#she likes herself just fine its not exactly self loathing? she's just. Very Very aware of what she lacks in herself.

[gothmiqote]

yk as interesting as it might be to have varha meet azem i actually this it would end up doing a Number on her self esteem lmao

like the idea she has of herself is like,,, Yes she's strong yes she's the "chosen one" butshe also doesn't know for sure she's got a ton going on outside of that. before she was the warrior of light she really was Just Some Guy who had her uses on the field, there's no denying from her that she's a good shot or handy with a glaive. but also those skills don't really roll over into other areas of her life. she still thinks she lacks in a lot of the softer skills--social things largely, but not just those. before she was the warrior of light, she really truly did Not have anyone else in her life (unless you count her one estranged brother who also survived the calamity. she, personally, would not) & couldn't sort out how to properly maintain relationships past a casual depth. it wasn't that she couldn't get along at all, she just never found herself being anyone's first choice. like, she will fully admit to being an attention-seeing kid. to be fair, it makes sense with as many siblings as she had that there would be a need to stand out, she's just never felt like she actually managed to do so.

intellectually speaking, she knows sh's far from stupid & that again, most of her talents really shine in the heat of battle. but like 90% of her friends are basically doctors, & she's aware she would probably have killed the world a long time ago if all the strategizing was left up to her. she'll contribute to these discussions because she's expected to, despite being really goddamn aware she wouldn't be invited to the table without the Very specific circumstances they all find themselves in.

speaking of those friends, it's not lost on her that she wouldn't have them if she wasn't hydaelyn's chosen. maybe they might have crossed paths loosely at some point, but there'd have been no reason to keep her around. having a title like that has its downsides & can definitely be more of a burden than a blessing, but on the whole? she's a bit relieved that she's been able to benefit from it in some more selfish ways (in her opinion). it's a nice change, people having expectations of her & being somewhat interested in her, even if a lot of that interest is directed towards the warrior of light instead of just her as a person. that bit of distance is weirdly comfortable at times. she's not the most emotionally graceful person, usually being too-direct or at a loss for word or reading a situation entirely incorrectly. she's impatient and forceful & is unsurprisingly bad when it comes to navigating environments like sharlayan. the only thing that saves her is the fact that she's Really good at looking confident & making her mistakes appear intentional. having a reputation helps too.

but azem? arsinoë? it's So clear within minutes of meeting her that she doesn't have these same issues. she's the type of person who draws others in without even trying. she's intelligent and witty and doesn't trip over her words (or struggle to find them in the first place). she's able to hold her own just fine in intellectual circles--hell, other people would almost certainly find her intimidating, if she didn't also radiate the type of energy that puts people at ease. there's nothing fake or exaggerated about the confidence she walks around with, and nothing seems to get in her head the same way it does varha. it's the type of inner-security she can only dream of.

i think at first she would want to meet her, just for the novelty of meeting the originator of her soul. i don't think it would cross her mind until it was too late that she actually didn't enjoy doing too much self-examination, and this would be a weird externalized version of that. and of course azem is interested in her--she's interested in a lot of things, but a shard of her own soul from a distant future would be especially fascinating. but varha would start to pick up on just how comfortable she was in her own skin quickly, and it would eat it her. people flock to azem in a way they never did to her Until she had a hero's reputation, until she offered something that was more than she could be on her own. that was when they were willing to look past her short comings. did azem even have those? probably not.

& varha's never been so sick with envy in her entire life, but she's not hateful about it. one, it doesn't make sense & two, she's Also been sucked into that vortex. azem's presence is... a lot, actually. it's domineering in any room--not unkindly, but she's impossible to ignore. she's also just a naturally charming person; there's nothing to hate. but the more varha watches her and searches for similarities, the more she starts to conclude that she seems to have inherited the more negative traits of azem. she's got the same intensity, gets tunnel-visioned about problems, & will Immediately lose her cool if you push her buttons correctly. all of that would be fine if she also got a sliver of that intangible thing arsinoë has that gives her a gravitational pull. she's like the sun, & varha would find herself starting to burn if she stays around too long.

part of her wonders maybe if venat had a hand in making sure the chips fell where they did. somehow she suspects if she were more like azem, she might have some stronger feelings about life or death situations; she might decide there was too much to live for to take certain risks. but if she felt like she was constantly falling short? or like she could have been a stand-in for anyone else? maybe it made her work just that much harder to prove something.

she's not surprised the present hades has such disdain for her. aside from the whole 'going mad from grief' thing, of course. she carries some of the least-loved parts of azem without her same light. standing next to her exposes failures of her personality that she never even knew to look for. varha doesn't dwell on hades' accusations of being a non-person; it's a waste of her time, especially when she knows otherwise. but she definitely feels like a cheap copy when faced with the original. of course, the general disinterest she'd dealt with from people her entire life made sense now. seeing what could have been--what was---makes her immediately understand. even if none of them had Met azem, they would have reacted if she'd resembled her in any way. she could get how losing someone like that would make you want to tear the world up in their name. and varha has people she loves now & who care about her in return, who would definitely mourn her if she were gone, but that type of reaction? nah, nope. they'd get over it in time; the death would be ordinary, as would the grief. which is fine by her, because she actually never Wants to see that level of destruction created for her sake, but still. she gets it.

[honeysofte-archieve]

only one.

Fandom: The Wayhaven Chronicles

Rating: T

Pairing: Female Detective/Ava du Mortain

Word Count: 1,776

Genre: love confessions hell yes!

i’m here a year later offering you a continuation to my first ever wayhaven fic: say your piece (or let her free) (18+, nsfw). excuse any clumsiness, this year has been THE WORST ever when it comes to writing. i hope you enjoy!!

Vesper knows, of course, that Ava would eventually ask again.

It is pretty much a certainty only biding its time and she is mostly fine with the thought of it coming up again. If their roles were reversed, she would similarly want to know the full details of the point of the matter— knowing her own nature she would be downright obsessive at getting true answers not shrouded by the delirious (although lovely) aftermath of sex.

But Vesper still hasn’t decided what she will actually answer when her time is up and her time runs out surprisingly soon as it’s not even a full day before Ava has seemingly gathered enough courage to ask.

“Detective,” Ava starts, but coughs and corrects herself immediately after Vesper shoots a pointed, even sharp, look over her shoulder. “I mean… Vesper Louise.”

It’s very attractive, hearing her own full name from the lips of the woman she loves and for a long, while both of them only smile at each other, a gentle blossom of a relationship cradled carefully between them, safe and sound, at least for now. Vesper is not optimistic enough to think that something like this, happiness above everything else, could last forever.

[ read at ao3 ♥ ]

“Better,” Vesper answers. Then she frowns and adjusts the temperature of the stove before flipping over the crêpe cooking, or burning, on the frying pan. “Though the Louise is a bit much, don’t you think?”

“It is a beautiful name,” Ava comments somewhere behind her. “You should not be ashamed of it.”

Vesper is glad Ava can only see her back or she would certainly notice the pleased flush on her cheeks. She clicks on the range hood and watches how steam begins to diffuse around the stove, clearing the air in a quick movement. The smell of already cooked crêpes is mouthwatering.

“I’m not ashamed,” Vesper answers with a shrug. She drinks a sip of her half-draught red wine sitting on the counter next to her. “I just think it’s a mouthful to use in everyday conversation.” She pauses. “But it sounds nice… when you say it like that.”

There’s a pinch of genuine curiosity in Ava's voice. “Like what?”

As if you loved me, Vesper thinks but is not brave enough to voice it yet. “Never mind,” she says instead and almost jumps out of her skin when there’s suddenly a strong pair of arms wrapped around her waist.

“I would like to ask you something,” Ava says quietly and drops one very cautious kiss on Vesper’s shoulder like she’s not sure whether it’s welcome or not. Vesper revels in it, feeling as if the kiss left an invisible burn mark through her shirt onto her skin.

“Hold that thought,” Vesper answers, a little too hoarsely, before quickly flipping the last one of crêpes on a nearby plate, snapping the stove off and reaching her small body across the counter to be able to rinse her hands in the sink.

Then she deftly hops on the counter and pulls Ava close by folding her arms around Ava’s neck. Now that Vesper is finally allowed to be physically affectionate with her, she won’t stop. She never will. “Okay, all done,” she says cheerfully. “What’s going on inside your head, baby?”

How curious it is that having the permission to use a simple pet name for someone can feel so ground-breaking. She also finds it a little funny calling a 900-year-old powerful vampire baby but so far Ava hasn't protested the nickname beyond a small frown of confusion.

Ava hesitates, her expression a deep frown. Vesper smooths out the wrinkles on her forehead with the tip of her thumb, smiling fondly at Ava who still slightly hovers over her, even like this.

“The station's rumour about you and the… the reporter man. Your former partner, I suppose,” Ava begins, her face scrunching openly with distaste, and Vesper can feel how her own expression falls in the moment of silence that cloaks them under. “Was it true?” Ava asks quietly, watching Vesper carefully under her pale eyelashes and making the other woman feel immediately like the world’s shittiest person alive.

Vesper sighs. She doesn’t want to be dishonest, but she also wouldn’t like them to linger on the topic of Bobby again. “Would it even matter if it was?” she asks, sighs very deeply again afterwards just for the sake of reprimanding her past self.

Vesper Louise Graves, you’re a fucking idiot, will be engraved onto her tombstone, no doubt. Feels exactly on-brand for her.

“I suppose not,” Ava answers after a long stillness of consideration, but she doesn’t seem to be completely sure about her answer. “Regardless, I simply find myself... curious, nonetheless.”

Vesper cups Ava’s rigid jaw onto her palm and presses a simple kiss on her forehead.

“It’s true,” she admits and is prepared for the shudder that travels through Ava’s whole body in the wake of the confession. Her breath quivers with hidden pain she’s gotten too good at hiding, her eyes pressed closed and throat gulping for breath.

“It didn’t mean anything, Ava, not like you do,” Vesper adds carefully, keeping her voice calm and kind. She rubs the corner of Ava’s unhappy mouth with her thumb, though it does nothing to hinder Ava’s crestfallen expression and Vesper feels painfully aware that her choice of words sounds like someone trying to console their partner after an act of infidelity.

Part of Vesper feels like that is what it was. That she betrayed a trust or some unsigned vow of devotion and oh, does she loathe herself for it more than anything. Rational thinking doesn’t help with bone-deep guilt.

"It was a mistake," she continues soothingly, trying to ignore the rapid banging of her heart, open for the world to see. "One made out of sleep deprivation and--"

Vesper quiets and thinks. Ava looks at her keenly and she's not sure what she should continue with for she doesn't want to make Ava feel even worse by admitting the overhead conversation with Nate that influenced the bad choice more than any other reason Vesper could come up with.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs instead, voice regretful and sad. She kisses Ava's temple, lets her lips linger on the sensitive skin longer than necessary. "I'm an idiot," she says quietly into her ear and Ava shivers at the sensation before pulling slowly away.

"You are not an idiot," Ava says, unimpressed. "You're a very intelligent woman as I'm sure you are aware of yourself."

Oh, perfect-- a clear way out. Vesper grabs it like a lifeline.

"I mean... I sure do love science," Vesper answers with a grin and it's not even remotely a lie. "It's kind of my speciality. Like, did you know that orcas are actually just big dolphins, but sort of whales at the same time? Pretty cool, right?"

"Vesper Louise," Ava sighs. She doesn't appear frustrated, but her voice just has a tiny flavour of kind impatience, like she knows how difficult this is for both of them. "You are deflecting."

"No kidding."

There's a long, pointed silence before Ava's brow arches, a tiny, almost mocking gesture. Vesper almost flips her the finger but she's beyond acting like a child. At least, she usually is.

"I just…" Vesper buries her face in the crook of Ava's neck, a place of warmth and comfort, almost. It helps if she doesn't need to meet her eyes. She swallows. Overthinks.

These words end up being true: "You scare the shit out of me."

Ava stills. "Scare you?"

Why does she feel like crying right now? "You scare me because…" Take a deep breath, Vesper Louise, and just say it.

"Because I love you so much I can barely stand it," Vesper finally says, the words that haunt her every waking moment she spends with Ava. It feels good and absolutely horrifying to finally say them aloud.

"I just… I don't know how to describe it any better. I feel like I'm dying, all the time, just thinking about it. About my feelings for you."

Ava is mute while she speaks and Vesper appreciates right now more than ever. Usually, the vampire's silence is frustrating, just another wall between them, but now it feels more like a comfort, a blessing in disguise.

And Vesper is crying now, failing not to, her eyes wet and lips trembling.

"I don't know what else to say," she murmurs. Ava's hand lingers on the back of Vesper's neck which reassures her that Ava is not going to escape, not this time.

"I was scared and hurt so I kissed him and it meant absolutely nothing to me. I don't have room in my heart for anyone else but you. That's all there is to it. I'm sorry."

Ava is still and quiet but remains relaxed in their embrace, her hand moving soothingly across the other one's back. After a while, she presses the smallest of kisses against the curve of Vesper's quivering jaw.

"Thank you," Ava whispers breathlessly and Vesper isn't quite sure what the words even mean. She's about to open her mouth to ask why when Ava tucks a few messy hair strands behind Vesper's ears and lifts her down-turned chin up with a fingertip.

"Please, do not cry, do not be scared," she whispers tenderly and with devotion. "I am the idiot one."

There's choked laughter and a sneeze against a shirt collar. "No shit," Vesper snorts, her eyes shining with happiness. She has never been in love like this, has never felt so protected and safe as she does every moment with Ava.

"You're my idiot, though."

The words are still questioning and hesitant but Ava smiles, smiles like a thousand suns for how bright it is.

"That I am," she says, her green eyes filled with warmth and gentleness, and dare one say it, love. "As you are mine. Always."

This is when Vesper grabs Ava's ears onto her hands and pulls her closer to kiss her with all that she is, with lips and tongue and teeth, because she can't not to. She's allowed to love and be loved, and be imperfect with faults and downsides, and still be someone of value.

Someone of importance to Ava du Mortain.

"Fuck Bobby Marks," Ava mutters darkly onto Vesper's lips when they part for breath, making Vesper's eyes widen in surprise at the crass language before she burst into giggles against Ava's mouth and kisses the frown between Ava's eyebrows away again.

That's right, she thinks.

Fuck Bobby Marks.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Ten Sides (Part 33)

I don’t exactly know how to tag this but a warning on this chapter as I feel like some of the language can be unsettling for mental abuse survivors and, though the chapter doesn’t contain sexual harassment, some of the language might be similar? Maybe the best way to but it would be to say that there’s a CW for objectification. 

Normally tears don’t come easily to her, not when she has to induce them herself. It only takes thinking back to the not so distant past to coax them forward. She hates the feeling of his hand on hers as he leads her down the hall. She worries that she is appearing too lucid so she lets herself stumble. The man sighs deeply as though she is an inconvenience. As though that isn’t exactly what he wants. “This way he mumbles.”

She knows the way, he has forced her to walk it so many times now. She knows the way though she hasn’t been down this hall in ages. She didn’t expect to have such a visceral reaction to trekking it once again. It comes like nausea. Her stomach drops and her throat runs dry. This time when she shakes it isn’t drug induced.

He chuckles, “keep walking, it isn’t that hard, we’re almost there.”

Which is all the more reason to come to a standstill but she lets him drag her into the room regardless. He leads her to the surgical table, she can smell the vines, their musky, freshwater odor. It leaves her stomach heaving. Agni, she hates the smell of sea plants...

“Get yourself comfortable.”

He knows well that the chill of the table’s metals offer no comfort at all.

“Since you’ve been a good girl, we won’t use the straps today.”

She waits for him to turn before letting out her sigh of relief. She lays herself back upon the table, staring at the ceiling. The same ceiling she’d been forced to stare at before. She shudders, feeling entirely queasy. For a moment she wonders why she is doing this to herself. For a moment she forgets that this is the only thing that will drive the nightmares from her mind once and for all.

Control. She will let old scenarios play themselves out. They will end the way that she wants them too.

They will if she can stave off the panic that comes with such familiar discomforts. A tear slips from her eye. She hadn’t meant for it to do so.

“You’re pretty when you cry.” He purrs as he fixes the first vine to her forehead. “Do you know that?”

And he will be pretty when he is a smear of blood on the floor.

“You’re better off this way. Trust me, you are. You’re more likable when you’re mindless.” He drums his fingers upon the side of her head. “When I’m done with you I’ll let you go back to your friends. I’m sure that they’ll appreciate my work; they’ll find you much more agreeable.”

It shouldn’t, but somehow it still stings. She realizes then, that she has made a mistake. She has made progress, sure. She has begun to rebuild old friendships and make new ones. But, Agni, she is still riddled with her own innate insecurities and the man has seen enough of her mind to exploit those.

If only she could reassure herself that he is wrong beyond a simple awareness that, even if he isn’t, that she’d rather be resented for her stubborn and unlovable personality than to have it wiped clean to make room for an uncannily sugary one. At least if she is unlikable, she knows that she is still Azula through and through.

“Don’t look so forlorn.” Sangyul chuckles. “You aren’t complete yet. But don’t worry, you will be. I’ll fix you.”  

Her breath hitches in her throat. She needs someone to fix her but, spirits, not him. She needs to fix herself. She will fix herself.

“Now I’ve watched the Avatar do this many times and I think that I’ve found a way to use electricity to activate the vines without the Avatar’s help.” He declares. “We’re going to test that on you. I anticipate this hurting.”

She goes tense.

“If you don’t squirm too much, we won’t need the restraints.” He pushes her back onto the table.

She wonders if she should put a stop to this now. But no. No, that wouldn’t be good enough to drive off the nightmares… She can’t keep her breathing level not when lightning sizzles on his fingertips. She hadn’t realized that he was a lightning bender. She hadn’t realized that he could bend at all. Thank Agni, he doesn’t know that she can also bend again.

The lightning surges through the vines, it tickles her head in the most bitingly unpleasant way. She gives an involuntary whimper and his lips curl into a wicked grin. She closes her eyes and works the current away from her head. She hasn’t exactly mastered redirection yet--it still stings terribly. And the vines on her head glow. He sends a few more bolts before withdrawing a long thin metal stick with a clay handle.

“See, this is going to help me guide the electricity. In theory, the lightning will do for me what the Avatar could do with spirit energy…” He mumbles.  He presses the stick to her forehead and drags the current along. The sensation is tingling, agonizingly so. She can feel tiny fingers of lightning touching the strings of her mind.

She closes her eyes. Eyes that water reflexively. The charge dancing in her mind is much more chaotic than Aang’s touch. When he had entered her mind he had entered with clarity, purpose, the ability to gauge how the colors of her aura were reacting to him. The electrical charge has no such ability. It is erratic, touching the fearful muted blue strands of her aura and dying them an even duller grey a sad grey--the result is anxiety inducing. It bounces back and strikes a different strand green. Guilt and self loathing trickles in.

She squeezes her eyes tighter. Her breathing becoming increasingly erratic. She needs control. She needs to take it back. The electricity has none of the guilt and compassion that Aang had, had. Aang...he no longer needs to touch the threads to dye them shades of red and pink. She takes several deep breaths. It is hard to relax with currents running through her mind, harder still with an enemy in such close proximity and damn near impossible with her mind left so vulnerable. But her mind is still hers. She lets herself burrow back in her mind, retreat into a familiar place. She can hear the rush of water as it slaps against the side of the boat, can feel the wind tugging at her hair. Mostly she can feel the flame of her chakra lapping at her belly, hear it crackling in her ears… It is hers, her chakra, her fire, her mind...

The lightning dances around in her head, but it doesn’t reach any further. It no longer corrupts. It can’t corrupt. Sangyul withdraws the metal rod and steps back. Her body jerks and convulses. Only twice--maybe it has been jerking this whole time. She isn’t sure.

“Now sit up.” He demands.

Dizzy, pained, she obeys. She tries to shake the daze from her head. Spirits, it hurts so terribly. Sangyul brushes a curtain of her hair out of her face. “Good girl.” He comments again. Her ears are ringing. “Now stand.”

She isn’t ready to stand, she thinks that her legs will buckle if she tries.

“Stand.” He growls.

She forces herself to her feet. It takes everything she has to remain upright. “Now,” Sangyul smiles. “Your hair has gotten quite long again…”

She swallows, her stomach lurches. Her tears are very real now and it only seems to delight him more. She knows what he is going to ask of her next. He presses a blade into her palm, it nips her skin and several dots of blood blossom upon it. But this time when she raises the blade, it won’t be to her own face where her scar is tingling with more fury than ever.

.oOo.

He finds her in the corner of the room, legs drawn up to her chest, cheeks stained with tears. Aang stoops down and touches her cheek, she doesn’t move an inch. Her eyes are hollow, dim. He takes her hand, her bloody hand and squeezes it. He runs his free hand over her locks. Locks that are clumped together with drying blood. It is smeared upon her face, her chest. It soaked through her shirt.

“Azula?”

She looks up, wordlessly. Her lips part.

He knew that this whole thing was a bad idea.

She souches forward and he expects her to begin crying into his shoulder. But she doesn’t, despite the soft tremors of her body, she remains quiet. He rubs her back as he takes the blade from her hand.

“Aang, what’s going on?”  Zuko asks.

“It’s over.” Aang replies as he hoists Azula upright. She holds her own weight but still leans very heavily into him. “Sangyul is…” He gestures to the body. Its throat is carved into a smirk as wide as the one that never had a chance to leave his arrogant face.

“Is Azula okay?”

“Azula is fine.” She grumbles.

Zuko clears his throat, “I guess I should have asked you directly, huh?”

Aang squeezes her tighter. “Are you sure that you’re okay you just...you know…”

“Killed a man.” She elaborates. “He needed to die, Avatar. I just…” She pulls back and seems to study his face.

He is fairly certain that he knows what she is looking for and he won’t let her find it; he is afraid but he fights to keep it out of his eyes. He knows what else she is looking for, “I love you, Azula.” His lips brush against her ear.

She swallows and finally she returns his hug. Holding her feels like holding a dragon; dangerous, unpredictable. Unstable. He wishes that he wasn’t afraid.

She won’t hurt him. He knows that she won’t and so he scoops her into his arms. “Are you ready to go home?”

“I can walk on my own, Avatar.”

He wants to remind her that she just went through some sort of hell. Wants to tell her that it isn’t a good idea. But he can’t, not here. Not in this room. “Is that what you want to do?”

She nods.

