#the whole worrying= suffering twice if it goes wrong but not worrying = only suffering once or not at all

[cerbreus]

surgery leave finally okayed!!!!

[stick-ball]

I was asked to write some of my sad headcanons on Jean and Kevin's relationship by @thelittlelostgraycat so here we go:

The first thing that comes to mind when I think about this dynamic is this really silly scenario. Doing grocery shopping, you have this great idea. You're going to make crepes for breakfast the next day. It's the weekend after a really long week, and you're feeling like having something nice, you know. So you stock up on all the ingredients. But then when it comes to it you stayed up late that night, binging your currently favourite series, and you get up later than usual and you're not really in the mood to stand in front of the pan for half an hour before you get to eat something. So, dismayed or not, you kill off the hunger with something quick and easy and get on with the day's plans. Then the next week comes and since you work long hours obviously you don't have the time for it either. By the time you remember, you really wanted to eat pancakes some time has passed. But you're excited again because that's what we are like with the things we love. The joy is always there even when we aren't doing those things. So you go take the pan out, the flour and bowl. You open the fridge and see you only have one egg left. That's a problem. You forgot to stock up, but well. It's still possible to make pancakes with one egg. You'll just have thinner batter. Then you get lit the milk and here's the problem, it expired. The dismay is pretty monumental for such a small tragedy. You taste it, just to make sure, and yeah, it's terrible you feel like retching. And the thing is, you could still make the pancakes. You could run to the store, but it was never really about being hungry. It was about the sentiment, and now you remember how if you made them in the first place, this wouldn't happen, and you wasted a whole carton of milk on a fancy you couldn't even commit to.

And that's how I see Kevin and Jean. It's love and it's sentiment and it's something really deep. But when push comes to shove it's always too little, too late. Too little words said, an apology wasted on a cold argument. Too much hassle, too much risk, too much grief if it goes wrong. Let's leave things as they are. It's not good but it'd stable. Too little time, between Riko and training and the dreams of freedom and illusions of grandour and the pain, all that pain and gore. It all ends up coming first.

But there's love, and I don't necessarily mean it as romantic love, although it could be. There's love, there's a whole language built around it. It's words of affirmation in a language no one else can understand. It's small tokens of care, small enough not to be put to an end by someone else, but meaningful enough to make the heart soar like they can touch the blue sky above the tomb they grew up in. It's stolen moments of peace, because both their hearts are for once free of worry when it's just the two of them together - noone there to harm them, noone to make them watch as the other suffers. It's time spent practising, not because they aren't good enough, but because when it's them they can freely love the sport they play. It's a shoulder to lean on and a body that keeps you warm, and that will never take more what you offer it.

But it's always too little and too late to grow into something defined. It's a safe chrysalis that makes the caterpillar endure, but there's no surety, no promises. As much as the chrysalis helps, the caterpillar transform, thr butterfly has to break out of it to fly. So no, it's not enough to last.

They care deeply for each other, but Kevin leaves Jean in the Nest. And Jean could hate him, could resent him, but he doesn't - because he understands when you have a chance you need to take it because life is cruel and it doesn't smile at you twice. He understands that he would probably do the same. It still hurts.

I think Kevin doesn't have many regrets bigger than leaving Jean behind. He still does it, though. But if he didn't, the story wouldn't happen. If he didn't, the whole chain reaction would not be set in motion, so he can't fix it, but he can be better from there on. He starts by getting Jean to a place as far from the Nest as humanly possible. In the hands of the person he holds in the highest esteem.

And that's fear, but that's also love.

Jean's new Jersey number is a 29 for both Kevin and Renee. So I think he understands, I think he doesn't hold a grudge. He starts to pick up his phone and sometimes even calls him himself, even if to trashtalk the team he knows Kevin is also watching play back in his dorm in Palmetto right now.

So they couldn't commit to it then, when there was nothing to lean on. But would it really be too little too late?

[hannahwatcheshorror]

TALK TO ME (2022)

😿 Kangaroo left for dead

Teenagers playing dumb games and winning dumb prizes, ghost edition. This movie is like a fresh take on Ouija (without the Ouija). A fascinating and spooky concept played out in an addictingly believable way. Worth the watch.

(Trigger Warning Self Harm, Suicide)

⭐⭐⭐⭐

This movie has such an interesting, crickley, crackly, creaky hook because growing up we (or at least my generation) played with Ouija boards like it was Candyland with absolutely no regard for how serious the content was. In fact, most of the time, playing Ouija was accompanied with a “true story” about someone who died by playing the game “wrong” but my friends and I would still play and barely glance at the rules or anything like that. So I am totally sold on the concept of this hand being a parlor trick and a party game because kids are dumb and we were all kids once (and we are all dumb at least once, some people twice even!).

The premise is, you hold the ceramic hand (there may be a mummified hand inside, spooky!) and ask the spirits to talk to you, then when one appears before you, you casually invite them inside your body. But don’t let it happen for over 90 seconds. Also you need to be strapped to a chair when it happens, but everything is totally fine. Our main girl, Mia, is game to try right away. At first I thought she wanted to try it to talk to her dead mom but she is just a wild woman who is game to trip a little without drugs I guess? Anyway she goes over 90 seconds (whoops) so now things aren’t going so great for her…

BUT that doesn’t mean the fun has to end, right? Because everyone still wants to get hand jobs. (Wait. I mean.) They want to talk to the hand. (That’s better.) So they all go to Mia’s friend Jade’s house and do more hand stuff. (Hannah, stop.) ANYWAY it is all fun and games until Riley, Jade’s 14 year old brother wants a turn and he is just too young, but Mia says fuck it and lets him try. Riley supposedly contacts Mia’s mom so Mia won’t let him break contact so he stays connected for two minutes apparently? And he starts to self harm, he is slamming his head into the table, it is wild, he tries to rip out his own eye. Jade comes back just in time ‘cause Mia is stuck still after hearing from her (maybe) mom.

Riley is hospitalized and that whole family is mad at Mia, (yeah) while Mia is trying to deal with how she sees all these creepy things going on (like her mom scratching at all kinds of surfaces) and Mia even sucks on some toes(?) because what is scarier than a foot fetish? The teens finally become wary of the hand but aren’t sure what to do and don’t realize how far Mia is descending into madness. Mia thinks her mom is telling her what to do so she stabs her father after a BLACK SWAN type hallucination where she thought she was fighting him off but he wasn’t even there at first.

Then she goes to the hospital because she thinks the only way to save Riley from eternal suffering is to murder him. Jade once again comes in clutch, finding Mia’s dad and getting to Riley just in time but not Mia, who very possibly sacrificed herself at the last second, before the insanity fully took over, and threw herself into traffic instead of the young lad. Mia is in darkness but she walks towards a light and an outstretched hand, a man sits at a table and says to her, “Talk To Me.”

My biggest issue with this film and its resolution is that they only randomly said that Riley seemed to be getting better but he also broke the rules like Mia and stayed under spirit control for longer than 90 seconds so I don’t know that he is actually okay or safe. That seemed a little too throw away and I worry about that sweet boy who cared so much for his friends suffering eternally for no good reason. Otherwise this was a compelling film with a bittersweet ending.

[elizmanderson]

Asking all the writeblrs I love to grow a vast garden, apologies if I ask the same thing twice *

Hello! I'm attempting to grow a Tumblr garden, with input from people around here to make a series of short stories about' houseplant fairies. The hope would be to have a 'community tumblr garden' full of all the wholesomeness the internet can offer.

Here's the request/seed - do you have a prior worry' or 'stumbling block'. perhaps an event or a piece of advice others told you that didn't help much or simply an' obstacle that you overcame. To be honest, I'm unsure of how to accurately describe 'the seed' but something in the realm of 'society expectations versus what actually helped- or whatever you wish? Also also, favorite plant/houseplant/ flower to write the story about.

Thanks for participating :)

...I'm actually not sure what you're asking for, like are you requesting that I write a short story? unclear. I'm not going to do that regardless, both because I'm working on other things right now and because I don't prefer to work from prompts that have been yeeted at me (remember in like middle school when your teacher would give the class a journal prompt and then you'd have to write from that? actual torture), but it sounds like also you're asking for an advice or experience share, which I can do

for all writers: find your people

actually this goes for all artists of any kind. many kinds of art seem very solitary. you might have an image in your head of a writer hunched alone over a laptop or notebook, scribbling away by themselves.

technically true, in a sense. but (a) it takes a village to bring a book into the world, whether that's an agent and editors and marketers and designers and printers to print a book and put it on bookshelves or the volunteers running AO3 and other fanfic sites working to keep the site running so you can share your writing with other fans. and (b) writing is hard, and you need people in your corner to cheer you on and help you through the hard bits.

for publishing hopefuls: the only guarantee is a negative one

you can work and develop your craft and do everything right and never get an agent, or a book deal, or never sell a single copy of the book you self-published.

BUT.

if you don't keep working on your craft and putting yourself out there, you'll never get anywhere.

this doesn't mean you have to persevere if your mental health is suffering because of all the rejections and gatekeeping and bullshit, or even if your mental health is fine but you've just decided it's not worth it. it's okay to stop if you need to. temporarily. forever. you don't have to keep going if you don't want to.

but if you (like me) are spiteful, then remind yourself that you won't get anywhere if you don't keep putting yourself out there. that's the only guarantee in publishing. it's a hard pill to swallow, but I like to put it out there because there's a sort of toxic positivity surrounding querying where it's like "it only takes one yes!" and where you're discouraged from ever complaining even the least little bit about querying on main and the prevalent story you're likely to see on social media is "I never thought this would happen for me, but after three whole months I'm finally agented!" which is a good formula for existential despair and feeling like something is wrong with you and your story when you get into the trenches and find out the querying actually sucks and can take a really long time.

(that wasn't wholesome and I think I misunderstood the whole assignment, but. there you go lol)

[elsinorelive]

This is a response to an essay about why Stranger Things season 3 disappointed my best friend in a big way.

(I would also like to point out that there is some speculation about Season 3 being something WRONG in the whole meta of Stranger Things, like it doesn’t belong with the rest of the seasons (to the point that the banner on Stranger Things Day showed the s3 VHS tape upside down in the pile of rightside up seasons) so I’m not 100% sure that there isn’t some other time travel, alternate dimension bullshit going on in s3 to begin with)

(Also take anything I say with a grain of salt because Scoops Ahoy Stevie is literally the love of my life and I would die for his stupid truth-serumed ass)

Teenagers suck

Absolutely. Teenagers do suck. The boys being nerdy and endearing did make the first two seasons endearing. But they had to grow up a little. The structure of the story forced the party to grow up, literally and figuratively. It’s almost a year later in the show and 2 years later in real time. Yes, it overlooks a lot of the trauma of s1 and s2, like all of it, which is completely inexcusable, but MAYBE the dating and the relationship bullshit is how they’re trying to cope. They think the threat is over. El closed the gate, they didn’t have to worry anymore, and being stupid teenagers is the only priority. I also remember what it was like to be this age and start being interested in dating and shit. This is where the groups start to splinter. Couples splitting of, girls only wanting to be friends with girls, boys with boys. Dustin is preoccupied with a girlfriend that the others don’t believe exist (he only goes to Steve because the others left him alone and he knows that Steve is just as lonely as he is and is the only (pseudo)adult that knows about the UD). Max and Lucas are on again off again over and over and over. Mike and El are obsessed. Max and El are starting to have a girl friendship outside of the party and the boys. And poor Will is in love with his idiot best friend. The dynamics are changing and a lot of the story is about the how they’re trying to navigate the changing dynamics of their friendships and relationships. They still love each other, but it’s different now.

The plot was overly pandering to the audience

Yes. It was less true to what the show was about and more interested in doing what people wanted.

Redemption arcs take work and Billy’s was cheap and lazy

I could fully go on about this for fucking hours. Billy did not deserve a redemption arc. He didn’t try to do better. He didn’t work to be a better person, to make it up to his sister, to apologize to Steve for cracking his fucking skull. You don’t get redeemed by being a martyr. The Duffers tried to do this TWICE in the same show. Once to Billy who didn’t deserve the redemption and once to Eddie who DIDN’T NEED TO BE REDEEMED (I will die on this hill). Billy didn’t suffer, he was possessed and got exactly what he wanted, power and control over other people even while he was being controlled. He never showed that he loved his sister. And she didn’t get to know if he really cared about her. Fuck Billy Hargrove and the Duffer he rode in on.

Killing People

Stop killing people. Why can’t anyone just live with the consequences of their actions.

Laziness

I got nothing, season 3 was lazy. It took the best these kids had ever acted, some of the best relationships (Steve/Dustin, Steve/Robin, Murray/Alexi, Dustin/Erica, Max/El) and let them fester. Russians? C’mon man, really? What’s next, the Satanic Panic? Russians are lazy, a real world Red Scare that would spook the pants off of Ted Wheeler, something that could have been real, but that is taken down by two kids in sailor suits and a lazy chief of police in a stolen uniform. It’s boring.

(Apparently, I'll only stick up for the characterization of the kids. You're right about everything else.)

This is an essay about why Stranger Things Season 3 Disappointed me in a big way.

1) Teenagers suck

Obviously, this is an overgeneralization and a matter or preference but a lot of what made seasons 1 and 2 so entertaining and endearing was that the kids were entertaining and endearing. They were nerdy kids who loved science and each other and they got in way over their heads with some shit they should never have been involved with in the first place. This season turned them into snotty teenagers who abandon their friends and only care about dating - basically forgetting about the trauma they went through over the last two years. Dustin wasn’t even with them for the whole show! It’s unrealistic and boring.

Which brings me to:

2) The plot was overly pandering to the audience

This season was very “We’re going to take what everyone talked about in season 2 and just do it mORE”

Dustin didn’t spend any time with his friends over the course of the show because they put him with Steve Harrington at the end of last season and the audience loved it. So they did it MORE.

People loved Joyce and Hopper so they have us that but MORE.

Lucas’s little sister became an overnight icon on tumblr for the two (2) lines she had last season so they gave us her but MORE.

I adore her, I’m just trying to make a point.

And the point is that just because the audience likes these things, doesn’t mean they do anything to serve the plot of your show. It does your characters a disservice when you let the story be influenced by the people who watch rather than by the characters themselves.

People loved Billy even though he was a massive fucking shit lord so they gave us him but MORE and with some bullshit ‘redemption’

3) Redemption arc take work and Billy’s was cheap and lazy

Completely glossing over the messaging that a bad person can only be redeemed through death, and how DAMAGING that might be for people who think they’re bad, let’s look at fucking story structure. 

A redemption arc only works if a) a character is punished by the narrative, b) a character feels remorse and makes an active choice to grow c) a character is actually given the chance to grow and be redeemed.

Killing them does fuck all. Having them kill themselves does fuck all.

“But Jessie!” I hear you saying.”Maybe the remorse makes them actively chose to sacrifice themselves. And isn’t dying them being punished by the narrative?”

I am here to say NO! I martry does not a redeemed character make. Dying is fucking easy. That’s not suffering. That’s not working to be better. To do better.

As with any case of redemption arcs, it’s time to bring up motherfucking Prince Zuko.

Prince Zuko, first of all, never did anything truly heinous. He was the antagonist and sought to capture the Avatar out of some misguided attempt to do right by his people and his father. He learned. He grew. He literally felt so much remorse there is an entire episode dedicated to him feeling SICK WITH IT.

And then he spent a whole fucking season trying to make it better.

What we got with Billy was this guy threatening and harming CHILDREN, being a racist fuck, terrorizing his sister, and generally being the worst. 

Was he a victim? Sure! We got his tragic backstory and that EXPLAINED his monstrous behavior but it didn’t make him less of a monster.

I’m not saying Billy couldn’t be redeemed. He could have. But he wasn’t. And he can’t be redeemed now because he’s fucking dead.

And we’re supposed to feel bad about it.

4) Killing people

I’ve said it before I’ll say it again: killing off characters is a cheap manipulation tactic of lazy writers.

Are there death scenes that mattered? Duh! Boromir’s death is one of the most powerful in literary history. It set the tone, and launched the ships, and really made everyone sad for a long time.

Not every death is that death.

Making us like the Russian lad to kill him for no reason was cheap and gross.

