#might... might cave and post this on ao3 at some point

[ggomos-maribat]

Secrets, Masks, and Family Gatherings

Cross posted from AO3

It had been nearly a year since she moved to Gotham City, but the skyline seemed new each time she went out for night patrol. Ladybug zipped to another building with Red Hood to gain a higher vantage point. Her wings fluttered slightly with the breeze behind her.

"All clear here." Red Hood pressed on his comms.

"Okay. We'll wait for an update from Robin and Spoiler then we're finished for tonight if there aren't any problems," Batman replied.

"Yeah, it's a miracle we get to finish up early." The vigilante rolled his shoulders and stretched his arms. "So LB . . ."

"This small talk again?" Ladybug groaned.

Red Hood put his arms up. "Hey, I'm just curious."

"What is it now?"

"I was just wondering what made you transfer to Gotham." He perched on the ledge right beside her. "You defeated your city's villain, right? You had nothing to do anymore."

He's not wrong. She often thought about it herself. Her past and responsibilities clung to her like unshakeable nightmares. Ladybug knew the moment she gained guardianship that her life had no chance of reverting back to 'normal'.

"I think you know how it feels," she said.

"How what feels?"

Ladybug sighed, slumping. "When we defeated Hawkmoth, I thought we could finally rest easy. But I couldn't. I was restless, and between that and taking care of the aftermath, I realized I was missing the superhero life." She shrugged. "That's why I'm here now---it's inescapable. As the guardian, I decided it was better for the Miraculi to be used for good instead of sitting unused."

"Ah, classic PTSD like all the Bats." Red Hood nodded.

She snorted. "But that doesn't mean I still live a restless life. In fact, I've gotten used to life in Gotham."

"But why Gotham of all places?"

"The Miracle Box told me something. I can't divulge anything more."

"Just like you don't divulge anything about your civvy life."

She rolled her eyes, elbowing him on the side, which caused him to flinch dramatically. Bats and their nosiness. "Hey, we're not that close yet for me to reveal my identity. And it's a fair game. I don't know any of you either."

"I'm surprised B hasn't dug up anything on you. And he has contingency plans for all the JL members."

"I told you, the glamor protects us."

At first, she'd been hesitant to work with the vigilantes and at the same time, Batman had been wary around her especially when she was entering their territory. But she had gotten to know them well over time, despite not knowing who were behind the masks. She could also tell they'd grown to trust her like one of theirs.

"All clear near Crime Alley," Spoiler reported over the line.

"Good. Thank you for your help tonight, Ladybug. Everyone else, back to the cave."

Ladybug stood up abruptly. "Thank you too. I'll join the Signal during the weekend. He mentioned he might need some help."

"Oooh, you seem in a hurry to get back home." Red Hood tilted his head.

"No, I'm not spilling anything about my plans for the night," she huffed. "And I need to go because I'm hungry and my timer's running because you forced me to use my Lucky Charm to win that bet with Red Robin."

"The look on his face was priceless."

Ladybug threw her yoyo. "Good night, Hood."

After double checking that none of the others had followed or tracked her, Ladybug detransformed and walked back to her apartment building. She could practically hear the coffee calling to her; she'd drown in it endlessly whenever patrol nights ran late and she needed commissions to finish afterwards.

In the empty elevator, Tikki hovered up to her shoulder. "It's a good thing patrol ended early, Marinette."

"It's not a good sign, Tikki." She smiled grimly. "I think something big's going to happen. A massive breakout or a big plan by the Rogues."

The kwami hummed. "You can try to get plenty of rest before that happens."

"No promises. I have twelve designs I have to submit to Audrey by next week."

Just as she headed to her apartment door, her phone rang a familiar customized ringtone. Tikki also gasped in excitement upon seeing the caller's name.

Marinette tucked her phone between her ear and shoulder while jamming her keys through the doorknob. "Hey, Adrien. What's up?"

"Hey Nette. Done with patrol?"

"We finished early tonight. The Rogues are suspiciously silent. How are you? How's Plagg?" Marinette stepped into the room and Tikki turned on the lights.

"Currently pigging out on cheese. As always." She could almost see her best friend's eye-roll. "Anyway, I called to tell you that I'll be visiting Gotham on Friday. Wayne Tech is partnering up with our brand and Chloe and Kagami are coming with me."

"That's great news, Adrien! I'll bake something special---or should I take you out to a restaurant? I know some good ones near my place."

Adrien chuckled. "Pick anything you want. I'll tell Chloe to send you our schedule so we can reserve lunch or dinner with you and----no, Plagg! I'm not telling her to buy extra cheese!" He heaved out a breath. "At night we can have a short . . . run. You can introduce me to your new partners."

"They're not my partners. It's just you, kitty cat," Marinette said pointedly. "We're just allies."

"You gush about winning prank wars against them."

"It's fun being around them but that's it!"

He laughed. "It's okay. I'm glad you're enjoying your time over there. Send my regards to Damian."

A knock suddenly sounded on the door.

"Speaking of Damian, I think he's here. Gotta go, and say hi to Plagg and the others for me!"

"Pfft, you keep stroking his ego."

With one last goodbye, Marinette threw her phone on the couch and ran to the door. She hadn't expected her boyfriend to drop by, but she was glad he could make time for her. She knew Damian was as busy as her and she was worried he'd end up not taking care of himself like she always did.

"Dames, I thought you had work at the company for the whole night." She gave him a tight hug and a light kiss as soon as she opened the door.

Damian pecked her cheek, winding his arms around her waist. "They let us go early and I thought I should surprise you."

"Good, because I'm surprised," she beamed. "Are you staying the night?"

"Of course, habibti."

Damian Wayne had been an unexpected addition to her Gotham life. They had met in the park while they were working on their sketches---him, a portrait drawing and her, an inspired dress design. Before she knew it, she was with someone who she believed she could spend the rest of her life with. Damian was her support, her confidant in all aspects except her secret identity (though the thought of finally telling him had crossed her mind too many times).

"Are you hungry? I haven't had dinner yet and I was just thinking of cooking instant ramen . . ."

"We can have dinner together, but . . . there is something I need to talk to you about." Damian rubbed her arms, gazing at her intently.

Marinette's heart quickened as she subconsciously thought about all types of bad news. Did he get hurt? Did I do something? Is he going to break up with me?

"Habibti, love, I can already read your thoughts." He kissed the tip of her nose. "It's not anything terrible."

"What is it?"

Damian took a deep breath. "I think it's time for you to meet my family."

Marinette felt her jaw drop. "Your . . . your family? Are you sure about this?"

For the longest time, Damian had expressed his distaste at the thought of her meeting the Waynes. At first, she'd thought that it was the status difference, but he seemed more worried about his father and brothers doing something crazy.

On the other hand, they had both flown to Paris four months ago for Damian to officially meet her parents and friends. It had gone smoothly, and Damian was convinced that the opposite would happen if she met his family.

"Yes. I've thought about it." He sat down with her as she ran her thumb over the back of his hand. "They're already asking about you and if I stall for any longer, I know they will start prying into your life."

"Oh . . ."

Damian had talked about his brothers before, and Marinette saw them sometimes in news and tabloids. In her impression, they didn't seem too bad.

"But don't worry," he assured her, "I will be with you the whole time. We'll have lunch at the manor tomorrow---"

"Wait, tomorrow?"

"Is it too sudden? I worked with your free schedule and---"

"No, no, I'm definitely free tomorrow." Her eyes widened. "Let's meet them tomorrow. It just caught me off guard. I have to prepare my outfit and buy a gift and----oh no, what would your brothers like? What about your father and Alfred?"

Damian smiled gently. "You don't have to concern yourself with that. You’ll make a wonderful first impression."

"But---"

"I have to warn you about my brothers instead." His lip curled. "They will be a handful."

She laughed a little. "You already warned me a million times."

"Because I can't overstate how troublesome they'll be."

Instead of her reply, Marinette's growling stomach echoed in the room. She blushed as Damian pulled her from her seat, kissing her cheek. "It seems that we have an emergency to take care of first. I'll help you cook."

---

Marinette smoothed down the remnant wrinkles on her skirt. She'd chosen a simple pleated dress to wear to her first family lunch with the Waynes. At the same time, the car pulled up in front of the Wayne Manor. It was just as intimidating as she remembered---she'd only ever been to the manor once, to wait for Damian.

"Nervous?" Damian touched her hand.

"Should I be?"

"Never," he replied firmly. "If anything, I should apologize ahead of time. Also, there is no reason to be nervous. If they aren't busy acting insufferable, they'll be impressed by you."

Though the words were warm, they did little to calm her heart. These were the Waynes, royalty of Gotham. She even found it hard to believe that she was with Damian in the first place.

"Come on." Damian helped her out of the car and guided her to the front steps. He pushed through the large wooden doors and they were both met with a broad-shouldered man rushing down the main hallway.

"Todd," Damian called out. "Where on earth are you going?"

The man---Jason, she assumed---stopped, glanced at them, and gave her a quick once-over. Marinette noticed the motorcycle helmet he held on one hand.

"Demon brat." Jason tilted his head. "I have work to do."

"But lunch---"

"I promised to drop by. I didn't say I'll stay." He gave Marinette a single nod and went off.

"I bet he had another fight with Father," Damian muttered under his breath. Marinette squeezed his hand.

"I'm sorry," he murmured.

"Don't apologize. Let's go," she told him softly.

Damian led her to the dining hall where the others were already sat around the table. Curious stares burned through Marinette, making her duck her head away. Damian himself was unfazed, wearing a half-scowl as he helped her to her seat.

"Master Damian, Miss Marinette, welcome." Just in time, Alfred strolled in with the food. She gave the butler a meek smile.

Then, she took a look at the Waynes one by one. The poised Bruce Wayne was at the head of the table, his presence the most prominent  in the room. Across from her was Dick Grayson, who looked like he was studying her. Positioned beside him were Tim and Stephanie, both whispering to each other. Finally, Barbara was at her other side, offering her a small smile of comfort.

"I'm glad to finally meet you, Marinette," Bruce greeted. "Damian talks a lot about you."

Marinette momentarily eyed the array of silverware near her plate which she did not know how to use. "The pleasure is all mine . . . sir."

"Please call me Bruce." He gestured to the food at the center. "Go ahead and help yourself. Alfred cooked a feast for us."

She cleared her throat. "Thank you, Bruce."

"How did you both meet?" Tim questioned.

"In the park, Drake. We were both drawing. I already told you," Damian butted in.

Tim waved him off. "I want to hear it from her, not you."

"I---"

"It's okay, Damian." Marinette nudged him a little. "I was sketching in the park when Titus came to me. Damian was drawing a picture of me while I was absorbed in my designs and accidentally let go of his leash. Titus led me to him and it all started there."

"You design?" Barbara asked.

Warmth crept to her cheeks. "It's my dream to become a fashion designer. I just do a few commission pieces here and there. I'm trying to take small steps to reach my goal."

A quick glimpse at her boyfriend told her that he was radiating all the pride in the world.

"Little D mentioned you came from Paris?" Dick sipped on his drink. "Why did you decide to leave?"

"Oh, please don't get it all wrong. I know Paris earned a bad rep after the Hawkmoth fiasco but that was years ago. I just decided to move here to find more opportunities for myself," Marinette answered smoothly.

"Why Gotham of all places, if I may ask?" Bruce chimed in. "Admittedly, this isn't the friendliest city in the country."

"Father, stop with the interrogation," said Damian.

"It's okay, Dames, I don't mind. Promise." She squeezed his hand under the table.

"Fine. But do not answer anything if you're not comfortable."

Marinette looked at Bruce. "One of my friend's parents who works in fashion suggested Gotham. There's a low competition among the designers here so it might be easier for me to make a name for myself."

"That's not a bad move actually," Tim remarked.

"So back in Paris, did you get to meet any of the heroes?" Dick leaned in.

"Grayson," Damian warned.

"That's---"

A sharp ring blasted out, cutting off her statement. Bruce fished out his phone, a muscle on his face twitched, and he abruptly stood up. "There's an emergency at WE."

"Emergency?" Tim peered at his phone as well.

"Yes, Tim. You're needed. Also Stephanie." The eldest Wayne looked around the table and uttered monotonously. "I apologize for cutting this short. We have an urgent matter at the company---"

"Father."

Bruce shook his head. "This absolutely cannot wait, Damian."

The three filed out of the room in a flash. Marinette, stunned at the sudden interruption, saw Dick also checking the emergency.

"Sorry, Babs and I need to go." He stood up and picked up his coat, going around the table to help Barbara. "It's nice to meet you, Marinette."

"Let's go out for drinks sometime, okay?" Barbara reached over and patted her shoulder before they left.

The disappearance of the Waynes left her fidgeting with her fingers and wondering what the big emergency could be. She peeked at Damian hesitantly. "Do you need to go too?"

His jaw clenched. "I think so."

"You can go." She cupped his cheek, pecking the other.

"I can't tell you---"

"I know. I won't ask, I promise," she assured softly. He didn't have to explain anything to her; she'd gladly wait for him to open up. "Go."

"I'm sorry."

"Damian."

He pressed a firm kiss on her forehead. "Alfred will drive you to your apartment. I'll come to you later, alright?"

"Okay."

She could hear Alfred offering her food to take home and guiding her to the car, but it was all a blur. Marinette knew she had nothing to do with what happened yet she was afraid that it would sour Damian's relationship with his family. Her fists clenched around her skirt as she looked down, feeling Alfred's keen eyes checking on her through the rearview mirror.

"Please do not take it personally, Miss," Alfred said softly.

"Yes. Thank you," she whispered.

Finding nothing better to do than to check her phone, Marinette noticed the numerous alerts plastered all over her screen. Arkham breakout. Fuck. No wonder it was so quiet last night. There were a number of messages from Red Hood (which was directed from her burner phone), asking her if she could help.

Marinette looked out the window. Sure enough, there seemed to be a racket coming from the other streets.

"Umm, excuse me Alfred?" She searched for a safe alley to transform. "Can---can you drop me off at the cafe over there?"

"Are you certain? There are Rogues running around the city at this time."

"I'll stay inside. Don't worry."

Fortunately, the butler did what she asked and she made a beeline to the cafe as soon as she stepped foot out the car. Transform. Connect comms. Head to the upper east side. The same words ran through her head.

Her phone rang suddenly right before she could say her transformation words.

"Adrien! Can't talk right now. Arkham breakout. Big emergency," she said hurriedly into the phone.

"Oops. Need backup?" He asked.

"Maybe not. I don't know." She massaged her temple. "Can I ask you guys to standby? You can take your power-ups just in case."

"That's fine. Stay safe," Adrien said, "How did lunch go by the way?"

"Gah! Not now, kitty!"

"Right, right, right. Emergency in Gotham. I'll hang up now."

Marinette sighed. "It was a disaster, by the way. I'll text the details later."

"Aaaand Chloe's yelling at me to spill right now. You should go."

---

Ladybug swiftly landed beside Nightwing when she arrived and the Bats had just finished capturing Penguin and his men. On the next rooftop over, she could see Robin with Batman---they were loud enough for her to deduce that they were having an argument but she couldn't make out the exact words.

"What's up with them?" Ladybug frowned. She had always known Robin as the cold, closed-off one in the group but it was her first time encountering a complete outburst.

"Personal stuff. Happened earlier," Nightwing replied briefly. "I'm surprised you came. I thought you had an appointment today."

She bit her tongue. "Uhh, it got cancelled."

Batman told Robin something which had him storming off, grappling away to another direction. Their comms buzzed to life.

"Ladybug, team up with Robin. The Riddler's in the next avenue," Batman ordered curtly.

Ladybug turned to Nightwing with wide eyes. The stress was obvious in the sag of his shoulders and tight grip on his escrima sticks.

"He's mad at all of us," he explained. "It's better if it's you who joins him."

Ladybug only nodded, throwing her yoyo to follow Robin. Her curiosity was growing by the minute, but she focused on thinking of ways to calm down her fellow vigilante. If he became too riled up, he could lose focus and get injured.

She followed him close enough for him to hear her. "Robin, you have to slow down."

"No, I have to get back as soon as possible."

"Get back to where?"

She only received silence.

Frustrated Robin equals not a good Robin. Ladybug leapt to match his pace and blocked his way. He glared at her. "Move."

"Look, this is the Riddler we're facing. He's still dangerous and if we're not careful, we'll get caught in his traps."

"I don't care. I just need to get this over with. Stay out of my way."

When he pushed past her, she had half the mind to wrap him in her yoyo and deliver him back to Batman for a time-out. She huffed as she followed him. You're not the only one having a bad day, grumpy boy. Robin anchored his grappling gun to a faraway building and at the second he jumped off, he careened to the side, swept away by an elaborate trap by the Riddler.

Before she knew it, Ladybug was after him. Her teeth gritted and her legs ran a mile as she groaned out loud. "This is exactly what I was just talking about!"

They were trapped in an empty little box with a puzzle lock on its door.

Ladybug released a shaky breath.

The worst argument I've had with one of the Gotham vigilantes was when I interfered with Red Hood's mission and he got overprotective. She stared at Robin, who was relentlessly kicking the metal walls. But that might change today.

"Robin," she called out. "I understand that you're mad at the others but it doesn't mean you can act reckless while you're in that suit."

"No. You don't understand." He raked a hand through his hair. "I told them. I already told them and they still . . .Do you know what they did?"

She opened her mouth to reason with him again but he beat her to it. "I only wanted at least an hour. No interruptions." Robin clicked his tongue. "For them, there is nothing more important than capturing these criminals even if there are other heroes who will help. And Father had to be the first to run out."

Ladybug gaped. She knew the Bats were somewhat of a family but it was Robin's first time referring to Batman as a father. "Are you sure you should be telling me---"

"Yes, so you know how unfair they acted earlier." He twirled his katanas, looking for a simple way out. "I only wanted them to meet my girlfriend. I brought her home. And they all left for this. Father didn't give a sincere apology and my brothers either don't care or are suspicious of her."

Wait . . .

She thought she'd stumble back, but her feet were surprisingly still planted on the ground. Lunch. Earlier. Girlfriend. Shit. Her breath was knocked out of her lungs as she processed Robin's words.

Damian's words.

She wanted to laugh. All this time, she'd been anxious about telling him the truth when he was already living the same life as her. The Waynes, the sudden emergencies, staying out late. Merde, it all makes sense now. It was ridiculous how she didn't recognize her own boyfriend.

"It was a mistake after all. I shouldn't have invited her to come," Robin sighed. "They're wary because she's a civilian---she'll be my weakness if anyone finds out about our connection. They know that, which is why they don't approve."

Her first instinct was to tell him that it wasn't true, but an identity reveal would be too much given their current situation. Ladybug pieced her words with care. "I'm sure they'll listen if you tell them how you feel. Your girlfriend will understand too."

"We don't communicate healthily, in case you haven't figured that out."

Her heart was still drumming against her ribcage. Damn it. Marinette would work better in consoling him. Ladybug's just a colleague. "I know. But a few words can go a long way. Tell them you'll be careful. Ask them to help protect your girlfriend if anything ever goes wrong."

