#no the war is not covered the same everywhere by everybody

[helshades]

Note that the 'beheaded babies story'—kudos on the tact, by the way—is real. Only fewer toddlers were actually decapitated than some people mistakenly told in their panic and/or wish to damn Palestinians, although the initial reports were pretty clear, and got confirmed by multiple sources.

Basically, it's not because you sympathise more with one side of a war that the country or countries in question magically stop producing propaganda, and that grave assertions need not be corroborated. Oftentimes it can take years, even decades before historians feel confident about knowing the truth. Nowadays, the technical means are such that even videos are relatively easy to falsify, so: yes, all stories have to be checked.

Please attempt not to forget the fact, in your noble defence of the Palestine people, that you pure-hearted Westerners aren't the only ones with a notable interest in Gaza, since, unfortunately enough, you happen to emote in accordance with the most unfrequentable folk in Islamic fundamentalism—who will use your compassion against you, just like the Israeli far-right will utilise any horrors perpetrated either by Hamas or its sympathisers to justify war crimes.

[linkspooky]

Hey, love your fanfic and your metas. I have a thing that's been bothering me since I read your Azula rant a few months ago (which aside from this one thing, was AWESOME. GO THE FUCK OFF.). You bring up how Azula protected Zuko and looked out for him and he repaid her by treating her like she was a live wire meant to be pitied instead of helped. I agree that Azula was done dirty by the narrative, especially with your points added, but I couldn't help but feel that your reasoning for Azula being a better sibling to Zuko was based mostly on conjecture for her motivations rather than what was told to us from the show. So that brings me to my actual question: Should Zuko help Azula because he's supposed to as her family or because he's supposed to be a hero? And will the fic acknowledge their equal share in their toxic dynamic in later chapters?

I agree that most of my arguments on Azula's motivations are based on inference and not directly stated in text. If you don't find my arguments convincing than that's that. I can only argue my interpretation I can't tell you how to read it.

However, briefly I'd like to point out that Azula's motivations are muddled at best. I used killing the avatar as an example, because unless Azula is omniscient she had no way of knowing that Aang could have lived. She reacted with complete surprise when Zuko questioned if the avatar was really dead. If the show was telling us that Azula planned all along to throw her brother under the bus in case the avatar turned out to be alive, that doesn't really make sense. Azula's motivations aren't really made clear to us because 90% of the time she's being shown to us through Zuko's perspective who has very mixed feelings about his sister at best. Azula is also ultimately intended as just to be a part of Zuko's arc and foil to him not really her own independent character so like, I kind of have to infer her motivations.

Anyway, to addressing your actual question. I'm going to use an example to show what I think is the ideal development for Zuko and Azula's relationship by comparing it to another media. Namely, the redemption arc of Faith in Angel the Series. It's briefly covered in this video redemption for her but I'm going to write my own spin.

Faith is the other slayer, a girl chosen to hunt vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her intention with the start is similiar to Azula's, she's meant to serve as a dark foil to the main character and while Buffy triumphs Faith was destined from the start to take a fall. Faith is also the bad victim to Buffy's good victim. They've both suffered from severe physical and sexual abuse, but Buffy ultimately has a support system while Faith does not. Buffy is also unable to save Faith and basically gives up on trying, because she's suffered very personal abuse under Faith's hands.

Faith takes a fall from lack of any real support system just like Azula. She envies Buffy for the fact that Buffy has everything, a mom, a watcher, firends the same way that people in Azula's life (her mom, her uncle, Mai and Ty Lee also sidenote Mai and Ty lee aren't obligated to choose Azula she made those relationships toxic but like Azula's mother and uncle war criminal are just playing favorites) have always chosen Zuko over her.

Buffy: Why, Faith? What's in it for you? Faith: What isn't? You know, I come to Sunnydale. I'm the Slayer. I do my job kicking ass better than anyone. What do I hear about everywhere I go? Buffy. So I slay, I behave, I do the good little girl routine. And who's everybody thank? Buffy. Buffy: It's not my fault. Faith: Everybody always asks, why can't you be more like Buffy? But did anyone ever ask if you could be more like me? Angel: I know I didn't. Faith: You get the Watcher. You get the mom. You get the little Scooby gang. What do I get? Jack squat. This is supposed to be my town!

Faith basically has nothing, and she's defined by her lack of stability and identity. Similarly to Azula's breakdown, she's almost terrified by the idea of love. Azula can't trust people and can only resort to controlling them with fear because the person who should have loved her unconditional abandoned her and the only parent who showed her attention made her earn it and the person who modeled her relationships showed her how to control others through fear and obedience and that taints all her other relationships. Azula is a toxic individual who doesn't deserve Mai and Ty Lee's forgiveness, and she's also literally never been shown what a healthy relationship looks like and people can't understand that if they've never been taugh tit both of these things are true simultaneously. Faith envies Buffy's life but she's also terrified of unconditional love because abuse and abandonment is basically all she knows.

[Riley is on top of Buffy, looking down at her.] Riley: I love you. Faith in Buffy's body: Uggnnh Get off. No. No. No! [Pushing Riley away]Get-get off! No. Off me. Get off. No, no-o. G-get [Buffy stands] Riley: Buffy...What? What's wrong? Faith: (gasping) Who are you? What do you want from h-her? Riley: Should I not have...? Faith: This is meaningless. Riley: You're shaking. [He gets up and puts a blanket/sheet on her.] Faith: Nnnh. Riley: What happened? Faith: Nothing. Nothing.

Faith is committing sexual assault here, just by the way. Faith is honestly worse than Azula (they both try to do a mass murder for their daddies) and gets shown way more narrative sympathy than Azula ever does. But you know, Faith is also her own fully fledged character while Azula only exists to be a part of Zuko's arc and most of her deeper writing was Aaron Ehasz champining her cause. I guess Faith exists in a show where the writers allow women to be messy human beings.

Ursa: [appearing in the mirror] What a shame. You always had such beautiful hair. Azula: What are you doing here? Ursa: I didn't want to miss my own daughter's coronation. Azula: Don't pretend to act proud. I know what you really think of me. You think I'm a monster. Ursa: I think you're confused. All your life you've used fear to control people. Like your friends Mai and Ty Lee. Azula: [hysterically] Well what choice do I have? Trust is for fools! Fear is the only reliable way. Even you fear me. Ursa: [gently] No. I love you, Azula. I do. [Azula screams and hurls the brush at her mirror, breaking it; then collapses, sobbing]

As one final parallel both of them are aware on some level that they are a monster, and that their actions are bad. Ursa is just Azula's own mind telling her, so if Ursa is telling her that using fear to control Mai and Ty Lee is wrong then Azula is on some level aware of that. Faith and Azula define themselves as the bad one, and use that as a personal shield from both guilt and other's people rejection.

AZULA: "My own mother thought I was a monster... she was right of course, but it still hurt." vs. ANGEL: You can't imagine the true price of evil. FAITH: Yeah? I hope evil takes mastercard.

While Faith shares many parallels with Azula, I'd also like to point out the parallels between Angel and Zuko. They are both marked as having "the redemption arc" for their show. That's literally Angel's concept from day one, he's a vampire with a soul trying to atone for his past deeds. His entire spinoff show is Angel trying to find redemption by saving others. Zuko on the other hand is not only considered like one of THE REDEMPTION ARCS of all time but also his entire arc is learning that the fire nation was wrong and redeeming himself by joining the avatar the person he used to hunt and atoning for the ways he hurt Aang and his friends.

I think Zuko's character arc is much more similar to Angel's than Spike's to be honest (they're both characters in buffy who receive redemption). In that as you said above in your ask Zuko's arc is about him learning to be a proper hero. We don't really get to the part where Zuko like, develops his identity as a person outside of being a hero who saves others. Zuko does like learn to calm down and not express his rage and learns about unconditional love from Iroh but like his act of redeeming himself is switching sides and helping the heroes. Spike swithces sides too but that doesn't redeem him, Spike's redemption is gaining a soul himself and learning to develop his own morality and do good deeds for the right reason and not because he wants to get Buffy's approval.

In my writing I'm planning to continue it so Zuko has to let go of the notion of redeeming himself through heroism and instead has to learn that real redemption is trying to be a better person every single day, not defeating the fire lord and being a GOOD KING TM.

Back to Angel, he's a vampire with a soul. Rather he spent 200 years as a soulless vampire killing people and then he was cursed to have a soul and suddenly feel guilt and remorse for his actions. It's like how Zuko eventually realized he was on the wrong side. Angel can deeply empathize with Faith because he has been where she has. At the same time there's a marked difference. Angel's redemption was basically handed to him on a silver platter. He didn't decide to get a soul and start feeling guilt for his actions again it was forced on him.

The parallels between them culminate in Five by Five, one of my favorite episodes of television ever. Basically Faith has escaped the consequences of her actions and is running away from Buffy. She goes to LA and gets a contract to kill angel at which point a lawfirm will drop all murder charges against her and also continue to pay her to kill people form them.

While Faith is hunting Angel down, the episode flashes back several times to the series of events that started angel's redemption. First Angel deciding to murder a young girl, and getting cursed by her family to regain his soul and feel the guilt for what he did forever.

The next flashback depicts angel's mental breakdown after his ability to feel guilt is restored. He's immediately abandoned by his partner, another soulless vampire who finds his guilt and his soul disgusting. He's left alone with his guilt and there's no comfort in the world for him.

In the third flashback in spite of his guilt, Angel tries to be a monster again and go back to his old self by feeding on a woman in an alleyway only to find the guilt is too strong and he can't bring himself to kill her so he runs away in shame.

Buffy walks the really fine line between the fact that just because you feel guilty doesn't mean you're owed forgiveness or your feelings of guilt take priority over the people you hurt and also that it's painful feeling guilt and everyone at some time feels and struggles with guilt after hurting someone.

Angel is a mass murderer who feels guilty, which like yeah you should feel guilty. He's also a human being feeling genuine remorse with no idea how to make up for his actions.

Angel is able to sympathize with Faith because he knows that guilt, he knows that feeling that there's nothing you can ever do to apologize for your actions and it seems almost better to just kill yourself. To be so hopeless to believe you're just not capable of good.

Angel: (harshly) I can't do it again, Buffy. I can't become a k*ller. Buffy: Then fight it. Angel: It's too hard. Buffy: (desperately) Angel, please, you *have* to get inside. Angel: It told me to k*ll you. You were in the dream. You know. It told me to lose my soul in you and become a monster again. Buffy: I know what it told you. What does it matter? Angel: (raises his voice) Because I wanted to! Because I want you so badly! I want to take comfort in you, and I know it'll cost me my soul, and a part of me doesn't care. He sobs. Buffy is at a loss for words. Angel: Look, I'm weak. I've never been anything else. It's not the demon in me that needs k*lling, Buffy. It's the man. Buffy: You're weak. Everybody is. Everybody fails. Maybe this evil did bring you back, but if it did, it's because it needs you. And that means that you can hurt it. Angel doesn't want to believe her. Buffy: (pleadingly) Angel, you have the power to do real good, to make amends. (raises her voice) But if you die now, then all that you ever were was a monster.

Angel has also previously in the show attempted suicide because he believed he wasn't capable of being better or ever apologizing for his actions and when that happened he had someone who believed in him unconditionally and urged him to keep living.

So, really what right does Angel have to deny Faith that same support? How can we believe Angel's truly grown as a person if he doesn't show other people the same kindness that's been taught to him?

Which leads to one of the most beautiful scenes in all of television.

Faith: "You're gonna die!" Wesley is almost done sawing through his ropes. Faith keeps hitting and kicking Angel. Halfway through this it starts to first rain then pour. Faith: "You hear me? - You don't know what evil is! - I'm bad! - Fight back!" Wesley has freed his hands and is untying the other ropes. Faith keeps whaling on Angel, sometimes he ducks, sometimes the hits connect. Angel grabs a hold of her: "Nice try, Faith." He tosses her away from him. Then walks after her. Angel: "I know what you want." She hits him and he hits back dropping her. She comes back up hitting and screaming, but not making much of a dent. Wesley leans out of the window and sees Faith beating up on Angel. He goes into the kitchen and grabs a butcher knife, then heads for the door. Angel as he dodges another hit: "I'm not gonna make it easy for you." Faith throws herself against Angel screaming: "I'm evil! I'm bad! I'm evil! Do you hear me? I'm bad! Angel, I'm bad! (She begins to sob, grabbing a hold of Angel's shirt and shaking him) I'm ba-ad. Do you hear me? I'm bad! I'm bad! I'm bad. Please. Angel, please, just do it." Wesley comes running out of the house. Faith sobbing: "Angel please, just do it. Just do it. Just k*ll me. Just k*ll me." Angel wraps his arms around her shoulders and pulls her against him. She over balances them and they sink to their knees, Angel still holding her as she cries. Angel: "Shh. It's all right. It's okay. I'm here. I'm right here. Shh."

As I said in my longass Avatar post we could have gotten this scene with Zuko and Azula. Zuko doesn't even have to necessarily forgive her, but we could have seen him at least embrace Azula out of sympathy at the lowest point in her life.

It would have been a parallel to the way when Zuko reunited with Iroh the first thing he did was hug him after Zuko was so worried his Uncle would never forgive him. Even if we didn't get a full redemption arc we could have just gotten this as a start, a sign that things might get better for Azula one day.

This is how I plan on writing Zuko and Azula's arc though. Zuko eventually needs to reach a place of self-awareness where he can help Azula get through the crushing guilt she feels because he's been there too. He had help when he was struggling at his lowest point, and now Zuko being that support for someone else is a way to demonstrate his growth as a person. That's a major theme I want to tackle in this fic, that helping the avatar and being a good firelord isn't the end to Zuko's development.

He can also do that while still holding Azula accountable for the hurt she's caused others and him. To emphasize she needs to actually do something to better herself, because feeling guilt isn't enough.

