#to discover it is the memorial graveyard. He go gets the other and shows it to them and Tresillo and Wani finally explains to them the

[chuchayucca]

I KNOW! When I first saw the concept art, it fueled my love for these guys even more! Happy that you now have more content of the Bounty Hunter to keep that love going!

I hid that gold in the tags because I had no idea how to bring it up in the first reblog but since you brought up good points, we can talk about it!!!

YUP

I alway had a feeling that the Bountry Hunters had and still do hold resentment towards the main genres because they minimized their history. For example, (These are only headcanons) K-Pop trolls originally originated from Pop trolls but they're barely mentioned in the Pop trolls history books or how Reggaeton trolls are a mixed of Hiphop and Pop trolls but again, their existence isn’t acknowledged in either trolls history’s. Despite the trolls’s social values being family and unity, the bounty Hunter trolls are excluded from the main genres.

(Again, only a headcanon) Death in the Hinterlands is treated differently than in the main genres because when a troll dies, it means their music is closer to extinction. There is a somber acknowledgement that everyone’s music in the Hinterland will eventually go extinct one day and because they only have each other, there’s a graveyard memorial. The graveyard is dedicated to dead trolls of forgotten music. Every troll there has a gravestone, their instruments/whatever ironic objects from their music, and little facts written about them and their music. Once a year, the Hinter trolls celebrate the memories of these dead trolls so their legacy can never be lost.

Oooooo thissssss too! I know Dreamworks had to keep the movie’s tone light because it’s a kids movie but I can easily imagine an alternative movie cut with darker tones.

In this video, you can tell there was a much more serious tone overall. The fight between Rock and Classical trolls, Cowboy Hickory being hostile where Branch was ready to stab him, Dickory’s dialogue in the deleted diner scene and the diner scene showing these bounty Hunter trolls are so forgotten that Barb promising them to be an opening act on her World tour makes them happy despite probably knowing she plans to get rid of all music expect for rock. The friend and I think the original idea for World Tour was supposed to be a critique on Pop music and it’s negative impact on music but they scrapped it because how serious it was and they probably didn’t know what to do for the original bounty hunter trolls’ happy ending.

I bring this up because I can imagine duringthe K-pop and Reggaeton trolls hunt for Branch, they got into a fight on which music deserves to stay and it got personal involving mentions of family members. There probably have been other Hinter trolls who left the Hinterlands and their friends because they wanted to try negotiating with one of the main genre to make their music semi-popular again. Or some Hinter trolls who just never returned once they’re were old enough to travel because they don’t want to reminded of the mortality of their music.

We have barely scratch the surface of these trolls and the Hinterlands, but there is so much potential for angst with these ideas.

I’m happy you liked my headcanons! If you have/want to, do you have any headcanons for the Bounty Hunter trolls? (Also I didn’t mentioned this but the Jazz trolls headcanon was created by @reblogforlifeman. She has a bunch of them)

Sooooo I haven't moved on from the trolls world tour bounty hunters.

The reggaeton trolls and their really cool designs and music....

Hickory and Dickory's entire thing with playing the long haul in trying to get close to poppy to steal her string.......

THE KPOP TROLLS AND THEIR MISSED POTENTIAL AND AND THEIR DESIGNS AND THEY'RE REALLY CUTE AND LOVELY

And CHAZ THE FUCKING SMOOTH JAZZ TROLL!??!??!??!?! need I say more. I mean just look at him.

I am going to start. A fandom. Surrounding these guys. Just watch me.

They are so silly and I love them

[the-girl-in-the-high-castle]

I've had these thoughts in my head for days now, but I finally put my ass down and am writing it now. Because I can't and will never let go of my beloved boat show, here it goes. Lots of thoughts and theories all over the place. This is a long one.

**************************************

Some people had theories that there are multiple simulations running at the same time. I actually like that one, and there are some of the things that could really justify that theory. Now, some of them might be mistakes in editing, but this is not a normal show we're talking about. These people pay attention to tiny details, they don't make common mistakes.

There are a lot of parallels with the characters, but there are also some things that you just can't explain. For example:

- In episode 6 when Eyk and Maura go down her memory shaft and exit the tunnel, they leave their lanterns at the end. Picture below:

Daniel follows them, goes down the shaft, exists the tunnel, yet their lanterns are missing. It's pretty clear they didn't take them. They left them there. No lanterns when Daniel jumps off.

Of course, just like I've said, this can be a common mistake in editing and filming, but I still think it isn't, I think it's more important than that.

- Then we have the passenger list Eyk finds on the Prometheus. While him and Maura are there, when he sees it for the first time, his name isn't there. Later, he is signed as the captain when he shows it to Maura, even before that, when he looks at it again at the end of the episode.

- When Maura locks Daniel up in the room in the mental hospital, it is clearly shown she turns around and leaves while he calls after her, yet later, after she yells calling after Henry and discovers the limitation of the sim, she is again in the hallway in front of the door, like she never left, looking at it as Daniel calls after her again.

Now, these are just a few things that can be used to support the multiple sims theory, but my rant here isn't about multiple sims running at the same time, it's about the previous sims we don't know anything about. Or do we?

So, to put it simply first, I think that the "memories" the characters have on the Kerberos are actually a representation of the roles they played in the previous sim, or sims. It's pretty much certain they aren't real, but they can be a projection of "past lives" in past sims.

It is confirmed by Henry that Kerberos is unique, aka that no sim had ever played out like this one. He says to Daniel something along the lines of "good job using the Prometheus to get to the Kerberos, still you failed". This means that no other sim before had had a missing ship and straying off course because of a missing ghost ship. And it makes perfect sense. Why? Well, if you pay attention, Kerberos and Prometheus are not exact copies of each other. While Kerberos' funnels are red, the Prometheus' are kind of yellowish. If you look closely at the ships in the graveyard or archive, as far as the eye can see, all the ships are Prometheus judging by the looks of it. There might be a third ship of the company that looks exactly like Prometheus, but it's highly unlikely. Now, driven by this, like I've said, it makes perfect sense that no previous sim had a missing ship as a force to drag the plot, because it wouldn't really make any sense to have a ship called Prometheus receive a distress signal from a missing ship called Prometheus. It would be stupid to have one ship search for another that is exactly the same. Plus, Elliot saying "we never got this far" must mean something too.

Following this: In episode 6, Daniel dispatches Eyk off to the Prometheus. Or is it A Prometheus?

Eyk ends up in the woods, familiar to all of us as the woods from his "memory" on the Kerberos. But, we are never shown anything but the woods in that moment. No house, burnt down or still standing, no family, no wife, no children, just the woods. The next we see of him is when he is getting out of the shaft and to his cabin on the Prometheus, or a Prometheus. So, there is no guarantee that his "memory" was the same on a Prometheus he ends up on at the end of episode 6. (I remember GoT theories back in the day claiming no character is truly dead in Westeros until we see his death on screen, off screen means life)

At the end of episode 3 when Daniel plays with his tetris, he teleports the Kerberos to another place at the simulation sea, Prometheus stays there. Again, we are never shown that *that* Prometheus is ever teleported back to the archive. Thus, a Prometheus Eyk is dispatched to doesn't have to be THE Prometheus, it can be one of the previous Prometheuses gone to the archive, containing different memories and hiding different lives the passengers lived through on it. Now, it does look the same as our Prometheus, but then again, so do all of the other ships in the graveyard.

When Eyk is sitting at his desk on a Prometheus and is drinking his sorrows away just before the Kerberos comes to the archive, we get a focus on the empty frame on his desk. We never see any focus on the desk or the captain's cabin on the Prometheus before that. There have already been many discussions about his family photo and the frame and Maura's emotional reaction to it, but I think it's pretty much taken as true that the photo that belonged to that empty frame was Maura's photo Daniel brought with him to the Kerberos. That photo looks exactly like Prometheus. It looks old and washed out, like it's been left in harsh conditions for years, just like the ship when we see it for the first time. It also looks like it's been specifically made to fit in a frame. And, it looks completely different from all the other photos from Daniel's memory.

The tobacco box in this picture is the same as the one sitting on Eyk's desk on the Kerberos and Maura uses it to trap Alfred.

The conclusion to this would be that their roles were different in the previous sims and that on a Prometheus Eyk ends up on, or more than one, Maura was his wife, or they were something else to each other. Meaning, that was their role in the sim, which can mean it was either a projection of their reality outside of the sim, or just a role they kept playing.

Also, in a different sim, Daniel could be her husband. In one sim, Elliot is her son, while in another, she lost her child. It would explain why she insists on not feeling anything towards someone who is supposed to be her own child.

This led me to believe that Daniel is actually trying to make her remember not her reality, but maybe an earlier sim, one of the earliest, or the first where their roles were those he claims and those from his memory. We know there have been too many sims. So, what if with each sim, their minds go deeper and deeper and more out of touch with reality and the only way to wake up is to go back through the sims that wasn't too deep and could still be escapable. It still doesn't determine whether he is real or not, though.

He says: "you have to wake up, or there will be nothing left to wake up to". This can be accepted as some sort of post-apocalyptic reference, especially because we have the spaceship survival mission in the end, but I think it's more of a reference to physical body that can no longer wake up if it goes too deep into the layers of the simulation.

Now, to Daniel's memory. His memory is placed in the big pyramid we see. Right across from the pyramid is Henry's building, aka the mental hospital. So, Henry is in Daniel's memory on the Kerberos, which is why Maura couldn't find his office in hers. If I follow my theory about the shafts containing "previous sim lives", Henry could be stuck in a previous simulation. Though why he can't get out while everyone else can, that's still a mystery to me.

Anyway, I hope this makes sense to someone because in my head, it sounded pretty good and better than a lot of other theories I've had so far.

I will never let go of the boat show, I have made my peace with it.

[greenthena]

Unreliable Narrators

If you've watched Good Omens, there's a reasonably good chance you've got several conspiracy boards tucked somewhere in your brainspace. And what's great about a show like Good Omens is that we've been encouraged by the creators to poke our noses in deep and examine our theories. Even the show itself subtly tells us, "things are not what they seem." For evidence, might I call upon the book, The Crow Road, which appears several times throughout Season 2--notably when Jimbriel is alphabetizing books in his own special way and again when Muriel shows the Metabitch what they're reading. The Crow Road is a very specific *CLUE* because the book is written non-linearly and the reader must piece the story together. Sound familiar? You betcha.

Now I know a lot of us, myself included, are pretty invested in the time layers/time skips that may explain some of the incongruities of Season 2. (Crowley, I spent 90 minutes cataloging your ding dang sideburn length, sunglass style, shirt selection, and sigil placement. Short or long, dude! Sideburns don't grow down your face in the time it takes to walk outside.) But right now, I'm much more focused on the theory of the unreliable narrator.

So let's begin not at the Beginning, but in a graveyard in Edinburgh. Spooky. (I like spooky.) Let's talk about the uncanny Gabriel statue.

Crowley and Aziraphale are surprised by its accuracy.  It's surprising enough that Crowley actually invites Aziraphale to come up to Edinburgh to see something that might amuse him.  This suggests that MOST depictions of Gabriel that they've seen are not accurate.  The essence of Gabriel is rarely manifest in the art created about him. What does this say about sculptors?  Artists?  About writers?  About people who set out to tell a story and show a truth?  That they're unreliable at best, only being able to show the version of events or subjects that they've seen, and furthermore only able to demonstrate these events or subjects to the best of their ability. 

In other words, all art is unreliable narration.

Let's take a detour to another flashback to an earlier time. 2500 BC to be precise. We find ourselves in a memory of the story of Job, and in the recollection we meet a luxuriously goateed Crowley with a mane of flowing auburn hair. But this set of memories gets really screwy upon closer inspection, when you realize that Crowley's hair is markedly different at different points in the flashback. There are two distinct hairstyles, and it's up to us to figure out why!

Now, there's only one scene in which only one of our dynamic duo appears, the scene in which Sitis identifies Crowley as Bildad the Shuhite. In this scene, which we have to assume is from Crowley's memory, Crowley's hair is shoulder length and wavy. Going forward, this hairstyle will denote Crowley's perspective, and it is the hair style that Crow-dad (Crow-daddy? Grazie, lo detesto) wears for the majority of the Job flashbacks. So despite the fact that we enter these flashbacks through Aziraphale's musings in the bookshop, I have to argue that they're mostly from Crowley's perspective. However, when we get the giant camera shift from the Crow-dad/Sitis scene to the scenes that take place with Job's children, we also get a new hairstyle for Crowley. In this block of memories, Crowley's hair becomes significantly longer and also distinctly curly.

This is a different set of memories, and I think we have to assume that we're now seeing these memories from Aziraphale's perspective. This makes sense, because these memories are dealing with Aziraphale discovering more about who Crowley is (a demon who would disguise goats as crows to save them from God's gamble) and about who he (Aziraphale) is going to become (an angel who goes along with Heaven as far as he can.)

What this all tells us is that the narrative will be different depending on who is relating it. Crowley remembers his hair looking one way, Aziraphale remembers it looking another. We're all pretty unreliable narrators, since we can only express what we have seen or experienced from our own limited perspective and to the best of our ability. Everything we experience is filtered through the lens of our understanding. Even something as objective as an un-retouched photo frames the "truth" as the photographer sees it.

So for me, rather than seeing the indulgent use of clocks as a motif for dysregulated time, I'm choosing (for like this week, at least) to see time as a guardian. The use of clocks does more than demonstrate inconsistencies in time, it also gives us an objective framework from which to hang our unreliable narrations. Because Crowley's sideburns can't grow that quickly! But if we untangle time to reveal a linear flow, I think we'll see that it's the perspective or the narration that's shifted rather than the timestamp. I think that when all is revealed, it will be clear that our belief about what is true can be in direct opposition to another person's equally unreliable narration. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[light-lanterne]

about the fic ideas u rediscovered and want to write, can u give us a 1 sentence desc of each of them?

hmm, okei !! some of them are massively underdeveloped so i'll skip those for now :S also, i suck at being brief so uh,,, two sentence summary x.x

tetris au (this will make sense, i promise): astronomy-lover mike spends his nights at the observatory, marvelling at the beauty of the universe and writing little poems about it all. one night, he sees a star fall from the sky and he has to help him return home.

witch au #1: life witch will has recently turned 18 so his coven decides to send him on a small mission: he needs to visit the neighbouring town of the death witches to help one of them (mike) dazzle up the ancient graveyard.

witch au #2: nature witch will is on a journey to find his twin soul, his familiar: a bonsai tree that rests on top of a mountain. upon arrival, however, just as he's going to grab the thingy, a very angry kitsune-esque mike shows up and tosses him off for he is the protector of the spirit.

forbidden love au: mike (of the wolf clan) and will (of the goat clan) meet as they hide from a storm and they can't see or smell each other, so they have a nice chat and arrange to meet up the next day. upon discovering each other's nature, they decide to become secret friends even if they know their clans will hate them for it, and even if mike's appetite is uh,,, different from will's.

18th century au: farmer boy will has always had dreams of a better life, so when he spots a hunting party near his home, he decides he wants to seduce one of the fancy people to maybe scam one of them out of their money. he eventually catches the attention of a certain someone, whom he doesn't know is actually the king himself.

amnesia au: without a single memory in his head, all will knows is that his mission in life is helping people who've had their heart broken in winter. each time he helps someone, he gets a little closer to something. while he is doing well in helping max, lucas, dustin and el, he can't figure out a way to help mike achieve his dream of being a published author.

,,,as you can see, the summaries are getting progressively longer as i go so i'll stop there for now. hopefully these have piqued your interest !! i'll make proper summaries for all these once i have more details (and titles) figured out ~

(random note: i am going to write all these at some point so please don't take them as prompts for others to use x.x)

[izunias-meme-hole]

KH Animated Series Rough Draft - Axel/Lea

Holy shit. I LOVE Axel and I like that there was at least an attempt to reform him. However, I will admit that post-KH2 Axel/Lea is weaker than the mans appearances in BBS, CoM, Days, and KH2, and is rife with his own problems. So like I did with Ansem and Master Xehanort, I'm going to be discussing a draft I have for this bastard man for a KH animated series.

Axel makes his debut in Season 2, the Chain of Memories and 358/2 Days sections of the show, and he's a 1-1 translation of how he was in the Chain of Memories game, but his characterization in the Days section of the season he's a mixture between his game and manga characterization, thus granting him an undeniable levity.

His relationship with Saix/Isa is established immediately, and given as much focus as his relationship with Roxas and Xion.

Xion slightly reminds him of how Isa was before both of them became two of the most toxic men in existence.

