#or (to go a bit self-indulgent) what the prisoner does with having the finale be about number six joining forces with number two

[weedle-testaburger]

it's just dawned on me that i fucking love endings where there is an alternative to just Killing The Bad People because if there's one mentality that's more toxic to humanity than any other, it's the idea that some people are Just Bad and deserve bad things to happen to them, and how people use that belief to justify doing bad things to people in turn. seeing that cycle get broken in media and forcing people to stop doing awful shit rather than just get killed thinking they were right along is way more cathartic and compelling to me

[gaiuskamilah]

says i'm her favorite (yeah i fucking better be)

terror fest | E | 1.1k words

relationships | tyson vreeland/nb!main character (brigitte barrera, she/her)

warnings | explicit sexual content, consensual non-consent, non-con elements

summary | During a fit of jealousy, Tyson indulges in a little fantasy of his.

notes: dead dove: do not eat, check the warnings. this also contains spoilers for chapters 11-13 for terror fest.

for @choicespride kinktober event: non-con.

[read on ao3]

“If you did something to Zaire, I won’t stop until you’re rotting in a cell for the rest of your life. Do you understand me?”

Jealousy rears its ugly head as Tyson remembers Brigitte’s call. He had picked up on the third ring—playing coy, maybe just a little bit excited, Brigitte finally called him back—only for her to call about Zaire. Fucking Zaire. He didn’t even have anything to do with them. Calling him just to talk about them. What was Brigitte thinking?

All the other deaths were fair play, except Zaire’s, apparently. 

Would Brigitte think the same way of his?

Because he wants her to. He wants her to find him, beaten and bloody, and give him all her attention. He wants her to never let him go, to dote over him, to kill and hurt others for even putting a single strand of hair on his head out of place. 

Tyson remembers how Brigitte kissed him after finding him tied and gagged, how she fussed over his injured leg. He internally preened when she pulled away and told him how much she loved him, right in front of Koda. He wants it to happen again. He loves it when she’s protective over him and only him, even better when it’s in front of other people.

But instead of that happening, he had to sit through a phone call where she asked him about Zaire. Not him! Zaire! Does he need to fake his kidnapping again? Fake a stab wound? Maybe poison himself just to grab her attention?

Brigitte, please notice me!

He lets out a breath in an attempt to calm himself. Maybe he needs a bit of perspective. He remembers how Brigitte held him just a mere few hours ago. Not Zaire. Him. She pinned him down on the table and had her way with him, told him not to hold back, to not stifle his moans. She pressed her clothed body against his bare own, took his cock in her hands, bit down and marked the curve of his neck. She wanted to hear him, and he obeyed. 

Now, he only hopes Zaire heard him too.

In the darkness of the tunnel, which now serves as his makeshift room, his hand slithers into his jeans, and he groans as he palms his already hardening erection. He breathes in and buries the side of his face into the sheets—Brigitte’s sheets—and starts to stroke himself to full hardness. He whispers her name as the scene in his head changes. 

I’m yours. I’m all yours. It’s what he said back at the prison, when Brigitte fucked him to the edge of his life. There is nothing else he meant more. He wants Brigitte to take him, to tie him up, to make him never be apart from her. In his head, she kisses and touches him in a way that she knows would drive him mad. He’s crying and terrified as she slaps him across his face, then coos and kisses his tears away. 

“I’m jealous,” Brigitte says. She caresses the side of his face that she hit, his skin already reddening with the force of her slap. “Ty baby, I’m so damn jealous.”

In the fantasy, his cock hardens despite his fear, and Brigitte laughs as he pleads for her to stop touching him. She ignores him, and pulls away his pants and his underwear in one go. Tyson whispers yes as his fantasy counterpart uselessly protests. He strokes himself, pretending it’s Brigitte’s hands, and moans as she leans forward to take him in her mouth. She holds down his hips as she has her way with him, ignoring his pleas for her to stop and to let him go. 

Brigitte tells him she found out about him and Destiny. “Destiny!” she spits, venom coating her voice. “It always has to be fucking Destiny. I can’t ever have anything for my damn self because of Destiny!”

Tyson bites his lip as he grasps onto his balls and imagines Brigitte looking up at his bare body from between his legs, all hers for the taking. The ropes burn his skin as he tries to get free, but no matter how much he thrashes against her, she’s able to keep him still. Down, boy, she whispers into his ear as she painfully tugs his long hair. Her lips latch onto the side of his neck as she rubs her wet center against his leaking erection. He’s chanting please don’t just above his breath. 

“Don’t worry Ty, I took care of Destiny. I even took care of our little friends,” Brigitte tells him, her nails digging into the sides of his throat. He’s feeling lightheaded at how she grasps his neck. “So now, you have no one but me.” 

Back in the tunnel, Tyson moans as he moves his hand furiously up and down his cock—so close, he’s so close—and sees Brigitte sitting on his hips instead. His cock disappears between her legs, and the fantasy version of him is horrified as she uses his body to pleasure herself. Her eyes glaze over in pleasure as she rides him, and he’s begging her to stop. “Brigitte stop, we don’t have a condom— you’re gonna get pregnant— I’m gonna come inside you— Brigitte, please—”

His body spasms, out of his control, as he finishes inside of her. She leans down and moans against his mouth. “You feel so good, Ty,” Brigitte says, not letting up and continuing to ride him. He’s sensitive, so overstimulated, and fresh tears stream down his face with every move of her hips against his. “Can you give me another one? Can you come one more time, baby?”

Brigitte ignores his protests again, her eyes slipping shut as she slams down on him. “We’re gonna make such a cute family,” she says. A familiar, traitorous pressure’s building in his lower half again; she’s so tight and warm around him, taking everything without hesitation. He watches her bring a hand against her clit, grinding and moaning as she tries to reach her own climax. He feels her clench around him when she comes, looking at him with lust-filled eyes as she says: “I love you too, Ty.”

“Fuck, Brigitte!” he moans as he spills all over his hand, staining his jeans and the stolen bedsheets. “Bri—Brigitte…”

He lies down in silence, catching his breath and recollecting himself as the pleasure washes away. 

After a few minutes, he reaches out for the box of tissues he leaves in the room and cleans himself. The others are waiting for and expecting him.

He doesn’t forget to take his knife with him. After all, they’ll be having their own little piece of forever soon.

[hey-august]

The marine x buggy fanfic is so good I NEED a slow burn of it so bad 😭😭😭

Ahhh, thank you so much!!! All the love for that fic is sending me to the moon 😭😭🩷🩷🩷

A slow burn would be fantaaaaaastic!! My list of things to write is so long, but here are some a lot of thoughts I have about the potential for a slow burn with the characters, as well as a slow burn that occurs after the fic. (Kinda sorta NSFW-ish down below, but not detailed smut.)

If the slow burn precedes everythingggg…

More Buggy being an obnoxious chatterbox. Never shutting up, making poor jokes, roasting everyone, sometimes actually saying something useful. And Reader would find it interesting. They’d find him interesting.

Because Reader doesn’t mind so much, they’d be tasked with dealing with the prisoner more frequently. Reader would try to keep the power balance, but there would be some softening around the edges. The lines would slowly blur.

We could have cute moments where Buggy whines about missing certain luxuries and amenities. Reader listens and sometimes indulges him. Maybe it’s not exactly what Buggy wanted, but it’s something. Imagine. IMAGINE, one night Reader sneaks Buggy out of the cell and lets him sleep in a nice bed. Their bed.

Reader would hang onto every word of Buggy’s stories (some of which are tall tales), invested in the performance he puts on and enthralled by the journeys.

Some days Buggy is moody. How could he not be, having been locked up for so long? He gets snippy. His words are meaner and cut harder. Communication is hard, even for the Reader. Sometimes it blows over quickly, maybe with a joke or a step towards more “platonic” intimacy. Other times it takes longer. Reader swaps shifts and avoids Buggy.

They have their ups and downs and eventually Buggy realizes that Reader has been volunteering for shifts where they can spend time with him. This could be where they have The Big Fight. The start of the darkest part of the night. First, Buggy tries to play everything off. Maybe he’s trying to push the Reader away. He taunts and teases them about wanting to be near him. His distrust and poor self-esteem fuel the fire until he lashes out and says something that crosses the line.

While this fight is still going on, the rescue kicks off. Pirates are swarming, looking for their captain. Now. Two options… (There are others, but I like these.) - Option One: Buggy manages to get uncuffed in all the scuffling and it’s time for him to leave. But something’s not right. He feels like he’s leaving something behind. It’s a feeling he’s familiar with, due to his Devil Fruit powers. It’s not a bit of himself though, not literally. In a frenzy, he goes looking for Reader. First checking their room, then running through the ship, calling for them. When he finally finds Reader (maybe with some mildly heroic saving), he blurts out an awkward apology and nearly begs them to join him. - Option Two: Buggy is waiting in the cell, listening to the distant fighting, when the Reader shows up. They’re moving quickly, unlocking the cell, taking off his cuffs, and telling him where to go to meet up with the pirates. They’re helping him escape. Buggy goes, following their directions. But before he gets too far, he runs back to the Reader and asks them to join him.

Fight fight fight, escape, everyone is safe on the ship. Celebratory party, from which Buggy and Reader slip away for a moment of quiet. And a first kiss, under the moonlight. Then maybe a mirror of the fic that was posted… They start screwing, get interrupted and have to go back to the party, eventually leave and finish what they started.

Okay, so now let’s talk about a slow burn that happens after the fic takes place, but before the last few paragraphs. This puts us at the point where the rescue is happening and Buggy asks Reader to join him.

Reader says no. They’re not ready to commit, they just met this clown who makes stupid decisions (and has a great dick).

In the ensuing chaos, Reader does something that makes their affection for the escaping pirate obvious. Their Superior notices and has to take a stand. They harm Reader in some way, maybe a shot or something.

Buggy sees this happen and that is. not. good. Fury, rage, and flying limbs are everywhere. 

Reader passes out, missing the rest of the fight, and wakes up on Buggy’s ship. He couldn’t leave them behind. Reader feels conflicted, their choice was taken away. They know that life would have been much harder if they stayed behind and stuck with the Marines after the show of weakness towards pirates, but it’s hard to give up on everything they knew.

Now we have a strange slow burn - the two clearly have some type of feelings for each other, but neither one wants to admit it. Reader is struggling with the direction of their life. Buggy just sucks at feelings in general.

But. Hear me out. They have a “friends with benefits” relationship. Maybe sometimes they hook-up out of frustration, other times out of loneliness. The physical chemistry is there, but they ignore and avoid anything that feels romantic. So they never kiss. No lips on lips.

Because of this, these two are absolute fools when faced with anything gentle. Cuddles are awkward and short-lived. Compliments or comments about how well they get along are brushed off or turn them into blushing messes. If they do get within kissing distance - oh boy. The hesitation is there. The looks darting between eyes and mouth. Licking lips in anticipation. But nope. No kissing. Only fucking.

Maybe here there isn’t a low point. It’s solely a slow burn, increasing in butterflies and hopeful moments until they give in. And the catalyst could be anything. Absolutely anything. Maybe Buggy admits his feelings first. He could be sober or drunk. Or Reader goes first, realizing they’re actually happy. Truly happy. And when they acknowledge that they like life on the ship, they also confess liking the clown. Or maybe the Reader is tired of the games and just kisses the stupid clown without thinking. One kiss turns into another. And another. And, well you know what happens then.

Happily ever after.

[that-ari-blogger]

The Owl House And Introducing Character

So, everyone has a story that is special to them. For a lot of people, it is Avatar: The Last Air Bender, or the Harry Potter books. For me, this story is The Owl House. I have watched this series more times than I am willing to admit and I genuinely believe that the series holds up and is on par with, if not better than other stories that have gone down as classics. It’s definitely the best story about a wizarding school that I have ever read.

This series of posts will not be a review of the show, but an analysis of why I think it is so incredible.

SPOILERS AHEAD

“So, you have a different way of doing things, a different way of seeing things. That might make you weird, but it also makes you awesome.”

A Lying Witch and a Warden is the first episode of The Owl House, and it comes out swinging, thematically. The quote above is a thesis statement for the entire show. What makes you unique is what makes you special, and it’s rather telling that she’s telling this to prisoners in “The Conformatorium”, a place where people are sent to stamp out their weirdness.

I find it interesting that, at this point, nobody’s species or physical appearance is brought into question, the “weirdness” is the personality traits. This is a story about inner strength, not external appearance, so the character designers get to go wild. But there’s another thing about the character designs here that I love, in a story about being yourself, no two characters look the same (and even the twins are noticeably different from each other), in the boiling isles, you are free to be whoever you want, with the villain trying to impose conformity onto everyone else.

In any case, the point of analysis that I would like to highlight here is the three main character introductions and how well they set up the rest of the story, Luz, Eda, and King. I’m also going to mention Camilla, but that isn’t as dwelled upon, yet. (I will get there eventually)

Luz is introduced in a fantasy of her own making. She’s wacky and fun, and “Now eat this, Sucka!” is iconic, but she’s stuck in this world of make-believe because people in the real world don’t understand her. Or more accurately, aren’t willing to understand her. This entire episode is Luz’s introduction, but the self-indulgently nerdy opening sequence (the book report bit) is so quintessentially Luz.

It’s also notable that this sets up the fairly flat character arc that Luz has in season 1. I don’t mean flat as in uninteresting, I mean she starts off being quirky and the main point of the series is the message that you don’t have to change. She does grow as time goes on, but she stays herself.

Luz does have a character arc, but she doesn’t become someone different, she learns to embrace herself. This book report is such a fantastic introduction for Luz because it establishes the contrast between Luz and the tropes she is pushing through. The Owl House is tropey as all hell, Luz literally calls out half of the references in the story, and I don’t think it's worse for doing so. But Luz is distinctly separate from the tropes. She’s unique, and she’s going through her own path, but she needs to learn that she is doing that, and setting that up with a book report is awesome.

Eda is introduced as the most powerful witch in the Boiling Isles and doesn’t really falter from there. What’s interesting is how she foils off Luz. Eda has embraced her weirdness but is exiled for it, or so we think. There is more under the surface, but we don’t really get more details on it, yet. I find it really interesting that the first thing Luz does to help Eda is fix a television. Changing it from a “box that reflects only sadness” to something that shines and gives off colour and noise. She brings something to life, and I think that’s what she does to everyone she meets.

Finally, there is King. King’s whole story is about his sense of self-worth and finding his purpose. As such, we are introduced to his shadow first, an inflated image that is terrifying and overbearing, and then it’s a little furball and a rubber ducky. He’s like Luz, with an expectation of how his life will turn out, only to find out later on that he will just turn out like himself and that’s okay.

There’s something fascinating that I haven’t touched on yet. These characters all have two introductions: an image, and a reality. Luz has the book report, we meet Eda and King’s shadows first. Even Warden Wrath has a mask and a true self. It’s a recurring theme that things aren’t what they seem at first glance. Each image meets a specific, very simple, trope, but then when we meet the characters, we find their complexities and weirdness. Then there’s Camilla. We only meet Camilla briefly, and she is an incredibly simple character. She’s the disapproving/misunderstanding parent figure. But, if everyone else has something deeper behind their first impression, I wonder what Camilla is like beyond what we see here.

Next

[bookshelf-in-progress]

The Six Swans for a fairytale retelling?

I finally filled this prompt by writing "Without Words" as my story for the Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge. Since I put the story in a separate post, I'm going to self-indulgently use this ask to provide some author's notes.

For quite a few years now, I've had the idea to retell the ending of this fairy tale from the prince's point of view. It's so dramatic! He's protected this woman for years, and had to be deeply in love to do so, and now he's faced with enough evidence that he has to put her to death. How do you deal with that? I fully intended to use his POV to fill this prompt, yet, every time I tried, I couldn't make it interesting enough to hold my attention.

Then a few weeks back, I had the image of the prince begging his wife to speak, while she had to stand strong and refuse, despite the pain it causes both of them. This became much more interesting (and easier to write as a short retelling), because the prince's conflict comes from not knowing, while her conflict comes from fully knowing what's going on and having to make the hard choice not to save herself.

From the first spark of this idea, the couple was named Eliza and Christian. Eliza because of Andersen's fairy tale, of course, and Christian because Andersen's tale is Danish, and Denmark has had ten kings named Christian. His name became even more thematically fitting when I decided to write this story for the Inklings Challenge.

I debated whether I should retell the "Six Swans" version where the heroine is accused of killing her three children, or the "Wild Swans" route where she's just accused of witchcraft. The witchcraft charge is enough to condemn her to death, is more directly related to her task, and makes her story parallel her stepmother's better. However, the missing children angle made this much more painful and implied a stronger bond between the two of them. They're not only married, but they've had three children together! He's protected her against two different accusations of murder! The fact that he's been so supportive up to this point makes it even more dramatic when he finally is forced to execute her.

It does seem a bit ridiculous that he's let this go on long enough to lose three children, but that just adds to the drama of the moment. Christian knows Eliza well enough that he doesn't believe she could kill their children, but after three murders, the evidence is getting harder and harder to explain away, and even the king has to obey the law, so he signed the execution order to prevent rebellion from his government.

If I hadn't written that opening scene, I'd probably be rolling my eyes at some of the language--"the way our souls entwine"? Really? Who talks like that? But sometimes you just gotta write something very, very sappy. It's good for the soul. And I have a good excuse because I posted on Valentine's Day.

On a structural level, my favorite line in the story is probably, "Does the prisoner have any last words?" I was struggling with how to transition between Eliza musing about Christian and her brothers to the moment of breaking the curse, when that line of dialogue occurred to me, and the scene fell into place. It's a standard line for this type of scene, while tying in perfectly to the specific conflict here. Plus, it stops the guards from tying up Eliza long enough to keep her arms free for shirt-throwing.

This story taught me a lot about how to strategically use telling vs. showing. The standard points of the fairy tale--the breaking of the curse, the reunion with her brothers, the mother-in-law's crime, and the recovery of the children--are all told, rather than shown, because this story is about the bond between Eliza and Christian, and stopping to show anything else distracts from that. Like, I had tried to show the brothers explaining about the curse and the lost children, but that tangled me up in the logistics of the scene, and made me drop the thread of Eliza and Christian's relationship. Reducing it to summary allowed me to keep the focus where it needed to be.

I am sad I had to push her brothers so far into the background. That family bond is such an important part of the fairy tale, but the story's focus means I only get to name one brother.

Usually, one of the youngest brothers is stuck with the swan's wing, but I gave it to the eldest, because 1) I wanted to be different, 2) In the limited space, it allowed me to feature both her eldest brother and the swan wing brother at the same time, 3) giving the wing to the crown prince creates much more interesting conflict.

Retellings that give the youngest brother the wing usually go on and on about how he's torn between his ordinary human life and the freedom of life as a swan, and that's so whiny and boring to me. Giving it to the eldest brother, however, has concrete political consequences. He's crown prince! Will the people accept a king with the permanent mark of a curse? Can he leverage this imagery to his advantage? Now that he's lost his dominant hand (I made sure to make it as inconvenient as possible), he can neither write nor hold a sword, which could have profound effect on his reign. Giving him the wing could be a bit like Rabadash's curse in The Horse and His Boy--something that forces him to prioritize peace--especially since I've written him as a bit of a war-monger. Even with his limited amount of page-time, he fascinates me, and I'd kind of like to see where his story goes.

With the brothers so blithely talking about going home and taking Eliza with them, I imagine that in the interim of seven years, events have transpired that have eliminated the stepmother as a threat. Going home is just going home to a beloved father, not going to war.

Initially, I had wanted Eliza's first spoken word to be her husband's name. When that proved to be impractical in the execution scene, I considered giving her no dialogue, to prove that she doesn't need words to be a force in the story. Making her one word of direct dialogue be her husband's name felt like the perfect compromise.

In offering to let Eliza take the children, Christian is really being reckless. He blithely talks of transferring the crown, but any one of his kids--who he's offering to let grow up in a foreign country--could one day decide to take advantage of their valid claim to the throne to try to take over his kingdom. He's really lucky that Eliza forgave him.

Portraying the final kiss as "I let my silence speak for me", was not intentionally inspired by Gaskell's habit of referring to kissing scenes as "delicious silence", but I'm kind of pleased by the connection.

I'm proud of that final line. Ties everything up so neatly and concisely.

[danwhobrowses]

The Rings of Power - Eps 3&4 Review

After two episodes delivering a solid start, the ball returns in Amazon's corner to deliver on the Rings of Power. Since I'm doing 2 a time with HotD I decided to do it with RoP

Spoilers for the Episodes

Right so Episode 3 and 4 of Rings of Power were alright, it seemed to follow a similar pattern to the last two, with 4 being better than 3.

I do feel myself a bit more lenient towards the show now that I am aware that the showrunners can't take anything from the Silmarillon, due to the Tolkein estate not letting anyone have the rights to it, but that doesn't mean there are some lore points going another direction that I don't quite feel good about.

Starting with the stuff I didn't like, I must admit part of why I didn't quite enjoy episode 3 was the express attention on the plot lines I felt were weak in 1&2. Again I find myself frustrated by Galadriel benefitting from being hostile - and very un-Galadriel-like, she is far from the radiant, wise, almighty student of Maia; the greatest elf mage in Noldor after Faenor, master of divination and worthy wielder of Nenya - and then acting smug and patronizing to every man (race not gender, just to be clear). Queen Regent Míriel also has that energy, but in episode 4 we better understand her hostility.

I didn't quite like the 'drama for the sake of drama', especially with Elendil and his kids, Bronwyn being unable to speak sense into the villagers too is annoying, of course she's in charge she's the one who got them all out: you don't piss off the medic. Númenor's conflict with the elves isn't quite fleshed out given how it's a show-only narrative, it just feels like a lazy choice to make the Númenoreans suddenly untrusting towards elves, despite the fact that Númenor went to Gil-Galad to help teach the Twilight Men.

I will say that episode 3 was also a bit self-indulgent on two moments; Galadriel's slow-mo horse riding didn't do it for me, I think the Elves' attempt to escape the tunnel had too much flippydoos too, there's grace and there's just trying to look flashy, it is really a matter of quality over quantity there. While we're at the attempted prison escape, the Warg...another big oof of a CGI attempt, I get what they were trying to do, but god did it just look wrong, again, quality over quantity is the matter here.

I do have to point out my continued disdain for Theo, he is very much a dumb-dumb with this sword storyline and petulance towards his mother, he's also just that extra little bit greedy. But my final criticism returns back to Galadriel, I made a meme of it in the 'spoilers out of context' but the whole 'symbol is Mordor' reveal was laughably stupid. Elrond can spy on Durin's conversation bridges away but Galadriel can't look at a symbol from the side? No Elven ciphers and archivists ever considered just turning it 90 degrees? Also why didn't Galadriel's company check the Southlands again? They've spent a millenia scouring Middle Earth for a whiff of orc but they didn't consider going where Morgoth's old allies were? Seems like the first place you would go.

But on the plus side, I do appreciate that 3&4 are putting in work to try and bring to life the weaker plots so far. I will admit I do find myself more interested in Arondir's subplot, his pain of losing his fellow elves trying to escape did make him more intriguing as a character, and by proxy his plot becomes interesting through learning the Orcs' subplot and of the mysterious Benjen, I mean, Adar.

We do have to appreciate how the show manages their exclusive characters in a way that we all are second guessing if it's just Sauron in another shape or form, in a way it does help add to the villain building that he could indeed be anyone even book readers are unfamiliar with, as it fits how Sauron maneuvers in this age.

Elendil and Isildur - man never stood a chance with the ring he's already hearing voices! - are welcome new additions, the sister Earien needs a bit more time but a plot seems to be forming there. Given that this will promise developing them into Kings vital to the Last Alliance. Halbrand's time on Númenor was interesting, especially his violent side, I doubt we are indeed finished with him too, at least I hope not. The Númenor subplot has breathed some life into the Galadriel plot, but I admit that it was late into episode 4 to win me over, thanks to the stunning visuals of the falling petals and triumphant music to Queen Regent Míriel's U-Turn.

While Theo is an idiot, his subplot also started turning a corner late with this hidden Sauron acolyte - who is more interesting than Theo already - and the promise of wider importance with the hilt (that only seems to make a blade with blood rather than just drawing the iron from blood) blending with the Adar and Arondir plot once more. The orcs returning to practical is great too, and Theo stealthing through the village at night (while another idiot move) did remind me of the old Fellowship of the Ring game when stealthing past the Nazgul.

The stronger storylines also remain strong; the Harfoot storyline is still the most Tolkein-esque to me; curious and adventurous with enough whimsy and core themes of kindness, but we took some time to make Poppy Proudfellow more likable - sympathising with the loss of her entire family in one landslide, but also still staying back to support Nori - and apply some leniency via Lenny Henry's Sadoc. The Elrond/Celebrimbor/Durin plot is also among the most fleshed and best acted of the show, Durin is just great really as is Disa and Elrond. While Celebrimbor could use a bit more screentime, the plot doesn't really demand it until his forge is made, so it does fall to this trio to maintain the elements of friendship, conflict and secrets. Introducing Mithril into the mix is an interesting play, but I am more curious as to why Durin feels that Elrond is hiding something from him - since so far, Elrond doesn't really know why Celebrimbor needs the Forge, his job is just to make sure it's built.