Faith: "Oh, maybe we - just don't mention it then." Angel: "Maybe we do." Faith: "Are you saying I got to apologize?" Angel: "Think you can?" Faith: "I don’t' know. - How do you say 'Gee, I'm really sorry tortured you I nearly to death?'" Angel: "Well, first off I think I'd leave off the 'Gee.' And secondly I think you have to ask yourself: are you?" Faith: "What?" Angel: "Sorry." Faith: "And what if I *can't* say it? There are some things you can't just take back, no matter how sorry you *are*, right?" Angel: "Yeah, there are. I've got some experience in that area." Faith: "Right. And you've been doing this for a hundred years! I'm not gonna make it through the next ten minutes." Angel: "So make it through the next five, the next minute." Faith: "I don't think I can." Angel: "Yes, you can." Faith walks away: "God, it hurts. I hate that it hurts like this." Angel follows her: "Oh well, it's supposed to hurt. All that pain, all that suffering you caused is coming back on you. Feel it! Deal with it! Then maybe you've got a shot at being free." Faith lets out something between a laugh and a sob: "I've got to be the first Slayer in history sponsored by a vampire." Angel: "Yeah, well, I've got some experience in that area, too."

Once again the fine line between "Yeah, you should feel guilty when you hurt people that's how it works" and also "You can still live with the guilt and get better."

As for Azula and Zuko's relationship and the way I plan on writing it, first and foremost I plan to make things get worse before they get better.

I do want to portray Zuko and Azula as being equally bad to each other. Azula was willing to throw Zuko under the bus for her father's favor. When Zuko is firelord though and the tables are turned and he has power over her, the way he treats her isn't exactly great let's say.

It's almost like abuse is born out of an unequal power dynamic and not just something that bad people do to innocent victims.

I know so far the narrative is incredibly slanted towards Azula, but one I'm just writing the way Zuko acted in the comisc, and two it's from Azula's perspective. Now that Zuko is finally getting his POV I plan on covering a lot of his pain from the way Azula hurt him too.

If you've ever read Interview with a Vampire and the Sequel Lestat, I'm planning on doing something similiar to Lestat and Louis' divorce arc. Each of them narrates a story from their own perspective and each of them paints the other in the worst light possible while highlighting their own qualties.

Also to some extent I do think Zuko believes that he's "the good one". That part of his treatment for Azula comes not from anything Azula's done, but from projecting his worst flaws onto Azula because they were both groomed by Ozai and wanting to convince himself he's NOT LIKE THAT.

Whereas Azula views Zuko as an ungrateful trait. I think they'd both have to essentially get over it. Zuko betrayed the fire nation because the way Azula and Ozai treated him was wrong and the fire nation was wrong. Zuko can't play good victim bad victim. You don't become a good person by pointing the finger and scapegoating someone else as evil, you do it by working on yourself every day.

The way I want to model their relationship is something like Sanemi and Giyu, or Blackfire and Starfire. The pain that they caused each other is legitimate and shouldn't be shied away from but also both ulitmately grew up and survived the same abusive household together. That's a special kind of understanding that they have for each other that no one else does, and I think Zuko needs that understanding from someone. Ursa ran away, Kiyi is an innocent kid, I don't think he could connect with either of them the way that he could with Azula who shared Zuko's same abuse.

Forgiving Azula and seeing how her trauma affected her can also be a way of Zuko forgiving himself and learning about himself. He can look at Azula's abusive behaviors and be like, oh I do that too. I'm not quite over that yet. It's impossible to be truly over the ways my abuse affected me, but I can keep working on it.

This is basically the note I want both of them to end on where they're both still working on redemption together.

ANGEL Faith, wake up! FAITH (wakes) I've rolled the bones. You for me. ANGEL (walks away from the fight with Angelus to talk to Faith) I used to think that. That there'd be a point when I'd paid my dues. ANGEL Faith, listen to me. You saw me drink. It doesn't get much lower than that. And I thought I could make up for it by disappearing. FAITH I did my time. ANGEL Our time is never up, Faith. We pay for everything. FAITH It hurts. ANGEL I know. I know.

Anyway, thnak you for the ask. I'm happy you're interested in my fic. If you have any more questions of comments on my fic feel free to send them.

[theladyragnell]

AC for Alex/Thom?

(Visiting their home for the first time! You and an anon both asked for the exact same thing, I am assuming because everybody wants Thom to visit hill country, so I am doing the prompt twice. Here's Thom in hill country (implying an epic fic as backstory, but shh), and in a few days we'll get Alex visiting somewhere I haven't decided yet!)

Thom, ever the diplomat, took some time to consider his first impression of Tirragen as they rode over the crest of a hill and into the fief, and decided that “brown” just about covered it. The late-summer dead grass waving in the wind was pale brown, the recently harvested fields darker brown, the lakeshore mud was brown, and the buildings in the settlement nearest them were brown. Even Tirragen’s hold was brown, stone much the color of the dead grass.

The lake, at least, was blue. It was some relief from the monotony.

“Not as luxurious as you’re used to, no doubt,” said Alex from up ahead of him, who for someone with no Gift at all had an uncanny facility for plucking thoughts out of Thom’s head.

At least he could occasionally be wrong. Thom had only grown used to luxury in Corus, and that had lasted no time at all next to the country upbringing of Trebond and the lightless austerity of the City of the Gods. It was just that apparently a small taste of luxury was worse than none at all. “You should have seen the monastery,” he said, encouraging his horse forward a bit to ride next to Alex. “For a place supposedly sacred to the god of the sun, it wasn’t a very bright place.”

“Tirragen gets light, at least.” Alex pulled to a stop before they could descend too far down the hill, shading his eyes with a hand and inspecting his fief. “The fall crops are behind.”

It had been the same everywhere, but Thom had spent years with his teachers hammering concepts of balance into his head. The new king had spent a perilous hour holding his kingdom together with magic. Thom was going to have to write him to reiterate that they were in for a troublesome few years and just hope that he would listen, after the exhausted way he’d asked them to get away from Corus before fingers started pointing at them. “Not quite as far behind,” he said. He hadn’t particularly known anything about crop growth and its projected rates when they left Corus, but he was learning them quickly enough.

Alex, who’d known the crops and their growth rates better the closer they got to arid hill country, lowered his hand and kicked his horse into motion again. “Behind enough to give us a hungry winter, and with Eldorne and Malven even more out of favor than we are, we’re not going to get much aid. I need to see how our grain stores do, and how much we need to save for seed if the crop gets spoiled. We just need to keep hill country from raiding across the Drell and starting another war for Jon.”

That was, Thom was almost sure, the most words Alex had strung together at once since they’d left Corus. When Thom had met him, those first awful months of trying to establish his place and letting himself be lost in his own pride, he’d picked his words carefully, with a talent for compliments that could make a man feel like he’d been slapped and a sly turn of phrase. On their journey, he’d simply seemed too tired to speak. Trust a man’s home to get him talking again. “We?” said Thom, when Alex twisted, seeming to expect his commentary. That was fair enough. Thom had certainly led him to believe he had commentary on everything. He suspected Alanna found it embarrassing, the way he’d learned to rattle on over the years.

“I assumed that if you were so interested in taking all your magical measurements about crops, you might have plans for what to do with them. The raiding is my business, unless you have insight from Trebond, you must get Scanrans across the border.”

Less often than they might. When their father had told Thom rare stories about his childhood, before everything, Scanran raids had featured heavily, the reason he’d gone for his knighthood instead of to the cloisters. King Jasson’s ambition, though, had given Trebond breathing space. “No plans yet,” Thom admitted. Saying that Jasson had made Thom’s life as a baron better, for all he was in the process of disinheriting himself, seemed cruel when he was riding across old Hurdik lands. “Agricultural magic was never my specialty. I’ll have to come at it from the side of the Dominion Jewel, and that’s half a country away, so it will take some work.”

“I’ll send out for any books you need, and our crop records are at your disposal.”

Thom hated crop records. He’d been spoiled, letting Coram deal with them, but that was why Coram would be a better baron than Thom would, especially given Alanna had more than enough to do and no interest in inheriting the mausoleum herself. “Fascinating evening reading, no doubt,” he said.

Alex twisted again, gave him the level look that meant You’re the one who wished yourself on me, remember, but didn’t comment, just kept riding on. “It will be hard work,” he said eventually.

Hard work, like Thom didn’t know the meaning of it. Like he hadn’t gained his Mastery young while leading everyone to believe he was too stupid to do it, playing a double game and advising his sister from a distance. If there was one universal among the young knights of the palace, no matter which side of the attempted coup they’d fallen on, it was that they thought life in the Mithran cloisters must have been soft and easy. It was disappointing that Alex, generally one of the more intelligent of them, seemed to feel the same. “Somehow I’ll survive.”

Alex frowned a little, with an assessing look that reminded him of Alanna’s George, who did not like Alex at all. Not that Thom could blame him. There was a reason Thom and Alex were rusticating in hill country for the foreseeable future, and they were lucky not to be doing it under guard like Delia. “I imagine we both will,” he said eventually, like it was a burden and not the best piece of optimism Thom had heard in months.

Thom looked off into the distance again, at the various shades of brown, at the blue lake reflecting the blue sky. In the distance, at the keep, they were raising the flag as their lord approached, the black and purple standing out in the landscape. It wasn’t home, but then again, he wasn’t sure, after so long, precisely where that was.

“It’s all very brown,” he drawled, at his most affected and court-mannered, and hoped Alex could hear the joke and the truth all braided together.

Alex just smiled a little, eyes on the flag at the keep, and dug his heels in, and Thom did the same, until they were cantering toward Fief Tirragen, and all the work that waited there.

[jadedandconfusedao3]

P.I.L.F. Professor I'd Like to FUCK

Hermione tapped her foot and cast Tempus for the third time. Slughorn was running late. Again. With fury written across her face, she stormed past her fellow seventh and eighth-year compatriots and hammered on the door.

“Class was supposed to start five minutes ago!” she yelled into the unyielding wood.

When the door finally opened, she huffed with impatience and walked straight into the solid but still totally obnoxious form of Draco Malfoy. After having had a growth spurt during the war and summer months afterwards, he now stood almost half a head taller than her. The effect of which meant that she now spent a great deal of time staring up into his smirking face.

He was everywhere this year. They shared all of the same classes. His signature was on all of the card catalogues of the books she tried to borrow, and he never returned them on time. He was always in Scrivenshafts eyeing off the same quills and journals.

Now he was wasting her class time by encouraging their potions Professor to engage in some mystery project that ate into more of their lessons every day.

“Chill the fuck out, Granger.” He snapped, as she pushed herself off his annoyingly well-muscled chest.

He stepped back and walked over to the front of the room to rejoin Professor Slughorn. Slughorn was carefully stirring a cauldron that bubbled steadily away on the desk. He looked up to see Hermione and gestured with his free hand.

“Do come in, class. Be careful not to walk near the front,” he tutted, “this potion is very volatile, and we wouldn’t want to cause an accident.”

Malfoy was standing watch, keeping an eye on the cauldron and the incoming students. Hermione passed by him with a glare and stomped up to where she shared a table with Harry and Ron. The rest of the class filed in quietly, casting curious glances over to the cauldron. It smelled appalling. She couldn’t imagine what the potion could possibly do for someone to want to ingest something that horrific.

As Slughorn raised his wand to close the door, Harry and Ron came bustling in, panting hard. Hermione rolled her eyes. They were always late and probably quite appreciated Slughorn's new schedule.

Slughorn smiled at Harry. “Harry my boy! Come in, come in. Don’t dawdle now.”

Harry nodded to the wizened old professor as Ron grumbled. Both boys stomped into the classroom throwing glares at Malfoy whilst Slughorn went back to his stirring.

“So glad you could join us, Potter.” Malfoy sneered, “It must be so hard to be timely with the schedule of a celebrity. Sign lots of,” he waved his hand in the air, “paper napkins or something?”

Harry sighed, “Give it a rest, Malfoy,” as he moved passed.

Ron bristled and puffed his chest out as he faced off with Malfoy. “At least people want to hear his name. Instead of shuddering in fear.”

Draco pushed off from the desk as he snarled, “Say that again, Weasel.”

“I said –”

Suddenly the cauldron popped loudly.

“Oh dear,” Slughorn muttered. “The reaction is coming on much faster than expected. You should –

Without warning, several things happened at once. Malfoy pushed Ron away, sending him skidding backwards across the room, before grabbing the lid of the cauldron and attempting to cover it. Slughorn cast a shield charm over the class just before the cauldron exploded with an ear shattering kaboom.

Hermione was thrown backward with the force of it and hit the wall behind her. Her head was ringing as she tried to stand, blinking her eyes. Her vision was slightly blurry, the room fuzzy blocks of colour moving slowly around her. However, after another few blinks, she could see again.

The shield that Slughorn had cast was splattered with potion and had thankfully saved the rest of the class from the fallout. Malfoy and Slughorn however, were a different matter.

She surged forward, lifting her hands to try and determine how to dispel the shield.

“Everybody get back,” she ordered. “We don’t want any of the potion falling on anyone when I take the shield down.”

Around her, the rest of the class murmured their assent and slowly moved away. Harry had crawled up beside Ron, who appeared to be out cold, and nodded to Hermione. When she was sure everyone was safe, she dispelled the shield and began banishing the puddles of potion on the floor.

Slughorn and Malfoy were both motionless shapes on the ground, but she didn’t dare get any closer until the immediate danger had passed. Whilst she found Malfoys presence to be aggravating, she had never wished him actual harm. Especially considering he just saved Ron’s life.

When she finally finished clearing the area she rushed over to kneel by Malfoy. He was lying down, turned away from her. For a moment she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. She knew he was bigger now, but surely not this much bigger. She frowned; his robes had changed colour as well.

What kind of a potion did that?

