#like. kira could have just been an object and the story would have barely changed

[skullinahat]

the dnd movie was good and effects where incredible and the shots and lighting where top notch and its awesome that so many people had a great time watching it however i felt every single character would have been a more interesting protagonist than chris pine

[swtorramblings]

Commander Thexan: Sacrifice

The battle with the Emperor continues, while the royal family, Koth, Caz’zandra, and Lana prepare to escape. But keep in mind, heroes have an infinite capacity for stupidity.

Major character death. Gore.

Story begins here: One More Night Previous:  The Third Next: Downtime

As they circled him, Valkorion spoke. Perhaps not his most dangerous weapon, but the most insidious. “Why do you oppose me? I gave you all such gifts. You should be grateful. Loyal.” Scourge answered first. “Grateful? For an eternity of numbness?” “But you have an eternity, if you choose to grasp it. Isn’t it worth such a small loss?” “No.” Kira answered next. “Yeah, I’m grateful. Grateful that you put a piece of yourself in my head. Grateful that you wanted to control me.” “Dear child, I didn’t want to control you. I wanted to elevate you.” Kira almost spit at this “gift”. Surro, for her part, wished to remain silent, wished the fight to be over, whatever the outcome, but realized that keeping him speaking would delay him. Scourge’s plan. Kira? Most likely making this up as she went along, but her instincts were right, even so. She said, “My dreams are filled with a world you turned to dust. That you used me to help destroy. I am to thank you?” He barely afforded her a glance. “You ushered in greatness, however small your role was. Yes, you should be grateful. The alternative was insignificance.”

Arcann’s group ran as best they could, eventually reaching Koth’s ship just as it landed. “Come on!” Koth was shouting from the ramp. Arcann and Caz’zandra, helping Senya up the ramp, reached him first. Arcann said, “So, Thexan sent you?” “Well, yeah. He knew I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.” There was an explosion behind them, scattering Knights, shredding Skytroopers. Vaylin was laughing as she ran up the ramp and then saw Arcann. “Ha! Tired isn’t helpless!” Then she looked at Arcann as she passed. “Brother, are you blushing?” Koth smiled at her and said, “Into the ship, princess.” “Ha! You are! Good to see you, too, Koth.” “I am not blushing,” Arcann grumbled as he continued up the ramp. Koth just grinned, shooting a Skytrooper coming up behind Lana, who was boarding last. “Yes, you are.” Lana ran up the ramp, stopping next to Koth. “I could have handled one Skytrooper.” “Why waste the time of the great Sith Lord Lana Beniko?” She smiled weakly and turned to enter the ship, but he put his hand on her shoulder as she passed. “I’m so sorry you didn’t find her.” She gritted her teeth and said, “I am more sorry we did.”

As the ship lifted off, Scourge took a single step forward. “Good. They are away. Now, we can finish this.” The Emperor smiled. There was something odd about the expression, something artificial. It didn’t matter, though. He said, “I think you’ll find that they are not as safe as you think. And that your sacrifice will be for nothing.” With that, he turned and blasted the ship, lightning playing over its shields, raised at the last moment but already flickering. Surro acted first, striking at his hand, but he smiled and turned the lightning on her, instead. She shifted and deflected the blast, while Scourge struck from the other side, but a shield spring up, deflecting his blow. Kira struck from a different angle, hoping they could overwhelm Valkorion’s defenses, but instead of more shielding, he simply spun from her path, leaving only empty air. The battle continued that way as the minutes ticked by, the three hoping they were keeping him occupied long enough for the ship to escape. It was looking promising, but no matter how powerful they were, or how skilled, against this monster their chances were always slim. Eventually, they began to tire. He flung lightning at Surro once again, and she was a fraction of a second too slow in deflecting it. She was flung back, smoke trailing her, and tumbled to a stop twenty meters away. Kira brought took position between the Emperor and the Jedi, bringing up her saberstaff to protect her fallen ally from any more harm. She knew she couldn’t hold him long, but she wouldn’t have to. Scourge finally reached his great enemy, and swung his lightsaber around in a powerful arc, but the Emperor dodged again, the smile never leaving his face. Scourge was pushed away by a powerful telekinetic thrust, almost going off the edge of the platform. The Emperor turned back to Kira, alone now, but if his power caused any fear at all, she didn’t show it. And he found something in her mind, something familiar. As he deflected her blows, he began to gloat. “Oh, Kira, do you think you are free of me? You think you destroyed my gift, but I sense it, still there, waiting for my hand to awaken it.” It was her turn to grin. “Is that what you think? You think everyone around you is inferior. Weak.” “Only because it is the truth.” “I’m going to tell you a little secret.” Something had changed. “He’s not asleep.” Even her voice changed, subtly, still clearly Kira Carson, but also something far older. A voice the Emperor recognized. “But I don’t work for him.” It was his own. “He works for me.” With that, she blasted the Eternal Emperor with his own lightning.

“What do you mean we’re supposed to leave them?” Arcann was saying. “Well, he said we’d have no time, that we had to retreat and leave them to delay the Emperor,” Koth answered. “But do you really think I’m going to listen to Scourge? The others seemed relieved, but Lana, ever the pragmatist, objected. “Do any of you understand what it will do if it catches us? Especially those three?” she said, pointing at the Tiralls. “Oh, we’re quite aware,” said Vaylin, a bit bitterly. Lana pinched the bridge of her nose and breathed deeply. “Yes, of course you are. I’m sorry. But we can’t risk that again.” Arcann chuckled. “If we were the kind of people who would leave them, we wouldn’t be here.” She was silent for a moment. Koth almost made a joke, probably something about making her speechless, but she gave him such a withering glare that he stopped and went back to piloting. “Fine. I knew you would do this when I asked for your help. Let’s try to get your people.” Vaylin looked like she was going to give her another hug.

Surro had recovered, though she was battered and her left arm hung limp at her side. She shifted forms to compensate and prepared to press Vitiate once more, whatever the cost. Kira was still pressing her own attack, battering their foe severely, shredding the Force shields and tearing at skin and clothing. Finally, she relented, too exhausted to continue. For a moment she understood why Vaylin laughed at times like this. That feeling worried her. Tired as she was, though, she drew her saberstaff and prepared to continue the fight. Scourge, of course, was Scourge. Valkorion looked down at Kira. “Tired so soon, my dear? Whatever tricks you have, you are still only mortal, while I have the power of worlds flowing through me.” Kira was about to retort, but at that moment, the Eternal Emperor’s facade flickered, and faded, the holoprojector damaged by her onslaught. Their true face was finally shown to the trio, that of the the smuggler Z’lia. Scourge chuckled. “So, the rumors were true, Vitiate. You did die there. And it was at Z’lia’s hand, wasn’t it? How did it feel to be undone by a force blind sneak thief?” The thing in Z’lia smiled at Scourge. “Yes, she did. She really was quite exceptional. And now she is also mine, a worthy payment for what she did.” Surro broke in, sneering, “Yes, of course, because no one ordinary could slay the great Sith Emperor, could they?” “Quite so.” Kira smiled, said, “And yet, we keep doing it, don’t we?” Before Vitiate could answer that, Scourge looked skyward, saying, “No, you fools.” Vitiate grinned and said, “I told you they wouldn’t escape. Their own weakness will always draw them back to me.” Surro whispered, “You spit on compassion. And you think you’ve foreseen everything, don’t you?” “Of course. Including your attempt at self-sacrifice. You really shouldn’t bother.” Scourge’s voice rumbled, “I think we can still surprise you!” Vitiate had been so focused on Surro in that moment that Scourge’s charge came as a complete shock. After all, self-sacrifice was not in the Sith’s nature, was it? That momentary confusion was enough to allow the former Wrath to lift the Emperor as he charged to the edge of the platform and over the edge. Kira looked over the edge as the two dwindled and finally fell out of sight, struggling until they were out of sight. Surro looked down as well, with an almost mournful expression. Kira was worried about her for a moment, but then she straightened, turned, and walked back towards where Koth was landing. It would have to do for now. They had lost Scourge, but they were both alive, and maybe he’d taken Vitiate with him. They boarded, and once again the ship was in the air, just ahead of Zakuul’s defense forces.

Scourge woke, for the first time in centuries actually feeling pain, though it was still dulled by his curse. He chuckled weakly that what he had desired for so long was given to him as he was dying. At least the others had escaped, and he had struck a blow against his enemy. Perhaps even a fatal one, he hoped for only a moment. That’s when he felt one hand, then the other, creeping over his broken ribs, crawling slowly up to his face. Z’lia’s face came into view, covered in blood, one eye socket crushed. What of the Emperor’s new body that he could see looked shattered, only the Force allowing it to still move, to keep its heart beating. Its lips curled up into a horrible smile, and the thing lurking behind those eyes said, “It will take more than that. And you have given me everything I need to heal.” As he felt his life draining from him, Scourge simply thought, “Of course.” He had intended to sacrifice all three of them. He’d hoped that together they could have caused Vitiate much more harm, delayed its plans. Still, it was somehow fitting that he would die so the others could escape, balancing his previous attempt, his betrayal of Meetra. He had come full circle, and was content with that. Vitiate stood, finally, and stepped away from the husk that had once been its Wrath. Really, it was a shame to lose him, three hundred years of experiences and his unique properties might have been of use. But he was much too dangerous, it seemed. And, really, what use would he have been as the Emperor devoured the galaxy? None at all.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Good morning world. And do you know what I’m thinking about this morning? Keiko (chill, autocorrect) on Deep Space Nine.

Partly because I’ve been thinking about how the show’s done her wrong since a few episodes into Season 1. Partly because, in the wake of the Atlanta shooting, it’s clearly past time to talk about how women of Asian descent are depicted in the media.

Rather go on and on about what the show did wrong, I’m going to start with what it did right, then move on into some suggestions for plot lines that might have gotten the audience into Keiko’s (and perhaps her daughter Molly’s) head better. Feel free to borrow for fanfic purposes. (And let me know if you do, or if someone else wrote some good Keiko and/or Molly fanfic I might enjoy.)

What's right: she’s a, not core character, but sort of second tier character who is on the show often. She has a respectable role: she’s a well-educated professional whose work is important to her, and a wife and mother. We also get hints of her having a life beyond that — not as much as I’d like, but for example at one point in the first season she’s away visiting her mother, and when she’s pregnant with her second child she keeps leading an active life. I think the show strikes an appropriate balance on sexuality: she’s married, we’re pretty sure she and Miles have sex, but she’s not presented as a sex object. And we don’t see her suffering more trauma than the other characters. As of where I'm currently at in Season 6, she's alive, and I have every reason to believe she'll stay alive through the end of the show. (A quick look at Memory Alpha confirms this.) Good stuff.

(She’s also in The Next Gen — parts of that I haven’t watched and others were a while back, so I’m going to stick to talking about her role in DS9.)

And...very nearly all the episodes she’s in, are very firmly from Mile’s perspective and not hers. (Even storylines that really should be about her: when she’s experiencing frustration at not being able to pursue her career and ends up going back to work, that episode is entirely from Mile’s perspective. She barely speaks a word in it.)

Contrast this to how Benjamin Sisko’s son and father are shown: Jake very much gets his own storylines and own life, and relationships that aren’t primarily about his father, even though his dad has a more central role in the show (and we definitely see their relationship from Benjamin’s perspective as well), and even though we rarely see Grandpa Sisko (huh, apparently his name is Joseph), you immediately get the sense of him as a strong-willed person who lives life on his own terms, and when he and Ben have conflicts you can understand his perspective easily. In spite of relatively little screen-time. Keiko gets far more screen time, but far less interiority. She’s presented in a way that’s hard to empathize with. And there’s less of a sense of who she is as an individual rather than as a role.

(BTW, if we got to see Keiko’s perspective more, whose would we see less of? Maybe Miles, who gets quite a lot of focus. Maybe Quark, maybe Julian...basically, I’m pretty sure if I went through the season and marked down which episodes were primarily about male characters vs primarily about female characters vs pretty balanced, the ratio would be telling. And it’s not like I don’t like the male characters (well, maybe I could do with less Quark) but... I don’t like them so much that I think the show is better for having shorted the women.)

I want to see Keiko have friends. I want to see her talk to other parents on the ship as a parent. That episode where Keiko’s off station and Miles has to figure out how to get their new baby to stay asleep? I want an episode where Miles is gone and Keiko has parenting struggles. Where we get into old conflicts between her and her mother or father that she has to work through as a parent herself. (This is not an unrealistic expectation -- we got that for Odo in one episode, and we got a similar thing with Kira processing her father's death while another character was dying.) I want Molly to go on her first sleep-over and Keiko to have conflicted feelings about her daughter growing up and for Molly to have conflicted feelings where she’s excited but...also kinda misses her mom.

I want to see how Keiko’s explaining the Dominion war to Molly and what she’s skipping over. I want to see Keiko worried about her husband (which, granted, we’ve seen that) and getting emotional support from someone else (which we haven’t really.) I want to see Keiko pursuing a hobby other than gardening. I want her to be really excited to introduce Molly to something that she loved growing up. (Specifically a Japanese cultural thing or not.) I want her to take Molly to a holosuite program that shows some Japanese architecture or history or gardens. I want there to be some conversation about language — sure, universal translators, but what do people speak on their own, and what does Molly grow up speaking?

(They’ve got an interracial/inter-cultural relationship and explore absolutely nothing about that.)

Since Keiko was a teacher for a while, is she absolutely obsessing over homeschooling Molly now that there’s no school?

I’m not sure I want to see Miles and Keiko have a “no one’s right” disagreement over how to raise their children, but that’s certainly a thing that could have happened. Or could happen indirectly: Miles isn’t the talking type and yet everyone on the station knows when he’s having wife troubles and are willing to give him advice. Who does Keiko get relationship advice from?

When Keiko and Miles are apart and Miles spends all his time playing darts with Julian or reenacting battles with Julian, who is Keiko connecting with?

(Side note: one thing that Brandon Sanderson does well in his fantasy novels such as the Mistborn Trilogy, is couples that are balanced in power and narrative significance. The show made a choice to have Miles be a more central character than Keiko. There’s no intrinsic reason they couldn’t have been on the same level of narrative significance.) (But even if they were going to be at unequal levels of significance, Keiko still could have been done much better.)