The Roxas relationship is still related to the friendship he never managed to get with Ventus, so his friendship with the poor guy is still for selfish purposes.

Come season 3, the events of KH2 happen, and Axel still ends up fighting Roxas, however here he actually dies here.

Now season 4, he returns as Lea, and good god the regrets and remnants of selfishness hit hard.

He has his black coat still and relies on outright darkness in order to use the powers he had as a nobody, but it's slowly eating away at him.

His main quest in the earliest part of the season is mainly to try and get Roxas back, and it starts with an attempt to turn Sora into a heartless, but he doesn't go through with it.

He spends a good portion of the season just M.I.A, pondering offscreen, and wandering around worlds, until discovering that the Organization is back because he saw a Replica of Roxas assisting Copy X (Young Xehanort) with an experiment of some sort.

He heads to King Mickey's palace to inform him about the Organization, only to discover that he, Sora, Riku, and Kairi know.

Determined to free "Roxas" from the Org's clutches, Lea begs the King to let him help, to let him "do the right thing," and while Mickey can pick up that there's still some traces of selfishness in this man's heart, he allows him to join up.

Lea can now USE a Keyblade, but at the moment he cannot summon one of his own, so he uses the Star Seeker for now, and is utterly dog shit at using it.

He spends his time learning how to use a Keyblade, but due to his selfishness and own inner darkness, he cannot fully tap into its power.

He ends up meeting the Destiny Trio, alongside a grown up and awakened Ventus, when Mickey introduces them to each other as Guardians of Light, and he's recognized immediately. Ventus is unaware of the bullshit Lea did as a nobody, meanwhile Riku, Sora, and Kairi know in different ways.

They all end up going to the Keyblade Graveyard, to face the new Organization, and Lea is left to tussle with Replica Roxas, the reborn Xion, and Saix, who has an artificial "heart" with a lot of darkness and a LOT of hatred.

Lea is getting his ass beat by all three of them, and is going through a hell that is both deserved and hard to watch, until Sora intervenes to handle Replica Roxas and Xion.

He constantly tells Sora not to hurt those two, which keeps him from focusing on Saix, and as a result he nearly gets both himself and Sora killed, and the Star Seeker is broken.

Lea is barely holding on and looking back at his life, only to come to grips with the fact that he was never in this for real friends, and that he was just out for himself. He was just following an impossible and selfish dream, and fully accepts that he's messed up beyond repair.

Fortunately Ventus saves both Lea and Sora, and uses curaga on Lea. After being saved from certain death and coming to grips with how shitty he was, Lea is able to summon a keyblade of his own now.

When Saix calls out Lea's name, he simply says "The name's Axel, old pal, and I think I see things clearer now. "

While Sora and Ventus handle the Replica Roxas and Xion, Axel and Saix duke it out, with Axel managing to beat his old friend and shatter his artificial heart.

As Saix begins to fade, Axel admits that while Saix was an absolute bag of garbage as a nobody, he wasn't exactly a saint either and both straight up say sorry in their own way. So while they aren't friends anymore, they both get closure here.

As for Roxas and Xion, Axel accepts that they're basically gone and that what Sora and Ventus just defeated were entities that Xehanort was using to further his own goals.

After Sora and Kairi mop the floor with Xehanort, Axel/Lea actually gets to form a friendship with Ventus at the end, and they're doing quite fine.

I like a good portion of what I have here, but I do feel like it's clunkier than what I wrote for MX and Ansem/Xehanort. Still, this is a draft, so I feel like I can make changes for my concepts here. Oh, and he'd be voiced by none other than Zeno Robinson.

[reikeip]

Crossroad ♱ Curse 8

Location: Hasumi Temple, Main Hall

Keito: …And he’s gone. Listening to your free will as always, Sakuma-san.

Koga: Hey. What now, what should I do? Well, because Sakuma-senpai wanted me to, I guess I’ll be helpin’ ya.

Bein’ honest, I didn’t understand half the words that came outta Sakuma-senpai’s mouth. Did you make any sense of what he was tryna say?

Keito: Yeah… I can’t read his real motive, but I have a general idea of what he meant.

We’ve known each other for a long time, so I’ve come to understand his pattern of thinking, to a degree.

Koga: …You, are you and Sakuma-senpai really old pals?

I’ve been to a lot of his shows, but why haven’t I seen ya around~? Just what kinda relationship do ya have?

You two are often together at school though. Are you like normal buddies, which has nothing to do with your idol work?

Keito: That’s about right… That guy may call me his friend but, honestly, we aren’t that close. We’ve been involved with one another for quite some time, though.

The first time I caught sight of that guy, it was at a funeral home.

My home is a temple, as you can see. Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve frequently visited places like that to help with my parent’s business.

Back then I was a pretentious little devil, though I’ve been told I still am…

Now I can’t help but blush when I think about it, but I looked down on everyone my age, thinking they were a bunch of morons.

I didn’t fit in well with my surroundings, and became my parent’s work assistant…

In my spare time I’d read books, write, and play with the one childhood friend I accepted to be my equal.

Koga: Ha, you were a gloomy brat, huh? Well, I guess I don’t get along with those my age enough to talk.

Keito: Mhm. Well, one day I, who had such a miserable childhood… happened to meet a demon.

Like a lonely kid hallucinating up some imaginary friend, I discovered that Sakuma Rei.

For some reason, that guy’s pastime seemed to be strolling through graveyards… Whenever there was a Buddhist memorial, I’d catch sight of him in the vicinity or funeral home itself.

At first, I thought I was just seeing things. Even back then, he had such beauty that it felt detached from this world. The first time I looked at him I screamed, and in my shock I found myself unable to stand…

I think that man will make fun of me for it until the day I die.

Anyways. No one could ignore such a beautiful boy as him, so anyone visiting the funeral home would often stop and chat with him.

And, without fail, they’d take an immediate liking to him.

To top it all off, everyone would go asking him for his take on things. All their problems would be unraveled by him, and they’d become eager to seek out his guidance.

That’s how intelligent he was, even way back then.

And not only that, he wouldn’t boast about it, just delightedly talk with others. Anyone would fall in love with someone like that.

Before you knew it, people with no business with any of the funerals would show up—these devotees would turn up just because they were itching to talk to him.

It was eccentric. Men and women of all ages would surround him, listening to the speech of a boy that sat atop a gravestone as if it were nothing.

Respected adults would bow their heads to this little boy and ask for his wisdom.

It was enough to be frightening. But I was childish back then, and believed I was the greatest of them all.

I was haughty—I thought that I was the smartest—that I understood the logic of this world.

For that reason, I’d often challenge Sakuma-san to verbal disputes. Whenever I struck upon something I’d head to the graveyard, telling Sakuma-san all about my new pet theory.

That guy, he listened as if he found it amusing.

In hindsight, I was like a little kid rushing to my beloved parents about some big discovery I’d just made… going listen, listen!

That guy, he’d take the entangled points of an argument I’d painstakingly built up and put them in order—where I was at a loss, he’d provide a breakthrough.

He’d present reference books, and in one fell swoop, a conclusion was bestowed upon me.

Talking to him like that, it gave me a peace of mind. I didn’t have to think for myself, I could ask that guy whatever I’d like and receive his teachings…

Having experienced that, I almost gave up thinking for myself altogether.

But before long, I grew afraid. As long as that guy exists, someone like me isn’t needed.

There was a line between him and everyone else, it was obvious. He was transcendent, he was superior.

He was the sole omniscient and omnipotent god, and we were nothing but his extras.

Being near that guy, it degrades you to such a trifling existence.

I’d only just entered my adolescence when I realized that—I was terrified.

I met someone who reduced my life’s worth to zero.[1] To protect my self-esteem, I ran away…

From then on we didn’t talk much, and I grew up unconcerned with that person.

And then, in high school, we were reunited. Since that guy started up conversations so freely with me, we’ve reconnected, to the point where we started talking again…

But to this day, I haven’t been able to erase the fear I felt back then.

The main character of this story—of this world—isn’t me…

It’s a repulsive feeling when you realize that you’re just a minor character—no, that you’re nothing more than a backdrop who could be replaced by just about anyone.

It was as if I’d become empty. If the story, if the world doesn’t need me, then… Why was I even born?

Do you get what I’m trying to say, Oogami?

It seems like you wish to get close to that guy, but… a human isn’t strong enough to live alongside a god and survive with their sanity intact—it’s impossible.

← previous | all | next →

Okay. So what Keito says here is 零 (rei), which is Rei's name. If you aren't aware, it also means zero or nothing. So he's basically saying: I met someone who reduced my life's worth to rei (zero/nothing). Take it however you'd like to.

[imaginesmai]

Arvin Russell - The preacher’s sins (2/2)

Here is the second part of this fic! Hope you enjoy it.

Plot: The preacher’s manipulation is finally kicking in, but Arvin isn’t letting go so easily. 

Warnings: It’s about TDATT, so you can guess, again. Violence, manipulation, hurt reader.

Lenora died two days after your argument with Arvin, you and him were drifting apart and Knockemstiff was entering in the coldest Autumn yet to meet. The villagers were on edge every second of the day, there was more violence and the people’s faith was starting to become dangerous. Just a few days ago, a pregnant woman and her boyfriend had walked into the café, and had been kicked out by angry clients who scream obscenities for not being married.

The preacher’s words were starting to make roots into the town, it seemed, and you were no exception; at least, you didn’t think you were. Since that talk with the preacher, he had opened your eyes about your sins, and you could say happily that you were getting better at reading. Every two days, you would go the church and he would be waiting outside, with his car and his bible. He would read to you, helping you understand what you couldn’t and giving you a kind smile. And if you got a word wrong, well, he knew how to fix it.

“And she… uh, she… �� you squinted to see what the word was, but you couldn’t read. Your heart started to beat loudly in your ears under the watchful eyes of the preacher. “She was con… con…”

The preacher put a hand on your shoulder, and your eyes got misty. You knew it was well deserved, because who didn’t know how to read? But it still brought tears to your eyes when it happened. You searched into your brain for something to say, but since Lenora’s death no one was teaching you. Arvin, your sweet boy, was the only reason why you sometimes doubted what the preacher was doing was right. And in order not to lie to his face, you barely saw him anymore.

“Come on, Y/N. You know what to do” the preacher said, unfastening his belt. In a moment of panic, you shifted away from him. “It’s for you own good. You think someone will love some brainless girl like you?”

“Please, preacher” you whined as he got up, belt in hand. “Please, not today. They – they haven’t healed, a-and it hurts. Please, I don’t –“

“You think your suffering is close to what he suffered? You whiny bitch, take out your clothes before I make you”

As quickly as you could, you got naked in front of the preacher, except from your underwear. The first time you did it, just before meeting Arvin in the graveyard, you had cried and begged. Then the preacher had explained you that it was the only way to cure your sins, to redeem yourself for lying to him in the first place. He had told you not to talk to Arvin about it – and you didn’t, because he promised you to teach you to read and be a good girl for him.

You didn’t know if it was because of what happened to Lenora, because of the hurt look on Arvin’s face when you told him you couldn’t meet that weekend, or because you had noticed that lately the preacher’s eyes were shiner than usual when you took off your clothes. But you were starting to doubt if what he considered redemption was really it.

“It’s for you own good” the preacher said, as the belt fell for the first time near your right shoulder. He didn’t bother to avoid the previous days lashes – he liked to see how longer could you keep the tears away. “You want to clean yourself?”

“Please, don’t –“

“I asked you a question!”

The belt fell so many times that you lost count. You thought about how all of this could end – he had told you, you could wipe your sins with the belt or with him. And every time you chose the belt, the preacher’s face got angrier. He wasn’t the nice, quiet man that presented himself in the church a few months ago, with a kind smile. You had really thought he was a nice man, but as the days passed and you were submitted to your own hell, your impression of him was changing.

You were afraid, something you hadn’t been at the beginning. It was easy to ignore what he was doing, because you took it as a punishment for not learning how to read. It was a motivation, and you were eager for each meeting, until one day you could show them that you could read. Maybe write a letter to Arvin, and watch how his warm smile lifted finally your mood. But the preacher had less patience each day, and you were making more mistakes – because he didn’t want you to learn, he just wanted you to choose the other option. Wanted you to leave Arvin and lay with him, and even you, who couldn’t read, wouldn’t do that.

You accepted the hits in silence, waiting for it to be over so he could drive you back to the church. And from then, pretending nothing was wrong.

-

The familiar truck from the Russell was parked outside your house the next day, when you finished your shift at the café. You almost didn’t notice it, because your father used to have one pretty similar. It wasn’t until you parked your car in front of your fence that you saw the familiar boy staring at you from the side of the truck.

Arvin was smoking, as always, and had a brow raised. He watched without saying anything as you got out of your car, getting ride of the ashes of the smoke. You took your time in grabbing your bag and closing your car – if your memory was right, it had been five days since you last saw Arvin, and it had just been a brief talking in the washing rooms. You had noticed he had something to say, but even if just two months ago you wouldn’t have had any problem talking about anything, now he couldn’t find away.

He waited for you, not saying a word. You chose not to say anything about the bruise and swelling around his left eye, because if you talked, you were sure you would just burst crying. That day the preacher had been busy with a family, so he had given you the day free – which was why you were coming home so soon, and why Arvin and you were the only ones there.

As you left he keys on the kitchen table and your bag on the chair, Arvin closed the door behind him. You didn’t have to look at him to know that he was staring.

“I was ‘ere yesterday” he announced, his voice echoing the empty space. “Waited for you to come back, but your daddy told me you’re coming home later now”

“Longer shifts, you know” you took out the pan, ready to make dinner and avoid the conversation. “Leroy is having – “

“I came from the café, and it was closed” Arvin cut you off. “Is everythin’….?”

Arvin didn’t finish his question, and you felt bad because he wasn’t demanding an explanation – he was just worrying. You kept moving things around for dinner as Arvin understood you weren’t going to talk. There was a suspicious wet feeling on your eyes, and a lump on your throat. The previous day the preacher had been particularly rough, not just with his belt, but with his words. And when you thought about Arvin, about how good he was, you wondered if they were true. If you didn’t deserve him.

Instead of giving up, Arvin walked around the kitchen aisle. Unknown to you, it hadn’t been the first day he had come to look for you. Since Lenora’s death he had kept his distance, too busy in his own grief to notice that you were no longer asking him to pick you up. He blamed himself, for the argument in the graveyard two days before her death and for not being there. So busy, that he didn’t know where his girl was spending her nights away.

He didn’t want you to think he was accusing you, because he would trust you with his eyes closed. But after asking around for a while, he discovered you were spending more and more time with the preacher, and that you didn’t smile as brighter as before. Now that he was finally alone with you, he couldn’t let it go.

“Y/N” he called you, putting a hand over yours and stopping the torture over the poor tomato. “I just wan’ to talk with you. I know she was your friend too, and I’m sorry I wasn’ here before”

“It’s fine, Arvin” you said. You didn’t look at him, nor shook his hand off. With the knife midway of cutting the tomato, you didn’t move. “Sorry for not… being there too”

“No, that’s my fault, darlin’” Arvin finally rounded your body and leant his head against your shoulder. “Can I treat you dinner? I’ve savin’ up for a bit”

“I can’t, I have to – “

You interrupted yourself with a pained whine and scrambled away from Arvin, almost having forgotten how bad your back hurt. The look of pure terror on his face decomposed you whole. In just two seconds, the knife had fallen to the ground and the tomato had rolled away, and Arvin looked like he had touched ice. He was pale, with his arms still open in a mid-hug and staring at you with wide eyes.

The house was silent for a long minute, while tears welled up in your eyes. Arvin looked lost, as if he could just vanish in thin air, but he collected himself well enough to help you up and sit you on the kitchen’s stool, that creaked under your weight.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, not moving his hand from your shoulder. He knelt in front of you and made you meet his eyes. “You can tell me anythin’, pretty girl”

“It hurts” you cried to him, finally saying out loud. “It hurts when I sit, or when I drive. And – and when I sleep too. I just don’t want it to hurt anymore”

“What hurts?”

“The belt”

Somehow, Arvin knew what you were talking about, and lifted your shirt with such soft and caring hands that you heart broke a little more. He asked permission with his eyes before doing anything, and reassured you when you whined in pain. Eventually, the brown blouse you had been wearing for your shift at the café came out, Arvin lifting your arms and passing it through your head.