Billy’s death as a kind of redemption and to make Max cry - even though she is shown to BARELY CARE ABOUT IT MERE MONTHS LATER - was bad.

HOPPER.

We know he’s not really dead which probably makes this worse.

But his character was butchered this season. Instead of doing actual police work or be shown to be doing anything smart, he was brash and stupid and wore a Hawaiian shirt. Because it was cute and funny and the audience loves Hopper. I wish they had given him some growth this season, especially because he had a kid.

And Hopper and Eleven and Hopper and Joyce: these relationships that were set up and developed last season. They completely stagnated. It’s like the writers just didn’t know what to do with these relationships. The Joyce and Hopper relationship was no longer the carefully constructed thing of the past two seasons. They got lazy and impatient and absolutely fucked it up. The thing with Eleven was more generic ‘dad deals with a teenage daughter’ thing which is tired and boring. 

That didn’t mean it didn’t fucking break your heart when you saw them react to his death. But, again, it wasn’t a real death. And it was unearned manipulation.

5) Laziness

I’ve used that word a lot so far but that’s really what this boils down to. Laziness.

The first two seasons (some would argue just the first season) were so good because they felt fresh and innovative. It was a new take on old stories: myths and urban legends like secret facilities where they nurture psychic powers and government cover-ups and monsters and alternate dimensions. It had different groups coming together to solve one mystery and they each had a little information but they didn’t have the right information for the part of the mystery they were trying to solve.

This season used fucking Russians.

Using Russians is lazy! Rehashing the same shit with the door opening to the upside down is lazy! Having the Mind Flayer cook up some half-baked revenge plot is motherfucking lazy.

I was bored watching it. I played a game on my phone through most of the last half. 

They could have brought back the other special children like 8 from last season. They could have run into another kid that had similar powers but was never part of the experiment so they just started lashing out or something. They could have made Nancy an aspiring novelist who takes inspiration from the shit with the Upside Down and when she runs out of material of real events she starts making up her own and her belief and the belief of others in this makes it manifest in the actual upside down like some kind of Tulpa.

I don’t know! Something! Anything other than what we got.

Well, not anything. At least no more women died.

But still

[freedfutura]

hii!! I’m coming from ur Wattpad! I have a request, Vance hopper x fem reader and it’s just fluff where Vance escaped from the grabber and goes to reader for comfort?

Hey!! I love seeing my Wattpad readers on here. Coming right up! <3 Hope it’s what you’re looking for.

[Vance Hopper]

Thanks For Sticking Around

Vance Hopper is described as a lot of things. Angry. Violent. Spiteful. Rough. Temperamental. But one thing people often forget to list is sensitive.

Vance Hopper is sensitive.

When he was taken by the grabber, he was forced to face the worst parts of himself. No matter how hard he tried to disguise his fear and pain with bravery and anger, it was clear that he was anything but brave. He had to face the facts- and that was that he was truly stressed out and terrified about his impending doom. He was afraid that no one cared enough to come and find him. That no one would care if he lived or died.

Sure, he was angry. Angry that he was weaker than the grabber. And that try as he may, there was no over powering a grown man twice his size.

In the end, his escape was pure luck. And he didn’t even do it alone- he had to obtain help from people who weren’t even alive. He couldn’t do it alone.

He’s always been stand offish, it’s just in his nature. So when the cops came to interview him, he was as stiff as a board. Not answering a thing they asked for over an hour until he was sick of sitting in the blinding lights of the interrogation room. Then he proceeded to answer their stupid fucking questions with short annoyed responses, finding their pitying expressions extremely irritating. He absolutely fucking hated the way they looked at him- like a hurt kitten. They spoke to him like he could break any second. It made him want to pull his fucking hair out.

When he was finally able to go home, the main goal in mind was to get a shower. He took his time, gently scrubbing at his bruises and scrapes. Watching the water pour down his body and pool around his feet- turning brown and red as it mixed with the blood and dirt previously smudged into his skin. Then, he redressed his wounds, changed into some fresh clothes and laid in bed.

He thought he would finally be able to get a solid nights sleep.

Of course, that was just too much to ask for.

No matter how many times he tossed and turned, he just couldn’t seem to get comfortable under his blankets. He felt wrong. He’s use to having too many feelings that he doesn’t know what to do with, but never before like this. The feelings he has are far more persistent. No amount of beating the shit out of others or playing pinball to dissociate would ever make him forget what happened to him. He can’t even look into a mirror without seeing that piece of shit’s finger prints etched into the skin on his bicep.

In pure frustration he tosses and turns erratically until he can take no more and throws his comforter off him with an angered grunt. He’s so worked up from all the movement that he’s panting with anger, balling up his sheets in his fist until his knuckles turn white.

He closes his eyes tightly in an attempt to calm himself down, and the first thing he thinks of is you.

And that’s when it hits him.

You! He completely fucking forgot he had you! God, what a fucking idiot. How could he forget the very thing that kept him motivated to escape in the first place?

You couldn’t have heard the news yet. They were yet to announce it on live TV. He imagines you must be worried sick about him, and his dumbass has had the power to make that suffering end this whole time.

He rushes to stand up from his bed, wasting no time to hurry to the phone in his bedroom. At first, looking at it makes him cringe as he unintentionally remembers the one in the basement. However, he soon shakes away that feeling, moving forward to pick it up off the receiver and place it against his ear. His fingers move quickly to dial the only number he had ever memorized. The same number he tried dialing in that damn basement oh so many times. Your number.

It rings for a few moments, and he begins to worry that he’s calling too late. After all, it’s already nearly midnight and your goody two shoe self always went to sleep at 11 on the dot.

Just as he’s losing hope, he hears a click followed by some shuffled noises.

“H-Hello?” You mumbled out groggily.

His face lights up in excitement, already feeling at ease by the mere sound of your voice.

His voice gets caught in his throat as he thinks of what to say, until he finally settles on keeping it simple. “Hey, sweetheart…”

If he could see your expression now, he would probably laugh.

Your eyes just about fall out of your school with how wide the burst open. You literally drop your phone in surprise before hurriedly rushing to pick it up again.

“V-Vance?! Where are you?! Are you ok?! Do I need to call 911?!” You rush out, choking back tears as you clutch the phone tightly.

He chuckles softly, shaking his head despite the fact that you can’t see him. “Nah. I already talked to those fucktards. They’re still as shitty as they were before I went missing. I’m at home. I’m alright now. Just a little bruised up- nothing too bad.”

“Y-You’re ok? What happened to you?” You stammer out, wiping away any stray tears that managed to escape you.

Though you’re trying your best to hide the fact that you’re crying, he can clearly tell by your irregular breathing and the shakiness in your voice.

With a slight frown he replies, “I…was…taken. By the fucking grabber. But I killed that motherfucker. Snapped his neck with a fucking phone cord. I bet he’s rotting in hell as we speak.”

From the sound of his voice, you would never be able to tell he was just kidnapped and trapped in the confines of a basement hours before. It’s honestly concerning. You know how Vance can be. He bottles up his emotions and then explodes at an innocent bystander for breathing too loud. But the worst part about him bottling things up is that he forces himself to suffer alone. And you’re not having that.

“I’m coming over. Now,” you decide sternly, hanging up the phone before he even has a chance to reply.

His heart flutters at the determination in your tone. Though he would never admit it, he always appreciated the way you would stubbornly force him to allow you to comfort him. He really needed someone to push his boundaries right now. To force him to let their love in.

Within a few minutes, he hears rustling outside his window, and looks over just in time to see you throw the panes open and clumsily falling through. You land awkwardly on the floor. He snorts at your idiocy, though is quickly cut off when you bounce right back up and practically throw yourself at him.

He stumbles back into his bed, barely saving himself as you throw your arms tightly around his neck and kiss his face again and again.

He feels heat creep up his neck and fights the urge to shove you off and cuss you out. Normally, he isn’t the hugest fan of affection beyond the occasional hand holding, but after everything he’s been through, he just can’t bring himself to deny your touch. He didn’t want to waste the very lucky opportunity he’s been given to feel your warmth once more. So, he carefully wraps his arms around your waist, allowing you to lay atop him as his eyes slowly shut in relief.

This is what he needed. You. In his arms. Your hair tickling his cheek. The scent of your shampoo lingering in the air around him. Your soft skin against his. God, he needed it so bad.

His hold on you tightens as he realizes this, unintentional tears strolling down the sides of his face.

“I missed you so bad,” you admit, your voice shaking and inevitably cracking towards the end of your sentence as you begin to tremble with tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

He hums lightly in response, simply showing his appreciation for you by holding you tight.

“Can I stay the night?” You ask hopefully.

He remains silent for a moment, but eventually replies, “yeah, alright. If that’s what you want. I don’t really care.”

You smile. Because even though he says that, his hold on you had just increased ten fold- showing no signs of letting up even if you had changed your mind.

Vance had a funny way of asking you to stay. Not by using his words, but rather through his actions. You knew when he called he was secretly asking you for your comfort, without actually saying that. He made it seem like what happened was no big deal, knowing you would come running to his aid.

Not everyone was cut out for a relationship with him- but to you he was complex. And you were willing to take your time and put your pride aside to understand him.

And later on, when he assumes you are sleeping, he ever so quietly whispers, “thanks for sticking around.”

And you just smile, pretending not to have heard a thing.

[berkmansimagines]

Look What You Made Me Do

a/n: this fic is inspired by a few scenes in Barry and a scene from Pam and Tommy. i already have a fic with this title but this song is so nice, i wanted to use it twice

Summary: You lose your cool after someone takes a shot at you and Barry.

Pairing: Barry Berkman x hitman!wife reader

tw: violence, cursing, mentions miscarriage

gif credit: @tvandfilm

“Hey Y/N! Did you hear me?” 

Barry gently taps your arm, trying to get your attention. The two of you are in Barry’s car on the way to the movies. 

“Huh? Sorry I missed what you said…”

Truth be told, you’ve been zoned out since Barry started driving. You aren’t in a good place right now. A few weeks ago you suffered a miscarriage during a hit. You had no idea that you were even pregnant. You don’t get rattled easily but the whole ordeal really shook you. You’ve been depressed ever since, spending most of your time in bed. 

Barry is worried about you. He keeps reassuring you that it wasn’t your fault, but you can’t help but blame yourself. If you had known that you were pregnant or didn’t take the job then none of this would’ve happened. 

“It’s fine. Nothing important… Are you okay?” your husband gives you a concerned look.

You take a deep breath and shake your head. 

“I…I don’t think I’m up for this,” you shyly answer.

“For the movie? I thought you wanted to see it. You’ve been talking about it for months,” Barry tries.

“I know. It’s just… I can’t do this today… I'm sorry... I wanna go home.” 

Tears begin welling in your eyes and you quickly wipe them away. Lately you’ve been crying over the smallest things. You look so sad, Barry’s heart sinks. He hates seeing you like this. All he wants to do is help you feel better. He thought that it would be good for you to get out of the apartment for a few hours, but he was wrong.

Barry sighs, nodding his head in defeat. 

“Okay. Yeah, I’ll take you home,” he softly replies.

Before Barry has a chance to turn around, you hit a red light. While waiting at the light, Barry rests his hand on your thigh. He’s silently signaling that he’s got you. 

You look towards your husband and notice a man on a motorcycle stopping right outside his window. He’s the only other person on this street. At first you think nothing of it. You assume he’s just waiting for the light. But then you see the man fumbling with something in his hand. You can’t make out what it is.

“Babe,” you subtly nod out the window.

Barry glances over at the guy on the motorcycle. The motorcyclist stops fumbling and you finally get a good look at what he’s holding. You gasp. It’s a gun.

“Drive!” 

Barry sees the gun the same time as you. He presses his foot on the gas pedal and floors it, running the red light. 

The motorcyclist chases after you and Barry. He starts shooting at the car, hitting the back windows.

“Who the fuck is this guy!?” 

Barry shakes his head, keeping his eyes on the road. He has no clue who this man is or why he’s shooting at them. The motorcyclist speeds toward the passenger’s side of the car. 

“Y/N, get down!” Barry tells you just as a bullet hits the passenger’s side mirror.

You duck down and open the glove compartment. Dammit. You were hoping there would be a weapon hidden, but all you see is an owner’s manual and the car registration. 

“Why didn’t you bring a gun with you?” you ask frantically.

“This isn’t a job. We were just going to the movies!” Barry exclaims.

You take a deep breath, trying to come up with a plan on the fly. You need to think fast. You quickly scan your surroundings, looking for anything that can be used as a weapon. 

From the corner of your eye, you see the motorcyclist gaining. He’s finally catching up to you. You try hiding behind the door and then a lightbulb suddenly goes off in your head. Without warning, you open the passenger door and-

WHAM

The shooter is thrown off his motorcycle and slams into a parked car. He flips over the hood of the car before crashing into the ground.

“Oh fuck…” Barry breathes.

“Stop the car!” you urgently tell your husband.

Barry pulls over to the side of the road, not too far from where the motorcyclist fell.

“Are you okay? Did you get hit?” 

You suddenly jump out of the car.

“Y/N!” 

Barry gets out of the car after you. He watches you approach the biker’s body on the ground. The guy appears to be unconscious. 

“HEY ASSHOLE!” 

You start violently kicking the man with full force. You’re so angry that you’re seeing red. You were already upset about your miscarriage, but this guy taking a shot at you and Barry has put you completely over the edge. You’ve reached your limit and now you’re exploding. All your pent up rage and anger… it’s all coming out.

“FUCK YOU!” you continue wailing on the dude.

Barry’s jaw is agape. He’s in shock. He’s seen you mad before, but never like this. For a brief moment, your husband is actually a little impressed. You don’t need Barry’s help at all, you are more than capable of handling this.

But then you keep going. You repeatedly kick the man in the head over and over and over again. You’re not slowing down. You’re not stopping. It’s like you’ve lost all control. 

“YOU FUCKING FUCK!!!” you scream.

Barry realizes that you’re not going to stop on your own. He understands better than anyone. His anger has led him to do some terrible things too.

“Shit,” Barry mutters to himself.

Your husband rushes over to you. He wraps his arm around your waist, dragging you away from the man on the ground. You keep kicking at the man’s body until you are no longer within reach.

“Y/N, stop!” 

When there is enough distance, Barry lets go of your waist and cups your face in his hands. You’re breathless and gasping for air. You try turning your head to look at the dude on the ground but Barry won’t let you.

“Hey! Hey, look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me,” Barry repeats.

Still catching your breath, you stop resisting and keep your focus on Barry. Your whole body is shaking.

“He tried to kill us,” you cry out.

“I know, I know! But it’s okay. You knocked him out. He’s not going to hurt us. He’s out cold,” Barry tries.

The biker looks more than just knocked out. He isn’t moving. Barry can’t even tell if he’s still breathing. For all Barry knows, the man could be dead…

Barry takes his hands off your face and pulls you into a hug.

“You’re okay. We’re okay,” Barry reassures you.

Then your husband hears sirens in the distance. His eyes widen. Fuck. You two need to get out of here before the cops show up. Barry lets go from the hug and grabs your hand. 

“C’mon, I’m taking you home…”

He starts ushering you back to the car. You're in a daze but you’ve finally caught your breath and stopped shaking. You follow his lead. 

As soon as you get back to the car, Barry flees the scene. It’s silent, neither of you know what to say. Barry once again rests his hand on your thigh. He’s still got you. You rest your hand on top of his and lightly squeeze it.

“Thank you,” you say quietly.

Barry gives you a reassuring nod, then intertwines his fingers with yours. 

“It’s going to be okay.”

[sorryforbeingcrazy]

Buffy and Spike deserved more...talking.

I´ve been marinating this in my brain for a couple of days, so here I go.

I really liked the relationship between Buffy and Spike. And I´m not only focusing on the “romance” part, but in general. I loved their transition from enemies to allies to....friends? I just enjoyed how when it came to serious threats, they always looked  and relied on one another for help.

That´s why one of the things that disappointed me the most about the last season was the fact that they never really talked about how wrong they did to each other on season 6.

Season 6 is a very very dark season, for all of the characters: Willow´s addiction to magic and the effects it has on Tara, Xander´s fears that end up leaving Anya on the altar, Giles feeling that he is useless...But who really takes the trophy home in this one, is Buffy. I don´t even know how to start.

