#mush i tell you

[potterandpromises]

Penance Is Also Kneeling in a Bathtub

About two years ago I posted what would have been the prologue from a canon divergence fic I’d shelved, in which Flynn isn't arrested and reacts to Lucy's kidnapping. (It is not necessary to read that first, but nonetheless it can be found here.)

That was the only scene worth finishing, but @ununpredictableme suggested writing more fragments for that fic, and so I’ve been slowly and periodically working on this piece for (according to my notes) a year and a half. Enjoy the whumpy aftermath of the heroic rescue.

Content warnings: drugging, field surgery of sorts, general aftermath of violence/confinement, and so. much. blood.

Also on AO3

"I need a room.”

The young but clearly long-suffering motel desk clerk looks up from his phone. Fortunately, he isn't bothered by Flynn's disheveled appearance. If he was, Flynn would have to consider killing him, which he would like to avoid if at all possible.

“One bed?”

“Two.”

The other man taps away on an elderly keyboard. Flynn hands him 90 dollars, receives a keycard, and goes to retrieve Lucy from the bushes up the hill behind the building.

His black bomber jacket camouflages her at a distance. She could be a discarded carpet.

The hill erodes with every footfall. He slips, once, twice, three times, His graze wound packs with muck and tiny rock shards. He bites his cheek. Not urgent, but he’ll need to slow on the descent. He will not drop Lucy.

He unshrouds her, exposes her closed eyes, her blank face. He balls up the mudded garment and places it on her middle. She could be a corpse if she were a better actress. Elevated breathing and week throaty sounds give her away. They’re new; proof, maybe, that whatever they assaulted her with isn’t permanent or fatal, but rather an attempt at deception. They thought he’d do what is trained into his heart muscle and abandon what cannot be saved.

His lag stings like crazy and he struggles to carry her even as the ground evens out. It takes far longer then he’d like to reach the door. He balances her weight on his good side, fumbles with the keycard and prays to God no one sees them.

“You’re safe now Lucy.” It’s not true enough but it gets his point across.

He sets her down on the bed with a thud, tries to catch his breath, a plan. Her eyes are open. She stares at him, profoundly focused, her mouth agape like a fish inhaling water.

“Welcome back.” Relief rushes his lungs, and though it is canine and unnatural, he cracks a smile. “I need to check you for injuries, okay?”

She gives no indication of consent nor protest; because she can’t. Whatever they drugged her with must have made her muscles week. She cannot speak. Gravity weighs her head to the mattress. Flynn’s fingernails dig into his dirt-specked palms.

(Her own mother.)

If they wanted her dead, they wouldn’t have wasted a moment. If they wanted to kill her slowly? He can’t dwell on it. There are simpler, more cost effective ways to permanently fuck up a human body, namely with a large stick, which means it will wear off, and someday, somehow they’ll have justice. If justice is not possible, they’ll have revenge. She will have a future.

He should say something comforting, restate his intentions to give her the best chance at understanding him. But his mind is silent and it nauseates him to look at her like this. Everything is silent save her breathing and the cars passing a world away.

He runs his hands over her body, gently but firmly, palm flat. She tracks him with her gaze. If it hurts her, he can’t tell. But her bones rest at the correct angles and his fingers don’t sink into her flesh and blood does not spontaneously gush into her clothes. It’s enough. He notes an almost healed cut on her palm and numerous scratches on her arms. They’ll need to be cleaned but it can wait until she’s wholly conscious.

She gasps, heaves for air or speech. A moment of observation suggests she isn’t suffocating. Her eyes are wide into him and his stomach twists. He can’t help with this, not when he’s him.

He snatches his jacket off the bed and promptly leaves her.

With the bathroom door open, Flynn sits on the closed toilet seat and rolls up his pant leg. Clumps of dried mud plummet onto the yellow-gray laminate. Lucy’s already digging a trench in his mind’s eye, but for the first time in weeks, he feels like he has a minute. He takes in the burgundy walls and the stains on the celling. He’s glad he doesn’t have to— knock on wood— but this would be a good place to deal with a corpse.

He washes his leg in the tub and probes at it with soaped fingers. The wound is shallow. He assumed as much. It’s still bleeding, but it will heal with minimal intervention, because he said so.

He takes off his shirt. With his pocket knife, he cuts two strips and ties them around his leg.

The sink turns brown with his efforts to clean his jacket. He puts it on over what’s left of his shirt, lest Lucy misunderstand.

In his peripheral, she raises her right arm. Flynn yanks his pants up. “What’s wrong?”

Her arm drops. He stands over her and assesses. She turns her head, the effort viable, and stares into him. Her tongue squirms between her teeth. She manages a few incoherences. Their grip on her is breaking. At this rate, it’ll wear off before sunrise.

“I did enough damage.” Satisfaction brims his tone. “They won’t be able to regroup tonight. You can save your strength.”

She half screams, half sobs. There are so many reasons for it: grief, hatred, frustration, fear. He can’t guess which scorched through her throat. Regardless, "I can’t help you anymore.” To his own ears, his voice is non-threatening, and incapable. “You just have to wait for it to wear off, then we’ll talk.”

“Flynn.” Her face is wet. It comes out raspy, and he wonders if she’s spent a long time screaming.

“I’m here,” he ventures, and squeezes her hand. She tries to pull away. The movement isn’t right and he drops her hand like it burns him.

“I need you to” —she coughs and sputters: “take it out.”

He frowns down at her. “I don’t understand.”

“Look.” Her eye contact is vehement, despite the tears. He doesn’t know what to make of her fervor, so he waits. “Look,” she repeats, “on my back... my shoulder.”

As gently as possible (it isn’t very possible), he flips her onto her back. His fingers brush strands of dark hair, her cheek, her nose, as he makes sure the pillow doesn’t smother her.