As Robin lowered his gaze, an urge to come up to him and hold his hands washed over her. She counted the seconds of silence that passed. It looked like he was thinking deeply about it.

"I apologize for getting you involved," he said. "And for mindlessly telling you about my personal life."

She laughed nervously. "Ah . . . it's okay to vent out sometimes."

Yeah, and your story definitely did not reveal your whole identity.

Robin turned towards the puzzle lock. "Should we attempt to crack the code in his puzzle?"

It wasn't a simple coded lock---it was a six-wheeled puzzle that was embedded onto the door. "By the looks of it, it will take us hours if we go through that route. I think I have a better idea. Are there any cameras here?"

He surveyed the small enclosure. "I see two by the corners."

"Good. Break them and cover the lens." Ladybug touched her earrings while he did what she said. I have spare cookies in my purse. That should do. "We can't unlock the door by ourselves, but Tikki can phase through and let us out."

"The tiny god-being in your Miraculous."

"Yeah, that's Tikki." She smiled. I'll have to introduce them sometime. "Close your eyes?"

After making sure that the cameras weren't functioning and he couldn't see her, she detransformed, motioned to the puzzle lock and sent Tikki out.

"Before we were trapped, I saw other civilians captured in similar boxes," said Robin. "Riddler should be camped east."

Marinette crossed the gap between them and tapped on the back of his hand. GOOD. RIDDLER FIRST THEN FREE OTHERS.

"Morse?" Robin scrunched his nose. "Are you also cautious about revealing your voice?"

YES.

"Tt. That is too much. Most of us don't even use a modulator." He shifted. "I doubt that I will be able to recognize your voice."

She pursed her lips. We'll see about that.

---

Ladybug was lounging on the top of Wayne Tower as the vigilantes finished up catching the remaining inmates. She used the time to fully wrap her head around her discovery. Damian. Robin. One by one, she also pieced together the identities of the others. It was so stupidly obvious all this time.

She heard a familiar zip of the grappling gun. It wasn't Red Hood who she expected to check on her but it was Robin.

"The Rogues are secured. There are rumors that the Joker orchestrated the entire thing but he wasn't around during the attacks," Robin reported. "The injured civilians are being rushed to the hospitals. No deaths."

Ladybug didn't break her gaze at the horizon. "That's good."

". . . Ladybug?"

"Yeah?"

He sat next to her. "The people in Paris . . . did they get used to these kinds of incidents as well? When Hawkmoth was active?"

"With an akuma attack nearly every week, yes you can say we had no choice but to get used to it."

"Was there a lot of animosity towards Parisians after the truth got out?"

"Only a little." She looked down at her hands. "Mostly we receive pity. The press made it clear how the akumas affected everyone's lives."

"My girlfriend . . . came from Paris too. I always wonder what it was like but I never wanted to pry."

Damian . . . She bit her lip. She had been dodgy about the topic, but she should know better than to withhold her feelings about it. Damn it, this will be so awkward when he finally finds out.

"You're worried about her safety," she said.

Robin nodded. "I wonder if she feels afraid during Rogue attacks. Or just living in Gotham. I never want to find out that she was in a dangerous situation and I wasn't there to . . ."

"You don't have to worry. If she's from Paris, then she's strong. Everyone in my city had been on the edge of death one way or another. Our instincts were sharpened. We can block out our fears and emotions." Ladybug looked up at him. "I'm sure she can handle danger."

"But it's different here. There's no magic to bring things back to normal. It's permanent." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I won't know what to do if something happens to her because of me."

"I think . . . you should ask her first---"

"I should break it off with her."

"What?!"

Ladybug nearly slapped a hand over her mouth. I said that too quickly. Thankfully, Robin didn't seem to notice anything.

"I've been thinking a lot," he continued. "I can't bring myself to tell her about this. About me. The mere fact of her knowing puts a target on her back."

Dear kwamis, please keep me from pushing my boyfriend off this rooftop before gets the chance to find out about me.

"Wait." She began slowly. "Don't you think she deserves to know before you try to make that decision for her?"

"What am I supposed to do?" His eyebrows furrowed. "I . . . I expect her to react badly. I've learned from today that I should keep her from getting involved any further. It's either I drag her into this dangerous life or I keep hurting her with my lies."

"You shouldn't start assuming things without trying first. I'm sure she trusts you and she'll come to understand everything in time. There's always a compromise." Her lips spoke the words before she could think. "You're not doing any good by cutting yourself off all of a sudden."

"If I end it now, she can eventually move on and stay safe. Nevermind how I feel," he argued, "I can let her go and she'll be safe."

"When I told you about how Parisians are strong, that's not what I meant." Tears pricked the back of her eyes as she raised her voice. "She can stay in a relationship with you and keep herself safe because she's strong. Can't you trust her as much as she trusts you?"

"I can't risk it. She's important to me."

"If she is, then talk to her. If you don't give her a chance to decide, you're not any better than your father or brothers."

"How would you even know how she feels?"

Ladybug's face contorted into a sharp glare. "I just know. I know better than anyone, Damian."

Anger morphed into shock as he stared at her. ". . . What did you just call me?"

She made a quick sweep of the area to make sure that they were in a blind spot. Then, she wasted no time standing up on the ledge, shuffling until the balls of her foot touched the edge. Then,  "I'm not defenseless, merde. And I really wanted to wait until the end of the day but . . . Tikki, détransformation."

Marinette watched Robin's face go through a storm of emotions. His jaw hung slack and his fists uncurled while he stood up to look at her.

". . . Marinette?" he breathed out.

She gently touched his cheeks with both hands, peeling off his mask to reveal his glistening eyes. "I can't believe you wanted to break up with me."

"Marinette . . ." He pulled them both away from the ledge and held her, mumbling 'I'm sorry' over and over again. His head was buried on her neck, with his hands pressed against her back.

"You. It's you," said Damian. "Of course it's you."

"It's me." She rubbed down his back. "For record, I only found out because---"

"Because I told you what happened."

She chuckled. "Yeah."

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, habibti." He pulled away a little to touch her cheek. "I was going to make a stupid decision."

"Are you upset that I kept this from you?"

He shook his head, kissing her head. "I can't and I don't have the right to be. I was keeping my secret from you as well."

"Come on, let's go home first. Then we can talk about . . . everything."

---

Ladybug swung into the night with a weight lifted off her chest. She and Damian had a long talk about their identities and relationship. They'd both agreed not to tell the other heroes until they were ready to. For her, it was better that they kept their secrets between themselves first and slowly ease into revealing the truth to her friends and his family.

She breathed in the breeze. Robin wasn't anywhere to be seen, but a group of vigilantes were. Nightwing. Hood. RR. What are they doing there?

The three immediately fell into a hush when she landed next to them.

"Hey, LB," Red Robin greeted.

She put her hands on her hips. "What are you doing?"

The brothers shared a look before Red Hood spoke. "Robin told you about his girlfriend, right?"

"Yeah . . ." she trailed off, dragging the syllable.

"We think something's up with her," said Nightwing.

"I'm sorry?"

"Sketchy stuff," Red Robin explained, shifting on his feet. "Well, we can't tell you who she is---secret identities and all---but she's from Paris. She's friends with Hawkmoth's kid."

Ladybug scoffed. "Adrien? He's not like Hawkmoth. I know him personally and he had nothing to do with that man's crimes. Trust me."

"Hmm, yeah but she's also close with the mayor's daughter. That one who also sided with Hawkmoth."

"You mean Chloe Bourgeois? She's proven that she's changed." And unbeknownst to the public, she was a hero again, this time under another alias.

"But she's so secretive. There's definitely something going on with her." Nightwing rubbed his chin. Ladybug wanted to bang her head in the nearest wall or groan to the heavens.

"What's wrong with being secretive? Aren't you guys the same?" she narrowed her eyes.

"That's not the main cause of our suspicion," said Red Hood.

"We weren't convinced about her reason for moving to Gotham, so we dug around," Red Robin continued, "She said something about more career opportunities but that's just a cover. We found classified files on superheroes in her apartment, including info on Justice League members. I bet she already knows about Robin's identity."

"You snooped in her apartment?!"

"It was an investigation," Nightwing snorted.

Her eye twitched. A secret had never felt so difficult to conceal. "I can't believe you'd break the privacy of a civilian just because you had baseless assumptions."

Red Robin winced. "Uhh . . . if you put it that way . . ."

She crossed her arms. "No, I know what this is really about. You're being overprotective of Robin; you can't accept that he now has a significant other and you think he's being naive about his choices. You think he's going to get hurt badly." She paused for effect. "Because you don't want him to repeat the same mistakes as you all did."

The look on their masked faces told her that she had hit the target better than any therapist they might have encountered.

Red Hood was first to deny. "We're not protective of the brat. We're trying to eliminate a potential danger."

"His harmless civilian girlfriend?"

"Think about it, LB. Why would she have sensitive files on the heroes?" Red Robin asked. "You can't deny that that's suspicious."

I don't know, maybe because she's a hero herself?!

Ladybug sighed heavily. Damian is really going to kill them when he finds out. "Does Batman know about this?"

"Nope, but we'll tell him when we gather enough evidence," Nightwing answered. "We're just trying to get Oracle to crack into her laptop. The security on it  is so heavy, it's insane."

Why is it a curse that I asked Max to protect my laptop? There are files on the Miraculi in there!

She discreetly took her yoyo and put it on the recording function. "Let me get this straight. So you're all investigating and prying into the life of Robin's girlfriend without the knowledge of Batman even at the cost of your identities and everyone's safety?"

"We're not risking anyone's safety---"

"It's more of research but---"

She pursed her lips. "And you broke into her apartment, went through her things and currently you're trying to hack into her personal computer?"

"Regular vigilante work---"

"Good, we're on the same page then." She smiled widely. Sinisterly. "Tikki, détransformation."

Pale. Pale faces were all she could see as the three vigilantes were engulfed in utter shock. Marinette held her smile, clasping her hands together behind her back. I can't wait to see how they try to make it up to me. Mon dieu! I'm going to mess with them. 

And as a cherry on top, Robin arrived at the scene, immediately putting her behind him when he saw that she was in civilian form. He directed an accusatory glare at his brothers. "What is going on here?!"

[mylo-space]

Swear It on the Sun

Summary:

Macaque steps away from a Brotherhood meeting to find some peace and quiet, and finds himself with some unexpected company.

A sort of character study on Macaque and Peng during their time with the Brotherhood.

Posted on Ao3: 2023-10-05

Word Count: 4,805

-

Nights on Flower Fruit Mountain hadn’t been quiet since Wukong had started inviting his little team of rebels to their home. Not that Macaque minded–at least, not enough that he’d say anything to Wukong–but he did miss the peace sometimes. Especially when it seemed like nowhere in the temple was quiet enough to think, drunken voices bouncing off the mostly empty halls.

If he were a bit more honest with himself, he might be a little annoyed to be sitting on the roof while Wukong partied. Luckily, Macaque wasn’t known for being honest, so he settled for distancing himself, waiting until his ears stopped ringing so much before rejoining the party. Wukong was a social creature, and Macaque refused to compromise the first real company the king had managed to keep just because he would prefer the quiet.

From the trees, Macaque could hear a branch rattling. His ears twitched at the sound, too harsh to have been the breeze, and he scanned the canopy for the culprit. It didn’t take long to spot a small, white monkey exploring the branches. She paused for a moment, peering around as though she could feel Macaque’s gaze, exploding into excited chattering at the sight of him and immediately climbing the tree closest to the temple.

Macaque watched in amusement as she perched on a branch just a few feet shy of him. The young monkey wiggled in place for a moment, judging the distance before hurling herself from the tree and onto the roof. She scrabbled over the ledge for a moment, and chirped happily as Macaque reached to help. “Woah, there, I gotcha,” he said quietly, pulling the monkey to safety. “Not quite ready for that jump, huh.”

The monkey was young enough that she definitely should have been asleep, and Macaque could have easily teleported her back to the cave, but he had a soft spot for rule-breakers. It took some real skills to sneak past Wukong’s generals, and they were far enough away from that party that, even if Wukong and his guests did do something stupid or dangerous, Macaque wouldn’t have to worry about her being in harm’s way.

“Don’t tell Wukong I let you stay,” Macaque told the monkey quietly. “You know he doesn’t like you little guys seeing him drunk.” 

Despite Macaque setting her on the roof tiles, the infant immediately climbed his arm and perched on his shoulder instead. Macaque struggled not to laugh as she nuzzled into his neck, his bandana doing little to stop the ticklish assault. He fought the urge to move as she cuddled close, and took a slow breath as she settled, reaching up to smooth down her white fur.

Wukong would have probably pointed and cackled like a witch at the two of them if he had seen, especially at Macaque for being such a big softie. The sage would’ve tried to muffle the sound behind his hand, but Macaque still would’ve heard it, and he’d have still elbowed Wukong in the ribs. They’d have shushed each other unnecessarily for a while, before settling to let the young one on Macaque’s shoulder continue her sleep.

But none of that actually happened, because Wukong was off partying. And had been, for much longer than Macaque would have liked.

He didn’t like the ugly, twisting feeling that came with the thought that Wukong might prefer the Brotherhood’s company over his own, and crushed it down until it was a mere splinter in his chest. It wasn’t just the partying that had kept the king occupied, Wukong had also just been busy with the whole ‘dethroning the Jade Emperor’ thing. Which Macaque understood the importance of, even if he did think it was a bad idea.

Macaque had made it well known that he wasn’t too keen on the plan, but his opinion on the matter went pretty much ignored, other than Wukong’s reassurances that everything would be fine. The Brotherhood clearly favored the bold on the situation, which was to be expected when too many egos collided and made a band of merry men. And in a world that rewarded bravery and recklessness, Macaque’s pragmatism probably did look a lot like cowardice.

Peng in particular seemed to have a bone to pick with him over this ‘cowardice’, never mind that Macaque had seen Peng dart away from more than a few battles that weren’t going their way. Of all the members of the Brotherhood, Peng was probably the one that Macaque found the most irritating. They were selfish and materialistic, complaining about squabbling for scraps while enjoying a hearty meal. It was so performative that it made Macaque want to roll his eyes every time the bird spoke.

But Wukong seemed to really like the Brotherhood and the company they provided, Peng included, so Macaque opted to weather the insults until their war with the Celestial Realm was over. And in any case, it seemed to annoy Peng more that he never reacted, and Macaque was great at tuning out meaningless noise. It was a win-win, all things considered.

So, when Peng joined him on the roof, gait slightly unsteady in their drunken haze, he was understandably confused, seeing as the bird never sought him out for anything other than using him as a verbal punching bag. “Macaque!” they greeted loudly, the way they did most things. “Enjoying the party from a distance, I see.”

Macaque glanced at Peng warily. They weren’t usually the type to get blackout drunk the way Wukong and Demon Bull King were, but it looked as though they’d been partying a little harder than usual. Still, they were mostly coherent, so as long as they weren’t completely insufferable, Macaque decided he was fine with temporarily sharing the roof. “What brings you up here?”

“A desire for conversation,” Peng replied. “Yellow-Tusk bailed, and Azure is such a lightweight that he’s barely coherent.” They swirled their glass of wine idly. “And I refuse to attempt small talk with the bull and the king in their current state.”

There was a beat of silence before Macaque asked, “So… you came to me?”

Peng scoffed. “No. I came to see the monkey sleeping on your shoulder.” Macaque’s eyes narrowed, his hand reaching up to rest on the young monkey’s back protectively. “Oh, relax, little warrior,” Peng drawled, stretching their wings and leaning back on their hands. “Believe it or not, I didn’t come up here to start a fight.”

“Fine,” Macaque carded through the white fur settled on his shoulder. “Just don’t start insulting me around the little guys. I don’t want them hearing that kind of talk.”

“That’s what it takes for you to grow a spine, eh?” Peng cackled. “The infants might hear.” A clawed finger pointed in Macaque's general direction. “You know- do you know what your real problem is, Macaque?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me,” Macaque muttered.

“Exactly that,” Peng said. “You’re so passive, and you have no reason to be.” They gestured to Macaque vaguely. “You may be a coward, but even I cannot deny your strength in battle. It’s downright shameful how timid you are with that kind of power at your disposal.”

Macaque raised an eyebrow. “Careful,” he warned, “that almost sounded like a compliment there for a second.”

“Certainly the closest you’ll ever get from me,” Peng shrugged, “It’s no secret that I respect power, and yours is nothing to scoff at.” They scowled, “But your refusal to be anything outside of Wukong’s shadow is… irritating, to say the least. All that potential, squandered on a… a lapdog. If I weren’t drunk, I’d be infuriated at the thought.”

“Ah,” Macaque deadpanned, “weird. Didn’t realize you had to be sober to be infuriated.”

“I mean, it just- it’s pathetic the way you follow him without question,” Peng continued heatedly, and Macaque resigned himself to their drunken rambles. He had the distinct feeling that this was actually the closest to nice the bird was capable of, however wrapped in barbed wire it was. “You’re capable of more than this. Better than this.”

Macaque hummed. “Maybe I don’t want any better than this,” he replied simply. “Not everyone is obsessed with power, you know. I’d be just fine living peacefully on this mountain for the rest of eternity.”

Peng laughed, “Oh,” they asked dryly, “and is the king content to do the same?”

“Of course, he is,” Macaque insisted. Wukong had promised him, and Wukong didn’t break his promises. “It’s the only reason he’s doing any of this, so we can-”

“Between you and Wukong, no one would dare stop you from living peacefully on your precious mountain,” Peng pointed out. “So what is it, exactly, that’s keeping you from living his ‘perfect life’ of yours? Why fight the Jade Emperor at all?”

The answer, of course, was Wukong. It was the king’s own paranoia that was stopping them, but Wukong was just looking out for them the best way he knew how. He wanted to be strong enough to protect them from anything, but Macaque also knew Peng was right, however much he hated to admit it. There was no threat that he and Wukong couldn’t handle, and hardly anyone would dare try, anyway. They could have their eternity together, with no wars and no armies and no fights.

If he were more honest, he might admit to Peng that Wukong was really more irritated about the whole ‘stable boy’ incident than he was truly dedicated to Azure's cause. But honesty, the elusive thing, was still hard to grasp, so Macaque only scowled in response, prompting another cackle from Peng, “You admit it, then,” they crowed, “you’ll never get that blasted chimp to stay!” Their eyes narrowed. “So, why are you still here?”

Irritated at Peng’s smugness and their lack of volume control, Macaque hissed, “Where would you suggest I go?” and gently pulled the infant from his shoulder, laying her across his lap. She sleepily buried one side of her face into Macaque’s shirt, and he let a hand rest against her ear, hoping that it’d muffle Peng enough to let her continue her sleep uninterrupted. “My home is here.”

“The mountain?” Peng asked, “Or the king?” And that was a more complicated question than Macaque was prepared to answer, because he wasn’t sure if the difference mattered all that much. Home was wherever Wukong was, and he couldn’t imagine that being anywhere other than Flower Fruit Mountain.