(And you’ll notice the show is almost going out of its way to avoid having any female characters with less significant recurring love interests. When they partner up Kira, it’s not with some guy who’s just nice and fun or a supportive boyfriend (someone analogous to what Leeta is for Julian or later Rom), somehow even though she’s one of the most powerful characters in the show (she’s second in command on the station) she keeps getting partnered up with characters who have more religious or civil power than she does, and who become very narratively significant at least for a little while. Female characters can be just love interests or family members, male characters have to be doing something big and important.)

I think the show overdoes romance, so this wouldn’t be my first choice, but...having an old flame of Keiko’s show up could be a thing that happened. Or having a thing where she notices an interesting stranger, and of course nothing happens because she’s married, but we still get to see Keiko as, you know, a woman with desires and interests that don’t always fit perfectly into her respectable well-ordered life. We could see mirror universe Keiko — I wonder what she’s like. Or some time travel alternate timeline story where she’s with someone else, or single and enjoying the single life. (Surely even if Keiko is overall happy with her life, surely sometimes she must wonder about the roads not taken.) We could have some indication that she too misses Miles when they’re not together, or we could see her excited to get more time away or get their quarters to herself while he’s away, or both because people are complicated.

What are Molly’s adventures? Who is she best friends with? Where’s her tension between growing up and becoming her own person vs wanting her parents’ love and approval? Where’s the episode where we’re all wait, she’s really not a little toddler any more, is she?

(We don’t even know what Molly thinks about having a baby brother — and that’s a huge, highly dramatic change in the life of a child.)

Where’s the episode where she desperately wants some pet that her parents don’t want her to have, or desperately wants some toy or activity that one or both thinks is unsafe, or where she wants to be on a sports team but there aren’t enough kids on the station, or where she has to say goodbye to the Bajoran friends she made, or she starts playing make believe games involving evacuating the station...

What if we got to see Keiko’s mother and learn something about her or the family history? What if Keiko had some aunt or uncle or sibling who showed up on the station some time, what might their relationship be like? Is there some family hero that Keiko’s always encouraging Molly to grow up to be like?

If the show’s writers truly couldn’t handle writing a child that young, this is Star Trek and we have time travel — there’s no reason we couldn’t have an episode involving future grown up Molly O’Brien.

What if we got some terribly retconned explanation for why Keiko, a professionally trained botanist, was mysteriously ready and eager to step into schoolteacher mode even though that’s its own profession that requires years of specialized higher education? Did...did Keiko for some reason study to be a teacher, have something go wrong, and then go with botany as Life Pursuits Take 2? (Perhaps she was pushed into being a teacher then decided she loved botany more? But she didn’t actually dislike teaching?)

What if we actually got an episode centered around her being a botanist and exploring alien plants? There’s possibilities there — heck, one of the most popular TOS episodes centered around space wheat, so why not? I want an alien planet where all the plants are yellow or hot pink because they photosynthesize with something other than chlorophyll. Why not? (Did you know there’s an old school Piers Anthony sci fi book about killer mushrooms? Not joking.)

She’s the only woman of color who’s a regular character on the show throughout the whole series. She’s one of the few Asian-descent women who’s on American TV at all. She deserved better.

And I think we should talk about how she, and other characters, could have been written better.

[do-not-call-me-meathead]

aposiopesis (part one)

My Orphan Black fic on AO3

part two  part three  part four  part five  part six  part seven

Summary: 

Cosima and Sarah turn to each other for support after the night they both almost end their lives.

It's simple, at first. Their friendship and care.

But things are never as simple as they seem.

Cosima loves Delphine, but there's something about Sarah that makes her question everything.

...

Ironically enough, it all began with the news of life. Delphine’s life, that is. Cosima had believed that she was dead, long dead. There was a sliver of hope that the woman she loved was still alive because it wasn’t like she felt her death like she believed she would if the French blonde had really died. But still. The radio silence carried the dread that led to her almost putting the bot into her cheek like a lunatic.

But she didn’t.

Kendall was dead and the scientist wanted to beat those Neolution sons of bitches. And deep down, she knew she couldn’t do that all sick and tired and dead. And besides. Kendall’s death was her fault. At least, that’s what she thought. She knew that she needed to make up for what she did so that she could live with herself. And for Kendall and Siobhan and all the clones. She (stupidly) thought the bot would fix it. Give her more time. She almost put it into her cheek.

But she didn’t.

Cosima apologized profusely to Scott and Hell Wizard about her moment of brief insanity, but they refused to leave her alone for the rest of the night. She was grateful for her friends of course (especially Felix who had stopped you from doing something so… dangerously stupid) but she needed time to accept the news.

Delphine was alive.

At least, Krystal saw her leave alive.

Things only seemed to escalate when she received a skype call from Alison. She had expected Felix to tell the other clone about her break down, but when she answered the call, she was bombarded with a terrified Alison who had her house raided by the police and her husband arrested.

“Oh, dude, that’s awful,” Cosima told the rambling woman, trying to find words that weren’t completely awkward. “W-what are you going to do?”

She listened as Alison explained how Felix had already gotten his (biological) sister to agree to be Donnie’s lawyer and ranted about wanting to torture Duko for scaring her kids. She had to admit that she wanted to torture him too for what he did to Kendall. For what he’s done to all of them.

“Does Sarah know?”

She was surprised by Alison’s sudden silence and frown. Alison looked down (avoiding Cosima’s gaze) and mentioned with what seemed like a forced calm, “I think Felix told her, but heavens, I don’t want to stress her out with this. With everything going on.”

Cosima didn’t know what the hell the soccer mom was referring to. She was positive that more than anyone in the clone club, it was Sarah who would want to be involved and help. But there was something in Alison’s eyes that made her wonder if something else was going on. Something that she had no knowledge about.

“What do you mean? Did something happen to Sarah? Kira?”

Alison held her hand to her cheek and sighed. “Lord knows Felix didn’t want this to be on your mind either, Cosima. He told me what happened last night. Honestly. Finding out that--”

“What happened to Sarah, Alison ?”

Alison made a tutting sound and crossed her arms. “Felix practically begged me to not tell anyone. I’m not even planning on asking Sarah--”

“ Alison .”

The mother put her hands up in the air in surrender. “Holy cow. Okay, Cosima. But please don’t ask her about it. I’m not even sure Felix told me the whole--”

“Just tell me.”

“Last night, Sarah almost killed herself,” Alison said so quickly that Cosima barely had any time to process what she said before she continued, “and Felix says that she was going to do it like… like…”

Cosima bit her lip, trying to stop the tears from coming to her eyes. She filled in the blank in her mind, but she still needed Alison to say it out loud.

“Like what?”

Alison blinked and stared like it was the last thing she wanted to say out loud. “Like Beth.”

Cosima’s heart felt like it had stopped with all the air knocked out of your lungs. She wanted to ache for Alison (knowing how close she was to the late clone), but she couldn’t stop thinking about Sarah. The cold truth (not that she’d tell Alison or anyone else for that matter) was that Sarah was much more important to her than Beth ever was. The idea of losing her, losing the person who held them all together, made her whole body feel weak and like it was decaying (more than usual). Especially since she realized that Sarah's pain must have been her fault. That this wouldn’t have happened if Cosima hadn’t been so…

“We almost lost her?” She asked in a whisper, not really expecting an answer.

Alison narrowed her eyes. “What, Cosima? I can’t hear--”

Cosima ended the call. It was Cosima after all who wanted to make the deal with Evie Cho. It was Cosima who allowed herself to be played and caused Siobhan’s mother’s death. It was Cosima who lost the months of work and advancements they made, probably stopping any chance of a cure. None of it was Sarah’s fault, but then… she could imagine the guilt she must have been feeling. Sarah kept the world on her shoulders. She let on the pain of others. She felt more than anyone but forced herself to not always show it.  

She dialed Felix’s number not knowing what she would say to him when he would pick up. She couldn’t call Sarah, at least, not yet. Not until she got the full story from him first. She liked to think that it was the scientist in her who needed her facts straight before going to the original source. But truthfully, she was terrified of talking to Sarah knowing that she was the root of her pain.

“Oi, do you know what bloody time it is?” Felix croaked as if he had just woken up.

She didn’t answer his question. “Is Sarah around?”

“She was plastered last night, mate. She’ll be out for at least another few hours. Please tell me you aren’t planning on doing another senseless act. Let’s not put any more foreign objects in mouths except for--”

“What happened with Sarah last night? And why didn’t you immediately tell me?”  

Felix paused for a second but then sighed. “You would think by now I would know not to tell Alison anything--”

“ Felix .”

“You had a lot on your mind, if you remember, darling,” He snapped cooly with an edge that made Cosima almost cower in her chair. “You nearly put a bloody bot maggot in your face. And you were all weepy about Delphine. It wasn’t the night to worry you about Sarah. Besides, you almost died too.”

Cosima roared with a growl. “Who cares? I still have the right to know.”

“If Sarah wanted you to know, Sarah would tell you, but as I said, she’s knackered. I shouldn’t have told Alison. I just needed… to tell someone.”

His voice changed from angry to… something tired. Desperate, maybe. Cosima gulped. She hadn’t realized how terrifying it must have been for him too. She thought about seeing Kendall and knowing she was about to die and closed her eyes tight. She couldn't imagine seeing Sarah in her place.

Lowering her voice, she asked, “How close of a call was it?”

“Dunno, really. Found her standin’ on a bridge lookin’ down at the trains. I’d say pretty bloody close. She was… not talkin’ right either. I don’t think she’s told me everything anyway. Which means nothin’ because she’s Sarah.”

Sarah was the one who everyone leaned on for support and help and armor and yet… she never allowed anyone else to do the same for her. It wasn’t something that Cosima had realized right away. She thought that Felix was her confidant and that people like Paul or Cal had gotten through to her emotionally. Hell, Cosima even thought that she’d be a person that Sarah’d go to if she needed someone. But now…

“Cosima, I can practically hear you think. Please don’t tell me you’re going to do what I think you’re going to do. You are not comin’ to the safe house.

She huffed stubbornly. There was no way that she wasn’t going to see Sarah now. “Well, either I’m going there or you’re bringing Sarah here.”

“You cheeky bitch. She’s not well, Cosima. You askin’ her questions about her bloody feelings ain’t gonna make her better. Look, I told Alison because I knew she wouldn’t have the balls to ask Sarah about it. You on the other hand…”

“I’m not going to make her feel bad about it!”

“She doesn’t want to concern you!” Felix yelled uncharacteristically. “Sarah likes to appear like she’s tough as nails for a reason. If she found out that you know--”

“I won’t tell her that I know. Dammit, you can even tell her I need to see her for my own emotional wellbeing. I won’t bring it up. But I just… I need to see her.”

Felix was quiet again. “Why?”

That was a loaded question. Her immediate thought was because of the guilt. For Kendall. For Mrs. S. For not realizing Sarah was in a dark place. For being too caught up with the bot and Delphine that she didn’t notice Sarah’s pain.

But Cosima had to be honest with him. “Because I can’t stop imagining Sarah jumping off a bridge and getting hit by a train and maybe if I see her alive, I will stop imagining the way her body looks all broken and dead on the tracks.”

More silence.

And then she heard him sigh like he was giving in. “Bloody hell, darling. Fine. We’ll come see you, yeah?”

Before she could thank him, he hung up. She understood his trepidation and need to protect her, but she was Sarah’s… Cosima couldn’t find the right word for it. They were close, at least, that was what she had thought. But when she really thought about it, she realized there wasn’t much about Sarah’s life (other than the clone shit) that she knew about.

“Were you talking to someone?”

Cosima almost sighed in relief that Scott had interrupted her darkening thoughts. She was already spiraling about Delphine and Sarah’s behavior. She didn’t want to spiral about her relationship with her either.

“Don’t worry, Scotty. I’m not turning into a nut and putting a bot in my face. Again. I was on the phone with Felix.”

Scott nodded and looked relieved. “The news about Delphine must have really shaken you then.”

“I mean, obvs I feel like the luckiest woman in the world that she’s alive, but I have no damn clue where she is or how she’s doing or if she’s okay. If Neolution has her…”

“Don’t think so negatively. We are going to find her, Cosima. And then you’ll have your science partner back and--”

“Scott, I don’t want you to think that you’re replaceable or something. Or that you’re like any less valuable than Delphine. I mean, you’re here because of your kind heart and bravery. I sorta dragged you in, but you didn’t have to stay.”

He stared at her with this wide-eyed look as if he was genuinely baffled by her words. “Yes, I did. I might have put a few things on hold, Cosima, but this is what I chose for my life. I know what I’m doing is important. There’s purpose in my life. And I’ve never… I’ve never had people before all of you. You, Hell Wizard, and even Sarah. You’re my family.”

Cosima’s eyes flooded with tears. She was so obsessed with the cure and Delphine and battling Neolution that she put almost everyone else on hold. Scott had never left her side, but Cosima felt like she had abandoned him. Just as she abandoned Sarah.

“Dude… I don’t know how to thank you.”

Scott gave his classic dorky grin and shook his head. “You don’t need to thank me, Cosima. Thank me by finding a cure so that we can stay mad scientists forever, okay?”

Cosima nodded vigorously. Forever sounded like a good amount of time to her.

.....  

The door to the basement swung open and the sound of heavy footsteps caused both Cosima and Scott to jump. Surprised that it wasn’t Hell Wizard, Scott looked from Felix and Sarah to Cosima wondering if this was indeed a planned meeting or something spontaneous.

Felix looked annoyed as he and his sister made their way toward the scientists. His arms were crossed and his eyes were cautious. It was obvious to Cosima (and Scott) that he was not happy to be there. He even stood in front of Sarah slightly, like he was protecting her. It made Cosima frown. She hated that he seemed to be protecting Sarah from her.

Cosima could barely see Sarah behind him. But she could tell that the woman was looking… incredibly Sarah-like. With her baggy tank top and ripped black jeans, messy eyeliner, and partially braided hair. Her hands were stuffed in her pockets of a leather jacket that Cosima hadn’t recognized but soon fell in love with. She couldn’t meet Sarah’s eyes, though. She didn’t know how to without revealing to the woman that she knew.

“I hope we’re interrupting something outlandishly nerdy,” Felix greeted and put his hands on his hips as if he was waiting for something to happen.

Cosima ignored him and turned to her lab partner, trying to tell him through her eye movements that he needed to go along with whatever she said. “Yo, Scotty, can you take Felix upstairs and show him the new bottle of vodka?”

Scott tried to hide his apprehension by nodding vigorously. “Yeah. Er… sure. Felix, do you mind if we… head…”

Felix waved his hands up in the air and shouted, “you are all hopeless,” and then started to walk up the stairs while his feet pounded the pavement with more drama than he usually mustered.

