#like it doesn’t make any apologies for itself it just plainly is what it is
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(continuing discussion of the gap between show's perception of Starfleet + what is presented)
I know there's a lotta Trek to work through and I completely understand if you choose not to, but I'd be really curious to see your opinions of first two reboot films—there's this fascinating continuation of it in line with 21st-century American history/politics, but the director and writers are clearly unaware of it. The cinematography of Starfleet in reboot Trek is distinctly more fascist when compared to The Motion Picture and the plot is. Distressingly on the nose.
(TLDR w/o big spoilers: in the first movie, Starfleet is described as a "peacekeeping armada", the Federation essentially experiences 9/11, with increased militarization and eugenics the main plot point of an ostensible Wrath of Khan reboot, and what is an attempt by a 'fleet admiral to provoke a war with the Klingons in the process of his further militarization of Starfleet. Also he attempts to blackmail Khan into helping him Build Weapons and Khan gets radicalized into becoming an anti-Federation terrorist. And then there's the racism)
I definitely wanna watch the reboots! I remember watching the very first one when it first came out but I had no investment or knowledge of Star Trek at the time so I don’t remember having any strong feelings about it
#Kinda dreading tng tbh but I will soldier on#the tng episodes I’ve watched (which r like two so not representative) had this like saccharine sentimentality to them that put me off#like tos is very cavalier and brutal which I like#like it doesn’t make any apologies for itself it just plainly is what it is#but (my limited experience of) tng feels a lot more sentimental and like psychological if that makes sense#anyway that opinion could very well change & I’ve heard the later seasons r quite good#asks#tos.txt
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I am vexed bestworstcase, vexed! I am trying to write dialogue/interactions between Salem and Oscar and struggling with their characterizations. I keep turning the interrogation/false-start reunion scene in the whale over and over again in my mind. What would it look like for Oscar and Salem to be forced to talk to and interact with each other on more even ground or working towards a truce? (With a big ol Oz shaped elephant in the room.) I want to get across Oscar as an active participant with autonomy and not flatten him, while also reckoning with Salem’s complex headspace around this whole shitshow. Do you have an idea of how you’d approach writing that dynamic? Any advice on how to make such a dynamic hold true to their characters while being an interesting exploration of their relationship? [What fucking happens if they’re kind to each other when they’re both expecting cruelty???] Genuinely interested in your thoughts on this considering the show itself will inevitable have to revisit this dynamic at its climax and conclusion
basics first. my general read on salem is that she has a solid grasp of what makes people tick but struggles to articulate her thoughts clearly, and this has cascading impacts on her speech: if she isn’t delivering planned and rehearsed remarks, she seems to either circumlocute (in ways that are, textually, confusing: “what are you saying” + her inner circle’s wildly different interpretations of what she means) or just say nothing at all.
i think this reading explains salem’s manner of speech far better than the pure ‘manipulative, lying puppetmaster’ angle a lot of the fandom ascribes to her, because there are these incidents—like the interrogation scene—where salem is being manipulative and her tactics are very cunning but undermined by her erratic or flat affect and unclear speech; if she were a masterful manipulator being cryptic on purpose for the sake of deception, she would be able to turn that off and speak plainly in situations where being cryptic is counterproductive to her purpose. but it really doesn’t seem like she can do that.
complicating all this is that 1. i think salem is aware that she’s Not Good at conversation, and 2. she wants to be understood. her constant seething about ozma’s lies is partly from the traumatic betrayal of her trust and also partly because he’s spent the intervening centuries poisoning the well against her to ensure that anyone who meets her will have the preconceived notion that she’s an unfeeling, unreasonable, inhuman monster. so there’s a degree of self-protection in her silence and her aversion to talking about herself, i think—if ozma couldn’t give her the benefit of the doubt, why would she expect better from anyone else?
with oscar specifically—i’m assuming a post-v8/9 context—there’s also the complication of salem having. tortured him. the last time they spoke which i feel is almost a bigger goliath in the room than oz is, because salem is actually pretty on the ball with separating oscar from her feelings about ozma. but the torture is very personal and very fraught for both of them; do you acknowledge it? apologize? ask for an apology? if oscar doesn’t bring it up, should she? is salem doesn’t acknowledge what she did, how does oscar navigate whatever feelings he might have about that or assumptions he might make as to why (is she pretending it never happened? does she think it doesn’t matter? will she get angry if he brings it up? the last time he tried to reason with someone ironwood shot him off a ledge)? it’s delicate.
some uh, general things that i try to hold in mind when i write dialogue for salem:
what is she thinking and not saying?
why isn’t she saying it? is she afraid of not being understood or is she not able to see the gaps or is she not sure how to put it into words?
what does she mean?
is this something she planned out in advance (or something she talks about often enough to have a sort of script in her mind), or is she speaking off the cuff?
when in doubt, she should probably say less
remember that her affect gets erratic and weird when she’s really uncertain
does she have people on her side whom she can kind of rely on to fill in the gaps (eg, summer) or is she on her own?
her soliloquies are eloquent, even poetic; her speech tends to be simpler. she rarely uses metaphors in conversation.
she tends to answer questions by giving examples that imply her intended meaning, and i am… not sure she realizes that she’s doing it. (cinder in v5 is a good example: salem says “never underestimate the usefulness of others; take leonardo, he was one of ozpin’s most trusted, and now…” when what she means is she’s hoping she can turn ruby against oz later)
when she isn’t sure how to respond she sort of stares blankly into the middle distance for a second or two. (she does it with cinder in v5 and oscar in v8)
oscar is similar in a way because i think he spends a lot of time in his head and it’s rare for him to get to a point of emotional enough to let out… any of the deep existential fear he’s living in, and i get the sense that he’s very conscious of what he says—which can come out in awkward stammering but also in a very deliberate cadence when he’s feeling more confident or determined or too focused on what he’s trying to express to feel self-conscious about it. but at the same time he’s easier because he doesn’t have, gestures at salem and her labyrinth of emotional armor, all of that. and wasn’t alone for millions of years.
with the specific context of olive branches and peace talks i think—esp at first—salem’s liable to be pretty tangibly awkward? because being asked questions and engaged with like a Person instead of a Fairytale Witch runs so counter to her expectations for how people will treat her. kind of a rattling experience, and nerve-wracking.
rewatching scenes is always useful. i try to take note of like body language and cadence ’cause achieving dialogue that feels in character is as much about how the character talks as what sort of things they say. and also thinking about character goals and emotionality—what are they trying to get from this interaction, how do their feelings influence their speech, do they succeed or fail and why?—is helpful too. what motivates the words they say? what motivates the thoughts they keep to themselves?
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Inviolable Bindings
AemondxAegonxFemOC
All Chapters Here!
Chapter 3
There was not a hint of surprise on his face when he made eye contact with her, his one eye seemed to burn through her own. His sharp Valyrian features were morphed into an unfriendly and unwelcoming expression.
“Hm.” The quiet noise came from deep within the man’s chest, “You certainly do look like a Targaryen. Although I hear that they breed the Valyrian features into women over there in your slave-ridden whore houses.”
Viserra was taken aback by the seemingly malicious intent of his comment. The hospitality that had been given by the others was not going to be reciprocated by this man.
“Ah, are you familiar with the slave-ridden whore houses in which you say I am from?” Viserra taunted back, watching as his facial expression remained unchanged but his jaw had suddenly tensed.
“I am well educated in many subjects…. But I do not have a taste for depravity,” he spat, his words were sharp and direct.
It was Viserra’s turn to respond with a hum. Choosing her next words carefully, she continued to hold the tension filled gaze, “Speak plainly. I had no intention of throwing insults with anyone tonight.”
The words he spoke next were filled with accusation, “I know my grandsire sent for you because of your dragon. He seems to not have any concerns about inviting you here with such impeccable timing of the King’s health. You are the offspring of an exiled Targaryen who had previously made a claim for the throne with his last visit to this city.”
Viserra rolled her eyes, she had forgotten that her father had once come to King’s Landing many years ago with that intent. However, the thought that she was here to try and do the same was absurd.
A slight chuckle left her lips and she shook her head, “If you think I am here to take the throne, you are mistaken and might also be a little mad. I have no desire for ruling or power such as that.”
“Doesn’t everyone, if only just a little?”
“No,” she answered quickly, “I am quite content doing as I please without that many expectations or responsibilities.”
The small adjustment he made in his face showed curiosity at her response, “Then what are your intentions here? Answer wisely, you are being closely watched by those who are not easily influenced or taken advantage of.”
Viserra thought for a moment before answering, mildly irritated by this interrogation, “Aemond, that is your name, is it not?”
“Prince Aemond.” The response was sharp.
“My apologies…My Prince. You seem like you know much more than initially letting on. You know who I am, who my family is, and where I come from. You must also know that I am not simply someone from the Free Cities with Valyrian bred traits because I also came with a dragon. I have spent many years with my father and grandmother being the only ones connecting me to my Targaryen history and it pleased me greatly to be invited here to meet others who share my blood. I can assure you that I have no ill intent in being here,” she stated, hoping honesty would start to break down the tension that suffocated the room.
Aemond looked at her, pondering her response as he tapped his fingers on the book in front of him. “Have you questioned why the Lord Hand summoned you here, requesting your support as a dragon rider?”
“I have heard whispers,” she stated, knowing her next words would also need to be chosen carefully, “I believe the display of hostility I witnessed at dinner confirmed this house is at war with itself. You have mentioned the King’s health as well. If I were to make a wild assumption, I would say that the House of the Dragon is not going to agree upon its current line of succession.”
There were a few moments of silence in the room while both parties ruminated on the words spoken.
“I know why I have been summoned here. Sometime on the morrow, I would like to speak with the King on this matter. It would be my desire to have clear expectations and duties laid out while I am here.” Her demand seemed to make Aemond’s eye twitch while his mind worked to form a response.
Taking in a deep breath, he found his next words in a hushed tone, “That will not be possible. The King is not in a state to hold conversations or make decisions regarding your duties.”
That small bit of information was the missing piece that brought the whole puzzle together. Starting with the King’s absence at dinner, it would make sense that he couldn’t attend. She also thought back to the Hand being the one to greet her upon arrival and the one who seemed to have arranged all of her accommodations. Then she remembered the surprised and questioning faces of those who saw her in the dining hall doorway earlier. All of the events of the night were starting to come together and she realized that her summoning was a very calculated move.
“The King did not send for me.”
The silence that was held between the two was full of unsaid confirmation. She had been brought to King’s Landing to aid in the usurpation of the King’s chosen heir. The idea that there was a division in who should rule after the King’s passing was now more than just rumors and whispers. There had been significant planning and preparation, gathering of power and support for when the time came to pass.
Viserra shook her head slightly and closed her eyes for a moment. She had walked into something that was much more complicated and dangerous than she had realized. The over the top hospitality and kindness she had experienced so far made sense. Those who had wished for her support would make sure to befriend her and treat her with the utmost respect.
“Now you understand what is to be expected of you.” The suggestion in Aemond’s voice that she was there to serve and obey struck a sudden nerve.
Both of her eyes narrowed as she stared daggers into his one, “My apologies but I do not think you have authority over me and where my loyalties lie. In fact, this whole conversation has treasonous implications. You will not hear me declare on this matter at the moment. I will need time to think on it.”
All of this seemed like some kind of trap. Viserra did not trust easily to begin with and now she felt as if the castle was nothing more than a pit of vipers. Aemond placed his book on the side table and stood up before her. She took in his height and sharp features staring coldly down to her. If the interaction had been different, she might have thought him handsome. Instead, his hovering raised the hair on the back of her neck and had all of her senses heightened.
“Watch yourself carefully, girl. You do not have the slightest idea of what you are now involved in.” The warning was clear and Aemond’s attempt at using his height for intimidation only irritated her further.
“I am more than capable of managing myself and making decisions on who and what to be involved with. You may have heard things about me, but you know nothing about who I truly am. There is more value to me than just being a dragon rider and it would be wise of you to not make enemies with me from the start,” Viserra hissed her response quietly and took a step towards him.
Aemond scoffed at her response, the corners of his lips curling upward. “I did not say I was trying to make enemies with you. You may be used to others respecting or fearing you because of your dragon, but here we all have that as common ground. You will be seen as another number on the back of a dragon if we are to go to war, nothing more.”
It was Viserra’s turn to scoff at his words. His response made her think he had not heard much about her at all, otherwise he would know that she was a skilled swordswoman and had experience in actual combat. “And who is to judge me for such usefulness?” Her tone was mocking and filled with disdain. This man sure did not lack any audacity.
There was another tension filled moment of silence. Aemond looked down at her hand still resting on the outline of her dagger. “Meet me in the training yard at dawn.”
Before Viserra could formulate a response to his request, he walked past her, bumping into her shoulder with his arm. The heat in her face had been building for the last few moments. Whatever vendetta this man had with her, she was unsure the root cause of it. She stood in the same place processing the whole interaction that had just happened before finally returning to her room.
The short walk back to her chambers wasn’t quite as pleasant as the walk to the library, this time she felt irritated and on edge. Elia had greeted her with a curtsy as she entered her room, but Viserra didn’t pay her much attention. She disarmed herself by the bed, placing her dagger near the pillow and then stepped towards the wardrobe.
She let Elia untie her dress and help it off of her body, quickly making her way back to the bed.
“A night dress, Lady Viserra?” Elia asked as she scurried after her.
“No, I do not wish to tangle myself in fabric during the night,” Viserra replied as she pulled the large blanket and furs down on the bed.
She watched as Elia nodded, a blush spreading across her cheeks. She had never liked sleeping in night clothes, feeling suffocated and tangled upon waking. Her preference was to be buried in blankets and furs, like the bed was her own dragon’s nest.
“I am to meet one of the princes tomorrow in the training yard at dawn.”Will you make sure I have something small to eat in the morning and that I am awake before the sun rises?”
Again Elia only nodded. “As you wish.” Waiting for her dismissal at the end of the bed, Viserra had to smile at her timidness.
“You may go to bed as well, Elia. I will see you in the morning.”
#aemond x aegon ii x oc#aemond smut#aegon x aemond#aegon ii#house targaryen#house of the dragon aemond#house of dragons#helaena targaryen#game of thrones#slow burn#eventual smut#fanfiction#ao3 stuff#aemond targaryen#house of the dragon#aemond x oc
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I’m in love with Begin Again! I was listening to ‘Eventually’ by Tame Impala, and I’m like omg this fits TASM!Peter🥲 I literally just picture straight up angst, but anywho! You’re one of my fav authors hun! 💖
are u asking for an angst fic… bc i wrote it 😭
eventually
pairing: tasm!peter parker x reader
tags: SO MUCH angst, hurt and comfort, sad, mentions of wounds, arguments, peter crying, self-esteem issues and self-sabotaging, mentions of death
summary: peter faces the weight of his double life. he doesn’t want to hurt you, but he is left with no choice except leaving.
missing out? ➤ my masterlist
It pains Peter seeing you asleep on the couch. He had promised that he would be back early tonight - that you wouldn’t have to wait up for him and that you’d finally have his warm body wrapped around yours. Peter realized that ever since he lied about having to work a nightshift at the office, you hadn’t been able to properly sleep in your shared bed without him. You didn’t know that his nightshifts were, in actuality, night patrols as Spider-Man. He couldn’t bear to tell you, knowing it would put you in danger as his girlfriend.
His girlfriend.
Whenever he’d leave, Peter noticed how you’d skim through his clothes in the closet before he’s out the door. You’d pull out your favorite jacket of his and you’d inhale the scent of it deeply, almost as if you had forgotten what he smelled like.
Were you forgetting his scent?
Were you forgetting how it felt to be with him, because he was so busy being Spider-Man?
It is apparent to him now, that in the time you spent caring for him, he forgot to care for you. He recognizes his shortcomings: the way he’d forgotten your two-year anniversary, how he stopped bringing you flowers in the mornings after a day of patrolling, how he would end up falling asleep during movie marathons because he was so fucking exhausted and he couldn’t tell you what he was going through.
Peter moves towards you, sitting on the edge of the couch. He doesn’t disturb you, not yet, anyways. You looked so peaceful, so blissfully unaware, so beautiful.
He wishes he could take a photo and memorize you like this forever. He can’t help but reach out to touch your face, letting his knuckle run across the apple of your cheek. There’s a soft smile on your lips, and Peter can’t help wonder if you were dreaming of him.
A better version of him, he hopes. One where he doesn’t end up hurting you constantly.
“Oh… Peter?” You innocently stir, looking at the brunette with sleepy eyes. You send him a lopsided grin immediately. It breaks his damned heart. You run your hand down his arm, unknowingly ghosting over the blossoming bruises he had gotten from a fight. Peter would give anything but to have you kiss them better and to kiss his anxieties away. “Hey, you. When did you get home? It’s almost three.”
“Hey there, bug.” The nickname is bittersweet in his mouth. He tucks a strand of hair behind your ear, taking note of how your body relaxed at the movement. Affection came to him so easily when he was near you. “Don’t worry about me. Why don’t you come to bed?”
With a tired groan, you sit up. “Will you sleep next to me tonight?” His brows furrow. “I don’t know why you’ve been getting up so early lately.” There’s concern laced in your voice, and it makes him feel so, so guilty.
You were concerned for him everyday, not knowing that his life could be taken at any moment in time. Not knowing that his existence itself was a danger - a burden to you.
“I’m sorry, Y/N. Work stuff.” He lies plainly, caressing your head with his hand.
You whisper like you’re worried sick. “You said that last week.”
“I’m sorry.” He apologizes profusely.
It’s all he can say. It felt like murder, to put your heart through whatever bullshit he was feeding you. It was hard for Peter to accept your unconditional love for him, when he was being selfish by keeping you in his life. You’d be happier without him, right?
“Oh, it’s okay. Don’t be sorry, darling.”
God, you pulled at his heartstrings.
You cup his jaw, and he leans into it.
He kisses your hand all over, savoring the saltiness of your skin. He kisses over the cracks in your knuckles, the smooth skin of your palm, the calluses on your fingers, the apex of your nails. He inhales your smell, like you’d done to his jacket, and he understands.
It overwhelmingly envelopes his senses, and all he can think about is you. You being safe. You being away from the ruin and destruction that he embodied. You being happier. Then, he’s sobbing into your hand. His lip and teeth are pressing against the skin, and his cries wrack through his body. Angry tears roll down his face and his vision is clouded, but all he can see in the blurriness is you. You’re taken aback with confusion, yet you don’t hesitate to embrace him.
“Peter, what’s wrong?” You take him into your arms, and he’s curling into a ball as he buries his head into your chest. He listens to your heartbeat, and he sobs even more. It’s the kind of cry that was messy - the one with snot and drool and Peter was a fucking mess but he didn’t care.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He chants like a prayer, and you fight back tears of your own because you hadn’t ever seen Peter like this.
“Why are you sorry?”
It scares you.
“Because…” He blubbers, staining your shirt with teardrops. “Because I’m selfish and I love you but I can’t spend my whole life loving you because I’m a coward and I can’t bear to lose you, Y/N. I just can’t.”
You’re crying, too. Because in the flurry of his hurried words and the hiccuping of his chest, you know something is terribly wrong.
“Peter…” You breathe out, pulling away from him to make eye contact. People used to say eyes were the window to the soul, but as you look at your boyfriend, you can’t see anything except yourself in the reflection of his hazel stare. “What are you talking about right now?”
“I don’t wanna hurt you.” Your boyfriend sighs through teary, red eyes. “I do it so much already. I’ve messed up your life. I should just go, shouldn’t I?”
“Look at me,” Your lip quivers. “I don’t know what has gotten into you. I don’t know why you’re thinking like that when our relationship is perfectly fine. Sure, we have our arguments, but those are petty things. I love you, Peter. I love you. I don’t understand.”
You’re desperately searching his face, tugging on his hand for some kind of sign.
“I’m leaving you.”
“What do you mean?” The question digs into Peter. “What? No.” You snap, standing up from the couch. The color has drained from his face, the rosiness on his cheeks and nose nowhere to be seen. Your face scrunches up in anger. “Why the fuck are you telling me this?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Bullshit. Give me a reason.” You can’t differentiate anymore if the tears on your shirt belonged to yourself or to Peter. You stab your finger repeatedly against your sternum. “Give me a good reason, Peter.”
Did he cheat on you? Was he not over Gwen?
Did you do something wrong?
Were you not enough for Peter?
“I can’t, Y/N.” You start yelling at him. He’s sobbing into his hands, elbows resting on his lap as he hunches over. Never once had you raised your voice at him - even the times he had stood you up on dates because his body was in pain and he couldn’t walk, or the times that he’d snap at you because he hadn’t slept in weeks.
“Do you even fucking love me?”
Peter winces, like you punched him in the gut.
Never did he want you to doubt his love for you.
“I’m Spider-Man.”
The words are hushed and forced-out, and the room is suddenly too quiet as if the world had found out his secret as well.
“I’m sorry. You know now. I have to go.”
He reaches for the backpack hanging off the doorknob, and you shakily step in front of him. Your hands smooth down his chest, and he fights off a sob as you press your forehead into him.
“How could you not tell me…” You hiccup, fists forming into balls as he tries to calm you. “Were you just going to pretend? Was I ever going to know? Were you just gonna - gonna make me fall in love with you and leave once I found out?”
He couldn’t gauge if you were angry at him, or sad. He couldn’t recognize the emotion in your eyes, like he was looking at a shell of a person.
He hates that you look beautiful even when you cry.
“No, no. Everything was real. I loved - love you. I always will.” He sniffles, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. The air is heavy before he speaks up. “You know, this would be so much easier if we were strangers.”
“At this point, I wish we were.” You admit solemnly. You refuse to look at him.
It stings. Hard.
He steps around you, slinging the battered backpack over his shoulder. You stiffen as he pulls out a luggage from the coat closet, and you piece together why the apartment has suddenly looked so empty recently.
You wondered where your pictures went, why his skateboard was missing, why there were such little clothing in your room, why the bed was always so cold.
He was going to leave.
He was always eventually going to leave.
You realize he has left you with nothing of his, except the jacket that smelled of him, and a single polaroid of him kissing you. It was a painful memory now.
Peter rests his head against the wall, looking at you through his eyelashes.
“I love you.”
“Why can’t you just stay…” You stand slumped like a little kid, arms loose at your sides as you meet his gaze. Maybe it would be the last time you’d ever get to look at those gorgeous eyes. You plead. “I won’t tell anyone. I’m not in danger.”
You want to remember him. His freckles, the slope of his nose, the scars and blemishes on his face, the softness of his hair.
But, remembering is so much harder than forgetting.
“Me, being Spider-Man, I am a danger to you.” Peter doesn’t touch you, just lets his hand brush against yours longingly. It makes him tremble. “I wish I could have it a different way, Y/N. I really wish I could.”
“All you have to do is stay.”
“I love you, bug. So much.”
“Stay.”
He feels his heart break, and he can’t bear to face you anymore. Wheeling his luggage to the front door, he admires the apartment for one last time.
He had built a home with you.
“I can’t wait to see what you look like happy, Y/N.”
His foot is out the door by the time you find the courage and voice to speak.
“If you ever decide that….” You swallow roughly. Your hands play with the hem of your shirt, and it smells too much of Peter. “… that Spider-Man isn’t for you anymore, come find me again, okay?”
He shuts his eyes.
You accepted it. And that hurt even worse.
Peter doesn’t say anything, and silently closes the door behind him.
-
#peter parker#spiderman#peter parker x reader#peter parker fanfic#peter parker fanfiction#peter parker fic#peter parker x you#peter parker oneshot#peter parker angst#tasm andrew garfield#tasm!spiderman x reader#tasm!peter x you#tasm spiderman#tasm fanfiction#tasm peter parker#peter parker imagine#requests#andrew garfield#marvel#tasm imagine#spiderman x you#spiderman x reader#spiderman oneshot
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(Hey, look! That Zimbits AU where Jack goes into PR after retiring from the NHL and NHL!Bitty comes looking for advice about coming out!)
“Your ten-o-clock, remember?” April gestures to the conference room with her pen. “The cutie the Hurricanes coughed up for Pride Night outreach? He’s here.”
Jack tugs down the blinds with a cautious finger and zeroes in on the handsome blonde sitting awkwardly at one end of their large conference table, conspicuously alone. “There’s always suits for outreach talks,” Jack hazards, looking back at his receptionist over his shoulder. “They never send players alone.”
“It’s what we’ve got on the books. Eric Bittle, Carolina Hurricanes. No plus ones.” April whispers, checking her calendar. “Well? Get in there, Boss; and buckle up, he’s got an accent.”
.
Eric Bittle looks up, his dark brown eyes wide and unfairly attractive as Jack extends his hand, Bittle rising to take it. Everything about Bittle is polished and perfected; suit tailored, hair coiffed so neatly Jack would posit he’d gone in to have it trimmed before he’d arrived this morning. He’s pulled together so tightly, in fact, that Jack can’t find any loose threads, and if he remembers his time in The Show correctly, no loose threads means Mr. Bittle’s probably hiding something.
“Eric? I’m Jack Zimmermann. It’s great to meet you.”
“Oh, I know who you are,” Bittle chuckles, and Jack’s heart would skip a beat if he wasn’t so certain there’s a huge piece of context still missing from this meeting. “It’s still very nice to meet you in person.”
“So, tell me about Pride Night,” Jack pops the button on his suit jacket and settles down across the table. “What, exactly are the ‘Canes thinking about doing that involves you coming to see us?”
Bittle bites his lip briefly, gaze darting off before coming back to settle on Jack, and Jack is reminded of so many media training sessions it’s like he’s back in Vegas again.
“I may have, ah, fudged the reason for my visit a bit. Yes, we have Pride Night coming up, yes I’m the designated sacrifice, but I’m more here on personal business.”
Jack eases the tip of his pen from the legal pad, recognizing an off-the-record admission is coming. “How personal?” He questions. “Are we talking potential legal trouble or just potential social trouble? Or no trouble at all.”