He left it on the table, and turned you around so that he could look properly at it. The poor wrapped bandages you managed to apply by yourself came out easily as you cried into your hands. One by one, they came apart under Arvin’s skilled fingers, who made a pile of them on the floor. Even if you didn’t see his face, you had a vague idea what it looked like. In that moment, you understood that what the preacher was doing wasn’t right – because you couldn’t talk about it to Arvin without feeling embarrassment and self-pity crawl through your throat.

“I’m so stupid, Arvin” you broke the silence, as Arvin feather touch ran down your back. “I can’t – I can’t get most of the words… They are, a-all the same. And… and…”

“Who?”

You turned around to look at Arvin, and didn’t see any of the reject you had expected from what the preacher had told you. There wasn’t even an inch of anger, at least you thought it wasn’t directed at you. When he met your eyes, there was just worry and love for you, and such a sadness and pain that probably matched yours.

Arvin cupped your face delicately and pressed his lips in the corner of your mouth, catching a falling tear. He kissed your face as many times as the belt had fell on you the previous day, until his own tears were staining your cheeks. Between kisses, Arvin learned about you learning to read with the preacher, about your thought of not being worthy of him and a bunch of other words that made him hold you tighter.

Your bare chest ended up colliding with Arvin’s, and his arms wrapped around your back without touching any bruise. He held your head close as he shook with emotions, and shushed any attempt of apology from you.

“I’ll fix it” Arvin promised you, once the tears were over and you were just holding each other. “I’ll fix it”

“But it was my fault, Arv, he –“

“He fuckin’ beat you. Nothin’ you could have done deserved it” he caressed your hair, and you felt at ease for a long time in a long time. “I swear I’m gonna make ‘im regret every second, a’right?”

“He said I was no good for you” you confessed, hugging him tighter. “I don’t – I have never gone to school and you – you deserve…”

“Hey” he brought your face out and gave you a soft smile. “You’re coming home with me now, and I’m gonna make you forget bout him”

Arvin pressed his lips against you, not minding the awkward position you were in.  The kiss was slow and lovely, and you hadn’t notice how much you had missed him until that moment. He kissed you again and again, making sure you weren’t going to disappear from his grasp, and repeating how much he loved you every time his lips weren’t on you. You two held each other for a little longer, until the sun disappeared completely from the sky and the time when your parents came home was close.

Then, he helped you put on your blouse again, wincing every time his eyes landed on your back, and walked with you to his car. You two drove to his house, his grandma in bed and his granduncle away, which left the whole place for you. It wasn’t like that weekend where everything started – you couldn’t say you were the same person as then, but Arvin loved you even more. He let you sleep on his bed, and he held you through the night until you fell asleep.

Once you had closed your eyes, you didn’t notice anything else. You didn’t notice Arvin barely containing his rage anymore, and getting up to get the gun he had gotten for his birthday. He pressed his lips against your forehead and jumped through the window as you slept, getting into his car.

Arvin Russell didn’t get to pull the tigger that night. When he arrived to the church, he saw the preacher bidding farewell to a young girl, and he waited. Waited until he was alone, and decided that a man like that didn’t deserve the mercy to die. Waited, and then he fell on him in the dark night and left him trembling and bloody, crying out in pain each time Arvin brought his fist on his face. He heard the cracking of the ribs, his nose breaking, and the pathetic sobs the preacher was begging with. Arvin left him unconscious on the woods, with no memories of what had happened.

That day, Arvin broke two knuckles and sprained his wrist. The preacher was sent to the hospital and, out of fear, never put a foot on Knockemstiff again. And you healed, physically and mentally, while Arvin taught you how to read. Loving you every step of the way.

Want to read more? Check out my side blog @imaginesmaimasterlists​, where I keep all the masterlists! Feedback is always appreciated

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Arvin Russell (the preacher’s sins) Taglist

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[twdmusicboxmystery]

1x05: Davon - Analysis, Part 5

Okay, I did watch Davon one more time and found some cool stuff I wanted to share. I also have a thought about the hand gestures, but it’s more symbolic than what you’ve discussed (read: more subtle/obscure and less provable; story of my life).

So, I got it into my head at some point that I wanted to watch again and write down the chronological sequence of what happens to Davon. Because we don’t see things chronologically—lots of flashbacks and such—it’s hard to figure out exactly what came when. But I had a hunch that the chronological sequence of events might be important, and I was right.

I won’t go through every detail of the episode, since we’ve all watched it like 5x and I want to keep this relatively short. Let’s start with the piano scene which we pegged early on as a retelling of the piano scene in Alone. I think we are 100% right about that, but it’s not the only scene that lines up with Beth and Daryl’s sequence in 4b.

So, chronologically, this is what I have.

Nora and Amanda find Davon in the woods with a bum leg>they amputate it and care for him>they give him glasses to see with that belonged to Martin and talk to him about their French heritage>we see him at the dinner table with them when they eat the carrots>then Nora and Davon at the piano>strawberries in the rain>Davon reads a book and hears voices in the basement>he goes down to look and finds the boys, including Garen who is still alive>fights with Amanda and accidentally kills her>is discovered and knocked out by Arnaud>awakens, still cuffed to Amanda’s corpse>wanders out of the garage yelling “help”>passes out in the woods.

I’m breaking here because this is where the episode begins. After that…

Davon awakens with no memory>goes first to the house (8, 9, 7) and then the garage (I noted that he tries to open the door of 897, but his key doesn’t work)>finds the shoe and acid vat, cuts off imaginary walker Amanda’s hand, which finally puts the illusion to rest (this is important; more on that later)>goes upstairs and lays Amanda on the table near the Hanlon poster (he’s having lots of flashbacks to what I laid out above throughout these scenes)>Goes to piano and remembers>Goes to bedroom and takes medicine, puts bandage on>hears something in basement and goes back down there>sees a deceased walker child and puts him down>sees Amanda again, though he’s only imagining it’s her; I believe it’s really Arnaud who puts the black hood over his head>wakes up tied to the obelisk in the graveyard>they put him in the red car>he escapes>goes to wheel house>sees Arnaud and Garen and remembers the truth>confronts Arnaud>calls the others>final speech>Arnaud killed>Je verrais>The end.

Okay, now that we’ve established that, I need to note something about the first part. Even in terms of how they show the flashbacks, they don’t show them in chronological order. I put them chronologically above, but the way they appear in the show is 1) Nora and Amanda find Davon, cut off his leg, take care of him, he asks for his shoe 2) At dinner table with carrots 3) Davon and Nora at the piano 4) They give him Martin’s glasses and talk of their French heritage 5) Strawberries in the rain 6) Davon reads the book, hears the voices, etc., and the rest are in the right order.

 So, I wondered why some of those are out of chronological order. You can tell they are because of when Davon gets his glasses. He’s wearing them at the dinner table, which means the scene where they gave them to him and talk about the French came before the dinner table scene, but it’s shown afterward. See what I mean?

But let’s return to piano scene = Alone. That’s my jumping off point for this.

Nora and Amanda find Davon IN THE WOODS, and he has an INJURED LEG. In 4b, Daryl and Beth are together IN THE WOODS, and she hurts her leg. 

Dinner scene: Davon and co. eat carrots. Dinner scene in Alone: Gimple wanted to play the song, The King of Carrot Flowers, but couldn’t get the copyright to line up.

Davon and Nora connect at the piano. Beth plays the piano for Daryl at the funeral home.

Now, again, these are not in chronological order, but they are in the order we see them in in the episode, and I think that’s to keep in the right order to represent the steps of Beth’s arc from S4.

Next, we see them give him the glasses and talk about their French heritage. I actually think this represents Beth at Grady. It’s not terribly obvious how, but he “wakes up” and is given glasses to see. I’m wondering if the talk of the British and the French could represent the first seeds of the CRM, via Grady. But I’ll come back to this because him receiving the glasses here is probably important.

After that, we get the strawberries in the rain scene. All I can say about that is that it’s after Beth is taken from Daryl to Grady that he “claims” the strawberry patch in 4b.

Next, comes the whole part where Davon hears the voices and discovers the captive and deceased little boys.

So, here’s the thing about this, and it will circle back around to Davon’s glasses. There isn’t anything in Beth’s arc YET that we’ve seen (unless one of you can think of something) that correlates to her discovering some dark secret. I’m more inclined to think this foreshadows something that we’ve haven’t seen yet. But the more I thought about this, the more it seems to me that it might be something that DID happen at Grady, but that they simply haven’t shown the audience yet.

A. Did Beth see something there she wasn’t supposed to? I even considered that maybe when they were together, Beth and Daryl saw something sensitive and just didn’t recognize what it was. Maybe, but because of the chronology, I think it’s more likely this was supposed to have taken place at Grady. Davon killing Amanda, which truly was an accident, could correlate with Beth inadvertently killing Gorman and O’Donnell. And I’m just wondering if even there, she saw something that meant they couldn’t let her leave for fear of her telling people about it. Much as Davon found out Arnaud’s secret here.

B.      Was there some sort of psychopath at Grady? Again, we didn’t see this obviously, but we had Arnaud here, Jocelyn in Scars, which also had to do with children being in danger. I even thought about Lizzie (of Lizzie and Mica) who was clearly psychotic, and that storyline was happening concurrently with Beth being taken to Grady. We even know that back in S3, they were going to have Axel being a psycho in plain sight who was going to kill Beth, but they did away with that storyline.

In terms of Grady, I honestly don’t think it could be Dawn. She was a terrible leader, but she didn’t display psychotic behavior. No one really did in an obvious way. Even Gorman and O’Donnell. They were rapists and narcissists for sure, but they were pretty open and unapologetic about their douchbaggary. Psychos are more like Lizzie and Arnaud, in that they act normal, but underneath are totally cray-cray.

So, I think Edwards is a possibility. Someone who acts like a bumbling nerd, but secretly isn’t. And we did see him manipulate Beth into killing Trevitt. Or it could be someone they ever showed us at all. (And of course, that’s assuming I’m even a little bit right about this. I may not be. I’m just noticing patterns.

Okay, after that, we see him tied up in the cemetery, and they try to smoosh him in the car. After Grady, Beth is left in a car for dead, but escapes. Hence the front windshield and the blond, female walker who tries to bite Davon. Long story short, he then goes and confronts Arnaud, and saves Garen. Because even chronologically this would line up with something AFTER Beth escaped the car, I have to think this is a future foreshadow. Something where Beth (and possibly Daryl, depending on whether these are mutual storylines or separate ones) figure out what really happened at Grady and save the kids. Je verrais: I see. Thoughts?

Oh, one quick, semi-irrelevant note. Watching it again, I realized that before they put Davon in the smoosh-car, the old man from the village tells him that due to his crimes, “your name will be erased; your memory lost.” 

So, that wasn’t something Davon just came up with at the end. He was parroting back what the old man said. I didn’t realize that before. But it’s interesting because it suggests, if this is a parallel to Beth, that as you said somewhere above, @wdway, her name has been erased and her memory lost. It’s just interesting to apply that to her. It reinforces what you already said.

About the hand motion? Okay, I probably only noticed this because you’ve all been talking about the hand motion they made in the grave yard. But let’s put that aside for a minute, because there’s another hand thing earlier in the episode.

Davon is wandering around, hallucinating the Amanda-walker talking to him. When he gets into the garage and finds the shoe (which I didn’t talk about above, but it lines up with the shoe Beth sees in Inmates, which I think someone already mentioned) he grabs a nearby saw and saws Amanda-walker’s hand off. This is so that he’s no longer cuffed to her and dragging her along.

But it occurred to me that this is much more like the instance @frangipanilove always mentions, where Daryl throws the walker hand into the fire when Carol shows up with Henry. In one case, the hand is cut off. In the other, it’s burned, but in both cases, it’s kind of tossed aside and forgotten about.

Here’s the thing I noticed. After Davon cuts off the walker’s hand, she doesn’t talk to him anymore. He no longer hallucinates her being alive or hearing her voice. So, I wondered if tossing the hand away represents getting rid of the illusion so they can see the truth. I think that kind of works for Daryl because he’d been alone out in the woods for so long, and Carol/Henry showing up is when he finally comes back to civilization and his family.

So then I thought about the hand motion in the grave yard. We certainly don’t have them “tossing away” their hands in that scene. So, it’s opposite from the other two instances because they keep their hands. But guess what? During that scene, they’re all operating under the illusion that Davon is the killer. So, they’re not tossing the illusion away to see the truth. They’re embracing it.

No idea if I’m right about this but, for these instances, it kind of works. Okay, I’ll shut up, now. Thoughts?

@wdway​:

This was wonderful, @twdmusicboxmystery! So glad that you had the patience to put it all in order. I do not have the patience to do that. I've tried briefly with not a lot of effort on my part, to be honest and then stopped and hoped someone else would do the hard work and you did.

A couple of questions then some thoughts. When do you feel that Nora turned from Beth into Leah? At the end? I did feel some Carol overtones in Amanda. Doing some things that were self-serving and the how she would do anything to protect her child, which backfires. To be perfectly honest, I never know when I talk about Carol if I'm being overly critical because she's not a character that I care for, ( I do understand her importance in the story) or if I'm actually seeing what the writers want us to see. The more I thought about it today, though, I believe e6 of Tales has a lot Carol ties.

I really liked how you did the side by side of Alone to what happened in e5 between Davon and Nora. To be truthful, I don't know if I'm on board with the idea of a psychopath at Grady. Maybe it's just that we've for so long thought of Edwards as a coward and very self-serving as so many characters were. I definitely believe that Beth knew more about what was happening at Grady than what we saw. She was alway shown as having a good read on people and situations.

We also know that she had always been a snoop. Starting back in s2 when Maggie tells a story of Beth going through Maggie's things and finding the birth control pills. We saw her go through Dawn's office and putting two and two together when she saw the dead doctor's ID card and realize that Dr Edwards had set her up.

Something that I remembered while reading though was in Slabtown when the doctor was brought in, we briefly see Beth holding what looked like a briefcase or some type of case that had a lock on it. We also saw it in Dr. Edwards’ office when she was calling out Edwards on what he had done. I think it's a little hint that she understood that there were things in places that people didn't want left out in the open. Therefore, I believe that she would take the stance of knowledge is power and would have taken an opportunity to find out what Dawn didn't want anyone to know.

While reading your thoughts, I kind of wondered if the gesture had something to do with sign language, something along that line. Again, thank you for the hard work of putting the episode in order for us. You're the best.

@twdmusicboxmystery:

Thanks @wdway! Yeah, the psychopath thing is just speculation too. No idea if it will turn out to be right. Or maybe just thematic rather than literal.

I don’t know if there’s a firm line between Nora/Beth and Nora/Leah. I almost think there just too much overlap to really disentangle them. I mean, Nora always had a son, which makes it seem like she was always Leah. But they didn’t tell us that until nearer the end. As if they didn’t want that to be obvious during the first part.

Rewatching, I also noticed that when the flashbacks all came 100% together for him, just before he passed out, I think, he saw Arnaud with the spoon in the doorway and Garen standing behind them when they were at the piano. It was like the kids were there the whole time, but they didn’t show them to us in those scenes until the very last second. Not even sure what we’re supposed to make of that, but it’s more of the deception that blurs the line between Beth and Leah. Interesting idea about the hand motion being sign language.

[synnthamonsugar]

Heyo!

You're good with Hive right? Could you explain Soulfire to me, please?

Thank you for writing, but ... I’m afraid I’m not certain myself! I’ve always thought soulfire was an applied phlebotinum substance for the hive, fitting in when the writer needed to describe an energy source or life-force without getting into details. A bit of searching on Ishtar Collective has reinforced that opinion, though I did find some interesting things.

First off, the term “soulfire” only shows up as of Destiny 2 (Warmind), which threw me for a loop because I thought it was something that had been around longer. Specifically, the Wormgod Caress lore which has this excellent blurb:

"Have you ever stared into the green soulfire flame? There is terror, but also… something warm." —Eris Morn 

(This doesn’t help us, but it is a favorite bit of characterization for Eris and her relationship with the Hive.)

The lore tab for this piece describes Nokris’ meeting with Xol, and has the following mention:

The glow of soulfire in his eyes, Nokris bowed before the worm. In his fire, he felt embrace. He felt home.

Which is a little ambiguous - I’m not sure whether the “soulfire in his eyes” is a fanciful way of describing hive eyes, or whether it’s meant to refer to Xol’s fire - in other words, some property of the Worm Gods as well as the Hive.

The next time we see it mentioned is in Season of Arrivals, again in the context of Nokris and Xol:

He had held the scrap taken from Xol’s remains for so long that it had eaten grooves into the bone plating on his hand. With it, he intended to force open that which had always been kept from him by the logic of the Sword. He meant to craft his own Ascendant gate from the grave-corpse legions of his risen brood. Fetid ranks of Thrall, rotted beneath rime on cracked chitin, encircled him and awaited the ritual. Their refurbished flesh: soulfire kindling.