Cosima motioned her head toward Felix at Scott, telling him to follow the man. Scott gave her another terrified look, but she ignored it. Her attention was now solely on Sarah and the realization that even though Cosima was the sick one, Sarah looked much paler and skinnier.

Suddenly, Cosima didn’t have any idea how to greet the woman that she had felt so close to for the past few years. There was so much that she wanted to say, but she couldn’t find any of the right words in her mind.

Luckily, Sarah wasn’t struggling with talking like she was. “Felix said ya almost put my bloody bot in your face.”

She blinked at the woman with the British accent that always caught her a little off guard. “Yep. Not totally the smartest idea I have ever had.”

“You can’t always be a brainiac,” Sarah replied seriously.

Cosima snorted. “Tell that to well… everyone.”

Sarah frowned (somehow more than she was already frowning). “Fee said you’re strugglin’. With the Kendall shite and all. An’ losin’ all your work.”

“Ergo the bot in my face. Yeah, I had a rough day. Everything sorta hit me at once, you know? And I shut everyone out. But I’m just lucky your brother didn’t let me. He’s the reason why I’m not dead right now.”

Sarah blinked and sat down next to Cosima on her bed. She slouched over and stared at her feet, not allowing the other clone to see her face.

“Yeah, not all of us have a ‘Delphine’ that would flip the switch for us and make us want to live. But hey, good for you, yeah?”

Cosima hadn’t felt this breathless since the time she had almost died in Felix’s bed. She opened her mouth, wanting to apologize for some reason, but then knew that she couldn’t do that. She wasn’t sorry for finding out about Delphine. She wasn’t sorry for not putting the bot in her face. And she definitely wasn’t sorry that she was still here. Though, she did feel sorry for Sarah, but she knew her well enough to know that she wouldn’t want her pity.

“I know Fee told you,” Sarah commented, a little less harshly, but with the same amount of coldness. “I could tell the second I walked into this fucking dungeon. So, what, Cosima? You want me to talk about it or somethin’? Share my bloody feelings with you?”  

“I want--” Cosima paused. She didn’t know what to say. “I want…”

“ What, Cosima? Spit it out.”

Tears fell down the scientist’s cheeks without fail (she didn’t even care if Sarah saw them). And with the tears, she finally found the words. “I just wanted to know that you were alive. I just wanted to see you. Touch you, maybe. Know that your heart was still beating, Sarah.”

Sarah finally looked up at her, startling Cosima with her red and watery eyes. “That’s fuckin' rich comin' from you. What would I have done if you offed yourself, eh? Who says you have the right to end your life and I don't?”

Cosima fidgeted with her hands and sighed. “Sarah, it’s dif--”

“Oh, so now your suicide attempt is different than mine? Better than mine?”

“I didn’t want to die! I wanted to live!” She shouted at her, standing up too quickly, causing her to topple over, forcing Sarah to catch her ungracefully as they both fell to the floor. She started coughing and couldn’t stop. She hadn’t had a fit like this since…

Sarah grasped both of Cosima’s shoulders and asked her what to do, how to help, how to stop the coughing. Cosima wanted the look of worry on Sarah’s face to vanish. She hated scaring people with her sickness and this was the absolute worst timing.

Finally, the coughing ceased and Cosima drank the water that Sarah had forced into her hands. The scientist began to apologize and didn’t know how to stop.

“Don’t say you’re sorry, it’s all my fault.”

Cosima tilted her head with confusion. “How the hell do you think that you made me cough? It’s the sickness, Sar. Not your charming personality.”

Sarah rested her head on Cosima’s shoulder, no longer upset with her clone. She was worried about her for sure, but the anger was all gone.

“I hate that you were the one who was with Kendall when she was killed. I hate that you had to go through that. I hate that we got played. I hate that Kendall’s gone and the research is gone and that you’re still bloody sick.”

Cosima reached for Sarah’s hand and squeezed it. “Sarah--”

Her voice trembling, Sarah interrupted, “I fucked things up, Cos. For all of us. I let everyone down. I let… I let Beth down. And it fucked me up. I don’t want to die, Cos. I just want it all to be over. And I want everyone to be okay.”

“Woah, dude. First, you didn’t fuck things up, Sarah, okay? Second, the whole Kendall stuff was my fault. I was desperate and not thinking things through. Especially with the damn bot. I don’t… I don’t want to die, Sar. I want to live this crazy life and do something good. And this sickness, it makes me feel so helpless.”

Sarah shook her head and then held it against Cosima’s own forehead. “You aren’t helpless, Cos. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. We wouldn’t have gotten this far. And we won’t find the cure or end this Neo shit without you. I need you here with me. I can’t do this without you.”

It was the same thing she had said to the scientist months ago when Cosima was dying in Felix’s bed. It wasn’t something they talked about often. Sarah’s rare moment of vulnerability and Cosima’s death bed wasn’t something that they would like to revisit. Even if it was a solemn moment of bliss where two women who understood each other, held hands in silence and compassion and love. Though, that could have been a part of the reason, too.

“You won’t have to. If MK can find Susan, we might be able to find a cure together. Not that I really want to work with that bitch.”

Sarah snorted and moved away from her clone. “Do you think Susan knows where Delphine is?”

Cosima’s eyes darkened. “Krystal said that she was alive when she was taken but… who’s to say she didn’t die minutes later? Hours later? Days later? I could be searching for a ghost.”

“Or you could be searching for the French love of your life who can help get a cure, yeah?”

The scientist tilted her head. “Now who’s little miss optimist?”

“Oi, don’t be spreadin’ that to everyone, yeah? Especially Alison. I don’t think I have enough optimism for her and Donnie. Bloody hell. I’ve always hated cops, but Neo cops are just another layer of shite I never thought we’d have to face. But it’d make sense. Cops do normally include the worst of people.”

Cosima gave Sarah an all-knowing look that made the mother roll her eyes and groan.

“Yeah, yeah, know-it-all. Besides Art and Beth. You have a good point.”

....

“You’re bloody joking,” Sarah blurted in the middle of Cosima’s story while they shared a joint (or two). “Alison’s mum did not say that.”

“She did,” Cosima said and nodded as she flopped onto the bed that she had been sleeping on most nights in the basement (if she were to sleep at all). “Called me ‘mulatto’, the horrid bitch. God, I can’t imagine growing up with that woman.”

Sarah hummed in agreement. “And I thought S was bad growin' up. Can’t imagine livin' with some racist arseholes. Probably homophobic arseholes too.”

Cosima never thought too much about how the other clones grew up. She thought about it in an analytical way (obviously, she noticed that nurture impacted everyone’s personalities more than nature) but she never really thought about how different she would be if she had grown up in Sarah’s or Alison’s shoes.

She gathered that maybe it was selfishness. Or that she was so entwined with living in her own head and learning about her own biology that she didn’t give other people much of a thought. But here, staring at Sarah and her lion’s mane of messy hair, thick eyeliner, and clothes that hung off her body, she realized that Sarah’s life didn’t start when she met Cosima (or Alison or Beth for that matter). It started when she was born. A separated twin forced into the foster system. She had been living a very different life than Cosima, but it was just as real and emotional.

Sonder.

“My parents were—are—great. College professors who always allowed me to be curious. I was never just some little kid to them. I was an equal. When they talked about physics, they let me talk too. Even if I had no idea what I was talking about.”

A smile grew from Sarah’s lips. “Are you sayin' that if I had your parents I would be a genius too?”

Cosima chuckled and shrugged. “I don’t know. If I was raised by S, would I like boys and alcohol?”

“Ah, touché, geek monkey. Yeah, it’s loads to think about. I mean, we are all who we are ‘cause of how we were raised but… there are similarities.”

Cosima was dazzled by the curiosity she was feeling for whatever Sarah was thinking, even if they were both high as a kite. Sarah’s thoughts were more intoxicating than any drug.

“Like what?” Cosima asked her as she took a big puff and coughed as she did a sultry little dance. “You mean our hot bodies?”

Sarah laughed again which made Cosima grin. She didn’t know if she heard her fellow clone laugh this many times before.

“Not just that. I’m talkin’ about our recklessness. Stubbornness. Our fucked up relationships.”

Sarah had a good point. “Now who’s the smart one?”

“You, ya twat,” Sarah muttered and wrapped her arms around the scientist and laid her head on her chest. “Always you.”

Cosima looked down into Sarah’s eyes and just stared. Neither of them could look away. Most of it was pure fascination. They were two completely different people and yet… they had the same (but different) features. The same (but different) face. It was jarring and complex and intriguing.

They heard the door open and both of their eyes flickered toward Felix and Scott who were walking down the stairs with glitter in their hair that wasn’t there before they left.

Sarah quickly moved away from Cosima and tried to joke, “Though I could’ve been the genius. We’ll never know.”

Cosima couldn’t laugh. She just stared as Sarah moved toward Felix and suddenly seemed so far away again. So untouchable. So hardened and alone.

“Keep me updated with the science cure shit, yeah? We will come back soon.”

Cosima wanted to ask if Sarah promised that, but the words wouldn’t escape her mouth. Instead, she just nodded and waved, feeling like the light was escaping the room and what was left when Sarah was gone was the darkness.

[yourfaveisyanderematic]

Boiling the Frog

When you leave things up to me, you get Horrible, but I suspect you already knew that :3c

You hated nail polish.  The whole process of manicures, in fact, seemed like a frustrating hassle, far too much effort for a result that would only chip in a few days anyway, something that was…girly, in a way you instinctively shied away from.  Your friends would admire your hands and complain that leaving them bare was a waste of good genetics, but you were perfectly content to simply regard their nails with vague admiration and leave things at that.  When would you ever need to learn, anyway?

“Fuck.” you swore under your breath as your hand trembled, moving the brush in the wrong direction and ruining the coat yet again.  Reaching for the rubbing alcohol and undoing everything for the umpteenth time was the last thing you wanted to do—you’d already been at this for over an hour—but entertaining the idea only reminded you of the last time you’d given into the impulse.  You saw his face in your mind’s eye, clear as day, the handsome cheekbones and elegantly styled light hair framing cold grey eyes that betrayed no hint of emotion but communicated profound disappointment all the same.

“Even young girls can do this properly, it’s one of the first things they teach each other.  How is this so difficult for you?”

The mere memory of hearing him say the words made your heart wobble.  You scrubbed at the fresh paint with new fervor, erasing the thought of having to actually hear them again with each stroke.  You’d do it right.  You could do this right.  It was easy.

You’d never paid attention to the routine before, but in only a short time you knew it intimately.  You knew how to push your cuticles back (an intimidating process that drew blood the first time you tried it) and to lay a clear base.  You knew how long to wait between coats and how to brush them for the best consistency and coverage, and you knew to coat the undersides of your nails with the topcoat to keep them from chipping for longer.

Only a month or two ago, if someone told you you’d learn to do all this for some guy, you would have laughed in their face.  You tried not to think about that, just pushed past the fatigue of making such tightly controlled motions for so long and tried again, watching the rainbow flecks of the micro glitter swirl against deep blue in the wake of the brush.  It was a good thing you were on the very last nail.  There wasn’t much time before you had to go to work, and Kira hated to be kept waiting.

You waved your hand in the air in an effort to get the last coat to dry faster, capping the bottles with your free hand and putting them away.  These, too, had a particular order to be in, and you weren’t sloppy enough to forget again.  Everything had its place.

Time to go.  You took a glance at yourself in the mirror, adjusted your slacks and dress shirt, and made for the door, stepping into the hallway.

“Kira?  I’m ready to go,” you called for your boyfriend (it still felt a little weird to think of him as that) and made your way down the stairs.  Yoshikage Kira waited for you near the front door, standing between you and your shoes, making a show of adjusting his tie even though his appearance had never been short of what you’d call ‘effortlessly immaculate’.  It was enough to make you straighten your shirt again, a little more nervously this time, even though you’d already confirmed you looked professional enough moments ago.

Kira gave you a very obvious once-over as you came to a stop in front of him, finally reaching forward to redo the button at the very top of your shirt.  The sensation of his hands, close enough to your neck that you could feel their warmth, was enough to make your breath hitch, but he graciously ignored it.  

“That’s all anyone else should be seeing of you.  You look very professional.”  He raised his hand, a wordless invitation (or an order, something in your head whispered) and you complied, resting your hand in his.  He tilted his hand, letting the light catch your fingers from all angles, regarding your work in complete silence.  You couldn’t help but hold your breath.

“Very nice.” Your heart fluttered at the words, so simple yet rarely heard from him.  “I can see you’ve been improving with practice, I told you this wasn’t hard.  Although…” a frown creased his thin features, “I’m not sure about the color.  Don’t you think the glitter’s a little childish?”

You felt your heart sink.  “But…you said it was fine, when I picked it out.”  This was stupid.  It was your nails, it should have been fine if you liked it.  Ever since your relationship began, however, it became increasingly obvious that Kira was far more sophisticated than you were.  You found yourself acting in response, changing how you dressed and even what you cooked, a childish compulsion to please him, to live up to the standards he set for you.

“For work?  When you wanted to buy this I assumed it was for a night out or the weekend, so I didn’t raise any objections.”  He eyed the clock overhead.  “You don’t have any time to change it.  Come on; traffic will be terrible.”  He stepped aside, letting your hand fall out of his grasp as you stepped into your shoes.  Without another word, Kira opened the door and walked you to his car, letting his arm rest around your shoulders in a way that was almost possessive.

But I don’t want to change the color, you thought but didn’t say.

—

“…and that’s how I got Sato to start putting his laundry away!”  Suzuki, one of your coworkers, finished her latest spiel about her adventures in childcare, sitting back for your reaction with an expectant grin.  You gently nudged her to move her leg, letting you finish filling out the form, and gave a noncommittal hum of acknowledgement.  Lunch hour was only ten minutes away but really couldn’t come fast enough.

“Everyone kept telling me ‘oh, once he’s got the habit it’ll be so hard to change’, but once you know the trick it’s actually really easy,” she wound a brunette curl around her finger with a knowing smile.  Suzuki was a nice enough coworker, older than you and modern enough to work despite being a mother, but she had a frustrating ability to carry on a conversation almost entirely one-sidedly, and learning to tune her out was almost a prerequisite for your job.

“It’s just boiling the frog.  All you need is patience.”