The visuals remains perhaps the one thing Rings of Power has miles ahead of HotD, Númenor was amazing, even the Orc tunnels had its own distinct aesthetic, and there are clear vibrancy and usage of light and dark. The music is getting there too, sometimes it is tame but other times it's great.

Overall it's still solid stuff, we're progressing, but there is a wall still here that needs to be broken through.

[the-wild-wolves-around-you]

hear those bells ring: chapter 4 (a deaf!bakugo x reader fic)

Summary: Bakugo and Reader finally get a moment alone, and important conversations are had. Over dinner of course ;) 

Pairings: Katsuki Bakugo x Reader; Katsuki Bakugo x You

Rating: M(ature)

Warnings: Adult language.

A/N: Sorry for the wait on ch 4, but it’s over 10k, so hope that makes up for it lol Anyway, hope you enjoy!

~*~*~ No spoilers or anything. This is just a self-indulgent AU fic with aged up characters. Everyone’s in their mid-20s. Fic title is from a song called “Achilles Come Down.”

Ao3 Link: Here

Ch 1 Tumblr Link: Here

Ch 2 Tumblr Link: Here

Ch 3 Tumblr Link: Here 

“Great. See you then.” 

The words ricocheted around your head like pinballs, and all you could do was stare as Dynamight turned on his heel and strode out of your ruined shop like he couldn’t stand to be there a second longer. 

“Bak—bro, c’mon!” Red Riot, or Kirishima as he insisted, called after the blond, who didn’t stop. Then the redhead turned back to you, clapping his hands in front of his face and bowing his head. “I’m so sorry about him. He can be a little…” 

“Direct?” you offered when the hero trailed off into silence for a beat to long. 

“I was gonna say he can be a little bit of a dick, but that sounds better,” Kirishima laughed, and you felt your face flush when he aimed that charming grin in your direction. 

You’d heard stories of how charismatic Red Riot was. He was a popular, mainstream favorite hero. The gossip magazines were always covered with his shirtless pictures that never failed to rile up the female population, even Mrs. Kojima and her old lady friends. 

But nothing could have prepared you for being in front of him, for having him wink and smile at you, even if you logically knew he wasn’t coming onto plain old you. He was currently wearing a dark hoodie and non-descript jeans, but you could still see the definition of his muscles through the bulky clothing, which definitely wasn’t helping matters. 

“W-Well, I’m sure you and D-Dynamight have more important places to be,” you stuttered as you averted your eyes. “I-I don’t want to keep you from any hero business.” 

“Alright, alright, I can take a hint, I’ll get out of your hair,” Kirishima chuckled as he held his hands up. 

Your face burned even hotter, if that was possible. “N-No! I mean—” 

“Just a joke.” The redhead winked at you again as he started to back up toward the front door, his boots crunching over glass and debris. “I’ll see you later, though. Oh! And, uh, make sure you’re on time tonight for Bak—Dynamight’s pick up. He really hates tardiness.” 

“Noted,” you murmured as your stomach bottomed out inside you. 

“Don’t look so terrified!” the pro hero laughed, pausing in the frame of your broken doorway. “I promise he’s not so bad once you get to know him. All bark, no bite, remember? But if he does bark at you too much, just let me know, and I’ll be sure to leash him.” 

Kirishima shot another sharp-toothed grin at you, and you strained your facial muscles to try and flash him a small smile in return. You weren’t very successful, since Red Riot’s bright expression dimmed a fraction, but thankfully he didn’t come back into the store. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” he said in a more serious but reassuring tone. “We can get breakfast! I know all the great places around the agency.” 

“O-Okay.” You didn’t know what else to say. Why was this pro hero offering to take you to breakfast? Was this just because of the news? You’d seen how the media had been tearing into Dynamight the last two days, calling him reckless, arrogant. Several interviews with the other heroes who’d been on the scene didn’t help matters, either, since by their accounts, they almost had the villain handled before Dynamight stepped in. 

Maybe Red Riot was just trying to butter you up so you didn’t help with Dynamight’s crucifixion. 

What the redhead didn’t know, however, was you couldn’t say a word against the blond, even if you wanted to. 

“Okay,” Kirishima echoed and drew you out of your thoughts. The pro hero flashed you one last smile and put two fingers to his forehead in a jaunty salute. “Have a good rest of your afternoon and evening! And when you get to the agency, if you need anything, just let our PR manager Nao know. Take care!” 

With that, the redhead pulled up the hood on his sweatshirt, slipped on his sunglasses, and ducked out of your store. Seconds later, he was gone. 

A beat of silence passed by, then two, and then you felt your knees give out from under you as you collapsed to the floor. Pain flared through your lower legs as you struck the hard, debris-strewn tile, but you barely registered the discomfort. Your breathing started to quicken, coming out in harsh pants, and the two paper bags in your arms crinkled with the motion. 

“Fuck,” you exhaled as tears blurred your vision, lifting a shaky hand to grasp tightly at your hair. “Fuck.” 

You’d been so stupid. Yesterday, when neither Dynamight nor the police came banging down your hotel room door, you thought maybe you were just being paranoid. That the blond pro hero hadn’t noticed anything unusual, and you could just go living your normal, unimportant life. 

Of course, the universe just had to prove you wrong. 

Because if you had any doubts before, they were gone now, evaporated under Dynamight’s hot, crimson glare. 

He knew your secret, and he was going to confront you about it. Tonight. Why else would he insist on picking you up? Alone. You’d heard Red Riot say he was patrolling this evening, so he wouldn’t be around to play buffer between you and Dynamight, which provided the perfect opportunity for an interrogation. 

But what could you do? Refuse? Dynamight didn’t seem to be the type to take the word “no” very well. Run? The expression you’d seen on his face before he left clearly told you that you wouldn’t make it very far. Besides, where would you go? Your parents were in America, and as you embarrassingly admitted to that detective the other night, you didn’t have any friends. 

And, until your apartment and shop were renovated, you didn’t have a place to sleep, and you didn’t have the spare money to live out of a hotel, so the agency was really your only option. 

Well, there was prison, too, you supposed. Maybe Dynamight was just going to pick you up and take you straight to the police station. 

He’s not going to turn you in, a small, hopeful voice inside of you said. He would have already done so if that was his goal. 

There was logic behind that sentiment, but it offered you no comfort. 

Because if Dynamight didn’t want to turn you in, what did he want from you? 

~*~*~*~*~ 

“Mrs. Kojima,” you sighed for the millionth time. “I’m going to be fine. And I really can’t take all of this with me.” 

You gingerly passed the large paper bag full of glass food containers back to Tadashi, Mrs. Kojima’s teenaged grandson, who stared at the bag with the hunger only a sixteen-year-old boy could achieve. 

“Fine?” the old Japanese lady scoffed, narrowing her dark eyes at you. “You would be fine in a nice, fancy hotel, not in a building with those… those… delinquents!” 

“Delinquents?” you couldn’t help but laugh. “They’re pro heroes. Famous pro heroes, some of the top in the country.” 

“If they’re so good, they wouldn’t have destroyed your home,” Mrs. Kojima huffed before she used her cane to nudge her grandson. “And Tadashi, give the poor girl back her food. Your face is too gaunt to be healthy, girl, and don’t think I can’t see those circles under your eyes.” 

The boy sighed as he stared longingly at the homemade food, and you could have sworn he was drooling, but he obeyed his grandmother and extended the bag to you again. 

“No, please, keep it,” you insisted as you waved your hands in front of you, taking a step back. “I-I don’t know if there will be a place to keep food in my room, and I don’t want to bother them too much.” 

“You should bother them, since they’ve been such a bother to you,” the old lady said as she nudged you this time with her cane. “You are too nice. I always say this. You need to be more selfish.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” You smiled. “But thank you for thinking of me, Mrs. Kojima. It was very kind for you and Tadashi to come see me off.” 

“How many times must I tell you to call me Ayano?” the elderly woman groused, tapping your shin with her cane again. “And of course we came. I wasn’t going to let you stand alone on a dark street and wait for that monster of a man.” 

“Grandma!” Tadashi gasped as he looked up from salivating into the bag of food. “Dynamight is the number two hero! He’s not a monster, he’s the coolest!” 

“I’ve seen him on TV,” his grandmother sniffed. “Always yelling and swearing. And Mr. Takeyoshi said he was very rude the other night. Not to mention all the damage he caused! Nothing but a foul-mouthed delinquent.” 

“Grandmaaaaa,” Tadashi whined. 

You sided more with Mrs. Kojima on this one, but the absolute adoration on the boy’s face made a small smile tug at your lips. 

But your amusement quickly faded as you glanced down at your phone again. 

6:58. 

Said foul-mouthed delinquent should be here any minute. 

As if your thoughts summoned him, the squeal of tires suddenly echoed through the otherwise quiet twilight, and you turned—with a pit in your stomach—to face the intersection down the road. Your street had been blocked off by barricades since the asphalt was still missing in patches, so the sleek, black car that had just pulled up was forced to park on the corner and put on its hazards. 

Your heart was hammering beneath your sternum, beating out a frantic, hummingbird rhythm, and you watched the car door get flung open, a lithe figure ducking out a moment later. The last rays of fading sunlight glinted off his ash blond hair before he pulled up his hood, but then he was looking in your direction, and even if he was too far to see the details of his face, you felt the instant his eyes locked onto you. 

“Holy shit, is that him?” Tadashi asked behind you, followed by a yelp as his grandmother smacked him with her cane. 

“Language,” she hissed, but the rest of her sentence was drowned out by the blood roaring through your ears as Dynamight started to walk toward you. 

No, not walk. Stalk. He looked like a predator slinking down the sidewalk, dressed in black and skimming through the shadows. There were a few people milling about the street, your neighbors who were still trying to clean up, but the pro hero paid them no mind. His gaze was still zeroed in on you, and your breath grew more shallow with each step he took. 

Don’t pass out, don’t pass out, you chanted in your head. And smile! Try not to look like he’s your executioner. 

You plastered on a smile, but it felt jagged like the broken street you stood on, your cheeks aching from the strain. 

Finally, after what felt like a blink and an eternity simultaneously, Dynamight came to a stop about ten feet away from you on the sidewalk. His hands were shoved in the pocket of his hoodie, his face was a cold mask on the tipping point of a scowl, and his eyes felt like red-hot embers burning into your face. 

“At least you know how to be punctual,” he said without preamble, his voice as sharp as his scarlet gaze. 

You heard Mrs. Kojima gasp behind you, followed by Tadashi frantically trying to shush her under his breath, so you cut the old lady off before she could say what was on her mind. 

“T-Thank you for taking the time to escort me to the agency, Dynamight,” you said, bowing at the waist so you could get a moment’s reprieve from those red eyes. “It’s… very kind of you, since I know you must be busy with your hero duties.” 

Mrs. Kojima harumphed behind you, and you took a deep breath to steady yourself before you straightened up. 

Dynamight’s crimson gaze had lost none of its intensity, but he finally seemed to notice Tadashi and his grandmother over your shoulder, and when he spoke, he’s tone was a fraction of a degree softer. 

“Yeah, well… it’s the least the agency can do,” he said evenly, like he’d memorized a script. 

You wondered if Kirishima had said something to him after they left. Or maybe the PR manager the red-haired hero had mentioned? 

Suddenly, you heard someone clear their throat behind you, and you winced. 

“Sorry, this is Mrs. Kojima and her grandson, Tadashi,” you said, motioning to them. “They’re some of my customers who just wanted to see me off.” 

“Customers,” Dynamight echoed as his red eyes raked over the pair. “For your stitching shop?” 

Something about his tone seemed off, but you couldn’t place it. 

“Alterations shop,” you corrected with a frown. “But yes.” 

“Is that all?” he asked as his eyes locked with yours, and you felt your insides liquify. 

Fuck. There was no way he could know that Mrs. Kojima and Tadashi had been “patients” of yours before. Right? Even if he knew about your quirk, that was a leap to make. 

Then again, it did sound kind of weird for two random customers to take an interest in their seamstress’ personal life. You’d set yourself up for that one. 

You opened your mouth, ready to clumsily explain, but Mrs. Kojima beat you to it. 

“I knew her grandparents long before you were a thought in your daddy’s brain boy,” the old lady huffed as she hobbled forward to stand beside you, Tadashi stumbling after her. “So I check on her from time to time, especially when she’s meeting and going off with some no-good delinquent at night. Is that alright with you?” 

“Mrs. Kojima—” you started as your eyes widened. 

“Grandma!” Tadashi hissed, his face flushing with mortification. 

Dynamight, for his part, actually smirked at the old lady’s attitude, amusement dancing in his red eyes as he finally shifted them off you. 

“Well, Stitches here is gonna be fine,” he said with a sharp smile. “She’ll be staying in our finest suite, being waited on hand and foot for the next few weeks.” 

Stitches? What the hell was that? Did he forget your name? 

“Is that so?” Mrs. Kojima narrowed her dark eyes on the blond, and her expression said she didn’t trust the pro hero as far as she could throw him. 

“Lucky,” Tadashi muttered under his breath. 

“If you don’t believe me, you can call her tomorrow and check for yourself,” Dynamight said before he turned to face you completely, effectively cutting off any rebuttal from the Kojimas. “Are you ready? It’s cold, and the car’s running.” 

“Y-Yes,” you stammered, shifting the strap of your duffle bag higher up on your shoulder. “J-Just a second.” 

You turned back to Mrs. Kojima, who was blatantly glaring daggers at Dynamight, but her expression softened as she shuffled in to hug you. 

“Watch out for him,” she whispered in your ear. “And take care of yourself. If something’s wrong, call me, no matter what. You can stay with me, okay?” 

“Thank you, but I’ll be fine,” you murmured as you pulled away. “I’ll call you when I know more about the shop’s repairs. Tadashi, take care of your grandma for me.” 

“Bah!” Mrs. Kojima scoffed, shooing you back with her cane. “I can take care of myself.” 

“I know.” You smiled as you grabbed the handle of your small rolling suitcase beside you. “Have a good night.” 

You turned back to Dynamight to find him suddenly beside you, the scent of burnt sugar enveloping you a moment later. You inhaled so fast it whistled through your teeth, but the pro hero didn’t even look at you as he slipped his finger through your duffle bag’s strap and pulled it off your shoulder. He slung it on his back in one fluid movement, and then he was reaching for your suitcase, too. 

“I-I got this one!” you said, a little too loudly, as you stumbled back a step and dragged the suitcase with you. “Thank you, but, um, I’ve got it.” 

Dynamight pursed his lips at you, his eyes narrowing into crimson slits, but then his gaze jumped over your shoulder. 

“Got something you want to say, kid?” he grunted, and he looked a little ridiculous with your pink and purple patterned duffle peeking out from over his shoulder. 

“M-Me?” Tadashi gaped and glanced around quickly like there was anyone else within half a block, but when he realized Dynamight was still staring at him expectantly, the boy began to ramble. “I-I just, uh, I just wanted to say I think you’re the coolest hero there is. Even more than Deku! Man, I wish I could have seen the fight the other night. You probably wiped the floor with that villain! When I grow up, I hope I’m a hero half as cool as you.” 

Dynamight actually seemed surprised by the boy’s adoring word vomit. The blond blinked as the suspicion and defensiveness drained from his face and posture, and then an easy smirk stretched across his lips. 

“You got a quirk, kid?” he asked. 

Mrs. Kojima made a face beside you like she was going to cut in, but you put a hand on her arm and gestured to Tadashi’s beaming face, and the old lady sighed and relented. She knew what this meant for her grandson. 

“Yeah, I do!” Tadashi grinned and puffed out his chest before he shifted the bag of food in his grasp and held out his right hand. His brow buckled in concentration, but a moment later a flame exploded to life in his palm. The flame grew, flickering upwards as it twisted and twined, changing shape as it went. In the blink of an eye, the teenager held the hilt of a fiery dagger, which he twirled around his knuckles. “I can make different objects with flames, and they act solid when I concentrate hard enough.” 

“That’s a pretty cool power,” Dynamight said as he eyed the flaming blade. “Bet you kick ass in your hero course.” 

“I-I do alright,” Tadashi said as he extinguished the dagger, trying to go for a nonchalant shrug, but the effect was ruined by his mile-wide grin and heart eyes. “You really think it’s cool?” 

“It’s only cool if you’re the best, so don’t slack off,” the blond scoffed. “Only losers half-ass their way through school.” 

Mrs. Kojima’s face was silently scandalized, but Tadashi’s grew determined. 

“Yes, sir!” the boy said as he bowed at the waist. “I’ll work hard to be the best of the best.” 

“Good.” Dynamight smirked. “Then, when you graduate, you can come prove how strong you are by taking me on. Who knows? If you’re actually strong, we might hire a new side-kick.” 

Tadashi looked like his eyes were going to pop out of his head as he straightened up, but the pro hero only snickered as he spun on heel and began to stride away. 

“You comin’, Stitches?” he called over his shoulder. 

“C-Coming!” you called back before you flashed the Kojimas one last smile. “Have a good night and be safe going home!” 

Then you took off down the sidewalk, your rolling suitcase clattering over the broken concrete behind you. 

Dynamight’s legs were twice as long as yours and quickly ate up the distance to his car still parked on the corner, and you only caught up to him as he was tossing your duffle in the trunk. 

You stood on the curb panting for a moment, just staring at him, and then the blond looked up and caught your eye. 

“What?” he grunted. 

“N-Nothing.” You cleared your throat and moved to pick up your suitcase, but he beat you to it, bending down and hefting the thing up in one fluid movement. The trunk slammed shut with a resounding thud, and the two of you were left staring at each other in silence. 

“Get in,” Dynamight finally said, jerking his chin at the passenger door. Then he walked around to the driver’s side, yanked open the door, and slid inside without another word. 

You could still feel the Kojimas’ eyes on your back, and you didn’t want to give them cause to worry, so you took a deep breath and got into the car. 

Even though your heart was trying to break free of your ribcage. 

The car itself was sleek and fancy, both inside and out. The seats were a supple red leather with ebony stitching, the dashboard shiny and inlaid with the newest gadgets, and you curled into the seat, afraid to even touch anything. This car was probably worth more money than you’d ever made in your entire life, and you had worked odd jobs since you were sixteen. 

The engine rumbled to life as Dynamight cranked the ignition, warm air blasting out of the vents and thawing your red nose and cheeks. The dash said it was only eighteen degrees Celsius, but the wind had been brisk. 

“Seatbelt,” the pro hero said as he yanked his own across his thick chest. 

You swallowed tightly before you did as you were bidden, and the second you were secured, the blond was throwing the car in gear and peeling away from the curb. Your barricaded street disappeared in a blur, and suddenly you were on your way. 

With Dynamight. Alone. In his car. 

The luxurious interior of the vehicle began to close in on you, feeling more like the walls of a coffin, and you braced yourself for Dynamight’s interrogation. 

Except… it never came. 

Minutes passed by in silence, and all the while, the blond’s red eyes stayed focused on the road ahead. One of his hands casually gripped the steering wheel, the other wrapped around the gear shift, and every one of the hero’s movements was fluid, precise. 

You tried not to, but you couldn’t help but study him out of the corner of your eye. His blank face gave nothing away, and neither did his slumped body language. He was covered in a dark hoodie and jeans again, so you couldn’t see much skin besides his hands and neck, but he looked… fine. 

One would have never guessed that he nearly bled to death beneath your hands two days ago. 

The memory of his blood, warm and tacky on your skin, made you clench your hands in your lap, and when you glanced over at the blond again, you nearly jumped out of your seat when you met red eyes. 

“Now you got somethin’ you want to say, Stitches?” he asked as he shifted gears, smoothly pulling around another car. 

“M-My name’s not Stitches,” you replied without thinking, but maybe this was a good thing. Thinking always got you in trouble. 

“Yeah, no shit,” the blond snorted, darting a quick look at you again before turning back to the road. “But you keep starin’ at me, so spit it out.” 

You fumbled for something to say, still thinking of his ashen face splattered with blood. “T-That was nice, what you said back there to Tadashi. He, um, really idolizes you, so you probably made his whole year.” 

“Tch.” Dynamight clicked his tongue as he looked in the rearview mirror. “Chances are, kid probably won’t end up as much.” 

You frowned. “But you said—” 

“I know what I said,” he cut you off, eyes meeting yours again. “And I meant it. Slacking off is for losers. Still, the brat will probably end up as a B-lister at most, more likely just an extra. That’s just the damn odds.” 

His words were harsh, but you knew they were true. There was no shortage of people signing up to be “heroes” in the world, but very few actually achieved the fame and notoriety of, say, All Might. Even years after his retirement, the Old Symbol of Peace was still talked about. 

“Well… thank you for not saying that to Tadashi,” you murmured as you averted your eyes out the window. 

“Someone will have to eventually,” Dynamight grunted. “But, if he proves me wrong, then he might actually have some potential.” 

“Mmm,” you hummed noncommittally. You didn’t want to talk about Tadashi anymore. Hell, you didn’t want to talk about anything. 

But you knew it was coming. You could feel the pro hero building up to it, the air in the car becoming more tense and charged by the second, like the calm before the storm. 

Part of you wished Dynamight would just rip the bandaid off already. 

The other part of you wondered if you would survive opening the car door and jumping from the moving vehicle, but at the speed the blond was driving, chances were slim. 

You were just thinking to pull out your phone and subtly look at the agency on the map to see how far away you were, but then Dynamight cleared his throat, and you felt all the saliva dry up in your mouth. 

This was it. 

“So,” the pro hero started as he pulled up to a stoplight, and his eyes found yours again. The red light reflected off his face and made it hard to tell where his irises began, everything washed out in crimson. 

But before he could get another word out, a loud growl split the interior of the car. 

Dynamight blinked at you before his gaze fell to your stomach, and you felt your face flare with heat. 

“Sorry,” you muttered as you clenched your abdomen, trying to shut it up, but it only growled louder in defiance. “I, um, forgot to eat dinner since I was busy packing.” 

And because your stomach had been in knots all day, but you didn’t need to tell him that. 

“Wasn’t that kid holding a whole bag of food back there?” Dynamight asked, frowning at you. 

“Y-Yeah.” You blushed even harder. Nothing escaped the pro’s notice, did it? “Mrs. Kojima had brought some stuff, but I didn’t know if there would be a place to store it in, um, whatever room I’m staying in. Plus, Tadashi is always hungry because of his hero course training, so it’s not like any of it will go to waste.” 

“You’ll starve yourself so some brat can stuff extras in his face?” the blond scoffed, and he looked at you like you were speaking another language. 

“I won’t starve,” you argued, a nervous laugh huffing out of you. “I-It’s one meal, and I ate a big lunch.” 

That was a lie, but maybe you could get away with a little one. 

Dynamight studied you for a long, silent moment, his face unreadable. Then the light turned green, and he clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes. 

“Tch.” He flicked on his blinker and turned left, weaving down a set of smaller streets leading away from the city’s center, where you knew his agency was located. 

“Where… are we going?” you asked as you glanced out the window. “Is this a short cut to the agency?” 

“We’re not goin’ to the agency,” he said. 

Your heart skipped a beat, and some of your unease must have shown on your face, because the pro hero scoffed again. 

“Don’t get your panties in a twist. We’re stopping to get food first.” 

You blinked in surprise. Food? He was buying you dinner? 

“Y-You don’t have to do that,” you stuttered, awkwardly waving your hands in front of you. “Really, I’m fine.” 

“Well, I’m fuckin’ hungry, so I’m getting food. That alright with you, Stitches?” His red eyes flicked to the side and pinned you to your seat, and all you could do was nod. 

The car descended into silence again as Dynamight navigated through the streets, and a few minutes later, he was pulling up to a curb. The street around you was definitely in a better part of town than you were used to, but it didn’t look too fancy. A number of small restaurants dotted the road, interspersed by a couple bars, and a few dozen people roamed the sidewalks, laughing and stumbling and obviously having a good time. 

Dynamight stared out at the crowd through the windshield, a small sneer of disgust curling his upper lip, before he turned to you. 

“Stay here,” he said. No, ordered. “I’ll be right back, so don’t go anywhere.” 

“O-Okay,” you replied with a nod. 

He narrowed his eyes at you, as if trying to discern whether or not you were lying, but he must have been satisfied with what he found because he reached for the sunglasses that were casually thrown atop the dash. He slid them on before opening the car door and slipping out, but he paused before he closed it, bending down and poking his head back inside. 

“Any allergies?” he asked bluntly. “I don’t need you choking and dying on my leather seats.” 

“No allergies.” You shook your head. “Anything is fine.” 

A part of you still wanted to argue about him buying you food, but something told you that you would both lose the argument and succeed in pissing the blond off, which you were trying your best to avoid. 

Dynamight grunted in acknowledgement before he straightened, pulled up his hood, and slammed the car door. He took several strides away before he gestured back to the vehicle, and it was only when the locks engaged that you realized he’d taken the keys out of the ignition at some point. 

He really didn’t want you going anywhere. 

You exhaled shakily as you unclenched and clenched your fingers in your lap, trying to get some feeling back into them. Your thoughts kept threatening to spiral off down dark avenues, so you focused on watching the people outside the car. The windows were pretty tinted, besides the windshield, so you didn’t think people noticed you watching them go about their night. Everyone was happy and smiling, flushed with laughter and drink, and a yawning loneliness suddenly opened up inside you. Even back in America, you’d never had a lot of friends, but you had drinks a few times in college with classmates, and you missed going out to somewhere besides the grocery or craft supply store. You had thought you would have time to make new friends here in Japan, friends that you could try restaurants and bars with, but it hadn’t happened yet. 