At this point I’d almost think it was exclusive to Nokris’ sorcery, but we see it mentioned by Eris in the flavor texts for a couple of bounties:

"Are you interested in Hive rumors, Guardian? Did you know they fear our fusion weapons? Superstition states disintegrations yield no soulfire. Untrue, but fear is a weapon we can use."

"Savathûn's brood do not chase the Dark as others do. Slay them, so I may witness their soulfire and learn their intent."

... which brings us back to this being some property of the hive, which is apparently tangible and released on death.

Season of the Hunt gives us a little more to work on with the properties of soulfire! Wrathborn are apparently capable of secreting it:

Ikora eyed the datapad. "Petra, a Hidden report details an encounter with an afflicted beast in Soriks's Cut. It bled soulfire."

It can be solidified and handled:

Kalli, Sendia, and Shuro Chi awaited the Queen's Wrath. They placed the specimens each in a sealed containment vessel. They assessed them one by one. They prepared their minds. Slipped into meditation.

Tooth, blood, and bone from the sacrificial Knight. Coagulated Soulfire.

It’s used as ammo in Hive shredders:

She turned to her left to ask Lira for extra ammo, only to discover her teammate slumped over, blue skin already going grey. The thick purple ichor of a soulfire round oozed from the hole in her chest.

And Crow used it in his wrathborn lures:

He pulled a vial of condensed Ether from his belt and slotted it into the Lure. The concoction bubbled as it mixed with the soulfire inside the reservoir. Moisture beaded on the Lure's thin metal casing.

So it’s a very versatile substance. :)

Finally, it pops up in Season of the Chosen in a description of the destruction of Torobatl:

"Sol is a graveyard for our people. But those warriors never watched our cities burn in soulfire. The memory of home should not be a comfort, my child, but the wound that drives your blood frenzy."

And, apparently, the weaponry of hive first seen on Mars, but later Savathun’s brood and the Hidden Swarm.

As a bit of an aside, Eris seems to refer to soulfire describing her own eyes:

I took a slough of Hive chitin, and with my own hands, I bent it into the shape of a starship. I think you of all people might understand why. But it's more than just a reminder of the green flames behind my brow.

Which reinforces the idea of it being an inherent part of hive biology (or the biology of those afflicted by hive corruption).

TL;DR. There does not seem to be a canonical explaination for what it is. However, it seems to be both a biological component of the hive, as tangible as blood or bone or chitin, as well as a substance that can be weaponized as a form of ammunition and an agent in widespread attacks.

[sergeantsporks]

Moving On

General Audiences

Gen, with some background Staja and Jlaire

Everyone seems to be moving on after the battle against Bellroc. Douxie seems to be the only one who can’t

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32747662

Or read under the cut

Jim had the chance to fix it all—to go back in time and keep everything from happening.

And he chose not to.

He said they had to soldier on. To carry the burden, respect the dead. He’d destroyed the time stone.

Douxie knew, in his heart of hearts, that he was right. That time travel would only bring more heartache—he knew that from experience. He knew that meddling with time was a bad idea. He knew that knowing the future was a responsibility, he knew that you couldn’t just “fix” everything. Jim was doing the right thing.

But JIM hadn’t lost everything.

Jim still had his girlfriend.

Jim still had his mother.

Jim still had Blinky, and AAARRRGH!!!.

Jim had lost Strickler, yes. And he’d lost his best friend. He hadn’t made it out unscathed, Douxie knew that. He knew he had no right to be angry at Jim for his choice, his RIGHT choice.

That didn’t make it any better.

That didn’t stop the raging, sick feeling in Douxie’s stomach as he thought about a future without Archie. Without Nari—even though he’d only been with the demigod a year or so, she was FAMILY. He’d put off his feelings for the fight—he’d moved on fast because he’d had to move on fast—but those feelings were catching up to him.

Claire was comforting Jim. Douxie stumbled away from the scene.

It wasn’t fair.

Krel and Aja hadn’t lost anyone—in fact, they’d gained about 7 someones. Good for them—at least they’d gotten out of this unscathed.

Jim and Claire had lost their friend. Jim had lost Strickler. But they still had others, their families.

Douxie had lost everything.

He still had Claire, of course, and Jim, and Steve.

But he’d never been their top priority—Jim and Claire had each other, and Steve had Aja, and Eli. And that had been FINE, he didn’t NEED to be everyone’s top priority. He’d had Archie and Nari, and he’d made them HIS top priority. And he’d been theirs.

But now?

Now, he’d lost them.

Nobody seemed to notice him go. They were mourning Toby. Of course they were mourning Toby, of course they SHOULD mourn Toby. It wasn’t fair to put his feelings over theirs—this wound was fresh. Of course they should have time to grieve. That was only fair.

Fair, fair, fair, fair.

Nothing was fair.

When he was far enough that he wouldn’t disrupt their mourning, Douxie finally gave out. He collapsed to his knees with a scream, a burst of magic breaking anything nearby that the titan hadn’t already destroyed. He pounded one fist into the ground, his vision blurring with tears and blue magic.

Nari.

Archie.

And he’d lost others, too, some time ago, but the new grief brought up old loss.

Merlin.

Morgana.

His parents, who he’d never known.

It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair!

Douxie punched the ground again. His knuckles slammed into broken glass and stone, but he didn’t care. He screamed out a sob, pressing his arms to his stomach, bent over double. Magic was emotion—and his was out of control. Blasts of energy were pulsing out of him in random bursts, clearing the area of rubble.

The magic and screaming faded to ugly, heaving, sobs.

No one had noticed.

No one had come to see where he’d gone.

Nobody noticed that he was hurting, too. That his whole life had been torn to shreds in the last 18 hours, and there was no fixing it.

Well, there had been a chance to fix it. But even that chance was gone, now.

Douxie would have given it all up—his staff, Merlin’s approval, everything—to see Archie and Nari again.

But he didn’t have that option.

The funeral passed in a blur. When his friends asked what happened to his hand, Douxie shrugged and said it must have happened in the fight. Everyone cried when they talked about Toby. About Strickler. Even Nomura got a few tears. Everyone cried for Archie and Nari.

Everyone but Douxie.

He didn’t think he could.

They asked if he wanted to say a few words for them, since he’d been the closest to them.

He couldn’t do that, either.

That would mean accepting that they were gone.

Archie wasn’t even dead. He just had to find him, he just had to—

“Douxie?” Claire took his bandaged hand. “You know we’re here, right? You don’t have to do this alone.”

Right. But he was alone. Archie had been there for him before—Archie had been his confidante, Archie had been the one he’d brought his feelings to. Archie.

Douxie clutched Claire’s hand so tight the tips of her fingers turned white. “You can—Archie’s not dead, you can find him. We can portal in, we can—”

“Douxie—Douxie, we can’t. The den is protected against my magic. Remember?”

He turned desperately to Krel. “The wormhole—they wouldn’t know to protect against that, you can open up a wormhole into it, then, right?!”

But Krel was shaking his head, too, “Not without coordinates—which we don’t have. I can’t lock in on feelings like Claire can.

If Nari had been here, her empathy magic would have been able to find coordinates.

But Nari wasn’t here.

And neither was Archie.

Jim wandered over, wiping his eyes. “Douxie. I’m sorry. I know you lost people, too.”

That didn’t even begin to cover it, but Douxie nodded and said thank you, and left.

The world went on.

Everyone else seemed to be moving on.

They had a memorial service every anniversary.

Jim, Barbara, and Claire brought flowers to the graveyard every weekend. Douxie planted some live ones on the empty grave that marked Nari’s date of death and let them grow wild.

It was what she would have wanted.

Everyone else seemed to keep going.

They went to work.

They finished school.

The learned to laugh again.

Everyone but Douxie.

Douxie scoured Merlin’s grimoire for clues that could bring Nari back—bring back Nari, bring back Archie with a wormhole. Easy. But there were none.

So he raided what was left of the bookstore. He read and read and read until he was sick of words, until his eyes were strained and he couldn’t see far away anymore.

But there wasn’t anything in the bookstore, either.

He moved on to the Camelot libraries.

He forgot to eat most days. Even on the days Jim showed up and cooked for him, Claire would clear away untouched plates.

And who needed sleep anyway?

Years passed. Years. He’d made it halfway through the Camelot library.

Except he couldn’t summon the energy to climb the library ladder anymore. He brought books down from the top shelves with magic, and discovered it was easier. So he stayed at his table, magic cycling books through.

He had to tie his hair back in ponytails and braids to keep it out of his face. The blue color had faded out of it, leaving it its natural black.

He missed Jim and Claire’s wedding, despite the fact that it took place a few doors away.

He missed Steve and Aja’s children growing up.

But he’d waited 900 years for Merlin. Surely he could work at least that long on getting Archie and Nari back.

Some days, he broke down and threw books across the room, angry at himself, at the Order, at Archie and Nari.

Other days, he’d stare at the wall for hours at a time, his magic waiting to clear away books he wasn’t reading.

Some days, he ran through the empty halls of Camelot, sure he’d seen Archie’s tail whipping around a corner. Sure he’d seen a flash of green.

He never really had.

On those days, he couldn’t make it back to the library. He’d collapse in the hallway, trying to summon enough energy to get up and keep going.

It was on one of those days that a shadow portal opened underneath him, dumping him neatly on a couch. Claire was waiting, her arms crossed. When had she gotten so mature and beautiful? And when had Jim, who was standing next to her, gotten so tall?

“Enough,” Claire snapped.

Jim put a hand on her shoulder. “What Claire is trying to say,” he said gently, “Is we’re worried about you. We have been for a while.”

“We were giving you time,” Blinky said quietly, “Time passes differently for wizards and trolls than for humans. We thought if we gave you a few years, tried to support you, you’d move on. Like the rest of us have—even AAARRRGH!!! But you cannot go on like this.”

Looking at the troll made a revelation drop on Douxie’s head. “I’ve been looking in the wrong place! Blinky, I need all of your books, I need to find out how to get into a troll market without the bridge, there is a way, I just—”

“NO!” Claire yelled, “No more research! No more books! Stop! Just… stop.” Her voice broke. “Douxie, you’re not okay. You’ve wasted away, and you can hardly walk. You don’t sleep. You don’t eat. You just read, and read, and read, and for WHAT?! Archie and Nari wouldn’t want you to waste your life like this!”

“I’m fine!” he protested.

Claire swiveled a makeup mirror towards him. “Look at yourself! Do you look fine?!”

Douxie stared at the reflection. It was a stranger. Claire and Jim had gotten older, had changed.

He’d stayed the same age.

But he’d changed, too.

His face was pale, gaunt, cheeks sunken in. The shadows under his eyes had always been prominent, but now they were so dark Claire could probably use them to make portals. His hair had gotten long, and dull.

And his eyes.

They were desperate. Tired. Strained.

And so, so sad.

Claire sat down next to him, taking his hands. “Archie and Nari are gone, Douxie,” she said, her voice cracking again, “Toby’s gone, Strickler’s gone, Nomura’s gone—we get it. It hurts. But they’re dead, and they’re not coming back. It doesn’t matter how much you destroy your health. It doesn’t matter how many nights you stay up, how many meals you skip, how many books you read. They aren’t coming back. You can’t keep going on like this. You said you hoped Archie would be happy. Don’t you think he’d want you to do the same?”

And Douxie finally broke down crying.

He hadn’t cried like this since the day it had all gone wrong. Since he’d first realized that he was alone.

He sobbed into Claire’s shoulder, ugly, heaving sobs that made his chest hurt. He cried all of the tears he couldn’t cry at the funerals. He cried all of the tears he’d held in on frustrating nights when he’d nearly given up. He cried until he didn’t have any tears left.

And Claire let him. She hugged him tightly—she’d gotten older. His student had become an adult. And he’d missed it. He’d missed so much.

“What—what do I do now?” he hiccupped, “They’re gone—and if I can’t get them back, what do I do?”

Jim put a hand on his shoulder. “The same thing we all did, the same thing we should have helped you do at the beginning, instead of letting you go this far alone, the same thing we’re going to help you do now. Shoulder the burden. Heal. And move on.”

[pawprintsmoon]

Wanheda in Sunnydale; the Commander of Death

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27060634

The first time Clarke the Vampire Slayer tried to dust the mysterious vampire, they did not exchange words. It must have been an off night for the Slayer, because after their fight the undead woman ran off into the night unharmed.

The second time they met, the vampire got away again. Right before disappearing, she had let her face relax out of it’s fighting wrinkles. She had the most hauntingly green eyes and the most infuriating little smirk. Clarke committed her face to memory, for there were not many vampires who could continue to best her. This was easy, for the vampire’s face was so memorable that Clarke saw it in her dreams for the next several nights. 

Just as the vampire was about to get away for the third time, Clarke called after her: “Who are you?”

She turned slowly back to face Clarke, looking down at her from the large grave she was unceremoniously jumping over to leave. 

“Why, Slayer?” she asked softly. “Are you afraid of me?”

“Of course not.” Clarke glared and gripped her stake tight. Then after a small sigh she said, “But I’ll admit that you are a formidable fighter.”

“Oh stop, you’ll make me blush.”

“Oh yeah? With what blood?”

“Why haven’t you killed me yet?” she asked, ignoring Clarke’s response.

“Well the undead can’t really be killed.” Clarke rolled her eyes. “You’re already dead, genius. Looks like your brains don’t match up to your fighting skills.”

“Come now,” the vamp feigned a look of hurt, “you’ll hurt my feelings if you’re not careful.”

“I’ll hurt more than your feelings if you’re not careful!”

“No, you won’t.” The Vampire turned away slowly to meander away through the graveyard. She called over her shoulder, “I know you have a soft spot for me, Slayer.”

Clarke fumed, but let her get away a third time. There was more patrolling to do and her watcher wouldn’t be happy to hear she’d wasted her night on one inconsequential vamp.

The next time they met the fight was brief and Clarke had her cornered against the stone wall of a crypt. Right before she was about to drive the stake into the vamp’s heart, however, her forehead wrinkles smoothed out to make the vampire look human. In Clarke’s moment of hesitation she spoke.

“I’m Lexa,” she whispered. Clarke froze, except her labored breathing from the combat. “You asked who I was, remember?”

Of course Clarke remembered. She didn’t move a muscle and neither did Lexa. Lexa didn’t need to breathe, of course, but she was choosing to and Clarke could feel the cool puffs of her exhales.

“That’s just my name though,” said Lexa. “There’s much more you could know about me.”

“I don’t want to know anything about you,” snarled Clarke, pulling back her arm to stake Lexa through the heart. Just as she did so, Lexa grabbed her attacking wrist and spun them both around so that Clarke was the one pressed against the crypt wall.

“Well,” Lexa said softly, “I’d like to know more about you.”

Clarke pushed her away and followed through with a kick to the stomach that made Lexa roll to the ground. She rolled back up however, ready with a punch. So they fought and Clarke convinced herself that her hesitation meant nothing. But when Lexa got away a fourth time she knew she ought to be concerned.

The resulting conversation with her watcher, Marcus Kane, consisted of instructions to meditate and reassess her feelings. He said that it was not the first time that a Slayer had been attracted to a vampire. Clarke immediately denied any such attraction to the monster and simply trained harder than ever. Perhaps she could sweat it out. The possibility that certain vampires could have souls lingered in her mind, however. So did Lexa’s green eyes and sarcastic remarks. Over and over again Clarke and Lexa would meet in the graveyard, pretend to fight, and never end up with real bruises or cuts. 

One night in late October, Clarke was in the tunnels underneath Sunnydale defeating a Haxil Beast when three more gigantic demons joined them. Just as Clarke was considering retreat, Lexa appeared with two long and lethal swords. In seconds one of the demons was dead and oozing puss on the tunnel floor. With no time for questions, Clarke accepted Lexa’s help, and together they took out the remaining demons.

After the fight and before they could speak. Lexa disappeared into the night leaving Clarke with a thousand questions. The Slayer immediately went to the Magic Shop to share her concerns with her watcher, Mr Kane. Immediately they hit the books. Clarke was just starting to feel guilty about not thanking Lexa for coming to her aid, when Mr Kane showed her the records of Lexa’s past. She was known to the demon world as ‘The Commander.’ A pretentious and narcissistic title.

