#once i do a proper locked in rewatch its so over

[humanundead]

now that i think about it its probably been about a year since i started watching ryuki.....did he know.jpeg

[tooweirdforyou]

The OP Boys & Their Personal Dirty Secrets pt. 2

A/N : Hey hun! I hope you like this! ( i can’t tag you idk why ) I saw you wanted a part two to this and decided to do it because it was fun. I guess, lol. anyways hope you like this! :>

Soooo, don’t judge the gif I couldn’t find anything else. Also I’m kinda tired ;-; alsooo. these ones are a LITTLE bit dirtier.

Warning : NSFW AHEAD! PROCEED WITH CAUTION! ⚠️ ESPECIALLY W/ THATCH.

kid and mihawk don’t have specific dark secrets since I couldn’t think of anything that would yk connect to them. ;-;

Summary : All of these boys and their personal, hidden dirty secrets. PART TWO!

-

Doflamingo

Oh boy, this male, despite his possessiveness, has a bit of a voyeurism kink. He hasn’t yet, but he DEFINITELY wants to turn on the country wide announcement, ( like those screens whatever used in Dressrosa when he talked ) and just fuck you as everyone watches throughout the island. He dreams of it, and one day, HE WILL make it a reality.

“How does it feel?” The lick of his lips and the shit-eating grin was on display all over the island for the people of Dressrosa to see, the image of Doflamingo’s hips thrusting and making contact with your rear.

“Does it feel good to have the whole island watching you being fucked senseless, by me? Their king?”

You couldn’t respond, lost in the insane amount of pleasure that ran through your body, specifically your lower regions. You didn’t even care that you were being watched, basking in the euphoria you were given at the moment.

Doffy’s strings suspended you partially in air, the material binding your body so you couldn’t move in the slightest as he took you from behind.

Arms wrapped around your bare figure, one holding you thigh tightly while the other wrapped around your torso, his hand grasping your throat and his fingers, pressing itself onto the flesh of your neck.

If you were fortunate, your face was cut off from the screen to be visible but your exposed body was seen by everyone who watched.

Doflamingo felt glory and power, as he continued to fuck you for all to see, your sweet, melodic moans echoing through the island as he did this.

What a fantasy that will soon become a reality.

-

Kid

Literally anything but also nothing. I couldn’t think of anything.. so here’s a kink he has! Dominant Submission. (?) basically, he LOVES the submissive ones, but those who really fight back. Feisty bitches yk? But like, he knows you’re all talk because he’ll have you begging for him on your knees once the two of you really get started. ;)

You’re teasing the hell out of Kid. You’re being bad by ignoring Kid and disobeying his orders and the Captain has had enough.

He barges into your room, slamming the door shut with the lock clicking on and before you could react, he has his hand around your throat and your back shoved to the wall.

“You think you’re being funny?” He growls into your ear, instantly using his free hand to rip your clothes off in a swift pull.

Despite the lack of air you had, your face still formed a sly and cheeky smirk in response. “I..I think it’s.. hilarious. Ha.”

Kid scowls before slowly smirking himself and tightened his grip on your neck a little bit more, but not enough to actually kill you. ( he cares after all :> )

“Tch. Looks like you need a punishment.” He drags you over to your bed and shoves you roughly done onto him, unbuckling his pants and pulled the belt out from the loops and pressed the two ends together so he had an able whipping belt. ( make sense? )

You merely grin at this and tilt your head. “Oh? Is that for me?” You hum and sat up, legs up and spread for him to see your already getting wet pussy, arms over you knees.

The sight of it made Kid growl lowly before he walks closer to you. “Time for you to face the consequences of pissing me off.”

With one hand, he forces you down onto the bed, breasts against the mattress and your ass forcefully in the air.

And with the raise of his other hand, it was only seconds before a loud whip was heard.

Tears stings the corner of your eyes but you still held strong, biting your lip. “Is that all you got? Guess you weren’t so angry.” You laugh and Kid didn’t respond, only whipping you once more, a little more force.

“Don’t you worry. I have all night long.”

[ I could write a whole OneShot about this, I had to stop lol ]

-

Marco

Little bit harder, buttt, come on. Sex in the air? Marco’s dream, for sure. And if he’s going to admit it, yes, he has done sexual activities in the air, where no one would be around.

The blonde doctor soars across the sky, a little ways away from the ship, not too far to lose sight but enough where he wouldn’t be seen, regardless of it being the time of night.

He’s only ever done it once or twice, but the no matter how many times Marco would do it again afterwards, the first time experience couldn’t ever be bested.

Sexual activities in the air.

Yet, that didn’t mean Marco didn’t love the thrill and excitement it brought him, especially when he did it so often in his younger days.

Extending his bright cyan blue wings out and around him, Marco palms himself through his pants, shutting his eyes before slightly lowering his pants enough to release his cock into the exposed cold air.

Marco shivers before reeling back and moving so he was laying down, his wings as support. One left propped up and his fingers wrapped itself around his shaft, his touch slow.

With nothing but the moon lighting down on him and the refreshing night breeze in the midnight sky, Marco felt at ease as he continues to rub his length in a teasingly slow motion, only increasing in speed seconds after.

Marco won’t lie, when it came to his release, he often did it into his hands and a bit dripping down onto his hips and chest,

but it felt good letting his cum spurt into the ocean.

-

Thatch

It’s pretty known that Thatch is a real perv with large sexual desires. ( at least to me because of @ honeybakedthatch lol ) however, this personal secret is his dirtiest one yet.

Thatch bit his lip as he grunted out a soft groan, feeling the rest of his warm, bitter cum shooting out from his tip and into the leftover mixture of cream and condensed milk he made for the cinnamon buns.

Pulling his pants up and zipping it tight, Thatch made sure to thoroughly mix the cum and mixture together with a plastic spoon before drizzling it over the cinnamon buns he left out just for you.

The plastered grin Thatch wore merely widens as he watched the ordinary looking cinnamon buns look identical to the others, but he knew the pleasant surprise in taste that differed.

Just as he finished drizzling the cream, the door opened, you having walked in. “Thatch, I smell something good! What is it?”

The cheery, innocent smile you had made Thatch smirk a bit, the imagination all too pleasant, the thought of you eating his delicious cinnamon buns.

“I made cinnamon buns. Here, I made these especially for you.” Thatch holds out the separate plate he had and walks closer to you, placing a sweet kiss on your temple before letting you take the plate and fork.

“Enjoy. If it’s a bit too bitter, let me know and I’ll.. sweeten it up for you.”

-

Mihawk

This stoic ass man is such an intimate, romanticist, he doesn’t quite have very dirty secrets.. but, one kink he secretly has is bondage and slight corruption. He won’t ever mention it but if you bring it up, he’ll voice his opinions on it.

“Now, now, love. You should be careful.”

Mihawk’s strict but amused tone was evident as he sat in his chair and watched you writhe in the tight black silk ribbons that bounded you on the ground.

Your arms were tied behind your back, your vision blocked by a silk blindfold and your legs were forced spread by a ankle bar, exposing your bare heat towards Mihawk.

You were leaning against a table/chair, and the only thing you could hear were Mihawk’s praises and warnings, along with the humming vibration that came from the vibrator strapped to your clit.

“You might loosen the binds, and you know you don’t want that, do you?” Mihawk sternly questions and you shook your head, biting your lip to prevent yourself from moaning out too loud.

“Oh? You aren’t responding?” Mihawk smiles slightly as he leans on his hand, elbow on the armrest of his chair. “I asked you a question.”

You gasp out in realization and stammered out, trying to close your legs from the shock and orgasm you keep receiving.

“I-I mean no.. h-hah.. ah.. I, I don’t want it to loosen.” Your blush darkens at the embarrassment you held, but you loved this, just as much as Mihawk did.

-

Shanks

I could come up with a bunch of things but the first thing my mind went to was — sex tapes. Shanks is all for EVERYTHING but I feel like sex tapes seal the deal. Especially since he hooks up with so many women, I’m sure.

Shanks watches as the woman below him arches her back and curls her toes in pure bliss and euphoria.

The loud moans escaping her lips and filling the motel rooms only edged him further.

His tight grip on the woman’s left thigh glides up to grab the soft mound flesh on her left, his fingers twisting the little perky bud as he thrusted his hips roughly into her, eliciting a louder pleasurable cry.

The sound of skin slapping was the only thing heard other than the heavy grunts of Shanks and the mewls of the woman being fucked into oblivion.

Shanks, despite having the time of his life and was nearing his climax as he continued to thrust into the two small and tight lips, it’s walls clenching around him, could only think about the recording camera on its designated position on top of the drawer.

As much as he loved the real experience at the current moment, he couldn’t wait to rewatch the recording of it and relive the experience that way.

-

A/N: here you go, hun! I know you wanted a part 2 with these characters and I hope this went out you expected and wanted! :>

A few don’t have proper endings but it’s gooddd enoughhh for me. :p

jus wondering, what do y’all think Kid has? Master, sir, daddy or captain kink? Or none and just his name?

Law def has a “doc/doctor” kink lol but since I’m at it, I don’t think Marco has that.

[ckneal]

There’s a midam AU idea that’s been living in the back of my mind for months now, but it’s been slow going. Mainly because I suspect that doing the idea justice is going to mean doing more research than I’m used to, and maybe even rewatching the series proper to help me fill in some of the weak spots, and I have so many other story ideas that are frankly just easier to work on, two of which are already slated to be multi-chapter works. . . But I’m in the mood to type up something longwinded, so here we go. Keep reading if you’d like to see a rough outline of the first few chapters of this story I really hope to write out properly sometime.

(Warning, this is a long one.)

So, this story is loosely based on the Hundred Years War that took place between England and France from 1337-1453. But it’s only very loosely inspired. Very, very loosely. As in, I was reading a book, I read about one thing that happened, it germinated in my head, and then suddenly I had a plot developing that featured my current favorite ship. Additional sources of inspiration include one of my favorite fantasy series, and a personally beloved trashy romance novel. Because it’s fanfiction, folks. There are no rules here.

Of course, in this AU, the entire world is going to be made up, with neither side of the war distinctly being assigned the role of England or France—or Flanders or Burgundy, for that matter. I barrowed an inciting incident, and few smaller details from history to help things along here and there, but with no regard for keeping all the French things assigned to one group and the English ones to another.

That said, the inciting incident took its inspiration from the Battle of Poiters, a conflict during which England not only won against the French, but also took their king hostage. King Jean II was later ransomed back to his people, but at a sum that was so high, France could not afford to pay it all at once. England still returned France’s king, but new hostages were provided to serve as collateral during the interim, including the King’s son.

So. . .crown Prince Michael Shurley completely decimates King John Winchester on the battlefield, and sends his demands to John’s queen, Mary Winchester. The two kingdoms have been locked in a territory dispute for several decades, and this is one of the more humiliating events to befall the smaller kingdom yet, especially since they are unable to meet all of Michael’s demands. When the Winchesters begrudgingly admit this to the Shurley representatives, they’re caught off guard when they’re offered a trade: John Winchester will be returned, so long Dean Winchester takes his place as collateral.

Things are less than stable in the Winchester kingdom however, with more than a few factions quietly scheming for power. John and Mary were an arranged marriage that was originally held up like a fairytale when the two seemingly fell madly in love during their mandated courtship, but the years afterward had changed them. Civil unrest sparked by the war had brought out a lot of disagreements between the Winchesters and the Campbells and their approaches to governing.

John’s supporters are the ones to step forward with a plan, and convince Mary that it’s vitally important the people are not alarmed by their king’s capture. Mary initially finds it distasteful, but it’s talked around and adjusted and reframed, as John’s people ferret out more and more information about the vital party involved, until she finally agrees.

Because John Winchester just happened to have a bastard son. The resemblance to Dean might not be particularly remarkable, but no one at the Shurley court has ever seen the Winchester heir before. Plus, Adam Milligan has spent the entirety of his teen years studying to become a physician, of all things. He’s perfect for their purposes. 

Ten years prior, the Shurley court had had to deal with its own bout of civil unrest, when King Chuck Shurley’s second eldest son had attempted to overthrow him with the support of several nobles from one the kingdom’s richest providences. Lucifer had allegedly been driven into exile following his defeat, and Chuck had been said to have contracted some sort of mysterious illness. According to rumors, the king had shut himself up in his private chambers and refused to admit anyone apart from his remaining children. Even servants were barred from tending him directly.

They snatch Adam away from his studies and force him into compliance by dusting off an archaic law left over from before the start of the war, when the kingdom relied on a conscription military force rather than a standing army full of career military professionals—this law empowering the crown to call on any of its citizens for a minimum forty days of military service per year. They tell Adam that his mission seems more dangerous than it is—really, all he has to do is pretend to be Dean, and use his medical knowledge to figure out exactly what mysterious illness has bedridden the enemy monarch.

Sam and Dean—the proverbial heir and spare of the kingdom—are not at court to meet their younger brother, when he’s hastily fitted for a royal wardrobe and put through a crash course on court etiquette. Sam is very publicly put on display at a holiday festival in another part of the kingdom, while Dean is sent orders to quietly stay behind at a country estate while his valet, Kevin Tran, is sent on to court. Neither of the princes is told about the plan until after Adam has already been shipped out, with Kevin in toe to help Adam along with the impersonation.

No one involved is in anyway comfortable with the mission. But it was only supposed to be for forty days. Adam was assured that the necessary funds to pay off the ransom would either be raised by the end of the minimum mandated service, or they would make contact to extract him. The Campbells and the Winchesters both allegedly had spies in the Shurley court, and they would make themselves known when the time was right.

Adam is given the impression that the latter had been told to him with the intention of making him feel safer. It did not work.

He’s terrified when he arrives—almost would have preferred being promptly thrown into a dungeon upon arrival, instead of a room full of foreign nobility who one and all give off the impression that if cut they’d bleed straight silver, and look at “Dean,” the hostage prince and purported military genius from the tiny, vicious country across the channel, as a curiosity to be studied. He’s assigned two guards (who I decided will be Anael and Samandriel, based entirely on the tags I threw together at then end of this post, during which I decided that I love these three together), who follow him around relentlessly, but beyond that, he’s. . .pretty much treated like a guest. If a stiflingly monitored one. There are limitations on where he can go and what he can do, but for the most part he’s just sort of. . .there.

Most unnerving of all, however, is the small package that Adam finds in his room when he first settles in. Kevin swears he has no idea who left it. It has the Campbell’s insignia clearly worked into the pattern of the paper it’s wrapped in, and inside he finds a knife small enough to conceal on his person, and a number of different herbs and powders that he recognizes from his studies—though of course, he’s more familiar with remedies to counteract their effects.

In other words, he finds an assassin’s-first-kill-job kit, and instructions on how and when to use it, if opportunity arises. This had not been part of the deal when Adam reluctantly signed on.

Unbeknownst to Adam however—though suspected by some parties in the Winchester court—Adam cannot assassinate Chuck Shurley, because Chuck is not there. Shortly after Lucifer’s insurrection, Chuck had quietly disappeared. Michael had only been a teenager at the time. He invented the story about Chuck being ill on impulse, certain that Chuck would be back sooner than later, and Raphael had gone along with it because, being twelve years old, Raphael was not yet old enough to question Michael’s judgement. It is now an awkward point between them.

Adam soon becomes another.

Michael regularly checks in to see how Adam’s getting on, in a way that Kevin assures Adam is entirely appropriate, since Michael is under the impression that Adam is going to be a fellow monarch someday, and is likely trying to be courteous. Adam inherently feels somewhat flustered around Michael though, which is not helped by the fact that Michael is somehow always present whenever Adam puts his foot in his mouth socially. On more than one occasion, he’s thankful that almost no one has actually been to his homeland, allowing Adam to blame an astonishing number of fuck ups on cultural differences.

Michael and Adam’s early one on one interaction are intensely awkward. Adam will forget to wear gloves, and then Michael will comment that Adam’s hands are oddly devoid of callouses for someone who’d practically been raised with a sword in his hand, leaving Adam to scramble for some flimsy excuse about hand cream. Adam will inquisitively ask questions about what sort of illness would be severe enough to leave someone bedridden for a decade but not kill them in that time (Kevin frantically motioning over Michael’s shoulder to convey that that is NOT the right way to fish for details on such a sensitive subject), and Michael will struggle to find an excuse around the quietly bubbling panic, because he hasn’t had to try to explain anything about his father since that first year, and he is not a particularly gifted liar.  

And then there’s Raphael.

Unlike Michael, Raphael is suspicious of “Dean” right from the start, pulling Michael aside to point out things that don’t seem quite right according to what their informants have told them about Dean Winchester.

“Doesn’t he look a bit young?”

“Some people look younger than they are, Raphael.”

“I was told Dean Winchester had dark hair.”

“Dark blond is dark.”

“Aren’t his eyes supposed to be green?”

“They’re obviously blue.”

“That’s exactly my point.”

The forty days come and go with Adam and Kevin nervously waiting for some sort of sign from home. Roughly two weeks later, a messenger arrives with unexpected news for Michael’s court: the Campbells have officially broken ties with the Winchesters in a violent bid for power that has left the kingdom at war with itself.

According to Kevin, the civil war has probably slowed things down a bit, if it’s as bad as the rumors say. . .

Adam and Kevin are stranded.

“Don’t worry though—I know Dean, and he knows our necks are on the line. He’ll keep out of sight until they manage to get us out of here.”

Adam finds it difficult to put faith in the virtues of a brother he’s never met, but doesn’t have it in him to question Kevin’s faith. He worries about his mother, who might have been safe in the countryside, but also might have made the trek to the capitol when it came out that Adam had been abducted for the sake of persevering the royal family's throne. He can’t be sure.

And to top it off, Michael takes to stopping by Adam’s room every couple of days to privately talk about the movements of the various factions—who has been sighted where and in what condition, where they’re rumored to be headed. Adam interprets it as an attempt to shake out inside information. One day, Adam finally tries to set him straight by saying it doesn’t matter how many ugly details Michael throws at him, Adam can’t help him because he doesn’t know anything—and is promptly put to shame when Michael looks at him in surprise and says, “You misunderstand. I assumed that you would want to know these things, because they are your family.”

Michael leaves, and Adam’s guards exchange a look. When asked, Samandriel awkwardly tells Adam that the royal family used to have a fourth child. Gabriel. He was lost during Lucifer’s insurrection. Pirates overtook his ship. They’d never received a ransom. Michael had purportedly offered a standing reward for any news of Gabriel, and put an unwise amount of resources into searching for him until it threatened the war effort.

Adam and Michael start talking more frequently from there, starting with an apology on Adam’s part. It’s tricky at first, because Michael starts out asking questions about Dean Winchester's military exploits—it is the most likely common ground between them, after all—and Adam has to hastily change the subject every time. By the two month mark, they’re talking affably, and rumors start to circulate through the courts as Michael's routine check ins on Adam start getting less formal and more frequent.

On the four month mark, rumors get even worse. Raphael finally sits Michael down and really gets into all of the things about “Dean” that don’t add up, item by item. If he’s trying to pretend he doesn’t know anything about his country’s military exploits, he’s far too convincing given his reported record, and Raphael has it on good authority that more than half of those “cultural differences” in etiquette that keep cropping up are completely unfounded—and look here, three different informants have sent lists of Dean Winchester’s physical characteristics, and the foreign prince DOES NOT MATCH.

“Michael, something is not right here.”

“Fine, I’ll talk to him about it now.”

And Michael storms off to address “Dean,” while Raphael calls after him that he should wait until morning. Because it is the middle of the night.

Adam just happens to be up reading. Michael’s familiar with the book. Michael gets distracted, and they talk all night. The sun’s coming up when Michael finally leaves, and a servant happens to see him slipping out of Adam’s room. Suggestive conjectures promptly follow, and Raphael exasperatedly admits they only have themself to blame.

And this only gets worse, because now Adam and Michael have transitioned into being friends. No more guarded conversations where one is convinced the other is about to catch them in some sort of lie. When Raphael mentions that some of the lesser nobles are starting to think Michael and Adam are courting, Michael’s fidgeting is not at all lost on them, as Michael assures them that of course that isn't the case. He and Dean are merely establishing friendly relations that will serve them well down the road politically—

“After the war is over?”

“Of course, after the war is over.”

Adam’s been stranded in the Shurley court for almost a year by the time that he finally slips into his room and sees a sealed message set out on his bed. Adam doesn’t recognize the insignia as belonging to either the Winchesters or the Campbells, but it’s signed with the initials “SW” at the bottom. It mostly contains a lot of vague phrases that make Adam wonder if he was supposed to be versed in some sort of code. As far as he’s concerned, the only important information comes at the end: Kate Milligan has been safely relocated for the duration of the civil war.

Relieved, Adam goes down to dinner, where some sort of seasonal holiday is being celebrated, and has a bit more wine than he normally would. The Shurley court is one of those stuffy courts where seating is stiffly dictated by tradition. As a foreign prince, Adam’s assigned seat is at the same table as Michael, although, according to Kevin, his placement's much further down due to his being a hostage. After a few drinks, and after most of the nobles have cleared off from the table to talk and celebrate elsewhere in the hall, Adam sees no reason not to get up and relocate down the line of chairs to sit closer to Michael. It was against the rules, but Adam was aware enough not to sit in Raphael’s empty seat, and he’d been seen with Michael so often that Anael and Samandriel barely even blinked, because Adam obviously wasn’t about to attack their prince or anything.

However, it is worth noting that while talking to Adam, Michael consumes a decent amount more wine than he would normally have as well.

Later that night, Michael’s walking Adam back to his room, and he starts to comment that Adam seems happier than usual. But even when sober, Michael would struggle to say something like that—if he’d even attempt it while sober—and Adam winds up biting his lip as he watches Michael’s mounting embarrassment, as a simple compliment inexplicably morphs—words seemingly forcing their way out as Michael tries and utterly fails to stop them—into a compliment about how Adam is beautiful—that is, he’s always beautiful—that is, Michael can’t help noticing Adam most days—that is. . .

. . .Michael is adorable. And in a moment of pure, thoughtless impulse, Adam leans in and kisses Michael right there in the corridor.

Michael is profoundly shocked, and his reaction delayed. Adam had only gone in intending to briefly press his lips against Michael’s, but as he’s pulling away Michael abruptly leans in and reseals the kiss, and Adam in turn takes that as an invitation to pull Michael closer. And a few minutes later, Raphael happens to walk down the hallway and find the two of them enthusiastically kissing against the wall.

And Raphael promptly turns around and goes back the way they came, only stopping at one point to flag down a servant and order them not to let anyone else walk down that particular corridor for at least an hour, hoping that Michael and Adam’s “friendly relations” wouldn’t result in anything too inappropriate.

As it happens, nothing particularly inappropriate happens. Nonetheless, Michael still wakes up the next morning, fully clothed in his own bed, in panic because the first thought to distinctly make its way through the ungodly pain in his head is that he’d taken liberties with a guest the night before. The heir to a foreign power at that, a peer, a hostage! Michael never thought he was capable of something so dishonorable--he’d had Dean pressed up against the wall as if they were a couple of ill-bred urchins, and how does one even go about apologizing for something like that?

(Of course, if Michael were thinking clearly, he might have remembered that Adam had actually been the one to back himself up against the wall, with Michael obligingly following along, quite malleable to whatever positioning Adam wanted so long as Adam kept kissing him.)

Michael’s behavior was beyond unacceptable. If his father hadn’t already abandoned them, he’d likely disown Michael out of pure shame. There was no telling what kind of damage he’d done to the relationship between their kingdoms. At best, Michael’s uncouth actions would be a dirty secret between them in the years to come, after Dean married, and Michael was left barely able to look Dean’s spouse in the eye. If Michael were a lesser noble, his parents might demand he married Dean outright.

And suddenly Michael sat up in bed, realizing he could marry Dean. His mind begins racing, because of course he could marry Dean! It made perfect sense. They enjoyed each other’s company, and with both of them being heir to their respective kingdoms, their union would effectively end the war. It might be complicated—especially given some of the odd customs Dean had introduced to Michael’s court—but marriages had been used to cemented alliances often enough, and the thought of marrying Dean elicited a curiously hot feeling in Michael’s stomach, remembering the way Adam had pulled him close the night before.

(Fun fact, England and France actually did try to do this with the Treaty of Troyes in 1420; it did not go as planned.)

Michael goes through the rest of his day in an uncharacteristically upbeat mindset, because now it all seems to just be a matter of organizing things, and he is good at organizing. He would have to write to either John or Mary Winchester as soon as the situation in their kingdom settled, and formally ask for Dean’s hand, and he and Dean should have a chaperone present at all times moving forward to avoid scandal--though there would be no way to sidestep scandal altogether, of course. Adam was still technically Michael’s prisoner. 

More than likely, the Winchesters or Campbells would demand Michael relinquish his claim to at least half of the territories that they’d spent the last few decades fighting over, but that would be fine. It’s traditional in Michael’s country to give gifts to one’s in-laws, and Dean is a future monarch. Anything too little would be insulting, and all would be consolidated eventually when Dean and Michael assumed their respective thrones. . .

