#the danger of vigilanteism is the lack of accountability

[cemoras27-but-writing-this-time]

Obsession Rejected Part 1

Hi, I wrote again. this is about the rejected soulmate Au that I saw on @im-totally-not-an-alien-2

Warnings: Unhealthy behaviors, Yandere Danny, off screen character death, obsessive and possessive behavior. Let me know if I need to add more and I will be adding more as the series goes on.

Please read carefully and safely.

Word Count: 1000

Ao3: here

Tim Drake was only 10 years old when he made what was probably the worst mistake of his life. Who knew just one word could change everything.

‘Stop.’

He never would have written it if he had any idea of what would come of it. But he wrote it, and to be fair to Tim, he was under a lot of pressure. Between school never challenging him, his lack of friends his age, and most recently his promotion to Robin. 

Being a vigilante was dangerous work. Hell the main reason he was one was because another had died. Of course he didn’t want to hurt a potential partner by being forcefully ripped away from them by the cold hands of death, rather deciding to reject his soulmate. 10 year old Tim Drake thought it would be so much less painful. He knew cutting off a soulmate could be painful on both sides, but every account he found also said that rejection was better than the death of a soulmate

It was one account by an unhappy couple. They weren’t even really soulmates. They weren’t exposed until a week after the deed was done.

At 10 years old Danny Fenton decided that the universe must hate him. How else could he explain the pain? The pain stemmed from one little word between the constellations carefully and painstakingly drawn on his arm. It was the worst thing he had ever experienced, only rivaled by his own death; but even then the hole he felt when he woke up that night trumped his death.

It was so sudden too. Danny was asleep when it had happened and the only person who would have comforted him was away! Jazz was sleeping over at a friend's house that night! He went to his parents that night but they didn’t do anything. Just hugged him, and told him to go back to bed and that they would talk in the morning. They forgot. Brushed him off and went down to the lab to tinker with that stupid portal!

Jazz came home that afternoon to a sobbing little brother and held him. She tried to argue with their parents that this was a massive deal, but they brushed her off too. Said that Maddie was fine when she broke her bond with their uncle Vlad in college. 

She was fine. Vlad wasn’t. There's a reason he's like that.

Later when Danny was 14 the portal that sucked away his parents attention was completed and it didn’t even work. I practically ruined his and his sister’s childhoods and it had the audacity to not even work!

It did work. He made it work. He turned it on.

Danny had spent a lot of time down in the lab before the accident, back when he still wanted his parents approval their love. He listened to their ramblings, about how ghosts are not sentient, about how they are pure evil, about how they are only driven by instinct and impulse. They were so wrong about most things, but they did nail a few. 

Like how ghosts are prone to impulsive, and sometimes even intrusive thoughts. But it's not because they are so unintelligent that they don't have any higher understanding other than base needs, it's because they are beings of emotion. The same goes for Halfas like Vlad and Danny. 

Leaving his original haunt was not a part of Danny’s plan. He never thought it would happen. After all it’s his haunt. But when everything came crashing down he knew it was time. 

Jazz had died. She was caught in the crossfire of a fight between some ghost and the GIW. he didn’t remember, he was too lost in his grief to fully recall what happened but all he remembered was screaming. And that the other ghost didn’t make it out. He made sure of it.

Tucker and Sam had moved on. Both to larger cities than Amity Park. Tucker even found his soulmate there, some fancy IT guy. But eventually they lost contact with him.

He was starting to get unstable. They could see it but they had no idea how to help. He was starting to act like Vlad. To Amity Parkers they could see that Phantom was getting more and more irritated, that he wasn’t as kind as he used to be. The press always loved to rag on him and tell the public how dangerous he is.

So he left. He didn’t take anything, just turned off the portal and created his own and flew. He was unwanted.

But he knew he couldn’t fly forever, he needed a haunt. He had his lair in the Zone, but he needed a living world counterpart. Then he found it. The ideal universe for him. The world he found was situated relatively close to his keep so he had easy access to it and it felt right. Like Clockwork dragged it over there himself.

But in his special little universe he decides to make his Haunt. Nothing fancy, just his little space, in what has to be his favorite city he’s found. Gotham. The dark city was full of ambient ectoplasm, the gothic look reminded him of Sam, and Wayne Industries reminded him of Tucker. And it was full of empty buildings no one would think twice about. So he created his own little nest. But something was wrong. He was missing something. 

His obsession. He was missing his obsession. Jazz was the only thing he could reliably feed his obsession with, and with her gone it was only a matter of time before he started to fade. His gaze drifted to his arm, ‘Stop’ still engraved in black pen. His soulmate.

Danny rises from his curled form and fades out of visibility, core quietly humming as it searches for the ghostly claim of his soulmate. Danny refused to be alone again.

And nothing short of shattering his core would stop him from having his soulmate, rejection or not.

[stonecrusherdrawsthearts]

World of Heroes R - Spider Squad

Who are the Spiders of New York? MENACES, that's who! Vigilantes with no official backing, who have taken it upon themselves to act as the 'protectors' of this city, but lack the real means to handle the crimes here. They focus on some maniacs with animal costumes tackier then even their own, and don't do anything to mitigate the damage left behind from their fights. I thought it was bad when there was just one of these freaks of nature here, but now there are three of them! Who knows when they'll strike next?! Whenever that is, you can bet the Daily Bugle will be the first to call them out on it!

MEMBERS

Spider-Man - the most infamous vigilante menace in this here fine city. Sure, his rabid fans will say he's "their favorite hero" who "never gives up" and "will always stand up for the right thing, even when its hard." And he sometime pays lip service to the idea of "Great Power coming with Great Responsibility." But if he wanted accountability, he'd register with the Avengers or Justice League or, hell, even the X-Men. But NO! He's a rogue, and that makes him just as dangerous as the 'villains' he fights!

Venom - For a month, Spider-Man tried out an edgier color palate maybe to avoid some real consequences for a shuttle incident, only to change back later. Then this guy showed up with the exact style, calling himself New York's new Lethal Protector! And wouldn't you know it, he's taking the Spider-Man motif and applying the Batman method of striking fear into the common man. Hell, some people claim he's actually a host to an alien symbiote, but I personally think that mouth is just... I dunno, makeup effects.

Web Ghost - The third webslinger to show up randomly in New York, and she's surprisingly even more active then Spider-Man herself. I don't know if she's just that dedicated to being a menace, or if she's trying to prove something. Hell, some people theorizes she's the reanimated corpse of the one person Spider-Man's confirmed to have killed "on accident," Gwen Stacy. I don't think this is true, but I can't help but wonder what it says to the world if it was. Like, the girl died at Spider-Man's hands and now she's swinging around the city like he does. Would he feel even a hint of regret? ...Ah, who am I kidding, she's just another girl with spider-powers, none of that death stuff.

NOT MEMBERS

J. Jonah Jameson - Former Top Reporter and Now Editor of the Daily Bugle, the best damn newspaper in the city of New York. People come to me for the truth, and I give it to them. You want my opinion on rich billionaires like Lex Luthor going into politics? They should have to give up literally every cent over 5 million as taxes, that way they actually contribute to society. You want my opinion on the Avengers? Reliable defenses against unwanted alien invasions, and so humble about it, too. Metahuman rights? That's something I support, and I hope Professor Xavier helps everyone. And Spider-Man... a goddamn menace playing hero in my city. This guy wants to help the greater good? Then show who you really are behind that stupid mask. Secret Identities are just a coward's way of avoiding accountability... unless we're talking the internet.

Mary Jane Watson - Some theater kid who works near the Bugle, I don't know. She's better behind the scenes then out front... look, what do you want me to tell you? I know nothing about her! Do you... look, just get out of here already.

[modern-vellichor]

Hii!! I stumbled across your account after reading the most recent Adrian Chase/Vigilante angst fic and let me just say, I read your whole masterlist and practically sobbed all the water out of my body 😭. I was wondering if you could possibly make a follow up to “couldn’t” or even just anything angsty vigilante. Maybe something that involves like the reader feeling unloved and they have a hard time adjusting to his affection in a sense, like an inner conflict. Love ur work it’s amazing <3

-a/n; it's been do long since I wrote that I had to reread it and I broke my own heart a little ngl (broken heart is inversely proportional to inflated ego)

-warnings; angst 😎, uncommunicative reader, lots of cursing bc im a big girl

You stopped coming into work. Adrian waited at your desk every morning and you never showed. The others said you were sick. He didn't believe them. He gave you the benefit of the doubt for the first few days. But the feeling of your lips was haunting him, he could still taste you. He couldn't sleep.

He rolled over and the alarm clock next to his bed flashed at him.

03:00 AM

He rolled out of bed. He didn't even bother getting dressed. He just slipped out of his home. He walked the streets, kicking pebbles. He knew where you lived, not that you had told him. He may have been harbouring a secret obsession for a while before your kiss. He snuck up to your window, standing, shivering on the fire escape. You didn't notice him as you moved your couch from one side of your cramped living room to the other. He didn't knock. Adrian just watched you. You looked sick. Your eyes were dull, your skin looked grey. You had lost the sense of life that once permeated the office, your body, your home.

You finally looked up from the floor. Your eyes met. You weren't shocked. Adrian seemed like the kind of guy to do this sort of thing. You sighed deeply. You tugged at the hem of your hoodie and opened the window for him to clamber through. He stumbled into your apartment. You ran a hand through your tangled hair. Adrian pushed his glasses further up his nose.

"What do you want, Chase?" You whispered.

"I- I don't know."

Adrian felt small, suddenly. He felt little and bare. He felt vulnerable and unprotected. And you looked big. You looked tired and worn thin. You looked angry. You were scary. You had a knife bared at his through, you had the threat of unbearable rejection, and what did he have? Carelessness? Callousness? No. He had nothing to fight against your icy tone, your harsh words. Your lack of care. He was small, he was frightened. He was in love.

"Why did you come here? You're not hurt. No one's in danger. You have no reason to be here?"

"I don't know," he uttered.

"For fuck's sake, Adrian!" You hissed.

Adrian winced. You softened your tone. You leaned back against the arm of your couch. He looked small. He was shaking. He was nervous. You were tired, wrecked. You reached out an open hand, beckoned him quietly towards you. You know Adrian can be odd sometimes, clueless. Maybe no one had taught him these things, taught him about feelings, and emotions - the gushy stuff. You didn't like gushy things, or gooey things, all the worst things were sticky. Like blood and guts, love and care.

Adrian took a few tender steps towards you and reached out his hand. You wrapped your fingers around his wrist and pulled him gently towards you. Things had fallen still in the apartment. He crowded against you. Suddenly, you couldn't breathe. Adrian dipped his head, his hands trailing up your neck. You pushed him away. Shaking and panting, you shoved him back towards the fire escape.

"You need to get out of here."

"What?" He nearly cried.

"This is so fucking unprofessional, Chase. You need to get the fuck out of my house. Like, right fucking now."

You gave him one last push. Adrian clambered out the window and escaped down the rusty, unstable stairs. He avoided your block for the next few days.

When you returned to work, you were quiet and drained. You looked tired. You sulked around the office. You worked late. Far later than anyone else. Adrian always noticed. He noticed you sitting at your desk, no light other than the light of your computer. He stood in the shadows, watching you type away on a tuesday night. His watched flashed midnight, wednesday.

He skulked out of the shadows and towards your desk. He had finally ditched the costume and that stupid helmet you always made fun of. You rarely saw him in anything else. You didn't see him as he snuck up behind you and placed a tender hand on your shoulder. You didn't make a sound. You just stopped tying as Adrian turned you around. He stood between your legs and held your face in his hands.

"Adrian-" you begam.

"Just- Don't say anything," he begged.

"please," you whispered.

"Shut the fuck up," he laughed breathlessly.

You smiled. It was s small, tired, somewhat pathetic smile, but it was a smile nonetheless. Adrian pulled you up and out of your chair. You stood on shaking legs. You trembled beneath his grasp. Worry, adoration, anticipation all in one.

He kissed you.

It was all consuming and it felt like it lasted forever. You were breathless by the time he pulled away. He leaned his forehead against yours. You laughed quietly.

"You're so fucking difficult, you know that?" Adrian whispered.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"Why?"

"'Cause it's fucking hot."

[scarlettriot]

Hide & Seek • To The Ends Of The Earth

Pairing: Kirishima X f!Reader

Warnings: Minors & Ageless Blogs DNI, Vigilanteism, Child Endangerment//Neglect, Mentions of Previous Injuries, Lack of Self Care, Reader Weight is Mentioned (Weight Loss Due To Stress & Environment) A Very Corrupt Commission

Contains: Aged Up characters to late 20s. Reader is a vigilante, Kiri is still a Pro (for the time being). Reader has a quirk. Hurt/Comfort. They share a bed. I don’t care how tall you are, Kiri is bigger than you in this 😂 Kiri calls Reader Sweets as a nickname ((if I missed something, please message me)).

Summary: After an unexpected reunion left you in critical condition, Kiri had to take steps to ensure you’d be okay. Even if he knew you might not agree with them.

Tag List: @meggsngrits • @weebaboobs • @katditca • @silverhairsimp • @bigmooncheeks • @akari180 • @e-b-e

Word Count: 3,803

A/N: I was just really dying to get this next chapter out so here it is. I do plan on updating my other series very, very soon! Again, editing is probably horrible, sorry about that. Happy reading ♥️

• Part One •

There was a rich aroma that tickled your nose, beckoning you from your restless slumber. It felt warm and welcoming, something that you hadn't experienced in quite some time. For a few precious moments, while your eyes were still shut, it didn’t even register that there was no way you should be smelling fresh coffee in the rundown, one-room unit you’d been renting above the shady bonds shop for the last two months. 

You sat straight up in a bed that was certainly not your own but vaguely familiar. Your wide eyes scanned the room for danger. When they landed on the young woman sitting in the corner of the room, legs tucked under her with a book in her lap, silvery blue hair pulled back, and the previous night started coming back to you.

“Y/N!” Eri’s voice was soft as usual, and she was already standing, going right for the door. 

“Eri, wait, please! Who… who’s all out there?” You kept your voice quiet. There was a window you could easily climb out of. You didn't think Eijiro would've sold you out to the commission, but if they'd found you somehow, you needed to be ready. 

“Only Kirishima and my dad, that’s all.” She offered a reassuring smile, “Kirishima’s been really worried, lemme go get him. I’ll be just a second. Please, don’t run away again.” 

Guilt tugged at your heartstrings, and you nodded your head. It seemed only fair she got the redhead since you were in his bed, after all. And it really only a few seconds before you heard some chatter flow in from the cracked door followed by heavy footfalls and the door flung open.

He stood there in the doorway, ruby eyes staring at you almost in disbelief. 

“Hey…”

“Hey?” He parroted, “You vanish for over two months, and all you can say is, ‘hey’!” 

“Umm, hello?” You tried, thinking that might be better, but he only shook his head. 

“You’re unbelievable,” He mumbled and crossed to the side of the bed, wrapping his arms around you in an instant, “‘M so glad you’re okay. If I knew it was you on the roof, I never woulda–” 

You held him right back, “You couldn’t have known, Eiji. It’s alright.”

It'd been months since he'd held you like this. One hand cradling the back of your head and the other locked securely around your back. You weren't sure if you'd ever get to experience another one.

So now you smooshed your face into the crook of his neck, taking in the lingering scent of spice and sweet amber that made up his body wash while your fingers clung to the back of his cotton shirt. “And, I guess I did attack you first.” 

“Guess you did. Gonna tell me why?” 

You bit down on your cheek, not wanting to say a word. If the commission had any suspicion he knew where you were or what you were doing, then he’d be held accountable too, and that was the last thing you wanted. 

“Sweets,” The nickname just made you hold him tighter. “I’m not gonna stop. You can keep runnin’, but I won’t quit looking for you. I won’t stop until you can come home.” His voice was so soft and gentle, but you knew he wasn't exaggerating, that he meant every word. Eijiro would never give up on any of his friends, even if they left of their own volition. “Just tell me what you're trying to do, lemme help.” 

“You can’t help–”

He carefully pulled you from your hiding place and angled your head so you had to look at him. “That’s not for you to decide. Please, tell me what you’re up to.” 

“Yeah,” the voice came from the doorway, and the two of you broke apart, “tell us.” 

Aizawa stood, leaning against the wooden frame with Eri peeking around him. 

To your knowledge, the man knew nothing about what your team had uncovered that day, why you left, or what had transpired up on the warehouse roof. “How much do they know?” You quietly asked Eijiro. 

“Enough. I couldn’t take you to a hospital, and you were bleeding in my arms a lot. I had to do something.”

“And I already know you’re wanted by the commission for questioning. They’re not being forthcoming about the why so when he called saying you were in bad shape, we rushed over.”

“I had to explain the injuries and how you got them so Eri could properly heal you. Told ‘em you’ve been gone for a few months, but I don’t know much else…” 

“You were severely dehydrated, and ya look like you haven’t had a good meal in weeks. I’m willing to bet that’s why you took the hit as hard as you did.” Aizawa took a seat in the chair Eri had occupied earlier. “We got some fluids in you, and Eri managed to reverse what damage Kirishima had done completely. But, you need to stay down for at least another day or two, recover from her quirk.” 

It sucked to admit, but you already knew what he was talking about. This short conversation already had you feeling far more drained than normal. 

“I have a place I’ve been stayin’. I’ll head back there and take it easy.” 

“Hell no! You’re staying put!”

Your protest didn’t even make it past your lips before Aizawa was speaking again. “Is there someone at this place you’re staying that can keep an eye on you? Help you, if necessary? Someone, you trust?” 

There wasn’t, not a single person. You barely spoke to anyone since you left, and you definitely hadn’t made any new friends along the way. “Right, so you're gonna stay here so Kirishima can look after you. Now, tell me what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into.” 

You would’ve begun speaking but with Eri right in the room, you hesitated. You couldn't stand the idea of bringing up any painful memories for the sweet girl. Aizawa picked up on how your eyes shifted uncomfortably and sent his adopted daughter out to the living room so the three of you could speak freely.

“Help yourself to anything in the kitchen!” Eijiro called after her, “TV remote’s on the coffee table!” 

After a muted, ‘thank you’, came through, Aizawa refocused the conversation. “Kirishima started telling me about the mission that made you leave. Said all the subjects were children,” Both of you nodded your heads solemnly, “And when you rescued them…”

“The commission insisted we return them to the facility we broke ‘em out of,” Eijiro explained. 

Aizawa’s fists tightened on the arms of the chair, but his voice remained steady. “And you did, so why the hell is there a hunt for you then?”

“‘Cause she promptly told the commission to go fuck themselves.” 

You elbowed Eijiro in the ribs. “I wouldn’t sign their NDA and didn’t accept their hush money.” 

“And she up and vanished without a word.” 

The man closed his tired eyes and let out a long breath of air like he was trying to organize his own thoughts. “So, what information do you actually have? What part is the commission playing in this? Who else is involved?”

You needed a minute before you could answer him. The rapid fire of questions put in perspective how little you really had despite the weeks of searching. “I– I don’t have much. But, I know where we returned the children to is vacant now. There wasn’t any sign that anyone was even there, certainly not a whole facility like we saw. Definitely a professional cleanup job. I also remembered a few of the people we fought during the original mission, and, well, they evaded capture but I tracked them down. I’ve got routes they take and license plate numbers, and I think I know where they moved the children to. I just don’t have a single thing to tie the commission to it all, so I don’t even know what part they’re playing in this. All I know is they’re using children as bait! Kids! Letting them be test subjects in the meantime and not caring about any of it!” 

Your chest was heaving, and you had that familiar tingling at the bridge of your nose warning you angry tears were about to build up. The only thing that prevented them from spilling over was Eijiro casually slipping his hand in yours, letting his fingers fill the spaces between yours, and squeezing tight, letting you know you’re not alone in your rage. 

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think the commission is solely behind it,” Eijiro chimed in, “They told us the reason the kids had to be returned was that there was a bigger operation at play. Someone more important they needed to apprehend. They just wouldn’t tell us who or let us work on the actual assignment. We also can’t figure out who has been assigned to work it, though, not for a lack of trying.” He went on to explain how Jiro and Bakugo both have tried breaking into secure servers to access information, but they just can’t do it without it being traced back to them. “There’s way more going on than they’re letting us know about.” 

You looked up at him. “Wait, everyone is working on this?” 

“Well, technically, they’re working your disappearance. We just figured the best way to do that was to learn more about what happened to the kids. Helping them helps get you back. ” 

“But… if you guys get caught–” 

“We don’t give a damn!” Eijiro stated bluntly. “We know the risks. We’ve all decided to remain at the agency and work as covertly as possible until we could find something that led us to you. Plus, you are actively wanted! Technically, we’re just doing our jobs!”

Your head felt like it was spinning. This was exactly what you were trying to avoid. You didn’t want them to have to sneak around and put their futures and careers on the line. Now that you were back, if you were found at Eijiro’s place, he’d be in so much trouble– if the commission learned Aizawa knew and Eri helped you, then they’d also–

“I think this is enough for one day.” Aizawa spoke up, pulling you out of your turbulent thoughts, “Y/N needs to rest for the next few days, so I’ll look into things on my end. See if there’s any information I can access that you guys can’t. In the meantime, is there anything you need from the room you were renting?” 

A change of clothes probably would’ve been beneficial, not that you minded being drowned in one of Eijiro’s hoodies. 

“I’ve got extra toothbrushes and shower stuff here…” Eijiro told you, and you nodded along. 

“Just a change of clothes then, please. And I’ve been keeping everything I’ve found on a thumb drive. The overhead light in the room is busted. I keep the drive inside the lightbulb. Oh, there’s also a laptop I was using. That’s in the bottom right drawer of the dresser.” 

He nodded his head, making a mental note of everything while jotting down the address you gave him. 

“Alright then, Eri and I will head over there later and then swing back here to drop things off tonight. Eijiro, I suggest you try and stick to as normal of a schedule as possible.” He stood up and stretched his back. “Don’t give the commission any reason to suspect something. Call if you need anything at all.” 

The both of you agreed quickly, and he sent Eri in to say goodbye, promising to see you soon.

Eijiro saw them off. You heard his side door close as you laid back down in his bed and squeezed your eyes shut, doing everything you could not think about all the people you've managed to involve.

He was still processing the fact that you were back, that you were okay, for the most part. He couldn’t even begin to imagine the toll these last few weeks had to have put on you. Of course, he could see it in your heavy eyelids, your cheeks also weren’t as full as he was used to seeing, and he noticed a few healing injuries when his hoodie would slip off your shoulder. 

He wanted to ask you about all of it. Find out what you’d learned, where you’d been, but he knew now wasn’t the right time to ask those questions. 

After Aizawa and Eri took their leave, you curled up in his bed. Your back was towards the door, the blanket tucked under your arm, and he was going to just shut the door and let you sleep when he saw your shoulder tremble and watched you curl in on yourself. All of this finally becoming too much for you to keep in. 

Quietly he walked into the room and sat on the side of the bed again. He rested his hand on your shoulder, and when you didn’t move away from the contact, he brushed his thumb and forth while searching for something he could say to make this better, help make it all make sense. But, your hand curled around his wrist and lightly tugged. 

“You want me to lay down?” You nodded, and he easily slipped into the ritual you two reserved for particularly stressful days. “How’d ya want me, sweets?”

“Can you be little spoon this time?” 

“You got it.” 

He slid under the blankets to make things easier and laid on his side while you turned around. Your arm slid over his torso, and fingers gripped the front of his shirt right over his heart while your face burrowed between his shoulder blades. He just smiled and covered your hand with his own, happy to have you clinging to him as much as you wanted. 

“Comfy?” He asked and felt your foot trying to wiggle between his legs. When he let your limbs tangle with his, he felt the quietest, mmhm, reverberate against his back and smiled, “Good.” 