He pulls her loose-fitting shirt as high as it will go. She isn’t wearing a bra, and there’s a small raised scab on her shoulder blade. Like with her arms, much of the surrounding skin is raked with half-healed scratches. “I’m going to touch that bump now, Lucy.”

To his surprise, she does not flinch.

And the blood does not drain from his face. Lucy needs him to be calm for this. He will not fail that. He will not fail her.

The lump under his index finger isn’t hers. It isn’t human. He probes the capsule from all directions, desperately hopes he’s wrong, confirms it.

“They’re tracking us?” He has to ask, cannot assume, keeps his tone flat.

Her head squirms in a way that resembles a nod.

“Lucy?”

“Yes.” She sounds so week, so unlike herself. “They... yeah.”

“Okay.” He repeats: “okay.”

It’s not okay. Things will not be okay, between them at least. Rittenhouse made sure of that.

He stumbles to the bathroom. The man in the mirror doesn’t recognize him. He washes his hands until they don’t shake. He washes his pocket knife, grabs a hand towel, joins Lucy on the bed.

He tries to ignore everything outside of his task: her fingers grasped into the bedsheets, his heightened breath, the fact that this body belongs to her.

“I don’t care if you cry.” He sits on her lower back, doesn’t want to crush her, redistributes his weight to his knees. “But don’t scream.”

The knife isn’t sharp enough. Her cry is muffled, he thinks deliberately. He checks again that he isn’t suffocating her.

Flynn wipes the blood away, creates a red dot on the towel. Not too big— he hasn’t hit anything important, of course that’s also the problem. He probes the fresh cut, first with his fingers then with the knife. He was off, he realizes, he’ll have to make a second cut. That needed stillness washes through his bloodstream again and he gets to work.

She’s quiet now, still breathing.

The device is small. He sew prototypes for something similar when he worked with the NSA. Flynn presses the towel to the bloody area and leaves it there. He stands up and leaves her there.

Before he can meet the inviting metal door, he has to scrub her blood off his hands, lest the good people of Wal-mart call the cops. He rinses the chip, too.

She’s crying again. He tries to ignore it, tries not to look at the figure on the bed. He left her shirt pulled up to her shoulders, it’s dehumanizing. He can’t fix it, not without feeling more then he can hide. Besides, the monster can’t comfort it’s victim, that would be wrong.

Tight in his fist, the rounded tip of the microchip digs into the callus under his wedding band. The night’s chill fills his lungs, gets through to him, shivers his shoulders. He quickens against it, embodies his role as an everyday man crossing an intersection for normal reasons at midnight.

Given the on-fire status of Rittenhouse’s woodland mansion, there’s probably no one to track the chip right now. Of course, he’s underestimated them before. Emma told them what she knew of his plan ahead of time. It’s entirely possible they have someone in a separate location, and it’s entirely possible their tech is at least as good at finding people as a damn smart phone. It may be that none of his efforts matter. It may be be that they see the half hour stop at the motel, suspect what he did, and kill everyone in that building.

He’s going to kill Emma.

To throw them off, the chip should cover as much ground as possible. They don’t have time for this. He put a knife in Lucy’s back and left her to bleed; quite the team.

In the parking lot, no one takes him as abnormal. There’s a man in a suit slouched against a full cart, speaking loudly and frustratedly into his phone. Flynn opens his palm over one of the man’s grocery bags as he enters the store.

He blinks. There’s a basket in his hand. He’s between two clothing racks and someone is staring at him.

He spins around. She steps back, frightful, lifts her basket as if it were a shield. Guilt aligns his lips into what he desperately hopes is a placative smile. She looks, horribly, like his mother did before Gabriel died, although she’s at least two decades older.

“Are you alright sir?”

The fact she doesn’t walk briskly away like she should startles him. So, at least to her, he reads as a little kooky and a little in need; good to know.

“Yes.” His own voice is unfamiliar, raw and deceitful. “I’m, ah, buying for a friend in the hospital. I’m not sure what she’d like”  —he gestures at a random clothing rack and gets lucky with T-shirts— “and these sizes are something else.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” It’s too odd, too earnest to be recognized as a lie, apparently. Her gaze flicks to his ruined pant lag. Not for the first time, based on her lack of surprise. He’d forgotten. At the reminder, the wound stings again, the physical equivalent of a bell ringing.

“Loose clothing would be comfortable.” 

It takes an abysmally long time to contextualize the words. “Right, thank you.”

She smiles, warm and sympathetic. The fear and suspicion behind her eyes has dissolved entirely. Perhaps she thinks she knows the sort of relationship he has, or the disorder that comes with a night like this. Whatever her reason, it’s... pleasant.

“Good luck.” With that, she walks away.

That could have been worse. He managed not to hurt or somehow fail her, like he does half the people he interacts with. He doesn’t think she’ll call the cops, either. Everything is just fine, will be fine.

He picks out a couple shirts and pairs of laggings for Lucy, and a pair of respectable, non-ripped, non-blood stained khakis for himself, as well as a new shirt. Also, a hoodie for Lucy. It’s chilly outside and besides, from now on they should try and avoid being seen by the cameras Rittenhouse, Google, and various governments use to surveille the public.

With his head a little clearer, Flynn puts together a mental list: multiple boxes of snack bars, bottled water, a first aid kit, a small sewing kit, and a tube of skin glue, so all his bases are covered. Vague notations of scurvy cross his mind. He adds a few oranges and a backpack to carry it all.

What he can easily conceal, he does, and pays for the rest with the money he tucked into his belt clip before the mission, in case of a situation like this.

Outside the motel, an old man smokes a cigarette and a teenage girl encourages a small dog to do it’s business, The door to their room is still locked and intact. Hope bubbles in his chest. They could still get away with it all.

Lucy isn’t on the bed. There’s blood stains on the carpet, like a corpse was dragged. An inhuman whine leaks out of him. He finds her in agonizing seconds, slumped against the wall at the end of her trail, previously concealed by the open door. He swallows his relief. Their eyes meet. If looks could kill, well, she wouldn’t need him.