The world had not been kind to Macaque before meeting Wukong, loud and dangerous and harsh. Both Wukong and Flower Fruit Mountain had been safe havens in their own right, providers of peace and quiet and gentleness. If Macaque had to choose a home, he would have taken living on Flower Fruit Mountain over literally anywhere else in the world, any day. Any century, any lifetime, he’d choose the mountain, so long as it had Wukong on it.

Seemingly bored with watching Macaque ponder the question, Peng tsked at his lack of response. “You really are a loyal little warrior, aren’t you.”

Finally in more familiar territory with the banter, Macaque huffed out a laugh. “Certainly more loyal than you,” he countered, less as an insult and more of a harsh truth. The honesty came a bit easier when he had jabs and taunts to hide behind.

Rather than refute the statement, Peng nodded, “It’s true,” they agreed, “I don’t have much loyalty to give.” Casting Macaque a sideways glance, they added, “Which is why I only give my loyalty to those who will return it.”

Macaque straightened, his free hand curling into a fist at his side. “Wukong’s absence doesn’t make him less loyal,” because Wukong always came back, no matter the distance or time. They had eternity, and if it meant Macaque could share that eternity with Wukong, he didn’t care that it came with the price of occasionally watching over the king’s mountain. The absence would be worth the forever they promised each other.

Peng heaved a long-suffering sigh, as though Macaque were the one being ridiculous. “Of course, it doesn’t, you insufferable simian, but it’s not about-” They lifted a hand to rub their eyes. “Let’s try this a different way.”

“Are you lecturing me right now?” Macaque asked incredulously. “How drunk are you?”

“Not nearly drunk enough,” Peng huffed. “How about we make a deal, hm? Humor me for a single civil conversation, and we can go back to hating each other in the morning when I’m far more sober.”

For a moment, Macaque considered portaling himself and the infant away, and dealing with the consequences of an annoyed Peng later. Then he considered that he’d probably never get another chance to speak civilly with the bird and, sue him, he was curious. “Sure,” Macaque agreed, “a conversation.”

“Thank you,” Peng said. “I don’t even know what you see in Wukong, anyway. He’s a lousy king, and a worse companion, by the look of things.”

“It’s complicated,” Macaque answered, because he really wasn’t sure how to describe what drew him to Wukong. It could’ve been the easy way that Wukong accepted Macaque needed quiet days, never questioning or belittling his famed six ears, the way he trusted Macaque despite the rest of the immortal world treating him like something to be wary of. But Peng probably would have scoffed at any of those answers, so Macaque said, “He’s just… Wukong, I guess. He pulls you in.”

Peng hummed. “Indeed.” They lifted their empty glass to inspect the stains around the rim. “I know Azure is certainly captivated by him.” Snickering, they added, “Hope that doesn’t cause trouble in paradise.”

Macaque blinked for a moment, “Well… I don’t think-” There was an implication under the question somewhere, Macaque was sure. Peng often spoke in a way that had Macaque’s ears twitching trying to hear between the lines. “I don’t see why it would?”

At that, Peng gave Macaque an odd look, setting down their glass again to give him their full focus. “You don’t see any way Wukong soaking up Azure’s admiration might cause problems.”

“I mean, it ain’t good for Wukong’s ego, that’s for sure,” Macaque conceded. “His head was big enough already without this whole… becoming the new Jade Emperor thing.”

“And what will you do, then?” Peng asked, and despite the question sounding genuinely curious, there was a sharpness to it that had Macaque’s brow furrowing in thought. “When Wukong becomes ruler of the Celestial Realm, what becomes of your precious ‘forever’?”

With no real alternative answer, and no rebuttal, Macaque reluctantly admitted, “I… don’t know.” It wasn’t something that he had considered. The way he understood it, they were fighting the Jade Emperor and then they were going home, but if Wukong was becoming the Jade Emperor, then the ‘going home’ part of the plan might be a lot harder than Macaque had originally thought.

Peng hummed, “Seems like you and the king need to get your priorities in order,” they said airily. Which… Macaque didn’t disagree with, but it was hard explaining that kind of stuff to Wukong. Once he’d set his mind to something–and in this case, fighting the Jade Emperor–there was little to nothing that would change the king’s mind.

It didn’t matter how many times Macaque said it was a bad idea, or reminded him that they’d make enemies of the entire Celestial Realm, and maybe spend eternity defending the mountain from the repercussions. Wukong was determined to fight this war, whether Macaque liked it or not, but he’d long since stopped arguing with the king about it. Wukong put up with enough of Macaque’s problems, his anti-social ways and sensitive hearing and anxiousness over every small thing he heard out of the ordinary. The least that Macaque could do was be there for Wukong through his own fears and quests for strength and immortality.

“Really, it’s not even his fight,” Peng mused. “It’s Azure’s. You, at least, don’t pretend to care about this war. The Demon Bull King is only interested in the fight, and I suspect Wukong only cares for the adoration he gets for his valiant deeds.”

Macaque closed his eyes and took a slow breath. He knew Wukong better than the rest of the Brotherhood, knew that Wukong wasn’t the benevolent hero Azure believed him to be, despite how much the celestial soldier looked up to the king. Wukong didn’t join the Brotherhood for the mortals’ sake, Macaque had–on more than one occasion–seen Wukong more upset about the cancellation of an event over the safety of the mortals weathering the conditions that canceled it. He wasn’t heartless, by any means, but he wasn’t exactly noble, either.

That said, Wukong wasn’t quite the selfish fool that Peng made him out to be, either. Reckless, maybe, but he still understood the risks and what was on the line, it was just that the collateral damage didn’t matter as much as achieving the goal. And, sure, Wukong liked validation, it was the whole reason the ‘stable boy’ incident irritated him as much as it did, but that wasn’t the point. The adoration he received from the Brotherhood–and Azure in particular–was more of an added bonus to the whole ordeal rather than a motivation.

Wukong wasn’t noble or selfish, or any of the odd labels that people liked to assign to him. Wukong was simply Wukong, a determined king with people to protect. So long as he reached his goal, any price was worth it, and since the goal was their gentle life on Flower Fruit Mountain, Macaque was more than willing to be a warrior in Wukong’s fights.

"There are no priorities to sort out," Macaque said evenly.

“No,” Peng agreed, “it’s just the one priority, hm? The king’s?” They studied Macaque carefully. “And you’ll just keep… prioritizing, until Wukong gets what he wants.”

“He wants a life of peace,” Macaque said. “We both do.” The wars be damned, they would have their quiet life. Wukong had promised, and Macaque could never give up on him.

“Even if he wants to fight other people’s wars to get it?” Peng asked. “You’re alright with that?”

Macaque’s chest tightened, resolve settling into his bones, even as he opened his mouth to lie. “Yes,” he answered, even though he was far from alright with fighting this war. Because it didn’t matter that he wasn’t alright with it, what mattered was that he and Wukong could live just as the king had promised. Peacefully, with full stomachs and content subjects, without fear of any threat. “However it has to happen.”

Peng sighed, “I see.” They shifted, startling Macaque as they rose to their feet. “Well, with that dismal display of blind faith, I suppose this conversation is done.” They snatched their glass and dusted off their tunic. “It’s a shame, really. When Wukong inevitably falls through with his promises, Azure will at least have Yellow-Tusk and I to rely on.” They glanced down at Macaque with something like disdain, or maybe something a little closer to pity, “But you… well.”

Since Peng was happy enough to drop the polite pretenses, Macaque gave the celestial soldier a cold glare. “Why don’t you go back to the celebration,” he said sharply, “the rest of the party might enjoy your gossip a little more than I do.”

Scoffing, Peng threw up a flippant hand. “Fine,” came the haughty reply, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” They sneered a bit as they turned away. “That king will be the death of you, Six-Eared Macaque, mark my words.”

Macaque grit his teeth to keep the growl in his chest from escaping, still trying to keep the infant in his lap soundly asleep. Frustration burned behind his eyes as he heard Peng rejoining the party inside, smug as always, though the knot in his chest loosened when Wukong asked where he was. At the very least, he hadn’t been forgotten.

Figuring he only had a few minutes to compose himself before Wukong came looking for him, Macaque scrubbed both hands over his face and heaved a sigh, the sound ragged and wavering as he pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. Hopefully, the excitable king was drunk enough not to realize how upset he was, otherwise the Brotherhood might have a case of infighting.

And as assuredly as the sun rose in the east, Wukong came not two minutes later, calling Macaque’s name. Macaque dropped his hands back to the infant in his lap as Wukong came peeking over the roof's ledge. “Hey!” he greeted cheerfully, hovering on an unsteady cloud. “Thought Peng was gonna bring you back. What’re you still doin’ sitting on the roof all by yourself?”

Wukong’s antics did wonders for driving out Macaque’s anxieties, snickering as Wukong all but fell off his cloud and onto the roof tiles. “Not all by myself,” he gestured to the infant sleeping in his lap. “Got some sleepy company right here.”

The king scowled, not bothering to pick himself up from where he’d collapsed and instead propped himself up on his arms. “Mac, c’mon, you know I don’t like the little guys hanging around our meetings.”

“You mean your parties?”

“Bah,” Wukong flapped a hand at Macaque, “semantics. It’s not for little ears.” He brought his hand back and let his chin rest on the palm, his gaze softening as it landed on the bundle of white fur. “I guess I can let it slide this time, though. You guys are pretty adorable.”

Macaque rolled his eyes, though he couldn’t help the smile that found its way to his face. “Oh, don’t you start.”

“But it’s true!” Wukong rolled onto his back and poked Macaque in the side. “The mysterious shadow,” he said in a gravelly voice, doing his best impression of a serious tone while hopelessly intoxicated, “the warrior of Flower Fruit Mountain!” Macaque batted his hand away playfully and Wukong let his arms fall to his side. “But you’re really just a big, ol’ softie,” he preened, “and only I get to know about it.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Macaque said, “Peng certainly seems to think I’m soft.” A different kind of soft, perhaps–cowardly, and weak–but soft, nonetheless.

“Well, Peng should mind their business sometimes,” Wukong huffed, getting himself upright so that he was properly sitting next to Macaque on the rooftop. “Soft, squishy Macaque is only for me.”

Nudging Wukong with his shoulder, Macaque lightly scolded, “Don’t call me squishy, dude, that sounds weird.”

Wukong shrugged. “Not my fault you’re squishy. Facts are facts.” He pressed his own shoulder against Macaque’s gently, mindful of the sleeping infant. “And, actually- like, to be fair, you are literally squishier than me.”

“Can’t all be born with stone skin,” Macaque mused. “Sure would be nice, though.”

“If you were, maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about fixing your armor so often,” Wukong teased.

“Yeah, whatever,” Macaque leaned into the warm shoulder pressed against him. “Worry about watching your own back before you worry about my armor.”

“Not worry about you?” Wukong scoffed. “Might as well ask me to move planets.”

Macaque hummed in thought, “You probably could.”

There was a moment of quiet, Wukong puzzling over the statement. “Huh… maybe.” He shook his head and reached over Macaque’s lap to card gentle fingers through the sleeping infant’s fur. “But I’ve got this planet to worry about, so. Not a theory I plan on testing any time soon.”

“Good,” Macaque said, closing his eyes and resting against Wukong contently. “Just got you back on the mountain, can’t have you flying into space on me.”

Wukong snickered, “Yeah, right.” An arm wrapped around Macaque’s shoulder and pulled him into the king’s side. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy.” There was a moment of comfortable silence before Wukong hesitantly spoke again, “Macaque,” he started slowly, “you… if you’re still anxious about this whole- you know, the ‘fighting the Jade Emperor’ thing-”

“Did Peng say something?” Macaque asked, all too familiar with how the bird spoke of him and how easily Wukong worried. “Something about me being a coward, perhaps?”

“No, no,” Wukong replied quickly. “I mean, nothing out of the ordinary, I guess.” His free hand reached up to rub the back of his neck. “Might have mentioned something about you sulking, but, uh… yeah. Just wanted to check in.”

“Of course,” Macaque sighed wearily, a sudden tiredness washing over him with Wukong’s warmth by his side. The hand on his shoulder gave a reassuring squeeze as he sank into his friend. “It’s fine, Wukong. They just… got under my skin a little, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

“Well, I am worried!” Wukong protested. “I don’t bring the Brotherhood up here to make you more anxious, bud. This is supposed to be a team effort.”

Macaque nodded into the crook of Wukong’s shoulder. “I know,” he said. “But it’s really not that big of a deal, I promise. They’re drunk and I’m an easy target to tease, that’s all.” There was obviously a little more to it than that, but Macaque didn’t want to dwell on it more than he had to, and he didn’t want Wukong to dwell on it at all. “We actually managed a pretty civil conversation, if you can believe it.”

Wukong gave an impressed whistle, “You’re out here working miracles,” Macaque could hear the smile in his voice, “a whole conversation with the Golden-Winged Peng,” he marveled. “A feat no man or beast has ever accomplished.”

Cracking an eye open, Macaque blearily reached up to put a hand over Wukong’s mouth. “Shut up,” he said, fighting to keep the amusement out of his voice as his fingers splayed ineffectively across the king’s face. “You’re going to wake up the baby.”

“The baby should be sleeping in the cave,” Wukong reminded him, gently tugging Macaque’s hand away from his face. “Why didn’t you portal her home?”

“Ah, you know me,” Macaque yawned, pulling his hand out of Wukong’s to rub at his eyes. “I’m an enabler.”

Macaque was jostled slightly by his headrest, Wukong’s shoulder shaking with a quiet chuckle, “Yeah, but you’re my enabler. Next time, we have to take the infant home.”

“Probably for the best,” Macaque agreed easily. A particularly loud noise from the temple had his ear twitching, suddenly reminded that Wukong had company to attend to. “You wanna get back to your party? I think your buddy DBK just challenged Yellow-Tusk to an arm wrestle.”

Wukong gave a disinterested hum. “Maybe in a few minutes,” he said. “Think I’ll just enjoy the view for a little while longer.”

“You sure?” Macaque asked, only to satisfy the tiny guilty part of him that felt bad keeping Wukong away from his fun.

But the part of him still rattled by his conversation with Peng sagged in relief as Wukong replied, “Yeah.” A familiar weight fell across Macaque’s tail, clumsily winding around the thin, black fur comfortingly. “It’s been a while since I just sat and stargazed, anyway. And it’s a beautiful night for it.”

“You’re drunk,” Macaque muttered, though he didn’t mind the extra bit of sweetness that came from a tipsy king. Really, Wukong was always a little soft-hearted when they were by themselves on the mountain, dropping the boastful, kingly act for Macaque and Macaque alone. It was only Wukong’s own walls and Macaque’s that kept him from showing such tenderness around the Brotherhood. However, alcohol and tiredness did them both tremendous favors in being vulnerable around company.

“And you’re a peach for putting up with me,” Wukong replied, a soft exhale escaping him. “You know, pretty soon, we’ll be able to do this all the time,” he said quietly. “Spend our days eating fruit, our nights stargazing.” His tail wound tighter around Macaque’s. “No wars, no… no fighting. I know you don’t really like that part of the whole plan.”

Macaque made a vague noise of agreement. “Not my favorite,” he confirmed. “Could do without the noise.”

“I know,” Wukong whispered, “I’m sorry.” He pulled Macaque closer, a good-natured jostle. “But, hey! We’ll have our forever soon,” the king promised. “Once this war is over, you won’t ever have to fight again. There isn’t anything in all the realms that could stop us.”

Ever the dreamer, the King of Flower Fruit Mountain, to think himself larger than any threat. Most people who dreamed so big didn’t have the heart or power to realize them, but Macaque knew Wukong, believed in him. There was no worldly threat that could escape the light of the sun, and no mere moon that could escape its orbit. “Whatever you say, Wukong,” Macaque breathed. “Whatever you say.”

[sunshinebarbarian]

Hello!! You can call me Pigeon! I'm 23F, from Portugal. I'm making this long ass post to give a little background information about the blog. I'm usually not into games like BG3, so I was a little late to the party, but boy am I glad to have arrived.

Click here to see the list of what I've already posted <3

I'm also posting on AO3!

One of my best friends kept talking to me about the game for YEARS and at some point last month Instagram decided to start recommending me fan edits of Astarion (which is funny because when she first asked me years ago who I'd pick, I very decidedly said Karlach) so I caved, and asked her to let me borrow it from her. When I was about 80 hours in, I broke and actually bought the game, because her account was being used and I didn't want to wait to continue my playthrough.

Neither of us expected me to get as much into the game as I did. Seriously. There's like 12 pages of screenshots I sent on discord of my own gameplay (a lot of it is Sol and Astarion kissing, oops), not to mention the unholy amount of reels and videos related to the game that we send each other.

Anyway, after about 180 hours (if you don't count the hours lost when I fucked up and had to reload the game) I finished the story, and proceeded to go cry in the corner. Instagram once again came to the rescue, when I started seeing posts from @meanbossart and I actually got obsessed with the way he draws his characters. I'd ride his dudrow to the Feywild and back if I had the chance. I'm not much of a visual artist, but I always loved writing, so I started writing Sol's adventures, because I was absolutely not ready to say goodbye to her (we spent over a month together! that's longer than some of my relationships). I'm doing it for myself, but I figured someone out there might enjoy it too, so I'm posting it. Plus this way I can save it more neatly than if I just keep using the notes app on my phone. I'm not new to Tumblr exactly, but I have never used an account for more than just snooping for particular posts. There's also AO3, but frankly that website confuses me and intimidates me.

Now, about Sol, and her story: I'm starting it pre nautiloid abduction, and will follow the choices that I made during the gameplay. I'm going to add some filling, to flesh out her character and her relationships with the whole gang, as well as just to give uniqueness to her story (otherwise you could just. play the game. and it'd be the same thing.). When I was creating Sol, I decided that I would play her as myself, making the choices that I would make, doing the things that I would do, so, the filling will be game/lore accurate still, and it will be based on my reactions and thoughts about game events. Luckily I have twelve pages of screenshots and a lot of messages to guide me. Once the game story is finished, I have ideas for how things will continue, because I refuse to let certain things remain the way they are, and I have attachment issues.

[asimplearchivist]

𝓐 𝓦𝓲𝓼𝓱 𝓕𝓾𝓵𝓯𝓲𝓵𝓵𝓮𝓭

𝐂𝐇. 𝐈𝐈 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐏𝐎𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐍, 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍. 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐕 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓.

[𝓪𝓼𝓲𝓶𝓹𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓬𝓱𝓲𝓿𝓲𝓼𝓽'𝓼 𝓶𝓪𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓵𝓲𝓼𝓽] [ 𝐏𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐍 𝐌𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐃𝐔𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐎𝐍 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 ] [ AO3 | SPOTIFY | PINTEREST ] summary ✨ ⤏ meeting a mythical isn't as novel as it used to be, but it still has its benefits. pairing(s) ✨ [tba] word count ✨ 3.3k a/n ✨ [header credit] | [divider credit] ⤏ this took way too long to finish, but the great thing is that I have to write one more chapter before I can post a couple that are already prewritten. maybe I can stay ahead after that point. :) I promise we'll get into the meat of this soon, and I hope y'all enjoy! ✨ MASTERPOST ✨ ✨ PREVIOUS CHAPTER ⤎ ✨ ⤏ NEXT CHAPTER ✨

“This is it?”