She grasped his shoulder, rolled him over and gasped. It hadn’t been a trick of the light. This Malfoy was bigger and much older. His teenage features had hardened into adulthood, his formerly pointy face now firmly chiselled. He started to stir, with slow jerky movements.

“Malfoy.” She said firmly as she leaned over him squeezing his shoulder. “Can you hear me, Malfoy?”

His eyes fluttered open and his gaze zeroed in on her. He raised a hand to her face, cupping her cheek gently.

“Hermione?”

Read the rest on Ao3

The art is also by me. Brought to you through hours and hours of learning how to use clipstudio. ::pulls hair out::

[latibvles]

hi poet! a while back you mentioned making the mouse hole girls canon in the with a fighting heart universe, i would love to hear more about that and what a crossover between the mouse hole girls and charlie’s crew would look like :)

Hi! This was a fun one to think about and I smiled when I got it in my inbox!! As is usual with these longer ramble / hc posts everything will go under the cut :)

So I feel like the premise for this is that all my alternate history / women in the military stuff is in the same set of spreadsheets and is pretty much set up like this:

Because it was a lot easier to just keep it all together, I ended up color-coding it just so I know where everything was, which then lent itself to “huh I can really just insert everybody into the same universe” when it came to those two groups. If Dick and Ginny weren’t a thing this would just be a megaverse but SBT exists in its own little universe

It’s essentially some accelerated Women’s Military History coupled with a nice dosage of suspension of disbelief

In this verse the WAC(WAAC? I dunno) Act is passed in October of 1940 when FDR is in his “we aren’t going to War but we are definitely kinda sorta preparing for War," era. I’m gonna keep it a buck — I do not remember when I made the WASPs be founded because in real life they were founded in ‘43, but just know it’s some time later in ‘41. All of which to say in this universe they allow women to be flight instructors because teaching is considered a feminine job, and many of them at the beginning (our lovely girls included) are transfers from the WAC! :)

Pearl Harbor happens, big push for COED armed forces after a demonstration from the lady flight instructors for the head of the AAF and other Big Brass Military Guys

Bill is passed first to allow female infantry, and then women in the air (but only in crews of all women or all men). Coed crews don’t become a thing until later on in the war

Anyways! With that in mind! Mouse Hole girls and Charlie’s paragals!

I think innately there is a sense of solidarity as women in a warzone, blazing a trail whether they wanted to do that specifically or not.

Paulina and June are either going to love each other or hate each other — no in between because they parallel each other in quite a few ways (only girls in their households, strong cultural identities, smart mouths)

I could throw in some tie between Alice and Viv as WACs prior to the bill getting passed & joining the AAF and Paratroopers, which would be fun for me personally

But I think Charlie and Viv are very very different — Viv steps into the position of leadership she's chosen for ready & willing; Charlie is essentially dragged into it because she's a bit of a natural even though she wants nothing to do with it. It'd take a minute for them to connect in a meaningful way. I think Charlie and Willie get along a bit better though since they're both fairly quiet people

You know who take to each other like birds of a feather? Max and Lena. Wisecrackers over here. I think Max and Lorraine would get along pretty well because they're both very competitive

Dot and Harrie too, because farm girls solidarity

And of course... Louise and Carrie, as sweet girls and the little sisters of their collective groups. That's the one that would have Charlie and Viv staring and then looking at each other and "Ah, I get it now."

In any "official" / canonical sense it'd probably be knowing of each other through newspapers and magazines; Fern is an heiress of course so she's all over that, Viv is everywhere because she has the face and the charisma for it. On the paragals end of things it's definitely Alice as their lone Lady Lieutenant, and possibly Maxine (because you put your star players on the cover of the game, of course. Nice respectable looking girls to combat that "khaki fever" rumor about the kinds of girls joining up)

But put them all in a room together and there's a positive kind of chaos I can see forming there. I'm a big fan of female friendship. We all know this. Also! Charlie and Willie are both artists so that's something to bond over [ *distant internal dick and Brady screaming soundbite* ]

Side note: if I did some "what if the mouse hole girls were PARATROOPERS" type thing I do think they'd be in Dog Company. Why? Because it's funny, that's why.

[hastalavistabyebye]

I have more Coruscant culture thoughts... So I've already talked about the artistic aspect here (possible bad aspects of the Elite's taste in arts, in reference to Bernard Palissy and Benvenuto Cellini, two Renaissance artists) and here (more focused on the mediums used, especially by the lower levels people).

But I haven't talked about religion and its artistic productions much yet. And now I have ideas.

Well, first, everybody on Coruscant (and the Core at large) would know about the Force because, obviously, the principal Temple of the Jedi Order is there. But that doesn't mean everybody believe in it in a spiritual/cultual way (what I mean is that it won't necessarily be part of people's religion, even if they know it exists). But it could lead to some interesting beliefs fusions and assimilations (in the same spirit as the take that the Manda and the Force are one and the same). But that's another subject.

To that, is added the multiculturalism of Coruscant, especially its lower levels. People came to this planet and have bring their culture with them, which also means their religions and cults. And then they were all mixed together so there would be cultural exchanges and influences, including as I said with the Force. It won't necessarily be systematic at all, but it could frame the evolutions and enrich the practice and traditions.

Coruscant's levels would be recipients of so many different celebrations and holidays, some would merge together (especially solstices celebrations, and different traditions could be mixed together depending on the resources on hand or just the families and levels). Good luck trinkets and talismans and other little amulets and spiritual objects, divinities figurines, of so many different cultures and homeworld would be sell in the markets and the streets. Maybe some levels have temples of those various religions (or the equivalent spiritual place).

Little homemade and customized altars could be find at the corner of two streets, or hidden in nooks formed by Coruscant's eclectic organisation. Sometimes a few people stops in front of it to add some offerings or pay their homages or pray.

Little solaces of devotion hidden in everyday's landscape.

But it could also be non religious. Just like sometimes we put marks on the places we lost a loved one to a roadkill (in Greece it's sort of little altars, small constructions that are lit up with a candle at night to mark the spot, in France it's often flowers or a sign, it can be with a photo of the lost one or just a mark of love like hearts or such), maybe there is such reminders adorning Coruscant lower levels. It could be because of a speeder accident, gang wars, a bounty hunter that don't care about casualties.... Still, there would be proofs of loved ones being lost all around the lower levels, warning of the dangerous places for others. It could be in the forms of holos sure, but maybe people from a more aquatic world would decorate those places with shells and synthetic pearls and sand. Species from forest planets would always carve a piece of wood in honor of their deads. Some knit and sew pieces of fabrics and change those regularly so that this sort of altar is always covered by resistant and clean clothes.

Maybe some of those places with spiritual or personal significances would be important for many different species and cultures, and as such would be covered in vastly different creations and arts, proofs of various practices unified by one place, one person, one belief.

But yes, in between the flashy adds and enormous metal constructions, in the middle of all this display of cyberpunk that Coruscant can be at times, little places for faith and love and grief and hope, covered in traditional or less traditional art and productions. Just people, common people, living on that planet and marking it as theirs, putting hints of their lives everywhere they can and want.

[thatforgottenbasilisk]

Beat the Dead Horse (You'll Get Red White and Blue Confetti)

fandom: marvel

word count: 3521

(AO3)

Some people say that you die the same way you're born. They extrapolate this point to different ends- alone, the more sheltered or depressed folk say; screaming and covered in someone else's blood, say those with a bit more humor, or else those who've lived violent lives; surrounded by loved ones, say all the civilians who have never and will never go to war, who hope to die old instead of young.

Steve doesn't agree with any of them. He was born on July 4th, amid fireworks and celebrations in the still heat of Brooklyn, with both his parents there and already full of love, just a few short years before his Pops passed on, and quite a few more years before Ma joined him. Now, he's sitting alone in the cockpit of a plane hundreds of miles from Brooklyn- but fast closing that gap- in the sharp cold of midwinter. His closest loved ones are only reachable over radio, not that he wants any of them here with him.

Peggy stays with him to the end. He can still hear her voice as the jet hits the water, and he knows that his own radio cutting out on her end must feel something like the tiny breeze he felt against his hand as Bucky just barely missed it; it must feel like finding out about the 107th when he was still just a dancing monkey for good old Uncle Sam; it must feel like other things, too, but Steve can't really think around the burning cold of the water all around him, flooding the whole jet and swallowing him whole.

---

"Steve Rogers was an American hero, there's no doubt about that. He lives on in comic books and archived propaganda films, in childhood memories and history books alike. Captain America is, some say, more myth than man by now; there has even been some debate on whether or not Steve Rogers's transformation under Dr. Erskine's formula was exaggerated in government propaganda (Rich, 1967), or whether there was even a successful test of the Super Soldier serum that took place at all (Waters & Meyer, 1966); some more contemporary and less mainstream authors have even questioned if Steve Rogers was a real person at all, or merely a government prop to aid in the propaganda effort during a time when morale was at a low (Bouchard & Wright, 1971).

Despite these debates, it cannot be overstated the impact that both Captain America's life and loss meant to the American populace, both during the war and even having a substantial ripple effect to the modern day. How many high schoolers are currently writing essays in their English classes about how this author or that poet uses him as a symbol for war, peace, or hope itself? Depending on which books they're reading, it may even be all three at once; and yet, at the same time, how many television advertisements have you seen today that feature Steve Rogers in support of this or that product, his likeness Xeroxed straight from the comic books for the occasion? The man is everywhere. He lives and breathes in your living room, at your kitchen table, on the radio waves and air waves alike.

It can make you wonder, sometimes, if you love him or hate him. He did nothing to most people who are living now, didn't murder any grandfathers- at least, no grandfathers that anybody would be proud to talk about- and yet you can hear the kids and the talk radio men chattering about him, about his legacy, about how backwards America is because of it. How he's gone from 'hero' to propaganda machine for the more Conservative folk, how he represents all that's wrong with the world today, how he stands up for nothing but racism and war and staying in 1955 for everybody's lives ad infinitum.

It's absurd. It's ahistorical. It's shaping modern culture as we know it."

- Richard Elliot, "A Second Transformation of Steve Rogers," February 1973.

---

The light is bright enough to be seen even through his closed eyelids.

He's not sure of when, exactly, he becomes aware of this fact. For all he knows, the light's always been bright, and he's just closer to the surface than he thought he would end up.

Is he dead? He doesn't even feel particularly awake, so that's not an unrealistic possibility. Maybe he's floating in front of the gates of Heaven, though he honestly feels more like he's lying on an Army cot more than floating anywhere. He'd thought that clouds, especially the Holy kind, would be a bit softer, but maybe there's some divine meaning behind it. There's a divine meaning behind everything, that's what his Ma used to say, and he's not about to question her or her faith now.

It's a long moment before it actually occurs to him to open his eyes and start tuning into the world around him. Everything is syrupy and slow, like it's just a bit too early on a winter morning and he's trying to think through the fog that's accumulated on the horizon and over the river. He feels like his brain's a car engine that's in dire need of oil, and the second he opens his eyes is when a mechanic finally pops open the hood of the car.

The lights are too bright, almost like they're pumping too much electricity into them at once. How much power is this building using? It can't be as much as the lights alone imply, because the bedding and the room both insist that this is nothing more than a military hospital- and they wouldn't waste money on the lights when they could be using that same money for more weapons. He jumps up off the bed, because something isn't right, and either something's happened or he's being played for a fool, probably both.

He looks out the window to see New York, from a few floors up, but it doesn't smell of the usual factory smoke and he can't hear any cars or people on the ground. The skyline looks too flat, and the window is situated such that he can't look down at the city, just at the windowsill. The only sounds that he can hear are coming from the radio, which is tuned to a baseball game that he idly listens to for a few moments as he steps back from the window and towards the bed.

After a moment, he realizes that the game sounds familiar; he remembers sneaking into it with Bucky just before he was drafted, sitting in the back of the stands with a terrible view but a view nonetheless, because they'd both gotten the day off from their respective jobs- Bucky at the docks, and himself at the local grocer's- and they figured it was a decent way to spend the day. He wouldn't forget that game even if they'd cut his head open and plucked the memory out of him.

Somebody's definitely trying to play him for a fool, but before he can think of what to do about it, the door to the room opens. In walks a woman, her tie done up all wrong, and all that he can do is demand answers for where he is, who's taken him, what's happened.

She denies everything, tells him that he's in a military hospital, and he truly commends the Germans on being able to fake American accents so well. Did they recruit a real American, he wonders? No, they couldn't have, because if this woman was truly American, she'd know how to tie her tie in the way that American women are supposed to. She looks like a man tied her necktie, so not American.

He's sick of this already. If he's being taken prisoner, at least respect him enough to tell him that instead of doing a stupid song and dance routine of trying to trick him into thinking he's safe. He moves past the woman and starts running for an escape, barely paying attention to the kind of compound they've put him in, only that there are a lot of windows and a lot of people in black suits. He runs out, hoping against hope that there will be backup, somewhere, or at least some kind of information on where he is and who's found him.

It feels like five seconds and five years before he stops. It's the middle of a busy street, with cars that look like Howard Stark personally engineered each and every one of them, while the buildings climb higher than any he's ever imagined. They're covered in screens, with what looks like hundreds of different colored film reels being projected on every one.

... It's still the same Manhattan, the man he later learns is Fury tells him. Just seventy years after you left it.

---

"Ronald Reagan's economic system is unsustainable, as stated far earlier than this publication by far better economists than I. Since I am not an economist, I feel that I should instead apply my own expertise to our current climate: American Nationalism is now higher than it's been since 1956, and that's not a coincidence.

