#rest assured i have most antis blocked at this point anyway

[lobsel-erik]

I was originally going to write on Twitter but character limits are too much of a bother so here I am. This will probably be very messy but I'm dealing with media that probably 10 people are familiar with, so... Whatever!

I've recently found this site: https://nervetower.neocities.org/analysis.html

It has a bunch of translations and essays on the game Baroque, originally released on the Sega Saturn.

This specific bit of info has made me OBSESSED with thinking about the game.

Sure the game was literally written in burst of inspiration by drawing tarot cards because the writers had a deadline and writer's block at the same time, and the protagonist being canonically trans was only in a draft for the prequel material, but the game is surprisingly consistent with its themes and the symbolism can still be read through a trans lens.

And because it's not confirmed and ambiguous, the protagonist can be read through multiple gender povs.

But like, why is this such a big deal? Well, Baroque and its prequel material just so happens to have one of the most incredible anti-bigotry narratives I've ever seen in a game. Specifically anti-ableism and anti-eugenics, among probably some questioning of organized religion and how corporations use it to further alienate the public into a cycle of oppression towards marginalized people. etc.

The protagonist is mass produced and manipulated by the Archangel to "purify" whatever he deems should be "purified", using guilt (the Christians/Catholics favorite thing) to do so as the protagonist is made to not remember anything besides their immense guilt over something.

For the game to progress the protag must regain their memories and find out they're a copy of who knows how many other copies, a human made into a product basically, made to feel special because they won't be distorted by their desperate delusions to escape a world destroyed by corporate greed like all the rest and have the power to "purify" things, when in reality they're just emotionally and genetically manipulated into being that.

A perfect pawn.

Now where is the trans symbolism? Well, aside from how little bodily autonomy the protagonist has, here's where things really get interesting:

In Baroque, God is presented as a woman. Before the Great Heat (aka apocalypse), God's Sense Spheres (her omnipresence, transferring data like the world is a body) assured that no great distortion would come to the reality humanity lived in, God would feel pain and know there was a wound to heal. Then the Archangel, who's really just some scientist, started fucking with the population's mental health on purpose because he wanted to kill God and create his own perfect little world. That's the short summary anyway.

At one point, with a lot of brainwashing using God's screams of pain, he created the Order of Malkuth to help him. But later the members woke up from the brainwashing and organized a desperate attempt to stop the Archangel: they would fuse Koriel number 12 (presented as a boy) with God so she could communicate in data that humans could understand. What they didn't expect however is that Koriel 12 had their own problems, and with Archangel interrupting the fusion, those problems were very amplified.

Koriel 12's guilt over being alive and God's suffering made shit hit the fan for good with the Great Heat.

And that's how the protagonist becomes mute and receives the power of God and anim- I mean, "purification".

The game begins and despite Koriel and God being now two parts of the same being, the Archangel tells Koriel to go to the bottom of the Nerve Tower, where the "Mad God" is basically imprisoned, and "purify" her with a rifle (with ammo made from the embodiment of her pain hormones).

The Archangel is literally making Koriel kill a part of themselves that's already literally buried deep into a mind tower that goes down instead of up but still has the image of a tower instead of a hole. He's basically forcing Koriel to bury the closet with them inside it because the closet isn't enough apparently.

Koriel also can't speak for themselves anymore but their thoughts can be read by the Horned Woman, which she just says out loud without explaining anything and unless you're thinking about it you won't even recognize those are "your" thoughts being spoken by another person.

Jumping ahead, when Koriel gets to the bottom of the tower, you can either do what the Archangel tells you or can just walk towards God and unite with her.

When you do this after some dying and finding out, you'll receive the true ending, in which it is made clear that while it is in a state at which it's harming everyone, the "distortion" is actually the natural way of the world, everyone needs to cope at least a little to survive, the Archangel's eugenicist campaign was the greater problem here, not the people "distorted" into representations of their suffering and coping mechanisms by his actions.

This is primarily focused on ableism and particularly the stigma around mental health.

With a trans reading, it forms a bridge so it can also just mean bigotry in general too.

Why? Well, since the 70s or something, trans people basically have to be diagnosed with a disorder to be granted legal access to transition, that's even truer for Japan, which literally puts it on paper as a disorder. And overall, transphobia and ableism go very hand in hand.

This game is now the closest I've come across to finding a game that's secretly about trans people too like The Matrix.

And this has greatly developed the brain worms 👍

[writing-nebula]

Update! (Also, sneak peek at the chapter!)

H I I'M NOT DEAD, HERE'S THAT UPDATE I PROMISED

Admittedly, most of this is going to be copied from AO3, with a few wording changes, as I summed myself up pretty well there, s o if you don't happen to follow Aura on AO3-

"I'll let you know if I think a chapter will take 6+ months" 9 months (10 months now, near 11 w h o o p s), no chapter, and no update later:

All I can really say at this point is sorry about the lack of update- I got a job, started writing a few other stories, some oneshots you may have seen me post if you've looked at my AO3, and just generally been Too Busy to work on Aura, even if I hadn't been having major writing block issues for it specifically

I'm making this update to assure you guys that this story hasn't been abandoned, that I'm not dropping it- I am still working on it! It's just going a lot slower than I would've liked, and I'm not sure if there's much I can do about that at this point in time.

That being said, I'm making this update now because I have actually made great progress on the next chapter! It's certainly not done, but the block seems to have mostly lifted for now, and I know exactly what I want to write for the rest of the chapter.

A n d, so I don't just leave you hanging here, I d o have a few scenes I'll be posting alongside this- both to assure you I am working on it, and to apologize for taking so long lol. I'm doing my best with it, I promise you!

That's all I have to say, I think- thank you all so much for your patience, and I hope to have something more out for you soon!! Alrighty- with that being said, I have a few scenes to add here, also copied from my update on AO3, so if you read there nothing has changed! But for those who might only follow Aura via Tumblr, here are a few preview scenes for the upcoming chapter, under the cut! I'm really excited to show the whole thing to y'all when it's done :D

"That was, uh, Mark and Amy, probably- I had a dizzy spell a few minutes ago, they both freaked out when I hit the floor."

"Oh," that would explain the suddenness of it- "then- That means there's someone new?"

Now excited- and feeling less shaky- Anti pushed himself to his feet, smiling when the human joined him and trying to peer past him again. "Who is it? A fan ego? I know there are a couple out there you like-"

He cut himself off when he registered the confusion drifting out from the living room, and from Jack himself.

"...What is it?"

"...See, we don't know who or what appeared," Jack told him with a frown. "Nothing changed, and we can't find sign of anybody..."

----------------------

When he entered his room, the feeling increased tenfold, which should be impossible, Marvin put spells up to prevent him from feeling their emotions so strongly up here- ...Which meant he was right.

There's someone in here.

Anti took a deep breath, trying to push away the fear and apprehension that kept squeezing, tightening like a vice around his chest- it's not me, it's not mine-

He took another deep breath, letting it out slow.

He shut the door behind him.

"...I know you're there," he started quietly, not wanting anyone outside the room to hear him. "I don't know why you're hiding from everyone, but... I'm not going to tell them." He paused, shoulders slumping in relief as the fear eased up somewhat.

"I won't tell them you're here, but you can't just hide in my room forever, okay? Not without at least calming down. I can... Feel you, and it's a lot."

Still no response, but as he sighed, going to his little desk and sitting down to use his laptop, he felt the fear in the air receding further- to be replaced by a gentle spark of curiosity.

He smiled, just to himself, and put on Jack's Resident Evil playlist. I'll give him some time to adjust. It's not like I can blame him for being nervous... 

When he felt a presence watching over his shoulder, he chose not to comment aloud, and he was very proud of himself for not immediately turning to look- though he honestly doubted he'd see anything anyway. 

...I just wish I knew who the hell 'he' is.

------------------

Anti was honestly used to the feeling of someone watching over his shoulder, at this point. Three days and this mysterious, silent, invisible ego still hadn't shown himself, though Anti was very sure he was still there.

Besides the watching whenever he was using his laptop, he could still feel him- nervousness, curiosity, faint stabs of irritation. It felt like a million things at once and were way stronger than one person's emotions could feel, but it had only ever seemed like one person, so he just dealt with it.

Today it was Golf With Friends, rather than the usual horror game- he mostly had it up for distraction, because despite Marvin's charms on the room, he could still feel Jack and Mark's excitement from the recording room, though thankfully he was too far away to physically hear them.

...With how focused he was, trying to ignore the emotion feelings, he wasn't really paying attention to his 'roommate'.

But he still noticed the instant that presence solidified, became something real-

And Anti found himself holding his breath as the semi-annoying phantom sensation became the very very real feeling of somebody actively leaning over him.

it's a hell of a time to stop being shy why the fuck-

"...What are you watching this time?"

Anti's racing thoughts screeched to a halt, and he exhaled sharply, keeping his gaze fixed on the laptop screen.

He felt frozen, fixed in place- and it wasn't because the guy finally spoke, the question startled him, sure, but it was reasonable enough, he probably couldn't see the screen very well.

No, the problem wasn't the question- it was the voice.

Calm, but deep enough for a faint rumble in his chest. Smooth, but not soothing- more cold. 

The faintest of echoes ringing in his ears, two voices just below the first- similar, but different.

...I know that voice.

-----------------

(Please note that these are still from a newer draft, and wording or more may change between these and the final chapter!)

[bathands]

Standing by and letting bullying happen is just as bad as taking part. If we want to stop anti's having a voice in this fandom, then we have to take an *active* stance against them. If you refuse to, you're condoning their behaviour.

oh my GOD i just want to look at memes and stuff about media i like????? why are you dragging me into this. i don’t care. sorry. the behaviour is reprehensible and so ridiculously out of proportion its laughable, but i dont have to take part in a public conversation about it if i dont want to. if you dont want to consume any content from a particular blog then block and blacklist so they dont show up on your dash whatsoever. also pls now do that to me because i dont want to accidentally interact with your dumb sanctimonious ass ever again. duck out bitch

[minky-for-short]

a kiss on the palm for shadowgast?

Enjoy sweetie

----

Caleb can’t seem to stop replaying the last few days in his head.

 It seems to be all he can do, as he can’t seem to bring himself to concentrate on the book in his hands, sitting in one of the spare rooms in the chateau that Marion provided them with. A place for them to recuperate and get their bearings as they try to think about their next course of action.

A place for them to keep Essek hidden someplace safe as he recovered from his injuries.

He can’t help thinking about how nearly a week ago, as they made their way back to Xhorhas from Travellercon, a drow man bearing an incredible resemblance to the Shadowhand had been waiting outside their door, asking if they’d been in contact with his brother. How no one had seen or heard from him in days, an odd occurrence even for someone as solitary as Essek.

It took the group a few moments to adjust to the fact that Essek apparently had a secret little brother, though Caleb knew if Essek was awake, he’d point out that none of them have ever actually asked him if he had any siblings, therefore he never technically lied to them. However, once they got past the surprising revelation, Jester began a scrying spell to track down their friend, and worry only grew once she revealed that her scry has been blocked.

Once Caduceus communed with his Wildmother to learn his location, the worry intensified when he received signs that Essek’s life was in danger.

They promised Essek’s brother, Verin, that they would find him, and inform him once he was brought to safety. 

The following days were tracking the Wildmother’s signs to a cave deep within the Greying Wildlands, Jester sending messages to Essek to stay assured that he was still alive, and to promise him that they were on their way to rescue him.

It was comforting, that even with how much distrust parts of their group still held for the drow wizard, they were horrified when they found him, half starved and beaten within an edge of his life.. Veth worked quickly to pick the locks of the cage and the anti-magic shackles on his wrists and ankles, Cad and Jester healed him enough to keep him stabilized as they began moving their way out of the cave, Caleb gripping his hand tightly the whole way.

 It was clear whoever brought him there didn’t really believe it necessary to leave guards. After all, who would go through so much trouble looking for one man?

Caleb keeps replaying these last few days in his head, and tries not to think of the fear he felt when they couldn’t locate him with that first spell, the way his heart would stop until Jester confirmed that he responded to her messages, as weak as his voice sounded. And the thing he tries not to think of the most was the blind fury that boiled within him at the sight of his drow, broken and half-dead, and the primal urge to find whoever caused him such pain and unleash tenfold onto them.

He’s finally torn away from those thoughts as his head whips up at the sound of stirring coming from the bed.

“Essek?” he calls gently, tossing the book aside as he lifts from the chair he’d spent the last day and a half in, waiting for this moment, and approaches his bed.

His eyes blink open slowly, not used to the sunlight even with the curtains drawn shut, but he manages to adjust as he tries to sit up, nearly falling back from the pain in his ribs.

Caleb rushes forward to ease him back gently, “slow, meine liebe,” a term he uses only in the utmost privacy, a secret that he shared with the drow, “Cad and Jester healed most of your wounds, but you still need to recover from the rest..”

“...Caleb?” Essek rasps softly, his voice still weak from nearly two weeks of disuse. But he still manages to let out a small chuckle as he looks up at the human man, “you came...I suppose I should’ve believed Jester’s messages..”

Caleb smiles as he rests his hand on his cheek, “of course we came for you, we all did.” he watches as Essek processes that, almost looking guilty for doubting, “we brought you to Nicodranas, you’ll be safe here while you recover, I made sure of that..” he nods to the anti-scrying wards he placed around the room, a spell he made sure he learned once they learned Essek had gone missing. 

Essek lets out a small sigh of relief, turning his head just enough to press a kiss to his palm, “I truly am grateful to you..” he murmurs, “Caleb...the people who took me-”

“Later, Essek” Caleb cuts him off, stroking his cheek gently, he already had his suspicions about who took him anyways.. “you can tell us everything once you’ve recovered some more, oh, but you should let your brother know you’re alright..” he can’t help but smile at the surprise that fills his drow’s face, “ja, we were quite surprised ourselves when he introduced himself, but he was the one who told us you were missing. It’s clear he was worried about you..”

Essek humphs softly, “Verin, always the worrier…” but Caleb could tell he was grateful for his younger brother’s concern, even if he wouldn’t admit it himself. He brings his hand up to rest over Caleb’s, “I’ll send him a message soon, I promise.”

“Good” Caleb hums, “now get some more rest, I’ll be right here when you wake up again.”

Essek smiles gently, squeezing Caleb’s hand once before letting go, his eyelids already growing heavy, “I know you will”.

[chaoticspacefam]

I remember reading your reblog a while back about how some Theron fans are anti-Lana (I've also noticed some Lana fans are also anti-Theron) and tbh, I feel like I'm the only one who loves both Theron and Lana equally. I adore each of them. I see the flaws in both of them as well. But what makes me a fan, in my mind anyways, is really choosing to acknowledge their flaws and deciding they aren't reasons for me to hate either of them. I'm a Lana AND Theron stan! ❤️

Hello anon! I want to preface this by saying you are valid and I 100% support you no matter what! Keep loving the characters no matter the reasons why, you do you, as long as you like them that’s all that’s important! ❤️ As a side-note I do tag all such posts with “theron critical” (and I don’t cross-tag in his main tag because I’m not an asshole - something that I have seen a lot of the “anti Lana” fans I talk about do with Lana’s tag, it causes myself and other Lana fans no end of problems and anxiety, I don’t want to (nor should I have to) block her main tag just so I don’t have to see death threats etc. towards one of my favourites) so if you want to stop seeing them feel free to blacklist that tag so they won’t come up for you :3 But you’re absolutely not alone, I have many friends and mutuals who like both Theron and Lana and I think you’re all totally awesome and should keep doing your thing as long as it makes you happy! I don’t wanna single them out, but they're definitely out there so you're not alone don't worry! 👐😘

I’m not sure which reblog you’re referring to, as unfortunately there have been quite a few over the past couple of months, but rest assured that anything that was said in that post (and any others on the same topic) was solely directed at those “aggressive anti-Lana” fans and not towards you or anyone else in any way. I have no problem with people who like the characters, hell I don’t even have a problem with people that don’t like Lana as long as you’re not an asshole about it!

Now, I don’t hate Theron as a character, but unfortunately those “aggressive” fans have soured his...reputation, if that’s the right word for it, for me somewhat and it makes it difficult for me to interact with people I’m unfamiliar with as I never know how they’re going to react to me casually mentioning that I don’t care for his romance arc and prefer Lana’s, I get nervous, but I certainly don’t wish any ill will on people who have different shipping preferences to me <3

(I’ve straight up had someone call me racist for enjoying Lana’s romance but not having any interest in Theron’s...y’know, cause I’m a lesbian and I like girls, Harold. 🙄😘 I’m very particular when it comes to my “male” LI preferences and I find most of the male options are just not that interesting for me. Those that I do like, I like because their personalities and/or dynamics with my characters appealed to me  - Koth, Andronikos, Iresso are the ones that spring to mind for me rn - Theron just didn’t have “that” special kinda dynamic for me, he was just...there. As an Alliance member, or a colleague, a trusted advisor etc.  and yes, my characters do distrust him after Nathema, because he literally tried to kill them and all of my OCs who are in power in the Alliance...have a history of people who are close to them suddenly trying to murder them so y’know, of course they’re gonna be distrustful of him and take time to forgive him, and some of them may never forgive him for it. 🤷‍♀️  But that’s their thoughts based on their experiences in their lives, not mine, the mun (is that the word? it’s a weird unfamiliar word I’ve never used it before but I think I’ve seen other people using it?? LOL)

TL;DR: I’m sorry if it felt like any of those posts were directed at you, but I promise they weren’t! I’m just salty and occasionally vocal about that particular subsect of fans but I have neither anything against Theron as a character or other people like you who also like him, acknowledge and/or point out Lana’s flaws, or even who prefer Theron over Lana or don’t like Lana at all. As long as you’re not being a dick trying to police someone else’s fandom experience just because they like different things to you, we’re cool 💖

[soviet-history-detective]

What is the cost of not respecting boundaries?

(For those who haven’t seen, Part 1 and Part 2) A quick rundown for the people who are wondering what’s going on: Hello, folks. I am one of the leading Chernobyl/Legasov researchers who runs this youtube channel. I found the audio fragments of Legasov tapes which became quite a hit and received praise from Craig Mazin. Legasov tapes, which the migty HBO couldn’t find with their Russian-speaking consultants and millions of dollars of budget. I found rare photos and pre-Chernobyl videos of Legasov, translated a substantial amount of documentary material on Soviet near history topics, a good chunk of that being on Legasov and Chernobyl.  I am a live and let live kind of person and I was willing to look the other way with the Valoris shipping business cause “they were shipping the tv show characters and fangirling about the actors” so I ignored it and posted historical information, answered questions, unearthed and translated documentary videos and text material.   Then I abruptly stopped and went quiet cause the shipper gang went too far and started writing gross shit, rape fantasies and dragging real people who weren’t even in the tv show into their godawful fics -one of them being someone I highly admire, respect and look up as an inspiration and role model notwithstanding. 

They didn’t stick to Valoris, they had to involve the people who were not in the script at all. People whose names they learned from me. They had the audacity to discuss their fucked up fantasies (which they call headcanons) right under my nose, they couldn’t control themselves since they are completely driven by base animal instincts and some of them are downright sociopaths with no boundaries: Rabid and depraved, driven only by the primitive sexual instincts, with a two digit IQ, no understanding of boundaries, ethics, morals, completely bereft of common respect and decency. It’s creepy as hell -run for the hills kind of creepy.  (When I say no ethics and morals I don’t mean only sexual perversions. One of them is notorious for plagiarizing other people’s content in multiple social media platforms and acting indifferent when called out.) So I got creeped out, grossed out, infuriated, disillusioned and went quiet. Blocked everyone who was associated with Valoris to avoid their gross thirst talks. Blocked the tag too. Stopped posting new finds after the last Legasov video compilation. Stopped translating videos and text material for a long while.

They are way past normal shipping. This is some seriously fucked up shit.  Here are a couple of examples (Warning: Gross content, rape fantasies, scroll past the images and continue reading below if you can’t stomach or are a minor)

Here is more rape:

Their biggest argument is “We are writing fics about the fictionalized tv show characters” which is total and utter bullshit, because:

Nikolai Ryzhkov was not in the tv show at all.

Neither was Vladimir Gubarev. Why are they in those fics?

This isn’t all, there are public posts here where they were bouncing ideas and coming up with the most abhorrent fantasies about a real person who was NOT in the tv show. I don’t have the time to search them, plus they are really gross, you are better off not seeing it. (A paranthesis here: I’m totally indifferent about explicit fics if they involve only fictional characters and not promote rape culture. Just to make things clear.)

If you are using the names of real people, you are shipping real people. Period. I can write a fic using the shipper gang’s names in an alternate reality setting where they are an evil gang of cannibalistic cunts who raid maternity wards and butcher all the babies then burn puppies ad kittens alive for fun. Or I can write a fic where they all get sodomized with saguaro cacti dipped in ghost pepper sauce by sadistic rogue KGB agents. It’s fictionalized versions of them in an alternate universe after all, so it’s totally ok. Right? Well, there really is no point arguing these things, and that is not even the point of this post. I’m just saying it’s fucked up, creepy and wrong in every way. 

Not to mention they bully and gaslight people who speak up against them. Grown ass women bullying a 15 year old and adding a transphobic comment after learning they are trans is NOT COOL. @ihatefandomsfuckyouall can testify as the target of their bullying. That’s wrong and creepy as hell. 

HOWEVER. Like I said in the previous post, this won’t be about a holy jihad against shipping or some big anti-shipper crusade.  Nope, nope and nope with nope sauce.

Ship away, ship all you want, ship till you drop, ship till you turn Fedex green with envy. I am not here to lecture sociopaths driven solely by primitive sexual instincts and bereft of any kind of boundaries, morals, common respect and decency. There is nothing I or anyone can do about it. Like i said, I have no intention of trying to talk sense into anyone or giving sermons. So rest assured that I am well aware it’s pointless and stupid to wage a war against shipping, however gross and vile it is. I can’t stop you from sexualizing anything that walks (or has been long dead) and spewing sick ass fantasies. I will repeat for those with two digit IQ: I know there is nothing I or anyone can do to stop you from doing what you are doing, absolutely nothing. So I will do NOTHING. Got it? Whoever claims otherwise is full of shit, I will do absolutely NOTHING, you got my word 100%.

Seriously I won’t hate on you, I won’t call for holy wars and witch hunts. So, rest assured, I will not make any move against any of you, nope. Besides I don’t have the time for that, I have a busy life and better things to do. No war, no hate, no screaming, no drama, nothing. Is that clear? Capiche? Comprende? Понятно? 

Well, now let’s get to the heart of the matter:

I have been quiet but not idle. I’ve been contacting people, sending queries, making phone calls, digging state archive repositories. I have been finding material and boy did I find material! I happen to be one of the very few people who are blessed with an extraordinary ability to find things no one else can find. You have seen what I can find by utilizing search engines and going through links. Even Craig Mazin himself was mighty impressed with my finds, the proof is out there in public view, I won’t bother digging it up now.

Anyway. It turns out I can find hell of a lot more than that by contacting people, sending queries, making phone calls and digging through state archive repositories. Some of it costs pretty penny but no matter, I don’t mind paying for never-before-published video footage that is not on the internet. Some of it is not even digitized so you gotta pay extra fee for digitization and it can be quite high depending on the video length and media.