It is instinctual to ask her if she is sure. But he remembers what she had requested quite a while ago and he resists. Instead he offers, “if you get tired of walking, let me know.”

She nods again. He has a pretty decent feeling that she will end up letting him carry her at least part of the way to the airships.

“I’ll send the imperial firebenders to make the rest of the arrests and I’ll meet you on the airships.” He glances at Azula. “Take care of her, please.”

“She can take care of herself.” Aang replies. He just hopes that she’ll let him help for a change. Her hand tightening around his is it’s own reassurance.

[synnefo-nefeli]

I’m a die hard Clerith shipper since 1997, you can’t change my mind but the one thing I won’t tolerate in FFVII aside from shipping wars, is anyone shitting on Tifa.

Don’t. You can like Clerith without hating Tifa. You can find other reasons to not to like Tifa as character, that isn’t “I don’t like her because she gets in the way of my ship”

Personally, Tifa isn’t one of my top tier FF characters, but I am not going to ignore how much of a badass and important person Tifa is to Cloud’s story.

People cite Aerith’s death and burial as the most important moment of FFVII, and yes it’s heartbreaking and an iconic scene. But you know what’s also an important scene?

Tifa in the lifestream with Cloud setting his memories straight. Tifa who up until this moment unbeknownst to the player, is aware that Cloud as he’s presented himself thus far *isnt* the Cloud he thinks he is. She’s been patiently going along with Cloud’s story trying to figure out *what happened* to him/ how he appeared in Midgar boasting of being a SOLDIER while clearly suffering from Mako poisoning/how will she ultimately break this story to him.

Think how hard it was for her to watch Cloud have ptsd episodes and not know how to ground him other than to say “it’s okay. Pull yourself together, let’s keep moving”, because she doesn’t know how or why Cloud is suffering.

But then they fall into the Lifestream together and Tifa helps Cloud sift through the memories warped and altered by the poisoning and Cloud’s severe PTSD.

Only Tifa could help Cloud here- she’s the only one on the Team who has known Cloud since they were young/understands Cloud’s motivations for wanting to become stronger in joining SOLDIER.

This part of the game is beautiful and emotional, and very ahead of it’s time in its portrayal and meta-discussion of PTSD; Cloud isn’t magically healed and back to normal, he never will be, be he’s reclaimed his identity enough that he can begin to heal. I’m replaying the original atm and the moment still holds and I’m hoping that the remake nails this moment. It’s as important and impactful to Cloud as a character as Aerith’s death.

Speaking of Aerith.  Aerith and Tifa become friends from the jump.  Aerith is so respectful of Tifa that twice she makes sure that she isn’t encroaching on Cloud and Tifa’s relationship. She asks Cloud if Tifa is his girlfriend, she reassures Tifa in Don Cornero’s Mansion that she’s not there to steal Cloud from her.  

And yeah, Aerith isn’t trying to steal Cloud or anything - she helped a cute buff guy recover from a fall, asked him for an escort because this time the Turks brought backup to capture her, and got swept up in the ensuing events.  

Hell, Aerith is ride or die for Tifa BEFORE THEY EVEN FORMALLY MEET EACH OTHER. Aerith sees Tifa being carted off to Wall Market and her “some bad shit’s about to happen to this woman if we don’t move NOW” senses go off.  

Cloud’s like “oh let me take you home first and I’ll get my teammates...” and Aerith’s like “YOU NAIVE FOOL? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO CUTE GIRLS IN WALL MARKET? (tbh, considering how naive Cloud can be, I am going with ‘nope’.) WE GOTTA GO! QUICK GET INTO THIS SEXY DRESS BECAUSE MR. SOLDIER YOU’RE NOT COMING UP WITH A BETTER PLAN WE CAN WORK WITH!!” Aerith drives the entire plan to get into the Don’s mansion. She negotiates the dress, the wig, the makeup, EVERYTHING, to make sure that Cloud can pass as a women to come into the Mansion with her.  

Heck, Aerith was going to go into the mansion HERSELF to get Tifa when the guard was like “No dudes allowed.” The only reason they went looking for dresses in Cloud’s size, was because Cloud got all “No, I can’t let you go in there a lone if it’s as bad as you think it is”, (as if he hadn’t just spent the last day with this woman watching her completely kick ass in battle). So Aerith was like, “Fine, you wanna come with me? Get in the Silk Dress, Cloud” with the same energy as Shinji’s Dad.

And when Aerith gets captured, Tifa was like “WE GOTTA GO AND SAVE HER FROM SHINRA!” as well as protecting Aerith through the whole ShinRa office building mission when the groups had to split up.  So yeah, these two queens love and respect each other from the get-go, they put Cloud in his place, tease the shit out of him and Barret, probably had hair-braiding trains at camp, and support the hell out of each other . 

Also, as we see from the rest of FFVII and in AC, Tifa is devastated by her friend’s death and continues to grieve with Cloud.  Tifa is emotionally intelligent enough to see that Cloud’s grief and guilt over Aerith’s death is killing him, but also respects his need for space.  However, when she finds that he has Geostigma and has staying away from everyone so he can just waste away and die as some sort of penance for not being able to save Aerith and zack, she get’s PISSED at him. Tifa is instrumental in bringing Cloud back (again) to his senses.  Making him see, that he doesn’t only belong to himself, he belongs to their family, just as much as they belong to him. The love and fierce protection Cloud has for his family?  They have that for him and believe he’s more than worthy of that love. Tifa takes none of Cloud’s mopey and self-loathing bs, and sets him straight.

So if you think Tifa is only there for fan-service, an annoying bitch who is there to be jealous of Aerith, is there just to make a love triangle so SE can pander to fans on both sides, you clearly

a) didn’t play the games b) missed one of the best female relationships and examples of women supporting women in gaming c) missed how equally important both Aerith and Tifa are to Cloud in their own ways

IMO I see her and Cloud as platonic soulmates- kinda like Black Widow and Hawkeye- they have history, they have shared trauma from their childhoods and in the destruction of Nibelheim, they know what it’s like to grow up in a poor country town that’s been exploited by Shinra on so many levels from the natural resources to it’s culture of military indoctrination and idealization.

Yes, there was an innocent first love, but after certain events, to me- it’s moved beyond romantic attraction between them. They’re always going to be important to each other and in each other's lives.  

Their innocent first love to me, mirrors Zack and Aerith’s, but Aerith moved on and fell in love with Cloud. Yes, Cloud reminded her of Zack, she probably wanted to remain close to Cloud to get closure on what exactly happened to him. 

People often forget, Aerith *knows* Zack’s died and returned to the Lifestream in the way that she knew her adoptive mother’s husband had died before word reached them. When she has her awkward moment in Gongaga it’s not because she’s now realizing that he’s dead, she’s now realizing that these are Zack’s parents and they still don’t know what became of their son. Zack was scrambled into Cloud’s memories due to trauma and because Zack was someone Cloud looked up and was his ideal, combined with the fact that Zack was the only person talking to Cloud for 9 months as Zack carried his catatonic self back to Midgar. But Cloud didn’t *become* Zack, only Zack’s plans of becoming a mercenary and being a former SOLDIER were impressed upon him. If Cloud actually became Zack he would have been chipper, this energetic “I’m a hero!” all around good-guy hero Zack made himself out to be. The Cloud we first meet...isn’t- yes he thinks he’s a former SOLDIER turned merc, but he’s sardonic, arrogant, and too much of “tough guy/lone wolf”...he’s more like his child-like self who was made to feel like an outsider and wants to showoff how much cooler and stronger he’s become.  He didn’t find Aerith because Zack was some how possessing him.  Aerith and Cloud meeting was destiny, and their subsequent relationship is independent of their past histories with Zack. And if Aerith is interested in Cloud because she reminds him of Zack - well...the woman is allowed to have a type.

I digress.

Cloud was in love with Tifa in that - “hey! notice me! If I go off an become this awesome guy, I’ll be worthy of your attention” sort of way, that teens get.  He was a lonely kid, often bullied by the other children in the village (Tifa included), and probably didn’t know *why* he wanted Tifa’s attention- it was most likely Tifa had the most social capital among the kids. And despite her hot/cold treatment of him,Cloud who was desperate to prove himself, figured that if he somehow “won” Tifa’s attention, it would “show them”.  I am not saying that Cloud was using Tifa or didn’t care about her- he does love her. He blamed himself for not being strong enough to save her when she tried climb Mt. Nibel.  But you can’t ignore that his thirst to prove himself wasn’t wrapped up in his crush.  It’s your typical “become a hero, get the girl” idealization.  Cloud was 14 when he left Nibelheim for Shinra’s military. He was a child, just like Tifa, with a naive idea about how the world worked- and the world slapped them both in the face, HARD.  Relationships mature and change over time. Outside forces can and will shift your dynamics in how your relate to the people you love.  Sometimes your first crush, becomes one of your very best friends (happened to me personally so maybe this informs my take on Cloud and Tifa) because when you’re young you don’t understand that loving someone, outside of your nuclear family, isn’t only constrained to romance. This is what I believe happened to them. Cloud and Tifa had the quintessential school yard crush, and when they were reunited years later in Midgar, they still care deeply for each other in a different way than they did when they were 14 and 13.

But those are MY feelings, it’s how I play the game’s attraction mechanics; I am afforded to shape Cloud’s relationships as I, the gamer, see fit. I understand why Cloti shippers ship Cloud and Tifa, and they’re just as valid as Clerith, Zarith, Clack, etc.. but I’m a sucker for M/F platonic soulmates because there needs to be MORE of that in media. I rather Cloud and Tifa be platonic soul mates, co-parenting Marlene and Denzel with Barret, than Cloud “settling for Tifa because Aerith died”. which that explanation for Cloud x Tifa, often used by Clerith shippers, just undermines who Tifa is as a character and her’s and Cloud’s relationship.

But anyway, even though I don’t ship them and Tifa is not my #1 girl for VII, she is a vital character. She’s not there for fan-service.  She’s not there exclusively for a love triangle and to cause tension between Aerith and Cloud.  Tifa is VITAL to Cloud’s story, to the story of VII, to the planet of Gaia. You wouldn’t have VII’s core story without Tifa. And I will go to the mat for her just as hard as Aerith did when she saw Tifa in the cart bound for Wall Market.

So again: you may not ship her with Cloud, or she may not be your fave in VII, but in this house we forever respect the badass queen whose name is Tifa Lockhart

[winterisakiller]

Get Better - Chapter Seventeen

Title: Get Better

Chapter: 17/18

Character: Tom Hiddleston/Cath Richardson (OFC)

Genre: Romance

Rating: Teen and up

Summary: Love. Companionship. Family. These are all of the things Tom Hiddleston desperately wanted. But his life and his choices left that a distant and unlikely prospect. So he did his best to move on and live his life as is. When an opportunity to return to the theater arises, he jumps at the chance and along the way finds that maybe, just maybe, those distant and unlikely prospects are closer than he could have imagined. Sequel to Brave Face.

Authors Notes/Warnings: So as I was writing Brave Face I knew that Tom’s story wasn’t over, even if that particular part of it was. And while I knew, more or less, what the overall ending to the story would be, its taken me a while to figure out the time in between.

Thanks to @redfoxwritesstuff​​​ for being an absolute godsend in regards to this story. I would truly be dead in the water without you. And thanks to @nonsensicalobsessions​ for reading over this for me and easing my worry that it was actually just a bunch of crap. 

So so so sorry for the massive delay in posting. The last few weeks of December were not the best for me (I was in an accident and was fine save for a few bruises, my car was totaled, and then the holidays) and writing just was not in the cards for me. So in the process of writing what was supposed to be the last chapter of this story I found Tom and Cath had other ideas so here is the now second to last chapter of Get Better. 

This story will update on Thursdays.

Tag list: @tinchentitri​​ @theheartofpenelope​​ @noplacelikehome77​​ @nonsensicalobsessions​​ @blacksuitofdoom​​ @just-the-hiddles​​ @wolfsmom1​​ @theoneanna​​ @hiddlescastle​​ @alexakeyloveloki​​ @messy-insomniac-bookgirl​​  @echantedbytwh

Previous Chapter

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 Tom watched as a myriad of emotion swam across Cath’s features, each passing much too quickly for him to truly catch. He could sense the unease rolling from her in waves and, god, he wanted to kick himself for dropping all of this on her. For putting her in such an emotionally chaotic situation. But once he’d started talking there was no way for him to stop all of it pouring out.

  It was freeing in a way he hadn’t truly anticipated, letting all of it out. Telling someone else; sharing the dark and broken parts of him with another person. While those closest to him knew most of what had happened, none knew the full scope of the mess save himself.

 And now Cath.

 “Tom.”

 He fought to ignore the surge of warmth he felt at the sound of his name on her lips. It was stupid, so very stupid for such a simple, small thing to matter as much as it did to him. Her blue eyes were cautious as she watched him watching her. He held his breath, waiting for the hammer to fall. It was inevitable. He knew it. Everything he had laid at her feet, the burden he’d hoisted upon her was too much. The only question in his mind was how she would break it to him. She was a kind, honest person to a fault; that much he knew without question.

 “I,” she started again, her hands wringing together in her lap. She’d dropped her eyes from his and he knew just where this was going.

 “Cath, don’t. It’s alright…”

 Her head snapped up, eyes widening as she pushed herself to the edge of her seat, hands raised in an almost pleading gesture. “Tom no, please…That isn’t what I’m trying to say. Please, just let me...I need time, Tom.”  They sat in silence for several moments before she slowly pushed herself to her feet, grabbing her purse from its resting place beside her chair.

 Tom felt his heart sink. Here it comes. “It’s alright, Cath.” He forced a quiet smile. “I understand. It’s a lot…Too much, even. Just forget it, please. Just pretend it didn’t happen. I shouldn’t have dumped any of this on you. It was completely unfair of me. I’m sorry.”

 Cath shook her head almost violently. “No, Tom. No, that isn’t what I’m saying…I just…I need time to process it. Please, can you give me that? I’m not running, I just need to make sense of all of this before I can…Please, just give me time?”

 Wordlessly, he nodded and watched as she gathered her things, offering him a quiet smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, and left. How long he sat in the brightly lit lounge, Tom couldn’t say. He was vaguely aware of Bobby coming in at one point and settling atop his feet. He reached down without looking and gently stroked the spaniel’s head, “Bobby, my lad.” The spaniel looked up at Tom with his wide, dark eyes, yawning as Tom scratched behind his ears. “I think I’ve just blown it.”

                                                            —

 The cool breeze of the late evening whipped around Cath as she wandered aimlessly down the mostly empty pavements. She hated the way she had all but ran from Tom’s when she’d sworn she would do no such thing. How could she have possibly been so insensitive? Guilt wracked her with every step. But, god, what was she supposed to do with all of that? How was she honestly supposed to respond? She couldn’t shake the way he’d looked at her as she left; the pained acceptance, the quiet resignation. She felt like a monster. A cowardly, selfish, insensitive monster.

 She hadn’t a clue what time it was and frankly couldn’t bring herself to care. So she kept walking, one foot before the other with no set course in mind. As she walked, she played Tom’s words over and over again in her mind. All of the uncertainty and self doubt, the anger and self-loathing. So many things that worked to make him the man he was now. Things she would never have guessed in a million years.

 Of course she’d known there was more to him than the face he presented to the world. She’d seen bits and pieces of that man over the last several months; she wasn’t naive. But seeing the man behind the curtain, in all his broken and tattered glory, was something all together different. I wonder if this was how Dorthy felt in Oz after the curtain lifted.

 Things were now both completely different and exactly the same and Cath didn’t quite know what to make of it. Tom was still Tom. He was still the consummate professional, the warm and laughing man who joked with everyone and took his job seriously. He was still the man who made her laugh and who frustrated her beyond all measure. None of that had changed. And yet…

 Her feet carried her onwards quite without her conscious permission. Cath blinked in confusion when she found herself standing before an all too familiar building. She glanced quickly at the watch on her wrist. It was quickly approaching one in the morning. Probably much too late to call, but she’d come here for a reason. And as much of a pain as Lorn could be, she was a voice of reason and Cath needed that desperately. With a silent plea for forgiveness, Cath walked up the stone steps to the door and pressed the call bell.

 The bell rang once. And then twice before Lorna’s loud voice echoed through the tinny speaker. “Yes?”

 “Hey Lorn, its Cath. I…Um, I know it’s frightfully late but can I come up?”

 The only answer was the buzz of the door unlocking. Cath slipped silently inside and jogged up a narrow flight of steps. Lorna’s flat was on the first floor of the converted warehouse. She’d lived there for ages and despite the buildings quirks (of which she admitted there were many), Lorna seemed to love it. When Laurie proposed it had been a given he would be moving into hers; Lorna wasn’t giving up that flat in a hurry. And Cath had to admit it was a lovely place. High ceilings, exposed beams, plenty of character.

 Lorna was waiting for her, leaning against the door jam, arms crossed at her chest. “What’s happened?”

 Cath gave her a faint smile. “Not out here.”

 While Lorna’s neighbors were discreet, it didn’t feel right blurting out anything (no matter how vague or innocent) where anyone could overhear. Not when he’d told her these things in trust. She owed him at the very least that much.  

 Nodding, Lorna stepped aside and Cath slipped quietly by her. A lamp was lit in the corner of the lounge and a book rested on the arm of the well-worn leather arm chair. She’d caught Lorna reading and thanked whatever deity cared to be listening that she hadn’t woken her friend.

 Dropping her bag on the side table, Cath settled herself on the squashy couch (a relatively new acquisition and admittedly a nice step up from the previous model) and turned to face an equally quiet Lorna. “Is Laurie in?”

 Lorna shook her head. “Nah, he’s on nights this week. Won’t be back til quarter of seven.”

 “That’s rough.”

 She shrugged. “Part of the job. We both knew medical school and then junior doctoring would be a nightmare. We just need to get through the worst of it.”

 Cath reached out and squeezed Lorna’s hand.

 Lorna dropped herself back into her chair, sitting in it sideways and facing Cath. “So spill. I know you didn’t show up at mine for a leisurely chat at one in the morning0. Something’s happened?” She looked pointedly at Cath and raised an eyebrow. “It’s Tom, isn’t it? Something’s happened with Tom? What?”

 Quite without her permission, Cath found herself bursting into tears which startled Lorna. Her friend was up and out of her chair within moments, kneeling before the couch with concern painted across her features. It took several choking sobs before Cath calmed herself enough to speak. “God Lorn, I think I really, really fucked up.”

 “I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that,” Lorna whispered soothingly as she rubbed her hand up and down Cath’s back. “I know you, Cath. Whatever it is, it can only be but so bad.”

 Cath let out a sardonic chuckle and shook her head. “I ran. He opened up and I just…I fucking fled.” The look of resignation that spread across his strained fears tore at her. He’d opened up and she’d done the one thing she promised herself she wouldn’t do. She bloody ran. “God, Lorn. The look on his face…”

 “Whoa,” Lorna cut in, her own brow creasing with worry. “Slow down and start from the beginning. What exactly happened?”

 “I blew up at him in the dressing room after everyone had left. I just…God, I don’t know. This whole bloody thing has been messing with my head for weeks and I just…I’d had enough. So I just snapped at him. Demanded he tell me what the fuck he wanted with me, with whatever it is we’ve been dancing about for months now.”

 “A reasonable request,” Lorna agreed, resting her hand on Cath’s shoulder. “And he agreed?”

 Cath nodded, “He did. After he finished with stage door and I finished getting things in the room back in order, we went to his,” she paused and laughed softly. “He made me tea. God, it was all so strangely normal. Like were weren’t sitting down to talk about the fucked up nature our relationship was twisting into. And I found myself sitting there both wanting to know why and desperately hoping he’d run again. It’s such a mess.”

 “But he didn’t run.”

 “No, he didn’t. None of what he said made any sense at first…He just started talking about that summer three years ago…”

 “Ah yes, that was quite the…spectacle,” Lorna added with a knowing smile and a light squeeze of her hand, “And would certainly explain some of his…hesitancy. But not all of it.”

 Cath shook her head in agreement. “No, not all of it….He took a while to get to the heart of the matter…God, half the time I don’t think he realized I was even in the room…It all just seemed to pour out. And I didn’t know what to say, what to do…Fucking hell I still don’t. So I ran…I asked him for more time and then I just…I ran.”

 Lorna took a deep breath, moving her hand from Cath’s shoulder onto her back and rubbing slow, soothing circles. “So you asked him for time before you left, you didn’t just get up and run out the door, right?”

 Cath nodded.

 “Then that means you didn’t run. You recognized that whatever he’d said was way more than you could process right then and there and you asked for time to do so. And THEN you left.” She paused, pulling her hand from Cath’s back and using it to tip Cath’s up to face her own. “That isn’t running, Cath. That’s being smart and making sure you don’t say or do something without truly thinking it through.”

 “But still…He told me all of this…And I just….” She ran a hand through her dark hair as she floundered for words that did not seem to want to come.

 “You just nothing,” Lorna cut in, reaching out and squeezing Cath’s hand once more. “You need time to take it all in. There is nothing wrong with that.” Lorna smiled softly at her. “But what you really need to do now is think about what he’s told you and figure out if it’s a deal breaker for you or not…Providing you both want to see whatever this is brewing between you through or not.”

 Cath sat silent for several moments, her eyes dark with confusion.

 “Is what he’s told you a deal breaker in anyway?” Lorna asked, her voice gentle but firm.

 Cath shrugged, tears welling in her eyes. “I just…I don’t know.”

 Several more moments of silence passed between them. “Okay,” Lorna started, clapping her hands together. “Is any of what he’s told you involve something illegal or potentially dangerous for him or you?”

 Cath silently shook her head and Lorna nodded decisively.

 “Does it involve any habits you don’t agree with? Is he secretly married? Have any hidden illegitimate children? Into anything kinky that is an absolute no go with you?”

 Cath fought an involuntary smile. “No.”

 “Is he seeing someone else? Sleeping around?”

 Again Cath shook her head.

 “Okay. Is there anything that he told you that in any way changes who he is as person to you?”

 Cath hesitated for a moment, letting Lorna’s question simmer in her mind before finally shaking her head. “No…No, he’s still the same Tom…Just with a bit more substance.”

 Lorna smiled at her. “Well, then, that is your answer.”

 “But can it really be that easy? There is still so much…God, I don’t even know if he’s going to want to hear a damned thing I have to say the way I darted out of there…” The words poured out of her mouth in a rush.

