#maybe gonna scream some more later idk

[nomairuins]

loveee when a character is crushed under the weight of someone elses expectations for them love when a character dedicates their entire life to something they never even wanted for themself love when the only reason a character keeps going is because theyre Supposed to and bc theyre supposed to make another person happy/proud. YES !!! CLAPPING !!! YES !!!!!!!!

[darlingdreadwrites]

I read your Toby fics, and I really love your writing:D

I see your open with requests and I wanted to ask a Toby x final girl reader?

They just kept fighting against him, and he somehow gained a crush on the person he is supposed to kill? It's fine if you don't ;D

I WAS SO EXCITED TO WRITE THIS I SQUEALED WHEN I READ IT!! i hope i do right by you, my lovely anon.

pairing: Ticci Toby x Final Girl F!Reader

summary: Toby thought you'd be an easy target since you were just a girl. He should've gone with the easy kill when he had the chance.

contains: getting chased by a man wielding two hatchets, slight pov switches but it's still in second person, idk what else to put

warning: violence, gore (more like imagery is gore-y), MEAN TOBY, reader gets hurt, toby gets hurt, me not knowing how to write fight/tense scenes and the logistics that go with them, barely any talking cuz i think toby would be too embarrassed by his stutter

word count: 1.6k

masterlist

a.n: when i read final girl in the request, i pictured reader wearing those outfits that female japanese horror game protags wear (picture fatal frame). i’m gonna keep the end ambiguous for you because my freak brain wants it all to work out perfectly for them, but the other part of my brain wants to keep it realistic cuz there’s no way in HELL i��d let someone forcing me to run live. if you want me to continue where i left off i’d be so glad to (and you can pick whichever type of “route” you want). ENJOY!!

The cool, night air gave you chills all over as your feet pounded against the soft forest floor under your feet. With every quick step you took, another short burst of breath escaped your lips. It felt like you were being pushed back by a sudden gust of wind, but the trees continued to look blurry in the corners in your eyes, and that was a good thing. You kept your pace – even if it felt like the breeze kept poking needles into the cuts on your skin.

You had decided to actually dress up today but stayed mindful enough for the fall weather. So, you weren’t exactly dressed for the occasion. Maybe next time you decide you want to get attacked by some psycho swinging hatchets; you’ll be a little more fucking prepared. 

The whistling of said hatchet reminds you of why you were running. The sound of his weapon whirred by as it lodges itself deep into the bark of a tree. It’s already behind you as your mind yelled at your body to keep up. His other hatchet thwacks into a tree too close to your head and you scream involuntarily. You stumble to a stop stupidly, stabilize yourself, and drag your body to pivot and sprint to the right.

You weren’t sure how long you could keep going. But - as much as your lungs burned - that buzz that came from fighting for your life nagged at you like a bitch. You don’t care how much your body hurts because you will deal with the consequences later.

You’re not going to let yourself die.

Toby grunted as frustration and anger seethed in his veins. Wrapping his hands around the handle of his hatchet, he kept his eyes trained on you as he struggled to pull the thing free. He’d all but forgotten that the other one was a few feet away. He wasn’t normally fond of losing his favorite toys. He wouldn’t lose you either.

You were a stupid, stupid girl, after all.

His head violently twitched to the side compulsorily when he finally dislodged his weapon. A few wood chips flew out and landed on the muddy leaves below. He stood there, taking and letting out deep breaths.

He thinks about what might be going through your mind as you keep running. Maybe about how you were gonna get out of here, call the pigs, and have some nurse tend to the wounds he gave you. He smiled and tightened his grip on his hatchet as he fantasized about your naïve hope. He knew these woods like the back of his hand.

You wouldn’t make it out of here in one piece.

You slow down as the structure of a house comes into view. It fits the eerie atmosphere perfectly – chipping paint, broken windows. You’re not here to admire the neglected building, though, and you stomp up the small steps. The door lets out a low groan as you practically shove it open using your shoulder.

Slamming it behind you, your head whips around for the exit or some type of weapon. In the distance, you can hear the shrill whistle of the man outside, an involuntary thing, you’ve noticed. Just how long have you been fighting this freak? Enough to learn his quirks, that’s for sure. 

Delving deeper into the house with hurried steps, you look around for a kitchen. Find a weapon, find a weapon, you repeat to yourself, the sound of your quick gasps filling your ears. You catch yourself on the doorway when you almost rush past it.  

You barely stepped foot into the room before crying out when you felt something make impact with your back. The dull, heavy pressure sends painful shockwaves through you. Having the wind knocked out of you, the muscles in your back spasm and you buckle forward. He shoves you, and you wheeze as the edge of the rusted stove in front of you digs painfully into your stomach.

Your eyes immediately land on a cast iron skillet, and you think you have less than three seconds. You smash the pan against the side of his head, your grunt and the metal clang the only sounds in the room. You were confused as to why he wasn’t yelling out in pain. But your arms jerked upward, the heavy iron bludgeoning into his chin and he stumbles back.

Toby can hear the ringing in his ears with each blow to his head, his world spinning for far too long than he would’ve liked. He snarls and grabs your arm, throwing you in the direction of a wall hard - causing you to drop your makeshift weapon.

He looks at you, at how your legs shake as you try to steady the world around you. Look at you - you looked like a fawn. With your wide eyes and trembling form. Guess he’ll be your coyote, right? He’d sink his teeth into the side of your neck and stain his maw with your crimson flood. You were just pretty enough that he couldn’t wait to watch your eyes roll back when he greedily kept the air from inflating your lungs.

No, but you weren’t a fawn, were you? He’d seen more fight in you than any of the losers he was tasked to kill. They sobbed – they fucking begged on their hands and knees – to keep him from tearing them limb by limb. You were stronger than he thought you’d be, but you weren’t as agile as he was, he thought.

His face stretched as another wide, sinister grin spread across his face. His gloved hand tightened around the hatchet’s handle. He could hear the leather creak if he focused on anything other than your breathing.

You duck and stumble out of the way as you hear the spitting of wood above your head. He yells out a loud “fuck!” and attempts to yank the weapon free. You run out of the room and almost collide with another wall. You pivot on your heel because there was no way you’d run away from the front--

Gasping, you caught your balance before you could fall through the gaping hole on the floor. No time to jump, you told yourself, and you spun once again. Sprinting down the hall, you were met with the door to a room rather than any kind of exit.

You’d remember to set this house on fire when you made it out alive.

The room stunk of decaying carcasses and a thick powdery smell – the former outperforming the latter. You make your way to a second door and find yourself in a bathroom. You think there’s nothing here heavy enough to hurt him until your eyes land on a towel rod that hung loosely from the wall.

With a determined tug it comes out and you know he heard it. You can tell by the way you hear his heavy boots scramble in the direction of the room. You take a deep gulp of air and press your back against the wall next to the door.

The air was heavy with tension as the door creaked open. His shadowy figure stretched on the floor, and he walked right in. Would he turn around? Would he sense where you were before it was too late?

While he twisted around, you slam the rod into the side of his head. He’s disoriented for a moment, his head rolling to the side. Before he could react, you lifted your right leg, and the bottom of your shoe made contact with his stomach – sending him hurtling back.

Toby lets out a groan as he loses his balance and falls into a tub. His limbs sprawl out, legs and arms dangling from the sides. He attempts to move when a raw, guttural scream that causes his chest to tighten makes him stop. His eyes dilate as he stares at you wildly. Something about your scream has shaken him to his core. His head was still dizzy and a little numb from the force of your hit. And yet he couldn’t help but admire your resilience. He should be livid – breaking all your fingers and pulling your pretty little teeth out of your mouth one by one.

The man’s tics overtook him, his eyelids squeezed shut with a sudden intensity. He opens them again, and you’re still rooted in the same spot – breathing heavily. He’d never seen a girl look as hot as you did right now. He didn’t think that was even possible in your state. Your clothes, hair, and face were caked in mud and blood from your gashes. A girl like you should’ve been screaming in pain and crying for her mommy. But you stared at him with a burning defiance that caused his heart to pound violently against his chest.

His hatchet lay at your feet, and he realized that you had gotten him. You won. He could try attacking you again – he was bigger than you – but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He can’t fight back anymore; he just stares in what he can only assume is awe. Years of taking lives and witnessing more gore than anyone ever should, could not have prepared him for this moment. You didn’t stop – you just couldn’t. It was… admirable. Beautiful, even, if he was a more sentimental person.

You piqued his curiosity like nobody had ever done before. He wanted to know what made you tick. He wanted to study every movement, sound, and judgement you’d ever make. You could break all the bones in his body, and he’d come running back to watch you do it again when the Operator put him together again.

You astonished him.

So, what’ll you do now?

[captainreecejames]

fired by a thirst trap || my ex is a footballer LH44 Edition

summary you date footballer kylian mbappe, that is until a lewis hamilton thirst trap hits the timeline

pairing ex!kylian mbappe x reader, lewis hamilton x reader

faceclaim bruna marquezine

warnings mbappe slander

notes first, please pretend that mbappe to real madrid was announced in april of this year, second please pretend that the golden doodle on the yacht is actually roscoe. thank you for the suspension of disbelief (or however the phrase goes).

part 2

twitter ----------

ynusername posted--------

liked by lewishamilton, mercedesamgf1 and others

ynusername before, during, and after the miami gp

load more comments

yourmanager that's right she's hot and she knows it ↳ ynusername 😘😘

mercedesamgf1 loved having you yn, come again soon ↳ ynusername thank you so much for having me!!

yourstylist from Miami to the met gala! ↳ ynusername light work 💪🏼

username12 she's so pretty it makes me want to die og

username13 that post break up glowup really is hitting

username1 how childish to break up with someone over what they wore to a date, yn your a bitch ↳ ynusername *you're 😉 ↳ username2 LOL SUCKS TO SUCK username1

lewishamilton you're gonna kill it on the carpet later ↳ ynusername you + me = slaying the met gala carpet ↳ lewishamilton you 🤝me = killing it on the dancefloor

username14 yn what have you done with my weird ass uncle?? you're making him cool

username15 I'm crying yn is really making lewis enter his active era again ↳ username16 if a woman as beautiful as yn was talking to me you bet your ass I'm refreshing my phone to see if she said something ↳ username15 you 🤝 lewis simping after yn

twitter --------

ynusername posted ----------

liked by lewishamilton, roscoelovescoco and others

ynusername but it's the monaco grand prix

load more comments

lewishamilton is it? Who's playing? ↳ ynusername no one's playing. its the grand prix, I never miss the Monaco grand prix ↳ lewishamilton 😂😉

roscoelovescoco we loves yous ❤️❤️ ↳ ynusername Roscoe 🫶🏼😭 ↳ username26 not Roscoe using a red heart ↳ username6 next thing we know roscoe's account is locked by merc 😭

username27 forget the red heart yn's got lewis participating in memes. merc admin is screaming crying throwing up rn ↳ username28 mercedes social media team has been begging lewis to do content, meanwhile he's over here giggling kicking his feet with yn

username29 fuck all y'all, who got yn the roses ↳ username30 idk probably the man who's yacht she's on ↳ ynusername 🤐🤐

username35 when her and lewis treat the paddock as their own personal fashion show, you won't catch me complaining ↳ username36 I know the French man is crying right now, she upgraded so fucking hard ↳ username37 she's just a gold digging whore, glad he left her ↳ username36 idk, maybe if he made an effort SHE wouldn't have left him

charles_leclerc was lovely meeting you yn! ↳ ynusername HEY get off your phone and go enjoy your win!!! 😠 ↳ charles_leclerc okay mom ↳ username31 someone update the f1 family tree, yn is now Charles mom via her relationship with lewis ↳ ynusername I'm too young to be a mom, let alone a grandma. 😂😂

twitter ----------

post note: also, in my head this was going all the way past the canadian grand prix and going to feature some of the mercedes social media admin debacles, but it got too long and i really don't want to pile on to them when I think they got fired.