We are talking about HD videos here. There is excellent AI video processing software out there which can turn even the most primitive 19th century videos to crystal clear 60 fps HD so we are good. (Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbElEqm1TQ) I have photos that can’t be found by searching the internet. You’d drop dead if you saw some of them. I’m working on getting the full footage of Legasov’s IAEA presentation. It’s hella difficult, you have to personally go to Vienna and go through the seven hells and seven lower hells to obtain access. Also you need to be a research scientist with a reference letter. (All this info and list of requirements can be found on IAEA official site.) I won’t get into the details but I have it all sorted out, scientist and all. It wasn’t easy and it took a damn lot of time, effort, pulling family connections etc. Now the only remaining roadblock is this accursed coronavirus. As soon as the pandemic subsides a trip to Vienna shall be in order. The long Q&A session following Legasov’s report is unfortunately not available, but Legasov’s report certainly is (after fulfilling a laundry list of requirements.)

This is not all. There are photos (in addition to the publicly available ones I posted before) and video footage of Ryzhkov visiting Chernobyl, Legasov’s meetings, partial video of one Polituro meeting. There is this one precious footage where Legasov is laughing and drinking vodka. I won’t even say how many hours of work it took to find that. (Plot twist: I’m not the one who found it!) I have a pile of videos of Ryzhkov when he was the chairman of the council of ministers of the USSR, which are historical records of tremendous importance and not on Youtube. Buddies who have seen them had insta-man crush on him without even hearing my translation. Some of you would KILL for those, I know for a fact. For the Legasov drinking-partying video you would sell your soul to the devil (who wouldn’t?)

I have an IAEA report with an extremely rare photo you can’t find by searching. I won’t tell you who is in it cause I don’t want to supply anything you could use for your gross fics. Suffices to say one of them is someone you are drooling about and the other one is a big shot name that’s not on your radar and will unleash all kinds of fic ideas once you hear it. So nope. I ain’t giving you another Ryzhkov, I learned my lesson. I have video footage of that same man giving high praise to Legasov, talking with a tone of fondness, defending him against accusations. Such a sweet video. It put tears in my eyes. I can see you gang drooling a lake over that one so hell fucking no.  

Did I mention I started translating Legasov documentaries? Every single one on youtube. Including the entire Звезда Полынь. Also planning to convert some Legasov footage to HD using the aforementioned software tools. 

I have actually been posting videos and text material translations left and right, just out of your sight (nice rhyme, isn’t it?) 90% the material I listed above is either in the pipeline or in my hard disk.  @tryingtobealwaystrying can verify. She helped out a great deal with the IAEA business and I owe her one for that. We are both individually damn good at finding stuff but it turned out we can work wonders as a team. As a result, we have a treasure trove of the highest order in hand and in the works. 

And, here is the deal: YOU WILL SEE NONE OF IT.

N.O.N.E.

Not a shred. Not a pixel. Nothing. Ничего. Совсем нет. 

Get it now? “You didn’t see it cause it’s not there!” 

You won’t see it cause it won’t be there! 

So, this is it. I can’t do anything about your shipping scumbaggery but I can cut off your supply and deprive you of material and information. You will NEVER be able to find any of it on your own (let alone afford the fees for.) 

I will deprive you of the fruits of my labor. 

Indefinitely.

Of course that doesn’t mean I’ll keep it all to myself. I will share them but not in public. In fact I have translated and posted some videos you wanted real bad, one of them got 1000 views overnight but they are not public, for my work is not for the eyes of the wicked and unclean miscreants. I post them in shipper-free foreign forums you can’t find and send links privately to decent, wholesome people who are interested in Chernobyl and Soviet history for the passion to learn and admiration for the historical figures, not for spinning depraved fantasies and writing horrendous, projectile-vomit-inducing sex fics. And -as those of you who possess three digit IQ’s might have figured out!- I am not alone in that. (Plot twist FTW!)  Congrats, folks. You managed to alienate and drive away the top Chernobyl-Legasov researchers and translators with your hideous debauchery, extreme scumbaggery and abominable attitude. So, this is your punishment: NOTHING. This is the consequence you will deal with. This is the cost of your choices. 

A big nothing is all you will ever get from now on. 

See, told ya, there is absolutely nothing I can do about your gross shipping and scumbaggery so I will do NOTHING. 

Got the joke? LOL. I have awesome humor don’t I :) 

No more videos. No more photos. No more answers. No more translations. No more information.

You royally fucked up, people. You don’t get to eat the cake and the icing, especially not when you offend and insult the cooks, take a dump in the middle of the restaurant and masturbate while rolling in it. You could have kept it out of sight. You could have exercised some goddamn tact. But no, you had to behave like animals in heat. 

Well, you can continue obsessing over the TV show scripts until you get sick of it.  I will be posting translations of different parts of Soviet history like the WW2 era. You can ship Hitler and Stalin all you want. Get those headcanons rolling! I will even give you a prompt: Stalin cheats on Hitler with Mussolini. LMAO. 

You know what, I take back the not a pixel thing. We may post screenshots from the videos and low-res crops from the photos from time to time just to rub it in your face. 

Here is one where they are grilling Velikhov shortly after Legasov’s suicide. Oh boy you gotta see his face when they start bombarding him about Legasov’s death.... 

Here is the shot from a long video where the legendary Premier Ryzhkov is sporting the legendary 80′s Soviet glasses in all his superlative handsome glory. He is giving an interview about important historical turning points in this video and this isn’t even the best shot. You have to pay to get a copy but before that you need a superpower-like ability to find where it is in the first place. I scaled it up to 1440×1080 but not gonna put the high resolution version cause I’m such a darling.

  Here is Ryzhkov in the famous white work attire of the Soviet era. Looks familiar, yes? Do I need to tell WHERE he is and what he is doing? (Hint: The year is 1986.)

Oh man, oh man. How worried he looks, so heart-wrenching. The footage is only about 3 minutes but absolutely solid gold. I won’t say whether there is Legasov or Scherbina or BOTH of them appearing in this footage cause I’m such a sweetheart.

Unfortunately I am not at liberty to post any Legasov shots cause I am not the finder of the Legasov videos we currently have at hand. Too bad, so sad.  There you go. Enjoy your cold dish of nothing. Bon appetite. Adios amigas!  WHAT IS THE COST OF NOT RESPECTING BOUNDARIES? @tryingtobealwaystrying​ @the--arch @ihatefandomsfuckyouall​ @rarravai​ @weronikaisback​ @live-long-and-time-warp​ @tryingtobealwaystrying​ @chernobylgal86​ 

[dearholly]

Dear Me,

I know why you’re here and I’m not mad. I’m not disappointed. Read this and then go rest. And please be gentle on yourself. 

We met at Macy's and immediately hit it off. I think it was a dark sense of humor and a fluency in sarcasm that first bonded us. She was amused and seemingly rapt by everything I had to say. When I eventually left Macy's for a work-at-home job listening to sales calls, I brought her with me. And because he was unemployed, her ex-boyfriend/roommate came with us as well.

They had dated in high school but had long since broken up although hey were still living together in her parent's house after his parents moved to Hawaii without him. I got to know him more when we started at our new positions. As a telecommuting job, here were a lot of opportunities for us to bond over instant messenger. He had a raw, vulnerable quality that drew me to him and I enjoyed how open and free I could be with him. He didn't seem to mind the darker parts of my humor and we bonded over a love of cars and photography.

The first tear in the fabric of everything is, I think, when I admitted to to my husband that I thought I had feelings for Her. He sexualized this confession and internalized it as permission for himself to be attracted to her, which in short turn he started to act on. In some ways, I knew that would happen but but I was terrified of my feelings. I didn't know exactly what I wanted, just that I wanted something else. Something more than what I had. On some level, I believe that I wanted her. But I let my fear and submissiveness get the better of me and chose to put my needs aside for what my husband wanted, which at the time seemed more manageable for me than having to deal with my own inner turmoil.

Throughout their entire flirtation in the beginning, she never came to me to tell me what was going on, or to question it. To this day, I don't even know if she asked my husband whether or not I knew. It might be the years that have since passed shading my opinions in this matter, but I don't believe she ever did ask him. I eventually did come to her to tell her what was going on, but I don't believe that I ever really trusted her again after that, despite our friendship continuing for another five years.

Years later, when I would say all of this out loud to a therapist, I would realize what a hard time I have accepting and advocating for my own feelings. Looking back now, I can tell you I was deeply hurt and extremely angry.

Which is probably what lead me to sleep with Him, her ex-boyfriend slash roommate, on the same night she first slept with my husband. And I did not afford her the same foreknowledge that I had.

But it wasn't all vindication. He and I had been getting very close. We worked together on a wedding I shot in Malibu. I'll never forget when we had some free time in between getting shots and we drove down to the beachier part of the beach to look for some locations to shoot the couple later. It was raining and the beach was empty, so he told me to take the car onto the sand, assuring me that it'd be fine. He was something of an expert on cars, after all. The front tires almost immediately sunk into the sand and we got stuck. As panic mounted in both of us, a friendly gentleman in a Nissan Xterra came by and offered assistance. With some pushing and revving, the car was unstuck. After our Samaritan drove off, He turned to me to apologize and wrapped his arms around me. There's something about being hugged by a person who is much taller than you. In that moment, I fell in love with him. His easy free affection was all it took.

And she had no clue about any of it because I did not do the courtesy of cluing her in. This is what is so dangerous about people who are not even aware of the emotions they're having.

Also, I knew that she would cock block. So the night that she came to my house to fuck my husband, I set up a little date with her ex boyfriend. I took him to a local bar, and explained what was happening with Her and my husband. And then I told him, "But I am here with you." Couldn't keep our hands off each other after that.

I didn't tell her until after the fact and I am positive that there was never a moment after that that she fully trusted me either. We cursed ourselves from the very beginning. And then made things truly awkward by attempting to have a four-way.

They say ignorance is bliss, but denial is true euphoria. And that is where we lived for the next 6 years. We changed our state abbreviation from CA to WA, but we lived in the same place, ignoring red flag after red flag. The chemistry was just bad. But we plundered ahead, all four of us. And when three of us lost our telecommuting jobs, it was Him that found us work again.

I hated the idea from the very beginning (red flag) but said nothing. I resented that he got her a job at the same place he'd gotten me a job and that she'd be starting the day after me, leaving me no time at all to have this one thing for myself. I knew even then that working and living with her would turn out to be a problem. And it did; when something bad happened at work, there was no escape from it at home. When something bad happened at home, there was no escape from it at work. Even though we were on opposite ends of the house, there was just no escaping it. When she was upset, there was a toxic cloud that hung over the whole house. It seeped into everything and was unescapable. It left no room for anyone else to take up any emotional space.

After a while, I stopped getting a period. But because I was living on Denial St, I ignored it for over a year. My doctors wholly admitted that they have no idea how this could have happened at such an early point in my life, but all of them speculated stress, both physical and mental. Prior to losing my period, I had lost a great deal of weight in a small time by over-exercising and under-eating. I was starving myself and then working myself to the point of exhaustion, and if this were the cause of my early menopause, I would not be surprised to find that out.

However, there was no space in my home to have any feelings about this. Because I was of a mind to never have children anyway, it was easy for most people to minimize how deeply it was affecting me, and ignore the active signs that it was doing so. And I never talked about. The feelings were too confusing, too mixed up, to talk about. I didn't understand them myself and there was no room to figure them out there.

A couple months after I got my menopause diagnosis, I started having regular panic attacks. She is the one who suggested I speak to a therapist. She's the one who recommended my first one, actually. And I am still glad that she did. My life really started to turn around at that point. I started in May of that year and by the end of the summer, I had finalized my divorce and moved into my own apartment. And later that year, I started anti depressants.

It is my belief that all of the improvements and growth in my life are what lead she and I to have our initial falling out that next Spring. Through therapy, and medication, and meditation, and all the other ways in which I was working on improving myself, I did eventually grow strong. And so did my boundaries. I started saying "No." more and "Sorry" less. And I stopped accepting unnecessary bullshit that was launched in my direction.

Especially when it is in a shared space in which professionalism is mandatory. After a five month hiatus from the office in which she recovered from an exploding kidney, I invited her to help me train a batch of new hires. During which, at some point, I explained something to one of them which was news to her. She started raising her voice in frustration, demanding to know why she was never told anything, and in general being extremely negative. To be clear, this type of behavior was just something she did. And it always bothered me - something that should be of little to no consequence to her personally, blown up in decibels and f-bombs. Like her brother dating someone she didn't approve of. Or her roommate's cousin marrying someone she didn't approve of. Or her cousin dating someone she didn't approve of. Or her aunts doing or saying something she didn't approve of. I often thought about buying her a robe and gavel for how judgmental and salty she could be to the people she supposedly loved. But I digress....

I am a deeply private person. So in that moment in our office, I was completely mortified. Here are these strangers I am trying to set a good example for, and here she comes with her Debbie Downer bullshit. I shut the conversation down as fast as I could by leaving it immediately. But later I sent a text explaining why that was over the line and why I was upset. A day later, I received some half assed apology about how she felt she was being left behind at work, and that somehow justified the disrespect. Like it was acceptable behavior because she was in pain.

I didn't respond. For one, because I was knee deep (literally) in dog fur, trying to shave my Maltese mutt. And for another, I thought that what needed to be said had been said. Her response didn't change mine. And so the next day, I went to her apartment as I did every Monday to do my laundry. As I was putting the laundry into the washing machine, I heard her bedroom door open. Before I could even look up from my dirty jeans and towels, I hear "Oh... Hi." and I turn just in time to see a flash of red hair whipping behind a slamming door.

At that point, I start to have a panic attack, assuming the slammed door was for me and my face. But I breathe through it and decide its best left aone. She's still upset and I don't have the bandwidth to find out why. I'm done volunteering for whatever that is. At work, I try to be cordial. With Him, I try to maintain boundaries and I tell him nothing that happens between she and I.

A few days go by. One night, I go pick him up and we have dinner at a diner down the street from his place. He's visibly upset, and he's using that soft whispery tone that usually precedes a fucking nightmare. Over my country fried chicken, I ask him what's wrong. He asks why I am ignoring her. I tell him I am not. And that after having a door slammed at me, I'm giving whatever she is dealing with a wide berth. He convinces me to reach out to her to try and resolve the issue.  

So I try to do that. But I'm annoyed and I say entirely the wrong thing, from the very start. I tell her "Stop telling people I'm ignoring you." Rather than "I am not ignoring you, Friend. Rather trying to give you space to deal with whatever it is you're dealing with because I don't understand it"... which eventually I do say, but it's too late. My tone is too incendiary. I'm too angry now. And I no longer feel as if this is anything worth saving anymore. She feels the same way. So she tells me we can no longer be friends. I'm hurt that she said that, but more disappointed that she said it first, and I accept that this is the way things will be. I block her on every social media platform we have in common.

Things are instantly strained between He and I. I ask him repeatedly not to get involved because I will be the one accused of it. But he can't help himself from being upset because she's upset. They have no boundaries at all between them. I tell him I need a break from him. He accuses me of "dropping him" the same way I "dropped Her" And so we break up.

For about 2 months. And then one night, I happen to get a late bus out of Seattle and sit across from him. He was coming from work. And I was coming from a bar. Were it not for the tequila, I probably would never have moved next to him. We made very little conversation all the way to our bus stop. I don't remember what I said. Probably just that I missed him and that I wish things had been different. We started talking again after that. And things were better, for a time. Between he and I, anyways.

What happened then between she and I is what sealed our friendship to the annals of history forever...

One night, while late in bed, I get an email notification from tumblr telling me I had a new follower. And its Her. Through several name/address changes, on the one platform I did not think to block her from, there she was following me. Looking down on that message as it glowed up at me from under the covers, witnessing the little smirk in her user avatar, I started to shake. The blog I thought I had made for myself, similar to this one, where I had the space to ruminate and collect thoughts, had been violated and invaded. Like every other aspect of my life, by her.

I did not react well to this discovery. At first, I made several passive aggressive posts directed at her and then deleted each one. And then I went directly to her, asking her to stop as I didn't think it was appropriate for her to be following me. Her response was to laugh at me, and mock something I had said in one of the passive aggressive and deleted posts I made. I'm not ashamed to admit that my reaction was explosive. I hurled every shitty thing I could think of to say inside one sentence and then deleted the entire messaging system we were using to communicate (which at the time was Slack). Later, when I apologized for my terrible reaction, she doubled down on the insults and called me a hypocrite for expecting that there be boundaries between myself and the person who said they never wanted to speak to me again. And so a final decision was made that this was not worth saving. So I blew it up over two lengthy emails.

I don't even remember what I said. And I don't want to. I suspect my brain is protecting me like a heat shield protects a satellite that is being hurled back to earth. I do remember what she said, which is that I proved her therapists right and that I had always been a bad person. I remember this because my therapist had lead me to the same conclusion about herself. Funny how even in our friendship death, we still have things in common.

A day or two after she followed me on tumblr, I updated the configuration of my blog that said no one could access via the app that wasn’t one of my followers, essentially ensuring that whoever was going to visit my site was going to do so in broad daylight. And then I installed a counter that tracked IP addresses of visitors who came to my blog. For months, she continued to check on it. It was like she couldn’t help it. She was clearly sick. So to test the lengths to which she would go to find it, I changed the name once again and sent Him a link to a post. Lo and behold one week later, there is the entry from his phone visiting. And then a few days later another, closely followed by Her IP again. Tumblr would be the first of many spaces that she colonized and evicted me from. It's not a coincidence that I struggled to find a voice after that or that I have not been able to write with anything approaching ease in the last few years.

I didn't see her or talk to her for months. She had stopped coming into the office. I stopped hearing sirens in my head when I saw her name, so I unblocked her on social media. After all, we still share friends and having gotten what I wanted all along (space), my anger had evaporated. 

But according to my boss, she still used the fact that we no longer got along as an excuse to work from home. As if I had been the one shouting at her in the office, as if I had caused a hostile work place. It's no small coincidence, in my mind, that I was let go by our boss very shortly after she returned to the office regularly. I can't prove it, but I believe she contributed to it. And unfortunately, it wouldn't be the last time she actively set out to hurt me.

When I lost my job, I lost my insurance and therefore, access to my therapist. And I had to start rationing my anti-depressants. I fell into the deepest darkest depression of my life. And it did not help that this was all in the dead of winter, when the sun barely came out long enough for me to see it and run outside. Through the rest of December and January, I submitted dozens of applications and copies of my resume. Finally, at the end of January when I had had to start cutting each of my Lexapro's in half to get by, I got a call for an interview for a company in New York. They hired me almost immediately, and before I knew it I was being sent to New York to be trained. It was right around the same time that I found out the remaining members of the team I had hired at my previous job, Her and several others had been let go unexpectedly. I'd love to say that there was no part of me that received any amount of pleasure upon hearing that, but I'd be lying. I definitely gloated. It felt good to know that things were going wrong for them, for her, when things had just started to go right for me after they messed them up so poorly. In all of my self righteousness I opined to a mutual friend about how bleak Her household must be because I believed it probably was. It sucks to lose one's job and I would know all about that. That mutual friend, knowing that I had a relationship with Him at this time, mistook my opinion as though I had heard it was bleak in the household directly from Him. So the next time our mutual friend spoke with Her, our mutual friend voiced some concerns about the state of how things were going for the two of them. Her spoke to Him later, demanding to know why He is telling me in particular that things in their house are not fine. Which leads him to send a group chat message...

It's 7AM EST early February and I'm in the Best Western of Troy, New York reading my text messages. He has sent one to our entire friend group, demanding that if any of us are speaking about him to stop it immediately; leave him out of all conversation - She is upset that there has been any talk at all. I tell him that request is impossible as we're all friends who care about each other and I refuse to be isolated in any way from any of them. Meanwhile, sirens are going off in my head. I hear my mother's voice, warning me about domestic abusers who isolate their victims from their friends to perpetuate their abuse. I silence it. After all, I still live on the corner of Denial St and The-Dick- Is-Big Ave.

Eventually, a one-on-one conversation is started between He and I. He insinuates that it is the group chat itself that is the issue, because she is not allowed to be in it. I tell him I think it's valid that she is not in it as I am, and I want her to remain firmly out of my space. Which is a mutual feeling between the two of us, or so I thought. And anyway, I tell him, it's her that has me blocked on every social media platform we had in common.

It's at this point he calls me a liar. And it's at this point the story should have ended but I still have a severe lack of love for myself, no therapeutic support, am low on my anti depressants, and completely isolated in New York for the next two weeks.

He tells me he has her search for me on Facebook and Instagram and she finds nothing, which proves that it is I that have her blocked therefore I it is me doing the lying. Which, anyone who knows anything about social media will tell you, this is expected behavior if you have someone blocked. But he hardly ever engages with social media, let alone take the time to understand it, so this is lost on him.

I'm immediately triggered. I have to leave the office where I'm being trained for my new job and walk back to my hotel to catch my breath before I vomit up the coffee and cake that our sales manager brought as a welcome gift. The words "At this point, yeah I do think you're lying." keep swimming back up to me from a little grey bubble. I call him and scream into his voicemail. "...I do think you're lying to me," ... My hands practically vibrating, I take a screen recording of all of my blocked lists and send it to him. "...you're lying to me..." I black out for a moment, thoughts of my mothers fists raining down on me as I'm being called a liar in the backseat of her car. I sob into my hotel pillow. I feel broken.

But it’s the middle of the day, I’ve had this job for all of two days and I cannot be having a massive freak out this early on. I take one of my precious remaining Ativan and try to breathe. Eventually, I calm myself. In a sick twist, I end up apologizing to him for screaming and overreacting. I open myself up further and explain to him why being called a liar is a trigger for me. This was a pattern with us; The only way he ever had compassion for me when we argued (and sometimes when we weren't) was when I spelled out exactly what I was going through. I thought if I was honest about my feelings with him, he would treat me with more dignity. But as a matter of fact, it turned out when I was crying on his shoulder, he felt as if I was manipulating him. He told me that once when I called him, sad because someone I had a crush on had started dating someone else. I was never sure what I was supposedly manipulating him to do. Spend time with me? Show concern for me? But despite that, I take a huge risk, expose my jugular to him again and beg for him to understand where I am coming from. 

He apologizes. He comes over and we have a quiet talk. For a very short time, things go back to whatever normal is to us. We're communicating a little more and I think we're being more honest. But things aren't the same. We're still very vulnerable. I never knew if he sensed that or not. I'd like to believe that if he did, his behavior would have been different. But his behavior remained rough, and careless. 

A little over a month after I returned from New York, he had invited me to his house while she was away. The entire experience was unnerving. For one, the apartment felt cold and dark. It was not very inviting. For another, He was relegated to sleeping on a roll up mat on the floor while She had a bed and a closing door with a closet and a window. This really bothered me. I thought there would be more of a separation, or a at least a clear division of space. A boundary. I look desperately for boundaries, but there were none. Her makeup vanity was directly behind his work desk and above the space he used to sleep in. And there was no trace of me there at all. But of course there wouldn't be. She wouldn't allow it. And he never cared enough about me to change that in any sense. So I started to really see for the first time that our relationship was just sex for him. I couldn't see clearly that we even had a friendship anymore and this really bothered me.

