#people having powers is nothing new to her

[sweetandsourspam]

held the broom, too prickly in my hand. old, old broom. had to buy a new one. maybe, maybe. if master gives me money, I will buy one tomorrow.

my three fingers tight around the pole. i had to clean, master says so. i have to clean because today is the day the hero dies. he told me nights ago of his plan, good plan, best plan. he is going to kill the hero, the man who walks like he is a god. master says, there are no gods. i do not know, I do not know. i live in the castle. i clean the castle. that is what I do.

I sweep, sweeps the floor, the stairs. i start up, go down. its better that way, master says, faster. i listen, I listens. i start up, where he has his device. the device that will kill the hero. he will be electrocuted, says master. electrocuted and dead, tonight. oh, tonight! how glorious. master has been waiting for a chance to kill him, and tonight is the night.

I sweeps the stairs. nasty, dusty stairs. too many. but I work. it is sundown, I must hurry. hurry because master is pacing upstairs, awaiting. the hero will come, he says, because he has taken something precious from him. i laugh when he laughs, but do not know what is funny. it is funny, master says, because he has a weakness. do not know why its funny, but it's funny. i sweep.

the night goes on. i hear rumbling, the sun hero is near. i seen him shoot light from his hands. mage, mage! master says no, he is not like him, he is different. bad and different. good, good person. he must die. he stands in the way of master's plan to take the crown. what crown, what crown! i know nothing, but I know master is smart and will do it.

oh, stain. on the stairs. not good. everything has to be perfect. master said nothing about mops, but I do. a stain will ruin everything. it will be quick, fast. i know how to do this, quick quicks. i set broom down, walk to my closets. filled with dusters, brooms, rakes, and mops. easy job, too easy. i grab a bucket, fill halfway with water and soap. easy, the stain will be gone soon.

i hear steps, but i have to clean. the hero knows me, knows I do the cleaning. he will not bother me, he never does. if the hero flew, he would have zipped past me, but he does not. he walks.

"wet, wet!"

"hello, odo," says the hero. he is dressed in tunic, hair golden even in the dark. i am mopping, I turn my back.

"wet!"

"there is a mob behind me."

i groans, loud and wailing. mob means people, and people means messes. the castle is already hard to clean, and I am one goblin. my legs hurt and there are too many stairs. too many stairs and too many people who will make a mess! stupid hero!

"It would be wise if the Dark Lord surrenders."

I cannot tell master what to do. i put my mop against the wall.

"Pass, wretched hero, pass!"

"Thank you, odo. I'm sorry, but I must put a stop to whatever devious plan he has constructed now."

"Pass, pass!"

i can hear the crowd climbing up the stairs, heavy steps. they are here to stop master, but I do not intervene. i never do. i clean, I cleans, and then I wait until they leave to begin again. the hero nods at me, one time. he thinks we are friends. we are not. i glower at him, at everyone coming up the stairs.

i was staring at the crowd coming up that I missed it, but everyone stopped in shock. the hero, he does not fly, he walks. he is a man, a real man, but he has powers. but he is a man. his tunic got caught in a splint of my broom. it goes up, up and crosses his ankle. he stumbles up the step, tries to pry the broom away from his feet, but it breaks. he is a strong man. it breaks, and he stumbles again, this time to the side. the crowd gasps. he holds himself up, but the mop, in a disarray, falls and pokes his back. he tried to straighten up, but perhaps the mop in his back scared him, and he went forward again. too forward.

the is no rails in the spiral staircase. i am three feet, small, small. it is hard to walk if you are taller, dizzying. master goes up easy, he's lived here too long. but the hero, he only comes in to stop master. he is not used to the stairs. he stumbles too forward, tries to grab something, and falls. the spiral staircase, filled with his mob, watch as the hero falls down the space, the void. everyone watches, jaws slacked, as he keeps going, going, going, until the thud resonates between the walls.

i grab my broken broom, shouting. he brokes it! he brokes it when I was not finished. the castle would not be clean in time for master's plan, his great plan. I pick up my mop, almost falling into the same void. I shout again.

"Rotten, stupid hero! Rotten, ugly hero! My brooms! My mops!"

"is he dead?" Someone asked.

Murmurs, murmurs. Then they panic, shouting. they are scrambling to leave.

"The Dark Lord!" someone shouts, and their screams are louder. I shout at them.

they are fast, but safe, they go down, downs. until their steps sound far away.

master is at the top of the stars, eyes hard. "Odo," he begins. "Where is he?"

"Bottom, bottoms!"

"Is he alive?"

I looks down. there are people around the hero, picking him up. there is a dark stain around him, too much blood. no broom, but I have mop.

"The hero is dead," someone shouts from below. why, why. i do not know. I scrub the stain on the stairs.

"Odo, you bumbling baffoon!" master shouts. he is rushing down the steps. he is used to them, knows which one is shorter than the others. he does not trip. "You killed him!"

"no, nos! no, master. he fell," I says. master is fast, upon me. his hand raised to hit, i drop my mop. "master, no! honest, honest. he tripped! stupid, stupid hero! he was not looking down! he trips and he fells. he did not look before he stepped! i swears!'

master lowers his hand. he is shaking with anger, eyes red. he wanted to be the one to kill the hero, I knows. i knows because it is all he says.

"Perhaps this is not the way the prophecy fortold," master says. "But, it will do. Odo, you degenerate, deformed. bastard. Come with me," he turned. "We must start the next phase of my plan."

I look at my mop, my broken broom. I need to clean, cleans the blood and the stain on the stairs. i have to cleans, but master yells at me to follow him.

I hobble up the stairs, legs hurting.

"yes, masters. yes. let's finish the plan," I says. it makes master laugh, and I do too, though I do not know why it is funny.

You are a lowly goblin with a mop that accidentally triggers a series of impossible rue goldberg interactions that ends with the demise of the fabled hero of light in the most anti-climatic way possible. Both the hero's party and the evil lord stand in shocked silence.

[moon-fics]

Pairing: Bob Reynolds x Reader

A/n: I haven't done any creative writing in months. I'm finally doing it again so PLEASE! PLEASE don't be made if I fuck this up.

Request: reader comforting bob (any bob, could be Reynolds or Floyd) after a nightmare abt a mission gone wrong 🙏🙏 may it be filled with all the comfort our dear robert could ever ask for 😌😌😌

Warnings: Swears, mentions of violence

Your first warning was the lights flickering. It was sudden and lasted way longer than a faulty wire would. Your second warning was the vibrations coming from your mirror. The third warning won't be as kind if you ignore it.

You know these warning signs, and you often look out for them. So, you rush out of your room. The dark hallways of the tower are barely lit, but you know your way to his room. You've run to them so often it's almost ingrained in your mind.

You don't even knock before opening his door and closing it behind you. You're met with a familiar sight of Bob curled up on his bed, trembling and gasping. He isn't awake and won't wake up unless someone helps him.

You stumble over to his bed and nearly trip on a Rubik's cube. You grab his shoulders once you reach him, shaking him lightly. This is a strategic mission because Bob is not a gracious person when he wakes up. With his powers, it's a 50/50 chance you get thrown across the room. Thankfully, the only time he's attacked in his sleep, you were able to dodge. Can't say the same for Alexei.

"Bob, wake up," you say while still shaking him. His oversized sweater is covered in sweat that sticks to your hands. "Come on, Bob. Come back to me." You say softly. You've found that yelling has never had a good outcome. So, using a softer tone is the only solution.

After a few seconds, you can see him stirring. His eyes move behind his lids, and his lips press together. You've memorized most of his face and reactions at this point. You've spent so much time with him it was only natural.

With one last shake, he's startled awake. A yell escapes his throat before dying out quickly. He frantically looks around his room before his eyes find you. Oh, do they find you.

It's like a puppy finding its owner after thinking it was lost. His eyes soften, and his breathing becomes controlled. It's rapid, but he's trying to slow it down.

"Did I-?" He can barely ask before you nod. "Was it bad? Did someone get hurt?" His usual questions.

"No, no one was hurt. You didn't do anything bad," You assure him while climbing onto the edge of his bed. You don't give yourself the entitlement of holding him or getting under the covers without her permission. "Was it a bad nightmare?" You ask.

He swallows whatever saliva is in his mouth and nods. "Yeah, it wasn't the best," He chuckles weakly. He pats the space next to him, allowing you into his space. You gladly take it and scoot closer to him.

"I, uh, I couldn't save anyone," He clears his throat awkwardly. You've both gotten into a groove of skipping the 'wanna talk about it' and the 'no, I'm ok'. It always leads to him talking about it and her comforting him back to sleep. "We were on a mission, and you wouldn't leave my side. I don't know what happened, but you were all hanging off a building, and suddenly I wasn't strong enough," He continues.

Having nightmares about bad missions or impossible situations isn't new to anyone in the tower. However, it is to Bob. He wasn't trained as an assassin or for combat. He was just some guy who got dealt bad cards and one wild card.

"Yeah, well, if we go down, at least we do it together," You nudge him. It's clear that doesn't help as his frown grows. "Hey, nothing is going to happen. I'm right here, and Bucky is right across the hall snoring." You say.

You gently rest a hand on his and squeeze for proof. He isn't alone anymore. He has a whole team of people who care and want the best for him. You're both silent as time passes. He can feel your pulse in your hand and how warm you are. Definitely not dead.

"Can you stay tonight?" He asks softly. His softness used to break your heart at how sad he seemed. Now, it's comforting. He doesn't sound as sad but more meek-like.

"Only if you don't kick me in your sleep again," You agree. A half smile spreads on his lips as an answer. You know he's going to kick you, and it's going to be annoying. However, you at least get to have a pretty view the entire night.

He turns over on his side and shifts under the covers. You carefully get under them as well and adjust yourself. Your chest presses against his back, and you wrap an arm around him.

You find it comical that a man this muscular likes being the little spoon, but you have no complaints. If it gets him a good night's sleep, you'll hold him all night.

"I'm right here," You repeat while shutting your eyes.

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

butterflygirl738 (6)

No tag lists. Do not send asks or DMs about updates. Review my pinned post for guidelines, masterlist, etc.

Warnings: this fic will include dark content such as dubcon/noncon, power imbalance, sickness, medical bills, and other possible triggers. My warnings are not exhaustive, enter at your own risk.

This is a dark!fic and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Summary: You love butterflies and your mother, but life isn’t that simple. As life gets complicated, and expensive, you find yourself in need and an unexpected miracle presents itself.

Characters: Steve Rogers (CEO/Sugar Daddy)

As per usual, I humbly request your thoughts! Reblogs are always appreciated and welcomed, not only do I see them easier but it lets other people see my work. I will do my best to answer all I can. I’m trying to get better at keeping up so thanks everyone for staying with me <3

Your feedback will help in this and future works (and WiPs, I haven’t forgotten those!) Asking for more or putting ‘part 2?’ is not feedback.

Love you all. You are appreciated and your are worthy. Treat yourself with care. 💖

"It was a nice day," S says as he checks the rear view mirror.

You twitch out of your trance. Your eyes are itchy, the way they get after a double shift. You suppress a yawn and nod.

"Very nice, thank you," you agree and twiddle your fingers in your palm.

"But you're anxious to get home..." he says.

"Well....my mom..." you begin. "I'm not trying to ditch you--"

"Ha, I know. I'm selfish. I've had you all day." He keeps his eyes on the road. "Should we stop and get her something?"

"Um, that's. Mm. I'd love to but..."

"Might be suspicious. Got it." He clucks. "Well, what about tomorrow? You got plans?"

"She has an appointment," you say. "Check-up."

"Ah, makes sense," he says. "When is it? Maybe after..."

"Yeah, er maybe. But... how long are you here? What about New York?" You wonder. The big city, his company, all that is still a mystery to you.

"It can wait. Besides, the hotel has wifi. I got all night to catch up emails."

"Oh, right." You stare at the street ahead.

"Tomorrow?" He prompts before the silence drags.

"Tomorrow. After noon? Should be done by then," you assure him, twisting your fist around your finger.

"Can I ask you a favour?" He slows as he gets to your street.

"A favour?"

"Yeah. Nothing big. Promise." He turns the corner and keeps a snail's pace.

"Alright," you utter.

"Will you bring a few bills tomorrow? We can go through them. Sort that out--"

"S. No. I can't--" 

"But that's the deal," he insists. "How can I help if I don't know the situation?"

"I... I don't know. It's a lot."

"A lot you shouldn't be worried about. You should be focused on your mom. Not money." He stops in front of your building. He angles in his seat and puts his hand on the back of yours. "This is what I'm here for. To take all that off your shoulders."

You exhale and swallow dryly. "It feels like too much."

"Not to me." His thumb rubs the seat, close to your shoulder. "Look, I'm just me. I got more than enough for that. I want to do this. I want someone to share this with. To spoil, if I can."

You look at him. He's too good to be true. After all the bad days, all the set backs, all the red numbers, you just can't believe it's what he says it it.

"I'll bring one," you offer.

"One?" He echoes.

"Mhmm," you nod.

"The highest one then," he says. His tone is even but demanding. 

"Okay."

"Okay," he repeats and clears his throat. "Look, sweetheart, let's not ruin the day. Go inside, spend some time with mom. I'll text you."

You chew your lip. You should tell him. It won't help if he thinks you're ignoring him.

"Maybe not." You fidget. "I'm... I'm almost out of... I uh, the internet is down and I pay per message."

"Hm, why didn't you mention it before?" He challenges.

You sink down, pushing your shoulders high. "It's embarrassing."

He sighs. 

"No problem. Tomorrow. After noon," he pats the seat and rescinds his hand. "Hope the appointment goes well."

"Me too," you murmur in dread.

You undo your seat belt and grab your purse. You sit up and glance at him. He watches you expectantly but you're not sure what he's waiting for.

"Good night," you say.

His jaw ticks, "good night, sweetheart."

You smile weakly and get out. You shut the door gently and turn to step over the curb. You march up to the front doors and peek back. You wave then go inside.

You feel bad now. Like you're abandoning him. After such a nice day, you're just strutting off without giving him anything...

Your chest knots up as you climb the stairs. It isn't just him, it's the lies. You're not sure you can keep this up but if you don't, what are you going to do? You can't pay him back and the missed hours at work won't do much to help that. And if you keep calling in, well, you might not have time to make up for what you missed.

You're confused. This was supposed to make it all easier but it all feels so much more complicated. Why can't life be as simple as the chrysalis in the hamper? 

🦋

"Will you come in with me?" Your mom asks as they call her name.

You nod and stand with her. It's not like the early days. When she went on her own. She didn't tell you the diagnoses right away. Not until the first treatment. That was a horrible day and there's been many of those since.

You follow the nurse to the sterile room. You sit in the chair in the corner and your mother sits in the chair by the small counter top. You're silent. Both anxious.

Dr. Vincent enters. You almost feel like you should stand. You cross your legs and return his greeting. It's not a very good morning but you won't say so.

"So, Noreen," he says to your mother. "I have some news."

Your mother looks at him from her chair. She looks small like a child. You've never seen her afraid but in that moment, you see her eyes gleam.

"You're a candidate for stem cell transplant." He says.

Your mom looks at you and back to him. You don't know what that means either. You remember they mentioned it early on but it never came back up.

"No more chemo. At least for now. We think this is the opportune time and it could help with recovery in the long run," he explains.

"Oh, right," she breathes. 

"We'll send you for a few scans to see how things are looking but your last images were positive."

"Uh huh, okay," she blinks. "Is it very expensive?"

He hums. "It can be. Depending on insurance. Of course, it would be my recommendation for you to go with it. Chemo is showing results but in my experience, this is the best course of action. If you wish to continue as you are, it's entirely within your discretion."

You're both quiet.

"I'll provide you some information on it before you go. How about that? Give you some time to think." He says.

"That's good," you say as your mom stays silent.

"Alright, then, we'll do the usual," Vincent diverts. "Let's get you on the bed."

You sit patiently as he checks your mother over. He's quick and efficient. He has a full waiting room, even this early in the morning. You thank him after your mother does and he leaves the room.

She steps onto the stool and down to the floor. As you approach her, she sighs. She doesn't say anything as she leads you out of the room.

As she stops at the admin desk to get the folder of pamphlets, she bids them a good day. As you come out into the gloomy of the rainy day, you take her hand. She stops and stands at the curb, looking out into the distance.

