#the last time i posted something about in the flesh was over 9 months ago

[ginnyws]

Hello Sue, thanks for having me.

[retroellie]

(I love your work btw!!! 🥺💕) Can you make an imagine where the reader is cooking dinner for Ellie, but then Ellie starts feeling a bit needy for the reader while watching her cook, and ends up roughly fucking her on the kitchen counter, which leads to the food being burnt and they end up getting takeout instead? 😩

Summary: Cooking dinner until Ellie gets a nasty idea

A/N: I promised more farm!ellie so here ya go. Thank you for the request love <3 Thank you for enjoying and i know you said take out but like i started writing and was like oh shit they meant modern world, so i completely forgot im sorry AHSJA. Anyways mom!ellie

Warnings: NSFW, Strap-on, Fingering, Pregnant sex

Word count: 3.7K

"Shit." Ellie huffed, shutting the heavy door to the barn.

There was so much work still needed to do on the farm, the hen shed needed to be built still so for now they were spread out across the barn and the cows pen needed to be expanded. There was so much left to do and ellie was nervous y'all might not get it done by the time winter got here.

She had been out there all day working on getting all the animals comfortable in their new homes, the pigs being the hardest. As of right now though the sun was beginning to set and Ellie was starving. You had gone in not too long ago because you were becoming overheated, not well for the baby in your belly.

Ellie walked through the field, seeing how pretty the house looked in the sunset light. All the pretty oranges and reds spread across the wood of the house, she wished she had her sketchbook so she could get down the quick picture before it left her brain.

She reached the house, taking her shoes off so she didn't get mud on the floor. She could hear faint sounds of music, if she was real quiet she could hear you humming along with it. She smiled at the peacefulness she felt right now, suddenly all the stresses she had about the barn vanished. Suddenly she thought the barn was a great idea, if this was how it would be all the time then she could die a happy woman.

She set her shoes next to yours, taking one good look at the fields before going in. The sun buried itself behind the hills, casting a glow on the flowing laundry allowing her to see small peaks of the barn. She couldn't wait for the kid to be running through here, she could see it now. She could see herself running after the kid, small laughs coming from the both of them.... her kid. The thought made her smile.

She finally opened the screen door, the smell of dinner filling the air around her. That's when she saw in the dim light of the candle filled room, you in the middle of it all. You were dressed in a cute little cottage dress that you were given at the baby shower, and one of the women of the town made it for you.

You were making something on the stove, not noticing her presence until the screen door slammed behind her. You jumped slightly, the perks of living in a post-apocalyptic world. You gave a small smile when you realized it was her before averting your eyes to the pot in front of you.

Ellie placed her things down on the small table by your back door, her eyes glued to you. She made her way over to you, seeing a cookbook opened right next to you. There were so many types of vegetables out along with some bread and meat. You always did know how to surprise her with your old world cookbook.

"Long day at work Mrs. Williams?" You smiled, teasing her a bit.

"Long and hard, Mrs. Williams." She came up behind you, placing her large hands on your hips.

She swayed a bit to the music, watching you stir the food in the pot. You smiled at her sudden affection, the feeling of her hands gripping softly at your waist making you blush slightly. One of her hands made its way to your belly, noticing how much bigger it had gotten since y'all moved here.

"How are my girls doing?" She asked, caressing your stomach softly.

When you guys first found this place you were only a couple weeks along, not even 9 weeks along. Now you're almost 6 months old, you have gotten bigger and bigger. Your glow had only increased as well, you looked really good and really happy as well. Most nights were better than others obviously, the paranoia and depression of the outside world can be hard especially on a pregnant woman.

"We're doing okay, she's a little shit and won't settle down but hopefully food will calm her down." You replied, watching as the broth bubbled.

You could feel Ellie's grin on your neck, kisses halting for only a minute just to look down at the bubbles as well. It looked like chicken noodle soup but Ellie couldn't be sure. Her hands continued to caress your belly, feeling as the baby moved around. She will never get used to that, the feeling of a baby in your stomach.

She was dragged out of her thoughts when you turned your head to connect your lips together. She was caught off guard but happily moved her lips to yours, one hand still sitting on your hip and the other slightly pushing you back to rest yourself on her chest. You chuckled into the kiss, pushing her away slightly with your butt.

"Honey, I love you but you smell like a pig pen..." You joked, turning back to the oven. "Go get cleaned up for dinner, it has another 20 or 30 minutes left."

She laughed, stepping away from you for the first time since she came into the house. She gave your ass a soft smack before trailing herself up stairs. You let out a surprised yelp, giggling as you watched her walk to the doorway and stop in her tracks.

"behave yourself while i'm upstairs... You think you can do that?" She joked, giving you a small grin.

"Ugh that'll be impossible...how could I behave myself when I know you're washing pig shit off your hands just up the stairs." You joked back.

Ellie chuckled and made her way upstairs, jogging up the stairs and into your bedroom. It didn't take much to get cleaned up, she just changed into a plain white shirt and some random pair of jeans she found on the dresser.

While she was placing her dirty clothes into the hamper she caught a glimpse of one of your guys toys. It was a strap on, it was one you used often but it worked for the two of you. That's when the best idea came to her, she didn't hesitate in grabbing the strap on. She put it on tightly so it wouldn't fall off.

When she was comfortable with it, not too tight and not too loose she pulled up her jeans. It wasn't too noticeable, the strap was mostly folded in between her legs so it didn't show through her jeans. She smiled at her nasty idea before walking back down stairs, seeing you in the same position you were before. This time your eyebrows were knitted together in frustration, licking your lips which sent tingles through ellie.

She went back to the same position she was at only minutes before her nasty idea, but this time her hands roughly grabbed at you. There was a slight change in her presence than the last time, it was once innocent and peaceful but now it was like a lion staring down its prey.

Her lips were once again attached to your neck, hands bunching up your dress slightly. The roughness distracted you a bit, not expecting her mood to change within seconds. One of her hands was slowly making its way under your dress, giving you only a split second to realize what she was going.

You didn't know if it was you being pregnant or what but you were almost immediately putty in her hands, in between your legs already called for her. Her hand was slowly running up your thigh, no time was waiting.

"Ellie... I have to make dinner!" You stated, hand grabbing on to the counter for leverage.

"You said 20 minutes right??" She asked, watching as you gave her a small nod. "I can make you cum at least 3 times before...."

Those words made you weak, you could feel the wet spot on your underwear grow more and more. Ellie sucked and bit at your neck, leaving small bruises. Her hand made it all the way to your thigh, feeling the wet spot. She gave a cocky grin, knowing she was the one doing that.

"Besides, dinner can wait..." She paused, moving her hand that rested on your waist to your chest, grabbing at your flesh softly. " Well, you pussy seems to think so." She teased.

You let out a small groan, letting go of the spoon you had been holding too grab at her hand that was grabbing at your boobs. You usually would give her a hard time, tease her as much as she teases you but right now... your hormones were everywhere and your body was so different than it was, you just couldn't fight back your desire for her.

She took a few steps back, taking you back with her so you were safely away from the stove before moving your panties to the side. She started off small with her movements, placing two fingers on your clit, circling them around to send small moments of pleasure to your core.

You moaned into the air, the increased sensitivity of your body changing made the movements feel more intense than they once were. Your head moved back to capture her lips in a kiss, while her fingers worked on the little bud between your folds.

The kiss was passionate, no teeth clashing or sloppy tongue action but like two puzzle pieces being perfect for each other. Your head craned back, wanting more of her lips and you were honestly afraid of breaking your neck but it just felt so good.

Ellie's hand on your chest pulled down your dress, releasing our boobs into the cold air. She was just able to pull it down to your waist but that was enough access for her. She grabbed at one of your boobs, playing with the sensitive nipple.

She watched as you gasped into her mouth, eyes slightly rolling back into your head. She took that as a cue to shove two fingers inside of you, thumb still rubbing at your clit. You couldn't last too much longer and she knew it, everything felt so different from your not pregnant body so she had to treat it differently.

Your walls immediately clamped around her finger, the knot in your body ready to explode. You grabbed on to her, one hand on her arm and the other moving back to grab her thigh to balance yourself. It all happened so fast and you didn't even know it was happening until waves of pleasure were sent all over your body and your juice dripped onto ellies hand.

Some strangled moans left your mouth, as your body felt like it was on fire and your stomach did twist and turns. You tried to catch your breath, wincing as Ellie took her fingers out of you. Ellie allowed you to slowly come down from you high, knowing she was not done with you yet.

"Sorry I came so fast...." You breathed out, moving to fix your dress back before Ellie pulled you back to her.

"Who said I'm done with you.." She spoke, moving her hand down to her jeans before pulling out the strap.

You gasped at the feeling of it, feeling it hit your lower back. You couldn't help but feel pathetic at the fact you were still so fucking horny even though you already came once, you felt greedy but you ddin't care.

"I said 3 times right?" She spoke, not asking but telling you.

You bit your lip at the tone of her voice, feeling your cunt flutter and drip onto your now soaked underwear. Your cheeks were red along with the flush skin of your chest from Ellie grabbing at your tender boobs.

Ellie pulled you closer to her, standing you still while she pulled your dress all the way down to your ankles. The feeling of her being fully dressed and you being completely naked, the degradation of it making your legs shake more than they already were. You were in nothing but your underwear that were pushed to the side and ellies hands settling down on your hips.

Ellie spread your legs a tad, moving a finger to slide through your folds. You winced a tad, overstimulated slightly but so ready to be fucked once again. Ellie got you nice and wet, lining up the strap to your puffy folds.

"Do you need anything? Water? Or do you want to sit down? i co..." She started but wasn't able to finish her sentence

"Jesus Christ ellie just fuck me already." You interrupted, moving your hips back to try to fuck yourself on the strap.

Ellie chuckled but you didn't have to tell her twice, she slowly inserted the strap but that wasn't until you moved your hips back and forth. The action of you fucking yourself on the strap made her stumble back slightly, hitting the sink so her back was flush against it.

You didn't have a set speed, you sped up and then slowed down just whatever felt the best at the moment. Ellie watched as you sunk down onto it, watching it go in and out of you. She was getting a little antsy, wanting to thrust in and out of you while holding you down on the cabinet.

Oh how she wanted to fuck you so hard, but you were fragile at the moment so she let you take your time. Instead she placed her hands on your hips, helping you push your weight onto her. Your thighs were burning, the way you had to push yourself back onto her gave you a legit work out.

You held onto Ellie’s hands, forcing your body back down onto her. You could feel yourself inching closer and closer each thrust, each thrust also came more frustration on your part. The feeling of running after an orgasm but not being fit enough to reach it out made you wanna scream.

You hair was falling in front of your face as you leaned over to try to fuck yourself harder on the strap, trying to get at the best angle as well. You were just genuinely uncomfortable but so motivated to get off that you didn’t care that your body was hurting.

Ellie noticed the tension in your body, feeling your frustration as you desperately tried to get off. That’s when she stepped in, stopping you for a minute to lean you on the cabinet next to her. Only your chest on the cabinet, your elbows holding you up.

“Lemme take care of you hun...” she started, lining the strap back up. “Just sit back and look pretty for me okay.”

She took home on your hips once more and dove back into you, hitting an angle that you wanted to get too but couldn’t. She went at the same pace as before, rough and hard but taking small breaks in between to check if you were hurting.

You grabbed onto the counter with dear life, the cold counter against your flush skin making you shiver slightly. She was prominent and very skilled, feeling every single inch of the strap inside of you.

“Fuck... Ellie... I-“ you could feel yourself clamping around her, your walls fluttering and tensing up ready to release.

She knew you could last longer, your strangled groans and small cruises dropped hints to her. Her twisted a hand in your hair, something she knew you liked, pulling it slightly while you thrust your hips back to hers.

You lifted yourself off the counter now holding yourself up with your hands, holding yourself as steady as you possibly could for Ellie. You could feel it rip through your body. You jerked your body flush against Ellie’s, back all the way pressed against her chest.

Ellie snaked a hand to your boobs and the other drawing soft circles in your clit. You threw your head onto her shoulder, mouth shaped into an O shape as you came with a loud moan.

“Come on baby.... cum on my cock..” she whispered, thrusting her hips into you harshly.

You were seeing stars at this point, holding on to Ellie for dear life as she fucked you through your orgasm. Ellie kissed up your jaw, catching your lips into a kiss while slowing down her movement. Your body had stopped jerking only to be left legit shaking.

Ellie pulled the strap out of you, still holding you up with one hand. You were out of breath, shaking violently in her arms as she comforted you back into your body. She moved a hand through your hair, peppering your neck with kisses as you slowly came back to your body.

“Do you need anything?” She whispered, pressing a small kiss to the shell of your ear.

You turned around in her arms, bringing her into a kiss. Your hands immediately made their way into her hair, her hands absentmindedly went to your hips. It had got a cold in the house but you both were heated up.

“I’m okay Ellie, the baby's good, I’m not thirsty, I don’t need to sit...” you said, knowing exactly the same questions she would ask. It warmed your heart to see she cared but holy shit you were so wound up. “I was promised 3 orgasms.... so please just shut up and fuck me.”

That was so fucking hot to her, you taking what you wanted without a care in the world was something she couldn’t handle. She brought you into a sloppy kiss, holding your head in place as she walked you back into the counter.

She pressed you against the counter, leg up against your bare cunt that was so overstimulated right now but you somehow wanted more. She lifted one of your legs up around her waist and you helped do the other until you were fully seated on the counter.

Your legs dangled down, spread wide open so Ellie could place herself in between them comfortably. Her hands sat on your thighs, squeezing both of them softly. Your hands wrapped around her neck, bringing her so close to you.

This is what heaven would feel like if there was one, fucking on the counter of your dream farmhouse while pregnant with Ellie’s child (Figuratively). It’s what pure light and sweet dreams felt like wrapped in one.

You wrapped your legs around Ellie’s waist, hinting at wanting her to fuck you finally. Ellie lined it up with your cunt, running it up and down your slit a few times before pushing it all the way in.

You gasped at the feeling of being filled to the brim once more, throwing your head back onto the cabinet as Ellie thrust in and out of you at an animalistic pace.

Ellie watched as your back arched up, causing your boobs to bounce every single thrust. This view made her mouth water, you being fucked under candle light. She leaned down to attach her lip to one of your boobs.

You grabbed a fist full of her hair to keep her there for a moment, feeling pleasure from two sensitive areas of your body could send you flying off the edge once more. You let multiple moans out, one after the other.

The house was full of them, bouncing off every wall until they made it back to Ellie’s ears. Ellie went deeper, trying to hit that spot that made you see stars. Ellie watched as your eyebrows knitted together, head pointed up to the ceiling as your mouth formed an O once more.

You were once again so close, tired walls fluttering against the strap. Your overstimulated cunt burning at the sensation of another earth shattering orgasm. Ellie lifted her head up to coax you through it, leaving sloppy open mouth kisses on your fully exposed neck.

“Come on baby, cum on my cock one more time....” she encouraged you, speeding up once more. “I know you can do it, make that pretty little cunt cum all over my cock huh.”

Those dirty words, words that made your body tingle every time you heard them. You grabbed onto Ellie once again, squeezing her hand as the knot in your stomach finally snapped once again.

You could feel how your juices spilled all over the counter, probably making a big wet mess. Pleasure courses through your body, making you jerk violently. Your nails dug into Ellie roughly, most likely leaving bruises.

Ellie once again fucked you through your orgasm but slowed down slightly, kissing up your neck. Your entire body collapsed, no more strength to try to get down.

You could smell the burning of your soup, the awful smell wafting through the air. It had been a little over 20 minutes, probably more than 30 minutes even. It was slightly bright outside when you started but now it was pitch black, candles were the only thing lighting your way.

Ellie planted another kiss on your lips, caressing your belly to comfort you. You kissed back, just wanting to go to bed at this point.

“Well the soup is burnt... So what do you wanna do for dinner??” You asked, looking at how the soup smoked.

Ellie looked back as well, seeing as it was literally almost black. She chuckled a bit, turning back to you and shrugging.

“I mean we have left over cake from the baby shower.... can't let it go to waste.” She said, watching as you gave her a big grin.

“Hmmm... I think you sound much better than cake.” You joked, well it really wasn’t a joke. You just came 3 times and she at least deserved to get eaten out.

“I swear you got knocked up and now you're just a little horn dog.” Ellie rolled her eyes, slipping out of you before handing you your dress.

“Hey corn dogs kinda sounds good??” You joked, hopping down from the cabinet almost falling down on your way.

“You are too much.” She laughed, pulling you back into a quick kiss.

You wrapped your arms around her neck once more, smiling into the kiss as her hands roamed down you your ass giving it a quick squeeze.

"Well cake and burnt vegetables for dinner i guess." You sighed out, between kisses.

The only thing y'all will be eating tonight is each other at this point.

[miceenscene]

'tis the damn season

frankie/reader | childhood friends to lovers | pre-canon

wc: 1.8k/2.5k

summary: At one point in your lives, you knew Frankie better than anyone else on earth. When did that change?

warnings: none

an: don't let anyone tell you that second person doesn't work from another character's perspective, least of all yourself while editing

Masterpost | ao3

Chapter 2: Who am I Related to?

December 8, 2012 18:57

Hudson’s was a shitty bar just up highway 210 outside of Fort Bragg, the nearest watering hole to the base as the crow flies.

As a result, it served pretty damn near exclusively military personnel. When it changed ownership about four years back, the new management decided to reflect that and so the place looked like the Fourth of July and Top Gun had thrown up on it. Never mind that Fort Bragg was an Army base. Still, they had cheap booze and greasy food that was far better than the commissary, so it was always busy.

Pope had texted the usual suspects a few hours ago that he was heading to Hudson’s that evening, making Frankie immediately ditch his plans of drinking alone for drinking with Pope and whoever else showed up. Most likely just Benny and Ironhead now that Redfly had semi-retired down to Florida. It was a short drive to the bar from the dorms on base, but it was enough to make Frankie groan and press hands to his lower back as he got out of his car and made his way inside.

Pope was sitting at the bar and didn’t look up from texting on his phone as Frankie gingerly eased into the stool next to him.

“Hey, Fish,” Pope said, rereading the email.

“Hey.” At the bartender’s attention, Frankie pointed to Pope’s beer before daring a slight back stretch.

Pope sent his email and then looked over. “You alright?”

“Yeah, just finished PT.”

He chuckled once. “Back still fucked?”

“More tired than fucked anymore,” Frankie managed, shaking his head and wincing. The bartender delivered his beer, and Frankie took a swig. “When did we get old?”

“¿De qué estás hablando ‘nosotros’, viejo?”

Frankie jabbed an elbow and grinned slightly down at his next swig. “Culero.”

“Hey, before everyone gets here–” Pope looked at him, an oddly serious expression on his face for their usual bar. “I found out today you haven’t re-enlisted yet.”

Frankie immediately dropped his gaze to the suddenly very interesting glass in his hand. “Ah, no. No, I haven’t.”

“I’m trying to pull strings to get Benny into our unit full-time. I think he’d fit well with the team. Then Simmons tells me you haven’t signed your new papers yet. So what’s up?”

Frankie glanced over to see Pope still focused on him. “Nothing, nothing. I… I’m still thinking about it.”

He chuckled. “What’s there to think about?”

“We all want out someday, right? If we’re lucky enough to choose when we leave.”

“Yeah, but there’s thinking and thinking.” Pope smacked his shoulder. “What – are you gonna become a real estate agent like Redfly?”

No. Definitely not. Even just the idea of shilling condos was enough to make Frankie’s eyes glaze over. But still–

“Real estate agents make more money than we do.”

Pope made a considering face for a moment then brushed it off. “Yeah, but you’d miss it. You’re like me. We like the rush.”

