#ruined a perfectly good chaos gremlin!!!

[ladyelainehilfur]

...

CHONG WAS THE ONE WHO PLANTED THE SEED OF TOPH BECOMING A COP, I WANT THAT HIPPIE GUY OBLITERATED!!!!!!!

[stresslitzia]

Skuld for character bingo 😁

I was having a Ventus moment(asleep) sorry

The fan depictions of Skuld as a chaos gremlin are the peak of this community. I personally enjoy my own depiction. she steals pens out of Ephemer's hands. She repeatedly takes the feather from Blaine's hat. She keeps disappearing because the wanderlust is so strong. She does the "I haven't seen you since you were this big" thing to Vanitas. She is here to cause chaos.

Unfortunately, canon does not agree with me. Why did you take such a good character and turn her into another helpless Obligatory Female Trio Member. You ruined a perfectly good Keyblade wielder is what you did. Look at her. She's writing secret reports. And having reports written about her. I don't know which is worse.

[spidori]

Hmmm.... What would red hood get as a gift for Ellie? It's gotta meet a few criteria. First off, this is a ghost, after his beloved's response to the accidental sealing, Jay has finally cottoned on to ghostly customs being just slightly different from mortal ones; he's confused, but he's got the spirit. Second, this is still a gift for royalty, it's gotta be grand and make some sort of statement alongside being personally meaningful to both giver and recipient. Third, and related to two, Ellie is the actual biggest chaos gremlin he knows, bar none, which is saying a lot given his siblings but is still true, and he needs to take this into account when choosing her gift. And of course, he only has until lunch tomorrow...

Yeah, this is fine (LIES! Jason is panicking! He's just gotten a chance to take the next step (out of hundreds, because proper courting) with his beloved and he's gonna ruin it because he can't think of the perfect gift for the Mirror Queen!)

Thankfully Kon steps in to help, and after calming Jason down just tells him you need someone who knows chaos on the highest levels and knows the Mirror Queen well enough to help you find the right gift? I've got just the guy. Let me make a quick call.

Cue some Bruce-bait looking twink showing up a few minutes later saying Kon said Jason could use his help finding the perfect gift for Ellie. After hearing Jason explain the situation, the kid gets a glint in his eye that Jason recognizes all too well from sibling prank wars, alludes OFFHANDEDLY to him being the red hood, as if that was just common knowledge (it is Jay-bird, ghosts see souls, and your self-image is the red hood at this point) and then whisks him away through a portal he somehow just ripped open with a wave of his hand through the air.

...the kid might not be *just* a kid, now that he thinks about it...

The next day, at lunch, Jason and Ellie have been having a wonderful time just talking and swapping stories. He even responded well to her giving him a shovel talk, properly groveling in fear as appropriate, but managing to perfectly maintain the balance of showing difference to her while showing that he's powerful enough in his own right to stand by her Knight's side. She'd liked him already, but this guy was literally perfect for her Frighty! And now he says he brought a gift! And that he appreciates the help of the Balanced Chaos in selecting it for her! If Danny helped him pick this she just *knows* it's gonna be great.

Cue hood plopping a Fenton ghost-proof duffel bag on the table, and unzipping it to reveal... A very grumpy Vlad's head. She may have set aside her grievances with the man long ago for the good of the realms, but a part of her would always dislike him, so seeing him complain about being decapitated and left in a sweaty gym bag all night (and oh my ANCIENTS, that's Dan's gym bag! She knows for a *fact* her biggest bro can SWEAT, she's seen the stains while braiding his hair) Was hugely cathartic for her. Yep, Jason has absolutely earned any and all of her approval. She needs to find a way to get those two to speed up the courting process even more, because she has A MIGHTY NEED to have this man as part of her court YESTERDAY thank you very much! Time to gather the 'kiss-the-girl already!' Council and throw their plans into MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE!!!

I know it was a prompt and u said you werent gonna do anything with it (and you so should) but i love ur two posts on the Queen of Clones Elle/Amnesiac Champion Kon AU (especially Kon's knight design (like ghost tattoos?!?!? so so cool) and Elle's relationship with him). Got anymore headcanons about this au? Who are the other clones you envisioned playing the background characters? Do Kon and Tim actually cuddle in the Only One Bed scenario? Does Elle get a cool princess/queen design(s) since Kon gets a knight one? Does Tim walk into Kon's knight practice and have a "oh no he's hot" moment? Just afagshjdksll this au is so cool please tell me all about it

The thing is, whenever I say "I'm going to put X idea here for someone else to grab since I'm never going to do anything with it" I'm lying. I'm a liar. It's still lives in my brain and is taking over all rational thought. I have at least 85% of a story written in my head when I say that, I just know that I'm never going to sit down and actually write it down lol

I have SO MANY thoughts about this AU, you have no idea what you've done asking me about it haha

(and seriously if anything at all in my ramblings here is of interest to anyone have at it, everything I post should always be considered free game to use as a writing prompt haha)

Like, between Elle getting snatched by the GIW & Kon ending up in custody with the Justice League for a bit, a lot of the clones that weren't involved in the rescue(s) who are out in the wider multiverse come pouring in to check on them and there's this huge impromptu "Congrats on Escaping a Government Agency" party for the two of them.

There are so many clones just everywhere, Tim is overwhelmed by them all (and hasn't actually realized that the whole deal of the place is that everyone there is a clone yet). But he's dealing. He's sticking close to Kon (because he's never letting Kon leave his sight again, especially since he's half convinced that Elle kidnapped & brainwashed Kon into being her loyal servant for evil purposes) and getting introduced to the most diverse group of entities he's ever seen before (humans aren't the only ones who get into cloning).

And then there's an excited whoop as some kid comes flying out of a portal and launches himself at Kon, talking a thousand miles a second, just so happy Kon is back and okay and the boy is so chipper and happy and sweet that it takes Tim a second to realize holy shit is that Damian????

The kid is the Heretic, aged down and growing up again with a fresh slate after getting sent to Elle's Haunt post however he disappeared/died in DC canon (I'm a bit fuzzy on those details). Of course that information takes a bit for Tim to figure out, becuase the kid has no memories at all of being the Heretic or of Damian or Talia or Bruce or fighting his way out of a whale fully grown. As far as he's concerned he's Antonio, Paulina Sanchez' adopted son, and like sure he's somebody's clone but that really doesn't matter to him, he only comes to Elle's haunt to hang out and tag along behind Kon because he thinks Kon is the coolest. (Kon is explaining this to Tim as a bright, cheerful, normal kid version of Damian is sitting on his shoulders. Tim is losing his god damn mind).

And the Only One Bed Thing!! Okay, so like, Kon is Elle's Champion and basically her unofficial Heir. When Elle isn't around he's in charge of her Haunt and looking after all the other clones. And even when she is there he just goes full Big Brother mode on everyone. It doesn't matter if the clones that end up in the Haunt are actually older than him, he's their big brother now.

To that end, clones end up coming to Kon all the time in the middle of the night, unable to sleep because of nightmares and stuff. And Kon is the cuddliest motherfucker. He's all about platonic cuddles to help people sleep. Just about every clone that's ever spent any time at Elle's haunt has ended up curled up in a blanket fort in Kon's room getting cuddled into feeling safe and cared for.

So for Kon? Only One Bed is no issue at all.

Oh all the clones coming over for the party has taken up all the rooms and Elle is "too weak from recovering" for her Haunt to make more? Of course Red Robin can stay in his room! His bed is so comfy and there's more than enough room for both of them (and like, sure, he's kinda panicking a little because he's never cuddled with anyone he's sorta had a tiny bit of a crush on, but he cab be cool! Besides, its hard to fully commit to the crush one Red Robin when Mystery Boy is out there somewhere, oh maybe he can ask Red Robin about him! He seems to know so much about Kon he'll know who Kon is in love with back in his old life!)

Tim, on the other hand, is just fully:

Over the prospect of having to keep his shit together while sleeping in the same bed as Kon (who sleeps without a shirt, jesus fucking christ, Kon has tattoos now since when did that happen??? why is he somehow more attractive than when he disappeared??? oh god Tim is going to have a fucking heart attack) especially after Kon drops the bomb that the only thing he can remember from before is some guy that Kon was apparently totally in love with??? Like Tim is being thrown wildly between being a Bi Disaster to being totally devistated and back again.

He mostly manages to keep himself together, at least until it's actually time for bed and it turns out that Kon is a cuddler when he sleeps (Kon did warn him! "just shove me off if I end up trying to use you as a pillow it won't wake me up" he said, and Tim thought "well it can't be that bad" he was so fucking wrong) and Tim ends up wrapped up in a cocoon of muscled and tattooed Kryptonian arms with his face smushed into Kon's chest and Kon nuzzling into Tim's hair in his sleep and it's the most comfortable Tim's ever been in his life and Kon purrs in his sleep like how is that even fair??? (I love the Kyrptonian's purr headcanon so much it has to be in here lol)

By the end of the first week Tim's has slept more and better than he has in years. He's genuinely forgotten what it's like to have a normal sleep schedule. Even with all his panicking, Kon sleepily curling up around him and hugging him like a teddy bear just knocks him out. It's insane.

And Elle! I have so many thoughts about Elle in this AU!

I mentioned it in one of my other posts on this AU that Elle gives off Vibes based off her various Epitaphs that she's gained, and I think that she'd kinda push that to the max when it came to Tim for awhile when Kon first shows up with him.

Like, she takes one look at Tim and is like "ah, this is Mystery Boy my amnesiac bestie has been on about forever" while also realizing that Kon has no idea that he's just panic-kidnapped the one person he sorta remembers from his old life. Which is the oppurtunity of so much fun matchmaking chaos. And she loves Kon, she's planning on officially making him her Heir so that he becomes Prince of Clones as well as her Champion, she wants him to be happy.

But also she's protective over him, more even than a lot of the other clones that end up in her Haunt. Kon doesn't remember his old life and he was so badly injured when he ended up in Elle's haunt that Frostbite hadn't been sure he would survive. Add in the fact that Red Robin was clearly with the people that had captured Kon while he and the other clones were getting her out of the GIW facility (and that the Justice League is sort of a government agency in it's own right) and Elle isn't totally sold on Tim.

She goes out of her way to give off extra creepy vibes while around him. Making sure he understands that she's more than strong enough to destroy him if he even thinks about hurting Kon. At least in the early days of Tim being in her haunt. She does, eventually, lighten up - especially when Kon gives her the big eyes and asks her to trust him, that he knows that Red Robin is someone he believes is good and that won't ever hurt him. She's still keeps a close eye on Tim, but does chill out a little after that.

And she does have a Queen Form (and a princess form when she's doing her Crown Princess of the Infinite Realms thing). She has a couple different forms/designs depending on which Epitaph she's invoking (and of course a fun vaguely eldritch shadow form that scares the shit out of Tim haha).

Her Clone Queen design is BIG, not quite massive Eldritch Ghost King Danny big, but definitely big. Like 20-30 feet tall big, so she can pick up and carry/hold all her clone children like little babies (if any clones are from a race/species that's bigger than that her size adjusts so she's always big enough to carry them).

She has a crown made out of mirror shards that float around and move so that it's always changing shape (I've been feeling clones being called "Mirrorborn" in the Infinite Realms since there's kind of a naming convention already with "unborn" and clones could be seen as kind of like reflections in a way. Elle's official title is actually "Queen of the Mirrorborn" though sometimes is called "Mother of Mirrors" that's why Kon's sheild reflects things, since Elle made it for him out of a piece of her crown while naming him her Champion) and wears a dress that also looks like it's covered in mirrors. It's actually very soft and comfortable and it's super common for clones to climb around or curl up in her skirts and sleep in there.

Her dress does turn into armor though if she needs to fight. And while in Clone Queen mode it's actually super easy for her to duplicate herself a bunch of times.

Knight Training!

Once Elle chills out on Tim a little and is fully onboard the matchmaking train with the rest of the clones (all while absolutely none of them tell Kon that Red Robin is obviously his Mystery Boy) she has Fright Knight show up more often to train Kon specifically for the purpose of Tim walking in on shirtless Tim expertly going through sword forms and sparring with various other clones. And of course Tim and Kon have to have a sparring scene, where Tim is so distracted by Kon being so fucking attractive he ends up pinned against a wall with the flat of a sword under his chin and Kon giving him a cheeky wink and then it's on and there's a whole dramatic flirty fight scene as they make their way through half of Elle's Haunt while sword fighting.

Also! Since Elle's entire court is actually there for once, a bunch of different monarchs around the Infinite Realms decide to host a tournament, so Kon gets to do official knight stuff in his best armor. And Tim gets place of honor right next to Elle during all the jousting and fighting stuff so he gets the best view of Kon kicking ass.

Tim (still wearing his mask because even if he's pretty sure that no one here is evil or would use his secret identity against him - or even care that he has one) has been all dressed up in some gorgeous clothes fit for his status as "Companion" to a Queen's Champion/future Heir. Just something absolutely insanely georgous in the colors of his Red Robin suit, with a dramatic but entirely functionless cape and Kon's crest (not Elle's but Kon's) embroidered on it and it's Kon's turn to blue screen at seeing Tim for the first time all dressed up.

And Tim is maybe finally putting together from talking with Kon that he might be Mystery Boy that Kon remembers from before and that Kon is in love with. So just before Kon is going out to joust, Tim - taking Elle's advice that he should give Kon a favor before the tournament for good luck - and wanting it to be more meaningful than just a handkerchief or something, takes his mask of and gives it to Kon as his favor.

And Kon just loses his god damn mind because Mystery Boy and Red Robin are the same person and all he wants to do is kiss Tim stupid but Fright Knight Master of Chivalry is like "nope you gotta win this tournament and bring honor to your beloved and do this whole ridiculous song and dance about it, no kissing, get out there and smash some heads together - and keep your helmet on this time!" and just yeets a disgruntled Kon out into the field before he can do anything.

And of course with all this extra incentive - Fright is serious about that whole "prove your love through combat" thing he's not going to be allowed to even kiss Tim's hand unless he wins and is perfectly chivalous while doing it - Kon wins the Tournament and is given the flower crown he's supposed to give to the most beautiful of all the observers and of course he gives it to Tim and he doesn't care if there's a forty step courting process he's supposed to follow Fright, he's fucking kissing Tim and there's nothing you can do about it!

Literally seconds away from them finally kissing is when the Justice League kick down the door to get Tim back.

The ghosts aren't even the ones that wrecks the Justice League's shit for interuppting, it's just Tim screaming at them about being cock blocks for forty minutes while Kon screams into the void in the background.

(Kon does get his memories back eventually, and he and Tim do finally get that kiss and start dating. But at that point Kon has been named Elle's heir so Fright Knight is even more rediculous about Correct Courting Steps than before because Kon is a Prince now. Elle is just relieved that it turns out that the Justice League nuked the GIW while they were looking for Tim, because they were not okay with them or the Anti-Ecto Laws. Kon is mortified at having what is effectively his adoptive mother constantly popping in to dote on him while in the middle of fights, Elle is having a great time.)