[jess-the-vampire]

honestly out of all the pilot/pitch stuff that was removed/changed, i am the most sad about william's removal if anything

arguably his character was later transformed into hunter, but i can see why dana claims technically his character was removed entirely because everything we get on him showcases him to mostly be wildly different from hunter

he's younger, from the 16th century so he's apparently centuries old, the concept was he and luz seemed to be the only humans on the isles, he's also basically everyone's idea of like.....baby philip with the witch hunter aspect more prevalent.

Honestly his pitch design even looks more like baby Philip then hunter.

how he went from this design to the more prince-like design down the line is worth asking. Cause by the time we got to the animation test he was known as "Prince william" (Idk, maybe in the pitch he was gonna be secretly a prince who regains his memories or something?)

he's just a weird kid who lives nearby and screams at the clouds.

apparently he also had a memory problem that would regain over time and reveal he and obron (pitch belos) are family and i assume had some past that probably explains them both being so freaking old and how william fell asleep with memory issues.

Maybe obron was responsible for william's condition, or maybe someone else did this and it led to obron's actions in modern day? i wonder how this would of played out had it been in the final draft.

also their relation, would it have been another nephew-uncle situation? would their relation have been way different, maybe they're brothers who were witch hunters and this was transformed into the wittebane backstory instead? william's also been asleep for centuries so it's been awhile since they've seen each other so their relationship would have a different vibe to it overall.

it's quite interesting, sad we never got to see where it would go but it would be cool if maybe a future project might go through with the unused concept someday.

[no-droids]

Another Rough Day

gif credit @chrishemsworht

Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 13.7K

Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort

A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long).  As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that

ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello

ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing

anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall

---

You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.

Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession.  You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets.  The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.

They’re… awful.

Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it.  The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.

Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to.  You don’t even really feel like a person right now.  The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life.  It feels sick.  Wrong in your bones.  Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop.  Not until all of them stop moving.

You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops.  Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago.  Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.

Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground.  It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception.  What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all.  You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now.  No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams.  No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.

You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move.  The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again.  It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.

Silence.  Silence.  You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement.  You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are.  You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder.  You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—

“P-Please don’t kill me!”

His words remind you of something.  Reality, maybe.  A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.

It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands.  “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”

Behind the mask, your expression furrows.  Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying?  They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat.  Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy.  It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.

No, this is a trap, it has to be.  Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.

You pause, staring down at him in shock.

It’s him, you recognize him immediately.  It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances.  Oshua Ryler.  Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened.  A stormtrooper?  His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense.  What is he doing here?  Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them.  They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers.  “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”

“Shut up.”  You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done.  You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet.  You hate looking at his face.  It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.

“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust.  His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat.  He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby.  You know what needs to be done.  Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over.  It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.

But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”

“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”

“The Empire is ashes.”  You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears.  “They hold no power anymore.  Why are you with them?”

“Because the one thing they have left is money!”  The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green.  “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…”  He stares wide eyed at you and gulps.  “C-Conditioning.”

Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now.  “Were they expecting the baby?”

“W-What?”  He squeaks up at you.

“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?”  You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side.  “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”

“Who is ‘he’?”  The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around.  “What are you talki—”

“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!”  You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him.  Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about.  “Now—”

“If it was I didn’t know!”  He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight.  “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty!  They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”

You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling.  You could still kill him.  You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.

Shit.  “Who put the bounty out on you?”  You ask sharply.  It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder.  “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”

“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.

“Yes!”  Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”

Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it.  You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask.  Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something.  Din was cut off before he finished.  Help?  Know what to do?  You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by.  The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.

But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice.  The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.  Get to Nevarro.  Tell Karga.

You look back at the quarry.  “How many of you are there?”

“At the base?  Around three hundred,” he immediately spills.  “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours.  There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”

“So around a hundred left,”  You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker.  “How many were dispatched on the search?”

“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground.  “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”

Of which, four you’ve already taken care of.  In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence.  That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector.  If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon.  And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.

You make the decision immediately.

“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel.  “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”

“You…”  He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands.  “You want to rescue the men?”

Ideally?  Sure.  Realistically?  You don’t say anything in response.  Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.

Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do.  The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it.  They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip.  Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.

“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you.  Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease.  It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.

When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression.  Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood.  Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color.  Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.

“Can you make it up to the cockpit?”  You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder.  Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again.  “I need as much information as possible about the base.”  You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm.  Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard.  It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.

Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest.  While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking.  Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now.  Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission.  Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.

Besides.  What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?

It’s just… not really your thing.

---

They’re everywhere.

They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors.  Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger.  Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.

Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next.  His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears.  When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.

He’s not thinking much.  He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread.  If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces.  He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind.  Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers.  Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.

His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base.  He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.

Din needs to go.

And yet… if he was another man.  If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go.  With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get.  He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat.  Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range.  Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind.  He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.

Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.

Run, sweet girl.  Run.

---

You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard.  Not far from here, three minutes or less.  The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers.  It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.

“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.

“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers.  “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”

Your mouth twists downwards under the mask.  Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible.  Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed.  The turrets, then.  “Are they automatic?”

“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.

“Radar?”

“Old.  Only engages above fifty meters.”

You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel.  “What about ships?”

“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport.  TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”

“Anything else?”  You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got.  You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?  

The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here.  Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here.  The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here.  Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not.  He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.

Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul.  If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.

You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator.  “Mando?”  You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway.  Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Try to figure something else out.”

That’s it.  That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to.  Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction.  Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose.  Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily.  It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.

“Where’s your helmet?”  Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.

But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls.  “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit.  “You cover your face like one.  You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”

“I’m not a Mandalorian.”  Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now.  “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”

But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he?  He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan.  All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge.  You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood.  This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby.  In a sense, it still feels that way.  The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family.  The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.

Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch.  He’d know, you tell yourself.  If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow.  Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.

---

There’s too many for Din to handle.

They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore.  The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response.  In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet.  These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.

Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back.  Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms.  The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.

An officer, he assumes.  Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.

“Well now, what do we have here?”  Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter.  The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh.  “What a shame.”

Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.

“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add.  “How were you able to find us?”

Silence.  The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now.  He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red.  Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality.  The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead.  Useless, then.  Good to know.

After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.

“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor.  Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention.  “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”

Gideon.  The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite.  It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened.  But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it.  The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.

“For what?  This Mandalorian?”  The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.

“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms.  “Orders were to capture him, alive.”

“Hm.”  The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head.  “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees.  “He must want the beskar.  I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”

All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive.  He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.

Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.

“Binders!”  A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.

The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed.  There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury.  It’s such a punchable jaw.

After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues.  “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”

Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth.  He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize.  Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible.  You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety.  Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually.  It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.

“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive.  Assistance may be required.”

It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk.  They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost.  You’re both long gone by now.  They’ve got no idea you even exist—

“He also spoke of a girl.”

And then he feels his heart stop in his chest.  Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response.  His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it.  How the fuck did he know?  He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?

But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile.  Who’s this, Mando?  She’s just darling, isn’t she?  Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?

“A girl?”

The trooper nods.  “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”

He’s going to kill them, Din decides.  Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man.  The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul.  His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun.  He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.

Except, then—

“Mando?”  The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet.  “I’m coming to get you.  Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside.  If you can’t, I’ll just… uh.  Figure something else out.”

And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.

The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember.  He’s panicked before.  He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time.  This is different.  This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.

He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection.  There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now.  The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat.  You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.

Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it.  Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you.  Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.

“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out.  His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision.  For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.

All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground.  There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.

---

You’re right on time.

The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about.  Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.

Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed.  It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground.  Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.

For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him.  Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up.  Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.

“Which ones are in charge?”  You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.

“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on.  Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—

To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them.  If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways.  The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.

The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge.  Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.

“Lift up!”  You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull.  You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door.  “Now!  We have to go now!”

You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up.  Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel.  Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears.  The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.

As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping.  You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.

Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense.  Deadly tense.  Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—

It flickers into existence all at once.  One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.

A star destroyer.

Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life.  It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it.  All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking.  You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.

Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.

---

The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before.  Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear.  Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship.  But now, everything has changed.

You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap.  Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared.  They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is.  You can’t seem to breathe like he is.  It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.

After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand.  Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.

“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh.  A close one.”

You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now.  Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing.  You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you.  When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain.    You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.

Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment.  You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through.  You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now.  However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest.  Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline.  Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.

Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you.  His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.

You feel something this time.  It’s… cold.  A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin.  Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood.  You did that.

There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word.  You can’t find a single word to say.  The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones.  It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet.  There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.

You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden.  Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.

But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement.  He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip.  It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.

“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.

Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features.  His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to.  You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there.  He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.

Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor.  You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves.  Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.

You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.

“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly.  Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself.  “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”

He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.

But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly.  Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t.  Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult.  You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive.  There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.

But then there’s a moment.  One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.

“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty.  There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t.  “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”

Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it.  Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones.  You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands.  He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from.  It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.

When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you.  The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood.  Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.

Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face.  The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.

After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground.  It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet.  Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.

Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back.  Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.

Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand.  It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang.  You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground.  The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.

“Are you hurt?”

He sounds… dead.  So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state.  He doesn’t move.   His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last.  If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.

“No,” you eventually whisper.

The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else.  Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying.  You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him.  You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.

You feel… nothing.  Absolutely nothing.

The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor.  Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes.  Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done.  Tasks to complete.

Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown.  Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain.  The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert.  You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy.  If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him.  It was… isolating.  Lonely by yourself.  The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.

When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp.  Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner.  Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath.  One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.

You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet.  You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…

What?  At least what?  Comfort you?  Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions?  What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him?  You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.

The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically.  He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you.  You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do.  If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself.  At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment.  Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul.  Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover.  You keep hearing their screams.

So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on.  You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again.  You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand.  After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.

Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone.  After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in.  The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings.  It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.

After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent.  You don’t feel anything as you do it.  You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm.  Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.

Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster.  The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything.  They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.

The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower.  Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy.  Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.

After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent.  When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.

You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls.  Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today.  You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.

You can’t sleep.  You don’t even try, it’s pointless.  The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself.  You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking.  You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago.  You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong…  They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.

You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation.  You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point.  In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.

You also can’t face Din yet, not like this.  You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure.  How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices?  Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t.  You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him.  You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance.  You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.

Figuratively, of course.  Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been.  Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.

So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you.  A long time ago, what would he tell you?

Din would tell you… that you killed someone.  Multiple people, this time.  He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done.  The end result won’t change.  You own this now.  You’ll carry their deaths with you.

You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice.  He wouldn’t argue with you.  He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them.  It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.

And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount.  You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned.  You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive.  You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him.  If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.

That’s it.  Focus on them both, alive and well together.  Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.

Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness.  It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself.  Hours, maybe.  Time is strange in hyperspace.

You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.

---

When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.

“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are.  You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways.  After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name.  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair.  He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet.  “Don’t say anything.  Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”

“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes.  You did save him.  You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent.  “I tried.  Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself.  I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”

His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul.  Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.