Lu lowered the Wonder Map so Eliana could squint at it. “…Yes. It matches the description that Bidoof gave us. I double-checked the old tomes in the Guild this morning while you ran our errands to make sure I had the right location. This is it.”

“No wonder so few have stumbled upon it,” Lu murmured, gazing into the narrow cave entrance with no small amount of trepidation as he rolled the map back up and stored it securely within their prepacked Treasure Bag. “With all the foliage growing around it, we almost walked right past it.”

“It’s not the worst place we’ve had to explore, though,” Eliana pointed out. “And if Bidoof was able to traverse it with relative ease way back then, it shouldn’t be too difficult of a challenge for us now.”

“Not accounting for Jirachi’s temper,” Lu responded quietly.

Eliana glanced up at him, frowning. “Are you having second thoughts?”

“What? No1” he said, ears perking forward. “Just—I worry that he might be less inclined to answer our wishes if we’re waking him back up from his nap just a couple of years after Bidoof did.”

“It just means that he won’t be in as deep of a sleep this time,” Eliana replied wryly, curling her tail around his waist in an easier approximation of a hug that she could manage while standing on all fours. “If he doesn’t want to grant us anything, that’s fine. It’s just for the sake of exploration, right? Finding out for sure? It’s not like we have anything really vital riding on this.”

“…Right,” Lu admitted, but the apprehension in his eyes matched his flat, noncommital tone. “Nothing vital.”

Eliana elected not to comment on it. He’d still refused to reveal his wish during the last week they’d spent wrapping up the most pressing of their job list and preparing for the veritable repeat expedition into the Grass Continent’s unforgiving southeastern mountain range, despite her gentle, if curious, teasing. Star Cave was closer to Treasure Town than Mount Horn was, but the journey was not an easy one nevertheless. Their limbs were already achy and sore as they both had grown unaccustomed to traveling such far distances of late, since it had been almost a full year after they’d completed their own personal challenge of exploring the farthest reaches of the map in search of hidden treasure and undiscovered history following their shared, simultaneous evolutions (which Eliana had considered a sort of ritualistic shedding of their old forms and thus the hardships they’d faced before that moment). She figured that they ought to alleviate that—take some time to venture out again before the summer was over, maybe towards the northeast where the weather was cooler. She missed camping, honestly, the peace and quite of the wilderness.

They entered the dungeon with equal parts caution and inquisitiveness. Eliana’s suspicions were correct that the feral Pokémon contained within were manageable between hers and Lu’s advanced skill sets and experience. They faced no issues picking their way down the winding, crystal-illuminated corridors to the pit of the cave, where a large clearing nearly distracted them from the gaping, crumbling hole in the far rocky wall.

“Well,” Eliana remarked, “I suppose that answers the question of whether the deepest recesses are still accessible.”

“I still wonder what Guildmaster Wigglytuff’s parents fed him as a child,” Lu murmured somewhere between awe and intimidation. “It is honestly a miracle we were able to pass the graduation exam.”

“It helps that he was holding back,” she reminded him. “He doesn’t have the heart to hurt anyone he considers a friend.”

They made their way through the lower portion of the dungeon far more carefully, not knowing what to expect around every corner. It grew darker and darker, and their eyes struggled to adjust to discern the shadows from their lurking foes.

The pit of the cave was illuminated around the rim with glowing blue crystals that glittered like starlight, casting an ephemeral hue across the smooth stone floor. Eliana tensed when she spotted a Pokémon hovering in the center over a slightly raised platform shaped like a star. Pale yellow and ivory, with billowing tails and dangling tags…and noticeably awake. Lu stopped at her side, warily watching who could only have been the Pokémon they sought.

“Heyyy!” the stranger chirped, his face crinkling with delight. “I wasn’t expecting visitors! Who are you?”

Eliana and Lu exchanged a glance. They expected outright aggression upon treading into the Myth’s territory, like Bidoof had described. Not…excitement?

“I’m Lucario,” said her partner hesitantly, then gestured to her. “And this is Eliana.”

Jirachi’s eyes lit up. “Ohhh! You’re the pair that restored temporal tower!”

Eliana blinked. “How…how do you know that?”

“Ohhh, there isn’t a Legend in the whole wide world that doesn’t know about you two!” Jirachi crooned, floating over and circling their heads to get a good look at them. “We communicate via telepathy, you know. Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf told everyone how you stopped time from freezing and knocked Dialga back to his sentences! Not to mention taking that nasty piece of work Darkrai down a peg or two!”

“That’s right. I almost forgot that the Lake Guardians had telepathy,” Lu realized, nodding. “But I didn’t realize that all of the Legends had it.”

“Yyyep! How else do you think we work together to keep the world at peace?” Jirachi giggled, covering his mouth with both hands as he twirled to a stop in front of them. “Buuut I digress! I take it that you came here to have your wishes granted?”

Lu blinked rapidly, peering down at Eliana in shock. “I—yes, you’re correct to say we came here to see you, but…”

Jirach tilted his head. “What’s wrong? Do you not have any?”

“It’s not that,” Eliana said with reticence. “We were just expecting…I don’t know, more of a challenge? We were told that it isn’t easy to have you grant wishes.”

“Thaaat’s correct!” the wish-maker said brightly. “Normally visitors have to rouse me from my naps in order for me to do anything, buuut I was already awake because one of my fellow Legends was communicating with me earlier. They’re loud enough that it woke me right up!” He giggled again, then spread his arms out wide. “Aaand I’ve been told that you two have been through quite a lot, what with saving the world and all—not once, but twice! I think that warrants a couple of freebies in my book! I think that it’s the least I can do as a reward for all your hard work!”

“Oh,” Lu said, relaxing slightly and letting out a breath. “I see. Thank you, Jirachi.”

“I should be thanking you! Now, tell me your wishes! Or would you like some suggestions? Some Pokémon like to have money, or power, or new friends, or—”

“No, nothing like that,” Lu interrupted him hastily. “I, um…how much do you know about us?”

Jirachi considered them carefully. “Weeell, I’ve heard through the grapevine that you,” he looked at Eliana, “are actually a human! Is that true? I couldn’t hardly believe it when I was told that!”

“I was a human, yes,” Eliana confirmed. “I…was attacked at one point, and it transformed me into a Pokémon.”

“Oooh, I see!” Jirachi nodded. “I have to admit, there is something different that I sense in you.”

“It also caused her to lose all of her memories,” Lu informed the Myth. “She was traveling from the future through the Passage of Time on her original mission to save the planet. She doesn’t truly originate in the present, but she’s been trapped here because of the distortion of reality’s fabric around her since she’s traveled through time. She’s unable to return home to the other Pokémon she cares about. That’s…the background for my wish.”

Jirachi perked up. Eliana stared at Lu. He didn’t meet her gaze.

“What is your wish, then?” the Myth asked.

“I wish…” Lu swallowed, then finally looked down at Eliana with tears brimming in his eyes. “…I wish that Eliana would be able to go back to the future, if she wants.”

“Lu,” Eliana murmured, her heart twisting. “I had no idea…”

“I know you have complicated feelings about all of it, understandably so,” he said quickly, interrupting her because of his fraught nerves, “I know that you haven’t really talked about the idea of trying to travel back, but…I also know that you miss them terribly and that you don’t like to discuss it because you’re afraid it will hurt my feelings or make me feel like you care about me less than the others. But it doesn’t make me feel that way, Eliana. I…you seemed so happy, having reconnected with the Pokémon from your past, and when you lost them…I’ve worried about you. You’ve seemed so sad and I don’t know how to fix it and—”

“Lu,” Eliana interrupted him gently, leaning back into her haunches to touch a paw to his. “It’s all right. I understand. Thank you for thinking about me.” She frowned. “I don’t know that it will be possible for me to return to the future. What Palkia said…”

“Yes, but we’ve been able to evolve since we stopped Darkrai!” Lu reminded her, eyes sparkling with passion. “There is a chance!”

“Possibly,” she admitted, “but…are you certain that you want to waste your wish on me? On something that might never come to fruition? There are so many other things that you’ve said you’d wanted so badly in the past.”

“Time and space are realms I rarely have influence over,” Jirachi added thoughtfully, watching the pair of them with interest. “It is likely that I will be unable to manipulate anything like that…but, if that is your wish, I will grant it to the best of my ability, as part of my promise to repay you however I can.”

“I’m sure.” Lu clasped a paw over his chest, expression determined. “Above all else, for everything that you’ve done for me, Eliana, I would do anything to see you happy.”

Eliana swallowed thickly, a knot coiling at the base of her throat. She nodded slightly. “Alright. Thank you, Lu. From the bottom of my heart.”

He kneeled to squeeze her into a brief, tight hug, then straightened and turned to Jirachi. “That’s my wish,” he confirmed. “For Eliana to be able to return to the future.”

“Aaalright!” Jirachi beamed. “I’ll do my best to make it come true!” He focused on Eliana next, expectant. “And you? Do you have a wish, too, Eliana?”

“I…” She dropped her chin into the draped material of her Virid Collar, her skin prickling with heat beneath her fur. “…I feel almost ashamed with mine, after Lu requested something so selfless.”

“I think I can guess,” Jirachi surmised. “Do you wish to have your memories restored?”

Eliana’s head snapped up to stare at him, startled. “I—how did you know?”

“I didn’t,” Jirachi giggled, waving his hands. “But with how close you seem to have been with those Pokémon Lu was talking about…it doesn’t surprise me one bit that you’d like to have your amnesia restored. I would feel the same way! I couldn’t imagine forgetting everything and everyone I ever knew.”

“So…you don’t think that’s selfish of me?” Eliana ventured, uncertain.

Jirachi’s expression shiftted into something like recognition. Then he smiled. “I don’t think that at all. You sound just like someone I met once before.” He giggled again and shook his head, gazing knowingly at the both of them in a new light. “I think it’s the exact opposite, actually. That you would want to carry on the memory of those closest to you, even if I am unable to return you to the future, is a sincere one. I can tell that you care deeply, Eliana, for everyone you know. I think I quite like you for that.”

She blinked, then returned his smile. “I…thank you. Really. That’s a great comfort to hear.”

“Of course!” Jirachi closed his eyes, pressed his hands together, and Eliana and Lu watched his tags glow for a moment before he returned to normal and stretched with a gaping yawn. “Aaah, it’s been a while since I’ve answered anything quite like that! It’s maaaking me feel kind of sleeepy…”

“Thank you for hearing us out, Jirachi,” Lu said warmly. “We appreciate you trying.”

“Ooof cooourse,” the Myth mumbled. His tails curled around himself and his floating grew more listless as his eyes began to drift shut. “Juuust don’t be disappointed if nothing haaappens…”

“We won’t.” Eliana brushed against Lu’s flank, her tail curling around his. “Sweet dreams, Jirachi.”

“Goodnight, Eliana. Goodnight, Lu.” With one last yawn, Jirachi curled up into a tiny ball and disappeared in a shower of sparkles that dazzled their eyes.

The sudden silence in the cavern was deafening. Eliana swallowed and turned. “Let’s go home.”

“Yeah,” Lu agreed softly. “I’m tired.”

The cave had quietened, thankfully, and gave them no trouble upon their exit. The sun was only just starting to set when they emerged from the tunnel, squinting against its harsh light until they acclimated. They decided to head back to Treasure Town rather than camp for the night, longing for the comfort of their beds and the rhythmic slosh of waves against the bluff that always lulled them to sleep. Even though there had been very little fanfare, and they hadn’t perceived any of Jirachi’s direct influence, they still felt exhausted.

It was approaching midnight by the time they turned to Treasure Town. All the shopkeepers and residents had retreated into their homes, leaving the square empty and peaceful. Shuffling down into their home with the cool, salty wind ruffling their fur was a palpable relief.

“Here, let me put all that away.” Eliana took the Treasure Bag from Lu’s paw with her tail. “Can you start the fire?”

“Of course.” Lu moved over and squatted by the pit they’d dug to house their open hearth, picking up the flint and steel to start scraping sparks onto the kindling he’d placed in the ashes that morning out of habit. “Say…do you really think that Jirachi meant what he said?”

“I don’t know, honestly.” She pushed open the chest they used for their rotating adventure inventory to start putting away the extra things they’d found in the mystery dungeon for sorting and trading the following day. “He seemed earnest.”

“Yeah. I’m glad we didn’t have to fight him. I feel like, one of these days, we’re going to run into someone who won’t appreciate that,” Lu chuckled. The crackle and hiss of a new flame preluded a flicker of warm orange light that flared across the floor. “There.” He stood with a groan and a sigh, moving over to the corner of the room. “Say, I think that chest is almost full. You might have to use this other crate for now.”

“You’re right.” Eliana dragged the bag over to the open box and peeked inside as Lu shuffled things around. It was a bit dusty, as they hadn’t used it in while. Him removing a few valuables stirred it all up and made her sneeze. He laughed quietly under his breath, and she heard the crinkling crumple of an errant sheet of paper.

She froze, heart stuttering against her ribs as she realized what the old relic he’d inadvertently rediscovered was.

Lu drew it up out of the crate into the burgeoning firelight, expression softening as he read the letter’s words silently. He set it to the side carefully, with respect, and Eliana drew in a deep breath as her eyes lighted upon the blocky footprint runes inscribed in ink long dried.

The first week or so after Eliana had returned from her untimely disappearance she had clung to that letter like a lifeline, tracing the strokes with her paws as though to imprint the weight of them into her memory. She had been relieved to be reunited with Lu, that went without question, as he had been her anchor for months throughout all the confusion that she had felt—but she had felt Grovyle’s absence acutely, someone with whom she had shortly (re)built an unshakeable bond and relied upon to guide her through the chaos they had single-handedly stood against. She had missed him terribly. She still did, and she couldn’t even explain the breadth of that feeling with words—her gut had never been wrong before, and she had trusted him wholeheartedly. It never truly went away, an acute and gaping wound she couldn’t seem to close with any distractions she’d tried. Her original partner, lost for a second time.

“You know…” Lu started, “…if you do go back to the future, I won’t be upset, right?”

Eliana regarded him without a word, gauging his pensive expression.

He continued unbidden. “I’ll miss you. And I’ll hope beyond hope that we’ll meet again. But…as long as you were safe and happy…I’d support your decision no matter what, Eliana. I don’t know what it’s like to be separated so starkly from yourself, I can’t even fathom how it feels…and I hope that you don’t think I’m trying to get rid of you. I just feel that I’ve had you for longer than I should have been granted.”

“You didn’t steal me from Grovyle, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” Eliana told him firmly, drawing his attention. “I hate that we were separated, and I regret that he had to endure what he did all by himself for so long, but…I feel like we were meant to meet. You saved me, Lu. I owe you my life.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, his muzzle crinkling at the corners as he fought an embarrassed smile. Always so humble, her partner. “Okay. As long as you know that I care about you.”

“I do. And I care about you, too.” She picked up a gold scarf and dropped it into the crate. “Maybe we should go to the Keckleon’s shop tomorrow and—”

She stepped on the letter. Vertigo crashed over her like the waves that had once threatened to drag her under the icy, crushing depths of the sea so many moons ago, biting into the wound in her transformed shape. The storm had dragged her to shore, a blessing and a curse at once—the current had dashed her head against a stone, wounding her further and robbing her of her identity. Her first impression after that had been Lu’s frantic spew of words at seeing all the blood welling from behind her ear and soaking into the sand beneath her weak, limp body. All she’d remembered were her name, the fact that she was supposed to be human, and not, in fact, a Pokémon, and a vague sense of loss that had never resolved until she’d encountered her original partner face-to-face in the Underground Lake.

Her partner, whom she had rescued and nurtured and protected with her life. Her partner, who had devoted himself to fixing his world at the cost of his own life for the sake of those that would come to be. Her partner, who had refused to grieve her before he’d ever accepted that he could have lost her forever before their time, but had lost her anyway because she hadn’t recognized anything about him except a faint sense of familiarity and trustworthiness.

The memories flooded like the tide, overwhelming and sharp like the pelting of frigid rain against bare skin, and when she came up out of it Lu was already holding her steady, repeating her name urgently with concern in his eyes.

Eliana reached out to him as best as she was able, clung to him tightly, and wept harsher than she ever had before.

[sparkles-rule-4eva]

Welcome to ma blog! 💙 (+ Links Masterpost)

Quick introduction to me -

Name: Sparkles ✨

Gender: female 🩷

Birthday: Oct. 26 🧡

chronic Sonic fanatic 😜💙

✅ What you can expect to find here:

pretty much everything Sonic 🤣

Wholesome Sonic & Tails Wednesday contributions: art, fics, screenshots, etc. 💙💛

random screenshots from something in the franchise accompanied by me happily screeching/ranting about it

Sonamy things 💙🩷 (and occasionally from some of my other ships, like Knuxouge and Tailsmo)

reblogs of Sonic stuff from other people

my fanart

my fics (they're also on AO3, I'll leave links down below)

Sonic Cinematic Universe stuff

Sonic IDW stuff

Sonic Prime stuff

Sonic Boom stuff

(yeah)

CHAOS 😈

❌ What you WON'T find here:

complaints

hate posts

politics

inappropriate anything

(I TRY to avoid reblogging things with swear words, but sometimes the post is too good overall or something so there might be an occasional one. There won't be any in my own original posts, though)

This is my space to have a fun time with moots and the Sonic fandom! 💙

Socials -

Instagram

YouTube

Cara

DeviantArt

AO3

Speaking of art, I will occasionally take ✨ REQUESTS! ✨ I won't officially open commissions till sometime in 2026, but until then, if you want a doodle of something (Sonic related ofc), just drop an ask in the guacamole box! Terms apply, like nothing inappropriate and no weird ships and/or ships I don't support, but in general, y'know. 💙

Links to my fics:

"Toddlers are harder than one would expect" - in which Sonic comes to realize that he's all but adopting this little fox that started following him, even though he barely has a clue what he's doing.

"Sonic Frontiers - Anything for Them" - in which Sonic's absolute dedication and love for his friends — even to the point of death — is explored as he scales the towers on Rhea Island.

"Foxes Go Floof" - in which Tails goes poof and Sonic thinks it's the funniest thing.

"Comfort in a Thunderstorm" - in which Sonic and Tails experience a thunderstorm for the first time and talk about their fears.

"Girl Talk" - in which Sonic and Tails talk about Amy, and Sonic's confusing friendship/relationship with her.

"Sonic's Weird Napping Places" - in which Sonic naps in weird places and his friends find him in said weird places.

"From 'Friends' to 'Parents'" - in which Sonic Wachowski comes to realize that Tom & Maddie are his parents, not just his friends, through the screen-to-text version of two actual scenes plus a new scene or two.