“I’m gay.” Bittle says plainly. “Whatever trouble that may be. My team knows it, my family knows it, and I want to come out — I need to come out — and I can’t mess it up.”
Jack is grateful for his game face, reaching for the coffee carafe near him to couch his surprise and no small measure of his excitement. “Oh, you mean like I did?” Jack jokes, earning a soft smile.
“No active player has come out since you retired,” Eric skirts Jack’s comment, taking the mug before gingerly amending, “Not voluntarily, at least. I’d like to break that streak. Given your experience, and what you do now, it seemed like the smart move to come speak with you.”
“Well, I’ll be the first to admit my behavior didn’t lend itself to much confidence with the public at large, but that’s why I’m where I am today. Making sure people like you can learn from my mistakes.”
“And you made a lot of mistakes,” Bittle murmurs, taking the mug from Jack gingerly, glances back out the window as he takes a sip, and Jack fights a smile when he realizes what’s happening.
“Are you . . . chirping me?”
“Makes me less nervous,” Bittle admits, apologetic. “But that was rude, I’m sorry.”
Bittle’s eyes are bright. His smile is bright. Everything about him is warm, inviting. Jack might be biased, though, he’s always had a soft spot for compact blondes.
“Don’t apologize.” Jack leans back in his chair, feeling lighter than he has in weeks. “You might be the only one in the whole league right now that doesn’t need to apologize.”
“I think I need to have a partner,” Eric clears his throat. “I can’t come out without a reason, otherwise what’s the point.”
“That answers one of my first questions, gives us a place to start. Yes, a boyfriend gets you points, but not in the way you’re thinking. If you come out with a guy on your arm, the story becomes maintaining the relationship, not that you have one or that you are ‘out’ at all. The scandal is the relationship falling apart, or you flirting with a fan when you have your partner at home, that kind of drama.”
“And if I just say, ‘hello, I am a homosexual’ people will think I’m promiscuous, or just trying to get laid.”
“Maybe. Are you?”
Bittle’s expression turns indignant, lips twisting into a judgmental frown that reminds Jack of his grandmother before a scolding.
“What kind of question is that? Yes, of course, but they don’t need to know that. But that doesn’t — You know, you gave me hope?”
Jack doesn’t quite startle, he’s well beyond the jumpyness of his youth, but he has no clue where this conversation is about to go.
“When you came out, when you were drafted, your cup season . . . every time you succeeded, beat the odds, it made me think, maybe, I could do it, too. I could be a professional athlete, I could play hockey, and it didn’t matter who I wanted to be with.”
Jack knows there’s a ‘but’ coming, he can feel it; so he gets there first.
“But . . . then I overdosed.”
“Then you retired.” Eric corrects. “Two years before I signed with Carolina, and you just gave up. I was going to be the first out NCAA men’s hockey captain, you ‘retired’ in scandal, and suddenly the trustees didn’t want the attention. Back to square one.”
“Eric, I wasn’t well.” Jack defends gently, knowing Bittle isn’t trying to be cruel.
“You let them get to you! You were supposed to be untouchable. I needed you to be untouchable.”
“Eric.”
“I’m sorry,” Bittle looks down at his hands, the table, anywhere but Jack. “I genuinely didn’t intend for any of this to come up so quickly, you’ve been nothing but charming and here I am dumping all my baggage on you like we’ve been talking for years . . . ”
“It’s actually alright. I’ve made peace with what happened to me, what I put myself through, and I wasn’t kidding that I’m very intent on making sure I can help others avoid the same pitfalls. So, what do you need from me right now?” Jack asks, genuinely curious. “An apology? A hug? You wouldn’t be the first to ask.”
“I want . . .” Bittle huffs, closing his eyes and evening his breathing. “I want dinner.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’ve loved the idea of you since I was sixteen, but now I actually need your advice on how to do this without losing my mind, and I can’t plan my future from a boardroom, so, I want you to take me to dinner. I want to hash this out like two normal, well functioning adult men. Also, maybe alcohol.”
“Speak for yourself on the well-functioning part,” Jack chirps himself, “but I think dinner can be arranged. I assure you, you’ll have my full support moving forward. The firm’s, as well.”
Bittle’s lips quirk, holding Jack’s gaze. He caught the slip, and now there’s nothing to do but own it. They lapse into a gentle silence. Jack sipping his coffee, Bittle doing the same. Jack isn’t sure what he’s waiting for, the puck is at the end of his stick. He flashes a smile. Bittle blushes.
“So,” Jack begins. “Do you like Burmese?”
____
They part ways and April’s eyes are huge with suspicion. “Should we discuss fees?” she asks. “Do we need to start billing? Sounds like it went well.”
“Nah, we’ll talk later about payment,” Jack replies, folding his jacket over his arm, hiding the slip of paper with Bittle’s personal number and trying not to stare as the forward walks away. “I have a strong feeling I might be handling this pro bono.”
#Zimbits#OMGCP#my stuff#eric bittle#jack zimmermann#PR AU#NHL!Bitty#tw: overdose mention#I know I’ve been gone forever here’s a treat to say sorry
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Hihi again-request for a scenario where the reader gets kabedoned by their s/o (accidentally or intentionally)(Ayaka,Hu Tao,Ei,Sara and Yae)-feel free to make any edits if you want think the scenario doesn’t suit the character well and remember to take care!! :)
I can do it like earlier and have 2 sides- one where they get kabedoned and one where reader does it! So if you'll like this one I don't mind you requesting second part ^w^
Also I think I might be crushing on Yae
Ayaka, Hu Tao, Ei, Sara and Yae reacting to their S/O doing the "Kabedon"
Reader here is gender neutral
Kamisato Ayaka
You didn't have many opportunities to take her out on a date. There were a lot of things you wanted to do but your outdoor plans failed due to an unexpected rain.
To get away from it you went to the Komore Teahouse. After entering a room you stood in front of the wall clearly feeling defeated.
She looked at you and asked if you were okay but it felt like you weren't listening or you just plainly ignored her. So she stood between you and the wall asking again but her tone was more serious.
You just rested your head against her shoulder as your hand supported you against the wall.
You admitted to the fact that you just felt down because of the rain that had ruined your plans.
While she did listen to you she was more focused on the position the two of you were in.
"I see- uhm I understand how you feel but-" her embarrassed tone made you look up, that's when you noticed that you pinned her against the wall.
You immediately pushed yourself away from her and apologized. She didn't mind what had happened in the slightest and the two of you continued your little date.
Hu Tao
She always liked it when you got confident with flirting. It's mostly because even though teasing is harder- once she hits the right spot she can see really great expression of flustered denial.
Of course it doesn't happen all the time. But she'd be lying if she said she doesn't sometimes create such situations on purpose just so she could tease you.
Each time she's done she's super sweet to make up for it if she makes you visibly upset though. It doesn't happen too often but it's not uncommon either.
Once you had a perfect opportunity to do the famous Kabedon you were prepared for her turning the tables, however you also thought you weren't going to let her get the better of you easily. You caught her off guard but she wasn't spooked so you had a little advantage.
This time you were prepared to say something back to her but once you had her... You felt speechless.
You were admiring each other, her eyes seemed more sparkly than usual but her smile was the same as ever.
Both of you felt like the entire world stopped existing and now it was just the two of you.
She booped your nose "Are we just going to stand here? Or was it just a staring contest" she says as she stares more intensively.
She just wanted to get you to talk. The silence was slowly making her flustered but she didn't mind that in the slightest.
Ei
Considering that she usually just stays in a huge rooms where she is always meters away from the wall it was hard to pull off something like this.
But somehow you managed to get yourself in that position... By accident.
That day she decided to take another walk around the town she wished to see more... And craved some dango milk.
As the two of you walked around some theif was being chased and you kind of stood in their way so they pushed you.
Since they pushed you Ei was pushed as well and she ended up with her back against the wall and you automatically placed your hand against it to stabilize your balance since you were almost about to fall.
As soon as the theif turned around to see if they were still being chased they saw Ei and freaked out. Thus they got captured.
Both you and Ei focused on that before you both turned your heads as the case solved itself.
That's when you noticed what had happened... As you were in the famous Kabedon your hearts were in sync beating faster than usual.
There was a bit of silence but she broke it by asking "How long do you wish to stay that way?"
Kujou Sara
You don't often get a chance to fluster her, even if this isn't a hard task. Unless she isn't focused on something else it's rather simple to flatter her.
So she didn't expect that to happen. And of course I mean the Kabedon happening.
You were alone you had an opportunity and took it. She was very much surprised but she didn't let that show.
She looked away but she also wanted to face you at the same time.
"What do you think you're doing?" she said with a sigh not really understanding your intentions.
If you wanted something from her you always have her attention. So a sneak attack like that seems unnecessary... But welcome.
Yae Miko
You planned this. You wanted to see how she'd react. Knowing her she'd probably be as bold as always... But it's still worth trying!
And hey, let's be real even if you fail to fluster her being close to her is a win on its own.
You waited for an opportunity to strike but it was almost like she just knew what you planned. You couldn't find her near any surface that was stable enough for your move.
Maybe it was a dare to see if you'd try it even though you'd risk falling with her?
She was also making sure to take a glance at you once in a while with a smirk... Yup she probably knew and wanted to see your reaction.
She didn't really let her guard down but she felt like that was enough. To be honest she had another plan of teasing that was much more entertaining.
So the second you shoot your shot... She did it.
"You're trying to fluster me, don't you? My love you need to try better than this" she smiles as she places her hand on your cheek and closes all distance between you, giving you a sweet kiss.
~Mod Lisa
#ayaka kamisato#ayaka kamisato genshin impact#ayaka x reader#Genshin Ayaka#Ayaka gi#hu tao x reader#gi hu tao#hu tao genshin#hu tao genshin impact#hu tao#Hu Tao gi#ei genshin#Ei#genshin impact ei#ei x reader#baal gi#baal genshin impact#sara kujou#kujou sara#sara kujou x reader#sara genshin impact#Sara gi#Gi Sara#Sara x reader#yae miko#yae x reader#Miko x reader#yae miko genshin#Guuji Yae
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TaiKouvember Day 6: Loyalty/Jealousy
“K…ro…”
“Kou…ro…”
“Koushirou!”
A sudden jolt surges through his body at the call of his name. A cold sweat covers his brow as he sits up.
“Mhhh… Koushirou… why’d you get up?” A lazy voice yawns to his side. It was a young boy, Taichi, who had answered his call. He laid in the grass under a large oak tree, observing his friend with one eye as he rubs the other.
“I’m sorry Taichi-san, I believed I heard my name…” Koushirou says, a mix of curiosity and worry filling his mind. Who was it? It sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it…
“Is there a problem? Do I need to wake up Agumon?!” The gogglehead exclaims before turning his head to his friendly firebreathing dinosaur.
“Noooo… Tai, five more minutes… your mom is making tuna casserole…” After hearing this, Taichi begins to make a face of disgust. In return, Koushirou suddenly gripped his gogglehead’s shoulders.
“Taichi-san! Agumon, how is he?! Has the countdown gotten any worse?!” The redhead suddenly exclaims, causing Taichi to freeze in shock.
“Countdown?! Agumon is fine, I think… What’s happened Kou??” Taichi immediately stands up, worry filling his face at the mere thought of something bad happening to Agumon.
“Taichi-san, I’m sorry, I’m not sure…” Koushirou begins to think. What came over him? He doesn’t know anything about a countdown… He has so many questions, but it’s like his mind won’t work. It’s just like with Vademon… he can’t help himself… he can’t help Taichi-san… he’s…
“Koushirou! Snap out of it!” Taichi’s voice suddenly snaps him back to reality, his eyes focusing on his friend’s. In Taichi’s eyes was… fear. Fear of whatever just happened. Koushirou wasn’t quite sure himself, but to signal to Taichi he was okay, he placed his hands on Taichi’s own.
Taichi’s voice just then though, it seemed so familiar. Like the earlier voice…?
“Taichi-san… I think you were the one I heard…” Koushirou begins, gripping his friend’s hands tighter.
“But I was asleep!” Taichi says, still worried for Koushirou as he tries to make sense of the situation.”
“As am I, Taichi-san… and I need to wake up.”
Suddenly, Koushirou isn’t surrounded by a warm meadow or a large tree, but by dark blue crystals. An almost suffocating cold surrounded him as two steadfast eyes pierced his soul.
Menoa.
This was her doing.
“He’s the password, isn’t he? To the encryption you keep on your database.” She stands still, frozen like a statue as she stares him down.
“Leave him out of this!” Koushirou demands, growling as he raises his fists to his sides, taking an offensive posture.
“You’re so defensive of Taichi. You shouldn’t worry Koushirou, he’ll be with you soon enough. Wouldn’t it be nice though, Koushirou, for him to never have to worry about losing his partner? For you to never worry about losing your precious Taichi-san? Reality doesn’t have to be so cruel. Together we can do so much more. We could even use the Digital World itself! We could bring happiness to everyone!” A crooked smile forms over her once blank expression, showcasing her true desires plainly. In response Koushirou loosens his posture, smiling softly.
“I’m sorry Menoa-san, I simply cannot abide by your plan. Everyone should have the freedom to live their life. Even if it hurts, that’s what’s best.” Koushirou bows forward as he apologizes, putting his arms to his sides as he remains steadfast in his decision.
“I only wish we could have been closer.” After Menoa softly says that, Eosmon gives Koushirou its kiss of death. With it his consciousness is whisked away, waiting for his Taichi-san to wake him up again.
For @taikouvember !
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hello if you want you can ignore this of course but I was wondering what would vampire Hoseok do if he found out someone turned oc? Your fics are amazing by the way!
Bitten to death
A/N: Thank you for your request :) It was fun to write. However I took it less as a reaction, and more of a story prompt. So it's not exactly a conclusive answer to your question. I hope you still like it, though ^-^ 💜💜💜
Summary: You thought you knew everything about Vampires but when you wake up one you learn there are some important things you did not know. And it's only going to let worse once you learn why you were turned.
Trigger Warnings: Blood, death, maiming, choking, violence, mind control, abduction, yandere themes.
Vampire! Hoseok
It was like a horror story within your already horrific story. Some man you've never met before broke into Hoseok's house when only you were there. While you screamed and fought and instinctively called for Hoseok, he covered you in bites unlike any other you had felt before. Ones that made you suffer as if fire was coursing through your veins. You wish that you could say you were strong enough that your fight had some kind of impact. But in truth, it was over after only a few seconds. And it was in those few seconds that you felt your chest burning and your breath fill your lungs for the last time.
Waking you're met by the stranger hovering above you. Your head aching and your body throbbing in ways you had never experienced before. With a quick glance, you can see everything around you, and that does mean everything. Every single little detail. And the information is overwhelming.
Your mind feels as if it's breaking from everything you're taking in. For as far as you can see there are pallets and long isles of shelves lined up, the contents on every rack crystal clear. You can hear the sound of his shoes on the concrete and the dirt gritting underneath, and how each peak of sound travels and bounces off the farthest point in the warehouse. Even the smells, there are hundreds of them all hitting you at once. A few you know like the fragrance of the treated wood or the oils stain, but others you couldn't guess at. It's as if all of your senses are on high and you have no way to focus them.
Despite your panic, no matter how much you want to run, you can't. Laying on your back with your arms spread out to either side of you and your legs held together, you're being bound by the thinnest most delicate length of silver chain. Though, it's not tied. It's only draped over you, but still holding you as if it were stronger than any steel. Burning you as if it were touched by the sun.
You may have only seen a few newly made vampires before, but you have still been around them enough and know enough about their existence to recognize how and why your body feels wrong. And absurdly you can't help but feel betrayed. This was not supposed to happen to you. It was the only safety you got from belonging to someone who was called The Immortal King, and The Origin of Cruelty. No one was supposed to be foolish enough to steal from him, and most importantly, no one was supposed to be able to hurt you. But now because Hobi didn't keep you safe, he's now lost his blood supply and you've lost your humanity.
The stranger snaps his fingers, the sound bursting in your eardrums making you groan and wince as he repeats it. "Focus your attention on just this one sound. On just the sight of my hand. Feel the air around it." He coaxes you, snapping again. The noise echos dozens of times, ricocheting off every wall. The dull thud of his fingertips hitting his palm only sounding the once though.
Opening your eyes your concentration goes to the hand held above your face as he said, the space around it blurring. On the back of his pointer finger on an otherwise porcelain complexion, you notice a small patch of dry skin just below his knuckle. Clear blue-black defined veins wrapping the back of his palm. He clicks his fingers again and you catch the sound of friction from the way his finger rubs down his thumb, feeling the most minuscule shift in the air created by his motion.
The pinpointed attention helps for a moment, but then you shift your eyes to his face and the explosion of information overpowers you again. His hold comes around your neck keeping your head from turning. The tight pressure on your throat while stifling your movement, nearly makes you smile. There's no airflow to restrict. Your chest isn't heating, your body isn't convulsing trying to breathe. Even in this tense moment, you can't help but find it humorous, thinking how many times over the years had you wished for this exact thing when Hobi had squeezed the air from you.
"Watch my eyes," on his words your vision becomes immersed in them. They're piercing blue. Made up of streaks of white interlacing with a clear sapphire shade, like thousands of threads made out of the purest tropical ocean. A transparent irregular line encircling his pupil, and beyond that every distinct strand blurs together with the others until it reaches the shadowed grey edge that holds the circular shape. Slowly his jet black pupils dilate, stretching and filling his entire iris till every trace of colour is removed. As if transfixed, you're unable to close your own eyes, a flooding of bright light filling your field of view. The strength of it is so intense that the tendons in your sockets ache and your eyes begin to water. Tears rolling down the sides of your face, cresting in your ears.
"Apologies, you are only my second." He confuses you with a vague explanation you did not ask for. The black finally receding into its natural size. Your own eyes scrunching as you try to blink away the soreness. The bizarre occurrence leaving you feeling drained of strength, filling you with anxiety caused by the uncertainty, which is only worsened by the glimmer of triumph in his gaze.
Searching past him to the ceiling your brain is again processing the whole image instead of the sum of its parts. The strain in your head slowly fading, your tight held muscles releasing as everything begins to normalize. You don't know what he did, but it seemed to help.
He doesn't back away, continuing to invade your personal space. Although, the way his fingers are trailing along your skin while you're restrained on the floor is still not the worst thing he has done to you. Seeing as he killed you.
"I had almost given up hope that Jung Hoseok would love." His hand daintily caresses along your neck and up your jaw. Your eyes shutting as his fingertips run over your lips. "I began to fear it might not be something possible for him." He divulges, his touch still aimlessly wandering.
The way he speaks you can feel his vailed anger. Despite his soft words, this is not someone who cares about Hoseok's wellbeing, this is someone who hates him deeply.
"However, you restored my lost faith. And for that, I would like to thank you, Inamorata."
He thinks Hoseok loves you? Is he crazy?. He's possessive of you, that is all. Even in moments of deception or weakness when you had told him that you loved him, he's never said it back with any sincerity. And he has never said it of his own accord.
"Sir," your eyes reopen. "I think you've misunderstood. These," you weakly gesture to the silver, each slight movement searing the links deeper into your flesh. "aren't necessary. We are on the same side. I hate Hobi, more than anyone."
"Truly?" He asks tilting his head to the side. His white hair messily hanging across his forehead.
"Yes," you nod trying to insist your point. "He's kept me locked up for years." you chuckle dryly. Finding it nearly risible that all of this is because this man believes in a fantasy.
"Well then, you are free to rise," he nods resolutely. Plucking the chains out of your melted skin as you grit your teeth. The sound of the sizzle on his own skin baffling you as to how he can even lift them.
Sitting up you gently pull your limbs in, inspecting the blistered and bloody marks. The skin on your wrists already starting to intricately knit itself back together.
"Come here." The stranger calls from a rested place on one of the pallets to your right.
Standing, it is a bit hard to walk with your ankles still cut up but you make it to him decently. Looking around you, you can see the sun streaming in from the high windows that line the whole length of the warehouse. It's enough to light up the otherwise dark space, but with the sheer size of this place, the beams of sunlight do not get close to the two of you in the centre. Still in the middle of the day, it means Hobi can't get to you. Not easily at least. So you're on your own for now.
"Kneel." He instructs plainly. And you follow, lowering onto your knees in front of him. Your only thoughts are of escape. You may be in your first minutes as a vampire, but it should be simple to move quickly. It always seemed like something that came easily to them. "Inamorata, you will call me Master." he declares abruptly.
"Yes, Master." You smile confusedly. Inamorata? Why does he keep calling you that? You're unsure if it's a name or a title, but it's weirding you out.
Your face drops, your heart thumping, realizing what you said. The words you just spoke replaying in your head. You hadn't meant to say that.
Why did you say that?
In fact, why had you knelt? Why were you doing what he said at all?
With a gaped mouth you climb back to your feet. "Look, I think-um." You start not knowing what you want to say.
"Kneel." He orders again more forcefully yet with a knowing, jovial smirk. You shake your head hard, staying upright. You're not going to let him order you around. He has to be kidding.
Your brows furrow, your mouth drops open, and your forehead tightens as your knees bend against your wishes. You drop back into your knelt position. Grunting as your jaw clenches, your fingers digging into your legs, doing your best to resist without success.
Your eyes go wide in shock.
"Good. Now stay there," his voice makes your stomach drop. But your muscles relax, your shoulders dropping and your bottom lowering on your calves. Your body resting in this position.
This is nothing you have ever seen before. It's nothing that you knew was possible. It shouldn't be possible. On top of all the horrible advantages they already have, you're sure you would have known if mind control was one of them!
"How?" You gape, shaking your head in disbelief. "Why?"
"Why?" a smile fills his face, "What you have told me is far different than what I had heard." He stands and turns, tapping his foot against the top pallet sending it and its boxed contents flying. He grabs at the bottom slats of wood underneath and drags them closer to you with a horrid screeching on the concrete. Sitting back down he is now much lower and much nearer to you. So much so that his legs spread straight out on either side of you. "See, I had heard stories of the self-proclaimed King of Vampires, who had fallen in love with his human pet. That he kept her close, kept her safe, and drank from her exclusively."
"That's not love." you interrupt with a scoff, "That's imprisonment."
"Well, let us see what the truth is. Tell me honestly, Jung Hoseok's little Inamorata, do you love him?"
"Yes." You're mouth answers before your mind has time to think. "No!" you instantly correct.
The smile grows larger on his face "And what do you feel about him?"
"I'm scared of him. But I care for him." The words are pouring out of you uncontrollably, your face placifying as you speak. "and I miss him when he isn't home."
"And does he love you?"
"I think so, yes." You wish you could make yourself shut up! Your calm tone drops and you bite your jaw trying to take back your own body, growling as you do. "No! He doesn't." you snarl in a rapid shift.
"You think so? Then my last question; Do you want him to love you?" He asks satirically.
"Yes," The word slips out. Being accepted joyously from him. "You can't just make me say anything you want!" you shout. Your body is rigid and stiff as you think to stand with nothing happening.
"I did not," he chuckles, "I made you say what you believe is true."
"No, you didn't! Tha-" his finger raises to his lips shushing you, cutting you off like your voice had disappeared.
That is not how you feel! Hobi may have gotten better as time has gone on, but he is still cruel and malicious and heartless. The only thing this man is doing is speaking to your primal brain. The part of you that gave into its survival instinct and it's the part that you fight every day to repress so that you stay in control. You can't love him, it's not possible.
"Ha, you are far more amenable than my last. I can hardly feel any resistance." He mocks, tapping his temple. "And I recall Jung Hoseok trying to move heaven and earth to break free. Even Mansueto struggled to contain him. But you," he reaches down holding out his hand and you follow his gesture, your body moving independently to accept it. "You are a broken little thing."
You don't understand his ridicule. You're not moving consciously. Your own mind isn't connected to your actions. So you can't fathom how your body is even reacting, let alone how you should be able to fight it.
"Stop." You complain, your voice coming out with far less strength than you had intended. "Look, Hoseok doesn't have my blood anymore, okay. So just leave me out of whatever fucked up feud you have you have going with him."
"No, that is not enough." his tone becomes suddenly harsh. He lifts his hand and you stand as he raises it. "He stole someone precious to me and he must feel the same agony of loss."
"You're wrong." you swallow, working to overcome your nerves, "I'm sorry, but you just are. He doesn't love me. I'm not precious." You try to reason, seeing your pleas falling on an unreceptive man.
"We will see."
The sun has barely set before you hear commotion beyond the metal walls.
You had tried over and over to pry information from this man, to convince him to let you leave. But you were unable to gather so much as a name from him, and clearly, you failed to be let go. After a certain point of ignoring you, he stopped you from speaking altogether. Not allowing you to say a word until he permits it. More than that though, he filled your head with many instructions. Telling you how to behave in anticipation of Hoseok's arrival.
100 meters in front of you the locked doors are ripped off their hinges, a dozen men and women pouring into the warehouse with inhuman speed. But as if time slows down your eyes adjust and you can see them, see their movements with full clarity. Hoseok comes in last and straight down the middle into the open square that you all occupy. And you must admit, you are genuinely happy to see him. Now you just want him to hurry up and get you out of here.
The man steps forward to meet them while you are sat on the stack of pallets behind him. Your only instruction at this time is to sit quietly and wait for him to call you. Hating the feeling of being restrained by your own body.
Watching them all lineup versus a single man, you find it comical how outmatched he is.
Hobi always said that when he got tired of playing with your human body, he was going to turn you. And he was furious if anyone robbed him of even your smallest reactions, so clearly, he was going to be beyond pissed that someone sped up his plan, and took your death away from him.
"That's mine," Hoseok puffs up his chest, looking past the man's shoulder to you.
The only thing that's confusing you, though, is if this man knows who The Vampire King is, why he didn't expect to be met with hell on earth, and why he didn't prepare better.
"Jung Hoseok, always so impolite. Do you not think you should greet an old friend after so many years?"