“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you.  It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up.  “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”

“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.

“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat.  They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses.  “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”

“Stop,” he chokes out.  The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body.  “St-Stop it, please.”

Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.

“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself.  The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking.  You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.

“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.”  Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes.  “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”

Your heart goes cold.  Again, everything turns numb.  It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today.  It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it.  For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.

“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks.  “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me.  I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger.  I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe.  And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II.  Do you know why I did that?”  The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart.  “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”

You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand.  You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up.  Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away.  But then, instead…

There’s a flicker of something inside you.  Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying.  It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die.  You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.

“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t.  “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones.  Especially the trained ones.  Anything else was meant to be your last resort.  Not your choice.  Not something you chose.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself.  The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him.  Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried.  You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen.  “I couldn’t do it.  It wasn’t a choice.”

“It was,” he tells you.  He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words.  “And it was the wrong one.”

“What was I supposed to do?”  You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster.  Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care.  “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”

“Yes.”  It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless.  Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against.  It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively.  “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean.  Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.

“No.”  The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child.  Never.  You’ll die before that happens.  “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that.  Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing.  Not even you.”

Din stares at you.  His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant.  It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become.  You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.

After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both.  He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”

You stay quiet.  It happened.  What’s done is done, you can’t change the past.  He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so.  This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child.  You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them.  Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.

“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers.  It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak.  Broken.  “You wore mine once before, and it was…”  He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away.  “It wasn’t real.  It didn’t fit.  It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out.  I liked it because it wasn’t real.”

“Was it… really that bad?”  You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad.  You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but…  Not a Mandalorian, he’d said.  Of course not.  Of course not.

“It wasn’t the armor.”  Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again.  “It was you covered in blood.  It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger.  You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship.  And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too.  You…”  He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice.   “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”

Not a Mandalorian.

“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you.  “You don’t fly into war zones.  You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me.  You said you tried to be brave… like me.”  His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand.  “I’ll never ask you to be brave.  I’ll ask you to survive.”

“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight.  They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time.  Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again.  It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside.  You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.

After a while, Din quietly breaks it.

“How many?”  He murmurs to you.  You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.

You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.

“That didn’t deserve it?”  You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory.  “Four.”

And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that.  Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain.  You’ll never be able to change it, though.  This belongs to you now.

This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”

And that covers everything.

The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else.  Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come.  You need to tell him.  You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.

“Din?”  You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor.  “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat.  “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”

“A star destroyer.”  He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time.  He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine.  You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.

He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before.  It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms.  His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing.  “What do I do?”

He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today.  All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty.  You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now.  If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer.  Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him.  “We’ll figure it out together.”

---

@cptnbvcks thank you so much for the incredible art!

[harkuri]

P!ug ony and his hook up🚬🚬

[WARNING +18] Also please make requests and also give me feedback🫶🏾❤️ Also idk if I should make a part 2 about after care so please tell if it’s good

You and Ony go to high school together (this is the third year of high school) and he was your p!ug until the summer you went out of town you and ony hooked up a few times and you just kept going back, when you were to high to walk but this nigga had a girlfriend🤦🏾‍♀️. So you when you found out you cut all connections with him. After the summer you had a MAJOR glow up, this is the first day of school and this is your outfit https://pin.it/5N6049zXH your hair and nails done https://pin.it/16He6o4Ox- nails https://pin.it/dcALwetdQ- hair.

You in first period looking FINE and guess who’s in that class, all of your classes at that? ONY FUCKING ONYANKOPON.

You sit down in your seat and get on your phone while you can feel ony’s eyes on you. You try to ignore him but his glare is to tense it makes you tingle in a good way.. After that class you get up and walk to your second period, Ony behind you of course he looks at the back of your head Ike a loin that’s seen meat after months. You walk to your locker and you open locker and look at the mirror in it you see Ony behind you. “What Ony? He looks at you with an intense expression.

“What the fuck ma?

“What? Why you lookin at me like that?”

He grabs your waist and pushes you into the locker and kisses you deeply, after the kiss you look at him with a confused expression

“Why you cut me off ma?”

“I gotta go to class..”

“Nah mama’s you’re gonna tell me.” He says sharply in his deep voice, he makes you tingle..

“We fucked Ony.. and you had a girlfriend..”

“Ma.. you think I would just have a girlfriend and fuck you?” You nod and he shakes his head looking down

“Ma, me and her were breaking up like I told her that we’re done but I guess she went to you and told you that we’re dating?” You nod looking done and putting your hands on his shoulders.

“So.. you do you still deal?”

“Yeah ma you want some?”

“Mhm.. and maybe.. we can catch up, I’ve missed you”

“I missed you too ma” after school you and Ony meet up and go to his apartment.. just so you know it wasn’t just catching up..

You guys get to his apartment and then you guys get high and take shots for his friend that gave him the alcohol.. just for him to dive in later and feast as if he hadn’t eaten in months. His thick tongue pushing past the two toned lips of your pussy and giving it a long wet lick, slurping up all the slick he gathered along the way. “Mmm~! O-Ony!” You squirted on his face after a few minutes as he licks up all the mess you just made. “Damn ma you cum just for my tongue?” He smirked.

The blankets shift around, revealing more of his naked body. You can't help but notice how his cock is partially hard, leaking pre-cum onto the sheet.”Now," he says, his voice deep and seductive, "I’ve been wanting this pussy all fucking summer but you.. you cut me off.” He groans, his hips bucking forward slightly, playing with you soaked two tone pussy lips. He smiles at you "You're going to feel everything." He grunts as he thrust into you, pounding into you without mercy. The room echoes with the sound of slapping skin and heavy breathing. “O-Ony!-“ He doesn’t stop, he continues to fuck you roughly as he pinches and twists your nipples, causing you to moan and writhe in both pleasure and pain. “Fuck ma.. pussy so tight for me fucking love it.. fuck if you keep moanin like that ima just cum in you.. get you pregnant fo’me..” He breathed, pumping his thick and long cock in and out of the soaking wet, lewd noise making pussy.

Holding your hips down and thrusting deeper into you, hitting your g-spot and making you moan and scream uncontrollably. "You're such a slut.. hey ma? You think I wouldn’t find out about you fucking eren over the summer?” You eyes widened. “ fuckk.. I bet you could take my cock all day, fucking slut..shut up and take it." he growled, pushing himself inside stuffing you with his cock.

“O-Onyy~!” You hold onto his head and looks at him in his eyes he kisses you and picks up the speed. You cum on his cock but still keeps going

“U-ughh~! Ony- mmm~!”

“Ma.. you want it in or out?” The pace picking up going factor and faster, you look at him and tears coming down your cheeks he kisses your eyes and asks again in a softer voice “you want it in or out ma?” You scream for him to go faster “o-ony~! Faster! U-ughh~!” Then you finally give him your answer.. “ y-yes ony~ u want it in me.. mmm~! Hurry~!” He’s pace it at full speed and strength and pounds into you until long robes of cum shoot in you your throbbing pussy..

You fall asleep and he washes you up and put a bonnet on you and his shirt it looks so sexy on you, it’s getting him hard again but he puts you in the bed and you guys end up falling asleep like this.

[midnight1nk]

So, that WOTFI 2024 trailer...

TRAILER REACTION/ANALYSIS (+BINGO)

[Spoilers below cut]

I did not expect the trailer to be released this soon, color me surprised! Kinda scared to click it tbh. (If you're gonna watch it on YT, just a heads up: tw for flashing images)

Okay... 3... 2... 1... LET'S-A GO!

REACTION & ANALYSIS

[To simplify things, my reaction input will be in blue & bold and my analysis will be in orange & italics. Cool? Coolio 👍]

It starts off showing the carnival grounds.

Presumably, it takes place in the same time frame as the last episode, because of the sun setting. And in the background, you can hear a creepy, carnival-themed rendition of "Silent Night"(???). Oh, nevermind, it's a music box cover for "Rock-a-bye Baby" (link here). Oooh, very scary....

I know it's not much but at least this scene (and surely more later on) gives us some insight into what mini-games were chosen for WOTFI.

Here we have the Ferris Wheel (please be my challenge OMG), The House of Crazy, and the Arcade. And also that strange office building on the third scene I pointed out in last week's episode review. Seriously, what is that building?

We then get this shot of the carnival entrance as the song cover gets interrupted by the next scene.

This looks very much like the background picture used for the WOTFI website. Oh hey look, the cutout of Mr Puzzles wearing Meggy's Western Spaghetti hat is still there.

Cut to the next scene of the camera getting closer to Didney's Engine Room doors with the next scene of SMG4 and Mario running. Huh, correct me if I'm wrong, but the corridor where they're at doesn't seem like the same one that leads to the Engine Room....

And of course, a shot of Leggy with a creepy smile, staring at the camera. It honestly reminds me of Four from the Meme Factory mini-Arc. WE'LL SAVE YOU MEGGY DON'T WORRY!

Then, we got... KAREN HI!

Yup, Karen's here, jumping through a hoop on fire. She would be great in this, considering that she's a former assassin. And she seems to be in this indoor kiddie playground so maybe House of Crazy??? Or just another attraction we haven't seen yet.

More of the camera gets closer to the engine room before we see Bob on one of those bumper cars (likely the one he was strapped in) from the last episode, driving away from a monster.

I'm literally going through this frame by frame and it looks like Bob is in the scary cart ride attraction as spotted in the last episode (left, top-ish corner on the image I put here). I feel bad for Bob omg look how scared he looks.

[Welcome to Puzzle Park // time stamp 2:55]

Closer to the engine room...

Then there's... SAIKO MY GIRL! She's on a tightrope with a pole in her hands, balancing over a floor of lava.

Hold up, where the hell is this? Somehow we're inside of a cave, with pink crystals mind you, and for there to be lava. I don't know if it's just me but it's giving the pit from the 'Let's Go Visit Peach' episode vibes, idk I might've gone insane...

More of Four and Mario running with determination (LOOK AT MY BOYS)

closer to the Engine Room...

And SMG3!!! SOMEONE RESCUE MY BOY ;^;

This reminds me so much of the Puzzlevision waiting stream where Three, Four, and Tari were stuck on the Wheel of Fortune. Also, these scenes are a nice callback to the 'SMG4: The Very Safe & Legal SMG4 Show' episode.

FOUR, GO SAVE YOUR BOYFRIEND

Then... TARI NOOOOO!!!!

OMG IS THAT HER SCREAMING? That is exactly how it went down last episode where she got pulled into the duck pond game.

Now, we should really start to get scared because I predicted that someone would be killed off during WOTFI, and while Mr Puzzles is a likely choice, it might be Tari. Listen, I DON'T WANT HER TO DIE BUT THEY PULLED SHIT LIKE THIS BEFORE, I'M TERRIFIED DUDE.

Closer to the Engine Room...

Oh, Leggy... hi....

Then there's... MELONY!! WE HAVE TO SAVE THEM [*rattles the gates*] LET ME INNNNNN

It looks exactly like the scene from the last episode, the one of the carnival attractions coming to life and chasing Four and Mario around the grounds.

Curious to see Puzzles' head also one of the things that they are chasing her. Not exactly sure where that is but based on the lit screens in the background, she may be on the carnival grounds. Or just inside an attraction we don't know about.

Closer to the Engine Room...

Next is LUIGI!!! This is giving Luigi's Mansion vibes...