Ronald Reagan, now famously having played a minimal role in the film, "Captain America: Siberian Takeover" (Russo & Russo, 1954), has become a symbol for both the American Right and America itself- though in a capacity greater than that of the acting President. His liberal use of Steve Rogers' likeness in his campaign makes his platform obvious to those who have studied the man in depth: he's practically synonymous with the caricature "Uncle Sam," and in a time of dwindling faith in the government and in America as a whole, in a time of disillusionment with the establishment, here he- and, by extension, Reagan- is to save the day against the Communists instead of against the Nazis.

So he wins the election, and all of a sudden everything is prosperous and the economy is booming. Everyone's buying cars, everyone's buying houses, everyone's buying everything and the 80's are already a time of hedonism and plenty mere months after his election. Captain America wins again, at least until this bubble pops and we all swing back the other way on the political pendulum."

- Megan Oher, "Reaganomics, Nationalism, and Captain America," December 1983.

---

It only takes two weeks before they need him again.

Two weeks to mourn everyone he's ever met. Two weeks to acclimate to the peace he was assured that he would have, only for it to be torn away.

He didn't miss the military.

---

TOM: Is that- is that the real Captain America? Fighting the Chitauri, there in the video, you see that?

KATIE: I do see it, Tom. I'd heard that they found his body about a month ago, but nothing on if he was actually alive all this time. We'd have heard, we're the number one source of information in New York, there's no way we could have missed this.

TOM: Well, either we did, or they managed to clone him. How long does it take to grow a man in a test tube?

KATIE: More than a month, I think.

TOM: Probably. But modern science is a wonder!

KATIE: I think they might have just figured out the serum from his body and given it to someone else, decked that guy out in costume instead. Seems less time-consuming than an entire clone, and besides, wouldn't a clone of Steve Rogers wind up like the pre-serum guy? He was shorter than me and scrawnier than you!

TOM: Yeah, unless it went into his DNA, they'd waste their money on a clone... the serum sounds about right. Unless it's just a really buff guy they found at some gym.

KATIE: He swears he doesn't do steroids or anything.

[STUDIO LAUGHTER]

TOM: Oh, no, of course not. Totally legit, just as strong as Captain America but completely naturally.

KATIE: Of course, of course.

- Transcript of the talk show, "Ragging On with Katie and Tom," Season 7, Episode 6; October 2012.

---

There's a press conference afterwards.

There are actually several press conferences afterwards, but they all blend together after a while, all the same information to different people and phrased in different ways. Yes, the Avengers are under SHIELD jurisdiction, or Yes, Loki is contained and there is no danger of him coming back and wreaking more havoc on New York or anywhere else.

There are also the fun ones, the ones that he'd thought were public information up until now.

Are you the real Steve Rogers? is a common one. He considers, for half a second the first time, lying and telling them No. He knows that if he's honest he'll never have a moment's peace again, he can never drop the act of Captain America, he'll always be beholden to upholding this title that's grown far larger than he could have ever imagined. His name is in history books, his costume worn by every actor who managed to claw their way into it both on Broadway and in the cinemas, every moment of his life before 1945 dissected and consumed by everyone who's gone through any American History class. He could shuck that weight off right now, he could pretend to be just the latest in a long line of actors and liars alike.

The temptation only lasts for a fraction of a moment, though, and then he remembers himself. Yes, he says, then and every time thereafter. I am Steve Rogers.

---

REPORTER: What is your opinion on Steve Rogers coming back to life out of the ice?

MELANIE: Well, um, I don't- I don't think I like it very much.

REPORTER: And why is that?

MELANIE: I mean, the last time things were so much about Steve Rogers, it was 9/11 and everybody started hating anybody who wasn't the same shade as printer paper, or- or dressed just slightly too masculine or slightly too feminine. Everyone was scared of everyone, and that was already going to happen after all this alien business, but I think the man himself coming back just makes it all worse.

REPORTER: So you think he shouldn't have been unearthed at all? Just left to rot?

MELANIE: I mean- I mean, he's still a person, and of course he deserves to live and all that, I just wish it weren't so public. I wish he just... didn't do all those press conferences, or helped out in New York but not in costume, or lied and said he wasn't really Captain America. It's not even his fault, he didn't even do anything, he's a product of his time and everybody putting his face all over everything doesn't help, but I wish that he wasn't the biggest signal that me and my friends all need to find somewhere to hide. I wish his face wasn't a sign that someone's going to start committing hate crimes against me, or worse.

- Interview Transcript, "Channel 9 News, Chicago," January 2013.

---

Steve doesn't understand why people seem so wary of him.

It's not the same kinds of people that used to be wary of him; instead, it seems to be reversed, with polite society welcoming him with open arms while the people on the outskirts skitter away like rats from a cat. When did it change? Even in 1945, it wasn't this bad, because he still easily got the trust of all the Howling Commandos- though, that might have been aided by his reckless rescue of all of them from Hydra.

Still, the Commandos had thought of him as one of them, an outcast from the military and society same as the rest of them.

Tony says the reason can be found online- or, more accurately, he'd said, Google it, I'm not explaining a half century of history when Wikipedia can do it better. So, here he is, typing away at a computer and routinely forgetting that he can backspace and correct his typos, only to remember when the machine spits back strange answers to his searches.

Everybody seems to think he's someone he's not. Everything he's getting back is telling him that Captain America is nationalism in a nutshell, which was true when he was filming all those propaganda movies and punching Hitler from California to France, but nationalism's come to mean something different now. Nationalism now means racism, means fear, means hate; and, again, it didn't not mean those things seventy years ago, but it's all the more apparent now that this is what he, as a person, has been reduced to.

It all comes back to the root problem: he's not a person anymore, not really, and now there's almost nobody who knows that anymore. There's nobody who hasn't grown up hearing about him, there's nobody around who he can just be any other man with rather than Steve Rogers, Captain America, and all the baggage that that entails. There's nobody he can talk to about Bucky, how they used to be something that wasn't quite best friends and was more along the lines of what he was on his way to being with Peggy after they'd ended that; there's nobody he can talk to about Peggy, either, and she's her own kind of legend, too, untouchable just like him.

Everybody thinks he's someone who would hate people like himself, which is ironic and at least a little bit funny. He thinks Tony would laugh at it, if he didn't hate Steve from the start of all this. Still, he's the one of all of them best acquainted with the future and how to make people think in the ways he wants them to think from a public relations perspective; if Steve wants people to stop associating him with that kind of regressive hatred, Tony is the best man for him to call, and he doesn't hate him so much as to give him bad advice on purpose.

Would people stop thinking that I hate minorities if I tell them that Bucky and I used to go out? may not have been the best thing for Steve to open that phone call with, though.

After quite a bit of coughing on Tony's end of the line, followed by an aggressive line of questions that inadvertently reveal quite a bit about what stories Howard chose to pass along versus what he chose to omit, Steve has his answer of Yes, but the PR people will hate you forever if you don't talk to them about it first. Steve is of the opinion that many PR people would rather he not say anything about that, and it's not really something he feels like bringing up, considering that they'd both broken it off long before he met Peggy or had the serum, but it does seem like an easier bomb to drop on everyone than the other option of insisting that he doesn't agree with the way his image has been used for the past seventy years and very slowly winning people over with that. He'd rather set the record straight immediately.

There isn't an opportunity for a while, and in that time, he finds the word bisexual and thinks he likes it quite a bit- and then he thinks of the irony in the knowledge that many people think he'd hate anyone who likes that word, too. He has to say something soon; immigrants are afraid, every kind of minority is afraid, and the conservative politicians are having the same heyday they've been having for months.

Finally, finally, there's a press conference scheduled by Tony, one that he doesn't tell anyone the purpose of, and for that Steve is eternally grateful. He thinks he's starting to bridge the gap that Howard built between them, constructed of distorted memories and insistence that Steve would have supported this or that when in all reality he wouldn't.

I am Steve Rogers, he says, mirroring the first thing he ever said to this particular public, far removed from his own public in his own time. I am Steve Rogers, and my mother was an immigrant to this country. I am Steve Rogers, and I am bisexual. These things are not congruent with the things that many politicians say that I am, or say that I support. I keep having words put in my mouth, and I am here today to stop it. I do love my country, but I do not love the things that my country has done in my name. I do not support the hatred or the oppressive agenda that my country has used my name to further. Thank you.

Reporters are practically screaming over each other, trying to get their questions answered. The lights are brighter than they've ever been, with camera flashes blinding him better than any fluorescents ever could.

Steve was born again the moment he woke up alone in that too-bright room in SHIELD a few short months ago. Now, in this too-bright room full of a cacophony from far too many people, he's killed something that's been alive far longer than he ever was.

[educatedinyellow]

Theme: Rec a fic that starts with the same letter as your username.

I spotted this rec theme on another blog and it sounded charmingly random and fun! I had a good time looking through my bookmarks and sorting out this little collection of mismatched seashells :)

Every Man's Got a Right by MollyC (SPN, Destiel, Endverse!Cas, time travel, 78K, E) In this one, Endverse!Cas is given a second chance to stop the world, and the people he loves, from going irretrievably off the rails -- he finds himself, without explanation, dropped straight into Season 2 and the first outbreak of the Croatoan virus. Watching him rediscover just how much Dean means to him and how far he's willing to go in order to change things for the better is beautiful. (Written in first-person, for those for whom that is a deal-breaker. It really shouldn't be, though!)

Everybody's Got a Hungry Heart by PallasPerilous (SPN, Destiel, musician!AU, 18K, T) Distinguished by Pallas's inimitable comedy-prose, this thing is an unhinged delight from start to finish. Dean is jumpy as shit. Why one possibly Icelandic beep-boop specialist has him on edge while Mick Jagger’s own vocal coach barely got his heart rate over 55bpm is a goddamn mystery. Maybe it’s the harp solos from that sample track; maybe Dean’s nervous that this is his last shot and if this guy can’t save Dean from filling out the back end of his contract with “Best Of” and “Live In Concert” compilations he might as well walk into the fucking sea.

Engineering 101 by Mara (Batman, Dick Grayson, early days, 4K, G) A clever use of extended metaphor to take a look at the process by which Bruce trains the first child he raises to be Robin and begins to realize what he risks breaking. (I'd say it largely embraces comic book logic in that it does not try to critique the whole premise of child crime fighting as an essentially bad thing, but it sprinkles in traces of real-life concerns. It doesn't vilify Bruce, but it does add some shades of gray to the creation of the dynamic duo.) "Engineering is about testing to destruction," Bruce said, settling into lecture mode. "You don't understand how you can do things better until you understand when and why they break apart."

The Eleventh Hour by Azdak (Man From UNCLE (TV), Napoleon-centric, 4K, G). OK, so, in the TV series there was an episode called 'The Gurnius Affair' wherein Illya had to go undercover as a bad guy, and -- long-story short -- things went wrong, Napoleon got caught, and in order to salvage his own cover and thereby the mission, Illya had to straight-up torture Napoleon. And he did so. Both of them were aware that he had to, both of them were horrified by the experience, and being 1960s television, there was never any adequate follow-up or emotional resolution. A lot of fanfic writers have tackled the aftermath of that disaster in different ways, and this is a fun and interesting take. Napoleon's narrative voice is many things here -- it's petty and angry in a way he rarely is, because his self-image and his pride have been so hurt and he's on ego overdrive here. But it's also wry, and self-dramatizing, and stubborn, and optimistic against all odds. Meanwhile, the narrative commentary of the femme fatale is a load of fun, too. A prickly, funny, angry, and ultimately triumphant brush with death is just what Napoleon needed, it turns out, to settle back into himself.

An Evening of Little Luxuries by otherhawk (MFU, Illya-centric, character study, 7K, G) Oh, I love this one, such a good look at Illya and what it means to him to live between cultures. Before the war he'd been more or less bilingual. He'd grown up speaking Ukrainian at home to his family and Russian everywhere else. After the war there had been no home left, and Russian had been the only language he heard, the language he thought and dreamed in. Now Ukrainian was simply another language he spoke, no different in his head from German or Japanese. His heart was a different matter, and he regretted that loss, regretted that when he dreamed of his parents, his sister, they spoke to him in a language that was no longer his own. Now, more and more, he found himself dreaming in English, and yes, that bothered him. He had no wish to lose Russian the way he'd lost Ukrainian. And so he let himself have evenings like this – the simplest things that felt like decadence – amid his fellow countrymen, many of whom, he suspected, were here for similar reasons.

Escape Velocity by Vehemently (Firefly, Simon Tam, character study, 5K, G) Such concise and vivid world-building, and a poignant look at how Simon grapples with how to accept the loss of the sister he once knew as he takes small, reluctant steps toward facing up to his own over-protectiveness toward the very different person River has now become.

Enduring, Quiet, and Calm by thesardine (BBC Sherlock, Johnlock, strange tenderness, 1K, G) A little gem of a sick fic -- so odd, so sweet. Has that hazy feeling of very late-night exhaustion.

Empty Houses by PlaidAdder (BBC Sherlock, Johnlock, case fic, 45K, T) A clever and involving case fic and the first story to feature PlaidAdder's wonderful take on Harry Watson. Written in that golden moment between Series 2 and Series 3 when we all imagined our own post-Reichenbach reunions and the possibilities for tenderness and healing were still wide open. This fic is rich in humor, compassion, and new beginnings, while also offering a darker take on some bits of canon than the show ultimately pursued.

Elevator Down by vikki (Inception, Arthur & Cobb, LJ fic, 10K, T) I really like this meditation on Arthur's backstory with the Cobbs. Psychologically interesting and elegantly written, and to me there's something touching about the thought that Dom's subconscious keeps lashing out at Arthur because, on some level, he knows it's Arthur who's working hardest to keep him alive. Arthur dreams up paradoxes. Cobb dreams up his late wife. One of these things is not like the other. One of these things is not safe.

