#the lack of a continuity checker really hurts this game

[corviids]

in retrospect, it would tactically make more sense for lucemond to NOT remain neutral.

summerhall isn't.... hereditary yet. since the next generation hasn't inherited the seat, there is no precedent there for summerhall to continue in their family line beyond the initial declaration by viserys. essentially, they could lose it all in one generation if the crown, whoever comes out on top after the dance, choses to have summerhall revert back to the throne.

ofc, they would fight and argue and try to protect their claim but considering how essential both luke and aemond are to their respective family camps, whoever wins will be (understandably) pissed off with them and look for a way for them to hurt, and what better way than to take away their home, income, lands and pride?

it would make sense for them to appease BOTH sides and keep them adequately pleased while playing a complex game of envoy-raven-political checkers shitshow where they don't have to exactly declare for one side, only make each of them think that they or on their side. and everytime they are asked to participate in the war, they could bring up their young kids, summerhall's relative isolation or even creaky fucking joints as an excuse.

they would need to have the mirage of political alignment without actually doing anything comprehensive for either of the camps, if only for the future of their line.

if lucemond were to declare neutrality, it wouldn’t be overt. like you said, it’d be an act of appeasing both side — saying something without actually saying anything.

where summerhall lucks out is in the fact that if the dance were to be won by either side, they have the leverage (for lack of a better word) of their kids. if rhaenyra won, i don’t envision her stripping her own son and grandchildren of what is technically now their birthright because luke didn’t want to put himself or them in harms way. on the flip side, if aegon won — yes he is definitely more unhinged and unpredictable but lucemond are now in possession of really the only dragons and i think they, with help from alicent, would manage to keep summerhall going to aenys whether it be through a marriage or just convincing aegon cuz he really isn’t the politically savvy type. even if he wanted to take it from aemond, i don’t envision that going well.

but yeah, lucemond aren’t tyrell neutral, they’d be war of ravens “summerhall has nothing to offer” type.

tho again, that’s if they stayed neutral lol

[themoomoorn]

Jeralt Eisner Stinky

Related to my previous reblog, feel free to parouse as to why I agree that Jeralt is a bad dad, and the fact that the devs’ lack of a continuity checker made him look worse than the director likely intended him to.

Let’s count the ways:

- Went a very melodramatic 180 regarding Rhea when Byleth - who was resuscitated from friggin’ death - wasn’t behaving like a “normal baby.”  Now to be fair, Rhea was too mum for her own good and a baby that’s not very reactive to stimuli is very concerning in real life, but real life ties lose some of their weight due to Byleth’s wonky parentage and the reason for her lack of heartbeat.  Jeralt is also generally perturbed by Byleth not being “normal” for quite a while, which is pretty shitty of him anyway.  

- As a response to the above, it’s implied that he was the one who set the monastery on fire when absconding with Byleth in the night, a fire that was reported to have caused some serious damage and destroyed a lot of books.

- There’s also the fact that he was aware that Sitri herself suffered from a flat affect and struggled to emote more expressively at first, and he himself is pretty emotionally constipated.  It’d be more shocking if Byleth grew up suddenly acting like Alois. 

- He loved Sitri for basically being a cute little innocent nun, likely seeing her as ideal housewife material.  I know I’m using the term “housewife” in a damning fashion, but he loves her for some seriously basic, surface-level reasons.  Plus the whole “getting her to emote and smile more” bit?  Granted, Claude’s relationship with Byleth grows in a somewhat similar fashion, but Claude also easily adheres the least to 3H’s “avatar worship” and he doesn’t just become fond of Byleth due to her smiling and getting cuter because of that.  You can’t say the same of Jeralt and Sitri.

- While one can’t entirely damn someone for raising a child in the mercenary lifestyle due to the setting - We got a Lord and his sister being raised under similar circumstances - The sheer ignorance that Jeralt raised Byleth with is pretty damning if the gameplay/narrative element (Byleth being ignorant for the sake of player projection and exposition) is taken away.  It’s one thing to not necessarily be aware of the ins and outs of the major religion of an entire continent, but Byleth doesn’t even have much basic knowledge of Fodlan’s three countries, or any country outside of it, although most of Fodlan doesn’t either. There is also more damning text, including how Jeralt handled all of their job logistics and didn’t bother to put in any incentive to have Byleth possibly learn to inherit or learn the ins and outs of the company.  The quest where you get Jeralt’s old tactics primer also reveals that he didn’t bother to teach Byleth basic battle tactics either. 

- Where the heck was Byleth when Jeralt was in Sauin Village???  Not even Byleth herself remembers.  And while it’s heartwarming to see that Jeralt still cares for Leonie after reuniting with her (With people who bash Leonie for her fixation on him naturally ignoring this), he seems to put more effort in bonding with her than his own child.  She’s also the one who winds up inheriting his company, although that can also be attributed to Byleth being presumed dead when she does.

- He doesn’t really say much when it comes to Byleth’s “Ashen Demon” title, which is notably one of the very few things that genuinely upsets Byleth prior to her becoming more emotive.  And while it’s hinted that Byleth herself didn’t express interest in interacting with other people casually, Jeralt wasn’t exactly helping matters in that department either, exacerbating their isolation from others.  Heroes has the default Female Byleth note that she can’t tell a friend from an ally due to how she grew up.

- The man’s a raging alcoholic who performed some pretty stupid, deadly shit, including a trick that had a high chance of beheading Alois.  His treatment of Alois is also pretty deplorable, as is the fact that he has a slew of unpaid bar tabs that get shouldered by Alois and then forced onto Leonie.  

- Going back to meta and tying to how a lack of continuity checking affected 3H, Jeralt spent a lot of time fretting over Byleth being even remotely exposed to the church when there’s plenty of folks who, while aware of the faith, do not actively practice at all, pay lip service at best, or even show some disdain like the three Lords do.  Exploring lore also hampers the idea that the church is omnipotent and omnipresent: The Empire’s church branch was flat-out gutted for well over a century with practically no faith-based services available (this is a crux for Dorothea’s hatred of the faith and also cited with Mercedes’ history; she and her mother had to go to the Kingdom to find any kind of religious sanctuary after getting kicked out of House Bartels), the Alliance’s church branch has no political sway specifically because of how said Alliance is governed, and the Kingdom’s church branch has its own problems due to the zealotry, radicalism, differences in opinions of the faith, and eventual manipulation by the Agarthans that led it crossing blades with the Central branch.  

Plus, you know, Rhea never bothered to pursue Jeralt after he ran away.  And Alois’ contingent of knights appearing in Remire that fateful evening was pure happenstance, plus how Jeralt doesn’t even operate his company under a pseudonym or anything practical like that.  So with these in mind, it’s actually pretty reasonable to consider that Byleth can at least be somewhat unaware of the Seiros faith without Jeralt’s input.

- While it’s unrelated to Jeralt being Stinky, I find it irksome that a lot of folks will jump right on Jeralt hating Rhea and the church in wake of the man himself acknowledging that taking Byleth away from the monastery (or at least not giving them a stable place to grow up) was probably a huge mistake upon seeing them flourish as a teacher.  He also gets gutted for ultimately putting two and two together and realizing that the Empire may be involved with the group that’s been terrorizing the monastery during all of the 1180 school year, and tells off the Flame Emperor when they claim they’re not culpable for the Remire Massacre.  It’s hard to tell whether or not the man would side with Edelgard with enough persuasion or propaganda, or how he’d react to Byleth becoming one with Sothis and taking on their position as a major figure within the church for three out of four routes with some degree of fanfare and acceptance (which players naturally ignore to warp into Byleth being a shrieking harpy church-basher, or a church victim that El-chan or Claude has to ~save~ her from, naturally).  But it’s proof that people can’t really read - the guy wasn’t having the FE’s excuses, plain and simple.

- The above also ties to how Leonie is derailed in Crimson Flower, as she’s one of the few who unambiguously knows that the Fork Emperor is working with the same group that had Jeralt killed, in addition to all of the hell they caused therein.  Naturally, her excuse if recruited on Flower is - wait for it - Jeralt was pissy at Rhea for reasons Leonie never finds out about, but since Byleth-chan is siding with El-chan, it’s all well and good now.

- There’s also the profoundly depressing meta that if Byleth were allowed to be their own character, a continuity person was maybe in place, and Jeralt wasn’t a glorified plot device, then he had all the makings to be a great deconstruction of Greil from FE9.  The parallels are all there, but naturally they’re not put to good use, or blithely ignored outside of Supports.  This also ties to just how heavily players project onto Byleth, possibly even more so than Robin or Corrin.  Since they really project onto Byleth as Kusakihara and his goons intended, Jeralt is naturally tied to players’ real life father figures by osmosis, despite the fact that Jeralt himself definitely isn’t a good father figure. 

While having a consistent continuity checker wouldn’t be a fix-all to 3H’s problems (Kusakihara’s dismissive attitude towards having one and consistency in general is pretty damning in itself), it likely would’ve at least tightened the worldbuilding that the devs prided themselves on and offered some more consistency, even if the price is showing unpleasant truths such as Jeralt being stinky.

[myckicade]

This is my response to an ongoing conversation. ( @motleystitches and @tikxy have some fabulous insights! ). I'm posting this portion on its own, as well, because... Well, why not, indeed?

To quote the beginning of @motleystitches' response:

This is incredibly interesting, because it leads me to thinking that perhaps Lestat never intended to be in this deep with Louis at all. He didn’t realise what he was getting into when he started the whole hunt-for-a-companion. He knew the “play” of romance, so that’s what he did with his grand gestures etc, but it all comes back to bite him, so to speak and he didn’t like it at all.

Mmmm, precisely. He intended to play the game, and fell head-first into, "Oh, shit." Louis feels like the biggest slap of reality that (I suspect) Lestat has had in a long time, a reminder of that which he can't control. He can kill. He can seduce. But love? Oh, no. No, love can not be kept on such a tether, not when it is him being choked by the reigns. Being Louis' maker, there is likely a pretty serious expectation of adoration from his fledgling, of love, certainly, and not necessarily with the intention of making it a two-way street (beyond those grand gestures).

The truly amusing part is that Lestat is really overthinking the problem. To use an old favourite, he's set up for a game of checkers, while Louis is ready to play chess.

I love your description of Louis as "the most human-ish vampire ever", because that is absolutely spot-on. Louis wants to be seen, to be understood. We wants something real. He isn't taken in by the superficial, and that comes across as the only card Lestat knows how to play. He can wine and dine, he can show off his wealth and status, he can be the mysterious man about town. When that fails to be what Louis needs to be happy, and it makes Louis confused and uncomfortable, there's this sense of, "...-Huh?!" Sure, Lestat eventually says he enjoys the challenge of Louis, but the novelty is quick to wear off. He's faced with it so many times, the resulting struggle to recalibrate leaves him with mental and emotional whiplash.

At some points, it really looks like he doesn't know whether he's coming or going. The argument in which Lestat screams, "This isn't a life!" strikes me, again and again. That he, Lestat, stubborn, headstrong, ever-powerful creature of the night, has been brought to tears over a situation he could have left. He's scared and hurt, stuck in the middle of a situation he doesn't seem to have encountered before, that he put himself in, and he's looking to Louis to fix it. Goodness knows he's tried and tried (and failed and failed) to make Louis happy, and Louis is the only one with the answer of how to make it work. The only one with the power to change it. He's helpless in the face of Louis' depression, and doesn't have a clue what else to try. Nights out don't work. Sex doesn't work. It's an easy thing to take personally. Unfortunately, he turns to that age-old defense: Victim Blaming. I do believe that he genuinely wants Louis to feel better, but that ego response of "Why am I not the answer?!" really, really gets in his way.

And he still has the balls to laugh in Louis' face, when Loius voices the same concern over their relationship. What a dick.

Anyway.

Lestat clearly loves Louis enough to stand beside him, and swirl down the drain with him, but he lacks the capacity for... understanding? Empathy? Patience? To continue on in silence. To some degree, I would argue that he shouldn't have to, either. Argument, within limitation, can be healthy toward working through feelings, and making one's self heard. Getting to the bottom of things, and figuring it all out. On the other side of the argument, Louis does not have to magically be better to fix the problem. I'm just being a broken record about fucking communicating.

The situation with Claudia is a repeat of the same theme, sparking the pattern I had previously mentioned. They wrap the wound (turn Claudia), forgive and forget, and move on. But, eventually, Louis' focus goes to Claudia, a stand-in (though loved) for the family he's already lost. He's once again distracted by something that isn't Lestat. He nit-picks at Lestat for his parenting choices, which, I grant you, don't look great on the surface. But, Lestat is the experienced vampire. I say again, Lestat is the experienced vampire. He knows what it will take for this girl, this fledgling of theirs to survive in the world. Every time he tries, Louis takes issue, because Louis is trying to protect Claudia from what she is. From what they made her. As with his own self-care as a vampire, he's trying to do it in halves. I think it scares him that Claudia is a killer, that she is not like him. That she will grow to resent them for what they have done to her, as opposed to for her. (And, as we've seen... Ta-da...).

But, I digress. Here's Louis, once again throwing criticism at Lestat. Resentment. Just when he thinks he's finally found the answer. After he's helped Louis to attain what he wants. After they have been doing so much better. After he's given more than he had ever intended to the man, and he's still not enough. He isn't enough to make Louis stay without Claudia. He isn't enough to make Louis happy without Claudia. Either he doesn't understand what Louis is going through, or he doesn't give a shit (which I find a little more difficult to believe), and it leaves him with a sense of inadequacy. And he looks at Claudia, and Claudia apparently holds every fucking answer that he has now spent decades trying to find. He's failed, and to a child, and part of him just seems to... give up.

Which brings me to Antoinette. Part of me thinks that, sure, Lestat runs back over to Antoinette, at whatever point, to fill the void of what he wants, but isn't getting from Louis. Someone he can please, and likely with so much ease, I can hear his ego purring from here. Someone who makes him feel wanted, and desirable, and (I'm sure) the complete opposite of helpless. The rest of me, though, also sees this affair as Lestat giving up. Said affair has gone on for all these years, and Louis obviously hasn't moved for a physical separation. The cry for attention has gone unanswered. He's tired of hunting. As you say, he recognizes himself as being in the wrong for it, because he still doesn't want to lose what they have, fucked up as it may be. It reads to me as, "Yes, I've done it. Now, are you going to fight for me? For us?"

Then, re-enter Claudia, and her attempts to take Louis away. No matter what they've been through until this point, no matter how many times Louis has threatened to end things, they are still together. They've weathered it all, for better or worse. If there has been a roadblock? Lestat has destroyed it. Quite literally, he has killed it. But, Claudia? She's a roadblock he can't go through. He can't kill Claudia. For one thing, I do believe he cares about her, much as - again - he claims he doesn't. For another, if he harms her, he will surely lose Louis for good. And, he cares about that. This isn't something he can piss on and walk away from. Louis means everything to him. Claudia is going to win, Louis is going to leave him, and Lestat has no tricks left to try. No amount of recalibration is going to fix it. He's lost, and he can't have that.

If he's going to lose anyway, he might as well become the monster he was always expected to be.

[fiveisnumber1]

A Villain In The Making - A Timeless Side Piece

For most people today was just a normal Saturday afternoon. They walked about the city, they ran their errands, they just existed. You on the other hand, you sat around in your room anxiously waiting for your friends to return. The academy kids had left a few days ago to go fight some crazy scientist in France named Gustave Eiffel and Sir Reginald even took Vanya with them this time leaving you to yourself. You could recall the day they had left since it was only a few days ago. You were peacefully playing a game of chess with Five when the sound of an alarm started to blare.

“Ugh, another mission?” Five questioned annoyed

This would be the third one in a row that he and his siblings had in the last week. He was getting tired of having to up and leave all the time especially since he only got to see you once you were finished with school during the week. And even then he now had to split his time with you with his six other siblings. This was awful. You saw the disappointed and annoyed look on Five’s face and knew that he didn’t want to go.

“I'm sorry this keeps happening.” 