 His interpretation of the horrors that Lexa had committed, suggested that Clarke should avoid upsetting her. Raven and Monty agreed that it would be useful to keep a vampire on their side and even Bellamy and Octavia were prepared to follow their advice.

Grudgingly, Clarke agreed as well. These horror stories were more than enough to remind Clarke not to be attracted to monsters. 

And yet.

And yet…

The months went on and Lexa continued to show up just in time to fight at her side. Often Lexa would appear with helpful information when Clarke was leaving the Bronze late at night, or patrolling among graves. She would always come with information about the Big Bad -a dangerous and mad woman with inhuman powers and mysterious origin. Her power was the Apocalypse causing type.

“Clarke. You need to know this…” or “I’m here to help you Clarke.” More than once Clarke would ask, “Why are you doing this?” and “How do you know all of this about Alie?”

Lexa never gave a straight answer until the night before Clarke was going to face off with Alie, who Lexa had informed her was a god separated from her home dimension. Clarke and her friends had laid out an insane plan and now it was just time to wait. In the morning they would save the world but tonight everyone went to their respective houses to sleep. Lexa insisted on walking Clarke to her house.

“Why are you walking me home?” Clarke asked as she allowed Lexa steps to fall in sync with her own.

“To protect you.”

“I’m the slayer, I hardly need protecting. You could have walked Monty home instead.”

“Monty got a ride with Raven, Clarke.” The slayer shivered at the way Lexa always announciated the ‘k’ at the end of her name. “And you’re the slayer. Alie is most likely to come after you.”

Their footsteps made the only noise for a moment before Lexa whispered, “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Why?” Clarke all but yelled. The stress of tomorrow’s plan exacerbated the constant frustration that was the Commander. “Why are you helping me?”

“Just trust me,” Lexa replied, voice still soft. Those eyes. So soft and sincere and not at all like a demon.

“Why would I trust you? You are death itself.” Clarke wanted to punch the vampire. Or lunge at her in some other way.

Lexa apparently shared that urge because instead of answering, she pulled Clarke into a hard, passionate kiss. Clarke’s body responded as her mind buzzed with white noise. It was rough and thrilling. Lexa’s hands were exploring the skin just under the hem of her shirt before Clarke pulled away.

“No.” Clarke shook her head. “No. Being a good kisser does not equate to being trustworthy.”

“So you think I’m a good kisser, then?”

“I think you’re probably a good liar and you definitely have secrets and you should go back to your crypt.”

“I am a good kisser.” Lexa smirked, moving closer to Clarke, hands still on her waist. “You’re good too.”

“Please…” Clarke’s suspicious mind wondered if the vampire was really saying that she tasted good. The still buzzing part of her mind was vaguely thinking that Lexa tasted good. Then Lexa took several steps away and the California air felt cold. 

“Right.” Lexa nodded, suddenly serious and impassive. “I’ll see you tomorrow. We will send the goddess back to the City of Light. Do not worry.”

Clarke wanted to apologize, but she also didn’t want to apologize. So she turned away and walked home alone. 

Early the next morning Clarke and her friends went out to an empty construction site to defeat Alie. Just after Raven failed to close the portal to Alie’s home dimension (the City of Light) everyone discovered why Lexa was called the Commander. Try as she might, Clarke could not completely corner the powerful goddess. Only when Lexa finally stepped in and commanded Alie through the portal. They all shared the victory, but Lexa had exhibited a special power that nobody could explain.

Faced with a full team of armed and curious demon-fighters, Lexa revealed the most important secret. Before becoming a vampire, she’d come from a long line of demi-god from the City of Light. Clarke couldn’t quite pretend to be surprised.

“Wait,” said Raven, her eyes wide and staring at Lexa. “If you’re part god, that means... you have a soul. The goddess part of you would have protected your soul when you were sired.”

Clarke felt as if her heart had stopped beating. She searched Lexa’s face, desperate for confirmation. The Commander’s silent nod pushed her heart to back into beating, hard and full of adrenaline.  

The moments were too long until they were alone again and Clarke’s pulse pounded inside her the whole time. Finally, the sun set and Clarke and Lexa were alone in the Magic Shop.

“You have a soul?”

“I do.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t want to distract you,” Lexa explained. “I know you would’ve cared for me and I didn’t want to be a weakness for you.”

“It was a lie of omission.” Clarke did indeed feel somewhat weak at the knees. Last night Lexa had asked for trust, and now Clarke was tempted to give it. “If you ever lie to me again-”

“I won’t.” Their eye contact was infinite. “And it would be a lie if I denied my feelings for you now. I understand if you can never want me. I may have a soul, but there is still demon in me. There is goddess too. I am not human, and you are so beautifully human.”

Lexa knelt down before her, a promise on her face. The magic of this moment was tangible.

“Because of my power and lineage, I am known as the Commander,” Lexa said softly. “But last night you told me that I am death. You were right. But you, Clarke, are the chosen one. The Slayer. The Commander of Death. I am death. And I swear fealty to you.”

Clarke offered Lexa a shaking hand and pulled the vampire to her feet. Everything she was thinking could not be put into words. So instead of speaking, she stepped toward Lexa and reached up to caress her cheek. Lexa leaned closer, all hesitation and desire. 

When their lips met, everything softened. When Lexa reached up to run her fingers through blonde hair, it was as if Clarke was spun of glass and she was afraid of breaking her. When Clarke’s lips opened to taste the Commander the hunger that stirred inside her was incredibly human. When that hunger became too intense, Clarke pushed her against a table and tossed aside all caution.

 Fingers dug into hips and roamed under shirts. Books were pushed off the table to fall open on the floor. Clothing was abandoned along with all inhibitions. Two bodies explored each other, discovering pleasure through their closeness. Two girls with the weight of the world on their shoulders floated as light as air. This time Lexa didn’t run off into the night, but stayed in Clarke’s arms until morning.

(At which point they snuck off to Lexa’s cozy candlelit crypt because they were still at the Magic Box and even Slayers, gods, and vampires prefer beds over tables. They spent the entire next day in bed, actually. They deserved it, they had just saved the world after all.)  

[residentofthedisc]

Very, Very Personal (and a Little Projecting) Headcanon

Ray Doyle from The Professionals is neurodivergent. 

Specifically, I’m gonna argue that the closest condition would probably be undiagnosed ADHD. 

(Also Bodie could be also ND because there’s an entire episode surrounding Bodie’s apparent PTSD which is never brought up again because of course) 

OK. Hear me out. 

- Depression.

Doyle exhibits depressive traits within the canon of the show. The Rack is probably the clearest example: he loses interest in his hobbies (i.e. not working out, his bikes, etc.), exhibits extreme guilt and self-deprecating (self-destructive) behaviours, and pulls away from support networks. In Discovered in a Graveyard, his tendencies to overthink and blame himself are well enough known by his coworkers that they question whether he’s going to fight for his own survival (and there’s an interesting little off-hand comment that Doyle ‘forgot’ to set his locks, so possibly more self-destructive behaviour) and worry about it. So, essentially, him being ND isn’t necessarily a huge stretch of logic? I mean, he could have bouts of depression and depression is a common comorbidity for people with ADHD. 

- Mood swings and extreme emotions. 

Doyle seems to fluctuate wildly between some fairly extreme moods. He’s described within the fandom itself as being mercurial. He flips a switch from utter joy to quick rage to broody self-reflection in minutes.  Now, this could indicate bipolar disorder or ADHD but as his moods have clearly defined triggers, I’d lean towards ADHD. 

- Intense emotions and moral codes. 

Doyle is described as being hot-headed and passionate and sensitive. He wears his heart on his sleeve and has a remarkably strict moral code for the job that he does. He has a real sense of right and wrong as well as an intensity of feelings to match. On it’s own, this doesn’t really mean he’s ND, but along with the other traits, it could be autism or - again - ADHD. 

- Impulsivity and reckless behaviour. 

Doyle is reckless. End of. OK, nope, let’s elaborate. 

Doyle is constantly putting himself in danger by running straight into situations without thinking. He forgets to call in if he’s found something, he speaks without thinking, and elements of his backstory could be indicative of this being a life-long trait. His ‘I cut up another kid when I was just a kid myself’ story and stories about causing trouble don’t mean that kids with ADHD are naturally violent, but that constant impulsivity and (due to other ADHD factors) difficulty in structured environments can land them in hot water. I can’t imagine a 1950s-ish school in Derby or probably Birmingham the unspecified city he grew up in would have the resources or understanding of his condition and that may have pushed him into crime and juvenile mishaps. He does point out that he joined the police to put him on the straight and narrow - perhaps showing that he needs external structure to be imposed on him to feel he’s functioning properly. 

- Hyperactivity/attention span. 

So, I’m not sure if Doyle could be considered hyperactive in the traditional sense. He is not jumping around all the time or constantly moving exactly, but I think there’s still an argument here. Whenever Doyle is waiting for something, he seems to be constantly fiddling with things; brain puzzles, reading, his own clothes, etc. All of these could be an ‘acceptable’ form of stimming he’s developed, but he does seem to have more energy than Bodie, but Bodie could just be messing him about. Similarly, the moments he’s focusing, he can be focusing intensely enough that Bodie has to repeat - possible hyperfocus? This section is probably the biggest reach. 

- Random traits because my own ADHD has completely bored me out of continuing nicely. 

* Sensory Processing Issues: very uncomfortable in suits and ties, has very specific styles and clothing materials he appears to like. Wears sunglasses a lot so possible photosensitivity (but also is likely just wanting to look cool). 

* Special interests: He seems to get quite obsessed with certain things, particularly cases and keeps picking at them even when they seem solved. (I think) Bodie occasionally mentions him ‘still going on’ about things, unrelated to the story. 

* Social difficulties: Doyle is not smooth, especially with romance. Honestly, he actually gets turned down by women more than I expected with characters like this. 

* Masking: Doyle is canonically good at undercover. Not unbelievable with being in the police, but what if he learnt this first masking his neurodiversity? 

* His long term memory is excellent. 

OK, so, long post and I am absolutely projecting because it would be really nice for my teenage hero to be both queer and neurodivergent like me, but I do think that it wouldn’t take a lot of twisting for Doyle to be diagnosed with ADHD. 

[aloysiavirgata]

The Way That Light Attaches To A Girl

Title:  The Way That Light Attaches To A Girl

Author: Aloysia Virgata

Rating: PG (language)

Timeline: Season 1

Summary:  Maybe she’s not so bad, this gingery little doctor.

Author’s Notes:  Mulder reads Cicero and finds the method of loci tool useful in honing an eidetic memory. Also, the timeline of this show is absurd. Per canon, the Pilot is in March of 1992. But here it’s March of 1993 because...I just can’t, honestly. Thank you to @perplexistan for reminding me that I wrote this in 2013, and talking me through the timeline.