And depending on what Dynamight had to say, it might not happen at all. 

You stewed in anxious silence for several minutes, but then the locks disengaged with a chirp, and the blond was sliding back into the driver’s seat, shoving a bulging plastic bag into your lap. 

“Here, don’t drop it,” he muttered as he jammed the keys back into the ignition. 

“I’ll just, um, set it on the floor,” you said as you shifted the bag down to the floorboards, holding it in place with your feet. The aromatic steam wafted out of the bag as you leaned over it, and your stomach snarled at the delicious scent of greasy meat and roasted vegetables. “This smells really good.” 

“Of course it does,” Dynamight sneered. “I’m not gonna eat shitty food.” 

“Only the best for the best,” you joked awkwardly. You blamed your sudden lightheadedness. When was the last time you ate? 

“Damn straight,” the blond huffed, yanking on his seatbelt before shifting the car into gear. “Can you make it five minutes without fainting?” 

“Yes?” you questioned more than stated, your brow furrowing. 

“Good, then hang on.” With that, the pro hero squealed away from the curb, merging into traffic seamlessly. 

Dynamight drove for several more minutes, but you didn’t ask where the two of you were going this time. The blond probably wouldn’t answer, and if he did, it would just be some kind of sharp retort, so you settled for staring out the window while making sure the food between your feet didn’t tip over. 

You hadn’t explored the city very much since you moved here, so most of what you passed by was foreign to you. But, just judging by the amount of lights and traffic around, you estimated that Dynamight was skirting the edge of the downtown area instead of going into it. You knew the general location of his agency, since you panic-Googled it earlier this afternoon, and while it was closer, the pro hero didn’t seem to be driving toward it. 

Eventually, Dynamight pulled up to the curb on an empty street and parked in the shadow of a tall office building. There was no sign on the façade to indicate a company, and only the dim emergency lights shone through the darkened windows, so it was obvious everyone had gone home for the day. Next door to the building seemed to be a small park, concrete and steel giving way to green grass and shadowed trees, but there was no one walking on this particular street. 

“Where are we?” you asked as you frowned out the tinted window. 

“Dunno,” Dynamight said before he opened his door, sliding out of the car without any more explanation. 

You blinked in confusion as he wrenched open your door a moment later, but he still didn’t say anything as he bent down to pick up the bag of food at your feet. 

“What do you mean you don’t know?” you asked. “You drove us here.” 

“By the time I answer all your questions, the food is gonna be cold,” the pro hero grunted, and he glared down at you still buckled into your seat. “Get out.” 

“We’re not eating in the car?” You didn’t mean to ask this many questions, you could tell it was irritating the blond, but you were just so… confused as to how you got to this point in your life. 

“I’m not about to let you ruin my damn leather seats,” Dynamight growled, stepping back to give you room. “Now get out of the damn car… please.” 

The last word sounded like it was dragged out of the hero against his will, painfully, and you wondered again if he was trying to be nicer because of all the negative media coverage. You didn’t think the blond gave a shit what the media thought, but Red Riot and their agency did, so maybe Dynamight was being forced to make an effort. 

“Are you seriously just going to gape at me like an idiot? Do your legs not work?” 

Well, what was that saying? You could lead a horse to water, but you couldn’t force it to drink. 

“S-Sorry,” you stuttered as you fumbled with your seatbelt, and you nearly twisted your ankle falling out of the car. 

“Fuckin’ hell, you’re as clumsy as shitty Deku,” Dynamight grumbled as he easily caught your elbow and kept you from faceplanting. 

This close, you could smell the caramelizing sugar scent that you finally realized emanated from the blond, and even through the sleeve of your sweater, you could feel the strength in the pro hero’s calloused fingers. 

Your face flushed with heat, but you were pretty sure he was tired of your stammered apologies, so you just stepped up onto the curb as he slammed the passenger door and locked the car. 

Then he turned to the tall office building and froze before a scowl twisted his features once again. 

“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, and his red eyes snapped to you. “You’re not afraid of heights are you?” 

“I… don’t think so,” you said with a frown. “I mean, I’ve been on roller coasters before, and I obviously flew here from America—” 

“Perfect,” the blond cut you off, shoving the bag of food at you again. “Take this.” 

“O-Okayyyy?” You tentatively wrapped your fingers around the plastic handles of the bag as you drew the food close to your chest. 

“Now, hop on,” he said as he turned around and crouched, his fingers starting to crackle with light and flares of heat. 

“Wh… what?!” Your whole body felt hot this time, not just your face. “Y-You want me… to get on your back?” 

“Again with the damn questions,” he growled, glaring over his shoulder at you. “If it will get you to move your ass faster, we’re eating on that roof, and unless you have wings under that sweater, I’m the only one who can get us up there, and I need my damn hands to use my quirk. So. Hop. On.” 

You gaped at the blond for a millisecond, a thousand more questions racing through your mind. Why the hell were you eating on a roof of a random building? Was this allowed? Why couldn’t you just go back to the agency? 

But you knew by the look on the blond’s face that he’d reached his limit with questions, so you could do nothing but comply. 

Just don’t think about it. Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think. 

You kept up this mantra in your head as you hesitantly approached the hero’s back. He had turned to look forward again, so at least his crimson eyes weren’t burning a hole into you as you carefully slid one hand onto his shoulder while you used the other to cradle the food against your stomach. 

You were just debating the best way to finish this embarrassing endeavor when you felt strong hands slide over the backs of your knees and pull you forward, startling a yelp out of you. 

“Jump,” Dynamight grunted, and you only had time to mindlessly obey as he straightened to his full height in one fluid motion. 

“Shit!” you couldn’t help but curse in English, hoping he couldn’t understand you. His hands helped to guide your legs around his waist, and you dug your left hand into his shoulder so you didn’t fall backward or crush the food that was nestled between the hero’s spine and your navel. 

A beat passed in silence as the two of you found your balance again. 

“I-I’m not too heavy, am I?” you murmured into the hero’s blond hair. Your throat felt tight with embarrassment, but when you went to swallow, your mouth was as dry as a desert. 

“Tch.” Dynamight clicked his tongue as he shifted your weight a little, his hands burning the backs of your thighs even through the thick denim of your jeans. “I could carry two of you without breaking a sweat. Don’t call me weak.” 

“I wasn’t!” you rushed to assure him. “I just meant—” 

“I know what you meant, shut up,” the blond cut you off, turning his head a fraction so his red eyes sliced into you. At this distance, his burnt sugar scent was almost overwhelming. “Do you have a good grip on me? And the food?” 

“Y-Yes,” you said as your heart began to pound against your sternum. You hoped he couldn’t feel it. 

“Make sure,” he growled, fingers digging into the backs of your thighs before he suddenly let go. 

A small gasp was ripped from you as you clenched your legs around his waist, and your left arm went from clutching his shoulder to wrapping around his neck. 

“Ack! Don’t choke me!” he huffed as he stretched his throat out of the way. 

Your right hand scrambled down a few inches, and you fisted the front of his hoodie, anchoring yourself across his chest as you sucked in your gut, leaned more into his spine, and tried not to crush the bag of food that was steadily making you sweat. 

“I-Is that okay?” you asked, your voice no more than a timid whisper. 

“Fine,” Dynamight said as he dropped his hands down by his hips, his palms crackling with energy once again. “Don’t fucking let go.” 

“I wo—OHHHH!” Your sentence trailed off into a startled scream as the hero suddenly exploded off the ground. 

His quirk made your ears ring, but you didn’t even have time to process that before you were thirty feet in the air. Every muscle in your body locked up in terror, and you were sure Dynamight was going to have bruises on his ribs from your legs clamping down around him like a vise. The wind tore at your hair and clothes, stinging the exposed skin of your face and neck, and you ducked your head against the hero’s blond hair as you clenched your eyes shut. 

Don’t let go, don’t let go, you chanted in your mind. 

Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over, and you heard Dynamight extinguish his quirk an instant before his boots slammed into concrete. 

The two of you stood there for a moment as you panted against the back of his neck, your hammering heart still lodged in your throat, before the blond patted the side of your thigh. 

“You can get down now,” he said. “But don’t drop the damn food.” 

You peeled open your eyes with a shaky exhale, and you could feel your entire body trembling as you slowly slid down from the hero’s back. The crinkling bag drew your attention, and you had a split-second worry that you had crushed the food in your terror, but a quick inspection showed that while the containers were a little crumpled, no food was leaking out. 

“Come on, I’m hungry,” Dynamight muttered before his boots started to crunch away from you. 

You snapped your head up and blindly followed after the blond, your eyes darting to the ground to make sure you didn’t trip over anything and then up to your surroundings to try and figure out where the hero was leading you. 

The answer, apparently, was to the very edge of the roof, and you wondered if the hero was going to make you hop on the Dynamight Express again, but instead he came to a stop beside a large electrical box. To your shock, he opened a small door on the tall metal rectangle and produced a thick, dark colored blanket, which he then threw down on the roof’s gravel. 

“Sit,” he grunted before he flopped to the ground, sighing as he stretched his legs out in front of him. 

There was about four or five feet between the electrical box and the edge of the roof, but the soles of Dynamight’s boots nearly brushed against the roof’s wall. 

Or they would have, if a three-foot section of the cement wall wasn’t missing right in front of him. The edges of the concrete partition looked suspiciously charred black, and you frowned at the sight. 

“Did you… blast a chunk out of this wall?” you asked as you slowly sank to your knees beside the blond. You were painfully aware of the void of protection in front of you, and you knew you were at least ten to fifteen stories above the street. But at least it wasn’t so cold up here, tucked into this little nook with the six-foot tall hero’s body heat helping to warm the air. 

“It was in the way,” Dynamight sneered, leaning over and snatching the plastic bag from where you had set it between the two of you. “And wipe that look off your face. I’m not gonna push you through the hole, and you’re not gonna fall with me here.” 

He didn’t look at you as he said this, too busy pulling out several food containers and spreading them out on the blanket, but the absolute surety, the confidence, in his voice actually eased some of the tension from your shoulders, and you sighed as you shifted onto your butt and leaned back against the electrical box. 

Now that you were seated in front of the hole, you realized this building gave you the perfect vantage point to the east. Most of the other structures were shorter than the one you currently sat on, so the streets stretched out before you like a map. The night sky was clear above you, devoid of clouds, nothing but a dark purple canvas sprinkled here and there with stars. But the moon was nearly full over your head, and its pale light was just enough to see by. You could see cars several blocks away cruising through the pools of lamplight, people waiting at bus stops or walking down the road to their next destination, and a realization came over you. 

“Oh, I see,” you murmured, still staring out at the view. “You must use this building as a perch during your hero patrols, right? You can see a lot from here.” 

“No shit.” Dynamight rolled his eyes as he opened one of the take-out containers. The smell of a well-made yakisoba hit your nostrils, and you watched as the blond ripped open a pair of chopsticks. He must have felt your gaze, though, because his red eyes snapped up and narrowed on you with a glare. “Quit starin’ at me and eat something. I didn’t go through all this damn trouble for nothing.” 

“R-Right.” You cleared your throat as you glanced between the other take-out boxes. “Was there something for me in particular, or…” 

“Just pick something!” he snapped before he shoved a bite of noodles into his scowling mouth. 

You pursed your lips as you reached for the closest container, flipping up the lid to find nearly a dozen yakitori skewers. Your stomach snarled and cramped as the roasted scent of the chicken filled your nose, and you could feel saliva pooling in your mouth. 

Grease immediately began to stain your fingers as you picked up one of the skewers, but you didn’t even care as you brought the kebab to your lips. You took a tentative bite to find the meat still pleasantly warm, but then a groan rumbled in the back of your throat as the flavor exploded across your tongue. 

“Mmmm, that is so good!” you mumbled around a mouthful as you ravenously tore off another bite. “It’s seasoned perfectly, and I like the bit of spice it has.” 

“Told you I don’t eat shitty food,” the blond scoffed before he reached over and snagged a piece of yakitori for himself. 

You couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at the corner of your mouth, but you quickly covered it up by taking another bite of chicken. 

“Thank you for the meal, Dynamight,” you said once you finished the skewer, reaching for one of the other containers. This one turned out to be another plate of yakisoba, and you eagerly pulled it into your lap. 

Silence settled between the two of you for a minute, punctuated by the sounds of you both quietly chewing, before Dynamight broke it again. 

“Katsuki.” 

“Hmm?” you asked around a mouthful of noodles. When you lifted your head, your eyes clashed with glaring red ones barely two feet away, and you swallowed quickly so you wouldn’t choke. “Sorry, what did you say?” 

“My name,” he grunted before ripping into another skewer, white teeth flashing in the pale moonlight. “It’s not Dynamight. It’s Katsuki Bakugo.” 

Another hot flash broke out across your body as his scarlet eyes bored into you, and you dropped your gaze to your lap. The blond was too close, his burnt sugar scent still strong beneath the aroma of food, and your brain struggled to come up with a response. 

“Katsuki Bakugo,” you murmured because you couldn’t help yourself, testing out the syllables on your tongue. 

You thought you saw the hero twitch out of the corner of your eye, but he might have just been taking another bite. 

“Yeah, and you better remember it,” the blond said after a moment, his tone adamant, commanding. 

Like there was any way you could forget his name. Japan’s Number Two Hero wasn’t exactly forgettable. 

You found it a little funny, though, that he was so weird about his own name after refusing to call you anything but “Stitches” so far. 

“I will,” you murmured, darting a glance at Dynamight—Katsuki? No, that felt too familiar. Bakugo, then—to find him still staring at you. 

The blond’s crimson gaze was piercing, pinning you to the spot, and you couldn’t look away. You thought he was going to say something, but his eyes only roamed over your face silently, like he was searching your features for an answer to a question he hadn’t voiced. His scrutiny unnerved you, made you fidget, and you played with your chopsticks to try and quell some of your nervous energy. 

Still, he didn’t say a word, but his red eyes began to narrow bit by bit. 

Finally, you couldn’t take it anymore, and you opened your mouth to say something, anything, before he beat you to it. 

“You have a healing quirk.” 

The words hit you like a sledgehammer. 

Your heart slammed to a stop in your chest, and you inhaled so fast it was almost a scream. A million thoughts, excuses, and lies scrambled through your head, but the hero didn’t even give you time to grasp at any of them. 

“Don’t deny it,” he said, face twisting into his usual scowl. “Fuckin’ hate liars. I know you have a healing quirk.” 

The blunt confirmation, after so long worrying, felt almost like a relief, but it was quickly followed by a deluge of dread. 

He knew, he knew, he knew. The truth blared through your head like a siren. There really was no running from it now. 

“Well?” Dynamight—Bakugo—demanded as he glared at you. “Are you going to answer?” 

“You didn’t ask me a question.” The words fell from your mouth without your permission, and you winced as the blond’s expression darkened. 

“Fine,” he growled. “Do you have a healing quirk or not?” 

“…yes.” There was nothing else for you to say, so you just stared at the pro hero as the noose tightened around your neck. 

“I knew it.” A wild smirk stretched across Bakugo’s mouth, triumphant and proud. 

“How?” you couldn’t help but ask as you clenched your hands in your lap, the food long since forgotten. Your stomach was churning itself into knots anyway, but a morbid part of you just had to know what was the final nail in the coffin that had sealed your fate. 

“How what? Did I figure it out?” the blond asked as he lazily picked up another skewer and took a bite, like he didn’t have a care in the world. Like he didn’t hold your whole world in the palm of his calloused hand. “Because I’m not a blind idiot.” 

“I’m serious,” you said with a frown, digging your nails into your palms. 

“So am I,” Bakugo scoffed, and his red eyes found yours again. “If you’re going to lie, at least do it right. That night in your apartment, you said I wasn’t really hurt, didn’t bleed that much, but your hands and my clothes were soaked with it. Way too much for the stupid paper cuts or whatever you blamed it on. The burns on my left arm were better off than they should have been, too, but I knew you were lying before I even noticed any of that shit. I knew the second you opened your mouth.” 

You cringed with guilt, dropping your gaze to your fidgeting fingers. So, all your lies had been futile from the start. “Was it something in my tone or…?” 

“Well, stuttering over your words with your guilty ass face didn’t do you any favors, but no,” the blond grunted. “It wasn’t your tone, it was…” 

Here, the pro hero trailed off, and he was quiet for so long that you chanced a glance at him. 

Bakugo was frowning off into the distance, staring out over the city without seeing. You could tell he was struggling with something, and since you were obviously a masochist, you pressed him about it. 

“It was…?” you led and then had to stifle a gasp as the blond snapped his head around to glare at you. 

“You can’t say shit about this,” he snarled and bared his teeth like a cornered animal, and you distantly noted that his canines were more pointed and pronounced than what was usual. Then his next words stabbed into you, sharp and serrated, and dragged you back to the conversation. “Do you hear me, Stitches? You don’t say shit to anyone. If you do, I’ll kill you.” 

You blanched at the seriousness of his tone, the sharpness of his eyes, and a nervous laugh was startled out of you. 

“I’m obviously not in a position to say anything against you, Dyna—er, Bakugo,” you said, adding the “-sama” honorific after his name as a show of deference. “You could have me arrested or even deported for using my quirk on you without permission or a license.” 

“Damn right I could,” he huffed as he narrowed his eyes at you, but some of the tension and anger left the lines of his face. “But I’m not gonna do any of that shit because I need—you are going to help me.” 

“Help you?” you echoed in an incredulous tone. “What could I possibly help you with?” 

Bakugo glared at you as the muscle in his jaw worked, like he was chewing over his words, before he finally spat them out. 

“My ears. The reason I knew you were lying immediately was because I could hear you.” 

Your frown deepened as you processed his words. “You remember losing your hearing?” 

“Remember it?” The blond scowled at you. “What the fuck are you talking about? Of course I remember being fuckin’ deaf!” 

“I-I’m sorry,” you stammered, waving your hands in front of you. “I just—right after you crashed through my window, you woke up for a second, but you were disoriented. I was trying to tell you that you beat the villain before I saw the blood coming out of your ears and realized you must have blown your eardrums. Then you passed out, and when you woke up again, a-after I… healed you, you asked about the villain a second time, so I just assumed you didn’t remember waking up the first time.” 

Bakugo frowned at you, pale eyebrows furrowing over crimson eyes. “I woke up more than once? Yeah, I don’t remember that shit.” 

“Wait…” You blinked and pursed your lips as you tried to understand what he was saying. “If you don’t remember that, how do you remember losing your hearing?” 

“Because my hearing was shot to shit before I even ran into that damn villain,” Bakugo growled, and his face tightened again as he turned away from you. “Couldn’t even hear my quirk activate anymore.” 

He held up his hand to demonstrate, and flashes of light crackled to life in his palm like mini fireworks. The hero’s expression grew strange as he stared at the visual manifestation of his quirk, but then he clenched his fist and extinguished the sparks. 

Meanwhile, you felt your jaw gape open as your eyes widened. “You… how long has your hearing been in decline?” 

The blond ground his jaw so hard you could hear the scrape of his teeth, and he glared off into the middle distance for so long that you just assumed he wasn’t going to answer you. 

Then… 

“Fuckin’ years, I dunno,” he muttered as he pulled one of his long legs up, balancing his forearm against his knee and pressing his mouth into the back of his wrist. “Didn’t notice it at first, but it probably started at UA, once I was able to use my quirk more regularly.” 

Ohhh, of course. Your eyes dropped to the clenched fist in his lap, and you remembered the boom that made your ears ring as the hero flew you both up here. It had been so loud, and to think of experiencing that multiple times a day, at close range, for years apparently since you knew UA was a famous high school here in Japan… 

“Did you see a doctor?” You frowned, glancing up at the blond as his gaze snapped back to yours. 

“Tch, doctors,” Bakugo sneered, disgust glinting in his crimson eyes. “Fuckin’ useless pieces of shit. I left a good-for-nothing white coat’s office the afternoon I ran into that asphalt villain. Idiot doctor said most of my hearing was just gone, I was going to lose the rest, and there was shit all he could do. Then, few hours later, you patched me up in fuckin’ seconds, so I know that bastard was full of shit.” 

All you could do was blink rapidly at the pro hero as you tried to process all this information. Japan’s Number Two Hero had been going deaf for years, and no one had noticed? You knew that would have definitely made the news, let alone the gossip magazines. What’s more, a doctor said his hearing was a lost cause, and yet… 

“How well can you hear now?” you asked, curiosity getting the best of you. You hadn’t even intended to heal his ears that night, it had just been a side effect of you dumping your energy into his body in order to keep him breathing. 

“Dunno, haven’t exactly done a hearing test,” the blond scoffed and rolled his eyes. “But I can hear you just fine, my phone, too, and my quirk. I’d say that’s good enough.” 

You pursed your lips in thought, studying the hero like he’d been studying you all night, and then you remembered what had started this whole conversation. 

“Okay…” you said slowly. “Well, if you’re hearing is… fine now, what am I supposed to help you with?” 

“Keeping it that way, obviously.” He glared at you. “You’re gonna be stuck at the agency for the next few weeks anyway, so you need to make sure my ears stay working.” 

You gaped at the pro-hero, wondering if you were suddenly losing your hearing. 

“M-Me?” you stammered as your heart crawled up your throat. “B-But I… I’m not a doctor.” 

“No shit,” he said, apparently a favorite phrase of his, and he looked at you like you were a particularly dumb child. “I don’t need a doctor, I told you they’re fuckin’ useless. I just need your quirk.” 

“But…” you trailed off in disbelief. Out of all the outcomes you’d envisioned for this night, this had never even crossed your mind as anything in the realm of possibility. “I’m… not a hero. I don’t have a license to use my quirk.” 

Bakugo stared at you in silence for an endless moment before his upper lip curled into a snarl. 

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” he hissed. “I know all that!” 

“W-Well, I don’t know what you want then!” you said, your voice rising in pitch and volume to match his. 

The echoes of your words ricocheted around you before they faded off into the night, and the blond clenched his jaw as he glared at you. 

“I want you to use your quirk anyway,” he said, the low growl of his tone vibrating through you. You opened your mouth to argue, but he cut you off mid inhale. “And don’t start bitching about rules. You’ve been using your quirk illegally already. That kid and his old hag of a grandma are patients of yours, aren’t they?” 

Your jaw snapped closed with an audible click, and a smirk bloomed across the blond’s pale lips. 

“Hah,” he snorted. “Knew it.” 

“I didn’t say anything,” you gritted out, and your breathing grew shallow. 

“You didn’t have to,” he said, his smirk taking on a taunting edge. “You really gotta work on your poker face, Stitches.” 

Your vision started to tunnel, interspersed with flashes of Tadashi and Ayano’s faces. “The Kojimas have nothing to do—” 

“Oh, calm the fuck down,” he cut you off as he rolled his eyes again. “I’m not gonna turn a grandma and a kid into the cops. Especially not for doing the same shit we’re going to do.” 

A knot of tension unraveled beside your heart, but your insides still felt more tangled up than a yarn ball being batted around by a crazed kitten. 

“Thank you,” you murmured with a sigh, dropping your eyes to where your fingers were picking at the frayed hem of your sweater. 

“I don’t need your gratitude,” he scoffed. “I just need—” 

“My quirk.” You were the one to cut him off this time, and you lifted your gaze to his again. 

“Yeah,” he said as he narrowed those scarlet eyes at you like a predator zeroing in on its prey. “So, is that your way of saying you’ll do it?” 

You bit your lip as you considered your options, but really, you didn’t have any. Dynamight was a famous, rich pro hero with all the leverage. He could ruin your life… but he wasn’t. He was instead providing a trade. 

His silence for your quirk. 

The Kojimas flashed through your mind again, as did your other “patients,” as the blond called them. You thought of your parents, too, and your grandparents. If you agreed to the hero’s proposition, you wouldn’t have to return to America as a failure, and after a few weeks, you could reopen your family’s legacy shop. 

And, in the meantime, you still got to use your quirk. You could heal, actually be useful. Even more than that, Japan’s Number Two Hero was relying on you. 

You didn’t know if you were up to the task, having never used your quirk beyond minor instances that were usually days or weeks in between each other. 

But… 

“Yes,” you finally said as you looked up into Katsuki Bakugo’s face. “I’ll help you.” 

You just hoped you didn’t hang yourself in the process.

[narrators-journal]

To kill a mockingbird

This is the first part of a Gogol fic I’m uploading here to flesh out my bsd masterlist and to feed you all. Don’t worry though! I will also work on hunter x hunter stuff while I do this story, not to worry! Just sit back and enjoy this very sketchy, dark, self-indulgent, pure fantasy! Please note this is PURE FANTASY.

Warning: here

CW: Reader-Chan gets kidnapped, dubcon kissing, this fic really turns up the bad things.

It had been a while since you'd passed out that hard after such a lazy night. You don't remember doing much, only making yourself a drink and turning on (favorite show) to burn your Saturday night away at home. Whether you'd go out or stay in was usually a 50/50 split, sometimes friends would ask you out to hang out or party, sometimes your weekends were spent spelunking social media or watching TV. However, this time, you'd gotten super tired only an episode and a half into your night of binging.