“This is the third time our chess game has been interrupted by some mission.” Five complained

“Maybe we should try playing checkers next time?” You jokingly suggested

You could see as a smirk start to form upon Five’s face as he replied,

“I don’t think chess is the cause for all these missions.”

“You never know!” You remarked

“There is a chance, however slim, that it might be the cause. That does not change the fact that I don’t want to go.” Five retorted

You opened your mouth about to try and comfort your friend but from down the hall you heard the loud shouts of Sir Reginald demanding his children’s presence. Both you and Five looked in the direction of his voice as he shouted,

“Do you not hear the alarm? Our mission is in Paris children, we must leave at once!”

You and Five looked back at each other, both with wide eyes as you processed what he had just said.

“You’re going all the way to Paris?” You stated aloud “I guess you’re going to be gone for a bit then, huh?”

Five felt his stomach drop. You were right, he was going to be gone for a bit. He didn’t want to leave you here though. He didn’t want to leave you at all. Without really thinking Five took your hands in his and suggested,

“You should come with me- with us.”

“Five as much as I would love to take a trip to Paris in the middle of the school year I cannot.” You explain

“Why not?” He asked

“I hate to be the person to remind you of this but my parents care for me and would think I’m kidnapped, Five.” You explain

“Shit, you’re right.” Five said as he pull his hands from you and began to pace back and forth

“Hey, if it will make you feel better maybe you can do something touristy for me while you’re there.”

“Like what?” he inquires, stopping his pacing

“I don’t know, look for people who you think are like us and then do whatever it looks like those other people are doing.” You elaborate 

“Children your lack of urgency is putting the world in danger!” Reginald shouts once more

You and Five look at each other once more realizing that he needed to go. It wasn’t fun but it was just something the both of you had to deal with given the differences in your upbringing. He was raised to be a “hero” and would have to leave to fight on behalf of the world and you were just some kid who lived across the street and still needed to finished her advanced algebra homework. Letting out sigh you quickly wrapped your friend in a tight hug which he reciprocated. As you held each other you could hear the sounds of his siblings starting to run downstairs and knew it was time for him to go. Parting ways you looked at your friend one more time and encouraged,

“Go kick some ass with your siblings. I’ll be waiting here for you when you get back.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Five replies, giving you a smile

And with that you watched as he flashed away. You turned back towards the chessboard that you had been playing at with Five only moments ago and sat down in your chair. As you were about to start putting the pieces back in their original spots a voice called out from behind you and asked,

“May I finish this game with you?”

Turning to look at the voice you smiled and said,

“Sure Pogo.”

As Pogo took a seat across from you, he mentioned,

“Just because the children aren’t around does not mean you’re not welcome here Miss (Y/N). This might not be your home but I hope it’s a place where you feel like you can belong.”

“Thank you.”

As you came back into focus you heard the sounds of many people chattering. Looking outside your bedroom window you could see as a crowd started to gather behind barricades across the street at the academy with signs in hand. Dozens of fans of the Umbrella Academy were stood outside the manor to wait and watch for the arrival of their favorite super powered kids. You however were just waiting for you friends to get back so you all could hang out again. Wanting to get out of your room and curious as to what all the fuss looked like in person you decided on heading over to the academy as well.  Walking downstairs you called out to your parents,

“I’m going to go meet up with some friends!”

“Alright, sweetie but be back by 8:30 for dinner and remember the third rule!” Your mom called back

“Uh yeah...I will!” You replied as you quickly hurried out the door rushing over to the academy before you could get caught

Carefully you made your way through the crowd and towards the front of the barricade closest to the house. You looked around at all the people who knew nothing of the reality that your friends were going through. It was crazy what a different world they lived in. As you stood behind the barricade waiting like everyone else for the umbrella academy to show up you felt someone push around you. Looking to the right you saw a kid about your age placing a suitcase down on the ground. He looked around frantically as if trying to find something and you could see that he was dressed up in an academy uniform. Not a good one though. It looked like all the materials were constructed out of tape and paper. You attempted to look away from the weird kid before he noticed but it was too late, you had caught his gaze. Trying to not be weird you quickly commented,

“Uh...hi.”

“Hi! I’m Harold.” He says extending his hand

There was something off about this kid but you couldn’t place it.

“...(Y/N),” You replied slowly shaking it “Nice costume.”

“Oh thanks! I made it myself.” He exclaims

“I can see that.” You comment unimpressed

He must’ve noticed your tone because he followed up with,

“I’ll get a better one soon though!”

You were actually a bit impressed by that. The Umbrella Academy uniforms were custom made so to have an accurate replica created would cost a lot of money.

“Your parents must really love you to pay for a custom made uniform.” You say surprised

The kid looked off to the side for a bit after you had mentioned his parents but when he looked back he explained.

“Oh no, I’m going to get one when I join the academy!”

You blinked a few times in confusion. What did he mean when he joins the academy? It’s not like an after school program you could sign up for free to be a part of. For better or for worse the Umbrella Academy was hand picked. Sir Reginald specifically chose kids who fell under the very rare and odd circumstances such as your friends and yourself. Giving the kid an odd look you questioned,

“Join? Not to be rude kid, but what makes you think you can join?”

“Well I was born on October 1st.” He states

“Yeah so was I, but you don’t see me standing in one of those uniforms.” You retorted

“But you can be! We both probably have powers, Sir Hargreeves just needs to help us find them out!” Harold replied excitedly

God these people really had no clue what life was like behind those walls. They knew nothing of how dull and damaging academy life could be. Centering yourself you placed a hand on the kid next to you’s shoulder as you stated,

“Listen, Gerald right?”

“Harold.” He correct

“Whatever. Having powers has downsides, it is not all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes it can be painful or frustrating or caused unintended harm to yourself or others when they get out of control.” You continued

Instead of a look of contemplation you watched as his eyes lit up.

“So you do have powers?!” He exclaimed

“I never said that.” You replied trying to get him off that topic “I’m just saying this academy isn’t the gift you think it is. You shouldn’t delude yourself because you’re only going to end up hurt.”

“Well, if you don’t want to be in the Umbrella Academy and hang with the coolest people around then suit yourself but I’m going to be living it up with my to be discovered powers and new siblings.” Harold stated

“Uh huh. Sure you are.” You remarked

“Just wait and you’ll see.” He replied

The two of you then went silent as you stood and waited for the academy to appear at their house. The thing was the Umbrella Academy had just arrived. The car had pulled into the back of the house where I could not been seen by the public. Turning from the front seat to look back at the academy, Reginald narrowed his eyes on Vanya and Five.

“Number Seven go in the house and wait in the parlor. Number Five I want you to spatial jump to the front of the house while your siblings and I drive around the block to the front in the car.” Reginald stated

“Why?” Five questioned

It didn’t make sense for him to be here while everyone else arrived later.

“Panem et circenses. Bread and circuses. The more the people are entertained the less questions they ask. Now go.” Reginald commanded

“Fine.” Five replied

Annoyed, Five spatial jumped out of the car and to the front of the house like he was told to do. With a flash he appeared in the middle of the two barricades filled with people. The crowd looked on with awe and excitement as they saw him there. Forcing a smile for the public Five gave a small wave as he looked around. And then, he saw you and a genuine smile came to his face. Pulling something from his pocket he flashed over to you. You didn’t say anything, unsure of how to interact given in this context you looked like another fan in the crowd. Granted, you were a fan of him and the rest of the academy just not in the same way as everyone else. Making the move to speak first Five asked,

“Can I sign your comic?”

“Oh wow! Yeah!” Harold said as pushed you away

Frantically, he tried to pull a comic from his pocket and hand it to Five. This was one of the things he hated most about having fans, they only cared about what they wanted and would put anyone else in harms way to get that. It was disgusting behavior to begin with but even worse that this kid had pushed you. Unhappy with the fact that he had pushed you out of the way Five looked at the boy upset and curtly replied,

“Not you. I was talking to her.”

You knew he wanted to talk to you but the question he had asked didn’t make sense. You didn’t have a comic on you. Curious as to what he meant you asked,

“What comic?”

“The one in your jacket pocket. Right there.” Five points out

Looking down your saw a rolled up comic in your pocket. Pulling the comic out you unrolled it and noticed that it was completely in french. He had gotten this comic and placed it in your pocket just so he could talk to you. Clever.

“Now how did that get there?” You questioned, a playful smirk on your face

“No clue. So can I sign it?” Five replied

“Sure, you can sign my comic.” You remarked sarcastically

You handed the comic back to Five and watched as he made no attempts to find a pen or marker to actually sign the comic. Instead, he stood there on the other side of the barricade, ignoring the rest of the crowd, and just focusing on you.

“So what have you been up to while we’ve been gone?” Five asked

“School mostly.” You replied

“Anything new happen?” He followed

“The new guy who sits behind me keeps picking on me and pulling at my hair.” You stated

Five could feel an anger start to rise in him. He was only gone a few days and someone had the audacity to pick on his best friend. No. Absolutely not, not on his watch. 

“I can do something about it for you.” He firmly states

“Absolutely not.” You retorted

It was annoying that this kid shows up and thinks he can just bother you but it’s not something you couldn’t handle. You were in the process of going through the proper channels at school but if nothing got resolved you had no qualms about handling it yourself. You did not need Five handing it because you knew his handling was the equivalent of a death sentence even if he didn’t cause serious physical harm. The psychological damage from someone with super powers threatening them would be enough to make that kid regret his own birth. 

Harold looked at the conversation between you and Five, and although he felt there was something different about it, that’s not what mattered to him. You had just told a member of the umbrella academy you DIDN’T want their help.

“What he’s a hero, he can totally help with your bully.” Harold interjected

Five looked towards the kid who had pushed you earlier and who was now trying to tell you what he thought was best. Taking a step closer to the barricade he stared Harold down. Lowering his voice in a steady tone he questioned,

“Why are you talking to her?”

Harold couldn’t see Five’s eyes from behind his mask but he could feel his piercing gaze and the tone in which he spoke felt less like a question and more like a threat.

Seeing what was starting to build you tried to redirect Five’s attention back to you by saying,

“Number Five, he’s another fan just like me, remember?”

Five turned to look back at you, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

“Number Five?” He asked, his voice slightly saddened “What did I do?”

“That’s. your. name.” You tried to remind without openly saying anything

It took a moment but Five was able to pick up on the message you were trying to get across and says,

“Oh-uh yeah...Number Five. Thats’s me.”

 “Anyway...” You continued “Did you do anything touristy in Paris?”

“Actually I did.” Five replies cheerfully “I saw a whole bunch of tourists placing these locks on bridges.”

“Interesting. Why?” You asked

“I don’t know but people kept writing them and their friends names on them so I did it too and wrote me and my best friend’s names.” Five explains “Alli- I mean Number Three kept giggling as I did so though which is odd since she did the same thing with Number One.”

“Weird. I’ll-” You catch yourself before finishing “I mean you’ll have to ask her about it then.” 

As Harold watched the two of you talk he felt a little frustrated. He knew that Number Five didn’t really want to talk to him but he needed to find his way into the academy. Trying to interject her said,

“Excuse me Number Five but I really need to talk to you-”

His words were ignored though as someone loudly shouted,

“They're coming! I think I see their car!”

You and Five look towards the street before you looked back to him. You knew that his father didn’t send him out here to talk to you and you worried how he would react if this is what he saw when he showed up. Taking on a more urgent tone you told Five,

“You need to move along, your father will be here any second.”

“I see them! I see the car!” Another person shouted from the crowd

Five stood frozen in place. He knew he needed to move but he also wanted you to come with him. But he couldn’t just drag you with him that would get both of you in trouble but he felt less anxious when you were actually by his side. You knew your best friend and sensing his internal conflict you said,

“Je te verrai à l'intérieur”

Finally looking back from the street, Five can feel his brain and body starting to catch up with each other and really process the situation. Looking at you he quickly replies,

“Á très bientôt”

You give him a small nod acknowledging his statement and Five takes that as his cue to walk away. He’s stopped though when Harold grabs at the sleeve of his jacket exclaiming,

“Wait no!”

With the crowd focused on the arrival of his siblings, Five didn’t want to make a scene. He could flash away but he was concerned the kid would hold on and come through the spatial jump with him. Attempting to just pull his arm away Five stated,

“Get off me kid,”

“No I just need to talk to you!” Harold replied

You were already tired of this kid to begin with but seeing him grab and pull on your friend when he should be keeping his hands to himself was the last straw for you. Placing your hand on top of his you firmly demanded,

“Let go of him. Now.”

Harold refused to let go though and so you were left with no choice. Rapidly, you heated up the molecules of your hand and burned the hand that held onto Five’s sleeve. The kid quickly let go as he saw the dark red burn now on the top of his hand. Looking towards Five you commanded,

“Go.”

And with that Five made his way closer to the entrance of his house. Staring out you with wide eyes, Harold looked between you and the mark on his hand.

“How did you do that?” He questioned shocked

“Do what?” You responded blankly

You had to have had powers. You were born on October 1st and you had just hurt him so he would let go of Five. Maybe you didn’t realize you had them but if you had powers that means he probably did too. Trying to get you to understand he explained

“You burned my hand.”

“No clue what you’re talking about.” You replied

This kid was not going to find out what you could do. Continuing to look at him blankly he saw as the rest of the academy member started to walk towards the house.

“Nevermind. Here come the rest of them, academy life here I come.” He said to himself as he jumped the barricade

You let out a sigh as you realized this wouldn’t end well, and yet you kept watching. He let Ben and Klaus pass him by before grabbing on to Allison’s arm the same way he did for Five.

“Excuse me. I'm your biggest fan.” He said

From behind him you could see Luther approach. And if his body language was any indicator you could tell how pissed he was that this kid was grabbing Allison. Grabbing Harold’s arm firmly, Luther pulls him of Allison and he angrily reprimands, “Hey, hey. You're not supposed to be in here.” “Get back behind the barricade!” Sir Reginald yells at him

You watch as Luther wraps an arm around Allison and walks her towards the house while the crowd’s focus shifts to the incident going on before them. With the crowd distracted, as Diego passes you he gestures for you to follow him. You take a cautionary glance at the crowd and with what seems like the confirmation of no one paying attention you phase through the barricade and quickly follow him towards the academy entrance. Although you thought no one noticed though, Harold did.

“What are you doing?” Reginald demanded

Harold look back from what he had just witnessed and up at Sir Reginald. “It's just...I was born on the same day as the Academy kids. I think I'm like them. I must be. I haven't quite figured out what my power is yet. But maybe with your help, we can find out.” He stuttered “You have no power. You never will have power. Now, go home.” Reginald stated “No, please. Just... I...You have to let me stay. I came all this way. Please don't make me go back.” Harold begged “A little word of advice, my boy. Not everyone in this world can be powerful. Chasing something unattainable is a recipe for a lifetime of disappointment and resentment.” Reginald stated

“No, no! I have to have powers because that girl, she has powers! I just saw it!” Harold exclaimed pointing in your direction

Hearing his words you quickly made yourself invisible before anyone could see you standing with the group. Reginald looked towards the house before looking back at Harold asking,

“What girl?”

The crowd started to laugh hysterically at the antics of the kid before them. He was ridiculous thinking he could join the umbrella academy. Trying to defend himself Harold exclaimed,

“She was just here! She-she disappeared!”

“People don’t just disappear, boy.” Reginald remarked “Now get off my property.”

Tears formed in Harold’s eyes. His heroes were now his worst enemies. They ruined his dreams and they ruined his life. From the stairs of the manor you and the rest of the academy kids watched as Harold grabbed his bag and started to run away. You felt bad for the kid but you also hoped you would never see him again.

[lady-literature]

what a lion cannot manage chp 2

dadmight here we gooo!!!

Ao3 | chp 1 | chp 2 | chp 3 | chp 4

Izumi’s home is a small place. Not suffocating or anything, but the town is too nosy for its own good and word travels fast. When someone new comes to town, it’s not long before everyone is talking about it.