He fights his own smile. She regained enough strength to drag herself across the room. She’s going to be okay.

(It occurs to him she was trying to escape. He tucks the thought away for some less hectic night.)

(It hurts.)

“Hey.” What else is there to say? “I brought us some food and clean clothes.”

This news is of little consolation to her. Her eyes shift to his backpack; could be a roast dinner, could be a loaded pistol. He can’t tell if she wants to cry or yell or both.

He steps closer. There’s blood on her fingers, balled into fists. Her dark T-shirt clings to her shoulders. His stomach turns. She must have twisted, rolled herself onto the floor, dug at the depth of the wound, tried to stop the bleeding.

They could have made due tonight, for another couple of hours at least. He shouldn’t have left her alone. He’s not that much of a coward.

(But Rittenhouse, Rittenhouse, Rittenhouse.)

“Is the drug wearing off?” He already knows the answer.

“Yes.” Her voice is scraped raw. “It’s happened before.”

Flynn sucks in a breath. He’s going to kill them all.

She coughs and it reverberates throughout her body. Even with the help of the wall— he suspects she couldn’t sit up without it— she leans precariously to one side. He makes for her space, half a step. At her injured coyote glare, he stops himself.

“Do you need help?”

“No.” There’s a huff to her response, as if the mere suggestion he could possibly help her is absurd.

She may be right, but they’re the only ones left.

What he does tonight is going to matter for the rest of their alliance. Longer, if he gives himself the credit. He understands that, so maybe the quest isn’t hopeless.

“How about just a hand?”

Just as light envelops a room, anger lines every part of her face. It tightens her fists and shines her dark eyes.

So, he waits; smooths out his jacket, gets dry mud on his palms, and tries to present indifference. People who don’t care aren’t a threat.

It’s his turn to squirm under her judgement, to flick his tongue. He shifts side to side, but holds her gaze. Of course she doesn’t want him to touch her, but Rittenhouse took their choices, mutilated and murdered them. Lucy tried, but she couldn’t end that.

He chances a step forwards, holds out a hand. She takes it. Her fingers ink him with her blood he caused, and he gives half his attention to that. Somehow it feels respectful.

“What happens now?” She missteps and loses her balance. Flynn grips her tight, too tight. Like a miracle, she does not pull away. Their eyes meet and her fury is dim. She’s just a wrack.

“Water, for a start,” he says. “No future without it.”

Still balanced by him, but instead with her own hands on his arm, she achieves a skeptical look.

“I can walk you to the bed and bring you some?”

“I can walk myself.”

“Not well.”

At her scowl, he smiles ruefully. Will she ever be able to trust him again? It’s not a thought he can afford to indulge. He can live without forgiveness.

He’ll need to work, anyway, be intentional.

They make it to the bed. He gets her a water bottle and undoes the cap. She takes it in both hands, drinks.

“I’m sorry.”

Her gaze snaps to his. Apologies are suspect coming from him, he understands, but when he doesn’t pull out a gun and shoot her in the face, the adrenaline fades. She looks down, crinkles the near empty plastic between her palms.

“I bought a first aid kit.” She looks up with an indignant, tired glare, not fear; a good sign. “And glue.”

There it is: the face of abject horror. Just great. “It’s perfectly safe,” he reassures her, “doctors use it all the time.”

“But are you a doctor?”

“Clearly not,” Flynn says, against his non-existent better judgement. “Hippocratic Oath and all that.”

If it’s an olive branch, it lies broken on the ground, it’s carrier in the ditch being eaten by scavengers. Violence haunts the air between them. They stare at each other and he kneels, surprises himself and her. It’s instinct, almost involuntary, please.

“I promise I’m done hurting you.”

Tears prick her eyes. She looks away and he loses hope, because when has she ever turned away from him? Even surrounded by fire they stared at each other.

“What if...” He rubs his temple. He’ll find them a path forward. He will. “What if I were to clean and bandage your wound in front of the mirror in the bathroom?”

She turns back and there’s a rightness in being eye level. Water lingers on her cheek. Her mouth is a thin line. “I’m listening.”

“You could see what I’m doing before I actually do it.” He holds up both hands, as if his body isn’t a weapon to her. “No sudden movements.”

Her own movements give away only her searching his body, his face. For what exactly he could not guess. He wishes for her to find it, tries to pry himself wide and sincere, does not say there isn’t another option.

She nods once, a soldier’s nod. He offers his arm as a mobility aid. She squeezes his forearm as they hobble across the room, tests her own strength.

“It’s not like I didn’t ask you to do it.” He busies himself in the logistics of this wound tending, thinks only of the word bathtub. “I’ll get over it.”

Their gazes meet in the mirror. Flynn did not give his eyes permission. She blinks, looks vaguely towards the floor.

It’s not like someone can just decide not to be affected by something like this. He learned that years ago in therapy. Still, if she decides they’ll work together, they will. He feels no joy at the thought, just pressure lifting off his organs. Tonight it’s enough. 

“Sit here. You should be able to see.”

She sits on the corner of the tub and leans into the wall, exhausted. “You feel stable? not like you’re about to fall over?”

“I’m fine.” It’s a silly thing to say, they both know it.

He turns to get the supplies. “Wait, what are you going to do?”

In the doorway, he pauses, wonders himself. “Clean it, for a start. I don’t know what else yet.” He takes the first aid kit out of the bag, wonders if he’ll be able to keep his hands steady. “Of course it’s not just my decision.”

She looks far too helpless— although he approves of her conserving energy, God knows she’ll need it in the coming days— but her eyes are hard. It’s a combination he’s seen in many bodies before. From her, it’s a sign she has become, will become, or has the will to become whatever is needed to stop Rittenhouse. That’s the only way they can win, the only way forwards. So why’s his throat so tight?

“The water might not warm up.”  

Right, he feels bad for her.

