#not my fault that i’m failing my other classes and neglected this one. except for it literally is my fault

[hongism]

mists of celeste ➻ ten

➻ pairing: ??? x fem reader ➻ genre: space au, pirate au, space pirate!ateez, angst, eventual smut ➻ Word Count: 4.9k ➻ Rating: M ➻ Warnings: language, violence, guns and weaponry, blood, future warnings tba ➻ summary: Sneaking aboard the ship of a renowned space pirate may not have been the best idea, but you’ll have to make do with what fate has handed to you

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mists of celeste act one ➻ part ten

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The water is cold under your bare feet. The red moon cascades dark light over the lake, and you glance around in search of your typical companion. The water swirls around your ankles as you wade through it, moving closer to the shore. Daichi is at the edge again, squatted down on the rocks. He prods at the pebbles beneath the water with his fingers. As you get closer to him, you see that he’s drawing small patterns in them. They are familiar ones, the same design that lines the skin along your spine. You bring a hand to the back of your neck just at the thought of them.

“You messed up,” Daichi says once you’re within a couple feet of him. A frown comes to your lips. “You used your abilities. In front of many people. You could have been caught, Umiko. Do you not realize that?”

“I do.”

“Then what were you thinking? Have you grown to be that careless?”

You don’t answer the man; instead, you turn away from him to squeeze your eyes shut and try to reign in the anger that bubbles in your gut.

“Do you wish to be caught? Should the military take you back and use you as a siphon? Why be careless now, Umiko? For what? For lives that don’t matter?”

You spin on your heel and kick up some of the black water. It smacks Daichi across the eyes. He flinches away from the attack but doesn’t make much of an effort to block it. He wipes the water away from his face.

A moment later, you find yourself flat on your back in the water. Daichi hasn’t budged an inch, and you know that he’s using his own powers to attack you. You pull yourself up, clothes weighed down by the water, and lunge towards Daichi. He doesn’t even lift a finger to send you crashing to the water again.

“You are careless and juvenile. Too much is slipping through, and you are allowing it. You must hide your markings. You will be caught if you don’t. You are already dangerously close to exposing yourself. Whether you want to face it or not, there is a Siren nearby. You must acknowledge it and guard yourself properly against him.”

“Busy?”

The voice drags you out of the reverie, and you lurch forward as you pull yourself out of the dreamscape. You blink at the scene before you, the black landscape of space looming before you without end. You hadn’t even realized that you let yourself slip into the dreamscape while awake. The man who spoke comes up on your right.

“You’re up!” You exhale, surprise in your tone as you look at the man who smiles like a Cheshire back at you. You haven’t seen him since Yunho carried his scarily limp body off the transport ship. It’s a vague memory, especially since your body was still overrun by the adrenaline in your system. You do remember trying to follow Yunho only to be stopped by Jongho. The Berserker had told you to head back to your room and get some rest while Yunho worked his magic, and you had no choice but to do just that.

“Yea, none the worse for wear,” San laughs out. He scratches at the back of his neck. “Slept for three days straight though. I’m mildly impressed with myself. Almost pulled a you there.” He sends a cheeky wink your way. You scoff at his remark, reaching over to punch his bicep. “Ouch! Hey! Go easy on the goods. I’m still fragile.”

“Oh, quit whining. If you have enough energy to make fun of me, I can hit you.” You roll your eyes before looking back out into space. “What was Yunho’s verdict?”

“Overexertion,” San answers with a sigh. “Using my powers too much in a short period of time. I’m good to move around but I should avoid things that could be taxing. Which means no sex.”

“Oh, you poor thing.” Your elbow finds San’s side as you utter the half-hearted reply. He whines at the impact. “Don’t complain too much or you’ll overexert yourself again.”

“Wow, ouch. I am physically hurt by your words. I cannot believe you would turn your back on me like this when I’m having such a rough time. The ultimate betrayal truly.” San places his hand over his chest, grasping the material of his shirt as he pretends to double over in pain. You award him with a slight glare. It’s enough to cause him to relent and stand up straight, looking out the window as you do.

You’re on the bridge for once. You try to make a point of avoiding the bridge simply because you don’t want to run into Hongjoong, and the captain spends all of his time here so it’s hard to avoid someone like that. You don’t have a choice today; Seonghwa asked that you come to the bridge first thing because Hongjoong wanted to see you. Of course, Hongjoong had to be busy with something right when you came to the bridge, thus here you are now waiting for said man to just hurry the fuck up and get this over with.

“I hate space with a passion,” you mutter after a few moments of just looking out into the vast emptiness.

“You picked a bad line of work then.” You release a laugh, bringing your arms up to cross over your chest.

“Maybe I did.”

“Why do you hate space so much?”

“It’s too big. Empty but at the same time full. So many unknowns out there.”

“Well, there are a lot of knowns as well,” San argues. “It isn’t all bad, is it? There’s a lot of beauty to space, even if you can’t always see it. Like an oyster or a geode. You can’t see the beauty on the outside, but the deeper you go, the more beauty you see. No?”

“I suppose you’re right,” you mutter. You drag your tongue over the front of your teeth, saying nothing more, but San doesn’t seem too bothered.

“It’s a bit ironic for you to hate space yet spend so much time in it.”

“I didn’t have much of a choice. Didn’t have any choice at all really.”

San laughs in response to your comment even though nothing about what you said is amusing in the slightest.

“I understand that feeling all too well.”

You neglect to reply. Something about his words and the tone lingering in them reminds you of what Yeosang had mentioned during the mission.

“San chose what he is, and he chose to be a weapon. He chose what he is on the crew for one very clear reason. It’s all because that’s how San views himself.”

You want to pry and ask San about it yourself, hear it come from his lips and not Yeosang’s, but you hesitate for too long. A door slides open behind the two of you, and you glance over your shoulder to see Seonghwa stepping out of the captain’s cabin.

“Hongjoong is ready to see you both,” he says in a flat tone. You turn to San unaware that he would be joining you in meeting with Hongjoong. It makes you feel mildly better about this situation because at least you won’t be alone with Hongjoong and Seonghwa. “Follow me.” Seonghwa leads the way back into Hongjoong’s room. You follow first, San close on your heels.

The platinum-haired captain is the first thing you see when you enter the room. Then, a large desk covered in papers left and right. Some are maps, others seem like trade agreements, news articles, everything you can think of is splayed before him on the wooden desk. He lifts his head as Seonghwa brings you and San in.

“Did Mingi and Yeosang conclude the trade deals for the cargo yet?” Hongjoong asks, obviously talking to Seonghwa rather than you or San.

“They are still in the midst of collecting signatures and papers.”

As your gaze darts around the cabin, you notice how similar the structure of the room is to the other ship you were aboard not too long ago. You remember the missing bundle of papers all of a sudden, recalling that you misplaced them sometime after being brought to Yunho.

I should drop by and see if he has them. If he didn’t just give them to Hongjoong or Seonghwa already. Would he do that? I don’t have enough reasons to trust that he wouldn’t. Fuck, I should have never gotten caught. Shouldn’t have gotten shot in the first place either. Fucking careless and sloppy.

“Ah, good. The two of you are here.” Hongjoong sighs and drops the papers in his hand as he sees you and San step out from behind Seonghwa’s back.

You shift your weight from foot to foot. A sudden wave of anxiety washes over you. San seems to be in the same predicament; he picks at the skin around his fingernails while looking at the floor. Something about the way the two of you are lined up before Hongjoong makes you feel like a child again, being lectured by your teacher for misbehaving in class. Except this time, it’s far different than that. You stand before a dangerous criminal and pirate who could kill you in the blink of an eye should he not like your response to whatever he asks.

“San. What happened on the mission?”

San lifts his chin to look over at the captain, eyes gaining a bit more confidence as he begins to speak.

“I failed to keep my emotions in check and let Yeosang’s words get in my head.”

“Did you talk to Yunho about it?”

“He tried to help but there wasn’t much he could say or do to help.”

“Yunho isn’t a miracle worker,” Seonghwa cuts in, moving to the side of Hongjoong’s desk. He folds his arms behind his back and stands straight as can be. “He can fix the physical but not the mental.”

“I’m well aware of that, Seonghwa,” Hongjoong mutters back without looking at the Lieutenant. “However, Yunho is more in tune with his emotions than the others. People like that know how to talk to people. San, what is your opinion on the mission and the outcome of it?”

San purses his lips, looking down at the floor now. He takes a deep breath before beginning to talk again, this time in a much quieter tone.

“My own emotions were the cause for the failure of the mission. I should have stayed focused, and it is my fault that the outcome turned out the way it did. There is no one else to blame for it, and I fully acknowledge that. So, I apologize to both you and Lieutenant, Captain.” San pauses and turns to you now, eyes full of regret as he looks at you. “I’m sorry to you as well for my behavior and causing the mission to be a failure due to my actions.”

You open your mouth to respond, to tell him that there’s no need to apologize, just to reassure him maybe. You don’t get the chance to say anything though, because Hongjoong cuts in with another question.

“What happened after the mission?”

“I expended too much stamina using my powers and because of that, I overexerted myself. Passed out from the exhaustion.”

“And why do you consider the mission to be a failure?”

“It was supposed to be a covert mission. Get in and get out without being seen or heard.”

“Did you get what I wanted?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“What did the military on Medra have to report about the situation?”

San looks a bit startled by the question, jaw stuttering as he fumbles to come up with a response. Seonghwa pulls a tablet off Hongjoong’s desk and scrolls around on it for a bit before answering Hongjoong’s question.

“Medra reported a single dangerous criminal, highly trained and dangerous. One who was able to dispatch a unit of soldiers with ease, but one and only one criminal. Used a sniper rifle, pistol, and a knife to kill the soldiers.”

You listen on with a growing pit in your stomach. The more Seonghwa speaks, the more the report sounds like it is you who Medra reported. And if Medra reported you and your identity, then Hongjoong could get rid of you in the blink of an eye. You wouldn’t even get the chance to find your damn papers.

“That one criminal being Levi Tatsumaki, who has already been detained, brought into custody, and sentenced to death for larceny and murder.”

You nearly exhale a sigh of relief. Hongjoong grins at you and San.

“The mission went fine. Yes, your actions got you caught. However, you got the job done and removed a competitor in the process.”

You glance over at San, and his lips are curling down into a scowl. He doesn’t seem pleased in the slightest with Hongjoong’s words. Part of you thinks that he was hoping for Hongjoong to tear him down and ridicule him.

“I’m proud of you, San,” Hongjoong says. There is an uncharacteristic gentleness in Hongjoong’s tone. The cruel and almost evil exterior seems to melt away, revealing genuine concern for San’s wellbeing. “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. If I were upset with your behavior and how you handled the situation, we would not be having this conversation. You are well aware of that.”

San nods along with Hongjoong’s words but doesn’t provide any further comment. The captain watches him in silence for a few moments before speaking again.

“You’re dismissed, San.”

The Spectre turns around without any hesitation, following the order with haste, and you opt to watch him walk out until the door slides shut behind his retreating figure.

“Now for you,” Hongjoong says. The warmth he had in his tone with San dissipates, leaving it cold and harsh again. “What is your opinion of the mission?”

“It was just fine,” you say as you attempt to keep your tone flat. “I’m not sure what you want to hear from me.”

“Why did you disobey Yeosang’s orders?”

“I saw an opportunity and took it.”

“Why?” Hongjoong presses further. You tilt your head to the side ever so slightly.

“It was an opportunity. Nothing more,” you reiterate.

“People don’t consider things to be an opportunity unless they see a good outcome to it,” Hongjoong says. He pushes back from his desk and stands up. In a few quick strides, he wraps around the wood and comes to a halt in front of it. Arms come to rest over his chest, and he leans against the lip of the desk while staring at you. “So what was the good outcome you saw in it?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.” You shake your head. “There was nothing to it. I just took the chance.”

“What did you think would happen after you took that chance?”

“I-I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking about that. My… my first instinct was to shoot and kill. That’s what I did.”

“I wonder if that’s what you did with the king as well?” Hongjoong’s tone trails off into inquiry, and he mirrors the tilt of your chin. “But it can’t have been. Nobody ever just takes those chances. They see something in them. I think I have you figured out, Y/N L/N. Even if you don’t want to admit it outright, your first instinct was to protect. You heard that San was in danger, you felt the need to protect him, and you felt the need to repay him for what he did to save you initially. Thus, you wanted to save him. Removing the obstacles in your way was the first step: Yeosang’s orders, the physical distance, the soldiers in your path. You may not want to hear it or admit it, but that is the reason for your actions.”

The man smirks at you as he finishes his crude analysis of your behavior. You straighten your head again, glaring at him with such intensity that Seonghwa takes a step in your direction. Hongjoong lifts a hand to stop him though. He nods his head ever so slightly in your direction as though prompting you to speak your mind.

“You shouldn’t act like you know me because you don’t,” you spit out with vehemence to your tone. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“You’re wrong.” Hongjoong drops his chin as he chuckles. “I know one thing for certain. You are not an Elitist.”

The words cause you to freeze immediately. You feel all color leave your cheeks as your heart plummets, and you think that Daichi was right all along. Your attempts to stay calm and collected go out the window at Hongjoong’s accusation.

“You have a clever method of concealing yourself.”

You bite down so hard on your tongue that it draws blood.

“I’m not exactly sure what you are yet,” Hongjoong says as he brings his chin back up. The words bring immediate relief to your racing heart, and you try not to place a hand over your chest. “For certain, you are not an Elitist.”

“Why do you think that?” You ask in as stable a tone as you can manage.

“I have studied Elitists in the past, and I am one myself. I should know how my own kind behaves by now. They make decisions with their head and only their head. Follow orders they deem fair and necessary. They do not act on impulse and are calm and calculating. You seem to make decisions with your heart, act on impulse, lack a sense of calm, and do not follow orders.”

“That’s false logic. Every single person here is a criminal. Yeosang is a traitor, albeit a loyal one, but still branded a traitor nonetheless. Which one of you has ever followed orders in the past?”

“I specified fair and necessary orders. If you were truly an Elitist, you would’ve seen Yeosang’s reasoning in asking you to stay on the cliffside. If you were only thinking with logic, you would’ve followed his orders. However, you deemed it unimportant because you saw that you had an opportunity to repay a debt. That is all beside the point though. The real reason I wanted you here is because I need to know what you want to be on the crew. You have the same choice that every other person on this crew has had.”

“According to the military, I am a weapon. Don’t you view me in the same light?”

“This isn’t the military, Y/N. You have a choice.”

“I don’t want one. Decide what you need me to do yourself. You obviously view me as a tool to be used, and I am willing to be that weapon until you don’t see any further use for me. Or you can dump me out the airlock now. Or leave me on some planet. Pick your poison.”

“If you are so willing to chuck your life away without a care, why didn’t you just turn yourself in?” Hongjoong asks all of a sudden. “Yeosang mentioned that you told him you have no more goals in life. Either you’re lying to cover for something or you truly don’t care about your life. What’s your game? You could’ve been dead and gone already.”

“That would’ve made me a martyr. That’s not how I want to be remembered. That’s not what I wanted.”

“How do you want to be remembered then?”

“I don’t want to be remembered at all,” you utter. Your tone falls to a hush without you intending for it to, and Hongjoong’s gaze almost softens as he glares at you.

“So you’re running then. Interesting.” He pushes off the desk and drops his arms to his side. You blink at him with question in your eyes. “Very well then. I will have you be a weapon for me if that is how you wish to be treated. You’re dismissed.”

You offer a nod in response before turning around to head out of the office. Neither Seonghwa or Hongjoong say anything else. The door slides shut behind you. You hesitate there for a moment, mulling over what Hongjoong said to you before making your way to the med bay.

I have to get those papers and get out of here as soon as possible. It’s only going to get more dangerous as time goes on, and I can’t risk any of these people figuring out more than they already know.

Your knuckles rap against the cold metal of the med bay door. You have fingerprint access to the room, but it still feels awkward barging into rooms left and right without warning.

“Come in!” Yunho’s warm voice welcomes you in, and you tap at the keypad before stepping into the cool interior of the med bay. “Oh! Y/N, I’m glad to see you.”

He grins from ear to ear as he sees who you are. You return the gesture with a small smile of your own but can’t keep your eyes from darting around the room to see if you can find any sign of your papers.

“I’m really happy to see you up and moving alright. I heard you still managed to handle things with relative ease during your mission.”

“I did, yea. B-But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Oh, of course! Do you need a checkup on your arm? I think those stitches should be ready to come out by now.”

It isn’t the reason for your visit at all, but you’ll go along with it for now. At least until you find what you’re looking for, that is. You seat yourself on the edge of one of the white beds and hold out your arm for Yunho. He takes hold of your wrist, pushing your sleeve up with a gentle touch that causes goosebumps to ghost over your skin. He tugs at the white gauze around your healing wound until it comes completely loose.

“Look at that. Ready to come out as I thought. Do you want me to go ahead and take them out? You can let them dissolve over time if you’d rather.”

“No, no. It’s okay, go ahead!” You motion towards your arm. As Yunho turns around and searches for some supplies, you blink around the room with a darting gaze. Even when he returns to you and starts pulling the stitches loose, you continue to look around.

“Is everything alright?” Yunho asks after a moment. You bring your gaze back to him. His lips are pressed into a delicate frown, and there’s a gleam of concern in his dark eyes. You push it aside with a small grin.

“I just can’t watch you pull them out. Makes me queasy.”

“I can make some small talk if you’d like?”

“Sure…” Your disinterest shows in your tone, however, and Yunho gives up on the attempts to talk with you. He pulls back from your arm.

“You’re free to go. Just don’t go picking at that wound anymore. I don’t wanna have to stick you with more needles.” Yunho winks as he looks at you out the corner of his eye.

“Wait!” You call out when he turns away from the bed. Yunho glances back at you, expectancy in his expression. “Did you – um, did you find anything on me when I first came in? With San, I mean? No, on me. But when I came in with San.”

Yunho tilts his head a bit and frowns at the ceiling.

“I don’t think so?”

“Are you certain?”

“I don’t remember seeing anything.”

“Nothing at all?” You continue to pry. Disbelief crawls into your tone. “A bundle of papers maybe? Tied around the middle?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Y/N. Honestly and truly.”

“Are you sure you just aren’t remembering wrong? Or lying to me? Those papers are really important to me. Did you give them to Hongjoong?” Yunho’s jaw stutters at your accusations, and he releases a huff of air.

“I don’t doubt that they’re important, Y/N. Really I don’t. But I just do not know what you’re talking about. I saw nothing on you when you came in. And if it was something that belonged to you, I wouldn’t take it or give it to Hongjoong. I’m not that kind of person. I thought I’ve made that moderately clear by now, but maybe I haven’t. Whatever was on you wasn’t my main focus. It was treating your wound. I’m sorry.”

If you were in a clearer state of mind, you would not get so blindly upset with him like you are now. However, you aren’t thinking straight and all your brain can think about is the possibility of Hongjoong having ownership of those papers. Without a name to them, anyone can claim them, and it isn’t your intention to let the most notorious criminal in the universe have free pardon papers. You push up from the med bed and exit without saying anything else to Yunho. You’re certain that regret will bubble in your gut later, but right now all you can think about is going straight to your room and figuring out a plan of action in private.

You tap furiously at the keypad outside your door in your haste. It slides open with a whoosh. You aren’t expecting to find anything inside except for an empty room, let alone someone sitting on the edge of your bed. But there San is on the edge of your bed with a trembling knee and picking at the skin around his fingernails. When you step inside, he all but jumps to his feet.

“I’m sorry for intruding!” He says immediately before you can ask why he’s here.

“Do you need something?” You inquire, letting the door slide shut behind you. The lights flicker on when you hit the switch, San almost invisible in the darkness. He opens and shuts his mouth a few times. No words leave him for a moment, then he reaches into his jacket and pulls something out. You lunge forward to snatch the item from his hand before you can think twice. It’s your bundle of papers. The full pardon back in your hands. A laugh of disbelief escapes your lungs.

“I-I’m sorry for taking them,” San says as you look over the bundle. “I should’ve have taken them, and I know that. I was just worried that Hongjoong or Seonghwa would find them. Or worse, Yeosang. They must be important to you for you to have gotten shot for them so I… I tried my best to hide them. I wanted to give them back to you sooner but things just kept happening and I couldn’t get a moment alone with you without someone stopping me. The timing never worked out right, I guess. But I wanted to get them back to you now.”

You drag your thumb over the front of the papers.

“These are my ticket to freedom,” you mutter.

“They’re pardon papers, aren’t they?” San asks, standing across from you. “Meant for you, I take it? I-Is – do you – do you want to return to the military then?”

“Absolutely not,” you deny in a heartbeat. Pulling your eyes up to meet San’s, you can’t keep a smile from overtaking your lips.

“O-Oh. I just – sorry, I just assumed that you want to be pardoned. Um… they – no, nevermind. It’s not important.” San shakes his head. The beginnings of a blush are crawling up his neck and cheeks. Without thinking twice, you reach forward and pull San into a tight hug. You squeeze him against your body, arms folded around his neck. The action catches San off guard for certain, and he flails a little before hugging you back albeit with a lot more hesitation. “You seem really happy,” he says against your ear. You unravel your arms from San and step back to look down at the bundle once more.

“They aren’t for me actually,” you admit. “They’re for someone important and special to me. I finally get to free him.”

“That’s a lot of effort for one person,” San murmurs through a melancholy smile.

“This one person is worth ten thousand. He’s worth any amount of effort in the universe. Thank you, San. I-I – you didn’t have to do that but you did.”

“It’s nothing. Don’t think too hard about it.” San heaves a deep sigh. “I’m just glad I could help in some way.”

“Well, you’ve helped me more than once now. I’m… I didn’t expect that from anyone aboard this ship.” San’s embarrassment melts away at your words. That cheeky smile returns to his lips, and he teases the corner of his mouth with his tongue.

“You could repay me then,” he suggests, sending a teasing wink your way. You blink back in confusion. “A kiss maybe?” You immediately roll your eyes at his remark, swinging an arm at his. He whines when you hit him, falling back as though you hit him with an insane amount of force. You steady him with the same arm and dip in before he can recover. You brush your lips over his cheek. He freezes under your touch within an instant. Red soars up his neck and cheeks.

“There. Maybe next time you can get one on the lips.”

✧✧✧

a/n: here we are at the end of act one!!! one down, fourteen to go 🤡 but anyways! what did you think of the conclusion to this arc? what’s been your fav part so far? your fav character? just tell me anything and everything! i love seeing your feedback and interaction with this story and i’m so excited to share more of it with you guys!

taglist: @faeriewoobin​ @sugarrimajins​ @atinyinwonderland​ @2504-life @lil7bluedragon @sparklychangbin​ @jeong-uwu​ @jeonartemis​

rather than sending me a ko-fi, i ask that you consider donating to the BLM movement!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

[zarathelonewolf]

BNHA - STOPPING, OR SAVING DABI?