And those clown(???) dolls are the same ones that are chasing Melony. It could be that they are in the same place or they used the same assets. Speaking of Luigi's Mansion, this could be the House of Crazy. My poor boy Luigi :'(

Worried about Boopkins, though. He hasn't shown up in the trailer...

Ok, can we finally talk about what's the deal with these two scenes?

Throughout the whole trailer so far, we've seen Four and Mario running, either away from something or in determination to save their friends, but you can't say these happened in the corridor for the Engine Room. If you look in the background, there are bricked columns, carnival-striped poles, and stars.

Meanwhile, the Engine Room corridor has concrete walls with graffiti plastered all over it, and far dirtier compared to the first running scene. Plus, the lighting is completely different.

Seems like the first running scene takes place on the carnival grounds, could be a refresher from the chase scene from the last episode. THEN, they ran again through the Engine Room corridor. Just a repeat of the last episode.

It makes sense honestly because if you think about it, people who aren't catching up on the episodes one by one would look for the WOTFI 2024 arc videos and possibly skip the trailer entirely. Without watching the trailer, they don't miss anything. The cinematic trailer works more as a recap of the last episode while giving teases for WOTFI. So, it works for both passive and active viewers of the show.

Anyway, our Classic OG duo made it to the Engine Room, a play-by-play of what happened at the end of the last episode. And find Mr Puzzles holy shit....

Just like I mentioned last time, Puzzles is very much giving Zero vibes. And also Wren, let's not forget that. Death flags, anyone?

His legs are completely gone, being replaced by wires. He took off his button-down shirt and gloves, revealing his synthetic arms that are connected to even more wires. They are literally plugged into his arms oh my spaghetti gods.

Puzzles manically laugh as some wires wrap around Four's and Mario's legs before being dragged out of the room.

Well, seeing that Mr Puzzles merged himself with the power source, Didney's only rating star, he has control of everything. So it isn't surprising to know that he did that. Would he put them under his control? Or force them to participate in this year's WOTFI? We don't know. But regardless, they don't have a choice. They're the 'missing pieces' of Puzzle Park after all.

No no, actually, WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS? I CAN'T BE THE ONLY ONE, RIGHT?!?!?! (if you have no idea what I mean, here's the link)

Oh, and the "Rock-a-bye Baby" tune just came back.

Mr Puzzles: "Oh, leaving so soon? The ride's just starting..."

Why exactly did he refer to this as a "ride"? I've analyzed trailers before and I know from experience that this could be a line said during WOTFI. Puzzles could be telling this to someone (not necessarily to Four and Mario) while this person (or people) are attempting to get off a ride.

It could also be a reference to the phrase "rollercoaster ride of emotions" which we the audience have yet to see. Basically, the channel telling us, "Oh you thought you got enough trauma from Meggy forced to turn back into Leggy, and Puzzles merging himself with the power source? You're about to get something way worse". Chat, we aren't ready I swear...

WOTFI LOGO OFFICIAL REVEAL! I KNEW THEY WERE GONNA DO THAT!!

For the past week or so, it was only on the show's account banner, a tiny little version of it. And the one you can download from the website isn't fully in color. Glad to see it fully in color with dramatic lighting :)

AND THE OFFICIAL DATE!

I knew some people were lucky enough to screenshot the banner with the release date on it before the channel quickly replaced it with "COMING SOON". It was speculated that it was gonna be around the 19th but we now have confirmation that it's true. WOTFI's NEXT WEEK, let's gooooooo!

We, of course, have to dress up for the occasion! If you have something carnival theme, put it on! SMG4 Cosplay? Put it on! SMG4 merch? Put it on! Some comfy pajamas with a pair of fun socks? Put it on!

Anyway, for the moment you've all been waiting for...

WOTFI 2024 BINGO

Well, in the 'SMG4 and SMG3 come up with an episode' video (y'know the same one they "hinted" at the carnival coming into the showgrounds), Three proposed the idea of Bingo Night happening in the episode narrative he and Four were making.

Since I've made bingo cards before for my favorite shows...

(Mario, do the thing!)

OUR VERY OWN BINGO CARD FOR THIS YEAR'S WOTFI

AND YOU GUYS WILL HELP ME FILL IT UP!

Comment on this post or drop a suggestion in my ask box, and I will put it on our card! It could be predictions, theories, or people that we will potentially see in WOTFI.

If you want to, you can explain your reasoning as to why you think your suggestion should be on the card. Also, let me know if you want to be tagged for your submission when I post the final product of the card!

OTHER STUFF/UPDATES

As of right now, writing this post, the website is still allowing mini-game submissions, so hurry if you plan to put one in.

Meanwhile, on Twitter...

I FUCKIN KNEW IT I SWEAR-

Then, there's Shadow...

Transcript for audio:

Shadow: "Really quick, I just wanted to drop this before anything else get out of hand. I noticed that everybody saw the trailer for this year's War of the Fat Italians... and well, obviously I can't say much on it but, uh, y'know, I think you guys will love what me and the team got going on right now. The only thing I will say, really though, given with everything's going into it..." [*chuckle*] "I do hold (or hope?) that you guys will enjoy the ride." [*starts singing*] "Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination..." [*sinister laughter*]

...Shadow, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!?!?!? YOU GUYS CAN JUST DO THAT

AND Y'ALL WITH THE ;) AGAIN, I'M GOING INSANE

For the account banners, they finally changed from "Coming Soon" to "October 19th" and of course, each account posted the trailer.

Brace yourselves, my dear fellows, 'cause it's going to be one hell of a ride...

[bowsnkisses]

𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐬

matt sturniolo x ice skater!fem!reader

𓂃 ࣪˖ ཐིཋྀ You and Matt have a love-hate relationship... too bad that you have to see each other almost every day, since you are his little sister's coach.

warning: a little angst(?), matt is a little asshole, bestfriends to enemies to lovers trope.

a/n: this was really quick but i hope you like it ;) i think im gonna make this a series idk chat; english its not my first language!!! sorry for the mistakes.

Matt parked the car and turned off the radio, he sighed and looked in the rearview mirror where his little sister, Rosie, had fallen asleep on the way to her ice skating practice. Her head was resting on her jacket, she made a 'pillow' by wrapped the jacket between the door and her shoulder. Matt couldn't help but smile a little.

She started ice skating a few months ago and was amazed. She was always very excited to get to her practices and whenever they finished she would get sad. And the reason for that, was you.

Rosie loved spending time with you and always paying attention to you with her big, blue and curious eyes. And she always repeated how pretty you were to his parents and brothers.

Matt, specifically, knew who you were for many years. You were best friends in elementary school until mid-high school, and you guys stopped talking because he became 'too popular' to be spending time with you, his words. Then a year later, the YouTube channel with his brothers, Chris and Nick, blew up and none of you knew about each other until Rosie, for her 10th birthday, begged her parents to sign her up for Ice Skating classes.

And here you were, seeing each other every day...

Matt always treating you dry and never avoiding rolling his eyes every time you spoke. And you, just wanting to punch him in the face and never see him again.

While Matt was a total asshole with you. Rosie was the total opposite.

"Rosie... bub, we are here." Matt moved her knee gently to wake her up.

"mmhm" She muttered opening her eyes and then rubbing them. Matt got out of the car and walked to her door to get her bag and help her get out of the car.

Once that was done, and Rosie couldn't contain her excitement to seeing you. Running and jumping while Matt almost fell with the pink bag.

When you guys enter to the rink, the little girl screamed with joy when she saw you. Matt made a face and you did too, but that was gone when she hugged your legs.

"Alright alright, someone its excited" You said while laughing at the little girl excitement.

—

Two hours had already passed and Matt was already getting tired of listening to you repeat the same thing over and over again. Once you did for final the class, Matt almost shouted hallelujah to the ceiling. He was getting tired.

And so were you, his annoying and exaggerated sighs for you to hear, every time you looked at him and he rolled his eyes... making sure you knew he was pissed. You couldn't give a big fuck, but it was the same in all the classes he brought Rosie.

And you were getting tired of his attitude.

When the girls went to one side of the blichers to untie their shoes. You took the opportunity to go straight to Matt.

When he saw you approaching him, he couldn't help but smirk a little.

"If this is too boring for you, I think is better for you to stop bringing Rosie. You are really distracting." You said while crossing your arma on your chest.

"Maybe you shouldn't be looking at me all the time and start paying more attention to your students. Some of them really need to perfect some skills" He said with a cocky smirk that almost made you throw up.

Before you could respond, Rosie approached with her shoes in her hand. Basically screaming with her eyes without saying anything to one of you guys to help her change her shows.

"I'll do it" Murmured to kneel and help his little sister.

You just roll your eyes in annoyed without Rosie to see.

Hoping that tomorrow it would be her parents who brought Rosie and not Matt.

sorry if this a completely shit.

btw the filter of the photos i got it from this beauty @sirenedeslily 🫶🏼

let me know if you want more parts :P or more introductions of the characters <3

₊˚ପ⊹ © 𝑏𝑜𝑤𝑠𝑛𝑘𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑠; all rights reserved. do not translate my work without my permission.

[aleksa-sims]

RL Story

CW: Pain... when it sucks, it really sucks hard. (my life)

Today N. came home. After 3 months abroad, he was back with me/us. However, N. was a little disappointed. Our Baby didn’t feel comfortable with him. He didn’t see him for 3 months. He was a stranger to our son. But later in the evening, when we were in bed together, our little one seemed to slowly understand, that Nico belongs to us. He didn’t cry anymore when N. tried to hug or hold him. He even seemed to enjoy it a bit. ❤️

Nico: I missed you both sm. I was hoping he’d remember me.😟

Me: You have to give him some time. He was only one day old when you left. And look at him, he likes you.

Nico: He’s quiet now because you’re holding him.

Me: But something about you seems to make him curious? He’s already tired. I can tell by his eyes. Still he struggles to stay awake. He doesn’t want to fall asleep. He looks at you all the time, N.

Nico: And he won’t let go of my hand. He pulls really hard like.. he’s fighting with me. 😄 He wants me out of here, huh?

Me: Let's put him between us. 🥰

Nico: Why is he sleeping here with you in our bed?

Me: He got used to it. He screamed & cried a lot. It was easier for me to have him next to me, to calm him down or feed him.

Nico: Yea, I know. You told me. But now that he’s fine, he should learn to sleep in his own bed, babe.

Me: He’s only 3 months old!! And I still have to feed our son every 3 hours.

Nico: I’ll get up for you. I go to his bed and give him the bottle.

Me: Is he bothering you?

Nico: What about fucking? I mean, he doesn’t bother me. He’s just a Baby. He doesn’t get it anyway. But I know, you! I doubt you’ll sleep with me, as long as our Baby is lying next to us in the same bed.

Me: Maybe that’s why he doesn’t like you?🤨 ...No, I’m just kidding. Um, well! I-... Idk? It's gonna work out somehow. But tbh... here, at my parent's, it's-.... Agh, I’m afraid someone might catch us or something. Yk? I can’t even close my door! Let’s stay in the house tomorrow night. There we have at least a little more privacy.

Nico: You had a fight with your parents? We used to have sex in your room, so why not now?

Me: It was a bit tense between me and my Mom. I just don’t want to hear anymore that I’m a bad mom.😞

Nico: Did she say that to you?😠

Me: She didn't really say it, buttt I always feel like I’m doing something wrong. She said I didn’t care about Lucas. This hurt me a lot. Anyway.

Nico: I gotta get you out of here.