"I'm tired, pie."

"I know, mom," you say.

"What do you think?" She asks.

"I don't know. Maybe... we should read the stuff."

"It'll be expensive."

"It's all expensive," you mutter.

She drops her head. "My last days and I have to watch my daughter work herself half to death just to suffer more and more."

"Mom, please, he said things are looking good--"

"Maybe but I don't know how much longer I can keep this up."

You swallow as your eyes burn. "It's... it's your choice. Always your choice." You look away, trying not to cry.

"Honey," she squeezes your hand. "I don't want to give up. I know you won't, either, but you're tired too. It hurts me to see you like this."

"Mom," is all you can eke out.

She lets go of you and looks at the folder. She exhales. "I'll read it over."

"We'll read it together," you offer. 

"When's work?" She wonders.

"Noon," you answer. Not work, per se. Just an obligation.

"Enough time for breakfast," she says. "My treat."

"Mom," you say.

"I know, I know. But I just want one last cinnamon bun before I go," she insists.

🦋

You're trembling. You haven't been able to stop since you left the apartment. You couldn't let your mom see the panic. She's already having a rough day.

You stand under the awning of the building, waiting. S drives up and you run out without pulling up your jacket hood. You feel in your pocket for the pamphlet.

You get in the car and flick the moisture from your cheeks. You gasp. "It's really coming down."

"You don't have an umbrella?" S says.

"Forgot," you shrug.

"Mm, well, looks like a day best spent inside. I was thinking, they got pretty good food at my hotel. We could have lunch."

You hesitate. The thought of his hotel room makes your stomach stir. You remember what he said. 'We'll see where it goes'. It's feeling more and more like there's only one way this goes.

"Sure, whatever you like." You sniff.

You buckle up and sit back. You tilt your head up.

"Long morning?" He asks as he pulls into the street.

"Yeah... a little."

"Bad news?" He asks cautiously.

"Mm, news... stuff to think about."

"Right," he steers on as the wipers swing back and forth. "Well, just relax. Once we get to the hotel, you can get dry and clear your head."

"Yeah. Thanks."

You close your eyes, content to let the rain and the motion soothe you. It's a moment to prepare yourself.. Maybe once you tell him, he'll change his mind.

When the car stops, you snap up as if you were sleeping. Your mind slows as the world does the same. S smiles at you and reaches behind your seat. He grabs an umbrella out of the back.

He gets out, shielding himself from the downpour, and comes around to open your door. He walks you up to the hotel doors and folds up the umbrella before he enters the lobby. He points you to the elevators.

"Got some work done this morning," he proclaims as you get on. "You were asking about my company."

"Oh, right. I was. Curious, I guess. I don't know anyone who owns one."

"You do now," he chuckles. "It's not as glamourous as it seems. This is as much time as I've had to myself in... a decade?"

"Really?"

"Not to complain. I mean, certain things I don't have to worry about. It's not a bad life. Solitary," he shrugs and the doors open.

He guides you along the hallway to his suite door. He lets you in ahead of him. He puts the umbrella in the tall vase by the door.

You unzip your jacket and hang it. You look down at your jeans. They're soaked. You rub the damp fabric.

"I got a spare robe in here, if you want to let those dry," he says.

"Sure, uh, probably," you agree.

He takes off his shoes and you step out of your boots. You linger by the door, shyly glancing into the suite. He stands up and combs his fingers through his hair.

"I'll get the room service menu," he grins and struts away. "Make yourself at home."

As he looks around, you reach into your jacket pocket. You hide the pamphlet behind your back, clasping your wrist tight, and tiptoe further inside. He waves the laminated menu at you.

"Right here," he puts it on the small round table between two chairs. "I'll get that robe."

"Sure."

You wait, reluctant at the edge of the sitting room. A couch and a clamshell chair in velvet. It's all so nice.

He comes back in.

"If you want to change before you make up your mind--"

"Uh huh, yeah."

You keep the pamphlet behind you and take the robe. He points you to the bathroom and you scurry into it. You lock yourself inside and strip off the wet jeans. The texture leaves your skin itchy. Ugh.

You hang them on the bar meant for towels and pull on the robe. It's soft and roomy. You tuck the pamphlet into the pocket and face the door.

You emerge as S sits at the table. You walk carefully, paranoid that the robe might fall open despite the tight knot around the middle. You sit down and lean over to read the menu. It's a good distraction.

"I recommend the mac and cheese, as simple as it sounds," he taps with his finger.

"Oh, I like mac and cheese," you say.

You continue your perusal. You'll probably just go with what he says. Your appetite is lost in the storm of your inside.

"So, uh, did you bring that bill?"

You sit up stiffly and blink at him. Your hand goes to the pocket of the robe. You gape at him. How do you do this?

"We can wait--"

"No, I can't. Not-- no. Because..." you stammer as your heart races. "Because it's... it's too much and... you can say no and... I'll be okay. My mom will be okay. I'll figure it out. I will."

"Woah, woah, sweetheart," he gets up and comes around the table. He gets down to his knees as he puts his hands on your arms, his thumbs caressing you. "It's alright. I asked you to--"

"No, no," you jitter as you reach in the pocket and slide out the pamphlet, slightly damp from the rain. "It's... it's more... it's..." you look down at the paper as you clutch it in your hands. "The doctor said it will be good but..."

He drags his hands down your arms to your hands. He eases the pamphlet free. He sits back on his heels and opens it. He reads it over as you cover your face.

"I think I should go--"

"I can do it," he says calmly. "One hundred? Easy."

"One hundred thousand!" You drop your hands. "S!"

"It's just money. This isn't about that. It's about your mom, isn't it?"

You stare at him. You don't understand how he can be so generous. It's just take, take, take, and you have nothing to give. And the more he gives, the more you depend on it. The hole only gets deeper and deeper.

[dammit-tazmuir]

A basic timeline if it helps:

(ALSO, if you haven't already, please also read the short stories The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex and As Yet Unsent before Nona the Ninth!)

In the epilogue of GtN, Harrow wakes up in a hospital bed on the Erebos, the Emperor's flagship, and meets John. She begs him to undo her lyctorhood and "give me back the life of Gideon Nav" (she says the full name), but he says he can't. They talk and she agrees to follow him.

Three days later ("Epiparados" in HtN), Harrow instead has Ianthe help her lobotomize herself, sealing away all her memories of Gideon, so that her brain won't know what to keep absorbing and she won't eat any more of the soul than she already has. Several agreements are made about this between her and Ianthe, and we still aren't privy to all the details, but Harrow leaves her post-lobotomy self all those letters. This also results in her Lyctoral power, while still present, being greatly limited, and her not having a cavalier auto-pilot mode.

Because she can't simply erase memories of Gideon without knowing something's wrong, she instead replaces necessary memories with false ones. With her immense power and grief, she subconsciously pulls most of the ghosts of people who were involved at Canaan House (including Dulcie and Pro) into a river bubble, and they play out false memories like an improv stage play. Whenever Harrow is unconscious, the "play" resumes. This means all the false past stuff "didn't happen" physically in time, but was real within the River, involving real ghosts of real people.

Among the ghosts, both Babs and Colum are conspicuously absent, only implied to have something vaguely resembling them in their place at the beginning. Cytherea makes no kind of appearance. The characters who are still alive and also Palamedes (because his ghost is sheltered in his own bubble) also have basically constructs taking their place, and they die off first. Silas's real ghost seems to be there and to have figured out what's up, and he eventually "kills" the Corona construct and then exits the bubble by his own choosing into the River. Some of the other ghosts figure out what's going on faster than others, and when Abigail realizes she helps Jeannemary and Isaac move on to wait out in the River. The other ghosts stay til near the end.

-

It takes her many more weeks to recover after the lobotomy, but eventually she starts becoming coherent again. John visits her and shows her the not at all concerning reserves of resurrected humans he has, all of whom have been alive but in stasis for 10,000 years. For the first time, he's waking up a new wave of them to send to the Ninth House to help shore up their numbers and give them the ability to keep passing on their culture and such.

He also teaches her about Resurrection Beasts: the vengeful revenants of murdered planets. He says there were originally nine: they've killed five, and there are three more out there. Harrow notes the math doesn't check out but doesn't bother asking.

However, part of what Harrow did to herself was setting it up so that if anyone even tries to say Gideon's name to her, she will physically hear it as "Ortus." In the course of talking, John says "Ortus Nigenad will not have died for nothing", but what he actually says is "Gideon Nav"; Harrow just hears it wrong, and notices that his mouth doesn't move quite right when he "says" Ortus. She starts bleeding and eventually falls unconscious, establishing a trend of bleeding + maybe other complications any time things threaten to remind her of Gideon. Since she said Ortus in return, the last thing she hears is John wonderingly repeating it.

She also did not consider that there could be more than one person named Gideon, but that's the name of the Saint of Duty. In Chapter 1 of GtN, Gideon described how her mom's dead body floated down to the Ninth's surface in a parachute, dead on arrival, with a day old baby in a bio container. When the nuns finally wrangled her mom's ghost back by force, all they got out of her was screaming "Gideon! Gideon! Gideon!" three times before running. They assumed this was a mother desperate to protect her child, and that Gideon was the baby's name, so they called her Gideon.

In fact, her mom was Commander Wake, full name (yes really) Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity. She was a woman who roughly 25 years ago rose up as a demagogue among Blood of Eden— the rebel faction among non-House humans that actively tries fighting the Empire— and united and organized them more than they'd ever been before. And we'll come back to her but she was killed by the Saint of Duty, and was just screaming in anger at him.

-

Harrow and Ianthe are eventually taken through the River to the Mithraem, the space station that serves as an empire base of operation and the personal home of the First.

They meet Mercymorn the Saint of Joy, whose anatomical skills through sheer memorization are just batshit stupid (Augustine says the applications are too narrow, because one would only really need it to kill Lyctors); Augustine the Saint of Patience, who "was a spirit magician like the Mithraem was a box with some bones" (and who John says could submerge half a city into the River if he wanted); and "Ortus" the Saint of Duty, who fights more like a cavalier or an attack dog than a traditional necromancer but can rapidly drain thanergy from others' theorems.

Augustine and Mercy hate each other and at one point Harrow catches a confrontation in the hall where he warns her to "stop playing this dangerous game, the one you said you'd stop." This is later show to be in reference to her conspiring with Blood of Eden, something both of them did in the past, but Mercy was always the "face" while Augustine stayed more distant and eventually backed out. He's confronting her because he's afraid John will kill them both if they find out.

Duty tries to kill Harrow many times. (There's an interesting discrepancy that the first time he tried to do so was "10 months before the Emperor's murder", but it was a few days after arrival on the Mithraem, which itself was 9 months before. I personally have a theory time is physically a little broken but yeah. It is also, notably, not 100% clear who first tried to kill Harrow on the Erebos.) The attempts are later revealed to be kind of on John's orders, though the full order was to fix her OR kill her. Even to John, Lyctors are very difficult to read, so he could tell something was dangerously wrong but not what.

What exactly he was sensing is a little hard to say. Because Harrow is schizophrenic and has had hallucinations since she was pretty young, she straight up didn't notice she was also being haunted, likely by multiple sources. She is never sure if the visions she sees of The Body are at all real, though she wants to believe there's something to them. A common interpretation (though technically debatable) is that when Harrow entered the Tomb at age 10, a piece of Alecto's soul just kind of latched on and haunted her from there on. But also.

Harrow's sword, as in Gideon's two-hander, fucking hates her. As in it literally physically burns her to make direct contact, at least early on. This is later revealed to be because Commander Wake has been clinging to it as a revenant for nearly twenty fucking years. She was in the sword the whole time Gideon had it. What seems to have happened is she clung to something else(? her bones? Gideon herself?) first and then when Gideon was given a sword as a kid Wake latched onto that, but she's been there for so long. (This is also why Harrow even in GtN says she always hated Gideon's sword and felt like it was judging her.)

Then, in Chapter 11, which is only 7 sentences long in total, Harrow "sleepwalks" / is dragged to where Cytherea's body is laid out and wakes up having impaled the body with her sword. Wake's ghost is split, a part still haunting Harrow's mind in the River, a part having moved its physical anchor to Cytherea's body so she can puppet it. This is why the corpse starts moving.

Unbeknownst to possibly anyone alive (it's ambiguous if even G1deon ever found out), G1deon's cavalier (or so we're told but that's a whole extra theory) Pyrrha was never fully absorbed, compartmentalized like Harrow has done to Gideon, though theirs was by accident, "and he took more from me than got taken from you." Pyrrha fronts sometimes and G1deon just blacks out when she does. At one point, Harrow walks in on the Saint of Duty "kissing the corpse" but Duty doesn't turn around and orders in a voice very unlike himself for Harrow to leave and close the door. This is because it's actually Pyrrha visiting Wake; she doesn't turn around so Harrow can't see the eye change.

-

Harrow spends time bonding with John and being taught how to kill planets and also avoids many death attempts that make her a nervous wreck. Eventually she stays awake for six days to keep vigilance and hatches a plan to murder Duty with soup, but John won't let anyone kill each other in front of him, yikes. He forces Harrow to go get some rest and she starts sleeping in Ianthe's room for safety instead. Ianthe has been trying the whole time to play bad boy love interest but forgetting the part where the bad boy is actually nice to the girl, so she doesn't mind too much.

What she does mind is her stupid fucking replacement arm. It's not perfect so she can't bring herself to accept it no matter how much that's messing her up, and she's actively frustrated with herself. Harrow wakes up in a state of zen clarity after a very long rest to see Ianthe stabbing at her arm, because Augustine gave her a few days before he's giving up trying to teach her and she's having a breakdown. Harrow casually decides to remove the old arm and grow her a new one, which apparently counts as sex to Ianthe (I'm only like 10% joking), and Ianthe loves her new arm and is able to function as a full proper Lyctor. As thanks, Ianthe helps Harrow try to set up an opportunity to kill the Saint of Duty.

This involves going to Augustine, who sets up a fancy dinner party. He doesn't tell Mercy why they need to distract John, but promises to keep her BoE activity secret if she helps, and swears on his brother's sword, so she agrees. (Underappreciated bit: He also says he can make sure Duty leaves on cue, and "Trust me, when I want Ortus to go, he'll be giddy-gone." Narration follows "(This did not make sense to you, as a joke.)" But it's. "When I want Gideon to go, he'll be giddy-gone" lmao.) Augustine and Mercy get incredibly drunk and eventually start making out and then pull John into it: Dios Apate, Minor. As casual as everyone is later Harrow gets the sinking but distinct feeling this has happened before. (Because it has, at minimum in reference to Dios Apate, Major, and strongly implied they've just been a messy ass polycule for way longer.)

When Harrow goes looking for Duty during this distraction, though, she finds a trail of blood leading her to the incinerator, and Duty injured and trapped inside. She considers just leaving, even when Wake-possessing-Cytherea activates the incinerator, but "he" looks to her with (dark, but so is the room) helpless eyes and she's too much of a bleeding heart, so she pulls "him" out. It's actually Pyrrha at this point, and once she's out she keeps her eyes closed as she tells Harrow how to effectively ward herself; "You'll be safe from us." She then speaks out into the hall, to Wake, saying this is fine, Wake can kill her, but please just tell her, after all this time, back then, why did Wake bring the ba—

John and co arrive after hearing the incinerator alarms, cutting her off, but she was asking why Wake brought the baby, who Pyrrha firmly believed to be hers/G1deon's and has been mourning over for the past 20 years.

-

In the River bubble dreams, the plot has diverged significantly as "the Sleeper" haunts Canaan House, starts killing people, and the weather turns to shit and stays that way. The Sleeper (who Ortus grimly joked should really be called "the Waker") is in fact Commander Wake, wearing the orange hazmat suit she died in. Gideon's sword is seen in the coffin because it was her physical anchor for so long (or may still be one anchor).

-

Eventually Harrow kills another planet trying to prepare a perimeter to face the approaching RB, and runs into Camilla there, who is this far out looking for Harrow. Camilla examines her and says “Nice intercranial haemorrhage. Kills most of us non-Lyctors.” (In reference to the lobotomy.) Harrow doesn't remember her except as a faceless corpse, but Cam has Harrow examine a piece of Pal's skull to confirm that he's still a revenant, and she meets him in his River bubble, but accidentally brings Wake with her. After a short talk with Pal, who she also doesn't remember, Wake starts threatening to break his bubble and he makes her leave quickly, but asks which bone Camilla has so he knows where to focus his essence, and asks Harrow to remake it into something with mobility, so she turns it into a hand once she's out.