Here I come with theories!

DISCLAIMER: I do not condone abuse, may it be emotional, physical or psycological. 

Now, as I’ve stated in the tags and the meta on chapter 325, I like the whole Todoroki family. Aside from Shouto and Enji, they may seem like minor characters, but they are actually well enstablished and deep and their reactions and reasoning after Endeavor begins his atonement arc are very nuanced.

I’m sure you already know what the point of view of every family member is: Rei won’t forgive him, but she’s also watching as he stones for his past awful deeds; Fuyumi is probably the one that wants to forgive Endeavor the most in order to have a semblance of a normal family; Natsuo righteously hates him to the moon and back, and Shouto is still on the fence but willing to work alongside his father on a professional standpoint. At times, Shouto also calls him “Father”, but only in certain circumstances and very rarely. And then...

Then we have Todoroki Touya, Enji and Rei’s firstborn. 

I won’t be talking about Fuyumi, Rei or Natsuo much on this post; I’ll concentrate on Touya, Shouto and Enji. They are, at least from what the narrative seems to be building up, the focus of the Todofam arc.

Let’s start with Touya, or at least I’ll write how I’m interpreting the narrative here...You can disagree, people have different ways of reading the same text.

He wants his father to go down, burn in hell, HARD. And he doesn’t really care if it takes to kill Shouto, whom he sees as his replacement, or put Natsuo’s life in the crossfire: anything that makes Endeavor suffer is justified. He even goes as far as killing innocent people and being an accomplice and supporter of terrorism, and bringing his family’s trauma and situation out in the public without their consent: one may argue it was correct to expose Enji, but in my humble opinion the approach was wrong. Touya wanted his father to suffer, without realizing or caring enough that his family may have traumatic reactions to the reveal as he did it, or may not be ready for it. He also isn’t doing it out of genuine feelings of justice, in my opinion: he’s weaponising the narration to bring down his father and the heroes.

 Touya, at times, accuses Endeavor of killing the innocent people HE killed with HIS fire, because Endeavor’s grave neglect and irresponsible behavior towards his situation caused Touya to start hurting himself to the point of burning up at Sekoto Mountain, before vanishing and becoming a Villain because of, presumably, all the unresolved pain and feelings pent up inside of him. 

Shouto is saved by the deadly fire embrace of his brother by Midoriya, that agrees with Touya about the fact that the past never dies, and as much as Endeavor will change, the past won’t; Midoriya admits this while saying that the actual Endeavor is trying to change, and Dabi isn’t Endeavor: which means that Dabi can’t fault Endeavor for those he killed and his uncaring behavior towards those that suffered his same trauma.

As some argued, during the war Touya is shown as an ensemble of Endeavor’s worst traits, which is important as it signifies that his behavior originates from the way Endeavor raised him. 

Now, onto Shouto.

Shouto, who we’ve seen being on the fence when it comes to forgiving Endeavor, actually seems to be trying to empathize with Touya during their fight, various times, really, as can be seen by his expressions. He also takes it upon himself to stop Touya before his family reunites in the hospital and opt to stop Touya together, with Endeavor and Shouto as the focal point.

Sorry  I have to go.

I will finish this tomorrow I swear-- 

EDIT: Expect this to be over tonight. I'm currently busy.

EDIT: I'll reblog this and complete it later.

EDIT:

Here we are once more. Sorry for making you guys wait.

As I was saying...

After Shoto extends his hand to his father in the hospital, and some months (I don’t remember how many, sry) after the press conference where the Top 3 spoke to the public, the Top Three throw themselves after Midoriya, that as abandoned UA, trying to track AFO and his followers down.

And Shouto...well, he isn’t happy, much like the rest of Class 1A: they are majorly upset and preoccupied because Midoriya is missing, but Shouto is also angered by the fact that his father is following Midoriya around instead of concentrating on how to convince Touya to stop hurting himself and others and thus STOP/SAVE HIM. This is what, presumably, Shouto and Endeavor’s goal is regarding to Touya: stop him from being hurt and hurting others with his flames, which will save him and give them a chance to repair the strained relationship.

Endeavor, Hawks and Best Jeanist’s mission to follow and support Midoriya in the meanwhile is failing splendidly: they endeavored (I’mnotsorryforthepun) in this mission because they wanted to compensate the lowering number of heroes active, hunt down villains and find AFO at the same time, all by profiting from Midoriya’s Danger Sense ability. The plan di per se wasn’t that bad, but Midoriya was going too fast for even Hawks, the fastest hero, to follow him; a reminder of why: Midoriya has a lot more Quirks than the top 3, and he was way more desperate than them to find AFO, trust me...the heroes, that also started to include Mt.Lady, Edgeshot, Kamui Woods and others, try to support him from the sidelines, but they are, at the same time, becoming a burden to Midoriya, as Endeavor recognizes before entering UA in chapter 325.

Also, the students mentored by the top 3 try to reach out to them like crazy, because they want to know what the fudge they’re doing and where Midoriya is: Tokoyami called Hawks, Bakugou tried to contact Best Jeanist and Shouto called Endeavor, without receiving exhaustive answers. Endeavor, in particular, doesn’t really want to sideline Shouto, after all they’ve been through, but when he missed the call, he was probably also feeling uncertain on how to deal with Touya, while at the same time worriyng on how to stop AFO and make sure the chaos the country is in doesn’t become worse. When he’s called to UA by Nezu and played a trick by the students who have now started figuring things out, he receives a wake-up call by his son.

Shouto makes him notice how they had told each other they’d stop Touya together, but Endeavor had sidelined him and took it upon himself to find his eldest son and Shouto’s older brother, all while making an exception for Midoriya. I don’t think Shouto didn’t understand his father was also trying to find AFO, but he also didn’t want Endeavor to ditch him and instead wanted to be included. Endeavor seems to slowly understand that the plan he and the other top heroes were following REALLY wasn’t going for the best, thanks not only to Shouto’s wake up call but to Bakugou’s words as well. If All Might, or Midoriya in this case, are left alone with the full weight of their responsibilities heavy on their shoulders, they are going to hurt themselves tremendously. While Endeavor thought that the plan was a good approach, Bakugou clearly says that it wasn’t the best one. Endeavor gives up his phone and looks to be reflecting on many things.

When the class works together to help Midoriya and bring him back to UA, he finally realizes that letting the kids convince Deku was a good idea and tells his colleagues not to intervene, for the students are dealing with it just fine.

We later see him out of the UA barrier with Hawks and Shouto, listening to the citizens screaming at Midoriya to stay away, scared for their safety and mistrustful towards the heroes; not even Best Jeanist and Present Mic can keep them calm. Shouto is super frustrated: he would love to go amidst the civilians and protect Midoriya form their accusations, “put them at ease” like his original heroic goal was. The circumstances, however, don’t seem to be his allies; he still looks extremely relieved when Uraraka takes the megaphone and finally convinces the citizens.

And, here we are to the last actual moment of the STOPPING TOUYA TO SAVE HIM narrative: Endeavor, after recognizing what exactly was wrong with the top 3 plan, looks a bit shocked when Shouto addresses him as “father”. He also look very...sad, somehow: sorry that things aren’t working out as well as he’d have hoped them to go, and that the Touya situation is still unresolved. Shouto extends a hand to him again, by saying that this time they’ll save Touya together. The thought of Dabi’s haunting eyes crosses both of them. Endeavor is probably still afraid that stopping Touya may be a burden too heavy for Shouto when he says, his face a bit obscured, “yes”.

THEORY TIME!

The narration seems to be headed towards the redemption of Shigaraki, Toga, Dabi, Endeavor and mayyyyyybe Overhaul. We know that Shigaraki’s saviour may be Midoriya, Toga’s will be Uraraka, and Overhaul’s rademtion’s factor will mainly be if Eri wants to forgive him.

Endeavor’s redemption’s weight depends on how efficient he actually is at saving Touya at this point and Dabi’s redemption will probably happen thanks to Shouto with contribution from Endeavor. To resume: Endeavor and Touya’s redemption are tied to each other, and Shouto is fundamental to help them both.

How could Hori bring forth Endeavor’s redemption without screwing over Dabi’s redemption, and not screw Endeavor’s redemtion at the same time? I’ll be focusing on Endeavor and dabi here, because I really don’t know how the dialogue between Shouto may be written.

I have no clue. Sorry I don’t. There are some viable options, like Endeavor gets kidnapped or fatally wounded while he fights Dabi because AFO is also there, and could ultimately steal his Quirk. In this case, Endeavor could be alone or with Shouto.

There is also the option in which Endeavor dies while trying to stop Touya from burning up, while recognizing his mistakes, validating Touya’s harsh feelings and accepting to burn in hell.

Frick, they could both die as they burn up, both recognizing the wrong in their ways, but it wouldn’t be really satisfying now would it?  

There are so many outcomes possible, but with everyone of them i feel like something is missing. I also feel like I’m the only one that wouldn’t find Endeavor’s death outrageous because “it’s sweeping things under the rug”, or counterproductive because “it would suck for Endeavor’s redemption arc, because everyone is tired of the redemption-by-death trope”.

Endeavor’s death could actually be the best moment of his redemption arc and what makes it truly valuable, depending on how well it is written. Maybe Endeavor isn’t sitting at that table in his dream because he died, and his death actually helped his family heal and smile, because while he had changed his views in the year before his death, it’s still relieving to be free from his presence. However, Touya isn’t present at the table as well, so really...the conclusion to both of their arcs could be anything. Some may say that making Dabi die would be wrong on an ethical standpoint: yet another victim’s death, that makes victims in the real world think there is no hope out of difficult situations; yet another unfair death, because abusers deserve death and not their victims.

Let me tell you why, exactly, I think, neither of their deaths would be useful; you are free to disagree.

Endeavor’s, Touya’s or both their deaths could make the future of the Todofam very traumatic, because the family wouldn’t really manage to find proper closure.

Which is why I don’t think Endeavor or Dabi will or should die, but they will both live with consequences: maybe Endeavor will lose his Quirk, and Touya may turn on AFO and protect Shouto.

I don’t know, honestly.

Plz. help.

All I know is that Horikoshi will surely try to make the outcomes as emotional and epic as ever, so I hope I won’t be disappointed, because so far I’ve been on board with seeing where Endeavor and Touya’s journey may bring them

Anxiously waiting for the next episode, and end of this volume.

[dreamescapeswriting]

BTS Reaction | Studying Together [Request]

A/N: I made this a college AU I hope this is okay for you love!

Seokjin:

"Alexa play my Lofi playlist," Jin heard you call out as he walked into your dorm room, he was carrying drinks in one hand and a bag in the other. He was late for your study session together and he felt awful so he stopped by to get food and drinks to make it up to you.

"You're late," You called out once you heard the floorboards creaking to let you know he was there, he sighed holding up the food and drinks as a peace sign and you smiled at him,

"You're lucky I'm so forgiving." You joked getting up from the table to take the coffee he was holding out for you, you sipped on it despite his warning about it being hot.

"I organised everything," You said as you pointed at the table in your kitchen, it was covered in pieces of paper, folders and flashcards all ready for you both to read from and quiz each other on. He should have been used to this after dating you for the last two years of your college lives but it was still surprising to him to see you have so many notes on one subject.

"It's one history exam-" He stopped talking once he saw the glare he was getting from you, he slipped out of his jacket and went to hang it up. You'd been in the same class together which was how you met and started dating for so long and you were going to pass this class if it was the last thing you ever did.

"I'm going to start on the tudor times and then move on from there, pick whatever you want." He stared at you as you lifted up a giant folder and began flicking through it until you got to the section that you needed. It was going to be a long day and night but as long as you were there to study with him he didn't mind at all.

Yoongi:

You thought that the final exam you and Yoongi would be something practical but instead, you were both taking a written exam while submitting a project together.

"This is stupid, why did it have to be a written exam." He groaned next to you, you were sitting in the library together huddled over a couple of textbooks wondering what could possibly be covered on a written exam instead of something you could physically create and show your talent.

"I know Yoongi, but once it's done it's done and it only counts as 20% to the final." You tried to reassure him but he was far too nervous about all of this for it to be blown off so simple as it not being too much credit.

"Look, I'll help you study and then when you pass you can buy me dinner to thank me." He chuckled as you laid your hand on his thigh as a sign of support. You believed he could pass this if he just put his mind to it. He was sure he couldn't do this but he was willing to give it a try if you were going to be this supportive of him, he'd always expressed his disgust for exams like this which was why he liked the music course so much. It was more projects than handwritten work - except for lyrics.

"I won't let you fail." You teased him kissing his cheek as you got up from the table, you were going to be there for a while so you were going to go on the hunt for food and drink to keep you both stable until you could convince Yoongi to go and get a decent meal with you.

Hoseok:

"Hobi I can't." You were sweating and panting against the cold mirror, your dance exam was coming up in less than four days and you still hadn't nailed the dance move you were struggling the most with. It was a lift - much like the one in the infamous movie everyone loved so much. Hoseok had to lift you into the air by your waist before bringing you back down into his arms.

"We can't replace the move," He told you as he restarted the song for what felt like the thousand times that day, you weren't going to be able to pass this final exam without it and you both knew that.

"Can I just have two minutes?" He watched as you slid down the mirror and sat on the floor, you felt defeated. You'd spent weeks trying to do the move, going around to different places to practice it. You could do the lift in the water, a kids ball pit and even in a field of grass but doing it somewhere like here, somewhere you could get hurt was bugging you out.

"Do you trust me?" He questioned wiping sweat from his head on the back of his hand, you knew he was getting frustrated with you since you were just as equally frustrated with yourself.

"With my life but-"

"Is it the nerves?" You nodded, the thought about doing it in front of everyone was the part throwing you off - that and the thought of smashing your face against the hard dance floor.

"So imagine they're not there when we do it and trust me enough to know I won't let you fall." He breathed wanting you to trust him as you did in your relationship.

"From the top." You whispered getting up from the floor and getting ready to nail the dance.

Namjoon:

Namjoon was giving you a hard stare as you stuttered over your words for the seventh time since you started talking, you groaned laying your head down on the desk in front of you.

"You can't look at me like that, it makes me anxious." You snapped at him, you were both getting annoyed with the upcoming exam. While Namjoon had his speech planned and ready you were still struggling to get through talking it through with him nevermind getting it up in front of a class full of students and presenting it.

"Why are speaking exams a thing? They're stupid." You grumbled looking at the flashcards, around the edges were small words of encouragement from Namjoon but they weren't helping you.

"I might fail it on purpose-"

"No, come on. How many times have I told you that you can do this?" You sighed as he came up behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist trying to comfort you in any way that he could but it wasn't helping you.

"Maybe I'm just not meant to pass this speaking exam." He sighed at how you were trying to discourage yourself from it but he wasn't going to let you give up so easily.

"You can normally do this in front of me, why is it hard tonight?" You sighed looking over at his friends who were all sitting on the other sofa, he'd brought them along to try and help you more.

"So just pretend they're not here, look at me and no one else. We'll do the same in the exam." He promised you kissing you on the cheek and returning to where he had been sitting before, he wasn't going to let you give up on yourself so easily.

Jimin

It was Jimin's idea to have a study date at the library but it looked like he'd decided to stand you up, you began sliding your textbook back into your bag when the door burst open and he walked into the room carrying textbooks, notebooks and what looked like coffee on top of everything he was carrying.

"Where have you been?" You giggled taking the coffees from him and placing them onto the desk beside you, he held up some new psychology textbooks and smiled.

"I waited outside all night for these, they're going to help us on the exam and then the stationary shop next door was having a sale on highlights and I know these are your favourite." He said sliding a packet of highlighters in front of you, you had a superstition that if you used these highlighters whenever you were studying you were sure to pass. He knew that since you freaked out the last time one ran out on you and you called him at 3 in the morning crying about no shops being open, so drove to your dorm room to make sure you went to sleep instead of cramming for a practice exam.

"Jimin you didn't have-"

"Yes I did, I also got your study drink and some new post-it notes for us because I know how much you love post-it notes." He kissed your lips softly and sat you down in front of him so he could show you properly everything he bought.

Taehyung:

Taehyung was quizzing you on the colour wheel while you sat on the sofa trying to quiz him on all the famous painters that were bound to be on the final Art History exam. You'd both met on your first day of the art class became best friends until it eventually led to years of you dating and now it was the final year. You were still together and as strong as ever as you tried to cram for final exams together and keep each other from going insane.

"Next chapter is your favourite." You laughed flicking over to the next page of the art history textbook and smiling as you saw all of your favourite paintings. He came over and dropped onto the floor beside you, reciting his plan to take you to Amsterdam and visit the Van Gough museum that was there. It had been his plan to take you to every art museum in the world but Amsterdam was the realistic goal for now. You were both planning on going as a way of celebrating for when you passed the final exams together.

"I think we've got it down." He mumbled flicking over the page, you had everything down. You both had a huge passion for the course and knew everything there was to know about it, the final exam was going to be simple but the final project was painting a huge portrait of yourself in any art style you had learnt over the last few years. Now all that was left was making sure you had the style down before you went into the exam.

Jungkook:

You stared at your boyfriend who was sitting carelessly in your dorm bedroom, you were trying to study from a book while he sat throwing a ball to the wall and back into his hand.

"You could at least act like you're studying to make me feel better." You grumbled taking a highlighter from your pencil case and highlighting yet another fact your brain seemed to be neglecting to take in.

"It's not my fault I soak up everything we learn like a sponge." You glared at him from your bed and went back to the criminology book you were trying to remember but nothing seemed to be staying inside of your head.

"You need to take a break." He whispered watching as you stressed about not being able to get anything to stay in your head.

"I can't. Not all of us can get away without studying Jungkook." You snapped, you didn't want to snap at him but you were stressed out about everything and the smallest thing seemed to make you snap lately.

"I'm serious," He closed the book and put it on your desk, he got onto the bed behind you and began rubbing your shoulders.

"Staring at the same page and expecting different results each time isn't going to work. You need to just take a minute, okay?" You nodded closing your eyes as he continued rubbing your shoulders to try and help you unwind. He chuckled as you let out a small moan about how nice it felt.

Tagline: 

@writingdreamsnottragedies​ @jooniesdarlingdimples​ @snowy-meowl​ @snowy-meowl​ @lyoongx​ @mitzwinchester​ @fan-ati--c​ @callingmyangel​ @rjsmochii​ @kneel-begyourpardon​ @innersooya​ @taestannie​ 

[snowdice]

Gaps in His Files (Part 10) [Relabeled; Refiled Series]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Logan/Patton

Characters:

Main: Logan, Patton

Appear: Remy, Virgil (but only in the epilogue)

Summary:

Logan Berry has learned many things the last 10 years: a lot of math and physics, a bit of humility, and how to be a hero being just a few. Through his education, his experience teaching, and his exploits as the superhero Bluebird, he’s changed in a lot of small and large ways. He has recorded these changes in well-organized documents and files. He’s even had to create two new file designations: a red one for files about his moonlighting at Bluebird, and a light blue one dedicated to his boyfriend, Patton.

When Bluebird is targeted by a memory device and all of those 10 years of progress suddenly disappear, Patton Sanders and Logan’s extensive files are left as his only resource to get those memories back. But what is Patton supposed to do when there are clear gaps in his files? And what does he do when he is one of them?

This is set 25 years before Sometimes Labels Fail though it’s story is completely independent of it and it is not necessary to read that one first.

Notes: Superhero AU, memory loss, past child abuse, past child neglect, unhealthy ideas about ones place in relationships, emotional suppression, self-deprecating thoughts, medical procedures mentioned, very brief unhealthy views of sex

I feel as though I should make a statement in Logan’s defense before you read this. There is a thing called unreliable narration and... our narrator is spiraling. 

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

“I have to go to work today,” Patton said Friday morning. “I am trusting you enough to not attempt to go to school like yesterday if for no other reason then so you don’t embarrass yourself.”

Logan nodded and Patton didn’t think he’d gotten his point totally across yesterday, but he thought Logan would probably not do anything today since on Fridays he only had to attend two classes and not teach or meet one-on-one with anyone.

“Good,” Patton said, biting his lip. Logan was distracted with one of his personal files and wasn’t looking at him. He’d been quiet yesterday after Patton had dragged him back from the college. He’d stopped asking Patton questions about himself or really talking to Patton at all, instead choosing to stew in his ire in silence. He read the book Patton got him and was civil when he needed something from Patton or when Patton asked something out of him, but his discontent with Patton’s presence was written all over his face. ‘Maybe I don’t want what I built’ echoed in the silence between them. It really sucked to know that Logan could so easily learn to hate him. “Bye then. I’ll see you later.” He shut the door to the apartment behind him.

He drove to the hospital in a daze of emotional numbness and sat in his car in the parking lot, staring at the tall building for almost 15 minutes with a tight feeling in his stomach before finally forcing himself into the building.

He had been hoping that having something to keep his mind busy with would help him feel better, but it just seemed to make things worse. It made the gaping hole in his chest widen and widen until it threatened to consume all of him. When he went to check on a patient’s wound, he felt like he could throw up despite the fact that he was long past being grossed out by medical things. It just kept getting worse and worse as Patton worked mechanically through the morning. Talk to patients, smile at coworkers, take vitals. Don’t rest. Don’t feel. Don’t break. Break and someone dies.

“Patton,” a voice called as the lunch hour crept closer. Patton turned to see Remy rushing down the hallway towards him. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I have a shift,” Patton replied blankly. He tried to turn away from him because a friendly face was the most dangerous thing right now, but Remy grabbed his arm. “What do you want Remy?” Patton asked, refusing to look at him. There was a pause before he was tugged on and yanked into a hall closet.

Patton rounded on him once the door closed behind them, a bit of it leaking, just not in any way that would actually help. Instead, it came out in a way that would likely just make it worse when the guilt hit later. “What?” he snapped harshly.

Remy didn’t respond for a long moment, just leaning against the opposite wall of the closet with a frown on his face. Patton bristled under the scrutiny.

“I heard Bluebird got beamed by a memory gun.”

“Yes, I’m sure everyone knows that by now,” Patton replied scathingly.

Remy again didn’t react to the harshness in his tone. He just nodded. “Bet that’s hard for people who know him personally,” he said.

“What do you want?” Patton said and this time it came out more wobbly than harsh.

Remy sighed. “Patton go home.”

Patton shook his head and could feel pressure building up behind his eyes.

“Patton this is not the place for you today. I’ll tell Bev you’re sick. Just leave.”

“I…” Patton stuttered. “I can’t. I…” he started to shake, bursting at the seams. “I can’t,” he gasped, and he didn’t think he was talking about how he couldn’t leave work anymore. Remy leaned forward to tug him into a hug and Patton shattered like a window in a hurricane.