The whispers of a man renting out the old cottage at the edge of town piques Izumi’s interest.

No one’s interacted with him much and he seems to keep to himself, but lack of information has never stopped the gossip mill from running before. He’s kind and polite from what the shopkeepers have seen when he leaves his house for food. That and he is, apparently, absurdly tall.

Besides the mystery of it all, there’s nothing really eye-catching about this particular rumour. Nonetheless, Izumi finds her ears pricking to attention every time he’s mentioned. Unbearably curious, despite herself.

***

For a while, the man seems like more of a ghost story than an actual person. Only showing up at the shops when they’re least likely to be busy. Only walking through town when he must.

Then, out of nowhere, it’s as if he can’t bear to stay in his rented house for anything other than sleep.

***

Toshinori has always been restless. Always moving and fighting and becoming

And here, hidden away in this sleepy town with no villains to fight or people to save, with a wound in his side that aches with every breath, he feels as if it’s clawing at his very skin.

He’s here to recover, far away from the action in Tokyo or Hosu or any place where he's actually needed so he won’t be tempted.

The doctors recommended he take it easy for six months. Mirai—Nighteye, he should say now—told him to retire.

As if that was ever actually an option.

Toshinori agreed to stay out of Heroing for two months, and that’s only because of the combined efforts of Torino and Recovery Girl and David.

He’s not even sure how David found out about it, what with him being on I-Island with Melissa (but Toshinori has a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with Nighteye). The trio were persuasive though, and Toshinori never stood a chance when David pulled his trump card: Melissa’s puppy dog eyes.

It’s nice that they care and worry, but Toshinori isn’t made for sitting still.

He’s restless and the phantom cries of victims he’s not there to save ring in his ears like bells as he tries to relax.

Finally, he decides enough. If he sits still for even a single second more he’s going to tear out of his own skin.

***

He’s been in town for perhaps two weeks (twenty-nine days since he defeated him, twenty-five since he’d woken up in a hospital bed, twenty-four since he realized he’ll never be the same) and it’s not enough time for him to be walking around as much as he is but he can’t help it.

He’s not staying cooped inside for two months.

Toshinori keeps to himself for the most part, stays on the outskirts of things like he normally does when he acts civilian.

Since the beginning of his career, he’s carefully kept Yagi Toshinori and All Might separate. Two different people as far as anyone outside a select few are aware. He’s gone years as unrecognizable from All Might and while he’s not quite worried someone will recognize him, old habits die hard, he supposes.

Even now, when he looks like death warmed over, there’s always a chance. He doesn’t normally stress about it so much, but he’d rather hide the fact that the number one Hero is hiding away in a tiny farming village along the coast. And that means not drawing attention to himself.

He’s only partially successful.

***

The first time Izumi sees him, he’s walking through the park.

She’s walking on her hands across the balance beam because she and Kacchan started taking gymnastics. (Kacchan wanted to take a combat class but was shot down by his parents until they could trust him not to attack another child with his newfound fighting skills. So Izumi got to choose their activity instead.)

The man is hurt. Badly. The heavy tang of blood hangs off him like a coat even from all the way on the other side of the park and she almost falls off the balance beam with the force of it.

But, what almost seems worse is that… underneath the smell of blood and pain and hurt, there’s only… him.

No lingering scent of others, of people who should care for him. Just the cinnamon earth of his own scent drenched in blood and the stale smell of strangers. Even humans, people who don’t purposefully scent their family and friends, smell like each other just by the nature of being close.

Izumi can’t imagine being that lonely. Can’t imagine living in solitude like that, with so many people around her and yet none who are close enough to touch and-

And, well. Izumi’s known around town for sticking her nose in places it doesn’t quite belong. She figures this is just much of the same if you think about it.

***

There are few people Midoriya Izumi has met that she didn’t like and fewer still who didn’t like her in turn.

If asked, Izumi will say this is because she is very good at making friends.

If asked, Katsuki will say it’s because she’s a goddamn freak.

(He won’t say so, because he’s not quite that articulate, but what he means is that there’s not a person dead or alive who can withstand the sheer strength of her will. Not a goddamn person on Kami’s green earth who can be near her for longer than a few minutes without being irreversibly changed.

It’s just a law of nature.

The sky is blue. The grass is green. Reality and the people within it bend to the desires of Midoriya Izumi.)

***

Toshinori has seen this girl running around town, normally with that loud boy at her side, but sometimes on her own. He’s heard about her more.

Everyone he speaks to seems unable to keep themselves from bringing her into the conversation.

She’s the one who plays chess with the elderly at the park, and who climbs up trees for kittens and always seems to be the first to look for runaway dogs. She reads to the younger kids at the library and helps out with craft activities.

He knows so much, Toshinori feels as if he’s already met the girl.

He continues to think that all the way up until he actually meets her and realizes he’s barely scratched the surface.

***

Izumi is good at patterns. Her mind is a bright chaotic whirl of thoughts and ideas and information at all times and it’s laughably easy to put it all together and find repetitions and relations.

Figuring out when the lonely man is going to be passing through the park again is no different.

He sits on that same park bench again, practically collapsing down onto it. His breath is short and his heart is pounding with the exertion of just walking. Izumi briefly wonders what happened to him. Then, she wonders why he’s pushing himself so much because that seems more pressing a matter.

She skips up to him and the smell of blood and pain is enough to make her dizzy but Izumi is determined, okay?

“Hello!” she greets brightly, hands clasped behind her back and smiling.

The lonely man startles. “Ah, hello?”

“Hello!” she repeats, “People call me Midoriya Izuku. Do you like checkers?”

“Uh…” The lonely man blinks, clearly taken aback. “Yes? Do you-?”

She hops a bit in place, excited. “Great! Come play with me!” she reaches up to grab his hand and tugs him over to the stone tables set up for the games. She’s very careful about the amount of strength she uses in that action, just like Nona taught her to be.

Normal little girls shouldn’t be able to throw around things twice their weight.

The lonely man moves easily, probably because he’s surprised by the action. He follows her though and that’s what matters.

He’s confused and a bit awkward at first which Izumi thinks means he doesn’t spend a lot of time around kids. Maybe he doesn’t know what to talk about. What do adults talk about? Her skulk normally talks about magic and whatever new creature has decided to snoop around their forest, so that's out. And he doesn’t smell like he’s a farmer.

So there goes most of her reference points for this kind of thing.

They’re four moves in and she can tell he’s trying to ‘let’ her win. Her ears flick in annoyance and she sets herself up for a move that will wipe him out in seven turns without taking any of his easy captures.

Maybe he likes Heroes? That’s what Izumi normally defaults to and it works most of the time. Who doesn’t like Heroes?

“Who’s your favourite Hero?” she asks, watching him move a checkers piece without even really thinking about it. He’s not even trying.

“Oh, uh,” he clears his throat. “I’m not really sure. I don’t… don’t really keep up with them anymore.”

Izumi blinks and tilts her head. She doesn't miss the ‘anymore’ part.

“Come on. You had to have a favourite at some point,” she insists. “Someone you looked up to and admired! And you can’t say All Might because, obviously. I mean, he’s my favorite but there are a bunch of other Heroes! Like Ectoplasm! Or Gang Orca! Or! Or! There’s even all those American Heroes? Like the Hulk! Or there’s Spiderman. He’s new but he’s super friendly from what people have seen! He goes around helping people even if it’s not villain related and just generally interacts a lot with everyone. There’s a lot about him on the American forums despite him being so concentrated on a small area. I would-”

Izumi stops, realizes she’s been rambling about nothing again and blushes. “Sorry. I get excited.”

The lonely man is quiet for a second and then laughs. It’s quiet and huffing and sounds a little like it hurts but it also sounds happy and that makes Izumi happy. She giggles too even though she’s not quite sure what they’re laughing at.

“All right,” he gives, raising his hands in surrender. “You’ve convinced me. If I must choose, I’d say I have a… fondness for Titania. She’s a little before your time but-”

“Oh! Titania the Strong? Or the Fairy Queen?” she asks because sometimes Heroes have the same name.  People reuse them or pay homage to someone they liked or carry on a legacy. There’s been an active Dread Pirate Roberts ever since the second generation of Heroes.

She tries to think if there are any other Titanias. Ones who stopped Heroing before she was born. She can’t think of any, but back when quirks first popped up and people started calling themselves Heroes they weren’t all that good at documenting them.

They’ve only just started to get better at that.

The lonely man stares at her in surprise and oh. Right. He doesn’t know.

Most people in town do, but he’s new. He doesn’t know of her fascination with Heroes or how her memory is near eidetic. The knowledge bank in her mind is massive and a large part is dedicated to Heroes (to their quirks, to the power they wield, to the ways they use them because it’s always best to have plenty of tricks up your sleeves).

“…The Strong. Young Midoriya, how do you-?”

“I like Heroes,” she says before starting to rattle off what she knows about the Hero. “Titiana wasn’t very well known outside her prefecture but those in it were said to love her. She saved a lot of people and interacted with civilians regularly on patrol. Personable and kind. If she didn’t confine herself to such a small area it’s likely she would’ve become quite popular even without a flashy quirk.” Izumi pauses, “She reminds me of my mom, actually. Only funnier. They say Titania liked to make jokes.”

The lonely man is quiet for a long moment as he moves another of his pieces into a position that makes him easy pickings. Izumi ignores it as she takes her turn.

He clears his throat, then, “She did.”

Izumi snaps up to look at him so quickly her neck cracks. Her eyes are wide and amazed as she looks at the lonely man. “You met her? That’s so cool!”

His lips quirk at the corners. “I did. She was…” he clears his throat again and it’s then that Izumi notices he smells… sad. That’s not what she wanted! “She was one of the best women I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”

“Oh.”

Izumi feels bad now. She didn’t mean to make him sad. And he sounds like, like he misses her. Izumi’s heart breaks, just a little bit and she hops down from her chair to stand in front of him.

Did he used to smell like her? Is she why he stopped getting close to people? Did he lose her?

Izumi’s mind spins and spins and spins. She doesn’t know. Too many variables. She needs more data.

But not now.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad,” she says. “When I feel sad, I get hugs and it makes me feel better. But some people don’t like hugs so Mom says I’m supposed to ask first. And, and you’re sad and I think you need a hug so do you want a hug?”

“I- I don’t-” the lonely man looks flustered now. Wrong-footed. Izumi tries to smile at him reassuringly.

“Mom says I give the best hugs!” she encourages. “So I’m sure you’ll feel better.”

After a long moment, the lonely man softens. “Well I- I suppose a hug wouldn’t hurt.”

“Great!”

She has to stop herself from launching at him, wary of how he’s still hurt and smells of blood. She’s not quite sure where it is but she’s very careful of where she puts her hands and is careful not to squeeze too tightly.

After a few seconds Izumi asks, “Do you feel better now?”

“Yes,” he answers, like he’s surprised by their truth. “Yes, I do. Thank you.”

She nods, satisfied. “Good.” Then, she turns and barely looks at the board before clicking her piece in a series of jumps that takes out half his side and leaves her at his home base. “Queen me, please!”

The lonely man blinks, opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again and laughs. Then, he does as she asked.

***

They play four more games after that with the lonely man actually trying after his sound beating in the first round. Izumi even lets him win the third one.

They talk about random things, Izumi driving most of the conversation by bouncing around random topics and babbling aimlessly. The lonely man doesn't seem to mind too much, and comments on things whenever she pauses long enough for him to get a word in edgewise.

By the time Izumi has to go home for dinner, the lonely man doesn’t smell as sad and Izumi finds she really likes him. He even ruffles her hair before she goes scampering off into the woods. He flattens one of her ears unintentionally but she can forgive that. He can’t see them after all.

He’s also familiar in a way. Almost like Kacchan was familiar, but just a bit different. She’s not quite sure what it is, but he’s nice and friendly and Izumi likes him.

“Did you have a good day, sweetie?” Mom asks her when she gets back home.

Izumi smiles up at her with all her teeth and says, “Yeah! I made a new friend!”

***

Her lonely man introduces himself the second time she finds him.

He calls himself Yagi Toshinori but his name tastes strange on her tongue. Not quite a lie, but not a truth either.

Yagi Toshinori may be his birth name, but it is no longer the name that holds power over him, at least not completely.

Izumi calls him Yagi-san and wonders what he called himself for so long that it changed his very being.

***

It’s somewhere around week two when Yagi-san first coughs up blood around her. He was laughing, a sound she takes such joy in creating, when he suddenly began coughing. A second later, the smell of fresh blood, thick and heady, filled that air and Izumi nearly had a conniption.

They’re in the park and her worried exclamations and mother henning draw the attention of most, if not every, parent in the vicinity.

They’re all rightfully worried and it takes a while before everyone’s calmed down enough for him to give some story about a swollen throat and how it’s already being taken care of.

He’s lying about it, Izumi knows, but he’s uncomfortable and concerningly red from embarrassment.

She lets him get away with it this once.

The parents give him wet wipes and napkins and well wishes that he gets better soon to his utter surprise. Like he hadn’t expected to be given kindness so freely.

Izumi smiles as she waves them all away, thanking them for helping and thinking, not for the first time, how much she loves her town.

***

She goes home smelling like human blood that day.

It takes almost half an hour for Izumi to calm everybody down enough to explain what happened without worrying them more. And even after that, all her cousins (all at least a decade older than her and all starkly human thanks to the curse everyone will only mention in passing) crowd around her and fuss for hours.

She manages it with only resigned exasperation because they did the same thing when she killed the kelpies causing havoc in the lake last month. (She isn’t sure what the big deal was then and she’s less sure now. Killing supernatural threats is basically her— the skulk’s— job.)

***

She spends six hours that night researching diagnoses where patients coughing up blood is a symptom, and as a result, completely ignores her homework.

She doesn’t like a single word she reads.

(Kacchan yells at her the next day about it but they're both weeks ahead of the rest of their class. He’s really only upset because he can’t compare their answers for the physics homework.)

***

It’s a badly kept secret in the skulk that Izumi will be the next Matriarch.

It doesn’t matter that she’s the youngest or that she’s hardly fox-like at all. Because that’s not how skulks work. They’re not human royalty and it is not about lineage.

Foxes are selfish creatures.

They aren’t quite known for their loyalty, not when there are wolves of legend who will beat themselves bloody for their packmates. That doesn’t mean foxes aren’t loyal, it just means they’re craftier about it. Sneakier and cleverer than their brutish cousins.

(Secrets are more easily kept when fewer people know of them. Loved ones are safer if no one knows to go after them.)

Skulks are just as close and beloved as packs, and the one who reigns at the head of a skulk is not there on power alone, not like the wolves’ alphas.

A skulk’s head is chosen, not fought for. And Izumi has been marked thrice over, by Magic and Fate and her own choices as she grows from girl to woman. Izumi has the will of a leader, the heart of a mother and the ability to inspire all she meets.

Midoriya Izumi will one day rule the skulk, the forests, the whole of Japan.

There is no one else it could be.

***

Days turn to weeks and Izumi keeps tracking Yagi-san down whenever she can. Sometimes they sit and just people watch and other times she demands he play games with her, something that makes him sit down and relax because while she doesn’t know specifics, it’s obvious he’s badly hurt.

All those books she’d scoured say the same thing: that he should be taking it easy. Something he is not doing himself so she does it for him.

He’s also been getting thinner since she met him. Cheeks growing gaunt and limbs becoming bony, like he’s losing muscle mass. Izumi, once she notices, starts bringing him snacks whenever she can. Random things at first that he turns down half the time to her disappointment and frustration.

It must show on her face one too many times because after a while, he sits her down on their bench and explains in fits and starts about his condition. 

Yagi-san was badly injured and lost his stomach. He can’t eat like he used to and isn’t really hungry anymore. His lungs are damaged, which is why he coughs up blood and can’t breathe right.

He tells her a laundry list of trauma and Izumi listens but can’t quite help the horrified look on her face; she’s still too young to have learned to school her expressions.

“That’s… that’s awful,” she whispers, eyes trained on the part of his abdomen he kept gesturing to, the place of such horrific pain.