Michael is still walking around delightfully living in his own head when Raphael pulls him into an empty room to discuss what they witnessed the night before. While not the most shocking scenario they could have imagined, they were not expecting to hear their brother announce that he and Dean Winchester would be getting married.

“And how are we to explain away our father’s absence during the proceedings, Michael?”

Michael’s good mood promptly withers. Because of course Chuck would be expected to play some part in arranging his son’s wedding. Ill or not, at the very least, he would be expected to make an appearance at the wedding. To have no part in it at all would be suspicious, not to mention rude.

While Raphael intended to snap Michael back to his senses, they had not meant to shake Michael into an immediate depression. They try for a gentler tone.

“You know, Michael. Our father has been gone for over a decade. He left no formal plans, he's sent no word. By any standard, he's abdicated. Perhaps this isn’t the right time to introduce a political marriage. Perhaps we should consider your assuming the kingship, and then come back around to formalizing your relationship with Dean—”

Michael, of course, is against this. Because their father is alive, and he will come back, and it will not be to find that another one of his sons had greedily tried to usurp the throne.

Seeing Michael about to fall back onto a familiar tangent, Raphael chooses the lesser of two evils and takes the conversation back to “Dean.” They ask which out of the two of them proposed to the other.

Michael abruptly realizes that he's forgotten something.

Meanwhile, Adam starts his morning on a much happier note. His headache is less punishing than Michael’s, and while feeling the normal amount of embarrassment that comes with drinking a little too much, the feeling does not extend to kissing Michael. His mother’s safe, he’s nailing his Dean impression, and Michael apparently likes him. Things could not be better. Until Adam remembers how the latter two items on that list are linked.

Michael is not like a classmate back home, who he could chat up, get a drink with, and maybe start seeing regularly if all things went well. Michael is, in fact, the acting ruler of one of the most powerful countries in the world, which just so happens to be at war with Adam’s, and under the explicit impression that Adam is similarly situated in the world.

Adam promptly begins freaking out.

And then Michael finds him.

Adam’s in the library at the time. Michael walks in and quietly dismisses Adam’s guards, and Kevin, leaving the two of them completely alone. Adam doesn’t realize what Michael’s doing right away, though he’s spent enough time with Michael to recognize how nervous he is as he starts talking about a proposal to end the war—selling the idea, as if Michael wouldn’t be enough on his own—and then sheepishly tapering into the idea that both he and Adam seem to have feelings for one another. And if Adam were able to go back in time and strangle his tipsy past self, he would, because then he wouldn’t have to see the look on Michael’s face when he says no.

And no, Michael does not understand.

Adam can hear years of living in the public eye at work in Michael voice, as he just manages to keep his voice level in asking, “Even if it would mean peace?”

"I'm sorry, I just—I can't."

". . .I see."

Michael excuses himself, and Adam collapses onto a couch, assuring himself that no was the only right answer, and he shouldn’t feel terrible—which, of course, since Adam’s spent the last couple of months flirting with Michael while posing as someone else, is not an easy idea to buy into.

Michael and Adam avoid eye contact at dinner, even as Raphael—who has zero doubts as to who initiated what the night before—practically burns holes into Adam’s skin with the looks they shoot down the table.

And then a messenger comes in. One of the wealthiest duchies in the kingdom (the same one that had once supported Lucifer, and of course would be populated with demon characters in the narrative) has declared its independence, having formed an alliance with the Campbells, and has launched an attack not far from the castle. Several villages have already been attacked along the way. Michael accompanies the armed forces he sends out to quash the uprising.

Raphael is left behind to fortify the castle and take in the refugees, who the messenger assured them are not far behind. Unlike Michael, Raphael rarely saw combat. Officially, it was because Raphael had adamantly insisted on training as a healer rather than a warrior, which was true enough. Unofficially though, Michael and Raphael are both fully aware that if anything happened to Michael, Raphael is the only one left to inherent the crown.

Samandirel and Anael escort Adam back to his room. Samandriel assures Adam that no one thinks he had anything to do with the duchy double crossing them, but it would probably just be safer for Adam to stay out of sight until things calm down. Anael is more closed-lipped about the situation.

From his window, Adam watches the first of the villagers come trickling in, and even from his vantage point he can make out burn wounds, makeshift bandages and hastily thrown together tourniquets, and he’s in hell, because it seems the only two options in front of him are to worry about Michael, or feel absolutely sick with guilt because he’s a trained physician and he should be down there helping.

Finally he pokes his head out into the corridor and asks if someone can find Kevin for him. Anael raises an eyebrow that “Dean,” who’s usually inordinately self-suffice for a prince, is suddenly insisting that he needs to see his manservant, but Samandriel is already helpfully heading down the hall. A few minutes later, Kevin is in Adam’s room, confused, as Adam asks him to take off his clothes.

“You can have mine, just switch with me, okay?”

“Uuh. . . Don’t you think mine will be a little tight on you—”

“Less talk! Strip!”

Michael had probably errored in assigning the same two guards to watch over Adam. After a year, the three of them had gotten to be on fairly familiar terms. Adam waited until Samandriel started to get chatty, and slipped quietly out of his room when Anael was distracted—neither of them having had any reason to think Adam would try to escape, because he had been nothing but compliant since the day he arrived.

From there, he goes straight to the infirmary.

Raphael had set up tents in the courtyard to accommodate the high number of people in need of care. Adam was a year out of practice, but the atmosphere was still familiar to him, and he slipped into the chaos unnoticed. Raphael doesn’t notice him until they are well into the thick of things, and Adam’s as covered in grime and gore as anyone else present. Adam had just gone for more bandages and the two of them nearly ran into each other, and for a split second Adam thinks Raphael just might not recognize him until hand closes around his arm like a vice.

“What exactly are YOU doing here?”

Then Raphael notices the stitches Adam had just finished putting in for his latest patient—and Adam’s stitchwork is immaculate, not the clumsy, half-hazard work of a solider who picked up the mechanics of it over the course of their career.

"YOU did that?"

Adam starts to fumble out an answer, but they are interrupted because then Michael is being brought in. The fighting is over. Raphael and Adam promptly drop everything.

Michael has a concussion. He’s also been lightly stabbed. You know, just lightly. Needs stitches though. Raphael is adamant that Adam leave immediately, but Michael, who is delirious, sees Adam and absolutely refuses to let Raphael send him away. Raphael winds up patching Michael together while Adam—annoyingly, to Raphael—is sat next to him, holding Michael’s hand. Adam winds up sitting next to Michael all night, because it’s the only way to keep Michael from getting up and tearing his stitches like a feverish moron.

Initially, Raphael refuses to leave too, not trusting their brother’s suspiciously competent love interest, whose family was purportedly allied with the traitors who’d just attacked their people. There are still more wounded to tend to, however, and Raphael begrudgingly has to step away—making sure to leave orders that a guard be present in the room the entire time that Raphael is gone.

Little does Raphael know, Adam would have lowkey given a limb to have Raphael stay. Michael’s demeanor is a lot less closed off when he’s feverish and concussed. Shortly after Raphael leaves, Michael starts apologizing for proposing earlier, and Adam feels like he’s been stabbed in the gut. And as he’s lying there, looking at Adam’s hand in his, Michael starts saying things he would not normally blurt out—like that ending the war was not the main reason he wanted to marry Adam, because the last year has been the best he can remember, and it is entirely due to spending time with Adam—even if Adam was only there by obligation—and he would do anything to make Adam happy, even if they weren’t together—and Adam is just stuck there, highkey dying on the inside.

Then Michael sees his face.

"I apologize, you’ve already said you do not want to marry me, I should not have brought this up—”

Michael starts to get out of bed completely unconcerned about his stab wounds, and as Adam’s pushing him back down, the words “That’s not true!” just sort of. . .fly out.

Then Michael’s suddenly looking at Adam, and his face is suddenly very sober, and Adam can feel his own face turning red.

"That is, I. . ." Adam realizes, suddenly, that he’s fucked. Telling Michael the truth is somehow both the right and wrong thing to do at the same time, and Michael is definitely in no condition to hear it either way. “How about, if you still want to marry me when all this is over, then I’ll say yes?”

The next morning is a string of stressful events for Adam. Raphael shooed him out of Michael room at dawn, and Adam went straight back to his own. Kevin, Samandriel, and Anael had all been reprimanded for Adam’s escape, with the latter two being replaced as Adam’s guard under Raphael’s orders. His first interaction with Ishim and Maribel does not bode well for them becoming friends.

When Adam tells Kevin that he’s thinking about coming clean to Michael, Kevin panics. News from the Winchesters had dried up weeks ago, even for Michael and Raphael’s sources. Kevin argues that they’d be better off attempting to escape on their own if the charade was getting to be too much for Adam, especially after last night—but even then, they should wait awhile longer. Why take any chances right now? And Adam doesn’t know how to go about explaining the why. . .

And it gets taken out of his hands anyway, when they step out of the room and find that it’s somehow leaked that Adam and Michael—who had completely misunderstood what Adam meant by “when all this is over”—are engaged.

Kevin doesn’t get another moment alone with Adam to discuss how stupidly dangerous this whole situation is, and Adam, no matter how hard he tries—can’t seem to get a moment alone with his fiancé to try to explain that the situation is not what he thinks it is. Everyone had vastly underestimated how far the rumors about Michael and Adam secretly courting had gone, and Adam can barely take three steps without a noble or courtier or someone pulling him aside to offer their congratulations, and as Adam gets closer to Michael’s chambers, there’s Raphael, circling like a shark and Adam does not want to make his confession to Raphael before he sees Michael.

Come dinner time, Adam finds that his seat had been reassigned. He now sits directly to Michael’s left. He keeps trying to convince Michael to step out into the hall with him for a second, while Raphael, seated in their normal place to Michael’s right, continuously circumvents him, firmly believing that Adam has done more than enough in private.

Then there’s a scream. A servant comes running out into the dining hall, carrying a bloody knife. They run up to Michael—up until the guards step forward to stop her, but she’s not attacking. Instead she hands over the knife and says that she found in the corridor outside the king’s chambers. She had been worried, so she broke protocol and went in. The king’s bed was drenched in blood.

Adam looks over and feels a chill when he recognizes the same knife that had been included in the murder kit he found in his room on day one.

If Raphael had looked up, Adam had no doubt that Raphael would have read something in his face, but they didn’t get the chance to. Michael and Raphael are busy staring at each, the only ones in the room who know beyond any doubt that the implication could not be true, because there had not been anyone in that bed to assassinate in over ten years. Neither of them is given the chance to try to spin the knife’s implications in any direction, however. While the court is still reeling in shocked silence, a guard walks in—completely oblivious—and announces that a messenger has arrived with urgent news.

Adam looks up, and finds he has room to panic more, when he sees Anna Milton walk in, a serving maid in the Winchester court, and as she drops a curtsey to Michael, she identifies herself as one of Raphael’s spies. She had held her place in the Winchester court for as long as she could, but when her real identity had been uncovered she’d had no choice but to flee, and she’s come with monumental news. The civil war across the channel has ended, the Campbells having been forced to seek asylum with their allies outside the kingdom, John Winchester deposed, and Dean Winchester installed on the throne in his place. She had witnessed his coronation herself the very day they identified her.

And Adam feels very cold, as if his blood had actually managed to turn into ice, which would have explained why he couldn’t seem to move, as every eye in the room immediately turns to him.

 And that would be the end of part one.

[o-anon-o]

Home

Diaval x Reader (Maleficent’s daughter)

Summary: Inspired by what Aurora has done, reader volunteers to venture to a nearby kingdom to make peace between more humans and the Moors. Though she is welcomed as a guest, she’s been gone for quite some time and has begun to miss the comforts of home. That is, until a certain raven shows up missing her just as much. 

A/N: Yo. Might do some more of these “shorts” Idk. I rewatched both Maleficent movies and realized there isn't enough Diaval out there. I wanna write these little fics for funnzies on the side. I might be into it. If you’re into it  *shrugs* lmk. Don’t forget to smash that like button and ring that bell to turn notifications on. 

Words: 3,191

It had been hours since curfew had passed. The entire castle had fallen silent under the dark blanket of night. Everyone was undoubtedly asleep, everyone but you. You found this to be your regular nightly routine. You found it incredibly hard to fall asleep in a castle this large, how the nobles did it each night baffled you. 

Two moons had surely passed since you last saw the rivers of the Moors. Though you missed it, you knew that what you were doing was right. If others were willing to sacrifice their comfort for peace, you must do the same. You had always seen the world a different way than your mother. Where she saw greed and weakness, you saw beauty, wonder and hope. Hope that one day there might be peace between humans and the magical creatures of the Moors. So that one day they would be able to travel passed their boarders and venture beyond what little they knew. When you closed your eyes you imagined the pixies and other creatures laughing and singing among human folk, in peace. 

Aurora was the one who pushed you to do this. Though she was ten years younger than you, she still shared the same dream you did. After marrying Prince Philip she had created that peace you dreamed of for so long. The Moors and humans were united by their marriage. It was peace, but only a small sliver of what could be. That’s why you decided to venture West to meet with other Kings and Queens to create peace treaties. People were scared of the unknown. That’s why you thought presenting yourself, a fairy, was a good idea. Once they met you and learned about your home, they would be more open to coexisting.

Your mother was against it. 

Aurora was on your side. 

Diaval... He offered to accompany you. You denied it, however. He was needed in the Moors to help protect the creatures and to keep an eye on your mother. 

At the thought of him, your hand mindlessly traveled down to your wrist where a small woven bracelet laid. He had given it to you the night before you left. You were sure it was intended as a simple parting gift, to remind you of home whenever you looked at it. You couldn’t help but feel a small tug at your heart at the thought of home. You closed your eyes at the memory of the way that the air smelt in the early morning. The lily petals blowing in the autumn breeze. 

Home. 

Your eyes opened, you were standing in front of the vanity in the dim, candlelit room. There was no smile on your face, you could see that as you examined yourself in the mirror. Reaching for the brush on the table, you absentmindedly combed through your hair. Surely you would be able to return home soon. The King had welcomed you as a guest. As far as you could tell, there was no ill intent. In fact, these humans reminded you a lot of Prince Philip’s father. Open-minded and willing to listen. You knew you may not get that lucky with other kingdoms. 

You saw your hair blow from the breeze that was trickling in from the open window across the room. Feeling the hairs on the back of your neck start to rise, you walked towards the window, reaching for the shutters, but something in the corner of your eye caught your attention. To your left, perched on one of the carved out statues next to the window was a familiar black raven you hadn’t seen in what felt like forever. 

With a small smile, you raised your finger out, inviting it to lay on your hand. The raven didn’t hesitate, in fact it had all ready jumped onto your finger when you had just held it out. Leaving the window open, you leaned against its frame facing the inside of your room. The raven jumped up into the air, while you had waved your other hand out lightly, emitting gold magic from your hand as you saw him transform into the man you had missed most of all. 

“Thank you for that.” Diaval shook his head, straightening out his attire. The feathers on his jacket shook slightly, a few falling to the ground as you nodded, staring at the man. 

He took a moment to look around the room. The castle’s stone walls had elegant carvings on the trim of the walls. The bed was immaculate, gold lining the posts on each end. There was even gold on the windowsill. It was nice, a warm beautifully decorated guest room, the only thing that didn’t seem to belong in the room was them. 

“well this is nice...” He looked back at her finally. 

“I’ve slept in worse places that’s for sure.” You felt a smile creep onto your face upon hearing his familiar voice. 

“Indeed.” He mimicked your smile, walking towards the large wardrobe on the other end of the room and running his hands over the gold lining.

“Were you spying on me?” You asked, a mischievous glint in your eye. 

“I beg your pardon?” He asked. His attention landed back on you. 

“Just then, outside. Why didn’t you make yourself known?” You nodded towards the window. “Are you here to report back to my mother?” You asked, pushing yourself off of the wall and standing up straight, crossing your arms. It had been so long since you had seen anyone. You were sure Maleficent would have sent Diaval sooner, or even sent you a letter asking you to report back. Nevertheless, he was welcomed here, and always would be. 

Diaval shook his head. “No she has no idea I’m here.” You were taken aback when he said that. It wasn’t like him to keep things from her. He was loyal to her, that much was clear. 

“Then why are you here?” You asked, stepping closer. You could see Diaval swallow nervously. His smile had dissipated, once you had stepped closer. After a moment of silence you let out a shaky breath. “Has something happened?” You asked. 

“Nothing’s happened. Mistress misses you, she hasn’t said it but she grows impatient for you to come home.” Diaval spoke clearly. “I thought I would come by to see how they were treating you to give her some semblance of peace.” 

“Right.” After his comment about Maleficent not knowing he was here, you had hoped he came for a more personal reason. “I'm quite fine. They’ve treated me very well.” You said matter-of-factly, hand on your hip. Diaval scanned your face, and then his eyebrows rose when he saw what you were wearing. 

“I can see that now. They have you fitted like a proper lady. Fitting, I think. You’ve always been royalty. It’s about time you started dressing like it, m’lady.” He teased. A small blush crept onto your cheeks once you had locked eyes with him after he had looked you up and down. It had been too long since you’ve bantered with this man. You had to admit you were caught off guard by that comment. 

Rightfully, the Moors should have been given to you instead of Aurora. It was Maleficent’s intention to have you rule as her successor, however you had thought it was a good idea to have Aurora rule. At the time there was no better way to unite the humans and the magical creatures than to have a human step in and care for them. With a bit of convincing, Maleficent agreed. Uniting both kingdoms proved to be a more substantial change though.

Ruling was never something that interested you. You’d much rather spend your time with matters of peace keeping and be left as a free spirit. Your attire... that was a whole different story. As your mother wore gowns that drifted past her wings, you preferred to wear things you could actually fly around in. That meant no long dresses, no laces or bows that would drag behind you in the wind. 

“If this is how a lady should be properly dressed, then I don’t think I can consider myself a lady.” You rose a brow, making him chuckle. 

Diaval’s gaze trailed down to your side, finally resting on your wrist. He delicately reached down and held your hand out.

“At least you haven’t forgotten where you come from...”

Your eyes followed his. They had wandered down to your wrist where the bracelet he had given you was laying. 

Before he could land a kiss on the back of your hand, you cleared your throat, redacted your hand and walked past him back to the vanity. You faced the mirror and began to remove the earrings that you had on. Tonight you were dressed more proper than you could ever remember being dressed before. You had a meeting with the king to discuss the future of your kingdoms, you were required to look your best to represent the entirety of the Moors. It was an uncomfortable evening, probably for you alone. Everyone else you faced tonight seemed to be in their element, besides you. The memory hit you like a train as you detangled the earring from your hair and placed it on the jewelry tray in front of you. You felt ridiculous. 

“This ridiculous thing is impossible to breathe in.” You mumbled to yourself. You caught Diaval’s eye staring at you from the mirror. “What?” You asked coarsely. 

“You look beautiful nonetheless.” He said upmost sincerely. You remained frozen for what felt like hours, but was for just a few seconds before you had the courage to look away from him. 

Beautiful. You couldn’t recall a time when he had called you that. He was a dear friend. While you grew up spying on Aurora, you and he had become close without a doubt. He was your best friend, your confidant and it took every power within you to deny his presence with you when he had asked to accompany you. Truthfully, you wanted to allow him to come. But that would be selfish. You knew he was needed there. No matter how badly you wanted him to stay, you knew that he couldn’t stay. 

You glanced at him with a brow raised through the mirror. You didn’t realize that your eyes had become glassy until you saw them through the mirror. “Is that the only reason you came here?” 

Diaval walked towards you with an uncertain look in his eyes. He seemed distracted, or perhaps deep in thought. You asked because you initially knew something was going on with him since he flew into your room. You watched him intently as you dropped the second earring into the tray. 

Another soft silence fell between the two of you. This one felt long and slightly uncomfortable. Like there were a million words lingering in the air that needed saying, yet neither of you had spoken them. Not until he was behind you, warmly emitting a familiar heat you had missed so dearly. 

Your breath hitched when you felt his hand delicately trail up the sides of your arms, over your shoulders and finally stop behind your neck where you could feel him work at the necklace clasped behind your neck, assisting you with removing the shiny piece of jewelry you detested having to wear all evening. 

Truth be told, Diaval didn’t even realize he was flying in the direction of the castle until he had all but reached the destination. 

Two moons. 

He had counted. 

He wondered how many more would have to pass until you were able to come home. He had missed how things used to be. The witty banter the two of you shared on a daily basis, the way both of you would worry over Aurora, the times shared convincing Maleficent that Philip was right for her. But the moments he missed most was when you would fly over the headwinds and race each other to the forest’s edge. At the thought of how peaceful you once looked back then, he couldn’t help but softly smile at you through the mirror. 

He remembered one particular moment you two shared while Philip was courting Aurora. The forest creatures had come together to make a beautiful song for the two as they had danced under the moonlight. The sparkling pixies glittered around them as they shared the moment together. He was watching it from afar next to you. That’s when things had changed for him. He knew that same love that Philip felt for Aurora was the love he felt for you. Though he had no inclination on how to act on it, he knew it was there.

With that thought lingering in his mind for almost a year, he had to admit he had felt a sting when you had so quickly declined his offer to accompany you on your journey. At first he hadn’t understood why, but it soon grew increasingly clear when his duties in the Moors picked up with your departure. He was thankful, really. It had kept his mind occupied throughout the day. Instead of worrying about you, he had helped his mistress keep things running smoothly. 

“I miss you as well.” He said it so softly you almost missed it. It dawned on you that in all the time you had known him, you hadn’t been separated for this long. Part of you felt ashamed for not seeing how this separation may be affecting him. The other part of you was excited that he had missed you just as much as you had missed him. 

You turned around, looking him uncertainly in the eye. His eyes were black, the blackest black one could imagine. Yet they always held deep emotion. There he was standing directly in front of you. The man you had missed most from home. You hadn’t realized when it happened, but your feelings towards him had changed exponentially. It was further increasing the longer you were away from home. His eyes never left yours, you could feel his breath on your face as you both stood frozen in the moment.   

“Do you?” You muster up the courage to say, seemingly trying to continue the banter. It was weak. Your voice was coarse from the way your heart was almost beating out of your chest. By the look on his face, he could tell you were at a loss for words. The rose hue on your cheeks was visible even in the dimly lit room. 

“The Moors aren’t the same without you flying overtop them each morning. The sun isn’t as warm. The water isn’t as serene and the stars aren't as bright. I miss you like a desert misses rain.” He spoke just as softly as he did a moment ago. His hands gripped the vanity on either side of you, fighting the urge to hold you in his arms and finally reach out and hold you. He had waited too long to see you. He thought he could make it until your return, but he had never been more wrong. Worried he may lose his chance, he needed to see you. 

“I know that I’m just a raven, not even really a man but--” 

You couldn’t take it any longer. He had drawn you in a long time ago. You placed your hands on either side of his face delicately, moving your soft lips against his. The instant you did, it felt like a dam had broken inside of him and he had finally wrapped his hands around your delicate body, pulling you in as close as he could. Kissing you as if he was about to wake up from a dream, he wasted no time. The time you had spent apart was far too much anyway. You had to make it up somehow. 

You pulled back for a moment, searching his dark eyes for any sense of hesitation or regret. There was none there that you could see. 

“I missed you too.” You spoke without another second to waste. 

With a new-found boost of courage, he plunged forward and captured your lips in another kiss. This one he was more prepared for. You felt your arms trail down to his lapels, pulling him closer to you, not allowing him to stop. It’s not as if you would need to tell him that. Unbeknownst to you, he had no intention to stop. Your mouths moved together in harmony as he held you tightly in his arms. The pace had quickened from your timid peck you had given him just a moment ago. The unfamiliar feeling of his lips against yours didn't frighten you. Instead, you were surprised with how natural tasting him felt. If anyone had seen the two of you together they would, without a doubt, imagine you had done this many times before. 

You had realized in this moment, he was your home. So long as he was nearby you felt at ease and safe, Moors or not. As he held you, you grew increasingly more electrified. Every finger graze that trailed passed a part of your skin was magnetic. It had your mind go foggy and your stomach do flips as he deepened the kiss, eliciting a soft moan from your mouth into his. 

“Diaval...” you had whispered his name once you had reluctantly pulled back, leaning your forehead against his. The sound of his name slipping past your lips that way was a sound he wanted to hear a million times over. Eagerly, he had placed soft chaste kiss on your lips once more before opening his eyes to look into yours. 

“What is it? Anything.” He spoke out of breath. 

With a soft smile you trailed your hands back up to his soft face, feeling him calm even more at your touch. “It’s late.” 

He blinked a couple of times before realizing that you were right. With a short nod he began to untangle himself from you. “Of course.” he cleared his throat.  

You had become confused. Without a second of hesitation you wound your hands around his neck to keep him in place. 

“I meant that as an invitation to stay here tonight. You flew all this way.” You assured him that you very much enjoyed his presence. Pulling him back into you, your lips hovered above his for a few moments, seemingly acting like a magnet as he followed them with his own. “Fly back tomorrow, stay tonight. Please.” 