Frankie nodded slightly. This is why he was still just thinking about it. It wasn’t a small thing to walk away from fourteen years with the Army. Especially since everyone knew the retirement benefits were absolute shit until you hit twenty. But he could already tell, he didn’t have another six years in him. He wasn’t even sure he had another deployment.

“You know the deadline’s New Year’s, right?” Pope said, cutting through his thoughts.

“Yeah, I know. I have some leave I have to take before the year’s out anyway.”

Pope nodded. “Good. Clear your head, get some perspective. See how fucking boring civvy life is, and then come back Jan 2 and join my team.”

Frankie smiled wryly; Pope always could make anything sound easy. “Something like that.”

“You have holiday plans then?” he asked, leaning an elbow on the bar.

Frankie sucked in breath. “I guess I’ll go back to my parents’. My mom’s been wanting me to visit for a while now.”

“How long’s it been?”

“I saw them in DC last summer, but I haven’t been back home… since I joined Delta.”

“Remind me where they’re at.”

“Up north. Little town in the middle of nowhere. Still in the same house I grew up in.” He could picture the wreath on the door, the twinkling lights his dad always strung across the front fence every December. A matching set used to be hung on the fence exactly opposite across the street. Who lived there now, he wondered. Would they put the tree in the front window too?

“Soldier coming home for Christmas. Sounds like a Hallmark movie.”

“Fuck you,” Frankie replied as the others finally arrived.

--

Frankie got his answer as he ducked out the front door of his parent’s house about a week later. His breath immediately fogged as he sucked in a few calming breaths of night air, the pressure in his head slowly levelling. Out in the still darkness, the noise level coming from the living room was finally manageable. Inside, with all of his cousins and his aunts and uncles and the music and everyone talking over each other and the heater set far too high for the number of people inside– he… he just needed a break.

Seven hours was a decent stint for his first day. He’d be around longer tomorrow. Wading in. That was the key. Because he was now the kind of person that had to treat time with his family like running a marathon. Apparently.

He walked down to the twinkling front fence, making a mental note to shovel the front walk tomorrow, and stopped. The house across the street – your house, as it would forever be in his mind – was completely dark. A small sign posted in the front yard announced some sort of home refurbishment company was going to be arriving soon. No doubt they would come in, strip away wallpaper and old tile and heart to paint it all beige and granite for the quick resell.

He hadn’t had the heart to ask his mother yet how long the house hadn’t belonged to your family. No need for another reminder of how much time had passed, how much he’d missed. He had more than enough already.

The front door opened behind him, casting a temporary warm glow across the dark snow, and his dad stepped out, pipe in hand. He meandered down the front steps to join Frankie at the gate, puffing a few times before speaking.

He shook his head. “It’d break his heart to see it so empty, but I understand why she sold,” he said, looking at the forlorn house with him.

“How long ago?” Frankie asked.

“Few months. Not too long after the funeral.” Dad looked his way for a moment. “I’ll give it ten minutes before I tell your mother you left.”

“I… thanks,” he replied weakly.

“Will you be back tomorrow?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be back.”

Dad nodded slowly, leaving just the pipe smoke wafting between them for a minute. “Take it slow, no need to rush.”

“Thanks.” He stepped through the gate, fishing in his pocket for his car keys.

“Francisco,” he said, making Frankie stop and look at him. “We’re glad you’re back.”

Frankie just nodded and went to his car. Even though he couldn’t bear another minute in the noisy press of his loved ones, the idea of going back to his lonely hotel room was truly abysmal. So after some finagling with the ignition, he started the engine and headed to the one bar he’d ever been to in his hometown.

--

There were Christmas lights in the window and a dancing Santa on the bar as Frankie walked in. Some sort of forcibly cheery holiday classic played over the speakers tucked between quirky memorabilia that hung over every square inch of wall space. And even though public smoking had been outlawed by the state well over a decade ago, cigarette stench had sunk into the very foundation of the place.

It was nothing like Frankie remembered. But it would do.

Eyes automatically sweeping across the moderately busy room for a Thursday night, he headed for a stool at the far end of the bar, ordering a beer when the bartender came by. It was just one step up from swill, but comfortably numbing in its mediocrity. He looked across the room again, checking for familiar faces this time and finding none. No surprise there. A decade was a long time, and really he hadn’t been around too much for the years before that too.

There were couples on dates here, friend groups, some sort of girls’ night happening in the corner, a few loners like him hovering at the bar. Most everyone was smiling, talking, laughing so hard their whole bodies shook. A whole world of Normal. And Frankie was a tourist.

Pope was right. He couldn’t go back to this. He couldn’t make it through one whole day with blood relatives anymore. What was he thinking? That he could just settle into a normal life like the last decade of his work was nothing? Get a 9-to-5 and a mortgage and a girl – not that he’d ever had too much luck in that department. Especially when there was one girl that eclipsed all others, and he didn’t even know her phone number any more.

The door opened, making the Santa on the bar dance, and every thought in Frankie’s head immediately stopped. His eyes drew wide as he stared, jaw barely restrained from slapping against his chest. Was it really – course it was, there wasn’t anyone else it could be. A whole century could pass, and he’d still know that face.

It was you.

Live, in the flesh you. Cheeks pinked from the wind, haloed by the street lights outside, wrapped in a truly astonishing number of woolen layers. Not a half-remembered fantasy, but Real and breathing and even more beautiful than his memory had claimed.

He watched you shake a few flurries out of your hair and stomp the excess snow off your boots, shutting the door behind you as you waved to the bartender. Your gaze swung across the bar, completely skimming past him, and landed on the girls’ night in the corner. You smiled. He stared.

You began to head over to the people you were obviously here to meet. On nothing but pure instinct, he immediately got out of his stool and followed you. Falling into step behind you, he stretched a hand forward to hook a few fingers inside your elbow.

You looked back at him, and for a heart-breaking breath there was no recognition in your eyes.

Till he gave you a half-smile and said, “Hey Bo.”

You blinked, mouth dropping open. “Frankie?” you asked.

He nodded.

Your astonishment ballooned so wide it froze your whole face solid for a moment. Then you laughed, out of far more shock than amusement, and gave him a smile all his own. “Oh my god!! You’re here!”

You immediately wrapped him in a hug. And though it took him a moment to return it, for the first time in ten whole years, he was home.

Chapter 3: Not my Homeland Anymore

taglist: @kelenloth ; @darnitdraco ; @gracie7209 ; @616wilsons ; @icanbeyourjedi ; @astroboots ;

[jamiiviper]

The Jamil Essay

this is a reupload of a post i made a couple of weeks ago - previously it was an external link to a google doc, so it never showed up in any of the twst tags, but i worked so hard on this and i would really love it if more people read it, so i’m reuploading directly to tumblr.

to put it simply, this is a 3.7k word character analysis purely about jamil. and even with a word count like that i wasn’t quite able to cover everything i wanted to say, so who knows, maybe there’ll be a part 2 one day. i’ve also decided i do want to write a kalim version, so i’ll probably start working on that sometime soon! stay tuned!

trigger warnings: mentions of child abuse

jamil is the vice dorm leader of scarabia, who’s been kalim’s caretaker practically since birth. he puts on a facade of not standing out, preferring to remain completely average, and plans his life around kalim’s antics. as we learned in chapter 4, however, his true feelings are that he bears a lot of resentment towards kalim, and that he wants to stand out - he just wasn’t allowed to, as he can never surpass kalim.

in this essay i want to cover not just my personal interpretation of jamil, but also some common misconceptions that people tend to have about him. twitter doesn’t have this problem as much, but with tumblr i’ve found that there are very few jamil stans, especially in the theory and writing communities - meaning it’s quite common for people to misunderstand his character. in the fandom as a whole, it’s common for people to only acknowledge him insofar as “gay for kalim”. 

firstly, jamil’s character development in the main story - i would say he’s arguably the best-developed character in twst, since yana now has enough chapters available to flesh out characters after their main story arc ended. jamil holds very deep-seated resentment against kalim, to the point that he plotted to betray him for probably several years. he plotted to have kalim not just thrown out of nrc, but thoroughly ruin his reputation in the process. after his overblot, those feelings did not magically vanish - far from it. i think earlier twst chapters suffered from arcs being wrapped up a little too neatly post-overblot, but pomefiore’s arc has already proved itself to be the exception and thoroughly covers not just jamil’s continued dislike for kalim, but also the wider consequences for what he did.

since the twst school year begins in september, we know jamil is about 9 months older than kalim. from literally the day kalim was born, jamil’s life has been dedicated to kalim. possibly since the day jamil was born, and he was always fated to be kalim’s caretaker. it may even have been the reason he was born at all. either way, it’s not like he remembers those 9 months. all jamil has ever known is that his sole purpose must be to serve kalim. he must not have desires of his own, he must not do anything for himself - from childhood he was expected to be ready to give up his life for kalim at a moment’s notice. he can’t be good at anything - kalim must always be better (i’ll cover this in more depth in a later paragraph, this philosophy is key to his character). his own parents drilled this into him, even going to the extent of hitting him if he didn’t comply. it seems he has a normal relationship with his family despite this - he bickers with his sister like regular siblings, and pre-overblot he indicated that his desire to be free from servitude wasn’t just about him, he wanted to free his family. nonetheless, the psychological damage his childhood caused him is severe. is it any wonder his unique magic is mind control, when he’s never had an ounce of control over his own life?

moving onto his early teen years, we know both jamil and kalim were severely poisoned at one point, both falling into comas for around two weeks. although we don’t have a timeframe for jamil’s coma, we know kalim’s was when they were around 13 years old. if jamil’s was around this age too - probably a short while afterwards - i think it’s plain to see why jamil’s resentment began to build. he’d have been around the age where he first started to question why his life has to revolve around kalim. why should he be expected to die for someone he doesn’t even like, who’s spoiled and doesn’t realise how much jamil does for him? kalim takes everything for granted: status, friendships, freedom, and jamil is meanwhile left in the shadows with nothing. then one day kalim gets poisoned so badly he falls into a coma - how much do you want to bet jamil was blamed for that, at the age of 13? after that he’s expected to taste-test anything kalim eats beforehand, and eventually starts making all his meals for him because the risk of poison is so high otherwise. then one day he slips up, or it’s an undetectable poison, and jamil is the one to fall into a coma. is anyone blamed for that? does anyone pity jamil outside of his immediate family + kalim? no, probably not. after all, he’s just doing his duty, right? it’s truly… no wonder jamil’s resentment became so intense. he finally has proof that his life truly does not matter. although kalim certainly cares about him, he doesn’t understand jamil’s position. he sees jamil as a friend, an equal; jamil knows this can never be the case, and he also knows kalim is too privileged to ever hope to understand. 

fast forward on a couple of years to jamil receiving his nrc acceptance letter. he thinks that finally, finally he’s going to be free. four years of freedom - and who knows, maybe after that he can be free forever! he can finally excel at his classes and be his true self, without fear of upstaging kalim! 

and then kalim gets accepted a month late. for no reason other than his surname. 

and then kalim gets sorted into his dorm.

it’s a miracle he didn’t just overblot on the spot - but that’s his nature as a scarabia student. careful foresight and planning. this moment was, undoubtedly, the moment he started planning his betrayal. he had his one month of freedom ripped away, just like that. 

oh, don’t forget the fact that not long after, kalim was made dorm leader not because he notably embodies scarabia values at all, but because of nepotism. (side note: most scarabia stans agree kalim does actually reflect scarabia values, just not as obviously as jamil does, but either way jamil himself wouldn’t see it this way. this is a jamil essay so i won’t go in depth about this unless asked to!)

under kalim’s watch, scarabia - known for its intelligence and cunning - is turned into “the party dorm”. this seems to be the fandom’s perception of them too - i mean, just ask any non-scarabia stan what goes on in scarabia, that’s probably the answer they’ll give you. jamil would have probably loved the original scarabia; although we don’t know much about it, we know scarabia students are on a par with octavinelle when it comes to intelligence (paralleling azul’s constant interest in jamil). yet by winter break, scarabia is doing so badly in those same exams that they didn’t even place in the rankings…? without meaning to, kalim clearly harmed scarabia. instead of getting chance to study magic and show off, jamil is now essentially an unpaid, full-time party planner by the time his second year starts.

a few months later, winter break finally arrives, and jamil executes his plan to dethrone kalim. i may have just spent the last two pages defending jamil’s grudge, but his actions themselves are still indefensible. there’s evidence to suggest kalim knew what was occurring on some level - refusing to answer jade’s question about who was hypnotising him proved that 1) he probably had some idea deep down that jamil was betraying him 2) he doesn’t want jamil to get in trouble for it. nonetheless, this does not make what jamil did okay in the slightest, even if kalim allowed it to happen. jamil is, undoubtedly, the bad guy in this situation, no matter how sympathetic his childhood makes you feel. i could go into detail about why kalim acted the way he did, but again, this is jamil-focused.

i’ll skip talking about his overblot, because i covered his hatred for kalim in a lot of depth already and i want to talk about the general aspects of his personality like his desire for praise later on. so moving onto the end of chapter 4, we see jamil’s true self: a snarky, heavily opinionated boy who honestly just wants to be free to be himself.

but just like his freedom, that side of jamil once again only lasts for a brief moment. jamil almost loses everything after his overblot. practically every scarabia student hates him and wants him thrown out of the dorm - even kalim, his sole defender, can’t call him a good person. he’s a traitor. he says he trusts the scarabia students to work out that it’s better for them if he stays, but that day won’t come any time soon, and until then he’s keeping his distance from them all, because their hatred is that strong. if azul truly had been streaming to more people than just jade, his life would have been ruined beyond repair. so what does jamil do? he goes back to serving kalim. as a scarabia student, his foresight is good enough that he knows the option he hates the most is the only one that’ll be good for him in the end. for jamil, being himself is nothing short of a death sentence.

now i’ve talked for far too long about the timeline of his character arc, i can finally get to the good stuff: jamil’s personality, and how it’s changed throughout the stories we’ve seen so far.

the first thing that springs to mind when you think of jamil, other than “snake”, is probably “tired”. or “he’s going to snap”. something along those lines. which... yes, we know he is. he did snap. after chapter 4, this doesn’t seem to have changed too much, but i do get the impression that he’s somewhat less stressed out by kalim. his resentment has dissipated, for the most part (he does still openly insult him, though), so while he does grumble at kalim there’s no suppressed fury behind it. what replaced that fury?

guilt.

in 5-10, jamil tells azul that he intends to continue to obediently follow kalim around in order to restore his reputation, both inside and outside of scarabia. this does of course make him sound pretty selfish (as per usual), and in classic jamil fashion he doesn’t let his true emotions show, so it’s easy to take this at face value and assume he just doesn’t really care. i think in this case, we need to look more at his actions that we see throughout chapter 5. namely, the way it’s being emphasised how he’s silently watching kalim from afar - something he’s always done, yes, but yana seems to be really making a point of it in chapter 5. it’s not just kalim he’s distancing himself from, either. he’s staying away from the rest of the scarabia students too, as mentioned earlier. he never had any friends at all to rely on, even before his overblot. so by doing this, he’s effectively completely isolating himself. he clearly has a lot of thoughts about everything that he’s not sharing with anyone - just listen to the way he sighs at the end of the flashback in 5-10, how annoyed and frustrated he seems. if jamil was telling the truth about just wanting to restore his reputation, he’d probably appreciate kalim’s efforts, even if he dislikes kalim himself. he shouldn’t be upset by kalim persuading the scarabia students to give him another chance. not if he truly just wants to get back to normal. i think on some level, jamil feels incredibly guilty over his actions. he might not have even admitted to himself yet that he feels this way, and by saying things like “i just want to restore my reputation” he’s just trying to convince himself. after all, that’s something he has a history of doing.

ever since jamil’s first introduction, we’ve known jamil lives his life by the philosophy of “not standing out is the best way to succeed”. he hates standing out or receiving any kind of positive attention at all, because he thinks that it’ll only attract trouble. or so we thought, because as we learned from his overblot, jamil desperately wants to stand out. he’s powerful and intelligent, and he wants people to acknowledge that. he wants the praise and recognition he knows he deserves. this means that whenever he said he didn’t want to stand out, he was lying through his teeth - he probably constantly tried and failed to convince himself of this throughout his childhood. during his lab SR story, he even repeats it to himself in his thoughts, like a mantra - “I want to avoid standing out. I can’t be satisfied with this. I cannot be too good, nor fall behind, and neither should I get satisfactory grades or fail. This is the best shortcut to success.”. much like his feelings of guilt, jamil refused to acknowledge how much he truly wanted to show off, even in his own thoughts. he is awful at being honest to himself.

post-ch5, we find out that despite everything, jamil does still hold this philosophy, to some extent. he of course shows off his singing and dancing skills enough to be chosen as a main vocalist, and he says he wants to make a name for himself and show various people just how talented he truly is: kalim, his family, the asims and MC, to name a few. yet in the chapter before that, when kalim compliments his singing and dancing, he’s like “i don’t really want to stand out, but…”. which is honestly a little confusing at first because he does want to. i’d probably interpret it as something along the lines of he wants to show off to the people he cares about, but he still wants to keep his head down in general. so i think that to some extent, maybe he actually has internalised that philosophy now. the one time he truly expressed his desire to stand out, it ended in catastrophe for him. he has this tiny seed of doubt within him now, telling him his parents were right all along. but... he’s working past it, and applying himself as and when he’s comfortable doing so.

going back to him being bad at being honest, jamil’s a pretty big tsundere. there’s one person he does regularly receive praise from: kalim. yet despite desperately wanting to be praised, he often gets annoyed at kalim and tells him something like “this isn’t about me right now” or “what does that have to do with anything?”. plus when the praise is coming from kalim, it’s often in the context of kalim praising him to other people - as a servant, he can’t be seen accepting all these compliments, right? he can never be better than kalim. so he has to reject kalim’s praise. when it’s just the two of them alone, though, is when jamil gets embarrassed to the point he has to hide his blush under his hood. given his childhood, chances are that he doesn’t really know how to process being praised. he knows he wants people’s approval, but when he actually gets it, he just short-circuits. it was the same at his birthday celebration; although he wants to be the centre of attention, when it actually happens, he gets all embarrassed and tsun. i was trying not to let my own personal feelings spill in this but oh my god he’s so cute i can’t

next... this isn’t really linked to any previous topic, but i want to talk about jamil’s cooking! jamil cooks all of kalim’s meals, and regularly cooks entire feasts for kalim’s parties, too (as well as being in charge of getting any animals kalim wants to show off, decorating the dorm, making sure everything runs smoothly… you get the idea). his cooking is very good, and he has a lot of technical knowledge about cooking too - azul, whose parents run a restaurant, didn’t know about emulsification, but jamil was able to explain it to him. despite being so good, though, according to his dorm SSR homescreen lines he doesn’t actually like cooking very much. he says the fact that he cooks so much is “just how things turned out”. of course, he could just be being a tsun, but i do feel like he’s being honest with this - what reason does he have to seriously enjoy something he was forced into doing his entire life? However there is evidence that he might enjoy it after all; he’s particularly good at alchemy because of his cooking knowledge, and according to magical archives he’s completely neutral in motivation for both flying and history lessons, but has slightly higher motivation levels for alchemy, indicating that he can’t stop himself from putting a little bit extra effort into that class. i think it can be interpreted either way with the canon info we have currently, but regardless i would not say he’s the cooking fanatic people often depict him as. 

also, when jamil cooks, although his cooking is good, visually it’s usually very boring, to the point he and his sister would bicker over it. he has the technical skills to cook good food, but no idea how to present it. similarly, in his fairy gala SR he was told that although he perfectly memorised the dance, it was boring to watch - it looked like he was just executing the routine without any passion behind it. jamil is so emotionally repressed that he has no idea how to express his individuality. even in his bedroom, the only truly personal items he owns are a first aid kit (related to his servant position, not him as a human being) and a stereo + headphones set for dancing. he doesn’t have any other hobbies or interests - he doesn’t even know what people his age do for fun, because he’s never been allowed to think about such things. 

