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captainsimagines · 3 years ago

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To Topple A Giant || Chapter Eight

Summary: You had made it your mission to destroy even the smallest evils. When the opportunity arises to finally take down your own family after years of gaining their trust, you reach for it. And so does Steve, the man who represents a symbol of everything you hate.

Pairing(s): Steve Rogers x Reader || Avengers x Reader

Part 8 of 10 ~ Mini-Series

Warnings: This story contains mature themes and discussions such as extreme canon violence, strong language, emotional angst, mentions of Endgame deaths and recoveries, sexual situations, and emotional/physical abuse. This is purely fanfiction.

Warnings in this Chapter: abusive parental relationship; extreme canon violence (gun violence, hand-to-hand, baton use, knives); strong language; mentions of drug smuggling, drugs, and human smuggling; mentions of blood and blood loss; major/minor character death (not the mains, don’t worry!); angst; gunshot wounds; heavy alcohol consumption

Word Count: 14,600+

A/N: Listen... you know damn well I had to put some American Pie lyrics in this. The reader’s and Jackeline’s relationship is not modeled after Nat and Yelena lol it was literally the biggest coincidence.

MedBay - The New Compound, 2024, 1:52 pm

“He did what?”

Bruce smiles sheepishly as he lugs Steve’s practically lifeless body onto one of those beige medical beds. Dr. Cho is pacing calmly around the room, getting her instruments cleaned and ready. She tries to ignore the way you’re crowding her, inspecting everything she touches and in turn is going to end up touching Steve.

“He took a bullet for someone.”

“And where is that someone?” you bite. You immediately want to apologize to Bruce for your tone but you’re distracted by the tiny groans of pain coming from the pale super soldier beside you. You have to look away to avoid whimpering yourself, but you can’t exactly make yourself deaf. “Don’t tell me he took a bullet for you.”

Bruce rolls his eyes and steps to the side as Dr. Cho begins cutting away Steve’s pants. “Everyone else is on vacation. He has no one here to take a bullet for besides. It was a shitty liquor store robbery and Steve was, of course, being a hero.”

“Where’s he hit?” you ask, heading over to grab a pair of gloves yourself. No one questions it.

“Femoral artery. Seems like he was plugging his own wound until he could get help.”

Dr. Cho is right. There’s a massive gash in his thigh that’s leaking excessively and the skin surrounding the wound is raised like Steve’s own fingers had plunged so deeply it left an imprint. Not only that, but his hand is covered in his blood. So is Bruce’s, you realize, because he had tried to plug the artery as well.

“How is he not dead yet?” Dr. Cho more mutters to herself than to you guys. Steve’s head is lolling to the side and his lips are an awful shade of white. His eyes are fluttering open and closed… open… closed… and he’s still mumbling random phrases. There’s a rough tug at the bottom of your stomach that pulls and pulls and there’s a weird urge to crawl onto the table to keep Steve warm.

“He needs blood,” you say, even though all parties in the room know that as fact.

Bruce, however, winces. “Sam’s not even in the state right now and I don’t think we have enough time to fly him-”

“Is he Sam’s blood type? What’s his blood type? Why can’t Bucky do it? Bucky’s in Brooklyn, he can be here in five minutes if he runs.”

Bruce starts rummaging through the upper level shelves and freezer cabinets. “Can’t mix the serums. We’ve tried.” He finally finds the blood bags, pulling them all out and spreading them across the clean tables. “It’s - shit - do we not have?”

Dr. Cho is now covered in blood, working as fast as she can to close the wound. “What’s his blood type?”

Bruce repeats it out loud and watches as Dr. Cho’s face falls. “I ran out yesterday. The blood drive isn’t until this weekend. I had a patient come in yesterday, I - I ran out yesterday.”

They seem to be having their own conversation with their eyes and are too focused on each other to see you already stripping your long-sleeve shirt and wrapping that horrible blue rubber band around your upper arm. “Me. Take mine.”

Bruce immediately shakes his head, stuttering as he tries to remove the rubber band. “Nu-uh, I don’t know if you know this but you’re human. I need two bags, three tops. I can’t just take it all from you right now!”

“Then get me some cookies and a juice box. I don’t care how much you have to take to make him speak a coherent sentence. Do me.”

Bruce hesitates but he rushes to the cabinets for the needles, vials, tubes, whatever - “No, do it direct.”

Your words startle the two doctors but they don’t question it. They hook you up and poke the needle in the first vein they find, attaching the tube instead of a single vial and direct it to Steve.

“You sure your blood matches?”

You give Bruce a pointed look as if that isn’t something written on your dog tags or on your weekly personal reports.

In the end, you’re told that you gave him the equivalent of two pints of blood. Not that you were awake for the second anyway but you vaguely remember Steve’s voice ringing in your ears. You’re not awake as he regains consciousness or to witness his very confused glare at seeing you in the bed next to him.

He swears he heard small mumblings… ‘If you die because of some highway robbery, Rogers --- I’m never gonna fucking stop bullying your grave --- haunt it’.... ‘Stay --- with me, please’.... ‘---supposed to apologize first’....

He tests the waters, mumbling a name he only says with annoyance nowadays. But now, it’s gently said. Soft, a whisper that sounds like a fractured hymn.

Present Day, 2025, 12:05 pm

There isn’t a set emotion in the world that seems appropriate. What are people supposed to feel when they’re singled out and chosen to suffer a life of pain? Self-hate? Pity for themselves? Anger? Sadness? Remorse? Nothing?

You really don’t know what you’re feeling. In the middle of rubbing vaseline on your newly acquired cuts and scrapes and bandaging yourself up, biting on a belt as Bucky set your shoulder back in place, and lying with Steve discussing everything and nothing all night after your promise - well, what the hell are you supposed to feel? As inevitable as it was considering he had ordered you shot before, the one feeling you know you feel is betrayed. Because even though Ernesto has proven himself evil time and time again, to his own flesh and blood, there was still a small part in your heart that didn’t think any parent truly wanted to inflict pain on their children. And your heart keeps proving itself wrong again and again.

“You just... jumped out of the car?”

Ramirez’s voice snaps you from your inner thoughts. He was let out of custody this morning. He’s currently filling in anyone who asks about the shipment, about Ernesto’s future plans, about the role he thought he had.

“Against my better judgment, but yeah.”

He chuckles and grins like he’s a kid hearing the best story ever told. “That’s what superheroes do. At least, what I’ve seen in the movies. John Wick, Bond, esos tipos.”

“I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, Omar,” there’s a teasing tone, “but I’m a fucking Avenger.”

That makes him laugh louder and in turn pulls one from you. “Ya se, ya se. I’ve known you since you were born. It’s weird hearing stories about you saving the world and jumping from bombed cars.”

“Mm, wait until you hear about that time I went into space and landed on another planet. Or time traveled. Take your pick.”

He’s stunned into silence and after a few more praises, he lets you return to typing out your report. There are plenty of other agents around for him to busy himself with. The base is tiny and not at all what you expected, but it’s secure enough to fit Torres, Sam, Bucky, and about fifteen other agents as they prepare for tonight. The plan you and Steve outlined was simple: attend the wedding, butter everyone up, send Steve away to help Ernesto retrieve and move the shipment, Scott and Sam will infiltrate, Bucky would be on standby to help you fight, and the rest of the team at base will begin arrests and sweeps. If everything goes according to plan, at least.

It’s easy to speak negatively about these things - there really were only two ways this could go.

You finish your report and go to stand, only realizing a minute later walking through the base that Ramirez is following you. You send him a funny look over your shoulder and he returns with a small smile of his own.

“Tengo preguntas!”

You stop and let him catch up. “Hmm?”

“Okay,” he starts, motioning his hands wordlessly until he could form them. “Are you and the Captain actually... juntos? Or just Avenger partners?”

“That’s personal, Omar,” you say with a roll of your eyes. “But I guess? That’s weird discussing with you.”

He nods in agreement. “It’s okay, I was just curious. So, him being mad was just an act? He doesn’t really hurt and threaten you, no?” He’s treading lightly, but you can already see the cartel mind turning. He would order Steve’s execution if he had to, even if he believed it to be morally wrong in some situations.

“Never. It was just an act for Ernesto.”

“Ah, Dios. Thank goodness.”

“Yeah, keep your men in line. It’s fine.”

He chuckles at that. “And the other Avengers?”

“They’re my family, Omar,” you grin wide, waking slower for the old man to keep up. “They would never hurt me.”

“That’s good, but not what I was asking.”

“Oh?”

“What are they like?”

Handing your report to one of the agents at a handful of monitors, you laugh loudly. “Do you want to meet them officially?”

“Aye, I know my daughters would like that...”

You raise an eyebrow.

“But I would like to meet them, too.”

“That’s what I thought. C’mon.”

The rest of the team are all relaxing and discussing the past days events in the lounge area, which is really just a glorified break room. Bucky’s still in his morning sweats same as Scott, Torres is already suited up, and both Sam and Steve are wearing their Avenger gear (minus Sam’s wings and Steve’s battered shield). Steve is the first one to notice you enter and he instantly gets up from his chair to greet you with a kiss on the cheek.

“Gross,” Bucky mumbles.

“You’ve been trying to get me a girl for over ninety years, Buck. And now that I’ve finally got someone who likes me back, you bully me for it?”

“Who’s bullin’? I said the same thing when Agent Carter smooched you in the weapon’s room and you thought you were alone.”

You pat Steve’s shoulder. “Think about it, Rogers. When Bucky settles down with someone, you have free reign.”

Steve pulls a thin smile and glances back at Bucky. “I’ll make them hate you.”

“Love and hate are the same thing, pal. It worked out for you two.”

“Okay, we’re done. Everyone, Omar wanted to formally introduce himself.”

Ramirez gives a shy wave. Torres returns it. It’s kind of hilarious to witness. Here you all are, Avengers and some standing over six feet with one of the most wanted drug lords in the world, and the all mighty drug lord is shy.

“I’m so sorry we got off on the wrong foot.” You notice how when Ramirez speaks to strangers or those he deems good people on his side, his accent is a little thicker. It’s like he wants to speak only in Spanish other than the Spanglish you were all accustomed to. “But it really is an honor to meet you all.”

Scott is the first to stand and shake his hand. “Sorry I pointed my gun at you, man. Habit.”

Ramirez chuckles, “Sorry I broke into your room.”

Steve interjects, “Thank you, though. For telling us what more we’re fighting for.”

Ramirez nods, a solemn look spreading over his face. “The minute I found out, I didn’t know who to tell. I’m lucky you were never truly on his side.”

“And what will you do after all this is over?” Bucky stands. “How do we know we can truly trust you?”

Ramirez sneaks a glance at you and you raise your hands. “Hey, I’ve got the same questions as him.”

Ramirez must know he isn’t getting out of this one because he answers quickly. “Drugs have a market where people choose. I just meet supply and demand protocols. I don’t do the unnecessary violence or blackmail. There is no need to. People will always want drugs.”

There’s a round of agreement throughout the small room. Ramirez continues, “But smuggling humans? There is no choice, nothing moral about it, it’s evil.”

“But people get addicted to drugs. They die from them everyday,” Sam argues.

“I produce and deal what you American’s call weed. Ernesto does the big stuff, as does White. I’m,” he laughs a little. “I’m their weed guy.”

“That is true,” you confirm. You’ve moved and packaged Ramirez’s product before. “Literally just weed.”

Everyone seems deep in thought, like their processing Ramirez’s words and the weight behind them. Ramirez ran with the big boys and was the biggest distributor of marijuana in Mexico and America alike, but he never messed with any other product. Besides producing, selling, and smuggling illegal weed, his only other crimes included conspiring with Ernesto on how to get the product over state lines.

“Okay,” Steve starts. “So how is tonight gonna work? We have to discuss that.”

Ramirez bows his head. “You’ve allowed me safety, you’ve listened to me speak, and you’re saving both my life and my daughter’s. If you must arrest me, then you arrest me.”

“The minute you’re transferred to a prison with less security, Ernesto’s men will get you,” you reason, already shaking your head no.

Ramirez gives a nonchalant shrug, “But you’ll get him and White. That’s all that matters.”

You look over to Steve for some other ideas, but like you he doesn’t have any. No one seems to have any.

Torres matches his shrug and his voice is small as he speaks, almost like his next idea is insane. “We can always put him in the Raft.”

Everyone’s eyes go wide.

“That’s where all the enhanced humans go, no?” Ramirez is stunned. “Do I count?”

“We’ve got no idea,” Steve rubs at his chin, looking at you for confirmation he knows you don’t have. “But it’s an idea.”

The plan is no longer singular. Fury had sent his best field agents for the job, the ones with the best aim, the ones with great strategic planning. Although you and Steve were still in charge, it was no longer just your mission. Your mission was to arrest the big three, big four when including Seda. That was it.

The plan goes like this: half the team will be focused on the venue itself, hidden in the shadows and monitoring the big three as well as your mics, and will aid you in the physical fight and arrests. Some are on the ground while others in the sky. Afterwards, they’ll sweep the estate and collect stolen property or priceless artworks. The other half is split into two, where one of those halves will be spread out for miles to capture anyone that might slip through, like guests who were on the most wanted list or guests that have helped Ernesto in the past. The other part of that half will intercept the shipment (once Steve radios in the location), save the hostages, and shut down the routes.

They instruct Ramirez to call Ernesto and to ask him if there’s a vegetarian menu offered. Ernesto responds with only a muttered groan and in a wild turn of events, asks if Ramirez can call you to make sure you arrive earlier than expected to make sure Jackeline walks down that aisle. He’s completely serious. Not only does Ramirez play along, but Ernesto doesn’t give any indication that he knows about the car bomb. So the team makes a judgement call: this was only Seda’s doing.

Ramirez is then told that the Raft is not an option; both the US and Mexican government want him and the only reason he hasn’t been arrested is because he still has many cards to play. The more he helps, the less time he’ll get.

One thing is known: this is the biggest mission anybody has been on in over two years.

Bucky remembers things in bits and pieces. Sometimes he’ll be minding his own business, enjoying this new world and the countless amenities it offers, and remember exactly where he was on the hottest day of the year in 1936. He remembers the blistering heat, boiling his once pale skin and giving him that beautiful olive he was now known for. He remembers the way his tongue dried almost instantly the moment he stepped outside and how he asked his next door neighbor, Ms. Kranshall, for a cup of water before work. He remembers her massive square glasses and how they nudged the tip of her nose as she nodded sweetly at him. He remembers her high but smoky voice and the way she patted his shoulder as he drank the cup down.

The first time he remembered Natalia was around the same time he remembered Steve. He sees a flash of ember in strands, speed almost matching his, and he sees those panicked green eyes he was once all too familiar with.

She was twelve when he first met her, forced to throw her around like a ragdoll until her ribs were bruised and her spirit broken. He went again and again, and when he wasn’t forced he would teach her how to fight properly and how to shield her most vulnerable areas. Scared as she was, she never showed it in those private moments, and decided to follow his lead in most things. And she learned to be fierce, no matter how hard he hit, and he still remembers the look in her eyes and the pull of her young face as they yanked him away for cryo before he could congratulate her on winning her first fight.

The first time he remembered you was when you leapt onto T’Challa’s back as the chase neared, tackling the young prince become king, and watched with sad eyes as both him and Steve climbed onto the jet for Siberia. He remembers your clumsy punches when you fought him with half his brain and how he kicked you so hard you flew. He also remembers how when you took that kick for Steve, the sound of his wail almost deafened the soldier.

Everytime he remembers something, a memory, no matter how strangled it may arise, the twinge in his chest is good. He’s remembering. He’s James Buchanan Barnes.

He feels that same twinge when a face full of freckles greets him at the entrance, documents raised above her head in a show of selfish glee, and a pep in her step that tells him she remembers him too.

“Sergeant Barnes!” Maribel gives a toothy grin. “Never thought I’d see you again!”

Bucky tilts his chin up and rests the tip of tongue between his incisors. “What? Hydra wasn’t enough for you, you gotta infiltrate the Mexican cartel, too?”

She scoffs playfully, “Other way ‘round.”

He snatches the documents from her hand and leads her inside. “I hope you got something here. Steve put a lotta faith in you.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Y/N does. That’s enough for me.”

Rolling her eyes, she snatches the documents back to turn the pages herself. “Follow me. We need to chat in private.”

“Shouldn’t we get-”

“I’d rather you know, and you tell them later. No audience.”

This causes Bucky to tense. He follows her in further and closes the door behind them both.

The left side of her face had less freckles back in 2012, he remembers, and now she’s covered in them.

Bucky remembers things slowly, but he remembers them.

It’s cold outside, air bruising your skin, and there are hundreds of goosebumps now erupting. You joke with yourself that in the end, you’ll most likely have to ask Steve for his jacket and ruin your overall look but hey, you’ll be warm. The wedding doesn’t start until five in the evening and it’s one’oclock right now, and there are white clouds in the sky instead of gray and the songs of some desperate birds searching for their lunch near your ears. It at least drowns out the constant noise of the agents hammering away at each other and preparing for tonight.

It makes your stomach roll: these agents are putting their lives at risk because of you.

You stepped through the discarded papers and tried not to leave your footprint anywhere important. His office was empty, left in a state of purgatory, and his lamp was still on. It’s like he stepped out for a minute.

You picked everything up: pens, computers, books, chairs. Under everything, there was dust.

He really did die.

As much as you wanted to step on his remains and spit on him, you couldn’t. The gash in your heart was still open and bleeding for everyone else and there was no room left for anger. You were indifferent, for lack of a better word. Frustrated?

A paper crumbles outside his office. No one had followed you in - a week after the snap and every single person on earth was still searching for loved ones or running from something - so no, no one else was supposed to be here. Mexico had been hit hard, it’s government shattered, and every cartel was picking up pieces or tearing the world further apart. There was no line anymore.

You twisted around and aimed your gun at the door, immediately lowering it when you saw Natasha raise her hands. She had this embarrassed smile on her face like she knew she had been caught.

“I meant to say hi over your mic. But you turned it off.”

You sighed deeply and dramatically shrugged your shoulders. “Well, I’m here. Guess who’s not.”

Natasha only nods and steps further into the room. She looks over the same things you did. “He’s gone? Good, good riddance.”

“But his death means nothing if trillions of others died also. It’s so fucking typical of him. If he’s going down, he takes everyone else with him.”

“He didn’t take them, Y/N.”

“I want to be happy,” you spit out through clenched teeth. “I want to feel relief. The fucking bastard is finally gone and I can’t even enjoy it properly.”

Natasha takes one more look at the hallway before letting her guard down almost completely. She envelopes you in a hug, squeezing tighter each time your breath hitches. “Hey, listen to me.”

“He’s gone.”

“I know,” Natasha’s voice is low and reminds you of the gentle hum of record static. “He’s gone and he can’t hurt you anymore.”

“But everyone-”

“No,” she pulls away and places both her palms over your neck. “He’s gone. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

It takes a while before you’re nodding along, repeating her words gently.

“You’re more than the pain he inflicted. You’re more than his name or crimes. You’re worth more than his impact ten times over. He can’t hurt you anymore. I know everyone’s gone, and we’re going to fight like hell to bring them back, but in this little moment, this little thread you can pull - pull it all out - he can’t hurt you anymore.”

She’s all muscle and bone and blood and real. What would you do without Natasha?