I wanted to talk to him about it, and I asked him if we could. I'm not even sure what I wanted to say, but I just needed reassurance that he was still friends with me. That he still liked me. That he was, even though he was far away, still somewhat in my corner. I was feeling anxious, I was low on my medicine, with no therapist, working 12 hour days and still broke from being unemployed for months. I just wanted to talk and have him reassure me that at the very least, he was there for me and would be there for me. He agreed to that and we scheduled a time to talk, because at that point he was extremely busy with work and trying to balance everything, as was I. The afternoon we had worked out to talk comes and goes, and I don't hear from him. I message him and I express annoyance because we had plans, but he tells me that he had an outing with Her, and it went long. And then he expresses annoyance at me for being annoyed at him. He goes on the defensive. I completely unravel over a string of messages, which of course are poorly timed and one right after the other, which I know he hates. He engages his favorite tactic which is to leave the conversation entirely, tell me he's not speaking to me for a while, and then come back at his whim. He does this over a few days. He responds to each of my texts individually, escalating in each response until he's screaming at me in all caps and has worked himself back into the rage which makes him walk away.

I'm at the point where I'm looking at this pile of garbage relationship which has twice in the past two months shoved me into two of the worst, most ill-timed panic attacks I've ever had - and finally I hear my therapist's voice ring back to me as clear as a bell: He will never leave her, and he will never choose you. Everything that my denial had been holding at bay like a sweet little naïve raincloud crashed down all at once around me with the force of a tornado. It was the way there was never any compassion or kindness shown to me at the worst time of my life. It was the way he called me a liar and a manipulator when I was trying to include him in my deepest most personal feelings and experiences. It was the way he never noticed that I was blowing up my life with alcohol or that I was deeply depressed. It was the way he lied over and over again, telling me that he cared about me and then turning around to demonstrate why that wasn't actually true. It was the way I had to bend over backwards to accommodate his feelings, while there was never any room for mine.

And so, as anticlimactically as it began, our relationship finally ended. I don't even remember what the final blow was, or what I said in response. No doubt something shaky and angry and ugly. But I have never regretted it. For as ugly as I know it probably was, I do not regret it. My life, my health both mental and physical, has improved exponentially since that day in late April.

But if there is a hopeful epilogue to the story, it would pick up six months later when I had settled into my new place in the city, to be closer to work. I started to feel those pangs again. Those little flighty feathery feelings that can be so strong they echo across decades with such intensity that you can almost physically feel their presence inside your skin where they hibernate. It was the same feeling that made me sit down next to him on the bus all that time ago. I missed him. In spite of everything that happened, everything I learned, and went through, I did. But it wasn't until I started to feel as though I missed Her too that I knew I had to get back into therapy. A queer friend of mine who had been struggling through their own relationship issues, suggested a co-op place in Seattle they'd been using which was geared specifically to women and those who identify as such. Signing up with them was probably the best decision I'd end up making in my 30's. The therapist I was paired with was understanding, validating, and I never sensed once that she was bored with anything I had to say. She equipped me with the best tools to deal with my feelings, she taught that it's okay to love and protect myself through setting and maintaining healthy boundaries. And the best part about her is that she herself maintained extremely healthy boundaries. I never knew more about her than I needed to know. Yet I felt like I connected with her on a very deep level. And through talking to her, working with her, I was able to fully understand and appreciate what I had just been through, and how to exercise compassion for myself when I would find myself in situations where I would start reliving all of that trauma. Because of her, I found myself again. Or maybe I found myself for the first time. She helped me understand the feelings I'd been having for years but hadn't had the space or emotional support to explore. She helped me put a name to a feeling I’d had since childhood but never knew there was a word for. Not long after I started working with her, I came out as non-binary. Through our work, I found a deep well of love for myself that allows me to firmly (but with patience and love) define and protect my boundaries, and still have enough energy left over show interest, compassion and love for others in their journeys. And I stopped trying to avoid feeling like shit through drinking. Literally, everything became better a result of my therapist's influence on me.

But try as I might, there are some days in the year where my mind wanders back to the grey north where I tried to make a home. When I can almost hear the drizzle of rain in Occidental Park as I cried my eyes out there over something He said. In my mind's eye, I turn away, but the neighborhood is haunted with these types of traumas for me. Nowhere is safe, my mind panics, and I get turned around in the horrid memories; screaming at each other on 1st Avenue outside E Smith, sobbing so hard on 2nd that a stranger asked me if I was okay, countless arguments in the park that followed us to the bus stop and back to our home. Eventually, my mind grows desperate for answers, and it carries me back in time... all the way back to 2010 at Macy's when it began, and the loop starts again.

Which brings me to today. I've lost count of how many times we've been down this road. But I know grief is hard. And so is recovery. One of the ways in which I see to my recovery now is to write more. I don't usually publish what I write because it's just for me and I still have a lot of residual anxiety about posting anything personal online. Another reason is that my writing is so fluid that publishing it seems too final. Like... what if I change my mind about that way I've structured a sentence? What if I think of a better way to phrase that feeling? What if I change my mind entirely about the thing that I've written about? ...Why use a period if I could use a comma?

But I'm publishing this note anyway. For you, future Holly. Because you need this to be over. And because whenever we get into this rut, the only thing we seem to be able to do to stop ourselves from missing them and reminiscing about the good times is to walk ourselves through the trauma that they ended up causing. Which is effective in getting the sad feelings to stop, but you know is burning you alive on the inside. And so I'm writing this note to tell you (future me) that we don't have to do that anymore. You can set these thoughts and feelings down in language and writing, and be done. You can publish them, and move on. You can walk away. Put a period on the end of the sentence and close the book. 

But if you ever feel as though you need to mutilate yourself mentally by trying to list it all out again, so that you can poke it and dissect it and review it in triplicate... I will be here. Waiting to remind you that nothing you have ever done disqualifies you from being afforded compassion and kindness. Waiting to remind you that you deserve better friends, better love, than those that would afford you only scraps. Waiting to remind you that your anger is valid, along with your hurt and your sadness. And also waiting to remind you that this is temporary. These feelings are temporary. Give yourself the space today to feel what you are feeling. Let yourself be sad. Let yourself be angry. And tomorrow when you wake up, let it all go.

I love you. -H

[initiala]

Hi.

I'm sorry this took a long time. Post-Big Bang burnout hit, coupled with crazy work stuff, and to be quite honest there were a lot of tricky conversations in this chapter I had to figure out.

We're setting the stage here for pretty much all the conflict to come, there's just one more piece that'll come into play later. Until then, enjoy!!

Also on AO3 and FF.Net

Her tongue slid up the length of his cock, swirling around the tip before taking it into her mouth. He shifted in his sleep, mumbling something incoherent under his breath, and she moved slowly, bobbing her head up and down on the tip while pumping the base.

She'd woken up with his morning wood pressing against her thigh - he really did like to curl up with her while he slept - and she really wasn't going to pass up an opportunity when it presented itself. She felt like it was only fair, returning the favor; he liked to wake her with his head between her thighs whenever the mood struck him. One hand slipped down to fondle his balls, her nails lightly scratching along his thighs as she gently squeezed and massaged. She inhaled; his scent was stronger here, marking her every time she took him in, letting anyone with a nose know she was his and he was hers. He twitched under her as she continued to lightly tickle his thighs. He whimpered, mumbling her name as his hips rocked up; she smiled around his cock, taking him in deeper with each pass.

She also felt that waking him with a blowjob was a small thing she could do to show her appreciation for how much he'd taken on when it came to wedding planning in the last few weeks.

Between Killian and Ruby, the whole wedding came together without any fuss; they were an extraordinarily efficient tag team. Ruby wouldn't take 'no' for an answer and Killian could grease the palms of those who might say 'no' anyway. Emma nearly had a heart attack when she realized how much they were spending - in costs and in bribes - but Ruby assured her that she'd negotiated the prices way down from what the initial offers were. And she only had to threaten to call Emma's uncle twice.

Knowing Uncle James, he would have liked nothing more than to be called in as muscle, but it was probably better for everyone that he didn't go around threatening people over something as simple as the cost of a reception hall.

Just a week left and all they had to worry about were the small details.

Killian groaned softly, bringing her back into the moment. She paused a moment, giving her jaw a break while she kept pumping his cock, watching the little furrow between his brows deepen. He was almost awake, she could just tell, but still asleep enough to think he was dreaming this. She smiled to herself, then wrapped her lips around him again and sucked hard. "Emma… Emma."

Then his hand found her hair and she knew he was awake; she'd be a little offended if he wasn't at this point. She redoubled her efforts, going down on him like her life depended on it, and was justly rewarded when his grip in her hair tightened and he cried out as his seed shot down her throat. She swallowed and sat back on her haunches with a satisfied smile, watching his chest heave and his hand scrub the last remnants of sleep from his eyes. "Bloody… not that I'm complaining, love, but what was that for?"

"No reason," she said, getting up and stretching her arms up over her head, knowing her shirt was riding up and giving him a little tease.

She caught his eye and smiled again, warmth flooding her chest at the adoring look on his face. "Why don't you come back to bed and I'll show you just how much I appreciated it?" he asked, his voice low and his accent thick from sleep.

She shivered and saw his nostrils flare: the offer was a tempting - and arousing - one, and he knew it, but they had things to get done today. "We're supposed to be at Alice and Robin's by noon, remember?"

Killian sighed. "I was hoping you'd forgotten about that."

Emma rolled her eyes. They'd stopped by the apothecary not long after Liam had left to get Granny's ingredients and to put a bug in Alice and Robin's ears about any anti-human speech from the non-human population. They'd been careful to leave out any details of Regina or the downtown packs so there weren't any witnesses being led, but with both young women being in prime position to hear the gossip from all walks of life Emma thought they'd have heard something after more than a month. "I'd like to have these things checked out before the wedding, so we can spend time together without worrying."

"I know, love." He sat up and scrubbed his face again. "I just… I have a bad feeling, that's all. And not in regards to Alice's insistence on allowing her to pet me when we've shifted."

She smiled slightly; Alice had a peculiar way of looking at life, and one of her many quirks was finding werewolves to be completely harmless, giant dogs. "I don't like it either," she said softly. "But better to know and be able to prepare than get caught off-guard again."

His hand drifted almost unconsciously to rub his shoulder, above where he'd been shot over a month before. Her heart panged; she went back to his side and put her hand over his, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. He hummed in quiet content, his head resting against her chest. Between his healing and all of the wedding preparation, Emma was almost surprised he wasn't more tired, but having something to do seemed to take his mind off the incident - for the most part. They both slept restlessly, plagued by memory-dreams of that night, and seemed to be taking turns waking each other up so they might be able to get a better night's rest without the dreams.

(She made a mental note to talk to Alice about that too - there had to be some kind of charm or spell to get rid of nightmares.)

Even the last full moon had been spoiled; Emma hadn't wanted to venture too far from home, and even though Killian had protested earlier in the day, he'd felt differently once they shifted. So after a quick sprint around the block to shake out the post-shift jitters, they'd returned and spent the night curled up together on the couch in the living room.

Sighing at the memory, she kissed the top of his head again and then reluctantly pulled away to go get ready for the day. She wondered about next week's full moon as she showered and got dressed, if they'd do the same; a newly mated pair wasn't expected to make an appearance with the rest of the pack, but she hated mating in wolf form and wasn't sure how well they'd handle another night cooped up in the apartment again. She remembered the restless energy, combined with the newness of the bond, that made her almost wild with need to do something. She worried that something might overpower her hatred of wolf-mating and then she'd end up actually hurting Killian if she lashed out after being knotted to him for too long.

She was still pondering it when she went into the kitchen and started making… She couldn't quite call this breakfast, not at this hour, but she still attempted to actually cook what had started as an omlette and was now probably just scrambled eggs with bits of stuff in it when Killian came up behind her after his own shower, smelling fresh and still a little damp behind the ears. His hand and arm settled on her waist as he buried his face in her neck, inhaling deeply. She could almost feel him relax, and smiled. "I've told you I love you, correct?" he murmured against her skin.

"A few times," she said, leaning into him in content.

"Mm. Maybe I should say it more often." She giggled as he turned her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers. "I love you."

"Love you, too," she said, resting her forehead against his. And then, because she could smell his arousal and feel him stirring against her thigh, she added, "You're not going to distract me from going to Alice's."

Killian sighed dramatically, then kissed her again. "Can't blame me for trying."

Emma reached down and squeezed his ass, then gave it a light smack before insisting he move and let her finish cooking. "We're going to find something to help you sleep better, too."

He groaned and she smiled, remembering what he'd told her about his first encounter with Alice's medicine making.

There it is, he thought, jogging up to the shop. Which Witch and Whatsits. While non-humans rarely tended to get sick, the bugs that did catch up with them were mean little things and Emma had been suffering from migraines and fever for a week now. This was the closest thing to a chemist they had in the neighborhood for their kind.

A gray-striped cat hissed as he entered the shop, sitting on top of the bookshelf right next to the door. Killian barely spared it a glance; cats didn't like him, he didn't like cats. The wolf part of his mind stirred, an idle urge to give chase brewing, but he stamped it down: for one thing, it wasn't dignified for a grown man to chase a cat. For another, hunting pets was something they tried to avoid on the whole. No need to make the neighborhood children cry because a beloved family pet was missing.

Though in this case, he simply had no wish to be cursed by the witch that owned this particular cat.

"Cheshire, behave. He's a strange wolf but he's new to the neighborhood." Killian looked up, noticing a young woman. She wore large, round glasses and kept her long blonde hair tied back in a braid.

He raised an eyebrow at that; from his understanding, this one was entirely human. She saw the look and raised an eyebrow of her own. "You think I married a witch and haven't picked up a thing or two? Werewolves walk a certain way. And you're shacked up with Emma Swan, and as far as I know there's way less leniency on inter-species relationships in the wolf packs than other supernaturals."

"You must be Robin then."

"And you must be looking for Alice."

"Who's looking for me?"

The witch bounded out of the back and made a beeline for her wife, clearly needing the same sort of quick affection he and Emma did when they'd been apart for a while. Her short blonde hair was a riot of curls and frizzy in the way of one who spent a lot of time in humid conditions - which spoke for her peculiar gardening of medicinal fungi. Her eyes met his and they widened in curiosity. "Oh hello. You're new, aren't you?"

Killian only had time to nod before she clasped her hands together with an enormous grin. "Excellent. Haven't had a new one in ages, it gets so boring seeing the same faces all day long. Not you, Robin-"

"No offense taken, my love."

"It's just I don't get to see what else I might be missing in my medicines. Limited quantity of germs to work with, all inbred and so very dull-"

"I'm just here for Emma," he said, even as she was reaching for him. "She's taken ill-"

Hand in hers, the witch took him back into what he presumed was her workshop. "We'll get something for her, but in the meantime -" She sat him on a stool and pulled over a tray of what looked like dental tools. She picked up the little mirror tool and what looked like a long Q-tip. "Open wide."

The storefront of Which Witch and Whatsits was unassuming, a subdued sign and a modest window display that mixed travel and New Age products, designed to lure in the younger crowd experimenting with their beliefs and interests. There was a little bell that jingled above the door when they went in and Emma saw Robin talking to a couple of college-aged girls; there were piles of maps and travel books spread on the counter in front of them and even if she couldn't hear their quiet conversation, Emma would know they were discussing the best ways to backpack safely through some part of the world on a shoestring budget. There was a map on the wall behind the cash register with pins in every country Robin (and, eventually, Alice) had been to, and photos forming a sort of border around it. Everest's base camp, riding camel-back through the Sahara, motorcycling across Turkey, summiting the Mayan pyramids - it was no wonder the travel bug-bitten youngsters in the area came to Robin for advice and stories.

Robin glanced up at the bell and nodded at them, not missing a beat in her own conversation. Whatever she knew, she'd likely passed on to Alice, and they wouldn't need to interrupt her.

Cheshire lay sprawled out between a display of healing crystals. He laid his ears back and made a noise of discontent when he saw Emma and Killian; she'd have thought by now that as a witch's familiar Cheshire would be used to all sorts of non-humans coming by, but he only mostly tolerated the presence of other supernaturals. Then he chirped and got to his feet, jumping down from the display and trotting through the beaded curtain that separated the human side of the shop from the magical one.

After only another moment, Alice poked her head out from the other room and grinned, waving them in. The hair on Emma's arms stood up as they passed through the magical barrier placed in the beaded curtain, a spell designed to keep all signs, smells, and sounds of magic away from anyone not "in the know" to the magical community while allowing anyone back here to keep an ear out to the front of the shop.

It was a useful spell, but it still made Emma feel like her hackles were up for ages after.

The workshop itself was a curious mix of greenhouse and darkroom, inviting conditions for all sorts of plants that Alice liked to experiment with. It was warm and humid, making everything slightly damp to the touch. "So, how're you two?" Alice asked, plopping herself on a stool. "Been a bit, yeah? Got all your doves in a row for the wedding?"

"We're fine, Alice, thanks," Killian said. He braced himself against one of the workbenches. "Almost ready with the plans, really just ready to get on with it, you know?"

"That's how I felt when Robin and I got engaged-just wanted to elope and be done with it, but her mum went all 'mother of the bridezilla' and wanted a big to-do. It was nice, I guess, having a mum going bananas over everything, but it took ages to get it all sorted."

Emma couldn't help but glance down at the frankly enormous ring on Alice's finger and pressed her thumb to the band of her own ring reassuringly. It might not be big or flashy, but it held so much meaning and she'd never be able to put into words how thankful she was that Killian agreed to use it for their engagement. "Kind of feels that way with Ruby, even though she's getting everything set up ridiculously fast," she admitted.

"See, that's what everyone should have in their lives. One person who's nutter for planning. Leave a project with 'em and do your own things and come back later when it's ready. 'Course, it's only really useful when there's a big party, but sometimes letting Robin's mum loose with watering the plants while we're gone means we come back to a cleaning service having mucked up my mushrooms and the socks are sorted. She's not one to do the dirty work herself, but she's got all the best contacts in town to get a job done, me mum-in-law."

Emma opened her mouth to respond, but Killian cut in, "Yes, and I'm sure if we need something else catered we'll ask for a number, but we're really here to discuss any updates you might have for us?"

"Oh, he's all business today, ain't he?" Alice asked Emma, who just gave a tight-lipped, slightly apologetic smile. She drooped slightly when she realized neither of them were very interested in playing games. "Wolves. Can't change a subject when you've got a rabbit between your teeth."

With a sigh, she hopped off the stool and beckoned them over to a slightly more conventional desk, covered though it was with notebooks and half-thought-out ideas and drawings, spells, and arcane symbols. All of the papers were slightly crinkled and swollen from the heat and moisture in the room, but most were unceremoniously swept aside to reveal a map of downtown Boston and some carefully taken notes in what must have been Robin's handwriting, because it certainly didn't match any of the barely legible scribbles of a witch at work. "So this is what all the little birdies have been telling us."

As she spoke, Alice pointed out various spots on the map where they'd colored in blocks and streets. "So this is where we'd overheard anything that could be taken for anti-human speech. I made a little color chart here: red is the worst of it, orange and yellow being less so, and down to green being things like annoyances at tourists and the like, nothing that the humans themselves wouldn't complain about."

"And with all the holidays lately, the tourists go up," Emma murmured, noting how much green there was and feeling relief at that. "How'd you figure what's dangerous talk and what isn't?"

"Well, Robin's fair used to hearing all sorts of nonsense said about her, what with the travel and all," Alice said. "She's got a good sense of what's nonsense and what's a threat, my love, so we started there. But we noted something interesting."

"It's all congregated in certain areas," Killian said, pointing to clusters of oranges and reds.

"Exactly! So I made a few rounds with some of the other local witches and got an idea of what their neighborhoods are like."

Witches, Emma learned, tended to congregate towards populations that fit their specialties. There weren't a lot of other non-humans in their neighborhood other than some of the Dorchester pack, so Alice could focus mostly on medicines and toy with side projects as she wished. The areas Killian pointed out were more diverse; the witches there dealt with werewolves and vampires, Fae and centaurs, and others Emma hadn't even known were local. "So we're already looking at centralized neighborhoods," she said, resting her elbows on the table. Alice had even drawn in patterns of where she knew certain species lived.

"Birds of a feather flock together," Alice said. "Or wolves in packs."

"I wonder if Regina wants to evict everyone who isn't Pack, or if she'd be content with making it non-human zone," Killian murmured.

Emma frowned; knowing Regina as she did, she couldn't imagine an alpha like her being wholly invested in creating a happy, magical community for everyone. She also didn't want to get into motives right now; they hadn't told Alice specifically to keep their suspicions quiet, and right now she was looking at them with a gaze that was entirely too curious for comfort. "Is there a timeline on when these notes were made?" Emma asked, changing the subject slightly.

"Just over the last six weeks."

The beaded curtain behind them rustled. "A lot more was said after Killian got shot," Robin's voice added. Emma glanced over her shoulder as the other woman came in. "I'll admit that a lot of the red areas were probably more Pack members speaking out than they normally might, and a lot of it has quieted down in the weeks since, especially after the announcement that you two were going to be married."

"What does that mean, 'normally might'?"

Robin shrugged with one shoulder as Alice lay her head on the other. "Werewolves are always more outspoken with the anti-human stuff than others, but it depends on who's doing the talking. Forest nymphs and water sprites are always vicious about environmental stuff. Centaurs complain about overcrowding and the ineffectiveness of their glamors with people still bumping into their hindquarters. I think of everyone vampires are the quietest about their complaints, but they have their mesmers and their blood bags so as long as they're fed they're happy."

Emma made a face; she really didn't like how casually vampires referred to the humans who willingly came to them or served them as 'blood bags', but there were a lot of things that made her squeamish about vampirism.

"So yeah, everyone has their complaints, but werewolves… I dunno, it always seems louder. And it got really loud after Killian was shot."

"Well, I'd think so," he retorted. "I got shot. By a human."

"Talk is always more about how Pack should remind humanity they aren't the only apex predators around, knock their egos down a peg or two, not outright finding the offender and killing him."

Killian's scent changed and Emma looked up at him, not liking the way his eyes flashed. "Well, I can't say I disagree with the idea."

"Killing the man won't change anything," Emma argued, alarmed that he'd agree with the anti-human talk.

"Might discourage others from trying anything else, or at least serve as an absolute reminder that there are things stronger than humans out there and we won't be intimidated by their weapons," he said. His voice dropped, colored with enmity. "And, may I remind you, he nearly killed me."

She opened her mouth, but the words got caught in her throat. He was right, he had absolutely every right to be angry about what happened to him. She was angry about it too - she wanted some kind of justice for what had been done.

But killing someone over it?

The wolf part of her brain agreed - rip, tear, kill - but she tamped it down. Dammit, wasn't she always going on about how she wasn't some kind of animal? How they were better than animals? She refused to be ruled by her baser instincts during her worst moments, she damn well wasn't going to let them rule her during her best. And while justice was necessary, killing the man was going too far.

This wasn't an eye for an eye. This was the whole head for an eye.

"Killing someone for harming someone else isn't a proportional response," she said, knowing her words were weak when she could feel the anger radiating from him.

"I think as the harmed party, I should get a say in how justice is handed out."

"So what, if a hunting party was called, you'd offer to lead it?"

"If that's what the Pack decided needed to be done, yes."

Alarm rose like bile in her throat. This wasn't done. Pack laws were clear about killing, when and where it should be done, and how. And since Killian had recovered and it wasn't deemed a magical attack by Uncle James and several of the other Pack elders, they'd ruled to leave the matter alone and remind everyone of what the possible dangers were during the full moon.

She'd heard Regina hadn't been happy about being overruled in the matter, one of the staunch supporters for such a hunting party.

"Well," she said, conflict in her heart, "it's a good thing the Pack decided everything should be left alone."

Slowly, she remembered that Alice and Robin were still there and watching them with mixed emotions playing on their faces. She felt like she should leave, ears laid back and tail tucked between her legs, but she had one more question. "Where's the greatest area of all the anti-human talk?"