 “If he’s half the man I think he is, despite his less than intelligent moves as of late, then he will. He’s probably just as scared as you are, if not more so. He opened up to you because he trusts you. He clearly values whatever you’ve got between you if he was willing to tell you what he did…”

 “But you don’t know exactly what…” Cath protested.

 “And I don’t need to. All I need to know is that it’s not going to harm you and that you are okay with it. The rest I can take on faith…And the firm threat that if he breaks your heart I’ll tear him into so many tiny pieces they’ll never find all of him.”

 Cath nodded, unable to fight the smirk that spread across her face at Lorna’s threat. She shook her head, uncertainly taking hold once more. “But there is still so much…”

 Lorna sighed. “There’s always something, Cath. You and I both know that. And with him and what he does for a living, it was always going to be more than most. But it’s not something you can’t overcome if you truly want to. What you need to do is make sure you are willing to accept that is part of the package deal. That you are willing to make it work.” She smiled warmly at Cath. “Why don’t you stay here, get some sleep and muse it over. See if things are any clearer.”

 Not taking no for an answer, Lorna pushed herself up to her feet and headed down the hallway. She returned several moments later, arms laden with sheets, pillows, and an older duvet. “The couch is new so it should be a touch more comfortable than last time.”

 Cath snorted, “I’ll take your word for it. Hand them over.” She motioned towards the various linens. Lorna smirked and tossed them. Cath’s laugh was muffled by the duvet that now covered her face. “Nice.”

 “You’re more than welcome. And on this fun note, I’m off to bed. You should be too.” Cath untangled herself from the duvet, shoving it and the other linens aside and onto the couch beside her, a contemplative look painted across her features. “Seriously, Cath. Sleep. Let it be for now. There is nothing you can do about it right now. Sleep on it and in the morning if things are more settled, reach out and see.”

 With that, Lorna turned and padded down the dimly lit hall towards her bedroom. Shaking her head, Cath pushed herself up from the couch and let herself truly look it over. It was new she noted with a wry smile of amusement. The couch was a decent size, wide enough to fit three rather large men. Covered in blue suede it was far fancier than the black cloth one Lorna had for years. It took the space of moments to settle the sheets onto the couch and get the duvet and pillow set to her liking. She sighed looking at her newly made bed, wondering if shed actually be able to sleep.

 Shaking her head, Cath padded her way down the hall and into the bathroom. She found a spare tooth brush, making a mental note to pop round to the nearest corner shop and replace it later that morning. She cleaned her teeth and washed her face before padding back into the living room and settling onto the couch. She closed her eyes, letting her head sink into the pillow. God, this was a mess.

                                                           —

 Cath blinked as she stepped out into the weak morning sunlight. She’d begged off breakfast with Lorna, not that she could have possibly eaten a thing with the way her stomach had twisted itself into knots. Even the small amount of coffee she’d managed to keep down wasn’t agreeing with her. Lorna had all but begged her to go home, shower, and for the love of all things holy eat something before she even contemplated picking up her mobile and calling Tom. Cath had mumbled noncommittally which had amused Lorna not at all.

 Exasperated, Lorna had refused to let her leave until she’d sworn not once or twice but near five times that she wouldn’t call/text/tweet/visit/contact Tom at all until she’d taken care of herself. “You’re no good to anyone until you’ve gotten your own head on straight, Cath.”

 As she made her way down the pavement towards the underground station, weaving in between the gaggle of morning commuters. Her mobile felt like a leaden stone in her bag and it took all her strength to leave it be as she made her way into the station, down the escalator, onto the platform and finally into the crowded carriage. Any notion of pulling said device out during the journey home was firmly squashed by the sheer amount of people climbing in and out of the carriage. Just as well, she figured.

 When the train rolled to a stop at her station, Cath worked her way towards the carriage door and onto the platform. Brushing her hair out face she stumbled through the station and the final two blocks towards her flat. She climbed the stairs with a quiet determination and once at her door, fished her keys from the depths of her bag. She resisted the urge to pull her mobile from her bag and check for any potential missed calls or texts until she’d firmly shut and locked her door.

 Nothing.

 She fought back the wave of disappointment that swelled within her. She hadn’t really expected him to contact her, after all she was the one who had asked him for time. But still, she’d hoped, however unconsciously, that he would. Why, then, was she so disappointed with him when all he’d done was respect her wishes? Frustrated and ashamed with herself, Cath made her way into the kitchen, plugging her mobile in to charge and left the room.

 Right, Cath told herself as she shifted her weight absently from one foot to the other. She could feel the grime of a day and change still on her skin. Shower.

 Stripping as she went, Cath stumbled first into her bedroom to dump her dirty clothes into the hamper and then into the small bathroom. She hoped, however feebly, that after a shower she’d feel more settled, more certain. It was thin hope but she clung to it all the same. Cursing as she fumbled with the shower settings until she’d gotten the water as hot as she could stand, Cath climbed into the shower and slowly felt the tension leave her shoulders and her neck.

 God, she was a wreck physically. All tension and stress.

 Cath stood as long as she could just letting the water pelt across her back and shoulders before she set to work washing her hair and scrubbing her body. It was difficult, tearing herself away from the warmth and comfort of the shower, but her fingers had long since started to resemble prunes and she knew the hot water would run out soon. Sighing, she wrapped herself in a fluffy towel and padded back towards her bedroom.

 Drying herself with quick efficiency, she dressed in a pair of dark grey joggers and a t-shirt that had seen many better days (it was thin to the point of nearing threadbare and stretched from years of wear and use). While things weren’t all that much clearer, she at least felt marginally calmer. She padded back down the hall, towel drying her hair, and wandered back into the kitchen. She forced herself to go through the motions of at least trying to eat and settled on making herself toast. For a brief moment she contemplated coffee but with the way her stomach was still turning, dismissed the idea out of hand.

 As she placed the sliced bread into the toaster her conversations with both Tom and Lorna ricocheted back and forth in her mind. Tom’s quiet resignation and Lorna’s surprisingly sage advice. Across the counter her mobile lay, its black screen taunting her. She fought the urge to check for messages that wouldn’t come. No, she’d asked for time and Tom, despite his faults, was a man of his word. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck,” she breathed into the quiet air of the kitchen.

 It was clear she needed to talk to Tom but figuring out where to start. And it was just as clear that Lorna had been right (though she would never, ever tell her so. If she let that slip Lorna would be nothing short of insufferable), Tom was still the same person to her. What he’d told her hadn’t changed anything. Yes, she was scared; God who wouldn’t be? There was still so many unknowns and uncertainties. While his career had certainly slowed in the last few years, knowing him as she did now, Cath knew it wouldn’t be long until that changed. And just as certainly she knew how much of an impact his career (and all the attention, press and fan wise) could have on any relationship he had. There would always be talk and while she’d been around the idea of fame for several years now, she had never been a part of it. If she took a place by his side (if he even still wanted her to) she would be in the thick of it and honestly it scared her. And she knew it most likely scared him too.

 She jumped as the toast popped up from the toaster and laughed softly at her own ridiculous reaction. Grabbing a plate, she pulled the toast gingerly from the toaster and spread a thin layer of butter over each slice. Right, she thought determinedly, get your head on straight and just rip the bloody plaster off.

 Hesitantly she reached for her mobile and unlocked it. She opened her contacts and tapped on his name. The photo smiling back at her from the screen had her hands shaking slightly. He’d insisted that he take a picture for her to use as his contact image and hadn’t taken no for an answer. When she’d given in, with poor grace she could now admit, he’d made the most ridiculous face and quickly snapped a picture. She hadn’t thought too much of it at the time but now…He must have trusted her a great deal to do such a thing. To not only give her his number (god only knows what his team had made of that) but to insist on taking a picture to go along with it. They’d barely known each other at all at that point and yet he’d been completely at ease with it. Funny that.

 Shaking her head, she clicked on the messaging symbol and found herself staring at the blinking cursor. Right. Short and simple would be best. Cath took a slow, deep breath and typed. ‘Hey, are you free? If so can we talk?’

 Not letting herself overthink she hit the send button and dropped the phone back onto the counter. She resisted the urge to stare at it and instead turned her attention to her toast. Cath ate methodically, not truly aware of what she was eating but knowing she needed to all the same. Half an hour passed with no response and she felt her stomach clench with anxiety.

 Just stop it, she scolded herself. He could still be sleeping….Or he doesn’t want to talk to you.

 Across the counter her mobile buzzed, signaling the arrival of a message. Her heart pounding wildly in her ears, Cath reached for the device. She unlocked the screen and read the text awaiting her.

 ‘I’m free. Buzz when you get to the gate.’

 Swallowing against the thick lump in her throat, Cath typed a quick ‘okay’, hit send, locked the screen, and padded back towards the bathroom. She grabbed a hair elastic and pulled her long hair back into a low bun. It was still quite damp but she didn’t think she could stand taking the time to dry it now. She slipped her feet into the pair of trainers by her bedroom door and headed back down the hall to grab her bag and keys. With a determined shake of her head she pulled open the door and took the first step into an unknown future.

                                                            —

 Tom paced listlessly around the front room, Bobby following at his heel. He’d been up half the night, trying desperately not to think and he could feel the exhaustion of an almost sleepless night weighing heavily on his shoulders. He’d told her everything and now all he could do was wait and see just how it would all play out. As much as he wanted it to work, for Cath to boldly declare that none of it mattered and she wanted nothing more than to take her place by his side, he knew life didn’t work that way. That kind of an ending was fiction, the thing he’d seen splashed across countless romantic comedies. This however was real life and chances were Cath would decide that he and everything around him was simply too much. He couldn’t…wouldn’t fault her for that.

 Briefly, he thought on just how Luke would react knowing he’d told someone everything. He could see Luke’s face apocalyptic with disbelief at doing such a dangerous thing. “Are you sure, absolutely sure, you can trust her with this? God, Thomas, why don’t you just go and call the press?” Maybe it was best Tom waited to call his publicist…Like maybe the next time he was out of the country. Luke meant well and honestly always had Tom’s best interest at heart, but this would be a stupid, chancy gamble in his book. And one that could leave him with an ulcer and mounds of damage control if Cath turned out to be someone he shouldn’t have trusted. But even if this turned her away from him completely, Tom knew she wouldn’t betray him in that way. It simply wasn’t in her nature.

 He’d been so caught up in this thoughts that he nearly missed the chime of his mobile which lay mostly ignored on the side table. It chimed once more before Tom realized just what the noise meant and scrambled to retrieve it. Stop being an idiot, it’s probably mum or Ben.

 But it wasn’t.

 Cath’s name blazed back from the cracked screen (he really needed to take the damned thing in to be repaired). Along with two short sentences. ‘Are you free? If so can we talk?’

 His stomach dropped like lead. Her words had bend short, curt almost. She’d made up her mind then and not in his favor. It shouldn’t feel like such a heavy blow, he reasoned, after all he knew it was coming. But still…

 Tom found himself pacing once more. He knew he should answer her. Say something. But what does one say to the person they know is going to break their heart? The minutes ticked by and he could hear Bobby’s whines grow steadily more uncomfortable. Tom paused and dropped himself onto the couch, absently patting the seat beside him. Invitation taken, Bobby hoped up beside his master and rested his head on Tom’s lap. “I’m sorry, Bobster, I’m shit company right now.”

 Bobby looked up at Tom with wide eyes.

 “I just don’t know what to do.” He quietly scratched the spaniel behind the ears, finding comfort in the silky smoothness of his fur. “I should just get it over with shouldn’t I?” Bobby yipped once and Tom laughed softly. “Okay then.”

 Tom reached for his mobile and opened the message Cath sent. With shaking fingers he typed his reply. ‘I’m free. Buzz when you get to the gate.’

 He hit send and dropped the device back onto the couch.

 A few moments later the mobile buzzed again.

 ‘Okay.’

 Tom let out a slow, deep breath. Now all he could do was wait.

Next Chapter

[wistfulcynic]

Self-Promo Sunday: Four Christmases

Merry Christmas everyone! I wrote this fic last year for CS Secret Santa so I thought I’d share again. Enemies to friends to lovers with family moments and ice skating!  

SUMMARY: When Emma Swan first meets Killian Jones at her sister’s Christmas party, she is not impressed. Over the course of the four Christmases they spend in each other’s company, Killian does his best to change her mind. 

On Tumblr: The First | The Second | The Third | The Fourth

On AO3

-

THE FIRST: 

They say first impressions are important, and Emma had always been a believer in this. It was essential for her job; if the skips weren’t convinced that she was there for a date with them, they’d never fall into her honey trap.

Of course, in her line of work she never spent enough time with anyone for there to be a second or third impression, so the first was pretty much all you got.

Her first impression of Killian Jones, formed about two hours into Emma’s sister Mary Margaret’s annual Christmas party, was not favourable. Of course she noticed his handsome face with its bright blue eyes and very kissable lips, but at the moment of their meeting those eyes were fixed on the naked breasts of her friend Ruby as the lips descended to latch onto her nipple and suck it hard as Ruby leaned back against the bathroom sink and moaned.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” shouted Emma.

“Ems!” shrieked Ruby, pushing Killian away and yanking up her dress.

Killian turned to glare at her, clearly displeased by the interruption. “Are you fucking kidding me,” he growled. “Barging in like this…”

“‘Barging in’? To the bathroom of my own apartment?”

He regarded her more closely, interest sparking in his eyes as he took in her habitual honey-trapping outfit of tight red dress and sky-high heels, her blonde hair in loose curls tumbling down her back. (“It’s— maybe a bit much for a friendly Christmas party?” Mary Margaret had said, but Emma knew that if she were going to survive a whole night with her sister’s very friendly friends then she needed her armour very much intact.)

“Ah, you must be Swan, then,” said Killian, his blue gaze now fixed on her as though Ruby and the party and the entire rest of the world didn’t exist.

“Emma Swan, yes.” She resisted the urge to squirm under his intense regard. The accelerated heartbeat and sudden hot flush across her skin she attributed to outrage. She simply wouldn’t allow them to be due to anything else.

“And do you not knock on bathroom doors here in your apartment, Emma Swan?” he inquired mockingly.

“I did knock,” hissed Emma, unconsciously moving closer to him. “You clearly didn’t hear me.”

“Well, I was rather occupied, love,” he said with an arrogant smirk that made her blood boil.

“I am not your love!”  

“No, indeed. Although that could certainly be remedied, should you wish it… Swan.” His smirk turned lascivious as he leaned into her space, his gaze roaming her body. His tongue flicked out to wet his lower lip and Emma actually shivered, suddenly overcome by images of that tongue and those lips on her skin.

What is wrong with me?

“You’re disgusting,” she hissed.

“Bit harsh, love.”

“Coming on to me in front of your— of the—” she gestured angrily at Ruby, who had been watching the interplay between Emma and Killian with extreme interest.

“Chill, Ems, it was just a bit of fun,” she said, “I took the opportunity to get some hot pirate action, but now that you have completely killed the mood, I’ll be getting back to the party. Maybe another time, Captain.”

“Aye, love,” replied Killian, his eyes still locked with Emma’s.

Ruby shook her head and squeezed behind Emma to get to the door, forcing her to take another step closer to Killian, who favoured her with a smile she would have found charming on a man she didn’t loathe.

“Now then, Swan, care to pick up where she left off?”

“I would rather rip out my own fingernails,” she retorted, the breathiness of her voice revealing the lie of her words. Why couldn’t she breathe?

He laughed, completely unperturbed. “I’d heard you were a tough lass.”

“Woman.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Lass means girl, right? I’m not a girl.”

The smirk returned. “That you certainly are not,” he purred, his voice dark and velvety and dripping with sinful promise.

There was that shiver again. Emma ground her teeth, struggling to think over the pounding of her heart, barely aware that she was biting her lower lip and shifting on her feet, squeezing her thighs together in an attempt to quell the tingling between them. What the hell was happening? There was no way she could be physically attracted to this jerk.

Killian closed the remaining distance between them, leading with his hips, one thumb tucked under his belt. With the other hand he reached up to grasp a lock of her hair, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger.

“So what do you say, Swan…” Maybe, she thought wildly, maybe I could… just this once… “…shall we see just how much of a woman you are?”

And the spell was broken.

Ugh, he was the worst, and now she was furious. Furious with him for ruining his gorgeous face by being such an asshole, with herself for being prepared to overlook it. How could she ever have even considered letting him touch her?

Quick as a flash, she grabbed his hand from her hair and whipped him around, twisting his arm behind his back, smiling in satisfaction at his grunt of pain.

“I would not fuck you,” she hissed in his ear, “If you were the last man on earth and the last hope for continuing the human race.” She wrenched his arm higher. “Do you understand?”

“I do,” he replied, through clenched teeth, “You needn’t press the point, Swan.”

She released him, and he immediately stumbled away from her, wincing as he reached up to massage his shoulder. He turned towards the door, twisting the knob and opening it a few inches before suddenly pausing and closing it again.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She blinked in surprise. “What?”

He turned to look at her for the first time since she’d released his arm, his expression free of suggestion or innuendo. Instead he looked… ashamed?

“My behaviour just now, it was… uncouth. Bad form. I apologise.”

“Oh.” She had not been expecting that. “Uh, fine. Thanks. Still not gonna fuck you.”

The smirk returned, this time merely a wry twist of his mouth, an eyebrow slightly quirked. “I’d never dream of suggesting you would,” he said. “See you around, Emma Swan.”

And with a small, slightly mocking bow, he was gone.

She saw him several more times that night, watched him actually, if she was honest, as he chatted and laughed and charmed his way through her friends and acquaintances. She waited for him to slip up, to show them the nasty, leering side of himself she’d seen in the bathroom, but he never did. In fact, they all seemed to love him.

It really pissed her off.

“So who is this Killian guy anyway?” she asked Mary Margaret when they went to the kitchen together to get drinks for everyone.

“Uh, he’s a friend of David’s.” Mary Margaret was distracted, trying to remember all the drink orders.

“Yeah, but how do they know each other? They seem… kinda different.”

“They met during David’s year abroad. You remember he studied in London? Killian was there too, I think they met in a pub or something.”

“Yeah, he seems like the kind of guy to hang out in pubs,” said Emma, wrenching the cap off a bottle of beer with perhaps slightly more force than was strictly required.  

Mary Margaret gave her an odd look. “Killian is definitely a character, but David says he was miserable in London before they met. Killian helped him feel more at home, introduced him to his friends, invited him to parties and stuff. He’s really a nice guy, Emma.”

Emma snorted. Nice guys didn’t come on to strange women in bathrooms.

“David’s been trying to get him to Storybrooke for Christmas for years now, but he’s always busy. He has to leave again tomorrow, actually. Something to do with his work.”

“What does he do?” Why was she interested?

“I don’t know exactly, he works on some kind of ship. Modern piracy, or something, David said.”

Ruby had called him a pirate too.

As she helped Mary Margaret carry the drinks, Emma found her attention drawn back to Killian, who was sitting on the arm of the sofa talking to… well, everyone, it seemed. He was telling a story, illustrating it animatedly with his hands —nice hands, she noticed, damn it— obviously coming to the punch line just as she arrived because the entire room burst into laughter.

Emma gritted her teeth as she handed him a beer.

“Thank you, Swan,” he said, with a polite smile. She nodded brusquely and turned away. She did not stomp off. She didn’t.

“So you’ve met Emma then,” said David.

“Aye, though I fear I’ve made rather a poor first impression,” Killian replied.

“Yeah, that’s not hard to do. Emma can be a bit prickly. She wasn’t my biggest fan at first either.”

“She’s Mary Margaret’s sister, you say?”

“Half sister, yeah. It’s a sad story. Their dad had a fling with Emma’s mom right after Mary Margaret’s mom died. When Emma’s mom found out she was pregnant, she freaked out and ran away. Their dad tried to find her, but she’d completely disappeared. Emma was found abandoned on the side of a road when she was less than a day old, and no one ever saw her mother again. She got swallowed up by the system then, spent years in foster care before their dad finally tracked her down.”

“Bloody hell.”

“You said it.”

Killian watched as Emma distributed drinks to the rest of the guests. Although she wasn’t unfriendly, her body language was decidedly closed off and unwelcoming, a clear warning to anyone who might try to get too close. Yet she couldn’t quite hide the yearning in her eyes as she watched the easy way the others interacted. She wanted affection, he realised, longed for intimacy, she just couldn’t open herself up to it, couldn’t bring herself to let anyone in.  

Fascinating.

He wished he could tell her that he understood, that he’d also been abandoned by a parent, and that after his brother’s death followed closely by his girlfriend’s he’d closed himself off from people too. It was hard to let anyone in when your only experiences with intimacy had ended in loss and betrayal, no one understood that better than he. Unfortunately, he feared he’d destroyed any chance to connect with her before he’d even really known he wanted to.

Killian kicked himself mentally for what must be the hundredth time in the past hour for having been such a boor in the bathroom. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking.

Although no, that wasn’t quite true. The problem was that he hadn’t been thinking. At least, he hadn’t been thinking with his brain. With his body already worked up by his dalliance with Ruby and his wits dulled by alcohol he had simply not been prepared for Emma, for the sharp green eyes that had pierced clear to his soul even as her soft gold hair had begged for his fingers to sink into it and pull her mouth to his. Immediately Ruby and the party and the fact that they were in the bloody bathroom had flown right out of his head, leaving only Emma and the hitch in her breath that he could feel on his cheek, the way her eyes had darkened as she bit a bright pink hue into her lower lip completely overwhelming his common sense and all his filters.

Oh, and he was a complete arse. That hadn’t helped matters either.

If only he didn’t have to leave early the next morning, he thought in frustration. Given enough time, he might be able to salvage the situation —salvaging wrecks was his job, after all— but instead her negative opinion of him would only solidify in his absence, and she’d probably spend the rest of her life thinking he was a creepy jerk.

He had no idea why this troubled him so much. All he knew was that he’d never felt so drawn to a woman before; even beyond the sexual attraction he sensed a kindred spirit in her and he couldn’t bear the idea of her despising him. Even if they never saw each other again.

He managed to speak to her once more, as he was leaving the party. She had fetched his coat for him (at Mary Margaret’s request and clearly under protest, he couldn’t help noticing), and he allowed his fingers to brush hers, lightly, as he took it from her.

Her sharp intake of breath and the way she snatched her hand away was balm to his soul. Whatever else, she wasn’t indifferent to him.

“So, you’re leaving tomorrow,” she blurted out, as he was shrugging the coat on.

“Aye. I have to get back to work.”