The grass beneath your bare feet calms you down. It’s tendrils are a little ticklish and there are droplets of silver morning water fog melting as they touch your skin. Focusing on the feeling isn’t enough to get you out of your own head and for a wild second, you think the God of Thunder is going to come up behind you and hold your hand. It’s peaceful out here, but what you wouldn’t give to see him again.

The day before Steve and Carol returned the stones, he had been here. He did as he promised: the second the flood of happiness extinguished like a Christmas candle, he found you settled in the mass of pillows with only instrumental music playing. He left for two cups of tea, sat in silence with you as you both drank, and whispered a strangled ‘I’m sorry’ as if you weren’t meant to hear it. Apologizing for someone who did come back, and you for someone who didn’t.

‘You know I don’t regret what we did. We brought everyone back.’

‘Don’t try and justify your sadness. Not at all, not with me.’ His voice was stern and his eyes serious.

‘I’m sorry he didn’t come back.’

His eyes had closed, as if he was expecting that apology, and he looked out the window where the sun was just barely rising, shining on him and him alone. ‘I’m sorry, too.’

There are footsteps, though. Heavy ones, footsteps that announce his upcoming presence on purpose so as to not startle anymore. Bucky was too generous for his own good.

“Had a visitor.”

You remain silent as Bucky sits next to you, looking up from his spot and expecting you to sit as well. “There’s water on the grass.”

“There’s water in the air in this godforsaken state, now sit down.” A push of laughter escapes your lungs but you follow his instructions anyway.

You sit in silence for a few minutes, admiring the way the pine trees bend slightly with the gusts of wind and how the birds have changed their pitch. You expect Bucky to speak first so you occupy that time by playing with the strands of wet grass.

“In 1997, I was taken out of cryo for a mission.”

You wince on accident. This wasn’t how you expected the conversation to start.

Bucky continues, “There was this man south of the border.” He points south to prove his point. “Hydra wanted to take him out because he was interfering with the drug routes they were monitoring.”

“Hydra controlled drug routes?”

“Hydra had their heads in plenty of places. They didn’t control them, but they did monitor them.”

You shake your head in understanding. “And this man?”

Bucky sighs heavily. His eyes are focused on the gentle yellows behind the trees instead of you. “He was told to take out another man traveling through and out one of these drug routes. He made a different call.”

“Who was your visitor?”

“Maribel.”

“Wha-?” You go to stand but Bucky gently pushes your left shoulder back down. “Why are you telling me this and not her?”

“She wanted me to tell you. And I guess, in turn, you tell Steve and the rest of the team.”

“Bucky,” your voice trembles on accident. “Tell me.”

“The man I was ordered to take out was Maribel’s brother.” He chuckles at your frantic shuffling and pushes you down again. He continues, “Hey, it’s okay. She never knew him and she doesn’t hate me for what I was.”

You don’t really believe him. But his face isn’t telling you otherwise. You're stuck between wanting to dig for more information and giving him a giant bear hug. “Did you… succeed?”

“The soldier ever rarely lost.”

Your face contorts. “Bucky…”

“He disobeyed orders, Hydra didn’t like that since it disrupted the drug routes, and so I was sent to help. Hydra didn’t seem to care about the man he let go, though.” Bucky shrugs and starts playing with the grass behind your hand. “The thing was, Maribel’s brother had been doing this a long time. Ernesto was on Hydra’s radar but in a good way. Maribel’s brother was also given very specific orders from one other person - their mother.”

The story pieces are all discarded haphazardly, pieces that are from different boxes and don’t seem to entangle properly.

“She told him to let the man go. Because this man was an American, and killing an American on Mexican soil was something that was impossible to hide from the claws of the law. So, this American made it back on US soil safely and was never heard from again. Until 1998, when he tried to re-enter Mexico under a false name but with one purpose. To see his newborn baby girl.”

The yellow behind the pine trees fades into orange.

“Are you saying-?”

“Maribel’s mother kept everything your mother left her when she tried to cross the border herself. Your real birth certificate, her real birth certificate, you.”

Bucky looks over finally, sad smile and all. “Maribel thinks, and now I think, that Ernesto isn’t your real father.”

There are so many questions formulating at the base of your skull that you don’t really take the time to absorb the news. “What did she bring you? What was in those papers?”

Bucky seems startled that your reaction wasn’t one of shock. “Like I said, Maribel’s mother kept a lotta things.” He pauses momentarily before speaking again. “Blood results was one of them. Still trying to authenticate them. The American was a doctor, after all.”

“A doctor,” you whisper.

“A doctor. He changed his name but he’s alive. Maribel’s checked.”

“Why would she tell me this now? Why now just hours before the wedding? Isn’t that why you guys didn’t tell me about what was really in the shipment?”

Bucky winces and his expression tells you he’s sorry.

You continue, “Why now? Why does it even matter anymore?”

He inspects you quickly, scanning your features for any signs of discomfort. “You’re okay? I thought this would surprise you more.”

The chuckle you release is dry, kind of harsh. “It actually answers a fuckload of questions. Like, number one, why he fucking hates me.”

His eyebrows scrunch together. “You think he knows?”

“If he doesn’t, then he’s a super fucking asshole instead of just a fucking asshole.”

Bucky pauses again and smiles up at the sky. The clouds are white and extra large today, and he suddenly remembers the taste of that mini popcorn he had bought and shared with his little sister Becca… Becks… while watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarves at the theater. The salt and butter had stuck to Becca’s fingers and she had wiped them on Bucky’s sweater. He remembers scolding her for that but giving her a napkin in between his giggle fit. He feels the same swell in the meat of his heart listening to you. “We don’t deserve you. You’re like the moon. Always there, shaping yourself into what that person needs, crater after crater beat into you and yet, you move the tides.”

The little snort that leaves your nose hurts a little. “That’s pretty damn poetic for this moment of ‘you’re not the father!’”

Bucky bites his lip and smiles toward the yellow and orange hues. “Like the moon.”

The hotel had replaced the door, no questions asked. The reason Sam decided to bust open the door instead of using the very functional key you had given Torres? No one knows. But the poor receptionist was told that you couldn’t possibly change rooms because this was top secret business and you absolutely wanted to slap Scott upside the head for worrying her. So they fixed the bolts and gave you all new keys.

Didn’t matter much anyway since you weren’t sleeping here tonight. You had already packed and made the beds.

You lay your dress and Steve’s dress attire on the respective beds. The dress sent over was a backless red silk, spaghetti strapped and slit on the left side - you’ve wanted to wear it since it arrived when Scott did.

Steve knocked before entering the room. You almost laughed at the gentlemanly aspect of it. “Thought for sure they’d have kept you for another hour at least.”

“I gotta change sometime. That your dress?” Steve shrugs off his uniform and climbs on top of his freshly made bed.

“That’s my dress. Sort of skimpy for a wedding, no?” You hold it up to show him the front and back.

“Does ‘skimpy’ mean bad?”

“Means slutty.”

He gives you this disappointed look, like he’s judging your vocabulary. “I wouldn’t use that word. So no.”

You silently apologize and move the dress over to the end of your bed. Everyone else was also getting ready for tonight. Agents were posing as local police, many infiltrated the wait staff, suits were being double-checked for any malfunctions. There was so much going on, but all was relaxed in your room. Steve smiles at you from his bed, head resting in his palm as he leans up to stare at you. It’s impossible not to blush under his stare, so you move to climb into his bed. You lay down with your feet to his head, the sides of your hips pressing together; just two upside down puzzle pieces. He chuckles and goes to lay on his back, right arm coming up to lay rested on top of your right thigh.

“All this week I thought I wasn’t ready.” You’ve had no more nightmares. “But I am. I’m ready to end this.”

He runs his fingers delicately along your thigh. “I’m ready to help.” He sighs deeply and cranes his neck to try and meet your gaze. “We’ll make sure they get maximum time.”

“You know that’s not our call.”

“Still.”

You rest for another few minutes, gentle touches calming you. His body is so warm, emitting sweet thoughts like the beginning of spring heat, and it’s impossible not to curl up into it. Steve breaks the comfortable silence, “What are you thinking about?”

You suck in a breath and tell him the truth. “That in the matter of like… five days, you and I are basically lovers now.”

“Lovers?”

“Lovers.”

He laughs out loud and goes to sit up. “I intend on taking you out when we get back home.”

Lifting your head, you rest on your elbows and grin at him. “Oh? And where are you planning on taking me?”

He thinks for a second before pressing his lips together and giving up. “I have to ask Peter or Wanda. I have no idea where you go during the day to eat.”

You laugh, “Seriously? I could’ve sworn you tagged along once or twice.”

“Nope. I always refused.”

You frown slightly, “Riiight.” Not wanting to rehash the reasons why, you try to soften any wrong feelings about what that implies. “I’m sure you’ve been, though. I take Bucky places, too. Ask him.”

“Mmm, I have my pride. Can’t have Bucky thinkin’ he knows more about my girl than I do.”

You smile largely now and hope no lipstick rubbed off on your teeth. “Your girl?”

Steve averts his eyes like he’s just now asking for your name and if you’d like to go dancing. There’s a beautiful scarlet glow painting his pale cheeks. “Like I said, I’m taking you out and asking properly.”

“We’ve already surpassed third base. I remember it vividly.”

His smile falls comically and he turns to grab a throw pillow to smack you with it a couple times. “Crude! Crude as always. Goddamn.”

“I’m sorry! Hey, I’m sorry!”

He stops his attack and pulls you into his chest. He warms your back instantly. “So, you’ll let me take you out?”

“I really, really like french fries,” you hum lightly and tilt your head back to lean into his shoulder.

“That narrows it down, thanks.”

You chuckle due to his sarcastic tone. He rubs his hands up and down your arms. An idea formulates while in the warmth of his body. “You know what I really want to do after we finish with this?”

“What’s that?”

You tell him honestly. “Rent a cabin. Spend a Christmas there, maybe. Catch some fuckin’ fish. Experience the snow properly.”

His eyebrows furrow like he’s dissecting such a claim. “I… wasn’t expecting that.”

You shrug, “Sounds cool though, right?”

“Got room for one more?” He looks down to meet your gaze and there’s a glint of hope shimmering in the blue of his eyes.

“Nat… Natasha.”

Natasha took in a sharp exhale as she lifted her head from the desk, left cheek numb and pink. Steve shot her a funny grin and continued shaking her shoulder until she fully opened her eyes. She slaps his hand away with a huff of laughter.

“Come here to do your laundry? You know, there’s only so many times I can help prevent shrinking shirts.”

Steve scoffs, “I used to do laundry by hand. I can figure out a few buttons.”

“You would think.”

Steve rolls his eyes and bumps her shoulder with the palm of hand before speed-walking into the kitchen. “It’s one of those days.” He opens the high cabinets and pulls a few vodka bottles.

Natasha pushes down whatever was starting to eat at her. She calms her deep breaths and rises from her chair. No words needed to be exchanged. She makes her way over to pull two glasses from the same high cabinets.

Steve watches her a little hesitantly, but she has that lopsided smile that pinches through only one cheek and her eyes are the slightest bit swollen from her power nap, and Steve breathes a sigh of relief. She tilts her head to the other side of the kitchen, that lopsided grin gracing her bare feet. Steve fumbles through a few cleaning supplies and some plastic bags before he finds the bottle.

“I hid it after… after Thor had that meltdown a year ago.”

Now, he was second guessing. It was a small bottle, only half left, but half a bottle of Asgardian liquor was enough to knock the God on his knees. For Steve, a few sips would do the same. But he needed it, he needed it, god help him. It’s been four years, he needs it. “Be my designated driver?”

“How about you spend the night? Y/N wanted to start a new show anyway.”

“I’ll be passed the fuck out during the opening credits.”

“But you’ll be here.”

Steve sighs and pops open the bottle. Natasha puts her hand up to stop him from pouring, “Check under that sink again.”

His eyebrows pinch together but he does as instructed. More cleaning products… more cleaning products. He tilts his head to look at the corners and there it was: a small, pink paper airplane taped mid-flight. Steve hunched his shoulders to grab it and crawled out carefully. “You know, you’re not supposed to tell me where you hide them.”

“Well, I felt bad! I’ve found like fifteen of your blue ones and how many do you have of mine?”

“That’s besides the point-”

“Say it. You’ve found six.”

His cheeks turn hot. “I’m not here all the time.”

“Excuses.”

“I leave mine in good spots. You probably got better eyes or something.”

Natasha laughs, loud and from her chest. “Sure. But hey - I’ll promise you somethin’.”

Steve pours the Asgardian liquor into his glass and straight vodka into Natasha’s. “What do you have in mind?”

“You find more than me by the end of this year, and I’ll take that vacation.”

Steve takes his first sip and tries not to pull a hard face. “You’re on. But what if you win?”

Natasha raises her glass and clinks it with his. He wants to apologize for forgetting to toast but her eyes are playful and forgiving. “You come with me. I’m not the only one who needs it.”

“So, I win regardless?”

She takes a sip and pulls a funny face. “Easiest battle, don’t ya think?”

They’re off their right minds twenty minutes into drinking and the common area is chaos. Pillows are thrown, the TV somehow ends up with dozens of fingerprints, and they’ve broken a couple flower pots. The cushions of the couch know Natasha’s bare feet and Steve’s boots; the walls fail to constrict their loud singing; Rhodey has already snuck past them to get himself a snack undetected.

‘And so I cry sometimes when I’m lyin’ in bed, just to get it all out what’s in my head!’

‘Hit the high note, Rogers!’

‘When you do, I will!... I scream from the top of my lungs-’

‘What’s goin’ on? And I say, ‘hey!’ ‘hey!’ I say ‘hey!’ What’s goin’ on?’

Steve’s still clear-headed enough to twirl Natasha around. She’s flexible enough to climb onto his shoulders.

‘I pray every single day - for a revolution!’

She’s starting to slur her words and Steve wonders if that blond streak in her hair was there last week.

‘The story of my life! I take her home,

I drive all night to keep her warm and time,

Is frozen!

The story of my life, I give her hope,

I spend her love until she’s broke inside!

The story of my life.’

She can longer feel her toes but seeing Steve let go makes her so incredibly happy and breaks her heart. I needed this too, she thinks.

‘So, bye-bye, Miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry

And them good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye

Singin', "This'll be the day that I die

This'll be the day that I die!”’

She’s all muscle and bone and blood and real. What would Steve do without Natasha?

“You wanna come?”

“Sure. I’ll cut down the trees for wood. Have a real fireplace.” He’s serious, you realize. Like, really truly serious.

Your heart swells with excitement and some other feeling you can’t quite place. But it’s good, like really good. The sigh you release is full of sweet wonder. “A real Christmas tree.”

Steve tightens his grip around your arms. “December’s right around the corner. Trees should be ready and standing tall.”

It’s almost too much to imagine. You have the sudden urge to talk specifics, to plan out this vacation. A beautiful, rustic cabin with only a coffee maker brought from the outside century, knitted quilts, real snow, Steve’s body heat, Christmas lights… inviting Sam, Scott, Wanda, Peter, and Bucky down for Christmas dinner and presents. A whole sleepover filled with ghost stories, candle burning, board games, Christmas movies. You’re up and tucking your knees under yourself to look down at Steve in an instant. “You’d throw on that checkered shirt, grow out your beard even more, and chop down a few trees for me? With me?”

“There’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be,” Steve says, eyes crinkling. For a second, he’s worried you’ll realize that he’s quoted your letter. But that same moment, you’re giggling with excitement over your future plans.

“Well, we lasted a week here without killing each other. The holidays always hold a few surprises.”

Steve picks up another pillow.

Business is not conducted during the church service. It feels normal, with half the guests attending the service and watching the happy couple exchange vows, while the other half only arrives for the party.

Jackeline’s dress is modern with a mix of vintage - simple, with long sleeves of lace and fabric that isn’t entirely white but with hints of beige; the dress dips lower in the back than it does in the front, and it’s tight near the waist but loose as it drapes down her long legs. Her hair is left loose and her make-up is heavy, and she illuminates under the sun rays that burst through stained cathedral glass. You don’t even pay mind to Ernesto and Seda seated in the aisle in front of you - not when Jackeline looks the way she does.

As the service ends, Steve tells you to wait until most of the guests exit. The priest eyes him warily, inspecting his young face and build and obvious persona. He says nothing, but he places a gentle hand over the cross on his chest as he follows the guests out. Steve stands, and out of respect dips his fingers into the holy water provided near the heavy wooden doors. He signs the father, the son, and the holy ghost and dips his fingers in again to sign the same on you. With a silent thank you and tender wipe to your forehead, you don’t question it. He’s not Catholic, or at least you don’t think, but you know he does it for what’s to come. No matter your beliefs, he just wants something, someone, to protect you. You turn back to the cathedral and grip the door as you bend down to one knee and tip your head.

Everything is grander, that’s for sure. The decorations are tripled; the violet lights are reflecting like diamonds off every marble and glass surface; the chandelier’s are no longer gold sculptures but diamond; the clay flowers hanging from the ceiling yesterday are now a part of the centerpieces, squeezed in with the largest bouquet of roses and violets; the live bands (because of course there are two) are each still setting up as everyone is getting seated; and there are about fifty round tables circling the large dance floor. There’s still a nice view of the lake and the pine trees ahead, and the tarp was abandoned as there was no rain in the forecast. All in all, and there were a thousand other things you could focus on but didn’t have the energy to, everything was beautifully put together.

Jackeline wasn’t lying when she said half of Mexico was attending. Besides family, there were celebrities in attendance, famous musicians who were simply guests and not performing, family of some of the other biggest drug lords from both countries (minus Europe), and a couple politicians who dipped before the new couple even walked through the doors after seeing Steve. But Steve worked his magic like he had yesterday and had everyone eating out of the palm of hand in pure amazement. He even had a famous actress hanging off his shoulder in under three minutes. Walking away to go congratulate Jackeline, Steve doesn’t miss the quick, sarcastic flick of your middle finger aimed in his direction.

“You’d tell me if you needed my help, right?” Jackeline asks after a while, bottom lip dripping champagne. She wipes it gingerly, careful not to smudge her pink lipstick.

“I would if there was anything wrong,” you respond truthfully. She pauses to swallow her sip and squints. She follows your gaze to Steve, whose right arm is being tugged by a girl who looks about twelve with five multi-colored bows trailing down her french braid, and who is also trying hard not to blush at the very attractive actress he can’t seem to get rid of.

“You’re going to stop him, aren’t you?”

You glance to your left, but it isn’t really a question. Jackeline knows. “Yeah.”

She nods and tilts her chin up, eyes still on Steve. “Make him watch as you burn it down.” You know she’s referring to Ernesto. She continues, “Every last bit of it.”

Smiling down at your feet, you raise your glass at nothing in particular. Just to salute the night air and whoever is watching. A few seconds pass as you both watch the guests enjoy the music and appetizers. Jackeline shuffles in her heels but she doesn’t seem to want to leave your side just yet. “You run, you understand?”

She’s only momentarily startled by your words. “Okay.”

“I never meant to leave you here, Jackie. I just had to find a way out first.”

“You found a loophole,” she chuckles, but the next moment she’s serious. “There is no way out.”