Time trickled by and, for a while, you didn't speak. He thought you might've even fallen asleep. "Missed you, Ei. A lot."

He wondered if you felt the way his heart suddenly started beating in overdrive. But, before he could make any declarations or say anything at all, he heard your quiet little snores and just smiled. He'd consider it the highest form of flattery that you felt comfortable enough to fall asleep with him like this.

Sleep hadn't been easy for him to come by these last several weeks either but with you wrapped around him, his eyelids felt like they had weights drawing them downward. So, he kissed the back of your hand, mumbling back just how much he missed you too, and then he seized the opportunity for sleep as well. 

Eijiro couldn’t remember the last time he slept so soundly. When he didn’t spend half the night tossing and turning. It’d been months. And he knew the only reason he was resting so peacefully now was thanks to you being in bed, snuggled up right by his side. 

He would’ve slept the rest of the day away, letting you nap as long as you need to, if only the loud banging on his front door hadn’t woken you up. 

You scrambled up from the bed, nearly tripping in the process, and looked ready to bolt out the nearest window. “Sweet, go in the bathroom, lock the door. Got it?” You nodded your head, and he waited until the lock clicked into place before straightening out his shirt and heading for the door as a fist pounded out another series of harsh knocks. 

He couldn’t have been sure who would be on the other side. Aizawa was never this loud, and he wasn’t expecting anyone else. His heart started to speed up even as he told himself to remain calm. If someone somehow figured out you were here, they would have to go through him if they wanted you. 

Eijiro pulled open the door and breathed a sigh of relief even as his best friend barked,  “She's here, isn't she?” 

“Excuse me?” Eijiro looked at him with a quirked brow. 

“You're not this dumb, hair for brains!” Katsuki shoved him aside and went into the house. “You found her, didn’t you?” 

“Katsuki, I really don’t know what you’re talking about—“ 

“Save it! You haven’t taken one fucking day off since the day Y/N left. And then you called off t’day, bright and early! Ya don't look sick!” 

“I just wanted a day off, man!” He was barely able to keep up with how fast Katsuki was talking. 

“Hah, sure, the same day that we get sent out to investigate a suspicious report in the warehouse district. The same district that earphones told me she told you about yesterday! And what do we find when we get there? Blood and a giant sliced hole in the fence!”

“Well, that sure doesn’t sound good—“

“The blood was hers! We had it tested! She broke in, and she’s hurt, and I’m damn sure you know something about it!” 

Katsuki’s finger jabbed Eijiro right in the center of his chest. 

“You were always really good at figuring things out, weren’t you, Kat?” 

Both men snapped their heads to the hallway, looking right at you. Eijiro was willing to continue playing to fool. He’d lie if it meant providing you peace of mind, even if it was to his best friend. But he was so glad he didn’t actually have to. 

“‘Course, I am.” He chuckled and walked right up to you. Enveloping you in a warm hug. “Smarter than those commission bastards. We took care of the evidence, by the way. Well, your blood, at least.” 

“What’s that mean?” 

He let you go and shrugged. I was patrolling with Pinky when we found it. Grabbed a small sample for ourselves. And then, well, Pinky swore she saw some suspicious activity on the ground. To get down there fast enough, she had to use her quirk and happened to destroy the blood splatter in the process… you know how she can go kinda wild with the acid sometimes.” 

Eijiro laughed and shook his head, but he saw that look of worry in your eyes again. “Hey… I’m sure if it wasn’t your blood, they would’ve turned it over. Right?” 

“Duh.” 

But that look of concern remained. He knew how this would look to you. Between him keeping you hidden, people needing to come heal you, and your friends destroying and withholding evidence, he knew you had to be putting the blame on yourself. And the way you wrapped your arms around yourself just confirmed his theory. 

“Hey, I got an idea,” As he walked over to you, he turned his head towards Katsuki, “You can hang around for a bit, yeah?” Katsuki nodded his blonde head, and then Eijiro rested his hands on your shoulders. “Perfect. So, why don’t Kat and I make up some dinner and you can take a bath or a shower? Might take away some of the aches and pains…” 

“Works for me. Looks like you’ve barely been eatin’ anyway!” He was already shrugging his jacket off and heading into the kitchen. 

Eijiro led you back to his room and right into the ensuite, flicking on the light. “Bath or shower?” 

“Shower sounds good.” 

He nodded and slid the glass door open to turn the water on, and made sure to point out where the shampoo, conditioner, and body wash could be found while hanging up a fresh towel for you on the rack right beside his. “I know they won’t be back with your clothes yet, but I’ll set some out on my dresser for you.” 

He was getting ready to close the door and give you your privacy, “Hey, Eiji,” He stopped, and his eyes met yours, “Thank you. For everything.” 

“You never gotta thank me, sweets. ‘M just happy you’re back.” 

There was a small smile on your face just as the door shut, one that brought a little shine back into your pretty eyes. He was in love with that smile and the light in your eyes. And he was gonna do everything in his power to make sure nothing dimmed it ever again. 

By the time Eijiro got back out to the kitchen, Katsuki already had a plethora of ingredients strewn about the countertop, each of which required to make your favorite meal. He took a break, though, when Eijiro began washing his hands to help, leaning against the opposite counter and scrutinizing his best friend. 

“So, you found her.” 

“Technically, she found me. Tried choking me out on that roof.” 

Katsuki nodded. “And her blood?” 

“My fault. She jumped me from behind– we didn’t realize who the other was until it was all too late.” 

“So, how’s she walkin’ and talkin’ right now? Ei… there was a lot of blood.” 

Eijiro put himself to work, washing off some vegetables to keep busy, and told Katsuki everything that happened since the two of you had been reunited. 

“We tellin’ anyone else she’s–” 

“NO!” He cut him off before the question was even finished. “She’s terrified of putting anyone else at risk. Hells, I’m surprised she came out here to let you know.” 

Katsuki just laughed and got back to work. “Didn’t need her t’fuckin’ tell me she was here. You’re shit at lying. Always have been. Would’ve figured it out soon enough.” 

“Not from me, you wouldn’t.” 

A blonde brow was raised at the remark. “You sayin’ you would’ve kept on lying to me?” 

Eijiro didn’t hesitate. He looked the man he considered to be his best friend dead in the eye, “If it meant keepin’ her and everyone else safe, that includes your ass, your damn right I would’ve.” 

Katsuki wasn’t mad. He didn’t look it, nor did he say anything to indicate he was. In fact, he grinned like he already knew the answer to his next question. “And if she leaves again?” 

The water turned off. “Then I’ll follow wherever she goes.” 

“Because you’re in love with her?” 

He sucked in a deep breath, “Because I’m in love with her.”

[wastewaifs]

For Ruth: ✂️ SCISSORS - what is the "last straw" for them to cut someone out of their life? how easily do they let go of people?

For Funke: 🪤 MOUSE TRAP - what will always lure them into certain danger? a loved one in danger? a promise of something they are always searching for?

Dealer's Choice! 💢 ANGER - what are some habits they have that will take some getting used to?

✂️ SCISSORS -- is this a lesbian joke. . . 😳 ruth's not well-versed in actually having people around her so i think sometimes she is too hasty and ready to declare something as being the "last straw" and funke has to rest a hand on her shoulder and be like. reconsider, babes. her empathy doesn't stretch very far when it comes to bullshit and bigotry etc. if someone is a repeat offender -- continually subjecting her to behaviours she's expressed her dislike or discomfort for, then yeah. Goodbye!

🪤 MOUSE TRAP -- definitely his nearest and dearest in peril. the f in funke is for Fambly. funke doesn't think he's invincible but because his gift is stupidly effective he does tend to want to act on any counts of injustice he witnesses/hears about no matter who or what he'd be up against. he is living the Vigilante Life. but i'm always thinking about funke bursting into a room ready to annihilate some nostrils and there's just a bunch of evil guys standing with gasmasks on and he's like :) (homer simpson retreating into hedge gif)

💢 ANGER -- for ruth: her short temper/lack of patience, her tendency to sound like she's shouting at you (she's just talking), silently entering a room and then terrifying you when she's suddenly PRESENT AND ACCOUNTED FOR, and then some autism stuff so like her bluntness and appearing "unfeeling"

for funke: (gestures to funke)

[thethistlegirlwrites]

15 for all of them?

15: Is your character dangerous? Do they think they are? ...for the squad!

Thank you so much for the ask!!!!

--- Compass

Sierra - Yes and yes. Sierra was a vigilante vampire hunter before she was recruited by an agency, and she is the sort of person to shoot first and ask questions later. She's honed her skills and is well aware of what she's capable of.

Pete - More than he thinks he is, actually. Pete doesn't see the results of his work as often, given he's on the forensic accounting side of the hunting process, but he's capable of unleashing a lot of chaos on an organization if he finds the right financial pressure points.

Shay - Yes, but he's LESS dangerous than he believes himself to be. Like most vampires who are not turned hunters, Shay doesn't really know what vampire un-life is like, and thinks that he will remain in the bloodthirsty fledgling phase permanently. Thus, his lack of resistance at being taken to what is basically a death sentence.

Saanvi - Saanvi is dangerous if cornered, and she doesn't always realize that until the time comes. She reacts in a moment, without a lot of planning as to her responses to danger.

Wren - Wren is very dangerous, but occasionally overestimates her intimidation factor, which is how she sometimes ends up on medical leave. She's a master manipulator, though, and doesn't often need to rely on her brute strength.

Joey - Joey thinks she is much more dangerous than she actually is, with the caveat that if you are a threat to her family or the people she considers family, she is the shadow you don't see coming until it's too late. But in terms of how dangerous her vampirism makes her, Joey is much like Shay in that she doesn't fully understand how being a vampire can progress and how it can be controlled.

Nico - Nico is dangerous, but keeps it under control. He was a hunter before he turned, and working with a bit of a rogue type of agency besides, so he has a skill set from that as well as his vampire powers. And never, ever, underestimate a threat from the cleaning crew. They KNOW how to sanitize a crime scene.

--- Magic & Silver

Robin - Robin's opinion of how dangerous he is shifts over time. Sometimes, he feels like his fae powers are a curse, and he's wondered if he's in some way responsible for his mother's death, but for the most part, he understands his spot in the natural order and where he falls on a 'food chain'.

John - John is dangerous and definitely knows that. He's been trained since he was a child to know how to hunt and kill vampires, and he likes his dangerous side, actively pointing it out whenever possible.

Kira - Kira made herself dangerous. She taught herself to kill vampires, and gained a reputation as a vigilante before being folded into an agency. She's a force to be reckoned with because she's never let anything slow her down, and as a black Deaf woman she's had plenty of things standing in her way.

Emma - Emma is dangerous and proud of it. It's an asset in her line of work. She's got more morals, and more of a soft side, than she shows the world, but she actively projects the image of a heartless, power-hungry vampire to everyone but her closest friends.

Cody - Cody is probably the least actively dangerous to anyone but himself member of the M&S crew. He's been known to make snap decisions and to trust people without a lot of reason given, but that's also how he and Robin met, so it's worked out okay for him.

Maira - Maira is a master of political manipulation. She doesn't need to be physically dangerous to be intimidating. She's good at reading people and using their secrets against them at the right time. Thankfully, she uses her powers for good.

--- Scrapbook

Lina - Lina is dangerous if you do something to make her see you as a threat. She's a journalist, so she's good at playing the long game, but once you are in her books as a villain, it would take a lot to get you back in her good graces, and she WILL dedicate herself to taking you DOWN for good.

Matti - Matti is technically dangerous by nature of what he is, but he's grown up knowing what he is and how to control it. He's like a big dog, looking scary but really just wanting to be friends, even if sometimes that means you get a bit squashed.

Jim - Jim is potentially dangerous, because he has fae magic he doesn't even know he has, much less how to control, but for the most part it's benign stuff like glamours and plant affinities that the danger is in knowing how to use and actively manipulating. He doesn't want to hurt anyone with any of it, so unless it was defending his life, even his lack of control won't do much more than cause some weird looks. If he's put in mortal danger, or one of his friends is, though, there's every chance the magic will break free on its own.

From this ask game

[roobylavender]

HI I think I found something you'd be interested in? it's an oedipal commentary of batman + an analysis revolving the conflict of bruce's father-figures [ra's & thomas] corresponding to bruce's own morality (if that makes any sense). i wouldn't expect you to completely agree with his views but I think all-in-all it's a very interesting piece (imo)! it's called gothic oedipus: subjectivity and capitalism in christopher nolan's batman begins by mark fisher!

here's the link for anyone else! i generally love how this focuses on the problem with modern comics and their inclination towards nihilism but this part in particular really hit it on the nose for me

obv cape comics have never been entirely left leaning. despite the anti-nazi bent of the earliest comics there was nonetheless always an idea that if the good guys are in power then the failings of the system are negligible. that ideology has generally formed the bedrock of the genre. but it's much easier to ignore in earlier comics when there were little to no actual stakes or continuity to what was being written. the stories were largely self contained and ineffectual and the civilian world served as a cartoonish backdrop to the villain of the week format. in the modern landscape, where continuity is paramount, and every effort is made to consciously tie the politics of the genre to the politics of the real world, that inclination is far more dangerous. you're trying to pass off the vigilante network as a collective jesus figure capable of saving the entire world so long as its own ambitions are pure and uncorrupted in comparison to those of everyone else. and that really is why the nolan movies are so tonally contradictory within themselves. there's this wonderful push for true personal heroism and accountability, but the rot of the system is ultimately disregarded, and the people of gotham are left to be buoyed by one person and his moral inclinations rather than by any sort of systemic revolution or support. the criticisms of bruce's lack of philanthropy or inclination towards fascism aren't unfounded but they're incorrectly placed, because they're aimed at the individual character rather than the holistic editorial system that has helped nurture and cement the idea that there never has to be an end, that the status quo is viable and worth preserving, and that it's okay to expect heroes to be heroic individually without ever going beyond the bare minimum that's required. more than a bruce wayne issue, it's a genre issue

[mansh22]

Mesmerizing Chaos: The Boys' Journey Begins

The Boys, a thrilling and darkly comedic superhero television series, has taken audiences by storm with its gripping storyline and complex characters. In this blog post, we will delve into the mesmerizing chaos that sets the stage for The Boys' journey. Join us as we explore the compelling world of the series, where superheroes run amok, and a group of vigilantes known as "The Boys" rise to challenge their corrupt reign. Brace yourself for a thrilling ride as we unravel the beginning of The Boys' journey into a world of chaos and vigilantism.

A World Dominated by Supes

In The Boys, the world is dominated by superpowered individuals known as "supes." These superheroes, idolized by society, hide a dark side beneath their public personas. Their unchecked power and lack of accountability result in chaos and corruption, leading to an imbalance of justice and the exploitation of the innocent. The mesmerizing chaos that unfolds in this world serves as a backdrop for The Boys' journey.

The Boys' Vigilante Justice

Enter The Boys, a group of vigilantes fueled by a desire to bring down the corrupt supes and restore balance to society. Led by the determined and vengeful Billy Butcher, The Boys embark on a dangerous mission to expose the truth behind the shiny facade of the superheroes. Their quest for justice takes them down a treacherous path filled with violence, intrigue, and unexpected alliances.

Unveiling Secrets and Confronting Power:

As The Boys delve deeper into the mesmerizing chaos, they uncover shocking secrets about the supes and the organizations that support them. Their journey takes them to the heart of the corrupt superhero industry, where they confront powerful individuals and risk their lives to bring them down. The interplay between secrets, power, and the pursuit of justice adds an enthralling layer of tension to the storyline.

Complex Characters and Conflicting Motivations:

Within the chaos of The Boys' journey, the characters themselves are not exempt from their own personal conflicts and conflicting motivations. Each member of The Boys brings their own baggage, traumas, and desires to the table, which adds layers of depth and complexity to their interactions and decisions. As alliances are formed and tested, the dynamics between the characters evolve, creating compelling narratives within the larger story.

An Unpredictable and Twisted World

The Boys' journey takes place in a world that is both unpredictable and twisted. The mesmerizing chaos they navigate is filled with unexpected turns, shocking revelations, and moral dilemmas. It challenges traditional notions of heroism and explores the darker aspects of human nature. The twisted world of The Boys keeps viewers on the edge of their seats, constantly questioning who to trust and what sacrifices are necessary in the pursuit of justice.

The Boys' journey into the mesmerizing chaos of a world dominated by corrupt supes is an exhilarating and darkly entertaining ride. As they strive to bring justice to a society plagued by unchecked power, The Boys face formidable challenges and confront their own demons. The complex characters, gripping plotlines, and twisted world make The Boys a must-watch series for fans of superhero stories with a dark and unpredictable twist. Strap in and get ready for a mesmerizing adventure as The Boys' journey begins in a world filled with chaos and the promise of redemption.

[spite-and-waffles]

"Why do you want Jason to keep killing and why are you so down on Bruce for not killing the Joker?? Do you really think vigilantes should take it on themselves to kill people?"

I think that wealth hoarding is an act of brutality, crime is the result of systemic violence and is also a social construct, legality has nothing to do with morality, and all cops are bastards. I think anything that tries to "fight crime" instead of addressing its systemic causes is copaganda, and society's most heinous atrocities on a mass scale is inflicted by the pen pushers in mega corporations and government, in perfectly legal ways. I think that it is the very function of the state as an entity to create marginalization and poverty. I think that having minors as sidekicks, super-powered or not, is reckless child endangerment.

But we have decided to fuck all of that and agree to the conceits of the Batverse, i.e cops are good but underpaid and underfunded, billionaire philanthropy is a thing that exists and Bruce's wealth isn't directly correlated to Gotham's poverty and crime, child superheroes are fine, and Batman doesn't permanently maim or accidentally kill people on a regular basis.

But Batman still doesn't ever resolve anything. Arkham and Blackgate both have revolving doors, organized crime still flourishes. The Joker regularly gets out and murders hundreds of people before being corralled and taken in. Rinse, repeat. It's the same unending grind of real life, except nothing works like real life. Whom is this empowering? Where is the satisfaction or vindication? What is the fucking point?

Given this state of affairs, why is it wrong for real life abuse survivors and marginalized people used to being collateral for profit or ideology, to want our own power fantasy? Why shouldn't Jason shoot rapists, decapitate mob bosses and actually protect and avenge innocent people? Jason, who, unlike Bruce, is a survivor of poverty and abuse himself and comes from the same community he wants to protect. Why is it wrong for him to kill his own murderer and give his audience the vindication and justice we deserve?

And in what universe is it wrong for a child to want a parent that will kill for them?

I suspend both my disbelief and beliefs to engage with the Batverse, but "if you kill a serial killer, you become as bad as a serial killer" is NOT A THING. There is absolutely no moral philosophy or ethical foundation you will find anywhere that will make that a legitimate argument. DC Comics pulled that one out of their ass for the express purpose of trying to justify the Joker's continued existence, which DOES NOT WORK because it has no narrative coherence. It is BAD STORYTELLING to overpower both your protagonist and your Villain Sue, paint yourself into a corner, and then slap on whatever rationale you can to keep that cash cow spinning for decades more.

TL;DR Batman should maybe solve some actual problems once in a while instead of expecting an A for effort, and Jason Todd should get to kill whichever scum of the universe crosses him. The end.

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

I recently found your account and I’ve binged all your Jason Todd work. You’ve quickly became one of my fav Jason writers!! You write him so well I’m obsessed 😍 Would you be able to do a fic with a female S/O who doesn’t want kids?? 👉👈 Adoptive or biological. I don’t want kids and there’s a severe lack of child-free fics so I’d really appreciate it 🥹 Thank you ♥️ Keep up the great work!!

Ari Note: Here ya go. It's a little Early for Thirst Trap Thursday buuuut. I think it fits Enjoy!💜

"So," the reporter asked, grinning like they were about to catch you in something, "I noticed you're not drinking."

"Nope," you answer, still smiling, acutely aware that they think they're about to say something about you being pregnant. And you groan internally. It gets old.

Like yeah. Jason Todd is a beautiful man. And yeah. You'd call him daddy. And yeah, he made jokes before about taking you home and getting you pregnant- despite having your tubes tied. But the jokes were just that. Jokes. He didn't want kids any more than you did.

He knew firsthand exactly how dangerous it was to have a vigilante parent. And you? You just liked being able to fuck, take naps, and get your hair done whenever you wanted without worrying about a sitter. You wanted freedom. And now that you had it, you were going to use it.

"So is there going to be a-"

"Not unless it's an immaculate conception. We took an abstinence pledge."

And as the reporter stands there sputtering awkwardly. Not expecting that answer, beside you you feel Jason choke back a laugh. Not just because it was ridiculous but because he was pretty sure that, despite his best efforts to clean you up after dragging you into a coat closet not 30 minutes earlier, you were probably still a mess. And he had your panties in his pocket.

"We really did," Jason said solemnly, nodding. "All those street preachers finally got to me."

"We're all netflix and no chill," you add.

"That would make a great T-shirt," Jason mused.

"I'mma make some for when we go-"

"Please don't," Bruce sighed, watching the reporter, now defeated as he shuffles away.

"Oh come on," you plead, "That wasn't even the meanest answer I could have given."

"It's true," Jason appealed, trying not to grin.

"No," Bruce said. "Just stop being-"

"You told me I can't drink at this one," you remind him, leaning into Jason's side when he puts an arm around your shoulder. "I can be sober or nice to the press. Not both."

And as Bruce walks away, pinching the Bridge of his nose Jason barks a laugh, "I can't believe he really was about to tell you to go order a drink."

"I know- I can't believe Dick actually owes me money already."

"He owes Alfred too- you did it in record time."

[marunalu]

Class 1A vs Deku arc literally undermined Deku's valid and noble reasons for leaving UA. Deku had trauma due to the war and had regrets about not being able to stop an incomplete Shigaraki. His fear of putting the people and his loved ones in danger after remembering what happened to Shoto, Bakutrash, Aizawa, GT, Nejire, Ryukyuu during the war was all the reasons he left UA. He already has lack of self worth due to being told worthless and useless and abused for 11yrs and when he became desperate to find Shigaraki it started to become worse with him not taking any breaks and all of this was before the encounter with Nagant . Watching Nagant explode and AFO's declaration only reinforced his fear and trauma and it's why he left all might. His state of mind became worse and he stopped caring about himself anymore.

However when class A arc started, all of his trauma, fear were thrown away. The arc painted Bakugou as innocent and an angel while blaming all might for Deku's lack of self worth when the person to really be blamed was Bakugou due to years of bullying, calling Deku useless and worthless, telling him to kill himself. The whole arc was a disgusting with Ochako and Iida agreeing with the trash when he mocked Deku. He also had the audacity to project himself on to Deku. Even Bakugou's apology was trash and Class A were just watching again. The most saddest part is that none of class A knows exactly what Bakugou did to Deku. They don't know that Deku's lack of not taking himself into account, his lack of self worth was a result of Bakugou's bullying, calling him useless and worthless. In the end the arc Undermined Deku's reason, his trauma and glorified his chief abuser.

The worst of it for me is what happened after Bakugou's apology which was narrative having Deku putting himself down and saying Class A were way ahead of him as Hero when they didn't do shit compared what Deku has done since the start. Then Deku Apologizes which was not necessary considering Deku was right to say they can't keep up. So what is Hori saying now? that Uraraka due her speech is a way better Hero than Deku? Bakugou is a better Hero than Deku ? Iida is a better Hero than Deku? Does Deku have to now learn on how to be a hero from class A when said class A didn't do anything compared what Deku has done?

Sorry for venting it's just i had High Hopes for the solo arc but am utterly disappointed with the story now. I understand Deku needs to share his burden with his friends but it should have been organic by making him realise that he Izuku (not Deku) matters and how much he means to them and that he can rely on them. Not by undermining his choices and reasons and especially not by putting him down.

Yeah the izuku solo/vigilantes arc had so much potential and hori did throw it out of the window! But honestly I think that was mostly his ex editors fault! Thanks god, that guy got replaced!

