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skzdarlings · 8 months ago

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bodyguard: the first guard | part two | chan/reader

masterlist.

(part one of the previous story.)

( read on AO3 )

A sequel to the Bodyguard. Miroh's daughter is assigned a bodyguard of her own. The past is confronted when old friendships and new enemies are pushed to the brink.

pairing: bang chan/reader content info: sequel to the bodyguard (felix/reader). this is a new reader perspective. the previously established story dyanmics: explicit violence, mentions of torture, death. chapter word count: 12,000 words.

B E F O R E

Felix is wearing itchy civilian clothes, the jeans distractingly stiff. Regardless of how many field missions he is assigned, he never gets used to undercover disguises.

“Look what I found,” Chris says, dropping into the seat beside him.

Chris looks marginally more at ease in his baggy basketball shorts and baseball cap, passing for a teenage boy on an afternoon train with his friend. They are in the passenger car outside the first class cabin, a compartment that should contain their mark but presently sits empty.

“Uh, the target?" Felix asks. “You know, the thing you just went to find?”

Chris giggles like the whole situation is funny. Felix is far less amused. This should have been an easy job: get in, kill the mark, steal back the data he took from Miroh, and get out. But so far it has been tedious.

Felix can’t even blame Chris this time. For some reason, Chris has been more accommodating lately. Chris is fifteen, almost sixteen, and Felix is twelve. They have both been active in the field for a couple years. Felix is not sure why Chris has opted for sudden compliance. He does not necessarily volunteer for jobs but he accepts them without much grudging reluctance. He will occasionally voice his worser grievances but for the most part he is keeping his head down.

Maybe it is the result of all those punishing sentences in the Cell. More than once he has been shoved down there, sometimes alone and sometimes with Miroh’s daughter. Felix would not want to spend any isolated time with her. But maybe she is intimidating enough to get through to Chris.

Whatever it is, it is working. Excluding moments like this when Chris is giggling and distracted and doesn’t seem to care about the job at all.

“Relax, Felix,” Chris says. “It’s a train. There’s only so many places he can be, yeah?”

“Well, there’s one place he’s supposed to be but he isn’t there, is he?” Felix says.

“Lighten up, mate,” Chris says. “We’re supposed to look normal. Normal kids have fun.”

Chris dumps a candy bag in Felix’s lap. Felix looks at it like it’s a bomb.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Felix asks.

Chris opens his own bag and starts eating the candy.

“That,” he says. He tosses a piece in the air and catches it in his mouth. When he tries to do it again, Felix snatches it mid-air and throws it on the floor. This makes Chris laugh.

“He was in the dining car,” Chris relents. “Four security officers. Ex-military. Piece of cake.”

“Why didn’t you say that before?” Felix asks, annoyed. He starts to stand but Chris yanks him back into his seat.

“The hell, man?” Chris says. “You gonna go ventilate the guy while a bunch of civilians are having afternoon tea? Ya think that might blow our cover? Just a bit?”

Felix frowns but he knows Chris is right. Miroh does not like a public mess. They will have to wait until the mark returns to the privacy of his cabin.

Felix does not like waiting. It is a part of a soldier’s training, but his least favourite part by far. He prefers action. With the quiet stillness comes fear, doubt.

The latter makes him sweat. He tries not to think about it. His life is his mission. Through Miroh, Felix has contributed good things to the world. Lately, it just seems like no matter what he does, the world does not stay good.

The Enemy has been dead for two years. The new enemy, his idiot heir, has holed up like a dragon guarding his hoard. He has built defences so high that not even an army like Miroh’s can breach it. There has been no retaliation, no offensive strike like the old enemy, but these deep roots are almost more sinister. Felix is starting to think this might be hopeless. That maybe Miroh is wrong. That maybe some things cannot be saved.

Felix crinkles the candy bag in his lap. He gathers himself and exhales.

“Fine,” he says. “How long do you think he will be distracted? Enough time to get the data?”

“If it’s in there, yeah,” Chris says. “Might as well check. He just started eating so we should have some time.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

Chris frowns like Felix is inconveniencing him with the job they were sent here to do.

Felix is not in the mood to argue. He shoves his candy bag in his back pocket and pushes past Chris. They make their way down the aisle. No one lifts their head, the two boys disappearing in their inconspicuous disguises.

They pick the lock to the first class cabin. Felix opens the door and looks around the room, for a moment a little stupefied by the luxury. It is all deep mahogany and gold trim. Their target is an engineer who stole designs from Miroh to sell to the enemy. The wealth of this cabin exemplifies that corruption, surely.

Felix tells himself that as he rifles through the luggage. He finds a laptop and tells Chris to stand guard while he collects the data. Chris is the better fighter but Felix is better with technology.

The laptop loads. The home screen is the mark with his family, three smiling, sunny-faced children, all younger than Felix. It gives him a queasy, uneasy feeling, a feeling that should be long scrubbed out of him by now.

He blames it on the rocking of the train carriage. Physical sensations can manipulate mental energy.

He searches through the computer storage for the stolen designs. Both Miroh and the enemy are chasing government building contracts, tying their businesses irrevocably to political power and pursing relationships therein. These plans will cinch the deal for whichever party has them. The engineer who betrayed Miroh masqueraded as a potential recruit before stealing the plans.

There is only one problem; Felix knows how to read metadata and he cannot find anything that was once on Miroh’s servers. In fact, some of these designs go back years, well before Miroh even considered pursuing these contracts.

“What’s taking so long?” Chris asks, poking his head in the room. “You’re usually a computer whiz. Is something wrong?”

“The files aren’t here,” Felix says. For the fifth or sixth time, he opens what looks like the plans. Everything except the metadata matches the description. But that metadata does not lie.

These files do not belong to Miroh.

Chris double checks the corridor before joining Felix. They look at the files together.

��Isn’t that it?” Chris asks. “It looks like the right thing.”

“Yeah, but it’s not,” Felix says, his eyes darting frantically all over the screen. “Or it should be. But these, uh, these files aren’t Miroh’s.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this guy stole the plans from Miroh. But all these files are original. They were never on Miroh’s servers.”

There is a moment of quiet. Chris is not famous for reservation so Felix looks at him. He is embarrassed to find a pitying look on Chris’s face.

“Felix,” Chris says. “Come on, man.”

It is not exactly a condescending tone, rife with too much sympathy to be so cruel, but It sounds like Chris is saying, don’t be stupid.

Felix swallows. He looks down at the plans. The realization hits him and the words come to his mouth, rising like bile.

“We’re not stealing back the plans,” Felix says. “We’re just stealing them. Aren’t we?”

“Well, yeah,” Chris says. “You didn’t know that?”

“How did you know that?” Felix snaps back, embarrassed and upset and very, deeply confused.

“It wasn’t exactly a stretch,” Chris says. “It’s what Miroh does. It’s what they all do. You haven’t figured that out yet? You?”

Felix, who has done the most assignments. Felix, who is the most successful agent in the special-ops program. Felix, who is the best only because the real best refuses to be.

He studies Chris, this older boy who seems so confident he has all the answers. Felix does not even know all the questions. He feels that weakness and vulnerability he so hates, the entirely world suddenly unfamiliar enemy terrain.

“Look, it’s fine,” Chris says. “Just take the data and we’ll leave. We’ll tell Miroh the mark got away. He cares more about the plans anyway.”

“Lie,” Felix says. “You want us to lie to Miroh?”

“It’s not a lie,” Chris says. “It’s just protecting the truth.”

Felix stares at him. Chris, on steadier feet than Felix, sighs and pushes Felix out of the way. He loads the data onto the external hard drive himself. He then makes a show of ejecting it and putting it in his pocket.

“Let’s go,” Chris says.

Felix does not get a chance to protest because the door opens. They have no time to react. In seconds, they are joined by the mark’s security team.

Felix knows how to fight. It is second nature to him. He should not need to think.

But he does. He overthinks. He gets a look at the mark before a bodyguard whisks him away. Felix thinks of the smiling faces on those children. He thinks how he is not much older than them.

There is a growing pit of anxiety inside him. It swallows him whole.

Felix and Chris fight to get away. Chris could take all these guards on his own but he is trying to avoid severely hurting them. That distracts Felix too. Suddenly, Chris’s refusal to fight does not seem like cowardice but instead it is something Felix cannot name. Something he once saw in Miroh but doesn’t anymore.

Distracted, Felix does not fight like he usually does.

The first class cabin is a private attachment at the back of the train. The fight lead onto the outside landing at the end of the car. A guard dislocates Felix’s shoulder. The next thing Felix knows, he is tumbling over the railing. He manages to grip with his good arm, holding all of his body weight to avoid getting snagged and ripped along the train tracks.

But it won’t save him. He’s going to die. The realization hits him like any other calculation in a fight, when he measures his odds and deduces his best move.

He has none. The train is moving too fast and he is at a bad angle to jump. He has one good arm keeping him alive and no way to fight the approaching guard. Chris has taken out his own adversaries and should be retreating with the data. That is what they are trained to do. The job is more important than the soldier. In a crisis, you leave the weak behind.

Felix braces himself to let go, hoping the above-average strength in his body can also withstand slamming into railroad tracks at high speeds. He suspects even if he does survive, he will be severely injured, abandoned in the middle of nowhere, and dead to the only place he has ever known.

But the guard falls back. Chris knocks him out with sharp efficiency. He then lays the unconscious man down with almost comical gentleness.

Chris runs up to Felix. Felix wants to shout at him – everything from go away and finish the job to my shoulder hurts and I need you to save me.

Chris gives no opportunity for argument or acquiescence. He shouts, “Hold on!” Then he swings himself over the railing. He wraps an arm around Felix and hauls him into his side. Once secure, he carries them back over the rail and onto the landing.

“What are you doing?” Felix asks. He cannot slow the race of his heart, seemingly tethered to the thunder of the train car against the tracks. He is not sure it will ever slow again. He thinks he might remember this moment forever.

“What am I doing?” Chris asks. He laughs for some forsaken reason. “Just doing this, mate,” he says.

He seizes Felix by his injured shoulder. Felix winces, having only seconds to brace himself before Chris shoves his dislocated shoulder back into place. Agony washes over Felix, hot and sharp, the pain rattling him worse than the actual dislocation.

“Sorry,” Chris says. “Sometimes getting better hurts more for a bit.”

The rest of the mission is a blur to Felix, lost to the throbbing ache in his shoulder and a similar pain taking root inside him.

They make it back to Miroh’s facility. Chris hands the hard drive off to an upper level agent while Felix sees a medic. The bag of candy is still in his back pocket. He sits in the infirmary a long time, just crinkling it between his fingers. He feels like his world is crashing around him.

It is days before Felix has an opportunity to see Chris again. They are in different barracks because of their age difference, the soldiers grouped by year. When Felix finds Chris in the corridor, Chris is talking to Miroh’s daughter who lives in the barracks too. They are on their way to their bunks.

Felix taps Chris on the shoulder. Chris looks at him, his laughing expression faltering when he sees Felix. He must see something in him that Felix cannot even recognize in himself.

Chris turns to Miroh’s daughter and says, “I’ll catch up, yeah?”

She spares Felix a glance and Felix feels an unusually panicked skip in his blood. It feels like she can see his mental turbulation the way Chris can. But unlike the rest of them, she has a direct line to Miroh. She might live and act like a soldier but she is more and always will be. Felix balks under her scrutiny, worried she will see his doubt and report it right back to Miroh.

Felix is grateful when she leaves. But when Chris looks at him so expectantly, Felix no longer knows what to say.

It takes a moment.

“I wouldn’t have done the same for you,” Felix finally says. It comes out as instinctively as a punch. “I wouldn’t have saved your life. I would have just finished the job.”

Chris blinks at him. He exhales on a laugh. Then he claps Felix’s good shoulder, a touch of clear camaraderie.

“I know, Felix,” he says. “I didn’t do it so you would pay me back. I didn’t do it because I thought you would do the same. I did it because it was the right thing to do.”

Felix thought he was speechless before but now he is truly at a loss. Even his long engrained instincts fail. He is out of punches.

Chris just smiles at his confusion. With one final nod, he turns and retreats to his bunk.

Felix stands in the corridor, wounded but bandaged. He stares at the place where Chris stood, like if he looks long enough then Felix will understand what Chris understands. That maybe there is a right and wrong outside of what they have been taught. Maybe things exist outside of this place.

Maybe some things can be saved.

P R E S E N T D A Y

“Ah, it’s the classic story,” Changbin says with a sigh. “A boy and a girl, forced to share a bed. He is her bodyguard. She is an heiress. Should we kiss on the lips?”

You whack him in the gut with a pillow and he erupts with giggles.

Changbin has been your so-called bodyguard for a few weeks now. It has changed little in your daily routine as your father had assigned Changbin to your department sometime before that. The special-ops program was written off as an experiment with potential for future development, though that development has long sat arrested. Bang Chan is in your father’s direct employ while Changbin has been on different teams fulfilling different missions. When you started taking the lead on projects, he served under your direction.

It is why your father is not happy. The bodyguard arrangement was meant to assert his control over you, using an agent as his eyes and hands. Miroh is not good at relinquishing power, not even to someone like him, or maybe especially to someone like him. You have always been a good, loyal, obedient soldier and daughter. Taking over projects and assuming command was inevitable. Somehow you have wronged him by doing everything right.

Lately, your work has been meagre clean-up duty. Miroh has been accruing assets and terrorizing his way into the mess left behind by his late enemy. It is making Miroh’s paranoia even worse. He has seen for himself how this powerful house fell apart just because its patriarch died. The business was left in shambles, underlings squabbling like helpless children. It was ripe for picking.

You have been cleaning whatever mess is left behind. This week you have been cleaning out some old office buildings, primarily sifting through abandoned storage for anything useful that might have been sequestered. You are spending the night at a nearby safe house, sharing a room with Changbin. The rest of your team is scattered around the house.

Seeing as your father has relegated you with menial tasks, you have taken it upon yourself to conduct your own investigations. Your findings have been on your mind all day. It is why you do not respond to Changbin’s joking with your usual wit.

“You’re quiet, murder princess,” Changbin says. “Should I be worried?”

He drops his mask on the nearby desk then unholsters his gun. He places it beside yours. It is a testament to your dynamic that you feel comfortable disarming around each other. You would certainly never do it around your father. But Changbin is different. You are not someone who seeks true friendship but you acknowledge the necessity of teamwork especially in times of crisis. You do not fully trust Changbin as you do not fully trust anyone, but he is loyal and you reciprocate that dependability.

It is why you beckon him forward. You are sitting on the bed, feet on the floor. Changbin pulls up a chair to sit in front of you.

“The enemy had a multi-level security system,” you say. “Physical in some capacities, digital in others. My father has always been more preoccupied with offense than defense, so in that regard they were always a step ahead of us. That is the part my father is interested in. That is all he sees.”

“And what do you see?” Changbin asks. His disposition changes with the severity of your words, joviality replaced with equal seriousness.

“I don’t see anything,” you say. “That’s the problem.”

He lifts an eyebrow, curious. You show him the image on your tablet, then swipe to the next one.

“The security log is missing information,” you say. “There is no trace of anything unusual transpiring the day they were all killed. No breach, no shutdown. Everything is normal until everything is gone. Someone scrubbed every last second of data from the digital system. Someone who knew the system well enough to not just delete the surface files but to clean the server entirely.”

“So what are you saying?” Changbin asks. “You think it was an inside job?”

“I know it wasn’t us,” you reply. “I know it wasn’t any of the usual players. This family had enemies in every market. If it was one of them, you’d think they would have stepped forward to assert themselves by now. Whoever it was had no interest in taking over company assets. No interest in even sticking around. Someone went to great lengths to make the entire thing look ambiguous, to leave everyone asking more questions, to turn our heads in one direction while they disappear in the other. Someone professional. Someone technologically capable. Someone whose only motivation was escape.”

His jaw is clenched as he stares at the images, but you can see the gears turning in his mind. When he meets your gaze, you sit forward.

“Changbin,” you say. “What happened on that mission?”

He does not need specification. Changbin is usually like you, pragmatic and realistic. He does not dwell in his emotions and never for so long. It has been well over a month now but he is still rankled by that warehouse confrontation with Lee Felix.

“Ah, Yongbok,” Changbin says wistfully. His eyes are downturned but his thoughts are somewhere else. “You remember him. He always needed a fairy tale to believe in.”

That much is true. You and Changbin have always been simple soldiers manoeuvring through the morally complicated world around you. You never had any delusions that Miroh was better than his enemies, simply that one or the other was inevitable. You knew you could make a bigger impact in the fight than watching from the sidelines.

Felix was competent but naïve. He believed in Miroh unequivocally which is why he blind-sided them all with his betrayal. To this day, you do not know why he joined the enemy, nor why he stayed.

It makes sense he might have naively devoted himself to a different cause.

“What fairy tale was that?” you ask. “The enemy?”

“Chris.” Changbin looks at you beneath the sweep of his dark bangs. His smile is wry. “He asked me about Chris.”

You blink back at him, surprised by the answer. After stumbling over any number of replies, you say, “That wasn’t in your initial report.”

“It didn’t seem important,” Changbin says with a shrug.

“You have a responsibility to report back everything—”

“Yes, commander,” he says dryly. He slumps in his seat and crosses his arms. “Does it matter now? I told him Chris was dead.”

Not a lie, in a way. Bang Chan was a rebellious subject in his youth, nothing like the merciless soldier he is now. The inhuman machine was wrought through inhumane treatment. You were not privy to the grittier details nor have you ever felt an inclination to investigate. You do not need knowledge of the gruesome torture that was administered. The results are the same: the rebellious boy died. He has been gone ever since he was dragged into a basement room for correction.

“Chris,” you say. The name sits heavy on your tongue. “Why would he want to know about Chris?”

“The better question is, why didn’t he want to know about me?” Changbin retorts. It sounds like a joke, his tone jumping back into comically exaggerated hysterics. But there is a tension in his shoulders that was not there before. “You know he didn’t even recognize me? Ah! The little brat! I knew him too! I wasn’t Bang Chan, no one was … But I was there. Forgetting me… We’re all that’s left!”

You tilt your head and study Changbin, as if there are more answers in his face than in his words. Your gaze drifts to the scar by his eye. He got hit today, taking a swipe meant for you. Other adversaries have sent agents to scour the late enemy’s business remains, but they are no match for soldiers of Miroh.

Changbin joked he was being a good bodyguard. In truth, he is a good bodyguard. Your security team is competent but nothing compared to him. It has made a difference, having someone so reliable at your back, even though it has painted a target on his. Your father is not happy Changbin outsmarted him. Changbin jokes about it, as he is wont to do, claiming he can’t wait for a pummelling of his own. He is probably right. Miroh has been quiet about the bodyguard assignment but that does not mean he has surrendered. He is a strategist. He is patient if it means results.