[sscrambledmeggss]

blaine for the ask game >:^)

jkjk do sebastian and mercedes

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED 🤚

Blaine Anderson:

Favorite thing about them: some of his songs are absolute bangers

Least favorite thing about them: his lack of accountability

Favorite line: “If he and I got married, the Gap would give me a 50% discount.” I love that he’s rich, and still looking for a discount, like okay go off <3

brOTP: the warblers <3

OTP: Blainofsky, I genuinely think they had some cute moments 😭😭

nOTP: Seblaine, I also dislike Klaine, but have/would read Klaine fanfiction, seblaine just upsets me, and that’s a me problem 😭

Random headcanon: he definitely has a Katy Perry stan account

Unpopular opinion: I don’t like him 😭

Song I associate with them: literally teenage dream by Katy Perry. Basic I know 🦧

Favorite picture of them:

I like how happy he looks :)

Sebastian Smythe:

Favorite thing about them: literal rat bastard, crime gremlin, but also I like how he chose to grow and change at the end of his time on the show. He genuinely tried becoming a better person and I really appreciate that (ignoring the warblers scandal in s4 LOL)

Least favorite thing about them: effeminophobia 🦧 but also his racist lines to Santana :/

Favorite line: “Fun, I don’t like you either”

Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it.

brOTP: I absolutely adore it when he a Nick are besties 🥰 but also hear me out...I can see him and Rachel as a very fun friends dynamic 😭 I also like it when he and Sam or puck are friends in fics :D

OTP: Kurtbastian, are we surprised

nOTP: Seblaine, again it’s just not something I enjoy but it’s completely valid of other people who do! :)

Random headcanon: there’s so many...but I feel like one time Jeff saw him in the hallway and he was just casually eating a pepper like an apple. He also wears crocs unironically

Unpopular opinion: I think his scandals outfit is fun. Not GOOD, but fun. It’s a mess and it perfectly sums up Sebastians character

Song I associate with them: The Archer and Peace by Taylor Swift also Beautiful, Dirty, Rich thanks to acitw

Favorite picture of them:

You can tell he knows he’s about to be a little shit, like he’s going there to ruin Kurt (and I think Rachel’s? If I remember the scene correctly) day 🦧 absolute chaos gremlin (affectionate)

Mercedes Jones:

Favorite thing about them: she’s nice, but she’s not a pushover. She values herself just as much as the values others, and I think that’s an amazing quality to have :)

Least favorite thing about them: idk if I have one 😭

Favorite line: “Okay, I'm gonna ask you to stop, because I'm starting to get embarrassed for you.” It basically just sums up all of glee

brOTP: Tincedes, Rachcedes, Quinncedes and Kurtcedes <3 though Puckcedes is also cute at times :)

OTP: Samcedes, Rachcedes, Quinncedes and Tincedes

nOTP: romantic!kurtcedes </3

Random headcanon: her and her older brother would put on concerts for their family when they were younger <3 she would sing and he’d do special effects in the background (lights, making sure the music is playing etc)

Unpopular opinion: I liked her and Sam’s breakup. Do I wish they got back together? Yes. But do I also think that it was super mature and well executed for a glee breakup? Yes. <3

Song I associate with them: Wildest Dreams. I honestly don’t really know why?? It just makes me think “this is a Mercedes song”

Favorite picture of them:

LOOK AT HERRRR 🥺🥺 Mercedes Jones deserves everything good in the world 🤚🤚

[aurora077]

The Irwin Agenda Chapter 1

Summary:

Lan Wangji is pleased that his brother and Wei Ying seem to be getting along like a house on fire. Lan Xichen is most grateful for Master Wei’s help. Lan Qiren is just happy that for once it seems like Wei Wuxian is keeping out of trouble and is optimistic that Gusu Lan has finally managed to tame the beast. Unfortunately, he should have learned not to count his chickens before they hatched… and he really should have been focusing on taming a very different sort of beast. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13942581/1/The-Irwin-Agenda

Chapter 1 - Lan Xichen starts a project.

Disclaimer: I do not own MDZS/The Untamed.

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

“Ah Wangji, there you are.”

“Xiongzhang. 😲 What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

“No no, nothing at all other than, you know, the obvious. I’m sure you don’t need to hear all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down.”

“What?”

“Nevermind.”

He cleared his throat, “Anyway I really came here to look for Wei Wuxian.”

Wangji blinked, indicating surprise.

“What does brother need with Wei Ying?”

“Hmm let’s just say I need his… expertise.”

Wangji’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “Brother isn’t thinking of….”

“Don’t be silly Wangji. I would never.” He’d leave the demonic cultivation and zombie best friends to Wei Wuxian, thank you very much. No, Lan Xichen needed him for a different type of expertise.

“Sect Leader Jiang visited the other day with Sect Leader Jin. He mentioned something to me and I need Wei Wuxian’s expert opinion.”

“You saw Sect Leader Jiang?” Wangji said, surprised once more.

“Indeed. We had tea while the kids were out doing whatever kids do when the adults aren’t watching. ” Technically they were young adults but, semantics.

Wangji’s mouth pursed slightly. He always looked like he’d bitten into a lemon whenever Sect Leader Jiang was mentioned (or present).

“Does Jiang Wanyin not know that brother is in seclusion?”

He frowned, “Wangji, you may not like him, but he is a sect leader. You ought to show due courtesy. Besides, I invited him.”

Lan Wangji was stunned. Why would his brother, who made it a point these days to avoid as many people as possible, take time from seclusion to have tea with Jiang Wanyin? He knew Xichen wasn’t in full seclusion, he’d come out for the banquet and other events important to the clan, but on a day to day basis the seclusion still stood. Which was why he was surprised Xichen was in the Jingshi to begin with, let alone looking for Wei Ying. Now he hears he’s been having tea with Wei Ying’s insufferable ex-shidi? What was the world coming to?

“Don’t look at me like that,” said Lan Xichen, “I’m perfectly capable of taking guests if I want to. And not all of us share your feelings about Sect Leader Jiang.”

Well, he could acknowledge that as true so he said nothing.

“Anyway, do you know where I might find Wei Wuxian?” continued Lan Xichen.

“Wei Ying is probably with the rabbits,” answered Lan Wangji. It was normal when he was busy with paperwork that Wei Ying would find other ways to amuse himself. The juniors were away on a night-hunt so the next best bet was the rabbits as Wei Ying was not currently occupied with any inventions.

“Thank you Wangji, I’ll see myself out.”

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

Wei Wuxian was indeed with the rabbits. His stubborn donkey was unhappily chewing at a patch of grass next to him while the rabbits cowered away from the both of them.

He perked up upon spotting Lan Xichen. “Brother in law, what brings you here!”

“Well,” he said amused, “I might be here to relieve your boredom.”

Wei Wuxian sprung up excitedly. “What do you have planned?”

“A-Yuan said that you once managed to raise lotuses in the Burial Mounds.” “Yes, did you want me to help you grow some here?” It would make sense that Lan Xichen needed his help. Neither the Burial Mounds nor Cloud Recesses had the right environment for lotuses to grow. What Wei Wuxian did was ingenious and altogether unheard of. The Burial Mounds was inhospitable to life in general although, even if it wasn’t, lotuses wouldn’t have grown there; but Wei Wuxian made it happen. He could certainly make it happen here too in the cold, mountainous Cloud Recesses.

“Well you’re on the right track! But...not exactly, ” said Lan Xichen.

----------

“Right well, I understand what it is you mean now,” said Wei Wuxian. He inspected the drawing. Lan Xichen had worked diligently to capture what he envisioned on paper. The problem now was making it happen.

“Do you have a place where we could do this?” enquired Wei Wuxian. He was so intrigued. If he could pull this off he would be impressed with himself. It would take a large area and it would be a lot of hard work.

“Yes, I believe I do. The back of the Hanshi has a lot of forest. I was thinking I could clear a big enough space. Nothing will go to waste either because we can use the wood from the trees to fence off the area.”

“Great,” Wei Wuxian said, clapping his hands decisively, “Let’s get to work then!”

--------

Lan Qiren was pleased. It had been a whole five months since Wei Wuxian had caused any sort of disturbance. And he was actually rising in the morning with the Lans now! And eating their food! Wonder of wonders!

He still was unabashedly clingy towards Lan Wangji but that made Wangji happy so, as much as it irked Lan Qiren to see their shameless displays, he would tolerate it...as long as the other rules were followed.

Lan Qiren always suspected his nephew was slipping alcohol to Wei Wuxian, though he could never prove it, but these days it appeared that Wei Wuxian was surprisingly sober most of the time. Lan Qiren didn’t even get a whiff of alcohol! For the first few weeks of this newfound adherence to the rules he was in a state of heightened panic. He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop with each day that passed without any of Wei Wuxian’s shenanigans. But as the days went by he started to relax.

He attributed this change of behaviour to his first nephew, who Wei Wuxian had been spending a lot of time with lately. Wangji was blinded by love and so he indulged Wei Wuxian too much, but Xichen had a clear head. He must be acting as a good influence on Wei Wuxian. He hoped this behaviour continued. It was a sign that finally, finally his days of peace might return permanently.

Xichen was interacting with people again (well, only his immediate family and for some reason, Sect Leaders Jiang and Jin… but still, it was more progress than some people made in an entire lifetime --looking at you Qingheng-Jun 😒-- and no, he was not bitter at all, whatever would give you that idea?). Wangji  seemed happy in general (as opposed to him moping around for the past 13 years in mourning clothes). And Wei Wuxian, that feral little gremlin, was actually following the rules!

Oh happy day!

He went to class with a pep in his step.

His students were noticeably happier as well because Lan Qiren in a good mood could only benefit them. He even removed the no interacting with Wei Wuxian rule from the wall, which is the one most of them broke constantly! The students rejoiced. Things were peaceful in the Cloud Recesses. Life was good.

----------

Lan Wangji was a happy man. He was married to the love of his life. His brother was getting better day by day, and got along well with his husband. And his uncle seemed like he’d finally come around to Wei Ying. He felt touched the day Uncle removed the rule forbidding interaction with Wei Ying. He knew that his uncle did not like him, even before the whole Yiling Patriarch thing. But he didn’t forbid them from living in Cloud Recesses. Sure he was not pleased that Uncle wrote a rule against Wei Ying on the wall, but it didn’t stop the juniors from interacting with him anyway and really only served to give Uncle some peace of mind that he did what he could to stop Wei Wuxian from “corrupting” the kids. Uncle needed to feel like he had some semblance of control so, aside from his initial protests, Lan Wangji did not fight him down on it. It wouldn’t stop him from giving Wei Ying a happy life anyway, so let Uncle have his rules.

Lan Wangji knew that his brother supported his relationship and that was enough. He couldn’t help but admit though that Uncle’s support meant a lot to him. He wondered what prompted the change of heart, since Uncle had had a grudge against Wei Ying since their school days and wasn’t the type of man to change his opinions that easily. He wasn’t so brave yet to ask him about it though for fear of ruining things, so he just accepted it.

Wei Ying himself had not noticed a thing. He was busy helping xiongzhang with his project. It was taking a long time because they had to do everything from scratch. Wei Ying didn’t have time to spare. He was matching brother’s schedule so that they could work together more efficiently. He didn’t even drink his favourite Emperor’s Smile these days because he didn’t want to lose focus. Even the food! Usually Lan Wangji would have enough time to make Wei Ying breakfast because...breakfast was usually lunch . But now Wei Ying got up to match the Lans and so he ended up eating breakfast with them too so as not to wait for a meal to be cooked and waste time. He was so tired at the end of the day he didn’t even complain about it, he just fell into bed at 9pm and that was that.

It really cut into the time they had together since they were both so busy but it was for his brother, who had stood by him after Wei Ying’s death for all those years and allowed him his freedom to go ‘where the chaos was’ as they said. He even helped him hide Wei Ying even though he thought Wei Ying was guilty. If this was what would help brother recover his spirits then Lan Wangji would not protest.

In fact, this little project of theirs helped his brother and Wei Ying to become closer. Rather than just accepting Wei Ying, his brother was actually forming a friendship with him. He even told him to call him Xichen-ge. He was impressed with Wei Ying’s ingenuity and grateful that he was going out of his way to help him when he really didn’t have to.

And as much as Lan Wangji loved Wei Ying, he still wasn’t much of a conversationalist, with Wei Ying doing most of the talking and himself, the listening. But with xiongzhang, Wei Ying found someone who was willing to debate with him and could easily carry a conversation. And brother found a friend who he could rely on. After Jin Guangyao’s betrayal, he thought that brother would never befriend anyone again. He may not ever be as close to Wei Ying as he was with Jin Guangyao, but it was a start.

Unfortunately, there was one downside to the project.

Somehow, the person who gave Lan Xichen the idea was *ugh* Sect Leader Jiang. What this meant was that the man in question would make frequent visits to see how it was coming along, providing them with insights as well. It irked him because Wei Ying and xiongzhang had insisted that the project was a secret. They promised they’d tell him before anyone else when it was completed and they’d asked him to cover for them and not let anyone on to what they were doing in the meantime.

Being a dutiful husband and brother he respected their wishes. It would have been fine if Jiang Wanyin had not been in on it. It chafed that he could not be there helping Wei Ying but instead it was Jiang Wanyin. He did not protest because Wei Ying still valued Jiang Wanyin and he would not do anything to upset Wei Ying, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. And since the project seemed to have helped Jiang Wanyin and Wei Ying reconcile, he was sure once all the work was done and Wei Ying wasn’t too tired to socialise, that he’d be forced to interact even more with the man, which he was dreading.

But of course he would endure it for Wei Ying. Sect Leader Jin was also involved somehow but the days when he visited made Wei Ying so happy that Lan Wangji could not begrudge his involvement in the project. Lan Jingyi and Lan Sizhui were also happy to meet with the young sect leader. Lan Wangji could not be upset when it made his family so happy. No, he would stay unaware for as long as they needed him to. Wei Ying was right after all, he would not be able to lie if uncle asked him directly about what they were doing. So he had to stay in the dark.

(But still, damn you Sect Leader Jiang! Why did it have to be you?.. No, he was not sulking!)

[meetthemoosemonster]

*Enderman noises*

Hey yall, I wrote a Ranboo fanfic and thought I’d post the link on here so its with all the other things that I write and show random people on the internet!

*Enderman noises* (1918 words) by nika_write_snow Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Ranboo & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF) Characters: Ranboo (Video Blogging RPF), Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF) Additional Tags: Mentioned Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Dadza, Enderman Hybrid Ranboo (Video Blogging RPF), Winged Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Angst, Fluff and Angst, Fluff, Panic Attacks Summary:

Ranboo finds out he has one of Tommys disks, Philza notices the ruined property value and parents the scared enderboy.

"here is the ao3 link, tell me if it doesnt work or something.

Summary:

Ranboo finds out he has one of Tommys disks, Philza notices the ruined property value and parents the scared enderboy.

Or

What I wished happened after Ranboo found the disk, with Dadza because I have Parent Issues (yup, its not just one of them, hahahahahahahahaha)

Characters:

Ranboo

Philza

Content Warnings:

Panic attacks Mild injury That's all I think, but if I missed one please tell me so I can fix it!