"We can talk all you like, Kol," Hoseok snarls, finally giving a name to your killer. "Once I get my property back."
"I think you'll find this is my belonging now." he chuckles in a brief pause. Hoseok's expression darkens, his eyes becoming murderous. The fury around him actually making you shiver. "Do you like the modifications I made? She is much more durable now."
Supposedly, Hobi's already noticed your change, because he doesn't look at you again. Instead, the two men have an intense staredown. All of the vampires on his side looking ready to kill on a word.
"And far more obedient. Come here," Kol calls you, holding his hand out at shoulder height for you to take. Moving automatically, you jump down from the stack of wooden pallets placing your fingers on his palm.
Unable to stand the rage on Hoseok's face you look down, just missing the exact moment he charges. But you see an instant later as he is thrown back like a paper doll into four stories of shelves, his weight bringing the metal, the shelves, and the products down on top of him as the whole structure collapses. His men looking as startled as you to see Hoseok so easily discarded.
Before the toppling construction settles, Kol breaks from your side and an incredible, horrible scene breaks out. His speed is something you can't follow, even now. You only see the trail of destruction when he stops. One after the other, he made his way through half of the vampires, ripping them apart. Literally tearing some in two halves. Decorating the square with blood and innards.
The others are as belated and overwhelmed as you, only just having the sense to react as his blurred image stops. When he advances again, this time he doesn't use his quickness for an advantage and simply ploughs through them. They attack all at once, and still as they grab and strike at him, their forces barely move him. And his response is terrifying.
You can only bear to watch the first one. Kol's fist driving through a woman's chest, the horrid cracking of her ribs as he tears it back out making you want to scream. But his orders have you completely silent. Instead, you close your eyes, sealing your hands over your ears. Trying to block out the violent sickening sounds of his destructive rampage.
There's a last thud before it falls quiet again. Your eyes springing open to see as horrific of a sight as you had imagined. He's dripping in blood. Drenched in it. And Hoseok's people are strewn in every which way. Not a single one having survived.
Sauntering through the sea of dead bodies, he makes his way to the side where Hoseok is unmoved, tossing away the beams and panels as if they were nothing. Grabbing him by the ankle, he drags him from the rubble into the clear space in front of you. The man you once thought of as the most powerful in existence, and his troupe of vampires, was completely demolished in mere seconds of work. And you can only watch on with your body shaking. Your hopes of rescue decimated. Your chest aching with worry, even for Hobi's sake.
"Now that it's a more intimate number of us, should we talk?" Kol releases him, brushing past you as he sits where you had before. His action triggering an instruction he provided earlier, forcing you to follow him and kneel at his feet.
Sitting up, Hoseok rubs the back of his hand against a large gash under his eye. The ferocity not having left his mannerisms. "You disappear for 90 years, and you show up to what, gimmie a blood bath." His laugh falls into a grimace as he stands himself back up.
"I was created in the 13th century and you brought infants to a fight with me. What did you think would happen?" Kol asks scornfully.
"I was hoping they would do a little better," He smirks, shrugging off their deaths. "Okay, that's my bad. But still, that doesn't tell me what you want. Or did you just want to remind me that you're still alive?" He taunts, his sardonic nature returning, "Remind me that you're still pissed and you can kick my ass. Good job. You put on quite a show." he smiles, his tongue running over his fangs as he gestures around at the gruesome display. "But she," he points to you with two fingers, bitterness lacing his next words, "is worth nothing to you."
"Oh, she is worth everything to me," Kol slides forward, his hand brushing down the back of your neck, "because she is worth everything to you."
On those words, you get the most heart-wrenching sight. A pang of insecurity shows up in Hoseok's eyes. Uncertainty and something so close to fear. The smile fading as he looks him up and down.
"I am curious, though, Vampire King, do you think she will detest the Sire bond as greatly as you did?" he punctuates the question, tugging your head back by your hair. "If I treat her as Mansueto treated you, how long do think until she breaks?"
With immense speed, Hoseok splinters one of the wooden crates near him, lunging at Kol, aiming to drive the shard into his heart with a roar. But he's caught before his hand ever plunges forward. Instead, Kol takes the sharp wood and spikes it into Hoseok's stomach. Continuing to dominate him with a solid blow, knocking him off his feet, smacking him into the concrete in front of you. Stepping down, he swings his foot punting Hoseok in the chest hurling him back among the remains of his fallen creations.
You had thought if you ever saw Hobi being handled as roughly as he treated you, that you would enjoy the Karma of it. But seeing him so easily immobilized is making you sick with fear and mostly sadness.
With Kol having stood, you're no longer bound on your knees and you scramble to your feet. You want to run to Hoseok's side but before you have the chance Kol drags you into him, his hand wrapped around your waist, his other crudely brushing the hair from off the side of your face.
"Call out to him. Tell him your every feeling." He hushes the order in your ear.
"Hobi!" you yell, not sure you would have even needed to be compelled to want to shout for him. "Get up, please. I'm scared. I wanna go home!"
"Go to him," Kol releases you and you sprint to his side, hardly able to slow your sudden frantic speed.
Doubled over Hoseok is bleeding profusely. He needs your blood- but you can't do that anymore. And you have no idea what to do. You don't know how to help him or how to get out of here. He's the one that is supposed to keep you safe.
Coming from behind you, Kol bends down shoving you out of the way to lift Hoseok by the throat. "Stop!" you follow their movement, hanging on Kol's arm. "Stop! Please." But you have no effect. Instead, he jerks the wood dagger out making Hobi yell in pain.
"Do you recall what you said as you killed our Sire?" Kol whispers maliciously. "You told me that 'I will get over it'." Releasing him, he lets Hoseok plummet to the floor and you drop with him trying to catch his weight. "In 100 years from now, I'll let you see her again and you can tell me if you were able to take your own advice." he smiles spitefully.
"Hobi," you whine lowly. Brushing his hair from his sweat and blood wet forehead. "I don't want to go with him. Rather the devil you know, right," you softly chuckle, trying to pull his energy back.
Even though you know the both of you have no chance at the moment, you guess you're just looking for an affirmation that he isn't going to let you go and let this other man keep you for the next century.
"Please," you whisper, your waterline filling with tears.
Reaching towards you, Hoseok's hand constricts around your throat, pulling you into him like he has countless times before.
"You're mine," he growls through pained grunts. His anger lessened, distress replacing it. But he gives you the answer he could see you searching for.
"Yes," you nod subtly. Closing your eyes as you lean further into his hold.
"Get up," Kol orders, interrupting you.
Despite his tightening grip, you pull away from Hobi, standing as you were told. The elder vampire taking your arm leads you away through the bodies to the open doorway.
"Say goodbye Jung Hoseok," Kol calls back, leaving him injured and alone, making you wish more than ever that you could pull back. "And do not worry, I'll take very good care of her for you."
#bts#yandere#jung hoseok#j hope bts#yandere hoseok#yandere hobi#yandere bts#yandere bangtan#bts scenarios#bts fan fiction#bts requests#bts reactions#vampire! jhope#vampire! bts#bangtan reaction#bangtan fanfic
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take me by the heart, take me by the hand // Elijah Mikaelson
A/N: An extension of the blurb I wrote on my blurb night a couple of weeks ago!! My taglists are open! If you would like to be added, drop me an ask and I’ll add you!! I hope you all like!
Pairings: Elijah Mikaelson x GN!Reader
Warnings: jealousy, soulmates, pining, mutual pining, mentions of food.
Word count: 2.1k
The sun was shining when Elijah Mikaelson began to understand jealousy in its unending torture. He wasn’t used to such an emotion. He wasn’t used to the blind rage that filtered through his body when he caught sight of you laughing with his brother. He wasn’t used to the want that would settle deep within his gut whenever he made you smile, laugh.
He supposed there was a sick juxtaposition in the fact that there he was, a creature of the night, sitting in the sunlight as he watched you laugh along to whatever story Klaus was currently telling.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t felt jealousy before, but Elijah had never experienced it to this extreme where he felt like the villain of a fairytale, desperate to steal the innocent love interest away and keep them for eternity.
“You wrestled a bear!” You gasp, bringing Elijah’s attention back to the room. Your eyes are wide as you hang onto every word of Klaus’ story.
The narrator nods; a smug smile crossing his face as he begins to act out the crux of the story. “We had this newfound strength after we were turned by our mother,” Klaus explains, “And the bear was easily disgruntled, choosing me for its next meal.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, love,” Klaus croons; his smile turning to a smirk as he hears Elijah grit his teeth. “I chose to engage.”
“Why would you choose to do such a thing?” You demand; eyebrows furrowed in confusion and concern for Klaus’ ability to make sane decisions. Elijah makes himself turn away; if he could, he would press away the furrow between your brows with a kiss, explaining that his brother was ever the exaggerator as he was an actor.
Klaus shrugs, lounging in his chair with a self-satisfied expression on his face. “Because I could and can,” He answers plainly, catching Elijah’s narrowed gaze from across the room and raising a single eyebrow in challenge.
Elijah doesn’t rise to the bait; doesn’t give himself the chance to. Instead, he leaves the room, feeling your frown on his back with every step he takes away from you.
“Have I done something to offend your brother?” You ask Klaus; your voice small as you stare at the doorway Elijah only walked through moments ago. Elijah had been off with you for weeks; staying in the room with you for limited amounts of time before stalking off to another room. He rarely spoke, but the soft timbre of his voice sent shivers down your spine with every word uttered. You couldn’t bear the thought of having offended the man you found yourself attracted to.
“You’ve done nothing, love,” Klaus reassures in a rare moment of affection. “My older brother just has some issues he needs to work out.”
“Oh,” You reply, falling quiet and remaining so for the rest of your time spent with the supernatural family.
----------
“Are you going to explain what is wrong with you, or are you going to stew in your feelings all night?” Klaus demands of his brother as soon as he enters the room, having seen you off only moments ago. The decanter of whisky sits open on the coffee table; one glass out of the two already filled halfway. Klaus helps himself to the other glass, pouring a knuckle’s length of the amber liquid.
“I don’t know what you’re referring to,” Elijah states airily, bringing his glass to his lips. He knew full well that he was jealous; he knew that was distancing himself from you and his sibling, unable to bear the rising envy clawing at his throat. What pains him most is that he can how his distance affects you, how hurt you look when he returns clipped conversations. The furrow between your brows deepens and he feels like a monster for being the cause of it.
“Your behaviour in front of (Y/N),” Klaus explains, doing his best to keep the anger aimed at his brother at bay. “They think they’ve offended you.”
“(Y/N) could never offend me,” Elijah states vehemently.
“You’re going to have to explain that to them.”
“I will eventually,” Elijah sighs, finishing off his drink and quickly refilling it.
“Whatever it is, brother, you can tell me,” Klaus promises in a rare moment of softness.
“That’s the thing, brother,” Elijah begins, “I don’t know what it is. All I know is that I see you two interacting and I lose my mind to jealousy.”
“Ah,” Klaus whispers, a knowing smile on his face as he places his glass on the table. The younger of the two men stands, clapping his brother on the shoulder before leaving the room.
Klaus finds it hard to keep the smile off his face as he wanders the halls of his New Orleans home. His brother had found his soulmate and hadn’t realised it. Their mother had warned them of such magic; the natural magic of the earth that created two souls to be intertwined perfectly. Outwardly, Klaus didn’t put much stock in the belief, but he had seen his mother turn his siblings into monsters cursed with having to walk the night for an eternity. It would make sense for soulmate magic to enter the Mikaelson home once and for all.
Elijah doesn’t stand from the chair; he remains seated for the night, resting his chin on his hand as he tries to get to grip with the feelings roused in your presence. He can no longer deny the attraction he feels for you; can no longer ignore the fact that he would give everything to wake up in a morning with you beside him, but what he cannot explain is the darkness of the jealousy holding him in its grip.
He only leaves the chair when he hears your voice chiming off the stone walls of the compound they call home. Your laughter lightens the atmosphere of the house; bringing joy to a home that was so used to the darkness of Klaus’ moods.
The kitchen is bright with the morning light as Elijah settles at the table; his gaze already fixed on Klaus and yourself. The former grabbing a box of cereal from the cupboard as you help yourself to the fridge for the milk.
It’s as you sit down that he begins to feel it. The sunlight catches you perfectly; your hair practically soaking up its rays as if you were to become the celestial being itself – the brightness radiating out of you with every laugh, every smile, and every animated gesture of your hands as you tell off Klaus for the fifth time already today. Elijah tightens his hand into a fist in an effort to keep the growing possessiveness at bay.
He didn’t know where it began; this dark urge to possess you. All he knew was that the majority of the time, his thoughts revolved around you along with the word ‘mine’ on repeat. The façade of the gentleman, so carefully crafted after a millennia wandering the earth, began to crumble in your presence. Elijah could feel the green eyed monster clawing its way through his body, its claws sinking in deeper with every friendly glance at any man that wasn’t him.
“It comes with finding your soulmate,” Freya announces to her younger brother; the earthy scent of sage blooming around her as she takes a seat next to him. Elijah raises a single eyebrow in question; not in the mood for futile conversation today. Freya represses the urge to roll her eyes as she elaborates, “The jealousy. The irrational anger. The want. It comes with finding your soulmate.”
“Soulmates are a myth,” Elijah counters, finding his gaze drawn to you – watching you talk to Klaus, laughing at one of his calmer moments. The very action has Elijah clenching his fists to keep the anger at bay.
Freya fixes her younger brother with an unimpressed look. “Elijah, you’re one of the oldest vampires in the world, and I’m a witch. We are the myths whispered around campfires.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Elijah wonders in awe. “I never thought I would have one,” He continues in a softer voice, thinking of his past lovers – they had never made his mind race, or his breath stop in his chest, they were never his last thought at night and his first thought in the morning.
You were, however.
Elijah meets the gaze of his wiser, older sister to find her already watching him with a fond smile on her face. “Go speak to (Y/N),” She urges in a soft voice, “Explain everything.”
With the support of his sister, Elijah makes his way to where you sit with Klaus. His younger brother already regaling you with one of his many stories about his past; the darker parts of each tale hidden away this early in the morning. Klaus pauses his tale as Elijah clears his throat. “Could I have a moment of your time?” Elijah asks of you, glancing between Klaus and yourself. Klaus raises an eyebrow but wisely remains quiet.
“Of course,” You murmur, standing from your chair, following the older gentleman to an alcove just down the hall from the kitchen.
“I wanted to apologise for my behaviour,” Elijah starts when he feels certain that his siblings aren’t listening in, “I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you in any way over the past couple of months. I’ve been coming to terms with some personal things and Freya, thankfully, explained the cause of such behaviour this morning.”
“Your apology is accepted, Elijah,” You laugh, smiling happily at the taller gentleman, taking note of how he seems closer to the Elijah you have come to know and love. “What did Freya explain if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I don’t mind at all,” He answers, “You’re bound to find out eventually.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense, Elijah!”
Elijah chuckles, smiling down at you indulgently. “I was jealous,” He explains; his face turning thoughtful. “I couldn’t figure out why. Whenever I saw you speaking or laughing with another man like Klaus or Kol, or even Marcellus though I know he’s happy with Rebekah, I was overcome with such intense jealousy that it was hard for me to get control of.”
“You were jealous?” You splutter, “Of what?”
“Of the men you so easily formed friendships with. I wanted to be the one you smiled at, that you laughed with.”
“I thought you hated me,” You confess timidly. “I thought I had broken an ancient vampire protocol and I had offended you.”
“You could never offend me,” Elijah states, “And I could never hate you, it’s rather the opposite.”
“The opposite?”
Elijah nods. “Freya explained to me the existence of a magic I once believed to not exist. I had never seen it; thus I could never state its truth. It wasn’t until Freya explained that the reason behind my jealousy and dark moods was that you are, indeed, my soulmate did I even remember that such a powerful magic exists on this planet.”
“Soulmate,” You breathe, peering up at Elijah through your lashes, “I’m your soulmate?”
“As I am yours,” Elijah swears, stepping that little bit closer to you.
“Vampires… witches… soulmates,” You whisper, unable to comprehend the change in your belief system.
“You’re not upset, are you?” Elijah asks, reaching for your hand. He need to know your feelings on this; should you not want the bond; he would take a step back. It would hurt, but he would do it for your happiness. Should you accept the bond, he would be a man in possession of the greatest living thing on earth – you.
“I’m not upset,” You promise, smiling at the original vampire, tangling your fingers together.
You place your free hand on Elijah’s chest, fully aware that you would not feel a heart beat under your palm. Even through the designer material of his perfectly tailored suit, you can feel the coolness of his skin and whilst many would be repulsed by the lack of warmth, you only feel further attraction for the man in front of you.
Elijah’s hand covers yours; the action speaking louder than any words could. He can feel the life thrumming through your veins; the vitality that punctuates the air with every breath you take. He feels drunk on his feelings for you; at a loss to understand how your paths crossing months ago could lead to a moment like this.
“I want a forever with you,” You whisper boldly, moving your hand to the back of Elijah’s neck.
“Forever and more,” Elijah promises; sealing the spoken vow with an unhurried kiss.
*****
The Originals taglist: @angelxnaa
Special fic tag: @elijahs-wife
#elijah mikaelson x reader#elijah x reader#elijah mikaelson imagine#elijah mikaelson#Elijah Mikaelson fanfiction#the originals#the originals fanfiction#elijah mikaelson imagines#the originals fanfic
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The issue with Catra’s redemption arc isn’t anything to do with challenging “redemption through suffering”, it’s that the writing is bad and constantly asserts things about Catra’s character development that the script doesn’t back up.
I’m not just talking about how Catra saying she was sorry in the second episode of the goddamn show, written by the showrunner, plainly didn’t mean anything to her or anyone else, although do bear that in mind just as an example of how S5 is built on clumsy retcons; I’m talking about the whole structure.
For seasons 1-4 and the early parts of S5, Catra is predominantly defined by her selfishness. It is the primary driver of her villainy. It is what makes her so awful to be around. It is the source of her toxicity, her resentment, her possessiveness, her cruelty and her spite.
The “Corridors” flashback portrays her friendship with Adora as toxic and one-sided. She punishes Adora for having a desire for other friends, acts conciliatory and nice when it looks like she’s getting what she wants, and goes right back into Tantrum Mode when Adora proposes a compromise; the only acceptable outcome to Catra is that she gets what she wants.
The plot of “White Out” has her gloating about finally having Adora under her control. Again, there’s no compromise; Catra has to get exactly what she wants, and if that requires taking away Adora’s agency, well, fuck Adora. (Also, this is possibly the biggest, reddest red flag in children’s media, so jot that down.)
Then there’s season 3, where she decides that if Adora has once again gotten something Catra wants, that means Adora has to suffer no matter the cost. Catra’s so caught up in her own personal pain that she has to inflict it on Adora, and who gives a shit about anyone who suffers on the way?
And then there’s Scorpia...look, you get the idea. This is a pattern with S1-S4 Catra. She demands trust, loyalty and support from Scorpia and Hordak while generally refusing to extend any of those herself; she refuses to accept responsibility for her actions and treats her personal pain as though it justifies any cruelty she wishes to undertake; she routinely demands that Adora put Catra’s wants over the needs of others, from the opening two-parter to the season 3 disaster. Even her one good deed towards Adora has selfish overtones, because while she’s helping Adora, she’s also getting rid of a rival; notably, her first qualm with the plan to drag Adora kicking and screaming back to the Horde came when she learned that it would cost her the promotion to Force Captain. There are a couple of moments where she does genuinely selfless things, but the shitty, entitled, possessive selfishness is the main driver of the plot.
And this isn’t, in and of itself, a problem! You could get a genuinely compelling arc out of having Catra confront her selfishness and entitlement and genuinely learn that it’s not all about her.
Unfortunately S5 just kind of says it did that and never actually backs it up. S5 Catra, as written in the actual script, is just as selfish as she always was, the narrative has just stopped caring.
She saves Glimmer not because she’s realised any genuine similarity between them or come to view Glimmer as a friend despite their earlier enmity, but because Glimmer is a convenient token to get something Catra wants.
She spends “Taking Control” sulking that her actions might have consequences in the form of the people she’s hurt being allowed to be upset over that. Her apologies end up so vague and so disconnected from anything she’s actually learned that they ring hollow; they feel like attempts to paper over her actions rather than expressions of genuine sorrow. Wanting to be forgiven isn’t the same thing as genuinely expressing regret, and the show’s attempts to conflate them don’t do this arc any favours.
This is a big, persistent and damning issue, because she still isn’t taking responsibility for her actions. She still blames Adora for fights in which she herself was the aggressor (”that never stopped you before”) and still frames her repeated rejections of Adora’s offers of help and support as Adora “abandoning” her, right up to the series finale. Very little of the harm she’s caused is ever substantively addressed beyond Frosta decking her on general principles and Perfuma being very briefly salty that Catra treated Scorpia like shit.
This problem lasts right up to the finale. When Adora takes the Failsafe, none of Catra’s tantrum feels like it’s got anything to do with Adora’s value as a person independent of what others want from her: she starts out mad that Adora “chose” Shadow Weaver over her, when in fact what Adora’s done is taken the best option from a list of bad options, and eventually admits to Melog that she’s upset Adora doesn’t “want“ Catra the way Catra wants Adora. The main ways Catra presents this centre Catra’s own wants first and foremost: she wants Adora to “choose” her over theoretically Shadow Weaver but practically everyone on Etheria, she wants Adora to give her the relationship she wants. It’s still all about her.
This tells us that Catra has learned nothing. Her tantrum at the end of S5 is exactly the same as her tantrum in “The Sword, Part 2″: Adora has prioritised the lives of innocents over Catra’s wants, and Catra views that as a personal affront. Her character arc has been a parabola that’s left her right where she was at the start, except that she’s now willing to let Adora have other friends so long as those friends are also her friends. (Including the one whose mother is dead because of Catra’s selfish, resentment-driven apocalypse tantrum in S3, which is the elephant in the room that S5 really, really does not want to address.)
Then the narrative tries for the “conscience makes you go back” moment...and fucks it up. Catra doesn’t go back because she’s finally grasped that Adora is a person with her own intrinsic value and deserves to live for her own sake. Catra goes back for one last attempt to get what she wants. She goes back to whitewash her history of controlling, resentful possessiveness as love in the hope that Adora will stay alive for the sake of Catra’s personal desires.
Having Catra go back just in the hope of getting Adora to go out with her ruins both characters’ arcs: it undermines Catra’s arc because she’s gone five seasons without grasping that Adora is a person with autonomy, agency and inner worth, and it undermines Adora’s because after being told that she’s worth more than what she can give to other people, she’s saved by Catra’s demand that Adora give her something.
Frankly, Catra’s redemption arc would have meant a lot more if at some point during it she had genuinely seemed to acknowledge that Adora has worth independent of what Catra wants from her. If instead of whining “you hate me now” she’d accepted that Adora has a right to work through her emotions in her own time and is under no obligation to forgive Catra just because of one Glimmer-shaped bribe. If she’d genuinely acknowledged the harm she’d caused to both the Princess Alliance and the innocent people of Etheria, instead of cracking jokes about it. If she’d accepted the idea that Adora didn’t love her back and tried to save her anyway.
If she’d gotten actual compelling character growth, and not just been fast-tracked through a badly paced redemption arc in order to fill out a shipping grid.
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The one where the reader is a singer
characters: HARRY x SINGER!Y/N
blurb: The reader is finishing up her brand-new album and as Harry comes to visit her on her last day of working in the studio, he gets to react to one of her songs, 34+35.
word count: 1.9K
author's note: HI GUYS! It’s been a week I think? Anyway, I’ll get back to school tomorrow so idk when imma post the next request but I’m hoping that it will be soon! Anyway, I want to thank y’all for the love and support on my writing and I hope that the anon who asked this likes it as much as I did. Never forget that you’re so golden and tpwk. AND ALSO, HAPPY 27TH BIRTHDAY TO HARRY!
You took a deep breath right after asking for the track to be played again. To everyone else the track was perfect, but it was different for you. It just felt like something was missing and you didn't know what. And god, you were tired. You were so genuinely exhausted that if you sit up in a chair and stay silent for more than five minutes you'll simply fall asleep. You felt your eyes heaving at every blink of yours and it was only 5 pm, but you were in this studio for so long. You were inside this place for 36 hours now with no shower and no sleep. You did eat but now you were hungry again.Your shoulders were tensed up, and you couldn't feel comfortable anywhere. Not in the couch, not in the chair, not in the floor and not even stand up. All you genuinely demanded right now was to be home under your bed sheets curled up with your boyfriend of four years while taking many naps or watching many movies, but no, you needed to have this done. You needed the album to be done and were extremely thrilled to release it to your fans that were excited as well. But yes, you were so frickin' tired.
— Again... — You repeated after a long and sharp breath listening to some groans from your coworkers. You all have been listening to this one song for about an hour and a half now and you haven't actually changed anything yet. — I know, I know, and I'm sorry guys, it's just not right!
— Maybe you think it's not right, but it is and you're just making a huge deal about it. — One of your co-workers said. A girl, Lucy, one of your friends as well. You turned your head to stare at her face and gave her that glaze that made her shrug her shoulders because of it — Alright, I'm sorry.
— I'm not making a huge deal. It's just not right, and I feel like the entire album is so great and this is just wrong. Like... — You said standing up from the couch you were sitten in and walked to the table with the computers on to grab the one paper you used to write this song. You stared at it in your hands for a while as you read the letters. — See, here is the problem. So here it's "you drink it just like water" and then suddenly comes "so what you doin' tonight?", it doesn't make sense, there's something missing in here. — You go through the lyrics again as you hear more groans from the people in the room — And honestly, I'm disappointed with myself for the rest. I need to change it so badly, but I have no idea on how.
— No problem, love — You naturally said referring to his previous apologies.