“On Christmas Eve?”

“Much of my work is… time sensitive. And I’ve no family anymore, so there’s not much point in taking the time off when I’d just be spending it alone.”

He had no idea why he’d told her that.

Perhaps he just wanted her to know that he too knew what it felt like to have no one.

Understanding and a hint of sympathy flashed across her face. “You could spend it with David,” she said, in a friendlier tone. “The holidays, I mean. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

“Aye, so he keeps telling me. But I don’t wish to impose.” He hesitated a moment before adding “Perhaps next year.” He zipped up his coat and slung his satchel over his shoulder, then turned and smiled at her, offering his hand. To his surprise, she took it.

On impulse, he lifted hers to his lips and pressed a kiss to the back of it. Her eyes widened, and she swallowed hard, licking her lips as she did, and Killian cursed the gods and the fates, and his own idiot self for ruining whatever chances he might otherwise have had with this woman.

“Happy Christmas, Emma Swan,” he said.

-

[dogbearinggifts]

“Dad Sent Me to the Moon” vs. “Because Dad Made Me”

How Luther and Vanya Talk About Trauma, Part Three 

Before I begin my analysis of Episode 4, I feel I should warn you: I kinda break my own rule here. Namely, I said in the beginning that I would compare Luther’s mentions of his time on the Moon to Vanya’s mentions of her exclusion, and sort of implied I’d leave it at that. But after seeing how Luther approaches his own forcible mutation, and thinking on it for a while, I concluded that I can’t limit Luther’s trauma mentions to the Moon. The moment where Reginald mutates him without his consent and leaves him alone to adjust is too pivotal for his character, the way he talks about it reveals a lot about how he regards his own trauma in general, and it actually sets up an interesting contrast for how he addresses his time on the Moon after the big reveal in Episode 6. 

So, from now on, if Luther or another character brings up his mutation, I’ll include it in my trauma counts. If it turns out I’d forgotten about another trauma Vanya addresses later in the series, I’ll add that one in too. 

Part One

Part Two

Episode 4: Man on the Moon

The first trauma mention in this episode is brief, and it comes while Vanya is walking with Leonard to rehearsal. 

Leonard: You’re doing it again.  Vanya: Force of habit. It’s just—when I was a kid, I felt like I had to apologize for even breathing.  Leonard: Tell me about it. I don’t think my dad ever forgave me for being born. 

Once again, we see Vanya bringing up her own trauma. Although this mention is  more appropriate to the conversation at hand, its presence reveals a lot about how Vanya approaches her painful childhood. 

First of all, we see her, once again, using it to explain her own behavior. Why does she apologize all the time? Because when she was a kid, she felt like she had to apologize for her own existence. She was made to feel guilty for taking up space in a house filled with young demigods, and that habit has followed her into adulthood. 

However, this also shows the progress she’s made in processing her own trauma: She is able to connect her present behavior to her past scars, and she understands how the latter influences the former. Even without her offer to Five to recommend a therapist she’d seen, this remark would be enough of a hint for viewers to surmise she had either seen a therapist or read some quality self-help books. That therapist, whoever she was, helped Vanya untangle some of her childhood and get a clearer idea of why she approaches relationships the way she does. It’s unclear whether Vanya always understood (on some level) that the abuse was not her fault, or if the therapist she saw helped her see that, but either way, the result is the same: Vanya knows that what happened to her was not her fault, and that influences the way she talks about it. 

But most of all, this snippet shows just how readily Vanya addresses her own trauma. She’s not shy about bringing it into a conversation—and not always as a swipe at her sister. Here, she’s not trying to remind Leonard that he was shitty to her in the past; she’s simply telling him what she knows about herself so he can understand her better. And Leonard brings up a bit about his own painful childhood, so they commiserate. This isn’t a bad thing, in the real world. Trauma and abuse survivors often benefit greatly from sharing their experiences and learning that they’re not alone. The fact Vanya feels comfortable addressing her trauma with someone she trusts is not in itself bad. The fact she’s chosen to trust a manipulative pile of walking garbage with a face is. 

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

Shortly thereafter, Allison wakes Luther to show him what happened to Grace. Luther’s reaction is, to put it lightly, subdued—he shows little emotion and his statements are matter-of-fact. 

Allison: Poor Diego. I mean, this is gonna be so hard on him.  Luther: It’s hard on all of us.  Allison: Luther? Are you okay? I mean, you know you can talk to me.  Luther: I don’t want to discuss it.  Allison: Hey, no. Don’t do that. Don’t shut me out. When I left, you were still… I mean, what…what happened?  Luther: Dad sent me on a mission. And it went…badly. I almost died. He saved my life.  Allison: Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve helped you through it.  Luther: I was fine. All right? I am fine. I don’t need any help.  Allison: People are attacking our family. I mean, come on. Talk to me.  Luther: I can’t. I…please. Just leave me alone. 

Here we see the first onscreen mention of Luther’s mutation, and—as with the first onscreen mention of his time on the Moon—it is Allison who brings it up first. And in a similar vein, Luther’s answers are brief, although with the Moon, Luther waxed poetic about the sunrise and his “world turning to white glass.” His answers here, in contrast, could almost be considered bare-minimum sort of answers—he’s saying as little as he can while still answering the question. 

It’s clear that Allison is trying to help. Luther gave her space to talk about her power abuse before; now she is giving him space to talk about his mutation. And he rejects the invitation. She accepted his help prior to this; now he’s saying “I don’t need any help. I’m fine.” And it would be easy to dismiss this exchange as Luther not wanting to appear weak, or as him not caring about what happened to him—but both of those assumptions would be off the mark. 

We learn later that Reginald considered Luther’s mutation a failure on his part. It was an emergency procedure undertaken to pull Luther back from the brink of death, and at the time Reginald likely had no idea what all of the side effects would be. He only learned the hard way, once Luther awoke to find his body was, for all intents and purposes, gone and replaced with a new one. And don’t think I’m defending Reginald here; if he had no idea what would happen, staying with his son until he awoke, ensuring he had someone there to explain it to him and keep him from panic, was the very least he could do, and he didn’t even do that much. 

Now, imagine what the recovery must have been like for Luther. The procedure would’ve been explained to him at some point—maybe by Reginald, maybe by Grace or Pogo—but he knows why he looks the way he does, so he must have heard it from someone. He knows it was necessary to save his life. He knows he’d be dead if it hadn’t happened. But if Reginald considered it a failure, how did that impact his relationship with Luther? Did he never look at his son again without disappointment filling his eyes? Did he simply avoid Luther from that point on, refusing to look at the reminder of how badly he’d miscalculated on that serum? Did he send Luther on mission after mission just to get him out of the house, or did he sequester him away from the world, barking orders to get back to training every time Luther crossed his path? Is he the one who told Luther to hide his body beneath that overcoat, or did Luther choose it himself in response to the shame his Dad taught him to feel? 

Grace and Pogo wouldn’t have been abusive toward Luther, true. But they wouldn’t have been supportive, either. Judging by an earlier conversation with Diego, it seems Grace’s programming will not allow her to speak badly of Reginald, and Pogo is always careful to avoid saying anything that might be construed as ingratitude. Grace would have gone on treating Luther the way she always had, and Pogo would probably have done much the same, but neither would have been available if he needed to vent. Neither would have listened if he’d needed to cry, or scream, or shout obscenities at his dad. They could have given him a refuge from Reginald’s shame and abuse, but they couldn’t have given him what he really needed: someone to say “Holy shit, Luther, that’s fucked up. You don’t deserve all that.”  

With all that in mind, it’s no wonder he is, to borrow Allison’s words, shutting her out. It’s the only way he knows to deal with that trauma. Just shut it out and keep going. But I’d like to note exactly what he says there: “I can’t.” 

This line, to me, shows two things: self-awareness and an acknowledgment of past attempts to come to terms. He’s had time to go over what was done to him—several years, in fact—and it seems he’s tried to find some sort of closure. But he never could. He was never given the tools to do so, because the one tool he needed—an acknowledgement that his dad was abusive—was always withheld from him. His emotions are a jumble of internalized shame and anger and self-loathing and resentment and gratitude, but he can’t untangle the knot and every attempt just leaves him in more pain than he was before. So he leaves the knot alone. It’s not a good solution by any stretch, but it’s all he has. 

***********

Not too long later, we see a very different reaction to Luther’s mutation, when Luther is going through Five’s room in search of clues and Diego happens by. I apologize for the length of this quote, but I don’t think a shorter one conveys everything worth discussing here. 

Luther: Do you know about Mom?  Diego: Well, looks like you got what you wanted. One way or another, right?  Luther: Want to tell me what you’re doing here?  Diego: Looking for Five.  Luther: Oh, and let me guess, you’re gonna save the day.  Diego: It’s what I do. Asshole.  Luther: Really? Last I checked, you mopped floors.  Diego: And what do you do? Sit on the Moon, for four years, waiting for orders? Pogo: Boys! This won’t help us find Five!  Diego: Keep on being a loyal soldier? After everything our father did to you? Luther: You mean save my life?  Diego: No, I mean….turn you into a monster.  Luther pauses a few seconds, then drives his fist through the wall near Diego’s head.  Diego: Can’t hide it anymore, champ.  Luther: He had a difficult decision to make and he made it.  Diego: Grow up, Luther, we’re not thirteen anymore.  Luther: That’s what leaders do, by the way.  Diego: He sent you on that mission all alone. Almost got you killed.  Luther: Yeah, well, at least he was there. Where were you? You and everyone else in this family? You walked out.  Diego: And thank Christ that I did, or I would’ve ended up just like you. Pause Let me ask you a question. When you watch one of those nature shows…does it turn you on? 

If you want to, you can look at this conversation as both a response to Diego’s trauma and a mention of Luther’s, but the mention of Diego’s trauma is so brief and the subject changes so quickly that I won’t count it. However, I will note that the argument begins with a simple, non-accusatory question from Luther: He wants to know if Diego heard the bad news about Grace. That’s all he asks, but Diego turns it into a dig at Luther, which prompts the argument. 

Now, I apologize ahead of time if I get off-topic for a minute, but this scene is one of the most cannibalized in the fandom. Those who dislike Luther to begin with cherry-pick his worst moments—mocking Diego for mopping floors, punching through the wall—and pass them around as if they are things Luther did entirely unprovoked because he’s that much of an asshole. But that is not what happens here. The scene begins with Diego twisting a simple inquiry into a swipe at Luther—for no real reason I can see, aside from Diego’s unresolved anger toward the rivalry Reginald introduced to their relationship—and escalates into an argument when Diego deliberately tries to enrage Luther. 

Knowing Diego, and knowing what he says of Reginald before and after this argument, it’s clear that his digs at Luther have a purpose: He wants Luther angry not at him, but at Reginald. He wants Luther to see that Reginald was the villain and get him to place the blame for his problems where it belongs. But the end does not, in any way, justify the means Diego chooses to employ. 

Think about how little Luther says to Allison regarding his mutation. “Dad sent me on a mission. And it went badly. I almost died. He saved my life.” How he tells her not just that he doesn’t want to talk about it, but that he can’t. Think back to the lengths he went to in order to hide it. Unless Reginald kept the Academy at a temperature more suited for snowmen than for people, it can’t be comfortable to wear that overcoat indoors all the time. Think about the way he stared at his body in the mirror, as if it were an unwanted stranger. Luther might have come to accept accept his body on the most basic “I’m stuck this way so there’s no point trying to change it” level, but he certainly is not okay with it. 

So what does Diego resort to in order to get a rise out of him? Body-shaming. 

I don't think it’s possible to overstate how devastating this is for Luther. If you watch this scene again, pay attention to his expressions. He’s angry, yes, but he’s also hurt. Diego has found his sore spot and is stabbing at it repeatedly—similar to the way Leonard later tries to enrage Vanya with chants of “Ordinary! Less than ordinary! Not special!” And just as the attack on Vanya comes from a man she thought she trusted and loved, the attack on Luther comes from his own brother. It’s not just devastation Luther is feeling; it’s betrayal. 

***********

Running count of trauma mentions (cumulative of all episodes thus far)

Own Trauma: Vanya 3, Luther 3  Trauma of Others: Vanya 1, Luther 1

Read on to Part Four

[truthbeetoldmedia]

The 100 6x13 "The Blood of Sanctum" Review

Well, The 100 fans, how are we feeling? Tonight we watched the last season finale The 100 is ever going to give us (the next will be a SERIES finale) and I must say, this is perhaps the first time a finale from this show has left me unsatisfied. Let’s delve into why that is:

Closing Season 6 was always going to be a bit of a challenge. We entered this season with perhaps one strong “A” plot and a minor subplot. We walked out with approximately five more plot lines and none of them are ones I’d consider minor. It’s astonishing to me that The 100 managed to craft a finale that not only didn’t close a single one of it’s existing plot lines adequately but also opened up, quite literally, an entirely new can of worms (anyone remember when worms where a thing on this show?). Let’s run through the list shall we: 

Worm Number One: Have You Seen This Boy?

We start the season with the mystery of the Primes, and although we now know exactly what they are and the vast majority of them have been floated, we are left with Russell the Eighth and Priya’s mind drive, clutched securely in the grasp of a now brainwashed Jordan. If it wasn’t obvious enough that Jordan is “under the influence” so to speak, we watch the camera focus on his adjuster while he chats with Bellamy in the finale, proclaiming that he is fine even as he spouts out pieces of information that would make me question that if I were in Bellamy’s shoes. The Prime plot, which could have ended this season, will now make its way into Season 7, where the cult that we were introduced to in this final episode will have a more active role in disrupting the peace. I wouldn’t be surprised if a large part of Jordan’s role next season is finding a new host for Priya and I can’t bring it in me to be upset about that. 

In a season where Jordan Jasper Green was one of the most anticipated new additions to the cast he was sorely under-utilized. We listened to various characters recite Monty’s charge to do better all season, but they all failed Monty and Harper where it mattered the most: their son. Shannon Kook is an expert at bringing a Harper-esque zest for life mixed with Monty’s desire to live better and it was a promising combination and one that was lost after episode 5 of this season. While I understand the appeal of first love, especially when you’ve never met anyone who wasn’t related to you or one of your parent’s friends, it is frustrating to me that so much of Jordan’s why is trapped in Priya nee Delilah. It would have been far more interesting to see Jordan take up the mantle Monty and Harper left behind and become the new moral compass of the group, even barring that, I would have been more interested in watching this man-child explore a world that was bigger than the space of the Eligius ship. Opportunity was squandered there and we’ll never get a return on the investment we made. 

Worm Number Two: Prime Schmimes

Along with Jordan holding on to Priya’s mind drive comes the need for another host and I have an idea of where he might find one. As I’ve mentioned in my YouTube videos and Twitter threads, they don’t make people Nightbloods for no reason. You need look no further than the Griffin ladies to see that: Clarke, Madi and Abby were all made Nightbloods (born or created) to further storylines and Echo (Ash) will be no different. Although she was spared the privilege of hosting Simone, she is currently the only available Nightblood we know of. Russell is also aware of her status and in the finale he quite clearly states that he wants revenge. He may not be able to bring his family back, but all it takes is one mole in the works to help him achieve that, and he has at least two (Jordan and the adjuster — not to mention the possibility of all of the Children of Gabriel who were brainwashed as well). It would also be revenge for Ryker at the very least — his mother’s mind hosted in the body of the woman who murdered him. While Echo does have the neural mesh (she entered the City of Light as well) and has not been exposed to an EMP, we learned in this episode that Russell was careful to examine Abby before he put Simone’s drive in her — to ensure that there was no failsafe. It’s entirely possible that they can shock Echo with an EMP and implant Priya’s drive and further move Russell’s revenge plot along. After all it was love that drove Gabriel to create immortality, what will love drive Jordan to do?

Worm Number Three: Skynet? Is That You?

Some foreign line of code has managed to find a home in the Eligius ship’s hard drive. While trying to save Madi (and we’ll discuss that in a bit), they essentially crash the Flame, allowing them to remove it without the need for the passcode. While this is happening, Madi and the Dark Commander are fighting a bitter battle for control of her body. I believe that — if one isn’t paying enough attention — it’s easy to say that the reason the Dark Commander disappeared from Madi’s body is because they removed the Flame, but I’m going to hazard a guess that he — like any other virus — realized his removal was imminent and adapted to the situation, leaving Madi’s brain and uploading himself into the Eligius computers. 

What does that mean for Season 7 and how will we see him return? Yana Grebenyuk (@yanawrites on Twitter — make sure to watch this space for her finale write up!) postulates that we might actually see him in two places next season! As a rub to Diyoza, who laughed at Gaia teaching Madi how to control the Flame (anyone remember what Gaia says during this scene: “A mind can’t be in two places at once”) Yana speculated that she might actually be trapped with him in the, wait for it, past! We know that the anomaly deals with time and space and we know that when Octavia went in she was gone for some time. Now it seems we have an estimate on how long. Hope is at least 20 years old when she stumbles into the tent and she and Octavia clearly know each other well. As Hope embraces Octavia, stabbing her — much as Clarke did with Finn — she tells her “He still has her” when Octavia asks about Diyoza. Hope’s appearance is very much Grounder-chic and it would also tie into why we learned about Indra seeing the Dark Commander once when she was young. 

Further, with his consciousness now uploaded onto the Eligius ship there’s no limit to what the Dark Commander might be able to get up to now. Maybe this is the true beginning of Terminator’s Skynet. With all of that being said: it is rather disappointing that, even with the close of “Book One” a part of the series’ final struggle will still boil down to the Grounders. It’s been 131 years, two nuclear apocalypses, a new planet and a new cult system (the Primes) and we still can’t seem to shake them. It feels like the show should have been called “Grounders” instead of “The 100” for the amount of focus given to them and it’s disheartening. At least for me. 

Worm Number Four: The Little Whipping Girl

Clarke, my poor girl. Bradbury may be Bellamy’s middle name, but hers is definitely suffering. This season we’ve watched Clarke be isolated both physically and emotionally from the people she’d once called friends. We watch her put herself out there and have a bit of fun, only to wind up almost kidnapped and taken to the Children of Gabriel. We watch her die, fight viciously inside of her own mind to survive, almost die again, be revived by Bellamy and then realize that while she was dealing with that struggle, her child was losing her own mental battle, and then we watch her lose her mother.  

No one person should have to be strong enough to deal with all of that loss and yet Clarke manages it effortlessly every season. We know (thanks to Executive Producer Jason Rothenberg’s Hypable interview with Selina Wilken) that Clarke will be dealing with the grief of losing her mother as Season 7 begins. While I am grateful that she is being given the opportunity to do so, because grief is something that is so often rushed through on this show, I am also concerned about how this will affect Clarke’s issues with isolation. For six seasons now, Clarke has consistently been on the outside of the group looking in, due in large part to her status as lead, forcing her to be the character we follow around to each new location and each new group. Although Jason notes that Clarke will be perhaps even more protective of her family with her recent loss, I don’t necessarily know if the show has the chops to make that work. 

It doesn’t help that her best friend (script confirmed) Bellamy now has his own issues to deal with, which leads me directly into...Worm Number Five.

Worm Number Five: We Call That….Regression?

Many of you reading this initially found me via Tumblr or Twitter or YouTube, all places where a huge part of my online persona is my love for and defense of one Bellamy Blake. He has been my favorite character from the moment he appeared on the screen in the pilot episode and I have been in his corner ever since. We’ve watched him, over the course of six seasons,  mature, moving past the unhealthy relationship he’s had with Octavia since her birth resulted in both siblings carrying a weight they were too young for, growing into a man who left behind the self loathing and resentment of the past and stepped into the self love. If you’d’ve asked me yesterday what my favorite arc on The 100 is, I would have replied without hesitation “Bellamy’s character arc!”

I’m no longer sure I can do that. After the events of last season, which culminated in Octavia putting Bellamy in the pit alongside Gaia and Indra and forcing them to fight to their possible deaths, burning the farm Monty cultivated and then forcing her people into battle out of necessity, it seemed as if Bellamy was finally ready to separate from the lifelong co-dependent relationship he shared with Octavia. The Season 6 finale has appeared to effectively erase that growth in one fell swoop. Just a few episodes ago we listened as Bellamy told Octavia she was still his sister, but she could no longer be his responsibility and this episode we watched as Octavia was stabbed and misted right out of Bellamy’s arms and into the anomaly. The season ends with Bellamy calling Octavia’s name as the anomaly recedes once more. 

In post-finale interviews (again see Selina’s Hypable link above) Jason is clear that finding Octavia is a huge part of Bellamy’s drive in Season 7 (going so far as to compare it to Bellamy’s desire to save Clarke in Season 6), and while I can admire, respect and even understand a brother’s desire to find a lost sibling, it’s a huge walkback (literally almost 360 degrees) on Bellamy’s arc since Season 1. What is the point of watching a show, seeing its characters evolve and grow and change and mature if, in the final season, we watch them revert back to who they were in the pilot episode? Will Clarke always be a girl who’s lost a parent abandoned on a new world? Will Bellamy always be nothing more than his sister’s keeper? Will Octavia always be hidden away somewhere? People aren’t watching television shows to see characters wind up where they began. We watch for the hope that our current situations (whatever those may be) won’t last forever. That growth can be permanent, that who we are now doesn’t have to define who we become, but as we head into Season 7, I’m not entirely convinced The 100 is aware of that. 

Worm Number Six: Madi’s Mad as a Hatter...or is She?

Madi’s plot is perhaps the only one that was wrapped up (even as the Dark Commander clearly continues his nefarious deeds elsewhere) but it was done so haphazardly I was left unsatisfied. We have watched Madi deal with the Dark Commander in her head all season, we’ve watched as she’s slowly folded under his control and we watched her break when it’s revealed that Clarke is dead. It does make sense that learning Clarke is alive would bring her back. What doesn’t make sense is how swiftly that’s dealt with. It took the Dark Commander days or weeks (I’m unsure of Season 6’s timeline right now) to successfully set up a home in Madi’s brain and simply seeing Clarke threaten suicide (and also — what a message to send to...lots of people...I understand that Clarke went through a lot this season, but even with the loss of your mother, even with the potential loss of your daughter, you can still fight) was enough to snap his hold on Madi almost immediately. 

It’s not realistic. I can understand the need to bring Madi back into the picture, but I think it might have played a bit better if the struggle was more prolonged, perhaps even something they needed to put her back into cryo until next season to discover. Unfortunately the choice was made, and a plot line that bit significantly into others ended with extreme prejudice in about two seconds flat. 