Under the cut is the full work, remember, Reblogs fuel the writing braincell!

Purple particles buzzed around Ranboo, his body also vibrating as his breath sped up and his brain grew foggy. This happens sometimes, when things got really bad, and Ranboos memory really started to slip, or he was just straight up panicking. The half enderman boy was sat shaking in front of an open chest surrounded by dug up dirt and soft looking snowflakes that bit at Ranboos skin. He was staring blankly at the green disk in the chest, making vwoops and crackly noises each time the reality of his situation hit him. The enderman hybrid shook his head, making more aggressive enderman noises for a second, then tried to take a deep breath.

‘You're ok, You're ok. Dream isn't here right now. Dream can’t-’

‘I have cat. I have one of Tommys discs. I have one of THE DISCS. Dream gave ME one of THE DISCS? Why? Why would Dream do that? Why would he trust me with something that gave him so much control over Tommy? What did I do?’

‘You didn't do anything, you would have written it down in your memory book,  you would’ve, wouldn't you?’

‘Would I? I didn't write down that I blew up the community house, but I definitely did that, right? I mean, I had that tnt, it must have been me. I just didn't write it down cause I didn't want to remember. What else am I forgetting? What else did I do that was so bad that I didn't even write it down? What else did I want to forget about? What else-’

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Philza was looking through chests looking for glass. The honey farm had broken again, and he needed bottles to fix it.

“This chest system is still scuffed from Tommy, that gremlin child really doesn't know organization does he.” Phil shook his wings in exasperation. He was still looking for the glass when he heard the sounds of an upset enderman. Confused why Edward was so riled up, Phil looked over at the enderman sat awkwardly in a boat, the mobs limbs too long to fit inside. Phil only got more concerned when he saw that Edward was only making small, concerned vwoops after the more aggressive noises, head was turned to look out the window towards Ranboos shack. 

Phil followed the endermans gaze to look at Ranboos shack through the window and sucked in a breath. What used to be a snowy lawn in front of Ranboos makeshift base was now a big hole of messily dug up dirt. Phil could see Ranboos figure, looking eerily small for his actual towering height, hunched over in front of a small chest, a shovel shimmering on the ground next to him. But what concerned Phil the most were the enderman noises coming from the area. Phil had heard Ranboo make some enderman noises before when he talked to Edward, and a couple in passing to himself, he'd never seen such loud scared crackles and vibrating noises from him before.  Another small worried vwoop from Edward grounded Phil enough to realize that this kid probably needed help. Phil grabbed his coat and wrapped it awkwardly around his wings before he rushed out the door and headed to where Ranboo was. 

As Phil approached, he could clearly see the cloud of purple particles around Ranboo, who appeared to be shaking, no, vibrating. His suit was wet from the melted snow, and plastered to his body, and Phil flinched remembering how much water could hurt enderman. His hair was also soaking, the white and black strands dripping. There was an indent where his crown would usually be, but Phil could see the red and green jewel encrusted golden band a couple blocks away, in one of the deeper areas of the damage. Phils footsteps slowed the closer he got to the dug up lawn, trying not to scare the kid with heavy footsteps on snow. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ranboo was trying to breath. ‘In, out, in, out, in, out, in, out, in- Does it even matter?’ He understood better now why he might have wanted to forget. It would be easier to not remember the chest or its contents, ‘Traitor’, Dreams voice in his head, his panic room. But the thought of forgetting and then finding out what he'd done when his friends, ‘Are they my friends?’, found out what he had done filled his body with terror and caused his eyes to well up with tears. It felt familiar. ‘Why does it feel familiar?’ The air around Ranboo felt like it was vibrating with the enderman hybrid and the particles that circled around him, and the glitchy noises started getting louder.

‘Stop thinking, stop, STOP, STOP THINKING.’ Ranboo let out the enderman equivalent of a scream, and then winced as he felt tears fall down the sides of his face, leaving burning trails of pain.

“Hey, Mate, you okay?” Ranboo jolted at Phils soft voice, a small surprised vwoop coming out. 

“Oh, Oh, um, yeah” Ranboo said quickly, hastily trying to close the chest in front of him, but accidentally slamming the lid on his thumb as his shaky hands fumbled with it. “Im fine, I was just uh…..” He trailed off, not having a good explanation for the mess that he made other than the truth. And he couldn't tell Phil that. ‘But you can! You should, so you stop betraying everyone.’

“Mhm…” Phil hummed skeptically as he looked at the chaos, but decided not to press. He looked back at Ranboo, who was shakily trying to stand up, but then had to sit back down, his body too exhausted and painful. Ranboo looked up for a second, locking eyes with the winged man standing cautiously in front of him. He realized his mistake too late, and was too exhausted to stop the instinctual reaction. He felt his jaw fall and the air begin to buzz intensely all over again. He felt defensive beyond reason, like he always did when he lost control while making eye contact. Luckily, Phil noticed Ranboo tense up and saw his jaw fall, showing off purple glowing teeth like spikes and looked down, breaking eye contact. His gaze found the black and white mask Ranboo usually had covering his mouth was on the ground next to them, soaked and abandoned.

“How about you come into Technos house with me so we can get you dried up, Ok?” Phil was still looking at the ground, and couldn't see if Ranboo was calmer now, but he felt the buzzing particles in the air fade significantly at his quiet words. Phil dared to glance back at the soaking white and black kid, and relaxed when he saw Ranboo was also looking down, more out of exhaustion than anything, but definitely more calm now. His jaw was back where it usually was, and he was no longer vibrating intensely. 

“Ok, here, let me pick up your crown and mask, and then we can head back to the house.” When he had put the 2 items away he held out his hand to Ranboo who took it carefully, almost as if he was afraid it would be snatched back. But it wasn't, and Phil helped Ranboo stand up, and started to lead the boy through the snow, leaving the chest behind them. Ranboo leaned against the significantly shorter man next to him, stumbling through the snow, his brain foggy from the pain and fear. Philza felt him shaking slightly, and nearly pulled away, worried that the enderman hybrid was panicking again. Almost immediately he realized that Ranboo was just shivering from the cold, being in a soaking wet suit surrounded by snow was going to make nearly anyone freezing cold, Enderman hybrids being no exception. Phil freed one of his wings from his coat and wrapped it around the kid to warm him up, not caring that he would have to deal with wet feathers later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When they reached the house Phil got Ranboo a spare bed, which the boy flopped gratefully down on. Phil chuckled quietly for a second before grabbing a set of antarctic empire style clothes and placing them on the bed.

“Don’t go to sleep yet mate, you need to change out of those wet clothes so you don't hurt yourself anymore.” Ranboo slowly nodded as he sat back up and ran his shivering hands over the soft material of the clothes. Phil started towards the stairs, then looked back for a second.

“I'll be right back with something warm for you to drink so you can warm up quicker, and a health pot or 2 so we can take care of the water damage. Once you're done with that you can sleep, Ok?” Ranboo mumbled something that Phil took as an agreement, and headed the stairs.

Ranboo changed into the fuzzy clothes as quick as his shivering, tired body would let him, too tired to question why the clothes fit him perfectly despite the fact that he towered over Phil, Techno, and Tommy too. He sat back down before his legs could give out again and sighed, feeling himself getting warmer. 

His eyes were beginning to fall closed when he heard Phils foot footsteps and looked over to Philza, who was holding a steaming mug in one hand, and a health potion in the other. He also had a towel draped over his arm. Phil handed the enderman hybrid the health potion first, which he drank quickly, and then the towel. Ranboo just wrapped it around his head, too tired to put anymore effort into drying his hair. The bed shifted slightly as Phil sat down on the bed, maneuvering his wings around so he could give Ranboo space. Ranboo took the mug of what he could now tell was hot chocolate and began to take small, experimental sips. 

After a bit he pulled his knees up to his chest and leaned against Phils body, still taking small sips of his drink. Phil smiled at the boy and slowly wrapped his wings around them both, hoping it would help warm up Ranboo faster. When the enderman hybrid was done with his drink he closed his eyes and let his head rest on Phils shoulder, letting out a small sigh before he fell asleep. Phil didn't move for a bit, only moving his hand to carefully take the mug out of the others hand, and he settled down for a while, just thinking about the day's whole ordeal. Questions filled his brain. ‘Why did Ranboo dig up all that area so messily? What was even in that chest, and why was he so obviously scared of me seeing it? Why was he so scared?’ Phil tried his best to just brush them off, he would ask Ranboo another day, when he was more calm, and feeling better. 

Some time had passed by now, and Philzas wings were beginning to cramp, so he gently laid the boy down on the bed, and carefully threw a thick blanket over him. Ranboo looked very peaceful in this moment, small vwoops coming out occasionally, but he didn't sound distressed. Phil smiled for a second before he grabbed the pile of wet clothes and took them upstairs to get washed and dried with the mask. Ranboo felt safe and warm for the first time in a long time, and he was content, dreaming about defeating a dragon with a steak or something, snuggled under the warm blanket. Who knows, dreams are weird.

Thank you for reading! If you got to this point I wish you the most amazing day, thank you!

[fearfulkittenwrites]

Gala and “I’m allergic to bullshit.”

Word count: 2244

Link for it on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26180371

Notes: Hey! This was beta'd by @3ambird​ , who is an amazing sweetheart and improves evertything they touch. Thank you for the help!

Galas were never fun. Bruce had hated them as a kid, and hated them as teen, and he hates them as an adult. Still, he has to maintain appearances, so he always attends. And as his family grew, his kids were forced to attend as well.

Dick Grayson was particularly good at socializing. After he moved past his teenage rage, of course. He used to get in passive aggressive arguments with the rich CEOs and company owners all the time. He still does, but at least now he was good at it to the point where it almost couldn’t be recognized as an argument, instead of jumping on the necks of greedy millionaires that bought land out of poor people.

That was an interesting headline.

Jason sucked at galas. Soon enough, he figured out that if he started enough awkward conversations, people wouldn’t want to talk to him anymore. Especially the creepy single older women, pinching his cheeks and squeezing his biceps.

“Say, Claire, what’s your opinion on the alarming rate at which the bees are disappearing? They say that’s because of all the chemicals we put in our food.” He’d smile, carefully holding his glass. Bruce would struggle to hide his gasp, because Jason, that’s the owner of the highest earning pesticides company in the country.

“Well, Roger, I’m certain that the legalization of abortions would be a great thing, considering that now your mistresses won’t have to be sent overseas to terminate the unwanted preganancies you give them, right?” He’d say, and Bruce would nearly have a heart attack, because Jason, that’s the president of Gotham’s conservative party.

“Oh, you see, Sandra, I think that gay marriage should not only be legalized, but encouraged. If straight couples were to cease existing, then no more children would be born, and honestly, no one needs any more of those snotty gremlins running around, ruining perfectly good tapestry.” And Bruce would faint, because Jason, for God’s sake, that is the leader of the Gotham’s Motherhood Association.

Tim wasn’t all that bad. He could be social with a little effort, and he was far more used to galas than any of the other family members, having grown up attending them. Of course, all of that was only valid when he wasn’t sleep deprived, which, considering all he had on his plate, was roughly 32% of the time. When he was running on three hours of sleep and seven cups of caffeine a day, trying to finish a project, run his share of the Wayne Enterprises, and manage school work, he became a bit more irritable and impatient. And extremely impulsive. Which is mainly why Bruce asked Dick to stand by his brother through most of the night.

“We both know you’re his impulse control, Dick.” He said, adjusting his oldest son’s tie “Remember what happened the last time he was left unattended for fifteen minutes?”

“He got into an argument with a young Creationist and dunked his own head in an ice bowl after screaming ‘Fuck God! I can hear colors and dinosaurs rule!’” Dick sighed, “Yeah, I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Cass despised them, but Bruce insisted she should attend anyway. More often than not, she’d just stay at the table, tasting as many appetizers as the waiters would bring her, and shooting murderous looks at anyone who sneered at her. Bruce was relieved that at least she wasn’t cracking any bones.

Damian was... Better than Jason and worse than Dick. He had an unamused expression through most of the event, and would unceremoniously swat away any hands that tried to pinch his cheeks. Other than that, he wasn’t much trouble. The real trouble were galas all Wayne kids attended. The five of them could cause enough trouble when they were apart, together they were the embodiment of chaos.

And this was supposed to be a calm, slightly boring family evening. It really was.

But Bruce just had to bring all five of them.

Everything had to go just right. As they walked in through the red carpet, the media was eating up the image of the six Waynes dressed formally; Each of them had a tie color matching their hero uniform (a cheeky thing they enjoyed doing to play with the theorists minds), Dick had a dark blue one, Tim and Jason slightly varying tones of red, Damian had a green one and Bruce had a black one. Cass wore a long black dress that sparkled when it was hit by the light in just the right way.

The first sign was the reporter, who, while aggressively pointing a microphone in their faces, asked pushy questions about relationships and the like, nothing out of the ordinary, until he shoved it in Cass’ face and asked her if she could even speak. Jason almost broke the man’s nose. Bruce silently thanked God for Dick, who stepped in front of the man before that happened.

“Try some shit like that again pal, you’ll hear from our lawyers.” He led his sister inside, a protective hand on her back.

They calmed down. And Bruce still had hopes that this would be a quiet evening.

Looking back at it, he doesn’t know why.

Because as Dick and Cass were at the bar, ordering drinks, a woman stood next to them, trying to make small talk. Neither of them seemed too interested in her; she is a hassle at every gala, making weird advances on all of the boys. Today, however, she was a little more tipsy, and Bruce couldn’t quite make out what exactly the conversation was about, but Dick was clearly uncomfortable and Cass was fuming. The woman kept grabbing at him, sliding her hands over his tie, squeezing his arms. And then she squeezed his ass, and it took Cass less than a second to break her nose.

If they were any other family, Cass would have been thrown out of the party, but they were the Waynes, and you do not throw a Wayne out of a party. If she punched a middle-aged woman, then she punched a middle-aged woman. Bring her a glass of water and some ice for her injured hand.

Of course, it didn’t end there.

Bruce was still surprised he didn’t have gray hairs yet.

Because Damian had discovered and made friends with a stray cat in the garden, and Jason had a laser pointer, because of course Jason had a laser pointer, and the cat ended up knocking down not one, not two, but three expensive pieces of pottery, shattering them on the gravel floor. And when the house owner saw the damage, he turned pale and had to hold back his tears. Jason laughed.

“-tt-.” Damian stated, adjusting his suit “You owe that cat a favour,those vases ruined the garden’s aesthetic. Regardless, I’m sure father will be more than happy to compensate you for the damages.”

He walked back to the party slowly, passing by the man who would need some time to make it back.

Once Jason broke him the news, Bruce thought (and hoped) that that would be it.

But no, the night was young, and there was so much time left and the batsibilings for sure wouldn’t waste it.

The previous statement about sleep deprived Tim?

Well.

Tonight, he had to pick a fight with an essential-oil-loving, antivax mother. Simply because he liked to torture himself. And because nobody realised he was alone until Bruce spotted him in the crowd, eye twitching as a woman rambled about all the heavy metals and chemicals that vaccines had in them. He thought about getting to him, but he knew it was too late. There was no going back now.