From the moment she is brought back to life, she suffers. We were expecting her comeback to be a happy moment, filled with tears of joy, laughter and hugs. Instead, she wakes up in her grave, has to dig herself out and then she walks around a Sunnydale on fire and full of demons. Can you imagine the shock? Only the crawling up from the grave should be enough to send someone to therapy for the rest of their lives. The mere thought of waking up in a coffin, six-feet undergroundnd makes me anxious...But let´s keep going.

She is back. She is traumatized and shocked beyond belief and at home with Dawn (after reliving everything that happened before she died). She is quiet, trying to process everything while Dawn is constantly talking to her about how things are and asking if she is ok. Her hands still wrecked from the diggin. And suddenly, she is face to face with Spike. (This is a sidenote related to the actors. I cannot give enough credit to James Marsters portrayal of Spike in general. But in this scene...man, 12/10, flawless). He looks at her in disbelief. And despite the fact that he was happier than ever that she was alive again, he does not try to touch her or approach her, and the moment he sees her hands he acknowledges what she has been through. So he just tell her that they are going to take care of her, and sends Dawn away to fetch stuff to clean her wounds. And they are alone in the living room. He does not overwhelm her with questions or hugs or anything. He just stares at her, giving her time to put her thoughts in order.

It may look like a trivial scene but I´m not kidding when I tell you that, for me, this is the most important scene of the whole season. And it is because it defines how the dynamic between Buffy and Spike, and Buffy and her friends is going to be.

When Spike is holding her wounded hands, letting her ask questions, just staring at each other, there´s silence. Peace. Calm. It´s the first moment since she is back that she is at ease. But the moment her friends burst through the door, is chaos. Noise, questions, worry, light, people...And this is why this scene is so important. During the rest of the season, the reason why Buffy goes away looking for Spike is because she wants that peace and quiet. She wants the calmness she gets around him, when she does not have to worry about being fine and happy in front of her friends. She can take her mask off when she is in front of Spike. That´s why she tells him that she was in a good place. That´s why he turns into her confident.

And for sometime, it works. Whenever she feels like she can´t take it anymore she goes to spend sometime with Spike. The problem is that her life gets harder and harder: financial problems, Giles leaves, Willow´s addiction, her relationship with Dawn. Her struggle becomes unbearable to the point were Spike is the only safe constant in her life. The only person she can rely on. And of course, mixing this with Spike´s feelings and their “tension”, their relationship turns physical. Very physical. And here is when Buffy starts using, quite wrongly, Spike.

The first time could be a slip, but not the rest. She may not have been aware at the beginning, but deep inside she knew what she was doing. She knew that Spike had strong feelings for her. She knew that he would never deny her and even if he did (that he actually does a couple of times) he wouldn´t last long. So she takes advantage of him and his feelings.

Someone, blind as a fucking bat, could say “Spike wasn´t minding it. He was enjoying the sex with Buffy. It´s what he wanted.” Fuck, no. He spents the whole season wanting to talk to her about their relationship. To discuss what is going on between them. If you are in it just for the sex, you don´t care to ask questions. You just don´t care. You just take what you came for and then you leave. The way Buffy does. And this bothers him. It bothers him that the moment they are finished she runs away. It hurts him. More than once he calls her out by the fact that whenever they are not “in bed”, she is constantly yelling at him and insulting him and his feelings, and yet, she always comes back to him.

Now, for those who think that Spike was fine with this I want you to imagine for a second, that you are in his shoes. As a human being, and not caring about genders. Imagine you loved someone, beyond reason (i´m not even going to throw in the fact that he saw her die even though i could). And because you care about this person, you spent time with them because they are in a bad place mentally. And that person enjoys your company. And starts spending more time with you. And one day, you kiss. Once. Twice. Then, you sleep together. Once. Twice. And god knows how many more times. You could think “If they like to spend time with me, tell me things they do not to their friends, kiss me and even sleep with me, they must feel something, right?” It´s a fair assumption. But instead, this person is constantly telling you how disgusted they feel with themselves for being with you physically, to the point were they keep what you have in absolute secret from their friends, and they run from you everytime you sleep together.

Fucking. Imagine.

Evil or not. Souless or not. That fucks you up my friends.

What leads us to the horrifying events of Seeing Red. You won´t see me coming any close to justify what Spike tries to do to Buffy. There´s no excuse in the world that clears you from that one. But I do see where it comes from. And it´s not just because Spike is evil. That´s a lame excuse of an argument. That scene, is the representation of Spike hitting rock bottom. He wants what he had with Buffy back. Even if it was only physical, it was at least something. And so, he is desperate...and well....we all know what happens. I swear to you, that scene creeped me out so fucking much.

That´s why it angers me how they did not approach these subjects on season 7. They both did terrible things to each other. They should have talked about it in depth. And even though I´m quite satisfied how they ended up acknowledging each other in ways any of the other characters do, I cannot hide my displeasure about that missing conversation. They needed more closure for what happened on season 6.

Good lord. This really turned out long.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[kariachi]

Some fic to go with some ‘Ossys molt’ and the companion ‘Ossys as Earth natives made of Kur‘ concepts nix and I poked at a few days ago.

~~

It’s not his fault. There’s a million things he’ll feel guilty about in his life, but nothing involving his molted actions. Maybe if the molts were new, or strange, but he’s gone through them twice a year since the day he’d hatched- already molted and trying his tiny best to fight his dam with territorial vigor (though not his twin, never his twin, they were a pair)- not counting the mess that had been he and Argit’s travels in the Null Void. The whole thing is old hat, a normal part of Ossy life that he can’t control, and so why tear himself up over it when he’s already supplied himself with more than enough ammunition.

Besides, he’d done everything he could to maintain safety procedures. He’d picked out a nice spot out in the middle of nowhere, where he wouldn’t have to worry about people wandering into prey range. He’d made sure it was stocked with plenty of food and loose animals. He’d given Argit the coordinates and how long he expected to be so he could come check on him, because what good was having a best friend you wouldn’t eat (out of less affection and more ‘the first time I gave up on hunting him before he ran out of quills’ but still) if you couldn’t put him to work. He’d even done his best to hide his birthday from the Tennysons so they wouldn’t be looking for him, and when they learned anyway had not only warned them off, but given them the wrong coordinates and a longer timeline as well. There was simply nothing, he knew from experience, he could’ve done to make things safer for everybody.

His mom had worried- because ever since he’d seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth she’d blamed his every tribulation on herself- specifically about him being found by poachers, but it isn’t something Kevin’s ever bothered concerning himself with. There isn’t a time he’s safer than when he’s molted.

He knows that from experience too.

So, when he sheds his molted hide for softer human skin again, the wildness of the shape sinking into his bones once more as things like morality and restraint creep back in, he doesn’t even try to get himself to feel bad. He remembers- of course he does, for all the Tennysons later will act like it was some other creature they were dealing with he’s still him, no matter what form he’s taken or the state of his mind- but there’s a detachment there that he might idly compare to the sort one feels for people who try to play with wild bear cubs.

Gwen, trying to push him back with blasts that are more food than anything in his molted shape as he pins her down and goes to rip open her torso.

Ben, as Diamondhead, coming to the rescue and suffering for it. Kevin is far more dangerous this way, and he’s winning handily until he collapses to an annoyingly familiar jolt of pain in his side.

Argit, chittering affectionately as he comes to, presenting a small cow he’s gotten from somewhere to make up for losing him his prey.

He takes advantage of those last long minutes in the in-between space, where he’s not quite one and not quite the other, to roll the memories over and consider his response to the inevitable questions. It’s a fool’s errand, he knows he’ll apologize to keep Gwen happy, keep his thoughts and memories to himself so they aren’t scared. Make himself small in a way that makes the beast in his bones snap and pace to keep the peace and companionship. But it’s a nice way to fill the space, to give his brain some practice as it rearranges itself back into something fit to deal with non-Ossys and non-Argits. All it is is talk anyway. He knows damn well he’s not to blame. They should’ve listened, shouldn’t have tracked him, they knew better, and he isn’t about to fault himself for their near-deadly mistakes.

They can’t make him.

[phoenixyfriend]

Vader Tries to Help

People encouraged me to share the dead dove concept! Yay! It’s a horrible concept with an undertone of comedic absurdity in the sense that you keep waiting to see what awful, incredibly stupid thing Vader is going to do next. Like it’s horrifying but it’s also very dumb.

By moving forward into the fic, you acknowledge that this is intended to be dark and liable to be upsetting, and that you are taking responsibility for your own engagement with the material.

This AU was helped along on discord by several parties but tbh I’m not sure how many of them actually want to be named.

Warnings: Mutual Extremely Dubious Consent (forced by a third party), drugging, irrational behavior (Vader), nonconsensual body modification, forced pregnancy, imprisonment, threatened torture of a child (not followed through on)

----------

Vader captures Obi-Wan a few years into the Empire. Because Vader is Anakin, but even worse on the emotional bullshit, he decides that he needs to keep Obi-Wan safe but harmless. Vader also got Luke in the whole 'capturing Kenobi' situation, so part of what Vader's thinking about all this is that Obi-Wan tried to protect The Baby and so Vader kind of owes him, obviously.

Palpatine lets him keep Obi-Wan "safe," because threatening Obi-Wan is a convenient way to make Vader shut up and do what he's told. Palpatine can kind of tell that threatening the toddler would make Vader lose his shit and attempt to kill good ol' Palps, so threatening the middle-aged depressed alcoholic being kept in Vader's guest room with Force-nullifying cuffs is pretty good. It's an additional layer of emotional torture on top of the electrocution of Vader himself!

Vader has Obi-Wan taking care of Luke, mostly, because Vader has Obligations and A Job, and Obi-Wan wouldn't hurt Luke, duh. He might try to escape with the kid, but he won't be successful, and Obi-Wan will definitely put Luke's safety first, so that probably won't happen.

This is all fairly normal for a variety of AUs, granted, and not very dark.

But see, Obi-Wan behaves. He's aware of how tenuous the situation is for him and his charge, so he plays nice. And Vader decides to reward that.

By giving him Cody.

There's an implied thought process there that Obi-Wan was fond of Cody, and Cody was fond back, and now that the Jedi aren't around, they can follow through instead of worrying about some silly Code. Vader's nullified the orders to kill all the Jedi, of course, possibly dosed their food with an aphrodisiac so they don't try to talk themselves out of What They Obviously Want.

Now, we’re going to make it a little darker, because why not make things worse by having Vader try to make things better?

Vader somehow twisted himself around to encouraging them to have a baby. This is accomplished through a combination of Sith Magic and nonconsensual surgery, and lots of questionable drugs.

Obi-Wan just wakes up in a hospital bed with a womb one morning, and is informed of the surgery then and there, after it’s already happened. The droid telling him about it is just like "in the Lord Vader's infinite kindness--" and Obi-Wan just.

Anakin.

What the fuck.

What in the actual fuck made you think this was a good idea.

(The Sith Chemicals, probably.)

I feel like Palpatine would maybe even order the pregnancy induction just to torture them by proxy because that's like eight levels of Fuck No and he barely has to do anything except tell Vader that he'd like to see what kind of children a Jedi Master like Obi-Wan has.

Luke needs friends, doesn't he?

Obi-Wan is having some very complicated emotions about all of this because Vader is, in his own absolutely insane way, trying to help.

Anakin wanted babies and Padme wanted babies so clearly, if Obi-Wan and Cody are in love, then they also want babies!

Cody and Obi-Wan very well might not be in love. Anakin definitely could have misinterpreted. It’s probably more angsty if they're just friends who ended up in this bullshit together.

(He's taking baby fever to new and somewhat horrifying heights, because... he would adore Obi's kids.)

(His family button is suprisingly large for a mass murderer.)

Vader Kindly Informs Bail That Obi-Wan Is Alive And Unharmed. Bail was a friend of Obi-Wan's, telling him this is only helpful and will keep Alderaan from getting more rebellious out of personal insult. Obviously.

Vader is almost offended when Bail implies he might hurt Obi-Wan. He kept his son safe, he owes him. Speaking of, don’t you have a child? How old is she, again? It would be Good for her to make friends, wouldn’t it? :)

Palpatine is just like... sitting back and eating evil popcorn as Vader runs around, ruining people's lives by trying to be less of The Worst than before.

Palps barely has to do anything, Anakin's fucking it up on his own!

Could have been just a sly "Kenobi is so attached to young Luke, but now that you've been reunited with your son, perhaps he'd be happier with a child of his own?" Come at it from both "make Obi-Wan happy" and "protect your relationship with Luke" angles.

Vader: I can't have babies anymore due to what you did to me on Mustafar. Obi-Wan: So you're punishing me by forcing me to have them instead? Vader: No! Children are a gift that you have been cruelly denied by the Order that held us in its chains! Obi-Wan: ...oh, right, you're insane. Forgot about that. Somehow.

Big dramatic speech about how the Jedi Order spent so long making them take lives, he’s giving Obi-Wan a chance to create it! To put something good and bright into the world!

Poor Cody is like. "General, I am very fond of you but I'm having a million panic attacks at the same time because of the mind control, and also Vader is under the impression that we're in love and I need to be your stud? I wasn't aware you could have children--" "I can't. Or at least, I couldn't, but Anakin is... creative." "...what."

I don't want to actually objectify Cody in the narrative past the point that Obi-Wan himself is, because nnnnngh racism and clone stuff, so I'm going to say Cody was in love with Obi-Wan, and would have been okay with at least discussing the whole baby schtick if not for the absolutely horrible circumstances.

Like if the war had ended normally, and Obi-Wan had expressed a desire to retire, unlikely as that was, then Cody may have suggested a dinner, and they could have gotten married and then eventually adoption...

(Cody had a lot of fantasies he didn’t let himself think about too hard.)

But no. It's this... weird Vader-inspired bullshit.

I'm just so invested in Vader trying to help but making things legitimately a million times worse.

He wants to help :) Oh god, he wants to help.

Why aren't people more appreciative of how hard I'm helping them? - the Anakin Skywalker story

With less time to stew and also getting handed what he wants, Vader could absolutely flip on a dime the second he saw Luke being protected, and go from “I hate you” to remembering that Obi-Wan said he loved him, and now he must keep Obi-Wan safe out of debt and he just... he’s playing house. 

Vader throws Obi-Wan a baby shower after the pregnancy is confirmed. Bail is invited, because Obi-Wan doesn't have a lot of friends still alive. Vader decides Bail is top of the Obi-Wan’s Friends List.

This is the first time they've seen each other in two years. Obi-Wan is heavily pregnant despite Bail knowing full well he didn't have the plumbing for that before the Empire rose. Cody is there and emotionally exhausted but more lucid than most troopers. Luke is running up to Leia because New Friend!!!

....there may be MORE of the 212th and 501st at the baby shower, with “kill all Jedi” orders revoked, of course. But it will keep the children safe!! And Cody and Obi-Wan can see their surviving friends!!

Cody: I'd be much happier to see my surviving troopers if they didn't all still have chips in their heads. Obi-Wan: I feel much the same. Vader: [404 error]

Bail and his family might be there at blaster point, but aren't you happy to see them, Obi-Wan??

Obi-Wan's endless trauma is honestly somewhat curtailed by the incessant need to facepalm at Vader’s bullshit

Obi-Wan and Cody both outwardly have a very "there are much worse people I could be stuck with in this situation but obviously I wish I'd had a choice, no hard feelings" attitude at each other.

Internally, Cody is suffering because this is NOT how he wanted his crush to be realized, and Obi-Wan is just suffering, period.

Cody: How did he even choose which of us ends up pregnant? Obi-Wan: He thinks I need to be protected, and that he needs to keep me safe. Cody: ...he does realize that you're better at-- Obi-Wan: Cody, he's completely lost it. No! He doesn't realize!

I feel like over the course of the year or two this plot unravels towards Palpatine getting murder-deposed and Anakin getting locked down, part of the driving force to Vader not being Vader anymore is that Luke actually really loves Uncle Obi and always starts fussing and going "Ben's sad" whenever Vader dismisses what Obi-Wan wants in favor of what Vader thinks Obi-Wan wants, and Vader can't deny his child anything.