The next morning I woke up with a severe headache. The pain was unbearable. I knew that pain. I’ve had this kind of headache in the past. That’s why I became hooked. I had to take very strong painkillers, opiates, because nothing else helped me. And now it was back. Why the hell? I really didn’t have the strength and nerves to deal with this kind of pain, NOW. 😭😫

I got up and went to the bathroom. This pain almost drove me crazy. I was afraid I’d be as bad as I was then, in the past.

I sat down on the floor in the shower. I tried to get through it somehow. Usually, the headache stopped after an hour.

And yes, I got a bit better. That moment Nico came to me. He just woke up.

Me: Did you leave Lucas alone?

Nico: No, ofc not! I took him down to your Mom. I thought you were there too. What-

Me: Nothing! I- I’m fine. I had a bad headache.

Nico: That’s why you’re sitting.... naked in the shower? 🤨🙂

Me: Yes, exactly. When I have this severe headache, sometimes I do things that don’t make sense. Yk? Out of desperation to survive the pain somehow.

Nico: And has it helped?

Me: No, nothing helps, but I still try, because, as I said, I’m desperate and can hardly stand it.

Nico: I love you, babe. So much. 😟

Me: Love you too. 😳

A day later I had to go to the hospital. I passed out, because I couldn’t stand the pain anymore. The docs suspected that it had something to do with the c-section anesthesia? However, it was nothing serious but the pain... didn’t go away. Just as then. 😫

Previous/Next

[weebsinstash]

*strums guitar* you know who would be a total piece of shit, to be stuck up in Heaven fuckin FOREVER with

This douchebag! Gotta get some Adam content out before the finale drops and then I'm sure I'll be back for more then too!

I was listening to "You Didn't Know" again and I HATE this man, and because I hate him and he's an asshole, I can then see his wretched character doing shitty and debauched things

Which then means he's conceptually fuckable and we must discuss

I was sitting and thinking about. Ok in the most dramatic fucking way possible can you imagine being in the courtroom with Charlie as a Sinner Representative because you're dope like that, and Adam just starts fucking beefing with you on sight and you give it right back to him because HOMIE BASICALLY INVENTED MISOGYNY, you're standing in HEAVEN while an ANGEL looks you dead in the eye and calls you a CUNT like I wouldn't fucking tolerate it I'd be screaming at him like a feral beast, "why don't you look at your FEMALE BOSS and say that again, you dickless loser?!"

But can you imagine just having this insane BEEF, you guys are having MUSICAL DIAGETIC SINGING BEEF, and then, like. Either there in court or later on in the plot, hey, everything is good now, Sinners/you can ascend or we can go from heaven and hell and visit our families and everything is good now, yaaay! Or your name was mispelled on a form and it's like oh shit you were supposed to be in Heaven all along our bad and ONLY you are cool to "go upstairs"

And you can't even be happy about it because it's literally "oh cool I DO belong in Heaven!">wait but my friends are in Hell > oh fuck THAT ANGEL THAT HATES ME IS HERE, and sure enough he's standing there at the pearly gates to personally welcome you into Heaven, grinning like the cat that ate the canary, making it EXTREMELY CLEAR that he's basically gonna be stalking you because he wants to personally witness you fuck up and get sent back to Hell where he can kill you himself

Homie is back at base posting photos of you all over the walls like an insane person, "look at this tricky fucking bitch, fucking scheming, fucking planning something, fucking bitch" and even Lute is standing there, ".... that's a photo of them eating a sandwich, sir" and she's like TRYING to see where he's coming from but these are photos of you like SLEEPING and the suspicion that you might act out becomes an excuse to stalk you as he gets progressively more unhinged and perverted and frustrated (in more ways than one)

Let's also just discuss some baseline ideas! Abso fucking lutely do I see him as some, frat boy piece of shit who is always at least vaguely hostile to women so we're discussing female Reader specific ideas. Like imagine he's trying to actually be friendly and be cool with you or maybe you guys even hang out on good terms or whatever, maybe you both play guitar and he likes how you can shred it, and, he's the kinda guy to invite you to hang out and not specify other people are gonna be there so you get there and he's with his buddies and they're all talking about, gross shit like the size of the tits on the girl they last fucked, "oh hey did you sleep with Stacey" "fuck yeah I slept with Stacey you know that slut takes anyone", like, Adam deadass expects you to stand next to him with your red solo cup as they all talk about "the massive cow tits on that bitch" and if you even mildly imply this isn't entertaining "you're just bein a prude babe!"

Like Adam has no self awareness, he'll be saying horrid shit about women and then one of his buddies makes the most MILD of comments about you, "yeah your friend is kinda fuckable" and Adam is like in a RAGE, "hey man, that's not fucking cool! Let's go, outside NOW, fuckin step up, bro!" and he's brawling dudes for shit he's said about their conquests PLENTY of times

Just picturing the idea of like idk Saint Peter or even Emily flying around and they see you sitting on a bench outside far far away from where other people are and they fly down to greet you with the biggest smile, "hiya, how are you?" and you um look at them with such a genuinely dead, depressed, empty expression that they like cannot even fathom it. You're??? Unhappy??? In HEAVEN??? they cannot even comprehend it.

The real kicker is if you started to CRY and look this angel or seraph directly in the eyes as you ask, "can i... go back to Hell? I'm allowed to leave, right?" and THAT'S what raises massive red flags and sends that angel straight to their fucking boss. Sera would be over here, "oh she's having problems with Adam oh that's unfortunate but they'll sort them out -- WAIT WHAT DO YOU M E A N SHE WANTS TO LEAVE????" And,, oh, NOW they suddenly care about how happy you are, NOW they're suddenly willing to help maybe mildly keep Adam away from you. Because why? Because now you're potentially going to damage Heaven's perfect track record, and, geez they can't have you running around DEPRESSED, with your face looking all... ICKY and SAD! What if you made the other darlin-- I mean other residents of heaven sad and they maybe wanted to leave their precious angel protectors too? Huh? Ever think of that?

I love how I was sitting over here "what if like the entire Spider Society was yandere for the Reader" and ever since then my brain is like a puppy chasing treats, "what if I made this entire community mentally unhinged"

Also. Carmilla Carmine and her family + Zestial protecting Reader from Adam or any other angels because 👏 we can have as many mommies or daddies or fake family members as we want down here and that's the facts on that 👏

[metis-iphigenia]

its like 2 am and im very tired so im sorry if this doesnt make sense i just want to talk about why i love scott summers.

•one of the reasons i love scott summers is because he is a flawed character who is quite doomed by the enviroment he was raised in. he makes mistakes a lot and learns that his actions have life altering consequences, later on he actually works on them.

for an example, in x-factor; scott left madelyne with their son nathan because the original 5 of the xmen were getting back together.(also the news of jean grey being alive) later on, Nathan is in the hands of apocalypse and mr sinister, later gets infected with that stuff etc.(idk how to explain sorry) and scott becomes aware that maybr if he didnt leave, maybe if he stayed he wouldnt lose the son he always wished to have. he is consumed by his guilt and grief. at least to my interpretion.

this is why i dont like actively calling scott a deadbeat dad because in the end he did come back for nathan.(he shouldnt have left in the first place i get that too) but calling him a deadbeat dad in my opinion just ignores his character as a whole.

or in xmen animated series, where in like the first episodes he has to leave morph. wolverine is angry at him justifibly(but its also not scotts fault(and morpherine canon guys)) scott does his best later on to be more careful to lead the team in missions, trying his best to not leave anyone behind etc its not very underlined that he does this but you can see it when you look for it.

•and not only that, i also find him very relatable and think his anger, frustration against the world very relatable. i also agree with his ideals.

cyclops ideals are a perfect balance between magneto's and professor x's ideals from my observation.

im gonna speak in xmen 97 terms because explaining my opinions is easier that way

professor x(as much as i admire what he stands for) is trying to help mutants but he is working towards tolerance, not acceptance. and like said in xmen 97, tolerance really is extinctence(i think this is how you spell it?? idk sorry english is not my mother tongue)

magneto doesnt want acceptance nor tolerance he just doesnt want humans(because of the years of opression he has faced, leading him to fight back against id but be the opressor as the time passes because humans(yes mutants are humans too) are corrupt like that)so he is trying to cause war for mutant liberation but his actions are causing people to be prejudiced about other mutants and causing them to be more violent towards them. even in the apocalyptic future, camps are being made for mutants because magneto himself started a war.(i will talk about my views on magneto on an another post because he really is a very interesting character corrupt by his own cynicism)

however what scott is working towards is acceptance and he is aware that if he just stands quiet to all the violence towards mutants and just busts his ass to save humans, he is the same as professor x, working towards tolerance. so now he uses violence to make people aware that mutants are going to live with them if they like it or not because he knows sometimes to be heard you have to scream. but his ideals towards mankind never changes because he doesnt hate them he hates their ignorance.

i do believe that since his mental health was declining(becasue of the years of opression and brutality he and his people have faced)he has done some things that were definitely problematic but this brings me to my first point of him facing the consequences of his actions.

overall, i do believe cyclops was right, i just think he also went about it wrong in some ways and that led to people not understanding him.

i find his backstory very interesting too(even though in changes but to me the orphanage later jack winters and professor x is the true one) i think about him being gaslit into forgetting his own little brother but him never faltering once and believing his own mind instead of someones tongue,his time with jack winters

(which i believe the interpretion of it being abusive because of the signs etc and how more impactful it makes that the first mutant he had ever actually known had hurt him instead of helping his own kind. it a parallel to our own world where even the opressors have managed to turn us against eachother even though we are all opressed by them, shunned because we are minorities)

later on him coming to live with professor and still being in a place where he is being used(i believe with my whole heart that professor saw scott as his son and sometimes forgot that they didnt share the same flesh but that doesnt change that professor did use scott, even without meaning any harm because professor in the end wants the best for all mutant kind but forgets to think about them as individuals)

•anyway to cut it short:

> i love scott summers because he makes mistakes AND learns from them, faces the consequences. and because of his mentality and the things he faced throughout his life that led him to making those mistakes.

there are lots of main characters in media who never really gets called out of the things they do(for example, annabeth from pjo with how she treated tyson, i love annabeth but it was just awful, also piper and her overall character(i chalk it up to rick riordan writing her badly because she is sorry to anyone who loves her))

>i love his upbringing and reading about it in any shape or form

>another reason why i love scott is because hes so bbg and miserable in a way i want to hug him so hard but also strangle him yknow

>>>>>TELL ME YOUR OPINIONS OF SCOTT SUMMERS WITHOUT BEING RUDE PLEASE!! if there is anything you dont agree with, you can always write it with the condition of being kind and not rude!!<<<<<<

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 407: Wait Why Are You Running Away

Previously on BnHA: Kacchan figured out how to control his quirk upgrade and was totally chill and normal about it. Definitely not terrifying at all. He actually spent the entire chapter smiling and laughing like the wholesome little boy he is. I don’t know why Kid For One is so freaked out about it. He even politely introduced himself using his childhood nickname. Clearly he just wants to be friends with you, KFO!