He could hear Remy saying things to him, but he couldn’t make out anything of the words except the soft sympathetic tone.

“A little girl fell out of the window,” he blurted out, unable to keep it in anymore, “and she was so tiny and so hurt and I had to cut into her with a knife so I could try to put her bones back together right and if I did anything wrong she might not ever be able to move right again. She could’ve died on the operating table and it would have been my fault. I shouldn’t have been the one to do it. Why did they pick me to do it? I’m not any good at this. I shouldn’t be here. I’ve just gotten lucky and one day someone isn’t going to wake up that should have and they’re all going to know how much of a fuck up I am. I can’t do anything right. I pretend and pretend to be good at things and nice and perfect but it’s all just an act and eventually everyone’s going to see it and they’ll all hate me. No one loves me and no one should love me and everyone who thinks they love me will eventually find out the truth and leave me because I can never be good enough no matter how hard I try.”

“Woah, hey, that’s not true Patton,” Remy said looking alarm. He was trying to wipe the tears off his face with his sleeve, but more just replaced them the next moment. “That’s so very not true. You’re not a screw up. You’re a great doctor and you’re not faking anything. So many people love you for you including me.”

Patton just shook his head. “You don’t know me,” he cried. “You don’t know me at all. The only person who I’ve ever even let really known me is Logan and I love him so much, but he doesn’t love me back, because I’m not good enough. And now he hates me.”

“No, no, Pat,” Remy said. “I know you’ve probably had a rough couple of days, but that man absolutely adores you. He could never hate you no matter what. He’s a dork who’s afraid of his feelings sometimes and he gets all pissy with strangers, but I know he doesn’t have it in him to hate you. No version of him ever could.”

Patton just laughed. “No. He doesn’t love me. Not really.”

“He does, babe. I promise he does.”

“I proposed to him,” Patton said. He managed to steady his voice, but tears were still streaming down his face. “He said no.”

Remy blinked and his mouth gaped open for a moment. “When…?”

Patton sniffled. “Two months ago.” It had been a soul draining, humiliating experience.

“How do you feel about marriage?” Patton had asked one day in bed after staying in Logan’s apartment for the third time that week. He had been thinking about it for a while and that day he’d blinked open his eyes to see Logan staring at him with the softest expression he’d ever seen on the man’s face and then Patton had been slowly and thoroughly kissed the rest of the way awake. It hadn’t even led to sex that morning, but Patton had thought he wanted to wake up like that every day forever.

“Marriage?” Logan had asked in response with a lilt to his tone that had made Patton swallow.

“Yeah,” he’d replied, “uh, specifically you marrying me.”

“Are you saying you want to marry me?”

“I… yes,” he’d admitted, but felt the need to backtrack, “but only if you want to.”

There had been a long pause and Patton had felt his heart shatter in it. “Give me some time?” he’d asked, but Patton had known that meant no. They had been dating for three years and he knew Logan had likely already made his decision about Patton long ago. He didn’t need more time. He was quick at making decision and he rarely went back on them. Patton had known him saying that meant Logan didn’t think Patton was good enough. That he hadn’t loved him enough to want to wake up next to him every morning. Patton had felt tears prickling at his eyes which wasn’t fair to him, so he’d turned away.

“Of course, sweetie,” he’d said as steadily as possible and that had been the end of the conversation.

“So yeah,” Patton continued in the present. “There’s something wrong with me and I… I don’t know what. If I did, I’d change it, but I can’t figure it out. Maybe it’s just all of me. Maybe he’s too smart and can see through all of the acts and knows how horrible I really am inside.”

“Oh sweetheart,” Remy said and leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead. “You are wonderful. I promise. You’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met. Want me to slap Logan for you? That might fix the problem.”

Patton chuckled darkly. “Which problem?” Remy grabbed his face and made him look him in the eyes.

“You need to go home,” he said firmly. “You need to take a bath and eat some ice cream and watch a sad movie so you can pretend you’re crying about that. Okay?”

Patton didn’t respond, just averted his eyes.

“Come on Pat,” Remy cajoled, “nurses orders.”

Patton smiled just a bit. “I’ll take the day off,” he conceded.

Remy frowned probably because he could tell that Patton was not going to follow the rest of his instructions because Patton was too rotted on the inside to listen to anyone’s advice.

He let Remy deal with telling people he’d be gone for the day and headed back to Logan’s apartment.

Want to read more? Click below!

Part 11

[jaskierswolf]

You Set My Heart Ablaze pt.5/25

Previous

Yennefer strode into the playground of her old school as if she owned the place. She barely gave the other adults a second glance. She was here for Ciri, and only Ciri. Geralt had practically begged her to come back for the day so that she could be with his ward whilst he was working for the day at Dol Blathanna School. He’d even cashed it in as a favour much to Yennefer’s delight. Of course, she’d never admit to the firefighter that she was going to say yes the first time he’d asked but it was his own fault for making such a big deal about it.

She remembered events like this one from back when she was teaching, and even from her own years as a student at the school. All the parents and guardians were always invited. There were school fates, charity auctions, religious services, all sorts of events that happened throughout the school year.

And Yennefer’s parents had never turned up.

Every time she’d stare longingly at the door begging some higher power for them to walk in and wrap her up in their arms, just like all her classmate’s parents did. Every time she was brokenhearted and left to stay with the teacher. Normally it was her form tutor but other times she was passed along to another teacher with another abandoned child.

It had turned her heart to stone.

She almost had to thank her parents for it. Their lack of love and affection had driven Yennefer to become the best, to become someone that they could be proud of, that they could love. It had fed her motivation and ambition that had served her so well and given her the edge to get ahead in the art world. As a critic she wasn’t afraid of saying her mind, even if it meant hurting the struggling artists. If their work wasn’t good enough then they needed to know. It wasn’t nothing compared to what she’d felt on a daily basis and would only help them succeed in the long run. Her sarcastic and witty vlogs had garnered a large following due to her brutal honesty with just the right balance of dry humour.

When she painted she took her pain and longing and fears, and transformed them into streaks of paint across the canvas until it was a perfect depiction of how she felt in that precise moment. Her artwork was chaotic at first glance but if one were to look closer they would see that each and every stroke of the brush was precisely where she intended it to be, forming part of a larger story and fitting perfectly like clockwork. There was never too much, nor too little.

She was in total control of the chaos.

People that thought otherwise were fools and tragically underestimated her talent.

The idiots.

Yes. Her parents’ neglect had served her well but she be damned if Ciri would be subjected to the same fate. The little girl’s kindness shone like a flame in the darkness of Yennefer’s world and she would fight to her dying breath to ensure that it wouldn’t be snuffed out.

So Yennefer had made up her mind the moment the request left Geralt’s lips. She’d booked a flight back into town before he’d finished begging and she was half way packed before she’d voiced her agreement. She didn’t particularly enjoy returning to the school but there was a strange kick of nostalgia that hit her in the gut every time she passed through the school gates. It helped that most of the faculty were still the same as when she had left. It was always good to see Tissaia again and she loved to catch up with Triss. They could not speak to each other for months on end but pick up again from where they left off as if they’d never spent a day apart. Everyone deserved a friend like Triss Merigold.

Things were still awkward with Istredd. They’d been childhood sweethearts before she’d ever met Geralt Rivia but they’d had an explosive falling out in her last year of University. The things he had said still haunted her and the betrayal still cut into her heart. After that she’d fallen into the arms of Geralt Rivia, or rather she lured him to her bed and how willingly he had stayed. Still her choice of partner had once again failed her and it ended even worse than it had with Istredd. Her and Geralt were too similar in temperament. Too stubborn and hot headed. Whilst they had loved each other, it hadn’t been a happy relationship. Finally choosing to remain as friends had been the best decision they had made but it left her heart vulnerable once more. She knew that Istredd still adored her. She was flattered by the attention but it kept bringing up all those old feelings from college. What if Istredd was the chance that she missed?

She scowled and shook her head. She didn’t want to think about it. Today was about Ciri. It had been a good few months since she last saw the girl, just after she’d moved in with Geralt full-time. She glanced around the school ground for her ashen-haired ward. Young children were everywhere, screaming excitably. She barely flinched when the fire engine in the middle of the yard lit up in vibrant blue and wailed loudly.

She really hated other people’s children.

Ciri was the exception. Ciri was sort of like her own surrogate daughter. She had adored the young girl even before the accidents that had left her without a family.

Finally she spotted the girl in a gaggle of kids, surrounding a teacher that barely looked like he’d graduated university. There were other parents nearby talking to their children and waving to the childlike teacher. Yennefer glided over to relieve him of Ciri. It was only once she got closer that she recognised him as the idiot that had now taken over her classroom.

“Buttercup.” She greeted him cooly.

“Ah. Yennefer Vengerberg.” He blushed and tugged at his hair nervously.

“Auntie Yen!” Ciri cried happily and flung her small arms around Yennefer’s waist. She winced as the gesture sent shock waves of pain down her spine but she was used to it and she hid it well. Ciri didn’t notice a thing.

“Hello darling.” She hugged Ciri back gently. “Did Geralt not tell you I was coming?”

“Of course not! He always forgets to tell me the important things. He’s too busy worrying about vegetables and what Mr Jaskier says in his emails.” Ciri pouted and crossed her arms dramatically in front of her body.

“And what does Mr Jaskier say in his emails to Geralt?” Yennefer raised an eyebrow at the teacher who flushed even darker.

“Just weekly reports on the class’s progress.” He mumbled. “What we’re learning, if there’s anything we’re struggling with. That sort of thing.”

“Well those things are important too, sweetie.” Yennefer told Ciri. “He probably just wanted my visit to be a surprise. I’ll talk to him about it later,” She turned to Jaskier. “I’m taking Ciri.”

Jaskier nodded. “Geralt said he’d asked a friend to look after her.”

“I wasn’t asking, Buttercup.” Yennefer smirked. “You know I almost didn’t recognise you without the coffee stains.”

Jaskier gaped. “You. What? Well. I. I will answer that later in a strongly worded email.” He spluttered.

Yennefer laughed knowing there wasn’t anything the primary teacher could do or say in front of his class. “Come along, Princess.”

_____________

Ciri was running circles around the other children in Vesemir’s drills. Of course the girl had an unfair advantage, namely that she’d been running Vesemir’s drills since she could walk, but it was still immensely satisfying to watch the envy on the faces of the other parents. Ciri knew she was good too, if the satisfied smirk was anything to go by. Vesemir wasn’t going easy on her though. He’d subtlety increased the difficulty of Ciri’s drills, still suitable for a six year old but not quite as easy as her classmates.

Yennefer crossed her arms and let her gaze drift across the playground as she leant against the wall to ease the growing pain in her back. Eskel and Lambert were busy trying to stabilise the firehose. Apparently, Eskel had turned it up a bit too much for the two kids that were holding it and it was now spraying all the parents nearby. Although knowing Eskel he’d probably planned it with the kids as a prank on their parents. Lambert was yelling but thankfully he was managing not to swear like a sailor. Yennefer supposed she should probably make sure she says hello to Geralt’s colleagues. They had after all once treated her like family. Sure, it had been the sort of family that you begrudgingly accept, but it had been family nonetheless.

She turned her gaze to the fire engine. It had gone silent for the last ten minutes or so. She could see a glimpse of Geralt’s bright snowy hair through the window so he was still in there. She caught Vesemir’s eyes and tilted her head towards the truck. Vesemir smiled and nodded so she took the chance to go say hello to her old friend. She was about to knock on the window of the truck when she noticed that Geralt was not alone in the vehicle.

Ciri’s teacher was sat beside Geralt, clutching a thermos flask that he definitely hadn’t had earlier in the day. From where she was standing Yennefer could just about make out the sound of Jaskier singing, and Geralt didn’t seem to be remotely bothered by it.

Yennefer froze.

Geralt hated it when people chatted unnecessarily. He was a lover of silence and only spoke when he had something worth saying. He didn’t believe in filling silence with mindless natter, and yet here he was willingly spending his lunch break with the talkative feral little shit that was Ciri’s teacher.

She backed away from the fire engine towards Vesemir’s group again, pondering over what she’d just seen. Geralt hadn’t mentioned Jaskier before as anything more than Ciri’s teacher. In their regular phone calls, Geralt often spoke about Ciri’s time at school and all the things she’d learnt from the youthful teacher but Yennefer had assumed that it was just Geralt being proud of his daughter but now she was wondering whether there was another reason too. One that maybe even Geralt hadn’t noticed.

“Ciri!” She called to her ward.

The ashen-haired girl looked up. Her eyes were sparkling from the exertion and her fringe stuck to her forehead with sweat.

“Come on. Time to move on. Let the others have a chance.” Yennefer said with a smile.

“Ok!” Ciri trilled, still slightly out of breath. “See ya, Uncle Vesemir!”

“Goodbye, little sparrow.” The older fireman nodded.

“Now, Princess. What can you tell me about Mr Jaskier?” Yennefer said as she took the young girl’s hand and they began to walk towards Eskel and Lambert. Yennefer pulled an umbrella from her bag as they approached. She didn’t fancy being caught up in Eskel’s tricks.

“Mr Jaskier?” Ciri asked sweetly.

“Yes. Is he a good teacher? My princess deserves only the best.” Yennefer squeezed her hand.

“Mr Jaskier is the best!” She giggled happily. “He always plays funny songs in the morning and he forgets to give us homework when it’s one of our birthdays! He even helped me with my numbers when I couldn’t get it.”

“Your numbers?”

“Yeah. I didn’t understand but Mr Jaskier said it didn’t matter that I didn’t understand because we all learn differently and we just need to find the way that suits us!” Ciri frowned as she spoke, clearly trying to remember what Jaskier had said word for word.

Yennefer tilted her head. So the buttercup wasn’t as disastrous as he first appeared. Ciri clearly loved him at any rate. “He’s not wrong.” She admitted. “Regrettably.” She added under her breath so that Ciri couldn’t hear her.

“Yeah! So then we made a song together so I could remember properly! Dad thought it was a great idea.” Ciri grinned.

Yennefer smirked. “Oh really? So your father likes Mr Jaskier’s songs.”

Ciri nodded enthusiastically. “He got annoyed at first because I was singing them a lot around the house after school, especially my numbers song but after I said Mr Jaskier wrote them he didn’t seem to care after that. I think Dad still feels bad because he didn’t see Coën’s text when he got sick and I got left at school on my own for ages!”

“He did what?” Yennefer snapped and then took a deep breath. “On your own?” She said more softly, feeling bad for taking her anger out on Ciri.

Ciri’s eyes went wide and she covered her mouth. “Oh no! I wasn’t supposed to tell you! Geralt and Mr Jaskier made me promise I wouldn’t tell you, even though Ms Merigold said she’d tell you!”

“Ciri. Were you on your own at the school?” Yennefer asked again.

“Oh no. Mr Jaskier and Ms Merigold looked after me until Dad got to the school, but Dad tried to say he owed them for staying longer, but Mr Jaskier refused because he didn’t mind staying with me cos we’re buttercups and buttercups stay together!” Ciri laughed proudly.

“Mhmm. And then what happened?” Yennefer pressed.

“Well then Dad still felt bad because he thought Mr Jaskier and Ms Merigold had to stay forever at school with me. So he brought Mr Jaskier coffee next time he was in the playground with us in the mornings.” Ciri beamed happily.

“Interesting. What about Ms Merigold?” Yennefer asked innocently.

Ciri scrunched up her nose as she thought about it carefully. “No. Ms Merigold didn’t get coffee but Dad did come in to say thank you for like… a whole week!”

“Oh really?” Yennefer smirked knowingly. She’d caught the fireman out. Geralt really should have thought to buy Triss a coffee too if he didn’t want Yennefer to find out about his little crush on Ciri’s teacher, not that that would have stopped her. She always found a way to get his secrets out of him. The poor man seemed incapable of keeping his mouth shut around her. It was a miracle she hadn’t cottoned on sooner.

She was pulled out of her thoughts by the familiar ringing of the old hand bell signalling that it was time for the next group of kids to go in for lunch. She glanced around to see the source of the sound. Istredd was hovering by the doorway with the bell in his hands. It was the same one that they had used when Yennefer had attended the school as a young bell, a heavy brass bell with a dark wooden handle. She remembered how her classmates had always argued over who’s turn it was to ring the bell at the end of break times.

“Time for lunch, Ciri. Go on inside with the rest of your class. I’ll be right there.” She released the young girls hand.

“Are you going to sit with us?” Ciri asked excitably.

“As long as Mr Jaskier doesn’t start singing.” She teased. “Of course I will, and Ciri?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t forget to wash your hands.” Yennefer reminded her, raising her voice as the girl began to run off towards the school building.

Yennefer sighed with a shake of her head and then strolled over to her old flame. There was no point in delaying the inevitable. She just hoped it wouldn’t be too awkward this time. She sighed internally and then flashed a smile at Istredd as she caught his eyes. The history teacher smiled back softly and she felt that long gone familiar warmth spread from her heart. He still had the same crinkles in the corner of his eyes when he smiled at her and there was a kind calmness in his eyes that grounded her the way it always did.

“Yenna.” He greeted her softly when she reached him.

“Hello, Is.”

“You look good. Are you well?” He asked with a tilt of his head.

She laughed and tucked her hair behind her ear. “It’s weird to be back. It always is but Geralt asked for Ciri and I couldn’t say no.”

“Geralt asked.” Istredd sighed, his muscles tensing and a hardness glazing over his eyes.

“Is, don’t start.” Yennefer rolled her eyes at the show of petty jealousy. “He needed me. Ciri needed me.”

To her surprise he let it go. Istredd had never forgiven her for moving on so fast with Geralt after they broke up and her relationship with the fireman was something that had caused tension between them ever since. “How is she?”

“Ciri?”

“Yeah. It’s all anyone talks about in the staff room, Ciri and Geralt.” Istredd grumbled and rolled his eyes at the mention of Ciri’s father figure.

“Oh come on, Is. He’s not that bad. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were jealous.” Yennefer teased, delighting in the way he shuffled awkwardly on his feet and dropped his gaze. She even noticed a faint blush under his brown skin.

“There’s nothing to be jealous of, is there?” Istredd’s dark brown eyes suddenly bore down into hers with a sudden intensity, a shy smile gracing his lips.

She shook her head, ignoring the dull ache that had now settled into her lower back. She should probably think about taking some painkillers but she didn’t want to show weakness in front of her former lover. “Geralt and I, whatever we might have had, it’s over. It has been for a long time now, but he’s my friend, Is. If you can’t accept that then—”

“—then what, Yenna?”

“Then whatever could be between us can never happen, and I don’t think you want that.” Yennefer raised an eyebrow at him and he nodded.

His hand reached out to hers before he remembered the hoards of children surrounding them and he pulled back, but not before the tips of his fingers had brushed against her wrist. “I’m sorry, Yenna. I should never have—”

“No, you shouldn’t.” She agreed.

“I didn’t know.” He looked down at the ground sombrely.

“That was never the point.” She sighed. “Look, I’ve got to go. Ciri will be wondering what’s taking me so long. Do you have my number?”

“You’ve probably changed it.” He shrugged. “It’s been a long time since we’ve spoken just the two of us. Triss is normally here.”

Yennefer pulled out a business card from her purse and pressed it into her friend’s hand. She cursed mentally as she noticed her tablet box was missing. She must have left it in her other purse. Maybe she could see if Triss or Tissaia had anything on them. She would have to swing by reception before she went into the dining room.

“We’ll talk more. I promise. I miss you, Is. You were always a good friend to me.”

“I miss you too, Yenna.” He nodded sadly.

She patted his cheek softly and tried her best to give him a reassuring smile, ignoring the way he still made her heart flutter in her chest, and then she brushed past him and into the old school building that seemed to never let her go.

_____________

The rest of the day at the school seemed to go without a hitch. Yennefer enjoyed seeing most of her old colleagues, although she could have done without Stregobor’s lingering gaze whenever they were in the same room together. She repressed a shudder and guided Ciri towards her car. It was a sleek black convertible which ran smoothly and practically purred when she hit the accelerator. She wasn’t overly familiar with the ins and outs of it but it was gorgeous to look at and she liked to travel in style. It was one of the first things she’d bought for herself when her art blog had started bringing in more money. Unfortunately Cidaris was a city where the roads seemed to be consistently full of traffic. There was no fun in driving her car in a city like that so she’d left the car with Triss whilst she was away.

“Auntie Yen?” Ciri babbled away.

“Yes, Ciri?” She glanced over at the girl who was buckling herself into the front seat.

Ciri was looking up at her with wide green eyes. “Where’s Dad?”

“He has to take the fire engine back to the station.” She explained and placed her hand on Ciri’s arm to try and reassure her. “He’ll be joining us at the restaurant once he finishes work.”

Ciri nodded. “Ok!”

Ciri then proceeded to tell Yennefer all about her life in Posada, her friends at the school, particularly a young boy called Dara and about one Jaskier Pankratz. Yennefer sighed. If she never had to hear about the younger teacher again she would be happy.

Although she did have to admit she was impressed with his style of teaching. Every single one of the children Yennefer had met that had been in Jaskier’s class at school was kind hearted and loyal to a fault.

That didn’t mean she wanted to hear about him non-stop from both Ciri and her ex.

It took Yennefer more time than she’d anticipated to get both her and Ciri ready for their meal with Geralt. She’d insisted on treating them to dinner as she wasn’t in Posada very often and quite frankly she didn’t trust Geralt’s cooking skills. She’d tried to get Ciri into a beautiful turquoise dress for the occasion but the young girl had flat out refused and Yennefer had to spend quite some time calming her down and wiping away the tears. In the end they’d put together a nice sparkly green top with some black jeans. Ciri had asked Yennefer to help her with some make up after watching Yennefer apply her own. That had surprised her after the pandemonium of the dress but she helped Ciri put on some glittery eyeshadow and lip gloss and Ciri even managed to sit still long enough for Yennefer to curl her hair.

Of course that meant that Yennefer barely had time to finish her own hair. She compromised and deftly braided her hair to keep it out of her face and then they were ready to go back out.

Geralt was waiting for them in the restaurant. He looked worn down and exhausted but managed to muster up a smile for Ciri and waved them over.

“Dad!” The young girl ran over to Geralt and he caught her in a hug.

Yennefer smiled at the pair of them.

“The wolves are going to the pub after work.” Geralt grunted. “They insisted I join them after. I’ll try and be back for bed time.”

Ciri pouted. “Can’t I come too?”

Geralt shook his head. “You’re too young. Maybe when you’re older.”

Yennefer raised an eyebrow at her ex. “I come all this way, Geralt, and you’re spending the evening with your colleagues.”

Geralt hummed nonchalantly. “They wouldn’t let me say no. I haven’t been out with them since…”

Yennefer waved her hand to cut him off.