*** It's been a long December and there's reason to believe Maybe this year will be better than the last I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself To hold on to these moments as they pass - Counting Crows *** It’s gritty outside, gritty and gray with a rime of salt on everything. There are pockets of rotten snow for him to kick, slushy and satisfying against his heavy shoes. He pulls his coat tighter, feeling like a hard-boiled detective in a pulp paperback, thinking this would be a good time for a cigarette if he still smoked. His divorce papers were filed this time last year, just like his parents’ had been a couple decades back. The ink had scarcely been dry on the marriage certificate when they realized they didn’t know each other and changed their minds. It was the same time Diana left him and his - their - files for whatever the fuck had summoned her across the sea. Paperwork, as ever in his life, was all that remained of these experiences. If this were really a detective story, he thinks, stepping over a soggy Washington Post, a tall cool blonde would have walked in through the frozen mist and into his arms. Someone lithe, with red lipstick and half-lidded violet eyes. She would look like Veronica Lake and speak in a low, compelling voice, urging him to do brave and outlandish things to thwart the Nazis. He’d wear a fedora, buy a mink stole for the blonde. They’d drink martinis and make love in dark hotels smelling of leather and intrigue. But he’s not living in a dime-store novel, he’s living in Alexandria on Christmas Eve 1993 (“The New Age of Angels,” claimed Time magazine, somewhat cryptically) and is eager to turn the last page in his calendar. Mulder knows it’s symbolic only, that his Eurocentrism is showing, but he still watches the ball drop on TV. Last year he’d kissed a woman in a bar and gone home with her too, but doesn’t think he’d remember her face if he saw it. He hasn’t got the energy to entice a stranger this year, and Scully’s hardly his type. He shouldn’t be sleeping with coworkers anyway, it’s never worth the trouble and the FBI is full of people who are paid to do nothing but sniff out secrets. Besides, he is now 32 years old which is really about time to start getting your shit together even if your baby sister was abducted by aliens at Thanksgiving. Mulder generally holds the holidays in low regard. He pauses to watch a small flock of cats at an upended trash can, feasting upon pungent things like battlefield ravens. One of the cats glances at him sidelong, narrowing round yellow eyes as though Mulder has designs on the gray thing it’s gnawing at. He holds his hands up to show the cats he wishes them no harm, keeps walking. Scully had offered to drive him home but he thanked her and caught the blue line, the clank and rattle of the train making him feel like some variety of normal businessman. Maybe people thought he was a banker or a Congressional staffer, going home to a twinkling Douglas fir and a mantle hung with stockings. Nine months and a broken condom can, in many circumstances, result in a whole new person. But it’s been nine months with Scully and she’s still her own woman, though Christ knows Mulder’s tried to remake her in his own image. She’s trudged alongside him through graveyards, military bases, bad diners, and one memorable night in Pennsylvania where she had captured a frantic bat in the hotel lobby. (“Do you want to wait for it to take human form before I release it?” she’d asked drily.) Through all of it she remained disbelieving and supercilious, leaving him vexed. She’d chirped “Merry Christmas, Mulder” at him, assuming that he celebrated Christmas and was capable of merriment. He was afraid Scully’d bring in a little Charlie Brown tree for the office, ornaments smooth and shining as her earnest face. She is skeptical in all the wrong ways and probably has the Michael Bolton Christmas album on her stereo at this very moment. She probably has eggnog in the fridge and will drink it without rum. She probably likes fruitcake and ham with pineapple rings on it. Mulder, going home to the shadows of his apartment where he might listen to Pink Floyd and nurse his resentment with three fingers of whiskey, feels justified in his scorn. A couple loaded with gifts pushes past him and he nearly loses his balance on a patch of black ice, clutches at a lamp post. He gazes up at the endless sky as snow begins to fall again. (Scully’s probably delighted by the prospect of a white Christmas, probably whistling a few bars of the song as she puts on a green sweater.) But he’s being unfair, isn’t he? For all her tattling back to the higher ups, she’s never tried to present herself as an angel. Her primary fault is in not being Diana, not being a tall dark moon goddess. Being pretty rather than beautiful, being frank rather than alluring. He’s seen her smoking a couple of times, discovered that she says “Jesus!” a lot so that she doesn’t say “fuck” or “shit.” This amuses him; he thought the blasphemy would be worse. He knows Scully watches what she eats but turns to carbohydrates and wine in times of stress. He found out she was sleeping with that asshole Jack Willis, which really threw him for a loop because Scully has a schoolteacherish quality that led him to presume premarital abstinence. He thinks of her in that first motel room, her smooth back beneath his hands, her panic turning on some masculine caveman switch. It’s been a long year, perhaps she could be his type after all despite her sensible underwear. She’s attractive enough if you like that sort of Hibernian look. He can tell she’s a bit awed by him and he could manipulate that to his advantage. Mulder walks the last slushy block thinking impious thoughts about Catholic school uniforms and playing doctor. The honeycomb tile of his building is muddied, layered with fragments of leaves and footprints. A radio blares something about Barbra Streisand doing her first live concert in twenty years. Mulder shakes his head and imagines his mother on the Vineyard, frothing with excitement. “Merry Christmas Agent Mulder,” says Leo, the maintenance guy. Leo’s got some kind of intellectual disability that Mulder hasn’t bothered to diagnose, but he’s always quick to replace a kicked-in lock or a shot-out window, and Mulder therefore regards him as a master craftsman. He gives Leo money every year at Christmas. At present he’s attacking the hallway sludge with an ancient mop. “Merry Christmas, Leo.” He gets his mail, sorting through it as he ambles to the elevator. Bill; bill; Playboy; Christmas cards from his doctor, dentist, and insurance agent; coupons; a thick manila envelope from the divorce attorney. Mulder rolls it all into a bundle and shoves it under his arm. He’s fumbling with his keys when the elevator deposits him on the fourth floor. There are wreaths on most of the doors in his building, a handful of mezuzas. Number 42, as usual, conforms to no given standard. He stops when he sees Scully leaning against his door. “Um,” he says. “Hey.” She waves her fingertips, looking uncomfortable. She’s holding a cardboard FedEx envelope. “I forgot to give you this before you left.” “Okay,” he says, uncertain about the idea of Scully on his turf. “Hang on a sec.” He makes sure the packet from the lawyer is hidden, though she’s probably heard the whole story. He knows what the talk is. They all act like he’s John fucking Douglas, like he can guess what number they’re thinking of based on how they part their hair. He’s a sideshow act, the guy who can think like John Roche and Monty Props. A freak. Scully turns to slouch against the wall while he jiggles the latest lock open, wishing there were a convenient place to stash a can of WD-40. “So, uh, come on in, I guess.” She turns, walks under his arm as he hold the door open, and stands in the entryway. The door clicks shut behind him, a final sound. Mulder puts his mail on the kitchen counter, tossing his coat over it. “You want anything to drink?” he calls to her, unsure if he can make good on the offer. What the hell does Scully drink? Tea? Zima? He’s got a few beers in the fridge, his wife’s wine is long finished. “No, I’m good.” Her coat’s draped over her arm when he comes back out, and he hangs it up for her. He notices that she’s wearing jeans with a navy cable-knit sweater, no tartan in sight. Her boots are dark and practical. Mulder shrugs off his jacket, loosens his tie out of its regulation noose. “Here, sit down. There’s, uh, the couch is right over there.” His couch is the atramentous green of algae, appearing black in the close room. “So what’s up?” She holds out the folder to him. “I realized I had this when I got home and since it’s a three day weekend, I wanted to make sure you had it. I thought it might be important.” Scully sits down close to the edge of the couch, much of her weight on her knees. She presses her hands together between them after Mulder takes the envelope, bouncing a little bit. He looks at the return address and groans. Arlinsky, that idiot from the Smithsonian. Mulder’s got enough credibility issues without this nutcase on his tail. He tosses the envelope on his cluttered desk for later perusal. Scully, as the messenger, looks apologetic. “Bad news?” He sits next to her, why not? “Nah, just…you know. The usual.” “Ah.” He watches her do a quick scan of his apartment. He has nothing to be ashamed of, she can look around. Mulder removes his tie completely now, untucks his shirt and leans into the corner of his couch. “So I’m surprised you’re here, Scully. I got the impression Christmas was a…thing. For your family.” He waves his hand vaguely, as though families are something he read about in a Margaret Mead article but never fully understood. Something closes in Scully’s face, which intrigues him. Discomfort usually comes with a good story, but he’ll tease it out of her later. She scratches her elbow, stalling. “I’m going to go by my parents’ house tomorrow.” “Not tonight? No big Scully celebration with stockings hung by the fire and cookies for Santa?” He has picked these ideas up from Oxford and Christmas music. Santa would probably prefer a cold longneck and some nachos. “My sister’s coming in tomorrow, she’s staying with my parents so they’re getting everything ready tonight. My younger brother and his family too, they’re getting in late.” Scully looks faintly guilty for this wealth of relatives. Which one of them are you avoiding, Dana? “Fun,” he says in a tone that he hopes is not sarcastic. Scully shrugs, picks at the cuff of her sweater. “Yeah, it’ll be good. I’ll get to see my niece and nephew. What about you? What are you doing?” “Oh, just…you know. Laying low.” He’s meeting up with the Gunmen for Chinese food and bootleg video games from some Japanese guy they know, but he’s not ready to tell Scully about them. In part because she might want to meet them and would end up charging Frohike with a sex crime. “Sounds good,” she says in a non-judgmental tone. “I could use some down time myself.” “Job wearing on you?” Going to wimp out and request a transfer? She puffs a breath of air out, pushes the tip of her tongue to her top lip. “No. Well, I mean, it’s hard. We travel so much, I didn’t do that before and it’s taking some adjustment.” Mulder drapes an arm over the back of the couch, wishing he could take his pants off and order a pizza. But he wants to know more about what drives her; Diana left him wary of unknown quantities, and this is his first opportunity to peer into Scully’s head. “Yeah, I guess they mostly shipped the cadavers to you before, huh? When you were doing doctor things?” He sees a slight narrowing of her eyes at this, the implication that she’s not a doctor now. The fact that she took it as an insult means it’s a vulnerability. “Mostly.” He decides to push it, being as he has home field advantage. “How come you decided to stop practicing medicine?” Scully sits up straight, her palms on the tops of her thighs. “I didn’t realize I had.” Prickly. “Oh, sorry, no offense. I just….you left your residency to join the FBI, right?” Faker, he knows her career trajectory down to the day. “My work as a Special Agent has always revolved around my background in forensic pathology. I just felt…called to the FBI as the place to best put those skills to use.” Called, religious imagery. Interesting. Her reply had a rehearsed sound, it’s something she’s repeated numerous times. Who gives her grief about being an FBI agent? A younger brother wouldn’t, would probably look up to that. Mom or Dad, most likely, though it could be one of the older siblings. He’d put his money on Dad or big brother based on the cold formality of her words. Both men are in the military, she’d speak to that. And big brother wasn’t mentioned as being in town, so Dad it is. He throws her a bone for revealing so much. “I’ve heard nothing but commendations.” “Thanks.” The appreciation seems genuine. “So what about you, Mulder? Why….this?” Scully holds her arms out like an orchestra conductor. The gesture encompasses his desk, the groaning bookshelves and fading newspaper clippings. Area 51, Reticulans, ectoplasm, and jackalopes. “Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible,” he quotes. “Feynman.” Scully knows her physicists. “It’s the perfect con, really. I figured out a way to get the federal government to pay for my hobbies.” He hopes that will satisfy her, but knows better. “Why is it your hobby?” Ah, Scully. You little investigator, you. “I’m a lousy knitter.” She smiles. “Because of your sister?” He steeples his fingertips, taps them against his chin. It’s tempting to blow her off, but he considers the implications of her presence. There was no reason to bring that letter by; she could have called and he could have told her to round-file it. She’s trying to build something between them, she’s looking past his annoyance with her assignment and he’s not going to slap her hand away on Christmas Eve. “Hold that thought,” he says. Mulder goes to the kitchen for the beers and the churchkey magnet stuck to the freezer. He checks for food, but a cursory examination reveals that Scully is going to have to make do with some brews. She’s peering into the fish tank when he returns, scrutinizing the inhabitants. “I think one of your mollies is pregnant,” she says. “That spotted one.” “Yeah, they’re prolific little cannibals. Here, Scully. Have a drink.” He holds the bottle out to her when she turns, watches her hesitate for an instant before accepting. “Thanks,” she says. “Though I probably shouldn’t.” She pops the lid off when he’s done with the opener. Takes a long drink. “So,” he says, returning to his seat on the couch. “Why do I spend my time looking for ET and yetis, right?” Scully rolls the bottle between her palms. “It’s hard for me to understand why someone with your abilities chooses to use those gifts this way.” Once she rides out this dogleg, Mulder thinks, she’ll go far in the Bureau with her careful diplomacy. “When my sister was…taken, it was the first time that none of the authority figures in my life had an answer. Not my parents, my teachers, the police…no one could tell me what had happened. Years went by and there was still no solution. People stopped thinking about it, you know? They just acted like she was gone and that’s all there was to it.” “But not you.” Her voice is gentle. “I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that this was a question with an answer, even if no one wanted to delve deeper into what that answer was. I became, well, obsessed with the idea that there were all of these mysteries out there with answers that people were uncomfortable finding. So when I found the X-Files…” He glances sidelong at his partner, her nutmeg freckles and her cinnamon hair. “Isn’t that what you were doing already, though? Solving impossible cases?” He shrugs. “They weren’t impossible. They followed a pattern if you knew what to look for. But what I do now, no one wants the answer, Scully. That’s the real challenge.” “You caught Monty Props. Props, Jesus, that case is legendary! I want to understand, I do. I see what you’re saying about the challenge, it does make a kind of sense. But when I think about the people you stopped…” She shakes her head. She doesn’t get it. But she’s trying instead of dismissing him. That’s something. “That’s just it. Your reaction, it’s…look. Serial killers, they’re sexy. The public loves them. Everyone wants to be Bill Patterson or, or… Jack Crawford, right? People still read about Jack the Ripper, they practically turn these psychopaths into folk heroes. There will never be a shortage of people wanting to do what I did.” Half the beer is gone in his next swallow. Scully looks thoughtful, her thumbnail at the damp corner of the label on her bottle. “So this is like, what? Like a martyr thing? If you walk away from the limelight for this then it makes up for never knowing what happened to your sister?” She turns her head to give him a level gaze, her eyes so blue and clear they seem artificial at times. He’s been called worse than a martyr, but somehow it stings. “Martyr? That’s condescending.” “I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sorry. I just, I guess it’s hard for me to understand what you hope to gain. What all this means to you in the end.” Mulder’s had enough of her analysis. “I’m not like you, I don’t crave approval.” It’s her turn to look stung. “I didn’t mean to pry.” He sighs. “Your questions aren’t unfair. It’s been a hard year.” “I heard.” There’s sympathy in her tone and he tries not to resent it. “Listen, Scully, I know you didn’t ask for this assignment and you’re doing your best with a bad hand. It’s just hard to share a career I’m passionate about with someone who pretty clearly thinks it’s a waste of time.” Scully sets her beer on the coffee table, resting her elbows on her knees, her hands cupped around her chin. Mulder props his feet up next to her bottle, patient in the silence. There are deep shadows in the room, illuminated by the ambient streetlight through the curtains, the cool blue aquarium lamp. Puddles of light leak from the kitchen, but they barely stain the rug. Scully looks like a Hitchcock girl, white and pure, untouched by the surrounding gloom. She reminds him of Ingrid Bergman or Greta Garbo, her good bones and heavy-lidded eyes. “You know,” Scully says, muffled, “Pathology’s hardly the hottest specialty in med school. It’s not really seen as a place to make a career.” “The malpractice can’t be bad though, right?” She rolls her eyes. “You spend years of your life learning to care for the living and use it to examine the dead. People have…opinions about that.” This had not occurred to him, and he says as much. Scully sits up and settles back into the couch. “And to then take that to the FBI, well…” Full circle to the truth. “Lots of grief for that?” She shrugs. “From some more than others. My dad, he – look, Mulder. I’m not saying we’re in the same place or have the same ideas or that we’re both noble misunderstood renegades. I am not trying to oversimplify anything. I’m just telling you that I know what it’s like to care deeply about something that other people don’t necessarily understand.” She looks defensive after this, takes a fierce swig of her beer. Mulder eyes her up with a new appreciation. “I guess I just figured all doctors sit on pedestals.” “If so, some of the pedestals are much higher than others. I know you don’t like me, Mulder. Or at least you don’t like our partnership. We may never be friends, I realize that. But it’s been three quarters of a year, you have to let your guard down if we’re going to work together. I want what you want, answers to these questions.” He smiles at her. A real smile, and thinks that it’s been a long time since he’s done it. “But you still think I’m spooky.” Scully smiles back. “Absolutely. And I still don’t believe in aliens. Or yetis. Or missing time or vampires or Nessie. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe there are answers.” He scratches his chin, five o’clock shadow rough on his fingertips. Maybe she’s not so bad, this gingery little doctor. “I did say I wanted a challenge.” “You did at that.” She returns her bottle to the table, then turns to face him. The aquarium provides a ghostly backlight, her hair gleaming like rubbed copper. He holds this image of Scully in his mind until it is indelible, then tucks it away to remember her by. The Rhetorica ad Herennium advises sensory encoding to aid in recall, and so he places her in the sunlit portrait gallery of his memory palace. Scully stands, crosses the room to take her coat from the rack. “I’m sorry the letter wasn’t good news.” Mulder gets up to join her. “It’s okay.” He squints when she opens the door, the hallway so bright it hurts his eyes. “Thanks for bringing it by.” “Okay, well, I’ll see you on Monday, I guess.” She seems hesitant to go. She probably feels sorry for him. “Thanks for the drink. And the company.” “Go,” he says. “You don’t want coal in your stocking for oversleeping tomorrow.” She laughs a little, then takes his hands in her small white ones. She gives them a squeeze. “This is going to be okay, Mulder.” He thinks she might be right, squeezes back. She lets go of him, walks out and turns right. He locks up behind her, her perfume still lingering on his side of the door. Diana’s not coming home. It’s time that he moved on.

[animeiija]

Decided to write another snippet. Just a happy, wholesome moment experienced during Avalanche's travels. This time, it can take place anytime after Nibelheim in the OG. They've found an Inn to stay in for the night, and this one has a TV. So, why not watch it?

It was an increasingly well known fact that Tifa did not do ghosts. 

So, when the girls decided to take advantage of their stay at the inn with an impromptu movie night, Tifa was faced with a conundrum: enjoy some bonding time with Aerith and Yuffie as they powered through an impossible amount of popcorn, or pout in some random corner because the only choices at this time of night were pornos and horror movies. 

As it stood, Tifa wavered in the doorway, clutching her robe tight to her chest as the internal debate waged. Since her clothes were hanging in the attached bathroom to dry from the much needed hand washing, she was limited to what corners she could find comfort in. The inn came with a small library down in the lobby, so she could find a nice novella to ease her to sleep. But then, she'd miss out on the chance to just be a normal girl. It had been years since she was even half that.

A defeated sigh escaped her lips before Tifa took the final steps to her assigned bed, bracing herself for jumpscares and horrible, horrible images that were a little too real. Memories of the Train Graveyard, and mischievous specters sent a shiver of dread down her spine. 

To her credit, Aerith was already building a fort of pillows and blankets for the martial artist to hide behind. a child hiding from the monsters in the closet or under the bed. It was the least Aerith could do since this horror movie night was her idea. 

Oh, how Tifa knew she was going to regret this. Tifa would have been happy with card games- even if Yuffie was an insufferable cheat that always seemed to get away with it. Not even Vincent could catch her slight of hand.

"Would you relax?" Aerith managed through a chuckle at her expense. "It's nowhere near as bad as real life?"

"Unless it is," Yuffie chortled, still tickled pink by the idea that Tifa was scared of anything. "You sure you don't want us to call Cloud? I'm sure he'd love to join us."

"You two are horrible," was Tifa's utterance as the last of her resolve had her sliding her legs under the copious amounts of blankets. The last thing she wanted was for Cloud to be reminded about how much of a scaredy-cat she was when it came to matters of the occult. 

Thirty minutes into the movie, and all three of them were buried to their noses under the covers.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Tifa cursed herself, straining her eyes to search for any moving shadows across the screen- cursing both herself for agreeing to the movie and the stupid youths that insisted on playing the Midnight game.

The blanket hitched higher to obscure part of her vision as Tifa shared in the old woman’s horror when the granddaughter started knocking on the door to summon the Midnight Man. One. Two. Three…...Twenty-One. Twenty-Two. Twenty-Three

Clawing at their door had all three girls near jumping from their skins, heart in their throats. The warm glow of firelight spilled through the crack beneath the door waving to and fro before the door finally opened to reveal Nanaki. One claw still stuck to the handle, the crimson beast shuffled into the room awkwardly until he was finally able to pull himself free.

Aerith was the first to recover, chastising the kind-hearted beast “You damn near gave us a heart attack.”

A snort of humor was the only indication they had to show that he took no offense. Instead, Nanaki observed the three young women huddled together beneath a mountain of blankets and pillows. Yuffie had managed to partially hide behind Aerith, while Tifa pulled one of the pillows up as a shield. Turning to the television screen, Nanaki took note of the impossibly dark lighting creating stark contrast on a deranged crone’s face. 

“Why do you humans insist on scaring yourselves?” He couldn’t help but ask, padding around to Yuffie’s side of the bed to nose her arm. 

“I’m not scared! Who’s scared?” Yuffie declared boldly, dropping her hand from the blanket to ruffle Nanaki’s mane between his ears. The race in her pulse and the bitter scent of her fear was a dead giveaway.

“I’m not scared,” Aerith sounded off, sounding decidedly more believable. 

Tifa was noticeably silent from behind her shield. Her carmine orbs remained unblinkingly focused on the screen as the youths discovered they were missing the most important part of the rules- the part that keeps them alive. 

Turning to watch a door creak open in the darkness on the screen, Nanaki decided to surrender to his curiosity. Climbing onto the bed, he stretched himself across the foot of the bed, head pillowed on his paws by Yuffie’s feet. The glow of his tail cast eerie shadows over the walls, but his indifference made the darkness a little less scary.

Then the screaming started. 