I agree with you and I understand why you feel so dissapointed and angry! I get why class a did what they did. They love izuku and wanted him back, but in my honest opinion they used - at least at first - the wrong methods. The 2 things that pissed me off the most, were first iida and ochako being SO FUCKING COLD to izuku at first and siding with bakugou, whos first action was to mock izuku again, when it was absolutely clear he wasnt in the right state and second, momo creating a fucking "asylum chair" they wanted to use to drug izuku and drag him back to ua against his will - she lost A LOT of my respect for her in that moment and I dont think she will ever win it back! I will not go into detail again, about everything wrong with bakugous apology! That whole abnormination of an apology was nothing more then the biggest insult to human intelligence and 95% of the fandom did eat that shit up!

[sil-te-plait-tue-moi]

Have you eaten anything today?

Quick summary: Recovering from the Cernavodă job, the team really settle into the roles of wanted vigilantes, and all try to make their peace with the fact that they’ve got another job coming up in under a month. The reader is trying to form closer bonds with the rest of them because of her distinct lack of any other friends (yes, this is a female reader – for my next series, I’ll do a gender-neutral reader; I underestimated the length of this series, not gonna lie).

Word count: 26.1K

Warnings: Lots of swearing (my Word document told me on multiple occasions that I would offend a lot of people with my choice in language); detailed mentions of a past eating disorder (sort of current as well); brief, brief mentions of self-harm; in-detail descriptions of violence and death;

A/N: For fuck’s sake, guys, this is getting out of hand. I’ve written more than 80,000 words for a fictional character who will never exist (and even if he was real, he’d be about twenty, thirty years older than me), and there's going to be so much more. I'm not even half-way into the plot that I’ve prepared. Those who are reading to see these guys fuck, be patient – I’m getting around to it, so, for now, you’ve got to settle for occasional masturbation scenes that are barely masturbation scenes. I have actually started an Ao3 account (https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohnoitsnina/pseuds/ohnoitsnina) and I also have a little Wattpad account to complete the big trio (https://www.wattpad.com/user/nonoitsnina; I don’t have any works up there yet, though), so go and give me a follow, please. :) Also, during this, there is dialogue in Romanian at the start and Italian by the middle, so crack open Google Translate, I guess. Anyway, please enjoy my story! (There’s a Taylor Swift song lyric reference in here, so see if you can find it.)

Chapters: Part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, part ten.

***

By the time we enter the safe house once more, golden and twinkling pride, glittering like a sharpened knife, is all that I can comprehend, not the others or the furniture or the walls near me, having surged above my head and swallowed my form like the broad ocean does to a tiny and insignificant crab – I’m practically swept away into that dangerous nothingness, claimed forever to that domain. For once, I’m actually happy. I’m always restrained around using that word: Happy. But I am. I feel happy. It swells and swells like some welcome parasite, starting at the centre of my body, right in my gut, and pushing out against the bounds and walls of my form, stretching the limits, and seeing just how much I can take before I combust into a state of perfect bliss. I’m happy. I can say that unironically as I undress in the bedroom – Almada’s in the shower, Benji’s busy collecting our things off of the coffee table and stashing them into our bags with Mashkov’s help, and Ethan’s also changing in the opposite corner of the room. I’m happy, I think to myself confidently as I slide myself into a pair of loose jeans and a thick, navy sweater.

I’m too occupied with desperately clinging onto this feeling, trying to repeat the fact that I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy in my head because I’m afraid that I’ll never experience this elation again, that I’ll fall back into the pit of despair that I’ve been living in for the most part of my life so far, that I barely even process the very real image of Ethan with his bare and naked torso out in the open while he’s fiddling with some green shirt in his hands. The muscles in his back, rippling and tightening as he fits his shirt over his head, are what snap me away from my increasingly mindless mantra. I flex my hands uncomfortably and avert my eyes, hastily gathering up my dirty clothes and dumping them in a messy pile upon the recently tidied beds, then leaving to the living space to check on Benji’s status. I shrug carefully past Almada (who’s damp and radiating warmth from his shower) and find Benji kneeling by the now-empty coffee table with his head in his hands – his teeth are grinding together viciously as he takes several deep breaths in and out. Mashkov is off to the side, zipping up the duffel bags for us, and has chosen to ignore Benji’s little breakdown. I catch her eye and make a face at her, trying to communicate something like “comfort him, for God’s sake” through looks and looks only. She raises her hands helplessly and leaves the room.

“The packing’s coming along great, then, I see,” I state plainly, squinting expectantly at the hunched man in order to tell if that, indeed, was the correct thing to say. Chances are that it wasn’t, but maybe it was. Maybe.

Benji unfurls from his position and takes my unsure expression in, then getting to his feet and moving his gaze to concentrate on the floor. “Yup, it’s great,” he says, but his nose sounds blocked, and his voice is slightly nasal. Are his eyes red? I’m too far away to tell, but I think that they are.

I lean forward, open my palms to face him and raise my eyebrows in a way that I hope comes across as encouraging rather than pressing.

He sighs defeatedly and rolls his eyes, letting it all come out in a lengthy ramble: “Well, it’s nothing really, but things are only gonna get worse from here if you really think about it. For one thing, we’re gonna be down a team member in Venice – Mashkov can’t come along ‘cause she’d be betraying her government, and we can’t exactly recruit any other people over there unless they’re civilians and, even if we do, the IMF will assume we’re keeping them, you know, hostage or something, and we’ll just up the vigorousness of the hunt for our heads. I just—” he pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut, “—I just don’t think that this is gonna go well. It won’t be long until the KGB find out that we interfered with one of their undercover missions and they start up a search for us as well. And we just messed with a terrorist organisation.” He rubs at his temple with one hand, then running it exasperatedly through his cropped hair. “If we don’t stay properly, properly hidden, then we’re dead.”

I grimace before saying in admittance, “You do have a point—”

“Points,” Benji corrects, hissing out the plural version like a snake would.

“Fine, points,” I sigh, rolling my eyes. “But you’ve gotta understand that we just pulled that job off. We’re fine, we’re alive. We’re gonna be fine.”

“Yeah,” Ethan says from behind me, entering the room with the bags of weaponry and ammunition in each of his hands. “We’re gonna look out for each other. I won’t let anything happen to you, don’t worry.”

A bold promise to make, I scoff internally, but it does wonders to calm Benji’s nerves – I can see the panic visibly melt off of his face into an expression of dependence and reliance. How nice it must be to trust someone so completely, so wholly. A rebellious spark of jealousy, envy, ignites somewhere hidden inside of me, some place impossible to reach. God, I wish I had that – I wish that I had someone who could take the wheel for a while and let me sleep in the passenger’s seat, comfortable and holding the surety that they’ll get me to where I’m wanting to go. And there’s also another thing that I wish I had instead of Benji, but it’s a little too selfish for me to admit clearly in my thoughts, so I’m going to say it quickly and quietly to myself once, and then I’ll let it go forever. (I’m jealous that Benji’s so close to Ethan and that I’m not. Even though I have mixed feelings, I still want to be emotionally intimate with Ethan, the Secretary’s golden boy, to know him inside out and have him know me as well – it must be some weird, self-destructive complex that’s making me feel this way; Ethan hasn’t exactly proved to be beneficial to my mental health so far.)

Benji leaves to get changed just as Almada’s finished doing so, the latter tapping Ethan on the shoulder lightly and telling him that it’s nearly five o’ clock and that we should all get going soon; the train leaves at quarter past six, and we’re driving to a station in a smaller city close by – just in case those IMF agents are tracking us as we speak, we don’t want to use the same train station twice.

Mashkov is observing us like a spider from inside its underground den, eyes beady and bright and piercing as she stands in the small doorway of her room with her arms folded neatly over her chest and her chin tilted upwards in superiority – I’m not sure what I expected from her, but definitely a little more life, perhaps a diversion from her usual senseless, emotionless nature. After all, we’ve spent a good week of intense emotions together and, you know, strong bonds can be forged between people in those kind of high-stress environments. But with Mashkov being Mashkov, she’s completely stone-faced as usual (I like how I use “as usual” like she’s some old friend that I’ve known for years, but no record of me is going to exist in her books at all after today). She watches as we scuttle about the apartment, gathering up our limited belongings and editing our appearances in the bathroom mirror – Almada and I stand next to each other and face the medicine cabinet, him putting on some cap that he apparently stole yesterday from the store next to the gas station at which we stopped for fuel yesterday after the Cernavodă job, and me fiddling with my hair and it’s parting until I figure out the angle where the majority of my face will be covered as needed. After adjusting the neckline of my sweater, I approach Mashkov with a bag slung heavily over my body, and I thank her and tell her goodbye out of common courtesy. At first, her grey eyes widen in surprise, almost as if she hadn’t expected me to be decent enough to offer her a farewell. “I’ll clean up the place after you’re gone,” she tells me sharply, choosing to totally ignore all (if any) of the sentimentality that we share between us. “I can’t keep you a secret from my government for much longer. And we can’t keep in contact.” Her eyes flitter down to the floor and she purses her lips before saying tautly, “Good luck.” I admire her for being able to erase any feelings of attachment from her mind – it seems to be serving her well.

We leave Mashkov and Cernavodă back in that measly, little flat that I didn’t really like anyways (some of the paint was peeling off the walls, and the ceiling had this strange, twisting texture to it that had made my eyes throb with confusion anytime I dared to look). Mashkov doesn’t waste time with lingering in the doorway, doesn’t bother with sending us down to the rental (the new one; after she found out that we were hiding from our government, Mashkov started to pay for everything that we needed, so every car, every item of clothing, even every toiletry has come out of her paycheck), so none of us bother with looking back. Well, none of us except sweet Almada who wears some pitiful, hopeful expression when craning, straining his neck upwards and to the side in order to catch one last glimpse of Mashkov’s slight, intimidating form. I grab the strap of his bag and drag him down the stairs because I know that he’ll call back to her if I don’t intervene.

Benji starts up the car after we all pile inside, face slack and his limbs limp like flaccid celery (excuse the crude synonym). Before he can pull out onto the road, I interrupt and say, “Wait, Benji.” He and Ethan both turn around to look at me as I continue in a sighing manner, “You can’t drive – I’ll do it.” I can see in the dark bags under his eyes that he’s just not up for this today. Besides, I’ll get to take a rest on the train. I’ll be fine – it’s not that far.

Benji is surprisingly quick to give in – he only protests for around five seconds before resigning and finally telling me, “Okay. I’m sorry.” I tell him that he shouldn’t be. I unbuckle my seatbelt and get ready to get out of the car. The engine rumbles beneath me like it’s alive. Benji and I open the doors, ready to switch, and I’m already stepping out onto the pavement when Ethan cuts in, voice dragging almost painfully against his throat:

“No, I’ll drive. I actually slept last night, so,” he offers in a way that’s somewhere right between condescending and generous (if anybody could be both simultaneously, it would be him). And because I’m selfish and exhausted, I don’t even try to convince him otherwise. Still, Benji and I switch places – I think he wants to take a nap or something, and he needs someone living and breathing to lean on as he does so. I climb into the front and Ethan does the same into the driver’s seat, groaning in the aching exhaustion we all share.

The car ride is astoundingly uneventful. Three minutes in, even though Benji is the one who wanted to rest his eyes for a little while, Almada takes a nap on his shoulder – and when I look into the back to check on them both like I’m a concerned parent making sure that their children aren’t dead but, instead, just sleeping, I find Benji resting his head on top of Almada’s. Ethan sees it through the rear-view mirror as well, and he chuckles quietly and smiles at me once I’m back in my seat and comfortable. And I feel like I’m in a good mood, so, instead of rolling my eyes at him or shaking my head and looking away or even glaring at him like all of my instincts are telling me to do, I smile back (fleetingly) and tell him, “I dunno how they can possibly sleep at a time like this. I dunno how they can sleep at all. You know, I shared a bed with Almada and then with Benji for a good amount of time before I realised that, wow, they both snore like they’re being throttled, for fuck’s sake.” Ethan laughs, and it comes thickly and straight from his chest – my toes curl in pride. “I’m not even kidding. But Benji especially. Even if I could sleep at night, I just wouldn’t be able to because of that godawful noise.”

“I know,” Ethan says, eyes smiling. “Benji and I lived together for two months, and we both know that the real reason I asked him to move out is not because I had just, you know, met Julia, but because of his snoring.” He pauses, then asking meaningfully, “You don’t sleep often, do you?”

What does he want to do with that? “No, I don’t,” I tell him, and the words come out harsh and cynical. “Neither do you.”

“I sleep.”

I scoff and stifle a laugh. “No, you don’t.”

“Well, I sleep more than you,” Ethan reasons, darting his green eyes over to me. “And I eat more than you.” This time, I actually do laugh. He smiles disbelievingly and carries on in a suiting voice, “I saw you go without eating anything yesterday. I don’t think you even drank anything.”

There’s a brief silence where he’s waiting for a reply, of which I have no idea how to formulate. Does he think that I have an eating disorder? Is that what this is? Because I don’t have one. My face practically goes into some sort of startled paralysis, and he glances to the road, to my face, to the road, to my face, again and again, until he finally picks up that there’s something wrong. The laughing gleam in his eyes fades back into worry and, as a few seconds pass, into sympathy. But I don’t let him get farther into the latter, cutting him off before he can say something else that’ll get on my nerves; “I don’t really—have an appetite when I’m on missions,” I tell him earnestly because it is the truth. “There’s always too much going on, and I still can’t keep up.”

And I don’t know why I thought that Ethan would just leave it alone at that (despite the many times that he’s pressed and pushed until the breaking point – it’s his job to do that, I know, but it’s still infuriating), but I’m still slightly shocked at how bold he is as he continues. “Well, we’re technically not a mission anymore,” he says, “so you can go find that appetite and, you know, eat.” This time, I choose not to reply because I don’t see the worth in it anymore, and I leave Ethan looking worriedly at me through the corner of his eye. How dare he suggest such a thing. Well, maybe he didn’t do it explicitly, but he was certainly thinking it. This isn’t exactly what I thought my day would come to, referencing the negative eating habits that I only clawed my way out of fairly recently (not that recently, don’t worry) and all, but here I am, my lip curled in slight disgust as I stare at Ethan incredulously. I don’t have an eating disorder. Fuck that and fuck him. Ethan doesn’t deserve my friendship (or maybe it’s the other way around – I’m still conflicted upon that matter). We stay there in silence, dreadfully aware of the space between us. Then, “Have you eaten today?” I tell him that, yes, I have—but I haven’t. The most I had was a glass of water in the morning in order to hydrate myself for the mission that would inevitably parch me. Ethan doesn’t seem to be convinced either, but he leaves it. None of my problems are worth his concern. He’s saved all of humanity from countless threats (and, no, I’m not exaggerating), and here he is, asking me whether or not I’ve eaten today. It’s so fucking stupid. He sighs, “I’m just worried about you, is all. You don’t sleep and you don’t eat – that’s not exactly healthy.”

“I don’t need you to worry about me,” I tell him. “Worry about yourself.” And I expect him to maybe defend himself, but only exhales in defeat, and he doesn’t press me for anything after my answer, so I turn my head away and watch the road and the trees and the sky speed past me in an incomprehensible blur.

When we arrive at the train station, it turns out that we have about a good hour and a half to kill and, because we’re relatively quick when boarding, Ethan and I decide to wait in the car as to not forcibly wake the others – none of us really got a good night’s sleep. Despite what Ethan said earlier, he didn’t either. He’s half-asleep with his chair reclined when Benji wakes up and asks me what time it is. “Five-ish,” I tell him inconclusively, unbothered to check my phone or something for a definite answer. He grunts stiffly in response, then realising that Almada’s still sleeping lopsidedly on his shoulder.

“He’s only a kid,” Benji chuckles as he takes a look outside of his window at the parking lot. “Remember when we were that age?”

“I actually really liked the Academy,” I reply, my mind drifting back to the days when I was living out my twenties, all but charmed by the romanticised prospect of being a secret agent – how childish. “I had a lot of friends back then.”

He barks out a laugh and retorts, “Well, I didn’t.” Ethan snaps out of his daze and, as soon as he realises the topic of the conversation, grins broadly and turns around to look at Benji. “I was pretty scrawny when I was younger, you know, and a few other trainees liked to pick on me every once in a while. But at the end of my first year, Ethan saw them having a go at me and scared every last one of ‘em off – he was in his final year at the time, and they all knew not to mess with a senior trainee like him.” I smile at the thought of this scene playing out – I can remember what young Ethan looked like, but what about Benji?—I’m having a hard time figuring it out. “Those guys sure were scared, weren’t they, Ethan?”

“Damn right, they were,” Ethan chuckles.

I grin. “God, what’d you tell ‘em?”

“It’s gonna sound really cheesy if I say it out loud,” he replies, his hand coming up to hide his flushing face. But Benji’s bringing out the encouragements, and I’m whipping out the pleas and the things I’d wilfully exchange to hear it, so he scratches the back of his neck and says, “Okay, just—” he looks pointedly at me, “—don’t laugh at me.” No promises. “I said something like, ‘I will superglue a pebble to the bottom of every shoe you have and will ever own.’”

I choke on my laugh and proceed into a coughing fit as Benji chuckles fondly from the back. “I’m sorry, what?” I ask him once I’ve recovered. “How the fuck did that work on them? It sounds like you’re threatening a seven-year-old.”

“It worked at the time, and that’s all that matters,” Ethan responds, deeply furrowing his brows and raising his hands in defence. “And twenty-eight-year-old me wasn’t exactly the best at conversation.” I find that hard to believe – even though Ethan left the Academy before I even arrived (I’m about seven years younger than him), it’s common knowledge among all that he graduated the top of his class by a mile, and it can therefore be derived that he was one hell of a public speaker; you don’t get that far without showing the qualities of leadership and authority, and you’ve got to be able to give orders confidently and assuredly in order to do that. He’s full of shit, Ethan is.

Benji seems to think so too, cackling and saying, “That is such a lie. I remember clearly that Kittridge asked you to give a speech when you graduated, and people gave you a standing ovation, for Christ’s sake.” I glance back at the stirring Almada, eyebrows carving up in pity as I see that his eyes are already opening, and his mouth is already gaping wide, wide open in a cavernous yawn. When the young agent inhales sharply and stretches open his eyes to wake himself up for good, I offer him a smile (because he deserves one, let’s be honest); he smiles back, even despite his fuzzy mind, and lifts himself off of Benji’s shoulder with a grunt.

“Okay, well,” Ethan saying softly, shaking his head with a reminiscent smile – why can’t we all just be our younger selves for one day; I was so much more carefree back then (I know that it’s hard to believe, but I really was more charismatic when I was younger), “my insults were off.” Oh, no shit. I’m about to open my mouth to say something else, perhaps comment again on his weak insult and maybe poke fun at him for it, because I don’t exactly want this insight into their lives to end – the person with whom I have the deepest conversations is the lady who sells newspapers just outside of the corner store back home, and it’s nice to feel at least a little bit personal with both of them. But Ethan opens the car door before I can do anything, ripping himself out of the nice moment and saying, “We should get going, now. I don’t wanna be late.” I nearly protest, but then I see that almost half an hour has passed – we still need to get something to eat before the train departs because, well, the ride is nearly twenty-nine hours long (glorious, I know); even I’ll try to eat something, if not for me and my own hunger, then for Ethan and to show him that I’m fine.

At our platform, large and stretching on and on for as far as the eye can see, Benji leaves to go buy a few sandwiches at a small, little bistro by the toilets, and I excuse myself from the others to go to the said bathroom. The walls are close and asylum-white about me, boxing together in a pressing enclosure that extends for metres on end, all down to some curious, metal doorway at the end of the hall that makes me tilt my head in interest – if I were to run down there at full speed, would I be able to reach that door before the years of my life drained out of me and I was left old and grey and dying? It isn’t a nice thought to linger about, and that hallway is messing with my brain, so I dart into the bathroom and away from its little optical illusion, gulping down any nausea that stemmed from its effects – I hold my breath in order to keep it from becoming shallow and rapid, trying to hold my head when standing in the long, long line of desperate individuals along the close wall of the corridor. Bombarded by my needy urge to just take a fucking piss, I almost forget about who I am. I enjoy these kind of moments, the little, distinctively normal ones that you’re so occupied with that you get too caught up in the mundaneness of it all. When the line doesn’t budge, I run on over to the men’s bathroom (of which, remarkably, has no line at all), ignoring all of the confused shouts from those who see me, and bolt myself into the cubicle, sighing in satisfaction when I finally get the release that I’ve been craving for what?—ten minutes, now? When I check my phone, it turns out only ten minutes passed during the time I was waiting in the line. Maybe I could stay here for a while more, I think to myself. Just sitting on this cold, crooked toilet seat with sodden strips of tissue plastered upon the linoleum floor, the light above my stall flickering ominously as I stare up at it with glaring eyes. Hmm. Perhaps it’s not the best place to loiter.

I keep my eyes fixed on the scuffed floor and stride out of the cubicle once I’m finished, the loud flush of the toilet (as well as the puzzled eyes of the other people in here) following my hurried footsteps as I make for the sink and wash my hands, then rushing out of there like my life depends on it.

All of the others are waiting for me when I escape the hallway, Almada tapping Benji on the back and pointing my way once he spots me through the crowd, eyes lighting up like a dog when it sees its owner after a long period of time. Ethan shakes his head disapprovingly and flails his hands, letting them flop exaggeratedly to his sides as he calls to me, “Come on, the train got here early.”

“Sorry,” I say meekly, taking up a bag from by their feet and draping it over my chest. “The line was really long.” He doesn’t look impressed, only jerking his head towards the train behind him, its engine and whistles and ticketmen all blending together in some ear-splitting, unpleasant cacophony of disordered order. The others pack together, closely around me, so that none of us get lost in the steadily growing swarm of people that gather around this one car – Almada grabs my bag, and Benji grips his shoulder, and Ethan politely clears the way for us all by shouldering his way through the crowd and offering a few weak apologies to those who swear and cuss and damn him for cutting through. I look over my shoulder ask Almada where the tickets are, but he doesn’t hear me, face screwing up in confusion and pressing a bit closer in order to catch what I said. I ask him again, this time yelling right into his ear and sparing no volume whatsoever, having to compete with the unforgivable chatter of everyone else – he nods in acknowledgement and asks Benji over his shoulder for the tickets. Ethan is right by the entrance by now, climbing up onto the train’s steep, dark-carpeted steps, offering the ticketman a smile and a “good afternoon” in Romanian, all the inflections and thicknesses as perfect as ever. I prop my foot up on the step behind him, bridged over the pitch-black gap right between the train and the platform, twisting my torso around and watching Benji hand the tickets to Almada, then to me, then taking them and giving them dutifully to Ethan.

Based solely on the movement of his lips, I see the ticketman ask Ethan, “Familia ta?”

And Ethan replies, “Da – soția mea și frații ei.”

When I know that he’s not looking, I smile. Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true, if we were just a normal family on a normal trip with normal intentions and hopes and dreams? I can have that one day, maybe, but it’s nice to be the fool, even just for a few heartbeats. The world seems to quieten when I catch Ethan looking down modestly at the floor with a small smile on his face as well – God, he’s a great actor; not everyone can just slip into an entirely different personality, an entirely different character, as so fluidly at that. Then again, he’s not just everyone. He’s a goddamn legend. When he finishes up with the ticketman and, since there’s some prick trying to shove past him, reaches behind him and stretches out his hand to me—and I take it, and it’s warm and large and envelops my own like a hot summer’s day. I smile at the ticketman as I file past him, the others following shortly inside and copying my actions. Ethan tightens his hold on my hand as he guides me into the aisle, not once faltering his touch, not even when we have to slink by people in the narrow, narrow lane. When we reach the row of seats further down and I’m packing my bag into the overhead compartment, he touches my arm gently – I jump ever so slightly, so he apologises – and hands me a sandwich box with the instructions of: “Eat it and try and get some sleep.” He ducks his head down to catch my line of sight when I try to avoid his serious gaze. “Please.” Then, he moves to sit across the aisle by Benji. I take the window seat. I need to distance myself.