The strangeness of the phrase made you pause, and you watched her grin broaden as you stared up in incomprehension.  “‘Boiling the…frog’?”

She clapped her hands, loudly enough to draw looks from others in the office.  “Funny saying, right?  I picked it up on a trip to America.  Basically, instead of trying to do everything all at once, you change things gradually, one at a time, and wait.  They get so used to things that they’re doing everything you want, and they don’t even notice the change!  Next I’m going to do it with vegetables.  You’ll definitely want to do things like that when you’ve got kids of your own!” she gave a knowing wink, despite the fact that you’d never once expressed the slightest interest in children.  She opened her mouth to continue some other story about parental wisdom she wanted to pass to you, and you went back to work, hearing her voice muffle into a background drone that was almost musical.

A shadow loomed over you, breaking into your thoughts.  The next thing you registered was that Suzuki’s presence had mysteriously vanished from your desk, freeing up a good third of the space.  

Kira loomed over you, beautiful even in the fluorescent lights that flattered nobody.  His hand came over your own, stilling your pen.

“What are you doing?  Lunch has started.  Hurry, we’ve only got an hour and I want to have Saint Gentlemen’s.”  Normally you would have objected—not even Suzuki would interrupt you in the middle of work, and there were only a couple lines left on the form—but Saint Gentlemen’s was popular, and missing out on lunch would put Kira in a bad mood.  You put the pen down and stood up.  It felt bold to grab Kira’s arm as the two of you walked out, but he didn’t pull away this time; when you looked up at his face, you realized it must have been because he was distracted, glancing over his shoulder with an unreadable expression.

“What’s wrong?”  You waited until the two of you were alone in the elevator to ask.  You hated to look like you were gossiping.  He took a deep breath.

“It’s nothing, really…I just dislike two-faced people, who smile to your face but laugh at you behind your back.  I’m so glad you’re nothing like that.”

You watched the lights on the display slowly count down, itching to press but unsure if you should.  “Like…did something happen?”

He looked at you out of the corner of his eye and then reached out, once again holding you close.  

“I don’t want to upset you.  We’re about to have lunch, I’d hate to ruin the mood.”

Memory flashed.  It was Suzuki he’d been staring at.  

“Was it Suzuki?  Did she say something about you?”  The elevator doors opened, and Kira stepped out with you, holding you tight against the crowd flowing out the doors into the warm sunshine.

“Actually, it was about you.  She’d been laughing with some friends on her break, while you were still working.  ‘They’re so gullible,’” Kira repeated in a high-pitched imitation of your coworker, “‘Did you see their face when I joked that their work was worth the promotion?  I trust the part-time hires more!’”  His face betrayed no emotion, but you felt your stomach twist as you began to rethink every compliment or comment she ever told you in a new light.  Was that really how she felt?  Why didn’t she say anything?  She—

Kira took your chin in his hand, turning your face to meet his.  Something like amusement tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“You’re so easy to rile up.  Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want to ruin your mood?  Forget about it.  You aren’t even friends with her.”

I thought I was, you thought but didn’t say.

—

“You’re lovely to look at, and so intelligent.  You’re just so…unpolished.  Only with my help can you really shine.”

Those were the words Kira said to you that first night you began dating.  You would have laughed, but you could tell by the conviction in his eyes that he was completely serious, so you played along, even if you didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.

As time went on, however, you began to realize just how right he was.

You were careless.  Time and time again you’d found yourself locked out of the house or missing your wallet, for Kira to look—with you in hysterics—only to produce the missing item from a pocket you must have forgotten to check.  You’d misplace laundry, and Kira would have to buy you new clothes.

You were naive.  Suzuki was the first of your silent bullies you learned about, but she wouldn’t be the last; it seemed like everyone at the office was undermining you somehow, and if Kira hadn’t been acting as your silent guardian you’re sure you’d be the office fool still.  It had been enough to make you quit your job from the stress, though Kira had been more than gracious enough to keep you at his home to recover in peace.

You were hysterical.  Too often you got yourself worked up, imagining that Kira said something hurtful, that he was trying to control you, that he told you this or that or locked you in your room.  It was in the moments of clarity that followed, moments that swept you up in shame and embarrassment, that made you realize that you’d imagined it all.  The stress of being the hunted at your job, of everyone being against you, was threatening to turn you against the one man truly and unconditionally on your side.

Kira had been so patient.  He helped you through it all, tolerating both when you hurled insults at him through the door he you locked to the moments of weakness when you sobbed like a baby into his chest.

“Structure,” was all he would say in those times.  “Structure is what will put your mind in order and make you stronger.  You’re very close, you just need me to help you a little more.”

He was right.  It was only when you knew you were following his lead that you really felt safe, that you could wear that coat or follow that recipe without being sure that you were somehow making a mistake.  The agonizing hours that he was gone (“I still have to work to support you, dear,” he said with a smile as you opened the door for him to leave) were almost suffocating.  Those rare, rare nights when he was out for longer than normal were the worst, when you genuinely felt that you were going to die.

Even so, it was with numb incomprehension that you watched him crush pills from an orange prescription bottle and tip them into the pot he stirred.  He caught your eye and smiled reassuringly, turning the label away from your view.

“To help you sleep tonight,” he offered as explanation, “I have to work late, but I don’t want you to be up all night worrying for me.  You’re fine with it, right?”

The idea of being awake and by yourself was awful.  The idea of being drugged—unconscious and vulnerable to whoever happened by—was borderline unbearable.  No, you felt the word push behind your lips, but you couldn’t make yourself say it.  You nodded slowly.

Kira tilted his head, a satisfied smile that made your heart flutter with pleasure.  If it made him happy with you, if it made you less unmanageable, maybe it couldn’t be that bad.  He gestured to the dinner table, where a small bottle of nail polish waited.  You could see your reflection in its pearly pink sheen as you approached.

“A new shade was released at the department store today.  I’d love to see it on you; we have enough time before dinner’s ready.”

You looked at the label, some high-end brand you would never buy on your own.  Killer Queen.

“It suits you, doesn’t it?”

[cepmurphy]

“No such thing as privacy here.” – Kerblam!

Ryan’s about to face the most horrifying threat of all: going back to work.

Kerblam! is an admirably well-constructed episode, with every single element turning out to be relevant to the plot or its themes. This starts from the fact the Doctor has made deliveries before (thus explaining how the System knew to contact her specifically) and the moment when Ryan pops the bubblewrap in an apparent gag scene, and extends even to Charlie’s introduction – entering a room right after a scene where his hacked robots have claimed his latest victim. He is literally coming back from that into Graham’s scene! And it’s a well-constructed episode that tells us how systems and organisations will not be well constructed! 

We’re first misled into believing this is a story about cod-Amazon eating its workers and while it twists away in the end, the company Kerblam! is explicitly a crap place to work. This is a place where you’re told “I hope people feel it’s a privilege to work at Kerblam” right before a robot puts a tracking device on your ankle. You can’t talk and interact with your fellow workers without a robot reminding you, in faux-friendly tones, that you need to pick up the pace. Nobody knows what anyone else is doing. The higher-ups don’t trust each other. You can get lost in the stacks and nobody would know if you died. Even when everyone’s on break, the robots watch like guards.

And as well as being clear this is crap, the episode is clear this is not so different to real warehouses right now. Ryan is not phased by the GroupLoop trackers because he’s already worn them in Sheffield. He knows the score. Just like in our world, workers like Dan put up with the grinding indignities because they need the money. All of this is hidden by clever marketing and a smiling corporate logo. Kerblam! isn’t holding a mirror up to our world but a window.

What causes this? Amorality. We’re told over and over about “the System” as something separate to the workers and even management, and eventually seemingly nasty executive Jarva Slade admits he’s not in the charge – the System is. There’s no people running the company anymore, “there’s only the System”. This does leave upper management of real such companies off the hook but is a good, powerful metaphor for what it feels like for most of the people working there: nobody is in control, the company is just sustaining itself, the processes have taken over. The System isn’t even a malevolent computer system like WOTAN or BOSS, it’s barely sentient, it’s just doing what it was told to do. It cannot factor humans in correctly or be humane, it’s only a computer system and the humans, over time, have allowed it control.

The Doctor will say at the end that systems aren’t good or evil, it’s how people use them. Here, we have people leaving systems to their own devices and finding, too late, there’s little way for humans to get back in. And the humans who could are too divided from each other to try.

(Let’s go back to Slade and talk about a grand bit of misdirection: when the Doctor responds to his bullying of Kira by snapping back, and trying to pressure him to reveal anything he knows. When he reacts with fear, we think she’s onto him. But Slade thinks this means the Doctor is killing people and is threatening him that he might be next!)

But this is Doctor Who S11, and once again the threat is a human and not an ‘other’. Charlie is a great unexpected villain but the signs are there. He’s startled and worried to have Graham around. He’s working the job we’re told means you can get around anywhere unnoticed. When the Kerblam Man arrives during the blackout, Charlie approaches it saying he can fix it (and how does he know how to do that?) and its “rampage” only starts when he’s near it; in the background, after he’s saved, we can see he’s not surprised a Kerblam Man tried to kill him. He tries to talk the others out of parts of their investigation or following him to find Kira. He also doesn’t know much about interacting with humans and has some weird views on women, and there’s a lot of dangerous men who turned out to have weird creepy views on women.

“Have you smelt her?” he asks Graham about the girl he’s been eyeing for months, and that’s played as a comedy beat but consider what sort of person does that.

Charlie’s motive is entirely understandable: he wants to stop automation and have humans back in work & charge of the systems. We’ve spent most of the episode being shown that’s a good thing and the story ends with Kerblam! restructuring to employ humans and be better. But Charlie’s move ‘for the people’ is for ‘the people’ in abstract. The actual workers are just fodder for his experiments. And these are co-workers, people he may know – but they don’t matter compared to his greater good. “For the cause!” The human threats in the previous episode and in the following The Witchfinders take the same view, a trilogy of people with grand ideas willing to wade in blood.

(Both this and Punjab also show these to be radicalised young men, another nod to right now)

There’s a bum note here though: the System killing Kira.

Now, this is set up well – right from Kira saying she can’t believe the System let her keep her job after her first week, while the camera shows us a Kerblam Man watching her from the shadows. The System has clearly been keeping her around because it knows Charlie’s infatuated. The System grabs Kira at the point when its attempt to outright kill Charlie has been thwarted, and is noted to be a message (which the cast think is directed at the group in general). The actual kill is delayed to ensure Charlie will see it – and Ryan immediately clocks that he knew the bubblewrap was lethal, leading into the reveal. And we know the System is blunt when it comes to fulfilling its objectives, so it makes sense it would think this would work at getting through to Charlie.

The problem though is that everyone reacts with horror and disgust and then this stops when the Doctor says the System has a conscience, that it’s resisting. The problem is the Doctor is not disgusted or note that this is an amoral thing the System has done – other characters know it was wrong, the death is constructed to horrify us, it’s clear the writer and director and everyone else making the episode know it’s wrong, intend for us to think it. So why is this not mentioned? Was a line cut?

This is the only quibble, though it is an annoyingly big one. The rest of the episode remains intricately made, attacking multiple targets at once, and full of character beats – Yaz being the first person to say they have to help someone in trouble and realising Dan saved her life, Graham trying to coax Charlie with paternalism, Ryan’s frustrations at being stuck in space-work, the Doctor against injustice. (She’s changed her view on conspiracies from Arachnids but let’s be fair, when she said she “loves” a conspiracy she was socialising with Yaz’s dad, not reacting to missing people)

And god those robots look creepy. Fixed insincere smiles and permanently chummy voices coming at you. Brrrr.

[fauzhee10069]

JoJolion’s main villain? Will it be female?

Okay, so whenever I find a discussion about JJL main villain, who will it be? And with the thirst from fans who wanted the first female main villain in JJBA, a popular theory emerged that Higashikata Caato would become the main villain. Yeah, so far… she is really popular, lots of hints point towards her, I can see some reasons of why:

Her motivation, she is currently in conflict with her ex-husband, Norisuke IV. Their conflicting views of how they have to sacrifice to save their son from the curse. Her sacrifice made her imprisoned for 15 years and separated from her children (how sad when her three children did not know her as their mother). Now, she returns and demands a payback.

Her persumably dominance over her son, Jobin. Jobin who previously was hyped as potential main villain is now overshadowed by his mother. Especially, it was pretty much confirmed that Jobin isn't the mastermind by Dolomite and Rai. “Jobin sweetie, remember that I went to jail to protect you, to save you, all for your sake. Imagine she says, ”I can see that Jobin must feel very indebted and grateful to her, that’s why he looks very respectful to her.

Her first impression of Gappy!Josuke was that she doesn't like him, regards him as freeloader (a potential enemy?)

Her Stand being a space-manipulating related type, often being regarded in the same boat with D4C (though I see that it’s more similar to Enigma currently).

Despite being 52 and a granny, she looks attractive for no reason, Araki’s habit of creating his main villains. Look how he changed fat!Valentine into the hot 48 years old president. Caato could be the antithesis of Lisa Lisa. Both are hot milfs in 50s and supportive to their sons, only the side is reversed.

Advanced points:

Norisuke IV he is one of the people closest to Josuke but the one who is likely most despised by Caato. I can see the potential conflict between Josuke and Caato or even her conflict with her other children.

The race to obtain Locacaca fruit, Caato’s side (Tsurugi, Jobin and Mitsuba) are fighting to cure Tsurugi. Josuke is fighting to restore himself to normal and save Holy.

Now, enter my personal opinion...

Actually, I like Caato as villain, or even major villain. But to be honest, though I also crave for the first female main villain, I don’t really like the concept of Caato as the one. Reasons:

Her conflict/motivation is too domestic, a household disputes; an ex-wife who wants to take revenge on and punish her ex-husband for the sacrifice and misery that she have to endured and demands payback (she openly asked for half of the household fortune). Basically, she wants to take back what's rightfully hers,  probably dethrone the patriarch to dominate the family business and fortune. This sounds like a plot taken out from Korean/telenovela family drama (with revenge as its main theme) only that it involves Stand battle, could be good for side plot but not for main plot. I wish the Rokakaka fruit, Rock humans, scientist and the curse will be a greater focus than this family drama bullsh*t.

Her background itself is too ordinary, a former housewife with no visible past career or other interesting things, unless she had other past background that is still hidden, maybe a past career that hasn't been revealed yet, ala Izumi Curtis. Though she could be a counterpart for part 4 main villain, being ordinary salary man.