Robin's eyes still looked worried, even behind her huge glasses, but her reply was prompt. "North End."

"I'm not happy about this, James," Aunt Jack said. "What's stopping the humans from trying this again at the next full moon?"

"Well, you can go join Regina and the other dissenters in that," Uncle James retorted. "Nothing's ever stopped them before, this is just the first time in our memory it's happened."

"You used to feel like this too. Fighting back, hitting them where it hurt most."

Sitting there and feeling seventeen again, Emma watched them bicker as she mulled over the announcement that Uncle James had brought home; she'd only come over to let them know about updates for the wedding when he'd arrived. Her aunt and uncle were always arguing about something; Emma hadn't understood it when she was young, but after living with them she figured out it was just how they worked together. You didn't get to be the head of a pack the size of Dorchester by being soft and accommodating. They were happiest when they were fighting.

Uncle James sighed, running his hand through his graying hair. "Yeah, well, I've learned a thing or two about diplomacy since then."

"There will be Pack who see this as weak," Aunt Jack argued.

Emma nodded; she agreed with the majority ruling, but she knew there would be plenty of Pack members who might see this as an opportunity to challenge for leadership. "There will always be Pack who see the alpha's decisions as weak," she said. She ducked her head at Aunt Jack's sharp glare, a reminder that while she held high status in the pack she still ranked lower than them and needed to show respect. "I'm just saying, if some idiot wants to actually challenge Uncle James to a fight, they'd better make funeral preparations first."

It would never feel right to see such a wicked grin on a face that was identical to her father's, but that was Uncle James through and through. "Smart girl. Now, what are you making us pay for this time?"

Killian left first, allowing Emma to gather her thoughts and her wits after the meeting ended. She and Robin left Alice to her mushrooms and Emma tried not to sneeze as the full scent of the incense in the shop hit her nose; it was nauseating to her, she didn't know how regular humans could stand it.

She wandered over to look at a display on meditation, breathing in time with what the directions were telling her and wondering if there was any clout to this whole chakra thing, when Cheshire yowled at her and something batted against her boot. She looked down and saw the familiar staring back with unnerving intelligence in his gaze. He yowled again and batted at an egg-shaped stone of mottled green and purple against her boot again. Emma bent down and shooed the familiar away, picking up the stone. "Hey, Cheshire's moving your rocks around," she said, looking it over as she took it over to Robin.

Cheshire hopped up on the counter next to Robin, who pet him absently as she noticed what Emma was holding. "Ah, that's fluorite - a worry stone. He must think you're stressed."

Emma side-eyed the prickly familiar. "Here I thought he didn't like me."

As if to prove her point, his ears went back and he looked away, but he didn't actually hiss this time and she took that as an improvement. "He does what he wants, but he's pretty good at getting people the things they need. Most of the time he's more subtle, but since you already know what he is, I don't think he cares." Emma looked down at the stone and Robin's tone changed to something softer. "Hey, that one's on the house. You two… seemed a little tense back there. It can't hurt and it might even help."

Emma's eyes flicked up back to Robin's and her mouth twisted into a wry smile. "This healing crystal stuff actually works?"

"You buy magic mushrooms from a witch and turn into a wolf once a month, but you're asking if healing crystals exist?"

"Okay, I don't buy those kinds of magic mushrooms."

Robin's smile was pure mischief. "They're there when you want 'em. She bred a new batch, much more potent but grounds you enough so you don't end up doing something stupid and dream quest off a cliff."

Emma made a face. "I don't think I'd be able to handle that."

"It's not for everyone." Her smile faded. "But seriously, Alice does… something to bring out the qualities in the crystals we sell. I don't ask, her magic talk just sounds like mumbo-jumbo to me. The other shops like this just sell plain rocks and they're aesthetically pleasing, but our stuff tends to work. It can't hurt, and it might help when you have to have what I'm gonna guess is a really uncomfortable conversation when you get home."

Emma made another face. "God, don't remind me… How can he think like that?"

Robin just shrugged, scritching Cheshire's ears. "People who are wronged… sometimes I think they're the only ones who get to decide who justice is mete. I've been around the world and seen a lot of justice done badly. But I've seen a lot of justice carried out to the best it can be done and people are still hurt by the results. No one's happy. So maybe this is how justice was handled, not doing anything in order to protect everyone involved, because the other option is going to blow a hole between two sides that might never be fixed. But Killian won't see it that way for a while, because while his body is healed, it takes a lot longer for the mind to heal."

Emma mulled that over for a moment, rolling the worry stone around in her palm; it made sense and put it into better words than she'd been thinking.

And the warm stone in her hand gave her the strangest feeling of tension leaving her shoulders.

"I don't know if he'll see it that way, but I'll try," she said. Then, remembering her earlier mental note, she added, "Oh, and speaking of mind-healing, I was wondering if you had anything that could help with nightmares."

She arrived home a little while later with a bag of sleeping tea and a chunk of black tourmaline to put in the bedroom - she was still skeptical of the crystal, but at this point she'd try anything (and regardless, she knew the tea would work; this was just a fallback). Though the sun was going down, the apartment was dark; she inhaled and found Killian's scent was fresh, tinged with bitterness and fading anger. She also smelled liquor.

Sighing a little, she put the tea in the kitchen and started towards the bedroom. "Swan," Killian called out, his voice a little hoarse.

She turned; he was sitting on the couch, though honestly calling it 'sitting' was being modest, what with all the manspreading of his arms over the back and his legs stretched out under the coffee table. A tumbler of what she surmised was rum was in his hand; the rest of the bottle sat on the table and she recognized it as one of Elsa's "guaranteed to knock a werewolf on his ass" brands.

Cool. Great.

"Don't make a man drink alone," he said, though he looked fairly drunk already.

Emma was in the mood for neither a drink or a man, but she just shook her head and went to the bedroom. She set the black tourmaline on the window ledge above their bed as Robin had instructed, then changed into more comfortable clothes. If she was going to be hauling Killian's drunk ass to bed or to the bathroom later, she'd rather do it in leggings than skinny jeans.

At that thought, she sat down hard on the bed and cradled her head in her hands. God, why was he the one driven to drink right now? He wasn't the one who found out his intended mate would be more than happy to murder someone for crossing him. He wasn't the one feeling betrayed because his intended mate agreed with the woman who killed her parents.

The metal of her ring pressed against her skin and Emma felt nauseated.

Fuck. They were getting married in a week. A week.

Maybe she did need a drink. A lot of drinks.

He knew how she felt about Regina, about Regina's politics. Saying he didn't disagree with the notion - the Pack-forbidden notion - that the man who'd shot him should be gutted for the crime was as good as saying he agreed with Regina. But he'd been shot, he had every right to feel angry and want revenge!

But that didn't mean it was right.

Emma dropped her head down and braced her hands on the back of her neck, trying to breathe and will away the nausea. He just needs time, she thought, remembering Robin's words. It's only been a few weeks since it happened, he just needs time to heal. And having nightmares every night isn't helping. Of course he wants revenge when he's reliving it all the time.

He just needs time.

She got up, head throbbing and feeling like her thoughts were twisted seven ways from Sunday, and went to the living room. Killian watched her with unsteady eyes and she noted that not even half the bottle was gone. Elsa's stuff really was strong if he was that far gone already.

Good.

Emma lifted the bottle to her lips and drank. The rum burned its way down her throat and lit a fire in her belly - she didn't want a drink, she decided as she lowered the bottle. She wanted to get drunk. If he could do it, for no real reason she could discern, then so could she. She had reasons to blur and block out her emotions right now, and she intended to suppress them with as much alcohol as her body could handle tonight.

She took another long drag out of the bottle, ignoring the tiny bit of common sense left that told her the alcohol would smack her in the face like a truck if she kept this up.

She sat on the chair, bottle still tightly held in her fist, and met Killian's gaze with her own. She didn't want to talk, not now, not with one of them sober and the other piss-drunk already. They could talk - fight - later, when she couldn't see straight and the words that wanted to spill out of her like bile were no more coherent than his. Hell, if she stayed this tense and the anger that still lurked in his scent remained, they might even take it to a brawl, and God help any of Boston's finest that get called out to deal with their little domestic at that point.

Her heart beat in her chest and with it came a surge of alcohol, a wave of relief and pain and anger all at once, making her arms unsteady as it worked its way through her body and clouded her mind.

She drank again.

"You're angry with me," Killian said, downing the rest of his glass.

"You're pissed at me," she retorted.

He took the bottle from her to refill his glass. She took it back, nowhere near drunk enough to fight yet, but if he wanted to get into it then she wanted to be prepared to not remember a single second of this. "I am," he whispered, drinking more. "But I'm angry at me too."

The bottle paused halfway to her lips. "What?"

"I don't… I don't want to feel like this." She watched him warily, taking another swig. "I don't want to feel like I need to take revenge, like I'd be glad to see the man ripped limb from limb, but I feel like if I don't do something then it's going to rip me apart inside forever. And I don't want to push you away. I don't want you to think I'm a monster."

She felt a pang of sympathy in her chest. "Killian-"

He downed his drink then looked her in the eye. "You looked at me like you were afraid of the beast within, Emma, and I never want you to look at me like that again."

"You were as good as agreeing with Regina, and you know how I feel about her. This won't last forever, Killian, but you can't let your instincts take over like that."

He held out his hand. "Come here, love." A knot of tension between her shoulders loosened at the pet name and she took his hand, yelping in surprise when he pulled her over to sit on his lap. "You have all the rum."

"Yeah, well, some of us got a head start on the drunken pity party."

She took another swig, but clumsily refilled his glass after. Damn, this stuff was strong. Then again, as she eyed the bottle, she realized they'd drunk quite a lot of it. Setting it on the table, she settled against him, letting his scent wash over her - definitely more rum-infused, but the anger was gone, leaving only the sour tang of bitterness in its wake, with more than a little arousal at having her in such close proximity. If it wouldn't have made her more dizzy, she would have rolled her eyes. "You know, there's no way I'd ever be afraid of your inner beast. I could take you."

Killian snorted. "You wish."

"I'm pretty sure we've fought before and I win every time."

"Only because I'm holding back."

She hummed, not quite agreeing with him on that. She nuzzled his neck, listening to his heart rate speed up and his breath quicken. A smile crept up on her, much of the anger and hurt slowly vanishing after voicing them and the giddiness of being drunk bubbling up inside of her; she loved this man, infuriating qualities and all, and maybe they still needed to talk and maybe they weren't going to see eye to eye on everything, but she loved him and she was going to marry him for better or for worse. Nuzzling him again, she let her fingers dance up the front of his shirt, tracing circles on his chest. God he smelled good.

"Do I?"

Belatedly, she realized she'd said that out loud and started giggling - fuck, she was definitely drunk if she was giggling like this. "You always smell good."

"Funny, because you always smell good too."

As if to prove his point, he leaned over and buried his face in her neck, inhaling deeply. She started giggling again when he nosed around, his beard scratching against her skin. Then he licked along her collarbones and she stopped giggling, a flood of heat coursing through her instead. "Fuck, Killian."

With surprising mobility for a man who'd gotten a head start on the whole drinking business, he shifted her so she straddled his waist, kneeling on the couch. The heady scent of arousal made her feel fuzzy and her clit pulsed in time with her heartbeat as she pressed against his growing arousal. "I only want you," he murmured, catching her lips with his.

She was too drunk to care where the sentiment came from, too lost in feeling his body pressed against hers. "I know how you kiss," he continued, pressing kisses to her lips and cheeks and neck between words. "I only want to kiss you ever again, to know everything that makes you squirm and squeal. I only want this forever."

His words swam around in her brain as he stripped off her shirt and tossed it aside. How the fuck was he so eloquent? Then he buried his face between her breasts and she didn't care how wordy he still was after splitting most of a bottle of rum, she only cared about the feeling of him sucking on her nipples and his hand and his brace against her sides.

At some point she reached between them and unbuttoned his shirt, revelling every time his chest hair brushed against her stomach. His hand went to the waistband of her leggings, pulling them down enough so he could find her sex, dripping wet with want. Emma let her head fall back as his fingers gently probed her folds and slid through, the dual sensations of him fingering her and lavishing attention on her breasts almost enough to undo her. She moaned, her hands going to his hair and holding him in place as he fucked her with two fingers, easing some of the ache she'd felt.

She was dizzy and drunk and turned on and all she wanted was to feel his skin against hers. "As you wish," Killian murmured against her skin and she realized she'd been talking without realizing it again.

She whimpered when his fingers left her and fumbled rather ungracefully off to the side, fighting to get her leggings off of legs that didn't really want to cooperate anymore. Killian, meanwhile, had seemingly forgotten how his belt worked and was snarling in frustration as he tried to undo his pants. Emma, one foot caught in her leggings and the other leg still fully clothed, started giggling again, reaching for him. "You don't have enough fingers," she told him, helping him undo the belt and flicked open the button as well.

"I have enough fingers for you to come on," he retorted.

"I'd rather come on your cock," she challenged, and the surge of arousal she smelled rolling off of him was answer enough.

It was clumsy and entirely ridiculous, each of them trying to get their pants off enough to actually be able to have sex, but Emma forgot about it entirely when he lay on top of her, his cock nudging her entrance and then sliding in, stretching her and making her tingle from her head to her toes. "I love sucking your cock," she said, trying to move her arm to a better spot and not elbow him in the face.

"I love eating you out," he told her, his hips pushing up against hers.

"It's why I did it this morning."

"I know."

She gasped when he moved, feeling like every inch of her was wound and ready to snap. "Is Elsa's drink also a magic potion?"

"What?"

Normally he was the talker during sex, but the alcohol gripped her tongue tight and every thought that entered her head seemed to be coming out. "This feels different. Good different? Is it Elsa?"

"I really don't want to think about my brother's mate right now."

"Oh. I do, kinda."

Killian snorted with laughter. "Love, you're really very drunk."

"Yeah, and so are you."

His head dropped to her chest as he kept laughing and oh, that was weird, feeling him shake with laughter while he was inside of her. But she liked it, not nearly as much as she liked it when he was actually fucking her, but it felt nice. She squirmed a little under him, trying to get into a better position, but it must have had an effect on him because his laughter turned into groans.

He started moving again and Emma sighed happily. She shifted her legs up, hooking her ankles behind his knees and moaned loudly when he bottomed out. She closed her eyes, every thrust sending a wave of pleasure through her. Her arms moved almost on their own in a slow, lazy drift up his back; she didn't need to cling to him - this wasn't their normal wild, passionate lovemaking - but she wanted to hold him tight, bring him closer, see how far they could go before blurring the line between their bodies and becoming one.

It didn't take long for her to come after that, her orgasm unfurling in a slow, dreamy way that left her sighing his name instead of screaming it like normal, but she thought it must be all the alcohol changing how it felt. She didn't mind, though, it was nice and it was making her sleepy.

Killian took a little longer to finish, his thrusts becoming more erratic and making desperate noises as he raced to finish. Emma made a face - it was starting to hurt a little - but but eventually he stilled, the dull, salty tang of his come reaching her nose as he spilled inside her. He lingered for another moment before pulling out and dropping his head against her chest, mumbling something she couldn't make out and didn't much care to ask him to clarify. She thread her fingers through his hair as he settled down over her, murmured wake me when it's time for dinner around a yawn, and promptly fell asleep.

[xfirechickx]

Arrow Rewrite

So I’ve (finally) caught up with the latest seasons of all the DCTV shows on Netflix, and to the utter surprise of no one, including myself, Arrow has definitely not gotten any better since the first two seasons, and the only good thing that’s come out of this train wreck of a show since killing off the Black Canary, is bringing Katie Cassidy back as the Black Siren. But still, to say that this show is a huge disappointment is a gross understatement, so much so, that the only reason I still watch is for Katie and for the annual crossovers. But, to actually make keeping up with the show tolerable, I had to pretty much mentally rewrite most of the show and headcanon the shit out of it, and make my way through with all the denial I can manage. So, this is how I like to pretend that the show actually went. And even though I doubt anyone will read this - this is more for my getting my thoughts down -  bear in mind, this is super anti F*licity with all the nolicity feelings I have. Also, after reading a whole bunch of posts with the same feelings as me, this became a sort of mashed clusterfuck of ideas that came together from everywhere.

SO first of all, Laurel is a metahuman, you know, like she should have been. What the fuck was the idea behind not giving her actual powers? That’s just stupid. So yeah, either Laurel was in Central City when the particle accelerator exploded, or some other freak accident gave her the canary cry. I don’t care how it happened, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Laurel is the team’s meta, and it caused her to want to don a mask even before Sara was killed.

Next, I’d like to think that she got the hang of street fighting a lot faster. Like, I appreciate that it took her awhile to be able to handle herself on the streets, but this “Oliver is the best fighter” mindset is absolute bullshit. Ik we’ve all been thinking of the Arrow as a bargain-bin Batman (and the horrendous bullet we dodged that was the mere suggestion that F*licity could ever be anything close to Oracle didn’t help), but I am so sick of Oliver’s fighting abilities being thought of as if he was the freaking Batman. Bullshit. I’ll admit, Oliver can fight and hold his own; he’d have to to be a vigilante facing down supervillains on a constant basis, that’s fine. But the Black Canary is one of the best fighters in the DC universe, and I will be damned if that was never acknowledged here. 

So the way I see it, Laurel not only kept up with Oliver and Roy while on patrol, but after he came back from his new life in Ivy Town, Oliver comes to realize that she’s actually better than him. Like, I want them to be out on the field, and she’s literally outdoing him at every turn. And at first, he’s all, “Damn, I must be a bit rusty,” but it becomes clear after a couple more episodes, when he no longer has that excuse, that she’s actually running circles around him, whether it’s on patrol or while they’re sparring. In fact, I want an entire scene of them sparring in the bunker, and as distracted as everyone else is doing their own thing, everyone can clearly see that she’s holding back, and Oliver thinks that her head’s just not in it.

Oliver: Come on, I know you can do better than that!

Laurel: Nah, it’s okay. This is a good pace.

Oliver: Come on, you’ll never get better if you don’t give it your all. Let me have it!

And then she brutally knocks him on his ass.

“Lucky shot,” he grumbles as he gets up and gets ready for another round, and Laurel has a look on her face that’s almost annoyed, but honestly, she’s been waiting for forever to knock him down a peg. Diggle, Thea, and Roy are trying not to laugh in the background.

And speaking of Thea and Roy, holy shit, Roy doesn’t leave! Whoever came up with that idea needs a good smack. Team Arrow comes up with literally any other plan and Roy fucking stays! Thea, is instead given the mantle Artemis with her own outfit. Yeah, ik it still wouldn’t give us the Artemis Crock storyline, but it’s still better than the Evelyn Sharp bullshit that we ended up with. We currently have two tech geniuses on the team, what’s wrong with three archers? They could continue having their relationship ups and downs as subplots as the show goes on. I would even like that at some point, they decide to get their own place together, and Thea decides to sell her old apartment (you know, the one she was brutally stabbed in) to afford a nice one with Roy. And I would like F*licity try in vain to hide how much of an asshole she is by getting all indignant about it. Like, Thea offers to sell it to F*licity first, but she tries to spin it like, “You didn’t want it anymore, so I took it, so it’s mine now?” And everyone’s like, “What? No, that’s literally her apartment, which she bought with her father’s money? Idk how the hell it came to be thought of as yours anyway?” And she eventually has to break down and either buy it or move out because Thea and Roy have their hearts set on getting their own place.

As far as nolicity goes, I always thought that they would at some point have a brief relationship (a ship that I originally didn’t care for, but quickly became my ultimate notp) which would be doomed from the start due to having little to no romantic chemistry, and even though F*licity definitely had a strong sexual attraction to Oliver, she mostly seemed to view him as an older brother; or at least, Oliver viewed her as a slightly annoying younger sister.

But because of Guggenheim’s constant interference, the will-they-won’t-they crap just kept dragging on and on and on until holy fuck I have negative five care points to spend on these two assholes, just give me more BC! Their relationship has to be the most boring aspect of the show, something that’s definitely not helped by the fact that F*licity is an emotionally abusive and manipulative piece of shit Mary Sue. Seriously, for the amount of times that she’s been really vocal about how hypocritical and controlling she is, it just boggles the mind how few times anyone has called her out for it. I say few, because it has happened before, twice I believe, once by Oliver, who calmly insisted, “Enough,” and once by Ray Palmer after she threw his dead fiance in his face. Classy lady, isn’t she? But the farther this show goes on, the more she gets away with and the more infuriating it is that Oliver becomes the bad guy in her place. And holy shit the fact that literally everyone needs to assure Oliver - and the audience - that they are, in Guggenheim’s world, the perfect couple. I honestly can’t tell anymore if he actually believes this, and is just trying to shove his own weird obsession with EBR down everyone else’s throats, or if he’s just trying to get those of us who don’t like the ship to come to the dark side. Either way, I’m not buying any of this shit. SO, for every time that there’s a character to remind everyone how “good” Oliver and F*licity are together, take a shot, and then block out their words and then replace them with various observances and reassurances on Oliver’s behalf. I’d like to think that those closest to him, like Diggle, Laurel, and Thea were totally ready to call F*licity out on her shit whenever she started taking things out on Oliver, but he would subtly shake his head and calmly assure them later on that “F*licity’s right, I’m wrong. But no really guys, we’re totally happy together, I’d just appreciate it if you guys not confront her because she’s the queen of right on every subject ever and I’m just lucky to be with her.” 

And the rest of Team Arrow just reluctantly agrees not to say anything unless Oliver is the one to bring up that he has a problem with her, but are totally ready to throw down at moment’s notice. Even people outside of Team Arrow notice it and tend to comment, with characters like Mick and Constantine on the crass side of the spectrum with phrases like “Does she occasionally let you take your balls out of her purse?” and more sensitive words from people like Barry and Sara, who actually try to get it through his head that, despite what F*licity says, not everything is his fault, and he does not deserve to be kicked around by her over situations that he had little to no control over (Samantha and William, anyone?)

And then there’s Damien Darhk. Hoo boy, my hate towards him killing Laurel burns with the fury of a thousand suns. There was literally no reason for it, you know, besides eliminating her as a threat to Nolicity. Except, she wasn’t even a threat?? It was pretty clear that Laurel and Oliver weren’t even considering a romantic relationship, and even I, as a hardcore GA/BC shipper, didn’t even want them to get back together at this point. Despite the unintentional victimization of Oliver, Laurel absolutely did not deserve any of his shit. So, as much as I wished that F*licity was the one who died, Laurel was still targeted by Darhk in order to get back at Lance, but she doesn’t just die and that’s it! She gets to be critically injured - getting intentionally stabbed by a former member of the League of Assassins tends to be pretty life-threatening - but she does get to heal while in the hospital and make it back out onto the field to continue as BC.

Hell, I’d even be okay with her actually dying that night if, and only if, they brought her back. For a universe based on superhero comic books, Guggenheim and company seemed to have totally forgotten (or just outright ignored) how often characters get brought back from the dead, at times in pretty nonsensical ways. But here, there was a way to conceivably bring her back; there were three in fact: In Arrow, the Lazarus pits would have been available; Flash could have brought her back with the introduction of Flashpoint, or you know, Sara, who happens to captain a fucking timeship could have brought her back, either by manipulating the timeline, or by pulling a Kingsmen II and had just shown up right after Darhk stabbed Laurel to revive her. I would’ve happily gone along with Team Arrow believing that Laurel was dead if the plot twist was that the Legends brought her aboard the Waverider so that Gideon could heal her.