When you awoke, it took you a moment to realize something was majorly  wrong. To start, it was oddly cold. Sure, your home could get drafty, but never as cold as you were now. Next, you noticed that you were laying on a bed of satin pillows, or maybe one big pillow? It wasn't clear through the cloud of grogginess when you first woke up, but when that sleepy haze lifted you confirmed that yes, it was one big pillow, some sort of cushion beneath you. However, that wasn't the first thing you noticed. The first thing you noticed was that you were in a massive metal bird cage.

It was big enough for you to stretch out on the cushion with about half of your body length to spare room-wise, it was also tall enough for you to stand and still be unable to reach the dull lamp hanging above you, even if you stood on your tippy-toes, but you also couldn't see a way out. To say you were terrified would be an understatement. When your (e/c) eyes finally focused enough to let you see into the darkness surrounding your prison, you noticed you were not only in a big bird cage, but suspended in the air in some concrete-floored basement as well. It wasn't a super cluttered space, from what you could see, some boxes, a big bed on the opposite side of the room, and some other furniture denoting that someone must've been setting the place up to be a sort of bedroom, even some rugs or something to keep the basement floor from being too cold, which you couldn't decide made the place creepier or not. This situation was getting weirder and weirder by the second, but you had no time to feed the bubbling stew of panic in your throat and break down, you had to try and think, to find a way out.

Sadly for you, there was no door save for a thin bird-cage-like one just big enough to let a tray of food or something in, other than that, no feasible way to get in or out. Even the little clamps meant to hold the bottom and bars together were welded down, so you couldn't pry them up to get the bottom to fall out. That brought out a new layer of emotions, confusion. If there were no doors and the bottom was welded on, how did you get in? Was this a bad dream? However, before you could try to calculate how long you could've slept, if you'd be able to sleep through the sounds of welding, anything like that, you heard someone open a door, letting a slice of light trickle into the quiet basement before a silhouette was cast and a man came down the wooden stairs. The man was tall, you'd gauge him to be at least 6 feet tall, with long snow-colored hair that he kept pulled back in a braid. He also wore either a long coat or some sort of cloak/cape thing, striped pants, and a sort of jester's collar or something, you didn't know exactly what the frilly thing at his neck was. Together with his mismatched gold and silver eyes, he was quite attractive. With a charming smile and a very handsome face, you were pretty damned sure he could've been some sort of model, you inwardly hoped that maybe some sort of playboy, or whatever the female equivalent is, model, but for now you made sure to stay on your guard.       "dobroye utro golubka'~" he hummed, his deep voice sing-song and jovial, as if he was used to bringing food down to women kept in suspended bird cages. After a moment, you tentatively tried to talk to him,       "Um...e-excuse me, do you know English?" You asked, letting that edge of pitiful hopefulness drip into your words to maybe get some pity or something from him, and the smile he gave you infused you with hope,       "Yes! I do speak english, not to worry golubka!" he chirped, his voice having a rather heavy Russian accent, as he opened the short-but-wide door to your cage and slid the food he'd brought in, shutting the little door back and locking it with a padlock as he spoke, leaving you with a tray of food  and still no way out.       "Great! C-can you get me out of here? Do you know how I can get out?" you asked, grabbing onto the bars and feeling your stomach flutter with hope and joy before it crashed right back down when he spoke next.        "Of course not," he scoffed, "I went through all of that work to set it up for you and get you in there, I can't let you out so simply." You really did not expect that alluring voice to turn so sour so swiftly.        "What?! WHY?!" that made him laugh, reaching into your cage and snatching your hand before you could yank away out of his reach, using that to pull you forward so he could stroke your cheek with his free gloved hand,        "Oh sweet, sweet golubka, because I want you of course." he hummed, and you could see the light of madness in his mismatched eyes while he stroked your (s/c) cheek "I want you to be my lovely little domokhozyayka!" he said, finally letting you pull away after a brief moment of seemingly admiring the loss of hope in your wide (e/c) eyes.

You pushed away from the bars, holding onto the hand he'd kept captive protectively close to your chest while your cheeks turned a relatively dark pink against your paler cheeks.         "W-what does that mean?" you asked after some hesitation, continuing to give him dirty looks while he reached in to try and touch you again, something you didn't allow. It took a moment, but with a huff, he replied,         "Domokhozyaka means house wife, golubka means dove...now let me touch you," he ordered, moving around the cage to a side where he could try to reach you easier, obviously getting cranky when you moved away again.         "Let me out first," you ordered, continuously moving or trying to find the perfect middle so he couldn't reach you as you spoke with a semi-forced confidence. The man shot you a dirty look, finally pausing to stand back in front of you, his arms looped around the bars in front of him,         "I'll let you out when you earn it. Not until then. The only way to earn freedoms? Behave, simple as that." he said as if you were supposed to know that rule. "Now, I'll give you an easy command to ease you into this new set up, alright? Just, give me a kiss." he hummed, that charming grin returning as he watched you like a panther observing his prey. You inwardly had to admit, kissing him wouldn't be a struggle, he was pretty, but he was also your captor, so you didn't want to be that easy to read.         "I-I can't. Kissing through these bars would be d-difficult and uncomfortable." you argued, mentally chiding yourself for the flustered stutter, but your argument didn't last too long either way,        "No problem! I can just do this!" he chirped, and with a flurry of movement, vanished and suddenly appeared in your cage, making it sway slightly when he landed. The sudden shift made you shriek and scramble back until you felt the cold metal bars digging into your back. The tall man grinned at you, going down to his knees so he was less imposing and closer to your face, not to mention somewhat caging you in with his arms,        "Now, be a good golubka and kiss me," he ordered, and before you could try to escape he closed the gap between the two of you, pressing his lips against yours and swallowing the squeak you let out. The kiss was rough, he put a hand behind your head so you both couldn't pull away and weren't forced against the cold bar, but that did little to help the icy fear warring in your veins with a dark dash of lust while the man pushed his tongue into your mouth, gripping your (h/l), (h/c) hair in a silent threat so you wouldn't bite, and held it for a long moment before pulling away for air. He grinned at the dark red blush painting your (s/c) cheeks afterwards. That sort of kiss wasn't new to you, you weren't a stranger to the more dangerous sides of exploration, and it wasn't like you disliked the force he put into it, but him grinning like that hit you with a bit of shame. You were kidnapped, you shouldn't be aroused. Curse your darker kinks. However, self-scolding and maybe some shame would have to wait, you still had to stay on edge in case your captor decided he didn't want just a kiss. You were into some messed up things, but you doubted if he really pushed he'd set up any sort of safe word. Luckily though, all he did after that was pet your hair and continue to grin,          "Good girl~ Now, eat your food, I'll be back for the tray in about an hour," he said, and with another flurry of movement he was back outside the cage and left, leaving you back in the darkness with only your dim light above you and your conflicted emotions.

[hoe-imaginess]

hostage | madara uchiha

Madara x Tobirama’s s/o

summary: Tobirama’s wife is held captive when the Uchiha invade Senju territory. She does what she can to keep the peace. It doesn’t last long.

word count: 9.5k 

warnings: sex as a bargaining tool, physical/emotional harm, heavy angst, mentions of miscarriage/abortion, brutal use of sharingan

a/n: part of a long and self-indulgent founders era fic I was writing, but recently gave up on. so this is just a very choppy rough draft. it’s all over the place. apologies for the poor & skimpy writing style. fair warning: bit of a darker rendition of Madara than what I usually write on this blog. IM me if you want more details before reading

⤰

They attack in the dead of night. 

With the main host of the Senju army battling in far-away provinces, Hashirama and Tobirama with it, few seasoned shinobi are left to protect the plot of land which the Senju call home. 

The Uchiha overwhelm the paltry resistance quickly and efficiently, then set about infiltrating the rest of the territory to claim as theirs. 

They’re met with little defiance. Of the Senju who don’t escape into the woods, slipping through Uchiha clutches before they can fully surround the vicinity, a majority left to endure the raid are civilians with no real experience or means to contend the invaders’ assault. 

Chaos ensues. Uchiha chase down fleeing families, drag them back to the center of the camp where hostages are corralled. They bark and shout orders at stubborn Senju who refuse to abide, sometimes resorting to violence to win obedience. 

Then come the fires. The Senju, in one final, practiced act of loyalty, set ablaze as much property as they can in an effort to destroy any intelligence on Senju affairs which the Uchiha might find and use to their favor. 

Some of these renegades are stopped before they can succeed, others manage to do their part before being apprehended. 

She is one among them, burning the room in her home which her husband uses so often to practice and hone his jutsu; where plots of war are imagined and scribed; where important records are stored. 

Tobirama would balk to see all his work going up in flames, but she knows that it’s what he would want her to do. 

The anguish that beats mercilessly in her chest as she watches her home catch fire is dreadful. 

Such a small little place, she thinks. Just big enough for the two of them. They hadn’t been married for more than a few months now. Arranged, like so many unions those days. 

Yet the little, perfect home held such memories in that short time; watching smoke rise from the walls and foundations makes her sick with sorrow. 

But it must be done. Whatever the invaders might pillage from her home, they would find nothing to their benefit, and nothing that might end up hurting Tobirama, or the Senju. 

Two Uchiha men grab her just as she watches the roof of her home collapse in on itself, pillars weakened and corrupted by flame. 

It’s a sodden and meager thing to find so fulfilling, but it’s the only thing from which to reap comfort. 

Doomed as she may now be to whatever her captors have planned, she, too, has plans: plans to remember Tobirama’s prudence, adopt it as her own. Whatever awaits her, she can face with her chin held high.

As she’s herded into a crowd of the Senju hostages, uncertain of their holistic fate, the cries and tears of anguish from men, women, and children alike hurt her beyond words. 

When the leader of the invaders stands before them and addresses them, with his coal-black eyes piercing every one of them even in the dark void of night, she feels anger beyond words. 

And when she learns of his plans to occupy their land, to keep them as prisoners of war, she feels determination. 

⤰

When she’s brought before Madara Uchiha in the coming days for the purpose of interrogation, he senses immediately that she isn’t a Senju.

Arranged marriages aren’t uncommon, and Madara knows Hashirama is quick to support alliances with clans he finds trustworthy enough. Madara wonders who, among the Senju prominent enough to be pursued for political marriage, might call this woman their wife. 

Feeling foolish for having not expected such a question in advance—though somewhere, she’s hardly able to blame herself, given the chaos of the last few days—her mind races for explanation when he inquires about her husband. 

“I’m a widow,” she lies. “He died months ago.”

She remains with the Senju to uphold the alliance her marriage created, she says, hoping he believes it. 

His gaze is startling, and she fears intermittently that he’s staring right through her with those merciless eyes, extracting the truth under her lies, truths that needn’t be spoken, only simmering underneath the surface for his scrutiny to grab. 

She feels apprehension like she’s never known when, after her explanations, he’s quiet. Utterly quiet. 

Then, just as she tries and fails to steel her heart’s rapid beating, he dismisses her. 

As she’s led out of the tent the Uchiha have constructed for their own purposes of war, she takes a calming breath. 

If she plans on putting her wits to use and curbing the punishments soon to be expounded against the Senju innocents, she needs to leverage herself with composure. 

She can’t let Madara Uchiha rattle her this much if she plans on contriving against him. 

If she plans on winning his trust.

⤰

It’s fairly easy to be granted an audience. 

She’s rigid in her loyalty to the Senju, and answers any of Madara’s interrogations about Senju information with silence or ignorance. Still, she’s compliant with otherwise basic facets of the Uchiha occupation; she tells him where best to find food and water in the land; from which fields they might find the most harvest; offers insight on neighboring clans that may contend the Uchiha occupation of Senju territory, loyal to the Senju as they were. 

In compensation, Madara is usually merciful with her requests. She asks that the Senju hostages be given more daily rations and more room in which to sleep and live, now that the Uchiha occupy most of their old homes. 

Generally, entreatments to the betterment of their well-being are met with leniency. Something for which she is glad, but the brother, Izuna, is not. 

She hears them arguing sometimes: Izuna claiming that his elder brother is being too forgiving on the enemy—she assumes she is the enemy in question—and Madara stating in response that he has no quarrel with Senju commoners, and that amending some of their grievances is no harm to their cause. 

These small victories continue to mount, until she finds herself at his side almost daily, discussing hostage afflictions, enduring his queries and, occasionally, even his frustration at receiving no answers. 

This frustration burgeons quickly, until she’s half-convinced that her play at ignorance is one he sees right through. But he always dismisses her when his irritation becomes visible and unavoidable, almost as if to save her from facing the brunt of it. 

It’s the first of the strange, apprehensive intimacies that he gives her. 

More apparent, soon after, are his long-held gazes. 

They sweep over her, inspect her while she talks, greedily scrutinizing her responses. He doesn’t miss the shiver that runs through her when his dark eyes linger for too long. 

She isn’t naive enough to think this prolonged regard is devoid of any suspicious undertone, nor is she naive to dismiss the lust behind his gazes; the careful inspections of her very body that describe something hidden and desiring under his facade. 

She doesn’t want him to look at her like that. She doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like the way it makes her skin crawl, or her heart stutter. 

But how can she be ungrateful for his dangerous admiration when it might prove profitable?

⤰

She reaps the benefits of his greed not long after their invasion. 

He’s taken up residency in one of the precluded houses near the center of the camp. No guards stand watch outside; he doesn’t need them. 

When she asks for entrance to his room he gives it, albeit cautiously. She doesn’t bother disguising her visit under any pretense; she’s there for him, and he knows this, apparently, judging by the careful look he gives her when she walks in and shuts the door behind her. 

Shame and irritation sizzles underneath her skin, but she ignores it. Her efforts have guaranteed the safety of the innocents under Uchiha rule so far, but those efforts won’t last forever. There’s more to be done. 

It’s not long until she’s pressed against him. Insistently her hand rubs over the space between his thighs. He’s soft, unaffected by her touch. It discourages her, but she continues, regardless. 

“What do you hope to gain from this?” he asks, eyes steely and trained on her, as if her eager hand isn’t even there. 

He hasn’t made a move to stop her, so she urges herself on. 

"Isn’t this what you want?” she implores.

“What makes you believe that?”

“The way you look at me.” 

It’s a calm declaration, though she’s still explicitly hiding something under her tone, he sees, something like frustration. 

“How do I look at you?” he inquires.

When she refuses to answer, he lifts a finger under her chin and forces her gaze to him. 

“Like you want to control me,” she answers bitterly.

The bulge under her hand twitches to life. She rubs harder. His face changes; his expression is tighter, more concentrated. 

“And that’s what you want?” His hand stretches across the back of her neck, keeps her head still. Fingers brush at the nape in deceptively gentle tandem. “To be controlled?” 

“No.” She squeezes her hand, hard. He replies with an angry, swift breath. “You could never control me.” 

The hand at her nape curls into her hair and yanks hard, so hard that her rubbing stops. 

“I already do.”

She’s infuriated by his words, he can see that plainly on her face. But he doesn’t care. She’s made the mistake of dangling her seductions in front of him, and he’ll rise to the occasion, if she's so determined to stir him. 

It shocks her how smoothly he maneuvers her to the futon at their feet, lays her down and climbs over her; how expertly his mouth captures hers and his tongue slides over her lips. 

She opens her mouth obediently, lets him explore. Shame courses through her when a hand between her thighs coaxes a pleased, albeit startled hum from her mouth. 

His fingers work her up quickly, pull her clothes off without a hiccup or delay. 

She had, foolishly, underestimated the strength of him. After she’s stripped bare, when he holds her arms down, there’s no room for her to fight back. As he looms over her, powerful and dangerous, she realizes she should be shaking in fear, in hatred, in uncertainty. 

Instead, her body is calm, forcefully calm. 

Sensing this, he sees it not as her resolve, but as a challenge. 

She refuses to close her eyes when he starts, and stares up at him, disputing his gaze. The pleased sigh that leaves his mouth when he starts rocking into her makes her shiver, despite her determination to keep her body still, keep it pliable for his pleasure but loyal to her convictions. 

His thrusts are deep and hard, reaching into her in ways she didn’t even know possible until now. Her breath catches with every snap of his hips, until those breaths are choking off into surprised gasps when he angles his body a certain way, hits a certain spot inside of her that makes her legs jolt with pleasure. 

One hand is planted firmly into the sheets beside her, keeping his body suspended over her. The other holds her thigh, keeps it pressed down to ensure she’s stretched as open as he needs her to be. 

When pleasure urges him to go harder, he takes her leg and curves it around his waist to dig into her deeper. With the new angle she can peer down, watch his cock spear into her with precise finesse. She tears her eyes away, the sight of it making her nerves tingle, making the unbidden pleasure that much more potent. 

Even if she wanted to vacate her mind, to numb herself to all feeling until she could be sure he was done and her task finished, it’s an impossible feat. Too many sensations; his heavy breath coming in low pants; strong thighs shoving against her legs with every thrust; his eyes, even when she turns from them, searing into her, pinning her down.  

A flush spreads over her body, hot and feverish and anxious. In the scant light she sees his skin giving way to his own pleasure; sweat lines the curve of his prominent clavicles, a drop on his brow as it furrows with the heightened pace of his thrusts. 

She starts to tremble uncontrollably as he roughly pounds into her, losing some of his rhythm, a basic need for release urging him. Rumbling, chest-born moans spill from his lips, and against her body’s wishes, she cums with a hard-fought whimper. 

As she shivers through the onslaught of pleasure, he stares down at her, his face an emotionless canvas.

She doesn’t even realize he’s near his end until he grabs onto her hard, grunts loud and staggered, then stops moving. 

He takes a moment to let the pleasure sink in, eyes closed to revel in the wet heat surrounding him, pulsing and twitching. Then he pulls out.

He leaves her on the mat, naked, curled into herself as if to hide the shame of her orgasm. Nothing in his posture speaks of an identical sentiment on his part. The sex she finds so monumentally impairing, he sees as nothing more than what it is: sex. 

No sooner than he moves away from her is he dressing, the raw muscle of his back moving with every motion, his sweat-glazed scars glistening in the moonlight that invades from closed curtains. 

Before he leaves, he says, “I assume you have herbs.” 

Her eyes open. 

The herbs. 

She had almost forgotten. She hasn’t needed to take them since Tobirama left, since there was no one else to share her bed…

The thought of Madara’s seed quickening inside of her makes her nauseous. She’s almost grateful he’s reminded her of the contraceptives. 

“Yes,” she says. She’ll take them first thing in the morning. They were made to work even after the fact. No need to panic. 

“Good.” 

He leaves her in his room, and she falls asleep despite her errant thoughts.

⤰

She draws a bath for herself and slips into the lukewarm water. 

The bruises and love-marks haven’t gone away. Every time they do, every time her skin is returned to its unsullied state, she’s in his bed again, tempering him, giving herself over to his rough desires in some hope it will continue to coax leniency out of him. 

She’s been bathing more often, she realizes: some meager attempt to wash his scent and his touch from her, no matter the pleasure she takes from it in kind. 

But there’s still much resistance in her thoughts when she gives herself over to him, a chiding reminder in the back of her head that says what she’s doing is shameful. 

She’s a married woman, after all; widow, in Madara’s eyes. 

But the masquerade doesn’t take away from the guilt she feels every time she opens her legs for his lust. It’s not even easy to imagine it’s Tobirama anymore. Tobirama isn’t so purposefully rough, isn’t keen on making pleasure so hard-fought with such domination that she receives from the Uchiha. 

A chill runs through her to think of the difference between them, to think she might never again know the softer, more loving touch of her husband. The possessive, taking nature of Madara’s intimacy might be all she ever knows. 

She touches the skin under her breast, feeling no texture on the flesh, but knowing the seal Tobirama left is still there: a risky, but comforting reminder of his caresses. 

She so misses them. She misses his voice, his touch, his earthy scent. The room around her is so devoid of it. The very air feels seized by the conquest of her Uchiha captors. Every breath she draws is more of their smoke, their fire, their danger.

She sinks underneath the surface of the bathwater, eyes closed, a calming air reserved in her lungs. 

The water is comforting, reminds her of Tobirama. She imagines it’s him surrounding and warming her skin, if only for a moment. 

She lets the world around her numb to nothingness, hoping at some point, so too will her anxieties leave her and make this dilemma all the easier to endure.

⤰

Izuna hadn’t meant to come across her this way.

The woman isn’t answering his brother’s summons, and the guards stationed outside her home say she won’t respond to the calls or demanding knocks they make at her door. 

Izuna isn’t a patient man. He has much better things to do than fetch his brother’s stubborn whore. 

The guards at the door had apparently been warned not to intrude on her sanctity more than necessary, and utter a protest when Izuna barges into her home unannounced. He ignores their murmuring, unfamiliar with the respect—or whatever it is—that keeps them compliant. 

The living area is empty and so is the kitchen. He calls her name once, then twice, irritation coloring his shouts. They garner no response. 

At the back of the house, he hears a sound, and goes to it. He hears it again once he’s closer, coming from the washroom, he thinks. 

He knocks once. 

No response.

He knocks again.

Still, no response. 

Sufferance all but worn, he pulls open the door. 

There’s a bath of water, her form distorted underneath its surface. His intrusion is apparently louder than any previous call for her attention and she folds up quickly from underneath the water, breaking the surface and sending splashes everywhere in her haste to glance around, size him up, and cover herself for modesty. 

Too late. He’s seen it. 

Never mind her naked body. Even if he needs to be forgiven for barging in on her later, he doubts, now seeing the mark that she quickly goes to hide under her breast, that she’ll be getting mercy from him or any other Uchiha from this point on. 

⤰

When Izuna drags her into the war tent, Madara is more startled by the interruption than irritated. 

She’s half-clothed, body and hair wet from the remnants of what he assumes was an interrupted cleanse; Izuna has a distraught look of fury on his face that never bodes well. What surprises Madara most, however, is the way she cowers into herself when Izuna throws her down at his feet. 

“What is this, Izuna?” Madara demands of his brother, mildly offended to witness this treatment of her, at his brother’s hand, no less. Madara’s intimacies with her are common knowledge, if not frowned upon by some of his Uchiha lieutenants. 

Izuna points an accusative finger down at her. “Look at it.”

Madara blinks through his confusion, waiting for clarity. Izuna hisses in anger, grabs her hair, and yanks her upright. 

“Show him,” he commands her.

She groans angrily in response. 

He yanks a little harder. 

“Show him.”

Madara’s suspicion gains with rapid unease. The doubt always tugging at the rear of his conscience comes to the forefront, ready to be fed with truths, ready to reap its victory. 

Izuna forces her to stay still, then claws at the hand she has wrapped about her stomach, hiding something beneath the haphazardly-adorned clothing. 

Madara catches on, and approaches. 

She slows her writhing when he crouches down in front of her. Then something like preemptive defeat rushes through her when he puts his hands on her, and she stills completely.

Madara doesn’t know what he expects to see beneath the fold of the robe he pulls away from her skin—the skin which is always covered by bandages when he strips her bare at night; courtesy, she always says, of a wound received during the invasion—but Tobirama’s Senju’s hiraishin mark is definitely the last.

The silence that ensues as he scrutinizes the seal is far more tormenting, she thinks, than any punishment he can possibly have in store for her. 

He’s enraged, of that she’s sure. And the indignant, defiant scowl on her face which receives him when he looks at her undoubtedly makes that worse. 

But she’s been found out, she knows. There’s little else she has to her aims at this point except her resentment, a resentment which she can now display with liberation. 

Her masquerade is extraneous now; any excuse she can possibly make redundant. She has to accept her fate, with her chin held high. 

Like Tobirama would. 

But the conviction doesn’t last long. 

“Hold her down,” Madara tells two of the Uchiha men in the room. 

She panics. 

When Izuna’s hands leave her and more vindictive ones take their place, she starts kicking away, trying to fight and make their hold on her that much more difficult to win. 

But it’s useless against the pure fear that runs through her when Madara slips out of the tent and returns a moment later, in his hand, an iron poker which had been mending the campfire outside. 

When he brings it over to her, she feels the heat radiating off of its glowing, orange, sharp tip. 

Her heart rate skips into the margins of delirium and she shakes her head. 

“Don’t—” she pleads, glaring up at him. “Don’t—”

Madara presses the singeing iron against the skin below her breast and she screams. Loud and ragged. He doesn’t care. 

Even before the deed is done, the smell of her own burnt flesh nauseates her beyond the limits of her endurance, and she passes out. 

⤰

The burn is so severe that it leaves her bed-ridden for days on end. 

Every twist and turn of her body stretches the thin, pink skin and leaves her whimpering in pain. 

Uchiha medics tend to her wound. She isn’t allowed the relief of healing jutsu; the burn is treated with oils and creams which alleviate only some of the pain, and none of the superficial scarring. Something for which she knows she has Madara to thank. He wants her to bear the mark of her deceit, wants the charred flesh to serve as a reminder of mockery. 

She had slighted him with her seductions, made a fool of him with her deception. The burn itself would be a meager sanction in comparison—he could have killed her, after all—if not for the scornful significance it held that did more justice to his condescension than any words could.

Any semblance of superiority her secret had once given her is all but crushed with the wound. Tobirama’s seal had soothed her, served as a pillar of faith and courage; a warm breath of comfort on her skin whenever the chill of her captors’ doujutsu fixed her, whenever Madara’s gaze searched her for weakness. 

Knowing her husband’s latent protection remained hidden from the eyes of the invaders had been enough, amidst all the turmoil, to shield her from fear. 

Now it was gone, rendered useless and indiscernible under corrugated skin. 