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi is all “sorry to keep you waiting, here’s the AFO and Yoichi flashback you ordered at long last” and proceeds to serve a nightmarish stew of HUMAN MISERY and RATS and STABBING and CARNAGE and SO MUCH MURDER and THE SINGLE MOST FUCKED-UP CASE OF CODEPENDENCY ANYONE HAS EVER WRITTEN. I was not even remotely prepared for any of this, and if anyone else claims that they were, I will call you a liar to your face. If this chapter had a mouth it would scream. Or just sob, ceaselessly and uncontrollably. I’m really glad Horikoshi is on break next week because that man needs to take a fucking nap. My god.

okay WOW

anyone else read the first two words and just immediately say to themselves, “oh okay, so it’s gonna be one of those chapters”? I mean, I guess we were due for a darker chapter after last week’s Kacchan Comedy Tour. but idk, I just wasn’t expecting “homeless sick prostitute with a drinking problem” levels of dark

AND SHE’S PREGNANT?!

what exactly is this manga rated again? doesn’t this backstory seem just a little bit raw for the impressionable kiddos??

has anyone actually checked in on Horikoshi recently? you know, just to make sure he is okay??

what a fun and wholesome manga this is

the lil baby arm covered in blood with the AFO hole on the palm. lying next to the dead mom hand. what an image to sear into our minds. I guess it’s been a while since he killed any dogs. gotta keep us on our toes somehow

also wasn’t expecting AFO and Yoichi to be twins! that puts an interesting spin on their relationship, because it’s usually a closer bond than even regular siblings. especially with all of that delightful shared trauma from a young age!!

yes, exactly

ohhhh this chapter is gonna hurt me, isn’t it. okay. ooooooookay. let’s do this

OH I’M SORRY, THERE’S MORE?!

Horikoshi my dude. you do realize that their mom dying in childbirth and the two of them just barely surviving and growing up as street orphans would have already been MORE than tragic enough, backstory-wise. you did not have to turn this into a freaking horror show with RATS TRYING TO EAT THEIR NEWBORN SELVES jesus christ

and THAT’S where you chose to put a one year timeskip?!

what the fuck am I reading here, you guys. no please tell me, I am actually desperate to understand

so the narrator is saying that some of the quirks manifested later in life, in “pubescent and pre-pubescent stages”, which is interesting because it’s the first time I can recall hearing about someone actually manifesting a quirk that late. maybe Deku’s old OFA cover story was more plausible than I realized

anyway so eventually it occurred to everyone that they should maybe freaking study this shit, idk. and eventually the researchers concluded that the superpowers came from a new gene that apparently isn’t human. and upon hearing that, society apparently lost its freaking mind. which is fascinating to me because it implies that the turning point wasn’t actually the superpowers themselves, but the realization of what it meant

like, so they were apparently fine with it when they thought it was a “mysterious disease”, but somehow it hit different when they learned it wasn’t actually a sickness at all, but instead the Next Step in Evolution. and it became an “us vs them” thing, as opposed to a “we have to cure these poor people” thing. damn

anyway so now Japan is a dystopia and we’re cutting to a big crowd of merc-looking dudes who are getting ready to attack some “meta freaks”, how lovely

but who is this figure in the shadows

I ask politely, as if it wasn’t already beyond obvious that this is AFO about to wreck some people’s shit

ohhhhh my god lmao

hopefully Katsuki and Deku can take the present day AFO out before he winds up looking like this. because this little fella is clearly demonic and idk if anyone can stop him

you all don’t understand. you need to run the fuck away right now

oh shit it’s already too late for them

it’s too late for any of us. it’s over. it’s all fucking over

((((；゜Д゜)))

AFO I am putting the manga down. I am backing away slowly with my hands in the air. I mean you no harm. please for the love of god have mercy

holy

“you see, we told you he wasn’t human” okay Scientific Research Group, you know what?? you win this round I guess

“HE WAS LITERALLY EVIL FROM BIRTH” HORIKOSHI SERIOUSLY ARE YOU OKAY??

HE WAS BORN AN ARROGANT BABY is literally the most terrifying sentence I have ever read

what the entire fuck

it’s a gorgeous sunny mid-November afternoon outside my window. but no matter how hard it tries, the light cannot reach this place

what kind of moron would throw a can of soda at him. officially the stupidest person we have ever seen in this manga

OH MY GOD OF COURSE IT’S HIM LMAO

(ETA: how come baby Yoichi has clothes that fit him perfectly but baby AFO is just stomping around wearing a tablecloth.)

BABY YOICHI. OH MY GOD. HOW THE HELL DID YOU GROW UP TO BE SANE AND KIND AND GOOD. THAT’S MY QUESTION THAT I NEED ANSWERED RIGHT NOW. YOU ARE LITERALLY A MIRACLE. YOU ARE AN IMPOSSIBILITY, DO YOU KNOW THAT

small and weak, but also so, so cute. all of the cuteness genes went straight to him. no wonder AFO was jealous

(ETA: just want to press pause for a second to speculate about what type of twins AFO and Yoichi are, since it has some relevance to the story, and especially to the OFA/AFO quirk lore. so! at first glance the two of them would appear to be fraternal twins, just based on the fact that they have very different appearances, and also the fact that Yoichi doesn’t have the AFO quirk – no holes in his hands, etc. identical twins are born from the same fertilized egg, so in theory they would both have the same sequence of DNA, which means Yoichi would have had the same quirk as AFO. but that doesn’t appear to be the case. so all of that points to them being fraternal, not identical.

on the other hand, there is one piece of evidence in this chapter that does support them being identical twins, and that’s the fact that per the narration, AFO absorbed most of the nutrients from their mother. a few minutes of google fu informed me that this condition is relatively rare, and only happens in cases where two twins share a placenta, which typically is only the case for identical twins. HOWEVER, for what it’s worth, there have also been rare instances where two fraternal twin placentas fuse together and become a single placenta. AND this apparently also increases the chances of one of the twins gaining more of the nutrients and causing the other twin to have a lower birth weight.

so based on the evidence here, my conclusion is that the two of them are most likely fraternal twins with a case of placental fusion. besides, you can’t tell me that stealing his baby brother’s placenta while the two of them are literally still in the womb doesn’t sound like exactly the type of BS that fetus!AFO would pull, lol.)

HEY!?!

okay?!?!?! well to be fair he did throw that soda at him

oh my god this is so fucked up. in like the best and worst way possible

I genuinely couldn’t ask for a better AFO backstory. it’s so incredibly twisted, and you actually do feel sorry for him. or at least I do. but it’s also beyond clear that this kid was FUCKED UP BEYOND ALL REASON right from the get go. zero goodness in him. literally doesn’t see other people as people. sees them as possessions only. things to rule over. not other thinking, feeling human beings. and that includes his own little brother

but. even if it’s not actually what I would call love, there’s still... attachment, there. it’s the closest he can get to actually caring about someone. guh. just, somehow they have both managed to humanize him, and at the same time made him less human than ever. this manga, man. this fucking manga, though

lmao and here we go. Captain Hero

you know, all those times that I made fun of AFO for not knowing how to read, I never suspected that the twist in his backstory would be that he LITERALLY DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO READ dfksjdlfkjslkdf

but seriously though. because Yoichi appears to be self-taught, and I can’t see AFO having the patience for that, and CLEARLY no one else was around to teach him, sooooo...

oh my goodness it’s actually getting wholesome up in here

what a good fucking boy. poor AFO. fuck me, I can’t help it. it’s not your fault you’re the world’s greatest monster you poor bastard

now we’re cutting to THREE YEARS LATER. okay

is he going to declare war on the glowing baby

typical teenager concerned about nothing but likes and view counts. AFO you would be so much happier if you stopped worrying about all of that and just focused on your own growth

oh, lol. well that was quick

(ETA: r.i.p. Damien.)

“this guy had more instagram followers than me. so I killed him” honey. sweetie pie. you need therapy

omfg

all this time I was wondering who AFO’s middle school lit teacher was who had failed so spectacularly at teaching him reading comprehension. and it was YOICHI ALL ALONG. omg

“and, presumably, that’s how it always was and always will be.” dude. can you imagine listening to AFO’s oral book report on A Tale of Two Cities. “ahem. it was the Best of Times. the end” buddy noooooooo

it was at that moment when Yoichi knew, etc. etc.

oh my GOD I scrolled down to the next panel right after this one and I just IMMEDIATELY DIED LAUGHING

“WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID” ffffffffffffffff I fucking can’t omfg

NOW THIS HUSSY IS STEALING HIS BROTHER AWAY FROM HIM NOOOOOOO

HE’S HIS!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!! THAT’S NOT ALLOWED!!!

oh my god the hands. so wait, is this just the standard symbolic BnHA handholding, or are there More Levels To This. when exactly did Yoichi pass OFA on to Kudou. like is that why the sudden close-up and all that? omg

WHAT!!!!

OH THAT’S THE END, HUH? THAT’S THE END RIGHT THERE, AND THAT’S JUST HOW IT IS. I SEE. OKAY THEN. EXCUSE ME WHILE I PUT MY LAPTOP DOWN AND GO INTO THE NEXT ROOM AND SCREAM INTO A PILLOW

oh my god. and break next week too. this is what you guys have been dealing with this entire time huh. I understand your feelings now. godfuckingdammit lmao

[lov3m3darling]

Apple of my Eye (Obsessed!Wally Darling x Short!Reader) Pt. 4

Another part! Idk how long this fic is gonna go on but I'm estimating maybe 10 parts? Not sure yet.

Anyway, on with the story!

!!!(TW: obsessive behaviors, jealousy, stalking, eye imagery)!!!

💙🍎💛🍎💙🍎💛🍎💙🍎💛🍎💙🍎💛🍎💙

Wally went home that night absolutely dazed and dizzy with love. Home even had to shove his chair underneath him before he fell a couple of times from not looking where he was walking.

He took off his jacket and loosened his tie before laying across the chair and sighing happily. Home creaked questioningly.

"Of course I'm alright, Home. I'm amazing, even..."

Home didn't say anything else, but Wally sat up in the chair and continued anyway.

"They're gorgeous, for starters! And they make just the most wonderful food...and their smile! Oh Home, I could stare at it all day..."

Home let out a long creak, sounding almost like a sigh. They were happy for Wally but jeez! You were all he talked about anymore!

"And did you know they like (fav hobby)? Doesn't that sound like fun? I wonder if they would show me how sometime..."

Wally laid there and talked about you all night, even long after Home had gone to sleep. What time he wasn't doing that, he was staring at the pictures you'd taken.

Later on, when you had kissed him goodnight, you tucked a copy of each photo into his jacket pocket. They were already up on the wall, in frames he had made himself from popsicle sticks and glue, painted to be your favorite colors.

But...that wasn't enough. No, the wall should be full of you! A whole wall of your marvelous self! His biggest art project yet!

And so, because Wally did not require sleep anyway, he stayed up to paint you.

Meanwhile, you were looking at the pictures too. You planned to go pick up some frames tomorrow, but in the meantime, they sat on your kitchen table next to the vase of flowers he'd brought.

You couldn't remember the last time you'd felt so important and loved. Wally looked at you like you were some kind of divine being. An angel, perhaps.

And in his eyes, you very much were.

Wally hadn't realized it before, but prior to you moving in, he had been...well, depressed. Every day was the same old routine. Sure, his friends helped, but ultimately he couldn't seem to get out of the rut he'd found himself in.

Oh, but with you...he felt alive. He could never get bored of you. Life was exciting again!

In all his pondering, he realized he had painted himself into the picture with you. You sat on his lap smiling, much how you did in the picnic pictures. His arms were around your waist, and your face was slightly red.

He grinned.

"They're so cute when they're flustered~" he chuckled, taking the canvas off the easel and immediately replacing it with a fresh one.

Needmorepictures

Yes...he would paint more...he had to...