As Harrow leaves the bubble, though, feeling overwhelmed and mixed up, narration for the chapter ends: "But you were always too quick to mourn your own ignorance. You never could have guessed that he had seen me." For the first time, Gideon, who has been the first-person narrator the entire time, directly references herself. Prior to this, though, she did have a lot of parentheticals or other asides, and a running gag of harping on Harrow for not knowing what a pommel was. She's been able to hazily watch everything from Harrow's subconscious.

Outside, Harrow learns the Camilla is now traveling with Coronabeth and Judith, and that all of them are with BoE, though Judith (who is in bad shape) does not appear to be staying by choice and begs Harrow to warn the Emperor he has a traitor in his midst. Harrow does not end up warning anyone.

-

Everyone gets ready for the RB's arrival, and to fight the Heralds, which look like external creatures but are in fact extensions of the RB, like fingers on a hand.

At one point in this last stretch, Harrow sits and talks with John, and he makes the mistake of telling her she'd be a hell of a daughter and he sometimes indulges the wish that she'd been his. She breaks violently and throws herself down to confess that she opened the Tomb as a child, and asks if she killed two of her fathers that day. As far as John is aware, that shouldn't be possible, so he assumes there must have been other burial chambers added in all the outer parts of the Tomb and that one of those is what Harrow stumbled into. Harrow is on one hand betrayed and pissed that he doesn't believe her, and on the other now questioning if she hallucinated everything.

John tries to comfort and absolve her of further guilt, apologizing that she endured so much based on a misunderstanding. But as he tries to brush some hair out of her bleeding face, the act of touching her head makes him more able to see the immediate area and he gets much more serious as he suddenly asks, "Harrow, who the hell has been tampering with your temporal lobe?" and she panics and runs without fully understanding why. He calls after her but doesn't pursue and doesn't bring it up again later, but the last thing she hears is him cursing himself. "Dammit, John! Dammit!"

-

Eventually, the night comes, and where Chapter 39 has John telling everyone "ten minutes to breach", it chronologically goes into the Prologue. Ianthe comes in and begs Harrow to let her help undo what she's done, because she doesn't want Harrow to die here. "Just turn around" bc the Orpheus vibes weren't strong enough lol. But Harrow tells her to fuck off and Ianthe does.

"And you walked toward your death like a lover" (39) / "you went to make war on Hell." (Prologue) (With the noted time breaks here and the capitalization of Hell I have recently been alerted to a theory that Harrow was never trying to fight the RB, but straight up doing some offscreen shit in Hell, but we'll see in AtN I guess.)

Hell spat her back out because Mercymorn stabbed her and left her to get eaten, although she did disable her pain receptors and hadn't intended Harrow to wake up for it. Harrow was left too strong to die quickly and too weak to save herself.

As she blacked out, she started rapidly reinventing the scenarios of her false memories, and we got three chapters of AUs. First is Harrow Nova, where she was born a failed experiment without necromancy and instead became cavalier to an adopted necromantic heir (Gideon). Second is a royal ball where many Houses are sending heirs to try to court and win the favor of Her Divine Highness (Gideon, which is a wild thing for Harrow to subconsciously clock). And then the beloved Coffee Shop AU, where the BARI Star is of course Gideon. Each time, Abigail tells her again, "this isn't how it happens", and the last time "Absolutely not", because that time was threatening to pull the Fourths' ghosts back into things.

When Harrow "wakes up" in the normal River bubble, Abigail helps explain what's been going on, and Harrow remembers and cries for Gideon.

-

Outside, with Harrow's consciousness awol and the dam holding back her essence broken, Gideon wakes up fully in Harrow's body and takes over. She starts fighting Heralds and it's specified that she dies several times while doing so, she just keeps getting better. One Herald also bites off her thumb and she instantly regrows a new one, which is not normal for Lyctors; they'd normally heal whole sections lost as stumps, like Ianthe's arm.

Eventually she runs into Mercy, who sees her eyes and pieces shit together, but Wake shows up and shoots Mercy with a bullet made from Herald carcass and leaves. Gideon has weird feelings and then runs off to find Ianthe. Augustine finds them, sees Gideon's eyes, and runs off. Ianthe gives Gideon Harrow's letter for her, including her sunglasses.

Eventually, Gideon and Ianthe go to John's room, but find him interrogating Wake, so they hide in a coatrack/closet area near the door. The Augustine and Mercy show up to confront John. Then Duty shows up, and stops by the coat rack first, and looks dead at the baby Lyctors, and takes Gideon's sunglasses off her face to wear before ignoring them and moving on, because it's Pyrrha and she needed to hide her eyes from the others. Wake is immensely relieved to see Pyrrha, who immediately shoots her (freeing her ghost).

The worst episode of Maury ever plays out, and at first it seems like Gideon might have been Wake and G1deon's kid, but instead, it's that Augustine and Mercymorn twenty years ago seduced John to acquire a genetic sample. He very specifically tried to avoid any risk of that but Mercymorn's anatomy skills are stupid and Augustine providing extra distraction probably helped. Mercy initially set up several "dummies"/"dolls" using her own eggs, and Wake was intended to use vat womb technology to grow at least one of those into a baby to sacrifice, but "THE EGGS YOU GAVE ME ALL DIED AND YOU LIED TO ME, SO I DID THE IMPLANTATION MYSELF." (This means Gideon is a sort of immaculate conception in that her parents never even directly met in life, but it also involves no less than six different people having sex lmao.)

Their intention was to use blood of a close enough genetic match to John's to break his blood ward on the Locked Tomb to wake Alecto and try to kill him and end the empire. The original plan was to evacuate the citizens of the Houses, too. This is also how Harrow finally got into the Tomb as a kid; "my face was under your fucking fingernails." (This fight and detail was also mentioned in GtN.) This comic by Naomistares beautifully illustrates the explanation.

John appears to have not quite pieced together everything and be pretty shocked. He knew there was something up and playing dumb, but when the seduction part comes into play he gets more thrown off, and then accuses "Did you two just pretend to hate each other?" (Extrapolation: The implications of Dios Apate Minor and Major both— and the fact that Major took them 500 years to successfully plan and pull off, and Minor was the first time they've been with him since— seem to be that neither of them alone could have pulled it off, because the only thing John wanted badly enough to let his guard down was both of them. This is supported by the first time Mercy mentions Augustine near the beginning, he immediately drops his argument and his face lights like a sunrise at the idea they're talking again, to her immense frustration. So when he learns about the conspiracy he is fully willing to believe they just put on an elaborate act all this time to make him more desperate, smh.)

Gideon of course is also very overwhelmed by this revelation, and comes out of hiding to announce, "I'm— I'm not fucking dead!" And of course John looks her over and replies as his first words to her, "Hi, not fucking dead. I'm dad."

This whole confrontation was because when Mercymorn and Augustine each saw Gideon's eyes, they recognized them as Alecto's eyes, Alecto being The Body, A.L., Annabel Lee, the woman buried in the Tomb. But there was no way a random child of the Ninth would have Alecto's DNA, and there was absolutely a way John's DNA would end up on the Ninth, because they worked very hard to put it there. They come to the conclusion that Alecto wasn't just John's bodyguard, as he'd always told them, but his cavalier, and their eyes swapped because he'd done Lyctorhood a better way than everyone else did, letting Alecto survive. (This leaves a lot of unanswered questions, not least of which being why the fuck would Alecto's eyes look like John's now do, and there's reason to suspect that the Lyctor's may have ultimately used the wrong formula but still got the right answer re: Gideon being John's kid, but that's a topic for after NtN.)

They had already been plotting to kill him, but this revelation makes them think that he just casually let them kill and eat their cavaliers with full knowledge there was another way, and that's their tipping point to go from secret plotting to openly "fuck you." (The "we might all die tonight anyway from this RB" might also be a factor.)

-

Back in the River bubble, everyone confronts Wake as the Sleeper, and Abigail and Ortus are able to summon the ghost of Ortus's historical blorbo Matthias Nonius to fight Wake using Ortus's sheer passion as a revenant link. (Ortus brought fanfiction to a magic undead gun fight and won, and we love him for it.) When Harrow sees Wake's face up close, she knows she's never seen her before, but something really bothers her, especially in the jaw (basically identical to Gideon, and they look very alike in general) and the eyes and brows (the most different from Gideon; this isn't said until NtN but it's very offhand, those features she got from John). This very subtly implies that the Divine Highness AU had been inspired by Harrow subsconsciously clocking the slight resemblance between Gideon and John.

Once Wake is gone, the bubble starts collapsing. Ortus, Matthias, and the other soldiers head off to help against the RB. Magnus and Abigail urge Harrow to return to her body, and believe she's just clinging to Gideon's memory and needs to let her go. Harrow begrudingly agrees, but Abigail and Magnus head out into the River (to look for Jeannemary and Isaac and maybe others, and then try to cross it, which Abigail theorizes can be done but people simply don't anymore because they've been taught to wait for a Second Resurrection and most have waited so long they've gone mad). The real Dulcie stays, though, and tells Harrow she has something to tell her.

-

With the confrontation, Mercymorn eventually tells John she'll forgive him if he can look her in the eye and swear to her he loved Cristabel and never wanted harm to come to her. Instead, as she walks into his arms, she slides her hands inside his body and turns him into mist. This does kill him, and there's a solar flare as the sun starts to destabilize, but he Gets Better and kills her instead. He gives everyone an ultimatum to join him or die. Not Gideon though, they just met, yikes, besides that's Harrow's body and he'd rather not punish Harrow too, Gideon can just be rebellious in the John corner it's fine. But finally Augustine asks if he gets a choice, and John says yes and begs him to come back, and Augustine tells him no and then submerges the entire Mithraem to the bottom of the River, near one of the stoma openings. Augustine basically asked if he got a choice just to set up to tell him to go to hell and then physically drag him directly there.

(On the note of literally yes dying but then getting better, this is how Gideon died several times earlier fighting Heralds, and also why she "survived" the nerve gas as a baby. And after the Avulsion Trial in GtN: "'Ha-ha,' said Gideon, 'first time you didn't call me Griddle,' and died. / *** / Well, passed out, but it felt a hell of a lot like dying. Waking up had an air of resurrection"... 😌)

John and Augustine end up wrestling over the stoma, with Ianthe above them. Pyrrha introduces herself properly to Gideon and informs her G1deon just died fighting the RB tonight, so she's alone in the body now. They debate what to do but ultimately end up out in the River too. Gideon thinks to herself that Ianthe could probably help make sure John is swallowed by the stoma but Augustine survives, but instead Ianthe does the opposite. (And. You know. Based on everything Ianthe knows, John dying has a high chance of meaning Corona dying too, along with the rest of the House citizens including the rest of her family, so there's that.)

Gideon finds herself passing out in the water, and then the last thing she sees is Harrow's bullshit dead girlfriend coming to claim her, as Alecto(?) says "in the wrong voice twice removed" something about chest compressions and not losing her. Gideon dies. (Again. But will it stick this time...?)

-

We cut back to Harrow in the River as Dulcie tells her she's certain she can sense someone intentionally moving Harrow's body, meaning there's a high chance Gideon is alive and in control. Dulcie appears to be crushed by falling debris afterward, but had been fully accepting of that risk in interest of the truth here.

Harrow chooses to pull herself out of the River not to her body, but into the Tomb. Nothing about the scene makes sense and it's not supposed to. She crawls into the empty(??) coffin and curls up with her sword and Frontline Titties of the Fifth, then she falls asleep, or dies, or both.

-

Six months later, we follow a girl about her daily life in a city that looks much closer to a modern day settlement than anything we'd seen thus far, albeit a dangerous and wartorn one. She lives with the person who goes to work for her, the person who teaches her, and the person who cares for her. She heals unnaturally quickly and for some reason when other people start to notice that they avoid those people after that. At the end she asks the person who cares for her if she's figured out who she is yet, and Camilla answers, "Not yet."

=============================================

BUT YEAH. I'm happy to answer specific questions if you have them as well. It's my favorite book and VERY worth a reread, but this should be enough to understand what's going on enough to be more confident moving into Nona. (Unsure if you actually meant to reread or were being hyperbolic, but clearing up confusion can't hurt either way!) And then once you finish all three books and all three short stories, you can read ALL of them again together and unlock all the layers of bonus content. >:3

(That is, I encourage reading NtN before rereading HtN unless you wanna reread HtN multiple times, because the added context from NtN and even from a later reread of GtN will enrich the HtN reread all the more.)

Good luck!

I finished Harrow the Ninth so now I need to reread Harrow the Ninth so maybe I will know what happened in Harrow the Ninth

[intermundia]

the ends the villains got in this season were so poetic and eminently justified to me. dedra, partagaz, they got what they deserved for their arrogance and ambition, their cruelty and selfishness, and all their contributions to the oppression of an authentically evil empire. syril died unrecognized and unremarkable, a traitor to the rebels who were foolish enough to trust him, and a patsy for an empire and a lover who didn't. dedra was jailed like a common laborer, everything she hoped to avoid, unwittingly helping the enemy create the chaos she despised through her own arrogance. partagaz fell on his sword for his failed leadership, the words of nemick some of the last things he ever heard. the writing of the show didn't excuse any of them, or allow time for their redemption. the audience could feel sympathy at their own discretion, but it was not particularly encouraged. they did terrible things, and were punished in the narrative.

the ends of the heroes were equally rich and earned. luthen died the way he always expected and maybe intended, by his own choice, finally caught, though it took some help in the end. i think the person most openly rewarded ultimately was bix, who held hope in her arms in an idyllic setting, standing amidst a crop ready for harvest. i think some of her trauma will linger on, but she was able to make things right, and punish her torturer, prevent others from suffering as she did. we saw that she went through an ugly period of healing, and it took many years, but in the end she survived, and found a peaceful life. vel lost her great love, the struggle cut cinta's life tragically short, but i think the narrative left her future with kleya open, maybe they could have a new story of their own together. they're both profoundly damaged people, but so capable and with such good intentions.

and of course cassian's story began with the end already told, it was already over, and nothing could be done to change it. the story could only ever manifest it. all his love and loss, it was all setting him up to pass a vital torch, and be a messenger of hope when the galaxy needed him most. i always knew such a rich prequel series would make the tragedy of rogue one hit harder, and as i watch it now, it does. there's so much weight to his presence, all his history and complexity. it was a tremendous loss on scarif, such a powerful sacrifice of such a good person, who did hard things others wouldn't or couldn't. he tried, in the service of the cause of freedom for the galaxy. so many things had to happen in order to make it possible to destroy the death star and ultimately destroy the empire, and the remarkable, precious thing is that they did. it happened because of so many small acts of service and dedication, so much loss. i think the series was profoundly successful in telling that story.

[catboybiologist]

I have an online(tho we've met irl a few times) trans friend, who like many if not most young queer people has unsupportive and generally horrible parents. She's financially dependent on them for food and medicine for her chronic illness, so currently transitioning, or being out to them or publically, is entirely impossible.

I also happen to have been born into, if not wealth, than moderate excess of the kind most never get close to. The costs her parents cover aren't even that high (for me), and im sitting on savings i objectively do not need.

How do i convince her to let me help, if not as a gift, at least as a loan she'll repay once she's done with uni and gets a job.

There's no one correct answer here, and I don't claim to have a solution for you. I'm hoping others can contribute. I'll say what I can but this is NOT going to be universal.

However, I will say that, from someone who's been in a kind-of similar situation as your friend: your friend is likely extremely jumpy and paranoid about the concept of being dependent itself. At least with her parents, its the "evil she knows". If you offer to pay for things she's going to be defensive and scared of still being dependent on someone, but just changing that dependency from one person to another.

This is nothing about who you are as a person, or her perception of you. This is a baseline level survival instinct that she's likely developed. And to be fair... yeah, she's kind of right to have it. You sound like a sweet person, anon, so I'm not dissing you- but there are too many extremely real horror stories of people jumping from one abusive, dependent situation straight into another.

Someone having power over her in that way, even if its someone she likes and trusts, is still a terrifying situation for her.