With a request like that, how could he say no? For tonight, you wanted to act selfish. You wanted to think of yourself over what was expected of the two you. You wanted to revel in this happiness forever, but tonight would have to do for now. Tomorrow came with more diplomacy, more treaty talk and more of that without him by your side. You didn’t want to marvel in that at the moment. Right now you wanted nothing but him, tonight, right now. 

You hadn’t felt this at home in a long time. 

[thenocturnalmushroom]

A Cozy Night - Touyuki - CCS

Tags: Fluff; Domestic; Domestic Fluff; Self-Indulgent; Established Relationship

Read on AO3

It was almost eleven at night and Yukito still having no desire to go to sleep. He was comfortably sitting under his kotatsu, accompanied by a good show on his laptop, a tin of cookies and some delicious hot tea – a perfect combo to a winter night. His plan was to finish watching the said show that same night, even if he had to stay up until dawn; it was a Friday night and he had no class nor job the next morning so he had no worries regarded his bedtime. Besides, the show was worth the loss of some sleep hours.

The silver-haired boy was completely immersed into the story, anxiously nibbling at a sugar cookie and barely noticing how his body was slowly leaning toward the laptop while his almost unblinking eyes refused to go away from the screen. The first real confront of the main character and the true villain was finally happening, and it was intense. Yukito had been waiting for it for the last seven episodes and he didn’t want to miss even the smallest detail; he was sure that everything about that scene would be important later in the story. His focus was completely stolen by the show and everything else was forgotten for some long, long minutes.

And that was why the boy nearly jumped out of his skin when the bell of his house rang, letting the half-eaten cookie slip from between his fingers.

It took him only a second to recover from the startle. He quickly paused the video and retrieved the cookie from the table, throwing it into his mouth, before heading to the front door, still chewing on the sweet. Being a little past eleven now, Yukito could only think about one single person who would come to visit him this late at night - and it made his heart singing inside his chest.

He hurried to open the door, and there was no surprise when he found Touya waiting outside, his hands shoved into the pockets of his heavy coat and a soft smile touching his lips.

“Hey!”, his boyfriend greeted him so casually, as if he wasn’t clearly freezing in that cold night.

“Touya!”, Yukito exclaimed his name for both the pleasure of saying it and as slight scold. He gave a step aside. “Hurry inside or you’ll end up getting sick!”

Touya wasted no time and complied. While Yukito closed and locked the door again, Touya carefully landed his backpack on the floor right before taking off his shoes, placing them besides his boyfriend’s ones.

“What are you doing here?”, the silver-haired boy asked while helping the other to take out his coat, which was slightly wet from the light snow that was falling outside. “I thought your shift at the restaurant would only end around midnight.”

“Things were too slow today, so my boss decided to close earlier.”, Touya casually passed his hands through his damped hair, shaking it softly. He had strongly regraded not having brought with him an umbrella or at least a bonnet.

Yukito quickly run to the cupboard to fetch a towel for him.

“If you have some spare time, you should have gone home and rested. You’ve been working harder than the usual this week.”, he said, handing the towel to Touya. It wasn't like he wasn't happy to see the other boy. Not at all. The week had been so busy that they had barely had time to meet outside the few classes they share together. However, Yukito couldn’t help but worry about Touya and his health; he would gladly sacrifice some of their time together if that meant that Touya was getting a proper time to rest, recovering all the energy he had spent between classes and all his numerous part-time jobs. He knew his boyfriend was strong, but he was still human.

“I think I can rest here pretty well, can’t I?”, Touya put the towel round his neck and gave a step forward to close even more the already short distance between them. Gently, he touched Yukito’s face, a cold hand on a warm skin, giving to both of them a pleasant shiver. Looking unbothered by the coolness of his boyfriend’s hand, Yukito covered it with his own hand, rubbing his cheek against Touya’s palm as if to lend it some warmth in a tender, affectionate gesture. As tender and affectionate as the smile they both wore on his lips. “Besides, I am home.”

Yukito’s eyes widened for a moment, his face feeling suddenly hot; he wasn’t waiting for a response like that. He felt a bubbling sensation being born inside his stomach and rise through his throat, taking the shape of a soft, cheerful giggle. “Tou-ya, you’re such a sappy!”

“Who are you calling sappy?”, Touya frowned, using the hand he was resting on the other boy’s face to pinch his cheek lightly. He looked annoyed, but Yukito knew it was only a facade; he could see all the softness around his boyfriend’s dark eyes, at the tips of his thin lips, almost imperceptibly turned upwards. And it only made him laugh even more.

Seeing Yukito like this made Touya’s frown melted into the fondest of the smiles. The urge of kissing the silver-haired boy he always feels whenever he sees his face – or thinks about him – only intensified at the that moment and Touya decided to just go for it. He leaned forward, now with both of his hand gingerly cupping Yukito’s face, bringing him closer and closer and closer, so ready to taste his lips once again, always so soft and sweet.

But the kiss never came.

“No! No! No! Rest first, kisses second!”, Yukito declared and ,with an unexpected quick movement, he turned his boyfriend around before putting his hand on his back to gently lead him to the living room.

“Yuki, what the…”

“You go rest and I’ll make some sandwiches and pour some tea for us. You can kiss me as much as you want later.”

“Fine.”, Touya agreed in defeat. It wasn’t exactly what he had planned, but it sounded good enough for him.

--

Touya took a place at the kotatsu, finishing drying his hair while listening Yukito in the kitchen preparing their snacks. He thought about offering some help to his boyfriend, but he quickly dismissed the idea; Yukito had insisted so much to him to take a rest that the boy would, for sure, kicked him out of the kitchen in no time. Without much to do, he stared at the laptop over the table, finding a paused image of what looked like an intense fight scene on its screen, and started trying to guess what this show was about.

It didn’t take much time for Touya to start feeling bored. He started darting looks at the open door, as if doing so Yukito would hurry up and come back to keep him company. He had been craving his boyfriend presence during that entire hectic week; they had had so little time to spend together these past days and Touya was eager to compensate for the lost time, for all the hugs and kisses and smiles they wasn’t able to share throughout the week.

A few more minutes had passed and Touya decided that being scolded and kicked out of the kitchen by Yukito would worth it.

However, none of it came to him.

“Ah, Toya! Great timing!”, exclaimed Yukito, his hands holding a tray piled up with half dozen  sandwiches. Resting over the sink top, another tray was waiting to be picked up, this one carrying two mugs and a steaming teapot. The sweet essence of the tea was hanging on the air, hitting Toya’s noise with the fresh smell of peaches and mint. “Can you pick the other tray, please?”

Carrying a tray each, Touya and Yukito came back to the living room and, without any waste of time, they set the table for their almost-midnight snack, sitting shoulder to shoulder under the heat of the kotatsu. Touya asked about the movie on the laptop screen and Yukito gladly talked all about it while they were eating, making sure to avoid any greater spoilers.

“That show sounds pretty cool.”, Touya said, between a bite and another. If he were being honest, he wasn’t sure if the plot of the show actually sounded that great or if it was Yukito’s enthusiasm about it that picked up his interest on it.

“If you want to, we can watch it together! I wouldn’t mind rewatching the previous episodes with you.”, his smile was so warm, so cozy when he made the offer that Touya found himself completely unable to answer anything but yes.

“Sure! Do you wanna start right now?” and the silver-haired boy didn’t need any other word to draw his laptop closer and click back on the very first episode of the series.

Rewatching the show was still pretty fun, but having Touya by his side was the best part of it. And it wasn’t only because now he had someone to share his thoughts about it. Having Touya’s arm around him, involving his body with his warmth, his scent, his strong but gentle presence, filled Yukito’s heart with the coziest of the feelings.

He felt whole. He felt safe.

He felt at home.

The same could be told about Touya. The boy could feel all the tiredness of the week melting away, leaving his shoulders lighter and his chest full of warmness and the sweetest peace. He nestled his boyfriend comfortably into his arms and rested his cheek on the top of his head, breathing slowly, absorbing Yukito’s presence and letting it impregnate his lungs, his heart, his whole being.

It was like magic; something fantastic and hard to describe, but so easy to feel – to get immerse in.

Yukito was his safe place and Touya always does his best to be the same to Yukito.

In their small, quiet world, Touya could finally feel truly relaxed, leaving all the stress and exhaustion from that long, long week behind and embrace the serenity of the moment. He allowed his body to go limp and his eyelids to get heavier and heavier, giving in to a sweet sleepiness state.

“I think we should go sleep.”, Yukito suggested, a hint of laughter in his voice. “We can watch the rest of the show tomorrow.”

Touya yawned. “Good idea.”

The taller boyfriend unwrapped his arms from around the other to stretch his body a bit, letting the silver-haired boy free to lean toward and close his laptop. But, before he could do anything else, such as get up and start cleaning up the table, Touya enlaced his waist once again, keeping him close to himself.

“Hey, don’t think I forgot about the kisses you’ve promised me!”, Touya smiled and cupped Yukito’s face with one of his hands, his thumb tenderly stroking his boyfriend’s cheek.

Yukito’s eyes lighted up like a moon finally appearing from behind a thick layer of clouds; so bright, so beautiful, so powerful against the darkness. Toya nearly lost his breath when he smiled back at him, the same smile that made him fall in love so many years ago. Sweet and vibrant. So sincere and genuine, coming from his core and growing until it blossom into his lips.

Those warm, soft lips that Touya was dying to kiss. So, that was what he did it.

Toya leaned forward and kissed Yukito exactly the way he was waiting for the whole day: slowly and affectionate, enjoying every single second of it. There was no hurry; they had all the time in the world - their private world. They could just allowed themselves to get lost in each other’s touch, to dive in each other’s warmth, in the sweetness of the other’s mouth. To Yukito, Touya’s lips had always tasted like peaches, but, somehow, they tasted especially sweet that night; he wondered if the tea they had had earlier would have something to do with that. Coincidentally, Touya found Yukito’s lips softer than ever, more tempting than ever.

“Satisfied?”, Yukito asked with a soft giggle when their lips parted. Even with their mouths parted, they kept their faces close, forehead to forehead, the tip of their noses softly brushing to the other in a loving gesture, while their bodies followed the example and still tangled in an embrace so tight that one could feel the other’s heart beating fast against their own.

“Not quite. I could have a dozen more of it, but I’m so tired right now that I think I’ll save them for tomorrow.”, as to emphasize his words, Touya closed his eyes and let his head slowly slip until it found the curve of Yukito’s neck, resting there with a content sigh. He could feel his boyfriend’s body shaking in a quiet laughter.

Yukito landed a gentle kiss on the top of Touya’s head, whispering against his dark strands: “They will be waiting for you in the morning.”

Hearing those words, Touya smiled and released the weight of his tired body over Yukito’s. Caught by surprise, the silver-haired boy’s body easily gave in with the sudden extra weight and lay down on his back with his boyfriend on his top, making both boys laugh.

Touya rested his head on Yukito’s chest and hugged his wait, while Yukito wrapped his arms around his shoulder, using one of his hands to stroke Touya’s hair in the most tender way, giving his boyfriend some pleasant goosebumps.

“We should go to bed, you know? Or we’re gonna catch a cold.”, Yukito said, but made no effort to get up or made his boyfriend to do so.

“We’ll be fine. We have the kotatsu and each other to keep ourselves warm the whole night.”, Touya’s voice was heavy with sleep, getting lower and lower with every word he said. Yukito only answer was a soft giggle and another kiss on his head.

They both felt so comfortable, so in peace resting in each other’s arms. They let the pounding of the other’s heart be their lullaby, leading them to a sweet slumber.

“Tou-ya~!”, Yukito called him with what was left of his consciousness.

“Hm?”

“Love you.”

Touya smiled to himself. “I love you, too.”

[the-silvr-speedster]

Home

Fandom: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Pairings: Daisy Johnson / Daniel Sousa

The team meets on the Zephyr for the last time before going their separate ways. Daisy reflects on the past seven years with them while trying to come to terms with losing the only home she's ever known. In the meantime, she is trying to find a way to tell Daniel about their time loop kiss, which is not such an easy task with the lack of privacy on the spaceship. Daisy also has an awful nightmare and Daniel is there to pick her back up.

Sequel to ‘About Starfish and Squares’ but can be read as a stand-alone.

Also posted on AO3.

Hey guys! 

I am soooo happy you liked my previous fanfic and since you wanted more, and I had a lot of ideas, here is Part Two. I wanted to write something short, basically, just Daisy telling Daniel about their time loop conversation and the kiss. And once again it turned out as this massive thing, even longer than Part One. I had a lot on my mind since I started rewatching the whole series again before the finale which I am equally excited and scared to watch. However it ends (and I really hope Dousy gets a happy ending) I will cry like a baby. Anyhow, thanks for the lovely comments on About Starfish and Squares on AO3, your support really helped me with finishing Part Two. I hope you will like it as well. Sorry for any mistakes. OK, so enough of my rambling. Enjoy the reading!

FYI I used a small part of the song Freaking me out by Ava Max in one section. It just felt right considering Daisy's feelings. (And I keep singing the song over and over so...)

Disclaimer: All characters are a property of Marvel and Marvel television.

Home.

What is it? What does it feel like? Is it a place or people? Daisy used to ask these questions for years. She wasn’t the only one, though. All the other children at St. Agnes orphanage were plagued by the same thoughts, the same questions. The same hopes. Every one of them hoped that one day someone would come and give them what they want. A home. It didn’t matter they didn’t know what it meant, they all wanted it. Daisy craved it. Some children believed that it wouldn’t be strangers coming through those doors but their own parents. They would open the doors, nervously step through, and explain everything. Apologize. There would be tears, there would be hugs, and hearts mended. They would take them home and forget about the past. Even Daisy imagined it, oh, so many times. She used to just sit there and hypnotize the old creaking wooden doors in the common room while other kids played. She did it so often that she remembered every crack, every deformity that could be found on them. Sometimes those doors opened and her heart leaped to her throat in expectation. Strangers came in and took her to their home but it was always over sooner than she could think of it as her home. She was back at St. Agnes and the doors were closed again. Only one time she really thought ‘this could be my home’. She had hope but even that was crushed when the family sent her back within a month. St. Agnes was her only constant. Or was she a constant at St. Agnes? Children would come and go, they would be fostered or adopted. Daisy was one of the few that would always stay. Until she had enough of it, of course.

She dropped from high school and left. No more Mary Sue Poots. How could they name her that anyway? Meet Skye, a fierce hacker. No, a hacktivist. Once again, she thought she found if not a home then at least a place she belonged to. With Miles and the Rising Tide. But now she knows that she hasn’t found a home until that day when two agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., an organization she despised for years, came knocking on the door of her van. She didn’t know home until she met Phil Coulson and his team.

She kept her eyes trained on the person in question as he was busy talking with Fitz and Mack. Well, not him, really, just an LMD version of him. She couldn’t wrap her head around it. It was him and it wasn’t him. He died. She mourned him. He was like a father to her, more of a father than her own father. No, Coulson was her dad. Or is. Or whatever. She kept coming back to their conversations during the time loops. Daisy was afraid Coulson was going to do something unexpected, like turn himself off permanently, after their mission was over. She just got him back - in a way - she couldn’t lose him again. But he didn’t and he doesn’t belong in this world anymore. Just like her, Daniel, and Deke.

Well, it’s really hard to think about Deke as someone who doesn’t belong here. He is like a tardigrade, he can survive anywhere and anytime, obviously. She is reminded of his ‘80s band, the Deke squad, again. She shakes her head, smiling. He was thriving in the ‘80s just as he was in 2019. She has no doubt he will be more than okay even now. That also has her thinking about what he’s going to “borrow” this time. First it was tech and then songs. Maybe now he will finally come up with something original. Daisy moves her eyes to him. He’s sitting next to Simmons and Diana, excitedly speaking of something, nursing a beer in a glass from Deke Squad’s official merch that he somehow managed to sneak on the Zephyr before they left the ‘80s. There were at least dozen of boxes of t-shirts, glasses, headbands, keychains, and who knows what else. Daisy has found out about it only two days ago, when Deke decided to move the boxes and managed to break the main controls panel on the bridge with one from the heavier ones.

“What the hell, Deke?” She yelled, after she reached the bridge and assessed the damage.

“It broke,” he told her innocently.

“Are you kidding me? It broke? On its own, huh? You had nothing to do with it at all, right?” Daisy stood there in the middle of the bridge, hands on her hips, scolding him like a child. She sighed. “Fix it. Before Mack comes back and sees it.”

“On it!” He called and tried to hurriedly leave the bridge but tripped over one of the boxes that were lying all around.

“Why are all these boxes up here?” Daisy came towards one of them and was about to peek inside only to be abruptly stopped by Deke. “What’s in there?”

“Nothing! Just some personal belongings,” he said maybe a little too fast.

“Oh, really?” She asked him incredulously. Daisy pushed him away and opened the box. She furrowed her brows in confusion as she saw its contents. Glasses. She moved to the next box. She took out a t-shirt. “Why do you need all of this stuff, Deke?”

“It’s Deke Squad merch! I couldn’t leave it just lying there on the base!” He defended.

Daisy looked at Daniel, who was watching their interaction with an amused expression, rolled her eyes, and then shoved the t-shirt into Deke’s hands, letting out an annoyed sigh. “Get it out of here.”

He nodded and started to move the boxes around.

“I’m going to help him,” Daniel informed her with a look that said ‘just to be sure he doesn’t break anything else’ while stepping carefully around the closest box.

“Alright,” she gave him a grateful smile. “I’m going to wake up Coulson and order some pizza.”

“Pizza for breakfast? Really?” He eyed her doubtfully. “I think I can do better than that.”

“It’s lunch already,” Deke spoke up from behind a stack of boxes.

“Why not have a pizza for breakfast?” Daisy asked with a shrug, completely ignoring Deke’s remark. “Pizza is always a great idea. Plus, you have work to do here. You can’t make us a proper breakfast.”

“It won’t take forever to put these away,” Daniel assured her while stepping closer. “I’ll be in the dining area in a few minutes and trust me I’m going to make you a breakfast sooner than they would deliver pizza.”

“Wait, did you guys just wake up or something?” Deke commented still hidden behind the boxes. But for her, it was like background noise.

Daniel was now standing in front of her fixing her in place with his eyes and giving her a small smile. She felt him take her hand in his. He brought it up to his lips and softly kissed her knuckles. Daisy could feel the so long forgotten feeling of butterflies in her stomach and tried to fight the blush creeping to her cheeks.

“Okay,” she mumbled quietly.

“I’d rather have pizza,” Deke said as he emerged from behind the fortress of boxes he just put up. Daisy quickly took her hand from Daniel’s and both of them made a step back from each other. Deke eyed them suspiciously.

“Yeah, uh, I’m going to wake Coulson up,” Daisy threw over her shoulder as she hurried away from the bridge leaving the two men behind.

Daisy thinks of that pile of lemons Deke once placed in her bunk. They really had a weird way to express affection in the postapocalyptic future he’s from, that’s for sure. Somehow that feels like a long time ago. The talk they had when she tried to explain she’s not ready to let anyone in. Not then, maybe not ever. Not after Lincoln. The pain, the guilt, and the regret she felt for so long keeping her heart locked away. Hidden and safe. The ghost of her love for him lingering deep within it. Love that remained unspoken since she never got the chance to tell him ‘I love you’. She remembers how Deke’s hope was crushed by her words. The kicked puppy expression he had on his face. Daisy didn’t want to hurt him but she didn’t want him harboring hope for something that might never be. She wonders if he still has that crush on her. ‘Most likely not,’ she told herself, a smile tugging at her lips. He moved on and somehow, she did too. What looked like an impossible thing less than two years ago, now became a reality. She has no idea how or when things changed. Maybe it was around the time she and Simmons were high on those puffies on Kitson. Maybe she needed that to happen to realize what she really wanted. To be honest with herself. She told Jemma she wants her own Fitz and the realization of what she said stayed with her even days after that, never actually leaving the back of her mind. But the planet needed to be saved again so she pushed it away and forgot about it. That memory floated back up just a few days ago. The memory of her and Jemma under that gaming table in the casino.

Daisy’s eyes flicked towards Daniel and remained on him, studying him. He and Mack took shifts at preparing the food on the grill. Now it was his turn. Meanwhile, he listened to the conversation between Mack, Fitz and Coulson and often joined in. And of course, he never forgot to send her a look or a smile, to make sure she’s okay. He was just laughing at something Fitz said, judging from Fitz’s awestruck expression they were probably grilling Daniel about his past and SSR. Daisy grinned. Fitz is going to talk his ear off. She looked at the bottle of beer she was nursing in her hands and tried to collect her thoughts. While the memory from Kitson resurfaced only a while ago, her confused feelings caught her attention during the time loops. More precisely, she realized that there is something there, that wasn’t before. There’s a heart now, where there used to be a ghost. She kissed him and remained silent about it. It freaked her out, that’s why she kept it quiet until the mission was over. She often acts on impulse and then freaks out.

Daisy let out a long breath and looked at Daniel again. She still hasn’t talked to him about their kiss in the time loops, not for the lack of trying but for the lack of privacy, among other things. The last few days were crazy.

When Daisy walked into the dining area Daniel has already started making breakfast. She’s probably spent more time talking with Coulson in the LMD lab than she thought.

“That smells amazing,” she called from the doorway.

“Told you it’s going to be good,” Daniel said over his shoulder.

She can’t exactly tell when he decided to be her personal chef but it might have started after he caught her eating breakfast for dinner one evening in the ‘80s. Who says she can’t have cereals with milk whenever she wants to?

Daisy walked closer and hopped on the counter next to him. “Hmm, pancakes are the best,” she agreed while jabbing her finger in the pancake batter and tasting it.

“Oh, no. No eating the batter, young lady,” Daniel scolded her with a teasing grin while he took the bowl away from her.

“Hey, don’t be such a grandpa about it,” she said, pretending to be offended. “What’s that?” She pointed towards a bubbling dark purple mass in another pot.

“That’s a sauce made from forest fruit mix I found in the freezer with a few secret ingredients I won’t disclose,” he winked at her.

“Someone’s being secretive,” she teased. “It looks delicious.” Daisy leaned over the pot and took a deep breath. “I can smell some cinnamon, hmm…maybe few drops of vanilla extract…a drop of love…” She paused, opening one eye, spying on Daniel’s reaction. He was giving her an amused look.

“Now, why would I use a love potion?” He teased back with a smirk.

Daisy regained her sitting position and dramatically sighed while pretending to be occupied by looking at her nails. “Yeah, you are right. You don’t need one.” It took her a moment to realize what she has just said. Better yet, what underlying meaning those words held. Her breath caught in her throat and she carefully looked up at him. Daniel had that soft look on his face again. That look she always wants to kiss away. She had to look at her hands. “I mean you are so likable. Everyone here likes you,” she babbled quickly.

“I don’t make pancakes for everyone,” he told her softly and she had to look up at him again. Those warm honest eyes. Suddenly she’s back in the time loop. ‘And you…you’d like to…be that someone?’ ‘Not for everyone.’ Oh, God. She has to tell him. Right now.

Well, in the hindsight…She never should’ve distracted him while he was making pancakes.

“You guys are making a smoke grenade or something?” Coulson spoke up the same moment the both of them noticed the burning pancake batter on the pan.

Everyone came back to the Zephyr to say the last goodbye. And by everyone, she means even Andrew, whom May has dragged along after long hours of explaining to him why his wife is a different person from the one he came to know over the years. Telling him she has empathic abilities. She also mentioned that he is Inhuman and their daughter might be as well. It must’ve been an interesting conversation. Daisy would’ve liked to see it.

With all those people coming on board, the spaceship started to become more and more crowded. It’s not that she wouldn’t be happy to have all of them here again after a few days of it being just her, Daniel and Coulson, but she kind of misses the privacy it provided. Maybe that’s why she is tucked away in a corner alone, watching over all of them. Her team. No, not a team. A family. Because teams break apart, families not so much. They always stay together, even if it’s from afar. A family never gives up on you. Well, maybe some families do, some are messed up like that. ‘Like my biological family,’ she thinks. But not this family. They never gave up on her. Yes, there were some initial reservations after she got her powers, but Coulson has never given up on her. Not when she chose the Afterlife over her family in S.H.I.E.L.D.. Not when she broke more than just their hearts after being infected by Hive. Not when she walked away them to become a vigilante after Lincoln sacrificed for her, because of her mistakes. Definitely, not when she started to believe she’s the Destroyer of Worlds. They gave her a chance after chance. They let her grow. She is not the same person she was almost seven years ago. She is not that wide-eyed girl living in her van being obsessed with superheroes and revealing the truth to the world. Skye died in that Kree temple and Daisy Johnson has been born. Or did she? Daisy likes to believe that a small part of Skye is still left somewhere inside of her. She liked Skye. She may have been naïve, but she wasn’t burdened by that darkness Daisy has inside. By those demons and nightmares.

“A time loop?” Daniel asks her.