That's when you hear the sound of the door being opened. You rise your head to look at the door and see Harry, your boyfriend, walking into the room with some paper bags in his hands that contained burgers directly from In-N-Out, which was in fact your favorite Los Angeles burger place ever. He arrived in silence, trying not to make a noise for fear that you were recording something but you could note his surprised expression when he saw everyone was looking at him instead of recording.
— Sorry guys, I didn't want to disturb you. I was passing by and wanted to check up! — Harry said as he closed the door behind him and walked farther into the room. You smiled tenderly when you saw the figure of the man walking closer to you. You haven't seen each other personally in some days, and he consistently secured you so much spiritual peace, he just had such a light energy and it made you feel so good — And also y’all had been stealing my girl for so long now! — He joked getting a slight laugh from everyone inside the studio. He approached you by wrapping your waist with one of his arms around your waist and sealing your lips together as he bends down a little.
— And Harry, technically she is maintaining us here and not the other way around — Lucy said in an ironic tone causing you to look at her quickly before letting out a deep breath and lowering your head by rubbing your sleepless eyes with the help of your hands, probably a negative result of sleep. Harry reflected the girl's words and then looked at you carefully before placing the bags on the coffee table that was next to the studio sofa.
— Why? What happened? — Harry asked encountering his gaze with yours as he crossed his arms and observed you raising your hand that contained the papers with the lyrics of your new song.
— I can't write a proper ending that I genuinely like! — You said, sounding frustrated to everyone in that room.
— The ending is good! — Another of your friends, Jaden, said as he got up and picked up one of the bags Harry had brought and then started walking again to sit on the sofa.
— Jaden, you in silence is everything to me! — You said in a mocking tone while running your hand through your hair — But you understand, don't you? — You asked Harry because he has experience with such a specific subject — It's not that it's bad, it's that I don't feel like it's ready!
— I get it! But have you already recorded? — Harry asked softly in his understanding tone. He more than anyone in this room comprehended exactly what you were feeling and he would do his best to help you since you did the same with him so many times before.
— Yes, twenty times! — Jaden murmured a little before taking a bite of one of the burgers that Harry had brought. Harry couldn't hold back the laugh when he heard the boy, as they knew each other well and Harry knew all his sassiness was based on nothing more than hunger.
— Let me hear it, so I can have some ideas to help! — Harry said looking at you, and then noticing your reaction. Your eyes widened at the man's request. It wasn't fear. It was just an apprehension and that made Harry extremely curious — What?
— Well... It's a little... — You said in a lower tone seeking your words.
— Promiscuous and indulgent! — Lucy and Jaden completed your sentence making Harry look at her and the boy sitting on the sofa and then Harry raised one of his eyebrows and looked at you with a smirk on his lips.
— Uh, is it about me? — Harry asked in a mocking tone, waiting for the answer that would raise his ego, of course.
— Look, let's not specify anything — You said quickly and nervously looking at the smirk on your boyfriend's face — Ok, Trevor, play the song right for the love of god! — You said getting a laugh out of Harry, Jaden and Lucy due to your despair in ending this matter.
And Trevor did as you asked and put the song on. You sat down on the bench near the wall and crossed your arms while watching Harry's reactions. The soon as the song started everyone could notice your voice and the rhythm of it that matched the beat.
You may think I’m crazy
The way I’ve been craving
If I put it quite plainly
Just give me them babies
You could notice Harry bouncing his head on the rhythm of the song as a sign that he liked it because you knew that he only did that to songs that he likes. And you also noticed a small smile when he listened to the end of this verse because he did remember all the times you both had talked about having a baby before.
So what you doin’ tonight?
Better say doin’ you right
Watching movies
But we ain’t seen a thing tonight
Again you noticed the smirk and you did smirk as well because you both knew the lack of ability that you had to watch any movie that lasted longer than two hours and you almost ended not watching anything.
I don’t wanna keep you up
But assuming can you keep it up
‘Cause then I’d like to keep you up
So maybe Imma keep you up
Boy
Harry wasn’t looking at you, though. He was looking at the floor while bouncing his head and paying attention to the song as he was trying to catch the vibe of it and honestly you don’t know if it’s the song that had this vibe but he was looking way too hot to handle at this moment.
I’ve been drinking coffe
And I’ve been eating healthy
Know I get squeaky, yeah
Saving all my energy
Now the chorus was about to start and you were actually excited and nervous to see Harry’s reaction of it. You two have been dating for four years now. He probably understood any little detail of this song more than anyone else.
Can you stay up all night?
F**k me till the daylight
34 35
You started to hold back your laugh as Harry lifted his head up fastly with winded eyes and a surprised look so he could face you. It wasn’t actually your style to write songs that promiscuous so he was actually surprised at it even though he loved it. He had a smile on his face though and so did you.
The song kept playing as the words repeated itself and it stopped just after the second chorus so Harry passed his hands through his hair as you waited for his opinion on it. Honestly, Harry’s opinion about your music is extremely important to you because you cherish and admire him way too much and love his songs so you hope that he does too with yours.
— So... What do you think? — You asked anxiously waiting for his opinion. The truth is Harry had already listened to all the songs on his new album except this one.
— I like it! — Harry said with a smile on his lips making you breathe a sigh of relief — Maybe I can help write the rest, but they really didn't lie and it's great. The beat is good and the lyrics are catchy and everything will be fine. The point, my love, is that you are too worried! — Harry said as he approached you, placing his big, strong hands on your shoulders and massaging them lightly feeling all the tension in your muscles slowly dissolving — Relax, it's amazing! You got it!
With Harry's help, you finished the song in less than an hour. When you recorded the rest and listened, you felt that now it was ready and now you could go home with him. It was simply incredible to know you could always count on him and to know that while you were together creativity would be present and life wouldn't be boring. After all, you had each other and had the art.
#hwrryscherry#hwrryscherryxreader#harry and y/n#harry styles and y/n#harry x reader#harry styles au#harry styles x reader#harry styles x you#harry styles blurb#harry styles x y/n#boyfriend harry styles#harry styles imagines#harry styles imagine
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I really liked Wilbur's lore stream from yesterday, so you guys are getting a short stream analysis from me
As always dialogue is color-coded: Wilbur, Tubbo, Ranboo
And since I'm the least concise person ever everything is under the cut
The stream is (DSMP LORE) A Year Later
The stream starts with Wilbur singing the L'Manburg anthem to Ranboo. It is interesting to notice that, just like all the streams since he's been back he doesn't start off the stream by addressing chat in any way but already taking with someone in-universe.
"I'm a big big fan of the song (...) (Wilbur notices that Ranboo was muted) so sorry, let's try again: have you heard that song before?" "Yeah I have, I have. I have- I've had a friend that sings it quite a lot" “Good, good, and I was gonna say, it’s obviously based on Hallelujah right? But the thing is, the thing is Ranboo, right? But the thing is- the thing is Ranboo, right? Is that the reason we did it is because Tommy used to sing Hallelujah to the plants" "Oh, to the plants?" "Yeah! In- in the- around the- around the uhm... around the thing! You know the- the caravan? (...) so, my man, Tommy used to sing to the plants to make them grow better and that was the song he used to sing and so I thought what a way to honour Tommy, you know, one of the most- one of the most loyal members or of our fair nation than by naming the song after him, you know? And singing it based on his little- his little Muse. Tommy is a- Tommy is all of our Muse really I'd say"
I cut as much of this quote as I could while still leaving it well understandable and leaving in everything I wanted to talk about, but man is it long... So let's break it down a bit at a time:
1) The friend that Ranboo referenced that sings the anthem a lot is most likely Tubbo considering that they met him later on in this stream while he was singing that very song
2) The memory of the song seems to still be a particularly pleasant one for Wilbur, which probably explains why Ghostbur as well was so fond of it. He speaks about it positively throughout and it generally seems like an overall positive moment of reminiscence, probably because it's a callback to a simpler time when Wilbur too was, you know, happier overall. It's a reminder of a time before the worsening of his spiral.
3) Also interesting that they kept it in canon that Tommy singing to the plants was what inspired the anthem. Especially because I'm not entirely sure if that's the case considering that the actual anthem wasn't written by cc!Wilbur but by a fan upon his request (obviously this is outside the story).
4) Last thing I wanted to mention was Wilbur describing Tommy as a Muse. Muses in mythology are the inspirational goddesses of the arts, music, and science, Tommy aside from the anthem obviously isn't that. But it is interesting that Tommy does take a central role when it comes to motivating people. We could say that Techno's speech on the 16th was inspired by him since it was directed at him. Similarly, Niki and Jack had their arcs revolving around him. Tommy was able to rally the troops with ease multiple times. And Dream's obsession with him itself is the main motivator for, like, 90% of his actions. So, while he may not cover the role of a muse literally it's not a comparison that is too far off...
They headed to the museum afterward and took notice of the Ranboo poster being missing. And then they headed off to L'Manburg (which, by the way, looks amazing, thank you cc!Phil for that one).
"It goes by L'Manhole now apparently" "I- yeah it's kinda- ugh- I'm not a fan. It's kinda rude to L'Manburg's history, you know? It- it's called L'Manburg. It's called L'Manburg. NOT Manberg, not L'Crater or whatever. L'Manhole, I don't care, it's now L'Manburg, it's always L'Manburg, okay?"
It's interesting that not too long ago he was saying that even L'Manburg itself (with an emphasis on the name) wasn't what was actually important, the purpose of it was. He admits later on that he lied in that conversation, but it's impressive how quickly he trusted Ranboo enough to let him see how much he still cared about L'Manburg when he was so intent on lying about it not too long ago.
Wilbur's enthusiasm about seeing the flag is another nice confirmation about him still caring deeply for his old nation.
"Damn, I really went down to bedrock, didn't I? Holy shit I did- I did a number on this place" (I wonder why Ranboo didn't correct him on this, because Ranboo knows that Techno, Phil, and Dream are the ones who actually exploded the country down to bedrock...)
They end up seeing Tubbo on the other side of the crater and head over to him. While they're heading there Tubbo is singing the anthem himself in a very mournful tone.
One interesting thing that I noticed it's that it's Wilbur that heads towards Tubbo's location instead of having Tubbo go to him like he mostly did with Tommy for example. I suppose it could be because Tubbo having been a president himself is in less of a subordinate position to Wilbur than Tommy who's always been a simple soldier.
"It's like looking in a little mirror, look you're wearing my suit still? How long have you been wearing that?" "Oh I just put it on, just for today" (in a similar fashion to Jack bringing out the L'Manburg uniform to reminisce, Tubbo also brought out clothes he strongly attaches the memory of L'Manburg to)
"Ranboo have you met Tubbo?" "Yeah, yeah. I've- I've met him, I mean we've, uhm... we've been around" (Ranboo still minimizing his relationship with Tubbo to Wilbur. Of course, this is because he doesn't trust him but it's interesting that he isn't even honest about that)
After a bit of back and forth, Wilbur starts apologizing to Tubbo. At first, like most other times he's having a serious discussion he puts himself in an elevated position to tower over Tubbo. It's a neat way to show how his own desire for control affects him, having Wilbur literally elevate himself over others when speaking to them. Literally putting Tubbo down in this situation. Which does make the beginning of his apology very obviously feel insincere.
"I'm sorry for making you president specifically before blowing it up and I'm sorry for when I did this *pointing at the crater* and blew all this up and making this whole. I'm sorry that I uh- that I said that you were the president of a crater"
This is that first part of the apology I mentioned. Just to clarify, I don't actually think that it was entirely insincere. It just feels less impactful due to Wilbur putting himself in a position of superiority over Tubbo, especially because it's something we've seen him do before. It's also to be noted that this time, like others before, he seems to be apologizing less out of actual guilt and more out of a desire to earn forgiveness. Which is not a critique by the way. I just feel like that's a misconception Wilbur has, that apologies serve the purpose of confirming to him that he's doing a good job at changing more than to actually make amends for what he's done. The reason why I think that's the case for the beginning part of this apology as well it's because of how fast he went to ask tubbo if he forgave him, which did put a certain level of pressure on Tubbo in this situation.
"I mean it wasn't- this wasn't all you Wilbur" (thank you tubbo for finally dispelling some of those misunderstandings)
"Yeah so me and mainly Ghostbur honestly, like-" "Ghostbur" (some more of Wilbur not being too fond of Ghostbur)
"Right is he [Ghostbur] this obsidian crap then I take it and these- these fucking dumb lanterns up here" (a bit more)
To correct Wilbur's misconceptions Tubbo starts off asking if the other knew Dream, to which Wilbur responds with how much he appreciates Dream and how he's his hero, which makes Tubbo backtrack and blames most of Doomsday on Techno and Phil. Which, as we know, isn't actually accurate and I have a feeling that this misinformation will be harmful later on once Dream is out of prison (though I don't blame Tubbo for backtracking with how enthusiastic Wilbur is, that was the basic conflict-avoidant approach that Tubbo seems to prefer).
"They rained tnt for days" (if this is actually canon then Doomsday was even more of a tragedy than we previously saw it as. It was days filled with fighting and destruction. Then again, Tubbo has misremembered traumatizing events before)
"Techno and Phil, they hated the government. I mean it was partially my fault as well" "But you didn't blow it up" "No I didn't. I would never have wished or anything like this to happen" "So it was just Techno and Phil?" *long pause* "Y-yeees"
Two things to say here:
1) I appreciate someone in canon recognizing that it's not Tubbo's fault for what happened to L'Manburg and blaming the people who actually blew it up, similarly to how I appreciate Wilbur bringing up with Tommy that it was clearly Dream pulling the strings with his exile with Tubbo. It's nice having it stated plainly for people to hear
2) This is the misconception I mentioned. This is most certainly gonna backfire at some point.
After that Wilbur commends Tubbo quite a lot for rebuilding New L'Manburg (once again being dismissive towards Ghostbur) and is clearly enthusiastic about it, even going as far as to say that that mattered more to him than them building him a grave.
"I just, I feel lost without L'Manburg. All my core beliefs, everything died with it" "You feel lost without a nation..." "I have no purpose anymore" "I guess that's where anarchy fails" (I think this may be the first time someone admits it to someone else, even though that lack of purpose and feeling disoriented is very obviously a shared sentiment amongst the ex-citizens)
After that, it's when Wilbur invites Tubbo to join Paradise, the, supposedly burger van with a small house attached to it that wasn't supposed to become a nation. I have a feeling that the proposition coming right after that exchange may imply that Wilbur changed his mind on it. He does purposefully put himself again in an elevated position when making the proposition.
"Would you like to come join me in Paradise? Literally" "Hmmm, I'm not sure Wilbur. I'm not sure I trust you man, I need to- in order to follow someone I need to trust them" "Wait, wait but you- I thought you forgave me! I thought it was, you know it-" "Wilbur I forgive you because I like to hang on to the hope that people can change, but-"
This is what I mean when I say that Wilbur's apologies come with expectations for the person he's apologizing to. By asking Tubbo first if he forgave him when he originally apologized, he already made it harder for Tubbo to refute that. And now we learn that he expected trust to come along with forgiveness. He's not doing this maliciously of course, but he does seem to have some misconceptions on this.
"I know you had that- that at the festival? With Technoblade? I never spoke to you properly about this. I- I could have saved you" "But you didn't" (other people brought this up, but this is a neat little parallel to the one scene in exile where Ranboo was lamenting about how he should have gone with Tommy and Tommy shut him down pointing out that anyone could have gone but no one actually did)
There is a second round of apologies and Wilbur is still standing higher than Tubbo, BUT he does put himself on his same level after he did a bit more pushing and found that Tubbo was standing his ground. He finally puts himself on the same level as Tubbo and openly acknowledges his boundaries which is the first actual real effort to change that we've seen from Wilbur. Which I'd say is a pretty important step for him.
"Wilbur in order for you to gain my trust back you have to prove it, I can't just give it out anymore. I used to be able to but I just- I just can't" (acknowledgement of how Tubbo's trauma also affected him deeply)
"You know I still have dreams, right? Of the explosion. And- and of the fireworks. And- and all of it. I- I still- I vividly see all of it. Every day. It hurts. It hurts a lot Wilbur"
I want to commend Tubbo here for being able to open up like this, especially considering how much he generally leans into denial and how much he usually suppress. And on top of that this is Tubbo acknowledging that both Wilbur's actions (the explosion) and Techno's actions (the fireworks) have hurt him and STILL hurt him and affect him deeply. It's quite a big admission especially for him.
"Sorry feels like such a weak word. I feel like there's nothing stronger that I can say" (first time that he's standing on the same level of Tubbo while apologizing)
"You're so strong man. Genuinely. You just- just the fact that you proved to me just there that you have this memories, that you have this nightmares and you still find it in your heart to forgive me. That's... you're a fucking champion man. You- you're a hero"
It's interesting that the reason why he claims Tubbo to be strong here is because he forgave him. It's not something that's inherently about Tubbo, like the fact that he still found the strength to go on and rebuild after the events he mentioned, for example, no. What Wilbur brought up is the one thing that Tubbo did for him. Which tells me that he still clearly has a bit of way to go to learn how to make amends and how redemption actually works, but, you know, that's to be expected honestly.
Wilbur moves on by inviting Tubbo to at least come and see Paradise, just to see what they'd made and Tubbo refuses because he wanted to spend more time reminiscing. Wilbur this time respect Tubbo's boundaries with no pushing which is yet another step forward for him honestly. Wilbur also gives Tubbo a "lucky rabbit's foot" that Tommy gave him to cheer him up and assure him that he had no problems with him not going.
With this their conversation comes to a close and Wilbur and Ranboo head over to Paradise (though not before Ranboo has confirmed with Tubbo that he actually does want to be left alone).
"You know I was gonna say 'this is hard' but obviously it's hard. I mean, you know, I've..." (a bit of reflection on his actions for Wilbur, you love to see it!)
"It's gonna get better! It's gonna get better! And it's gonna be worth it when I see them smiling. All of them. Tubbo, Jack, Niki, Tommy, anyone!" (I'm pretty sure that this is a genuine sentiment right here. It really does seem that wilbur's Big Plan right now is just to make amends and change)
"Do you know who the original L'Manburg group were? Do you know who we were?" "I- I think most of them yeah... I think it was like: you, Jack, Niki, Fundy I believe as well" "Fundy was a bit after. Fundy was after we'd gotten independence"
I wonder if that's an actual misrememberance on Wilbur's part (c!Wilbur, not cc!Wilbur, I'm sure cc!Wilbur remembers this) or just him wanting to put some distance between his good memories of L'Manburg and Fundy. Because Jack and Niki weren't there for the independence war either and yet he singled out Fundy who was. And I doubt that he'd forget about his son being one of the people who lost their first life in the final control room. In addition to that Wilbur didn't mention Fundy before among those he wanted to make smile.
I really think that this was intentional and that it was because, well, Wilbur felt deeply betrayed by Fundy. And we as the audience know that Fundy only ever publicly stopped acknowledging him as his father to be able to stay undercover as a spy, but he doesn't. It wouldn't be so weird that he wanted to erase Fundy from his memories of the time when he was supposed to be happy.
"I try and keep this on the low because I don't want uh- I don't want people to use it against me is the main problem. I do wa- I didn't even tell Tommy, I lied to Tommy" "Yeah?" "I'll be honest I'm gonna tell him soon that I lied to him because if it- it kinda eats away at me. But I told- I told tommy that I didn't actually care about L'Manburg and that it was just like a tool for me to use to gain, you know, power and stuff, but it's not- it's not true. L'Manburg is- was really important to me. And it is still to this day"
Once again I'm surprised how little it took Wilbur to trust Ranboo with stuff he hasn't really told anyone else. Makes you really understand how low of an opinion of himself he has that when the first person that calls him "alright" out loud just gets his undying trust. Especially considering that Ranboo doesn't trust him back and hasn't been the most honset with him so far. It's also a nice spelled out admission for anyone who didn't get how much Wilbur cares about L'Manburg from the longing look he gave to the camaravan's replica in the stream where he said he never cared.
"I wanted history to live on, not as a stain caused by me, you know. I basically took a big shit on the history books it feels like" (just another interesting little insight on Wilbur's view of the situation)
"I've heard about what's Tommy's, you know, moved on... and how jack's moved on, and how Niki's moved on and everyone's moved on from L'Manburg at least partially, but Tubbo man, he's still..." (he only thinks the rest of them moved on because he hasn't spoken almost at all with two of them and he never really listened to Tommy. Also, again, Fundy is not mentioned)
"I don't know where I'd be without you [Ranboo] here right now man, I mean T-Tommy's great and all and he's here but I- I feel like, you know, I don't wanna- I don't wanna string him along too much because he's- I- when I look at him. When I look at him when he's helping me out building things with me I see the same eyes that looked at me when... when... There were some- there weren't some fun times in the ravine of Pogtopia. I wasn't a very well man and I can just see Tommy from that day"
This one was one heck of a confession!
I don't know if this is me misremembering, but I'm fairly sure that this is the first time he's admitted to not being great to Tommy specifically. Again, Tommy is the one person he met with so far that he hasn't apologized to. Heck! He told Tommy to his face that him being sorry for his actions didn't mean he wouldn't do them again. It's a pretty damn big admission to acknowledge that that behaviour (which is the same now, if not worse when only related to Tommy) wasn't good. It also shows that he's at least a bit aware of Tommy's emotions which is rarely shown honestly. Though whether he cares because of Tommy or because being around Tommy makes him feel guilty (which is what you'd expect him to feel) and he doesn't like that is to be determined still, mostly just because the phrasing was a bit uncertain at the moment.
"I know what it's like to have no one- or at least feel like no one trusts you. Uhm, and I- I've realized that if- if no one's with you then how can anyone really know when you've redeemed yourself? So that's why I'm here I guess" (Ranboo's answer to why he trusts Wilbur. Which he doesn't, but still)
And the stream ends with Wilbur saying he hopes Tubbo comes around to try out one of the burgers (though he does repeat that he doesn't want Ranboo to pressure him to join) and complimenting Ranboo a bit more.
#dream smp#wilbur soot#ranboo#tubbo#c!wilbur#c!ranboo#c!tubbo#character analysis#dream smp analysis#long post#I said it would be short and I most definitely lied#but you guys should know that I'm not capable of brevity by now#so honestly it's on you if you believed the title
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I review killing time (or whatever)
Okay, yes this review has taken me forever and that’s because there’s so much I want to say, and most of it has very little to do with the plot of the book. I cut down a lot of this so you guys could just get to the main point of what I’m trying to say, so I apologize if this is a little brief or incomprehensible to those who haven’t read the book.
And also, before I get into it, I would like to say rest in peace to the author Della Van Hise, who passed away in march of this year. She contributed a lot to the fandom, especially in regards to K/S fiction, as well as publishing a lot of non-trek related work during her life.
First of all, if you have heard of Killing Time, there is probably one specific reason for that. It’s the same reason I picked up the book in the first place and why it’s really even a topic of discussion on this site. To put the story quite briefly, Killing Time was recalled during its initial release on account of the book having too many slash elements (aka, the relationship between Kirk and Spock could be read as sexual/romantic). I first heard about the book here in this post where the history of it is worded to sound like one very dramatic mystery. One user (no shade intended here) even goes as far as to say the book was recalled by old Gene himself! Now I’m always one for drama and such, but after reading the book I looked into it a little more, and I don’t think that’s exactly how it went down.
Here you can find multiple statements from the author herself, in which she tells the whole story. According to her, the book publisher accidentally released an unedited manuscript that was never supposed to make it to the public. So technically the publisher did not recall the book because it was “too gay”, they recalled it because they printed a version that was never meant for the public to see anyway. These were the edits that were specifically requested by Paramount, who the publishers were supposed to go through to get the final okay on all material. And like, yeah, all of Paramounts edits were pretty much to delete any sentence where Spock and Kirk are tender to each other, they were trying to make is less homoerotic, obviously. I understand why this slight distinction may not make much of a difference to you guys, but for me it’s important to note that the book wasn’t recalled because it was too gay, it was just never supposed to be gay in the first place. It doesn’t make that fact any better, but it does make it less dramatic, in my opinion. I encourage you to read the statements from the author on this topic though, because she gives the whole story a lot better then I just did.
Now to address the main question at hand, does Killing Time depict a romantic relationship between Kirk and Spock, or is it all just hype? (in layman's terms, is the book gay or not?) and to answer quite plainly, yes it’s gay. of course it is. but then to answer less plainly, no. What the fuck do i mean by this? well let me try and explain.
I read the second edition of the book, aka the censored version, but I also followed along with the first edition (using this great article). The changes made to the book did not effect the plot at all, and were really only minor things. Notably, in the second edition they just kind of left out any part where Spock and Kirk touch each other (and I don’t mean in a sexual way). For example, there is a scene where Spock and Kirk are having a serious conversation in the ships garden. In the first edition, at the end of the conversation Spock places a hand on Kirks shoulder, which Kirk covers with his own hand. In the second addition, all mentions of this simple contact are deleted. The differences between the two are mostly little things like this. There is no secret sex scene or love confession hidden in the first addition. You see, in my opinion, the changes made to the second edition of the book do very little to censor the romantic undertones between Kirk and Spock. That’s because they are ingrained in the plot line itself.
One very important aspect to this book is that Kirk and Spock share a mental bond. This is something that can only happen between a Vulcan and another when they are extremely close. The mental bond that Kirk and Spock share is so strong in this book, it’s even present when they enter an alternate dimension where they are strangers to one another. There is a romance in this book between two original characters, and their relationship is constantly being paralleled by that of Kirk and Spock. And, maybe most telling, Spock refuses a female Romulan who is very interested in him over and over again simply because Kirk exists. And no, that’s not an exaggeration, here is a line from when the Romulan woman was begging Spock to be in a relationship with her:
“I need you. The Empire needs you, what more can there be?”
“James Kirk” the Vulcan murmured without hesitation.
That line is in both versions of the book. What I’m trying to say is yes, there are K/S elements in Killing Time. There are many tender moments and lots of talk about Kirk and Spock’s devotion to each other.