Her flashback and motivation in the past, in my opinion, is too sympathetic (something that Araki claimed to avoid whenever he writes a main villain). To save her son from her curse, rather than sacrificing her life, she preferred to sacrifice the life of other (stranger). To be honest, I prefer her method than Norisuke IV, therefore Jobin (and her other children) do not need to lose a mother figure (which ironically happened). This is a husband’s common mistake; assuming that his wife is not different with his mother, hoping that his wife will do the same thing with what his mother has done. Basically, a mom who did sacrificing her own contented life for the sake of her child, imprisoned for 15 years away from her children, she had just been released and is still reorganizing her life. Unlike other JoJo main villains, in which their trouble pasts had become a past completely (that happened years ago) as their current life in the present storyline is much better but Caato still had to face her ex-husband who seemed to abandon her and had to try re-bond her relationship with her children again (idk why but her story kinda reminds me of Cookie Lyon from Empire). She just barely regains her life back.

Her personality that is too obvious for a villain. Being very two-faced and deceptive, showing her true calculating personality to those she deeply trusts yet truly capable of however seems to intimidate and inspire fear, but in public, she comes off as charismatic and loving person. It’s like “Oh looks… she is evil… she must be the main villain!!” I mean, just as she first appeared (which is not long ago), she already acted menacing, intimidating and declaring her objectives. Whereas JJBA main villains in general were acting pretty casual.

Most likely, Araki did the Principal and The Pauper to Norisuke IV’s character. From the fun & loving dad and a supportive father figure for Josuke to be an asshole husband who is disregarding his wife for the sacrifice she had made and even refused to pay her alimony. Now I am confused whether I should cheer for Norisuke IV (Josuke’s side) or Caato. This will potentially rival my disappointment over Xiao Fan ruining Zhao Yun and Xiao Meng’s dynamic. >:(

She doesn’t have any moment that can be mocked over and meme’d. Also, all of her appearance so far is like a boss. If she constantly stays like this till the end, I’m afraid that she would potentially ruin the funny dynamic between The Main Villains gang in fandom!!!

I don’t need another mom archetype in JJBA main villains gang, we already have Kira as the mom.

Her determination to live free from the men (read: husband)’s control and decision yet seems to be in control of her son (and possibly grandson) makes her sound like feminazi. I hope I’m wrong though, hopefully Araki doesn’t write her to be main villain only to fulfill the quota (due to the lack of female main villains) or as political correctness. I just want my first female main villain to be just a character of her own without being the feminist advertisement (though that’s what you likely will get from a character with just housewife as background). I have faith in Araki though because in my opinion he was quite successful as he wrote Jolyne, she is very likeable for the only female JoJo as she is simply being who she is without promoting feminism.

A mother controlling her children (in this case, Jobin). Though this is personal, I’m never into this kind of villain. I think it is very cheap, there is a teach that children must respect their mother who had nurtured and raised them and one mom decided to take this as an advantage to control her children. Most likely, Caato could be the main cause of Jobin's authoritarian attitude to his son, Tsurugi.

Mom: “Okay son, remember that I had carried you in my womb and suffer for 9 months for it, I had painful labor to bear you, I had taken care of you when you were a helpless baby, teaching you everything and saved your life from the curse, even saved you from your crime, by letting myself go to jail and lost my 15 years of life… all because I love you. Now, do me a favor and never question it!” Son: “No, sorry mom.” Mom: “(How dare you!) Why not?” Son: “Because I never ask to be born (especially by you).” (I don’t think Jobin would ever say that, probably Joshu).

So, if Caato turns out to be the main villain, she could be my least favorite main villain despite I am being a female myself. Though it's still too early to judge, there is still a hope that she will deliver something more interesting than those 5 points above. One of them is the theory and possibility that she is the mysterious head doctor or the Rock human’s leader.

My other personal wish is that Holy Kira is the actual main villain. This is purely crack theory and something that is even less likely than Caato, but I think Holy Kira will deliver something more interesting than Caato:

Her more interesting background as an Ophthalmologist, emergency doctor, and guest professor. A woman, a mother and A PROFESSOR!!!

Her more direct connection with Rokakaka fruit, it is revealed that Holy created the hidden Rokakaka lab at T.G University Hospital, she was researching the fruit! Therefore, A SCIENTIST!!! There is a possibility that she was part of the Rokakaka Research Organization (though probably she just did the research independently).

She is a direct descendant of Johnny Joestar, therefore… a Joestar! Imagine being a Joestar and a main villain at the same time!! Okay, despite being a Joestar, Holy is not a JoJo. But this will be hilariously the greatest irony ever, a main villain is descended from a JoJo.

Her, tricking Josuke, the main protagonist (who is also part of her son) to cure her is something far more brilliant than a mom straightly controlling her son through intimidation. Perhaps her illness is part of her master plan (“計画通り/keikaku doori!!”ala Light Yagami or Aizen), it’ll be a greater troll than Joseph trolling Jotaro as reincarnated DIO XD.

Holy Kira might be the antithesis of Holy Kujo, the purest and most loving milf ever in JJBA to be the worst and ambitious mom.

Holy Kira might fit the theme of the villain being the opposite of the protagonist, what is the opposite between Josuke and Holy? One being the guy stitched together from two other guys and one being a woman who has a lot of missing parts (in this case, her brain).

She already had her possibly funny/crazy moment when she was trying to use a nurse like a pair of boots and a magazine XD.

Personally, I think that Holy has better design than Caato. While Caato looks like the older version of Jolyne, her messy appearance looks like a middle-aged woman who couldn’t let go her teenage years (that’s why she can’t beat Lisa Lisa as a hot milf in 50s imo, her appearance is tidier and more elegant). Look at Holy Kira, she is trendy and the dark cape looks fabulous for a villain’s design.

Holy may possess a more interesting Stand, I’m sure she is a Stand user if she can see Paisley Park and knows about Killer Queen. Please, Araki… show me what her Stand is capable of!!

If Caato stays the same until the end of the story, she will be the most deviated villain in JJBA history besides being female, Araki might breaks the pattern with her. But isn’t using Holy Kira as main villain would be a greater pattern breakers??

Besides Holy Kira, I found another crack yet brilliant theory of Yasuho being actual main villain without her realizing it, played it like an alter ego ala Doppio. Disclaimer, it is not written by me. While this is very interesting (and I support this theory tbh), this could be another case of The Principal and The Pauper in Yasuho’s character.

Hopefully, Caato is just a red herring for the actual main villain (as she is too… obviousss), but the possibility of Holy as the main villain is even smaller. That’s why I keep my expectation of evil!Holy so low, she could be just a straight SBR counterpart for Holy Kujo (the purest mom in critical condition that needs to be cured asap) with slightly bigger role, nothing more. Perhaps, the main villain could even be neither Caato nor Holy.

Now, let’s countdown the villains we had so far and how Caato or Holy will fill it up:

A vampire (and an ex-lawyer student)

A Pillar Man, boss of his own kind

A vampire… again (at least he is hundred years old now)

A salary man and serial killer

A mafia boss

A priest (and the vampire’s lover best friend)

A president of alt!US

A former housewife and former inmate / A mad scientist and a Joestar / A Rock human and head doctor (another mad scientist), assuming the third possibility of main villain is a guy / The main villain is a concept (not a person), the Locacaca fruit itself (I love this one tbh)

Pick your choice!!

Summary: I welcome Caato as villain, even as major villain. She is the first female villain who has her own motivation without being a mere pawn for the main villain. She deserves a big role, but not the biggest role. Gappy!Josuke deserves a greater villain to fight than a greedy and vengeful milf who is wronged (by her husband) in the past, someone who hasn't even reached the top (and her own happiness). The mystery of Locacaca’s fruit, the origin of the Higashikata’s curse;the rock disease, what’s up with the Rock humans and the Wall Eyes should be prioritized over the game of throne inheritance fight drama of the Higashikata family’s property and power. To be honest, I still prefer the main villain to be a man… again rather than Caato (even if it is Jobin).

TL;DR Caato will still be my most favorite female villain but potentially becomes my least favorite main villain in JJBA.

[slothgiirl]

blinding part 1 (a theo raeken/reader story)

mariella gallagher, lydia’s younger cousin, has always had a soft spot for theo raeken, and now that they’ve brought him back to help, she can’t seem to help herself when it comes to him. it also doesn’t help that she’s slowly losing her grip on whatever powers she has as an empath. 

ao3 // part 2 // part 3 // part 4 // part 5

“So why can’t I go with you exactly,” I asked Lydia after she was done explaining the plan to everyone except Hayden and Mason who were actually in class like they ere supposed to be. If my aunt wasn’t faculty who knows how we would be getting away with suddenly leaving class, ditching class, and arriving late all the time. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather go with you.”

Just the thought of encountering the ghost riders again was enough to make me want to vomit. And seeing as Scott and his packs whole m.o. was to run towards danger instead of away, we would probably run into them sooner rather than later.

My cousin sighed impatiently, “because we don’t know what we’ll find at Caanan. At least here we know what we’re dealing with.”

“Even if we don’t know how to deal with it yet,” Malia said with a scowl.

“I’d still rather take my chances with whatever you find there than the ghost riders.”

Kira threw an arm around my shoulder, smiling as reassuringly as she could after the ghost riders had taken a whole party full of teenagers down in the bunker and none of us had been able to do anything to stop them, “don’t worry Mari, I’ll protect you. I won’t let them come near you.”

“And you’ve got Liam,” Scott said smiling at his beta.

“Just hurry back,” Liam told him, “we’re stronger together.”

“Hell yeah,” Malia grinned.

*

I took my seat next to Kira in art, happy to be able to phone in this class. Ever since the ghost rider’s showed up I’d been jumpy and stressed and I kept scratching at my arms. What made it worse was I could feel how freaked out the rest of the pack was.

It was almost enough to make me want to take my meds again.

Almost.

“You wanna talk about it,” Kira asked, not looking up from her painting. Her still life wouldn’t have looked out of place in a gallery. Meanwhile I was still cleaning up all my sketch lines and pretending that I knew how to shade objects.

I shrugged, “it’s fine. We’ll figure this out soon and then-“

“Don’t say that. If you’re not okay then talk to me about it,” she told me, looking over at me, “maybe it won’t solve anything but you might feel a little better.”

Sighing, I put my charcoal, giving up on getting any work done when I could barely keep my hand steady. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about it, but the only person that I had ever felt comfortable talking to about my so called powers, that were completely useless and more of a pain in the ass than anything, had turned out to be a horrible person and was now rotting wherever the skin walkers had dragged him down into.

“Mari?”

Her concern was warm, gently waving towards me, the mental equivalent of a hug. I might as well. “I’ve just never not sensed something from anything. But the ghost riders,” my voice broke, remembering the events from the bunker, “there was nothing there. Nothing. Like they weren’t alive, at least not in any sense of the word I know.”

“I thought they were going to take me,” I tell her, looking down at my feet as I wipe the welling tears from my eyes. “I mean at least you can all fight or do something. I just feel so useless sometimes. Like I can sense what people are feeling, even catch some thoughts if it’s a strong emotion but that’s it.” Hell, werewolves could sense emotions by smelling the air or scent or chemosignals whatever those were.

Her concern spiked, intertwining with a tinge bitter guilt.Kira leaned over and squeezed my shoulder, “but they didn’t get you. And you’re not useless. You’re kind and gentle and you calmed Liam down, anchor-less Liam and Malia. Like made them calm down.”

“Stiles can help Malia calm down.”

Kira rolled her eyes, going back to her painting, “just take the damn compliment.”

I laughed, “still think your kitsune abilities are way cooler.”

“You wouldn’t if you were the one training with my mom. I wish I could montage through all the five in the morning wake up calls.”

We both laughed.

“Mariella? Kira? Please be mindful of the noise level in here,” Mrs. Sanchez called out to us.

We both nodded.

When I went to pick up my slab of charcoal, my hand was steady enough to risk my sketch.

*

“So Scott leaves and you immediately decide to try and catch a ghost rider,” I ask Liam and Hayden skeptically.

“We can’t just sit around and do nothing,” Liam said defensively.

“Well you can all try and do that,” I said, “I’m going to go to therapy and not deal with any of this and especially not go looking for trouble.”

“Trouble kind of already fund us Mariella,” Mason said gently, “and we need to figure out how to stop them. If we catch one we could figure out what they want and make them leave.”

Which made sense even if their plan was insane and they still had no way to channel that much lightning at once. “Okay,” I admitted, “but I still want no part of this.”

“Couldn’t you do it,” Hayden asked Kira as she walked up to us gathered around Liam and Mason’s lockers. “I mean you are a lightning kitsune aren’t you,” she clarified raising an eyebrow.

“Thunder,” Kira corrected, “and yes I could if we had a few decades for me to learn how to channel that much lightning at once.”

“Sorry,” she added, looking around at us, her shame and insecurity leeched into the air, “but I just don’t have the training yet.”

“Yet,” I said, hoping to reassure her. Her mom was a thousand years old, Kira had plenty of time to get all her nine tails and become an amazing thunder kitsune.  

“Sure you’re alright going by yourself,” she asked me, changing the subject.

I shrugged. It was pointless to lie when three of use were supernatural creatures who could hear someone’s heart speed up when they lie, so why bother. “I’ll live.”

“Corey and I could go with you,” Mason offered. “Safety in numbers and all that.”

“See,” I said throwing the rest of them a pointed look, “it’s not just me.” They’re all werewolves and suddenly they think horror movie logic of splitting up and dying doesn’t apply to them.

“Not like you can drive,” Liam said shamelessly.

“I was nervous,” I protested for what had to be the thousandth time, “and the dude was an asshole, he wanted to fail me.”

“Didn’t Lydia say you ran a stop sign?”

I groaned, “it wasn’t even my idea to get my driver’s license. I don’t even want to drive. You don’t let crazy people drive cars.”

Mason grins, “but you’re not actually crazy.” Which was true. It turned out that everything that every psychiatrist had chalked up to hallucinations and paranoia was actually true.

“I thought I was!”

*

Miss Morell smiled sharply as I took a seat on her couch. “I’m assuming you’re still off you’re medication.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling guilty about it all over again. “I just feel better without it. And I’ve only had one migraine this week so progress,” I told her twiddling my hands. “I mean I should eventually start to be able to block people out. . .right?”