Like her home, her body now, too, at the hands of the Uchiha, denied her refuge. 

Yet in some twisted, ironic way, the wound still grounds her. The pain is a bittersweet reminder that her body is alive, and not a shell for the hopelessness she feels inside. 

It’s a degrading and pitiful comfort. But it’s all she has now. 

⤰

Madara makes infrequent visits during her recovery. 

The first few are made in silence. As she lies there, pitiful and motionless, he stares without a word to spare. His scrutinizing gaze, both spiteful to set eyes upon her and satisfied to see her agony, is the only acknowledgement he gives. 

The patronizing graduates to interrogation. He stands over her impotent form, leering down as he demands to know the reason for her having the seal on her skin, demands to know her relationship to Tobirama Senju. 

The line of questioning betrays the deductions he’s already made. He’s already decided that the woman is Tobirama’s spouse, or at the least, some sort of lover. The intimate placement of his seal is telling enough, and her previous elusion on the subject of her purpose on Senju land is further proof. All the suspicions piece together and exploit her lies. 

But he wants to hear the truth from her own mouth, the very mouth which conspired to deceive him with its pleasure, keep him pliant with its warm caresses on his body. Only then will he be satisfied, only when she admits who she is, what she is, who she belongs to—

Then he can remind her that it’s he who owns her now. He who conquered her home as easily as he had conquered her. 

Her silence isn’t as defiant as she thinks, not by a long shot. To patronize her is a pleasant notion, but the hooded, resentful gaze she gives him fails to stir him in any way besides to sing praises of his own power. 

⤰

“Kill her,” Izuna insists. 

His determined indignation on the matter comes like a chant in the days following the revelation. 

Madara’s commitment to deciding how best to deal with her is only marginally interrupted by his brother’s input, but it does disrupt his logic and feed his own fury. 

He should kill her. Should string her up for the rest of the Senju to see: let her be an example to whoever else among them may have delusions of defying him. 

“What point is there in keeping her alive?” Izuna presses on. “Kill her. Send her body to the Senju army. Let them know we won’t be trifled with.”

“No,” is Madara’s decisive reply. “She serves more use to us alive.”

“I fail to see how. She’s done enough to outwit you. I would’ve thought you eager to be rid of her.”

Madara resents the comment, but tempers his irritation. “I know your dislike for Tobirama makes you enthusiastic to do her harm. And why is that? Because you know harm done to her is harm done to him.”

“Precisely.”

“Then you should understand the benefit of keeping her alive.”

“Fine. Keep her alive. But not unscathed. If you want to use her as leverage, deliver a gift to the Senju. The correspondence between you and Hashirama has been pitifully civil so far. Send something with the next envoy. Something of hers. A finger will do.”

“No.” Madara’s tone is unequivocally firm. “We will do no such thing.”

Madara has little doubt that his brother’s enmity runs deep enough that an adequate offense on her part, no matter how slight, might be cause for Izuna to damage her. That’s not something Madara can allow. 

His conscience forces away the fact that part of his aversion to his brother’s threats are rooted in possessiveness; Izuna has no claim to her, has no entitlement to her punishment. 

That’s Madara’s. That’s his. And his alone.

⤰

How she finds herself sharing his bed again, she may never know, and will never be brave enough to ponder. 

She’s silent when he moves inside of her. Even when he makes her cum, as easily and powerfully as he always has, she barely lets the ragged, frustrated moan loose from her lips for a second before closing her throat and swallowing down the tightness.

When he rolls off of her he lies in silence. Where he would usually get up to bathe or leave, he remains, like he's done so often recently, to sleep beside her. 

He taunted her once, told her he had no fears of sleeping beside her now, because she knows what it would mean for the Senju hostages if she tried anything. 

That aside, she’s half-convinced that he’s awake at all hours of the night regardless, waiting patiently for the opportunity to catch her plots and punish her accordingly. 

But how difficult would it be? To kill him, leave him, save as many hostages as she can while he bleeds out in the room, alone and cold. 

It’s a fantasy she allows herself to imagine over and over again. A fantasy too opportunistic to ignore after their nights of scornful passion leave her weak and spiteful. 

The kunai she left under her pillow feels cold as ice when she slowly reaches for it, hiding the purposeful movement behind a comfortable stretch. 

It’s been a long hour since she first played at sleep. She never hears him breathing, but considers his silence as good a signal as any that he’s unconscious. 

When she carefully turns over, she confirms that his eyes are closed. He sleeps on his back, always, as most shinobi do. Alert and at the ready even in slumber. 

Slowly she rises from under the sheets, ever so careful not to let the fabric move an inch across his skin. She should just slit his throat, she realizes. But piercing into him will be swifter, and more profitable. 

The kunai wavers in her hand. Killing unwitting men in their sleep isn’t so difficult a task; shinobi and kunoichi alike do it all the time, don’t they? That was war. 

It should be easy to stab down into his heart and twist, to watch him wake in tormenting shock as the blood fills his lungs and chokes him. She would enjoy that. 

But the wavering in her hand worsens to a subtle tremor. 

He’s not an unwitting man, not some simple enemy to kill for convenience. That makes her confidence ever harder to steel, but she has to. She has to kill him. 

She won’t wait a moment longer. Kill him, destroy him, and be done with it. 

But just as she raises the kunai, a strong hand wraps around her wrist in an unforgiving grip.

His eyes are open, glaring at her. 

She shivers with fear and rage as his hand tightens to a bruising grip. Her panic sends her mind into a frenzy of action. 

She can still do it. Just one stab downwards and she can end it. 

But even pushing down with both hands doesn’t overwhelm his strength. He still glares and scowls, infuriated.

She tries again, putting her entire body’s weight down on the weapon, limbs shaking with the effort. 

He doesn’t budge. 

He flips them instead, and the kunai is suddenly in his hands, pressed against her throat. 

“There are easier ways to kill me,” he mutters. If his blood is boiling at her trespass, nothing in his bored, thin voice betrays composure. “You could be more creative.”

Tears prickle her eyes. Her hands press desperately against his, trying to push the cold blade away from her skin. But he keeps it there. Even the smallest movement will slice the flesh. 

“Remember that you are the one at my mercy. I could kill you and every Senju in this camp any time I wish.”

“You’re horrible,” she seethes, breath shallow in anger. "I hate you.”

“I’m aware. Yet you continue to share my bed night after night. You still think you’ll gain anything from it?”

The words sting her pride, split her open to let the doubts and faults and fruitless depravities spill in. 

“You do nothing but shame yourself. Look at you. Spreading your legs for me like a dutiful whore, thinking it will somehow save you and your people. It’s pathetic—"

She slaps him, hard. 

Though his cheek burns with redness, he’s otherwise unfazed by pain. He scowls and slams her arm down to prevent any more of her rage. 

“You may think you have control over me,” she says in a seething whisper. Even with the kunai pressed against her jugular, the expression on her face is nothing short of brazen. A lofty, defeated brazen that comes across as scorn. “But you don’t, and you never will. There’s only one man I’ve ever loved. When you’re on top of me I think of him and only him. It makes it bearable. You’ll never be half the man that he is.”

He scowls at her, his eyes like burning, silent daggers. She knows she might have sealed her fate right then and there. But so be it. Let her last moments of life be spent spiting him. 

Her body relaxes, unconcerned with fighting whatever comes next. 

She doesn’t expect him to laugh. 

“Tell yourself that, if you must,” he says, with a sadistic, grim smirk. “But you know very well the power I have over you.”

His eyes turn crimson and she gasps, but by the time she makes to look away, it’s too late.

In the illusion, Tobirama is frowning at her, eyes wide, a sneer of disgust on his face. 

She doesn’t understand why, at first. Why does he look so gloomy? She feels only joy to see him. Joy and unbearable relief. 

She tries to run to him. But burning hands at her throat summon her back. Despite no voice, face, or body to accompany the unforgiving grip, she knows it’s Madara who impedes her by the ferocious strength alone. 

“Whore.”

It’s not Madara’s voice, but Tobirama’s. It carries over to her, like they’re separated by a valley despite his being only yards away. If she could reach out to him, touch him, feel his embrace—

“Uchiha whore,” he barks at her again, scowling now. 

“No,” she pleads, eyes stinging with tears. She tries to pull the grip from her neck away and escape, but Madara locks her arms down to her sides, rendering her utterly trapped. 

“Tobirama,” she begs for his sanctity, for his forgiveness. But he’s backing away from her now. 

She cries and cries desperately, screeching in frustration when Madara’s grip tightens to a visceral degree, until she feels like her skin is alight with flames. 

She looks down, and sees that they are. And the skin which these flames scorch dies off to corrupted, pink flesh as it travels up her arm in a slow crawl. An agonizing, horrible, slow crawl. 

Hours elapse as she endures the torture. Hours of raw, inhuman pain and her husband slurring his vile insults at her. The sheer destruction it pillages on her mind and body makes her feel small, makes the flames which take their time in exploring her skin burn brighter and hotter until finally she feels like nothing but ash. 

The last of her willpower billows away with that ash, as she watches Tobirama’s form start to disappear on some horizon that defies logic. 

She still wants to touch him. Still wants to be held by him. She still wants him, despite how clearly he doesn’t want her. 

His obscenities circle her thoughts, all-encompassing, completely and finally defeating her. 

Whore. Slut. Traitor. Weakling.

She cries a voiceless cry when Tobirama disappears, and Madara takes the illusion away shortly after. 

She blinks for clarity, eyes adjusting back to a reality no less harrowing than the previous artifice.

He leers down at her, takes in her anguish and her seedy frame with gluttonous cruelty in his gaze. 

Numb, teary eyes stare up at him as they slowly read his form. Realizing her predicament, she starts to hyperventilate, and tears run down her face. 

She shuts her eyes in one last attempt of modesty, forcing the stream of salt to sluice more violently down her cheeks. 

“Tobirama,” she pleads weakly, the only thing that she can think of in her hazy pain. 

It angers Madara. 

“He doesn’t want you. Now look at me.”

She refuses.

His hand twists into her hair and snaps her head back so hard that she almost sees stars behind her eyelids.

“I said look at me.”

“No,” she cries weakly, though she obeys, regardless. Her bloodshot, desperate eyes feed his sadistic vengeance. Then she’s turning her head away from him. Meager defiance. “Please—”

Satisfied with the short admission of her defeat, he takes her face and forces her look at him. 

“Try anything like that again and I’ll make sure you spend an eternity in a nightmare of my making. Do you understand?”

She has no energy to respond. 

“Answer me.”

All she can offer is a weak nod, tears still streaming down her cheeks. 

In a moment of triumphant vindictiveness, his fingers press harshly against the burn under her breast, bringing to life a reminiscent pain, a crushing reminder of what he’s done to her. 

He pushes her face away and she curls into herself, thinking of Tobirama.

In these makeshift quarters he’ll find no sleep; his mind is a mess of anger, desperation, and confusion. He needed to hurt her, didn’t he? She had defied him again. What other choice did he have? 

Another moment spent in her presence is another pin of irrational emotion nudged into his chest. He needs to leave.

He catches her glaring at him when he climbs off and starts to dress. It’s a look full of pure, searing hatred.

But he says nothing. He’s extracted enough triumph from her. 

His silence is in victory; hers in defeat.

⤰

She feels less alive each passing day. 

She doesn’t see him very often, not since the incident in the night when she’d failed to take swift revenge. 

Occasionally she hears him on the other side of the door, inquiring the guards who stand watch outside about her disposition. Rarely does he enter and see for himself. 

When he does, they exchange no words. He examines the room for any plotting demonstration of escape or sabotage, disguising his observation of her underneath these sweeping inspections. 

However, sometimes he gives up on the pretense and simply stares, studying her, trying to decide how he feels.

His actions are regrettable, of that he’s sure and self-condemned, but there’s still a glimmer of insolence in her eyes when he catches her gaze: one which rekindles the spite within him, fans vengeful flames and reminds him that she brought this upon herself. 

She would see no pity from him. 

Any words of apology on his tongue fizzle away then, and his visits conclude as silently as they begin.

⤰

The fight in her dwindles helplessly, and as it dwindles, so too does all sense of reservation. 

The prodigious determination there once had been to contend Madara and his Uchiha conspirators is all but spent. What good does it do her now? She’s broken, subjugated, and without leverage. 

Her body, which had once enabled her to use its seductions to the advantage of her people, is now depleted and only a shell. A shell for the hollow, cold heap of defeat that she now is. 

How deluded was she to think she could save all the people here? How had she ever thought that she alone could protect the hostages from the evil at their door? 

And Tobirama, whose embrace was denied to her even in dreadful illusions—what would he think of her? Madara was right. What else was she now but an Uchiha whore? Obsolete, ruined, soiled. 

Tobirama won’t want her. Not now. Not ever again. 

What more is there for her?

As the weeks go by, Madara’s distrust ebbs away. Suspicions of subterfuge die with her audacity; the times he does happen upon her, she’s nothing but a husk of the sharp woman she had made herself out to be. 

House arrest soon becomes a superfluous precaution, and even when the guards leave their posts, she makes few attempts to leave her home. And when she does, she wanders aimlessly, meanders without direction and without purpose. 

She’s pitiful, Madara decides. Pitiful and crushed. He has nothing to fear or suspect from her. Her fire is gone. 

What he doesn’t expect is that the last ember of that fire holds one desperate dredge of scorn. One which she won’t allow to be extinguished. 

When she wanders into the Uchiha war tent that day, she isn’t stopped. 

She’s given no second-glance by any of the Uchiha shinobi. Even if they were to give her careful inspection, they would never know of the kunai in her pocket, the steel icy and begging to be utilized for one final, desperate fight.

Madara isn’t there. Instead, she finds Izuna.

“Where is he?” she asks weakly. 

Izuna pays her so limited attention these days, regards her as little else except the harlot his brother broke in and conquered, that her presence has nothing more than a fleeting impasse on his patience. Like a gnat buzzing around his head. 

“My brother? Who knows.” 

When he accords her his attention he sees that she’s looking lifeless as ever. Sometimes he ponders the nature of the unkind things his brother has done to her, with a fraction of a fraction of pity. Then he’s reminded of the trespasses she’s made, and the pity is gone. 

“What?” he mocks. “If you’re hoping to charm some leniency out of him, you’ll get nowhere looking like that.” He tsks, a sneer marring his lips as he pulls his eyes over her form, like it’s a harrowing task to complete. “You’re better off groveling on your knees... save him the displeasure of looking at your face, at the least.” 

Although she doesn’t react, he sees humiliation simmering underneath the hardened, broken surface of her expression. He would have favored a more promising response to his taunts, but he’s satisfied to see her tamed of her previous unruliness, nevertheless.

He turns his back to her. Her misery is pleasant only for so long; the more he looks, the more unsightly it becomes. 

The Uchiha sigil stares back at her, stitched proudly and delicately onto the back of his garb. 

It mocks her, does more to incite her than any of his degrading condescension can. 

Unthinking, she moves to him. 

Hearing her approach he turns to meet her, the same bored sneer on his face. 

The melancholy is still in full bloom on her features, but there’s something else there, too. Something that tells him she’s struggling to express a grievance on her tongue.  

He scoffs.

“What is it, woman?”

He’s not Madara, she decides, but he’ll do. 

Aimlessly, she yanks the kunai from her pocket, then brings it down on his neck, not caring for whatever consequences will follow.

⤰

She wondered why Izuna didn’t kill her the moment he wrangled the kunai from her grip.

Blood spills from his neck; thick crimson pours in rivulets down his shirt, down the hand that presses against his wound. 

It may not be fatal but it’s certainly critical. Sharingan had worked in his favor. An inch more of the dagger’s descent studied without the activation of his doujutsu might have guaranteed his death. He inched away just in time.

She doesn’t have time to lament her failure. 

He did throw her to the floor in his anger, but nothing else comes. If he hadn’t been so occupied with sealing his wound, she imagines his ire would prove much worse, if not terminal. 

She doesn’t bother pushing up from her place on the floor when another Uchiha, hearing the din of Izuna’s angry hollers, barges in, sees the chaos, and sprints away after taking orders from Izuna. She doesn’t hear the essence of these orders, numb to the world as she is. 

Had the kunai been in her hand, she would slit her own throat in defiance. Death would have been preferable to what comes next.

When Madara storms in, she’s still a pile of hapless defeat on the floor. 

He says not a word, but the pure rage boiling behind his gaze says all it needs to: She made a grievous mistake. 

She gasps when he grabs a fistful of her hair and yanks her to her feet. She screws her eyes shut, unwilling to look at him. He doesn’t seem to care whether she does or doesn’t. 

She’s certain that he rips hair right from the roots when he whips her around, shoves her forward with enough force to break every bone in her body. A bookcase greets her as she barrels into it. That’s when her eyes open in pained shock, a rushed gasp escaping her as she struggles to regain the air thrown out of her lungs. 

She wants to collapse, but a hand clasps around her neck and keeps her standing. Then the fingers tighten around her throat. She chokes pitifully for oxygen. 

“I told you that if you ever tried something like that again that you would regret it.” His voice is cold with anger. “But to make an attempt on my brother’s life?”

She doesn't answer. Apparently, he doesn’t expect her to.

He shoves her back to the ground. It knocks the wind out of her, and when she pushes herself up on shaky limbs, a heavy boot in her back sends her to the floor again. 

She yelps as he digs his heel into sensitive muscle. A burst of hot and red pain spreads through her back. Her kidneys, maybe? She doesn’t know. But he’s damaged something internally, and she wishes she were dead. 

Her breaths are pitiful and scant when he finally takes his foot away. She says nothing. Thinks of nothing. 

“Get up,” he demands, in a rigid, thin voice devoid of anything except fury.

Even if she wanted to obey, her body refuses. 

“Get up,” he snaps, and the unforgiving hand returns to twist into her hair, sending webs of pan across her scalp as he hauls her to her knees.  

He crouches in front of her, a hand still fisted in her hair. Now he wants her to look. His other hand takes her face and squeezes, so hard she’s half-convinced he plans to crush her skull. 

“Open your eyes and look at me.”

Desperately, she tries. But it’s a task to keep her eyes open without nausea seeping into her gut. Her eyelids force themselves to shut in an effort to quell dizziness. 

But then he jostles her around by the grip in her hair, so hard and so viciously that her entire world blacks out momentarily. The motion sends her mind reeling and her vision swimming. 

“Open your eyes.”

Adrenaline shoots through her and demands her to obey. 

She isn’t surprised when the red of sharingan is there to greet her. 

Everything goes black in the world of his making. She almost expects to see Tobirama there, for him to shout at her and degrade her again. 

Instead, she feels pain. The worst pain she’s ever felt. So painful she can’t breathe, can’t think. The only thing that exists is the hot, searing flame of anguish that stings every inch of her skin, every gap of her insides, down to the very organs. 

A hundred kunai stab into her head. She hears them slicing flesh to ribbons and digging fractures into her skull. Her blood curdles until it’s set aflame. That too, she hears, bubbling underneath the surface of her skin like thick, boiling water.

Everything hurts. Everything is endless agony.

When air finally fills her lungs, she wails. 

So loud, so violently, so wretchedly, that it’s almost itself anguish to hear.

Then he takes it all away. 

The relief is heavenly. She crumples into a ball. 

She hates it. She hates the weakness. If Tobirama could see her…

Then the pain comes again. She screams in tandem, then bites her tongue so hard it bleeds.

The cruel routine goes on, for what to her deluded, frenetic mind seems like hours, but is in reality passed in mere minutes.

Izuna watches as his wound is tended to, his expression as devoid of any mercy or sympathy as his brother’s. 

⤰

Two weeks later, when her body and mind make the slow, pitiful climb back to equilibrium, she notices the change. 

It’s unlike one she’s felt before, but not entirely unrelated to an irksome nausea: a queasiness in her stomach that neither food nor rest alleviates; something new, like an aura, that swathes her and accompanies her every second of the day; an extra weight added to the burden of her body.

Then comes the fearful ascent of logic. 

Amidst her turmoil, she’s forgotten about missing her monthly bleed. Its absence could be blamed on the toll her body has taken, but she knows better. 

The revelation brings her into a spiral of hectic anxiety, of despairing conflict. 

It’s not long before she finds herself sneaking into one of the medical tents, decision already made on how best to deal with the new predicament. 

She shuffles through the stock of vials and herbs which the Uchiha medics keep at the back of the tent, finds what she’s looking for and almost escapes as covertly as she had infiltrated, when she’s stopped. 

“What is that you have?”

She pauses a foot away from the tent’s exit, her body in a mode of panic.

“Some herbs for my wounds,” she mutters.

An elder Uchiha woman, a medic, turns her around and inspects the filched items in her grasp. 

“That is ginger root,” the medic observes warily. “If you need something for the pain, I would suggest dried poppy.”

The young woman stares fretfully at the old woman; the old woman stares back.  

“Thank you,” the younger stutters blankly, unable to make a step in either direction; play along and heed the advice to go search for the proper herbs, or flee and risk suspicion? 

“You look ill,” the old woman says, eyeing her, putting a hand to her forehead.

She backs away. “I just need rest.”

“Let me examine you. I can help you find the right medicines.”

“No,” she says. Any medic will be able to feel the life inside of her, given the chance. “I’ll be alright.”

She tries to leave then, but the old woman doesn’t let her. 

⤰

When Madara answers the request for his presence at one of the medic huts, he’s surprised to find her there, sitting on a cot, hunched over and distressingly quiet. Two Uchiha men stand at her sides, supervising her.

“What is the meaning of this?” Madara asks. 

Recently, he’s appreciated any reason to stay away from her. The sight of her makes him sick, makes a conflict of rage and confusion and culpability dance angrily in his head. 

The old woman offers him the ginger root, and a small vial of clear liquid. “She was after these.”

Madara takes them into examination. “Am I supposed to know what this is?” His patience, already thin, dwindles considerably for the roundabout elucidations.

“A toxic mixture,” the old woman explains plainly. “Boiled with regular tea and these will certainly destroy whatever grows inside a womb.”

With subdued bafflement, Madara looks at the woman on the cot, understanding all at once. 

She doesn’t dare meet his eyes. Even now her body trembles with frustration, with fear, with defeat. 

Izuna, who had accompanied his brother, scoffs, incredulously loud. “So either you managed to put one in her, brother, or it’s the Senju’s.”

“Can it be determined?” Madara asks the medic, ignoring his brother, and never taking his eyes off the frail form on the cot. 

“In a month’s time the chakra should be durable enough for us to sense.” 

“Kill it,” Izuna insists, coming to stand next to his brother, a voice of frustrated reason. “If it’s a Senju, better off unborn. And if it’s an Uchiha... you would pass on the clan’s power to halfling filth.”

Unperturbed, Madara stares in silence. Finally she meets his gaze, unsettled by the look of dark concentration in his eyes. 

“Why attempt to destroy the life inside of you unless it’s a burden to you?” he ponders out loud.

She realizes his train of logic: it must be his, for her to be so adamant in her pursuit to terminate it. 

“If it was my husband’s,” she says, “and it is, I would do the same. You would kill my child the moment I bring it into this world. Why let life grow that is destined to be murdered in cold blood?”

“And if it were mine?”

“It isn’t."

Madara scowls. 

“And if it were,” she goes on dangerously. “All the more reason to destroy it.”

That visibly infuriates him. 

“Give her the herbs,” Izuna asserts again. “Let her solve the problem. Either way she’s doing you a favor.”

Madara doesn’t speak for a long time. 

His careful inspection of her lasts long enough to make her doubts rise afresh, make her feet fidget uncomfortably and her heart pound in desperation.

“She stays here tonight,” he decides ultimately, looking to the Uchiha guards at her side. “She doesn’t leave.”

Izuna looks muddled, and somewhat irritated by the decision. 

She just looks afraid. 

⤰

He doesn't return for many days, but his absence can’t be appreciated as much of a reprieve at all; her mind is a mess of anxiety and denial the entire time. 

This can’t be happening, she tells herself countless times. She can’t be pregnant. And worse, can’t be ignorant to the father. There’s no possible way. It can’t be happening.

Part of her reasons for the better: it must be Tobirama’s. No more than three months have passed since the Uchiha first conquered and occupied the land, no more than three months since she’s been with her husband. 

The other part of her, downtrodden and beaten into pessimistic depravity, knows that with the chaos Madara brought, so too came a negligence to her normal routines: was she taking the contraceptive herbs as diligently as she needed to, given their intimacies? Amidst the turbulence he caused, had she remembered each and every time they were together to make sure nothing was conceived from their depraved liaisons? How could she not, when the way he touched her and took her made her sick?

But then, doubt: leading her astray, reminding her that everything horrible and miserable that could happen already had, so what was a bit more to the mountain of suffering she already endured? What was stopping fate from deciding that the life inside her womb belonged not to her loving husband, but to her unforgiving captor?

Thinking about it drives her to depressive insanity. By the time Madara comes to see her, she’s depleted almost all of her brain power. 

“Leave us,” he commands the guards who have been assigned to watch her. 

They obey, and the pair are left in silence. 

Her mind pleads with her to run, to attack, to simply scream—anything. Anything that will quell the distress of the pause in the air, the distress of not knowing his intent. 

When he takes a step forward she inches back. Noticing this, he’s dissuaded from approaching any closer. 

“So long as the child is inside of you, you have nothing to fear from me.”

Her heart pounds so furiously in her chest that she’s sure it’s audible in the quiet of the room. 