“It’s okay,” he reassures her and her eyes flick up to meet his. He’s smiling, something warm and wide and so familiar but can’t quite place. “I’m a tough one, my girl. I’ll be alright.” 

Izumi presses her lips together and lets him change the subject. But while he speaks, her mind is a whirl of plans and ideas and things she needs to do.

***

Her mom ‘accidentally’ runs into Yagi-san at the market one day.

(Things like that are never accidental for a fox, nevermind that her mom’s as human as Kacchan. She was born in a skulk and that makes her other in a way normal humans aren’t).

Yagi-san sees her first and his face lights up, “Little Izumi!” he greets.

She waves at him, head tilted back almost all the way as she grins up at him. “Hi Yagi-san!” she yells because he’s so tall. It must be hard to hear her, especially with his human ears. Those miss everything interesting.

His eyes turn onto her mom and he gets very red suddenly. Embarrassed and shy, like he was when she first met him. “Ah, apologies,” his hand rubs the back of his head, “You must be her mother.”

Mom smiles, but her eyes are studying him, flicking over his form, quick and analytical.

“I am, people call me Midoriya Inko,” her mom offers her hand. He shakes it. “You must be Yagi-san. It’s nice to finally meet the man behind the legend. Izumi talks about you a lot.”

Yagi-san looks delighted at that. “Does she?”

“Oh, yes. It feels like I already know you with how much she goes on,” she tells him then turns to Izumi. “And you’re right, sweetheart. He really is too thin.”

“Right!” Izumi exclaims, causing Yagi-san to startle. “That’s why I needed all those bentos! He doesn’t like to eat on his own, so I have to make him.”

After he’d told her about his injuries, she’d very carefully read and researched what one should do after a gastrectomy like his and came away with a thousand and one rules for eating he most definitely was  not following.

It made her more than a bit upset that he’s not taking care of himself like he should be. That he acts so cavalier with his health.

Her mom nods gravely, very serious. “Of course. It’s important to stay healthy.”

“See!” Izumi spins on Yagi-san who looks frozen in mortification, “Even Mom agrees and she’s always right.”

His eyes flick between them both for a long moment before his shoulders slump and he grins, small and wry at them both. “Well if two Midoriya women are telling me that, how can I hope to argue?”

Izumi grins with all her teeth because she’s won and you can’t spend excessive time around Kacchan without picking up some habits.

Mom and Yagi-san talk for a while longer, mostly probing questions from her mom disguised as boring grown-up stuff and small talk. Yagi-san answers them all correctly as far as Izumi can tell. He doesn’t lie once which is good because even if Mom can’t hear his heartbeat she knows how to tell when someone lies.

They leave that day with Mom’s stamp of approval and a skip in Izumi’s step.

***

Mom must have given some sort of signal because now Yagi-san can barely walk out of his house without being accosted by her skulk.

It must be really confusing on his end, all these random people coming up to him suddenly. Not all of them even look like Midoriyas because the townspeople still think there’s only half as many of them as there really are and they want to keep it that way.

They all come away liking him though, some enough to continue interacting with him regularly. Which is good, because he needs more friends. Though, Aunties Emi and Isami tease him so much she’s not sure he’ll ever stop being flustered.

(The best part though, in Izumi’s opinion, is that they all help her keep an eye on him. And, more often than not, they’ll place some sort of fruit or snack in his hands before running off and leaving him in confusion. Izumi laughs whenever she’s there for it to his utter confusion.)

***

Aoi plops down next to her on the couch one day, arm thrown over her shoulders and bright pink pixie cut hair tickling her cheek as she bumps her head into Izumi’s temple and hums lowly because it’s the closest her human vocal cords can get to purring.

Izumi’s classifying plant life for biology, something she normally doesn’t stop doing until it’s finished, but she looks away from them now because Aoi’s her favourite cousin. She’s never said so out loud because she'd rather die than hurt anyone's feelings, but the entire skulk knows anyway.

“He’s weird like you,” Aoi says with no lead-up or explanation.

Izumi grins as Aoi ruffles her hair because she understands immediately and takes that for the compliment it is.

***

Yagi-san touches her casually now. Ruffling her hair, guiding her with a hand on the shoulder, tugging lightly on her wild curls. It’s like he was waiting for permission or something.

It’s nothing she’s not familiar with. Her skulk does it all the time, both to scent mark and provide comfort, and Izumi spends most of her time invading Kacchan’s personal bubble for those same reasons.

Yagi doesn’t know about scent marking like she does because he’s human, wholy and cleanly even if Izumi can sometimes feel a nuclear reactor humming with all the energy hidden away in his chest. (And isn’t that just another reason he’s so strange? Izumi wonders what his quirk is sometimes, but never asks. She doesn't think she’d get the real answer if she did.)

He doesn’t know, and doesn’t seem like an overly touchy person but he touches her and it feels like when her mom pushes her bangs back and presses a kiss to her forehead. Affectionate and soft and Izumi can’t help leaning into every gesture like she’s starved for it.

***

The next day, Izumi greets him with a hug and he smiles that oh, so familiar smile and Izumi feels like she swallowed the sun.

***

The townspeople whisper, carefully outside of Izumi’s range of hearing for once, about the man she follows like a duckling and the growing bond everyone can see.

They were wary at first. They knew so little about this odd stranger.

But with Izumi running around him like a tiny, babbling dervish, unintentionally dragging him into every conversation she starts, it doesn’t take long for them to get a read on the man. It’s almost amusing how he had tried so hard to keep to himself only to fail the moment she crashed into his life.

A month and a half after he showed up, the townspeople can confidently say that Yagi Toshinori is good people. Earnest and kind in all the same ways Izumi is and uniquely awkward and well-meaning in others.

The townspeople whisper, and laugh, and can’t help but think how good it is that little Izumi’s found herself such a lovely father figure.

***

He asks her, one day, why she spends so much time with him when she has so many friends her own age.

The look she gives him makes him feel like he’s asked a stupid question. The words that come out of her mouth immediately after make him breathless.

“Because I like you,” she says as if it’s just that simple. As if Toshinori hadn’t spent decades interacting with people who only liked him because he’s All Might. As if this little girl, hidden away in this idyllic town, saying she likes him as Toshinori, isn’t the most important thing he’s heard in years.

“Ah,” is all he says to that and Izumi goes back to eating her popsicle, only now she’s unashamedly leaning into his uninjured side.

Something warm in his chest blossoms and Toshinori can’t help wondering what exactly he’s gotten himself into now.

***

She brings Kacchan to meet Yagi-san not long after that. She’d been waiting for her skulk to stop harassing him so much, so it had taken longer than she wanted.

Kacchan was starting to think she’s purposefully keeping things from him—which she is, but not this. And the things she is keeping are mostly not her secrets to tell anyway (not that it makes her feel any less bad for having them).

The two know of each other, of course. It’d be impossible for them not to know with how much she babbles at them both about the other.

Kacchan is… unimpressed at first. Loud and disrespectful and really just himself in a bad mood because he’s bad at meeting new people.

Yagi-san takes it all in stride even as her best friend swears enough to make a sailor blush. She can see he’s wondering why Izumi picked him, of course, because everyone does after meeting Katsuki.

She watches from where she’s lying along the top of the monkey bars as they circle around each other, curious and trying not to show it. That is, until Kacchan grows bored with that and starts challenging Izumi to ridiculous contests.

She sighs but accepts every one because, while Kacchan is indeed the self-destructively competitive one, he doesn't hold a monopoly on that trait within their friendship.

Yagi-san gets roped into playing referee and rewards the winner with head ruffles and blinding smiles. Well, he at least tries to. Izumi accepts the affection just fine but when he reaches for Katsuki, her best friend snaps his teeth at him the moment contact is made.

Yagi-san pulls back immediately, eyes wide, but Kacchan hadn’t screamed at the top of his lungs or exploded something so Izumi knows it’s all mostly for show.

She'll have to explain that to Yagi-san later.

***

There’s a saying, in Izumi’s family. A saying that falls from the lips of every fox in the world. A silent oath one whispers from the day they’re born with magic in their veins.

Shual Nephesh, serve thou for thyself.

There’s a duty every leader picks up when they are placed in power, but it is only foxes who truly carry its weight with them. A shimmering gem tied tightly around their throat, both great honour and deadly noose combined.

Matriarch, be thou for the skulk.

There’s no oath for a Hero to take. Nothing regulated or standardized besides the flimsy laws riddled with loopholes and flaws that Izumi could dance around with her eyes closed. So, she makes her own.

Hero, be thou for the people.

***

There is no new weight to her wrist, no new gemstone to tell of her Promise.

The shackle she wears like a badge of honor has been there for years already after all.

***

Two months come and go and Toshinori… stays.

Torino and David both called the day before he was planning to go back to Tokyo, to go back to being All Might, and they begged him to stay just a bit longer. Well, David begged. Torino yelled at him for ten minutes until Toshinori could get a word in edgewise.

After a long pause, Toshinori agrees, to all their surprise.

He wasn’t going to leave, even before they called to beg and he knows what the reason why is, even if he won’t admit it.

He’ll have to leave eventually. Sooner then he might like because he can’t just stop being All Might… but he can stay a little longer.

The world hasn’t fallen apart without him yet.

***

He does call into his agency, of course, and requests as much paperwork as possible be faxed to him.

He’s still restless and antsy and even if he’s not in the field there is plenty of administrative work that needs to be done as All Might. He’s been ignoring it for too long.

Rika, his manager of all things relating to All Might’s image, is no doubt having a fit about his abrupt and continued absence, but he can trust her. She’s no doubt handling the media circus with an iron fist and cunning mind like always. 

She doesn’t let him touch his social media accounts or anything really relating to PR, but she does send him a list of charities to choose from. He’s always like picking which ones to send donations to and make scheduled appearances at.

She also sends him a veritable mountain of things that need his signature, half of which are for merchandising and things like that.

He signs them all without looking.

He’s also faxed the backlog of Assistant Heroes—not ‘Sidekicks’, there were few words he disliked more than that old relic—applications that have piled up in his absence to sort through. Even with the rigorous standards themselves and what few Heroes All Might does have at his agency sorting through the applications before they ever arrive in front of him, there are still dozens that have piled up.

People who work with him have to uphold certain standards. That's something both him and Rika agree on. They can’t have some Hero with a lousy attitude associated with All Might. The press would have a field day with that kind of scandal and Toshinori can’t stand those types of people anyway.

The employees at his agency are held to a higher standard than others. It’s why it’s so prestigious in the first place. His Heroes have to be brave and kind and put the people first above all else.

They may not ever be pillars like him, but Toshinori will be damned if they aren’t beacons of good.

Toshinori is, was, and always will be, firm on this stance. 

He, of course, has to hide all that paperwork from Izumi—because that’s a thing she does now. Knock on his door and spends time at the cottage he’s renting. She does her homework at the kitchen counter while he keeps himself busy doing the less flashy sort of Hero work.

The problem is, she's a curious sort of child, and interested in most everything her eyes land on. She’s made a habit of poking her head over his shoulder while he’s sorting through sensitive documents, keen eyes dancing over the page, and scaring the shit out of Toshinori.

She stares at him with those all too knowing eyes as he scrambles to hide it from her. After the third time it happens she thankfully stops but there’s a contemplative look in her eyes that’s sure to give him stress headaches.

***

“What do you think he’s doing?”

Kacchan doesn’t look up from the math homework he’s checking for her. He also doesn’t ask who she’s talking about because there’s really only one person it could be. “Kicking ass, probably.”

“Kacchan,” she pouts from her place sprawled across his living room floor (they never hang out at her house, for all the obvious reasons). “Be serious.”

“I seriously think he’s kicking ass.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

Kacchan looks up to glare at her. “Why the fuck would I be? Izu, it’s All Might. He never loses. He’s fine, you goddamn bleeding heart.”

Izumi guesses he’s right. All Might’s never lost a fight. It’s what makes him so amazing. It’s just. There’s something at the base of her stomach that won’t let her let go of her worry. It’s been three months  without a single sighting.

That’s… unheard of.

“Stop moping!” he yells, the sugar-burnt crackle and pop of his quirk jolting her from her melancholy.

“Careful, Kacchan!” she shrieks. “You’re going to burn the paper.”

Kacchan snaps his teeth at her but there’s no real heat in it. It’s playful, or as close to it as he gets. “I am not! And stop slacking and check my fucking history worksheet, you freeloader.”

She sighs and flips back onto her stomach. “Yes, Kacchan. Of course, Kacchan. Anything for you, Kacchan,” she gripes fondly.

“And don’t you fucking forget it.”

***

“Young Midoriya?”

“Huh?” Izumi startles from her thoughts for the third time this game. Realizing what she’s done, she blushes and hides behind her hand of cards. “Oh! Sorry, Yagi-san. I can’t seem to focus at all today.”

He smiles, warm and bright. “Not a problem, my dear.” He sets down his hand, choosing instead to give her his full attention. “Something on your mind?”

“Yeah. Just… I’m worried, I suppose.”

He hums encouragingly. “About?”

She blows out a heavy breath. “It’s been three months since anybody has seen All Might.” Yagi-san’s shoulders stiffen. Talking about All Might always makes him uncomfortable but she needs to get this off her chest and he’ll listen. “He’s never disappeared like this before.”

Yagi-san coughs into his fist. “Ah, well. Perhaps he is doing undercover work?”

Izumi gives him a look like she thinks he’s being particularly thick. “He almost never does undercover work. He’s not suited for it and there’s plenty of underground Heroes who can do a better job. He normally respects that.” She pauses, thinks that over. “And even the few times he was recorded to be associated with undercover jobs, there had been plenty of credible sources saying he’d been seen doing small acts of heroics. Community service, charity work, helping people cross the street, things like that. But, right now, it’s practically radio silence. All Might’s never just,” she waves her hands helplessly, “cut himself off from the public before.”

Yagi-san blinks at her and, when there doesn’t seem to be an answer to that forthcoming, Izumi keeps going.

“I just- I can’t stop thinking maybe he’s hurt? Or that something has happened to him? Kacchan says I‘m worrying over nothing but sometimes I just get these feelings, right? Like there’s someone out there who needs my help and… and this is one of those times.” She huffs a humourless laugh. “But again, Kacchan says I’m being dumb because why would All Might need my help? I’m ten! What can I do?

“But I just keep thinking how Sir Nighteye is still in Tokyo and hasn’t said anything official about his whereabouts and David Shield is still in America and there’s just nobody else that All Might has to lean on, at least not to public knowledge, and if those two people aren’t there for him then who is?”

By the end, Izumi has to take a deep breath because she hadn’t breathed once while she word-vomited all her worries at him.

When she looks up, Yagi-san is staring at her with an expression she can’t really read.

Quieter, she says—because she’s never been able to leave well enough alone and if Yagi-san doesn’t understand then who will?— “He saves everyone, but who’s there to save him?”

Yagi-san laughs.

Not a mean one, not like he’s laughing at her, but more like he was so surprised by her that he can’t contain the sound. Uncle Kazuki did that sometimes. Probably because Uncle Hikaru is more than a handful and he made the mistake of marrying him, or so they say.

“You truly are one of a kind, my girl. I’ve never, in all my years, met someone with a heart as big as yours.”

Izumi blushes to the tips of her hidden ears at such a high compliment and picks up her cards just to hide behind them. “I think we should finish our game.”

He gives a quiet chuckle but picks up his cards. “Okay, okay. But, for the record, my dear?” Izumi looks up at him and finds him smiling at her, small and soft. “I think there’s a lot you could do to help him.”

***

He watches Izumi and Young Bakugou run around each other, playing some strange amalgamation of tag and marco-polo where Izumi’s blind folded and only allowed to use her hearing and sense of smell to sniff out her friend.

It’s quirk training made into a game, something ingenious only she could come up with.

Izumi is doing well at locating Bakugou, head swiveling in whatever direction he’s in despite the blind fold, but she keeps tripping over and running into things, paying too much attention to her friend and not enough to her surroundings.