Tifa cried out in shock before she ducked under the covers, not wanting to watch as the poor girl was tortured. Let them think she was a coward: everyone has something silly they're afraid of! 

Of course this was the sound that had Cloud barreling in, fresh from his shower. With his golden blond hair slicked back, the glow of his eyes were unobstructed as they swept over the room in search of danger. The bloodbath on screen hardly phased him, even as the crone cried out for someone to bleed, but he wasn't as perturbed by violence as Tifa was. 

It took him all of two seconds before his eyes narrowed on Aerith, already knowing who was responsible for the choice in movies. Sucking his teeth, Cloud crossed the room to place his hand on Tifa’s back- at least he assumed it was given the blanket tugged overhead. His eyes softened when Tifa flinched. “Tifa,” he breathed in an attempt to pull her from beneath the covers. “It’s just a movie.”

She refused to be consoled. Instead, she reached for Cloud’s other hand in an attempt to pull him under the blankets where it was safe with her.

Another glance at the copious amount of blood projected on the screen had Cloud sighing. Aerith was something else, Cloud couldn’t help but grumble to himself upon noting her cheeky grin. She wasn’t sorry at all, and seemed to take great delight in this moment. Sadist. "Mind moving over?" He asked finally, pulling his hand from Tifa’s back to massage the bridge of his nose.

With some maneuvering and further invasion of personal space, Cloud managed to slip himself under the blankets to press himself against Tifa's other side. Warmth crept up his neck as he did so, only now realizing that Tifa was dressed in a flimsy robe and nothing else. This fact had escaped Tifa’s mind as she twisted in place to mold herself against Cloud’s side- yanking the topmost blanket along with her.

“Quit hogging all the covers, boobs!” Yuffie whined, trying to yank a bit of shield back so she could go back to not-hiding. 

“Get your own, brat!” Tifa threw back at her in a botched attempt at firm. The tremble in her voice refused to leave.

“There’s another blanket in the closet,” Aerith offered, finding the entire scenario hysterical. 

“No!” Yuffie instead dared to reach her leg across the space between their beds, clinging to Aerith as she did so to grab the flat sheet with her toes. Once she had it, she yanked it yard until it pulled free from the mattress. 

Cloud just watched their antics as they started to settle again, accepting the offered bowl of popcorn before allowing himself to get pulled into the movie. Or rather, allowing himself to marvel at how well Tifa fit against him, tucked under his arm with her cheek pressed firmly against heart.

“What are you all up to?"

This time both Tifa AND Yuffie cried out when Vincent opened the door, crimson eyes glowing in the darkness.

“Horror movie night, wanna join?” Aerith grinned.

Vincent glanced between the murder taking place on the screen, and the mass of bodies on the first bed before shrugging. Closing the door behind himself, Vincent took the bowl of popcorn from Cloud’s outstretched hand before claiming the empty bed for his perch. He and Hellmasker loved horror movies.

Barret and Cid are out drinking, so they've been spared the horror movie marathon that continues long after "the Midnight Man."

Aerith has no problem falling right to sleep after.

Vincent scares the crap out of everyone when the occasional laugh bubbles past his lips (Hellmasker loves horror movies, and thinks they're funny).

The others decide that all future horror movies will be watched during daylight hours.

This is all obviously headcannon territory, but it's fun to fill in the gaps between adventure. They've spent a couple months together, they're going to develop their relationships beyond battle.

[virgil-is-a-cutie]

My Brother the Vampire: Fangtastic

Updates will be reblogs tbh

Summary: Patton is a vegetarian. Virgil is a vampire. And they're twins?!

Ever since Patton Abbott discovered that his long lost twin brother, Virgil Vega is a vampire, he's been soaking up everything Virgil will tell him about Franklin Grove's vampire community. It's all top secret, and Patton's sworn that he'll never tell another soul. But now, nosy tabloid reporter Serena Star is snooping around. As she gets closer and closer to the truth, it's up to Virgil and Patton to throw her off track. This is one fangtastic news story that can't get out!

Virgil Vega trudged sleepily into the breakfast room already dressed for school. He had on a black ripped skinny jeans, a violet long sleeved shirt underneath a black short sleeved shirt that had a quote from one of Edgar Allen Poe’s face on it with his thick combat boots. He had a black Panic! At The Disco necklace that had the symbol from the music video LA Devotee accompanied with his green emerald necklace. He slid into his chair, and rested his head on his palms wishing for more sleep. Mondays were just so boring. 

"Good morning, sleepybones," his father, Declan Vega said, placing a plate next to his head.

"Shh," Virgil murmured, his eyes closed, "I like quietness before eating."

"It's your favorite," his father coaxed gently. "Blood sausages with scrambled eggs and toast with some Crofters jam on it as well as bacon," he says smiling.

Virgil peered at the place and giggles as it was plated to look like a smiley face. The blood sausages semi dripping of blood since it was semi raw like he liked it. "Thanks," he mumbled softly.

His father, already dressed for work in black chinos and a black pin-striped shirt with French cuffs and a yellow bowtie, sipped his tea and picked up the remote control. "There is nothing better than lazy morning shows as on Mondays," he said smiling.

He flipped through the weather and some talk shows before settling on The Morning Star.

"Oh god please no," Virgil protested, "just looking at Serena Star's smile gives me sunburn gives my skin the hives."

Serena Star, WowTV's best celebrity reporter, had impossibly bright, bleached blond hair and eyes that looked as if they'd been surgically enhanced to be permanently wide open in either adoration or shock. Lately she'd been trying to cast herself as a serious journalist on her own morning news show, The Morning Star. Just the other day, Virgil had turned the TV off in exasperation after Serena had said, "Tell me, Mr. Senator, how does it feel to have a law named after you?"

This morning, Serena Star was standing with her back to a small crowd of people, talking into her microphone. She was wearing a tiny blue suede miniskirt under a knee-length trench coat, and the look in her wide eyes said "shock!" She was in what seemed to be a graveyard. A scruffy, black-clad teenager stood beside her...

Declan flipped the channel.

"Turn it back!" Virgil blurted.

"But you said-"

"I know. Turn it back!" he repeated.

Virgil could not believe his eyes in what he was seeing. The boy standing next to Serena Star was none other than Garrick Stephens, one of the lamest vampires at school. He and his bonehead friends, which everyone called them the Beasts, were always pulling dumb stunts, like seeing which one of them could eat the most garlic croutons without getting seriously ill. They weren't nearly as scary as they smelled, but they'd been annoying since forever. It didn't help that whenever Virgil brought his food that had garlic they'd make a show of gagging in the cafeteria.

Virgil frowns and begins to eat his breakfast while watching the news wondering why Garrick was on the news.

"Oh dear I do believe that's the local cemetery," his dad said.

Virgil realized he was right, meaning that this was being filmed less than five blocks from their home.

The camera panned over to an empty grave, and Virgil's dad turned up the volume.

"....yesterday's small town funeral went horribly wrong," Serena Star was saying off screen.

"Local deceased man, Mr. Alan Koontz, was scheduled for burial here at the Franklin Grove Memorial Cemetery. As Mr. Koontz was being lowered into the ground, eyewitnesses say that his casket creaked open." The camera zoomed in on a shiny midnight-blue coffin lying open next to the grave. "In a bizarre turn of events, out climbed an allegedly live person!" Serena continued. "Mr. Koontz's widow immediately fainted and was rushed to Franklin Grove General Hospital for treatment after the event occured."

Serena Star's frowning face reappeared on the screen, "friends of the family say that the person who emerged bore no resemblance to Mr. Koontz and was, in fact, a teenage boy."

The camera pulled back to reveal Garrick, who was licking his palm and then using it to slick back his greasy gross hair.

Virgil was frowning now too, since Garrick and his friends didn't know the meaning of the word "discreet." They probably couldn't even spell it. Ever since they were little kids, Virgil had always been amazed and dumbfounded at how close the Beasts routinely came to breaking the First Law of the Night.

Which was that vampires are never supposed to reveal their true selves to an outsider.

Thinking about that made Virgil feel uncomfortable. After all, he'd recently broken the First Law himself. But who could really blame him? He'd had no choice, though, he couldn't possibly keep the fact that he was a vampire secret from his identical twin, Patton, even if Patton himself was human. Didn’t help that Patton had seen Virgil’s palm heal from when he fell onto the thorn bush in his backyard.

The two had met once Patton arrived to school and after one day they realized the truth of them being twins. Which was a shocker to the two of them.

Virgil sighs, he may have broken the rule, but at least it wasn't on national TV.

Serena Star looked squarely at the camera. "I, Serena Star, now bring you an exclusive interview with the thirteen year old boy who was almost buried alive. I think you'll agree it's a story that's truly... INDEADIBLE!" A graphic with the word "INDEADIBLE!" materialized on the screen over Garrick's head, and Virgil rolled his eyes. Serena was always making up lame words for her on-screen headlines.

"Awesome!" Garrick Stephens grinned.

Virgil's head began to ache because how in the underworld, were they going to cover up a vampire popping out of a coffin in the middle of a funeral?

"Mr. Stephens...." Serena Star turned to face her subject, "... how do you feel?"

"I feel great!" Garrick said with a small shrug.

"Amazing!" Serena commented, with a slight frown. She had clearly been expecting Garrick to be upset. "How long were you in that coffin?"

"Like seven, eight hours I think. I really can't say."

"That must have been very unsettling," Serena Star prompted sympathetically.

"Only when those pallbearer guys carried it around and woke me up," Garrick said, shooting a peeved look off camera.

"Are you saying you were asleep in there?" asked Serena Star, her wide eyes widening even further.

"Yeah," Garrick answered before raising an eyebrow, "what would I be doing in there for... 8 hours? I woke up once I felt the casket being moved."

Virgil winced as Serena Star shook her head in disbelief. "You almost sound like you enjoyed yourself."

Garrick shrugged.

"Mr. Stephens," Serena Star said, a hint of disapproval in her voice, "what kind of person sleeps in a coffin?"

"It wasn't my idea." Garrick shrugged.

"Oh?" said Serena Star. "Whose idea was it?"

Garrick was about to answer, but then he seemed to think better of it. He then crossed his arms tilting his head, "you know that one episode of Mike and Molly where Molly was at her sister's job at the morge and they got high and got in the casket? That happened except for the weed and morgue part."

"Are you saying that you were just goofing around?" Serena Star asked with a slight frown as if she had became uninterested.

"Yep," Garrick replied, wrinkling his nose and scratching chin which Virgil and any other vampire in town knew he was lying since that was his social tick that showed he was lying.

"You mean..."

"I was messing around with my fellow kings of Franklin Grove Middle School!" Garrick cried out smirking and wildly waving, "yo, Kyle, Ricky, Dylan! I'm on TV!"

'What a moron,' Virgil thought.

"What exactly did your friends have in mind?" Serena Star probed.

"It looked comfortable so I climbed in," Garrick explained, his eyes glinting mischievously. "That's why I did it."

Virgil sighs knowing he was throwing a lame reason why he did it to avoid revealing any vampire secrets.

Like the fact that they slept in coffins. Still, it was a pretty semi lame alibi, especially because he kept going on about how it was really comfortable. At least he wasn't saying how it was the best sleep ever.

"The Interna 3 is a pretty comfortable casket," he said shrugging before leaning towards the microphone. "When they say `rest in peace,' they mean it!"

"Mr. Stephens, please," Serena interrupted. "That still doesn't explain how you ended up at Mr. Koontz's funeral."

"Uh... simple. The funeral home got the coffins mixed up. Did you know the Interna 3 is the best comfortable coffin?"

Serena Star yanked the microphone away, "are we to believe that this was really just an innocent student messing?" she said to Garrick, who shrugged again looking away in boredom.

"Or," she continued, turning slowly to the camera, "is there something more sinister at work?"

"She's looking for blood," Virgil mumbles softly.

"Clearly, a gruesome obsession with death," Serena went on as the camera zoomed in for a close-up of her shocked face, "nearly cost this misguided young misfit his life!"

"Who are you calling misguided?" Garrick's voice whined offscreen.

"And he isn't alone," Serena said, ignoring Garrick. "One look around this sleepy town reveals a dark obsession consuming the minds of its children." The live feed cut briefly to footage of the mall, showing a group of Goth sixth-graders.

"Are the youth of America next?" Serena asked ominously, as she reappeared on-screen. Then she frowned with determination, "I, Serena Star, will not rest until I find out the evil truth behind what's happening here."

Virgil grimaces knowing what comes next.

"Because the Star of truth must shine!" Serena Star declared dramatically, pumping her micro- phone in the air. It really was the worst journalis- tic sign-off Ivy had ever heard. "This is Serena Star. Wake up, America!"

A commercial came on, Declan shut off the TV. He turned around to look at his son and points to him, "you must promise me," he said, "that if you are ever on television, you will make a better impression than that boy Garrick Stephens."

"It's not funny, Dad," Virgil said with a frown on his pale face. "If Serena Star starts seriously investigating Goths in Franklin Grove, you know what she might find. What if she scoops the existence of vampires? None of us will ever be safe again!" Virgil rambles on as he began to quickly hyperventilate.

His father put down his tea quickly before helping his son calm down before he had an anxiety attack. "Virgil," he began to say gently, "we are talking about a woman best known for her special expose on the footwear of the rich and famous! I very much doubt she's capable of finding any real proof. Besides, the moment there's always bound to be a new bit of Hollywood gossip, Serena Star will forget all about Franklin Grove."

Virgil sighed once he had finally calmed down, "I hope you're right," he said, standing up to take his plate to the kitchen, "because if not, it's going to be really hard to get blood sausages around here."

-----

As they pulled up in front of Franklin Grove Middle School on Monday morning, Patton Abbott was applying his light pink lipstick in the visor mirror when he heard his papa gasp. He frowns and flipped up the visor to see the front steps of the school packed with people and a string of TV news vans lining the curb.

"Holy moly," Patton said breathlessly.

Remy Abbott, Patton's papa, double-parked and started to get out of the car as curiosity hit him.

Patton’s eyes widened before he quickly got out of the car and rushed to block Remy from opening the door further grabbed his papa's arm and squeaks out, "where are you going?"

"I want to see what all the commotion's about," his papa replied as he pulled down his sunglasses.

Patton immediately shook his head, "you can't come with me into school."

"Why not?" Remy asked with a pout.

"Because I'm in eighth grade," Patton explained with a frown.

Patton's papa smiled and shook his head and sighs before pouting, "well, okay," he said with a sigh.

"It's not you," Patton reassured him, "It's all parents. It's like a rule. I'll call you," Patton said reassuringly before he pecked his papa on the cheek, climbed out of the car, and squeezed between two news vans.

Patton frowns and walked towards the steps, careful to not step on any of the crews things. He looked up and noticed the bounce of soft blonde curls.

"Camilla!" he called out and his only human friend, Camilla Edmundson, turned around waved at him.

Patton made his way over to her and Camilla smiled, "hey. This is so wild," she said gesturing to the whole scene.

Patton frowns, "did something happen?"

Camilla raised an eyebrow before telling him about what had happened and dread slowly filled his stomach as he realized what Serena may stumble upon if she investigated.

Boy did he hope vampires were fiction, but nope! They were real and his twin, which he was still surprised about really I mean an identical twin! His own twin brother was a vampire as well! It just basically made them much more completely opposite yet identical twins.

Virgil had broken the first rule of Vampiredom, which was to never tell am outsider the secret.

And now Serena Star was here because of a stupid stunt Garrick Stephens did? Patton really wanted to yell at the stupid boy. For his brother's sake.

He really should look for Virgil.

"Come on let's go inside."

As he and Camilla moved the the crowd so as to make their way to the front doors of the school when he hears it. He heard a familiar high-pitched voice call out his name. He tried to ignore it and keep walking, but the voice shrieked even louder, "PATTON!"

Patton winced and told Camilla to go on without him before he reluctantly turned to see Charlotte Brown, his cheerleading captain, who was gesturing for Patton to join her in a circle of cameras.

Ever since Patton, with Virgil doing try outs for him, had made the squad a few weeks ago, Charlotte had acted as if she had forgotten that she'd tried to sabotage Patton, who was actually Virgil at tryouts. As well as if forgetting that Virgil, who was disguised as his twin, had caused her to be late to try outs and stole her role of Cheer Captain. Which must have soured her mood even though Patton turned down the role. In fact, Charlotte and her friends Katie and Allison all treated Patton like he was their BFF.

'At least it keeps the squad cheering as a team,' Patton thought to himself as he made his way over to the three girls.

"Tell them, Patton!" Charlotte said, grabbing his arm and pulling him in front of the cameras. "You know... what it's like as a new student here. How frightening it is with all the bad influences around this school."