So now you’re asking yourself, Gar, why did you just say earlier that “no, the book is not gay”? Well, that’s because it’s not. This isn’t a K/S book. This isn’t a piece of Spirk fanfiction. Because for as much as this book is about Kirk and Spock’s relationship, it’s even more about Romulans (and more specifically, that one girlboss Romulan Commander from the Enterprise Incident.... bet ya didn't see that coming!) That’s right, the most controversial Star Trek book ever published is at it’s core quite plainly just a Star Trek book. There is weird alternate dimensions, time travel, espionage and lots and lots of Romulans!
Alright, alright, what I’m really trying to get at here is that yes, if you read into Killing Time there is K/S elements. I mean for god sake the author was a known K/S fanfic writer, that wasn’t a secret by any means. If she wrote their relationship a little more tenderly than most authors would have, can we really be surprised? But writing a K/S story was not her intention here, and that’s not what this is. I think the author put it best herself, so I’m just going to put that here:
“If people chose to see overtones of K/S in it, maybe it’s because there were overtones of K/S throughout Star Trek itself.”
People will hype up killing time as some secret confirmation that K/S is real and canon, and I really get that. Like, it would be really nice to have some canon acknowledgment of K/S, and I really don’t blame people for acting like that’s what this is. But that really isn’t what this is. And even if there was some kind of love confession, I really hate to break it to you, but the Star Trek novels are just fancy fanfiction and are not considered canon by any stretch (excluding the one Gene wrote himself, which let’s face it, perhaps has the most K/S elements of all).
If you are looking for a nice story about Kirk and Spock being in love, then I very much urge you to look at Ao3 or similar sites. Skip this, if you want a K/S story, because that’s not what this is. Now, if you’re a huge fan of the Romulan commander from the Enterprise Incident, then my GOD you have to read this. I think this was a pretty solid Trek book. It was no piece of literary genius, but it got the job done. There was a lot of it that I think could have been left out, because it the later half it started to drag horribly, and we got a few plot threads that went absolutely nowhere. I’m not sure I’m much of a fan of alternate universes, as I really really enjoy the established dynamic of the characters, but it didn’t bother me too much. But I mean hey man, there was defiantly parts where I was so invested I couldn’t put the book down. Give this one a read if you’re looking for a pretty interesting Trek book with a little bit of cheeky K/S sprinkled here and there.
If you have given the book a read, or just have thoughts in general, I’d love to hear them!
#here it is people#as always sorry for any grammer or spelling mistakes#i know there are prone to be some so just uhhhhh#ignore it if you can#star trek#killing time#kirk#james t kirk#spock#kirk/spock#k/s#spirk#the original series
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fic: walking with the lady
Every movie, every book, every story about the horrors of letting in the ghosts has prepared Dani for the constant state of alarm. The panic. The discomfort of the situation.
Not a single goddamn one told her how stupid it would be.
***
The first time Viola Lloyd rears her spectral head outside of a dream, Dani is doing her best to enjoy an incredibly pleasant spring morning. She’s been having strange thoughts--strange echoes of night terrors that have been escalating, images weaving as though shot from the depths of some great ocean--for a few months now. Has been trying her very best to take Jamie’s advice and not worry about it. One day at a time. Stop gazing into every reflective surface in the county and just...live.
And she’s been doing that, she thinks, with a decent amount of peaceful abandon for a woman carrying an unknown beast in the depths of her psyche. She’s traveled. She’s seen much of America, and more of Jamie. She’s learned she’ll never get any better at tea, that she’s honestly not terrible at pasta, that she can talk the ear off old women who just want to stop and smell the flowers. It’s been a serene six, seven, eight years, if she lays them all end to end, and she’s glad of it.
But the dreams are coming faster now. With more regularity. Long stretches of night fade into black and white, into memories she can feel with her whole body, but knows aren’t her own. Corsets and sweeping skirts, a sister she never had, a husband. A child. None of this belongs to Dani, so it must be her, mustn’t it?
It scares her. She talks about it to Jamie when she wakes--sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the middle of the night; whether she’s truly awake or not, Jamie always listens. They always hunker back down, holding tight to one another, Jamie whispering into her hair that you’re still here, you’re still you, it’s all okay, Poppins. It helps, as much as anything’s going to.
What doesn’t help is sitting here on this park bench, a list of shopping plans open in her lap, and hearing--hearing isn’t even the right word for it, it’s like a ringing voice coming up from the very back of her head--someone say, “And what on earth is that?”
Dani sits straight upright, every line of her body rigid with fear. “What...is what?”
She’s said the words out loud, she realizes when an elderly man with a basket of stale bread turns slowly to look at her. Her mouth twists itself into a rictus grin of apology, and he shuffles off, looking very much like a man prepared for his own murder at the hands of a lunatic schoolteacher.
“Well,” the voice says, coolly amused. “That was embarrassing for us both.”
What, Dani thinks, the fuck is going on?
“What’s going on,” Viola Lloyd’s deep, accented voice says, “is truly beyond my knowledge. Do you know the last time I had this many thoughts of my own? Must have been...oh, three hundred years, now...”
Why, Dani thinks furiously, are you having them now?
“I certainly couldn't say.” Viola sounds astonished. “The last I recall, I was trying to reclaim my child--”
Flora, Dani interrupts with a rush of anger, was not your child.
She imagines she can feel Viola’s hand flip to and fro, carelessly. “It’s all apples in the end, isn’t it?”
She’s clenching her fists in her lap, she realizes, as if there’s anything to fight. As if she could ward Viola off from inside her own body.
“Oh,” Viola says coolly, “I wouldn’t worry just yet. I couldn’t say for sure--it’s all rather new, you must understand--but I don’t think I could do anything to you. Not yet. Look, here, I’ll try...”
Dani’s muscles strain against an invisible force that never comes. Viola chuckles.
“See? Nothing. The lights are on, my dear, but none but you is really home.”
Then why are you awake? Dani demands.
“Not a clue, darling. It’s nice, though, isn’t it? You really take it for granted in life.”
Take what for--
“Seeing,” Viola breathes. “I haven’t seen anything properly in centuries. I’d forgotten how bright the world was. How full of...color.”
Is it Dani’s imagination, or does Viola’s tone hold an edge of disgust on that final word?
“So, again, I find myself asking. What on earth do you call that?”
Dani allows instinct to turn her head, somehow sensing the direction Viola wishes for her to look. She finds herself staring at a young child playing at her mother’s feet.
I--it’s... And it’s here, in this moment, faced with the nearly impossible task of explaining to the 400-year-old ghost woman who shares her body what a Slinky is for that Dani Clayton decides this whole cohabitation thing might have been a mistake.
***
“Hang on,” Jamie says. “Hang on, she’s awake in there?”
Dani, folded nearly double on their couch with her face in her hands, nods. Her head is pounding. Viola has been, ah, what’s the polite way to put it? Running her mouth. For nearly four hours.
“She’s got some...opinions,” Dani mumbles into her cupped hands. Jamie stops rubbing light circles into her back, curious.
“About what?”
“Might be a shorter list, to ask what she doesn’t have an opinion about,” Dani says. At the back of her head, she feels Viola cross her arms.
“This sounds like you are on the path to impudence, Miss Clayton.”
“But hang on, I thought--” Jamie seems to be choosing her words carefully. “I thought she was just sort of...in there. Tucked away, like the kids said. What do you mean she can see?”
Dani blows out a long breath, wishing dearly for a cigarette. “I don’t know, Jamie, I’m not the authority on carrying Victorian women around in my skull.”
“Bit nearer to it than me, Poppins.” Jamie’s smiling, plainly trying to make her feel better. Dani turns to glower at her.
“I love you very much. Please don’t test me right now. She hasn’t stopped talking for more than twenty minutes all afternoon.”
Jamie raises her hands in surrender. “Can she...can she see me now?”
“Tell her,” Viola says. “Tell her I can see her, and her mannishly-inappropriate hairstyle.”
“I will not be saying that,” Dani mutters. Jamie raises an eyebrow.
“Are you having a conversation now? What’s she saying?”
“Please let her know I find her insistence upon men’s trousers silly at best, her blouses are entirely too loose, and I am bewildered by the wealth of ankle she seems to find appropriate in mixed company--”
“She says you have a nice smile,” Dani says. Jamie’s eyebrows raise to her hairline. Viola makes a horrible little noise of revulsion.
“How dare you place words in my mouth!”
“You are absolutely not telling me the truth, are you?” Jamie says in the same moment. Dani groans.
“Aspirin. I am going to need so much aspirin.”
***
It’s not all the time, thankfully; Dani thinks she’d go mad if Viola were truly there at all hours, yammering away about silks and petticoats and the good old days when a person could just drop dead of the plague with no notice. Sometimes, Viola even goes days at a stretch without saying a word, as though she’s sunk back to sleep in whatever little corner of Dani’s mind she calls a bedroom.
And then, like a thunderstorm, she emerges once more. Usually with something snappy and irritating to share with Dani.
“Are we really wearing that?”
“There is no we, Viola,” Dani grumbles. She’s in the process of trying to choose between a flower-patterned dress and a denim vest, unable to gauge what kind of day it’s going to be when she steps out of the closet and into the chaos. Business has been booming down at The Leafling, which is wonderful, but more than a little overwhelming. And Jamie, god love her, has taken to watching Dani when she thinks Dani won’t notice, always with this worried little crease between her eyes.
It’s making her crazy, if she’s honest about it. Jamie isn’t the worrier in the relationship, and watching her slip into the role is making Dani feel worse about the whole situation. She needs Jamie to tell her it’s all fine, it’s all perfectly all right, they’re going to make it through this new weirdness together no problem.
“My dear, we became a we the night you said the magic words,” Viola says, a bit pettily. “Or have you forgotten me already?”
“How,” Dani grits out, “on earth am I supposed to forget you? Feel like I spend every day just...waiting for you to spring up and ask some idiotic question about cars or airplanes or deodorant--”
“For a schoolteacher, you surely lack for patience, Miss Clayton.”
Dani closes her eyes, searching for strength. Her hands grope, landing on dress and vest and yanking them free. “You know what? Both. We’re doing both today.”
“We most certainly are not! Not even a glove to be found? And again with the florals! We’ve been over how tacky the florals are, Miss Clayton. Miss Clayton, are you listening?”
“No,” Dani says decisively, wriggling into the layers and looking around for her chunkiest pair of earrings.
“You are the scandal of the town, Miss Clayton,” Viola sniffs.
***
“Does she, ah...watch when we do this?”
Dani groans. They’d been having such a nice evening--an old movie fading slowly into wandering hands, Jamie’s mouth making its way down her neck, Jamie’s fingers slipping beneath the hem of her shirt and tickling her ribs. She’d just flipped Jamie onto her back, was just looking to remove the deeply inconvenient articles of cloth between them, when Jamie pressed a palm lightly against her chest.
“Not trying to be weird about it,” Jamie says, breathless. Her eyes are dark and heavy; though she’s stopped Dani moving closer, one of her legs has wound around Dani’s hip, easing her in. It’s giving Dani the worst kind of mixed message, to say the least.
“Would you like us to put this sort of thing on hold until I find a way to exorcise the demon from my head, Jamie?”
“I did not say that. I decidedly said nothing of the kind.”
Dani lets her head fall forward, covering Jamie’s face in a fall of blonde. “Sorry. That was snippy. I just...I don’t know the answer. She’s...” She tilts her head, eyes shut, searching. “Quiet. For now.”
Jamie brushes her hair back, cups the side of her face, thumb moving in a slow arc across her cheekbone. “S’all right then. Can’t blame me being curious, can you? I mean, it’s not every day you find a third party sneaks into your bed.”
Dani leans into the soft stroke of her hand, sighing. “I don’t like it, either, you know. She’s so...judgey. I hadn’t realized ghosts could be judgey.”
“What’s she judging?” The hand on her chest slides, gripping a fistful of her shirt, pulling her toward Jamie. Dani sighs again, letting Jamie kiss her with the soft determination of someone apologizing for stopping this train in the first place.
“Me,” she murmurs against Jamie’s lips. “You.”
“Me?” Jamie sounds affronted. “What’s there to judge about me, I’m a bloody peach.”
Dani laughs, bites her lower lip until Jamie groans. “It’s not anything personal. It’s just...the whole world is so different from what she remembers. There’s TV, jean shorts, women out there having jobs and lives without consent of their husbands...for her, it must be the Wild West.”
“Judges what she doesn’t understand, is that it?” Jamie is doing an admirable job of pretending to still be invested in this conversation, even as her hands are making short work of Dani’s sweatpants. Dani sucks in a breath.
“I guess. Yeah. Can’t blame her for that, really.”
Jamie mulls this over, fingers tracing hipbone. Her nails bite gently into soft skin. “Does she judge us for this, I wonder?”
“Do you care?”
“Not,” Jamie says, twisting her hand and bringing their mouths together hard, “in the least.”
***
“Put it out the window.”
“I am not putting it out the window, Viola.”
“Down a flight of stairs, then! What in all cosmic reaches of hell is this for, if not throwing it somewhere it can never harm another soul again!”
Dani exhales through her nose, slowly, embracing every meditative memory of dealing with errant children. “I am not,” she says slowly to the empty apartment, “going to throw my television anywhere. And I'd really appreciate it if you’d stop making that suggestion every time I turn it on.”
“You are letting your soul rot from the inside out with this filth!” Viola is all but shrieking. Dani imagines her pacing back and forth, back and forth, her hands wild. “Your moral fiber, Miss Clayton. What of your moral fiber?”
“If MTV rots away one’s moral fiber,” Dani says, as calmly as she knows how, “then I suspect we’re all lost causes, anyway.”
Viola is silent for such a long time, Dani thinks she’s done the trick. She turns her attention back to the laundry she’s been folding to the tune of Janet Jackson. Her head bobs gently in time as the videos shuffle past--Madonna, Michael, Paula, George. Then, with the hour change, newer fare. She’s still getting around to some of these artists, still trying to work out how she feels about them.
"Did you hear that?” Viola seethes. “What was that about an anaconda? Is this man suggesting we feed a woman to snakes? What barbarism do your people accept in this age?”
Dani folds a pair of Jamie’s socks with such deliberate care, she nearly forgets to breathe while doing it.
“Moral fiber,” Viola hisses. “Moral fiber is wasted on this age of nudity and...and...hammertime.”
Dani finds herself desperately invested in ironing the wrinkles out of a pair of jeans with her hand until Viola goes quiet again.
***
“You could have such nice hair,” Viola croons. “Such nice hair, if you would only put them away...”
“They’re convenient,” Dani says, scraping her hair back into a pink scrunchie. Viola makes a noise of disgust.
“They’re abhorrent. Honestly, your time and its...fashions. What do you call this?”
She’s gesturing toward the bathroom counter, to the little basket that holds all the hair supplies. Dani sighs.
“It’s a headband, Viola. We like headbands. They keep the hair out of our eyes.”
“There are other ways. Fine hats. Lovely veils. Why don’t you own any lovely veils, Dani, do you want the common folk seeing your every decision in your eyes?”
Dani reaches for the hairspray. Behind her, Jamie bustles in with shirt half-buttoned, suspenders swinging around her thighs. Viola makes another catty little noise.
“Any news?” Jamie asks, reaching around for a hairbrush and kissing Dani’s cheek.
“She doesn’t like scrunchies,” Dani reports. “And she’s started calling me Dani.”
Jamie frowns. “Good sign or bad?”
“Impossible to guess.”
“Tell her you want some veils,” Viola says sweetly. “And for her to learn the value of a fine skirt.”
Dani, ignoring this, reaches around the back of Jamie’s neck and pulls her into a searing kiss. Jamie drops the hairbrush with a clatter, leaning Dani back against the counter and gripping the small of her back like she’s suddenly forgotten they’re both late for work.
When they break apart, they’re both flushed, Dani giggling into the underside of Jamie’s jaw, Jamie’s eyes glazed. In the back of her mind, she hears Viola sigh.
“That is truly childish, you know.”
***
It’s kind of an accidental habit, punishing her inner ghost for bad behavior by channeling her frustrations into sex. She couldn’t explain it if she tried, except to say Viola does tend to shut up when Dani’s properly distracted. Maybe it’s just the way the connection works, thinner when Dani isn’t willing to give it energy. Maybe Viola’s embarrassed. Either way, a year after Viola first speaks, her life with Jamie burns hotter than it ever has.
It’s best when Viola is trying to run her mouth over Jamie’s fashion sense, she’s noticed. It is, in fact, the only way to shut Viola up about the aforementioned fashion sense. Which Dani intellectually understands; coming up from a world 400 years away, where women dressed in endless layers and a person’s value was often found in the shine of her jewels and the rich fabric of her skirts, slamming face-first into the 1990s must have been a trip. Truly, Viola is lucky Dani didn’t cart her out of that lake earlier. If she thinks scrunchies are bad, she should have seen the heyday of shoulder pads.
Honestly, though, the worst thing is listening to Viola trill on about how much better Jamie could look if she’d only bow to the whims of femininity. Jamie, whose primary word on fashion has always been “can I dig a hole in this?” is perfect just the way she is. In fact, as the years go on and her jeans grow cuffs, her shorts grow shorter, her tops crop midway up her stomach, Dani thinks the world is finally suiting Jamie instead of the other way around.
“She’s prancing around for the world to see--”
“It’s ninety-six degrees out,” Dani says in a low voice. She understands these conversations with Viola can be internalized, but she tends to wind up wearing this distant expression every time, and Jamie can spot it a mile off. Best to just mutter aloud in the sanctity of their own home.
“She’s walking her wares up and down the block,” Viola rages on. “Not a shawl to be seen!”
“Jamie,” Dani calls from the kitchen, “have you ever in your life worn a shawl?”
“That’s, uh, one of those blankets with the fringy bits, yeah?” Jamie calls back. She’s bent over the air conditioning unit, trying to coax life into the old girl. The cropped line of her black t-shirt rides up her back, revealing glistening skin. Dani tips her head to enjoy the view. “I’ll pass on account of any blanket in this heat being like to kill me.”
“Best not to test it,” Dani agrees. Viola heaves the longest-suffering sigh Dani’s ever heard.
“It doesn’t bother you in the least, your woman out there, where anyone could see her...her bare stomach!”
“One,” Dani says coolly, “she’s my girlfriend, not my woman. Two, I’ve never once tried to dictate her clothing, and I’m not stopping because a dead woman insists. Three, I happen to like it.”
“Like what?” Jamie strolls back to her, pushing sweaty hair off her forehead with a sigh. She stops a few inches away, rocking back and forth on her heels like she wants nothing more than to close the distance despite the mind-numbing heat.
“Viola is commenting upon your more risqué clothing choices.”
“What? This?” Jamie grasps the exceedingly high-cut hem of her shirt and tugs it gently upward, teasing. “What’s her problem with all this?”
“It’s on display, evidently.”
“As it should be,” Jamie says almost primly. “I’m a fine specimen to behold. Learn to enjoy it, love, it’ll be faster than trying to change the view.”
This last, she says in a slightly louder voice, as though speaking to the shadow behind Dani’s eyes. She’s grinning, and Dani has time to think how strange it is, how quickly they’ve learned to accommodate Viola’s appearances into their conversations--Jamie has taken to leaving beats between her sentences, allowing for Dani to process two people speaking at once--before Jamie is wrapping both arms around her and lifting her off the floor. She squeals in surprise, delight turning to desire as Jamie licks a bead of sweat from her neck.
“Not again,” Viola sighs. “You’ll wake the whole village.”
“Apartment,” Dani corrects, catching Jamie by the jaw and kissing her hungrily. It’s too hot for this, probably, but she can’t quite remember how to care when Jamie pulls free of her grasp and slides to her knees, taking Dani’s skirt with her.
“It’s a nightmare, regardless.”
***
Eventually, Viola proves herself capable of learning a thing or two. Namely, that she is welcome to run commentary on anyone in the world except for Jamie.
Even old ghosts can learn new tricks, apparently, although it takes a number of months, a great deal of sex, and one memorable weekend in which--upon Viola raging over every article in Jamie’s side of the closet for half an hour--Dani simply removed the option of clothing from Viola’s sight altogether.
“This,” Jamie panted, both of them on the floor with a sheet draped over their tangled limbs, “is working for me in the weirdest way, Poppins.”
“I think she’s really starting to hate me,” Dani said conversationally, even as her fingers slipped between Jamie’s legs yet again. Jamie’s hips rose to meet her, one hand burying itself in her hair.
“Well, that makes one of us, doesn’t it?”
***
Not commenting on Jamie, naturally, does nothing to stop Viola talking about every other goddamn thing in the world.
“We’re going to have to have a long talk about not shaming women for their bodies, you know,” Dani tells her one afternoon. Viola has been tearing a young woman to pieces over her short skirt, furious that someone so pristine could soil herself with such impunity. Dani must be getting used to this in the weirdest way possible, because this kind of floral language is starting to feel second-nature.
“I would never shame anyone,” Viola protests. “I am simply stating fact. Men do not value women as it is, and while we may win their games, we get nowhere at all if we do not play them.”
“This isn’t a game, Viola, it’s her life. Her body. She can do whatever she likes with it.”
“But I want her to succeed,” Viola insists. There’s an almost disconcerting eagerness to the words. She really truly believes what she’s saying. “A woman viewed as nothing more than a strumpet will have an even more difficult time securing a dowry, and then where will she be?”
“In college?” Dani suggests blithely. “Traveling? Living isn’t just for men, Viola, I know you know this. You refused the oath of obedience on your wedding day.”
“Of course it’s not for men’s sake alone, but when the law--”
“The law is different here,” Dani says, almost gently. “Has been for a long time. Or haven’t you noticed how well Jamie and I get along without a man to be found?”
Viola’s silence stretches so long, Dani’s sure she’s either gone back to sleep or is finally choosing this moment to let the ugly banner of homophobia unfurl. She’s been waiting for this moment for years, it seems, waiting for the ghost in her head to mimic her mother on the one and only occasion she attempted to send home a letter.
“You’re different,” Viola says at last, very softly. Dani blinks.
“Pardon?”
“You’re different,” Viola repeats. “Jamie is your forever. Does that young girl have her forever, Miss Clayton?”
“Well--I don't know, I don’t suppose it’s my business--”
“Perhaps she will find it in one like our Jamie,” Viola says impatiently. “But perhaps she will find instead the stones of men who have not, over four centuries, really changed all that much. Is it so wrong of me, to have a mother’s care for that?”
Dani doesn’t know how to answer. Doesn’t have the first idea, when faced with a Viola who is not simply catty for cattiness’ sake, but genuine. She opens and closes her mouth a few times, unable to find argument.
“We just. We just don’t pick on girls for what they do with their bodies, all right? It’s...it’s cruel, and it isn’t necessary.”
Viola sighs. “Fine. But we still ought to discuss the pattern choices. Those polka dots are not flattering in the least.”
It’s only later, watching Jamie chop carrots for dinner, that Dani realizes Viola had said our. Our Jamie.
“Oh sweet Christ,” she mumbles.
***
The change is slow. Subtle. If not for the fact of carrying this woman in her head, Dani’s not sure she even would have noticed.
“She what?” Jamie looks up from the plant she’s tending, fingernails grimed with soil, wedding ring carefully strung upon a thick chain around her neck until she can clean up again. “She...sorry, what?”
“I can’t be sure,” Dani muses. “It sounds...crazy. But I think she’s starting to like you.”
“Well, sure,” Jamie laughs. “I’m a deeply likable human being. But this is the Lady, yeah? Same one who dragged Peter fucking Quint to his death? Same one who thinks I show too much skin?”
“I’m...not convinced she thinks that anymore.” It’s really hard to say for sure. On the one hand, it’s possible Viola has shut up about Jamie’s shorn sleeves and shorts because every time she mentioned either, Dani made it her personal life’s mission to make sure Jamie never wore anything else around the house. On the other...
“I think she looked at your butt the other day.”
Jamie raises her eyes slowly, brow furrowing. “Can she do that? Turn your eyes to something you weren’t already looking at?”
“No,” Dani says, a bit stiffly, all too aware of stepping into the trap. Jamie grins.
“Thought not.”
“But it was different,” Dani presses on through flushing cheeks. “I mean--even if I was already looking, she was--I mean--she--”
She doesn’t know how to explain it. How the rumble in her chest, already so familiar at the sight of Jamie puttering around their home, had seemed to expand until it encompassed all of her. How it was like someone had turned the heat in the room to its breaking point.
“I can just tell, okay?” she says, aggrieved. “She looked at your butt, and she liked it.”
Jamie makes a thoughtful face, brushing dirt off her hands with slow, deliberate motions. “So...what you’re saying is...your personal ghostie has a crush on your wife?”
Dani presses her face against the counter, letting the cool metal relieve her blush. “Shit. Yeah. I think she might.”
“This is,” Jamie says triumphantly, pressing up against Dani from behind and kissing the back of her neck, “the funniest thing that has ever happened, by a country goddamn mile.”
***
A series of events, cascading in short order, that Dani almost actually feels bad about. If one could feel guilty about putting strain on one’s personal-pan Casper.
The Britney Spears video, for one. Viola still does not like music videos--or music, frankly, unless it involves a ridiculous number of flutes and orchestral swells--but she’s grown to tolerate them. Mostly.
That is, until Britney sways onscreen in a plaid skirt and schoolgirl pigtails.
“Fuck,” Dani gasps, hand coming down hard against her own breastbone. It’s like someone grabbed the dial on her blood pressure and cranked it all the way up. That someone, she suspects, being the dead woman who has been more and more present of late.
“I--I cannot--I simply am not capable of understanding--” Viola sounds like she’s short-circuiting. “I know we are not meant to comment, but what on earth is she doing?!”
“Dancing,” Dani says sharply, trying to coax her breathing back down. Is this what a stroke feels like? Is her fucking ghost roommate giving her an actual stroke? “Viola, you’ve seen dancing.”