Since Ciri.

Of course he hadn’t.

And now she was here it would give the man a chance to spend the evening away from Ciri, the first for a long time.

“Ciri and I have plenty to catch up on. You can go but don’t stay too late.”

“I’m not a child, Yen.” Geralt grumbled back.

She smirked. “No but I know what your friends are like. Lambert in particular.”

“Uncle Lambert is fun!” Ciri grinned. “Please can I come?”

“Not this time, little Lion Cub.” Geralt ruffled her hair and Ciri swatted his hands away.

“Dad! You’re ruining it!”

Geralt looked taken aback by her protests.

“I styled it for her, Geralt. I’m sure you noticed.” Yennefer gave him a pointed look.

He blinked as he looked at the ashen-haired girl more closely.

“Yeah. I noticed.” He lied. “You look lovely, Princess.”

Yennefer rolled her eyes and picked up the menu. “I’m starving. Let’s not waste anymore time with mindless conversation.”

In the end they only ordered one course. Ciri was tired from the exciting day at school and Geralt was eager to meet up with his friends. He ordered steak and chips, predictably. Ciri went for chicken nuggets and chips, Geralt even allowed her to order a fizzy drink. Yennefer preferred a more sophisticated option and chose panfried sea bass with spinach and new potatoes. Although that didn’t stop a small handful of Geralt’s chips from ending up on her plate, in return in took some of her potatoes. It was a slightly painful reminder of their happier years as a couple and a habit they had yet to break. She squeezed his hand under the table and he flashed her a small smile.

“Thanks for coming, Yen.” He said softly.

She nodded. “For Ciri.”

“I know, but I appreciate it all the same.”

_____

Next

[lideria]

Appreciation. | Xiaojun

Request: Can I request a one shot with Xiaojun (fluff/angst) please 😔💚

Author’s Note: Anon, honestly if you hate this (because I do) just know I’m sorry I tried :’)) 

Warnings: Couple of swear words, an argument although not too heated, English is my second language so errors are always possible.

Word Count: 2792

Genre: Angst, Fluff

I (desperately) hope you enjoy!

People say opposites attract.

They are right, in a sense. Xiaojun and you definitely were not the likeliest of people. Or the pair people would suspect to end up together. But you also were definitely not exact opposites of each other— nobody could be that with him. The guy was calm but had truly chaotic energy, a dreamer but also a doer, an optimist but also a pessimist; you name it, he was most probably also that.

Yet there was something about him that definitely did not have any alternatives to it, “it” being his ambition and love for work. It did not change and it probably would never do.

Xiaojun strives to make music and be involved in all its derivatives. It is how he was brought up. Music is the base of his whole life. He loses himself in it. There was no argument about it, nor were there any questions. How could there be any when his whole lifestyle was adapted to it?

There is great passion in what he does and you respected that, you truly did. But you also had your ambitions. Things that you had to adapt to, in order to succeed in them. These things did not necessarily fit to your boyfriend’s ambitions or schedules— they certainly did not have to. That you knew about, but you also thought that this was where the problems started.

In your view, relationships work by giving and receiving. Of course it must depend on fondness first to have any chance of working out, but if there has to be sacrifices to be made it should be on both sides. If there is affection and compassion they should be on both sides. And for these to occur there should be will to do it and recognition to appreciate it.

The problem was, you could not really sense that appreciation in him for quite some time.

When dates were planned, they were planned according to his schedule, unless you had a major thing to worry about. He would get to be the one deciding whether you two get to hang out or not. Even things like FaceTime or Skype calls would have to be organized so his schedule would be capable of fitting it in. And yes, his schedule was more often crazy busy than not, there was nothing to deny about that. But as the last minute “I’m sorry sweetheart, maybe another time?”s, “Something came up, we have to cancel.”s, “I think I’ll be late, what should we do?”s and their derivatives piled up, it started to feel like he was failing to see your sacrifices of your own cancelled plans and organizations you’d make in order to maybe spend more time with him.

And with more time, it started to feel like music was so deeply engraved in his bones and heart that maybe anyone or anything could never be the priority again, even for a short while.

But the other times— the times where you actually got to be with him— it would be a whole other story. Both of you got to see each other pretty often, but usually at absurd times in the middle of the day or late in the night and only for a short while. Still, Xiaojun would make you feel so loved when you two were together. Listening to you with all his attention, giving you all of his love and affection, hugging you, kissing you, playing songs for you. He serenaded you quite often, which would embarrass you both sometimes as it was such a romantic trope, too romantic even for him at some point. But you loved it, you loved being with him. You even loved the Skype calls at ungodly times of the night and the late night dinner dates of rushing to make anything to eat, but at least with some class so it would feel more like a date.

You loved everything and you were happy with him in those moments, but when you reflected on it, you just did not like how it was you that had to make it from one end of the spectrum to the other rather than just meeting in the middle with him. And meeting in the middle did not necessarily mean to cancel things just to be with you, just a bit of recognition and gratitude was enough.

For the longest time you keep it in and bottle it up because is he really at fault? But the frustration grows, and grows, and— well, grows until the feeling of neglection and the sacrifices going unrecognized just weighs heavier and heavier on your shoulders and in your stomach.

And one day, it all blows up.

You had come to the dorm that morning, because he would not have any plans or programs that he would have to attend to. It would have been the first full day in almost a month that both of you would get to have to yourselves and each other only. And you both loved to have breakfast, so it would have been the perfect start for what you hoped would feel like a day with no end to it.

That gets ruined pretty early on, though.

Xiaojun greets you at the door and hugs you before planting a kiss on your cheek. He appeared to be the only one awake— the only one out of his room at least.  He accompanied you to the kitchen where you both started preparing the necessary ingredients for your favorite breakfast, and he spoke up first when you were cutting up some ingredients on the board. “I have some bad news,”

Something drops in your chest. You were used to this feeling normally. This time, though, it seemed to be a heavier drop. “Yeah?” The disappointment was already audible in your voice tone and Xiaojun recognized it. But he never let it get to him, so this time was no exception. “I have to go to the company, I think something was wrong with my recordings.”

There is a moment of quiet after that. Nobody says anything for a while, you just chop the ingredients and he goes to prepare the water after cleaning the other ingredients. He moves onto do some other things, you cannot really tell, but after a while he stops and from the corner of your eye you can tell he is leaning against the counter and looking at you.

Time must have lost its sense, because if they asked you it was only a few seconds that had passed when Xiaojun squeezed your arm a little and you stopped to look at him. This startle also made you realize the fact that your eyes were brimming with tears that burned with frustration. “I’m fine, it’s what you have to do.” A tear falls. Of course.

“Then why are you crying?” One thing about Xiaojun that genuinely pissed you off sometimes was hot he never got angry, or properly annoyed. Sometimes you wanted him to. Because he had this beautiful way with words and toning that acted like a master key for people’s hearts and minds, but because he was so incredibly patient you would never get to really hear him. Although magical, it laid like a curtain covering his essence. And again, it just felt like you were opening up when he was not.

“Because I’m used to it and I’m tired of being used to it,” You sniffle, properly turning to him with your body. “You could’ve told me sooner, you know. So I wouldn’t have had to cancel my plans?”

He is genuinely surprised. “You had plans?”

Your breath hitches in your throat at his confusion. The disappointment gets even bigger. “I told you when you called me about today. You said you were sure you had the day off.”

His brows furrow a little. “But this is not exactly an instance I can do something about.” And he was right. But frustration still ate away at you, and you felt the need to speak up about it just for once. “Yes, it’s not. But do you even realize how much I do for this to work out? I keep eliminating so much of my time—”

He is quick to answer. “So you want me to cancel work? I’m on a—”

“Tight schedule, yes. I get that you can’t do much about it.” He is not exactly getting riled up, but just a bit quick to get information out of you, which riles you up. “Then what’s the problem, exactly?”

And at that moment, you hate that he still does not know. You hate that he is so oblivious to it, because that just means he does not think about it at all. What truly breaks you is the slight hint of sass in his voice. Ever so slightly you sob, without the ability to help yourself to hold it dearly inside. That ends up being what truly worries him. “I just would like to get recognized for the amount of shit I pull from my ass just so I can get to see you when you have time. I know that you must be seeing yourself like, I don’t know, a makeshift saint because you try to fit seeing me into your packed schedule but hell, Xiaojun—“ You put a hand on your chest that so badly wants to heave with the untold struggles you had been going through. Now that they found the slightest escape, they wanted out. “I’m so behind on my things just so this can work. And then when this kind of thing happens— which you know is more often than not, and I don’t get a heads-up, it all goes to waste. My sacrifices for this relationship and my life outside this relationship goes to waste,” You have to stop for a moment to take a shaky breath. You try to look him in the eye, but realize you cannot, so you settle for just looking up at the ceiling. “You get to do music which is your life, I know, and to have a relationship. And in your point of view you’re absolutely incredible at it. But we’re young and reality is that you’re lucky enough to have settled with your way of living this early in life. I’m still trying to find something that works for me, but with taking so much time out so many times to travel and for the couple of hours I’ll only hopefully get to see you… Neither feels secure enough for me to say I’m doing something right. And to not at least get any appreciation for the risks I take, it’s heartbreaking. That’s the problem.”

The words leave a bad taste in your mouth, but it also feels refreshing to finally let the feelings out. So you wipe at your cheeks. To get rid of the negative remnants of whatever this was. And once everything is moderately dry, you take a look at him. He looks deep in thought, eyebrows furrowed all the way, a serious look in his eyes. “How come you never told me? I would have listened.”

“Maybe I need more than being heard this time.” A sigh makes its way out from deep in your chest with that suggestion.

And then, though everything feels bitter, you turn back to the counter to resume preparing your part of the breakfast. Because despite it all, you still want to spend some time with him before he leaves.

Things go back to how they were— quiet—when you turn back to the counter. He follows you and gets back to work as well, although a bit later, and you both cook in silence.

But all silence does is bring the thoughts back, and fuel new ones. Does this silence mean you are on bad terms with him now? Would it have been better to not say anything at all? Were you overreacting? Or rather, was he really not appreciative? What would it make him if he was not? And what would it make you if you were overreacting? What would it make you think of each other?

The thoughts race as you two cook and suddenly, your brain decides you are not done crying.

Why? You do not know. At least for certain. There was too much going on internally.

This time he does not say anything. Instead he hugs you from the back and places his chin on your shoulder. He is looking at you again, you can tell. You start laughing— not because anything is humorous, but because your nerves are all over the place. Your emotions are everything and then some with boosted frustration. Because nothing is settled. Because you stopped talking and so did he.

But then something happens.

He starts thanking you just as you apologize for what must be a very creepy behavior. And he starts thanking you for a lot of things. His voice is barely above a whisper, but affirmative.

Thank you for traveling through the city just to come see me. Thank you for staying up to talk with me. Thank you for waking up early to meet me. Thank you for running to catch me and kissing me when we part ways. Thank you for the times you flew out to make sure we get to see each other once before it becomes too long a while. Thank you for the times you cooked for me. Thank you for making time for me, even though everything feels uncertain to you. Thank you for being vulnerable with me. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for staying. Thank you for caring about me so much, sweetheart. Thank you for caring so much about this, and thank you for loving me. But please, don’t burden yourself alone anymore. Tell me your struggles sooner. And I promise to do better at seeing it, rather than watching it.

As much as you hate to say it, you wanted to hear these words. Had been expecting these words. Definitely not every single time— but sometimes it would be nice, and was in fact nice, to hear that your effort did not fall on deaf ears or blind eyes.

There is a rush of happiness and hope you cannot stop. Because he gets it now, instead of choosing to stay oblivious just to be able to hide in the comfort of silence and not have to deal with what he was told, which many people would have done.

You turn your head to kiss him when that hits you. He kisses you back. For shorter of a while than you would have liked. Then he moves (in your opinion way too quickly when there is a burning stove) to get a bowl and some cutlery out, getting breakfast straight out of the pot and blowing on it before picking some of it up to serve you. “Come on,” he says, holding the spoon close to your mouth. “There is nothing better than food fresh off the stove when you are upset.”

“I’m not upset anymore.” You claim, but he does not seem too keen on it as he shakes his head. “You still got some boo left over.”

That makes you snort. And it goes exactly like how you would expect a snort to go after a good cry. Thankfully he only laughs and hands you a tissue without much pester. He does stare at you, though, which is not much better. “What are you looking at? You made me snort after I cried, I think it’s quite basic maths what the outcome is when you add them up.”

“Mhm,” He pauses, hesitant. His confidence is low as he speaks. “If you want to hang out tonight, I’m all yours to have. The thing should last only a few hours, though I can jump over tourniquets if I have to.” Without waiting for a response, he starts getting cutlery out for himself, most probably to avoid eye contact. Knowing how he operates with conflict, you were sure he was tip-toeing through the topic.

“Oh God, please don’t,” You wipe your nose one last time. He fills his bowl with as much breakfast he put for you. “Those things are half as tall as you. Wouldn’t wanna see how that rolls out.”

And with that he drops the cutlery. He looks at you with something close to disappointment, and after giving it a few seconds, you both start hollering in laughter as you eat your breakfast.

Sure, he had a special way with speaking, but you would like to think resolution was something both of you were good at.

[squirrelly831]

Fainting [Seokjin, Yoongi, Hoseok, and Namjoon]

Warning: Namjoon’s reaction has to do with a panic disorder, so read at your own risk.

Enjoy~

Seokjin

May was a web comic artist and she was known to pull all nighters. Due to that, her boyfriend, Seokjin, would make it a priority to check on her at her apartment especially on days that she didn’t answer his phone calls or text. Sure, call him overbearing, but he knew how May got when it came to her work. She’d work herself to death if she was left alone too long.

So, when he found out that they had an early day, he was excited. He knew May was in a crunch as her deadline for her weekly post was nearing which meant to him that his girlfriend wasn’t taking care of herself. He sent her a text to let her know that he was going to stop by that night and make dinner, but his text went unread.

That night, Seokjin entered her dark apartment, “May?” He called out as he took off his shoes and headed to the living room. When he flipped the switch he was greeted with horror. “MAY!” He dropped the groceries without a care when he heard the eggs break as he rushed to his girlfriend’s side. May was twisted in pain. Her eyes didn’t open when he grabbed a hold of her burning flesh. He felt her forehead and cheek, “You have a fever…” He whispered. He picked her up and took her to bed before he went scavenging for medicines and a wash cloth.

After he cleaned up the groceries he dropped, he gave Namjoon a call and explained the situation as well as to let him know he would not be returning home that night. Seokjin made a quick stop to the convenient store and got some soup ingredients before he returned to May’s place.

Seokjin finished the soup and brought it to May’s room just as she was sitting up. May sought out her glasses when Seokjin rushed to her side, put the soup down on the night stand, and handed her the glasses.

She put them on and looked up at Seokjin, “Jin? Why are you here?” She glanced around the room. “Why am I in bed?” Her eyes widened, “Shit the comic!”

Before she could get out of bed, Seokjin’s shot out and pushed her on the bed, “You’re not leaving this bed.”

“Seokjin.”

“No, don’t Seokjin me. You were unconscious in the middle of the living room” he snapped. May opened her mouth to say something, but she quickly shut it and bit her lip. “You promised you’d take care of yourself. Instead you were overworking yourself even though you have a cold.”

“I’m sorry… I was going to deal with the cold after I finished my panels.”

Seokjin wanted to be mad, but the sad regretful face his girlfriend made was impossible to stay mad at. He took a seat on the edge of her bed, “Good. Now, you need to eat.”

Once May recovered, Seokjin took her out to celebrate her recovery and for hitting 100,000 likes on her latest chapter.

When her food was placed in front of her, Seokjin snatched it. She gave him an exasperated look, “What the heck?”

He grabbed his chopsticks and picked up some of her food, “Say ah~”

“Jin, I’m not a baby” she complained. He held the food there for a moment and May leaned forward to eat it.

However, he pulled it back and ate it with a satisfied look, “Too slow, jagiya~”

She rolled her eyes and grabbed her food, “You’re so lame…”

“No wait, I want to feed you once. I promise I won’t take it again.”

She grabbed her chopsticks and shook her head, “Nope. Too late.”

Yoongi

Amanda always told her best friend and boyfriend, Yoongi, to rest and not to overwork. She didn’t understand the life of an idol as she was just a normal college going girl, but she did know when Yoongi was neglecting his health. Though they dated, sometimes she had a habit of acting like an over bearing mother and not a girlfriend.

However, though Amanda was always on his case, no one was on her for the same neglect. As a college student, she had her own stress to deal with. One being the horrid final exams. Most of them weren’t bad, except her one chemistry exam. She wasn’t even a science major, but it was a basic requirement. Unlike other basic requirement course professors, this one was serious about her class. So much so that the final was 60% of the overall grade. Amanda struggled with barely scraping by with a 75 in the class. Failure was not an option.

Her neglect started slowly, missing one meal or scraping off a couple of hours of sleep, but as the exam steadily approached Amanda pulled more all nighters or ate a small snack through the day. Her head buried in a book and Yoongi would have never expected what she was doing. He had decided to leave her be until after finals season as he knew she wouldn’t so much as glance at her phone.

The day of the exam, Amanda’s nerves were haywire. She was surviving on coffee and an energy snack. Her eyes developed large bags under them that makeup couldn’t hide. Her hair was unkempt and thrown into a ponytail. When she finished her exam she stood and a wave of dizziness hit her. In her head, she reminded herself that she’d get sleep when she got home. She unsteadily made her way down the stairs as the steps blurred and refocused.

Her professor looked up at her, “Are you okay?”

Amanda’s head felt hazy. She saw her professor speak, but couldn’t make out the word. Her eyes rolled as she collapsed in front of the desk. She didn’t hear the gasps of the other test takers or when her professor grabbed her phone to call an ambulance.

Malnourished. That was all the doctor had to say to Amanda when she woke up with an IV attached to her arm. The doctor insisted on keeping her overnight much to her disappointment.

So there she was in the hospital bed as she waited for the nurse to bring her nasty hospital food. Her mind wondered to her exam. Had she been able to turn it in? Her trail of thought was interrupted when her door swung open and her boyfriend ran in out of breath and looked frantic. “Yoongi” she breathlessly called out. “What are you doing here? I thought you had a photoshoot.”

Yoongi shot her a look “I’m your emergency contact, stupid. I ran here when I heard you fainted. Exhaustion, fatigue, dehydration! Are you mental?”

Amanda looked down with guilt riddled on her face. The last thing she wanted was to worry Yoongi who had his work to worry about. “I was just trying to make sure I didn’t fail my class…”

He pulled up a chair to the side of the hospital and sat down with a relieved look. He took her hand and held on to it tightly. Amanda could feel how shaky his hand was. “I know you always worry about me when I overwork and I never took it seriously. However, when I got the call you fainted because of exhaustion. My heart stopped. We need to take better care of ourselves, okay Jagiya?” She nodded and he leaned forward to kiss her forehead. He wasn’t going to let her go through exam seasons alone ever again. He made a promise to himself that he’d make time to stop by her place to pull her from her studies.

Hoseok

Hoseok was at the practice room with his best friend and crush, Mariah, who agreed to help with with his new choreography. She was a dancer just as he was which was how they met. He went to her dance studio and took some classes and the next thing he knew, they were always together.

Mariah was dressed in a turtleneck shirt and jeans as the winter weather was insane. She regretted not bringing a change of clothes that she would be comfortable to dance in. The heat of their bodies was suffocating. She grabbed the top of her turtleneck and fanned her face with it. She sucked down her water and jumped up, “Alright” she clapped, “Break over.”

Hoseok groaned as he stood, “How many more times until we call it a break?”

Mariah placed her fingers under her chin, “Let’s stop once we can get to the first chorus perfectly. Remember, even if we mess up, we will go through the whole song before we redo it.” Mariah looked in the mirror to catch Hoseok’s nod. She hit the play button and got into position before they started dancing.

After the third time, Mariah felt dizzy. She crouched for a bit to try to refocus. She felt like she was on fire. She took a deep breath, “Alright, one more time.”

Hoseok noticed her ill expression, “Are you sure? You don’t look good.”

Mariah waved it off, “I’m just sore.” She played the song once more and got prepared to dance.

“Mariah, hey! Mariah!” She woke to the feeling of a cold water bottle pressed to her face. She slowly opened her eyes and noticed her upper body was supported by Hoseok’s body. “Can you stand?” She nodded and he helped her on her feet only for her knees to buck. He caught her before she fell and he picked her up, “I called a taxi, I’ll take you to the hospital.

Once at the hospital it was determined due to the excess heat and the tight turtleneck shirt, Mariah had overheated and fainted. When the doctor left, Hoseok broke down.

He held her hand as guilt overtook him, “I should have paid more attention you how you were feeling. I’m sorry.” He wouldn’t listen to anything Mariah had to say about the blame. He would accept it was his fault.

Namjoon

He thought he knew his best friend, Jessica, like the back of his hand. However, there was one thing she never told a soul. She had a panic disorder. She didn’t find the need to tell anyone about it as she was on medicine that kept her calm.

Though the meds helped most of the time, they didn’t help one day after she got into a heated phone argument with her parents. She was tired of being disrespected and treated like a child by her verbally abusive parents. She was tired of being pushed around by them. She did everything for them, sent them money though she was struggling with her own bills of tuition, took care of her siblings even though her mother was a stay at home, and ran their errands. However, Jessica reached her boiling point and she snapped.

Namjoon had entered her apartment without announcing himself when he heard her screaming. He ran into the apartment to see her phone shattered on the other side of the living room and Jessica hyperventilating. Namjoon rushed to her side to calm her, but she sobbed harder and gasped for air as she choked on her sobs. Her hand flew to her chest as her legs became jelly. Her attack lasted long enough that Namjoon called her doctor to rush over. However, as she stopped crying, she still gasped for air before she ultimately fainted which only made Namjoon panic.

Jessica’s doctor rushed to her apartment when Namjoon called her. She explained her fainting was caused by the lack of oxygen to her brain due to her hyperventilation. She wrote out a prescription for Namjoon to pick up for Jessica and after he went to get the medicine he went to her bathroom to get her small glass. As he was in her bathroom, he noticed a prescription pill bottle with Jessica’s name etched on it. As Jessica slept, he looked up the medicine only to discover it was an antidepressant and was used for panic disorders.

He was upset that she never told him she was suffering. He reached for her hand and stared at her unconscious figure. He wouldn’t confront her about it and wait for her to open up about the series of events, but he would look into how to prevent and stop a panic attack. He refused to let his best friend suffer alone.