Raising children into soldiers is a testament to that patience. You look at Changbin, arguably the last true survivor other than yourself.

We’re all that’s left.

You find yourself reaching for him. It is not like you, but lately everything seems out of character. You touch his face, drawn to that scar, a scar that should be yours. You touch it very lightly.

When you meet his eyes, he is looking at you strangely. You are not a famously affectionate character, not even with him. You rip your hand back and shake your head.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks, more curious than accusatory.

“Nothing,” you say. “I mean – well.” You scrub a hand over your face. The weeks have healed the worst of your injuries, but it is still littered with scars, including the ones Changbin gave you.

His eyes linger there before he sighs and drops his head. He rubs his face too.

“We’ll talk later,” you say, suddenly feeling the weight of today, not to mention the accumulative exhaustion of the days before. “It’s been a long day.” An understatement.

Changbin doesn’t argue. You separate to use the facilities and dress down for rest. You sleep in sweatpants and a t-shirt, your weapons and shoes not far. The one bed has plenty of space. You lay down first, certain that your mind is running too fast to rest, but all that exhaustion catches up to you.

You wake some time in the middle of the night. When Changbin gets out of bed, the dip and rise of the mattress stirs you. You blink awake, watching him amble over to the window. There is a cushioned seat and he plops down, his arms crossed and his eyes on the stars.

You wonder if you look that young out of combat clothes. His hair is ruffled and the black t-shirt and pants are comfortably fitted. His face looks vulnerable and open as he stares into the night.

“You’re awake too,” he says, not looking at you.

“Obviously,” you reply. You push yourself upright. “You woke me.”

“Sorry,” he says, trying to flash you one of his jovial grins but barely managing.

“You look tired,” you say.

“Thanks,” he replies with a laugh.

“You should go back to sleep.”

“I’m on bodyguard duty,” he jokes, gesturing to you. “I need to make sure no one murders the murder princess.”

You give him a dry look that makes him giggle. Naturally his humour returns at your expense. He really is the little brother you never had.

You slide off the bed and join him at the window seat. You shove and kick like bickering children until you are comfortably settled. You sit with your legs curled up to your chest, mirror images of each other. He looks out the window and you look at him.

“What are you thinking about?” you ask.

“Nothing,” he says, an automatic response. Then he shakes his head and sighs. “I don’t know, princess,” he says. “I don’t think you’ll understand.”

“What makes you say that?” You cannot help but feel offended even if he is probably right. You do not have heart-to-hearts, which is what this feels like, a quiet moment carved out of chaos. If everything was different, you would just be two friends talking about your normal lives.

Your life is anything but normal.

“I know you,” he answers, simple and confident. “I know who you are. Even when – well, no matter what happens, I guess.”

“Well,” the words are out of your mouth before you can stop them, “that makes one of us.”

You swallow your thoughts quickly. Your innermost turmoil cannot be entrusted with anyone. It is dangerous to even think such weakness, never mind vocalize it.

Changbin looks at you with a pinch in his brow. You look away, up at the sky. You wonder about the vantage from the stars, seeing the bigger picture of your life. Your pain and sacrifices have to be worth something. Miroh always said the world was full of shadows, dark spots no regular person could clean. He was right about that. He is definitely one of them, but sometimes only darkness can fight darkness. Or so you thought. All this business with the enemy has changed things. That darkness collapsed in on itself like a black hole, taking everything with it.

“It used to be easier, didn’t it?” Changbin asks. “Just doing what you’re told… You can tell yourself it’s not your fault, that it would have happened anyway… Maybe I was believing in fairy tales too.”

You look at each other. He just sighs.

“A part of me feels like I never grew up,” he says. “I’ve always been what I am. Maybe it’s time to stop.”

“That sounds a lot like treason,” you say, realizing how dramatic it sounds after the fact. Miroh is a businessman and this company is not a country. And yet treasonous is what it feels like, a deep betrayal to the place that raised and shaped you into what you are. It feels like treachery to even think about abandoning it after everything.

“Maybe it does,” he says. He gives you another wry smile, flicking his bangs out of his face. “Does it matter? He already wants my beautiful head off its beautiful shoulders.”

“You shouldn’t be saying this to me,” you say. You’re Miroh’s daughter. Your relationship with your father might be fraught, but your loyalty is to this house and always has been. It is the only constant in this tumultuous, violent world.

“Are you gonna tell on me?” Changbin teases, so unserious on such a deathly serious matter. He just laughs at your silent but intense stare. He shakes his head as he looks out the window. “I don’t worry about that.”

“About what?”

“You telling on me.”

That stops your heart faster than the treason.

“Why not?” you ask slowly, as if you are wary of a trap about to spring.

Changbin puts a hand in his hair, shaking out his ruffled bangs. He looks normal but also not, his strong body so clearly built for violence. It is why you are shocked when he reaches out, when he touches you like you touched him, an undemanding press of his fingers along a scar.

Your startled eyes find his. It splits your focus. You see Changbin right now, older, stronger. You also see him younger, thinner, looking at you with concerned eyes as he wipes blood off your brow.

You blink again and it is just him as he is now.

He drops his hand.

“You don’t trust anyone,” he says. “I know. Ha! I really know.” He swings around, planting his feet on the ground. He reaches into his pocket then flicks open a pocketknife.

It should make your heart palpitate, a soldier with a weapon in your proximity, especially when you are unarmed. But there is no rush of blood, no fear, no worry. You just look at him, seeing all of him, young and old. You realize there has been more than one constant in your life.

The knife catches a glint of starlight, a flash of light in the darkness.

“You and I are the same, aren’t we, murder princess?” he says. “But also not. You were raised in the pen with us but it was never the same. We’re just animals to him. Raised to the slaughter, ha! But not you. One way or another, you’re going to be someone.”

You watch as he lifts his hand. He curls and uncurls a fist. He looks down at his palm.

“When it happens,” Changbin says, “Because it will happen, tomorrow or in a month or a year or whenever Miroh decides… But when I go like the rest of them… When it’s just you and you’re trying to decide who you want to be, not who your father wants you to be… When you’re trying to remember everything and you can’t decide what was real and what was just training and what was Miroh…”

He draws a slow slice across his hand, not so deep to be detrimental to his grip, but enough to draw blood in a long, thin line. You look at this small scar as if it the deepest wound you have ever encountered.

“Just… remember me,” he says. “I didn’t bleed because I believe in Miroh. I’m your soldier, not his.”

You are at a loss for words. You do not think there are any words, none that you were raised to know. You can only stare at the little trickle of blood as it runs down his wrist and drips onto the floor.

You have always felt very alone. You learned to thrive in that solitude. Even clinging to the hope of your father’s approval proved exhausting and useless. You accepted your high promontory was a lonely one.

Not even that solitude compares to the idea of Changbin gone. Even if you go weeks without seeing him, he is out there somewhere. You both keep your heads down, get the job done. Not the best soldiers, not the worst, but the ones still here.

You let instinct override your senses for the second time that night. When he makes to stand, your reflexes snap into action. You grab him by the arm and snatch the knife. He has no time to respond, watching as you slice a similar scar on your own palm.

Your eyes meet. You are unflinching, more resolute than ever. You clasp his hand and the blood smears in a signifying pact that needs no other words.

Only when the moment settles do you say, “You’re not a half-bad bodyguard.”

His laughter comes to him slowly, none of that empty joviality but a genuine burst of it. His eyes crinkle and his smiles widens and the laughter bubbles out of him.

“I’m the best bodyguard,” he says. “And don’t you ever fucking forget it.”

In the light of day, last night’s whirlwind of dramatic emotions feel tempered. You and Changbin are able to conduct yourselves with a proper degree of soldiership. Though his words and your promise are in the back of your mind, you put it away for now.

You dress in combat gear and pack your bags for another day of infiltration, investigation, and clean-up. It is hard to say how easy or difficult the day will be. If you encounter other agents, the confrontation could complicate things, but sometimes that is better than a long day with no interesting discoveries at all.

The enemy had properties scattered all over town, some active and some not. This particular office building is a very old one, seemingly long since abandoned and turned into company storage. Some of these boxes have not been touched in decades, perhaps remnants of the business as run by the previous generation.

A thick layer of dust coats the desks and boxes. At least your masks are put to work, filtering the dusty air as you trail through the building.

“Yahhh,” Changbin whines, flicking some papers off a desk. “Today’s going to be boring.”

“Yup,” you say in accord. There is no way anyone else will be here. You doubt there is anything of value to be discovered, but Miroh will harass you if you do not complete his missions as outlined. With so much tension between you already, it is better to keep your head down and complete the menial tasks, even if it is blatant busy work.

A few of your officers are sent ahead to sweep the building. It is not a towering skyscraper but several tall floors nonetheless. Your subordinates take different floors while you and Changbin take an upper level. You begin the tedious task of rifling through the abandoned documentation.

“I’m a supersoldier, not a secretary,” Changbin gripes, moving boxes with more force than necessary.

“You’re not a supersoldier,” you say without looking up from your work. “There’s no such thing.”

“I’m pretty close,” he says, flexing and kissing his bicep.

“When you start flying, maybe I’ll consider it,” you retort, dryly.

“All right, I’m not a supersoldier,” he says. He takes off his mask to grin at you. “But I am super good looking.”

You take off your own mask to throw at him like a projectile. He squeals and ducks, then proceeds to cuss you out for the next few minutes while you smile.

Eventually he takes a seat. He props his booted feet up on a desk while sorting through some papers with absent-minded perusal.

“So tell me again about the security log,” Changbin says, evidently growing bored within minutes.

You can hardly blame him. It is why you are about to reply, but your thoughts are quickly obliterated. Gunfire reverberates in the nearby stairwell, followed by shouting and thumping. Seconds later, your warning pagers are vibrating. Your officers’ voices come through the communications software.

“Hostile enemy agents breached ground zero,” they say. “Be ready for confrontation.”

You and Changbin spring into action. Your masks are unfortunately abandoned, too far to grab in a rush thanks to your shenanigans, but your bags and weapons are within reach. You swing them on and arm yourselves, racing into the corridor to join the rest of your team.

It happens very fast. One moment, this ancient building is nothing more than a dilapidated office from a bygone era, brimming with useless nothings that no one would want. The next moment, it is overflowing with enemy agents, pouring in one after the other.

You and Changbin join the other officers in the stairwell. None of you are prepared for the sight that greets you, the sheer number of adversaries that come streaming into the building at rapid speed.

“What the fuck,” you say, realizing far too late you cannot take this many agents. You have not had anything near this problem before.

You look at Changbin, both of you shooting uselessly to stop the encroach of hostiles.

“We need to retreat,” you say in unison. You nod at each other.

The message gets passed along the communicators. There is no way to escape through the ground floor, the enemy agents chasing you up the stairwell. You take out your phone to call for back-up, relaying the message directly to Miroh’s team leaders.

“Can you at all identify the hostiles?” the man asks.

“Do we know who they are?” you shout at Changbin over the gunfire and chaos.

“Ah, well they’re not friends!” he replies.

You pause in your ascent to squint down at the approaching horde. The uniform colours are familiar at a glance, but the dog tags confirm your suspicions. It locks you in place with shock and confusion, because there is no way that makes any sense.

These agents belong to the enemy. The enemy. It explains the numbers, as only that house could rival Miroh in terms of size and numbers. But it is not possible he is conducting an offensive attack because he’s dead and his business is in shambles. There is no one to conduct an operation on his behalf. It makes no sense.

Changbin grabs you by the back of the neck, hauling you up the stairs with him.

“Not the time to stop and smell the flowers, murder princess,” he says.

“It’s the enemy,” you say. “I don’t know how or why, but it’s them.”

“We’re sending a back-up team straight to you right now,” Miroh’s leader says.

You end the call to focus on your surroundings, confusing and chaotic as they are.

You watch as several of your officers are taken down. You wince at each reverberation of a gunshot that kills them. A dozen more faces flash in front of your eyes, every child in that program with you, every enemy you have killed on Miroh’s behalf. Chris. Felix. Changbin, young, small, looking at you with concern.

The reign of fire follows you. You think you will be hearing gunshots for days.

“Get her out,” one of your officer’s says into the comms, directed at Changbin. “Leave through the roof. We’ll hold them off.”

You trip running up the stairs.

You never trip, far more coordinated than the average soldier. But you hear your officer say that and your mind’s eye is overwhelmed with the image of them dying. Because that is what will happen. You should not be bothered by it. You can train a new security team. They exist for this exact reason.

But all their faces are flashing in front of your mind. Your team, the program soldiers, the First Guard. A thunderous pain rattles down your spine, a cry leaving your lips as you are inundated with visions of death that you suddenly cannot shake.

“Up, up!” Changbin shouts, hoisting you onto your feet. “You’re better than this!”

He’s right. You are a soldier. You trained for this. You were made to fight.

You push through the pain and thunder. You get your feet back under you. You race with Changbin to the roof and trust your team to do what is best.

You slam and bolt the door behind you. You look around for something to barricade it but there is nothing. Changbin meanwhile opens his pack and takes out the rappel line and harness. You have had little use for it on most of the assignments, but it is standard tactical gear when assigned any investigation or clean-up work, as it can require getting into locked areas through sky access. You almost left them behind today, knowing the building was abandoned and you would have no difficulty getting in. You are glad you decided against that.

“Here,” Changbin says, handing you the harness. “Put this on.” He ducks back down to finish securing the line on the edge of the roof.

“They’re not gonna be able to hold them,” you say, fitting the harness around yourself. It is second-nature. You hardly need to think, fastening every buckle as you stare at that closed door. “They’ll be on us in seconds,” you say. “They’ll just follow us over the roof on the line.” You grant your odds are better on the street, that you can endeavour an escape, but that is only if you get that far. Those enemy agents are going to blast down that door like it’s made of cardboard, then they will be on you.

Your heart is pounding in your chest, your adrenaline propelling every breath. You do not have time to think twice. It is why it takes you so long to notice that Changbin has not put on a harness.

“What are you doing?” you ask when he stands, completely unprepared to rappel down the building. “We have to go! Put your harness on, idiot!”

He takes the hook and locks it onto your harness, fastening it with a few skilled flicks of his fingers. You grab his hand, stopping him.

He takes a breath and finally meets your eye. The wind blows his dark bangs across his face, opening up his expression to you. You can feel the furious scrunch of your own features go lax. Just like that, your adrenaline dwindles, all that heat turning to an ice cold block in your chest. It drops to your gut.

“Changbin,” you start.

“You’re going to go down that line,” he says. “When you’re at the bottom, I’m going to cut it so they can’t follow you. It will buy you time to get to the vehicles and get away.”

“Absolutely not,” you say. “What the fuck are you thinking? You—”

“I’m your bodyguard,” he says with that wry smile. “This is my job. Let me do it.”

“No,” you say, struggling against him. You try to unhook the rappel line but he fights back, not your usual play-fighting but deadly serious. “You can’t be serious!” you shout. “We’re the same thing! If you’re staying and fighting then I’m joining you!”

“We’re not the same thing!” he shouts back. “You’re a Miroh! You need to get out of here!”

“You’re right, I am a Miroh!” you say. “It’s me they want anyway! You put on the harness! You can still get out of here!”

“I’m not leaving here without you!”

You want to reply. The words are right on your lips: I’m not leaving here without you either.

But before you can say them, all that thunderous pain fractures your vision again. Your focus splits. You see Changbin in front of you, dressed in his combat gear with the wind in his hair.

Then everything changes.

The sunny sky darkens and the rooftop disappears. You see the colour grey. It is all around you, halfway blinding you, filling your lungs so you can hardly breathe. You blink rapidly, as if that will clear your vision, but it is just more grey and the sound of faraway voices.

Then you see Changbin again, in his combat gear but years younger. Just a teenager, all skinny cheeks and sharp angles. There is no wind in his hair. There is no wind anywhere. He is bleeding profusely from a head wound, a stark slash of red in the middle of so much grey. He says your name. You hear your own voice but it is a foggy, faraway thing. You cannot make out what you are saying. When you look down, you cannot see your body. You can only see him. You can only hear him.

“I’m not leaving here without you,” he says.

Then you are abruptly yanked out of that grey. You are back on the rooftop in the sunshine. Changbin has his hand planted on your chest, securing the last piece of the harness. You hear the thud of someone kicking at the bolted door. You look there frantically. Changbin does too. Then you look at each other.

“I told you I was the best bodyguard ever,” he says, smiling.

He whips off his glove, revealing his freshly scarred hand. He grabs your bare hand, the one with the still-tender scar. He clasps your hands together and looks at you with a desperation you have never seen before, like he is trying to tell you a thousand things with just a glance.

Then he slowly lets go of your hand.

“Sorry I can’t fly,” he says.

He shoves the middle of your chest, hard. You go tumbling over the edge of the roof just as the enemy agents break the door down.

There is nothing you can do mid-air. You can only shout his name, terrified and furious and desperate all at once. You scream your emotions out until the line comes to an end, a few feet from the ground. You unclip your harness and drop to the ground smoothly.

“Can anyone copy?” you speak into your comm, looking up at the roof helplessly. You watch as an enemy agent swings over and starts to climb down the rope. You draw your gun and brace yourself.

Then Changbin’s head pops over the edge. “Copy,” he says, then cuts the line.

You jump out of the way. Seconds later, the enemy agent comes careening into the ground. The pile of rope lands on top of him.

“Fuck,” you say. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Changbin!” you shout hysterically into your comms. “Changbin, can you copy?”

He doesn’t answer. You run over to the body, searching for something. You don’t even know what, you just know that this whole situation is wrong.

It does not take you long. You roll the body over. Though his neck is now twisted at a fatal angle, you recognize the agent. He was standing in your father’s office just a few weeks ago. His name was Agent Slump. You shot him through the shoulder.

These are not enemy agents attacking the house of Miroh, they are your father’s men attacking you.

You push away from the body, looking frantically up at the roof for any sign of further commotion. You see nothing from this vantage.

You run back into the building. You let adrenaline and instinct carry you up the stairs, taking a few at a time and ignoring the burn in your thighs. This is Miroh, you keep repeating to yourself. Your father has done this. Sending fake enemies after you. Teaching you yet another lesson. You said you could handle yourself. You said your security team could protect you. Now you are running past their dead bodies, your chest heaving from exertion and emotion. You find yourself blinking back tears. You cannot remember the last time you cried.

“Changbin,” you say into your comm, tripping on another step. Your voice comes out of the comms on your dead officers. It echoes in the empty stairwell. “Changbin, answer me, please,” you say. “It’s not the enemy. It’s my father. It’s Miroh. Changbin. Changbin.”

You are halfway up the building when you hear voices below. You stop to listen. Your vibrating phone makes you jump.

“Miss Miroh?” comes a voice, then you see one of your father’s officers at the bottom of the winding stairwell. This one is not playing a part. He is in the standard uniform. There are more officers behind him. The back-up you called like an idiot.