“And if you are not able to block people out,” Miss Morell asked the question that had kept me up so often over the last few months, “what will you do?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I mean I don’t want to always have to deal with people’s emotions in my head. When someone around me gets really sad it makes me sad, their emotions bleeding into mine and I hate that. It scares me. But I also  don’t want to spend the rest of my life dazed from taking anti-psychotics. No combination of pills felt right. Some were really bad and this last one muted things pretty well but I still felt wrong.”

It made being around Liam hard. No one ever knew what would set him off and I hated how I could feel his anger well up inside my throat like it was my own.

How I could feel my lab partner’s anxiety and nausea turn to stress the longer I sat there next to him, all my own thoughts magnified in funhouse mirrors until I was stressing over whether I had remembered to write my name on the test even though I knew I had. Over whether any of my friends in Beacon hills were really my friends or if they were just being nice to Lydia’s cousin.

“Have you considered a solution that isn’t on on end or the other,” Miss Morell asked, her emotions as remote as she herself could be, a god deigning mortals with her presence.

“What do you mean?”

“You could take a low dose,” she explained, “just enough to keep your own mental health intact without cutting yourself off from your own abilities.”

“I don’t know,” I said, thinking about how excited I had been when I realized that the connection went both ways. Their emotions could bled into my own, but I could also influence people’s emotions.

Would I lose all the progress I had made?

“You don’t have to make any choices now,” Miss Morell said smiling for the first time since I’d arrived, “Just something to think about. I’ll see you next week?”

“Yes.”

Because I had to go to therapy. It had been one of my dad’s conditions of coming to live with my aunt instead of spending my time going in and out of a psychiatric ward.

*

Third wheeling to Corey and Mason wasn’t actually bad. It certainly didn’t feel as much as third wheeling to Malia and Stiles had been or Scott and Kira. Liam and Hayden were just a nightmare of too much PDA.

They also didn’t even bring up the ghost riders even once which immediately made me love them. We hadn’t spent much time together seeing as I was a year older and had spent most of my last year in Beacon hills in a hazy fog of anti-psychotics in hopes of shutting everything out.

“Don’t hate me,” Mason said, as Corey chose a song off his phone, “but I think Troye Sivan is massively overrated.”

“No,” Corey protested, “that’s just-you’re wrong.”

“You can’t tell me I’m wrong just because I don’t care for his music. I’m entitled to my opinion especially when my opinion is right.”

“Doesn’t make it an opinion then does it,” Corey quipped back and I tried to block out the nauseatingly sweet smell of fondest and love that filled up the car. I take it back, Corey and Mason are just as bad as the other couples although Lydia and Stiles are mostly pop rocks and something refined like channel no. 5 so it really wasn’t bad.

Corey played a song before turning to look at me, “what do you think Mariella?”

“I-“

“You’ve got to listen to the whole song first to get the full experience.”

“Okay,” I told him, “but I can already tell you it sounds fine but I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to listen to it again.”

“Told you,” Mason laughed.

Corey shook his head, “you two have no taste.”

“Oh I think I have plenty of taste,” Mason replied looking over at his boyfriend.

Corey blushed, his face achieving the level of pink many beauty youtubers could only hope to replicate, “I think you mean I have great taste.”

I popped my earbuds in and raised the volume as high as it would go hoping to block them out as they drove to go drop me off at my aunts house. Six months and I still hadn’t gotten any better at blocking people out. Lydia wasn’t even sure if I could.

I sighed and stared out the window.

[meanbihexual]

Angst/Fluff Prompt 13 - “You make me feel safe.”

The heat of the jungle was oppressive, even this late at night. It was an odd contrast to the feel of the Force that threatened to overwhelm her at every moment, the darkness that pressed against the edges of her senses; it was cold and slick, sliding in sickly reds and purples through the animals and plants, even the earth itself. Yavin 4 was a world so infected by the Dark Side that Safiya couldn’t believe it had once been cleansed by the Jedi Order.

If it was just darkness, she probably would have been okay, but there was something else that lurked around every corner, in the caves and temples and ruins that littered the moon: Vitiate’s presence was as palpable as the constant storms gathered on the horizon, heralding the arrival of the rainy season, but the specter of the Sith Emperor could signal nothing so innocuous. Safi didn’t know if her awareness was simply due to years of his influence upon the area or if Revan was closer to resurrecting Vitiate than they had initially thought, but either way, the feeling of that icy rage building around her every moment left her off balance and unsettled, to say the least.

The nightmares had gotten so bad that Safi was barely sleeping at all, and she knew it was beginning to show–dark circles framed her eyes, her skin was even paler than normal, and just that morning, Doc had asked if she needed an adrenal before meeting with the Coalition forces; Safi knew that something had to change before she became so exhausted and unfocused that she made a serious mistake.

Which was why she currently found herself enduring the hot, humid jungle air in the middle of the night as she furtively made her way across the Republic camp to a ship not her own. Every time she woke in the night, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets with tears coursing down her cheeks, there was only one thought that even came close to comforting her, and she could no longer justify sitting and longing when the object of her thoughts was so close at hand.

Her knuckles against the shuttle door seemed unnaturally loud against the quiet backdrop of animal and insect noises, and Safi jerked at the sound, turning her head to see if anyone was watching. She reminded herself that she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but she still twisted her hands together anxiously as she waited for an answer.

The door slid open after only a few moments, and Safi was filled with an acute sense of relief as the familiar form of Theron Shan came into view. He stood in bare feet and no shirt, a datapad in one hand and a blaster in the other, with, she noticed with a distant sort of amusement, his hair as perfect as always. When he saw who was on the other side of the door, he lowered the blaster and smiled.

“Hey,” he said simply, but his smile quickly faded to be replaced with a look of concern as he noted her appearance. “You look like hell. Come in.” Theron stepped back to allow Safi room to pass, and for a moment she hesitated, wondering if this was such a good idea after all. But the warmth of Theron’s gaze, combined with the near-intoxicating feeling of his presence in the Force, pulled her through the door, following him into the main part of his shuttle.

The shuttle was small, divided only into the cockpit, fresher, and one main room, where they stood. A narrow bed took up one wall, and in the opposite corner was a small couch with a table. A holocom and two storage lockers were the only other furnishings. She watched as he set the blaster and the datapad down on the table before he returned to her. Standing in front of her, he reached out and lightly brushed his thumb across the dark half-moon beneath her eye.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his eyes travelling over her form, searching for any signs of injury or distress he might have missed. Without the strip of gold metal that usually covered her eyes, he could see that she looked exhausted, but other than that, he didn’t find anything amiss.

“I–” Safi started, then broke off, unsure of how to continue. She had never spoken to anyone about the memories that haunted her dreams, not even Kira, who had helped her through the aftermath more than anyone else. On Rishi, Master Orgus had pronounced her strong enough to face her memories, and she had done it, though it had been difficult. But here, with the past seeming to come alive around her, they were much harder to bear, and speaking them aloud seemed almost impossible.

Theron must have sensed her uncertainty; his arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her to his chest, and she gratefully buried her face against him, winding her own arms around his neck. They stayed that way for several moments, Safi drawing strength from his embrace. Finally, she began to speak.

“When I defeated the Emperor, it was the second time I faced him. The first time didn’t…it didn’t go as well.” Quietly, brokenly, she told the story of her imprisonment, the terrible things Vitiate had both done to her and used her to do, the months of brokenness and flashbacks and nightmares. With every word, she expected to feel Theron pull away, but throughout the entire tale his embrace never wavered.

When at last she finished, she took a shaky breath, face still hidden, and said, “The nightmares have been worse since we came to Yavin. I’m so afraid, Theron–afraid we won’t stop Revan in time, afraid if Vitiate comes back I won’t be strong enough to face him again.” The tears that had threatened for her entire narrative finally spilled from her eyes, pooling between their bodies as she continued. “But you–you make me feel safe.”

Theron lifted a hand from the small of her back to smooth it over her hair, his touch gentle and calming. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, Safi,” he said quietly, his voice low and warm. “If the Emperor does come back, I know you would beat him again. But…” His hand slid to underneath her chin, lifted her head so he could look her in the eye. “I promise that I’ll be with you every step of the way, no matter what happens. Alright?”

Safi nodded shakily, swiping her tears away with the back of her hand. Already she felt lighter, less hunted, as though Theron’s presence acted as a shield between herself and the ever-present darkness swirling around her. “Alright. I’m sorry I broke down on you–”

He cut her off. “Don’t apologize.” A mischievous smile danced on his lips as he said, “I like you showing up in the middle of the night.” His fingers ghosted down her spine, sending shivers through her body as he brought his lips to her ear, pressing a kiss just behind it before asking, “Why don’t you stay here tonight? I think I have a few ideas to distract you from those memories…”

She couldn’t keep the smile from her voice when she answered. “I don’t know…what did you have in mind?”

Theron pulled back, met her eyes once more, and the heat in his gaze drove any remaining thoughts of Vitiate far from her mind.

“Let me show you,” he murmured, drawing her to the bed, Safi following with no resistance. They didn’t need to speak again for quite some time.

Later, in the last hours before dawn, Theron lay on his side, his head propped on one hand while the other lightly stroked across Safi’s bare shoulder and down her arm. What was it about this woman that evoked such strong emotions inside him? He had never been good at letting other people in, at letting them close enough for him to develop any real connection with them, but Safi had managed to sneak past all of his defenses and embed herself firmly in his life–and, perhaps most surprisingly of all, he wasn’t even resentful. He was…happy. Even as he was overcome with anger and sorrow as she told him about her past, he couldn’t stop the racing of his heart when he heard her mutter, “You make me feel safe.”

In her sleep, Safi shifted against him and whimpered uneasily. Not ungrateful for the distraction from thoughts that veered into uncomfortable territory, Theron slid down behind her, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her tighter against his chest.

“Shh. I’m here,” he whispered, and she quieted almost immediately.

It was late, he mused as he settled himself next to her, and he was tired. It was making him overly sentimental, that was all. He just needed sleep.

His last thought before he drifted into oblivion was that, whatever it meant, he really liked being her safety net.

[lunaschild2016]

Life As We Know It Chapter 8

Rating: M (Smut, Language, Violence, Adult Themes)

Romance/Tragedy

Their lives seemed to be steeped in tragedy. Through it all they had each other until wrong choice brought it all crashing down. Eric had never been able to make up for the mistake he made, but he never stopped trying. Once again tragedy strikes turning everything upside down. Now, for little Ava they will have to come together once more. AU Eric/OC M No War No Divergent Hunts

A/N: This is a completed story that I have posted on another site as well. But thought I would add it here since I just started this account. I hope you enjoy.

@kenzieam@ericdauntless@jojuarez26@jaihardy@iammarylastar@captstefanbrandt@captainviolets@badassbaker@readsalot73@fuckthatfeeling@dani5102@beltz2016@beautifulramblingbrains@affabletimelady@irasancti@meganbee15@pathybo  @lauraaan182​

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Chapter 8

“Thank you for watching Ava for us Mama Pedrad.” Shay smiled at the mother to two of her adopted brothers, Zeke and Uri Pedrad.

Maria Pedrad waved aside the thanks of the anxious mother. “You know that there is no need for thanks. Zoe and I will enjoy getting to stay with Ava and I know that our Kira has all the most important people with her tonight.”

Kira smiled at the matron of the Pedrad family. “Hestia made dinner for you two and there are still some sweets left. I also made up some takeaway boxes of food for you Maria. I know since you decided to take a position in the daycare wing of the new place that you haven’t been able to get time to pre-prepare the dinners you take with you for lunch. All you need to do is refrigerate them and you are set.”

Maria sighs at the young womans thoughtfulness and nods. “Thank you Kira.” She steps back to look at her and smiles brightly. “I must say Kira I always thought you were stunning but you are even more so now.”

Kira blushes and smooths the dress a bit nervously. “Thank you. I have to admit I really love the dress. I was glad that Shay was able to reign Chris in and not make it too revealing.”

Shay turns her head away as if to kiss her little girl's head but is really trying to hide her smirk. She didn’t reign Chris in, Eric did, and rather well too. Shay didn’t think Chris would be trying to force Kira into another barely there dress again anytime soon after her encounter with her brother. He had stormed into the shop that Chris and Shay were at after Shay had unthinkingly mentioned she was having issues with keeping Chris in line with the dress. He was there almost instantly and pulled Chris aside. He never raised his voice but his look and tone made it clear to not fuck with him about this but also not to stress Shay, or more importantly Kira, out about it either.

Kira and Shay were waiting for Tris and Four to make it up to the apartment. Then the guys would be meeting them as well soon after. Eric had recruited them to help with some set up for the party. It was being held at the new shopping center annex, the pit and the roofs of the compound.

Because Eric knew that the thing that would make Kira the happiest was something that benefited Dauntless but also worked towards making Dauntless and the relationship between factions stronger, he had done just that.

He had worked with Johana in Amity to do a combined faction party for the fall harvest. It was also to celebrate Kira making leader but he also made the focus the advancements of Dauntless, the new ability for the factions to trade and working towards better relationships.

There were vendors from all factions that decided to take part all around the setup areas. Live music in different areas provided by mainly Dauntless and Amity but even Erudite and Candor have contributed a little bit here and there either to music or other interesting entertainment.

The end of the night there would be fireworks, something normally reserved for New Years eve. Because this was a first major celebration of a step to uniting the factions though, it was approved for them to be broken out for this party too.

Kira made sure that Ava had everything she would need her in room. Maria and Zoe had objected at first to Kira putting them in her guest room but when Kira pointed out that the party would be late, she agreed. Kira made sure that there were plenty of towels, pillows and that little 9 year old Zoe had everything she would need for the night.

After she had done that though she went to put the finishing touches on her outfit and herself. Eric had messaged her that he was just getting ready himself and that he would be over soon. Since the party didn’t start for another hour everyone was heading over to her apartment for drinks and snacks.

She really was happy with the outfit and her overall appearance. She hated shopping but she liked getting dressed up and looking nice. As long as she wasn’t being forced to wear what she would term lingerie and being told it was a dress.

They had picked out a dress that was composed of three parts and made into one. The underlay of the dress was a black tube top that had a sweetheart neckline and ended under the bottom of her breast. The skirt portion was the same black material as the top of the dress but it started at just above the belly button and goes to her mid-thigh. Over that, and joining the two pieces so that it all formed one garment, is a lace overlay so that the exposed parts of the dress has delicate black lace with the pattern of flowers and vines. The upper portion of the lace overlay has scalloped edges and is sleeveless with a mock turtleneck. The overlay for the lower portion actually extends beyond the mid-thigh and stops at just above the knee. It is sexy without being too revealing. Kira smiles at the choice and has to admit it isn’t that bad.