The support I needed the most in a similar kind of situation was figuring out how to be independent, and working through a plan to do so. I never had a friend who was wealthy enough to contribute financially to me (although some offered anyways). But, I did have friends who sat me down, helped me apartment hunt, taught me financial skills I never learned, helped me covertly set up new bank accounts, give me advice on how to secretly put away money for a while, and get myself independent.

This may be bad advice. But, you might want to start there. Help her develop a plan and/or timeline for what being independent from her parents looks like up front. Then, if there's a "gap" or spot where things would be uncertain for her, like a period of time where she would have to search for an apartment, a job, financial aide, or whatever, offer to be her optional safety net. Don't offer things up front. Work through how she's going to get herself independent, and then become her plan B, not her plan A.

You sound really sweet, anon, and I'm hoping everything works out for both of you.

[violetasteracademic]

Summary:

I was not always this way. I have memories of a time before this darkness was pooled into me. When I spilled the language of creation, not in the service of good or evil, but simply because a world needs nothing but to be made. Flowers need nothing but to bloom. People need nothing but to breathe. Water needs nothing but to flow. Those memories are hazy now. For so many years, I have been fighting the inky black corruption poured into my being. I have since been broken, divided, silenced and reborn. But once I touched her, I felt it. A vision of who I once was, and I knew that she was to be my salvation. Slayer of kings. Protector of thieves. Bringer of life. My Elain.

In other words: The corrupted Cauldron loses it's battle for control when it spies the lovely fawn being touched by the shadowsinger.

Warnings: Dark fic, dark elriel, toxic cauldron, mind control, noncon/dubcon, psychological abuse, torture, kidnapping, explicit sexual content

Thank you to @yourstarsmyscars for looking this over and everyone who supported this idea (some of you may remember it as my Elriel x Cauldron swimfan fic idea from well over a year ago!) and everyone who thinks AI should burn in hell.

Read the fic here.

Preview below the cut:

I was only a tool. A Cauldron forged at the hands of the Mother herself, and from me flowed new worlds. 

But in my corruption and distress, the Mother abandoned me. She left me in this broken world, and moved on, trusting the threads of her fate would hold strong despite all that had been done to me. 

She could have come back for me. She could have fixed me. But she didn’t. She left me to fend for myself, to push and push against the madness, to hold onto myself as my magic was twisted by false gods.

Anger.

I was so angry. 

I would not be abandoned again.

Elain Archeron would be mine.

I pool the leaking oil back inside me, and with my considerable power, I create something new. 

A spell. One I know well, as I wrote it from the language that spills from my body. I had watched a dragon, the right hand of a god, contain herself into the body of a High Fae.

There would be sacrifice. Forcing the vast endlessness of myself would limit some of my power. But it would be worth it. For Elain, it would be worth it.

Bones build within me, locking into place, and around it stretches muscle and skin.

I don’t want to look exactly like Azriel, but if that is what she desires, I should like to give her just enough to be pleased when she beholds me.

Hazel eyes. A tall, broad, and muscular build. A sharp, strong jaw and lips that curve in a way I pray to whatever gods are greater than me that she will find it tempting. I can only hope that she will find shorter, perfectly coiffed silvery blonde hair to be pleasing. I believe it will compliment the golden brown of hers well.

I bind the spell onto my skin in an undetectable display of tattoos, much like the runes and markings the Illiryan males carve into their skin. A pleasant shiver passes through me at the thought of her running her fingers over them.

Love. This is what motivates me.

There are other emotions that live within me now, of a darker nature. Possession. Fury.

Violence. 

But perhaps love is its own form of violence.

Bringing some unhinged vibes to @elriel-month because why not? We're all mad here.

[cuboftea]

Uuuuugh love this so much.

I really wanna write a dynamic or see it explored how they end up feeling about each other. Most of the time i see Bow being written as jealous or indifferent, but what if after hearing about Bot, Bow has no qualms about their existence. Even though she knows why Bot was created, its hard to look at them and visualize them as a clone of herself.

However, once Bow starts watching Season 3 out of curiosity, a new thought sits in her mind, one she never thought would be an issue cuz of how she loves her girls at the mansion.

No one really liked her until after she died. When she can’t visit or be about of her own choice, and when she used her ghost powers to help. If Marsh hadnt felt guilty, no one would have ever seen her, or cared. They felt guilty enough to build a robot, but didnt even believe to see the real thing when they first went to the mansion.

Bot was still tolerated more by everyone when they were acting like her, and especially more so when they became them. Was Bow really that much of a bother? That they’d prefer anyone else, even if they felt bad?

And with Bow not really being in tune with complex emotions, she hates this feeling. It starts to be in the back of her mind and spoils her precious time with anyone at the mansion. She starts to doubt if Marsh cares about her or feels guilty and obligated to be there. She knows Knife and Dough have no choice.

If you pair that with the robo suit fix, Bow would probably feel even worse. That she has to be the one mimicking Bot, that it would remind every one of the two. And even if she could go out whenever she wanted, would people start to go back to hating her?

Unfortunately, them avoiding each other makes their paranoia worse. Bot thinks Bow hates them, and struggles with feeling like a failed version of Bow. While Bow thinks that Bot avoiding her is due to feeling above her. While everyone is somewhat right about Bow being upset, the reason she is has nothing to do with Bot themself, but how everyone reacted to it. Reacted to her. In her mind Bot has no reason to feel like the other bow when theyre even more cherished when they broke away.

At this point she feels like the other, annoying version of Bot. That she was better off being in the back of everyones minds, never in the spotlight.

Idk, i feel like it would be interesting if the conflicting feelings were a two way street that both have to cross. That Bow can realize that Bot doesn’t think of themself as superior, and for Bot that Bow never hated them at all, and thinks their new style is super cute. That if anyone wants to fix these messy feelings its ultimately up to only those two on how they wanna redefine it. And they find when they shut out their worries about everyone else, its not actually that hard to like each other. Bot is incredibly sweet and fun, and Bow can be really funny and enjoys being a part of someone’s antics.

:o

[lostwysteria]

(Part 19

Comin in hot guys! Buckle Up ya'll! I am both happy and dissatisfied with this one. The curse of being a writer or an artist. Just one more left for this arc. I'm going to take a few days off after posting part 20. Let myself recharge and not burn out.)

Masterlist

Lin Ling was grocery shopping and looking for some starters to put in the small veggie and herb garden Nice and Wreck had set up for him by the huge windows on one side of their new apartment. Tomatoes, cabbages, lettuce, and onions were his main goal at the moment. He was just passing an alley when he was grabbed and his mouth was covered by a cloth. He passed out.

…

He woke up restrained and some kind of metal thong gagging him. 

“Good evening, Homemaker. Or should I call you Lin Ling?” Enlighter asked as Homemaker opened his eyes. “You are an absolute Mystery. I have absolutely NOTHING on you! It's impossible. Yet, here we are.” Enlighter said with a tsk. “Show time. Look pretty for the camera.”

The next few minutes were confusing. Apparently Enlighter was fueled by Fear, now. He was going by God’s Eye and was bound to expose Nice in any way he could.

…

Moon spat out her drink in horror. Lin Ling was being held captive by that crazed former hero. And this time it wasn't being staged. She shot a portal to Hero Tower as soon as she was suited up.

…

Shang Chao dropped his tablet. “Yang Cheng! Suit up! Lin Ling has been captured by a Fear powered Enlighter. He’s snapped!”

…

Miss. J reached the ground floor right as Moon portaled in. “Good. We're going to need you to help restrain Nice.” 

“I figured. We don't need him rampaging right now.” Moon agreed. Even she knew how thin the thread of his sanity was. Moon opened a portal to the trio’s floor.

They walked through to see Wreck struggling to keep Nice pinned.

“LET ME GO! I NEED TO SAVE HIM!” Nice was yelling desperately. 

“A little help?!” Wreck asked the newcomers. Moon put Nice in a hold, letting Wreck have a chance to catch his breath. He used his powers to restrain his lover as well. Nice went limp and was just laying there, trembling. It was heartbreaking to see.

“You need to stop and think, Luo Xiaoxing!” Miss. J used his true name. That made even his tears stop. 

Moon gasped quietly in the background. She had never known his true name. Just his hero one. 

Wreck went over to her. “His name uses the characters for Collection and Little star. He’s mine and Lin’s collection of small stars.” He told her. “Hello, Xiao Yueqing. My name is Yanshi Tiantang. Using the characters for disguise and heaven.” He introduced himself. 

“Disguising the heavens, huh? It fits.” she told him. 

…

Lin Ling was listless and boneless at this point. God’s Eye had been trying to get something from him for hours. He was exhausted and dehydrated and in pain. He had refused to say a word this entire time.

He knew Miss. J was probably handling things and trying to stop Nice from losing it. He just had to wait a bit longer. 

…

God's Eye was delighted when Nice and Wreck arrived through Moon’s portal. 

Before he could even say anything, Nice spoke up.

“You want the truth? You can have it. I'm not perfect. I am an orphan that grew up in the system. I only got into good schools because of my grades and pretty privilege. Wreck and I were Idols together in Highschool and College before trying to become heroes together. I made it, he didn't. We were separated and he gladly became a villain just to stay close. We are in love. We have been for so long.”

“I only dated Nice to boost my own status once I saw that people wanted us together. I didn't know that they were in love until after the public tied us so tightly together that my powers trapped me with him.” Moon admitted.

“I come from a good, third generation wealthy family. I grew up with luxuries Nice never could dream of back then. When I couldn't get the one thing I truly wanted, I selfishly chose to be a villain just to get it..” Wreck confessed next.

“I went along with dating Moon just to boost my own image of ‘perfection’. I never loved her. How could I, when we were using each other? I got so bogged down by my own perfection, that I lost sight of what truly mattered. I lost sight of my heart.” Nice cut in again.

He stepped forward. “I tried killing myself. I tried killing myself when the weight of being me was too much to bear. I stepped off the same roof Homemaker was on. This very same roof, in fact. He caught me and then I caught him when he fell while trying to save me. He listened to me as I cried for hours. He took me home and cared for me. Not some imagined image of me. I fell in love with him, too. Wreck and I both have.”

“Homemaker listened to me as well when I kidnapped him out of jealousy and rage at the thought of losing Nice to him. I poured my heart out to him and he didn't judge me. He comforted me and fed me a home cooked meal.” Wreck chuckled wetly.

“I am not perfect.”

“I used people.”

“I am just selfishly trying to keep what I want.”

“Let him go.”

God's Eye screamed in rage at his plan backfiring. Paradoxically, the three confessing their faults was gaining them trust. Who knew that people loved it when people took accountability for their own actions? 

He looked at the weakly struggling Homemaker. A few hours of light torture had taken it's toll on the physically weaker hero. The rank 260 hero wasn't a fighter or even a defensive hero and it showed. That little bit of struggle seemed to be the last straw and he finally lost consciousness.

God's Eye attacked the heroes with his little robots. Unfortunately he was outclassed and outnumbered. He decided to make one last fuck you to the three that thwarted him so easily. The fight had moved him and his captive close to the edge of the roof. He gathered the remaining robots and sent them at the heroes at the same time he tossed Homemaker off the roof. 

Let’s see how the public reacts to a rampaging hero that just lost a favored toy.

[peetalive]

I constantly think about the details of Lucy Gray's song towards Billy Taupe. The line "You went to the dogs and I lived by my charms" is definitely up to interpretation (I think it's simply her alluding to being an above-board entertainer but that's a discussion for another day) but the 3rd verse really gets me. Specifically the lines;

"Well alright I'm bad but then you're no prize either. // Alright I'm bad but then that's nothing new."

This could simply be her referencing how she encouraged Billy Taupe to steal, but it's framed as a response to a direct accusation in my opinion. The verse before suggests it too, saying "Then one day you left saying I was no good". I think Billy Taupe felt manipulated by her when their luck started running out, so he turned away from the Covey in favour of more lawful company. It feels like a situation of him getting back at his loud, opinionated girlfriend by siding with the more powerful, secure people of District 12. We know that the Covey were outsiders of District 12 and that they only ended up there permanently because of how their cards were laid out. And then to punish her he helps rig the reaping against her, and we start to see a lot of parallels between him and Coriolanus. Both act as love interests who were initially drawn in by what Lucy Gray had to offer them. For Coriolanus it was control and a sense of supremacy, while for Billy Taupe it was security. And of course she provided them both with entertainment.

Lucy Gray's role as an entertainer, however, is ultimately what prevents both Coriolanus and Billy Taupe from being secure in their relationships. Through both of their songs she frames their love as being for what she provides instead of for her.

"So who will you turn to tomorrow, I wonder? // For when the bell rings, lover, you're on your own."

"Cold and clean, swirling over my skin, you cloak me. // You soak right in, down to my heart."

Even though the songs themselves are completely different, both highlight just how aware Lucy Gray is of the dynamics in their relationships. Having moved on from Billy Taupe she promptly realizes how Coriolanus is keen to sanitize her image and support her as long as her can profit from her actions. Then finally, because her song to Snow is a love song, we get to the punchline;

"It's why I need you – you're pure as the driven snow."

This line means a lot to me and I think it should mean a lot to you, too. Driven snow refers to any snow that has been carried by the wind without previously being frozen. Superficially, this is the purest snow, being the snow that lands on top with few contaminants (You know what I'm getting at here...). In my eyes though this refers to Coriolanus' precarious social status after the Games that drives him to District 12 as punishment. The line is borderline satirical, because how pure could Snow be if he has been pushed to the most disparaged region of the country? Surely not pure at all.

Snow's drive to be powerful impacts Lucy Gray's appearance because he refuses to present himself as an ally to anyone who contaminates the Capitol, even in the thick of people who vehemently oppose everything it stands for. Lucy Gray needs Snow to make her palatable, which he does readily as a self-assigned agent of the Capitol. Her willingness to be sanitized, at least publicly, makes her trustworthy to him in turn. It's only when their future plans are driven away from the Capitol, when she fantasizes about their life outside the system, that Snow realizes Lucy Gray is only an asset to him in the specific scenario of the Games. There she is molded as a reflection of his most desired qualities. Tenacious. Charismatic. Boundless. Without the power structures of the Capitol Snow is forced to acknowledge that Lucy Gray is what destabilizes his control. She is the wind that drives him away from the life he dreams of, sending him higher into the sky at times but ultimately towards the ground.

[iriascend]

Meet Pelleas Venali Thelen, a disenfranchised Berduskan noble with a talent for both the blade and the arcane, who's as socially awkward as he's eager to please.

(art commissioned from the lovely @justvea18 )

Character backstory under the cut :D

The noble house of Thelen doesn’t consider itself Elturgardian. Despite their holdings certainly belonging to the kingdom these days, as all lands under Berduskan rule do after the city’s recent annexation, Thelens instead pledge fealty directly to the city of Berdusk. 

It is not a surprise to anyone who knows the history of this region. Thelens have, if you believe their founding myth, been here even before Berdusk was a village, let alone a city-state. Less than a decade of new allegiance is not enough to change elven loyalties. As people who had lived in the Sunset Vale for hundreds of years, Thelens considered themselves as part of Berduskan nobility, the First Folk, even if they mostly spent their time outside the city, in Fort Stagwatch. 

The fort stands two days north-east of the city, along an old Uldoon Trail section that connects Berdusk and Asbravn, surrounded by a small village often referred to by the same name. It’s been built there to provide safety and a resting spot for merchants travelling between the two cities, given the hobgoblin and gnoll populations in the Reaching Woods just north. The family’s presence on the Berduskan political stage has been marginal so far, especially since they are not very wealthy in comparison to other nobles, mostly earning their coin from road tolls and taxes off their land, and never being particularly interested in reinvesting it. Their position in the city is extremely stable, though. It is thanks to the long-lasting loyalty of the small elven population of Berdusk (grateful for them producing and importing elven delicacies, like berry wine, that would otherwise not be available in the region), and the well-earned support of citizens of their lands, who had always been treated justly and warmly by their Lord. 