dancing is all jamil has that’s not directly related to serving kalim, really - but even that ties into his servant status. although he genuinely enjoys it nowadays and dances by himself for fun, he only picked it up as a hobby because kalim wanted to go to dance practice, and of course jamil had to accompany him. when his flashback after his overblot talks about him deliberately losing to kalim, the story focuses specifically on a dancing competition. which is why it’s honestly so important to jamil’s character that chapter 5 focuses on a singing and dancing competition. jamil finally has the chance not just to show off his skills in general, but his skills at the one thing he’s been allowed to love throughout his life. the one thing where losing to kalim at it hurt so much that it was such a prominent memory for him. when jamil was chosen as a main vocalist, he instinctively tries to say kalim would be better suited for the position, but stops himself and accepts it. it clearly means so much to him that he was chosen for this.

okay i started to scare people with how long this was getting when it was only 50% finished, i think if i write anymore people will actually be concerned for my health so i’ll leave it here. if you read all of this, thank you so much for putting up with my anime boy brainrot for over six full pages! i really.. really like jamil. again, i most certainly do not think his actions should be defended, but god if they’re not fascinating to read about. and i hope i covered the other sides to him well enough, the things that you’d never ordinarily pick up on because so few people talk about him outside of him and kalim as a pair (both platonic scarabia + romantic jamikali, i mean). he has so much depth to him that people don’t see and god i could easily have gone on for another few pages if i wasn’t forcing myself to stop. but please please talk to me if you want to hear more...

yana has treated him so well, jamil stans get too much food if anything but i’m absolutely thriving off it as you can see! thank you for allowing him to exist, yana-sensei!

having said that, i couldn’t stop myself from adding some extra facts about him below. please enjoy.

some fun jamil facts for your soul:

his sister used to bake him cookies on his birthday - specifically, these!

when jamil and kalim went to eat at the cafeteria with ruggie and leona, leona took one look at jamil and went “you look like you’d kill kalim in his sleep”

sebek and jamil find each other’s positions enviable. sebek wishes he could have been by malleus’ side from birth as jamil was with kalim, and jamil just… wishes he served someone he respected as deeply as sebek respects malleus (but he does think sebek is too enthusiastic)

jamil hates surprises with a burning passion, and despite being with kalim for 17 years is still not used to them. for his previous birthday, kalim held a huge surprise party, and i think he still hasn’t recovered from the shock

i think a lot of people already know that in his birthday SSR story he said he wanted a parrot after graduation so he could teach it to call him master, but it goes a bit further than that? it was actually first mentioned during his lesson chats, when kalim gets a parrot. jamil has to research how to care for it, and ended up wanting one of his own afterwards (but got too tsundere to admit it at the time).

also, he heard that the sorcerer of the sands’ parrot (iago) could speak as fluently as a human, and he got excited and watched a bunch of parrot videos on magicam, but was of course disappointed to find out that this was not the case.

he frequently uses flattery to try and get his way, like when he attempts to flatter vil during his SSR story - unfortunately he misjudged vil, as vil’s actually the type of person who hates meaningless flattery. because he does this so frequently, when he genuinely does give compliments people don’t always believe him.

according to the halloween event, jamil is surprisingly environmentally conscious, and insists on holding a sustainable halloween theme. after organising so many parties and seeing the waste they probably produce, i think there’s no wonder he’s so concerned about it.

[bookwyrminspiration]

Shattered Upside Down

A kotlc wings au: masterpost here

Chapter 9: The Little Reminders

word count: 7.1k

chapter summary: Sophie and her friends are in the Lost Cities. The broken down, monster-infested Lost Cities. And they only have a certain amount of time to do everything they need to before something bad shows up. But monsters aren't all that comes to try and get them.

warnings: monsters, blood, implied death (of a character never met or mentioned again, who died a long time ago, it's not as bad as it sounds), arguing with parents, fighting, buildings collapsing, brief medical mention, swearing

taglist: I’ll reblog with it. let me know if you want to be added or removed!

Y'all ready? We're tying in some little details from earlier, so that's fun! Enjoy the chapter! Apologies if formatting is a little weird. Tumblr did a thing so I don't know what it'll look like when I post it!

ao3 link here or read below

It was so quiet a pin drop could’ve shattered the world.

Not that it would’ve made a difference. Colored glass and cracked gems littered the ground, an entire city brought to its knees. Mold and mushrooms crawled painstaking through the cracks, condensation crying down the sides, water marks left in their wake. Building after building as far as one could see was destroyed, damaged, some even reduced entirely to rubble.

Sophie didn’t even want to breathe as they moved, the stench of monsters and rotting flesh and decay permeating the area.

They hadn’t seen anything, not yet. But she knew they were there. Somewhere. Watching. Gauging. They’d entered the monsters’ territory, and now they could only try to do what they needed before those things decided to respond.

Their scent was thick enough Sophie wished she’d remembered to bring that mask she’d had before she’d run away, the same one they’d worn on that damning mission. It was supposed to be the end. They’d bring down the facility and clean up the aftermath and everything would get better.

A bright pink hair ribbon fluttered in a breeze, stuck beneath a cluster of broken crystal on the side of the path. A hand print beside it, frozen in the mud. A small hand print. It was gouged through with claw marks. She didn’t want to know what had happened. She knew.

Where do you think they are? Fitz asked, just to her. She gave him a mental shrug in response. She didn’t want to know. No amount of preparing would be enough for whatever happened.

Part of her, a surprisingly large part, didn’t want her parents to show up. She didn’t want to confront them and explain herself and lie her way through the conversation. And she knew she’d be at the center of it. The Moonlark. Sophie Foster. Always in the middle of things. Not that they were wrong, it was just tiring.

Yet another part of her remained horrified she’d even presented this ultimatum. She could risk herself; she’d had more experience with monsters in the past week than she’d had since everything started. Sure, it wasn’t much. But it was something. One of them even saw her as a...friend.

This group, she didn’t want to risk. But they wouldn’t let her do it alone and they’d planned this out beforehand. They weren't going in with their hands tied. And they could all easily escape, rely on those wings if it came to an emergency.

Maybe they’d even leave them alone again, like that creature in the tree the night they ran.

But their parents? They’d been stuck underground for the last several months. And they weren’t even fighters in the first place. They were painfully elven and she loved them to death. She couldn’t stand being responsible for anything that happened here today.

It was so horribly cruel of Sophie to have picked this place, to have given them so little choice. The place was infested. The stench made her eyes water, rips and tears marks littered the buildings everywhere you looked.

Something darted through her peripheral and she flinched. The creatures knew they were here. They just hadn’t attacked. Maybe they’d gotten lucky, were in a part of the city with some of the more docile ones, although all of them were threatening.

Let's get a head start. So they don’t catch us off guard. It seemed forbidden, intrusive to speak aloud. Like there was this careful illusion held together by the silence. None of them were willing to break it.

The others nodded, breaking into two groups.

Sophie, Linh, Biana, and Wylie in one; Dex, Tam, Maruca, Marella, Fitz, and Keefe in the other. Those that could hide the wings, and those that couldn’t. And Dex, who was going to grab some supplies.

Sophie pulled her cloak closer, checking it was secured as a breeze passed by. The wings buzzed in response, the open sky beckoning her. She’d have to be extra careful they didn’t make a noise if their parents showed up.

Wylie nudged her, raising his brows in question.

Right. She was supposed to find them. Track them. She was the telepath of their group.

Everyone reeked of anxiety, muscles tensed as she leaned back against a nearby building for stability, raising her fingers to her temples.

Starting with a blanket sweep, she scanned the nearby area, searching for any presence she could find. The wave spread from her like an explosion, rocketing outwith her at the center. She could feel Fitz stumble, perking up as the wave washed over him, faintly hearing someone ask him what happened. She didn’t bother to hear the reply.

There were pockmarks scattered throughout, empty holes moving within the web she wove. Monsters. Since that day in the facility she’d learned what they felt like, the hollow space they left behind. Like looking for a blind spot. They were...everywhere. But none attacked.

Reaching further, she kept scanning, about to give up.

Someone smelling of cherry blossoms placed their hand down on her shoulder, shaking her slightly. Sophie jerked, inhaling deeply, keeling forward and nearly toppling over if it weren’t for that hand.

Not here yet, she whispered, trying to reorient herself. The sudden change from concentration back to reality had been jarring--unintentional on Biana’s part, but a large stressor nonetheless.

Move!! Biana hissed in her mind, pulling Sophie along.

Oh.

Her mind lagged a moment behind as she was dragged, shaking her head to try and comprehend the enormous, gaping shadow that had fallen over their group.

She covered her mouth to try and slow her breathing as they ducked around a corner.

Biana hadn’t shaken her awake out of impatience or question. She’d jarred her into reality to escape.

Now that she was aware of it, the pungent odor of breath and smoke coated her tongue. Just how distracted had she been? How far out had her mind been reaching that she didn’t even notice the thing right beside her?

It’s claws made a horrid screeching sound against the crystal as it moved, talons sinking into the wall several feet above where they’d just been, its enormous barbed tail swinging lazily, thwacking into that very spot she’d been leaning against, leaving cracks and scratches all down the side.

C’mon, Linh called, gesturing from where she was tucked away on the other side of the road. Let’s get away from here.

There was no way they could get past that tail, sporadically swinging around and blocking that path to the rest of their group. Goddamnit. How had they gotten separated so quickly?

“There’s no way we’re getting through there,” Biana groaned oh so quietly, speaking Sophie’s thoughts aloud, shaking out her hands, trying to dispel the nerves.

Sophie absentmindedly nodded in agreement, surveying the area, looking for the least dangerous, quickest path. She didn’t even need a destination, just away. Biana’s fingers closed around her wrist, drawing energy from her skin as they both sporadically faded in and out of view. Huh. When had Biana grown so powerful?

The thing shifted its weight, tail thunking around and sinking into the wall, using it as leverage to crawl further up the building, staining it red wherever its skin grated against the crystal.

Wait.

Now, Sophie urged, pulling them both back. Use this moment. Take advantage of every single second you’re granted and wring every inch of progress you can from it. With the tail momentarily occupied, you’d think she’d go forward. Dart through the danger and emerge victorious.

No. Sophie Foster didn’t like to do things the way people expected her to. It made her eyelashes itch.

She whirled around, Biana attached to her wrist. They’d backed themselves into a corner, but just how far back would this corner go? What would it give them if only they had the keen insight to ask?

Its eyes made contact with hers and its mouth dropped open just as they turned their backs, the sound of the ground trembling behind them as it dropped itself down, starting the hunt.

Rock slammed against the soles of their shoes as they stumbled through the rubble, tripping over colored pebbles and ducking under collapsed pillars, buildings rising on either side of them like they were trapped in a maze with no end. No solution.

Growls and screeching claws echoed around them, and she knew they were surrounded. She couldn’t see them but she knew.

They’d caused a commotion and now everyone was coming to see what all the fuss was about.

Cursing, they rounded a corner only to come to a screeching stop, a mound of crystal pieces blocking their path. Turning, they looked over their shoulders.

Something skidded down the side of the building, the narrow gap between walls, claws scratching as it descended, something unpleasant in its eye. It’s mouth gaped, no teeth in sight but a hissing noise emerged nonetheless. It was large enough it nearly didn't fit in the space, but it contorted and slithered and narrowed its gaze onto her, mouth falling open with a mechanical click.

Well, fuck. It’s too early for that. The morning chill hadn’t even dispersed yet.

Both their heartbeats hammered in their chest, adrenaline surging as she realized this one was very much not friendly, it wouldn’t even try to be. Leave leave leave leave leave she needed to get out. They needed to go somewhere anywhere else.

Where are you going? Linh asked, somewhere from beside Wylie. It seemed Biana and Sophie were the only ones in danger. Great. The others didn’t even know they were being hunted, stalked, tracked, assessed.

Um. Good question, she responded. I’ll let you know when we figure that out. Biana glanced at her sidelong, seeming to realize Sophie actually didn’t have a plan and groaning. Then grinned, laughing with her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound as she threw herself into their escape.

They turned on their heels, putting their backs to this new monster once more, and ran. On hands and knees, rocks and pebbles shifting uneasily beneath them as they climbed over the pile.

Their cloaks with the chaotic movement and Sophie caught a single glimpse of the vibrant orange against Biana’s back before she was bumping into a corner and moving again.

It crashed into something behind them, the haphazard destruction providing a dangerous terrain it couldn’t quite navigate. Good. Good. This was good.

Run. Jump. Avoid. Disappear.

It roared behind them, screeching in pain as something heavy crashed down. Maybe it’d gotten caught on a building. Good. That was good, right?

Sunlight shone through the gaps between buildings, spastic as they channeled extra power into their legs, dashing darting dancing through the destruction until she saw an opening, looked up and remembered that flash of orange and realized she was not burdened to the ground and she grabbed Biana’s hand.

“JUMP,” she screamed, her voice echoing through the walls and reverberating back to her against the crystal.

They jumped, pushing all that channeled strength into their legs and leaping higher higher higher until they crested the walls and could see for miles for everywhere for eternity.

And they caught themselves.

Those wings snapped out, flinging themselves from beneath the cloaks and smoothing their descent. She blinked and that film dropped over her eyes.

Biana moved jerkily yet somehow smooth in the sky, letting go of Sophie’s hand as she flitted to and fro, movements that would’ve made Sophie undeniably nauseous.

It took her only a moment to locate the others, to find Wylie’s exasperation and Linh’s concern. To change course and point Biana in the right direction and swan dive down, curving around crumbling spires and rods.

Risking a glance backwards, she couldn’t locate that creature, it seemingly lost within that maze of buildings and halls and paths that would’ve trapped them too had the sky not beckoned so loud.

Clear. They were in the clear. It was behind them. They were fine.

Vaguely, she could see the other group in the distance, the rest of their friends pointing and waving as they watched them soar in slowly descending circles, growing ever closer to the ground. They’d gone off to find Dex’s supplies, just perusing through the city. It’d take several people to get everything he needed, maybe even more than one trip.

Biana began lowering herself, but Sophie couldn’t help but linger in the sky just a few moments longer, taking in the destruction. Reminding herself of everything they were fighting for, why she needed to step out of her own skin and remember all the people she’d left behind.

She shouldn’t have.

Something glimmered off in the distance, only visible with this new eyesight from this vantage point, but she dropped like a stone.

The void let her through, jumping between places and glitching through the air like she had when she’d grabbed Marella, falling atop Biana in the sky and wrapping her arms around her, jerking them through the void and onto the ground, sprawling a few feet away from the rest of their group.

Shit.

Biana sat up, shaking herself off and covering her wings, drawing that cloak close. Everyone’s hearts were hammering, echoing in her ears as her throat went dry.

Sophie got to her feet, bracing her hands on the back of her neck. She couldn’t dare speak it out loud, didn’t know what was still listening. If that creature had truly gotten itself caught or if it was just waiting to continue the chase. She didn't want to bother with it, just thinking it a minor nuisance as the real shit came to fruition.

Huh. Her world had devolved into such chaos that a monster chase was just a brief interruption, nothing to be thought over.

She shook her hands out, Wylie reaching down to help Biana to her feet.

There was no use putting it off any longer, so she spoke into the entire mindbubble. They’re here.

Sophie couldn’t pull her wings close enough; they were so conformed to the shape of her body she worried they’d bend that way permanently. But still, she wanted them closer. She’d buttoned up the front of her cloak, prepared her lies, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough.

She scratched at her arms to try and distract herself, but that just pulled at her damaged skin, leaving lacerations and blood stains behind. She really should’ve wrapped them. Why hadn’t she wrapped herself up? That’s what she’d gone with Tam to get.

Linh's skin was covered in bandages, her legs and arms tightly bound. It hid some of the incandescence, and in the morning light she almost looked completely normal. Sophie should’ve done the same to herself. She’d gotten so distracted she hadn’t even thought to, and none of the others had remembered to remind her.

Strange. Usually they were so on top of her injuries. It was...unsettling to imagine why they weren’t this time. Not that--not that she wanted them to focus on her. She just--

“Is everyone prepared?” Wylie’s voice was so loud in this silence it made her physically jump, taking all of her energy to keep the wings from shooting out in fear, giving herself away. She did get some impressive height, though.

“Nope. Let’s do this anyway.” If they didn’t do this now, didn't confront their parents and convince them to stop trying to find them, they’d just have to do it again later.

They were fine for now. They were relatively safe and unharmed. Their injuries were from themselves, not the forest. The forest. The forest only she had access to.

If you can, grab the stuff to make a temporary crystal or find a pathfinder of some kind, she sent out to everyone. So you don’t have to rely on me.

Nice try, Foster. I like relying on you. But yeah we’ll look.

She rolled her eyes. Of course he was joking. He knew she was anxious and the little fucker was trying to make her feel better. And it was fucking working. She scowled.

Alright. Now or never. Do or die.

Live with it.

Sophie couldn’t see through the tears falling from her lashes, the wet getting caught up in those films. The world was made of fragments and smears and it was all she could do to hold herself together as she saw her father climbing over a mound of rubble.

Grady. Dad.

There were others beside him, an entire group who had come out to try and get them back, but she couldn’t stop herself from desperately reaching out one last time. She saw him and her legs were moving moving moving and she just had to get to him to let him hold her to feel him alive beneath her fingertips.

He was moving too, eyes widening as he sprinted forward and then he was right there and his arms wrapped around her and held on so so tight and his chin rested on her head and her face was buried in his chest and he smelled like soap and feathers and warmth and home.

She’d missed this so much.

“Hey, kiddo,” he whispered against her hair, the braids she’d woven them into on the walk over, trying to tame the mess. She’d have to do that when flying. They rocked back and forth, just holding holding holding each other.

She’d missed this.

Eventually, he stepped back a bit, holding her out by the shoulders and looking her over, gnawing at his lip as he saw all the blisters, the lacerations, the burns. The scratches.

It’d been a rough couple of days.

“Are you okay?” he asked, bringing her in close again, this time oh so gentle. Like he was afraid one wrong move would tear her apart.

She just shrugged; she couldn’t get her throat to work. She exhaled, the breath shaky and uncontrolled, wiping at her eyes to try and compose herself. She didn’t even know who else was here. Did she care?

Sophie stepped back, but Grady reached up to pat the top of her head, smoothing down her hair. She leaned into the touch. She’d missed this.

He stepped to the side when he saw her leaning to try and see around him, glancing around the area now that she was here and there was something to protect.

There were so many people. Any number was many. She didn’t know why she thought she could do this. She could do this.

Taking a deep breath, she counted who’d come.

Ro and Sandor--Sandor--stood on either side of the group, weapons out and noses lifted to the wind. Protection. Della was wrapped around Biana, fussing over her and feeling the bandages on her arm. A pang of guilt hit her, but she pressed it aside. Mr. Forkle stood beside Wylie, the two of them in some sort of discussion she hadn’t expected. Elwin had rushed to Linh just beside Wylie, and was now carefully lowering her to the ground, Juline giving a helping hand.

Juline. She looked up, making eye-contact with Sophie, holding it.

“Everyone else is in a different part of the city,” she said, clearing her throat. “But they’re fine. They’re okay. Well--” she cut off, eyes glazing over as she reached out to Fitz.

Grady’s hand tightened on her shoulder, but the sensation faded as her mind reached away from her body.

I’ve...they’re here. She said, unsure how else to put it. Are you all doing alright?

It took him a moment to respond. Yup. Just a little--shit. Just a lot of unwieldy things. I just dropped something. Dex seems to be having the time of his life, though. None of it makes sense to me.