She does eventually catch him, pouncing on his back and sending both of them to the ground. Toshinori smiles despite himself as it immediately transitions into a wrestling match.

Not for the first time since coming to this fantasy of a town, does Toshinori think wistfully of a world where things were different. If he didn’t need to hold up the world, if people were kinder, if the world was safer. If, if, if.

Toshinori wanted a family once, before he picked up all these mountains he should’ve climbed. He still wants a family—doesn’t think he’ll ever stop—but he’s practical enough to know it’s too late. To see it’ll never work out.

(He ignores the part of him that says it’s closer than he thinks. Ignores the way any thoughts of his future—the ones where he forgets he’s going to die in eight years at least—all have a child in them. A little girl with wild green hair and freckles and a heart big enough to cradle the world.

His mind ignores them, but his heart is soft and weak and tucks it all in his chest, safe and sound for those rainy days.)

***

Time skips along, as it’s wont to do.

Izumi dances into eleven years old with all the joy and brightness of a girl on top of the world.

Her magic grows more with each day and after the fourth time she comes home dragging some sort of creature behind her, the skulk starts whispering about having her begin training before the traditional fourteen years old.

She joins aikido at the suggestion of Yagi-san while Kacchan gleefully dives into kick-boxing after hounding his parents for three months. Izumi keeps up with gymnastics but Kacchan drops out to join the wrestling team.

It’s all vaguely concerning from an outsider’s point of view but it’s nice that he has an outlet.

For all that she’s growing up, Izumi is still much of the same. Still sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong and dedicating most of her time to helping other people, no matter how important the task, and staying at the top of her classes with Katsuki right next to her.

What little free time she allows herself is divided between all the people she loves. She’s busy, but she’s always been busy. Always right at the thick of things when they happen which is just how she likes it.

It’s the best three months of her life, a bright summer she enjoyed to the fullest. Her magic has been practically singing in her veins because, until she becomes a Hero, until she takes her rightful place at the top, as a Protector, this is as close to perfect as she’ll get.

That, of course, means it can’t last.

Because perfect things never do.

***

Yagi-san leaves, because he has too.

She’d known that for a while now. His job is important, even if she’s not quite sure what it is he does.

He always dances around the question when she asks. Saying he works in relation to an important agency that helps keep people safe. He’s always adamant of how much he loves it and she can see the wistfulness in his eyes sometimes. Like there’s places he wants to be other than here.

And so, Izumi resigns herself to watching him leave her. Braces herself to lose this growing, fragile thing in her chest she can’t put a name to.

He leaves the week after her birthday and she’s there at his house to say goodbye. She expects this to be the last time she sees him, she expects him to leave and not come back just like the father she never met and doesn’t want to.

What she doesn’t expect is for him to press a phone into her hand, a single number already programmed into it, and tell her he’ll keep in touch. She doesn’t expect him to get on his knees so she can look him in the eye as he Promises to visit, to come back, whenever he can.

She tries hard not to cry, because her lonely man gets so flustered when she does, but she can’t help it. She sobs and throws her arms around his shoulders, clinging to him because even with the Promise she knows it will be too long before she sees him again.

She has so many things she wants to tell him. So many things to say and do and none of the time.

His lips press against her forehead. “I’ll miss you, my dear girl.”

But, perhaps she’ll still get the chance. Just… later.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

***

Kacchan, Aoi, and her mom all gang up on her the following days, trying their hardest to cheer her up and get her mind off things.

Her mom makes her favorite foods and Aoi teaches her magic tricks she’s not supposed to learn until Nona officially begins her training and Kacchan only grumbles a little when she takes to clinging to him like a heartsick koala.

It’s the last one more than anything that makes her realize how worried they must be. How badly she must be moping for them to be so worried.

Kacchan may not actually care about how much she’s in his bubble, but he does like to complain about it, loudly and vocally. He’s really very mean and if Izumi couldn’t always tell when he’s lying she’s sure she’d never made it to being his best friend because she’d be crying too much.

But she’s worrying everyone and it’s not like she can’t text or call Yagi-san. He gave her the phone for a reason (though a whole new phone seems a bit much).

Izumi tries not to be so sad.

It only works a little.

***

Two days after Yagi-san leaves town, All Might saves thirty people from a hostage situation, rescues two potential kidnap victims and stops three robberies all before two in the afternoon.

Izumi sees the news articles almost immediately because even if she’s sad and breaks into tears every couple hours, she’s been keeping her ear to the ground about any sign of All Might for weeks now. There’s pictures and videos and stories of his escapades everywhere and all anyone is talking about is where he’s been.

Izumi finds a video of him, barely thirty seconds long, of him apologizing for his absence. Some official story that’s nothing but lies falling from his tongue because it had taken Izumi all of five seconds of hearing his voice before everything clicked.

Izumi is smart and clever and sees things no one else does and she can’t believe she’d been so blind.

All Might’s face smiles at her through the screen but Izumi can’t hear what he’s saying because all she can see are bright blue eyes. Bright, familiar eyes and a familiar smile and familiar laugh and and and-

And her lonely man is the number one Hero.

She closes her laptop and screams.

[stylishanachronism]

So it is in fact Watcher Wednesday, I have a headache, the neighbors are still firing off fireworks and setting off all the car alarms on that side of the street, here’s a sliver of an essay about Pillars of Eternity and sheep.

So if you’ve been following along at all, you’ll know I have a dearly held headcanon that Edér, outside of seasonal agricultural work, supports himself by knitting elaborate ring lace shawls (no seriously what the fuck is he supposed to be doing all year Obsidian answer me who is making his socks), because canonically most of the Dyrwood’s production is tied up in fancy wool and fancy timber. More specifically, per the guidebook, “Wyr (“wire” - Aedyran) wool, gal glas (“green thorn” - Glanfathan) timber, Glanfathan deer hide, tin, lead, iron, copper.” (PGB1, pg 48), and it’s telling that the particular types of wool and timber are specified, as they aren’t for any other country(1). This is surprisingly well supported in game, between the set dressing in the Gift, the shipwreck scavengers beneath the bridge, and Dyrford’s main industry, namely tanning and dyework, as well as the lack of either crop industry on a wide scale, or food prepared for shipment in the Gift. (It does raise the question of ‘where are all the sheep’, but considering Obsidian knows nothing about textiles and the fact adding Yet Another model probably wasn’t the best use of their time, I’m cross about it but I’ll excuse it)

Fun fact: shipping roving is a waste of everybody’s time. Shipping thread on a scale that would enable somebody else to turn it into cloth is less so, but it’s significantly more expensive. Cloth takes up a lot less space than either option (especially roving), and is a lot harder to damage/a lot easier to protect during the process, especially since there’s a smidge more evidence(2) that wyr wool is a fine, light, long fiber wool, and therefore prone to matting in its base state.

This is not in the game at all, and barely barely barely in the guidebooks, but that set of facts means the Dyrwood is probably known for its weavers and knitters, and they probably import a lot more dye than even Aedyr, who are implicated to buy dyed in the wool textiles(3), which leads to the idea that the Dyrwood and Readceras have very strong economic reasons to get over their differences, (which is openly canon, but without explanation) and in the meantime Stalwart’s smuggling business? Almost entirely dye into the Dyrwood. The same economic pressure would explain why Aedyr was so eager to go back to trading with them, instead of being deeply pissy about dealing with a ‘failed’ colony, as they are with Readceras.(4)

On another tack, this takes everything about the Pearl Bluffs and makes it actually relevant to Defiance Bay as a city, because shelling out municipal funds on adventurers because one of your priestesses is having bad symbolic dreams is... a little sketchy, considering the state of the city, but if hiring those adventurers also gets rid of a major predator in the closest accessible good grazing land? Sheep are much more valuable than dreams, and that’s a reasonable expense. (It also explains why there’s absolutely nothing there, because local grazing land > mildly inaccessible but well placed military infastructure, because if I was worried about invasions by sea (which Defiance Bay canonically is), having some sort of lookout on the cliffs above the port would be a good idea, but not if it would hurt the city’s main industry.)(5)

Circling back around to the lack of crop industry, I know mechanically nobody wanted to animate Yet Another field of wheat (or what have you. There’s a lot of options there but they didn’t put it in so We Just Don’t Know(6)), and so it’s not that they don’t exist it’s that they aren’t pictured, just like the dozens and dozens of little towns that ought to be peppered across the place, which must exist but aren’t pictured (or named), but like... I desperately want to know what Obsidian thought everybody was doing all year, and where they were supposed to be living. (Let’s face it, I want a real map, with county lines and everything.) I am, obviously, proposing that in addition to the many many necessary industries (coopers! more blacksmiths! every single citizen from the age of being able to hold a pair of needles knits and spins so they don’t go naked! glaizers! lumberjacks! carpenters! butchers! I could go on!), that pretty much everybody is involved in some sort of fiber production, mostly wool but linen as well (preparing flax is No Joke), or otherwise dye preparation in some form or other, but like... what did Obsidian think. Where are the sheep?

Footnotes:

1: Per the guidebook: Readceras produces “Vorlas (purple dye), corn, corn flour, wool, cotton (minimal), lumber“ (pg 50), the Republics “Iron, copper, silver, glassworks, ships, spices, clocks, and astronomical equipment” (pg 52), Aedyr “Iron, fine steel, cotton, dyes, lumber (a major export of many varieties), spices” (pg 54), and Eir Glanfath “Gal glas (“green thorn” - Glanfathan) timber, Glanfathan deer hide, gold, adra shell (the odd shell material found in Engwithan ruins), rare fungi“ (pg 57) even though their exporting adra makes zero goddamned sense. No other countries/cultures have listed products, though Deadfire made a good effort at showing the exports of individual cities in the Deadfire. I’m not citing it because I’m too lazy to go copy all that shit down by hand, though.

2: The evidence on wyr wool is, very basically, it’s either a long fiber wool (wire like, able to be drawn very fine), or a short fiber wool (wiry, coarse). Long fiber wool is more desirable, and more likely to be specified out on a consumer level, versus a more ordinary short fiber wool, where knowing the provenance really wouldn’t change much. Long fiber is also a much lighter wool, the sheep more delicate (not by much, but still), and the Dyrwood’s climate as shown doesn’t particularly require a hardier sheep. Without actual sheep to look at, or somebody on staff with enough textile knowledge to incorporate said knowledge literally anywhere, there’s not a ton of evidence either way, but I have my biases, and finer wool suits them so that’s the argument I’m making.

3: “Aedyran clothing is known for being relatively simple in construction and often using large, colorful striped or checkered patterns for accents.” (pg 54) Trying to dye stripes is a misery. Trying to dye checks is worse. Weaving stripes or checks, on the other hand, is very, very easy, but requires you to dye the thread before it’s processed.

4: I would cite the guidebooks here, but since they never actually come out and say ‘there was five years of famine and it was not great’, I can’t, but uh, there was (at least) five years of famine and it was not great. A fraction of the population wandered off to make candles in sufficient quantities that they’re a minor Dyrwodian import (”Many a Dyrwoodan lord who illuminated their keep (and cursed all Readcerans) unknowingly did so by the light of Eothasian candles.” (PGB2, pg 81), in reference to The Bright Shephards, said fraction with the candles), and another went to the Deadfire, where they were delighted to finally be successful farmers (”To the delight of these wayward pilgrims, their crops took to Deadfire soil better than they had in Readceras,” (pg 80), in reference to the Children of the Dawnstars), even though they... don’t actually grow anything in common with Readceras, and meanwhile Aedyr continued to be dicks about the whole mess, even as Readceras proper finally got their feet under themselves, and managed to get the Vorlas properly established to the point where it’s their main export. (Look, Vorlas is fantasy indigo, and indigo takes a couple of years to like, not die at the first hint of literally anything going wrong. It’s more finicky than roses, especially since they’re not growing it in a region it’s built for, there’s a reason everything went to shit.)

5: It also explains some of the bounties, because ‘dangerous thing that only bothers *really* stupid travelers’ is a much smaller problem than ‘dangerous thing that bothers fairly defenseless essential livelihoods’. Also mechanically you’re paid for the Caed Nua bounties but like... Caed Nua is setting the bounty? so you aren’t being paid you’re just saving the house a lot of money to get somebody else to do it. You need to defend your sheep as well as your roads, I guess is what I’m saying?

6: Look, someday I will dig through every recipe I can get my hands on, in game or in the cookbook, and come up with a list of things the Dyrwood probably grows for food, but today is not that day, so right now your guess is as good as mine, as long as your guess is ‘not corn’.

[umbraastaff]

@merle-casts-zone-of-truth

(well, this got out of hand! i was intending to write this concept as a much shorter, not-shipping fic, but then i decided to use this prompt as an excuse to actually write it, so here we are i guess!!!  --oh, and using the last name Hadar comes from the ideas ive seen on your blog, ofc. hey i love that a lot and i had to give it a shoutout!)

Overgrowth [a sort of companion fic to Harvest, though you don’t need to read one to read the other]

★ ★ ★

On Tesseralia, they say they’ll give over the Light when John makes peace with the enemy.

The Light of Creation is right at their fingertips for the 30th cycle. All it’ll take is a conversation with the omniverse’s most enormous, threatening force.

“If there’s anyone in any plane who can do it, it’s you,” Lucretia says.

John smiles wryly. “Yes. If there’s anyone.”

“If you can’t make peace, get information,” Davenport advises. “But don’t sell yourself short. You’re good at this.”

“I’m good at this,” John repeats.

★

The first sign of the Overgrowth’s approach is widening cracks in sidewalks and rocks. Vines creeping up mailboxes. Farms yielding crops a little faster, fruits a little bigger. The sun feeling a little brighter.

★

John fixes his tie, closes his eyes, and wills himself into a deathly vulnerable space. He opens his eyes to a bizarre scene. It’s a beach, because he’s standing in the sand by the ocean, with waves that creep up close to his feet, then slide away just in time to leave them dry. Across from the ocean, though, there’s a dense forest, and stray trees permeate the rest of the environment: standing in the sand, and even in the ocean, swaying with the waves. They aren’t even trees you usually find near beaches.

The whole place looks like a collision. It’s as if a forest and a beach decided they both wanted to be here for this meeting, and they both followed through, with no coordination. There are two suns in the violet sky, too, as if to drive home the idea that it’s two places mashed together.

And John is standing across from someone else, in the sand, in the point of contact between these two climates. He’s a dwarf in a bright-colored shirt with a tropical print. He looks like a regular guy. Like a dad, even.

The dwarf squints at John, blinks a few times. “Huh,” he says, in a voice that’s too gruff, too earthy, too real to belong to someone at the center of a universe-consuming mass of plants.

“Hello, sir,” John says, forcing the bewilderment to keep out of his voice. “I am John Hadar. May I ask your name?”

“Highchurch. Uh, Merle. Highchurch.”

“Highchurch Merle?” John says, extending a hand. “A pleasure.”

“Other way around,” Merle chuckles, shaking it. “The pleasure’s mine! This is real weird, though. How’d you pull this off?”

“It’s something called Parley. A technique for peacemaking, which is what I hope to achieve with you. It ensures that the guest-- that’s you-- is perfectly safe. I invited you, so I can’t harm you,” John explains. He omits the bit where Merle can kill him, but he’s sure the dwarf will pick up on it. Then he adds, hopefully, “Question for a question?”

“You already asked my name,” Merle says, but after a beat where John’s trying to come up with a response, he grins. “Kidding! Let’s sit down. Then you can ask whatever you want.” He gestures past John, and so the human turns around to see a picnic table. He’s absolutely sure that wasn’t there a minute ago.

They sit down. John speaks again. “So, this place… I don’t recognize it, myself, but I’m wondering if it holds any significance to you.”

“Never seen anythin’ like it,” Merle says earnestly. “But I figure it’s, y’know, a metaphorical space. I’m from the beach, myself, always loved it. And the trees… I like ‘em plenty, too, but that’s gotta be more to do with my whole situation… and Pan. I’m a cleric, you know. Well, was a cleric.”