“It’s fine.”

She’s curled in on herself, shoulders shaking, arms pressed stiff to her sides.  

The washcloth is cold in his palm. It drips onto the floor, slow like blood. Fuck.  

“It’s—” she hisses. He forgot to hide his face. “I’m not scared of you.”

It’s his stomach lurching. It’s her face growing red. “It’s the drug,” she says, breathes hard through her mouth. “This happens every time it wears off.”

He nods and anger settles into his core. It’s familiar, almost like having friends.

She presses her elbows into her ribs. It must hurt.

“Where are you going to stand?” she asks.

“In the tub.”

He controls every movement, every step, the way his breathes come as he gets behind her. He sets the kit down on the tub’s opposite corner, watches her watch him in the mirror, sees himself swallow.

Her shirt clings to the whole of her back.

(What has he done?)

“Would you lift your shirt up?”

She drags it up, the fabric reluctant, and reveals blood streaked skin.

It sticks just below the wound sight. “Do you mind if I—“

“Go ahead.”

Carefully, he pinches the fabric, a little stiff already, and exposes this thing he’s done.

It always looks like more then it is, he knows that. But her shoulder blade is covered in blood, as is most of her back. It streamed down and stained the curve of her spine. It’s wet and shiny in places, dry and caked in others. The wound is partly clotted, at least. He can probably take his time. He blinks at it, at her. “Flynn?”

“Can you hand me a piece of gauze from the first aid kit?” The rag slowly warms in his one hand, like antarctica melting, and he still holds her bloody shirt up in the other. Hers still shakes as she reaches across the rim of the tub. “This will probably sting.”

“Wait.”

He lets go, lets her shirt fall to her sides. She hands him the gauze and he crinkles, crushes the packet in his fist, presses his fingernails into his palm between tendons. He can’t kill the sight tremble, but she’s busy and doesn’t notice.

It takes him longer then it should to realize what she’s doing. For a split second, he considers making a joke about women undressing in front of him. He averts his gaze Instead, and faces the shower head, clumsy in the small space.

“Okay.”

She clutches the ruined fabric to her breasts.  

In the mirror, Flynn catches himself from the corner of his eye, doesn’t look too hard, resembles an abusive husband. The thought is half silly. Whatever this is, whatever it will be, it isn’t a marriage.

He kneels, comes down too hard on his bad leg, stifles a groan. “Flynn?”

“It’s alright.” She twists around to get a better look at him. "You can still see me, can’t you?”

Although weary, her eyes are bright, curious, concerned. They flick down. He reaches, means to press on her wound, thinks better.

He drapes the wet cloth over her free arm. She blinks at it, detached. It’s almost cute, how she’s almost amused.

“We have limited resources,” a point that needs no reminder, “and we’re about to get that rag dirty.”

She shakes her head. “What do you want from me?”

He grimaces, wants inexplicably to lie to her again, brushes it off and reaches out, palm up. 

“You were lying on the ground.” Something passes briefly over her face, pain or fear, not because of him. “Those scratches should be cleaned.” History, the world, all that they’ve been through and will go through and the sunlight she’s stood in is in her face, and something stirs within him again. “Let me.”

She shrugs. He washes her arm as gently as is practical, with a bar of motel soap that doesn’t lather. To her, it’s clearly not worthwhile, but she switches the hand that holds her modesty at his look.

The shadow of a smile presses his lips; quite the team.

She still bleeds when she moves. He still needs to make it stop.

He rinses the cloth thoroughly under the tap, soaks his pants and his makeshift bandage, rubs more five cent soap into the rag.

“Okay?”

In the mirror, she nods. She observes him as if he has nothing to do with her.

He presses firmly on her wound, accidentally pushes her forwards. 

She inhales sharply. He pulls away, takes the cloth with him. Fresh blood trickles from her wound.

“Sorry.” His voice is calm, apologetic. Two drops flow in front of him down her back. His girls' blood is in front of him. She finds his gaze in the mirror and he doesn’t like the way it interests her. “I didn’t account for your lack of strength. I’ll be gentler.”

She scoffs. His frown deepens. “I wasn’t quite ready."

She straightens and stiffens her posture. As lightly as possible, he cleans the blood off her unbroken skin and the pink lines that divide it. He shifts more weight to his good leg to give his bad one a break from the excruciating surface, which makes that knee ache insistently even as it helps.

He murmurs a warning, and Lucy doesn’t cry out as he wipes away the old blood from his work. He’d prefer she did. In the mirror she bites her lip hard.

He considers reminding her of what he said before, how it’s okay to cry, but her moving would make this next part difficult, so he doesn’t.

He’s glad for the bruise he���ll have in the morning.

“Lean back a little.”

He rips open the gauze packet, lets the wrapper fall at his knees, presses the square into the wound with two fingers, and loses his balance.

Lucy jerks forwards. He fails to suppress his groan but catches himself with one hand.

“I was trying to get more pressure on the wound.” She’s twisted to look at him, alarmed... worried. He rights himself, sits on his legs.

“At least we have more of these.” He holds up the soaked gauze, half red, half pink.

“Are you okay?”

He lets her question, so sincere, hang in the air a moment too long. “Are you?” he says.

She scoffs again. It wasn’t a joke but it might as well have been, and he laughs a little, too.

“You’re still bleeding.” He says it so softly, so easily like he didn’t rip something from her body. He rips open a new packet and replaces the gauze, holds it to her shoulder blade. “I thought pressure alone might stop it but...”

“You and your glue.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

She reaches across the tub, plucks the tube of glue from behind the kit and hands it to him. He hands it right back. “You should read the instructions first, see it isn’t that bad.”  

“I don’t really...”

“You don’t what?”

“... like to think about that sort of thing. The inside part.”

Despite the pain, he raises himself onto his knees, enough to meet her eyes in the mirror. He lifts his eyebrows.

She looks away, maybe embarrassed, sort of annoyed, almost smiling.