“Might not be,” you admit, downing your glass in one shot. “But I know this. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

You don’t exchange more than a few words with Steve before he’s called by Ernesto’s men and motioned toward those massive dry lava rock doors; doors that don’t muffle sound but are strong enough to withstand a bullet wound. You watch him leave with them, and he shoots you a smile over his shoulder to simply look at you. Your eyes swell only slightly, burning the corners and blurring everything. He’s bright and brilliant, walking head first into Hell and shining like the bolts of Zeus.

Steve has faced giants before, from all backgrounds and all worlds. He has blocked their punches, taken near mortal injuries; stared them in the face with every ounce of anger and determination his cells could produce. There was always this whispered voice in his head that warned him of the last day he would pick up that shield. In 1945, the voice was loud and raging as he drove that nosediving plane into the Arctic. Over the last few years, however, the voice had quieted and let Steve ponder his fate himself. Steve swears the voice, or rather his own conscience, is getting tired.

He listens intently, responding only when spoken to, and prays his mic is picking up every bit of this conversation. Ernesto commanded the room as he screamed orders in both English and Spanish. His men fell in line; some as determined as the old man, some quiet, some bothered. Didn’t matter what the orders were. Steve noticed the few who would glance at one another and speak their distaste with their wandering eyes. And when Ernesto would speak directly to Steve, the same men would pinch their lips into a thin line and glare.

The shipment had arrived mid-conversation and as men were sent out to do their jobs, Ernesto kept Steve behind. I need you to stay with me until the shipment is secure and can be moved - you’re my bodyguard, Ernesto had told him, confident and only slightly bending his back in discomfort from the weight of the day. Steve agrees, and hears Bucky mention how they have eyes on the shipment from the sky.

Steve stays by Ernesto’s side even when Ramirez is called in. He’s prepared for a bloodbath, for two big men to cement their graves in this tiny office, but it doesn’t happen. Or at least, it doesn’t happen yet. Ernesto regards Ramirez as an old friend and finally trusts him enough to tell him what the shipment contained. Steve isn’t surprised, however, when Ernesto takes nasty satisfaction at Ramirez’s horrified expression. Because even though Ramirez had already known, the confirmation adds a multitude of terror. Steve can feel his palms sweating.

As expected, Ernesto tells Ramirez that he plans to use his lands for his gain. The safe thing to do would have been to agree, to nod along, and to live in the knowledge that the shipment most likely wouldn’t head out. But Ramirez, for some reason Steve can’t fathom, stands up and says no.

Steve understands now; the odd shaking of your shoulders even when your face was completely blank and emotions calm. He watches the beads of sweat drip from Ernesto’s forehead onto the tip of his nose; he watches the way his chest heaves as his voice becomes louder; he watches until he can’t take anymore and he enlarges the shield with Scott’s tech and tells Ernesto to move away from the other man. Steve understands now - the man really is scary, even if he wants to admit it or not.

“You really are a phenomenal actor.”

Swaying slowly, you try not to step on Seda’s feet as he guides you across the dance floor. The music is calmer than it was five minutes ago, the guests are enjoying dinner and conversing, and Steve had told you fifteen minutes ago that he would be right back. Ernesto had sent you a malicious wink, but you knew better. Steve’s name was written in blue and Ernesto’s real target had to be you.

“Acting with what? Acting that I enjoy this dance? Acting like I respect you?” Your upper lip twitches into a teasing smile. “Or acting like I don’t know it was you who planted that bomb?”

He matches your smile, looking down at you with a glint in his eyes. His grip around your waist tightens. “Acting like you’re really on our side.”

Lowering your voice just a fraction, you lean in, top of your head level with his chin. “I’m on Ernesto’s side. You almost had me and my Captain blown up.”

His left hand is settled on your shoulder and he uses the opportunity to dig his nails in. All around him, his men are watching. “How did you get away?”

You give a dry laugh. “You think that was my first bomb? It was childsplay.”

Seda scoffs, “You speak of this Avenger business like I don’t know who you are. You’re still that scared little girl who hid in her room when alien’s fell from the sky.”

“I may be. But there’s a difference between you and I. I actually stared them in this face and won.”

“The second time, maybe”

Sticks and stones, but goddamn did those words always hurt. Blame goes a long way but you and your team are used to keeping it close to home. “Why do you want me dead?”

His scowl deepens and the wrinkles by his eyes crinkle over each other as he squints down at you. “The Avengers are not secretly on our side. Tony Stark never was but Ernesto loves to tell people otherwise. Same about your Captain. You’ve been playing us for years.”

“What evidence do you even have? For years, we’ve done nothing but clear the roads for you,” you say, shaking your head in disbelief.

He unwraps his arm from around your waist and sets both hands around your upper arms. He’s pressing down as hard as he can but still loose enough not to draw unwanted attention. He breathes a sharp exhale, and the puff of air hits your cheeks. “I don’t know what happened to my men after you got what you deserved. They were good men and just like that, erased.” He smirks. “I know you had something to do with it.”

A guest with bright red hair laughs loudly to your side as she is twirled around by her partner. It’s not as vibrant as you’re used to, but you still imagine that lopsided smile you hadn’t seen in forever. “Does it matter? You know what they did, so why is my hypothetical revenge chastised?”

“Tell me right now that none of your Avenger friends did your dirty work. Tell me your Captain’s hands are clean.”

“I promise you, my Captain is clean.” Seda doesn’t show any signs of believing you. Still, your mouth twitches into a mocking smirk. “But our once mutual friends Tony and Natalia tell another story.”

“Am I supposed to believe that two people who are dead are responsible for this? Ironic,” he grits his teeth.

You repeat, clear and true. “My Captain is clean.”

He fakes a tiny gag but you know he means his disgust. “You turned over so quickly for him. For the heroes who destroyed the world. Pathetic.”

“You really need to stop underestimating me,” you practically order, voice full of warning and annoyance.

Seda continues, “Following orders from a fascist. Following orders from a country that only does harm.”

He turns you around as the dance instructs, a half-hearted waltz that didn’t have a beginning, middle, or end. You take that second to scan your surroundings and weigh your options. “I agree about the country part. But I don’t follow orders from the country, I follow them from my Captain.”

You’re facing him again and in those hellish eyes you see truth. “No, he’s a symbol of everything we hate. Of everything we need to destroy.”

“Touch Steve and I’ll blind you.”

His feet stop mid-step, as do yours. His eyes widen only a little, but it’s all the ammunition he needs. “I knew it.”

It’s barely a whisper, a tickle from a single strand of hair, but you catch it. No longer keeping it a secret, or rather a secret you didn’t care that you let slip, Seda now knows it was all a lie. All this time you had never referred to Steve as anything other than your Captain.

You feel the blunt head of a .22 press against your abdomen as Seda laughs, “You never could get a mission right.”

Twisting his arm and knocking the gun from his loose grip with your wrist was easy. So was catching the gun mid-air and elbowing him in the ribs. Seda falls to the floor in a state of shock, instinctively gripping his chest. You aim the gun at him and like you’ve seen in the movies, place the tip of your heel just below where his belly button would be. He releases a sharp breath and his eyes are challenging, practically begging you to dig deeper and get on with it.

You can hear the screaming and frantic murmuring from the guests surrounding you and the leveling of guns from Seda’s men. But you’re focused on the man trying so hard not to quiver beneath you, his nasty grin spreading wider.

“You’re alone,” he bites. “Your Steve is helping Ernesto right now, no? You’re alone.”

Your grin forms slowly, and you’re counting down the seconds you have until his men start firing, but you lean your upper body down slightly to make sure he hears you. “That’s never been a problem before. Don’t you remember?” You click back the safety as discreetly as possible. “I was trained by the Black Widow herself.”

You quickly raise the gun to shoot the closest of Seda’s men in between his collarbones, effectively starting the bloodshed. You jump out the way in a flash, rolling across the floor and behind a table. Tipping the table over is easy and it seems like a smart idea at first, until you realize the tables are all glass. The tablecloth had covered that detail, which sucks like hell, because now the bullets are shattering through and you’re forced to kick yourself away and run behind the pillars instead. The heels are kicked off at the same time you’re fishing underneath your dress.

A stray bullet hits the pillar’s side making you squeal. It makes you work faster, though.

Once you find the secure nano-tech ‘button’ (as Scott liked to call it), you strip as quickly as you can and slap the button on your bare shoulder. The nano-tech spirals and threads into itself as intricately as frost spreads on a window, shielding you in both metal and kevlar.

When a storm of bullets hits the pillar and cracks the marble, you’re forced to crouch and hope Seda’s .22 and the myriad of weapons you’re now equipped with are enough. Before your thoughts can creep into a ‘last man standing’ mode, a roar of wind sweeps across the estate and between the cracked pillars, causing your loose hair to slap your face and blind you for only a second. Quickly putting your hair up and pulling the metal batons from the back of your suit, you’re met with the best sight - one that was a little late, in your opinion.

“Kind of you to show up!”

Sam ignores your quip as he flies into three men at once, feet first with his wings extended with the might of a guardian angel. He immediately shields runaway guests who were caught in the middle. He takes the ones on his left, you take the ones on his right.

You let them swing first. They’re fast and pulling their punches and are clearly aiming for the end result of sticking you to the ground. But you’re quicker and deflect the punches. You manage to deliver a solid punch upward to crack the nose of one. As he reaches up as instinct, his ribs are open season.

He falls out cold easily after your batons do their damage and the next man isn’t nearly as fast as the first. He doesn’t move enough to his right to avoid the harsh kick to his sternum. Each ambitious kick to the chest seems to demolish the man’s protective wall he’s trying desperately to keep intact, but once you give your legs a break and switch back to the batons, he doesn’t stand a chance. There are bullets raining across the venue, but Sam is shielding you and deflecting them elsewhere. It allows you the freedom to rip into whoever you think deserves it.

You’ve got two men on your tail and after knocking their weapons from their hands, it seems like a fairer fight. The first doesn’t step back far enough to avoid your roundhouse kick and he falls hard on his ass, gasping for a lick of air. The second is closer, however, and manages to wrap you in a chokehold. Releasing yourself to fall deadweight for only a second, gravity tricks him and you use the momentum to kick up and fly over his shoulders. It’s hard to do without a wall to propel yourself off of. But your abs and thighs are clenched and you don’t quite think you’ll actually end up on this guy’s shoulders but you do. You don’t dwell on that moment of personal pride, though. Tightening your thighs, you use your upper body weight to lean downward and wring his neck. Once he’s down, you sweep your leg around across the floor to trip the other man who was just barely standing back up. With the .22, you fire point blank.

Detaching yourself from the gore has never been much of a challenge. Eyes rolling back and clouding, limbs dangling limp after having just been full of life, bodies thumping against the floor after eating your bullets - you don’t so much as grit your teeth anymore.

Sam is dealing with his own mess closer to where that poor cake is now destroyed, vanilla filling exposed and now two stories instead of four. The other cakes are no better. Sam pulls the trigger once more at someone charging at him and he averts his eyes. Sam, however, clenches his jaw.

“Where’s Seda?” you shout, firing at men who are jumping out from behind tables but giving away their location before they even surprise you.

“Lost him. I think he’s heading over to Steve!”

You look over the room and pray everyone got out safely. There are no civilians lying in their own puddle of blood, no guests begging for help, but you can never know for sure. “We need more hands. Where the hell are Scott and Bucky?”

A storm of bullets starts crashing into the tables and pillars beside you. Trying to duck doesn’t work and you’re grazed in the left arm. Sam tackles you behind the stage, wings extending further and out bending around you.

“I’ve been shot!”

Sam can’t help the laugh that erupts from his throat because of your dramatic tone. “You’ve been grazed. The nano-tech has already rebuilt itself.”

“I don’t care, I hate being shot. It’s not nice. I’ve been hit.”

“Dramatic.”

“Y/N?” a harsh whisper sounds from under the stage tables. Watching your eyes bulge paints a mournful expression on Jackeline’s face. Julian is right beside her, pistol out but not shooting. You wonder if he knows you’re the invader.

“What in the hell are you still doing in here? I told you to run!”

“I’m sorry,” Jackeline squeals as bullets continue firing. “Everyone crowded. I was scared so I just got down.”

“Sam.”

Sam nods, already reading your mind. You had to find Steve; you couldn’t stay here. But there’s bullets still blazing in your direction and you find yourself hopping on your ass slightly each time a bullet connects to the ground beside you. The nano-tech does great in deflecting the lead but it really isn’t an invitation to get shot more times. The graze on your arm is already starting to burn.

“Sam is going to guide you both out of here, alright? Julian, cover her. Sam will cover you.”

There’s a war going on behind Julian’s eyes. His face does a thousand things at once as he hears your orders and the scream of guns combined, but he nods. He grips Jackeline’s waist and pulls her in close, but before they can begin crawling Jackeline turns back to you.

“Mátalo. Okay? Para nosotras dos.” She’s got this fierce determination in her eyes and her accent is as thick as can be.

“Okay.”

Sam relays his location over his mic and who he has behind his wings, but before he can safely guide the married couple down the stage, a new wave of men enter and open fire. Sam’s wings can only take so much, and even though they’re vibranium, his suit is not. Ducking behind the table and reloading your gun, you then lift your head over to view the scene. It’s a mess and you could surely take them down hand-to-hand if you were close enough, but you’re stranded with your batons and seven bullets and a world of automatic machinery pointed at you.

The storm of bullets pauses and every single person looks up to the sky. You thank the Gods for no rain today because the absence of a tarp allows for the quinjet to settle over the chaos and create a much needed distraction. Sam takes his leave, wings still wrapped around your sister, and you do the same. Running from behind the stage with batons lit up and tazed, you knock out the closest men. They fall in a strangle of electricity, vibrating and convulsing as each shock travels through their veins, ultimately paralyzing them for however long it turns out to be. This gains the attention of almost everyone else but before they can train their weapons back toward you, the back of the quinjet opens. There were a few tables still standing and it seemed the super soldier liked them better than the flat floor.

The glass shatters from the impact of Bucky’s weight, glasses of champagne and plates with unfinished meals folding onto the shards. He’s dressed in his tactical gear and a dark navy blue jacket without a trusty sleeve. Even if the arm was covered and his hair was long rather than the short length it was now, the men would certainly know who just fell from the sky. Almost immediately, the men scatter. Bucky takes them down one by one, shot after shot, and decides to use his knives for the ones who don’t run. It’s tricky, but he manages to lodge his knives in the base of the spines of those who later changed their minds.

He catches your eye after you manage to snap the neck of one of the runners. He tilts his head toward the left and watches you run to give Steve the backup he needs.

The mansion seems longer, wider, just generally bigger as you rush through the rooms and halls to get to Steve. The stuffed exotic animals follow your gaze and you can’t ignore them for long. There are men following you and men leaving Ernesto. You duck behind the standing polar bear and wait until the footsteps sound farther. Checking the amount of bullets in your gun, just in case, you finally flick the safety off and run.

There’s really only one thing of importance floating around the padded confines of your skull - get Steve out. Another thing you two had in common: both sacrificial idiots. But there wasn’t any way that you would give up the chance to save his life, as he would yours. Didn’t matter if the man you were protecting him from was your father or not. It hadn’t really settled, hadn’t truly digested, and you didn’t think it ever would. Because for years, this man was your father. He was the only man with that title. He wasn’t fatherly, far from it, but he had the label and that’s what you were going to focus on. It made no difference.

You push the office door open and start stuttering over your words. You want to ask what happened, why there’s so much blood, whose blood it is, but all that comes is a fractured series of what the hell’s? The last syllables push through with necessary force, hardly intelligible, but exhaled at last.

Ernesto is kneeling with his head hanging low and his hands behind his back, defeated. But it isn’t Steve who’s holding a gun to the back of his head - it’s Seda.

No, Steve is in the corner clutching at his right hip and gritting his teeth, a wild look on his face that tells you he too was blindsided. He’s hurt. He’s gasping and wincing at the slightest of movements and it ignites the flame you’ll use to burn this world to the ground. It’s splitting your fucking ribs apart.

“Don’t move!” Seda yells, gun still locked on Ernesto’s head but eyes on you. “Put the gun down.”

“Seda-”

“Put the fucking gun down!”

Biting your tongue, you flip the gun in your hand so it’s facing downward and move to gently place it on the table. Flicking your eyes to where Steve is, you get your answer as to why he’s been so easily shot. His massive body and shield are draped over Ramirez, who is also disarmed and pissed.

The self-righteous idiot, you think, he’s always gotta save the little guy.

“We’re gonna talk about this like the gods we are, yeah?”

Your face pulls awkwardly, “Seda, what is happening?”

“Don’t act like you’ve been on this asshole’s side the entire time now,” Seda bites, shoving the head of the gun harshly into the base of Ernesto’s neck. “Go on, tell him.”

“The shipment was intercepted,” you tell him. But you’re not just telling Seda, no, it’s the first Steve is hearing the good news and it allows him to feel a bit of relief. “You’ve both lost.”

“What have you done?” Ernesto screams, cheeks vibrating and face red with anger. He pays no mind to the gun and dares to glare at you. “Tell me!”

The top of your lip greets a run of tears and snot and it isn’t until then that you realize your hands are shaking mid-air and your throat is closing. “My mission.”

Blood or not, this man had the power to tie your thoughts into knots. He only had this power at precious moments and sadly, this was turning out to be one of them.

Seda bites out a laugh - it’s wet and bloody and scares you half to Hell. “I’m not the only one here who wants to kill you. But I’m going to beat her to it. She brought you back, I can’t have that.”

“No!” You curse inwardly at your involuntary hiccup. “We’re not here to kill you!”

“Oh?” Seda raises the gun at you. “What’s the endgame? Que mas necesitas?”

“I don’t need anything. The shipment is intercepted. The estate is on lockdown. Your routes are down. You’re cornered. It’s over.” You let your shoulders drag just a little. “For both of you.”

Surprisingly, Seda doesn’t pull the trigger when Ernesto charges toward you. He doesn’t pull it when Ernesto wraps his hands around your throat, either.

It’s instinct for you to hold out your hand to stop Steve from doing what he does best. He’s already halfway up and wincing with each push to help you, to rip Ernesto from your capable body, but Seda clicks the gun in his direction. Steve watches the way your arm extends, all five fingers spread in a hopeless plea of ‘don’t you sacrifice yourself for me, don’t you dare’.

“I have done nothing but help you! I put food on the table and clothes on your worthless back! You spent my money!” Ernesto’s eyes are practically bulging and his thumbs are almost crushing your windpipe, but his placement is off. You can still breathe air, no matter how bruising his grip may be. “This is how you treat me? I should have killed you all those years ago. I should have ripped you limb by limb until your cries bled!”

“Please,” you whimper out, hand still extended toward Steve and the other attempting to push Ernesto by the chest.

“Please? Please? Te voy a matar aquí, ahora, porque siempre te lo mereciste!”

You let out a strangled scream and are about to fight back. To save yourself and to end Steve’s suffering of watching you suffer, of watching his newfound hope dwindle right before him, when a gunshot erupts. Everyone screams, ears ringing, and there’s blood splattered all over your cheeks and neck, spots and leaks that trail down into the collar of your bodysuit. A heavy weight lands on you and knocks you back into the shelves. You hold Ernesto’s now limp body as best you can, knees locking painfully. There’s a massive hole where the top of his head should be and for the first time in years, you have to look away to keep from throwing up.

“Dejalo.”

You open and close your mouth but regret it when the taste of copper lands on your tongue. You follow Seda’s order and drop Ernesto to your feet, the thud sending a shiver up every single one of your vertebrae.