“Fun, right?” Daisy comments with a sigh, her eyes scanning through the contents of the drawer… ‘Wait, what?’ She looks up confused. They are back in the time storm. ‘No. No, no, no…no. Not again.’ “Daniel? What the hell is-” She starts to say but he cuts her off.

“This is why I wanted to stay with this team. Do you ever have a day when something crazy doesn’t happen?” Daniel asks a little too excited.

“It’s been a while.” She speaks involuntarily. “Hey! Daniel?!” She waves her hands frantically in front of him. He doesn’t notice it.

“Reminds me of my SSR days,” he tells her, nostalgic smile on his lips.

“We just need to get that implant out,” she says and decides to just take the scanner but Daniel stops her.

“Wait! It’s a trap,” he warns her.

“But we don’t know that yet.” Daisy looks at him confused. ‘Why would I say that? We know it’s a trap. This…this has already happened.’

“We do. You said somebody obviously went to the drawer and…,” he pauses. “Simmons was supposed to get the scanner, right?”

“Yeah, until I told her I was gonna do it.” Daisy looks around as the lights start to flicker. ‘Something doesn’t feel right,’ she thinks.

“Every attempt so far has been on Simmons. She’s the one they’re trying to kill,” Daniel says looking at her.

“Maybe, but we still need the scanner.” ‘Oh.’ He’s gonna take it. She can’t let him do it again. She reaches for the scanner but her hand goes right through it. ‘What?’ Fear starts to settle in her bones.

“Right, but if I die, I’ll just, you know…reset. No problem. If you die, you’ll lose your memories and waste all this time relearning everything. Time, we don’t have,” Daniel explains and reaches into the drawer without a second thought, grabbing the scanner.

“What are you doing? This is crazy!” She says trying to move from her place but to no avail.

“This is my purpose. I know that know,” he tells her a flicker of blue in the brown of his eyes. His voice is getting weird. Muffled, like by a static on a radio…

She tries to look around for something, anything to help her take at least one step closer to him so she could take that scanner from him. ‘Something is way off.’

“Why would you-”

“To make sure this worked. To make sure you didn’t try this yourself,” he cuts her off and when she looks up it’s not Daniel standing there anymore, but-

“Lincoln? What…” She pauses, looking at him in shock. He’s wearing the same S.H.I.E.L.D. jacket he had back then. Yo-Yo’s necklace is hanging from his fist. His face is bloody and his blue eyes are piercing through hers. “It was supposed to be me,” she mumbles quietly, tears running down her cheeks. “You should’ve let me die!”

Lincoln gives her a sorrowful smile. “I would never let you die.” His voice is echoing around her. She can feel its vibrations in her bones. “So, it’s fine,” he mutters, a little surprised, looking at the scanner in his hand.

“No! It’s not. Let go of it!” She screams hopelessly. “You can’t just die for me like this. This is wrong!”

Suddenly she hears a weird sound coming from the scanner and Lincoln lets out a groan. A shadow of confusion crosses his face. However, as he leans back against the table he fades in and out like the flickering light above them and finally changes back into Daniel.

“Sousa?!” Daisy calls to him. “Daniel!” He looks up at her with fear in his eyes, blood spilling from his mouth. “No!”

“Hey, hey, hey, Sousa,” her body finally lets her move close to him as he starts slipping to the ground. She tries to lower him more carefully until he sits down. “Hey, Daniel, look at me. It’s gonna be okay,” she tells him, a quiet sob breaking her voice. “It’s gonna reset. You’ll be fine.” She sits down next to him and let him lay down on her lap.

“Why is it taking so long!” She yells into the empty ship. Daisy cups his cheek with one hand and strokes his dark hair with the other one. “Please, stay with me,” she whispers almost inaudibly. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The time loop has to reset. It always does!” A stray tear drops on Daniel’s forehead. “Please,” she begs, sobbing. “Daniel!” But he doesn’t hear her anymore.

She watched hopelessly as the last light slipped away from his eyes. She could feel how his heart gave its last weak beat. He was gone. He died for her just like Lincoln did.

Suddenly she feels too much. She feels every vibration around her, but not those she needs to feel. Those of his heartbeat. It’s like her own heart is trying to beat for them both, picking up speed until everything around her shakes. But she doesn’t care anymore. Panic and pain are clawing at her chest making her breathless.

She sees her mom, lying there lifeless after Malick snapped her neck. She sees Enoch. She sees Lincoln floating in midair. Lash. Her mother again. Triplett…The room is becoming filled with bodies of those she cared about but had to die because of her.

“It has to reset,” she mumbles weakly. “It has to reset. It has to reset. It has to reset.” Daisy closes her eyes and hugs Daniel closer.

Daisy.

“Lumley said that we should stay the hell away from you.”

She looks up at the sound of that voice. It’s Coulson. The real one.

“I had a chance at healing up from this,” he points to his chest, “but I gave the serum to you.”

Daisy.

“He said that wherever you go, death follows.”

Daisy!

“He was right.”

Daisy!!

Wake up!

*******************************************************************************************

The plane was shaking. Daniel woke up in his bunk with a start. At first, he thought they are taking off somewhere but that didn’t make sense. None of the four of them knew how to pilot the Zephyr. Daisy managed to fly the quinjet on her first try back in the ‘80s, but that-

Then it hit him. “Daisy!” Those are her quakes…

He jumped out of the bed and stormed into the corridor where he almost collided with Coulson.

“Where’s Daisy?” He asked him worriedly.

“Hey, guys? What’s going on?” A very sleepy Deke looked out from the door of his bunk. “Why is everything shaking? Are we going somewhere?”

“She is in her bunk,” Coulson informed him ignoring Deke completely and Daniel didn’t waste any second standing there as he hurried towards Daisy’s bunk. “I was going through the supplies when this started. I was just about to go check on her. She’s probably having a nightmare.”

Daniel stopped before her doors and faced Coulson with a concerned look in his eyes. “Nightmares cause her to quake?”

“Only the really bad ones. Actually, she didn’t have an episode like this in forever,” he explained with a mixture of sadness and worry. “I think you should check on her.”

Daniel was about to ask him if he’s really okay with it being him but the plane was hit by another strong quake and the light started to flicker above them. He gave a nod to Coulson and opened the doors to Daisy’s bunk.

Daisy was lying mostly still, the only evidence of her discomfort being her tear-streaked cheeks, the way she was grasping at the blanket and her rapid breathing. It physically hurt Daniel to see her like that. So strong and yet so vulnerable.

“It has to reset. It has to reset,” she started mumbling from the dream and another wave of tears slipped from under her eyelids. “It has to reset. It has to reset!”

Daniel was at her side in a second, wiping the tears away from her face and caressing her hair.

“Daisy,” he tried softly.

“It’s about the time loops.” He heard Coulson comment from the doorway.

“Daisy,” Daniel tried again, carefully cupping her face in his hands.

Another, even stronger quake hit the plane. Daniel heard something clatter to the ground and another distinct sound of a breaking glass somewhere in the dining area. He looked around just in time to see Coulson leaving to assess the damage, followed closely by Deke. He turned his focus back to the still sleeping woman.

“Daisy!” He tried more loudly this time.

She whimpered.

“Daisy!! Wake up!”

Her eyes snapped open with a loud gasp. She shot up into sitting position, the unexpected movement almost making him fall from the side of her bed. She was looking around in bewilderment, gasping for air.

“It’s okay,” Daniel told her with a calming voice, his hands going to her face again, forcing her to look at him. “You are safe. It was just a dream.”

“D- Daniel?” Daisy mumbled. Her brown eyes meeting his. They held so much pain and fear.

“Yeah,” he gave her an encouraging smile, his thumb gently stroking her cheek. “I’m here. But Daisy, you have to stop quaking.”

The shaking stopped suddenly. She raised her hand from her lap and softly put it on his chest, right above his heart. He saw a flash of relief on her face before it was replaced by guilt. She looked down.

“Hey! Don’t feel guilty about this. The plane survived a time storm, this was nothing,” he spoke calmingly.

“Is everyone okay?” She asked him quietly.

‘Of course, she would worry about everyone else but herself,’ Daniel thought to himself. He gently raised her chin so she would meet his eyes again.

“Yes,” he assured her. However, the moment he looked into her eyes he saw they no longer held pain or fear or guilt. They were just…empty.

“Daisy?” He started softly. “Do you, uh… Do you want to talk about it?”

She considered it for a moment but then shook her head and let her hand fall from his chest back to her lap, her eyes following.

“Okay. You don’t have to.” Daniel let his hands drop from her face and moved further back to give her some space.

She was sitting there quietly, her long hair cascading around her face, hiding it from him. Daniel realized that the silence is even worse than her quiet sobs while she was still asleep. He wanted to help her somehow but he didn’t want to push her further away by insisting on talking about it. He considered leaving, because maybe she just needed more space but he didn’t want to leave her alone. She shouldn’t be alone not if the nightmare was so bad that it caused quakes.

Daniel thought about what Coulson has said. ‘Was it really about the time loops?’ She hasn’t told him much about what happened in there. He knew only the general stuff Coulson and Daisy told the whole team about after Enoch’s sacrifice. They’ve been in there for a long time, finding a way how to save everyone almost at the last second. Nobody else remembered but the two of them, probably because of their sleeping pods. Some members of the team died during the time loops because Enoch was programmed to kill if anyone tried to remove Simmons’s memory blocking implant. Was her nightmare about that? Possibly. It would give nightmares to anyone.

“Do you want me to leave?” He decided that at least he should give her the option even if he wanted to stay.

She quickly looked at him, a flash of panic crossing her soft features. A clear ‘No’ to him. But then she composed herself and looked away.

“Yes,” she whispered almost inaudibly.

He raised an eyebrow and sighed. She is not making this easy at all.

“I think I’ll stay anyway,” Daniel exclaimed.

“I told you to go,” she looked up at him a light annoyance on her face.

“See, you tell me to leave but you don’t actually want that,” he gave her a small smile.

“How do you know what I want, huh?” She asked him, anger seeping into her voice. “I want to be alone.” Daisy moved further away from him.

“Honestly?” He sighed looking at his hands and then back at her. “I know people like you. Focused on the greater good, even at your own expense. You want people to think you like being alone, even though you always end up back with friends,” Daniel told her and met her eyes again. The annoyance was gone. She was looking at him with a mixture of shock and…surprise? He decided to push his luck further. “You all keep running at the problem full tilt until you either solve it or slam headlong into a brick wall. But you don’t have to deal with the aftermath alone, even though you think so. You should have someone there to pick you back up. Someone to help you unload that burden or share its weight.”

Daisy closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. Few tears escaped from her eyes and she frantically wiped them away. She laughed, but it was a sad laugh.

“I am trying to be angry at you but I can’t. Not after…after you say…that,” she spoke. “You know, we had a very similar conversation in the time loops.”

Daniel raised his brows in surprise but decided to stay quiet and let her continue.

Daisy sniffled. “I asked why you are always there, whether to help me or watch over me, and you gave me the speech you just did. Again.” She looked at him in curiosity. “So, uh, you want to be that person for people like me?”

Daniel gave her a small meaningful smile. “Yes. But not for everyone.”

“You said that, too,” she smiled sadly. “You are right, you know. I…I want you to stay. But I also want you to go. My life’s a mess. I…People I care about tend to get hurt…,” she took a deep breath and added very quietly, “…or worse.”

“Daisy-” Daniel started to say but was cut off.

“I have demons. My past is…” she shrugged and wiped her tears away again.

“We all have skeletons in our closets,” Daniel told her. “I am not scared of yours.”

“You should be,” she murmured.

“Let me be the judge of that. One day. When you are ready.” He decided to risk moving a tiny bit closer and taking her hand in his. He looked into her eyes so she would see that he really means every word he says. “I am not going anywhere.”

For a brief moment, he could see the fight in her eyes. But it was there just for a few seconds. New tears ran down her cheeks but she made no move to wipe them away this time. She moved closer instead and hugged him, burying her face in the crook of his neck.

Daniel’s arms sneaked around her waist pulling her close. He could feel her tears seeping through his shirt. He sighed and when she let out a muffled sob, he comfortingly stroked her back.

“They are all leaving,” she said between sobs. “I’ve never thought it would come to this. They are the only family I’ve ever known.”

His heart ached for her. “And they will never stop being your family. Families change, grow, their members go their separate ways but always come back together.” It made him think of his own family, of his home. He couldn’t even say goodbye and will never see them again. He lost it all in a blink of an eye. But he was supposed to be dead and now he got a second chance at life. As Coulson said - a life after death.

“I know,” she mumbled. “But it won’t be the same.”

“No, it won’t,” Daniel whispered into her hair.

Daisy let out a yawn.

“Maybe you should try to rest a bit more,” he suggested.

She leaned back and he could see the uncertainty mixed with fear in her eyes. She was scared of the nightmares. “Will you hold me? I promise I won’t quake you out of the bed,” she gave him a small teasing grin.

“Whatever you want, Quake,” he teased back and she caught the collar of his shirt and pulled him down with her.

*******************************************************************************************

Daisy knows now that she can’t let her demons stand in the way of her happiness. Those demons are in the past but will always be a part of her. A part she will share with Daniel one day, as well as he will share his own demons. Yes, she is scared that she could lose him like Lincoln but a small part of her has a hope that it won’t happen this time.

‘We are going home.’ Four simple words Daniel said to her in that barn. Words that kept her fighting. Back there it was just a promise to make it back to the Zephyr, because where was home? Her only home were the people on board the Zephyr, her team and family. Where was home for Daniel? She couldn’t ask him then. They plucked him out of his time, his home.

Maybe she is losing her family in some way but maybe she will gain something else. Her own Fitz. Maybe, she already has.

‘We are going home.’ It could be a promise of something else. Now those words could mean more. She can feel that warm fuzzy feeling in her chest when she thinks about it. When she thinks about him. She smiled, her eyes fixed on Daniel as she took a sip from her beer.

“Just kiss him already,” May spoke up from beside her.

Daisy choked and slapped her hand over her mouth to prevent herself from spitting the beer out. She coughed a few times and May hit her on the back.

Privacy. She misses it.

“May! What the hell?!” She exclaimed annoyed and berated herself for not realizing that May sneaked up on her. And her feelings. ‘Shit.’ She gave her a glare.

“Just saying,” the older woman shrugged. “You know, there are bets going around on when you two finally become a couple. Officially. They refused to let me participate because of my empathic powers.”

Daisy groaned and rolled her eyes. “Mack and Yo-Yo already had one bet when we were in the ‘80s. Not sure what it was exactly about but Mack won,” she shrugged thinking that it may have been about the kiss. “You guys are the worst; one doesn’t have any privacy.”

“We are just happy to see you smiling like that. To see you happy again,” she patted her on the arm. “But please, do something about it already because this…tension is killing me.”

“I was going to, but as I said, there is no privacy on this spaceship with all of you here,” Daisy defended her lack of actions. She really wanted to tell him the morning after he stayed with her because of that awful nightmare but Mack and Yo-yo were already back and they probably heard about that nightmare from Coulson because they both wanted to go check on her which ended up in Coulson calling after them: “I strongly advise you not to go there.” She could hear their ‘Why?’ followed by a surprised ‘Oh!’ from Mack. She remembers as she quickly shot out of the bed, Daniel’s confused ‘Daisy?’ following her. She rushed into the corridor with ‘I am fine, thank you’, closing her bunk behind her and added: “No weird assumptions are needed.” The three teammates were looking at her in amusement.

“Yeah, everyone is here, as in here and not there,” May pointed at the bridge since they were all in the cargo bay with the ramp lowered down.

Daisy considered what May was proposing but quickly refused the idea by shaking her head. “Nope.” She could already see the faces of everyone after she and Daniel would be seen leaving the bridge together.

“You can’t wait to get rid of us, can you?” May teased.

“Maybe,” she snickered. “At least I’ll spare him from the if-you-ever-hurt-her threats from you guys.”

“Mack already beat us to it,” May gave her an amused smile.

“Oh God,” Daisy facepalmed.

“While you were on the way to save Simmons and Deke,” the older spy added mischievously.

“What?! But that was a week ago… Oh,” she sighed when she realized that Mack was very quick to do it after she told him about the time loop kiss. But she wasn’t even sure what to do about it back then. Or was she? Why everyone around her seems to know her better then she does? And more importantly - what else did he say to Daniel? She looked towards where both men stood, chatting over the grill.

“Uh, I should probably go check on what they are discussing now,” Daisy said and finished the rest of her beer.

“Go mingle. After all who knows when we get the chance to be together like this,” May smiled sadly and she, too, went to join the others.

Daisy watched her go for a short moment, set the empty bottle on a table, and walked over towards Daniel and Mack.

“Hey, guys. What do you have there? I’m starving.”

*******************************************************************************************

The team spent the rest of the evening and the beginning of the night by sharing their memories, laughing and teasing each other. They remembered their fallen friends and maybe even cried a little. Nobody wanted to be the first to leave. They all knew that when they do leave, it will be the end of their journey as a team. Eventually, Fitz and Simmons decided to go first since their daughter was already sleeping curled up in Jemma’s lap. Fitz said his goodbyes and took still sleeping Diana into the car.

“You know, this isn’t a goodbye,” Jemma told Daisy with shaking voice, tears running down her cheeks. “It’s see you soon.”

“I know,” Daisy sniffled and wrapped her best friend, no, her sister, in a bear hug.

“It would be lovely if we lived close to each other. Diana needs her auntie Daisy,” Jemma mumbled into her shoulder.

“Yeah. That would be great,” Daisy smiled through tears. “I am so happy for you, Simmons. You have Fitz and Diana, your little family,” she moved her hands to Jemma’s shoulders to look her in the eyes. “I know you’ll be okay and that makes this all a little less painful. You won’t be alone.”

The scientist chuckled. “You won’t be alone either,” she said and looked sideways at Daniel, who hovered nearby watching over Daisy, to make her point.

Daisy let out a soft laugh.

“It’s so good to see you this happy again. So, what are you guys planning?” Jemma asked her with a grin.

Daisy shrugged. “I thought that maybe I can take him on a small trip to show him how the world changed. After that…,” she sighed, “I honestly don’t know. I guess we both need to find out where we belong in this new timeline.”

“You’ll figure it out. Together. I’m sure of it,” Jemma told her comfortingly and hugged her again. “I love you, Daisy.”

“I love you too, Jemma.”

After Fitz-Simmons departed, the others left one or two at a time. Mack and Yo-yo were the last ones, leaving almost in the morning hours. Coulson decided to go with them, which really surprised Daisy since the possibility of him leaving too didn’t cross her mind. But as he said, every one of them needs to find a place in this new world and he is not an exception. He assured her he won’t be gone for long.

“It’s just a trip,” he said. “And take care of each other,” he added over his shoulder as he was walking down the ramp.

She stood there, looking after them until she could no longer see the lights of the car. Just like that, they were all gone.

A fresh morning breeze played with her hair. Daisy shuddered. She has heard Daniel walking down the ramp before he put a jacket around her shoulders. She didn’t even realize he went inside to grab it for her.

“Thank you.” She wiped at her tear-streaked cheeks and smiled, not yet looking at him.

“It’s nothing, but you are welcome,” he replied as he stood next to her.

He was so close she could feel the warmth of his shoulder on her own. She could feel the vibrations of his heartbeat. Her hand brushed against his and he took hold of it, their fingers intertwining. That touch grounded her in the moment and place. It assured her that she is not alone. Daisy let out a long content sigh. She knew that now was her time. They were finally alone.

“I need to tell-” she turned to face him but was cut off midsentence after Daniel crossed those few inches between them and pulled her in for a soft kiss. It was short but it caught her off guard. His right hand was still holding hers and his left cupped her cheek. She briefly opened her eyes to look into his and she thought she’s going to drown in that dark chocolate. Whatever she wanted to say was long lost with only one thought on her mind. Daisy leaned in and kissed him back, both her hands grabbing at the collar of his shirt to pull him closer, while his arms snaked around her waist. This kiss was different than the previous one. It was like finally getting a glass of water after dying of thirst in a desert. It was urgent and it left them both breathless. They remained close afterward, trying to catch their breaths. Daisy was beaming and Daniel was looking at her like she was the most precious beautiful thing he has ever seen.

“That was much nicer than our first kiss,” she told him quietly with a playful smile tugging at her lips.

Daniel frowned in confusion. “This was our first kiss.”

“Hmm, not for me,” she hummed, moving her right hand from his neck to his chest. She could see the moment when it hit him.

“The time loops. You kissed me in the time loops,” he said with a light chuckle and shook his head in disbelief.

“Why do you think it was me?” She asked with a gasp and smiled at him teasingly.

“And am I wrong?” He smirked smugly while he stroked her back.

It sent shivers down her spine and she had to force herself to concentrate. “Nope. But you, Mr. Sousa, kissed me back,” Daisy disclosed and pinched him in the chest.

“Hmm, that’s not fair. I don’t remember that,” he gave her a sad look.

“I can make you remember,” she whispered as she caught his face in her hands and brought it down to hers to kiss him again, exactly like in the time loops. Daniel responded to her kiss by pulling her even closer. One hand cupped his cheek and the other sneaked around his neck. She pulled away too soon for his liking.

“It was like this,” she whispered, her hands dropping to his chest.

“Nice,” he smiled. “But short.”

“Oh! So, that was too short for you, huh? We were plummeting towards certain death and needed to trap Enoch,” she told him exasperatedly. “You, Danny-boy are lucky I found the time even for that short kiss.”

Daniel laughed and eventually, Daisy joined in.

“You were so cute. With that soft expression on your face after the kiss. It took everything within me to stop myself from kissing you again,” she admitted while playing with a button on his shirt.

“Were you going to tell me about it?” He wondered.

“I was about to tell you before you kissed me, so…” Daisy shrugged and smiled at him sweetly.

“Hmm, I can do that again,” Daniel offered and his eyes darkened a bit.

“Yes, please,” she breathed.

*******************************************************************************************

Daisy and Daniel were sitting on the cargo bay ramp which gave them a nice view of the horizon. They weren’t really that tired and neither wanted to move from that spot after they exchanged a few more kisses. They sat down and Daisy cuddled into his side. It’s been so long that she watched a sunrise. A start of a new day. The beginning of something new.

“We can’t live on a plane,” Daniel said thoughtfully. “We need a proper place to call home.”

Daisy smiled and slowly looked at him, her eyes roaming over every small detail of his face lighted by the rising sun. His features were relaxed and peaceful. She wanted to imprint this face into her memory to keep it forever.

The words ‘we’ and ‘us’ and the meaning they held used to freak her out. But with Daniel, it’s somehow different. She is not scared of them, on the contrary, hearing them warms her heart. She sighed.

“What?” He asked her, a questioning smile playing on his lips as his eyes melted into hers.

Daisy leaned in and planted a short but sweet peck on his lips. Then she pushed herself back to look at him again, enjoying the soft almost dazed expression on his face.

“I like the sound of that,” she said in a low voice, giving him a lopsided grin.

“Sound of what?”

“Home.”

How am I gonna live my life without this TV show? Without Dousy? I guess we are all gonna meet here to scream after the finale, so see you then! I’ll have to wait until Thursday evening, though.

[takerfoxx]

Coming to Terms with Homura Akemi, My (Formerly) Least Favorite PMMM Character

Or, How I Learned to Stop Whinging and Love the Emo Meguca!

I have a…complicated history with my favorite anime’s main character (and yes, Homura is the main character. Madoka might be the title character and the show’s POV protagonist, but like most things in this series, that was a clever ruse, and it’s really more about Homura’s journey than Madoka’s). The first time I watched the show, I walked away feeling kind of ambivalent toward her, even mildly hostile. And that’s weird, right? I mean, just look at her! Look how her character arc plays out! She was practically grown in a lab to be my favorite! And you know what? In pretty much any other series she would have been my favorite, no doubt. She would have been a first pick Fav of the Day, the starring character in whatever fanfic I wrote about it, etc. But since the show she premiered in is anything but traditional, the way I eventually came to love each character turned out to be a little…unorthodox.

Now, I’ve gone over most of this before, so sing along if you know the words. My first time watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica went a little something like this:

Episode 1: Blue funny, Pink cute, Yellow badass, Purple mysterious.

Episode 2: Blue favorite, Pink alright, Yellow probably evil, Purple mysterious.

Episode 3: Yellow’s not evil after all, and now is the dead. My bad.

Episode 4: Pink getting all fucked up, SOMEONE SAVE BLUE!

Episode 5: Hate Red for attacking Blue. Kick her ass, Purple!

Episode 6: Still hate Red.

Episode 7: FUCK YOU, BUNNYCAT! Red’s not so bad after all. But someone save Blue!

Episode 8: Aw, hell no, Purple! You don’t threaten Blue like that! You go, Red! You’re pretty cool after…oh shit. BLUE, NO!

Episode 9: GO RED! GO PINK! SAVE BLUE! YOU CAN DO IT, I BELIEVE IN…no.

Episode 10-12: Stuff is still happening with the plot, but I no longer care. My heart has been shattered, all light has gone from the world. My babies are gone. If only they had more time together, if only there was someplace they could reunite, really get to know one another, and go on adventures together…huh.

