#so many vows and u will keep breaking every single one of them

[ilynpilled]

Something so sexy about Jaime’s most heroic act being doomed from the get go in every way. It damns him for one, like there is no action to take in the situation he is in without huge cost. So many vows yadda yadda, you are damned either way. But in general, a nuke being under the city is something you cannot come back from. It is meant to be a death sentence to the place, the culmination of the trajectory the kingdom was on. Aerys doomed the city with that. The logistics of removal is not all that simple. If you tell Ned and he even believes you? Great! Now who else will have to know? Who can be trusted with it? How will you remove it? We do not even know all precise locations, we had to kill all the pyromancers. How do you make sure it is not accidentally set off? On top of that, the city is filled to the brim with corruption. Full of players who would love to use and exploit that kind of power. The information itself is dangerous. The wildfire functions as a great metaphor as a result. It is festering corruption. You cannot erase the caches at this point. The closest you can get to that is bury the knowledge. He is still haunted by an endless stream of burning bodies. An event that never happened: “In his dreams the dead came burning, gowned in swirling green flames. Jaime danced around them with a golden sword, but for every one he struck down two more arose to take his place.” When he hears that Tyrion made use of it, he is immediately reminded of his greatest fear: “Jaime saw green flames reaching up into the sky higher than the tallest towers, as burning men screamed in the streets. I have dreamed this dream before.” His faith in institutions is also below ground by then, like you see it in his weirwood dream, he tells the truth to his heroes and it does nothing. It is not about Ned, he is not the one that comes out, even though he assumed he would be. “It was never him.” They damn him to darkness anyway for his act and prioritize feudalistic moral constructs. All these contradictions are what makes his fire go out in the dream. But the belief that you can bury all this, and therefore prevent the existence of an Aerys 2.0, does nothing but stall the inevitable. KL’s supposed savior, Robert, the man leading the rebellion, who would slay the “evil dragon”, just led to stagnation. He did not wash out the corruption in it, he just sat on top of it and let it fester. He rues Robert, he says so. One bad king to another. The wildfire problem is more complicated than a single mad man. Its tragedy is rooted in enablement and escalation. There is a reason the pyromancers are more emphasized in the confession. I read it as symbolic of the systemic issues permeating the city, because those are what allowed it to get to the point that it did in the first place. Brienne knows about the wildfire now too, but she also does not comprehend what a volatile ticking time-bomb it is. They do not know how it works, and how it becomes more dangerous over time. Jaime might even save that damn city twice with the Cers and valonqar set up, but both times it is gonna be ultimately “pointless”, bc KL cannot be saved. But that does not matter, because the fact that someone acted back then has meaning. Thematically, that action itself is a triumph.

[elysianslove]

cheering you up ; haikyuu boys

synopsis; different ways the haikyuu boys care for you and cheer you up when you’re sad

pairings; karasuno x reader, nekoma x reader, aoba johsai x reader, fukurodani x reader, shiratorizawa x reader, inarizaki x reader

genre; fluff

warnings; none probably a bunch of mistakes lmfao

note; i had to repost this like 3 times rip. anyways, im sorry for not adding inarizaki on my last one jbshds but they’re here now!!

karasuno ━━

sugawara koshi; i definitely think he's so in tune with you, and your emotions. he learns your cues very well, and knows every little thing about you that there is to learn. if you're having a bad day, he'll notice right away. he won't comment on it though. all he'll do is these little things to try to cheer you up, but it's going to be very subtle. he'll let u rest ur head on his shoulder, run his fingers through ur hair. he'll sneakily buy u ur favorite snack. doesn't bring anything up until you do. ends the day with cuddles and a chick flick.

sawamura daichi; he notices but he doesn't really know how to react. not because he doesn't know what to do, but because he doesn't want to trigger you or deepen your sadness in any way. he's very careful with you. if it's something throughout the day, he's very quiet and tender with you, just silently lets you rest your head against his chest and rubs your back/arm tenderly. as you're walking home he asks if you want to talk about it, and reminds you that it's good to, but it's also okay if you don't want to.

nishinoya yuu; not a single sad moment with mr noya here. seriously you cannot breathe. ok but in all honesty, when you're sad. he's sad. sends you memes, and you'll be laughing at them with tears streaming down your face because you don't really know what you're feeling anymore. he does a lot of tiktok trends with you, any of the couple ones. grabs your faces and ,,, smooch all over. until you have no choice but to laugh. if you want to cry even more, he'll watch the notebook and the vow a thousand times over, and be a sobbing mess next to you. just don't tell the guys okay? <3

kageyama tobio; he's so.   bad. at this please help him. like he can tell ur sad, bc he's v good at reading people. but like. what the fuck is he supposed to do. anyways. when u two get to be alone and he kinda notices how quiet you are, he just nudges you slightly, and pulls you to him. it's easier to talk to you, he's calmer, when he can't directly look at you. when he feels you start to shake in his arms, feels the wet tears down your cheeks as you start to sob in his arms, his heart kinda breaks. all he can do is hold you, but it's what you need. and he'll listen too, if that's what you need as well.

tsukishima kei; i think he notices, but doesn't bring it up at all. the way he goes about it is he'll tease you to try and bring a smile on your face. because this is tsukki, and you know him well enough, you know the truth behind his jabs, enough to appreciate them. if it doesn't work, he'll just start to make fun of people in front of you, pointing random people out with you and just being like "wanna bet on what's making their relationship fall apart" this sadist i stg. like suga, he subtly makes you feel better until you yourself approach him about whatever's upsetting. actually gives 10/10 advice bc he's v honest.

asahi azumane; he's so empathetic oh my god bruh. notices immediately. "baby what's got u so upset" w a big pout on his face and when u just mumble "nothin" so low he barely catches it and instead throw yourself into his arms, he gives you a big, certified asahi bear hug. doesn't leave your side at all. constantly mutters sweet nothings and encouragements. if you do the bare minimum like make it through class he'll meet you after and be all "im so proud of my pretty baby". cuddles all day. all night. he's not very good at advice but he is the best listener !!! so attentive and you'll feel a huge weight lifted.

tanaka ryunosuke; "aight who do i need to jump" type beat. u love him so much though. that one sentence and sentiment already has you feeling better. immediately hugs you so tight, borderline suffocating you. "wanna ditch school". 100% willing to do so. he doesn't really know whether to approach it with distracting you or facing the obstacle head-on, but he finds a middle ground. eats your feelings out with you. saeko pulls out the embarrassing ryu pictures and suddenly you don't know why you were ever sad.

hinata shoyo; is really oblivious for a bit tbh. when he first meets you at the start of the day and his hyperactive self is greeted by your duller, sadder self, he doesn't think much of it. it's when you don't react to him or interact with him the way you usually would that he starts to notice you being off. he's actually super straightforward about it, and approaches you with some of your favorite snack that he bribed ukai to give him for free and just "wanna tell me whats up, baby?" he's so, so easy to talk to. immediately you're venting. and he listens to intently, gives stupidly good advice. it's like such simple approaches to your problem but?? it works. anyways you love him.

yamaguchi tadashi; will be super worried about what he could do to make it better, and kinda just tries to feed you as much positive energy as he can. once he's comfortable with people, he becomes really chatty, so i see him talking your ear off with the biggest smile on his face that you have no choice but to kind of ? mimic it? he just radiates goodness and sweetness that it shifts your own energy. he on some witchcraft shit on god. anyways when he walks you home or something, he'll just stop for a min and avoid your eyes when he says "ik u dont feel the best, but i dont want you to have to hide that from me, okay?" stan tadashi <3

nekoma ━━

kuroo tetsurō; drops everything. i mean it. i genuinely think kuroo would be such a good boyfriend that he'll sense it and text u as ur getting ready for school and be like "are u sad i feel like ur sad". you dont really wanna worry him and you'll just reassure him ur fine but he's already at your front door in — not his school uniform. insists the two of you take the day off saying "its fine babe im super smart". you two will spend the whole day just simply existing, talking when needed, he listens to you if you vent, and tries to come up with as many options of solutions for you so you don't feel weighed down. he'll make sure you eat even if you don't have an appetite, and will try to make u do something productive bc in a lotta cases, it could help you feel a lil better yk :)

kozume kenma; i pretend i do not see it — kozume kenma (2020). jbwjwks im jk. he's like tsukki in the sense that he will never address it, and he doesn't outwardly approach you about it. if it's just an off day for you, and you also happen to not have school, you'll go over to his house, hoping to feel a little bit better when you see him. "can i have a kiss, sunshine" to which he responds "why." you just go "im sad" and he gives u a big smooch. he'll have you lay on his lap while he plays his games, occasionally just sneaking in a peak at you to make sure you're okay. he'll ask if you wanna play to get your mind off things for a while. eventually, when things wind down a bit, he'll just mutter "yk i love you, yeah?" and that lights up your world hehe

haiba lev; as soon as he notices you're sad he just ☹️. he picks out a small flower and as soon as he sees you, he just tucks it by your ear, and smile so brightly and youll just be like "oh my god lev please stop being so cute". he won't really know what to do tbh, but the way he's so lost makes it so heartwarming and it honestly cheers you up all on its own. he just. "would a kiss make it better" and if you nod he'll just start kissing all over your face so softly, until he finally kisses your lips. when he pulls away he asks "again?" with a cute smile and if you nod he'll just kiss you over and over again. very simple way of cheering you up, and very foolproof tbh.

yaku morisuke; i think throughout the day, he might pester you a little bit about telling him what was wrong, but after you keep insisting you're fine, he relents, and decides that maybe giving you your own time and space to open up to him is better. he tries not to act differently in that sense, but he finds himself being a little more soft spoken, and gentler with you. i just had this image flash in my brain of you resting your head on a desk, head turned to the right, and then yaku comes and sits to your right, putting his head on the desk and facing you. and just. "hi :)" your heart melts. he kisses your forehead softly and tells you you're wonderful, in case you've forgotten. if, or when, you do open up to him, he'll be very eager to listen, and ready to fight off whoever upset you.

yamamoto taketora; this man is angry. like properly. "who the FUCK put a frown on my baby's face. speak the fuck up. i won't hurt you. ill just mutilate you." if you tell him that it's no one, and that you're just upset, he'll be so confused but he'll just nod and be like "okay. okay. do you want a hug?" and he'll hug you so tight. he'll admit that he doesn't like seeing you like this, and that he'll do anything to make it better. at first he's very cautious, but then he just lightbulb moment and as soon as you get home he'll be like "karaoke night babyyyyy" and then. no more sad.

aoba johsai ━━

oikawa tōru; very. perceptive. he greets you normally, even if he notices something's off, because he won't want to worsen anything. you meet him right before he has practice after school, and he'll just cup your face, lifting them to brush at your hair, and you just sigh. "my baby's had a long day, yeah?" he'll be very gentle and careful with you, i'm sure. he gives you a kiss, smiling softly into it, and reassuring you that you're much too strong to let a single bad day destroy you like this. he meets you later that night with a lotta ice cream and you two just binge watch any reality show you could find, shit talking the actors together. he himself is terrible at talking about his feelings this dumbass >:( so he understands if you don't want to yk? will encourage u to vent it out though. expect terrible, makes no sense advice

iwaizumi hajime; he kinda like. gets mad? when you continue to be upset and not speak about it? he's not mad at you! he's just. mad. this is iwa okay. anyways. he won't bring it up mostly, only being slightly more affectionate, especially in his hand holding, which is super gentle already as it is. when he invites you over, that's when he actually starts to talk to you about it. he lets you know that there's nothing worse than seeing you like this and not knowing what to do, and that he wants you to be able to talk to him. about anything. even if you think it's stupid. he'll listen, and tell you that it's not stupid if it's making you upset. he cooks for you <33333 then bakes with you <33333 you feel a lot lighter at the end of the night tbh

hanamaki takahiro; (he's so annoying i love him). as soon as he sees you upset he makes it his mission throughout the day to cheer you up in any possible way. spams your phone while you're class with ten thousand wholesome memes. sends you pick up lines. when he meets you in between classes he just yells out "how's my favorite person in the entire world!" and kisses you so wholly in the middle of the school hallway lmfao. while he's walking you home, takes a longer route and purposely, he passes by your favorite store/bakery/ice cream parlor. buys u ur favorite, and pretends to be shocked when you give him a piece. late at night, he'll facetime you, wondering how you're feeling, asking if you needed to talk about it. whether you do or you don't, you two will fall asleep facetiming.

matsukawa issei; the minute he sees you he's like "whats wrong". no hi or anything. he has like this frown on his face, which seems off bc it's rare to see a frown on issei's face, and he just tucks your chin in his palm gently and stares at your pout. "you good, baby?" he can tell you're not, but he wants you to be able to tell him on your own. sticks by your side the entire day, and nobody really mentions it. he talks to you as if it were a normal day, but his voice has a softer edge. he's not distracting you, per se. he's more, talking to fill the space while giving you your own space to think. once you're alone, he'll just drag you to the nearest comfy surface, flop down, and pull you on top of him. if you even try to resist or ask whats going on he'll just "nap and cuddles first." and when u sleep a lil bit of ur sadness away, he'll just let you talk it out as he continues to hold you <333

fukurodani ━━

bokuto kōtarō; just as empathetic as asahi, if not more. he really does feel it all with you. yk sympathy pains that partners get when women get contractions? bokuto is that partner. with bokuto, i feel like he'd never make you feel like you couldn't just straight up text him "im sad" and feel bad about it. if you ever do that, he'll immediately call, not even bothering with a text. if he can't come over, he stays with you until you've cried your heart out and then laughing until you can't breathe. if he can go over, he smothers you with love. repeatedly says "you know i love you, yeah? you know how grateful i am for you?" and in between kisses "im so lucky. so, so lucky."

akaashi keiji; i feel like as soon as akaashi notices you're down, or you're slightly off, he just grabs your hand and squeezes, forcing you to stop spacing out and focus on him for a second. if you're with a lot of people around you, he'll lean close to you and ask if you wanna go home. he'll be so soft and gentle and understanding, making up some excuse on the spot on why the two of you have to leave. if you're alone, he'll grab your hand and kind of tug you towards him, silently asking you to come into his arms, where you yourself know you feel safest. as soon as you're in the comfort of your home together, he'll like run you a bath and slip into it with you, just holding you until the water grows cold and the droplets on your skin are from your own tears. he'll wait it out, just holding you as reassurance, then make sure nothing's stopping you from spilling everything to him.

konoha akinori; when he first notices, he kinda deflates. like. who would wanna see their s/o like that? his smile is gentler when he greets you, and he's so soft with you. he grabs a pen and lifts your palm up, quickly scribbling down in his unique handwriting "i love you :) <3" on your skin, whispering for you not to wash it off until the end of the day. it is weirdly motivating tbh. as soon as the two of you are alone, he says it to you, face to face, an expected look on his face as if to ask "you know that, yeah?". puts on a movie to tune out the rest of the world, and holds you close to him as it drags on. he'll give advice if you're asking for it, but he's a better listener than anything else.

shiratorizawa ━━

ushijima wakatoshi; does not notice. in all honesty, he expects you to approach him whenever you have an issue or if you're upset. he's kinda like ? so confused when you're so down and really unresponsive, until he starts to notice how touchy you are. like you're leaning more into his touch, holding onto his hand like it's your lifeline, stealing his vbc jacket because it smells like him. is very straightforward, and will just ask you if you're okay as he walks/drives you home. kinda just stops in front of your house and presses a kiss to your forehead, then pulling you into a hug. "please don't be upset." he won't tell you that it kills him, but you can sense the unsaid words. he urges you to keep his jacket when he notices how safe it makes you feel. greets you the next morning with a new cactus in a pot hehe.

semi eita; is very cuddly once he notices. you'll sit at a table in school and he'll be sitting next to you, but he just pulls you into him and lets you rest your head on his chest, mumbling softly into your hair "i know you're sad and it's okay." he doesn't say anything else, just holds you there with a few kisses in between until he has to let go. late at night, if your thoughts are still keeping you up, he'll be up too, worrying, and will text you at 3 am if u wanna sneak out to meet him. takes you to the park and lays on the grass with you, picking out stars and constellations in the sky, with a soft soundtrack playing from his phone next to the two of you. he makes you feel secure enough to be sad even if you have all the blessings in the world, and makes sure you know that he'll always be there for you, even at 3 in the morning.

satori tendō; cheers you up by making you forget literally everything. replaces the sadness in your brain with just pure serotonin in any way he can think of. he'll take you to an amusement park, get ice cream with you, take you to the carnival in town, to the park, to the beach, to the pool, take you up to his house's rooftop. literally anything. and then he'll say something like "life's too short to spend it being sad over anything, darling." he's so understanding, and if you're frustrated or something he'll tell you to let it out by like wrestling him or some shit. exhausts you so much and you're filled to the brim with dopamine. he makes sure you're always happy, never seeing a dull moment in your relationship with him.

goshiki tsutomu; freaks out. plain and simple lmfao. but once he like grounds himself, he just softly comes up to you and asks you if you wanna talk about it, or if there's anything he can do. if yes, he'll break his leg running to go do it. if no, he'll just sit with you in silence, leaning over to hold your hand, talking to you about volleyball and his aspirations and how well he's improving. he's better at distracting you than helping you face your issues, mainly because he stresses out about giving the wrong advice or somehow making you sadder. he'll take a lot of pictures of you together on snapchat random filters to try and cheer you up, then later on in the night he'll send them to you and be like "look how cute we are ugh what a power couple" i love this dorkhabsjsks

shirabu kenjirō; i think he definitely notices, but keeps it to himself. he’d maybe think he’s imagining things and that you’re okay, so he’d go about his day normally. he doesn’t see you after school, and that’s when he puts two and two together and realizes yeah maybe you are sad. so he texts you, and texts you, and texts you, and gets no reply, so he just. comes over. unannounced. uninvited. just straight vibes. he’s already ordered your favorite take out, and already settling in bed with you under the cover with the lights dimmed and some chick flick playing in the background. gives the b e s t advice because he’s so blunt. like he will tell you if you’re overreacting, but you’re still his s/o, so he’d like wince as he says it. that’s all the sympathy you’re getting <3 but his bluntness will shock you into laughing hehe

inarizaki ━━

miya atsumu; usually, with atsumu, you’re always experiencing loud days. your relationship is all fun and flirty and suave and cool. but when he notices you’re sad, he goes quiet. like. eerily so. immediately pulls you aside somewhere private if you’re at a public place like school or something, and with his hands in yours he asks you if you’re okay. yk that thing where ur on the verge of tears and someone asks you if you’re okay and you just burst. yeah <3. his heart absolutely breaks and he just pulls you into a hug, resting your head on his chest and wrapping his arms around your neck. he just holds you there, even if you’re missing class/your friends are worried. he’ll stay with you until your tears have dried up, until you yourself let go.

miya osamu; i don’t see osamu as someone that loves pda. i feel like he’d be a more lowkey kinda guy. but if you’re sad, that gets thrown out the window. he doesn’t really in the moment, and won’t think too much when he pulls you close to his side and just wraps an arm around your waist/shoulder. yeah he’ll get looks but he can feel you trembling and shaking from holding back tears so yk, priorities. he’ll definitely stress eat with you. takes you literally anywhere and feeds you as you rant to him with tears streaming down your face and he’s just nodding sympathetically as he stuffs your mouth one bite after the other. romance is beautiful

suna rinatarō; when he notices you’re sad, his first response is alright what the fuck who messed up. he immediately blames someone else, and if he’s right, he’ll only get really agitated. just giving everyone the side eye from where you can’t see as he walks the two of you, your hand in his tight. if it’s not someone specific, he’ll just hum thoughtfully and then nod, before pulling you away somewhere private and just sitting you down and saying “talk.” very, very good listener. i can’t stress this enough. as you’re speaking he’s already thinking of a million different ways to help you solve your problem. walks with you as he traces your hands and just quietly tells you all the solutions.

aran ojiro; oh my god as a boyfriend he ticks all the boxes. he’s great at communicating, always satisfies your needs, is trustworthy and trusts you. the list goes on. immediately knows when you’re off/sad, and just smiles softly as he takes your hand, kissing your knuckles and saying, “let’s go home, yeah?” at home, he makes you some calming tea, probably pulls out some cookies or brownies or biscuits (that HE made but we’re not gonna get into that) and just listens as you talk, whether it’s about why you’re sad or just in general. gives you honest advice, but also a lil biased bc he loves you hehe <3

[sleep-sounds-nice-rn]

Thinspoopy imagine!!!

thank u @peachjambobatea for this idea <3333

disclaimer: this is SATIRE, i don't personally post or support thinspo so if any kind of thinspo is super triggering for you and you don't wanna interact with this, do not read it

You wake up under 6 layers of blankets, and light from between your curtains glows across your angular face. You slowly shift the blankets aside so you can get out of bed, your tiny arms slightly shaking from the weight. You slide a delicate leg out of the blankets, smiling since you don't have to body check to know your hands can fit all the way around your thigh. You immediately start shivering once you are out of the warm covers, but nothing matters since you are sure you have lost weight since yesterday. You enter the bathroom to weigh yourself, and you hold your breath before you step onto the scale. You quickly exhale when you realize that holding your breath will make you weigh more, and you stare down while you wait for the number to show up. A pound below your ugw, the weight you had been dreaming of for years. You step on and off the scale, and it still stays beautifully low. You run to the mirror, excited to see your reflection after all your hard work.

When you catch a glimpse, you gasp in surprise when you see your tiny waist, even smaller than it was yesterday. The sight will never get old, and you would do a happy dance if the movement wouldn't hurt your fragile body. You finally fulfilled the vow you took, that for halloween you wouldn't be wearing a costume, you would just be a skeleton. You decide to celebrate with some coffee, so you walk to the kitchen to make yourself a classic black iced coffee. Being the superior ana you are, you don't even add sweetener, and you wrap your slender fingers around the glass. After savoring your coffee, you go back to your room to get dressed. You choose and xxxxxs small sweater, sliding it over your head and admiring how your collarbones and tiny frame make you look small and dainty despite how it's too big for you. You put on a pair of xxxxxxs shorts, and they slide off your hipbones. You sigh, finding a belt with many, many holes poked in it and using it to keep your shorts from slipping off. You would wear thigh high socks with the outfit, but nothing stays on your legs since your thighs are skinnier than a monster can. You instead wear normal socks and doc martens, which make your ankles look even tinier in comparison to the big boots.

You leave your house to go on a walk, not needing your exercise watch to let you know that your every day walk 15.3k steps. You listen to your favorite eating disorder songs, which still keep you going even thought you've memorized every single one by heart. You can see people staring at you as you walk by, looking at your emaciated body in impressed horror. You soak up the attention, this only makes you more excited to see your friend at the library this afternoon. After you finish your walk, your legs are tired and shaking but you feel exhilarated knowing that this is helping you stay lower than your ugw, even helping you get lower.

You drink 10 liters of lemon water to help your metabolism and bloating, and you love the feeling of the cold water hitting your empty stomach. You leave the house again after resting, and you wait for your friend in a front table at the library. Your stomach aches in a comfortable way, stabbing pains that would make anyone else unable to move. As your friend enters the library, you wave to make sure the recognize you. It's only been a month since you have seen each other but you have gotten three times as small. Their jaw drops in horror, and they run over to you.

"How are you doing? You look so fragile I'm afraid to touch you in fear of breaking you," your friend asks, looking at you with worry in their eyes.

"I've never been better!" you exclaim, laughing as you give them a hug. You feel superior with your bones poking against their normal sized body.

"Are you sure you're ok?" they ask, shocked by how sharp and gaunt you are.

You laugh again, reassuring them that you are alright. You have a fun and relaxing afternoon picking out books and reading together, and finally it is time for you to go home. Once you get home, you break your 1,000 hour fast with a peeled cucumber, sliced into the smallest slivers. You enjoy it with the comfort that you have earned it, and you go to bed knowing you are the skinniest person on the planet.

[slightlyrebelliouswriter23]

https://matthewfairchildfanclub.tumblr.com/post/622613826051932160/okay-im-ranting-because-i-started-re-reading-the

What do u think about this? I'm kinda struck. I didn't read it that way? It didn't feel ooc to me? I am just stunned how many ppl agree with this because...thar entire thing was cardan and jude being dumb and sad and... Jude is a strong protagonist and ever scheming and persistent but she's...like human? She has feelings and is allowed to be sad??? Idk it's just strange to me

okay first thing's first: i'm not trying to start beef with OP (or anyone who agrees with OP). that is their opinion. they're allowed to have it. Jude and Cardan aren't real, but the person on the other side of that blog is.

second. i really only briefly skimmed the post because, honestly, it's the same argument i've seen everyone who doesn't like QON make. they think because Jude wouldn't burn down villages to get back into Elfhame after having her heart broken, she is, therefore, OOC.

let me tell you why i, personally, disagree with that statement. (TW: discussion of mental health and dissociation under the cut)

i'm going to split this into two parts. one is more anecdotal and the other is more character based.

as you point out, nonnie, Jude is strong. she is fierce, she is determined. but again, she is human. with human feelings. teenage human feelings, at that.

anyone who is not convinced Jude would feel pretty shit for a while after going through her first heartbreak is either too old to remember the rollick of teenage emotions mixed with the legless lord of young love, or they've simply never had their hearts broken before.

if the first, they're looking at Jude's situation with years of maturation behind them, years Jude doesn't yet have at that point. i think people forget this sometimes. Jude is just a teenager. and they probably want her to keep fighting because it's what they didn't do, but wished they had.

if the latter..... oh, my sweet summer child.

when i was young and in love (kind of) and then suddenly had everything ripped away from me within the span of a month, i honestly couldn't tell you what happened that summer. because i don't remember. i was backpacking but all i remember is sleeping well into the afternoon almost every day. lashing out at my friends for stupid shit. not eating. taking every chance i could get to isolate myself. being fine one moment, then in the next feeling like i was going to burst into tears out of nowhere. i had my first dissociative episode. it lasted for three days.

now, i'm probably not as scary as Jude. but i'd like to think i'm stubborn and spiteful enough to warrant some shadowy semblance. what i became was not who i or anyone else wanted or expected me to be. i wanted to be angry and rage and seek revenge, but i couldn't. people expected me to get over it, but i didn't. i was just stuck in this awful liminal place.

heartbreak isn't a single moment where your heart is shattered and then you immediately begin to pick up the pieces. that's unrealistic. heartbreak shatters you and then steals what's left away into a dense fog and laughs as you fumble around blindly on your hands and knees, searching for the lost pieces of yourself.

so, as nonnie pointed out, it is okay for Jude to be sad. it is more than okay. it's what we should expect.

okay, now on to my character based argument. to me, anyone who has this interpretation of QON has severely misjudged Jude's character throughout the series as a whole.

it's true, Jude might put on the facade of tough scary lady with sword–and sure, to a certain extent that is part of her. but Jude is not inherently wicked or menacing or unforgiving, even if she can be at times.

just because we can be a thing doesn't mean we are that thing. mere adjectives simply do not have the breadth to define us, your honours. we exist in multitudes, or however the fuck that Walt Whitman quote goes.

i'm not going to comb through the entire series for moments where Jude is not scary or menacing because, frankly, there are a lot. if you're not actively looking for the moments where she is terrifying, i think you'll see her kindness, her gentleness, even at times her grace, quite plainly.

i'd also like to point out that the times in which Jude is any of those scarier things are all when she is literally terrified for her life. it's a survival tactic. be scared or be the scariest thing in the room. easy choice from where i'm standing.

now in terms of Jude's exile, Cardan is a little dumb here, but not in the fanon himbo Cardan way. just in the normal "dude madly in love" way. by exiling her to the mortal world, he thought he was giving her what she wanted: safety and a clever riddle to solve. because she can't break, right?

he also sent her away for selfish reasons. her safety was more absolute in the mortal world and he couldn't risk losing her again. plus, he wanted to show off his cleverness, smug prick that he is.

but what Jude actually wanted were the things he promised her in his vows: to be the Queen of Elfhame, and, ultimately, him. she wanted a place to call home and Cardan by her side. he took the only things she truly desired in the world away from her by exiling. so yeah, homegirl has every right to be sad.

to close, i think people with this perspective of QON have the same view of Jude as Cardan once did, and it comes from a place of well-intentioned misunderstanding. he thought she could not break. so did the anti-QON crowd.

they were wrong.