Worm Number Seven: Make it Make Sense

(The above image is NOT edited.) The constant will they, won’t they of Bellamy and Clarke’s relationship needs to end now. Even as Jason tells fans that we (as a collective unit) all misunderstood what Bellamy’s drive was in saving Clarke (again see the Hypable interview linked above), he tells EW that "There were a few seasons in the middle of the run where we didn't know, we legitimately were on the bubble and were always trying to engineer something that could possibly be a series ender and a season ender, you know? I have for a while known thematically and like you say, in a general way, what I want the ending to be. I knew what I wanted it to feel like, I knew what I wanted it to say."  

When you look back on the middle season finales (which for a seven season run would be Seasons 3-5) Jason has been crafting a very clear endgame, and that endgame is Bellamy and Clarke, together, facing their next adventure. 

Season 3 ends with Bellamy and Clarke, in the  Polis throne room, standing in front of Lexa's throne. They are united (literally touching), watching their people recover from the effects of ALIE, some wounded (like Jaha), others embracing the people they love (Kabby, Briller, Memori). Clarke delivers the news about the reactors melting down, that they haven't won just yet, and then Octavia kills Pike and walks away. Season 3 ends with Bellamy and Clarke — together — preparing to face their next challenge. 

The Season 4 finale is a bit more ambiguous, because Bellamy and Clarke are physically separated but the notes are still there. We come into Clarke making a radio call and she is speaking to Bellamy specifically. She says "I still have hope" — that call back to the "You still have hope?/We still breathing" moment that sent the Bellarke fandom into ecstatic spirals of joy and — as a ship bursts through the atmosphere — Clarke stands, her breathing quickens, she smiles and she says "Never mind, I see you" and "I See You" (Confirmed by Tree Adams to be written for and about Bellarke), plays in the background.

Even as we watch Clarke's joy turn into apprehension when she realizes that's NOT Becca's rocket and instead says prisoner transport — if the series had ended here, in this moment — it's possible that it could have been Bellamy (and the others) walking off of the Eligius ship and in fact, that was the most common theory during the hiatus: that Bellamy and the others had joined up with the Eligius crew to combat the fuel issue, which wasn't far off. The series would have ended on the assumption that it was Bellamy walking off of that ship, reunited with Clarke and together again, facing the challenge of repopulating a barren Earth (after they dug out the bunker of course) and because we didn't have any updates on the Space Squad until Season 5 premiered, we also would have been left without the knowledge that Bellamy and Ash (aka Echo) were a thing. 

Season 5 ends with Bellamy pulling Clarke into his side, both crying, both leaning on each other (with Jordan in the background) united and about to take on this journey (the discovery of a new planet) — together — again. And yes, I know a lot of people were upset about this ending because Bellamy and Ash/Echo were still a "couple", but again, I want to point you back to Jason saying that he was writing these as series finales and he knew what he wanted those finales to feel like and what he wanted them to say.

The theme of the Season 3-5 finales has always been "Bellamy and Clarke, together, facing the next adventure." and the feeling has always been that Bellamy and Clarke and their relationship to one another are the center of the story, that if the story ends here, Bellamy and Clarke are together. I'd even go so far as to say that the theme of Season 4 and Season 5's finales specifically has been about hope and renewal. The opportunity to do and be better in a "new" place. 

And that’s fine and dandy. What’s not fine is when this relationship is deliberately given romantic beats, framing and lines in an effort to draw or retain an audience with no payoff. Again, people are not watching television for the never before seen plot twists. People watch television for the characters. They stay for the characters. Friends is one of the most successful shows of all time on the strength of the relationships it showcased as an example, and the same can be said for many other great shows. It’s when showrunners forget that, believing that the story they are so desperate to tell is more important than the audience who have given them the ability to tell that story, that everyone suffers. One need look no further than the recent endings of Game of Thrones and Veronica Mars for evidence of that. 

Make the story clear. Make it plain. Your audience deserves that. 

In conclusion, The 100 season finales work better when they are written as series finales. Given the knowledge that he would have one more season to close out the show the way he wants to, Rothenberg leaned too far into the chaos of Episode 12 (“Adjustment Protocol”) and left audiences with a bitter, unfinished taste in their mouths. With only 16 episodes left to satisfactorily wrap up all of the arcs he opened or left open this season, I’m not convinced we won’t be seeing a repeat of Game of Thrones. 

April’s episode rating: 🐝.5

P.S. A Good Worm: 

If you’re like me and you need something to look forward to as we enter the long hiatus before the final season of The 100, think about making your way to Conageddon! Located in Boston, Massachusetts, and this year held on April 3rd-5th,  it is The 100’s only American convention and as someone who’s been before (and will be back) it’s a weekend packed with fun and friends. Tickets haven’t gone on sale just yet, but make sure you watch this space for more information, including cast information and ticket pricing!

[bthump]

How do you feel about Casca and her relationship with Griffith? Especially with her possibly trying to protect him from getting hurt again. I am interested to hear your thoughts. Do you think she has no concept of love? Or that she genuinely loved Guts?

Overall I actually really like Casca’s relationship with Griffith, and I think if a) Berserk was a very different story and b) Miura didn’t make Casca’s life revolve around romantic pining, I’d really love them as a v interesting platonic brotp style relationship with lots of layers and depth.

Casca has a v unique perspective and insight on Griffith, with her combination of hero worship and the way she’s seen him at his worst (pre-torture).

She’s aware that he hides himself behind a veneer of perfection, that he feels immense guilt, that he buries his emotions. She watched him self harm in front of her after prostituting himself to a pedophile. She’s more aware of his vulnerable humanity than even Guts is.

And knowing that he’s human, seeing some of his darker and sadder flaws first hand, only makes her admiration grow. I love that. I think it’s sad for Griffith because he doesn’t know this and knowing it would’ve probably really helped with his self loathing issues, and I think it’s a little… messed up, the way Casca sees Griffith’s ability to suppress his feelings and be perfect for everyone as a strength, but it’s really interesting as a dynamic.

When it comes to Griffith’s point of view, I think it’s kind of a shame that he remained so closed off to her. Casca and Guts have very similar feelings towards Griffith, but where Casca is largely shut out after he turns and puts his hand on her shoulder in the river, Guts is let in. So Casca and Griffith feel kind of like a missed connection. Not in a romantic way, but in a “if things had been slightly different between them, they could’ve been great mutual support for each other” kind of way.

If the river scene had gone a little differently, like say if Casca had assured Griffith she didn’t think he was dirty instead of asking why he was with Gennon, or if Griffith had allowed himself to accept her comforting hug, I think Casca could’ve been solid, affirming emotional support for Griffith. If she knew about the assassinations, say, she’d’ve been fine with them. She probably would’ve been a better assassin than Guts, too, lol.

lbr, Griffith desperately needed someone to see all of him and tell him he wasn’t a monster, and Casca would’ve been great at that. For Casca’s part, she wanted someone to prioritize her and trust her enough to accept her emotional support (as we see pretty clearly in the scene where she and Guts fuck.) And I think getting this platonically would’ve been just as good or better for her than getting it with a side of sex.

But at the end of the day it was Guts who Griffith turned to (and tbqh the fact that Casca’s jealousy is explicitly because she’s in love with Griffith absolutely means that Griffith trusting Guts, prioritizing Guts, and wanting Guts to see all of him, ie exactly what Casca wanted to be to Griffith, all boils down to attraction and Griffith choosing Guts over Casca as essentially his emotional support because he’s in love with Guts and not Casca. But I digress) and Casca’s relationship with Griffith never met its full potential.

But despite that, they still have a really cute, generally fairly positive relationship before everything goes down. Griffith sends a search party not just for Guts but also specifies her when they fall off the cliff. When they get back Casca’s falling over herself apologizing and Griffith just smiles and welcomes her back. At Guts’ prompting he mentions her dress to her just to say something nice and slightly make up for letting her think he was dead. When he first saves her she becomes devoted not just because he threw her a sword, but because he helped calm her down after she killed the dude, seemed to empathize with her (”he just nodded, deeply and slowly,”) and gave her a blanket. After the rescue there’s a moment where he sees her crying near Judeau from afar and clearly wishes he was still able to comfort her.

Idk honestly their relationship isn’t perfect, it has some sadness, some missed opportunities, some dark moments (I’m talking pre-Eclipse, I’m not touching Femto bc as far as I can tell the Eclipse rape had nothing to do with Casca or Griffith’s overall relationship with her and everything to do with Guts), but overall I think it’s a sweet, mostly positive friendship.

Ok lol sorry about that essay that doesn’t even address most of your ask.

As for Casca trying to protect Griffith from getting hurt, I think it makes perfect sense from a character perspective, though I’m a little cynical when it comes to my thoughts on what Miura may have intended. Like, eg, I think Casca’s violent diatribe against Guts near the waterfall was meant to be a mix of genuine anger over the way he broke Griffith, partially projecting her own feelings of abandonment, and partially her feelings of jealousy getting involved too - why couldn’t Guts have stayed for her, and why couldn’t she affect Griffith the way Guts could? We see both issues come up shortly after - jealousy right before she tries to kill herself, and raging at Guts for (she thinks) wanting to leave her behind again after they have sex.

So I guess now I’m thinking Casca’s feelings when she tells Guts to leave are probably a complicated mixture of like, everything.

I think what you described plays a large part. She knows how Griffith feels about Guts, and that seeing her and Guts together every day would be torturous for him. Also lbr, a few days with another dude aren’t enough to erase anyone’s like, near decade of feelings for the first dude, and we see them come up again during the rescue mission, when jealousy starts creeping between Guts and Casca, so she’s not exactly over her feelings for Griffith, which includes wanting to protect him.

I think there’s also an element of Casca being self-sacrificing, telling Guts to leave to pursue his dream because she thinks Guts’ dream is the most important thing to him, and she believes Guts staying would be a sacrifice on his part.

I think Casca is aware enough of the weird love triangle between the three of them that she knows if they both stayed with Griffith things would get weird and fucked up real quick for everyone, probably especially Griffith. She’s jealous of Guts and Griffith, Griffith loves Guts and would be jealous of the relationship between him and Casca, plus he’s the most vulnerable, and I think there’s a strong indication that Guts would be caught in the middle, but probably would end up prioritizing Griffith.

AND THEN there’s another aspect to Casca pushing Guts away that I think could, at least in theory, be the strongest motivating factor, at least when it comes to my interpretation of Casca and my love of flawed female characters who make terrible choices just like the men do, which is that she’s been given an opportunity to take Guts’ role.

Now Griffith needs her. Now she’s the one who can comfort him and Griffith finally accepts her comfort. And sex is also maybe on the table which, taking the narrative at face value, is something Casca also wants.

There is a “yet,” there, ofc. I think Casca’s feelings are mixed. She genuinely wanted to leave with Guts, she was probably glad of the chance to get over her one-sided feelings for Griffith, but at the same time, she still has those feelings.

So like, ultimately, once she’s faced with the reality that Griffith desperately needs someone who loves him and she can’t just take off with Guts, there are three options available: her and Guts both stay, only Guts stays, only Casca stays.

Both her and Guts staying would be an unmitigated disaster of jealousy issues, only Guts staying would fucking suck for Casca (right now from her pov, in the long run lbr it would by far be the best option bc Casca needs to find herself away from dudes), but only Casca staying would give her something she used to desperately want, and still does want on some level.

So she tells herself Guts would be unhappy without his dream and he shouldn’t stay for his own sake, and tries to send him off, but the actual driving emotional reason is that only one of them can stay with Griffith and she wants it to be her.

(For the record I think this would’ve been a huge mistake for Casca even if the Eclipse didn’t happen. Despite Griffith’s nightmare vision I can’t imagine her being happy living a quiet domestic life with him. But what’s the point of a Berserk character if they’re not making huge mistakes?)

lol man this is a lot longer than I thought it would be, and I think a lot of this is a stretch and probably not what Miura intended, but it’s the explanation I want to land on.

Oh and finally, just to briefly hit the last two things, I’d say Casca can’t tell the difference between love and a feeling of obligation she gets when someone saves her. Both her feelings for Griffith and Guts started after being saved by them, and both manifest in wanting to comfort them and be their emotional support and give them something in return for what they’ve given her.

“Not just being given to… maybe I can give something as well.”

So while maybe Miura wanted us to believe Casca loved Guts, or could’ve fallen in love with Guts (tho idk maybe this is purposeful, I talk a lot about how I think he deliberately went a relatively non-romantic route with Guts and Casca’s hook up), I don’t think she genuinely loved him, or Griffith for that matter, in a romantic sense.

@poppy-moon because you asked a while back re: meta about casca and griffith and now I’ve written something lol. and the first half is more the positive kind of thing you were suggesting.

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

Ignored (Levi x Reader)

Am I hated?

[Name] didn't understand what was going on. What was happening? Why was this happening?

Why was she being treated this way?

Just a few months ago everything had been fine. They'd been preparing to go on the 56th Expedition of the Survey Corps. [Name] had talked to each of her squad members, confessing her worries to Petra, who was like a sister to her. The other woman had assured her she'd do fine and if she simply followed orders, everything would go smoothly.

She'd then proceeded to talk to Eld, who'd been kind enough to make certain she was prepared by reviewing the formation that Commander Erwin had designed with her. After ensuring that she was thoroughly aware of its separate sections, their respective functions, the emergency signals, and the overall purpose of the formation, he'd patted her shoulder and told her Levi would look after her, prompting her to blush.

Gunther had told her not to be too nervous about it and distracted her from her stress by relating amusing stories of his days as a young cadet, before being handpicked by Levi himself to join the Special Operations Squad. His tales had loosened [Name]'s nerves quite a bit, and she'd cheerfully thanked him before making her way to Oluo.

Of course he'd spoken to her in his normal condescending and arrogant manner - according to Petra, he'd only become like this after joining the Levi Squad, which made [Name] suspect he was attempting to imitate their captain - but [Name] had always found it quite funny and a useful way to relieve the concerns and dangers looming over the horizon.

Then, finally, there had been Levi himself. He'd taken one look at her, deduced what she was concerned about, and had kissed her softly, promising that she would be completely fine.

"I'll protect you," he had said.

The Expedition came and went, but it was only then that everyone in her squad - and even Commander Erwin, to a lesser extent -  had begun to act strange. Initially they'd been quiet, subdued, and melancholy, especially Levi. [Name] had attempted to ask him what the matter was, but he'd completely, totally disregarded her, and to top it all off, he'd walked away without even so much as glancing her way.

Following that peculiar event, the bewildered and hurt [Name] had turned to Petra, Eld, Gunther, and Oluo, inquiring what was ailing her lover. They, too, gave her the same treatment. They didn't answer her. They didn't look at her. And, eventually, they walked away, leaving her alone, confused, and afraid.

Why was everyone ignoring her?

Why were they treating her so coldly?

One morning, in the mess hall, [Name] spotted the squad sitting in their usual spot. Her gaze fell to the one empty chair next to Levi's that was hers, but, just like it had been for the past few months, there was no food where she sat. Levi, Petra, Eld, Gunther, and Oluo ate their meal, not stopping to offer [Name] anything, not stopping to even converse with her. When they had finished, they left quietly, once again ignoring the [hair color]-haired woman staring after them in confusion.

"Petra!" [Name] called, tapping her friend on the shoulder. The ginger said nothing. She didn't even turn to look at [Name]. Angry and hurt, [Name] shouted in her ear, "Petra!" but there was still no response.

"Why are you all ignoring me? Erwin!" [Name] called, seeing the blonde haired commander walk by the squad. "Why is everyone here not paying any attention to me? Have I done something wrong? Is this a punishment? What did I do?"

[Name] wasn't normally this talkative. In fact, she was a rather composed and elegant woman, though friendly and warm with her close comrades, but being ignored and shunned for months on end was certainly changing her. She was becoming increasingly desperate, and the feeling of being alone in the world gnawing at her soul, gaining strength every passing day.

She continued to ask Erwin, trying to determine what exactly was causing everyone to treat her this way. What had she done? They'd been ignoring her, disregarding her very existence, for months. She didn't understand it.

And even Erwin, the fair and impartial Commander of the Scouting Regiment, said nothing in response to her question. He, like everyone else, refused to even so much as look her way, face stiff.

"I don't understand!" [Name] cried out. "Levi!"

Setting out in search of her lover, the young woman found him sitting in the grassy field that the two of them often visited together. He was staring up at the sky, a wistful expression visible in his silvery orbs. [Name] tentatively sat down next to him, but he didn't turn his head to smile at her like he usually did. He didn't acknowledge her presence at all.

"...Levi?"

No response.

"Levi?"

No response.

"Levi?"

No response.

"Levi, please, talk to me!" [Name] burst out, knowing that Levi disliked such fits of childishness, but she couldn't help herself. She felt alone - all alone and hopeless. The Commander she believed in to lead humanity to victory one day, the people she'd considered her closest friends, the man she considered the love of her life, were all ignoring her. They were all acting as if she didn't exist.

Why?

And yet, Levi did not respond to her plea. It was as if her begging fell on deaf ears.

"What have I done wrong?" [Name] pressed sorrowfully as Levi continued not to acknowledge her existence. "Did I do something wrong on the Expedition?" she wracked her brain to remember, but try as she might, could not. The Expedition had n't gone smoothly, per se...as usual for the Scouts, there had been many deaths and many wounded. Not to mention the fact that Erwin had very nearly been killed by an Aberrant Titan ambushing him, but he'd managed to narrowly escape that fate, so there was nothing to worry about in that regard.

If that was the case, why was everyone so despondent?

"Please tell me what I've done to make all of you so upset." [Name] asked softly.

There was no answer.

"Levi."

Silence.

"LEVI! PLEASE!"

Despite all of her efforts, it seemed Levi was not going to respond. Head dropping, heart heavy, [Name] was about to stand when her lover's voice stopped her.

"I'm sorry, [Name]."

Eye widening, she glanced at him, expecting to see him staring back at her, but he wasn't. His gaze was still fixed on the sky, full of utter sorrow and despair. This only served to confound [Name] more than she already was, but she said nothing as Levi continued.

"I promised..." he whispered, voice beginning to saturate with a tormented emotion that [Name] could not yet describe. "I promised to protect you..."

He stood up smoothly, powerful muscles rippling under his military uniform, and began to walk back towards the buildings. Curious and slightly disappointed, [Name] followed. What was he talking about? Why was he bringing up his promise from months ago now? And how did that have anything to do with apologizing for ignoring her lately?

Levi made his way to the area behind the Survey Corps building, where a small cemetery for the Regiment's most valuable soldiers had been established. He came to a halt in front of a particular gravestone, staring at it, head bowed and raven tresses covering his silvery eyes. The small memorial piqued her interest, but before [Name] could take a closer look at it, Levi spat bitterly, voice filled with self-loathing.

"I promised to protect you, and I fucking broke my promise!"

The world seemed to briefly fall away under [Name]'s boots, leaving her reeling in absolute shock. She knelt down, examining the gravestone Levi was standing over.

Rest in peace, [Name] [Last Name]

Bravely sacrificed her life saving Commander Erwin Smith from a Titan's ambush.

One of the most compassionate and courageous members of the Scouting Regiment,

And the lover of Levi Ackerman, Humanity's Strongest Soldier.

"Bullshit!" Levi suddenly bellowed, collapsing to his knees and slamming his fist into the ground. Blood welled up on his knuckles, but he clearly took no notice as a dry sob escaped his mouth. [Name] could only look on, unable to act, unable to move at the stunning realization of what was really happening.

"Humanity's Strongest Soldier?" the raven-haired man choked out between his agonized cries. "What kind of Humanity's Strongest Soldier can't even protect the person he loves?"

And [Name] understood.

She fully understood what had happened.

56th Expedition

"We are halting in the clearing ahead!" Erwin bellowed. [Name] didn't respond, knowing anything she tried to say would be lost in the cacophony of hooves pounding the ground. Galloping next to her, Levi's gray eyes flashed with understanding, but he too said nothing and continued to steer his horse on.

As the Regiment reached said clearing, [Name] dismounted and tied her horse to a tree, petting it and commending its bravery softly before turning her attention towards Levi, who had walked up behind her. "I told you you'd be fine, brat." he teased lightly. [Name] smiled, rolling her eyes with an air of mockery about her. "Whatever you say, O Mighty One." she replied sarcastically. Levi snorted, amusement gleaming in his orbs.

"I need to go find Erwin." [Name] said, stepping forward. Levi nodded. "I need to go talk to Hanji." he stated. "Shitty Glasses apparently saw an unusual type of Titan today and she won't stop squirming and squealing." There was clear irritation in his voice. "I need to calm her down or she'll get herself killed."

"Don't murder her." [Name] cautioned, prompting Levi to smirk. "I can't promise that, brat." he called over his shoulder, walking away. [Name] watched him go with a smile before making her way around the clearing for Erwin. She eventually found him standing near the edge of the clearing roughly ten yards in front of a cluster of trees.

Approaching him, [Name]'s sharp eye caught something strange in said cluster of trees. She could have sworn she saw a flash giant human-like eye between the thick trunks, but dismissed it as the stress wearing down on her as she didn't see any other evidence of a Titan. Continuing toward Erwin, she closed the last few feet between them. Seeing her approaching, the blond man turned towards her, his left side facing the clump of trees.

"[Name]," he greeted as she approached. The woman opened her mouth to return the greeting, but before she could, it all went to hell. A giant, humanoid shape lunged out of the trees towards Erwin, jaw gaping, saliva slavering from its teeth. A Titan was all [Name] had time to think, or more specifically, not even think, just realize, before her body went into autopilot. Diving forward, she barreled into the blonde-haired man with all her weight and strength, knocking him several feet back.

The Titan's jaws meant to close around Erwin's torso instead clamped around hers, teeth sinking viciously in and, in a matter of seconds, cleaving her body straight in half.

[Name] didn't feel pain for very long.

Levi...you promised. Why didn't you keep it?

Present Time

"I'm sorry, [Name]..." Levi cried, fist still jammed in the dirt as [Name] stared at him. "I'm sorry I couldn't protect you."

It all made sense now.

The reason why everyone was ignoring her. It was not because she'd done anything wrong, or because they hated her, but because she, [Name] [Last Name], was dead.

"Captain..." a soft, familiar voice uttered from behind Levi and [Name]. The both turned, [Name]'s face shocked and Levi's face tear-stained, to see Petra, Eld, Gunther, and Oluo standing there. Their expressions were full of pain and regret as they took in the sight of their captain crying over the grace.