Luke cries because Palpatine Feels Wrong like, once or twice, and Anakin goes “oh, okay, assassination time.”

[ironwoman359]

Perhaps I will be crucified on the fandom mountaintop for this opinion but I don’t...actually think that Janus? Is Self-Preservation? Like, that’s not his trait. Nowhere did anyone in canon say that. What Patton said was that “Deceit is an inner coach that acts with the one intention of self-preservation.” [Can Lying Be Good, 23:53, emphasis mine.]

Self-preservation is not who Janus is, it is his goal. His endgame, his justification for his actions. And it goes beyond preserving the self; for Janus it’s about fowarding the self, and he doesn’t care about the cost of doing so. Sometimes we get so caught up in this fandom with SvS and the fact that Janus was technically right in that arguement that we forget about CLBG. When Thomas was worried that he’d hurt his friend, Janus’s suggestion was to lie to make himself look better. When Thomas didn’t know what to do about the wedding, Janus was pushing for the callback because he views Thomas and his career as the most important thing. And while many of us may agree that the callback was the better decision there, Janus, by nature of who he is, was most inclined to not only go to the callback, but lie about why Thomas was missing the wedding, again, to make Thomas look better.

Sometimes I see people say “Janus is self-preservation, therefore his actions are justified. Everything Janus does is to protect Thomas.” And I know that it’s semantics, but I disagree with that last statement. Virgil is the one who does everything he does to protect Thomas. Janus, meanwhile, is the one who wants to further Thomas’s reputation at every turn. I know that Thomas’s instagram stories are word of god, not canon, but remember how he described Virgil and Janus at the Grand Canyon? 

“Virgil would be telling you to ‘Get back from those cliffs!’ Janus would be telling you to 'Take pictures to make it look like you’re next to the cliff, for clout.’”

In the case of Can Lying Be Good, it was self-preservation because Thomas had already done something, and Janus wanted to preserve his reputation from the hit it could have possibly suffered because of it. But with SvS, Janus wants to go to the wedding to further Thomas’s own agenda. Which, as discussd in Putting Others First, is not always a bad thing! Janus’s actions in POF show how he is a balance to the other sides, Patton in particular. Patton was so wrapped up in what was good and what wasn’t that he was neglecting taking care of Thomas, so Janus stepped in. HOWEVER, when left to his own devices, the steps that Janus is willing to take to “preserve” and further Thomas and his career/reputation are...not great. 

This is not me riding the Janus hate train, I love the snek boi as much as anyone, it’s pointing out what (in my opinion) the whole point of the series is. ANY ONE of the six sides we know, if given total control with no pushback, is very bad for Thomas. We’ve seen how listening to Virgil too much is bad (Taking on Anxiety), listening to Logan OR Roman too much is bad (Logic vs Passion/WDWGOOBITM), Patton's gotten it twice now for different reasons (Growing Up and DWIT), and I think that in our rush to celebrate Janus’s name reveal and “acceptance” arc, we forget that the same is true for him. Again, look at Can Lying Be Good. Janus was 100% wrong there, and in SvS his methods were extremely flawed. If he had allowed an actual discussion to take place, with input from all (especially Logan), they would have probably caught on to the idea that Thomas realized at the beginning of POF...just talk to Leigh and Mary Lee. But doing so goes against Janus’s goals of pushing Thomas and his reputation higher and higher, so for Janus, that idea was not on the table. Too much of his influence, and Thomas got hurt as a result. 

Janus’s ideas and goals are not always bad, and his methods aren’t even always bad, but he needs to be balanced against the others, particularly Logan (who can more easilly determine when Janus’s methods are actually the best course of action) and Patton (who is more in tune with how Thomas feels about certain methods; Janus couldn’t give a care in the world whether or not something is right or wrong, but Thomas cares about that, which is why Patton still needs his voice). 

I’m not going to get in to the whole “Roman laughing at Janus vs. Janus comparing Roman to Remus/manipulating him in CLBG and SvS” thing here, that’s a different type of post altogether in my opinion, I just have been seeing the “Janus is Self-Preservation” thing thrown around a lot, both within that debate and outside of it, and felt like I’d throw my analysis out into the world, for what it’s worth. Janus is not Self-Preservation. He does not “protect” Thomas in the same way that Virgil does. He is Deceit, and the reason he often exercises his function is to preserve and/or further the self, and I think that Patton’s quote above is something that the fandom often misinterprets. 

[grimxark]

This is going to be a post about Cinderpelt. 

I feel a lot for her. She is like, the most endearing background character in the series and I honestly don’t think the Erins even intended that. Even despite her hardships, she’s never as mentioned in Thunderclan/the clans in general after she dies. Sure, Leafpool is sad and thinks about her constantly, but that was mostly written as foreshadowing for Cinderheart. Of course, when she dies, Littlecloud is described as becoming sad. But after that, we get nothing. So let’s talk about her for a while, yeah? Cinderpelt, alongside her brother, gets kidnapped by a shadowclan cat. She is saved by the former MC of said clan, and her future mentor. She is a happy little thing, always willing to help and eager to prove herself. This eagerness and willingness prove to almost be her doom. She becomes depressed, finds happiness when she is once again saved (in a metaphorical and literal sense) by the grumpy Medicine cat that had once been Shadowclan. 

She is happy. Then her former mentor (and currently a good friend) runs to her asking for help. A queen is having trouble during birth, she is Riverclan please dont freak out, so she goes and helps. Its her duty. Then the queen dies, under Cinderpaw’s watch, and she’s so heartbroken about it and so apologetic. But you saved the kits, her friend insists, but thats not enough, is it. Her brother’s mentor is now heartbroken, devastated, and because she couldn’t save a cat her friend, her former mentor, will lose his best friend. Because she couldn’t save her, and he chooses his kits over his clan, and Cinderpaw understands. He will be a great father you can tell, and she is so, so sorry.  Then a fire happens. Cinderpaw evacuates with the clan, saves as any herbs as she can, and when she sees orange pelt among orange flames with a kitten in his jaws, and she cannot see her mentor, she understands, too. She understands when Fireheart catches Yellowfang’s last breath, and she understands when she hears what Yellowfang tells him. It doesn’t hurt, but Cinderpelt is jealous that she wasn’t the one who spoke to her last, and shes disappointed in herself because maybe if she had been faster she could’ve saved her mentor just as she had saved her twice before. Cinderpaw finishes her training on her own, and when she becomes Cinderpelt, her heart aches with the knowledge that her leader does not trust her despite the fact they both had been wronged and hurt by the same horrible cat. She never lets the image of the clans be tainted in her mind, and she hides and helps two cats from Shadowclan who anyone else would have left for dead. She saves them, finds the cure to their sickness- isnt that just wonderful? Making up for the fact she let her mentor and a queen die by saving a whole clan? In the end, Cinderpelt doesn’t ask for a payment, she lets those apprentices be as they are. She never even asks for credit, but Shadowclan knows who their savior is and cherish her like their own, though their pride would never allow it. Her act inspired Littlepaw, and he becomes a MC apprentice. He looks up to her. 

When the forest is crumbling all around her and she knows they must go when the travellers return, its her who has to convince Firestar to leave the territory behind. She knows, no- she understands- that he is waiting for his best friend, his companion to everything, to return. Though in her heart she knows Graystripe to be well, it is hard to convince others otherwise. But its for the good of the clans, this isnt just about Firestar. This is about survival of their ways, survival of the young. Shrewpaw had already died before his time, please dont let that happen to any other cat. The journey is long but she bonds with the other medicine cats and warriors like she never had before, and she finds to be in peace. It’s a relief when Leafpaw finds the Moonpool and everyone can finally settle, but it is sad that they will have to part. 

It takes a few moons, but she receives it- not a prophecy, but a promise. She will die, Starclan has told her she will. They refuse to say when, or how, but they know she will and they want her to know it. For what? Because they were the ones who set her path so she would be a medicine cat? Why did they have to cause her suffering? Why do they have to mingle with those who still live? Cinderpelt has never felt so angry and so alone, and yet all she finds within herself is to lower her head and accept it. Yellowfang is among those who tell her, and she sees no sorrow in her eyes or even a hint of sympathy.

Cinderpelt wants to hate her, but she understands. She understands this is beyond her mentor, that this is something Yellowfang had to endure. 

She tries to make it count, she really does. But then she breaks at Leafpool and hate Spottedleaf more than she ever had before when her apprentice is gone, gone and she can’t even begin to look or ask for guidance because as far as she knows Starclan is just waiting for her inevitable death. If they warned her- maybe it was because they knew Leafpool would not come back. So Cinderpelt spends time with good Firestar, her mentor once upon a time, her rescuer in her dreams, the flame which saved the forest, her best friend. But even good old Firestar has his moments, and his worry for his daughter leaves her with no time to tell him how much he means to her, and how much he helped her. She spends time with her brother, with her sister- and Brackenfur is excited enough for his kits that he talks to her endlessly for hours, and the only thing Cinderpelt thinks is how she will miss his laughter, and will he miss her too? The medicine cat doesnt eat unless forced, her worry for her apprentice and the possible future lack of a medicine cat for thunderclan sickens her by the day. 

She starts to think this is how shes supposed to go until- well, until badgers storm into their camp and try to claim everyone as their victim, until theres too many badgers for so few cats, until there’s a badger with so much hate in its eyes she could suffocate. She believes her fate is to die from sickness until a badger stands by her and desperately tries to claim the queen and her kits. When the blow to the neck finally comes and she can’t carry her weight anymore, she thinks about how much it hurts. When she hears and scents and feels Leafpool, her whole body hurts so much. Cinderpelt says words she is not sure she still believes in, and she is so so happy that she can see Leafpool one last time. 

When she goes, and is offered a body, she feels guilty. She feels this is wrong. She watches her brother mourn, she watches leafpool mourn, and she watches Firestar as he carries on. Did he mourn her? Did Sandstorm mourn, too? Cinderpelt is not sure she knows the answer anymore. All she knows is to control a life that is not her own, until she feels so guilty about it that she lets go. Then its like she was never relevant before. 

[dreamii-yume]

Hiya~ Can I request a sinfic featuring yan!riddle where he uses an aphrodisiac on his fem!darling? ^v^ thanks in advance if you every try to write this!

Tried to implement some Mommy kink for our Baby Riddle but meh...Yume didn’t quite get there lol I’m sorry~ I’ll do your mommy kink justice someday, Riddle!  {{ (>_<) }}

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It's petty, it goes against the rules, against every moral lesson he was taught, and as the older one, Riddle knew how immature this was of him. But he just loves you so much that it's only fair for you to feel the same thing, right? It's a completely valid reason! 

♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎

Riddle was not one to show emotions to make himself feel and look vulnerable to others.

It doesn't matter if they're a close friend or anyone he's familiar with, he just thinks that it's unnecessary for him to do so. Especially after his overblotting incident, it's just his duty to do what's right and recognize his past mistakes. For the first time in so long, he was corrected, he was wrong in so many ways, and he whole-heartedly accepted that. It was a blessing that his own dorm ended up forgiving his tyranny, being able to celebrate another successful unbirthday party as if Riddle hadn't done anything wrong at all. He was lucky to have such understanding friends, but the fact that they forgave him this easily was the exact reason why he's so conflicted with such a massive amount of guilt.

They were so nice despite after everything, just too loyal and accepting that Riddle's heart aches just remembering that he once took advantage of that loyalty. The guilt still chains him up and it was suffocating, but he knew he must not show such emotions. It doesn't change the fact that he's the Dorm Leader, the current King of Heartslabyul, he shouldn't burden anyone with such trivial things such as guilt. They don't have to know, if this was the price for his past actions, then he shall suffer through it all alone. No one needed to get involved in his personal matters, not again.

"...Are you sad, Riddle-san?"

No one...but you, who personally knocked ever so gently against the walls he built around himself.

Riddle didn't know if you were aware of his dilemma or had just consulted him out of pure instinct but he'd be lying if he said that he wasn't caught off guard that one day. It was the end of another unbirthday party that you and Grimm were invited to. You had dared to place your hand on his head, stroking his hair once and even asked such an outrageous question. Suffice to say, he was surprised, it left his mouth open but words don’t seem to come out. It also occurred to him that you might've done that deed unconsciously as he could practically see the realization coming down upon you, retracting your hands from his head almost immediately.

"Oh, I-I'm sorry...! I touched you without thinking..." You had apologized, bowing repeatedly but eventually looked up with an embarrassed smile. You scratched the back of your head, a tiny blush decorating your cheeks, feeling silly. "...I guess I just felt something really odd about you today, Riddle-san. It's probably just my imagination but still..."

"...Please cheer up. I'm sure no one would want to see you sad." You said, giving him a close-eyed smile and an awkward ‘Cheer-Up’ pose. "If you have something on your mind, feel free to share them with any of us!"

With Grimm screaming for you from the distance, you gave him one last smile and bowed before turning to your monster friend. Riddle didn't even get to say anything as he stood there, watching your figure disappear in the distance. He found himself reaching for his own head, on the same exact spot that your hand was in and looked down. That was unexpected, he really should get his act together if someone like you was able to tell. It was a relief that you didn't pry too much, that would've been a problem.

...Though, Riddle couldn't deny that something in him felt a little giddy for someone to see through him without words. The way you placed your hand on his head, the way your eyes looked at him, even if it was all done unintentionally. It made his face heat up and his heart could only beat so fast.

They all felt so gentle and sincere. He liked it.

But even so, Riddle turned around, clearing his throat and shaking his head awake out of such a ridiculous daydream. What is he talking about? Patting his head is a major offense to him personally! It's gesture that makes him feel inferior and doing so will immediately prompt him to decapitate your head off.

However, Riddle narrowed his eyebrows together and pat his reddening cheeks twice, just to calm himself down. You did recognize your mistake and it wasn't intentional after all so...He'll let you off the hook. He might've just been surprised, that's all, there was no more reason to fret over your touch like this.

Riddle needs to get his everything together, he's your senior, for god's sake.

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...Was what he told himself, correct? He thought he was done with this.

Someway, somehow, Riddle found himself inviting you for a private tea party with him one day. He doesn't like this, it feels like he's favoring you way too much, he doesn't even do this with Trey and the others. But one look at your troubled expression in the library that day was enough for him to come and talk to you. Seriously, had he really become this easy to catch these days? Anyways, your woes laid down on a subject that involves magic, it was probably why you look so troubled about it.

"You'll teach me? Really?"

That spark in your eyes was something Riddle had never seen before, it intrigued him for some reason. He originally thought that you were suspicious, suddenly appearing out of nowhere without a single ounce of magic. You ended up becoming a student, a half-student to precise, and not to mention a girl in a prestigious all-boys school that Night Raven. It already sounded problematic in papers and by ear, your whole existence in this school is a clear violation of rules! However, once he took a closer look at the bigger picture of your situation, only then did it occur to him how harmless you really are.

After all, you were just a normal girl who always seems to get involve in a situation you didn't ask for in the first place.

"I see...So, that's how it is." You said, humming. Even without magic to perform the activities written on the text book, you somehow understood the basic concept of the topic. As expected of Heartslabyul's Dorm Leader, his strict but careful manner of teaching was no joke.

Gracefully placing down his cup on a saucer, Riddle ran his finger smoothly on the huge block of text in the textbook. "You don't need magic to remember these formulas, correct? As long as you memorized all of them with accuracy, you'll have no problems in the upcoming tests." Riddle advised as you nodded, mentally taking notes of each and every one of his words. "Now, try to answer this next question with a different method. I'm sure you'll be able to figure out the trick soon enough."

True to what he said, you managed to answer all the questions in your homework and Riddle couldn't help but be amused with your reaction. You look so relieved that you were able to finish them in such a short period of time and with confidence too. This made him want to brag about how he could finish paper works at this amount in an even shorter time frame and with everything guaranteed to be correct just so he could see your amazed reaction. But he decided against it, thinking of how immature of a move it was.

"Riddle-san, you're really amazing...I could never do these things by myself." You whispered with a small laugh as you leaned down on the table, resting your head that had been starting to ache from all the memorization you've been doing. Riddle wanted to criticize your laid-back posture but, in the end, he kept it all on his own. Your exhaustion was to be expected after all, it’s understandable.