Sidenote: ik that this would have never have happened simply because all of the Arrowverse shows have to check in with each other to some degree so that they’re all on the same page, but wouldn’t it have been absolutely fan-fucking-tastic if, after Arrow had confirmed that BC was for sure dead and wasn’t coming back, that Flash and LoT just totally undermined it. Like, if Laurel was brought back with either Flashpoint or the Waverider, and KC’s just hanging out on a different set while Arrow just tries its damnedest to discredit them?

Arrow: She’s dead.

Flash/LoT: Well she was, but she got better.

Arrow: She’s def not coming back.

Flash/LoT: Not until you learn to be nice to her anyway.

Arrow: She’s not the real Laurel. Our Laurel is D E A D

Flash/LoT: Nope, this is definitely her, and she’s going on cool adventures with us because SHE’S A DAMN GOOD CHARACTER AND YOU DICKBAGS NEVER DESERVED HER

All the while more of Arrow’s fans flock to every show except Arrow until the assholes in charge of the decision to kill Laurel finally have to (publicly) beg to have her back because literally no one will watch their shitty show anymore without BC, and then they’re forced to respect her character and give her a fair amount of screen time. That would just be poetic justice in my book.

So as season 5 kicks off, Oliver, Roy, AND Laurel take in and train the new recruits to join Team Arrow. I don’t have much to change about this season except that since Laurel isn’t dead, and as much as I like Juliana Harkavy, there’s literally no reason to bring in Dinah Drake. Also the shared hallucination in the Invasion! crossover partially rekindles the romance between Laurel and Oliver, which actually feels pretty heartfelt and like it could possibly lead to them getting back together for real. 

And then F*licity ruins it because that’s what she does.

F*licity and Oliver get back together and things progress normally, with the rest of Team Arrow quietly building up a resentment towards the abusiveness of their relationship. I’d also like to think that since Curtis had progressed as a team member, that there’s a slight undertone of “what is she even here for anymore?” among them. Like, whenever she butts in with her hypocritical opinions, someone else will actually step in like, “Hey, you’ve had a long day, so why don’t you go ahead and go home. Don’t worry, Curtis knows what he’s doing, so we’ve got this. Yes, we’ll call you if we need something, but don’t worry. You’ve worked hard today! You deserve a break!” Meanwhile, the rest of the team is literally patching themselves back together with bandages and whatnot, blood and sweat everywhere, all giving each other The Look™ when she nods like, “Yeah, you’re right, I could use a hot meal and a shower. Plus, this tracking system is so simple an idiot could use it, just try not to fuck it up while I’m gone.” Still, no one says anything because Oliver is back to trying to make it work between them, and she occasionally helps William with his homework, so he can’t complain.

William btw, while appreciating the fact that F*licity brings intelligent conversation with her, has not forgotten how much of a bitch she was when trying to save him. Sure, he wasn’t present while all the shit-talking was going down, but there was no way that Samantha didn’t mention it at least in passing later on. “I’m amazed at how much Oliver has grown as a person. He was a real jackass when I knew him before, but he was genuinely worried about you and how we’d get you back. I just wish that the blonde chick he was working with wasn’t being such a pain about it. Like she had any right to any of our business, or any right to be a bitch about the rescue mission.” At this point, nolicity’s domestic life is pretty much out of some crappy fanfiction, and I will be damned if William doesn’t get to bring up F*licity’s pettiness at least once.

And since F*licity apparently feels threatened when Oliver’s past love life gets brought up, William tends to go to his Aunt Thea whenever he feels the need to talk about his mom without having to feel as if he’s the one bringing up a touchy subject. She’s also the one to get him out of the house whenever Nolicity gets especially nauseating at home, and he ends up growing a bond with the rest of Team Arrow in the process. While he still doesn’t want Oliver to be the Arrow anymore, he grows to respect the rest of the team, and ends up with all of their numbers in case he needs any of them to kidnap him for the day. He gets to spend some time in the bunker while they’re out on missions (with Diggle under the hood, of course). Funnily enough, after one mission without F*licity or Oliver, he asks Thea, “So what exactly do you need F*licity for anyway?” And Thea explains that she’s usually down in the bunker handling all the tech stuff while they’re all out in the field, but then he says, “Yeah, but Curtis was handling all that and working in the field??” And Thea and Roy exchange The Look™ again and change the subject.

Things finally come to a head during the Crisis on Earth-X crossover. Oliver, totally taken by the magic that is WestAllen still proposes during the rehearsal dinner, and F*licity, still very publicly says no. Classy. Naz*s invade and everything goes to shit, and Oliver and F*licity still try to make things about them while shit is literally falling apart around them, and to the people whose wedding actually got ruined for some reason. To her credit, Iris doesn’t outright tell F*licity that she’s being a self-obsessed drama queen at what is literally the worst possible time, but she does put out a few comments that both remind F*licity that it was in fact Iris’s day that was ruined, and gets her to shut the fuck up.

F*licity: Oh, wah! Oliver and I had a fight and then naz*s ruined any chance of makeup sex! Wah!

Iris: They literally ruined my wedding and abducted my groom.

F*licity: *internally* oh fuck I forgot about that

Meanwhile on Earth-X:

Oliver: Oh, wah! F*licity said she wouldn’t marry me after I proposed at your rehearsal dinner! Wah!

Barry: Yeah, what the fuck was that about anyway?

Oliver: Ikr? She wouldn’t say yes even after all the beautiful things that were said during the speech! If that doesn’t scream romance, idk what will!

Barry: I actually meant, why the fuck would you propose at the rehearsal when you can do it at literally any other time that isn’t supposed to be about Iris and I getting married?

Oliver: There was magic in the air!

Barry: *facepalm*

No, but the conversation between Barry and Oliver would go on to a touching, if not repetitive explanation about how Oliver was so taken, not just with Barry and Iris’s union, but the idea that Barry has been able to balance his life as a hero and his personal life. Oliver had once told him, “Guys like us don’t get the girl,” but Barry actually did it. And Oliver was envious, because his own life was one clusterfuck after another, with an on-again-off-again relationship that he’s only sort of making it work, and after the Dominator’s simulator, he realized how much he wanted his life as Oliver Queen to be fulfilling and filled with love, and how much he wants a partner in both halves of his life, like Barry and what he has with Iris. And throughout all this, Barry listens and quickly notices that throughout his whole explanation, Oliver never once uses F*licity’s name; he doesn’t even bring her up specifically. Barry probably means to point this out, but Oliver brushes him off thinking that he’s just going to tell him off some more, because that’s what he’s come to expect from having F*licity around all the time, and that’s what people who love you do, right?

It’s actually Snart’s doppelganger who points this out (after eavesdropping on their entire conversation) and suggests that maybe Oliver just hasn’t found the right person to be his partner the way he wants. “Just look at Barry and Iris, or me and Ray.” Oliver shrugs him off too, and just resigns himself to the loneliness of either being without F*licity, or being with her in all the wrong ways.

They get back to Earth-1, Supergirl is saved, yadda yadda yadda. I would like to change Stein’s death into him also making a miraculous recovery and leaving the show still intact. Just, using naz*s to kill off a Jewish character? REALLY?? Fuck all of that. Anyway, Barry and Iris still decide on an impromptu wedding right after *insert literally any event that doesn’t involve killing off Martin so disrespectfully* and Barry still brings Diggle to perform the ceremony, and Joe, Cecile and Wally are present because of course they fucking are. You could even argue for Cisco and Caitlin, but it doesn’t matter to me as much if they’re there. So Barry and Iris exchange vows, say their I do’s, and-

Fucking F*licity interrupts. Because of course she fucking does. “Would you marry us, too? Would you marry me?” A moment of silence and then everyone just explodes.

Barry: Seriously, though? After waiting my entire life for this, two more seconds is literally all I could have asked for

Wally: I’m a speedster, and I could have waited a couple more seconds

Iris: Really? Can I not just have one (1) wedding go uninterrupted?

Joe: In retrospect, we probably should have waited until these assholes left and done this at STAR Labs or something

And F*licity just gets overwhelmed because she’s literally never had so many people tell her she was wrong in her entire fucking life and Diggle tries to mediate (no matter how much he agrees with the rest of Team Flash).

Diggle: F*licity, you don’t even have a marriage license.

F*licity: Oh, no, it’s okay, John! We could just share the moment with Barry and Iris, and then go get a marriage license when we get back to Star City and have our own wedding there.

And then everyone explodes again because, seriously what the FUCK? “So I have to share my second interrupted wedding, and you’re just going home to have another one of your own?” And literally everyone is so fucking frustrated and angry, even more so because they all knew they should have been celebrating at that very moment but F*licity seems to think her awkwardness is still cute when it might just be the most infuriating thing ever. Finally she turns back to Oliver, who hasn’t said anything since she proposed like, “Hey?! A little help here?!” And Oliver is busy with finally seeing her without the rose-colored glasses and seeing her as the selfish and problematic person she is and it’s fucking glorious because he’s just so calm but everyone hears him when he just says, “No.”

F*licity: What? NO? What do you mean, NO?

Oliver: No, F*licity, as in, no, I’m not gonna help you ruin their second wedding, no I’m not going to defend you after fucking this up, and NO I won’t marry you. Not here and definitely not now.

Everyone else is pretty taken aback because up until now, no one’s ever told Queen Fefe off and they’re all doing an internal happy dance at how, for once, Oliver isn’t backing her up. Oliver and F*licity have a staring contest, F*licity waiting for him to back down, and Oliver holding his ground, until F*licity, finally realizing that she’s been unanimously outvoted, just storms off without saying anything, probably expecting Oliver to come running after her to apologize. But he doesn’t. He actually just quietly apologizes to Barry and Iris, and stays in his place as a groomsman (best man, my ass) and stands and waits for Cecile to take up her new place as matron of honor (how the fuck Fefe got that position is beyond me) all the while having this look on his face that says “It had to be done, but I’m gonna catch serious hell when I get home.” Diggle repeats himself in pronouncing Barry and Iris as husband and wife, they kiss, and the crossover ends with an UNBLOCKED shot of them two while their remaining wedding party claps it out.

I would keep everything in the gift scene in next episode of The Flash exactly the same except for Iris’s line is changed to, “Okay, not on the registry, but I guess trying to get married during our wedding wasn’t on the registry either. I’m not bitter.”

The whole wedding reception scene in Arrow is also completely done away with, and replaced with a long-awaited breakup scene, the one to end all breakup scenes (between nolicity anyway). Down in the bunker, it starts off with (what else?) F*licity trying to blame everything on Oliver. “Shit like this is why I didn’t wanna marry you. And then I put MYSELF out there and what do I get? Rejected, that’s what! I get rejected and humiliated in front of everyone!” And then she rambles on and throws in a couple references of the island and how he hasn’t changed since his frat boy days for good measure. Some guilt tripping and a few hypocritical statements later, and then she ends it. Or, at least, that’s what it’s supposed to be, but it really comes off as more of a threat to end it. Her closing statement sounds a lot like “You better straighten up because you’re damn lucky to have me.”

And Oliver just kind of silently stews until she finishes and he immediately jumps into how far he’d obviously come since his five years on the island, and how unfair it was for her to throw that in his face, and even worse how she tried so hard to justify butting her way into Barry and Iris’s special moment to further put herself in the spotlight. She tries to butt in a couple times (like she does) but gets immediately shut down because hell to the fucking no that was not okay. It ends with them trying to yell over each other, and F*licity yelling, “Well maybe I shouldn’t even be on this team anymore since you’ve made it pretty clear that you don’t need me!” right as the rest of the team walk in. They immediately try to backtrack, but F*licity, being her usual dramatic self yells, “No! No, you stay! I’ll go! He obviously doesn’t need me anyway!” and just leaves.

The rest of the team is just so shell shocked and embarrassed at having walked in at that exact moment (they’d all secretly been hoping to be there at that exact moment because that’d mean they’d officially have permission to drag F*licity the way she should have been several seasons ago) but the moment turned out to be more awkward than anyone could have hoped, so no one really knows what to do. “You alright, Hoss?” Oliver pretends that the past minute never happened and redirects everyone’s attention to the latest update on Cayden James. Meanwhile, Laurel, recognizing that Oliver is going to opt out of dealing with the problem, quietly excuses herself and leaves the bunker after F*licity. And Laurel finds her just outside the bunker, pacing because was she was actually expecting Oliver to run up after her after causing that big scene.

Laurel: That was some fight you guys just had.

F*licity: What, oh that? Nah, Oliver’s just being a jerk. Don’t worry about me, we’ll be-

Laurel: Where the hell do you get off talking to him like that?

F*licity: Wait, what?

Laurel then unleashes the mother of all lectures, bringing up every single problematic thing F*licity has ever said or done, which is pretty much anything and everything anyone has ever had to complain about the Mary Sue-ish nature of her character, every time she’s been an asshole, every time that she and the rest of the team has wanted nothing more than to tell her to shut the fuck up but how Oliver had asked them not to because of how much he wanted their shitty relationship to work, whether they were together or broken up at the time. F*licity tries to keep a stoic facial expression, but it’s pretty clear that she’s embarrassed and angry and incredibly surprised because damn, first Oliver and Team Flash, and now Laurel is calling her out on her shit and she was so far from expecting it. Laurel, to her credit, never even raises her voice, because she doesn’t want the rest of the team to hear and get involved, and she makes it clear that no one is kicking her off the team (if she wanted to leave, then that was her own prerogative) but she’s just so glad that she finally gets to unload everything she’d been holding back since Oliver and F*licity had gotten together and the bitch was not going to worm her way out of it this time. Her rant ends with the sentence, “Don’t think for even a second that you’re in the right about any of this,” and she turns on her heel and heads back down to the bunker while F*licity stays frozen where she stands, still trying to absorb that she’d just been told off, and how no one was going to apologize for it.

In the upcoming days, it seems like F*licity is gone for good; she hasn’t come back down to the bunker or contacted anyone on the team, and the team slowly adjusts to not having her around (and encouraging Oliver in that he did the right thing by breaking it off). Curtis pretty much takes over her role on the team (he’s the third smartest person in the DC universe, dammit! Why in the fuck has he been reduced to Fefe’s sidekick?!) and makes time to go out on patrol with the others and besides not having anyone back in the bunker, the team dynamic really doesn’t change. But just as things escalate with Cayden James, F*licity comes back; she shows up unannounced at the bunker after the team comes back from the field, and insists that she’s ready to resume her role as Overwatch. The rest of the team is pretty iffy considering all the drama that she’d left in her wake, but they agree to take her back because they’d probably need all the help they could get against Cayden. So the show goes on, with some tension still between Oliver and F*licity, but Laurel quickly shuts her up with a look every time it looks like she’s about to start some shit.

Team Arrow obtains the list of people on Diaz’s payroll, and after some celebrating on taking down the bad guy, F*licity announces that she was officially leaving the team. There’s a lot of confusion, since she made such a big deal about wanting to come back, but she explains how she only wanted to finish what she started with Cayden James, and now that the mission is over, she’s ready to go back to a normal life, like what she had originally planned when joining the team back in the first season. This scene is actually a bittersweet one; no matter any of our opinions on how badly this character was fucked up, she was a part of the original team, and her departure from it should be treated like the end of an era. She leaves, but not before assuring them that she would help out if they ever need it.

Idk what the future holds for the plot, but as far as GA/BC being endgame (because they were, dammit) I actually wouldn’t want it to happen in the next season. Now with F*licity gone, Oliver got bumped up from the second to the biggest asshole in the Arrowverse, and like I said before, Laurel absolutely does not deserve his shit. So I don’t want there to be any romantic relationship between them at all, for at least one whole season. Hell, I want them to date other people during this season. At this point, I’d just really like to see their friendship to become more solid. I want them both to come to terms with what happened between them in the past, and decide to extend their partnership. I want Oliver (and the rest of the team) to see Laurel as his equal, not as his potential love interest, and definitely not his sidekick. I want Oliver to start resembling his comic book counterpart at this point. I want him to more frequently crack jokes and become less like a Batman wannabe. It felt like that’s the Oliver we were supposed to get when this show started, after he’d had a chance to deal with some of his trauma.

The eighth season is when Oliver and Laurel start showing romantic interest in each other again. They maybe start flirting while on the field, and eventually they go out on dates without the masks. And at first it’s weird, because of all the history they share, and a running gag where every time they sit down, they’re immediately summoned on a mission (original, ik). But they not only find the time to be together, but they actually realize that the life actually works for them, because there are no more secrets between them anymore. I want them to start calling each other Pretty Bird and Robin Hood and pretty much all the fluffy (and probably smutty) scenes that it would take for their relationship to better resemble their comic book counterparts. And their chemistry is just as good as it was in the first season, when you could just look at Oliver and see just how in love he was with Laurel, only better now that they both share the vigilante lifestyle.

This all eventually leads to them getting married; it doesn’t matter if it happens in the eighth season or the ninth, but the proposal is similar to the 2010 Green Arrow short, where he proposes while in full costume after completing a mission together.

Their wedding could be the premise for the annual crossover, but I wouldn’t mind if it was purely an episode of Arrow. If it’s not a crossover, then I would at least like a brief cameo of Barry and Iris, probably calling or video chatting them before the wedding, wishing them luck because they sadly can’t make it due to having to deal with this season’s villain. But Sara has to be there, for sure; with or without the rest of her team, she needs to be present as the maid of honor.

And their wedding gets interrupted, because of course it does (probs by Orm leading the Atlanteans or some shit) so they break up the wedding party to suit up and join the fight. This is actually the first time we see F*licity since she left. They need her tech skills yet again because Curtis was either incapacitated during the fight, or he’s off on a trip somewhere with the hot police officer from this past season. Anyway, they’re at whatever office/genius bar she’s working at, hovering while she does her thing, and she’s rambling on as per usual until she says something like, “I expected to hear from you like everyday, tbh. I’m honestly surprised everything didn’t fall apart the moment I left.” And everyone just kinda rolls their eyes like, damn, what a bitch. And then she makes it more awkward when it comes out that Oliver and Laurel’s wedding was supposed to take place earlier that day, and it’s like, “Oh, so I guess you are willing to get married, just not to me!” And Oliver has to physically hold Laurel back from cussing her out because, “We need her, okay?”

The episode/crossover ends with the team (and William and F*licity because reasons) back in whatever location they’re using as the Arrow Cave at this point, everyone in full costume, patching up their injuries, and it overall looking like the shawarma scene from the first Avengers movie. And despite having just won the day, everyone’s still sorry that they couldn’t finish the wedding. So, just like how Barry and Iris should’ve had their second wedding in STAR Labs, they decide to hold their wedding in the Arrow Cave. So, everyone still tired and dirty from their recent fight, but it still makes for an interesting ceremony. But it’s mostly because I want Oliver to lift Laurel’s mask the way he would’ve lifted her veil. And not only do they actually have vows, they’re actually pretty fucking beautiful. Like, Oliver’s are about how he’s loved her for most of his life, but how this is the first time where he feels like he’s finally worthy of her, and how he sees her as an equal, and as his partner in both halves of his life. Laurel’s reflect on how they went from friends to lovers, to strained acquaintances, back to friends, to actual partners, and eventually back to lovers. And no matter how many times their paths lead away from each other, they were forever intertwined. And then Diggle pronounces them husband and wife and everyone cheers.

F*licity hangs back from the rest of the crowd that’s hugging and kissing and congratulating, because she really can’t stop herself from thinking “That should have been me,” but she manages to keep it (mostly) classy and only hints towards the thought twice in her rambling congratulations. In the end, she hugs the both of them, and makes her exit right after Oliver and Laurel stroll out to catch their plane to their honeymoon.

[nebula-starlight]

Glitch

Just a little alternate take on the Void & Anti fight from Comatose had Dark not arrived. Enjoy! 

“I should have expected you’d find me sooner or later, Virus.” 

Her head rose, eyes glowing as she heard the sound of footsteps behind her mixed with the crackle of static. How entertaining was it that after months of her existence in his world, the Irish glitch finally had the gall to seek her out for a personal chat. He’d learn awfully quick why she was a fan of attack first, ask questions later. Talking led to missed opportunities for inflicting rather devastating injuries. And besides, she wasn’t keen on leaving much time for petty discussion that would be worthless anyway. 

“Name calling wasn’t what I expected from the pretty lassie.” She chuckled under her breath at his remark, getting to her feet from where she had sat cross-legged on the barren floor. 

“Don’t start claiming you’re a nice little puppet-master on my account. Try to have some dignity before I rip it to shreds just like the rest of you.” The air around her crackled, the change bringing a smile to her face before she closed her eyes and jumped. 

Magic long ago torn from her soul now flowed freely, creating wispy trails that extended off her eyes as the slitted pupils shrank the second she flipped around in mid-air to deliver a kick to his back. Human bodies were frail and if her limited knowledge of its anatomy was correct then the speed and force would surely break a few bones... Only he wasn’t standing in that spot anymore. 

“Stand still!” She screeched, rolling into a landing with strangely practiced ease for a being who hadn’t been human long. 

Whipping her head around at the sound of static, she bent back to avoid a knife swiping at the very spot where her neck once was. Thinking fast, she grabbed his wrist and twisted it, eyes glowing a bright shade of green as she bared her teeth with a snarl. Let him upstage her! Sure that blasted community kept feeding him with attention but she was... 

“Sure you’re all there?” Anti scoffed, knife falling from his hand before he glitched away out of her grasp and snatched up the blade before it was able to hit the dark floor. “Wouldn’t want you to phase out of existence or anything. At least, not until after I’m done with you.” 

Void closed her eyes with a huff, lifting a hand before the aura flared stronger from under her closed eyelids. A ghostly green flicker of a sword phased into her palm and her lips split with a wicked smile. 

“Ready?” 

She darted forward with half-opened eyes, swinging the blade down only for an irritated growl to slip free as he blocked the hit with his knife. Sparks flew from the clashing metal before they broke apart and glitched back a few steps. Gripping her weapon tighter, she shifted her weight on her feet as her gaze studied him. The equal yet opposite of her in every way. Controlling, possessive... not unlike how she also was with who had been her host. 

“One mistake is all I need. You screw up and you will find out exactly what I am capable of doing...” 

Anti crossed his arms, tucking his knife down into the crook of his elbow. “Then we’ve reached an impasse. No matter how hard we fight our skills are equal-“ 

“Or not.” She growled, taking a single step forward. “You forget the advantage those loyal little puppets offer you... A power boost I am far too lacking.”

The Irish glitch twitched in place, neck distorting even before he tilted his head to the side. “And who’s fault is that?” 

Void’s gaze narrowed as she dropped into a crouch, passing her aura-created sword to her other hand. With barely any measure of effort, a second blade was formed and she spun the steel around, chuckling as the visible scar across her throat looked infected with black instead of the dried red. 

“Oh just come at me already!” 

“It’s your funeral.” 

The eagerness with which he started forward only made her smile widen. Death held no peace for her now. Besides, she’d already crossed into that realm and finally embraced exactly who she could be. There was no fear left when revenge was the sole driving force of a continued existence beyond reality itself. 

Void lifted her blades, shifting her weight back onto one foot to block the angry swipe that had been aimed at her chest before throwing her other weapon. She watched with an almost sickening glee as it ripped through fabric and skin before finally getting lodged in his neck. Every single time each enemy she fought made the same idiotic mistake. They all forgot about the second blade... although it wouldn’t be enough to truly take him down as she wanted. 