“Well, you see Karen,” He started.

“Uuum, my name’s Patricia.” She interrupted.

“I’m a billionaire’s heir, I don’t give a shit.” He said “Anyways. As I was saying, the thing is, I’d rather take the chance of being injecting myself with mercury than, oh, I don’t know, get meningitis and fucking die?”

The circle went quiet. Another woman, wanting to dissipate the tension, tried to restart the conversation.

“I-I mean, I don’t understand why can’t they make something safer, right? Like, when we used to throw those smallpox parties, why won’t they make something that works like that? So that we can build a natural immunity instead of all of those chemicals.” She laughed awkwardly.

Tim slapped his own face so hard that it attracted a lot of eyes.

“How. Do. You. Think. Vaccines. Work. Susan?”

“M-my name is Mary.”

“I don’t give a fuck.” He answered. And just in time, Dick swooped in.

“Hey, Timmy!” He greeted “Can I borrow this guy for a second?” He didn’t wait for an answer as he guided Tim out to the garden.

“Fucking idiots.” He muttered “I don’t know how they have so much money. They’re all fucking idiots, Dick. I’m surrounded by dumbasses.”

“There, there.” He said “Okay, we’re far enough.” He looked around “Go ahead.”

And Tim let out the most horrendous, rage filled scream any of those guests had ever heard. Because of course they heard it. Bruce sighed and shrunk on his chair.

“Better?” Dick asked as he finished, patting his back.

“So much.” Tim answered.

“You should’ve slept a little before this.”

“No way. I’m totally fine.” He answered “I had three cans of monster before we left, so I feel great.” Dick raised an eyebrow, worried.

“Whatever you say, buddy.” He led him back inside, tidying up his brother’s hair “Just... No more picking fights with moms tonight, okay?”

And Bruce thought that was enough. Bruce was certain that this would be the last incident.

But his kids just loved proving him wrong.

He thought that the best strategy would be to ask them to stick together, so that Dick’s responsibility and social skills would keep his feral siblings under control. He should’ve known it would backfire.

The last he checked, they were making small talk with some CEOs on the edge of the room, away from the dance floor. Jason, Cass and Damian seemed completely bored, Tim was clenching his jaw for some reason, and Dick tried his best to look polished and polite.

“So, I heard that Wayne Enterprises have a new project?” One of them asked, chest so projected forwards it looked like it was about to explode.

“Yes. Yes we do.” Dick said, smiling politely “We’re opening up a refugee housing program.”

“Oh, so that’s what those buildings are for?”

“Yes, exactly!” He exclaimed, opening his arms in a seemingly natural manner “We are building apartments to shelter them. It’s nothing fancy, but we can charge a cheaper rent than most, and not charge at all for the first six months, giving them a chance to properly establish themselves here.”

“Well, I must say,” Puffed up chest guy stated, “I can’t see why not to give them to good old Americans instead. There’s a lot of homeless people nowadays, you see.” He leaned forward as he talked.

Damian perked his head up, but didn’t say anything. Cass and Jason seemed to be listening. Tim’s left eye twitched.

“Actually,” Tim started “The company has very stable, successful projects to help the homeless.”

“I’m familiar with those, yes.” He arrogantly dismissed the teen “But, you see, I just can’t understand why not open the housing to tax paying Americans instead of some...”

“Potential terrorists?” Damian suggested, arms crossed, scowl on his face.

“...Foreigners.” He completed.

“Well, since you ask, we are currently planning on the possibility of eventually opening vague apartments to Americans too.” Dick answered, swirling the liquid in his glass around “But the priority now really are the refugees.”

“I don’t see why can’t we prioritize our own people.” He insisted “I’m simply concerned for the well being of our poorest patriots.”

Dick blinked.

And here’s why Bruce should have known it would backfire.

Because, yes, Dick was able to cool them down...

But they were able to fire him up.

And so, like the charismatic man he was, he covered his nose a little, rubbing at the end, and faked a loud sneeze.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” He started “You see, I have this strange condition.” Dick stared at the man in the eye, the guy who had bought an old building people were squatting at, just to demolish it and doom them to the streets with no care or compensation, and, knowing this and so much more, said “I’m allergic to bullshit.”

And his siblings went feral again.

Tim and Jason screamed an ‘Oooooooooh!’, Damian pointed at the man and laughed loudly, and Cass snorted, covering her mouth in surprise.

Dick didn’t break eye contact as he drank the last of his champagne.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” He said “I have to go look for better company.” Dick left the empty glass at the nearest table and adjusted his suit, smiling “Have a nice evening.”

As he walked away, the gang followed close behind, all of them very excited about how Dick, the composed, calm, cool, polite and polished Dick Grayson-Wayne, had just burned a millionaire in front of his economic allies. As the party reached Bruce, the man once again seemed to sink into his chair. Dick sat next to him, radiating confidence and charm.

“Do I wanna know?” The man asked.

“No,” Dick answered, grinning but not looking at the man “No you don’t.”

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

The mystery of the box was solved. Hunk had sent enough food for a small army. All of it allergen free, and all of it apparently good in some way for Lance’s pregnancy. Lance seemed a little disappointed there weren’t cupcakes, but that only lasted as long as it took to find home made caramel slice neatly packed towards the bottom of the box. Claimed by his husband, Keith didn’t have the heart to take it away from him. Pidge was the only one to take a piece of the slice when Lance offered it around, everyone else could see how excited Lance was over it, whereas Pidge simply didn’t care. The gremlin was setting up the group call for his birthday, after sending the video of their boys through to Miriam. Miriam would be part of the group call, as would Lance’s team. This was supposed to be for him, to celebrate his birthday, but the previous day Lance had fallen asleep while Mami had talked. His husband was missing his mother something chronic, he’d realised that during his chat with Shiro, now he’d be awake to see her. While they’d been out on the veranda, Coran had moved to sit in the recliner that Curtis had been in, he now had Korra sleeping on his shoulder. His mother, Curtis and Pidge were sitting on the sofa, leaving the recliner for him and Lance. He hadn’t wanted to hurt his husband’s back, but the slice had perked him up. Lance now snuggled up in his lap with the fudge sitting on his belly.

Shiro was the first person Pidge called, his adoptive brother was a gushing mess over the video of their twins. Curtis didn’t help by being just as gushing over the whole thing, and their roles as godparents to the boys. It hadn’t registered but this was the first scan Curtis had seen in person. The first time he got to experience the joy that came with each scan. They’d seen the features of their boys in scans before, but not with the twins looking so... human. So close to being born... He wasn’t sure how much more human they could possibly be, or how much more they could possibly need to grow before they were born. He’d have to consult their baby book. Lance wouldn’t be going into labour here. Maybe another month, then they’d have to leave their temporary home. Plus, Curtis had to be coming to an end of his leave soon. They wouldn’t be able to stay here without his presence... The idea of leaving their “bubble” wasn’t appealing in the slightest. Lance was still healing emotionally. He was still learning to accept that he’d soon be giving birth, or rather, soon he’d be a father to their little boys. The less stress between now and then, the better. Having them call was better for Lance, also better for him and his stupid secondary instincts. Keith quietly proud of how he’d kept his jealousy in check for the most part. There’d been no yelling, or accusations... He hadn’t put his foot in it, and didn’t intend to now.

Letting Shiro and Curtis do most of the talking, Keith was happy to watch his adopted brother be himself and be a total idiot over Korra. As far as babies went, she hadn’t kept them up all night with her crying, and her serenades weren’t completely terrible. The real chaos of the day didn’t start until Pidge connected everyone else into the conversation. It soon turned into everyone trying to wish him a happy birthday, or make a joke about how he was going to be a father soon, so he and Lance had to get their act together. Lance managed a few words here and there, Pidge and Hunk getting into an argument over whether or not she peaked in the box ahead of time. Pidge stuck to her guns, swearing she hadn’t, nor had she scanned the box to determine its contents. The fact that she supplied that counter argument lead him to believe she had. Given that Hunk, Shay, and Shiro were still technically at work, they were the first of the group to sign off. Shay was extremely shy about wishing him a happy birthday, managing to get the words out just before the call disconnected. Shiro promised he’d be in touch soon, but that was probably in the form of him calling Curtis as they’d talked the night before... and possibly a call later to see how Lance faired after talking to everyone. There’d been a small flare where the topic of conversation was how big Lance had gotten, much to his husband’s misery. Sure, he’d started to relax again one the conversation had moved past his belly, but his upset was clogged in Keith’s nose. The caramel slice discarded the second he became the focus of things. The Cuban was also sitting a little stiffer in his hold, his face hidden against Keith’s cheek as he clammed up. Lance hadn’t said “red”, nor had he escaped the conversation by saying he needed the bathroom. Having his hands on the container the slice had been in, kept them from wandering to scratch at the inside of either wrist.

The next three to sign off were Acxa, Zethrid and Ezor. All of them repeatedly telling him how lazy he was for relaxing at the cabin while they were stuck with the trainees. When they’d left the call, Veronica had joined. Miriam was fast to scold her oldest daughter the moment Veronica went to enquire about Lance’s pregnancy. Marco laughing hard until Daehra shoved him off his seat and ruined his image in front of his family. Daehra also had a few choice words for the pair of them. Him because he was letting Lance work from the cabin when he should be concentrating on his pregnancy. Lance because he hadn’t called Annla, and the pint sized Princess wasn’t impressed with either of them over it. The request to call was also accompanied by the request for pictures of Kosmo. Keith felt slightly “used” as she was only wanted photos of his wolf and not his perfect twin boys. She was getting both, whether she wanted them or not. Daehra also wanted a copy of Lance’s scan for her medical files. With how his husband was feeling, that’d have to wait until he’d recharged his courage. Veronica seemed to scare Lance more than Krolia’s arrival. He didn’t think anything had happened that was out the ordinary, but he’d been out of it after the explosion so would probably need to ask Curtis for the truth there. And, it wasn’t like Lance was ghosting her. He did reply to his messages. It might take a few hours, or day’s depending on who it was, but he did reply.

With the outpost to run, Daehra swapped out with Lucteal who wished him a happy birthday. Lance perked up enough to tease him about the hickey on his neck. Lucteal’s face turning bright red at the mention of Yule. This led to Marco being elbowed in the ribs as he pulled a total Lance and started gossiping about how Yule had come to the outpost for some part, and how Lucteal had been totally jealous when Tobias had cooked for her. Both he and Zak passed on their wishes, yet Keith was sure they didn’t actually know or really care. Lance’s team were happy, and he knew that made his husband happy, but he also knew that Lance was devastated that he wasn’t there to witness it all. As Marco and Lucteal devolved into wrestling, Lucteal attempting to silence a Marco who wouldn’t be silenced, wetness smeared against his cheek. Lance shaking was he started nosing into him in an attempt to find comfort that his arms around his husband wasn’t providing. For Lance to last this long made him proud. With Miriam scolding both men in the background, Keith caught Curtis’s attention. Being the guest of honour in the whole thing, and being as socially competent as a barnacle on the bottom of a sunken wreck, Keith wasn’t sure how to politely bring things to a close. When it’d been the 8 of them, he could take the moment. Now it was 11 of them and he felt awkward leaving Mami. Lucteal and Marco’s feeling didn’t matter as much to him as they’d be fine. Mami was Mami. She was stuck in Cuba worrying for her pregnant son, knowing that Lance had had an off day the day before. He didn’t want her to worry, not when this was clearly from Lance being overwhelmed by so many thoughts, feelings and emotions brought on by seeing their friends again. Without a working clock in front him, Keith could only assume they’d been talking for at least the last 3 hours. He wasn’t even sure there was anything left to say. They’d wished him a happy birthday. They’d gushed over his boys... and now they all had jobs to go back to. If he was exhausted from them all, then Lance had to be near on passed out. Plus, his husband hadn’t gone that long without needing a bathroom break in time since he’d arrived.

Curtis being, as Lance liked to call him, “Space Dad 2.0”, he was quick to assess the situation. Whispering to Pidge, Pidge have a quick nod at his words, disconnecting Lucteal and Marco from the chat, then Veronica who’d started talking to Miriam and Krolia, sending a short burst of static through the line before she did. Once again, Keith was in awe of her tech skills, and just a little bit scared over how easily it was for her to cut the call like it didn’t matter. Sensing something was up, Miriam was polite as she waved them off. Sending her love and making them promise to keep her up to date with everything happening there. Krolia’s comms rang less than 30 seconds after the call disconnected, his mother bullshitting her way out to the veranda with a bold face lie that it was the coalition.

Unlike her usual prying self, Pidge made herself look busy as Curtis came over to them. Keith hadn’t realised but Coran had fallen asleep sometime after Shiro, Hunk, and Shay had disconnected. Both he and Korra dead to the world, still cuddled up together. Taking the container from Lance’s hands, Curtis placed it on the coffee table before placing his hand on Lance’s shoulder

“Lance, are you ok?”

When his husband didn’t reply immediately, Keith replied for him

“I think he’s reached his people limit for now”

Letting out a soft sob, Lance shook his head

“I’m sorry...”

Lance didn’t need to be sorry

“Shhhh. It’s ok. Our friends don’t know when to shut up”

“I... I need to use the bathroom...”

“That’s perfectly fine, Lance. Keith can go with you”

“I’m sorry”

Curtis squeezed Lance’s shoulder softly, his smile didn’t waver at all

“Honestly, I wasn’t the reason for the call, but as Keith said, and maybe not as harshly, our friends really don’t know when to be quiet. I’m not sure what we were talking about by the end of it”

His husband dropped to a rough whisper. Keith realising that the whole time they’d been wrapped up in the conversation, he’d taken a sip of his drink but hadn’t thought to give anything to Lance. He was also pretty numb across the thighs and arse, his husband most probably in agony from holding the pose for so long

“I... had an accident...”

Curtis made an “ah” sound, Keith wasn’t completely convinced Lance had. He hadn’t felt anything

“Not to worry. You and Keith take as long as you need. I saw you falling asleep there. If you want to take a nap...”

Lance continued his mumbling

“Pidge and Coran...”

“We can make up extra beds. It’s not a big deal. Or they can head back with Krolia later tonight. There’s still an hour and a half until dinner if you want to take a nap”

“You’ll wake us?”

“I promise. I should also look for Kosmo. He hasn’t been back since he was scolded for stealing pancakes this morning”

It was suspiciously silent without Kosmo there to steal their food. He hadn’t noticed much more than the occasional urge to swap Lance sitting in this lap to his husband sitting between his legs

“I didn’t even notice he’d disappeared again. Lance, babe, lets clean up and take a nap”

Standing under the spray of the shower, Keith washed his husband’s body for him. He wasn’t sure why his husband hadn’t told him that. Soaping up Lance’s shoulders, his husband was leaning against the wall, asleep on his feet as he chewed on his lip. Kissing the place he’d just scrubbed over, Keith wanted to understand

“Lance, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Hmmm?”

“You didn’t tell me... about... That you needed the bathroom”

“I didn’t want to make a scene”

“That’s not making a scene. How long... how long were you holding back from saying anything?”