Okay. Reach out if you need anything. Or just to interrupt...because this conversation isn't going to be fun.

He laughed slightly, hollow. Yeah. I definitely don't envy you right now.

Wait, have you envied me before?

Good question.

She waited for him to answer it, but it was silent on his end. Well you can’t just--

Take care, Sophie. I love you.

He severed their connection.

“--Sophie?” Someone was shaking her--Grady. That was Grady. His hand was on her shoulder and he was shaking her back into her body.

“Mmm. Yup. That’s me,” she slurred, shaking her head slightly to regain her stability, to ground herself. She rubbed at her eyes, Fitz’s words echoing in her mind. I love you.

She wanted to say it back. Why hadn’t he given her the chance to say it back?

Sophie found Juline once more, directing her words in that general area but addressing the whole group. “Yeah, they’re all fine.”

“Tell them to come here, please.” Ah. Okay. Right into it, then.

She shook her head. “They’re busy.”

Sandor stepped forward, fist tightening on the hilt of his blade. “They can un-busy themselves for this.”

Wylie took it for her, and she nearly leapt forward to hug him right there and then, but it didn’t seem like the right time. She didn’t want to be the only one they addressed.

“Unfortunately, they cannot. But anything you need to tell them you can tell us and we’ll relay the information.” He crossed his arms, glancing towards her as if in question.

She inclined her head slightly. Yes, it was okay that he stepped in.

“We’ll need all of you in one place for this,” Sandor said, and Sophie’s stomach dropped.

“We’re not going back.”

Grady’s hand tightened on her shoulder, flexing as if he wanted to pull her closer and just leap away with her. But they were separated. If they stole the four of them away now, they’d never find the other six.

She hated that they had to strategize like this.

“Look,” Ro began, pointing a dagger at her to emphasize her point. “I don’t know what kind of idiocy has infected your group, but you can’t be up here. You and your little fucked up elf brains have to come back with us, to the underground. And we’ll take you by force if necessary.” Everyone flinched, Juline frowning at her like they’d had an agreement beforehand, a plan, and Ro had gone completely off the rails.

Sophie just shook her head. “No. We’re here to see you. To let you know everyone’s okay, and that you don’t need to worry.” Ro rolled her eyes, and Sophie was tempted to flip her off. “But we are not going back, and that is final.”

“This absolutely is not final, kiddo.” Grady contradicted, turning her around slightly to face him. The movement sent her cape swirling and for a moment she thought the wings would become visible, but they remained hidden. Thank fuck.

This would never end. They’d only go round and round and round in circles and neither would ever concede and their parents would never understand why. They’d just sit here until--

“While we’re...discussing that, how about you sit down and let me look over you, that sound good?” Elwin waved her over from where he sat beside Linh, whose bandages had been peeled back. Biana sat by Linh’s side, looking over fresh, better wrapped bandages over her cuts. He must’ve gotten to work on the two of them while Sophie had been talking with Fitz. Right. His little farewell would haunt her the moment she had time to think...which didn’t seem to be anytime soon.

She nodded, walking over and placing herself beside Linh, bumping her arm with her elbow in greeting. Linh bumped right back into her, smiling as she winced. Something about this light made her look almost normal. She wondered why no one else had commented or asked about the patterns on her skin. Could they even see them?

He inhaled, sucking the air in through clenched teeth. “I bet you two were exposed to the same thing, huh?” He asked, gently pulling Sophie’s arm and inspecting the peeling skin.

“Yep,” she answered, unsure how much Linh had already said.

He doesn’t know it was Marella, she whispered into Sophie’s mind.

What did you tell him?

Run in with a weird creature and a stray explosive? Sorry, I was thinking on the spot.

Sophie nodded. She could work with that story.

“I’d tell you to be more careful around fires and those kinds of things, but I don’t think you know how,” he teased, but his frown didn’t fade as he gently observed the visible skin, pulling serums and creams and bandages from his bag. “I guess that’s why you specifically requested I come.” Sophie nodded, then realized she should probably say something.

She cleared her throat. “You don’t know that. Maybe we just missed you.”

He laughed, gently rubbing a thin layer of something over her arm before covering it with a light gauze. She sighed with relief, leaning against Linh. She hadn’t realized how much pain she’d been in until she felt the cooling effect of the balm.

Both Sophie and Linh were given several elixirs, luckily none too soured or rotten. Biana;s injuries were light enough that she only took a pain reliever.

Unfortunately, the brief peace couldn’t last. The adults seemed content to just keep watch, the scent of sweat and anxiety overwhelming as they surveyed the area, eyed the tree line, the mounds of rubble, just long enough for Elwin to do the basics of what he needed.

Probably because they expected him to be able to continue the treatment once they’d gotten to the underground.

They didn’t seem to understand that they were not coming back.

She wanted to. She didn’t want to leave.

Mr. Forkle approached her on the ground, offering her a hand to help her stand. The gauze across her palm rubbed strangely as he hoisted her to her feet, the sensation off-putting enough that she shook it out slightly as she found her balance.

Linh tugged at her cloak as she stood, readjusting it so it sat against the wings properly, hiding them. Elwin had tried to get her to take it off, but she’d refused. Told him to just do what he could see right now and worry about the rest later.

He’d also told them all he’d want to look at their backs, see what had happened after he’d left them for a short time and returned to find them gone.

He’d told them he’d forgive them if they apologized for scaring the shit out of him, that they didn’t have to do it now. They could deal with all of that later.

There wouldn’t be a later. She just had to convince them to let them all go.

They’d never agree to let them all go. This was an impossible task, doomed to fail from the start.

“You kids just love getting in trouble, don’t you?” He asked, stepping back to let the others come forward. The groups condensed, kids (and Wylie) across from the adults, the line seemingly already drawn.

She shrugged. “That tends to happen when you give children the responsibility of fixing a broken world.”

Linh winced, but this time it wasn’t from her injuries.

“That responsibility was meant to be shared and eased with the help of the Black Swan, help we cannot provide with you as runaways.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “No. You’re still part of the problem. You weren’t helping anyone, certainly not us.” Oh. Okay. She was doing this now.

“We know you think our ways are too traditional, that we’re not making progress--”

“No. Let me talk.” She held up a hand, silencing them. She’d let them silence her into submission when she’d burned down that storehouse; she wouldn’t let them do it again. “The first time the Neverseen were defeated, how did that happen? Us. We--my friends and I--took the fight to them. We didn’t sit at home waiting for approval from the council, waiting to fight ‘legally.’ There was a problem. A problem that got people killed. And you’d been fighting for decades and got nowhere until I tracked Gisela across the globe and found her myself. Until Dex hacked their trackers and trailed them. Until Biana infiltrated their base on her own to plant bugs and get us intel.”

They looked like they wanted to stop her, but she pressed on. “Your complacency has gotten you nowhere, and I am not at all sorry to be fighting to get results. The Neverseen were gone. My friends brought them to their knees, and you said you’d support us, take it from there and pick up the pieces. Well, guess what? Those pieces scattered in the wind because they weren’t properly disposed of and now they're out in the world, causing even more trouble than we ever could have imagined. You didn’t do your part, so I don’t trust you to support us now. You’ll have to earn that back, and if this”--she gestured to their little group, the people they’d sent to try and convince them all to come back, to tug at their hearts and play into their guilt--”is any indication, you are only getting further and further away from that.”

She crossed her arms, trying to keep herself in check. She hadn’t even known she’d had all that bubbling beneath her skin, but now that she’d open that part of herself she could feel it frothing, foaming to escape. There were so many ways she’d been disappointed, so many mistakes people had consciously made, it felt like her veins would burst.

Ro’s mouth had fallen open, torn between anger at her stubbornness to come back and loving Sophie’s disregard for those in charge, the disobedience.

Biana glanced at her out of the corner of her eye, raising a brow in question. Sophie nodded, imperceptible. They needed someone to cool the situation down, someone good in social situations.

Juline opened her mouth to respond but Biana cut her off, stepping forward. She was never afraid to be blunt and Sophie loved that about her.

She smoothed out her clothes, her scars on full display. “You seem to misunderstand why we’re here. We left abruptly, we know. It was necessary. Now that things have calmed down, we agreed to see you again--to give you some peace of mind. To let you know we’re okay in person. Not just the four of us, all ten.

“We didn’t come here to debate returning. We’re not coming back, not right now. So stop trying to convince us, and don’t try to justify your actions against valid criticism.”

There was silence for a moment, then Della spoke.

“You’re not safe out here,” she said. Smart. Begin the conversation with an indisputable fact in their favor. But Sophie could do that too.

“We’re not safe anywhere.”

Sandor sighed, but it sounded more like a growl, not even looking at her, still scanning the perimeter. They were fairly out in the open; for some reason, they hadn’t moved to better ground.

“You’ll be much safer where we, your bodyguards”--he gestured to himself and Ro--”can see you and protect you. That’s what we’re here for. This is a massive nest of monsters; we’re lucky we haven’t been attacked yet. This is a mess.” He gestured around the area, the cracked crystal and claw marks.

He was right. Which was why they needed to end this quickly. Get them out before they were hurt. She needed to go somewhere else, to cool off. She could feel Linh and Wylie’s eyes on her, wondering if she’d explode at their parents like she’d done with Biana.

Sophie nodded in agreement. She was nodding a lot during this conversation. “You’re very good bodyguards, but we’re staying up here. Besides, our location isn’t here.”

“Then tell us where you are,” Juline cut in, a hint of panic in her voice. Glad to see the four of them safe, but none of them the person she’d specifically come for. And she didn’t know it, but that one person’s body wasn’t working the way it should.

Combined with her outburst, the realization that they were completely out of power in this situation was settling in. She could read it in their widening eyes, the shifts in their stances, like they were rearranging themselves.

“We can’t. We literally can’t.”

“Please, Sophie--” Grady began, running his hands through his hair in frustration, looking like he wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her, but he froze.

They all did.

Because they all heard it.

A horrendous screeching noise, like metal grating against metal. Or claws against the ground.

SOPHIE. GET OUT OF THERE. Fitz’s voice pounded into her mind, panic and terror following.

What? Why?

MONSTER!

“Move,” she hissed, shoving Linh to the side, noting Biana dragging Wylie the other way. Away. They had to get away.

She looked over her shoulder, seeing their group scramble, glancing around frantically, trying to find where the noise had come from. Sophie hadn’t bothered to figure it out, just moving away.

Something crashed to the ground, a great plume of smoke and dust arising from the area, whipped around by a sudden wind, like something was beating its wings. It must’ve been a tower, building, the sound so horrendous she stumbled, hands pressed to her ears as it ripped through her.

Wylie was panting on the ground across from her, eyes closed as his hands covered his ears.

The building took eternity to fall, seconds of time dripping past like a deluge, one after another until she couldn’t tell the difference and someone was screaming her name or maybe that was just the ringing in her ears but something was coming coming coming it was after them they’d overstayed their welcome and everything was crashing apart around her.

Think, Foster, she reminded herself.

Next step. Find the others. Find everyone.

The few precious seconds it took her to gather herself enough to reach for her temples were too many. She was out of time.

“I said MOVE!” Fitz was yelling at her, sprinting from a nearby alley, a pathway through the mess. He was moving lopsided, his limp aggravated by whatever the physical labor had done to his knee. Oh.

That’s why he’d warned her.

His group was heading their way, a monster in tow, screaming at them to get out.

The other six were close behind, Keefe darting around corners, Dex leaping into the air with channelling. Marella’s hands were glowing, Tam’s fingernails stained black.

Their cloaks fastened tight but something something something still looked off if you were focusing. No one was focusing on them.

They were occupied with something else.

It screamed.

Sophie stood there, frozen, as it crawled over a mound of rubble, jerking and frantic, several eyes littered over its body, claws digging into the crystal as all its sight narrowed in.

On the other group.

Where her father was.

“NO!” She didn’t know who said it, who screamed. But her throat stung and her body was trying to move without her permission.

“Dex,” Juline yelled, a strange relief washing over her face as she saw him, quickly vanishing as the creature tumbled forward. It moved so inhumanly quick, limbs upon limbs emerging and cycling as it danced uncontrolled toward their vulnerable parents.

Ro had drawn her sword, a maniacal grin slicing her face as she laughed, widening her stance.

No no no nonono. She couldn’t kill it. She didn’t stand a chance and she’d go down trying and it would be all Sophie’s fault because she’d frozen and wasn’t doing anything when if anyone deserved to pay it was her.

Grady’s face had hardened, a weapon in his hand she didn’t recognize pulled from somewhere as he stood back, eyes on that charging creature when his face went slack and he whirled, another one emerging from behind.

She couldn’t get to him, an eternity between them, rocks and debris and a wall of hurt throwing them further and further apart with each step she took forward. Linh was tugging at her arm, Maruca at her other. Trying to get her away.

It was impossible to fix this. They’d doomed themselves from the start.

He was still wildly searching the area, searching for her.

They made eye contact, his face softening as he saw her, saw how far she was. That she could still get away, wasn’t being directly attacked.

“No,” she whispered, watching him turn away, steel settling over his skin. A calm acceptance

No.

She wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t watch him die.

Sophie lunged forward, breaking from her friends’ grasps with that new ease,

and

she

glitched.

She was dancing through time and space, here and there and everywhere in a single instant. There was no distance too far, nothing she couldn’t be in this one moment in time. This one moment that she’d make last an eternity. This world was hers to command.

She appeared, just at his side, shoving him away, letting that prowling creature descend on her instead, sinking its teeth into the skin of her shoulder, ripping through fabric and darting away.

She didn’t care. She didn’t care at all. Because Grady was fine just a few feet away. He was fine. That’s all that mattered.

His eyes widened as he watched her, trying to stand amongst all this chaos and rubble, and she didn’t understand didn't understand the fear, the pain in his eyes. The screams and gasps echoing behind her, the way the world seemed to pause for a moment.

Not until she saw the tattered remains of her cloak fall to the ground.

“Go home,” she whispered, backing away from him. “Go back. It’s not safe up here.”

He wasn’t moving, he wasn’t talking; no one was.

But the creatures were still screaming, eyes condensing and coalescing, observing her and the people around her.

“Get them out of here, Sophie” Maruca screamed, force-fields flickering into place around the creatures, caging them in. But she wasn’t steady on her feet. Why hadn’t she raised the shields earlier? Maruca nearly fell, her hold flickering. She was buying Sophie a few seconds, but that was all she could give. Who knew what she'd given already.

Sohie steeled her nerves, letting the wings buzz behind her, keeping the attention. Let them see her, let them focus on her and not notice the things on her friends backs too.

“I’m sorry,” was all she said, darting forward faster than Grady’s eyes could understand, glitching the two of them just a little bit away, beside Della. She grabbed the two of them, and vanished.

The clearing was just as she remembered it. The crystal grate sat crooked on the ground, the trees around as menacing and uninviting as ever. Last time she’d been here it was raining.

It was supposed to be the last time.

She let go of the two of them, ripping through the void back to the Lost Cities. Another two. Juline and Elwin. She brought them back.

Went back and forth until they were all back, all away, all safe. Safer, at least.

“Sophie, wait--” Grady was reaching for her. He scrambled for his pocket, telling her they'd just come back. She couldn’t leave, she had to stay. Let the adults go back and handle it.

She twirled the pathfinder through her fingers, listened as he fell silent.

It’d been right there in easy reach when she’d grabbed him. So she’d taken it. They’d needed one, and taking it from him kept them from coming back. At least for a little bit.

He was reaching for her.

She didn’t look back.

She vanished.

The shields fell just as Sophie arrived. There were monsters loose in the Lost Cities, chasing her and her friends. She didn’t care.

The world had ended years ago.

Nothing. That’s what she felt.

Everything was numb. The echoing screams of the creatures, the grating of their claws against the ground, the sweat and fear of her friends. None of it registered. It would hit her later, she knew, but not now. Not yet.

Sophie dug her nails into her scalp, watching the creatures explode out of their containment, finally set free. They laughed, animalistic, bodies thrashing rhythmically as they slithered forward.

Apparently physics didn’t matter anymore.

Thoughts and plans filtered through her mind, the mindbubble alight with chaos. She tuned it out, just watching from the center of it all. The eye of the storm.

Someone was in the sky, unused to flying but moving with enough precision she knew they’d done it before.

One of the creatures locked eyes with her, maw falling open with a haphazard grin. A mechanical creak came from it’s neck as it twitched.

It scrambled forward, close to the ground, crossing the clearing in just a few short moments.

She didn’t care.

It was going to tear her to pieces.

She didn’t care.

The ground rumbled, trembling and bucking and weaving into new positions, throwing them all the ground, the scent of thunder and terror rolling over her, knees buckling beneath her.

The stench hit her first, the watered down rot, a dying perfume of withered roses and rotten fruit. Cloyingly sweet, deceptively undead. Her eyes began to water, like she’d been physically hit. She couldn’t see through the tears, but she didn’t need to.

It made itself known.

Dark and decay seemed to slip through the cracks of the stone, falling upwards like unnatural rain.

It crushed that creature beneath its gargantuan paw, cracked and molten.

It was right in front of her.

She looked at it and it looked back, nearly four times the size of the thing it’d just killed like it was nothing.

Monsters vs monster. It’s eyes glowed a deep gold, dripping down the midnight blue of its face, its body vaguely bear shaped.

It looked away, charging towards those other monsters, the movement accompanied by a jingle.

There was a collar around its neck, tags clanging against each other as it moved, killing--destroying--each of those creatures her friends ran from one by one.

An intelligence lingered behind its eyes, its movements. This was...even more unsettling than the creatures, than the destruction littered around her.

It blinked at her like it knew her.

Sophie forced herself to her feet, to take in absolutely everything she could about this thing before it vanished. It could be the difference between life and death.

It lowered it’s head to the ground, and

her

heart

stopped.

Behind it’s head, hidden by the whorls of curls decorating its stocky body, was a little girl sat atop it.

A little girl in a chaotic, elaborate gown, something human’s thought princesses would wear, frizzy red hair tangled around her face.

The little girl she’d seen in the facility.

[ozzdog12]

2020 Top 7 (and 1)

2020 am I right? We saw an insane amount of games come out and 2 brand new consoles. What a wild and weird year for gaming, and life in general. In case you are relatively new here, and to be honest that would be completely fair considering I don't post very often on Tumblr anymore, every year going on the last 4 years (on here) I have done a Top 7 (& 1) for my favorite videogames of the year. Check out 2019, 2018, & 2017. What’s wild, as I look back on my list of games that I’ve completed and played, only maybe 10 came out this year. 2020 was a huge backlog year. 

Lets get on with the ‘And 1!”

Favorite Game that Didn’t Come out in 2020: Control (PS4)

Control may very well have been my 2019 Game of the Year, had I played it in 2019. I LOVED Control. I wanted to play it in 2019, but initial reports that it was a little rough on base consoles put me off until it was fixed. And Holy smokes what an insanely fun and trippy game once I finally started it. I knew within the first 20 minutes this was going to be the shit when I went down a hall, walked into a room and talked to the “janitor” left out a door behind him and the entire building had shifted. I’ve always liked Remedy games, but from a distance. Max Payne 1&2 and Alan Wake all oozed with weirdness and intrigue, but never enough for me to finish them. I missed out on Quantum Break. The story is Control is just the right amount of mind f*!$ for me and builds a universe I didn’t know I needed. It take some time to piece everything together, then everything just clicks. The game does have a weird difficulty spike when fighting bosses and the checkpoints were too far apart at times, but those were later patched. I spent an insane amount of time within the Federal Bureau of Control building and even more time after that with the Foundation and AWE DLC and it STILL wasn’t enough. I wanted more. Outside of Prey, I can’t think of another game that stuck in my brain more after I’d finished it. Control is absolutely a MUST PLAY title. In a world where everything sort’ve feels similar, Control stands out of the crowd.