The statement angers her, scares her, and much to her shame, relieves her. 

“It’s not yours,” she claims.

“Unless I’m miscalculating, the Senju host left a week before my arrival. And not long after that, a fortnight at most for the sake of assumptions, this child might have been conceived. Between us.”

Bile rises in her throat and she wants to protest, but he goes on, badgering her with the logic she’s thus far refused to entertain. 

“If it were his, you would be farther along. Visibly, for one. And more than likely, I would be able to sense the chakra, deduce which clan it belongs to.”

By now she’s trembling quietly with her fear, fighting the urge to deny him, to preserve the hope that the reality he speaks of is in fact skewed.

“The child inside of you is an Uchiha,” he says determinedly. 

She shakes her head.

“You know I’m right.”

“You’re not,” she argues. “You said yourself there's no way of knowing. Not yet.”

He cocks his head. “Then you really have no idea, do you? No idea who it belongs to? Normally mothers can read the chakra within them at this stage. Can you not?”

She won’t grant him an answer, instead stares down at her feet as they dig into the ground, as if in a desperate attempt to escape underneath. 

Madara watches her with careful scrutiny. “I suppose we’ll have to see, then. But somewhere in that head of yours, you know I’m right.”

You’re not right, she repeats in her mind. You’re not. You’re not.

Just as he makes to leave, he stops. 

“And let me be clear,” he says, menacingly. “If you make any attempt to destroy what grows inside of you, you won’t be the one suffering the consequences.”

The glare he gives her speaks volumes: The Senju hostages. The violence that would ensue. The atrocities he might commit if she disobeyed. 

He leaves her. She clutches her stomach, letting the first, long-suppressed tear roll down her cheek. A warm, wet trail is left in its wake. 

In the turmoil she finds evidence for and against his claims when she lets her thoughts run away with logic. A wash of anxious desperation enlivens her, makes her conscience grab for a reprieve to her doubts. But even that is denied by the crushing reality of her situation. 

The life inside of her might belong to the enemy, to the Uchiha. 

And still, it might not. 

She stumbles between one acceptance and the next, each clouding her ever more until the tears are spilling in streams down her cheeks. 

When she puts every morsel of her ability into sensing the life within her, she can’t tell if the faint trace of Senju chakra she feels is authentic, or a desperate manifestation of her mind’s making. 

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Cold As Ice. 

Word Count: 3.3k

Pairing: Fae!Yandere!Todoroki/Reader

Synopsis: Todoroki, the King of the Fae, seems to have lost his vulnerable, helpless, idiotic little mortal. He's as displeased as you'd expect, and he does plan to make his anger known.

TW: Graphic Violence, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Animal Death, and Imprisonment. 

One of Shoto’s greatest pleasures was recalling the spring you’d first met.

Parts of it were true. Fae couldn’t lie, but they could omit, and he never failed to find a new detail to leave out whenever he recalled the months he’d spent in the mortal world. He told his court of the weeks you’d spent attending to his wounds and soothing his pain, or the charming cottage you shared and how quaint human civilization had become, since his last visit. With a small smile, he would speak of the livestock you’d tasked him to feed and the herbs you’d mixed into your tea, creating a concoction his fleet of servants could never seem to replicate. His favorite memory was the kiss you’d shared when he was finally healed, before he departed to return to his mysterious ‘homeland’. He loved you, and you loved him in return. It was something out of a fairytale, for him.

He didn’t tell them of the translucent blood that stained your hands for days after you freed him from the thawing ice, or the strange symbols he drew in the snow until it dissolved under the warmth of the spring sun. He never saw fit to mention the mare he beheaded, whose organs he carved out and jarred and kept in your pantry, if only to remind you of your companion’s slaughter. He wanted to make you seem like a willing partner. A sweet mortal who didn’t know better than to love a fae, a soulmate born into the wrong world. But, soulmates didn’t have to be held down to be kissed. They didn’t have to be threatened into returning their admirer’s affections. They didn’t have to be dragged into a land they did not know and thrown at the feet of a man they did not love. They should not hate their lover, not as you hate Shoto.

They should not run as soon as they’re given the chance to.

Shoto thought you preferred him to death. That was his mistake, his underestimation. He thought, if you were given the option of throwing yourself from the window of your tall, lonely tower, you’d be more scared of the inevitable injury that would entail than spending another day in your captor’s company. Now, with a hand clasped to the numb, throbbing shoulder that’d broken your fall and the bare soles of your feet beating harshly against the frozen ground, you thanked whichever gods were listening for his assumption. The forest, with all its winding roots and outstretched branches, was your safe-haven, the brisk air filling you with a sense of freedom, of strength. You weren’t sure how to get back to the human plane, not without magic, but a damp, dark cave would be a sanctuary compared to Shoto and all his fineries. You would be content with misery, as long as you were the one to choose it.

But, it was a hopeful dream. Already, you could hear the crack of hooves against soil, the soft footfalls of those agile enough to chase after you without a mount. This was just another hunt, to them, and you were an animal to be tracked and captured, to be skinned for your fur and declawed and thrown back into the wild because they thought that was better than putting you out of your suffering. Your revenge came in the form of boredom, in how easy you were to catch, in the refusal to indulge their desire for clever prey. Rather, you ran blindly, searching for a hole to hide inside of, a frozen lake their horses wouldn’t be able to follow you across. Simple methods, but fool-proof ones. Strategies even you wouldn’t be able to blunder.

A woman called out, a bird of prey screeched, and you spotted a knock in a barren cliffside, a deep hollow in an overlap of rock. It would be a tight fit, but if you held your breath and worked quickly, you might be able to find your way inside. You’d almost overlooked it in your panic. Surely, if you were quiet enough--

You never got a chance to finish that thought. Without warning, a gust of ice-cold wind washed over you, and something sharp and burning embedded itself in the back of your calf, your knees buckling as soon as the arrow found its mark. You collapsed, catching yourself with your injured arm out of instinct and screaming as a bright, primal burst of pain etched itself into your bones, your flesh, your being. But, that didn’t stop the hilt of your aggressor’s sword from colliding with the nape of your neck, cutting the sound short and sending you back to the ground. You didn’t try to catch yourself, this time.

With some effort, you roll yourself onto your side, gritting your teeth and tilting your head back to state up at the two faeries who surround you. Your found the woman first, a knight with a sword at her hip and a small, tight-lipped scowl. Yaoyorozu, the leader of the hunt, her hair darker than the night sky and her skin pale enough to put the falling snow to shame. A beauty, like all her kin, almost human if you looked beyond her swirling eyes and the pointed tips of her ears and nails. You had to remind yourself that she was one of the reasons for your current vulnerability.

Beside her was Shoto, a bow slung over his shoulder and an arrow missing from his impeccable quiver. His expression did little to betray him, all regal neutrality and flawless perfection, but his anger was present in his wings, outstretched and taunt behind him, in his white-knuckled grip on his chosen weapon. You met his eyes, and in a moment, his hand was around the shaft of another arrow, ready to send it through your chest with little more than a flick of his wrist. When he realized what he was doing, he dropped it, a fleeting look of self-scrutiny and pity passing across his expression. You could try to convince yourself that it’d been a reflex, that he didn’t truly want to be more destructive than he had to be, but you’d be lying if you tried to say there wasn’t the slightest hint of hesitation. Just another sign that his generosity wasn’t the reason for his delicacy.

He simply didn’t want to break his newest toy so quickly.

Yaoyorozu spoke first, addressing her ruler rather than her prisoner. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d been treated as more than an extension of your captor. “I can call the others,” She said, her gaze flickering vaguely over the blood pooling underneath you. “We’ll need a healer if you want your pet to walk without a limp. I didn’t think to bring one, but the castle isn’t far.”

“I’ll handle it,” He replied, kneeling beside you. So close, you could make out the thin lines running through his translucent wings, flowers of ice and glass that deserved a better place to bloom. The corner of his left-most wing was scarred over, burnt to a leathery crisp, not unlike the matching scar over his nearest eye. In the back of your mind, you fantasized about what it would be like to rip them from his back, to crush thin skin and impossible formations in the palm of your hand and render him as flightless as yourself. Shoto chose to pretend he didn’t know what you were thinking about. “This is my responsibility. Gather your pack and have a medic waiting for when I return.” He paused, letting his temper flare with a narrow-eyed glance in your direction. “You shouldn’t have to rush, I intend to take my time.”

Yaoyorozu bit the inside of her cheek, but she didn’t protest. Rather, she nodded, bowing her head as she turned, following her footprints back into the tangled woods. As soon as she’d disappeared into the darkness, Shoto took the time to sigh, to glare properly the next time he bothered to face you. His bow fell to the ground, abandoned and forgotten. You weren’t particularly concerned.  He had a dozen more waiting to be used on something helpless and disobedient.

“You humiliated me,” He started, his hand drifting to your injury, freeing his arrow before a gloved thumb drove itself into the open wound, his touch as agonizing as a hot iron rod against unprotected skin. You had to fight not to lash out, to condemn yourself to a fate worse than momentary discomfort. There was still a knife sheathed at his belt, and you could only be thankful he hadn’t thought to use it. “I trusted you to go without restraints, to go without guards, and the first thing you think to do is prove to my subjects that my lover would rather risk death than be with me. Tell me, does that sound like behavior I should reward?”

You didn’t answer. Your arm was going numb, equal parts due to the fracture and the chill, and you couldn’t tell him anything he wanted to hear. That’s what it came down to, in the end. How you could make Shoto happy, even if he claimed to be willing to return the favor.

He shook his head, pulling away from your wound and taking up your chin. His hold wasn’t tight, nor did he make an effort to force you into a submission more demeaning than your current surrender, but those small shows of grace were nullified by the feeling of your own warm blood beginning to stain your skin. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

You didn’t have to think. You barely had to open your mouth. As soon as your lips parted, the words were already falling from your tongue, a blunt, shallow river of things you knew you’d regret. Things Shoto would make you regret. “Eat shit and die. You can impale yourself on your own crown, for all I care.”

His frown barely wavered. There was a beat of silence, an idle evaluation of your current state, but his disdain was never vocalized. He didn’t bother to. He didn’t have to.

You didn’t see his hand move, not before the grip of his knife was making contact with the back of your head, your vision going black before pain had a chance to follow.

~

Your contempt for the Winter Court was the only thing that rivaled your loathing for Shoto.

It was a place of joyless, merciless conduct, of cruel smiles and stone painted with gore, although the colorless blood of fae rendered the violence a sightless affair. Two guards were flanked at your sides, but neither dared to look at you, staring straight ahead as they opened the massive oak doors of Shoto’s throne room. The quiet was heavy, tense, but you didn’t attempt to make conversation, not as the panels of wood slid away and a narrow carpet came into view, a rich navy to guide all newcomers to the elevated stage on the otherwise of the room. He could’ve easily come to you, sent a servant to alert him when you awoke or been waiting there himself, but he wanted a show. He wanted you to grovel at his feet, and he wanted his subjects to see you do it.

Oftentimes, you wished you’d been taken by a member of the Summer Court. You wished you’d never been taken at all, of course, but you couldn’t stop yourself from wondering what it would like to exist in a land without ice and sleet and stares that are only barely concealed. You’d visited their valley once or twice with Shoto, and although they weren’t any less wicked than their cold-blooded counterparts, they hid their malicious intent under charms and spells and tricks, traps that kept their victims rooted out of delusion rather than fear. It’d be a deceptive fate, but compared to the reality of the Winter Court, it couldn’t be unpleasant. If Shoto could simply invoke your name when he craved control, you wouldn’t be favoring your right leg over your left as you dragged yourself down the well-tread pathway.

There were sneers from the stands as you passed by, harsh whispers of rumors and tales that were just untrue enough to burn at their tongues as they spoke. You tried not to pay them any mind, but it was difficult. Your latest ‘betrayal’, as Shoto had put it, would only fuel their distaste for their ruler’s mortal partner. Perhaps if you were something else, they’d be entranced. If you were an abnormality or a beast or something dangerous, you’d be able to do more than run and make noise and disobey rules they hadn’t thought not to follow. But, you were human, so you were boring. A feral mutt whose tricks had long-since grown old.  

You came to a stop in front of Shoto’s throne, a massive structure of silver and velvet and ornate carvings of every woodland animal you could imagine. You didn’t attempt to meet his eyes, only dropping to one knee, assuming the position he’d force you into, if you didn’t fall into on your own. You didn’t speak, though, letting Shoto greet you with a tone so stoic, you had to wonder whether this was a punishment or an execution. “How are your injuries?”

“I’ll live, unfortunately,” You replied, under your breath, rolling your shoulder back, making an effort not to wince. You didn’t want to show weakness, not when he was already so far above you. “The healers say I’ll need a few days to recover fully. That won’t interfere with…” You trailed off, your eyes flickering around the courtroom. Searching for any sign of a looming threat. “That won’t interfere with what you have planned, will it?”

He huffed, a small pout pulling at the corners of his mouth, but he accepted the announcement without further argument, leaning back and letting his chin come to rest on a closed fist. With his free hand, he gestured for you to come closer, an indolent wave barely worth the energy it took to execute. Slowly, you pushed yourself to your feet, only pausing when Shoto tapped his thigh. Disappointment washed over you, but any shock was minimal. If he couldn’t have his revenge, then your shame would serve as a consolation prize.

You clung to your last scraps of dignity, keeping your expression stern and your posture rigid, but Shoto freed you of that with an arm around your waist, dragging you into his lap, your side soon flush against his chest and your back pressed against his armrest, your legs left to tangle with his. He was quick to deflate, to melt into you and bury his face in the crook of your neck, the affection intimate and sickeningly underserved. The tips of sharpened teeth brushed against your skin, but thankfully, abstained from taking root. The last thing you wanted was another wound to fret over. “Can’t you bring me the smallest relief?” He asked, chilled breath washing over your skin, earning a shudder. “An apology, words of remorse, a purpose, anything. I don’t want to be bitter with you, beloved. Any sign that you care for me is a sign I’ll take to heart.”

He sounded exhausted, exasperated. You attempted not to let his disposition faze you, keeping your gaze fixed on the furthest stone wall. “My words would bring you no comfort,” You muttered, more to reassure yourself than to convince him. “There’s nothing I can say to quell your anger. You saw what I did, and you know why I did it. An excuse would only frustrate you.”

You felt him grit his teeth, his hold around you tightening. His wings flickered before resuming their trained motionlessness. “You have no reason to despise me--”

“I have every reason.” You didn’t wait for him to finish, nor did you have any interest in letting him. This was a dance you’d practiced many times, a song you could identify from a single note. You would sing along, but you wouldn’t let Shoto act as if you’d never done so before. He didn’t deserve your patience. “I’m a prisoner here, Todoroki, I’m your prisoner. You provide for me, and I understand that you think you’re being kind, but no amount of luxury can make this place my home. I don’t belong here, I’m…” You were different. You were alien. You were lesser. “I’m not meant to be here. I’m not meant to be with you.”

Early on in your captivity, you’d convinced one of Shoto’s servants to smuggle an iron knife into your chambers, the weapon forged in the human world and stolen from a fae noble with questionable intentions. When Shoto next visited you, letting his guard down in favor of rambling on about his day and the ongoings of his court, you’d driven the dagger blindly into his chest over and over and over again, only stopping when one of his knights dragged you off of his limp body. You didn’t have to say it’d been useless. Cold Iron was effective on most creatures, but you’d need something much stronger to kill a fae as powerful as Shoto, whose veins took the shape of snowflakes and whose wrath bunt with the heat of glowing embers. The servant was killed by sunset and your knife was melted down into two nails, both of which were then driven into your heels as retribution. You hadn’t been able to walk for a month, but Shoto told you time and time again that he was being lenient, that was being merciful. You’d believed him. The fire in his eyes had nearly been enough to melt his frozen heart.

Compared to his current rage, his fury back then seemed like child’s play.

“A prisoner, you see yourself as a prisoner,” He spat, pointed talons biting into your hip, cutting through fabric and skin and drawing blood before he thought to stop. “I’ve never asked anything of you. I gave you a castle, beautiful clothes, a life befitting divinity, and you say you feel like a prisoner just because I urge you to tolerate me in return.”  He paused, scoffing, letting out a breathy, humorless laugh before he went on. “If you’re a prisoner, you’re a rather coddled one. That’s my fault, isn’t it? How can I expect you to learn your place when I treat you like a lapdog?”

“That’s not what I meant,” You responded, hastily, avoiding his question. “You know that’s not what I meant. I’m only trying to--”

“You’re trying to earn your discipline, apparently,” He warned, nearly snarling against your shoulder. His fingers found their way to your hair, taking you by the scalp and jerking you backward, just far enough to allow him to glare, to bare his teeth and growl. “I’ve kept you safe. I’ve let you live in leisure because I wanted to believe your pathetic human mind would let you be motivated by gratitude, rather than fear. I can see that allowing you to love me on your own terms isn’t an option, anymore.” He wretched you upward, forcing you to straighten your back, a pitiful whimper escaping from your lips before you could suppress it. “If you think you’re a prisoner, then I’d be more than happy to treat you like a prisoner. It’d be a shame not to give you what you’ve been begging for, wouldn’t it?”

You moved to argue, to apologize, to do whatever would sway Shoto’s resolve, but by the time you opened your mouth, he was already calling over his guards, metal gauntlets soon clamped around your forearm and your shoulder, ready to dispose of you at the slightest omen of their King’s will. Shoto only leaned back, watching as you lost your composure, as you panicked. He didn’t yell, nor did he lecture you further, but as always, his rage found a way to make itself known, if only in the grin that ghosted across his lips. Satisfied and decided. The smile of a man pushed to the edge and far too prepared to push back.

The smile a monster, finally ready to devour its prey.

“This might be a change for the better.” His tone was one of sterile contentment, a serenity that ran deeper than his voice could ever portray. You had a feeling you wouldn’t be able to shake him, again, not so easily. 

You had a feeling he wouldn’t give you the chance to, again.

“You might finally come to see how loving I’ve been, when you’re stripped of my favor.”  

[bones-sprouts]

SELF INDULGENT APOLLO JUSTICE ACE ATTORNEY AU BECAUSE IT BRINGS ME JOY ( SPOILER WARNING ⚠️‼️)

@burnoutandbookworms-ohmy you wanted to be tagged :>

okay so the cast would be as follows

apollo - tommy

phoenix - wilbur

trucy - tubbo

klavier - ranboo (this one's ambitious but hear me out-)

kristoph - dream

ema - techno

lamiroir - kristin

zak - phil (F in chat for mr minecraft 😔)

and then all of the filler characters would be various other smp members (suggestions?)

so then the plot would go as follows (we're bullet pointing this bitch you better run)

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•

• so tommy arrives in the courtroom with dream, and he's nervous as hell, because not only is it his first trial

• his client is wilbur fucking soot

• world renouned defense attorney, now disbarred for forging evidence

• but tommy is 110% sure wilbur is innocent

• because wilbur is his HERO

• and then dream introduces them and damn he looks like shit

• i'm talking full pogtopia era get-up, plus a ratty beanie that has wilby painted on it and a crown pin

• so wil spouts the standard cryptic bullshit you'd expect from phoenix

• and tommy does an early smpe earth 'i am so cool and not at all starstruck' type act

• and they head in

• you meet the judge, who i didn't replace bc it's the judge

• tommy does his chords of steel, but with significantly more swearing then apollo would use

• and dream seems to be just a bit off

• and he goes on this big tirade about blue cards

• the case goes smoothly, until

• tommy feels something akin to a burning from the compass he's kept as a necklace for as long as he can remember

• and he just knows that the witness is lying

• it's like he can see the tiniest of tells that tip him off

• dream doesn't quite understand it, but wilbur looks like he knows exactly what's going on

• before he calls this out, though, a recess is called

• wilbur and dream have a chat, so tommy's left to his own devices

• and this boy about his age in a green magician's outfit runs up to him

• and he looks like an older version of the picture of wilbur's kid that he showed off in court beforehand

• and he hands tommy a (bloody??) playing card and poofs away

• then the trial resumes as normal, with tommy grilling the witness and eventually accusing her

• but it just doesn't seem right

• he knows she's not lying about being innocent, her tells would have tipped him off if she was

• but dream pushes and pushes him to formally accuse her

• until wilbur fucking soot interjects with an OBJECTION!

• while tommy geeks the hell out, wilbur asserts that there must have been someone else in the room

• and accuses dream.

• tommy's confused, and the both of them argue back and forth for a bit, until wilbur starts explaining his theory with evidence from tommy along the way

• but it's seeming like they don't have any non circumstancial evidence

• until wilbur has tommy pull out the playing card

• (i haven't been explaining the case but it makes sense i promise)

• they win the case, with dream never faltering or showing emotion, even after being taken away

• tommy's shaken up, but happy, all things considered

• but before he can ponder on what's just happened, wilbur takes him aside to talk

• and admits the card was forged

• tommy's shocked, and he's sad, and he's angry, because how could wilbur fucking soot forge evidence??

• and he punches him in the face

• wil smiles and gives him an offer to work at his office, since tommy's boss is kind of in jail

• tommy leaves

• but he comes back a few months later, only out of desperation

• he's greeted by the boy from the trial (wil's kid?)

• who demands to know his name and his 'talent'

• tommy says he's a lawyer and introduces himself

• the kid says his name is tubbo and that the building hasn't been a law office in a long time

• tommy asks to see wilbur

• so they go to see him

• in the fucking hospital

• he managed to get hit by a car, which sent him flying 40ft back into a telephone pole

• and he sprained his ankle

• he's very lucky apparently

• so from there, cases 2 and 3 play out (i'm gonna skim though these bc if i write them out ill end up rewriting plot points and i don't have the energy)

• along the way, they meet a few interesting people

• ranboo, a prosecutor who's dream's younger brother and the guitarist for a popular band, that tubbo immediately gets along with and tommy despises

• dispite seeming cocky, he's impressively awkward outside of court

• technoblade, a detective who's fairly standoffish towards tommy and tubbo alike, but has a soft spot for wilbur (do they have a history)

• kristin, a singer with a past she can't remember (unbeknownst to tommy, his compass tends to point towards her and tubbo. odd)

also before we move on to the final case, a quick summary of the dynamics and other small shit bc seritonin

• though wil adopted tubbo, they have much more of a sibling dynamic, and cause general mayhem

• wilbur does actually warm up to tommy fairly quickly (beanix and apollo dynamic, my abbhorrent) and while tommy still doesn't 100% trust wil, they do end up getting pretty close as time goes on

• tubbo and ranboo IMMEDIATELY hit it off, much to the dismay of tommy, and the two of them act like the dummy named micheal that tubbo uses for magic tricks is their son

• tommy acts like he hates ranboo's guts, but that won't stop him from trying to sweet talk his way into getting evidence from him (it always works, ranboo has no spine.) he also, like in canon, vents to ranboo whenever he needs to, and ranboo ends up knowing more ab him then even wil and tubbo

• jack is eldoon. they all go to his noodle shop constantly and tommy always complains about them being too salty. jack hates him with a passion but adores tubbo and wil

• instead of snakooos, techno deadass just has entire bags full of raw potatoes that he eats like chips, this is terrifying to everyone except wilbur, who acts like it's completely normal

• instead of pretending to be taken hostage in case 2, tubbo deadass pretends to have a nuke and threatens to set it off unless a recess is called. after things calm down they go back in and he just,, doesn't get arrested. the law is fucked

• after case 1, dream wears a smiley mask in order to not show his face, paranoid that tommy or someone else like him will know his secrets though his tells

okay now final case here we go

• wilbur tells tommy and tubbo that he's been working on a special trial with the jury system, and that he needs them to defend

• they agree, and go to meet the client

• things generally go like any other investigation, but there's just something about it that feels game changing

• and as they power though the first part of the trial, they start to uncover that there might be someone pulling the strings from behind the scenes

• tommy clocks her tell (chewing her nails) and they start to make progress

• but before they can uncover answers from her, she passes out

• a recess is called, and so are paramedics

• it turns out she's ingested the same kind of poison as the victim, coming from her nail polish

• tommy and tubbo are shaken up, and they go to wil for help

• he decides they need to know the full truth, but he knows that some of the evidence is lost at this point

(and holy shit stay with me here i promise that as out of left field this is the original game made significantly less sense)

• he phones a friend that he knows is the only one that can help them

• karl

• he explains the situation, and karl agrees to help them

• and they fucking time travel

(again, the game makes even less sense i promise)

• they chat with the victim and defendant from seven years beforehand, right after wil was disbarred

• they watch the trial wil got disbarred over, where he defended tubbo's bio father, phil

• and they see a much smaller tubbo hand wil the forged evidence, saying that a kind man told him to give it to the man with the bright blue hamilton suit

• and they watch wil present it, only to be shot down by a much younger ranboo, who proves it's fake

• and they find out tubbo and tommy are bio siblings, which they're shocked about but decide to talk about later (fuck canon tommy and tubbo get to know)

• and they go visit dream in prison

• at this point wil is CONVINCED dream is behind everything, they just need the right evidence

• so they head to the cell, only for it to be empty

• naturally, they start snooping

• wil finds a letter, and opens it to reveal exactly what they need to win the case

• but before they can leave, dream, equipped with a smiley mask, stops them

• they exchange a few words before they leave, letterless

• luckily, wil has a trick up his sleeve, and reveals that his crown pin has a built in camera

• they examine the contents of the letter, and wil hastily makes a replica, and they head off to the trial

• since they're experimenting with the jurist system for the first time, they can't afford to wait for the defendant to heal, so they proceed

• they call dream to the stand

• they grill him for quite a while, with the help of ranboo who refuses to protect his brother, getting him to show his true colors, and then pull out the letter

• and he says that it's a fake, which the judge unfortunately agrees with

• so they don't have their evidence

• and even though they've shown pretty much everything and dream had practically admitted to bring a murderous bastard and the one who gave tubbo the fake to give to wil

• they don't have enough to convince a judge

• tommy and tubbo are crushed

• but wil is happy

• because they don't have to convince a judge

• they have to convince a jury

• and they win

• dream shatters along with his mask, going completely off the deep end

• their client is safe, and so is wil

• kristin also reveals to wil that she's tommy and tubbo's bio mom, saying that she'll tell them when she's really

• so things come to a close

• for now, anyway

so yeah, thats AJ but dsmp, to anyone who didn't play the game, i'm so sorry this makes no sense, and to anyone who did, you're cool as hell can we be moots 👉👈

[theodora3022]

Crown Jewel

(noun): a particularly valuable or prized possession or asset.