"Sonic Frontiers - Calm After the Storm" - in which Sonic and Tails — both exhausted after the events of Sonic Frontiers — take care of one another.

"Wachowski Family One-shots" - a collection of one-shots centering around the Wachowski family: Tom, Maddie, Knuckles, Sonic, and Tails.

"Healing Hugs" (Sonic Prime) - in which Tails tries to understand what happened with Sonic in the cave, and offers the simple comfort of a hug.

"Brothers' Night" - in which Sonic drags Tails away from his work to have a fun night together with no screens.

"The Darkness Within" (Sonic X) - in which Sonic guiltily reflects on his actions as Dark Sonic, and Tails sits with him, comforting him without knowing what happened.

"Sonic vs. Tails - The Ultimate April Fools Battle" - in which Sonic and Tails spend the entirety of April 1st locked in an all-day prank war.

"Enchanted" - a Sonamy AU, strangers to lovers, slow burn 💙🩷

(will update this as I write more)

"Tom's First (official) Father's Day" - in which Sonic faces the second Father's Day he's faced since getting adopted by the Wachowskis, and is determined to make this one better after last year's awkwardness.

"Fevers Can't Ruin Birthdays" - in which it's Tails's birthday and Sonic tries to give him a perfect day, but comes down with the flu instead. (basically the plot of Frozen Fever lol)

Dats about it! 💥

[crystalclear365]

How did I get to this point?

So, I finally caved in and made an AO3 account. I don't regret anything.

Basically, one day, just randomly at night, I thought an interesting thought to myself:

"What if there was an AU where Bass and Mega Man were friends?"

And that's what happened. After some pondering and encouragement, I decided to make it happen. And for the past few weeks, I've been speedrunning chapters like crazy. I currently have a backlog of ten chapters, and I plan on posting them twice a week. Starting Monday of next week, they'll be uploaded on Mondays and Fridays until I either run out of chapters in the backlog or I get cooked (if I get busy). Or when the fic ends. Whichever comes first.

And after doing the math, this backlog will last me five weeks, or a little over one month, which is just enough time for me to add more chapters to it and also focus more on school, which (should be) is my top priority.

Now that I gave the backstory, it's actually time for me to tell you what this is about, because this was the main reason why I'm making this post, lol

In this AU, Dr. Wily tries out a familiar tactic to defeat Mega Man by having Bass pretend to be friends with him (so that he can kill him in the end. Yikes.) And Bass ends up actually wanting to be friends with Mega Man and y'know, not kill him maybe (just maybe...). And along the way, he becomes friends with Roll, Proto Man, and Kalinka, and they all form a friend group together. :)

Sounds all nice and wholesome, right?

Anyway, this fic is supposed to be more of a laid-back approach compared to the canon series. It's not too heavy on any fighting (besides arguing) and violence. However, it does go deep into angst and stuff, but there's plenty of wholesome moments.

And also Bass might be just a tad bit depressed in this

Anyways! I hope this piqued your interest and that you might stick around for the whole thing. Thanks for reading this post. :)

Have a good day! 💙

[pinkrabit]

Hi I saw another post basically saying "how can you stand jiang cheng" and there are literally so many reasons in my humble opinion but I'm gonna attach ss of other people reasoning why (aka I can't be bothered to rewrite it when someone else already did it right)

He was a fucking boy thrown into politics and was hurt. If he hated wwx sm and was so selfish why didn't he land the final blow to wwx. Either at the BM or on the edge???

He had multiple chances to kill wwx after reincarnation too. Mo Xuanyu's body wouldn't have been able to defend well against Jiang Cheng.

As far as just killing demonic cultivators, I'm pretty sure we lack direct characterization with that claim. It's hearsay at beat, if I remember correctly.

Yeah he was an asshole for taking anger out on other people. But it's also not like he found a random person and went "you're the current whipping boy tysm"

Some people are just assholes, I can't really defend him here.

Of course, there are reasons. Despite how flimsy wwx's status was, Jiang cheng was given an inferiority complex because of his parents comparing him to wwx. He went through a fucking war. Where he, at one point, was ready to die because he trusted wwx to take care of jyl. (Special mention of the core transfer and then wwx making the wen brat eat his own skin. That was fucked, but creative. WWX would definitely be a theatre kid)

If he was so awful, how could JL defend him so readily and earnestly?? Why would he spend so long w/o assistance to get wwx out of the cave, knowing he might have been dead???

Thank you for coming to my random tedtalk about how even though JC did some kinda shit things from wwx pov, he wasn't free to do what he wanted. (I wish I had the ao3 comment name) (sorry for not tagging the tumblr users, but you did get credit)

[nonsensefromtheabyss]

Hello! I am OK1610 from ao3. I loved Riddle V.I.Z.ion so much! Such an amazing story with great characters! I loved the aliens especially! Your story inspired me to weave my own tale for these characters as well as a design element for Diz (the support beams) for my refs of the aliens (credited in the post)! I cannot wait to read more about them and their pasts!

Any chance we can get a little sneak peak of what is to come?

('Riddle Classified' sounds like a great name btw!)

Hello!! Lovely to see you again!

Literally had to spin in circles at work when you said my story inspired you, was not prepared; I’m honoured <3 and I hope you have fun creating! You art is so perfect!!! I love how the style is still reminiscent of the game art but far more detailed and much more fun to look at—it’s so vibrant! They’re all super adorable (rotating Quiz in my mind rn) and it looks like such a sweet AU—I’m an absolute sucker for stories where things end well (which I don’t think anyone would guess from my own works XD.) Would be super intrigued to know more when you’re ready to share!

(Definite spoilers for my future Riddle School fic below the cut!)

Dutifully adding a tally to Riddle Classified’s column! I swear the title is going to be the bit I decide last with this thing, it’s certainly giving me the most trouble XD

As for sneak peaks, hmmm; it’s a little early in the process for me to feel like I’ve got much that’s actually interesting to share, but I could tell you about the first chapter? It’s post defection, a few years into the V.I.Z.ion Project, and involves Quiz being kidnapped by bounty hunters/pirates. He has to stall for time, turning them against each other as a distraction, while Viz and Diz sneak around and kill off the people stationed at other outposts before picking him up. 

It’s told from the perspective of the pirates, who really have no idea who or what Quiz is, and is set in a snowstorm to really play up a theme of isolation/being trapped. Horror movie vibes. They know something is going on outside, and they know their contacts are going cold one by one, but they can’t figure out why—maybe it’s just the storm like their leader says, maybe it’s something else. They’re stuck with this unknown alien who’s sounding way too plausible when he says the roof might cave in, or there’s something outside, who talks them into telling him the scary stories they’ve heard about rogue soldiers in the area. If they go outside and try to run, they’ll definitely die of exposure, but if they stay? Unclear. And surely nothing out there could be alive. The noises are the wind, just the wind, they’re not in danger, nothing’s getting closer, everything’s fine.

It’s a good opportunity to play with Quiz’s unique skill set of appearing very harmless to manipulate people, gives me the chance to do some exposition on the alien’s species lore, and—most vitally—sets a pretty sinister tone for the V.I.Z.ion crew actually in action! A good jumping off point for what’s to come!

Another chapter I’ve got planned as a definite inclusion (though I don’t know where it’ll go yet; probably late in the collection) is them kidnapping Phil. It’s from Phil’s perspective, and I’ve honestly just been galaxy braining over it for a few nights now; he just barely escapes them when they see him first (runs through populated places they can’t follow, gets on a bus, his dog attacks Quiz when he gets home) and then spends the next few days as Dib from Invader Zim trying to convince his family that Aliens Are Definitely Real And Also After Him. They don’t believe him. One night he wakes up to find that everyone else is knocked out, and the aliens are in the house searching for him. He doesn’t get away this time. Very stressful times for Phil—I don’t think I’ve ever written a non-stressful time for Phil. I don’t think I’ve written a non-stressful time for any of these characters.

With this chapter, I’m hoping to do something with the perspective shift, which is another reason I think it should come late in the formatting. While the aliens are very much villain protagonists in this, having everything be through their eyes will eventually make them familiar—maybe not exactly relatable, but certainly comfortable. The jarring dissonance of exchanging that highly militarised, desensitised perspective to an actually human one—the P.O.V of someone we, the audience, know—when he’s terrified and being hunted by them appeals to me. Particularly as, at that point, I will have written scenes of the V.I.Z.ion aliens interacting with humans from their own perspective, and the difference between what they think and what people think can be thrown into even sharper relief.

I realise I’ve told you about the only two chapters that aren’t from the alien’s direct perspectives, so sorry about that! But I hope they made for a satisfying sneak peak <3 maybe this isn’t what you meant at all… I’ve never actually done a sneak peak before!

[dykejasper]

Crooked Trajectory [SU fic]

AO3 - dykejasper

Summary: Future-era post-shattering Jasper has no choice but to be alive, to exist, to find a purpose for herself while learning how to cope with a lifetime of trauma, new physical issues from shattering, and social dynamics she's never experienced with gems she doesn't understand. Many who are really down bad for her. Starts off pretty heavy but there will be fluff and fun and love and light, I promise.

Chapter One - "Free Will" - Jasper POV A dissociative trip back to where Jasper was killed and reborn. Rating: Mature CW: Suicidal ideation, self harm ideation, PTSD, minor mention of animal death (accidental collateral via Steven)

✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄✧

Jasper couldn’t remember making her way back to her cave. She couldn’t remember anything said to her after the order, “Find something better to do with your life.”

Those words tumbled around her numb mind on loop, layered over thousands of years of horror that would never go away. Her entire existence had been a waste of resources, at best. Static buzzing flooded her senses and threatened to rip her apart all over again. Her skin prickled head to toe and the weight of reality crushed her chest in. She couldn’t make her lungs expand. An all too-familiar sensation in recent years.

She stared, unseeing, at the same spot on the wall of her cave for hours while that buzzing built and built until she flung herself into the cool night air, hyperventilating, feeling like she might corrupt all over again while memories tore her apart. Her knees hit the bare earth and she dug hands into her hair, gripping those hideous, detestable horns. The panic broke into a festering hatred and a hollow laugh broke through the frantic gasping.

One of them was broken now, reduced to a stump. The other remained intact, coming to a sharp point that she pressed her thumb into until pink spikes flashed across her vision and she shuddered, wondering if she could rip it off. She never actually tried.

She gripped the foul, bone-like growth while her heart raced. Won’t fix anything. You’re trash by design. Her hand fell away and she was overwhelmingly numb again, taking deep, shuddering breaths as she looked around.

This didn’t feel like her cave anymore. She never considered this place anything special, but it had been secure, if nothing else. Her eyes lingered on the little wooden hut that didn’t belong to her and the static inside her grew loud again.

It was easy to rip apart, at least, easy to fling away into the woods with very little effort or thought. And then as if by instinct, without any real decision to do so, Jasper began tracking the damage left by the fight, retracing their steps.

The thrill of it all returned as if she was reliving it in real time, delighting in the confidence and competence with which her Diamond threw every bit of his power at her, finally. Proving, after all this time, that Diamonds were just as powerful as they’d been made to believe. It wasn’t all a lie.

Part of her felt a choking, overwhelming insanity if she thought too hard about the multiple sincere attempts she’d made at destroying the Diamond she was created to protect, between Rose Quartz and now Steven. Rage mingled with guilt and she could feel the pressure mounting once again, the buzzing growing louder.

She followed damaged trees, fallen branches, occasional small craters from missed or deflected strikes. A creature Steven once called a “deer” lay obliterated in one of the pits, a gruesome mess of wrecked limbs and insides brought out. Those pink discs did some real damage now that he knew how to use them.

And then her stomach dropped when she came to the edge of a vast crater; a half-mile wide strip of decimated organic material half-buried under a deep layer of blown-up soil, clay, and rock. Pink spikes consumed her vision and she felt the terror flood her once again, the horrible realization that she was afraid of being shattered. She never expected self-preservation to kick in at the last second.

The pain of being split apart was exquisite. It lasted only a moment, but it was like remembering every sort of pain she’d ever felt, and then feeling them all again, combined, in one final flash. Ripped and torn in every direction, physically and mentally. But not erased.

No, that was the real horror, Jasper had discovered. There was no silence after shattering. There was no freedom from existence, of course it couldn’t be that simple. She assumed there would be some sort of release, craved it, at times, but she’d been so utterly wrong.

But even so, the panic came before she learned the truth, not after. That realization puzzled her. Why did she fear her existence ending, particularly when it’d been nothing but misery?

Shattered, she existed as formless energy: semiconscious but broken, detached from the corporeal world and lost. Locked in a prison of vague feelings, shadows of memories, flashes of sensation. Everything was wrong. She needed to form. She needed to be whole. She was pure fear. She wasn’t anything at all. And then, after what felt like her entire lifetime, her energy was being redirected, pulled, fused back into place, and with a terrified gasp, she was reborn.

Fear and wonder were matched in intensity in that moment. Only a truly powerful, merciful Diamond could so easily destroy a gem and then put them back together. And to be brought back at all must mean she was needed for some greater purpose, or at least to finally serve the one she was made for.

Find something better to do.

She dropped down into the crater, trekking through the raised hills of destruction and clambering over broken trees until she found what she was looking for. Freshly ruined earth surrounding a small field of flower and grass regrowth that marked where he crawled around crying, collecting the pieces of her gem. Pathetic.

She laid down in the grass and flowers, staring up at the starry sky and feeling utterly alone.

Why would he bring her back for this?

Her skin prickled and the static in her mind amplified and she wanted to rip herself apart with own claws. She disconnected from reality and felt sheer horror pulse through her every atom, more powerful than any physical pain. Her very existence and continued survival felt like some sick cosmic joke.

To emerge during a violent raid on her defective kindergarten, during a false war, with the sole purpose to protect the same gem she was meant to fruitlessly attempt to destroy… she was created to fail and cursed to endure eternity with no viable escape. She remembered a thought she used to have, long, long ago, that her fellow kindergartners had it lucky. They were all deemed off-color and shattered the moment the war was lost, her agate loved reminding her. They got to escape before the real torture began.

Or so she assumed. Now she knew better. Now she knew exactly how her fellow kindergartners felt for thousands of years. Would their shards ever be recovered? Or were they powdered and released into space, deemed too dysfunctional even for harvesting? Her agate’s voice echoed in her mind like the crack of a whip, “Only traitorous, Earth-made trash would care about the complete waste of Yellow Diamond’s time and resources that was your kindergarten. You’re not a traitor to your Diamond, are you?”

Maybe “something better” was never resting until Yellow Diamond felt every bit of pain she’s ever inflicted, directly or through her agates. Maybe it was hunting down her old agates and smashing them to powder.

Or.., you could come to Little Homeschool!

A flash of pink spikes blotted out the dawn sky and her stomach flipped and she scrambled to her feet, her heart ready to burst. The sudden panic was quickly drowned in shame at her reaction to a memory of his voice. Coming back here was stupid. Why had she done it, without even thinking?

Why was she trembling?

As repulsive as the idea was, her only option was obeying her Diamond’s expectations by going to his stupid school. Being tortured by agates seemed more fun than learning how to befriend an agate, and she was certain plenty of gems would feel the same about her. But really, what choice did she have? Minding her own business in the forest away from everyone is how she ended up shattered.

Jasper gritted her teeth and clambered out of the canyon of blasted forest, wandering away from her grave. She was broken and ready to face whatever horrible new life she’d have to endure, miserable and alone as always.

[kelpan]

So, remember how in my last author's note, I said I was feeling better? "More like a human"?

Yeah, I spoke too soon.

These past few months have put me through the wringer. Super stressful work environment, and new meds messing with both my mental and physical health. I'm taking steps to change the meds, and banish this nasty depression it has kept me trapped in. I can only apologize for how long it's been since my last update, though I did my best to keep writing.

This chapter might be a bit smaller than what they usually are, but it was hard-fought for. I hope you all like it, and thanks for being patient with me.

Credit for the OC Chrysanthemum headshot goes to wwispie on Etsy/Instagram!

Ao3: Petals on a Stream of Stars

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Act 1, Chapter 12: Such Wonderful Coworkers

Wednesday

7:30pm

Chrysanthemum

The alarm replayed across the air, ominous and oppressive. Chrys looked towards the sound, the weight of the message sinking under her skin. Never before had she found herself in this situation; never again did she want to. The worry that gnawed at her stomach threatened to make her vomit, and the last thing anyone needed was for her to bring her lunch back out for a visit. She forced the sensation down from the back of her throat, and turned to face her partner, ready to follow whatever instructions he had for her. 

“Sun, what are you—”

Yet she stood alone. The entrance doors clicked shut, broadcasting what must have been his departure. For him to leave without a word and so abruptly was unlike him. 

Wait, what even are our protocols? What am I supposed to be doing here??

The two attendants from the Atrium stood out against the sea of quietly occupied children. If anyone here might have a shot of giving her some kind of guidance, her best bet was from other employees.

“Uh, hey,” Chrys asked, hurrying over, doing her best to project some sort of veneer of calm, lest her anxiety take control. “Everything seemed fine when I left. What the heck happened?”

Neither moved to look at her, or acknowledged that she’d spoken. Their game of “Go Fish” was more interesting, eyes locked on their individual sets of cards. Chrys waited, arms crossed over her chest, gaze pointed, until someone caved. The one on the right took that title; A heavyset, disheveled looking man with greasy hair, who offered only a measly, nonchalant shrug in consolation. 

 “Eh, she must have slipped from the group while we were walking back. Kid was there when we lined up.”

Soon the other joined in, a small, diminutive stick of a woman, likely around the same middle age as her counterpart. She clicked her teeth and added a card to the center pile. “My guess is she got distracted by something we walked past and snuck off. I’ve heard of stuff like that happening from some of the other staff. Hell, this place is like temptation in a bottle for kids.”

Chrys’s composure threatened to crack. Could they not hear themselves right now? Her tone took on a sharp edge. “What do you mean “you guess”? Aren’t you worried about her?”

“Oh chill, she’ll be fine.” The male attendant answered, unfazed. “They’ll send every mechanical bozo they’ve got in this place after her, like that creepazoid clown you’ve got here. Soon as the lights go off she won’t stay missing for long, I can tell you that.”

Chrys bristled. She didn’t appreciate the blatant, derogatory dig. “Is that about Sun?”

“Nah, the other one.” The same attendant answered. “After all, the guy’s part of security now, it’s his job to handle shit like this.”

Just then, every light in the vicinity began to fade, blanketing the daycare in a soft but artificial twilight. Some of the children shouted in mock terror, their cheeky giggles giving away their true amusement. Chrys startled out of reflex, eyes wide as she watched the scenery take on new life around her. 

Stars. So, so many stars. 

On every post, every wall, every support beam, even the ceiling and the fake clouds dangling overhead, glow-in-the-dark stars greeted her with their nostalgic light. Never would she have thought that the cheap ones she used to have decorating the ceiling of her childhood bedroom might be able to provide any sort of substantial light, but here they were, their collective amount—and likely higher quality—creating more than enough illumination to easily see by.