So yeah, that’s the story of how I fully got on board the KyoSaya train. Obviously, writing Resonance Days only solidified that, and coming across A Happy Dream by angel0wonder, AKA the potato lady AKA @smxmuffinpeddling (wazzup?!?!), pretty much cemented it as my top reigning OTP.

Now, obviously I got invested in the whole story as time went by. Subsequent rewatchings of the show, mainly through convincing people to watch it blind so I can laugh at them when they get to certain scenes (don’t hate, y’all did it too!) and taking part in online discussions really got me into the show as a whole instead of just being confined in my little KyoSaya bubble. But coming to love the other characters for their own merits took some time.

Mami was next. I’ll be honest, I just didn’t care all that much for her during my first watching, mainly due to believing that she would turn out to be evil for the first couple of episodes (I blame Disney and their recent trend of turning almost every kindly mentor/confidante figure into the bad guy lately), and me being more surprised that I was wrong when she died instead of being shocked that she was killed. Again, had nothing against her, that was just my reaction the first time around. However, she was included in Resonance Days because it felt like the logical thing to do, and she turned out to be so much fun to write for that I really came to love and care for her character in general, and her relationship with Charlotte ended up becoming one of my favorite parts of that story.

Madoka honestly took more time. I think the main reason I wasn’t all that invested in her is that she was pretty passive in the series proper while my attention was more on the more proactive side characters. And again, this wasn’t a bad thing! In fact, it was a clever bit of deliberate storytelling, as it’s revealed that she originally was a proactive main-character type, only to unintentionally get relegated to her observer role by the butterfly effect caused by Homura’s time loops. But anyway, the thing that made me turn the corner on Madoka actually also ended up being fanfiction, but not one of my own. Specifically, I came across a popular, yet also somewhat controversial, fic called Persephone’s Waltz (and wazzup, @erinptah!), in which Homura decides to just stop beating around the bush and lock Madoka up in a basement until Walpurgisnacht had passed. And as weird as it sounds, making Madoka a prisoner actually gave her more agency, as the fic really went into detail about the psychological effects of being a kidnapping victim, from the strange rituals to the escape attempts to coping strategies to Stockholm Syndrome to bouts of depression and so on and so forth, all the while never deviating from her core character. It really got me rooting for Madoka and, by extension, invested in her character in canon as well.

That just left Homura.

By then, I had gotten over being a little sore at her for trying to kill Sayaka that one time, and I was interested in where her actions would take the plot. I just wasn’t interested in her, per se, as I hadn’t had an icebreaker moment like I had with the other characters.

And then The Rebellion Story happened.

The Rebellion Story: PMMM’s End of Evangelion

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is often compared its nearly two decade-old predecessor, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and not without reason. Like Evangelion, it took a genre mainly known to be fun and kid-friendly (giant mechs for Evangelion and magical girls for PMMM) and turned it on its head, resulting in a brutal and twisted deconstruction that would end up altering the direction that genre would take for years to come. The key difference is that Evangelion’s brilliance was in many ways an accident, with the bizarre places it went being largely informed both by its troubled production and its showrunner’s personal demons staying bottled up through the early part of the show but letting them loose later on, whereas PMMM was meticulously constructed from top to bottom to become the hand-grenade to the genre that it would become. But in the end, the effects were the same. They even both had a follow-up movie that was not originally supposed to happen that ended up being highly divisive among fans due to the shots they took at the fandom that had sprung up around the original series, even if The Rebellion Story wasn’t nearly as spiteful as End of Evangelion was.

Now, I’ve already gone into at length about how PMMM brutally dissects and deconstructs the Magical Girl genre, and it did it so thoroughly that the genre itself was totally wrenched in a new direction, much like Evangelion did to the Giant Mecha genre. But after you’ve completely taken apart the genre in your first season, where exactly do you go? How do you continue when your work is seemingly done?

The answer: deconstruct yourself.

Much as Puella Magi Madoka Magica went after the Magical Girl genre, The Rebellion Story went after the fandom that had sprung up in the original show’s wake. The first third of the movie gives the fans what they claimed they wanted: a traditional Magical Girl reimagining of PMMM where everyone is alive and working together, everyone is mentally and emotionally healthy, the two fan-favorite ships are just a kiss away from being canon, Kyubey is now a cute and silent mascot that helps out instead constantly manipulating everyone around him, and even the most popular witch is back as a benevolent secondary mascot in a happy friendship with the character she had killed. We see Madoka and the Moemura version of Homura being adorable together, we see Kyoko and Sayaka goofing off, we see Mami cuddling with Charlotte with nary a head-chomp in sight, we see everyone being just being friends and protecting the city from weird but essentially non-threatening monsters. It is basically the summation of a hundred fanfics that had been posted between the end of the show and the release of the movie.

But this is still PMMM, and something is not quite right.

We all know what happens next. Homura starts subconsciously noticing that something is off, she gradually becomes Terminator Homura as she investigates the situation and regains her memories, and the perfect happy world is exposed for the farce that it is. Things collapse, and the truth is revealed: Homura had become a witch that had been trapped inside her own soul gem, those close to her had been lured in to complete the illusion, and of course it is all Kyubey’s fault. Because this is PMMM, and Homura doesn’t get to be happy.

But the movie doesn’t stop with that reveal. Once we learn the truth, it changes targets. It stops deconstructing the fans, and instead goes after something else.

It starts to deconstruct Homura Akemi, its own main character.

Despite her promise to continue fighting on in Madoka’s name to protect the slightly more kind world her beloved had created, Homura had found herself unable to cope without Madoka. Her mission had failed, and without that stabilizing force, despair had slowly crept in, corrupting her from within, to the point where (I believe at least) she had been fighting not to honor Madoka, but in hopes that she would fall in battle and be carried off by her goddess. She had been fighting not in hopes of building a better world, but as a way to seek release from her pain. She had been miserable in Madoka’s new world, even moreso than she had been during her time loops.

And because she had been foolish enough to tell the truth to Kyubey, the little rat had taken the opportunity to use her to set a trap. Madoka had been pulled out of Heaven right into the Incubators’ clutches, and it was all her fault.

Is it any wonder that she had been unwilling to accept Madoka’s salvation during the climatic battle? Is it any wonder that her own labyrinth had featured her own familiars dragging her away to her own execution? Homura hated herself. She hated what she had become, she hated what she had allowed to happen, she hated that she had failed so utterly and completely.

In fact, I’d say that this movie shows something about Homura that I don’t think a lot of people will appreciate me pointing out, and that is as much as Homura was single-mindedly devoted to Madoka, she never really came to know her. I mean, how could she? She only knew Madoka over the course of a few of a few infatuated weeks the first time around, which she then repeated over and over and over again, becoming increasingly traumatized over time. I don’t doubt that her devotion to Madoka is real, but The Rebellion Story does seem to suggest that after a while she was fixated on Madoka as an ideal rather than Madoka as an actual person, something to be protected and possessed rather than as a living, breathing person with her own autonomy.

Now, am I saying that Homura is a bad person and that anyone who felt inspired by her resilience and devotion is wrong? Of course not. Am I saying that anyone that ships MadoHomu is bad, promoting toxic relationships, etc.? Hell no! What I’m saying is that due to everything she’s been forced to endure and fight again, she is a very mentally unhealthy individual, one who is in desperate need of help. And if an actual relationship between her and Madoka is going to realistically work, well, first something  drastic will have to happen to upset her new system and give Madoka her power back, but Homura is also going to need tons of therapy.

As I said before, Homura’s decision to rip Madoka out of the Law of Cycles and turn herself into Homucifer has been pretty controversial, with many people claiming that it betrayed her characterization. To those people, I would say that they never really knew the real Homura Akemi. The show set up an idealized version of Homura, and people had that ideal imprinted in their mind. And I can’t really blame them for that. The show ended on a big, optimistic moment with Homura making a big speech about how she was going to keep fighting in Madoka’s name. It’s all very stirring, and I can’t fault anyone who would feel betrayed by their Homura acting against that promise.

But as a sadistic bastard in another dark show that is now also very controversial once said, “If you think this story has a happy ending, then you clearly haven’t been paying attention.”

Homura Akemi Did Everything Wrong, and It’s Okay to Admit That

Even though The Rebellion Story got me interested in seeing where the whole Homucifer vs. Godoka thing would go, I still wasn’t all that invested in Homura as a person. I was entrenched too deep in my KyoSaya world, and everything outside of that was just so much plot. Most of my focus was on Resonance Days, which just didn’t involve her at all.

It took years, but three things finally cracked me out of that shell. The first was writing Walpurgis Nights, of course. Granted, Homulilly was more of a Moemura than Homucifer, but that story really made me dive deep into her innate insecurities, to explore her struggles with self-loathing and her reliance on Madoka for any kind of validation.

The second was watching through a few blind reactions to the series, seeing how other people reacted to her character and the things that they picked up that I had missed. One thing in particular stood out to me: during Homura and Madoka’s first meeting in episode ten, Homura is actually shocked when Madoka casually addresses her by her first name, as no one ever called her by her first name.

And the third might get me some hate, but it was through coming across this little video:

Now, like many things I’ve discussed in this post, this video has been pretty polarizing, with some people outright hating it and labeling it as slanderous character bashing. The clickbaity title certainly doesn’t help, and I can’t say I agree with all of its points. But the video really isn’t the character-bashing piece that it might seem like. Rather, it’s as much a deconstruction of a character that has been heavily idealized by the fandom, pointing out the many mistakes and, while it certainly was not her fault, how she was driven more by a personal need for validation rather than selfless love.

That’s when it all clicked for me, all the little pieces coming together.

Despite how badass she appears to be, despite how unwavering her adoration for Madoka is, Homura Akemi is someone who was broken from the beginning, who was re-broken again and again, who never seemed to make the right choice, who was never allowed to have what she wanted, who was never allowed to win, until she finally snapped and ripped apart the carefully-laid plans and systems that seemed to be set against her.

Homura Akemi did everything wrong, and that is fascinating!

Consider: when we first meet her, she is a young girl who has known nothing but neglect, who has been shuffled around by an uncaring system her entire life, who is physically weak due to a heart condition, who is terrified by any kind of attention and is genuinely perturbed just by being called by her first name.

Of all the tragic backstories in the series, hers is easily the worst. Mami and Kyoko’s characterizations are both defined by having a single horrific event in their respective pasts that took everything away from them, events that shattered their worlds and which they blamed themselves for. But at the very least they had something before the cruel hand of fate reached into their lives. Homura never had anything! Her family is so completely out of the picture to not even warrant a mention! Her heart condition leaves her constantly balanced on the precipice of death and frequently leaves her weak and in pain. She’s never had a real friend, never had anyone close, never had anything that made her feel good about being herself. So when the Arch of Victory witch ensnares her with suicidal thoughts, it doesn’t really have to try very hard.

And then Madoka came into her life. A cheerful, outgoing girl who showed her kindness, one who called her by her name and said that it was pretty. Someone who came to her during the scariest moment in Homura’s life like a guardian angel and saved her. Someone who was everything Homura had ever wanted: kind, humble, encouraging, non-judgmental, loving, powerful, protecting, and the list goes on.

Is there any wonder that Homura became infatuated with her? Not one bit.

But then something terrible happened. Madoka and Mami were faced with the horror of Walpurgisnacht, and it killed them. Finally Homura had someone in her life that made her feel good about being herself, and that person was stolen from her. She had to watch Madoka fail. She had to watch Madoka die. And she just stood by and did nothing.

And it is then that Homura made her first mistake. Kyubey being the opportunistic manipulator that he is, he took advantage of her vulnerable state in order to add another soul to his quota. And of course Homura accepted; who could blame her?

But consider this: Homura could have wished for Madoka to be resurrected. Walpurgisnacht had been defeated; it was no longer a threat! Then the two of them (or three, had Mami been brought back as well) would have been together, fighting side-by-side! I mean, it would have eventually ended in tears anyway, but Homura had no way of knowing that. As far as she knew, she was in a traditional magical girl story that just so happened to have a bad end, one that she could have fixed.

Instead, she wished to be sent back in time to redo her first meeting with Madoka, only this time as a Puella Magi. That way, she could help Madoka and Mami prepare for Walpurgisnacht! She could protect Madoka!

It wasn’t enough just to have her dearest (and only) friend back in her life. Homura wanted to switch the roles. She wanted to protect Madoka like Madoka had protected her. She wanted a reason to keep existing, a mission, a way to prove her worthiness, because she still hated herself and needed something to validate her existence.

But it wasn’t that kind of show. She didn’t have all the information. How could she have known that Kyubey was being deceptive? How could she have known of the truth about witches? How could she have known that her time-looping would make Walpurgisnacht stronger? How could she have known that each loop would alter the timestream, entangling both Sayaka and Kyoko in its web?

Still, she kept trying. She made herself stronger and stronger in hopes that she would be able to stop Walpurgisnacht in time. She tried to warn everyone about Kyubey and the witches only to be disbelieved. She watched the others die around her again and again. She watched Madoka either die or succumb to despair and become a witch herself.

And then it happened.

That all-important timeline, where everything in her changed.

The one where she and Madoka finally successfully defeated Walpurgisnacht, but lost everything else. The one where they laid side-by-side in the ruins and the rain, as their cracked soul gems grew darker and the darker. The one where Homura resigned herself to becoming a witch.

The one where Madoka sacrificed her final grief seed, Sayaka’s grief seed, in order to save Homura. The one where she made Homura promise to go back and prevent her from making a contract in the first place. And the one where Madoka died again, not in battle against a witch, but by Homura’s own hand.

Something inside Homura broke that day, something that was never repaired and never will be. It was then that Homura shed the last remnants of the frightened, insecure girl she had been and became the Terminator-esque warrior that we were first introduced to. Her missions was clear then: stop Madoka from making a contract and defeat Walpurgisnacht by any means necessary. Nothing else mattered.

But despite all her resets, despite all her preparations, despite (supposedly) finally having all the information, Homura still kept failing! No matter what she did, Madoka always made a contract and became Kriemhild Gretchen. And Walpurgisnacht just seemed to be getting stronger.

Finally, in the timeline that encompasses the show proper, Homura learned the reason why. She was doomed from the start. Her own resetting of time was only building Madoka’s karmic destiny, increasing the power of both Walpurgisnacht and Kriemhild Gretchen. The more she went back, the more the universe itself stacked the deck against her, and now it was all but impossible. And what was worse, she had done it to herself.

Just look at her in that second to last episode, when she’s lying there bloodied and broken, when she’s about to go back yet again but stops herself. Just look at her face as her soul gem darkens as literal years of despair seep out of the defenses she had built up around herself. She knew that it was hopeless, she knew that both she and Madoka were doomed, she knew that she was seconds from finally becoming a witch after all of her efforts were for naught, and it terrified her.

But then, just as all seemed lost, Madoka herself appeared to save her, but did so through the last thing Homura wanted her to do. She took all of that karmic destiny Homura had burdened her with and made a witch that shook the very foundations of reality. Witches were removed from the equation, and Puella Magi who had succumbed to despair were simply allowed to pass peacefully instead of becoming monsters. The contract system and the advancements wasn’t removed, and the girls’ wishes weren’t negated. But the cruelest aspect of it was.

And all it cost was Madoka’s existence.

Yes, Homura was saved. Yes, Madoka was spared of dying or turning into Kriemhild Gretchen. But the person that Homura had devoted her entire existence to protecting was gone, and by her own hand. Only Homura herself was left to remember her.

Can you imagine how that must have felt, to be forced to soldier on while bearing the weight of that knowledge, to know that you had ultimately failed in your mission and had to go on without the only person that had ever meant anything to you? Sure, there was that whole “always be with you in spirit” thing, but that is a poor comfort to someone like Homura. Yes, the show ends on an optimistic note, with Homura promising to fight on in Madoka’s name, but it’s often been said that the only thing that give a story a happy ending is where you end it. And while I’m sure that many fans would have loved to believe that Homura had done just that, had fought the Wraiths to the bitter end until she was welcomed into Madoka’s arms, the sad fact of the matter is that reality is rarely ever so simple.

In The Rebellion Story we learn how true that is. Without her mission, Homura was unable to keep herself together, and despair did finally overtake her. But instead of peacefully disappearing and being taken by her love, she had made the fatal mistake of confessing to Kyubey of all people the truth about the way things were.

Now, why would she do that? Why tell Kyubey about the witches and how Madoka had changed things? Did she not suspect that he might do something with that knowledge?

Personally, I think she did. Maybe not consciously, but I feel that deep down inside, she hated what the world had become, not because the Law of Cycles had removed a significant portion of the pain, but because Madoka had to erase herself in order to create it. Yes, deleting witches was a net positive, but it wasn’t the positive Homura had been fighting to achieve. Madoka had made her promise to keep her from making a wish, and Homura had to execute her right after. So I do think that she told Kyubey the truth because part of her was kind of hoping he would intervene somehow and bring Madoka back.

And he did, and he did so though screwing Homura over. Again.

Within the labyrinth contained within her own soul gem, Homura build the world she had always wanted to exist. The endless loops had been washed away, and she and Madoka were fighting together in a joyful magical girl show. She worked so hard to build a place that would make her happy, but in the end she had been unable to accept even her own gift, in part because she subconsciously knew that something was off, but also because she had conditioned to be suspicious anything that seems like it would be working in her favor.

Learning the truth broke Homura yet again. She had done this. She had been the one to admit the truth to Kyubey, and he had used that knowledge to ensnare Madoka once more. Her love was again trapped by Incubators, and it was all her fault. Is there any wonder that while everyone was fighting to rescue her from herself, she was screaming for them to stop while her own familiars executed her over and over again?

Homura’s decision to rip Madoka out of the Law of Cycles and again rewrite reality is a controversial one, and I get that. But when you put aside the cool, determined badass that she presents herself as and look at the whole of her journey then it only makes sense. She was sick of it all. Sick of being manipulated by the Incubators and their contracts, sick of having her desires denied by the Law of Cycles, sick of being held back by her own inadequacies. She was sick of losing, and that was going to end.

The movie is called The Rebellion Story, and that title couldn’t have been more accurate. Because at the end, Homura rebelled against everything: against the Incubators, against Madoka, against herself, against a world that seemed set against her from the beginning. She forcibly seized control, dominating Kyubey and his ilk, ripping Madoka from the Law of Cycles and reprogramming her to be sweet and docile, and even erasing Madoka and Sayaka’s friendship so that Sayaka wouldn’t interfere. In the end, she finally won.

And she still hated herself. Even after overcoming everything and embracing her status as the world’s new Devil, we see her own familiars throwing trash at her.

And that is the Homura I came to love. The icy, mysterious warrior that she was presented as just didn’t do anything for me. But the broken girl who seemed to have the entire world set against her, that had what little happiness she had stolen from her time and time again, that made mistake after mistake as she tried to fight against the unfairness of everything and constantly made things worse, that finally said “Fuck it” and forced the world to bend under her will but still wasn’t happy at the end it all? Well, just look at the stories I’ve written, the kinds of stories I gush about. That is a story I can sink my teeth into. That is a character worth investing in, because she is just so damned fascinating!

Now, I’m not going to say that she’s my favorite character now, but her story is the one I’m the most interested in. And when we finally get that long-awaited follow-up, I’m definitely going to be swooning over any and all KyoSaya interactions and watching what happens to Mami and Madoka with rapt attention, but the bulk of my investment will be in Homura’s story, because in a very strange way, her story feels the most human.

Now I just wonder how many people I’ve managed to piss off.

[babbushka]

No Time Like the Present

I rewatched Logan Lucky for the 147395th time, so i felt inclined to write a little Clyde Logan x Reader fic. It’s soft, it’s sweet -- i hope y’all enjoy 

Word Count: 1.9K

Warnings: none :)

I love you so much, it hurts me

Darlin, that's why I'm so blue

I'm so afraid to go to bed at night

Afraid of losing you…

You sang along to the crackling radio, swaying your hips slowly back and forth, rearranging some flowers in the sunlight that streamed through the soft linen curtains. The sun caught some speckles that were floating around, and you sighed, reaching for the duster.

“Oh Patsy.” You sighed to yourself, her lyrics bouncing in your mind as you hummed along, preoccupied with one thing. “What am I gonna do?”

You didn’t know when it had started, not really, when your heart had started growin’ full of love for him. Probably back in high school, if you were honest with yourself, but that was such a long time ago that really it felt like you were born with it, with this crush.

He was your favorite customer, Clyde. Not many folk round those parts had as deep of a love for reading as Clyde did, a respect for it. When he came in, he went through every spine on the shelves, his brow knitted in concentration. Unlike so many others, he purchased the book of his fancy even after taking a quiet seat in the reading nook and getting through a big portion of it. Once, he even finished the story in his lil corner of the nook, and he still bought the book.

Clyde was always respectful of you and your shop, carefully wading through the aisles and shelves that might have been too narrow for him to get through comfortably – after all it was a small store. He always paid with a couple bucks too much, but refused to take back any change. He gave you a smile that you were practically fixed on, and every now and again he would crack a joke in that dry deep voice of his that had you melting.

You were so wrapped up in the thought of him, that you nearly missed him walking through the threshold into your store.

“Good afternoon, Clyde.” You smiled warmly at him. He blushed and gave you a smile in return, and for the first time in your quiet acquaintance with him, he approached the checkout counter instead of going straight for the books.

Every time you got to look at him, you were always blown away. He was tall and wide, and looked so sturdy you were pretty sure if you ran at him, you would bounce back. You had never seen him in any sort of formal wear, always in a pair of dark jeans and a short-sleeved button down (carefully tucked in, of course), and today was no different. He did wear a baseball cap though, to keep the sun out of his eyes. You loved the way his ears stuck out.

“Good afternoon, (Y/N).” Clyde took his baseball cap off, and ran his good hand through his locks to fluff them back up. You had to resist the urge to card your fingers through his hair yourself. “You look beautiful today.” He blushed, immediately tripping over his words, “Not – not that you don’t look beautiful other days! – just – well today especially so.”

“Thank you. You look handsome yourself, as always.” You blushed bright red, caught very much off-guard by his compliment. You couldn’t help but grin seeing that smile of his once more, seeing the way he too flushed red.

You two fidgeted for a moment or two, before Clyde cleared his throat and looked at you with hopeful eyes.

“I was just wonderin’…” He started, trailing off and looking nervous again.

Your breath caught – was he going to ask you out? Valentine’s Day had passed a couple of days ago, but there was nothing wrong with a belated celebration you thought. Why, you were sure there was still chocolate and candy at the grocery stores, even discounted!

“Yes?” You prompted, when Clyde didn’t wind up finishing his question.

His eyes snapped to you, all nervous again. He looked like he was going to say something, but then he sighed very slightly and his shoulders slumped.

“Would you mind helpin’ me find a book?” He asked, rubbing his finger idly against the wood of the counter. “There’s one in particular I’ve been lookin’ for, I was hopin’ you might have a copy.”

You tried not to let your spirits crash too visibly. Damn Patsy Cline and her love songs, getting you into such a romantic mood. Of course Clyde was only here for a book, that’s why he always came, after all.

“Of course!” You forced a bright smile and walked around the counter. “What’s the title?”

“Well that’s just the thing,” Clyde sighed once more, scratching the back of his neck. “I can’t remember it.”

Despite your shattered hopes, you laughed. Looking for a book with no title is like trying to find a song with no lyrics, you thought. You said as much, and he laughed too.

“I’m pretty good with song lyrics.” He said warmly, and you just crossed your arms over your chest.

“Do you remember what color the cover was?” You asked, needing someplace to start.

“Yeah, I think it was red?” Clyde said, his voice trailing up into a question.

“Then let’s go see, hmm?” You smiled, walking over to the section of the store that had a big selection of red spines and covers.

You became very aware that the two of you were the only ones in the store. It wasn’t unusual, three o’clock was a pretty off time for your humble shop. But the song faded out from the radio and light static replaced it as the signals tried to figure themselves out. In the quiet, you found you were nearly holding your breath around him, and feeling very pathetic for it. Why couldn’t you just get a grip? He probably had no interest in you whatsoever, you thought bitterly.

Unfortunately, you also became very aware of just how narrow some of your aisles of books were – the two of you kept bumping into one another as you sifted through covers. Arms brushed, and you blushed, feeling like a love-sick fool. It didn’t help that he practically radiated warmth; on more than one occasion you had to scooch by him and you placed a respectful hand on his back to let him know, and it always surprised you at how warm your hand came away.

He towered over you a good foot and a half, you barely comin’ up to his shoulders. You thought it must be nice to be able to reach the top shelves with no problem, and despite it all, the image made you smile.

“Do you remember what kind of book it was?” You asked, when you wanted to hear his deep rich voice again.

“’Was a love story, I think.” Clyde said softly.

“I’m a sucker for romance.” You replied, “Don’t get much of it out here in the real world, so the books are a nice way to pretend.” You admitted when you turned to find him looking at you in surprise. No doubt he had been teased before for liking romance novels, they had a stigma attached to them for whatever reason.