“Why should it matter? I’m fine... all I want is to go nap with you”

Nipping at Lance’s shoulder, his husband swatted at him. This would have to be a short shower. Lance needed both his and Curtis’s support to make it to the bathroom due to his back, and the pain down his leg

“It matters to me. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. I’m sorry that I didn’t notice”

“You weren’t supposed to...”

Keith felt a stab of something akin to anger that Lance would hide something from him. He wouldn’t have made a big deal out of it, or a scene. The could have covered it with a white lie, or he could have covered while Lance went to the bathroom

“Why? Why wouldn’t you tell me? There’s nothing embarrassing about using the bathroom”

“Keith...”

“I don’t get it... You shouldn’t have been sitting there like that. When did it happen?”

“Keith...”

“Babe. When did it happen?”

Mumbling and sniffling, Lance sadly answered

“Not long after Shiro left the call. I’m sorry... I’m so sorry...”

“Babe! That was... for that long... why didn’t you tell me”

Lance jumped at “Babe!”, Keith supposing he had been a bit forceful with the word

“I didn’t want you to be angry... I thought you were mad...”

“What no? Why would I be mad? I’m a little mad you didn’t tell me, but we both know you’re heavily pregnant and these small accidents happen”

“But... it’s your birthday. Everyone should have been here with you. Or you with them. Instead, you’re in the middle of nowhere with me... I didn’t want to ruin your birthday! I wanted it to be perfect for you”

Hanging the shower puff back around the cold tap, Keith then wrapped his arm around his husband

“It’s perfect because I’m here with you. That’s all I need”

“But it’s not what you deserve! You deserve the best birthday ever. With everyone celebrating the fact you exist, because you existing is the best thing ever”

“Honestly, I was over the call thing before Shiro left the conversation. You’re not the only one who felt overwhelmed. My team was thinking of visiting, and having an actual party here, but I chose this instead. I chose this because all I wanted was to spend the day with my husband. That’s a perfect day to me. I know you had plans for us, and I didn’t want you to be upset by the change of plans”

“You shouldn’t have to change your plans around me. I want you to have your own life. To have your own friends... I want you to make memories with them, not just with me...”

“I didn’t “have” to do anything. I did it because it’s what I wanted. I want to spend this time with you. Without the fuss of a huge birthday. Birthday’s are hard for me, like Christmas is. I’m still learning to be okay with them. And I’m learning that maybe I am okay with them when I have you with me. You don’t need to punish yourself over an accident. You don’t need to hate yourself or think you need to be uncomfortable like it’s some kind of earned punishment”

“But... but I fucked up. I couldn’t talk to them all properly”

“You did. You were already tired before the call. We both could have used a nap to recharge. Also... I’m not good with people and words. You being there helped me”

“You’re not as bad as you think. Everyone loves you. We all love you... I’m sorry I messed up”

If Lance apologised one more time, Keith was going to melt down the drain hole due to the guilt he felt over the incident. For hours, or at least a good hour, his husband had hidden his accident thinking it’d be the best thing... His confidence had taken a hard knock with Krolia being there, and again when their friends had mentioned his stomach. Not only had Lance wet himself, he’d also been sitting through a damp bra. Keith was sure the wet fabric against his nipples hadn’t felt great thanks to the small leak

“No more apologising. It’s my birthday and I say no more”

“I’m... I wanted it to be perfect. Curtis and I were going to do the cake... and then... I thought we could make lunch together. Nothing fancy... You looked so happy when you cooked me lunch and I thought “yeah, we could totally come up with something together”. I mean... I wanted to you know, try cooking before then and I did plan that before you made eggs... I know I shouldn’t make plans... I only get down over them. I... I really wanted you to be happy”

“I am. I am with you”

“But that’s another thing. You have obligations outside of staying here. Your team mentioned it. You should be training. Practicing your Blade skills and keeping in contact with everyone. I want you to have a life outside helping me cope”

“I do have a life”

He was technically recovering, which he could have done back on Daibazaal, but he’d made the choice for himself that he wanted to be by Lance’s side above everything

“You’ve been so focused on me. I want you to do something for you. Only for you. I want you to be selfish. I want you to ask me for things... I want you... I want you to...”

“You want me to what?”

“I don’t want to be a burden... I don’t want to shackle you down”

Coaxing Lance to turn in his hold, his husband’s brilliant blue eyes were far too wet for his liking

“You are not a burden. I’m here because I want to be with you. I want you to feel safe and I want you to relax as much as possible before your c-section. Ok. And it’s nice here with just the three of us. There’s no pressure on me to be Krolia’s son, or to be a senior Blade member. I’m here because I want to take care of my family”

“But you’re missing out on stuff...”

“That stuff couldn’t be anywhere near as important as being with you and our boys”

“But... what about Daibazaal? You were so passionate about making the universe see you guys as something more than Zarkon’s legacy”

“We fulfilled our obligations with the tour. I know it’s been weeks for you, but to me I’m still coming off the tour. I’m not... I don’t want to work. I want to enjoy being with you. All that other stuff can wait”

“Don’t you miss them? Your team? Shiro?”

“I do. But they’re all just a call away. I would rather be here with you missing them, than out there with them missing you”

Lance’s eyes widened, Keith biting down a snort at the expression on his face. His husband was so damn cute

“Keith... if that... if that ever changes, I won’t blame you”

“It won’t. How about we get out of this shower?”

“If you want to hang with Pidge...”

“Idiot. I’ve had enough “peopling” to last me today”

“She came all this way. She said she wouldn’t and she did”

“That reminds me, she visited you here?”

“Yeah... not long after Curtis brought me out here. It was... kind of nice. She didn’t make a big fuss or anything...”

“So you’re reconnecting with her?”

“Maybe? A bit? She brought burgers but my mouth was messed up”

Keith was proud. He was proud Lance hadn’t shut her out when she’d made the effort. And he was proud of Pidge for respecting Lance enough to not pry or make a scene

“Then we’ll have to take her out to dinner or something after the boys come”

“Mmm... I’m sorry... about before”

“That’s alright. Well, it’s not, but it’s passed now. Don’t ever feel you can’t tell me when something happens. I love you”

“I love you, too”

After their shower, Keith finally got his cuddles. Lance falling asleep almost immediately when they spooned up together. Despite feeling as if he too was about to drift off, Keith spent their hour simply enjoying cuddling his husband close. When Curtis crept in to wake them, Keith felt mean for having to wake Lance up to eat. His husband clearly needed more than an hour’s rest. Asleep on his feet, Curtis moved their chairs closer together so Lance could against Keith’s while Keith fed him. Lance insisted he could manage a fork on his own, but the vacant expression he wore when the carrot he’d slabbed slipped off the plate said otherwise. Taking the fork from his husband, Lance seemed to think he got out of eating proper for that day. No matter what either of them thought, Curtis was firm in his stance that caramel slice didn’t count as real food, meaning that if Keith didn’t take over feeding Lance, he’d be in the shit tomorrow. Slicing everything that seemed to magic it’s self onto his plate, with a little help from Coran, Lance ended up eating more than Keith by the end of dinner. By the time the cake came out of the fridge, they’d all gorged themselves on Hunk’s home cooking as if they hadn’t eaten in the last phoeb. Lance tried his absolute hardest to sing along with their group, his husband mumbling/singing in a strangled kind of way “samurai” instead of his name, sending Pidge into a fit of giggles as they finished up singing him happy birthday, before Keith blew out the 26 candles on his cake. He didn’t need 26 candles to remind him how old he was getting. It was weird enough to think of how long it’d been since Shiro had crashed and changed all their lives, and it was even weirder to think he was married to the love of his life with twin boys on the way. Sure, there were things he wished he could go back and change. But for them to end up where they had, how they had, he was pretty damn proud of the both of them for that. Things weren’t perfect, yet they were both still working hard on the aspects of themselves that they found lacking. They were talking and they were getting there. Lance had come so far. He wasn’t cold. He wasn’t a stranger. He wasn’t suffering in silence any more. He’d admitted his past and they were working through what would take years to... not get over, but to make a kind of peace with. Lance would forever be scarred from his experiences, and though it was certain they’d fight, neither of them were going to give up on each other, nor were they going to give up on the future with their boys.

[elizabethrobertajones]

12x22 watching notes

*loud Dean!girl tears*

Cup of Tea No. 1:

Expectations - Berens Buckleming Clean Up Operation, which tbh when you rank writers by skill at this job WAS the top of the game over Dabb but then Perez showed up. But I still expect a competent job.

This appears to be the BMoL and Mary wrap up episode, although on this show appearances can be deceiving.

As a fervent Mary stan this season, I'm hoping they don't kill her but if they do kill her she dies next episode for heroic reasons, not this episode for rubbish hubris reasons, although I am open to being won over to a tearful passing if they actually get to friggin communicate everything with her, and in that respect I feel we've been waiting since 12x03 for Berens to get back to the point he was making there...

I EXPECT Ketch to die bloody, but ever since last episode I've been pre-emptively disappointed that he's going to be mauled by his own hellhound. Slightly less disappointed if Dean opens the cage and says "Sic 'im, boy," to the dog, because this IS an episode by Bobo "Drowley" Berens.

Aside from that, I've pretty much got nothing because I haven't been speculating ahead on much or really daring to entertain any ideas, except for firmly staking my entire farm on the mystery dude from the 2 in 1 trailer being "Garth with padding" so I expect I will be handing over my farm soon. Although I assume that's in 12x23 and therefore not yet and maybe not for hours.

[note from past me ‘hours’ yeah okay this episode literally ended up making me bedridden and too weak to move by the halfway point so I took like 24 hours from start to finish :P]

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Oh yeah, Dean's got a pending 7 years ago "welcome to next time" for Walt or Roy from Dark Side of the Moon. One or the other is supposed to be in this episode. The reminder of 5x16 nudges all its themes onto the table, and it's nice that it's a Dabb episode, the one that wrecked Dean n Cas's faith, ruined Heaven for Sam n Dean, and had Zach attempt to ruin Mary for Dean with that chilling speech that after 12x03 we were saying really cut too close to home on what Dean might have thought after Mary walked out.

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Quick Jody recap. Not entirely sure if the "Jody is good people" line comes from 10x20 about Claire, or 7x22 about not!Jenna, the Alpha's blood slave, but it certainly wasn't about Alex, although it's laid over a clip of them together, and the only reminder about Jody is that she adopts wayward daughters.

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Blah blah  murder!Mary, capturing Toni recap, Mary is brainwashed, bunker is gonna kill you... Noticing Ketch saying the air will "reverse" which means what, exactly, but anyway goes with the theme of reversing things. He also has an extremely punchable face, and since DHJ grew his beard back, all these con photos from the other day have been literally unrecognisable and I keep wondering who the normal looking bloke is hanging out on stage with them, because I'm so used to him looking like this:

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(brief break because Berens episodes always make me really sick for some reason)

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Anyway.

NOW.

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Dead guy (thing?) on a truck.

Dead guy. Mary used some reaaaally horrible cat claw looking knuckle dusters or something to kill him. BMoL including savergy as part of the deal; Mary is the hellhound who tears up these guys. Not just being effective at killing - it has to be horrible too. And Mary's been getting used to killing monsters horribly - why should it matter when it's people?

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the obvious problem next season is the hunters have been decimated so monsters are going to be a much bigger problem and sam and dean can't rely on all these random nobody hunters to stop the next generation of tragic backstories.

This one was called Lester, and I watched 10x02 waaay to recently and that's the guy who got screwed over by Sam's demon deal shenanigans and Dean killed.

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Oh no I think he worked in Auto Repair - Bobby would have been a target if only they still had a Bobby

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Bobby would not have stood for this. Mary would have been in the panic room in a flash through some trickery and smart paranoia :P

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Aaaaah Jody's on the hit list. Who did Jody ever hurt???

I can tell you why that's stupid even for the BMoL: aside from killing law enforcement being a dumb idea in general to not draw attention to yourself, the local sheriff type hunters will literally always be the sort to get involved in cases on a local level and start hunting for themselves to protect a small town like Jody did... you're never going to stop them popping up and you're removing a valuable local level resource and I bet there are others like Jody who just didn't have the misfortune to know the Winchesters who literally never fight above their weight limit but are ready for vampires to come to town >.>

I know she's on the hitlist because she's an associate of the Winchesters but I mean... their overall plan is STUPID if they're going after hunter cops in general. Pfft

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*Sam, Dean and Toni bicker entertainingly*

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Toni argues that they NEED her so THEY don't kill her. It's like... on the endless infinite loops of Crypt Scene reversals, this one is Toni arguing for HER life to UNDO a brainwashing if they don't kill her, using the keyword "you need me", and... yeah. Same sort of deal - someone saying stuff to not get killed and there's brainwashing involved.

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Sam: "LORE"

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DAY ONE

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Remember how 11x14 is one of my favourite Sam episodes because Berens just sometimes writes the Perfect Sam, and he's all peppy and researchy? I've seen literally 2 seconds of this scene and I'm like, yeah, he's at it again.

Berens's take on Sam is probably the interpretation I've funnelled into Terrible Coffee AU, mostly because I laughed SO HARD at excessively caffienated Sam in 11x14 and what it did to his personality, I decided then and there I would never write a scene with him where he hadn't had at least 4 cups of coffee

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Sam found a gremlin spell :D

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Pfft they need to purify some blood to make it work. While the Bunker is on lockdown and the lights are flashing red. Dean's even wearing a red shirt, though it's a plaid one, because he's in the family again unlike 10x03, and Toni's the ~invading element~ who last episode like demon!Dean spat a load of bitter truths at Sam, did the same to Mary.

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Aw they're all combining their blood. They're in like some sort of pact now, that they all at least want to live, at least long enough to try killing each other in free air. But yeah, no one of them is being relied on to be the purified one - symbolic that while they hate each other, when it comes to getting free none of them is being more self-righteous than the others, and also an admission that none of their bloods are pure enough that any of them could have lorded it over the others.

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(Sam, of course, is working with Toni and compartmentalising everything about how she tortured and mind-raped him)

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Brains failed, now for brawn. (Sam and Dean still being aligned this way, and each having a day to try their thing)

I hate seeing a map of the Bunker as if it makes sense, but it reassuringly magically produces a brand new wall we've never seen before with a convenient exit right behind it - "let's Shawshank this bitch" - so I figure its magic is still at work. It's brainwashed too - it doesn't want to kill them, so it's doing its best to help :<

They need to manually override it.

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Dean immediately gets repurcussions for his idea by getting a shard of concrete in his eye. Probably not symbolic

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Also they probably wasted a ton of air doing that

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"how did this happen?" "which part?" "all of it" - haven't hit play but cosmic consequeeeences

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"We had Cas back, we had Mom back"... I assume Dean's priorities have been pointed out by everyone but I'm doing it anyway. Even if you just say he's listing them and had to go one way or the other, and "Mom" is the more surprising one, but still... Cas being got by Lucifer was like, up there with things that getting him back was like getting Mary back, in how happy it made Dean. That is a Thing.