Riddle tilted his head to the side. "...Is that so? I do think this is normal for my age." He said, which merely made you laugh nervously and drop a sweat. What he said just proved how much of a genius this child is, having the personality of a workaholic. However, you noticed how he slouched down slightly, with something oddly lonely in his eyes. "...This is what I've been taught all my life after all. I have to be the best of the best."

Ah, of course, he's not a genius without a cost. That much is understandable at least. "That's not true." You said without thinking, making Riddle turn to look at you. Your eyes were closed as if you were in the verge of falling asleep but that dazed, gentle smile remains on your face, telling him that you're still wide awake. "No one can be the 'best' out of the best. A child shouldn't grow up to believe that they can."

"...But unfortunately so, Riddle-san did, didn't he?" You phrased the words like it was supposed to be a response to yourself rather than to him. You opened your eyes, sympathy overflowing from within them that it makes Riddle's heart ache. "I can't imagine how painfully lonely that must've been, enduring and following all those crazy rules."

"But you know? It doesn't have to be like that anymore, you have friends who'll listen and spend time with you now." You said. "You can eat all the tart you want and not have to worry about breaking any rules for even just a second. It doesn't hurt to have fun once in a while."

"That's why, Riddle-san doesn't need to be the best of the best. You don't even have to listen to your mother if you, yourself knew how unreasonable her words are. You are your own person, after all." Riddle looked up at you and you couldn't help but to think of him as a little puppy, learning how to do his first trick for the first time. However, you blinked and covered your mouth when you realized that you just said something extremely rude in regards to his mother. "A-Ah! T-That's not to bad-mouth your mother or anything! I'm sure she was trying in her own way...! I think…?"

A tinge of awkwardness decorated your features as you sat properly on your seat, scratching the back of your head. "...But the point is...I just don't see why Riddle-san needs to be the best at everything. You're already fine the way you are." You said, looking down as you begin to feel really embarrassed of what you're saying. "Honestly, if you were my son, I'd be the proudest mother in the whole world~! No doubt about it!"

Widening his eyes at what you said, Riddle couldn't help but look down as different kinds of emotions swirling inside of him. His mouth twitched but he didn’t know whether to smile or to frown, he's incredibly indecisive right now. But his eyes did soften though, your last words had echoed over and over again inside his head, blocking out every other words that came after. He felt all warmed up on the inside that he clutched his chest tight and didn't seem to hear you say "Just kidding~" in a playful manner. You'll be the proudest mother you said, an actual proud mother who can be proud of someone like him.

"...Honestly, it would've been nice if you were indeed my mother in the first place..." He whispered with a strained, quavering voice, his hand clenching harder on his chest. How laughable, he's older than you and yet, he could actually feel himself at ease, consulting you like this.

"Eh...? Eh!? Riddle-san!?" You were about question him, trying to process if what you heard was correct. However, you quickly shot up from surprise in your seat as you looked at the red-haired's expression, a few drops of glistening tears began to overflow from his eyes. "W-Why are you crying...!? Aah, I'm sorry, I-I was joking...! I'm not gonna do it again, okay-"

"Hey..." Before you could say any more, you flinched as Riddle grabbed your hand, shutting you up completely. You fell into silence as he slowly brought your hand up on top of his head, your heart beating in anticipation. "Could you do it again...? Please?"

You felt your face heating up, not knowing how to process this turn of events. It was supposed to be a joke, an example to strengthen a point that you were trying to make. Still, Riddle seemed to have taken it seriously and you couldn't help but to feel a little sympathetic. It just proves that this child had been hungry, yearning for some needed motherly affection that he never got as a child. So desperate in fact, that he's willing to believe that silly little statement of yours.

Your eyes softened as you went closer to him and began to stroke his hair as gently as you could. You watched him sniffle, his shoulders shaking slightly as he tries to keep his cries at a minimum. "...You're still in pain, aren't you? You poor thing..." You said with a smile, purposely making your voice as soft as possible to give him the sense of comfort. "There, there...It'll be alright. Everything's going to be alright."

With that, Riddle couldn't help himself anymore and wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you closer. Sitting on his little throne, he buried his face on your stomach, his tears staining your uniform but you didn't mind. All you could really do was to continue stroking his hair and welcomed his head in an embrace. "...Thank you for enduring everything all this time, you've been such a good boy." You comforted, closing your eyes and Riddle could just melt against you. "But we're here now, you don't have to worry anymore. From now on, you'll never feel lonely again."

"You've done an excellent job, Riddle. I'm so proud."

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Continue the Spice~?

Yume had to force herself to buy a new laptop because she knew she wouldn’t be able to survive Online Class without one (c" ತ,_ತ) I’m quite a stranger to electronics really, but I’m learning as I go, but I still miss my old laptop aaaa- （；＿；）

BUT NEVERMIND THAT!

Yume had reach 500+ followers! That many Darlings!? Isn’t it crazy!? (´；Д；`) To think this blog could actually reach that much lol Yume just wanted to release some hornii \(//∇//)\ Thank you very much, Sweethearts~! My fellow Hornii people ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

...I’m excited for the next few Sinfics (΄◉◞౪◟◉｀)

[kitkat1003]

Where the Ice Crushes the Wave

Warning, this fic contains instances of:

Dubious Consent  Possession  Emotional Manipulation  Abuse  Minor Character Death  Hurt No Comfort  Blood and Gore 

Summary:

I don't know if you've heard of Possessed Tang, but it's everywhere on tumblr, and it's basically an excuse to hurt Pigsy.  I decided to go ham. The warnings I put are real.  Viewer Discretion is advised.

AO3 Link

Pigsy notices something is wrong immediately.

It’s not hard.  He’s been watching Tang for years, knows him like the back of his hand.  He knows that Tang is always there when he opens, at least for a few minutes.  They’ll banter, then Tang will disappear for a few hours before arriving at lunch to steal some noodles.  At some point, Pigsy will yell, chase him out but not really, and Tang will laugh all the while.

On a good day, Pigsy will invite Tang upstairs, and they eat dinner in Pigsy’s apartment.  They’ll sit in front of the TV for hours, making fun of idiots in cooking shows, and Pigsy will deliberate over and over on the idea of moving his hand to hold Tang’s.  He never does, because he’s afraid to push, afraid to ask for too much and lose what he already has.  

Pigsy can feel the power he has, vibrating in his skin, hidden because the person he used to be is not who he wants to be now, ever.  He knows that if he let that loose, if he grew tall and strong and dangerous, everyone around him would suffer; he holds it all in.

He just waits for Tang.  He can be patient.  He has spent a thousand years learning to be, and he thanks his master for teaching him, because if he was to wait for anything it would be this.

He’d spend an eternity and a day waiting for that.

For four days, though, Tang doesn’t come to the shop at all.

Pigsy texts him, calls him, and gets nothing.  He shouts more, is biting and sharp for those four days, wracked with worry and desperate for answers.

He searches even the town once.  Twice.  He waits, because that’s what he’s good at, but at the same time he wants to grow large and take charge, to roar into the night and shake the world until it tells him where his Tang is.

Four days of waiting before Tang appears in the shop in the morning.  He smiles and waves, as if he hadn’t blown Pigsy off for four days, as if he hadn’t worried Pigsy sick.

“Where the hell have you been?!” Pigsy grabs Tang by his scarf and pulls, too angry and worried and hurt to stop himself.

Tang starts but gives him an easygoing smile in return.  That’s what tips Pigsy off first.  The curve of the lips is wrong, more cunning than kind.

“Sorry-family emergency.” Easy deflection. Tang shrugs.  “I kept meaning to text you back, but stuff kept coming up.”

Pigsy could almost accept that, except Tang has never brought up his family before.  To talk about them now, it seems too...convenient.  And regardless of that, Tang has never left Pigsy in the lurch like this.  It’s too out of character.  A quick text to say ‘I’m okay’ would take but a minute.  Tang is kind enough to give Pigsy a minute of his time, he wouldn’t just let Pigsy sit worried.

Right?

He stares at Tang, squinting a little, and almost lets him go.  But then.

“You changed your glasses,” he notes.

The rims are blue.  He can see traces of snowflakes on the lenses.

Tang smiles, eyes shut and head tilted to one side.  Pigsy is suddenly aware of something dangerous, sitting beneath his friend’s skin.  The hairs on his arm stand up straight, and it is so, so obvious now that this isn’t Tang at all.

“Yes,” Not Tang says, and his smile is all teeth.  “Do you like them?”

Pigsy knows a challenge when he sees one, and he takes a breath.

“Prefer your old ones, actually,” he grunts out.  “Blue isn’t your color.”

Not Tang laughs.  It sends a shiver down Pigsy’s spine.  But it isn’t just fear, no, his cheeks color.

“On that, Pigsy, we will have to disagree.” His name out of Not Tang’s mouth sounds foreign, but it’s Tang’s voice, and Not Tang curls something soft and sweet around Pigsy’s name like it knows.

Pigsy goes to work, and firmly refuses to look over his shoulder.

He can feel Not Tang’s eyes on him anyway.

MK doesn’t notice anything wrong with Tang.  Mei doesn’t either.  Not Tang tells MK a story, talks animatedly with Mei about her next race and promises to be there.  Pigsy makes a bowl of noodles on autopilot and hands it to Not Tang.  Not Tang holds the chopsticks differently.  Not Tang doesn’t slurp up the noodles and fails to give Pigsy a smirk when he finishes the bowl, like Tang would have.

Pigsy is tense the whole day, and he waits until MK heads upstairs and the shop is closed to do anything.

“Can I walk you home?  Figure we should talk.  Haven’t seen ya in four days,” he jerks a thumb towards the door.  Not Tang tilts his head to the side, and his glasses flash in a way that is so familiar, and yet makes Pigsy shiver again.

“Sure.  I missed you.” And Pigsy is taken aback, because it sounds like Not Tang means it.  Maybe he—no, he knows this isn’t Tang.

But how much is it not Tang?

They walk out of the store, and down a block or two.  Pigsy doesn’t know where Tang lives, though he suspects somewhere near the library, but Not Tang is following his lead.  Looks like Not Tang doesn’t know, either.

He grabs Not Tang by the scarf, and drags him into an alley.  He slams Not Tang against the wall, hard but not too hard because Not Tang is still Tang’s body. Tang is still mortal.

“I don’t know who the hell you are,” he starts, and he lets his tusks out, baring his sharp teeth like a challenge, a growl in his throat.  His eyes glow ocean blue, his nostrils flare.  “But you better get the fuck out of my friend or—”

The words die in his throat as Not Tang laughs, cold and dark, and as he looks up and sees his own gaze met with something sharp and blue and icy.

“Or what, Bajie?” 

His voice has an undercurrent of something familiar, another voice Pigsy recognizes.  He wracks his brain.

“What, don’t recognize me?  Not surprising, when only one of your troupe ever could.”

That has Pigsy stumbling back, because he knows, now, he knows what that means.  It’s a stain on his pride, one of his many regrets, it’s—

“Baigujing,” he breathes, and she laughs.

“In the flesh, so to speak.  Does he suit me?” she asks, tugging on Tang’s skin and hair like one might with clothes.

She frowns, tilts his head to the side at an unnatural angle. “I’m not a fan of red,” she tells him. Then Tang changes, hair black to white from the roots.  It travels down, red to blue, silver to gold.  His skin gains a blue tint, as well.  The air around them drops in temperature, and Pigsy can see his breath.

She brushes herself off, takes a little bow, and all Pigsy can see is Tang who isn’t—this isn’t—how did she—

She takes a confident step forward, and Pigsy, in all his rage, still only sees blue.

“You get out of him right now, or—”

In a flash, she pulls out a knife and presses it against Tang’s throat.  Pigsy sees a few spots of red from where she’s pressing the blade, and cool terror sinks down his spine.  She wouldn’t, would she?  He can’t be sure, with how she’s wielding the weapon like a promise.  He takes a step forward out of panic, and stops when she raises a brow. 

“You do anything but what I say, and I stain this new outfit.” She smiles, and it’s Tang’s smile, the one that Pigsy melts under the sight of every time.  

But here, now, he’s ice.  Fear roots him to the spot and Pigsy swallows the lump in his throat.

“And if I tell the others about ya when you aren’t looking at me?” he grinds out between gritted teeth.

She tilts her head to the side. “Why would they believe you?  After all, you wouldn’t believe your own brother,” Pigsy flinches, remembering how easy it was to get Triptaka to banish Wukong, because Bajie never would pass up an opportunity to call his brother a liar, to hurt him.  “Turnabout’s fair play, and you’re on the losing side.”

Pigsy clenches his fists.  He can feel the desire to get big, to roar, to tear her out of him, rise in his chest.  But this can’t be solved with violence, as easy as he wants it to be.  Pigsy has never been good at diplomacy.

“What do you want,” he spits out.

She brushes Tang’s hair out of her eyes.  They glow in the evening light, bright and malicious.

“I have a few errands, and while this mortal is useful, he is a bit...weak.” She flexes Tang’s fingers experimentally.  “You’re quite the muscle.  I think you’d be quite useful, hmm?”

Pigsy does know a challenge when he sees one, but this time, he’s backed into a corner, with no way out, so he slumps his shoulders.

“Alright.  Just….just don’t hurt him.” It comes out a tired plea.  “And stop-don’t ruin him like that.” He gestures to her getup.  He’s sure she’s only showing him this to hurt him, because he wants Tang.  Not whatever this abomination is.  Just practically, it would give her away if she didn’t change back. Though he’s not sure how much of a choice he gets, regardless. 

She sighs, but after a moment the pleasant red and gold return, and Tang’s hair is black again.

“Fine.  Picky, though,” she places Tang’s hand on his cheek, cupping the side of his face, and Pigsy’s cheeks warm.  When he looks up, everything about Tang looks normal, except the blue rims on the glasses.  He looks away.

“Tomorrow,” he tells her.  “We’ll start tomorrow.  And once-once I’m done, you’re out of him, got it?” 

He glares, and she smiles, Tang’s mouth curving into something more unhinged.  Brown eyes glow light blue.

“It’s a date.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tang doesn’t remember the few days that he disappears.  He doesn’t even remember disappearing, to be honest.  He just walks to the noodle shop as if nothing is wrong, because to him, nothing is.  

He can tell that something off, though.  Not wrong, but off, because when he walks the feeling of his feet against the ground is muted.  Everything is a little muted, like all of his senses are muffled by something.  He shakes his head a few times, to try and break through the fog.  It doesn’t work.

He waves at Pigsy when he walks in, and then nearly jumps when he’s grabbed.  He tries to open his mouth to say something, but suddenly everything goes cold, and he’s pushed back into his own head.  Someone else takes the reins, Something Else moves his lips.

Family emergency, he hears himself say.  He sees the reflection of himself in Pigsy’s eyes.  His glasses are different.  Pigsy notices.

He watches the Something Else make Pigsy very aware that the Something Else exists, and then he is thrown into the passenger’s seat.  When MK comes over to ask for a story, Tang is allowed to tell him one.  When Mei talks about her next race, Tang can avidly respond.

He keeps trying to explain that something’s wrong, to them, but when he opens his mouth to try and say the words nothing comes out, or the Something Else will say something.  A joke, or a fact, or nothing at all, and doesn’t silence sometimes speak the loudest.  

It knows too much about him and the longer he knows it’s in his head, the more he can feel it, cool tendrils poking into memories he’d rather have private.  It searches, it pries, and it leaves no stone left unturned, leaving Tang feeling vulnerable, invaded.

The day ends.  Pigsy asks to walk him home and Tang finds himself agreeing before he can stop himself, before it can.  He wonders if it even tried.

They walk, and it’s only a matter of time before Pigsy snaps.  Tang is honestly surprised it hasn’t happened sooner, when he’s unceremoniously thrown against the wall.  It hurts, but much like his other senses, the pain is muted.  He knows Pigsy isn’t using his full strength though.  Pigsy can throw people five times his size out the door with ease.

He follows the conversation with bated breath, and then he sees something like recognition flicker in Pigsy’s eyes, and he hears Baigujing, and it says Bajie, and—

Oh.

There’s a knife to his throat.  