Part II

Credit to gif owners

Written & revamped by Squirrelly831

♕ REQUEST

☮ BTS MASTERLIST

∞ ULTIMATE MASTERLIST

[mars-the-4th-planet]

Yuri Gagarin harasses a truck driver and talks about politics with Penny Polendina

Yuri landed on the firm Russian soil in a rural town next to a gas station. Well, not that firm, but firm enough. At least, that is what the 4th panzer Corp thought while they rolled through the area, but that is neither here nor there. "Vodka, nyet kaliningrad luftpanzer kozorvorisc niemcy?" She asked the gas station person politely.

Roughly translated the gas station persons response was "No we do not have plutonium fuel, thats not actually a planet therefore it cannot produce fuel!"

Yuri moped excessively until the gas station person handed her a small lump of uranium. "Look, you can have this okay? Maybe you can turn it into plutonium."

Yuri handed it back and shook her head. "I apologize for wasting your time comrade, please have a nice day in our glorious soviet union."

"Our wha-"

"Penny are you a communist or a filthy cappie?" Yuri asked her robot friend, surprised that she never asked this before.

Penny put two fingers together. "I dont know... I am not really into human politics... Personally I think that the best solution would be a society run by robotics like in New Polendine Mesopotamia. It brought peace and prosperity to an otherwise chaotic and violent region."

Yuri Gagarin rolled her eyes. "That is just a mechanically led puppet state overseen and funded by the United States of America."

"Yes but us Polendinas cannot be corrupted by greed or power lust and we always make calculated and empathetic decisions according to our makers... So..."

"Robots supercede the working class Penny, so a nation run by them is anti-worker by default!"

Penny shrugged, a bit nervous about the conversation and to change the subject she pointed at a Republic of Amazon truck and exclaimed "Hey look Yuri! I did not know they had amazons in Russia!"

Yuri frowned and popped up next to the truck man as he applied gas to his truck. "Hello anti-comrade, what are you shipping through my beautiful motherland?" She asked in Russian.

The truck man looked at her, puzzled. His eyes were bagged, his shoulders sagged, his skin was pale and his limbs seemed frail. The man was in bad shape, but that was to be expected of Amazon workers.

"Ma'am... No hablo Español.." He mumbled and continued with the gassing of his truck.

"What are you shipping in this truck for the foul corporation of the Republic of Amazon?" She asked again, in English. There was a slight threatening tone in her voice.

The man blinked. "Bread, ma'am."

Yuri narrowed her eyes. "Right. Give me your keys."

"Are your robbing me?"

"No. I have authority granted to me by the USSR to search any capitalist vehicle."

"My truck does not have a political idealogy ma'am..."

Yuri powered on her rocket and raised her fist. "Silence. Give me your keys in the name of the Soviet Union."

The man sighed. "The soviet union is dead ma'am."

Yuri was about to strike him, but Penny suddenly grabbed her waist and pulled her back.

Penny moved in front of her. "Sir, I apologize for my friend. She is in much grief about the fall of the USSR."

The trucker put the gas nozzle up. "It's alright babe. I best be going now."

"BABE?!" Yuri Gagarin flared up. Literally. "You FOOL! This Penny belongs to ME!"

Startled, the trucker scampered back. "Wait! Fine, take the keys, I'm sorry!"

Yuri nodded and took them, and used the keys to unlock the back door. "Aha!"

"Oh... Oh my... Um" Yuri didnt know what to say about what she saw. "Where are you taking them?"

"C-China..." The trucker stammered.

Inside the truck were what appeared to be twenty humans wearing the yellow and white Amazon Prime uniforms, except they were lacking mouths and their heads had two colorful blue and pink horns or antenna (Yuri wasnt sure which) that were aerodynamic looking like the tail fins on the back of a plane. They curved up and swooped back. The strangest thing about them however was how they all looked pretty much the same. They all had pale skin and black hair, and the males among them were all tall and muscular. While the women were all small and slim and sleek. Every one of them had striking blue eyes that gleamed in the dark. One male was making hand motions but immediately stopped as Yuri Gagarin opened the door.

"Who... Or what... Are these people?" Yuri Gagarin asked. "How could you ship people packed in like this! Like property!"

"I honestly don't know ma'am please... I am just the driver... Amazon has my son in mandatory daycare and I had to take this job to save up for the fee to see him on weekends..."

"they have him in what?"

Penny explained because the trucker was clearly scared. "When Amazon employees complain about not having the time or money to properly care for their children, the Republic of Amazon files a statuate of neglect against them and takes their child into corporate custody. The parents can still visit their child, but it costs them a fee and the price is measured by the minute spent with them. Sometimes with a government permit the parents can get their child back, but only if they make a lawsuit about it and that is even more expensive."

The trucker started crying. "I miss my boy! Please, I know this transport is wrong but it pays well and I am saving everything to see him again! I havent eaten in three days!"

Yuri Gagarin sighed. "Typical abuse of the working class... We are clearly living in the worst timeline. So what are these people? Aliens?"

"I honestly have no idea..!" The man stammered, continuing to cry.

Penny shook her head. "They seem to have mostly human DNA. I would say they are genetically modified human beings made for servitude."

"Why don't they have mouths? How do they eat? What are those things on their heads?"

"I do not know the answers to the last two questions, Yuri my friend. But their lack of mouths is likely intended to keep in accordance with international law on the property rights on genetically modified life forms. If a creature is intelligent enough to speak like a human, it cannot be made into property. This does not apply to robots like me, because I am not a biological lifeform..." Penny added sadly. While she enjoyed her friendship with Yuri, she could not shake the fact that in her mind she was in servitude to her.

"That is rather disturbing, since they are probably just as sentient as you or me or this malnourished worker here." Yuri Gagarin said, and got up into the truck. "Hello comrades, my name is Yuri Gagarin. I believe that your time as chattel is over. Come with me, and we shall run down any who seek to oppress and exploit you. First we must make it to our secret communist headquarters, alright?"

They seemed scared by this, and backed away the best they could with how crowded it was in there. Amazon officials assigned to train these people were sure to really into the idea that any opportunity to escape was just a test, and that failing the test would result in horrible punishment. So they believed that Yuri Gagarin was just another setup to catch disloyals among them.

"Come on, let's go!" Yuri Gagarin insisted. "It is not often that I am optimistic about anything, but I am optimistic about saving you."

They did not budge.

"They are not the brightest beings in the bulb, are they Penny?"

"I think they are just scared Yuri my friend. But they are already in a big truck, why don't we just drive them there?"

"The truck could have a tracking beacon Penny."

Penny doubted that possibility. "You could be right, but my sensors do not detect one. Perhaps I could try to communicate to them that they are safe now?"

"Go ahead, but I don't know how you could do so better than me..." Yuri Gagarin moped.

Penny made a bunch of ASL hand signals to them, reassuring the people that they were safe and free to go now. She added that she was an EA-built robot unaffiliated with the corporate empire of Amazon, and so they had no reason to be afraid of her. For the most part they seemed unconvinced, because they were never taught sign language as that counted as a form of speech. The hand signals they made to each other was a simple code they made themselves, which was punishable whenever they were caught doing it.

Yuri Gagarins brief optimism about the situation seeped away. "Why does everything have go be so complicated and hard! Oh, woe is us!"

She grabbed Penny and held her for comfort. "Oh, my dear Penny! Do you see now the sins of capitalism?"

"To be fair Yuri my friend, many capitalist nations have placed an embargo on the Republic of Amazon for their treatment of their workers. And some other major companies refuse to do business with them. These genetically modified humans were on their way to a communist country anyway... So it is not merely capitalism at fault, but a few corrupt individuals who have a lot of power, and that is a recurring theme in every system. And I mean no disrepect to you by saying that!"

Yuri Gagarin held Pennys shoulders and looked at her eye to eye. She smiled. "You remind me of Freedom Sayori sometimes."

Penny frowned. "Sorry..."

"No no, I meant that as a compliment! I may dislike her beliefs, but I have... A strange respect for Sayori as a person. She is naive, but she is no hypocrite and practices the freedom and kindness she preaches."

Penny giggled. "Hehehe.. I think you like her Yuri!"

"What? No! Never!"

"We should get these people to safety now Yuri. The driver too. Even if there is a tracker, what can Amazon do against a Polendina and a Rocket Girl?"

Penny's sweet and determined smile brought some optimism back into Yuri. "You are right. I am prepared to fight for what I believe is right. Let us go, Penny, and bring some small justice to the world! Even if it is neglible in the larger picture!"

"That is the spirit Yuri!...I think..."

[witchreflection]

Hello friends, I not only translated from Spanish my MP100/GO crossover, I expanded it a bit 

The one where Mob is the Antichrist (WIP)

As it happens with all important projects, when the moment to set the apocalypse into motion arrived, the infernal powers appointed (or may be, sentenced) a committee to oversee all details, and as it happens with all committees, no one ever agreed on anything and only one person (or in this case, being) did all the work[1].

In another world, the unfortunate sap in charge of the allocation of a human family for the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness, chose the family of the American Cultural Attaché in the United Kingdom as the best suited for the task, and then devised an ingenious plan (for a demon) where all the actual planning for the interchange of babies was delegated to other even more unfortunate infernal agents.

In this world, however, the outcome of the committee representative’s game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe was different, so the chosen family was that of the daughter of a Japanese home appliances tycoon, and then the committee’s representative forgot to actually delegate the planning until the last moment. This is why the demon Crowley received the following orders alongside a basket with a perfectly average looking, dark haired male baby:

“Corrupt a human so they can be persuaded to steal a child from his mother’s arms, to be unknowingly replaced by our Lord’s son.”

And,

“DO NOT MESS IT UP, CROWLEY.”

Crowley offered ₤100[2] to a nurse he found smoking in the parking lot to do the deed.

And well, many years later Crowley will wash his hands over the whole affair, arguing that his plan would have worked if that same day, at that same hospital, at the other end of the same hall where Hoshino Nadeshiko-san (full-time heiress) was in labor, Kageyama Akane-san (programmer, alongside her husband at the UK for work) was not in the same situation. Or maybe it would have worked if this nurse were not terribly racist, on top of unscrupulous, and didn’t think that “all Chinese people look the same”[3].

***

Eventually, the Kageyama family (now including their much-loved Shigeo) had to return to Japan once their contracts and visas expire. In the meanwhile, the young Hoshino Asahi-kun grew a bit neglected by his parents, but with the constant attention and counsel of his kendo instructor[4] and the housekeeper.

***

Asahi-kun’s 15th birthday comes but no hellhound does.

Crowley and Aziraphale scramble to find out what happened to the Antichrist, and they first search for the nurse who is now in prison[5] and doesn’t know anything of use, then the hospital, where they pick up a paper trail[6] that leads them to Japan.

“Well,” says the demon to the angel. “On the bright side, you do like sushi.”

***

Kageyama Shigeo is a very normal baby. Average size, average weight, reaches the developmental milestones at the expected ages. His parents love him very much and if Shige-chan has an habit of always managing get things he shouldn’t into his hands, they don’t think too much about it and gently correct him, just as they do when he tries to lick the neighbour’s cat or pulls from mommy’s hair.

When things start to float a bit, they take it on stride, because, well, it is not really problem, it is only small things and not very high, and Akane is pregnant again.

It does take them by surprise when Ritsu-chan keeps dropping his pacifier or a preferred toy and they have to keep picking it up for him, which immediately raises a concern about how many things that touched the floor ended up on Shige-chan’s mouth, and relief that they don’t have to worry about that with Ritsu-chan[7].

As Shige grows, so do his powers, and his family also grows accustomed to them. Soon, every time he cries –which is not often– the furniture will rattle, the rain will not touch him and he would make little and not so little animals swim through the air, or the bath water would float in shapes, but is always to entertain Ritsu or their friend Tsubomi. Sometimes the cutlery will bend, or Shige would accidentally make everything in the house hover 2cm over the floor in his sleep, but he is a good kid and it’s not like he does it intentionally.

Then, after an incident where Ritsu returns unharmed but covered in blood and Shige in in tears, and they don’t tell no matter how much Akane and Hisao ask their children what happened, Shige stops using his powers deliberately while the accidents increase, but they can’t do anything about it, because who do you ask about your child ESP problems? 

***

Later, people will debate if the well-timed appearance of Reigen Arataka into Shigeo’s life was in fact as “godsend” as the Kageyamas thought the day their child returned home from school happier and more at ease that they had seen him in months.

The fact that the man would also act as a quick response free babysitter and chaperon also helped to improve their opinion of him[8].

***

Kageyama Shigeo is a very unremarkable boy, but he tends to have a tangible effect in the people who cross his path, and he achieves this despite his powers and no thanks to them, mostly.

Had this been a different world, his powers would have not been obvious, but would have arranged the world around him to his liking. In this one, they never get him what he wants and he has to figure that one all on his own[9].

***

A list of times the world could have ended ahead of schedule:

After the incident when Shigeo lost control of his powers for the first time and believed, for a second, before he heard him cry, that Ritsu was dead.

All the times Dimple tried and failed to convince Shigeo to help him become a god[10].

The time a technician’s shoelace got caught in his desk chair’s wheel, making him trip and smash his keyboard, almost starting up a chain of events that would have resulted in a Chinese Navy ship colliding with an American one, had he not also accidentally disconnected the ethernet connection of his terminal in the process.

The time Mogami almost managed to make Shigeo lose his faith in humanity.

The time Dimple did achieve godhood thanks to Shigeo’s powers, before Shigeo’s powers decided they could do give it a try on their own and Dimple realised his mistake.

That one incident by the end of Shigeo’s second year at middle school, which is not discussed in public by people in the known, for plausible deniability, you understand. Even thought it was not his fault, he is very sorry and very sure it won’t happen again and he helped put everything together again, and he has been reassured that no one died, miraculously[10].

But the important bit is that it didn’t happen.

*** For a being that some of the time is a snake, Crowley has way too much leg to fit into a tourist class plane seat, and he has time to complain about it at length during the 12 hours flight.

You see, due to the intrinsic nature of airlines, miracling two last-minute first-class plane tickets, does not mean that those two first-class seats actually exist in that flight.

The fact that Crowley was responsible for making flying a terribly uncomfortable ordeal for the masses, was an irony lost on him.

So was the fact that he was directly contributing to the flight attendant’s path to sainthood, attained by her infinite patience.

________________________

[1]Except that, in fact, none of them did anything.

[2] The money was fake, but the nurse deserved it.

[3] Yeah, neither I know what Crowley was expecting to happen.

[4] If he’d had the time to pay attention to these things, Hoshino Katashi-san (CEO of his father-in-law’s company and absent but demanding parent) would had made an issue out of the kendo instructor being British. Fortunately, not only he never asked who was teaching his son, but the instructor wasn’t even really British in the first place, nor Japanese as Hoshino-san would preferred, nor anything, simply because the instructor wasn’t born in any country, or region, or geographic zone, as he had been brought into existence by Divine Will before the Creation, and he has been issued the physical form he inhabited after a long and tedious bureaucratic process, and he very much prefers to never have to go through it again, thank you.

[5]After noticing the money she had been paid with was fake, the nurse took a very pragmatic decision by taking the extra baby she found herself with to an adoption agency for rich people, where she received a quite large “fee”. This inspired her to a change in careers and became a full time “recruiter” for the agency, until it was closed under investigations for human trafficking.

[6]Not literally. The paper archive was burnt in a freak accident which was in no way caused by infernal agents with no knowledge about electronic databases.

[7]What they don’t know is that, soon enough, Shige-chan starts picking up things for his brother too when they are not looking. Maybe this is the reason why the brothers built extraordinarily strong immune systems and rarely get sick, maybe it is the other way around. I’m betting in the later.

[8]So did the discreet background check they did(a) on Reigen to make sure nothing untoward would happen. It also revealed that the man had his driving licence and an updated certification in first aid, making him qualified enough to take up child-care professionally.

[8.a] A leftover form their youth, before they decided to use their skills in a more legitimate manner as “cybersecurity”.

[9]With the support of loving family and friends, not that it lessens his effort in any way, but it is nice to mention it and Shigeo likes be reminded of it, too.

[10]But not a god as in God, more like a god as in the inaccurate translation of kami in Shintoism. Unbeknownst, back then, to Dimple, had he succeeded in making a god out of Shigeo, the results could had been less like the Emperor (like he envisioned) and closer (but not quite) to the actual Almighty.

[11]This is still being debated by the people in the known.

[tjbcnntt]

guess who’s back, back again, lenny’s back, tell your friends. ok so tj is my newest baby so he’s not quite as developed as noah but i still love him dearly and i’m very excited for you to meet him. if you like what you see below the cut, just give this post a good ol’ like or hmu and we can plot !!!

( keith powers • twenty three • cismale ) look, it's tevin “tj” bennett from apartment 6A! apparently he moved into moreau apartments one month ago and rumour has it, they can be quite reticent— good thing they’re also passionate, hey? i hear they’re the phoenix of the building. 

↘︎ 𝚋𝚊𝚜𝚒𝚌𝚜 !

given name: tevin james bennett

nickname: tj, tev

age: twenty3

birthdate: october 15, 1995

hometown: tba

occupation: art gallery ambassador & bartender

↘︎ 𝚑𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢 !

(tw: mention of death) a normal childhood could not have been further out of reach for tj. growing up, it was just him and his father — his mother unfortunately passed away after complications during his birth and despite reality promising it wasn’t his fault, tevin’s always had a deep-rooted guilt about it

his father never made it much easier on him either honestly. though calvin never outright blamed him for his beloved wife’s death, his attitude towards his son always seemed to hint towards it

tj doesn’t remember ever rlly seeing a smile on the man’s face — except in the few photos he found of his parents together, which only confirmed his beliefs that his father wasn’t the same man that he was before his wife’s passing (end tw)

on top of that, nothing tj ever did seemed to be enough for the stone cold man, including pushing away his own passion for his father’s. art has always been tj’s first love. painting, drawing, writing, music, everything considered “art” tevin is sure to love. but his father never agreed with his love for watercolours and paintbrushes — instead he wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and go into the medical field, which was the last thing tj wanted to do. the schooling, the pressure, everything that went along with the industry gave tevin shivers but as a young boy who wanted nothing more than the approval of his father, he saw no other option but to go into it

(tw: mention of anxiety) so with no break or gap year after high school, tj went to university for his bachelor of science but his fears of the pressure were only proven right. the workload was already a lot but with the added pressure of his father’s constant looking over his shoulder, he developed anxiety and he just scraped by on most of his classes in his last year (end tw)

after graduating at 22 with his ba in science, tj felt a weight lift off of his shoulders – for about 2 minutes.. and then the pressure was back when his father wasted no time bringing up med school and his son’s future. calvin was just so pleased his son was actually doing something with his life (what a backhanded compliment hey?) and while tev felt a glimmer of hope that he might actually be pleasing his father, he knew nothing would ever be enough for the man. he’d never be able to reach his father’s high standards if they only kept going up

this all was a lot on his shoulders for a while and tj fought the tension building inside of him, trying to find his passion and motivation for med school, but it just kept just kept building up as he woke up everyday never feeling fulfilled with his choices of pushing away his own dreams for his father’s

his fingers continued to yearn for the paintbrushes he’d packed away and ideas for sketches kept flashing across his the backs of his eyelids. his passion for art became a burning itch he couldn’t scratch and in the middle of this summer, it became too much for him

an argument began between tj and his father after his father started pestering him about applying to med school and getting angry that he was “slacking.” tj, normally one to just bow down and hide away from confrontations with his father, exploded on his father and a fight ensued that ended with tj packing his bags and storming out of his father’s house, slamming the door on his past and diving head first into the future he wanted

↘︎ 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚕𝚢 !

after a few weeks of bouncing between his friends’ couches, tj and his best friend, priya, set their sights on vancouver (very fast car by tracy chapman of them) to start fresh together. they both needed a new city, a new home... a new outlook. so vancouver, here they came

to pay the bills, tevin picked up a bartending gig at a popular bar in the granville entertainment district but continued to search for a job that would put him in the right direction and just a week ago, he found that job at the vancouver art gallery as an ambassador, basically someone who welcomes guests and orients them on the current exhibits, and feels one step closer to finding his place in life

since breaking apart from his father, he’s also rediscovered his passion for the arts. it took him a while to feel comfortable with a paintbrush or a sketchbook (hell, it still gives him jitters sometimes) but after a few brushstrokes, he’s begun to fall into the flow of letting his muse consume him once again

↘︎ 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚎𝚛 !

aesthetics: black coffee in a chipped mug. the sound of a pencil scratching against paper. sun rays poking through drawn curtains. patterned button down shirts. paintbrushes drying in the setting sun so they’re ready to use by sunrise. fresh watercolours. a stocked liquor cabinet. boots worn at the sole from too many walks along the coast. a sketchbook full of pencil markings. frank ocean playing through the night.

notable traits: honest, passionate, dexterous, reticent, altruistic, loyal, aggressive

best described as a cloud of creative visions that are fighting for a way out of the cement walls built around them after years of neglect.

though he never met his mother, distant relatives never let tevin forget how much of her he’d inherited, from her selflessness to the creative spark in her eye, and though he hates to admit it, tj is well aware the phrase “like father, like son” is all too real in regards to his short temper and reticence

growing up with such a sour relationship with his father, however, pushed tevin to distance himself from these traits as best he can, never wanting to look in the mirror and see the one man he loathes most. he often bites his tongue in confrontations unless pushed further and has been working effortlessly to let his emotions and feelings shine through to those he trusts

at first sight, his quiet, mysterious exterior can be intimidating to most, unless he’s caught drawing in public in which his features soften to let the pained young boy living inside of him to shine through. but around friends he’s grown comfortable with, tj’s charming and gregarious side comes out through his contagious laughter, jokes, and pure loyalty

along with his painting and drawing, tj fuels his passion for the arts through dance. when he isn’t working or creating, he’s often found in a dance studio near moreau

↘︎ 𝚜𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢 !

i totally aimed to make sure this wasn’t as long as noah’s and i failed pretty miserably. sigh. jkahs

if you made it through yet another one of these, you are incredible and i love you so much.

tl;dr: a boy with no mother and a father who projected his own dreams onto his unwilling son. his intimidation forced him into the medical industry, despite the fact that his fingers itched to hold a paintbrush instead of a scalpel. but when the pressures of med school became too much, an explosion occurred between father and son that sent tj storming out of his childhood home and into the arms of his best friend to start their new life in vancouver. now a starving artist working at an art gallery by day and popular bar by night, he’s searching for his muse once again and determined to live the life he wants to live

first things that come to mind when thinking of tj: paintbrushes, drake’s discography, a caged eagle, early mornings in the dance studio, and thick chains.

again, i would love any and every connection for my dear tj so pls give me all of them! like this / hmu and we can chat xo

[ghosthart]

idk but living with a single parent who accidentally had me, never wanted me, and had me at a very inconvenient time so she hated me and i ruined her life has kind of like destroyed me as a person because i’ve grown up being sorry for everything and being desperate for attention and someone to take care of me because my mom would never give me the love i wanted. she never acted like she loved me. never. i got bare minimum. i got toys and pets and vacations from my grandfather, but without him my mom would of just fed me, given me a roof, and emotionally neglected me and beat me when i asked for attention. she always let me know she never wanted me and made me feel guilty for being born when it was her fault for not even caring about trying to prevent a pregnancy. my whole life i’ve felt like nothing i do is good enough, and i’ve always failed at everything. i never wanted to go to school, i failed almost every class pretty much every year of school, and my mom always screamed at me that i’m not good enough and that SHE was top of her class and made straight A’s her whole time in school. while having an abusive mother and shoddy step father (who made up for it by being such a good parental figure to me until i was 7 when he moved over seas and when i was 16 he basically dropped off the face of the earth and abandoned my family for another one). she justified slapping me and yanking my hair and pinching me and verbally abusing me, screaming and cursing at me when i was very young, by saying her mom did even worse so it’s not a big deal. it’s just my fault that i can’t do better so i deserve it and worse. for a while the fear stopped because she stopped berating me for every little thing and stppped physically attacking me and stopped throwing away my belongings, and i started to think she decided she actually is happy she had me, but a few months ago she told me she’s tired of me and now that i’m 19 she wishes i would just figure my life out so i’ll finally stop making her life miserable after all these years and that just broke me. the one person who is supposed to love me unconditionally cut me off financially entirely and will give me nothing, tells me she can’t wait to get rid of me and that all i do is make her life miserable (at that moment she had just said she’s sick and tired of paying my $25 phone bill and then she just started screaming that she’s sick and tired of me and i make her life miserable) and i just really can’t wait to get out of this toxic environment and provide for myself because she has done nothing for me but destroy my personality and coping skills. i learned nothing from her except for fear and anxiety and i am severely dependent on others emotionally. especially my boyfriend, i need emotional support a lot and constantly feel afraid ill be pushed away because i want attention, but he always reassures me it’s just my mom who was like that and didn’t really love me the way a parent is supposed to. and my dad is a nice guy but he left when i was 2 and other than that he’s just been my dad who i saw every other weekend until i was 16. i just needed to vent about how much my mom has fucked me over on a mental health level and how much i can’t cope with the fact she hates me for existing and not being entirely dependent on myself. she wanted an independent and non needy child and got the complete opposite. ok i’m done ranting if you even read this i’m surprised. sorry i’m on mobile and don’t know how to do the read more thing to not put this whole thing on your dash

[joongie-smiles]

The Phone Never Rings

This is not a one-shot, just a little something inspired by the lines “I wait by the phone but the phone never rings” from “Campfire song” from the Lightning Theif Musical, which is absolutely amazing. 