Also belatedly had some Thoughts and came back to this point, that Amara is really the big bad of this season too, but as an abstract concept of chaos, which she represents, where her 2 actions for Dean were to give him Cas and Mary back, but between throwing Lucifer wherever to let him carry on as he liked, and bringing Mary back to get tangled in this, she creates the two heads of the end of season chaos, and both arcs (and Mary and Cas have been mirrored all the way as the two sides of this sort of looping around each other)... I guess what I'm saying is I expect chaos and I'm blaming it on her, but it's belatedly given me a really interesting way to look at the randomness of the season.

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Sam's regretting things. Give him a dog. *ruffles his damp hair* He was just too optimistic for his own good. He wanted the world wide scale doing good thing, and wanted to follow along instead of leading.

Whenever I think of Sam and leading I think about boy!king Sam and the plans that were apparently there for him. He had the "I'm not a leader" arc like 6 years before Cas did, and it turned out it was all a con anyway, but the point is, Sam very very firmly does not like being put in a position of responsibility, probably has season 2-3 trauma related to it, since it was how he first died, and then how Ruby met him, swearing loyalty to him as if he would be that leader...

Ironically in 12x14 and Berens knows this full well as he writes Sam saying this, Sam took control and leadership of the situation and crisis-managed it all the way through to a dead Alpha vamp, getting the hero shot and everything, but he still blamed the BMoL over and over that they were the ones who did all the hard work, and turned to them for guidance, instead of seeing what he did there.

As Leviathan!Dean once said, but, uh, reapply this to being a GOOD leader, they're strong and smart and so on... He just went to the end that it was a perfectly good opportunity to subjugate the weak (which is what the BMoL want) and of course Sam would rather not do that :P

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Cup of Tea no. 2

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Oh crap, they're have a Moment about how they want to die, talking about how they didn't imagine it being this way because, well, who plans to be murdered by their own Bunker

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I don't think Dean plans to die this way any more

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Did Dean just....

he did

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Toni hates the Americans

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YEAH DEAN

He's gonna remember that forever.

If he's not dead and tbh if he is he just died happy

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Having an explosion in the Bunker was a terrible way to use up all the oxygen

YAY Dean did the thing and all the smoke is clearing

I suppose because this is on the CW Dean doesn't stumble in with a massive boner from finally getting to use it

This was already a symbolic victory for the crazy American way of hunting.

-

Oh dear, it's Mary.

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She is covered in blood and just walks up to the door, and Jody's like... okay I guess this is what happens with the Winchesters.

I think 12x06 softened her up too much to the idea they just show up covered in the last hunt and want to watch TV

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Omg GARTH IS ALIVE. For now?

"You and Bess need to get someplace safe" :3 Thanks for looking after them for me

I mean now Eileen's dead and Garth is still alive I feel sort of bad for using his life to bargain with. Hence hoping he's mystery guy.

-

Nyoooom

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oh that was a cruel fake trail of blood.

I mean real blood but fake anyone got killed because Jody is upright and Alex is next to her and Mary's just got a bleeding nose and a smirk while being wrapped in rope.

"Hello boys"

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Heee Alex and Jody took down Mary and they're being proud of each other for doing it

I love them so much so I am in absolute terror that one or both of them dies

-

oh dear Dean's stuck in a room with Jody and Mary and she's taunting Jody for playing mom to Dean - 9x19 comes immediately to mind, and Momma taunting Jody for doing the same to Alex, which is how she got her in the first place. And Mary's tied to a chair and all she's got is the same demon!Dean thing from 10x03 to snark at Dean and tell Jody she can have him.

Honestly, Dean's adapted a lot very well to even survive watching Mary say she doesn't want him to his face.

He doesn't look HAPPY but he didn't like, burst into tears and/or storm out the room

"What's the matter, Dean? Am I too different from the Mary you know? Or too much the same?"

The whole messed up family thing in one go here >.> Mary mirroring Dean as demon!Dean having a dark side that renounced his family and claimed to have always been this thing, and Mary doing the same...

-

Lol Mary's hiding behind "inpenetrable psychic walls" - that's not the metaphor the Bunker was warning about us or anything, OR anything deeply symbolic about all the character stuff for Sam and Dean where they hide behind walls of "the story became the story" and all that. Looks like maybe this is how Dean is forced to tell Mary all the dark horrible truth about her deal and all that we saw in the script they teased? That he has to try and find a way to ease her out from behind it, maybe taking a few scratches and shrapnel in the eye to get there, but... Can he grenade launcher through it with his words??

-

"They can't be torn down with grenades"

Dean is too sad to even do a "watch me try"

-

Random hunters!

-

And Walt and Roy!

-

"No hard feelings" yeah it's much easier to understand when Sam's alive and that was 7 years ago and honestly so much character growth since then or something

Nice demonstration of putting aside bad feelings to work together

-

Dean leaves Sam to do the big presentation and Sam stumbles over introducing it as a personal problem he and Dean have ended up with, but then suddenly drops into inspirational speaking about "our people", taking on the burden as a leader :D

(I mean that's like the one thing they told us in PR but it was "sam n dean" and look I'm really proud of him okay? Berens writes a Sam I love)

Sam also admits, in front of Walt and Roy even, that he was one of the hunters who messed up and were suckered in by their flashy tech. Admitting that the current terrible scenario is his fault again, when that's what they originally killed him for - whatever was on the hunter grapevine about what Sam Winchester had done...

-

blah blah America is great land of the free etc *Sam finishes the speech with an American flag flying behind him*

-

But I mean good laying out of the philosophies of what they see hunting is really all about - the whole cops and robbers thing Sam talked about in 12x14 but thought the BMoL could help with that instead of seeing they weren't going to be anything like what he idealised about the job.

And he asks them to follow him :')

-

I hope the near-death experience made Dean change his mind about dying bloody too

-

Dean's so proud

Me too

-

Oh no he's sitting it out. Literally because he blew his own fucking leg up.

-

I'm sitting this out too... I'm in too much pain to continue doing anything useful right now

-

Cup of coffee no. 1

-

Morning! So Sam gets his big character growth moment to maybe not mess up leading a thing this time (people are going to die but they know that... more alarmingly, Jody's going with them >.>) and Dean's saying behind to fix Mary. He gives a speech to Sam about doing that which sounds almost exactly like the sort of thing Sam was saying about demon!Dean - if there's any of them still in there they're going to find it and bring them back.

The Mary stuff has always been emotionally more on Dean's side just because Sam would be perfectly content for her to exist and see what happens (which is probably an unspoken part of how the BMoL suckered him in that he didn't mention in the big speech to the other hunters) - he gets the external evil to fight, something which helps fix his and especially Mary's mistakes by taking down the operation, while Dean deal with Mary.

It only just occurred to me typing this, even though I've had like 14 hours since I found out what the plan was, that that puts Sam in a Ketch-ish direction if he's going to be anywhere predictable. I'm still torn about this because I want Sam to kill him for Eileen but Mary's got a personal beef too and I'd honestly be sort of confused if despite being the least-most-invested in killing Ketch, Dean doesn't get pitted against him, partially because this is The Raid pt.2 (this time the hunters doing exactly what the vampires did when they were all being killed off) and partly because stuff just kind of happens to Dean more. But it's entirely unfair of him to hog ALL the emotional catharsis if he's got Toni and Mary with him trying to fix Mary, and then ALSO has to deal with an unexpected Ketch

-

Oh dear, Alex just told Jody to kick it in the ass while heading off to a safe house with Donna. It's sort of the show generic rallying cry because Kim Manners, but it's also the Ellen and Jo bye bye phrase, and I don't like this. I have suddenly remembered I am very very worried about one or both of them, and Alex unfortunately still don't have much point to be in this episode except it's weird to pretend Jody doesn't have a family just because the actresses need herding, Claire's purposefully driven off into the sunset so doesn't seem to be a part of this, and that leaves Alex here to either kill or react to Jody being killed.

-

Sam and Dean do the bitch/jerk thing which in a show where there was actual threat to either of them dying would make them having a "don't die pls" farewell unnerving for the exact above reasons, but just makes me feel like everyone's having tearful goodbyes to try and pretend the stakes are equally high - at least, the characters think so - to obscure killing off Jody.

-

The BMoL have Sam and Dean on their board with "ELIMINATED" underneath them. Losers.

Aaaah I forgot Claire was a potential target though. The WORST thing they could do is kill her off-screen without ceremony and let Jody and Alex find out because Jody bursts into the control room and sees Claire's picture with "ELIMINATED" under it

-

Oh nope Ketch is getting nervous about where his asset is so he gets the "keep it between us" info that Mary's in Lebanon, Kansas, aka time for Ketch to not be around to get killed in the base (making it infinitely easier to raid for everyone else) and for him to go exactly where I assumed he would.

-

Sorry Sam, you get the second hand reassurance that Ketch paid for it >.>

-

Nighty night, Dean and Mary :D I'm surprised they didn't just say African Dream Root but I suppose the BMoL have had time to develop these technologies and magical chemistry that makes the stuff work, and dream root does come with the problem that you can literally kill someone in one of the dreams, it's so real, and tidying up all the lore on how to do this sort of thing would make sense if they wanted to not have to deal with any odd plotholes from that. Using electrodes and stuff to link Dean and Mary connects them without the basic way dream root does it, polyjuice potion style, so theoretically neither of them should have control over the other, although Dean's entering Mary's head?

-

WHERE'S THE SOCK MONKEY? INACURRATE. FAKE.

Oh well, I suppose there's some sort of weird symbolism sticking Dean in that chair to wake up but without Dean's sock monkey it just doesn't feel real to me.

-

I suppose it could be any old day of the week not like dropping Dean directly into the scene in 1x01, since it's daylight beyond the windows, so perhaps Mary has been tidying and Dean's sock monkey is in his room where it belongs and it just happened to be on the floor in 1x01 because she hadn't tidied that day >.>

-

Dean whatever you do do not pick up the tiny Sammy. He's very cute but I have a bad feeling about randomly appearing babies.

Oh it's so weird to regress Mary back to the Mary she was stuck at the whole time of the show for 11 seasons. I mean MARY said she was stuck there in 12x03 as well but her surface actions have all been really different, obviously. And at this point... Dean looks stunned to see her and I don't think it's just because it's the "wow Mom" shock he would get all the previous times, but now, FINALLY looking at her as someone who she USED to be...

Oh no he's so small.

This is what he looked like when he wore the "I wuv hugs" shirt. He's seeing it from the other side now.

Dean could pick HIMSELF up.

Oh noooo he's eating PB&J I didn't sign up for this.

I was expecting him to do this but I was not expecting it to be Dark Side of the Moon over again instead of 1x01. I thought he was going to go do something similar to Sam in the vision Azazel showed him in 2x21, but I suppose the point is that they return to the most important moment to them, and for Dean it was eating PB&J with his mom. It's utterly tragic that Dean and Mary have the same Heaven memory but from different sides, because one of the worst  things about Heaven is the isolation - if you don't know to start pressing on the walls looking for roads or loose threads, you can stay in a dream for eternity, and Mary and Dean might be living the exact same moment over and over again, but without each other... I'm not saying they should be soulmates, I'm saying Heaven should be more like what Ash made of it without the sneaking around and needing an advanced understanding of quantum physics or an angel to tell you what to do to start hopping between Heavens.

Of course put too many people together and they start talking and questioning and it's easier to keep them content if they don't have the ability to think about their situation deeply and philosophically, but are drugged up in their Heaven dream with happiness and mindless contentment living over their best times again.

And now Dean's stuck on the outside looking in of the same moment just as Sam was 7 years ago (you know maybe last night I was wondering if we'd come back here because I was thinking Roy and Walt were a very obvious clue... This is what happens when  you take 14 hours off)

-

YEAH JODY. FUCK THE LAW. RUN A GUY OVER. SHOOT SOMEONE.

LOL Roy and Walt are driving Gadreel's car

-

Of course in the way the show endlessly loops around itself, what Dean is doing, especially the sitting opposite Mary while her brain is hacked thing, is 9x10 again. Toni is Crowley but this time Dean is going in himself.

-

"You're choosing this" *Dean is horrified* *has only just gone through this with Cas last year* He hates that anyone would choose not free will because, well, contradiction. But Mary has regressed back to how she would have been in Heaven - living in the dream and not really able to think about what's outside herself, and so the choice to stay is very easy: abstract pain and harsh reality, or just not thinking about it. In a way it's almost like trying to right what she feels was done wrong to her - all those gifsets comparing it to Buffy talking about how she didn't ask to be brought back and how she had been happy in Heaven. To Mary, THAT was the violation of her free will...

"I hate you"

Aaand Dean reaches the most dramatic part of HIS character arc relating to Mary.

Ironically one of the B99 episodes I caught up while laying around like a dead fish yesterday included one where Holt got annoyed Amy wouldn't stand up to him even after he lost her favourite pen, and eventually wound her up enough to make her yell at him and dare to disrespect her superior officer (... to an Amy degree anyway :P) and, yeah. Same deal; Dean's been completely INCAPABLE of expressing anything negative to/about Mary, and even the argument in 12x14 was more a sort of downwards bump in this relationship, because within the episode he decided to reconcile with her *just* because she was Mary, and of course the argument was not as stark and final sounding as "I hate you" - reconciling with her after was just putting that aside in order to keep her around, not any sort of conclusion to this fight.

-

lol getting some more use out of the sci fi corridors to randomly mimic the opening of A New Hope, though the BMoL are literally "the empire" and the American hunters are the "rebels"

-

oh I think Roy or Walt is already dead. Lol. Sucks to be them.

(they DID just think they were doing what was right in 5x16 but still. They've been a statisticaly anomoly to be someone who killed a Winchester and lived to tell the tale (I suppose the lady from Wishful Thinking as well but she was as much a victim of the spell as anything so it doesn't... count...?? I suppose the people from Mystery Spot who helped kill Dean all those 1000s of time as well :P))

Anyway being a redshirt on this mission gets them killed on the Winchesters' behalf so fair's fair

-

Oh boy here's the stuff from Dean's confrontation with Mary, and aside from squeezing her eyes not to listen it's completely one-sided as Jensen delivers the sort of Dean monologue which of all the monologues which should have got him an Emmy already, this is the best. This is terrible :D

He's using instead of "we love you" truths to get to her, the HoRRIBLE truth that she's been owed THIS ENTIRE TIME

Anyway he's blaming his whole tragic backstory on her instead of Azazel, because the story has become the story that even after 4x03 Dean's managed to keep Mary pretty much exactly on the pedestal he always kept her on rather than confront that she is the root cause of his angst, which involves her death... He's letting go of everything. Seeing her saying she wants the best for him and will keep him safe, but he knows she's saying this having ALREADY made the deal, and that her entire happy life with her kids was ALWAYS a sham because she ALWAYS knew something bad was coming, but while she was living like this she put herself entirely into that dream to ignore it.