You do not go back down. You drop your phone and race to the roof.

“Get her,” you hear the officer say, then the stairwell is thundering with footsteps as they chase you.

You no longer know what you are doing. You do not know where you are going or what you will find. A part of you is unsurprised when the rooftop is empty, that they got away, that now your father’s men can come in and play hero.

You look around for Changbin but you cannot find him anywhere. You try to tell yourself that is a good thing, that it could be worse, that he could be as dead as your security team, just a body on this roof. You try to tell yourself that he is safe. It was just Miroh. They are probably taking Changbin back to the main facilities right now. Everything will be fine.

Deep down, you know nothing will be fine. Everything has changed.

You hear the officers behind you. You look around. The building next door is too far for a regular person to jump, potentially too far for you to jump. It will be cutting it close, but it is all you have. At this point, you halfway hope you’ll fall and your father’s men will be forced to report they let you die.

You shed the top layer of your combat shirt, getting down to the tank top underneath. You are not sure it will make a difference, but every bit counts. You back up and count a few seconds, then you take a running leap off the roof. You get a grip on the next one, though not without a lot of pain. You grit your teeth and hoist yourself up, ignoring your scraped arms as you take off running. You open a skylight and drop into the building. Another empty corridor stretches in front of you.

You decide your objective it to escape. You can confront your father after, but right now you need to prove you can handle yourself. You can get out of here.

You are certain your father’s men will have the vehicles locked in. Once you escape this building, you will have to find another��

A window behind you shatters. You duck and cover your head as glass explodes around you. You roll to get away, though your limbs are shaky from everything. When you get to your feet, it is more unsteady than usual.

You turn around. You feel that sinking feeling in your gut again.

“Oh my god,” you say. “Of fucking course it’s you.”

Bang Chan stands there, cold and ungiving like the living shadow he has become. Your father likes an agent that can both disappear and intimidate, so Chan somehow feels like a terrifyingly huge figure, looming over you, despite the fact he is not much bigger or taller. His presence is hulking, as deadly and awful as you remember. He stares at you with those dark eyes over the half-mask. He is not breathing especially hard despite the fact he just took a running leap from the opposite building and smashed through a window. His body is as steady and ungiving as his gaze.

You do not waste any more breath cursing. You turn and run.

You know it is useless but you have to try. In your head, if you get away, that is a bargaining chip. You can talk to Miroh, you can show him that you were right, you can have Changbin back, and Changbin will be fine and—

You let out an aggravated cry when Chan grabs you. You manage to rip away after a few good kicks. It is amazing what hidden strength lies in adrenaline. Your heart is pumping even faster than your last fight with him.

You duck into a stairwell and jump over the railing, landing a couple floors below. You keep doing that, ignoring the fact you can hear him copying you. If you look back, it will slow you down. You keep jumping until you hit the bottom floor.

You make it a few steps before he grabs you again. This time he is relentless, a big gloved around wrapped around your throat.

That adrenaline betrays you. It is like all your training abandons you as your terror and fury rips through you. You struggle against him, your motions jerky and frantic and poorly strategized. He pins you to the wall, using his whole body to lock you in place so you stop kicking him.

“Let me go,” you say, barely above a whisper. It makes him tighten his grip on your throat. You twitch helplessly, gripping his arm uselessly, your face pinched with anger.

You are swiftly joined by the other officers. You glare at them, still digging your nails into Chan’s arm. He does not soften his grip until he is ordered, then he puts you on your feet. You stumble, your vision covered in black spots as you suck in deep, gasping breaths. It was not even just the choking, as he did not squeeze hard enough to fully incapacitate you, but as your adrenaline dwindles, your strength does too.

You trip for the third time. Someone grabs you by the shoulders and pulls you back up. You are not sure if you are more surprised or terrified to find it is Chan, looking at you with calculating eyes. You stare back at him, this manifestation of your father’s worst, most inhumane actions. You are torn between apologizing to him and kicking him again.

Then another officer grabs you. You watch with alarm as he puts you in handcuffs.

“What the fuck?” you ask. “Who’s fucking side are you on?”

“Miroh always, of course,” the officer says. “This is for your own good. You are behaving erratically. Don’t be scared. We will inform your father that you tried to flee from your own protective officers. I am certain he will do everything in his power to ensure you cannot put yourself in harm’s way again.”

You have no more words. An animalistic cry escapes from your chest, ripping through you. Even with your hands cuffed behind your back, you dive at the officer and take him down. You bite down on his ear until you taste the metallic tang of blood. He screams under you until someone rips you off him. They hold you by the back of the neck like a poorly behaved puppy.

The officer gets to his feet. Blood is pouring down the side of his neck, part of his ear torn. You spit blood at him.

He raises his hand as if to strike you. You stand there, chin jutted forward, ready to take it.

Then you realize it is Chan holding you. When the officer brings his hand down, Chan moves you. He steps in between you and catches the officer’s wrist.

Chan says nothing. He does not need to say anything. He looks at the officer and the officer swallows.

The officer snatches his hand back and straightens his clothes.

“We’re leaving,” he says. “Guard, take your charge.”

You are looking smugly at the officer. That cockiness dissipates when Chan turns around and looks at you. It has you immediately shrinking away, then flinching when he grabs your arm.

They take you to a truck. It is one of the holding trucks, the kind they use for transporting undesirables. It is obvious they always intended to lock you in chains. You have been in metaphorical chains your whole life, and it is only taking this to realize it.

You try and slow your frantic breathing. You cannot have a breakdown right now. It will only make it harder for you when you confront your father. You are already at a disadvantage, being dragged to him in literal chains. You will be completely at his mercy, and Miroh does not have mercy.

You sit on the bench in the back of the prison truck. You expect to be alone with an officer, giving you time to strategize and think, but then it is Chan climbing into the van and sitting on the bench across from you. All the hairs on your body stand up. You cannot concentrate on anything with Bang Chan in close proximity. He moves like a wild animal, something predatory and swift about him. When they close and lock the door, your heart skips beats.

Chan says nothing. He never says anything. On the rare occasion you have been in contact, you have not heard a word out of him. You seldom have anything to do with the missions he runs. They are above even your paygrade, the worst of Miroh’s work.

You swallow. He is not speaking but he is staring. He does not remove the mask. You have not seen him without it in years. He is nothing but a soldier. An army unto himself.

Your heart skips another beat. An idea slowly forms in your mind.

You are better than average. Chan is better than you. You cannot take all these agents on your own, but you could definitely take them with his help. Of course, that is an entirely hypothetical thought. It would be absolutely, completely, severely ridiculous to even try. You are certain the best reaction you will get out of Chan is nothing, just a penetrating stare and silence. The worst would probably be a snapped neck.

You curl your hands behind your back. The scar on your palm stings. You clench your jaw.

You have nothing else to lose.

“You’re not a soldier, you know,” you say.

Just like you suspected, he says nothing. He just stares at you. The truck rattles along, jostling you so your handcuffs jingle. He moves with the sway of the vehicle, hardly affected.

Your fear turns to frustration. You heave a breath.

“Did you hear me?” you ask. “You’re not a soldier. You’re a prisoner. You’re not who you think you are. Miroh has you under his control, but it’s not real. The real you is in there somewhere. And the real you—” The words come rushing up, slamming into your furiously clenched teeth, “The real you hates Miroh almost as much as me.”

Chan stares at you. That is expected.

What is unexpected is the slow tilt of his head. It makes you shiver, instinctively cowering as he studies you. His brow slowly quirks, a questioning expression. You did not know he could make such an expression.

“Are you… listening to me?” you ask.

He straightens, but he still looks questioning. It is enough for all your desperation to rush to the surface. You fall forward, slamming on your knees in front of him. You are so scarred and bruised, it hardly matters. More important is the fact he looks down, as if he is more concerned by it, though you cannot read any more expressions on his stoic face.

“Chan,” you say. “Chris. Whatever you want to be called. If you’re in there, then listen to me, please. I know you don’t know me. We hardly knew each other at all growing up. But we did grow up together. Miroh is controlling both of us. He is going to use us to do things. He—” You curl your fist behind you, needing to feel the sting on your palm. It brings a tear to your eye.

Chan is looking at you, expressionless again, but it doesn’t matter. You have to try.

“It’s not just us,” you say. “This is bigger than you and me. I have a—I have a friend—my friend, you understand, and I—”

The van comes to a stop. Chan grabs you by the shoulders and puts you back on your bench. You screw your eyes shut and shake your head. You want to scream.

When you open your eyes, you pour all your anger in your glare. It is not directed at Chan, though he is the one to catch your gaze and hold it.

You are still looking at each other when the door is unlocked. There was only a small window providing light in the cabin of the truck. A bigger slash of golden light has you wincing.

Chan is unaffected, still staring at you. An officer opens the door wider and nods to him.

“Let’s go, guard,” he says.

Chan gets up. You watch as he struts past. He jumps out of the van and lands smoothly on his feet.

Then he reels back and punches the officer. It is quick as a snap, the unconscious body hitting the tarmac in a flash. It makes you jump, the bench rattling underneath you.

You sit, petrified, confused. Chan slowly turns. You blink at him.

He holds out his hand.

“What?” you say. It comes out a rasp. You cannot manage more words. There is no way your frantic, barely coherent pleading got through to him. This man has been tortured into compliance. There is no humanity left in him, no memories, no emotions, no hopes. He does not feel anything. He does not understand anything. He is a weapon.

He is still holding out his hand.

There is nowhere to go but forward. You get to your feet and shuffle towards him. He still does not speak, nor does he look at you with any particular expression. He just holds out his arms and lifts you out of the van. When you are on your feet, you stare at each other.

He spins you around. A gust of breath whooshes out of you. You panic for half a second, then you realize he is unlocking your handcuffs.

Never mind. He is breaking them with his bare hands. You watch as they hit the ground in a mangled heap. You turn around slowly, your knees still shaking.

Chan is calm as the other officers approach. Someone asks why you are out of your handcuffs.

Chan looks at you. You do not know why or how, but he nods.

You nod back.

You are a soldier. You trained for this. You were made to fight. It is time to remind them of that.

Your father is in his rooftop garden. Miroh has a few soft hobbies like that, gardening among his favourite. He sees himself as a cultivator as much as a green thumb, bringing more life into the world despite what life he takes. It balances for him. The ends always justifies the means.

You walk into his garden. It is obvious he is not expecting anyone, much less you. He does not have time to hide his surprise. You just fought your way through all of his security measures, battered and bruised and beaten. You have not seen yourself, but you are certain your body is a canvas of violence right now.

“Hello, father,” you say.

“Go to my office,” he replies without hesitation. “We will talk there.”

“No,” you say calmly. “We’ll talk right here. Right now.”

He is holding a watering can. He puts it down without looking and it tips over, splashing everywhere. Neither of you look at it. Your eyes are locked on each other. You both know what he did today. He is smart enough to work that out.

“Where are my men?” he asks.

“Detained,” you answer. Chan is holding them off somewhere. You still do not know why or how, but there will be time for that later. You have to solve one problem at a time.

You have no real plan. You are making it up as you. All you know is that scar on your hand is throbbing.

I’m not leaving here without you.

You touch your palm, running your finger over the scar. You do not look away from Miroh as you approach him. Your legs are weak, your knees shaking, your body in agony, but you take one step after the other. Given the stricken look on his face, you think this might be more disturbing than if you were healthy.

Your injuries might have made you equal fighters, but his arm is still in a cast, weakening him too. He will not win in a one-on-one fight. He is smart enough to know that too. It is why he takes a careful, calculating step back.

“You’re injured,” he says. “Go to the infirmary. We can talk after.”

“We can talk now,” you reply, taking another step forward.

“Whatever it is, it can wait,” he says.

“Where is he?” you ask.

You are both speaking calmly, moving slowly. The watering can is slowly leaking water, gurgling in the background. Wind moves through the flowers. You hear birdsong in the sunshine. Still, in the background, it feels like the world is screaming, the high-pitched whistle of that pot at a boiling point.

“Who?” your father asks.

“I’m not playing any more games,” you say. “I’m not playing dress-up with any little secret agents. I’m not getting in any rings and playing made-up fights with your silly toy soldiers. No more lies. No more games. No more secrets. Seo Changbin is my best officer. I want him back. Tell me where he is.”

“His time as a soldier has run its course,” Miroh says. “His body is more useful than him. The initial special-ops experiment was a failure. His genetics might unlock the key to replicating the medicant. We can try again. You should want to help me. You would know better than anyone what worked and what did not.”

Your exhaustion and emotion nearly gets the better of you. You almost hurl right in front of him, imagining all the horrifying implications of genetics and keys. You imagine them taking Changbin apart, piece by piece, experimenting on him like a slab of meat.

You keep your disgust and horror down. You take another step forward.

“Give him back to me,” you say. “Right now. I told you already. I’m not playing any games.”

“You are deeply unwell,” your father says, his tone changing as he looks at you with more scrutiny. His whole face seems to darken with the furrow of his brow. “This is not like you. Go to the infirmary.”

“I’m not asking again,” you say. “Give him back to me.”

“Why?”

Because you’re my father, should be a good enough answer. You know it will not work. You know he does not care. Miroh hates you because you are his daughter. Miroh is not scared of anyone because he knows he is the best. He is scared of himself in you. You never stood a chance.

“Because he’s my friend,” you say, because that is the only truth that matters anymore.

It makes your father laugh unexpectedly. You do not break.

“Your friend?” he asks. “Oh, well, my dear, if he’s your friend, then of course I’ll suspend all my plans and operations!” He continues to laugh.

“I already told you,” you say. “I’m not asking again.”

You fly at him without further warning. He has a half-second to react, his eyes widening as he side-steps clumsily. With your mutual injuries, it is not much of a fight. After a short scuffle, Miroh kicks at your legs, your weakest point, and you double over. He swings his knee up into your stomach and it makes you fall, curled protectively over yourself. You plant your forehead on the ground, arms around you, breathing hard.

“That is how a daughter should be before her father,” he says, looking down at you in your broken little bow.

You look up as he reaches into the lapel of his coat. He has kept his gun in the same place for years. In the same place you always keep yours when you wear a long coat.

He puts his hand there and finds nothing.

You uncurl, showing the gun in your hand. You point it, cock it, and place your finger on the trigger as you stand.

“If the next words you speak are not his exact location, I’m killing you,” you say.

“Then kill me,” he says.

He must know you are running on fumes and a half-baked plan that you did not believe would work. He is calling your bluff, knowing you like he knows himself. You will drop the gun and concede. Miroh wins. Miroh always wins.

But you are gripping that gun with your scarred hand. It sends a twinge of pain shooting up your arm. You hear Changbin’s voice in your head.

You pull the trigger.

You are not sure who is more surprised. You can feel it on your own face, dripping with your sweat and blood. You lower the gun and watch as Miroh stumbles backwards, frantically patting his chest. You wonder if he is wearing any protective layers.

It doesn’t matter, in the end. You spent the last few minutes walking him backwards. If you couldn’t get the gun, you were going to grab him and threaten him with the edge of the roof.

When you shoot him, he stumbles. He falls back. He goes right over the edge.

You stand there for a long minute. The watering can has emptied. The wind has gone still. The whole world seems to stop. When you drop the gun, it hits the concrete with a clatter. It feels very strange that the sun is still shining.

You walk to the edge of the roof. You look down. Your father has loomed over the world from this perch for years, looking over the things he has so meticulously grown.

He is laying in a broken heap at the bottom of it now.

You do not know how long you stand there. The wind begins to blow again. You feel it on your face.

Then you hear a voice. It nearly makes you jump.

“What now?” it asks.

You turn around. Bang Chan is standing there in his dark combat gear, that half-mask still fastened in place. He has finally broken a sweat, his hairline damp, and his chest is moving a little faster with breath. He is human somewhere under there. Deep, deep down. You have no idea what to do with that human anymore than the soldier.

One problem at a time.

A few more officers appear on the rooftop. Chan turns. You approach him.

“What now?” you repeat. You scoop up the discarded gun and point it at the officers. Chan draws his own and does the same. You stand side-by-side, arm-to-arm, eyes on your adversaries. “Right now,” you say, “we fight.”

You pull the trigger.

The fight begins.

#bang chan x reader #chan x reader #bang chan x you #chan x you #skz x reader #stray kids x reader #stray kids fanficiton #bang chan fanfiction #skz x you #stray kids x you

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perfectlyvalid49 · 8 months ago

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I am afraid as a Jew.

I know that we are on the “how dare you say we piss on the poor” piss poor reading comprehension website, but the vast, vast majority of my original post is about the antisemitism that I experience in my life today, and the antisemitism that my ancestors experienced before Israel became a state. Zionism has little impact on either. If you can’t tell the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, it may be that your anti-Zionism is antisemitic, whether you mean it to be or not.

You said that something didn’t sit right with you when you read my post, and I think that something is a part of you realizing that some of your behavior in your advocacy for Palestine is the sort of behavior that I and many other Jews view as antisemitic and you didn’t like that. The good news is that the discomfort you felt can lead to growth, but only if you let it.

I appreciate that you have Jewish friends, but the Jews that show up to pro-Palestinian marches are the sort who are the most tolerant of antisemitism, and the most likely to not call it out when they see it. The Jews who will not tolerate antisemitism have essentially been forced out of the pro-Palestine movement in the last six months for being “Zionists,” regardless of their actual political beliefs. Because of this, I’m not sure you are as educated on the subject matter as you think you are. I hope you will read this and that it will give you some things to think about, and maybe choose to learn more about.

In this post, if I am conflating Judaism and Zionism (and I think that’s happening more in your head than it is in the text), it is because the people who are attacking “Zionists” are attacking Jews. I don’t think the people who might hurt me are going to ask me my opinion on Israel before they strike, and in fact, I have seen people on this website call anti-Zionist Jews Zionists for doing something as simple as pointing out antisemitism, so even if they do ask, I will probably be found wanting.

In addition, there are more Christian Zionists in the United States than there are Jews in the world. And yet, I have not heard of a single Christian Zionist being attacked for their beliefs, nor are Christians routinely called upon to defend their views on Israel in the way that Jews are. Meanwhile, I have watched a non-Zionist Jew lie though his teeth to his six year old about why we all had to leave our synagogue so fast because “they hate us” is so, so hard to explain to a young child.

I’m actually going to ask you to answer your own question. Why would a post about JEWISH TRAUMA feel the need to mention the displacement of JEWS in Israel, but not the displacement in Gaza, a place where there are ZERO JEWS? Or am I not allowed to center myself and my people in a post about my experience of our communal pain? If not, could you imagine asking that of any other minority group?

I think that if you can call Gaza a concentration camp, you need to study up on either Gaza or the Holocaust. I am not saying that conditions there were good, nor am I saying that I think that they should have continued as they were. And I’m certainly not advocating for them continuing as they are. But to say the two are equivalent is like saying that Earth and Jupiter are both planets, so they are the same size. There are some key differences that you are missing. I made a quick chart.