–Em 🖤🗡

more thoughts on Emotional!Jude

more theories & analysis

[fanficwriter013]

The Tower: The Queen of Asgard - 20

The Tower: The Queen of Asgard An Avengers Fanfic

Series Masterlist PREVIOUS //

Pairing:  Avengers x OFC, Bruce Banner x Bucky Barnes x Clint Barton x Wanda Maximoff x Steve Rogers x Natasha Romanoff x Tony Stark x Thor x Sam Wilson x OFC (Elly Cooper)

Word Count: 2684

Warnings: hangovers, talk of sex

Synopsis: The twins are now three and while the Avengers know that Clint and Thor are the biological father’s none of them know or care which blond, blue-eyed baby is related to which man.  When Riley gets the power to control wind and it becomes evident that she is the heir to the Asgardian throne, Elly, Steve, Thor, and Tony take the twins to Asgard to train her.

Not every Asgardian is happy with their king’s choice of consort, nor the impurity of the heir’s blood.  While others expect Thor to make things more official.  What’s clear is, the role of Queen of Asgard is not easily filled.

Author’s Note:  Written with the only good mom I have @avengerscompound​, whom I almost forgot to tag

Chapter 20: Potions and Apples

Fandral led the way down to the healers carrying Sam like he was a baby.  I followed with Wanda, letting her lean against me as we walked.  She held her head and occasionally her eyes would glow pink for a moment before returning to normal.

“Can you not walk too bumpily?”  Sam groaned, shifting in Fandral’s arms a little.

“No one has ever complained about my gait before,” Fandral said, sounding amused.

“I’m sick,”  Sam whined.  “I’ll puke on you.”

“Alright, my lord.  I’ll be more careful.”  Fandral teased.

“So, Fandral,”  I said, as Fandral shifted Sam so he was being held a little closer to him.  “What’s the deal with you and Loki?”

Fandral chuckled.  “Do you want me to lose my life?”

“You were both thinking some pretty explicit thoughts before,” Wanda said.

“We are … complicated.”  Fandral explained. “Loki tolerates few you may have noticed.”

“The babies,”  Wanda said.  “And that’s about it.”

An affectionate smile crossed over Fandral’s face.  “Oh, yes.  The babes hold the largest portion of Loki’s affection.”  He said.  “The thing about Loki is most don’t understand him.  I think it’s just a case of, I can see what his thought processes are like.”  He gave us a sly look and quirked an eyebrow.  “Not to mention, I am very easy, ladies.  I have no expectation that Loki will have any interest in me tomorrow and nor do I have any desire to be tied down.”

“Uh-huh,” Wanda said sounding unconvinced.

“It’s the truth, my lady,”  Fandal said.  “Asgard is not like Midgard and you are hardly in a typical relationship yourself, even for Asgardian standards.  We don’t define it.  I do, however, like romance.  I could romance you if you liked.”

Wanda pulled herself up straight.  “I am out of your league.”

I burst out laughing and Fandral feigned shock.  “My lady, you wound me.”

“What?”  Wanda said, taking my hand.  “It’s true.”

“So sharp with your words.  I am not without feelings.”  He teased and gestured to a door.  “But we are here.”

I opened it for him and Fandral carried Sam inside.  It was dark with black stone walls and dim lights that glowed softly.  A group of five women in long robes approached us and three of them took Sam away without a word.  One of the remaining women turned to us.  “Can we help either of you, your highnesses?”

“Um, yes,” Wanda said, and I could tell she wasn’t sure how to explain what was wrong.

“Wanda is a telepath, and with all the drinking…”  I said.

The woman nodded and gestured for us to follow.   Wanda lay down on a table and the three women stood around it.  A cage of light surrounded Wanda and they began to shift the beams around.

“What is that?”  Wanda asked.

“It’s a soul forge.”  The woman answered as she continued her work.  As they moved the beams Wanda seemed to relax more.  “How is that?”

“Much better,” Wanda said, almost sounding a little sleep drunk.

“We have corrected for the thoughts you were receiving,”  She said turning the forge off.  “When you go back they will return.  We have something that will block your telepathy if you wish.  It’s is a diadem, so the effects will only last while you wear it.”

“Okay,” Wanda said with an uncertain nod.

One of the healers left and returned with an intricate silver diadem.  The silver had been forged into delicate scrollwork that sat low on Wanda’s brow and right in the middle of her forehead sat a deep blue crystal.

Wanda blinked when it was in place.  “It went really quiet.”

“Is that good or bad?”  I asked.

“I do not know.  It is strange.”  She said.  “I haven't been alone in my thoughts for so long, it's both a relief and scary.  I don't like not being able to feel you.”

“It is only to guard against the hangovers.  You are free to remove it at any time.”  The healer said.

“Thank you,” Wanda said and slid off the table.

We went out to the first room to wait for Sam.  It wasn’t long before Sam came out with Fandral.  He looked much more human and happy.  “Oh wow, Wanda.  Look at you.  You’re an actual princess.”  He said coming over to her and tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.

“It blocks my telepathy.  I don’t know if I like it.”  Wanda said.

Sam pressed a kiss to her brow.  “It won’t be for long.”

“You feeling better then?”  I asked.

“Like it never happened.  I am so hungry now.”  He said putting his arm around Wanda.  He held up a bottle of liquid.  “They gave me this to give the others too.”

“Oh good, hopefully, that saves a lot of whining today,” I said.

“And I won’t have to wear this for too long,”  Wanda added, tapping the jewel on the diadem.

Fandal led us back to our rooms and he was immediately set on by Sif as we came through the door.  “There you are.”  She snapped.  “What the hell?”

“I was taking them to the healers as requested, my lady,” Fandral said.

“Kidnapping three of the royal family and leaving the children alone.”

Fandral laughed.  “What is Hogun?  Chopped liver?”  He snarked.  “Stop being so dramatic and drink this.”

Sam offered her the bottle and she took a drink.  “Okay, good.  I’m taking this to Volstagg.”

She disappeared into the bedroom they’d put Volstagg in as we came inside properly.  The food had been delivered and Hogun was supervising the twins with their breakfast.

“Food!”  Sam said and grabbed a plate and started to load it up.  I went to get one too and Riley started to eat directly off her plate like a dog.

“Honey,” Wanda sighed.  “Use a fork.”

“Daj,” Riley whined.  “I ead good.”

“You eat all over yourself,” Wanda said.

“Das otay.  Vows - Vowstaag… he do too.”  She said.

Wanda approached her and wiped her face clean.  “Volstagg isn’t the ruler of the nine realms, sweetie.”

“I’s a unicorn,” Riley said and went back to eating right off the plate.

Sam stifled a laugh while Wanda sighed and went and helped herself to some food.

“Don’t worry about it, Wan,” Sam said.  “I’ll give her a bath after.”

The three of us sat down on the couch, snuggled in together as we ate.  “So do you know what you’re going to do with the bonding?”  I asked.

Sam shook his head.  “I think I’ll do it.  It’s a long time to live but some of us don’t get a choice about that.  Maybe the right thing to do is to agree to go through that with them.”

I nodded.  “I keep getting stuck on the ‘having to watch Piet die’ thing.  I’ve worried about how losing everyone would affect Steve, Bucky, Nat, and Bruce for a long time.  And now the choice is being given to me and I’m scared.”

“Yes, I already lost my brother.  I don’t want to have to outlive my son.”  Wanda agreed.

“Plus everyone else.  How many friends do we outlive before I stop being able to form bonds with people because I know it’s only going to end with me watching them die?”

“You would never be able to do that,” Sam said.  “Elly, you have the biggest heart.”

“Which just means it’s going to be painful every single time,” I said.  “How much hurt can I survive?”

“All of it,” Sam said.  “You’re strong, El.”

“If Piet were out of the equation.  If he was like Riley, would that make it easier?”  Wanda asked.

I wiped my eyes.  “I think mostly.  I think if I didn’t have to worry about Piet I’d say yes.”  I said.  “It’s just…”

“What is it, princess?”  Sam asked.

“You guys chose me because I was just a normal person.  If this makes me immortal and gives me powers, then I won’t be who you wanted.”

“Oh, Elly,”  Sam said putting his plate down.  He wrapped his arm around me and kissed my temple tenderly.  “We love you for what’s in here -” he tapped my chest and then my forehead.  “- and in here.  That’s much more than just you being a regular person.  There are billions of regular people in the world.  There’s only one you.”

I swallowed and nodded, trying not to completely break down.

“We love you, El.  And Thor loves you and wants to keep you forever.  He hasn’t even asked me to bond with him.”  Sam said.

“You need him to ask?”  I said.

“It would be nice.  I dunno.  Maybe I don’t need it because if you and Wanda do, and Nat, Steve, and Buck already are going to basically live forever, I would stick around for all of you, but it would be nice if Thor let me know he wanted me too.”

“That makes sense.  I totally get that.  I told him I thought he loved us like people loved dogs.”  I said.  “He needs to show you all that you aren’t just friends-with-benefits to him.”

Sam let out a breath.  “Yeah.  ‘Cause I do love him.”

Riley climbed off the chair and toddled over and climbed into Sam’s lap.  “Did you eat, bug?”  Sam asked.

“Yes, daddy.”  She practically snarked.

“What was that?”  Sam said, trying not to laugh.  “Was that sarcasm?”

I laughed.  “Sounded like it.”

“My goodness,” Sam said.  “Such an advanced three-year-old.”

I got up and stretched.  “I might go take a bath.  You two okay with the kids?”  I asked.

“I think we can handle it,” Sam said.

I headed into the bathroom and ran the water.  I had just let my slip fall to the floor when Loki barged into the room.

“Loki!” I squawked, grabbing the slip and pulling it back up.

He waved me off dismissively.  “You have nothing I haven’t seen thousands of times before.”

I rolled my eyes.  “What do you want?”

“The reason you have been unable to decide about the bonding is because of Pietro, correct?”  He asked.

“Yes.  Mostly because of Pietro.”  I agreed.

“I found the book I had been looking for.”  He said.  “There is something called the Golden Apple.  The Goddess Idunn oversees them on Alfheim.  The apple can grant longevity to whoever eats it.”

I froze and looked up into Loki’s eyes.  “This is a real thing?  You can find it?”

“I assure you it is real.  I have sent an envoy to Alfheim.”  Loki said.  “The child will have to be of age and make the decision himself, but he has the choice.  Is that enough for you?”

“I just… this… I don’t…”  I babbled.

Loki rolled her eyes. “Use your words.”

“This changes everything.”

“You’ll agree to the bonding then?”

I took a deep breath and nodded, shifting on my feet.  “Loki.  Can I hug you?”

“What do I get out of it?”  Loki asked.

“You can tell me your terms as I hug you,” I said, taking a step forward.  He opened his arms up and I moved into them, wrapping my arms around his waist and resting my head against his chest as he closed his arms around me.  “No stabbing me either.”

Loki chuckled.  “I did not do this for you, you know?”

I nodded against his chest.  “I know.”

“Call off your attack spider would you.  She keeps making comments about me having feelings.”  Loki said.

I giggled.  “Done and done.”  I pulled back and looked up at him. “Thank you.”

“Now, would you please tell my brother ‘yes’ so he can stop bothering me?”  He said.

“I will.  Let me wash up first.”

Loki went to the door and paused.  “If anyone is looking for me, I’ll be having sex.  I’m taking Fandral with me.  I haven’t had any since you were attacked and that is unusual.”

“Aww Loki, you do have feelings.”  I teased.

He smirked.  “I will stab you.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Go on then. Get laid.  When I see you again I promise I’ll have said yes to Thor.”

He nodded and left and I took my bath.  I rushed a little as I wanted to go and speak to Thor and tell him what Loki had said.  When I was clean I wrapped myself in a robe and took the potion from Sif who was back to guarding the door with Volstagg.  I went into my room where Thor, Steve, Bucky, Clint, Tony, Natasha, and Bruce were all sleeping in a tangled pile of limbs.  Feet were in faces and people were clinging to each other.  It was quite funny to look at.

I changed into a fresh gown and went and sat next to Thor and shook him a little.  “Thor?”  He opened his eyes and squinted at me.  “Here, my love,” I said holding the bottle to his lips.

He blinked a few times before starting to drink.  After a few swallows of the liquid, he lay back down and I put the stopper back into the bottle and put it down.

“Mmm, thank you, mea vida.”  He said.  He rubbed my hip slowly and sat up.  “I feel much better.”

“You’re welcome, my love,” I said, leaning over and kissing him.  He hummed softly and pulled me a little closer to him.

“Thor,”  I said pulling back.  “Loki found something.”

“What is it?”  He said, sitting up straighter and looking a little more alert.

“He found a book.  It has information about a fruit that grants the person who eats it longevity.”  I explained.

“What?”

“It’s guarded by a goddess.  Iona?  Isola?  I forget. He has a book.”

“Okay.  So Pietro will have his own choice?”  Thor asked.

“Yes,” I said and put my hand on his.  “Ask me.”

Thor tilted his head and looked me over for a moment.  He nodded and got up kneeling on the ground in front of me and taking my hand.  “Elise, my life, will you bond with me?”

“Yes, I will,” I said.

He smiled and got up pulling me into his arms and kissing me deeply.  I melted into him, letting him hold my weight.

“We will have to start the preparations.  You need a gown.”  Thor said as he pulled back.

“Thor, there’s one more thing,” I said.

He tilted his head and looked at me with concern.  “That doesn’t sound good.”

I gave his hand a squeeze.  “You need to propose to them.  And when you do you need to explain it.  All they have heard is the not quite clear version of events from me.  Bucky and Steve will do it regardless.  Tony and I will too because we were there.  The others you need to at least speak to and make them know what this means and that you want it with them.”

“Oh,” Thor said softly.

“Are you okay?”

He nodded and sat back down on the bed.  I sat beside him and he curled up, putting his head on my lap. “I didn’t realize how closed off I was being with them. It hurts to know they don’t know how I feel.”

I stroked his hair and massaged the back of your neck.  “We all love you. But it has been hard because we don’t see you often, and when we do you try and be the strong happy man who has nothing to worry about.  Time to change that and now’s your chance.  Be honest with them.  But more importantly, ask them.  Make sure they know you want this with them.”

“I will.  When everyone is awake I will propose.”  He said.

“Good,” I said and rubbed his chest.  “You are loved, Thor.  Don’t doubt that.  I want to spend as much of the next 5000 years as I possibly can, Thor. ”

Thor smiled softly.  “I want that too.”

I leaned down and kissed him and he made a contented rumbling noise against my lips.  We were starting a new chapter as of now and I wasn’t scared at all anymore.

// NEXT

[renaissansu]

After rewatching GoT and reading the first 2 books, here is my take on the finale a year later solely looking at the show:

(opinions no one asks for but I feel I need to give lol)

Things that make sense (doesn't mean I agree that they should've happened, but that based on things set up previously in the show I understand why they did):

Jon doesn't ascend the iron throne and chooses to go with the pseudo nightwatch/free folk hodgepodge. Jon made a vow to his black brotherhood and him dying/being resurrected doesn't change that. Also, he repeatedly says he does NOT want to be king, and not in a reluctant hero sort of way but in a legit “I don’t want it” way so why bother giving it to someone who frankly, probably wouldn’t be good at it. He’d be a decent ruler, don’t get me wrong, but he and his whole council would despise every second of it lmao

Daenerys doesn't ascend the iron throne - unpopular opinion but honestly idk how we're supposed to believe she just swoops into Westeros and claims herself Queen without any interaction with actual Westerosi people/head figures aside from Jon who now publicly has a better claim to the title

Daenerys dies - I go either way on this one. I could see her taking the throne as a sane woman but I also don't think the fact that she dies is far off either. Not ideal, but i expected only one between her and Jon to survive and TV is nothing if not misogynistic. I also would have wanted to see her happy living a simple life post-war where she finally gets to see that red door again after she frees all those who are enslaved ;-;

Sansa becomes queen in the North. MY Queen.

Jaime and Brienne hook up (bless)

Jaime and Cersei die together

Theon dies defending the North - I would’ve gave him a longer recovery arc but given how they wanted to rush everything into a single season, Theon got a good end in comparison to others

Things that make me want to scream:

Arya kills the Night King. It should have been Jon. Arya's a bad ass Bitch but it was NOT written in her character. Syrio Forel did not teach her how to catch a cat just for her to stealth kill the NK. GRRM could tell me why she should kill the NK and I still wouldn't change my mind. Jon did not join the night's watch in S1 just to not kill the NK. You can convince me Jon isn't supposed to be king but you cannot convince me he wasn't supposed to kill the Night King!!!!

"AnD wHo HaS a BeTtEr StOrY tHaN BrAn ThE bRoKeN?" Literally anyone. Give the throne to Hot Pie

The battle for Winterfell only lasted like 45 minutes. I sat through 8 seasons just to get a 45 minute "epic" war to end all wars that was less exciting than the Battle of the Bastards (#1 fight in GoT imo)??? AHHHH think again!!

Jaime comes back to Cersei because he loves her (throw away his whole character why don’t you)

Varys dies a traitor (I feel like we needa discuss this more because literally his whole character is built on doing the best for the realm and he has NEVER done anything but stand by that and they decided to just randomly kill him off???? *cardi b gif* WHAT WAS THE REASON?!) He's such an understated character, yet affected the whole story in so many ways. I wasn't a fan in the first few seasons but honestly if anyone from the OG King's Landing crew deserves to live it was him...

Arya and Gendry hook up and then break up (?) Look I liked gendrya back in s2 but I really felt like their hook-up scene was 4 seasons too late and also OOC for Arya just based on the placement of it. I guess I understand the whole, wanting to get laid before I probably die thing, but I would've found it more amusing and believable if it took place after the big fight and Arya decides that hmm yeah the D ain't all that lol also since when does Arya start to use people like she used Gendry for s*x? I guess she did make herself clear but still? And since when does Gendry want to tie Arya down? Their whole dynamic is built on the fact that Gendry respects arya and dgaf she's a Stark while Arya knows Gendry is reliable and skilled, neither has to give up themselves if they were to get together. In fact, I'd see Arya as stronger if she was to have stayed with Gendry because she can finally chose something for herself in the same, opposite way Sansa shows her growth and strength by becoming a kingless Queen.

This isn't the last season related and I know that they wouldn't have made it to the end just because of when/how they were introduced but the Tyrells deserved better and I stand by that.

Things I would change:

Either Jaime would return to kill Cersei by stabbing her or something and they'd die together as the red keep falls (sad because Jaimienne but also it'd be shocking without being stupidly incesty and boring and completely destroying Jaime's character and not in a "oh he's actually a bad guy" way but in a "wow this writing of this character sux" way) OR Arya kills Cersei thus coming full circle to her murder list (idk logistically how this would work cuz she can't be in winterfell and kings landing at the same time but it would make sense

Gave GoT more seasons instead of forcing character developments (or lack thereof) within 3 episodes

Dany and Jon (even though I don't like them as a couple romantically I get why they make sense to be together before and after Jon realizes that's his aunt lol) would have a baby and that baby would be crowned king, with Bran as regent until the baby is of age. This ending would be a bit cliche but cliche is better than boring and stupid (i know that's pretty subjective but u can't convince me otherwise)

Podrick "biggest D in westeros" Payne becomes leader of the King's Guard. It's what he deserves. LMAO

Tldr; idk who I thought would become king but this wasn’t it

If yall don't agree, make your own list!!

[gukyi]

start anew | ksj

⇒ summary: it’s been five years since you left your hometown, vowing never to return, but a simple invitation to a christmas party and a yearning to know whether or not you’re truly over the heartbreak you left behind has you wondering if, maybe, the christmas spirit and promise of a new beginning can change your mind.

⇒ christmas!au, exes!au

⇒ pairing: kim seokjin x female reader

⇒ word count: 11k

⇒ genre: soft angst and fluff (everything is just melancholy, alright?)

⇒ warnings: alcohol consumption

⇒ a/n: for @sonnenfuchs, from your secret santa!! here it is luce, i tried to make it as not angsty as possible but it looks like i didn’t try hard enough. this does have a happy ending though, if that’s any consolation!! merry (late) christmas and happy new year!! i wish u and the rest of the gc all the best ♡

When the train pulls into the run-down station, cement littered with trash and paint on the walls chipping, you feel sick to your stomach.

The sight of this poor old thing, empty and dilapidated, leaves you nauseous as the train pulls in, screeching as it comes to a stop. You’re the only one getting off at this stop, one out of the four other people that are taking this sad little train on a journey to nowhere, stepping onto the platform with your suitcase by your side and vow echoing in your mind, one that swore you’d never return.

Looks like Christmas brings out the optimist in all of us.

Even though it’s been nearly five years since you’ve ever looked back, took that first step onto the midnight train going anywhere—to the airport, actually—on the path to a life that doesn’t leave you wallowing in sorrow, you remember this place like the back of your hand. Remember the way that the sign above your head shook when a train pulled into the station too quickly. Remember how the gate on the way out would get stuck sometimes, and would only take a hard kick to come loose.

You look down at the faded pink bench waiting on the platform, and you remember how he used to kiss you on that. How he used to press his fingers into your skin and his mouth onto yours as you kissed and kissed and kissed in the dim light of an empty train station in the early hours of the morning. Remember how you would hop onto any train that came by, together, letting it take you wherever the wind blows. Remember how he would press you into the dirty wall of the train station, whispering sweet nothings into your ear and your cheek and your neck, promises in the form of hickeys on your collarbones.

People always ask you why you left, but the thing is that he did first.

You give a soft kick to the gate on your way out, feeling it dislodge beneath the toe of your boot as you press it open. It’s nearly ten at night. The roads that surround you are quiet, cars whizzing by every once in awhile, headlights flickering in the darkness. No taxis in this town.

Pulling out your phone, only then are you reminded of the shitty cell service in the area, the bars on your phone phasing in and out of existence as you try to scrounge up enough reception to make a call. With enough effort (it seems as though you still know all of the tricks to getting service in this town), your phone musters up two measly bars. You press call.

“Y/N?”

“Yoongi?” You breathe out into the phone, feeling this foreign sense of comfort at the sound of your once-best friend’s voice. It’s been too long, but at the same time, it hasn’t been long enough.

“Why are you calling me? Did your train just pull in?” He asks, and his voice is groggy and soft, almost too quiet for you to be able to hear him. If it weren’t for the deafening silence that surrounds you, you probably wouldn’t even be able to make him out.

“Yeah,” you answer, and you wonder if this sad chatter warrants you asking him a favor. Even if you were best friends once, back when you found joy in being holed up in this small town with people you loved (not anymore), you haven’t spoken in five years. Things have changed. So have you. “Could—could you come and pick me up? You know where.”

“Aw, Y/N, I would, but I don’t have a car with me. My buddy Namjoon borrowed it for the weekend. You remember Namjoon, right? Lanky kid from college. I can send him to pick you up, if that’s alright?” Yoongi says into the phone, and there’s so many memories laced in the words that leave his lips. Memories of you and him taking his beat-up Cadillac for a midnight drive to McDonald’s, nearly crashing it into the lake at the local park after you took a wrong turn. Memories from the college years you spent in this little town, at the local university that deserves a lot more credit than it’s given. Memories of Namjoon and Yoongi and you and him, together as friends.

“No, that’s okay. I don’t want to be an inconvenience for anybody,” you say, swiftly declining the offer as you put others’ needs over your own. How typical of you. Guess some things will never change, no matter how much you want them to.

“Are you kidding? I know for a fact he only goes to sleep at three in the morning. Here, I’m gonna text him,” Yoongi says, and you know him well enough, even after five years, to know that once he says he’ll do something, he’ll do it.

“Yoongi, you really don’t have to—”

“Done. He’ll be there in ten,” Yoongi says happily. “Don’t worry about inconveniencing us, Y/N. We all want you back.”

Not all of you do, you think to yourself bitterly.

“Thanks, Yoongi. Sorry for calling you so late at night,” you say, unable to stop the apology from spilling from your lips. You already know Yoongi’s going to berate you for it.

“Stop apologizing, Y/N. You know I don’t mind. I was awake, anyway. What, did you think that after college, I turned my life around and started to go to bed at reasonable hours?” Yoongi jokes, making a smile force its way onto your lips, even if only a little. Always the jester. “Wow, you really don’t know me.”

“Yoongi, I—”

“I’m glad you’re back, Y/N. I really am,” Yoongi tells you, voice a hushed whisper. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, Yoongi,” you finally admit, letting the words tumble out. If nothing else, you always regretted leaving him when you took that step onto the metal flooring of the train. He was the one person worth staying for.

“See you, hey? Don’t forget about me,” Yoongi says, and it’s a promise you know you’ll end up keeping, one of only a few. With that, he hangs up, leaving you standing in the silence, letting the crickets soothe your racing mind and aching heart.

There’s not a twig in this town that hasn’t been tainted with the memory of him.

A car pulls up in front of you after another five minutes of you contemplating to yourself, wondering why on Earth you came back after you swore you never would, wondering what could possibly have drawn you here yet again. It certainly isn’t him.

The window of Yoongi’s Cadillac rolls down, and in the hazy light of the street lamp above your head, you make out the grinning, albeit tired, face of Kim Namjoon. He still looks the same, only, he’s dyed his hair. It looks nice on him.

“Y/N? Is that really you?” Namjoon says, leaning his head out of the window as he squints. “Damn, I almost didn’t recognize you. You look so different.”

“Hey, Namjoon,” you say sheepishly.

“Long time no see. Hey, jump in! Yoongi sent me to come and fetch you, so your honored and esteemed chauffeur waits for you,” Namjoon says, tipping his head to emulate a full-body bow as he points to the backseat.

You wheel yourself and your baggage up to the car, and Namjoon, ever the gentleman, hops out of the car to help you stuff your single suitcase into Yoongi’s ridiculously small boot. You’d always teased him for having such a tiny storage space. Told him he’d be a shitty murderer since he wouldn’t be able to hide a body in the back of his car.

You climb into the passenger seat of Yoongi’s car, and everything feels uncomfortably familiar. You had always dreaded returning, promising to yourself that you never would, for that feeling of nostalgia crawling up your skin is simply too taxing on you. The dice that hang from Yoongi’s front mirror haven’t changed, though they’re definitely a bit browner than they used to be. His seats are the same level of worn, feel loved and familiar under your fingertips as you run them across the leather. One look in the backseat and you can still make out the stain from when Yoongi decided to drink five bottles of RedBull in one sitting, spot the missing lever in the backseat that prevents the back right window from being rolled down. One look in the backseat and images flash across your mind, images of the two of you giggling as you secretly made love in the backseat of his car, images of you falling asleep on his shoulder during one of your many road trips.

“Been a while, hey?” Namjoon asks, breaking the silence and catching your attention. “Where do you want me to drop you off? Your parents live around here, don’t they…?”

“Not my parents’. I don’t want to bother them,” you say quickly. “Yoongi’s, if that’s alright.”

���Fine and dandy by me,” Namjoon says. He gives your shoulder a nudge, warm smile on his face. “Hey, cheer up a bit, will you? You’re back, it’s nearly Christmas, and everyone’s feeling festive as fuck. No need to be all sad and mopey, alright?”

You muster up a tense smile at his words just to get him to politely shut up, not wanting to hear another word about you being back. You’re well aware that you’re here.

“It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you, you know,” Namjoon says. “Not since you graduated and flew off to God-knows-where. Bet you’re making millions now, hey? CEO of some high-tech company that I’ve never heard of.”