He chuckles. It feels sociopathic.

“We don’t have to do this,” he says. She still trembles, not as hard as when she first sat down. It’s cause could almost be mistaken for lack of food. “It’ll close on it’s own eventually, I just don’t want you bleeding through your new shirt.” Not to mention the scar.

“Whatever.” She runs her free hand through her hair. “I just want this to be over.”

“Is that a yes to the glue?”

She sighs, and Flynn’s struck with the realization that he doesn’t know her as well as he assumed. “It’s me telling you to do what needs to be done.”

“Okay then.”

She sits up straight, braces herself. The gauze dampens against his fingertips. He takes the glue from her, reads the instructions twice.

He’s ready.

Her resolve is cracking.

“It’s okay if you need a break.”

She shakes her head. Her face scrunches with unlet tears and she looks down into her lap, crosses her other arm over her chest and holds herself close. “Wyatt and Rufus are dead.”

“I’m sorry Lucy.”

She shudders, so different from the shaking the drug dealt, and a sob catches in her throat. “So it’s true then.”

“I did read about it, yes.” he confirms her agony. “It was an explosion at Mason Industries the same night they took you. Their own doing, obviously.”

“They showed me a newspaper.” He aches in a way he hasn’t in years, not for a living person. “Part of me thought that maybe it was fake.”

“Do you want...” He gets up on his knees, sets the glue down. She turns and they’re eye level. Her eyes shine. The words almost kill him but there’s no one else here and it’s what he’d wanted. “Do you want me to hug you?”

She nods, sniffles.

It’s an incredibly delicate arrangement. He keeps one hand on the gauze, she keeps a forearm pressed over the cloth on her breasts, and they twist to meet each other.

The fact she’s half naked registers too late.

She squeezes him hard with her free arm, a tiny act of revenge or just desperation for contact he can’t know. His own free hand finds the middle of her back and rests there, featherlight.

This might never happen again. He tells himself to enjoy it. He does.

The angle demands they part, so do his knees and the sting of his wound, but he waits until she’s ready.

He stands, still with one hand on the gauze, and tries to remember how he would have handled her grief three years ago. All he can think of is infection, all he remembers is fever.

“What is that?” She reaches out to touch his leg.

“Nothing to worry about.” He lets go of her for the first time in many minutes, turns on the tub faucet, soaks his shoes, scrubs his hands. In his peripheral, the bloody square plummets into uselessness.

Flynn dries his hands, reaches to dry her back of the blood droplets.

“What happened to your leg?”

“Ah.” His mind is empty of clever retorts. He’s left with mere honesty. “Minor gunshot wound— just a graze.”

She is, once again, thoroughly horrified. Clearly, he is not very good at reassurances.

Although her concern boggles his mind with the unfairness of it all, he is not that much of a hypocrite. He lets her fingers brush the edges of the ripped fabric.

“Just for you, I’ll cover it with a thick coat of glue.” Her light touch, something he’s never felt before, sends sparks into his core, nearly burns. “But, one thing at a time?”

She nods, releases him.

Flynn picks up the glue. He kneels and the ache growls within him. He welcomes it with a barely hidden grimace and a slight smile towards Lucy.

“That doesn’t hurt?”

“Not more then standing,” he lies, and half regrets both the lie and the position.

Lucy turns and straightens herself. The edges of her skin come a little closer together, even as blood leaks out. Flynn wipes it away. He covers that first regretful slice with a layer of glue, more comes out then he intends. With the second, deeper gash, it’s needed. “If I were a doctor, I’d tell you to sue me or at least file a complaint.”

She doesn’t respond. In the mirror her eyes are closed. It could be wishful thinking that he’d recognize it if she were on the verge of panic, but she looks restful. She’s fought alone for weeks and if there’s an end in sight to this war, they’re on the losing side of it. The tail end of this awful experience could be her last moment of relative peace for God knows how long.

She opens her eyes. “Where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know.” He gives each cut a second layer. “My plan went to shit, Emma—”

“I know.”

He pauses, hand outstretched for the first aid kit.

She hugs the cloth closer to her chest, looks away from the mirror. “I couldn’t move, I couldn’t open my eyes, but I was awake the whole time.”

“Oh.”

Perhaps he should apologize for nearly dropping her several times.

Instead he lets the information hang in the air, lets himself imagine doing violent things to her mother and Emma and all the Rittenhouse members he saw but didn’t get a chance to shoot; and he places a protective bandage over her wound.

He does not let himself imagine how she felt: the fear and powerlessness and uncertainty. He thinks of a way out.

“I can call in some favors to get us out of the country while we regroup and find some allies, but there’s no telling what Rittenhouse will do with the Mothership in the meantime.”

"Agent Christopher,” Lucy starts. That name is in the journal, with cryptic references to her wife and kids. He'd also googled her, of course. “She helped us, and her name wasn't listed among the dead.”

“Will she throw me in prison?”

She looks at him over her bare shoulder, clear-eyed and alive with hope. “Not if it’s the only way to stop Rittenhouse.”

“Okay, I trust you.” He stands and feels all the choices he’s ever made and not made in his knees and in his wound. In metaphor however, he hasn’t been this light and free since the morning they were set to meet, before he told her to check for a trail, before she didn’t answer when he called again. “We’ll make our way to her house in the morning.”

He exits the tub, retrieves the bag with her clothing. “I’ll leave the room while you finish cleaning yourself up, but,” —he holds up two shirts— “burgundy or black?”

“Burgundy.”

[to-be-a-dreamer]

Hello Newsies fandom, for your casual viewing pleasure (and because apparently some people think headcanoning the Jacobs family as Jewish is antisemitic), here is the exact passage from the official Newsies novel that states Davey is Jewish and Jack is Irish :D

It's not a headcanon, it's literally written in the source material and, even if it wasn't, this fandom has been headcanoning characters' ethnicities based on their names since 1992. They're street kids living in New York City in 1899, they're going to be a diverse group and the best thing we have to go on is their names. I know my group of mutuals headcanon at least two other characters as Jewish, somewhat if not entirely based on their names.