“She is so young! She is a child! Who is protecting this person from the world?” Viola is furious. Viola is exploding. Dani sort of wonders if her chest is going to explode, too.
“She’s...a pop star. This is what they get paid lots and lots of money to do.” It’s a bad answer, she knows. These videos make her a little uncomfortable too, when she thinks on them too long. But Viola? Viola’s rage is a towering beast of a thing. For a minute, lungs scraping at the air, Dani is genuinely afraid this is the point where the switch flips. Where she finds herself staring at the room from the back of her own head.
“Someone,” Viola says in a low, terrible voice, “must protect these children.”
It takes almost an hour to calm her down. Dani doesn’t turn MTV back on for a while after that.
***
“The. The moon?” The opposite end of the emotional spectrum this time. If Viola had been nearly apoplectic over Britney’s choreography, she now sounds faint.
“You should have floated that a bit more softly,” Dani tells Jamie, who looks confused.
“Float what, all I did was mention NASA--”
“The moon,” Viola repeats. “We have seen. The moon.”
“She’s having trouble with the moon landing,” Dani says. Jamie waves her hands helplessly.
“Poppins, I have trouble understanding the geography of Texas, we all have problems.”
“We have,” Viola breathes, “stepped foot. Upon. The moon.”
Dani pours herself another large glass of wine.
***
“How’s this, then?” Jamie gives a very small, somewhat self-conscious twirl. “Too much? Too little? Too, ah, revealing, as the ghost contingent might say?”
Dani, leaning against the bedroom wall, can’t quite find the words. Viola, too, is conspicuously silent.
“It’s bad,” Jamie says, nodding fervently. “Yeah, y’know, I think I knew it when I picked it up. Better on the sales rack, as they say. I can just...if you wouldn’t mind popping the zip real quick...”
“Yes, Dani,” Viola says quietly. “Pop the zip.”
“You don’t even know what that means,” Dani hisses. Jamie raises an eyebrow.
“What’s that?”
“It’s not bad,” Dani says quickly, ignoring the little harrumph Viola utters. “It’s very not bad. Opposite of bad, really.”
Relief floods Jamie’s face. The dress is low cut in a way very little of her clean-up clothes are, with a slit running clear up the leg. Patterned in burgundy petals, the black velvet is stark against her pale skin.
“I won’t get run out of the convention, then? Only they said there’s a bit about drinks and networking, and it was just shy of black-tie. I could do that instead. Get a black tie. Think I’d look nice in a black tie.”
“The dress,” Viola says in a low, conspiratorial voice. “Tell her it is a nice dress.”
“It’s a nice dress,” Dani repeats with comic dazedness. “Best dress I’ve ever seen, maybe.”
“And now,” Viola says soothingly, “you go to her. Walk confidently now, shoulders back, chin up--”
“Are you...wing-man-ing me toward my own wife?”
“Seduction requires confidence, Dani.”
“What’s she saying?” Jamie’s face has gone a curious mix of apprehensive and amused. Dani swallows.
“Seduction requires confidence, evidently.”
A slow grin spreads across Jamie’s face. Dani raises a hand, finger extended.
“Don’t. Don’t make that smug face.”
“What’s smug about it?” She’s moving across the room, arms already reaching. “This is my very natural expression, I’ll have you know. The most normal expression in the world for a woman whose wife is being told to undress her by the ancient rage-ghost sharing her body.”
“Our lives,” Dani says helplessly, already pressing herself flush against Jamie, “are different than other people’s lives.”
“Yes,” Jamie agrees in a low voice, sliding the sweater over Dani’s head. “Can’t find it in me to complain, though, can you?”
***
It’s weird, almost. Weirder, that it’s almost not. That the beast in the jungle, the creature Dani spent nearly a decade dreading, has pounced at last and...mostly, she just seems to want to see Dani happy.
Jamie finds it hilarious, in that pretend-callous way Jamie has of smoothing over genuine concern with soft laughter. She doesn’t like Dani sharing her mental space with someone at all hours, Viola popping up like a wack-a-mole game on high. But, if Dani must share the space with anyone, at least--
“It’s someone who thinks I'm gorgeous.”
“You are gorgeous,” Dani replies, a bit exasperated. “Gorgeous, silly, perfect person. But my inner ghost has a crush on you, that isn’t strange for you?”
“Poppins, my life has been strange since a doe-eyed American strolled into it and told me she still saw her dead fiancé when we kissed.” Jamie reclines on the bed in a sleep shirt and underwear, hands playing lightly with the pillowcase beneath her head. “Strange is my bread and butter these days, and if I had to sacrifice you to have it any other way, we both know how it would go.”
Dani makes a mulish sound under her breath. Jamie cups a hand to her ear.
“Say again?”
“It’s weird,” she repeats, arms crossed over her chest. “She’s weird. I always thought she’d do something bad--walk me off a roof, or strangle someone to death, or try to rob a convenience store. But mostly she just wants to protect young girls from an uncaring world and look at your butt in the shower.”
“That is...very specific,” Jamie says lightly. Dani shakes her head.
“It’s so bizarre. The longer this goes on, the more she sees of the world, it’s like...like she’s getting more real. More Viola, less Lady.”
Jamie sits up, hand sliding to rest high on Dani’s thigh as if to shield her from harm. “But not more solid, right? Not taking up space you already rent?”
Dani shakes her head. “That’s the thing. She doesn't feel like she’s taking over. And it feels...like she should.”
“You want her to?”
“No, no, of course not.” Dani raises Jamie’s knuckles to her lips, raining soft kisses up and down her hand until the tension goes out of her brow. “I just don’t understand what’s happening. This isn’t...what I expected.”
Jamie exhales, shifting her weight until she’s sitting in Dani’s lap. She takes a Dani’s face between her hands, kisses her long and slow until Dani eases back against the headboard.
“This is good, Poppins. You’re a good influence. You were on those kids, and on me, and now on this Lady of yours. Maybe that’s all a ghost needs, deep down.”
Dani leans into her, lets the rhythm of kiss and gentle bite and hands slipping beneath her clothes carry her away for a while. Still, no Viola, and she’s grateful. She doesn’t like to think how that would feel, Viola popping up while Jamie’s curling her fingers deep, groaning soft against her shoulder. There is a time and a place for hauntings, and time with Jamie is something else entirely.
She’s pretty sure Viola even respects that. Which is, like everything else, incredibly strange.
***
Viola attends their second wedding. Their real wedding. It’s bizarre on a level Dani isn’t prepared to deal with, feeling her surface as the plans become reality. Jamie’s got flowers, naturally, and Owen’s catering, and Henry has the kids--who are kids no longer, but fully-formed people with lives of their own--running errands on the day. And Dani...
Dani is looking at herself in a wedding dress for the second time in her life, only this time, she can breathe.
“You are radiant,” Viola says. Dani closes her eyes for a moment, steels herself.
“Nothing else to say? No notes?”
“You chose wisely,” Viola says. Dani sighs.
“I figured lace was classic, and someone told me I had nice shoulders once, so--”
“The dress is beautiful,” Viola says. “But I was not talking about your grooming for the day.”
Dani gives a shaky laugh. “I love her, you know. I really do.”
“I can tell.” A beat of silence. Then: “I did not understand at first. Her. Or you. I suppose I will never understand completely. But...I understand the depths of what you feel. It is a part of me, too, I think. That devotion, sinking into all the spaces where I had forgotten.”
“You’re in love with Jamie, too?” Dani asks, not really wanting the answer. Viola laughs.
“Yes. And no. You and I are intertwined, Miss Clayton. What you feel, I feel, to a degree. More importantly, I have seen your life with her. The life you build with the reckless joy of two people doomed one day to die.”
“Thanks,” Dani says, a bit sharply. She senses Viola putting her hands up, a terribly-modern gesture of surrender.
“You understand what I mean. It takes courage, to love this completely. To do so while carrying a burden neither of us can truly comprehend is...something else altogether. There is a strength there I could not have understood on my most willful of days.”
“You turned Death away at your own doorstep,” Dani points out, smiling. Viola is pleased.
“I did, didn’t I? And I could never regret it, even now. But you. You are doing something so much more incredible. Loving, even knowing what ending love must craft.”
“This is a bit dark for my wedding day,” Dani points out. Viola nods.
“You are radiant. And you are fortunate. And I wish you both all the happiness in the world.”
It is the strangest wedding toast she’s ever heard, and something within Dani’s heart has never been more at peace.
***
“How’s our Lady doing tonight?” Jamie asks as Dani slips into bed beside her. She tips her head, thinking on it. Viola, as she usually is once Dani crosses the bedroom threshold, is nowhere to be found.
“Good, I think. Calm.”
“And my wife?” Jamie looks at her, eyes serious. “You’ve been quieter lately. Fighting her less?”
“She’s been fighting me less,” Dani says. “She...likes it here, I think. Likes us. You know, I thought after this much time, she’d get bored or restless or...go back to her old ways, but...”
“But I’m just too gorgeous,” Jamie teases. Dani slings a leg across her body, holds tight to her with hands that never feel as though they can hold on hard enough.
“I think sometimes...sometimes it’s just about remembering. What it’s like to be a person. What it’s like to be in love.”
“Mm,” Jamie agrees, fingertips drawing dizzying spirals on the bare back of Dani’s shoulder. “Well done, you. You’ve tamed your beast.”
Dani sighs, content. “I think it was a joint effort.”
“Yes,” Jamie agrees, kissing the top of her head. “Because I am, famously, too gorgeous to deny.”
#the haunting of bly manor#the haunting of bly manor spoilers#fanfiction#dani x jamie#jamie x dani#me: I'm gonna take this show incredibly seriously and analyze it in detail#also me: wouldn't it be fucking hilarious if viola just rode around in Dani's mind yapping all the time?#also also me: oh no it went from being stupid to having heart anyway what the hell#anyway this is all karatam's fault and she knows it#and like everything else it isn't as silly as it could be because my dumb heart got in the way
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Leave It In The Sun: Chapter One (a Disco Elysium fanfic)
Warnings: Full game spoilers, eventual spicy scenes, basically the level of adult content in the game itself.
General summary: A slow(ish) burn exploration of life at Precinct 41 after Harry and Kim wrap up the case and Kim makes the move to Jamrock. Mainly just about how Harry and Kim's relationship might develop, and a sort of character study of some of the employees of Precinct 41 in general.
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Chapter one summary: Two difficult weeks after leaving Martinaise, Harry finally reaches out to Kim. Chapter length: Approx. 4.3k words
The sun is only just setting over the streets of Jamrock, drenched in rain and neon. The city stops to catch its breath in the intermission between day and night.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: And so do you. You could’ve sworn the nearest payphone was, y’know, nearer than this. Maybe that bone-shattering gunshot wound also isn’t quite as far along in the healing process as you thought either.
PAIN THRESHOLD: Brilliant claws of pain rake down your thigh as you lean against the payphone and try to center yourself.
You glance at the phone resting in its cradle, with some trepidation. Phone calls are always a bit… difficult for you. Especially these days.
SUGGESTION: You can still change your mind.
VOLITION: No. You came here for a reason.
SUGGESTION: Or… you could always just call her instead.
VOLITION: *Focus.*
You take a deep breath. The late spring air is turning chilly in the slowly setting sun. The rain drizzles lazily as it has all day, showing no sign of stopping. A handful of people are still--or already--out wandering downtown Jamrock, laughing and talking and hurrying home and running errands and entirely focused on just about anything in the world *besides* a washed up middle-aged man having a minor anxiety attack and moderate-to-severe hip pain next to a public phone at 6:04pm in the rain.
INLAND EMPIRE: The loneliness knocks the wind out of you. You thought you were used to it by now. It’s worse outside, around people.
DRAMA: The threadbare costume you created for yourself in the privacy of your dark, trash-strewn apartment doesn’t seem quite as convincing with an audience.
VOLITION: Stop the goddamn pity party and pick up the phone already.
The receiver is light in your hand as you fumble for change and the crumpled slip of paper you’ve had in your jeans pocket for the last two weeks or so. You slowly, deliberately dial the phone number written on it, as if some part of you is afraid that your fingers might just automatically fall into the patterns of *her* number instead.
VOLITION: They might. But you’re done hurting yourself.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: Well, maybe not entirely. Yet. But you’re done hurting yourself *with her* for sure.
INLAND EMPIRE: You still feel like you deserve that pain. But it’s wrong to keep using her as the knife you gut yourself with. She deserves better, even if you might not.
LOGIC: In any case, this isn’t about her. It’s about you, and it’s about--
“Hello?” Kim’s voice is muffled and tinny through the old, worn copper wiring. He sounds tired, but you guess that’s not particularly surprising. You’ve been pretty damn tired too.
“Kim, hey, it’s uh, it’s me,” you reply awkwardly.
“Harry? Do you need something?”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: This is the first time you’ve called him since leaving Martinaise, despite carrying that little piece of paper around for the last two weeks. He’s thinking, why now?
“Yeah, no, I just happened to be downtown this evening,” you ramble, “and I thought--”
“You’re drunk,” he says. It is completely without judgment. A stated fact. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Harry Du Bois is drunk. “Where are you exactly? I’ll--”
“Wait, no!” you exclaim, a little too loudly. A nearby pigeon makes a mad dash in the opposite direction at the sound. “That’s not it! I swear I’m basically sober right now. Mostly.”
A long pause on the other end. “Alright,” he says plainly. “So what can I do for you?”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Make no mistake, he’s picking his battles here and gingerly stepping *around* that “mostly.”
EMPATHY: He’s just relieved it’s even that much.
COMPOSURE: How embarrassing.
VOLITION: Just start over. Your first sentence was garbage, but you know you’re under no obligation to continue it, right?
You take a deep breath, then try again.
“Well, it’s really more about what *I* can do for *you*,” you say as smoothly as possible. “You know that big motor carriage exhibition in town? It just so happens I’ve got *two tickets* to it.”
Another long pause. “You mean the one that ends today?”
“Yes,” you confirm.
“And are you aware that it is currently around six o’clock in the evening?”
“Is it? I mean, yes. Yes it is,” you say confidently. “I am aware of the passage of time.”
“And you waited until now to do this?” he asks.
EMPATHY: He sounds more amused than annoyed, though you definitely detect a bit of both.
“Uh,” you falter. “Look, it’s open until 8:00, so do you want to fucking go or not?”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: About half a kilometer away, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi is sitting in the kitchen of his new apartment, already in his pajamas and winding down for the evening. It’s a bit early for that, but he figures he should take the opportunity to rest before he tackles that mountain of backlogged cases he was promised upon making the move to precinct 41.
Two weeks ago, he said goodbye to the strangest man he’d ever met. A man he found himself inexplicably drawn to in the week they spent together, and whom he thought about every day since. Wondering if he would take the lifeline Kim tried to throw to him, or if that little slip of paper would just end up forgotten at the bottom of a vomit-soaked trash can in some shitty bar. Wondering if the dawning trauma of everything that happened in Martinaise and the restlessness from sitting at home recovering from its aftermath would combine to pull him down into a dark place beyond Kim’s reach for good. Wondering and wondering to fill the silence. And now finally the silence is broken, but whatever this cry for help is, it is not the one Kim ever expected to receive.
But he knows one thing for sure: it *is* a cry for help.
“Alright,” Kim says finally. He takes a sharp breath. “Sounds good.”
The walk to his apartment takes a bit longer than you expected. It’s not that far from the downtown payphone, but you still wasted a good 20 minutes on the journey.
ENDURANCE: You are expecting too much of yourself too soon.
INLAND EMPIRE: It’s always one or the other with you, isn’t it? Too much or not enough.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Twenty minutes to walk a few blocks? Fucking pathetic. What kind of cop are you? Hell, what kind of *gym teacher* are you? Man up.
ENDURANCE: No. It’s a miracle that you’re still standing at all.
PERCEPTION: Beyond the apartment door, you can hear footsteps and soft humming.
You knock, and the door opens almost immediately.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: Shit. You were hoping you’d have a few spare seconds to think of something really cool to say.
REACTION SPEED: C’mon, say something fun and upbeat to prove you’re not a depressed sack of shit who’s been spending the past two weeks drinking alone in the dark.
DRAMA: Showtime!
“Howdy, pardner,” you hear yourself say.
SAVOIR FAIRE: Finger guns! For god’s sake, don’t forget the finger guns. Without them, you just look like a goddamn lunatic.
You do the finger guns.
Kim does not seem particularly impressed as he slowly looks from your outstretched gun fingers to the twisted grimace that now wracks your face.
“Please, holster those things before coming inside,” he says humorlessly.
You blow the pretend, metaphorical smoke from each of your hot weapons before stuffing your hands in your pockets. As you do this, he watches with an appraising look.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s wondering if this is *regular* weird or *drunken breakdown* weird. However, he is intimately familiar with your brand of stupid bullshit at this point and it doesn’t take long for him to place it in the former category.
“We should hit the road soon,” you comment as you peek curiously into his apartment.
“Hit the road,” Kim repeats with mild amusement, “in what?”
LOGIC: Oh. Right. The Kineema is property of Precinct 57. Not Kim Kitsuragi personally.
“Shit, yeah,” you concede. “But hey, if we call a taxi now--”
LOGIC: You’ll arrive just in time to immediately turn around and go home.
HALF LIGHT: You fucked up. You’re a fuck-up. Great job, idiot.
VOLITION: Try not drinking and blacking out all day next time.
LOGIC: Yes, but then…
“Fuck,” you inhale. “Fuckady-fuck-fuck. Shit. Goddammit.”
Kim waits patiently for you to catch up. You’re almost there.
“I should’ve called earlier, sorry,” you apologize. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
LOGIC: What is wrong with you is that you drank all last night, slept off a hangover most of the day today, and woke up in a daze about 45 minutes ago. But what’s done is done. No point in bringing that up now, right?
“Nor do I,” says the lieutenant with a small smile. “But whatever it is, I am no longer surprised by it, I assure you.”
“Sorry. I’m sorry,” you repeat, leaning on the door frame pathetically, a congealed ooze of mental illness and embarrassment. “Sorry for bothering you in the first place. You’re always so nice to me, even when I’m a pain in the ass.”
CONCEPTUALIZATION: Which is to say *constantly.*
Kim says nothing. Just sighs almost imperceptibly.
EMPATHY: Your self deprecation is frustrating for him, and he does not know how to respond to it constructively and compassionately.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He *does* think you’re a pain in the ass sometimes, but a pain worth dealing with.
INLAND EMPIRE: For reasons beyond your understanding.
“Why did you agree to go in the first place?” you sigh. “You’ve got a brain that actually works, you knew it wasn’t gonna happen. If you’re trying to make fun of me, then, well…”
You pause.
“That’s just fine, I guess. Good job, carry on.”
He adjusts his glasses and looks away. “I appreciated the intention,” he says finally, in a measured voice. “And since I hadn’t heard from you the past couple weeks…”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: ...He was afraid you wouldn’t bother trying again.
“Sorry,” you mumble. “I’ve been kind of busy. You know how it goes after cases like that.”
“I do,” he says. He hesitates for a moment, then adds, “you’re welcome to come in if you like.”
You hobble into Kim’s sparse kitchen and collapse on a dining room chair. It creaks ominously under the velocity of the assault.
“I’m glad we have an opportunity to catch up,” he says politely, pulling up the other chair and gazing at your pained expression from across the table. “Your injury is healing well, I assume?”
EMPATHY: It is obvious that he does not in fact assume this at all.
You shrug, still trying to get a hold of yourself and push back the ache swirling at the edges of your mind.
He watches you struggle for a moment, then gently says, “it will take time to heal, but it *will* heal.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: *So please be patient and kind to yourself,* is the silent plea left unsaid. It hangs in the air pitifully. You both know it’s there.
“Time hasn’t exactly been a good salve for me in general,” you mumble.
He’s silent for a while. Opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again.
“Harry,” he says finally. “What happened in Martinaise is not your burden to carry alone.”
“I thought you didn’t like *personal issues*, lieutenant,” you say.
“I don’t,” he says with a frown, “but this…”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: This is about me too, he thinks. As much as he hates to admit it. He doesn’t particularly like his *own* personal issues either. But the past two weeks were hard for him, and you didn’t make them any easier.
EMPATHY: He was worried about you, and--although he will never admit it to himself, let alone you--there’s a part of him that selfishly hoped you were worried about him too. At least a little.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He’s used to this line of work, and so are you despite the holes in your memory, but it never gets any easier to deal with some things.
EMPATHY: There was so much death that day. It haunts you. And now as you sit in Kim’s kitchen, the alcohol slowly filtering from your blood and leaving behind the dregs of a headache, you realize it still haunts him too. You both added perforations you never wanted to make.
ENDURANCE: It’s too much. Your head swims and your entire body aches in the throes of repressed grief fighting its way to the surface of a sea of quickly evaporating Commodore Red.
INLAND EMPIRE: Warning! Trauma containment center has been breached! Evacuate the area immediately!
HALF LIGHT: You’re going to cry, aren’t you? You’re going to fucking cry. Right here in his kitchen. Why can’t you keep your shit together for more than five minutes straight?
You are entirely unable to keep the tears from rolling silently down your cheeks, unbidden.
INLAND EMPIRE: You don’t have it in you to really cry properly, like a normal fucking person. Not anymore. Something has disconnected the wire from your “press here to begin sobbing during your emotional breakdown” button, and you’re not sure what or when.
ENDURANCE: But human beings *cry.* And despite everything inside you that’s broken and rotting, you *are* a human being. You can’t not be.
Kim’s standing next to you now, his hand resting comfortingly on your shoulder. He doesn’t say anything.
EMPATHY: That’s the point of this whole shoulder-touching business in the first place--your disconcertingly unhinged behavior has left him at a loss for words, yet compelled to offer *something.*
This goes on for the longest five minutes or so the world has ever seen. But finally, you’ve wrung it all out of yourself and the tears stop almost as abruptly as they began. His hand gives your shoulder a squeeze, then he sits back down in the chair opposite you, avoiding your eyes. He rummages in his pocket for something, then hands you a blue handkerchief.
“Where the hell do you keep all these?” you mumble as you reach for it. “Fuckin’... infinite handkerchiefs around here.”
“What can I say? I like to be prepared,” he says.
“For drunk idiots who throw up all over crime scenes and have mental breakdowns in your home?”
“Usually to clean my glasses,” he says flatly. “But at this point, I suppose it *is* fair to say that it’s also for your various crises as well.”
“Well, thank God one of us is prepared,” you say. “What would I do without you, Kim?”
He hesitates, a strange wistful expression tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I don’t know. What *did* you do the past two weeks?”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: As soon as the words leave his mouth, he regrets them.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t… That’s none of my concern,” he says quickly.
AUTHORITY: Who the hell does he think he is? You’re not a child who needs to be minded. You’re a grown-ass man who can sit alone in his apartment and get wasted if he fucking wants to. Assert yourself!
“Honestly? Drink, mostly,” you say with a self-conscious chuckle.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He just stares at you with the bleakest expression you’ve ever seen cross his face.
EMPATHY: He’s so tired. So frustrated. So disappointed.
INLAND EMPIRE: Oh God! He’s *disappointed* in you? This is terrible. Anything but that, please!
“I thought I was doing better,” you say quietly. “Guess not.”
“You were,” Kim says kindly.
INLAND EMPIRE: Tequila Sunset hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it still will. Maybe it’s inevitable. Maybe when you took up that mantle, it was like some sort of alcoholic event horizon. Tequila Sunset is the only way it was ever going to end. What other force in the universe could begin to exert as much gravitational pull over you?
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: From the void we came, to the void we must return.
“Listen,” Kim tells you, “this is not surprising. It’s got to be harder now that you’re back in Jamrock.”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: It’s *easy,* baby. All your old favorite haunts are here. You know all the cheapest bars, the sketchiest parts of town with the purest amphetamines… You can’t remember the names of half of them anymore, but the muscles in your legs can trace the steps there perfectly. That shit’s burned into your body forever.
“Yeah.” You swallow hard. “Anyway, what about you? How’s Jamrock treating you?”
EMPATHY: The darkness clouding his expression lightens a bit.
“Good so far,” he says. “I’ve actually only been here for a few days. G.R.I.H. wrap-up took longer than I expected.” He pauses and looks out the window. “But I’m glad to be here now.”
“Really,” you say with a laugh. “In this shithole?”
“It has its perks,” he says. “I’m looking forward to beginning work at Precinct 41.”
“You’re not working solo, are you?”
“For right now, yes I am,” he replies. “I’m fine with that. I’ve done it before.”
INLAND EMPIRE: The idea of sharing a workplace with him and yet not being at his side when he needs you… it makes you feel cold, lonely, somehow.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You have a duty to Jean. Jean is your partner.
SUGGESTION: Fuck it, just say it. You know what you want to say. Say it and get it over with.
“You should work with me,” you blurt out. “We were such a good team in Martinaise. We could keep those good times rolling!”
“I’m flattered, but,” he says, turning his head. “Satellite-Officer Vicquemare…”
“Doesn’t give a shit about me,” you say. “Fuck him.”
EMPATHY: That’s not exactly true. You know it’s not.
INLAND EMPIRE: But the truth is complicated. It’s easier to just boil it down to *fuck that guy.*
LOGIC: Jean is bad for you, and you’re bad for him. Or, you used to be. And has anything really changed? Are you really any different? Maybe it was just the change of scenery that fooled you into thinking otherwise.
INLAND EMPIRE: Same old Jamrock. Same old coworkers. Same old bad habits. Same old *you.*
“I’m not so sure about that,” Kim says delicately.
“Forget about him,” you push, suddenly more serious about this than you intended to be. “I can arrange this shit with Captain Pryce, and I can deal with Jean.”
“I… uh,” he coughs. “I don’t know what to say.”
DRAMA: You’re in control of this show now. Pull an honest answer out of him.
You point at him and narrow your eyes. “I know what you should say: what you *feel* in your *heart*!” You pound one fist against your chest over your heart to drive home the point, then wince.