He sees his reflection in Pigsy’s wide eyes.  His hair is white.  His eyes are a startling, glowing blue, and he can feel blood welling up where the knife pierces his skin.

Pigsy buckles.  Tang watches him leave.

“What do you want?” he asks, to the Something Else.

He gets farther and farther away from control with each step she takes in his skin, every moment he isn’t allowed to speak.  He can feel cool shackles on his wrists, thick as steel.

“You like him very much, don’t you?” A voice, chilling and cruel, rings in his ears.  Tang doesn’t need her to specify who she’s referencing.  They pass by a window, a storefront.  She stops, and turns to it, so Tang can see her smile with his mouth in the reflection.

Tang’s blood turns to ice, and he wonders if it’s because she’s the one in his body or if it’s just his fear, in the end.  She grins wider, and Tang’s helplessness and terror grow.

“I am going to break him, and you are going to watch.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The next day Pigsy is quiet.  He doesn’t say much besides telling MK to take out the orders placed on the counter.  His eyes occasionally flick to her, to Tang, to the thing sitting on the counter that looks familiar in looks alone.

Pigsy knows he has to remember.  He can’t forget that this isn’t Tang.  Even when he sees her sitting on the same barstool with that same smile, when she learns how Tang holds his chopsticks and learns how Tang eats, even when she is already perfecting something that everyone else sees is perfect.

This isn’t Tang.  Pigsy can’t forget that.

That night, she gestures for Pigsy to follow her.  He does, walking step by step with her, waiting for her to tell him what to do.  She takes him toward the marketplace, where Pigsy goes to get his ingredients a few times a month.

“You remember that Spider Queen, don’t you?  Quite the adventure we had,” she says, and Pigsy bristles at the implication.

“You weren’t there,” he growls out. 

She places a hand on Tang’s chest, expression one of mock offense.  “How could I not have been?  I mean, you were there with me. Is this not the skin?” she tugs on the fleshy part of Tang’s wrist, hard enough that the skin goes red.  

Pigsy says nothing, and shrugs.  

“Regardless, the Spider Queen will get in my way if she isn’t handled, so you’ll take care of her.  Better to squash a bug before it grows.” She points to the Spider Queen’s stall.

“I don’t kill anymore,” Pigsy grunts.

He hasn’t for years.  He took that part of himself and locked it away, made himself small because he wanted people to feel safe around him without being scared of what he could do.  He doesn’t kill.  He makes people food, he doesn’t harm them more than any other mortal could.

The knife is back out, and Pigsy knows where she’ll imply it going.

“I do,” she purrs.  “And you’re mine, so you do too.”

Pigsy clenches his fists, and shifts.

He’d imagined showing Tang his demon form.  Imagined preparing for months, carefully explaining.  Imagined going someplace remote, someplace theirs, and revealing himself.  Imagined scenarios where Tang ran, imagined scenarios where Tang stayed.

He grows tall, and burly, and looming and powerful.  He’s about eight feet tall, here, with the muscles to match the height.  His rake appears in his hand, prongs sharp.  It’s as tall as he is, and the prongs are longer than his forearm.  She looks up at him with an impressed expression that looks wrong on Tang’s face, yet makes Pigsy’s cheeks burn anyway.

“Magnificent,” she breathes, and he shivers at the sound.

He holds his rake tight, setting it on his shoulder and glancing over to the stall.  He tries to stop his hands from shaking, as she leads him to the entrance.

“Give me a lift, won’t you dear?” she asks and Pigsy grits his teeth.

He lifts Tang up, gentle with his body because even if Tang isn’t the one asking Pigsy will be damned if he hurts him like this, and they descend.

The Spider Queen’s lair is as eerie as he remembers it, though it seems to have been upgraded.  There are pods of glowing green liquid everywhere, and a computer as well.  He catches what looks like a human bent over it, tapping at keys and sighing to himself.

“Is it done yet?  The world needs its Queen to return.” He hears her voice from the right, and shifts a little to hide as she comes in.  The man at the computer stiffens, and turns around at perfect attention, bowing.

“U-Unfortunately, such a complex undertaking is going to take more time, my Queen,” the man trembles out.

“What are you waiting for?” Tang’s voice slithers into his ear, and Pigsy fights back the urge to growl, letting out a huff of a breath and narrowing his eyes in annoyance.

“An opening,” he replies.

“This has to be done by New Years!  I want to start the Year of the Spider on time,” she growls the last part out.

“Y-Yes, my Queen,” The scientist replies.

She turns away, and that’s when Pigsy jumps down.  She just barely dodges his rake and Tang jumps off of his shoulder to settle in the shadows.  Fine.  Now Pigsy doesn’t have to worry about him getting caught in the crossfire.

The Spider Queen recovers quickly, getting into a battle stance.  She gives him a once over, and then smirks.

“So the pig is back to fight, hmm?  I would have liked to see you in this form last time,” She purrs out the words, chuckling to herself.

Pigsy charges without response.  He swings his rake, she ducks, throwing out a sharp leg.  He blocks with his arm and grunts when the blade edge of her leg digs in.  He lifts a leg and kicks her, no holds barred where her humanesque body and her spider body meet.  A weak point.

She lets out a shout of rage as she’s knocked back.  He slices to the right, knocking off her helmet.  Long, messy black hair tumbles down in front of her face.  She pushes it back, darts forward, throwing out some webs.

He dodges the first few, but one catches him by the foot, trapping him to the floor.  He twists and dodges as best he can when he can’t move, but she’s closing in.

He throws out the rake, in a last ditch attempt as she goes in for the killing blow, and catches her neck between two of the prongs, following through with the swing, bringing her crashing down onto her side.

“Fool!” she grits out, twisting her legs to try and stand.  “I am the Queen of this world!  I will feed you to my subjects, you—”

Pigsy twists the rake in one sharp motion.

Crack.

She goes very silent, and very still.  Pigsy breathes, as her body slumps down on itself.

Okay.  

Pigsy slowly, carefully, pulls away the rake.  

He waits for movement.  He finds none.

Okay.

“Do try and make sure she stays dead.”

He jumps at the sound, turning around to see Tang.

Tang is watching.  Tang.  Tang watched—

Not Tang.  He has to remember that.

Her eyes glitter in the low light.

“A broken neck can be fixed.  Make sure she can’t come back.  Wouldn’t want to have to deal with a vengeful Queen, right?” She gestures to the corpse.

Pigsy grips his rake tightly.

The prongs go through flesh far too easily.

He thinks they’re about done, but then she points to the computer.  More specifically, to the man cowering beneath the control panel of the computer.

“No witnesses,” she says. “Get rid of him.”

Pigsy is frozen in his spot.

“Please,” the man begs. “I didn’t want to help, I had no choice!  She was going to kill me-I-I’ll destroy everything I did!  I’ll delete the code.  Everything!”

“You misunderstand.” Tang-she-walks carefully towards the cowering mortal.  “We didn’t do this to save the world.  We did this to get her out of my way.”

Dawning horror flashes on the man’s face.

Pigsy hesitates.  A demon is one thing, this is just a mortal.  A human.  Pigsy glances at the man, and imagines her pointing him at MK.  Or Mei.  He couldn’t.  He can’t.

“Would you rather I do this?” She pulls out the knife, pointing it at the man.  “I know you prefer him in red, though I hear blood is difficult to get off clothes.”

At the thought of Tang, who could be still in there, having to watch himself kill, Pigsy moves.

The man hedges his bets and runs.  He ducks under the knife and Pigsy’s outstretched arm, sprints toward the exit, but Pigsy’s arm swings around after him.  He can’t take more than a step forward because his foot is still stuck by the webs, but his legs are long and his arms much the same.  He reaches over in a panic, and grabs the man by the head, aiming to muffle his shouting, stop him from doing anything while Pigsy tries to negotiate, when—

There’s a sickening crunch, and squelch, and the man goes limp.

Pigsy is very, very aware of the liquid dripping from between the spaces of his fingers.  He’s afraid to open his hand.

She claps, then is at his side, cutting him free of the webs.

“Good work.” She pats him on the side.

Pigsy trembles.  Slowly, he opens his hand.

All of his body falls but the head. The head.

Pieces drop, clattering or squishing or dripping.  Pigsy’s hand is covered in it. Hair clings to his fingers.  Skin folds in on itself on the ground, with nothing solid to hold it taut.

Pigsy feels like he’s going to be sick.  He didn’t mean….he hasn’t taken this form in years, decades, he isn’t used to the power it holds.  He didn’t mean to, he was panicked, he just, he needed the man to stop.  That was it, it wasn’t on purpose, he didn’t mean—

“Feels good,” she whispers in his ear, somehow.  “Doesn’t it?”

Pigsy stumbles away, trying to shake the pieces, the blood, the person off of his hand.  He trips over the Spider Queen’s body and crashes into the computer, destroying it.  His knees pull toward his chest as he tries to breathe.  

It takes a good minute for him to realize that she’s rubbing a hand up and down his back in a comforting manner.  He looks down at her, because even sitting he’s taller, and her smile is—that’s not hers.  

“Tang?” his voice is hoarse.  His tusks always get in the way of speaking.

Tang smiles.  It’s soft, pitying, almost sympathetic.

Pigsy feels himself melt, a little.  It’s almost familiar.

“It’s okay,” Tang says, but is it him?  Pigsy doesn’t know if he wants it to be.  A part of him craves the comfort of something familiar, another doesn’t want Tang to see him at his worst, covered in blood, with a body count.

“That’s enough for tonight,” Tang says, she says, Pigsy can’t tell.  His head is already trying to process what he’s done.  “Let’s go.  C’mon.”

Pigsy lets himself be helped up.  He lifts Tang onto his shoulder and climbs out of the cave, shivering when the chilly night air whips past him.  He still has a few hours before he has to get up for work.  He sets Tang down on the ground, shifts back to his smaller form.

Tang looms over him like this.  Pigsy regrets becoming small.

“Shall we?” Tang gestures towards Pigsy’s apartment.

Pigsy nods, and they walk home.  Once they arrive, Tang heads to the couch, and Pigsy to the bathroom.  He scrubs and scrubs at his hands, until the water stops turning pink and then some.  His palms burn, skin scraping against skin, but he can see the pieces that can’t fit in the drain.

He vomits, finally, in the toilet.  He coughs, wiping his mouth, and hunches over the sink, glancing at himself in the mirror.  Deep breaths.  He just needs to remember that this will be over, eventually.

“I’m going to bed,” he calls, as he leaves the bathroom.  

His hands are still shaking.  His throat burns, and he lets it, maybe as a punishment.  He doesn’t know.

“Goodnight!” Comes a voice that sounds too much like the real thing.  Pigsy takes in a shuddering breath and vanishes into his bedroom.

He curls underneath the blankets and tries to get the cold feeling to escape his bones.  It seems to settle in, regardless.

It takes him a long time to fall asleep.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Whatever Tang had imagined she’d make Pigsy do, it wasn’t this.  He watches as they head to the market, and then as Pigsy changes, per her request.

He wonders if Pigsy would have ever shown him this form otherwise.  As is, Tang is terrified, but not of Pigsy.  He’s worried for Pigsy.  Because he knows the power Zhu Bajie can wield. here He knows that she knows, too.

Watching Pigsy fight and kill is as impressive as it is heartbreaking.  He can see the shock, the horror, as Pigsy grapples with his actions.  Tang can’t fight the revulsion when he sees Pigsy kill the poor bystander but at the same time he can’t hate him for it.  

He could never hate Pigsy foremost, but in this instance, he can’t hold this carnage against him. Not when Pigsy curls in on himself, his bigger form trying to be as small as possible.  Not when he won’t look at his own blood-stained hands.

He moves to take a step, stumbles as she throws him the controls.  The longer he isn’t allowed to do anything, to speak, to move, the harder it is to get used to doing it when he has control.  He wonders if he’ll forget how to walk eventually.  He wonders if he’ll forget how to breathe.

He tries to comfort.  He’s not allowed to tell Pigsy that it’s him, because she won’t let him, but he can comfort, because she needs Pigsy functioning for this to work.  Maybe Tang should be offended that she’s using him, but truthfully,  he just wants to do something to help Pigsy.  He can’t just stand aside to watch.  It’s almost worth being used if he’s used to help.

Pigsy looks at him, then.  Tang wants to apologize.  To beg for Pigsy to stop. He doesn’t know if Pigsy can recognize that it’s him, either.  The words don’t make it to his throat and she throws him into the backseat again.

When they get home, Pigsy stays in the bathroom for too long.  Tang hears the sound of retching and winces.  He wishes he could do something, say something.

As he falls asleep, he still wishes he could apologize.  For something.  Anything.  Everything.

He can’t feel his legs.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The next morning, Pigsy gets up and heads to work.  Tang is sitting upright on the couch.  Pigsy pointedly doesn’t look at him, quick while making breakfast, eating, and grabbing his chef’s coat before heading to the shop.  He typically starts two hours before opening, setting up the dough, stringing out noodles.

He’s slow, today.  His hands shake as he tries to work, he’s halfway to where he’s supposed to be when MK comes down, on time for once.  He forces himself to speed up because he knows calls will be coming in soon.

He sets the broth to boil, stirring once, glancing down at it to check its progress, and—

It’s red.

It’s red and it’s spilling from his fingers, sticky and thick as it falls into the broth, the stench of it has him trembling violently enough that the spoon slips from his fingers.  Pieces of hair and bone bubble up from the bottom, and Pigsy sees an empty eye socket, staring at him in terror, pleading horror, begging for mercy.

He grabs the pot and pours it into the sink, he can’t let anyone see it, can’t let anyone know what he’s done, the stains settling deep into his skin with no way out, no way to make it disappear.  A man is dead.  A man is dead and Pigsy killed him and it’s everywhere and everyone is going to know and he has to get rid of it.

When he pours it into the drain, there’s not a spot of red in it.  He watches his half an hour’s worth of work disappear with an unsteady breath, setting the pot back on the stove and washing his hands.  The water boils his fingers.

“Uh...Pigsy?” MK calls.  

Pigsy turns and does not look in the direction where he knows Tang will be.  He catches MK’s expression, brow is pinched in concern.

“What?” He doesn’t mean to growl the words out as he does.

“Um, why’d you do that?  It looked almost ready,” MK points to the now empty pot.

Pigsy hides his shaking hands by clenching them into fists. “Bad batch,” He replies, succinct.

When he glances MK’s way, he imagines how easy it would be for him to repeat last night.  Would it sound the same, the skull crunching in his grip quick, or would MK’s Monkey King powers offer enough resistance so that it’d be slow?  

Pigsy remembers his old name, his old title, his old desires.  He would fight with Sun Wukong and enjoy it.  He is powerful, then and now.

He promised himself he wouldn’t be that person again, that he’d be better.  But looking back at that journey, is it any wonder that he’s so quickly fallen back into the same bad habits?  Zhu Bajie was rude, cruel, a liar.

Why’d Pigsy expect that he could change?

“A shame.” 

He nearly jumps, at the sound of her voice, his voice. He glances at the blue rimmed glasses, brown eyes.  Warm and cold.

“It looked delicious, at least,” Tang says, head resting on his palm.  He smiles, soft.

Pigsy looks away.

He gets back to work.

Some of her jobs are simple.  Break something, find an artifact.  Pigsy learns not to ask questions, because none of the answers give him much comfort.  Occasionally, Pigsy will get his hands messy, stained with the blood of demons.  Those nights he barely sleeps, too busy trying to scrape the dried liquid from beneath his fingernails.

He justifies it, even though there is no true justification for the carnage.  Thankfully, there haven’t been any more mortal deaths.  The demons he fights are bad, he thinks, as he watches them bleed out on the floor.  The demons he fights would be going after MK if he didn’t get rid of them first.  

MK mentions offhandedly that there haven’t been as many demon fights recently.  Pigsy horrifies himself with the sick satisfaction he feels, the pride that swells in his chest.

He’s able to justify his actions, but it doesn’t fix the gaping hole in his chest with every swing of his rake.  The worst part, he thinks, is that it’s becoming easier to do.  There’s a certain familiar numbness that comes with a higher and higher body count.  He went through it thousands of years ago, when he first began fighting, and he goes through it now.

It settles in faster this time.  Must be his experience.