The antisemitism of BDS is well documented. In particular it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because the House Representative from the district next to mine came to several synagogues in the area, claimed to be pro-Israel, and didn’t mention that BDS was part of her platform until after she was elected (literally, it was not on her website until after she was elected). I know that’s just the actions of one person, but that, in association with the movement’s antisemitic rhetoric, makes it worthy of inclusion on my list.

I went and googled a definition of apartheid, and got this from Cornell Law: “Apartheid refers to the implementation and maintenance of a system of legalized racial segregation in which one racial group is deprived of political and civil rights.” If Israel denies Arabs political and civil rights, how come Arabs serve at all levels of Israeli military and government, including sitting on their supreme court, holding office in the Knesset, and holding high ranking military positions? If your problem is with how Palestinians are treated, you must remember that Gaza and the West Bank are not actually a part of Israel (nor do they wish to be) and therefore the Palestinians living there do not live in Israel and are not Israeli citizens. Most countries have limits on what non-citizens can do, why should Israel be different? Palestinians should certainly be allowed to form their own country, and I’m in favor of a two state solution, myself. But it sounds like you don’t think Israel should exist. I’m curious as to why you’re in favor of Palestinian self-determination, but not Jewish self-determination.

It’s not genocide. Simply put, if Israel wanted to kill every man, woman and child in Gaza, there would have been no one left by the end of October. They would not have sent in ground troops, they would have just bombed them from the air. They would not have sent in aid, because why bother. The intent is to destroy Hamas, NOT the Palestinian people. Without the intent to destroy the Palestinian people, it’s war, and it’s terrible, but it’s not genocide. The fact that you either don’t understand that, or need to use the worst accusation possible to make your point is one of the reasons why I don’t think you’re as educated on the topic as you believe.

I want to know your definition of Zionism. My definition (one of the more common ones among people who identify as Zionist) is the right for Jews to have a self-determined state in the area now known as Israel, their indigenous homeland. Why should anyone with a conscience be against that? What part is morally objectionable? If you object to only the location, where should their homeland be, if not their land of origin?

Why do you think so many of those words were in quotes. The right hates the “other”, but I put other in quotes because people on the right will decide they don’t like you, and then work out how you fit into the category of “other” regardless of whether you’re different or not. Similarly, the left hates “privileged/elite/oppressors” IN QUOTES because people on the left will decide they don’t like you and then work out how you fit into the category of “privileged/elite/oppressors.” In this case, if you are Jewish and therefore a member of a minority with a history of oppression that goes back thousands of years, you will get called an “oppressor” by the left so that they can give themselves moral permission to attack you. I have a problem with actual oppressors, but the left has shown that they don’t believe that words have meaning. Holocaust, oppressor, apartheid, genocide – all of these words have definitions, and the definitions are being ignored so that the left has mean words to use against Israel. Until I can believe that the left is using words in a meaningful way, I will not hate a group just because the left says I should. You should consider doing the same.

You say that “the most egregious act of antisemitism since the 40s is the State of Israel conducting ethnic cleansing, massacres, apartheid, occupation, shoot-to-kill policy, theft of homes and land, and latest of all: genocide under the banner of the star of David.” That’s not Jew-hatred. That’s not antisemitism. That’s the excuse that people use for their antisemitism though. If you and others like you can’t help coming after Jews in the Diaspora as “oppressors” because of the actions of Israel, that’s not Israel’s fault. That’s the fault of the people who choose to be shitty to Jews “because Israel!” If a person can understand how attacking a Chinese American isn’t an appropriate response to the crimes committed by the Chinese government, but they can’t understand why attacking a Jewish American isn’t an appropriate response to the crimes committed by the Israeli government, then the problem is that the person is antisemitic and looking for an excuse.

If every oppressed person has the right to fight back, then you should be happy to know that there’s a long history of Jewish oppression in the MENA area. Consider the 1948 war the act of the Jewish people fighting off their oppressors and founding a new state where they could be free. Does that narrative make you feel better about Israel? It’s what you seem to be indicating that you want. Or is that narrative only ok if it’s the Jews being overthrown? Why might that be?

There are no laws in the United States aiming to reduce the rights of Jews or harm Jews right now. Two years ago, women in the United States had a constitutional right to abortions. Things change, and they can change quickly. And do you know where else there were no laws aiming to reduce the rights of Jews? Germany in 1930. The Jews have a long cultural memory, and part of the reason for that is because we ALWAYS need to run eventually, and so we need to remember what it looks like when it’s time to go. I think that if you don’t understand that every place that Jews have lived for the last 2000 years has been safe right up until it wasn’t, then you missed out on one of the major points of my post. Maybe read it again for understanding instead of just trying to find bits of it that you want to use to talk about how Zionists are terrible.

Not that I should have to defend my statements to you, and it’s really nitpicky for you to call it out, but here is a list of people I “know” in Israel:

My penpal from middle school – it’s been at least 20 years since we last wrote.

A handful of Israelis that I follow – I’ve even had positive interactions with some of them on Tumblr!

Some cousins on my mom’s side. They’re like fourth cousins and we’ve never met. But I know they exist! I don’t know if they know I exist.

My husband’s cousin’s wife’s family – we’ve met once, at my husband’s cousin’s wedding in 2009.

Does that explain how I can have family and acquaintances in Israel, but not consider any of them close (a clause that you very conveniently cut off in your quote)? I don’t talk to them, I’m not kept up to date of their activities. If something bad has happened to them, I haven’t been informed. Their existence hasn’t impacted the trauma that I was writing about.

Anyway, Am Yisrael Chai refers to the people of Israel – a name that Jews have called themselves for centuries prior to the founding of the state. In fact, the state was named for the people – “We are the people of Israel, so we will name our state Israel,” not, “Hey we named this place Israel for no apparent reason, I guess we’re the people of Israel now.” If you don’t know that, it tells me that you’re REALLY not as educated on the topic as you ‘re trying to make yourself sound. And given that there’s already been an extensive conversation about why people who don’t know what Am Yisrael Chai means jumping in to this post to attack Israel is antisemitic, in the comments section ON THIS POST, I don’t feel like going over the whole thing again. Either read the link, or accept this TL;DR on it: If you read a post about antisemitism and feel the need to redirect focus to Israel, you’re being antisemitic.

And honestly, reading through your response, the whole thing seems in bad faith. You’ve either deliberately missed the point, or given the worst possible faith reading to everything I wrote, and then came on to my post about how antisemitism is upsetting (deliberately on a joyous holiday) to talk about why you don’t like Israel, and how you think that things would be better for me if I were a Good Jew and just denounced Israel and the 40% of the Jewish population that lives there. I will not throw my own people under the bus to be kept as a favored pet for as long as I am willing to agree with you. There were Jews that did that in Nazi Germany, and they were killed just as surely as the Jews who did not. There were Jews who did that in Soviet Russia and it got them deported to Siberia just as surely as the Jews who did not.

Frankly, for someone who is so uneducated in Jewish history, I find your tone in this post condescending, and I find your claims of “I’m not antisemitic, I’m just an anti-Zionist,” to ring incredibly false. I think that at best, you’ve been drinking Hamasnik propaganda Kool-Aid at your pro-Palestinian marches and don’t realize how much false or biased information you’ve been told, and I think that more likely, you live in the West and have not interrogated just how much antisemitism is just present in Western culture and therefore present in you. Like I said at the top, I hope that you will maybe do some research involving conflicting viewpoints to your own and maybe learn something about Judaism before you hop on another post to lecture a Jew about something you don’t understand.

On being Jewish, and traumatized (It’s been 5 months and I want to talk):

Judaism is a joyous religion. So much of our daily practice is to focus us on the things that are good. I know that there’s a joke that all our holidays can be summed up as “they tried to kill us. We survived – let’s eat!”, and you might think that holidays focused on attempts at killing us might be somber, but they’re really not. Most are celebrated in the sense of, “we’re still here, let’s have a party!” When I think about practicing Judaism, the things I think about make me happy.

But I think a lot of non-Jews don’t necessarily see Judaism the same way. I think in part it’s because we do like to kvetch, but I think a lot of it is because from the outside it’s harder to see the joy, and very easy to see the long history of suffering that has been enacted on the Jewish people. From the inside, it’s very much, “we’re still here, let’s party” and from the outside it’s, “how many times have they tried to kill you? Why are you celebrating? They tried to KILL YOU!”

And I want to start with that because a lot of the rest of this is going to be negative. And I don’t want people to read it and wonder why I still want to be Jewish. I want to be Jewish because it makes me happy. My problem isn’t with being Jewish, it’s with how Jews are treated.

What I really wanted to write about is being Jewish and the trauma that’s involved with that right now.

First, I want to talk about Israeli Jews. I can’t say much here because I’m not Israeli, nor do I have any close friends or family that are Israeli. But if I’m going to be talking about the trauma Jews are experiencing right now, I can’t not mention the fact that Israeli Jews (and Israelis that aren’t Jewish as well, but that’s not my focus here) are dealing with massive amounts of it right now. It’s a tiny country – virtually everyone has a friend or family member that was killed or kidnapped, or knows someone who does. Thousands of rockets have been fired at Israel in the last few months – think about the fact that the Iron Dome exists and why it needs to. Terror attacks are ongoing; I feel like there’s been at least one every week since October. Thousands of people are displaced from their homes, either because of the rocket fire, or because their homes and communities were physically destroyed in the largest pogrom in recent history – the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust ended. If that’s not trauma inducing, I don’t know what is.

And there is, of course, the generational trauma. And I think Jewish generational trauma is interesting because it’s so layered. Because it’s not just the result of one trauma passed down through the generations. Every 50-100 years, antisemitism intensifies, and so very frequently the people experiencing a traumatic event were already suffering from the generational trauma that their grandparents or great grandparents lived through. And those elders were holding the generational trauma from the time before that. And so on.

And because it happens so regularly, there’s always someone in the community that remembers the last time. We are never allowed the luxury of imagining that we are safe. We know what happened before, and we know that it happened again and again and again. And so we know that it only makes sense to assume it will happen in the future. The trauma response is valid. I live in America because my great grandparents lived in Russia and they knew when it was time to get the hell out in the 1900s. And the reason they knew that is because their grandparents remembered the results of the blood libels in the 1850s. How can we heal when the scar tissue keeps us safe?

I look around now and wonder if we’ll need to run. We have a plan. I repeat, my family has a plan for what to do if we need to flee the country due to religious persecution. How can that possibly be normal? And yet, all the Jewish families I know have similar plans. It is normal if you’re Jewish. Every once in a while I see someone who isn’t Jewish talk about making plans to leave because they’re LGBTQ or some other minority and the question always seems to be, “should I make a plan?” It astounds me every time. The Jewish answer is that you need to have a plan and the only question is, “when should I act?” Sometimes our Jewish friends discuss it at play dates. Where will you go? What are the triggers to leave? No one wants to go any earlier then they have to. Everyone knows what the price of holding off too long might be.

I want to keep my children safe. When do I induct them into the club? When do I let my sweet, innocent kids know that some people will hate them for being Jewish? When do I teach them the skills my parents and grandparents taught me? How to pass as white, how to pass as Christian, knowing when to keep your mouth shut about what you believe. When do I tell them about the Holocaust and teach them the game “would this person hide me?” How hard do I have to work to remind them that while you want to believe that a person would hide you, statistically, most people you know would not have? Who is this more traumatic for? Them, to learn that there is hatred in the world and it is directed at them, or me, to have to drive some of the innocence out of my own children’s eyes in order to make sure they are prepared to meet the reality of the world?

And the reality of the world is that it is FULL of antisemitism. There’s a lot of…I guess I’d call it mild antisemitism that’s always present that you just kinda learn to ignore. It’s the sort of stuff that non-Jews might not even recognize as antisemitic until you explain it to them, just little micro-aggressions that you do your best to ignore because you know that the people doing it don’t necessarily mean it, it’s just the culture we live in. It can still hurt though. I like to compare it to a bruise: you can mostly ignore it, but every once in a while something (more blatant antisemitism) will put a bit to much pressure on it and you remember that you were already hurting this whole time.

On top of the background antisemitism, there’s more intense stuff. And usually the most intense, mask off antisemitism comes from the right. This makes sense, in that a lot of right politics are essentially about hating the “other” and what are Jews if not Western civilizations oldest type of “other”? On the one hand, I’ve always been fortunate enough to live in relatively liberal areas so this sort of antisemitism has felt far away and impersonal – they hate everybody, and I’m just part of everybody. On the other hand, until recently I’ve always considered this the most dangerous source of antisemitism. This is the antisemitism that leads to hate crimes, that leads to synagogue shootings. This is the reason why my synagogue is built so that there is a long driveway before you can even see the building, and that driveway is filled with police on the high holidays. This is the reason why my husband and I were scared to hang a mezuzah in our first apartment (and second, and third). For a long time, this was the antisemitism that made me afraid.

But the left has a problem with antisemitism too. And it has always been there. Where the right hates the “other”, the left hates the “privileged/elite/oppressors.” It’s the exact same thing, just dressed up with different words. They all mean “other” and “other” means “Jew.” It hurts more coming from the left though. A lot of Jewish philosophy leans left. A lot of Jews lean left. So when the left decides to hate us, it isn’t a random stranger, it’s a friend, and it feels like a betrayal.

One of the people I follow works for Yad Vashem, and a few weeks ago she mentioned a video they have with testimonies from people who came to Israel after Kristallnacht, with an unofficial title of “The blow came from within.” The idea is that to non-German Jews, the Holocaust was something done by strangers. It was still terrible, but it is easier to bear the hate of a stranger – it’s not personal. But to German Jews, the Holocaust was a betrayal. It wasn’t done by strangers, it was done by coworkers, and neighbors and people they thought were friends. It was done by people who knew them, and still looked at them and said, “less than human.” And because of this sense of betrayal, German survivors, or Germans who managed to get out before they got rounded up, had a very different experience than other Holocaust victims.

And I feel like a lot of left leaning Jews are having a similar experience now. People that we’ve marched with or organized with, or even just mutuals that we’ve thought of as friends are now going on about how Jews are evil. They repeat antisemitic talking points from the Nazis and from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and when we point out that those ideas have only led to Jewish death in the past they don’t care. And if someone you thought of as a friend thinks of you this way, what do you think a stranger might think? Might do?

The Jews are fucking terrified. I’ve seen a post going around that basically wonders if this was what it was like for our ancestors – when things got bad enough to see what was coming but before it was too late to run? And we can see what’s coming. History tells us that they way people are talking and acting only leads to one place. I’m a millennial – when I was a kid the grandparents at my synagogue made sure the kids knew – this is what it looked like before, this is what you need to watch out for, this is when you need to run. I wonder where to run to. It feels like nowhere is safe.

I feel like I’ve been lucky in all this. I don’t live in Israel. I have family and acquaintances who do, but no one I’m particularly close to. Everyone I know in real life has either been sane or at least silent about all of this (the internet has been significantly worse, but when it comes to hate, the internet is always worse). I live in a relatively liberal area – there’s always been antisemitism around anyway, but it’s mostly just been swastikas on flyers, or people advocating for BDS, not anything that’s made me actually worry for my safety. But in the last 5 months there have been bomb threats at my synagogue, and just last week a kid got beat up for being Jewish at our local high school. He doesn’t want to report it. He’s worried it will make it worse.

I bought a Magen David to wear in November. At the time it seemed like the best way to fight antisemitism was to be visibly Jewish, to show that we’re just normal people like everyone else. Plus, I figured that if me being Jewish was going to be a problem for someone, then I would make it a problem right away and not waste time. I’ve worn it almost constantly since, but the one time I took it off was when I burnt my finger in December and had to go to urgent care. I didn’t think about it too much when I did it, but I thought about it for a long time after – I didn’t feel good about having made that choice.

The conclusion I came to is that the training that my elders had been so careful to instill in me kicked in. I was hurt, and scared, and the voice inside my head that sounds like my grandmother said, “don’t give them a reason to be bad to you. Fight when you’re well, but for now – survive.” It still felt cowardly, but it was also a connection to my ancestors who heeded the same voice well enough to survive. And it enrages me that that voice has been necessary in the past. And it enrages me that things are bad enough now that my instinct is that I need to hide who I am to receive appropriate medical care.

I wish I had some sort of final thought to tie this all together other than, “this sucks and I hate it,” but I really don’t. I could call for people to examine their antisemitic biases, but I’m not foolish enough to think that this will reach the people who need to do so. I could wish for a future where everything I’ve talked about here exists only in history books, and the Jewish experience is no longer tied to feeling this pain, but that’s basically wishing for the moshiach, and I’m not going to hold my breath.

I guess I’ll end it with the thought that through all of this hate and pain and fear, we’re still here. And we’re still joyful as well. As much as so many people have tried over literally THOUSANDS of years to eradicate us, I’m still here, I’m still Jewish, and being Jewish still makes me happy.

Am Yisrael Chai.

#antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #judenhasshole #the Iron Dome exists because the number of terrorist missiles shot at Israeli civilian targets would be unacceptable in any other country #but there is extreme pressure from the global community for Israel to not counterattack against the people shooting them #so the Iron Dome is how it keeps it’s citizens safe when the world demands that they just accept these attacks without retaliation #holding Israel to a standard that no other country is held to #that’s antisemitic #could you imagine living in Arizona and every few days Mexico sent missiles to attack Phoenix #and the people there being like ‘yeah it’s part of life – we get alerts on our phone when we need to take cover’#it would never happen #but that’s what’s being asked of Israel #'the Palestinians wouldn't attack if they weren't so oppressed!'#there are a lot of oppressed people in the world #very few of them choose to solve their problems by attacking civilians taking hostages and raping women #at least give the people who make that choice the dignity of being held responsible for their own actions

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dottores · 2 years ago

Text

HELIOTROPES

pairing: dottore x fem!reader & segments

summary: the gods were sick and twisted. for five hundred years, he believed he was fated to be alone. he had long accepted it—embraced it, even. that is, until a midwinter night when that elusive red thread finally appeared on his finger. but as much as he wants to ignore it, the pull of a soulmate simply cannot be ignored.

genre: soulmate au, canon compliant for the most part

warnings: fem!reader, worldbuilding for snezhnaya & fatui & fontaine

notes: finally reader's pov! and YES, theta segment IS webttore! i started making the segment sheet, ill post it at some point sunday or monday so if u want to see it, keep an eye out for it!

THE COLOR PURPLE

“If anyone is to ask, your soulmark has gone black, your thread is severed, and your soulmate is lost to the world. Should anyone find out that your thread leads to the north, all of us will be under suspicion and Her Excellency is not merciful.”

You stood tall, hands clasped behind your back as you stood between your mother and your half-brother, listening to the Hydro Archon’s announcement. It was an abrupt assembly, as they typically had been lately. You had been preparing for bed when the bell rang throughout the massive palace that housed all of the nation’s aristocrats in the center of Fontaine’s capital city.