“You outta tell your man that you’re feeling neglected.” Clyde frowned. He frowned even deeper when you sucked in a laugh.

“I’ll tell him but I don’t think he’ll do anything about it, on account of he doesn’t exist.” You smiled sadly.

“He doesn’t exist?” Clyde repeated in that baritone voice of his.

“No sir.” You shook your head, resuming your search through the books on the shelf.

“You mean to tell me a gorgeous angel like yourself was all by her lonesome on Valentine’s Day?” Clyde asked, voice almost so quiet you couldn’t hear it.

“Every year.” You said simply before shrugging. “But it’s okay. I’ve got my flowers and my shop, and my radio. Helps keeping me from feeling too lonely.”

And you, you thought, but you didn’t dare say that out loud, didn’t want to scare him off and then you wouldn’t have him anymore.

Clyde stopped his search, and circled your wrist with his warm hand. You stopped what you were doing too, and turned to look at him. He was unfairly handsome, you thought, as the sun made its way to his eyes through the window. He looked at you – really looked, and nudged your wrist in his direction, silently asking you to step closer to him. You did so without any hesitation.

“Does it work?” Clyde asked, his voice barely above a whisper, his hand leaving your wrist to rest softly on your cheek.

“Not all the time.” You whispered back with a shake of your head.

Clyde brushed his thumb over your bottom lip, and you let your eyes slip closed at the feeling.

Moments later, plush lips pressed against yours, a hand cradling the back of your head.

Your heart beat wildly in your chest, and you raised your arms to wind around his neck gently, parting your lips so he could kiss you more deeply. You felt Clyde’s prosthetic curl around your waist, and the touch grounded you, gave you more confidence.

You stood on your tip toes, pressed yourself closer to him, as if that were possible.

Oh how long you had dreamed of something like this! The radio crackling to life softly, the sun warming your skin, your life-long crush in your arms. Except this time, it wasn’t a dream – at least, you were ninety-nine percent sure it wasn’t.

Clyde kissed you and kissed you and then kissed you again, until you were grinning against his lips, separating just a bit to get some air.

“I’m sorry – that was too forward of me I – ” Clyde started, sounding not the least bit apologetic, and you just shook your head and giggled.

“Kiss me again?” You asked.

 Clyde didn’t need to be told twice.

 “Would you like to go out with me tonight? On a date? A proper date.” He asked you, an hour later.

He was helping you lock up the shop early, never having found that book after all. You thought he made the whole thing up to spend time with you, but that was something to tease him about another day.

“I would love to.” You nodded, threading your fingers with his metal ones as you walked to his car.

“I’ve been wantin’ to ask you that for a long time, (Y/N).” Clyde swallowed thickly, looking down at your hand in his. He opened the door for you, and you only let go to sit yourself down and buckle your seatbelt.

“Well, no time like the present.” You beamed up at him when he rounded the car and sat down in the driver’s seat.

In typical Clyde fashion, he just gave you that smile and a blush, and turned the car on. You rested a hand on his thigh as he drove down the road, and with your other one, fiddled with the radio, letting the sweet sounds of Patsy Cline fill the air.

While I give to you

And you give to me

True love, true love

So on and on

It will always be

True love, true love

tagging some friends!  @fullofbees @spinebarrel @oh-adam @dreamboatdriver @bad–bad–man @thecurlycaptain @bourbonboredom @driverficarchive @aweirdlookingtree @rosalynbair @redhairedfeistynerd @adamsnackdriver @glitzescape @arwarz @admiralsixx

[quarterette]

Utawarerumono: The False Faces ep 13-25 Liveblog

Gonna just straight up do individual episode comments, since the second half is gonna be denser in content. As with the first half, this is a rewatch and will have spoilers for the games.

Opening Comments: Man there’s not much movement in the animation but its beautiful all the same.

Ep 13:

- *spit take* why are they sending Rulu? IDK if it was because the directors weren’t informed about the whole “baby of the family” detail because I can’t imagine Shis letting this happen

- Interesting how instead being of a secret force that Oshtoru sent, Haku and gang are now the accompanying force to Rulu and Atuy.

- I’ll be pleasantly surprised if Entua makes more sense in the anime than in the games

- oh wow Dekopompo is even worse in the anime, straight-up running off on his own.

Ep 14:

- I like how instead of Atuy catching the arrow the twins have a force field. Granted, it make Atuy even more of a non-entity

- the extreme long shots of the CGI soldiers are really nice. I don’t feel like we see the loss of formations as they come into contact with each other often in war anime

- why are the twins running like that - imo that way too much movement for dainty girls (maybe I’ve watched too much anime)

- wow they totally recontextualized retrieving Shinonon and cut down a lot of potential runtime.

- did they seriously remove Atuy’s bloodlust

- you know open-eyed Ougi is growing on me, him and Nosuri have such lovely eye color

- poor Maroro

Ep 15:

- I’m relieved that the adaptation art makes Raiko look less like Lelouch. Always seemed like lazy design to me, him and Mikazuchi look nothing alike.

- did they introduce the telepaths in MoD? I can’t remember.

- that triple-take of Zeguni dying was just silly. If it were one slice x3 it would have been fine but this... Oshtoru be flexing with that mountain.

- I never really felt calling Witsu an Eva was quite right but with the Akuruturuka.... yeah I see it.

- truly we are in the war arc proper now.

- Heh wouldn’t it have been interesting to have the proxies’ subservience kick in instead of having the twins shield Haku. Oh well missed opportunities. IMO it would have worked well with the accelerated timeline the anime needed to achieve.

- what is with the triple takes this episode

- ah haku wasn’t even able to save them gg

- post episode revisiting the VN comments:

they hint at the telepaths, and as I thought the Vurai razing the city wasn’t in the VN. It was a good showpiece and works with Vurai’s characterization, but messes with Haku’s as a cost - the VN suggests that Haku inherently can be ruthless (he suggests scapegoating Moznu for Anju’s kidnapping, which the anime totally skips over), while it looks like the anime is gonna use this mass destruction as the reason for steeling his heart. I can’t say I hate that the writers chose to have the main characters in the fray, but it definitely requires more suspension of disbelief that everyone got out okay compared to the VN.

- Interestingly we don’t see Oshtoru’s mech form at all. I do like the increased bro scenes between Mikazuchi and Oshtoru

Ep 16:

- Yeah we immediately feel the ripples of that last episode changing Haku’s trajectory... its a logical trajectory but... ugh. I’m not sure how I feel about such a contrary Haku. It wasn’t really a thing in the VN? So frustrating augh. Utawarerumono was never a story big on moralizing about war... and the anime writers aren’t doing a great job adding it in.

- I’m 99% sure they pulled some of Ukon’s lines for comforting Haku here from a conversation they had in the VN waaaayyy back around the gigiri fight, making the scene all the more frustrating. The concepts of powerlessness and loss of life is something that Haku had been introduced to the moment he woke up and had already been working on dealing with. I can’t say its an invalid take that he’d be shook over mass destruction (I mean, most people would) but it’s a sharp deviation from the VN.

- Oh wow they’re totally gonna retool the banquet to deal with haku’s trauma instead of him dealing with his memories of being the LAST OF HIS KIND aren’t they.

- yeah they did

- oh god don’t say the word seduce haku, rulu’s gonna die from blood loss

- lol i don’t remember the twins being tied up

- rulu is dead

- and now haku is dead too. I think only Ougi and Yakutowaruto escaped unscathed.

- this did give me the bro bonding that I had been missing in the show thus far. Not enough drinking scenes! like literally the VN is literally just baths and booze between the action lol

Ep 17:

- ah finally the flashback episode. lol all the crunchyroll comments are like “watch the first season”.

- haku calling his new buddies family... oof mito’s knowing gaze makes it all the much sadder

- Haku:”did you need to go that far” Mito: “lemme do it again with Tuskuru”

- hah “reposition your camera” nice, easy way to not show his face

- heh stares at your sister-in-law’s butt, that’s actually a pretty subtle hint without adapting any of the monologue from the VN that he kinda had feelings for her

- damn this is probably the most complete vision of the future we get in any medium

- hey to be fair the ameterasu blast was mutsumi and not exactly a product of mankind fighting each other - but it does go to show just how little Mito knew about what was actually going down

- to continue with my frustration, we see that haku is called out by his bro that he has a habit of “conceal don’t feel” so it makes his emo bit last episode even more jarring - though in hindsight I guess his depression comes less out of the blue for his friends now - its just that the reason is misattributed

- oof “make up for lost time”

- ooh I like the final scene with Woshis as the delegate to Tuskuru. The VN did fine without it but man what a cliffie for those watching the first time.

Ep 18:

- oof we’re not going to have any shinonon/kiwru antics are we

- man I can’t wait to see Benawi - he was my favorite chara in Uta1 after Touka

- wow they really did just ignore the fact that Kiwru is the prince of Ennakamuy and cut him out of the party

- dugh never mind I don’t like ougi’s open eyes here

- speaking of ougi they totally glossed over his role as reconnaissance

- and have they even mentioned that nosuri is trying to retake their clan’s name?

- cocopo still best bird

Ep 19:

- of course you’ll be sweaty haku, boro boro only wears that brown undershirt in tuskur smh

- i love how all of the dads we see dote on their daughters so much

- of course only now do they mention the fact that atuy and haku are drinking buddies and we just have to take it at face value

- actually seeing those sailor uniforms in action make atuy’s regret that much funnier, the stills don’t quite do it justice (though really, it’s the sound effects carrying the team)

- lol the background soyankekur antics are great

- cocopooooo noooo damn this romance with mukkur is great

Ep 20:

- huhu woshis was allowed down to the underground garden huh

- benawiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

- dang they didn’t use the hot air balloon ;-; so disappointing like if they do it this way they won’t even get to retake the supplies ;-;

- i guess its a good way to hint at kuon’s identity

- something is wrong with kurou’s face

- also where the fuck is nosuri - i know kiwru is a lost cause for this show but nosuri too? they really are trying to wipe out the tactics seen in the VN

- i do think the line about kurou’s line to kuon about “ripping the country in half” is nice - can’t remember if it was in the VN but at this point most of the good lines seem to be coming out of the VN

- ugh the twins are such a cop out, still think they should have went with the hot air balloon strategy

- we hardly knew ye mito

Ep 21:

- dang I’m pleasantly surprised by these CG soldiers

- bye bye munechika, still salty you can’t turn into a mech

- oof “I’m sure my mom was someone like you” this show lives and breathes on dramatic irony

- bye bye anju, what was the point of actually having oshtoru there when the tea was delivered? makes him seem more incompetent than he is, though entua was nowhere to be seen - imo for the best

- oshtoru, an honorable man through and through, giving up your mask, lowkey too honorable for your own good

- okay one of my favorite things is how regularly dekopompo is ignored during the generals’ council meetings; overlapping voices isn’t really a thing in the VNs due to its nature as a written medium first and foremost

- oh interesting Oshtoru’s men are coming to defend him that’s new

- oh no torture time ;-;

- post episode VN notes: ugh they also dropped the Woshis power grab of locking Dekopompo and Raiko outside of the gates

Ep 22:

- Yes go be a dad Yakuto and stop Nekone from doing stupid shit please oh please oh please

- Man they are seriously retooling oshtoru’s downfall aren’t they - wish it didn’t come off so crudely planned. Like, y’all know Oshtoru is loved by the people, did the generals not think some sort of rioting would happen if you let that info go public? Granted the original plot of having Entua sneak the info out is pretty contrived... but at least it better preserves the perceived competency of the generals by forcing a smaller timeframe in which everything goes down.

- man people watching this will be so confused next season when they realize Kiwru is a prince

- wut Kuon you should know you probably won’t be able to get info to the princesses once y’all leave. Good that Shinonon is going on ahead to Ennakamuy though.

- eh are they’re gonna try leaving by sea this time? even though Ennakamuy is in the mountains?

- secret tunnel ~ ♫

- aw no Evenkuruga reveal for Nosuri and Ougi. Though, I guess the anime never established that their base was in the Hakuorokaku basement...

- you know, since they just generalized the jamming barrier it’s kinda nice to see that the gang had to sneak in the hard way. IMO that’s one of the “game design justifies the plot” moments - the VN tries to keep everyone together so you can have all your unit options when fighting, but let’s be honest smaller strike teams work at times.

- oh hi Honoka, you’re not arrested here? guess not.

- oh god have they been translating Atuy’s “onii-san”s as “mister” this whole time? I can’t say that “love” was a better translation but that’s just tragic

- I wish we got more hints that haku actually has been doing some training (aka the SRPG parts of the game) rather than these random moments of competency and knocking out the guards.

- good god oshtoru your honorableness is gonna be the death of you. how can you trust Vurai. Seriously idk how it’s gonna turn out here, but Vurai literally wants to see Anju dead in the VN.

- ok i lie splitting the party was a terrible idea. they are taking way too long to convince oshtoru to take a stand. these men are way too stubborn. jk its fine

- whelp there goes the boat

- aw yeh Yakutowaruto lets go

Ep 23:

- Yakutowaruto continues to be a badass

- ugh and of course Oshtoru gets hurt, and he’s not gonna tell anyone

- ok I’m enjoying how acrobatic these twins are

- the plot change ripples continue to be seen; there’s no distractions at the gates since dekopompo is inside the gates. Raiko’s strategy stuff does make for good tension tho.

- ugh the fact that Soyankekuru is in the capital is gonna complicate things. The moment Atuy is seen to defect he’s screwed. That’s gonna change the timeframe of things second half.

- lol Kuon god powers time, hope there weren’t too many casualties. Poor Nosuri now has two sacks of people to deal with...

- ok I feel like I’m seeing more poor art quality this episode

- wow it seems that everyone’s on board for some arson today

- bruh don’t take him through the sewers Oshtoru’s wound’s gonna get infected

- oh god who thought it was a good idea to give Rulu a blade.

- Cocopo best bird. Period. MVP.

- Soyankekuru, what a guy.

Ep 24:

- ooh mech fight in the city? oh nvm its just a sword fight. a sword fight between two beasts. thank god vurai ain’t that dumb

- wait they said there was a barrier in the palace, but i don’t think there was a barrier for the outer walls? why the frick didn’t the twins just teleport out for the last bit? they were pretty close to the gates... unless they needed the gates open anyways?

- vurai? not dumb? scratch that, good god do y’all not care about the safety of the people? guess not cuz it’s MECH FIGHT TIME (ok, if we’re honest oshtoru’s the one who initiated so yes he’s equally dumb)

- water vs fire, groudon vs kyogre, this is what animation is all about YASSS

- the twins’ shield is too OP

- haku please stop indulging Nekone

- will the twins actually be able to seal Vurai? they were kind of trash at doing their job in the VN (though they did have the good excuse of being exhausted for this particular instance)

- ok that nekone running sequence is jank

- damn haku blocked that punch? oh no he’s on fire

- looking like nekone’s “it was my fault” is gonna be part of a cascade of setbacks rather than the final blow. I’m kinda glad - the VN’s take was probably the most exasperating part of the whole story - gutwrenching but also made me want to punch her. I’m up for arguing whether or not taking that away was a good thing

- oh no the salt. no. how could you put it at the post-credits scene.

- vurai’s confirmed dead? that could be a problem next season.

Ep 25:

- dang what an opener giving us no info just kuon looking sad. we had emo haku now get ready for emo kuon i guess

- nuedori is probably my favorite song after kimi ga tame, such a good song to overlay the time skip over

- man anime viewers must be so confused. like they saw Haku and Oshtoru get out of town but only Oshtoru show up. man this is so effed up.

- no not the fan noooo augh  brokoro in the kokoro

- sad nekone really sells it doesn’t it

- dang I knew Ennakamuy was surrounded by mountains but I guess the anime went and interpreted that as a CRATER

- at least kuon didn’t leave until later in the night?

-i know the twins did a spell in the VN as well but seeing the visual change between haku and oshtoru is a bit silly

- what’s with the flower field that’s so cheesy

- i can see why someone said laughed rather than cried during this particular use of kimi ga tame - the alternating shots to his saltification is just silly, there’s so many prettier shots for showing people dissolving - like the VN gave you a very serviceable “standing on a cliff as the sun rises and you fade into dust” why didn’t you take it

- side note in the VN i was imagining it something like this scene from CCS but different lighting (sorry I could only find the english dub on short notice, timestamp at 1:13:24):

- also how could you get everyone off model during such an important part

- you know what I’m just gonna pretend that there was some really bad production crunch so they had to do a rush job smh

- i do like this orchestration tho

- oh god the cheese never ends, now it’s raining

- that said it’s not terrible, but definitely missing something compared to the VN

- haha with some of your decisions next season you might just end up in Denebokshir Haku. jk we all know how it ends

- boro boro ;-; yes go hug your kid she needs all the comfort she can get

[feminarrie]

under the same moon - four

a/n: this is a longer piece at six words shy of 3.6k! this my fav chapter i have written so far, so i hope you do too! and as always, please let me know what ya think!

want to be added to the taglist? send me a message!

warning: this chapter does contain a brief mention of underage alcohol use. i do not condone this behavior, but feel it is necessary to capture hanna’s college experience. 

Hanna has a throbbing headache when she wakes up the next morning. Not in her own bed, but that of Imogen and she’s not alone. The sound of shallow breathing tells her that much, but even so, there’s a warm body tucked into her side.

She’s not worried that she brought home a random person from the bar. Not that she hadn’t had a few one night stands that had alarm bells ringing in her head while she tried to concentrate enough to sneak out quietly. But, Hanna recognizes the way in which their knees are cradled close to their chest and tucked just beneath Hanna’s right ribs. The pattern of breathing is familiar too, with shallow puffs of air passing through their nose every two or three breaths.

Sonam is in a deep sleep next to Hanna. Who had only woken up because her stomach had begun to twist into knots with just how hungry she was.

She is careful in unraveling Sonam’s arms from around her own upper arm, despite the fact that she knows Sonam is a heavy sleeper and could (and has) slept through an earthquake or two. She really envied Sonam’s ability, actually. Because once she was out, that was it. Nobody could wake her up without doing the utmost.

(Hanna and Imogen had once jumped on her bed, jostling and shaking Sonam, for five minutes straight and they only received a groan before Sonam had rolled back over).

Hanna manages to set both feet on the ground without so much as a quiet sigh from Sonam’s parted lips. Without an area rug beneath her bed, Imogen’s wood floors are cold beneath Hanna’s feet. It sends a shiver up her spine and she shakes her upper body to rid herself of the icy sensation.

She is careful in her steps, quietly padding across the room until she’s reached the door. It’s already slightly ajar and a familiar voice carries through the two inch gap between the door and its frame. It only squeaks slightly as she attempts to squeeze past the frame and step out into the hallway.

Tyler is standing by stove when Hanna enters the living room. She can only see a partial view of his side profile. But, his mess of warm blonde curls and sharp jawline are hard to miss. The corner of his lips seem to twitch upward when he catches her in his peripheral, ocean blue eyes flickering between her and the pan on the stove.

“Morning, sunshine.” He greets, wedging a spatula between the small nonstick pan and a golden brown pancake.

“Morning.” Hanna tries to return his smile, but her nose scrunches up and she grips her temple as her head continues to pound. “Where’s Imogen?” She asks as she shuffles into the kitchen.

As she passes behind Tyler, Hanna can see that his natural cool toned brown locks have started to sprout from the roots. She thinks that he must have let his natural color grow in over the winter break. She prefers it, if she’s honest.

“Coffee run,” Tyler states, transferring the pancake to a plate that is stacked fairly high with others. “Plus, we needed syrup.”

Hanna reaches up to grab a glass from the cabinet right of the stove. She doesn’t bother to grab the jug of purified water from the refrigerator and simply fills her glass with water from the tap. She leaves it running as she guzzles down the first class in a matter of seconds before refilling it again. She slows down her gulps this time. Panting slightly as her lips hover around the rim of the blue tinted glass.

“I’ve missed all of this.” Hanna hums, leaning on the counter. “I’m glad we’re all back together.”

Tyler hums his own affirmation while setting to work on another pancake.

Hanna is rather happy to have all of her friends back in one space. Ecstatic, really. Perhaps content, too. There aren’t enough words in the English language to describe the sense of homeliness and excitement that she feels despite a raging hangover.

“How are you feeling this morning?” Tyler prompts, earning a dry laugh that fades into a groan from Hanna.

“That bad, huh?” Tyler chuckles, flipping another pancake onto the plate and turning off the stovetop.

“I never want to drink again, honestly.” Hanna sighs before taking another sip of her water. “How bad was I?”

Tyler moves past Hanna to grab the frozen hash brown patties from the freezer. It’s as if he knows where everything is in the apartment. Which, to be fair, he does. Not only are Imogen and Hanna creatures of habit, but Tyler spends more nights at their apartment than with his own roommates three blocks away.

She’d met Tyler during her freshman year and he’d been the only person without a partner for her drama and film project. In which they had to identify the general themes of one book that corresponded with an assigned film. It was an easy project, as it should’ve been, for a core curriculum class. But, it also meant spending hours together in order to discuss the book and rewatch the movie.

Hanna had invited him to her dorm. She remembers because she had to sign him in because her last class had only just ended at nine in the evening. Tyler had gone to the campus store to grab an assortment of snacks and Hanna offered him a Corona that she’d gotten past her RAs a week prior.

It had been far more enjoyable than she thought it would be. They had chosen Like Water for Chocolate because it had been easy. They’d read the original book and watched the movie of the same title. But, Hanna had forgotten just how much eroticism and passion that was woven into the storyline.

Looking back, she can’t fault herself for it. They had read the book at the very beginning of the semester and they’d only just started the final project a week and half before it was due. Plus, with it being her first semester of university, she could hardly recall what she had for dinner the night before let alone the plot of an assigned novel.

So, it had been somewhat awkward as they both took the occasional notes while watching the movie. Glancing at each other when they thought the other wasn’t looking. Hands brushing one another as they reached inside the bag of Ruffles sat between them.

That night had not only marked the start of their friendship, but a year long crush on Tyler. In which, she spent much of her time attempting to flirt with him. Not that she ever admitted to it when she was fully immersed in her feelings for Tyler, but she tried just about everything to get closer him. Until the day that it something simply switched in her head. Her feelings had seemed to have turned platonic without her being aware of it. Up until she had seen Tyler with his then girlfriend, Franci, and there was no sinking feeling in her gut or a hole in her chest.

Since then, she’d seen Tyler with a variety of people. Even helped set him up with one of the guys from her theory course. That had been at the end of their junior year and as far as Hanna knew, they were still happily together.

“You kept talking about some guy named Niall.” Tyler shrugs, peeling back the plastic of the container and pulling out eight hash brown patties. “I tried to ask Imogen who he was, but she was just as gone as you were.”

Hanna realizes now, that she had been so caught up in the whirlwind of having her friends back that she had neglected to fill them in on that aspect of her London trip. Even though, it was arguably one of the more memorable parts of her time there. At least in the sense that she doesn’t have to look at pictures to be reminded of the way she felt in that particular moment. It all still lives within her and overcomes her whenever she hears Niall’s voice.

“So, do you want the long or short version?” Hanna cuts right to the chase.

She sets the glass beside the stainless steel sink before pivoting to reach for the stash of ibuprofen that sat in a corner beside the fridge. A tiny space that was reserved for instances such as this.

Tyler raises a single shoulder in a shrug as he reaches into the lower cupboard next to the stove. There’s a clamor of metal that has Hanna’s nose wrinkling in discomfort, but it’s short lived and Tyler produced a round baking sheet. She waits again, as he tears a rather large piece of tinfoil from its box and secures it over the pan.

“Whatever you’re comfortable with.” Tyler says, stealing a momentary glance while placing all of the patties on the sheet.

Hanna realizes that he must have already preheated the oven because he’s placing them on the upper rack and closing the door once again.

It warms her to know that he makes himself at home while he’s in her and Imogen’s space. It means that all the hard work that the two had done to create a homey space had paid off. The nights arranging and then rearranging furniture so it allowed just enough light in were worth it. The long hours of knitting—which wasn’t exactly a chore for a proper old lady like Hanna—throw blankets had paid off.

(She doesn’t ever think about the fact that Tyler and Sonam really only feel so at home is because of how kind the set of roommates are. They go out of their way to buy food for Sonam, who is allergic to peanuts and a touch lactose intolerant. They bought candles that smelled like lavender and sandalwood that instantly calmed everyone that walked into the room).

Just as Hanna is about to begin retelling the short version of the story, she sees Sonam shuffling out into the living room. She’s knuckling at her eyes and a sleepy smile on her lips. Hanna envies just how sweet and soft she looks despite the fact that all four of them had enough to drink for a group of ten.

“G’morning,” she greets after a yawn.

Tyler and Hanna return her greeting as she goes to sit at the small white table that is flush against the wall. Sonam pulls her legs up so that the tops of her thighs are pressed to her chest. The position makes her small while simultaneously reminding just how small the space is.

“You’re just in time.” Tyler speaks, setting a timer on the stove before mimicking Hanna’s position against the counter. “Skeeter’s gonna tell us about Niall.”