“Por qué hiciste eso?” you ask him, voice small. You choke on another hiccup.

“Don’t lie to me and say you weren’t going to do it yourself.”

You look over at Steve. His eyes are just as wide as yours and the same red specks, now turning brown, are tainting the flush pink skin of his beautiful neck.

“No,” you whisper. Steve hears your lost accent returning and it clutches at his heart.

“It was for the best.” Seda marches over to grab Ramirez by the tie, ripping him up from the ground and pointing the gun to his head. Steve lunges forward and Seda fires another bullet into the same hip.

“No!” Your throat is raw, scratched, and Steve hits the floor in another heap of muffled groans. Seda returns the aim on Ramirez.

“Imagine my surprise when I saw this one confronting Ernesto with your Captain. Imagine my fucking surprise when I tried to find all our passports, all our files, and nothing was here! Imagine my surprise when I saw that fucking idiot White being taken away by one of your agents!”

“Seda, please.” You were never much of a negotiator. It was always go in and let the others do the talking. Steve was the talker, he was the negotiator, but he was out of his element. He was always the enemy to Seda. He could never convince him otherwise.

“You’ve given me new purpose,” Seda grins and Ramirez is rather calm in his arms, like he accepts this. “Look at the crime scene. I’m using the gun Ramirez got from your team. My men are still loyal.”

He pauses and smiles with all teeth, blood in between most of them. “You shot Ernesto. You shot your Captain. You shot Omar.”

The frightened look on your face seems to fuel him even more. He continues, “We’ll never stop hunting you.”

“Try it,” Steve manages, standing up again and vaguely registering the flash of light to his right. His shield is no longer there. “You’ll have to kill me to win. You’ll have to kill all of us to win. Me, Y/N, Omar, Sam.” He breathes in deep but smiles. “The Winter Soldier.”

You swear Seda’s face pales but his grip around Ramirez’s waist only tightens. “Easy.”

“It won’t be,” you finally say, voice no longer wavering. There’s no plausible way Seda could win. But one thing is fact: whether they’re Seda’s or Ernesto’s men, they’ll never stop hunting you now. “You lost, Seda.”

All stills but there are shouts and the ring of gunshots still echoing near the lake.

“No,” Seda looks to you and to Ernesto’s body. “I didn’t.”

He aims the gun at you and fires.

Steve’s wail is grease to the fire in your soul and you accept whatever pain might hit. There’s space and then there isn’t. There’s emptiness and then there’s a space being filled by that horrid but lifesaving shield. There’s no one and then there’s Scott, blown up to his regular size with shield in hand and in front of you. The bullet bounces off the shield easily and hits the wall. You’re pushed into motion and in about two seconds, you’ve grabbed your gun again and do not hesitate to fire. The bullet hits Seda in his exposed chest and Ramirez fumbles to get the gun from him. Seda hits the floor and no one else follows.

The shot hits its target perfectly. Seda doesn’t so much as stutter.

“God,” Scott grumbles, eyes trying to focus on anything other than the pools of blood. “Was I late?”

You don’t pay any mind to Scott and rush over to Steve, where he’s barely holding himself up with his hip tilted on the edge of the desk. “Steve? Steve. Did he hit anything important?”

“Besides the fuckin’ meat of my stomach?”

There isn’t a way to see beneath the kevlar, but your fingers have a mind of their own as they try to dig in. “You know what I mean.”

Steve huffs a laugh and gently slaps your fingers away. “No, but motherfuck me Christ, I get shot way too much and it hurts no less.”

“Was the shield not enough? You had to sacrifice your one-hundred year old hips? Are you hit anywhere else?”

“I was caught off guard. What about you? I heard over the mics that you were shot and-”

“Are you two done?” Scott interrupts, clearing his throat awkwardly but half a mind still paying attention to his own mic.

It’s like you’re snapped back to reality. There’s not only Steve but others, alive and dead, and the smell of copper is all too familiar. “Sorry, I’m still in shock. I don’t really know how to proceed from here.”

“Y/N-” Scott tries, but you resume.

“We were supposed to arrest them. Just arrest them.”

“Okay, I think we should get you outta here,” Steve acts like he’s the one guiding you, but his weight is falling. You faintly register a phone ringing in the room but Steve, ever so persistent, is still acting like he is holding you up. He lunges forward with a sharp wince, and your hand immediately goes to his hip.

“Captain.”

Ramirez lowers his phone, call ended, and he wears an expression Steve recognizes immediately. It’s an expression that looks all too similar to Dugan’s when he relayed the news of enemy forces breaching their base. “...How many?”

“They’ve already sent the news to their men in Mexico.”

“Have they shut down the border?”

“It wouldn’t make a difference.”

“They don’t know two of their men are dead, so we can-“

Scott shakes his head, shield still in hand with specks of blood drying on the blue stripe. “They know White was arrested. That’s all they need. They’ll assume the rest, the worst.”

You sigh, “Seda was right.”

Scott literally pouts and he looks like he wants to wrap you in his arms. “No, don’t send yourself there.”

Steve, however, agrees with you. “If they know about White, then they know about Omar. Seda had time to tell his men.”

“Then we make sure he’s arrested and taken to a secure facility. We can keep an eye-” Scott starts, but you shut him down quickly.

“He’s wanted by the US government, not the Avengers. We can only transport him. We can’t guarantee his safety.”

Ramirez gives a small smile. “Mija, voy estar bien. No te preocupes.”

“I don’t know.”

Scott looks between the three of you. He places the shield against the wall near the door. He raises his eyebrows at Steve and looks to his wounds, but Steve waves him off. Reluctantly, Scott nods. “I’m gonna go check on Sam.”

There’s a pool of blood near your boots. You don’t want to know if it’s from the dead or from Steve.

“Doll, what are you thinking?”

He can’t hurt you anymore. “That I need you to go, too.”

Steve forgets about the pain in his hip and focuses solely on you. “What?”

“Go. If there’s one more thing you can do for me and my reckless family, go check on Sam.”

“You know I can’t leave you here alone with him.”

Your voice is steady and calm and it’s scaring Steve. It’s scaring him. “I promised myself that you wouldn’t be hurt by this mission. I stand by it.”

“I promise, Captain, I have no resentment. Whatever she does, I will follow,” Ramirez speaks, and Steve doesn’t even pay him a glance.

“I can’t just go.”

“Steve,” you interlock your fingers behind his neck. “Please. Listen to me.” He looks so confused, a million questions flying through his mind and almost escaping those sweet pink lips. Fierce, you whisper for only him. “He can’t hurt me anymore. He can’t hurt me anymore.”

He relishes the feeling of your soft hands behind his neck. They’re bloody, but yours. His neck is bloody, but you don’t seem to care. “Two minutes.”

“Two minutes,” you confirm.

He pulls from your hold and turns to leave. He picks up the shield. Before he leaves, he grips the doorway and looks over his shoulder, eyebrows pinched and jaw tense. “Two minutes, I swear to Almighty Christ, Y/N. I’m coming back for you.”

You smirk, the dim light from the office lamps creating nothing short of a sparkle in your eyes. “I don’t expect anything less, Rogers.”

Steve hesitates for a moment and then he walks away. Once his footsteps are no longer heard, you turn back to Ramirez. There’s a voice in your head telling you this was a bad idea and that you were an idiot to have your back turned on him for so long, but Ramirez is simply leaning on one of the chairs and grimacing at the bloody scene before him.

“Remember when Ernesto bought you that car when you were thirteen? And then another when your brother crashed it?”

Your nose pinches, “I don’t feel like reminiscing when he’s lying right there.”

“Do you remember what you told me when he bought you that second car? The sports one?”

You sigh. Ramirez was clearly going to continue speaking. “‘No lo quiero. Soy una niña. Get rid of it.’”

“And I did.”

“You did.”

He smiles, and for the first time you notice all the gray hair dusting his head, the most by his temples. There's a limp in his step too but you can’t remember if he had before or after the wedding. “I’ll get rid of this.”

“What?” you blink, unsure if you heard him right.

“I’m already a traitor. If I spin this, you can continue the mission. You can arrest even more of his men. They’ll come after me instead of you.”

It’s what he’s been trained to do. It’s what he’s done since he transported his first shipment. It’s what he’s done time and time again for Ernesto, for Seda, for some of his own careless men. He’s numb to it, just as you were a few days ago, but now you can’t stop thinking about the aftermath. Where would he put their bodies? Would they be buried here or back in Mexico? Would people really care if Ernesto was dead? They didn’t seem to care when he was snapped out of existence. But Ramirez has this sag in his shoulders that tells you he’s already calculating the best way to wrap the bodies and how deep he plans on sending them… or burning them. Burning them was always easier.

“They’ll come after your family. Your daughters.”

He shakes his head, “I’ve ensured their safety. They’re safe.”

Against your better judgement, you tap your mic discreetly and turn it off. “I can’t let you take one for the team.”

He chuckles, “I’m a part of your team? I’m an Avenger?”

You can’t help but laugh with him. It’s not a light moment, but it’s a moment nonetheless. “Sure, Omar. But we don’t trade lives.”

“I had this coming.”

“No, you didn’t. You don’t.” Straining your ears and shutting your eyes, you mumble a quick prayer in hope that this plan of yours worked. You pass Ramirez your own gun and speak low. “Go.”

He’s shocked and he stutters. “Que haces? Que esta pasando?”

“There’s no one on the east side right now. All the guests were moved to the front. It’s clear. But not for long.” Pushing him to the door, you make sure he’s not leaving any bloody footprints behind. He’s clear. “Go.”

“This will kill us both.”

“But it will give us a head start.”

“No puedo hacer eso! No quiero hacer eso.”

“Omar, they’re not going to protect you once you’re charged. I can’t protect you then. So I need you to go.” You reach into your suit and pluck that random Roman coin you had stolen just a few days earlier. It was a token of good luck but you didn’t need it anymore. You avoid looking at the carving for fear that the likeness to Steve will make you change your mind. You place it in Ramirez’s hand and clench his fist shut. “If there’s one thing you can do for my stupid, anti-hero mentality, go.”

“Que hago con esto?”

“No me llamas. But let me find this.”

He looks at you with pity. It’s so much pity and understanding for your situation that you have to look away. “I owe you my life.”

Eyesight now on the wall over his shoulder, you offer him a thin smile. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

He stumbles at first, unsure if this is really happening, and finally passes by. “Y/N.”

You figure it’d be pretty rude not to answer. You turn slowly. He continues, face somber and head shaking with so much pity. “The amount of Hell that’s coming...”

It’s funny, really. You shoot him that famous smile you were known for. It tricks him like it’s supposed to. “I’m already going to Hell for the lives I’ve taken and the crimes I’ve committed. But the journey to my fate has been worth it.”

The estate is being swept as quickly as possible. There are agents dressing wounds, reading rights, snapping photos, on the phone, etc. It’s organized chaos and there’s so much happening but it’s never impossible to catch Steve’s side profile in a crowd. His nose is pinched up and he’s dealing with his wounds himself. No one is even looking at him.

Speed walking to him, you hook your arm in his and turn him around. He’s too tall, and your toes strain as you rise on them, but you wrap your arms around his neck anyway. He returns the gesture and squeezes you as hard as you’re squeezing him. After a few seconds, he whispers quietly.

“Where’d Ramirez go?”

If he saw your eyes, he would know you were lying. You keep your arms in place. “He got away.”

He tries to push you away but fails. “Y/N.”

“He got away,” you repeat. Slowly, regretfully, you pull back. “We should go.”

There’s a horrible crease in between his eyebrows and he knows he’s caught you in a lie, but he also knows that if there was one thing he knew most about you, it was that you were just as stubborn as he was. Quick with wit, always asking to be punched, and stubborn to the point it made strangers worry. So he doesn’t question it, and turns with you in the direction of the jet. “Maribel has the safehouse set up. Montana.”

“You sure you can make it to the jet? Should I get Bucky to come with us?”

The quinjet is empty except for a few supplies, a medical bag, and Friday. There are only two seats and by the way Steve’s bending over to show his true pain, you’d be flying it. Once you land, you can fish out those bullets.

“No one else.” Steve bites. He can’t risk anyone else - hell, he doesn’t even want to risk you. “I’ll protect you.”

You board the jet and watch as the trees sway in rhythm to the movements of everyone doing their job. It’s dark, and you push the fact that you’re so horribly night blind to the back of your skull, and it’s starting to eat away at you that the mission didn’t really go as planned. No one seems to notice yet that you never brought them the two main players they were hoping for. It only makes you close the quinjet faster. You sit Steve down in one of the seats and kneel before him. “And I you.”

If anyone asked, Steve would lie and say he was tearing up because of the bullets piercing his skin in half. To protect and be protected.

“Let’s go.”

TAGLIST: @dumb-ass-writer @justab-eautifulmess @supraveng @mycosmicparadise @missnighttigress

#steve rogers x reader #reader x steve rogers #avengers x reader #reader x avengers #Steve Rogers #steve rogers fanfiction #to topple #a giant #by Moni #captainsimagines #mob fanfic #trigger warnings listed #enemies to lovers #friends to enemies to lovers #mini-series #part eight #chapter eight #marvel fanfiction #marvel masterlist

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insert-cleverurl · 4 years ago

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solaine copies her dsmp meta twitter part one

preface: i wrote this on february 13th and am now archiving it over here on tumblr before i get around posting it to the actual archive (of our own). i'd like to clean it up before i go there, becuase i wrote this at like one am lying in bed and typing on my laptop that was sitting on my stomach. it's a lot of rambling. i go on a lot of tangents. it is not the cleanest nor likely most accurate meta you will ever read.

how characters (children) on the smp learn from history rather than repeat it: a thread

aka: stop liking the other one you fucks i opened the wikia so i actually know what happened now /lh

context here is that i had earlier made a much less coherent thread (not that this one is very coherent) with the caveat that i was going entirely off memory

this thread is mainly going over how tommy + tubbo both emulate and turned away from wilbur + schlatt respectively, and how i think that's going to reflect in ranboo's arc

"as long as i can't be the next jschlatt, you can't be the next wilbur." okay we all know this. it's obvious from this point on that both tubbo and tommy saw or had fears of how they were each developing into scarily familiar people - schlatt, a dictator, and wilbur, a madman.

starting with tommy, the parallels between his exile arc and wilbur's pogtopia arc are immediately, and glaringly, obvious. paranoia, trust issues, "maybe i'm actually the bad guy here", and most notably, intense loneliness. wilbur made it obvious he believed pogtopis's allies would all abandon them in the end (them being he and tommy, though how much he trusted tommy by the end is also up in the air), and he was completely prepared to kill anyone he had to in order to secure pogtopia's victory, despite also preparing himself to be the one to end it. wilbur gave up on l'manberg, at the very end. he believed tyranny was all that would ever reign, so he blew it up.

tommy, in his exile arc, was also despairingly lonely. he hallucinated tubbo, grew attached to dream, etc etc. tommy was very very close to "becoming" wilbur here (god i'm sorry this is so long already and just me summing things up we already know it's to keep my thoughts in order + satisfy my inability to shut up and use too many words)

where wilbur and tommy go their separate ways is when they were given an out. dream gave wilbur tnt + for tommy, he was. you know. gestures vaguely at logstedshire. wilbur took the out - he gave up. he gave in. we know he had moments of clarity (when niki was in danger) and Maybe this was one he could've had too, but he didn't. he took the tnt.

tommy decided enough was enough. so at a crucial moment in time, tommy turned away from being wilbur. he did not repeat history.

onto tubbo; admittedly i know much less about his arc as president so this will be less outlined. tubbo,,,, acted very similarly to schlatt. probably moreso than tommy and wilbur! strange new laws, ignoring his cabinet, execution, generally appearing to lose his care for the world and the opinions of others. i'd argue the thing that separates him from schlatt is the most important part of this thread, because it proves my point: he remembered.

i just want to clarify here: by "proves my point" i mean this is the clsoest we get to an agreement of the ideas i'm putting out here in canon?? ig?? as in like. this is the most on the nose way to say it. similarly in recent days to quackity consistently referring to his treatment of dream as torture, which seems to be a very "I Am Not In Character" move but is definitely meant for us, the viewers, rather than character dream or character quackity themselves. tubbo's is a little less like that but still it's kind of like pointing at the X on a map for us the viewers. ok tangent over

tubbo lived under schlatt's rule as one of those people he treated extremely shittily. he lived under schlatt's rule as that person he executed. and tubbo remembers all that! tubbo remembers how schlatt's rule played out, and he looks at his own uh, less than stellar time in office, and he admits this out loud (to ranboo, according to the wikia. i am getting all of this off the wikia. i did not watch any streams during this arc.) that he can See himself becoming schlatt.

and when quackity tries to execute ranboo for being a traitor, tubbo stops him.

onto dream and ranboo! dream is a special case in that we never get to see his perspective of things and are rather left to play fill in the blank, and this whole arc is special (in terms of this thread) in that it isn't over. so i will be doing a lot of extrapolating here.

dream starts out as a generally ambivalent character who has very few rules that he pretty much never bothers to enforce anyways (i think? i don't remember).

by this i mean, this is all stuff i heard secondhand in recent months and can no longer remember what it actually was because i never went back to check. i'm pretty sure, but just a disclaimer. i don't wanna get hit with an "um, actually

his villain arc starts very very early - two whole seasons before he really became one. in the war, he is the antagonist and he plays up to it! most of the war is from l'manberg's pov (or that's how we look at it now, at least) so obviously he is the Bad Guy here.

ranboo griefed a house like two days into the server. 'nuff said /lh

ranboo + dream are both heavily vilified characters from the get-go - dream's part should be fairly obvious (uh, the everything leading up the exile arc where he actually did villainous things), whereas ranboo's is most notably during the second festival's aftermath. taking the blame for blowing up the community house, wanting to "pick people not sides" (he wants all his friends to be happy - sounds familiar, right?), etc etc, and now he's with techno and phil, the former of which is Definitely considered a villain for working with dream

now many many parallels are being drawn between he and dream, especially with the whole enderwalking thing. in the aftermath of everything happening, he chooses to stay out of all conflict, until Something Happens and forces his hand. (the egg!) he wants peace for everyone, which again, sounds very familiar, right?