If you looked up, you would see the moon high in the sky, the stars glittering against the darkness, but you didn’t dare look away from the Hydro Archon or her court officials.

“... for months, we have allowed ourselves to be lenient with the heretics plaguing our capital. We allowed ourselves to be patient, but the time for leniency and patience is over, we must…”

It was an honor to be welcomed into the Hydro Archon’s abode, the chief justice had claimed, but you knew better. It was no honor for the nobles to be forced out of their countryside estates and into the city--it was a means for surveillance, to make sure that the most influential members of Fontaine’s society were not sympathizers to the growing dissent throughout the capital.

The people were unhappy. The Hydro Archon was becoming more and more severe with her sentencing, more and more strict with her laws. Fontaine prided itself on being the center of culture and arts, but the nation was declining, their energy apparatuses were failing, and their judicial system was becoming corrupt, though no one dared to say it.

The Hydro Archon’s descent had to do with rebellion stirring in the north. You weren’t sure what it was, exactly, you didn’t think anyone really did, but you had heard your grandfather whispering about it vaguely with some of the other court officials--an uprising against the gods, one that she believed would draw the wrath of Celestia down upon all of Teyvat. You thought this might have begun as a noble cause, the Hydro Archon desperate to protect her people and keep Fontaine absolved of conspiring with Snezhnaya, but it was going to become a witch hunt where anyone with any affiliation to Snezhnaya would be found guilty of collusion.

You felt acutely aware of the thread tied neatly around your thumb, of the soulmark branded in between your shoulder blades--the ones that connected you to a citizen of Snezhnaya and would make your whole family a target should anyone ever learn.

You thought it was unfair. It was unfair that you had to hide the fact that you had a soulmate. It was unfair that you and your family would be under suspicion if it got out that your soulmate lived in the north. It was unfair that you had to deal with people gossiping about you because of it--because nothing good ever came along with someone that never received their mark. There were a lot of things unfair, you thought to yourself, and while you didn’t have it as bad as some of the civilians living in Fontaine City who had to deal with the Hydro Archon’s forces constantly prowling the streets looking for dissidents, you thought it was rather ironic that everything unfair about your life stemmed from Celestia’s decision to give people soulmates.

You frowned as your gaze tracked to the side instinctively, looking at where your mother was standing next to you. Behind your mother, your stepfather lingered. You could feel him hovering directly behind her, you could see him out of the corner of your eye, and you couldn’t help the resentment that pooled in your stomach.

Your stepfather. Your mother’s soulmate. The man who had all but turned your life upside down when you were three years old after his arrival in Fontaine.

“... this organization is a blight upon our esteemed nation and court of law, staining the purity of our ideals, defiling our magnificence in the eyes of the divine…”

You tuned the Hydro Archon out as your gaze drifted back down to your own thread. Your soulmate was annoyed with something--you could feel the emotion deep in your gut, muted enough to know that it was not your own. Your soulmate never really felt anything strongly--not sadness, not fear, not anxiety, and certainly not happiness. You weren’t sure you had ever felt them actually happy before.

They were angry sometimes, though, and annoyed occasionally. It was never overwhelming like you had overheard some of your peers talk about. They said sometimes it felt as if they could feel their soulmate’s emotions more intensely than their own--when they were angry, a burst of joy or excitement from their soulmate could ease their anger, or worse, when they were in a good mood, a surge of anger could have them lashing out at their friends and family for no reason.

You never experienced any of that, for better or for worse. In fact, for nearly a year after your tenth birthday, the only proof you had that your soulmate was alive was that your mark was still brightly tattooed between your shoulder blades. They did not tug the string back in response to your own goodnight tugs--though you tried not to let it bother you--and you never really felt anything from them, pain nor emotions.

It wasn’t until you learned how to separate their tiny inflections from your own emotions that you had a way of knowing whether or not your soulmate was alive besides the shared mark and thread, but even then it was just… underwhelming. You didn’t know what to expect from your soulmate, which was unfortunate because by your age, most people at least had an idea of their soulmate’s personality through their shared emotions.

“Perhaps, it just means they’re calm,” your nanny, Miss Elyna, had tried to soothe you while you were making yourself upset over it one night.

“Not feeling anything strongly is not a bad thing,” your father had agreed quietly, “it makes it easier to hide that you have one.”

But you didn’t want to hide, you were sick of hiding--you wanted to go looking for them, you wanted to travel to the frozen wastelands of Snezhnaya, you wanted to wear open-back dresses to show off your mark in hopes that someone had seen the match, you wanted to find them, and you wanted to be with them.

But if you wanted to be with them, it would mean leaving your country behind, leaving your family behind. So much as you might resent your stepfather, you couldn’t bear the thought of leaving your father, your mother, Miss Elyna, or even your half-siblings. Unless the Hydro Archon changed her stance on Snezhnaya, you would be forced into an impossible decision: your blood or your soulmate.

You let out a quiet breath, shaking your head. From the corner of your eye, you caught sight of your stepfather, again. Donned in a lavender dress shirt with a fancy watch that once belonged to your mother’s late father, he looked like the image of Fontaine aristocracy despite hailing from the City of Freedom.

Purple was your favorite color, it was your family’s color, but you hated how it looked draped against your stepfather’s skin. You felt irked again, unable to draw your gaze from the older man. You hated him--you hated how he treated your father, you hated how he treated you, and you hated how he was trying to pit your half-siblings against you. You knew you couldn’t fault your mother for wanting to be with her soulmate, but if this was her soulmate, you couldn’t help but wonder what that might mean about her.

Your throat felt tight as you forced yourself to look away, eyes instead falling on your grandfather standing at the Hydro Archon’s side as she spoke. He was Warden of the Black Cells, the highest security level of Fontaine’s prison--he was one of the Hydro Archon’s most trusted confidants, the one she counted on to make sure her enemies stayed locked deep beneath the lakes of the city. His eyes were sharp as he stared down at the aristocrats standing before him, reminiscent of a predator hunting its prey, waiting for someone to slip up and place themselves under suspicion. He paid particular attention to your stepfather, you couldn’t help but notice, and it made you almost want to giggle.

The assembly was finally near its end, you could tell from the Hydro Archon’s tone: “... a curfew will be instated to preserve our-”

And then your arm burned--so intense that it took all your self-control to not cry out, somehow both hot and cold at the same time. It was dragging against your skin in even strokes as if branding letters onto you. You bit down hard on your lower lip, hand flying to clutch your forearm and trying not to make a scene. You could feel several pairs of eyes on you, including your mother, half-brother and stepfather… and your grandfather.

Branding words.

You felt light-headed as realization began to hit you.

It was past midnight.

It was your birthday, and you were fifteen.

It was the start of the third phase, and the first time that words were shared between soulmates, the pain was excruciating.

What terrible timing, you thought to yourself as your eyes teared up and your half-brother shifted in front of you once he noticed something was wrong, looking at you with a questioning look that you couldn’t even respond to.

Just as your vision began to go spotty, you caught sight of the words being seared into your skin--the same shade as the soulmark stamped between your shoulder blades, but only visible to you:

Deactivate.

“Do you think I won’t have you deactivated, Theta?” Dottore asked, voice calm but internally, his anger was rising as he looked down at the report in front of him detailing the near destruction of one of his labs down in southern Mondstadt and along with it, most of the progress that they had made the past six years in stabilizing delusions.

The Theta Segment looked unbothered, staring at Dottore emptily. “You won’t have me deactivated because you don’t have the resources to create a new segment right now. Otherwise you would have replaced Beta already, and you haven’t. Either way, deactivating me wouldn’t have prevented the situation unless you’ve figured out a way to endow segments with prophetic abilities,” Theta said, voice dry and mocking.

Beta, Dottore inhaled, trying to reign in his temper as it spiked at the reminder of the Beta segment. His head was pounding--he had been dealing with setbacks in his own research, and the Balladeer was being less than forthcoming regarding information about the Abyss and Irminsul. He was losing his patience with it because the only reason Scaramouche was even capable of withstanding the hostile energy in the Abyss was because Dottore had unlocked his latent powers as an Archon’s creation.

He could by all means deactivate Theta, but Theta was right in that he didn’t have the resources to create another segment to replace him. He had all of the physical materials, despite how hard they were to come by, but he lost the connection to Irminsul he had in Snezhaya, drained the sprout of all of its energy, and he needed the connection to Irminsul to create the segments in the mindsets of his past self. There were rumors of other withered sprouts in the ruins of Vindagnyr--he had the Rho and Gamma segments searching through the bitter cold to try to find ways to revitalize the sprouts, but their efforts had been fruitless thus far.

“Careful,” he warned quietly, looking up from the report to finally look at the Theta Segment, who stiffened a bit at Dottore’s tone. “You’re testing my patience.”

“There was nothing I could’ve done,” Theta’s voice was still sharp, defensive, which Dottore expected of the segment. Theta was the segment created right after his expulsion from the Akademiya--volatile, uncontrollable, always angry and always on edge. He never took well to being told that he did something wrong, Dottore was surprised it had taken him this long to snap.

“If it were Rho or Delta, they would have made the necessary preparation to deal with such a situation,” Dottore countered, reading through all of the reported damages and lost research. He pressed his lips together tightly as he realized that all of their research had been lost. It would set them back over a year, maybe two or three. “Instead, we-”

“Don’t compare me to them,” Theta bristled, hands fisting at his side, teeth clenched so tight that Dottore could practically hear them grinding. “Not to Delta.”

Dottore smiled thinly, “Then do not do things that make me compare you to them,” he said coldly. He leaned back in his seat, placing the papers down. “This was easily preventable, Theta.”

“How was I supposed to know about a stray wyvern nesting in the Mondstadt countryside?” Theta said, aggressive and loud.

Dottore stared at him, “You research, Theta,” he responded, tone a bit more sharp. “You research the area where you plan to waste hundreds of thousands of mora building one of our labs to make sure that it’s a location conducive to our research. All of the older segments would have known to look into the property and the surrounding land before throwing away our limited mora. If you can’t even bother to make an effort to show a little bit of responsibility, you will be stripped of your independence and sent to the Fontaine border to assist Delta permanently, do you understand?”

“You can’t do that,” Theta hissed. “I’m not a child-”

“No, you’re not. You are a tool,” Dottore interrupted, “and tools do what they were created for and when they are no longer useful, they are disposed of.”

Theta turned to leave, fists balled tight at his side, Dottore spoke up again before he could walk away, “Did I dismiss you?” he asked. Theta stopped but did not turn to face Dottore. “You will go to Sumeru with Lambda. The two of you will work on replacing all of the lost research. You will explain to him the situation and why he is being forced to halt his part of the residue project. You have half a year to replace all of the lost research.”

“Or what?” Theta spit out.

Dottore did not respond, he figured that was enough of an answer.

You will be deactivated.

Theta scoffed, shaking his head—and just like that, Dottore’s temper snapped. His hand shot forward quickly, iron-grip latching around Theta’s wrist as he yanked the segment closer to him, tone low and laced with poison as he leaned forward over the desk, “You have wasted far more resources than you are worth. Time and time again you have proven yourself to be the most useless segment that I’ve created. Tread carefully because your next mistake will be your last, I don’t care enough to replace you.”

Theta ripped his arm out of Dottore’s grasp, taking a step away. His lips were twisted, and his eyes were ablaze with rage, but he didn’t respond this time.

Dottore looked back down at the desk, shuffling through the papers and looking for the one that he had been trying to get through before Theta had arrived to disrupt his peace.

“Leave,” he ordered, void of emotion as he relaxed back into his chair. “Now, and don’t ever bring up the Beta segment again.”

Theta didn’t say another word as he left the room, closing the door harshly behind him. Dottore let out a sharp exhale, squeezing the bridge of his nose as he tried to calm himself down so he could refocus. Instinctually, his gaze drew to his other hand, where the thread was tied snugly around his thumb.

His soulmate hadn’t tugged the thread tonight. He looked back to the window on the far end of the room, where the sky was dark and the stars shone brightly against the black canvas. He wondered if they had finally given up or if they just hadn’t fallen asleep yet--he wasn’t sure which he would prefer. Usually, he could tell when they fell asleep, but this time he had been distracted by Theta and wasn’t paying attention.

Tonight would be the start of the third phase.

He looked over to the side, in the direction of the chart that he had set up. He wouldn’t know the exact time, but it was soon, and he was glad he got Theta out of the room before it began. His thread had shown up in the dead of night ten years ago--he remembered the day very well--and he had dreaded this day ever since it had shown up. The third phase was a violation, a breach of his privacy. He did not want his thoughts being transcribed onto a random person at all, much less when he couldn’t even control what words were being sent to them.

This was when the concept of a soulmate really became an issue. They had already been a personal issue, but now it extended beyond just him. It was an issue for the whole organization because if one wrong word got transferred to them and they mentioned it around the wrong people, it could spell a lot of trouble for the Fatui and their goals.

He should have gone to the Jester by now. He should have gone to him and told him the situation so they could work to track down his soulmate before it got to this point before it put the Fatui at risk. He didn’t know why he hadn’t yet. Something odd and unfamiliar tugged at his gut, an emotion he couldn’t recognize. It wasn’t from his soulmate, he could feel that much, but he convinced himself it was.

You haven’t gone to the Jester because you’re going to sever the bond, he reminded himself, and then this would become a nonissue. But it was not as easy as he thought it would be. There was no previous research done into severing a bond between soulmates, there were old folktales but no legit information to back the validity of them. Dottore had a feeling that Irminsul would have answers for him and he found it ironic that the tree seemed to be the root of all of his most recent issues--he had half a mind to burn the thing to the ground when he finally got to it.

Just as he was going to finally force himself to focus back on the report, he felt it--a searing pain in his left forearm, nothing compared to what he had dealt with before but he hadn’t expected it to be as intense as it was.

He paused only for a second before rolling up his sleeve.

Purple, the word said, and Dottore couldn’t help but shake his head. He wasn’t sure what he had been anticipating from them, but he supposed that a color was about as predictable as it could get.

He wondered what they might have gotten from him--it could’ve been anything from his argument with Theta to his thoughts on Irminsul. He hoped that it wasn’t the latter. He felt stressed suddenly, rubbing his temples and letting his eyes slide shut as he tried to figure out what he could do, if there was a way that he could control his thoughts and filter out what they could be receiving from him.

He didn’t think there was, realistically. He had done a lot of research trying to prepare for this day, and he had come up empty-handed. The only way to prevent his soulmate from receiving words he didn’t want them to receive was to stop thinking about them, and that wasn’t an option. He had work to do, research to complete, and he refused to let them interfere more than they already had.

Hesitating for a second, he reached for a notebook laid out on the desk next to him, jotting down the word he had received before pushing the notebook out of sight and pushing his soulmate out of mind, returning to the heaps of papers he had to get through before the night was up.

You lounged in the garden, relaxing to the soft scent of lilies beneath the gentle glow of the sunset over the horizon. You could hear a songbird chirping in the distance, people chattering in the streets as they made their way back to their homes before curfew, the quiet hum of the apparatuses set up throughout the garden to keep the flora rich and healthy. It wasn’t raining, for once. You swore that the past two weeks had been nothing but torrential downpour, you’d been trapped inside the library of the palace, spending your time reading old tales of forbidden love and the old gods.

You didn’t like being in Fontaine City. It was always muggy and ugly outside, it was usually raining, and even when the skies were clear, there was a strange, intense mechanical scent that made your head hurt--the only place free of it was the garden on the roof of the palace, but even then, sometimes the sweetness of the flowers was sickly. You wanted to return to the countryside, to your mother’s family estate near the Snezhnayan border where the air was brisk and fresh, and the grass was lush and green, the thick scent of the wild and the subtle scent of smoke from the estate’s fireplace being the ones most familiar and dear to your heart.

You sighed as you rested your head against the cool stone of the statue you were sitting against, pen tapping steadily against your notebook as your eyes grazed over the past few words that you had received from your soulmate: sever, residue, research, failure.

You couldn’t make much sense of it, you had thought two years ago that maybe you would finally get to know more about your soulmate now that you were sharing thoughts, but you found yourself at even more of a loss than you were at before. They were a complete mystery to you. They thought words in the old tongue rather often--Theta, Iota, Lambda, and Delta, most frequently but there were others that appeared less often: Kappa, Rho, Gamma, Epsilon, Zeta—and no one really knew the old tongue unless they were an academic or some sort of priest of the dead gods.

And even the thoughts you received in the common tongue were just strange, and you didn’t even understand half of them. Ever since the start of the third phase, you seemed to spend the majority of your days in the palace’s libraries trying to understand them by looking up the random words that were showing up on your forearm, but somehow, it only left you more confused.

You thought that maybe they were a scholar at Sumeru’s Akademiya who had traveled north for research. Fontaine had its own institute, but it focused on engineering and mechanics, not languages, and students who graduated from the institute typically remained in Fontaine unless they were granted leave to introduce and promote their invention to other nations… and even then, they would never be granted leave to Snezhnaya, but as far as you were aware, the Akademiya did not have such restrictions.

It would be better for you if that were the case--that way, your soulmate wasn’t a citizen of Snezhnaya, and you didn’t have to worry about being prosecuted by the Hydro Archon for treason.

You hummed to yourself, doodling on the corner of your notebook as you eyed the word that was currently branded against your forearm: dead. It followed the string of words you had received earlier in the day--normally, you only received one word from them a day, two if you were lucky, but since you woke up this morning, you’d gone through five words.

You bit down on your bottom lip, hesitating before you finally noted the word down beneath failure, adding it to the grouping you had made for today. Sever, residue, research, failure, dead. Not foreboding at all, you thought to yourself, trying to put together what it all might mean. You weren’t sure how the first word fit in with the rest, but you figured the other four were all related.

Research into some sort of residue? What residue? Failed in whatever they were doing, something or someone ended up dead.

They didn’t seem distressed about it, so you supposed that no one important to them got hurt or died… or if they did, your soulmate simply did not care… and it kind of worried you that you genuinely did not know them well enough to know which was the case. You sighed, a pout tugging at your lips as you looked away from your notebook and up to the sky.

There was another storm already rolling in, you could see the dark clouds in the distance. You didn’t know what to think about your soulmate. You got strange words from them, you never felt anything from them sans the occasional annoyance or anger, and they never responded to your tugs when you tried to tell them goodnight.

You supposed it hurt a bit. Your whole life, you had watched kids your age babbling on, excited about their soulmate. You watched them have invisible flicking competitions that only the two of them could follow--seeing who could flick the thread the most before the other person gave up. You watched the way they reacted to feeling waves of emotions from them. You watched the way they would all giggle and talk about the words they received--figuring out their favorite colors, their favorite foods, what they liked to do and maybe even narrow down to where they might be living. You watched as they blushed and got flustered when it became apparent that their soulmate was thinking of them.