Pairing: Francis Scott Fitzgerald X fem! former assassin reader

Summary: Having betrayed the Order of the Clock Tower and fled to Japan, you hid your ability and worked at the ADA as a secretary for protection. Life was not as good, but you knew what Lady Christie would do if she discovered a traitor’s whereabouts. You knew someone would dig up your old dirt sooner or later, but why does it have to be this arrogant, awful man? 

Notes: This is really self-indulgent (to satiate my cravings and daddy issues), so read it at your own risk. I am not comfortable with cheating, so Francis is single in this one and never went bankrupt.(But he is still a family man, his wife Zelda passed away before the events in the show) He is an arrogant bastard in canon so you might find his behaviour offensive but that is just how he is. Excuse my pathetic Canadian English, as I cannot write in British English at all. This fic took me too many hours to write, thankfully it is finally done...

Special thanks to my friends for beta reading this long thing, your encouragement and praises are what kept my fragile sanity intact in the process!

Word count: 4.2k

Warnings: Mild bimbofication, mild objectification, coercion, implied dub-con(We all know what happens in marriages right?), Yandere themes

She was beautiful, but not like those girls in the magazines.

She was beautiful for the way she thought.

She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved.

She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile, even if she was sad.

No, she wasn’t beautiful for something as temporary as her looks.

She was beautiful, deep down to her soul.

-F.Scott Fitzgerald

The entire Fitzgerald Estate is finely, thoughtfully decorated, lavish even. Like photographs right out of a luxurious architecture magazine, with marble floors, persian carpets and high raised ceilings. A manor that sits on the top of a little hill, surrounded by trees and flowerbeds. But no matter how beautiful it may be, no one can never feel quite at home in prison. You thought as you lean back on the living room sofa near the patio, slowly dozing off in the afternoon sunlight with a half-read novel on your lap. Maybe you would go for a swim later, you could use a soak before he returns.

It’s easy to forget how much blood is on your hands in peaceful times like these. Ever since he made you dispose of your count book, you can barely remember how many people you had slaughtered.

Your hands were once covered with callouses from hours of training, but now they are as smooth as the velvet curtains. The glow from the big diamond ring on your ring finger irritates you so very often, but he had warned you not to take it off.

“Lady Fitzgerald? Mrs. Smith is here for your fitting session.” It is one of the maids. Ah, is the tailor here already? You put up a smile for the guest and got up, silently cursing your “husband” in the process. Good thing he is at work most of the time, so you can at least enjoy this glamorous life every once in a while without wanting to bury yourself in a bottomless pit.

Another week, another one of those frivolous social events. But you have no choice but to accompany him to every single one of them. While acting as the leader of the Guild, Francis is also the head of the Fitzgerald cooperation, therefore this high society life has always been the norm for him. You, on the other hand, prefer lurking in the shades. All these shimmering lights, noisy parties, fancy dresses and high heels leave you either dazzled or vulnerable. You feel more like his nice accessory, a Christmas bauble than a wife. However, you know your obligations. Be his arm candy, smile, be obedient and not to speak unless spoken to. The alternative of obeying these absurdities is simply unthinkable. Merely the thought can make you feel chills on this warm summer afternoon.

It’s either this or absolute hell. No, that is not an exaggeration.

As an experienced assassin, you had prepared for death since you first signed up for the position. However, no one can bear the Order’s punishments. You know that too well, having witnessed it first-hand countless times.

At least you can live a carefree life with this option. With infuriating restrictions or not, you are still alive and maintain a certain degree of freedom. You should take this compared to an excruciating death any day. Plus you also get to live in extravagance, you cannot hate that for one bit. This rich man has spoiled you to no end, willing to fulfill even your most absurd requests as long as you are his darling wife. Let it be cars, clothes or jewelries, whatever you wish for, Francis would always make sure you got the finest of them.  Not that is ever possible, but you could...get used to this.

However, you utterly despise this title, Lady Fitzgerald? No matter how much he pampers you or showers you with gifts, it would never make up for the fact that you only signed that marriage license under certain conditions. There are those sleepless nights, while you lay under silk quilts in his embrace in some exquisite mansion, you wish you were back in your humble Yokohama flat alone.

---a few months ago

Almost spilling your morning beverage due to running into one of your coworkers at the door, is surely a bad omen, but at the time you did not give it much thought. “Sorry, (y/n)-san. But there is an emergency.” Kirako Haruno?

Work has only just begun, and to your knowledge, there are no major events scheduled for today. Why is she in such a hurry?

Haruno is as terrified as if she just saw a bear in the middle of the street. Strange, since she is usually calm and collected. 

“What has happened? Are you okay?”

“There are foreigners here, they are demanding an audience with the president. (y/n)-san, you can handle them, right? Please, keep them occupied while I notify the president.” Looks like this is your problem now since you speak better English compared to any other in the ADA.

She said it quickly without any pause. Also walked away before you had a chance to refuse, so Haruno missed how the colours suddenly drained from your visage and your horrid expression. 

Oh, dear. Please do not let the foreigners be them… Although not many members of the Order recognizes you as you always don masks even at meetings, you still feel the world may have ended for you, as you wobble out of the office to the reception area with cold sweat. If Haruno had not hurried off, you would have found some excuse to get away from this troublesome situation. You should have called in sick today...

Are they speaking with American accents? Good gracious, you almost had a heart attack over this. You dealt with the Guild before, back when you were still in the Order when you still viewed Lady Christie as your older sister. She used to take you to negotiations meetings. You know how they are, so it should be a cakewalk to keep them occupied for at least a while. But...what if they identify you and report your whereabouts to the Order?! Would they be willing to do Christie this “favour”? The last time you checked, the two organizations were not on exactly friendly terms. So you should be fine as long as you act accordingly. Besides, the agency would not allow foreigners to harm one of their office clerks, precisely why you applied for a job ADA a year-and-a-half ago.

Get your act together, (y/n). Being this panicked is beneath you, everything will be alright as long as you conceal your fears. 

Finishing on your diplomatic front preparation, you greet them with a professional attitude. “Welcome to the Armed Detective Agency, ladies and gentlemen of the Guild.” You try to talk in the calmest tone possible, without stutters. “Now if you would follow me, I shall prepare you some tea. The President will be ready for you shortly.” Now that you have a chance to observe them up close, you had to dig your nails into your palms, pressuring yourself to maintain composure. Why is the leader of the Guild here?! You had seen him before, there is no way you could mistake that arrogant blonde for anyone else. Even though you are pretty confident he would scarcely recognize you without a mask, that tiny possibility feels like a sharp blade pressing against your throat, ready to strike anytime. 

Fitzgerald was not expecting someone who speaks flawless English to receive them. Not someone this cute, too. And here he thought this is just going to be like any other boring business discussion. But he cannot shake off this feeling of how he had seen your enchanting smile somewhere before. It was not easy to leave even a vague impression on the great Francis Scotts Fitzgerald, you must have been someone important. A business partner? A Government Official? Or perhaps a Socialite? You are someone with a high position, that he can be sure. But why would you Oh how he hates having blurry memories of something. As soon as he returns to the Guild base, Francis needs to look into their Database immediately. 

“Earl Grey, imported from England. Would you like some refreshments as well?” Taking out a can of cream biscuits from your desk drawer, you are glad to see the redhead young girl nodding excitedly. You return a genuine smile to her before bending down to fetch the plate. You were not sure if you were just being oversensitive, but you felt a burning gaze on your back when you turned. Your assassin instincts were almost always accurate, could it be that Fitzgerald had remembered something?

“Is there something wrong, Miss? You are sweating so much.” You do appreciate the ginger girl’s kind words, but could she not say it out loud for her boss to hear? You were planning on keeping your panics to yourself. Moving unnoticeable further away from the Guild leader, you gulped nervously. 

“My apologies. I am not feeling well this morning. Now, here’s your biscuits.”

“Aren’t they called cookies? They are truly delicious, thank you so much, Miss. I’m Lucy by the way.”

“In England, we call them biscuits. Would you like some more, Lucy? I have more if you’ll like it.” Her cheerful nature reminds you of a little sister, how could you say no to her pleading eyes. Unfortunately, this also made you forget how you are trying to remain incognito, and you let your hidden past out unintentionally. 

England? That certainly rings a bell for the bright mind of Francis Fitzgerald. And no, he was not eavesdropping. You are talking to his employee, after all. Francis even forgot to scold Lucy about being a demanding guest on cookies because he was so deep in thought, searching for any clue of who you might be. He was about to recall something when you received the president’s notice about the meeting. “The President is ready now, this way please.”

After they entered the office, you realized how you had accidentally exposed yourself while explaining about biscuits. No, now all you can do is pray Fitzgerald was not listening in to that whimsical tea-time conversation. Your stomach suddenly feels queasy, a sign that maybe you should request to go home early. You surely do not want to face those calculating blue eyes again. Heck, you never trembled this badly, not even before the toughest missions. 

He was planning on asking you some questions after that unsuccessful negotiation, but it would seem like you had taken a sick leave early. 

You seem to be rather nervous around him. Suspicious. 

Yet Francis cannot stop thinking about how you cared for Lucy. That consideration, if his little daughter is still around, she is bound to love you… It could just be professional kindness, but Francis had seen enough people to tell what is a facade or not. Zelda was like this too, in fact, it’s this admirable quality that had drawn him in the first place.

The great Fitzgerald had seen so many beautiful women, but your unparalleled warmth and grace outshine all appearances. 

Wait, Francis had finally cleared the fog now. Aren’t you that girl with Agatha Christie, the head knight of the Order of the Clock Tower? No wonder you speak of England. He was so shocked when Christie introduced you as one of her finest knights. You were so friendly and lighthearted, how can you be that notorious master Assassin? It does not matter whether you had a mask on or not, he remembers those lovely (colour) eyes too well. He had found you to be alluring back then, but at that time he was too busy to concern himself with amorous feelings. Going through the guild files, he found that statement from Christie about how you had defected from the Order and a bounty for your whereabouts.

So, you are hiding from your former Organization? That is unfortunate. Francis had heard a word or two about how the Order is feared for its gruesome torture methods, how they still implement the old ways without mercy. You would rather work as a low-wage secretary then continue being one of their most esteemed Knights, something must have gone terribly wrong. 

This is the perfect wager to let you, a kind, independent strong woman, bend to his will. 

Now that he had thought about it, coming back home to a loving wife once again sounds more than wonderful. Having someone by his side forever, to love, to spoil, to have a family with had always been what he wanted. But fate has been cruel to Francis on this matter and had taken them away way too soon. 

This time, he would make sure to do it right. Francis is determined not to let the tragedy repeat itself.

You were surprised by that clearly expensive gift box on your desk the next day you arrived at work. There is a letter attached to it? Your heart dropped when you saw the Guild's emblem embedded on the wax seal. What could they possibly want from you apart from...that?

“Dear Ms(y/n), Sir Francis S FitzGerald would like you to join him for dinner at (location). Please put on the dress in the box attached and be at (location) at seven p.m sharp.” 

What a condescending letter. Not even a polite invitation, just saying he wants you there? You knew how this Fitzgerald is, that arrogant and greedy type, who would value money above conscience. Well, you still got some savings left, if that could shut him up you would not mind emptying your pockets.

You can never let her find you. Suicide before she did is a possible option, but you decided to save that as the last resort.

That is why you decided to put on that dress and go to meet him at this high-end western restaurant. 

The hem of the dress is too short for your likings, but its sublime texture made you presume it costs a fortune. You cannot even recall when was the last time you had don such fine material. Life as a Knight major feels nothing more than a fever dream when Agatha was still your friend, your dear Commander.

What is Fitzgerlad’s intention of giving you such a scandalous dress? Is this some peculiar way to humiliate you? This is why you are better off acting as the blade, never as the tactician. Mind games were never your forte. 

You are wearing that dress as Francis asked, good. He knew you would look gorgeous in it. It’s such a shame you always covered yourself up. Why wear those cheap, conservative trash when you can wear this?

Someone like you needs to be cherished, to be coddled. You do not belong in the shades or some little office.

“Mr. Fitzgerald. How may I help you today?” God, you feel almost naked in this piece of cloth, but you know you had to grin and bear it as he has the upper hand for now. “If this is about that business permit, I am not the one to make decisions.”

“Why, you are not going to thank me for the dress? You look absolutely breathtaking if you are wondering.” Crap, he is wearing a suit of a matching colour. Has he done this on purpose?

You blush a bit at Francis’s generous compliment, but you did not foreget why you are here.

“Please, do sit. And call me Francis, Miss.” Pulling the chair out for you, Francis smiled politely before signalling the waiters to bring out the appetizers. He is acting way too nice if all he wants is blackmailing you. You were expecting a simple, cold business trade, not...whatever this can be called.

“So, how is Lady Christie doing?” You put down the wine glass, sensing his malicious intent and narrowing your eyes. Of course, he knows, you should have expected this much from the leader of the Guild and an accomplished businessman. Lady Christie must have sent out wanted advertisements, too. 

“If you know this much then you must know I am not a part of the Order anymore.” Just name the price already, then you can both go back to your respective businesses and forget your paths ever crossed.

Clever one, although Francis would expect anything less from someone like you. Not just anyone could be the Knight major of that Order after all. You sighed with frustration, clearly wanting to get this over with. “How much do you need? I still have a decent sum in my bank account.” It would probably be a large price, coming from this greedy man, but you are willing to pay for it as long as he stays silent.

You, trying to bribe him? How adorable. You must have been incredibly oblivious to not notice his intentions. Yes, normally a good check would silence Francis, but can’t you see he is not after your money here?

Instead of taking the pen, Francis shoved his smartphone in front of your face. 

You turn paler when you figure out the contents. It was an email draft, a draft intended for your former Commander. It tells how the Guild is doing her a big favour by returning her astray Knight major to her proper place. Did he type out an email already? You can already feel those cold dungeon bars on your skin. 

“Is money not enough? What exactly do you need?” Calm down, (y/n). If Francis did not send that email, it means negotiation is still possible. Just give him what he needs and be done with it. 

To your shock, the blonde smiled smugly and said: “I want you to join the Guild.”

Join the Guild? “As an assassin?” Of course, he is after your ability. It was what made you a high ranking knight, no wonder he would want that for his organization. 

“Not exactly. You see, I’m looking for a...personal bodyguard.” Hm, Francis is fond of the word “personal” in this context, it makes him feel like you are one of his possessions already.

“If you have any knowledge about my ability at all, you should know I am no good for frontal combat. With your status, fitting individuals would come running.” Is he toying with you? How despicable. Only a dastard would toy with someone’s mind, especially someone desperate.

Carefully taking your hand into his, feeling your soft skin and those light calluses on your fingers, Francis knows he has to do this the blunt way. You are such a fool when it comes to romantic relationships. 

“Be my wife, you don’t need to worry about being discovered ever again. Christie cannot touch you as long as you are by my side. You can have whatever you want, just say the word. ”

This has to be a hallucination. Be his...wife? “Mr. Fitzgerald, have you got hit on the head earlier?” Feeling his forehead with the back of your hand: “You do not seem to have a fever. Are you feeling unwell?” Is he out of his mind? You, his wife? You are a dangerous assassin with a high headcount, not exactly wife material. No one sane wishes to be involved with you romantically, or so you thought.

He was not expecting such an eccentric reaction. Most women would be over the moon with the mere thought of becoming his mistress, not to mention an actual wife. Francis knows you are different, but this is out of his wildest predictions. 

You are even harder to predict than the stock market of New York.

“This is a serious offer, love. Do you take my words as some jester’s joke?” He is not joking? Oh dear, you don’t want to marry this man. He did not even properly court you? And it is not like he is giving you a real choice either.

“What, are you going to refuse? That is fine, surely this email could bring a smile to Christie's face.” “No, please don’t send that email!”The way your pupils shrink suddenly gives him heartaches, but this is the necessary measure to make sure you are compliant. Francis had promised to spoil you, but sadly this is not a matter he can compromise with. He could make it up with gifts and attention later right? This life in exile is not fitting for a lady like you, so why don’t you let him take care of you? Don’t you understand what could happen to you had he not intervened?

That trembling little nod is all Francis needs for confirmation. As he brings your hand to his lips for a gentle kiss, he swore silently to himself how he would never repeat his previous mistakes.

“Now, let us go ring shopping. Pick the biggest diamond one if you like, but make sure to select it out with a matching one.”

----Back to present

After the fitting appointment, you decided to spend the rest of the afternoon with some confectionary practices. You remember well how Francis’s face would lit up like a Christmas tree if he comes home to the smell of your bakings. It disgusts you how much he loves your docile mask, how you are his perfect housewife, his Mrs. Fitzgerald. This bastard do take pleasure in others pain.

Still, you must keep your “husband” happy. Humming your favourite melody in a pink apron, you try to imagine you are just doing this for only your own amusement, in your own house to make this more bearable. 

Baking is one of the many hobbies you picked up after becoming Lady Fitzgerald. You could not work, neither as an assassin nor a secretary, as he is concerned about your “safety”: “Why should my lovely wife trouble herself with those headaches? You should spend your day doing whatever interests you, like painting or knitting! Tell me anytime if you need tutors.” Then Francis gave your head a few pats as if you are some cute puppy? You can never count how many screws he got loose.

What interests you? Well, stabbing Francis in his sleep could hardly count as a suitable hobby. Guess you’ll have to think of other ways to utilize those kitchen knives.  Since he forbids you to train with weapons, you are stuck with those pathetic feminine leisure activities. 

Placing the tray onto the preheated oven rack, you were cleaning up the mess from the process when two strong arms abruptly wrapped around your waist from behind. You knew exactly who it is since you had sensed his presence when he first set a foot into this ridiculously large kitchen. You also had to take deep breaths, reminding yourself why you shouldn’t just aim your fists at Francis’s nose then and there. These past few months with him had raised your resilience to an incredible level, you could tolerate his demanding physical affections without the urge to jump off a cliff now. 

Curling your lips upwards, you push yourself to leave a light peck on the tall blonde man’s left cheek. That is mandatory, you had learned that on the first day here. “You’re home early.” The way you say those words is so sweet, even sweeter than those sugary treats in the oven. Even though you have to be careful, not letting the venom underneath slip out.

This is what Francis S. Fitzgerald longs to come home to, the love of his life after a day of gruelling meetings and other work. Once a renowned assassin, a second-in-command Knight in a Prestigious Royal Order, but now you are just his little housewife. He could never find a shinier trophy to demonstrate his power and influence. The haughty Blonde knows you have not entirely given up on the idea of escaping, still holding a grudge towards him, time will tell whether you accept your place or not. But that does not matter now, right now the Guild leader just wants to watch some brainless tv show on the sofa, with you on his lap to unwind, some Bordeaux would be nice too. He could handle all those business meetings if that means holding you to sleep every night. The sight of your smile makes it all worth it. 

You belong to him now, his most prized possession, the crown jewel of Francis Fitzgerald’s collection.

And you have no say in the matter as long as you wish to stay in the land of the living.

It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving,

But like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.

-F.Scott Fitzgerald

(Hey! Thank you for reading! Commetns and reblogs would be greately appreciated!)

[cauldronofmorning]

Okay so.... I've encountered your tags about "the talking scene between trapper and hawk in dr pierce and dr hyde the stuttering the grabbing the not blinking how another of hawk's coping methods has bitten the dust#trapper being soft parental but annoyed and how he needs to check out while hawkeye needs to save the entire world"... if you have time, Go off! I would love that 2000 word essay and your opinions.

It’s a bit of a mess and would probably get a C- if I handed it in, but! Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde and how it shows the difference between Hawkeye’s and Trapper’s coping methods.

Context! Alan Alda wrote the episode, mental health is important to him (not to psychoanalyze an actor, but he had depression before the show and his mom was schizophrenic) and there’s a quote on how Hawkeye didn’t actually change much in the eleven years, just had his coping methods beaten down.

So throughout season one, Hawkeye and Trapper have mostly been ignoring the trauma of a war. Hawkeye naturally ended a movie with a speech about propaganda (Yankee Doodle Doctor) and Tommy tells them (Sometimes You Hear The Bullet) about a kid who should have been the blonde hero in a war movie actually dying and not hearing a bullet, forcing them to actually quietly think about it. But for the most part, they can distract themselves with booze, pranks and women, and Hawkeye can still draw a straight line between his tenuous sanity pre-war and the place he’s in.

There’s also two important episodes in season two before Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde, that make the war more personal for both of them. The first is Radar’s Report, where a scared prisoner contaminates Trapper’s patient by knocking the blood over. Trapper’s sulkier throughout the episode, obsessed with how it could have been okay if it weren’t for that incident, and less indulging of Hawkeye’s girl of the week problem. His patient doesn’t make it, and he makes a beeline to the POW’s tent, maybe would have killed him if Hawkeye hadn’t bought him back to reality. “That’s not what we’re about.”

The second is For The Good Of The Outfit. This one has a village bombed by American military and Hawkeye/Trapper run afoul of previously decent sounding generals trying to shut them up from talking about it, including passive aggressive threats to send them to the front, and specifically to Hawkeye, intercepting letters to his dad. It’s okay by the end of the episode, but he’s still livid when he finds this out.

In comes Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde. The episode starts with Hawkeye already slightly dissociated from a long shift, thinking it hasn’t ended, and Trapper having to gently take him by the arm and guiding him out of the OR, telling him he was taking the chest cases “like he was their only hope”. Hawkeye wanting to save everyone keeps popping up throughout the episode; here, when he’s stumbling into Henry and his ego filtered through deprivation making him think he’s the only one who can do chest cases, the scene I’m getting to, and the end where Trapper and Henry sum him up.

As much as Trapper is “let’s get drunk to deal, okay?” kind of comfort in comparison to BJ who can actually talk about emotions, if not necessarily knowing the best way to deal with them (Hawkeye has a type and it’s repressed blondes), he’s soft with Hawkeye – gentle touches, firmly telling him to go to sleep, indulging that chopper noise is just thunder – until he figures the best way to get his friend to rest is to sedate him behind his back.

The thing with Trapper is that while he might be a bad husband, cheating on his wife with no shame (but he keeps bringing up that Hawkeye is more perverted so that might make it easier for him to deal with, see the couple of times he glares at Hawk for flirting with Henry/a male patient, Divided We Stand, The Trial Of Henry Blake, Check Up, Life With Father, Adam’s Ribs), he’s a good father who ran into a minefield for Kim and tried to go AWOL for Cathy and Becky. That’s not to say he always treats Hawkeye like a child, that would be weird considering how much flirting they do, but when the other man is manic or badly affected, Trapper’s first instinct is to be parental.

After Hawkeye in his doubletalky way admits to Radar he’s compulsive and psychotic (sidenote:  his symptoms of strong emotions, not being able to think clearly and too many spirals to name actually bear that diagnosis out, instead of just using the word when one thinks another is behaving badly), he wanders around the camp like a ghost, making notes about corpsmen with guns and nurses checking patients in post-op.

As Hawkeye often does, whenever he finds something out, or thinks he has in this instance, he has to tell his live-in boyfriend of the season immediately, and if he can’t sleep then neither can anyone else. He sits on Trapper’s bed, extremely close and not blinking, and jostles him awake. Already Trapper’s slightly panicky, as no matter what he says about being the mellow one, any time there’s shouting or loud noise in the swamp, he always wakes up with a start. Even when he sees it’s Hawkeye it takes him a few seconds to process and get back into his role.

Hawkeye’s very sad and very quiet. For the past seven minutes, even though he’s dissociated, exhausted and not doing well, he’s still trying to do his normal thing of turning his anger sideways and being snarky or being a clown bottom for the gaggle of nurses. Going back to one of Trapper’s good qualities is that he’s a decent parent, Hawkeye can regress emotionally into being like a ten year old (incidentally, the age when he had the most trauma pre-Korea, with Billy, his mom dying, guilt over not wanting dad to remarry and at some point losing his virginity), both for funny like in Picture This and for sadness.

So he’s finally noticed that he’s in a war zone and he’s too tired to make jokes about it or distract himself from it. Trapper already sounds frustrated but still listens, telling him to go bed before he drives himself crazy. There’s been a few takes that Trapper would get sick of later Hawkeye, and given how much they really can’t talk to each other that often, even just a mention of Hawkeye’s will when he has to go to the front makes Trapper shut down and Hawkeye cover with a joke, that’s probably true. They’re both messes, but for now Trapper can give Hawkeye someone to lean on.