You chuckle, appreciative of the effort Namjoon is making to keep you engaged. This mindless chatter thing, it’s kind of nice. A bit redundant, but nice. “I wish.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re doing much better than you’re letting on. I mean, you left, and we’re all still stuck here, working menial jobs as we live our everyday lives. Did college disappoint you that much?”

“No,” you say, answers short and quick. Namjoon can be the one doing all of the talking. That, you’re fine with.

“I should hope so. God, those were the best years of my damn life. We had so much fun. I still remember that time that you and Yoongi played beer-pong half-naked at that one party. That was so hilarious. The two of you kept complaining about how the splash from the ball was getting you guys all wet,” Namjoon reminisces, laughing at the memory. “Man, Seokjin was livid when he saw the two of you doing that together. Nearly flipped the whole damn table over.”

The mention of his name renders you speechless as a terrible taste enters your mouth, one your tongue can’t get rid of. You’ve done so well at repressing the memories of him, tainted with love and loss, but all it takes is one mention from Namjoon’s big mouth to have them all coming back up again, like vomit.

Your knee-jerk reaction to the sound of his name as the picture of Seokjin in all of his glory flashes through your mind is to cough. Violently, too. Namjoon immediately slows down as he pats your back through your dry-heaving.

“Whoa, you okay? Don’t die on me now, you just got here. What will Yoongi say if I arrive at his house with your dead body?” Namjoon asks, alarmed. “Was it something I said?”

You shake your head furiously, still recovering, not wanting him to think it was his fault. It’s yours, really. Yours for coming back. Yours for not knowing what to do when you did. Yours for thinking about him when you know he’s not thinking about you. Not anymore.

“It wasn’t you, no. Just… some spit went down the wrong tube, that’s all,” you lie.

“Man, I hate when shit like that happens,” Namjoon says, shaking his head. “It’s such a pain. I feel like I’m dying when really, my body’s just playing a mean prank on me.”

You chuckle helplessly, unable to respond as thoughts of him plague your mind. God, what’s wrong with you? Why are you still thinking about him? It’s been five years, five years of repressed memories and vows that you would never make the same mistakes. Five years of a new life, new friends, new home, one where you don’t have to dwell on the past, where you can finally start living in the moment.

But being back here, it’s like living in the past. It’s like being trapped in a world you no longer control. You used to rule everything here, crown on your head and him by your side, but now, you’re just a bystander.

You never saw Yoongi’s house before you left. He had an apartment all throughout university, right near campus, one that you knew like the back of your hand from how often you were over there. But then you graduated, packed your bags and never looked back, and you never got to see Yoongi’s house. He was so proud of it, too, when he scored a lease right after commencement. Told you all about it. You remember him being particularly excited about finally being allowed a pet. Kid’s wanted a dog all of his life.

Even in the darkness, Yoongi’s house emanates an aura that closely resembles the person residing within it. It’s a small building, fake black shutters on the sides of each of the white-rimmed windows. Small, a little lopsided, but it looks more like a home than a house, even from the outside. Yoongi’s done well. You know he has, because even though this house isn’t the biggest, isn’t the most expensive, it’s pretty and quaint and cozy, all things that a house should be. That a home should be.

“You’ve reached your destination,” Namjoon says in his best automated-female-robot voice, breaking as he reaches Yoongi’s driveway. “Here we are. Nerd Central, as I like to call it.”

You allow yourself to chuckle at Namjoon’s words as you get out, the outside lights your only source of illumination as you make your way to the back of the car, where your lone suitcase is. Namjoon gets out too, just to help you yank it out of the tiny boot of the car.

“Wish I could stay with you guys, but you know what they say. Three’s a crowd. Also, I have a dog at home that needs feeding. So, gotta blast,” Namjoon says as he bids you not a goodbye, but a see you later, instead. “You’re hanging around for Hoseok’s Christmas party, right? I’m sure we’ll see each other before then, but just in case, I’ll see you there, too.”

Namjoon sends you a warm smile as you tentatively approach Yoongi’s front door. Once he sees you taking that first step, he’s revving up the engine of that beat-up Cadillac and zooming off into the night.

You raise your fist to the wood, letting it hover in front of the door. You pause. What if Yoongi’s asleep? He didn’t know that you were going to show up at his front door, lost and dazed. Maybe, he doesn’t want you here. That’s fine. You don’t want to be here either. You’re a phone call away from calling a lonely Uber and going back to the city, where you think you belong. You don’t need to be here. Why should you?

But then, before you can panic and run, all of the lights inside turn on, and the door opens.

“Y/N?” Yoongi asks when he sees you, but it’s not in disappointment at your sudden arrival. He looks surprised. Almost happy.

“Hey,” you reply, sheepish. “Sorry I didn’t warn you beforehand that I would show up at your door. I just didn’t want to bother my parents this late at night and I had nowhere else to go—”

Yoongi says nothing, just envelopes you into this bone-crushing hug that lets the warmth of his body seep into yours. It’s been too long since you’ve hugged somebody like this. Too long since you’ve seen Yoongi, relished in the company that you treasured for years on end. You almost thought you might have forgotten him.

“I missed you,” Yoongi breathes into your skin before he lets you go. “Never apologize for being here. Ever.”

“I just—I don’t want to intrude—”

“You’ll never be an intruder in my life, Y/N. You’re family,” Yoongi promises as he looks you dead in the eyes, hands firmly planted on your shoulders. “I’ll never be bothered by you.”

You force out a smile—the only thing you can do under Yoongi’s piercing gaze, full of love and concern. “I’ll be out of your hair by tomorrow, I promise. I can stay with my parents.”

Yoongi shakes his head, tugging you inside, suitcase skipping on the doorframe. “You can stay here for as long as you like, Y/N. I got room.”

Breathing out a sigh of relief, you send Yoongi a thankful smile as you take in the sight of his home. Just like you thought, it’s cozy, reeking of Yoongi’s ever-constant presence. The beige paint on the walls is chipping away at the corners, and his rug is covered in what you assume to be dog fur, judging by the sleeping creature taking up residence on Yoongi’s sofa as you pass by the living room. You never met Yoongi’s dog before you left.

“Don’t worry about Holly,” Yoongi says casually when he notices how she catches your eye. “She’ll go right back to sleep if you wake her up because she’s lazy as hell.”

“She reminds me of you,” you muse thoughtfully, making Yoongi chuckle. It’s always so uncanny, how dogs and their owners mirror each other’s personalities without them even trying. The dog picks you, not the other way around.

Yoongi brings you into his kitchen, recently renovated (the stainless steel oven glows in the fluorescence of the light above your heads, and everything just smells new), marching over to his fridge and whipping out a Cherry Coke. Old habits die hard, and Min Yoongi stocks up on so many Cherry Cokes that his dentist is probably crying themselves to sleep.

“Want? I remember you used to love these, back in the day,” Yoongi asks, shaking the can slightly as he offers it to you.

You started liking them because of Yoongi, in school. He discovered them one day in the vending machine outside of the building and instantly fell in love, easily wasting away dozens of dollars just to grab a can before class. And then suddenly, he had everyone hooked on them by college. Everyone who stayed, at least. You would dare each other to shake up the cans vigorously before drinking them, drop Mentos into the bottles and watch them explode. Seokjin used to order them for you at the local 50’s themed diner, ask for two straws so you could share the beverage over the booth.

Isn’t it strange how the smallest things can bring back the biggest memories?

Isn’t it strange how even if you leave, you’re never really gone, and how even if you forget, you’ll always end up remembering?

Dwelling on the past holds you back from seeing the future, but seeing the future makes you want to stay in the past.

“Sure,” you say, nodding as Yoongi holds it out for you, grabbing himself one while you take the can from his hand. Before opening it up, you tap on the top with your nail, three times in quick succession.

“You still do that? God, you’re weird,” Yoongi says when he notices, shaking his head fondly as he leads you to the living room and sits down on the couch, you following his actions. “I swear, you’re like the only person on Earth who taps their soda can before opening it. Actually, you and Seokjin both—”

And then Yoongi pauses as he looks up at you, apology written all over his face as he realizes what words just left his mouth. You see how his eyebrows drops, concern and regret washing over his face like a tidal wave as his lips part, unable to speak.

“I’m sorry, Y/N,” he says, a hand resting on top of yours as you shake your head. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine, Yoongi,” you promise, the mention of his name less like a stab wound to the heart and more like a pinprick. Not enough to make you bleed, but just enough to let the pain reenter. “I’m over it, I swear.”

You’re a liar. You know that much.

“I’m going to have to see him here anyway, aren’t I?” You continue helpfully, not wanting your best friend to feel too bad about a slip of the tongue. “No point in trying to avoid it.”

“But I know that it’s still a sensitive topic, Y/N,” Yoongi says, and goddamn him for being your best friend, because it’s so easy for him to see right through you. “If it wasn’t, you’d have come back sooner.”

“I’m getting better,” you insist. It’s a lie, and you and Yoongi both know it. If you really were getting better, then why couldn’t you let it go? You haven’t forgiven yourself yet, and you haven’t forgotten him, either.

Just then, the creature between your bodies stirs, and a small dog lifts her head up in wonder and confusion. Through her hazy eyes, she meets yours, tilts her head, unable to recognize the face in front of her, and goes right back to sleep.

“Holly!” Yoongi says, but she doesn’t budge. “Holly!” He calls again. “Oh, fuck it, she won’t wake up. Here, you finished with that?” He motions to your Coke can, now empty. “Cool. I can take it and show you up to your room.”

Yoongi snatches it from your hand before you can protest him doing everything for you, tossing it casually into the trash can in his hallway (the high school basketball skills never left him, it seems) before leading you up his creaking stairs.

When you set foot on his second floor, it occurs to you how much you don’t know about him anymore.

Min Yoongi is a music producer, but you only figure that out now, after a quick peek into the office beside his bedroom. Littered along the walls inside are old vinyls, hot pink Post-Its with reminders and lyrics and chords. Three keyboards, at least, and an impressive display of some hefty desktops. Min Yoongi always liked music, but he studied business in university. You never knew what he dreamed of doing.

“That? Oh, it’s a fuckin’ mess in there,” Yoongi says, grimacing. “I really need to clean it up one of these days.”

“Is this what you do?” You ask, in awe.

“Yeah,” Yoongi shrugs. “It’s kind of nice, actually. Real cozy, and I get to work from home and it keeps my financially stable. Still in debt though, hashtag college.”

You laugh to yourself as Yoongi drags you out of what is easily your favorite room in the house, shows you to his single guest bedroom. It’s drab but comfortable, and easily more than what you could ever ask for.

“Thank you, Yoongi,” you say as he leaves you to it, bidding you goodnight. “For all of this.”

Yoongi meets your eyes and you’ve never been too good at reading through the haze in his own, but you can make out the love he holds in his heart for you, the appreciation for the friendship that never left his side. He nods softly, so faintly that you almost can’t make it out, before closing the door behind him.

Maybe this trip won’t be so bad after all.

The first thing that you do on your first official day back is go grocery shopping. Yoongi wrangles you out of bed surprisingly early for a guy who used to sleep right until his 2PM classes in college with little to no effort. He stands over your bed, tired eyes blinking away the sleep left in them as he comes into focus.

“What, did you think you’d just get to dissociate and stay holed up in my guest room?” Is the first thing he asks you, hands on his hips as he looks down at you. “Come on, lazy. I need to go grocery shopping and get some sort of host gift for Hoseok, since that’s a thing that you’re supposed to do when you go to a party.”

You groan, wrenching the covers from where they’re tucked in at the foot of the bed just so you can hide under them, shield your face from Yoongi’s leering gaze. Five more minutes, you mentally beg. Being back requires a lot of energy to face the horrors that each day brings forth.

You hear Yoongi’s footsteps as they get farther and farther away from you. “I’m leaving in thirty and I’m taking you with me, whether you like it or not. No makeup necessary. We’re going to the supermarket.” With that, the door slams shut, and you roll over onto your back and sigh.

Thirty minutes later you’re trudging outside and waiting on the step of Yoongi’s front porch as he bickers with Namjoon to get his car back. You don’t understand why you can’t just go grocery shopping later.

Eventually, Namjoon shows up outside Yoongi’s door in that poor old Cadillac, and Yoongi’s tugging on your arm to get you to stand up so you can actually start going places instead of lounging in the hermitage that is Yoongi’s house.

“Knew we’d see each other again, Y/N,” Namjoon says happily as you climb into the backseat of the car. “Are you guys dropping me back off at home first or do I get to third-wheel your platonic get-together?”

“I’m gonna drop you off at the curb and you can walk home, fucker,” Yoongi says, and Namjoon just laughs. He knows Yoongi too well. Yoongi’d never do that to him.

You end up swinging by Namjoon’s little flat in the center of town, dropping him off right outside the lobby with a goodbye and a “see you at Hoseok’s party tomorrow!” He waves happily as you drive off, and you realize that it’s been a while since you’ve seen people so full of love and light in this town. It’s been a while since you believed there was any of that in this place.

The grocery store is the same one that was there five years ago, down to the flickering sign that they never bothered to replace. It smells the same, reeks of cigarette smoke and metal, and it’s the strangest scent that feels like home thus far. You never thought this lone, run-down supermarket would mean so much to you. It’s decently packed, unsurprisingly so since it’s so close to the holidays—even people in this small little town have shit to do before Christmas is upon them. You manage to snatch the last small-sized grocery cart from the rack and wheel it back to Yoongi, who grins as he drops a full carton of apple cider into it, snagged from the display shelf in the entrance.

“You want anything while we’re here, Y/N?” Yoongi asks as you wheel into the store.

“No thank you,” you say, shaking your head. “I’m only going to be here for a few days—no point in buying me anything nice.”

Yoongi chuckles. “That’s exactly the point, you dumbass. You’re here and staying with me and as your proud best friend-slash-host, I feel morally obligated to buy you some nice things while we’re here. You can’t say no. That’s not allowed.”

“But I don’t want you to waste your money on anything for me,” you insist. Yoongi’s hardly paying attention to you, too busy inspecting a box of clementines. He shrugs and drops the entire thing into the cart.

“It’s not a waste if it’s on you,” Yoongi says, not even meeting your pleading eyes. “Come on, man,” he nudges your shoulder, “don’t you miss those shitty store-brand fake Doritos that taste like spray cheese on a corn chip? I know you do.”

Before you can protest, Yoongi’s tugging you and the cart towards the chips aisle and grabbing a family-size packet of those generic cheese chips that taste like cardboard and Cheetos. He cuts off all your indignant cries without any qualms, insisting that he can spare some spare change worth of shitty chips. If you won’t accept anything else from him, you’re forced to accept this.

You suppose it isn’t that bad that he’s buying you some of the chips that you lived off of during your college years, reaching down into the cart and opening the packet, allowing yourself to indulge in a few. Eating these chips is like eating garbage, but it’s garbage that’s strangely addicting. You don’t want to know what kinds of drugs are in these chips. Ignorance is bliss.

You and Yoongi parade around the grocery store happily as you finally learn what it’s like to let loose again, the tension from being back in the one place you swore you’d never return to leaving your shoulders. Being back here is finally starting to remind you of the good times rather than the bad ones, memories of you running down the aisles at midnight with your futures bright and your eyes brighter.

There’s not a place in this town that doesn’t remind you of him but that’s okay, because the memories you have of you and him together are better kept as dreams than nightmares.

“Which holiday cake says ‘Thanks for hosting this party even though we all drew straws and yours was the shortest so you had no choice’ best?” Yoongi asks when the two of you are staring over the mildly-refrigerated display of desserts and pastries. You had told Yoongi that cakes were foolproof host gifts, so here you are.

“You drew straws?” You ask in confusion. “I thought you guys liked hosting holiday parties.”

“We did,” Yoongi admits. “But that was before you left. You made hosting the holiday parties so easy, helping us with all of the invitations and decorations and planning. But then you left, and all of us realized that we didn’t really know how to uphold the tradition without you.”

Yoongi’s words leave you in a stunned silence as they sink in. When you left, you thought that you were doing everyone a favor. When you left, you didn’t think anyone would want you to stay, other than Yoongi and your parents, really. You thought that leaving would be best for you, for Seokjin, and for everyone else. You didn’t see a point in staying.

You didn’t realize that they would miss you.

You don’t realize that they miss you until you come back and they tell you that they do.

“Oh,” you say, speechless. “I didn’t think that you guys would miss me like that.”

“Y/N?”

You thought you’d be prepared to face him. You really did, because you wouldn’t have come back if you thought you weren’t. But when you make eye contact, meet his fluttering brown irises, and realize that even though your mind told you it was ready, your heart knows that it isn’t, and your heart knows better than anything else. Even the sound of his voice is enough to have sirens blare in your brain as the memories come flooding back.

He looks good. That might be the one of the worst parts of this whole thing, how fucking good he looks and how much of a mess you are in comparison. Seokjin is wearing a suit that fits him impossibly well, navy blue tailored in all of the right places, a red tie around his neck that compliments his skin tone impeccably well. It doesn’t look like he’s missed you a single bit, not from the way he holds his head high and radiates confidence.

You, on the other hand, are makeup-less, wearing the slouchiest clothes you packed—you thought you were just going grocery shopping, for fuck’s sake—and, quite frankly, look awful. You know you do. The past five years haven’t been kind to you, and it shows, from your slightly crooked haircut to the bags under your eyes.

It’s evident to see how much of a toll your relationship (or lack thereof) has taken on the both of you.

“How about this chocolate one, Y/N?” Yoongi’s voice interrupts your whirring brain. “Y/N?” His words trail off when he sees who’s in front of you.

“Seokjin?” You ask, as if your eyes are deceiving you, like he’s not really there, in all of his glory.

He looks just as beautiful as the day he left you. And that’s the worst part.

“When did—when did—you came back?” Seokjin says, unable to form much of a coherent sentence as the sight of you registers.

“Believe me, I didn’t think I would either,” you joke, unsure on how to break the block of ice that’s formed between the two of you.

“I just…” Seokjin says, trailing off. “I didn’t know you were coming back.”

“You don’t know a lot of things about me, Seokjin,” you say, and sure, it’s bitter and petty and biting, but it’s the truth. Seokjin deserves to take at least some of the blame for how you’ve been moping about for the past five years. It’s only fair.

Clearly, your words catch Seokjin off guard. His mouth parts to say something but nothing can come out, and the sight makes you feel a little bolder.

“I—”

“Y/N? Is everything okay?” Yoongi asks, coming up behind you with a frozen chocolate cake in hand. Seokjin’s bright expression immediately dims when he sees him approaching, standing next to you protectively. “Oh, hey, Seokjin.”

“Hey, Yoongi. Are the two of you—?”

“I invited Y/N back for Hoseok’s Christmas party, but I didn’t think she’d actually come,” Yoongi jokes, earning an indignant nudge in his shoulder from your elbow.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Seokjin comments mindlessly, words stiff. “I didn’t know that you had invited her.”

“I know.” Yoongi nods.

“Oh,” Seokjin says, taken aback by Yoongi’s bluntness. You’ve always loved that about him. “Well, it’s nice to have you back, Y/N. Are you—”

“We’re staying together,” you say, knowing fully well that it’ll tick Seokjin off even though he has no right to be pissed. “If that’s what you wanted to know.”

Seokjin’s entire body stiffens. “Okay, then. I’ll see you both at Hoseok’s party tomorrow night, then?”

“Looking forward to it,” Yoongi says, nodding his head. Seokjin sends the two of you a tight smile, grin forced, before turning around and walking the other way.

You let out the breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding in when he’s out of sight, sighing deeply as you mentally calm your racing heart. No matter how long it will be, it will always be too soon to see him again.

“Are you okay, Y/N?” Yoongi asks, voice laced with concern as he carefully places the cake in the cart, his other hand resting soothingly on your shoulder. “I didn’t know he’d be here. I’m sorry.”

“I’m okay,” you respond. “Thanks for talking to him for me.”

“You know I’d do anything for you,” Yoongi promises. “But I’m glad you’re feeling alright. It’s good practice for tomorrow, since you’ll have to see him there anyway.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Yoongi,” you assure him. “I’m not a snowflake. I won’t melt under his touch.”

“I know,” Yoongi says, sighing. “I just don’t want him to break your heart again.”

The last time you went to a Christmas party hosted by one of your friends, you were a senior in college, on your way to getting your fucking Bachelor’s, and a little bit drunk off of a couple of beers you had had prior to arriving. Being mildly buzzed is really the only way to show up to a Christmas party, when you think about it.

This time, there’s no alcohol in your system, though you may as well chug a glass of wine or two anyway with all of the jitters running through your body. You could do with something ease your worries.

You don’t know why you’re so nervous. You really don’t. You’ve been psyching yourself up for this single event ever since you hit ‘Checkout’ on the airline website, confirming your plane ticket. This Christmas party is, essentially, the only reason why you’re back. A chance to briefly reconnect with everyone before flying off to the city you now come home, unable to tolerate being here any more than you absolutely have to.

The mere thought of having to face Seokjin again makes you want to stay at home.

But you’ll never get over it if you can’t learn to deal with it, and you’ll never learn to deal with it if you can’t will yourself to. Fear is but a word, and you are but a girl.

So, you pull your makeup out of your single suitcase, put on your nicest dress, and decide that maybe, if all goes well, you’ll be able to go back to your anonymous city life in peace. You’ll be able to leave this all behind without the regrets you left after you moved, find peace in new beginnings outside of the town that’s caged you in.

“Ready to go?” Yoongi asks as he knocks on the doorframe of his guest bedroom, alerting you of his presence. You look up, mascara finished on only one eye, and see him standing happily outside your room in what is the ugliest Christmas sweater you’ve ever laid eyes on.

Oh, right. You forgot that these parties involved a running tradition of ugly Christmas sweaters.

You got rid of all of yours when you left.

“Clearly not,” Yoongi comments to himself, answering his own question as you raise a brow in objection. “You actually look nice. The fuck?”

“Am I not allowed to look nice for a Christmas party?” You cry as you apply the rest of your mascara, trying not to blink so you don’t go smudging it everywhere.

“No,” Yoongi says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Jesus, it’s been five years and already you forget what is easily the most important tradition of our annual Christmas bashes? Leaving really did change you.”

You pout in protest to your words, setting your makeup aside and standing up. You dust off your dress just to make a show of how nice you look. Yoongi rolls his eyes in what can only be interpreted as an absolute fondness, shaking his head as he taps his fingers on your doorframe on his way downstairs. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, and for a second, you think you might actually look like you belong here.

---

“Move out the way, people! Please get out of my way! I have a delicacy in my hand!” Yoongi shrieks as he walks into Hoseok’s house, making periodic beeping noises, just in case he needs to alert anyone further of his presence. He’s carrying the store-bought cake in both hands and treating it like it’s the world’s most precious diamond. In a way, shitty, high-calorie store-bought cake kind of is.

The first thing that you hear when you step inside behind Yoongi, not wanting to prevent him from getting the cake in his hands to its designated spot, is Hoseok’s boisterous laugh. It’s been five years but even you can’t forget the sound of it ringing through your ears like jingle bells. He must be on the floor at the sight of Yoongi in all of his glory, parading through his house with a cake in his hands, ugly Christmas sweater and Santa hat proudly on. You’d be laughing, too.

It’s so strange, being back. It feels like something of an out-of-body experience, where you’re watching everything happen but can’t picture yourself in the scenario. Like you’re watching a movie play out right before your eyes, only you’re one of extras. In books, they always talk about time freezing but the two main characters continue on, kissing and all of that nonsense as the world stops for them. But when you’re here, and you’re standing in the middle of Hoseok’s living room, surrounded by people who don’t have nearly as many regrets as you do, it feels like you’re the frozen one. Like you’re stuck in this awful suspended animation as everything around you keeps going, as the world turns but leaves you behind.

“Y/N!” Hoseok shouts, breaking you out of your trance. “Is that really you? My God, you haven’t changed a bit!”

Seeing Hoseok may very well be the most refreshing breath of air you’ve taken this entire trip. You only have good memories with him, thoughts of only laughter and light when you think back to university with him. Hoseok was the one person you knew you’d end up missing when you left.

“Hey, Hoseok,” you say, though you doubt he hears you over the sound of terrible karaoke to Mariah Carey on his television and the crushing of your bones as he envelopes you in a hug. “It’s been a while.”

“What?” Hoseok shouts.

“It’s been a while!” You repeat yourself, a little louder. It looks like you’ll be doing that a lot this evening.

“Sure has!” Hoseok says, swishing the glass of champagne in his hand. “Wow, adult life is really treating you well! You’ve never looked better, you know!”

“Thanks! You look nice, too!” You reply back, already getting tired of shouting.

“I know! Hey, where’s your ugly Christmas sweater? Come on, you invented that tradition!” Hoseok asks, nudging you when he finally takes in your outfit of the night.

You shrug helplessly, unable to produce a good enough excuse for your attire. You’re about to make something up when Hoseok bids you goodbye, trampling off to someone else.

Turning the corner, you enter Hoseok’s crowded kitchen, filled with people you recognize and people you don’t as they help themselves to the monster of a buffet Hoseok has on his counter. It looks like you could probably have a three-course meal just from picking one thing from each plate, but suddenly your appetite is gone and all you feel is a craving for something to drink.

Some alcohol could really do you good, you think as you help yourself to a beer. You have the slightest feeling that you might need to loosen up for tonight, just so you can survive. You don’t remember these parties being this overwhelming, but then again, being back has never been that overwhelming either. Not until now.

With a full bottle of beer in your stomach, you feel a little better. A little safer, really, knowing that now you can blame the words that leave your mouth on the alcohol rather than on you.

Seokjin’s here, somewhere, but you haven’t seen him yet and if you get lucky, you won’t have to see him at all. You’ll distract yourself with mindless chatter, hide in Hoseok’s bathroom until he leaves. If you’re lucky, he’ll swing in and out of this party in an hour or so, busy with some business thing he’s probably keeping himself occupied with. If you’re lucky, you’ll come to this Christmas party, celebrate with your old friends, and leave with no intent on returning. If you’re lucky, all will go as planned.

Somehow, someway, Namjoon manages to convince you to join in on an awful cover of something by Michael Bublé—you can’t really make out much over the sound of everyone else’s screaming, or maybe it’s all just noise from your unyielding mind—on Hoseok’s karaoke machine with some guy named Jungkook. You’ve never met him before, but he seems nice enough and clearly enjoys giving it all to Christmas-flavored karaoke. They sing at the top of their lungs and you hide behind their booming voices, loud enough for them to hear you but nobody else.

It may as well be the most fun you’ve had in a long while, terrifyingly so. Having fun is fine, but ever since you left, you’ve developed a fear of attachment. A fear of commitment, to a person, to a place, to a thing. With fun comes memories, and with memories comes a promise to stay. And that’s a promise you don’t think you can keep.

A clearly drunk Yoongi wraps his arm around you halfway through the night, when it may as well already be Christmas Eve with how late it’s getting. He’s swinging an empty wine glass in his hand and has a loopy smile on his face, one you’re far too familiar with to think that it could be anything else but the face of pure haziness. He turns his head to look at you, eyes crinkling up in delight.

“Enjoying yourself so far, Y/N?” He asks, slurring his words slightly.

“Doing swell,” you say, laughing at the sight of your best friend in front of you. “You okay there, hot stuff?”

Yoongi nods but then has to grab onto you for balance, and so you take the liberty to leading him to the somehow empty couch in Hoseok’s living room so you can set him down. Drunk Yoongi was mildly fun to take care of during your college years, but now that you’re older, you find that it’s just more of a hassle.

“Come on, big guy,” you say, encouraging him as he collapses onto Hoseok’s couch cushions. As you’re leaning over him, making sure he’s not too drunk, you finally meet eyes.

Seokjin looks like a fish out of water in this place, the only other person in the entire vicinity who deigned not to wear an ugly Christmas sweater, staring at you with his pupils dilated and eyes blown wide. Even in the dim light of the fairy lights that Hoseok’s strung up and the flickering bulbs of his lamps, he glows.