Warnings: Angst, cursing, character death, neglect

Masterlist

Request

Tag

A little boy with fair hair kicked his feet up and down as he swung from the swing. The park he was in was practically deserted save for a couple walking a dog with their son, and the woman in front of him. She was beaming at him and her eyes held only kindness and love. She was wearing a big yellow hat that looked obnoxious against her purple dress, but he had insisted on her wearing his favorite hat, and she  had complied. It was his birthday, after all.

"Okay, I think we've been here long enough, don't you, Sweetie?" his mom asked. "Why don't we go get some ice cream?"

Normally, he would have said yes, but he was waiting for something. He had refrained from asking, but he was getting impatient. He shook his head sheepishly. "Can I . . . can I call him?"

She hesitated. She knew this question would come, it always did. He had been asking for 5 years without fail. She had tried to get him to forget this time with a trip to the park, presents, and ice cream, but it was useless. Even at 5 he was stubborn. "I don't know, Luke, maybe later-"

"Please," he whispered. "Just once then we can go."

She nodded and smiled softly, but the smile didn't reach her eyes like they usually do. "Okay." She gently stopped the swing and pulled her phone out. After looking through her contacts, she passed the phone over to Luke, who waited patiently for the ringing to end.

Eventually the ringing did stop, but instead of a voice answering on the other end -he wasn't sure what it would sound like but it would definitely be loving- he was meet with the all too familiar robotic voice of a woman telling him to leave a message after the beep. Luke forced his own smile and left his message. "Hey, Daddy, it's me, Luke. Um, I know you're really busy with work and . . . stuff, but, um, I just wanted to say that today's my birthday and I'm wishing for something special this year. Mommy says I can't tell anyone or it won't come true, but I'll give you a clue, it has to do with you. Mommy got me a cool plane and I'll tell you all about it if you call back. Bye, I love you, Daddy."

He hung up the phone and gave it back to his mom.

"Ready to go?" his mom asked.

Luke nodded silently, took her hand, and followed her back to the car. He looked out the window at the family with the dog and couldn't help but sigh. He tried to keep his disappointment from showing, he really did, but it was hard. It wasn't fair that some little boys got a dad or even two dads, but he couldn't even have one. He loved his mom more than anything in the world, but he missed his dad. But, like his mom always told him, no matter how far away his dad may be, he stilled loved Luke.

Luke just wished he'd show it a little more.

--

"Happy Birthday to Lu-uke! Happy birthday to you!" the crowd around the dining room table sang.

Luke, who sat at the head of the table, smiled and, when prompted to, blew out the candles. The crowd cheered and prompted him to stay still for pictures. His mom came around the table to stand at his side and started cutting the cake after taking the candles shaped in the number 1 and 0. He got the first and biggest piece and happily ate it while everyone else was given a piece. The rest of the night was spent with more congratulations and presents. Eventually, everyone left and Luke and his mom were left to clean up. Not many people had gone, so the cleaning was pretty quick. Luke was in his pajamas and in bed by 10:30 pm.

His mom stood above him and smiled down at him. "Another successful birthday?"

Luke grinned. "Another successful birthday," he confirmed.

"Sorry about Grandpa not making it, I know he promised to take you fishing," she said apologetically. She ruffled his fair hair lovingly.

Luke shrugged. "It's okay, I'm kind of used to someone missing my birthdays." He tried to say it nonchalantly, but it came out more bitter than he wanted it to.

She sighed. "Luke-"

"I know, I know," Luke interrupted. "He loves me, and he's a busy man, but can't he love me and show up? At least on my birthdays?"

"I'm sorry, Honey, I know that it's . . . not ideal, but," she stopped and closed her eyes for a moment. It was then that Luke remembered that it hurt her just as much as it hurt him. She took a shaky breath and continued. "But this is what we have, and we have to make the best of it."

Luke sighed and nodded. She was right. Their family situation might not be ideal, but they could work with it. He loved his mom and would allow her to be mother and father for him.

This would be enough. For now.

--

"It was him!" a large boy yelled. He pointed a finger at a scrawny 13 year Luke Castellan. "He's the one who stole my phone!"

"No I didn't," Luke scowled. "It's not my fault you can't take care of your things."

"Well, you steal everything else, how do I know you didn't take this too?" Behind the bully, Steven Bake, was a group of students who had formed a crowd, ready for the fight that might start between the 7th and 8th grader.

"You have no proof," Luke pointed out. "Apparently even that isn't obvious enough for you."

Steve's face started getting redder by the minute. He bared his yellow teeth at Luke and stood taller to look more intimidating, but Luke wasn't scared. He had dealt with bullies before. He was prepared to dodge the fists.

But he wasn't prepared to dodge the words.

"You're a no good thief, just like your deadbeat Dad," Steve spat. "No wonder he hit the road and never looked back."

Luke blinked in shock. Yeah, it was common knowledge that his Dad wasn't around, but nobody had really brought it up before, especially not at school.

"You probably never even talked to him before," Steve laughed harshly.

The shock was quickly replaced with anger. "Yes, I have!" Luke shouted. "I talk to him all the time." It might have been a lie, but it's not like they would ever find out. Anyway, his anger was clouding his reasoning.

"Oh, yeah? Then prove it." Steve fished his phone that had been allegedly missing and held it out. "Call him," he said.

This was the 2nd time today Steven had surprised him. Luke knew he was a jerk but even this was low. "He's-he's probably busy with something or-"

"Or you're a thief and a liar," Steve said smugly.

Luke surrendered and took the phone from his hand. It was half his fault for lying about it, now he had no choice but to follow through. He dialed the phone number he had memorized a long time ago. Upon Steve's harsh insistence, he put it on speaker and waited.

If there's anyone up there please, please, please let him answer. Dad if there was ever a time for you to answer the phone it's now. I've never stopped believing in you. Just, please, do this for me.

He waited and waited until the ringing stopped. Luke held his breath as the pause went on longer than it usually would for a message. Maybe it had happened. Maybe by some miracle, his dad would finally answer.

But, unfortunately, miracles weren't ever in Luke's favor. The dreaded robotic voice told him to leave a message after the beep.

Luke didn't wait for the standard message to end before dropping the phone and running from the laughing crowd

--

Luke stared at the phone on the table and willed it to ring. This room, unlike the rest of the rooms in the Big House, was mostly empty except for the desk, phone, and chair in front of them. Since it held the only available phone in Camp, the room was rarely used except for emergencies. Not only was it a direct connection to the mortal world, it was also a direct connection to Olympus. Usually someone here would be calling the gods, but this time Luke was waiting for a certain messenger god to call.

Luke had been at Camp Half-blood for a couple days now. The journey had been tough and he had lost a good friends, but now he finally had the chance to get some answers. Why didn't you come for me? Why didn't you claim me sooner? Why did you leave us to fend for ourselves?

Why did you do that to Mom?

That was the million dollar question. Why did Hermes, who apparently loved his mom enough to tell her that he was a god, make his mom crazy? One morning she was helping him pick his classes for the next school year, and the next she was locking them in the house and insisting Luke never leave the house because monsters were out to get him. Luke had been terrified of this new person who definitely wasn't his mom, so he left. And now he wanted answers from the man who did that.

Not man, god. A god who was his dad and apparently didn't see the need to fix what he had done.

A deadbeat god who couldn't even have the decency to apologize for what he did.

A coward who couldn't even pick up the damn phone and call Luke for a simple 'hi'.

Luke got up abruptly from his chair and glared at the phone with watery eyes. "Screw you too, Dad," he spat. He left the room with his head held high and his resolve set.

He would make him regret neglecting him.

--

"Group 1 goes to the east end, group 2 to the west end, and you, make sure the archers are in place," Luke said, pointing to the teams as he called them. "Got that?"

"Yes, sir!" his makeshift army confirmed.

"Then go." Once his troops were gone, Luke double-checked the maps around him of Manhattan. The final battle had begun and everything was going according to plan. All accept one thing.

The damned phone.

A simple phone like the one that had been at Camp sat at the front steps of the Olympian thrones. He had expected the opposing demigods to try to contact him, that seemed like something Chiron would do, but it appeared to not have been put there by the half-bloods. That only left the gods.

Now would be a good time for the gods to try to reason with him or plead with him to not destroy them. But that wasn't their style. Zeus would rather give up his lightning bolts than admit that he was wrong and a rebellious teen half-blood was right. He wouldn't give Luke that satisfaction.

Still, he waited. He waited for Zeus' apology or even a phone call from his Dad. Funny how you can't get any attention from your parents till you're destroying their parthenon.

But Luke had very low hopes, so when the phone never rang, he wasn't that surprised, but he was still disappointed. Deadbeat dad till the end, huh. He left the throne room and forgot about the phone.

It wasn't till he was back in the throne room fighting Percy that he even remembered the phone. When he was stabbed, he crumpled close to the phone and thought bitterly I started by the phone and it's only fitting I end by the phone. While he bled out in his friends' arms, a sound cleared his fuzzy mind for a moment.

The unmistakable sound of a ringing phone.

[thoughtstojots]

End Reflection: sophomore year of college

This year has been quite the year but most definitely a step up from the last in many ways. Here are some conclusions and progressing thoughts. 

1.) I still am not sure what I want to do with my life... maybe a doctor, maybe someone in product development. Whatever it may be I still want to dip my toes in so many other subjects and fields of study like cardiac research, textiles, sociology, European history, political science dealing with health care and international relations, food waste, biotechnology. The list GOES ON. If anything I have realized this year, it is that I just want to learn, to know, to try to understand, and to do whatever I can to gain a better perspective of what I want to learn about. 

2.) Academics are not my priority. Important? Yes. Needed? Well, maybe not. That doesn’t mean I neglect them at all. Yes, I still put effort and I still intend to get good grades but I am most definitely not losing sleep (or as much as my more school-oriented-high-school-self would have) over stressing out about a class to get an A in. 

a. What if I want to be a doctor? Then I should have exceptional grades to bring up my overall resume. Grades are one way to boost your resume but definitely not the only way. I’m not just letting them sink and watching them drown. Rather, I’m just choosing my room over the library. More so, because I’m not so sure I want to be a doctor, I don’t think it’s worth it to lose sleep over it especially in these harder science classes. And if I do choose med school, I’ll work super hard to do well on the MCAT (easier said than done, but doable). 

b. Somewhere in the fusion of the egg and sperm that made me, the DNA lineup possibly allowed me to be slightly smart. This year, the year I have honestly slacked the most ever in school, I have noticed that my plummet was not too bad. I mean it may be that I’m getting more sleep than others but I don’t have to work as hard as a lot to get the same results. When it comes to understanding connections between differences and learning trends and patterns, I much say I have a knack for it after just seeing it the first few times. And I guess with this, I choose my battles. I.e. organic chemistry. Mechanisms no problem. Remembering reagents, problem. Wouldn’t have been if I had taken some time to make flashcards or a Quizlet but oh well.

c. My desire to learn really comes into play with all of this. I enjoy hearing it for what it is or maybe reading on it to know more about it. But hard core studying, no thanks. Evolution lecture was very interesting (during the times I wasn’t sleeping in it) but more enjoyable was the book (when I actually read it). The book was actually interesting and from there, informing, and a good way to study. But I didn’t go out of the way to study so I could get an A on the exam. 

d. Regrettably, I still don’t know how to effectively study. The studying I did this year was a lot of piggy backing off of other’s study sessions or self teaching myself something I did want to know more about but was probably only going to be two multiple choice questions on the exam. 

With this mentality, I have become more relaxed and less stressed. I have invested myself in so many other things that have made me happier. That was also a difference between high school me and college me. My grades were "priorities” in high school but I kept a balanced life of doing extracurricular activities that I honestly enjoyed. It just happened that a lot of my social life at time was also interwoven with these activities, making it all manageable. Once I entered college, I came in with the mindset that my grades were my priority and actually made them my priority. There’s no doubt, there are times I still regret my past action and choices, comparing my what is to a what could have been scenario (but I always overthink things and look back on what a “better” situation). It’s difficult not to but I’m learning.

3.) The time spent with certain people is way too short. This year I have really branched my self in varying social groups and met many people. Sad to say though, quite a few of them graduated this semester. Even sadder to say, a good handful were international students who are returning/have returned to their prospective homelands. Those who are not, are off to better things away from Lexington. Earlier in the week I was comparing my social group from freshmen year to this year and noticed stark contrasts but also some underlying themes. 

a. The Greek life scene was definitely not up my ally. A lot of partying and drama, fake sisterly bonding, and an awkward climb to a crumbly social hierarchy. I think the worst part about it was that it kept me encapsulated in a bubble where I found no individual growth. My days revolved around it with going chapter meetings or mandatory events, trying to eat or hang out with my “sisters” to bond, pretending to care about the dumb shit they got themselves into. It was all just not my scene. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t meet any great people. I met wonderful women in the sorority I was in and I know a handful of strong, intelligent, women in sororities now. But it was not until I was out of that cliquey, over-dramatic environment and involved in other things that I saw some of the better qualities in these women. One, it makes me happy to see the great things of them do outside that realm. Two, it’s disheartening to see how two-faced these same people can be around different people. 

The people I met this year, wow. I can’t even say they were a complete 360 but really they were just on a different playing field. As much as I would like to think it had something to do with the Law of Attractiveness, it was probably more so luck. From work, to clubs, to labs, to classes, to volunteering, to random hangouts, to studying, I met some good people that I have shared some great memories with. (There have also been a handful of bad apples that I wish I didn’t have memories with.) They were all integrated in their own communities but were so welcoming to me. In one short year, I have experienced more warmth from strangers than I have a lifetime. I wish they didn’t have to leave. 

b. Dipping my toes in other things has also kept me a good distance from the pre-med crowd. But even in freshmen year, I didn’t seek their integration. I have met more pre-meds but I have learned to pick and sort who I enjoy being around, who I find annoying and aggravating, and who I totally don’t want to talk to unless I need something from them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Surely enough, this distance has made it easier to relieve some guilt I have about my not-so-stellar grades and to pursue more enjoyable events. But hey, late night study sessions with lots of Starbucks and good company is something I will forever cherish. Also, it has been so much fun meeting science orientated people not pre-professional anything.  

4.) Home is still too far. Yeah, a little over an hour away but with no car and limited time, it is far. Talking and texting my family weekly is still inconvenient for al of us as we’re each getting busier and busier.  In some ways it has been a good thing, especially for my siblings. Since I am a second overbearing mother figure sometimes, they have less to deal with now that I am away and I can see that it has been for the better. They’ve grown and accomplished so much. I’m proud. 

5.) Just because I have free time doesn’t mean I’m free. This year was also a lot about balancing my energy levels in terms of school, work, socializing, and having me time. I tended to overbook myself thinking I was getting equal amounts in everything but not realizing that I needed unequal amounts of some things for me to really thrive. 

6.) The year of not shopping for clothes failed. Sorry not sorry. I cheated the system for so long by having Umair buy be things and I buy him things in return. Now it has just collapsed. Somewhere in March, I bought something. But, hey, I did last longer than many assumed. 

7.) If you can’t be a team player, don’t be on the team. There were some shining moments where I showed some intelligence, organization, and leadership skills throughout the year among different groups. However, if I must commend myself on anything, it’s for being a team player. Understanding where the faults are, doing your part, and upholding yourself to the standards set, it’s not impossible. You’re just really accountable for you. But to be on a team, please be aware of of the others and try to be understanding. You don’t have to break your back for someone but you could try bending a bit. It’ll only help you be more flexible. 

8.) I’m really not that young. They say age is just a number and it really is. But it’s also a number with limitations and responsibilities. No driving until this age.  No drinking until this age. Vote when you’re this age. Apply to things when you’re this age. Sigh. As much as I look forward to getting to a more respectable age, I don’t want to grow up at all. It’s all contradictory to me. 

[edd-tom-andzombehs]

School Starry- Placed is AP English class beggening year in American, barely speaks English, gets a 23, teacher says I barely talk too anyone any use horrible grammar in purpose, I'm using Google Translate, but it bad . Maybe soon learn English more.

I FEEL YA, MAN!!

My school is guilty of putting all of their students in all honours/AP classes. They constantly preach about how we should take classes to our limitations and that its ok to not be in the honours and AP classes if its not for us, but they are always like “Well I know you’ll do fine in all these honours classes!” and “You may be on the brink of failing this class and its almost winter break but I’m sure you can stay in Honours and get a good grade!!”(this is what my math teacher told me lol). They push everyone into these big classes they cant handle and neglect when someone isn’t doing well in one. Basically my school only cares about the test grades and don’t even try to help us out. I was stuck with ALL HONOURS CLASSES IN MY FIRST SEMESTER OF HIGHSCHOOL!!! I was the kid that, in 8th grade, spent their 6th period class trying to beat Chill Penguin on my teacher’s copy of Megaman X and got A’s and B’s on tests i never studied for!! I was, in no way, shape, or form, ready for all the classes they forced me into.

Basically, Don’t let it get to you!! You’re super smart, no matter what grades or teachers say. Keep your head held high and keep on going! If you want my opinion, in most scenarios, its the teachers fault for someone failing the class, because they fail at being an trustworthy, helpful teacher.

Also, pro tip, never use google translate for anything except laughs. Me and my friend tested it by me putting in random things, it translating to Japanese, and me saying that to my friend who can speak Japanese. We did it a lot and one of my favourite times was when my other friend tried to make a song, used google translate to put the lyrics in Japanese, and that ended up translating (courtesy of my Japanese friend) to “One small Laundry, it does big”. There are plenty of other free translator apps and websites that do a much better job than google translate, and they can be much more helpful. Also, there are plenty of free apps you can download on your phone that can help you learn English more! No matter what you do, I’m sure you’ll do awesome. I believe in you, man! Show that teacher who’s boss!!!

Also, you’re teacher sounds like they came out straight out of a crappy romcom where the teacher is really mean and keeping the main protagonist away from their love and so on. If you wanna relieve some stress, just imagine her bursting out in song like in a musical/romcom and I know you’ll feel better.

[almostafantasia]

more than a name

wayhaught hogwarts au | chapter 4/?

Being an Earp at Hogwarts is tough. Being the youngest Earp and constantly living in the shadows of two older sisters is nothing short of a nightmare.

Willa, newly appointed Head Girl and Slytherin’s sweetheart. Wynonna, the notorious troublemaker who spends more time in detention than out of it. And then there’s Waverly, whose life crumbles into tiny pieces when she doesn’t get awarded the Prefect badge that she spent her first four years at Hogwarts striving towards.

Enter Nicole Haught – Hufflepuff, Muggleborn, and general bundle of sunshine – whose unexpected but not entirely unwelcome arrival into Waverly’s life puts Waverly on the path to discover who she is in more ways than one.

Read on AO3.

Waverly dumps Champ on a Wednesday morning.

It happens in the middle of Potions class, one of the few classes that she and Champ share. They’ve been partners all year, sitting next to each other and sharing a cauldron for many of the projects that the professor sets for them to attempt in class. (Waverly’s grade for the year so far is only a mid Exceeds Expectations, while Champ’s is inexplicably high for somebody with so few brain cells.) And Potions, a class where at least half of the work they do in class is practical and allows for conversations, is the perfect class for Waverly to share with her boyfriend because they can talk while they follow the instructions for the newest potion and attempt to brew it correctly.

Not on this particular Wednesday morning.

“Oh, you know your friend?” Champ says suddenly, as Waverly glances over his shoulder to check that he’s chopping up their ingredients to a high enough standard, while she supervises the correct stirring of the cauldron that is giving off rich purple fumes as it bubbles and smoulders as per the instructions. “Haught?”

Waverly’s head snaps up when she hears Nicole’s name. The two of them are pretty much back to normal, though Waverly is still cautious about the amount of time she spends with Nicole and how it might be perceived by others, while Nicole continues to be the most unnecessarily understanding person on the planet.

“What about her?”

“So I heard this rumour that she’s into girls,” says Champ.

Waverly stiffens. Since hearing from Willa that Nicole’s sexuality is the subject of conversations between people who have never even taken the time to speak to her, Waverly has heard a few whisperings around the castle. Thankfully nothing particularly nasty has befouled Waverly’s ears, but it still makes her incredibly uncomfortable to hear other people talking about one of her closest friends as if they deserve a say on the matter.