No matter. She had pushed her magic too far already as the wispy trails faded from her eyes shortly after the blades shattered apart. He’d get enough attention from the fans to make her attack seem like nothing but a distant memory. By that point she may not even exist anymore... 

“Not gonna finish me off?” He rasped, the sound gurgling in his further damaged throat before making it out of his mouth in a tone that made her want to act on the still burning fire churning in the depths of her broken soul. 

Still she turned, crossing her arms over her chest in a soft sigh. “I’d love nothing more but, alas, even my magic has limits. I shouldn’t even be technically alive from the damage done and yet here I am... A disgrace to the once proud beings I used to consider my family.” 

Void heard the static crackle behind her as she closed her eyes, knowing well that the sound meant he was going in for another strike but she made no attempt to stop it. A part of her was done trying to cheat death... the same speck that irritatingly saw naught but good in each life. Maybe it was time to submit to fate...? 

The stab felt like she’d been punched, his voice rasping out a curse at the black ooze that leaked free from her body. Anti had known exactly where to attack but the knife in her back wasn’t the issue any longer. No, what he just did only opened up a far darker box she rarely allowed herself to admit was available to her unstable being. Where most souls who took over a host seemed to nullify the abilities of the original, her possession had somehow only locked away the former she-dragon’s elemental magic. And now with that cage unlocked... she wasn’t going down without a fight. 

Metal warped, sinking deeper into her body as she turned, opening one eye as it glowed bright green. “Shall we try one more time?” 

“What type of demon are you?” The angry shock she heard from Anti only seemed to bring out his accent and she couldn’t help but snicker. 

“Not a hell-spawn I assure you. Consider me the offspring of corrupted magic and unquenchable vengeance... and you happen to be unlucky enough to be right in my crosshairs.” 

The glitch growled, summoning one more knife with a twitch of his hand. “Then I’ll just keep hitting you until you fall.” 

“Good luck trying to kill someone that’s already dead.” Void shrugged, lifting a hand as thin wispy vapors of shadow rose from her fingertips almost mindlessly. “I suggest you go back to doing what you do best. Being nothing more than a rather persistent thorn in the Irishman’s side. Always lusting after a chance to draw more power from those puppets...” 

Another knife was hurled into her back, only bringing out a short bark of amused laughter from the unstable spirit before it too met the same fate as the previous one. Violently cracking her neck as her body glitched in place, she closed her open palm and brought her risen hand down. It did not matter who was superior now. She had an edge over him - at least in her mind - and that was enough. Each blade he threw would do nothing to her who had already entered into death’s barren realm. 

“Cease trying to damage me. We both know it won’t work,” Void chuckled under her breath. “Or would you prefer I return the favor?” 

The single pop that faded into silence with was oddly eerie, bringing up vague memories she had repressed for so long of drowning in nothingness. Lack of noise, barren blank space all around her... 

Not again! She wouldn’t be cast aside and forgotten. She had power and... And nothing mattered. Once more she’d been left to rot away in some empty void just the same as how she was created. If anything could ever come close to breaking her then the weight of what pressed in all around her was a great contender. 

For a brief second she could hear something, a familiar giggle almost before dissolving into the hiss of static that faded away. 

“I could have continued our spat but leaving you here like this is more fun. Do enjoy your eternity of isolation.”

@illyriashade56 @marginmaster87 @rogue-of-light-analyzed 

[elspethdixon]

Look!  It’s an untitled Steve/Tony WWII AU

Well, the first scene of one, anyway. There are about 35,000 more words where this came from, but no title. Our working title of "Captain America & Iron Man vs. the Nazi Mummies" had to be discarded, because there are no mummies nor indeed anything remotely resembling mummies anywhere in the fic.

The warehouses in the East End were burning again – he could smell the chemical tang in the smoke, underneath the acrid smell of explosives and the heavy scent of a gas leak from somewhere uncomfortably close. Fire itself made a noise, Tony had learned that in China, but he couldn’t hear it over the drone of airplane engines and the ear-splitting rattle of the anti-aircraft gun on the next block.

Nearly two months in London, and he still hadn’t gotten used to how loud it was.

The hotel that took up most of the block was already burning, the front façade and half the roof missing and the top three floors caved in. A building like that would have a big basement, and since the closest subway station had been damaged in the last raid, it would be packed with people.

He cut his jet boots a good six feet above the ground and let himself fall the rest of the way, just to be safe. Tony had replaced the original rocket boots with a combination of miniaturized jet engines and vectored thrust when he’d built his second suit, but there was still enough heat and flame to be deadly if he landed too close to that gas leak.

Close up, it was obvious that the hotel was no longer structurally sound. He was going to have to be careful moving the rubble.

Tony activated the armor’s cooling fans and strode forward, chunks of plaster crunching under his boots. That partially collapsed section of wall and the fallen ceiling beam resting across it were the only things holding up the weight of the upper floors; he couldn’t move them, or anything that was holding them in place. If the entrance to the cellars was under any of that, the people inside were – he’d find a way to get them out.

Inside the building the air was thick with smoke and almost too hot to breathe, and Tony thought briefly and uselessly of Gene’s ice ring. His air filters had already failed, and his armor’s internal oxygen supply was exhausted. It didn’t matter; it wasn’t that hard to breathe in here, not yet.

The grand staircase to the second floor had collapsed into a heap of smoldering rubble, partially blocking what had to be the cellar entrance. Someone on the inside had pulled the door inward, and as Tony came closer, he could hear the sound of panicked voices, and the high pitched wailing of a small child.

“Hush,” a woman’s voice said firmly. “Up you go.”

A small, round face appeared in the opening, belonging to a child of indeterminate gender. It saw Tony and shrieked.

A heavy overcoat had been laid across the top of the pile of rubble, enough to offer some protection against the heat, but it didn’t stretch all the way to the floor. The little boy – girl? – stared at Tony with huge eyes, frozen in place, unable to back away without falling into the cellar.

“It’s okay,” Tony tried. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

“Mommy!” the child wailed. “Mommy, there’s a robot!”

He should have listened to Happy and painted his armor, but the dull grey was harder to see at night, and kept the German fighters from firing on him.

“I’m a nice robot,” he offered, painfully aware of the weight of the upper stories hanging over their heads. The ceiling beams were heavy, and would take hours to burn through, but the heat would already be weakening them. They would crack and splinter long before they turned into char.

“Andrew, if you don’t climb down and run outside like a good boy, I will give you such a smack.”

The little boy inched forward, his face screwed up as if he were about to cry, and Tony snatched him off the heap of rubble before he could fall off the coat and onto the burning remains of the staircase. He set him on the floor, and looked up to find that a little girl had already taken his place atop the rubble. She looked a year or two older than the boy, and was clutching a stuffed giraffe.

She gave him a wary look, but kept quiet as he lifted her down, then immediately latched on to the little boy.

Three more children followed, and then Tony looked up, ready for the next one, to find himself staring at the blood-covered face of a woman.

“There are nearly fifty more people down here,” she said. “At least ten more are children, but they’re all too big to fit through this gap. We have to move some of the rubble out of the way.”

“I’ll do it,” he said. “You’ll burn your hands. Is anyone hurt?”

“Mrs. Shores has a broken arm, and she’s lost consciousness. I think her husband is dead. They were the closest to the door.” She didn’t mention herself, despite the vicious gash that stretched from her hairline nearly to her jaw.

Tony didn’t mention it either. He just started shifting rubble, careful not to destabilize the pile.

The last collapsing building he’d gone into had been full of dead bodies, and there had been the shattered remains of someone impossible to identify on the street outside. One death and one broken arm was a hell of a lot better than he’d expected.

His chest started to ache halfway through shifting the pile, and the armor’s cooling fans were wheezing loudly enough that he could hear them even over the roar of the fire and the sound of engines and gunfire overhead. English fighter planes, this time; the Merlin engine had a different pitch than the Daimlers and Jumos that powered Messerschmitts, Junkers, and Heinkels.

Junkers and Heinkels with Stark Industries-inspired bomb sites, thanks to dear old dad selling SI’s designs to anyone who could pay for most of the thirties.

Without the armor’s gauntlets, his hands would have been a mass of burns by now, past the point of uselessness. As it was, the metal was starting to get uncomfortably hot.

“Right. I think that’s done it,” the woman announced. She coughed, holding the end of her sleeve over her face, then went on, her voice hoarse. “We’ll pass Mrs. Shores up to you first.”

Tony gave her his most charming smile; the helmet would hide it, but those kind of things came through in the voice. “If I weren’t wearing this metal helmet, I could kiss you.” He’d expected frightened, panicking people, or shell-shocked casualties too stunned by disaster to be any help to him.

She touched the back of her hand to her forehead, pushing back hair sticky with blood, then winced. Whatever had cut open her face had also raised a bruised lump the size of a silver dollar over her left eye, and it was already starting to swell shut. “Not with the way I probably look,” she said.

“I like my women covered in soot and plaster dust,” Tony assured her. Then the armor’s low power warning sounded.

No more time for flirting with strangers who probably needed medical attention more than they needed attention from Tony Stark. He tore one of the sleeves off the now-smoldering overcoat and wrapped it around his gauntlets, insulation between the hot metal and the next person he touched. “Pass Mrs. Shores up.”

They had rigged up a crude stretcher using parts of a folding chair and several blankets. The woman on it was old enough to be Tony’s mother, and her left arm was a bloody, swollen mess. She didn’t even twitch when he hauled the stretcher up and over the remains of the rubble, even when a shower of sparks from the ceiling fell onto her dress and Tony had to clumsily pat them out.

He should have installed some kind of fire-fighting upgrade weeks ago. It was ridiculous to be putting out sparks with his hands, not to mention incredibly inefficient.

“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing to that woman?”

Tony whirled, automatically bringing up one hand – the repulsors he’d designed as flight stabilizers could take care of any human attacker as easily as they could a German plane – then forced himself to relax when he saw the distinctive shape of a civil defence helmet. “Trying to get her out of here.” It was a cliché, but- “I’m here to help.”

The air warden stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. “The little girl said there was a robot. I thought she was hysterical.” His Cockney accent was thick enough that he sounded almost like he was speaking a foreign language, all swallowed consonants and sharp vowels. “What are you?”

Almost out of power, according to the buzzer sounding annoyingly in his ear. “There are more people down there, and the ceiling’s about fifteen minutes away from caving in. You can gape at me later.” He held up one hand, and fired the repulsor at one-sixth power for a fraction of a second, just enough to shred his makeshift woolen ‘glove.’ “I even do tricks.”

The air warden called him an uncomplimentary name, but more people were arriving now, hustling bombing victims out of the building and throwing wet blankets down across the partially cleared entrance to cellar to make it easier for people to crawl out. Tony waiting just long enough to see the woman with the injured face emerge from the rubble, then left.

There was more he could have done – there was always more – but he wouldn’t be able to help anybody if he ran out of power and passed out.

He made it most of the way back to Bletchley before the armor’s power reserves ran dry and he had to switch to the nearly-empty battery powering his chest device. By the time he landed, and was climbing back through the window of his supposedly-secure room, the armor tucked back inside his briefcase, Tony could almost feel the shards of shrapnel moving around inside his chest.

He plugged himself into the electrical outlet by the nightstand and collapsed backward onto the bed, too exhausted to care how he was going to hide the blisters on his hands tomorrow.

His window faced southeast. Outside it, he could see London burning on the horizon.

[johnsonandcoulson]

have always loved this blog and probably always will but guys, aren't you too harsh on people? I mean you block every blog who was once considered as ~neutral to skyew@rd shippers, yet Chloe herself did a lot and said a lot to heat the interest in those shippers? I think if people have realized why it's WRONG to like the ship and consider yourself as Daisy fan at the same time, it's great. We should learn from our mistakes not being hated for making them, we're all people, aren't we

Hi anon,

First of all we don’t block all the neutral people to Skyewards (we wouldn’t finish blocking, lol), we block people who have Skyeward content and anti-Daisy posts because we don’t want to interact with people who are okay having Daisy hate and content that romanticizes the abuse a woman of color received at the hands of a Nazi.

For the record we have also blocked Daisy/Coulson shippers who have Daisy hate in their blogs or who have insulted/attacked us. Pretty recently we were attacked by a few fellow shippers for stanning Daisy too hard and not giving white dudes the attention they deserved. 

We have no problem with Skyewards who have realized that it was an awful thing to ship Daisy with the Nazi who terrorized her and threatened to rape her. If they have posted about regretting it and have deleted their racist/misogynistic/pro-abuse content we don’t block them. People make mistakes. We have. But you’d be surprised how few people actually regret shipping Skyeward or admit that the ship was problematic and harmful. No, they just go on and act like they are the biggest Daisy fans while still having graphics in their blogs about how aroused she is when Ward handcuffs her.

Most people stopped shipping Skyeward because it finally (after years!) became an unpopular opinion in fandom, mainly because the show kept reminding people it was a gross, gross idea. Or they stopped because the ship was never going to happen anyway. Not because they saw WHY it was wrong. Again, that’s why they have no trouble keeping pages and pages of content excusing Ward for his abuse and villifying Daisy.

Also this is a shipping blog? Why are people acting like this is a general blog or that we ever claimed it was? Most people in this fandom wouldn’t want to be reblogged in this blog anyway, why are you acting like we are denying them of some godgiven right? It’s a pretty personal blog in many ways. This blog is mainly for Cousy shippers, and before we reblog something from someone who isn’t a shipper WE MAKE SURE FIRST that person is completely comfortable with having their graphics alongside posts about how Daisy and Coulson should make out. It’s amazing how the previous anon ignored that point in our reply and twisted this policy into “you just don’t want to play with the rest of the fandom”.

Our follower count is very low, and our gifsets don’t get half as many notes (if that!) as any other blog making Daisy stuff. These messages imply that we are robbing these people of exposition by choosing not to reblog them here. Honestly they would probably get less notes if we reblogged them.

Like this fandom has spent years telling us VERY LOUDLY that they don’t want us to be part of the AoS fandom, yet we get yelled for not including the rest of the AoS fandom in our blog.

Almost no general AoS blog or the Daisy fandom at large ever reblogs @hamsterfactor‘s gifsets, yet we need to be giving explanations for not reblogging stuff from people who still have TONS of Skyeward content (ie Daisy hate) in their blogs.

People are allowed to learn from their mistakes but we have been personallly harassed and bullied by these people, so we don’t owe them interacting with them, simple as that. It’s a bit frustrating that everybody in fandom is very quick to go and defend people who spent years spreading racism, misogyny, Nazi apologia and rape culture and who bullied so many people, but that no one ever thinks about how the people who suffered that harassment might feel. It’s all about forgiving the parts of fandom who were toxic, never sympathizing with the people who tried to protect Daisy and her fans.

Skyeward shippers must be always given the benefit of the doubt and we have to forgive and forget but we Cousy/Skoulson shippers are still treated like garbage. Even people who like and interact with us have to qualify it with “I don’t ship Cousy/Skoulson but” just in case, like we’re a disease. We were one of the few corners of fandom who tried to stand with Daisy when most of the fandom thought that throwing her to the arms of her abuser was a normal thing and non-problematic and who cared more about “fandom unity” than about the spreading of racist, Nazi apologizing, pro-abuse discourse in fandom. We are still considered “worse than the Skyeward” by many people in this fandom. No one ever goes to other blogs to say “hey, you should hang out with the Cousy/Skoulson fandom” but we have to make concessions for the Skyewards. Seems fair.

Seriously there are people who have done so much harm and have spread so much Daisy hate and rape culture and pro-abuse stuff in this fandom that we just don’t want to see their names in our dashes. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request. We are trying to look out for our own mental health here, and it’s fucking us up that we get demonized for prioritizing that and not wanting to interact with the same people who were reblogging stuff by our harassers daily.

It’s just frustrating that even after dealing with harassment by Skyeward shippers for three years this fandom at large will still go out of their way to defend them and attack us.

We’re all people, except for us, apparently. We have to write hundreds of words trying to excuse our choice to not reblog people who have anti-Daisy content in their blogs, but I bet those people don’t get anons asking them why they still have that harmful stuff, and of course no one asks why blogs that claim to be pro-Daisy reblog content from Skyewards.

I get your intention is good, anon, and we agree we all make mistakes, but think again how we must feel getting people in our inbox asking that stuff from us that no other fandom gets asked, how it feel that it’s pretty obvious that today we still can’t dream of being treated by this fandom half as decently as people who spent years fighting to popularize a pairing between a woman of color and her Nazi abuser. 

Hope you can see it a bit from our point of view.

PS. Don’t throw Chloe under the bus here. She stopped talking about the ship positively way before most of these people we supposedly should be reblogging stopped posting anti-Daisy content, I can assure you, and she has done a lot to fight the kind of mentality that excuses Nazis and abusers since then. Plus an actor supporting a toxic ship is never an excuse to indulge in the kind of behavior this fandom saw since May 2014.

- the very tired mod becketted

[cecillewhite]

Think xAPI is Next-Generation SCORM? Think Again

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Occasionally, we invite learning community experts to share their advice with our readers. Today we feature a post by Anthony Altieri Founder of Omnes Solutions. Anthony is an independent xAPI evangelist and Instructional Developer for the Internet of Things.

  If you’re an elearning professional, you’ve probably seen or heard the term xAPI countless times. But are you still fuzzy about where SCORM ends and xAPI begins? And why you should care, anyway?

After years of educating people about xAPI (aka Experience Application Programming Interface), I find that it is still one of the least-understood concepts in the digital learning world. So I’m on a mission to clear the air.

I want everyone to recognize xAPI as a solid and surprisingly simple foundation for next-generation learning experience measurement. But that does not mean xAPI is a next-generation version of SCORM (aka Sharable Content Object Reference Model). It is not. And that’s a good thing. Let me explain.

How Did the SCORM/xAPI Confusion Begin?

To understand why these two data specifications are different, it helps to know a little bit about the origin of xAPI.

Rewind briefly to a day in 2010, when the dew was still fresh and early morning sun filled the meeting room at Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL). A research team gathered to start work on an update to the SCORM specification. By that time, SCORM was a decade old, and the only serious update had been delivered six years earlier, in 2004.

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However, it didn’t take long for the team to realize that another SCORM update simply couldn’t meet the needs that existed at that time, let alone evolve to support whatever forms training might take in the future.

The Trouble With SCORM

The primary problem with SCORM is its core philosophy. It relies on a “state”-based reporting methodology. In other words, because SCORM reports only the current state of an individual’s enrollment, it doesn’t specify when that individual completed a course or other details about that experience.

Can you extrapolate completion activity from SCORM data? Absolutely. But there’s a difference. And although that difference may seem like subtle semantics, it can have a huge effect on reporting.

With SCORM, when learners enroll in an online course, the state of the enrollment/course is recorded as “not attempted.” When they launch the course, the state is recorded as “incomplete.” If all goes well, they eventually finish the course. At that point, the status changes to “completed” or “passed” or “failed” depending on how learners perform and how the course is configured to report outcomes.

Along the way, you could collect other data, but few training providers actually apply that function to anything other than the score, because it is difficult to use and has very limited support for meaningful reporting.

For example, you could collect test questions and answers. But in 2010, many learning management systems (LMS) didn’t provide a way to report on all the answers every student submitted for a given question. Even if they did, the level of reporting detail was inconsistent.

Another Problem With SCORM

There was also a rather large elephant in the elearning room:  For SCORM to work fully, everyone pretty much had to log-in to an LMS. Yes, some methods divorced training content from the LMS, proper. But more often than not, this was accomplished through the digital equivalent of smoke and mirrors. It wasn’t a particularly stable practice.

And Don’t Forget These Issues…

This led to yet another digital elephant in the room:  SCORM’s reliance on JavaScript. Back in 2000, JavaScript was the only programming language used to create training content in web page format. Unfortunately, JavaScript suffered from many issues.

One was cross-domain requests. For obvious security reasons, browsers generally blocked JavaScript requests made from one domain (such as Example.com) to another (such as AnotherExample.com) unless it was done in a very specific manner. And most LMSs did not support that without more smoke-and-mirrors trickery. Oh, and as mobile devices became widely used, even more challenges emerged.

The Need, In a Nutshell

To summarize, the “next generation of SCORM” needed to solve multiple problems:

1) Change from a “state-driven” reporting system to a system that let administrators collect more accurate, detailed information about training participants.

2) Provide a more detailed way to report training progress, apart from the completion state.

3) Provide a way to launch content from outside an LMS – potentially divorcing it entirely from the LMS, and possibly even removing the need for an LMS entirely.

4) Allow content to use programming languages other than JavaScript.

The Solution (Sort Of)

Did this framework lead to the next-generation of SCORM? Well, not exactly. Instead, the team at ADL actually paved the way for the Actively Narrating Technical Interface-Sharable Content Object Reference Model – otherwise known as the ANTI-SCORM.

OK, they didn’t call it ANTI-SCORM. But they could have. And with that, they gave SCORM a silent, respectful nod and simply walked away.

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The Alternative

Fortunately, the ADL effort wasn’t a total loss. In fact, from the ashes of this original process rose the xAPI – a new and somewhat radical way to track and record what a learner does and when the action occurs, along with virtually any other data describing the learner’s actions.

In short, xAPI is “event”-driven. This represents a massive departure from the ways of “state”-based SCORM. Here’s how it works:

Let’s say an individual initiates an action, such as clicking a button, launching a course, or playing a video. The content immediately notifies the server (a Learning Record Store aka LRS) about this event in a statement that reads like normal speech. The statement structure includes three common elements:  actor-verb-object. For example, “Sally clicked the button.” “Anthony launched the course.” “John played the video.”

The content can be designed to include details in this statement, such as how long John played the video, or which parts of the video he played, or which operating system and browser John used, the date and time when the video was played, and so on. Content authors have nearly unlimited ability to collect related information.

Better Data = Better Insights

These statements can also be stitched together to see all the steps in a series of related interactions, the total time required to complete the sequence, how many steps were repeated and more. This provides a much better understanding of an individual’s experience than SCORM can provide.

As a result, learning administrators and course creators can easily review reports and isolate problems, so they can quickly adjust, clarify or correct the content. This helps ensure that learning initiatives are supported with the best-quality content. It also provides the kind of data that illustrates the business impact of learning initiatives.

Other Issues Resolved

xAPI also removes the SCORM JavaScript requirement I mentioned previously, so content doesn’t have to be limited to a web page. It can be a computer program, a mobile app or even an IoT device like a car, appliance or voice-controlled speaker. Essentially, it can be any connected thing that lets content send statements to the LRS.

This also means that content no longer needs to be launched from an LMS, so you might not need an LMS at all. (However, for reasons I’ll discuss at another time, many organizations will still need an LMS.) Regardless, in every way, xAPI has become the ANTI-SCORM. And that’s not a bad thing.

Putting xAPI Into Perspective

xAPI is not meant to replace SCORM directly. It is meant to respond to a rapidly evolving digital world. It is meant to support diverse needs in dynamic business environments. It is meant to take learning insights into the future, rather than concerning us with standards from the past. It is meant to be everything that “state”-based SCORM is not.

xAPI is flexible, granular, flexible, portable, flexible, consumer-friendly – and most importantly, flexible! And given its “event”-driven foundation, xAPI is more than SCORM could ever be.

In the new world order, we have options. We can choose to use SCORM or xAPI. And if you prefer the familiarity of SCORM services, you can rest assured that it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

So don’t think of xAPI as the next generation of SCORM. It’s something new. It’s something different. xAPI and SCORM will co-exist for years to come. And we’ll all be better for it.