“See? Right on cue.” The attendant continued. “I bet you he’s the one who finds her first. Five minutes, tops.”

“Nah, it’ll be Roxy. Fast is like her whole thing. Ten bucks.” The woman chimed in with a barking laugh.

“Ha! You’re on!”

In the background of their grating banter, a new message spoke through the intercom, pulling Chrys from the conversation.

“ATTENTION ALL GUESTS: PLEASE REMAIN IN PLACE. OUR ANIMATRONIC STAFF AND SECURITY BOTS ARE CURRENTLY INVESTIGATING. THEIR SCANS ARE FOR IDENTIFICATION PURPOSES ONLY. LOCKDOWN WILL REMAIN IN PLACE UNTIL THE MISSING CHILD IS IDENTIFIED AND RECOVERED. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.”

The automated voice spoke with an ignorable note of authority, demanding obedience through command. She could only imagine how frightening this situation must be to the other children throughout the pizzaplex; To go from having the time of their lives one instant, to then finding themselves in a world of darkness and danger the next. At least the children under her responsibility seemed impervious to this, safe and secluded as they were here in the Daycare. A small blessing.

Marigold, however, could afford no such luxury. Wherever she was, odds were that she was alone, overwhelmed, without anyone to guide or comfort her. And if anyone with less than innocent intentions found her before one of the animatronics could… she closed her eyes against such a thought. The math, however, remained clear; With each minute that ticked by, the risk of this turning into a catastrophe grew. 

There had to be something she could do, anything to help speed things along. In a building this large, with all the various nooks and crannies she might have wandered into, going about this in a blind sweep would be far too tedious. Kids were masters of subverting your expectations, able to get themselves stuck in the most ridiculous of places. Pressing her palm to her forehead, Chrys dug through her memories, seeking anything notable, any sort of outlier that might give her some insight into whatever was going on in that little girl’s mind.

She’d been teary and reluctant to leave her mother when she’d arrived. Commonplace, most children suffered from some form of separation anxiety at that age. She played, she laughed, she had fun… and seemed hellbent on continually bringing up a certain ambiguous “big brother” every chance she could get. Was that the missing key? What was it she had said about him again? Something about wanting to share a pizza together, that he was some grown up that worked at some beach…

No, wait, that wasn’t it. She’d said here at the beach. Did… did she mean the pizzaplex? 

“Hey,” Chrys said, interjecting herself back into the conversation. “Is there anywhere in the Pizzaplex that’s beach themed, or, I don’t know, might be considered kinda “beach-y”? Someplace like that?”

The two attendants shared a look of confusion, glancing at the other for mutual confirmation that they’d heard her right. 

“Uh, not really.” The man replied, in a tone that made clear what he thought of her question. “The big things are the band performances, golf, the raceway…. everything else is pretty standard kid stuff, like the arcades. It ain’t really a “beach-y” kinda place, if you catch my drift.”

The woman piped in with a snap of her fingers. “Oh, hey now, isn’t one of the free zones pirate themed? They might have some beach decor or something.”

“Oh yeah, Kids Cove, right? I always forget about that place. Hasn’t it been, like, under construction or renovations for forever or something?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Internally, Chrys vibrated. It may only be a nugget, but this was more of a lead than she had thirty seconds ago, and she’d be a fool to dismiss it. 

“Yes! That’s got to be it! Marigold had said something earlier that makes me think that might be where she’s gone! We have to let someone know. How do we contact Sun? Or Moon? Is there a way we can ping them or something?” 

The pair scoffed at her. 

“Who do you think we are, Vanessa? She’s the only one with direct line access to those overpriced tin cans.” The man patted the seat between the two of them. “Listen, why not sit down and relax with us for a second? I’m sure someone will find her soon, and everything will be just fine. I promise.”

His voice dripped with a syrupy sarcasm, the kind that came across as both patronizing and belittling. In her veins, her blood boiled. A little girl was out there somewhere, likely now having the worst birthday of her life, and they weren’t willing to lift a single finger to help her? To even try?

No. Unacceptable. 

“Fine. If you won’t help me, then I’ll just go out there and find a way to tell them myself. Stay with the rest of the kids until I get back. Don’t work too hard now.”

 Without giving either of the two a chance to retort, she pivoted and left, marching her way to the entrance of the daycare, stopping only once to grab a flashlight from the charging station mounted on the wall behind the security desk before stepping beyond the gate. 

There was no way she was going to let that little girl suffer any longer than was necessary.

[shivunin]

WIP Wednesday

Thanks for the tags @demandthedoodles and @greypetrel! I've mostly been fiddling with the fic I started posting on AO3, but here is some of another piece I've been working on as well. It's partially inspired by this poem:

I just love the contrast between all those long, hesitating lines and the abruptness of "Stand further off then! Go."

So, in relation to that, here is the precursor to the biggest fight Maria and Fenris ever have (this is...roughly three weeks after the Act 2 romance scene):

“You have a kind heart,” Hawke’s father had told her often when she was young.  It had usually been followed by a crucial word: but.   You have a kind heart—but the rabbit is beyond saving, but a kind heart will not help you when a demon comes to call, but you should let the boy fight if he wants to fight. Sometimes, the words were slightly different. Sometimes, Malcolm said instead, “Mijita, for the Maker’s sake, if you bring me to one more felled bridge I am leaving you to walk home alone,” or “Maria, you should not have shocked him back to life. I told you, did I not, what it means to be a mage? We are leaving; pack your bags.” But what he always, always meant to say was: you have a kind heart, but—

Malcolm was the first, but he wasn’t the last.  “I don’t know why you bother, Hawke,” Varric said often, feet propped on his table, shaking his head. “Doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.” “I’ve no idea what you see in him,” Anders had said just a few weeks, glaring after Sebastian as he walked away. “He is beyond helping.”  “I will never understand why you let that man speak to you so,” Aveline had said more than once, scowling over something Anders had said.  Or— “you do know that the elf is like an angsty porcupine, right?”  Sometimes, she felt like snapping in return: there is no point. I don’t know why I bother, either. But—there was no point in snapping, either, was there? They didn’t really want to know why.  But Merrill—Merrill wanted to know why. Sometimes, Merrill didn’t even add the “but.” Sometimes, she just told Hawke that she was kind, no qualifiers. That was why Maria liked to spend time with her: Merrill didn’t waste time on prevarications like that. You were who you were, for good or ill, and she seemed to see little point in chiding one to change.  Merrill was her friend; Hawke might even have been tempted to call Merrill her dearest friend, if she’d ever felt inclined to bestow such a distinction. It hurt her to see Merrill hurt, to hear the tears in her voice as they trudged back up through the bowels of the mountain.  “Pol,” she said somewhere behind Hawke, “what was he thinking? He acted like I was a monster.”  “His death isn’t your fault,” Hawke wanted to say, but Fenris spoke first.  “You are a monster.”  Hawke stopped dead, turning on her heel to look at them. Fenris was not looking at her; he was looking at Merrill, disgust plain on his face. Isabela stared at him, moving to set a hand on Merrill’s shoulder. “You aren’t helping,” the pirate told him.  Tears had long since begun to fall down Merrill’s cheeks, darkening the collar of her dress, and when Isabela drew her closer more of them fell from her chin to the green fabric below.  “Good,” Fenris snapped. He opened his mouth to say more, but glanced at Hawke and shut it again.  You are a monster.  Hawke could not say if she was angrier for Merrill or herself. No—she couldn’t say what she was feeling at all, really. Fenris looked at her, his mouth pressed into a narrow line, but at last he turned away.  “Come on,” Hawke told Merrill, reaching for the elbow Isabela wasn’t holding. “Let’s get us out of these caves, alright? Nothing is ever helped by the addition of giant spiders.” Merrill nodded, her hands steady despite her tears, and allowed herself to be led from the caves.  You are a monster. 

Tagging: @star--nymph @ndostairlyrium @heniareth @daggerbean @alta-et-astra @palipunk @dungeons-and-dragon-age @idolsgf

[downwiththeficness]

The Usurper-Chapter Ten

Summary: Lilah McNamara stole things for a living. It was tedious work and often dangerous, which made it just exciting enough to keep her interested. After botching a routine job, Lilah finds herself standing amid monsters. Wholly unprepared for the horror of living under Amaru’s reign, Lilah decides to use her well honed skills to thwart the queen’s plans and prevent the end of the world.

Word Count: ~

Disclaimer: I do not consent to this work being copied or posted to other sites of blogs.

Start at the Beginning Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Read on AO3 Masterlist

God damn, but Javier had good taste. Lilah frowned at herself in the mirror and tried not to hate the man for his ability to pick outfits that suited her perfectly. Lilah would never have looked twice at the softly draped sheath dress in shell pink. And, she certainly never would have dared to step into the satin pumps that adorned her feet. More than that, she would never have thought to put the two together in a single outfit.

“I look amazing,” she murmured, wondering why it felt like her stomach was turned around in knots. No. She knew exactly the reason, and it wasn’t because she looked good.

This was a date. It was definitely a date. Lilah was going to a bar for drinks with Brasa. He’d even assured her there would be a band. She was dressed up, her hair was done, and she’d put on a little more makeup than normal. Most days, all this effort would be put towards the goal of disarming a mark. But, not tonight. Tonight, Lilah’s effort was to...what? To tempt him? To draw him in? To make him want her?

Lilah had mixed feelings about Brasa on her best days. On her worst, she resented him for putting her in a position that had no good outcome. She’d either spend the rest of her life in the caves, or Amaru would kill her. Lilah wasn’t sure which option was better. Death might be a mercy, given the certainty that she was going to go insane if she spent much more time isolated from the rest of the world. It didn’t matter how much Brasa tried to reassure her, Lilah couldn’t figure out how to get around her biggest hurdle to freedom.

She turned from the mirror, hoping that she could distract herself from the impossibility of her situation with a little alcohol and music loud enough to ring in her ears for hours afterwards. Brasa assured her that she could go out as often as she liked and this was her first attempt to test that theory. It occurred to her that she should try to find an opportunity to run. Brasa was less likely to drag her kicking and screaming back to the car if there were others around to act as witnesses. Less likely didn’t mean that he wasn’t capable. She couldn’t stop thinking about the way Javier talked about the lengths Brasa would go to in order to get her back. To the ends of the earth...

The bedroom door opened and Brasa stepped through. Lilah lifted her brows at him, “Please tell me you’re changing before we leave.”

Brasa looked down at his outfit, much the same as he always wore. Black on black, leather coat and gloves. He hesitated before saying, “Ah, maybe?”

Lilah took a moment to think about how she was going to say the thing that definitely needed to be said, “You can’t go out into public like that.”

Dark brows drew together, “Why?”

She held back a laugh at his genuinely confused expression, “Because people are going to either think you’re some kind of cosplayer or...deeply into BDSM.”

More confusion, “What’s BDSM?”

“That’s probably something you should look up for yourself,” Lilah said quickly. “My point is that you need to blend in a bit.”

The door opened again and Javier hurried inside, “My deepest apologies for intruding, but she’s back.”

“Already?” Brasa drawled, looking unhappy.

“Yes. And, from what I’ve seen so far, her trip was unsuccessful.”

Brasa muttered what sounded like a curse under his breath, “Alright. I’ll deal with her,” he turned to Lilah, “and we’ll go.”

“You’re gonna change first, right?”

He sighed, “What would you like me to wear?”

Lilah shrugged, “Just blend in, okay?”

Javier inched forward, “I have something that might work.”

Javier to the rescue.

“Thank you,” Brasa said. Then, “Let’s get this over with.” To Lilah he added, “Wait here, please.”

Feeling somewhat bewildered, Lilah watched the two of them leave. She stared at the door for a long time, then trudged over to the bed and sat down to wait. Lilah waited, and waited, and waited. She waited so long that she thought the bar might close before they got there. That thought came along with an odd sense of relief. All the pressure of enjoying the next few hours to the fullest for fear that she might not get another chance any time soon lifted. She wouldn’t have to try to make small talk, wouldn’t have to try to be pleasant. Wouldn’t get distracted by his smile. Or his dimples. Or his impossibly brown eyes.

From somewhere far away came a noise. It was small, at first, but the sound grew in volume and force with such speed that Lilah jerked to standing. Staring into the middle distance, she listened hard for something that might tell her just what the fuck that was. The noise paused briefly, then started again with a deafening boom. She rushed to the door and was out in the hall before her brain caught up with her legs. In the dark, she searched for the danger.

It sounded like thunder. How could she hear thunder hundreds of yards underground? Lilah turned her head and looked both ways down the hall—there it was again. Not thunder. More like...a roar. Lilah took a step towards it with a hand lifted, as if to shield herself from attack.

Another roar. Lilah took off running. She blew through the door and into the massive cavern. Her legs stopped cold when she caught Amaru in the process of tearing the head off a person who was fighting for their life. Lilah’s jaw unhinged and she had every intention of screaming, but no sound came out. She’d seen Brasa kill, knew that she was surrounded by blood drinkers, but watching the skin tear apart in real time was sickening.

“My queen,” Brasa said in a cool tone, “was that necessary?”

Amaru dropped the head. It landed with a wet plop at her feet, “She failed me. Like you have failed me.”

Brasa was faced away from her and he hadn’t noticed Lilah was standing there watching. His body was upright and rigid, as if there was a string lifting him from above. Lilah half expected to look down and find his boots hanging an inch or two from the stone floor. On either side, his hands were clenched into fists. “Its going to take time to track down the book, my queen.”

Amaru stared him down and Lilah could feel the anger radiating from her, “I wouldn’t even need the book if I wasn’t stuck in this ridiculously weak body.”

“I understand,” he replied. “Its very frustrating for me, too. But, if you want to open the door, we need the book.”

Amaru didn’t seem at all impressed by Brasa’s measured response. She marched up to him and pointed a finger in his face, “For every day you make me wait, I’ll tear somebody apart. Even though they breed like rabbits, there’s only so many of them. Guess who I’ll come for when I run out.” Brasa’s ‘my queen’ was cut off when Amaru slammed the heel of her palm into his chest and sent him flying. He landed ten feet from where he was standing and stayed there while Amaru sneered, “No more failures.”

Lilah waited for her to disappear before she allowed herself to move. Even then, it was only to bring her hand to her chest. She drew calming breaths while she waited for Brasa to get up. He did, eventually, but his movements were slow. Lilah thought he might actually be hurt, which produced an odd pang that unsettled her. She might not like him very much and she might resent him, but something about watching Amaru toss him around in a fit if pique didn’t sit right.

After dusting himself off, Brasa turned and finally realized she was there. He said her name softly and the two syllables were touched with mortification. Lilah knew what it was like to have someone witness an ass kicking. In some ways just knowing there was another set of eyes in the room made the whole thing even worse.

She straightened her shoulders and smiled, “Tough day at the office?”

Brasa looked down at the head still sitting on the floor, “You could say that.”

“Do you want to reschedule?”

“No,” he answered after a few seconds, “I think getting out of here is a good idea.”

Lilah nodded and gestured towards the body, “Should we...bury her, or something?”

“I’ll ask Javier to care for her,” Brasa replied. “He should—.”

“I’m here,” Javier said as he entered the room with a garment bag over his arm. He looked at the gore below, “I take it the meeting didn’t go well.”

“It didn’t.”

Javier snapped into action, “Take this. Go change. I’ll handle the body. Lady Lilah, if you’ll wait in your room, this will not be easy to watch.”

As if watching her die was easy? Lilah thought, with ire. Followed by, I’ve seen two murders, lately. I wonder how many more there will be. She said, “Sure. I can do that,” while she pushed down the image of Raul’s terrified face.

Brasa reached for her, “Come on.”

Arms crossed over her chest, Lilah let Brasa lead her out of the cavern and down the hall to her room. Once inside, he split off and headed for the bathroom without a word. Lilah found herself once again sitting on the bed, waiting. She folded her hands in her lap and tried to parse her feelings about the last ten minutes of her life.

Lilah knew that Amaru was brutal and a little bit unstable. She also knew that Amaru was powerful. The mix of powerful and unstable had led to what felt like an inevitable conclusion: sadism. Whatever she was looking for, Amaru was willing to kill for it. She was also willing to punish her most trusted lieutenant in the process. Which didn’t bode well for Lilah.

She had been kept well away from Amaru for weeks. Aside from their introduction, Lilah hadn’t seen the other woman at all. The only news about her came from the little details that Lilah was able to glean from Javier and Brasa. The two of them spoke to each other in a way that suggested a long-suffering relationship of managing what basically amounted to tantrums when Amaru didn’t get her way.

Lilah didn’t know the extent of Javier’s abilities, but she thought she had some surface knowledge about what Brasa could do. It didn’t make sense that the two of them refused to team up and take down Amaru together. Their lives would certainly be a little less stressful without having to clean up after their sovereign.

Brasa stepped out of the bathroom and Lilah’s brain sort of stopped for a second. He was dressed in a button up and slacks, which wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary. But, Javier’s selection was a cotton in a deep purple with cuff links that glinted gold. The pants were black, of course, but cut closer to his body than he usually preferred. In fact, the whole outfit was tailored impeccably to skim the lines of his frame. Taken as a whole, Brasa looked really fucking good.

She remembered thinking that he was in shape back when he was Antonio. His conservative style and the fact that he occasionally wore a robe managed to effectively hide the body underneath. When he became Brasa, the leather coat and heavy fabrics did much the same. Now, wrapped in thin cotton, Lilah could see the breadth of his shoulders and the way the muscle rolled when he moved. It pulled at the yoke of his shirt with every breath. Brasa lifted his hands to button the cuffs and Lilah had to tuck her fingers into her palm to keep from reaching out to trace the outline of his bicep. He might be dressed like any other man in the bar, but there was no denying that Brasa could put somebody on their ass.

“You look nice,” Lilah said when she found her voice. She looked down. He was still wearing the gloves. What was with the gloves?

Brasa smiled and those fucking dimples formed on either side of his mouth. Lilah’s brain stopped again, stumbling over the fact that she could find him so completely attractive despite her less than kind feelings about him. “Thank you,” he said. “Should we go?”

Shaking herself back to awareness, Lilah pushed from the bed to stand and answered, “Yes, of course.”

He guided her out of the room and moved left down the hall. Lilah felt him take her hand while the light around her dimmed, “We’re not going the other way?”

Brasa glanced back at her, “Its faster this way.”

“Oh.”

The path was fairly straight, only a turn or two, but Lilah felt the gentle incline put a little burn in her calves. She should have known better than to wear the heels Javier picked out for her. The only way out was through the caves and the ground beneath her was unpredictable, at best.

Not long after that, moonlight cut through a large opening. Lilah stepped out into fresh air and saw that it as the same entrance Brasa brought her to on the night she found out he wasn’t human. She looked around, her brows coming together as she recognized Antonio’s car parked not too far away. It had only been a few days, but the memory of seeing Brasa standing in the doorway of the church seemed like a lifetime ago.