This prosperity came to a sudden end around 1400 DR, not long after the birth of a new generation. Leaving his young son, Lue, and his wife, Lady Ciliren, Lord Zelos Thelen left Stagwatch along with a squad of trusted guards. Their mission was to deal with the beasts of Reaching Woods that have been coming closer and closer to civilization, as he would often do; sometimes it was routine patrol, sometimes reminding the inhabitants of the forest where they’re not wanted. He expected nothing more than a pack of gnolls or some bandits, so he left without worry, promising to return in time for his son’s upcoming tenth birthday. He never did, and no trace of him or his soldiers was found despite the best efforts of the rest of his garrison. 

Many believe that he has been assassinated by rival nobles, or by the Red Wizards of Amn or the Zhentarim themselves. For years by then, the two opposing factions tried to gain a foothold in Berdusk. Around that time, the Red Wizards successfully covertly sponsored a small, less powerful First Folk family of Alverkin. Alverkins used this backing to stage bandit attacks on the lands overseen by Fort Stagwatch after Lord Thelen’s disappearance (or maybe even before), then start rumours that Thelens are no longer capable of making sure that the road to Asbravn remains secure. They managed to convince several other small First Folk families to back them in this claim, an achievement made all the easier with how little involvement and experience the Thelens had in the predominantly-human politics. Despite the wisdom of the ruling High Lady of Berdusk and her secret Harper advisors, this plot couldn’t be prevented from coming to fruition. Alverkins took over the Fort in 1403 DR, claiming that it needs a new lord if the crucial food trade with Asbravn is to remain unimpeded. 

While the Thelens were not outright thrown out of their ancestral home, it was clear that they are not welcome there anymore. For a few months, Lady Ciliren and her son were mistreated by the Alverkins who had moved in, growing more and more worried about their situation due to a couple of accidents happening to their most loyal servants. After one of such incidents, one of their cousins living in the city (who was probably also a Harper agent - or at least has been tipped off by Harpers — acting either on his own accord or trying to do something for the Thelens when the faction couldn’t help them before) warned them that Alverkins are actively planning to kill Lady Thelen and her young son. To prevent this, they escaped the Fort during the following night. Knowing they would still be in danger if they stayed in Berdusk proper — young master Thelen having the right to demand the Fort to be handed back to them once he grows up and proves capable — Lady Thelen decided to fully disappear from the view of nobles. 

She chose to escape to the House of Acumen, a nearby monastery located east of the river Chionthar, on the central plains of Elturgard, one of the oldest religious organizations in the Western Hearthlands, operating since the time of Askavar (an elven settlement within the nearby Woods of Sharp Teeth, abandoned in the 5th century). Thelens had been sponsoring and visiting the place frequently, as it was the family’s patron deity, Labelas Enoreth, so she hoped they would at least let her son stay there. The journey to reach it was troublesome, especially for a lone mother with a 10-year-old elf toddler in tow. It took most of the wealth they managed to take from their home to fund this trek. The monks welcomed them warmly and allowed them both to stay, but warned Lady Ciliren that they cannot provide the splendor she may be used to as a noble lady, and that she would have to earn her keep like any other resident. Since she only cared for her son’s survival, she accepted these terms without question.

Since then, Lue Thelen had been growing up as a temple child, among clergy, pilgrims and associated laymen. Even if with time Lue gained the courage to occasionally venture to Berdusk — doing supply runs like other members of the monastery, or venturing out on a solo adventure to see the city, both against his mother’s wishes — he still remained mostly a cloistered child. While it saved him from becoming arrogant and taught the value of hard work, it also meant he hadn’t had the chance to develop the noble cunning or charm he would’ve if he was rubbing elbows in Berdusk. Lady Ciliren had a harder time adapting; in an extremely short time she lost her husband and everything she knew thus far, and then had to work for her livelihood for the first time in her life. Because of this, the mother and son drifted apart despite their love, both having problems dealing with grief and often secretly blaming it on each other. 

Over the years, as he slowly realised why his life looks like it does and what happened to their previous home that he barely remembered, Lue’s heart filled with anger at the injustice of their predicament. He began to cultivate a grudge against Alverkins. He knew better than to dive into politics on his own, though. He became convinced that his father could easily return their House to its former grace and honor thanks to the respect of the people that he enjoyed, and started believing that Lord Zelos is not dead, but simply missing. After all, nobody ever found a body or even blood, and a great fighter like him would NOT go out without a fight. Eventually, Lue swore to find his father and bring him back, so that they can retake their home together. When one of the pilgrims to the monastery shared rumors of an elf with the Thelen crest and the Thelen birth-mark having been seen in Candlekeep in the last decade, Lue became all but obsessed.

As soon as his coming-of-age Naming Ceremony had been completed, marking him officially an adult, he took up his father’s old spear, picked out a new name — Pelleas, after a tale of a wanderer forever looking for his comrades-in-arms — and set out for Candlekeep.

[marvelskies1969]

Infinity

Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader / Loki x Fem!Reader

Premise: Y/N Rogers was sent away as a child, her powers deemed dangerous. After years of brief summers with Steve and Bucky, she returns for good when their mother dies—just as war begins.

As her abilities awaken, she draws the attention of Loki, the trickster god, and faces growing fear from those around her. Caught between destiny, war, and forbidden ties, Y/N must decide who she truly is—and who she’s willing to fight for.

Warnings/content: slight angst, brief mention of death/dying, jealousy, fluff, swearing, unstable parental relationships, follows the plot of the MCU timeline, with small changes.

[Masterlist]

[Part 3]

(Chapter 79)

Taken 

Y/N had been about to teleport. She had locked eyes with Steve, silently telling him she was *sorry*. Sorry for leaving him behind, sorry for abandoning him in this fight, but she knew she had to get out—to *come back stronger*. To escape the people who were trying to take her.  

But then *it* hit her.  

A piercing, electric agony shot up her spine, latching onto her very core and *ripping* her from herself.  

Her powers—  

Gone.  

The force of the pain sent her to her knees. A strangled gasp left her lips as the raw absence of power hollowed her out, leaving behind a weight so heavy she thought she might collapse under it.  

No, no, no.  

She reached for it—*nothing*. The energy that always pulsed beneath her skin like a second heartbeat was gone.  

Strong hands yanked her up. A voice barked an order.  

“Move.”  

She didn’t resist.  

Didn’t even hear the way Steve was struggling beside her.  

All she could hear—*all she could see*—was *him*.  

Bucky.  

*No.*  

Not Bucky.  

The Winter Soldier.  

But those eyes. That same steel-blue she’d known since childhood. The ones that had held her gaze through unspoken feelings—eyes that promised he’d always return, that locked with hers as he held her hand the night before he shipped off to war. Eyes she’d memorized in quiet moments, tangled in the warmth of his arms. Eyes that had loved her.

And the same eyes she saw, wide with fear, as he fell—and she thought she’d lost him forever.

It wasn’t possible.  

It wasn’t *real*.  

But she had seen him. *Felt* his blows as they fought. Heard his name whispered by Natasha in the hospital, confirming what she had already known in her gut.  

And now—  

Now she was being dragged away in cuffs by the very organization that had *made* her—  

Just like they had *made him*.  

Her stomach twisted violently.  

*Bucky.*  

She needed time. Space to process the absolute *hell* of the last few hours.  

Instead, she was thrown into the back of an armored transport van. The doors slammed shut behind her with a finality that made her feel *trapped* in a way she hadn’t since waking up in this new century.  

Steve sat beside her, breathing hard, his cuffs digging into his wrists as he glared at their captors.  

Sam was muttering something under his breath, glaring at the soldiers in front of them.  

Y/N?  

She sat motionless, staring at the floor.  

Her thoughts were a storm, her body vibrating with the phantom feeling of *absence* where her power should have been.  

Then—  

A flicker of warmth.  

Loki.  

He was there, brushing against her mind like a soft whisper. He wasn’t pushing—just *watching*. Concern curled at the edges of his presence, careful and restrained.  

She inhaled sharply, closing her eyes for a fraction of a second.  

Then she *pushed him away*.  

Not now.  

Not while she was *like this*.  

Not while she felt like she might *break*.  

A heavy silence stretched in the van, thick with tension and unsaid words.  

Steve broke it first.  

“You okay?”  

A pause.  

She could lie. Tell him she was fine. Tell him she was strong enough to handle this.  

But she wasn’t.  

“…No,” she admitted, voice barely above a whisper.  

Steve gave a slow nod, like he understood. Like he felt the exact same way.  

Her breath hitched slightly, but she forced herself to stay still, to push down the screaming panic clawing at her chest.  

The van rumbled along, the weight of their capture pressing in from all sides.  

Then—  

A gunshot.  

The van *lurched*.  

A body hit the floor.  

Another shot. Another body.  

Then—  

The doors *burst* open.  

Blinding light flooded the van, and before Y/N could even react, a figure leaped inside, moving with lethal precision.  

A gunshot rang out. Another soldier fell.  

Then—  

The figure pulled off their helmet.  

Maria Hill.  

She exhaled sharply, rolling her neck. “God, that thing was *squeezing* my brain.”  

Y/N stared. For the first time since being taken, something *cracked* inside her—relief.  

Steve didn’t hesitate. He surged forward, knocking the last guard unconscious before Maria tossed him a knife. He freed himself, then Sam.  

The moment Y/N’s cuffs snapped open, she *felt* it.  

The block on her powers *flickered*.  

The suppression wasn’t permanent. Already, something inside her was *waking up*, crawling back to the surface—  

She inhaled sharply.  

The world *shifted*.  

For the first time in what felt like *forever*, she could *breathe*.  

And she was *angry*.  

They had known how to take her down. But they didn’t know how fast she could recover.  

Big mistake.  

Maria grabbed a rifle from the ground. “Come on, we need to move.”  

Y/N rolled her shoulders, a slow, dark smirk curling at the edges of her lips.  

Hydra had made a *huge* mistake.  

And she was going to make sure they *regretted it*.  

—  

When they finally made it back to a safe location, Y/N still felt raw, her emotions a tangled mess of grief, shock, and fury.  

Then Maria led them into a dimly lit room—  

And there, lying on a hospital bed, very much *alive*—  

Was Nick Fury.  

Y/N’s breath caught in her throat.  

Steve froze.  

Sam muttered, “Oh, you gotta be kidding me.”  

Fury opened one eye, his voice raspy but unmistakably *him*.  

“About damn time.”

[nishitanis-left-nut]

finished LaD. I think Ichiban fixed something in me.

but first of all- took em long enough to give us a majima crotch shot in this game (what hes saying with no context makes this funnier. you gotta go 100 times WHAT)

positives first (im gonna make a separate post with all the more stinky complaining and nitpicking-)

"Once you're at rock bottom, the only way forward is up."

i feel like this is one of those phrases that gets so overused in media that whenever i see it it just automatically reads as insincere and a lazy way of trying to say something profound, and maybe im biased since i was in a place where i needed to hear it, but this time around it didnt feel like that. might have made me cry even. whos to say. the story is pretty self contained and simple (by yakuza standards) and ichiban is a nice man so it doesnt come across as it talking down to you?? the scene feels very encouraging and the lack of mean spiritedness in how ichiban talks and carries himself is nice??? i still feel like they set some things up and then subsequently did nothing with them but eh. i think most of my complaints about this game actually kinda boil down to how they spent the entirety of it teetering in between making it feel like a "yakuza game" and dealing with the new game mechanics and direction and not really knowing how to do both at the same time. eh.

do NOT separate them

this entire last scene gutted me actually. i noticed it back when saeko cries at the club but damn the crying in this game feels so visceral and real like- theyre full on ugly crying on screen. i tried looking back at other crying scenes in past games and the only ones that look and feel like this are kiryus reaction to rikiya getting shot and the nishiki forest scene in y0 (i know the animation is a product of its time too but also specifically with women, comparing sayama crying over ryuji and saeko crying over the soapland owner its like night and day. sayama looked pretty and her tears were barely there, not a grimace or wrinkle in SIGHT, saeko at least was allowed to look "ugly" when she cried) i dont think this scene wouldve hit me as hard as it did if they hadnt made ichi look as distraught as he does (also the vocal performance cuz holly shit? holy shit.)

i knew i was gonna like ichiban, look at him how can you NOT like him? but even while playing the game i didnt think he'd end up leaving that big of an impression on me. but here we are. we really do need more media that revolve around "Adulthood" and how different people cope with and adapt to it, i wish LaD had spent more time on those aspects of the story honestly since with each game it feels like the crime drama parts of it keep trying to get pushed to the backburner, but they still suffocate everything else- no, positives, positives-

im not someone who plays a lot of games so before i picked up any yakuza game id been feeling like Something Was Missing and that something was a piece of media. and then i played yakuza 0 and it was like oh. i guess i live here now. i really do need to start playing more videogames because i feel like its one of the phew mediums where we still constantly get adult protagonists dealing with Adult Things aside from romantic relationships or work without it also just being a parody or a comedy? and it taking itself seriously??

i keep thinking about yakuza 3 and how the game had you be with kiryu as he lived a normal life for a while, it felt like a resting point in his life because, well, it was. and how in yakuza 5 we got to go to work with him and i feel like stuff like that was missing from this game. every domestic and "normal" thing ichiban goes through in this game happens off screen, and for a game thats got friendship and the power of community at its center that feels kind of weird?

not sure how the rest of the fandom feels about y5 and the whole taxi substory and the parts of it you had to do for the main story but i really liked being able to see kiryu get somewhat comfortable in his new environment and do "normal" things. and, as flawed as it is, theres no debating the importance the quiet parts of yakuza 3 had on him and the games that came after it. if y3 hadnt had kiryu interact with the kids as much as it did, if it hadnt had us see how HAPPY he is living with them in okinawa, y5 and y6 wouldnt have hit as hard as their supposed to

in y5 you can even send money to the kids through atm's for christmas presents, and every time you do kiryu sends money thinking of a specific kid and he goes on a small tangent thinking about the things they like and how old they are and sending money according to what he thinks theyll want/need and its like- these are HIS KIDS. he knows their interests he knows their birthdays and even though hes not supposed to exist to them anymore he still wants them to have a good christmas because thats what children deserve thats what HIS children deserve-

i went- kiryu tangent. but back to ichiban, my point was that even in those games where they have the crime drama at the center and are extremely action packed, they still took the time to have kiryu do normal things so when he gets ripped from that you feel it. ichiban didnt get any of that, the crime drama isnt really as all-encompassing as it is in the other games and the "normal" bits of it you gotta hunt down around the map or be TOLD they happened

this was uh, this was supposed to be the Positive Thoughts post so ill get back to that rq. despite all of my barely disguised animosity towards how they didnt balanced the action and the character progressions i really did enjoy the game. i think. i adore ichiban so that counts right? im still real confused about why they established how he can get blinded with rage really easily but then didnt. do anything with that? in fact they kind of go back on it and just have him POSITIVE THOUGHTS POST GRAAAFKASFMPJJO

live laugh love ichiban, i wish the writers loved you as much as i do. i kept calling him a shonen protagonist in other posts because thats kind of the impression i got from him at the start and ive seen other people describe him like that too, but thats not exactly accurate to how he is as a character. hes a really nice person, a stubborn man thats got an idealistic view of the world and wants to make it better so his life and the people in it can be better. i love you kasuga ichiban and i hope whatever happens to you in infinite wealth isnt that bad cuz itll make me sad

who the FUCK are you nick and who do you work for

[hoemainexpansion]

Chapter Five: Could You Put it in For Me? I'm All Wet: You and Utahime celebrate your birthdays together and it allows the rest of the people in your life to finally meet your demonic companion. However, things completely go to shit and send Suguru into a panic as he worries for your safety.

Also on AO3: HomainExpansion

⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°

“Happy birthday!”

Everyone shouts as you and Utahime enter the living room to see all of your friends and family gathered around waiting to shower you both in attention. 

Every year the two of you celebrate your birthday on the twentieth of February since it’s in between the both of yours and that time has finally come. 

You’d planned on ignoring your birthday this year since everything going on has been sucking the fucking life out of you. But according to your best friend, that was the exact reason that you couldn’t skip it this year.

She even went on a long rant about how she was afraid that you were going to fall into a hole too deep and dark to get out of if you continued to do nothing except sit around and read news articles about tragic events. So, you took her advice and agreed to continue on with the tradition, as long as it was something a little bit more intimate than usual.

Manami suggested hosting a small party at the family home so that everybody could be somewhere that felt familiar and comfortable so you decided to take her up on that offer. You have a feeling that the reason that Suguru wasn’t opposed to a group of strangers being in his house was because it gave him the perfect opportunity to interrogate them. 