He stays in the kitchen more often during the day.  Ignores the banter between MK and Mei when they barrel in, only half hears the stories shared.  He tries to lose himself in the motions of cooking, something that’s his, safe.  He can still do this.  So he’s fine.

She’s always there, either at the counter during the day or by his side at night.  Pigsy makes a few valiant attempts to text someone, to tell them what’s happening, but she steals his phone and Pigsy isn’t allowed to touch it.  She nearly cut off Tang’s finger when he attempted to take it back.  He stops trying.

She follows him when he goes out, whether it be to the market or just on walks.  No one raises an eyebrow at this—Pigsy has always stuck close to Tang, and vice versa.  To the outside world, this is normal.  She can tease and cloy and claw her way close to him and it’s just the silly antics everyone else expects.  Any reaction Pigsy has is normal too, when he shouts and rages and pushes Tang away, because that’s just how he reacts.  He’s loud and he’s mad.

He’s being played and he’s playing right into her clutches, but he doesn’t know what he can do.

Pigsy is so tired.  Some days, he manages to convince himself that things will be fine, soon.  He has to think it will be. If the demons were stronger than him, he thinks, maybe they’d deserve to live.

If they were stronger than him, maybe he’d get to stop.

Another development, one he can’t wrestle his feelings together on, is how Tang, how she, acts during their expeditions.  There are lingering touches across his back, fingers trailing on his neck, a palm cupping his cheek.  Sweet smiles thrown his way, gentle words whispered into his ear, arms curling around his form as he’s pressed against Tang’s body.

Every time he freezes, caught between revulsion and want, because he loves.  Desperately.

That’s why he’s doing this after all.  That’s why he even bothers.  Sleepless nights, reopened wounds, returns to bad habits—it’s all for a man Pigsy cares just a little too much for.

She gets bolder with each passing night.  Interlaces their fingers when he sets his hand on the counter during the day.  Sends him compliments that make him weak in the knees.  He knows that it’s not Tang, but sometimes he wonders.  Maybe hopes. 

Because she’ll smile at him, but it'll be Tang’s smile, soft and almost a smirk but never quite there.  He doesn’t know if that means Tang is still in there or if she’s just getting better at pretending to be him.

He doesn’t know which is worse.

It’s a little over a month later, one night after a job that leaves Pigsy’s hands bloody and his eyes weary, that he gives way, collapses in on himself.  He grabs Tang’s scarf in shaky hands and trembles, because he’s so tired.  He misses his best friend. He misses the person he’d do anything for, the person he’s doing the unspeakable for.

“Please,” he whispers, voice hoarse.  “Take me-just-I’m stronger than him-I won’t fight back, you can do all the damage you want just—” he chokes on the words.  “Give him back to me.  You can have me, just give him back.” 

He takes a shuddering breath, blinking away tears.  They fall down his face anyway.

“Please.”

He trembles against Tang, something familiar made foreign because she’s stolen it from him, against something as silence fills the space.

Soft hands lift his chin and he hears a chuckle so familiar.  He hates that doesn’t know who is laughing.

“Oh, Pigsy,” And it’s her, and it’s Tang, and Pigsy searches for understanding as a thumb brushes away his tears.  She, Tang, leans down until their eyes are level.

Pigsy searches for something familiar in them.  

His favorite color is the color of Tang’s eyes, brown with a hint of red, soft and warm.  

“Why would I need you, when you’re already giving yourself to me?”

And then Tang-she-his lips collide with Pigsy’s and-and-and—

Pigsy’s eyes are wide.  This is-he’s wanted this for years, it’s everything, nothing, all at once.

He shouldn’t like this.  This isn’t-it isn’t Tang.  But Pigsy is pressed against the wall as Tang’s body leans forward, like everything Pigsy has ever wanted, and Pigsy closes his eyes.  He closes his eyes and forgets, just for a moment, where he is and what’s happening, decides to be selfish.

When his eyes are closed, he can’t see anything.  He can only feel Tang’s hands on the sides of his face, holding him so tenderly, Pigsy’s hands still bunched up in that scarf.  He can’t see the glowing blue eyes, or the smirk, he can only feel the smile against his lips.

Tang pulls away first.  Pigsy drops his hands and nearly trips over himself, eyes wide open again to blue eyes and a wide smile and a laugh that is cruel and knowing.  

“My, my, that sure was something!  You really are desperate, aren’t you?” she says.

Pigsy wipes his mouth, trembling.  He feels sick, not because he didn’t like it, but because he did.  Does.  

“You-I—” he tries to explain himself, but she tuts and walks forward with a small smile on her face, patting him on the head like one would a dog.

“It’s alright, I understand.  For a mortal, he is attractive.” She fiddles with Tang’s hair.

Pigsy wants to throw up.  He wants to scream.  He wants to throttle her, but he can’t hurt Tang.  

He might have already.

How much does Tang see, does Tang feel?  Did he see this, feel this?  Did he watch Pigsy use him, like the monster he is, because Pigsy is selfish?  The thoughts spiral deeper and deeper into something self destructive and Pigsy bites on his thumb hard enough to make it bleed.

“If it’s any consolation, he loves you too,” she says, and Pigsy freezes.  “Do you think he never noticed how your hand would twitch toward his?  You’re terribly obvious, but he’s a coward as well.”

Pigsy feels his breathing pick up.

Tang, he, he love-loved?  Past tense, did Pigsy ruin it?  Did he break something he never even had?  Might not ever have, now?

A hand trails across his back and Pigsy shudders.

“No need to worry.” She leans in close, until Pigsy can feel her cool breath against his ear.  “If you’re good, I think I can make this happen again.”

And then she walks away, leaving him in the wreckage.  Pigsy breathes, clenches and unclenches his fists, fighting back the urge to cry because he doesn’t have the energy for more tears.  He moves to leave, when—

“It seems you do have a bit of control left,” he hears, right before she’s out of earshot.

Everything goes cold.

What does that mean?  Was the kiss...was that Tang?  Or was it-what does that mean?

The more he thinks about it, the more his head goes through loops.  Tang is in there.  Tang has control-some, a bit, no specifics.  Pigsy isn’t a thinker, he doesn’t know how possession works.  Maybe-maybe Pigsy isn’t as terrible as he thinks he is.  Maybe that means, maybe, it wasn’t all a lie?

His walk home takes ten minutes longer than it should.  He keeps bringing up his fingers to his mouth, tracing the spaces where Tang’s lips slotted into, like a perfect puzzle.  Every part of him she touched tingles like static, and Pigsy can’t think, can’t find a single thought.  If it wasn’t Tang, if it was just her...

He doesn’t know how to cope with the fact that he doesn’t want this.  Not like this.

He doesn’t know how to cope with the fact that deep down, he does.  Regardless.

What kind of monster does that make him?  

Is it worse than the one he already is?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tang is quiet when she kisses Pigsy.  He doesn’t feel anything, touch long lost to his senses, floating in empty space.  Some days, he doesn’t know where he ends and she begins but he knows that he has no weight to himself, not anymore.

He’s quiet, an ache in his chest growing ever painful as Pigsy gives in, and he wonders if it would have been like this if it were him.  Something in the heat of the moment, passionate, real.

He wonders and grieves a life he isn’t having.  She uses his mouth and whispers sickly sweet nothings and turns Pigsy around so that Tang isn’t sure that Pigsy knows what’s up and what’s down.  She walks away and leaves Pigsy to try and collect himself, and all Tang wants to do is say sorry.

For what, he isn’t sure.  This isn’t his doing.  But that was him all the same.  

Tang bows his head and sniffles.  He watches her wipe his eyes.

“It seems you do have a bit of control left,” she says, staring down at the tears in his palm.  She flicks the water away.  “Get over yourself.  If you wanted this, you should have made it happen.  You had plenty of time.”

And the worst part, Tang thinks, is that with the years he’s known Pigsy, he knows she’s right.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Pigsy tries to keep some semblance of normalcy after that, though it’s hard.  He can feel Tang’s eyes on him, gaze lingering as Pigsy moves, day after day.  He tries to keep his cheeks from flushing, tries from reacting at all, when Tang looks his way.  He forces himself to remember that the kiss wasn’t right, wasn’t Tang.

But at the same time he can’t forget what he heard.  What it could mean.  Pigsy has mired himself in despair so deeply that the scrap of hope he feels is enough to keep him teetering on the edge of something dangerous, something selfish.  

There’s a change in the air between them, he knows. MK and Mei notice too, as much as he tries to keep this from them, keep them safe.  He doesn’t want them trapped, like he is.  He couldn’t handle it if they were.

“You guys have been acting weird.” Mei hops up to the counter as she speaks, glancing between Tang and Pigsy with squinted eyes.

“Oh?” Tang asks, leaning his head on his hand.

Not Tang.

“Yeah, you guys have been real clingy,” MK slings an arm around Mei’s shoulders, rubbing his chin with his hand.  

Mei brightens.

“You guys have finally gotten together, haven’t you!” She points an accusatory finger at the both of them.

Pigsy freezes.  Flushes from his feet all the way up to the tips of his ears, and Tang laughs, a soft, sweet, bell of a laugh.

“Were we that obvious?” Tang chuckles into his sleeve.

Mei bounces in her seat, and MK looks away, a little flustered himself at the idea.

“Uh, totally!  We, uh, we both saw this coming.  Yeah.” Pigsy would laugh at MK’s poor attempt at a lie if he wasn’t frozen in place, stuck between horror and something else he can’t acknowledge.

Some part of him wants to pretend this is real.  Some part of him, growing with every passing second, wants to play along until he forgets it’s a game.  Because he’s been fed emptiness and sadness and helplessness and, suddenly, there’s this hope—maybe false, maybe real, dangling in front of him.  

There’s something good, and something kind, and something Pigsy needs.  Something so cold it becomes warm and Pigsy would like to be warm.

“How’d it happen!  I want details!” Mei leans forward, face a few inches away from Tang’s, and Pigsy fights the urge to pull her away from him.  He doesn’t know if it’s because he wants to keep her safe or him.

Tang goes into a story, dipping into the tone he would with Monkey King tales, and Pigsy feels the edges of static crawling up his neck, a high pitched tone drowning out the noise of conversation as he tries to make sense of the situation he’s in.

How did he even get to this point?  He traces back memory after memory, but nothing makes sense.  The pieces don’t fall into place, even as he finds each and every one to try and put it all together.  It’s like someone has sanded the edges down, or covered them in ice, so they slip and scrape against each other.  Pigsy stands still, and slowly swivels his head to glance at his family, Mei and MK and Tang, all situated at his counter, like they’ve always belonged.

He keeps reminding himself that it isn’t Tang, not really.  But is it so terrible to pretend?  When he’s already worse than he’s ever been?

“It was really special.  Right, Pigsy?” Tang turns to him with an expectant grin, and Pigsy flushes again, a color Tang once told him was a dusty rose.  

He doesn’t snap.  He bends, because when you bend, the cracks are slow to break.  And Pigsy has always taken things slow, hasn’t he?

“Right.” He steps forward, his hand beneath Tang’s chin.  Tang has always been the most handsome person Pigsy has ever seen, and how could that change, even with blue rims?

Tang’s lips brush against the side of his face, for the effect of MK and Mei’s groans, and Pigsy smiles.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tang trusts Pigsy with his life

That goes without saying.  As he forgets what it feels like to move his fingers, as he forgets what taste is, he knows above all else that he can trust Pigsy with his life.  

After all, Pigsy is why he’s alive at all.  Anyone else would have buckled under the pressure by now, being the slave of the Baigujing.  Anyone else would have made a mistake that would have left Tang a bleeding corpse on the ground.

Pigsy shoulders on, regardless of everything, because he values Tang’s life above all else.  Tang knows this.  That’s why he trusts Pigsy.

But things are changing, just a little.  Pigsy’s desperation for something real, for Tang as he’s meant to be, is dying.  Somehow, she’s bewitched the love of his life into something that is becoming unrecognizable.  And Tang, though he is losing the memory of touch, of taste, of movement, finds this somehow more terrifying, more horrifying.  

To see Pigsy vanish, just as Tang did, with no one making him disappear but himself.

Pigsy leans into her false touches.  He melts into the kisses she forces upon him.  His resistance falls slow and Tang can do nothing but watch and wonder quietly, as numbness threatens to swallow him whole.

He trusts Pigsy with his life.

But he doesn’t know which life Pigsy is trying to save.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It keeps happening.

At night, when he gets moments of clarity, when he remembers how awful everything is, Tang will be there with honeyed words and precious touches to sweep Pigsy off of his feet and forget.  Pigsy will be horrified by the sight of death in one moment and locked in an embrace in the next, kissed with a passion he can’t help but return.

“You’re so strong,” Tang will say, with reverence to his tone.  “It’s incredible.”

Not Tang.

Pigsy will fight against the pride that comes from the compliment, then fail every time to stifle it.  Because he is strong, incredibly so, and he is powerful, and he can swipe through any demon with ease.

Nevermind the brothers, crying out for each other when he’d separated them, the way one had gone pale and quiet when the other went still, because they were a pair made one.  You can’t kill a pair at the same time, unfortunately.

Pigsy knows he should feel guilty, should fight more.  Knows that this isn’t right, it isn’t real.  It’s so easy to forget, though, so easy to cling to something good when everything else hurts.

It’s so easy to set aside the memories of how wrong it all is.  So easy to hide it all away, focus on the elation, the kind smiles, the gentle touches.  Tang washes blood off of Pigsy’s hands when they get home—it’s their home, how could he forget—and curls up with Pigsy in the night, holding him close, and Pigsy clings, because he needs this.  Needs something that makes him feel like things are okay.

The thoughts reminding him that this isn’t Tang start to slip through Pigsy’s fingers.  He finds himself relaxing around the shop, smiling when he sees Tang at his seat, squeezing back when Tang interlocks their fingers.

Why fight it?  Sometimes it hurts, and god does it, but there’s something so lovely about it now, everything he ever wanted with a price he’s fine paying.

When you take a pig out of its domestic environment, it easily turns wild.  Hair, tusks, a penchant for violence.  And Pigsy hasn’t been out of his domestic environment in years, but he’s a pig, in the end, lost in the wilderness of an icy forest and blue eyes.

“Hey, Pigsy?” MK’s voice comes from behind him.

Pigsy turns from his work to see his boy at the counter, wiping it down as he waits for orders to come in.

“What?” He glances between the pot and MK, deciding the pot will be fine for a few seconds.

“Are you doing okay?  You, uh, you’ve been kind of quiet,” MK rubs the back of his neck, awkwardly.

Pigsy opens his mouth and closes it.  He glances to the empty seat.  Tang’s empty seat.

He doesn’t actually know where Tang has gone, but it’s so rare for it to happen.  Pigsy tries to remember the last time Tang wasn’t in his spot during the day, but tracing memories that far back is like poking at the wreckage of a shattered pot; you’re bound to draw blood.

The tiny vestiges of resistance crawl from ash and leave burning fingerprints on the forefront of his mind.

Tell him, he hears himself think.  Tell him!  This is your chance!

But the truth is so, so painful, and Pigsy doesn’t have it in himself to shatter this equilibrium.  Isn’t it so much kinder to let it settle beneath the surface, to hide the pain and make it so no one knows at all?  He doesn’t want MK to look at him with horror and disgust.  He doesn’t want to have to try to fix something that might be broken beyond repair.

This is nice.  This is okay.  He’s happy like this.  Why ruin it?

He reaches over and ruffles MK’s hair.  MK playfully smacks his hands away, and Pigsy chuckles.

“It’s my job to worry about you, kid,” he tells him.  “I’m fine.  Orders will be out in a minute.”

He waves MK off, and goes back to cooking.

Tang appears a minute later, in his seat.

“Hey,” Pigsy hears, and he turns, leaning on the little divider between the kitchen and the dining area.

“Hey, yourself,” he replies, and Tang smiles and kisses him soundly.  Pigsy’s brain short circuits.

“What was that for?” He asks, something like incredulous elation in his voice as he laughs.

Tang’s face screams victory.  Pigsy wonders what he’s won.

“Oh, I just felt like it.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He supposes he has his answer.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He’s finishing up another job at the end of the month when Tang claps his hands together.