PAIN THRESHOLD: Please don’t do that.
You break the dramatic pose and lean back in your chair again with a shrug. “Or just tell me to fuck off. None of this wishy-washy noncommittal shit, though.”
He’s silent for a long time, watching and listening to the rain as it picks up outside. Then finally he gives you an apologetic smile and speaks.
“Harry,” he says kindly. “Fuck off.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Translation: maybe. But not now.
EMPATHY: He’s not angry, he’s deflecting. This is by far the nicest way you’ve ever been told to fuck off. Don’t take it too hard.
“Alright, alright,” you say. “Forget I said anything.”
You spend a while just making smalltalk at Kim’s kitchen table. None of it means anything, but it’s nice. It’s a nice, good, human thing to do, sitting and chatting with him. Makes your “regular well-adjusted person” costume fit a little better. The rain begins to let up a little in the fading sunset.
“You know, we could do something else if you like,” he says brightly. “Here in Jamrock, I mean.”
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Yeah. Lots of stuff to do in Jamrock. Like speed and hard liquor. Or crying in the bathroom of a dive bar because you’re too fucked up on speed and liquor.
SUGGESTION: He probably wouldn’t go for that.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: There’s got to be somewhere else to go. Something else to do with him. Think. What do you want to do with him?
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Oh buddy, are you sure you’re ready to open that can of worms?
The lieutenant watches you as you rub your temples in an effort to massage the awkward thoughts out of your terrible brain. Then he says, “you know what, don’t worry about it. It’s fine, we can just stay here.”
“Yeah, okay,” you say. “Sounds good.”
“I’m going out on the balcony for a cigarette,” he informs you. “You can--”
“I’ll come with you,” you interrupt.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: He pauses, wondering how many you might’ve had already. Then again cigarettes are, shockingly, by far the *least* detrimental of your *many* vices.
The two of you step out onto the lieutenant’s rather small balcony. It’s still raining very lightly, but this is probably as good as the weather is going to get tonight. Good enough. There’s really not quite enough space for two adult men to comfortably lounge around out here, though. You try to make yourself as small as possible as you fumble in your pockets for a cigarette and lighter.
PERCEPTION: You hear the soft click of a lighter and smell smoke on the gentle evening breeze drifting over from your left.
“Fuck,” you grumble. “I forgot my light--”
You realize Kim is holding out his own lighter wordlessly, still gazing out at the city sprawling out below.
“Thanks,” you say.
He nods. He pockets the lighter again once you’re done with it, then leans on the railing and exhales smoke with a sigh.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: Outwardly, he is silent and pensive. He almost seems anxious in a way. But in truth, he likes this. He’s enjoying standing out here in the rain and the dark and smoking his nightly cigarette by your side once more, just like that first night in Martinaise.
You rest your arms on the railing as well and try to map his sightline. Your arm presses against his in the cramped space, but he does not react.
“Pretty bitchin’ view here,” you comment. “Comparatively.”
“Mhm,” hums the lieutenant. “By Jamrock standards, quite bitchin’.”
PERCEPTION: His hand dangles loosely over the edge of the railing. It’s a bit smaller than yours and much thinner, bonier. Sharp and angled like a marble sculpture.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: A work of art. Just like the rest of him.
SUGGESTION: Wonder what that hand would feel like in yours…?
“Everything alright, detective?” Kim asks, smoke escaping from his lips as he speaks. You realize that you’ve been staring at his hand for longer than is generally considered acceptable by polite society.
“Just spacing out a little I guess,” you mumble, averting your gaze.
“Par for the course with you,” the lieutenant chuckles.
VOLITION: Don’t make this too weird. Don’t think about that cigarette dangling loosely from his beautiful hands, or how soft his lips must be, or how nice it would be to just give up all pretense and embarrass yourself and hug him tightly right here on the balcony. Whatever you do, don’t think of any of those things.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: Shit.
“Well, it’s getting late,” you say, stubbing out your half-finished cigarette in the nearby ashtray. “I should probably go.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right. We’ve got work in the morning after all.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: You do?
VOLITION: Just play it cool.
“Yes,” you say, nodding stoically. “Tomorrow is Monday. I am aware of this, and that is why I said that in the first place, and not for any other reason.”
SAVOIR FAIRE: Nailed it.
“Tomorrow is Tuesday,” Kim says flatly, his face expressionless.
“I know that!” you say defensively. “I was just testing you. Come on, Kim, you don’t think I’m really that stupid, do you?”
He starts to say something, then thinks better of it and instead takes a long drag of his cigarette before trying again. “No, detective. I don’t think that.” Then he puts it out on the bottom of his boot and drops it in the ashtray.
The two of you head back into the apartment as the rain starts up again. You pull on your tarpaulin cloak in preparation for the long walk back home. But as you reach the front door, the lieutenant stops you.
“You know, you could just stay here if that would be easier,” he says abruptly, looking tense. “It’s late, and it’s raining, and…”
ESPRIT DE CORPS: ...And the route from here to your home features at least a dozen bars along the way.
EMPATHY: He’s worried you might not be able to resist the siren song of their garish neon signs and blaring dance music spilling out onto the streets like a red carpet unfurling.
“And your injury,” he adds quickly. “It was causing you some pain earlier, wasn’t it?”
HALF LIGHT: You don’t need his *pity.*
INLAND EMPIRE: Maybe you *do.* He knows you too well already.
EMPATHY: And, for whatever reason, cares about you a little too much. A terrible decision on his part, really.
“Yeah, good point. Plus your place is closer anyway,” you reply. “Thanks. Sorry to impose.”
He gives you a little nod. “It’s no trouble at all.”
Soon, you’re settled in on Kim’s couch under a small pile of blankets that still smell like artificial flowers, cloying and too sweet, freshly laundered.
He says good night and disappears into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him. It’s strange somehow, lying here in his living room alone in the dark. Like you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be. Like sneaking into a museum after it closes.
PERCEPTION: In the hazy twilight of impending sleep, you notice a calendar on the wall across from you. You can just barely make it out in the dim light, and you realize something.
“Son of a bitch,” you shout, “tomorrow *is* Monday!”
Just before you retreat into the blanket nest you could swear you hear a muffled apology from the next room.
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hostage | madara uchiha
Madara x Tobirama’s s/o
summary: Tobirama’s wife is held captive when the Uchiha invade Senju territory. She does what she can to keep the peace. It doesn’t last long.
word count: 9.5k
warnings: sex as a bargaining tool, physical/emotional harm, heavy angst, mentions of miscarriage/abortion, brutal use of sharingan
a/n: part of a long and self-indulgent founders era fic I was writing, but recently gave up on. so this is just a very choppy rough draft. it’s all over the place. apologies for the poor & skimpy writing style. fair warning: bit of a darker rendition of Madara than what I usually write on this blog. IM me if you want more details before reading
⤰
They attack in the dead of night.
With the main host of the Senju army battling in far-away provinces, Hashirama and Tobirama with it, few seasoned shinobi are left to protect the plot of land which the Senju call home.
The Uchiha overwhelm the paltry resistance quickly and efficiently, then set about infiltrating the rest of the territory to claim as theirs.
They’re met with little defiance. Of the Senju who don’t escape into the woods, slipping through Uchiha clutches before they can fully surround the vicinity, a majority left to endure the raid are civilians with no real experience or means to contend the invaders’ assault.
Chaos ensues. Uchiha chase down fleeing families, drag them back to the center of the camp where hostages are corralled. They bark and shout orders at stubborn Senju who refuse to abide, sometimes resorting to violence to win obedience.
Then come the fires. The Senju, in one final, practiced act of loyalty, set ablaze as much property as they can in an effort to destroy any intelligence on Senju affairs which the Uchiha might find and use to their favor.
Some of these renegades are stopped before they can succeed, others manage to do their part before being apprehended.
She is one among them, burning the room in her home which her husband uses so often to practice and hone his jutsu; where plots of war are imagined and scribed; where important records are stored.
Tobirama would balk to see all his work going up in flames, but she knows that it’s what he would want her to do.
The anguish that beats mercilessly in her chest as she watches her home catch fire is dreadful.
Such a small little place, she thinks. Just big enough for the two of them. They hadn’t been married for more than a few months now. Arranged, like so many unions those days.
Yet the little, perfect home held such memories in that short time; watching smoke rise from the walls and foundations makes her sick with sorrow.
But it must be done. Whatever the invaders might pillage from her home, they would find nothing to their benefit, and nothing that might end up hurting Tobirama, or the Senju.
Two Uchiha men grab her just as she watches the roof of her home collapse in on itself, pillars weakened and corrupted by flame.
It’s a sodden and meager thing to find so fulfilling, but it’s the only thing from which to reap comfort.
Doomed as she may now be to whatever her captors have planned, she, too, has plans: plans to remember Tobirama’s prudence, adopt it as her own. Whatever awaits her, she can face with her chin held high.
As she’s herded into a crowd of the Senju hostages, uncertain of their holistic fate, the cries and tears of anguish from men, women, and children alike hurt her beyond words.
When the leader of the invaders stands before them and addresses them, with his coal-black eyes piercing every one of them even in the dark void of night, she feels anger beyond words.
And when she learns of his plans to occupy their land, to keep them as prisoners of war, she feels determination.
⤰
When she’s brought before Madara Uchiha in the coming days for the purpose of interrogation, he senses immediately that she isn’t a Senju.
Arranged marriages aren’t uncommon, and Madara knows Hashirama is quick to support alliances with clans he finds trustworthy enough. Madara wonders who, among the Senju prominent enough to be pursued for political marriage, might call this woman their wife.
Feeling foolish for having not expected such a question in advance—though somewhere, she’s hardly able to blame herself, given the chaos of the last few days—her mind races for explanation when he inquires about her husband.
“I’m a widow,” she lies. “He died months ago.”
She remains with the Senju to uphold the alliance her marriage created, she says, hoping he believes it.
His gaze is startling, and she fears intermittently that he’s staring right through her with those merciless eyes, extracting the truth under her lies, truths that needn’t be spoken, only simmering underneath the surface for his scrutiny to grab.
She feels apprehension like she’s never known when, after her explanations, he’s quiet. Utterly quiet.
Then, just as she tries and fails to steel her heart’s rapid beating, he dismisses her.
As she’s led out of the tent the Uchiha have constructed for their own purposes of war, she takes a calming breath.
If she plans on putting her wits to use and curbing the punishments soon to be expounded against the Senju innocents, she needs to leverage herself with composure.
She can’t let Madara Uchiha rattle her this much if she plans on contriving against him.
If she plans on winning his trust.
⤰
It’s fairly easy to be granted an audience.
She’s rigid in her loyalty to the Senju, and answers any of Madara’s interrogations about Senju information with silence or ignorance. Still, she’s compliant with otherwise basic facets of the Uchiha occupation; she tells him where best to find food and water in the land; from which fields they might find the most harvest; offers insight on neighboring clans that may contend the Uchiha occupation of Senju territory, loyal to the Senju as they were.
In compensation, Madara is usually merciful with her requests. She asks that the Senju hostages be given more daily rations and more room in which to sleep and live, now that the Uchiha occupy most of their old homes.
Generally, entreatments to the betterment of their well-being are met with leniency. Something for which she is glad, but the brother, Izuna, is not.
She hears them arguing sometimes: Izuna claiming that his elder brother is being too forgiving on the enemy—she assumes she is the enemy in question—and Madara stating in response that he has no quarrel with Senju commoners, and that amending some of their grievances is no harm to their cause.
These small victories continue to mount, until she finds herself at his side almost daily, discussing hostage afflictions, enduring his queries and, occasionally, even his frustration at receiving no answers.
This frustration burgeons quickly, until she’s half-convinced that her play at ignorance is one he sees right through. But he always dismisses her when his irritation becomes visible and unavoidable, almost as if to save her from facing the brunt of it.
It’s the first of the strange, apprehensive intimacies that he gives her.
More apparent, soon after, are his long-held gazes.
They sweep over her, inspect her while she talks, greedily scrutinizing her responses. He doesn’t miss the shiver that runs through her when his dark eyes linger for too long.
She isn’t naive enough to think this prolonged regard is devoid of any suspicious undertone, nor is she naive to dismiss the lust behind his gazes; the careful inspections of her very body that describe something hidden and desiring under his facade.
She doesn’t want him to look at her like that. She doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like the way it makes her skin crawl, or her heart stutter.
But how can she be ungrateful for his dangerous admiration when it might prove profitable?
⤰
She reaps the benefits of his greed not long after their invasion.
He’s taken up residency in one of the precluded houses near the center of the camp. No guards stand watch outside; he doesn’t need them.
When she asks for entrance to his room he gives it, albeit cautiously. She doesn’t bother disguising her visit under any pretense; she’s there for him, and he knows this, apparently, judging by the careful look he gives her when she walks in and shuts the door behind her.
Shame and irritation sizzles underneath her skin, but she ignores it. Her efforts have guaranteed the safety of the innocents under Uchiha rule so far, but those efforts won’t last forever. There’s more to be done.
It’s not long until she’s pressed against him. Insistently her hand rubs over the space between his thighs. He’s soft, unaffected by her touch. It discourages her, but she continues, regardless.
“What do you hope to gain from this?” he asks, eyes steely and trained on her, as if her eager hand isn’t even there.
He hasn’t made a move to stop her, so she urges herself on.
"Isn’t this what you want?” she implores.
“What makes you believe that?”
“The way you look at me.”
It’s a calm declaration, though she’s still explicitly hiding something under her tone, he sees, something like frustration.
“How do I look at you?” he inquires.
When she refuses to answer, he lifts a finger under her chin and forces her gaze to him.
“Like you want to control me,” she answers bitterly.
The bulge under her hand twitches to life. She rubs harder. His face changes; his expression is tighter, more concentrated.
“And that’s what you want?” His hand stretches across the back of her neck, keeps her head still. Fingers brush at the nape in deceptively gentle tandem. “To be controlled?”
“No.” She squeezes her hand, hard. He replies with an angry, swift breath. “You could never control me.”
The hand at her nape curls into her hair and yanks hard, so hard that her rubbing stops.
“I already do.���
She’s infuriated by his words, he can see that plainly on her face. But he doesn’t care. She’s made the mistake of dangling her seductions in front of him, and he’ll rise to the occasion, if she's so determined to stir him.
It shocks her how smoothly he maneuvers her to the futon at their feet, lays her down and climbs over her; how expertly his mouth captures hers and his tongue slides over her lips.
She opens her mouth obediently, lets him explore. Shame courses through her when a hand between her thighs coaxes a pleased, albeit startled hum from her mouth.
His fingers work her up quickly, pull her clothes off without a hiccup or delay.
She had, foolishly, underestimated the strength of him. After she’s stripped bare, when he holds her arms down, there’s no room for her to fight back. As he looms over her, powerful and dangerous, she realizes she should be shaking in fear, in hatred, in uncertainty.
Instead, her body is calm, forcefully calm.
Sensing this, he sees it not as her resolve, but as a challenge.
She refuses to close her eyes when he starts, and stares up at him, disputing his gaze. The pleased sigh that leaves his mouth when he starts rocking into her makes her shiver, despite her determination to keep her body still, keep it pliable for his pleasure but loyal to her convictions.
His thrusts are deep and hard, reaching into her in ways she didn’t even know possible until now. Her breath catches with every snap of his hips, until those breaths are choking off into surprised gasps when he angles his body a certain way, hits a certain spot inside of her that makes her legs jolt with pleasure.
One hand is planted firmly into the sheets beside her, keeping his body suspended over her. The other holds her thigh, keeps it pressed down to ensure she’s stretched as open as he needs her to be.
When pleasure urges him to go harder, he takes her leg and curves it around his waist to dig into her deeper. With the new angle she can peer down, watch his cock spear into her with precise finesse. She tears her eyes away, the sight of it making her nerves tingle, making the unbidden pleasure that much more potent.
Even if she wanted to vacate her mind, to numb herself to all feeling until she could be sure he was done and her task finished, it’s an impossible feat. Too many sensations; his heavy breath coming in low pants; strong thighs shoving against her legs with every thrust; his eyes, even when she turns from them, searing into her, pinning her down.
A flush spreads over her body, hot and feverish and anxious. In the scant light she sees his skin giving way to his own pleasure; sweat lines the curve of his prominent clavicles, a drop on his brow as it furrows with the heightened pace of his thrusts.
She starts to tremble uncontrollably as he roughly pounds into her, losing some of his rhythm, a basic need for release urging him. Rumbling, chest-born moans spill from his lips, and against her body’s wishes, she cums with a hard-fought whimper.
As she shivers through the onslaught of pleasure, he stares down at her, his face an emotionless canvas.
She doesn’t even realize he’s near his end until he grabs onto her hard, grunts loud and staggered, then stops moving.
He takes a moment to let the pleasure sink in, eyes closed to revel in the wet heat surrounding him, pulsing and twitching. Then he pulls out.
He leaves her on the mat, naked, curled into herself as if to hide the shame of her orgasm. Nothing in his posture speaks of an identical sentiment on his part. The sex she finds so monumentally impairing, he sees as nothing more than what it is: sex.
No sooner than he moves away from her is he dressing, the raw muscle of his back moving with every motion, his sweat-glazed scars glistening in the moonlight that invades from closed curtains.
Before he leaves, he says, “I assume you have herbs.”
Her eyes open.
The herbs.
She had almost forgotten. She hasn’t needed to take them since Tobirama left, since there was no one else to share her bed…
The thought of Madara’s seed quickening inside of her makes her nauseous. She’s almost grateful he’s reminded her of the contraceptives.
“Yes,” she says. She’ll take them first thing in the morning. They were made to work even after the fact. No need to panic.
“Good.”
He leaves her in his room, and she falls asleep despite her errant thoughts.
⤰
She draws a bath for herself and slips into the lukewarm water.
The bruises and love-marks haven’t gone away. Every time they do, every time her skin is returned to its unsullied state, she’s in his bed again, tempering him, giving herself over to his rough desires in some hope it will continue to coax leniency out of him.
She’s been bathing more often, she realizes: some meager attempt to wash his scent and his touch from her, no matter the pleasure she takes from it in kind.
But there’s still much resistance in her thoughts when she gives herself over to him, a chiding reminder in the back of her head that says what she’s doing is shameful.
She’s a married woman, after all; widow, in Madara’s eyes.
But the masquerade doesn’t take away from the guilt she feels every time she opens her legs for his lust. It’s not even easy to imagine it’s Tobirama anymore. Tobirama isn’t so purposefully rough, isn’t keen on making pleasure so hard-fought with such domination that she receives from the Uchiha.
A chill runs through her to think of the difference between them, to think she might never again know the softer, more loving touch of her husband. The possessive, taking nature of Madara’s intimacy might be all she ever knows.
She touches the skin under her breast, feeling no texture on the flesh, but knowing the seal Tobirama left is still there: a risky, but comforting reminder of his caresses.
She so misses them. She misses his voice, his touch, his earthy scent. The room around her is so devoid of it. The very air feels seized by the conquest of her Uchiha captors. Every breath she draws is more of their smoke, their fire, their danger.
She sinks underneath the surface of the bathwater, eyes closed, a calming air reserved in her lungs.
The water is comforting, reminds her of Tobirama. She imagines it’s him surrounding and warming her skin, if only for a moment.
She lets the world around her numb to nothingness, hoping at some point, so too will her anxieties leave her and make this dilemma all the easier to endure.
⤰
Izuna hadn’t meant to come across her this way.
The woman isn’t answering his brother’s summons, and the guards stationed outside her home say she won’t respond to the calls or demanding knocks they make at her door.
Izuna isn’t a patient man. He has much better things to do than fetch his brother’s stubborn whore.
The guards at the door had apparently been warned not to intrude on her sanctity more than necessary, and utter a protest when Izuna barges into her home unannounced. He ignores their murmuring, unfamiliar with the respect—or whatever it is—that keeps them compliant.
The living area is empty and so is the kitchen. He calls her name once, then twice, irritation coloring his shouts. They garner no response.
At the back of the house, he hears a sound, and goes to it. He hears it again once he’s closer, coming from the washroom, he thinks.
He knocks once.
No response.
He knocks again.
Still, no response.
Sufferance all but worn, he pulls open the door.
There’s a bath of water, her form distorted underneath its surface. His intrusion is apparently louder than any previous call for her attention and she folds up quickly from underneath the water, breaking the surface and sending splashes everywhere in her haste to glance around, size him up, and cover herself for modesty.
Too late. He’s seen it.
Never mind her naked body. Even if he needs to be forgiven for barging in on her later, he doubts, now seeing the mark that she quickly goes to hide under her breast, that she’ll be getting mercy from him or any other Uchiha from this point on.
⤰
When Izuna drags her into the war tent, Madara is more startled by the interruption than irritated.
She’s half-clothed, body and hair wet from the remnants of what he assumes was an interrupted cleanse; Izuna has a distraught look of fury on his face that never bodes well. What surprises Madara most, however, is the way she cowers into herself when Izuna throws her down at his feet.
“What is this, Izuna?” Madara demands of his brother, mildly offended to witness this treatment of her, at his brother’s hand, no less. Madara’s intimacies with her are common knowledge, if not frowned upon by some of his Uchiha lieutenants.
Izuna points an accusative finger down at her. “Look at it.”
Madara blinks through his confusion, waiting for clarity. Izuna hisses in anger, grabs her hair, and yanks her upright.
“Show him,” he commands her.
She groans angrily in response.
He yanks a little harder.
“Show him.”
Madara’s suspicion gains with rapid unease. The doubt always tugging at the rear of his conscience comes to the forefront, ready to be fed with truths, ready to reap its victory.
Izuna forces her to stay still, then claws at the hand she has wrapped about her stomach, hiding something beneath the haphazardly-adorned clothing.
Madara catches on, and approaches.
She slows her writhing when he crouches down in front of her. Then something like preemptive defeat rushes through her when he puts his hands on her, and she stills completely.
Madara doesn’t know what he expects to see beneath the fold of the robe he pulls away from her skin—the skin which is always covered by bandages when he strips her bare at night; courtesy, she always says, of a wound received during the invasion—but Tobirama’s Senju’s hiraishin mark is definitely the last.
The silence that ensues as he scrutinizes the seal is far more tormenting, she thinks, than any punishment he can possibly have in store for her.
He’s enraged, of that she’s sure. And the indignant, defiant scowl on her face which receives him when he looks at her undoubtedly makes that worse.
But she’s been found out, she knows. There’s little else she has to her aims at this point except her resentment, a resentment which she can now display with liberation.
Her masquerade is extraneous now; any excuse she can possibly make redundant. She has to accept her fate, with her chin held high.
Like Tobirama would.
But the conviction doesn’t last long.
“Hold her down,” Madara tells two of the Uchiha men in the room.
She panics.
When Izuna’s hands leave her and more vindictive ones take their place, she starts kicking away, trying to fight and make their hold on her that much more difficult to win.
But it’s useless against the pure fear that runs through her when Madara slips out of the tent and returns a moment later, in his hand, an iron poker which had been mending the campfire outside.
When he brings it over to her, she feels the heat radiating off of its glowing, orange, sharp tip.
Her heart rate skips into the margins of delirium and she shakes her head.
“Don’t—” she pleads, glaring up at him. “Don’t—”
Madara presses the singeing iron against the skin below her breast and she screams. Loud and ragged. He doesn’t care.
Even before the deed is done, the smell of her own burnt flesh nauseates her beyond the limits of her endurance, and she passes out.
⤰
The burn is so severe that it leaves her bed-ridden for days on end.
Every twist and turn of her body stretches the thin, pink skin and leaves her whimpering in pain.
Uchiha medics tend to her wound. She isn’t allowed the relief of healing jutsu; the burn is treated with oils and creams which alleviate only some of the pain, and none of the superficial scarring. Something for which she knows she has Madara to thank. He wants her to bear the mark of her deceit, wants the charred flesh to serve as a reminder of mockery.
She had slighted him with her seductions, made a fool of him with her deception. The burn itself would be a meager sanction in comparison—he could have killed her, after all—if not for the scornful significance it held that did more justice to his condescension than any words could.
Any semblance of superiority her secret had once given her is all but crushed with the wound. Tobirama’s seal had soothed her, served as a pillar of faith and courage; a warm breath of comfort on her skin whenever the chill of her captors’ doujutsu fixed her, whenever Madara’s gaze searched her for weakness.
Knowing her husband’s latent protection remained hidden from the eyes of the invaders had been enough, amidst all the turmoil, to shield her from fear.
Now it was gone, rendered useless and indiscernible under corrugated skin.
Like her home, her body now, too, at the hands of the Uchiha, denied her refuge.
Yet in some twisted, ironic way, the wound still grounds her. The pain is a bittersweet reminder that her body is alive, and not a shell for the hopelessness she feels inside.
It’s a degrading and pitiful comfort. But it’s all she has now.
⤰
Madara makes infrequent visits during her recovery.
The first few are made in silence. As she lies there, pitiful and motionless, he stares without a word to spare. His scrutinizing gaze, both spiteful to set eyes upon her and satisfied to see her agony, is the only acknowledgement he gives.
The patronizing graduates to interrogation. He stands over her impotent form, leering down as he demands to know the reason for her having the seal on her skin, demands to know her relationship to Tobirama Senju.
The line of questioning betrays the deductions he’s already made. He’s already decided that the woman is Tobirama’s spouse, or at the least, some sort of lover. The intimate placement of his seal is telling enough, and her previous elusion on the subject of her purpose on Senju land is further proof. All the suspicions piece together and exploit her lies.
But he wants to hear the truth from her own mouth, the very mouth which conspired to deceive him with its pleasure, keep him pliant with its warm caresses on his body. Only then will he be satisfied, only when she admits who she is, what she is, who she belongs to—
Then he can remind her that it’s he who owns her now. He who conquered her home as easily as he had conquered her.