Early Returns by rageprufrock (Inception, Arthur/Eames, journalist!AU, 15K, M) Rageprufrock is another author whose comedy-prose is always a pleasure. I love this one for the grouchy journalism malaise in which the embers of inextinguishable principle still smolder, lovingly described as only an insider can <3 For reasons that don't bear discussion, Arthur ends up at Safeway at a 6:30 p.m. on his way home for the night still carrying his messenger bag with his headphones around his neck, standing in one of the aisles looking at 200 different brands of plastic tableware and double-ply picnic dishes. He's been a journalist his entire professional career, so of course he's been this depressed before, but there's something profound when you mix the sinking misery of mortification with the heady, dizzying blur of self-directed fury, and it makes him feel numb down to the fingertips and toes.

If anyone else would like to play this meme, I'd be glad to see your recs!

[louis-mori-17]

I've not "started" this AU yet, but... I, more or less, know a few things about it.

Ladybug it's the substitute of Twilight in this. They are such paranoids, they would be best friends and, at the same time, continuing don't trusting each other. A plan it's not sure, 200 even less and, of course, anxiety everywhere. Ladybug is known by this name because she created her personal bugs, unobtainable from everybody except her. Young and the most serious among all spies, almost impossible to recognize her when she's playing the part, because her younger self - who's the cause of most of her traumas - takes the spotlight... And she could have never be a spy, never. Her cover it's like sawer in a tailor shop, that, incredibly, will also help her with the mission.

Chat Noir/Adrien Agreste it's the substitute of Thorn Princess, aka Yor Briar. Two dorks, naive and The cutest, loved by everyone in the universe... And both of them would clearly kill everyone who just thought of hurting their little ones. His name takes after his habit of night attacks and his weapons: iron claws. As cover, he works as an architect, who's pacific and passive the most of the time, but people still talks dirty about him just because.

After a long, long, looong conversation with myself, I thought that Plagg would've been the perfect choice for the role of Anya. An orphan who likes cheese, his manticore plushie and, of course, Spy Wars... because he likes guns and seeing bad people die, even in anime. He's more... selfish and capricious then Anya, but with Adrien he will eventually change a little. Then he will be bad just to drive his mother crazy, of course.

Alya is: Frankie

Tikki is: Damian.

Trixx is: Becky.

Duusu and Nooroo are: Emile and Ewen.

Chloé is: Yuri Briar.

Nino is: Nightfall.

Kagami is: Handler/Sylvia Sherwood.

Felix is: The Shopkeeper.

Luka is: Donovan Desmond.

Lila is: Melinda Desmond.

I don't know if I'll even draw something about this... Tell me if you want to know more! I still thank you for reading this.

See you soon!

[stesierra]

Today, I'd like you to meet the other two main characters in Mud-Child. Here's chapter two. Chapter One is here:

CHAPTER TWO

Go to Derryford for a job. That's what everyone said. Thousands of people crammed into that place, all who thought they were better than farm or townsfolk. They couldn't scrub their own walls or care for their own horses. Had never seen their houses burnt down by invaders, or their fields looted by the duke's soldiers. Had never shoveled shit in their lives.

That's what everyone had told Bren.

Ten days into his visit to the city, he leaned against a wall on Merchant's Street and tossed a worm-pocked apple from hand to hand. Free jobs, his ass. The war had reached everywhere. Even here.

A chill gust of wind whistled past his ears and blew the stink of ox-shit up his nose. Some geezer had bent his ear at the last inn that'd let him squat in their stable, telling him just sixty year ago the city would've reeked of nothing but horse-dung and ladies' perfume. Bren knew horses, but they hadn't been common since before he was born. As for ladies' perfume? He avoided it – and its wearers — whenever possible.

He took a crunch of apple, and his long black hair tumbled into his eyes. His budget hadn't stretched to cover haircuts in months. He brushed it out of the right eye, the blue one, but he let it hide his orange left iris from the world.

"Messenger?" a nasal, grating voice yelled over the clatter of ox carts and the arguing of street sellers. Bren turned and spotted a merchant dressed in a stainless white coat and a battered top hat. The man stood outside a stall, his too-wide eyes twitching under the brim of his hat. "Are there no messengers in this town?"

A girl, her patched calico skirts tucked up about bony knees, jumped out from between the stalls and darted up to him. "Lots, sir. Carry your message?"

She had the local accent, vowels longer and consonants softer than in the country. She was no older than ten, and her skin was the same dark chestnut shade as the best of horses. With that complexion, she must have blood from Gwenes, like Bren. She could've been his sibling, except Little Sister here had two blue eyes, not one. And no sibling of Bren's had lived.

A new girl in a ragged apron and rolled-up pants elbowed Little Sister into the street, into the path of an ox cart. The driver screamed at her, a shrill invocation of the gods. Bren winced and started forward, his apple forgotten.

The new girl was pure Sarican pale and nearly white-haired. Not a good thing to be in these days, when Sarica and Rebora were at war. Safer to be one of the shades of brown found in the average Reboran mongrel.

"I know the streets like my hand," the blonde said. "And I'm least twice as fast as everybody else."

"Are you?" the merchant said. "Well, I could use speed."

Little Sister pushed back up to them, unfazed by her near trampling. "She's lying. She don't know this street, or I would've seen her before. But I'll take your message, sir."

The blonde glared. "I know the street! I know all them. I was born here, behind an old lolly cart on the corner, and I'll get the message there fastest!"

"We was all born here," Little Sister said. "You don't know nothing."

The merchant's caterpillar-like brows furrowed. "I don't care which of you takes it, but I'll only give it to one. Make up your minds which of you it'll be."

The thin sunlight flashed off the knife the blonde yanked from her sleeve. It slashed out, but Little Sister tackled its owner around the knees. They crashed into the muddy gutter.

Bren ran for them. His hair streamed back behind him, uncovering his orange eye.

The merchant lifted his gaze skyward and doffed his hat. "Oh, for the gods' sakes. This won't do. Will no one carry my message? Ah! You, cursed fellow! Can you deliver a message?"

The girls stopped kicking and stabbing, their chance at the job lost. Bren skidded to a halt under the force of their glares. His stomach grumbled, but he tossed Little Sister the rest of his apple.

The merchant said, "There's coin in it for you."

Bren said, "I can, if you'll tell me where to take it."

"The old guardhouse. As quickly you can. Haste is of the essence." The merchant threw him the letter and three pennies.

Miser. But it would buy another night in a stable. He took the money.

#

The walk across the city was long, noisy and disheartening. Bren passed glass-fronted stores, some of which weren't even boarded over, and heavily guarded stables filled with the nicker and stamping of horses, and inns with drunken carolers hanging around their open doors. He had applied to work at all those places. They had turned him away, and they hadn't been kind about it.

The old guardhouse loomed on the north-east edge of the city, set off from the shops and houses in its own stone building. No one loitered outside that building, and the traffic that passed was hushed. Bren had not looked there for work. Life had taught him better.

A flag hung over the door, a blue rectangle cut by the skinny body of a fanged snake. The locals called it "the duke's earthworm," but not anywhere a soldier or guard might hear them.

The heavy door of the guardhouse squeaked open under his hand. Bren lingered in the doorway, glancing about for danger.

The front room of the guard house was wallpapered with butcher's paper and stuck full of tacks that pinned up yellowed fliers and posters — and, in the corner, some woman's flouncy drawers. The fliers screamed "Able-bodied? Curse-free? Soldiers wanted. Regular wages" and "Man sought for impregnation. Good blood lines only. Cleanliness a must. No pay" and "Suspect your neighbor of magic? Report to the duke's guard, not the temple!"

Two guards played cards on a scratched table, a pile of brass buttons scattered before them. One muttered, his voice a scratchy city drawl.

"Sirs?" Bren said.

They looked up, and their eyes narrowed in unison. One slapped his hand down on the table and rose, leaving the cards fanned on the table behind him.

Bren took a step back and pulled out the letter. It crinkled between his fingers. "I've a message for you, sirs."

The guard snatched it from his fingertips and broke the sloppy wax seal. The other tapped his hand into a neat rectangle and asked, "What is it?"

"Merchant fusspot again. Another complaint. The neighbor's paying some witch to have him cursed, the neighbor is selling unlicensed goods, the neighbor employs doxies and whores."

The second guard snickered. "Going to go read that to the neighbor?"

The first snorted. "And waste time breaking up the fight when the neighbor hears what fusspot called his daughters? File it in the usual place, Carter." He pivoted back towards Bren. "I ought to fine you ten pennies for bringing this drivel."

Bren's hand closed on his coin purse. The merchant's three pennies sat like ballast at the bottom. "Sirs, it wasn't my message."

"I told that idiot he'd be paying the nuisance fee if he bothered us again. Why shouldn't I take it out of you?"

"I don't have any money, sirs. I didn't know—"

The other guard stood and strolled up to them. "No money? What are you doing in the city, then?"

The first guard leaned close. "We don't like vagrants or beggars. Especially not your kind, odd-eye."

Bren scowled and thought, once again, about getting an eye patch. It was only pride that stopped him; pride, and the desire for depth perception. "I'm neither. I work for my beer. I came to the city to get a job."

"If you got no job, you're nothing but a drain on the temples. We got enough of those. Pack up the cards, Carter. Odd-eye needs an escort to the city gates."

The guards started towards him. It was too late to bolt for the door. Far too late to simply not waltz here like an idiot trusting in the goodness of guardsfolk.

"Now, in case you think your curse is going to get you out of this, know that if I grow frog warts for laying hands on you, I can have you lynched."

Bren's back scraped the wall. "I have a job! I just got hired. I start tomorrow."

"That so? Where?"

Bren's eye fell on the recruitment poster pinned up across from him. Inspiration struck. "The army took me on to care for their horses. It's steady work."

The first guard laughed. "They wouldn't hire you."

"Why not? I got twenty years of experience with horses." That part was true, not that it had helped him. "The animals don't care what I look like."

The grin on the guard's face crushed Bren's hope for a quick escape. "Well, we'll just see if the officers do."

#

They didn't tie his hands. The little trodden-down part of his brain that accepted being marched to the edge of the city as normal appreciated it. The rest of him seethed with resentment.

The army camp stood just south of the city, a sprawl of unfinished wood buildings and canvas tents overwhelmed by the duke's snake-flags. It looked half-assed, like the builders had planned to uproot themselves at any time. Maybe a hundred years ago, when the war had just started, they had. But the weathering on the buildings told Bren a temporary solution had become permanent.

The walls were thin. Even outside, he could hear the banter of the soldiers, the low complaints of someone on guard. A loud and disconcerting belch.

The guards prodded him towards a building with "administration" tacked up over the door. The paint on the sign was peeling, as though some old maid had cursed it with boils. They pushed him inside.

At the back of the building a lean, raw-boned man sat at a desk and shuffled paperwork. A pipe, stained with use, lay at his left hand. The man looked up at the three of them. His voice was deep with authority, but so scratchy he must take five or six pipes a day. "What's this?"

One of the guards slapped Bren's shoulder. "We were just checking this fellow's references. He says he was just hired on by you folk. That so?"

The officer laid his paperwork down and leaned on the desk. It creaked. A green and gold cockade bloomed on the shoulder of his blue uniform, but Bren didn't remember what rank it designated. "What's his name?"

The guard chuckled. "If you hired him, shouldn't you know it?"

"You think I remember every fresh face around here, gentlemen? His name."

Bren swallowed. "Bren. Bren Turnbull."

The officer looked Bren up and down. A corner of his mouth twitched upward. "Bren Turnbull. Our newest monster-herder. Yes, that's right."

Bren gaped at him.

The guard said, "He said horses."

The officer shrugged. "Well, I don't know what our recruiter told him, but now that he's signed on, he'll work where I want him."

"Sorry to bother you, sir," said the second guard.

"No bother at all. Leave him here. He has some paperwork left to do."

Bren stood stock-still until the door had slammed behind the guards. Then he burst, "What do you think you're playing at?"

"What am I playing at?" the officer repeated. "Funny you should ask, since it isn't me playing games." He leaned back in his seat. "Yes, I think you'll do. You're tall enough, if a bit older than our usual recruits."

"I didn't agree to join the army," Bren said. "I never enlisted and you know it."

"Do I? I think you'll find you did. Didn't you dream of riding monsters into battle as a boy?"

Bren crossed his arms and glared. His glare was particularly impressive, he knew. It was the eye. But the officer didn't even flinch.

Oh, Bren had worked around the army many years before, like almost every young man had. He'd driven carts and rubbed down horses, but when the real fighting had been done, it hadn't been his job to do it. He liked it that way. He said, "I'm not a soldier. Not a monster-handler. I take care of horses."

The officer steepled his hands. "It's a major offense to lie to the guards, friend. They'll fine you for that. Ten pounds, I think it is."

Bren swallowed. Twelve pennies to a pound. He didn't have a fraction of it. "If you can't pay the fine?"

The officer's smile flashed yellowed teeth. "Debtor's prison. Or the mines."

Bren wanted to punch him.

"I don't think you want me to tell the guards we don't have an agreement. Do you, Mr. Turnbull?"

#

He should've picked prison.

The deer carcass disappeared head first, its glazed eyes and dangling tongue vanishing into the pulsing mass. The deer didn't actually move; the chest of the monster flowed around it. It slurped like a drunkard sucking at a bottle of ale. Bren didn't know what it smelled like; he had his hand smashed flat over his nose.

The soldier next to him smirked. He hadn't bothered to cover his face. "If you're going to throw up, don't do it here. If it takes your breakfast, the whole thing'll stink of it for months."

Bren wasn't going to throw up. He wasn't. The taste in his mouth was just apple, not acid. He said, strangled, "How could a little stomach juice make it worse?"

The soldier shrugged. "Doesn't smell so bad. It's magic. It don't rot. Flies eat it, but it don't rot."

The monster was made of meat. Raw meat, veined with fat and gristle, and shoved into a vaguely bestial form. It had abandoned most of that form to feed, but a few touches still lingered. A slab of beef ribs formed an unshapely thigh. The paw wrapped around the deer's back leg had pork sausages for toes, and a turkey carcass made an unlikely head.