So far the only hiccup has been Gojo throwing a fit that you were going to be apart for a couple hours.

“But I’m supposed to protect you!”

“It’s only for a couple of hours so that Utahime and I can get ready together and then we’re going straight there, no detours.”

“But anything can happen in those couple of hours. What if someone attacks you and I’m not there?” Good lord he’s so fucking whiny.

“Can’t you teleport?”

“Yes. But as I mentioned before, I’m weaker the further apart we are. And the longer we’re apart, the weaker I get. Why do you think I’m always so close to you?”

“My dazzling personality?” He doesn’t say anything, just scowls. “Can’t you also feel when I’m in danger? You’ll know if I’m safe or not.”

“Those feelings are also weakened unless you’re in a life or death situation.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I decided to get you this!” You pull out a white box and hand it to him.

“A phone?”

“Yes. If I start to feel like shits getting weird, I’ll call you. I already have everybody who matters numbers saved in there for you. But besides that, you can customize it however you want.”

“You’re the only person I talk to. Who else do I need to call?”

“In case we ever get separated again for whatever reason, you’ll know I’m calling from someone else’s phone. Or who knows? The world is crazy. This way we have a backup to circumvent your power drawbacks.”

“Thanks,” you thought this would water down his fears a little bit but it’s clear that it hasn’t.

“Then why do you look like someone just kicked you in the balls?”

“We’re gonna be apart.” Oh. That’s what this is about. Clingy fucker.

“It’s only gonna be for a couple of hours. I’ll make sure we get ready super quick and we can keep in contact when you’re gone. But we have to do this. If Suguru sees that we won’t separate for even a few hours so that you can help set up the surprise party that Utahime and I already know is happening, he’ll think you’ve trapped me in an abusive relationship and won’t let me out of your sight.” He looks in shock then. You’d hate for him to feel that way but you have to be honest about how this will look if he’s around all the time and you never have any alone time with your friends.

“No detours?”

“No detours.”

“And we can still keep in contact?”

“Yes.” Clingy fucker.

“Fine. Only a couple of hours though.” You’ll take it.

“By the way, don’t go through your photos when you’re around other people,” you say with a smirk. 

“Why? What’s in there?”

“You’ll see,” and then you walk away.

After a few moments, you hear a whistle from the living room as you’re trying to get ready for bed. 

“I don’t remember seeing these ones on your phone!”

“They’re new!” You shout back. You never in your life imagined that you’d be taking risque photos for your clingy demon but here you are.

And that’s how you spent the evening before your shared birthday party. Even though he agreed the night before, he was still a little whiny when it came time to actually leave. Kento showed up and agreed to give him a ride since your apartment was on the way and Gojo was practically attached to you at the hip when he showed up. 

Yeah.

It’s a good thing that you’re going to take a few hours apart or this would look like a horrible relationship.

Well, fake relationship.

But aside from that, today has actually been pretty great. 

You got to have some girl time with your friend, she seemed to like your ‘hot dilf neighbor’ and this party has been going pretty smoothly.

So far, your favorite part has been watching Suguru question all of the guests. He’s already done Gojo so he started with Utahime’s new boyfriend who actually held up pretty well under pressure. And yeah, they’re officially boyfriend - girlfriend now, good for them. 

Kento was up next and you swear that they both just became good friends. What is it with dads being obsessed with history and loving to talk about it? Who knows, but they’re getting along because of it.

You even managed to convince Sukuna to come along since he’s basically been a protector and a friend throughout the past few years aside from just being someone who you work for. But you know that Suguru was really pushing to have him on the guest list so that he could question him about if any weirdos have been harassing you at the club. It’s through their conversation that you learn that the loser who grabbed you is Naoya Zenin, some rich prick with a spiteful personality. Your family wasn’t particularly happy about you withholding that information, but you just didn’t want to worry everyone. Luckily, they don’t seem too upset. Just more worried that he might hold a grudge. 

But thank goodness you invited Yuji because he was able to lighten the mood and that’s exactly what you were hoping for. You see him pretty often and you thought he’d be a nice person to have around and you were right. It’s been extra fun watching him interact with Sukuna as Sukuna continues to argue that he’s an only child and that he ‘doesn’t know this kid.’

Along with Utahime’s parents and a few other friends from high school, it still manages to feel like a pretty intimate gathering. 

Even with Gojo clinging to you every time a man looks at you, you don’t feel as overwhelmed as you thought that you would. 

Instead of doing a massive amount of cooking, Manami and Utahime’s mom got together to work on catering and they chose the restaurant that you two had your first joint birthday at together. It’s moments like these that make you realize just how much care they put into everything and it makes you smile.

But it also makes you feel a little guilty because if you’re being honest, you still pull away a lot and you’ve got to start working on that. 

“How are you doing, dear?”

A voice rips you out of your thoughts and you look up to see your best friend’s mom standing there.

“Hi Mrs. Iori.”

“Oh please, drop the formalities. We’ve known each other for so long,” she says with a flick of her wrist and you giggle. “I haven’t seen you in awhile. I tell my daughter to make sure you come over for dinner, but it appears that she’s been unsuccessful.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I finally got my own place and have been enjoying the isolation. And then with everything going on in the news, I’ve been enjoying it even more.”

“I can’t blame you for that. But sometimes it is good to be around other people.”

Like mother, like daughter.

“Utahime said the same thing.”

“That’s because she gets her smarts from me and not her father.” The two of you share a laugh and it makes you realize just how much you’ve missed them too.

“I’ll make the time, I promise.” She seems pleased with your answer and nods.

“Who’s the boy who’s been making heart eyes at you all night?”

“Heart eyes?!” She laughs at your reaction. 

“It’s obvious that he’s madly in love with you,” she says before Utahime calls her from across the room. “Excuse me, I must attend to my dramatic daughter.” She gives you a hug before walking away.

In love with you?

It must just be that he’s starving and desperate for this to be over with so that he can eat your soul. Even still, you take a look in the direction that you last saw him in and see him sitting with Yuji who seems to be excitedly raving about something but Gojo is still staring at you.

Maybe she’s right.

No. He’s a demon. That’s absurd.

Could he?

Do they feel emotions?

Fuck it.

That’s a problem for another day.

It starts getting late and guests are finally starting to depart which is nice because even though you’re grateful for them, your social battery is drained and you want to go to sleep. 

“Need me to give him a ride back home?” Kento asks you.

“Oh no, it’s fine. Thank you. But he’s going to come home with me.”

“Oooooohhhhhh!!!!” You hear your sisters shout from the other side of the room, hyping up the situation like they’re Flavor Flav. 

“Not like that! Nothing is going to happen!” You start waving your arms around as if that’s what’s going to diffuse the situation, but you already know that it’s hopeless. You just don’t want your family to think you’re taking a guy home just so that he can fuck you through the mattress.

Everyone in the room starts laughing and you do too in an attempt to play along. 

Gojo throws his arm around Kento and you can already feel his irritation starting to rise but you can’t help but watch this car crash. 

“Thank you for offering to take me home Nanamiiiinn,” your friend scowls now and you do your best to hide your laugh. “I guess since we’re friends now, that kind of makes us boyfriends.” He shakes off Gojo’s arm and starts to walk away. “Whaaaatt? Girls call each other ‘girlfriends,’ why can’t I call you my boyfriend?” Everyone else starts to laugh at your fake boyfriend's shenanigans and you have a feeling that you won’t be seeing Kento for quite some time. 

Everyone starts making their rounds to say goodbye and one by one people start to leave signaling that it’s probably also your time to start heading out. You go to grab your purse before saying goodbye to your family when Manami approaches you and you already know what’s coming.

“Oh dear, it’s getting late. Why don’t you stay the night?” You’re about to open your mouth to refuse when she interrupts you first, “your friend can even spend the night.”

Your eyes widen in shock because what? “Suguru would hate that.”

“I’ll handle Suguru. Your friend can stay as long as you sleep in separate bedrooms and if you are in one room together, you must keep the door open. But besides that, I don’t see an issue.” Good thing the two of you aren’t having sex or this would be disappointing.

“Okay, we’ll stay.”

She looks completely blown away by your acceptance. You usually don’t agree to spur of the moment things like this but you just promised yourself you’d spend more time with them, so you’re going to follow up on that. 

“I’ll make some tea and speak with Suguru so that you can show him around.”

You walk over to Gojo who’s engrossed in games on his new phone and tap him on the shoulder. His bright blue eyes look up at you and it’s in that moment that you think that he’s really growing on you. It’s not like you haven’t been getting along before this or anything. Maybe it’s just everyone else convincing you that there’s something more even though you didn’t think there was. 

“We’re spending the night.”

“We? I don’t think your dad is going to like a boy sleeping with his daughter.”

“Manami said that we have to sleep in separate rooms otherwise it’s fine.”

He pulls you to the side so that Nanako and Mimiko can’t hear you. “I just spent the entire day without you and now we can’t sleep together?”

If you didn’t know any better, you’d say that’s pure pain in his voice.

“We didn’t spend the entire day apart.”

“But I had to share you. With everyone!” He whisper yells.

“It’s only for tonight. We can hang out in my room as long as the door’s open and you’ll sleep in the room down the hall. We can leave in the morning.”

He looks completely defeated but he accepts. If you’re being honest, you do feel a little bad but you spend literally twenty four - seven with him. He’ll be okay being in your family home for one night.

Just then Suguru comes over with that smile that most people would think is sweet but you can tell that someone is about to get a lecture.

“I’m sorry, but may I borrow Mr. Gojo here for a moment?” Oh shit.

You nod in agreement and take a seat on the couch trying your best to eavesdrop but they’re too far away. You hear a door close and assume that they’re in his office so you just make a note to ask your companion about it later.

“My wife just told me that you’ll be spending the night in our home,” he says but Gojo knows that it’s not really a question.

“I just found out myself… sir.”

“Have you been told that you’ll be sleeping in another bedroom?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Good. I just wanted you to know that if I find out that you spent the entire night in my daughter’s room with her door closed, that’ll be the last time that you ever do that,” he gets more serious and even Gojo is intimidated.

“I promise that I won’t be doing anything inappropriate with your daughter, especially not in your home.”

“I would hope not. I used to also be a twenty something young man and I understand… temptation.”

“I’m good at resisting temptation.” 

“I hope for your sake that you are. Otherwise, that’ll be the last time you ever have to worry about succumbing to it.” Gojo’s eyes widen and Suguru continues, “and before you ask, yes, that was a threat.”

“I promise that you have nothing to worry about. I’ll follow your rules.”

“Good!” Suguru says before leading him out of the room, “then I hope you’ll enjoy your stay.”

They both return to the room and you can see what looks like a bit of fear written on Gojo’s face. What the fuck did Suguru say to him that scared a demon?

“Is everything okay?” You ask but you’re kind of scared of the answer.

“Everything is fine,” Suguru responds. “I know today has been a long day for you, so you may retire upstairs if you like.” He gives you a kiss on the forehead and goes to join his wife in the kitchen.

You grab Gojo by the arm and start dragging him up the staircase.

“What the hell was that?”

“Your dad is fucking terrifying!” Gojo says and you laugh. “What’s so funny?”

You pull him close and whisper in his ear, “you’re a demon. Why are you scared of a detective?”

“He has an intimidating aura. If I still had bodily functions, I would have shit myself.” You know that he’s serious but you can’t stop laughing. “Seriously! He threatened to kill me.”

“He did?!”

“Not in so many words, but yes. Or threatened to cut my dick off which is also terrible.”

“Can either of those things happen?”

“I can heal myself so nothing is really a death sentence.”

“Then why do you seem so scared?”

“Your dad has to like me!”

He’s taking this role so seriously and you kind of love it. You finally make it to your bedroom and he’s in awe the second he steps inside and starts looking around. You don’t have a lot of posters on the wall or anything, but you can still feel how this is your room.

You have a computer desk set up with one of those expensive ass chairs with a print on it from your favorite anime that was a birthday gift one year. The desk itself is covered in notebooks and gel pens showing just how much time you spend there whenever you come over. There’s a wax warmer in the corner of the room with a jar overflowing with wax so thank goodness Manami had you put it on a plate, but it does look pretty cool. There’s a bookshelf with Junji Ito and horror novels all over it and mixed in there’s some Funko’s and figurines of your favorite characters. You have a separate table set up with all your makeup that you keep here so that you don’t have to travel with it back and forth. It’s actually funny how even though it seemed like everything was packed up for the move, there’s still a touch of you here and it makes you feel at home.

You always see in movies and shows how when a child moves out, the parents immediately turn that room into a gym but that’s not the case here. You can tell that Manami comes in to dust just to make sure it stays clean. But besides that, they gave you this room and they continue to leave it for you and it’s sweet.

“You usually dress up pretty goth, I have to say that I’m surprised by the bedding.” A while back you came across a light pink and white bed set from Betsey Johnson and you just had to have it. It’s floral and when you saw the word ‘reversible,’ you couldn’t hold back on getting it. 

You read somewhere awhile back that if there’s one room that you’re supposed to splurge on, it’s your bedroom since that’s your most personal space that you should feel the most comfortable in. You’ve since taken that to heart and can honestly say it’s one of the things that’s kept you sane throughout the years. That’s another reason why you haven’t been engaging in your ‘hoe years’ as your friends call it, you can’t let just anyone in your space. 

“I’ve started wearing more color throughout the years but there was a time when that was abnormal.” You take a seat on the bed and just watch him as he looks around.

“So…” he pauses and you have a feeling that this conversation is going to be a shit sandwich. “How many other guys have seen this room?”

For fuck’s sake.

“One.”

“Just one?” He asks while taking a seat next to you on the bed.

“Just one. I’ve only had one boyfriend. Did you think my bedroom was a revolving door of random dicks for years or something?”

“Just curious,” he acts like it’s no big deal but you can tell that even that one is killing him.

“How many women have seen your bedroom?”

“Six,” he replies with no hesitation.

“I have to admit, I didn’t think you were going to answer that.”

“Who not? Expecting less?”

“More. A lot more.”

“What? Nine?” He’s so cute.

“I didn’t think it was going to be less than thirty,” he grimaces like you just said the most absurd thing.

“Why do you look so horrified? You’re a cute boy, that being someone’s guess can’t surprise you.”

“You think I’m cute?” He asks with a smirk.

“Gojo–”

“Satoru.”

“What?”

“You always call me Gojo but call everyone else by their first names. Do you not like me? Are we not friends?” Oh my god.

“Of course we are.”

“Hmmm. Anyway, I told you a bit about when I was a human. I worked too much to really partake in any activities so having an active sex life was towards the bottom of the list. Most of my partners are from after I turned.”

“Did anyone ever command you to have sex with them?”

“Yeah.” He looks a little sad after admitting that.

“Were you okay with that?” Once those words fall from your lips, you immediately want to take them back. It feels too personal to be phrased as casual as you just said it.

“I don’t know. I never really thought about it. None of my masters have really asked about my well being or worried about how I felt except for you.” That’s a fucking bummer, no wonder he doesn’t just volunteer that information. “You took me to a bakery because I like sweets and got me a phone so that we can stay in contact even though we’re in the same room all day. Nobody else I’ve served would have done any of those things. They find out that they can order me around and they take advantage because they want to get their ‘souls worth.’”

Hearing him say all of that puts literally everything into perspective. You’ve been bitching and moaning about how crazy it is that he’s super clingy and possessive but now it all makes sense. 

In your eyes, you haven’t gone above and beyond for him. 

But in his eyes, you have.

Where you look at the things you’ve done as small things you’d do for a friend, he views them as grand gestures of kindness and while you appreciate his being grateful, it does make you a little sad that he considers them such a big deal. But that’s not going to change anything. You’re going to continue to do things for him and show him around because him being so excited about everything makes you happy as well. That’s how you’ll get your ‘souls worth.’ He is protecting you around the clock, the least you can do is entertain him as well.

“I like this thing that you do with your socks. Back in my day, a woman would’ve been flogged for wearing something like this.” He tugs on one of your thigh highs and starts to laugh.

“Back in ‘your day,’ didn’t women wear corsets and have their tits practically pushed up and out of their gowns?”

“I didn’t say it made any sense.”