Brasa pulled a set of keys from his pocket and clicked a button. Lights flashed on a late model Mercedes in black. Lilah followed him to the car and let him help her into the passenger’s seat. With the door closed, Lilah let herself think that the interior was really, really nice while trying to forget that the person who owned it was probably dead. The driver’s side door opened and Brasa dropped into the seat. Lilah listened to the engine turn over, then asked, “What book is Amaru looking for?”

If Lilah wanted to live, she needed to know everything she could about the key players on the board in order to make the best decisions regarding her safety. Even if Amaru was insane, Lilah could tell that she was goal oriented. If Lilah knew the intimate details of what drove Amaru’s decisions, she could anticipate (and possibly mitigate) the danger.

Brasa’s hand hesitated over the gear shift, “A book on ancient Xibalban ritual.”

Lilah was surprised he’d actually answered the question. She decided to pry further, “What kind of ritual?”

Another hesitation, “She...wants to open the door between dimensions.”

Lilah’s head turned very slowly so that she could look at him, “She wants to do what?”

Brasa pulled away from the cave with confident hands, “Open the door between dimensions.”

“Why the fuck would she do that?”

He took a breath, “I suppose she misses home.”

Lilah stared at him for a long moment while she tried to process, “I know that I’ve only met her once—the recent murder notwithstanding—but I definitely get the feeling that Amaru isn’t capable of being homesick.”

Brasa chuckled while the car zoomed towards a distant highway, “You’re right. I think she misses the power.”

“Brasa,” she said with disbelief in her tone, “she tore the head off somebody right in front of us. How much more powerful can she get?”

“You’re right again,” he replied. “Power might not be the right word. Maybe influence is better.”

“Influence?”

A nod, “Amaru was...untouchable in Xibalba. She oversaw nearly the whole dimension, had an army of culebras that soaked the ground with blood in her name.” He paused, “Here, she’s stuck in the body of a child with a fraction of her influence. Her army can be obliterated with the next sunrise. The humans don’t know about her. Worse, its unlikely they’ll care unless she slaughters them in droves.”

Lilah’s brain helpfully supplied the image of a neck separating from a torso, “Opening a door to another dimension isn’t going to stop her from doing that.”

“I know,” he relented, “But, searching for the book is enough of a distraction to put off the need to dig mass graves for a little while.”

“How long?”

“As long as it takes.”

Lilah grabbed onto something in his tone, “You’re trying to prevent it.” Brasa was quiet long enough that she decided she was right. “I don’t think I pictured you as particularly protective of humanity.”

“I’m not,” he replied and Lilah deflated a little bit. “I’ve seen this before. She conquers her enemy, sucks the life from them until there’s nothing but a husk. She did the same in Xibalba and she’ll do the same here.”

“I don’t understand why it matters where she does it.”

“It doesn’t,” Brasa replied, “What matters is that she does it. Can you imagine what its like to see an entire world drained of everything that makes it,” he searched for the words, “a world? Can you imagine what its like to watch that happen over and over with no goal but the sheer enjoyment of watching something die?”

“No, I can’t,” Lilah said quietly. She could hear the exhaustion in his voice and it very nearly caused her to sympathize with him. “Why now? You’ve been with her forever. Why try to stop her now?”

He glanced at her briefly, “Its not obvious?”

She hissed through her teeth, “So, we meet and suddenly you want to save humanity? Is it because I happen to be a part of humanity?”

The car pulled off from the highway into a metropolitan area, “Not at all.”

“Then, what is it?”

“Change,” Brasa murmured, “Meeting you showed me that change was possible.”

Lilah rolled her eyes, “Please. You’ve lived for centuries and you just now figured that out?”

His mouth twisted, “Yes, I have lived for centuries. I have lived the same life for centuries. Do you know what its like to be told what to do every waking moment? To have no choice in who you talk to, who you threaten, who you fuck,” his voice went quiet, “who you kill?”

Well, now Lilah felt like an asshole. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, saying, “No, I don’t.”

Brasa pulled the car to a stop in the parking lot of a building with a sleek exterior and huge windows, “I don’t have choices, Lilah. Not for the things that matter. What Amaru tells me to do, I do.”

“Why?”

“Because I have to. Because I made a mistake a long time ago.” He cut the engine and leaned towards her from across the console, “But, with you, I can see that I might not have to do that anymore if I am very, very careful.”

Lilah stared at him, “I don’t understand.”

“One day, I’m going to explain it to you,” he replied, “Not tonight, but one day. Let me give you the chance to relax for a few hours, hmm?”

He was asking her to stop for now. Lilah sighed and decided that she would heed the request, “Alright, but I want a giant drink with lots of alcohol.”

Brasa smiled, “Done.”

[randlemartin]

First Line Analysis

tagged by @youcalledmebabe thank you this was fun

rules: post the first lines of up to 10 of your last fics/chapters posted on ao3 or your wips and try to draw some conclusions.

don't think I have ten so i'll mess with the rules a bit to get something lol. which is a sign i should quit my job and get to the writing mines asap

an easy accord for the sake of the pack

Carwood tucks his chin close to his chest and readjusts his cold fingers around his M1 as the wind tears down the narrow, ruined street, reminding Easy (what’s left of it) that even though Bastogne and the Bois Jacques are behind them, they’re still very much within the unforgiving clutches of winter.

2. trade in the world

The ground beneath his feet, a nearly disgusting mixture of snow and mud and who knows what else, squelches as Carwood makes his way outside of the CP.

3. Maybe I'm a fool, but it's fun

It’s only as he stands opposite the nurse as she waits with a pointed look for him to give his name and relationship to the patient that George realizes he may not have thought this through.

4. anchorage

George is starting to experience thoughts of giving up, of collapsing onto the French soil beneath his feet and letting whatever happens happens.

5. Sunshine enough to spread

He might have said it was love at first sight, when Babe first saw Gene, but that would mean he could remember their first meeting and, if he’s being honest, he can’t.

6. Sunshine enough to spread (chapter 2 - wip)

Compared to Bastogne, Haguenau looks like a five-star resort, though Babe feels like that’s the same as saying that compared to getting your eyes plucked out, being in prison’s not too bad

7. Cave Canem (wip)

Zell am See feels like a dream.

8. untitled thing in a notebook (extreme wip)

When he runs across Foy, set on finding I Company, he knows with certainty that he is going to die in this war - sooner rather than later.

hm. i think i love opening right in the middle of it and throwing characters and setting immediately to the front of the story. reading them feels like i don't like a lot of build up or spending too much time setting the scene, though i think i'm a bit more descriptive depending on the narrator?

i think everyone's been tagged but if you haven't been consider this your tag <3

[hangon-silvergirl]

Hiiiiiiii…….

I rarely engage on Tumblr and minimally engage on AO3, but I’ve been thinking about you as I scroll through my dash.

How are you feeling? How is life? I remember that you were feeling pretty stressed out at the beginning of the year. You haven’t written in awhile, and while I miss your amazing stories and writing, I wanted to know if things have settled for you yet. *hugs*

Well thank you, that's very kind!

Honestly, it's been a pretty miserable year in a lot of ways, and that was largely due to work stress. I had an untenable workload and inadequate support, and I was caving in on myself for a while there. I nearly went on leave, and I did go to the hospital at one point.

Which was straight-up bonkers.

So... I quit! 😊

And I just started a new job! This week 😄

That whole smoz has certainly impacted my want/ability to write. I've written some original fiction, and bits of fanfic here and there, but I haven't been in a headspace to give much to it in addition to those stressors, plus family life.

I've also, honestly, been having fandom fatigue, which is pretty standard when hyperfixations start to wane. I still love Hellcheer, and the community, but I haven't had the capacity for much beyond making my dumb memes for the last however long.

All that said, thank you so much for reaching out, being so lovely and thoughtful, and for saying such kind things about my writing. It means a lot, and I really, really appreciate it! 💕

I won't make any promises for posting fic, because I honestly don't know if/when I'll finish something. I am my own worst enemy, often.

But if/when I do finish something, what I will promise is that I'll post it for anyone who might be interested in reading it.

[caius-hhhhhh]

following up on this fanfic emoji ask game: I know this is not the general convention but i tend to like responding to an ask game all at once rather than waiting for prompts. so I’ve just answered every single one of the questions below the cut. Again, if you wanna play or use the game for your own purposes, please do! you don’t have to repeat my strategy, although you’re free to do so too.

i was about to say “this is a bunch of autofellating nonsense” but that’s the point. who cares. i wrote a lot about disability. if your mental illness also significantly impacts your ability to write, this might be triggering.

I’m still a baby ao3 user (@ is spitemonger) with only one published fic (it’s Zutara. It’s not that I’m not proud of it but I wrote it on a deadline and thus spent a lot of the creative process going “i don’t want to i don’t want to”). but a) I have generally been writing since I was a teenager, and b) I want to write more and publish more.

So I’ll be mostly referring to unpublished wips, with a primary focus on a long-form one-sided radiostatic fic covering Vox’s fall to Stayed Gone, and a minor focus on two shelved Magnus Chase (PJO spin-off) fics, one for Fierrochase and one for Blitzstone. [if you haven’t read Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgaard get the fuck on it, there’s a genderfluid character]

😅 What's a story or scene you've created that you're a smidge embarrassed exists?

my entire trunk novel? If I’m embarrassed by a scene I delete it during edits. So the only thing I’m even minorly embarrassed by is the fandom-specific plot I wrote by the seat of my pants (Magnus goes to Camp Half-Blood) — I’ll get more into that in a later question

🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?

love that this emoji doesn’t fucking register on my computer. I’ve never thought about this before! It’s hard for my own writing to get me emotional, I tend to look at it so clinically and dispassionately I kind of get caught off-guard when people say an emotional moment hit them. I do get very easily fucked by other people’s writing about transness. No prizes for guessing why, characters exploring their own gender and other people telling them they see them as their proper gender always get me feeling some type of way. calam4r1’s comic about Alastor’s “what have you done to me” makes my heart EXPLODE

🤡 What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?

I am exceedingly proud of this Cave Johnson-ass line: “All projects, collaborations, products, and endorsements featuring or even vaguely mentioning that crimson ass’s likeness are to be liquidated. And burned. In fact, trap and seal the gases from the fire, freeze them back into liquid, and then burn them again.”

😈 Has there been a point in a story where you did something just to be playfully mean to your readers?

Oh fuck yes. It is a major twist that I’d be stupid to spoil, but! There is a red herring at the start of my current fic that you don’t get resolution for until three-quarters of the way through. It involves Vox’s real name.

✍ Do you have a beta reader?

My close associate SpaceWall is a fan-fucking-tasting editor who understands my need for my writing to be completely eviscerated. She has the balls to tell me when I’ve got a shite idea, and I could not ask for a better editor. Go fucking read her fics and tell her she’s excellent. On the subject, I really like editing and am fully open to reading your work. I’ve a slightly longer post about it here but please reach out to me if you’d like me to look at anything you have.

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

Disability. It’s well and truly quite hard to find a story that doesn’t deal with disability — hell, it’s hard to find a human that doesn’t have a relationship with disability — but it’s something canon so frequently either tacitly ignores or doesn’t pick up on. If I’m going to do anything in a fic, it’s explicate the characters’ canon disabilities or headcanon new ones. This is my favourite part of Cold Bodies btw, and basically the only part I wrote without explicit prompting. It’s in the last subsection if you don’t want to read the 8k words of prep

🎢 Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

idk man I’m really bad at pacing so even if the content is whack I go about it too slowly to really shock anyone

✨ Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉

fuck off.

💋 First kiss fics. Love em or hate em?

Love the implication that I don’t fall asleep every night fantasising about a thousand different first kiss scenarios.

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

I’m very picky when it comes to listening to music while I write. I can’t think about words if the song I’m listening to also has words, nor if it has a really tangible melody that I want to follow along with. So I need really slow, atmospheric music without a real tune. Undertale genocide themes are actually fucking excellent for this, I’d highly recommend them. I’ve created a massive fuck-off OSRS playlist (on itunes, not spotify, so I can’t share it, sorry) basically comprised of the entire Portal 2 soundtrack (special fucking shoutout to The Friendly Faith Plate, which is SO VOX CODED YOU DON’T HAVE ANY IDEAAAA) and Sim Gretina’s electro swing (Enemy Like Me is my favourite), plus Kira’s Piece of Art and Dua Saleh’s mOth. The first because it’s giving Vox’s obsession with Alastor, and the second because, duh.

🛠What tools/programs/apps do you use to write?

I’m a google docs hoe. I know I shouldn’t be, but fuck man, I know how it works. It feels natural when my writing is on there. I’ve tried Scrivener and it made me angry. What the fuck ever And “tools”, that’s really funny — I’m the type of grad student that does all my citations manually because switching to Zotero is weird and scary. I know how to do it manually! Why would I ever accept help for something I know how to do?? (< ocpd symptom)

⛔ Do you have a fic you started, but scrapped?

The world doesn’t fucking need any more Nico di Angelo fics. It really doesn’t. There’s plenty. He’s a skinny white boy, he’s got the entire internet in the palm of his hand. You wanna compete with Robin? Really? You wanna do that to yourself? I don’t even have catholic guilt, I’ve got nothing to add

🙋‍♀️ Do any irl people know you write fanfic?

SpaceWall and I are irl friends, but we hold each other’s secrets in equal regard. The secret is that she is a good writer and I’m a poet I wouldn’t actually mind if people I knew irl found and read my fics. It’s just writing. I don’t find anything to object in it, and in fact I’d like it if I could talk about Hazbin with other people irl. I would hate it if people I know irl found my tumblr, but that’s principally because I’m significantly more open about my ocpd here. I’m not a person on the internet, I’m just words and a drawing. You haven’t seen the kinds of fucked up shit I do in front of my peers that would suddenly Make A Lot Of Sense if they knew I had a FUCKING personality disorder.

🍦 What's the sweetest fic you've created so far?

The Blitzstone origin wip, which is mostly “ostracised gay dwarf learns ASL because he saved this dying elf’s life”. come to think of it the first chapter of that fic is technically perfect and there’s very little stopping me from putting it the fuck on ao3 and abandoning it for three years before coming back. huh. i might… just do that.

🍷 Do you drink and write?

Always. It turns the judgemental part of my brain off and I have a much easier time making things and getting ideas down. Such a shame I don’t smoke too! I’ve tried writing whilst high and it was not writing. It was in fact lying back and rereading 666

🍆 Do you write the spicy stuffs? If so, what's your most popular nsfw fic?

“the spicy stuffs” porn is the word you’re looking for. You can say it. It’s four letters. The internet police won’t get you. See look, porn porn sex penis tits ass fucking Writing erotica was a really instrumental part of unlearning the self-destructive writing habits that made me suicidal scrap my original work. My initial intention was that because it’s erotica, it’s not for other people: it’s for me. And having that barrier of “this is not for other people to see” was liberating and necessary — I turned it off eventually, because erotica is not something to be so ashamed of that no eyes but yours can look upon it — but I needed to force myself to write something that I couldn’t imagine being scrutinised and therefore needed to be Purposeful and Say Something.

🌞 Do you have a preferred time of day to write?

11pm–2am is when I get my best work done. Unfortunately, I write the most frequently between 1–3pm because I have the energy and motivation to, but those are Self Doubt Hours and I have a hard time getting into the swing of things I actually have the best writing luck when I get up early but that’s not gonna fucking happen

💖 What made you start writing?

In general, pathology, but I’ve kind of made that clear already. What made me want to write a Hazbin fic was seeing how exceptionally creative this fandom is and how much fun people seemed to be having sharing their ideas. I feel like in the circles I’m running in, there’s not a lot of pressure to make Good Art, and it’s… not really a big deal if your work gets a lot of attention or not. Everyone seems to be getting the same tone of feedback, all cheer and encouragement, and the vibe to me seems really casual and fun. I’m not thinking to myself “how will I compete with these other authors”, but “I wonder if the user I idolise will see and like my work”. And the answer is often yes. It’s not just that people are creating and playing so freely, it’s that it feels like a lot of us are here to support one another, and that’s been really reassuring. Because I feel like people will like anything I put out

❌ What's a trope you will never write?

I was about to say “anything related to pregnancy, thinking about my uterus makes me nauseous” but I uh. Wrote about a miscarriage. So I guess writing about a wanted pregnancy is the real limit

💲 Would you ever open commissions?

This is a super interesting question I haven’t seen spoken about very widely: it is considered extremely normal to commission fanart, but whenever the subject comes up, people seem incredibly reticent to ever commission fanfiction. I’m not fully sure why — in principle, it seems like there should be no real distinction in paying for fanart versus paying for fanfic. They’re both derivative work, they’re both made by enthusiastic artists who deserve to be compensated for their thousands of hours of expertise. I’m not certain what causes the disconnect. I have seriously toyed with the idea of doing podfics for money. I am in fact a professionally trained actor, and I own a USB microphone; which puts me ahead of like 50% of all of AO3’s userbase. Not sure if I’d fully commit to the idea because it’s still rather contentious. Were I to read my entire fic out loud I would put it behind a patreon though. It is in fact a very labour-intensive process, and again, I do have professional training.

🧐 Do you spend much time researching for your stories?

Hoo boy.

this is my fic folder. For most fics I write, I have a draft document and a research document: I’ve colour-coded the related documents: so dark green and dark green are the draft and research, pink and pink are both parts of the same project, etc. Let’s compare the word count in each of these draft documents and research documents, shall we? The dark green draft is 8k; its research document is 16k. The pink document is Cold Bodies. Including the html coding and my author’s notes, it’s edging on 13k. Its research document is 8k. It’s the only fic I’ve completed. The light purple draft is 21.5k. Its research is 96k! The light green draft rather conspicuously titled “botw script” is in fact a script, not prose, so it’s only about 4k. Its research, which is in fact titled “I don’t like botw’s story”, is 25k. The dark purple draft is a rather tragic 6k. Its two research documents are a combined 104k!!! One of the documents is called, rather tellingly, “I think I like research more than I like writing.”

My research process involves a not insignificant amount of textual analysis. For Cold Bodies, it looked something like this:

I haven’t done a lot of that kind of work for Hazbin because most info is fanon or only vaguely canon-adjacent, but I have compiled a list of headcanons many of you have put out into the world.

that’s gabrielsbubblegumbitch’s post and soot-and-salt’s And Not From Head To Toe. The other significant form of research I do is scour books I think are interesting or relevant so I can take plot or thematic inspiration from them. Previously, I’ve combed through Creating A Champion (and cannot recommend the experience. it’s kind of racist 😬) and made a fic a loose parody of Emma so I could fall back on its plot when I needed inspiration. For this Vox fic I’m rereading David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Eden Robinson’s Traplines (the last short story has a Monkey Beach spoiler, read that first), Catcher in the Rye, The Chocolate War, and, for some reason, Cary Elwes’ As You Wish.

🏆 What's your most popular fic?

Only got one. Shoutout to grownupchangeling for fucking SPRINTING into my inbox to ask for the answer to this question, really admire their(?) tenacity and dedication to squatting in my notifs like a spider in the corner

🎃 Do you write fics for certain holidays? Which is your favorite holiday inspired fic?