Hanna misses the slight furrow in Tyler’s brow and vague disinterest that mixes with something else in his eyes when he speaks. She has her back turned to him and she’s too busy formulating the story in her head that she wouldn’t have recognized the look anyway. Her thoughts are five thousand miles away, where she is tucked into Niall’s side while he talks about his songwriting and interest in music.

Hanna may have missed the look in Tyler’s eyes, but he doesn’t miss the blissful look on her face when she takes the seat opposite Sonam. Her features are as soft and peaceful as he’s ever seen them. Even more so than when he has woken up beside her after the four of them pulled all-nighters just to study for their respective exams.

“Oh!” Sonam cheers quietly, resting her cheek atop her knees as she turns her head to face Hanna. “You wouldn’t stop talking about how much you missed him, ya know.”

Hanna’s cheeks flush crimson at the idea that she had been so sloppy drunk that she couldn’t keep her mouth shut about him. They heat up even more when she realizes that her text messages are likely to read much the same.

She fights the urge to run to grab her phone. Mostly because she isn’t quite sure where it is and couldn’t really be bothered in tearing up the apartment to find it. So, she only settles into her seat more. Turning so that her back is pressed to the wall and she can rest her right forearm across the table.

“So, you know the rumors we always heard about how lenient Higgins and Westley were on the London trips?” Hanna begins her story from the beginning.

Her words are similar to the ones she’d spoken to Imogen, although not verbatim. This time, though, after Imogen had returned with four cups of coffee, Hanna also adds their most recent interactions.

She pays particular attention to the other night, when the pair had sat on video chat for hours with only a few mutterings between them. Niall had called simply because Liam had a date that was going extremely well and he didn’t anticipate his roommate’s arrival until the next morning. Hanna had been journaling and very much caught up in her own stream of consciousness. Niall would ask her what she was thinking about here and there, when he noticed a broad smile light up his screen. Of course, Hanna never told him. Too embarrassed to say that she was writing about him like a preteen girl gushing about her first crush in the safety of her diary.

As if Niall’s own well-loved lyric book hadn’t been riddled with half finished songs about the way she makes him feel.

Hanna even talks about the fact that he’s made it a habit to call her when he gets home from his shift at the record store. When his voice is thicker with his blossoming fatigue and hers is slightly more chipper with the early morning. He recounts his day at work while she recites her plans for the rest of the day. Which, as of late, have only been spending time with Imogen at home or going to the quaint cafe just off campus.

“Did you tell them that you haven’t told him you like him yet?” Imogen questions as she leans against the wall, ankles crossed and coffee cup held tightly in her small hands.

Hanna pokes her tongue out at Imogen, but shakes her head. It earns a forced laugh from Tyler, but Sonam is reaching across the table to playfully swat at her arm. Hanna turns her head to give the petite brunette the same look she’d given Imogen before and it earns her another playful tap.

“I haven’t told him. I don’t know if I ever will.” Hanna responds truthfully.

She’s afraid of what it’ll mean if she does. Especially because she isn’t entirely sure of what Niall feels for her. Sure, she knows that he finds her at least attractive and fun to be around. But, she knows from experience, that those two factors don’t always mean someone has any romantic interest in her.

And Hanna has never liked someone the way that she does Niall.

He makes all of the cliche romance novel tropes come to life. As if he is some male love interest that makes the narrator’s world fall away when they’re together. Creating a safe little bubble where the worries of the world are muted and she is only capable of focusing on the good.

It scares her a little, if she was honest. It scares her to feel that way for someone that is an entirely different time zone, living an entirely different life, and yet somehow manages to be woven into her everyday experiences.

Not crucial to her existence, but absolutely makes it all a little less mundane.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

The conversation had moved away from the inner workings of Niall and Hanna’s potential romantic relationship to everyone else’s winter vacations. Imogen shared pictures she had taken on her cruise. Sonam talked about the family wedding she had attended and the fair amount of drama that took place there. Tyler went into beautiful detail about his work at the Aquarium of the Pacific, where he had been able to score an internship.

They had all eaten their breakfast and fallen into their natural routine. Imogen and Tyler ducked outside to smoke a blunt in the comfort of Imogen’s Volkswagen beetle. They’d returned twenty minutes later with half lidded eyes to watch Planet Earth. Sonam was sat on the floor, back pressed to the sofa, switching her attention between the television and her phone.

Hanna initially planned to sit down to knit and watch the nature docuseries with her friends, but realized a few stitches in, that she should look for her phone.

She rummages through her dirty laundry basket, checks beneath Imogen’s bed and beneath its covers, and in the bathroom before she finds it. The black iPhone, wrapped with a clear case with pressed daisies, had been in her purse the whole time. It still hangs from the hook on the back of Hanna’s door after she retrieves her phone.

Most of her notifications are from the posts she had been tagged in last night, but there are two from Niall that telling her that he hopes she got home safe and a reminder to call him whenever she sees his message.

She opens the thread of text messages between them and finds a series of half-formed thoughts that she shouldn’t have even typed out. A heat begins in her chest before radiating to her neck and ears, tinting them a shade of pink. Even if her memories from last night weren’t already to come back in bits and pieces, her text messages painted a pretty explicit picture of what she had been like last night.

Niall’s responses don’t give her any clue as to how he feels about the situation. For all she knows, his request to call him, regardless of their time difference, could mean that he wants to remind her that they are an ocean apart and this was purely a friendship. Which would absolutely tear her heart in two, but she would understand. Their friendship was still young even with their interactions said differently.

But still, Hanna doesn’t want to stick her head in the ground to avoid the situation. She would rather have Niall say what he needs to and move on from it. Because the more time she took to dwell on it, the longer it would take her to get over it and she knows that getting over Niall would already take long enough.

So, she doesn’t bother with texting him to see if he’s busy or sleeping, but calls him after she has shut her bedroom door. The ringing bounces off the walls of her space for just a moment before she switches the audio to her headphones by plugging them in.

“Hello, love.” Niall says, and although it is dark, Hanna knows that he is smiling.

“Hi.” Her response is clipped, nervous.

“How are you feeling?” Niall asks, leaning over to switch his bedside lamp on and it takes a moment for his eyes to readjust.

“Uh, good. Much better than this morning, that’s for sure.” She answers before pulling her bottom lip to sit between her teeth again.

“S’good to hear, love. Didn’t know how much you had to drink, so I wanted to check in and make sure you were alright.” Niall admits, eyes flickering from the screen to beyond it.

Hanna assumes he has the television on low because there’s washes of blue and yellow over Niall’s face every few seconds. He doesn’t seem to be paying too much attention to it, though. His attention is still very much on Hanna.

He just isn’t sure how exactly to approach the topic of what she had revealed the night before. Even after talking it out with Liam, who insisted that Hanna would be over the moon, he still cannot keep the nerves at bay.

Luckily, Hanna has a hard time holding her tongue sometimes.

“Is that the only thing you wanted to talk about?” Hanna is still nibbling on her lower lip, teeth snagging a jagged piece of skin.

“Always keep me on my toes,” Niall laughs quietly. “But, no. I guess not.”

There’s a long pause as the two wait for the other to start speaking, but unsurprisingly, it is Hanna that speaks up first.

“I know I said I liked you last night. I was incredibly drunk.” Another pause for a deep breath. “It’s still true. I like you a lot. Quite possibly more than I’ve liked anyone. But, I don’t want you to feel obligated to say that you feel the same.” Pause. “I just feel like I would’ve been more regretful if I didn’t at least tell you how I felt.”

Niall allows for an extended period of silence to ensure that Hanna is entirely done speaking. But, the way his eyes are damn near closed with just how wide he is smiling should have been an indication that he felt the same way. Not that Hanna noticed because she had squeezed her eyes shut shortly after finishing, hoping it would help in evening out her excited breathing.

“I like you, too, Hanna.” Niall says and it feels like a weight has been lifted off his chest. “Ever since that night. I just haven’t been sure if you’d like some Irish boy living halfway across the world. Especially when he’s trying to make it into the music industry.”

Hanna knows he’s trying to lighten the mood and ease her nerves. But, there’s a whole new collection of excited nerves that have settled in. Ones that have her asking about where they should go from here when there is a pregnant pause.

“Up to you, love.” Niall leads. “Because I’m all in if you are.”

And even though it is scary, Hanna is absolutely and irrevocably all in.

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[dragonbat2011]

Reaching Out ‘Til We Reach the Circle’s End — Chapter 3

For the chapter index: https://dragonbat2011.tumblr.com/post/621379453957865473/reaching-out-til-we-reach-the-circles-end-toc

A/N: Rewatching S2E16, "The Miller's Daughter," I just realized that Regina never saw Rumple at his weakest. Or, if she did, it was just for a second or two before she realized what she'd done to Cora. As far as Dark Ones not needing sleep (S5E1: The Dark Swan), I can't forget or ignore Rumple's dream (S2E19: Lacey). So let's just say that, Dark Ones require much less sleep than the rest of us, but still need a little on occasion.

        Chapter Three

Regina had often found Rumple unnerving. In the Enchanted Forest, his high-pitched giggles had set her teeth on edge. His constant needling had quickly gotten under her skin, to say nothing of the way he always seemed to be playing some game with her where only he knew the rules. That last bit hadn't changed in this realm, but here it had been his controlled demeanor and his utter inscrutability that she'd found most disconcerting. At least, until now.

She'd never seen him like this before. Not sobbing and shaking, trembling as though a gust of wind might shatter him. Not this thin, nor this pale, either not knowing or not caring that others could see him in such a state.

If it had been Henry, she would have gathered him up in her arms at once with a low cry, but this was Rumple—who always held himself aloof. Rumple, who mocked weakness in others and made damned sure not to show any himself.

Well. Except for that time in Neverland... And then, afterwards on Main Street when Pan had… And… Regina pressed her lips together, closed her eyes, and reached out, gripping one of his shoulders with each hand. "It's going to be okay," she murmured, not having any idea what 'it' was. "You're back. You're home." She had no idea whether anything she was saying was getting through. "Hey," she said gently. "Hey." A bit awkwardly, she took one hand off his shoulder and brushed a falling lock of hair back from his forehead. His skin was burning hot beneath her cool hand. "Rumple?" She knew that he was supposed to be immortal and damned few things could kill him. All the same, she'd never seen him with as much as a cold before this. She took another breath and shot a glance over her shoulder at the others.

"You go on," she said, addressing Emma. "Don't keep your mother waiting." She realized almost in passing that the enchantment that had transformed their friends into flying monkeys had worn off. "Take the others, too; let Whale check them out," she added, glad that Emma and her father had come in separate cars and would have space for them. "Robin and I will bring Rumple."

She waited for Emma's nod before turning her attention back to the man crouched before her. "You're running a fever," she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact about it. We'd better get you to the hospital, too."

His breathing was still ragged, but he hadn't tensed up at the mention of the hospital, and he wasn't trying to pull away from her now. She looked over her shoulder at Robin. "Would you mind sharing the back seat with him? I think someone needs to keep an eye on him and I'm going to need both of mine for the road."

Robin nodded. "Of course."

____________________________________________________

He could have teleported himself directly into the village, but he was enjoying the walk. It had been far too long since he'd been able to go where he pleased and take as long as he cared to. Besides, he needed time to think.

He now had a second chance to get things right, one he'd never dreamed could be handed him. He could protect Bae from the duke's henchmen, stop them from taking the girl… Moraine—that had been her name, he recollected now. His eyebrows shot up. Why… he could stop the Ogre War this very moment, months before Hodor would ever step foot in Pen Marmor—

He stopped, frowning. Something wasn't quite right about that. He turned the thought over in his head and his frown deepened. There was already a Dark One in this time, one enslaved to Duke Bowden, even as he himself had been enslaved to Zelena. The Frontlands were poor and ravaged by war, as they had been for nearly two decades at this time. Many of its people had died in battle and those who were left could barely work the fields. Most of what they raised went for taxes to feed the duke's household, and to supply the armies. What little was left was barely enough to live on. And if the winter waxed longer than usual, and the planting was delayed, if birds and rodents got to the crops before they could be harvested, if a woman gave birth and was too weak or too harried to do her share of the work on the farm or died in childbirth leaving her husband to tend field and babe—and any other children as might be too young to put in a day's work, then there wouldn't be enough to live on. Small wonder that some, like Charlotte Long-Scar, found other ways to survive.

 Won and lost

 Wars come with cost

 Loss and gain

 Both coffers strain

He was surprised he could still dredge up that old rhyme; it had been ancient when he'd been young. But no less true. Wars were expensive. And while the peasants bore their brunt, the nobility felt the pinch as well. Which begged the question: Why hadn't the duke ordered his Dark One to put a stop to the war years ago?

It was, of course, possible that the man was an imbecile, a 'useless fool', just as Zoso had said. Or as Zoso would say in about three months' time, Rumple reflected. But perhaps, there was more to it than that.

It had taken him time to learn planning and patience. When he'd first become the Dark One, flush with power, he'd indulged his every impulse, and it had cost him his son. If he was to make the most of this second chance, then it behooved him to be more deliberate this time out.

Perhaps, a visit to the duke's castle was in order. With the right disguise and the proper questions, perhaps he'd get the answers he needed. But that could wait. In fact, he realized, it would have to.

He always knew where his dagger was. It whispered at him in a voice only he could hear. Or rather, he realized suddenly, in a voice only a Dark One could hear. And that might present a problem. Because in this time, he wasn't the only Dark One. Until he knew what he was going to do and how he was going to do it, the last thing he wanted was for Zoso to be aware of his presence. Rumple didn't trust his predecessor, for good reason. He would have to find some way to avoid him, at least, until he could come up with a way to stifle his dagger's voice.

For now, he decided, he needed to concentrate on more immediate concerns. For example, what he ought to say when he arrived in Pen Marmor and met himself.

And Bae.

______________________________________________________

"Stay a moment," Robin said, looking upward toward the loft. He bounded up the ladder and returned a moment later, holding a folded rectangle of gray wool. "I thought I saw a blanket up there," he said, unfolding it and draping it over Rumple's shoulders.

A faint sigh escaped Rumple's lips, followed almost immediately by a paroxysm of coughing.

"Hang on," Regina said. "The car's just outside."

Zelena hadn't returned through the portal. Regina wanted to ask where she was, but now was definitely not the time. She had her suspicions, though. And after everything Zelena had done, Regina wasn't certain she wanted them confirmed. She knew what Rumple had wanted to do and, in an earlier time, she might even have cheered him on. But Zelena was her sister and Regina would have spared her if she could have.

She half-escorted, half-steered him to her Mercedes, opened the back door, and watched as Robin helped Rumple inside. The blanket slipped slightly and, in the sunlight, Regina realized for the first time that the suit Rumple was wearing now wasn't one she'd ever noticed him wearing before. It certainly hadn't been anything she'd ever seen anyone wear in the Enchanted Forest, though it wasn't completely unfamiliar to her. Rather like something out of one of the period pieces she'd occasionally watched on public television. On the pretext of helping Robin get him settled in the back, she gripped Rumple's arm once more. While the fabric was woolen, it was a far cry from Armani.

She waited for Robin to slide in and shut the car door before she went around toward the driver's side. As she did, she said aloud, "What the hell happened to you?"

_________________________________________________________

He'd taken the precaution of magicking up some more-appropriate attire; three-piece designer suits and ties were scarcely typical garb in his old village, nor any other place he could name in this realm. No peasant rags, though; people saw what they expected to see and they wouldn't expect to see Rumpelstiltskin, town spinner, town coward in good wool breeches and tunic, linen shirt, and fur-lined cloak, hair held back in a queue by a narrow leather strap. In fact, as he made his way through the marketplace in the square, most of his onetime neighbors looked up once, took in his finery, and then hastily lowered their eyes, still crying out their wares, but not as boisterously as usual, as though they both wanted and dreaded his attention.

It was an attitude to which he'd grown quite accustomed over the years, but not here and not now. The clouds in the sky were darker now; it would rain soon. It occurred to Rumple that the stall-keepers might prefer to close up shop, but were hoping yet for his custom. And he was hungry. He looked about for a moment and headed toward Talorc's stand to purchase a meat-pasty. Biting into it, he closed his eyes and savored the taste, realizing that at least one of the herbs involved was only native to this region and—so far as he knew—hadn't gone over with the curse. He considered for a moment before handing over a few more coins. When he left the square, he carried six more pasties in an oilcloth wrapper.

He made onto a dirt path he knew well enough to walk blindfolded—though as the path was often used by herders and cattle-drivers, it was better he didn't try. Halfway to his destination, the rain that had been threatening began to fall. Within moments, the sprinkling of drops had become a steady downpour—one that was beginning to seep through his cloak. He thrust the pasties under it just the same, though he knew that the oilcloth would protect them. He could have done something about the rain, to be sure, but the crops and wells needed the water and he didn't want to risk having anyone see him use magic and notice that was keeping dry. So, he put up the hood of his cloak and continued onward.

As he neared his destination, the rain intensified, but so did his misgivings. What would he do when he reached the hovel he'd once called home? How could he explain himself… to himself? What could he say that wouldn't terrify his younger self? How would he face Bae without flinging his arms about the boy and practically crushing him to his chest? And knowing everything that had occurred the first time around, what could he do now to change it? He was certain of one thing: after close to a year of slavery, after having Bae in his head and then losing him, after this sudden change in his circumstances, he was in no frame of mind to form a coherent plan. He had food. He needed shelter. And he needed to think very hard about what to do next. Until he knew that much, it was better by far not to have the meeting for which he yearned. In fact, he shouldn't have come this way at all; he should have taken a room above the tavern for the night. He still could. But the rain was still falling and the temperature falling… And people would ask questions about the well-dressed merchant stranger who'd come to town too late to buy seed and too early to buy produce, who'd arrived early and not seen about lodgings until it was nearly dark… Perhaps, not. Not everyone shared his nasty, suspicious nature. But sooner or later, fine clothes and fine airs or no, someone was going to recognize his face. The fewer people to see him now, the better. And he was closer to his old hovel now than he was to the town. No, he wouldn't knock on his door, but there was another place he could shelter. And he oughtn't to be disturbed there until morning.

He spied a light in the window of his old hut and he crouched low so that his shadow wouldn't be seen, making his way instead to the rear of the hovel, where stood the sheepfold. Bae had brought the flock—if one considered four sheep a flock—into its low stone-and-thatch shelter, out of the rain. Rumple hesitated only a moment before he unbolted the pen gate, stepped into the enclosure, and bolted the gate behind him once more. He made his way hurriedly into the structure at the far end, eased open the stout wooden door and, once he was inside, slammed that barrier back into place as well. One of the ewes bleated a greeting. "It's all right, Bellwether," he murmured, smiling a bit. "It's only me."

He'd be lying if he were to say that he found the smell agreeable, but the sheepfold was still a step up from the storm cellar he'd inhabited so very recently. He took off his cloak, spread it on a clean patch of straw-strewn ground damp-side-down, and curled up. Dark Ones generally could go days, even weeks without sleep, it was true, but he'd been through a number of ordeals lately. He was weary in both mind and body and, while he probably could have gone without slumber a bit longer had he needed to, a bit of rest would be quite welcome at the moment. It wasn't very late yet; probably about an hour or so before sunset—though with the rainclouds above it was harder to tell. He'd arise well before daybreak. And in the morning, he'd likely have a clearer idea of what to do. He closed his eyes and, despite the hard ground and ovine odors, was asleep in moments.

________________________________________________________

The creak of the wooden door startled him awake, as a youthful voice exclaimed, "I told you I saw someone, Papa!"

The beam of a lantern fell across Rumple's face and he turned quickly, flinging his arm across his eyes to shield them. And then, disconcertingly, he heard his own voice reply from the gate, "So, you did, Bae."

Rumple forced his voice down into a lower register. "I meant no harm," he murmured. "I was caught in the storm."

"So, you crept into the sheepfold instead of coming to our door?" his younger self demanded harshly.

"I meant no harm," Rumple repeated, recognizing what was happening all too well. His younger self had come out here with Bae having no idea whom he might encounter. For all he knew, it might have been Charlotte Long-scar herself, or another of her trade. Had he been at the window instead of Bae, his younger self would likely have pretended to have seen nobody and passed the night hoping that there would still be four sheep in the pen come morning. Bae had probably insisted on coming out here now, and his younger self would have forced himself to come with him out of fear of what some desperate sort might do to his boy. And now that he realized that the stranger in the sheepfold seemed to pose no danger, he was using a show of anger to hide any lingering fears.

Rumple thought quickly. "I-I didn't want to impose. I'd thought to find an inn to pass the night, but when the rain came upon me… I brought food with me," he said hurriedly. "I'm happy to share, but as to lodgings, I shouldn't like to turn anyone out of their bed when there's bedding enough here." He picked up his cloak and quickly wrapped it about himself, pulling the hood up to hide his face. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you."

"Wait," his younger self said. "I'll not turn a man out in the rain. My boy and I were just about to sit down to supper. From the look of your clothing, I daresay you're used to more refined fare, but you're welcome to share what we have. And while our home may not have the finer things," Rumple heard a faint smile in his younger self's voice now, "I think you'll find it slightly more comfortable than our sheep hut."

"You can have my bed," Bae offered. "I don't mind a straw tick for a night or two."

"I…" Rumple's voice trailed off. He wasn't sure that this was a good idea. And he should have cast a glamor spell earlier, he realized. He couldn't do it now; the telltale smoke that accompanied all but the most subtle of spells would give him away. He'd have to wait until both their attentions were directed elsewhere before he tried it. There was so much that could go wrong if he accepted the hospitality being offered. But Bae was standing in front of him and Rumple couldn't bear to leave him again. Not after having lost him. "Very well," he said, still disguising his voice. "I-I thank you."

__________________________________________________________

He'd forgotten. While the hovel had had a door once, it—and the wall that had supported it—had been used for firewood long ago. Now, a broad sheet of woolen cloth, waterproofed with lanolin and slit open at the bottom to make a flap for entry and exit, stood in its stead. Which would have all been well and good, except that as Rumple passed through, a half-step behind his host, the edge of the heavy fabric brushed against his face and pushed his hood partway back.

He tried to pull it up again quickly, but his younger self had seen. And so had Bae. "Papa!" the boy gasped. "He's…"

The younger Rumpelstiltskin's eyes widened. And a voice, not as angry as it had been before, but still hard and suspicious, demanded, "Who are you?"

[aion-rsa]

Blood Feuds and All the Feels: TorCon 2021 Highlights

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For the second year in a row, Tor Books and Den of Geek have presented TorCon, a virtual convention bringing the exciting panels and dynamic conversations of a book convention to your computer screens. This weekend built on the success of the inaugural con with over 30 authors from Tor Books, Forge Books, Tordotcom Publishing, Tor Teen, and Nightfire matching wits and being candid about their emotional, scary, and hopeful writing processes.

The weekend started off spooky, with horror trivia and thoughtful conversations from female thriller writers, then transitioned into a bevy of gay delights by way of deep dives into emotional storytelling in SFF and upcoming fall reads to make you shiver with antici…pation. Panels ran the gamut from one-on-ones (with assists from Den of Geek moderators) to panels playing games in real-time, all for your entertainment. Check out the highlights below, with links to relive the livestream fun or check out the events for the first time if you missed them live!

Visit the TorCon Bookstore here.

Catriona Ward in Conversation with Gillian Flynn

Listening to one of today’s gutsiest thriller writers Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl, Sharp Objects, Dark Places) chat with Catriona Ward, author of the highly-anticipated The Last House on Needless Street, felt like listening in on the pivotal conversation in a mystery, where everything slots into place. “No one goes from skipping along the street to becoming a monster,” Ward said, “it’s incremental. You turn around and look back at your footsteps and you don’t realize you’ve walked the path to monsterhood.” Between this empathy for the monster and their frank discussion of female culpability in horror, it’s no surprise to learn that Gone Girl‘s ending was the easiest of Flynn’s shocking conclusions to come up with.

Moderated by Den of Geek Books Editor Kayti Burt, the conversation tackled the inherent creepiness of unreliable narrators and whether the authors know their books’ dynamic twists when they first sit down to write. A sense of place is extremely important to both writers, from the eponymous house—and its Bible-reading house cat—in Ward’s forthcoming book to the themes that ground Flynn’s stories. “Whether it’s about what it’s like to grow up in extreme poverty in the ’80s with Satanic Panic and reclaim that mentality, or female aggression and violence and what it looks like cyclically,” Flynn said, “it just happens that the mystery is the way for me to attach an engine to it and give me the discipline to actually tell this story.”

Rewatch Here!

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Chaotic Storytelling—Take 2!

Last year’s most chaotic panel returned with a new batch of ambitious authors ready to pants, not plot, their way through a speculative story in front of a live audience. How do you get from Gladys the tortured mummy in Stephen King’s castle to one of Keanu Reeves’ many incarnations saving the day? By tripping over some security lasers that emit glitter, of course. Enjoy this glimpse into the minds and creative processes of J.S. Dewes (The Last Watch), Jenn Lyons (The House of Always), Christopher Buehlman (The Blacktongue Thief), Andrea Hairston (Master of Poisons), and Neil Sharpson (When the Sparrow Falls), with plot twists and surprise d20 rolls supplied by moderator Drew Broussard of LitHub.