Number 7: Astro’s Playroom (PS5)

I never thought in my wildest dreams that a game I had almost zero interest in playing would end up on my list of favorite games this year. Astro’s Playroom is being labeled as a ‘Tech demo’ but that feels like an insult to what it is. It’s a full fledged game and its free! I’ve paid more for less. A charming little platformer that lives and breathes the history of the Playstation. So many cool Easter eggs and references. It certainly centers its gameplay around the DualSense controller and everything it can do, but at its core, its a completely approachable and forgiving 3D platformer. I played it just to see what it was about, next thing i knew I had completed all the levels and wanted to further explore all the nooks and crannies within the game. I wanted to see everything the game had to offer and I had an absolute blast doing so. Makes me kinda wish I’d played the previous game on PSVR (I’d have to have a PSVR too)

Number 6: Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS5)

Another quality title, albeit a spin-off, from Insomniac to add to their Spider Man universe. Gameplay felt obviously like Spider-Man, but Miles has unique abilities that made the game feel different enough, especially the cloak and stealth. I enjoyed the fact that it was short and concise. The issue with most ‘open-world’ games is that they are entirely too bloated with unnecessary filler content (I’ll get to that in a later game), something I felt the first game suffered from, but I also understand why they are there. However I could’ve use one or two more story missions to help flesh out some characters, but it wasn’t required and didn’t change my opinion one way or the other. My one BIG gripe was with Miles himself. He is an extremely smart young kid, but so incredibly naïve. Peter Parker tells him the one thing he SHOULD NOT do is tell people he is Spider-Man. I get it, that’s part of his growth, but Miles thinks he can just solve his problems by revealing his identity and it almost certainly never works out. 

Number 5: The Last of Us: Part 2 (PS4)

The Last of Us Part 2 may be the most polarizing game in the history of the medium, but for the absolute wrong reasons. I’m in the minority that I very much enjoyed my experience with TLOU2, quite a bit actually. Its better in every single way over its predecessor, except the overall story. There are plenty of fair criticisms to be had about the story and various things within the game itself, but I thought the gameplay was so tight and crunchy. There were genuine moments of suspense and terror that I felt that no other game has ever given me. The entire hospital section (2nd time) was so susensful, I had to put my controller down to gther myself. Some of my favorite moments in the series I experienced with a character I wasn’t overly fond of. How many games can do that? The Last of Us Part 2 was meant to invoke emotion, not necessarily joy. I think that's what people lost along the way. Say what you will about the direction Naughty Dog has taken over the years, but you would be hard pressed to find a studio that makes games graphically better than they do. Yes, I know about their crunch culture, but this is not a place for that. I will say, the game was a tad bit too long, which is not something it typically say for a single player, narrative driven game. The pacing and the way the story was told wasn’t my favorite, but I respect what it was trying to do, even if it failed in some aspect of that, I finished the game within the week it was released. Something I RARELY ever do. I’m a father and I related with Joel a lot in TLOU, but I also recognized how wrong he was. There is a lesson to be learned. Your actions always have consequences and while he was doing what he thought was the right thing, it wasn’t his choice to make, and in doing so set up a series of events that were entirely avoidable, but again, that’s the point isn’t it?

Number 4: Grindstone (Switch)

I’m counting this as a 2020 game since it just came to the Switch this year ( less than a month ago) but its not the first time I’ve played it. Grindstone was the only reason I kept my Apple Arcade subscription and when I let it lapse, there was a void I just couldn’t fill. I bought Puzzle Quest on Switch but it just wasn't the same. Its THE perfect game for bite sized play, even though in its addictive nature, you’ll clear a few levels and an hour has passed before you know it. It has the perfect amount of depth that most ‘match’ games don't. You have different weapons, items, and outfits w/perks to use and experiment with to keep it fresh. I went months without playing my Switch and when this was announced in August, I couldn’t wait! Sadly, I had to wait 3 months, but since then I have spent so much time on the Switch. It gave me a reason to play it again. The art style and humour is great. The variety of enemies and challenge is just right. I can’t recommend it enough. Seriously, check this game out!

Number 3: Doom Eternal (Xbox One)

I will be the first to tell you, I did not like Doom (2016). I found it extremely boring and trite. I understood what Doom(2016) was doing and it succeeded, maybe too much. Nostalgia is a helluva thing. So in saying that, I was mildly interested in Doom Eternal. Doom Eternal is nothing like 2016 outside of it being a Doom game that connects to the rest of them (& also being a sequel to 2016). The mechanics are drastically different with more platforming (for better or worse). Eternal is challenging, at times very hard, especially early on. Eternal has no respect for its players, in a weirdly good way. It laughs at how you’ve played FPS before this one and WILL MAKE you play it its way, not your way. Yes, you point and shoot, but ammo is scare and you MUST use everything in your arsenal. No more using just 2 guns for the whole game. The enemies are relentless. Sometimes you have to pause and take a breath after a battle because you go a 100 mph for the whole fight. You have to continuously move or you die. There is an enticing rhythm to it. I categorize Eternal as ‘Blood Ballet’. Its a game where when your feeling it, much like a rhythm game, you get in the zone and there is no stopping demons from getting slayed. Surprisingly, unlike most games in the genre, it seemed to get easier (sans one extremely frustrating platforming section late in the game) the longer you played it. Was that a testament that I ‘learned�� the Eternal way or it truly did get easier? I don’t know, but the final Boss(es) were....easy.. I had more problems and deaths within the first 4 hours than I did the final 8-9 hours. The multiplayer was also surprisingly fun. The older I get, the less interested I am in multiplayer, but I found myself coming back for more for a good month or so. 

Number 2: Gears Tactics (Xbox One)

As 2020 comes to a close, I came to a stunning realization. I might be a bigger Gears of War fan than I had previously thought. Don’t get me wrong. I love Gears, but I seem to love Gears more than I thought. I'm way more invested into the lore than I recall. Anyways, Gears Tactics is everything XCOM 2 SHOULD’VE been. Not only does Gears Tactics utilize the Overwatch action, its makes it EXTREMELY important. The story revolves around the father of Kait Diaz, Gabe and a ragtag group of mostly random soldiers to take down Ukkon. Anyone who is remotely interested in the Gears universe will love the story and references. The gameplay is just so damn satisfying. The bosses are very challenging and different. I actually had to change my strategy to finish the final boss. I experimented with a totally different style of class and was rewarded for it. The post game stuff is also aplenty. This game scratched a VERY specific itch for me and I’m itchy to jump back in. I’m glad this came to Xbox One because I’m current computer could not run it.

Number 1: Ghost of Tsushima (PS4)

I have a very odd relationship with massive open world games. I love them, but I get very burnt out on them. They all have a relatively same-y formula and are often populated with bloat. GoT does have some of that but to its advantage, its not very populated, in a good way. One of the things that I really appreciated about GoT and its side quest is most of them felt meaningful. The thing that really stood out to me about GoT is the absolutely satisfying combat. It just feels SO GOOD. It requires timing and patience. There are different fighting styles for different enemies and even the armor you wear is more than just cosmetic. The combat is so fun and satisfying that I was immediately excited when they announced Legends, a multiplayer add on, for free. Its so much fun and is a blast to play with a group of friends. I’m sporadically still playing the Legends mode. I initially wanted to play the game in ‘Kurosawa’ mode but I am glad I didn’t because the game, even on the PS4 is stunning, and on the upgrade on PS5 is jaw-droppingly smooth. I did play the entire game in Japanese with English subtitles. I still don't know what Jin’s English voice sounds like. GoT does a good job a drip feeding you new abilities and things to keep things fresh. I love stealth and once I unlocked it, I spent the majority of every battle taking out as many enemies as I could while in stealth mode. Ghost of Tsushima does a lot of things very well, that the few things it doesn’t can be easily overlooked.

[badsext]

A Comedy of Errors: Nathan Young x Female Reader

This was a combination of a request from my friend @elliethesuperfruitlover for a story where Klaus and reader are exchanging horny messages all day, then go crazy on each other when they finally see each other. That is combined with an anon request I received for a Nathan fic wherein the reader notices his boner and they have dirty filthy sex with loud moaning, biting, etc. I took some liberties and changed a few things to fit the narrative. I hope you like it 😚 Warning: Smut (of course)!

——————————————————

‘I had a dream about you last night.’ You knew a spicy little text like that would get a reply, even at 9:00 AM. And it was true, you’d had a filthy sex dream about Nathan Young and woke up horny as hell.

You pictured him zipping himself into that orange jumpsuit, then checking his phone and grinning like a jackass with his imagination running wild. He responded immediately, begging for details. But you loved teasing him. You were going to make him work for it, dropping hints and innuendos all day long.

As soon as the probation worker sent him home, Nathan headed for your place. But first a quick stop for something to spice up your evening for less than 20 quid. Double cream, a jar of maraschino cherries, a (stolen) bottle of vodka and ultra thin condoms that claimed to provide a tingling sensation. Nathan was very pleased with himself and optimistic about the evenings events. He became so distracted daydreaming about your naked curves that he ran smack into another pedestrian, sending the contents of his grocery bag toppling onto the sidewalk.

Nathan immediately let out a series of swears until he realized that this human obstacle was a wisp of a woman old enough to be someone’s gran. The impact had knocked her to the ground. He apologized and tried to help her back up, but his clumsy effort only made matters worse. The old broad was mortified. Help!,” she shrieked. “This man is molesting me!”

Nathan panicked, grabbing whatever was on the ground and stuffing it back into his bag so he could get the hell out of there.

After getting on the bus he noticed the cherry juice leaking all over everything in the bag and instead of condoms he had taken the old lady’s rash ointment. He sighed, abandoning the whole sticky mess and cutting his losses. He patted the bottle of vodka still safely tucked into his pocket. ‘Fuck it,’ he thought, sneaking a quick swig, then took a seat by the window.

By this time you knew he had already left the community center, so you sent him some extra motivation.

‘Hurry, I’m so wet!’ 💦

Nathan started to get hard and the fact that he was on public transport made no difference. His lust knew no such limits. ‘On the way’ 🍆

He looked out the window to see what street he was on and it suddenly dawned on him that he was headed in the wrong direction. He had gotten on the wrong bus! How could this get any worse, he thought, signaling the driver to get off at the next stop. He exited the bus like a shot and ran haphazardly across the street, his boner leading the way like a divining rod.

A car smashed into him going about forty miles an hour, enough to snap several of his important vertebra. Nathan heard the loud crunch of metal against bone before hitting the pavement and losing consciousness. Shocked onlookers started to gather and emergency services were called. Nathan expired in a pile of gore and debris just seconds before the ambulance arrived.

The paramedic examining him couldn’t find a pulse, so she administered CPR, but it was no use. He was pronounced dead on the scene. She had already called the coroner, placed a sheet over his body, and began filling out the paperwork when she noticed it. A conspicuous lump forming under the sheet. She dismissed it as nothing but a post mortem involuntary spasm until he sat up and threw off the sheet with a loud gasp. The paramedic stared back at him in shock. Nathan looked down at his erection, then back up to her and winked. “Thanks, love.” He got up and dusted himself off. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta get home to my girl, so I can fuck her brains out.” Priorities!

He arrived at your door panting and sweating. “Jesus, Nathan! You look like hell,” you teased, pulling him inside by his shirt. Your mouths converged, tongues fighting for dominance like a couple of territorial moray eels.

He tasted pleasantly of cherries and vodka. You pried your mouth away from his to playfully admonish him. “You’ve been drinking already I see...and why are you so sticky?,” you said, tracing your thumb over his lips and chin.

“I’m gonna make you sticky.” His breathy retort tickled your ear as his hand crept under your t-shirt to play with your nipple. You could feel yourself getting wet at his touch.

“Mmm.” You grabbed his stiff cock through his jeans.

He groaned, peeling your shirt off and eagerly cupping your breasts. “You wouldn’t believe what I went through to get here. A fucking quest!” Then he whipped his shirt off dramatically for emphasis, mussing his curls.

“Ooh. Did you slay a dragon?” You unbuckled his belt and pulled it through the loops with a snap, dominatrix style.

“No, but I died.”

You learned of Nathan’s immortality soon after meeting him. Following the initial shock you discovered it was a huge turn on. “Oh, fuck,” you gasped, gliding your hands down his chest. Nathan cracked a sly smile as you drew closer, kissing and nibbling his neck. You pressed your cheek to his to body to listen to his beating heart. “Was it painful?,” you asked, gazing up into his eyes, deep green pools of chaos.

“Excruciating.”

You looked back at him as if to say ‘no more fucking around.’ You led him back to your room and made him sit on the edge of the bed. You knelt down between his legs. “It looks like you need some T...” You unfastened the button on his jeans...”L” You unzipped them...”C”....You pulled them off along with his boxers. You began stroking his stiff cock gently with your fingertips. Nathan struggled to keep his cool. He propped himself up on his elbows to watch you work. His ragged breath betrayed him as you began to nuzzle him, dragging your lips and nose over his smooth, sensitive flesh. You licked his length and lapped playfully at the little drop of pre-cum at the tip. He whimpered. His eyes shut tight and his hands grasped the sheets.

Nathan let out a helpless moan as you took him into your mouth, bobbing slowly up and down, savoring him. You became lost in the act until you noticed Nathan’s breath change. “If you do that any more I’m gonna come,” he said with desperation in his voice.

You released his cock and raked your fingernails down the length of his thighs before standing up and sliding your panties to the floor. Nathan’s green eyes studied you, hazy with lust. He latched his mouth to your nipples, suckling each one them ravenously as his hand crept between your legs.

“Oh, no,” he said suddenly, his voice muffled between your breasts.

“Oh, no what? What’s wrong?”

“That old lady has our condoms.”

“Nathan, what the fuck are you talking about? I have an IUD....birth control. I got it a month ago.”

“So I get to fuck you raw?....unenCUMbered?” He smiled, and wagged his eyebrows.

You nodded with a giggle at his enthusiasm...”Wait, Nathan, was that a pun? You know that’s grounds for PUNishment.” He bit his lip, trying to hide his excitement.

You climbed on top of him, kissing him roughly, forcing his head into the pillow. Then silk ropes were used to secure his wrists to the bedposts crucifixion style. Nathan flicked his tongue at you defiantly as you straddled his face. “I’m going to teach you a lesson,” you said, lowering your most sensitive flesh onto his open mouth. You gasped at the exquisite feeling of his warm tongue on your clit. You ground your hips against him over and over, the rush of adrenaline filling your head. Using him the way he liked to be used. In this moment he existed only for your pleasure, your insatiable need. Your breath grew heavier, building to a sort of primal growl. Then the sudden pulse of your muscles, echoing the pleasure radiating from your core to every inch of your body.

After coming back to your senses, you realized you were squeezing the poor boy to death with your thighs. When you looked down Nathan was still. His neutral expression started making you nervous. “Nathan? Nathan?! “ You shook him. “Nathan?”

He opened his eyes. “What, love, I was just quietly basking in the afterglow,” he said, innocently fluttering his long eyelashes.

You hit him with the nearest pillow. “Jesus, Nathan I though you were...you know! I thought I might have...”

Nathan laughed. “You thought you smothered me to death with your fanny?”

You were embarrassed, but you had to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. “You are such a little shit,” you said with your hands covering your face.

“Yeah, but you love me anyway. Now, let me fuck that juicy little fanny before I go mad!” Nathan rolled on top you and searched your eyes for reassurance. Then he lined himself up with your entrance and moaned as he delved into your silky softness for the first time without protection.

You grabbed him by the ass and shoved him in as far as he would go. He started achingly slow, so you bit his chin and raked your fingernails over his shoulder blades. Nathan was always encouraged by a little bit of pain. He drove into you over and over, with vigor and purpose. You felt yourself unraveling once more. Your voice rang out at the peak of orgasm, then mumbled unintelligibly into his neck as you savored the rush of dopamine that flooded your brain. You watched his face contort as he came inside you. Nathan’s body suddenly tensed, then twitched. He made a new sound, vulnerable and uninhibited. He sighed contentedly and it looked like he wanted to say something. Of course you knew exactly what he wanted to say. You almost said it yourself. If he can’t bring himself to say it, here comes a joke, you thought, but Nathan just smiled shyly and laid down beside you. Then his hand crept nervously under the covers to hold yours.

@elliethesuperfruitlover @bubblyani @vinawyatt @chipster-21 @chokemerobert @helena-way07 @moorehollandplz @punknatch @renegadesheehan @dandycandy75 @meowbearspandas29 @taintedrosebud @bi-satanist @gunnerxsenpai @allthingsextrordinary @royhey @bitshy-life @honeymelon22 @gurlimtired @nobodydoodle @anonymouscherry @clownass-hoe @shuckinsquib @that-boi-misfits @klaushollandyoung

[katsukikitten]

Irritated 9

Short but hey at least I'm writing again.

WARNINGS:  18+ AU, Dark Adult themes, proceed with caution. 

"Moving onto the most crucial point of this meeting. Due to the heavy rumors of the reappearance of the league of villains and high end nomus I need the two of you to be in..." But the rest of the conversation is drowned out by the rushing blood in the ash blonde's ears.

Teetering on the back two legs of his chair as his eyes burn holes into that damn emerald mop head who is ever present in his life.

The same dumb ass who asks questions about this meeting.

But he isn't asking the right ones.

Hell everyone seems to be avoiding the elephant in the room as they carry on normal conversation all the while the hot head grows even hotter.

The swirling rage demanding his undivided attention while his ribs echo his heart beat.

Finally he snaps, slamming down the two front legs of his chair, palms hissing as explosions ring out stunning the other two in the room.

The wood at his seat is forever charred, while yours was always neat, easy to forget as they seem to have now.

Hell even Izuku was sitting in your normal seat.

"Oi, how much longer are you two gonna act like nothing is fucking wrong?" He growls, Izuku looks away with flamed cheeks proving Bakugou's theory right.

Izuku was worried too, he was just too scared to ask.

"I don't follow."

"You lying fucker. You *do* follow. When was the last you heard form Y/N?!" He slams his phone on the table when no one answers, "Since she quit right?"

"So that makes it a whole fucking month. No one has seen her, no one has heard from her and her insta is dead." He shoves the phone in their faces. The last picture you posted was of Bakugou and Deku standing next to All Might's cut out.

"She could be on vacation." Yami counters to which Bakugou snorts.

"And she wouldn't want any dumbass pictures of the beach with an even shittier caption?" He hisses, "No paparazzi has seen her?"

"I'm sure she's been spotted."

"Where? All the tabloids question her where abouts."

"Staycation. No one knows where she lives. She was always good at that." Yami counters, nervously sipping at his coffee causing the blonde to grind his teeth.

"How is she eating if I still have her fucking card?" He slams the plastic on the table that clatters with it's own dramatic flare.

Director Yami gulps desperate for an excuse as Deku's eyes widen.

"New card." Yami shrugs making his way back to the bulletin points behind him.

"Its still active." The room is enveloped in that sweet burning sugary smell as his temper rises. He is no longer playing Mr. Nice guy.

"Activate her tracker." Its a threat and a promise all in one. Do as I say or become fuel for my explosions is everything his eyes say.

"S...she threw her bracelet at me when she resigned." Yami tries to sound direct as Izuku subconsciously fingers the metal on his own wrist.

"Yea but I doubt she did that with the one that's implanted. Pull it up Yami."

The director is stunned into silence before a burning blush creeps onto his face.

"I..." He clears his throat no longer able to hold eye contact with either party, "I don't think it will work."

"What?!" A snarl and a shocked retort echo in the room.

"What do you mean?" Another set of polar opposite tones ring out in the small stuffy place of the meeting room. Yami fishes for his phone in his pocket, pulling up the neglected app swallowing thickly as he is proved right.