She slips on the the burgundy knotted slouchy ankle high boots, before taking a look in the mirror at her makeup and lipstick. Chris hadn’t went too crazy on that either. She just made sure to make her eyes smoky and to highlight the unique blue color. Her lipstain was red but it was a soft one that just added color instead of making her lips looks they were bloodied.

Her chestnut colored hair was left down with only one side pulled back by a antique looking silver comb that had a few garnets set into it. Her natural curls were softened and the whole look was more sophisticated overall. She would be taking her burgundy leather jacket because it would be cooler at night and there were supposed to be several outdoor areas to visit.

When she went back out into her living area of her apartment there were already people arriving. Smiling she was given hugs and congratulations by her friends. Ava was fascinated by her Mama and her Kira being so dressed up and if either were holding her or sitting where she could toddle over to them she would stare or gently pat them.

When Eric arrived he was a little disgruntled that it had taken him and Four longer to see about the fireworks set up, it made him later than he had wanted to get ready. He had wanted to be over to Kira’s before everyone started to arrive but that didn’t happen. When he did get there at first she wasn’t anywhere around. Shay must have seen his look so she pointed him to the balcony with a bit of a smirk.

She wasn’t at her end, but at the end with the fireplace and was sitting on the couch with the fire blazing and reading to Ava beside her. His heart almost stopped from just the scene that painted but also from her. She was gorgeous and practically glowing with happiness.

Her eyes found his as he approached them. Ava gave a laugh of happiness and patted the seat beside her. Clearly telling him that she expected him to join them. With a smile for Ava, he did one better when he picked her up and sat with her in his lap.

Kira grinned at the little girls happiness at being in her uncle's lap and beside her aunt. She also hadn’t been able to break away her gaze from Eric’s. His smile as he looked her over had that warmth shooting through her and Tris words came to mind again.

“You look beautiful Akira. More than beautiful.” Eric couldn’t help but to lean closer to her and brush his nose along her cheek, jaw and ear as he breathed her in and restrained himself from kissing her like everything in him was demanding he do.

“Thank you.” Kira breathed out as she closed her eyes and swallowed around the desire flooding her. “You look amazing too Eric. You look happy.”

Eric gave a lopsided grin into her neck. “I was just thinking the same thing about you baby. That you look amazing but that you glow with happiness.”

“I am happy Eric. More happy than I have been….” She trails off as he nods into her neck. Her forehead furrows because she can feel his lips so close to her, but they never connect and it frustrates her.

“Me too Kira.” He sighs and against his better judgment places a single soft kiss to her neck. His eyes close when he hears her soft moan that he knows she is trying to clamp her mouth from letting escape.

He pulls away reluctantly. The two of them try and compose themselves. Ava helps that along as she starts to demand to be read to again. With a laugh Eric kisses Ava’s cheek and the three sit close together while Kira reads.

That is the scene that Shay and Tris come out to when they go to bring them back in and to get Ava settled in her room. Shay’s breath catches a little and she can’t even help the tears that threaten to come out.

Tris smiles softly as the two women hang back instead of going forward. “I have never seen Eric or Kira look as happy as they do together. As happy as they do right now.”

Shay nods with a smile and the two women move forward. “Hey guys. I am going to go get Ava settled in for the night. Emmett wanted to get her changed for bed and maybe read her a story.”

Kira looked up and smiled at Shay and Tris. “You both look amazing. Four and Emmett might have their hands full tonight.”

Tris blushes and shakes her head. “No. I don’t think they have anything to worry about. All eyes are going to be on you tonight Kira. You look beautiful.”

“Buful” Ava says and pats Kira’s cheek. Kira almost tears up as she pulls the little girl to her and kisses her cheek.

“Thank you Puddin. You are beautiful too.”

Eric wraps his arms around both of his girls as Kira looks to him again. Her breath is taken away by the clear and overwhelming love in his eyes. She allows her forehead to press to his for a moment and then sighs before pulling back.

“Well let’s get Puddin off to spend time with her Dada and Mama before we all head out. I could use a drink too.” Kira mumbles, causing laughs.

Ava grabbed Eric’s hand and pulled him along with her. Kira, Tris and Shayla trailed along behind the massive man being tugged by the tiny toddler.

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

It was perfect. The music, food and people made the party for her. It amused Eric because Kira didn’t want to stay still at first. She wanted to inspect and see it all. He knew that she would and it was why he had included so much into it. The group moved along through the different areas until they finally ended up at The Pit and at the bars that were set up on the main floor. There were also dance floors set up and the group didn’t waste time in hitting both up and breaking off.

Kira was dragged off to the dance floor by Lynn, Shay and Mar; leaving their dates and men behind at the bar to look on and make sure they weren’t fucked with.

Eric watched Kira dancing and though his face showed nothing, inside he was dying to get out there with her. The whole night they had stayed close. His arm was almost always around her and they were pressed close as they enjoyed drinking, eating, talking and even just holding each other.

He ached for going out there with her but he didn’t know if he could handle it either.

“Kira looks like she’s having fun.” Emmett said as he leaned against the bar near Eric.

Eric nodded and gave a slight smile. “She deserves to. None of this would be possible without her anyways. It’s only because of her and her ideas that we might actually be in the fucking black budget wise for once in years.”

Emmett smirks into his drink. “You guys look like you are doing good.”

Eric side eyes his brother-in-law and shakes his head. “Don’t even think it man. I am not going to fuck this up by trying to go for more.”

Emmett nods but internally he is smirking. Whether either of them admitted it, it already was more. He got it though. Eric didn’t want to lose what he had just got back. Kira was more than a bit skittish when it came to relationships. “I get it, believe me I do. I…”

Whatever he was going to say is cut off by a growl from Eric whose eyes go hard and his body tenses.

Out on the dance floor Kira lets the drinks she has had and the fact that she is enjoying herself take over. She moves to the beat and loses herself in the music. Shay, Lynn and Mar are never far from her and each other so she isn’t worried about someone starting crap with her. She doesn’t want to dance with anyone and they know that.

Well that isn’t completely true. She wants to dance with Eric and badly. The more the night goes on and the drinks hit her system the more she starts to seriously consider it. They hadn’t really ever got to do this. They had the one dance the night of their first kiss and the only other time they had danced had been the night they had first been intimate. That had been just an impromptu dance without any music, just the two of them pressed close and swaying together.

She could admit that several times when she had gone out over the last year or so here in Dauntless, she had wondered and often what it would be like to be with him dancing.

She was in the middle of that reflection when she felt hands go around her waist and someone press close to her back. She knew the second that the fingers touched her that it wasn’t Eric. She also knew the second she got a whiff of their scent who it was. It had her grabbing a wrist, spinning around and twisting it so that it was behind his back and he was on the ground on his knees.

Her eyes were fire as she looked at the back of the head of her piece of crap ex, Ben. “I think you must be either fucking high or too drunk to remember Ben. But I believe I said you are to come nowhere near me or even think about touching me again.” She growled out.

Shay and Mar were holding Lynn back, who was snarling at Ben.

“Kira baby, you know you miss me.” He whined and tried to break free from her hold but she had him too good and it was hurting his shoulder badly.

“Miss you? You really are high. I miss nothing about you. I meant when I said to leave me alone and I never wanted to see you again unless I just had to for work. I suggest you listen and get the fuck out of my sight now.”

“It’s a open party. I can stay if I want…” Ben yelps because strong arms yank his arm harder. Eric had come up behind Kira and smoothly taken her place. Now he was the one in charge of making sure he got the message.

“You have just worn out you're fucking welcome. Get out of here before I toss your pathetic ass off of the Chasm and grant you your fondest fucking wish.” Eric had leaned close to his ear to say this in his most deadly calm and menacing voice he could.

He felt disgust for how much the little punk trembled under him just from his words. He wanted to thrash him right there but he wouldn’t because it would fuck up Kira’s night. He promised himself though, he would be looking for Ben later on and making him pay for putting his hands on her.

Uri and Zeke had followed him and when Eric had lifted Ben up, they took over and made sure he got the message then left the area.

With him out of the way Eric turns to pull Kira to him. His forehead is furrowed and he looks her over as if she is hurt. With a sigh she moves closer, allowing him to cup her cheeks and look into her eyes.

Eric sees that she isn’t upset or even bothered. In fact the moment his hands touched her there was no other thought that Eric.

“Dance with me Eric.” Kira said as she lifted on her toes to move her mouth closer to his ear. Her breath was as warm as her body as it pressed against his and her arms wrapped around his neck.

He didn’t even need to answer. He had known the second Ben was gone he wasn’t leaving the dance floor without her, or without doing just what she was asking him to do.

Their friends, seeing that she was ok, moved on with smiles or smug looks when Eric pulled Kira to him. Almost instantly the two started to move in time with the music and each other.

The two for sure drew some looks. Some were girls that were eyeing the young leader or glaring at the newest leader in envy. Most though wondered what the new addition to leadership was doing with that asshole when she could have any guy at her beck and call tonight.

Eric and Kira had eyes for no one but each other though and wouldn’t have given a shit anyways if they did know what others were thinking when looking at the two of them.

His body pressed against hers, his hands as they moved almost hesitantly at first but then more sure and dominating; all of this was quickly tearing down the last reservations she had about taking the step towards physical with him. She didn’t take it there as they were dancing, because the dancing was enough. Although she felt his lips graze along her neck and and shoulders more than a few times.

For Eric’s part he was holding back so much as she moved her body against his. Her hands caressing his chest, arms, back and even his neck and into his hair as they danced. They were both breathing hard and there was no way she could not feel his arousal as it pressed into her or when it seemed like she sought it out to move against it.

He could have and should have stopped their dancing long before they did end up breaking away. He wondered if it looked like they had just engaged in sex to anyone else because it sure as fuck almost felt like it. It also brought home to him how much of a beautiful and sexy as hell woman she had grown into. The way she moved with him brought up all kinds of images of what it would be like for them in bed together now.

They had been amazing together before and from what he was experiencing now it felt like it would be mind blowing for them now. He tried to shove that thought away and after what had to be almost a half hour later, he led her back to the bar.

They were both still full of desire, panting hard from the dancing but also each other. He ordered their drinks but never let her move from the crook of his arm.

His eyes held hers and Kira smiled. Knowing he was checking again to make sure she was ok. “I’m fine Eric. Really. He hasn’t and won’t spoil this for us.”

Eric felt a flash of heat and pleasure. ‘She hadn’t said me, she said us.’ He returned the smile and leaned closer, by now they were both used to the gesture they allowed each other. Their foreheads pressed close together, noses brushing together and breathing each other in but also fighting constantly the pull that their mouths had on each other.

It must have been the drinks or the fact that they had worked themselves up beyond what they had ever dared to get to before. Maybe it was just her being tired of fighting what seemed as natural as breathing to her body. On the next time their noses brushed and lips ghosted above each other, Kira pressed up and into his.

It was instantaneous the gasp and growl that came from each of them. It was also instant when his hand whipped up to the back of her neck to pull her in and lock her there before his mouth took over and deepened the kiss. How he had the presence of mind to not only put his drink down but take hers and put it down too, she couldn’t understand.

The second he did though and their hands were free, they were pulling each other closer. Her hands and nails went to the back of his neck, scraping along it as her body arched into him and she moaned in pleasure. Eric could only groan as he let his his hands move over her back, ass, shoulders and arms. The kiss only broke when they were left gasping for air, even then their lips didn’t fully leave each others.

Neither had known they were capable of the depth of passion they just shared. They had been passionate before of course, but this was different and deeper somehow.

“Eric” Kira breathed against his lips before she swallowed.

Eric’s heart felt like it was beating out of his chest and he was about to answer her almost whispered plea when a throat cleared around him. Closing his eyes and growling he pulled back to look over Kira’s shoulder at Four who looked apologetic. He pointed to his watch and Eric understood.

“Baby….” Eric said into her ear as he brought her against his chest at the same time. “Will you go to the roof with me?”

Kira’s arms wrapped around Eric and she sighed as she closed her eyes. The roof was good. Fresh air would help because she needed to be able to think, her mind was fuzzy but not from drink. Her body was also on fire and maybe the cool fall night air would help with that too. She doubted it but it couldn’t hurt to try.

She nodded. “Ok.” Was all she could get out.

Pulling back Eric cupped the sides of her face and tilted her head so he could see her eyes. He was looking for regret or an indication that if he kissed her again she would reject him. He didn’t find that, just the desire that was sure to be in his eyes as well.

He allowed a brief press of his lips to hers in smaller and softer kisses before he pulled back again. He had to make sure to grab their jackets from the bartender.

Kira picked her drink back up and tossed it back before he handed her jacket to her. He smirked slightly then tossed his own back and put his jacket on. They turned together and he pulled her to his side. Their group had given them room but when they saw them ready to leave, they all made their way to the roof and the section that was set aside for the leaders, senior members and others that were invited to see the show but from that reserved section.

There were couches and fire bins placed around to provide warmth and light. There was also a few tables full of treats and with a smile Eric led Kira over to the table that Hestia and Horace were manning.

They both came around to give Kira hugs before they pressed covered paper coffee cups of a steaming drink that she was informed was a mocha and baileys coffee. Eric got one as well and then the each picked out a treat from their table. Somehow they decided to share when they both decided they wanted the cheesecake with the berry compote topping.

The found a small sofa that was in the area their friends were already making their way to and taking other seats nearby. Max and Daria greeted them with smiles and failed to hide their smug looks.

It didn’t bother Kira or Eric, hardly anything would at the moment. They all sat around talking while Eric would glance at his watch every once in awhile.

Kira sipped from her coffee, the warmth from the beverage and booze making her feel cozy. Eric pulled her closer into his side and smiled as he looked to her. “Are you warm enough babe? There are blankets here if we need them.”

Kira shook her head with a smile. “I am fine. You, the fire and the coffee are making sure of that.”

Eric couldn’t help the smugness that came into his looks. “Good.” He didn’t look away and Kira could feel that desire flare up again in her. She knew she was going to act on it now, she just didn’t know how to broach the subject to him.

The loud boom and crackle of the first fireworks was what broke their gazes from each other. Kira’s eyes went to the sky and her face lit up with a smile as she laughed. “Fireworks! Oh that is perfect!”