It was sucking the deer into itself, adding it to its torso like a child squishing two lumps of dough together.

Bren said, "Where do you get a thing like that?"

The soldier spat. "Butcher's wife made it. He got himself wounded at the front lines, couldn't get a child on her, and she wouldn't let anyone else take his place."

"Of course she didn't." Bren looked away from the meat monster as it took the last of the deer up with particularly loud slurp. "I suppose it didn't matter to her someone might end up cursed."

"She was a sweet-tempered thing. No curses come out of that sort."

Bren, who knew curses, said, "A monster's bad enough. They should know better."

"You ought to be glad for those barren old virgins. You wouldn't have a job, otherwise." The soldier flung a rope around the meat monster. The twine squished through its loose flesh, but bone stopped it. "This one near killed the butcher, though. They may be brainless things, but they don't hold still to be chopped up, either. Something for you to keep in mind."

Bren flinched when the other end of the rope bounced off his chest. He caught the leash, felt the vibration of the monster moving on the other end of the taut line.

"You're crazy to take this job," the soldier said. "You cursed lot are fearless."

"We aren't," Bren said, staring at the monster as it sucked its mass back into the shape of limbs. Was it too late to run back north and leave the city behind all together?

"You'll like the perks, though."

"Will I?"

"Food and wages, and no questions ask. Army's guarantee." The man tapped his nose. "Keep the monsters repaired and under control, and nothing else will matter. No history. No curses."

Bren's hand flew to his orange eye. Well. He had needed a job. Now, disgusting or not, he had one. He might as well make the best of it. "I'll hold you to that."

#

The woman-creature had destroyed its offering. That was bad.

The being had tried its best to fix the cylinder, but she had thrown it in a bucket of water. The clay object would soften and go to pieces there.

The being vaguely remembered how the water would soak down into it, back when the being was still in the earth. It touched its own strangely solid arms. They were smooth and slightly sticky, but if it focused, its surface hardened, and the stickiness faded.

Water wouldn't soak it now, it thought, and then marveled. It didn't remember thinking before it had climbed out of the pit. It remembered being earth. The woman-creature had dug it out of the hill and taken it home like she wanted it.

She didn't seem to want it now.

There were other memories, but they didn't belong to the being. Vague impressions of the feel of coarse wool on skin, the catch of smooth cotton against callused hands, the burning of muscles and aching bones and the hot agony of fire. Whiffs of smell and hints of flavor— blueberry muffins, wet earth, cough syrup — were most maddening of all. It couldn't scent or taste anything now.

The memories gave meaning to the woman-creature's noises and her face's contortions when the being had climbed out to meet her. She had been angry.

Something very new caught at the being's mind. Fear. What would happen to it now? It wanted to stay with the woman-creature. It could almost remember being her. That meant she was important.

It touched its new face. Everything was confusing. But what it did understand was that the woman-creature had made it more like her. That had to mean something. Perhaps it meant that it was wanted.

It lifted a shapeless hand before it and concentrated. Fingers spread and smoothed.

@anonymousfoz

@moremysteriesthantragedies

@elizababie

@sm-writes-chaos

@bellascarousel

@palebdot

@hyba

@da-na-hae

@macabremoons

@the-dragon-chronicler

[maccreadysbaby]

CRASH AND BURN™︎

fem!oc x preston garvey

in which a strange girl shows up in the commonwealth to tell the minutemen that an old enemy is rising up from the capital wasteland, and they’re not just coming for kicks and giggles. oh, and an unassuming second-in-command manages to catch her silver eye, even on the brink of war.

❝ if this is what it feels like to fall for you, garvey, i don’t want to stop until i crash and burn ❞

this is chapter one. full chapter masterlist can be found here.

TW: none

❝ A NEW LEASE ON HUMANITY ❞

Diamond City, Boston, CW

Sept 12, 2288, 2100

— DIAMOND CITY WENT QUIET AFTER THE SUN HAD SET. Heartley didn’t quite know what she’d expected, really. The Commonwealth wasn’t a place with bustling nightlife, unless the raids on settlements and numerous homicides conducted by gangs in the area counted. For it to be the hustling and bustling, populous center of post-apocalyptic Boston that it was, it sure was… quiet. At least when it was dark outside.

Heartley ran her out of place, neatly manicured pointer finger around the rim of her purified water, steel gray eyes watching and calculating the movements of everybody around her like some kind of machine. Her long, easily distinguishable, vibrant red hair was tied into a braid and hidden beneath the hood of her black duster. A black bandana covered the entirety of her face besides her eyes. Beneath her duster sat black cargo pants, a black turtleneck, and a set of genuine gunner combat armor, hand-painted with the same dark color. If she didn’t wear black, she felt too exposed. Too bright. Too easy to see. Even her feet and hands were covered — one by boots, the other, fingerless gloves — because exposing any part of herself without quiet consideration could get her and everyone around her killed in an instant. Because they were everywhere. Lurking. Searching for her like a lion on the prowl.

The robot at the noodle counter had been kind. Or so she thought — it was only the second robot she’d encountered in the Commonwealth, and the other was British with a bad attitude. The one here kept offering her food over the counter despite her many kind denials.

“Not too culture shocked, are you?” Came a soft, but smooth tenor voice from her left. She didn’t turn her head, only catching the swift movement of his turning toward her in her peripheral.

“You say it as though I’m a child,” She replied, slowly turning the water can in a circle on the counter. She saw him shift from the corner of her eye.

“Just checking in. We did jump headlong into… an entire new world littered with death and destruction,” He took the time to choose his words carefully. It was something he did often, which she believed more people should do — take the time to think through their words, feeling out when to apply pressure or ease off, making mental notes of every single syllable that comes out of their own mouth.

The easiest way to learn someone’s intentions, their deepest, darkest desires, was to simply listen. Truly hang off of every word they spoke. Something she wished she’d learned long ago.

“I’m okay, Markus,” She responded, finally sparing him a glance. Her cold, steel eyes met his. They were an anomaly, or so they’d heard. Not even zero-point-zero-zero-five percent of the population was graced with heterochromia, or two different colored eyes, anymore. And the sage green iris that sat in his left eye, and the deep amber that sat in his right, showed just how much of an anomaly he was.

Markus nodded. He had the hood of a tan duster pulled tightly over his head. It was old — the sleeves had been cut short, almost like a vest, so the long sleeves of his black shirt far surpassed them. The rest of his outfit was a mirror image of Heartley’s. Black and covered. Everything besides his face.

His hypnotizing eyes were placed carefully amongst his perfectly symmetrical features. He had a deep olive skin, and dark hair cropped close to his head. His upper lip was thin, his bottom not much bigger, and his nose made a perfect curve that pre-war women would’ve envied him for. Only in the sunlight, and with deep concentration could Heartley see the faint freckles that danced across his cheeks and nose, but even in the neon lights of Diamond City, she could imagine them all in their places.

“I’m not,” He admitted simply, shifting his gaze back towards the noodle robot ahead. Heartley turned her head fully that time.

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged, multicolored eyes hopping across their surroundings as he worked up a careful response. “My new… identity, new abilities, instincts… plus the world around us. I’m not sure how to process it all.”

Heartley looked forward, swirling the water in the can as she got lost in thought.

“I mean, look at him,” Markus faintly gestured the noodle bot ahead of them. It was stirring a pot, murmuring its singular voice line to bystanders as they passed. “I look like that on the inside. I know I look like that on the inside, and yet I can’t help but feel so utterly human.”

She sucked in a breath, taking note at the sudden emotional shift in the conversation. “Because you are.”

“I’m not. Don’t deceive yourself,” He ordered, glancing down at the counter his hands were folded on top of. “I used to be.”

Heartley couldn’t help the pang of guilt that blossomed inside her chest at his words. She knew they were true no matter had badly she didn’t want to believe them.

“You’re still my best friend,” She replied, not even shifting in the slightest despite the emotion in her statement. He shook his head.

“Am I? Or am I just his conscience downloaded into a synthetic body?”

Heartley shifted again, crossing her legs. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

“Okay,” Was all he said.

Together they sat, hood beside hood, deep into the dark night that encompassed Diamond City’s center.

To understand them, you need to know their story.

Here it is.

>>

[the-firebird69]

There's a few other things to note the first is John remillard is dead we hate him and we need to get him out of there I'm so sick of hearing about this idiot he doesn't know anything he's trying to go down there and he can't get there and he's pitiful he's a horrible idiot we need them in and that's all I'm saying and I'm going to write why he puts Bob's everywhere too many bombs everywhere and we need them out he wants to have a meeting with Duke Nukem Blockbuster and have him headed up and he said he will so I'm going to schedule it so sick and tired of having so much s*** out there he keeps saying we don't need to do this we don't have to have so much stuff out there of theirs and we don't feel like hardly anything for a while and they're just sitting there doing nothing they had spaceships we do see what he's saying there's no real reason for for it and he wants it trimmed and we need it trimmed it's gross we're just about to do it and we're planning to do it but we mustn't let it ever happen again we need the upper hand and we don't need this much cover we're going to hurt ourselves and our people it's wrong

Thor Freya

We need to have a meeting with everybody up there and we need to have it down here and it has to be about urgency we're fooling around with stuff here and we're messing with these people and we're pushing them and it's to preempt and it's probably my cadre they're not wrong in doing it because we never seem to have enough troops or back up or things under control it is our fault for not properly communicating to our people that we need them in and we need skilled people and immediately I don't care if they're from Timbuktu in France they're going to sign on and they're going to do it now to save themselves and us there are people and I'm tired of this nonsense we need to tell them to do it they need to be instructed. Furthermore we need the troops now right now to keep ourselves from exploding not want to blow up and miss out on seeing my wife and my children and my friends have helped me my whole life including them I don't think it's fair that we don't recognize this is a simple task and we're hiding from me from it not me I want everybody called in from everywhere and then down here the same meeting and to talk about why are people are not signed on and how to get them to and I want to notice it out tonight and everyday we need skilled people immediately we are in trouble we're in our need this is a war we need people for space defense immediately to catch space to breathe Earth blows up we don't need to have a device down there to prove there could be one that we can't find necessarily 100% we need to explain that and not allow them to do it to prove that they can I'm sick and tired of this s*** I want someone to listen to my f****** order

Zues

Hera

What is saying is true we need to have a meeting and have Duke and Blockbuster headed up we're playing with fire and we cannot keep doing it and we need him to say it correctly and we need all of us in and we need to hire skilled people and move the others into their jobs right now and train where we are it's a great idea he had it just now with her he says if you're over there they're over here you're still going to sign on cuz we need you and we're going to make a mandate of some kind there's a way to say it and I'm going to write it down right now and we're writing if you have these skills you are requested and required to report to duty something like that we're going to send it out

Thor Freya

I want every man woman and child who's active duty in a certain rank at this meeting tomorrow and we're going to write it up and we want it and he's going to have a little meeting himself you know he's been working all sorts of stuff and all of its recruiting and he's saying is start doing it and we'll have to hire and people are not doing it and they have permission and everything and the reason is they're busy doing other stuff so he says we need transportation and we do I said we're not going to get to and from anywhere infiltrating without it and we need to get on it and this is very slow so we need a few hits we have one he's right we just need to do it and we need to start complaining and get it done and we need to do it backwards bja said it you're not getting it so you make the beer and send it to him and we use it and you're asking for it and we get our money back now we have to activate this stuff and we're going to send it out tomorrow and we will have a list of things to activate and run with the cart in front of the horse the beer is one of them there's a few of them the Pontiac is another kit cars we discussed with the panels and plant-ons there's a monstrous crowd that we do that

Olympus

[bubbleteaimagines]

Allo Can I be blessed with some Porco headcanons with a female reader whose from Paradise ;;c;; Both fluff angst n smut >~< Thank uu

Porco dating someone from Paradis Island

Porco Galliard Headcanon

Warnings: NSFW Content

ALSO SPOILERS!! IF YOU HAVENT READ THE MANGA!! I REPEAT SPOILERS!!

when you and porco first met, neither of you knew of the others identity

porco had just gotten back from war and you were there to infiltrate marley for information

in fact, you both seemed to be running from who were supposed to be, just wanting a break from your destinies

this caused you both to somehow end up by the ocean one day, just when the sun was setting

you had been sitting close to the shore, the water lapping at your feet when all of a sudden a voice caught your attention

“hey—! wha—! you’re not supposed to be here!”

not expecting for anyone to actually be down there that time of night, you quickly whipped around with alarm in your eyes

“w-whose there?” you ask nervously, terrified that you were gonna get caught and your cover was gonna be blown

after all, levi had specifically forbid you from wandering off

“the tickle monster— who the hell do you think? no citizens are supposed to—”

when porco finally came into the light and he saw you sitting there, eyes wide as your sundress blew in the wind, he was immediately taken aback

not only were you trespassing, but you were also...different

whether it was your skin, your eyes, or just simply the fact that he had never seen you before, porco was astonished

“i-i’m sorry! please don’t tell! i didn’t mean to, i—”

“hey, hey,” immediately his entire demeanor changed. “don’t worry, i’m not gonna tell. how could i rat out a beautiful lady like yourself?”