(slight tangent: yes, the griefing was forcing dream's hand. it's nigh impossible to construe it as anything other than a political attack - the vice president of l'manberg griefing the home of the greater dream smp's king? dream looks weak + open to attack if he lets it slide)

this was a bad way to put it but the spirit of it gets across i think. fuck character limit on twitter

that catches us up on all current lore. where do i think dream and ranboo are going to split? dream has been alone in his decision-making basically since the very first war. not once has he (successfully, we don't know if he tried) gone to fall back on his friends' support and ask for their help in making these hard decisions (of which there are many). he severs his final connections ("i don't care about anything on this server") and cements his place in history as a monster.

i think it is very likely that we are getting a ranboo "friendship and relying on other people" arc here. there are other ways they could go with it, obviously, but given his current arctic anarchist ties and what appears to be other friendships developing. hmm! i'm interested. this part is entirely speculation/extrapolation. point being. the kids on the smp do, in fact, learn from history. they still make mistakes sometimes, but past a certain point, they're always different mistakes. they learn, and they almost always get happier endings for it

i don't know if it's a coincidence that it's the three lore-relevant kids who are the ones doing this. i don't think it is, because this is a very well-written and clever story. the younger generation is the one learning and fixing past mistakes and leaving the world better off for it. that's very neat! i like it a lot. also now that purpled's becoming lore-relevant, goddamnit if i don't want to see next season being his "learning from history" arc. punz vs purpled, maybe? that'd be neat. who knows. ok i think im finally done lol ty for reading :)

caveat I forgot to add last night: obviously ranboo and dream start out in very different positions, moreso than both tommy and tubbo. but at the end of the day, all three of them are their own people who just happen to take after other people in some ways :)

again, ty for reading! here's the original thread. i'd like to add that this is probably out of date and i may come back to it some day but who knows. maybe this will just be a relic of before Now (may 25)

#solaine's dsmp meta #dsmp #dsmp meta #c!tommy #c!ranboo #c!tubbo #tommyinnit #ranboo #tubbo #schlatt #c!schlatt #c!dream #dream #c!wilbur #wilbur

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honey-dewey · 4 years ago

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Loving You is a Losing Game

Pairing: Marcus Moreno/Reader

Word Count: 2,602

Warnings: Gore, loss of limbs/appendages, medical procedures, implied experimentation, big Reader whump, Marcus is depressed, this is 99% angst, I’m sorry in advance, I promise it has a happy ending.

Permanent Taglist: @phoenixhalliwell @star-wars-hell

Two weeks before he was going to propose to you, you disappeared from Marcus’s life. With no idea where you went or who took you from him, Marcus devotes himself to finding you, even if it costs him his life. Meanwhile, you’re struggling to keep alive in a cell, wishing you had your hero by your side. What must you lose to reunite with Marcus?

A/N: An anon asked me to write some Reader whump with Marcus after I posted my Marcus whump, and boy oh boy did I deliver! I hope this satisfies you, anon, because I’m oddly proud of it.

Every second that passed was agonizing. Marcus was pacing up and down and up and down, waiting for Miracle Guy to return from his mission. To see if they’d caught sight of you.

You’d been gone from him for six months now. You’d missed his birthday, and Missy’s, and even your own. He’d been planning to ask you on your birthday, the ring heavy in his pocket even now. But you’d been taken, kidnapped by an unnamed threat that hadn’t shown itself again. He had been inconsolable for weeks, but dragged himself to work on the hope that one day there would be news. And today was that day. Or at least, he hoped it was.

“Marcus.”

Marcus looked up. Miracle Guy stood in front of him, worried, holding a piece of paper. A photograph. He surged forward, moved by instinct and instinct alone.

“It’s all we could find,” Miracle Guy said softly, handing over the photo. “They did DNA tests. It’s theirs.”

The photograph wavered dangerously as Marcus took in the contents. Three fingers, bloodied at the ends, lay on the pavement, the blood long since dried up into the ground. They were old.

“Marcus? Are you okay?”

Marcus shook his head. They had you. They’d injured you. They had no fear of hurting you. Would they kill you?

He looked up, vision blurry with tears and anger. “They’ll pay for this.”

Marcus didn’t rest for days. He was fueled only by coffee, anger, determination, and fear. Even Missy, who had mourned your loss as much as he had, was worried for him. He was killing himself to find you.

Finally, he found a lead.

Well, technically someone else found it. A smashed VHS tape found near the fingers. It took Tech-No days to fix it properly, but when he did, no one liked what they heard.

There was no image on the tape. The camera had been angled towards the blank wall, the faded patterns of bricks grey and fuzzy. The sounds though. Oh god the sounds.

It started with suppressed sobs. Marcus clenched his fists, trying not to scream. That was you, sobbing, shuddering breaths so full of fear. Heavy footsteps entered the room, and your breathing picked up, racing quickly to full panic mode.

“No, please,” you begged, voice thin and weak. “Please!” You sounded desperate, and there were rough sounds, the sounds of skin on stone. A sliding noise, like metal on fabric, and then a sound so loud and shocking that everyone in the room jumped.

You screamed, high and bloodcurdling. Frenzy entered your voice as you shrieked and shrieked and shrieked. Marcus was frozen, the complete terror and pain you were conveying with a single noise making him incapable of movement. He vaguely registered someone throwing up behind him, but all he could focus on was your continued screaming.

Finally, the tape stopped, cutting off one of your screams. Tech-No stepped forward, a bit paler than he’d been before he showed the tape. “Given recent evidence, we can safely assume that tape was of them removing three of (Y/N)’s fingers.”

Whoever had thrown up heaved again, the sick splattering sounds tame in comparison to what everyone else had just heard.

Marcus was the first to speak. “We’re finding them. Right now.”

———

You had lost all sense of day and night, and your only indicator of time was when your single meal arrived. A metal tray shoved under a flap in the thick metal door. Your food was typically meager and rotten, but you ate like a man starved. Mostly because in the beginning you had been.

As you crawled towards the tray, the chains binding your thick leather collar to the wall clinking, you tried your best to keep the weight off your left hand. Two weeks ago, the cruel men who’d kidnapped you had cut three of your fingers off and left you with nothing to fix the bleeding stumps. You’d eventually resorted to ripping up a pant leg to bind your hand and staunch the bleeding.

Today’s meal was a few bites of stale bread and a quarter serving of stone cold soup. You kept pace in eating, knowing that scarfing it all down would result in vomiting. And in the first months, it had. Your cell still stank from how much you’d thrown up in there, but it was buried among the other smells. Not that you could even smell it now.

You drank half the water they gave you, and used the other half to wash out your hand. It was the first major injury they’d given you, and you’d tried to take care of you. Despite your tending and the daily washings out, the hand was swollen and red, the site of the injury a sick sort of yellow with spots that were actually turning brown. It was burning hot to the touch and oozed something that reeked, even in the disgusting cell. You’d be lucky if you’d be able to keep the hand. Hell, you’d be lucky to keep the whole arm at this point.

“I’ll be lucky if I don’t die here,” you said bitterly to yourself, ripping another long strip of fabric off your discarded pants with your teeth and slowly wrapping up your hand, biting back tears. The only fingers left were your index and thumb, and they didn’t look good.

When your body succumbed to exhaustion, you curled up on the threadbare mattress and used the single moth bitten blanket to preserve body heat. Sleep was easy and dreamless now, and you often woke at the smallest of sounds. Like the man walking past your cell every so often, maybe every half hour? You wished you had a watch. You wished you had many things. Shivering beneath your blanket, you curled closer into the corner and wished for Marcus.

Marcus was not there when your eyes opened. You woke up to the harsh scrape of the door opening and two men grabbing you to drag you out. You kicked and screamed, but it did nothing. The men were stronger than you, and in your starved state, you were too weak to do much more than flail.

A rough scrap of fabric was tied around your face, killing your vision. A second one followed quickly, sitting uncomfortably between your lips and silencing your voice. Your feet didn’t want to carry you, so the men did it for you, carting around your dead weight as if it were nothing.

Just as suddenly as they’d lifted you, the men put you down, and you whined as harsh lights filled your eyes when the blindfold was removed. You were at the start of a long white hallway, branches of the hall snaking out and around. Had they put you in a maze?

A harsh jolt around your ankle sent you shrieking, kicking your feet to attempt to dislodge the heavy ankle bracelet you wore. It didn’t move, and a sharper stab raced up your leg as you danced around like you were possessed.

Finally, you started to run, racing down pristine white corridors and working yourself dizzy. You unwrapped your hand, hoping the dripping blood and pus would help guide you, like a gory version of Theseus’s yarn. But all it did was confuse you until every hallway was filled with smeared bodily fluids and you had no way to turn.

You had no idea how long you were in the maze. Hours? Days? Time was irrelevant here. Whenever you tried to stop, to rest or to find reprieve from the stabbing pain in your feet, the ankle bracelet would shock you harder and harder until you moved again. The blinding lights never dimmed, and finally, finally, your body gave out.

The anklet shocked you once, twice, three times and then yet again for good measure. All you did was twitch, lying exhausted on the floor, the world underneath you spinning like an out of control carousel. “Marcus,” you croaked, your dying voice a harsh scrape in your throat. You hadn’t had water in hours, was it hours? Spots swam through your vision as two people in white coats came to collect you, putting your limp body on a stretcher and wheeling you away. You were tossed into a cell, this one whiter and lighter than your last one. You had no time to investigate the new room as one person, the woman, poured water down your throat while the other shackled you to the wall again. The woman checked your vitals and wrote down some numbers while the man used white bandages and soft gauze pads to cover the ruin of your left hand. You weren’t coherent enough to tell if he’d put any disinfectant on the wound, but you could guess that he didn’t. No one here was that kind to you.

“Rest,” the woman said, putting a hand on your head in what you assumed was her idea of comfort. “We’ll try it again later.”

You couldn’t even argue as your body shut down, plunging you into the darkness of your dreamless sleep.

When you woke, it was not to the scientists or the bad men. It was to faint gunfire and a large figure bursting into your new cell. You scrambled upright, immediately tossing your hands up to protect your face, knees hugged to your chest to make yourself small and heavy. But no blows came, no rough hands touched your skin. Only soft shuffled footsteps and labored breathing. Braving a peak, you saw a man silhouetted by light, the familiar outline of katanas over the person’s shoulders breaking your heart.

“Marcus,” you said weakly, uncurling. As your eyes adjusted and the door slowly began to close, you were able to take Marcus in fully. He looked a wreck, exhaustion written all over his face and a broken expression twisting his usually kind features. He fell to his knees, and you crawled forward to meet him, throwing yourself into his arms and letting yourself be wracked by sobs for the first time in months. Your malnourished and anemic body shook violently, but you had never felt more steady, cradled in Marcus’s embrace.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Marcus breathed, voice unsure and wavering.

You shook your head. You had no words, no ability to speak right now. Instead, you just pressed yourself tighter to him, tears ruining his shirt. You could barely register Marcus cutting through your collar and discarding it on the floor.

Marcus stood, cradling your broken body to his chest. He carried you out, past other heroes who all fell silent at your current condition. Marcus lay you down on a stretcher once you were outside and rode with you to the hospital, holding your unruined hand the entire time. You focused only on his grip, grounding yourself to it. You would be okay as long as Marcus Moreno was holding your hand.

The next few days were very fuzzy. You were in and out of an operating room, usually asleep and always drugged. After so long in pain, the gentle numbness of not being hurt was worrying. You had been right, half of your left arm had been too badly damaged to salvage. Below your left elbow now lay nothing, no hand to hold and no fingers to squeeze. Marcus held your right hand instead, pressing kisses into your palm and slowly running his thumb over your knuckles while he read.

Aside from the arm, your injuries had been few and far between. A couple scrapes that needed disinfectant, a broken rib that had healed incorrectly and needed surgery, and the rubbed raw skin of your neck that had been healed. You’d slowly begun to gain weight again, no longer skin and bones. Your hair, which had been greasy and matted, had been shorn off and was now regrowing. Your body had finally begun to rework its circadian rhythm, your sleeps lining up with the rise and fall of the sun.

Marcus took a breath beside you, his thumb absently circling over your index knuckle as he read. He’d been touching you in some way ever since you’d been found. Gentle hands touching yours while he watched TV, shoulders pressed together when he told you about Missy, the softest of kisses against your temples when your head hurt. You smiled, turning to Marcus and blinking slowly. He’d been working for weeks to restore your smile, and now you had it back, albeit shaky and nervous.

“What’s that look for?” Marcus asked, turning to you, one corner of his mouth rising slightly in amusement.

Your grin only grew. “You,” you said. “I love you.”

Marcus leaned forward, turning so he was fully facing you. “The day you were taken,” he said softly, taking your right hand in both of his. “I was so scared. It was two weeks before your birthday, remember? And I had been bursting with joy, because we were going to spend the evening together, just you and me.”

“Marcus,” you interrupted quietly. “What are you saying?”

“Hush dear, indulge me,” Marcus insisted, moving one hand to trace his knuckles across the curve of your cheekbone. “That night, on your birthday, I was going to ask you something. Something that would’ve changed our lives forever. I’d spent months planning, making sure the night would be perfect, and then the universe stole you from me.”

You sighed, wishing you could cup Marcus’s face in your hands. Instead, you settled on resting your only hand on his right shoulder. He put his hand against yours, the warmth seeping into your skin. “Now,” he continued. “I wish I could ask you as easily as I had wanted to. This has all brought to light how precious you are to me. How much you make me happy. Darling, my light and my love, I want to be beside you forever, and I want you at my side. We will stumble, that I’m sure of, and there will be days where we will hate the very ground the other walks upon. But I’m willing to risk the fleeting bad for the abundant good.” He reached into his pocket and produced a slender ring made of twisted silver and shining gemstones. “Will you marry me?”

You had no words. Looking at Marcus, who was so sincerely pouring his heart out, you felt some kind of shame that you had no response except shock. Not shock that he was proposing, because you two had briefly talked about marriage. No, you were shocked at his emotion. His heart wrenching tone. The look of worry on his face as you sat there, silent.

It took a minute, but you finally managed to compose yourself long enough for a very strangled sounding “Yes.”

Marcus’s face brightened as you nodded, both of you tearing up. “Here,” he said, sliding the ring onto your ring finger. “It’s beautiful.”

You smiled, pulling Marcus close and hugging him as tight as you possibly could. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Marcus breathed, embracing you as firmly as you had him. “I’m so glad I get to say that to you again.”

The pair of you spent the rest of the day pressed against each other, Marcus getting into your bed with you as you drifted in and out of sleep. While he watched some horribly violent fantasy TV show, you dozed against his shoulder, the gentle hug of the ring on your finger a constant reminder that no matter what threats came your way, you would always have Marcus.

#we can be heroes #marcus moreno #marcus moreno x reader #marcus moreno x you #Pedro Pascal #My writing

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pasiphile · 4 years ago

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idk if this is something you've either a) ever felt the desire to talk about (if not, please excuse the curiosity!) or b) talked about before, but how do you go about writing your ep(f)ics? it's one of those things i've always been curious about because there's plenty of chat about how to start an original novel and plot it etc but usually a good chunk of those hypothetical word counts come down to character building, which is less relevant in fic. any thoughts?

I don’t mind at all! Especially because after writing four (five?) of these fuckers I finally feel like I got the hang of how I actually tackle them.

(that is, the general method. If you're asking about knowing what scenes to write/how to decide what actually happens, there I can't help you. Imo, that's just a case of having imagination)

First a caveat, though: I don’t write chronologically. I know people who do, and honestly it seriously impresses me, but it’s not something that I can do. If you can write chronologically, please do, because you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches. But if you’re like me and you just hop around...

So basically I start out with a vague idea. In Laws that was picking up after ACWNR and showing how they got from there to the point at the start of the series, for TVD it was I wanna show Moriarty’s pov for most of the series, and for the Untamed it was what if post-canon someone starts fucking around with the Yin Metal again. Basic, huge ideas, that give me a start, a middle and an ending.

This is also the point where some people outline. Again, if you can, great! do it! give yourself structure! I personally keep trying and it never works so I’ve given up, and try to keep track in my head instead.

Once I’ve got the basic idea, I basically just... start writing. By which I mean, more specifically, that whenever I have a bit of free time I retreat into daydream-land and start imagining things that might happen. Anything might be a jumping-off point there; a thing I read in another story, an interesting meta I read, a detail I saw in canon. Anything that fits the general storyshape.

(A lot of those scenes start their life in the space before I fall asleep).

The trick after that is to get to a keyboard asap, before I forget what I actually had in mind, and write it down (this is also why fic fragments tend to show up in the notes app of my phone). Once I start writing those down, usually I go beyond what I initially thought of - they write themselves, in a way.

If you do that often enough, eventually you’ll end up with a critical mass of scenes. I do try to put those scenes roughly in the right place, chronologically, but that’s only an estimate. This phase two is basically one giant shuffle game: trying to see which scenes can follow on which, whether there’s a logical connection between them, and then cut-paste and adapt all over the place.

I don’t actually edit in this phase, to be clear. I might put in a placeholder and a note if I have an idea what needs to show up to make two scenes link to each other, but I don’t go any deeper. At this point, you need a bird’s view on your story.

Once that’s in place, I start the hard work, which is taking those scenes and turning them into a coherent whole. Basically I just start reading at the start (of the story/chapter) and then run through the story as if I’m watching a series. The bulk of it has been written by now, so I now have room to write in the connective bits, the references to previous happenings, more internal thoughts and reflections...

And at the end of that phase, you’ve got something that resembles a (clunky, messy, occasionally weird) story.

So then I reread. This is usually when the bigger things start showing up, the character arcs and relationship-building. Some of that is already present, but it isn’t until I’ve got the whole thing in front of me that I actually start seeing the patterns. I try not to edit straight in the text at this point (which is why I often put the file in epub on my ereader, so I don’t get tempted) and take notes about general trends. Detailed editing is later.

(sidenote: fanfic needs less character building than original fiction, but you still need character development. if you’re writing an actual long thing instead of series of vignettes or one-shots, the way the characters are at the start can’t be the way they are in the end. Something’s gotta change, both in terms of characterisation as in relationships, otherwise you’re just going to end up with a boring story.)

And once that’s done, the process starts over, basically. Based on the notes, I start writing missing scenes and shuffling around scenes again if needed, and while I’m at it, I also try to edit the more detailed things. Said editing process keeps going until right at the end: I line-edit in AO3 one last time, just before I post, with the chapter copy-pasted from words straight into the drafts there.

Is this an efficient, logical or neat system? Fuck no. But it’s the only one that works for me, and I’ve gotten some good results with it.

It is, however, a rather intuitive system, because I know roughly how stories work, how tension and character building works etc. When I read, I tend to sense where it needs a cliffhanger, or a spanner in the works, or a big dramatic reveal. If you don’t have that sense (which honestly, I think you can only get if you read/watch/consume shitloads of fiction) you’ll need a way more structured approach - but those have never worked for me, tbh.

TL;DR

Phase 0: have an idea. can be as vague as you want, but try to know the beginning, middle and end of the story.

Phase 1: just fucking write. give no fucks about writing ‘complete’ scenes, just put it down on the page, even if it’s just a dialogue fragment. try to put things roughly in the right place but don’t spend too much thought on that. Put all your energy into imagining things, and then scribbling them down as soon as possible before you forget them again.

Phase 2: shuffle. Move the scenes around until you’ve got an idea what happens and in what order. Don’t bother edting. Just try to get one coherent plotline going.

Phase 3: read-and-write. Start from the beginning and walk yourself through the story, writing as much connective bits and embellishing everything you can.

Phase 4: read-and-check. Read your story as if you were a reader, not the author, and try to see if it makes sense, what the characters’ arcs are, what the story tension is like, and what’s happening plotwise.

Phase 5: Adjust accordingly, ie Rinse and repeat.

#Anonymous #Writing #Writing 101

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kurtstinypurse · 4 years ago

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27 with klaine, I’m begging

#27 - Kisses exchanged while one person sits on the other’s lap.

I’ve actually had two anons request this one, so I’m making this a part 2 of my last prompt, with coworkers!klaine - per popular demand ;-)

read the first part here

Blaine can’t remember how they got here.

The vague logistics are obvious - he knows they left the bar together, remembers the cab ride from the way Kurt’s palm felt like a searing brand where it rested heavy on Blaine’s upper thigh, but the rest of it has blurred together, entirely unimportant.

It’s all pointless when it’s led him to Kurt’s apartment, on Kurt’s couch, on Kurt’s lap, kissing him.