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

In your own house, you could not sleep. You were still just about floating from the afterglow of the date, yes, but there was something else as well. You felt like you were being...watched.

Every time you closed your eyes, you could feel someone looking at you, and you'd just end up sitting up in a panic and turning on the light.

Eventually, you were more frustrated than scared, and threw back the covers with an irritated groan.

Bedroom door shut? Check.

Nothing under the bed? Check.

Nothing in the closet? Check.

Curtains closed? Check.

"Okay...let's try this again, I guess"

You got cozy again and managed to close your eyes for all of five seconds before they sprang open yet again. You grabbed a pillow and screamed into it before standing up and going to the window. The curtains were closed, but that was the only way anyone could be looking at you, so you had to check.

Out of your frustration and tiredness, you threw the curtains open, only to find Home staring directly at you from across the way. You jumped a little and opened the window cautiously.

"Home? Can you hear me over there?" you called as quietly as you could manage.

Home's shutters waved at you.

"Why on earth are you staring at my house? Is something wrong?"

Suddenly, Wally appeared in the window and you quickly ducked under yours. You weren't sure why you were scared of Wally seeing you, but you did as instincts told you and stayed hidden; listening.

"Hoooome~? Who are you talking to, hm~?"

Home didn't respond, and Wally peered outside to see your window open.

"Oh~? Sleeping with the window open~? I bet they look adorable~ Maybe I should sneak over and check in on them~"

You started to panic. Wally didn't sound like his usual chipper self...and he was planning to come watch you sleep?? Creepy...

...

Wait...

You managed to jump up and dive into bed just before Wally made it to your window, and pretended to be asleep.

Wally sighed, hearts in his eyes as he watched you.

"Absolutely stunning~" he whispered to himself.

You heard a soft thud as Wally climbed in and made his way over to your bed. Your heart was racing but you tried to just focus on keeping your eyes closed and your breathing even.

Suddenly, there was soft felt on your cheek.

He caressed your face gently as he admired your sleeping form, and for some reason, you were immediately calm.

"You're perfect, (y/n). I've made up my mind...I'm going to marry you. Then you can be around all the time! You can move in!"

Marriage? He wanted to get married right away?

You...you didn't want...

...to wait either! Married life with Wally sounded marvelous!

You began to blissfully daydream about it all, until he withdrew his hand and left, making his way back Home.

His...you were his...

...hang on...

...MARRIAGE?!

You sat straight up in bed, staring wide-eyed at the window he had left from. What just happened? You felt like you were in some lovey-dovey trance that disappeared as soon as he was far enough away.

Of course you didn't want to get married so soon! What were you thinking?!

You realized now why Home was looking at you. They were trying to warn you that something wasn't right with Wally. He wasn't acting like himself anymore and he was messing with your head to make you love him more and more.

But...the trance was oddly calming, wasn't it..?

Without it, alone in your bedroom, you felt...lonely.

Somehow, despite being slightly afraid of him now, you wanted Wally to come back...

💙🍎💛🍎💙🍎💛🍎💙🍎💛🍎💙🍎💛🍎💙

SO.. that was kinda short and to be totally honest, it was not my best work. Not exactly my favorite chapter of this story tbh...

Also I'm sorry it took so long! I've been feeling kind of uninspired lately and I've also been pretty busy so I haven't had time to sit down and work on this. I may be a little slower from now on than I was when I first started but I do fully plan to keep writing this and probably other stuff too!

Aaaaanyway! Have a lovely day (or night...actually, it's night time here right now)

✨️☮️🔁⬆️✨️

[ssa-atlas-alvez]

I can see cowboy having some tension within the team when he feels like his theories are going unheard and his opinion unvalued when they're all throwing ideas around. I feel like he'd gradually start stress eatin' more and more sunflower seeds until he runs out and just leaps up in the middle of spencer's long-winded argument after cowboy's suggestion has gone unheard by the team for the third time in five minutes he practically runs for the door because his allergies are about to hit fever pitch or he's gunna go smash some government issued coffee mugs.

This is right when you join the BAU, before everything.

Warnings: bad government knowledge on Atlas' part, I did try to google it but idk guys, trying my best here. Oh, also, stress eating.

Taglist: @xweirdo101x @xdark-acadamiax @ara-a-bird @heidss @chubbyboyinflannel @pendragon-writes @migwayne @bigolgay @technikerin23 @supercriminalbean @honestlycasualarcade @caffeine-mess @1s3v3n1 @oddmiles @kevyeen @stealing-kneecaps @criminalskies @woodandwaxwings @anonstories08

"Perhaps the unsub's a teenager," Spencer theorises and you want to slam your head against the desk. Because that's what you've been trying to put forth for the last ten minutes - ignored each time.

Instead, you say nothing, just continuing to shovel the sunflower seeds into your mouth before you say something you'll regret. "We should have seen that sooner..." Hotch mutters.

'I did.' You think bitterly, letting a handful of sunflower seeds fall into your mouth.

"But why is he targetting these men?" Garcia asked. Whoever the unsub was, he was going round shooting men - never life-threatening, but clearly out for revenge of some sort.

"Maybe someone like them scorned him in his past," You say, Prentiss talking over you before you can get your third word out. You were gonna need some more sunflower seeds real soon if this kept going. How many sunflower seeds were healthy to consume in a day?

You close your eyes for a moment before trying yet again to reiterate your point. This time, though, Reid cuts you off with a long list of statistics about female offenders.

"I think someone in his past hurt him and these guys remind him of them." Morgan says and you realise you're out of sunflower seeds. You shoot up, knowing that you didn't have many options right now (what with your anger): 1, scream at them (not literally but close enough), 2, throw the closest mug at the wall (but these were government-issued mugs so that probably wasn't the best idea), or 3, get some more sunflower seeds to munch on whilst you try not to regret your entire life decisions.

You don't know if they've even realised you've left the room and you can't be fucked to check. Instead, you head on over to your bag, pulling out a fresh pack of sunflower seeds and open it before making your way back to the room.

"Everything okay?" Hotch asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes sir," You answer, "Ran out of sunflower seeds. Figured no one would notice if I left anyway,"

"I know you were part of hostage negotiation previously, but we work as a team here."

You look at him for a moment, debating saying something. On calling his bullshit because clearly you only worked part of a team here if they had accepted you as a part of their 'group' - which you clearly weren't in yet. You settle for a simple, one worded answer.

"Interestin'." You say before resuming the eating of your sunflower seeds.

"Excuse me?" Hotch asked, clenching his jaw in frustration.

"Surprised you heard me, Sir," You said, "That's all,"

"Is there a problem here?"

"You tell me," You answer, "You're the boss."

"We'll talk about this later. We have more important things to be concerned about right now."

You tilted your head ever so slightly in a small nod of acknowledgement before turning back to the bag of sunflower seeds in your hands as you listened to the team - seeing no point in joining in at this point.

[blueberryismilk18]

Heyyy, I just found your writing and I love it so much 😭

I just wanted to ask for bistro huddy (idk if I spelled it right 😭) headcanons with a s/o that has anger issues. Like whenever they serve a rude costumer they can hardly contain themselves from smacking them with the turkey sandwich they ordered 😭😭. You could do whatever characters you like. You don’t have to take my request if you don’t want to btw. I don’t wanna force anything. Anyways, I hope you have a great day/night! Bye bye!!! ☺️

Heyy, I really enjoyed this one:3 sorry I’ve been gone for a while I had a very bad writing burn out. I’m gonna try and get as many done today as I can so expect more later! Hope you enjoy (none of my head canons are ever proof read so if there is a spelling mistake lmk)

Ruby, Terry, Joey, and Pickles with a S/O with anger issues

ℜ𝔲𝔟𝔶 (fem reader)

💋 She definitely has anger issues too but she can keep it under wraps.

💋 Will shit talk about the Customer(s) bothering you

💋She would probably go into the freezer with you to scream about the entire kitchen staff while you scream about the customers

💋 If you ever actually flip out at a customer she would lowkey be proud, or like in awe. I don���t think she’d encourage it but also she kinda would…

💋 “I didn’t think you had that in you, kind of stupid though. I mean It was kinda hot.”

💋 There’s a reason the chefs aren’t servers…

𝕋𝕖𝕣𝕣𝕪 (Masc reader)

👔 Lets you sit in his office(? Does he even have one… I’m assuming yall) to cool off and take a breather

👔 While your there he will tell you about how he understands it’s easy to get frustrated

👔 Trust me, this man understands. He goes through it almost every day.

👔 “I tell ya love, I know. I got Tim always calling my ass for things that, I tell ya, are just plain stupid!”

👔 Lets you talk about it and will probably crack a few jokes with you to help you feel better

👔 You flip out at a customer, you best believe this man it’s taking your side. What are they gonna do, tell the manager?!

ᴊᴏᴇʏ

🍨LOSES HIS TEMPER TOO! 

🍨 NOBODY is gonna treat his prince/princess like that?!

🍨 He flips out at the customer for you.

🍨 Another man who understands how idiotic people can be (despite being kinda dumb himself.)

🍨 “What the fuck are these people doing! If they gotta problem direct them to me sweetheart! Cause they could have a sandwich alright, a fucking knuckle sandwich!”

🍨 if you flip out, he would literally praise you for it, men’s glad you finally stuck up for yourself

𝙿𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚕𝚎𝚜

🍭 I don’t think he really understands why your upset when you come to the back 

🍭 Once you explain he would get mad too! 

🍭 How could you let them talk to you like that?! 

🍭 “Let me at him!”

🍭 offers you candy to make you feel better, will give you a few hugs to help you cool off

🍭 Will take you outside to the back for a bit to breathe while he says some (stupid) sweet things to make you laugh

🍭 If it keeps happening with the same person maybe he’ll get riled up enough to confront them, probably will chicken out last second

🍭 If he finds out you flipped out, he hyped you up after, even after getting yelled at by Terry

🍭 “You did so amazing! That’ll teach them!”

[forthelostones]

𝚙𝚝.𝚘𝚗𝚎 ; 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚎𝚢𝚎𝚜 𝚘𝚗𝚕𝚢 ─── ⋆

⟡⋆˙୨ᥫ᭡. 𝚗𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚎 𝚊𝚞 - 𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚐𝚎!𝚊𝚋𝚋𝚢 𝚡 𝚏𝚎𝚖!𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛 ᥫ᭡.୧⋆˙⟡

synopsis: abby was a woman whose presence was becoming deeply irresistible to you. in your final year of nursing school, you toil with the idea of pursuing her — ruin what you have or enjoy what’s in front of you?

warnings. 18+ (mdni); sub!abby (eventually), mini slowburn, suggestive language, jealousy, nora & mel ft, smoking/drinking, mentions of parental death, nickname: dummy, and modern au - pre-established relation.

an: hi everyone, waaaa thanks for all the follows! i appreciate you all sooo soo much. this is something i just thought of idk, maybe a series who knows! i am thinking abt putting this on ao3 too!

(no y/n)

wc: 2.4k

The noise you dreaded hearing the most pulled at your heart, jolting you wide awake at 4:45 a.m. You roll over to the screaming phone and detonate your alarm for clinical. Not even one minute later you get a message from your neighbor, Abby, who is also your classmate. 

Anderson: Rise and shine Dummy. 