"You left us, ALONE, because Dad was just a shell" holy crap the show is actually OVER, what's even left to SAY

I know when Mary came back, around this time last year we were screeching about the development he'd be offered by this, by finally getting to confront his family history again and get to be at peace with the way he was raised and all that... It's gutting to watch it in real time though

"I had to be a father, and I had to be a mother"

holy shit I wish I could send this scene back to season 10 me to see :D Like, right after 10x03. Because the character thread in Dean I've been following the entire time I've been in fandom has been waiting to see if this would ever get resolved well, after 10x03 where demon!Dean blurted out similar to Sam but from the worst possible place, at HIS lowest point. (This is not Dean's lowest point. Lowest point for his relationship with his mom, but higest peak he's ever stood on for his own personal strength. Holy crap I'm proud of my boy.)

(The phrasing here is all kind of reminiscent of 10x05's song about John and Mary and it's making me laugh inappropriately because the start of season 10 nailed all this so much)

And the thing is by setting this all here in the Dark Side of the Moon day it's a completely timeless moment - like sure there's some vague outside stuff going on like it's BECAUSE of the BMoL but Dean's ONLY talking about their history, their past, how his life was all the time since ever, and the historical facts of Mary's life. Any time since 5x16 they COULD have pulled the trigger on a scene like this, because all they needed was a run up to get Dean in the right mood to say it all. Of course this is the end result of a massive, at least 4 years project to tear Dean down and build him back up and have his character development go on an absolutely incredible journey... At this point I feel like the sports commentator yelling encouragement on the final lap before an absolutely record breaking victory.

"I couldn't do it - and you want to know what that was like?" YES PLEASE KEEP TALKING

Dean lists all the shit that's happened to Sam like the bitter Sam!girl he is and says "all because of you"

I think at this point I just want to look back at 1x09, where Mary as a ghost goes to Sam, before almost any of this happens except Jess dying and the horrible upbringing, and says "I'm sorry" because she KNEW what she'd done to him, and she died guilty about it. She said in 12x02,

MARY: And when we do find Sam... how am I gonna face him? DEAN: What do you mean? MARY: That yellow-eyed thing would never have come for him that night if I... I started all of this.

but with all the massive miscommunication themes she didn't go talk to Sam when she should have - when he came to her in the end of the episode and hugged her, she should have apologised there, and made a start on it. And if not then, then in 12x03, although I'm feeling like from the moment she cut her hair it was too late and she was already avoiding who she had once been, chopping off the style associated with herself as their mom and stepping into what would become this demon!Dean-like brainwashed Mary. I suppose it makes sense to say in 12x02 she raised the problem that she had to face sam somehow, and she DIDN'T and then we got 12x03, the mirror episode to this one on this side of the story (and it feels like Berens has made one of those clear lines through the season, with 12x14 being mirrored on the other side of this episode, in the way Robbie owned season 9 - so like I hand season 9 to Robbie, I'm giving Berens season 12 :P Good work on all this, sir.) In 12x03 Mary is faced with the haunted house full of mirrors to exactly what she's NOT seeing here - Sam as the burned, soulless doll in a crib, the object the demons passed around, and eventually was nothing but a hollow person, as Dean ends it on describing that Sam lost his soul. And for Dean, she sees the little boy, and she hasn't moved past that, but Dean had to tell her from the moment she died he wasn't that any more - he was the parent of the family. She's got her family regressed here again, because confronting it in 12x03 just made her run away. And this is as far as she's run, through the season, literally just running on the spot in this exact place.

Outside Mary is crying, but inside Mary is refusing to show anything. Maybe it's just because where her consciousness is - she won't cry on the face Dean can see. He's leaking tears in the dream but not on the outside. But yeah, she can pick one (1) set of tear ducts to angrily repress. Because at the end of the day, Mary has always been the one more like Dean.

Dean FINALLY gets through the "i hate yous" he's always needed to say to get back to "i love you"

*slowly sinks underneath the blankets* Yeah, saying "I love you" to Mary is the only way he's ever been able to get it out before - the speculation being that once he's worked through his COLLOSAL issues with his parents he might be able to say "I love you" more casually to others because he's at peace. I can SEE him settling into being at peace now, which I think is all that Amara INTENDED when bringing Mary back, but obviously the MASSIVE repercussions going on outside their little insular family bubble.

And Dean forgives her. And says on the other side of this, they can rebuild their family and make it work. AAAAAAH.

(AAAAAAAAH)

Finally he gets to the "but I need you to fight"

"Mom I need you to see me" Oh god this is so good and painful

Mary's crying on the inside too! But in this case it's good because that's the part of her that can see Dean

And we're back to mirroring the start of the season, the very opening scene, but this time Mary recognises Dean and gets to say his name first, instead of Dean crashing out of the trees at her, yelling "Mom", and getting his ass handed to him :P He had to tell her who she was, but this time he told her who HE was. And NOW she sees him, now he took down every single wall between them.

-

LOL Oops bye Toni nice knowin' ya except for all the times you were terrible.

If Dean had trusted her - and if they'd changed the freakin LOCKS again - she might not be dead.

Ketch does the thing again where instead of just killing his targets, he wants to talk to them, so he wakes Dean up instead of just slitting his and Mary's throats while they're unconscious.

-

I suppose now it's on Mary to wake up and save Dean

-

I was torn on who needed to kill the dark mirror of John more, but honestly, Dean's done, came out of the oven perfectly risen and smelling great, so he does not need to reject John. He sees John accurately and describes him in that speech in such a way... His memory doesn't have to haunt Dean, and he's forgiven Mary too.

(And we never mentioned the cupids. Pfft.)

-

christ, Dean's being given the Swan Song beatdown with his leg not working. For once he fights back because Ketch is absolutely not a loved one, but he's completely outmatched, and Ketch is enjoying punching him.

He says Mary said absolutely nothing about Dean - Dean knows from being in Mary's head how she DOES care about him, and that she was being brainwashed - he doesn't know for how long... Point is, these words can't hurt. He already made his peace with Mary too.

-

I think Dean just threw Ketch through the SW DW table, which is hilariously dark about their legacy >.> It's more about in the contacts they build outside themselves, and the WORK they do, than anything they write on a table - shots of Sam and Dean thinking about the world while sitting alone in the bunker or in/on the car are often very sad about how isolated and alone they are.

Thinking of which, we're rapidly running out of episode for me to be worried about Jody in.

-

Ahaha Ketch brought a gun to the fight. He says he's not stupid after Dean points out how stupid he was, but he's got his back turned to Mary, and Dean's now in exactly the same place SAM was in 10x03 after the demon!Dean chase, where Cas suddenly came out of nowhere and grabbed Dean.

Oh Dean flinched, he had been watching Ketch. Nice surprise. Mary's back :D

Dean hobbles over to stand at her side.

"I knew you were a killer. You both are." "you're right." Yeah, Dean n Mary are a pair aren't they :P Both been through this same arc now. Dean owns the description but I think he has a very different definition than Ketch, for all people tell him that he's a killer. He can kill things for his job and when it needs to be done, but that does NOT mean he's a psychopath like Ketch. And Mary has a heart too and chose the right side.

-

Jody pls don't stand with your back to the open door - this is literally how that random no name got killed in 12x14 and I really really don't like you not covering your back, especially when you're a cop, and even when you think you cleared this place.

-

Oh they all survived. Sam got the news about Lucifer, decided to pass on working with a maybe lesser evil to deal with a bigger one. Jody saves his bacon with the big kill shot.

-

Where does Dean even get prescription painkillers. I suppose he'd have got some when  he broke his leg but aside from that it's pretty much up to them to work out how much to medicate themselves by whatever illegal means off-the-grid people can fake prescriptions or health insurance. Also America's healthcare system is terrible because it seems like an entire adversity all by itself to their lives, while in a free healthcare country... yeah, not so much a big deal :P

-

Mary's got the season 7 Cas guilt now - everything that happened is her fault, she feels. I mean she certainly really helped the BMoL get a foothold and so on although they seemed pretty intent to come on over whether she had anything to do with it or not. But the broken family relationships, yeah, she ran away >.>

-

"What if he can't forgive me?" "Mom. You don't have to be scared of me" *Winchester family sandwich*

I think I'm starting to cry at this show way more often than I used to but oh my god I'm so happy for Sam right now. He misses the entiiiiiiiiire thing but the point he made back at the start of the season is he just wanted Mary THERE and her problem is she was TERRIFIED of him, and having the whole equivalent drama to what Dean just went through with her, but if she knew Sam, that's not him. He zenned out in season 5-7 and has already recovered from like, the whole thing, and piled on totally different trauma :P His arc was so important to resolve to the story they already completed the arc in Swan Song, and it wasn't about Mary but it WAS about peace with himself, and of course all done with external actions and plot drama while Dean had to deal with the internal stuff, literally going inside Mary's head to sort it. Anyway point is Mary doesn't need to be scared of him because there's nothing to be scared of. It's literally as simple as he wants his mom, should she happen to be here. Unlike Dean's entire character arc since season 1 still having been unresolved. And the heart of it was stuff that was obvious since season 1 or the first episode, but Sam got his resolution in season 5, while taking us back to that season 5 moment, showed how Dean did NOT get his resolution when he needed it, because it was never JUST about sam but his entire family.

I wonder how he'll be next season, no matter if Mary survives it or not.

-

Thinking of which, now Berens has finished writing season 12 for us, I suppose Dabb has a whole bucket of fuckery waiting to throw us into season 13.

[mysticmysterywrites-blog]

Prompt #1

So. Lets combine Soulmate "first words on the wrist" style, with Dungeon and dragons.

- I like the idea of lichdom being akin to TaaaaaZ's style of liches. More spectral, able to possess things, if you have a spare body you can inhabit it. Most of the time, the transformation from mortal to lichdom ends with its soul anchored onto something. More often then not, this is knowledge. Its why so many liches are labeled under the evil category, because logic can be cold when its left alone. But also, most of the time, wizards that turn to lichdom do so out of a search for knowledge. And in turn, that knowledge is what they anchor onto, leaving them with only knowledge to run off of. My boy? Nah homie he went the chaos route. Without a flesh suit, he's anchored himself onto emotions. Which is like, while its going to keep you sane much, much longer, its also going to be an absolute BITCH to control most of the time. He runs entirely off of emotions, and it takes a lot not to be what you think of when people compare others to water. Always changing, always turning. He has NO control over that. Anyway, he also just has a hard time thinking straight (Which like same) as a lich. So until he gets back to his body, he's going to be rambling nonsense.

I'm aware this is not how lich work in actual DND. I do what I want.

- As for soulmates, I'm more fond of the idea that soulmate isn't inherently romantic, so much as it means that it will be someone important in your life. More over, for an au like this one, you can have multiple soulmates, either romantic, platonic, ect ect ect. So it's like. Your soulmate isn't guaranteed to love you. After all, love takes work and time, and effort, and sometimes fate just doesn't guess a personality right. However, no matter what they will come into your life. Somehow, somewhere. And they WILL impact it. And thats the important part. (That said, you know this beotch a SLUT for shipping, come AT me with that shit) Oh, also I like the idea that the sentences on your skin evolve to fit the words you know. So babies down have much but like, a line. Toddlers will have broken up words and phrases, younger kids will be more simplistic. Though, about by the time most are 13, their full statement should just about be there (Unless, you know, somehow the soulmate drops a word they wouldn't know until that exact moment)

Finally, Slight warning. The main plot of this rp deals with a Atropals, which is like literally a god fetus that's been aborted. So like, if you're uncomfortable with that kind of enemy. Whoops

Anyway, that world building and warning aside. So, who thinks that a good way to "stop a not so all the way there ex from resurrecting a dead god fetus to raise it to it's true potential" is by becoming a lich and working entirely on your own because involving anyone else might get them killed, but also you don't feel so bad about getting YOURSELF killed. Well. Certainly Thales Depressed Ass.

Notedly, he's a LOT more finicky when he's not attached to a body. He either has a one track mind, or his mind is all over the place. Once he's back in is body (and while he is able to leave it) He acts a lot calmer, and far more collected. But he's still kind of, new to this lich thing? Like you know those liches that have been at it for at least a hundred years and have their shit together and just kinda wanna devour souls? Yeah no that ain't him, he's been at it for a year and a half and he is ALL over the place. However, when he has a body to possess? All of his stats went into like, Intelligence and Charisma. Dex and Wisdom got like a little more. Constitution and strength?? Oh no. Oh noooo....

He's a fuck boy. Just like, a fuck boy that can die multiple times, so.

In his human flesh suit, Thales is 6'2, with smooth long hair about down to his mid-back. He has a tendency to lean twards glam fashion over anything else, because whats the point of having magic if all eyes aren't on you? Paints his nails, hairs always in a different style, deffo has at least four or five rings on the same finger sometimes. Would in fact wear the wizard hat. Lich wise.. its as I mentioned. Think more, spectral skeletal figure mixed with dementor, type of deal. His magic is silver based, so I imagine his spectral would end up leaning to the same. Have the like, bright red eyes though, and keeps that distinct skeletal figure.   He has a twin brother that he ditched, that probably will end up becoming relevant sooner over later. That chump is fucking pissed.

As for the character type I'm looking for.. Species and gender wise? I'm not picky. Personality wise? I'm kiiiinda leaning to characters that are more on the chaotic end of the spectrum? Like. Maybe not ENTIRELY assholes (though I love asshole characters and would never dare to deny them) but you know. Characters that got a little umph to them. Maybe some with just as questionable morals. That said, this is /not/ set in stone. The idea of this Chaotic Neutral Gremlin getting paired up with some Lawful Good chump thats just standing there HOLLARING as he grows ANOTHER body is also VERY appealing to me. So. Hm, Guess I'm not picky about personality type either then, just something that can be amusing.

Also, your character can have as much or as little an idea of whats going on with this situation as you want. Did they start snooping where they shouldn't have?? Just kind of pick the wrong guy to argue with at the bar? Kicked out of the Cool Kidz Cult for necro-crimes? All up to you, world is your oyster. Ect Ect Ect.

Theres a line of gold on his wrist.

It matches his brothers perfectly. It's not something he questions, for the longest time. You don't question the freckles on your cheek, nor the color of your eyes. It was something that was just /there./ It was apart of them, and to question its existence wasn't even an offense, so much as unthought of.

He points it out to his twin one day, when he realizes that no one they've met has one quite like theirs. It's basic, for all intent and purposes. Just a bold line of gold, shines against the light like a bracelet. Like paint, even. "Ma doesn't have a band around her wrist," He says, as he traces the line in his own skin, "'Lae don't either. I think it's just us."

Their mother answers them with a smile when they ask. "Well, You were always together," She points out to them, as they hold out their wrists to her pointedly. She gives them a small smile, and carefully holds each of their hands, "It's never been important, for you to know what you'd say to eachother. It's simply important that you know it's there. And well.. There you are," She lets go of their hands, lets a soft breath out, "People love to talk about the bonds of family, but its rare for family to actually be bonded by fate. Don't ruin what She gives you, boys,"

Their mother was smart, and they were not. So they nod along, even if they don't fully understand. And it takes them years to truly realize what she meant.

~~

Theres a red one on his wrist, snug carefully under the golden line on his wrist. Its crimson, and brilliant, and he finds himself mouthing the words to himself time and time again.

His brothers has a very ugly word on it, according to their tutor. He blinks at it time and time again. "I'm not even sure how you know that word," His tutor frowns, then - "Ah Right. You're Kioko's children. Your mother should take more care to watch her mouth around the two of you."