As soon as I slump in my seat, my entire body goes slack, muscles relaxing and turning to jelly as I put the sandwich into the little net in front of me, then sighing sharply through my nose and letting myself try to relax – there’s nothing to worry about for the next whole month or so; the next attack is in February, and we’ve already proved to ourselves that we can certainly handle the stress. Then again, we’re cut off from a lot of resources, maybe even more so than before. Like Mashkov said, she can’t keep us a secret from her government for long – they’ll report us to other countries before we know it, labelling us as vicious criminals who are interfering with known terrorists, and we’ll be even more restricted in our choices and movement and freedom that we already are, unable to walk down a street without the fear of a camera capturing our identities. But, you know, the distorting scenery (of the station melting away into the grey city makes everything better. Ah, it’s just fucking great – I’ve never been so relaxed. My eyes start to ache and throb, and the right side (the ride side specifically) of my brain begins to hurt, that cloudy sort of hurt that isn’t sharp enough to be too bothered about. I stretch my eyes open, squint them shut, stretch my eyes open, squint them shut. Oh, I just wanted to rest – why is the headache deciding to arrive only now? I do my best to work the twinge away from my eyes by focusing on the small, little, fine details of the passing trees and buildings – for the apartment complexes, I try to make out the depth and quality of the window frames, what evening meal a family is eating in the amber-lit dining room, and which subject that student is cramming for on their desk in the window; for the trees, I watch the birds tuck into their spiny nests, the twisting branches and twigs that reach up to grab at the dimming sky, the defined lines and wrinkles that run along the length of towering and squat trees alike. But the headache persists, pounding and pounding relentlessly against the restraints of my mind. The green things eat away at the city until all I can remember is flat, damp plains edged with melted snow.

Then, it clicks for me, the reason why the muscles in my neck are still strained and why the urge to gnaw at my fingernails is starting to win me over and why my jaw is miraculously clenched shut: Almada has been chattering away about everything and anything that comes to his mind for, God, I don’t know—a solid fifteen minutes by now. I peel my eyes away from the window, an agitated and slightly disbelieving scowl pulling at my features, and I turn to look at Almada who’s mumbling on and on about how he really misses this shabby, little bar by his apartment back at home that he attends religiously every week with his friends (he’s pretty sure that the bartender fancies him, and that’s why he gets free drinks sometimes) and he tells me about how he’s going to take some girl there once he gets home from this whole job. I raise my legs up onto the seat and cross them beneath me, forcing my temple right up against the vibrating pane of glass. God, I know that he’s bored and everything (if this is his way of coping, the next day is going to leave me begging for the sweet release of death), but he wasn’t nearly this chatty during the car rides in which I sat beside him.

“You got anyone to go back to? You got a family?” I hear him ask me once he realises that I’m back in the present, now – only then do I realise that he must have been completely mindless in his talking, a nervous habit or something (though, I’m not quite sure what he’s nervous about).

But replying is the only way to shut him the fuck up, so I say to him, “No.” And I think that it’s funny and cruel that a single word can come out so bitter and distasteful and make another human being’s face fall so completely. I inhale deeply, stetch my eyes open as wide as they can go once again, and swivel in my chair so that my entire body is faced towards him. “Sorry, I have a headache,” I give him lamely as my excuse, the gritted edge to my voice still not yet lost. Almada frowns, but he leans nearer to me in interest – I haven’t talked about my family at all, so he must be jumping at the chance to learn about the personal life of his more senior agent – not agent, actually, but whatever the fuck I am, what we all are, right now. I don’t know what’s going through his brain, of course, but I can make a good estimate from my previous experiences of desperately wanting to gain the approval of my supervisors back at the agency. So, I set it out plain and simple for him: “My parents are dead, and I don’t have any siblings.” Why complicate it, hmm? I’m not particularly sad that they’re dead – they weren’t the nicest of people, let alone the best of parents. But they kept me alive during my childhood and, even despite their constant arguing and yelling and fighting and threats to leave it all behind and start somewhere anew, they were still married when they died – they didn’t want me to be a child of divorce (actually, it was more to save their reputations with their parents and their friends, but I like to think that they cared for me more than I knew), and so they pretended that our lives were perfect and their relationship was of the same nature. God, I hated them. I really did. They were both narcissists who’d point out all my flaws and all the things that I did wrong. And I didn’t even notice that it wasn’t normal until I was fifteen.

When I manage to drag myself out of my incredibly self-centred thoughts, I notice that Almada’s got pity, of all things, glimmering in the depths of his nut-brown eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says unsurely, picking at his nail beds.

I bring my fingertips up to pull at my eyebrows and the skin around my eyes, feeling the hammering and thumping of the headache only grow and grow as this conversation goes on and on. But he’s near to letting up, and I sort of feel guilty about snapping at him, so I ask, “What about your folks? Do they know about your kind of work?”

“Oh, I’m a foster kid,” he replies with a shallow smile. “And they don’t know about my job, you know, obviously. I actually wanted to be an astronaut at first. But my foster parents said to be realistic.” I try to imagine Almada as a man in a spacesuit among the big stretch of black up there and the speckled stars that interrupt its body, and I almost start to believe that he actually could’ve done it, he actually could’ve become an astronaut (he’s certainly got the required inquisitiveness, alright), but then my head starts to strain again. Almada grins as he tells me, “My birth mother always told me that I could do it, though. Then again, she was a literal crackhead, so.” Oh, that’s not great. That’s not ideal. He must pick up on my change of expression because he laughs in good nature and says, “Yeah, I didn’t love that. Didn’t even like it a little bit, could you believe?”

I hum in response and flop back into the correct position on my seat. God, it feels like someone’s just split open my head with a goddamn axe and is prying me open and reaching into my body cavity, grasping at my consciousness like someone grasps at mist or filtering and dry, dry sand. Just try and sleep. Maybe drink something, actually. Yes, I should drink some water. My head lolls back sickly as I ask Almada, “D’you have any water? I need water, for—” I swallow a copious amount of saliva and vile bacteria as it all floods my mouth like I’m about to hurl my guts or something, “—Christ’s sake.” My arms come to cradle my abdomen as if I have a baby growing in there, nausea building up pressure in there like a volcano on the brink of eruption. No. Nope, I am not throwing up today, thank you very much. I just wanted a rest, goddammit; why can’t I have just that? Just one rest before we arrive in Venice – that’s all I want. Fuck, can’t someone just take away my damn headache?

“I don’t think we have any,” Almada replies, oblivious to my writhing and squirming. I swear to God, if I throw up, I’m throwing up on him. “I dunno if you mind me asking, but why did you get into this work in the first place? I just want to know about, like, the greater picture because, I’m gonna be honest with you, I’m having a hard time finding motivation right now and I need a wake-up call—”

“Oh, my God,” I exclaim, cutting him off. I shush him vigorously, then hissing at him, “Can you just—?” I bring my fist up beside my head as I glare at him, and I cramp it up into a claw, shaking it to accentuate my annoyance. Shut the fuck up – that’s what I really want to say, but it would be a touch too much for the kid. I just asked him for some water. Just some goddamn water. “You know what? I’ll be right back – I’m going to the bathroom.” I get to my feet a little too spiritedly due to my flexing muscles, so I thud harshly against the back of the seat in front of me, grunting agitatedly in pain. I wave away his attempts to help me back into my seat, and I shove past him and into the aisle instead – Ethan and Benji both look up at me concernedly when I turn to face them with my professional glower and my ducked head and raised shoulders and clenched fists and swaying legs, so I roll my eyes and make forwards for the toilets. My hands clamp down firmly on the corners of strangers’ seats as I clamber along my path, floor dipping treacherously beneath my feet and sparing no mercy for the tortured sweat upon my forehead. Why the hell am I sick? I only throw up twice a year (that is, when I don’t make myself do it – I don’t do it anymore, but, wow, I used to do it more often than I like to tell myself and that shrink that I was seeing a while back), and it never happens this—this early on.

By the time I’m halfway down the aisle, I abandon all sense of self-respect and rush to the toilet. I think I’m going to throw up. And this suspicion is confirmed when I begin to retch and gag – I push past some lady with hair as dark and rich as the night sky, and I make for the toilet cubicle, grateful to God that everyone was more fortunate than I as to not get a cursed headache and want nothing more than to hurl their guts out into a mediocrely cleaned toilet bowl – there’s no queue at all, you see, so I’m allowed to fling myself in the damn thing and bolt the door. I put my head into the ceramic bowl, hands gripping at the rim of it, and start to pant weakly, my own hot, foul-smelling breaths fanning back onto my face. “Fuck,” I cuss. This is an all-time low for me, you see: Throwing up in a public restroom with my knees soaked in either water or something else that I’m not quite ready to define just yet. Actually, maybe not an all-time low – it’s just a low. I’ve been in much worse situations now that I think about it. I can’t complain if I’ve been put here instead of the much less favourable jail cell or, to hell with it, a fucking grave. “Fuck, fuck, shit, fuck,” I continue, slamming my fist onto the seat of the toilet.

“Hey,” I hear Ethan’s distinctive voice say through the door after calling my name, “are you in there?”

“No, dipshit, it’s the other person that you saw storm off, looking like a piece of shit,” I bitterly remark, my voice echoing about the bowl as I refuse to let my head up in case the vomit decides to regurgitate itself up here. “Just go away, will you?”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, just leave me the fuck alone,” I groan. When I hear him sigh dissatisfiedly, I roll my eyes and tell him, “I’ll be out in a minute. Go back to your seat.” That’s what he wants to hear, isn’t it? He wants to hear a rational reason for why he isn’t needed here, so I gave it to him. Now, is he going to leave or what? What will it take, goddammit? My throat starts to taste like bile, so I open my mouth and try to make myself gag into the sterile water that hangs about at the bottom of the bowl.

There’s a sliding noise that scrapes against the shut door (like Ethan’s just stroked the thing like he’s saying goodbye to an old friend) and then receding footsteps. I mean, there’s no verbal farewell, but it’ll do. Never mind the scowl that finds my face again – I was expecting at least some sort of kind gesture. This is Ethan Hunt, after all, known for his compassion and empathy even out in the darkest, most dangerous of places that would break any lesser of a person and turn them into nothing short of a monster. But I don’t linger on that for long. No, instead, I stick two fingers into my mouth and prod at the back of my throat just like I used to do after a particularly large meal that I felt particular guilty about consuming (this was years ago), and I retch grossly, body convulsing in that horrid way that I used to know so well. Just throw it up and it’ll all feel better, I tell myself. But what is there to throw up? I haven’t eaten anything at all today – what is there to throw up? Nevertheless, I keep prodding and gagging and prodding and gagging – it’s always taken me a while to throw up on purpose; I’ve never understood films and books where people can stick their fingers down their throats only once and have the most magnificent puke they’ve had in their entire lives – until it spills out of me in one go, splashing deep and smooth into the toilet bowl. I make sure that my head is really well buried in there and that my hair is out of my face – there won’t be any mess, only a smell.

I stay there and just breathe for another minute or two. I hate that feeling that never fails to get to me after throwing up, like nothing and no-one as gross and pathetic and—and discardable and pitiful as me has ever walked the planet until now, until my very existence came into happening. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and I lean away from the toilet bowl and let my back fall against the locked cabinets beneath the sink, those silver handles digging into my shoulder blades. Breathe and breathe and breathe some more – I sound like I’m half-drowned. My limbs feel weak and useless when I try to get up the first time, not all that different the second time around (though I’m successful in my attempts).

I flush the toilet, then turning around to gargle my mouth nice and thoroughly, and I wash my face from that sallow, ashen look. I’m just about to reach for that terrible, one-ply toilet paper to dab at my skin when there’s a knock at the door. I cry, “Fuck off, Ethan.”

“Sorry,” a feminine voice says amusedly. “I was just wondering if you’re okay. I heard you throwing up, and it didn’t sound fun.” There’s a warm, pleasant accent that dances in her words, and it makes the tough, metal-tasting coil in my stomach (the remnants of whatever sickness I caught earlier) unfurl like a flower does its soft petals. “And I don’t want to bother you, but are you finished yet? I really need to go.”

I sigh. “Yeah, sorry, I’m just washing my hands and all that. And it does smell like vomit in here, so I’m sorry in advance.” I undo the lock on the door, jamming it violently to the side because of its stubbornness and unwillingness to budge, and am met with a woman with soft, dark eyes and soft, dark hair and soft, dark skin – she smiles at me and pulls her loose-knitted, orange cardigan tighter over her body. Had my gut decided not to pester me with alarm, I would’ve smiled back – there’s just something about how nice she seems that doesn’t do shit to convince me; she lacks sincerity in her eyes. So, I give her that polite smile that I was weary about as to not suggest to her that I’m anything other than just a normal civilian with a civilian life. Get away from her, my gut is screaming at me. And I’m trained to follow a gut feeling, so I slide past her and avoid her eyes as I do so—but she grabs my wrist roughly in her hand. And I instinctively motion my compromised hand over to the outside so that hers is wrenched over and forced to let me go; now, I hold her wrist instead. The woman’s other hand darts forward, quick as lightning, to slice down on the crook of my arm, and my grip falters – she tries to yank her hand away, but it doesn’t work, so she reaches for my left shoulder to push me back. Before she has the chance to, I use my other hand to smack it out of the way, then tugging unkindly on her hand to turn her around and hold her arm up against her back in the perfect position to break it. My face perfectly straight (almost emotionless), I pin her wrist right up against her shoulder blades, using my other hand to rest palm-flat against the base of her elbow, ready to strike sharply upwards. I ask incredulously, “I’m sorry, what the fuck? I just threw up – can you choose a better time, please?”

The woman replies with a brutal jab of her free elbow into my ribs, then using my brief doubling over in pain to free herself from my hold. “I need you to come with me,” she says as she puts her fists up in an on-guard by the sides of her face, raising her shoulders like a boxer – she looks light on her feet; I should just run now, shouldn’t I?

“I don’t really want to do that,” I grit. If I make it into the car, she’ll give up or at least lessen the intensity of her pursuit – I glance at the rows and rows of bored-looking people out in the car to my right. I can’t run because she’ll run if I do, and then what? My eyes snag on the woman’s bulky watch as she fiddles with the little crown of the thing. I try to swivel upon my heels and stride right into the car, but, just as I turn to face that aisle, some turgid wire is wrapped around my neck and jerking me backwards into that secluded area just around the corner. My breath expands and expands in my throat until the pressure is enough to instigate a few panicked tears to sheen across my glazing eyes – fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, this isn’t meant to happen. I wriggle both of my hands under the garrotting wire and try to push it away from strangling my neck, but that woman has pulled it too tight and, with her leg curled around my thigh, it’s impossible for me to escape. I reach a hand behind my shoulder and feel about for her wrist – my fingers fumbles across the cold steel of her watch and over a wire that extends out of the crown and around my fucking neck. Scrunching my face up in determination, I bring my other hand to meet with this one in a lock around her wrist, and I lurch forward abruptly, throwing her weight over my shoulder successfully. I watch as she thuds with a grunt to the floor, torso sprawled right in the middle of the doorway – the passengers at the front glance from her to me with wide eyes, but I just step over her winded body and past them, marching over to Almada and shaking him from this daze that he seems to be in.

He notices right away, from the urgency in my grasping hands and or maybe from my hard eyes, that something’s wrong, backbone perking upright as it turns to a soldier’s metal one, and he says, “What happened?”

“I got attacked by some woman,” I tell him and, when I dart my eyes over my shoulder back to that doorway and find her all but gone, I shove myself into my seat – I don’t want to be identifiable, now, and I need to hide my face quickly. “Where’s your cap? Put on your cap,” I whisper to Almada, then leaning forward and over his lap to check the whereabouts of that woman; he says it’s just in the seat pocket in front of him, so I get up from his lap and let him put it on. Then, I tap and push at his shoulder rapidly, hissing to him, “Tell Ethan. Tell Ethan that there’s a woman in her early thirties, about five foot five, dark, straight hair, dark skin, slim build, and Southeast Asian, I think – see if he knows anything about her, if he’s seen her.” When Almada hesitates, glancing at me with perplexed eyes like I’ve gone crazy, I punch him roughly in the arm that’s closest to me and growl, “Now, goddammit.”

Almada complies instantly after that, bending across the gap of the aisle and racking Ethan’s arm as I peer over the rim of my seat, scanning my acute vision over the contents of the train car – she could be one of the passengers, for all I know, with her head covered with a hat or a hood and with her nose stuck in a book, in a newspaper, in a laptop that she’s been using to watch us all this while. God, this isn’t good. This isn’t great. I find my fingers clawing into the fabric of the seat, and I have to snag them jaggedly, one by one, away from it. I press my back into my own seat and try to calm my accelerating heartrate by breathing leisurely in through the nose and then out from the mouth. Bright-eyed and attentive, Almada turns back to me and says, “She’s from the IMF – that’s what Ethan says. She was there at Cernavodă.” I rest my forearms on my knees and lean myself forwards, only to meet Ethan sitting in exactly the same position – his face is drawn thin and sombre. I frown. Almada isn’t finished with his deliverance: “She’s probably not alone.”

We need to get off of here. But, fuck, the next stop isn’t until fifteen hours when the train will arrive at Budapest-Keleti in Hungary.

“We’ll get off in Budapest and travel by car to Venice. Actually, no, we’ll drive to—to Kranj in Slovenia, and we’ll wait out a while over there,” Ethan says lowly, glancing fleetingly over his shoulder at a lumbering man who passes him on his way to the back of the train – I can barely hear anything he says, and I squint my eyes and dip my ear and inch closer (while still maintaining the proper posture in my seat) to try and receive what he says in better and finer detail. “But,” he begins, then gulping thickly; “But I don’t—how are we gonna stay out of sight? We’ve got fifteen hours and,” he shakes his head and pauses (he isn’t used to asking questions; others usually come to him for advice, for answers), “how—are we gonna stay out of sight?”

I run a hand harshly through my hair and pull at the roots in order to wake myself up – I don’t feel nearly as panicked as I should right now – and then tell him as clearly yet quietly as I’m able to, “We can’t get off, so we’ll just have to stay here and hope that they’re smart enough not to attack us in front of all these people.”

Almada nearly cries out, “What if they’re not, though? What if they shoot us and run, or poison us, or stab us?”

“They won’t do that,” Ethan coaxes, more comfortable in his skin now that he’s back in his element as the teacher, not the student. “There are cameras and people everywhere, and, if just one of us is found dead, the train will stop for an investigation – they’d risk getting caught and losing sight of the rest of us.” I nod in agreement, and the dread dissolves off of Almada’s face. “We just have to, like—” he darts his eyes over to me, “—like you said, hope that they’re smart enough not to attack us in front of all these people.”

And that’s just what we do – I collapse into my seat and shut my eyes, working out the strange vertigo little by little and imagining that I’m submerged deep underground into warm, bubbling mud. I don’t sleep and I don’t think. I just lay there in the mud, slowing my breathing and keeping my muscles still. I know that it’s dangerous – hell, those IMF agents most likely have eyes on us right this moment if they’re half as good and capable as our team is. I wonder if they’re watching me breathing and shifting and swallowing as of now. Are they sat in some cubicle, some storage room, gathered around their techie and observing me on a computer screen like I’m an animal in a zoo? No. No, better not think about that. Instead, I’ll immerse myself back into that mud, deeper and deeper and deeper.

When I open my eyes again, Almada is asleep. The sky outside is dreadfully dark, no stars and no moon in sight, extending black on forever and ever. The silhouettes of the trees and hills and pylons cut into the matted clouds, looming up to heaven, all disfigured and vague and blurred. What time is it? I tilt my head to look at Ethan – I’ve found that I can always tell the time just by looking at him; he’s wide awake if it’s late in the night or early in the morning, and he’s tired-looking and stubborn if it’s the afternoon. And he’s perched in his seat with his eyes as vivid as the engulfing black outside is overwhelming, sure enough. I shift my attention over to Benji – he’s gradually, gradually nodding off onto Ethan’s shoulder. I shouldn’t have closed my eyes, I think to myself as I sigh and give my limbs a good stretch; Ethan’s probably been awake this whole time, keeping watch when no-one else would. I didn’t even give one thought to volunteering myself as a lookout. I watch Ethan stare aimlessly at the seat in front of him. I don’t like watching him, particularly, but he’s just easy on the eyes – I can physically feel that throbbing ache dissipate away from the front of my brain whenever I follow the lines, sweet and harsh, of his face. I hope that he still thinks I’m asleep – this is pretty nice. Maybe I can just continue looking at him for a little while longer. For the sake of my physical relief, of course.

Then, Ethan meets my stare out of the corner of his eyes – I look away as quickly as I can, and I hide my face in my right hand, now following the ledge of the window beside me. My neck feels hot and thick and awkward, like my neck is specifically and inherently wrong and shouldn’t even exist in the first place, so I roll my head back and try to slant it into a more—a more normal angle. I feel like my clothes are starting to stick to me. Do I smell? My hair seems to me that it’s being weighed down with dark, stiff grease, and my skin is layered in something warm and insulating, the feeling clogging every single one of my pores and suffocating me torturously. God, how much longer do I have to stay on this fucking train? And so, I check for myself, pulling out my phone (to myself, I thank Mashkov for it – she’s the one who nicked it for me a while back) and noting that we’re only about fifteen minutes from our stop. My first instinct was to ask Ethan and have him do the work for me, but, look, I checked for myself. I need to start taking care of myself again – this whole mission has tampered with my head, my habits, my life; I need to get everything under control as soon as possible. That way, it’ll be easier to pretend that everything in my professional sector is fine.

I debate whether or not to close my eyes again, but I decide against it – when I take a quick look around the train out of anxiety that, yes, someone is watching me and someone is plotting to kill me at this very second (because, well, people are trying to kill me; I was fucking strangled, for Christ’s sake), a few people look back; first, there’s a bald man in a contrasting (eye-prickingly so) plaid shirt and who wears thick-rimmed, black glasses, and there’s a young teenager who gives me a dirty look, and also an old woman with a psychedelically patterned skirt that falls down to her ankles, and, finally, a young woman with striking blue eyes. None of them look remotely close to the person who tried to throttle me, but, hell, they could all still be working with her. Maybe they’re communicating with each other right now, through their phones, through their laptops, through little earpieces and stolen whispers. And if I think about it a little harder, aren’t they all in the perfect formation to close in on us if needed? All of them are dotted around, but they sit in a general circular fashion with the four of us at the very centre. They could cut off our exits and have us dead in under a second flat.

Fucking hell, just calm down. That’s not going to happen. We’ll be fine. Even though I keep repeating that to myself under my breath over and over again until I sound like an insane person, I’m still not convinced – my leg is bouncing restlessly, so fast that it dares to challenge the rate at which a hummingbird beats its wings, and I have to swallow every five seconds in order to prevent my mouth and lips from growing drier than the Sahara Desert. None of that is going to happen. The train will stop in—ten minutes, now, and we’ll get off just fine. Those IMF agents won’t be able to find us. We’ll get a cab, and we’ll find someplace safe in Kranj, a nice apartment with an indifferent landlord who doesn’t care that we hand them the month’s rent in cash up front. The weather will be vicious, though, with harsh winds lashing at trees and buildings alike, with rain spattering all over with no exceptions, with the sun leaving the world defenceless and waiting to die at the storm’s hand. But I don’t know – that’s what the forecast says. The raindrops will be firing like bullets at the taxi’s windshield, hailing like some salvo on the doorstep of that apartment that we’ll rant out, battling with the strength of the building’s foundation and threatening to uproot it from its home on the ground. It’ll go exactly like that. I grab my knees in my hands, and I press them together to stop them from bouncing about nervously.