Like, I don't know how else to explain that headcanoning a character with a traditionally Jewish name isn't "stereotyping" it's literally just being like "oh hey, this whole family has really common Jewish names, it would be fun if they're Jewish" and then we all move on with our lives because it's also literally canon. Like, it would be bad if we were headcanoning a character as Jewish purely because they exhibit behaviors that are also associated with negative Jewish stereotypes but that's literally not what's happening here. Also I'm pretty sure it's mentioned in the non-dialogue parts of the script somewhere but I don't have access to that.

In conclusion, don't be weird about people headcanoning characters as minorities, it's not stereotyping it's literally just people existing.

(Also, I am not Jewish, so I do not at all claim to be any kind of authority on representation. If any Jewish bloggers want to weigh in I will happily read and be open to learning!)

[taruruchi]

I bet y'all didn't expect...

Spy X Family AU >:3 (Sort of)

Real ones would remember the context of this scene (/j the og scene and context are under the cut)

Anyway >:) Now it looks like they're actually in an anime HAHAHAHA You will definitely be seeing more of this in the future bc I am not Normal about them nor sxf 🫡

ORIGINAL SCENE + side by side comparison:

CONTEXT: Season 2, Episode 10 (I'm pretty sure)

Yor gets a little exhausted after her mission and spending the day enjoying the resort with Loid and Anya. She ends up falling asleep while walking somehow 😭😭 Anya joins in her sleepiness and Loid has to carry both his wife and his daughter now 👍 (I would've drawn that too but like. I should probably replace Anya, but with who?????)

[trustworthytoast]

The fact that proshot Mush has by far the straightest energy of all the Newsies is so funny to me

He looks like the biggest Chad

And probably everbody thinks of him as this one guy who gets every girl and never settles down

And then he casually mentions he has a partner

And then everybody's exited to meet this lucky girl who managed to make this player settle down

Just imagine their faces when he brings Blink with him

This boy with one missing eye and this darkness in his remaining one like he has seen a lot of bad stuff in his life

But they are just so cute together

Like so adorable it hurts

And everybody is just so baffled how the boy with the biggest Chad energy is so casually and confidentely so queer

[bidisastersanji]

Classic high school anime tropes ZoSan omigosh listen up this is so cute and I have so many tropes to hit I basically wrote down the beats of the season:

Unexpected mid semester half foreign transfer student Sanji with mysterious past

Zoro sits by the window at the back of the class and Sanji is told to sit next to him

Dropping the eraser and brushing hands oh my this new guy has the softest looking hair and his eyes are so blue

Your eye-

Huh?

Your eyebrows look stupid.

What did you say you stupid mosshead?

-Roronoa. Black. Stand outside. (With the buckets, staring daggers at each other)

Thus starts their rocky friendship (?) and they’re forced into interacting because they’re sat next to each other in class and constantly are paired to do class work together.

Sanji’s flirty and deferent nature around women- students and teachers alike (and his occasional nosebleeds) rub Zoro the wrong way, and Zoro’s disregard for women, hygiene, manners, the dress code/uniform etc annoy him even more.

He also hates how popular Zoro is and the amount of love confessions he gets and that he does not handle gracefully at all (you’re such a brute!)

Rivalry intensifies during sports class- episode where they go absolute ham during dodgeball and scream out attack names

Although it must be noted that Zoro feels warm when he sees Sanji stretching effortlessly, and being sweaty and fiery during sports class

Nami is elected class rep and Sanji vice class rep

The high school girls think Sanji is princely and mysterious and he quickly becomes popular thanks to his beautiful bento and the snacks he makes for his girl classmates

Zoro observes him and thinks he’s always putting on a mask and keeping people at arms length. He doesn’t let himself admit that he kind of feels bad for him but subtly drops comments that get Luffy interested in him so that Luffy can force him to join their rowdy friend group

They go to karaoke and the strawhat shenanigans slowly crack at Sanji’s composure until he’s singing loudly and happily with everyone else by the end of the evening

From then on Sanji’s smiles are more genuine and happy and Zoro is more than content with his little plan

Nami noticed and teases him about it

At least one scene where Nami steals Sanji or Zoro’s umbrella so that they share one and go home together (they learn they have to go in a similar direction and walk some of the way together from that day on “you’ll get lost without my help mossy, we know you already have too many lateness issues with the school)

Sanji joins so many clubs- he works really hard to be top of the class and does all the things that would get him into a top university- and it’s only after Zoro talks to him that he decides to follow his heart and join the cooking club and drop another club

He later gets his first part time job at the Baratie and gets basically adopted by his new father figure Zeff (Sora’s brother who he reconnected with)

He’s so excited to have some money of his own and gets a marimo keychain for Zoro’s birthday

Episode where Zoro gets sick (I thought idiots didn’t catch cold?) and as vice class rep (Nami makes an excuse not to go herself) he has to go give Zoro notes and stuff

Highly entertaining scene where he gets to Mihawk Manor and meets Zoro’s goth family

Followed by sweaty feverish Zoro in his bed that absolutely does not make his stomach flip flop and his hands sweaty (he brought homemade soup!)