You couldn’t do any of that--not only because your soulmate was from, or lived in, Snezhnaya, so you couldn’t even talk to anyone your age about them but also because you weren’t experiencing any of that with your soulmate anyway. Every time you tried to get them to flick the thread back, you were ignored, and your soulmate never thought about you, the most frequent words you received from them were deactivate, failure, and sever. You didn’t know what deactivate meant, you assumed failure was in regards to whatever research they kept thinking about, and you had no idea what they were trying to sever.

It was frustrating and upsetting. You just wanted a soulmate that you could be with like your peers, someone to be excited about and look forward to. And you were excited, and you did look forward to eventually meeting them, but you couldn’t help but be a bit bummed and anxious over it all.

Three years.

You were seventeen now. There were three years left until you and your soulmate entered the fourth and final stage--being able to communicate through the shared thoughts and then you would finally get some answers from them.

“There you are.”

You slammed your notebook shut, eyes wide as your head snapped to the side, gaze falling upon your half-siblings, Elliot and Sylvie, approaching you from behind. You smiled as best as you could, trying to glance around to make sure that their father wasn’t following them.

“He’s busy with mother at a meeting,” Sylvie said quietly, eyes lit up with a sort of mischief that you hadn’t seen in her for quite a bit. “We snuck out.”

She spoke hushed, as if the flowers around them might tell her father what she was saying. You supposed it was possible--you wouldn’t put it past the Hydro Archon and the court officials to install listening devices throughout the city to make sure that no one was conspiring against them.

“How did you sneak past Miss Elyna?” you asked her as the two of them came to sit cross-legged with you on the ground next to a bed of pretty pink flowers.

They were almost fourteen years old now. Both of them had been born with their marks, so they and their soulmates would be entering the third phase soon too. They were excited, constantly whispering about what they thought their soulmate would be like. You remembered when you had been like that, bouncing around in bed as you rattled off possibilities to Miss Elyna because you had no one else to talk to about it.

Now, you only felt a dull sense of disappointment.

“She wasn’t looking, so we snuck out the door and ran,” Elliot told you, a bright smile on his face. You doubted that was the case—Miss Elyna had the senses of a hawk, it was more likely she let them leave because it’s their only chance to spend time with you without their father hovering and dragging them away.

You hated their father. At one point, you had been hopeful. You thought that your mother meeting her soulmate would change little in the way your family worked. Your father was more than happy to step aside and let your mother find solace with her fated, but it wasn’t enough for your stepfather. He wanted your father gone and he wanted your brother to replace you as your mother’s heir, but you had no way of proving it. He hid the rotting carcass he called a personality behind a kind smile and empty eyes that your mother refused to look past.

“Can you tell us what it’s like?” Sylvie whispered, drawing you from your thoughts. Your brow furrowed in confusion, shooting her a questioning look, but Sylvie only looked pointedly down at your notebook.

Your eyes widened, instinctively tucking the notebook closer to your chest. Your lips and mouth felt dry as you stared at your half-siblings, trying to figure out if Sylvie was implying that she knew that you had a soulmate. No one should know—no one besides your father and mother and Miss Elyna. You had worried the day you received your first word from your soulmate would draw suspicion, but your father had brushed any unwanted eyes off by telling them you had been ill.

No one should know, you felt sick and anxious, unsure of how to respond to Sylvie--both of them were looking at you expectantly, excited for an answer.

“It’s okay,” Elliot said, once he realized how upset you suddenly looked. “We’ve known for a while, we won’t-”

“Elliot! Sylvie, have you seen-”

It was Miss Elyna, out of breath and on the verge of tears--she cut herself off as soon as she saw you hidden behind the statue. You rose to your feet, concerned, “Miss Ely-”

“It’s your father,” Miss Elyna said, voice choked and wobbly. At once, the world around you shattered. “Come, we must hurry.”

“I suppose I owe you thanks,” a familiar voice murmured, approaching Dottore from behind. He tilted his head to the side, glancing over his shoulder to where his old recruit, now promoted to the Ninth seat as the Fatui’s Regrator, came to a stop next to the column that Dottore was leaning against, waiting for his chance to slip away from the celebrations.

“Thank me with funding,” Dottore said. “I’ve exhausted all of my resources. I’ll need a significant amount of mora and test subjects to begin research into Archon residue if we want to find a safer alternative to delusions any time soon… which I’m sure you’d be personally vested in and I am not cutting the funding from my own personal projects.”

Pantalone let out a huff of laughter, Dottore was not sure what exactly the new Harbinger found amusing about what he said so he turned to face him, lips flat and eyes void of emotion behind the mask he wore.

“Relax, doctor,” Pantalone said quietly. “I have not forgotten about our original deal. Have you not already seen an increase since my induction into the Fatui?”

“Not a large enough increase in comparison to the risks I took advocating for you,” Dottore said coldly, looking away from him up to where the Jester was preparing with the Captain for the official inauguration of Pantalone as one of the Eleven Harbingers. “Go, this event has lasted long enough. As soon as all of the official business is over with, I can leave.”

Pantalone did not look pleased, lips pressed together tight as his gaze swept across the large room. All of the higher-ranked members of the Fatui based in Snezhnaya were attending the event--agents trained by Arlecchino, vanguard captains trained by Capitano, even some mages and Mirror Maidens that had gone through La Signora’s strict training regiments lingered around where the Eighth Harbinger was lounging back at one of the tables. She looked just as ready for the night to be over as Dottore was.

Pantalone looked anxious, only thinly concealed behind an otherwise blank expression, and Dottore supposed he couldn’t blame him. All of the people in this room were the people that had been considered and rejected for the Ninth Seat in favor of him. The Fatui were united, yes, but their loyalty only went so far when the prospect of a promotion was dangled in front of their face. Not a single person in this room would forego the chance of taking out the new Harbinger if it gave them a shot at being one of the Eleven.

They had tried it with him centuries ago, when Dottore had initially been promoted to Harbinger. The Fatui was a younger organization then, less structured and far more anarchic, and there had been more attempts on his life than he could count. Only one had succeeded, and he had made it so that it could never happen again.

Now that he had centuries of authority, his moniker inducing fear and respect throughout their ranks for all of his accomplishments, he didn’t have to worry much about greedy, ambitious underlings trying to take off his head and claim his position.

But the Regrator would have more trouble, he noted to himself.

Something felt odd in his chest--a twinge of anxiety, or fear. It was not his own, and he had been blocking off his segments for the duration of the night so he was not interrupted while at an important event. He could only assume that it was coming from his soulmate. He frowned to himself, eyes darting down to his forearm but it was covered by his sleeve, and he would draw too much attention to himself should he go to check if the word had changed.

Instead, he forced himself to focus on the situation at hand.

Pantalone was no fighter, his delusion harmed him as much as it helped him--more so than it did to the average person--it tore apart his body from the inside whenever he summoned the volatile energy, and he couldn’t even control the energy yet. He was incompetent with a sword, couldn’t pick up a claymore, and was awkward with a polearm. He was decent with aiming a bow, but that would be useless in a close combat assassination like the ones that would be attempted on him. If he were attacked, the only real defense he had would be that decorative blade strapped to his waist.

Dottore wondered if it would be worth it to enlist Sandrone in creating a sort of projectile weapon that could be used both in close and ranged combat… but that was not something he was going to waste his own time doing, he would present the option to Pantalone only once Dottore’s funding has been increased significantly.

“Is funding the only thing you want?” Pantalone suddenly asked, voice cryptic in a way that Dottore did not like. He peered at the younger man from the corner of his eye, waiting for him to explain himself. But he didn’t, instead, violet eyes only looked down pointedly at Dottore’s right hand--the hand that his red thread was tied around his thumb. Dottore inhaled, not responding, and finally, Pantalone continued, “I’m just saying, I have other resources, connections… should you need to find something,”

Someone.

Dottore was livid, he could feel his anger rising, and he could feel that strange anxiety begin to get worse from his soulmate’s end, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about that now--was it a taunt? A threat? Or a genuine offer of help?

Either way, Dottore didn’t like it. No one should know about the thread tied around his thumb. No one should know that he had a soulmate. Did one of the segments let it slip? Did they mention it in public? It was possible, but Dottore doubted it--the younger segments were never around people and the older segments knew better, even Theta. They knew very well that even if they had no interest in meeting their soulmate after all of these years, that if their soulmate died, it would cause irreparable damage to all of them.

They would not risk it.

So then how-

“If you’re wondering how… I’m very observant, that’s all,” Pantalone interrupted his thoughts, watching him carefully. “I had to be, considering my lifestyle before you recruited me into the Fatui. Abrupt movements for no apparent reason, flinches, stiffening, sudden jerks… a gaze flickering down just a bit too often… tucking a thumb into your fist--I learned to watch for certain tells to find weak points in my enemies...”

Dottore unfisted his right hand immediately, not moving nor responding even as Pantalone stared at him expectantly, waiting for a response. He felt like a fool, and he hated feeling like a fool. He wanted to say something, make a dry comment about how yes, of course the way he held his hand meant that he had a soulmate, but his lips wouldn’t move and he wasn’t sure if responding would be more damning because Pantalone hadn’t even said the word soulmate yet anyway, only implied it.

“... but we are not enemies, so you need not worry. It’s not something I plan to use against you… just offering some extra resources. If you need them, just let me know,” Pantalone finally said, the heels of his boots clicking against the marble ground as he began to make his way past Dottore toward where Pierro and Capitano were waiting for him. “You know where to find me.”

Damn all of the subordinates looking for a quick promotion, Dottore had half a mind to kill Pantalone himself, right there in front of everybody. His rage was clouding his mind, a wicked storm about to break through the calm facade. He felt like he was young again, the years just after he was kicked out of the Akademiya when he was brewing with uncontrollable fury and a switch that could flip on or off at any given moment with no warning.

He forced himself to leave. He would deal with the Jester and his complaints about his premature departure later, he was certain that if he remained there any longer, blood would be spilled and all of Dottore’s efforts to get himself more funding would go straight down the drain.

He couldn’t tell anymore if the anxiety he was feeling was from himself or his soulmate. The corridor around him swayed like he was on a ship sailing through the rough, northern sea. He had been so careful to keep it hidden and the way he positioned his hand gave it away? There was no way. Pantalone had to have been throwing out a wild guess and hoping for confirmation--his only hope was that he had been able to keep his face devoid of the anger that was twisting his insides, that he hadn’t given Pantalone any reason to believe his suspicions had been correct.

His chest felt tight--like he couldn’t breathe properly, which was ridiculous because he was breathing but it felt like he wasn’t getting enough air to his lungs. He didn’t know what this was. It was not something he had ever felt before, and that meant it had to be coming from them, his soulmate--he cursed himself for giving in to his own bout of emotion, a show of weakness that allowed their emotions to engulf his and he didn’t know how to fix it now that the spiral had begun.

Unless it wasn’t emotions, and that was why it was so intense.

Were they getting strangled?

It didn’t make any sense, he would be able to feel the hands around their throat, the bruises forming against their skin.

He leaned against the wall of the corridor he had escaped down, only dimly lit by a candle halfway down the hall--far enough from the event that he shouldn’t have to worry about anyone stumbling upon him while he was like this. He pulled off his mask, pressing a hand hard against his chest, right over where his heart would’ve been.

Calm down, he wanted to spit out at them, his rage blending with his soulmate’s anxiety and fear. Calm down.

This was not the place. He could hear the Jester speaking in the distance, he could hear the crowds of people applauding dutifully at the official announcement of the Regrator’s position, he could see the shadows of people walking just a bit too close to the side hall for his own comfort.

He was being overwhelmed, and he had never been overwhelmed by someone before, not like this. His fury was subsiding, being replaced by his soulmate’s intense surge of emotions. He had never felt anything like this before, and he wasn’t sure what it was or how to describe it. It felt as if the walls were closing in around him, as if someone was dragging jagged nails down the inside of his throat, as if his blood had turned into lead—thick and heavy, weighing his whole body down.

He couldn’t even tell what was wrong, he couldn’t tell if the pain was physical or emotional. Was his soulmate dying? Was that it? The thought made his stomach churn, wondering what that would mean for him, if he would become the husk that all widowers became after their mark went black.

No, he told himself, you are stronger.

The Captain was able to move on from the death of his soulmate. Dottore had seen the blackened mark himself when the man asked him to fix up his arm after a challenge had gone wrong years ago against one of the ancient gods of the far north.

Had he moved on? Dottore questioned himself, or was he just a shell of himself, moving on autopilot to bring the divine to their knees before he could join his soulmate in the next life?

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter whether or not Capitano had been able to move on because Dottore would--he was above man, above mortal. He refused to let something as inconsequential as the death of a stranger inhibit his research, and obstruct him from his goals. He refused to let nearly five hundred years go to waste.

But he wasn’t sure, no matter how much he insisted to himself that it didn’t matter. He wasn’t confident he would be able to brush it off, and the uncertainty was damning because the thought of his soulmate—who would be no older than sixteen or seventeen now, a year or two older than the Gamma segment—dying such a brutal and untimely death made him sick to his stomach for reasons beyond just selfish ones, reasons that he didn’t dare try to delineate.

Celestia is cruel, he thought to himself as this situation forced him to come to terms with what he had been pushing away for over a decade. Because they were not just a stranger, so much as he tried to convince himself of it. Dottore was a pragmatic man at heart, and he knew himself very well, no matter how much the past twelve years have tested his sense of identity. From the moment he had noticed that thread and felt those childish little tugs, Dottore had formed an attachment to the person on the other side. He was selfish and possessive, and he had never in his life had something that was so fundamentally meant to be his before and he didn’t want the gods to take yet another thing from him--he convinced himself it was more out of pride, out of anger toward Celestia than out of fear.

He had known it was too good to be true from the start. He knew that the gods would dangle his soulmate in front of his face like meat to a starved dog--it was why he was so intent on finding a way to sever the thread before this could happen. He knew that they would let him get accustomed to their distant presence, they would let him get accustomed to the goodnight tugs and the frequent swells of emotion that he was not capable of feeling on his own. They would even let it get to the point where he was beginning to accept it, noting down all of the words that were transferred to him in hopes to find clues regarding where they were… in hopes of getting to learn more about them—who they were, why they were meant to be his fated.

He knew that they would let this all happen, and he knew that they would rip it away, and he let himself fall for the trap they had laid out anyway.

Dottore was a fool. He had always been one, but the past decade or so had truly made a comedy of it in the eyes of the divine.

His fingers fumbled for the buttons on the cuff of his dress shirt, trying to see which words would be branded on his skin for eternity--to see if it would give any sort of hint as to who they were, or where they were, or what happened to them so if the opportunity ever arose, he could deal back tenfold to the person that did this.

Father

He paused, taken aback for a second. Was their father the perpetrator? If that was the case, it might not be all too hard to find the culprit--filicide was considered taboo across all seven nations… but Dottore had a feeling that it wasn’t so simple because him being startled at the word gave him the bit of clarity he needed to compartmentalize and digest all of the stray emotions tearing through him.

It was not physical pain, he realized, trying to pinpoint what exactly it was. He had gotten better at deciphering emotions over the past seven years, but whatever this was, it was still foreign to him. The only consolation he had was that he couldn’t feel his body weakening, he couldn’t feel any physical pain. The thread was still bright and very much connected to him.

And the intensity was fading--albeit at a snail’s pace, but it was fading. It was becoming something heavier, more oppressive, as if the weight of the world was being tossed onto his shoulders.

Grief, he slowly recognized, this must be grief.

Grief. He had never experienced grief before. Not like this. He had mourned failed experiments, he had mourned the loss of his resources, he had mourned wasted time but he had never experienced an emotion like this before.

He felt relieved knowing that his soulmate was not, in fact, dying, knowing that he didn’t have to stress about figuring out how he was going to move on when Celestia damned all those who had lost their soulmates to desolation, knowing that he would not have to deal with his segments losing their minds over this but at the same time-

“Dottore.”

He was not even able to dwell on his train of thought, forced to try to compose himself as a familiar voice met his ears. Now back in control of himself, getting ahold of the unwelcome emotions still crawling around inside of him, Dottore could focus. He tucked away the feelings deep within him as he straightened, slipping his mask back on and rolling his sleeve down as discreetly as he could.

He looked over his shoulder to where Brighella was standing several feet away, a glass of wine in his hand, green eyes beady and curious as he spoke, “Is something wrong?”

He spoke with a sort of faux care that made Dottore irrationally annoyed because he knew very well that it was just that--faux. He wanted something. Brighella always wanted something and Dottore wasn’t particularly in the mood to humor him this time, lips twisting down as the man brought it upon himself to draw closer to Dottore.

“No,” Dottore answered shortly. “Why are you not attending the event?”

“I could ask the same of you,” Brighella’s response was challenging and quick. Dottore raised his eyebrows beneath his mask, not that Brighella could tell, but the other Harbinger quickly grew uncomfortable in the silence, letting out a sheepish laugh, nervous gaze flicking back and forth. “Ha, sorry. I’ve had a few drinks, you know how it gets-”

“I do not,” Dottore said, voice icy as he observed the man.

Dottore had never been particularly good at reading people. He spent more time in his lab than socializing, even during his years at the Akademiya, and the only use he found for humans once he joined the Fatui was utilizing them to make advances in his research. But he could tell something was off, Brighella’s eyes were too sharp--they didn’t have the drunken glaze that they usually did when the man had been drinking.

Was he faking it?

Dottore didn’t think so. Brighella reeked of alcohol, and he seemed off-balanced, and Dottore didn’t think that he could really fake much of anything to anyone, much less to Dottore. He was always skittish and anxious around higher-ranked members of the Harbingers, but something wasn’t sitting right with him. Dottore thought-

“Oh god, I didn’t mean-”

Dottore stared down at his stained clothes, at the red wine seeping through his white dress shirt, sticky against his skin. Dottore’s lips twisted, barely restraining the resurfacing fury and Brighella was panicked, stuttering over his words as he apologized, stumbling over his own feet as he searched for something to use as a cloth or napkin to clean up the mess he had made.

Dottore only inhaled sharply, turning on his heel and ignoring the calls after him as he made his way down the hall in the direction of his quarters for the night.

Tonight had been a trainwreck, he thought to himself bitterly. Between Pantalone, his soulmate, and now the drunkard that called himself a Harbinger, Dottore swore he was on the verge of losing his mind.

Ever since the red thread had appeared on his thumb twelve years ago, he had been losing control. He was losing control of his segments, he was losing control of all of the carefully calculated plans he had created, he was losing control of himself, and tonight was proof enough of that.

He was done.

He would figure out a way to sever the damned thread before this got any further. It was too close of a call for comfort--he didn’t know how the death of his soulmate would affect him, and it was a gamble that he wasn’t willing to take. He couldn’t afford to let something like this happen again, especially in public. It made him seem weak in front of those that would use it against him—and Dottore was not weak. He was sick of being strung around like a marionette by the emotions of a child.