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Think xAPI is Next-Generation SCORM? Think Again original post at Talented Learning

[nyanzaya]

“Kill Me”// im sorry

Even More Drabbles - Accepting @fawking-izaya Leave a “Kill Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about my character killing yours. 

(🐈)         Iza was by no means a holy person or saint. He always had severalreasons to kill; although, in the end, none of his reasons ever did matter. Hewould claim it’s for the greater good and justice and that he as doing theright thing in ridding the world of corrupt people. In retrospect, that neverwas the reason; rather, it was a cover up for the real reason: self-fulfillment.

               With anunyielding and undying hate towards people of any kind Iza had always questionedwhy people deserved the things they have. He had never felt much remorse forthe people he had purposely gotten killed, surely Iza would have gotten caughtby now, but that was not the case. Iza was smarter than he made himself out tobe. He wouldn’t stupidly get himself caught in such actions. 

               It wasuncleanly, and certainly not something he would want to dirty his paws with,let alone having the blood stain his hands. He was sure the taste of humanblood would be bitter and disgusting. A sophisticated feline such as himselfwould rather be in his luxurious bed napping the day away till dusk. 

               As of rightnow Iza was at his desk, a bored expression on his face. It was past dusk andwell into the night. The city lights were bright, and truthfully to Iza it wasa pretty sight, but it was soon ruined by the sights of people scrambling below.Iza moved his head to rest on the palm of his hand as he scrolled throughvarious sites and chats. There were several potential victims Iza could havepicked and done away with in the same night, but that was not his style. Hepreferred people who held a significance or power somewhere.

               Many of themwould have been a walk in the park if Sinzuo was still around.

               That crazedwolf would pounce and kill anything in his sight and to him it didn’t matterwho it was, but alas, he was nowhere to be found. For all Iza knew Sinzuo could have gotten caught or died somewhere. Truly, Sinzuo was love at first sight, perhapsbecause their morals were similar or for worse their sense of justice was thesame. In the end, Iza wouldn’t claim he had any association with Sinzuo andwhomever he would take down in front of him, but to Iza, Sinzuo was perhaps oneof his closest friends even if they are anything but friends.

               In the end,their senses had always came down to the same basic component: Murder. 

If Iza thought about it there were several people he couldpotentially get rid of, such as the people who confuse him for Izaya. He leanedback against his swivel chair and turned to one side with a hum. Iza wasn’tsure if he actually wanted to go out and do it himself. 

               Would it beeasier to get someone else to do it? Iza did have a record to keep of gettingrid of people indirectly; keeping a ‘out of sight out of mind’ approach. 

               Iza knewIzaya’s schedule well enough, but he was sure Izaya had about the same amountof information, maybe a little less considering Iza’s elusiveness, but eventhen Izaya himself was also quite elusive. Iza was sure Izaya would know thathe was most active at night, but that was more or less a given. Was it possible that Izaya knew of the feline’s harbored anger towards people? Perhaps, butperhaps not. It was not as if they were personal with each other and it waseasy to tell the mask each of them wore. If anything they were more likestrangers despite the clear similarities and strong etched differences betweenthem. 

               How Izayacould love people made Iza sick to his stomach; although, the irony is that Izaneeded people even if he would rather be apart from them. Without people he wassure he would have gone insane years ago, whether that was reverting back intohis cat-likeness or perhaps he would have been so far gone in his own madnessthat he would have ended up like Sinzuo: an anti-social being that would attackif provoked. 

               It would havebeen easy to claim that he too, loved people as much as Izaya and was thereason he chose to kill them but how insane must he be to think that? It wasalmost laughable. There was no simple answer for the reasons why Iza acts theway he does or has developed this mentality of him against the world.

              Simply put: He was unstable. Iza always held a front to appear acertain way towards people depending on his needs and desires. It was clearlydebatable who was more dangerous, but Iza liked to think that he was better andfar more dangerous than someone like Izaya. 

               Who elsecould kill in cold blood and never think of it again? Hell, who could see it asa sport and a simple game? That’s all it was to Iza, just a simple game. Heknew Izaya liked games, but perhaps not as crucial or dangerous as Iza’s typesof games. It was debatable, but perhaps it wouldn’t be debatable for muchlonger.

               Iza pushedhimself off his chair. If anyone should get rid of Izaya it should be him.Forget Shizuo, he would never have the nerve to finish the job, but he knew tonot be hasty. For all he knew Izaya could always be prepared foranything. 

                                                             ⚔️⚔️

               It had been several days ofassuring this would secure the kill. 

               Did Iza have a real reason tokill Izaya? No.                 Was he going to do itanyway? Yes.

               Lurking around downtown, Izawaited patiently for his moment. One could say Iza was at his lowest point. Healready knew he could never be human and he figured he may as well never becomeone. Surely, it would be easy for Izaya to pick a fight with someone likeIza. 

               An ear turned,hearing light sounds of footsteps and cheerful humming. That had to be Izaya.Who else would sound as if he were cheerful about mayhem? Aside from Iza, ofcourse. 

               The only problem now wascatching Izaya. Iza knew Izaya to have a lot of agility, but even Iza himselfhad the reflexes of a cat and many capabilities Izaya didn’t have, such asbeing able to see in the dark much more clearly. 

               Iza thoughtabout his next move: Would Izaya be curious enough to check a sound from analleyway? 

               Easily, Iza knocked over a trashcan and hid himself from sight. He heard the footsteps come closer, sounding asif they were carrying his target to the area to check out what hadhappened. 

               Sure enough, there was Izayalooking over the area with curiosity. Instantly, Iza meowed in a pitch Izayawould recognize as a completely different cat.

               He heard Izaya sigh, “Justa damn cat. I should have known.” 

               Iza peaked from his hiding spotin time to see Izaya turn around uninterested and Iza took this chance. Withlight footsteps he crept up behind the informant and pulled out his pocketknife. As he was about to make his mark at a vital, it was blocked. Iza was notsurprised, he expected this much of Izaya.

               The adrenaline rush had startedto appear, heightening both Izaya’s and Iza’s senses. 

               “And just what are you doing?”

At Izaya’swords Iza couldn’t help his facade of false love, “Why, I’m simply showingmy love for you Izaya-san. So, why don’t you let me express it?” 

               Izaya jumped back, keeping hiscalm composure, he remembered a situation similar to this, having to do with ademon blade wielded by Anri Sonohara. He couldn’t help but wonder if the plagueof Saika children were returning. There was something off about the half-felinein front of him, appearing as if he was intending to commit to killinghim. 

               As an information broker, all Izaya hadto rely on was the information he gathered and his own wits. With keen eyes,Izaya simply observed, being wary of Iza.

               Iza brought his hands together,as if he were about to pray, his right hand still holding the pocketknife, “How mean, Izaya-san has nothing to say about my love for him.” Izacontinued the facade, hoping to confuse Izaya. Easily, Iza twirled his knifebetween his fingers as if he had done the actions hundreds of thousands oftimes and walked towards him. There was a grin on Iza’s face as he approached,much like a cat that has caught a mouse.

               “It doesn’t matter if you loveme Izaya-san. I already know you don’t care for me. Another love lost meansabsolutely nothing to me.”

               Izaya backed up with each stepIza took. This was not the same as the fights he would have with Shizuo.Something about this was completely different, but at the same time he canunderstand just what it was. The glint in the feline’s eyes shone bright;although, it was not the same as the way Saika’s curse would make a victim’seyes shine. Feeling threatened, Izaya raised his knife, “What is it that youwant from me, Kitten?” Izaya asked, keeping his voice steady. He didn’t want toprovoke Iza any further.

               Iza stopped walking and held hisknife in his hand. His ears leaned forward hearing Izaya call him ‘Kitten’. Thefeline was not insulted by this but, to think Izaya would call him Kitten hadthrown him off. Iza’s tail flicked to the side in annoyance along with an eartwitching, and instantly Izaya noticed this.

               “How annoying.” As much as Izadid love to be called Kitten, it was reserved for people he could tolerate, gotalong with, or if they were a master of his. Hearing Izaya say it; it sounded wrong. As if it were implying thatIzaya was someone he could tolerate, when in reality it was hardly the truth.For worse, Iza felt as if Izaya had intentionally implied that he owned him.

               Izaya wasn’t sure how to feeltowards Iza’s words and felt he had made a mistake. Most cats, or at least hiscats, liked to be call pet names. Looking at Iza again, he looked as if he hadgotten wounded with his ears flat and his tail swaying left to right and backagain. From what he knew of cat body language, that was not a good sign. Itmeant that he had just further angered a feline who was more than willing topounce for the kill.  

               Iza was furious and the knife inhis hand looked much more pleasant than it did earlier. The only thing that wasmissing from such a beautiful blade was of course, a dark color. It was almost convenientthat Izaya was there, even though Iza did plan for this. If the blade didn’twork Iza always did have other ways of completing the task, but he wasdetermined to get this done within the night.

               “I’m not your kitten, don’t youdare say that to me.” Iza hissed the words, narrowed eyes looked at Izaya.  

               Izaya took that as a sign toturn and run, which he did. Iza didn’t say anything, instead he followed behindthe informant. Izaya was going to treat this as the same as he would run fromShizuo, except he was going to be dodging large objects like trash cans orvending machines. Instead, Izaya would have to dodge small needles, which was aharder task than dodge something large; given the fact Iza had excellent aim itwas difficult.

               In a quick turn, Izaya tossed afew of his own knifes that he had.

               Easily Iza deflected the knifes,and tossed a needle to a pressure point when Izaya had turned back around. Izamissed the pressure point in Izaya’s leg, but anything was better than nothitting at all. It would make it easier to catch Izaya if he was slowed down. Evenif Iza had punctured one of Izaya’s legs he kept throwing needles, anything toget Izaya to start bleeding. If there was blood in the air, the easier theinformant would be to find.

               When he felt a prick on the backof his thigh, Izaya hissed. It didn’t feel like a knife, instead he figured itwas something small, but it hurt just as much as a knife would. He also felt aneedle scrap his cheek, where blood had started to seep down. There was nothingIzaya could do about that. Right now, he had to find a place hide, or at leastbuy himself time. Izaya make a sharp right turn down an alley way. He tried toscale up the wall, but just as he was about to jump he felt another pain in hisleft leg.

               Iza had punctured a pressurepoint and down fell Izaya to the floor. It felt like he couldn’t move his legat all with two needles in his leg. It was ironic for Iza to be using needles regardless,he was deathly afraid of them, but Iza quickly found that he could hold andwield the needles just fine. If they were being used against him there was no wayhe could fight without anxiety taking over his senses.

               As Izaya was, Iza felt he hadjust won this fight. Izaya was on the floor clutching his leg. Iza gave a coy smile,it didn’t fit the situation. It almost looked as if Iza was having fun withthis hunt. If Izaya knew any better, he had just played into Iza’s cat-likeinstincts to hunt and kill. As if to rub more salt into the wound, Iza threwhis knife into Izaya’s already punctured leg.

               Izaya hissed at the knife beinglunged into his leg but he kept a cool exterior. “You wouldn’t just kill me,would you?” The informant inquired hoping to buy more time and hoped to change Iza’s mind. There was no way Iza could kill him. Right?He knew Iza to be quite docile.

               Ears leaned forward hearing whatIzaya said and Iza couldn’t help but give a small laugh. Iza took another knifeout of his pocket and looked at it, as if it had the answer on it. “I have noreason to.” Iza said simply.

               Izaya had felt a shimmer ofhope. He was certain Iza wouldn’t go through with it now, it’s when he noticedthe glint in Iza’s eyes and how his hand had tightened on the blade.

               “But that wouldn’t stop me fromdoing it just for fun.”

               The words sent a shiver downIzaya’s spine. He wasn’t ready to die. Not yet.

               Izaya hadn’t thought he wouldfeel this feeling of intense fear and with no way of running away; what were thechances of his survival? He still had his knife, surely, he could fight Izaback, but the feline had an advantage.

               The informant invaded death forso long, how could someone like Iza catch him so easily? Even Shizuo couldn’tcatch him besides destroying part of the city in order to accomplish such afeat. Izaya took the blade out of his leg, as much as it hurt he had to armhimself. It was almost strange how Iza was just watching almost waiting forIzaya to right back, but maybe that’s what Iza wanted.

               Iza watched how Izaya pushedhimself up with the help of the alley way wall. He still wanted to play, if youcould call this playing. It would have been boring if Izaya had given up soeasily; although, this was a sign of uncertainty if a cat couldn’t finish offcaught prey. Iza figured Izaya wouldn’t know that. How often has his cats broughthim mice? Since when had Izaya ever had a mouse in his apartment? From whatIza remembered, Izaya’s apartment was very clean.

               Seeing Izaya struggle to stay upon his leg, and hold out the knife as if to make distance between the two. Izasaw this as a means of defense. What else could Izaya do in this situation? Itwasn’t as if he had help or if he had foreseen this happening to him.

               Iza took a step forward and whenhe did Izaya moved back. The feline frowned.

               How mean.

               Izaya gritted his teeth as Izawalked towards him. He could try to run again or he could try to fight Iza withhis own throwing knifes but he was sure Iza would be expecting either answer to his unasked question.

               What are you going to do now?

               Izaya sighed. What can he do inthis situation? Who would help him of all people? Iza was closing in and histime was running short.

               Maybe there are no other options…Ican’t get through to him, so what would stop him from killing me anyway? Izayathought bitterly, and with no other option left he dropped his arm that heldthe knife to his side and dropped the knifes to the concrete floor. The informant turned so his back was pressed against thewall instead of his side.

               Iza saw this action as a meansof surrender. It was the right choice he felt. It would make it easier to getrid of the other quickly. The feline got in front of Izaya who looked as if hehad already accepted his fate and placed a hand on Izaya’s cheek, in a sweet gesture“Don’t worry Izaya-san, I’m sure someone will come after me just as I have cameafter you.” 

               Izaya didn’t know what Iza wastalking about. It wasn’t making sense, but it felt as if Iza was trying tosooth him that he death wouldn’t be in vain. It was almost sweet of Iza to talkthis way, but as sweet as it was there was bitterness not to long after.

               Iza had no real sympathy forIzaya other than the fact he was about to die. The feline was not acold-hearted killer as he made himself out to be.

               For a pretty last image, Izaclosed his eyes and pressed a kiss on Izaya’s lips; a kiss of death.

               Izaya couldn’t help himself, itwas very symbolic, if not ironic. Then, a stab to his heart and suddenly, hewas heartbroken.

               Iza pulled away from the kisswhen he had stabbed Izaya. He couldn’t help but lightly laugh seeing the lookon Izaya’s face. It was not exactly peaceful, nor was it hurt rather it seemedas if Izaya understood everything now.

               It had been a few minutes and Izayawas long gone now. His blood was on Iza’s hands, but Iza felt it wasappropriate. The only question Iza had for himself was what he was going to donow. Guilt never did hurt him or else he wouldn’t have been able to get rid ofthe hundreds, if not thousands of people that came before Izaya.

               Although, something about thisfelt off. No more competition.

               How boring.

[blatherkatt]

Title: The Calm Is Terrifying When The Storm Is All You Know [Homestuck]

Chapter 8: Negotiations 

Summary: There were two kinds of trolls who went to Earth: rich shitheads with too much money and free time, and desperate assholes who couldn’t survive on Alternia, even with the best efforts of the young Condesce. Karkat hated the planet almost immediately, but with his home planet too dangerous for mutants, he really didn’t have any choice but to hide out on this weird little diurnal planet. At least he’d be safe. Or so he thought, right before blundering his way into an accidental friendship with the son of an anti-troll terrorist.

Rating: M

Chapter Warnings: Mentions of neglect and abuse, mentions of terrorism, actions of highly questionable legality 

FIRST | PREVIOUS | NEXT

Terezi’s apartment was a disaster of impressively clashing colors, but the horrendous color scheme aside, it had a definite comfortable feel to it. Pyralspite immediately pushed inside and curled herself up in a bed tucked into a small indent in the wall and looked in Terezi’s direction expectantly. Terezi chattered at the dragon in Alternian, and while Dirk couldn’t parse the words at all, he easily recognized the tone; it was the same way his mother spoke when fussing at Rose’s cat.  Terezi left her cane against the wall by the door, apparently not needing it in her own home, and fetched a jar of…something Dirk couldn’t identify and didn’t want to. She took out a couple pieces of whatever was inside and fed them to Pyralspite.

She looked up at Karkat and Dirk as she did this. “I’d say you two will have to figure out who gets the couch and who sleeps on the floor,” she said, “But Karkat basically never sleeps, so that’s a pretty easy call to make.”

“Fuck off,” said Karkat. Terezi waved a hand at him dismissively.

“Anyway,” she said, “Ablution block’s just over that-away, Karkat. You haven’t been able to change your clothes for, what, a week? And I doubt you’ve had a chance to get cleaned up in that time, either, so you go right ahead, you got first dibs.” Karkat shot her a grateful look (not that she would know, but, well.) and scuttled off. “As for me,” Terezi said, heading for what Dirk assumed was her bedroom, “I’m gonna get the fuck out of my uniform.”

“Before you do,” Dirk said, “Could you maybe give me the Wifi password? Promised Mom and Rose I’d Skype them soon as I could.”

“It’s on the side of the fridge,” Terezi said, disappearing into her room.

A few minutes later saw Dirk on Terezi’s balcony (the view from which was hilariously terrible, but the air was clearer than in most parts of the city, at least).  Settling himself into a chair with his laptop settled on his legs, Dirk sent the call out to both his sister and his cousin. Roxy answered the Skype call almost immediately, which wasn’t exceptionally surprising. Her face popped up on Dirk’s laptop screen, and she held up a hand to him, tapping away at her phone.

“Hold on a sec,” she said. “I’ve been filling in Rose and Aunt Ray about what you told me, they’re up to date, Rose is getting her computer out.”

“That’s fine, there’s no hurry,” Dirk said. Roxy looked up from her phone at the sound of his voice.

“Holy shit, are you okay?” she said. “You sound even more fuckin’ exhausted than you did earlier!”

“Yeah,” Dirk sighed. “Been a hell of a day, Rox.”

Roxy made a sympathetic (if overexagerated) frown, just as the second Skype window clicked open. Dirk could see Rose still rushing to set up her laptop, and hear his mother’s frantic voice. Soon as the laptop was stabilized and both women were in view, Mom nudged Rose slightly out of the way, her hands shaking.

“Dave, where’s Dave? Roxy — Roxy said he was safe, is he —??” Mom said, her words slurred together despite her clear agitation. Rose flicked her a disdainful look, but centered her eyes on Dirk as well.

“Dave isn’t here, I’m at Terezi’s place, but Dave is in police custody. He is safe, yeah,” Dirk said. Mom let out a sob, earning another brief glare from Rose, who then leaned in closer to the screen.

“Well, gee, don’t get too excited,” Rose said, staring Dirk down hard. “You don’t sound too happy about it.”

“No, I’m glad, I am,” Dirk said. “I mean, fuck, at least he’s away from…It’s just.” He sighed, rested his face in a hand for a moment. “Kid won’t fuckin’ talk to us,” he said. “And some of Terezi’s superiors are making a big fuckin’ fuss over it. Kid thinks we’re gonna let the old man take him back. He just…completely shut down on me when I tried to convince him otherwise.”

“So Derek’s still loose?” Mom whined.

“…Yeah,” said Dirk. “Plan completely fucking failed. He was onto us from the start. Only reason we got Dave at all is because Terezi found him, somehow. I still don’t have the details on it, but I think some old friend of hers is involved? Sounded like she didn’t even realize it was Dave until she’d already caught him.”

“Hm,” said Rose, just a bit too smugly for Dirk’s liking. He let it slide. Too tired to deal with her right now. “I’m still not sure why you thought to call Roxy before Mom and I,” Rose continued. “Especially after I asked you to call us as soon as you could?”

Dirk groaned.  “I was a little caught off guard when I first saw Dave, okay?” he said. “I didn’t have a lot of warning beforehand. You can’t just show a guy his baby brother after ten years and expect him to be completely composed. Called Roxy to help collect my thoughts before trying to talk to him, is all.”

“How is he?” Roxy and Mom said in unison.

“Hes…Ugh,” Dirk groaned. “Not good. He looks fucking awful, God.” Mom put her hands over her mouth, the waterworks threatening to start up in full force. No point in sugar coating things, though, she’d see him herself soon enough. “He’s…probably pretty underweight, had a black eye and an awful looking scar on his cheek. Probably hasn’t had a proper night’s rest in ages, judging by the circles under his eyes, and…He’s gotta be half out of his mind with anxiety. Kept acting like the old man was gonna spontaneously appear right behind him.”

Mom sniffled. Yep, there it was, the infamous Rachel Lalonde Booze-Fueled Waterpark is now open for business, complete with an extra set of Rose Lalonde’s patented Generalized Annoyance. Roxy, at least, wasn’t crying, but she certainly looked worried.

“It’s a good thing we’re getting him home, then,” Rose said, patting Mom’s arm. “We’ll be able to give him some rest and some peace of mind, for once.”

Dirk sighed again. “Well, there’s where the bad news comes in.”

“Fuck,” muttered Roxy.

“Like I said, Terezi’s higher ups are being a bunch of obstinate jackasses about Dave acting as a witness, and he’s refusing to talk to anyone. I mean. He talks, sure, it’s still Dave. But he won’t say anything about the old man, or anything vaguely related to him. He doesn’t want to come to New York, either. Got no idea why, there’s nothing for him here in Texas, but he’s determined to be difficult.”

“What — what does that mean for us, then?” Mom whimpered.

“He’s still coming home,” Dirk said. “I—we put too much fucking work into finding him to not bring him home. One way or another, he’s coming back with me, I can promise that much. But it might be a few more days. On top of that, too, Terezi mentioned that he might be basically under house arrest for a while.”

“Oh, noooooo,” said Roxy. “Does that mean I’m not gonna be able to come and hug on him? Fuck!”

“Probably not right away,” Dirk said. “Sorry, Rox. I’ll try and see if we can’t get something in place so you can come and see him ASAP, but. Yeah. He’s too much of a flight risk, right now. Old man’s got him brainwashed, or something. The kid thinks he has to stay with him.”

“My poor baby,” Mom whispered, “Oh, ohhh, my poor baby —”

“I’m sure he’ll get better once he’s settled back in here,” Rose said. “We’ll just have to help him unlearn whatever Father’s forced onto him, give him some time to adjust. I’m sure he’ll come around.”

“Yeah,” Dirk said, softly. “Anyway, um, that’s the situation out here. Can you two clean his room out? Get the house ready for him? I’ll let you know as soon as I do when he’s gonna be back, and how this is going to play out.”

Mom nodded emphatically, and Rose responded with a quiet “of course.”

“God, you better keep me updated, too, okay Dirk?” said Roxy. “I wanna know when I can come and love on the poor kid! God damn, sounds like he needs it.”

“Sure thing, Rox.”

“And get some sleep, you big dummy, you look like a wreck.”

Dirk snorted. “You’re not my real mom,” he said, earning a laugh from, well, his real mom. “Alright, I gotta eat and take a shower, I’ll talk to you all same time tomorrow,” he promised. He could hear Terezi scuffling about in the kitchenette again, and he hoped that she had something in it suitable for human consumption. Goodbyes and goodnights were shared, and the webcams clicked off. Dirk groaned softly, rubbed his eyes with both hands, and stared out at what little of the horizon was visible from Terezi’s balcony.

“What do you want with Dave,” said a scratchy voice to Dirk’s side. He looked up. Karkat was standing there, arms folded, a towel draped over the top of his head.