“Huh. Do you mind if I ask--”

Merle shakes his head, interrupting. “I get another question, pal!”

“Ah, yes,” John says, very worried that he’s going to have to give away (or come up with a lie about) important information.

“Do you like chess?”

John raises his eyebrows. “Oh, er, yes. I do. Very much.”

Merle smiles. “You seemed like the type.” He knocks on the table, and a square platform of wood rises from it, with a checkered pattern appearing as it does. Then, a boardful of chess pieces appears in their rightful places: John’s set is made of wood, and Merle’s pieces are all made of tiny, woven vines. “So, what was your question?”

“Oh, right. I was wondering, since you were a cleric before, how did you go from that occupation to… this?”

“Funny you should ask it that way,” Merle says, “Since I probably wouldn't be here if I wasn’t a cleric in the first place.” He taps the table gently in thought. “People from my church, they… they found out something big, and they asked me to explain it. I asked Pan about it. And this whole shebang sprung from that event.”

“I… see.” John nods slowly, taking that in. He’s grateful for the chessboard: a perfect distraction to pad the conversation and keep his big questions from seeming too frequent. “I’m afraid I don’t know which of these sets counts as white or black, so I’m not sure whether to make a move or wait for you.”

“Oh! Who cares. You go ahead!”

They play for a few turns in silence. Merle is very slow, but he’s very good, and they’re about equally matched in skill. Finally, the dwarf says, “You mind if we get rid o’ the whole back-n-forth thing and just have a normal conversation?” With a cautious nod from John, he continues. “What really brings you here? I can’t imagine trying to talk things out with the plant plane was your first solution, if I’m causing so much trouble for you.”

“Ha,” John lets out a hint of a laugh at that. “No, it wasn’t. I only recently learned this technique. We just figured that it couldn’t hurt to try talking, right?”

Merle looks him in the eyes, looks through his eyes. It’s uncomfortable. John likes to be in control of what people see in him, and Merle looks like he’s reading an open book. “It’s more specific than that.”

John blinks. “Yes. Well, there’s also the issue where we won’t get the Light of Creation here unless I make peace with you,” he says, and only after it comes out does he realize how much he’s said, too directly. It was so compelling, in that moment looking at Merle’s eyes, to be honest. Goosebumps prick the back of his neck.

“The Light, huh?” Merle moves his bishop. Whaddya need that for?”

John hesitates. “We’re scientists. Er, my party. We want to study it.” Each of the last few words has to be forced up his throat, burning his tongue just slightly as they come out.

Merle meets his eyes again, looking disappointed this time. Like a parent of a kid who stole candy instead of, John reminds himself, an enormous eldritch forest that suffocates whole planar systems. “You don’t have to tell me,” Merle says, “But please don’t lie. Not in such a lovely place.”

So not even half-truths work. And it’s not as if John can risk trying a charm spell on a man with so much power. He’s just going to have to play the game: be honest, and try to get more information than he gives. “My apologies,” he says. “I hope you can forgive my caution.”

Merle nods. “You want the Light to get it away from me, right?” When John’s only response is a startled stare, the dwarf continues. “That’s good. I hope you use it for something better than we do.”

John blinks, but as he’s trying to find the right question about that, he feels a pressure on his legs. He looks down to see vines creeping up from the ground, locking his feet to the earth. “Uh, what’s--”

“Oh, shoot,” Merle exclaims, looking under the table from his side. “I think our time’s up. Is it possible for you to come back later? A while later. I don’t want you to be endangered here.”

“Ah, yes,” John says quickly. “Nice meeting you, Merle.”

“Yeah, yeah, nice chat, get outta here!” the cleric responds, voice lacking any real annoyance.

John closes his eyes.

★

The Overgrowth’s second sign is the death of small plants on the forest floor as the shadows of the canopy overtakes them. It’s the sidewalks crackling, home gardens climbing up the walls and through the windows. It’s people getting ill from non-native plants releasing toxins they don’t have the immune systems for.

★

Smoke hardens back into John’s form, and he looks up from his place on the floor. Everyone is still here: the crew, and Oriana. She looks down at him, question apparent on her face.

Back in his element, John pastes a bright, relieved smile onto his face. “The Overgrowth won’t be bothering us anymore.”

The crew stands in stunned silence, and then they break into cheers, with varying levels or sincerity. Oriana takes a bit longer to convince, but John says everything he needs to, gets ahold of the Light, and returns to the Starblaster with his crew.

Davenport speaks as soon as the door shuts behind them. “Well done getting the Light. What actually happened?”

“I played chess with the Overgrowth. His name is Merle,” John says flatly. Six pairs of eyes stare at him.

“You played chess with plant hell?” Taako clarifies. “For real?”

“So there was a specific person at the center of it all?” Lucretia asks, already writing.

“Yes. And he used to be a cleric of Pan. I think… it seemed like godly power was involved in the Overgrowth’s creation. I’m going to ask more later.”

“What? Why not just stay there and get the rest of the info back then?” Magnus asks.

“The plants there started acting up, and he asked me to leave. I was worried I’d die if I didn’t, and then we’d have no chance to get this world’s Light.”

Davenport nods. “Good call. Give it as much time as you think it needs, then get back in there.”

Lup finally speaks. “He didn’t kill you. Like, he actively tried to not kill you. That’s nuts.”

“Yeah,” John says.

★

In the Overgrowth’s later stages, plants start to animate. Roots wrap around the foundations of buildings and crush them. Vines overrun the streets and valleys. Touching any of them gets you dragged underground, locked in a dirt tomb until the world ends.

★

Since it’s only a month to the end of the year, and the heightened activity of the Overgrowth might distract Merle in later conversations, John decides to Parley at the next reset. He finds himself in the same place, with waves a little calmer than he remembers. This time, the picnic table is already in front of him, and their half-finished chess game is waiting. And on the other side of the table…

“Merle,” he says.

“John! Nice to see ya. Thanks for waiting.”

“Of course,” John says. “May I ask what cut our last meeting short?”

Merle takes a moment to think. “Hard to explain. When I’m not here, with you, I don’t have a body, or even individuality. I’m just part of the mass. And I’m sort of a reassuring force, because of my role in all this. So when I’m not there, they get… antsy? Like a bunch of kids,” he adds with a laugh.

John smiles. He can’t quite get behind the humor of calling the Overgrowth “kids,” but Merle’s shameless enjoyment of his own joke is sort of endearing.

“I gotta question,” Merle says, sitting down at the table. John joins him. “Whose turn is it in the chess game?”

“Yours, I believe. Was that your question?” John jokes.

“Ha! Nice try,” Merle retorts, using a pawn to take one of John’s diagonally. “I just moved between planar systems. Does this parley thing work across different systems, or do you have a method of transport? I know for sure you’re not hitching a ride with me.”

John considers how to answer that. On the one hand, Merle would probably let him decline to answer. But on the other, that could mean Merle refusing John’s questions later. And John has to be honest if he does answer, so… best to just keep it vague. “My friends and I, er, that crew of scientists,” he says, “We found a way to pass between dimensions just before you do. Using your portal, but not your plane.”

“Huh. That explains how you’ve done it without the Light in hand.”

John hesitates. “One more thing. During our first meeting, you mentioned that the Overgrowth-- er, that is, your whole plant plane, here--”

“Overgrowth?” Merle laughs. “Kinda on-the-nose! Better than mine, though.”

“Yes, well,” John continues, “You said it all started with someone asking you about… something. What was it?”

Merle’s expression falls, but before John can find out why, he realizes that his hand, resting on the table, has nettles starting to grow over and around it, with spikes that are precariously close. “Time to go, then, I suppose.”

★

It’s a few more sessions before John tries the question again.

“I just keep wondering,” John explains, “because what you've done is so… incomprehensible, so unique. I can't imagine what you were asked that made you create it.”

Merle closes his eyes. “When I was a cleric, back home, some members of my church found the Light of Creation. Young people, you know? The sort to ask big questions. Problem is, the Light had answers.” He takes a minute to make a chess move before continuing.

“They were scared of what they saw, so they showed it to me, looking for answers. And I- I saw--” Merle takes a shaky breath, and John realizes his eyes are glistening. “I saw everything. It wasn't just the concept of eternity, it was every single moment of it. And everything we do is so small, John. It was all so antithetical to everything I'd ever believed. I… I don't…”

John puts a hand on top of Merle’s, on the table. Merle looks up at him, some of the distress relaxing into gratitude. “John,” he says seriously, “With all your space travels and whatnot, don’t you ever lose sight of the little things. Don't zoom out so far into the big picture that you forget what's important.”

John’s lips quirk upwards. “Don’t worry. I’m a bard. I know every note is important.”

“A bard, huh?” Merle leans back, (not far enough to separate their hands), and he takes on a jokingly offended look. “You been holdin’ out on me? What do I gotta do to hear you play?”

“Sing, actually,” John says. Usually he’s not a fan of impromptu requests, but he finds he doesn't mind this one too much. “I mean, I do most of my magic with motivational speaking. But I sing sometimes, too.”

And then he does. He sings an old Dwarvish song that he learned on a previous world, something with a softer melody than most of their music is known for. He doesn't actually know any Dwarvish outside of the lyrics he's memorized, but he knows what it's about: A stone that falls and rolls down a mountain, who talks to all the animals and plants it passes. And at the end, when it's sitting still at the base, thinking it is alone, it learns it has befriended the mountain itself.

Merle is crying by the end of it, letting out any tears he was suppressing. “That was beautiful,” he says. “Thank you, John.”

★

The Overgrowth never appears in the sky. It climbs out from the core of the plane, a parasite, suffocating the world in shadow and cold as a cocoon covers it. And once the planar system is engulfed, it expands to its true size. The crew only ever sees it for a few moments-- an enormous mass of plants, with vines reaching out to them, before time freezes and resets.

★

“I’ve seen dozens of civilizations use the Light to pursue knowledge,” John says. “How did your use of it create the Overgrowth?”

“It wasn't in pursuit of knowledge,” Merle says. “It was… I led the church in a prayer. And because I had the Light, the whole world joined in as I called to Pan.” he sighs. “But I think that the vastness of eternity-- of real eternity-- was too big for gods, too.

“So Pan gave us his power. Or we ripped it out of him, I don't know. I don't think the light amplified his magic so much as… made its own version. Because, this--” he gestures to the forest-- “this isn't my Pan.

“Anyway, yeah. The Overgrowth began with that. We were all so afraid of being alone, being small andshort-lived in an uncaring universe. Of being nothing. But if we joined everyone together, if we became our own universe, we could be… something.”

★

“What brings you joy, John? Do you enjoy singing?” Merle asks, after another song.

“Yes. I like to... inspire people. And I like the way words and notes can be woven into any shape.” When Merle waits, John adds, “And… I love my crew, and…” They meet eyes.

“That’s good. Don't ever stop loving things, John, don't ever let yourself stop.”

“What do you enjoy, Merle?”

“I love your singing. I love our meetings. I love these waves,” Merle says, gesturing out towards the sea. “I wish I could remember any of that when I’m not here. Then, maybe… maybe I could stop all this. Stop… hurting everyone. Hurting you.”

★

In the ninety-second cycle, against the advice of the rest of the crew, John calls Merle for a final meeting. They've spoken in every cycle up till now-- multiple times in some of them, when Merle could manage it.

On the beach and in the ocean, there are more trees than there used to be. It's been a gradual increase over the decades, but it still feels like far too many, too fast. Above them, the night sky sparkles with stars.

“This may be our last meeting,” John says immediately. If he sits on the information, Merle will know something’s wrong.

Merle senses the weight of that statement, and so he doesn't endanger John by asking why. Instead, he says, “What, your friends finally figured out you're having an affair with the enemy instead of grilling me?”

John goes red for a moment before he relaxes and laughs. “You, personally, aren't my enemy, Merle.”

“Just look at you, hopelessly brainwashed!”

They laugh. John has mentioned before how he’s sure the crew thinks he's being Charmed, what with how happy he always leaves parley sessions, and with less new information each time. But he still fights against the Overgrowth just as hard as the rest of them, so they keep trusting him.

Merle speaks again as their laughter dies down. “I was wondering when this’d happen. You got any plans for our last day?”

Without really thinking, John starts to sing. He sings about the stars reflecting on the waves, about impossible wishes breaking the backs of meteors, about how far apart each star in a constellation is. He lets magic creep into the music, making the stars twinkle with different colors and having their reflections swirl in the ocean.

Merle faces away from John for most of it, staring out at the sea. “I loved that,” he says quietly at the end. “Where is it from?”

“I… I made it up just now. I thought you'd notice, what with all the stumbling and off-key notes.”

“It was perfect,” Merle whispers. They stare at the sky for a while, and then he breaks the silence again. “And you know I'm tone deaf, right?”

John laughs. “Oh, that's right! I forgot. Guess that part doesn't matter, then.”

“Yeah,” says Merle, and before they can fall into another silence, he adds, “Hey, you wanna know about these constellations? I think I still remember a few of them.”

“That would be lovely,” John says.

★

Seventeen years later, John drinks the ichor of a second voidfish, and he is overwhelmed by a sea of memories. In the emotional mayhem, he almost tries to parley. The thought is interrupted by the deafening crack of the moon base being torn through. The crew sees an enormous tree trunk grow straight up through a dome and then through the ceiling. There is a horrible, lurching tilt as the base's ability to stay airborne goes out, and it remains in place by the tree’s strength alone.

★

Not an hour later, John vanishes from a barely-functional elevator and finds himself in an almost-familiar space. His shoes are on sand, but he's surrounded by a fairly thick forest. He can see the ocean water to his side, glinting off the spots of sunlight between leaves. The picnic table is broken in half, with a tree dividing it.

And he sees Merle. “Holy shit, that worked,” the dwarf says. He's on his knees, surrounded by foliage. His right arm looks like it's made of wood, and his left eye has a flower obscuring it. John can't tell if it’s growing over the eye or instead of it. He doesn't want to know.

“Oh gods, Merle,” John says in a panic. “Fuck, it's been-- what's going on?”

“It’s this very original idea I had,” Merle grins, considerably less worried than John is. “I call it Parley!”

“What happened to your arm? Your eye? Merle--”

“Don’t worry about it. And what about you? Your complexion? You look awful,” he laughs.

“I had my good skin stolen by elves who played… electronic dance music.”

“The hell’s that? Can you sing it? Will you--” his tone drops to something a little more serious. “Will you sing for me? One last time?”

“I- I can't,” John says. “They took my singing, my… my sense of pitch. I can't sing.”

Merle looks at him for a long moment, and John expects something sympathetic, pitying. He doesn't want that at all. But before he can say that, Merle says, “You’re tellin’ me your pitch is stopping you from singin’ for Merle “tone-deaf” Hitower Highchurch, in a private parley area?” The trees around them seem to shift and creak. “What happened these last couple decades? The John I remember wasn't shy like that.”

“No, it's-- I appreciate that, Merle, but it's not that simple. I can't feel the changes between notes at all, and it throws me off my rhythm every time. I can't hold a tune.”

“John, if you won't sing, I will,” Merle decides. “And you're gonna hate it.”

“I doubt that,” John challenges.

And so Merle starts singing a loud, obnoxious shanty, wheezing every time it requires his voice to go higher. John realizes a few bars in that he recognizes it. It was broadcasted by one of the voidfish at Legato Conservatory.

As Merle predicted, John hates it, in an amused sort of way. He decides to try joining in, and he finds it's easier to keep up with the rhythm when he's being guided by Merle's (albeit terrible) singing. They yell the song to the sea, lacking any semblance of harmony or tune.

“See,” Merle says, “You still got it!”

John laughs. “I just didn't have any other way to drown you out, that's all.”

“You coulda killed me,” Merle says, tone far too flat. John stops laughing. The trees seem to lurch inwards around them, making John feel mildly claustrophobic. “This is parley.”

“What? No, Merle, what?? I'm not-- I won't kill you. I can't. Don't say that.”