Obligatory Zoro pushes himself too hard to prove he’s not sick/weak and passes out on Sanji and Perona walks in on an easily misunderstood position they’re in

BIG EXAM arc where everyone is stressed out, Sanji shares his notes and organises a study group at his place - revealing that he lives alone in a studio apartment, he glides over his explanation and says it has to to with the fact that he’s half and his French dad doesn’t live in Japan, and Sanji wanted to live here because his mother was Japanese. No one dares dig deeper but Zoro can tell there’s a lot more to the story, Sanji looks very tense and his fake smile is on (also there’s no family pictures at all)

Zoro falls asleep during the study group and Sanji definitely doesn’t think he’s adorable drooling on his tatami floors

Zoro is captain of the kendo club and has a very… intense fan club of people of all genders who guard him very jealously

Zoro interacting with Sanji constantly makes the fanclub jealous and some try to intimidate him and bully him into avoiding Zoro but he refuses to be pushed around until they find stuff about his past/family and blackmail him (this happens in a bathroom probably)

Zoro gets insanely annoyed that Sanji has been ignoring him- he then confronts Sanji about it- cue dramatic, tear filled scene where Sanji says hurtful things to push Zoro away

A few weeks pass until Nami and Usopp catch wind of what really happened and Zoro is FUMING with anger when he learns what happened. He confronts the head of the fan club and tells them to burn whatever it is they have on Sanji and to never go near him again, threatening them

Things eventually go back to normal

Zoro exasperating Sanji with his inability to not burn everything they’re supposed to make in home economics

Winter holidays and Sanji is lonely (but happy to spend Christmas with Zeff)

He is cheered up by his friends making plans to go to the new years festival in kimono (he wouldn’t miss Nami and Robin in kimono for the world! - he says , while also thinking of what Zoro will look like) zoro comes in normal clothes and he’s disappointed and insults him for not making an effort and what did he even expect from a sentient plant

Zoro keeps stealing looks at how beautiful Sanji looks in his kimono though. Nami tries to bribe him into revealing what luck/what prayer he did but he doesn’t cave, no matter how much of his debt she would wave off

Sanji gets “extremely bad luck” in love and cries haha

Valentine’s Day and White day shenanigans with obligation chocolates and homemade chocolates and Zoro feels sad cause he didn’t get any from Sanji- is even particularly jealous that Law, Pedro and Ace got some, but Sanji gave him something else since he knows he doesn’t like sweet things but Zoro didn’t realize it was a Valentine’s Day gift until Nami explains it to him later

Zoro struggles to find a gift for white day since he still can’t tell if it was obligation or romantic on Valentine’s Day - he gets Sanji a kitchen knife, to the hilarity of all and the panic of their teacher

The straw hats going to cheer on for Zoro at his kendo competitions and Sanji definitely doesn’t think to himself that Zoro looks very cool

Culture festival is ripe for SO MANY THINGS do they do a maid cafe??? Is Sanji forced into a maid dress by his burgeoning fan club/the girls in the class he can’t say no to? Sanji is so happy to bake the patisseries for it all (also Zoro’s reaction ti Sanji in the maid outfit and saying welcome goshunjin-sama before he sees who walked in and turns tomato red)

Alternatively they could do a play where they have to play the prince and the princess and we get Sanji as the beautiful princess, directed by Iva-Chan of course- and they torture themselves over the kiss scene

Luffy pressures Sanji into accompanying him and Zoro to the haunted house done by another class and Sanji is terrified and grabs onto Zoro (you will never speak of this to anyone, marimo, you understand?)

Beach episode!! Nosebleed Sanj surrounded by bathing suits (not just the girls, this man is a proud bisexual disaster).

Going at Mihawk’s expensive beach house with all the strawhats. Watermelon smashing, ice cream, playing in the water, going in a cursed/legendary/scary/lover’s cave (repeat of Sanji tightly holding on to Zoro for dear life, especially since there are bugs) fireworks, near love confessions with one of the two parties asleep and not hearing it

Background world wise- seven warlords are on the student council and hold a lot of power of course

Obligatory jealousy episode with the childhood friend and misunderstandings- Kuina (yes she’s alive, but a wheelchair user she survived the accident but can no longer compete in able bodied Kendo) comes by school and Sanji misunderstands the tenderness Zoro shows her, jumping to conclusions in typical anime fashion and running away

Class trip to Kyoto arc where the boys struggle with all the romance in the air, sitting next to each other on the Shinkansen (zoro falls asleep on Sanji’s shoulder and he lets him and shushes people), get into trouble when they’re late to the meet up because Zoro got lost( sharing a hotel room - yes Usopp and luffy are there but they need to share a bed omg), buying souvenirs, getting into a fight with local school punks (Killer and Kidd)

ALSO OF COURSE a bath scene during the Kyoto class trip what was I thinking, we need a nosebleed Sanji being taught how Japanese bath etiquette is- Sanji asks about Zoro’s scars and lies about his own when Zoro notices the many marks he has

Possibly tie up the story with finally revealing Sanji’s tragic backstory that’s been hinted at the whole season when Judge comes and removes Sanji from the school and plans to send him to a boarding school abroad- everyone bands together and dramatically save the day and Zeff adopts Sanji and Zoro and Sanji confess to each other and become boyfriends

The end

[cler1csfink]

WHAT THE FUCKING MACARONI

im so normal about this I’m so normal about this I’m calm and kind and I’m normal and I’m

[sgkjd]

me the minute i'm hit with over exhaustion: i need to die bc nobody needs me and im tired of pretending to be capable of being human

[dyrewrites]

Reading is hard.

How am I supposed to pay attention to someone else's characters and world when my own will not shut up.

And, should I manage that;

How am I supposed to analyze and talk about it afterwards when I have to shut off every part of my brain to focus on this story?

How do people do buddy reads. Is there a trick, do you have some secret techniques to pay attention while also getting lost in a book?