Stepping forward, Petra placed a single rose down on the gravestone, closed her honey-colored eyes, and saluted, a fist clenched to her heart. The rest of the squad did the same.

"[Name], we will always remember and love you." the ginger woman stated emotionally, audible strain in her voice from maintaining her composure.

Next to [Name], Levi stood and glanced down at the grave, his silver hues two pools of heartache and grief, but also love and reverence. He stepped over to stand by his squad, closed his eyes, and saluted side by side with them.

"I love you, [Name]."

And only then did [Name] realize that she too, was crying, for she was standing in front of the grave, and even though her squad was unaware of the fact, they were indeed saluting to her spirit.

They saluted her life and honored her memory.

I was never hated. I was always loved.

[artemis-entreri]

That other Anon (What would it take to make Artemis Entreri happy...) got me wondering. After his relationship with C. and D. (D. presumed dead atm) would Artemis enter another relationship? What kind of a relationship would make him at least content? That man sure could use some happy time in his life.

[[ Oh man, this original Ask is so ancient that it doesn’t have a time stamp. >_> In honor of NaNoWriMo, which I’ve never participated in or even paid much attention to before, I’m going to endeavor to finally answer these things I’d saved because I wanted to answer them but couldn’t at the time. Incidentally, I’d also been waiting for some sort of canonical conclusion before addressing things like this, but in retrospect, the “developments” added by the last books were so far from organic that what I’m about to write now is probably not too different from what I would’ve written before. 

I think that whether Entreri would enter into any more relationships is a separate topic from what he needs to be happy. Unlike the case with Drizzt, I don’t believe that Entreri needs to "belong" in order to be happy. He might not ever be happy in the same way that Drizzt is, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t be fine. Each person experiences and defines happiness at least a little differently, so I think that Entreri doesn’t need to have what Drizzt has to be able to be happy. This concept is one that has always been lost on Drizzt, and I think the reason for that may be that it’s one that’s also lost on Bob.

As far as Entreri and romance are concerned, my impression is that he’s never really looked for, or actively desired to be in, a romantic relationship. I think he’s supposed to be one of those people for whom romance is a low priority. I wouldn’t describe him as aromantic though, as he’s exhibited romantic attraction to others. Overall, I’d even go so far as to say that romance and Entreri don’t mix well, at least not so far in any case. The points of entry into both of his romantic relationships were directly due to incidents that tampered with his mind, with the effects of Idalia’s Flute landing him with Calihye and the aboleth encounter in the sewers beneath Neverwinter leading him to bond with Dahlia. Furthermore, Entreri has shown himself to be loyal, perhaps to a fault, when it comes to his romantic partner. He was willing to let Calihye kill him and only stopped her when he realized that someone else had intervened in what should’ve been his private matter. I find the whole sequence of Entreri throwing Calihye out the window and then looking for her afterwards kind of strange and inconsistent, but I suppose I’ll have to chalk all of that up to the effects of Idalia’s Flute. Still, I don’t think the Flute makes people do the sort of stuff that they absolutely would never do, but rather, much like the drugs and alcohol of our world, it lowers its user’s inhibitions and makes them more likely to do things that would normally be extreme for them. So, while the part where Entreri threw Calihye out the window for attempting to manipulate him was consistent with his character and his creed of not leaving any enemies in his wake, the back-peddling of looking for her afterwards and not for the purpose of finishing her off was a glimpse into the vulnerable part of him that he’d prefer not to exist. That part of him is self-destructive in that it makes him undervalue himself. Despite Calihye’s attempt on his life and what would’ve felt like further betrayal by abandonment, Entreri still wanted her enough to risk messing with not just any drow but drow associated with the most dangerous person he knows, and loved her so much that he cherished the time that they’d spent together before she left him again. And for Dahlia, he allowed his own code of honor to be compromised in perhaps the only time that we’ve ever seen throughout the entire series when he couldn’t reject her completely despite her already being involved with Drizzt. Entreri was ready to let Drizzt strike him down for that transgression, which was a big deal because that was allowing someone else to have ultimate control of his fate, and someone else having that sort of power is the thing he tolerates the least. In fact, the lengths that Entreri went for Dahlia meant that he was risking more than his life, he did things that completely offended his sensibilities, which are difficult to offend. We saw how utterly intolerant he is of the Underdark, of Menzoberranzan, to the point that he’d rather wage a  hopeless battle against a legendary paladin king and his party of heroes that defeated a god rather than escape temporarily to the sunless world below. We saw how thoroughly terrified he was of the prospect of having to wield Charon’s Claw again, and it was a state that we’ve never seen him anywhere close to before. Despite these things, he went to rescue Dahlia, and that’s reminiscent of his allowances for Calihye because it really seems to be the case that, despite what he says, Entreri places far more importance in his significant other than he does in himself. I’d say that this is due in no small part to his self-loathing, but I think it’s also due to him being the kind of person to love intensely. I don’t believe what I do because I think he’s a bad boy with a heart of gold, I’d even say he’s pretty damn far from the whole “heart of gold” trope. I do believe that Entreri would love intensely because, in addition to that he does pretty much everything intensely, as an emotionally inexperienced individual who lacks perspective about what degree to feel something, he’d likely be pretty black or white about how much he feels. Even though I’m sure that he’d rather not put so much of himself into any sort of involvement with someone else, his logic can’t dictate his heart, especially not when his heart is so inexperienced and vulnerable. While all this talk about how Entreri’s full of love and goes so far for his sweethearts might sound like positive qualities, I did bring up these points within the same paragraph that I opened with, “romance and Entreri don’t mix well” for a reason. I believe that on some level, Entreri should be aware of the relative values he places on his waifu versus on himself. He doesn’t seem to display this level of introspection in the books, but given how he’s supposed to be an acute individual who’s super honed for survival in unimaginably difficult environments, I really think that he should be able to recognize  such a self-destructive tendency. Furthermore, I can’t see him as being ok with this vulnerability, as it goes against everything that he’s trained himself for, everything that he knows, and everything that his instincts tell him. What this means is that he’d recognize pretty easily when his efforts aren’t reciprocated, but his low sense of self-worth also likely means that he’d have a high tolerance for that lack of reciprocation.

Entreri, for all of his own emotional inexperience, is significantly more emotionally mature than is Dahlia, especially prior to Kimmuriel's intervention. While Kimmuriel’s psychic surgery might’ve “calmed” Dahlia down, I don’t think that process necessarily imparted upon her a sense of honor, which is something that’s central to Entreri’s mindset. Dahlia might not always be picking a fight with Entreri anymore, but with her own host of unresolved issues as well as general inexperience, I see her as time goes by, waffling quite a bit. Effron’s existence, his importance to her, and the strong dislike that Effron and Entreri share for one another would also instigate disharmony. We’ve seen Dahlia forsake Entreri for Effron without so much of a thought in trying times, and I think that sort of behavior would be pretty consistent for her. Dahlia’s maternal instinct isn’t exactly conventional, what with the throwing her baby off the cliff and all, but coupled with her guilt, it’s become a very strong force that will, in my opinion, always drive her to choose her offspring over her lover if she had to leave one to die. To further complicate matters, it’s likely that Dahlia’s been impregnated a drow, most likely Tiago, but quite possibly Kimmuriel or even Drizzt. Tiago, in addition to enjoying the act of raping Dahlia, also sought to plant his seed in the then-Matron Mother of House Do’Urden. Kimmuriel is a possibility because it seems highly unlikely that he’d care what happened to Dahlia’s body after he was done with it, so he wouldn’t have taken any precautions (plus the circumstances of their copulation didn’t allow for that anyway). Drizzt might be the most concerned of the three, however he also doesn’t think about that sort of thing and his whole relationship with Dahlia was a series of impulsive behaviors strung together. I also don’t personally believe that Drizzt is conscientious enough to consider the possibility of producing a half-drow child with Dahlia even though he agonizes about the same topic regarding Catti-brie because Dahlia’s just never been important enough to him for him to think of that much or that far. I consider Drizzt the least likely father of a probable half-drow baby in Dahlia’s womb because given how promiscuous Dahlia was and her experience with childbirth, she would have likely taken birth control precautions. These measures would’ve most probably faded during the extended time that she was in Menzoberranzan. As for Dahlia possibly being pregnant with Entreri’s child, I won’t say that it’s completely impossible, but I’d say that the likelihood of that is infinitesimally low. During the times that they were together, Dahlia always had the chance to make her preparations. Furthermore Entreri strikes me as the type who really doesn’t want children, so without getting too graphic in the details, I think it’s safe to say that he would’ve taken measures of his own to make sure that he didn’t impregnate anyone, even someone that he loved. So, with Dahlia already proven herself totally ready to ditch Entreri for Effron, the addition of another child, and a half-drow one at that, would seem to be guaranteed to be a stress point for Entreri. Dahlia would be unlikely to want to give the baby up because of her guilt over what she did with her first child, and I see her as the type to expect Entreri to accept and go along with that. I can’t see Entreri being ok with it at all, not so much because the child is half of a race that he despises for the most part, but rather the specific drow from which it descended. He’d be able to tolerate the possibility of Tiago better than Kimmuriel, but either way, even though Entreri would intellectually know better than to blame a child for the actions of its parents, something flagrant enough would make it very difficult to reconcile the intellectual and the visceral. Especially if it turned out that Kimmuriel had fathered the child, which would likely give rise to psionic capabilities within the child, I really see Entreri just throwing his hands up and not being willing to deal with it. However, going back to Dahlia’s tendency to vastly prioritize her offspring, I believe that while Entreri might intellectually understand the reason for her being that way, there’d be only so much of it that he could take, again because of the difficulty in reconciling the intellectual and the visceral. Especially given that his whole life, he’s fought against being trivialized and invalidated, I think that there’s only so much violation of his nature that Entreri could and would endure.

If Entreri did leave Dahlia, I see it as being a clean break, as it’s difficult for emotionally inexperienced people to do the “let’s stay friends” thing after bonding so strongly with another. I see him as cutting off contact, going very far away, and minimizing chances that he’d see or hear from her again. I'd even speculate that the entire experience would be agonizing for him and he’d want nothing more than to know how she was doing and what she was doing at every second. These desires would cause him to be extremely angry with himself and he’d see it as weak and pathetic how he can’t stop feeling and thinking such utterly pointless things. This ruminating rage would deepen his cynicism and misanthropy, as well as stirring the sort of vulnerability that leads people to engage in such often unfortunate temporary relationships as the rebound. However, I see Entreri as having enough discipline, or perhaps enough cynicism, to avoid doing the rebound thing, though I’m not dismissing the possibility altogether. The consequences of emotional inexperience are such that even the most disciplined person could break under enough hurt, but Entreri’s supposed to have unbelievable amounts of discipline. I guess it ultimately falls to the specifics of what leads him to leave Dahlia to determine how he would behave in the short-term following the breakup. Long-term, on the other hand, I see him as reverting to that whole not looking for and not interested in romance approach. He might even actively avoid getting involved, especially if he’s aware of how he tends to give so much of himself into his relationships, and what that has done to him in the past. It’s the sort of cynicism that jives so easily with his experience of being exploited for his skills, so really, I think that he’d be quite turned off to the idea of getting into another romantic relationship. What’s likely to happen however is that he’ll fall in love again, perhaps many times, and get involved with people that don’t value him for his full worth. What tends to happen when someone gives so much of themselves into a relationship, as Entreri is wont to do, is that it leads the other person to take it for granted and even take advantage of it, which leads me to believe that Entreri will either avoid relationships altogether, or undergo many unhealthy ones before we return to him avoiding relationships altogether again.  Maybe someone different will come by to break the cycle, but that’s a big if, as Entreri is such an outlier as far as social spectrum goes that finding the right kind of outlier that’s appropriate for him is no small task, especially when he’s beyond not actively looking, to the point of actively dismissing potential partners.

As far as the “Dahlia leaving Entreri” theme goes, I’ll start with what Entreri would do if she left him by death, as that poses clearer scenarios. If Dahlia died of unnatural causes, i.e. by another’s hand, Entreri would kill the perpetrator, mourn for probably a very long time, then go on to follow a course similar to the one I described in the previous paragraph, but instead of cynicism, there would be sadness. If Dahlia died of natural causes much earlier than she should’ve, i.e. by disease, the situation would be similar to her dying of unnatural causes except with less assassinating. Finally, if Dahlia died of old age after hundreds of years, perhaps closer to a millennium if not more, and Entreri stayed with her all throughout all of those years, unchanging, an immortal eternity granted to him by Charon’s Claw or the jeweled dagger as he watched his beloved of an nigh-ageless race fade and wither while it should’ve been the other way around… I mean, I think the scenario is highly unlikely, but it’s still pretty heartbreaking to think about because of how steadfast and sacrificial Entreri would need to be for that scenario to hold true. It’s not possible for me to grasp what that sort of experience would be like, I feel that any extrapolations I make would be grossly inaccurate because my data points run out far before the timeline for the thought experiment does. I think though, that while it wouldn’t befit Entreri to follow a partner to death normally, if he’d gone so far as to make someone (Dahlia in this thought experiment) the center of his life for so long, that after she passed away, he’d likely not feel much like living anymore. Entreri is also (mostly) human, and humans aren’t wired to know how to deal with living lifetimes as long as those of elves’. Elves, being genetically long-lived, probably have some sort of “awareness” coded into their biology to better comprehend and handle a lengthy lifespan and likely have developed coping mechanisms. What would be normal to an elf would be beyond wonky to a human, and at over a hundred years Entreri is already exhausted of living (heck, he was even when he was in his 40s), so if he hasn’t died by the time that Dahlia does and he’s still with her, he probably wouldn’t have much of anything for himself by then, especially with how egocentric Dahlia is and will probably remain. While Bob wants us to believe that Entreri is serving as Dahlia’s guide and teacher in dealing with similar emotional traumas, realistically, I don’t think Entreri has gotten enough of his own answers to be wholly qualified to do that. Also, while the “healing together” trope is nice, in reality, it doesn’t work out too well, and more likely becomes the blind leading the blind. What’ll most likely happen with Entreri and Dahlia is that, although he pretends to be firm with her, eventually she’ll figure out that he can’t say no to her, and while I’m not saying that Entreri would ever become whipped, I do think that he’d let things go a lot more than she would because it’s the path of least resistance, as well as spoil her because of his tendency to value his partner more than himself. This would establish an unhealthy, even toxic, dynamic between the two of them, and unfortunately, Entreri is the type to stick with a toxic relationship for unthinkably long because of how tough he believes himself to be and, on a subconscious level, how he doesn’t believe that anyone else would care about him as a person. So, if he stayed with Dahlia until she died of old age, I think that the concept of another relationship would be so far and foreign from his mind by that point that even if he chose to go on, he might not be capable of entering another relationship. This is really a subject that I’d need to think more about, but fundamentally I feel that there’s some truth to the whole idea that if one has lived long enough and seen enough that one sort of transcends mortality. Put in smaller terms, as children, a lot of us wanted to play in the mud. As adults, we see mud as a great nemesis from which we must keep our pets and children because mixing the two would mean undoing all those hours of cleaning that we’d broken our backs performing. In other words, through growth, retrospect makes us wonder why we were even remotely interested in the sorts of things we used to like. The difference between a child and an adult is only a few decades, thus imagine how big that difference would be if it was measured instead in centuries. Despite all of this doom and gloom, I do think that it’s possible for Entreri to sort of start fresh in the most recent scenario that I’ve posed. He might be able to do it alone, but I think that’d be very difficult because he’d be very set in certain ways that he would’ve had to force himself into in order to tolerate staying with Dahlia for so long. He’d need another long-lived individual who’s undergone the experience of living for another over a prolonged period of time to be able to be on the same page as him, but this person would also need to be able to appreciate him for who he is and have broken free of their bonds to be able to help him do the same thing and find himself again. Only then would he be able to consider entering another romantic relationship. I can’t help but wonder though, that when one’s lived that long though, especially one like Entreri, how much meaning that a romantic relationship would even have by that point. There would be so many complicated associations with partnership that it would pose its own challenge to untangle.

Thus brings us to Dahlia leaving Entreri by her own choice. The most likely cause for this is her falling out of love with him, which could be due to a variety of scenarios. I’ve been pretty down on Dahlia, but it isn’t because I dislike her or think of her as an inherently bad person. I actually feel that the way that she is is very understandable, but I’m not saying that excuses her bad behavior either. Dahlia is very inexperienced and very traumatized, plus biologically she should still be a child. She a child who’s been forced to be an adult and living the way that an adult does. There’s so much of her mentality that needs to follow its natural course of development, which requires a lot of time, especially given that she’s an elf and elves at around age 30 are like the equivalent of human early teens (i.e. recall Drizzt at 30). Because of this, Dahlia would likely need more time than an elf that hasn’t gone through the sort of traumas that she did to reach a similar state in life. Before then, however, she’ll be prone to impulsive things, “bad” things, because she doesn’t really know any better. The way that I see any decisions that Dahlia makes in her love life right now and how transitory they are is that what she’s going through is very similar to how very few high school relationships last the rest of one’s life, or go beyond high school. Just as how people in college would often look back and wonder why the heck they dated who they did during high school, Dahlia’s views are likely to change drastically as she matures further. Although I’ve described Entreri as emotionally inexperienced, Dahlia is more than that. In addition to being emotionally immature, Dahlia’s generally inexperienced. While Entreri isn’t very in touch with his heart, he knows himself far better than Dahlia knows herself, and given the closed-off natures of both of them, it’s the amount of time that Entreri’s been around compared to Dahlia that makes for the difference in maturity states. So, Entreri’s reached a point of enough stability that he wouldn’t “outgrow” Dahlia, but this doesn’t preclude his reasons for leaving her being rooted in her outgrowing him. Or, more precisely, Dahlia would outgrow the person she was when she fell in love with Entreri, and change at a different rate than him because he’s already done a great deal of the fundamental stuff that she’ll need to go through. I think more and more, Entreri would be stricken by how young she is, but he’d either find ways to adapt, or feel creeped out by the fact that he’s pretty much with a child and leave for her own sake. Conversely, without as much perspective, and because of how much she’d be changing, Dahlia wouldn’t be able to adapt to Entreri. The least cruel thing for her to do is to recognize this and for both of them to agree it’s the right thing to do for them to part, not that it wouldn’t burn with the fury of the Nine Hells for Entreri and lead him down the path described before. However, I don’t know how much Dahlia would be aware of what’s happening to her, and I see it as much more likely that she’d get fixated on the next hawt young thang to cross her path or catch her eye, and she’d want to trade the older model in for something new. True, even in old age, Entreri would be a force to be reckoned with, but I don’t think Dahlia cares about being with the absolute best if she could have what’s best for her at any given moment. I can’t really blame Dahlia for this degree of fickleness because I just see her as a child who doesn’t know what she wants yet, and just as I’d have a hard time landing on a child for not sticking to the same thing that they were interested in as they metamorphosize with age, although it would break Entreri’s heart, I can’t really fault Dahlia for leaving him for someone more suited to who she becomes.

I realize it might seem strange that I mentioned Dahlia leaving Entreri in his old age when previously I’d discussed him living eternally. The reason for this is that we don’t know exactly what’s going on with his artificial life-prolonging. There are hints in Hero that the magic of Claw that sustained his life force is weakening, but we’re also not 100% sure if it’s Claw that’s solely responsible for Entreri’s unnaturally long life. I think it’s the case that so long as Claw binds him, Entreri can’t be killed, but the Shade essence in him is what made him de-age and age slowly. True Shades live forever if they’re not killed, but Entreri is only part-Shade. But again, we don’t know what’s causing what, and with a dose of the Spellplague and another of the Sundering thrown in there, really, anything goes until we receive more information, which we’re unlikely to do. So, as Entreri ages, it’s possible that it will be a depressing experience for him. He’s not as obsessed with maintaining peak performance anymore and he’s exhausted with living, but to fade away slowly would be hard for him to take. He despaired in the past that he’d no longer be in his prime when his arch-nemesis would just be entering his, and even though Entreri no longer has an arch-nemesis anymore, losing the exceptional physical capabilities that are such a big part of him would be very difficult to endure, made even worse by how he’s probably not thought about losing it to old age for a long time after he stopped aging. As he’s going through this tough transition in his life, as mentioned before, it’s unlikely that Dahlia would stay by and support him through it. More than likely, she’d become frustrated that he isn’t as capable as he once was, blame him for that which he can’t help, and finally leave him with those accusations weighing heavily on his mind. After their separation under these conditions, Entreri would likely feel very rejected, used and undesirable. He might wish that he could just give up completely like Dondon had, but his survival instinct wouldn’t allow that. A retired criminal in Calimport becomes the leader of a criminal organization, but Entreri never had the stomach for hierarchy. He’s also no longer a criminal, but he’s not a good guy either, and I find it highly unlikely that he’d seek out civil service, as part of a city’s Watch or what have you. What I see happening is that he’d become a partial-hermit, not entirely removed from civilization, but living on the fringes of it along the same vein as he’s always had, but with significantly less involvement. He’d need protection, and he’d barter some for it with his skills and cunning, but his sense of self-worth would be at an all-time low, and his age would probably be on the forefront of his mind if anyone expressed a romantic interest in him. I think that if Dahlia left him because of the deterioration of age, Entreri would be hesitant to even engage with beings older than him but whom appeared younger, again because of what that appearance would viscerally remind him of even if intellectually he knows that he’d be the younger one. Furthermore, he’d be aging faster than a young-appearing older being, and he wouldn’t want to risk getting hurt over being dumped for his decline.

Now that I’ve addressed to death the question of would Entreri enter another relationship after Calihye and Dahlia, here comes the same thing for what kind of a relationship would make Entreri, at the very least, content. While it’s no secret that I really like pairing Entreri with Jarlaxle, I actually don’t feel that there exists a canonical character throughout all 30+ of the Drizzt books who’s “good enough” to be appropriate for Entreri. By “good enough” I don’t mean someone with shining morals characterized only by wholesome actions and beliefs that could guide Entreri entirely to the ways of the light, whereupon he can finally find true happiness. In fact, anyone like that would be the very opposite of what would be good for Entreri. The poor guy’s spent his entire life among people who were only interested in him for his skills, and in order to find any sense of validation among that kind of society, he’s had to play its game by becoming that which was most coveted by its standards. While the books would have us believe that the emptiness that Entreri felt was due to his lack of ability to connect to others, that’s a very social-normative way to look at things. I personally think that Entreri’s sense of emptiness and self-disgust came from having to define himself by the demarcation set by the very same people that he despised. He couldn’t do anything different because they and their ideals were all that he’d known. I believe that having to cater to that which he hated made him as intolerant of authority and of others that try to impose their beliefs onto him as he is. He’s fiercely independent but didn’t have a chance to build the foundation upon which to found that independence, and I think he’s aware of this fact on some level because he’s so defensive when others try to mess with aspects that he’s never gotten to explore himself. I think that the two main qualities that would define an ideal romantic/life partner for Entreri would be: A) Genuine interest in who, not what, he is, and B) Security in their own sense of self with the appropriate amount of associated competence.