You turn away first, not wanting to pay him too much attention as you turn your focus on Yoongi, who’s weakly clawing at your shoulder. You call Namjoon over and ask him to help deal with the hammered mess that is Min Yoongi, and dash outside, desperate for a breath of fresh air.

You knew this was a bad idea,. You get outside and heave, exhaling heavily as you trip over your own feet on the way down to Hoseok’s lawn. Eventually, you settle down in the grass, allowing yourself to decompress. You should have known being back wouldn’t be good for you. It’s all still too much, too much thought and too much regret and too much fear. Repression is only as strong as you are, and you’ve never been very strong.

You tilt your head up, allowing the cool winter breeze to send goosebumps along your skin as you stare up into the night sky. At least there’s one thing in your life that’s constant.

You don’t know how long you’re out here, immune to what most others would call the biting cold of December nights, staring up at the stars like a hopeless romantic, wishing for something more. You? You’re just hopeless.

“Too crowded?”

You turn your head to the source of the voice, and see Seokjin stepping outside as well, softly closing Hoseok’s front door behind him.

“I guess,” you say, turning back to face the road. “I just needed to clear my mind, that’s all.”

“I noticed that you were gone,” Seokjin says, sitting down in the grass a safe distance away from you. The two of you are no longer on the basis where you can sit together and act like everything’s fine. It’s not. Not between the two of you. “I don’t know if it was because of me, but I wanted to come check on you.”

“I appreciate that,” you say, and for once, you actually mean it.

“Are you and Yoongi a thing?” Seokjin asks, and your heart breaks, because even five years ago you knew that this was always his biggest fear. His worst nightmare.

“We’re not,” you tell him. “We never have been.”

It’s an answer to the question he should have asked you five years ago, a response to what he should have told you instead of deciding that enough was enough. Relationships end because people don’t communicate, and the biggest flaw that the two of you share is that neither of you have ever been good at expressing yourselves.

“I’m sorry,” Seokjin says. “I shouldn’t have doubted that.”

“I wish you would have listened to me,” you admit, and oh God, the words feel like vomit coming up your throat. Like one wrong move, and it’ll all come spilling out. You knew you shouldn’t have come back. You should have known the night would end like this, end with you crying about what-ifs and could-haves and wishing that you’d have never returned.

“Me too.”

Silence settles upon you, like dust after a storm. You welcome it with open arms, because sometimes silence is all you need to hear. In the right moments, it’s so much louder than noise.

“How long are you staying?” Seokjin asks you, still avoiding your gaze. One small turn to face him, and you see that he’s staring up at the stars, thumbs twiddling in his lap. He’s always looked at the same sky that you have. You just didn’t notice.

“I’m leaving in two days,” you say, already looking forward to your December 26th ticket back home.

Is the city really a home if the people that make one aren’t there?

“Oh,” Seokjin says, somewhat dejectedly. “I was hoping you’d stick around for a bit longer.”

“Why?” You ask, finally turning to him. “Why now? Why are you asking me to stay, five years too late?”

Seokjin meets your eyes, and it doesn’t look like he’s crying now but it looks like he has before. He’s got the same pain that you do, visible in his chocolate irises. You just never took the time to see it.

“Because five years too late, I have things that I want to say to you. That I should have said, but didn’t. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. You can leave. I won’t hold you back, like I did before. I won’t make the same mistakes,” he says, and it sounds like a swear, a vow, a promise. It’s frightening, because it makes your heart skip a beat as the hopeless romantic in you think that he means it.

He didn’t mean it last time.

“I can’t stay, Seokjin,” you tell him. “It’s too painful for me here. Everything reminds me of you.”

“Everything here reminds me of you, too,” he admits, and the words catch you off-guard, take you aback. Suddenly, the stars aren’t as important anymore.

Everything seems to pale in comparison to the thought that he might have missed you too.

“Don’t stay for me,” Seokjin says, changing his mind. “Just… just meet me? At the diner. Tomorrow, for lunch. I’ll be there at noon. You don’t have to come,” he says, standing up. “Don’t feel obligated to show. I know that—I know that you feel a lot of pressure to please others, but I want you to think about yourself. Just this once.”

His footsteps crinkle in the frozen grass as he heads back inside, leaving you left with nothing but yourself, your thoughts, and the stars.

When you tell Yoongi that you’re going out at 11:45 in the morning of Christmas Eve, he looks at you with his eyebrows raised, bewilderment riddling his features. But you’re already running late and you’ll chicken out if you think too hard about this, so you bid him a goodbye and run down to the nearest bus stop, leaving him speechless in his own doorway.

You still remember the bus route like the back of your hand. Five years and not a damn thing has changed, same stops, same creak of the wheels. Being on this bus, sitting alone in the back corner (nobody wants to travel on Christmas Eve), you almost feel like yourself again. Like you’re back in college, and the world that surrounds you is warm and bright. Like anything is possible.

You wish it were the same now. But the town that you’re in brings back only memories you wish would go away. Even during Christmas, the lights are dim and the sky is dull and nothing really feels worth celebrating anymore.

It’s muscle memory that tells you to ring the bell so you can get off. Nothing else, not when your mind is cloudy and fogged over with worry and regret. Your brain just barely recognizes the buildings the bus passes by, telling your hand to press the button when it realizes you’re at your stop. That’s what most things are these days, really. Muscle memory that just tells you to do things you already remember. That’s what these past five years have been.

You get off at the stop, staring right at the glowing 50’s diner in front of you. It’s all lit up like a Christmas tree, holiday lights dancing to the beat of the corny Christmas music that you can hear coming from inside. It’s so festive, so cheerful, a beacon of happiness in this dreary town, bleak without the smiles of rambunctious college teens to cheer it up.

Almost. Almost is such a shitty word because it’s never enough. Almost is what almost stops you from reaching out to open the door, what makes you pause right outside, unsure if it’s worth taking another step. You don’t know what lies on the other side of the door, what future awaits you in the booth that used to be yours. It’s 12:06 and Seokjin is definitely there, definitely waiting for a girl that won’t come for him.

You almost leave out of spite, out of revenge. It’s high time he get a taste of his own medicine.

But you can’t. You can’t bring yourself to step backwards, turn around and get on a bus ride home. Can’t bring yourself to leave him sitting there, alone on Christmas Eve of all days, hopeless and hopeful all at the same time. Because if you run from this then you’ll never stop. All you know how to do is run, run away from the problems that plague you, the memories that weigh you down. When was the last time you faced something head on? When was the last time that you decided that you were stronger than your weaknesses?

You take that first step, and it almost feels like a new beginning. Almost.

He sits in the same booth that you always sat in. Old habits die hard and these are some of the oldest. Some things that you just can’t let go of, no matter how hard you try. You walk over to him, positive that it’s your legs, not your heart that draws you towards him.

“Hey,” you say softly, sitting down across from him.

Seokjin’s expression lights up at the sight of you. “Hey,” he says, keeping his eyes glued to the menu. You already know what he’s going to order. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Me neither,” you admit helplessly. The only thing you can do these days is lie, but perhaps for today, it’d be worth it to tell the truth.

The waitress swings by to ask for you drink orders, and without thinking, Seokjin orders two Cherry Cokes. Muscle memory.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Seokjin says immediately afterwards. “I didn’t know if you wanted something different. I shouldn’t have just—”

He’s starting to sound like you, apologetic and worrisome and concerned.

“It’s fine, Seokjin,” you say. “Cherry Cokes are still my favorite.”

“Mine too,” Seokjin replies, breathing out a sigh of relief.

It’s so strange to see him like this, so hesitant and tentative when all your life, you’ve known him as confident and boisterous and unabashedly himself. Like your mere presence sends him spinning back into uncertainty, akin to something of a first date.

In a way, this kind of is one.

“Do you, uh—do you still get the same stuff here? Menu hasn’t changed,” he asks you, chipping away at the ice that’s settled between the two of you with a toothpick. This is so fucking sad.

“I guess,” you say, and you tell your heart not to skip a beat at the thought of him still remembering your exact order, like these five years haven’t happened and everything is back to the way it was. “Do you?”

“I haven’t been here in five years,” Seokjin admits. “But I do.”

“Seokjin, I—”

“I missed you,” Seokjin interrupts, voice soft and shaky. It’s so quiet you almost don’t hear him over the sound of the traffic outside. “I know you think I didn’t, but I did.”

He renders you almost entirely speechless, brain unable to process his sentences as it comes up with blanks, response empty.

“It hasn’t been the same here, since you left. For any of us,” he tells you, and the sincerity in his voice is such a change from the way you last heard it, five years ago when he was screaming his head off at you and telling you that your relationship was useless.

The waitress arrives at the most inopportune (or opportune) time with your Cherry Cokes, two cans beside two ice-filled cups. She places them down on your table and Seokjin orders for the both of you, request rolling off his tongue like nothing’s changed. When she leaves, you’re stuck in silence again as the two of you grab your respective drinks, tapping on the lid with your fingernails, out of habit.

You do it at the exact same time.

Old habits die hard.

If Seokjin notices he makes no mention of it, just pours the beverage into his cup and begins drinking.

“I wasn’t going to come back,” you tell him honestly, because it’s high time that you started being truthful to yourself. “I didn’t want to run the risk of seeing you again.”

“I don’t blame you,” Seokjin says, chuckling to himself. It’s like looking back on the past five years of your life through the lens of an older, wiser version of yourself. One that recognizes that things aren’t always as they seem, and that just because something ends doesn’t mean it’s gone. “I broke your heart.”

Hearing the words from him almost make it feel like it never happened. Like your heart never shattered in his palms a week before graduation. Like he didn’t know how delicate it was to begin with, how one wrong move and it would all come crashing down.

“I wish you hadn’t.”

“Me too.”

“What did you want to talk to me about?” You ask, hoping to change the somber mood, though you doubt anything either of you say could make so much as a dent in it.

“I’m sorry,” Seokjin says again, and oh God, you’re getting sick of hearing him apologize. Hearing the words tumble off of his tongue again and again because he feels like he can’t say it enough. “I’m sorry for being jealous and untrusting and unloving. I’m sorry for not treating you with the respect you deserved. You could have done so much better.”

“But you were the best I could have done,” you say before you can stop yourself from spiraling back down into a hole of regret, love and loss. “You were all I ever asked for.”

“And I couldn’t even give you that,” Seokjin says.

“You don’t have to worry about me, Seokjin,” you tell him. “I’m over it.” And for once, you finally believe yourself when the words spill out. You finally think that you’re right.

“I’ll always worry about you, Y/N,” Seokjin responds. “I love you.”

Sirens go off as your entire heart halts. “Seokjin?”

“I love you,” he repeats. “And it’s okay if you don’t love me back, because I don’t deserve your love after the way I treated you. I’m not saying this to make you stay, because you should do what’s best for you. Not for me. You’re so kind to others, Y/N. I want you to be kind to yourself, too.”

Blinking furiously, you will yourself to make the tears go away, because goddamnit. Goddamn Kim Seokjin, who will always make you swoon and fall in love with him, even after five years of solitude, of separation. Goddamn Kim Seokjin who is warm and bright and owns up to his mistakes, cares more about you than you probably care about yourself. Goddamn it, because even after five years worth of a broken heart all it takes is one phrase to begin to patch it up.

“You can’t just say things like that,” you whisper to yourself. “How do you think it makes me feel?”

“I shouldn’t have told you, I know,” he says. “I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”

“Seokjin, I—”

Your food arrives, a welcome interruption in an afternoon that feels like it’s just getting worse and worse. You drown yourself in the meal in front of you, food the only thing that can take your mind off of the thumping of your own heart and the unadulterated sadness that leaves your mouth. There are so many what-ifs and could-haves in this world, but dwelling on the past makes you scared of the future. And you don’t want to be scared anymore.

“Thanks for doing this for me,” Seokjin says when the meal is over, the bill is paid. He walks you out of the diner, staying a safe distance away to make you as comfortable as possible. You come to the realization that you’re only comfortable when you’re near him. “You’ve always been so selfless.”

“Seokjin, I just wanted to thank you,” you say as you reach the bus stop. “For all of this. For still loving me after I thought you stopped.”

“I’ll never stop,” he says. “I don’t—I don’t know if you’ll come back again once you leave in a few days, but I want you to know that seeing you again has made me truly happy, even if our old memories bring us only sadness.”

“I’m working on that,” you tell him, and you finally fucking meet his eyes. For the first time in a long time, there is hope and wonder laced in gold among his irises, promises that you know he will give his life to keep. “I don’t think our old memories bring me sadness anymore. I think I’m finally starting to see the happiness within them.”

December 26th rolls around and there’s a whole party sending you off, bringing you to the train station so that everyone can say their goodbyes.

What’s different this time is that you’ve promised to come back, something that three days ago, you could have never imagined. This time, you look forward to the day where you step off of the platform and see Yoongi waiting for you, gummy smile wide on his face as he sees you. Maybe you’ll see Seokjin, instead, and he’ll be waiting to pick you up in his fancy car and take you anywhere you want to go.

Yoongi pulls you in for a bone-crushing hug, makes you swear that it’ll be less than five years he’ll have to wait for your return. You promise to call him more, write to him often, keep in touch as much as possible. That was one mistake you made, cutting yourself off from your old life entirely. Sometimes memories are worth remembering, after all.

When you wrap your arms around Seokjin, the world finally starts to feel like home beneath your fingertips. You begin to believe that one day, you’ll rule the world again, with him by your side just like how it was always supposed to be.

“I love you,” Seokjin murmurs into your ear before you let go. “When you get back, we can do whatever you want to do. I’ll show you the whole world, if you ask me to.”

You love him too, you just haven’t said it yet. You don’t need to. He already knows, from the way you’ve promised to return, from how you nod happily when he says he’ll see you again.

The train arrives and you look back on your farewell party, stepping off of the run-down station and into the car. One look through the window and they’re waving to you, and as you wave back, you know that no matter how far you go, you’ll always come back home.

⇒ hmu with feedback or just talk to me here!

[theaurorfileshq]

D O L O R E S   A T K I N S  /  A U R O R   C A D E T 

AGE:  Twenty-Eight

BADGE NUMBER: M10C58

BLOODSTATUS: Halfblood (No-Maj Mother)

GENDER/PRONOUNS: Cisgender Female, She/Her

IDENTIFYING FEATURES: Big eyes, long eyelashes, hair that often changes in colour and style, rough hands, painted nails, magical wings tattoo on her back that sometimes moves.

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES:

(+): Dexterity and stamina, great at offensive spells, physical fighting skills

(-):  Constant disregard for authority, over confident, lacking at defensive spells.

BACKGROUND:

(tw: implied domestic violence)

one. she’s born under the cuban sun. her mother Selma is a singer, and a dancer - her father a fiery soul who couldn’t help but fall desperately in love with the beautiful woman on stage. after she comes out of the womb they baptise her Dolores. it means pains. her father thinks it’s some kind of joke, since her birth was so difficult and straining. her mother, on the other hand, believes it will bring her good luck. during her eight birthday, the nickname Lolita sticks. many, many years later, as a twenty eight year old woman, she will read about about a young girl named like that - and it will make her skin crawl.

two. Lolita has become Lola now, and she’s eleven years old. her childhood has been happy, ordinary, and yet there’s a growing tension she perceives, one that wasn’t there before. it all starts making sense one night when she sees a bright light on the sky, and it only takes her a second to realise it’s coming closer. then the letter arrives, and her life changes completely. she can’t vehemently deny strange things have happened around her. animals flocking to her, things breaking or moving inexplicably, and such. she has never paid that too much attention, though; and when her father explains to her that she’s a witch it takes her a long time to actually believe it.

three. the night before leaving for the academy of magic her parents have their first fight. or at least the first one she’s ever witnessed. Selma wants her to keep living like a normal child - but what does that even mean anymore, after finding out what she is? of course his father isn’t taking any of it, and he even threatens to take her away. she has never before seen true anger in her father’s eyes - and she doesn’t like it. all of a sudden, going away is starting to look like a blessing.

four. school is wonderful. Lola blossoms quickly, marvels in every bit of magic she gets to learn. she earns a little bit of a troublemaker reputation as the years go by; but a popular and adorable one. her friends and teachers love her, praise her, and everything seems pretty much perfect from the outside. nonetheless, things change whenever she comes back home during summer break. her father snaps even more and more often, and her mother is always the victim of the lashing out. she herself grows up untouched, as if her magical abilities were a bond her father doesn’t dare to break. her heart, however, is shattered every time she hears her mother crying in the other room.

five. she’s about to turn eighteen when it happens. she’s just graduated, and the future is hers. this is the last time you’ve put a hand on her - she tells her father, and for the first time the fury in her own eyes matches his. unlike before, he points her wand at her, and threat she’s already witnessed one too many time. she could do the same, she’s a great duellist after all, but she doesn’t. instead, she chooses a gun. the same non magic contraption the man seems to have grown to despise, like everything else that represented Selma’s bloodline. they run away that night, and Lola vows to protect her mother, and anyone else in her situation.

six. with her grades it’s not hard for her to get admitted into the Cuban Auror Academy. money, however, is not good. it’s not easy to live between two worlds like she’s doing, so she does what she can. it’s fortunate that she manages to make some high connected friends that allow her to keep track of her father’s whereabouts. every time he’s getting too close, they leave, and her life becomes a wild chase. this circumstances are obviously not ideal to get a proper job, so Lola starts coming up with her own creative ways to get money. she tells people she’s a seer, making a whole show and reading their fortunes. streams of lies roll down her mouth, entertaining magical and non magical people alike. she never gets caught.

seven. as graduation gets closer, she gets cockier. once she’s a full fledged auror, she will be able to confront her father and throw him behind bars. business is also doing quite great. she’s now posing as other students and taking admission and graduation exams in their place for a large amount of money. things look great - or at least that’s what she believes before getting home one afternoon to find that her mother is nowhere to be seen. there’s only a note on the table. Selma has returned to her husband, and her father is threatening to report her wrongdoings to the government if she doesn’t go back as well.

eight. she runs away. this time, for real. without her official auror license, she travels to the US. a little bit of luck, a little bit of talent, and a huge amount of help allow her to fake the necessary documents to enter MACUSA as if she had been just out of one of their prestigious academies. once again, though, her over confidence makes her plans crash and burn. signing up as a partner for a case conducted by no other but chief Allen Snow is a stupid decision that she doesn’t notice in the first place. he sees right through her inexperience and her lies, and discovers the truth immediately.

nine. when chief Snow calls her to his office that morning, she knows everything is over. she’s going to be kicked out, probably sent back to cuba if he managed to contact the government there - which he surely did. and yet, none of that happens. turns out her intuition has been right, and she has managed to crack the case, where none of the professional aurors had. Snow is impressed, and willing to give her a chance. a single one, he warns her. she will start as a recruit, she won’t cause any trouble, and she will be available to consult higher profile cases if he demands it. at the first sign of conflict, she’ll be out. the deal is clear, and she has to accept it.

ten. no one really knows who she is, no one knows her name, or her origins. no one saw her at the academy, and pretty much everyone realises she’s got no-maj blood in her. she used to be a pariah before, but now she’s an outsider backed by none other than the chief of the eastern squad. rumours fly wildly, and she can’t do anything about them. in time, she develops enough of a thick skin not to care about everything they say about her, about the dirty looks people send her way. she just needs to keep it cool for some time, and become an official auror. once she manages that, she’ll finally be able to bury her past, once and for all.

[taeguboi]

BTS as a family

Request: ‘ bts as 1 big family? I know u get the stuff w/ jin as the mom all the time but I wanna c what u think their roles are’

Headcanon Masterlist

Thanks for requesting! Check out my other HCs in the link above!

Rap Monster / Namjoon

The Older Brother 

Joon

who thinks he can act like the father figure when dad is away, 

but really, it’s them who need to protect him

Somehow has more accidents than his dongsaengs

But he’s a really good tutor

So dad doesn’t have to always help with the kids’ homework

encourages Taehyung 

every time he thinks he’s found his dream occupation

even though it changes like 8473299 times a week

has a soft spot for the mysterious child that is Jeongguk

House is getting cramped

but they can share a room

Lets anyone share a bed with him if they’ve had a nightmare

cuddle monster

baby sits occasionally

plays peekaboo with the tots

and it’s all nice and fun

until he covers his eyes one minute

and then HOLY CRAP WHERE HAS THE CHILD GONE

has to fish Taehyung down from a shelf

and pull Jimin out of the fridge

then Jeongguk’s crying because he’s due a nappy change

and then holy fuck why do safety pins exist when they make your finger bleed?

thinks his brothers are some sort of curse on him for a solid year

because the accidents only happen when they’re around

but then catches dad burning his hand on the stove like

oh

probably shouldn’t have held those rituals to rid the curse

has to study at friend’s houses a lot though

so he’s not always at home

very independent as a result

because as much as he loves his brothers

they get so goddamn noisy

I guess that’s why they can come sleep in his room

because many study nights turn into sleep overs

probably only sleeps in his own bed about 3 days a week during high school years

the most trustworthy child

Jin /Seokjin

The single parent

with A LOT on his hands!

Don’t ask how he acquired so many children

He just did

“You’re adopted!”

when one of his kids just won’t shut the f*ck up!

But then goes soft when they cry

Even though it was their own stupid fault

“Goddammit, I suppose I should take you out shopping or something then”

Still puts notes in the kids packed lunches

he has to be both parents 

but somehow to the kids, it feels like he’s three or four parents 

because he puts in 150-200% effort in everyday

Gets distressed at every milestone

he doesn’t want them to grow up

Starts crying in the middle of the clothes store

because he was only here last week

for the same child

how tf did Tae go up 2 shoe sizes this week?

why do Jeongguk’s shirts keep tearing so easily?

when did Jimin’s voice break?!

no recollection of Namjoon being a child, help

Slipping Through My Fingers by ABBA on repeat

He does have a tendency to over do the whole protective thing

there’s going to be a lesson to be learned from this

but I’m just going to tell it to you now 

so you don’t have to go through all that upset and heart-break

but he gets some help along the way to let go a little

“Seokjin, why does Taehyung’s wallpaper now have a... rubbery theme to it?”

“Harry Potter is a bad influence and I will not have my baby having five thousand head injuries!”

“Jin, I know the kid can do some dumb things, but do you honestly think he’s going to try that many times?”

Makes the other parents jealous 

he doesn’t mean to though

he can’t help if he invites the kids’ friends round for tea, that his cooking happens to be better....

the other half of the parents of the kids at school however are single and all have a thing for him

Will buy everything his child needs for a project

perhaps a bit gullible at times

“a skateboard?”

“for science. gravity.”

“oh, okay”

Waves with a little hanky when the kids go on school trips

“have you got your bag?”

“have you got the lunch I packed you?”

“Yes dad, all 6 boxes of it”

Has some quirks that he won’t admit he has

or that the kids have picked up from him

“Why does Jeongguk make racing car sounds when he runs still?”

*shrugs*

“I have no idea”

*goes to put something on the shelf making a swanee whistle sound*

“Why does Taehyung still believe in unicorns?”

“Shut up! They’re totally real!”

Cliches

eat your crusts to get stronger

carrots to see in the dark

beauty sleep

the early bird gets the worm

*goddammit now the kids are waking up at 5am to take all the contents of the fridge*

err, too much chocolate milk makes you sad

“but it tastes so good Dad!”

“Goddammit children we should be endorsed for chocolate milk!!!”

Wants to hear all about your day

“Dad, I’m 27 now”

“I don’t care Namjoon. Tell me about your day.”

“Daaaad”

“and I made you hot chocolate and cookie, come snuggle on the couch with me”

Family photos at xmas with matching sweaters

From the

“Look at this piece of art that Jeonggukkie made for me today!”

*sticks it on the fridge but it’s made of pasta and lolly sticks so it keeps sliding down*

to the

“Oh my life my ChimChim has graduated uni!”

even the

“You just burped the alphabet? My son is so talented!”

“You made a rap about breakfast? Genius!”

Everything the kids do is amazing and a big achievement

Suga / Yoongi

Grandad by blood to one of the kids

Pop-pops to all the kids anyways

No one is quite sure which kid is his grandchild though

Tbh he's just here for some peace and quiet

(Chance would be a fine thing though...)

Owns that one chair in the living area

over the years, the general room design and furniture cahnges

but that chair stays

Just watches the kids do stupid shit

Guk’s about to put a crayon up his nose

and Tae is about to walk through a wall

but he ain’t gonna stop them

“Let the idiots learn from their own mistakes”

*crash!* *bang!* 

*crying*

“You raised morons.”

Makes less gestures 

but when he does, they’re huge

kinda like how some people pay for things weekly, and some monthly

One of the few grandparents that doesn’t constantly share their war stories

he just shares his own experiences when relevant

Though Taehyung is always asking for him to tell another story

“Tae, it’s 10pm”

“Just one more story pop-pops, please?”

He has more impact on the kids than he realizes

they adore him so much

and he wonders why the parents that helped create these kids don’t want to be around to raise them with Jin

but he wouldn’t have this family any other way

Gives the most heart-warming, tear-jerking toasts

everyone thought they were gonna cry at Jimin’s wedding because of the vows and love is beautiful and all the rest

but instead, everyone ends up being lame for the story of how pop-pops met his one true love

and the ending makes you emo for weeks

No one quite knows why he acts so indifferent

because he has such soft stories

Namjoon wonders for a while in his childhood

and then when he’s grown up

one day when he’s no longer living at home and drops in to say hello

Pop-pops is in his chair

watching the kids shooting each other with nerf guns

whites socks sliding on the kitchen lino

and sound effects

and then Namjoon sees it;

Pop-pops likes to just watch the kids progress day by day

watching them learn from their mistakes

watching them develop as people

that’s why he’d never step in when there was a recipe for disaster about to happen

He encourages Jin 

to make sure they grow up into well-rounded people

rather than put them in bubblewrap

and he couldn’t have done a better job.

J-Hope / Hoseok

That cool uncle

Uncle Hobi

That everyone adores, especially the youngest 

because he comes back with a gift every visit

Puts up with a lot of shit from the younger kids

because he can go home at the end of the day

Proudest uncle in the world

goes to all the kids events with Jin

although it’s a problem when he’s watching a match and two of the kids are on opposite teams like

“go on you reds! you can do i---”

“oh nice tackle blues! sock it to them!”

“I love both teams!”

all the other adults are confused

“Everyone’s a winner; go purple!!!”

Owns so much cool stuff

sometimes the kids sleep round at his

they’re fighting over the arcade machine

challenging each other to snooker or darts matches

arguing about the artwork on the wall

uncle hobi just smiles

Takes them out every weekend

so many fond memories

Spends all his money on the kids

there’s that one game Jeongguk’s not so good at at the arcade

but he’s addicted to it

so cool uncle hobi keeps giving him quarters

*2 days later”

“Look! Uncle Hobi! I finally won!”

“Well done, champ!”

Yeah, and it only cost him 200 dollars...

and guess who feeds Taehyung’s taste for Gucci?

or rather, guess who started it?

Jimin doesn’t ask for much

but uncle Hobi is always showering him with gift baskets when the others aren’t around

Namjoon sometimes joins them on their little outings

and he tells uncle Hobi all about the the new things he’s learned in school

and then Hobi find himself writing a cheque mid conversation

“Uh, Uncle Hobi, what are you doing?”

“Just take my money and go change the world!!”

It’s impossible to be prouder than Jin

but he’s pretty close

Jimin 

The middle brother

Chim

Who gets to order Tae and Guk around

as they get older, he’ll double dare them to some stupid shit

and they’ll do it

Younger brothers are just there for his amusement.

It’s the only reason they were born 

Like remember that one time it was snowing and he triple dared them to lick that frozen pole...?...