And while most of the panelists agreed that they were unlikely to collaboratively co-write a novel—unless it was a project like Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar’s This is How You Lose the Time War—they relished the opportunity to tap into their more unpredictable sides and go with the first plot ideas that popped into their heads without that self-editing voice. After all, as Lyons reflected, “sometimes fun is destroying stuff.”

Rewatch Here!

Nightfire Family *Blood* Feud

Tired: Family Feud. Wired: Gathering a temporary coven of authors from Macmillan’s newest horror imprint Nightfire to answer horror trivia submitted by the Tor staff. Guided by moderator Lee Mandelo (Summer Sons), these masters of thrills and chills had to answer burning questions such as… What’s the most common hiding spot in a slasher film? Which tropes are the most beloved? Who’s the scariest serial killer? (Spoiler: The shark from Jaws makes the list.)

In addition to guessing at their editors’ and publicists’ answers, the panelists let us into their own brains for some fascinating insights. Thomas Olde Heuvelt (HEX, Echo) once passed out while giving blood, while Cassandra Khaw (Nothing But Blackened Teeth) has a soft spot for Sophie Kinsella’s rom-coms. Gretchen Felker-Martin (Manhunt) has to purposely scare herself to get in the zone, while Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Certain Dark Things) fondly told childhood stories about a spot known as Blood Alley.

“We like to be scared because we all have our little dark sides to ourselves,” Olde Heuvelt said, with Khaw praising how the genre creates a space for people to process fears. Moreno-Garcia pointed out that horror doesn’t necessarily have to scare to be effective, that its tropes are in conversation with other genres and familiar stories retold. And Felker-Martin summed it up best: “Horror is about looking at things you don’t want to look at until you can expand your sphere of empathy enough to encompass them.”

Rewatch Here!

James Rollins in Conversation with Holly Black

Holly Black kicked off our conversation with the thrilling news that she’ll be publishing her first adult novel, Book of Night, with Tor Books! While Black is embarking on a new stage in her writing career with this series, for James Rollins it was like coming home: The thriller writer returns to epic fantasy with The Starless Crown, the first installment of the ambitious Moon Fall series in which he applies his love of scientific discovery on the fringes with a story that he carried in his head for over a decade before putting pen to paper.

With Den of Geek contributor Natalie Zutter moderating, the conversation delved into the authors’ shared love for the band Dead Can Dance as well as the appeal of liminal spaces—from the Faerie court to a twilight realm on a tidally-locked planet—and characters with a foot in two worlds at once. Both authors enjoy writing fantasy characters who fail to honor that old adage to be careful what you wish for, with magic bringing as much potential for world-ending disaster as for life-changing joy. As Black pointed out, “The difference between curses and wishes is just shading.”

Revisit the discussion for talk of non-Chosen Ones, fantasy jewelry, swamp bats we would die for, and the pop culture getting these authors through the pandemic. To that end, could there be some Lupin-esque heists in Book of Night? “Maybe” Black teased. “I hope so!”

Rewatch Here!

All the Feels: Emotional Storytelling in SFF

“With all due respect,” Becky Chambers (A Psalm for the Wild-Built) said to the more stoic authors on this panel, “if you’re not crying when writing a book, then what is the point?” Kerstin Hall (Star Eater) joked about how to “hack” readers, but quips aside, moderator TJ Klune (Under the Whispering Door) guided these authors in a soul-searching conversation about how they put themselves into the emotional highs and lows of their SFF stories. “It’s all about contrast, isn’t it?” asked T.L. Huchu (The Library of the Dead), comparing their writing to how artists work with light and darkness on the same canvas. “If you have these highs, when the really messed-up stuff happens, you’re bringing the characters down from a height, which creates a greater effect.”

From infusing the worldbuilding with feelings to constantly stepping back from the text and taking the temperature, these authors of everything from cozy sci-fi to cannibalistic family sagas never lose sight of the intense relationship on both sides of the page. Part of being a writer, as Alex Pheby (Mordew) pointed out, is letting readers meet you partway by “letting them have space in the text where they can engage their own feelings” instead of being prodded by the author to feel a certain way. Most important when writing from a place of trauma, Lucinda Roy (The Freedom Race) said, was for the author to be sure that they had come to terms with their own emotional starting point: “Have I reconciled my spirit to this trauma in such a way that I can stand back from it and write about it in a way that will be useful to others?”

Despite the name of the panel, it was still a heartstring-tugging surprise to see the panelists get emotional over their brief time together. When asked about inspiration, Roy said of her fellow authors, “Those kinds of people are my people.” Aww, right in the feels.

Rewatch Here!

Ethereal & Eerie: A Glimpse at Captivating Fall Reads

Bless all the authors on this panel for candidly saying that in most cases they would not want to live in the worlds they’ve created—especially because for many of them, like Catherynne M. Valente (The Past is Red, Comfort Me With Apples) and Lee Mandelo (Summer Sons), their books are set in a version of our present. As moderator Seanan McGuire (Where the Drowned Girls Go, Across the Green Grass Fields) pointed out, “Would I have written a book about where I am now if I wanted to stay?”

The panelists spoke about how they set the proper atmosphere for their novels, from Valente cribbing from an actual Florida HOA agreement to Freya Marske (A Marvellous Light) recreating a real manor house she visited in England. The most pressing question is which came first, the world or the characters? For Alix E. Harrow (A Spindle Splintered), it was walking out of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and saying, “I want to Spider-Verse a fairy tale.” While Zin E. Rocklyn (Flowers for the Sea) drew upon her “very deep respect” for the water (“that shit is scary and it’s our least explored area of the Earth”) to create the world first, her character came immediately after: “I wanted to mess with something that was catastrophic and bleak.”

What with releasing new books during spooky season, of course talk turned to tried-and-true Halloween reads and especially favorite eerie bookish characters, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle‘s narrator Mary Katherine Blackwood (Shirley Jackson sure knows how to write ’em) and the eponymous protagonist of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. And how do these authors get in the proper eerie mindset? Everything from Rocklyn’s Spotify playlists to Valente and Mandelo each needing to do no more than step outside into a nearby cemetery. It’s gonna be a great fall ahead.

Rewatch Here!

Charlie Jane Anders in Conversation with TJ Klune

If this were an in-person con, Charlie Jane Anders (Victories Greater Than Death) and TJ Klune (Under the Whispering Door) would have been all over the place, appearing on and/or moderating in a variety of other panels. It was such a treat, then, to see the two of them in devoted conversation, led by Kayti Burt. The two found a lot of common ground, from writing for both YA and adult readers, to debating the benefits and drawbacks of standalones versus series, to speaking candidly about trans identity and asexuality.

As Burt astutely pointed out, both authors go to great lengths to depict kindness and empathy even within their more traumatic or grim stories. That intentionality is for the readers’ sake, Klune said, speaking about his YA superhero series The Extraordinaries and the second installment Flash Fire: “Queer kids deserve to have a book about queer kids that isn’t about the angst of coming out and homophobia; queer people should be able to read about happy queers who do stupid things.” And while Anders often finds that she establishes the tone at the start of a project, she’s aware that tropes can sometimes lead the story in a darker direction and that she as the writer can choose to diverge from where a story may seem like it’s turning grim: “Most tropes aren’t the boss of me! They work for me, not the other way around!”

Rewatch Here!

Space is Gay!

With books like Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit, Charlie Jane Anders’ Victories Greater Than Death, and Ryka Aoki’s Light From Uncommon Stars, it comes as no surprise that space is becoming increasingly gay. But moderator K.M. Szpara (First, Become Ashes) keenly started off the panel by asking the authors to define what they even mean by space. For Aoki, it was the sense of needing space: “If there’s any world you sometimes need a break from, it’s the world we live in as queers.” Anders likened the genre, with its interstellar jaunts and gallivanting, to one of the very best romance tropes: “It’s like there’s only one bed, but with the entire cosmos around you.”

“There’s only one pod!” the panel chorused, and we knew this was going to be a gallivant for the ages even if we were stuck on terra firma. But it wasn’t just riffing: When asked what should be made gay after space (dinosaurs and cyberpunk came to mind), Aoki brought up the necessary point that our work in space was not done: “Don’t just make it gay,” she said, “make it queer and trans.”

This panel had some of the most sparkling witticisms of the con, with this self-appointed starship crew of authors plotting a gay space heist involving tactical ballgowns, robbing Elon Musk’s inevitable space bank, and knowing exactly where to hide a body on a space station. Even when discussing more serious topics such as the need for queer scientists and educators (in addition to sci-fi writers), Aoki had the panel and audience cheering: “Imagine Bill Nye the Science Bi!”

Rewatch Here!

Conjuring the Diaspora: Myths, Legends, and Classics Reimagined

Moderator Lily Philpott began this panel, about the intersections between the Asian diaspora and speculative storytelling, by acknowledging how vast the diaspora is, inviting the panelists to each speak about their ancestors and formative myths and legends. With these authors based on three different continents, no two people had the same perspective on identity. To wit, in discussing the disparate influences on Light From Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki said, “I’m not doing that to show you how many places I can be, I’m doing this to show you how many places I am.” With regard to rediscovering one link to her family history in Japan while losing another, Aoki said, “I refuse, with this book and with many of my books, to see myself as fragmented.” Whereas Nghi Vo (The Chosen and the Beautiful), whose family is Vietnamese and Hakka Chinese, said that while she appreciated the discussion of wholeness, “I have no interest in being whole. I have plenty of identity in fragment.”

As for what drew them to SFF, for Aliette de Bodard (Fireheart Tiger) it was because it’s fun! “I think on some level what I’m trying to find were these stories my grandmother would tell me as a child,” the French-Vietnamese author said, “and that sense of wonder you had when finding a dragon or turning a mountain and meeting the mountain spirit.” Interestingly, Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun started out as more historical palace drama but eventually turned fantastical, especially playing with the what-if aspect by adding magic. “One of the appeals of fantasy for me is you can approach issues side-on,” said the author, who grew up in a Cantonese-speaking Malaysian-Singaporean community in Australia. “With fantasy, you can conjure up characters who evoke those same issues, like with gender, but it’s cloaked by a softening layer that makes it vague. So many true people with their own experiences can see themselves in it.”

“The experience of the diaspora is one of monsters,” Vo said. “If you start with monsters, you start in horror and SFF. When you’re operating from a place where monsters want to eat you, and realize you’re a monster as well, you have to figure out how you’re gonna eat everyone else—that’s where I’m writing from.”

Rewatch Here!

Jo Firestone in Conversation with Joe Pera

Unfortunately, this is the only TorCon event that was truly live in the sense that there isn’t a link to rewatch Adult Swim star Joe Pera (Joe Pera Talks With You) and Punderdome creator Jo Firestone dryly yes-and their way through discussing Pera’s first book A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing but Using the Bathroom as an Escape. A boon for socially awkward and/or overstressed readers everywhere, the book was a challenge for Pera in translating stand-up from the stage to the page, and a delight in collaborating with illustrator Joe Bennett.

Kayti Burt led the audience Q&A, featuring such pressing questions as the best wood on which to display this book in a bathroom (teak). Pera hopes that the book, intended to be read in the duration of a short but much-needed bathroom break, will be a meditative guide but not necessarily recognizable by name: “Sometimes, like with stand-up, it’s best when someone stumbles upon it and has no idea who you are,” he said, “and feels like they’ve discovered something more personal that talks to them.”

The post Blood Feuds and All the Feels: TorCon 2021 Highlights appeared first on Den of Geek.

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Why (and How) Asuka Should Face Sasha Banks at Wrestlemania 34

The first-ever women’s Royal Rumble is in the books, and it’s safe to say it was a resounding success. It was a match full of surprises, fun spots, and classic confrontations. A celebration of women’s wrestling past and present while simultaneously having its eye on the future. Many of the legends proved they could still go, but it was two of the main roster’s current stars that stole the show.

Eventual winner Asuka put on a dominant performance and secured her rightful spot in a marquee match at Wrestlemania. Sasha Banks, meanwhile, became the Iron Woman, entering at No. 1 and lasting an impressive 54 minutes 46 seconds, eliminating best friend Bayley and icon Trish Stratus along the way.

A debuting Ronda Rousey may have momentarily distracted from the accomplishments of the Rumble participants, but as Raw rolled around on Monday night, the spotlight was firmly back on Asuka and Sasha. With Asuka’s choice of Wrestlemania opponent put aside until after the Elimination Chamber – where Alexa Bliss will defend her title – the Empress of Tomorrow instead faced off in an absolute slobber knocker with The Boss.

In what was easily one of the most hard-hitting matches in quite some time, Asuka and Sasha held nothing back, damn near killing themselves in the name of entertainment. It was probably Asuka’s best match since joining the main roster, and it’s no surprise her opponent was Sasha, who seems to give everyone their best main roster match.

The chemistry between Asuka and Sasha, not to mention the spectacle of the match itself, is worthy of a proper Wrestlemania feud. It would be a huge shame for this to be a one-and-done deal. Rumours suggest that Asuka will face Charlotte for the Smackdown Women’s Championship at Mania, while Alexa will defend the Raw title against Nia Jax. I can see the logic in both of those feuds, but after Monday night, I honestly believe the money match is Asuka v Sasha II. But how would we get there?

It starts with this image…

That is an image that begins a feud. An image that features in video packages. An image that marks a turning point for a character.

Sasha claimed she was ready for Asuka, and she came closer than anyone in recent memory. But as she laid in the middle of the ring, broken and beaten, a tear rolling down her cheek, she realized that she wasn’t as ready as she thought.

It’s always the same story with Sasha. Close but no cigar. She’s a four-time Women’s Champion, but just as soon as she reaches the top, it all comes crashing down. She made it all the way from No. 1 to the Final Four of the Rumble but has nothing to show for it. She took Asuka to the limit but came up just short. What does Sasha need to do to change her fortune?

We all know the answer. Turn heel. That is how you build this storyline.

Sasha displayed her heel tendencies towards the end of the Rumble match and in her pre-match promo on Raw. But she hasn’t gone all the way yet. If I was booking this feud, between now and the Elimination Chamber, I would have Sasha slowly beginning to realize that she needs to break bad. Culminating at the Elimination Chamber where she goes full-on heel mode and captures the Raw Women’s Championship.

Week-by-Week Booking

Raw (February 5) – Planting the Seeds

Sasha rewatches the closing moments of her match with Asuka on a TV monitor. She focuses on the tear. Bayley interrupts and tells Sasha that it was a GREAT match. She came SO close. Sasha is still hurting from the loss, and so Bayley goes to give her best friend a hug. Sasha pushes her away. “Not now, Bayley.” Sasha leaves.

Later on in the night, Bayley takes on Asuka in a competitive match, where Asuka comes out on top.

It’s also announced that Alexa’s opponents in the Chamber match will be Sasha, Bayley, Nia Jax, Mickie James, and Mandy Rose.

Raw (February 12) – Giving up the Chain

Sasha and Bayley team up to take on Alexa and Nia in a tag team match. As the referee is distracted, Alexa introduces her trusty old friend the kendo stick into the equation.

[Side-note: In the build-up to the Chamber match I would have Alexa trying to become more extreme.]

Sasha gets a hold of the stick and is about to use it, but Bayley convinces her not to. Bayley is a by-the-rules babyface with a phobia of kendo sticks, remember? Sasha listens to her best bud. But it costs her, and Alexa steals the victory, pinning Sasha. Visibly annoyed with Bayley after the match, Sasha once again turns down a hug.

Later in the night, as Sasha is leaving the arena, Renee Young catches up with her for a post-match interview. Renee asks Sasha about her chances at the Elimination Chamber. An emotional Sasha takes off her Legit Boss gold chain and hands it over to Renee. She tells her that right now, she doesn’t deserve to be called The Boss.

Raw (February 19) – Friends no more

The go-home show before the Elimination Chamber. Bayley takes on Alexa in the main event. It’s a competitive back-and-forth match, but it ends in a DQ when Absolution storm the ring. Alexa takes out a kendo stick, and everyone starts beating down Bayley.

Sasha comes to make the save, carrying a kendo stick of her own. She chases everyone off and helps Bayley back to her feet. The pair hug. And then BAM!

Sasha throws Bayley head first to the mat. And then smashes her over the back with the kendo stick. Sasha considers what she’s done for a second, wondering if she’s made a mistake. No, this feels right! She locks in the Bank Statement, using the kendo stick for leverage.

Elimination Chamber (February 25) – The Boss is Back!

Sasha wins her fifth Women’s Championship after heeling it up the entire match. Shady tactics, trash talking, weapon usage.

The match comes down to Sasha and Bayley – I would have Nia eliminate Alexa if you still wanted to build that feud. The former best friends tear the house down, and at one point it looks like Bayley is going to get her revenge by beating The Boss. But it’s not to be, Sasha is now channeling NXT-mode Sasha, and is unbeatable.

Then, to cement her heel turn, Sasha does something despicable. She places Bayley’s head in one of the Chamber pods and slams the door shut on Bayley’s neck – repeatedly.

Referees try and enter the Chamber to stop Sasha, but she shoves them out of the way. She drags Bayley’s carcass into the ring and traps her in the Bank Statement, wrenching on the clearly injured neck. Just to give Bayley a bit of a rub here, I wouldn’t have her tap out, but instead, pass out. The ref rings the bell and declares Sasha the new Raw Women’s Champion.

As the Chamber is lifted up, Sasha stands tall with her new title. Bayley is stretchered out. Renee Young gets in the ring for a post-match interview with Sasha and tries to get some answers on why she would intentionally hurt her best friend.

Sasha delivers a scathing promo, claiming the reason for her lack of success this past year is that she lost sight of herself. She forgot how to be The Boss! She cared too much about her friends and the fans. She now realizes to succeed the only person she needs to care about his herself.

She asks Renee if she still has her chain. Renee takes it out of her pocket. Sasha snatches the chain and shoves Renee to the ground (there’s no better heel tactic than being mean to Renee). She puts the chain around her neck and declares: “The Boss is back! And nobody’s ready for Sasha!”

Raw (February 26) – A Championship Celebration

The next night on Raw, General Manager Kurt Angle refuses to reward Sasha’s actions with a celebration. But Sasha doesn’t care. She’s The Boss! She will hold her own celebration. And so she rocks up to the arena in a Cadillac Escalade with her own personal security detail – like her entrance from TakeOver Brooklyn back in 2015.

This is how Sasha enters the arena all the time from now on.

Once in the ring, she picks up where she left off the night before. Being The Boss means looking after number one. Ending her friendship with Bayley was a career move. Putting Bayley in the hospital was not personal she says. Again, she says nobody is ready for Sasha, not even Asuka. Yeah, Asuka might have beaten the old Sasha Banks, but she hasn’t, and can’t, beat The Boss!

Asuka’s music hits. She walks down the ramp. Sasha directs her security to form a barricade. Sasha is expecting Asuka to challenge her for the title at Wrestlemania. But Asuka isn’t impressed.

Asuka says she has already beaten Sasha and wants to go up against the best on the grandest stage of them all. She wants to face a real champion, like Charlotte Flair. This obviously infuriates Sasha who screams for Asuka to come back. But Asuka brushes off The Boss and leaves.

Raw (March 5) – Anything you can do, I can do better

Alexa gets her rematch for the Women’s Championship against Sasha. Asuka watches on a monitor backstage. Throughout the match, Sasha tries to provoke Asuka by stealing her moves. The hip attack. The kicks. The armbar. And finally the Asuka Lock.

Sasha wins the match and calls out Asuka. “You see that, Asuka!” Backstage, Asuka doesn’t look impressed, and once again walks away. I would book this similar to the Shawn Michaels and Undertaker feud. Taker refused to face Michaels, and so HBK did everything in his power to get the Deadman’s attention.

Later in the night, Kurt Angle reveals that Asuka will appear tomorrow night on Smackdown Live to confront Charlotte Flair. It’s expected that she will make her decision on which champion she wants to face at Wrestlemania.

Smackdown (March 6) – A Boss Blindside

Charlotte is in the ring. She talks about being a proud champion. Ready to take on all comers. And she wants to know if the Empress is prepared to go one-on-one with the Queen at Wrestlemania

Asuka comes down to the ring. The two women have a stare down. Asuka says she respects Charlotte. The champ returns the sentiment. They both agree that they could steal the show at Wrestlemania. “So what do you say?” Charlotte asks, holding out her hand, waiting for Asuka to seal the deal.

But just as Asuka is about to accept the handshake, Sasha’s music hits! The Escalade drives into the arena flanked by the security detail. Asuka and Charlotte both prepare for an attack. But nobody gets out of the car.

Sasha enters the ring with a kendo stick and takes out both Charlotte and Asuka from behind. She tosses Charlotte out of the ring and proceeds to wail on Asuka with the weapon. She then locks in the Bank Statement using the kendo stick for leverage.

Raw (March 12) – It’s on!

Sasha again holds court. Boasting about her Smackdown attack and how Asuka might not even make it to Mania. She says that means she should get to pick her opponent instead. Maybe she’ll choose Bayley? Oops, no, she already injured her. Perhaps they’ll have to bring back another legend? Like Trish Stratus? Oops, no, already eliminated her at the Rumble.

Just as Sasha is in full-on braggadocious mode, Asuka comes out, still nursing her neck injury. “You want Asuka at Wrestlemania?” she says. “You’re ON!”

Sasha smiles, pleased that she got what she wanted. But the expression on Asuka’s face changes. No one has ever seen Asuka look this angry before! “You have made the biggest mistake of your life!” Asuka yells. Sasha’s smile turns to a look of fear.

Raw (March 19) – The Contract Signing

Kurt Angle oversees a contract signing between the champion and challenger. Sasha is flanked by her security detail. Sasha signs her contract with her BOSS stamp. Before Asuka signs her contract, she says she wants the match to be No Disqualification. Sasha says that Asuka can’t demand the match type, but Kurt agrees to it.

Asuka signs on the dotted line and then grabs Sasha by the chain, yanking her face close, so that she can look directly into her eyes. “At Wrestlemania,” Asuka says, “I’m not just going to take your title. I’m going to break your arm!” She then launches an attack on The Boss, but the security guards manage to rescue Sasha and carry her away.

Raw (March 26) – A Vicious Attack

Two weeks from Wrestlemania and Sasha is starting to regret her decision. Asuka has snapped and is out to break bones! Sasha needs to take out Asuka now. She tries to convince the other women in the locker room that Asuka is a danger to them all and they should help her in removing Asuka. Nobody listens.

Later in the night, Asuka takes on Sonya, displaying more viciousness then ever before. She wins quickly, and refuses to let go of the armbar, until the referees eventually pry her off.

Once again, Sasha attacks Asuka from behind, but this time Asuka is ready and fights back. Sasha’s security enter the ring, momentarily distracting the Empress, and Sasha blasts Asuka with a kendo stick. She then directs her security to hold Asuka in position, as she begins repeatedly wailing on Asuka’s back.

Raw (April 2) – Nobody’s ready for Asuka!

The go-home show before Wrestlemania. What is the physical condition of Asuka after the brutal beatdown by Sasha the week before? Will she be able to compete at Mania? Sasha certainly doesn’t think so, and once again, she brags about taking out the “feared” Asuka. She says that if Asuka doesn’t turn up on Sunday, then Sasha will be declared winner via forfeit.

But Sasha is wrong. Asuka is here! She makes her way down to ringside. “Security!” Sasha yells. Her security guards form a line outside the ring. Asuka has her arm behind her back, it looks like she’s nursing a back injury. But she’s not nursing her back, she’s hiding a kendo stick! Asuka unveils the stick and begins swinging at the security team! Taking them out one-by-one. Oh Shit! Sasha can’t believe it!

With the security team laid out, Asuka turns her attention towards Sasha. The Boss abandons her title and tries to make a run for it. She jumps out the opposite end of the ring and goes to exit via the barricade. But somebody is there to stop her.

It’s Bayley!

She hasn’t been seen since Sasha injured her neck at the Elimination Chamber. She removes her neck brace and begins pounding on Sasha. Asuka steps into the ring as Bayley rolls Sasha into the Lion’s Den.

Sasha desperately crawls over to her title, but Asuka steps on it. Sasha looks up at the face of the woman that is about to kill her. Asuka rips off Sasha’s chain and delivers a swift kick to The Boss’ head. Sasha crawls around the ring dazed. Asuka is about to lay into her with the kendo stick, but the security has recovered and manages to drag Sasha out of harm’s way at the last minute.

But Asuka is ready, and at Wrestlemania, there will be no escape.

And that’s the feud I would book for the Raw Women’s Championship leading up to Wrestlemania. Asuka, of course, should get the ultimate revenge in the match and claim her first main roster Women’s title. After the rematch, Sasha could move on to feud with Bayley throughout the summer. Whereas Asuka would have a number of challengers in the form of Nia Jax, Absolution, Mickie, and hopefully a debuting Iconic Duo and/or Nikki Cross.