Quality B) is in my opinion the less obvious of the two, so I’ll start with elaborating on that one. There’s a lot of truth in the maxim, “lead by example”, and I think that it applies to something as small scale and personal as a relationship between two individuals. While I would describe Entreri as a very strong person overall, he possesses vulnerabilities that are very stark, and he strikes me as the kind of person who would forever keep those hidden even if he did come to completely trust someone, if he didn’t deem that person strong enough to handle his vulnerabilities. By vulnerabilities, I don’t mean the details of what happened in his childhood, but rather, all the ramifications of those events and all the other traumas he’s gone through. He probably can’t even articulate most of those consequences, and because so much of conveying them would depend on the subtleties of communication beyond that which is expressed in words, in order for verbal expression to happen, the conditions would have to be correct. Entreri would need a proverbial wall solid enough to lean on, one that is as tenacious as the ones that he’d built around his own heart. The right kind of person who’s secure in their own sense of self would also not need Entreri to do anything for them, because presumably, they’d be self-sufficient enough to not need his help. I think that this would allow them to naturally look beyond the “what” aspects of Entreri, as well as eventually make Entreri feel at ease about not being taken interest in as a tool. Of course, it’s very likely that, especially during the early stages of a relationship with an individual like this, Entreri would feel ill-at-ease, because he’s simply not used to not being exploited by others. He’d at least subconsciously question why this other person wants him, and if it’s all a grand farce or scheme that’s designed to lull him into a false sense of security to inevitably trap him. It might mean some turbulent times for Entreri and this hypothetical character early in their relationship, it might even lead to separation due to the degree of Entreri’s distrust. But, this is where A) comes in, because a genuine interest in who he is will keep Entreri going back to this hypothetical person, because as we’ve seen in the books, he’s so unable to resist someone actually caring about him as a person to the point that it’s almost an addiction, and definitely his Achilles’ Heel. However, in the books, none of his romantic partners are as interested in him as they could and should be, but even despite that, he’s fiercely loyal to them because they showed him the tiniest bit of interest in what lies beyond his impressive skills. I’ll be frank here, he’s absolutely not a perfect idealization of a man who only requires emotions to be this dedicated. The presence of sex definitely plays no small part in cementing his attachment. Nonetheless, without the appreciation for who he is, the physicality of sex is meaningless to him.

As far as how A) and B) tie together, A) is about empathy, which is independent of how secure someone is in themselves. While it isn’t necessarily the case that people who are more secure about themselves are more capable of empathy, what is the case is that more secure people are not as affected by the words of others. I think that insecurity is what leads people to try to impose their own beliefs onto others, because failure to do so is invalidating and invalidation is probably the biggest threat to one who lacks security. Hence, someone solely possessing of trait A) would not be sufficient for Entreri, because even if they cared more for him than they did for themselves, the lack of B) would mean that they’d inevitably try to seek validation from him by inadvertently pushing their beliefs onto him. This could happen indirectly, and without the hypothetical person ever intending or wishing anything akin to making Entreri become more like them. However, because of how fiercely dedicated Entreri can be, he might take it upon himself to do what he can to help his partner, in the process hurting himself without either meaning for that to happen. Even though he’d deny it and fight to stay with his love (in the short term anyway, he’d probably realize things if he lived long enough to outlive several partners), that doesn’t necessarily mean that the relationship would be healthy and good for him, or for the other person for that matter. As is the case with many victims of abuse and trauma, Entreri would likely go through many unhealthy relationships before he’d find a healthy one.

This brings me to the reason that I like the Entreri and Jarlaxle pairing so much. Among all the canonical possibilities, Jarlaxle is the closest to satisfying the two traits that I’ve explained above. There are some fairly glaring issues, such as his sex and gender identity as well as his tendency to exploit anything and everything. However, unlike any other character in the Drizzt books, Jarlaxle undergoes some extensive effort to try to understand Entreri better, even if those efforts ended up being invasive, questionable and overall pretty ineffective. Nonetheless, Jarlaxle tried to understand the man behind the skills and the circumstances that led him to become who he is, and really, no one else cared enough to do that. Furthermore, Jarlaxle wanted to help Entreri get better, not by Jarlaxle’s definition but by Entreri’s, however the methods that Jarlaxle took were rushed and inappropriate. Although Idalia’s Flute was overall a monumentally bad idea in context and, out of context, was an extremely lazy plot device to force character “development”, its redeeming quality is that its effect is to unlock the heart of whomever plays it. In other words, it’s not a magical implement to change someone into something or some way that another wishes, its intended purpose is to nurture growth on a very personal level. However, just as how in real life, trauma victims need to become ready at their own pace to heal, I believe that Idalia’s Flute is only effective when one is ready for their heart to be unlocked. What Jarlaxle did was the equivalent of throwing Entreri into psychotherapy when he wasn’t ready for it, and that’s absolutely not all right, but still, it’s a lot better than, for instance, telling Entreri what he should do to feel and be better (*cough* Drizzt *cough). That latter scenario goes beyond disrespectful, it’s flagrantly abusive, and I’d even go so far as to describe it as disgusting and despicable. I suppose it would be easy to make an original character that satisfies A) and B) for the purpose of pairing them with Entreri, but I have a hard time getting into that because I feel like, no matter what, it wouldn’t be “real”. Jarlaxle’s far from perfect but he’s also far better than his canonical alternatives, and I suppose that’s how my OTP became what it is.

Thus we return to my initial contention that Entreri doesn’t need to be in a relationship to find his own version of happiness. Social science teaches us that humans are an inherently communal species. Furthermore, social norms across many different cultures enforce the idea that we can’t be happy if we’re alone, that we need a partner and friends or else we’re doomed to misery. I’d say that these things are true for the most part, but the keyword here is “most”. As with any sample set, there will always be outliers to the common denominator. Someone like Entreri is obviously not your average human, written as he is with a past that is quite horrible and a life that doesn’t get any easier. I’m not altogether comfortable with applying our world’s sciences and customs to a world that’s totally different. For all we know, humans of the Realms are wired differently from humans of Earth. Our respective cultures share similarities (or more specifically, Realmsian human cultures are strongly derivative of ours), but the biggest differences are often in the subtleties, and without being able to experience another world’s subtle cultural elements, applying our rules just always feels faulty on some level.

Nonetheless, with his specific set of circumstances, Entreri does have more than enough reason to be misanthropic. The vast bulk of his life experiences involving other people is those others seeking to exploit his skills, and this sort of objectifying behavior towards him would’ve most likely led him to see others as egocentric vultures that only want to use him as a pawn to further their own trivial ends. This would certainly explain why he’s so intolerant about anyone trying to hold any sort of power over him. Furthermore, he’s more competent than most other people, and he knows it, which makes having to deal/work with them especially frustrating, and that is why he prefers to work alone. Even when he encounters someone on his level, he still prefers to do his own thing, because ultimately, he doesn’t trust anyone, and even if it’s the case that his soulmate’s out there and he meets them one day, his trust is something that’ll take him a long time to give, if ever. To Entreri, other people are by default nuisances and he’d rather avoid them altogether. Unlike Drizzt, who aches for company, compassion and understanding, Entreri wants his free will to never be impeded by anyone else. With a goal like that, bringing anyone else into the picture automatically poses some degree of threat. I think that the core reason as to why I believe that Entreri doesn’t necessarily need the same set of circumstances as Drizzt does, is because, quite frankly, Drizzt had a much easier time in his early life than Entreri did. Certainly, the depravity of Menzoberranzanyr drow probably makes the depravity of Calimshan’s criminals pale in comparison, however what Drizzt always had, that Entreri didn’t, was a beacon of hope. He had Zaknafein, who stood by him with steadfastness for as long as he could, and then he had Guenhwyvar, who he could always 100% trust to be on his side when she could be around. I’m not saying that Drizzt’s early life was a total picnic, since Zaknafein did die and Guen could only come every few days or so. However, compared to Entreri’s only source of trust betraying him so completely and literally no love at all growing up… I’ll just say that I know which one I’d rather pick if I had to go through either one’s childhood/adolescence. I do however fear that there wouldn’t be enough parchment in all of Faerûn for me to write the appropriate amounts of whiny, preachy, self righteous and sanctimonious journal entries in. In any case, because of these discrepancies, Entreri is used to being alone, whereas as we see in the books, especially during the Neverwinter Saga, Drizzt can’t handle it. Being alone is familiar to Entreri, and familiarity breeds comfort. I’m not saying that Entreri needs to be alone to be happy, just that he’s one of those characters that can be just fine on his own. Besides, being alone doesn’t automatically equate to being lonely unless you’re in poor company, and Entreri is anything but poor company.

All of that said, I think that a lover would make more sense to Entreri than would a friend, but I don’t think either would be enough to “complete” him, even if he doesn’t need someone else in order to be complete. While the passage of time might change his views, I don’t think it will temper his tendency to deal in absolutes when it comes to certain things, and I think personal relationships are one of those things. Rather than having friends, I see him as having a bunch of acquaintances that might refer to him as a friend and with whom he might even reciprocate that custom. However, he’d only have one person who’s so close to him, someone who would be all of the things he might need: his lover, his partner, his best friend, his family. He doesn’t like people, and this is something so fundamental that I don’t see it flipping, hence why one person is enough and probably all that he’d tolerate/allow to get that close to him. Which of course makes it all the more devastating if he ever loses that person, but such is the fate of those who deal in absolutes. Put this way, it sure sounds like Entreri won’t ever be happy, doesn’t it? I’m not trying to doom him to a life of misery, but in reality, many people, especially those that have undergone hardships, aren’t ever able to attain the sort of happiness that we’re conditioned to go after. But you know, that’s ok, because even if Entreri isn’t feeling actively happy most days, if he has his freedom and free will, if he’s not being suppressed and if he’s still alive, that is enough. Because happiness is a journey, not a destination, and so long as he keeps going on, he doesn’t need to be anything other than himself, and I think that the ability to be ourselves is the greatest happiness of all. ]]

[writesandramblings]

The Captain’s Secret - p.67

“Einstein on the Beach”

A/N: This takes place after episode 7, "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad," and is a little heavy on the OCs, sorry if that's not your preference. There's a bit of fluff (and a joke I've been waiting 240,000 words to make which is so delightfully awful), but also some final set up for the end that's coming. There is one person out there who likes Groves best out of everyone, so I dedicate the Groves content to that person (you know who you are).

Also, did anyone catch the big clue in time loop? Can you see someone's secret yet? There was one line in there that revealed something big, but then it was undone by the temporal reset... I spend a lot of time wondering if anyone sees where this is going. There are so many dominoes lined up, I'm really looking forward to tipping them over.

Lastly, sorry for the delay in posting, internet connection issues!

Full Chapter List Part 1 - Objects in Motion << Part 66 - Past and Present Tense Part 68 - To Fill Up My Hand >>

"Actually, you were the one most likely to believe me. That was the weird thing."

"Oh?"

Lorca and Stamets were in the ready room going over the events of Mudd's time loop. Of all the crew, only Stamets had any understanding of the full breadth of the encounter because only he was aware of all the loops in the way Mudd was.

"Hugh thought I was having some sort of break from reality, Burnham needed so much convincing, Tyler never believed me unless I had Burnham tell him... But with you, I repeated your words once, just the once, and you were on board with it."

"That surprises you?" Lorca took a fortune cookie and pushed the bowl towards Stamets. The fortune read, Good news will come to you from far away.

"Well, yes," said Stamets, taking a cookie as well. "It's no secret you hate me." His fortune was, Generosity and perfection are your everlasting goals.

Lorca's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "I don't hate you."

Stamets squinted at the captain. "You don't?"

Lorca shrugged lightly. "Sometimes you need a little extra push to get us where we're going."

"A push," echoed Stamets, squinting all the more. "More like a push down the stairs."

Lorca snorted with amusement. "Sometimes that's the fastest way to get down them."

Stamets mouth fell open and he stared in silent amazement. Delight spread across his face. "My god, you don't hate me, do you? You like me."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"I mean, a few times Mudd tried to get you off the bridge by pretending there was a medical emergency. You didn't go when he said it was Mischkelovitz, or Egarova, but when he said it was me, you went immediately. I thought it was just because you were worried about the drive, but there's more to it, isn't there? You actually like me!"

Stamets had learned a lot in his many loops through time. Maybe too much. Lorca did his best to remain impassive. "I don't hate you, which is a far cry from liking you, lieutenant."

"But that's just it. I can see everything so clearly now! You really enjoy pushing my buttons, don't you?" Lorca glowered. Stamets grinned. "Captain, that's as sweet as it is disturbing!"

"Mr. Stamets," Lorca growled.

"Okay, captain, I hear you," said Stamets, holding his hands up in surrender and grinning. "You can push me around all you like, I won't push back."

Lorca tried not to smile and failed miserably, ending up with an awkward and entirely unconvincing almost-frown, because frankly, that was the best invitation he'd gotten all week. He managed to turn his expression into a sneer as he said with all the acid he could muster, "If we can stay on task, lieutenant."

Stamets was not fooled in the slightest because he really did see everything now. Ever since his integration with the mycelial network, it felt like all of spacetime was laid out before him and he could access any and all of it. The network went everywhere, and he was part the network. "You want to hear a few of Mudd's one-liners?" he offered. "I mean, they were all at your expense, but they're pretty funny!"

"Fine," said Lorca, certain he was going to hate this.

"So, this one time, you asked him what the hell he was doing on the ship, and he said, 'Whatever I want!' and then he shot you."

Stamets had never heard Lorca genuinely laugh before. It was, Stamets concluded, pretty awesome.

When he was done with Stamets, Lorca received a holocomm request from Lalana. He locked the ready room door. "Good morning, Gabriel," she said. "I need to stop by Memory Alpha. Can we do that?"

"I'm going to lean on the side of no," said Lorca.

"I do not think you understand. Either Discovery is taking me to Memory Alpha, or I am leaving Discovery, because I require something which is on Memory Alpha."

"Lalana, that's—"

"If it helps, I can ask Starfleet to order us there to download Discovery's data archives to preserve a record of everything relating to our spore drive research, but it would be quicker if we simply went and Starfleet was not aware of it. Of course, if it is your preference, I will leave for the Gabriella immediately and make my own way."

Lorca took a deep breath. "Lalana. This is my ship. You do not tell Starfleet what to do with my ship." The last thing he wanted was Mischkelovitz's map downloaded into the central library archives.

Her head turned almost completely sideways. "Then will you take me or am I leaving?"

Lorca shook his head as he sighed. "What exactly do you need on Memory Alpha?"

"The lului box."

The silver brick, gifted by Umale, of unknown purpose and operation, which some part of Lorca genuinely suspected to be a paperweight. "Why now?"

"Emellia and I have a theory as to its use. We believe it may be a self-powered computer capable of performing the calculations needed to use the spore drive without Stamets, and that the reason the Federation has not been able to fully ascertain this yet is that it requires a lului to operate. Since I am the only lului available, it stands to reason we should bring it aboard."

"That is a whopping big if," said Lorca.

"Emellia has studied the data readouts and she feels they support this conclusion. Emellia is very smart, so I trust her assessment, and if she is right, then having the box here on board where it can be readily used for this purpose seems wise. Do you not think?"

Lorca did trust Mischkelovitz's assessments. They tended to be correct in his experience, even if a few of her assertions like the existence of chronitons in the null time bubble remained unproven. If she was right about this, it might give them a viable backup to Stamets in the event of his incapacitation, and if she was wrong, well, maybe they could find some other use for that mystery box.

Lalana hopped forward. "We can go together, you and I. It will be the sort of mission you can do while everyone else waits on the ship for a change. Aren't you tired of waiting on the ship, playing captain? Would you not like to get out there and do something? It will be as much fun as Tederek. Remember Tederek?" She hopped forward again. "Sneaking around right under everyone's noses and they will never know how foolish they truly are."

There was another thing to consider, too. The lului box wasn't the only thing he might retrieve from Memory Alpha. There were also potentially full, unredacted copies of records which had been legally sealed. The lului box might serve as a good excuse to see what Groves was hiding behind those court orders.

Still, it was risky, it would mean stepping off of Discovery (which he was loathe to do), and objections had to be raised. Lorca leaned one hand against his desk and put the other on his hip. "You're talking about jumping us past Earth. We've never gone that far."

She used her tail as support to stretch up slightly. "Then would not it be impressive to do? And just think, nobody but us will know we did it. And if there is an emergency, we will simply jump back here. Though, you may have to leave me behind since I cannot beam back aboard on short notice."

If there was an emergency, Starfleet wasn't going to be able to reach them, because they would be several sectors away from where they were supposed to be. Unless they left a communications relay, carefully disguised and coded to forward any transmissions to them. There was an asteroid belt in a nearby system that could serve as cover for such a relay. Alternately, they might leave behind an entire shuttle, since a shuttle could move around and make it look like Discovery was still in the area, but if Lalana was going, they would need a shuttle to move from the ship to the planet, and that might be too many shuttles out at once...

Lalana watched Lorca as the wheels turned in his head and was entirely pleased with herself. She could clearly see on his face that he had already decided they were going to do it. She knew full well how much Lorca loved proving his own superiority over the rest of the hoodwinked masses.

In this regard, Lorca was not alone, but for John Groves, life was not a grand adventure so much as a series of unfolding disappointments.

This was not a new conclusion on Groves' part. He had realized life was not all it was cracked up to be a long time ago, earlier than most, and had been languishing under the enduring futility of it all ever since. It was all random, for starters. Evolution, existence, love, death, pain. That a single sperm hit an egg and gave rise to a person was as random and pointless as anything could be. Even when the combination was entirely directed and controlled for the purposes of bringing about that specific person, as had been the case for most of Groves' relations. It was still an unfortunate bit of senseless chaos.

His own life in particular was a pointless routine. Wake up in the morning, make some tea, drink it with Lalana, wait for Mischkelovitz to stumble out of her wall dwelling, make sure she was brushed and washed and all those stupid little things she always forgot about unless prompted. He envied her those wall compartments. He had outgrown the ability to squeeze into them twenty years ago and lost some part of his connection to her and Milosz in the process. He had become an outsider in a very literal sense. Now that they were adults and could control the size of the compartments, the designs still precluded him from entering. Instead, O'Malley had taken his place.

This morning, two unusual things happened. First, during morning tea, Lalana asked him to tell Mischkelovitz their conversation from last night had been "fully realized." The word choice, like most things about Lalana, struck Groves as patently odd.

The second oddity was that, after the regular morning tasks and receiving this missive, Mischkelovitz announced she was leaving the lab to attend to something.

"Whatever, cool," said Groves. He went and sat in his corner with his padd and opened Brig Chess.

It was called Brig Chess because he had programmed it while sitting in the brig and used it to pass the time there. It had caught on among various members of the crew who liked chess. The styling of the program was delightfully no-frills and retro. All player names were four characters long, an homage to the invention of arcade games, and the green-on-black coloration was a direct reference to early computing systems.

Groves had five games going at the moment, two of them blind on his end, and quickly sent out a new round of moves to his opponents. He had the highest score in the game largely because, unlike everyone else on the ship, he could afford to take on as many opponents as he wanted. He had no other official duties to attend to.

Which was not to say he had nothing to do. There were also two dozen legal briefs sent from various offices across the quadrant requesting his attention. The war did not negate the slow process of justice in the Federation. A few of the briefs he could not help with from Discovery and he denied their requests. The others, he drafted arguments for and filed them into the queue for transmission at Discovery's next unrestricted communications relay.

A new brig chess game request pinged. Groves checked it. It was from "M.B." I wish to play Vulcan chess, the message read.

Sure, he wrote back. Vulcan chess was a bit of a misnomer; it was a game that had arisen on Vulcan which bore some similarities to Earth chess in that there was a board and various specialized pieces, but the gameplay was a bit different and the pieces and strategy markedly so. Groves and M.B. were the only people on the ship who played it. It had not even been a component in the original brig chess program; Groves added it after M.B. inquired about the possibility.

It was interesting that, while M.B. knew the "Rove" she was playing with was the designer of the brig chess program, she probably had no idea who he actually was. His chosen nickname, Rove, was only an oblique reference to his own identity and was a word in its own right. Devoid of any context, it was hard to draw the connection.

In contrast, Groves knew full well he was playing against Michael Burnham. If the initials weren't clue enough, there was also the fact M.B. appeared shortly after Burnham's arrival on Discovery and the fact M.B.'s first few games had been against SILY: Burnham's roommate, Cadet Sylvia Tilly. (Also Groves' favorite player nickname, after his own.)

Really, the only players who knew Rove was Groves were NATE, MISH, LLNA, and probably SARU. NATE had been the reason he programmed brig chess in the first place. Sex and chess were the two things he and Egarova had bonded over in null time. At least he had been able to keep the chess component of the relationship going.

As far as M.B. went, Burnham was an excellent opponent, but Groves had learned early on that she had a serious problem with losing, so sometimes he had to let her win. The really hilarious thing was when he did, she would typically feel obliged to point out whatever "mistake" he had made, as if he needed her help to improve his intentionally torpedoed game. He could see why Saru had found her such a frustrating crewmate on the Shenzhou.

He wondered if he should let Burnham have this game or not. She was capable of beating him honestly, just not as frequently as she thought she did. He decided to give her a run for her money today.

The Mudd incident was shaping up to be a very interesting report for Starfleet. Lorca sipped his coffee as he reviewed it one more time, making sure the contents were unassailable while revealing only those details he thought Starfleet ought to know. There was no need to contradict the report on his time in Klingon prison by revealing Mudd's vengeance was borne of being deserted in that godforsaken place.