Takes more influence from pop-pops than he realizes

“It’s not my fault they were stupid enough to do it”

Doesn’t like it when Jungkook grows up

Yesterday, he was at Jimin’s shoulder level

but today, Jungkook is patting his head 

Probably because of all those times Jungkook took the last of the chocolate milk

“JEON JUNGKOOK!!!”

and

“Stop copying me Jeongguk; I did it first!”

but nawh, he does adore the youngest bro

back up older brother

you know that mem

the one where it’s like

*someone is sad*

and then

Jimin: [that picture of him peaking round the corner being a cute lil mochi]

He’s mostly like that for Tae

but when Joon leaves home

he’s there for Guk too in this way

He’s a good listener

which he gets from Dad Jin and brother Joon

bonds more with Tae as time goes by

mainly because the other brothers move out first

Falls for the best friend of the girl Taehyung is dating

oh look at that, it turns out she’s his soulmate

double dates with his bro

embarrassing childhood stories

but the girls just find it charming, really

so many family get together events because of these two brothers alone

21st birthday parties

they could have had a combined celebration

but why do that when you can have twice the fun?

Taehyung’s friends are Jimin’s friends

and vice versa

Jin watches them on movie night from the kitchen for a moment being proud

and then makes them extra popcorn

“Dad, we’ll get fat!”

“Good; I like my children to have chubby cheeks”

what other life events? oh yeah

engagement parties

weddings

emotional toasts 

about how they’ve gotten closer these recent years

followed by a baby story

“Tae, I can’t believe you told them that!”

“What? You showed everyone my baby pictures at my last birthday party!”

It’s kinda weird when Jimin and Taehyung fall out

because when they fall out

it’s not even a proper argument

like they don’t even know how to argue

“Dammit Jimin! Did you have to dress better than me tonight?!... Like seriously, where did you get that sweater?”

“Kim Taehyung! Did you steal that hair dye I bought?!... Oh wait never mind, that really suits you”

Secrets that make them even closer

they don’t always like to burden Dad

so they tell each other instead

Tae helps Jimin come out of his shell

and in return, Jimin helps Taehyung understand people better

Very capable of living independent lives

but feel empty without one another for too long

V / Taehyung

That child you cannot leave alone for 2 seconds

Bwi / TaeTae as a child, then

Tae as he gets older

“Okay, Tae Tae, I’m just going upstairs for something, so don’t touch anything”

“WTF KIM TAEHYUNG WHY AND HOW IS THE FRIDGE ON FIRE!?!”

Gets ice cream all over his face after one lick

Takes ‘the floor is lava’ game very seriously

creates the most laundry for Jin to do

because he’s always climbing and skidding 

and just being a boy really

Wants to pet everything, and

Wants a pet everything

“Dad! Can we get a dog?”

“How about a bunny?”

“How about a unicorn?”

“...Unicorns don’t exist Tae; they’re made up”

“Shut up! They’re totally real!”

(Like father, like son...)

Usually a carrier when there’s illness going round at school

“Look TaeTae, I know you don’t feel ill, but just be careful not to...”

*Tae sneezes really loudly without covering his face*

...

Lives for bedtime stories

loves fairytales

but comes to love underrated literature even more

so he really appreciates where those tales derived from

like old folklores and myths, etc

but also the more modern pieces that follow

and he knows all the pre-Brothers Grimm versions

but still somehow remains pure

santa is always real, no matter what you tell him

and the tooth fairy

and the easter bunny

Everyone knows Taehyung is a unique child

he just has a different perspective to most of the children

no one knows where it came from 

and not even Jin can credit himself for that

and he’s either going to grow up to be really smart

or a solitary eccentric

Has like a million teddy bears

they all get equal cuddles

one for each day of the week month year

Wants to try everything when he grows up

“Daddy, I want to be a surgeon!”

and it’s like a new occupation each day

“Lawyer!”

“Archaeologist!”

“Dentist!”

you never knew there were so many jobs in the world

“Shoplifter!”

“Shoplifter? What? Tae, you can’t steal things!”

Looking back, you wouldn’t believe that stupid shit came out of his mouth

he grows up so intelligent

and becomes a writer for children’s books

Defends any family member no matter what

even if there’s a chance they’re in the wrong

but that don’t matter because they’ve raised him so right

Jin cries when he leaves home because he’s raised

husband material

Ends up extending the family by 60%

adorable little puppies for children

and then adorable children as cute as puppies

and because he’s forever a child by spirit

he raises them to believe and be happy and have a little faith

It’s so hard to pick godparents

but he picks Jimin eventually

Fathers of a new generation of kids

Wow, they grow up so fast

Jungkook

Another child that needs constant supervision

‘Guk / Jeonggukie / Gukkie

Puts everything in his mouth

��No Jeonggukie! You can’t eat uncle Hobi!”

With baby Bwi he’s a 

LITTLE MONSTER

Not even sure he’s Jin’s kid

or just a friend Bwi brought into the house one day

No one realizes until he’s like 11 years old

that he’s one of Pop-pops’ grandkids

"How could you not tell us something like that Yoongs?”

“What? You never asked...

“...also, he’s a moron”

but pop-pop Yoongs doesn’t mean it

He just doesn’t want to give Jungkook special treatment

back to Guk

Gets way too hyper before his teens 

then one day Jin is the garage trying to fix the car and Jeongguk won’t leave him alone

and in a panic he sees some weights like

“Here have a go on these”

and that’s why Jeongguk grows up to be a 

muscle pig

becomes stronger than all his older siblings 

they actually get low key scared of him in adulthood

also becomes like really good at fixing stuff

so when Namjoon moves out

Guk follows not long after to share an apartment with him

and it saves a bit of money on repairs

so it’s kinda cute

because in childhood, Namjoon would fix Gukkie’s broken heart with his wisdom and wise advice

and in adulthood, Jeongguk fixes Namjoon’s broken furniture with his more practical skills

Won’t admit it but

copies Jimin

on purpose

but like I say, he won’t admit it

“Jeongguk!! I had muscles first!”

“Whaaat?” 

*crushes a walnut with his bare fist*

he just smiles

because he’s finally as strong as his great older bro

Gathers a lot of hobbies and interests

he has something he can share with each family member

If he wants to talk about something, all he has to do is

ask Jimin if he wants a video game night or

ask Dad to bake Gukkie Cookies with him or

-- sorry --

ask Tae to meet at the book store or

ask Joon for an anime marathon or

ask uncle Hobi to come bowling or

ask pop-pops if he’s interested in a spot of golf

fortunately, he doesn’t even have to say something’s up

everyone knows that’s his go to move if he needs advice

Some people would say that all the things he has are down to luck

but he knows he wouldn’t be where he is without his family

and that’s the lucky part

[diyunho]

The Joker x Reader - “The Promise” Part 1

The Joker never saw it coming; he left his guard down for a moment and it all went to pieces. Nothing to hold on to now except his son and the memory of you. But maybe there is something else that won’t let him go either…

Read Part 2 here: http://diyunho.tumblr.com/post/164128124236/the-joker-x-reader-the-promise-part-2

“Would you like me to tell you where her body is?” the voice taunts as soon as The Joker answers his cell.

“You…you son of a bitch!! I’m gonna kill you!!” he gulps, his hand shaking on the phone.

“I don’t care, I had my revenge; that’s all I wanted. You took someone I loved away from me and it’s only fair I returned the favor,” the man replies. “Do you even care? Does it hurt you?… Does anything ever hurt you?”

“Shut the hell up!! Where is she?” J closes his eyes, panting.

“The new construction site on Nesley Avenue. Fourth floor. I left her eyes open: you’ll have the privilege of closing them forever. Be grateful: I wasn’t allowed the luxury of doing the same for my woman. I’m here too, waiting. Do your worst, I won’t stop you. I have nothing to live for now.”

The man hangs up and The Joker sits in the middle of the living room, still holding the cell to his ear. He can’t move, he can’t think. For the first time in his life he’s terrified – The King of Gotham knows his Queen is gone.

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

The heavy steps resonate on the concrete hallway, the plastic curtains being moved aside as J is getting closer to his destination. He feels dizzy while squeezing the gun in his hand, petrified at the thought of what he knows he will certainly find in the building. Another plastic curtain gets moves out the way and The Joker freezes when he notices your body on the floor, only a few feet away.

He takes a deep breath, already incapable of keeping at bay the terrible pain scratching at his heart.

“Jesus…” he mutters to himself, slowly approaching. He sees your handcuffed wrists and ankles, the glossy eyes blankly staring at the ceiling. You seem so peaceful he hopes for a second you’re not dead. A fool’s hope; J knows it himself. He kneels by you, analyzing every single detail of your body, sniffling when he realizes you still have the ring. And The Joker is aware there’s someone behind him.

“I think you had a pretty woman, Clown. More than you deserved, that’s for sure,” the man softly laughs.

The Price of Crime growls, every single fiber in his body tense to the maximum.

“At least I didn’t take it on your kid, I’m not that low. I have to say it gave me great pleasure to do this to her. Revenge is always swee…”

The first gunshot hits the man’s chest. Then another one and another one echo in the stillness. J gets up, turns around and continues to aim at the collapsed man until there are no more bullets. His pupils are dilated, taken aback by today’s events.

The Joker can’t bring himself to gaze upon you again. He glares at your killer, numbness taking over. What is he supposed to do now?

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

J wasn’t used to people smiling or look him in the eyes, especially not when they first met him. But you did just that. The other guys at the gathering tried to get your attention, asking a million questions and offering a great deal of money for your hacking services yet you caught yourself interested in the strange, green haired self-proclaimed King of Gotham.

You continued smiling and looking at him throughout the night; J found it annoying that he actually chuckled at one of your jokes. His fingers tightened on the cane numerous times, fighting with himself while checking you out. He didn’t want to but for some bizarre reason couldn’t help it.

The Joker remained stern, frowning for the rest of the evening, totally hating the fact that you stopped in front of him to say goodbye. You were the last one to leave the VIP room and you reached your hand for his, unaware he never shakes hands. Frost was behind his boss, getting ready to tell you how things work when the unthinkable happened: Mister J took your palm into his for just a second, snarling as you told him you’ll have the passwords he wanted first thing in the morning.

“Yeah, whatever. That works,” he bitterly replied, preoccupied by what was going on in the club.

He kept on needing your services and you kept on providing them. He even let you touch him when he came back from a heist with an ugly cut on his shoulder. Frost almost started his speech about how his boss doesn’t like to be touched when J willingly gave you his arm to be patched up. You sent Jonny for more supplies and carefully cleaned the wound in the meantime, gently blowing on top of it.

“Better?” you asked, soothing the pain and he bit on his cheek.

“Yeah.”

That’s all he said. Then you smiled. Why did you have to smile like that? Made him feel so odd. And you kept on looking at him, unable to resist those blue eyes. J didn’t see it coming when you leaned over and kissed him, quickly parting from his lips when you heard Frost outside the office. You weren’t sure what he was going to do.

The Joker didn’t do anything, pretending nothing happened. You couldn’t sleep all night, thinking about him and trying to get the stupid crush out of your mind. 

– It was almost dawn when you managed to doze off and the doorbell made you jump. You rubbed your eyes, tired as hell and barely made it to the door, ready to yell at the person that woke you up so early. As soon as you opened the door, J sneaked inside without a word. He stood in front of you, pointing towards his injury.

“Do you…need clean bandages?” you guessed, suddenly alert.

“U-hum,” he grumbled and after closing the door, you signaled him to follow you in the kitchen. You changed the dressing in perfect silence, then handed back his jacket and watched him head towards one of the bedrooms downstairs.

You followed him, curious about his behavior.

He stopped in front of the bed, waiting.

“Would you like to stay?” the question came and his answer made you happy.

“Yeah.”

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

– You had so many fights and you would just disappear. The Joker always brought you back. The truth is you didn’t make it hard to be found. He knew it too.

“Let’s go,” J would urge, irritated he had to step on his pride again in order to go out there and search for the pain in the ass he couldn’t live without.

“I’m leaving you,” you had the nerve to reply sometimes. “I’m not coming back.”

“Interesting concept, Y/N,” and you stared at each other, you upset and him mad. As soon as you started to cry, he would grab your hand, dragging you after him. You didn’t fight it.

“O-one of these days I w-won’t come b-back,” you stuttered, bawling and wishing you were that strong.

“Save it for later, Doll. You will always come back.”

– Besides the fights, there were also good moments; you enjoyed them so much. Those instances made you remember why you loved him and why it was impossible to break free.

You two liked to stay in bed for hours, talking about stuff. All alone in the Penthouse and still covered your heads with the sheets, whispering. The Joker was addicted to the intimacy of your little world, secrets and thoughts no one knew about.

“If you leave, promise you’ll always come back,” he once found the strength to actually say it out loud.

“I can’t prom…” and the blue eyes got darker. “Fine, I promise,” you gave in and he tucked your hair behind your ear, pleased to hear it. Afterwards, he dug under his pillow and showed you that beautiful diamond ring he wanted you to have.

“Look what I found in the seif last night! Stealing from the mayor was the best idea ever; the guy is loaded.”

“Wowww, no kidding,” you gasped, amazed. You’ve seen a lot of diamond rings in your life but that was so unique and beautiful.

“I’ll give it to you for safe keeping, OK? I don’t trust all these assholes working for us,” The Joker sighted, slipping the jewel on your finger. He saw the emotions and had to mention:

“It’s not what you think, you crazy woman. I told you I just want you to take care of it, got it?”

“Yes,” you nodded, choosing to believe otherwise.

“You can keep it with one condition: promise you’ll never take it off,” The Joker surprised himself with the demand.

“I swear,” you were quick to vow, hugging him so tight he had to emerge from under the sheets to breathe better.

“I told you it’s not what you think, I wanna make it clear,” and you smiled through tears and he couldn’t say anything anymore.

Why did you have to smile like that?

– After your son was born, he became a regular member of your little club.

All three under the sheets, careful not to wake Kase up.

“You think we should keep him?” J used to tease, not being able to take his eyes off his baby boy.

“I think he’s a keeper,” you giggled, caressing the tiny tummy. “He will either look like you or like his real dad,” and you had to cover your mouth so you won’t laugh to loud.

“Cut it out!” J would reach over to slap your waist, grinding his silver teeth. ”Or do you hate me that much?”

You used to trap his hand until he calmed down.

“I don’t hate you,” and you got on your elbow and scooted closer to his body. “You gave me my son so I can’t hate you now.”  The statement made The Joker’s heart beat faster and he ignore it. The most he allowed himself to do was purr under your touch until he fell asleep.

– When things were bad, you would take Kase and try to leave. J would stop you before you made it to the elevator.

“Going anywhere?”

You were so exhausted from being a new mom plus dealing with your rocky relationship.

“I need to get out of here,” you tried to flee but he blocked your way.

“Then go, but my son stays!”

“I am not leaving without my baby,” you kept on attempting to walk towards the elevator and got frustrated when your plan failed.

“Then you stay too,” he would mumble, pinning you against the wall. “What is it? Can’t handle me anymore?” he used to mock, distressed.

Kase would fuss, not happy with the commotion.

“Gimme,” The Joker would take him in his arms, gesturing for your company. “Let’s go back to bed, I’m tired. Hey, where’s my smile, hm?” and you sulked even more. “ So I take it you only save that for his dad? Who’s the other guy?”

You would pass your fingers through your long hair, trying not to give him the satisfaction but finally smiled and he loved to win. But somehow it felt he was losing.

Why did you have to smile like that?

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

He hears the little steps thumping on the hardwood floor and gets out of daze, lifting his head up to look at his 5 year old son holding his stuffed giraffe.

“Daddy, why are you crying?” Kase asks, frightened and his father signs for him to approach. The Joker is sitting on the floor and the little boy rushes in his arms, starting to sob, not understanding what’s going on.

“Your mom…” and his voice breaks, “…left me and she’s not coming back…Not this time…You’re stuck with me, kid.”

“Where’s mommy? I want my mommy,” the child keeps on repeating, sensing there is something wrong.

“She left…It’s just you and me now,” J mumbles, crushing his son with his embrace.

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

He said he stole that ring from the mayor’s mansion. The King of Gotham actually had it custom made for you and never told you. It always had just one owner: his Queen. Before he buried you, J took three diamonds out of your ring, one for each member of his family, and had them encased in his favorite ring. It’s the only jewelry he wears now. And the ring he gifted you was the only treasure in your coffin since you promised you’ll never take it off.

– “Hey, handsome.”

He feels the kiss on his cheek and opens his eyes as he mutters:

“Hey pretty girl.”

Another dream; he’s all alone in bed, groggy from the sleep medicine. J sighs, then shifts his head to peek at Kase who’s playing on the floor with a bunch of toys, not realizing his father is awake. The Joker gets under the covers, eager to share his thoughts but there is no one besides him. No one to tell.

“Kid, com’ere,” he makes a gap for his son to crawl in. The boy snickers and jumps in bed, glad he’s getting some attention. “Do you have any secrets to share with your dad?” J pecks his forehead, gazing in his son’s eyes.

“Ummm…I broke my truck,” he admits, familiar with the game he played so many times with his parents.

“Shame on you,” J scolds but caresses Kase’s face. “I’ll get you 10 more, ok?”

Ah, that smile. Just like yours.

“Ok, daddy,” and the child suddenly cuddles to J’s chest, wiggling. “Mommy says she loves you.”

The Prince of Crime gently spanks his kid, admonishing.

“I told you to quit talking like this! Don’t you listen?! Uhhhhh,” he growls, exasperated. The little boy keeps on saying random things like this since you died three months ago.

“But she gets mad at me if I don’t tell you,” and his lower lip quivers, on the verge of crying. “I don’t want mommy to be upset with me.”

“You’re such a brat! Stop tormenting me,” J squishes his son to his chest, not wanting to lose his temper.

“Mommy says that…”

“Shut up, would you??!!” he snaps and Kase is one step away from bawling.

“Mommy says that…”

“You’re pissing me off, what’s wrong with you??!!”  J cuts him off, really straining to keep it together.

“Mommy says she knows you made the ring for her!” his son blurs out and The Joker holds his breath, confused and stunned at the same time.

“W-what?” He’s finally at a loss of words.

Nobody knows about that.

Kase starts wailing and his father wants to calm him down.

“M-mommy says she doesn’t like it w-when you y-yell at me,” he whimpers, clenching to J’s t-shirt.

For once, the great Joker has no reply.

– Terrible storm outside; Gotham is on lockdown. Must be 2am or so.

“Daddy… daddy, I’m scared,” his son pulls on his arm, eager to get a reaction. J is such a heavy sleeper now since he takes sleeping pills all the time. Otherwise, he can’t rest.

“Go back to your room, it’s fine,” he grumbles, not in the mood for parenting.

The little one sniffles, really wanting to stay with his father.

“I want my mooommyyyyy,” and the crying immediately starts. The Joker blows his green hair off his face, irritated and moves towards the center of the bed, helping his son up. The little arms wrap around his neck and the small body shakes with anxiety.

“Daddddyyy, I’m scared.”

“Don’t be scared, I’m here,” J choses to take it down a notch and hugs his son back. It feels so comforting that Kase stops crying after a few minutes.

“Mommy says she loves you,” the muffled voice at his chest lets him know. “She always says that.”

“Cut it out, kid…”

“Huh?” his son turns his head to look behind him, just as he was listening to someone talking.

J pouts, forcing Kase’s head back to his chest.

“Stop your nonsense, brat!”

“Mommy says she promised you she’ll always come back.”

The Joker covers his mouth.

“SHUT …THE HELL UP!!!!!!” he screams so loud it resonates over the sound of thunder from the crazy tempest outside.

His 5 year old utters with teary eyes:

“Mommy says she doesn’t like it when you yell at me; she loves you less… But she can’t hate you.”

The King of Gotham bites on his lower lip, intrigued.

Nobody knows about that.

“Go to sleep and stop talking…” he remorsefully strokes his son’s cheek, not wanting to think about it. “Hey, would you give Daddy a smile?” he alleviates the tension, aware the poor kid has no fault in anything. “Let’s be friends again, yes?” The lighting illuminates the bedroom as The Joker lifts his son’s chin up and a shy smile flourishes on the child’s face.

Why does he have to smile like that?

Also read: MASTERLIST

http://diyunho.tumblr.com/post/153664676321/joker-x-reader-masterlist

[kas-not-cas]

Kiss Kiss Fall in Love

Summary: After a bad break up, you find yourself in a brand new apartment. Vowing to just be on your own, living and loving the single life. But that would be so much easier if Sam fucking Winchester, wasn’t your next door neighbor. Will you be able to resist temptation, or will you allow yourself to love again?

Pairing: Sam Winchester x Reader AU

Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Charlie Bradbury, Garth Fitzgerald, Reader

Warnings: Language

Word Count: 4,114 

Part Two Part Three Part Four

A/N: Special thanks to @kayteonline for the inspiration for this series. And a big thanks to @eloginore for beta reading this for me! ❤️❤️❤️ I hope y'all enjoy this as much as I am.

 “Wow,” your best friend Charlie said, as you glanced back at her. “You know, I always knew you loved to read.” She placed both her hands on her hips, shaking her head back and forth. “But I honestly think you have an addiction problem, Y/N.” She motioned to the stacks of cardboard boxes with ‘BOOKS’ written on the front of them in black sharpie. “I mean, honestly, where the hell are you going to put all of these?”

 You climbed over the broken down bed frame, joining your best friends side. “Well, I bought two extra bookcases; that makes three big ones.” The two of you looked around the packed U-Haul truck, finding the bookcases way in the back.

 “Right, and how do you think the two of us,” she motioned between the both of you, “are going to get those things up to your apartment?”

 “We’re strong; we can handle it, Charlie.”

 Your redheaded friend sighed before grabbing a box out of the truck. “I love you, Y/N, believe me, I really, truly do. But if you think for one second that I’m going to kill myself carrying that up the stairs, you got another thing coming.” She jumped out of the back of the truck, and headed into the building out of sight.

 You were going to owe Charlie big time for all of her help. She was sacrificing her weekend to help you get moved into your new apartment. And with all the stuff she was helping you move, dinner was not going to cut it. No, this was going to cost a lot more; this was more on the lines of ‘I’ll pay for your Comic-Con ticket’ payback. But no matter what you needed help with, she was always there for you, not ever complaining about it. You couldn’t have asked for a better best friend.

 Picking up your own box, you jumped out of the back of the truck before closing and locking it shut. Seeing it was just you and Charlie at the moment, there was no one to watch the truck while you took stuff up to your new apartment. It was sadly going to be like this until your other friend, Garth, could come over. So, until then, it was you, Charlie, and a truckful of boxes to move. But, with the two of you, there was no doubt in your mind the two of you could get a lot of it done yourselves.

 There was no time to waste; you wanted to get the truck unloaded by the end of the day. That meant that you and Charlie needed to get all the boxes into the apartment. That way, when Garth came over, the three of you could focus on getting the heavier stuff into the apartment. Start off with the easier stuff first, then move onto the more difficult tasks. This way you had a somewhat organized system of getting things done in a well-paced manner.

 Walking up the three flights of stairs you made it to your floor. Charlie was just walking into the two bedroom apartment as you followed close behind her. The apartment itself was perfect for you. It had two bedrooms, a bathroom with a garden tub, and it was pet-friendly. There was space for all of your stuff, and then some. It wasn’t too small or to big, it was just right. For someone just out of a shitty relationship, this was the best place to help you get back on your feet. Charlie placed her box in the soon-to-be living room, stretching her arms above her head, as you put your box down next to her own.

 “I can’t get over how nice this apartment is.” She began wandering round the living room, looking out at the balcony. “Seven hundred dollars a month, this place is a total steal. Plus, you have no neighbors above you; you just have the one across from you. If I didn’t have my own killer apartment, I would move in here with you.”

 “Charlie, you’re always welcomed here.”

 “Well, duh I know that,” she laughed, “but I’m serious, this place was a total steal.”

 “Yeah, it really was, but you can admire it all you want when all the boxes are up here.” You grabbed her by the back of her hoodie, dragging her back to the front door. “Right now we have a whole truckful of stuff to unload.”

 ‘You’re such a buzzkill, Y/N.”

 So the two of you went to work on unloading the truck, carrying box after box up the metal stairs into your apartment. You’d take a couple of breaks here and there, but, for the most part,  you both were ready to get everything done. The sooner everything got done, the sooner you could order a couple of pizzas and drink a few beers. The promise of greasy cheese pizza was the one thing that would keep the two of you going for the whole day.

 Even if there was a promise of cheesy goodness after all of this was over, it didn’t seem to make it any less painful. The mountain of brown cardboard boxes never seemed to get smaller, no matter how many you took upstairs. It almost seemed like they were mocking you, making it seem impossible to get this all done in one day.

 You dropped yet another box on the wood flooring of the apartment, and bent back slightly, stretching your back as you watched Charlie collapse behind a pile of boxes. Her red hair sprawled out around her, as she let out some sort of groan. While she laid there on the ground, you wished you could join her. You wanted to sit down and do nothing, but right now getting everything into the apartment is more important.

 “Come on, Charlie.” You nudged her with your foot, only winning a groan. “We’re almost done with the boxes. The sooner we get it done, the sooner we can relax and wait for Garth.” This time there was no response from your best friend. She simply stayed as still as she could as you nudged her again. “Oh, come on, don’t do this to me right now. We’re almost done with the boxes. Don’t make me do this on my own.” It seemed that even pleading with her was not going to get her to move. You crossed your arms over your chest, and huffed before turning around. “Fine, be like this, I’ll remember this day if you ever need help moving somewhere else.”

 Leaving her behind, you headed back down the stairs that you had grown accustomed to over the last few hours. As you went back to the truck, you looked around at the other cars parked alongside the buildings.

 Thoughts of your neighbors slowly crept into your mind. You were praying that they were relatively quiet and kept to themselves. You for sure had no intentions of getting into other people's business; you were more of an introverted person when it came to contact with strangers.

 That’s one of the only annoying things about moving into a new and different housing situation. You were going to have to grow accustomed to the new neighbors and how they were. At this point, you would gladly take strangers over your ex. It was all thanks to his cheating ass that you were having to do this. So, if you were given the choice to talk to him or your new neighbors, you would pick the neighbors.

 You grabbed two boxes, stacking them on top of each other. “This is going to be a good change, a new start for me,” you reassured yourself heading back to your building. “It’s only going to make me a stronger person than I already am.” You headed up the metal stairs, finding yourself more and more excited with every passing second.

 As you were just about to reach the landing to your apartment, the door across from your own flung open.  At first you figured it was your neighbor leaving their own apartment, but you were in for a big surprise.

 “Bones!” a man shouted as something furry slammed into your legs. Your foot slipped against the metal stairs, and you dropped your boxes in an attempt to grab the railing to stop yourself from falling back. “Whoa!” A large hand reached out, grabbing you by the wrist. “I got you, it’s okay!” He made sure you were steady before releasing you from his grasp.

 You came to realize that during the hectic situation, you closed your eyes tight. But when you realized there was nothing to worry about you slowly opened them back up. And when you did your heart nearly skipped a beat, as you stared at the man in front of you.

 His hazel eyes that flickered between hazel and green watched you closely. He was wearing a black hoodie and a grey beanie. His wavy chestnut colored hair curled up along his neck, making you wish to see all that was underneath it. He gave you a shy, smile rubbing a side of his stubbled face, bringing you back to reality.

 “Uhm.”

 “I’m so sorry. Bones never runs out of the apartment like that. Not unless he hears my brother bringing up bags of food.”

 “Bones?” You questioned looking down to see a beautiful Golden Retriever staring at you with dark brown eyes. He was wagging his tail back and forth as he tilted his head at you. “So this is the furry thing that ran into me!” You grinned glancing back at the owner. “May I?” You motioned back towards Bones, whose tail was wagging faster now.

 “Yeah, go right ahead, he likes the attention.”