The train draws to a screeching halt. I fumble forwards and quickly finish my sandwich.

***

This morning, I woke up and went to the market with Benji. The light in the town square was almost stifling, expanding the edges of it until they were filled to the brim with liquid joy and enjoyment – it’s the only way I can describe it. It was airy and ethereal and otherworldly. The colourful shaders of the stalls were flooded and streaming with sunlight, spilling onto anybody who happened to stray out from under the friendly shade and into the dreadful inbetween. I happened to do so as Benji was bargaining with a fishmonger over the price of two seabass – it was like my body had been blessed; I lingered for a good ten seconds more in that beautiful light before Benji motioned me over to the bread stall. And when we were strolling on back to our apartment, we laughed a little bit about our situation, made fun of where we are in life and what we could have but don’t, and stopped at some corner store to purchase a pair of sunglasses for Ethan. It was Benji who insisted upon it, and I only complied – I followed him into the store and watched him carefully select the pair of aviators that, he said, felt the least cheap to him. “Ethan had a pair of these a year back,” Benji said to me as the cashier put his money into the register. “He broke them on a mission and hasn’t really had the time to get a replacement.” I narrowed my eyes at the flush that had been creeping up his neck. After that, we reached our tall, peach, scuffed building (the one with the lovely, white crown moulding, and the wooden, brown shutters, and the two intricately wired balconies out front), and I let us in after fiddling with the keys for far too long. We took the staircase up – neither of us like the feeling of that elevator; I say that it’s far too old to be reliable, and Benji says that it’s got to be at least a little bit haunted.

With such a nice start to the day, what Ethan’s just said to me is beyond depressing. The words are still swimming around in my brain, begging to be processed and allowed into my filed-away thoughts, exhausted at having to face the mental extremities of my mind. And Ethan has his eyes squinted and is biting his lip in apprehension – he knows that I’m playing around with the prospect of being difficult on purpose, acting out because this is just absolute bullshit, and I could certainly make the next few days very hard for him, indeed; maybe I won’t necessarily want to, but it’d be an after-effect, nevertheless. “God, say something, will you?” He scoffs, running a hand through his hair and exhaling forcedly. “It’s not the worst news in the world.”

Oh, my God, yes, it is. I bring my feet up on the armchair, letting one of my legs sprawl across the entire length of it – I bite and nip at my fingernails as I try to find the words to say. I can’t do something too irrational (even though this deserves an irrational reaction; it would be perfectly rational to enact an irrational reaction) because it might set him off on me. But, you know, I think that’s over. Things have been pretty neutral between us over the past few days – there’s not been much of note, but we did have a nice conversation about dumb shit that we’ve done on missions (I found myself smiling at his smile, and vice versa; my face ached afterwards when I retreated for the night to mine and Almada’s bedroom). So, maybe he can handle just a little bit of fire. It wouldn’t be enough to burn him – it’d just remind him how sharp of a tongue I possess.

“You’re so full of shit that it’s not even funny anymore, Hunt,” I say wryly with a grin. I watch as he pretends to be fed-up, throwing his arms up in defeat, but I’m not fooled even for a second; he’s smiling, for God’s sake. I can see it from under his hand that tries to hide it. But I know that he is annoyed – I used his last name again. I’ve been avoiding addressing him by name in general, but the statement seemed to need it as an essential – I needed to really push my point. “No, I’m serious—” (I’m really not). “I’m gonna put some dirt into your mouth if you’re not careful.”

Ethan starts to pace about in the metre directly in front of me, beginning to say, “Well, I was on Interpol’s most wanted for a good few days back in 2006.” I raise my eyebrows, and my grin widens – I remember that very clearly, but I thought that it was just a rumour, a story created by the IMF to push Ethan onto an even higher pedestal than he was already residing on (which they’d actually done before, mind you). “And I came out of it just fine. Then again, I had been framed—so I had to do what I did in order to clear my name. We’re just acting independently and by our own free will. We’re vigilantes. Interpol’s completely justified with putting us on their list.” He isn’t exactly doing well to soothe my nerves. His hand covers his mouth and rubs there anxiously as he tries to formulate his inner thoughts in a cohesive way – that’s one thing that I like about him: He always thinks before he acts. And if not thoroughly, at least a little bit (unlike myself). “But we’re justified as well,” he says. “The IMF shouldn’t have taken us off that case in the first place. And we’re trying to escape a—” (he chuckles), “a quite lengthy prison sentence, here, and we’re doing that by fixing the mess that we made in the first place. That shouldn’t be classed as bad, should it?” I shake my head. “Right. Right.”

“Stop doubting yourself on this,” I tell him. “We all made the right decision – I’m sure of it. We’d rather be here than rotting away in jail.” Now, it’s his turn to nod half-heartedly.

He sits himself down in the armchair on the other side of the aged fireplace, resting one of his ankles on top of his knee and holding it in place with his hand as he cups his face, still covering that mouth of his, in the one that he rests on the support. He sighs brokenly as he says, “We can’t use any intelligence contacts anymore. Not from anywhere. And my plan was to recruit a government agent from each of the targeted countries, and to use them as a consultant, essentially.” He sighs again – that sure is a lot of sighs. “But—we can’t do that—anymore.”

“It’s fine,” I assure him – internally, I’m a little shocked that it’s me who’s comforting him; normally, it’s the other way around because he’s the more empathetic out of the both of us (I’m not ignorant enough as to refuse and deny that). He must feel so out of control right now if he’s resorting to receiving advice from me of all people. Even Almada would be more capable at this. Still, I persevere because I can’t have Ethan descending into a nervous breakdown just days before we’re due to stop another attack (and we have no idea what it concerns – without someone on the inside to aid us, we have to prepare for everything; it could be yet another bombing, an assassination, a hostage situation): “We can just work around it,” I say simply. “We’ll make a plan using the information on Jager’s drive and, um, go from there. It’s at a church, right?” Ethan nods. “So, we have the exact location of it. We know the general day that it’s happening.” He seems to relax at my affirmations. But then, I say, “We just don’t have the time or anything.” And he screws his eyes shut again, shutting himself off from reality and retreating into the mental panic room that he’s created for himself. Oh, shit, what do I do? I grind my teeth together and let my foot spasm rapidly before pulling it together, making sure my voice is calm and level when I next speak to him. “Ethan,” I say, his name heavy and foreign on my tongue – his head perks up at the sound of me calling him that. “Ethan, we’re heading to Venice tomorrow. We have the location, we have the possible dates, we have the equipment. We’re ready for this.” I’m not too sure about that part, but Ethan seems to be convinced by it – I think that he’s still just in a daze that’s been inspired by my unexpected gentleness.

I stay with him a little while more, switching the subject and rambling on and on about this festival that’s going on in Venice at the moment and how I actually attended it a few years ago on an assassination detail. Ethan doesn’t reply very much to my story, only cutting in occasionally with a laugh or a smile or a prompt to continue or elaborate – it’s fine by me, of course, because the whole point of what I’m doing is to distract him. When I tell him about how I made my getaway on some stolen speedboat, Ethan lights up and respectfully launches into a story of his own about when he was a teenager and went on a trip with a few friends before graduation – they rented jet skis and raced each other along the shore as the sun blazed burning orange and golden upon the shifting sea. I leave after that because all signs of alarm seem to have faded back into a light, reminiscent smile. I make to lie down in bed because my head is starting to hurt, but I don’t sleep. I just try to zone out from the real world because I’m getting sent back to hell tomorrow, and I’m not looking forward to it. Almada keeps me company, though, leaving me to my own thoughts as he researches into that Venetian church (cathedral, actually, I realise under further contemplation), his meticulous typing and the sound of his quiet breathing being the only things that I manage to apprehend as I continue to fall into my trance.

I like moments like these, moments where I look fast asleep because of how low I’ve managed to get my breathing and heart rate, moments where I can hear unadulterated shit that isn’t sugar-coated with its usual dash of decency and manners, moments where my ears are amplified due to the deprivation of my sense of sight, moments where I can hear Almada sniffling pitifully and whining lowly in the back of his throat as he tries to hold back his tears, moments where I can hear Ethan repeatedly smashing his fist against some poor wall in anger and irritation, moments where I can hear Benji muttering uneasily to himself about how the trip to Venice might not go as smoothly as we think and about how we need to put measures in place so that nothing bad happens before we reach the shore. Oh, yes, and I’m definitely a bad person for enjoying every single second of it – I like learning more about people, finding out additional information and compiling it all into one big mess that I can use to try and—I don’t know—improve my relationships. If I can even call them that, ha! But I spend a little bit more time like that, lying motionless in bed with the rise and fall of my chest as the one and only indicator that I’m, indeed, still alive – I just want to keep listening.

And then, I get the fuck out of bed and help a teary-eyed Almada (when he sees me sitting up, he immediately snaps his head around to look back at the corner of the room, most likely adjusting his facial expressions and emotional attitude so that he can feel professional; God, this type of life is not healthy at all, is it?) to run over what we need to do tomorrow in Venice – scope out the place of attack, place cameras there and a surveillance set-up at our apartment, purchase the clothing that we’ve already agreed on. And we also take a good look at those IMF agents that Luther managed to identify for us, revising their faces and their pasts like we’re cramming for the exam of our lives. Irene Kamińska. Marie Winston. Vera Acharya. Timothy Thompson. Those are the four agents that have been assigned to the case that was taken away from us. And Luther says that we’re now a top priority for the agency – they think that we’re hostile, that we want to disintegrate them. We don’t, of course – I could never do that to the IMF, not if someone held a gun to my head. Acharya is the one that put a wire around my neck – she’s only twenty-seven years-old, barely older than Almada. I memorise the rest of them by their most defining and unchangeable features – for Winston, I remember how her skin is so pale that she looks like death; for Thompson, I remember that he’s got a slightly crooked nose (he probably broke it when he was a kid); and for Kamińska, I remember how her shoulders are strong and broad and elegant. God, I bet they’re all crawling around Venice, just waiting for us to fall into their trap. What’s the price on our capture (or, you know, our deaths)? It’s basically just a glorified bounty hunt for them. I used to take part in those kind of things when I was a lot younger, right when I came out of the Academy. I learned not to waste my time with that kind of thing. It wasn’t the career path that I wanted. But then, I was given assassination detail after assassination detail, so—I guess I kind of fucked things up for myself, huh?

When I look over my shoulder, Almada is gripping at the edge of the bedframe and frowning an impossibly deep frown. I give him a single, short pat on the back, and then leave him to his own worries.

The next day, when we get to Venice, I get to properly appreciate my surroundings, unlike the other various countries and missions where I’ve been too concerned with work to notice anything at all, even when things were right in front of me. Hell, I’m still obviously concerned over that sector, but I don’t even have a job to worry about anymore. I start to really notice things because I’ve been feeling a little nihilistic about everything – we’re on a goddamn floating rock in space and I’m somehow expected to stop people from blowing up other people, and for what? Let’s not get into it – I’ve already spent too long contemplating it all. So, I decide to just appreciate Venice. Remember: Nothing really matters. And the more I look, the more I find things to enjoy. I find that I love how the horizon stretches blue on forever. I love the way the stream of pearly water trails behind us on the speedboat. I love the dangerous knot that forms in my stomach due to the high speed that we’re travelling at, and how the wind lashes at my hand and pulls at the skin on my cheeks. I love how, when we dock, the street that our apartment is located on has lanterns of blues and greens and pinks strung up between buildings and over the wide alley, shapes cutting the cold, blue sky up into an artistic canvas. I love it.

There are restaurants dotted all around, pleasant scents of seafood and other classic Italian cuisines wafting through the air and mingling beneath my nose in a way that I can only describe as absolutely heavenly. Maybe I could eat at one of these places after everything is over, I think to myself. Maybe I can come back here on holiday, alone or with someone else (I don’t mind), and have a taste of that spaghetti, the one with the shellfish, being served to the father of a family of five. This is the first time that I’ve felt properly hungry in weeks. But we pass that certain restaurant in a matter of ten steps exactly, the others with their eyes set on the yellow building near the end of the street – I hurry my pace in order to catch up, only then realising that I must’ve been staring a little too intently, practically drooling, at the little restaurant back there. I wonder if they offer take-away.

The apartment is bigger than all of the others that we’ve rented, towering ceilings and expansive kitchen and stretching floor making it seem large and yet terribly empty all at once. It would’ve been expensive as hell, too, if it weren’t for the condition of just about everything – the walls look like they haven’t had a paint-job in a solid thirty years, the floors are uneven and dip oddly towards the centre of the rooms, there a little cracks in the ceilings, and sound is horrendously clear through the thin ceiling and walls (right now, I can hear our neighbour stamping around upstairs, their television playing steadily on in the background – I can make out a few barks of a dog). But still, the place is large. So, when Almada and Ethan leave just as fast as we arrived to go complete the necessary errands, I take the liberty of pacing around the empty space and breathing in all of that room, envisioning that I’m actually on a trip with my friends to explore Europe for the very first time. Of course, there are several things wrong with that fantasy, the most important of which being that these people are not my friends – they are my colleagues. Sure, I’d like them to be my friends. I think. I’m not sure. Friends sort of require being emotionally vulnerable and forming genuine, long-lasting connections – isn’t that a bit too, I don’t know, set in stone? What if I were to tell Benji every single thing about me, only to have him decide that he’s not ready for all of that, and he leaves? That doesn’t sound very appealing. The last time I had a proper friend was when I was back in the Academy, and even those kind of friendships lacked depth and meaning – mostly, we just joked around and kept each other company in the gym.

Once I’ve decided that I’ve had enough of walking aimlessly about the apartment, I make for Benji’s room (he’s bunking with Ethan again) and find him slumped across the bed with his computer in his lap, typing away impossibly fast at his keyboard. I find it funny how quickly his fingers move – most people at the IMF have the skill to type fast, of course, but Benji’s hands seem to fly and zip across the keyboard like he’s a wizard who’s mastered his craft after all these years (he does it all without looking down at the keys, fingers moving all by way of muscle memory). He’s so immersed into what he’s doing that he doesn’t even see me enter the room. “So—” I begin loudly, smiling to myself when he jolts up like some startled cat, “—have you got visual yet? They’re wearing cameras, right?”

“Yes, yes,” Benji flitters, swivelling his computer screen on the mattress to the side of him so that I can see. “They’re setting up the cameras at the cathedral right now.” I watch as Ethan’s camera tilts up to look at the grand, twisting intricacies and statues that reside upon the detailed roof of the Basilica. I let my eyes linger on the worn biblical paintings that cover the underside of the decorative domes and arches – are Ethan’s eyes widening in awe at the magnificent architecture as well? There are people all around in the square, so Almada and Ethan lift their heads up every so often to check on one another – I let a part of me relax when I see that both of them are keeping their faces hidden, Almada with his cap (I swear that he’s wearing one of Miller’s jumpers, the red one that she wore to bed once when it was too cold) and Ethan with his hood up. Benji and I watch closely when Ethan leaps up onto a ledge that some people are choosing to sit on, carefully brushing his hand (and a camera) into a crook in the towering, brown building right by the entrance. And there’s another camera placed in one of the arches. Then, there’s one placed on the other three sides, all put in places where you can see the full extent of the square. And there’s some placed inside – those specific ones are attached to hyper-sensitive microphones. We watch as, one by one, the cameras connect to Benji’s computer – I can see all of the tourists swarming about like pestering flies.

I breathe out concentratedly because even watching that has made me tense. Benji notices, brown eyes wrinkling at the edges when he chuckles, “I know. We’re gonna need to get good and drunk together after this.”

I should fucking think so.

Ethan and Almada return to the apartment with a shopping bag full of outdoor clothes. The sky outside is a beautiful mural of soft pinks and oranges and golds and yellows, and the clouds are voluminous and sunlit, looking like something out of a painted depiction of what heaven is. What I really want to do is open up the shutters and lean my head out of the tall window, gazing and gazing at the sunset until it disappears to welcome the night. But I shut the windows instead, all of them, and make sure nothing and no-one would be able to see in here no matter how hard they tried. Benji and I don’t take our eyes off of the monitor – we just keep watching and watching and watching some more as the cathedral turns a husky blue and transitions into midnight. We begin to spiral into an abstract sense of nothingness. It’s a nice feeling to know that, for once, I’m not in here alone; I can’t count all the times that I’ve been sitting on the floor after a nice warm shower, rubbery and naked and cold on the damp floor, completely separate from reality after I let myself debate over a certain subject (which have, so far, ranged from relatively mild things like whether I should get a haircut or not, to particularly existential things like whether I’m a good person and if any of it is going to matter at all in the end). But it’s bad that Benji has to suffer through this. It’s not a fun feeling to have once you get out of here – it’s like you’ve just thrown up.

But there is something that snaps us right back out of it. Benji and I see it at the exact same time, turning to look at each other with wide eyes, unsmiling faces, and ridiculously fast heartrates. My face cracks after a split second, and so does Benji’s, and we both laugh out of shock as he clutches at his laptop to bring it into his lap – I dive onto the mattress and crawl behind his shoulder, jutting my neck and chin outwards to get a closer look. I laugh again – they’re right in front of my eyes. Those fucking terrorists, I mean – they’re right in front of my eyes. There are three of them in there; one in a janitor’s uniform, another dressed as security, and the last wearing a well-pressed, brown suit. Benji’s mouth gawks open disbelievingly – I chuckle again at his expression, and so does he; neither of us expected to find them as quickly as this. God, it’s lucky that we arrived when we did. I tell Benji to turn up the volume so that we can hear what they’re saying (they’re all standing right under an altar dedicated to the Virgin Mary, hidden under an arch where I recall that, luckily, Ethan stuck a camera and a mic), and he does, gnawing anxiously at his lip and swallowing strongly as he does so.

I immediately get up from my kneeling position behind Benji, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and walking out of the room with purpose in my every footfall. I need a pen and some paper. I need to write down what they say. Unlike some agents, I don’t have a completely photographic memory. “Does anyone have paper?” I call through the apartment, bare feet struck icy cold against the hardwood floor. “And a pen? I need a pen.” I peer into the other bedroom (where Ethan and Almada are staring at the ceiling and having a mindless conversation about whether water is the best beverage there is (Ethan is completely for it; so am I, to be honest), and repeat myself: “Can I have a pen and paper?” Ethan, still lying down, tips his head backwards on the mattress and, as soon as he sees me, springs up to sit instead – he asks me if everything’s alright. “Yeah, everything’s fine,” I tell him. “We found the bomb guys at the Basilica, and I just want to write down the details of their conversation.”

I must’ve over-simplified – both of them give me snarky, little, scrunched-up faces. I’m about to apologise, thinking that they’re genuinely upset with me, but they only get up from the bed, grinning and rolling their eyes and shaking their heads fondly; Almada finds me some paper, and Ethan hands me a pen. The latter has his green eyes twinkling like the stars in the night sky. He even reaches his hand out to wrap around the crook of my arm, most likely just in good fun—but, as soon as I turn around and his hold is at its firmest, he remembers himself (and so do I) and lets go promptly, mumbling a little apology before flashing me that smile. I watch as he walks away and continues that smile over his shoulder, then watching (just as intently) as he disappears into the room that Benji’s in. I unconsciously brush my fingers over the hot stretch of skin where he touched me. That’s interesting. That’s odd. I—I don’t think I liked that. I stand there, running my knuckles over my arm, until Almada comes up behind me and hands me a wad of paper (from where, I don’t know). I follow him into the room, hands clutching at the paper.

Ethan has a hand on his thigh and the other placed on the ledge of the headboard as he crouches down, smiling to himself while he listens to the dialogue of those terrorists. I climb back onto the bed and resume my former position behind Benji, this time making space for Almada as well – he slides into my left, eyes trained on the screen, so I’m forced a little to the centre. I tell Almada to shove off when he gets a bit too close for comfort, wanting enough room so that I have optimal view of the computer. Benji increases the volume until it’s up all the way.

“Otto del mattino? Sei sicuro?” The man in the janitor’s uniform asks the terrorist in the brown suit. The audio scraggles through the speaker, echoing his discreet whispers into clear eternity due to the large, large space of the cathedral.

I watch as she brushes her light hair out of her eyes and behind her ear, cursing under her breath at his carelessness, “Potresti essere più forte?” The janitor (well, “janitor”) seems to shrink at her tone, looking at the floor and almost cowering away when she glares deathly at him. She continues once she’s satisfied that he’s been put in his place, sighing, “I turisti si riverseranno in quel momento e hai sentito cosa ha detto Vincenzo. Devono essere le otto.”

I furrow my eyebrows, clicking the pen open and scrawling that name down on paper. Ethan leans in closer to me and offers to translate, but I only glare at him before noting down that the attack is happening at eight o’ clock in the morning – I’m fluent in Italian, for fuck’s sake. Can’t he take a hint?

The woman groans exasperatedly when the janitor-man doesn’t give any reaction. “Sandrino, smettila di preoccuparti. Fai come ti viene detto e non ti fai male.” That’s not the most comforting thing to say in that situation, but, then again, I’m sure that I’ve said worse.

“Dove lo vuoi, allora?” The man dressed as security says, referring to the black bag at his feet. “E a che ora arriva la squadra d’assalto? Non voglio intralciarli.”

My heart nearly stops for good.

My face drops.

The woman in the suit replies sharply, “E non mi interessa dov'è la bomba – assicurati solo che esploda esattamente alle otto.” How can she tell him that with such an expressionless face? The fact that she’s able to inspires a heavy sadness that sits at the base of my heart. How is she this brainwashed? And when I look to both my sides, at Ethan and Almada, I can tell that my reaction is justified – the first has his face twisted into a painfully questioning look, and the other is frowning like it’s his job. Benji turns his head away for a second, pushing his glasses up his nose, and then he resumes his watch.

A mass shooting? How brutal.

But that’s what we’re working with. I can’t afford to have a conscious right now. And besides, this isn’t the first slaughter that I’ll have seen—but, God, I really don’t want to see it happen again. I vividly remember the feeling of helplessness that held my limbs down, down, and the flash of coursing red that darted across my vision when the crowd of people collapsed to the ground, dead. But that won’t happen again – I have enough experience to know what to do this time. And I have the others to catch me if I fall through, this time.

Fuck, I wish I were dead. If I were dead, I wouldn’t have to think about all of this shit. I could just sleep. I want to go to sleep.

The woman exits the sight of the camera, and the others secure and connect the bomb behind the main altar of the Basilica, directly underneath the impressive, gold-like organ that dominates the wall back there.

“Right,” Benji says, clicking off of the surveillance tab.

We all take a good few seconds to process everything.

I clear my throat and ready myself to talk (clearly, nobody else is going to). “We have to speed everything up,” I say – my voice is gritty, so I clear my throat before I resume. “We need to get everything ready by five, I say. The cathedral opens at seven, so we need to be out of the apartment at least an hour before that – preferably half past five.”

“Nobody goes to sleep tonight,” Ethan adds, straightening himself up and dragging his hands over his face in frustration. There are dark circles underneath his eyes, and his face is a sallow, grey colour – in short, he looks like shit. My stomach feels queasy at the thought of us being too exhausted when eight o’ clock comes – what if we fuck up? What if a hundred people end up dying just because we didn’t get a good night’s sleep? I don’t want to be racing in between wilted, struck bodies of children when in pursuit of the perpetrators. I don’t want to see the bloody holes in their heads, stomachs, chests. I don’t want to see their glazed-over eyes. The thought of it makes me want to cry. God, we’re only four people. There are going to be so many shooters, and we’re only four people. If only Miller hadn’t died. None of this would have happened in the first place. And now, I’ll have to see her in every dead individual in that cathedral, images of God watching on from behind me, forever trapped in the stained-glass windows. I push away the nausea and an approaching migraine, trying my best to listen to what Ethan has to say. “We need to be dressed and packed by five—” he looks pointedly at me, ‘’—like you said. Remember, we’ll be walking through a field. Please, don’t complain – I won’t be able to handle any complaints.” At first, it seems targeted at Almada (he’s the child of the group), but I know that he really means me. I make a vow to myself to keep it all inside from now on – he sounds like he’s about to break, and I feel sorry for him.