“Not sure I get what you mean,” Dirk said. “There’s nothing we particularly want him to do, if that’s what you’re asking. Just want him back home where he belongs.”

The troll scowled. “Yeah, because he’s family, right?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Fuck off,” Karkat spat. “I’ve had enough of this human ‘family’ bullshit. If you think I’m just going to stand idly by and let you ship him off to another torment-center he’s somehow obligated to stay in due to your weird human bullshit, then you’re the most pan-addled sack of shit I’ve ever met.”

“While I wouldn’t exactly describe ours as the ideal home environment,” Dirk said, “It’s only a ‘torment-center’ when Rose has to bathe the cat, I assure you. That sound could get an entire legion of war prisoners talking in a hurry. Outside of that rare occurrence, though, I fail to see what you’re so worked up about.”

“Worked up? Oh, I haven’t even gotten started, don’t you fucking worry,” Karkat said. “Dave’s had more than enough Striderian bullshit for one lifetime - hell, I’ve had more than enough of that shit for one lifetime, and I was only there a few fucking days! I’m not about to let him get dragged back into that fucking hellscape, and I’ll fight anyone who fucking tries, including you.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, Karkat,” Terezi’s voice said, floating onto the balcony from inside.

“I’m who to the what, now?”

“It means ‘you’re trying to have an argument with someone who already agrees with you,’” Dirk said.

“I heard what you said before,” Karkat hissed. “Dave doesn’t want to go with you! I trust him way fucking more than I trust you —”

“That’s cool and all,” came Terezi’s voice again, “But Dave’s judgement is not exceptionally trustworthy right now.”

“Terezi, this is a private conversation, and I would appreciate it if you would —”

“Private? Karkat, Rose can hear you in New York.” Terezi strolled onto the balcony and leaned against the railing, some sort of microwave dinner in hand. “Speaking of which, Dave’s only against going to New York because he’s got it in his head that doing so is somehow going to get him in trouble with Strider. Which is a stupid reason, so he’s going. Plus, legally, he does have to go.”

“Wh-why?!” Karkat said.

“He’s a minor,” Terezi said. “Which means, legally, he’s still a kid, and that an adult has to be taking care of him. And that adult is his legal guardian. Dave’s legal guardian is his mother, and she lives in New York.”

“So…so he’s —”

“We can arrange a visit if you’re worried about not seeing your pale crush again,” Terezi said with a devious grin.

“STOP SAYING I HAVE A FUCKING PALE CRUSH,” Karkat barked.

“Um,” said Dirk. He had no idea how a crush could be ‘pale,’ but it was still his brother they were talking about, and, well.

“I don’t!” Karkat said, as Terezi started cackling. “I’m just — He went out of his way to protect me from his monster of a guardian, and I — I get it, okay? Terezi, shut the fuck up, oh my God, shut up!”

“Get what, exactly?” Dirk asked, resting his chin on one hand.

“I get — I get why he’s scared,” Karkat said.

“Because you’re super fucking pale for him —”

“No,” said Karkat, “because he’s a scared fucking kid in over his head, and you’re asking to drag him away from everything he’s ever known, and even though things have been bad for him now, at least he sort of…new what to expect? Whereas now, he’s got nothing! You’re forcing him, against his will, to go to some place that’s completely fucking different from all he’s ever known, and he has no choice, no say in the matter, and it’s fucking scary! Sound a little familiar, Terezi?!”

Terezi laughed again. “Whatever, Karkat,” she said.

“He’s exactly the same as —”

“Yes, Karkat, I got that,” said Terezi. “It’s super adorable that you care so much, but, hey, guess what else is the same about your situations?” Dirk raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. So, Terezi’s friend was an Alternian refugee, then? It certainly sounded like that’s what he was implying. Dirk wondered why he’d had to leave, but figured it wasn’t really his business.  

“What,” said Karkat.

“The place that the people who fucking care about you are dragging you off to is objectively better than the one you’ve been in.”

“Oh, sure,” Karkat said, rolling his eyes. “Earth’s so safe, I got abducted by a fucking terrorist in my first month here. And I just love how we have to be awake when the fucking sun is up, beating down on us like the ugliest lightbulb the universe ever spat out. Yeah, this place is sooo much better than Alternia.”

“Karkat, do you have to be so melodramatic all the time?” Terezi said. “I didn’t say it was perfect, just better. You’re still alive, aren’t you? The answer is yes, close your fucking mouth, smartass. And, likewise, the Lalonde family is pretty much a chaotic whirlwind of clashing personalities and is barely functional as a unit —”

Dirk snorted. He wasn’t even going to attempt to deny that.

“—But it’s still a fucking better place to be than wherever Strider is,” Terezi continued. “It’s quiet, and the people who live there all really fucking love Dave.”

“Why do you want him back so badly?!” Karkat said, turning on Dirk. “Just answer that question for me, okay? Why. What’s so important about him.”

Dirk wasn’t sure he could put it into words, but he could feel about a million and one answers for that question. It was in every memory of an infectious six-year-old’s laugh; it was in every recollection of scared red eyes asking to crawl into bed with Dirk after a nightmare, when Mom wouldn’t wake up from one of her infamous booze snoozes; it was in every fossil or drawing Dave had once excitedly babbled at Dirk over.

Most especially, though, there was the great empty hole in the house without him there. The rift that had opened up in all of them the night Dave was taken, and had never stopped aching since. The great abyss that had driven them apart and forced them together, had tormented Dirk late at night with insomnia and the darkest of whispering thoughts, had pushed Rose to pick fights with her classmates and her brother, had given Mom one more thing to constantly be miserable about in her undeservedly shitty life.  

“He’s my brother,” Dirk said.

Karkat snorted. “‘He’s family,’” he said, his voice mocking. “You sound just fucking like him, you know that? Like it’s your fucking excuse for everything.”

“It’s not the same,” Dirk said, feeling tension creep into his voice and trying to will it away. Stay cool, stay calm.

“Woah, hey,” Terezi said, “Karkat, you need to calm the fuck down.”

“What’s so different about it, then?” Karkat said, ignoring her. “Fucking enlighten me! Why should I be okay with him being shipped off with you? How do I know you’re not just going to put him through the same bullshit with a different coat of paint?”

Dirk narrowed his eyes and tried to swallow the fury and self-loathing that sprang up. He knew, of course; he was hyper aware that, of the three siblings, he took off after his father the most. In his lowest moments, he worried that he had the potential to wind up just like the old man. Didn’t mean he was going to stand by and let a total stranger accuse him of being anything like the bastard.

“I don’t owe you an explanation,” he said, as calmly as he could. “He’s my little brother, and it’s none of your fucking business.”

“Oooookay,” Terezi said, physically putting herself between the two, “Calm down, here, holy shit. If you start a fight up here my landlord’s gonna pitch a fit. Karkat, I promise you, Dirk’s kind of awful at showing it, but he does actually care about Dave’s wellbeing at least as much as you do. Dirk, you need to chill the fuck out, too. You both want what’s best for Dave, so for fuck’s sakes, stop fighting.”

Karkat scowled, and stomped back into Terezi’s apartment, muttering darkly. Dirk flicked his eyes toward Terezi.

“Nice friend you got there,” Dirk deadpanned.

Terezi groaned. “He does this sort of thing all the time,” she said. “He cares a lot about pretty much everything he cares about at all, and he makes everything so fucking personal.”

“Speaking of,” Dirk said. “Should I be concerned about that ‘pale crush’ thing, or…?”

“I’m mostly just teasing him about that,” Terezi said. “Karkat gets a little pale with everyone he cares about, whether he means to or not. Comes with the whole he-cares-about-things-a-lot deal. I dunno if it’s an actual pale crush, but with how Karkat’s acting it actually might be this time. Granted, Dave’s kinda pitybait anyway, but, still, this is getting ridiculous, even for Karkat.”

“Okay,” said Dirk. “I’m gonna need you to start defining some terms, here, so I know how mad I should be about that ‘pitybait’ comment.”

“It means he’s kinda pathetic and really easy to feel sorry for,” Terezi said. “Which, he is.”

“So, the pale crush is…feeling bad for Dave?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, but, basically, yeah,” she said. “It’s a troll thing, I’m too fucking tired to try and explain it right now, but I can promise you he does genuinely just want to make sure Dave’s safe.”

“Right,” said Dirk.

“Anyway, I am going the fuck to sleep,” Terezi announced. “It’s been a long day, and tomorrow’s not looking any shorter. There’s food in the fridge that you can heat up in the microwave, or if there’s nothing you want, there’s a corner store real close. Take Py with you if you go down, though, I still don’t want either of you fucks out without someone keeping an eye on you. Don’t kill each other overnight, or I swear to fuck I will prosecute whichever one of you survives into fucking oblivion.”

“Thanks,” said Dirk. He didn’t dare say as much to Terezi, but, despite how exhausted he felt, he didn’t expect that he’d be getting much sleep tonight, either.

Terezi had been right about being busy the next day, it turned out; Karkat was left pretty much to his own devices in that little room from the day before while she saw to whatever the fuck she was doing. Sollux came by whenever he was on a break and kept Karkat updated throughout the day, not that there was much to be updated on — no progress was being made today, either, apparently. Karkat tried to focus on the book he’d brought along to read, but…

Okay, so. He didn’t like the idea of Dave being shipped off against his will to some unknown place. But. It was apparently happening regardless, and…it would be for the best if Dave would say at least a little bit of what he knew, because anything resulting in Strider getting taken down could only be a net positive.

The next time Terezi came into the room, Karkat suggested going in and talking to Dave himself. It made sense, Dave had talked to him plenty while they were in the apartment, and maybe he’d be less hostile toward someone who wasn’t with the police. She’d very quickly shot him down, but about twenty minutes later, she stormed in again and said he was welcome to try.

“Be my fucking guest,” she said, tense and irritated, “You certainly can’t make it any worse, and we’re already bending a ton of fucking rules for this shit. Best of luck to you.” She’d given Karkat a sheet of paper with some questions on it, and guided him roughly over to a different part of the police station.

The room they had Dave was in was…intimidating as all hell. White, undecorated walls, a file cabinet shoved into the corner, a table in the middle with two chairs, and a big mirror up on the wall - worryingly boring and plain. Dave was fidgeting restlessly in one of the chairs, and Karkat could see that his hands were still cuffed together. Dave glanced up as Karkat entered, and blinked in surprise.

(Holy fuck, his eyes were bright red, Karkat had not been expecting that. The same red of Karkat’s own blood, shit, they really did have a weird amount in common.)

“They desperate enough to send you in, now?” Dave said.

“Well, someone’s gotta cut through the impenetrable wall of utter garbage that spills out of your mouth,” Karkat said, “and at this point, I’m pretty much the fucking expert.”

“Ha,” Dave said, staring at his hands. Karkat pulled out the chair across from Dave and sat down, dumping the paper he’d been given to the side carelessly.

“…What’s that?” Dave said, flicking his eyes at the page.

“A bunch of questions Terezi wanted me to ask. I wanted to just…talk for a bit, first, though.”

“I’m not answering any —”

“Yeah, I heard,” Karkat said. “I get it, though. I do. This whole thing is a huge fucking mess, and you really don’t deserve any of this, and I can’t say I like it much, either, but from the sound of things, you’re gonna wind up in this New York place one way or another.”

Dave huffed.

“And that fucking sucks,” Karkat continued. That earned a surprised look from Dave (he really was so much easier to read without the shades, holy shit). “And you don’t wanna go, and I get that, okay? It’s total hoofbeastshit, it sucks really fucking hard, and I’m sorry.”

“I…yeah,” said Dave. “Yeah, it really fuckin’ does.”

“Frankly, I’m not sure I like that they’re sending you there,” Karkat said. “I mean, they’re all so sure that it’s gonna be this great experience or what the fuck ever, but…ugh. Terezi says there’s legal shit involved, so.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Dave shrugged. “Bro’s not exactly on the law’s good side right now, so. And I mean, it’s not like I’m against the idea of seeing Rose again, I miss her like hell, but. New York’s a long goddamn way away, you know? And I barely remember it at all, and, fuck, Br — It’s a long damn way, I guess.”

Karkat decided to ignore what was no doubt another restatement of the general sentiment of ‘Bro will kill me,’ as that hoofbeast had not only died, but had been pounded so thoroughly as to now be naught but dust in the breeze.  “Yeah, well,” he said, “Maybe it won’t be so bad? I mean, fuck, I can’t say I’m super fond of Earth, but having friends here has made it a lot less shitty. Maybe it’ll be alright, especially if there’s people there you’d like to see. And, fuck, maybe we’ll be able to keep in touch, or something.”

Dave snorted softly. “You wanna keep in touch? Dude, I fuckin’ kidnapped you.”

“It’s not my fault you’re weirdly easy to talk to, you endless blustering windbag,” Karkat said. “And, fuck, call me sentimental or whatever, but I…I do want to make sure you’re okay, in the long run. You did kind of risk your ass to keep me safe.”

“Shit, man, if anyone owes anyone, I owe you, dude, I’m the idiot who got seen.”

“Yeah, and guess what: I’m the idiot who saw you and decided to follow you into a dimly lit hallway right after learning a fucking terrorist had been seen in the area. How about we just agree that we were both equally idiotic on the day in question and cut this insipid argument short before it bores us both to tears, okay?”

“…Yeah, whatever,” Dave shrugged. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a long moment.

“…New York, huh,” he said quietly. Dave was silent another long moment. Then, “Ugh, okay, whatever, let’s just get this over with.”

“What?”

“The fuckin…questions, or whatever. I’m…I can’t answer everything, I’m not riskin’ my hide spillin’ everything, but…bare minimum, whatever it takes to get this show over with.” Dave groaned. “Fuck, if Bro ever finds out I —”

“You’re the one who keeps saying he’d never actually kill you, and anyway, the point is to get you far enough away that he can’t come after you. And before you start that ‘abandoning’ him bullshit, here’s a thought: shut the fuck up.”  Karkat picked up the paper and skimmed it. “I think Terezi pulled some sorta compromise out of her ass, too, because these mostly look like they’re just confirming your identity, so.”

He cleared his throat and glanced behind him at the mirror. “Wait, shit, do I need to write this down, or —”

“I’m pretty sure someone’s behind the mirror listening to this whole conversation, dude,” Dave said. “They’re probably recording everything we’re saying, or something.”

The whole conversation? Well, shit, that was embarrassing. “Fuck.”

An hour or so later, after Karkat had finished talking to Dave and had been herded back into the small meeting room, Kanaya arrived. She said that she would have come earlier, but had been stuck at work for a while. They’d barely had any time to catch up, though, when Karkat could hear Terezi yelling outside in the hall.

“I swear to FUCK, I will personally track down those assholes and —” the door clicked open, and Terezi was briefly silhouetted, her head turned toward some poor unseen soul, “No, I don’t give a fuck, this is an awful idea! Who the hell is in charge? What happened to the precious fucking protocol?!  No, I’m telling him, but you better fucking believe I don’t goddamn approve! This is horseshit!” She slammed the door closed behind her, and audibly groaned. “For fuck’s sake,” she said. “Times like this I really wish Earth worked more like Alternia. I would really love to be able to fucking kill the bastards in charge of this case, take their position and do this shit properly, but no, that would be ‘murder’ and is ‘frowned upon in all fifty states,’ blah blah fucking blah. Ugh!”

“Is there more trouble?” Kanaya asked.

“I thought everything was supposed to be fine now,” Karkat said. “He talked, it’s over with, he can go to fucking New York and everyone���s happy.”

“He talked to you, yeah,” Terezi said. “So now, the oh-so-wise powers that be have decided to ‘kill two featherbeasts with one stone,’ as it were, and send you up to New York, too. Since we need to put you somewhere safe, anyway, and you’re the one who got him to cooperate a little. Nevermind that it’s a fucking horrible idea, for a huge fucking number of reasons — Hey, Dirk, good timing,” she said, as the door briefly opened and closed again. “Did you hear what they’re fucking proposing?”

“Yeah,” said Dirk, staying farther away, his expression blank. “I mean. We’ve got two guest rooms, and some pretty damn comfortable couches on top of that, we could certainly house anyone who gets sent with us, but it’s more for Mom to prepare for, which isn’t entirely fair. My question is, though, is this plan even legal?” Dirk asked. “Pretty sure this is not at all the kind of solution written into the letter of the law. Sending a kidnapping victim to live with his fucking captor for a while sounds a bit sketchy.”

“We’re working a bit loose with the laws, here,” Terezi said. “Happens a lot with cases like this where there’s potential for an interplanetary incident, we play a bit more by Alternian rules. That’s besides the point, though, the point is that it’s fucking stupid!” Terezi shouted. “They wanted me to let you know it’s an option, Karkat, but, holy shit, I cannot believe they’d even consider this bullshit as a valid solution.”

“They want to…send me to New York?” Karkat said.

“Yeah, that’s the gist of it,” Terezi grumbled.

“…With Dave?”

“You’d be staying at the Lalonde house, which is a fate I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy, quite frankly. No offense, Dirk, but your family is a fucking mess,” she said.

“None taken,” Dirk said. “I’m not gonna act like we’re a perfectly functional unit. Bringing Dave back is one thing, he belongs there,” he continued, shooting Karkat a biting look. Karkat narrowed his eyes and glared right back. “But it might be tricky for someone else to get used to, especially someone from a different planet.”

“I’ll go,” Karkat said.

“Alright, well — Karkat, holy fuck, no you won’t,” Terezi said. “No, you — Strider is not going to take all this laying down, first of all, he is definitely going to try something to get Dave back, and if you’re caught up in all that — it completely defeats the fucking purpose!”

Karkat gulped. “Well, if it’s not safe for me, then how can you claim it’s safe for Dave?” he said. “You’ve been saying this whole time, he’d be safe in New York, but now you’re saying he won’t be?”

“I can fucking assure you,” Dirk said, “he’ll be safe. I — we aren’t going to let the bastard take him again.”

“Then it should be safe for me, too,” Karkat said.

“Oh my God, Karkat, for once in your life stop being such a stubborn jackass about this!” Terezi said. Karkat folded his arms.

“I cannot say I particularly approve of this, either,” Kanaya said. “Karkat, are you sure you really want to do this? New York is very far away.”

“Earth’s a long way from Alternia,” Karkat said. In truth, the idea did make him nervous, but no more so than coming to Houston had. “Besides,” he continued, “It’s not like I’m doing a whole lot here. Even before getting captured I was just sitting at a fucking desk all day, and now I’m doing even less! I’m tired of being a fucking liability. At least this way I can, you know, feel like I’m actually doing some fucking good with my time.”

“Well, then, I suppose we had better both start packing,” Kanaya said with a sigh.

“What? Both?” Karkat said. Terezi and Dirk reacted with similar surprise.

“Do you really think I’m going to let you get shipped off alone to some far corner of the world after everything that’s happened?” Kanaya said, a stern look in her eyes. “I’m coming with you.”

“God fucking dammit,” Terezi muttered.

“But — your job! Kanaya, you have a good thing going on here, you don’t have to leave, you can’t just give that up,” said Karkat.

“My job is primarily design work,” Kanaya said. “I can’t participate in sewing while away, no, but I can still provide sketches and work with measurements. I’m sure I will be able to work out some understanding with Porrim. She’d want to be sure that you are safe as well.”

“Holy shit, you’re both fucking serious,” Terezi hissed.

“And the human did say that they have two guest rooms,” Kanaya concluded with a smile. Karkat couldn’t help but return the expression. Fuck, Kanaya was a good friend, he didn’t deserve her at all, but he was glad as hell that she was here.

“Aaaugh,” Terezi groaned, “This is going to be such a clusterfuck.”

[faithfulheir]

HERE’S WHERE THE FUN BEGINS...

My portrayal of Noctis will stay close to canon. My interest isn’t playing a replica per-say but to expand upon what I feel the game overlooked or glossed over.  

The only canon divergence is world of ruin.

Key difference: emerging from the crystal, Noctis appears to not have aged a year. There’s heavy, dark bag under red eyes but overall, he remains the same person who his friends saw before Noctis entered “Crystal Stasis”. This is more than a cosmetic change! 

OUT OF CHARACTER...

THE BASICS

This blog is against hate. Hate breeds hate. Only hate allowed here is self hate, yo. (kidding. i try to keep that to a minimum.)

Please tag your smut! (nsfw works) And sex talk, if you don’t mind. Some days are good. Some days are friggin’ awful and I want to jump out of my skin. Better safe to take caution than not. But we should be tagging this stuff anyway for the teenie-boppers.

ATTENTION BLOGGERS USING CO.VU

My anti virus blocks websites ending in “co.vu” making it impossible to read your rules/profile.

“Malwarebytes blocked a suspected bad URL or an unwanted program.”

WRITER:

thy name is sera & I’m 21+. if you wish to plot, ask a question, or simply chat up a storm  feel free to message me via IM or askbox. 

caution?! this user has clinical depression. this does not excuse for any ill behavior. Please approach me if I’m doing something wrong. Communication is key to a healthy life style. 

FANDOM:

Any character outside the Final Fantasy setting is welcome! 

Etc. Disney / Star Wars / Apocalyptic-era / Harry Potter, etc. I’m more than willing to fit Noct into your setting, should I know it. 

One of the reasons I enjoy writing with characterfrom different fandoms is because you get to explore sides your character may not show when around someone they're comfortable with. People have different faces they show others; some can be tense, and some can be chatty with strangers.

No fandom is off limits. All I ask is you help me understand your character if I don’t know the fandom. Naturally, this also includes original characters.

FORMAT:

one liners

paragraph, 

icons, 

small font--

don’t use icons? no problem! i’ll still roleplay with you

but please, don’t reblog asks.

MEMES: 

Send all the memes, don’t be shy!

Have we followed each other for a couple of months and still haven’t communicated? You're more than welcome to still approach me! 

Are you somebody I don’t follow back & would still like to reach me? Go right ahead, I’m not closed off. Send me that meme!

I love turning memes into threads. I thrive off memes. But I will not reblog asks unless it’s to save them. Please make a new text post & tag me in it. I track the tag FAITHFULHEIR

SEMI-SELECTIVE:

Unfortunately, I can’t follow everyone. 

I use the term ‘semi-selective’ for my own sanity, rather than to say I’m an open blog. All ‘semi-selective’ means is mutual take priority & I may be selective with non-mutuals.

IN-CHARACTER INFORMATION:

Godmoding:  Please don’t control my character or decide his actions without approving it with me. Noctis is strong af but rest assured, he won’t go seeking a fight with people.

Shipping: Up in the air when it comes to shipping, so if interested, HMU so we may discuss deets.

DYSLEXIA:

Now and again, a random word that doesn’t belong squeezes itself into my writing. It throws the sentence off balance, and makes no sense. (I've written “kylo rey” instead of “kylo ren.”) So, if you see a word out of place, go ahead & message me, politely pointing it out.

SOCIAL ANXIETY:

-- ‘wait for what? sera, why roleplay when it forces you to interact with people??’ you may ask yourself. & that’s just it! I want to interact with people, I want to overcome it!

!! IMPORTANT !!

Social anxiety is a little bitch. Sometimes, I get scared because I tend to speak ‘formally’ compared to most who can express their happy, carefree nature through text. I may be slow responding, but I promise I will.

Figured a heads up was appropriate b/c I don’t want anyone thinking I’m ignoring them. Chatting oocly with my writing partner eases the anxiety, but it’s not required. I just want others to know that I may be quiet but that doesn’t mean I’m opposed to ooc chatting.