More than kissing him, actually: fingers of one hand knotted in Kurt’s slightly sweat-dampened hair, other hand rucking up Kurt’s sweater and searching out his skin, soft and smooth and irresistible, alternating sucking Kurt’s bottom lip into his mouth and then his top one, rocking his hips down slowly, infuriatingly slowly, somehow holding himself back enough to allow the heat to build instead of rushing through it.

And he feels Kurt underneath him, too, the way Kurt’s fingers shakily unbuttoned Blaine’s cardigan moments ago and shoved it off his shoulders without so much as breaking their kiss, the way he now has his hands on Blaine’s ass, encouraging him along to ride the undulating waves of the friction they’re creating together, already so much but nowhere near enough.

They’ve barely spoken since they kissed - in fact, it had been an unspoken agreement to leave and to share a cab and for Blaine to come up to Kurt’s apartment, and it’s odd, really, how certain of all of it Blaine had been.

How certain of all of it he still is.

But he’s certain, too, that he needs more, and he’s pretty sure Kurt does, too, from the way he throws his head back against the couch cushions with a shaky breath of a moan when Blaine begins to mouth across Kurt’s jawline and down his neck, taking his time sucking slow, purposeful kisses everywhere he can reach, on every bit of skin that’s exposed.

If he were completely sober, Blaine would be reveling in the fact that he’s even being allowed to do this, that he’s learned the softness of Kurt’s lips and the salty-sweet taste of his skin, that he’s beginning to learn the way Kurt sounds when he moans and the feeling of Kurt’s cock hard and pressed against his own, even through their pants.

But he’s not sober - he’s not entirely wasted, plenty coherent enough to know what he’s doing and that he wants this and that Kurt wants it, too, but he’s drunk enough to be able to put the wonder and amazement and every other thought out of his mind and focus on this, on figuring out how to make Kurt feel good and actually making it happen.

The rest will come later.

So Blaine pulls back enough to look at Kurt, lifting slightly up on his knees on either side of Kurt’s lap and pressing Kurt further into the back of the couch, leaning their foreheads together, their breathing coming hot and ragged between them - and Kurt looks incredible like this, cheeks flushed from booze and heat and desire, eyes dark and lust-blown with only a ring of dark blue left visible around his pupils, mouth kissed red and swollen and god, what Blaine wouldn’t do to see those lips wrapped around-

“Blaine,” Kurt breathes out in a stuttered exhale, his hands sliding up to rest on Blaine’s bare chest, up under his undershirt, and Blaine realizes he’s just been staring, realizes he’s gone still, realizes that Kurt is nearly trembling underneath him, and Blaine needs to-

He needs to do something.

In as fluid of a motion as he can manage, Blaine pushes himself up off of the couch and up off of Kurt, instead sliding down onto the floor in front of him, gently pressing at both of Kurt’s knees to encourage his legs to part - and he can’t help but feel a tiny thrill at the way they fall open so readily, at the way he can hear the hitch of Kurt’s breath and possibly even a soft whimper, too.

There’s no way to describe how it makes Blaine feel other than powerful, like he’s in control of giving this to Kurt, of taking him apart in hopes of putting him back together, and Kurt is letting him do it, trusting him to.

The powerful feeling persists through his uncoordinated efforts to unlace Kurt’s boots and pull them off, then the sloppy awkwardness of their joint maneuver in getting Kurt’s pants off, too, and then-

And then Kurt’s fingers are twisting in Blaine’s curls, pulling him closer as he leans in to ghost his mouth along the outline of Kurt’s cock straining in his underwear, sucking briefly at the head of it, reveling in the taste as well as the moan that it elicits, low from Kurt’s throat.

Again, if Blaine were sober, he’d want to take his time - draw it out, strip Kurt naked and kiss and savor every part of him, and as much as he still wants that, hopes he’ll have another chance to do it, maybe, someday, he’s far too impatient, the anticipation of months of possibly-mutual stolen glances built up for far too long.

There’s no hope of waiting another second.

And so Blaine reaches to hook his thumb under Kurt’s waistband and tug his underwear long enough to free his cock, to wrap his hand around the length of it, then wasting no time taking it into his mouth.

The weight of Kurt on his tongue, the feeling of his lips stretching around him is incredible, turning Blaine on beyond belief as he sinks as far down as he can manage, and he can’t help but moan at the combination of all of it, nearly overwhelming his senses.

It’s been a long time since he’s done this, not just been intimate with someone but ached so desperately to give. He’s a thousand times more focused on Kurt’s release than his own, and though he’s achingly hard and feels himself straining against the fly of his pants, it doesn’t matter - all that matters is the way Kurt reacts when Blaine swirls his tongue around the head of his cock, the way Kurt moans when Blaine takes him in deeper, the way Kurt begins to tremble underneath him, fingers digging more insistently into Blaine’s curls.

But by the time Kurt is shifting restlessly and panting and moaning underneath Blaine’s hands and his mouth, Blaine is becoming more desperate, too - he reaches down to unbutton and unzip his pants, shoving them down past his hips far enough to slip his hand under his briefs and jerk himself off, too, not caring that it’s his own touch because it’s still connected, still in rhythm with what he’s giving Kurt, still on the path to the pleasure and the heat and the release that they’re searching for together.

“Blaine, I’m- Stop, I-”

Kurt sounds completely and utterly undone, and when Blaine pulls off to look up at him, he looks it, too - debauched and lost in the feeling of all of it, and Blaine did that, Blaine made him this way.

And Blaine needs to pull him through it.

He makes the split decision to push up off of the floor and climb back onto Kurt’s lap, one hand pressed into the couch cushion beside Kurt’s head, knees once again straddling his lap, taking another moment to look at him, to breathe him in and look and memorize just in case, before he leans their foreheads together and reaches down to grasp Kurt’s cock in his hand again, intent on bringing him over the edge.

Even untouched, Blaine is too wound up to properly kiss Kurt while he does it, instead staying impossibly close as their breaths mix hot and heady between them, as he pays attention to Kurt’s soft noises and whimpers to know when he has the right grip, the right touch, as he feels Kurt’s hips bucking up underneath him with an intensity that proves he’s right there at it, close, almost.

When he feels Kurt’s hand snake between their bodies to find Blaine’s cock, too, wrapping around it with surprisingly sure, steady fingers, Blaine is done for, too.

It takes only a handful of strokes for him to come, spilling hot over Kurt’s fist as his orgasm sparks through him like a firework, bright and bold and in pure technicolor, leaving him shaking and breathless and collapsing against Kurt’s body, just in time for him to feel Kurt come, too, and Blaine is close enough to feel it ripple through Kurt’s body, only letting go of Kurt’s cock to clutch him nearer, pressing as close as he can possibly get.

“Oh my god,” Kurt laughs shakily once they’ve begun to come down from it, and Blaine hums in agreement, pressing slower, gentler kisses to Kurt’s jaw, as if it can soothe him, help him, ease him back out of it.

“Was that okay?” he asks quietly, feeling like he should, as he musters all of his energy to lift up enough to look at Kurt, feeling weak and boneless but just needing to check, needing to be sure.

“So okay,” Kurt breathes, rocking up enough to capture Blaine’s lips in a kiss, softer and sweeter than any they’d shared before, making Blaine’s toes curl at the tenderness of it and of the weight it holds - a silent affirmation that this isn’t it, that they can be more, that this is just the beginning.

And Blaine allows himself to sink into it, reveling in the feeling instead of being afraid by it, instead of questioning it, only pulling away when it’s turned into a press of their smiles more than anything else.

Of course, there’s one more thing.

“Did you- Did you really already know who I was?” The question comes out sounding tentative, but Blaine is suddenly desperate to know, slightly afraid of the answer, unsure of what it means either way.

Kurt smiles slowly, lazily, shifting to lay down on the couch and tugging Blaine down along with him, pulling him close.

“Blaine Anderson,” he murmurs, and Blaine has never loved his name more, has never heard it quite like this, like the beginnings of the melody of a soft, sweet song that only Kurt knows how to sing. “I did a project with Tina, back a couple months ago. She talks about you a lot.”

He can’t help but laugh at that, a breathless, genuine giggle bubbling up and out of his chest, and he tucks his face into Kurt’s neck just because he can - just because he can.

“I didn’t know yours until I overheard it tonight,” Blaine admits softly, feeling silly and oblivious for it, for not having known, for not having thought to ask Tina long ago. “But I... I’ve been seeing you around the building for months now, and I just... There’s something about you.”

Kurt lets out a soft, happy hum, trailing his fingers up and down Blaine’s back, tracing small, weaving patterns along the path.

“Something good, I hope.”

Lifting his head up, Blaine feels no hesitation in pressing his lips to Kurt’s in a slow, languid kiss, whispering the words into it when he speaks.

“Better than I ever could have expected.”

#part 2 to the other one!#coworkers klaine #definitely just smut #but with some feeling at the end!#klaine #kurt hummel #blaine anderson #glee #my fic #klaine fanfic #klaine fanfiction #prompt game

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hangingslothcentral · 4 years ago

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Here’s what writing an episode of Spirit Box Radio looks like...

If you’ve ever wondered how episodes of Spirit Box Radio are written, here’s a little overview of that process!! If you like this, I can also write up a similar breakdown of the sound design process!

Most, but not all, episodes are born in the ‘Episodes’ section of the Show Bible. The Show Bible is a document of epic proportions - 50k in length and growing every day - which contains all the essential information about the show, from the continuously evolving methods I use to edit different character voices as I learn more and more about audio editing and production, right to ‘sketches’ of the episodes for all three series of the show. There is also a large section called ‘Ideas and Notes’, where I’ll write freeform dialogue between characters and keep track of themes and ideas to try and keep them consistent. These are all numbered, and referenced in a seperate spreadsheet I have of all the characters with significant and/or speaking roles in the show.

The full break down is under the cut!!!

The grandaddy of the the plans in the Show Outline, where I go over all of the main ideas I want to be talking about in the show and roughly mark out the outline of the shape of each season. The first draft of the Show Outline was very messy and rough, but subsequent versions are broken down into Season-by-Season chunks, all talking from a multi-series perspective so as to place the ideas of the show along a three-series-long arc.

Season Outline

Season Outlines take those ideas for the shapes of the series from the Show Outline and refine them further from a beginning-to-end-perspective. I'm a goal-oriented writer, which means my story ideas tend to come from a very ‘the end’ kind of place, and the stories that lead up to that ending are all about serving that ending. Quite often the ending itself changes a long over the planning and writing process for me, but that’s the great thing about a plan! Once you have it, you can change it if you need to. What a plan does, however, is provide you with a framework for understanding what bits of a story you have, and what bits you still need to make.

The three seasons of Spirit Box Radio are quite deliberately split into two halves. There are lots of reasons why and one of them is that it gives you a very specific kind of shape to be working from. A season with a mid-season break has a part one which has it’s own escalation of tension and climax, which comes at the mid-point of the season-long escalation, where the story might otherwise sag a little.

Beyond splitting the plan into Parts 1 & 2, I typically also break episodes into ‘Blocks’. This is partly practical; I can refer in conversations with my guest writers to where it falls in a specific block of episodes, and where that block fits in the story as a whole, and it also makes splitting up the episodes for sending out scripts to my actors a lot more straight forward. Part 1 of Season 1, for example, was broken into three blocks; episodes 1.1-1.7; 1.8-1.13; 1.14-1.20. I won’t go into detail about how this effects the structure of the episodes themselves, but it’s usually about building characters up to making a certain decision, or following a certain subplot more closely before pulling away.

Episode Sketch

A ‘sketch’ is a very brief summary of what needs to happen in that specific episode. This can be concrete, like ‘find [x] item’, or vague, like ‘establish that Character A has Trait Y’. Sometimes I’ll make a note to include a specific sound or character beat, or I’ll reference a noted scene from the ‘Ideas and Notes’ i think would fit in there. It’s usually at the sketch summary stage that I figure out whether or not there will be other characters in a specific episode. The sketches for almost all of the episodes in Season One were written between August and October 2020.

Episode Plan

This stage takes those necessary elements from the sketch and fleshes them out into a coherent story. The key thing about podcast episodes is that they have to be able to be entertaining on their own, minute by minute, as well as serving the whole series (I talked a lot more about this in the last episode of Hanging with the Sloths on Patreon which is only £2/equivalent pcm to access if you’re interested!!)

Whilst I’m making my episode plan, I’ll look back at the sketches for the episode I’m working on and those before and after it, and refer to the series outline where I can, to make sure I’m keeping a handle not just on the individual pacing of the episode, but the pacing of the show overall.

I like to have Episode Plans done by about a month before I need to have a script finished.

The Script Itself

Spirit Box Radio scripts are either agonising or happen in the blink of an eye. I do not have a set approach to how I write an episode. Sometimes the plans come with sections of dialogue written months before and I’ll drape the rest of the episode around those moments and see where I end up. If there is a character other than Sam in an episode, I’ll typically attempt to write that section of the script before the rest, so that I’ll definitely have it locked by the time I need to send it to the actors.

Any script that is for other actors (i.e. not me) has to have notes, direction, and additional information included to help the actors give their best performance. That’s difficult sometimes because I guard my show secrets closely, so it’s often a game of working out how much I can tell an actor without including spoilers for later important plot points unless absolutely necessary, and how to supplement gaps in their information. I’ll usually compare a character to a character from something else as a shorthand for performance.

This means there are two versions of every script which needs to be seen by people who aren’t me. My scripts, which I call the master scripts, have all my audio cues, breaks for drinking water in recording sessions, character notes that are Top Secret, sound scaping ideas, specific sounds I’ll need to use at different moments, and specific audio cues. As I get better at sound design, my version of the script only gets messier and messier to look at. Sometimes, when I’m writing scripts, I’ll actually even start with sound design notes now!!

Script Locking

This is the point at which a script can no longer be changed. Scripts with other characters in them have to be locked before scripts for just Sam, because they need to go out to actors and I need to ensure that I have time to go back and ask them to redo things if necessary, and also to make sure they have proper time to rehearse and organise read-throughs as they’d like to. That means sometimes sections of an episode are locked way before other sections are even written. This can be challenging as a writer because sometimes I’ll come back to a section which I know still needs work, and find I’m extremely limited in what I can do because I’ve already sent an actor a script to record from - sometimes for later episodes, I’ll have the lines from otheres already recorded and ready to go before I finalise some of Sam’s lines for a specific episode.

Sam is recorded a minimum of three weeks before an episode is due to air, and I’ll record in 3-episode stints, usually. I like to have the scripts locked a week before I record so I have time to read them through at my own pace, but sometimes I won’t manage to have them locked until three days out. On one hateful occasion, I threw out an entire script after I’d recorded an episode and re-recorded the whole thing the day before airing. I do not recommend doing this and whilst I am much happier with the result it was an agonising experience because once I’d rewritten and re-recorded that episode I then had to edit it before it was due for release, a process which takes about six hours minimum. I was making tweaks until 20 minutes before the episode went live. Do not recommend.

Editing

Speaking of editing, the final stage of writing an episode actually happens in the cutting room. Sometimes episodes are simply Too Long. Sometimes stuff that worked on paper just don’t work in audio. Sometimes I can’t say a word correctly for the life of me and have to cut a whole sentence to cover it over. More rarely, but still often enough an occurence it bears mentioning, I’ll realise in the editing process that a conversation is better in a different order than the one given in the script, and pull and move around the dialogue to adjust the flow. Sometimes I’ll move sections about a bit to accomodate similar problems with narrative flow.

Annnnd that’s it! That’s what the process looks like!

#spirit box radio #spirit box radio podcast #writing #audio drama #behind the scenes #writing process #show runner

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funkymbtifiction · 5 years ago

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Regarding low Te and writing. What writing software do you use to help you with structuring your plot and drafts if any? Could you in some post describe he drafting more in detail, please? I can't even write a simple fanfic because I have ideas, multiple plot lines... and then I lose the vision and can't bind the parts together. And I kind of do it all in my head and lose any interest for actually typing.

I’m afraid my writing process as an ENFP would not help you, because I free-write (meaning no outline and no draft) and pull it all together with Te.

Since you type as INFP, I asked a writer INFP friend for advice. She said she struggled a lot with this until she got into her 20s. She said inferior Te wasn’t creating the structure she knew she needed to make a story “work” (come out int the end) and her secondary Ne was “running rabbit trails all over the place and being Unhelpful.” She said coming up with a three-act framework beforehand helped her prove to herself that she could write something coherent and see it through, and then self-discipline helped her to stick with it all the way to the end. That’s how she finished her first novel. Now that she is more aware of how her Ne can plot things without conscious planning, she relies on it more and uses outlines less, but she still needs to be strict with herself in “knowing how this story is going to Work.”

She says you need to do the hard work of asking yourself if you have an actual story here, or just a barrel full of butterflies. Unless you have Te substance behind something (a sense of where it’s going, how it fits together, etc) your vague idea will go nowhere. Since you aren’t an ENFP, you cannot just jump in and end up with something that makes sense (Ne/Te) -- so you have to outline and then commit to self-discipline and actually overcome your laziness to finish writing it. She said your outline should also be a contract with yourself to finish it. “I am going to start my characters at point A and move them through points B and C, and then I am bloody well GOING to get them to point D.” Leave blanks along the way for Ne to fill in, but have an outline -- with one, you can tell if there’s enough cool ideas all the way through to keep you interested in writing. If not, fix it by adding new ideas. And don’t plan too heavily beforehand (as in, fill in too many details) because then there’s no surprises for your Ne to love. She said if you can’t fix the problems beforehand and have enough cool stuff to keep going -- you don’t have a story, plain and simple.

As for drafting, she says: I get up a word document and start typing, "okay, character X, character Y, character Z. character X wants--what? character Y wants--what? how are they going to get it? what's the problem. why do they clash." and then I keep riffing off of that, filling in motivations and emotions and backstory and whatever. and then I start a list of events, beginning with the beginning. This is all before I start the first draft. This stage is really where I figure out "if I have a story."

She recommends you study up on the three disaster format, also. It helped her a lot learn to structure a story so that she could get good enough to free-write more. (IE, if you can’t come up with three good disasters spaced out nice and evenly, then you KNOW you don’t have a story.)