[humberg]

Devil on my shoulder

[ganondoodle]

ok so i saw a post (not mentioning it here directly bc no hate to the op of it, but im so annoyed by that plotpoint that i gotta rant) about the scene were they undragonfy zelda and it was all like

- no actually the people that are upset that both zelda and link returned fully perfectly intact dont get that it makes so much sense and is so cool actually bc its sonias time power amplified and reverseing both zelda and links arm so that she was never a dragon to begin with (thats why she doesnt retain any of its features) and link never lost his arm and its such a cool callback to when sonia amplified raurus light laser thing and the reason sonia didnt do it earlier is bc ghost cant be everywhere i guess :) -

i talked about this once before so i wont go super into detail but ... yeah that doesnt make that any less unsatisfying imo

aside from it just feeling like a thinly veiled excuse to return everyone to perfect and unblemished status quo more than a 'cool callback' it also annoys me on a game design level bc (as i mentioned in that older post too) why would you not include ANY of the signifiers of the time power when they do it? like the TÖK sound that goes off when you activate it, the world going black and white with that wave animation, and zelda actually transforming back like a reverse tp link wolf thing, ANYTHING? no its just sparkly light beam in ghost dimension town and sparkly poof everyones back :)))

also the implications of that even being possible is just .. making everything even more messy imo like if you can time reverse not just a persons body, or just PART of a body but also a SOUL being lost, over such a long time too.... that raises so many questions, if sonias able to do something like THAT how come she cant send someone back in time bc that tbh sounds way less complicated (on a sidenote is it jsut me or did anyone else feel like sonia talking to zelda -lol i cant help you control your powers you just gotta vibe with it and figure it out yourself bro- was a lead up to zelda .. actually getting control of her suddendly revealed time powers? or was that meant as in oh look she reversed a few weapons once :) bc it felt like it was meant to be she has to find out how to return to her own time USING HER POWERS .. and then its jsut kinda dropped, like so many more things and oh look a dragon :) )

but overall i just .... ok you can find a flimsy excuse for that scene but it still feels ... bad? like oh cool bad guys deaded once again for sure totally this time and everyones back to normal like nothing ever happened and also it even reversed even zeldas memory i guess so she literally cant remember anything and why anything like that was never done before that is bc of reasons(tm)

it just feels so meaningless, sure you can find some wobbly explanation for why something went like that instead of all the other possibilites but its just ... unsatisfying

am i meant to feel whole having returned everythign as if nothing ever happened? bc i just feel empty, especially on top of all the things that left me with such an empty feeling in the game it just puts the cardboard cherry on top of a cardboard cake, pretty to look at but shallow like cardboard and just as tasteless

[callsignspark]

everyone please look at the cow eraser I’ve had since elementary school, purchased at the book fair, and how it’s definitely something baby Rhett would gift to the girl he liked in sixth grade and who would then blush so hard as an adult when he learned that it sits on your desk at work

[quesadilla-day]

just a mushroom and her mushroom pal 🍄 🍄

[project-sekai-facts]

As a person who hasn’t played any other rhythm game, why do you think prsk is so successful in a category where there are so many other games to choose from? I guess this would also relate to why you quit the other games you were playing?

hatsune miku.

also i think the story is project sekai is very engaging and generally much better than rhythm games in terms of writing quality and storytelling. i can't comment on bandori because i never got into the story, but compared to D4DJ, proseka is much more consistently good and deep. that's not to say there's anything wrong with D4DJ's more lighthearted overall tone aside from when it gets into questionable shit but sometimes it feels like there's no stakes even when the story tries to say that there are, and generally it's written more like a comedy slice of life than prsk's very realistic and heavier slice-of-life style.

the same can be said for SIF of which i read 6 chapters 3 years ago before skipping literally everything else. the stories were pretty simple again and obviously some people are gonna prefer that over prsk's sometimes more heavy-hitting tone but from a critical pov project sekai does have the better writing.

both the other franchises i mentioned do have really good writing at times. while love live is ultimately slice-of-life with comedy it does have some exceptional character writing, as does D4DJ. Some of the D4DJ stories released in the last year are also amazingly well-written and have dealt with much heavier topics and handled them really well. but that's enough of me gushing about those.

i think its interesting that while this game has always been pretty popular as a idol mobage outside asia, EN suddenly exploded last may-june and i'm not entirely sure why (i guess summer break in america and maybe some adverts and tiktok?). like i used to be able to T20K-30K by barely playing the events and suddenly i was getting T100Ks when I didn't change how i played at all.

Also like. not the best way to judge but when i first checked this fandom's ao3 page in february last year it had about 300 fics and it very suddenly started rapidly going into the 1000s starting that May-ish. like, very rapidly. as of posting this we're at 15516 (only 6k less than enstars which is a much older game) and two ships made it into AO3s top 100 this year so that's a very significant boom in popularity just to back up my bad tiering strats.

i also think tiktok definitely played a part in the game's EN popularity. i don't go there but the tiktok fanbase is huge, right? and then it runs on algorithm shit so people get that stuff on their FYP and download the game. word of mouth but digital style. also crossover with genshin somehow that i think has roots on that app.

the thing is that none of those directly have to do with why people would play proseka over the others and i think that's it. prsk has become an outright popular game outside of the idol-rhythm label. loads of people at my college know what hatsune miku: colorful stage is but barely any of them know enstars or bandori which are the other big names.

i think in someways it's less project sekai being the "preferred" game and more project sekai being the "known" game.

what the fuck did i just write i'm so sorry

[smile-files]

i don't know if ralsei is a transfem or transmasc i just know he is trans

[praynot]

thought about lee and despite denouncing / being traumatized by religion, she's still someone that has adamantly read the bible and multiple versions of it. watched interpretations of the crucifixtion and life of christ. how that may have sparked a bit of her passion with movies (and feeding into the hc i made earlier about wanting to become an actress because then she'd be on the tv her mom watches so often and maybe ruth would see her too finally but that's a different tangent). i think about lee and maybe having wanted to talk about acting techniques or directing techniques she admires in movies but having nobody to talk to about it. costumes, set designs, details because she strikes me as someone very, very detail oriented. how she could have gone on for days about little things and nods she likes when watching tv or seeing something in cinemas but just staying silent. and how after the longlegs case, she finally has her voice back, finally feels like she can try and talk about things, finally feel interested in things again.

[wield-the-mighty-pen]

It’s crazy how this nightmare is actually what happens later on, but without Adrien turning on her