The night is passing far too quickly. I run Almada through the plan after he admits to me that he can’t think straight and wouldn’t be able to remember it for the life of him. “So, I have to take care of an entire group?”

“Yes,” I reply plainly.

“But that’ll be, like, fifty people.”

“Uh-huh.” I drag my eyes away from his face as I unpack the bag of clothes (and a few rucksacks, it seems under further inspection) that’s been set on the floor by the couch, telling him absent-mindedly, “Look, how many times do I have to tell you?” I instantly regret my harsh implications, and soften my voice as I continue, “The tourists will greatly outnumber the terrorists, right? So, if we split the tourists up into sections and take responsibility for one each, they’ll be easier to protect and order around. You need to disarm all of the guards – better yet, eliminate them – and evacuate your designated group. Then, and only then, you can head back inside and give a hand to anyone who needs it.” I dart my eyes up at him, asking, “Got it?”

He nods.

“Good.” And I shove the empty, rustling backpacks into his arms and tell him to go put them in our room.

At one o’ clock, there’s time to kill, surprisingly. Benji’s sorting out all of our tech in his room, on his bed, and he shooed me away when I offered to help him (“I can do this just fine on my own,” he’d said to me in a sagging voice, stretching his mouth into a tight smile as he waved me out of the room).

So, I sit and watch Ethan reading with his head low. He cradles the side of his face gently in his right hand, supported upon the wide, green limb of the armchair, as his left flicks through the thick, granulated pages of some book that he found and bought at the market back in Kranj. I try to catch a glimpse of the scrawling, black words (in English, I’m surprised to find – how did he manage to find a book from a Slovene market in English?) that he runs his light fingers upon, and I piece together a girl with fiery hair and an old man with an aversion to talking, both riding along in his buggy through nineteenth-century Canada. I love that book, I think to myself as I recline back in the armchair of my own, legs stretching out to cross at the ankles. I used to read it all the time when I was younger. And judging by the soft, whimsical look that dawns upon Ethan’s pretty face (the one that’s been dragged down for too long by stress and paranoia), he used to read it all the time as well. I find myself smiling when he chuckles at something said in the book, and I swallow it all back when he runs his hand through his newly cut hair. I touched that hair only a few days ago – did I tell you about it? It was back when we were in Kranj, about a week ago – he asked me to give him a haircut, and he sat himself in the bathtub after locking the door and making sure that I had a pair of good scissors; and for one part, I was kneeling right behind him, thighs wrapped around his hips, and running my hands through that soft, brown hair of his. I liked his longer hair, actually, but he said that it was getting in his eyes – I told him to keep his eyes down for the majority of it, mostly because I didn’t want him to see me struggling to breathe. But now, he seems completely unaffected while I can’t stop staring and staring and staring at him. And I guess that describes our relationship all together – it’s one-sided and delusional and barely a thing at all. What am I even doing? I don’t even want to stare at him. It’s just that I don’t have much else to do – that’s all. I get to my feet and leave him alone in the low lamplight of the living space, surrendering myself to the shadowy corridor as I walk to mine and Almada’s bedroom.

The kid is fast asleep in the bed, and the lights are off. I can’t blame him, of course – it is four in the morning. And I know that we all agreed to stay awake for the whole night, but Almada needs this; he hasn’t been himself for the past few days, becoming jumpy and easily startled and also barely sleeping like the rest of us – normally, he can sleep just like that, but, now, he needs someone by his side in order to fall asleep. I sit beside his slumbering form and quietly assemble our weapons, making sure that they’re all clean and have enough magazines each so that we won’t run out of bullets. I find it sort of therapeutic when I do these sorts of things, and it amuses me because I’ve got a lethal weapon in my hands, and I’m smiling down at it like it’s the greatest joy of my life. But the way that the wipe slides down the components that have become so familiar to me over the years, so much so that I’ve spent more time with them than my own family, calms me – it’s natural, like how the wind brushes through grass, like how the spring trickles into the rushing river, like it was written in stone, an age before I was born, that I’d end up here.

Once I’ve cleaned all of them, I stuff them into the according bags – there are four of them, all the same design, all in different colours – and move on to check that the equipment (for the disarmament of bombs) Benji packed into them is sufficient. And I don’t bother with stuffing silencers in there – they’d just take up too much space, and we’ll be in the heat of the moment anyway; this isn’t a stealth mission. We’re stopping a mass shooting – that’s the main priority. When I’m done, I just sit there for a little while longer. I don’t really know what to do with myself. It somehow still doesn’t feel real – any of it. I haven’t even really done anything with my life. I just remember reaching goal after goal after goal, and then feeling so empty when I had nothing else to do. Will it always be like this? Is this as good as it gets?

Five o’ clock advances like a prowling tiger, claws out-stretched and teeth bared. I give Almada a shake to wake him up, then leaving to go get changed in the bathroom. As the light hums and thrums about me, I lower myself onto the toilet seat and uncrumple the trousers and the fleece and the thermal shirt and the long socks that were purchased only hours before this. But first, I shrug myself into my thick, bulletproof vest – the IMF sizing comes in bulks, in chunks, so this particular vest is a little bit tight on me, digging into the skin in my armpits and pressing into my lower stomach. I put on layer after layer, tying my hair away from my eyes, and then take a short look in the mirror – I still look too much like myself. Actually, it doesn’t matter – no-one will be following us through that field, so why bother? Still, I try out a grin – I look quite a lot different when I smile. I spend a minute or so training myself how to do it with the corners of my mouth sharp and precise – normally, when I smile, it’s all rounded and soft. It’s a small detail to change, but it makes me feel more productive. I exit the bathroom, zipping my purple fleece all the way up and tilting my head up to the ceiling as to not get my skin caught up in the little, pink zip.

In the common area, everyone is dressed. I chuckle to myself – now that it’s been put into perspective, this is actually a really good cover; none of us suit this kind of civilian activity, not even a little bit, because Ethan looks uncomfortable in his own skin, Benji keeps fiddling with the zip of his jacket like he’s never seen one before, and Almada looks far too unhappy and dead in the face to pass as a normal person. But no-one’s going to see us anyways. If we leave before the sun’s up, the streets will be empty, and the roads around here will be quieter than inside a church – Italy’s like that; no-one properly wakes up before ten o’ clock.

“We’ll make an early start, then?” I ask everyone, and they nod back in response, too tired to even open their mouths. I get that fear tugging at my stomach once again – we better wake up properly before we get to the Basilica. Hell, I don’t feel as nervous as I should. There’s no adrenaline in my blood. There’s nothing. God, what if this doesn’t work? And the stakes are arguably higher than in Romania – innocent people could die. I like to think that I’m all cool and indifferent to those kinds of things, to people dying off, because people die every day anyway. But I’m not. I’m trusting you with this next piece of information, so just don’t go telling anybody else, okay? Well, a year before the Jäger mission, I was nearly suspended from the field due to almost failing my annual psychological assessment. For the larger part, it was because they found the scars on my thighs – until then, I was able to blame it on a previous mission, but the scratches intensified and deepened as my mental health worsened, so the assessor called me out on it. And my mental health was for shit because all of the trauma of killing and forgetting and killing and forgetting was finally catching up to me, haunting me at night and stalking me through the day. I’m not as tough as I pretend to be, really. The only reason that I managed to stay in because I was one of the best assassins that the IMF had, so I was put on a detail in France under the condition that I never let what happened happen again. And I worked myself out of hurting myself, I managed to up my body weight – the next assessment I had, I passed. And I also hardened myself further to all outside experiences, just to ensure that I wouldn’t relapse or have another episode where the voices and faces of my targets would run through my dreams – if you can’t tell, I additionally developed even worse insomnia.

Oh, I wish I were dead.

We secure our earpieces before leaving the apartment and stepping out into the cold and stone-washed, blue light that settles over the deserted street outside. My backpack sits nice and comforting against my spine, the handle of the handgun inside it pressing jaggedly into my back. But the air is lovely and fresh and sharp in my lungs as I take several deep breaths in, trying to shake myself up – I need to be more scared; I need to make myself think that things aren’t going to end well. I know that it will, of course (maybe), but I need to think that it won’t so that my motivation is greater, and my actions will therefore be quicker, more efficient, more precise. I want this to go well. Ah, good, it seems to be settling in, now – the panic. This has to go well. If not, I don’t know, I guess that I’ll die or something. Maybe the world ends. Maybe everything and everyone good about this world disappears and leaves the rest of us wandering the sad, depressed landscape of a physical, living hell. That sounds bad enough.

It only takes a few minutes for the muscles in my legs to scream and ache with fatigue – I blame it on my lack of sleep. Then again, I manage to act on a daily basis without sleep, so why am I failing myself only now? Again, it seems due to the lack of excitement in my body. I quicken my pace, I stretch my arms above my head and my legs out in front of me, clench and unclench my jaw, but nothing seems to help. I’m going to die if this doesn’t go well, I’m going to die if this doesn’t go well, I’m going to die if this doesn’t go well – I repeat that in my head as well, but, again, nothing happens. Perhaps it’s just the texture of the pavement against my shoes; I find that the arches of my feet begin to strain after a while of walking on tarmac, on long, large, flat surfaces that never let up and have no sympathy for the wicked. I take a quick look around at the others to see if I’m, indeed, the only one who’s showing any signs of fault and weakness. But I’m not exactly comforted by what I see in Ethan – he strays behind Benji (this is instantly a problem; Ethan Hunt is never less than at the forefront of every group, of every battle, of every line, in every sense), rubbing gingerly at the nape of his neck as his back hunches over painfully. That’s not good. Almada must be thinking the same thing – he saddles in close to Ethan, sets a hand on his back, and asks if he’s alright. Ethan nods and hastens his pace, but he keeps massaging his neck and shoulders with a kneading, cramped hand. That’s not good. And the thing is, Almada probably did it out of honest concern for Ethan’s health – what I’m concerned about what his ability will be like at eight o’ clock) – and he was brushed away like some nuisance of a fly. I feel for him, so I walk next to him for the rest of the journey, listening to him during his rant about how intensely he loves the architecture here, steadying him when he nearly falls right into the road that carves away into the countryside, and bracing myself behind him as he climbs over the fence-entrance and into the golden field beyond.

The golden field beyond. It’s full of rapeseed – I distinctly remember my mother telling me that it’s rapeseed that makes a field look like that. I have no fucking clue why it’s called rapeseed – it isn’t exactly the term with the best connotations, but it’s a plant, so. And I recall screwing my face up into a little grimace as I hung my head out of the window and followed the flowing, yellow brush of the rapeseed field, wondering how such a pretty sight could be related with such a gruesome and cruel and dehumanising act.

The grass and the flowers stroke lovingly against my calves, dancing across the fabric of my trousers with such astounding elegance and grace, and an angelic fog surrounds us in a pale and thin veil. I fall into step behind Almada, not wanting to let him trail behind like he inevitably would if I let him, taking the tail of the group – and, you know, if I were to be picked off by one of those ratty, little IMF agents, I don’t think that anyone would notice for a good twenty minutes; that’s how silent it is and how silent we are. The only sounds that muffle through the comfortable, tired air is the trudging of our steps and the twittering of awakening birds – the sky is lightening into a clear, strong blue. And once the fog clears up into a casual mist, there’s not even a cloud up there, only soft, lazy wisps of golden light that curl about our heads like some sort of ironic halos. I should allow myself to relax, I think to myself – it’s just us here for miles, no danger in sight. But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something waiting amongst that clump of tallgrass, eyes glinting red like a blaze.

About half an hour of trekking later, we have to haul ourselves over some other fence – the twigs and slim, rubbery branches of the encasing bushes prick through the thin material of my fleece, digging into the skin underneath; I lean into the pain until it becomes something stabbing and sharp, just to wake myself up a bit more – and emerge out of the brush onto the pavement of some road that leads right into town. And after a few winding, narrow paths, and shallow steps leading up, up, up, the Basilica is finally in sight, intricately detailed spire spindling high up into the hazy sky, laced with glittering mist that shines burning amber in the early sunlight. There’s little to nobody in the main square – there’s only an old man with thinning hair, a little bucket of birdfeed in his hand as the other scatters it out to a flock of cooing pigeons; and a couple of people setting up stalls and their produce upon cheap, plastic racks; and a small huddle of tourists, complete with their bulky cameras and patchy sunscreen and colourful, put-together clothes, drifting around the restaurants and souvenir shops while they wait for the cathedral to open. If only we could scream “bomb!” and help them to scurry back into their hotel rooms – of course, we can’t because we’d risk getting arrested under the suspicion of terrorism, and then be helpless in stopping the explosion and the mass shooting. So, instead of doing that, we sit on a cold, stone ledge in a row, and I squint up at the sun.

There’s time to waste. We have to wait until people start queuing in order to break in – that way, guards will be less of a threat because they’ll all be at the entrance of the building. Benji has a lockpicker in his bag, so we’ll be fine – there’s a rusted door down the side of an alley that we can enter through, Almada says. And while I’m worrying about all of this, Ethan’s getting up from his seat and crouching down beside a small, black cat with a soft face and soft ears and a soft tail – he runs his large hand over its little spine, smiling softly to myself as it lets out a quiet mew. I watch with a melted soul, feeling warm at the way the light shrouds Ethan and that cat in a way that feels so true, so perfect, like the scene was meant to be painted and framed in the greatest gallery in all of time. I think about coming down to stroke the cat as well, but I decide against it – I don’t want to scare either of them or potentially ruin the whole thing. So, I just observe as Ethan gently picks the cat up and brings it to sit in his lap – he adjusts himself upon the wall, uncaring of everything else, amidst the light and flushing breeze, smiling down at the cat. Almada grins, dimples carving pleasantly into his cheeks, and moves to cuff its ears with two fingers, chuckling brightly to himself when it bites back playfully at his fingertips with needle-like teeth.

I reach my hand up one of my sleeves and start to pinch lightly at the skin on my lower forearm, hoping that the stimulation will finally snap me out of this cursed daze and allow me to work to my full potential. I’m a good agent (or whatever the fuck I am), but I suppose that the IMF always offered me that extra push off of the edge, that luring reward of recognition and promotion at the end of the tunnel, that something that helped me to excel. You’d think that the stakes at hand would make me more eager, but all that it’s making me feel is tired and nihilistic. Don’t I deserve a single week without stress pulling at my heartstrings? Don’t I deserve to go to bed without insomnia fogging up my mind? I’m exhausted, for fuck’s sake, and I’m about a millimetre’s worth away from asking someone to smother me in my sleep.

Before I can elaborate further on the theory, Benji’s repeating my name softly, then telling me, “We’re doing a small comms check – we’re heading to the entrance point in exactly two minutes.” I switch my focus back over to the main doors of the cathedral, and, sure enough, there’s a queue forming along the winding, black-ribboned path, tourists getting their bags checked and their bodies scanned. I must’ve lost track of time again; I need to stop doing that. I subtly tap onto my earpiece, turning it on with a delicate beeping noise that caresses the rim of my ear.

Ethan mutters a little “check?” into all of our earpieces, and we reply in a hushed chorus of affirmations. If I close my eyes, I can imagine that Ethan and I are good friends spending a lazy Sunday afternoon together in my apartment, and he’s talking to me in that low voice about something that I don’t really care for but listen to intently because it’s him who’s speaking the words. Civilian life has become more and more appealing to me lately – it never used to; I guess I thought that I was sort of above them, knowing things that they didn’t and having skills that they didn’t. But all of those tourists are smiling. All of those tourists are with other people, whether it be family or friends or significant others. Then again, all of those tourists may or may not get slaughtered within the next hour or so – whether that does or doesn’t happen depends on us, depends on me. Someone has to do this job, don’t they? If it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been some other sorrowful creature who’d be in the exact same place as I am: No home, hating the system, and being powerless to do anything about it. But if I close my eyes, Ethan and I are good friends spending a lazy Sunday afternoon together in my apartment. We’re normal people. I’m smiling and with another person. I can sleep well at night. I eat on a regular basis. I have friends at work, and we go out for drinks on Friday nights at this bar down the block. I have parents who are alive and who love me. If I close my eyes, everything is nice.

Then, we get up and follow Almada’s lead to that rusted, green door that cowers into the crook of one of the Basilica’s arches. We lower ourselves down into the shallow dip upon the doorstep, crowding around the lock in order to allow Benji some privacy as he picks the heavy, hulking lock that slings itself and a large chain through the handles of the door. I look over my shoulders and check for any wandering guards – luckily, this door is down a thin alley, therefore seen as a second-hand priority; security will be more focused around the two major squares behind and in front of the building, especially this early in the day. After a few moments of muffled clinking and fidgeting, Benji tugs at the thick chain, sliding it off of the handles like some bothersome snake – the rest of us grab a length of it to ensure that it makes as little noise as possible, wrapping it loosely around Benji’s arm so that we can lay it in a pile on the cathedral’s floor inside. I creak open the door, wincing as it scrapes unpleasantly at the stone beneath it, and rush everyone inside, then following and closing the door behind me.

And the plan kicks in like we discussed, occurring swiftly and smoothly like a meticulously choreographed dance being performed at the grandest theatre in all of the world. We shed the outer layer of our clothing (for me, that’s my purple fleece – it’s the most identifiable part of my appearance) and lay them next to the chain on the ground; we set down our bags with a soft thud and unpack what we need, securing holsters and loading guns and stuffing the extra load or two into the dark utility belts around our waists. Benji, of course, has been declared the bomb handler with the rest of us as safety nets (Luther’s on the line already, standing by to provide information like last time; this bomb could be different from the last, and the wrong technique could have a fatal result). And the rest of us have the cathedral split up into thirds – the civilians in our corresponding sections will be the ones that we’re responsible for, no matter how large or small the group. Okay. Okay, the adrenaline is starting to flood in at last. This mission is no different to the other ones I’ve been on, I calm myself. I’ve done this a thousand times before.

The team is prepared and currently swallowing back any doubts or fears that they might be having, much like myself, so I decide to give them a few words of encouragement: “Remember not to get shot,” I tell them with a smile. And surprisingly, I get a grin out of all of them. “Time?”

“Ten to,” Almada replies, and the anxiety comes to cloud his face once again, pulling it down, down into a frown. He bounces on the balls of his feet, breathing shallowly and hurriedly – the pressure of a mass shooting must be getting to him; he doesn’t have to deal with it alone, at least. So, I catch his gaze and offer him a smile – that’s the best I can do right now; I couldn’t reach to touch him even if I wanted to, what with my hands gripping ever so tightly around my gun – and he holds my eyes anxiously as he tries to calm himself down. He asks, “Everything will be alright, won’t it?”

No-one moves, so I nod at him and say, “Just don’t leave your group until they’re at a safe distance.” I don’t want to make any promises to him because I, myself, am still unsure of what the outcome of all of this will be. What if I promise him that, yes, everything will be alright, and he dies, of all things, and I have one more funeral to attend to when I come home (if I come home)? The IMF will still be in the process of signing paperwork and transporting Miller’s body overseas and trying to find a way to break the news to her parents gently and convincingly – I’m sure there’ll be time to attend her funeral when I’m back. Or maybe it’ll go on without me, and I’ll be left with no closure and a brain full of bad, bad memories. I couldn’t bear to have Almada dead too, especially after swearing on his safety. So, I just stick with my answer and leave it at that, leading the others past the sturdy, stone pillars and the ominous, crusting grave-like platforms that order along the space of the basement. I don’t waste time contemplating on what this basement is actually used for, making up the cramped, spiralling staircase until we reach the neat, arching doorway that has a short and red velvet rope (held between two gold stumps) closing it off from the public – I nudge one of its posts away to the side with my foot, creating an easier entrance for the others, then slipping into the cathedral and lifting my head to look at the towering ceiling all the way up there; there are paintings of heavenly bodies and heavenly angels, and I know that I could just lose myself in them if I had been any other situation. I’ll have to go to a museum soon. If I don’t come out of this alive, I’ll just have to hope that my house in the clouds has paintings like these (bold of me to assume that I’m going up there instead of down under, I know).

Tourists are only just coming in. We’re a minute closer to eight o’ clock, now, so Benji rushes off to the location of the bomb – this time, we know where it is, at least – with his feet quick and his shoes squeaking quietly against the floor (and there’s a little child not three feet away from him that’s doing the same thing, squealing gleefully like a pig does as her parents chase after her exasperatedly). Ethan immediately goes to his sector of the building, not even bothering with a word of warning or good luck or farewell like I was expecting him to, placing his gun into the holster of his utility belt as he approaches his now-small crowd. But Almada doesn’t do that – he stays close to me, clenching his jaw and balling his fists; I have to urge him to leave me and go to his spot so that I can go to my own without having to worry about him. And once he’s gone, I set to work.

I feel sharp and efficient and bright and powerful when I move, and that usually isn’t the case, so I take hold of this feeling and store it in a little bottle for later, sliding my gun into its holster like Ethan did, and spreading my hands invitingly to the people in my third of the Basilica. What have we got here?—there are a few couples here, about three people I’d class as elderly, and the rest are a spattering of large families of four, of five. This is alright – this is a lot less people than the last—mass shooting that I witnessed years ago. The tourists all take notice of my radiating anxiety, turning to face me as I tell them in an accented voice, “Hello, my name is Odette Caliva and I’m special forces – I need you to—”

A spiteful punch straight to the gut.

I have no time at all to recover, diaphragm fluttering brutally as my attacker jerks out their leg with a kick into the exact same place, so firm that it sends me falling to the floor with my hands flailing about to cushion the blow. Shit, I can’t fucking breathe – I’m gasping like a fish out of water, rasping, torturous, dragging breaths that kill me slowly, slowly, but my lungs won’t work, stunned into a paralytic shock.

What the fuck?

What the fuck?

I look up and see five armed men, soldier-like, in thick, black gear.

Oh, fuck, no. No, no, no, I’m not letting this happen. Come on, get up. Get up and fight, goddammit. The struggle makes my lungs scream and beg for oxygen, tears coming to glisten over my eyes when I realise that they don’t seem to be improving their state. Come on, come on. Please.

But sensation finds its way back into my body, and I lurch upwards with a deep inhale, taking advantage of the weak but present momentum, and latch my arms around the legs of the man closest to me, making his knees buckle from beneath him – he tumbles to the ground with an alarmed cry, and his knee jabs up painfully into my chin as he does so; it was inelegant and unpleasant, but it worked. And by now, my entire section of the room is backing away to the wall, edging towards the exit that is currently in the process of being closed. Oh, God, it’s being closed? I furrow my eyebrows and grunt angrily, reaching for the man’s gun, becoming ruthless in my actions as I put a bullet in his head, then taking care of another two shooters. There are children watching with wide eyes and open mouths, but I don’t fucking care. I can’t let anybody die here, so fuck them and fuck everything.

My arms become achy, sore and loose from holding such a heavy gun, so I drop it with a jarring clang to the floor and, instead, opt for the handgun from my holster.

Shrieks ring out through the air in a clashing, disharmonious melody from all corners of the cathedral – I block it out, only paying attention to cocking the gun and aiming it at the sternum of the next terrorist that I’ll kill; when the direction of my aim sweeps momentarily over my crowd, I receive furious and terrified screams. Too bad.

The fold of my arm bends inwards as one of the shooters lets go of his gun and throws a punch there instead – my grip falters, and he claims my wrist in a tight wrench of his black-gloved hand. I twist my knee up into his stomach and, when he doesn’t give me the reaction that I want, again into his groin – as he doubles over, I curl his grip over the arch of his back, placing the palm of my other hand flat below his elbow and jolting upwards. Cru-u-unch! I let my hands drop from the form that I’ve practiced a thousand times before, breathing heavily and allowing a moment’s rest. God, I love that move. It’s so easy, but it seems to work every single time.