“Nicole’s sexual preference is nobody’s business except her own,” Waverly tells Champ coldly.

“Hey, chill!” Champ responds defensively, holding both hands, including the one that holds the small knife from chopping up ingredients, aloft in a mock surrender. “I’m just saying, it’s kind of hot, don’t you think? A girl making out with another girl? I’d pay a few galleons to watch that kind of action.”

Champ’s snigger is the final straw for Waverly, the way that he looks at her with a smarmy grin as if expecting Waverly to agree that she finds herself turned on at the concept of Nicole and another girl.

“You know what Champ,” Waverly raises her voice a little bit, forgetting both that they are in middle of a full classroom and that they are supposed to be brewing a potion whose success depends entirely on Waverly stirring it with the correct motions for the next ten minutes. “You are such a pig!”

“What’s your problem?” asks Champ, letting the knife drop to the table and turning to Waverly with his hands planted on his hips.

“You’re disgusting, that’s what!”

“Well at least I’m not saying that it’s not normal like everybody else is doing!” Champ attempts to defend himself. “At least I’m being supportive.”

Waverly could hex him. In fact, if they weren’t in the middle of a Potions class where it would almost certainly get her deducted several house points and possibly a detention, she would hex him.

“Fetishising sexual attraction between two women does not making you supportive, it makes you a dick!”

“It was just a joke!” Champ holds his hands up. The tone of his voice deflecting the blame onto Waverly as if it is her fault for not agreeing with him, he continues, “Why do you have to overreact so much?”

“I’m not overreacting,” Waverly answers indignantly, not quite able to process the level of dragon shit that is leaving Champ’s mouth. “Nicole is my friend, and unlike every other moron in this school, I don’t give a crap who she fancies.”

“Calm down,” Champ says. “Let’s just forget I said anything.”

He reaches out with one hand and rests it on Waverly’s arm in an attempt at a truce, but it’s the last straw for Waverly. She can’t associate herself with somebody who talks about her friends like that, particularly the one friend who has stuck beside her through the recent turmoil of emotions in Waverly’s mind.

“No,” Waverly shakes her head conclusively, the decision already made. “I’m not just going to forget what a prat you are. And you know what, I don’t want to associate myself with somebody who makes such disgusting remarks about a close friend of mine. We’re done, Champ.”

And as if to add emphasis to her point, echoing the celebratory fireworks that are going off in Waverly’s mind at the realisation that she’s finally brought herself to break up with Champ, the cauldron that she’s been neglecting to stir while arguing with Champ promptly explodes in a cloud of purple smoke.

Word travels around Hogwarts fast. So fast that when Waverly sits down for lunch with Wynonna and Dolls barely an hour after the exploding cauldron incident, during which Waverly received the worst telling off she’s ever had at Hogwarts from their Potions professor and then spent forty five minutes in the Hospital Wing being treated for minor burns, Wynonna already knows that Waverly and Champ are no more.

“So I hear you finally gave Chump the dump.”

If it was anybody other than Wynonna, anybody with a little more tact, they would have tried to hide the glee from their face. As it is, Wynonna is more animated than Waverly has seen her in a while and she knows that the grin on her sister’s face has only a little bit to do with the fact that there are donuts on offer for dessert today.

Waverly is feeling surprisingly unaffected by the breakup. Maybe it’s too soon for her to have fully processed it yet, maybe her mind is still reeling from the explosion of their cauldron. Or maybe she just genuinely isn’t bothered that she’s no longer calling Champ her boyfriend. Whatever the reason for her indifference, it means that Wynonna’s apparent joy at her little sister’s return to the single life doesn’t bother her either.

“It was an explosive breakup,” Waverly acknowledges. “Literally. Our cauldron blew up.”

Wynonna grins and Waverly doesn’t think she’s ever seen her sister look so proud of her.

“Nice,” says Wynonna. She ponders thoughtfully and then continues, “I’m going to use that one in the future - when there’s a guy I can’t get rid of, blow something up in his face.” Pausing only momentarily, Wynonna grins and raises her eyebrows suggestively as she concludes drily, “Makes a change from things exploding in my face.”

Waverly wrinkles her face up in disgust and ignores the last past of Wynonna’s comment as she says with a pout, “It’s not funny. We failed the class and we have to go to the Potions classroom on Friday after classes finish to attempt the potion again.”

Wynonna’s jaw drops open and her cutlery clatters to her plate. Even Dolls, who always seems so serious to Waverly, raises his eyebrows in surprise.

“Waverly Earp,” asks Wynonna, leaning across the table with genuine intrigue on her face, “have you got a detention?”

“It’s not detention. It’s a makeup lesson.”

“Sounds like detention to me,” Dolls comments unhelpfully.

Wynonna holds out a hand for a high five, which Dolls ignores and she lets it fall back down to her lap dejectedly. 

“Welcome to the club sis,” she says to Waverly.

Wynonna picks up one of the two donuts on her plate (seriously, only Wynonna would put mashed potatoes and donuts on the same plate and call it a nutritious meal) and breaks it in half, offering one half out to Waverly as if it is a prize for finally joining the “detention club". Waverly accepts the gift and puts it aside for later. Though the gesture of Wynonna sharing with Waverly should probably fall a little empty considering that the stacks of donuts in the middle of the table keeping magically refilling themselves, the fact that Wynonna Earp, self-professed Donut Queen, is offering to split her share of infinite donuts is actually quite touching and somewhat softens the blow from being asked to redo today’s Potions class outside of normal school hours.

With her mouth stuffed full of the other half of the donut that she gave to Waverly, Wynonna’s eyes widen and she beckons over a newcomer, who Waverly is happy to see is Nicole. As Nicole drops onto the bench opposite Dolls and greets them all, Wynonna swallows her food and resumes her gleeful celebration of Waverly’s latest mishap.

“Haught! Guess who got a detention?”

“You?” guesses Nicole, as she helps herself to food and piles her plate up with a much healthier lunch than the one Wynonna has chosen.

“Wrong!” grins Wynonna, and Waverly knows that Wynonna was expecting Nicole to make that guess because revealing the truth is all part of Wynonna’s fun. Considering that this is the first detention (makeup class, Waverly’s brain is quick to correct) that Waverly has received at Hogwarts and it is unlikely, considering her track record, that she will be receiving another one any time soon, Waverly is happy to let Wynonna have this one. “Waverly has detention.”

“It’s not a detention, it’s a makeup lesson,” Waverly rolls her eyes, turning to face Nicole as she gives a proper explanation, knowing that Wynonna’s version of events will be a dramatic overexaggeration of the real thing. “I failed the class when I accidentally caused a cauldron to explode while breaking up with Champ.”

Nicole pauses, a fork laden with food hovering between her plate and her mouth as she turns to look at Waverly with concern in her eyes as she asks, “You broke up with Champ? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” shrugs Waverly. It’s a little bit of a lie - though she knows that she’s made the right decision and that the overall feeling she’s had since breaking up with Champ has ultimately been relief, he was still a big part of her life and it does hurt a little bit that she’s had to let him go. “Good riddance.”

“Atta girl!” Wynonna says proudly, offering out her hand for a first bump, which Waverly reluctantly meets with her own.

Beside her, Nicole still looks a little worried, like she doesn’t quite believe that Waverly is this okay barely an hour after breaking up with somebody. Waverly tries to communicate something with her eyes, something that reassures Nicole that there’s no immediate need for concern but that they can talk about it later, when Wynonna isn’t present. Whether Waverly’s attempts at telepathy are successful or not, Nicole chooses to stay silent on the matter and Waverly is grateful for that.

Waverly stays quiet for the rest of the lunch break, letting the three sixth years carry conversations about something that happened in their shared Transfiguration class that morning and gossip surrounding a few of the girls in their year. Waverly is only half paying attention, nodding along and making vague noises of agreement whenever one of them looks at her but her mind is far away.

She thinks of Champ and whether she’s made the right decision, and of Nicole and the nasty things that some of the students in this school might be saying about somebody with such a kind heart, but mostly she thinks of Willa and what her reaction is going to be when she finds out that Waverly and Champ are no longer together and whether this new development in Waverly’s life is going to trigger the rumours about her own sexuality in the way that Willa promised it would.

Waverly is so caught up in her own thoughts that she doesn’t realise the lunch break is almost over and that she has a lesson to get to until the other three are getting to their feet ready to leave the Great Hall.

“Can I walk you to class?” Nicole asks Waverly as they stand up.

“See?” says Wynonna, shooting Waverly a sly grin. “Haught is the kind of person you should be dating! Chivalrous, intelligent…” Wynonna pauses and takes a moment to check out Nicole’s body with about as much subtlety as a Hungarian Horntail in a greenhouse, before she concludes with a grin, “… and a cracking arse.”

Waverly blushes at the suggestion, though she knows it is only intended as a joke. She can’t help but wonder if Wynonna has caught wind of the rumours that Willa claims will soon be making their way around Hogwarts if Waverly keeps up such a close friendship with Nicole. She can only assume that she hasn’t, though Waverly does get a brief moment of amusement as she imagines what Willa’s reaction would be if Wynonna were to repeat such a comment in front of their oldest sister.

Nicole, clearly unfazed by Wynonna’s sense of humour after five years of sharing classes and the much more recent development of shared prefect responsibilities, reacts in the best way possible - by deflecting the attention away from the idea of something going on between her and Waverly and back onto Wynonna.

“Whoa!” she exclaims, holding her hands up in mock protest. “Keep it in your pants, Wynonna! I just don’t see you like that.”

Clutching a single hand to her chest, right above where her heart is, Wynonna replies, “You wound me, Nicole.”

Waverly smiles softly, grateful that she’s manages to surround herself with a good group of people, and follows them out of the Great Hall and onto the Grand Staircase to go to their respective classes.

“So are you sure you’re okay?” Nicole finally asks, as they part ways from Wynonna and Dolls on the second floor landing. “You broke up with somebody this morning.”

“And it honestly feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” Waverly shrugs indifferently. It is the truth - Waverly feels much lighter now that she no longer carries the burden of her relationship with Champ around with her, though she can’t deny that she’s a little bit nervous about having to face him Defence Against the Dark Arts in just a few minutes. “Champ and I are not right for each other. I was delusional to think that it could ever work.”

“So what was the final trigger?” asks Nicole.

“He…” Waverly hesitates before she answers because while the truth is that this is a decision that has been building up for weeks over a number of things, she doesn’t know whether she should burden Nicole with the knowledge that it was an argument that stemmed from a conversation about her sexuality that finally sealed the deal for Waverly. She eventually settles for a diminished version of the truth. “He was being a prick.”

“Business as usual then?” jokes Nicole, eliciting a nervous little laugh from Waverly.

“He actually said some pretty demeaning stuff about you,” Waverly finally confesses the truth, deciding that after all the support Nicole has offered her, Nicole deserves to know that Waverly also has her back in any situation. “I could handle the way he treated me - he can treat me as nothing more than a prize on his arm, or a means of bragging to his mates that he finally got to second base - but the moment he started being nasty about somebody I care about…”

As expected, Nicole’s expression turns remorseful and she launches into an apology.

“Waverly, I’m sorry…”

“Don’t apologise,” Waverly insists with a reassuring smile. “This isn’t on you. It was going to happen sooner or later.”

Nicole nods and swallows down whatever she is feeling right now, though Waverly knows Nicole well enough to know that she will continue to feel at least partially guilty until she is one hundred percent certain that Waverly is okay following the split from Champ.

“What kind of things…?” Nicole begins to ask tentatively, before Waverly cuts her off with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’ve probably heard worse,” Nicole points out.

“And there’s no need for you to hear this kind of stuff again,” answers Waverly conclusively, and though Waverly can tell that Nicole is still a little bit curious about what Champ might have said to provoke such a response from her, Nicole shoots Waverly a grateful little smile and Waverly knows that sparing Nicole the grim details is the right thing to do. She elaborates vaguely, “He was being a homophobic bell-end and I dumped him for it, that’s all that matters.”

Nicole pulls Waverly aside just before they reach the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Nicole asks, her brown eyes full of concern as they flit between each of Waverly’s own eyes, searching for any sign that Waverly might not be as fine as she keeps insisting that she is. “Just because Champ is a turd, it doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to be upset that it didn’t work out.”

Waverly is prepared to put on a brave face - she’s been doing that pretty much her whole life, hiding how she really feels about things to spare other people the burden - but then she spots Champ and two of his rowdy friends approaching the classroom from the other end of the hallway, laughing and joking as if he didn’t also go through a breakup this morning. It’s not that she finds herself missing Champ, more that she misses the security of being in a relationship and though she knows that Champ is not her soulmate, if such a thing even exists, she doesn’t know if she’s ever going to find that kind of security in another person again.

Though she manages to keep her emotions in tact - barely - she can’t help but confess her fears to Nicole.

“What if nobody else wants to date me?” she voices the pitiful thoughts aloud, the lump in her throat hardening with each second that passes. “What if Champ is the only one and I threw that away because of a few little comments? What if now that I’m single I’m just the weird Earp girl again?”

Nicole doesn’t even hesitate to wrap her arms around Waverly, pulling her into a tight embrace. Two weeks ago, Waverly would have been self-conscious about the gesture, worried that hugging in such a public place could spark the very rumours she’s so desperate to avoid, but right now she doesn’t even care. Nicole’s arms around her are a comfort, the smell of a berry-scented body wash masking an underlying scent that is slightly musky and ever so Nicole and makes Waverly just feel so overwhelmingly at home. 

And besides, why would Waverly be ashamed at being branded a lesbian when the only lesbian she knows has without a doubt the kindest soul out of any person she’s ever met?

“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Nicole assures Waverly, cupping the back of Waverly’s head with one of her hands and running her fingers through the hair there in a manner that feels oddly intimate, but in the most brilliantly soothing way. “You are the most wonderful person I’ve ever met, beautiful on the inside and the outside, and anybody who can’t see that isn’t worth your time anyway. The question isn’t whether anybody will want to date you, but whether anybody is worthy of dating you. Anybody would be lucky to call you their girlfriend.”

Waverly pulls back from their embrace to look Nicole in the eye, only to find that Nicole’s face is filled with such sincerity that Waverly doesn’t doubt for a second that Nicole’s words were anything but the absolute truth. The tears in Waverly’s eyes are no longer a result of her own self-doubt and crippling fear of loneliness, but a direct response to the realisation that Waverly has somebody as unfalteringly wholesome as Nicole to pick her up when she’s feeling low.

“How do you always know the right thing to say?” Waverly sniffles

Nicole deepens her voice as she pronounces, almost sage-like, “With age comes great wisdom.”

“Okay, grandma,” Waverly giggles through her glistening eyes and forces herself into composure once more.

“I’m serious though,” Nicole tells her earnestly. “There’s probably a queue of people who are lining up to date you.”

And because it’s Nicole saying it, who Waverly probably trusts more than she trusts anybody else, herself included, she just about believes it.

Nicole is right on two counts.

Firstly, that there are people who are actually interested Waverly. In the forty-eight hours after her breakup with Champ, Waverly receives no fewer than three propositions from the boys of Hogwarts.

Unfortunately for Waverly, Nicole’s other correct statement is that none of these boys are worthy of her. Even Waverly, who is feeling more than a little bit sorry for herself and her newly single status, can see that.

The first one comes from a Gryffindor boy in the year below Waverly, who approaches her and asks her if she wants to hang out with her after classes finish one afternoon next week. It’s actually rather a sweet offer - the boy isn’t one that Waverly knows at all, but he’s got a cute smile and a face that will surely be handsome when he grows out of his gawky teenage phase - and despite it being a mere six and a half hours since she broke up with Champ, she’s actually tempted to say yes.

That is, until she notices his friends, a group of five rather loutish fourth years sitting two tables away, one of whom chooses that exact moment to disturb the silence of the library by hissing “Get in there, Anthony!” while the others jeer and make rude gestures with their hands. The boy - Anthony - sniggers along with them and slinks off back to his friends without even waiting for Waverly’s answer. 

She doesn’t know what hurts more - the fact that she’s now the object of what was clearly a dare, or the fact that she nearly fell for it.

The second one is a much more obvious no. In fact, Waverly has already compiled a list of reasons why she’s going to say no to him before he even asks. (One, he’s a notorious fuckboy; two, he plays Quidditch for Gryffindor so Waverly’s opinion of him is already negatively skewed; three, she’s almost certain that there were rumours about him and Wynonna last year and while she’s completely supportive of her sister’s casual approach to sex, the idea that Wynonna has already been there first puts her off entirely; and four, he greets her with her surname instead of calling her Waverly.)

“Earp! Hey, Earp!”

Waverly sighs as she turns around and sees who is approaching her. She doesn’t really know what it is that other girls see in guys like this. Sure, she supposes that he’s good-looking enough, with his school uniform worn sloppily enough to give off some bad-boy vibes and curly dark hair ruffled in an I woke up like this kind of way. But his reputation for screwing any girl who even glances his way and then casting her aside for a newer model at the first available opportunity precedes him and Waverly’s interest in being just another notch in his bedpost is so minimal that it probably goes into minus figures.

“So I hear you broke up with Hardy,” he says, reaching up to run a hand through his curly hair in a move that is probably supposed to be disarmingly cute.

Waverly, who isn’t stupid enough to fall for his cheap tricks, merely nods in response.

“About time,” he smirks. “You can do way better than him. You deserve somebody who can show you a thing or two.”

Waverly agrees with him that she can do better than Champ, but she isn’t really sure that this guy is much better. It’s possibly not a step backwards, maybe just a step sideways from Champ (a step slightly further into fuckboy territory) but Waverly is certain that whatever “thing or two” this sleazebag wants to show her is nothing that she actually wants to see.

“How about you and I hang out sometime?” he continues, and Waverly has to admire his persistence in the face of her complete disinterest. “Maybe tomorrow? We could go up to the Astronomy Tower and look at the stars. I’ve heard that it’s pretty romantic up there.”

And Waverly has heard that it is infamously Hogwarts’ number one hookup spot, and even if she was prepared to sacrifice her dignity by accepting what this guy is offering her, she doesn’t particularly like the idea of being caught by a prefect patrol (a patrol that could include either one of her sisters, Nicole, or even Chrissy and Jeremy from her own house) with her underwear around her ankles and a half naked Quidditch player between her legs.

“I think I’ll pass,” Waverly says, and she makes to step around him and continue walking.

“Come on, Earp,” he says, stepping into Waverly’s path once more to block her from leaving. “Hardy is just a boy. What you need is a proper man to treat you right and show you how everything is done.”

From the time of his voice and the lewd smile on his face, Waverly can tell that the “everything” he is talking about probably requires minimal clothing and the missionary position.

“What I actually need is for you to leave me alone,” Waverly says, folding her arms across her chest and brushing past him with her head down so that she doesn’t have to look him in the eye.

“Whatever!” he calls after her. “Your loss. You know where to find me when you change your mind!”

Waverly is not certain about many things in her future right now, but one thing she is absolutely positive about is that her mind will remain firmly unchanged on this particular matter.

The third proposition leaves Waverly feeling the most uncomfortable, which is saying a lot, considering how she felt after the first two.

It comes from Tucker Gardner, a boy in Waverly’s year with a reputation for being a bit of a loner. Normally this wouldn’t be something to put Waverly off - she hardly has the most expansive social circle herself - but there’s a reason why Tucker has no friends; namely, he’s a bit of a creep.

“Waverly,” he says, tilting his head to the side. “I would say that I’m sorry to hear about you and Champ, but I’m not.”

“What do you want, Tucker?” Waverly sighs.

“You and I have always had a special connection,” he continues, and Waverly rolls her eyes. She and Tucker have only spoken a few sentences to each other since their first year, and they certainly don’t have any kind of connection, not in her eyes anyway. “Maybe now you’re no longer with Champ we can explore that connection together. We’re meant to be together, you know.”

After the couple of days that she’s had, Waverly loses it.

“We are not meant to be together!” she yells at him, causing him to flinch. “The only thing that you and every other guy at Hogwarts cares about is getting your dick wet and I’m not that kind of girl. I broke up with Champ less than two days ago and you know what? I’m happy being single! I don’t need a guy in my life, least of all a creep like you.”

“Come on, Waverly,” says Tucker, reaching out with one of his hands to touch Waverly’s arm. “You don’t mean that.”

Flinching away from his touch, Waverly takes a couple of steps back away from Tucker and with tears swelling in her eyes, responds, “Yes I do. Leave me the hell alone, Tucker.”

And with that, Waverly turns on her heels and flees, wiping the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her school robes as she goes.

“Men are pigs,” Waverly tells Jeremy on Friday afternoon in Transfiguration, as she recounts the tale of her endless woe at the hands of Hogwarts’ male population since her breakup with Champ two days earlier. Realising who she’s talking to, she adds, “No offence.”

“None taken,” Jeremy shrugs indifferently. “Men are pigs. Especially the straight ones.” Adding as an afterthought, Jeremy concludes glumly, “Gay men are just confusing.”

Waverly flourishes her wand, watching as the gerbil sitting on her desk turns into a beautiful white china teapot decorated with an ornate pattern of delicate pink and red flowers. It’s no coincidence that she chooses that exact moment to perform the spell perfectly - the professor walks past just as she does so and nods approvingly at her stellar effort, and when Jeremy accomplishes the spell to the same standard moments later, Waverly knows that the pair will be able to get away with a little more chatter than their less successful classmates for the rest of the lesson.

“I’m sorry,” Waverly says to Jeremy, when the professor’s undivided attention is focused on demonstrating the correct wand movements to the pair of Hufflepuff girls struggling to master the spell at the next table along. “Here I am complaining about my miserable love life and I haven’t thought to ask about yours.”

“Oh, it’s infinitely more tragic than yours,” Jeremy teases with a mocking eye roll. “I can’t believe you’re complaining that half the Gryffindor Quidditch team want to sleep with you.”

“Have you met the Gryffindor Quidditch team?” Waverly asks, arching an eyebrow in Jeremy’s direction.

“Fair point,” acknowledges Jeremy. “But if you think you’ve got it bad, remember that the gay dating pool at Hogwarts is basically non-existent.”

Waverly’s mind wanders inexplicably to Nicole, who presumably faces exactly the same problems as Jeremy does. Waverly immediately feels guilty and vows to be a little more thoughtful when making complaints about her love life. Poor Nicole has patiently listened to Waverly moan about Champ for weeks, and now to her moan about single life after Champ, when she has probably been resenting Waverly the whole time for even having potential romantic interests to complain about at all.

Waverly imagines Nicole getting herself a girlfriend - imagines what it would be like to watch Nicole holding hands and kissing somebody, to see her spending all her free time with somebody else, to see her smiling and laughing because of somebody else. Of course, Waverly wants Nicole to be happy and if getting a girlfriend is going to do that then she’ll be happy too, but she can’t help the lurch of jealousy that twists at her insides at the thought of Nicole having somebody other than Waverly as her number one person.