from that day forwards, you both were gone

you began to see each other again and again and again, at first just by pure coincidence, but then it soon became intentionally

porco would purposely seek out the pretty girl wearing pretty dresses, and you’d sometimes linger in the marketplace to see if he’d be there

it wasn’t long before you two began hanging out

porco asked to accompany to the beach again and since he was a high ranking eldian he was allowed there

of course, he didn’t tell you that

both of you kept your identies a firm secret, but neither of you knew

you just thought that maybe he was a high ranking soldier and he assumed that you were marleyan bc you didn’t wear an armband

you and porco became extremely close and it wasn’t long before a relationship blossomed

porco was horrible at being romantic, but he tried, he really did try for you

he’d bring you flowers, buy you little things of chocolate bc he knew it was your favorite

he’d try to leave you little love letter in the morning and it’d absolutely melt your heart

he’d spoil you and use his status to take you to the finest restaurants in liberio

sometimes when you were out people would recognize porco, but he’d always keep the interactions brief

when it came to porco, you probably didn’t know much about him

he was kinda closed off, and he wanted to seem strong to you so he never shared much

but that was okay— what he did share was enough for you

when it came to you though, he’d want to know all about you

he could stay up for hours listening to you explain your childhood, leaving out the parts where you were really from

he’d love knowing about you and would hold you close, often falling asleep to your stories

really, porco was a gentle yet protective lover

he could be extremely jealous and it translated into the bedroom

sex with him was rough, with porco being the dominant most of the time

he loved to mark you and degrade you, wanting you to scream out who exactly you belonged to

he’d pound you into the mattress and tell you what a good little slut you were and then he’d make you cum all over him

afterwards, he’s not much for aftercare lol but at least he’d hold you?

if he fell for you quickly then he’d probably introduce you to pieck

and she would LOVE you, thinking how it was cute that porco was so mean to everybody else but so soft around his girl

he likes touching you, that’s for sure

always has an arm slung around you

in all honesty, he’d be an amazing boyfriend and uwu but you know it’s not gonna last...

technically, you and porco were doomed from the start

he was lying to you about who he was, liking the fact that you loved him, not the jaw titan, ‘marley hero.’

you were lying to him, not even from marley and an island devil that they seemed to hate

your love came to a boiling point, eventually

when you both found out who the other truly was, both you and porco were shocked— like hella shocked

you were on the battlefield, defending eren when all of a sudden you spotted porco and pieck from up above

you wanted to scream and abandon everything right then and there, to tell them both to get the hell out of there

but then,,, porco looked up and saw you using ODM gear, wearing the same suit as the people attacking marley

his eyes widened, not even believing it as betrayal and anger seeped through his veins

“y/n!”

you’d be so terrified to face him

you’d probably break down crying and explain that you hadn’t meant for it to be this way— you didn’t mean to lie and yes, you truly did love porco

but then,,, you’d be exposed to his own little secret

as marley soliders began shooting at you, yelling at you to get away from the warriors, porco would suddenly scoop you up and transform to shield you from their bullets

everybody, including your comrades, was absolutely dumbfounded to see him throw you on his back and run away with you

and you’d be literally frozen, not even believing this was happening

“what...the...fuck...”

porco kept you safe during the entire battle, up until he decided to take eren on

you couldn’t lie, even though your relationship was probably gonna be in shambles after that it hurt so bad to see him just laying there, not even knowing if he was alive

you tried to find out, you tried to go towards him and yank him out of his titan but jean swooped in and tackled you at the last second

you were a crying mess but he held you, kicking and screaming and all, not letting go until you were safely on the plane

“jean, please! you guys don’t understand — i have to go back! i have to see—!”

“i’m sorry, y/n, but this is for the best. you have to let go, you may never see him again.”

for the next few months, or years that you were separated from porco, you’d be a hollow mess

It’d take some time for you to forgive him, and him you

for the longest he stayed on marley, bitter and cursing your name

cursing himself for falling in love with an island devil

he hated you, he wanted to kill you...only...he didn’t

deep down porco knew that he still loved you

and he carried that love everywhere with him, even if it tore him apart inside

he was stuck between wanting to be in your arms again and wanting to be loyal to marley

after finding out where you were from, he’d have so much rage and so many questions

you were a devil, yes, but...were you?

you were so sweet and compassionate and kind...how could you be?

you were the exact opposite of what porco had been taught

you weren’t a devil...marley had lied

they had lied and filled him with all this hatred for people he didn’t even know

it infuriated him, and it saddened him that he couldn’t be with you all because he was brainwashed

for the time that you were apart, porco was a mess

he hardly looked alive anymore, only thinking about you day and day out

he longed for the day he’d see you again

and when he did—

all hell was breaking loose, AGAIN

marley was declaring war on paradis

there were people everywhere, titans ranging about, eren being...eren

you of course were on the front lies, just trying to survive when you suddenly spotted him

could it be? no...

you didn’t wanna believe it at first

you couldn’t

you only stared at porco’s scrunched up face in shock, not moving despite that being incredibly dangerous

likewise, porco was shocked to see you there, alive and once again fighting for paradis

it felt just like the first time, but this time you both had months to prepare your words

and the first thing you said to each other?

“i’m sorry.”

the words shocked both you and porco even further, but it felt...right

“y/n...i’m so sorry i—”

“please, pock i should be the one to apologize. i lied, i know i did. but i—”

“i lied too. we both did. guess that’s why we were made for each other,” porco chuckled humorously, you nodding in agreement

for a moment, you both just stood there looking at each other

but then, months of tension boiled over and finally you just kissed, in the middle of the battlefield

“uh, guys? that’s romantic and all but FUCKING FOCUS WILL YOU?”

porco promises he’ll find you after the battle

and what do you know, he keeps his promise and after that you guys live happily ever after the manga doesn’t exist

[yandere-dark-cupid]

If you’re requests are open can I get a Yandere Zuko x fem reader where after the war he looks for his darling by making his guards track her down but without anyone knowing bc he doesn’t want ppl to think that he’s back into his old ways again and keeps her in the palace

Ok Angel 💜👌💜. If you want, I could continue this as a mini part to part scenario series if I have the time T.Angel. There is just so many ideas worming around this concept and just think of the crazy things the darling and Zuko is going to go through, while also keeping both of their identities on the veeery low-key. Just let me know Angel 😊☕💜.

Also everyone is going to be aged up to 18+ Btw.

Side note: For the sake of this scenario, the darling will be from the Southern Water tribe. If this Angel decides to let me continue this as a mini scenario series, then the both of us are going to talk about if the darling can be a Waterbender or not.

Warning ⚠!!!: Their is going to be some slight Nsfw in this.

Yandere Zuko: A Dragon's treasure

Five weeks. It has been five weeks since you've went missing. Once the war has ended, Zuko was planning to propose to you. But every since his coronation of being crowned the new FireLord, you just up and vanished. It was like you were never there in the first place. And Zuko has been scattering everywhere in the palace and Fire nation to find you or some type of clue. But nothing. There was nothing there. You really covered your tracks, didn't you?

Right now Zuko was in his thrown room. He was fuming- No steaming with rage. If anyone were to walk in to the room, they'll notice it was boiling in there. He tried to look everywhere in the palace. Even outside the palace. But to no avail. Zuko couldn't find you. You've made it clear that you don't want to be with him or any where near him with this type of stunt you've pulled.

Zuko took a seat on his thrown. His hands was on his head, just about ready to pull his hair out and shout in frustration. But then a knock on the door stop him. " *Frustrated sigh* State your name and your business." Zuko said with spite and a hint of venom in his voice. The person behind the door flinched at his tone of voice. "It's me Sir. The guard you put in charge of the search party for Ms.Y/N". Zuko perked up at the mention of his missing lover's name. " Come in. " said Zuko. With out a second thought, the guard entered the room. She bowed down in respect for her FireLord.

" FireLord Zuko I have an update about Ms.Y/N's whereabouts. " Said the guard. She almost stuttered. The guard noticed how extremely hot it was in the thrown room. It was a clear sign that FireLord Zuko was pissed out of his mind. " Well, " Zuko said in annoyance and anger. Zuko was beyond angry at this point. He was a whole entire cluster fuck of emotions right now. " M-me and m-my crew found some people who could be connected to Ms.Y/N's disappearance , your majesty. " Stuttered the guard in slight fear. Zuko quirked up an eyebrow at what the guard said.

Ah. So the guard managed to find the ones responsible for his darling's vanishment, or at least had some part in it. " Bring them in. " Zuko said. The guard only merely nodded, not wanting to meet the FireLord's intimidating gaze. The guard got off their knees and went to call the other guards, to bring out the people that played some part of the darling going missing. The other guards quickly brought out four other people. Those people was tied up, bounded, and blind folded. The people was visibly quivering in fear. They were very confused and scared on what they did to upset the FireLord.

The four guards forcefully pushed the four people down to the floor. Each guard took off each person's blind fold. In front of the four people, there sat the FireLord in all his glory. FireLord Zuko glared down at the 4 people in a burning gaze. So these disgusting pathetic excuses of human was responsible for his darling going missing. Zuko scoffed at the thought. After a painful intimidating stare down, Zuko finally spoke. " So your the ones held responsible for Y/N's disappearance. " Zuko spat out to them with his voice dipped in poison.

" I-if y-you're talking about a someone that has (h/c), (e/c), and (s/c) then t-they came to m-my store to buy clothes." The woman stuttered in fear. Zuko stayed quite and only listened. " If you're talking about the same person; they came to my food stand and brought some food. " the old man said quickly in fear of what the FireLord would do to him if he took so long to explain himself. Zuko only merely quirks his eyebrow. " Y-yeah, that same person came to my Shop and bought some bags and extra equipment as his they were going on a trip. " The man said while sweating nervously. " The same person came to shack a-and brought some w-weapons. " Said the short lady in fear. Zuko only hmmed at what they said.

" So you're telling me the lady you just described went to all of your stores and shops to buy something. " Zuko said still glaring down the four people. " Y-yes. " the woman squeaked in fear. The old man only nodded quickly. " Mhm. " both the man and woman said. Zuko got up from his thrown and began to walk down to his stand. " What should we do with them you highness? " Said one of the guards. " Bring them to the dungeon. I will decide what to do with them later. " Said Zuko. " I-I don't understand what did we do wrong. " Stuttered the woman in fear and nervousness. Zuko quickly turned to the woman, the woman quickly shuts her mouth. Zuko then begins to slowly walk towards her.

Zuko shot one of his hands out and grasps the woman's face in a painful grip. The woman squeaks in surprise and fear. Zuko just merely just glares down at her. His eyes is filled with a flaming rage. " You all are held responsible for the disappearance of Y/N, " Zuko spat out in anger. Zuko releases his hand from woman's face. Zuko steps away from the woman and is now in front of the four bounded people. " Since you all play a part in my- err Y/N's disappearance, you all will be punished accordingly. " The four people only shook even more at FireLord Zuko's statement. " All of you take them away were they'll never see the light of day again. " Zuko said with venom dripping from his voice.

The four guards only bowed and said a quick " yes sir ". With that they took the four people away. Now Zuko was once again left in his thrown room...... alone.

Zuko let out a sigh of frustration out. He walked towards a window that was in the room. He stared down at his people, he was thinking about something. Based on what the four people said, Zuko can conclude that his darling is no longer in the Fire nation. Zuko dug into his pocket and took out something. It was a necklace. A betrothed necklace to be more specific. You see his darling was not from the fire nation, no no no. You were from a Water tribe, the Southern Water tribe to put it. While Zuko was on his trip to help Aang defeat his father and help him master firebending, Zuko found out from Katara on what her necklace means. He found out that from the Water tribe in order to marry someone, you have to make a betrothed necklace and give it to that special someone. When Zuko found out about this type of information, he instantly got rapped up about it. Ever since he's joined team Avatar he was thinking about what life would be like when he becomes FireLord, then his thoughts were drawn into marriage. He can't help but think, his darling would make the perfect FireLady. His FireLady.

And they'll have children. They'll be lovely children. With his darling swelled up with another one of his heirs all while holding another one of their children. It'll truly be a.. delicious sight to see ~ Zuko hmmed in delight at the thought of his darling bearing his children. But... that's if he witness such a darling sight. Zuko groaned at his mood being dampened and soured. But he knows it's true. Zuko knows if he doesn't act fast, he'll lose his darling. And that lovely little scene that played in his mind, will be nothing but a mere fantasy. Besides, he doesn't want to get himself accidentally sexual frustrated.....

With that aside, Zuko begins to start planning and strategizing. Zuko walks away from the window. He calls a servant, he orders them to get one of his best generals. The servant was slightly hesitant and confused, but never the less terrified. Wasn't the war over? They pushed their question aside, because they know now wouldn't be the best time to question the FireLord. He hasn't been acting himself lately and has been been flaring up at anything these past few weeks. With out much of a second thought, they did as they were told and went to see if someone could get one of the generals FireLord Zuko was talking about.

Zuko on the other hand, went back to sit on his thrown. He knew it will take time for the general to get here, so he decided to sit and be patient for him to get here. All while doing this, Zuko began to plan out in his mind on how he was going to get his darling. He was thinking about getting some of the Fire nation's best spies to help track down his darling. Sending out a whole search team and alerting the public while cause some type of panic. Not only that but he's trying to show that He and the Fire nation has turned over a new leaf, that and he doesn't want people and the other members of team Avatar know he's basically going back to his old ways. Since everybody knows the history on how he went to the ends of the earth to find and Capture the Avatar, and he's basically doing the same for his darling. It'll put a bad name on him and an even worse name on the Fire nation. So he'll lay as low as possible and keep shush shush about it, so he doesn't rise suspicion and ruin all the hard work he's been putting in the past time he's became FireLord.

With all those thoughts in mind, Zuko decides to call the same servant from before. So he can see if his message has been delivered. The Servant said they already sent a messaging hawk out to see if they can reach the general. Zuko only hmmed and dismissed them, and told them to report back to him once the massage has been delivered. With that the servant left, leaving Zuko in his thrown room. Zuko dug into his pocket again. He took out the Betrothed necklace out. He gently creased and rubbed the engraving and creases. He took so many hours and very much effort into making this for his darling. Looking at it always made him feel calmer, it made him happy knowing that his darling will be wearing it soon. But then his darling ran away from him before he can give it to them. Zuko pushed down on the purple garnet at the thought of his darling running away from him ( the rest of the necklace's gems are made up of smaller bits of Rudy and sapphire ). Zuko let out another sigh of frustration. He began to think. Once is darling is back with him he's never letting them go...........