I stretch my arms and yawn involuntarily, casting out any of the remaining elements of tiredness that may linger in my system after a difficult early morning. I pick up my gun, fully ready to kill the last two men with no mercy at all. I make sure that, this time, I have both of my hands clasped on my gun, arms tight and locked. I debate looking over my shoulder, both to check my surroundings and see how the others are getting on, but I decide against it.

It’s the wrong decision, I realise almost instantly afterwards, because there are shots being fired freely and randomly through the crisp air. Instinctively, I drop to one knee to avoid the bullets, but when they start violently penetrating and ricocheting off of the tiles around me, I’m smart enough to gather that I’m the one that’s being targeted. Before I can get to my feet and scurry off to aid my petrified civilians, there are thudding sounds behind me. When I look over, two of my people are already dead and sprawled on the floor as collateral damage.

I act on a whim and shoot the remaining hitmen, only to find that the shots are firing at me still – they weren’t shooting in the first place.

“Everybody,” I scream, “I need you to get out, understand me? Get out.” And because I’m the one holding the gun, they obey and flood towards the great, closed doors of the place. As I begin to try to figure out where the shooter is placed – they could be on one of the higher levels, judging by the angle of the bullets’ direction – I put a finger into my ear and say directly, “Almada, I need you to free up the exit now. We need to get these people out of here.” I see him nod affirmatively and move to take out the guards positioned about there, then heaving open the door with help from a few of the frantic civilians from both mine and his crowds.

I hear Ethan groan sharply out in pain, the sound then followed by a high whine (there must’ve been a bullet flying past his ear, just a little bit too close for comfort). I look back over my shoulder, and I find that the door is still not open – it’s too heavy. More and more people are helping to pull at the doorknobs, gritting their teeth and fighting for their lives.

Exhaling cleanly, I dart my eyes over to the organ. “Benji—”

But then, I see her. Not the clad-in-black terrorists, but Vera Acharya trailing down the stairwell leading from the upper level, hair plaited out of her face and with a gun in hand. Of course, they’re here – we should’ve planned for this. Only now do I realise that the flurry of bullets being blasted at me have has stopped.

“Benji, what’s your status?” My voice is strained and pressing, twisting itself into some high-pitched thing that sounds so desperate and pathetic when the recipient lets me remain there on the line, waiting and waiting for an answer.

He answers, “Almost done. It’s a simple bomb, so I’m almost done.” And I would trust his answer fully had Luther’s instructions in the background been less sharp, less formal, less clipped. I narrow my eyes when I spot his head poke out from behind the wooden altar up at the front of the cathedral.

“Good,” I respond, frowning when Acharya follows the angle of my gaze and finds my Benji sitting there too. Oh, God. Oh, fuck. “Benji, get down and stay where you are.” And she begins to walk over there, cocking her gun and making sure to torment me just that little bit more with a cold curl of her lip into something between a grimace and a smirk. “She’s on your two o’ clock.”

“Who’s on his two o’ clock?” Ethan asks briskly; as I start off in a quick pace, I look over and see him ushering his crowd closer to the opening door (the progress is excruciating and small, but I can see a slit of white daylight appear in the gap between the great doors).

“Yeah,” Benji repeats pointedly, “who is on my two o’ clock?”

“The IMF,” I reply, increasing my footfalls into a run, heart stuttering dangerously as I see Acharya explodes into a sudden bolt, making for Benji who’s only trying to prevent a bomb from blowing all of us up. He can’t die – I’m sure that he’s one of the best of us; he isn’t meant to die like this. He’s supposed to die with his friends and family around him, old age biting at his soul after a long life lived well and to its fullest – right now, Benji’s only barely filled up his cup. He’s not going to die like this. So, I dart as quickly as I can with the aim of intercepting (by any means necessary) Acharya’s inevitable launch of merciless assault – only God knows what she’ll do for that reward. Oh, God – God, please, help me now. Don’t let Benji die. God, just let me die instead. If you’re up there and contemplating killing Benji off, don’t do it – let me die instead; I don’t care. I’ll even help you out, see? I can run faster; I can prepare myself to visit you (if you are, indeed, real, and up there); I can load my gun and get ready for what will either be my catharsis or the end of my life.

Acharya and I collide in a harsh flurry of blows – I disarm her, and she does the same, leaving us in a formal gun-to-gun position, eyes slitted. But I take action and sweep her legs from underneath her with a swift leg, darting backwards when she fires out in surprise as she stumbles to the ground. What I’m not prepared for is for her to lash out a foot at my knee, making it click into a position that I know from the get-go is all wrong and awkward and janky. And despite the fact that I have the higher ground currently, nothing is going to make me shoot at her – I’m not going to kill one of the IMF’s agents; we already have too much tension with them. But, of course, there’s no stopping Acharya – she has little to lose – so she reaches forward, grabbing my wrist, and uses my body weight to lift her up to her feet, simultaneously sending me crashing to the floor.

She points her gun at my face.

Oh, here we go. I don’t flinch at all. I don’t even look away – I want to at least be able to look death in the eyes if I’m going to go out this way. I should feel something, I know, but all that I can think about is how sorry I am that I won’t be able to protect Benji from getting shot if I, myself, am shot and—well, dead. But it’s a damn shame that Acharya will be the last person that I see before it all goes dark.

Her finger plays at the trigger.

I get ready to say goodbye.

And she removes her eyes from my face to look at something in front of her. My first guess is that she’s trying to preserve her rotting conscious by refusing one more face to haunt her mind at night. But her eyes are filled with panic, and, before I know it, she’s whipping her aim to whatever’s approaching her, extending her free hand down towards me. What does she mean for that reached-out hand to do? Is she trying to fool me into killing myself? It takes me a heartbeat to realise that she means for me to help her.

Because I choose survival, I grab onto her hand, then re-firming my hold on my gun and preparing myself to squeeze the trigger for the life of me – I can’t die now; Benji’s still vulnerable and out in the open. And there are four hitmen approaching us, cocking their automatics, and pointing them at the two of us. Oh, I see. Acharya is putting the objective of her mission above the pedestal of capturing the highest bounty of the moment. As she should, of course – that’s what any respectable, good-hearted person would do in this situation. Still, the bare minimum will never exclude the fact that she threatened to go after Benji when she knew (most likely) fully well that he was disarming a bomb that would hurt us all and very well kill us – if I come back to the IMF and am asked to work with her or any of these other agents on a mission, I’ll refuse it and refuse it more. I don’t suppose I’ll ever forgive any of them for all of this. But because I’m here, faced with four people who are about to shoot the living hell out of me, I meet eyes with Acharya and give her a small nod to confirm our temporary alliance.

I know that, right afterwards, we’ll be at each other’s throats again, but I’m not letting Benji or Almada or Ethan get killed – they can prevent the next five attacks or so without me, and I know that, but there’s no telling whether they’ll get out of here with their lives; when I dart my eyes over to that door, Almada is grappling with a terrorist, and Ethan is in the process of convincing an IMF agent (Marie Winston) to stop firing at him.

So, Acharya and I take care of the guards as swift as anything, keeping our wits and bullets about us. As she moves, I notice that she still has that rigid, ordered stiffness from how the IMF trains its agents – I remember being taught the exact blows that she’s currently using; when I was at the Academy, the IMF hadn’t yet introduced one-on-one combat sessions yet, so we were trained as a bulk. Luckily, as time went on, I was able to find my own footing in what I liked and what I didn’t – I have an advantage over her in that way, I suppose; it’s clear in the way that I take down my first perpetrator faster than she does, in the way I’m more confident in my technique than she is. As I jab my elbow into my hitman’s nose, sighing out in satisfaction at the gruesome cracking sound as it breaks, she holds one of hers in a headlock and lets me kick him square on his temple. We take our guns and shoot them all once in the skull to make sure that none of them will bother us anymore.

And then, just like that, we’re not an “us” any longer.

We stand there, chests heaving with effort, for a few more seconds. Then, she flings a fist out at my jaw, and I duck expertly and jab the hilt of my gun in between her ribs. Before I can redirect my aim forwards into her stomach, there are two hands dragging me away from Acharya. I spin around and kick whoever it is away with my foot, only to see that it’s another IMF agent, this time Timothy Thompson with his slightly crooked nose and military haircut. I groan internally, reeling at the responsibility of having to fend of two trained super-agents, and I elbow Acharya fiercely again in her stomach, just to wind her like she winded me, then turning to swing my fist at Thompson’s face – the latter hisses out in pain, but recovers quickly and, to my surprise, puts his gun into his holster and stretches out a bargaining hand in front of him; “I’m sorry,” he says, raising his voice above the chaos, “about her. The plan is to bring you in alive, of course.”

“We’re trying to stop a fucking terrorist attack, and you’re thinking about the bounty?” I cry out in disbelief – maybe these are just selfish people.

Acharya grabs my shoulder with both of her hands and driving her knee into my gut. I spin myself out of her grip and dodge a heavy swipe from Thompson – he then catches my wrist and pulls me into him, wrapping a tight arm around my upper body as he orders his partner, “Go for the one behind the altar.” Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me. My eyes widen and I yell out in frustration, throwing my head back into his face and stomping down as hard as I can on his foot, taking advantage of when he loosens his grip, sending a kick inbetween his legs and punching him sharply in the jugular like he deserves – he chokes out, falling to his knees in agony as I run off and wrap my hand firmly around Acharya’s dark plait, yanking her backwards and ignoring her pained cries as I do so.

“He’s defusing a bomb, you idiot,” I shout at her.

Ethan calls my name frightenedly through comms. That’s unlike him, I think to myself. “Assistance required,” he says, voice becoming more and more urgent, louder and louder as he continues, “now!”

I look over to the doors, over to where he is, and I see both him and Almada struggling to fight off the collecting guards who are on the brink of completing the job that they came here to do, trying desperately to compensate for what should be a four-person job as planned – Benji is preoccupied, and, although he’s now finished disarming the bomb (“Done!” He cries in pre-mature victory, and Luther lets out a guffawing laugh before saying farewell and logging off), he’s unable to exit his space due to a shooter sent to take him out, some bullets chipping the (gladly) thick, wooden altar, the others clinging and pinging off of the metal organ behind him; and when I begin to race over to where I’m needed most, fucking Acharya dives for one of my ankles, and I’m tugged to the floor, chin hitting the ground so unforgivingly that bitter tears spring to my eyes. My gun slides away from me, gliding slickly across the floor.

My knee is already throbbing with hurt, so, when I swivel around onto my back and see her pulling that same leg, I have to grit my teeth together in order not to scream when I kick out at her face and torso for her to let me go, hands shuffling myself away from her, body wriggling and writhing to make it difficult for her to get to me. With a particularly well-placed kick, electric-hot daggers of pain strike up my leg like lightning as I free myself from her and scramble to my feet, limping over to my gun as I coddle my weeping, swaying right leg. I reach for my gun and take out the guy that’s hassling Benji with two bullets, then gulping down my discomfort as I reload it with a fresh magazine.

And when I turn around to make for the doors, the tourists are all trying to exit at once through a slim gap in the doors. Almada is trying to tell them to slow down and open the door further, but they’re all driven frantic with fear.

My stomach drops, my heart thrums in my throat, and I try to hobble faster over there.

But this is a big cathedral.

So, I have a front seat to the play where everybody dies at the end.

I’m metres away when the hitmen start shooting at freewill at the pile of civilians. Not even Ethan is able to save all of them. And a few of them manage to escape outside – there must be external help to try and get that door open since it widens just that little bit more at the sound of the deafening salvo of shots.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck – I cock my gun and aim at one of the shooters, but then a blazing, intense pain rips through my abdomen and makes me stumble back slightly. I turn my head in the direction of its origin, over to my right, and see a terrorist standing there with his gun pointed at me. I shoot him before he can do anything. But then I realise that he’s already fired at me, and his bullet has torn right through part of my stomach – when I place my hand where it hurts and then pull it away, my palm is glistening with thick, crimson blood. That’s not good. Still, I raise my gun and help Ethan and Almada to take out the hitmen before every single one of those innocent people can drop dead to the floor.

And even though it only takes a collective few seconds to put a few bullets in their bodies, the onslaught doesn’t stop; there are a few terrorists positioned up on the higher level. The civilians are safe – the survivors, at least, have escaped through the thin gap. And that means that, fuck, the police will be here any minute, now, and that the bullets are for us and those IMF agents. And I’ve got a fucking bullet in my side – what the fuck am I supposed to do? I can’t get shot again, and I can’t let any of the others get shot either, so I ready my stance and point my gun at the first terrorist I see up there.

I manage to get him with one shot.

This seems to frighten the others – they move away from the open balcony space, most likely making for the stairs to come down onto our level and find proper cover there; I’ve made it clear that they’re in perfect sight to get themselves shot easily, and Almada further exaggerates this point when he fires a particularly well-aimed bullet and takes down another of the hitmen. I run over to him, making sure to check behind me in case the Acharya or Thompson has chosen to tail me (they’ve both vanished from sight, though), and then pull the young agent behind a bend in the arch, smiling and congratulating him on his shot; “You did great,” I whisper gently into his ear. I’m not sure why I whisper it, but it seems to make him soften and relax, all because of my soft and relaxing tone – I take note that this is the way to calm him down should I ever need to. But before he can open his mouth to give me a reply, a bullet nicks the side of the arch, and both Almada and I jump furiously backwards into the wall. Bullshit. You’d think that, after years and years of experience, I’d be fine with the piercing nature of a gunshot, but it would appear that I’m not; my body is struck with terror, and I have to rely on my training to let it melt away into the background so that I can work properly.

I glance my eyes around the place – I can see Ethan peeking out from behind the opposite arch, trying to get a good shot of the advancing fragment of what was a large hit squad. I frown because, well, he looks overwhelmed; he’s running out of bullets, he’s got this panicked look in his eyes, and he doesn’t even have Benji’s backup to aid him in his struggle. In fact, where is Benji? I can’t see him. As Almada darts his gun in and around the corner, I check in with Benji, asking him, “Where are you? I can’t see you.” A pause. “Benji?”

“Yeah, sorry,” his voice crawls into my ear, and I sigh heavily with relief. “I was just, um—God, I was just running, and I’m really fucking tired, and I’m being shot at, and it’s just not fun at all.” I ask him where he is again because he didn’t answer. “I’m on the other side of the room. I’m trying to get closer to you, but this twat won’t stop shooting at me!” I spot the person that he’s talking about.

I press my hand into my abdomen, trying my best to stop the warm, heavy stream of blood flowing from there. Is the room spinning? It wasn’t spinning a moment ago. I leave Almada to the hard work, panting quickly like an animal as I try not to whimper – I don’t want him knowing that I’m hurt. I don’t want anyone knowing that I’m hurt. Knowing the nature of my companions (which is of the kinder sort, I can’t deny), they’ll drop everything, including their own personal safety, to help me. They’re so goddamn annoying. God, I feel like I’m going to faint. I lean my forearm against the wall, feeling my legs begin to betray me in a plot to bring me to the ground. Just keep breathing. Oh, God. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. My arm shifts on the wall, and my entire body nearly rocks away – Almada grabs me before I buckle.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” He asks me, shielding me from the violence over there by turning his back to it and using his free hand to peel my hand away from my soaked undershirt. His breath stutters when he sees the wound.

I hit his chest before he can say anything, hand slapping him there repeatedly until he closes that gaping mouth of his. “Get rid of those fuckers first. Then, we can talk, alright?” He doesn’t reply – I think it’s because he’s still too shaken by the sight of blood (it’s sort of funny, really). I roll my eyes and point my gun around the corner, shooting at the general location of the blurred, doubled visions of the terrorists. I think that I manage to get one or two of them – their indistinct, hazy, black shapes drop to the floor, so, you know, I must’ve done something right, at least.

But the group seems to be veering towards Ethan’s position. I blink hard, thinking that my eyes are perhaps deceiving me, only to find that they are – they are proceeding towards his location. It must be because he’s alone. I lock eyes with him, and he waves his gun in the air, eyes stretched wide open in alarm, to signal to me that he’s got no bullets left, no refills. I know what I have to do. “Cover me,” I instruct Almada, making sure that I have enough bullets for each of the men in their team.

“What?” He cries. “But you’re—you’re bleeding.”

“I bleed every month,” I reply with a grin. “It’s not a big deal.” He doesn’t seem to get the joke, so I drop it and roll my eyes – eh, I can laugh about it with myself later on. “Just cover me, will you? Stay here and make sure that I don’t die or anything.”

He gives in with a shallow nod, and I set off towards Ethan, keeping my limbs close to my body and my head ducked down so that my chin is tucked into my collarbone. Bullets fly past me and lodge themselves in the wall to my left, and I try my very hardest to ignore them as best as I can – right now, my only available tactics are to cover my ears and just hope that I don’t go deaf from the powerful clamour of those shots, and to keep running despite them; I have to pretend that death doesn’t exist. I stretch out my gun with both hands and manage to kill a guard, then flying directly into Ethan as he reaches forward to catch me and pull me into the tight nook with him. Straightaway, I take the advance and continue to fire at the rally of shooters who are now stranded in the middle. Benji took my dash to his gain, rushing over to reside with Almada, now able to work with the rest of us to complete the task. I hurriedly hand Ethan a magazine from my belt, and the neat, rhythmic clicking sound of him loading it into his gun eases me into a better state (not exactly comfortable, but it’s just nice to know that I have a friend). Still, I tell him to let me take the front – “Just rest a little,” I tell him. “You look like hell.”

This is going to work, I realise. We’re going to win this.

And when they all fall dead to the ground, I can almost forget all about the lifeless pile of civilians by the front door and, of course, law enforcement trying to force its way past the corpses.

I avert my gaze – if I don’t, I’ll fucking cry.

It’s awful silent after all that’s just gone down, isn’t it? It shouldn’t be this quiet. There should be more screaming, perhaps, or more shots or wails or barked orders or something of the sort. It’s just too—too still. I sink down to the floor, body feeling flaccid and limp and good for nothing. I set my gun down beside me and splay my legs out wide, wide, frowning slightly at nothing in particular. That’s before I remember that I have a hole in my side. I curl a hand around that side, my left, and swallow strongly.

Ethan sits down beside me, and he nudges me with his shoulder and says, “Some morning, huh?” His contact leaves the skin under there, under my shirt, warm and tingling. I loll my head backwards and tilt it away from him, not wanting him to see the roll of my eyes that I use to protect myself against the growing flush of heat on my neck.

I nod in response to his question, combining it with a small grunt for good measure—but, fuck, the pain blitzing through my abdomen breaks through into my voice. And because Ethan is Ethan, he notices immediately. He furrows his eyebrows, grimaces, and kindly moves my hand to the side. And he sees it. He sees all the blood. And I haven’t looked at it in great detail yet, really analysed it, but Ethan shifts into a kneeling position and bows his head down, and then tenderly keens my stomach forwards to him with a hand coiled around the small of my back, scoffing in either disgust or incredulity as he analyses the bullet hole.

“Oh, my God,” he enunciates. “You should’ve told me.” His voice is low and, I can tell, filled with annoyance. Well, what the hell was I supposed to do? Ethan’s fingers toy with the hem of my shirt, and he glimpses briefly up at me to ask for my permission. I nod, and he folds my shirt up a little, its material slick and sticky with blood. God, I think I'm going to faint.

I roll my eyes, explaining myself when, really, I shouldn’t have to, “If I’d told you, you wouldn’t’ve let me cover you, and you would’ve died.” Ethan seems to want to reply, opening up his mouth to say something, but then he chokes on his tongue and closes it again; he knows fully well that I’m correct. If I’d told him, he would’ve tried to protect me, and his exhaustion would’ve piled up and piled up some more until it all just—collapsed upon him.

And then, he sighs and tells me, “We have to go soon.” Right. The police are barging their way in – we only have a minute or so. “You should’ve told me.”

I take a look at the pile of bodies blocking the door.

And then I start to cry.

[stxleslyds]

What do you think about the theories that Jason was sexually abused as a child? Or even possibly while he was comatose after his resurrection?

Implications of this theory include his conversation with Mia (Speedy) and Bruce's message (Battle for the Cowl). In addition, when he was Robin he expressed what was then considered uncharacteristic rage towards the perpetrators of sex crimes.

Garzonas - unrepentant rapist who got no consequences

When a woman killed her sister's rapist and murderer (because Batman's evidence was not admissible in court), Batman said that she went too far with murder. Jason's disagreed with "Good riddance". Good for you, Jason.

His recklessness when dealing with a child sex trafficking ring.

I highly doubt that DC would ever confirm this theory. I would rather they leave it ambiguous because I don't trust them to not botch Jason... much less respectfully address the subject matter.

I have read so many thoughts on Jason that they're starting to blend together. So I apologize if you've already answered this before.

Hello friend! Aside from the fact that I took way too much time to answer your ask, this was also a hard question to come up with an answer to, I wanted to remain respectful of the subjects at hand even though I don’t second this headcanon. But before we keep going, let me put some trigger warnings in this post.

trigger warning: mentions of sexual abuse, child abuse, rape.

First, I would like to bring up these two concepts because I oftentimes mix them up when talking about these “ideas”.

Theory: a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something; an idea used to account for a situation or justify a course of action.

Headcanon: Headcanon generally refers to ideas held by fans of series that are not explicitly supported by sanctioned text or other media. Fans maintain the ideas in their heads, outside of the accepted canon.

I think the idea of Jason having been sexually abused at any point in his lifetime is a mix between a theory and a headcanon. Why I am saying this? Because as you have put in the ask, there has been instances where fandom has found pieces of information that they have considered the base of this idea.

So, if we say that there is a piece of text that might support that idea and they build from that to justify a course of action we would be looking at a theory. In this case Jason having been abused would the reason as to why he acts in that strong and violent way towards cases of sexual abuse/harassment.

In the other hand those pieces of text might not support that idea so fandom headcanons that idea in order to build another layer to a character, in this case Jason having been abused would also justify his actions towards certain criminals.

The “text” (panels, issues, mentions) are most of the time ambiguous, which makes readers have different perspectives in what is being written and what then is made into a theory or headcanon.

Personally, I don’t like this theory or headcanon for various reasons (which I will explain later in the post), and I have read and understood those moments mentioned as Jason just having survived Crime Alley as something general, I don’t think he suffered that kind of abuse but I think he was made aware of that type of behaviour every day that he spent alone in the streets and that why we saw Jason in Batman #408 saying that he had “graduated a long time ago from the streets of crime alley”.

Having said that, I do understand that some of the moments mentioned can be seen as ambiguous and that’s what leads people to theorize/headcanon that idea, because of that I would like to show the panels mentioned in your ask so everyone can read them and make up their own conclusions and then I will talk about the reasons why I don’t like this particular theory/headcanon.

As Robin:

Batman (1940) #422

In these panels we can see Jason as Robin jumping in to defend a woman that was being attacked by a man. There I only see Jason acting like a vigilante would, maybe he was hitting too hard or whatever but Batman has hit people as much as Jason was doing it this time around, plus I, personally, don’t see any kind of problem with Jason beating a man that was harassing and threatening a woman with death.

Right beside we have Jason being on the side of the woman that killed her sister’s attacker. He didn’t see any problem with that woman seeking justice for her sister on her own when the police, Batman and himself couldn’t get the job done.

Here I see Jason having a big problem with authorities and justice system, which is not something new, in Batman #408, Jason says very clearly that he doesn’t trust the system in Gotham (the police, social workers and such), and he was also shown in that comic talking very fondly about his mother and about how much he cared for her when she was at her worst. Let’s remember that Jason loved his mother, he took care of her and resented his father for being abusive towards her and even introducing her to drugs.