“If I thought I could stop it just by going to sleep, don’t you think I would try?” Hawkeye does a twitch of the head, still unblinking, and that’s just really asking Trapper to understand and take him seriously. Also the wording, he’s not saying he can stop thinking about it just by going to sleep, or stop feeling anything just by closing his eyes, although both of those are implied. He makes it very clear later on (Letters, Preventive Medicine, Blood Brothers) that he feels like he’s as bad as the war – god and martyr complex combined – and if he can’t fight against/blame everything on that then it’s time for some self loathing.

Trapper does actually pay attention and gives him some advice. Definitely not great advice, but advice nonetheless, to close his eyes when things get unbearable, and to keep checking out when it keeps happening. This can’t work for Hawkeye, who’s had a guilt complex ever since he was a child, but it’s how Trapper copes. The next episode when Kim’s mother turns up for the boy, after a time of being actually open, he goes right to dismissive snark. Plus in season three’s Mad Dogs and Servicemen, another one on how differently Trapper and Hawkeye deal with things, he shrugs that he pretends he’s not there all day along.

Hawkeye’s stuttering a bit at this point. Words are important to him, it’s why you should probably leave him a note even if you’re a man who 1) wants to forget about Korea as soon as he arrives in Boston but won’t 2) wants desperately to believe he’s straight but isn’t 3) cares through physical touch and can’t think of what to say for seventy two hours. Wordplay is important to him too, and he admits to Sidney in the finale that his brain thinks too fast. Obviously exhaustion is going to put his brain and mouth out of sync, and considering how he sounds like he’s going to cry in the mess tent when he can’t even get words out to Frank Burns, it makes him all that more helpless.

“Somebody, and it wasn’t you or me, started this war.” It’s the “whoever the them, we were always us” of it all. It’ll be more important in the third season, and what happens in Welcome To Korea, but Hawkeye has taken it for granted that he and Trapper will stay co-dependent no matter what happens or who they come up against or how their time is running out. Much how he probably didn’t tell Trapper about the abandonment trauma he’s suffered before, Trapper always reassures him to come back soon, or no charge for leaning on him, or it isn’t a Christmas goodbye, and doesn’t want to share real feelings.

Beyond that scene, with Hawkeye dragging himself off to be a hero, assume that everyone who tries to take care of him really just wants to sleep with him, and cry while singing, Trapper tries to sedate him while he’s not looking. He’s tried being parental, he’s tried the repression advice, it’s time to be passive aggressive for Hawkeye’s own good. Or what he thinks is Hawkeye’s own good. It’s not especially great on Trapper’s part, but a similar thing happens reversed in Mail Call, where a drunk Trapper tries to go AWOL and as soon as he’s distracted laughing at Frank, Hawkeye locks his bag away so Trapper won’t be tempted again. Both of them are repressed messes who can’t really talk to each other.

When that sedation attempt ends up in Frank falling over, Trapper goes to Henry to be the worried macho boyfriend. Like with the only comedic dancing allowed and not the time in Officers Only when a genuine offer gets turned down, being protective over Hawkeye where he can hear can only happen when it’s for fun/likely no real danger.

At the end, Trapper and Henry sit by Hawkeye’s bed when he’s finally asleep and talk about him. Kindly, but they know he’s unstable with a hero complex. Like Mulcahy said in season eleven, the camp has a lot of experience with not dealing with reality, and even Trapper says in Iron Guts Kelly that one man’s reality is another man’s fantasy. Nobody has the capability to talk about this yet, and Sidney and Hawkeye only really become friends in O.R. Hawkeye will wake up and he and Trapper will pretend this never happened.

When Adam’s Ribs comes around, and Hawkeye has a manic episode over needing to eat something that isn’t liver or fish, Trapper and Henry are again the ones looking after him, comparing him to their kids and Trapper in the background both snarking over Hawkeye’s slippage in sanity and looking out for him. It’s not as quite high stakes as Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde, but they’re still worried about him.

To end this out, Trapper and Hawkeye and mental health is a fun thing to look at. Neither of them are particularly emotionally intelligent yet, Hawkeye just kind of a self absorbed mess and Trapper finding it easier to be a reassuring rock and keep his own struggling to himself, and they keep things from each other while also taking past each other, but they comfort each other with jokes and distractions that only they can understand. The repressed clowns are trying, even if it does all end with a borrowed kiss and only just barely missing each other.

[breanime]

Bre’s Boys Preference: How They React To You Being in Danger

Billy Russo: Billy is merciless. While you’re life is at stake, everyone and anyone is on his shit list. He is ready and willing to kill anyone who gets in his way of saving you, and when he finds the people who threatened your life in the first place... Heads will roll. You’re his, and he will do anything to keep you safe. Anyone who tries to take you from him is dead. He doesn’t sleep, doesn’t eat, doesn’t rest until he gets you back and he’s practically bathed in his enemy’s blood. And even then, he’s still on edge. His anger is so strong and palatable, every inch of him is tense, he moves like a panther in the jungle, ready to attack at all times. The only thing that brings him any peace is you; he’s carefully controlled around you, touching you gently once he has you back in his arms. And as he holds you, he says those three words that Billy Russo never imagined hearing himself say: “I’m so sorry”.

Logan Delos: He panics. Like, it takes him a while to regain his composure. He’s on the floor, eyes wide and full of tears, chest heaving as he thinks of all of the horrible things that could be having to you. But he gathers himself, standing up on his shaky legs, and does whatever he can to get you back. He spares no expensive, hiring the most capable people to track you down, and he insists on going with them. Once he has you back, Logan finally allows himself to cry openly, his head buried in your hair. “Don’t ever leave me again,” he says, as if you’d left on your own accord, “I was so scared... I love you, I love you, I love you”.

Jax Teller: Jax wants BLOOD. He calls on the club, and they do whatever it takes to bring you back to him. Jax doesn’t care who gets in his way--he mows them down with ease to get to you. No one can get through to him--not Clay, Gemma, Opie, or Chibs--Jax is willing to set Charming on fire to get you back. And when he does get you back, he’s still not done. He holds you to his chest, so hard that it almost hurts, and he promises to never let this happen again. He makes it his personal mission to track down every single person who had anything to do with your abduction--no matter how low level they were--and make them pay. 

Coco Cruz: Coco gets so upset, he blacks out for a minute. The last thing he remembers doing is punching a hole in the wall. When he comes to, he doesn’t wait for Bishop’s approval; he just hits the street with Angel and Gilly. It doesn’t take him long to get to you--he uses his sniper skills to shoot down any and every obstacle that gets in his way. Every word out of his mouth is “fuck” or “shit”, and when he comes face to face with the person who put your precious life in danger--he takes great pleasure in stabbing him nice and slow, watching the life drain from his eyes. Then he’s over to you, grabbing you and pulling you to him, assessing you for injuries. If there are any--he’s memorizing them, categorizing them in his mind because he believes that they were all his fault. “I’m so sorry, querida,” he says, “I’m so sorry...” 

Angel Reyes: Angel calls EZ, and the two brothers hit the road. Eventually, the club catches up to them, and the Mayans track you down within a day. The entire time they’re looking for you, Angel’s blood is red hot. He can’t sit still, he can barely breathe, he breaks all of the speeding laws to get to you. He’s surprisingly callous in his revenge, killing without hesitation, without joy. But when he gets to you, it’s like he wakes up from a nightmare--his eyes are warm again, and when he touches you, his caresses are gentle and careful. Angel doesn’t let you out of his sight for days after that, always holding you and kissing you. And when he does have to leave you alone for more than a few hours, he insists on having EZ come sit with you, or takes you to Felipe’s until he can come and get you. 

Miguel Galindo: If his half-brother is all heat and fire, Miguel is ice-cold. He’s methodical with his anger, making sure to dispatch men to all corners of the country in search of you. But he isn’t sitting idle, Miguel is out too, Nestor and Alvarez at his side. He takes a few people off of the street and plops them down on his church pew. He spends a nice deal of time cutting limbs off and collecting information, and by the end of it all, he’s led to you. Miguel picks you up and carries you away, and for the rest of the night, he’s taking care of you. He puts you in the tub, sliding in behind you and holding you close. After that, he’s lathering you up with your favorite scents and then rubbing you down with lotions. He can’t stop kissing you, and as you sleep--finally able to rest now that you were safe--he watches you, his dark eyes staring at you while his head conjures up all the ways he could have lost you, and he vows...this will never happen again. 

Nick Amaro: Nick calls upon his brothers in blue when he finds out that you’re in danger. The NYPD (as unruly as they are), leave no stone unturnt in their search of you. Nick is so tense, he can barely take a step without flipping a chair or punching a wall. He’s just seen so many terrible things in his career, the thought of anything like that happening to you... It makes his want to scream. He reaches Stabler-levels of aggression when interviewing witnesses and suspects, and he’s almost taken off the case, but Benson has his back. When he finds you, Nick holds you close, his embrace both firm and careful as he holds you. He’s with you all the way, sitting with you at the hospital, staying at your side when you’re interviewed by the cops; Nick doesn’t leave you for a second. He’s still a bit on edge, but your presence definitely helps calm him as the night goes on. And when he lays down with you that night, he finally lets himself relax. 

Johnny Tuturro: Johnny trusts and respects your ability to protect yourself, he really does, but he’s still worried when you go missing. He spends all day trying to track you down, and when he can’t, he turns to Charlie. She’s the one who discovers that you’re in danger, and once she does--the whole house is on alert. Johnny, Mike, and Briggs hit the streets in search of you, and once the find the ones who took you, Mike and Briggs have to pull Johnny off of them. When Johnny gets to you, he softens immediately, holding you and whispering how scared he was, telling you “you’re okay, you’re okay” for a minute straight. It’s hard for him, after that, not to get a knot of anxiety in his chest whenever you go out, but he knows that you know what you’re doing, and worse come to worse--he’ll always be there for you when you need him. 

Rio: No smiles, no smirks, no chuckles. Rio is all business. He’s armed to the teeth, and anyone can see the tension in his body as he moves, his eyes glaring ahead of him. Rio takes no prisoners and pulls no punches. Either someone gives him the information he needs and only gets a little fucked up, or they tell him no, or something he doesn’t like, and get killed. Either way, he finds his way to you quickly, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. Rio doesn’t waste time on extravagant speeches or showboating once he finds you. He puts a bullet in the guy’s skull, and then empties the clip in him for extra measures. Then and only then, does he let his body unclench. He keeps a hand on you at all times; a hand on your thigh as he drives you home, his fingers in your hair as he undresses you, his mouth on yours as he holds your naked body to his. Rio treats you like a queen always, but he’s especially soft and gentle with you now. Afterwards, you lay in bed together, and he can’t take his eyes off of you. “Go to sleep, mama,” he says, a small smile on his face, “I ain’t going nowhere...and neither are you.” 

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Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think! This was unapologetically self-indulgent of me haha (requests are still closed)

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[spockandawe]

Than you so much, spockandawe for answering my ask. Do you mind if I ask a few questions again?

Who is your favorite main couple in mxtx novels (wangxian or hualian or bingqiu)? And why?

Who are your fav side couple (don't have to be canon) in mxtx novels (in each of the 3 novels)? And why?

Sorry if you have answered the questions before...

No worries whatsoever! I love talking about fandom things like this :D

Hmmm. I think... I'm going to have to go with hualian as my favorite main couple. It's a really tight race with bingqiu, but the metaphor I've used before is that svsss hits me like I'm eating a bag of doritos, where shh yes okay i know it's lighter on nutritional content than I want it to be, but i can't stop eating and if you try to take it away I will FIGHT YOU-- But tgcf in general and hualian in particular are like a big fancy dinner, and no matter how much i LIKE my doritos, I still have to admit that a real dinner has more substance to it.

I think that a big element of it really is mxtx developing as a writer, and that it's unrealistic to expect a novel she wrote when she was barely an adult to compare to where she is now, and by any standard, tgcf is ambitious as HELL, but that's not all there is to it. I think that for me in particular, there something about the difference between Luo Binghe falling in love as a teenager and achieving love in his mid-twenties and Hua Cheng falling in love comparably young and staying devoted and steadfast without any external support for eight hundred years. I can conceptualize the passage of eight years, but trying to picture eight HUNDRED years of that kind of single-minded adoration just leaves me reeling. And it opens the door to intense gestures of devotion that bingqiu just never had TIME for, like the statues.

There's also something for both these ships that doesn't wangxian doesn't have as much of (which knocked it out of the running ssfdf) and that's that regardless of gong/shou dynamics, there is an intensely submissive element to way that Luo Binghe and Hua Cheng love. And like... that really, really does it for me. And looking at it now, i think that's the real final deciding factor in tipping me in favor of hualian. Luo Binghe begs Shen Qingqiu to choose him, using any and all methods at his disposal. He's 200% down to be as shameless as it takes to get what he wants, and I love it.

But I just DIE at the way Hua Cheng is ready to tie himself into knots to avoid inconveniencing Xie Lian in any way. He's the ruler of a city and lives in a lavish palace, but is completely down to stay in puqi shrine because that's what Xie Lian wants. Xie Lian is part of a heavenly contingent that invades his city, and steals his prisoner and bURNS HIS HOUSE DOWN, and Hua Cheng is furious........ because when Xie Lian consciously decided to jump in front of Hua Cheng's sword, he got hit with Hua Cheng's sword. And it mean I SCREAMED in Mount Tong'lu, when after so much dedication and service, Hua Cheng decides NOT to remove the paralyzing talisman from Xie Lian's body! It makes me appreciate the depths of how much he's FEELING when we see his self-control finally waver! When we get to see those little moments of fear! I can't exactly say that choosing hualian over bingqiu was an EASY choice, but it was the CLEAR choice for me, hahaha

And my favorite side ship....

Oh man, I have no idea how I'm going to explain this, but...... moshang. I just. I love them.

And see, I don't think mxtx even did that great of a job writing them, or at least she didn't spend enough energy addressing the whole 'hmm, casual violence as a display of affection does not actually work with humans, aight' thing. There's still more... fear than I would like at the end of canon, when I think a quick abrupt turnaround for mbj would have legit been appropriate, and if anyone can recognize the difference between his appearance and his actual thoughts, it should be sqh

But also.... this relationship hits so many of my buttons, even if mxtx kind of like, set the microwave timer, and fan creators had to come along and actually hit START.

The shameful truth........ (afdhfj not actually shameful) is that if I had to pick one mxtx character and be like 'it me', i would have a hard time justifying anyone but shang qinghua. The last time i reread the extras and saw the bit about how mbj's cold face was a gift from shang qinghua to his favorite character, I was legit like 'YES, QUEEN!' And in a transmigration story like this, an author being loved by their own character is just THE most indulgent, wonderful thing!

And as far as canon plot goes, one, I VERY much want to write some actual in-depth thoughts about mbj's trauma and baggage from being imprisoned by huan hua palace when he was just a toddler, and realizing that his dad was... not going to protect him from his uncle. I want to pore over that lingering fear and lack of trust, and a gradual swooning over one of the most nonthreatening men around, and terrible (mutual) communication skills leading to a near-fatal falling out and a miracle save. I want to scream about how he puts ALL his faith in shang qinghua to protect him from his uncle, the bogeyman of his youth, and COMPLETELY neglects to warn or inform shang qinghua in any way, and shang qinghua loses like ten years of his life to the stress, but manages to pull it off in the end.

This ship DOES embody some of the things I like most about wangxian, especially the part where two people of intensely different temperaments still manage to build up a deep understanding. Now, wangxian gets messy in large part thanks to external forced, while these two manage to fail at everything, starting with basic communication, all on their own, but like.... I like dumbassery..... these two endear themselves to me XD

[realityhelixcreates]

Beta, Theta, and Me Chapter 9: Magic Carpet Ride

Chapters: 9/?

Fandom: Thor (Movies), Avengers (Movies) Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: Relationships: Loki x Reader (But not right now),Drug Use

Characters: ��Loki(Marvel) Additional Tags:  A/B/O, Sorta, More Of An Exploration Of  Life And Self Expression Within An A/B/O Framework, Loki Does What He  Wants, But Loki Does Not Actually Do What He Wants, Antagonistic Bosses,  Loki Has A Throne Now, But It’s Not What He Wanted

Summary:  Loki, paragon of self-sacrifice, must face down a cultural taboo.

Loki stared ruefully at the little bottle of pills on the table in front of him.

“You've got to be kidding me.” he said, “Your weak mortal medicine will have no affect on me.”

Tony Stark shrugged. “Works on Cap.”

“I am not your Captain Rogers. We are worlds apart.”

“The guy's a never ending science experiment. We had to develop insanely strong meds for him because, in the event that he actually managed to get hurt, our strongest stuff couldn't help him. But I have it on good authority that this'll do the trick. That authority being your brother. King of Asgard.”

Loki glared in scandalized disbelief. “You are telling me Thor actually took one of these?”

“Took some persuading, but yeah. After he came back down, he was pretty sure they'd work on you too, despite your differences.”

Loki's eyes flicked to you, then back to Stark, then to the bottle. “Hold your tongue. We don't need to discuss this any further. I will not poison myself at your command.”

“It's not poison!” Stark insisted. “It's a painkiller and anti-inflammatory. It will help you heal.”

“You cannot expect me to degrade myself for your convenience.”

“No, I expect you to lie for your convenience.” Stark shot back. “Though I don't see how hiding this from me,” he gestured at the chair, the neck brace, “actually helped you at all. You don't get anything out of it. Anyway, you really need to start cooperating if you want to stay. I'm trying to be lenient, but the more you complicate things, the more likely it is you'll be discovered. I think we all agree that would be bad.

As for you, if you want to come back downstairs and rejoin society, we've always got space for you” he said to you. “The baristas have been asking after you.”

“No!” Loki burst, “If I must befoul myself with your medicines to retain my lodgings, then I require her assistance to oversee things while I am...impaired.”

It had been an accident. Or rather, a lapse in personal judgment. You had left Loki after dressing him one morning, to fix breakfast, and Stark had shown up. And because he was your boss, and owned the building, you had just let him in. That's right, you had helped out the landlord. Your parents would be ashamed of you. You were ashamed.  

And the silent fury Loki had been radiating when he wheeled out into the seating area and Stark had gotten a look at him as he really was made you surprised that he wanted to keep you around at all.

Stark had given him an exasperated earful, and then left, coming back this morning with a bottle full of small pills. You couldn't even come close to pronouncing the complicated name on the label, but from what Stark was saying, they were the kind of thing that should never be taken by a normal person. Not if they had been made with Captain America in mind. Not if they were powerful enough to string out Thor.

You were surprised Loki was even pretending to go along with this, considering the cultural attitudes to chemical medicines in Asgard. Really, you fully expected him to order you to throw the pills away once Stark left.

When you brought him his tea, he sighed deeply, his expression a mask of utter melancholic resignation.

“Crush one of those accursed pills into a powder and add it to the tea.” he said woefully. “Stay by me as I suffer this indignity. Be forgiving of any upcoming transgressions, I implore you.”

“Hey, I'm sure it won't be that bad.” you said, grabbing a cooking spoon, and carefully breaking the pill down into a fine powder with the handle. “It won't stay in your system for very long. Your body will filter it out and flush it away, and you'll be clean again.”

You brushed the powder into his teacup, and stirred until it dissolved. Then you handed it over to Loki, who stared into the cup morosely.

“Won't it be good to not be in pain, even just for a little while?”

“I thought that many times, when I was in the clutches-” He stopped abruptly. “I've thought that many times. It is always denied to me somehow. There's always a catch.” He took a long sip of the tea, and sighed again. “And so I am tainted. At least the tea doesn't taste any different. You are getting better at that.”

“Here, have a muffin.” you offered him your freshest creation. “It says on the bottle that you're supposed to take it with food.”

He accepted the muffin with all the graveness of a prisoner at his last meal, but he thanked you graciously, and stopped you when you started to leave his side.

“I will be rendered a senseless fool by this foul poison. You must stay close, so that I do not do something utterly moronic, like throwing myself from the balcony on the assumption that I can fly. I might not actually survive in my situation, and I dislike long falls anyway.”

“You're scared of heights?” you asked, scarcely able to believe it.

“No,” he said haughtily, “I dislike long falls. It is different.”

“Why do they bother you?”

“That is personal.”

“I've seen your dick.” you pointed put.

“You would not be the first.” he said, matching you for vulgarity.

You rolled your eyes. “Whatever. Do you want more tea?”

Loki glanced into his empty teacup, bemused to see the bottom.

“Yes, I suppose I would.” he said, setting it down for you.

He had tried to teach you the fine art of pouring tea, and you had finally managed to do it without dribbling, but, as Loki put it, you also did it without grace. He didn't say anything this time, just tightened his lips in a sarcastic way, and took a sip.

At least you knew how to make tea to his specifications. It wasn't difficult, once you had figured it out. Just measurements and timing.

He had devoured his muffin, so you brought him another. Loki was extremely particular about flavors; not adventurous at all. Even banana nut offended his senses. But cream cheese met his approval in every application so far, even if he did complain about the texture of bagels.

“You'll have to get me an Asgardian cookbook, if this keeps up.” you said. “I might be able to whip you up something that reminds you of home.”

“I do not necessarily always want to be reminded of home.” Loki said. “And some of our dishes take many hours, even days to make. I need you for more than that. You cannot be in the kitchen at every moment.”

You would never admit it to anyone, but you got a surge of secret pleasure every time Loki said that he needed you. You'd always enjoyed hearing it from others, but it was so much better coming from a god.

Though it did make you wonder if the isolation up here was messing with your head a bit.

“Besides,” he continued, “enough cheese, bread, and meat will approximate the diet well enough. Asgardians have high metabolisms, and require many calories, and so do I. Our active lifestyles tend to make us big eaters as well, although I do not get my usual exercises these days.”

“If you would actually give yourself the time to relax and heal, you might be able to get back to that sooner.”

“Yap, yap, you nag like a bratty lapdog.” He scorned. Your eyebrows skyrocketed.

“Well gee,” you said with exaggerated shock, “if you don't want me here, just go ahead and say so. I'll go downstairs and be a barista.”

“No, you cannot leave me!” There was a distinct waver in his voice. “I will be polite. You won't leave me, will you? I didn't mean it.”

“Loki.” you said, suddenly feeling guilty. He sounded like a scolded little boy, on the verge of tears. “I'm not going anywhere. Don't worry about that. You should be more polite though.”

He reached out gracefully and took your hand.

“Dear lady...” he began, his words slightly slurred, and you finally realized that the medicine was taking effect.

“How are you feeling?” you asked, filling his tea again.

“Strange.” he said. “I feel light, but like there is a weight upon my eyes. Light, but like I cannot lift my limbs. One with this chair. Melting into the floor. I do not hurt...it's been so long...”

He really was starting to tear up.

You took his tea from his trembling hand and grabbed up a tissue.

“Here you go.” you said, dabbing his eyes gently. “Go ahead and enjoy it. Pain shouldn't be an everyday thing for you, if it doesn't have to be. You don't have to feel bad for enjoying a little bit of peace.”

“No, you don't understand. I don't deserve this. The pain was at least something familiar. I don't recognize this feeling. This lightness. It doesn't feel real.”

“Well, you are real, and I am real, and the medicine is real. The feeling is the medicine acting on your perceptions, so it's kinda real, it's just different than usual, that's all.” you patted his hand, and he grabbed for yours.

“Will this feeling go away?”

“Of course!” you laughed, “don't worry, this is just temporary. It will help your neck, and when you're healed, you won't have to take it anymore.”

“What if I can't stop?” he asked. “I am...not good at refraining from...indulgence.”

“If no one brings you anymore, what could you do about it?”

“If I am healed enough to remove this brace? To move about freely? What could I not do about it?”

“You know, that's a good point. I think we'll have to find you some of that ultra-powerful super weed the cops keep saying totally exists, but no one else seems to be able to find.”

He gave you a sideways stare. “More poisons?”

“It's to help free you from the other poison. But there are multiple strategies for getting clean, if that really becomes a problem. It's not like I've never seen addicts before; I'll help you if you need me.”

He reached for your hand again, and missed.

“Blessed thing.” he blabbered. “You are a draught of Alfar wine, brewed under the starlight. The fresh breeze through the forests of Vanaheim, just after sunrise. You are the faithful moon, pure as gold.”

“And you are high as balls.” you teased, bashful about the flowery praise. You really shouldn't be pledging any more of yourself, but the allure  of being needed-wanted even, was as addictive as any drug.

“You are the only once who may see.” he said. “I want no one else to see me like this. Stark especially. None save you may witness my dishonor.”

“Loki,” you mock-scolded, “if you keep looking at it like that, you'll impede your own progress. You'll fight it subconsciously, and just slow your healing down.”

“How, pray tell, should I look at it then?” he asked.

You took his hand, which was still waving around after yours.

“Look at it as permission. Permission to relax, to let the guard down and just exist for a while. You have everything you need right here, you can just be. It's okay to take some time to just be.”

“Just be what though? What is worth it for me to be?”

You shrugged. “A prince?”

“In exile.”

“A god?”

“Blasphemed rather than worshiped.”

“How about...my master?”

He squirmed a little in his chair.

“I could perhaps do that effectively.” he said quietly.