You giggle and hand him the remote. “Put something on the tv so that they don’t think we’re in here flirting all night.” The next part you make sure to raise your voice for, “and something to drown out our voices so that the twins in the hallway who like to eavesdrop can’t hear.”

They start to giggle and you hear footsteps receding and that’s how you know you were right.

“Shit, do you think they heard everything?”

“I heard them start coming close around the socks. We’ll be fine.”

You turn to lay on your side, facing him, and listen out for what he puts on.

“Wife Swap?!” You immediately laugh because it’s been some time since you’ve seen that.

“I’ve had a lot of time to watch tv since I’ve been with you, this show is surprisingly hilarious. Back in my day, if a woman swapped husbands, she’d probably be executed.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. It’s also crazy seeing people who are so cheap they volunteer to not bathe at all and when they do it’s a bucket bath. Why are your people so obsessed with regressing? That shit sucked. I love showers.”

“It’s funny because every history teacher I’ve ever had always said, ‘it’s important to know your history so that we don’t repeat it,’ and then you see a bunch of people wanting to undo progress.”

“Looks like they didn’t get the messenger pigeon.” He’s so cute.

Before you know it, you start drifting off to the sound of his soft laughs.

When you wake up in the morning, you find yourself alone in bed and have to admit that you’re a little surprised. You definitely thought that you’d wake up to Gojo and just have to apologize to Suguru and Manami in the morning, but apparently not. 

You stretch a little before getting out of bed and doing as much of your morning routine as you can with what remains in your room. After freshening up and changing your clothes, you make your way down the hallway to the guest bedroom Satoru is supposed to be in, but you find it empty.

As you descend the stairs, you hear laughter coming from the kitchen and it stuns you.

Is that Satoru and Suguru?

Laughing in the kitchen?

Like friends from high school?

Now you’ve seen it all.

You rush over to the kitchen to find them sitting across from each other, at the kitchen table, Suguru with a mug of coffee in one hand, and Satoru with a glass of orange juice in his. And they’re just having a grand old time like Suguru didn’t put the fear of god into him last night.

It’s Suguru who notices you first and waves you into the kitchen, “good morning dear, come join us. How’d you sleep?”

“Uhhhh, fine. How are you? Both of you?”

“Turns out that your dad is pretty cool.”

How the hell did this happen?

“I must say, this young man is not as bad as I thought he was.” He turns to Satoru then. “I do apologize for last night, but you must understand that my only intent is to protect my daughter.”

They start chatting like they’ve been best friends for years and you decide to just take a seat and let them do their thing. After a few minutes, Suguru asks if you’ll stay for breakfast but you decline with an excuse about needing to run a few errands before your next day at work and you don’t want to push it off until the last minute. For the first time in a while, he doesn’t look disappointed by your refusal and that’s all you needed to know that you’ll take him up on more of his offers in the future. You run back upstairs to grab your bag before he walks you both out to your car.

“Keep in touch,” he says while pulling you into a hug. “You too, Satoru.”

“Will do, sir.”

After you get in the car and drive a few blocks away, you ask Satoru what happened. “How did you go from being terrified of him last night to being best friends this morning?”

“I’m not sure. He just started laughing at my jokes and said that he’s really happy that we followed his rules.”

Was that all just a test?

“Well, that’s good then. When did you leave?”

“About an hour after you fell asleep. I didn’t want to wake you up by getting out of bed right away.”

“And you were okay? In the guest room?”

“Yeah. Lucky for me, my master loaded up this phone with beautiful photos she took so they kept me company last night,” he says with a smile.

“Satoru!” He laughs and you just enjoy the music for the rest of the ride home.

When you arrive at your floor, you’re a little taken aback by the fact that there’s a box on the floor in front of your door. At first you think nothing of it since your birthday is in two days. But then you remember that you and Utahime just had your joint birthday party and if anyone was going to give you a gift, they always do it then. 

You unlock your door and then bring the box inside, setting it down on the kitchen counter. 

It’s a red box wrapped in white ribbon with a gift tag attached. You untie the ribbon to remove the tie and read what’s inside. It’s pretty vague and there’s nothing written down that indicates who it’s from. All it says is, ‘Happy Birthday.’

Fuck it.

You pull off the rest of the ribbon and open the box to see that there’s nothing inside except for a white envelope. It’s not a huge box, but pretty big for an envelope to be the only thing that’s inside. The box itself is big enough to fit a cute boombox from the early 2000’s so that throws you off. But maybe the person who left it behind didn’t want to run the risk of someone stealing just an envelope because of the thought that there’s money inside or something.

“Who’s it from?” Satoru asks from over your shoulder.

“I don’t know. There’s no name left behind.”

You finally pull out the envelope to find it sealed shut which is a choice considering they put it in a box. Good thing Manami got you a letter opener a few years ago and you retrieve it from your bedroom before returning to the box. 

You grab the envelope again and maneuver the letter opener into a small opening and tear the top open.

“I have to say, I assumed that letter openers would be one of those things people retired by now.”

“Most people do since everything is done by phone or computer. But I really like stationary stuff so Mananmi got me this for Christmas a few years ago.”

When you first start to pull what’s inside out, it feels like a photograph. It’s completely white but the underside is sticky which means you probably pulled it out upside down. Once you see it, you gasp.

It’s just a photo of a fingerprint.

‎⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°

There’s no way for you to feel other than being completely tired of this shit. 

You’ve been sitting in this goddam police station for what feels like fucking days but it’s only been six hours. But cops making you retell the same story over and over again makes it feel like time is moving in slow motion and you fucking hate it.

You’ve been sitting in this interview room alone for the past ten minutes just browsing on your phone, luckily they let you keep that, in an attempt to keep yourself busy. 

You know the cop routine of stepping out of the room and talking about whoever they’re observing through the two way mirror so you just wanna sit here and give them no reason to suspect that you set them up on this goose chase.

You also don’t want to go viral like that fucking lunatic who was doing handstands and shit in between interrogations.

Due to his being close to you, they immediately took Suguru off this case which means that you’re getting the full officer effect today.

Fuck.

They said that if there're more incidents, they’ll consider letting him have a part in it due to being on the case the longest, but until then, he’s been sidelined. That means that there’s no one to sit with you while you get questioned like you’re a suspect.

You’ve also been separated from Satoru who’s apparently been in another room getting questioned the entire time as well.

He must be hating this.

You’ve gone over your story at least five times with Detective Kong, the only other person you’ve known in this station as long as Suguru due to the fact that they used to be partners, before he got transferred. He was only recently moved back within the past six months so they don’t consider him ‘too close to home’ or something.

Just then, you hear the door open and see him standing before you with his notebook in hand, “I just want to go over your story one more time and then we can get you out of here, okay?”

“Sure thing.”

He closes the door behind him and takes a seat at the table, right next to you.

“One more time, a quick run down please. When did you leave? Get home? Open the package? All that stuff?”

“Satoru and I left home in the morning not too long after I woke up. We drove straight back to my apartment and discovered the box when walking down the hallway and approaching my door. I opened the door, grabbed the box, put it on the kitchen counter, and then opened it up right away. As soon as I saw what was inside, I called Suguru.”

“Why did you call Suguru instead of just 911?” Really?

“I didn’t consider a box left outside my front door something that required immediate response from emergency services. Also, if it turned out to be a prank, it would have been a waste of time. Plus, the operator probably would have thought I was just fucking around. So, I called Suguru knowing that he’d know what to do next.”

“You were with this… Satoru… the entire night?”

You’ve got to be kidding. That’s new.

“Yes. We spent the night at Suguru and Manami’s house yesterday.”

“Are you sure he was there the entire night?”

“What are you getting at, Detective Kong?”

“I’m just trying to account for everyone’s whereabouts. This is a print left behind by an unknown serial killer, we just want to make sure we find the right person.”

“Satoru was there the entire night.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I feel sure.”

“‘Feel sure?’ What does that mean?”

“I fell asleep with him next to me in bed and woke up to find him in the kitchen with Suguru.”

“So you don’t actually know if he was there the entire night? Due to you falling asleep? How do you know that he didn’t take your car and then come back?”

“He can’t drive.”

“He’s a grown man.”

“Who can’t drive.”

“Why not?” Ugh.

“He grew up in a sheltered religious upbringing and that wasn’t something on his parents to-do lists. And walking would have taken forever. And even if he did, I’m sure a six foot three man with white hair would stand out on cctv footage. Plus, my building has surveillance cameras everywhere and he’d definitely be recognized on camera seeing as he’s spent so much time there.”

“Uber? Lyft?” Now you’re starting to get pissed off.

“That can be tracked. But if you made it all the way to detective, then I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that.”

He chuckles in response. 

You’re glad he finds this so fucking funny because you’re about a millisecond away from lawyering up and telling him to go fuck himself. You want answers, but you also don’t want to be accused of something that can so easily be disproven, Satoru either.

“That is true,” he starts, “your boyfriend willingly handed over his phone and there’s no records of those apps ever being on his phone so I guess that is ruled out.” Then why the fucking questions? “Speaking of surveillance footage from your building, we’re retrieving and reviewing it now so I suppose you’re correct that he would be seen.” Obviously. 

You lean back in your seat and cross your arms, clearly over his mood. You understand that he’s just trying to do his job but you’re over this.

“Just another few questions.” You audibly sigh and catch his irritated expression when you do. 

But like being saved by the bell, someone knocks on the door and stops him before he can even get going.

The door opens and an officer that you don’t know steps inside, “Detective Kong, there’s a man here to see her,” they point at you. 

In walks a tall, tired eyed man in a sharp black suit carrying a briefcase. 

“Who are you?” He asks the man.

“I’m her lawyer Hiromi Higuruma and if she’s not under arrest, this questioning is concluded.”

You don’t have a lawyer but thank fucking goodness someone thinks you do.

“I just have a few more questions for her.”

“Is she under arrest?”

“No.”

“Then she’ll be leaving with me. The gentleman too.”

You smile and shoot up and out of your chair to follow him out of the room. You just know that anytime a cop says they only have a few questions, you’ll be there another two hours and you just want to go home.

After exiting the room, you see Suguru standing in the hallway and run over to him immediately.

“Suguru, you know better than to interrupt an investigation,” his former partner says.

“I’m not interrupting an investigation. I’m protecting my daughter. Those questions were getting a little too pointed for my liking and I can safely say that she and her boyfriend were at my home the entire night.”

“You’ll sign a sworn affidavit?”

“Yes. I can even provide the security footage from my home that proves that neither of them even stepped out on the porch last night, let alone my property in the middle of it.”

You can’t see Kong’s reaction since you’ve decided to bury your face in Suguru’s chest, but you can just feel that he’s not happy about this.

“You can’t blame my questioning seeing as most of the time, it is the romantic partner.”

“That’s true. But they’ve only gotten together as of late, it’s highly unlikely that he’s an accomplice or decided to track her down seven years after that fact. Plus, a basic search would have answered all of your questions instead of keeping them here all day. With that, we’ll be taking our leave.”

Suguru puts his hand on your back and starts to lead you out of the station with Higuruma trailing close behind. When you reach the reception area, you see Satoru sitting in the waiting area waiting for you, impatiently tapping his foot. When he sees you, he runs over and pulls you into a tight hug, holding you for a minute.

Eventually you make your way outside and consider it finally a safe time to ask, “a lawyer? Really? Do you think I’m in trouble?”

“No. I’m sure you’ll be fine considering there’s evidence to corroborate everything that you said, it’s just a precaution,” Suguru responds. 

“Now what?”

“I’ll give you Higuruma’s number in case anyone tries to contact you again. Just make it clear that you don’t want to speak to anyone without him being present and you should be fine. And that goes for both of you.”

You and Satoru both nod in agreement and Suguru puts his hands on your shoulders, so you know what’s coming.

“Sweetheart,” oh dear, “you should come home for the time being. Just until we find out what’s going on.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” you say with a laugh.

“I must be getting predictable in my old age.” Getting? “It’s just a precaution.”

“I know but… I’m gonna go home for now. Did they search my apartment?”

“No, they didn’t have a search warrant.”

“Would it make you feel better if you searched it before I went back?”

“Yes,” he says after thinking about it for a minute. 

You thank Higuruma for getting you out of there and take his card before getting in the car with Suguru and going back to your building. 

“Did you watch the interview?” You ask Suguru once you’re back in his car.

“I did. You did well.”

“Was I bitchy?” He raises a brow at you. “At one point, Shiu looked kind of irritated.”

“You were asked the same questions for six hours before new ones came out of nowhere. If it were me, I feel I would have been a lot more curt than you were.” That makes you feel better. 

When you get to your apartment, Suguru does his detective thing and searches the entire apartment from top to bottom. He moves stuff out of the way to make sure there’s no hidden cameras, checks behind every door and under every piece of furniture. He looks around for about an hour before he deems it safe but that doesn’t stop him from trying to convince you to go back home with him. He even offers to let Satoru come back since he, according to him, ‘can see how attached you are to each other,’ but you politely turn down his offer. 

“I just don’t like you being so far away,” he says.

“I’m not. And either way, I have Satoru here and I can use him as a human shield,” you respond while laughing.

“I’m serious, I just want to make sure that you’re safe.”

“So am I. I know that you mean well. But I called you immediately after I got the box, right?”

“Yes.”

“So, can you trust that I’ll call you if I feel like something else is off? I promise I won’t wait.”

He sighs before finally agreeing. “Please don’t take risks just because you have someone else here.”

“I won’t.” 

He pulls you into a hug before turning to Satoru and telling him to keep in contact, especially if something feels off. You’re really surprised how much their relationship has improved in like, a day, but you appreciate it. Eventually your protective adoptive father leaves and it’s just you and Satoru alone in what feels like days.

Satoru rushes over to you and pulls you into a kiss, completely catching you off guard.

“Sorry about that. I should have asked first. But it feels like I haven’t had any time with you in years.”

“Oh, it’s o-okay,” you start to stutter. It’s been literally years since you’ve kissed anyone and you weren’t expecting it today.

“Now what?”

“I’m gonna take a bath.”

It’s been years since you’ve taken an actual bath since you’re so accustomed to showers, but you’re definitely going to do it today, you’ve earned it. You haven’t used the claw foot tub you wanted so much because it’s felt like time never slows down enough for you to do so, but you’re making that time now.

You go through the closet that you keep the towels and other bathroom essentials in and pull out a pink box with a strong perfume smell.

“Good thing I got these in advance,” you mutter to yourself.

Inside of the box is about twenty bath bombs. You loved when those videos went viral of people recording them dissolving and changing the color of the water and whatever else, so you got a bunch for yourself. You pull out one that’s pink and blue with specks of gold in there and take it to the bathroom to sit on the sink before filling up the tub.

“What’s that?”

“A bath bomb.”

“You’re gonna blow up your tub?” Satoru asks that so seriously and you can’t help but giggle.

“It’s kind of like a colorful perfume ball. It’s going to dissolve and color the water and stuff, they’re pretty cool.”

“Is there anything this time doesn’t have?”

“World peace?”

“Oh baby, the world will never have that.” Damn dude. Dark.

You go into the bathroom to get undressed once you hear that the tub is full enough and you do the exact thing that you’d been telling yourself not to forget. 

You left the fucking bath bomb on the counter.

The far side too.

Far enough that if you step out of the tub, you’re going to soak the floor.

Thank goodness you have someone sitting around your apartment practically waiting for orders and that they’ve already seen you undressed so this isn’t as awkward as it could be.

“Satoruuuuuu!” You yell from the tub. He comes into the bathroom and immediately averts his gaze once he sees you in the tub, but you can still see the pink on his cheeks. His reaction really shocks you this time seeing as he typically is doing anything he can to get even the slightest peek of anything. “I forgot the bath bomb, would you get it for me?”

He grabs it from the sink and starts to walk over to you, staring down at the floor the entire time. 

“Could you put it in for me? I’m all wet.” His eyes shoot open and you regret your phrasing. “My hands, I mean.”

The both of you laugh it off and he gently places it in the tub. It immediately starts to dissolve and he looks like he’s in awe. The bomb starts to spin around as different colors start to cover the water along with what looks like gold glitter. 

“It smells like blueberries.”

“Yeah, I like the fruity scents.”

He sits on the floor next to the tub and just watches it dissolve and it makes you think of the time your friend’s puppy did the same thing.

He’s so cute.

“You’re going to be okay, you know? I’ll protect you.”