Her silence isn’t as defiant as she thinks, not by a long shot. To patronize her is a pleasant notion, but the hooded, resentful gaze she gives him fails to stir him in any way besides to sing praises of his own power.
⤰
“Kill her,” Izuna insists.
His determined indignation on the matter comes like a chant in the days following the revelation.
Madara’s commitment to deciding how best to deal with her is only marginally interrupted by his brother’s input, but it does disrupt his logic and feed his own fury.
He should kill her. Should string her up for the rest of the Senju to see: let her be an example to whoever else among them may have delusions of defying him.
“What point is there in keeping her alive?” Izuna presses on. “Kill her. Send her body to the Senju army. Let them know we won’t be trifled with.”
“No,” is Madara’s decisive reply. “She serves more use to us alive.”
“I fail to see how. She’s done enough to outwit you. I would’ve thought you eager to be rid of her.”
Madara resents the comment, but tempers his irritation. “I know your dislike for Tobirama makes you enthusiastic to do her harm. And why is that? Because you know harm done to her is harm done to him.”
“Precisely.”
“Then you should understand the benefit of keeping her alive.”
“Fine. Keep her alive. But not unscathed. If you want to use her as leverage, deliver a gift to the Senju. The correspondence between you and Hashirama has been pitifully civil so far. Send something with the next envoy. Something of hers. A finger will do.”
“No.” Madara’s tone is unequivocally firm. “We will do no such thing.”
Madara has little doubt that his brother’s enmity runs deep enough that an adequate offense on her part, no matter how slight, might be cause for Izuna to damage her. That’s not something Madara can allow.
His conscience forces away the fact that part of his aversion to his brother’s threats are rooted in possessiveness; Izuna has no claim to her, has no entitlement to her punishment.
That’s Madara’s. That’s his. And his alone.
⤰
How she finds herself sharing his bed again, she may never know, and will never be brave enough to ponder.
She’s silent when he moves inside of her. Even when he makes her cum, as easily and powerfully as he always has, she barely lets the ragged, frustrated moan loose from her lips for a second before closing her throat and swallowing down the tightness.
When he rolls off of her he lies in silence. Where he would usually get up to bathe or leave, he remains, like he's done so often recently, to sleep beside her.
He taunted her once, told her he had no fears of sleeping beside her now, because she knows what it would mean for the Senju hostages if she tried anything.
That aside, she’s half-convinced that he’s awake at all hours of the night regardless, waiting patiently for the opportunity to catch her plots and punish her accordingly.
But how difficult would it be? To kill him, leave him, save as many hostages as she can while he bleeds out in the room, alone and cold.
It’s a fantasy she allows herself to imagine over and over again. A fantasy too opportunistic to ignore after their nights of scornful passion leave her weak and spiteful.
The kunai she left under her pillow feels cold as ice when she slowly reaches for it, hiding the purposeful movement behind a comfortable stretch.
It’s been a long hour since she first played at sleep. She never hears him breathing, but considers his silence as good a signal as any that he’s unconscious.
When she carefully turns over, she confirms that his eyes are closed. He sleeps on his back, always, as most shinobi do. Alert and at the ready even in slumber.
Slowly she rises from under the sheets, ever so careful not to let the fabric move an inch across his skin. She should just slit his throat, she realizes. But piercing into him will be swifter, and more profitable.
The kunai wavers in her hand. Killing unwitting men in their sleep isn’t so difficult a task; shinobi and kunoichi alike do it all the time, don’t they? That was war.
It should be easy to stab down into his heart and twist, to watch him wake in tormenting shock as the blood fills his lungs and chokes him. She would enjoy that.
But the wavering in her hand worsens to a subtle tremor.
He’s not an unwitting man, not some simple enemy to kill for convenience. That makes her confidence ever harder to steel, but she has to. She has to kill him.
She won’t wait a moment longer. Kill him, destroy him, and be done with it.
But just as she raises the kunai, a strong hand wraps around her wrist in an unforgiving grip.
His eyes are open, glaring at her.
She shivers with fear and rage as his hand tightens to a bruising grip. Her panic sends her mind into a frenzy of action.
She can still do it. Just one stab downwards and she can end it.
But even pushing down with both hands doesn’t overwhelm his strength. He still glares and scowls, infuriated.
She tries again, putting her entire body’s weight down on the weapon, limbs shaking with the effort.
He doesn’t budge.
He flips them instead, and the kunai is suddenly in his hands, pressed against her throat.
“There are easier ways to kill me,” he mutters. If his blood is boiling at her trespass, nothing in his bored, thin voice betrays composure. “You could be more creative.”
Tears prickle her eyes. Her hands press desperately against his, trying to push the cold blade away from her skin. But he keeps it there. Even the smallest movement will slice the flesh.
“Remember that you are the one at my mercy. I could kill you and every Senju in this camp any time I wish.”
“You’re horrible,” she seethes, breath shallow in anger. "I hate you.”
“I’m aware. Yet you continue to share my bed night after night. You still think you’ll gain anything from it?”
The words sting her pride, split her open to let the doubts and faults and fruitless depravities spill in.
“You do nothing but shame yourself. Look at you. Spreading your legs for me like a dutiful whore, thinking it will somehow save you and your people. It’s pathetic—"
She slaps him, hard.
Though his cheek burns with redness, he’s otherwise unfazed by pain. He scowls and slams her arm down to prevent any more of her rage.
“You may think you have control over me,” she says in a seething whisper. Even with the kunai pressed against her jugular, the expression on her face is nothing short of brazen. A lofty, defeated brazen that comes across as scorn. “But you don’t, and you never will. There’s only one man I’ve ever loved. When you’re on top of me I think of him and only him. It makes it bearable. You’ll never be half the man that he is.”
He scowls at her, his eyes like burning, silent daggers. She knows she might have sealed her fate right then and there. But so be it. Let her last moments of life be spent spiting him.
Her body relaxes, unconcerned with fighting whatever comes next.
She doesn’t expect him to laugh.
“Tell yourself that, if you must,” he says, with a sadistic, grim smirk. “But you know very well the power I have over you.”
His eyes turn crimson and she gasps, but by the time she makes to look away, it’s too late.
In the illusion, Tobirama is frowning at her, eyes wide, a sneer of disgust on his face.
She doesn’t understand why, at first. Why does he look so gloomy? She feels only joy to see him. Joy and unbearable relief.
She tries to run to him. But burning hands at her throat summon her back. Despite no voice, face, or body to accompany the unforgiving grip, she knows it’s Madara who impedes her by the ferocious strength alone.
“Whore.”
It’s not Madara’s voice, but Tobirama’s. It carries over to her, like they’re separated by a valley despite his being only yards away. If she could reach out to him, touch him, feel his embrace—
“Uchiha whore,” he barks at her again, scowling now.
“No,” she pleads, eyes stinging with tears. She tries to pull the grip from her neck away and escape, but Madara locks her arms down to her sides, rendering her utterly trapped.
“Tobirama,” she begs for his sanctity, for his forgiveness. But he’s backing away from her now.
She cries and cries desperately, screeching in frustration when Madara’s grip tightens to a visceral degree, until she feels like her skin is alight with flames.
She looks down, and sees that they are. And the skin which these flames scorch dies off to corrupted, pink flesh as it travels up her arm in a slow crawl. An agonizing, horrible, slow crawl.
Hours elapse as she endures the torture. Hours of raw, inhuman pain and her husband slurring his vile insults at her. The sheer destruction it pillages on her mind and body makes her feel small, makes the flames which take their time in exploring her skin burn brighter and hotter until finally she feels like nothing but ash.
The last of her willpower billows away with that ash, as she watches Tobirama’s form start to disappear on some horizon that defies logic.
She still wants to touch him. Still wants to be held by him. She still wants him, despite how clearly he doesn’t want her.
His obscenities circle her thoughts, all-encompassing, completely and finally defeating her.
Whore. Slut. Traitor. Weakling.
She cries a voiceless cry when Tobirama disappears, and Madara takes the illusion away shortly after.
She blinks for clarity, eyes adjusting back to a reality no less harrowing than the previous artifice.
He leers down at her, takes in her anguish and her seedy frame with gluttonous cruelty in his gaze.
Numb, teary eyes stare up at him as they slowly read his form. Realizing her predicament, she starts to hyperventilate, and tears run down her face.
She shuts her eyes in one last attempt of modesty, forcing the stream of salt to sluice more violently down her cheeks.
“Tobirama,” she pleads weakly, the only thing that she can think of in her hazy pain.
It angers Madara.
“He doesn’t want you. Now look at me.”
She refuses.
His hand twists into her hair and snaps her head back so hard that she almost sees stars behind her eyelids.
“I said look at me.”
“No,” she cries weakly, though she obeys, regardless. Her bloodshot, desperate eyes feed his sadistic vengeance. Then she’s turning her head away from him. Meager defiance. “Please—”
Satisfied with the short admission of her defeat, he takes her face and forces her look at him.
“Try anything like that again and I’ll make sure you spend an eternity in a nightmare of my making. Do you understand?”
She has no energy to respond.
“Answer me.”
All she can offer is a weak nod, tears still streaming down her cheeks.
In a moment of triumphant vindictiveness, his fingers press harshly against the burn under her breast, bringing to life a reminiscent pain, a crushing reminder of what he’s done to her.
He pushes her face away and she curls into herself, thinking of Tobirama.
In these makeshift quarters he’ll find no sleep; his mind is a mess of anger, desperation, and confusion. He needed to hurt her, didn’t he? She had defied him again. What other choice did he have?
Another moment spent in her presence is another pin of irrational emotion nudged into his chest. He needs to leave.
He catches her glaring at him when he climbs off and starts to dress. It’s a look full of pure, searing hatred.
But he says nothing. He’s extracted enough triumph from her.
His silence is in victory; hers in defeat.
⤰
She feels less alive each passing day.
She doesn’t see him very often, not since the incident in the night when she’d failed to take swift revenge.
Occasionally she hears him on the other side of the door, inquiring the guards who stand watch outside about her disposition. Rarely does he enter and see for himself.
When he does, they exchange no words. He examines the room for any plotting demonstration of escape or sabotage, disguising his observation of her underneath these sweeping inspections.
However, sometimes he gives up on the pretense and simply stares, studying her, trying to decide how he feels.
His actions are regrettable, of that he’s sure and self-condemned, but there’s still a glimmer of insolence in her eyes when he catches her gaze: one which rekindles the spite within him, fans vengeful flames and reminds him that she brought this upon herself.
She would see no pity from him.
Any words of apology on his tongue fizzle away then, and his visits conclude as silently as they begin.
⤰
The fight in her dwindles helplessly, and as it dwindles, so too does all sense of reservation.
The prodigious determination there once had been to contend Madara and his Uchiha conspirators is all but spent. What good does it do her now? She’s broken, subjugated, and without leverage.
Her body, which had once enabled her to use its seductions to the advantage of her people, is now depleted and only a shell. A shell for the hollow, cold heap of defeat that she now is.
How deluded was she to think she could save all the people here? How had she ever thought that she alone could protect the hostages from the evil at their door?
And Tobirama, whose embrace was denied to her even in dreadful illusions—what would he think of her? Madara was right. What else was she now but an Uchiha whore? Obsolete, ruined, soiled.
Tobirama won’t want her. Not now. Not ever again.
What more is there for her?
As the weeks go by, Madara’s distrust ebbs away. Suspicions of subterfuge die with her audacity; the times he does happen upon her, she’s nothing but a husk of the sharp woman she had made herself out to be.
House arrest soon becomes a superfluous precaution, and even when the guards leave their posts, she makes few attempts to leave her home. And when she does, she wanders aimlessly, meanders without direction and without purpose.
She’s pitiful, Madara decides. Pitiful and crushed. He has nothing to fear or suspect from her. Her fire is gone.
What he doesn’t expect is that the last ember of that fire holds one desperate dredge of scorn. One which she won’t allow to be extinguished.
When she wanders into the Uchiha war tent that day, she isn’t stopped.
She’s given no second-glance by any of the Uchiha shinobi. Even if they were to give her careful inspection, they would never know of the kunai in her pocket, the steel icy and begging to be utilized for one final, desperate fight.
Madara isn’t there. Instead, she finds Izuna.
“Where is he?” she asks weakly.
Izuna pays her so limited attention these days, regards her as little else except the harlot his brother broke in and conquered, that her presence has nothing more than a fleeting impasse on his patience. Like a gnat buzzing around his head.
“My brother? Who knows.”
When he accords her his attention he sees that she’s looking lifeless as ever. Sometimes he ponders the nature of the unkind things his brother has done to her, with a fraction of a fraction of pity. Then he’s reminded of the trespasses she’s made, and the pity is gone.
“What?” he mocks. “If you’re hoping to charm some leniency out of him, you’ll get nowhere looking like that.” He tsks, a sneer marring his lips as he pulls his eyes over her form, like it’s a harrowing task to complete. “You’re better off groveling on your knees... save him the displeasure of looking at your face, at the least.”
Although she doesn’t react, he sees humiliation simmering underneath the hardened, broken surface of her expression. He would have favored a more promising response to his taunts, but he’s satisfied to see her tamed of her previous unruliness, nevertheless.
He turns his back to her. Her misery is pleasant only for so long; the more he looks, the more unsightly it becomes.
The Uchiha sigil stares back at her, stitched proudly and delicately onto the back of his garb.
It mocks her, does more to incite her than any of his degrading condescension can.
Unthinking, she moves to him.
Hearing her approach he turns to meet her, the same bored sneer on his face.
The melancholy is still in full bloom on her features, but there’s something else there, too. Something that tells him she’s struggling to express a grievance on her tongue.
He scoffs.
“What is it, woman?”
He’s not Madara, she decides, but he’ll do.
Aimlessly, she yanks the kunai from her pocket, then brings it down on his neck, not caring for whatever consequences will follow.
⤰
She wondered why Izuna didn’t kill her the moment he wrangled the kunai from her grip.
Blood spills from his neck; thick crimson pours in rivulets down his shirt, down the hand that presses against his wound.
It may not be fatal but it’s certainly critical. Sharingan had worked in his favor. An inch more of the dagger’s descent studied without the activation of his doujutsu might have guaranteed his death. He inched away just in time.
She doesn’t have time to lament her failure.
He did throw her to the floor in his anger, but nothing else comes. If he hadn’t been so occupied with sealing his wound, she imagines his ire would prove much worse, if not terminal.
She doesn’t bother pushing up from her place on the floor when another Uchiha, hearing the din of Izuna’s angry hollers, barges in, sees the chaos, and sprints away after taking orders from Izuna. She doesn’t hear the essence of these orders, numb to the world as she is.
Had the kunai been in her hand, she would slit her own throat in defiance. Death would have been preferable to what comes next.
When Madara storms in, she’s still a pile of hapless defeat on the floor.
He says not a word, but the pure rage boiling behind his gaze says all it needs to: She made a grievous mistake.
She gasps when he grabs a fistful of her hair and yanks her to her feet. She screws her eyes shut, unwilling to look at him. He doesn’t seem to care whether she does or doesn’t.
She’s certain that he rips hair right from the roots when he whips her around, shoves her forward with enough force to break every bone in her body. A bookcase greets her as she barrels into it. That’s when her eyes open in pained shock, a rushed gasp escaping her as she struggles to regain the air thrown out of her lungs.
She wants to collapse, but a hand clasps around her neck and keeps her standing. Then the fingers tighten around her throat. She chokes pitifully for oxygen.
“I told you that if you ever tried something like that again that you would regret it.” His voice is cold with anger. “But to make an attempt on my brother’s life?”
She doesn't answer. Apparently, he doesn’t expect her to.
He shoves her back to the ground. It knocks the wind out of her, and when she pushes herself up on shaky limbs, a heavy boot in her back sends her to the floor again.
She yelps as he digs his heel into sensitive muscle. A burst of hot and red pain spreads through her back. Her kidneys, maybe? She doesn’t know. But he’s damaged something internally, and she wishes she were dead.
Her breaths are pitiful and scant when he finally takes his foot away. She says nothing. Thinks of nothing.
“Get up,” he demands, in a rigid, thin voice devoid of anything except fury.
Even if she wanted to obey, her body refuses.
“Get up,” he snaps, and the unforgiving hand returns to twist into her hair, sending webs of pan across her scalp as he hauls her to her knees.
He crouches in front of her, a hand still fisted in her hair. Now he wants her to look. His other hand takes her face and squeezes, so hard she’s half-convinced he plans to crush her skull.
“Open your eyes and look at me.”
Desperately, she tries. But it’s a task to keep her eyes open without nausea seeping into her gut. Her eyelids force themselves to shut in an effort to quell dizziness.
But then he jostles her around by the grip in her hair, so hard and so viciously that her entire world blacks out momentarily. The motion sends her mind reeling and her vision swimming.
“Open your eyes.”
Adrenaline shoots through her and demands her to obey.
She isn’t surprised when the red of sharingan is there to greet her.
Everything goes black in the world of his making. She almost expects to see Tobirama there, for him to shout at her and degrade her again.
Instead, she feels pain. The worst pain she’s ever felt. So painful she can’t breathe, can’t think. The only thing that exists is the hot, searing flame of anguish that stings every inch of her skin, every gap of her insides, down to the very organs.
A hundred kunai stab into her head. She hears them slicing flesh to ribbons and digging fractures into her skull. Her blood curdles until it’s set aflame. That too, she hears, bubbling underneath the surface of her skin like thick, boiling water.
Everything hurts. Everything is endless agony.
When air finally fills her lungs, she wails.
So loud, so violently, so wretchedly, that it’s almost itself anguish to hear.
Then he takes it all away.
The relief is heavenly. She crumples into a ball.
She hates it. She hates the weakness. If Tobirama could see her…
Then the pain comes again. She screams in tandem, then bites her tongue so hard it bleeds.
The cruel routine goes on, for what to her deluded, frenetic mind seems like hours, but is in reality passed in mere minutes.
Izuna watches as his wound is tended to, his expression as devoid of any mercy or sympathy as his brother’s.
⤰
Two weeks later, when her body and mind make the slow, pitiful climb back to equilibrium, she notices the change.
It’s unlike one she’s felt before, but not entirely unrelated to an irksome nausea: a queasiness in her stomach that neither food nor rest alleviates; something new, like an aura, that swathes her and accompanies her every second of the day; an extra weight added to the burden of her body.
Then comes the fearful ascent of logic.
Amidst her turmoil, she’s forgotten about missing her monthly bleed. Its absence could be blamed on the toll her body has taken, but she knows better.
The revelation brings her into a spiral of hectic anxiety, of despairing conflict.
It’s not long before she finds herself sneaking into one of the medical tents, decision already made on how best to deal with the new predicament.
She shuffles through the stock of vials and herbs which the Uchiha medics keep at the back of the tent, finds what she’s looking for and almost escapes as covertly as she had infiltrated, when she’s stopped.
“What is that you have?”
She pauses a foot away from the tent’s exit, her body in a mode of panic.
“Some herbs for my wounds,” she mutters.
An elder Uchiha woman, a medic, turns her around and inspects the filched items in her grasp.
“That is ginger root,” the medic observes warily. “If you need something for the pain, I would suggest dried poppy.”
The young woman stares fretfully at the old woman; the old woman stares back.
“Thank you,” the younger stutters blankly, unable to make a step in either direction; play along and heed the advice to go search for the proper herbs, or flee and risk suspicion?
“You look ill,” the old woman says, eyeing her, putting a hand to her forehead.
She backs away. “I just need rest.”
“Let me examine you. I can help you find the right medicines.”
“No,” she says. Any medic will be able to feel the life inside of her, given the chance. “I’ll be alright.”
She tries to leave then, but the old woman doesn’t let her.
⤰
When Madara answers the request for his presence at one of the medic huts, he’s surprised to find her there, sitting on a cot, hunched over and distressingly quiet. Two Uchiha men stand at her sides, supervising her.
“What is the meaning of this?” Madara asks.
Recently, he’s appreciated any reason to stay away from her. The sight of her makes him sick, makes a conflict of rage and confusion and culpability dance angrily in his head.
The old woman offers him the ginger root, and a small vial of clear liquid. “She was after these.”
Madara takes them into examination. “Am I supposed to know what this is?” His patience, already thin, dwindles considerably for the roundabout elucidations.
“A toxic mixture,” the old woman explains plainly. “Boiled with regular tea and these will certainly destroy whatever grows inside a womb.”
With subdued bafflement, Madara looks at the woman on the cot, understanding all at once.
She doesn’t dare meet his eyes. Even now her body trembles with frustration, with fear, with defeat.
Izuna, who had accompanied his brother, scoffs, incredulously loud. “So either you managed to put one in her, brother, or it’s the Senju’s.”
“Can it be determined?” Madara asks the medic, ignoring his brother, and never taking his eyes off the frail form on the cot.
“In a month’s time the chakra should be durable enough for us to sense.”
“Kill it,” Izuna insists, coming to stand next to his brother, a voice of frustrated reason. “If it’s a Senju, better off unborn. And if it’s an Uchiha... you would pass on the clan’s power to halfling filth.”
Unperturbed, Madara stares in silence. Finally she meets his gaze, unsettled by the look of dark concentration in his eyes.
“Why attempt to destroy the life inside of you unless it’s a burden to you?” he ponders out loud.
She realizes his train of logic: it must be his, for her to be so adamant in her pursuit to terminate it.
“If it was my husband’s,” she says, “and it is, I would do the same. You would kill my child the moment I bring it into this world. Why let life grow that is destined to be murdered in cold blood?”
“And if it were mine?”
“It isn’t."
Madara scowls.
“And if it were,” she goes on dangerously. “All the more reason to destroy it.”
That visibly infuriates him.
“Give her the herbs,” Izuna asserts again. “Let her solve the problem. Either way she’s doing you a favor.”
Madara doesn’t speak for a long time.
His careful inspection of her lasts long enough to make her doubts rise afresh, make her feet fidget uncomfortably and her heart pound in desperation.
“She stays here tonight,” he decides ultimately, looking to the Uchiha guards at her side. “She doesn’t leave.”
Izuna looks muddled, and somewhat irritated by the decision.
She just looks afraid.
⤰
He doesn't return for many days, but his absence can’t be appreciated as much of a reprieve at all; her mind is a mess of anxiety and denial the entire time.
This can’t be happening, she tells herself countless times. She can’t be pregnant. And worse, can’t be ignorant to the father. There’s no possible way. It can’t be happening.
Part of her reasons for the better: it must be Tobirama’s. No more than three months have passed since the Uchiha first conquered and occupied the land, no more than three months since she’s been with her husband.
The other part of her, downtrodden and beaten into pessimistic depravity, knows that with the chaos Madara brought, so too came a negligence to her normal routines: was she taking the contraceptive herbs as diligently as she needed to, given their intimacies? Amidst the turbulence he caused, had she remembered each and every time they were together to make sure nothing was conceived from their depraved liaisons? How could she not, when the way he touched her and took her made her sick?
But then, doubt: leading her astray, reminding her that everything horrible and miserable that could happen already had, so what was a bit more to the mountain of suffering she already endured? What was stopping fate from deciding that the life inside her womb belonged not to her loving husband, but to her unforgiving captor?
Thinking about it drives her to depressive insanity. By the time Madara comes to see her, she’s depleted almost all of her brain power.
“Leave us,” he commands the guards who have been assigned to watch her.
They obey, and the pair are left in silence.
Her mind pleads with her to run, to attack, to simply scream—anything. Anything that will quell the distress of the pause in the air, the distress of not knowing his intent.
When he takes a step forward she inches back. Noticing this, he’s dissuaded from approaching any closer.
“So long as the child is inside of you, you have nothing to fear from me.”
Her heart pounds so furiously in her chest that she’s sure it’s audible in the quiet of the room.
The statement angers her, scares her, and much to her shame, relieves her.
“It’s not yours,” she claims.
“Unless I’m miscalculating, the Senju host left a week before my arrival. And not long after that, a fortnight at most for the sake of assumptions, this child might have been conceived. Between us.”
Bile rises in her throat and she wants to protest, but he goes on, badgering her with the logic she’s thus far refused to entertain.
“If it were his, you would be farther along. Visibly, for one. And more than likely, I would be able to sense the chakra, deduce which clan it belongs to.”
By now she’s trembling quietly with her fear, fighting the urge to deny him, to preserve the hope that the reality he speaks of is in fact skewed.
“The child inside of you is an Uchiha,” he says determinedly.
She shakes her head.
“You know I’m right.”
“You’re not,” she argues. “You said yourself there's no way of knowing. Not yet.”
He cocks his head. “Then you really have no idea, do you? No idea who it belongs to? Normally mothers can read the chakra within them at this stage. Can you not?”
She won’t grant him an answer, instead stares down at her feet as they dig into the ground, as if in a desperate attempt to escape underneath.
Madara watches her with careful scrutiny. “I suppose we’ll have to see, then. But somewhere in that head of yours, you know I’m right.”
You’re not right, she repeats in her mind. You’re not. You’re not.
Just as he makes to leave, he stops.
“And let me be clear,” he says, menacingly. “If you make any attempt to destroy what grows inside of you, you won’t be the one suffering the consequences.”
The glare he gives her speaks volumes: The Senju hostages. The violence that would ensue. The atrocities he might commit if she disobeyed.
He leaves her. She clutches her stomach, letting the first, long-suppressed tear roll down her cheek. A warm, wet trail is left in its wake.
In the turmoil she finds evidence for and against his claims when she lets her thoughts run away with logic. A wash of anxious desperation enlivens her, makes her conscience grab for a reprieve to her doubts. But even that is denied by the crushing reality of her situation.
The life inside of her might belong to the enemy, to the Uchiha.
And still, it might not.
She stumbles between one acceptance and the next, each clouding her ever more until the tears are spilling in streams down her cheeks.
When she puts every morsel of her ability into sensing the life within her, she can’t tell if the faint trace of Senju chakra she feels is authentic, or a desperate manifestation of her mind’s making.
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