The door chimed. "Enter," said Lorca, looking away from the lights of the bridge for the brief moment the doors were open. When he looked back, he saw Mischkelovitz standing in the ready room, her hands pressed together in front of her in a way that resembled Lalana's expression of distress, minus the knocking motion. Her gaze was fixed firmly on the floor.

"Mischka," he greeted, wondering what she was doing up here. "Something wrong?" His first thought was that she had come to fret about the lului box.

She did not answer immediately. Her head twisted as she swallowed nervously. Her eyes scrunched shut. "Captain, I..." She swallowed again, her mouth dry. "I'm—I wanted to ask you something." Her hands twisted, the right one curling into a fist and then the left covering it, nails digging into her skin.

A question, not a guilty conscience. Not that it couldn't be both. "And you couldn't ask using the comm?"

"No!" There was real, palpable fear in her voice at that prospect.

"Is this about the lului device?" he asked. She shook her head softly. He held out a fortune cookie to lure her in. It worked, of course. She never declined them.

In this case, perhaps she should have. Her mouth was so dry she had trouble chewing and she asked with a trembling voice, "Water?"

He brought her half a glass of water and she downed it quickly and in one go, hands so tight around the glass it shook. Lorca leaned back against his desk and crossed his arms, looking down at her with a vaguely amused frown. The last time she had gotten like this, it was because she had misspoken his name. He really hoped this was some sort of greater problem than that, because otherwise this was getting a little ridiculous, mycelial map and mystery box be damned. "Do I need to call Mally or Groves up here?"

Again, her reply was instantaneous, but this time more horrified than afraid: "No!" Her hair bobbed as she shook her head again, more forcefully this time. "I just, I wanted to ask you something... something personal."

It was clear she was having a tremendous amount of difficulty. He reached out and took the glass from her, their fingers touching as he did. He could feel the tremble even from that brief contact. He put the glass safely on the table. "Go ahead."

Absent the glass, she clasped her hands in front of her, left over right again. "I didn't... with my husband... and so... I was wondering..."

His eyebrows shot up. Surely she didn't mean what that sounded like. Surely that wasn't the question she was asking.

"In the time loop, we all died, over and over again, and I don't want to, to die without ever actually... With another person..." She trembled almost from head to toe.

It definitely, definitely was. "Never?" he asked. She shook her head. How in the hell can that be the case. This can't really be happening. "Doctor. Are you asking me to have sex with you?"

"Yes, please." She lifted her eyes for the first time, looking up towards him with more hope than fear, but her hands were still shaking. "Please?"

It had not been easy for her to ask, and if he were a better man, he would probably have refused. But he wasn't. He smirked. "Okay."

All shivering ceased. She gasped and looked up, bright-eyed. "Really?"

He crossed his arms and smiled faintly. "My quarters, 2030." The smile on her face was irrepressible, even if there were still tears glinting in her eyes from anticipated rejection. "Now wipe your eyes and get back to work."

She did so, wiping her sleeve across her face as she bowed in appreciation. She actually bowed. "Thank you, captain!" She turned on her heel and fled as commanded.

Again, Lorca averted his eyes when the doors opened and closed. He returned to his usual place behind the desk and picked up with the report, but with only half a mind on the actual work at hand. A virgin. You didn't see those every day, especially on a starship. What in the hell had been wrong with Milosz.

O'Malley was probably going to kill him for this. Just another thing to add to his list of reasons to hate Lorca.

When Mischkelovitz returned, she was giddy and kept periodically bursting out into giggles but would not say why. Groves stared at her and asked her in qoryan what the big deal was.

She refused to answer.

Groves scratched at his wrists. There were no scars there—medical technology had taken care of that—but sometimes the skin still itched when he was frustrated, and this was very frustrating. The rules of qoryan stated that you were always supposed to speak the truth with it and to keep no secrets, because secrets were for outsiders, not for them.

Groves decided to speak some truth to her right now. "Li kat ma'soproht ze pakri makiin? Je ma ha't'rohti." You think you can count me as an outsider? I'm us-but-older.

Mischkelovitz's eyes widened. "E'hhro ma'tiinen? Je ba kroht se bakiin!" Aren't you cheating? You sound as if you didn't leave us!

Groves scowled at that, because nothing served to guilt him so thoroughly as the fact he had left and none of them would ever let him forget it. "Esseren ma'so'prohti, xi'sohn." I expect this cruelty from outsiders, monster.

"E prei'baroh. Se malotoh." I'm sorry. You're right. "Kii'reh pa'prossi je patrafah patrossen." If I told you our plan it might change it.

Groves hummed thoughtfully. "Fair enough," he said. "Don't blame me when it blows up in your face because you didn't tell me."

Mischkelovitz stuck her tongue out at him. He stuck his out right back. As mature as ever, the pair of them.

They stayed in their respective corners for the rest of the day until O'Malley came to fetch them for dinner, or, as O'Malley described it while he and Groves fetched the trays and Mischkelovitz secured the table like a small and vicious guard dog, "Dinner as breakfast. It never gets old." O'Malley sighed.

Groves groaned. This was not the first time O'Malley had cracked that particular line. "You can ask the dispenser to make breakfast, you know. Or maybe you don't. I'm never quite sure exactly how dumb you are."

"Down, John," warned O'Malley as they headed for the table where Mischkelovitz was waiting. "You know Melly hates breakfast food. I'm not very well going to eat it in front of her."

Groves rolled his eyes. God forbid O'Malley do a single thing Mischkelovitz disagreed with. It was ridiculous, really, the lengths O'Malley would go to please certain people in the hopes of receiving their table scraps.

"We waiting for Saru?" asked Groves as they sat down.

"No, I asked him not to come today," said O'Malley.

"I thought he was your friend," said Groves.

Almost at the same time, Mischkelovitz went, "Why would you do that?"

O'Malley sat, fork in hand, feeling besieged on two sides, and said, "Has it ever occurred to you two there are things going on in my life that don't involve either of you?"

"Not really," said Groves.

"What does that mean?" asked Mischkelovitz, seeming genuinely confused.

O'Malley put his fork down, covered his face, and groaned. "You're children, both of you. I hate everyone today."

"Mally?" said Mischkelovitz. O'Malley's hands slid down and he peered out from between his fingers at her. "I love you."

O'Malley dropped his hands and smiled at her. She always knew the right thing to say to cheer him up, even if that was largely because it was always the same thing. "Just as much," he answered. "Now can we please eat quietly, peacefully for once? And maybe not judge me for twenty minutes?"

Mischkelovitz started tittering at that for reasons that made sense only to her. Groves knocked his knee against hers to get her to stop. The last thing any of them needed was a public bout of hysterics to draw attention to themselves. Also, laughter was dangerously contagious, and if Mischkelovitz went off, he might end up doing the same.

After dinner, Groves was officially released from his duties watching Mischkelovitz. He wandered over to the cargo bay to shoot some hoops. It was a bittersweet hobby. Absent anyone to play with growing up, he had no skill in the teamwork aspects of the game; all he really knew how to do was make shots of impressive technical precision. If only his childhood had provided the opportunity to pursue the sport. By the time they had all escaped, it was too late.

It was, he thought to himself as he flicked the ball towards the hoop and watched it soar in perfectly, always too late to change anything.

When Mischkelovitz left the lab again, O'Malley and Larsson were on the door.

"Where are you going?" asked O'Malley.

"Secret project update," she said.

He knew there was some secret project Lorca had her working on, but whatever it was, it was above his security clearance, so he left it and let Larsson go on break and stood there by himself trying to empty his mind of all thoughts. This worked only a little bit, so he switched mental tactics and pictured Aeree in the morning sunlight, beckoning him towards the bath. She was as beautiful as she was opaque, a mystery he had yet to solve. Maybe someday. He had no intention of giving up.

The proximity alert beeped in his left ear. Incoming. He turned his head and heard a familiar set of footsteps. Only one person on the ship had that stride. Saru.

Some part of O'Malley's heart sank.

"Colonel O'Malley," said Saru, inclining his head in greeting.

"Commander Saru," he replied, curtly. "Can I help you with something?"

"May we speak inside a moment?" asked Saru.

Some part of O'Malley really did not want to, but he owed Saru an explanation. He opened the outer doors and informed Larsson of his position.

"I apologize for disturbing you while you are on duty," said Saru as soon as the doors slid shut, "but I find myself concerned. I have very much valued our discussions and if I have done something to cause you offense..."

That was the worst conclusion Saru could have drawn. O'Malley felt genuinely bad for giving that impression. "No, you haven't."

"Why are you avoiding me, colonel?" Saru could be delightfully direct when he wanted.

O'Malley scrunched his nose. "It's not you I'm trying to avoid. It's me." He swallowed. "I'm not the man you think I am, Saru. I wish I were. I've done things. And I think... I've done something I can't come back from." His gaze fell towards the floor.

Saru considered that. "We have all made mistakes, colonel. Whatever you have done..." A shift came over Saru. He straightened. "You referred to me once as a 'unicorn.' This is a creature from Earth's mythology which is seen as being innocent and pure. I am neither innocent nor pure, colonel. In my brief time in command of Discovery, I knowingly inflicted suffering upon a sentient living being under the misguided belief that the ends would somehow justify those means. In doing so, I betrayed those ideals which I hold most dear. Furthermore, I did this to an alien who was gravely misunderstood by many, which is something I myself know all too well. I think, if I were to be in your interrogation room, you would not judge me an acceptable captain."

O'Malley took this in with an expression of spreading shock. "That's... The mere fact you'd think that says you'd never end up in the room with me. Ever. And I don't judge captains. That's not my job. Even if it were..." O'Malley's brow furrowed. "That's part of why people talk to me. Because I don't judge them. I give them exactly what they want. Understanding, forgiveness, and justification. And they impale themselves on it. Because I do everything I can to make sure the blow doesn't strike them in the heart."

There was something unclear in O'Malley's words, some combination of his analogy and his stated methodology. It did not sound like he was wholly engaged in the pursuit of justice. "I do not understand what you mean exactly."

"I mean I wish I were a callous bastard like some of the people who sit down across from me. I envy them their cruelty. It seems preferable."

Saru's head shifted right, then left. "Surely you do not mean that."

"Oh, no, I do. The problem with being a bleeding heart is that your heart constantly bleeds. Literally, in my case. I wish I could turn it off." O'Malley crossed his arms with his hands tucked under his arms defensively.

Saru stood quietly a moment. "I understand. Sometimes... I have sometimes wished I were a predator instead of being prey. The traits which predators have, their fearlessness and strength, these are qualities I lack, and which seem to make navigating the universe so much easier. And yet, if I were a predator, I would be both capable and culpable of causing pain and suffering in others. I do not wish that, having experienced it myself."

There was a twist of sympathy on O'Malley's face. "Do you know, the other meaning of unicorn was the one I meant. I know you're not innocent or pure or perfect, but you are something rare, Saru. You're incredibly brave. Bravest person on this ship, I should think."

Saru's head shook. "I am not brave."

"You are in the one way that really counts. You're honest. It takes a lot of bravery to admit your shortcomings, your weaknesses, and not just to others, but to yourself."

That did ring true. It also seemed applicable. Saru pressed his fingers together. "Perhaps it would be of benefit to you if you were to admit what it is has cast a cloud over you, colonel."

"I wish it were that easy."

"Perhaps it is."

"Tell me something. If you could do things over again with Ripper, knowing what you know now, would you still have used him the way you did?"

"I would not," said Saru with total certainty.

"See, that's the difference. I know what I did was wrong, and I'd still do it. I'd even do it a third time if it came down to it."

Saru was taken slightly aback. "Why, if you know it is wrong?"

"For the same reason anyone does anything crazy." O'Malley smiled in a way that suggested it was borne from a private thought. "Anyway. What's done is done and we can't change it. Probably better that way. We'd go mad if we could."

"Yes. We can only move forward and attempt to do better next time," said Saru.

"And that's why you'll never end up in my interrogation room. You don't need an interrogator. You own up to your mistakes and admit the things that weigh on you. Admitting things is the first step towards overcoming them. I wish I were as brave as you. And I really wish the captain were, too."

"Captain Lorca is one of the bravest captains I have ever met."

In many regards, this was true. Lorca had no fear of battle or death. He commanded with certainty and purpose. Yet it was also completely false. "But you see it, too, right? It's like there's a burden on his shoulders."

"There is no secret there," said Saru. "The destruction of the Buran weighs heavily on the captain."

O'Malley hummed faintly. "Mm, no, it's something else, something people don't know about. John's the same way. Whatever it was, it was so terrible he'll do anything to avoid talking about it for fear it'll be used against him. It's interesting. I've gotten some of the worst people ever to serve in Starfleet to open up to me even when it meant condemning themselves, and for the first time, I don't have to condemn anyone in any way, and he still won't open up."

Saru tilted his head again, stared at O'Malley with unblinking eyes. There was a clear difference between Lorca and captains being interrogated after the commission of crimes. Internal Security did not tend to arrest officers unless they were certain of their guilt. "That is because Captain Lorca still has something left to lose. If I may, colonel, as a species, my people have lost more than most. That is why it does not trouble me to be honest. I do not fear losing."

O'Malley blinked, gazing up at Saru with a sort of reverence. "You don't, do you?" This time, O'Malley's smile was genuinely pleased. "You know, you can call me Mac."

Informality did not come easily to Saru. "Very well, Mac."

"Someday I'll tell you what happened. I just hope you won't hate me for it when I do."

Saru was gratified by the words. "As someone who has also made mistakes, I do not think I could."

Lorca used everything he learned watching Mischkelovitz on the security feeds and then some. In human psychology, as with many other species, the first experience you had of something tended to be what defined it for you and Lorca was hell-bent on making this particular definition the best one possible. Mischkelovitz, for her part, brought a lot of medical and biological knowledge to the table. She was just missing the practical elements.

Which was why, at the end of it all, when Mischkelovitz rolled away and covered her face and started crying, he was genuinely disturbed by the reaction. He sat up. "Mischka." He touched her on the shoulder.

She recoiled and curled into a ball, shaking.

"What's wrong?" No answer. Her position and state seemed to indicate a deep shame. "Is it Milosz?"

"No!" she blurted through the tears. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I don't mean to cry. You don't deserve this. You've been so kind."

Lorca raised an eyebrow. "I didn't do this to be kind. I was being selfish. I wanted to go where no man had gone before." It was, after all, the guiding mandate of Starfleet.

There was a momentary pause. Mischkelovitz inhaled sharply and a laugh choked out. Then another. She began to laugh hysterically in that way only she could. Her hands fell away from her eyes and her shoulders shook with genuine mirth.

He chuckled, too, and smiled. "And I'm your first. That means a part of you will always belong to me."

She wiped her eyes, still convulsing with paroxysms of laughter. "Thank you, Gabe. Sorry for crying." The laughter subsided and the tears were gone with it.

"Come here." He put his hand on her bare back and this time she did not recoil. She rolled back towards him and nestled against his shoulder. "I like that you can cry. At least one of us can." If he had been able to muster up the tears again, would Cornwell have forgiven him the phaser? Probably not, but maybe it would have helped. It certainly had back in San Francisco.

He felt a small vibration against his shoulder. Not movement, but sound. "What is that? Is that music?"

"Yes," she said. "If you lean in close, you can hear it." She shifted position upward, so her head was next to his, and Lorca pressed his ear against hers. There were small patterns of harplike sounds emerging from her implant.

"What is it?"

"Mishima."

The patterns repeated over and over, changing slightly as they did. "It's a little repetitive," admitted Lorca.

"I like repetition. Patterns are math. Math is everything."

There was something a little familiar in the phrasing. "Ask Stamets, and he'll tell you it's all mushrooms."

"Stamets can't see what I see."

Lorca smiled at that. It was a good thing Stamets' focus was so narrow. He was literally missing the bigger picture. "No, he cannot. How about you walk me through the latest revision of your map?"

It was a perfect way to end the evening. Lorca and Mischkelovitz both loved that map and when he asked her how many jumps she thought were needed to complete it, he found the answer high but completely within the realms of possibility.

One hundred and fifty jumps. That was what she estimated. The number echoed in Lorca's mind after Mischkelovitz departed his quarters. She insisted it was only an estimate, but she was good at estimates. If she thought that's what it would take, he had no doubt it would be the case.

One-hundred and fifty jumps was going to equal a lot of dead Klingons if Gabriel Lorca had anything to say about it.

Part 68

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Ten Sides (Part 28)

Somehow she thinks that it is worse to be herself. Sometimes she thinks that it would have been better if she would have just let Aang do his thing and mold her into someone new. Someone more pleasant. “Is that supposed to be reassuring, Avatar.”

“It was a few months ago.”

“Well it isn’t now.”

“Azula, wait.”

“I want to be alone, Avatar.” She doesn’t have much of a choice in that regard.

He catches her by the wrist. “No you don’t. I know that you don’t.” There is no point in asking him how he would know that. He tells her anyhow, “this wouldn’t bother you if you wanted to be alone for the rest of your life.”

It isn’t as though she has a say in that either.

“You have to go back and…”

“They aren’t going to humor me a third time, Avatar.”

“But…”

“Mai has made it abundantly clear that I’ve wasted enough of her time. And TyLee is better off finding someone gentle and warm.” The sensitivity and compassion TyLee deserves is exactly what she can’t provide.

She finds herself feeling exhausted. So much so that she finds herself a spot on the wall and slides to the floor. She isn’t sure how much more she can take, really. She just wants to feel cherished, safe, and happy. Wants to feel secure and stable again.

Aang pulls her into a hug and holds her head to his chest. He rests his chin on the top of her head and rubs up and down her spine. Perhaps she doesn’t feel happy, stable, or secure but--at least for the moment--she feels cherished and loved.

She gnaws on her cheek, it is the only thing that saves her from tears. She can’t afford those right now, she is already feeling weak as it is. “Why don’t we get you back to your room?” Aang suggests and helps her back to her feet. She still leans quite heavily against him. She supposes that privacy would be helpful. If only it weren’t too late for that; she isn’t sure how long Mai and TyLee have been standing there. How much they have already heard.

.oOo.

She looks no more comfortable this third time than she had the first two. Now that Mai and TyLee are well aware of the nature of things, he more openly strokes her hair and touches her cheeks. At the very least he thinks that it calms Azula, if only slightly.

This time they sit quietly and wait for her to speak up. He has a feeling that he is going to have to do it again. And just when he opens his mouth to do so, she does too. This apology is very quiet, probably the softest thing he has heard come from her lips and she has a gentle voice on the best of days.

“For what?” Mai implores. She isn’t making things particularly easy. But he can’t say that she doesn’t have a right to her anger. It is fair enough all things considered. Even so, he is worried that Azula doesn’t have much more in her. She is more than ready to give up. He wonders, for a moment, if Mai is playing a game of her own; making Azula think that she has a chance, just to see the woman beg.

“A lot of things, I guess.” The princess mumbles, “how much time do you have.”

“Not much but apparently all day.” She rolls her eyes.

“Do we have to go through it all?”

Aang brings his stroking to a halt, resting his hand on her mid back.

“I guess that would just be tedious.” Mai mutters.

“TyLee?”

“I just want to know that this is...real.”

“Real?”

“That this isn’t one big act.”

.oOo.

“It isn’t.” Azula sits upright. “I’m done with mind games.” At the very least she is for now. She can’t quite play them without feeling a degree of unease for herself. Without feeling a sickly squirming in her stomach. Without her own mind making its way back to that facility. She can already feel the cool of the vines on her forehead. She massages her temples.

“But how am I supposed to know that?” TyLee asks.

“I can’t do it anymore.” She replies. She truly doesn’t think that she can. She has had so many lies that they have begun to suffocate her. So many lies that she can’t even pick out the truths anymore, not without meditating on them to open her chakras for several hours.

TyLee doesn’t look any less skeptical.

“Why don’t you tell them why you can’t do it anymore.”

She supposes that she is already as vulnerable as she can make herself. She leans herself against Aang once more and she relays her story. Each word seems to sap a little more energy from her and she hadn’t had much to begin with. By the end of it she isn’t sure that she can uphold the conversation anymore.

She is left with a familiar, queasy fluttering in her belly and a slouch of her shoulders. Suddenly her body feels as though it is too heavy to hold upright. She is thankful to  have Aang holding her by the torso. She can’t tell what they are think of her but she has a feeling that she will be dissatisfied either way around. Either they are going to see her as a hateable hypocrit or some pitiful fool who has burned through all of her luck and strength too early on in life.

She lays herself down, her head is aching. She isn’t sure if she wants to hear what they have to say. She isn’t sure if making amends is worth so much trouble. She feels like her mind would be troubled either which way. At least this way, she doesn’t feel like she is evil through and through.

“So you can’t handle your own antics.” Mai quirks a brow.

Azula isn’t sure why she had expected even a scarp of compassion from the woman. “I suppose that I can’t.” She mumbles. And that is all, she has reached her limit. She takes Aang’s hand. He rubs small circles on the back of her hand. It provides her at least some sense of soothing, though she finds herself wishing that he would use those vines again, just one last time. One last time to take the edge off.

“That sounds like it was hard.” TyLee finally says her piece.

Azula shrugs. “It…” she isn’t sure what she wants to say and she is too tired to figure it out. So she settles for a simple, “yes.” She feels Aang’s fingers interlace with her own. “I don’t want to be like that anymore.” She mumbles. “I don’t want to be like him.”

“You’re not like him.” Aang promises again.

But she could be. She had been. And that is enough to make her hate herself.

She wonders if such is the turmoil that the Avatar is facing; a fine and simmering self-loathing. And if she, seasoned in the art of wrongdoing, finds herself overwhelmed by the guilt she can only imagine how intense it is for a man who goes so out of his way to avoid doing harm.

Agni, this was supposed to make her feel better, to help her heal. But she has only succeeded in adding more stress and with no pay off whatsoever.

TyLee exchanges a glance with Mai.

Azula drapes her free arm over her eyes. Her head hurts so terribly. Her mind hurts…

“I don’t think that you’re like Sangyul.” TyLee says finally.

The name sends chills vibrating down her spine. “That’s a pretty lie, TyLee.”

“It’s the truth. Sangyul doesn’t care that he hurt you. But you care that you hurt us. That counts for something, right Mai?”

Mai presses her lips together and then, with a sigh and a shrug, replies, “I guess. I mean it doesn’t count for much but…”

TyLee grins, “see even Mai agrees.”

Even so, she isn’t sure if she should be around the two of them anymore. And yet Aang is smiling too. That stupidly optimistic smile. She doesn’t want to share it. She is afraid to share it. But she tries to do so anyhow.