And if there was not a way to sever the thread, then he would make a way.

reblogs appreciated!

#dottore x reader #dottore smut #dottore x you #genshin x reader #genshin smut #genshin x you #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact x you #genshin impact smut

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unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240 · 1 year ago

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Here's the thing that really broke me about the goyische left's response to the Hamas massacre: once again, the uncritical, antisemitic double standard for Israel and Jews versus literally anyone else has now expanded to assume that Jews do not deserve human rights or have lost them by virtue of being Israeli.

Let's say, for a moment, that you have been radicalized to really believe that the Hamas attack on civilians was a liberatory action, perhaps unfortunate that it targeted unarmed civilians, but what else were they supposed to do? Besides, Israel has visited similar and worse attacks on Palestine for years, so turnabout is fair play, especially in service of the struggle of liberation of a brutally oppressed group. [To be clear: I take issue with this and find it morally repugnant. But for the moment, let's accept arguendo this belief as a baseline.]

Do you really include rape, torture, killing children at all but especially in front of their parents, or killing parents in front of their children and taking hostages of the survivors, beheading infants, trapping and burning families hidden together alive, stripping and parading hostages naked through the street, mutilating and displaying the bodies of the dead proudly and celebrating their deaths, and doing all of this on a holy day where Jewish people the world over are supposed to be celebrating the end of the holiday season and the beginning of a new cycle of Torah learning. On a day that people will be resting, with their families, unarmed and in their holy spaces, and are explicitly commanded to be happy.

.......amongst the "unfortunate-but-necessary violent struggle?"

Like even if you believe in your heart of hearts that all Israelis should die or at least are acceptable casualties in the struggle, do you really believe that there is any excuse for the above atrocities? If you do, I need you to ask yourself some things:

Do you think there is any justification for the manner and cruelty of the deaths?

Do you really think that there is anything a person could do in order to deserve any of these actions as a sentence?

Was the cruel nature of this, designed to inflict the greatest amount of trauma on the survivors and the Jewish people at large, actually necessary to accomplishing the goal of liberation?

Would you accept any of these actions being done to any other group?

If you are a white American, do you think you personally deserve this yourself for everything the United States has done to the native population (never mind anyone else)?

Do you think that civilians can be held 100% accountable for their government's actions? Is that a standard you yourself would like to be judged by?

If context is important, how is the last 2000 years of brutal antisemitism from virtually every part of the world not also relevant context? How is the Holocaust not relevant? The Farhud?

Do you think refugees fleeing genocide should be able to live wherever they can and that other countries and peoples have a duty to step up and take them in? If so, would you call refugees of genocide colonists and settlers?

Do you think that children should have to answer for the crimes of adults? That it is ever okay to kill them in cold blood?

Do you think that non-combatant deaths should ever be celebrated?

Theoretically, if the only way Hamas could accomplish its goal (which we will assume arguendo is Palestinian liberation, despite the mounds of evidence against that) is to kill whatever Israelis they could get their hands on, don't you think that a valid liberation force would just kill people as efficiently as possible rather than take the time to brutalize and humiliate them first? Wouldn't that be the more morally understandable thing to do?

Do you think it's ever okay to mock or talk down to people grieving their dead, no matter who they were, especially if they were random citizens rather than, say, high-profile politicians?

These questions to me are unanswerable and the fact that they are even in question at all unjustifiable. The left has either actively participated in this or remained silent in the face of it. And too many friends who I thought were allies have failed to reach out to even ask if we're okay, let alone made even the weakest of condemnations of the brutality my people have experienced this week.

This tells me that you think my humanity, as a Jew, is conditional. That my right not to experience war crimes is up for debate.

How am I supposed to trust you ever again? Feel safe in your presence? Collaborate with you on other issues? Why should I?

For the people who are posting about the situation yet failed to condemn the torture and brutality against my people, please know that I will likely never fully believe you that you are for restorative justice, against the death penalty, against cruel and unusual punishment, against sexual violence, for children's rights and against the murder of children, against terrorism, against civilian casualties, for the rights and protection of refugees, for freedom of movement, support indigenous groups, and certainly certainly anyone claiming to be against antisemitism. There will forever and always be an asterisk next to your statements in favor of universal human rights which reads: *except Jews.

#if you are my friend and you haven't even said one thing about the victims not deserving this #yet are posting about the situation #we are not on good terms right now #like I understand staying out of it entirely in your posting if you are worried about spreading misinformation #but I see those of you reblogging things justifying the brutal violence against my people #I am hurt and I am angry and I am heartbroken #if you read this and know this is you feel free to reach out if you want to work on it #but there is going to be a *long* road to teshuva #I actively feel unsafe around you right now #I should not have had to say any of this for you to care #resisting the urge to tag specific people #I won't name names publicly - you know who you are

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jumpywhumpywriter · 1 month ago

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Living Weapon Whumpee part 1

Warnings: forced living weapon/fighter, captive whumpee, memory loss, murder mission

Whumpee is a trained killer, a lethal monster forced to fight and pitted against the enemy in the war time and time again... but this time... he's set loose on an innocent town, in a different kind of attack. His mission: leave no survivors.

Whumpee hated it when he was forced to fight and kill. Hated his handlers, his conditioning... hated himself for giving in and being their weapon. Their winning card in every game -- people as pawns.

And today, he hated that he was being set loose yet again, a deadly killer given knives and a mission, pointed in the direction of an enemy town. Though it wasn't an 'enemy', really -- while Whumpee’s handlers usually had him kill soldiers on the battlefield, this time he was to destroy a town full of innocents, of mothers and children sheltering from the war. Whumpee's leader had no morals, and he didn't plan to spare his enemy's wives or children, even if they weren't a part of the battle. He was sending Whumpee to slaughter them all, deal a vicious blow to the enemy in a way Leader couldn't do on the battlefield -- strike where it hurt most, where the grief alone would weaken his enemy's soldiers.

And he'd planned everything so perfectly, sending part of his own army to distract the enemy and give Whumpee a clear path into the town to deal his damage.

Whumpee's orders were clear: kill every living human he saw and crossed paths with -- indiscriminately. Leave none alive.

Fighting on the frontline of war was something Whumpee was trained to do, created and molded and enhanced by chemicals, and he was good at it, strong and mighty and dangerous. While he didn't particularly like killing the soldiers of the enemy, it gave him an outlet, a way to take out his rage and fury at everyone who had chained him in his own mind -- it gave him something to do, a purpose in existing.

But he'd never killed defenseless civilians before. His stomach churned with nausea at the thought, despite his bone-deep conditioning and training instinctively telling him to fight fight FIGHT. Flood the streets with blood. Attack and destroy.

He wasn't normal, he was a freak of nature -- a man taken to a lab, torn apart and put together so many times his skin was almost made of solid scars. They'd done something to him, something to his mind as he was strapped helplessly to a table, injected with unknown chemicals that burned inside him. But he could never remember exactly what, or how they'd managed to erase large parts of memory to make him cold and impassive, the perfect killer to lead armies.

Some nights he tried to remember what his life was like before becoming a living weapon, a walking murder machine. But it always hurt to think too much about it, leaving him frustrated and no closer to answers. So eventually he'd just... given up, accepted his role. And now here he was, in leather stealth suit, armed with blades for slaughter as he marched into the target town he'd been sent to.

He wore a cloak over his suit to hide his weapons, a hood pulled over his head to conceal his scarred face. Everyone in this war knew who he was, the loyal and vicious dog of Leader. A single glance at him would terrify people.

The town he walked into was very small, probably housing only half a hundred people in total -- that would all be dead before the sun set.

Whumpee stalked into the village with the confidence and grace of a lethal warrior, the cloak hardly being enough to hide his identity when any sane person could see from his gait alone that he was a skilled warrior who had survived many battles.

Whumpee's heart began to pound as he successfully reached the center of the village where his killing was to begin, to maximize casualties in case anyone managed to slip away and run -- most of the townsfolk were located in the center. And most would not escape.

Strange, he briefly noted, that his heartbeat quickened, when he had long since tamed it to be steady and sure even in the heat of combat, not to mess with his head or concentration. After all, adrenaline was what made people sloppy, panicked, what made people lose in battle. He had mastered his control over fear so many years ago it was as instinctual as breathing.

And yet, he hesitated. Paused, before drawing his dual daggers from his belt, shedding the cloak like a wolf in sheep's skin and revealing himself for who he was, what he was.

"It's Weapon!!" The alarmed cry came before Whumpee's cloak had even fully slid off. He grimaced at hearing his war-given name. He hated it.

Next ⏩️

Masterlist

@scoundrelwithboba @lumpofsand @isikedmyself878 @iamheretohurt @fleur-a-whump

@ay5ksal @otterfrost @sausages-things @i-don't-know-sal @togzy

@whump-till-ya-jump @cravesunconditionallove @whumpwritinglover222 @watermelons-dont-grow-on-trees

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jiveyuncle · 10 months ago

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Keith never believed he'd have a long life. He always figured he'd die young and that his death would serve some purpose. He'd die taking a hit for a teammate. Or go up in the flames of a violent explosion while dragging a civilian out of a targeted building. Or crashing his ship at Naxzela to prevent an entire system from being incinerated.

Keith was going to die. He was going to die young. His death would mean something.

He thought these things were a given - facts inscribed on the essence of his being - as unavoidable as a dream, programmed into him the way sleep always eventually demanded dragging creatures to realities outside their own.

Keith was reckless, not because he didn't value his own life - that value could be measured by what he did with it and what he could achieve by risking it - but because he valued others’ more. He was reckless because he cared too much - about the success of the mission, about someone left behind, about everything and everyone else - and that caring was going to be what got him killed. His paladin teammates shouted it at him after every rash decision. His blade comrades acknowledged it with approving nods after each close call. He would easily give up his life if his death meant someone else was saved.

So, when he wakes inside Red, blinking his eyes open only to come face to face with himself in the pilot's chair, things don't click right away. It's not that Keith is dead - that part he accepts instantly, understands on some subconscious level in the same inexplicable way the astral plane connects minds and quintessence links paladins to their lions - but it's the how that his brain isn't processing. It's not that he is staring at his own slumped lifeless body, but it is the trusted Blade member he'd been tasked with transporting to a location to disclose the latest intel on Galran troop movements simply dislodging their blade from Keith's neck, tucking the knife away in their armor, walking to the exit, and leaving as if nothing had just happened. It’s Pidge joking into the comms of Keith's helmet, and Lance joking back, completely unaware of the fact that in a moment, without fight, without reason or warning, without some big sacrificial act, Keith just ceased to exist.

It takes them 15 seconds to write off Keith's lack of a response to the joke as him being peeved about being the butt of it.

It takes them 5 minutes before Lance starts offering lighthearted apologies in the form of backhanded compliments.

It takes them 15 minutes to discover that Keith isn't at the meetup location at the time they agreed on and to realize something is actually wrong.

They find Keith's body cold.

There's a lot of panic that feels much too sudden and extreme after drifting through space with his own corpse in the quiet cabin for so long - too many emotions in his friends faces, loud cracking voices, shaking hands.

Lance presses a palm to the gash in Keith's neck and grabs a control arm with the other, begging Red to take them home. He can't feel how cold Keith's skin is through the climate-controlled gloves of his suit, but he has to recognize there is no pulse beneath his fingertips. “If you've ever loved Keith,” he pleads anyway, as if he doesn't already know.

They rush his body out like getting him to a pod will be of any help.

Keith can’t feel his body, but he feels tears on the floor of the cockpit and the vibration of feet down Red's ramp. He doesn’t sense pain, but he tastes his own congealed blood in the chair and, later, the antiseptic Coran returns with.

This is how Keith dies. Quietly. Without purpose. Alive one moment, and then not - wiped away with a cleaning rag beneath clenched fists, secret shuddering breaths, and a mouth whispering his name for the first time alongside words of regret.

Dead Keith/Red Paladin Lance AU (Part 2/?)

The event that set things in motion.

I’ve always wanted a canon story where the main character dies in some anticlimactic way, but I don’t ever see it because I assume it would really anger a fanbase or just feel really dissatisfying. The big question of, “For what reason? What purpose did that death serve?” And the reality is, death doesn’t usually come in the form of sacrifice or to satisfy some narrative. I’m obsessed with the idea of someone so important, a character who has lived through so many close calls just dying in such a simple and unexpected fashion - of dying without anyone knowing. It has to really fuck with Keith’s teammates extra bad - suddenly not knowing who they can trust, wondering any time there’s silence on the comms if one of their other friends just died without them noticing. Them each picking up little habits to signal to the others that they’re okay - Lance humming, Pidge tapping her fingers near the mic, Shiro clearing his throat, Hunk popping his lips. Uhg.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

You can now read this on AO3 as:

Empty Spaces You Left Behind

#keith kogane #lance mcclain #pidge holt #pidge gunderson #katie holt #voltron legendary defender #voltron #vld #fanart #fanfic #major character death #cw blood #dead keith red paladin lance au #Empty Spaces You Left Behind

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moonlight0934 · 9 days ago

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Crocodile Tears

Damian punches the last goon in the face before turning back to his brothers. Tim and Dick are both done dealing with their goons too which means the only target left is Joker himself, and Bruce went after him a while ago. Tim drops his staff, causing Dick and Damian to just stare at him.

“Sorry, my hand seized up,” Tim says, his face red.

Damian laughs.

“That’s ridiculous. You’re a vigilante, and you just dropped your weapon?”

Tim grumbles something as he grabs his staff.

“Shut up.”

Damian huffs, and turns away.

“We should go give Batman backup,” he says after a quiet second.

“You know that he doesn’t want us going after Joker,” Dick says.

“So what? He’s not that much better. He could die,” Damian replies, folding his arms.

“As much as I want to trust him, he doesn’t have the best track record,” Tim says.

“Fine, let’s go find him.”

Damian nods.

“He turned his tracker off when he went to find Joker. So, we should split up and look for him,” Tim says, pulling up a map of the city. “Nightwing, you take this area, while Robin can take the other one. I’ll go over to the harbor.”

“Are you alright with that?” Dick asks.

Damian nods again.

“That sounds acceptable. I will radio if I find anything.”

They disperse, and Damian heads to his area of the city. There’s an abandoned apartment building that has a few lights on. At first, Damian thinks he’s found the fight between Batman and Joker. However, as he gets closer, he realizes that there’s no way. It’s far too quiet, and there isn’t much noticeable movement from inside. Damian still walks into the building, and he takes the stairs since he doesn’t know for sure that anything is happening.

Damian slips into the apartment with the lights on, and sees the weirdest scene in front of him. Jason, who hadn’t been responding to their attempts at communication since Joker started attacking, is sitting across the table from Scarecrow. Damian immediately holds his breath as they both turn to look at him. Damian slips his filtered mask on his face as Jason smiles.

“Hey Baby Bat, what are you doing here?”

“Hood what are you doing?”

Damian types out an SOS message on his communicator. It explains that he’s with Scarecrow, and he doesn’t know the situation.

That should warn them to wear a mask. Who knows what I’ve already been exposed to. It might be in the whole building.

“What do you mean? I’m talking with one of the people that lost their homes in the recent arson cases. I’m going to help him if I have the opportunity.”

Damian narrows his eyes.

“No, you’re not. That’s Scarecrow.”

Scarecrow smiles at Damian.

“Well, it seems that you didn’t breathe in the gas that’s coating this room. That was very smart of you. I guess I’m just going to have to give you a shot of it so you can tell whatever backup you have that it was a false alarm.”

“What?” Jason asks, his eyes slightly glassed over.

“Can you give this to him?” Scarecrow asks, holding a syringe out to Jason. “It’s a vaccine for something that’s been going around this area. You wouldn’t want your brother to catch it, would you?”

Jason takes it, shaking his head.

“Come here.”

Damian shakes his head.

“Hood, snap out of it.”

Jason continues walking towards him. Damian takes a step back, his eyes trained on Scarecrow.

“Come on, it’s not that bad. It’s just a shot. You’ve never thrown a tantrum about a shot before.”

“I don’t throw tantrums!” Damian cries, obviously offended.

Jason grabs his arm, but Damian kneecaps him. He twists his arm away from Jason, and storms over to Scarecrow. Damian grabs Scarecrow’s collar, but Jason tackles him before he can do anything.

“What is wrong with you? Attacking a civilian?” Jason demands, anger coloring his tone.

“Shut up, and get off of me!” Damian cries, trying to push Jason off of him.

Jason is about to stick the needle into his arm when the door slams open. Dick comes in, and stares at both of them.

“Get off of him!” Dick says, his tone hard. Dick’s eyes start to glass over slightly.

“Put your mask on,” Damian demands, then drives his knee into Jason’s stomach.

Jason stumbles, leaning against the wall, and Damian climbs out from underneath him.

“Why would I need a mask? You and Hood need to stop fighting, and get along.”

“Because of Scarecrow!”

“Scarecrow isn’t here, Da-”

Damian is across the room in an instant, and he presses his hand against Dick’s mouth.

“Were you just about to say my name in costume?” Damian hisses, his eyes dark.

“Calm down. It’s just us, Hood, and some civilian. I’m sure he won’t say anything.”

“That’s not a random civilian, that’s Scarecrow. Either way, you shouldn’t be saying my name in front of civilians.”

“Did you hit your head?”

Jason climbs to his feet, but he looks confused.

“What was I doing?”

“You were just about to sedate Robin because he attacked me,” Scarecrow says, putting on his best scared voice. He sniffles, and a single tear rolls down his face.

“Can you just put the burlap sack back on your head, because you are the ugliest crier I’ve ever seen,” Damian snaps before turning back to Dick.

“Robin, you can’t talk to people like that. Is that true, Hood? Did Robin attack him, and were you trying to sedate him?”

Jason looks down at the syringe in his hand, and then nods. Scarecrow continues fake crying in the background.

They’re both really high by now, so I have to figure out how to restrain both of them, and not let Scarecrow get away. This is going to be difficult, but I have to figure something out before someone else shows up without a mask.

Dick grabs Damian by the shoulders.

“You have to calm down, Robin.”

Damian glares at him, then slams his elbow into Dick’s face as hard as he can. Dick stumbles back into the wall while Jason rushes forward to grab Damian. Damian ducks, throwing a batarang at Scarecrow, who is trying to move closer to the window. It doesn’t seem like he’s actively trying to sneak away, just trying to make it easier to do if Damian does get the upper hand. The batarang hits him square in the jaw, knocking him off of his feet.

Jason goes crazy at that, and grabs Damian like he’s a rag doll. Damian almost snaps his neck, but then remembers exactly who he’s fighting. Jason slams him against the wall hard enough to crack a few of his ribs. Damian gasps.

“You just assaulted a civilian!” Jason forces Damian’s face up to lock eyes with him. “Do you understand how serious this is? I thought we were past this? You can’t keep acting like that!”