“Well, I think that’s it,” he says and Pigsy freezes, realizing what may come.  “I don’t really have any other errands to run, and you’ve done your end of the bargain.  I’ll be out by morning.”

No, Tang can’t go, he can’t.  If Tang leaves, then what will Pigsy be?  He needs this.  Tang, Tang’s good for him.

He whirls around, and a hand reaches over to rest on Tang’s shoulder.  Tang.  Tang is good.

“I-wait-but,” Pigsy finds it so hard to articulate his thoughts nowadays.

He’s always been the muscle, Tang is the smart one.  Pigsy is good at doing, not talking.  He shouldn’t speak when everything comes out scrambled anyway.

“Use your words, now, dear,” Tang says, and Pigsy melts, like he always does.  How can he not, when Tang is looking at him like that?  Like Pigsy is his?

“I want to-you can stay-can you?  I need you to stay.  Please?”

Because Tang makes Pigsy feel whole, makes Pigsy feel loved.  He can do whatever Tang wants him to do, whatever Tang needs, Pigsy will make it happen.

Tang’s fingers trail down Pigsy’s face.  Pigsy leans into the touch, even though Tang’s fingers are cold.  Tang feels cold, but that’s okay.  Pigsy doesn’t mind.

“Oh, Pigsy,” and it’s Tang.  Pigsy searches for understanding, as a thumb brushes away his fears, soft.  Tang leans down until their eyes are level.  Pigsy finds familiarity in them, like he’s known them for an eternity.

His favorite color is the color of Tang’s eyes, blue with a hint of white, hard and cold.  

“All you had to do is ask,” Tang leans forward, and his lips brush against Pigsy’s, and Pigsy leans in.

It’s everything he’s ever wanted.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

When ice touches the ocean, there is no crash.  The ocean fights back against the shift in form at first, but eventually is quieted by the power ice wields.  The ice smothers, the ice settles on top as a slate, and the sea goes still, everything hidden beneath, never to reach the surface.

Tang watches, from the prison in his mind, and the cuffs  on his wrists are so much tighter.  He can't feel where the cuffs end and his arms begin. He can’t feel his hands. He can’t feel anything.  All he has left is his vision, which is more a cruelty than a blessing.

When ice meets the earth it fills in the crevices left by time and expands, cracking stones apart and leaving it crumbling in its wake.

Tang curls in on himself as she shows him a kiss he never got to give, as Pigsy leans in with no hesitation, lost in something Tang can’t save him from.  He curls away from the sight and tries to pretend that things can get better, that they can be saved, but he doesn’t know.  Not when it hurts this much.  Not when he’s lost this much.

Something like betrayal rests bitterly in his stomach.  Pigsy left him.  For an imitation, Pigsy left him, and Tang knows there’s more there, knows there has to be, has seen it unravel, but it doesn’t change the fact.  

Pigsy made his choice, and Tang is the one suffering the consequences.

Tang crumbles quietly.  He doesn’t even know, here, if he has eyes to cry from.  It feels like he’s crying.

It feels like he’s screaming. No one hears. Even him.

If the water is still, it does not crash against the earth.  There is no tide, and the earth remains unchanging.  Except, even without the waves, time erodes it all.

Tang has nothing but himself and time.

[ronsenburg]

Hi! I wanted to ask you something about Klapollo. What topic/argument do you think could possibly cause them to break up or take a break from the relationship? I live for the drama and was thinking about maybe writing a fic but like I dont want to make either of them assholes, like Apollo bringing Kristoph up to hurt Klavier, for example. I don't think he would do that but I struggle to come up with something else.

Oh boy, I hope you’re not upset about this, but I wrote you an essay. I’m sorry.

Overall, I really like the klapollo relationship timeline because, compared to, say, narumi/su they have a much more normal, organic story. They meet, flirt, share a mutual trauma, get together! Totally normal! But I also think that they would have a much harder time than narumi/su finding the balance you need in a serious relationship and I can see them calling it quits for perfectly practical reasons that aren’t really anything to do with one being a jerk, you know? Here are my top things that I think they would have to navigate and maybe struggle with before a real happily ever after:

1. Money. You’ve probably seen my post where I talk about Apollo feeling uncomfortable with displays of affluence. I don’t think that this is an easy one to get past. AA6 Spoilers, but Dhurke and Datz literally raised them in hiding on the run in the mountainous jungles of Khura’in. They sent Apollo to the states as a nine year old. We don’t know what he did when he got here, but my money’s always been on the foster system. That doesn’t typically breed a sense of stability, financial or otherwise. 

From my experience (so take it with a grain of salt), children who grow up with very little tend to behave in one of two ways when they reach financial stability and/or achieve wealth: first option, they’re really bad with it. They spend it nearly as fast as they make it on things they didn’t get to have or experience when they were growing up. Second option, they never spend it. They know what it’s like to be without, so they save as much of it as they can so they have the security of knowing, if something happens, they won’t have to go back to the way it was before. I will always put Apollo in the latter category. He works hard for what he has and what he gets and, I think, things that signify extravagance make him uncomfortable. On the other hand, I think that the Gavin’s have always had some sort of wealth. Klavier and Kristoph have very different aesthetics to their spaces that we get to experience (Klavier’s office and Kristoph’s cell) but they’re both pretty lavish. Now, we can assume they each made their money individually in their respective careers but, honestly, Kristoph’s cell is so gaudy. To me, it screams “this is what I’m used to and I refuse to accept any less” which is an attitude that I feel comes more from a lifetime of that treatment. 

So if we accept everything that I’ve said above as true, trying to put a person who saves every penny they get and feels bad treating themselves with a person who spends money freely because it’s been a constant throughout their life? It can go poorly. Casually dating, maybe it’s not such an issue once Apollo says “please no more presents and can we just get takeout for once?” but if you’re talking about something more serious, where you have to live in the same space and pay joint bills and be confronted with the other person’s spending habits constantly, it’s a whole other thing. Please take it from me as a person in a long term relationship who loves their partner tremendously—everyone fights about money. Everyone. It would be very difficult for Apollo to feel comfortable, even if he knew that finances were in good shape and there was savings, etc. Things happen, people leave. Nothing gold can stay. Changing that line of thinking takes work. It would also be easier said than done for Klavier to just do an about face on his own habits for Apollo’s comfort. Being a celebrity makes money, but it costs money, too. There is a certain amount of lushness that people expect. That can’t just go away. These are things that become bigger problems overtime, no matter how much you love each other. 

Anyway, I would be really surprised if—even if you’re writing them as really happily married—Apollo doesn’t have a ‘emergency fund’ that even Klavier doesn’t know about. It’s a ‘just in case’. Just in case Klavier leaves him. Just in case he needs to get away fast. Just in case the world ends. It’s not a logical thing, something that he sat down and rationalized doing, it’s just there because it feels better to have it than to not. But that can be kind of hurtful if the other person finds out about it, so. There you go, a whole minefield of money related drama.

2. Apollo’s Abandonment Issues. He’s got them! What do you call and orphan twice over who also lost his very best friend? I don’t know, but if capcom doesn’t stop picking on my boy I’m going to kick them in the teeth. I will still never get over AA6 for telling us that Dhurke took Apollo in when he was orphaned as a baby, then abandoned him in the USA, then came back for him and got his hopes up, and then was actually dead the whole time! Hahahaha! What a trip! 

Anyway, you don’t come back from that super easy. People who suffer this kind of trauma usually have a really hard time trusting others, which is understandable. They also can have unrealistic needs from their partners, become codependent, or even just self-sabotage their relationships, pulling away first to try and avoid the pain because they think the other person will leave them. I think that last one is most likely for Apollo, especially given the disparity in circumstances I mentioned above. If Apollo can’t trust that Klavier actually loves him, can’t trust that he won’t leave him like EVERYONE ELSE HAS, then they can’t have a healthy relationship. Drama.

3. Klavier’s Emotional Trauma. Kristoph is a pretty big jerk to Klavier in the last case of AA4. He criticizes and undermines Klavier, threatens and admits to manipulating him. In the anthology, Klavier shares an “lol so funny!” story about Kristoph accidentally breaking a window while he and Klavier are playing ball. In it, he convinces Klavier that it was his fault and that he should take the blame and apologize for breaking the window! And Klavier does! That’s gaslighting, baby, and since the Anthology is supposed to be canon, we can take that to mean it’s been happening since Klavier was a kid. Think about that. An entire life of gaslighting and manipulative behavior! You don’t come back from that easily, either. 

People who experience emotional abuse can, among other things, suffer from depression and low-self esteem. They need affirmation from their partners and can have a hard time with letting people in or being honest (though not from a malicious mindset—more a “I’m going to say what I think you want to hear because if you’re happy, bad things won’t happen!”). They can also always be waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. Sure things are good, but when will that end and the bad time start? It’s a self fulfilling prophecy: if all you can do is worry about things going wrong, then you aren’t actually enjoying when things are going right and you will cause the issues you’re so worried about. Drama.

4. Fame. Klavier has been in the spotlight since he was a literal child. If the Gavinners were already hits when Klavier was 17, they likely formed and starred their rise some time before then. A year, maybe two? Klavier spent his formative years in the spotlight. He quite literally doesn’t know any other way. Apollo, on the other hand, has never experienced the kind of scrutiny he’d be subject to when dating someone like Klavier. It can be really stressful and hurtful and just overall not a good time. And I’m not saying that Klavier wouldn’t be sympathetic, but I don’t think he would really understand how difficult it could be to have been thrust into that position out of nowhere, because he’s had years of dealing with it and was in a completely different place in life when it began for him. It’s not unreasonable to think that Apollo might not be able to take it. You can love someone and want to be with them but if you can’t adapt to their lifestyle, it’s not going to work. They could walk away rather than risk what might happen to Apollo if they kept it up. Drama.

5. Careers. They both have very demanding jobs. While sharing a similar profession can mean there’s a mutual understanding, it can also cause issues if you... never get to see each other? Schedules can be out of alignment (which could easily happen; their cases can’t always line up and they seem to require a lot of time investment outside of just normal hours). If Klavier goes back into music, that’s an additional time constraint. Why be in a relationship when you can only see the other person for moments here and there? What about the stress that comes with those jobs? That can cause drama.

6. Klavier looks like Kristoph. They are very different people, yes, but similar enough in some ways that it could cause tension. Maybe Klavier is tired and stressed and snaps at Apollo, and suddenly, all Apollo can see is Kristoph and all he can feel is the uncomfortable churning in his stomach that goes along with the memories of him. Someone he trusted, someone who let him down. That’s a difficult subject to broach, and it can fester like an infected wound if left intended. 

But Apollo sounds like Kristoph sometimes. We saw it in AA5, which is, of course, an extreme circumstance. But it can come out from time to time in other ways. A phrase that slips out, the way he intones certain words, the way he signs off in his emails—little things that are harmless, but can still act as triggers. 

Sometimes you need to get away from things that can remind you of your past in order to work on getting over them. If you are in love with someone who shares a similar trauma, who brings those issues from the past to light frequently just by being themselves, it might not be a healthy situation. I don’t think they would need to throw it in each other’s faces for it to become an issue. Drama.

There are more, but I probably took this more seriously than you intended. Whoops! Anyway, I hope that helps??? Maybe???? I hope you get them back together in the end because they deserve to be happy though!!!!!!!

[lottki]

Look I don’t know if Bramblestar ever had the real ‘oh shit I just killed my brother’ vibe that lasted MORE than a few sentences but hell would that be cool. And I’m a sucker for fucked up dynamics so let’s picture this.

Let’s be real, it’s pretty messed up as it is in warriors cause most of the time any suffering or stuff just lasts a few books IF EVEN MORE THAN ONE and then boom, dissapears. Not counting Graystripe’s case or any main character’s death in. He’s just gotten to know his only (to his knowledge, rip Tadpole) brother, started hanging out cause blood bonds and stuff. Besides they do have pretty similiar goals in life or so it might seem. He gets angry at Squirrelflight many times cause he’s blinded by having his brother by his side. They train in hell with their dad. A lot. They plan on taking over their clans. He participates in it too, not really being sure if he’s in the right or not but still, he does because we can’t say no to papa Tigerstar. So he keeps going in this whole mess, becoming a deputy of Thunderclan, just as Hawkfrost starts slowly taking over Riverclan and it’s members. 

Then shit hits the fan. Mistyfoot gets exiled from Riverclan for something Hawkfrost has told Mothwing to ‘prove’ to the clan. This time however, he has his paws firm on his sister’s actions and won’t let anything slip from under her. Leopardstar is proud of both of the cats, as she’s been acting like another mother figure after Sasha left the clan. Together with Tigerstar he gives Bramble the next big step in their plans. Kill Firestar, so that he can become the next Thunderclan leader. By this point Brambleclaw is really desperate to prove himself to his family and achieve his goals more than anything else. Squirrelflght has stopped talking to him whatsoever, and it seems as if the whole clan trusted him with more than their lives. He loves the feeling and often gets too cocky because of this. Together with Hawk they get Firestar in the fox trap and Brambleclaw actually manages to kill the orange cat before stopping himself to think about what that would do to the clan. Hawkfrost congratulates him and comes with him into the Thunderclan camp to announce the news of Firestar being dead for good. 

 After Firestar died some Shadowclan warriors have also claimed to have seen what really happened and Blackstar banished Tawnypelt from the clan for being the killer’s sister. She, of course, does not believe this one bit, saying Bramblestar would never do that to his own mentor, and goes to join him in the clan once again. By now Thunderclan warriors are fine with her coming back as they value her just as much as Bramble. Over the next few months she works really hard to get accustomed to everything again and soon becomes the new deputy to Bramblestar after the last one vanishes mysteriously (Hawkfrost and Ashfur might have had something to do with it). All this time Bramble and Hawk have still been training in hell and one night at a gathering Tawnypelt overhears the two brothers talking. They start arguing over something and she basically hears that everything her past clanmates said has been true all along and she got dragged into it by their schemes. At this point something snaps in her, and she starts noticing the little things Bramble does and says, and slowly, here and there, starts hating him for what he’s become. But she’s also jealous. How dare he be in the spotlight, loved by his clanmates, when she was casted away twice now? 

She finds Mothwing of Riverclan with her new apprentice, Willowpaw, and asks to speak in private. She questions the she-cat about her brother’s doings, and poor Moth spills her thoughts and worries that had been bubbling inside her ever since Hawkfrost started planning on taking over. The next day Tawnypelt decides to finally put an end to all of this. She stalks Bramblestar when he’s leaving the camp to meet up with Hawk and confronts them both. In this very moment Hawkfrost drops the mask he’s been wearing in front of their brother, and threatens her life if she doesn’t stop the questioning, or she’ll end up like Firestar and many warriors after him. This makes something click in Bramblestar’s head and he accuses Hawkfrost of everything THEY’VE done TOGETHER. Everyone starts fighting and, in the end, a few more Thunderclan and Riverclan warriors approach the border, cause of the squabble. All they see is Bramblestar, standing over Hawkfrost, with blood all over his paws and muzzle. Hawkfrost lays still, with a deep slash on his neck. 

Tawnypelt takes over as the acting leader, pretty much doing all the work now that Bramblestar has commited to his crimes against the code. He hasn’t left a cave his clanmates picked for him as a new ‘den’ of sorts, keeping him as a prisoner for now. They no longer trust him, and only allow her to see him because she was the only one to confide in after finding out what happened. He keeps staring blankly at the walls of his cell, unable to forgive himself for everything he’s done to those cats. Firestar, Mistyfoot, Leopardstar, Squirrelflight... Oh starclan, Hawkfrost... What did he do to his only brother? And for what? For saying that to Tawnypelt? She could’ve been wrong, she must have! The second she comes in he spins around and tries to attack, for the first time since a moon or so. She manages to pin him down after a few minutes of him almost killing her, and looks at the cat she trusted with her life more than others. That cat is long gone, and she knows it. She knows he’ll never be the same as he was before meeting with Hawkfrost. They share one last look, and then it’s over. Brute murdered by his own kin. Filled with guilt, she announces what happened to the clan. She assures she doesn’t want to be the leader if they do have something against it now that she ended their misery. She knows she did the right thing, but wonders, where might her brother be now?