Instead understanding these panels as Jason having been abused himself, I see it more as Jason having a humongous understanding of how much women and others suffer in Gotham due to the justice system’s lack of action. I also see Jason as the kind of boy that respected all women and could not sit and do nothing when people were hitting and abusing women just like his father did to his mother.

Batman (1940) #424

This issue starts by saying that Jason jumps into action as soon as he hears someone scream but that he wasn’t going to be prepared to see what was happening. This is the issue where all of us meet Felipe Garzonas, the abuser and rapist of many women. At first Jason doesn’t know what Felipe was doing but after he and Batman “defeat” Felipe, he goes to the room where he finds Gloria in a bed badly hurt and scared. Jason is shocked when he first finds her and after hearing her story in the police station, he becomes more and more happy about the fact that by having caught Felipe, he and Batman would be able to offer some peace and justice to Gloria after he goes to jail, but that doesn’t happen.

They had all the evidence to put Felipe in jail and the police could easily see that Gloria was the victim but because Felipe had someone to back his made-up story up, he was able to not be arrested and jailed.

Jason once again is baffled at the lack of action by the police or simply justice not being able to be made in favour of the true victim. Batman even says that he has noticed that Jason “had become to emotionally invested with the case” which could favour either idea (Jason having suffered sexual abuse or not), in my case I see this once again as Jason not being able to remain calm after doing everything to keep that woman safe and the justice system not being able to do it themselves in a more permanent way (jail time, or whatever).

But that’s not all because Jason being too emotional with that case was brought up as a way to show that Jason couldn’t see that Felipe had been under the influence of drugs, which is something that Jason can see in people very well (do to experience with his mother and his training with Batman). So, Felipe is now a rapist, an abuser, he does drugs and he also has a market for it.

Because Felipe was allowed to go back to his “normal” life he had Gloria be killed, and he kept abusing drugs and women, when Jason finds Gloria’s dead body and that Batman still seems to abide the justice system he snaps. He goes alone to see Felipe and that’s were this iconic panel comes from. The moments before Jason made his first kill and felt no remorse about it. I know this is kinda soft topic because Jason was a teenager, but good for him, kill that bitch. Gotham doesn’t need more people like him.

Batman (1940) #226

This is the issue where Jason attacks the men that were involved with some very nasty stuff involving children. Batman narrates and says that him and Jason had been working on this case for three weeks. Jason jumps into action suddenly and “recklessly” even though Batman considered their investigation wasn’t over, he also says that he thinks that Jason had been “acting oddly” and that he was very “moody, resentful and reckless” and that that attitude could “get him killed”.

This could be used as to add more proof of the abuse idea but I actually see it as build up to Jason’s death, that happened two issues later. Let’s remember that Jason found out of his birth mother and was desperate to find and save her from Joker, because he was a good son but also because he didn’t feel like Bruce loved, cared or appreciated him anymore. Ever since Jason made it clear that he didn’t see the world and justice in the same way that Batman did back in issue #422, Jason and Bruce’s relationship suffered, they just couldn’t see eye to eye on some subjects and Bruce’s neglect or lack of care for what Jason believed in drove Jason to act the way he did in the case involving his mother and the Joker.

Jason obviously has major issues with kids being abused and put in dangerous situations, he as the Red Hood (Winick’s Red Hood) is the same, he really wants kids to be taken far away from drugs so they cannot be manipulated, used and abused by Gotham’s Drug Lords. Here I can see some of the same thing, Jason being protective of those kids and getting fed up with how much time he and Batman had to wait to do anything about the subject, along side it I bet Jason wasn’t seeing the police or the justice system doing anything about the whole thing so that could have probably fuelled his desperate attack of those horrible people.

As Batman/Red Hood:

Batman: Battle for the Cowl #3

Battle for the Cowl… yeah I am going to be brutally honest about this, if anyone thinks that this is someway or somehow proof that Jason had been abused in the past then I think we have very different ways of thinking how survivors must be treated or written in comics and other media.

This to me is pure bad writing, this is some of the worst things I have seen being written in comics. Whether or not this implies Jason being abused or not, Bruce’s message is absolutely disgusting and not at all helpful, it is even worse when you realise that Dick, a canon sexual assault survivor, is the one playing the message to Jason even though Jason explicitly said that he didn’t want to hear it again. That Book, issue, page and panel are extremely badly written and is one of the most terrible Jason and Dick characterizations ever.

So, I don’t really care if this panel is supposed to offer support to that theory or headcanon, I really dislike that speech and if it is actually referencing Jason as being a survivor of child abuse, then Tony S. Daniel needs to make an apology from today to the day he dies.

“Of all my failures, you have been my biggest” “You were broken and I thought I could put the pieces back together. I thought I could do for you what could never be done for me. Make you whole” “What happened to you as a child… the terror, the pain, the horrors” “You needed repair and instead I gave you an outlet to act out on”

Absolute garbage writing. Me, as Bruce is number one hater, know that that speech is even out of character for Bruce. Listen, if Jason had been a victim of sexual assault or just being a kid living alone in Crime Alley, no one should leave a message like that, telling a victim that they were broken and needed fixing, what the hell? No, thank you, this issue proves nothing except that Battle for the Cowl was a mistake as a whole.

Green Arrow (2001) #72

Judd Winick is clever I will always say that, and while I do see why people think that Jason is making the “child abuse idea” canon I still think that the way that he talks is still fairly ambiguous if not just him playing mind games with Mia.

I know it sounds wrong, but hear me out, Winick, in this arc makes Batman say that Jason distracted him and Oliver just to take Mia as a “hostage” because that was Jason’s way to mess with him. This arc happens right after UtRH and Jason is a bit more unhinged than ever. But he doesn’t harm Mia, he just talks to her, he tries to make her see why he acts the way he does and to do that he talks about how much he sees of himself in her. Do I believe that Jason suffered the same things Mia did? No. Do I think that their past is similar? Yes.

But Jason doesn’t only use the fact that they have similar pasts to make Mia rebel against her “no killing ways” and Oliver like he did with Bruce, but he also brings up the fact that their past is incredibly different to the lives of Bruce and Oliver, and that those differences are of importance.

Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t see Jason bringing Mia’s past for anything other than manipulating her and kinda make her see Oliver in a negative light the way that he does Batman and Bruce. Jason was at a point in his life where all he wanted to do was deliver the same pain that he had gone through but he didn’t do it by physically harming anyone (Mia was left unscratched), he was just out there trying to play mind games so he could break more havoc in Batman’s name.

Mia’s past is just way too different to whatever we have seen in canon from Jason’s past. Maybe I am wrong, after all, I only read about Mia in that arc.

-

With all that having been said I think it’s pretty obvious that I just don’t think that Jason’ having been sexually abused as a child actually happened, and I also don’t like to think about his past in that way. His canon suffering could have made him act that violently against criminals involved with sexual attacks and drug-related crimes, but I also think that’s just how Jason was, he really disliked the justice system in Gotham and saw how much it failed to protect victims, so now that he had the training to help those who couldn’t do it for themselves, he tried his best to bring criminals to justice.

And when that didn’t work, he grew more and more frustrated with Batman’s methods which led him to be more unforgiving and violent.

I also don’t like the theory/headcanon as a whole because I think its one of those things that Fandom comes up with just for that extra angst factor in their favourite character’s story so they can make him suffer more and because of that no other Robin or character as a whole can ever understand his pain or whatever. In this fandom there is a lot of “competitive trauma” going on and I honestly dislike it a lot.

About Jason having been assaulted while he was in a coma, I don't really know, he was at a hospital for what I believe were six moths, maybe that idea comes from real life happenings but I have never thought of that happening in Jason's life and I would rather not give it much more thought.

Also, I believe that DC just like fandom would have never been able to handle the subject of Jason having been a sexual assault survivor with the respect and care that it actually needs. We have seen DC treat sexual harassment and abuse as nothing but a side plot or bringing it up in an extremely disturbing way. In Fandom some (very few) people end up glamorising or romanticising these subjects so, I don’t believe the comic world was or is ready to treat a backstory like this with the respect it needs.

Maybe I haven’t even treated the subject with the respect and care that it needs and if that’s the case then I am truly sorry.

I had never answered a question regarding this subject before and I really appreciate all the questions you send my way; they do make my brain happy. I am really sorry it took me this long to write an answer to you but I hope the post is good enough for all the time I made you wait!

I hope you have an amazing week!

[zoopzopp]

A post for some BAMF Izuku fics <3 (more of these will be added and the list will be updated as i read them)

Fics i've read:

The Secret Ingredient is Crime- Izuku only had a whole month to further prove himself worthy of Yuuei's golden acceptance, and he was going to do whatever it took to make it in. Yuuei would never truly know what hit them until it was too late. (The secret crime AU in it entirety is fucking amazing and what wouldn't i give to read more stuff with it)

Deku the Villain Hunter: Support Hero - We all know the story: After being told he couldn't be a Hero by All Might, Midoriya Izuku still wandered over to a supervillain attack where he could save Bakugou Katsuki. But what if he had made the other turn? The answer is a butterfly effect that would lead him on a path to paving his own future. A path of revenge, finding his own moral compass, and doing the impossible. (OKAY MANY THOUGHTS. Very cool story and aspects. I binged it overnight and lost a bit of sleep the next night as well.)

The Story of How Midoriya Izuku Asserted His Dominance (And Traumatized Japan) - The Sports Festival was supposed to be a break from stress. Shouta should have known there is no such thing as a break with his class.

making it right (for real this time) - - Izuku is a support course student at UA, and Katsuki's neighbor, best friend, and former bullying victim. After Izuku's performance at the sports festival, Katsuki realizes something. He has to make things right. -

Hero Fall (UA Civil War Exercise) - It's now the end of the first year of UA for our students. Nedzu had decided to bring back the annual Heroes vs Villain fight. The fight shall last 5 days and the villain leader is Izuku Midoriya, with the commanding officer of the hero team being Katsuki Bakugo. But, what happens when Izuku is left alone?

Hero Class Civil Warfare - Heroes lead by Bakugo. Villains lead by Midoriya. Seven days prep time. Three days for Izuku Midoriya to show why they should be glad he's not a real villain.

"I Didn't Know You Had It In You." - Midoriya goes feral rage mode in his fight against Overhaul. The beat down still happens, but with Eri no longer at his back, he gets more violent. One For All reacts in an interesting way and Midoriya commits a terrible and unheroic act - the cold blooded murder and maiming of Chisaki Kai. Shigaraki is there to watch it all unfold.

Plan C meets Plan A - Even if All Might is right and Izuku can't be a hero, Izuku refuses to be useless. So Izuku uses his analysis skills to develop Plan C: Consulting in order to help the heroes. Eraserhead is impressed by this mysterious new consultant but alarm bells in Deku's behaviour quickly have Aizawa recruiting help for Plan A: Adoption.

Q. A. B. - One month after @hawks_unofficial's initial viral post, the blog titled "Quirk Analysis Blog for the Future", otherwise known as "Q. A. B.", has gone from an average of 10 views per post to an average of 20,000 views per post. Midoriya Izuku does not know how to view the impressions analysis for his suddenly popular blog, and only notices that sometimes, people actually comment on his posts now. He does not google himself or his moniker and thus does not see the rise in online articles and speculation. He is unaware that the "kyuu-ei-bee" he begins to hear about in passing refers to his own blog. He does not have a Twitter account. At the time, Midoriya Izuku is 15 years old.

How to murder your father - It's dangerous to be a bad father when you have a life insurance. Just saying.

Negation - Passive Quirks are a bitch. Izuku is reasonably done with the situation.

Thanks For Your Support - Izuku has the talent and the intellect to be the first Quirkless pro hero, and everyone at UA knows it. Unfortunately, his desire to become a hero has long since been buried thanks to the words of his childhood friend and childhood hero.

Policed To Meet You - Izuku takes All Might's advice and becomes a cop.

Vigilante Work And Other After School Activities - Izuku is a vigilante, Aizawa likes cats and therefore kids who help cats, and sometimes breaks must be forced upon overachieving teenagers.

When the Commission Lost Total Control - The hero polls have a small part where one can suggest their own hero. This is done just because of the amount of heroes is to great to name them all. This creates a little problem for the commission because a vigilante is assumed to be a brand new hero by the public- and ranks pretty high. Because of that, this vigilante now is too popular to hide and they can't come out with their mistake either! Think of the chaos that would bring.

Izuku being Badass but like in not that grand of a way but still tearing-people-down-in-some-way kind of way

He Was Quirkless - Midoriya get's sick of discrimination against the quirkless and decides to do something about it. It leads to some interesting situations. A trilogy.

bloody, but unbowed- It's Advocacy Week for Yuuei's hero students and it gives Midoriya Izuku a lot to think about about what kind of hero he wants Deku to be.

Called Out - When Izuku is hit by a quirk that will cause him to call out the first person to be rude to him on the way to school with every mistake they've made in the affected persons presence or have otherwise effected said affected person, Aizawa is in for a rough ride. In other words, with some help from a quirk, Izuku rakes Aizawa over the hot coals until he gives out. (a great fic but i've got mixed feelings on this one because on one hand, izuku is badass but on the other its Aizawa bashing and really like him skhdskdb so yea! Read it as per your tastes!!)

The time when everyone learned that izuku respects Bakugo more than all might. - I didn't like how Bakugo was tied up during the sports festival and so izuku didn't. Badass izuku roasted all might and midnight.

Villainous Sunshine - After an innocent question, Class 1-A learns just how terrifying Izuku's analysis is. Nedzu's along for the ride.

Never understand ( and you can't ) - Midoriya is sick and tried of his classmates bias and prejudice against the quirkless community and finally breaks

Mastermind: Strategist For Hire - Izuku Midoriya never got the chance to save Bakugo from the sludge villain and impress All Might. With his dream crushed, Izuku becomes bitter and angry. It also doesn't help that he faces discrimination at every turn. All he ever wanted was to be appreciated, so when the villains are the ones to recognize his talents rather than the heroes, well, Izuku just can't resist. He might as well help those who actually want him around. Mistakes were made, and now society must face a villain of their own making: Mastermind.

Malignance - Deku is far scarier than anyone gives him credit for.

Fics in my to read list which has/probably has BAMF izuku

Young Midoriya - Izuku Midoriya couldn't help himself when he saw someone in trouble. Even at 12 years old, his instincts drive him to help those in need. So when he sees Kacchan and his goons about to ambush another student, he has to step in, right? It's not like this hasn't happened before. What is different this time though, is that he's never had an audience that consisted of the Number One Hero.

Heroics and Other Things That Don't Require Superpowers - Izuku doesn't have a quirk. That's the long and short of it. After being told his whole life he can't be a hero, General Education at UA is the best he can hope for, right? Wrong. Dead Wrong. So super wrong that his best friend from Gen Ed, all of Class 1A and a whole mess of Pro Heroes are going to prove to him how wrong he is. Izuku has the makings of a hero, and his lack of a quirk only throws those qualities into starker relief. After all, who wants to be as strong as All Might when you can be the cleverest hero in the business?

Cases of More Than - Izuku is known as Deku online. He's an analyst of quirks, sometimes even working with the local detective, Tsukauchi, on a case. He meets new friends, builds a few relationships, and slowly crushes on his best friend. But then he's thrown into the General Studies Course at U.A. It doesn't help that All for One is showing an interest in him at all.

No Regret - In this world there is no hard set villain or hero. No victim and aggressor. Everyone is at fault for something and Izuku, with his own villain group, will make everyone pay. Even the bystanders who did nothing. This is what society gets for abandoning it's people. Deku will manipulate everyone and be the greatest villain, all so the world can be a better a place. With the stakes so high there is no time for regret.

We Are a Different Kind - Mirio doesn’t think he can be a hero anymore now that he’s quirkless, Izuku calls bullshit.

Live a Hero - "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Or, you're raised a villain, rebel when you're nine, and fight against the odds to become a hero anyway. That's how it is in Izuku's case.

Prodigal - After being convinced to give One for All to Mirio, Midoriya Izuku must rebuild his shattered dreams with bloody hands.

Two Sides of the Same Coin: Vigilante - Izuku is orphaned at the age of four and is sent into the Japanese Foster Care System. After multiple failed attempts at finding a forever home and some unfortunate circumstance, he ends up on the streets. Eventually, the vigilante, Deku appears. Eraserhead must gain his trust to bring Deku back to the right side of the law. If he he does, however, the untrustful but pure-hearted boy may just be a bit more than Aizawa Shota can handle.

From Muddy Waters - - but the sleeve of his tracksuit was bulging, tearing and ripping and a mass of twisted flesh, nearly as big as the boy himself and nauseatingly familiar (the arm of the man that had torn a hole in his side with a grin and left him a frail shadow of himself) swung forward and slammed into the flat face of the giant robot. Izuku wants to be a hero more than anything.

Pieces are easily sacrificed when they're nameless - Nobody ever thought quirkless, weak, weird Midoriya Izuku was dangerous. This perception carried over to his first year high school class, because really despite the super strength Midoriya didn't have it in him to be dangerous. That was their first mistake. And the one that would see them fall.

Not exactly BAMF izuku but i just wanted to rec these fics <3

In the shade of a sunflower - Being biologically quirkless came more with an extra pinkie joint in the toes and a stunning lack of vestiges mutations. It came with smaller things, like extra teeth that did virtually nothing, exploding organs, and weird exposed nerves that weren't designed to feel pain.

Throat Punch - In which Aizawa attempts to teach Izuku how to use various battle tactics and it goes just about as well as you'd expect. At least Shinsou is there with his fantastic commentary. (just a fun lil thing where izuku is really stronk and trains with shinsou and aizawa)

So Be It - He could still do good. Midoriya could show them all what a hero without powers looked like. If he had to break a few rules to do it, so be it. So be it… (as stated not exactly BAMF but its a vigilante izuku so ye-)

Never Enter a Drinking Game with Bakugo or Izuku - Izuku walks in on Kirishima and Kaminari having a drinking competition (no alcohol involved). And it reminds him of an old story.

5 Times Midoriya Taught Class 1A about Memes and 1 Time they Found a Villain that Understood Them - After being diagnosed as quirkless, Midoriya gets into pre-guirk media and finds memes. He shares them with Class 1A. Aizawa doesn't get paid enough for this. (THIS FIC???? FUCKING AWESOME. LITERALLY WHAT I WANTED TO SEE)

Midoriya: JD Version - Nedzu has decided that a play should be put on so that the students can learn how to "go undercover", an idea which Aizawa thinks is utter bullshit. They're putting on Heathers and when Nedzu chooses to cast Midoriya for JD, everyone objects. Midoriya is a much better actor than they thought.

that is a lot!! I hope you have fun reading it!!!

[greatwyrmgold]

A lot of authors try to make Batman and the Joker into foils, with the Joker as a sort of an evil Batman. That's an understandable impulse; foils are great, and the Joker is more iconic than the rest of Batman's rogue's gallery put together. But the Joker was just another rogue in the gallery before accumulating baggage and expectations, so it's hard to make that foil relationship work. There's just not much they have in common that they don't also share with, say, Hawkeye or Mysterio.

Their relationship boils down to little more than a master detective and a criminal that's really hard to detect. Attempts to make it more meaningful usually try to frame something Batman does as a symptom of insanity like the Joker's. And that just doesn't work. Aside from the yikes-ness of "crazy people" being painted as violent and dangerous, the Joker's "madness" manifests as violent acts that are too different from Batman's—domestic terrorism doesn't line up with brutal vigilantism, unless you rewrite one or the other.

But there's one angle that occurs to me that I haven't seen done before: The characters' focus on their past, or lack thereof.

Batman is hung up on the past. He's motivated by his parents' deaths, obsessed with making sure nothing like that ever happens again. Contrast Spider-Man; he's arguably motivated by the death of his father figure, but mostly in the sense that he wants to be a better Peter than the one who let Uncle Ben die. The event itself doesn't matter, just the mindset that enabled it. But Batman is hung up on his past, and Batman stories often focus on that, one way or another.

Meanwhile, the Joker barely has a backstory. His history is famously vague and inconsistent, with its most famous depiction in the comics coining the term "multiple-choice past" and makes it clear that the Joker prefers it that way. This carries over into his most famous adaptation (sorry, Hamil!Joker), who gives multiple inconsistent accounts of his past at various points in the film, implying radically different motivations for his violence.

We have a hero who is obsessed with his past and a villain who doesn't care about his. Why don't more stories use this? I can think of several possible ways to resolve this conflict off the top of my head.

Batman realizes that the Joker has a point. Dwelling on the past is making him miserable; the Joker's over-the-top joie de vivre comes from not worrying about anything except the present.

Batman realizes the Joker has a point; by living in the present, he's able to adapt better.

The Joker is wrong, because by ignoring his past he can't learn from his mistakes (but Batman can).

The Joker causes mayhem without an ounce of guilt because he doesn't worry about the past; Batman stays on the straight and narrow because he doesn't want to cause the same kind of pain that was inflicted on him.

The Joker is just running from his own past, and he can't run forever.

Batman is running from his past, throwing himself into training and then vigilantism so he doesn't have time to mourn...but he can't run forever, either. Someone in the Bat-Family worries that he'll spiral towards an unrestrained frenzy if he can't confront his trauma, an arc that might start after something like the Jason Todd incident.

Obviously, most of these are incompatible with each other. But that's kinda the point! You could tell a lot of different Bat-stories from this angle, and I'm surprised I haven't seen any.

(I wonder what the odds are someone's gonna reblog this pointing out a storyline that did exactly this.)

[lookotherway]

Were there any dangerous flaws of vigilantism introduced in the Bnha vigilante spin off? From your take about it?

it (might) encourages civillians to demonstrate their quirks in public. 

not sure if i remember it right, but the civillians in Vigilantes didn't seem to care much about the fact that kouichi isn’t a licensed hero, or they didn’t know that. the introduction chapter also stated that the pro heroes actually turn blind eyes at the vigilantes as long as they didn’t commit any serious crime and/or tangle themselves in any serious situation that required the pro to involve. because no pro hero arrests kouichi for his actions, i’m not surprised if the civillians mistook kouichi as a licensed hero.

back to the first point. the law suppresses public-using quirk to prevent the world goes into chaos, disorder, or deepens the hierarchy based on quirk. vigilante’s existence in fact threatens it. i guess kouichi is a lucky case, but in a worse case, there will be someone thinks “if this guy can show off his quirk like that then why can’t i?” but of course, the pro heroes let vigilantes slide because their tagrets are those guys with thoughts like that, albeit smaller cases. after all, more people thinking about the safety of the city, the better, isn’t it?

also, since vigilantes don’t possess any real power to the law, and isn’t undergoing any thorough training, the most they can do in a serious situation is confront the villain and kick his ass. endeavor named 3 fundamentals required for a hero: rescuse, suppression, evacuation. then, vigilantes stop at suppression. we can see how this going in the latest chapters of Vigilantes, when some civillians stand on spot to cheer on kouichi instead of seeking evacuation, yet no one shields them from the dangers. 

maybe i should talk a bit about the criteria to pick a hero that tsukauchi’s sister had mentioned. it purely stated a fact that a hero is deliberately chosen upon the potentially possitive influence they could bring to the society. it means a hero vows to devote his power for the good of the civillians and is held accountable by the law. that’s the condition in order to use one’s quirk freely, like, freedom within the framework. 

vigilante kind of bouncing on that line. they lack the reliability. they didn’t vows anything to the law yet they’re freer than most civillians, they didn’t care about what kind of influence they could give, no one knows when will they stop using their quirk for good deeds, no one knows when will they go from vigilante to villain, no one knows if there’s something already went beyond control, and the blame if shits happened that involved vigilantes would probably fall on the government and the pro heroes as always. 

kouichi is a case that people will say “it’s so lucky that he’s a good person”. besides kouichi, well... no one knows for sure.