Never really crossed my mind. I do like a good beach fic, and anything set in winter makes me happy, but I’m not a massive holiday story enjoyer.

🎯 Have any of your readers accurately guessed major plot points? Care to share which?

I spoke about this a bit in response to soot, but if your readers are able to accurately guess a plot point or twist it means you have done it successfully. It means you have given your readers the tools to reach the same conclusion you did: and those tools are foreshadowing, atmosphere, subtext, and tension. Those are how a twist or beat feel that they belong in the narrative, because they gel with everything that has come before it. It in fact should be the author’s goal for readers to be able to guess the twist! It’s not that it should be blindingly obvious, but more that a seed should exist somewhere that smart readers (which are all readers!) should be able to see it and notice when it takes root.

🎨 How do you feel about fan art of your stories?

Who doesn’t like fan art? Who’s the fucking Anne Rice of AO3 that’s going to be like “you may read my fic but do Not make art inspired by mine” literally who does that

📈 How many fics do you have?

Guess.

🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?

I outline wherever possible. How detailed the outline is depends on the scene rather than the fic: “Vox goes house hunting” is in fact a very very long scene and a scene that amounts to two pages might well be described beat-by-beat in the outline. Pants-writing gets me incredibly stressed out because I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know where I’m going, I have no direction in mind, and because of that panic impulse I cannot be open to serendipity. It’s also really hard for me to do complete rewrites, so as soon as I have something down on the page and it’s made it past the first, worst, round of excruciating edits it tends to remain as-is in the final draft. So I often need at least a vague idea of what’s going to happen before I can start my work. I don’t do drafts, inasmuch as I’ve used that word pretty consistently throughout this post. I think. I think, think, think, research, ruminate, think, tentatively write less than 100 words, think think think consider scrapping the whole thing and then I detonate like a firework and the vast majority of the ink that first splatters on the page in that initial explosion stays until I know it’s done. I write like a shotgun: with a very intensive buildup and lots of preparation with a very short but very powerful discharge. I’ve told this to people and received the kind of expression you typically only get were you to remove your shoes and begin licking the sole of your foot. So please do not compare your own writing process with mine. Okay? This is not normal. I don’t know how often I’ve mentioned this but I have a disorder. No one but me does this. You should not expect yourself to.

👀 Tell me about an up and coming wip please!

No <3

🤗 What advice would you give to new fanfic writers that are just getting started?

I am literally the last person you should ask. Never pour water on a grease fire? Your face mask should completely cover your mouth and nose? Always make sure the base is larger than the widest point?

💞 Who's your comfort character?

I don’t actually find that there’s a single character who brings me comfort to write about. I write about someone if I have something to say about them. I do have a comfort trope, which is sleeping together.

🧠 Pick a character, and I'll tell you my favorite headcanon for them.

I think that Valentino used to be a porn actor before he became a director. During a shoot, he would wear an earpiece so his director could feed him lines, given that he couldn’t read the scripts.

🤩 Who is your favorite character to write?

Alastor! I also talk breezily and with an emphasis on slightly elevated language, so I find his dialogue to be incredibly natural to spit out. Plus, who doesn’t love dated exclamations and turns of phrase like “By Jove!” and “take a powder”?

😬 Which of your fics would you be most horrified for friends, family, or coworkers to stumble upon?

I well and truly don’t care. I don’t publish anything I’m ashamed of. I only publish things that I think showcase my skills, and that I think are worthwhile pieces of art. And if I had a friend who thought fanfiction or erotica was something to shame or scorn, well, they would not be my friend.

🎉 What leads you to consider a fic a success?

Finishing it.

✅ What's something that appears in your fics over and over and over again, even if you don't mean to?

Romantic partners becoming the main character’s therapists… I mean, that’s one of the great things about writing villain protagonists. They don’t fucking have to go to therapy.

📚 Would you ever want to turn writing into a career?

Buckle up, cunt. I had a novel I was working on as a teenager. It was about toxic masculinity and MLM sexual assault. I said to myself, this will be a piece of art that defines a generation. It will say something that our (western) society desperately needs to hear, and one day a young gay kid just like myself will be tilting their head at a 90° angle to see the titles of the books lining the shelves of their local bookstore, see my novel, pick it up, and discover that it spoke to them: in the same way that I felt seen and heard by the books I loved. So as I wrote and worked on it, I often looked at my own writing with the harsh and uncaring eyes I knew it would be faced with when I inevitably contacted an editor. I wanted to make it flawless, bulletproof, do everything in my power to make this work perfect before an editor could see it, so that way I could wholeheartedly say that it was ready for other eyes. So nothing was perfect. Every part of it wasn’t good enough, fix it, FIX IT, I know you can do better so stop acting like THIS is the best you can accomplish. Come on, pick yourself up and do it right this time. And I tortured myself with that. To this day I cannot look at my draft without thinking of all the mistakes I made, what needed to be improved, what still needs to be improved, and after I’ve grown more and gotten diagnosed and met with people who have been published — met publishers — I know that I can’t trust myself enough to let this become a career. Do you know how hard writing this post has been? Did you know it’s taken me two days? Did you know how long I leave my posts in the drafts for, rereading, rereading, rereading, making sure there’s no chance this can be fucked up in any way, that it is totally within my control? I cannot become a professional writer. It’s my disability.

so, you know. rock make stick hit hard on head, cock make dick real hard in bed

⌛ How long does it take you to write a fic, or a chapter?

A lustrum.

🤯 What's a genre you struggle with as a writer (ex. romance, action, etc.)?

B-plots! I kind of get regular plotting, in that I know how to build and resolve tension, but I am so bad at finding other things for the characters to DO in order to take a break from the main plot. I already worked so hard to make a main plot, you want me to do another one??? To say what? I did everything I wanted to, I tied it all in a neat bow, if the readers want a break from the main tension why can’t they just tab out

💔 Is there a fic of yours that broke your heart?

I love trans Vox, but in order for him to be in character he has to hate being trans. I’m really used to writing about trans joy, for my own health and for everyone else’s, so writing a character that wishes they weren’t trans is really sad.

💥 How do you feel about criticism?

I actually love criticism. Your work can only get better through education, and one of the easiest ways to get education is by having another person read your work and tell you something about it you didn’t know. I need other perspectives because my own perception of my writing is exhaustive and exhausting: I feel like I’ve done everything I can to improve my work and I am so tired of looking at it that I need a fresh pair of eyes to show me something I’d not found. Getting better is always something to strive for; and even in mean comments it is entirely possible to find the thread of a lesson. More often than not it’s a threat of a lesson, but personally, I take what I can get. Criticism is something I find easy to receive because I can turn it into something productive, either “okay, this is something I need to improve upon, let’s do that” or “this is so clearly in bad faith it is costing me nothing to ignore it”. It’s something I can easily take control of. It’s positive comments that feel like apple-bobbing in a tub full of syringes.

🤭 Do you have a favorite tag to use when posting your works?

#Psychological Horror immediately followed by #Eventual Smut. One of my favourite tag jokes I’ve written is #falling in love, #unrequited love, #friends to enemies, #on-again off-again relationship, #don’t date your coworkers holy shit don’t do it. And you really can’t go wrong with Cold Bodies’

🥰 How do you feel about reader interaction? Are you open to receiving questions about your fics?

I suppose I’m kind of asking for it at this point.

I’ve left this one for last so it will have the best dramatic impact. Thank you, heartily, for sorting through that much shit!! I hope this is a worthwhile reward for your efforts.

🤲 Would you please share a snippet of a wip?

The shadows lengthen. The room is small, bereft of light; the darkness has plenty of recesses to establish itself within. His chest distends and recedes with a languid, heavy pulse: good. He will not wake. He dares not take a step. He contorts with the gloaming, letting it carry his weight like waves on the wine-dark sea. Ink creeping along the fractal contours of incautious skin, on paper pulp. The blanket is drawn too far up his shoulder, but his hands have wisely ventured away from its grasp. He has nestled them close to his face: the right palm faces the ceiling. His overgrown claws, weightless, curl around the soundless air. The cuffs of his shirt have drawn back to reveal the skin on his left wrist.  He casts a faint but adequate illumination. Regrettably — he discovers — he has not flesh but casing. Whether it be titanium or catalin, it protects the veins underneath. What seams it must possess, he cannot access at present. He cannot smell his blood. Only the hot hiss of his breath, of bertholite and alkaloids. Experience has had the good grace to train him to anticipate the worst-case scenario. Thus, he suspects his knife would dent upon contact with his skin. This would likely require blunt force, something messy and more out of his weight class. Which is unideal: his own strength is formidable, naturally, but imprecise. And somewhat unsubtle. He sees the power buzzing underneath his grip. A live wire ready to snatch at the first hint of energy, snapping, sparking, antsy and unfulfilled. He likely isn’t trained enough to feel it himself, but again, the danger is too tangible to risk tripping over it. Were he more experienced, older, had experimented enough to test his limits, it would be a safer estimate; but as he is now, untapped and spring-loaded — fisticuffs would result in a significantly less assured victory. It is not a lack of confidence. It is simply a risky bet he does not want to get caught foolishly trusting himself with. That is smarts, not sheepishness. He does not hiss aloud. Nor does he retreat: he takes stock. The room offers little relevant information. His possessions are scarce, no letter drafts upon the writing desk, no bandages or weapons. His wallet is useless. He’s laid out nicotine patches and topical creams upon his toilet table: an invasome, it seems, may be a possibility. Unfortunately, he would have to synthesize it himself. He despises inconclusiveness. He returns his gaze to the picture box, his screen dim and vacuous.  Loathed as he is to admit, this may be a somewhat longer project than he had initially envisioned. More’s the pity — what a spectacular send-off he would have been able to provide! Keep your chin up, now, old boy. This was hardly a trip for biscuits. It was, however, strike two.

[buryam-soul]

Comment Fest - Final Count and Fic List!

IT’S LOVING FIC WRITERS HOURS AND BY HOURS I MEAN DAYS!

Thank you so much to @justleaveacommentfest for this wonderful event, you gave me the courage to do what I always wanted to. My total is: 29 comments! I didn’t have a goal in mind coming in to this, but that’s a big jump from zero!

Also I caved and finally made an AO3 account thanks to this event and I’ve been using it to unleash my adoration of fics onto unsuspecting authors! If you see an Angkasa_Biru in the wild.... That's me! (I didn't know how to bring this up when I commented on my mutuals' fics haha hi guys)

As for the rest of this long post, I’ve been keeping it in my drafts and updating daily. Here are all the fics I commented on in chronological order! Fandoms you can find here are:

Precure (5 fics)

Genshin Impact (10 fics) (Mostly Cyno/Alhaitham, a few of them platonic)

Drawtectives (2 fics)

Aurora (3 fics)

Avatar the Last Airbender (1 series with 9 parts so far).

There’s 2 Genshin smut fics but I label them as NSFW, proceed with caution!

Day 1: Old Fics/New Fics

Total: 3 comments

Because of timezone shenanigans, I was one of the lucky bunch who still had AO3 working for the earlier half of the day! I was planning to unwind after errands later that day with some more fics but then... the site's down. RIP.

Cold Bug by discordiansamba

Happiness Charge Precure | Iona

Old Fic (August 2017)

A sweet and cute Iona sickfic featuring her friends visiting her at different times. It’s a nice warm hug of a fic!

Late Night Revelation by Ereana

Genshin Impact | Alhaitham/Cyno

New Fic (9 July 2023)

Sleepy and soft conversation between the Acting Grand Sage and the General Mahamatra as they work overtime together. I might have squealed at the end of chapter one.

Be Brave! What it Takes to be a Cure by AlmondTofuChan

Hirogaru Sky Precure | Tsubasa & Ageha

New(ish?) Fic (20 June 2023)

Post-episode15 Tsubasa hurt/comfort that reads very much like a canon episode. It’s nice and sweet, focusing on mainly Ageha and Tsubasa, and the characterizations feel on point!

Day 2: (oops no reading)

Total: -

Site down for the rest of the day. RIP

Day 3: <2k Words and AUs

Total: 13 comments

Praise be! AO3 is back up. I went a little insane to compensate for yesterday and possibly maybe to avoid my chores. Whoops.

A speculative analysis of how bad you want me by desertbloom

Genshin Impact | Alhaitham/Cyno

(does not follow today’s theme. but it’s the first thing i saw opening the tag today and it’s nice, of course i commented)

The conceit is simple but interesting - trap these two in a room that can only be unlocked if each tells a lie and the other believes it. The banter that results is an absolute blast, and that ending took me out.

Work in Progress by echoelbo

Genshin Impact | Alhaitham/Cyno

<2k Words (1,135)

Fake dating because Alhaitham wants to get in trouble and be demoted. Comedic with a pinch of sweetness.

kintsugi series by discordian samba

Avatar the Last Airbender | Toph & Zuko

AU (Canon Divergence)

ONE OF MY FAVORITE SERIES OF ALL TIME! A fantastic AU wherein Zuko was banished instead of sent to search for the Avatar, and ended up meeting Toph years earlier and working for her family now. It’s such a fun and good time, the OCs feel very grounded to the setting, the worldbuilding feels like a natural extension of canon, and it oozes with found family energy.

Note: I left 3 comments here today. 2 on each chapter of of earth and fire and 1 on those left behind.

you’re so good at herbal tea, getting enough sleep by arospacecase

Drawtectives | Rosé & Jancy True

<2k Words (533)

Short and sweet written version of Ros��’s memory from S2E9 of her birthday with Jancy. 

Three Drawtectives in a Bed by Shadowmatic

Drawtectives | Grendan Highforge & Gyorik Rogdul & Rosé

<2k Words (654)

Post S1, the trio sharing a bed for the first time. Nice and cute!

Kuru Kururun! by CureKururun

Tropical Rouge Precure | Kururun

<2k Words (100)

Obligatory Kururun shitpost fic; this is the first fic I ever reblogged on tumblr, so I must show some respect. Kururun is love, Kururun is life.

A Flash of Violet by twilightstarr

Genshin Impact | Alhaitham/Cyno

<2k Words (1,281) and AU (Canon Divergence)

AU where the Traveler wasn’t involved in Alhaitham’s Story Quest-- so Cyno comes to the rescue during that last bit of combat. Featuring sexual tension and flirting in an obscure language because they’re nerds (affectionate). Ties in with Te Diligo mentioned below, but it could be read as a standalone, I think!

Baby Mine by Coffeewolf67

Aurora | Falst & Kendal

<2k Words (1,350)

A warm, comforting story about Falst soothing Kendal after a nightmare with a lullaby his mother used to sing.

Love does nothing by Linear_Aztec

Aurora | Erin/Void Dragon, slight Erin/Falst

<2k Words (1,225)

VD and Erin get "married" with Falst as the officiant. It's crack. It's silly. It's amazing and fun.

What the Desert Remembers by ghostrobin

Genshin Impact | Alhaitham/Cyno

AU

An absolutely amazing 17k word experience. It’s a long journey to the desert and a long journey of Alhaitham (and the readers) discovering what Cyno even is and what his goals are.

show me your teeth by spiralpegasus

Genshin Impact | Alhaitham/Cyno

Omegaverse AU | NSFW 

Comfort fic!! The build up is fun, the smut makes me go feral, and the sweetness has my heart in a chokehold. The characterization and worldbuilding intertwining feels very natural-- of course Alhaitham would take a full week off even if his heats usually only last a few days, that’s so like him.

Day 4: Platonic/Rarepair

Total: 5 comments

Hit a snag in the middle of the day because of personal stuff, sadly. BUT NO EXCUSES JUST RESULTS

scenery along that widened road by halcyonine

Genshin Impact | Alhaitham/Cyno, Alhaitham & Kaveh

AU - Canon Divergence (was going to reread for yesterday but whoops)

The worldbuilding is amazing, intertwining mundane and strange aspects of Sumeru. The fake dating to real feelings pipeline is wonderful, especially written in Alhaitham's POV with his (over)thinking about everything. And the way it plays with canon is such a treat!!

Cortisol rising by Anonymous

Genshin Impact | Alhaitham & Cyno, Alhaitham & Kaveh, Kaveh & Cyno

Platonic

In which Alhaitham is stressed by the Acting Grand Sage position, an argument with Kaveh sends him to sensory overload, and Cyno arrives just in time to help him ground himself. (And no Kaveh is not treated as malicious, they do very well balancing his frustrating side and the understandable reasons why he’s pissed.)

Accismus by Anonymous

Genshin Impact | Alhaitham & Cyno & Tighnari

Platonic

Alhaitham sick fic! As in he's in shambles and is also a difficult patient. But Tighnari persists and Cyno is there to help. The characterization feels on point even when our favorite Scribe is in tears from pain!

Stitch by Stitch by discordiansamba

Happiness Charge Precure | Iona & Phantom

Platonic

Post-canon bond-with-your-former-enemy time!! Featuring Iona teaching Phanphan how to knit. Comedic and sweet!

Last Name Basis by discordiansamba

Happiness Charge Precure | Iona/Seiji

Rarepair

Iona and Seiji continue to call the other by their last names despite the seven months of dating and Hime is having none of it. Hilarity ensues!

Day 5: free space

Total: 7 comments

Because of timezones, the “surprise flavor” has yet to be revealed, so I’m taking this as a free/themeless day! ...uh, but I had the itch to draw today, so it did take a while for me to actually get to reading. Whoops.

I guess I accidentally themed the day around multichapter?

Te Diligo by twilightstarr

Genshin Impact | Alhaitham/Cyno

(NSFW)

Rivals to friends to benefits to queerplatonic partners...!! It starts with Alhaitham flirting to ruin Cyno’s concentration in a spar, it spirals into electro-infused kissing and sexy times in the Grand Sage office. Featuring good boundary-setting, genuine friendship realizations, and a healthy dose of Cyno jokes! Another of my comfort fics, queerplatonic cytham is everything to me

I left 2 comments, on chapters 1 and 2.

Tahraim Adopts a Feral Storm God by Sandpaper on Strings.

Aurora | Tahraim & Tynan, Tahraim & Caliban

(Spoilers for Aurora Chapter 18/Tynan arc aftermath!)

Tahraim’s new project -- character development for Tynan! Very, very fun dynamic and a solid understanding and interpretation of Tahraim’s character.

I left 3 comments, on chapters 1 - 3.

I also left 2 comments, one on each chapter of in which acting and lying are the same thing, really, part of the kintsugi series that I listed on Day 3!

Day 6: Try Something New!

Total: 1 comment

"...what happened?" You may ask. Uh. Drawing. Drawing happened. Just as I thought I wasn't even going to read anything today, Te Diligo updated! So I left a comment on the new chapter (and rambled in the tags of my reblog for good measure). Not on theme, but hey, no excuses just results!

.

In closing: wow leaving comments is fun actually. I was expecting to get through one or two days and then falter but barring the AO3 shutdown, there were no zero-comment days! Looking forward to the next time the comment fest comes around ^^