“It might solve your problem.” As he says it, John feels vines creeping up his feet, tighter than usual. He tries to kick them off.

“And it might not! Jesus, Merle! We're gonna find a way, okay?”

Merle sighs. “Thought you might be like that. C’mere.” When John leans away from his inviting gesture, Merle adds, “I won't trick you into killing me. I'm not a jackass.”

John hesitates another moment before stepping forward, shaking the plants from his legs. He sits down in front of Merle-- with him cross-legged and the dwarf up on his knees, they're nearly eye-level.

Merle puts his non-wood hand on John’s upper arm. Roots are starting to twist over both of their legs. “John,” he whispers, “Do you wanna know the worst lie I've ever been told?”

John leans in. “Yes…?”

“It’s that love and moments and songs aren't worth anything because they'll be gone someday. And I've been living that lie for ninety-nine percent of my last few centuries alive. Except when I’m with you.” The trees are getting wider, taller. They’re starting to actually close in. The wind whistling through the branches sounds like a scream. “So I wanted to tell ya thanks for that, and I also wanted a minute here to cast-- Zone of Truth!”

The last words are a shouted spell, cast from his wooden hand, which has its fingers on the ground. The earth glows all around them, and then suddenly everything ignites. The arm, the trees, the vines. John expects the fire on his legs to burn him, but it just feels pleasantly warm.

As he's squinting at the blaze, John feels Merle squeeze his arm a little tighter and cough. He looks down to see vines constructing Merle's chest, aflame but too thick to be burned through yet.

“Oh gods, Merle, are you okay? I can-- Maybe I can heal--”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Merle wheezes gently. He moves his hand up to John’s head, running it through his hair. Then he presses their foreheads together, and they stay like that for a moment. “Destroy these bastards for me.”

And then John wakes up on the side of a dirt road.

★

At the end of the battle, John sees Merle once more. He’s sitting on the shore of the beach, looking like his normal self again. And there aren’t any trees in the sand or water-- only some vegetation scattered further away, where it would be on a normal beach. Far across the water, two suns are setting, one just slightly above the other.

Merle looks up and smiles at John, then pats the ground beside him. “Will you sit with me?”

John does, his mind swirling with questions and wishes and apologies-- something, anything to say to Merle before he’s gone. What does he say? Why can’t he get any words out?

“We don’t have to talk.” There’s an almost amused smile in Merle’s voice, like he knows what John’s thinking. “Let’s just watch this together.” He puts his hand on John’s, and they look out over the water.

When the first sun sets, and the other is three-quarters down, John feels the weight on his hand vanish, and when he looks over, Merle is gone.

Alone, he watches the other sun vanish, and then he is returned.

★ ★ ★

[idolizerp]

LOADING INFORMATION ON XLNC’S LEAD VOCAL, DRUMS CHA MINHO...

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: Damien CURRENT AGE: 21 DEBUT AGE: 18 as indie / 20 under KJH TRAINEE SINCE AGE: N/A COMPANY: KJH ETC: has a checkered past riddled with potential scandals

IDOL IMAGE

Damien is the member who would be the first one to turn on any of his other members or call them out on something in games if it would mean he would come out on top. And he always does it with such skill, the feigned innocent looks, always pulling the 'don’t be mean I’m a foreigner’ card at every given opportunity despite the fact he understands and speaks Korean perfectly. As it turns out, Damien is simply an incredibly good liar and rather prides himself on that fact and has decided to use it. But he never turns on members out of spite or hatred, he’s always laughing about it, mastering the variety skill of completely poking fun at everyone and keeping games interesting while keeping himself likeable. Damien, at heart, is just a troublemaker who just really likes winning.

Nothing at all is really known about his life before he came to Korea and appeared for the first time with XLNC. All that is really known is that he was raised by his father in Australia and his father still lives out there. Beyond that, Damien has never deemed it necessary to talk about his childhood or what it was like, always brushing off the questions with lazy shrugs of his shoulders and bright smiles - “ah, it was nothing interesting.” He has never talked much about the relationship he has with his family which had led to speculation about what sort of childhood he did actually have. But he simply never talks about it and never plans to, preferring fans only saw of him what he wanted them to instead of what they might assume from his background.

When it does come to his members, Damien understands the bond they have and he wouldn’t lose it for anything. He considers them his second family, willing throw down everything he had for each and every one of them. Though he might act like a cheeky and annoying younger brother on more than one occasion, it is his way of showing affection. He’s usually found resting his head on one of their shoulders and clinging onto their arms or even deciding to sit on them instead of a chair. Fans have even gone as far as calling him something akin to a puppy, headbands with dog ears are a common thing handed to him to wear at fan signs. It has also been noted that he is more than capable of picking out his members quite easily from behind. “I’m a drummer,” he would say with a grin, “I see the backs of these guys more than I ever see the front.”

But of course XLNC is about to be raw and real music and it is also a role he took too rather well. Nothing comes above the music and the moment he steps onto that stage and sits behind his drums and the mic, he is in the zone. There is no messing around, no stupid smiles when they are performing. The performance is all about the song, trying to deliver the best that they can and playing as though this might be the last time they ever get to perform. His on-stage persona is quite different to the personality he displays off stage, and it has sometimes gotten him backlash, people calling him 'fake’. But he has never let it bother him. When he and the rest of the band are playing time just seems to stop and he let’s all the emotion and passion he has for music flow out. And even off stage he speaks about his love of music and how finding it helped him in ways people could never understand. No one could ever question his passion for his craft and how much he loves what he does. And that is his own way of showing emotion. Maybe it’s just not what people expected.

Damien is an idol of many sides. That Australian drummer with the cute accent when speaking English. The calm and collected passionate and emotional drummer with sweet vocals at the back of the stage behind his drum kit doing what he does best. Or the dumb puppy clinging to his members and leaning against them at every given opportunity because he seems to think they are more comfortable than a couch.

IDOL HISTORY

TW: ALCOHOLISM, DRUGS, UNDERAGE DRINKING, UNDERAGE SMOKING, VANDALISM

Cha Minho came first.

New Years Eve 1997, five in the afternoon, a hospital in Incheon, Cha Minho was born. His parents were fully unprepared and had no idea how they were supposed to raise a child together, but the two of them were willing to try. And try they did, the first couple of years of his life he was a happy child. But stress is a killer and his mother certainly started to feel it. He was only two years old when his mother started to come home less and less, always smelling of alcohol and other substances, sometimes bringing home strange men when his father wasn’t around. The police were called multiple times, and then one night, his mother simply never come home at all and to this day he has no idea what happened to her. And he supposes that deep down he doesn’t really want to know the answer.

His father didn’t take it well, the bad memories he had in Incheon kept eating him up, so he decided to seek a new life with his son somewhere else, to start again. And that was why a couple of months before his third birthday, he and his father moved to Brisbane, Australia.

This is where Damien Cha began.

Though he was a happy child and very outgoing and smily child, he was also a very loud one, banging on pots and pans to create as much noise as he possibly could just for the sake of making noise. That was why his father decided to sign him up for drum lessons, hoping that banging on something a little more productive would help him stop creating so much destructive noise. And it did somewhat, he continued to bang around on things, but at least this time it was to a proper tune and not just creating noise for the attention. And he loved his lessons, his talent with drumsticks and finding rhythm was quite apparent, his teachers in his younger years praising his good ear and willingness to learn.

When he hit middle school the real problems started for him. Constant complaints about teachers for his bad attitude, the constant need to rebel, the kids he hung around with outside the school building, skipping his classes, vandalizing the building with old graffiti cans. Even his drum teacher had her worries when Damien stopped paying attention in his classes. His father was more than stressed, always shouting and yelling and grounding him, stopping his drum lessons for awhile to try and punish him, but it never really worked. Their house was just constantly filled with the sound of raised voices, Damien and his father screaming back and forth with each other every time they were in the same room. Which thankfully for the neighbours was not all too much as his father was always out working for long hours

He hit his early teens and the behavioural issues only got so much worse. He got into bloody fights at school, bullied his classmates, got arrested multiple times and got himself a juvenile record. And then he got his hands on alcohol, started hanging around with the older teens and school where they corrupted him further. Got him drinking, got him addicted to nicotine, gave him drugs and got him high, got him into serious trouble with the law. And the drugs and alcohol only made him angrier and angrier. Before all too long, Damien was going down the same dark road his mother once travelled back in Korea and his father couldn’t stand to see it.

The intervention came when Damien was fourteen and what only felt like weeks before he finally got into trouble he wouldn’t be able to get out of. His father started sending him to expensive therapy sessions. At first, the stubborn and angry teenager he was only wanted to rebel, refused to talk, tried to punch multiple of his therapists. But slowly he started to calm down, actually started talking about his feelings and what he was going through. The lack of a maternal figure seriously hurting him, his need to have a proper parent with his father always away working. He felt hurt and lost and betrayed, which caused him to become upset and lash out. It was what was causing all of his bad behaviour.

His therapist suggested music therapy for him, using the drums to try and be more open about his feelings, Damien retreating away to practice whenever he felt the need to rebel instead of going out and causing trouble. And with many many therapy sessions and actually sitting down and talking with his father and the promise that he would be around more for his son, and with a little help from some prescribed medication, Damien started to really mellow out and started to turn into the happy kid he used to be. Of course he still caused trouble, but it turned into more playful trouble than anything serious. Messing around with classmates like a typical teenager, laughing and playing jokes on each other and pulling stupid pranks and dares.

He got himself clean of everything, no more drinking or smoking and no more drugs. He broke ties with the older boys he had been hanging around with, apologized to his teachers and his classmates for his behaviour. Damien and his father even mended their broken relationship, acting more like a father and son than they ever had. Things were good again. The teenager had fallen in love with his drumming again, pouring most of his attention into practising more than anything. He found his true passion was music, spending hours and hours listening to his favourite tracks and drumming along on his own drum kit. He even joined a band with some of his classmates, the five of them sat in the same room for hours on end jamming away. It truly made him happy, made him feel a real bond of friendship and he started getting more comfortable with the idea of having people to rely on. But it was just for fun and when graduation rolled around, the five of them went their separate ways and the band was disassembled, but the boys remained friends, deciding one last trip together before they all went off the their respective colleges.

They settled on Seoul. And that was where Damien ended up getting scouted by an indie-label looking to sign him for their upcoming band project. A Korean band had been playing, but an argument had ensued and the drummer had stormed off, leaving the group without a drummer for the last few songs. Enter from stage left Damien with a grin and happily announcing that he was a drummer and he’d be happy to take over. And with no much of a choice but to stop early, the guys had agreed and he sat in for their last few songs. He never really expected anyone of mild importance would be paying attention. But no, he was wrong, apparently.

Of course when he phoned home and told his father that yeah, he wasn’t actually coming home his father panicked. There was an argument over the phone, but Damien was determined. And there was no much his father could really do from another country, his son was a legal adult and that was the end of that, he could do what he wanted. Eventually his father did give him his blessing and Damien ended up extending his visa and signing with the label.

But it was a struggle to suddenly get used to everything different. Speaking Korean on a daily basis again was weird to get used to despite it being his main language with his home life. Also the chance in scenery was the pain and he always found himself complaining about the cold weather simply because he was used to it being far hotter. And there were other things, foods he could no longer his hands hands on, formalities he wasn’t so used to, remembering to speak formally to strangers and all the different words. It was hard to settle properly, but he had new people to rely on and he was pretty damn determined not for it to become a issue. He was going to do this.

And do it he did, he was paired up with the other prospective band members and they became XLNC. The training was hard simply because he didn’t know any of them from before, but the more they hung out and the longer they practised the more Damien started feeling comfortable around them, he might even say that he was confident they could make this work. Sue they might only be under a small indie label, but it was better than nothing. Certainly better than back in Australia with no label and having to think about getting a proper job or going to college (lord forbid that).

But the road they travelled was not paved with gold like he had hoped. They found it hard to find their footing in the ever changing musical industry, their struggling company not helping matters. It was a long two years with very little in the way of recognition and, on more than one occasion did Damien consider calling it quits, either out of desperation or complete exhaustion. But it was his members which stopped him, they had signed up for this together and they were going to go down together – if it ever came to that. But he was thankful he had to others to rely on during their tough times, he grew incredibly close with his band members over the two years in that small company.

KJH suddenly buying them from their old company and basically pressuring the group to sign with them was something he never saw coming. But they were being handed a carrot and Damien was more than happy to take it with very little complaints or questions. Anything to get out of their struggles and finally let the whole world hear their music.

Of course, there were some issues. Suddenly going from one company to another was hardly an easy transaction to make and he could feel some tensions, but XLNC stuck together and that was all that really mattered to him. He knew that if one member quit, then he would end up going as well. They were a group and it was going to be all four of them or nothing at all, just the way he wanted it. This was his new future and he was almost willing to say it looked bright. Though he knows it’s not going to be easy and there is going to be a lot more work put into things, a lot of his time suddenly spent practising harder, but the they have finally got a good footing, a start, and he’s eager to see it grow

While there is still some apprehension, worries that his troubled past will come back to bite him and he’s also aware that he has never told KJH about his… problems, he’s hoping no one is ever going to find out. So long as he gets to sit behind his drum kit and make music and make their fans happy then he’s happy as well. This was the start of a new journey together and Damien was simply quite eager to see where it took them and what would be waiting for them at the end.

[yahoo-from-the-marbles-blog]

Takeaways from Kansas: Martin Truex Jr. almost stole a win

Kevin Harvick (4) passes Martin Truex Jr. (78) with a lap to go to win the NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Kansas Speedway on Saturday, May 12, 2018, in Kansas City, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Welcome to our weekly post-race column of fire takes. Let’s see what’s in store this week after Saturday night’s race at Kansas.

Clean air almost gets Truex a win

Martin Truex Jr. was one of six drivers who didn’t pit on the second-to-last caution of the race when Ryan Blaney hit the wall on lap 248.

The pit strategy call put Truex in second and he was just ahead of Joey Logano when the final caution of the night flew for a big wreck involving William Byron, Ryan Newman and others.

The lead on the final restart almost paid off massively as Truex pulled away from the field. But as Kevin Harvick moved to the top of the track to try to gain time on Truex, the 2017 champion’s car started to fade and his hopes of a third-straight win at Kansas Speedway disappeared.

[Kevin Harvick gets fifth win of 2018 at Kansas]

“I thought with five to go, we were going to be in good shape,” Truex said. “We were running some really fast lap times and actually pulling away, and then actually the switch flipped and I got tight and started shaking the right front tire, and I knew I was in trouble.”

Harvick almost ran out of time to catch Truex, however. He didn’t complete the pass until the two drivers had entered turn one on the final lap.

“We’re going to have to find some speed, and I think our cars are capable,” Truex said. “We’ve had good speed throughout the season at points.  We just haven’t been as consistent as last year in finding it.  I feel like the box for us is a little bit smaller, and it’s pretty evident that the Fords have an unfair advantage this year, so I’ll just throw that out there.”

From this perspective, Truex said the comment about unfair advantages with his tongue in his cheek as a reference to Brad Keselowski’s comments about Toyota’s dominance in 2017. The apparent sarcasm wasn’t relayed to Harvick in his press conference when he was asked about Truex’s comment.

“That’s funny,” Harvick said. “Maybe he forgot about last year.”

William Byron hits wall violently

William Byron said his crash Saturday night was the hardest hit he’s ever taken in a race car.

Byron and his team had put two fresh tires on his car before a restart with 16 laps to go in an attempt to gain track position. The track position ploy worked, but not for long. Byron got loose on the inside of other cars off turn four and his car snapped loose and went head-on into the outside wall.

The impact with the wall combined with a hit from Ryan Newman sent the back end of Byron’s car up into the air.

“Yeah, that one hurt really bad but, I’m fine,” Byron said. “We took two tires there and couldn’t get it turned on the bottom and then got sucked around at the last minute. It just should have been lower than that. Just couldn’t rotate. Couldn’t cut. I think overall, we were trying to kind of push some things there and it just didn’t work out. But, we’re going to wherever is next and that was definitely the hardest hit I’ve been in. But, I’m thankful to be walking, so that’s good.”