In the final year of your nursing program, every day became harder. You feel your body morph back into the cavernous mark you left in the mattress, so warm, you could just… You let your heart settle before you toss your feet off the edge of your mattress, tuck your feet into your slippers, and head to the bathroom. You couldn’t risk the temptation of laying back in bed. On clinical days you were the most nervous but it felt real, like what you had been working towards was actually obtainable. These days were also the longest, so mentally preparing for that was a large part of your success. 

You slip your legs into your light blue scrubs and grab your backpack that was heavy with supplies. Flickering all the lights off and then slipping into your shoes you open the door to find Abby in the corridor at 5:20, ready to head out. You pull your hand over your hair in an attempt to parry any imperfections you might’ve missed in the mirror. She had her keys laced in between her fingers, peering down at her watch. Her scrubs were pressed and well-fitted, hugging her thighs comfortably and falling just above her ankle. Her arms bulged out of the cap-sleeved top complimented with a slick back bun, and her badge attached at the hip, perfectly placed. Meanwhile, you were struggling to find clean scrubs this morning, do your hair, and search for your badge floating in the mess called your backpack. 

“Ready?” She muttered. 

You just nodded your head with your eyes fluttering, fighting off any lingering sleep. 

Ever since freshman year, you have been deeply inspired by Abby. She always aced her tests and made it her mission to become a real nursing student. Which sometimes meant taking on more than she could chew. In one of your entry levels, sophomore term, you became her patient — or dummy — for the year. Your professor explained the patient's situation and you sat limply, very anxious. 

“Anderson, go ‘head.” Your professor spat. 

“Hello, I’m Nurse Anderson, I’m here to take some vitals.” 

You just nodded your head as her large hands reached for her stethoscope, heading towards your back. 

“Come on you need to be a better dummy than that.” Your professor said. 

Her comment made Abby break character and laugh, since then, you’ve been her Dummy. 

You settled into the passenger seat, letting the familiar scent of pine infiltrate your senses. On clinical days Abby insisted on driving you both to the sites. Abby was meticulous about everything and you noticed that early on. Her car was in pristine condition, even though it wasn’t very new. There was no trash or any misplaced items, it was faultless, and it baffled you how she kept up with life and school. 

“Wanna review notes?” She suggested. 

“No, I didn’t get any sleep last night I was studying for Pharma. Didn’t finish the midterm study guide we made until 1 a.m.” 

“Shit. Today’s gonna be rough for you.” She said, pushing the button to start the car and turning the heat on, which made you sleepier. The sun wasn’t even peaking out yet, and you cuddled up to the window listening to Abby mutter off terminology that turned into nothingness as you fell into a sleepy abyss. 

“Dummy. Hey, we’re here.” She said tapping your thigh. 

You had really fallen asleep and were embarrassed at how deeply and easily it happened. The sun was dull in the sky and you shuddered at the cool air as you opened the door. 

The NICU was peaceful. A few of your classmates were cooing over the babies with the instructor, while Abby was observing and taking notes while they were talking. 

“Sorry, another question —" she’d probed, with her iPad in hand. Watching her scribble small annotations and pictures distracted you. Her brows would dip into each other, mentally absorbing every small detail, you just stared at her until she caught you. 

“You’re staring again.” She’s said many-a-times. 

“Anderson, can you send me your notes after?” Mel asked as we packed up our book bags to head out of the hospital. Of course, Abby obliged, even though she and Mel were coveted enemies, she would photo-copy them and email her notes anyway. 

“I don’t know why you even entertain her.” You whispered. 

“I feel bad, she’s struggling, least I can do is help her out.” She shrugged. 

Back at your apartment building Abby invited you to her to drink a little, and you couldn’t say no. Due to the fact that you lived next to each other and that Abby was introverted, you were one of her few friends. But then again you didn’t know much about her outside of being classmates. You changed into sweats and then walked into Abby wearing a tank top and grey shorts. The white, ribbed fabric clung perfectly to her chest, exposing the outlines of her upper body, hugging the cusps of her breasts. Which made you lock your eyes sweetly onto her without fault. She had set out two glasses and brought a bottle of wine to the coffee table in front of the TV. 

Her apartment was cozy, the temperature was perfect, it always smelled nice, and the warm lighting was inviting. You sigh as you join her on the couch, it felt good to sit down, not to mention on something other than your shitty couch. She grinned as she handed you the glass. 

“Now what’s this?” You smirk. 

“Just Prosecco, to start.” 

You both keep eye contact as you take the first sips. Her lips perched onto the edge of the glass and while she was staring into your eyes, they drifted slightly downwards to the pinky pillows on her face. She raised her eyebrows and peered into her glass with a nod of approval. 

“I think today went well, I wouldn’t mind —"  

“No school talk.” You interject.

“Oh, so now you wanna be like friends?” She smirked. 

“I mean…” You trail.

She shrugged as she took another sip. “It’s not. I’m pretty boring.” 

“Come on, talk to me.” 

She was pressed into the opposite corner of the couch, but you felt inclined to lean in more and inch closer to her body. She tucked her leg under herself, so you really saw the stretch of her willpower. Her quads leading up to her thighs were sucking you in like a lazy river guiding you to her estuary. 

“Well, I hit a new number at the gym.” 

“Is that why you’re wearing this little number tonight?” 

Her face turns pink as she turns her head away in guilt. You watched her break into a nervous laugh pressing her lips together tightly. 

“What’s the point if I can’t gloat?” 

You both share a silence for a moment before she composes herself as she feels the heat of your eyes on her. Your vision trailed from her thighs back to her warm eyes. Her fingers turn white while she pinches the stem of the glass. 

“You make it hard to look away, so I don’t blame you.” 

“See, I told you I’m boring.” She said ignoring your comment. 

“I guess I’m curious to see what goes on in that brain of yours. How can you be so put together and still be sane while everyone else is drowning? I admire you so much but I think you’re fucking crazy.” 

She reaches up to her scalp to remove the ponytail holder that held back her blonde locks. Her hair falls just above her chest in a long bob, perfectly cut, not a wrinkle from the hair band anywhere.

“My dad was a surgeon so I guess I became familiar with his lifestyle while growing up. He was crazier than me, super detailed, borderline obsessive,” She glanced toward the ground. “He’s the reason I’m here.” 

“Is he still working or did he retire.” 

She dipped her head down and sipped the last dribbles of her wine, “He passed away a while ago. Just before I came to university.” 

“Abs, sorry.” 

You didn’t have the right words, no one ever did with that type of thing. 

“Ah, it’s fine. So, I just bought this new mezcal, I’ll be right back.” 

She ran to the kitchen and brought shot glasses. 

“So you want me tipsy or what?”

“Just enjoy this with me?” 

Her request was soft and inviting, how could you even think of saying no. She poured more alcohol into the small glasses, “Come here.” she demanded. 

Her command made the pit of your stomach wobble. She took her right arm and looped it with yours, pulling you into her. You didn’t realize it but your heart was beating faster than its resting rate. Her skin was so warm and her hair smelled like honey, her bicep was curling against yours and suddenly you realized your lack of muscle. She lifted the glass to her lips and you followed, not breaking eye contact, her arm tightened, pulling you upwards slightly. She took the shot like a fucking champ. You pull away gasping. 

“So smooth.” She teased. 

“Sure.” You gagged. 

She tucked a strand behind her ear and licked her lips, looking at you fight a fire. She gets a notification on her watch and instantly breaks the tension. You see her eyes light up and a smile creeps up as she reaches for her phone and begins pecking at the screen. You didn’t understand but you felt slightly jealous of whoever was interrupting your night.

“Who’s thattt.” You say in a sing-song voice. 

“What? No one, it’s just a friend.” 

“The fact that you told me it was a friend tells me…” 

“Fine. It’s Nora, remember from freshman bio?” 

“The TA? What? How didn’t I know any of this?” 

“No, because it’s nothing. She’s in grad school, we rekindled recently — I don’t know it was random.” 

“Abby, you are literally blushing.” 

It was true, her skin had turned to the likes of a strawberry. She looked up to you and shoved you in a playful way, slightly embarrassed. You shove her back and she tosses her phone and retaliates. In one swift moment in between the laughter, she pinned you down on the couch cushions. You look up at her, hair flowing into your face, her straddling your legs, and an unwavering smile. Her phone dings with another message which she ignores and it makes you stifle your breathing. 

“You should get that.” You whisper. “And why is that?” She tilts her head playfully. 

She stumped you, no smart rebuttal this time. Another notification slides through and she finally releases you from her grasp. She runs her hand through her hair and reads the messages slightly biting her lip. 

“Well what did she say, come on.” You say leaning over to which she pulls away. 

“No! I, okay. You. Okay. Okay okay.” 

She looked and sounded like a teenager nervous about a pending text. 

“So, context, I told her I was unwinding you know after clinical… So, she said ‘ah, the best. how do you unwind’ right? So I just said, drinking a little, letting my body settle in, you know comfy — being comfy. She said ‘maybe I can help?” Like okay, that means… what I think right. Anyway, I said, how can you help? She said ‘tell me what you have on and I can assess the situation.’” 

You sat taken aback at her brute honesty. 

“So.”

“She’s flirting, isn’t she?” Her eyes sunk at this discovery. 

“Indeed she is.” 

You felt a sense of betrayal, fucking Nora, you thought. 

“Help, what do I say. You know better than me.” She admitted. 

“I am so honored you want my help. Say it again.” You scooch closer. 

She refused. “You know what never-mind.” 

“Abbbbyyy, say it.” 

A minute passes before she finally gives in. “You know better than me.” 

Suddenly you became an expert for Anderson. 

“Let me see your phone.” 

She was hesitant but finally handed it over. You type a possible reply with her looking over your shoulder. 

“What? I’m not wearing a lacey thong.” 

A bit of you wished she was.

“Abby, it doesn’t have to be true.” 

“Yes okay. Red thong. Send it. No-no, just say nothing. I mean that’s more realistic right, oh add that I just got out the shower.” 

She replied instantly. 

Naked, just for me?  

“Why would she say it like that?” Her face turned sour. 

Not for you, just me and my eyes only, you reply. 

“Okay, I like that.” 

When can I see you? 

Abby took her phone back and turned it off while you two shared loud laughs. 

“Fuck, I am not good at this flirting stuff.” She groaned. 

“So, I finally found what you’re not good at, huh?”

She flicked her eyes up at you and away, she was hiding something, a secret. 

“Abigail…” you trail. 

“What.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder. 

“Have you ever been with someone before?” 

Deep down you knew the answer. Her ability to not get wrapped up in bullshit led to her hyper-focus on life and not the fun parts. 

“I mean, describe with.” She said going back to the fridge. 

“Had sex with, made out with, also just dated.” 

She brought back two bottles of cider, her lips already pressed to one. You grab yours by the neck patiently awaiting her answer. She just sips her cider.

“Abby,” you say theatrically. “What is it, no one has tickled your fancy or maybe you’re too much of a workaholic to prioritize your needs.” 

Her mouth fell open slightly. “The second one. I’ve gotten there but something always felt off.” 

Hearing Abby talk about sex made you giggle, she couldn’t even mutter the word. Your mind swarmed with all the stuff you could teach her, the positions you could put her in, and the way you would make her feel. 

“Hmmhm.”

“Wait, what the fuck does that mean.” 

“What?” 

“Hmmhm.” She mocks.

“It’s nothing, right now it means I should go, we have Pharma remember. This has been fun,” you stand. “Good night Anderson.” 

You reach out to nip her chin with your cold hand and in that moment when peered at you through those thick lashes you could melt.

“Good night, Dummy.” She smiled goofily.