Damian blinks, all of the rational thoughts leaving his brain. Scarecrow is getting up now, wiping the tear tracks off of his face. Damian bites his lip.

“Yeah, you should be upset. You’re acting just like your grandfather.”

Jason drops Damian, and hits the floor a second later. Tim is standing behind him, a mask in place. Dick is also unconscious exactly where Damian left him. Tim knocks Scarecrow out too before turning back to Damian.

“Hey, are you ok? Did he hurt you?”

Damian shakes his head even though his ribs and back are screaming.

“Ok, well we need to get them out of here. Batman had Joker handled already. I assume that Scarecrow was trying to use the distraction to get a hold of Hood. What he planned to do after that, I’m not sure. For now though, we just need to get them home. Can you help me get Nightwing to the car?”

Damian nods again, almost mechanically at this point. Tim looks concerned, but doesn’t say anything. Once they get Jason and Dick to the infirmary, Damian doesn’t wait to hear if they’re ok, or if Bruce found out what Scarecrow wanted. He just changes, and goes straight to his room. He locks the door behind himself, and throws himself into bed. He ends up crying alone until he falls asleep, unable to get his brother’s words out of his head.

#angstober 2024 #angstober #no.22 #crocodile tears #batman #batfamily #damian wayne #tim drake #dick grayson #jason todd #scarecrow #emotional angst #whump writing #writing challenge

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tamamita · 1 year ago

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(apologies ahead of time if this is something you already talked about) you're very invested in this conflict and I am genuinely confused by some things, you seem to support hamas but from my pov they're a fascist organization that took power with military might, and oppress their own people. according to people I know living in israel they've been kidnapping, r@#!ing, and killing civilians. and I've been told any palestinians who speak against it or try to escape are labeled as traitors and executed. basically what I want to know is if you support hamas despite all that, why? what am I missing here? is everything people are saying despite being documented or even personal expereince from people I know is a lie? I understand not supporting israel and I understand supporting palestinians but I don't understand supporting hamas

I'm disappointed, because you say that you've been in touch with a bunch of Israelis, yet you've made no efforts to consult with a Palestinan. The Israelis aren't suffering; the Palestinians are and have been ever since the Nakba of 1948 (which I hope your Israeli friends mentioned), 105 years if we count the Belfour declaration. So next time, please consult with a Palestinian if you want to understand the occupation better than to consult with a bunch of privileged people living in an illegal settler colonial state. It's even more evident that you'll hastly accept any information from Western and Israeli-sponsored media, e.g Hamas mass r*pe, beheaded children, etc, despite the fact that they've been debunked to death now.

I support violent resistence against colonialism and imperialism. Israel has been occupying Palestine for 75 years, so the Palestinians have actively been resisting the ever expanding settler colonial regime. Once again, Hamas at its conception was initially funded by Israel as an attempt to undermine the secular and socialist resistance groups in Palestine. Indeed, the former IOF Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev confessed to Mehdi Hassan that Israel funded Hamas (thus being complicit in the creation of its outdated 1988 charter). The Israelis did not expect the blowback when Hamas grew to power after they secured power in Gaza. Hamas, for me, is just a resistance group that continuous to uphold its legacy of decolonization by actively fighting against the apartheid regime. Now you may ask, why not peaceful resistance? Habibi, the last time a peaceful protest was held, 200+ Palestinians were shot to death during the Great March of Return. Israel seeks to undermine any attempts for Palestinian self-determination.

As for the death and kidnapping of those Israelis. This was inevitable. Israel is NOT a safe & peaceful country, it is keeping an entire population of people inside a cage, while blocking them from food, water, electricity and humanitarian aid. Even UN secretary general António Guterres said, what happened on October the 7th, did not happen out of a vacuum, that was the culimination of 75 years of oppression against the Palestinians. It was obvious that the resistance movement would fight back, it is the government's damn fault for putting its citizens and settler villages close to world's largest open-air prison, while expecting everything to run smoothly. Indeed, surveys show that Israelis are blaming the IOF and the government for the lack of security which resulted in the death of the Israelis.

Now, even if Hamas was removed from the equation, did you forget about the Palestinians in the West Bank who are constantly being targeted by violent settlers? Do you think Palestinians have no right to self-defense when they are being subjected to harassment, torment and systematic oppression? Palestinian children and women are constantly kidnapped, r*ped, tortured to death, blackmailed, jailed for life under a conviction rate of 99% under Israeli courts. You tell me how Palestinians feel first before you consult with a bunch of Israelis who will never suffer a fraction of what the oppressed are going through.

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spop-romanticizes-abuse · 5 months ago

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we’ve already talked about the more blatant forms of ableism concerning entrapta, like the way the princesses treated her, but another thing i want to mention is how the narrative around entrapta is also a bit ableist. namely, i want to talk about the way entrapta’s reasons behind being a morally grey character.

entrapta is morally ambiguous, that’s pretty obvious and i have no complaints about it. i do like morally grey and complex characters. however, what rubs me the wrong way is the fact that entrapta’s moral greyness is a direct product of her autism, according to the narrative. she doesn’t join the horde just because catra manipulates her, she also does it because.. the horde has cool tech stuff and gadgets. basically, entrapta is okay with endangering thousands of innocent civilians, if it means that she gets to play with fun gadgets. she says it herself, that she’s “on the side of science”.

now as an autistic person myself, i get that neurodivergent people can be quite passionate and sometimes singleminded about their hyperfixations. but never to this point. if i was offered a job that involves my hyperfixation, but that job was corrupt or directly hurt other people, i wouldn’t accept it. same goes for most neurodivergent people that i know. especially for those who are more on the high-functioning side of the spectrum, like entrapta. we know how to differentiate good from bad. we use our critical thinking skills.

i saw a few spop critics say that they don’t blame entrapta for joining the horde, because the princesses treated her like shit. and i have to partially disagree with this take. yes, entrapta had all the right to be mad at the princesses. but the horde wasn’t just targeting the princesses. war isn’t, and has never been, a heroes vs villains conflict. if anything, the princesses are the ones who are least affected by the war. entrapta should at least have had a moment of epiphany where she realizes how terrible the horde truly is and the harm she has helped it to cause. but no, even though she gets “punished” (i.e. mistreated) in s5, it doesn’t really drive forward a good message. the princesses are only mad at entrapta because they feel personally betrayed by her, not because her actions were wrong on a larger level.

i guess it’s no surprise coming from the show that treats the war like a silly game, but i still resent the fact that the creators basically imply that autistic people are stupid and don’t have a moral compass. also if i’m not mistaken, i believe someone in the crew made a really distasteful joke about entrapta being a tr*mp supporter because “she doesn’t know any better”. again, all of this boils down to ableism and the trend of infantilizing neurodivergent people.

#ableism tw #spop critical #spop salt #spop #spop discourse #spop criticism #she ra #anti spop #entrapta

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cosmicjoke · 4 months ago

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Man, all these people who claim that Levi made the "wrong" choice when he chose Armin, claiming that the outcome of the story would have changed or been different if he'd just chosen Erwin, essentially blaming Levi for the Rumbling, conveniently never have an answer when you actually ask them what Erwin could have done differently to change the outcome. That's because there isn't anything Erwin could have done to change the outcome, short of somehow, magically, discovering what Eren was really planning when no one else could. How Erwin would have been able to do this, who can say, since Eren didn't tell anyone about his plans other than Floch and Historia. I guess Erwin really was just that much smarter than everyone else, including Armin, even though, you know, Armin discovered that Annie was the Female Titan through simple observation and the same with realizing Reiner was hiding in the walls in Shinganshina. Isayama didn't set up Armin's exceptional observational skills for any reason. Nope. Just an arbitrary detail he put in, since Isayama's so known for including superfluous information in his story (insert heavy sarcasm here).

If Armin wasn't able to discover Eren's true intentions, despite being infinitely closer to him than Erwin and spending far more intimate time with him than Erwin would have been able to, why do people think Erwin would have gleaned Eren's true intentions when Armin or the others couldn't? Even Levi, who'd had Eren pegged from the start and understood what he was better than anyone, who's widely acknowledged at being better at reading who people really are than anyone, wasn't able to see what Eren really had planned. Eren himself didn't even know exactly what he had planned until he saw the future, and even then, he remained in deep denial about it, pretending to himself that he wasn't going to go through with it.

But we're supposed to believe, according to these people, that Erwin would have been able to see what Eren had planned when Armin, Levi and even Eren himself didn't know and was in denail over up until the point they were in Marley. These same people also want to claim that Floch never would have been radicalized if Erwin had lived, but that's bullshit. Floch was already radicalized, from having to charge to his death against the Beast Titan. He came out of that situation wanting to make Erwin suffer for leading them on a death charge, under the belief that Erwin was the "devil" they needed in order to win against their enemy. Floch's radicalization had nothing to do with Levi's choice in who to give the serum to. It had to do with how over a hundred soldiers had to give up their lives in order to keep the hope for humanity's future alive, and how Erwin led them and convinced them to do so.

But let's suppose Levi had chosen Erwin, then. Would it have changed Floch's decision to collaborate with Eren?

The answer to that is no.

Either Erwin would have supported Eren's plans or come up with some other, similarly aggressive plan to deal with the outside world, or he wouldn't. If Erwin had refused to deal with the outside world with a mercenary attitude the way Floch wanted (i.e. in a way lacking humanity, wiping out everyone, essentially), Floch would have turned to Eren, and the same outcome would have resulted. Floch never accepted the limited Rumbling plan. That wasn't enough for him. He wanted the whole world wiped out. We see this in the way he intentionally targets innocent civilians during the raid on Liberio. He wanted Erwin to be chosen because he believed that Erwin was devoid of humanity, because of how he'd led 100 new recruits to their guaranteed deaths. Because of that, he believed Erwin would do whatever it took to win, no matter the cost.

If Erwin had shown him something less than that monstrosity, it wouldn't have satisfied Floch. So Erwin choosing to go with Zeke's proposed plan wouldn't have satisfied Floch, either. It wouldn't have been extreme enough for him. The only thing that would have been, would be Erwin choosing to eliminate all of humanity beyond the walls, i.e. going with Eren's actions. If he'd refused anything less than that, again, Floch would have turned to Eren. Either way, they end up down a path of death and destruction.

If people think Erwin would have succeeded in negotiating with Marley where Hange and the scouts failed, again, wrong, because he never would have even been given the chance, just like Hnage and the others were never given the chance, because, again, Eren went rogue and disappeared. Again, unless Erwin was somehow able to magically discover Eren's true intentions before they left for Marley, when up until that point, Eren himself was still in denial over it, then the outcome would have been the same, whether Erwin was with them or not.

People that claim Levi made the wrong choice and "doomed humanity" as a result, also routinely fail to acknowledge just how done Erwin really was. There's a reason Levi talks about not wanting to see Erwin become a "devil". I've talked about this at length already, so I won't repeat myself here. If you want to read more in depth about my thoughts on how Erwin's dream had begun to corrupt him and threaten his humanity, you can do so here: https://www.tumblr.com/cosmicjoke/737098651561787392/sorry-to-keep-reblogging-this-it-just-keeps?source=share But to go into it briefly, these same people who want to deny the significant role Armin played in Levi's choice, and how that speaks heavily to how Levi was very much considering what was best for humanity at that point, also want to deny that Erwin was in danger of losing his humanity if he'd been forced to go on living and leading the SC. The denial of this blinds them to the fact that, in Levi's view, what humanity needed was hope. It didn't need a leader who was broken by his own guilt and cynicism and self-loathing.

Just before Levi is about to inject Erwin with the serum, Erwin begins mumbling in a delirious state, talking to his father and asking about the outside world. He's still in the grip of his dream. Still, in his dying moments, possessed by it. He has nothing beyond that. That's what that moment shows us. He's just given up his dream by charging the Beast Titan to his own death, knowing death was the only thing that COULD release him from that dream. While he still drew breath, that dream consumed him. The idea that these people posit is that Erwin would have recovered from the loss of his dream by finding a "new dream" to be drunk on moving forward, and that would have allowed him to continue on as an effective leader. But what this take fails to acknowledge is how Erwin's guilt most assuredly would have been exacerbated by the discovery of the truth, not alleviated by it. He would have been met with the crushing disappointment of what that truth was. Yes, his theory that humanity existed beyond the walls would have been proven true, and thus his father's correctness. But beyond that initial vindication for Erwin, he would have been met with the bleak reality of their situation. That all those lives he'd sacrificed for his dream, for the discovery of the truth, would have amounted to nothing more than the hopeless realization that the rest of the world wanted them all dead. Instead of finding freedom or an answer to their hopes, they'd instead found themselves pushed further into a corner without hope of escape.

That wouldn't have lessened Erwin's guilt, it would have worsened it. There's no way Erwin would have felt that disappointing reality was worth all those lives he'd sacrificed. And that's where Levi's fear came in of what Erwin might become. Why he tells Floch Erwin would have to become a devil if he'd continued on as their leader. He was in danger of losing his humanity to his guilt and self-hatred. He might very well have been driven mad by that guilt without the distraction of his dream to shield him from those negative thoughts and emotions. There's a reason the panels show Levi recalling in this moment asking Erwin what he would do once he discovered what was in Eren's basement, and Erwin answering he didn't know. There's a reason Levi recalls Kenny saying to him that we need something to be "drunk on" in order to continue living. People that claim Erwin would have been fine love to ignore all of this. They love to ignore just how ruinous Erwin's pursuit of his dream had been on his psyche. And I'm not talking about whether the self-loathing he felt was earned or deserved. That question is irrelevant. It's irrelevant because whether deserved or not, it's what Erwin felt. He hated himself, and felt overwhelmed by the guilt of what he'd done, and the discovery of the truth and the realization of his dream wouldn't have assuaged those feelings. It would only have made them worse.

And that was never what humanity needed. It didn't need someone who'd been turned bitter and hopeless and filled with despair, the way Erwin was, that bitterness and despair likely only to become worse with the realization of his dream and its ugly, disappointing reality. His guilt would have only increased with the realization that the world all those soldiers under his command died for, that he convinced to die for, was an impossibility. It would have made him feel all the more as if he'd lied to them all, and sent them to their deaths for nothing. Again, to think Erwin would have been able to easily recovery from this, or move on and continue to lead in the wake of this, is absurd and fails to acknowledge the depth of Erwin's inner turmoil and suffering. To continue on in that role, after these revelations, after the confirmation that he'd convinced all those soldiers to give up their lives for a lie, would only have increased his self-hatred. The very fact he would have had to continue to lead is what would have threatened the loss of his humanity, ultimately, because there's no way he could have continued to operate in that role under that much crushing guilt. Retaining his humanity would have meant drowning in despair. Forfeiting his humanity would have meant turning into Floch or Eren or Zeke. In order to keep operating as the leader of the SC, Erwin would either eventually succumb to his guilt and be rendered useless, paralyzed by his self-doubt and fear, unable to bring himself to tell the lies, or what he believed were lies, required to inspire people to action, or he would truly have had to divorce himself from all sentiment and feeling, uncaring that he was lying and sending people to their deaths for nothing. And that, in the end, would have been a disaster, both for Erwin himself, and for humanity.

Levi says he doesn't regret not choosing Erwin, even as the Rumbling unfolds beneath him, and it's because he knows and fully believes that what humanity needed was someone that still believed in it, someone that still believed in it being worth saving, someone that still believed and had hope in something better, something beyond war and death. That was Armin. That's what Eren's own speech he gives to Levi, trying to convince him to choose Armin, is about. How Armin is this person who can see beyond fighting or thirst for revenge. How he's the person who will save humanity because he believes in that ideal future.

Levi says "I entrusted the future to that kid who had the same look in his eyes as all of you,". He literally says it. "I entrusted the future". He's very literally saying he trusted in Armin to carry humanity forward into the future it needed. That he specifically chose Armin for this purpose. That Armin's idealism was as much a consideration to him as Erwin's own suffering. These people love to talk about Levi saying "I chose this place for Erwin to die" while ignoring him saying later to Erwin "I didn't choose you", meaning he did choose Armin. It was as much a choice for him as it was for Erwin. Both of them weighed equally in Levi's decision. I don't understand how these people that claim Levi's choice was all about Erwin just completely ignore this line. It's so utterly disingenuous to do so and I think they know it. I think they know it's disingenuous to frame Levi's choice as if Armin wasn't just as important and significant in it as Erwin.

And I don't want to hear the argument that Levi was saying Armin's purity and the innocence of his dream was "the same" as Erwin's. Again, this is a disingenuous argument from these people, twisting Levi's words and their context to fit their agenda. Because they know deep down Levi wasn't comparing Armin's purity and the purity of his dream to Erwin, he was comparing it to the collective hopes and dreams of the soldiers of the Survey Corps, to all of his fallen comrades who offered up their lives in the belief it would help create a better, freer world. A "stupidly idealistic world", as Levi puts it. Armin's dream was akin to that. He wanted to see the ocean, he wanted to explore a world he believed was filled with wonders and beauty. He believed, even after the discovery of humanity beyond the walls and the reality of their hostility toward them, that there was beauty and wonder to be found and experienced. He never lost faith in that conviction. Armin's dream was one rooted in hope and belief and joy. That's what made it pure, and that's also why he was able to give it up so readily, because in its innocence, it didn't consume or define him.

Erwin's dream wasn't pure and anyone who claims otherwise is either full of it, or they seriously don't understand Erwin at all. Erwin's dream was never pure, because it was a dream rooted, not in hope and belief or joy, but one rooted in guilt and shame and a longing for atonement. He wanted to discover the truth not because he thought it would lead to a better world or to experiencing something beautiful, but because he was desperate to escape from the crushing guilt he felt over his father's death, and the belief that he was responsible for it. That's the literal opposite of purity. That's wretchedness and shame and self-loathing driving Erwin's dream, from the start. That's not an innocent dream able to be let go, that's a weighted shackle round his neck, threatening at all times to pull him under and drown him. And in the end, that's what had begun to happen to Erwin. That's what his dream had begun to do to him.

Armin encapsulated the dream of the Survey Corps, through his innocence, though the purity of his dream, through his belief that there was still a world out there worth discovering, worth exploring, worth experiencing, despite the bleak reality of their situation. Nobody believed in humanity's worth or its future more than Armin, and that's why he was the right choice. Because humanity needed someone who believed in it and its future. Ignoring Armin's role in Levi's choice is to fundamentally misunderstand why Levi made the choice he did in the first place. It wasn't only for Erwin's sake. It was for humanity's sake, too. And that really is supported, also, by the fact that Levi chose the humane option of not dragging Erwin back into the role that had left him with only more pain and guilt. He chose compassion, both in allowing Erwin to rest, and in choosing a boy who still held hope for humanity.

#Levi Ackerman #Erwin Smith #Armin Arlert #attack on titan #shingeki no kyoujin #analysis #meta #commentary

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