My God, this was a boom ass idea. Not only that, but an idea of Zuko having a bit of a breeding kink has been floating around in my mind for some time now. I had a lot of fun with this. Like I said before T.Angel, If you want me to make a mini scenarios series about this let me know 😆! Well I hope you enjoy it. Until next time my Little Tainted Angels, see you soon ~💜❤💜

[peakywitch]

Fuck Men - John Shelby

“Hello i hope you’re still accepting requests! Can i ask for one with John Shelby. Y/N goes out with her friends and gets roofied (someone put drugs in her drink) and they call john and it’s all messy and full of angst. John comes in with Arthur and Tom and they try to make her vomit it up and he’s crying and fluff at the end. Hope you’re still raking requests I really love your writing! Xx” 

Warnings: drugs intoxication, alcohol, this one is little disgusting sorry

words: 1580

masterlist

I ain't got time for you baby, either you're mine or you're not

Make up your mind sweet baby, right here, right now's all we got

Although The Garrison was one of the best pubs in town, the one run by the Germans, Die Rotte, a few blocks from it was best for having an actual good time. That's where you could find Y/N and her girlfriends every other Friday night. They weren’t exactly women exclusive, but only the best men could get inside.

It was quite a delightful place, to be honest. White walls, art deco everywhere, good alcohol, an amazing band who played the best Charleston in town. The night was one of the best nights. It was a chilly summer night, so dresses were being shown off.

“Y/N, try this!” screamed Lizzie with ecstasy, handing her a glass.

“What is it?” she asked from the table, seeing her friend coming from the bar.

“It’s called Fallen Angel! It tastes like lemon and...just try it!” Lizzie had a beautiful smile on her face, maybe it was snow or the facts that she had gotten a proper job.

A little party never killed nobody, so we gon' dance until we drop

A little party never killed nobody, right here, right now's all we got

“Ok, I’m in. Get me one!” she smiled, after swallowing the exotic greeny drink.

Lizzie started her way once again to the bar and after Y/N held a small conversation with Ada, who was almost as drunk as Lizzie, she came back.

“Here is to us, ladies.” she started to distribute the questionable amount of alcohol between the six women on the table “Fuck being a fuckin’-” she interrupted herself “Fuck men!”

“Fuck men!” the other women chorused, but Y/N could only smile.

She was the only one who got a decent love story. But a decent love story won’t stop anyone from drinking a whole glass in just ten seconds, does it? No, it doesn't.

Time passed by and the night was getting better and better, almost like a movie. The dance floor was filled with sweaty couples dancing non-stop to some loud charleston that rumbled in their hearts, threatening to leave their bodies.

Her legs started to feel weaker, but she knew that was alcohol because it’s the first sign: fragile legs. She knew the others were feeling the same, because they had taken the same amount, or even more.

“I need air!” screamed Y/N, trying to make Ada understand her over the music.

“You need her?” asked her sister in law in return, the music had her going.

“I need…!” she began again, the room started to spin faster and faster, the trumpets were making her head weight and her ears buzz. “John, Ada…”

“Y/N!” voices began to scream her name, but the noise was clouding her mind, and her eyes were not responding anymore, being covered by her heavy eyelids.

But just as she tried to reach out for Ada’s arms, she fell.

“Liz!” screamed Ada, panicking “Lizzie!”

She appeared by her side in a split second, and saw her on the floor, holding her unconscious sister-in-law. 

“Oh Lord, Y/N!” she screamed and knelt by Ada’s side.

She tapped her face abruptly, trying to wake her up.

“She’s not waking up!” they both stated in fear and got her out of the dancefloor screaming to the other dancers.

They sat her on their table, and wet her face with the ice cube that her glass had. While Lizzie was focused on her friend and bathing her neck with the cold water, Ada had her eyes on Y/N’s Glass.

“Ada, another one! Come on, it’s not-” she turned her face and saw Ada’s eyes stuck on her glass “Did…?” she whispered, forgetting about everything.

“There’s something white, Lizzie…” Ada began to tear up, thinking about her friend being harmed.

Lizzie left the bar as rapidly as she could, and ran three blocks down to the Garrison. Her chest was getting cold, and her ankles started to hurt: high heels were not meant for running on a messy street at three am, drunk and scared.

She began to scream John’s name even before she reached the entrance to the Garrison.

“John! Shelby! John! John!” she entered the Garrison, not forgetting to scream Shelby's name. He wasn’t in the big room, he had to be in the booth.

His name burned her throat, she said it so many times she started to forget what to say.

“John!” she burst into the private booth, and everybody stopped laughing.

“Lizzie?” asked John confused, she was supposed to be with Y/N.

He knew something was up, he saw it on her face.

“It’s Y/N!”

He got up as quickly as he could, even faster. Lizzie didn’t have to say another word, for he was running down the street, fearing the worst.

A soft and cold wind was drying his lungs, but it would take more than just wintery weather to prevent him from running towards her. Not even war could stop him from whispering her name in his prayers. If he prayed, it was for her. For her to be safe during the disgusting Spanish flu, for her to be happy during those birthdays he was away, not knowing if his “Happy Birthday” letter would make its way before he took his last breath.

“Y/N!” his voice echoed in the pub, and his throat almost ripped.

“John!” cried Ada, not knowing why her friend wasn’t responding.

And in a few confusing seconds, her body was over John’s shoulder, he was trying to get her out of there.

“Please stay with me, I need you.” he kept on reciting as if he was trying to memorize those exact words. “Please, I need you. Stay with me.”

The walk from the bar all the way to the house in Watery Lane was infernal and everlasting. He couldn't pronounce the words correctly, he was mumbling desperate thoughts, which made no sense on his lips.

Polly, who was spending a cosy night in, opened the door, as an answer to the shouts from her nephews. And as John entered the house in a rush, he placed the girl on the couch, trying to make her wake up.

“What the hell are we even supposed to do!” Ada cried, not knowing why she wasn’t waking up.

“What did she have, Ada?” he asked, taking his blue vest off.

“We don’t know! Her glass had something white at the very bottom, we don’t know what happened, John.” She was about to pull her hair off her head, she was sure it was a nightmare.

“White?” he screamed “She got her drink fucked over and you tell me now?” he was roaring, scaring Ada even more.

“Why don’t you take the girl to the doctor, instead of screaming to your sister?” Polly confronted him “Fighting Ada won’t stop time, it’s making you lose it!”

“John!” his oldest brother entered the house, nervous and curious about what was happening. Tommy was walking right behind Arthur.

“Y/N is under some fucking drug, and I don’t have any idea of what to do…!” he was about to cry, his eyes were stinging.

“What was in her glass?” asked Tommy, taking his jacket off.

“She was drinking a Fallen Angel and there was something white and dusty at the very bottom…” remembered Ada, cleaning her constant tears.

“So it was at the bottom, good to know it didn’t dissolve,” Tommy answered, and walked up to John.

“Brother, listen to me.” he said, taking John’s face in his hands “You take her to the bathroom, and we know you hate puke, but you have to make her vomit.”

He began to instruct quickly on how to help her, and John was suffering by the simple thought of hurting her.

“You won’t hurt her, you just…” Tommy was being careful with his words for the first time in ages, and John was thankful “You just touch everything in there, and it will result. Trust me, she’ll be alright.”

John walked into the bathroom with her, dead weight.

“I’m so sorry, please wake up…”

Some say you float, some say it’s like a dream. Some say you feel everything around you, some say you don’t even realize. But it was fucking disgusting for Y/N, she was dancing a popular Charleston and, when she opened her eyes, she had his husband fingers all the way up to her throat, making a nightmare out of a party.

“What the fuck!” she screamed, feeling how even her soul could leave her body in that same minute.

Both of her hands gripped onto John’s shirt, as she was still not seeing a thing.

“I can’t fucking see!” she screamed, scared to death.

“Don’t worry, Y/N.” said a voice from behind her, she was scared “It will come back to you in a few seconds, don’t worry.”

John hugged her, tightly against his chest.

“John.” she relaxed her body, while susurrating his name.

“Don’t you ever scare me like this again, because next time I might not survive the fear.”

“I’m sorry I scared you, I love you.” she apologized, while her fingers danced in his neck.

“I need you by my side until I die, please don’t leave before me.” he was being truthful, it was never hard for him when she was by his side.

“I’ll try not to, love. I’ll try not to.”

@deepdonutkid @a-golden-sunflower-vol-6 @stydia-4-ever @natural-hearts @lovemissyhoneybee @girlwith-kalei-do-scope-eyes @peakyrogers @writeroutoftime @peakyxtommy @nyotamalfoy @pinkeijin @lukeymybabe @eternallyvenus

[miawin6]

PERCY JACKSON CHARACTERS AS EVERMORE LYRICS

Percy Jackson

And if it was an open-shut case

I never would've known from that look on your face

The more that you say, the less I know

Wherever you stray, I follow

Everybody wants you

Everybody wonders what it would be like to love you

When we were younger, down in the park

Honey, making a lark of the misery

And we live in peace, but if someone comes at us

This time, I'm ready

And when I was shipwrecked, I thought of you

In the cracks of light, I dreamed of you

Annabeth Chase

You know that my train could take you home

Anywhere else is hollow

There is happiness

Past the blood and bruise, past the curses and cries

Beyond the terror in the nightfall

Haunted by the look in my eyes

That would've loved you for a lifetime

Leave it all behind

Tell me, when did your winning smile begin to look like a smirk?

When did all our lessons start to look like weapons pointed at my deepest hurt?

I can't make it go away by making you a villain

All you want from me now is the green light of forgiveness

Never be so kind, you forget to be clever

Never be so clever, you forget to be kind

Piper Mclean

I'm like the water when your ship rolled in that night

Rough on the surface but you cut through like a knife

As if you were a mythical thing

Like you were a trophy or a champion ring

And there was one prize I'd cheat to win

If I can't relate to you anymore

Then who am I related to?

And the skeletons in both our closets

Plotted hard to mess this up

Jason Grace

It's the kind of cold, fogs up windshield glass

But I felt it when I passed you

There's an ache in you put there by the ache in me

But if it's all the same to you

It's the same to me

You can run, but only so far

I escaped it too, remember how you watched me leave

But if it's okay with you, it's okay with me

I won't ask you to wait if you don't ask me to stay

Sorry for not making you my centerfold

Were you waiting at our old spot

In the tree line, by the gold clock?

Did I leave you hanging every single day?

Were you standing in the hallway with a big cake?

Happy birthday

Did I paint your bluest skies the darkest gray?

A universe away

Sometimes walking out is the one thing

That will find you the right thing

Hazel Levesque

Show me the places where the others gave you scars

I sit and watch you and notice everything you do or don't do

You're so much older and wiser and I

I wait by the door like I'm just a kid

Use my best colors for your portrait

Lay the table with the fancy shit

And watch you tolerate it

Will you forgive my soul

When you're too wise to trust me and too old to care?

No more tug of war now, I just know there's more

I rewind the tape but all it does is pause

On the very moment all was lost

If our love died young, I can't bear witness

And it's been so long

Frank Zhang

And in the disbelief, I can't face reinvention

I haven't met the new me yet

Fatefully

I tried to pick my battles 'til the battle picked me

If the shoe fits, walk in it everywhere you go

Never be so polite, you forget your power

Never wield such power, you forget to be polite

I should've asked you questions

I should've asked you how to be

Asked you to write it down for me

All your closets of backlogged dreams

And how you left them all to me

Leo Valdez

"This dorm was once a madhouse"

I made a joke, "Well, it's made for me"

And the heart I know I'm breakin' is my own

To leave the warmest bed I've ever known

We could call it even

Even though I'm leavin'

There'll be happiness after me

But there was happiness because of me

Both of these things I believe

There is happiness

After giving you the best I had

Tell me what to give after that

I can't stop you putting roots in my dreamland

My house of stone, your ivy grows

And now I'm covered in you

I'd live and die for moments that we stole

On begged and borrowed time

And you know in your soul

When it's time to go

Nico di Angelo

I'm begging for you to take my hand

Wreck my plans, that's my man

Life was a willow and it bent right to your wind

They count me out time and time again

Gleaming, twinkling

Eyes like sinking ships on waters

So inviting, I almost jump in

But I don't like a gold rush, gold rush

I don't like anticipating my face in a red flush

I don't like slow motion double vision in rose blush

I don't like that falling feels like flying 'til the bone crush

And then it fades into the gray of my day old tea

'Cause you know it could never be

My mind turns your life into folklore

There'll be happiness after you

But there was happiness because of you

Both of these things can be true

And you passed right by

I was in the alley, surrounded on all sides

Long story short, it was the wrong guy

Now I'm all about you

Actually

I always felt I must look better in the rear view

And he's passing by

Rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky

And he feels like home

Long story short, it was a bad time

Long story short, I survived

And I couldn't be sure

I had a feeling so peculiar

This pain wouldn't be for evermore

When the words of a sister come back in whispers

That prove she was not in fact what she seemed

Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano

You had a speech, you're speechless

Love slipped beyond your reaches

While you were out building other worlds, where was I?

Where's that man who'd throw blankets over my barbed wire?

I made you my temple, my mural, my sky

Now I'm begging for footnotes in the story of your life

But what would you do if I, I

Break free and leave us in ruins

Took this dagger in me and removed it

Gain the weight of you then lose it

Believe me, I could do it

This place is the same as it ever was

But you don't like it that way

It's never too late

To come back to my side

Yes, I got your letter

Yes, I'm doing better

I know that it's over

I don't need your closure

I know I'm just a wrinkle in your new life

Staying friends would iron it out so nice

Guilty, guilty reaching out across the sea

That you put between you and me

Right where you left me

You left me no, you left me no

You left me no choice but to stay here forever