The map shows no red dots. Only the hundreds of blue caused by the bracelets. He pushes the phone to the center of the table, the proximity is close enough to reactivate the trackers in the two men. Slowly two red dots flicker to life beside blue.

The third never makes an appearance.

"Why isn't hers showing?" Izuku asks, a glare beginning to weigh heavy in his jade eyes.

"If it's not checked monthly then it deactivates on it's own." He pinches the bridge of his nose, "In my defense I had seen the three of you everyday for the last few months. You guys are a PR nightmare!"

Bakugou's glare narrows in on the ignorant man who was in charge of the safety of hundreds of heroes.

He was going to be pay for his ignorance.

Izuku watches the hot head's toned arm lift, palm spread wide, realizing just in time Bakugou's intentions. He lunges for his old friend, knocking him off balance as the two of them fight. The two men struggling for dominance before the blonde comes out on top.

Literally, pinning the emerald haired man, as he raises a fist, sure to make contact with his stupid, freckled face.

He always hated this face, but you, you didn't seem to mind it.

And yet, in a sense, Deku had let you down too.

But no one let you down as much as Bakugou had. Or so he thinks, he keeps telling himself something isn't right, that he should have followed you.

Maybe even apologized.

"And fuck you too Useless Deku! Too much of a pussy to ask about your fucking friends!" He brings his fist down, aided by the power of his quirk.

Deku shuts his eyes and hope he doesn't lose too many teeth.

The punch makes contact but not with Izuku's face. Instead Bakugou's forearm is half swallowed by carpet, concrete and steel biting into his flesh. He ignores it with a growl. He rises with a growl, scarlet eyes set in determination as he blasts the door from its hinges.

××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××

The smell of damp Earth and harsh chemicals assault your nostrils as your vision rapidly fades in and out. 

As if it watching an old film, images flickering by just fast enough to give it the effect of motion. 

But this felt like a horror film. 

And one you are staring in. Your breath comes rapid and hitched as you try to fight the silent fingers that slowly caress against your brain. Each nail numbing a part of your thought process as motion catches your eye from beneath a side door to your right.

The door open illuminating the shadow as a hiss of your bracelets pierce into your skin, injecting you with something that pulls you under faster than the figure can appear before you.

"I think I need to lower the dosage doll. I want those pretty eyes to see their new home I've built." His voice echos in the darkness before all thought is lost to you.

××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××

In Bakugou's moment of rage a thought occured to him. One that has floated through his mind for longer than he can remember.

If he wanted something to be done right then he ought to just do it his damnself.

His strong legs carry him down the stairs and winding halls to the records room. Like clockwork the attendant had left for his smoke break at exactly six o clock.

Something Bakugou had noticed years ago and filed away as possibly important.

Just in case he needed to borrow a file without having to check it out.

And he definitely doesn't anyone to know that he may or may not be looking for you.

Because they were more than likely going to try to stop him.

The hot head knew he had a least fifteen minutes, especially since the evening receptionist smoked at this time as the quiet record keeper. The basement dwelling attendant hoping to mac on the handsome receptionist in that short time.

Bakugou was thankful for the stupidity of others for once as he slipped into the records room with the spare key that was tapped beneath the desk.

The room is vast, reeking of mildew and damage paper mixed in with stained ink. He never understood why cases and records were filed manually instead of digitally but today he was grateful for the current CEO's laziness and the former CEO's aversion to both change and technology.

Older records are kept on steel shelves stacked in brown boxes that had to date back to the seventies or eighties while the more recent files were tucked away in half rusted filing cabinets, lining the musty brick walls.

There was no method to the company's madness, the records seemed to be filed haphazardly and more or less half assed over the years by someone whose dreams of being a hero hadn't fully flickered out.

But clearly they had settled for protecting rotting paper in favor of the public.

Bakugou growls as his eyes drag along each paper plaquer none in the exact order he needs. Some even slid into the metal casing upside down.

At least that's how he finds the one labeled "new hires 20XX". His cheeks hurt from his devilish grin before he yanks one of the doors open.

Again organization is thrown to the wind as files sit out of alphabetical order.

Chaotically mingling with one another having Bakugou grind his teeth.

Finally he finds your file, tattered and coffee stained as if someone revisited it quite often. He opens the Manila folder, more than ready to commit your address and whatever other information he could gain from the thick folder before an idea strikes him.

Would anyone even notice a missing file in this mess?

Hell it had taken him almost ten minutes to find and it wasn't as if the director was concerned with your well being.

His eyes narrow at your address, wondering why you chose to live in such a run down part of town before he slips the folder into the front of his pants swiftly covering it with his shirt.

He returns to the front of the record room, quietly shutting the cage door before he takes his gloved hand to the tape.

The door to the left stairwell clangs open. Two male voices echoing in the hall.

"I...I mean that's if...if you want to meet for drinks when you g..get off."

Bakugou rolls his eyes, deft fingers adhering the key back to its home just before the other make answers.

Delight in his voice that twists Bakugou's stomach in whole, green jealousy.

"I'd love to see you later. Until then." What could be a peck on the cheek follows as Bakugou slips into the opposite stairwell.

Wondering why the hell it seemed blossoming relationships came so easily to everyone around him.

His ribs throb as a reminder that that was something he would never have the privilege to experience as your voice echos in his head.

"We were never friends."

The mineola folder suddenly feels too hot against his skin, burning even. For a second he wonders why he is even doing this.

Why he's bothering himself with finding someone that clearly doesn't care for his company. He thinks to himself that he will just place the folder in his desk, that he'll abandon the notion of being a sleuth and return to his hot headed no fucks given ways.

But you whisper in his head once more with a weak, sleepy tone.

"Please stay, Katsuki."

Strengthening his resolve to find you once more.

[aelaer]

Re: Blood in Your Veins

Hey so uh.

As anyone who’s been following me for a while knows, I started the serial “The Blood In Your Veins” about this time last year (it used to be ‘my veins’ but retitled it on its move to AO3 because execution of prompt had changed a bit over writing). It’s a prompt that I couldn’t stop thinking about and just dabbled in slowly to see where it went. Then 2020 fully hit and my writing came to almost a complete stop until about October, which is when I began again on Illuminating the Shadows, which was finished and posted in December.

Anyway, I’ve been poking and prodding fairly continuously at The Blood in Your Veins. The first four parts that I posted originally here on tumblr are now all on AO3, and once part 5′s up I’ll link it here and link everyone who wanted alerts to the updates then so they can see the new part. Then all future parts will be linked here as well.

(Cut because why the *hell* did I write this much about this?)

I’ve been slow in posting because I, against better judgement but why not, decided to post it as a WIP. But that means I keep on making edits to older parts because I think of something new that should be addressed earlier in the story. Like uh, when I was writing part 9, I realized I needed to go back to part 5 and add an addendum. When I was writing part 12, I realized I totally forgot a part that I ended up adding in part 8, because I needed it for a future connection. This happens all the time in my writing and makes posting WIPs almost dangerous because my thinking is rarely linear if the story takes place over a course of more than a couple days. Thus the very slow posting.

So this silly little prompt thing that I was just prodding and poking at to see where it went? The farking doc passed 50k words tonight. Yup.

Granted, like 10k of that is probably outlining, personal notes, and A/Ns filled to the brim with meta, medical science, fake science, and technical/computer engineering because I love talking about it and giving people info to access easily for their own knowledge. I figure I can’t be the only one who finds this stuff super fascinating and fanfic makes it unique in that it’s not a book where the research is irrelevant, you can show off all the interesting stuff right here and talk about it with people! I love that about fanfic, so much. Sometimes the A/Ns are just as interesting as the story in some stories.

So it’s gonna be a bit slow for however long, but I finished 11 parts (with 10 betaed), have the 12th largely written out (though I’m not 100% sure about it yet so I want to poke at it more), and parts uh, 13 to 17ish outlined. But considering I was like “yeah this is 8 parts at most” like, at the beginning of this, that number is bound to change because characters keep saying things and doing things (including the supporting OCs, who are demanding to be fully fleshed out within the bounds of supporting character roles).

And yeah, this is just a ramble of what I’ve been mostly doing as I haven’t been super active on tumblr this month as this has consumed most of my free time. I haven’t read a lot of works either, and once this is completed I hope to remedy that, before I go into my next two big projects (which were meant to be what I was working on *now*, but then this took over and what will you do. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to complete three novel-length fics in the course of the year, but I’ll see what I can do. I really want to tell these stories).

Uh, this was really long. Sorry, I’m super verbose and don’t know how to be like, succinct. My old boss, two bosses ago now, used to quote Twain about brevity being a sign of wit, but if it is, call me 100% unwitty because I like to ramble. And then I always feel a little bit guilty for writing *so much* about my bullshit, so I feel like if you read this far, you 100% deserve to read a preview of an upcoming section. Especially since you pressed the Read More button! So here you go, thanks for reading my rambles. This is a section from the longest part so far, part 8. It’s a long little bit!

---

"How high's the toxicity now?" Tony asked as he stepped off the scale.

"Yesterday's blood sample came back at 0.45 milligrams per kilogram of your weight," Stephen replied. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves.

Tony offered his arm for the blood draw. "And if 3 milligrams is the magic number for fatality, that'd put my current blood toxicity at 15%."

Stephen inserted the needle at the crook of Tony's elbow and watched the tube fill up. "That's not quite how it works."

"It makes sense to me."

"That's still not how it works." He removed the needle and capped the tube, and as he put everything away, explained, "Saying that your blood toxicity is at 15% implies that you're talking about the whole volume of blood in your body. You're probably at about 5,500 milliliters with your weight, and with the density of blood equaling about 1.06 grams per milliliter, it is like you're saying—"

"That 874.5 grams of my blood is toxic, yeah, yeah, I know," Tony interrupted. By now he was setting up the table for their breakfast.

"I was getting there."

"You were going too slow," he shot back easily. Stephen gave the engineer a look at the comment, but Tony ignored it. "Yeah, I know it's not my whole body's blood volume. Obviously. But putting a percentage on how long until I reach the point that I'm dead makes sense to me. I'm not measuring the whole volume of my blood, I'm measuring how much more can I handle until I'm dead."

Stephen shot him a frown. "It doesn't make sense to call it 'blood toxicity' then."

"Maybe not to you, but it does to me. And I'd design such a measuring tool for me."

The statement caught him off guard. "Design?" He finished packing up the kit and joined Tony at the table.

"Well, if I wasn't stuck in here, I'd design something to automatically read a blood sample, like how glucose meters read blood sugar levels. Wouldn't be hard to engineer something like that. And I'd have it give me the amount of toxicity as a percentage relating to how far along it was until the amount was lethal. Sure, I could memorize the numbers, but the percentage would be more concrete in my head."

Stephen smeared butter over a piece of bread as he listened. He shook his head at the end of Tony's explanation. "Wouldn't work for the consumer market; there's too much room for interpretation as to what the percentage means."

Tony huffed. "Well, like I said, it'd be for me. Not the consumer market."

His brow furrowed. "You're telling me that you can make a blood test as simple as the one used for testing blood sugar levels for something as rare as palladium poisoning?"

He narrowed his eyes. "... yes…"

"You can make it portable like the glucose meters?"

"Yeah, of course."

"And affordable to most hospitals?"

Tony looked up in thought. "I don't usually factor in the costs of materials and manufacturing in personal projects, and others do the number crunching to see if my ideas are viable for production in company projects. If they aren't, but I really want them to be, I'll tinker a bit more, sure."

Stephen couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Do you realize the amount of money you could save for both hospitals and patients across the country with such technology? Specialized blood tests—like for many metal poisonings, for instance—aren't offered at every hospital. It may not be available even in every state. Those types of lab results can take weeks to get back to a doctor and the patient. And you're saying that you can not only potentially create this type of technology, but that you may be able to make it affordable if you really want them to be?"

"Well yeah, sure. I've done it a few times with other things. I could probably do that with a blood meter thing. I doubt the tech's that complicated."

His mouth was partially hanging open, Stephen realized this, but he couldn't bother at the moment. He was flabbergasted. The first thought that came to mind went to his mouth, unfiltered. "And you spent the last two decades building weapons."

"Don't." The word was sharp and filled with an overabundance of emotion.

Stephen fell silent. He crossed a boundary he had yet to see before now, and he was not so callous as to push against it. Instead he turned to his meal and focused on eating. He avoided looking at the other man.

A couple minutes later, Tony spoke again. It was low, pensive. Thoughtful. "There was a good reason I shut down weapons manufacturing after I got back from Afghanistan, you know. If the department ever comes back, it will be with major restrictions and modifications. Likely more defensive than offensive. More shields, less missiles. But in the meantime I've been restructuring. Expanded in commercial aerospace and industry. We entered the energy market properly. Consumer products is coming soon—end of the year, probably." A pause. "Don't see why we can't look into medical tech, either. Certainly wouldn't hurt to try."

He could only nod and say, "It certainly wouldn't."

[technoskittles]

Catradora fic rec list

I mentioned making one of these awhile ago and I’m finally sitting down and compiling some of my all-time favorite fics. I’ve read a lot (like, a LOT), but I feel like a few of those really deserve an extra shout out.

I’ll separate them between multi-chap and one shots, but other than that they won’t be in any particular order. I’ll also try my best to tag the authors here on tumblr if I can find them, but if not, just lemme know if you see your fic and I can edit this later.

I’ll also be including ratings/word count/trigger warnings/etc

(I’ll mostly be including common tw’s so please make sure you also read the tags for anything that may affect you personally! Also, if I miss any, please keep in mind that it’s been awhile since I’ve read some of these so I may not remember all of them!)

Key:

[E] - Explicit 

[M] - Mature

[T] - Teen & Up Audiences

[G] - General Audiences

And for the multi-chap fics:

(O) - Ongoing

(F) - Finished

(?) - Not finished and they haven’t updated in awhile so the author probably died

So let’s get started! (Get ready for a long post obviously)

Multi-chap fics:

1. upper west side by ceruleanstorm (F) [T] ~190,000 words

TW: past child abuse, alcohol abuse

@princessofgayskull

I feel like this is definitely one of the top must-reads for all Catradora fanfics. I know I’ve seen this on a couple different lists but I’m including it on mine as well because it really is just that good.

The chapters are lengthy (but in a good way!) and the story really takes its time to flesh itself out. The character development of the characters as individuals is beautifully done and wonderfully realistic. The pacing of the development of Catra and Adora’s relationship is also sweetly slow, a steady slowburn that invokes that deep-rooted yearning feeling mirrored by the characters themselves.

It’s a really clever premise that takes place in the modern world but implements the canon universe in the form of the book that Adora’s writing that ties back to her and Catra’s shared childhood. The way that aspects of the show were revamped into this fic are so creative and I just....ugh. LOVE.

This fic also has a oneshot compilation that takes place after the events of the final chapter which is currently ongoing and I HIGHLY suggest checking that out as well once you’ve finished this. 

The sister fic for those interested: she’s god (and I found her) (O) [T] ~40,000 words

2. The Devil Is In (The Details) by SeasInkarnadine (O) [M] ~58,000 words

TW: Graphic Depictions of Violence, child abuse, emotional abuse, use of recreational drugs, Major Character Death

@seasinkarnadine

This is a really great fic where Adora is an undercover cop who sidles her way into one of the largest gang syndicates to bust whoever killed Hordak, a big gang leader and drug trafficker, whose death was originally ruled as an accidental overdose. Her and Catra (one of the gang members) both know foul play was involved and work together to figure out the truth.

The dynamics between these two is so casual and hilarious but still has those gut-wrenching moments that really ground you and realize that their relationship is dysfunctional on a few levels. The exploration of Adora’s conflicting feelings towards Catra hurt in such a good way as she realizes that she does genuinely care for Catra, but also is aware that what she’s doing will eventually screw her over and land her in jail. It’s the best kind of underlying angst and I highly recommend it.

Another really great selling point that I particularly love is that Adora is deaf in this AU and the author really shows this in such a realistic and natural way that shows she really knows what she’s talking about. It makes the dynamic between the two even more interesting considering that Catra also knows sign language which give the two a lot of moments of mutual understanding that doesn’t extend to the other characters. It’s something that the two of them have that’s sort of just for them to be on that level of understanding and it’s so great.

Also, Morgan is just a great writer in general and I highly suggest checking out more of her stuff (her art too!). She’s one of the writers I’ve looked up to since my beginning days in the fandom and it’s still amazing seeing all the great stuff she puts out.

3. Skinny Love by Maychup (O) [M] ~100,000 words

TW: past child abuse

@maychup

Another staple of big fics in the catradora fandom but for good reason. This fic is a wonderful exploration of events taking place after S1 illustrating Catra & Adora’s relationship in a different path that the rest of the show takes. It focuses heavily on their past experiences with each other and how that affects their current situation being on opposite sides of the war. 

This fic is older, published just after S1, so canon divergence is an important aspect of its build. But the way the story is written is so beautiful and grounded that it’s still interesting even now knowing what really happens in the show. 

Their dynamic is kind of back-and-forth, with Catra figuring out what Adora means to her and vice versa and where the two of them want to go from that point. It has so many sweet moments and steamy ones as well (btw, there’s a lot of smut) and the exploration into each of the character’s pysches is so compelling and intriguing.

4. Faded With Feelings by yesimgay (F) [T] ~24,000 words

TW: recreational drug use

This was such a cute, short multi-chap fic. It’s a bit older but I think it’s still one of my top faves. 

A modern au, Catra & Adora are roommates post-college and trying to make their way in the adulting world. Catra has ADHD and smokes weed to help with that. One day Adora accidentally eats a couple of her edibles and cute shenanigans ensue. And that’s just the first two chapters.

The rest of the fic goes on to the girls figuring out their feelings for each other, especially Adora who, in this case, isn’t really sure of her sexuality. All-in-all, a really cute fic that’s a nice break from all the angst that typically saturates the fandom.

5. Chasing the Spotlight by holymountain (?) [T] ~20,000 words

This is an AU where Adora is hired to be Catra’s, a pop singer, bodyguard. There’s so many cute moments in this, though admittedly it’s been about 6 months since it’s last updated so be sure to keep that in mind.

6. we’ve been making shades of purple out of red and blue by darklady21 (?) [t] ~24,000 words

An “and they were ROOMMATES” au. In this one though, Catra and Adora don’t actually know each other and really only get to know each other over time. It’s cute and has a lot of interesting interactions between the two, but it hasn’t updated in about 7 months.

7. Tuning Out by FaiaHae (?) [T] ~2500 words

I actually really loved the whole concept of this fic but it hasn’t updated in like, an entire year so...only read if you’re okay with the fact that it probably won’t ever be finished haha

8. burnt sugar by jeserai (O) [G] ~11,000 words

@jeserai

Oh god YES this fic. The classic “fake dating” au except Catra is a rich kid inheriting a business who essentially hires Adora, a broke college student, to go on a date with her to this big business function. There’s not a lot to say about it other than that without giving too much away, but the fic is about halfway done at this point so it’s a pretty short read as of now.

Just be warned, it’s currently on a MASSIVE cliffhanger so if you wanna wait until it updates I totally understand lol

9. still waters by summerson (O) [M] ~28,000 words

TW: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, self harm

A “The Last of Us” AU. Personally, I’m not super familiar with TLOU because I could never get into the game myself, but this fic is so well done and the writing style is so interesting and well-executed that I still love this fic to bits. But obviously, for those of you who are aware of TLOU, you already know that this fic is going to contain quite the fair share of angst so be ready.

10. Whispering Dreams by dragonesdepapel (F) [T] ~7500 words

It’s been awhile since I’ve read this one so I don’t remember everything, but I do remember really enjoying the writing style and the construction of this fic. It’s a short read, but it’s totally worth it

11. please could you be tender by erce3 (F) [G] ~40,000 words

@figbian

please please PLEASE go read this fic. I’m actually begging y’all to go read this one I loved it so much it’s still one of my top 10 faves out there.