"Ah, you're that motherfucker that the word has been about as of lately around?" His mother laughs herself silly at his brother's bond, when he asks. Sticks his arm out right to her. It's obviously not fully formed, the words are simple, still changing. But the swear stays thick on his arm, and she tells him not to repeat it with a pat on the head.

He rubs his own at night and wonders about it till dreams take him away.

~~

He dates a girl when he's 16, and then a boy when he's 20.

The girl, she's beautiful. She had these beautiful, teal eyes that just lit up when she spoke about something she loved. She had a passion for hammers, knew how to swing a punch. He'd once saw her deck someone straight across the room. She finds her romantic soulmate because of him, ironically enough. An Aasimar woman, skin bronze that has an affinity for flames. Their first words are

"I know I'm a little drunk right now, but I think I just saw an angel." "You shouldn't act so surprised, It's just the alcohol talking."

They've no hard feelings between the two of them, and once or twice they take care to take a job or two together.

The man is more complex. A centaur blessed by the forest in whispers and prayers. His figure is thin and hind reminds him of a dears, and he's eve got these elegant horns to show. He's a bit older then himself, maybe six years or so. He studies magic, all the same as him. Gets lost in his studies and forgets about things easily. He has this beautiful blonde hair, and a hand carved stave, and- Their break up is sloppy, and leaves him torn up for months.

"You shouldn't look at people like that, they might get the wrong idea, lad." (He never does find out how his conversation goes. Maybe he should return to that forest and find out one day.)

~~

He starts researching necromancy not for use, but for archiving.

It's an easy lie to play off of. He wouldn't make the lie too broad an say that the magic did not, at least, fascinate him. And certain spells are easy to incorporate into his magic pool. False life is incredibly handy for when they come across being that see them as little more as targets. Vampiric Touch has given him a sharp heal far more then he'd like to admit, and he finds himself using Circle of Death on men far more menacing then he.

But he keeps himself in the clean. Between himself and his brother? They like to travel. And as he travels, he writes down the oddest, most unique spells he can find in a singular book. He's never been sure what for, not immediately. But maybe one day he'll get use out of it. Maybe one day they'll actually know what to do with it.

They're 16, young, and dumb, and if you'd told him at the time he'd get use out of the most dangerous spell he'd collected he would have laughed in your face. (They separate, later. Some stupid fight over some stupid issue. But he keeps the book near and dear to him, and doesn't let go.)

~~

The third man he dates is by far the most interesting.

By then, Thales is maybe 23. Allsuns... gorgeous. Again, a few years older then him, but thats to be expected with high elves. His soulmate has long since passed, something about a magical accident on the coast line. He laughs it off, tells him that it was a long time ago. Grabs his hand as he tells him not to worry. It should have been his first warning, perhaps. It had always been weird when he'd phrased it like that.

Not to worry.. Not to worry....

But he's always been easy to trick with a pretty face. (Trick wasn't the right word. He always knew, of course, the man was dangerous. It was just easier to ignore when he had such a nice smile to him)

The man is really the reason he really begins to delve farther into necromancy. The push he needed into the pool.

~~

"Did you know there was suppose to be another goddess of fate."

Thales raise an eyebrow in Allsun's direction. They're in a library, reading over some book to dig out Information for the man's latest project. He always told Thales, you'd never believe how much knowledge you can find in the pages of a book. It might not be what you're looking for, but you can apply knowledge anywhere.

And you know. Thales was included to agree. But he was tired, and the book offered him little use. "Odd topic, but I'll humor you. Go on,"

"Not odd at all. In fact, I dare say it to be relevant," the man snaps his book shut, pushes his hair back on his head, "Lady Istus was with child. However, a great sin was cast upon it. Poisoned, if it were, by an overly zelous god. Stricken by grief, she goes to her good friend," A wiggle of the eyebrow, metaphorical air quotes "The raven queen, and begs her to help. So, the goddess rips it from her womb!" He swings his arms up, and Thales can't help but hide a snort into his hand, "Problem solved, right? Wrong! Now they need somewhere to put this child, and-"

"An unborn child to a major god? That's just Her story," he tilts his head, lets an easy grin cross his face, "Try again."

"Im not! Consider it- Perhaps. Perhaps it is, fate, wouldn't you put it? That her child suffers the same route as she," and suddenly, it happens. He'd always been easy to read. The emotion showed best on his ears, and there was nothing more amusing then sitting back to watch But this? This was different. This was serious. It was a tonal shift that might as well have shocked him awake, straight into a new conversation.

"See, the fetus? They needed to put it somewhere. What better place then the lands they rule? It was left to rot here-" he taps the floor with his staff, "not here, specifically. But here, on this plane, on these grounds. And know what? It fuels our fates, Thales. Istus thinks she's in control of our bonds, but she simply records fate."

"No, no. It's spoken to me. It is the one that ties the strings between us and and the gods," there's a pause in the man's voice, and it's in that moment he catches the glint in the man's eye. It's bitter, and numb, and the pretty face that hides his intent is gone. He was serious. The joke was gone. This wasn't hypothetical.

"But it is so, very angry. And instead of rotting, it feeds." Allsun's smiles, and the casualty of it chills his spine.

"/We're/ going to raise a deity, Thales."

Hey.

What, the fuck.

~~

He's use to traveling with his brother, is the thing.

Between the two of them, they're quiet good at getting attention on themselves. Thales has magic that's different from your everyday wizard. Knows how to put his own touch to it. His brothers a bard. His entire job is to entice crowds. And though he doesn't come off as such, his brother enjoys having the attention on him, on stage.

They're good at what they do. Put on shows, make some gold.

Allsun is different.

He uses his words, gathers crowd not by story, but by motivation. He tells people what they want to hear, sways them in his direction. At first, it had been interesting to watch. He'd sit back and scribble in the notebook how the man swayed the last crowd, watch as more people turned their attention to his gaze. Once he begins to hear the poison behind the honey, he knows he can't stay. But Allsun has already planted his seen in the world, and its only a matter of time before he watches it take its root.

And he's terrified as to what this man can do.

~~

Despite this, He stays with him as long as he can.

At first it's easy. Don't show him what you've found, things that could possibly help his conquest. He likes to think he did some kind of damage to it. That he put it off for just a LITTLE longer. But it gets harder. The Allsun quickly finds followers, finds people who gather under word of mouth. It's far faster then he ever expects them to gather, and by then he's no stop to the resources the man has access to.

It's not just Allsun that is dangerous. This, thing. Allsun had been all too eager to explain to concept. Explain what it could DO and how it could grow. He's not an easy man to rattle. Despite this, he doesn't see why the man is so eager to rise such a being. But he knows, if anyone can do it... Allsun can.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. And he is so, incredibly desperate.

He turns the pages of his book of forbidden magic, magic he's collected after years on years of travels through ancient ruins and tucked away cities. Magic only people that have been forgotten by the sands of time would practice.

For now, he runs. Begins accounting for what he'll need.

~~

The spell is not simple.

Of course, anyone could tell you that. If necromancy were easy, if just any ol'chump could do it, then they'd have immortals casually wandering about. He thinks, maybe Mystra made the magic neigh impossible not as a test, but to test the bounds of morality. Ask any who defy the laws of nature, why were they doing it? For what purpose did they have, thinking they could go against the gods and the order of things as they stood.

But he is no simple wizard.

No, no. He's motherfucking Thales Maheras. If anyone is going to become a lich, it is him.

~~

He wonders, sometimes, what his brother is up to.

Bet he found his soulmate by now.

His thoughts linger on it for a moment, but that hesitance does not linger for too long. He had more important things to deal with.

~~

If life is a knit scarf, staying alive is keeping on strings

With every attack in battle, another string is cut. And most of the time, when you fall in battle- Loose all your hp, so to say, the strings are given to death to tie. You're pulled to the next realm with guidance or by force. Or perhaps you're pulled to a new body, if you're quick enough.

However, becoming a lich... it's taking those strings, and wounding it around your soul. Time and time again, until theres no where you can go but here. For that, being a lich is dangerous. Theres nowhere to go when you die, when you truly die. You're trapped to wander forever, or vanish into nothingness.

He finds that, maybe. The idea of nothingness isn't horrible after all.

~~

Lichdom suits him well.

He manages it with far less struggle then he'd imagined he would. The hardest part was getting the supplies. Necromancy was not a cheap class, and he finds himself stealing more then he finds himself buys. He knows, he could possibly turn to his mother for money. Knows that she would not hesitate to send him a couple thousand gold should he ask. Might ask out of curiosity, not out of accusation.

But it feels wrong. He can't ask her for money, something that he'd be using to buy the supplies that would inevitably kill her son. He spends the money on bigger things. A clone pod, a new stave, a new wand. He keeps the stave in his house, a little place on the mountains, where snow just falls and falls. It's cold, its unforgiving, but its private. You need to know where to go to get there. Has a teleportation Circle in place, just to make things a little easier to manage. Getting there is harder then leaving.

Its also, private. Privacy is important, and if people are around to hear his screams, they think its the wind.

But once he has the supplies, its as simple as... following steps. Practicing his magic. Something he's done for years, shoved himself into time and time again. It only takes him a year. Between jumping around, collecting the supplies he needs, practicing the magic he sways, and avoiding men on his trail, it only takes him a year to become a lich. He supposed, if there were anything to be smug about, that would be it.

(When he looks down at the words on his wrist, they've turned black. They're the color of death. He wonders if he's severed his connection with a lover. He wonders if this is his punishment, for messing with fate. He was hoping she'd understand, but.. bah. He has more important things to deal with)

~~

He leaves to find Allsun.

Allsun has grown powerful in two years. Both in influence and magic. He has men to do his bidding, watches him create men to do his bidding. If he's ever felt bad about his necromancy, he knows not to now.

And. It clicks, one night when he's just.. watching. Far enough away not to get caught, but close enough to see. A warlocke. Not a wizard, a warlocke. The man is a warlocke, and he's made a deal with something far outside his pay-range.

Then again. So has He.

~~

He burns through his first new body on accident.

He's lucky. His old body hardly had even decomposed

It teaches him to be careful with the blood and body he carries, however. There could always be another incident. He didn't have control over his powers, and snapping from something like possession to burning

If he lost his body entirely, this would be so, so much harder.

His second body had been slaughtered.

He's foolish, with the second one. Doesn't wait until the third has finished growing to actually start doing shit. He's lucky the process only takes three months. He even considers, for a time, finding another clone pod to bid on- steal. But one was bad enough to take care of.

So, he quietly learns not to proceed with a plan until his body has grown once again. He needs not to be left without a body for three months again. It gives him time to practice his abilities, sure. But it leaves him alone, with no one but himself.

The third

And the fourth is.... Well...

~~

He was killed again.

Allsuns men got to him. He knows, then. Damn, he'd thought he'd been sly, too.

He's patient. Patient enough not to blow his cover, patient enough to linger in a limp body, allow himself to be carried and ditched. It's a long wait. His body grasps desperately for sleep, to leave in a state of ignorance. But he can't let Allsun know about this, his lichdom is the one thing he has up his sleeve. The power that comes with it, is the one thing that he has up his sleeve. And he continues to wait. He allows himself to bleed out. Normally, he'd not suffer the pain that comes with dying so slowly. He'd sever the threads of life that remains, taint his own living body until his soul could rise and lash out on its own accord. But he needs to know there's no one near by. He knows their men will linger, knows it's safer to let himself die a slow, agonizing death.

In a sort of Mccob way, it's.. beautiful. Relaxing, even. Hanging onto the last threads of life, just long enough to feel the way few settles on him. Long enough to feel himself settle into the earth, something he knows very well he will not do for a very long time. His breaths are fleeting, shorter with every passing moment.  

He knows it's nothing more then a calm before the storm, and It's when the last string of life leaves him, does his world turn to flames.

His screech is one of murder, one of absolute hatred and anger. It's absolutely animalistic, and bloody, and filled with a poison he didn't know he had in him until he'd died.

It's hard to keep himself composed. He /doesn't/ keep himself composed. Its moments like this he's envious of those that run on logic, that run with their mind fully in gear. But here? It's a pure show of emotion and power. His rage meets his magic, and together they create a spectacular show of light and flame. It circles around him, dances on the grass and trees, sparking like electricity and dazzling like glitter. It's not entirely harmless, but he takes as much care as he can manage not to burn this body. He's been careless before, and there's nothing worse then needing to slice your skin on a fresh body, just to grow another. The memories of it don't exactly give him control, but it stops him from burning his immediate surroundings to a crisp. And when he's done he's left... Alone. His power falls off of him in waves, a display that was only moments ago a spectacular display now chilling him to the bone (haha.) It falls off of him in waves, trailing off into smoke, which quickly turns into heavy mist. It settles in the ground around him, lingers in between the blades of grass and fallen leaves. But it's harmless, now. Any necromancy taint is minimal, And he's left alone, at the mercy of his own emotions.

...

Except.

He's not alone.  

As his anger dies and the flames fall, leaving him floating there, he actually notices them for the first time They're sitting close enough to him that they couldn't have gotten caught in the cross fire, but absolutely must have felt the heat of it. They look.. terrified? Pissed? It was hard to tell. He couldn't connect dots or emotions in this state, just knew that emotion absolutely should not have been a positive one. His eyeless gaze flickers over them, taking in the sight of them on the ground (broken leg? Bruised body. Possibly beaten by Allsuns men. What the hell did they do to them?)

They speak to him.

He blinks. Everything snazzy he'd thought he'd say in this moment- if his soulmate was the one to speak to him first. It's gone out the window. Something.. Vore. Something about wanting to be tied up. Something FUNNY. He just feels dizzy. Thats hard to manage, when you've no physical form.

"Oh Huh," He says, thoughtfully, glancing down at his own, skeletal wrist. The words are still there, engraved in black under a dusky grey, "You know, I wondered how I was going to tell whatever poor bastard got stuck with me about /this/." A pause, and he doesn't even acknowledge that is on their arm forever, ("Guess that cats out of the bag.") The laugh that follows is sad, and to a degree cruel. He wonders if they've been given a new soulmate yet- Another one. How ironic would that be?

Though, he thinks, perhaps this is istus' way of punishing him for his sins. Not by not giving him a soulmate. By tormenting them, his /soulmate./

Its not something he needs to be concerned about.

He hovers for a moment, glancing down at his own body. The strings that keep his soul tied to it have far since been severed, leaving him without a husk. Its a nonissue. He has another one grown, and he'll have another one soon enough. "Look, as excited as I am to meet my soulmate. Thrilled, really, honestly, like genuinely it's hard to express this right now but- Fuck it. Okay," Keeping his voice from the terror it demands to be is hard, cruel even. He manages, "We don't have time for formalities. We need to leave. I burnt through this body faster then I thought I would," something about that is wrong. He knows, he knows he needs his body. He can't just fight without it.

"Come on, it's not safe." He casts false life on them.

It's no pure heal, but it should fix them up long enough to get them out of here.

(It's a shame. The words "So, what are your thoughts on vore?" Would have been /hilarious/ on someone's arm.)