It’s stupid, she knows that, and incredibly selfish, but Nicole has become an important part of her life this school year and Waverly doesn’t really know how she would cope if that changed.

“Waverly?”

Jeremy’s voice brings her out of her own thoughts.

“Sorry,” she mumbled apologetically.

“You spaced out completely there,” he teases her.

Waverly exhales, her eyes closed as she tries to bring herself back to the present, then opens them and greets Jeremy with a smile.

“Sorry,” Waverly repeats. “Just got a lot on my mind. But go on, tell me about you. Any guys in your life right now?”

Waverly’s detention that evening is about as successful as a remedial Potions class with an ex-boyfriend can be. The professor is either feeling particularly nice or the news that Waverly and Champ are no longer together has reached the staff room and he doesn’t want to deal with another explosion, because he gives them separate cauldrons on opposite sides of the classroom and leaves them to work individually. And the result is one that Waverly is happy with; her potion is damn near perfect when she turns in a sample while Champ’s is the wrong colour, the wrong consistency, and is giving off a putrid smell that is making all their eyes water.

Packing her things away as quickly as possible, Waverly swings her schoolbag over her shoulder and hurries for the door, hoping to escape before Champ can catch up to her to save having to face the walk up to the Great Hall from the dungeons in an awkward stalemate with her ex.

Unfortunately for her, Champ races after her, calling out her name as he does.

"Waverly!”

She ignores him, but Waverly can hear heavy footsteps behind her as Champ runs to catch up with her, quickly falling into step beside her.

“I miss you.” he pleads.

Waverly can do nothing but roll her eyes and tut under her breath. After the few days that she’s had, Waverly would be quite happy to never see another boy again, and of those boys Champ is definitely at the top of the list of people she’d rather avoid.

Ignoring Champ doesn’t work, not when he’s walking beside her step for step, and when he gets no response, Champ clasps his fingers around Waverly’s wrist and drags her to a halt as he lets out an indignant, “Hey!”

“What?” demands Waverly, snatches her arm out of Champ’s hold. “Are you waiting for me to say that I miss you too?”

Champ looks at Waverly meekly and then nods, “Well, yeah.”

“You’re going to be waiting a long time,” Waverly tells him, continuing to make her way up the stairs from the dimly-lit dungeons to the main part of the castle for dinner. “I don’t miss you Champ. It’s only been a couple of days but I feel so much better now that we’re no longer together.”

“You don’t mean that,” Champ says, his voice hardly more than a desperate whine. “We were good for each other.”

“Maybe I was good for you, but you weren’t good for me,” Waverly tells him, not caring if her honesty is a little too brutal. “You were constantly dragging me down, you ignored me until it suited you to have a girlfriend, and you belittled me until I was nothing more than a piece of meat hanging off your arm. I’m done with you, Champ. And it feels really good.”

They reach the Entrance Hall right as Waverly concludes and she can’t help but feel proud of herself for that little speech. It’s been a long few days - Waverly’s emotions are running high and she wants nothing more than to spend her Friday night curled up in a soft armchair in front of the crackling fire in Ravenclaw Tower with a good book - but she’s glad that she can still at least string together a strong argument.

It has the desired effect too. Champ stares at her, dumbfounded, and Waverly can almost hear the cogs turning in his brain as he tries to come up with something in response.

“Hey, douche wagon!”

Waverly has never been so happy to hear Wynonna’s voice, and the sight of her sister coming down the stairs into the Entrance Hall, her school shirt untucked and rolled up to her elbows and her red and gold tie mysteriously absent, is a welcome one.

Squaring off in front of Champ, her fingers curling threateningly around the wand in her hand as her arm hangs loosely at her side, Wynonna raises her chin and demands, “Are you harassing my sister?”

Champ cowers away from Wynonna and answers, “I’m just speaking to my girlfr-”

“She isn’t your anything, fuckwit,” snarls Wynonna, giving Champ a gentle push on his shoulder to assert her authority, “least of all your girlfriend.”

“Piss off,” retorts Champ, taking an aggressive step forward and reaching for the wand in his own pocket. “This is none of your business.”

Waverly is frozen where she is, watching the exchange between her sister and her ex-boyfriend. She doesn’t know whether to step between them to stop something from happening that lands one or both of them in the Hospital Wing, or to take a step back as they inevitably go at each other to save herself from injury.

“Waverly is my sister,” Wynonna says defiantly through clenched teeth, her words sending a rare surge of Earp family pride through Waverly. “That makes her my business. Now why don’t you go back to the pond you came crawling out of.”

With a flick of Wynonna’s wand, there’s a flash of light and Champ is no longer standing beside them. For a moment Waverly panics, because it isn’t completely beyond the realm of possibility that Wynonna knows a highly illegal spell that has irreversibly banished Champ to somewhere that he will never be found. But then she hears some muttering from the other people in the busy Entrance Hall who gathered around when they realised they might be about to witness a fight. Waverly follows the direction of a couple of index fingers and realises what they are pointing at - a slimy grey toad flailing around helplessly where Champ stood just a moment ago.

Waverly’s mouth falls open in surprise. Human transfiguration is an advanced skill and Wynonna, who Waverly was pretty certain rarely pays attention in any of her classes, has just performed it to perfection as easily as if it were a first year spell. Not only that, but the sight of Champ as a toad, helplessly squirming around on the floor as those around them laugh and point, is a visual that Waverly is probably going to treasure for a long time to come.

“Come on,” mumbles Wynonna, shoving her wand back into the pocket of her uniform trousers and looping her arm through Waverly’s to steer her towards the Great Hall as if she hasn’t just performed complex magic in front of an entertained audience. 

“You’re going to get in so much trouble when one of the professors find him and realise that it was you,” Waverly reminds Wynonna, despite still being impressed by Wynonna’s unexpected skills.

“Don’t care,” shrugs Wynonna, ignoring the whisperings around them as she guides Waverly over towards the end of one of the four long tables for dinner. “It was worth it.” As they take their seats, Wynonna looks across in concern at Waverly and asks, “Are you okay?”

Waverly takes a deep breath and counts to five, then smiles across at her sister as she answers truthfully, “I am now.“

As winter envelops the castle, bringing flurried snowfalls and icy winds to the Scottish highlands around Hogwarts, Nicole falls in love with the school for what is probably the billionth time. She counts herself incredibly lucky that she gets to spend nine months of the year living and learning in a goddamn castle, instead of attending the drab Muggle comprehensive school that her parents planned to send her to until she received that fateful letter that would change the course of her life forever.

The castle is beautiful in winter, full of crackling log fires and towering Christmas trees and a beautiful layer of morning frost on the grass in the courtyards and all across the surrounding hills. Nicole loves having an excuse to bundle herself up in an extra fluffy jumper, her school scarf and gloves, and her thickest black cloak, just to be able to walk around the school grounds and fully appreciate the festive atmosphere that surrounds the school.

And this year, to improve things even further, she has Waverly to keep her company on such outings.

If Nicole hadn’t already been one hundred percent convinced that Waverly Earp is the cutest person on the entire planet, the sight of Waverly bundled up in a cloak that is at least a size too big for her and the fluffiest pair of turquoise earmuffs that Nicole has ever seen solidifies that knowledge.

They leave through the castle front door, taking the path that leads towards the Great Lake so that they can walk along its icy banks. The grounds are beautiful, shrouded in a thin layer of snow that glimmers and crunches underfoot. The lake itself has frozen over almost entirely and where the students would splash around in the shallows in the hot summer months, there is just a treacherous sheet of translucent white.

It is only when they are approaching the greenhouses that Nicole realises that Waverly is being quieter than usual.

"Hey, what’s up?” she asks, reaching out with a gloved hand and curling her fingers into the crook of Waverly’s elbow through the thick material of her cloak.

“Nothing.”

Waverly’s response is far too quick to be the truth.

“You can talk to me, you know,” Nicole reminds her, not wanting to push but also knowing that Waverly has very few other people that she feels comfortable opening up to and just a few days after her break up with Champ, she probably has a lot going on in her head.

“Yeah but…” Waverly seems nervous and for a moment, it seems as though she’s going to keep it all bottled up and try to pretend that there’s not something bothering her. Letting out a long sigh, Waverly finally admits, “It’s been brought to my attention that while I’ve been complaining about all the silly little things going on in my life, I haven’t stopped to think of you.” Waverly glances up at Nicole with a guilty expression in her eyes, before adding, “And, you know, how there are really limited options of girls at Hogwarts for you to date or complain about.”

Nicole could laugh. All she wants is for Waverly to be happy and right now, when Waverly is having so much shit flung her way from every direction, if what she needs to be happy is a willing pair of ears to listen and be understanding then Nicole is happy to be that person. It never once occurred to her that there should be any reciprocation, that Waverly needs to earn the right to have her problems attended to by doing the same for Nicole. And jealousy has definitely never been an issue. It hasn’t crossed Nicole’s mind that the reason she has nothing to complain to Waverly about is because there are a lack of dating options.

“Who have you been talking to?” Nicole asks, amused by Waverly’s confession and wondering how such an idea has been planted in her mind.

“Jeremy.”

“Oh, I like that kid,” Nicole says, smiling at the memory of her few short interactions with the likeable, if slightly dorky, Ravenclaw boy. “I’ve shared Prefect duty with him a couple of times.”

Nicole takes a moment to consider what Waverly has said about being worried about Nicole getting jealous, and almost laughs.

Nicole has been aware of her attraction to girls for two years now and has known that she’ll probably have to wait a while, possibly until she leaves Hogwarts, before she can find a serious relationship for almost as long. Though being single sucks, particularly when all her friends are getting into relationship and enjoying dates and first kisses and even starting to have sex, and Nicole wants to be able to join in with all that excitement, she’s optimistic enough to know that the right girl is out there and that a little patience will make it all so much more magical when it does finally happen.

(She ignores the way that her heart clenches in her chest as her brain reminds her that the only girl she’s ever felt attraction towards beyond a little crush is probably straight, definitely emotionally unavailable, and happens to be walking beside her right now.)

“But you don’t have to worry, it’s not a bother at all,” Nicole says, her words intended to reassure Waverly that she has every right to rant about the wrongs in her own life without worrying about whether she’s be selfish or not. (She isn’t. Nicole could listen to Waverly talk for hours about anything and remain enraptured throughout.) “I’m happy being single, I’m happy to wait for the right girl to come along. And in the meantime, feel free to rant about how stupid the male population of Hogwarts is because I agree entirely.”

Waverly laughs and makes a little noise of agreement, and Nicole is relieved to notice that some of the anxious tension that was on Waverly’s face before has dissipated after Nicole’s reassurances.

“So go on,” Nicole prompts her. “What’s bothering you?”

Letting out a sigh, Waverly says, “I’m sick of people only talking about me as an Earp. Or they talk about me in relation to my sisters.” Waverly changes her voice to mimic the other students in the school and says, “‘Wynonna’s slept with half the school, maybe her recently single little sister is just as easy.’ Or ‘Willa Earp’s little sister must be gay because she’s spending too much time hanging out with a lesbian.’”

Waverly glances up at Nicole as she says this last bit, eyebrows raised as she waits for a reaction.

Nicole just laughs softly and then says, “I’m honestly flattered that people think I could be dating you.”

“Yeah, ditto,” agrees Waverly. She leans into Nicole’s side and then adds, “You’re quite a catch.”

“Yeah,” snorts Nicole, rolling her eyes playfully, “tell the ladies of Hogwarts that.”

Now past the greenhouses, they take a left turn that follows the path up a set of uneven stone stairs and towards a tall archway that leads back into the castle through one of the courtyards. But when they reach the top of the stairs, Nicole realises that the way back into the school has been blocked by somebody stepping out from behind the stone pillar of the arch.

A shiver trickles down Nicole’s spine when she realises who it is, worse than any induced by the cold winds during her leisurely walk with Waverly.

Bobo Del Ray. Head Boy, seventh year Slytherin, and perhaps worst of all considering Waverly’s current predicament, Willa Earp’s boyfriend.

His arms folded across his chest and his chin held up high, Bobo is an intimidating figure blocking their way forward, and Nicole has no doubt in her mind that his presence here, where it is just Nicole and Waverly with nobody else in sight, is no coincidence.

“Well,” he sneers, eyes flickering between the two girls. “What have we got here? Hogwarts’ very own pride parade.”

Nicole has dealt with Bobo a lot during her time as a Prefect, particularly in the last few months where his position as Head Boy has put him in a position of power over duty rotas and prefect meetings, and she knows from experience what a power-hungry, downright nasty piece of work he can be.

“What do you want, Bobo?” she asks with a despondent sigh.

Nicole is determined to not let any fear show on her face, even when Bobo takes a step closer in an attempt to frighten them, and she maintains eye contact with him until he is the one to break it to look at Waverly instead.

“I think you both know what I want,” he answers cryptically. Nodding at Waverly, he elaborates, “Willa has already spoken to you.” Turning back to Nicole, he looks at her with an expression of revulsion, as if Nicole is something nasty he has found on the bottom of his shoe, before he continues, “And you, you’ll stay away from Waverly if you know what’s good for you.“

Waverly’s voice pipes up from beside Nicole, slightly shaky but defiant as she asks, "Are you threatening us?”

Bobo tips his head back and actually has the audacity to laugh in their faces.

“Why, of course not!” he tells them, though the malicious grin on his face suggests otherwise. “I’m the Head Boy.” His grin falls off his face as quickly as it arrived and he stares them both down with cold eyes, before he growls, “And you’d do well to remember that too.”

Bobo leaves as suddenly as he arrived, his cloak sweeping around his calves as he turns and slinks off into the courtyard once more.

“Merlin,” Waverly curses from beside Nicole, when Bobo is out of earshot. “What a dick.”

Nicole hums in agreement, wrapping an arm around Waverly and pulling her in for a reassuring hug, before chuckling softly into the other girl’s hair as she muses aloud, “Who would have thought that out of the three Earp sisters, Wynonna is the one with the best taste in men?”

[tumblunni]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa tfw u have another game idea AGAIN i think my brain hollowed itself out for more idea space at the expense of everything else like ability to actually create my ideas or ability to remember to eat :P

this kinda isnt a NEW idea, its just something floating around in my brain that ive now got more of a concrete idea for, i guess? playing Oxygen Not Included reminded me of it and made me feel maybe people would actually be interested in it, yknow? and its probably not something i could ACTUALLY make, cos it’d require like.. a lot of my own programming. not really easy to just make in a helpful gamemaker enginey thing like rpgmaker. tho it is an rpg... kinda...?? ehhhh im not feeling very good today, sorry my writing is... bad

ANYWAY WHAT WAS I SAYING

Well the idea I has was for kind of a roguelike tower climbing rpg, like Azure Dreams or Persona 3 The premise would be that there’s a mysterious underground civilization, trapped for generations with no memory of the surface world. Between them and sunlight is this potentially-infinate magical labyrinth that nobody has managed to make it through. (At least as far as anyone knows. Everyone wants to believe that friends who dissappeared in the labyrinth actually made it to the other side, rather than.. well.. the other side.) So the game would be about tackling this labyrinth in multiple short sessions. My favourite genre: roguelikes that actually have some form of progression in them! Even though you’re dying a lot, you retain a small amount of what you gathered each time in the form of townbuilding progressyness and ~friendship routes~ and ~ETCETERA~!

But then after playing Oxygen Not Included I kinda have a burning desire to see a game that has the good bits of that and not the... Frustration. To say its a roguelike without progression is understating it, gahhhhhhhhhh! Roguelike sim game of 8 hour game sessions that get destroyed cos of one stupid mistake and you have to be all perfect and lucky and YOURE ALWAYS STARVING and gahhhhhhhhh THIS IS MEANT TO BE MY GAME IDEA NOT VENTING ABOUT THAT GAME Anyway I was thinking how it’d be really cool if a game like that actually DID have a sense of progression. And an actual end goal. Like.. if you were actually digging towards the surface! With periodic savepoints and characters that dont die so easily and have more personality to them and you get all attatched! I already got all attatched to my dumb sim characters and then just got really upset how they kept dying and the game seemed to not give a shit :P

But yeah its not like I can just completely copy that game, lol. Even if I wanted to, I dunno how to program a simulation type engine thing from scratch! So i was thinking like.. a regular roguelike randomized dungeon generator actually IS possible in Rpgmaker, so I dunno.. I could find a way to make that work with some kind of ‘you are actually creating the dungeon’ type thing. i really like the idea of being able to dig your own path through the thing and have it permenantly etched there forever. I was thinking it could be an awesome idea if in the postgame you could come back to the now-empty labyrinth after everyone’s escaped to the surface, and be able to walk through it and have a big ol nostalgia trip. One that’d be unique to every player! And like.. maybe even be able to see changes, like it being reclaimed by nature and flowers? And you could upload a dungeon seed for your own personal dungeon, so that other players could play it, and that could be the postgame replay value~!

game name ideas i guess Catacomb Crawl Boundless Down

and I was thinking the protagonists could be two kids and be a grumpy older sibling who’s a jerk to their well-meaning-but-immature lil sib, but loves them deep down, and has to learn a lesson about becoming a more responsible sib, and etc like.. yeah.. basically inspired by over the garden wall i didnt really like that show, and i felt bad about it cos everyone was telling me it was a masterpiece. alas! :P aaanyhoo they’re not very developed yet, except older sib being a bit of a comical greedy coward type of person and lil sib actually being quite wise but always underestimated. Like, they have more common sense than their big sib even though they are a lil naive sometimes cos theyre so optimistic. Both sibs get each other into trouble pretty often, but they balance out perfectly to save each other each time! And lil sib is kind of a pushover who just obeys big sib unquestionably and can never stick up for themself when big sib is being all ‘ugh ur so immature im totally better'. They’re just like... the sort of person who’s so scared of their friends leaving them that they let anyone hurt them as much as they want as long as they stay. Very relateable to Bunni! Also they sorta try and pretend to be the dumb sidekick and class clown. Cos again theyre worried if they disagree or try and stand out too much then their sibling will hate them. Quite often their ‘dumb mistakes’ are actually the older sib’s fault, and they’re stuck like ‘AAAA I CANT TELL THEM TO STOP COS ITD BE OUT OF CHARACTER. I NEED TO BE THE CUTE BABY.’ And its all super complicated cos older sib acts like they resent them for never growing up too, its like.. cant ever win. This whole thing has kinda turned them into an anxious mess deep down. part of big sib’s whole redemption arc would involve them having to realise that their actions arent harmless, and treating such a young child this way actually has a permenant effect. And like... big sib doesnt know how to take care of little sib on their own because they’re immature themself! Being able to admit that instead of trying so hard to be all fake ultra mature and infallible, thats another big character arc. As well as aknowledging that lil sib is indeed growing up and becoming someone intelligent and independant. And realizing that the reason they keep putting them down is so they can try and deny that, and the reason they’re denying it because theyre JEALOUS! Jealous that little sib might have their emotions more alltogether than them, scared that their emotionless facade of perfect big sibness will be broken, and scared that without that they’ll have nothing left. Need to become more comfortable with trusting and relying on your lil sib, need to actually talk to them about this stuff, yo! Ideally I’m gonna try and write it in a way that doesnt make big sib seem like a completely hateable villain. Their backstory is gonna involve being from not exactly the nicest family, and both struggling to escape what they’ve been shaped into. And trying to learn how to take care of each other as a real family, when they have no real frame of reference for what real love looks like. And also climbing a bigass tower to save humanity from being entombed underground, but that’s comparatively easy, lol! But yeah the idea is that big sib kinda absorbed more of their bad parents’s ideals, and like... they love their sibling so utterly and deeply because they just did not know what family love felt like until they came along. And it really REALLY hurts them whenever they realise they’ve been subconciously being neglectful or hateful towards the lil fella, but theyre so distracted by like.. the greed of being free now. And doing anything and everything, drunk on that freedom! And not really being capable yet of caring about other people when they havent even learned how to care about themself. They keep being all decadent and delinquent and it seems like theyre egotistical but still deep down they HATE themself and this is all just like a ‘fake it til you make it’. And its so easy to get caught up and go too far to try and put on this facade, and they feel they cant really vent their real feelings to anyone. Cos they’re super cynical dont trust anyone except sibling loyalty like. Only way to survive! And like... cant talk about it with the sib either, because little kid wouldnt understand, and if they do then that means theyre not little anymore. They dont wanna ruin lil sib’s childish innocence cos like.. that innocence is their only reason to live. Innocent stupid bastion of family love, came into their life and gave them the courage to deal with those shitty parents gahhh! And part of them ‘knows’ that the only way to love anyone is to be deluded and innocent. You have to be too stupid to realise that the world is awful and everyone sucks and loving people just gets you hurt! And big sib is toooootally smart cos they know that life is meaningless. But they’re entertained by seeing a stupid person stupidly believe in optimism. Totally. Thats the only reason they wanna protect that innocence. Totally. sooooo basically imagine a very mentally ill mess of a preteen that’s curled up in the corner crying perpetually within their own mind, while on the outside they’re all HA HA I’M AMAZING, BITCHES And also imagine that bunni is able to write good enough to explain these damn characters aaaa im very tired im sorry

anyway summary: protagonist is a jerk, Character Development: The Game, you will cry for little sib whom is basically like penny from inspector gadget also I was thinking maybe this could be the one and only time I do the Amnesiac Protagonist Cliche Setup. eeeexcept not really?? well i mean I think it’d work cool if these characters were new to this setting, but I wouldnt actually do 100% amnesia thing I was thinking more like... they are the only two people who came from the outside world. And they just can’t remember how they got here, they wake up trapped in this place and everyone thinks theyre crazy for talking about being from somewhere aboveground. So you have an even more desperate motivation to escape compared to everyone else! I mean of course everyone wants to return to the surface, but its been so long that no-one remembers what it’s like, and so many attempts have failed that they’ve all given up. So you can act like a beacon of hope and lead the people even though you’re just a child. Like, this is about a morally bankrupt trash protagonist being dragged kicking and screaming into heroism, lol And of course we can have some good ‘ol mystery amnesia reveal type plot thingies! But without having to have a protagonist who’s COMPLETELY clueless, and a game beginning with no direction whatsoever. Its more like a ‘trapped in another world’ story except its the same world just a few thousand miles underground, lol. And revealing how exactly they got there and what they’ve forgotten is gonna be a plot, yes, but also there’s the bigger mystery of what on earth this doom labyrinth is and what caused these poor people to be trapped in it! And what they’ll even find when they finally reach the surface again, will it really be the sort of paradise they’re all hoping for? also many tears for sad dysfunctional tiny family of awkward childrens, ye also (hopefully) fun dungeon gameplays

so yeah bunni is tired and delirious and rambling Thoughts at you dunno if anyone was interested in any of this, but there you go!