“I know. But I do have to keep Suguru in the loop more, I think he feels left out.”

“He wants to protect you and he’s afraid you’re going to put yourself in danger.” So that’s what they were talking about?

“I won’t. At least, I wouldn’t have before. I might be more willing to be proactive now instead of reactive later.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m so tired of not having answers for this shit. I kinda wanna go out and do my own investigation and hopefully figure something out to help solve the case.”

“You know, you are allowed to take a break and enjoy your life,” he says and that shocks you.

“But, don’t you wanna eat my soul?”

“It can wait,” he looks so sweet as he says that. “I’m on level forty seven of Peggle Blast.” There it is. “These gnomes fucking suck.”

The both of you laugh and just sit there enjoying the silence together for the rest of the time that you’re in the tub.

 As peaceful as this moment feels, you can’t completely shut your mind off.

You just have so many unanswered questions that are driving you fucking crazy. How did this person who did what they did to your parents know where you live? That means that it’s not a coincidence and you didn’t realize that you’ve been in proximity to them, or it means that they’ve been watching you.

For seven years.

But why?

You’re not going to lie to yourself, you absolutely understand Suguru’s paranoia. You’ve already decided that if one more thing happens, you will go back home to stay with them if he insists, you’d just hate to put other people at risk by doing so. 

You love them. You love all of them and now that you know that monster is getting closer, it just concerns you to be around anyone that you care about.

What a conundrum.

“Turn your brain off,” Satoru says out of nowhere.

“Huh?”

“You’re stressing yourself out. Turn your brain off. I’m here to protect you and as long as we’re around your family and friends, I’ll watch over them too.” He’s so sweet.

“I’m sorry, I’m just overthinking.”

“Well… stop. Need a distraction?”

“Like what?”

“Wanna have sex?”

“Huuuuhhhhhh?! How’d you come up with that as a distraction?”

“Oh please, like you haven’t been trying to seduce me since we got home.”

“Seduce you?! I’m a virgin! I don’t know how to seduce anyone.”

“Oh Satoru, will you put it in for me? I’m all wet,” he says while impersonating your voice and you bust out in laughter that has tears rolling down your face. You didn’t realize that’s how it came off and you think that he actually has a point.

“Okay… fair. But I wasn’t trying to seduce you.”

“Oh yeah? What’s next? Gonna ask me to get your towels for you?” They are kinda far away but you’re not going to ask him now. “You were gonna ask me huh?”

“Pshh, no.” You couldn’t even make that sound convincing based on the look on his face.

“Okay. Then I’m just going to retire to the bedroom where you let me sleep next to you every night while I eagerly await your legs on either side of my face.”

“Satoru!”

He doesn’t say anything else. Just laughs and walks out the door, closing it behind him.

If you’re being honest, his technique of breaking your walls down is working. 

It’s in that moment that you realize just how horny you are. It’s been weeks since you’ve used any of your vibrators because moving took a lot out of you and then you’ve had Satoru basically glued to your side which leaves you little to no privacy. You can’t exactly ask him to sit in the other room while you do anything because he’ll probably just have his ear glued to the door, listening out for any sound you make.

Unfortunately, all you can hear in your head now is Cardi B saying, “beat this shit like a drum.”

Ugh.

Maybe if you’re completely quiet, you can touch yourself just a little bit before climbing out of the bath. You slowly move your hand down doing your best to prevent any excess movement in the water that would cause any noise. But once you get your hands between your legs, your hopes are dashed.

“I can feel that!” You hear Satoru shout from your bedroom.

“Fuck you! You feel that too?”

“Afraid so babe!”

You just groan before pulling the plug on the tub and making your way over to the shower to rinse off and wash your hair. But now that your sexual frustration has been brought to the forefront of your mind, it’s all you can think about and it’s driving you crazy. 

You force yourself to think of literally anything else as you wash your hair and ignore the hot spawn from hell waiting to drag you down into sin and debauchery with him. 

Unfortunately, your shower has to come to an end at some point and you turn off the water, step out, and turn your bathroom floor into a fucking pool due to you forgetting the towels on the other side of the bathroom. Oh well. Can’t be helped.

You wrap up your hair first and then tie the towel around your body before stepping out and seeing Satoru laying on your bed. 

“Hey babe, how do you feel?” He asks with a smirk.

“Eat me!”

“I’d love to!” He starts to get up but then you stop him.

“That’s just a figure of speech.”

“That’s a figure of speech?”

“Yes. It’s like when guys get mad and they tell someone to suck their dick.”

“People say that too?” He looks completely dumbfounded. “How is that an insult?”

“Because people don’t want to perform oral sex on people they’re fighting with.”

“That’s one of the best times!” What?

If you’re being honest with yourself, you kind of want to let him have his way with you. You wanted your first time to be special and with someone who you have a connection with and that’s clearly him. Although you don’t spend a bunch of time talking about feelings, it’s evident by what you do know how he feels. 

Maybe he wouldn’t be the worst choice.

But you’re going to force yourself to save that problem for another day. You don’t want to make a big decision just because you’re feeling frustrated.

You pull a giant shirt and a pair of panties from your pajama drawer, get dressed, and then return to your room to climb into bed.

You’re achy in ways that you didn’t think possible and it’s not like you did any physical activity. But the mental drain of being at the station all day sucked the fucking life out of you. It’s only early evening and you already feel ready for bed but you know that it’ll kill your sleep schedule.

Ugh.

What to do. What to do.

“Going to bed? It’s kind of early, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what to do with myself. This day was particularly draining.”

He lifts up his arm and you just scrunch your brows at him, having no idea what he’s doing.

“What?”

“Come here.”

“Oh… you wanna cuddle me, Satoru?”

“Why not? You’re hot.” Of course that’s what he’d say.

You decide to take him up on his offer and scoot closer to him before resting your head on his chest. It's a surprisingly sweet gesture and you feel more comfortable than you thought you wouldn’t.

“These phone things are amazing. If a kid in my day saw one of these things, I think their head would explode.” You let out a weak little laugh before eventually falling asleep.

‎⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°

“Sweetheart, wake up. Hey, wake up.” You feel someone trying to gently shake you awake but your eyes are so heavy that it’s hard for you to open them. “Please, we have to go.”

When you’re finally able to open your eyes, you see Suguru standing before you with nothing but pure fear written across his face. You’ve never seen him look like this in your life and it immediately causes you to panic.

“Is everything okay? Where’s Satoru?” You look around the room when you notice that he’s not in bed with you anymore.

“He’s packing a few bags for you. We have to go.”

“Suguru, what the hell is going on?”

He sits down on your bed next to you before speaking, “a family member of one of the previous victims has been found deceased along with their partner. A print was found at the scene and came through as a match which unfortunately didn’t come through until a couple of days later. But now that we know that it’s connected, I’d like you to come home, at least for a few days.”

This time, you don’t argue.

You get up, go to the bathroom to wake yourself up and grab a few things before rejoining Suguru and Satoru in your bedroom.

“I didn’t know exactly what you’d need so I just packed a bit of everything. Even some of your ‘work clothes,’” and he puts work clothes in quotations.

“That’s fine. Anything else that I need can be bought or someone can accompany me back to get them. Can he come?” You turn to Suguru and ask.

“Of course. I knew you’d fight me otherwise.” You just chuckle in response and grab a few more things before heading out the door.

That’s how you found yourself woken up at midnight and rushed into Suguru’s car on the way back to your family’s home. 

‎⋆˙⟡♡✧˖°

[lamoorgalore]

Connections that I've made between The Riders in "Marks of the Evil One" and the previous Papas

So I don't know if people have already made these connections before, this is my first week of really learning about the lore of Ghost. I've listened to the music before, but I haven't really gotten into it before this week!

But I know people have made the connection of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Papas that we know. I just wanted to write down what's been stewing in my brain. :D I'll put it under a read more, since this got pretty long :,D

"One rider has a bow/Rides a steed, white/And wears a crown, conquering" This is Papa Emeritis I. I see his weapon as the bow being the first Papa that we've seen on stage. He's the scout of the party, mostly unseen by the enemy but his impact being felt further than thought possible. Also! Other than Papa Nihil, he also wore a white chasuble. He is the first Papa Emeritus (Wears a crown), and started the band back up and gaining almost instant popularity (conquering).

"A second rider joins/On a steed, red/Swinging a sword, mongering" From what I've seen, Papa Emeritis I and II seem to come as a pair. From them being brothers born 3 months apart and also Papa II wearing Papa I's same face paint for a while. They're also the only Papas to have the mic passed down peacefully between each other on stage. The album that Papa Emeritus II released, "Infestissumam" was about the Antichrist, impending doom, the name itself translating roughly to "the biggest threat". That certainly brings to mind a strong Melee warrior on the front lines, sowing fear. His red steed also brings to mind his red sunglasses that he used to wear.

"The third rider looks cool/On his steed, black/A pair of scales in his hand" This one feels a bit ironic, considering the sad fate of Papa Emeritus III. From my short time learning about the previous Popes, Terzo's story feels the most tragic. After picking up the mic from what was said to be a bitter and inefficient pope, he seemed to be where the Pope's stage performance started appealing to the modern audience. Terzo wearing the tailscoat and pants on stage, being a much more active performer and sitting down to have face-to-face talks with the audience. He was even the pope to win Ghost their first Grammy with "Cirice!"

But all of the accolades are nothing compared to the injustice and nepotism of Sister Imperator. She wanted her son in power as Pope, and drags Terzo off stage, later tricking him into thinking he'll go back on tour "Back in the spotlight, forever!" and instead killing and embalming both him and the previous Popes in glass coffins to be seen by the congregation forever. For a rider holding scales of justice, his story is anything but just.

"The fourth rider is death/Rides a steed, pale/And Hades follows him" This is personally, headcanon from me atp. But Copia being the fourth rider of Death with Hades following him just reminds me of his entire story during the Chapters. The threat of him being just the next Pope lined up to be killed and stuffed and displayed in a coffin is a constant threat hanging over him. Mr. Psaltarian and Sister Imperator casually bringing up "The End of the Summer Tour" and telling him not to worry about the "Brand New Coffin" being wheeled through the ministry. And with Rite Here Rite Now, it's this conflict that's front and center as the final tour of the summer draws closer. But instead of him dying, his mother dies in front of him, becoming a ghost just like Papa Nihil.

Speaking of which, Papa Emeritus IV's move up in power always seems to come at a cost of someone else's life. Papa Nihil dies after his sax solo mid-concert, thus giving Copia his new title. And then at the end of his reign, his mother dies and he steps into her position as Frater Imperator. Imagine the weight of that on his shoulders! What a lucky and blessed life! What a curse... This also comes with the development that we see in some of the latest chapters, where Frater Imperator is able to see and converse with the ghosts in the Clergy, something we haven't seen the past Papas do. It would be interesting to see if they continue the Chapters just to see if Papa V Perpetua is also able to see the ghosts, or if Copia just looks absolutely Crazy in front of his twin brother. >:D

I also know that Tobias has said that lore will probably not be as much of a thing going forward, which makes me sad. I'm such a nerd for a narrative, and I'm so happy with what he's created so far! I suppose if he decides to drop it completely, we'll always have fan canon and people like me who will spout paragraphs of utter bullshit xD

With all of this, I would also like to theorize about Papa V Perpetua's position in all of this. If he's been cast out from the Clergy before this, then he might not have known so much about the previous Popes. I wonder if he's some sort of prophet/oracle figure, or someone who's had hidden connections in the cult before we knew about him. Either way, I'm excited to see where Tobias takes this new character. He seems to follow a bit more of Copia's personality, if a bit more shy. And it's hilarious how the ghouls bully him around the stage, like they don't take him seriously as the Pope yet, lol

I want to hear what yall think though! This is the first time that I've really posted anything big like this for Ghost on tumblr. Am I totally missing the mark here, or didn't mention anything big? I'll admit, most of my overall knowledge comes from Chronicle Ghoul's video essay series starting with "The Road to Rite Here Rite Now | Entire Ghost Timeline" https://youtu.be/qBZe8Lj7hHw?si=OJeZ2hCjES4WlWqQ

[super-silly-star]

Dp fanfic idea

Where the Fentons successfully capture the infamous ghost boy.

Maddie and Jack are particularly beaming in excitement at their success they finally did it! They're long life dream finally came true! The new weapon they invented really did come in handy.

It knocked out the ghost, well not completely the ghost remained conscious it just couldn't move at all, nor use its powers.

It made it paralyzed.

As long as they went to the lab quickly the affects would last and they can whatever they wanted.

Jack secured the ghost in the back of GAV not that it could move but better be safe than sorry.

They kept discussing what they wanted to do on the ride to the lab, excitement bubbled in maddies chest, their best specimen yet. Could you really blame her? She's been dreaming of this day since the ghost portal opened.

She wanted to see how ghost worked, how they ticked, what made them.

We're the insides human or goob? Did they have pain factors? How do they behave when under these situations?

Did they even have emotions? Or is it just regrets and anger from past lives? Did they even have ones? The blob ghosts didn't.

She wanted to know it all. And what better way to find out than on phantom himself. Oh the so called "ghost hero" maddie knew better. He was no hero, it was merely an act to decisive the towns people, to gain trust? Popularity? She didn't know, all she knew was that she wanted to tear him apart piece by piece.

She was so lost in her thoughts she haven't noticed that they arrived, now reminded of her original goal she became hyper, getting out of the car while her husband bless him grabbed the ghost from the back, she unlocked the door and her husband was right behind her.

There were no words between them. Only the sound of hurried footsteps and excited breathing, they both knew what to do.

The lab was neat, the smell or sour ectoplasm in the air never quit leaving the place.

There was a table in the middle, newly made just for such occasions.

Jack set the ghost on the table, the restraints clicking immediately into place securing the ghost that laid on it.

Equipment already prepared, jack and Maddie took a step back, admiring the ghost they captured, their specimen.

They grind both looking at eachother. "Can you believe it Mads?" Jack said staring at his wife with enthusiasm, she smiled back returning his excitement.

She looked back at the table, there sat phantom hands and legs restraint in a phase proof material unmoving.

Yet...his green eyes looked at them anxiously, or was it fear? Maddie didn't know the longer she looked at his toxic green eyes the weirded she felt. He looked almost scared, but how? Did he have emotions? He looked so young up close....

Why was he looking at her like that? His eyes were pleading for something, unshed teary eyes looked at her, he looked small fragile.

She felt a knot in her stomach, she couldn't take her eyes off of phantom, and he kept staring maybe because it was all he could do, or maybe it for another reason.

The silence was painful the more she looked the more she felt conflicted.

As if feeling her conflict jack put a hand on her shoulder. "Mads? Are you okay you look pale what's wrong?" He said his voice laced with worry.

Maddie kept looking at phantom, "it's just...it's nothing" she turned her head away "we should begin the experiment let's not wait too long." She sighed Moving to grab the scissors.

"Are you sure?" Jack said still worried "I mean we did capture it we can always do the experiment once you feel better" Jack told her, she paused for a bit.

It....she hasn't realized when she started calling the ghost him instead of it.

"No...I'm fine don't worry hun" she walked to the table examining the ghost, her husband followed behind her.

"Amazing..." Jack said in awe pulling the suit of the ghost, "look Mads! It's not attached to him like we thought it would be!"

The statement pulled her away from her racing thoughts for a bit "Oh! That's interesting do you think there's skin under?" She asked glancing at her husband.

"Welp! Only one way to find out!" He said excitingly as he grabbed the scissors from her.

She watched him as he cut the ghosts suit he started cutting from the neck only stopping at the stomach.

Maddie falt sick. He had skin, he had skin and he looked so young. So human.

"Jack..." She said her voice but above a whisper. Her husband turned his attention to her She looked back at him the horror in her face so visible.

"I can't..." She muttered, "I can't do it...he looks too young...too human." Jack just looked at her then ever so slowly stared back at the ghost examining it.

"Oh..!" He whispered Maddie felt relief wash over her, she wasn't crazy he saw it too.

Phantom stared at them, the fear in his eyes replaced with something else...relief.

"Well...what are we gonna do? He's still paralyzed."

'He'....she thought.

(And that's where my train of thoughts end hahs please note I'm not writer I just have a lot of ideas so if someone is willing to complete this or take inspiration from it would be awesome hope you like it!)