Kansas has inexplicably become a place for insane crashes. Aric Almirola broke his back in a crash at Kansas in 2017 when the back of his car got airborne and slammed back into the track and there have been many other massive crashes at the speedway ever since it opened in 2001.

Kyle Larson finishes fourth after starting 34th

Kyle Larson had an insanely fast car. Larson started near the back of the field and was 13th just eight laps into the race — a gain of 21 spots.

The march to the front continued as he took the lead for the first time on lap 131. Larson held onto the lead through lap 213 and then took it again from laps 226-243. But once Kevin Harvick passed him on lap 244, Larson’s car faded a bit.

It got damaged when Ryan Blaney tried to side draft with him on lap 248. The contact damaged Blaney’s car and cut his tire, sending the No. 12 into the wall.

“Then Blaney was side-drafting really hard and I was as high as I could get and we made contact, whatever, and we had a bunch of damage, so I hate that we didn’t turn today into a win, but it’s satisfying to see how much speed our car had tonight,” Larson said. “And, it’s definitely good to show that Chevy has a lot of speed, at least in the No. 42 team; so, we’ll just keep working hard and try to get as fast as [Harvick].”

The contact damaged Larson’s left-rear quarterpanel too. He still somehow came back to finish fourth, though he may get a points penalty later this week. Larson’s rear windshield was visibly bowed in after the race and NASCAR has already issued four penalties for that windshield issue this year.

“So, I’m glad to see that we have a lot of damage back there because obviously if there was no damage back there we would probably get a penalty and who knows, we might still,” Larson said. “But I’ve got a ton of damage back there. These cars are pretty rigid and one piece of damage can affect the whole rest of the car, as you can see.”

Stenhouse and Elliott get unhappy with each other

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Chase Elliott were racing for 10th on the final lap when Stenhouse slid up in front of Elliott’s car. Elliott let off the gas instead of turning Stenhouse into the wall and conceded the position to the No. 17 car.

But the move slowed the momentum of both cars enough to allow Kyle Busch to pass each of them before the finish line for 10th. Stenhouse was 11th and Elliott finished 12th.

After taking the checkered flag, Elliott hit Stenhouse’s bumper and then Stenhouse swerved into Elliott. The two drivers then exchanged words after exiting their cars, though it appeared there were no real hurt feelings about the incident.

Given Elliott’s momentum and the circumstances of the lap we couldn’t blame Elliott if he had stayed in the gas and dumped Stenhouse in the line. Stenhouse got away with one there.

Elliott could also have been upset about his team’s performance. At 12th he was the second-highest finishing Chevy behind Kyle Larson in fourth.

“Yeah, just scratching and clawing to run mediocre,” Elliott said. We have a lot of work to do.”

Matt Kenseth’s return is a dud

Matt Kenseth’s first race of 2018 wasn’t a vast improvement for Roush Fenway Racing. Kenseth finished 36th in his first race in Trevor Bayne’s No. 6 after he was caught in Byron’s crash.

Kenseth wasn’t competitive before the crash either. He was two laps down and running nowhere close to the top 10. Perhaps the problems with the No. 6 team are more than Bayne. While we didn’t expect Kenseth to suddenly contend for a win or even a top 10 on Saturday night, the lack of speed was a little surprising.

More post-race thoughts

For more thoughts, check out Jeff Gluck’s podcast. I joined him this week to discuss what turned out to be an eventful final 30 laps on Saturday night.

– – – – – – –

Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

Follow @NickBromberg on Twitter

More from Yahoo Sports: • Snake causes wild delay at minor league game • New details about old assault case against NFL coach • What is MLB’s beef with custom cleats? • Just like old times: Tiger comes alive at tourney

[myckicade]

Mmmm, precisely. He intended to play the game, and fell head-first into, "Oh, shit." Louis feels like the biggest slap of reality that (I suspect) Lestat has had in a long time, a reminder of that which he can't control. He can kill. He can seduce. But love? Oh, no. No, love can not be kept on such a tether, not when it is him being choked by the reigns. Being Louis' maker, there is likely a pretty serious expectation of adoration from his fledgling, of love, certainly, and not necessarily with the intention of making it a two-way street (beyond those grand gestures).

The truly amusing part is that Lestat is really overthinking the problem. To use an old favourite, he's set up for a game of checkers, while Louis is ready to play chess.

I love your description of Louis as "the most human-ish vampire ever", because that is absolutely spot-on. Louis wants to be seen, to be understood. We wants something real. He isn't taken in by the superficial, and that comes across as the only card Lestat knows how to play. He can wine and dine, he can show off his wealth and status, he can be the mysterious man about town. When that fails to be what Louis needs to be happy, and it makes Louis confused and uncomfortable, there's this sense of, "...-Huh?!" Sure, Lestat eventually says he enjoys the challenge of Louis, but the novelty is quick to wear off. He's faced with it so many times, the resulting struggle to recalibrate leaves him with mental and emotional whiplash.

At some points, it really looks like he doesn't know whether he's coming or going. The argument in which Lestat screams, "This isn't a life!" strikes me, again and again. That he, Lestat, stubborn, headstrong, ever-powerful creature of the night, has been brought to tears over a situation he could have left. He's scared and hurt, stuck in the middle of a situation he doesn't seem to have encountered before, that he put himself in, and he's looking to Louis to fix it. Goodness knows he's tried and tried (and failed and failed) to make Louis happy, and Louis is the only one with the answer of how to make it work. The only one with the power to change it. He's helpless in the face of Louis' depression, and doesn't have a clue what else to try. Nights out don't work. Sex doesn't work. It's an easy thing to take personally. Unfortunately, he turns to that age-old defense: Victim Blaming. I do believe that he genuinely wants Louis to feel better, but that ego response of "Why am I not the answer?!" really, really gets in his way.

And he still has the balls to laugh in Louis' face, when Loius voices the same concern over their relationship. What a dick.

Anyway.

Lestat clearly loves Louis enough to stand beside him, and swirl down the drain with him, but he lacks the capacity for... understanding? Empathy? Patience? To continue on in silence. To some degree, I would argue that he shouldn't have to, either. Argument, within limitation, can be healthy toward working through feelings, and making one's self heard. Getting to the bottom of things, and figuring it all out. On the other side of the argument, Louis does not have to magically be better to fix the problem. I'm just being a broken record about fucking communicating.

The situation with Claudia is a repeat of the same theme, sparking the pattern I had previously mentioned. They wrap the wound (turn Claudia), forgive and forget, and move on. But, eventually, Louis' focus goes to Claudia, a stand-in (though loved) for the family he's already lost. He's once again distracted by something that isn't Lestat. He nit-picks at Lestat for his parenting choices, which, I grant you, don't look great on the surface. But, Lestat is the experienced vampire. I say again, Lestat is the experienced vampire. He knows what it will take for this girl, this fledgling of theirs to survive in the world. Every time he tries, Louis takes issue, because Louis is trying to protect Claudia from what she is. From what they made her. As with his own self-care as a vampire, he's trying to do it in halves. I think it scares him that Claudia is a killer, that she is not like him. That she will grow to resent them for what they have done to her, as opposed to for her. (And, as we've seen... Ta-da...).

But, I digress. Here's Louis, once again throwing criticism at Lestat. Resentment. Just when he thinks he's finally found the answer. After he's helped Louis to attain what he wants. After they have been doing so much better. After he's given more than he had ever intended to the man, and he's still not enough. He isn't enough to make Louis stay without Claudia. He isn't enough to make Louis happy without Claudia. Either he doesn't understand what Louis is going through, or he doesn't give a shit (which I find a little more difficult to believe), and it leaves him with a sense of inadequacy. And he looks at Claudia, and Claudia apparently holds every fucking answer that he has now spent decades trying to find. He's failed, and to a child, and part of him just seems to... give up.

Which brings me to Antoinette. Part of me thinks that, sure, Lestat runs back over to Antoinette, at whatever point, to fill the void of what he wants, but isn't getting from Louis. Someone he can please, and likely with so much ease, I can hear his ego purring from here. Someone who makes him feel wanted, and desirable, and (I'm sure) the complete opposite of helpless. The rest of me, though, also sees this affair as Lestat giving up. Said affair has gone on for all these years, and Louis obviously hasn't moved for a physical separation. The cry for attention has gone unanswered. He's tired of hunting. As you say, he recognizes himself as being in the wrong for it, because he still doesn't want to lose what they have, fucked up as it may be. It reads to me as, "Yes, I've done it. Now, are you going to fight for me? For us?"

Then, re-enter Claudia, and her attempts to take Louis away. No matter what they've been through until this point, no matter how many times Louis has threatened to end things, they are still together. They've weathered it all, for better or worse. If there has been a roadblock? Lestat has destroyed it. Quite literally, he has killed it. But, Claudia? She's a roadblock he can't go through. He can't kill Claudia. For one thing, I do believe he cares about her, much as - again - he claims he doesn't. For another, if he harms her, he will surely lose Louis for good. And, he cares about that. This isn't something he can piss on and walk away from. Louis means everything to him. Claudia is going to win, Louis is going to leave him, and Lestat has no tricks left to try. No amount of recalibration is going to fix it. He's lost, and he can't have that.

If he's going to lose anyway, he might as well become the monster he was always expected to be.

@motleystitches left me this lovely, thought-provoking comment, and I wanted to take some time to answer it throughly:

"But was there at any time genuine affection between Louis/Lestat? That’s the part I feel is really awkward. Ep 5 seems to be asking to reinterpret all the previous episodes. Yeah, it’s abusive, violent, but ep5 made it seem like *everything* was just fake to Lestat, so they never went into a “pattern” at all. instead, it was just a game/hunt to Lestat…"

First, I apologize for taking multiple days to answer this. Second, let me clarify that I will make mention of things that I feel explain each character's shitty behavior. Explanation does not equal excuse. There is simply no excusing a great deal of what has gone down here.

So, to dive right in: Yes, I absolutely believe there was - and, still is - genuine affection and love between Louis and Lestat. That love is, quite understandably, not sitting around in plain view during the events of 01x05. Things have spiraled so far out of control between the two of them - lying, cheating, manipulating - that neither party seems to like the other, all that much, right now. While this is the first time the two of them have clashed to such extremes, it is hardly their first time at-odds. Love can survive a lot, and there's something about twisted, fucked-up, these-two-should-not-be-together love that seems to lend a little extra elasticity before the break.

To look at each character, I guess I'll begin with Public Enemy Number One. When the two initially met, I would agree that Lestat was on the hunt, both vampiric and romantic. The thrill of the chase was alive and well, as I should think most beings experience when they have a goal in-mind. And, as much as Lestat tries to separate vampire from human, he is still victim to basic human nature. He wants love. He wants companionship. I just don't think he's terribly fond of the idea of that he needs it.

Lestat, if you should ask me, is a terrible liar, even to himself. This, I think, is where a lot of the manipulation comes from. It looks ugly as hell, at face value, but I think a lot of it is rooted in insecurity. He either doesn't know how, or - for my money - doesn't want to ask for the things he shouldn't need. The things he should be strong enough to do without. Things that, in the past, have probably come back to bite him in the ass. So, he comes up with other ways to get them, to entice Louis into giving him what he wants. Again, manipulation is manipulation, but I don't think it comes from a place of falsehood when it comes to Louis. He wants from Louis, but he doesn't want Louis to know that he holds that kind of power over him. Unfortunately for him, it slips out when he feels that he's faced with no other choice to get what he wants.

Monogamy is my favourite example. His assurance to Louis that other people are acceptable is so terribly, obviously transparent, only to have a complete, unsurprising meltdown in the face of Louis taking advantage of their agreement. While there is definitely bullshit to be called in the double-standard, Lestat also comes across as genuinely heartbroken. And, who could blame him? (I'm sure many could, but, I'm speaking to the heartbreak, not the actions that followed). Here is his partner, who - by said partner's own admission - has little sexual desire for Lestat, only to take up with an old friend at the drop of a hat. I can tell you from experience, that is a shitty feeling. To have your partner show no desire to do something with you (not necessarily sexual), only to be all too willing to give it a go with someone else. That said, I firmly believe that Lestat wanted to believe it would be fine with it, to know that Louis was with someone else. Otherwise, he's in it too deep. He's jealous. That jealousy and heartache become weakness, and those weaknesses can be exploited at Louis' will.

And, Louis… This is what I love about this series, is that everyone is feeling this story in so many different ways. Personally, if I was to find anyone's love to be in doubt, it would be Louis'. He's so caught up in resentment of Lestat, for turning him, for killing to survive, for all of the basic things that Lestat is... He clearly has difficulty in getting around that. Louis has a very mild way of showing affection. Granted, a great many beings in this world are not affectionate, and that is just fine. In his case, it makes sense that at least some of it comes from a lifetime of being told that his feelings were, to quote, "a crime against nature". He doesn't owe Lestat affection, and he's not obligated, but... A lack of attention doesn't tend to work very well, when paired with a needy personality. Again, I'm not saying Louis should give Lestat everything that he wants. But, he knows what his standoff-ish ways do to Lestat. There's no way that he doesn't. Threatening to leave, and then walking out, only to turn back up once his point has been made. Or, even better, when he has need of Lestat, again. (See: Claudia).

Speaking of Claudia, this is a fine example of the things Louis knows, and how best to use them to his advantage. He's far more subtle about it than Lestat, but Louis is guilty of manipulating his lover when it suits him, too. When he needs Lestat's help to save Claudia, he knows just what buttons to push. He knows that Lestat loves him, and will do anything for him. A daughter means that he'll stick around for a family. Coming to him in the first place doubles as a stroke to Lestat's ego, letting the scales of power tip to his favour for a time. Even with that, it still gets Louis what he wants. He wants to save Claudia. He wants to atone for his own sins. He wants to be a good person. And, yes, I do believe that he genuinely wants to fix things with Lestat in the same move. (Four birds, one bite).

That's where the love (and the co-dependency) shows the most. Louis wants to fix it. He cools off, and comes back around, and gives it another try. Ill-advised? Fuck, yes. But... You can convince yourself of a great many things when you're in love. Otherwise, in theory, you'd probably walk away. He knows Lestat. He trusts him, trusts in his love, and in the good of him that certainly does exist. Again, if it was all bad... Well, something attracted him in, in the first place.

Fast-forward to 01x05... Violence is definitely not the answer, but I am not one bit surprised that such is where they have landed. Lestat has lost all of his hold on Louis, in all forms, be it love, attention, or power. And, he lost him to Claudia. His weaknesses have come back to bite him, and he's doing the only thing he seems to know how to do: bite back. Biting back against Claudia, though? Wrong move. Trying to harm Claudia, the only redemption that Louis may feel he has left in the world, his child, is worse than taking on Louis, himself. There is no way Louis lets that slide, even if that means taking on an older, faster, stronger adversary. Even if that adversary is his own lover. To protect his family, yes. But, in some truly fucked up way, I feel like this is the only way Louis is going to bother to protect himself. Where this leaves them, now? It's not pretty, not by any means, but it will be interesting to find out.

That was... a lot. (And, sadly enough, I have so much more that I could add). All together, yes, I feel that there is love between them, but they suck at showing it. Love isn't their problem. They're a personality mis-match, to say the absolute least. Incompatible. These two fail at communication. They really might have benefited from a long, involved, check-your-ego-at-the-door type of a conversation. It didn't have to come to this, but no one was willing to get to the root of it. Ego. Ego, ego, ego. (Mm, I love it). This relationship feels very real, where so many other on-screen portrayals are lacking. Now? Now, the road back to love with be treacherous, if even passable, at all.

After all, Louis may have said told Lestat to let him go, but he never said he didn't love him.

P.S. This is just my opinion, and I may very well be biased. I have been in this type of relationship before. We shouldn't have been together, but we were oddly perfect for one another, and that thought still surprises the shit out of me.