He had made sure to have them, she was sure of it. In fact she was sure that Eric had a hand in almost every aspect, if not all aspects, of the party tonight. Chris was a wonderful planner and did her job well, but she wouldn’t have been so focused on any of the things that had been spotlighted tonight. Not without at least some guidance. Eric had known what she would want more than anything and seen to it. Setting her cup down on the table, she took his and did the same. After that she looked at him a bit unsurely, she wanted to be even closer to him and share in this moment.

Eric knew what she wanted without having to be asked because he had just been thinking about lifting her up and putting her there anyways. So he did just that, he lifted her up and moved her to his lap. Her arms went around his neck, her side against his chest and their foreheads pressed together for a moment before they turned to watch the fireworks together.

She could feel the beats of his heart against her and it pulled to her, before the finale could even get close their lips found each other again. This time their mouths also explored neck, ears and jaws.

Her hands curled into him as shivers of pleasure coursed through her. Mistaking her shivers for being cold, Eric pulled back panting. “Are you ok baby? Do you want to go inside?” His voice was thick with desire but his forehead was furrowed in worry.

Kira started to shake her head no she but then she bit her bottom lip in thought. “Can we go? Not back to the party though.” She almost held her breath when she said this and it made Eric’s catch.

He swallowed but nodded then swiftly moved her to her feet and stood himself. They didn’t stay for the finale and they didn’t give more than a brief nod as he pulled her to his side and made their way to the apartments.

When they neared her apartment, he pulled his key card that worked for his and her door out to unlock her door.

Kira frowned because she remembered Maria, Zoe and Ava. “Eric.” She put a hand out to stop him with a frown still in place.

“I don’t have to come in Kira. We don’t have…”

“Can we go to your apartment Eric?” Kira interrupted him before he could get the rest out.

Eric swallowed but nodded and pulled her along to his own apartment. With a look to her to be sure he opened the door and let her go in first. When the door was closed and locked he turned to see her standing by the doors to the balcony, looking up to the sky. The fireworks could be still seen from this part of the compound just not as well.

He slipped his jacket off and put it to the side before he moved to stand behind her. He lets his hands go to her waist and pull her closer but didn’t move for more than that.

Kira closed her eyes and sighed at the contact again. Feeling brave she moved to take her jacket off and let it drop to a chair near by.

Eric turned her to face him and pull her against his chest. “Kira…”

She shook her head and put two fingers against his mouth before she took a breath and steeled herself. She wanted him but she didn’t want to lose what they had because of it. She needed to make that clear. “I want you Eric. I haven’t ever stopped wanting that and it has gotten worse, even before all of this.”

She stopped because she could see and feel the pleasure that radiated through him at these words. His hand moved to cover hers and move her fingers from his mouth.

Eric sensed a ‘but’ coming up and he braced himself for it. “I hear a but in there somewhere Kira so let me just say, I want you too. I want what we have again more though. I don’t want to lose you ever again.”

Kira nodded “I feel the same way, but what if we could have both Eric.” She blushed and chewed her bottom lip in thought of how to word it.

Eric tensed and looked to her. “What do you mean Kira?”

Kira sighed and looked at his chest as she went ahead and blurted it out. Lynn had told her that it was also called friends with benefits. That sounded much less crude than fuck buddies. So that would be how she would present it to him. “We keep our friendship but it would be just a bit more. Like with….”

Eric wanted to growl but didn’t. He knew where she was headed with this now. His fingers dug into her hip and his body responded whether he fucking wanted it to or not. She wanted to be friends with benefits. While this should be fucking the best news, it wasn’t because it wasn’t what he really wanted. Yes he wanted her physically but he wanted more with her. He wanted everything with her and only her from now on.

But he would take what he could get, so he knew before she spoke the word he was agreeing.

“Benefits.” Kira finished, unaware of the internal struggle in Eric. She was having one herself, because as soon as she started speaking the words her heart and body went to war. Her heart wasn’t happy but her body was already anticipating getting some relief.

Eric’s breathing began to get heavier and his nostrils flared. “Are you sure Kira?” His voice was strained.

She wasn’t completely but she wanted him and that was ruling her for the moment. “Yes Eric. I want you, but can we do this?”

“If this is what you want Kira, then yes.” Before she could second guess it though the selfish bastard part of him that he had been shoving to the side from the moment they woke up together reared his head. He claimed her mouth in a kiss to drive every thought from her head, his hands roaming her body at the same time.

Her hands worked to move under his shirt and he groaned as she moaned at the contact. He broke away panting because he needed to make like he was on board with this. In reality he would take every opportunity to use this so that they would be what he knew they should be. What she wanted to be but was still so scared of him hurting her to allow again.

He pressed his forehead to hers. “Do you know what that means though Kira. Do you know the rules of it?”

Panting and dazed she shook her head. “Not really, just a little.”

Eric silently thanked the gods for whoever suggested this and that they didn’t tell her what it all meant. “Then we need to talk about that before Kira. You need to be sure.”

Kira nodded and licked her lips. His hands were still roaming over her, making her mind stay hazy. Especially when one trailed up her stomach and to cup her breast over her dress. His mouth moved to start nipping and kissing along her jaw near her ear and neck. “We don’t see anyone else and if we do we tell each other. No other hookups Kira. That is what with benefits means.” He almost growls that. It is the most important one for him and the only one he cares about really.  Making her his, and only his.

Kira nodded as she gasps when his fingernails scraped over her nipple through the dress and stick on bra. “No one else.” Was all she got out in a breathy whisper.

A rumble of pleasure went through his chest as he smiled into her neck. “No sneaking off or hiding it either Kira. This isn’t cheap or dirty. This is us.”

Something almost tickled in the back of her head, telling her to think a bit more but it was driven out of her mind when Eric moved his lips to her pulse point and began to suck, bite and soothe her there. She moaned and clutched to him.

Reluctantly, Eric pulled back and looked to her, he needed her to answer that last and agree. “Do you understand that last part Kira? I won’t hide this because there is nothing to be ashamed of.”

With heavy lidded eyes Kira looked into Eric’s and saw the demand for an answer. “Yes Eric. No hiding it.”

The amount of triumph he felt at that blew the last restraint he had. Eric claimed her mouth in a kiss and lifted her in his arms at the same time. He wasted no time in moving them to his bedroom and to finalize the claim of her again before anything could get in his way.

[sakura-warrior]

Instead of Glass, There was Ice: Chapter 1

I recently published a new HitsuHina story under my fanfiction account, H-Mira. So I thought “Hey, why not post it on tumblr too?” and here it is! 

Please let me know what you think! 

Rated T for some swearing.

Chapter 1:

She couldn't believe her eyes. One minute Hinamori Momo was reading the final words her captain had left for her, and the next she was in complete shock as the words on the parchment paper changed before her eyes, leaving a hidden message in their wake. As she strive to read the new message through tear stricken eyes, she suddenly felt her grief being rapidly replaced by shock as the message sunk in.

There was just no way. It had to be some kind of mistake. There was no way that what this letter was saying was true. It just couldn't be…

But, as she continued to read the letter, Hinamori came to realise that what it was saying had to be true. There was no mistaking it: this was her recently deceased captain's handwriting after all. And she knew that there was no way in the world he would ever lie to her, especially in his final words.

Knowing that something had to be done, she wiped away the remaining tears from her eyes as she stood up. Filled with a newfound determination to avenge her beloved captain's killer, she began to recite a kido spell under her breath and prepared herself for the blast she knew was soon to follow.

.

.

.

Soon, she found herself facing down the alleyway that hide her captain's assailant. Taking a deep breath, she then leapt forward as she prepared herself to confront her captain's killer and her beloved childhood friend, Hitsugaya Toshiro.

"Hinamori… What are you doing here?" he asked her in shock as she stood between him and the captain of squad three.

"Finally, I found you…" she responded, desperately trying to prevent the sob in her throat from escaping. "And now to avenge Captain Aizen's death…"

"Hinamori, wait! You're not strong enough to-" Hitsugaya began, but was soon rendered speechless as Hinamori withdrew her sword and pointed it at his throat, not Ichimaru's. "Hina...mori… W-What are you…"

"I told you… I'm here to avenge Captain Aizen's death…" she replied coldly, although she felt her insides start to burn. "And that means killing his murderer… Killing you, Hitsugaya-kun."

Before he could muster a response, Hinamori charged at him. It was only due to his years of training that he managed to dodge the attack on reflect, because otherwise his brain was in too much confusion to function. Just what was she saying? What was she… Why was she…

It didn't take long for Hinamori to recover from the momentum of her swing and charge at Hitsugaya again. This time, however, he was ready and was easily able to dodge her attacks. In fact, it was so easy that he had to wonder if she was even trying to hurt him all. After all, she hadn't even bothered to release her shikai, which was practically suicide against someone who could use Bankai if they needed.

"I.. I… can't… I can't do it…" Hinamori muttered as she stopped mid-assault. Then, she lifted her tear stained face to her childhood friend. "I can't hurt you, Hitsugaya-kun… Even though Captain Aizen said… Even though he told me in his letter that you… Oh, I just don't know what to do anymore, Shiro-chan…"

Without warning, Hitsugaya disappeared from her sight. Before Hinamori even had a chance to process this, she felt his presence suddenly appear right beside her.

"I see… So it was hidden in that bastard's letter, huh… I knew I should I have trusted my gut and burned the damn thing." a voice said at her side, so cold and heartless that Hinamori barely registered it as belonging to her childhood friend. "And to think that he dragged you into this… If I could, I'd kill that bastard all over again for the pain he put you through."

"Hitsugaya-" she began, but was soon cut off by a gasp as she felt a sudden wave of drowsiness take hold of her. Recognizing the sensation as a sleeping kido, she felt all the strength being sapped from her and would have collapsed on the spot had Hitsugaya caught her.

"It's alright, Hinamori…" she heard him say in a soothing voice. "Don't worry, I'll make sure nobody ever hurts you…"

"Now, Ichimaru, where were we…" and then Hinamori's world faded to black.

.

.

.

When she next awoke, Hinamori noticed that she was surrounded by white, unfamiliar walls. As she sat up and looked around, she realised that she was alone in a room that was barren except for the futon she was sitting on.

It was only when she tried to leave and realised that there was a barrier blocking her path that she figured out where she was. Her knees went weak and wave of nausea came over her stomach. She was in Hitsugaya Toshiro's captain's quarters.

The sudden recognition of where she was hit her like a tidal wave. She had to get out. There were too many questions that needed answering. And she refused to be helpless.

And so, she blasted the barrier with a kido spell and ran as fast she could. Once out, she felt several spiritual pressures intensify and suddenly fizzle out on Sokyoku Hill. Recognizing one of the dominant spiritual pressure as belonging to her childhood friend, she sprinted there as fast as her legs would carry her, praying that she made it there before it was too late.

It was only as she got closer and closer to Sokyoku Hill that she realised just how much spiritual pressure Hitsugaya was letting out. The sheer magnitude of it would have otherwise forced her to collapse had it not been for her strong determination to reach him. She had no idea he was that powerful… It was terrifying.

Once she reached the top and could see him, she collapsed to her knees. And not only because she could no longer rely on her determination to withstand his spiritual pressure, but also because of the sight that lay before her eyes. There, stood Hitsugaya with his hand choking the life out of Kuchiki Rukia, a mass of bloody bodies surrounding him. Most of them appeared to still be breathing, but she knew that if they didn't receive medical attention soon...

"Oh, Hinamori, you made it." he suddenly exclaimed, his hand still squeezing the young kuchiki's throat. "You got here a little earlier than I was expecting. Had I known you'd get here now, I would have let up on my spiritual pressure. Sorry about that."

"L-Let me… go…" Rukia gasped as she desperately tried to claw Hitsugaya's hand away from her throat. "Let… me-"

"Shut. Up." he growled in response as he shoved his other hand through her chest. And he then withdrew his hand almost as quickly as it went in, a small glass sphere now in his blood covered hand. Taking a look to expect that the sphere was indeed the object he was searching for, he threw away Rukia's now unconscious body and began to advance towards Hinamori.

Hinamori desperately tried to speak as he walked towards her, but no words could escape her lips. Not only was his spiritual pressure soul crushing, but the scene that was playing out in front of her was just too much for her mind to process. She had no idea that her childhood friend could act this way. That he could be so… cold.

"Here, is this better?" Hitsugaya asked her after suppressing his spiritual pressure and extending out a hand to help her back up. "I really didn't meant to make you go through that. But, the fact that you could not only withstand, but also make your way up here despite my spiritual pressure means that you'll have no trouble fitting in where we're going. I gotta say, that's a relief."

"W-We? We're… going?" Hinamori stuttered in response, her voice starting to return to her.

"Of course, we." he answered, helping her stand up again. "There's no way I would ever leave you here with these traitors, after all."

Before she could even ask what he meant by traitors, a sudden flash of light came directly at them. She didn't even have a chance to blink before Hitsugaya effortlessly blocked Soi Fon attack.

"You'll have to do better than that." Hitsugaya stated as he pushed the squad two captain back. "Try a weak attempt like that again and you'll lose your head."

"Why you little…" Soi Fon growled as she charged at Hitsugaya again, only to have her attacks easily blocked once again. Hinamori could barely believe it, the capable captain Soi Fon was reduced to a weakling in her childhood friend's presence.

"Psst, Hinamori!" she heard a voice she recognized as Kira calling from behind her, motioning her over to him. "Quick! While he's too busy to notice!"

Hinamori, so overwhelmed by what was taking place around her, couldn't bring herself to walk towards the squad three lieutenant. Noticing that she wasn't walking towards him, Kira assumed that she couldn't hear him and decided to bring her to safety himself.

Unfortunately for Kira, Hitsugaya noticed him charge towards Hinamori out of the corner of his eye. As such, he quickly knocked Soi Fon unconscious and launched a kido spell after Kira.

Fearing that the spell would kill her academy classmate, Hinamori didn't hesitate to run and push Kira out of the way, the spell missing them both by mere centimeters. Hitsugaya, noticing just how close it had come to hitting her, started to run to where Hinamori and Kira were standing.

Except, before he could reach her, a large yellow beam came down from the sky and engulfed him in its light.

"NO!" Hitsugaya cursed as he banged his fist against the solid beam. "CURSE YOU! I swear, if it's the last thing I do, I'll take her back. I won't ever let you hurt her, you hear me!? And I will kill anyone and anything that gets in my way!"

And with that, he vanished into the hollow-made whole in the sky.

Leaving Hinamori all alone, surrounded by the shattered pieces of her life as she knew it.