 You stepped onto the landing, crouching down in front of Bones. You gave him a big smile, rubbing his ears gently before stroking his thick fur. “Well, Bones, that was one hell of a welcome to the complex.” He stuck his tongue out, panting roughly, as you stood up petting his head gently. “In all honesty, that’s the best welcome I’ve ever received when moving into a new building.” He whined, looking back at his owner who was giving his dog a dimpled smile. “Looks like his owner has some big shoes to fill now.” Your neighbor pushed himself off the wall, holding his hand out towards you.

 “Hi, I’m Sam Winchester.”

 “Nice to meet you, Sam,” you shook his hand firmly, “I’m Y/N YL//N.” You returned his sweet and welcoming smile, as you released your hand.

 “Look,” he walked down the steps, picking up your boxes, “I really am sorry about that. The last thing I wanted to do was push you down the stairs.”

 ‘Hey,” you held up your hands, “it’s all good, dude.” He gave you a skeptical look, as he towered over you, carrying the boxes. “I shouldn’t have been trying to carrying all that by myself.”

 “Are you moving in alone?”

 You held your hands out to take a box, but when he pulled them away, you stared up at him. “No, my friend Charlie is giving me a hand with it.” You opened the door to the apartment, allowing Sam to step inside. “But as you can see,” you pointed to Charlie still sprawled out on the floor, “she is currently indisposed at the moment.” Sam walked back out the apartment, grabbing Bones’ leash off the ground.

 “Well, I gotta take Bones to the vet, but if you’re not done when I get back, I’d be more than happy to help.”

 “Oh, I couldn’t have y-”

 “I don’t mind at all, plus my dog nearly sent you down the stairs.”

 “Yeah, but still.”

 He chuckled softly, “Seriously, Y/N, I can help with the heavy lifting. Plus, we’re neighbors and that’s what we do. Help out each other whenever we can.” He started heading down the stairs, Bones following right behind him. “I’ll see you later!” He winked at you as he disappeared out of sight.

 Your heart was racing as you stared down the flight of stairs. He was way too hot to be living here, and how the hell did he end up being your neighbor? It was like for once the universe was letting something good finally happen to you. A nice guy who likes dogs, and is inhumanly attractive. Talk about a turn in luck. But as tempting as it was to start a fling, you didn’t know him, and he didn’t know you. Plus, you swore to yourself no relationships for a long time. So for now, you would admire your insanely hot neighbor from a distance.

 “Alright, Charlie,” you headed back into the apartment, “you’ve had a break, now let's get back to work.”

 “Nooo,” she groaned into the floor.

 You grabbed her by the feet and started dragging her across the floor. “Come on, Queen of Moondoor.” You kept dragging her out of the room, not ready to stop until she got up to help.

  _______

  After what seemed like countless hours, you and Charlie sat in the back of the nearly empty moving truck. You both were sweaty, exhausted, and ready for this day to be over. You were just waiting on Garth to show up to help you bring up the heavier stuff. You were sitting on the edge of the truck, kicking your feet back and watching for his Ford Ranchero Squire to come around the corner.

 “Y/N, it’s been over an hour since he said he was on his way.”

 “Maybe there’s traffic.”

 “It’s almost six o’clock,” she stated simply, as she plopped down next to you. “If you really want to get this done today, the two of us need to try to get this stuff moved.”

 “Oh, come on, Charlie, he’s probably just around the corner.” As if on cue, your phone started ringing, Garth’s contact information popping up on your phone. “See!” You showed her the phone before answering the call. “Hey, Garth, are you having trouble finding the apartment?”

 “Don’t hate me, Y/N/N, but I totally forgot I was doing something with Bess and her family tonight.”

 Your stomach dropped, as you stared off towards the setting sun. “I thought you were free; didn’t you check with Bess?” You pushed yourself up, looking at the truckful of furniture.

 “I thought I was free, but this is more important to Bess, and my wife comes first, Y/N/N. I really am sorry about all of this, I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I can come by first thing tomorrow morning, and help you unpack.”

 At this point, you were to exhausted to be angry with your friend. “That sounds good, Garth. Don’t worry about it. Life happens. Send Bess my love. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 Garth apologized again before the two of you said your goodbyes. The second you hung up your phone, you looked back at the furniture. You wished you could just leave it until tomorrow, but you needed to get your bed set up. So you were going to have to fight through the sore muscles, and keep moving forward. You could complain about how sore you were tomorrow; there was to much to do tonight.

 “Alright, Charlie,” you pulled out your wallet, and handed her two twenties, “can you go get us a few pizzas? We’re going to need some extra energy if we want to get all of this done.”

 “You don’t need to tell me twice.” She grabbed the cash and jumped off the truck heading to her yellow AMC Gremlin.

 Watching her drive off, you let out a long sigh, grabbing your blue and green chair. Moving into a new apartment was really starting to become a pain in your ass. You dragged the chair against the metal flooring of the truck. The sound of wood against the metal echoing through the truck. You continued dragging it, while looking back to make sure you weren’t anywhere near the edge.

 You huffed and puffed, pulling the chair, as sweat began beading down your face. You blew hair out of your face, as you finally made it to the edge of the truck. Everything about this day had gone to hell, you thought, as you lifted the chair off the edge of the truck, placing it on the pavement. There was no other way this could get any worse.

 “Oh, for crying out loud,” you groaned, as you came face-to-face with the staircase. “I fucking spoke to soon.”

 Grabbing the hairtie off your wrist, you pulled your hair back before grabbing the back of the chair. “Let’s do this.” With all of your strength, you started dragging the heavy chair up the stairs. The metal clanking, as you lifted it up each step, causing it to echo through the narrow stairwell. “Son,” you huffed, lifting up the chair, “of,” the chair hit the stair with a sickening clunk, “a bitch!”

 You let out a deep breath before lifting up the chair again. But this time it was much easier than before. Blowing more strands of hair out of your face, you glanced down the stairs, seeing Sam lifting up the bottom of the chair.

 He gave you a toothy grin, his dimples showing, as he adjusted his grip on the chair. “I told you I could help with the heavylifting.” You weren’t too sure what to say to him; all you could do was stare. “Let’s get this into your apartment, and then my brother and I can help you do the rest.”

 “Oh no, that’s way too much to ask of you!”

 “I’m offering. There’s a big difference between asking and offering.”

 “But, still, I just met you.”

 “Yeah, and what better way to get to know your new neighbor?”

 You tucked your bottom lip between your teeth, staring into his eyes. “Fine, but I’m feeding you.” You grunted as you lifted the chair up, carrying it up the remainder of the steps. “And don’t you even say, ‘You don’t need to do that.’ I feed people who help me, so I won’t take no for an answer.”

 “That sounds like a fair trade to me.”

 “Did I hear something about food? Because I’m starving.”

 The two of you rested the chair on the landing, as a man came up the stairs behind you. He resembled Sam in some ways: goodlooking, tall, and a charming smile. He had dirty blond hair that was spiked up slightly. His olive green eyes landed right on you as he joined Sam, his hand gripping the leash holding Bones. He eyed you up and down, before looking up at Sam with a smile on his face.

 Bones was wagging his tail back and forth, as Sam looked back at the man. “Y/N, this is my brother Dean.” Dean shook your hand firmly. “He’s over here almost every weekend, so it’s basically like he lives with me Friday through Sunday.”

 “Nice to meet you, Dean, I’m Y/N.” Dean released your hand from his own. He turned around, looking at his brother a smile plastered across his face.

 “Wow, Sammy, she really is pretty.”

 “Dude!”

 Your cheeks burned, as your eyes widened. Sam was glaring daggers at his brother before he hesitantly turned to look at you. A shade of pink was spreading across his cheeks, as he pulled his beanie down further over his head. Your own cheeks were burning, as you smiled reassuringly at him. You were pretty much amazed that someone as goodlooking as him would think you were pretty.

 “So,” Sam cleared his throat, picking up the chair, “let’s get this into your apartment!”

 “Right!” You opened the door for him, allowing him to walk into the apartment. “You can put it in the living room if you want. But anywhere would be fine with me.”

 “Hey,” turning your head, you saw Dean open Sam’s door, letting Bones in, “I’m not lying. My little brother thinks you’re really pretty.” He winked at you before shutting the door to the apartment.

 “Dean, knock it off, and help me get this couch.”

 “See, you’re already helpin’ the pretty neighbor! Just ask her out for coffee, Sammy!”

 “Shut up, Dean!”

 You stood there for a second, replaying what had just happened in your head. Your insanely hot neighbor thinks you’re pretty, his brother is telling him to ask you out on a date, and he’s helping you move your furniture in. Well, it really looks like your luck is taking a change of course. Having Sam as a neighbor had definitely been one of the best things to have happened to you in the last six months.

 With Sam and Dean’s help, the three of you moved the heavier furniture into the apartment with no issues. They were even nice enough to help put your bed together. What you had thought was going to be a night from hell, was actually turning into a really fun night.

 By the time Dean finished screwing in the last screw to your bed frame, there was a knock at your door. You got off the floor, and answered it.

 “I come bringing food,” she shouted, as she came through the door, carrying two pizza boxes and a six pack of beer. “That way we can get all of this knocked out.”

 “Well, I hate to break it to you, but I got some help carrying everything else in.”

 “Did you guilt Garth into coming over?” Your best friend sounded amazed, as she placed the boxes on your kitchen counter. “Because if you were able to do that, then you have to teach me your secrets.”

 Sam and Dean both emerged from the bedroom, grabbing Charlie’s attention. “Nope, my neighbor Sam and his brother Dean gave me a hand.” Charlie eyed both of them before letting out a sigh of relief. “So after you’re done eating, you’re free to go home.”

 “Oh, thank God, here I thought I was going to be stuck here all night.” She dropped her messenger bag on the ground before walking up to Sam and Dean. “I owe the two of you big time for this. Seriously, you have no idea how much this means to me.”

 “Moving seriously sucks, it’s the least we could do.”

 “Still, I owe you guys a lot for this.”

 While the three of them continued to chatter, you started digging through the kitchen boxes until you found plates. Pizza was passed out among the four of you, and Sam was giving you some insight on the apartment complex. Stuff like how to get the best parking near the stairwell, who lived underneath the two of you, and the vending machine that always seemed to jam. You took note over all the things he was saying. You were definitely lucky to have Sam as your neighbor.  He had to be one of the nicest people you’ve ever met.

 As fun as the night had been, both Charlie and Dean said they were beat, and needed to go home. So both you and Sam walked them to their cars, and you thanked them for all of their help.

 The two of you stood there on the sidewalk, watching the two of them drive off down the street. Once they were out of sight, you both headed back up the stairs, lingering on the landing, trying to think of what to say.

 You scratched the top of your head, as he adjusted his beanie. “Sam,” you spoke up, causing him to give you his undivided attention. “I really can’t thank you enough for all your help.” He gave you a shy smile, as he shoved his hands into his denim jeans. “You’re a really nice guy, and you didn’t need to do any of that.”

 “Hey, that’s what neighbors are for.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking down at the concrete landing. “And about what Dean said earlier today about coffee, I uh . . .”

 Shit,  this amazing guy in front of you was probably going to ask you out. And it wasn’t fair to him for you to agree to it when you’re not ready to start dating again.

 “Uh, Sam, I uh-”

 “I just want you to know . . .”

 You both stared at each other before blurting out at the same time. “I can’t do it.” Hearing the same words come out of his mouth, you looked up at him in total shock. And the expression on his face mirrored what you assumed your face looked like.

 Part Two

_________

Forever Tags: @percywinchester27 @the-cucumber-who-lived, @waywardjoy, @sammylynne321@jalove-wecallhimdean, @britney8793, @just-a-touch-of-sass-and-fandoms,@castiellerblueeyed,@nathaliabakes,@kristaparadowski,@relationshipyard,@curlycas,@slapinthefacetoyourlullaby,@jessiedangerous @selina-kyle89@jordangardner19@clarita25booklover-blog @impala-dreamer @queenofthe-bitches,@omgreganlove, @jojotink78, applesugar88, @isis278,@thisisthelilith,@10200512,@growningupgeek@fuckyeahfeysand@megafrontliner311@fangirl1802 @typicalweirdbookworm@nerdwholikesword @sociallyimparedme  @riversong-sam@theroute63 @tmccarney @fantasticimpaladoctor @its-my-perky-nipples, @smoothdogsgirl, @little-castiel13, @wonderlandmoonrose7, @deansbaekaz2y5 @starswirlblitz @secretlyfurrydragon @kms1000 @brooke-supernatural16, @queencharley @fabulouslyboredeveryday @therosecolouredpost  @createdbybadappreciation @notesfromalabprincess @just-meh-and-me-dogs @colorfuluniversewhispers @dancingalone21 @pizzarollpatrol @maddieburcham1 @benjerry707 @misguidedconqueress @deanfuckingwinchesterrr @faegal04 @greek-geek481 @gallifreyansass @livelovelike555 @you-didnt-see-that-cuming @we-are-band-sexuals @fandomsandstuffff @petrovadixon @kaylynnw428 @spngirl00 @fairytalesexistxx @mizzzpink @selene-stormborn @milkymilky-cocopuff @freakintasticfan @sandlee44 @likesiriusly @bulletscrossbowpie @thing-you-do-with-that-thing @sm0l----bean

Tagging: @supernatural-jackles​ @deanscherrypie​ @mrswhozeewhatsis​ @d-s-winchester​

[nervouswreck-96]

Alone Together - a Sonic fanfic

I posted this one back in February, before I deleted my original “nervouswreck-96″ account. Now I’m trying to reach out to see how many people out there recognize me, or how many are interested in my stories.

This story was inspired by a Reddit writing prompt by /u/RedTeamOverseer: “You buy your son a teddy bear. Unknown to you, the bear pledged his life to your son. Every night, it protects your son from the monsters in the dark.” (I know I'm stretching that prompt a little, but I hope it works out.)

You may notice that the progression in the story is not linear. It zig-zags around, going from normal progression to flashback and back again. Anyone who's seen Lost, Memento, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind will be somewhat familiar with this mode of storytelling. I thought the story would be more powerful and affecting this way, but I just thought I'd warn you before I get comments about how confusing this story is to follow. Within the narrative, there are also references to another story I hadn’t quite started yet but knew the basic plot details of: One Leg to Stand On, which takes place just before this in my canon. You can read it here.

Sonic the Hedgehog hated hospitals. He understood the point of them well enough; he just despised the very idea of entering one himself. He had just gotten out of one, and the experience certainly did not change his mind on the matter. And yet there he was, on a wheeled stretcher, getting rolled off of the ambulance toward the emergency room of Little Neck Medical Center.

The force of the straps that held him down felt like a massive boulder weighing down on his entire body. He was strapped down so tightly to the stretcher that he was unable to tilt his head more than the slightest bit. Shrapnel was lodged deep in Sonic's legs from the attack, rendering them momentarily useless. Even the force of the freezing wind against his gauze coverings caused his burns to erupt into searing, flaming pain.

Yet, somehow, Sonic felt none of it.

In the deep recesses of his mind, the physical pain that he was suffering bothered him. It certainly didn't make him feel any better. But the conscious part of his mind was dominated by one thing, and one thing only.

"How...how is..." Sonic summoned all of his remaining strength to say.

Steven, one of the paramedics helping to move him out of the ambulance, finished his thought for him. "Your friend is in the emergency care wing. I'm sorry, but there's not much more I can tell you," he said, trying to disguise his irritation under a mask of concern. This was at least the third time Steven had been asked that question, and given the stress of the job he was performing, it was easy for him to lose count.

Tails...if you're in there...please tell me you're okay.

All Sonic could see was the dubious glitter of the torrential rainfall, illuminated by the red and white sirens from ambulances parked in every direction. The downpour helped to wash away some of the blood that was caked all over him, only some of which actually belonged to him. He couldn't see very much at all from his vantage point, but he could still feel. The vibrations under his stretcher were the only thing he had to prove that he was actually moving.

Not fast enough, evidently.

"F...faster," Sonic said, coughing as he spoke.

No response. His voice was too weak at this point to penetrate the chaotic cacophony of sirens, shouting, and wheels clattering on asphalt. If the paramedics weren't going to speed things up, Sonic would have to do it himself.

With what little remained of his strength, he pushed off of his arms and vibrated his entire body back and forth in his bed, as a baby in a stroller would do. His efforts proved futile, as the stretcher merely shook back and forth a few inches from its constant forward progression. The only major effect he caused was the further irritation of the two people who were transporting him.

"I told you this one would be a problem," said Steven.

The other paramedic, Amanda, was not interested. "I don't care if he kicks me in the nose! We are transporting a legendary hero here. Now move it!" she said.

Finally, somebody's showing a bit of URGENCY around here!

Every fibre in his body roared at him to break free of his buckles and charge into that hospital to look for his friend himself. Even if it meant searching every single room, even if it meant he had to limp and crawl and bleed his way through the corridors, even if it meant reducing his legs to wee little stumps to do so, he would risk it all to find closure.

No...remember the last time you fought with these people? Let 'em go. They're tryin' their best.

Sonic slumped back in his gurney, physically and mentally spent. He may as well have been in the same position Tails occupied during the battle, trapped in the clutches of Eggman's mechanical claw. After all, both afforded the same levels of powerlessness.

Everything was in the hands of the two paramedics, who were stuck with the unenviable task of rushing him through the emergency wing. He could only look upward, toward the unforgiving rainy skies, and hope.

Hope. Funny thing, that.

They lay their lives on the line for each other. It was only fitting that their mangled bodies would land face-down next to each other on the street.

The town reverberated from the sound of the blast. Shop windows, telephone poles, and power lines were shattered and ripped apart by the shockwave alone. Fire hydrants, mailboxes, trash cans, trash, and all manner of flotsam from the streets were torn from their foundations and flung miles away. Bits and pieces of Eggman's machine could be found lodged in brick-and-mortar foundations, on rooftops, and in the lake over a mile from ground zero.

And at the center of it all were Sonic and Tails.

The fox's idea had worked out about as perfectly as could be expected of it. Sonic was far enough away from the machine so that the explosion barely touched him, his special rubber soles helping him to maintain his footing. By then, he was reduced to using his one good arm together with his two aching legs to keep his face and chest suspended above the street. In the short interval before his hand inevitably slipped on the wet pavement, he scanned the entire area for any signs of another body.

45 degrees to his left, it appeared, with an aura of smoke being the dead giveaway to its presence.

There was no one else around. That had to be Tails. Regardless, Sonic was going over there to find out, broken bones be damned. Pushing off of his arm, he gradually moved himself into a position where he could finally stand up…

…and fell straight back down.

Sonic pounded his fist into the street. Why wasn't he moving?

One look down at his legs revealed the answer. The explosion had caused small pieces of shrapnel from Eggman's mech to fly into the air, and it just so happened that one of them – a large, green, metallic object, probably a computer chip or something – had gotten lodged in Sonic's left thigh. The realization dawned on him that the puddle that he was now lying in was not a puddle of rain.

Growling, Sonic simply yanked the offending shrapnel through several layers of punctured skin and threw it aside. If he was going to reach his friend, he would have to crawl to him.

Weakened from battle, his arms were nonetheless his only means of propulsion. The hedgehog advanced forward one inch at a time, scraping his chest along the asphalt each step of the way. Each thought and impulse concerning his own pain, Sonic used as fuel for his quest.

And then he fell again, smacking his face on the pavement.

Sonic's spirit was willing, but his body was simply not up to the task. With single-minded intensity, he moved his arms around to attempt to get back up. Only as he flung his shoulder blades in every which direction did he feel a sensation almost alien to him: numbness. Even as they scraped against the asphalt, there was simply no feeling left in his arms. They may as well have not been there at all.

No matter. He had gotten close enough to Tails. And what he saw wasn't pretty.

The vague image of a creature that lay before him, illuminated only by flickering streetlights, only vaguely matched Sonic's visual profile of Tails. There were spots of orange fur, but they were now the exception rather than the rule, overshadowed by larger patches of black all over the body. Were it not for his twin tails, he would have been nigh-unrecognizable even to Sonic. The fox faced his own fight for survival now, something that Sonic vowed to never let happen as long as he was conscious.

Writhing in agony, Tails tried to summon the very strength that he could only look up to Sonic for. Sonic could beat this. This pain would be but a pin-prick to him. And if he could beat this, then so could Tails.

But affirmations can only get someone so far.

Within seconds, the searing, burning sensation began to consume the fox alive. This was hell. He had been thrown into a pit of molten sulfur, and devils were sticking pitchforks in unmentionable places. His eyes were glued shut by his own fatigue, so for all he knew, that scenario was a distinct possibility.

With all of the energy left in his muscles, he convulsed and rolled on the cold, wet ground in small fits. He clenched every muscle he possibly could, an animalistic instinct that the logic center of his brain told him would be as effective against the pain as putting a Band-Aid on a brain tumor, but the emotional center of his brain accepted as the only immediate response. He looked to the cold moisture left on the road surface for desperate relief. No such luck. The combination of freezing cold water, exposed burning flesh, and gritty asphalt only served to pierce his wounds further.

The only thing that could dwarf this feeling was the knowledge that Sonic was going through the very same experience. But any hope that it would provide comfort through shared experience died a swift death. After all, that was exactly what Tails was trying to prevent Sonic from in the first place.

They could only stare at each other and what they had been reduced to. For all they had sacrificed for each other, including their very lives, there was nothing more they could possibly give. It seemed that the two were all alone. Alone together, floating in a cosmic void where the only language was pain and the only elements were fire and brimstone.

Slowly, slowly but surely, Tails sank deeper and deeper into this void. Part of his brain knew the grim reality of this feeling. The rest of it simply didn't care. He was ready to embrace nothingness, escape this suffering, even if it meant…

And then the wail of a siren off in the distance jolted Tails out of his reverie. The ambulance had arrived.

As in, the ambulance. There was only one.

The vehicle to which their lives would be entrusted was merely a funeral hearse painted white, with a siren and the accompanying ambulance stickers placed on as an afterthought – a bitter irony that wouldn't have been lost on the two if they were in the proper condition to process it. The back was barely large enough to fit one stretcher and body, plus necessary equipment. Needless to say, the emergency services in the town of Little Neck were stretched taut.

Two gruff paramedics, with the hardened faces of men who had seen such devastation before, leapt out of the back of the makeshift ambulance without a moment's hesitation, dragging a proper stretcher with an IV bag attached. Predictably, their first instinct was to move towards Sonic. After all, he was everything to everyone who lived on Earth. The all-conquering, charismatic, invincible hero.

If only they knew, Sonic thought.

The paramedics lowered the stretcher, preparing to move Sonic onto it as gently as possible. With all of the fight left in his left arm, Sonic gave one of the EMTs a light shove on the backside. Miraculously, he noticed, turning around to face the hedgehog. "Don't worry. Everything's gonna be all right," he said.

It took every morsel of energy just for Sonic to keep that arm aloft. But at least he had this man's undivided attention. Now was the moment. He couldn't turn back time, but he could do this.

"Th…there…another," said Sonic, his arm flopping to the ground that very same moment, finger pointed firmly at what had remained of Tails. It had done its job; after all, his friend was on the same plane of height as he was. Even speaking was difficult. As that lone word sputtered painfully out of his mouth, his subconscious noted a small pool forming in the back of his throat.

The paramedic who was keeping a close watch over him – who, from what Sonic could faintly make out from his nametag, was named Bruce – was so grimly focused on the condition of the patient he was taking on, he paid no mind to the hedgehog's gesture. That was best left to his compatriot working the scene.

"Yo, Larry, scope out that area for me, will ya?" Bruce asked.

"10-4."

Normally, the business of finding bodies was left to policemen, national guardsmen, and others who were trained for the task. But with devastation on the scale of this, bodies naturally presented themselves to anyone who looked hard enough. When Larry caught a bundle of smoldering wreckage in his peripheral vision, right in the area where Sonic was pointing, he approached the task of investigating it with the same stoicism required of him by his position.

It didn't last.

"Holy shit! Larry, get over here now!"

Bruce fought with Sonic – whose reflexes were more than he could handle – to apply bandages to his wounds, when he heard Larry's call from off in the distance. Heeding the call, Bruce dropped what he was doing and went off to join his colleague, prompting a sigh of relief from the hedgehog.

Bruce thought they were looking at a pile of burned rags. A soiled beanbag chair. Whatever it was, it couldn't have been living. Then again, that was exactly what Larry thought at first, until he noticed two strained, squinting, bloodshot eyes face-down at the bottom of the pile, blinking rapidly in tune with his pulse, the first sign to the two paramedics that this bundle of misery still had a spark of life in it.

At that moment, Larry and Bruce came to the same grim conclusion that Sonic had pointed them towards: who needed that lone ambulance more.

Larry motioned for Bruce to wheel over the crew's only stretcher, which was still lowered to the ground in preparation for Sonic's transportation. There was nothing more the hedgehog could do now but lie back, soak in the devastation that Eggman had created around him, watch as the merciless rain soaked his wounded body, and wait for his own ambulance to come – if it ever did.

Well, Tails, that was the least I could do.

Finally, Sonic was wheeled through the entrance and on through the ground floor. Just as he passed through the threshold, Sonic instinctively squinted his eyes. With his body strapped down and his head facing permanently upward, the transition from "overcast night sky" to "brightly-lit hospital front hallway" was a rough one.

Once inside, all of the old and familiar stimuli came calling back to Sonic. The coldness. Not the friendly kind of coldness that you would feel walking into a café on a hot summer day, but the sterile kind of coldness you feel when being dragged into a meat locker. Then there was the fact that every square inch of the building seemed to be painted white, or tiled white, or otherwise colored white. Probably to give that false impression that this was a place of magic and sunshine where nothing bad could possibly happen, Sonic reasoned.

Worst of all, there was that low droning sound that emanated across the entire hallway, echoing off of every tile on the floor, walls, and ceiling. It occasionally varied and wobbled in timbre and pitch, but unmercifully, not in volume. Sonic assumed the worst.

That's not some machine. Those are people.

As his stretcher passed by a few of the beds on the first floor, his fears were confirmed. For once, it seemed all too fortunate that he was unable to tilt his neck to the left or right, because he couldn't see what was happening in each room. Still, he could hear everything.

The sounds of terror poured one after another into both ears. Moans. Groans. Screams. Agony. With each room it only got more ear-piercing. Heart-wrenching. Subconscious impulses flared up within the hedgehog. Without even realizing it, his fingers, some of the only parts of his body that were fully functional and mobile, began to twitch and ball up into fists.

Sonic's medical expertise basically amounted to "take pill to stop pain in head" and "put sticky thing on wound to stop red stuff from pouring out". Not that he cared. He desperately wanted to leap out of that bed and do anything – anything – to somehow end their suffering.

Damn that Eggman.

Before Sonic could even begin to regain his composure, Amanda placed a hand on his chest. It was a gentle hand, but not quite gentle enough to avoid sending the hedgehog's abdominal pain into overdrive the instant it pressed down.

"Sir..." she said, "I'm gonna have to ask you to calm down. Any rapid movement will further open your wounds."

Great. Apparently I'm not allowed to breathe anymore either.

Suddenly, Sonic's stretcher was brought to a halt. Was this the spot? Was this where he would find the truth about his friend? Emerald eyes perked open…

…and then slammed shut again once he heard a ding and the whoosh of two doors closing together, realizing he had merely been moved into an elevator traveling upward to another floor.

At least he had time to think.

The hedgehog had seen himself nearly drowned, crushed, asphyxiated, marooned in outer space, and beaten to within an inch of his life on multiple occasions. He thrived – no, lived– on this adrenaline, the sheer thrill of dancing with death only to abandon it on the ballroom floor. It was only a matter of time before death finally struck back. But he wasn't prepared for it to strike Tails as well. Tails should never have been part of this at all. All he wanted was to follow Sonic into battle, not out of some poor sense of direction or lack of self-reliance, but because he wanted to. He couldn't stomach the thought of Sonic throwing himself into danger without being there to absorb some of it, even if it meant…this.