Study outlines, get books on writing them and/or read articles. She doesn’t use writing software and neither do I, but once you are ready (a finished draft), run it through ProWritingAid. That taught me more in 6 months of feeling insulted when my story lit up like a Christmas tree than in decades of reading writing books all about editing, pacing, and structure. ;)

- ENFP Mod

#writing #infp #mbti

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bipercabeth · 5 years ago

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Hi you are such a good writer I was hoping you could give me some advice! I’m trying to write more consistently and more understandable for people to read, because I tend to just write my stream of consciousness and hope it sounds coherent but whenever I try to do that I totally lose my train of thought and the ideas I had trying to write it in a way people would understand? Idk if this makes sense, but how do you tackle writing out a story and not forgetting the details you want in it?

phew okay! i got all of these within 24 hours so i’m going to combine them and hope that i can answer them all. i’m both honored and terrified that i’m the person y’all came to for advice, that’s wild! i’ll do my best to be coherent. (also thank u ur all very sweet). i made a post about this a while ago, but it’s pretty half-baked. i’m putting this under a read more because i know it’s going to get out of hand.

as far as software, i don’t think you need anything more than google docs! it’s what i use for everything and it’s so functional. you can access it from any device with internet, it automatically saves, the mobile app is decent, it’s easy to share, easy to format, and you can download different docs to work on offline! the share feature is versatile depending on who is reading, so friends can just view and/or comment and betas can edit/suggest. it has never let me down.

plotting really is its own beast because it’s different for every writer. i’m just going to take you through my process and hope there are parts that will work for you! i’m also going to use examples from a few of my outlines (mostly roommates but i’ll probably dip into a bellarke one or two) to make more sense of what i’m sure is going to be a slightly feverish post. i really love plotting and talking about writing and i’m already getting excited.

with writing, there’s kind of a spectrum of plotters vs pantsers. plotters stick by outlines and planning out their writing whereas pantsers go by their gut. i know people who write both ways, and there’s no difference in the quality of their writing or plots! it’s just about what works best for each person. i’m a pretty hardcore plotter, but i leave myself room to improvise and for the story to grow.

okay, so my general first step once i’ve got an idea for a story is to open up a google doc, make a bullet point, and just word vomit every single idea i have onto the page. separate bullet points for each idea, but if i have multiple ideas that relate to each other, i indent to keep them together. the point of keeping similar things together is to make the next step easier: organize them. once it’s all on the page, put it in chronological order, or if your story has flashbacks, the order the scenes appear in. here’s an example of what i mean (from my bellarke superhero au):

it’s quite half-baked! pretty vague language, but it ended up being enough for me to write the scene. each indent further explains the point before, making it a lot easier to sort your thoughts and structure scenes once you get to them. it’s by no means a blow by blow account of what’s going to happen, but the language is just enough to make me recall what i was thinking when i wrote it.

after that, i look at what is usually several pages of scenes told through bullet points, and i start to look for common themes to separate them into chapters. this is also where i try to fine tune scenes and clear up any immediate plot holes i find. i try not to force myself to completely outline everything in the beginning because i end up changing several scenes anyway! sometimes you get to the actual writing part and realize a scene you thought was perfect misses the mark. sometimes you write and realize there’s a theme or issue you need to address through a specific moment. leave yourself some room to grow! this is also a great time to weave in parallels, callbacks, and important themes you want to include throughout the story.

this is usually where i start writing! if it’s a complex story with lots of research, formatting, or character building, i might take more time before jumping in, but these asks are fanfic-specific and fanfic tends to be pretty straightforward. for writing, i like to use a different doc than my outline. there’s less scrolling that way, and i find that having my outline open on the same screen while i’m writing really cuts into my flow. i end up staring at point a and point b trying to figure them out rather than starting at point a and letting the scene run it’s course. it’s much easier for me to switch tabs when i get stuck.

that’s the majority of my plotting process! i’m going to leave a few miscellaneous tips that have helped me immensely down below.

i find that certain things just don’t help me in an outline. scenery, description, and most body language are things i think about when i’m actually writing and fully immersed in the story. my outlines tend to be dialogue, bare-bones plot points, and quotes/lyrics/links for inspiration. dialogue comes very easily to me and sets the tone of the scene, so having it the outline helps me get into the flow of a scene, after which everything else follows. and if a whole scene of dialogue comes to you, why risk forgetting it? some of my best scenes have come from two pages of dialogue in my outline. sometimes you just know how a scene is going to go.

nobody is seeing your outline except for you and maybe a trusted friend or beta. it should serve you! there’s no right or wrong way to write a story, so find the things that work for you! there’s a lot of advice in this post, and it all works for me, but there are some people who wouldn’t benefit from any of it. a lot of figuring it out might be trial and error.

let yourself be indecisive! you don’t have to have every moment figured out right away, and some room to breathe usually serves your story better in the long run. i really didn’t have any clue where i’m going in either of these parts of my outline, but once i got to these points in roommates it became more clear what they needed to be.

finding inspiration to get back into a fic after a while away is really hard for me, so i like to leave myself reminders of art, other writing references, reminders of the Energy i’m going for, song lyrics, etc. like so:

writing can be stressful! make yourself laugh in your outline! most of these are me objectifying percy but it’s okay i’m valid

okay those are my general tips! i know it’s a lot! you might not use any of this! but i worked for a long time to find the things that work for me and maximize my ability to write, so i hope this makes the search a bit easier for people who are starting out. feel free to come to me with any writing problems you have, whether that’s through my inbox or dms. always happy to talk about it. happy writing!

#anon #iris messages #this was a doozy to write y'all i put a lot into this #i love posting new chapters bc everyone remembers i'm a writer and they send me their questions #that sounds sarcastic but i mean it i genuinely love talking about writing #my writing tips

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nothingunrealistic · 4 years ago

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as an anon talking about your fic, you write some pretty longs one that cover a lot of ground while overall staying on track, and do you happen to map fics out in a certain way, like an outline of scenes, or feel it out as you go? are there patterns in what feels inspiring and solid enough to be the foundation of a new fic? do you tend to think about ideas for dialogue or conflicts or broader themes and atmosphere first, is it easier for you to start with an idea that's really specific or vague?

oh i love these questions! gonna copy them so i can properly answer them one by one

do you happen to map fics out in a certain way, like an outline of scenes, or feel it out as you go?

it depends! if i’m writing something that’s long enough / takes place over a disparate enough set of times and places to be split into chapters, i’ll usually try to start with an outline of all the chapters (with titles if i have them - chapter titles are Very important to me) and bullet points of what i want to happen in each one. and rarely do i Already know exactly / fully what i want to happen in every chapter as soon as i think of the overall fic concept, so it helps to have an outline to add ideas to / figure out where new elements should go as i think of them. (the only real exceptions to this are a couple of deh fics that are multichapter but are also molded so closely to canon that i was pretty much able to write them as i went without having to map them out first.) if it’s a long or medium-length oneshot, i’ll likely have a bullet pointed list of what i want to happen (or at least a few notes), but i’ll write a lot as i go and sometimes fill in gaps between scenes with short notes about what should go there. (i do a lot of putting Things I Still Need To Write in brackets to be revisited later.) short oneshots (like prompt fics) are most likely to be written as i go without setting down a lot of ideas / notes beforehand - at most i’ll have a sentence or two about what i want it to be about and a few lines of dialogue that i want to include but haven’t figured out how to fit in yet. (i almost never write something completely in order. if i do, it’s because the whole idea came to me at once, complete with basically-intact chunks of prose, and i’m scrambling to get it out of my brain and onto a page as fast as possible. that doesn’t happen often, but it’s fun when it does.)

are there patterns in what feels inspiring and solid enough to be the foundation of a new fic?

the only real consistent pattern in what ideas can become full-fledged fics for me is that i almost always feel like i’m fixing something from canon - exploring a character, a relationship, or a theme that’s not examined / addressed enough already; filling in gaps in the events we get to see; explaining a detail that seems inconsistent with the story; addressing / rebutting some kind of common misconception about the story / characters / themes; or just taking a different path entirely because canon annoys me. (i’m mainly driven by spite, is what i’m saying.) this is why i mostly write fics for works that frustrate me in some way, and also why i write a lot of things that are canon compliant, or canon divergent but with the same setting and tone as canon, rather than completely divorced aus. (when i Do write aus, it’s because of that first point about wanting to explore an underserved character / relationship / theme.)

do you tend to think about ideas for dialogue or conflicts or broader themes and atmosphere first?

i guess broader themes (or at least the overall plot) first, since dialogue needs to fit into whatever story it is i’m trying to tell. like i mentioned, though, sometimes individual lines of dialogue will come to mind before i’ve fully fleshed out what it is i want to say. (and sometimes those lines might get discarded if they ultimately don’t fit with what i’m writing.) “conflicts” tends to get folded into either “themes” or “dialogue” for me, i suppose, and “atmosphere” isn’t necessarily something i specifically think about. if i’m writing something it’s because i want to make some kind of point, rather than just trying to convey a Vibe, though of course there are times where a specific Vibe helps make the point.

is it easier for you to start with an idea that's really specific or vague?

also something where It Depends! i’ve written a number of fics where the thing that pushed me from “discussing / complaining about canon with friends” to “actually writing and posting something” was one small detail from, or related to, canon that i wanted to build a story around. some examples:

the drum phrase from “be my baby” being a prominent motif in love in hate nation, which is set the year before “be my baby” was released

an article about rage rooms (which i read after a rage room was featured on billions) that mentioned someone crying after spending time smashing one up

will roland’s belief that jared and evan never spoke to each other again after good for you

the jared’s tech inspect video that sky lakota-lynch made

evan and jared both knowing what a consigliere is (i’ve written so many prompt fics based on scenes from the deh novel... i couldn’t Not use that bonus material somehow)

taylor’s strongly held and readily articulated opinions on rush’s best albums (i haven’t finished or posted this one yet but it’s In Process i swear)

with regards to broader concepts, i’ve already written one fic with the motivation of “what if a particular fic trope commonly applied to evan and connor was instead applied to evan and jared?” and am working on another. two different billions fics i’m partway through were inspired by youtube videos, which are more starting points for lots of character interaction than actually Dictating the interaction. lots of prompt fics i’ve written so far (and others i Intend to write) were basically just Manifestations of ideas about characters that i’d discussed at length with friends and finally decided should exist in a more coherent form. the only thing i don’t really do is setting out to write something with a General Fic Trope (mutual pining, hurt/comfort, etc) as the driving force / main point - those kinds of things certainly may be present, but whatever i’m trying to achieve is usually more specific than that.

(reblog if you write fanfic and would be totally down with your followers coming into your askbox and talking to you about your fic)

#inbox #anonymous #thank you!!

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rutilation · 5 years ago

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hi I have some theories about the Problematic Rock

In my essay for chapter 82, I said that I had settled on a theory of What The Deal Is With Cairngorm. My thoughts on the subject are a bit all over the place, so in the hope of presenting things in a coherent manner, I’ve laid out my thought process from the past eleven months or so in roughly chronological order, beginning with the nitpick that started it all. Welcome to my twisted mind, and all that.

For the most part, the way the series applies fantasy concepts to actual geology has been fairly sound. For example, tourmaline generates an electric charge when heated, so Melon radiates electricity when upset. Cinnabar the rock often comes out of the ground covered in native mercury, so Cinnabar the character is surrounded by magical floating mercury. Alexandrite turns red or purple in incandescent light, so the light the Lunarians give off changes Alex’s color and gives them a mood swing to boot. It’s exaggerated and fantastical, but it’s nonetheless grounded in some nugget of geology trivia which one might find on the back of a Snapple cap. But, Ghost and Cairn’s condition in the story does not line up with how phantom crystals work, even within the science-fantasy framework we’ve got going here. At first, I just filed it away next to other inaccuracies such as Antarc shouldn’t be able to trudge through snow without dissolving in a puddle of their own brine, much less dive into the ocean unscathed. However, if my theory(s) is correct, then this apparent lapse in the internal logic of the story might have in fact been deliberate foreshadowing. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, some context. Phantom crystals form by way of two distinct but related processes:

During a crystal’s formation out of a solution, its growth is temporarily halted for one of any number of reasons. During this time, dust falls onto the surface of the crystal. As the crystal begins growing again, these tiny debris become trapped within, and if the rest of the crystal is sufficiently transparent, the included material appears from the outside as the outline of a crystal within a crystal.

The other process to which this term applies involves color zoning, and is a bit easier to explain. During a crystal’s formation, the chemicals that make up the solution change slightly, and these impurities cause one part of the crystal to become a different color from another part. If the color zoning is concentric, and the different colors in question are visible from outside the crystal, it can be labeled a phantom crystal. Ghost and Cairn appear to be this second type.

So here’s what I’m getting at: a phantom crystal is not two separate crystals, in much the same way that the rings in a tree trunk aren’t a bunch of separate trees. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense for Ghost and Cairngorm to be two separate people, and if they are actually intended to be examples of this phenomenon, it raises some questions. For one thing, watermelon tourmaline forms via the exact same process of concentric color zoning I described in example number two; since you usually can’t see the pinkish part from outside of the green layer of crystal, it’s not often labeled a phantom crystal, but it’s the same phenomenon nonetheless. So, why is it that Cairn and Ghost are two different people, but the green and red parts of Melon aren’t? For that matter, why aren’t the two halves of Euclase two separate people? There’s certainly more of colorless-Euclase than there is of Ghost. If mere color zoning were enough, then why are Ghost and Cairn the only examples of highly-conjoined-twins amongst the cast? Unless of course, we weren’t given an accurate picture of how these two came to be, and there’s something fishy going on.

Of course, whether or not this little contradiction is actually meaningful wholly depends on if Ichikawa was even aware of the distinction as she was writing. As I recall she once said in an interview that she wasn’t very familiar with geology in the first place before she started writing hnk. But, like I said at the beginning of this essay, this is what got me started down the rabbit hole. From this observation arose two different trains of thought. One came to me pretty quickly, but the other took a few months to materialize.

The first idea that popped into my head when I realized that this inaccuracy could have been deliberate was that Ghost and Cairngorm might not be separate people, and there was some split-personality shenanigans going on. I’ll quickly list the things I think this theory has going for it with some bullet points.

Remember that one time, when Cairngorm referred to Ghost as their “former self?” And that other time, in the official translation of volume 6, when they referred to Ghost as their “other half?” That is rather curious terminology for referring to one’s sibling.

That one time in chapter 39, where Cairn repeated Ghost’s sentiment about being “tired of praying” verbatim, and the composition of the panels seemingly called attention to it.

It would serve to explain a certain contradiction in Cairn’s personality: despite their aggressive—and at times violent—demeanor, they nonetheless act like a total doormat in all the ways that really matter. They live their life according to someone else’s wishes, they’re quick to pass off decision making to others, and they fold under pressure pretty easily. What if Cairngorm is, in fact, Ghost’s idea of what being assertive is like, without any understanding of what it means to actually be independent or confident?

A common critique of the story is that Ghost’s character was rather perfunctory, and their death felt like a second-rate retread of Antarc’s fate. Well, if Cairn and Ghost are the same person, then they weren’t actually unceremoniously dropped from the story after all. Come to think of it, right before they were supposedly taken, Ghost said they wanted to change; what if they actually did?

As many of you have noticed, Ghost is one of the few characters who isn’t ProblematiqueTM . Doubtlessly, Ichikawa now regrets killing them off before they could do something kinda nasty. Even Antarc got the chance to cluelessly trample over Phos’s self-esteem before getting turned into road salt. But, if it were revealed that Ghost was actually the same character as creamed corn, then Ichikawa could drag their good name through the mud with one fell swoop. (I’m just trying to think from her perspective, guys! Her cruel, sadistic perspective…)

But ultimately, when I got around to wondering why on earth they would have a split personality in the first place, I found that this line of inquiry raised more questions than answers. Unlike my second theory, which mostly just raises answers.

(I know I just dumped a big tinfoil hat at my readers’ feet like a cat gifting its owner a decapitated bird, but please keep bearing with me, I’m not even halfway done.)

The idea that I’ve found to be the most fruitful came in the weeks following chapter 75. I’ve brought up this line from Aechmea multiple times (probably to the point of redundancy,) because it’s the biggest hint we’ve gotten so far that there’s some Cairn-related context we’re not yet privy to. And the more the narrative keeps reminding us of it—usually by way of Cairngorm bringing it up with varying levels of anxiety—the more it seems to be alluding to something important. So I got to thinking that whatever my little plot twist was, it would have to account for Aechmea’s cryptic bullshit. I put forward a couple preliminary ideas in my essay for chapter 75, but I’ve since discarded those in favor of my second theory.

So, somehow Aechmea knew Cairngorm before they came to the moon, and neither Cairngorm, (nor Ghost for that matter,) remembers meeting him. When I tried to think of how this could be possible, while also keeping in mind my little bugbear about phantom crystals, I developed a theory that’s much more pedestrian by the standards of the hnk fandom. I am of course, talking about the mysterious artificial gem experiments that the Lunarians conducted. That sure is a plot element which has been left dangling, huh? And since no one, least of all myself, believes Stinkmea when he claims that the experiments were a complete failure, it has been a favored pastime of people who write walls of text to speculate on who amongst the cast might have been planted on earth by the Lunarians; e.g. Obsidian, Antarc, new Morga and Goshe… I imagine someone at some point has even postulated that Phos themselves is from the moon. But, if you pay close attention to how Aechmea, and later, Barbata describe the process by which they attempted to create artificial gems, it lines up strikingly well with what we know about Ghost and Cairngorm, and it also serves to explain the geological inaccuracy I was talking about earlier.

Aechmea describes how the Lunarians tried to create their own gems by grafting pieces of gems they had captured from earth onto artificial bodies, and that they were dumped on earth before being retrieved after they showed no signs of life. Barbata also mentions it later, in more oblique terms. He’s speaking vaguely, but his warning to Phos feels a bit odd in its specificity. The use of the phrase “emotionally delicate” also raises my eyebrows a bit. I may be reading too much into this, but I feel that his hypothetical example is less hypothetical than he’s letting on. Perhaps, he is in fact referring to a certain someone in particular, who is emotionally fragile, and subsequently lost their sense of self after being subjected to this experiment. Hmmm…

So here’s what I think went down: once upon a time, probably before the current generation of gems had been born, there was a gem on earth who was just plain old colorless Quartz. I’m going to call them OG!Quartz. One day, OG!Quartz is captured by the Lunarians, and Aechmea uses them for his little gem experiment, probably with Barbata being the one to carry it out. He shaves off the outermost layer of OG!Quartz and discards the rest of them. Then, he grafts those pieces onto an artificial body made of black Quartz. The inclusions from OG!Quartz permeate into the artificial material, and thus Cairngorm is born. The Lunarians subsequently dump them on earth, at which point Kongou, who may or may not realize what’s going on, picks them up and names them Ghost Quartz, despite the fact that they didn’t come about via that process.

This would explain a lot of things. If so little of OG!Quartz was used to make Ghost Quartz, they would likely be unable to remember their previous life, or the ensuing events on the moon, for that matter. And since Cairngorm would be a newborn at the time, they wouldn’t be able to remember Aechmea either, thus solving the riddle of how Aechmea knew Cairngorm before they came the moon.

It would also clue us in to what Aechmea meant by love, why he was quick to swoop in and take advantage of Cairn, and why he kept Cairn’s original arm around. If they were the one success after a series of failed experiments, it’s possible that Aechmea feels a sense of ownership over Cairn, as if they’re his accomplishment. (Yikes.)

It would also explain another thing that has stuck in mind. The way Ghost was taken was kind of weird, wasn’t it? At the time, the Lunarians were being oddly particular about nabbing Ghost instead of Cairn. Usually, the Lunarians try to shatter the gems and be done with it, not shave a bunch of little pieces off the outside. Furthermore, Cairngorm was thoroughly wrecked by the end of that fight. The Lunarians could have easily grabbed them both and gotten away before help could arrive, but instead, they pushed Cairn off of the vessel and only took Ghost. If we assume though that Ghost and Cairn are the result of one of those gem experiments, the Lunarians actions during that battle start to make sense. Perhaps the Lunarians wanted to see if Cairngorm was alive in their own right, or if the pieces of Ghost were just dragging the rest of the body around. They wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from their distant vantage point. So, they nabbed Ghost and intentionally left Cairn behind in order to further observe their experiment.