This fic is set in a modern setting where Adora & Catra were childhood friends and are in college and god it’s just SO. GOOD. The writing style and composition of the flashbacks with the present events is so beautifully done and organized and I really cannot hype this fic up enough GO READ IT

12. buried a hatchet (it’s coming up lavendar) by erce3 (O) [G] ~12,000 words

on the note of that last rec, I highly rec their other work which is currently in progress. It takes place after S3 but it’s an exploration on if Catra and Adora got trapped in the portal instead of Angella and FUCK this person is genuinely amazing go read their stuff

13. Senior Year by SimplyAbsolute (O) [E] ~98,000 words

@simplyabsolute

This is a really cute fic about Adora and Catra in their final year of college and I guess for me personally it really just hits hard because I’m also in my final year of college lol. But really, it’s a great fic and I suggest checking it out. It’s actually only got one more chapter left too so it’s almost done!

14. Assassinating Adora by Wicked42 (F) [T] ~13,000 words

@wicked-42

TW: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Jeez this fic was a real rollercoaster of emotions. I loved every bit of it. 

Basically, some people try to assassinate Adora and Catra stops one of them, but both girls are still inflicted by the poison and....it just gets crazier from there. Don’t wanna spoil it too much but this is a must-read for sure.

And this one may seem like cheating but I’m gonna plug one of my own multi-chap fics here

15. Pure Feeling (O) [T] ~30,000 words

TW: brief mention of sexual assault in Ch 5

This is a modern AU set after all the kids have been out of college for a few years. 

Adora and Catra were childhood friends but ended up drifting apart and falling out during their college years. Fast forward about 6 years and they run into each other again, except now Adora has a daughter and is struggling to balance her life as a single mother. Overtime the two girls work on rebuilding their friendship and somewhere along the way might even realize that they’re feelings for each other never really went away. But of course, like all things in life, this isn’t an easy process and they run into more than a few complications - internal and external.

One Shots:

(there’s so many of these I’ve loved so I’m really going to try and narrow it down to about 10. If yours didn’t make it, no offense! I just have WAY too many to include and this post is already so long haha)

1. The Interlude That Never Ends by FMLClexa [M] ~2500 words

TW: Major Character Death, brief mention of sexual assault

Okay I’m gonna be honest: If you ignore all the other fics on this list, READ THIS ONE. This is absolutely my #1 favorite without a doubt. It’s a soulmate/reincarnation au and it’s so wonderfully executed that I honestly cannot even begin to tell y’all how much I love this one. It’s old and one of the first fics I ever read, but it’s so timeless and excellent and I promise you won’t regret reading it. I know I’ve read this about a million times over.

It’s been a whole year and this has held my #1 fave position the entire time. READ. IT.

2. after party by summerson [M] ~2000 words

TW: recreational drug use

God this fic was so great I read it last night and I’m still in awe in how well it was written and the emotions it managed to invoke in me. My favorite scene is the part where Catra tells Adora “I love you” because it’s so raw and desperate and I vibed with it so hard. It’s really difficult trying to tell someone how much you love them with just a few simple words because they really just don’t convey how much you love them and it’s so frustrating and GAH this fic was fucking great please read it.

3. jigsaw by jeserai [G] ~2500 words

@jeserai

This fic is so great and I felt so warm inside reading it. Definitely read if you want sweet, slow friends to lovers burn.

4. Vicious by SeasInkarnadine [M] ~3500 words

TW: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Rape/Non-Con

I really highly recommend this one if you can get past the trigger warnings. It was so well written and very suspenseful with the juxtaposition of the timeline between current events and snippets of what had happened just hours before. But the ending is really sweet and the way that Catra cares for Adora after the whole thing squeezed my heart to pieces.

This is one I’ve read a few times over because of how much I love it. Def in my top 3.

5. Basement by spookyscaryskeletons [G] ~2800 words

This was such a great rendition of “Adora and Catra are forced to talk” and the emotions were raw and bleeding and I love the character portrayals. 

6. Coming Apart by Whorls [E] ~13,000 words (or ~6,000 words each chap)

@crazy-pages

Okay this fic technically has two chapters but I’m including it here in the oneshots because the chapters are identical in the sense of story but the only difference is that in chapter one Catra is a cis woman and in chapter two she’s a trans woman pre-op. Other than that the chapters are identical so it’s mostly based off which experience you would rather have while reading.

This fic was. So. Fucking. Good. Sen did such a fantastic job with both aspects of this story and I love it to bits and pieces. The smut in the beginning is delicious as can be, but then towards the latter half it absolutely sucker punches you with feelings but in a good way. I really, really fucking love this fic and I think it needs more attention than it initially got so I’m imploring you all to please go read this fic. It’s fantastic.

7. Seconds That I Cannot Replace by Mogatrat [M] ~7800 words

TW: child abuse, underage(?)

This is a really heartbreaking fic set before canon. It’s about all the times that Catra and Adora started a romantic relationship only for Shadow Weaver to come in and ruin everything by constantly erasing and resetting Adora’s memory. I still think about this fic from time to time. Give it a go.

8. Come morning light by dragonesdepapel [T] ~1800 words

TW: Major Character Death

Another one that’s technically two chapters but it’s the same events, just covers the perspective of each girl. Adora’s dying and asks Catra to stay with her.

Basically this fic ripped my heart out and I still think about it sometimes.

9. someone you like by caela [T] ~5100 words

oh fuck me yes this fic. A modern au where Catra sorta stalks Adora on instagram and accidentally likes an old picture. Fluffiness galore.

10. When You Came Calling by ActuallyMe [E] ~5200 words

TW: Major Character Death

A 1940′s Mob AU where Catra is a private eye and Adora married high-ranking mob boss Hordak...who’s just been murdered.

Really great one shot. Personally I would’ve loved to see more come of this but it’s great on its own.

And once again, this is cheating but here’s a couple oneshots of my own that I wanna plug real quick

11. hang tight (all you) [T] ~9200 words

Modern AU fic set when Catra and Adora are in high school. Adora struggles to come to terms with her sexuality in an discouraging environment as well as the fact that she’s had a crush on her best friend since middle school. Personally I think this was one of my best works and a lot of other people seem to have liked it too so yeah!

12. as my World d[ivides] [E] ~2500 words

TW: Rape/Non-Con, Underage

One of my darker fics, but still one I’m pretty proud of. Without giving too much away, Adora suffers from a trauma and engages in unhealthy coping mechanisms and Catra enables her because no one’s taught them any different.

[gooseking]

Y’all, I know it’s 5:30 am and I need to be up by 9 am, but I just wanna get sappy with y’all for a bit. I really do appreciate the support I’ve gotten for Hiraeth so far, and I can’t wait for what’s to come. I never would have thought that anything that happened during my first semester of college could happen (my girlfriend breaking up with me, getting carpal/ulnar tunnel in both arms, moving to Chicago, etc.), but after all of that happened and things started to get better (once I had my surgery and got away from that ex for a while), I feel like I’ve become a new person. Ever since I had that creative block due to me not being able to draw because of the pain and letting it out after my surgery, I truly feel like I’ve opened a new chapter to my life. It was 8 months ago that I started developing the characters and the story, 3 months since I released the first page. Here we are, at the end of Chapter 1 (the last page is going up once I’ve gotten settled into my dorm and at the usual time on Tapastic), and I have y’all supporting me here, 21 people subscribed to the comic on Tapastic with over 450 views. Y’all have been super amazing with motivating me to do better. With being genuinely interested in my story and my characters. I cannot thank you guys enough for just being here and interacting. 

I’m gonna be completely honest with y’all, Hiraeth has been probably my biggest “success” with art and stories. Growing up, I’ve been the same. Drawing, creating stories, making my own characters, I’ve been doing that since I can remember. It only grew when I got in the creepypasta fandom (aka my cringiest phase I ever went through), and I started writing my own creepypastas. My family honestly demonized my stories and characters. I was told that I would be the next Jeffery Dahmer because of the horror stories I wrote. My family never listened to my stories. I didn’t give up. It was in my blood to create. I then made Elements (which was an early early EARLY concept I had, dating back to early middle school), and people seemed to like it on DeviantArt and Tapastic (getting many people to join the contest I held and accumulating 1.2k views on Tapastic), but I didn’t properly flesh it out and it burned out like a match. My family still brushed off these stories. Between the end of Elements (2016) to when I started developing Hiraeth, I had so many concepts for stories, but never fleshed them out due to a creative block or not getting enough support from my family. Once I started Hiraeth and became passionate about it, my family supported it (for the most part, minus my dad who calls it “weird” in a bad way). I talk about how y’all support the comic and how well it does when I have view spikes on Tapastic or when y’all interact with it, and how I’m genuinely surprised by it, and my mom replies with a genuine, “Because it’s really good!!” Like Fletcher, I have severe self esteem issues. I don’t see how I could make something that people could possibly like, even though that’s my dream. But with Hiraeth, I see it as something that helps me emotionally. I pour my heart into this comic because it’s me legitimately coping with stuff I can’t really control about myself. It gives me control over something I can’t control in myself, even if it is just “make-believe”. I never expected for people to genuinely like it. I mean, I made the characters at 4 am while being high off my ass on pain medication. One of the characters was even an old creepypasta character that I decided to rework to be a part of Hiraeth. 

I might start repeating myself if I keep typing, and it’s now past 6 am, so I’m just gonna wrap it up by saying a big, HUGE thank you to you guys. Every share, every reblog, every like, every view, it really means a lot to me, and I see and recognize the people regularly interacting with my posts. Y’all are all super amazing, and I literally cannot thank you guys enough for sticking with me through this and supporting me like you have. Thank you.

[whitterzthefangirl]

Niall Horan One Shot - The Weight of It All

Happy Saturday night beautiful people! I have been writing for 8 months with the intention of eventually sharing something. I have been far too nervous to do so, but I finally read my writing to my husband and best friend who both encouraged me to post this. I have about 15 written stories, so if you like this LEMME KNOW!  I will tell you that there is TW: miscarriage. 

When Niall arrived home that evening he was disappointed to find the house dark, except for the light at the end of the hall, their bedroom. 

 “Lovey,” he called, continuing his steps into their bedroom. He found her seated in their master bath, their rescue pup, Rosa Barks at her feet. She was staring into space, but met his eyes when he stepped into her space. 

 Niall, hi,” she forced a smile, as he took a seat next to her, scratching behind Rosa’s ears, “How was the meeting?” 

 “Just finalizing album artwork, sorry I had to go,” he nudged her shoulder with his, “Why’d you move in here?” When he left she had requested alone time in bed. He had checked on her a few different times, bringing snacks, water, and coffee, which was the only thing she didn’t refuse.  Never once had he found her doing anything but writing in the journal he’d bought her a year ago. It was a grey leather bound book with a silver heart in the corner. It currently holds more used than blank pages. They weren't the best at talking things through with each other at the moment, so he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious about the words in there. He was hoping that one day she’d tell him all about it, maybe let him read some of it, but he wasn’t holding his breath. 

 “Change of scenery,” she stated with a shrug, refocusing her gaze in front of her. On the other side of her, he saw 2 items. One was her journal, the other a baby onesie. He felt a sense of panic inside of him. It became obvious that he had not succeeded in the hunt to clear the house of any mention of a baby. Their baby. 

 “What have you got there, lovey?” he asked, grabbing her hand. She did not return the embrace, and he quickly let it go feeling silly at the unreturned exchange. He felt another feeling rise inside of him, frustration. They had been doing so well. 

 “Do you ever think about the baby? “ she asked.   

 Her question made Niall wish he was anywhere but here at the moment. Not because he didn’t want to comfort her, but because he feared being honest with her at this moment. He thought of the baby frequently, but not in the same way that she did. Both of them were sad, but she harbored guilt over the fact that her body had betrayed her. It was something she carried alone, because she wouldn’t let him carry it with her. 

 At the time of her pregnancy test, she had been getting ready to start her own marketing company and had been vomiting at nearly the same time every morning. At first she thought it was nerves, until she had confided in her mom who teased her about being pregnant, which sparked an internal countdown to her last period, which she realized was late. 

 She had taken the test alone, and only waited hours to share the news with Niall. She had feared how he would react, but if he was freaked out, he wasn’t letting on. He had immediately gone out, and bought the unborn baby a set of golf clubs, and a guitar. She remembered teasing him that their child might not want to participate in the same hobbies, she remembered when he smiled back, “They won’t have a choice.” 

 An accidental pregnancy is a weird thing between two people, who love each other, especially as you realize how much you truly want it. She remembers the first 3 weeks after finding out she was pregnant, and all the plans they made for baby Horan, and her upcoming pregnancy. He was excited to learn of her cravings, and to be there anytime she needed him, after he finished his last leg of the tour. She loved that the two shared this super intimate thing between the two of them which resulted in a lot of sex, followed by a lot of time in bed. By week 8, the pair frequently caught the other in daydreams about what he or she would be like, look like, sound like. By week 9, he was leaving for a 13 show tour, with promises of Facetime, belly time, and lots of visits. By week 12, she was calling Niall from the hospital, sobbing about not being pregnant anymore. As quickly as they had dreamt it, it was gone. That was the hardest part for Niall, not being there when she needed him the most, which was why he was choosing to keep her close now. 

 At the end of week 13, she couldn’t talk about the baby without crying, but found solace in the fact that Niall couldn’t either. By week 17 , Niall had stopped bringing the entire thing up for fear of making her cry, which made him cry. She took this as a sign that he didn’t want to talk about it at all, so she began retreating to the bathroom where she cried alone. Niall took note of this, and would hover outside the door with their pup, Rosa any chance he got. By week 20, Niall  had thought his girl was back, but a birthday party in week 22 made her fall apart all over again at the sight of her baby brother’s baby. For week 25, Niall surprised her with a 3 week trip to Hawaii which she accepted, and he could have sworn that he saw the light return to her eyes when she smiled at him and said, “Some time away will be good for me.” During that vacation, he believed she was back, and he found himself hopeful that things were going to be ok, which is why he chose to travel to New York come week 29. Things were not ok though, and week 30 through 39 were spent with her going through the motions of life, crying alone in the bathroom, only this time around she was really good at hiding it. Week 40 brings us to the bathroom floor where Niall and she are sitting. The due date. 

 Remembering her question, he bumps her shoulder as a playful gesture, trying to engage her physically, “Of course I do, Lovey. You know that,” he smiles at her, and prays that tears don’t fall from her baby blues. 

 “We don’t talk about it.” She mentions in a very matter of fact tone, she does not engage him physically, she doesn't even look at him as she says, “I’ve cried in this bathroom almost every day for 40 weeks.” 

 He was confused, he knew she had cried quite a bit at first, but it had all stopped after Hawaii. Hadn’t it? She didn’t allow him time to question, instead stating, “I had a dream.” She was sprouting so many things off, he did not know which one to bite on to, but again she did not give him a chance to offer any feedback, she just continued, “The baby was there. A baby girl.” She took this chance to look at him, which helped him to gauge how she was emotionally, she was lit up, and then started crying suddenly, “She had your nose, and my lips, our eyes. She was the perfect mix of both of us, and it was all so sad, Niall.” She leaned into his side, as he placed an arm around her, stroking her long dark hair. 

 “Oh lovey, why didn’t you say anything?” He cooed. As her cries continued, he shed a few tears of his own. She didn’t answer his question, instead saying, “I thought about dying today. I think about dying a lot,” she paused, moving away from him as if he was a hot stove top. 

Niall’s face softened. Had he been so naïve to think she was fine after everything that had happened? It hurt to hear that she thought of dying so much, he was speechless, which allowed her to continue. 

 “I’m mad, and sad, and still grieving. I don’t know how to get over this, and it feels like I never will,” she was in hysterics at this point, “I never talk about it. I never told anyone.” He knew that to be true. It was something she had requested of him. The only people who knew she had a miscarriage were the people who knew she was pregnant: Niall and She. She continued crying, and he wasn’t sure what to do, so he did the only thing he could. He held her, rubbing circles in her exposed flesh. He was hoping she would focus on anything, but how she was feeling. He believed it was working, because her cries got softer. What felt like hours was really ten minutes, and Niall decided it time to speak up. 

 “I’m not much of a talker, darlin’. When we first came home, and had to deal with the weight of it all, I didn’t know how to talk about it without crying, and my crying made you cry, so I decided to be strong for the both of us.” 

 She closed her eyes, facing him. “I appreciate that, but I think I need to be strong for me now. I need to get some help.” 

[theundercovermarvelfan]

Whumptober 2020 - Day 31

And it is MIDNIGHT EXACTLY as I am posting this FINAL prompt! Thank you to everyone who has followed along and thank you to @whumptober2020 for putting on this awesome event!

Whumtober Challenge

Day 31 Alternate Prompt #11 Presumed Dead

It had been a long ass day. 

Clint had come off a rough mission a couple weeks ago and was still working on getting back up to physically fit to return to active status as a SHIELD Agent and an Avenger. He had spent the entire day at the SHIELD base upstate working out and running training exercises to make sure he would be well prepared for his assessment in just a few days. He was sick of sitting around Avengers Tower and he felt like he was more than ready to get back into the field. 

Clint could have stayed upstate on the SHIELD base, but over the last year and a half since the Avengers had moved into the Tower after the Loki incident, the Tower was finally feeling like home to Clint. And tonight Clint just wanted to be able to sleep in his own bed. So, he got in his car just after six o’clock in the evening and started the four hour drive back home. 

He was about halfway home when his phone rang, interrupting his blaring classic rock music. 

“Yeah?” Clint said as he answered the phone, not glancing at the caller ID. 

“Hey, Clint, just checking in,” came Natasha’s voice over the line. “How did it go on base today?”

“It went fine,” Clint assured her. “I was able to run a couple extra training exercises than I had planned on. I’m a little sore, but I feel good about taking the assessment in a couple days.”

“Does that mean you’ll take it easy for a few days?” Natasha asked pointedly. When Clint was benched from missions he tended to get obsessive about getting back to active status. 

“I think I can go back to just working out and training in the Tower if that’s what you mean,” Clint said cheekily, knowing that it wasn’t. 

Natasha sighed heavily and Clint just knew she was rolling her eyes. “Are you staying on base tonight?”

“No, I wanted to come home tonight,” Clint said. “I’m actually driving back now.” 

“How far out are you?”

Clint paused. There was something… off in Natasha’s voice. The question had come across just a shade too… demanding. 

“I’m probably about an hour and a half or so out,” Clint said carefully. “Is everything okay, Nat?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Natasha assured him, and all traces of the strange tone were gone. Had Clint just imagined it? “Just attempting to keep tabs on you since you’re here, there and everywhere these days. I’ll see you when you get back.”

“Yeah, see you in a bit,” Clint agreed before he disconnected the call, the bluetooth immediately switching back over to his blaring music. 

Of the course of the next hour and a half, the odd conversation with Natasha slowly but surely slid to the back of Clint’s mind as he lost himself in the music. It was after ten o’clock at night when Clint was finally pulling into the parking garage underneath Avengers Tower. He gave a big yawn as he pulled his duffle bag out of the backseat and slung it over his shoulder. Then he trudged over to the elevator, blinking heavily as the exhaustion hit him hard now that he was no longer behind the wheel of a car. 

When he got into the elevator, he instinctively hit the button for his apartment floor. But as the doors were closing, he changed his mind and hit the button for the common floor. He had skipped dinner that night and figured there were probably some leftovers he could snag from the communal refrigerator. 

Clint stepped out onto the common floor to find that all the Avengers were gathered, and all looked at him when he entered. Clint hesitated, looking around warily at the serious faces that had all turned to him at the same time. The television wasn’t on, they had all apparently been just sitting around, which was odd for this time of night. 