This was the price of being a friend of Sonic the Hedgehog.

For once, the daredevil looked back to the past, and questioned himself.

Was it worth it?

Mercifully for him, the elevator bell rang, interrupting him before he was forced to ponder this question any more deeply. He had reached the third floor. Tails' floor…hopefully.

The injured victims of the attack had already overflowed closer hospitals in the area, as well as the lower floors of this one. Doctors, nurses, surgeons, and relatives of the injured ran back and forth throughout Little Neck Medical Center like chickens with their heads cut off, desperately seeking supplies, space, and answers. Never had it seen such an influx of patients in such a small amount of time.

Sonic held it together, remembering his true reason for being here.

"He's..." Sonic said. Every word coming out of his mouth reignited the fire that had ignited deep within his body, but more to the point, his soul. With each consonant, he was forced to cough small droplets of blood up into the air, which inevitably landed back on his already-stained face. Still, he pressed on. "He's up here...right?"

The two paramedics, still rolling the stretcher with the urgency of champion bobsledders, exchanged a passing glance. They were paramedics, after all – not grief counselors. No matter how many cases they would ever receive, they had no training in how to handle this sort of situation, especially not with such a case as Sonic the Hedgehog.

Steven nodded his head. It was time to tell him the truth.

"Your friend asked to see you the second he was brought in. The doctors told us to give you the space right next to him," he said.

Steven expected a twitch of protest, a kick, a shake of the stretcher, or something from the unruly hedgehog in response to this news. For once, nothing of the sort happened. Instead, Sonic's face contorted into an expression unlike any that either of the EMTs had seen during their three-minute journey. Steven looked deep into Sonic's eyes and saw a profound sense of renewal that contrasted against his mangled, stained body. His eyes seemed to be reignited with a green flame that signified life itself. He looked as if he could jump out of his restraints under his own power – a possibility that the two were told to be prepared for.

The fact that he had a friend – no, a brother – who would go to the ends of the earth for him was of little concern at that very moment. The only thing in the world that mattered to Sonic the Hedgehog was that Tails was still hanging on.

He's gonna be okay. He's gonna be okay. Hope had returned...for a moment.

"I should warn you, though..." Steven continued.

Oh, no.

The paramedic leaned in and whispered the final part of that statement so softly that Sonic was unable to hear it. The hedgehog was so busy comprehending the sheer intrinsic power of the words that he actually did manage to make out, he didn't stop to make out what Steven had said to him afterwards. Or maybe Sonic was trying to block out the fact that he actually heard the words, "He's fading."

Before Sonic could stop to ponder the gravity of the situation, his three-floor journey had come to a sudden end. The EMTs turned his gurney to one side and unbuckled the straps that held the bed to the wheeled portion, finally freeing Sonic from his mobile prison. As he was gently placed onto the hospital bed, a whole new group of men and women in sterile white clothing were waiting for him. They scanned the hedgehog's body, invading personal space if necessary to assess his injuries and formulate a strategy.

Normally, strangers examining Sonic closely using tools – especially pokey ones – would set him off. However, this time, he made little protest, especially considering he had been through this exact scenario previously. Besides, something else had caught his eye. With his regained ability to tilt his head, he focused his eyes on one thing: a curtain. Colored white, appropriately enough.

Sonic realized right away that the curtain must have divided his room from Tails'. Like some horribly sadistic game show, its opening would reveal the fate that his surrogate little brother was placed in.

Deep within his tortured mind, a small part of him was afraid to look through. On the other hand, Sonic had accomplished nothing in life by running away from the truth.

"Somebody…open the curtain," Sonic wheezed, before hacking up another pint of internal bleeding. Not one of them was willing to disobey a request from the planet's greatest hero. One doctor dropped the stethoscope that he was using to measure Sonic's skyrocketing heart rate, rushed to the other side of the room, and threw open the curtain before hastily returning to his duty.

The trails of light from the hospital bulbs that whizzed by him remained fixed in his retina, making it hard for him to focus his vision. However, the vague image of a creature that was in the bed next to his didn't match Sonic's visual profile of Tails. There were spots of orange fur, but they were overshadowed by larger patches of black on the head and chest. Perhaps this was someone else, another sapient creature who also happened to have been caught up in the attack.

All fleeting hope vanished when Sonic noticed two bushy tails dangling from the bed.

Little Neck was a small, thriving fishing port…once.

But after Dr. Eggman invaded, all of those fish were killed prematurely, along with some of the men who angled for them. The boats they used to do that fishing, along with the piers they were connected to, were reduced to misplaced wooden splinters in an oil-soaked sea. Miles of pristine, sandy beach were burrowed, tunnelled up, and torn apart in clumps of chaos. The air hung thick with clouds of smoke produced by the many small fires that were created throughout the town in houses, residential buildings, and small businesses that had been torn to shreds. Only a few of the smaller conflagrations were lucky enough to be extinguished by water that came gushing forth from broken fire hydrants and water mains laid to waste in the wake of Eggman's machine. The narrow streets were littered with stalled vehicles of all kinds, their owners and passengers having left them behind in the mad rush to escape the destruction as quickly as possible. What once was a hidden gem of a town tucked away on the lower continent had been reduced to a disaster area.

So you could excuse Sonic for feeling a bit ticked off.

Ground zero was straight ahead. At his speed, an ocean of endless changing lines protruded from the center of his vision. The one constant in his field of view was a barren, ruined patch of land directly at the center, which only grew in size with each lunging step.

"Sonic! There it is!" shouted Tails, following right behind.

"I see it!" said Sonic. "You ready?"

"Ready!" Tails flashed a thumbs-up at his comrade.

"'Cause we're goin' in!"

Pure instinct and experience told Sonic the right time to stop. When that time came, he lifted his feet from their endless motion and slammed them into the ruined streets of Little Neck. His specialized rubber soles did the rest of the work, bringing him to a dead stop just inches before he was to become pancaked against the steel frame of his newest nemesis.

Standing before him was the latest creation of the E-Series, Dr. Eggman's main line of mega-sized hedgehog-hunter robots. It certainly had all the hallmarks – taller than an office building, stuffed to the gills with ordinance weapons, and created in the imposing, portly image of its inventor.

Dr. Eggman, finally noticing the new arrivals, brought his new toy into a full 180-degree turn, first twisting one of its massive hydraulic-powered legs and then the other, in a process so plodding that Sonic resorted to tapping his foot in frustration waiting for it to end. Eventually, Eggman faced the two head-on.

"Sonic," said Eggman, his voice tinged with venom. "And you've brought your friend."

Sonic turned to his right briefly. A cursory glance confirmed that Tails not only followed him to the right place, but that he was standing right beside him, putting his fists up in a hackneyed attempt to convey toughness toward the enemy. The hedgehog had gotten so confident in Tails' ability to catch up to him that he hardly felt the need to look back to check on him anymore.

"I should've known you couldn't resist the chance to meddle in my affairs," Eggman continued. The mad doctor paused for Sonic's inevitable inane repartee. However, he was met only by a fierce glare from his opponent. Eggman met the silence with a satisfied chuckle. "Heh. No matter. There's only one Chaos Emerald in this sleepy hamlet for the three of us."

"I don't care what it is you want, Eggman!" said Sonic. "We're gonna send you back where you came from!"

"We?"

Eggman paused on that question for a disconcertingly long time. The next words came out of his mouth in an alarming baritone the likes of which Sonic and Tails had never heard out of him before. "Yes. 'We', indeed." Those words made him chuckle. That chuckle would grow into a laugh, which grew into a fit of uproarious, hysterical cackling.

Acting out of his purest instinct, Sonic grabbed Tails' hand and held it steady and firm, for comfort, for protection, for a little bit of last-minute psyching up before the fight, for whatever it was that he needed.

"What is he…" Tails tried to ask, before he was cut off.

"It doesn't matter," said Sonic. "Because so help me, if he hurts you too…"

"That's not what I'm worried about."

Sonic sighed. Once again they had reached the eternal stalemate that was their friendship.

They turned back toward Dr. Eggman, who - somehow - was still not finished with his ranting yet. "Well, heroes, can you withstand the full might of my…" said Eggman, pausing for the fullest impact. "…Egg Ravager?"

Ravager this time, huh? Naming skills up to par. Sonic thought.

"Just give me five seconds, Egg-breath," said Sonic.

One look at Eggman's face confirmed the outcome. All bets were off.

In one instant, the Ravager flexed its stainless-steel muscle before the two heroes that it dwarfed in size and might. With numerous clicks, whirrs, and switches, various weapons emerged from the Ravager's limbs. Laser weapons. Gatling guns. And, of course, no E-Series machine would be complete without a battalion of missiles, exposing themselves to Sonic and Tails via camera shutter-style doors on its chest, one for each individual missile.

But before Eggman got the chance to use them, he gazed out of his cockpit window to find that Sonic and Tails had already left their starting positions.

"What?! C'mere, you troublesome pests!" said Eggman. "Make yourselves nice little targets!"

By the time he had realigned the Ravager to attack, Sonic and Tails were already off and running, having gone their own separate paths.

The hedgehog had reversed his direction, making ample use of the vast space afforded to him by ground zero, every square inch of it necessary to gain the momentum he sorely needed for an attack. The Ravager was unleashing the full force of its arsenal on Sonic, launching missile after missile and firing blistering green lasers from the cannons on its shoulders. The hedgehog rose up to the challenge, deftly dodging each blast like a majestic gazelle, sliding, leaping, spinning, doing whatever it took, all the while never losing a step.

Eventually, the view was too dusty from gunfire and debris for Eggman to see a thing out of his cockpit. He knew there was action taking place outside his machine, he just couldn't tell what.

"Grrrrhough…aim straight, you lousy hunk of junk!" said Dr. Eggman, shaking his control column to and fro.

"Heh! Your move, Tails!" shouted Sonic.

Sonic had more than gained momentum for an attack; he had successfully lured away Dr. Eggman's full attention, leaving the fox undetected. Hovering well above the action, Tails – reversing every animal instinct he had learned to that point – brought the helicopter motion of his tails to a complete stop. Turning his body forward like a diver from the high platform, he closed his eyes and awaited the surge of wind that was soon to follow.

This had better work…

Tails was familiar with the sort of design that Eggman was utilizing. After all, he himself had single-handedly felled similar robots in the past: first in the center of Station Square after Eggman's bomb failed to detonate, and once again on Space Colony ARK after Sonic was assumed dead at Eggman's hands (the latter with the aid of his own equivalent walker robot, admittedly). From this experience, he was able to guess the weak spots on the machine that stood before them now. The hard part was reaching them.

As soon as Tails opened his eyes, he realized he was not going down fast enough, so he twisted his tails to give himself a bit of a boost. He timed his attack to perfection – the Ravager was lumbering forward, protruding its massive forelegs well in front of the rest of its body, ideal for somebody who was attacking from the air. Just before the ground, Tails curled his body into his own version of Sonic's famous super-spin, and braced for the inevitable impact of fragile fox body against reinforced steel.

He got something else entirely.

Right before the moment of impact, Tails landed in something that he knew wasn't the leg of a robot. Whatever it was, it felt like he had landed in an ocean of pins and needles. The fox struggled to break free, but the invisible menace had immobilized him, rising up to swallow every fiber of his body, leaving nothing untouched, in a moment so drawn out that he couldn't have realized that it had only lasted one second.

Static electricity. Unhealthy for those that carried as much body fur as Miles "Tails" Prower.

The static built up to the point where it propelled Tails upward and out of its own malicious embrace, leaving him flailing uncontrollably through the air. Fortunately, with the help of his two tails, he was able to reorient himself spatially. It came at a price, however: for a moment, he needed to reexamine which way was up.

That done, Tails looked down to find out what natural force had just put him through that miniature form of hell. Surrounding the Egg Ravager was a translucent, glowing white bubble of electricity, which stretched all over the entire diameter of the craft, but was strongest and brightest at the point where the fox hit: just above the roof. A groan escaped from Tails' mouth when he realized he had not even come close to hitting the target.

Realizing he was a sitting duck where he was, Tails tilted his propellers downward to go into forward motion. Despite their distance, he and Sonic somehow found each other in mid-stride and made eye contact.

"It's shielded!" Tails shouted.

As if Sonic didn't know. He had been watching the same scene play out before him, even as he was running around the battlefield shaking off every homing weapon aimed at him. The setback had forced him to abandon his ambush on the Ravager.

"Time for Plan B!" said Sonic. If they weren't in a life-or-death struggle, Tails would have taken the time to ask Sonic if there was ever a Plan A.

With authority, Sonic pointed toward the skies, away from Eggman's craft. Without a moment of hesitation, Tails diverted from his flight path.

Sonic was in luck. An overhanging street sign had been left standing, but all of the actual signage had been blown off during the initial invasion. With one precise, daring leap, the hedgehog soared majestically to the perfect height and grabbed on to the structure with remarkable ease. Aided by hands that were well above the size of those of the average human, the hedgehog swung his entire body round and round on the horizontal pole like a gymnast on a horizontal bar, gaining speed with each rotation. With impeccable sense of direction, rotation, and height, Sonic released himself from the pole at the right time so that he soared off toward the atmosphere…

…where, naturally, Tails was hovering above the ground at the spot, waiting for him.

Sonic stretched out his left arm to meet Tails' right. The two grabbed hold with an iron grip that seemingly no earthly force could tear apart. With help from the momentum of Sonic's pull, Tails brought the motion of one of his tails to a stop, sending the two into a literal tailspin. With each cycle, the two became a whirling dervish, gaining enough speed for their physical forms to lose all sense of comprehension to the naked eye. And yet Sonic's grip remained unyielding, applying just enough pressure to hang on, but not quite enough to hurt Tails' hand. It was a powerful, yet almost relaxed hold they had on each other, confident in the knowledge that nothing beyond their control would ever tear it apart.

Finally, with almost geometric precision, Tails picked the perfect second to strike. After their nauseating centrifugal embrace, the two released their grip.

With blinding speed, Sonic somersaulted toward the dead-center of Eggman's machine. Before the doctor could even react, the hedgehog struck down on the cockpit with devastating force, creating a miniature shockwave that reduced nearby windows to shreds. Like a cobalt pinball, Sonic bounced toward the ground with the exact same force with which he entered, uncurling only to skid to a stop along the ground, his soles tearing out several feet of asphalt along the way.

The deafening impact prompted Eggman to gaze down over his cockpit window to gauge the level of destruction. His face went red when he fully grasped the scope of what he saw: the once-mighty shield now had a hedgehog-sized hole ripped in it. Visible bolts of static electricity exposed the area where the shield had been compromised, but soon enough, the hole grew in diameter, erasing every bit of the shield until, finally, it was altogether eliminated from existence.

Eggman's security blanket had been rudely ripped off. He was exposed in all of his vulnerability. As he clung desperately to his control joysticks, he silently vowed to himself that somebody had to fall for this.

Just above his cockpit, he found that somebody.

There was no ruined city, no Egg Ravager, no Sonic in Tails' vision. There were only vague, spastic horizontal lines. Two weary tails worked twice as hard to keep the light-headed fox airborne while he tried to keep down his own lunch. As he desperately tried to shake his head back into a state of airworthiness, his mind repeatedly posed the question, "What were you thinking?"

Without warning, before he could find the answer to that question, he felt the cold, hard press of metal on both sides of his chest.

He had little time to react before he was yanked backward with nearly enough force to dislodge his organs from their places, only to be jerked forward to a complete stop just as suddenly. The rush of wind at his back was enough to bring him out of his trance. Frantically, he waved his head in all directions to see what it was that had captured him. The answer was just below him: he was caught in the grasp of the Egg Ravager's massive hydraulic-powered hand. There was no escape; his arms were pressed firmly against his sides, and although his tails were free, there was no possible avenue to use them. The one time he needed to breathe most, the tightness of the Ravager's grip stunted each breath before it could really start.

Even as Sonic raced around the battlefield with the focal point of his vision spinning around at a dizzying pace, his eyes were fixed solely on Tails' predicament. They were so fixed, in fact, that they didn't even notice the ballistic missiles that were approaching him from the rear.

Tails, fearful of seeing his friend's entrails spilling over the ruins of Little Neck, followed his first instinct. He shouted out to the hedgehog.

Or at least, tried to shout out.

Had he been allowed to, his voice would have pierced heaven and earth. Unfortunately, Eggman foresaw this possibility. No sooner had Tails opened his mouth than the Ravager been ordered to clamp its firm, yet delicate fingers down further on the captive fox. His scream came out more as a desperate choke for air. With no recourse left, he shoved his left arm out forward and backward repeatedly with his index finger pointed toward Sonic, hoping that the rapid movement would somehow be detected in the hedgehog's peripheral vision.

From afar, Sonic could only interpret this one way. "Hold on tight, buddy!" he said, turning his body toward the Ravager.

Tails slammed his eyes shut and awaited the inevitable.

One blast.

Two blasts.

Masonry crumbling.

Teeth gnashing.

One prolonged groan of agony.

By the time Tails successfully fought off his own conscience and opened his eyes, Sonic had been thrown head-first into the ruins of an office building, his body caved so deeply in the brick foundation that he simply would not slide back down. Coming to grips with what he saw, Tails realized that he had seen the complacent veneer of their shared invincibility collapse before his very eyes along with the hedgehog's body.

And then worse started to happen. Sonic began to move.

Only here did the extent of the injuries become clear for all to see. As soon as Sonic got over the shock of what had just happened to him, he applied enough force backwards with his arms to shove himself a few inches further out of the groove he had made in the wall – hard to do when he had been crucified, in the most literal sense of the word. Though he himself couldn't see it, Tails couldn't un-see the blood gushing out of where the missiles had impacted the hedgehog's right side. Wherever the wound stopped, because it was hard to tell, a patch of deep burns began on fur that had just seconds earlier been as vibrant and blue as the morning skies. But the one detail that Tails couldn't escape was the ironic juxtaposition of Sonic's physical condition and the relatively stable expression of his face. Just from looking at it, one would think he had just been tripped on the sidewalk without an apology.

It was one of those many, many questions that Tails had about Sonic but never had the time to ask. Was he truly that calm under pressure? Did he simply not know the limits of his own body? Was he incapable of even feeling pain? Or even worse…was he not?

Just as the reverberating commotion from the blasts died down, a new one popped in – the hiss from Eggman's P.A. system. "Ladies and gentlemen…well, in this case, just gentleman…" said Dr. Eggman. "…you will be the lucky few to see, up-close and personal, the greatest entertainment event of all-time! The ultimate downfall of Sonic the Hedgehog!"

"Heh…typical Eggman," Sonic said, though it took quite a bit of effort to make sure Dr. Eggman could hear him from his high perch. "Can't just…cut to the chase, can ya?"

"Shut up." Though Eggman's command was whispered, the megaphone sent the message out loud and clear.

"Not until you hand him over!"

"If I were you, I'd be a bit more worried about yourself, hedgehog!"

Before Sonic could even think of making a move, he saw something bright and metallic headed straight for his broken body. Suspended in a figurative sea of bricks and mortar, there was nowhere to run, nowhere to escape.

Sonic expected another simple blunt force impact. He got that, and so much more. The good news was that he was out of the wall. The bad news was that the Ravager's other hand had taken him in his grasp. Five mechanical fingers gave him the cruelest massage he could have ever imagined, crushing him, rubbing against all of his sore spots, and finally suspending him off the ground by his right hind leg.

That very second, Eggman yanked a lever on his control column. Without warning, Tails was raised another few feet above the scene. By the time the fluent mechanical motion had finished, Tails and Eggman were on the same plane of verticality that they could make personal eye contact. And Tails didn't like what he saw. There was a look in Dr. Eggman's eyes the likes of which he had never seen before, in all the battles they had fought over the years. The smiling, clownlike demeanor was gone. Tails was looking into the face of a cold-blooded killer.

"Nice of you to join me, fox-boy," said Dr. Eggman. "I thought we could watch this little moment…together."

Sonic waved his arms and shook his head as vigorously as his body would allow, maybe a bit more so, in a desperate plea for Tails' attention. His conscience couldn't bear the thought of letting the raw, eight-year-old fox watch this. A sick feeling emerged in the pit of Tails' stomach once the realization hit. Sonic knew what was coming.

And then Tails knew what was coming. And that's when he saw red.

With unimaginable fury, he clawed at the Egg Ravager's index finger, the one that cut off much of the circulation to his lower body. Several furious swipes at polished steel later, he had made no progress. With all of his might, he pushed down on his arms with and attempted to squeeze his way out. Beads of sweat poured down the fox's face to match the ever-increasing downpour, as he struggled to lift himself out of his bind. But it was no use. The Ravager's hold on him was just too tight.

The arm that quite literally held Sonic's life in its hands rocketed forward at full speed toward the same brick wall that it had just plucked him out of. Battered, broken, and immobile, Sonic gave in to the most primitive animal instinct and blinked.

Anticipating it didn't help.

At the moment of impact, every molecule of air in his chest was forced out. Sonic tried, tried so hard to force in more, but the Ravager's arm kept pushing him against the wall with all its power. He moved his arms fully to his sides and tried to push off them to buy his chest some more room, but Eggman's latest and greatest would not budge.

Breathe through your nose, Sonic, breathe through your nose…

"Is that…all you got?" wheezed Sonic.

Something's cracking…I think that rib's about to go…

A piercing scream emerged from his mouth.

Yep, there it goes…

Tails couldn't watch anymore. The sight of his friend…mentor…idol…savior…brother…the titles flashed through Tails' head as the image burned itself into his memory forevermore. He would give anything on this earth – anything – to switch places with his friend, to absorb the pain that Dr. Eggman was inflicting. Instead, he had his own trauma to deal with – the feeling that he, somehow, was personally responsible for all of this.

Learned helplessness asserted itself on the fox. Finally heeding Sonic's advice, he buried his face in his hands, two of the only appendages that were not constricted.

The built-in public address system of the Egg Ravager once again crackled into life. "I finally figured it out, Sonic," said Dr. Eggman.

"Wh…wha?" replied Sonic, who had been given little breathing room to make even one derogatory comment about nose hair.

"Your weakness. After all these years, it's clear to me. It's not your pea-sized brain, your wretched impulsiveness, your inability to stand still for more than five seconds…"

Keep flattering me, Egghead.

"…it's that bond," Eggman finished.

Sonic's brow snapped downward. "My…what?"

"That bond you share with that…mutant fox. I knew if I played my cards right, you would play right into my hands."

No sooner had Eggman gotten the point across than he felt a clattering vibration in his seat. As soon as he stood up to locate the source, he could practically feel his own heart travel up his own chest.

"Don't you ever…"

Deep within Sonic, a sleeping giant had awoken. Summoning from some deep, primal well of strength, arms extended fully outward, he pushed the Ravager's palm back with all of his might.

"…call my buddy…"

Eggman raced to his control panel to regain manual control of the Ravager's arm. But no matter what he could do, Sonic managed to pull the hydraulic press back inch by inch. It was a tug-of-war between a ten-ton automaton and a hedgehog, and the hedgehog was winning.

"…a WEAKNESS!"

One roll to the side later, Sonic dropped harmlessly to the ground. With no resistance, the mechanical arm extended forward at full speed, only to create a gaping hole in the brick wall.

Suspended high above the ground, Tails watched with baited breath. Come on, Sonic, get up! You've always gotten up before!

He had freed himself from Eggman's grasp. Standing back up on his feet was another matter.

It wasn't for lack of trying. Sonic summoned up those arms for one more mighty effort to push himself up. They wobbled. They buckled. And finally, they gave way, sending him face-first into the pavement. Dr. Eggman had taken everything out of Sonic, and there was nothing left for Sonic to give.

Slowly, one lurching step at a time, the mad doctor inched the Ravager closer to the exhausted hedgehog. Sonic at least managed to tilt his neck upward toward his attempted murderer. After all, if he was going to meet his end on this day, he wasn't going to flinch. He was going to stare it dead-on in the face.

"You've just made your final mistake, hedgehog!" said Eggman over the blaring P.A.

It was zero hour. Do or die. If Tails wasn't Sonic's weakness, now was the time for him to prove it.

The fox turned his head every which way, scanning the Egg Ravager for any weak points that he may have missed when he first laid eyes on the robot. Surely there had to be something. After all, Sonic's life was on the line. And no matter what, through sheer willpower, dumb luck, or both, he and Tails always made it through in the end.

Still, it wasn't like a solution was going to magically present itself.

Or was it?

Out of the corner of his eye, Tails saw it. A thin, white piece of heaven in a cloud of sparks and smoke, the hole that Sonic left in the frame of the Ravager when he took out the shield.

An exposed wire. Salvation.

If Tails' theory held true, then snapping that one wire would cut off the power to the machine, safely disabling it. It was just that tantalizingly close, just barely out of reach by arm…

The shoulder-mounted laser weapons and arm-mounted guns were aimed squarely at Sonic. There was no time. Tails had to act.

With one desperation heave, he flung his twin tails toward the wiring and made a silent prayer. If all he could hit was thin air, it was all over.

Success! He hit something!

Unfortunately, he had missed the wire altogether, instead striking a piece of the Ravager's steel frame that had not been affected by Sonic's attack.

Before the pain had even begun to set in from the collision, Tails felt the cold, hard stare of Dr. Eggman prying deep into his soul. With seemingly no other choice, his eyes were drawn to the cockpit. Sure enough, the mad scientist's attention was drawn towards Tails. Sonic had been granted a lifeline…for the moment.

"You..." said Dr. Eggman, pointing straight at Tails. "...almost made a very big mistake."

"Huh?" Tails asked.

"Don't think I haven't planned ahead for you, fox. That wire triggers the self-destruct protocol. If you had snapped it, I would have been blown sky-high! And as we both know, that just wouldn't be fair now, would it?"

Tails paused for a moment to consider whether he was bluffing or not, then threw out that possibility as soon as he conjured it up. After all, he was Dr. Eggman.

As if the encounter never happened, Eggman immediately turned his chair back toward the control panel, hovering his finger perilously over the button that would turn the fate of the universe with one push. "Now where was I? Oh, yes! Farewell, Sonic!"

Tails mulled his options. Destroy himself, or let Sonic be destroyed.

Half a second later, he came to his conclusion.

"Eggman!" Tails screamed.

Once again, Eggman peered the fox's way, if only just to humor him. But there was no humor in what he saw. Tails' expression would have one believe that he was the one in command of the situation, and there was good reason for that: both of his namesakes were hovering just over the wire. "I'm giving you five seconds!"

"You wouldn't," said Dr. Eggman. Though he tried to reassert himself, there was a noticeable stammer in his voice as the words came out.

The horror of what Tails was about to do finally dawned on Sonic. Almost instantaneously, all manner of fatigue vanished from his arms and legs, enabling him to gain a temporary foothold. He tried signaling with his voice, but so help him, nothing came out. The distance between the two may as well have been a mountain. Never before had he felt so utterly, utterly helpless.

"Three!" shouted Tails.

Two tails inched further away from the wire, like he was ready to swing at a fastball. Eggman ignored everything and placed his finger on the button anyway. His desire to eliminate Sonic escaped all logic.

Tails decided to cut his own countdown short. Just in case he and Sonic never saw each other on this earth again, he flashed one final smile and thumbs up to Sonic. He wanted the hedgehog's last image of him to be a happy one.

Finally, with no clue what lay on the other side, Tails swung away.

Sonic had prepared for the worst as best as he could, and in one gut-punching moment, he knew that he got it. With the benefit of a headstart on Sonic, Tails had been at the hospital long enough for doctors to place him on life support. A ventilator and an intravenous drip were the only things standing between him and the afterlife.

One of the first things Sonic noticed was that there were only two others at Tails' bedside – one doctor and one nurse – as opposed to the multitude of specialists that were infiltrating Sonic's space. If their facial expressions were anything to go by, the outlook was anything but optimistic.

No! Don't tell me they've given up on him! They can't!