(I should point out that when I say “the Lunarians,” assume I’m referring to Aechmea, Barbata, and perhaps a handful of other unnamed extras. Aechmea probably doles out knowledge of his obtuse schemes on a need-to-know basis, and I doubt people like Cicada, or Quieta, or Goshe’s gnarly skater friends know anything about this.)

Going back to this page, Cairn’s expression has stuck in my mind. They’re trembling, and have a fearful look on their face. By all accounts, even if what Aechmea just said was confusing, it should still be something Cairn would be happy to hear. But their immediate reaction is one of understated horror. It’s almost as if they intuited that there was something very wrong with that statement, even if they can’t put their finger on why. This leads us into another question that’s been on my mind which this theory might serve to explain.

In my very first essay about Caringorm, I ran into a bit of a wall when trying to figure out why Cairngorm’s personality is the way it is. I figured at the time that Cairngorm’s issues arose from having no agency for most of their life, and that their relationship with Ghost was perhaps much less amicable than we were lead to believe. And while it’s hard to argue that being a prisoner in their own body for most of their life hasn’t messed them up, I don’t think that’s the only thing going on here. Furthermore, as far as Cairn’s relationship with Ghost was concerned, we haven’t heard anything about it since, which leads me to believe that it’s not where the trouble lies. While I still stand by most of what I said in that essay—particularly about how Cairn’s dependency complex compels them to treat themselves as a vehicle for someone else’s desires—there’s a major aspect to all of this that I overlooked at the time. During their brief tenure in the series, Ghost exhibited a lot of the same issues that Cairngorm does now.

The way they talked about living life following Lapis’s orders—as if they were Lapis’s lackey rather than their partner, the way they latched onto Phos so strongly after they showed them the barest hint of interest, their abysmal self-esteem… It all seems eerily similar to Cairn’s issues, even if it manifested in a more muted fashion. So, why is it that Ghost exhibited some of Cairngorm’s maladaptive coping mechanisms, despite the fact that Cairn should have been the only one of the two who needed to develop them in the first place?

I haven’t exactly put too fine a point on it since I don’t live with the condition myself, and thus don’t want to risk putting my foot in my mouth, but I can’t really elucidate on this in a concise manner while dancing around the subject. Ever since chapter 68, I’ve been looking at Cairngorm through the lens of borderline personality disorder. Since they seem to check more and more boxes off the symptom list with each new chapter, I think it’s a useful lens through which to view them, whether or not it’s one that Ichikawa had in mind. But, BPD generally arises from trauma, to the extent that many psychologists see it as an alternate manifestation of PTSD. So, for the longest time, I’ve wondered how it was that Cairn and Ghost ended up the way they did. There’s no clear answer in the narrative at this point.

This brings us to what Barbata alluded to, that the process of trying to create an artificial gem was damaging to the minds of the those who were subjected to it. If Ghost and Cairn were (re)born as the result of something terrible, something that destroyed their sense of self, it might explain why they both have mental issues that are indicative of past trauma, despite those issues not having any obvious source. The only other possible source of trauma I can come up with is that the relationship the two of them had with Lapis might have been an abusive one. But if that were the case, then there should have been some buildup for it in the chapters following 67. And while Lapis and Ghost have barely been mentioned in the interim, there’s been a whole lot of incremental reminders that Aechmea’s a shady bastard who’s hiding something from Cairn. Where there’s smoke, there’s probably a fire.

Well, that’s about it. Thanks for sticking with this to the end; hopefully, I didn’t make too many flagrant leaps in logic. Ichikawa, if you would be so kind as to confirm my theories, and also let Phos peacefully live out the rest of their days with their snail friends, I would really appreciate it. See you all in the essay for chapter 83.

#houseki no kuni #land of the lustrous #im kind of nervous about posting this #but if we want the rewards of meaningful engagement with art #we must subject ourselves to the mortifying ordeal of posting crack theories

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whumpiary · 5 years ago

Text

[update: this drabble used to be two posts but has since been edited to be one coherent piece!]

content warning: referenced past drugging, implied/discussed drug abuse, paranoid thoughts.

Cass is sitting in J’s bedroom, trying to sleep despite the daylight creeping in through the blinds. He’d been confused at first when Josiah had shepherded him in and peeled the sheets back from the bed. When he hadn’t moved to lie down Josiah had said that he needed to put the house back together and Cass needed sleep and that neither would happen if Cass was lying on the couch. Cass felt a pang of guilt through his fog and hadn’t argued. He’d done enough arguing today.

He’s not sure if he sleeps but he’s certainly awake when there’s a gentle knock on the door, followed by a man with long blonde hair and a neatly trimmed beard letting himself him. Whatever Cass was expecting when Josiah said his friend was a doctor, this is not it.

“Hey there,” he says with an easy smile “Wasn’t sure you’d be awake”

Cass tenses, sitting up against the headboard and trying to look less vulnerable, less weak. He hates doctors. Hates them even more when they’re so casual. Trying to act like your friend. They weren’t friends.

“I take it you’re Mal,” he grunts.

“I take it your Cassius”

“Cass”

“Cass. Right,” Mal corrects. He’s got a relaxed grip on eye contact, holding Cass’ gaze a few seconds longer than should’ve been comfortable. There’s something vaguely familiar about the way this man hold his gaze and it settles in Cass’ gut with a rocking sort of unease. Despite himself, Cass looks away.

Mal sets his bag down on the desk with a thud. It’s one of those old leather ones that border on the line between outdated and cool depending on who’s carrying it. Cass rolls his eyes. Wanker.

“How’re you feeling, Cass?”

“What, what do you think?” Cass spits. The other man doesn’t miss a beat.

“I literally do not know, mate. I met you about thirty seconds ago.”

Mal sits down on the chair by the desk, a careful distance from Cass, and begins rolling up the sleeves of his henley, revealing a litany of old-school tattoos that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Sailor Jerry’s bottle.

“What?” Mal asks, smiling at Cass’ obvious stare. “Did Josiah fail to mention my rugged good looks?”

J had, in fact, failed to mention his doctor-friend’s rugged good looks. He’d failed to mention anything at all about Mal, actually. Cass had half expected a half-dead, half-deaf 67 year old racist who’d scribble a prescription for Valium without looking at him and head off again. Instead he was staring at a 30-something Adonis who looked like he oughta be on the cover of an alternative home-goods magazine selling kombucha.

“You just don’t, don’t really look like a, like a doctor.”

Mal nods like he’s used to that assesment.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m technically a nurse.”

Cass coughs a laugh, “It, it, it does, actually.”

“Thought it might,” he says, smile dancing back on his face “Now. Josiah said you took something?”

Any amount of warming Cass had been feeling toward Mal turned ice cold in an instant.

“I didn’t take shit.”

Mal shrugs, “Alright, well did someone else give you something?”

Cass’ head jerks up and he squints at Mal, trying to figure out the trick.

“You believe, believe me?“

"Well are you lying?”

“No.”

“Then I believe you,” Mal says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. He puts on a pair of blue-rimmed glasses, smiles like this is the only thing he’d prefer to do right now.

Cass stares at him. Right. Definitely not what he was expecting.

“So. If you didn’t take anything, did someone else give you something? Josiah, maybe?”

Cass’ heart falters and his eyes flit to the door. This is a trick. A trap. They’re tricking him into saying something against J so he can be thrown out or hurt or- he takes a deep breath and stops that particular train of thought. It was stupid. It was Josi- J - for God’s sake. And Cass’d named him, anyway, made him tell the truth. He knew J hadn’t given him anything.

He looks back at Mal, suspicious all over again. Why would he plant a thought like that?

“Wouldn’t he… wouldn’t he have told, told you if he gave me something?”

“Well, see, Josiah knows I’m not a huge fan of roofies, so I doubt it,” Mal says, rolling the desk chair closer. “Alright if I take your blood pressure?”

Cass nods blankly and shoves the sleeve of his shirt up to his shoulder, offers his arm.

“Do you, you, you think he gave me something?” he asks.

“Seems a little out of character but you’re the one that knows what’s going on here, so I figured I’d ask,” Mal straps the blood pressure cuff around Cass’ upper arm “This might be a little uncomfortable, but it’ll just be a minute.”

They’re silent for a moment as Mal pumps air into the tourniquet. He’s right, it is uncomfortable. Maybe not in the way that Mal thinks. The cuff tightens slowly with each pump, cutting the blood circulation in a way that feels far too much like a rough hand gripping too tight. What did you think was gonna happen, Ace?

Cass takes a deep breath, tries to remind himself where he is, who he’s with. “Is Mal short for, short for something?“

“Unfortunately, yes,” says Mal and smiles as he makes quick eye contact. “Malory.”

Hipster with a medical degree. ‘Course his name is Malory.

The cuff constricts a little more and so does Cass’ chest. What did you think was gonna happen, Ace? Deep breath.

“It’s not that bad,” he shrugs.

“It is when you’re middle name is Valerie.”

Cass snorts a laugh. He doesn’t care if it’s true or not. The distraction is welcome.

The fact Mal’s not actually touching him helps. The tattoos even more so.

Classic American sailor tattoos, thick dark outlines coloured with red and yellow, a little blue. Sparrows, an anchor, a swashbuckling lady, a dagger, a heart. Then the less conventional ones. An astronaut, a small cat, an umbrella, a tea cup. Cass’ eyes catch on a trio of roses on Mal’s left arm, warped slightly. Or rather, the skin is. Bubbled scar tissue sits uneven under the ink, spreading neatly along his inner arm, starting at the wrist, stopping before the crease of the elbow. You’d barely notice it if you weren’t this close. Cass leans a little closer.

“You admiring the artwork or the scar?” Mal asks in an even tone, his attention on the blood pressure gage. Cass pulls back away, quickly, cheeks burning hot with the shame of being caught staring.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“It’s alright, I don’t mind. It’s a good scar,” he says removing the cuff. Cass flexes his fingers as blood rushes back into them in a hot flush. Mal rolls his chair back to dig something else out of the bag. “It’s from when they cut me open to hardwire in this here biometric, fully automated, life-like mechanical hand”

Mal flexes his fingers, as if to show off the dexterity of each digit. Cass stares. Mal’s face splits in a stupid grin.

“I’m kidding,” he assures quickly “Hand’s real. It’s the foot that’s fake” And he knocks on his shin, the full thud of hollow plastic helping pitch the punchline.

Cass frowns, looks back down at the bed sheets. He feels like an idiot for nearly falling for it. But he’s tired and he doesn’t feel right and wasn’t this asshole meant to be helping? Not just fucking around? He feels even more like an idiot because everything Mal does makes him feel small and young and stupid. Like some kid, doe-eyed and staring, about to be tricked by Dad jokes and an easy smile.

“That’s a stupid, a stupid joke,” Cass mumbles. Like a fucking kid. God. There’s something about Mal that Cass can’t place, can’t pick and it keeps sending him off-kilter. Something familiar-but-not that he doesn’t want to think about.

“Yeah I know. Bad habit,” Mal is picking something else out of the bag now. “He holds up a stethoscope. “Give your chest a listen?”

“Do I have to take, take my shirt off?”

“Yeah,” Mal says with a deep sigh, apology etched into his face. “Unfortunately, while medical science has advanced far enough for me to hear through several inches of muscle, blood, and bone, we have not yet cracked the ability to also hear through a thin stretch of cotton, so…”

He gestures with his hand. There’s a beat. Cass remains thoroughly unimpressed. Mal sighs again, with another smile.

"Yeah I know, stupid joke. Leave your shirt on. I’ll get you to lean forward though, if you can”

Cass obliges silently. He fucking hates this guy, he decides. He hates the jokes and the hair and the tattoos and the one fucking foot. The painfully ‘not your average doctor’ vibe of him.

Complete wanker.

“I know, know what you’re doing,” he spits after a few moments of quiet. The other man hums an acknowledgement, moving the stethoscope to his back “With the, the, the jokes and the stories. Tryna be friend- be friendly. Just tryna get me, get me more comfortable so I’ll tell, I’ll tell you shit”

Mal sits back, taking the stethoscope from out of his ears. He’s got an impassive sort of look on his face that’s kind of annoying. “Is it working?”

“No. You’re not my, not my friend.”

“I’m not trying to be, mate, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on,” Mal holds his gaze as he says it. Piercing and ice blue, Cass is overcome with a feeling that he’s being looked into, gently inspected. That he doesn’t need to tell Mal anything. He already knows.

There’s a fear that grips Cass for a moment. J wouldn’t send a reader in without telling him, right? His eyes flit to the warped skin on Mal’s wrist. Hiding a mark?

Then the moments gone. Snapped in two like glass as Mal breaks his gaze to throw the stethoscope back in the bag.

“The stammer normal for you?” he asks, suddenly.

Cass blinks. “The what?”

“The stammer. You keep repeating, keep repeating yourself every few, every few words, like this, like this,” Mal demonstrates. The not-a-mechanical hand turns in the rhythm of his voice, like a conductor keeping time for an orchestra “That how you usually talk or is it new?”

Cass frowns, tries to think about how he’s been talking.

“Uhh… new, it’s new I guess,” he says. Mal hums low, produces a small pen light.

“Follow this with your eyes,” he says “What about the tremor? That new too?”

The flip between conversation and consultation is dizzying, but Cass does his best to oblige. There’s a faint feeling of nervous dread creeping over him. Something’s wrong.

“Um, it… It happens when I’m, when I’m, when I’m tired. Or when I’m stressed, stressed I guess. Been pretty norm, pretty normal for a while,” he says. He’s overly aware of the tripping of his tongue, now, embarrassment and frustration eating at him with every word he snags on.

“Push through’d do it too, I guess?” Mal asks, pocketing the light again.

Cass stares at him, gaping a little.

“You know, push through?” Mal tries again “When you’re spent but you keep using your-”

“I know what, know what push through means,” Cass snaps.

The other man puts his hands up in a hasty surrender. “I didn’t mean anything by it, mate.”

“I’m not your mate.”

Cass knows exactly what push through means. If he spent too much time in someone’s head, if he named too many people one after the other, he’d start to feel the tug of it. Tingling in the hands and feet, faint ache in the chest or the head. But a blood rush, your heart pulsing with something other than blood. Like you could do anything.

So then you’d push through, keep going. Full splitting headache, churning stomach, dizziness, aching joints. But your brain felt electric, so much bigger and faster and you could see so much more than anyone else. So many connections and vibrations.

So you push through, go a bit further, just a little more. Breathlessness, slamming heart, bones like glass, thoughts like fog. And it’s burning now, a little, but the spark is still just in reach. So you push through.

Just a little further, knowing you’ll get it back if you just keep reaching. Memory loss, delirium, pain like your body was going to kill you. Or floating, unhooked, free.

Cass knew what fucking push through was. Intimately. The question was how the fuck did Mal?

"Josiah didn’t give me anything,” Cass says suddenly. It feels like a confession. Mal doesn’t say anything. “There was... The... The, the, the people I was, people I was staying with. I think they, they… I think…”

“Do you know what it was they gave you?” Mal asks gently. He does everything so fucking gently. Cass squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head.

“I don’t even, even know for sure that they, they, they did,” he admits. His voice isn’t shaking. It’s not. “I’d just… wake up and I would feel, would feel wrong. Like I’d gone on a bend, a bender or something”

“Like a hangover?”

“More like withdrawal. Then push through on top.”

“Is that why you took the oxy? It felt like withdrawal?”

“It wasn’t an oxy, just a-” Cass stops abruptly, biting down on his tongue. Idiot. “I thought you said you believed me.”

“I thought you said you didn’t take anything.”

Mal’s eyes glint. This isn’t right. What did you think was gonna happen, Ace?

Cass can feel his breath ducking shallow in his chest and he hastens to control it, shove it down, stave off the black spots that are suddenly flickering in his vision.

This isn’t right. He leans forward where he sits, gripping the edge of the sheet. He barely has anything in him but he needs to get this guy away because something isn’t right, none of this is right.

He barely has enough in him but he has enough: “Mᴀʟᴏʀʏ, ʟᴇᴀᴠᴇ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ɴᴏᴡ”

But Mal doesn’t flinch, doesn’t change his face, doesn’t move to go. He just tilts his head slowly, looks Cass in the eye. His voice is so gentle when he speaks.

“That one’s not gonna work on me, mate.”

Cass feels his heart miss a beat, like skipping a step on the stairs, foot sliding through free fall. He thinks about bolting, but Mal is blocking the door. He thinks about trying to name him again but he has nothing left, he was nothing left and it doesn’t matter because it didn’t fucking work.

“I knew, knew it. I fuck, fucking knew it,” he spits. He tries to lean forward, but the dizziness hits him too fast and he sits back “You’re a reader, aren’t, aren’t, aren’t you?”

Mal laughs softly like the accusation is surprising.

“No, not quite,” he says, quietly.

“Well what are, what are you, then?”

“I’m honestly just a nurse, mate,” Mal leans back in his chair, pushing that long mane back with one hand “And, unfortunately for you, Josiah’s friend.”

He almost looks sad. Cass isn’t fucking falling for it.

“I don’t believe you.”

Mal shrugs, taking his glasses off, “You don’t have to.”

There’s a long moment between them, quiet and still. It’s so silent that Cass can feel the air around them pulsing. Maybe that’s why the yell from the other room is so loud. Something like a crash. More yelling. An argument, a fight. Mal, who has been seemingly unphased the entire time Cass has been talking to him, suddenly seems very, very phased.

Someone is here. Someone has J.

Cass is moving before he has time to register the pain that swoops in at the rush in his head.

“Who’s, who’s here? What’s happening?”

Mal tries to stand in front of him but Cass is already pushing passed. He can barely feel the juttering of his legs. Mal grabs for his arm-

“Everything’s fine, it’s jus-”

Cass doesn’t notice way his heart is suddenly not beating but fluttering, surging, buzzing. He shoves Mal backwards, reaching for the door.

“Everything’s not fine, fuckhead. Who, who did you bring here? What, what what have you done to Josiah?”

Cass doesn’t notice that his lungs are straining to grab oxygen, straining to do anything other than squeeze mercilessly.

“Nothing, mate. Cass, you need to-”

Cass doesn’t notice the blood rush in his ears, drowning out Mal’s words.

He opens the bedroom door, prepared to see anything; prepared to see a bloodbath, prepared to see a gun to Josiah’s head, to see an armed fucking militia. Prepared to see them. The them he’s running from, the them he should know better than to have run towards, the them who could find him and drag him back, and drag Josiah along too if they wanted to.

But that’s not what he sees.

He sees Josiah, standing with his back to the hallway, completely fine. Angry, sure, but when wasn’t Josiah angry? His voice is still echoing sharp across the room but his body language is open and loose. He almost looks relaxed. Comfortable in a way Cass hasn’t seen him since coming back. He’s fine.

And then he sees her. Small and leather-clad and familiar and furious.

Oh.

Cass feels the fear fall off him like a cloak, which maybe was stupid considering who he’s looking at. He wishes he hadn’t opened the damn door.

Lou.

“I assume you’ve met my wife?” Mal says from behind him.

Right. Fuck.

And then.

And then Cass realises someone’s squeezed all the breath from his chest, and that his legs are shaking so hard they shouldn’t be holding him up and that his heart has somehow turned into a wasp’s nest, and that his brain is a brick of dynamite about to explode.

Cass looks at the woman in front of him, looks at Josiah, looks at Mal.

Lou. Here. Right.

Fuck.

And then he faints.

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