And then Clint spotted Nick Fury standing on the other side of the room, arms crossed as he leaned back against the wall behind him. That’s when Clint really knew something was wrong. 

“What happened?” Clint asked as he let the bag slide off his shoulder and onto the floor. 

“Why don’t you come sit down,” Natasha invited, her voice solemn. 

Clint didn’t move, his eyes darting around the room once around. “Is this an intervention?” 

The comment at least got a half hearted chuckle from a few in the room. 

“It’s nothing like that,” Steve assured him, his tone light. “There’s just something we need to tell you, and we figured it’d be better if we were all together for it.”

“Okay,” Clint said slowly as he carefully started walking forward, completely baffled by the situation. What could possibly be going on that made everyone look at him like that? 

“It’s nothing bad, I promise you,” Natasha said as he sat on the couch next to her. 

“We’re just trying to find a way to do this that won’t immediately give you a stroke or a heart attack,” Tony input. 

“Okay, just tell me what’s going on,” Clint pleaded. 

“Nick,” Natasha prompted, looking over at Fury expectantly. 

Nick Fury sighed heavily before he pushed himself upright off of the wall. “I want you to know, I never wanted to put you through this, Barton. It was never my intention. It made sense in the big picture, but I knew what it would do to you in particular and I hated it. And it was always my intention to tell you what happened… but there isn’t exactly a protocol for how to break this kind of news.”

“Okay, we gotta pull the ripcord here at some point,” Tony said pointedly. 

“SHIELD had a program under Level 9 clearance called Project T.A.H.I.T.I.,” Fury went on. “Can’t imagine you’ve heard of it?” Clint only shook his head. “I cannot get into the details of the project, for obvious security reasons, but suffice it to say the goal of the project was to be able to heal wounds that otherwise would be fatal. It was designed to be able to save someone that would have otherwise been beyond saving. We’ve had mixed results from the project over the years, so when I called it into action a while ago, there was no guarantee that it would work. I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”

Clint’s head was spinning. “Fury, I’m going to be honest with you, I am dead tired and I have no fucking clue where you’re going with all this or even what any of it means.”

“Clint… Phil Coulson is alive.” 

There was that ripcord that Tony had been talking about. It was like the world had fallen out from underneath Clint. His heart paused, twisted and then started pumping wildly and out of control. He suddenly felt like he wasn’t getting enough air and for some reason he couldn’t feel his hands. He was floating away, untethered to the earth any long as his reality was ripped apart. 

Clint found himself shaking his head. “No… no… no, Phil is… he’s dead. I… I saw it. I saw the security footage. I watched… Phil’s dead. We… we buried him.” Clint looked around wildly. This was some kind of sick joke. But no one was laughing. Then was everyone else losing their minds? “He died, Loki killed him!” 

“Clint,” Natasha said softly, placing a gentle hand on his shoulders. “I know how hard this is to get your mind around. I know how painful your mourning process was and how long it took for you to accept it. And I know that this completely destroys that entire process that you went through. But it’s true. Phil is alive. Fury managed to save him with Project T.A.H.I.T.I.”

“Phil Coulson was clinically dead when the med team arrived on the scene after Loki stabbed him,” Fury said, a little too clinically for Clint’s mental state at that point. “We were never completely sure that we would be able to bring him back. And even when we did, we were never completely sure we could successfully heal him. It was a day by day operation that lasted for months.”

Clint dropped his head into trembling hands. He shook his head. This wasn’t real. There was no way this was real. Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe this was another nightmare. He had spent months grieving the loss of his mentor and best friend. He had been completely shattered by Phil Coulson’s death. This man had taken him off the streets as a teenager and given him a purpose in life. He was the most stable person in Clint’s life, he was Clint’s anchor in the world. He was Clint’s family. Losing Phil had almost broken Clint. 

It couldn’t be that easy to get him back. Could it? 

“Clint?”

Clint head shot up so quickly that he just about pulled a muscle in his neck. He would know that voice anywhere. The figure had stepped in from an adjacent room and now stood there like a specter. Except he wasn’t. He was flesh and blood. He breathed and he smiled that comforting smile that Clint had always loved so much. 

Clint was on his feet one moment, and then across the room the next. He threw his arms around Phil with such force that he almost knocked them both over. But it was at that moment it finally hit him. This was real. 

Phil was alive.

“It’s okay, kid,” Phil soothed as hugged Clint back just as fiercely. “It’s okay.”

“You… you were… I thought you were…” Tears were now flowing freely down Clint’s face. 

“I know,” Phil said gently. “I know. I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner. I just… we didn’t know how to tell you.”

He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything in that moment other than the feeling of Phil’s arms wrapped securely around him. 

He was home. 

XxXxX

DISCLAIMER: I know this probably doesn’t fit in exactly with the events of the Agents of SHIELD tv show, I kinda tailored it to what I needed this prompt to do. Also, Fury deliberately leaves out important details about Project T.A.H.I.T.I. ;) 

[hannahxxashley]

This is a really long post that I know nobody will read but I just need to vent about it lol.

Just when I thought life couldn’t get much worse, I now have cystic acne to add to my list of bullshit I’m dealing with. It started around December. And I’m not talking like “oh look at this cystic acne haha” and it’s one or two pimples (like SOME fucking women who have left reviews of certain products on amazon 😒 they show their before pictures like OMG LOOK HOW BAD MY FACE WAS and they had like 2 pimples that you can barely see. Fuck off. 🖕🏻😂). I’m talking full blown, unrelenting cystic acne all over my chin and jawline and now it’s moved to my cheeks and sometimes my forehead. Giant, inflamed red bumps and a million little tiny bumps all over the place...it looks like I have some sort of flesh disease on my face. It is horrific, embarrassing, upsetting, and it’s something I have NEVER dealt with in my whole life. Even when I was starving myself to death I didn’t have acne like this.

I think it could be hormonal but I don’t know why it’s this bad. The only thing I can think of really is that I’ve turned 30 and women’s hormones start changing a lot in their 30s. I’ve read a lot of women say they started dealing with insufferable cystic acne in their 30s as well. I know it’s not my IUD because I’ve had that thing in for 4 years now and I didn’t have this problem until recently. I did quit taking those birth control pills last April and I read online that sometimes acne can peak up to 9 months after you quit taking the pill. That would have been right around December. I also started getting my periods back around December as well. So maybe this is just some sort of freak acne flair up while my hormones rebalance but idk...I quit taking the pill 4 years ago when I got the IUD put in and I never had this happen.

I’m going to try to fix this internally first. I’ve bought a few supplements to try. I’ve been taking 1250mg of omega 3 fish oil, I also got evening primrose oil to try BUT I think that is triggering headaches. The last 2 days I’ve taken it, I’ve woke up with a headache across my forehead (different than my covid headaches) and one of the side effects of EPO and GLA is headaches 😒 so I might have to stop taking it. I’m also going to try green tea extract and maca root. I’m also going back to an acne kit called Exposed Skincare. I used it for a couple of years when I lived in Oklahoma and it helped with the acne I was having then (although it wasn’t even CLOSE to how bad it is now but I was taking Lexapro at the time and also taking birth control pills that caused acne issues). One thing I see all over the internet is that you should stop eating dairy of you have bad hormonal acne. The American Academy of Dermatology says their is no credible science saying that dairy causes acne. And I’ve been eating dairy (milk based nutrition drink and Greek yogurt) twice a day every day for the past 3 years now. Why would it all of a sudden be an issue now? I can’t change my meal plan anyways because I’m not about to fuck with my eating disorder lol.

If I can’t fix this on my own, I will concede and go to the dermatologist. I absolutely will not take accutane and I will NOT go back on birth control pills. I can’t take spironolactone because it can raise potassium levels and people who take a potassium supplement cannot take it. I have to take potassium every day twice a day since I still b/p. It also is used to lower blood pressure and the last time I took a medication that lowered blood pressure was when Dr. Narcissist (that is what I call my psychiatrist because he is a giant narcissist 😂) prescribed a BP medication for my PTSD. After being on it for a week, I started getting chest pains and I became so lethargic that I could barely get off the couch or walk from one room to the other. It was pretty scary. I’m also not really open to doing any harsh chemical or acid peels on my face. I’ve read countless women say it did nothing for them. So honestly, what else could the dermatologist do for me at this point? 😂 idk. I have to do everything in my own time, in a certain order. So the dermatologist at the end lol.

Sigh. What a shit fest. I just want my life to be normal again. It was going so well. 🤦🏻‍♀️

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations for reading my endless paragraphs of self pity lmao. I CAST THIS OUT INTO THE VOID.

[sdottkrames]

The Wolf’s Out of the Bag

(A Maruaders Era Fic)

@comfortember Prompt 9: Confession

Summary: Lupin’s friends no longer believe that he’s visiting his parents each month at the full moon.

Notes: I was originally going to do a Golden Trio fic, but my heart kept calling me towards the Marauders. So here we are. My first HP fic. I hope you enjoy it! 

Also: this is definitely based on a screenshot of a Tumblr post by @hogwartshead-canons (I can’t find the blog anymore?) that I saw on Pinterest that went like this:

Sirius: of course we’re not going to have you kicked out! Why would we do that?

Remus: Because I’m a monster….

James: Oh stop being such a drama queen. You fold your socks, Remus. Do forgive me if I’m not trembling at the sight of you.

Read on AO3: Here

I hope you enjoy!

When James met the boy with the messy black hair on the train to Hogwarts, he’d known right away they would be best friends. Sirius Black was confident and loud, bold and funny. James didn’t care about his last name, and Sirius was grateful to be seen as something other than a family legacy. They got on famously from the very first “hello.”

When Peter Pettigrew, with his mousy hair and nervous disposition ended up being in their dormitory, James had instantly decided Peter was his project. James had his father’s drive to protect and his mother’s kind heart, and he knew Peter needed protection and confidence. He was determined to give that to his new friend.

Remus Lupin was another story entirely. The boy was quiet, but when he opened his mouth he had the ability to make the others nearly wet their pants with laughter. He kept to himself most of the time, almost like he was afraid to let himself become friends with the group. The urge to crack his shell and earn his friendship sunk deep into James’ skin. 

James tried everything. He made Remus’ bed  (he had discovered his friend liked his bed made, but often slept so long he rushed out with no time to make it in the morning), he snuck Remus food from the great hall when he was sick (he was sick a lot), he let Remus ride his prized broom. Giving Remus chocolate seemed to have the best effect, though. Slowly, slowly, James could see the shell Remus had created around himself cracking, and that feeling under his skin became even more present as he got closer and closer to earning the shy, quiet boy’s trust. 

And he also learned a few secrets along the way. 

After months observing Remus to find his favorite snacks or his go-to hiding spots, it wasn’t hard to piece things together. The other boys often talked about it at length while Remus was gone on his trips “home,” or while he was “sick.” It didn’t take a genius to figure out that it was always during the full moon, and soon they were no longer debating the what if’s, but instead the what now’s. 

They obviously didn’t care that Remus was a werewolf. Sirius prided himself on not being afraid of anything, James was far too loyal to let any prejudice get in the way of his friendship, and Peter was simply their shadow, content to follow their lead as usual. 

With growing concern, the boys watched their friend struggle each month. They tried to let him come to them, dropping hints, and hoping he would trust them with his secret. They’d gotten close enough over the last year. But he never did. 

They decided it was time they went to him.

***

“You look horrible, Remus,” Sirius said as the other boy entered the dormitory.

It had been a rough transformation that month. Worse than usual, for some reason. Madame Promfrey had said it was natural for some to be harder than others, especially since he’d been very homesick the past week. The Christmas holidays seemed like ages ago, and the summer ones were a lifetime away. He missed his mum terribly.

So, no, he wasn't looking very good. He’d worn a thick, comfortable sweater to hide the raw wounds that he’d given himself, chewing on his own flesh when there wasn’t anything else to chew on. A nasty habit he’d picked up on during his younger years. His hair was disheveled, and he was sure he looked thinner than he usually did.

“It was a long trip at home, I’m just tired,” he said, giving a grim smile, the lie falling from his lips so naturally even he almost believed it. 

Unfortunately, the others did not. Remus swallowed as he registered the concern and disbelief that filled each of their eyes in various degrees.

“C’mon, mate,” Sirius said. “We know you haven’t been home.”

“We can’t help you if you don’t tell us what’s really going on,” Peter piped up. “We just want to help.”

Remus shook his head, his eyes wide, looking and feeling like a cornered animal. The urge to run, to get away from them and their kindness, away from where they could get him to speak the truth that would turn their love into hatred, was overwhelming.

“I...I can’t,” he gasped, then tore out the door without another thought.

Peter sighed, and started to straighten Remus’ books. He always turned to cleaning when he felt uncomfortable and knew that his friend liked a clean desk.

Sirius and James shared a look, having a conversation without words as only they could.

Should I go after him? James asked in a nod towards the door.

A pursed lip. He might need more time.

A sigh. We need to tell him.

Sirius shrugged his shoulder, leaving it up to James and ending the conversation. He turned back to his books. He would be there as soon as Remus needed him, of course, but James was much more delicate and tactful in these types of situations. He would give his friend a head start and join them later.

James hesitated a second before following his gut and heading to find Remus. Throughout the years, he had learned a lot of his friend’s favorite spots to go to when he was upset. He rarely encroached on his friend’s space, but just now he felt it was warranted.

Remus was huddled underneath a tree by the lake. The weather was just starting to turn warmer, and he relished the ability to be outside with only a jacket again. He quickly wiped his eyes as James approached and flopped down beside him, leaning against the tree.

“Listen, mate, we’re your friends. We just want to look after you. We don’t give up on people, and we certainly aren’t going to give up on you,” he said, after a bea

“I know,” Lupin whispered, his voice pained. “But you should.”

James sighed, deciding to rip the proverbial band aid off. “I know you’re a werewolf,” he confessed.

Remus looked at him, his mouth opening and closing a couple times before he stammered out, “I...you...what?”

Suddenly, a new voice cut in. “Seriously, Remus, you’re a rubbish liar,” Sirius said.

“We figured it out months ago,” Peter added.

“And we don’t care,” James said firmly.

Tears filled Remus’ eyes. “You should. I’m a monster. I’m dangerous. I-”

“Oh stop being such a drama queen,” James interrupted. “You fold your socks, Remus. Do forgive me if I’m not trembling at the sight of you.”

“You’re not taking this seriously,” Remus said harshly. “I could kill you.” He emphasized his point by angrily shoving his sleeve up his arm to reveal the red gashes that criss crossed over older white scars, a cruel scrapbook of his life that only pictured his lowest moments. “This could happen to you, only you won’t survive it.”

The others were silent as Remus’ anger filled the space around them, but James could see the self loathing that was the true cruz of the matter. He slowly reached out towards his friend, trying not to spook the boy, and gently tugged him into a hug.

“Remus, we aren’t going anywhere,” he said. Remus was paralyzed in surprise for a moment before bringing his arms up to return the hug.The others quickly joined in, enveloping their friend in the warmth of their bodies and friendship. 

But soon the quiet moment ended. 

Sirius, unable to help himself, dug his fingers into Remus’ side, which made him giggle. Then Peter joined in, and soon they were all on the ground unable to stop.

Remus sobered first, but a grin stayed on his lips as he looked at these three boys who had finally broken through his walls, who had really seen him and still loved him. 

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” Peter said simply.

“Yeah, mate. Who else is gonna make sure we finish our homework in time,” Sirius grinned.

James slung his arm around Remus. “One condition, though.”

“What’s that?” Remus asked suspiciously.

“No take backs. You’re stuck with us now.”

Remus smiled bright as the sun, warm and genuine. “I think I can live with that.”

“I’m telling you, mates,” James said dramatically. “This is the beginning of an era.”

[mirrorfalls]

The Alchemist When He’s Full of Metal, Vol. 15

(Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5, Vol. 6, Vol. 7, Vol. 8, Vol. 9, Vol. 10, Vol. 11, Vol. 12, Vol. 13, Vol. 14)

So.

Today.

I swear to God, this was a complete accident of timing. If I’d started my readathon a week earlier, a week later - I would’ve recapped this volume some other Friday and not given it another thought. There’s literally nothing I could say about the War on Terror that its actual victims haven’t said a hundred times better on this very site (never mind actual, legitimate news sites and memoirs), so for all our sakes, I’ll try to keep the direct comparisons to a minimum.

Also kept to a minimum: my paltry attempts at jokes, because there ain’t nuthin’ funny about this.

I’ve seen several people criticize Mangahood for not fleshing out Ishval enough, and fair’s fair, someone here should’ve at least gotten a name. Scar’s scrapped his name/general identity by devoting himself to Murder Alchemy, fine, but what’s the excuse for his brother?

On a larger scale - not-yet-Scar’s “[Amestris acknowledges our faith?] That’s not respect - it’s politics!” rebuttal is absolutely beautiful, quite possibly the smartest line in a series that’s cranked out no shortage of those. But it also raises a lot of questions Arakawa doesn’t really have the space to answer: how long has Ishval been part of Amestris? Was it there from the founding? A colony annexed fifty (twenty? Ten?) years ago? How does its (combat-ready) population stack up? Where’s the language barrier? And most important of all, how were they treated before the war? Because I seriously doubt tens of thousands of people would start a full-scale rebellion over one kid getting shot.

(Related to that, I have to question the wisdom of setting this whole flashback during the last days of the war, when the bloodletting’s at its highest and everyone’s long out of fucks to give. Mustang’s how-could-we-have-fallen-this-far speech isn’t easy to take seriously - even as a mistaken viewpoint to be proven wrong - when there’s not even a hint of what they’ve fallen from. Was there ever a stage of the war that was (or could be passed off as) legitimate peacekeeping, or was it all-you-can-kill from day one? And if the latter, how stupid must he have been to not realize it for seven years?)

... well, those are about all the complaints I can drum up, because the rest of this volume is gold. Bone-chilling-

-heartbreaking-

-intermittently cathartic-

-but more often hopelessly rage-boiling-

-”if I stopped for every moment here that works like gangbusters I’d need a month to write this post”-

-gold.

The doctors Rockwell get to be people and not just aspirations. Scar's birth lands as a grade-A tragedy while feeling not just logical but inevitable (a lesser writer would probably have made him the forward-thinking intellectual before everything went to shit; but no, he was already a grumpy alchemy-hater to begin with, and Arakawa makes you feel for that). The Homunculi kick their villain cred up a thousand notches after multiple volumes of taking it easy on the heroes...

... and then there’s this asshole.

One of my most-hated archetypes is the kind that boasts “Well, at least I’m not a hypocrite!” as his only redeeming feature, but God damn it... Kimblee somehow makes it work. Maybe because he’s the only character on the front-lines who’s on the same page as the reader - i.e. understanding everyone is here to serve a military dictatorship that isn’t obligated to do shit for “the people”.* If memory serves, he’s going to be taking Barry’s place as Token Evil Teammate for quite a few volumes ahead, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to where he ultimately ends up.

Oh yes - and I should cap off with something more about Mustang, shouldn’t I? This whole volume did its damnedest to play him up as Scar’s equal-and-opposite, wrapping up with a direct contrast between his lofty, protect-all-people idealism and Scar’s very personal nothing-left-to protect vendetta - overall, it’s not even close to a fair fight in memorability or sentimentality, but if nothing else, I’ll be remembering this page as well as any of Scar’s scenes.

They’ll remember you, O Hero of Ishval. Now and forever.

*And on that note: I wonder if the Amestrian military is more inherently sympathetic to a Japanese perspective (thus making “it’s run by genocidal monsters” a more upsetting twist) than an American one. I would never call American media “pacifistic” overall, but it does - for largely amoral, Cold War-rooted reasons - encourage kids to be suspicious of countries whose leaders go around in uniforms and medals 24/7.)