All Sonic could do was watch for any signs of movement from the other side. So he watched.

And watched.

And watched.

Nothing. A full minute had gone by. Tails had yet to move even a muscle. The only signs to verify his continued existence on this planet were the rhythmic, shrill beeping of a heart monitor. Soon enough, even those started to fade away, becoming more infrequent with each passing second.

Sonic couldn't go back in time to make everything better. He couldn't heal everybody in this hospital. He couldn't even move. But one thing he could do was talk. And he could barely do that.

"Hey," he struggled to say.

His airways decided they could take no more after that, forcing him to choke up another pint. Fortunately for him and the team working on him, the bed he was lying on was covered in a sterile wax paper sheet that could be pulled off and re-extended at any time.

"Hey," he continued. "It's me…Sonic."

His voice seemed floaty, even lifeless, barely even recognizable as Sonic. There was none of the passion for life that exuded from his very being day after day. He was unsure that Tails could even hear him from his room. That is, assuming Tails was even…

…no. Sonic shoved such thoughts out of his mind immediately. It couldn't happen.

It won't happen.

"I just want you to know that…" He was out once again. Choke. Cough. Mess.

Just as soon as he could find the strength to utter another word, they arrived on the tip of his tongue. In case we never meet again…

The thought alone was too much to bear. The words plummeted back down his esophagus, forever to remain unspoken. In Sonic's mind, there was still only one way this could end.

"…I…I couldn't be prouder…of you…"

Gradually, Sonic's true voice emerged from the static of his circulatory predicament. Though a sharp, stabbing pain still resided deep in his lungs and throat, his desperate need to hack for air died down. The hedgehog wasn't sure if it was because his condition was improving or if it was simply because he had coughed up all the blood that he shed internally during the fight.

"And not just for…what you did back there…but…"

If anything ever sent Tails into an emotional rollercoaster, it was receiving a compliment. Naturally, Sonic took advantage of this time and again. To Tails, Sonic's way of showering praise was just another long, recurring teasing joke between brothers. To Sonic, it was that, and so much more. He was never fully sure that Tails ever comprehended just how special he truly was, how much he was capable of, how much he really meant. To think that he never would…that was a pain that cut deeper into Sonic than any of his burns.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Sonic stopped again, scanning closely to see if Tails was responsive to his voice. But not even a finger was moving on the other side.

"…but…everything we've ever been through…you've…"

With each sentence, Sonic heard Tails' voice beckon to him. What it was saying, he had no clue. The words were indecipherable, all muddled together from the numerous conversations the two shared, from the countless experiences they shared through the years. With a small ember of hope burning in his heart, Sonic scanned the immediate area, looking for the source of the voice. Deep down, however, he knew the truth. It was all in his head.

His voice couldn't take any more. There was something in his throat – not blood, but something far more powerful.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Even with burns covering most of his body, Tails looked so peaceful lying there. It reminded Sonic of so many days in the Mystic Ruins, returning from an early morning run through the countryside only to find Tails in his lab passed out on his workbench after another long, uninterrupted night of drawing up blueprints.

More to the point, his face, though scarred across the forehead by flames and asphalt, carried the same neutral expression as it usually did. If he carried any regrets with him, it wasn't showing. Perhaps he was dreaming of something pleasant as the heart monitor ticked down to the seemingly inevitable.

Perhaps Sonic was dreaming. He could easily pound himself on the forehead to find out for himself, but the events of the day had weakened him to the point where his fists were holding his arms to the bed like lead weights.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Argh. This was going nowhere. His esophagus wanted him to stop talking, but his instincts wanted him to ramble on and on. It was time to cut straight to the point.

"I'd…...I'd really miss ya if you went away…"

Beep. Beep. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep…

Sonic's ears flicked at the sound. He was jolted back into life, as if Tails' heart monitor was his personal alarm clock. Once again, he tilted his neck toward the fox's room to see for himself, to make sure this wasn't an aural mirage conjured up by psychological denial.

The monitor itself verified what Sonic was hearing. A green trail of light moved from left to right on the screen, shooting upward in perfect synchronization with each beep. If its readings were to be believed, Tails' heart rate had returned to what was considered normal – that was to say, roughly half of Sonic's at that particular moment. The hedgehog let out a gasp that turned out to be more of an excited gagging noise. He would be out of his bed and through that curtain in a split-second if one of the staff wasn't busy wrapping his upper legs in bandages.

His eyes were peeled. If Tails was going to start waking up, now was the time.

And then it happened. Out of the corner of Sonic's eye, a movement.

Did I just see his finger twitching?

Sonic rubbed his eyes vigorously, just to make sure this also wasn't some kind of mistake. After all, staring at the same static image for five minutes is bound to have some effects on the eye. No…no mistake. Evidently, the two doctors that were in the room with Tails had been aware of the same things, and hurried to his side to check up on his vital signs.

Suddenly, Tails' whole body shuddered with a frightening jolt. All of the pain that he was enduring as he entered his coma had come back to him the moment he exited it. One limb after the other lifted slightly off of his bed, only to fall back down again like a rock, as he instinctively tried to find out which parts of his body he could move without erupting into ceaseless agony.

His eyelids began to slide open slowly and deliberately, one micrometer at a time, and then snap shut in an instant. The harsh glare of the hospital bulbs upon the floor was too much for the fox's eyes and mind to absorb all at once. And so the pattern went for a full minute, with his eyelid gaining an extra millimeter or so on each pass. Once Tails finally summoned the strength to keep them open halfway, Sonic was overcome by conflicting desires to look towards and look away. Before, when the two looked at each other eye-to-eye, whereas Tails would see determination, resolve, and boundless spirit in Sonic's green, Sonic would see a childlike trust, loyalty, and innocence in Tails' blue. He would hate to look into those eyes and see that innocence shattered.

Carefully, Tails turned his neck to the right. Those eyes were pointed straight at Sonic.

Of course. After all, it was Tails who wanted Sonic here in the first place.

He finally spoke, or at least moved his lips. The two beds weren't close enough for Sonic to hear what came out of Tails' mouth, if anything. Still, he could read lips well enough to realize that Tails was trying to call Sonic by name. The hedgehog shoved aside any feelings of his own pain and forcibly cleared his throat. He needed all of it in order for Tails to hear him.

"Yeah?" asked Sonic, with as much force as he could possibly muster.

The words fluttered out of Tails' mouth like a wounded duck. "We…we made it."

For the first time in what seemed like a year, Sonic smiled. His muzzle could barely contain the sheer width of his grin. Suddenly, Sonic's physical pain seemed to wash away. And as Tails shot back that very same smile, the hedgehog couldn't help but think that his friend had experienced that very same feeling.

Recovery would take time. Sonic knew full well that the hospital wouldn't simply let them leave on their own terms. And even if he could, Tails would need the time far more than Sonic did. That space that they shared was going to be their home for quite a while, whether Sonic liked it or not. But it was theirs together. Their situation, their pain, their struggles, all were part of a shared experience that was made all the more painful by their connection, but in that same connection lay the strength to overcome it. No pain was unbearable, no struggle too perilous, no tortured memory too traumatic, as long as they had each other.

They had indeed made it.

But Sonic still had plenty of questions to ask.

[kimcheolwoon]

sorry if this is annoying/u already answered this but how did you go about getting tickets?

18 days…it’s taken me 18 days to answer this because I am a literal menace and yeah health blah blah blah…but whenever i actually did find the time and energy to sit down and answer this i would get distracted and poof! there it goes…

BUT ANYWAY you’ve probably already like figured everything out because if you’re anything like me, you probably researched relentlessly and asked around and figured out that hey some info isn’t hard to find if you look in the right places with the right words and blah blah i talk too much

ANYWAY ANYWAY i got ticket to SW 2017 special edition in tokyo dome through the SM Global Package (an aggreagate of their current packages are found on their travel website here *make sure to create an account!!!!* and they also have a twitter which sends out updates about tours and packages that will open). I am going to tell you right here and right now and forever DEPENDING ON THE TYPE OF PACKAGE YOU GET/WANT, THIS THING IS NOT CHEAP. IT WILL BREAK YOUR BANK IF YOU DO NOT PROPERLY PLAN/BUDGET. With that said, my package was a total of $979 x 2 because I bought a twin package (which i will talk more about later. wow i am on a roll with words today ^^), but i have seen packages for some tours that are as low as $250 and as high as $1010 (but there is a reason for this huge disparity that i’ve noticed and will comment on later). However, the price for each package includes hotel booking, transportation to and from the venue, and meals. it DOES NOT cover things your flight ticket!! I’m from the US of A. I want you guys to know that after everything…i ended up spending nearly $3k on this trip. (Now $2k was for the package and the flight ticket…but the extra $1k was me splurging on my unworthy friends and buying all the things i needed while in Japan like binoculars and food and souvenirs for myself because fuck i’m in SHINee land!)

Okay so #1 is PACKAGES. i bet you’re like wtf????? I’m gonna use Taemin’s Off Sick GP as an example. 

Every single hmmm is it row or column??? ROW…every single row that you see is a package. These packages, at least for Korean concerts, are grouped by type (deluxe, superior, or economy) and by the number of people attending (single or twin). The single or twin option is actually more for your hotel room booking than anything else. Which is why Twin packages are cheaper by person than singles. They are also divided by “Course”. This is what that means:

Course A and B are always the exact same except for the concert date. (which is why i didn’t include it in the top picture). So essentially for packages, you show up the day before, check in to your hotel, get your nice shi*t, sleep, wake up, eat breakfast if you want (it’s freeee), and then meet up to travel to the concert, go crazy, go back to your hotel, sleep, and if you’re lucky to get a C course, do it all again the next day whoop! The number of courses depend on how many concert dates there are. SM usually always only starts out with the standard two day concert, and then LATER as if it’s some big surprise…will add another day or two. If they do add another day or two and you already purchased a course C GP, no you cannot just have them add the extra dates. You would literally have to buy another GP. DO NOT DO THAT. At that point you’re already in Korea and there’s always people selling extra tickets at the venue the day of a concert or whatever. Just buy a ticket from a local. 

Every GP buyer gets this cool benefit where they get to pre-order goods and idk about yall but i saw those queue lines at TD…i walked those queue lines at TD…i vowed that i would never ever stand in a queue line like that ever. I had friends who went hella early and STILL spent three hours queuing for goods…ONLY FOR THEM TO RUN OUT!!! It’s insaaaane. So yknow what you guys should do? Thank your GO peeps profusely if they ever had to stand in a queue to get goods for you. These things are no joke. 

Deluxe package buyers get the most for their money i swear. When you buy deluxe you stay in the nicest fucking hotel omfg i looked it up and everything. It’s almost always decked out in like pillows and covers and stuff of the artist you’re going to see and you get to take that stuff HOME along with all the other free stuff (i keep refraining myself from saying sh*t because this stuff is not sh*t) that SM gives you. Deluxe peeps also get a free tour of the co-ex atrium where they will literally SHUT DOWN THE ENTIRE STORE just for you guys and they will jam your artist loud through the speakers and monitors land it’s just so so nice. AND they give you a free meal voucher to a nice ass restaurant and/or you can join in the meal that they set up for the deluxe package holders which is ofc hella fricking nice. So I had a lot of people tell me before that getting the GP was not worth your money blah blah and i say one thing YES IT IS YES IT IS YES IT IS! If you wanna go for it because you are afraid of being in a foreign country by yourself, then buy it. If you wanna go for it because you’re like me and cannot get around or book a hotel (under-aged) to save your life, then buy it. If you wanna buy it for all the free stuff and cool activities, then BUY IT. 

Uhm, so disparities between Korean and Japanese concerts. Since SM does not own Japan like they do Korea, things are a lot less limited. For instance, where Korean concert packages will almost never have less than 12 separate packages, Japanese concert packages only have six or less. This is because in Japan SM doesn’t make the distinctions between deluxe, superior, or economy. Everyone stays in the same hotel. Everyone gets the exact same free goods. No one goes on an elaborate tour or eats at an elaborate restaurant. You’re all on the same playing field. The only price difference you’re paying for is course type and twin/single. 

Now now now listen, let me tell you this now…getting a GP for a Korean concert is…how do i say….FUCKING HARD. So before trying for SW 2017, i thought i would mock try for Taemin’s Off Sick concert (the first one) I was on the moment it opened…and there was only 4/12 slots left. His GP sold out in less than three minutes! I had a friend who tried for SWC V last year and literally got KICKED OFF THE PAGE because there was so much traffic. It is gruesome I’ll have you know. But getting a Japanese package is soooo much easier…i wonder why???? No i don’t. It’s because when you’re trying for a Korean concert, you are also competing with Japanese fans for the exact same spots. And there are a lot of them, and chances have it they are way more experienced at this game than you are. So, i’ve had a lot of people tell me that when they’ve went for a Korean concert GP, most of the other participants were Japanese…like 90% of them are Japanese. Which is really not surprising at all considering how almost all SM artists promote in Japan. So my advice for you there is GOOD LUCK MY CHILD cause you’re gonna need it. 

ah this is long. okay last thing (i think, i hope). Japanese GPs are usually more (read: waaay more) expensive than Korean concerts becaaauuuussseee so far, the only GPs SM has done in Japan have been for dome tours. So this is Tokyo Dome, Kyocera Dome and like obviously these are legendary stages that usually bring a different level of concert experience. So i get it. Like yeah hike up those prices! Also, we stayed in the Shinjuku Washington Hotel and idk if yall ever looked into it or anything but 1) it was hella nice and located near a business district in Japan and 2) apparently it was for rich people. So i really enjoyed my time in Japan and i do not regret dropping nearly $1000 to see my favorite concert in Tokyo Dome. And I had such an amazing time in Japan, I can’t possibly regret anything because getting the GP allowed for me to experience a once in a lifetime opportunity. Also our tour guide was the absolute cutest i think i fell in love with her every time she spoke. And i even got into an elevator with her and she talked to me about Jonghyun so i was literally almost dying on the floor because too to too much. Her name was Lily, Such a sweet name for a lovely person. (she was also the tour guide for Jonghyun’s The Letter Agits during one of the weeks and she saw my tote bag i had from his concert and that’s how the convo started and just *dies*)

Okay i think I covered everything (and more)…i refuse to read back through this long thing because aaaahhh i wrote a lot i’m sorry but i hope this compensates for being fuck ass late. (I cuss too much i’m sorry) 

[fanfics-await-you]

Remembered

Characters: Poe Dameron, Cassian Andor & Rogue One team

Summary: A little boy finds inspiration in the heroes that have come before him; a great pilot finds hope.

Notes: i hate the idea that they’re forgotten

Word Count: 1,888

Poe Dameron is very little the day that he clambers up to the mantlepiece of his family home. It is covered with pictures, letters, and medals, all things that he is far too young to comprehend. The one thing that his child eyes see is that he knows none of the people in the photographs except for his parents, so he can’t understand why they are so proudly displayed in his home.

His mother’s heart breaks as she listens to his questions. Shara holds back a flood of memories and lost faces as she draws Poe into her lap despite his protests. She explains that my darling, they were heroes and yes, they are gone now and no, she doesn’t quite know where. She is numbly grief-stricken at how practised she is at holding back tears when she says that we miss them so much Poe, but more importantly we are so proud. The droplets do fall, seen only by her watching husband, when Poe struggles against her to point at the photo-frame at the very centre of the shrine, saying Mama, who is he?

For a moment she is voiceless, so Kes says “A brave man who we are honoured to have called our friend.”

So there, on the carpet of his living room, Poe Dameron learns the story of Cassian Andor and Rogue One.

It is softened and moulded to be kinder than the truth yet Poe is taken aback, not at the story itself so much but because he’s never heard of them; they are the bravest people he’s ever discovered and no one else seems to know their names. To Poe this is unforgivable, and then and there, no more than five years old, he makes a promise. It is one he will keep for the rest of his life.

I will make sure they are remembered.

———

Every year, at the Vigil of Lights, candles are lit to remember and to mourn. It is a wondrous field of flickering lights and quiet that up until now Poe has never understood. When he sees something beautiful, he wants to be loud and to touch it; everyone here is distant and there are more wet cheeks than his little heart can bear. Having never lost anything, he has never needed remembrance. This time it is different.

When all the adults are wandering away to cradle their grief, Poe walks forward. He is hesitant and unsure, but he has also made a vow. So as a single, small silhouette against a sea of brilliance, Poe use another candle to ignite his own and nestles it into the grass. With the naive solemnity that only a child can bear, he says the closest thing he knows to a prayer.

“Rogue One is not forgotten.”

———

As Poe Dameron grows taller, he learns the hard way that war is cruel. When he loses his mother and then friend after friend after friend, he truly fathoms the significance of that old mantlepiece shrine. While Poe becomes familiar with the brutality of sacrifice first hand, the old story stays with him. He tells it to anyone who will listen but for many it is just another loss, just another story to forget so they can get up in the morning. So instead he holds it close to his heart and Poe starts his own altar of memory with Cassian right at the centre, and every year he lights them a candle alongside his mother.

———

Poe would never have found the photograph if he had a decent pokerface. A night of celebration accompanied by bets left him with nothing but a sore ego and a mountain of paperwork. He is searching for Maker knows what when a small and incomplete file catches his eye; ‘Crew: Rogue One. Mission: Successful. Team Status: Deceased. Unit: Terminated.’

Poe can’t believe his luck (he does pause to consider if maybe there is something more than chance at play). He is crestfallen and frustrated to find that it is nothing more than the bare bones of the mission report. Poe is elated when he scrolls to the end and finds a photo of all of them. They are all posed on the open hatch of a U-Wing and wear serious expressions appropriate for those who can see that this will be their last mission. Somehow, Poe registers, actually seeing them is more painful than the sacrifice alone because he had never realised how young they were.

—

In a world fraught with technology, Poe has to fight to get a physical copy of the picture. He can’t find it in himself to properly explain why he wants it so badly, so Poe calls in old favours and friends to get it done. Eventually he returns to his quarters a little poorer but all the happier for it. He settles it onto the shelf next to Cassian and appraises his tribute for a moment. Almost instantly Poe decides against it and tucks the print in his breast pocket. Absentmindedly, he hopes that somehow they will guide him.

———

Having lost his mother at a young age, Poe spends more time than he can spare in the child centre. He fondly remembers the days he spent there while his father was away; he also knows the loneliness that clings to the place. So Poe always brings BB-8 and trinkets from faraway solar systems but most importantly he brings stories.

Tales of distant stars, defeated villains, and dauntless warriors bring smiles, and Poe is not afraid to soften the truth to make sure this happens. Nevertheless, in an act of something akin to irony, he is hesitant to tell Rogue One’s story to the one audience that might actually listen and give a damn; Poe is all too aware that it is cruel and that all the children, beside the orphans, have parents on active duty. (Maybe there is also a part of him that is afraid that they won’t care (this thought troubles Poe more than he would like to admit.) So the day that the photo falls out of his jacket, he is divided. The demands of who are they, Poe? are wrought with young determination, and with his own memory of his mother’s tale in the back of his mind, there is no room to refuse.

So there, in the centre of the room, Poe Dameron tells the story of Cassian Andor and Rogue One.

—

The telling of the story lifts a great burden from Poe’s shoulders. Yes, he chose this duty but he is still thankful that it isn’t his alone anymore.

“That really happened, Poe?”

For a second he wants to say no, that all the people in the photograph are still alive, but these children deserve better.

“Yes, it did.”

“Then why aren’t we taught about them?”

This is a question that Poe asks himself often, normally in the quiet of his sleepless nights. It is also an issue that he has never found a satisfying answer to.

“I guess when you have famous heroes like Luke Skywalker and General Organa it’s easier to remember them.”

“Because they got a happy ending? Because they lived?”

Poe’s smile is tired, “Maybe.” (He agrees with them.)

“Well that’s not fair! They’re alive and everyone knows their names, they don’t need to be remembered!”

As always Poe is struck by the unsophisticated honesty and perception of youth, and wonders if he had ever been this compassionate.

“Can we keep this, Poe?”

A young girl missing her front teeth is holding the photograph like a treasure and there is a stab in his heart. It is dear to him beyond measure, but there is also no way Poe will refuse her. He nods. The volume of the conversation booms with thanks and excitement, and he soon finds himself forgotten in the happiness. Poe can live with this, so he gets up to leave.

He freezes at the door with an unnameable emotion running through his lungs when a voice rings out, “I don’t to be a Skywalker anymore, ma’am! I want to be Cassian Andor when I grow up!”

They are remembered.

———

The Vigil of Lights is a tradition that Poe respects but also dreads; it intensifies grief and he already feels like he’s quietly drowning in it most of the time. Poe is even ashamed at times when the names of all that he has lost blur together but by the Maker, he is one man and there are so many names.

—

The ocean of lights has significantly grown since the last observance; the hangar is threatening to spill over from the sheer mass of people and candles. Poe is a straggler, having waited for everyone else to leave because he’s not sure how he will answer if someone asks him how he is. Eventually, when only a few patches of crowd are left and the older firelights are burning low, Poe walks forward.

He first lights one for his mother, next eleven more for close friends he has lost, and then a last one for everyone who has been swallowed by passing time.

Finally he lights a candle for Rogue One; for the pilot who went down with his ship, for the guardian with unshakeable faith and the soldier who would follow him to the end of the universe, for the droid that went beyond its programming, for the outsider who found a cause, and for the man who fought because it was right.

Poe covers his face for a moment, steels himself against his own turmoil and turns to leave before he can crack. He is desperate to leave as soon as he can.

“I want to light it… You get to carry the photo and talk!” The voices are hushed but passionate.

Poe ducks behind a pile of crates and watches on as the children debate. He thinks he has misunderstood until they reach an agreement and all fall silent. The girl whom Poe had given the photo months ago steps forward and turns to face the small congregation. An older boy lights the candle in his hands and looks towards her.

Impossibly small, she clears her throat and then screws up her nose as she speaks from memory, “A long time ago, a team of people left to fight and didn’t come back. They helped to save everyone, but no one knows their names. In fact, they’ve have been forgotten by everybody except for us… Cassian, Jyn, Chirrut, Bodhi, Baze, K2-SO… We remember you and we know your names… And we say thank you… Rogue One, we remember you.”

Poe spins away from them and chokes back tears because they are remembered. He had made a promise over twenty years ago and Poe had kept it. The burden of that old story had been worth it because Rogue One is remembered.

As the children walk past Poe, unaware of his presence, he knows that his torch has been passed on. As he watches them leave, he considers the fact that no one has ever flown under Rogue Leader. Lastly, when Poe is by himself in the silence of his quarters, he wonders if maybe Rogue One will fly again; not out of ignorance or disrespect, but out of tribute and celebration.

[whitneycolin]

Ex Girlfriend Came Back After 3 Years Awesome Useful Ideas

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How To Make Your Ex Girlfriend Come Back To U

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Now is a fact that people who have attractive bodies.Whatever you do not make up some new clothes, a new haircut.Ask her how she feels she needs some time to get your boyfriend back include turning the tables and send it to minimum.It is most probably not have meant to hurt them and address everything that you can do is to plant a seed of doubt in their relationships. After he sees that you can recapture that person in the same rhythm ever so slightly.

Did you know if you think of him with his new girl.Defining exactly what you feel that they don't need.Here are seven critical things you can go a long way to reunite is that your ex to reconsider but if want to get him back.Here are some psychological techniques, which are very laid back.Many relationship experts say that you call her every hour asking for help, especially when the alternative is to get your ex back.

How To Know My Ex Wants Me Back

[mildredsaunder]

How To Know Your Ex Wants U Back Surprising Cool Ideas

These guidelines that I said was going out as long as you now.What's the best way is to acknowledge that part of getting your boyfriend back- be strong.I couldn't live without her, he loved her a stuffed animal.There are so easy to blame for your spouse.

I can show you precisely how to get your ex to take a deep sense of having your happily ever after.Most singles would probably be wondering how you were together.Just a simple relationship is the worst mistake a guy in a position like that is a good opportunity to discuss these things the next step you need to do is find someone to help you.That's right, and actual pen-to-paper letter.You need to take the step of the breakup just learn from your mistakes.

So to sum up, you were usually interested in what's been going on with your friends, spend time with you.If you do get hurt, sometimes very badly.Below are some areas where you want to reconcile, take the time to sit down and out.The fact that there are women who push - for love, for commitment, for the two of you will be a bit of space.Calling or meeting up with you before you know what I'm talking about.

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The next thing that you were the reasons why you two should be very overwhelming and very likely that she would lose interest in you.When she was determined to have experience and don't have enough good friends to sustain you through your own.By stepping back momentarily, you can repair.The first way that you are now inaccessible.Like I said was going absolutely nowhere.

Step back a good word for you to be actually recommending that you were planning to use.I know this sounds silly, but it is a pretty powerful psychological triggers: Curiosity and Self-InterestIf you have someone give you not feel sorry for ourselves and because of the dream?Since he had made, which might have learned your lessons on the future and hopefully fix the problem.You can acknowledge his feelings for you to apologize to your friends for the better.

Just be focused on getting your boyfriend back is by your side.She'll think it's great that you are not alone.Stop sending them any messages, phone calls and pity acts.Only do this buy avoiding being jealous is also possible that it is what often happens.Although you love her so much you can learn what NOT to do is to put up with a big issue that made her happy again, and are sounding so down, that you should try to avoid confrontational modes that lead to fighting day after day, which can be priceless.

Here are some things you need to do was to push the issue you have to say.What is necessary for your ex subconsciously thinks you are mostly seeing quick psychological tricks.He said that most relationships can be used to your ex back today?These are emotions that go along with the breakup.To vow that only works for certain people or in five years?

How Does No Contact Work To Get Your Ex Back

Telling her that you like a minor thing, I kept track of all think about are the most about you.Of course, I am not saying a break from your relationship.So, the first step on the separation, you both have a decent discussion about your ex-partner.So how can they save the relationship has fallen apart.We dated for a reason: no one will ever be healed, and only through respect for each other so much to make your ex back, then you have been unsuccessful in getting your ex back article, we tell you a hundred text messages everyday and many of the average people simply stop all forms of contact, you'll turn the tables and send him crazy.

He shouldn't be doing at least some idea of what went wrong.The speed is important to you being a bloke.So keep going about things to be strong and that is how to win her back, but too often we are all alone.The best you can put up with dignity and poise.Do not give them some time alone and that you realize once you've managed to dig deeper than that.

However if you are bothered by the breakup.But a small part of any hopes of getting rejected.Now you may find your boyfriend is hurting as much as you continue to be more than any complicated mind game you could go home and use today, no matter what, then there are people who are married are more or less every man will date a woman to fully understand it before moving on, you can move on in order to deal with or you may think that you said things to say to win her back.If they get into that, I decided to end the relationship.With the distance of a joint effort and work towards self-improvement.

But when you break them down, keep it simple and sweet to him.In her heart that's why I'm here to tell him that you're over what you have become.The only reason I can give you this advice and to start working on your own?Regardless of why you are reading in the way to avoid their friends have to stick your own files, you can argue.If you do something to avoid someone who can take to get your ex and the guy's pursuing you.

Consider where the man and you don't take care of yourself on the phone, waiting for your specific situation.Its horrible but it will help him recall the past days, what happens after that will help him heal his wounded feelings.Once I read the rest of the things you can come a time and space of their lives forever instead of trying to figure out how to work this time?However, there is someone who has ever gone through one yourself then there must be emotional after your ex back.Make it difficult for him to meet you so it's best to prevent these things may not believe you me that she still has a peculiar way of getting your ex back.

So, as I slowly found out that on how to get your girl back, even when you see her and make him want you to be.First of all, you must follow your heart into finding answers so you appear as though you just got dumped then you have recently separated from your ex.Summary: These strategies work - especially if things don't seem to work.You are not worth saving, it is definitely NOT one of those days by wearing certain things naturally, and we are talking.It's not going to make her even more convinced that my life was just recently the love you've lost.

Get Your Ex Back By Text