Patton frowns before shaking his head quickly before yelping as a reporter in a rumpled suit stuck a microphone in front of Patton's face. "Have you ever slept in a coffin?"

"No," Patton said after blinking in confusion.

A woman holding a tape recorder asked, "Are you familiar with a street gang known as the Beasts?"

“...Street Gang is such a such a strong word for them,” Patton said raising an eyebrow remembering how Virgil had described them to him.

A short, determined looking woman in a tight, bright orange suit muscled in between the others, her blond hair shining in the sun. Patton’s eyes widened and he softly gasped. It was Serena Star herself! She looked much shorter than she did on TV. 

"Have you ever..." Serena Star said, thrusting her microphone under Patton's chin, "... felt threatened by everyone around you wearing black?"

"Uh... not really since both my papa and pops wear almost all black. Since when is there anything wrong with wearing black?" Patton asked raising an eyebrow. He didn’t notice the looks Charlotte gave her friends.

Charlotte quickly leaped in front of him and nods hurriedly causing her blonde hair to bounce, "yes, Ms. Star, I totally have!" she cried, clearly overexcited to be talking to a celebrity reporter like Serena. "Once," she said, flipping her hair dramatically, "I was in the girls' bathroom, re-applying gloss, when two Goth girls came in. They were dressed from head to toe in black rags, and their nails were covered in black nail polish. And guess what they did. They growled at me!"

"Growled at you?" Serena Star repeated with wide eyes.

"Absolutely," Charlotte nodded seriously. "I was so scared I ran out without even doing my mascara!"

“You had a perm last year and you looked like a poodle,” a student pops up beside Serena said in the microphone. A girl steps beside them and smirked, “that growl was more of a bark dumbass,” both giggled as they rushed up the steps cackling as Charlotte gave them a glare before looking back at Serena with a strained smile.

"So you think it's a problem," Serena Star pressed, "that so many Franklin Grove students are obsessed with darkness?"

"Totally!" Charlotte agreed, "black is so last season." She gestured toward Serena Star's turquoise stiletto heels. "I absolutely love your shoes, by the way. Are they from Hollywood?"

Patton sighs, but takes the moment to sneak away and make his way inside the building so he can find Virgil.

As he walked down the hallway he saw Virgil with his new boyfriend, Logan Daniels, who surprisingly has yet to have noticed how identical Patton and Virgil looked. Virgil was playing with his emerald ring that was attached to the necklace that he had around his neck.

The same ring identical to Patton’s that helped the two realize who they were and the only things from their birth parents.

“See you later,” Logan said with a smile before giving Virgil a kiss on his forehead to which caused Virgil to blush a light pink.

Virgil twirled the emerald ring on the chain around his neck, "okay," he said softly with a shy smile. His brother was so smitten. Patton thought it was super cute.

As Patton waited for Logan to leave he yelps as his shoulder was lightly gripped and looked to see that Roman was dragging him towards his brother. Virgil blinks and gasps as his best friend grabs his wrist and drags both twins to an empty boys bathroom. Roman quickly checked the stalls before turning to look at the twins.

“He was window shopping,” he said and from the questioning look he got from Patton the two friends explained how they changed coffins like they changed phones. As the two vampires began to worry about Serena Star, Patton tilts his head.

“Why don't we pretend and say werewolves are real to throw her off her trail,” he offered with a raised eyebrow.

The two exchanged a look and Patton’s eyes widened, “wait are you for-” he’s cut off by the bell ringing and his worries didn't ease as they didn't respond to him.

----

As 3rd Period finished, Virgil made his way to his locker when Roman grabs his wrist again.

“Hey what’s wrong?” Virgil asked with a frown and raised an eyebrow as Roman pulled out a tube of dark red lipstick and applied it, “Serena Star got the principle to call a meeting with The Scribe,” his friend said and Virgil frowns.

“When’s the meeting?” Virgil asked curiously.

“In 5 minutes, let’s go,” Roman said as he dragged his friend towards the meeting, "you know we're the only vamps on staff, right?" Roman whispered to his friend. “So we have to get on her good side alright?”

They noticed they were the last to arrive as they noticed everyone was seated around the big editorial table where Serena Star stood in the far end with their principle.

Both goths turned to find themselves face-to-face with a WowTV camera lens. They both hadn't noticed the cameraman squeezed into the corner by the door. For a moment, Virgil felt as if he'd been turned to stone, he hated being in front of cameras, crowds, and tape recorders.

With a gulp, Virgil looked right at Serena and smiled as brightly as he could, "as the senior writer of the Franklin Grove Scribe, allow me to say what an honor it is to meet a journalist of your, uh, standing, Ms. Star. I'm sure we all have a great deal to learn from you.” No matter what he had to get in her good side

Serena Star smiles and nods, "thank you," she says clearly flattered by the praise. She gestured to the boy sitting closest to her. "This young man just said that as well,” she said as she gestured to Toby Decker.

The bunny whom Patton told him was brought by The Beasts to his home when it was the day of the ball. He was also one of the best reporters on staff.

Both vampires sat beside Camilla and that was when Serena officiously placed her palms on the table. "I called you here, fellow reporters, because I need your help."

“Whatever it is, we can do our best,” Toby said eagerly as every member of The Scribe nodded.

“Good," said Serena, "because I'd like one of you to work with me on my nationally covered story about life here in Franklin Grove."

"You mean, be your assistant?" asked Will Kerrell, a 7thgrader who usually covered sports.  "Exactly,” Serena Star said as she nodded. She paused to let the information sink in. "I'm holding a audition, and the person who wins gets to be my assistant."  "How exciting!" Principal Whitehead said approvingly.  Virgil tilted his head a little wondering what she was up to.  Serena Star looked around the table with her wide eyes, "to audition, you have to get out there and get me a quote about Garrick Stephens and his coffin."  "What kind of quote?" 

"Something juicy," replied Serena Star, "something that will make the American public sit up and take notice. And the person who gets the best quote will get to help me, WowTV's Serena Star, with my story," she finished, her eyes sparkling.

‘She’s using teens to get what no adult can,’ Virgil thought to himself.

Virgil cleared his throat before nervously fidgeting, "does the quote have to be about Garrick Stephens's stunt at the cemetery?" he asked raising an eyebrow. "I mean, that was just a lame practical joke, right?" "I think there's more to the story," Serena said meaningfully, "and a good reporter will find out what."

Virgil cursed under his breath at that.

Camilla raised her hand, looking a little bored, "does everyone need to get a quote? I mean, I'm more of a critic than a reporter," she explained.

"Only those with investigative reporting experience need apply," Serena answered.

 Virgil raised an eyebrow seeing as Roman grinned at Camilla and whisper, "Looks like you and me are off the hook!" "Well, for those of you who do audition, I can- not imagine a greater opportunity than working with a journalist as respected as Serena Star," Principal Whitehead said.

If Serena Star noticed, she didn't show it. She flashed her trademark smile at the staffers around the table. "You have twenty-four hours to get your quotes. May the best reporter win!" she declared.  "Thank you, Ms. Star," Toby Decker said professionally. With that, the Scribe staff started to file out of the room, chattering about their high profile assignment. Roman started to leave, too, but Virgil put a hand on her arm. They had to talk to Serena first. "See you," Camilla said to Roman and Virgil before heading toward the door. However, before she reached it, though, Virgil saw her do a double take and walk over to the cameraman.  "That's the Sign of the Cyborg!" Camilla said, pointing to a symbol on the guy's T-shirt.  "You're a Coal Knightley fan?" he responded before they were deep in conversation about Coal Knightley's books which Virgil chuckled at.  Meanwhile, Virgil and Roman went over to talk to Serena, which was when the reporter grabbed Virgil's hand and shook it. As she did, she peered down at hi's fingers. "Interesting choice of nail polish," she said, raising her other hand and signaling her cameraman to come closer. He was too busy talking to Camilla to notice, so Serena smiled at Ivy in a plastic way and waved her free hand more frantically. Finally she snapped, "Martin!"

"Sorry!" Martin the cameraman said, rushing over as Camilla left the room. Serena huffed and let go of Virgil’s hand at last. She looked at him and Roman intensely. "You two must be friends with Garrick Stephens."

Virgil let out a loud deep sigh, “is this because we wear black clothes?” he asked with a strained smile.

Serena Star nodded. "Exactly."

"You mean you agree with stereotypes?" Virgil asked with a frown and a curious little tilt of his head blinking owilishly like Patton had shown him.

"What?" Serena Star spluttered, ”no! Of course not."  "Thank goodness," Virgil said, "because Principal Whitehead always says that a great reporter is never swayed by prejudice." He finished with a half smile at the principal over Serena Star's shoulder.  "That I do!" Principal Whitehead confirmed cheerfully.  "I couldn't agree more," Serena said stiffly, glancing uncomfortably toward the camera. She changed the subject. "So where do you kids hang out?"  "The diner," Roman told her with a shrug as he pulled out a mirror and played with his hair.

"Which diner?" Serena Star asked immediately.

"We like the Meat & Greet," Virgil replied.

"Is that the one that's decorated like a meat locker?" Serena Star said.

Virgil fidgets and hums, “I like Mister Smoothie,” he lies.

 "Me, too," Roman chimed in quickly.

Serena Star paused. "So you two don't know Garrick Stephens?"

Roman and Virgil didn't say anything.

"And you don't know anything about him or his friends?" Serena pressed on.

"Everyone calls them the Beasts," Toby piped up from a few feet away. Virgil hadn't even realized he was still there and mentally cursed at not checking the room first.

Serena Star nodded at him encouragingly, and Toby went on. "They're always playing practical jokes and things. Several weeks ago, they dragged me to a party at Virgil's house, even though they knew I wasn't invited. Although, I don't think they were invited either, but I wasn't sure.”

Virgil’s eyes widened before he cringed. Serena turned to look at him,"you invited Garrick Stephens to a party?"

"Lots of people were invited, I can’t remember who was invited really,” Virgil said with a small nervous smile.

"But not Toby, who you work with closely on the school paper?" Serena said pointedly with a raised eyebrow at the goth boy. 

Virgil shrugged helplessly. 

Serena Star turned back to Toby. "What else can you tell me about Garrick and his friends?"

"I think they're into heavy metal," Toby said, "although that might just be their T-shirts. And they're always saying weird things, like `bloodsucker' this and `bloodsucker' that." 

Virgil's mouth went dry and his stomach felt as if there were bats fluttering around it.

"Bloodsucker?" Serena's eyes widened. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Toby replied.

Virgil wanted to really scream and beat up Garrick Stephens so bad.

1/?

Tag: @gothfoxx

[i-believe-in-soriku]

Essay Part 1: Riku’s Journey

Riku is undeniably the character who has experienced the greatest evolution throughout the series.

His journey begins in Destiny Islands, when he was just a little kid who wanted to live adventures with his best friend, Sora.

Riku: When we grow up, let's get off this island. We'll go on real adventures, not this kid stuff!

That's that will of discovering the world, and the fact that he was really close to his friend Sora, that lead him to make a promise:

Terra: Is there some reason you're interested in the outside world?

Riku: Yeah. I wanna be strong one day. Like that kid who left. He went to the outside world - I bet he's really strong now. I know it's out there somewhere - the strength that I need.

Terra: Strength for what?

Riku: To protect the things that matter. You know, like my friends.

Riku had a very strong friendship with Sora. The two of them used to fight with wooden swords, explore the islands, and watch the stars together. But then, Kairi came to the Islands and became part of their life. Years passed and their friendship became stronger - but somehow something was missing.

That's when Kingdom Hearts happens. At this time, Riku wanted to explore the other worlds, feeling trapped on Destiny Islands - will he had already expressed ten years before. Riku was jealous of Sora, and probably of Kairi and Sora's growing proximity. Riku felt lonely, as we can see during the game. These dark feelings caused him to be manipulated by Maleficent, and to turn to darkness.

There are also other reasons: he wanted to see the world - which he already wanted as a five years old kid-, he wanted to become stronger in order to protect his friends - even if he did it the wrong way, he didn't forget that goal, as proved by this scene:

Riku: So, Kairi's like a lifeless puppet now?

Maleficent: Precisely.

Riku: And her heart was...

Maleficent: Taken by the Heartless, no doubt.

Riku: Tell me! What can I do?

Maleficent, as the evil witch she is, manipulated him strengthening his feelings of loneliness, jealousy and betrayal.

Maleficent: You see? It's just as I told you. While you toiled away trying to find your dear friend, he quite simply replaced you with some new companions. Evidently, he values them far more than he does you. You're better off without that wretched boy. Now, think no more of him, and come with me. I'll help you find what you're searching for.

Ansem, on his side, pretended he knew the way to make him stronger, as Riku was jealous of Sora's strength...

Ansem: The heart that is strong and true shall win the Keyblade.

Riku: What? You're saying my heart's weaker than his?

Ansem: For that instant, it was. However, you can become stronger. You should not fear in stepping through the door to darkness. It held no terror for you. Plunger deeper into the darkness and your heart will grow even stronger.

Riku: What should I do?

Ansem: It's really quite simple. Open yourself to the darkness. That is all. Let your heart, your being, become darkness itself.

... but he used him as a puppet to achieve his goals. The way he asked advices to bad people shows how lost that boy was. However, Riku finished by regain control of himself, and at the end of the game, decided to help Mickey close the Door to Darkness, even if it meant being somehow left behind - a beautiful act of redemption.

But that's only the begining of his story. In Chain of Memories, we follow Riku who has to fight his own darkness, embodied by Ansem (and also Repliku who mocks his fear of darkness). At first, Riku totaly rejects the darkness inside of him, afraid that it might overpower him once again.

Riku: All you have been talking about is the darkness. I can only assume you wanna pull me back in... so you can play Puppet Master.

And he doesn't want to hurt people like he did.

But we can see that he's becoming more and more mature, because this game is also about how Riku began to accept the part of darkness inside him as a strength (and I think Mickey helped him to do that). That's what makes him choose the way to Dawn.

Riku: What are you making me choose now?

DiZ: Between the road to light - and the road to darkness.

Riku: Neither suits me. I'm taking the middle road.

DiZ: Do you mean the twilight road to nightfall?

Riku: No. It's the road to dawn.

During 358/2 Days, Riku's will is to make sure that his best friend sleeps in peace - actually, he wants him to recover his memories and wake up. He teams up with Mickey and DiZ/Ansem the Wise to do so. In this game, Riku embraces the darkness in his heart while fighting Roxas...

Riku: I have to release the power in my heart- the dark power that I've been holding back. Even... if it changes me forever.

...a sacrifice made even though he's aware he may not find his own body anymore - which illustrates how Riku has finally accepted that darkness isn't 100% evil. We can also see that he's no longer bitter towards others: he's not even angry against Sora's Nobodies for keeping him away from his friend - just sad.

Xion: So, do you hate me for taking your friend away?

Riku: Nah. I guess... I'm just sad.

Still, in KH2, Riku is ashamed by his appearence and hides himself from Sora, even though he keeps on protecting him at distance. When they finally meet again, he tells this shame calling himself "a castaway from the darkness":

Riku: I'm no one---just a castaway from the darkness.

But he recovers his true self.

KH2 insists on the fact that despite a clear maturation, Riku still has doubts and still feel a little bit lonely. Sora points at:

Sora: Riku... C'mon, man! Why did you try to do so much on your own?You got friends...like us!

He still needs his friends to reassure him and accept him, and still thinks he can't get rid of his own darkness - his shame is still here:

Sora: You're coming back with us, right?

Riku: I had given in to the darkness.

Sora: Riku!

Riku: How'm I gonna face everyone?

Dream Drop Distance is a turning point to Riku's character. During the game, it is underlined that Riku is holding back some stuff inside of him, by four characters including himself.

Riku (to Quasi): Are you sure that's what's stopping you? Because I think something else is holding you back. Ask your heart, Quasimodo. [...] Wish I could take my own advice.

And:

Quasimodo: Master Frollo--he made me live inside the bell tower, but the real walls were the ones I built around my heart. You helped me see that, Riku.

Riku: I was...speaking from...personal experience.

Phoebus: I'd say you still keep a lot locked inside.

He also admits that he feels like his darkness will always follow him:

Riku: I gave in to the darkness once. And ever since, it's chased me around in one form or another.

But the end of the game proves that Riku has achieved a balance (a confidence that we can see in KH3).

Indeed, during the last parts of 3D, Riku is shown as a being of exception, whom heart has light and darkness in balance...

YMX: I don't know how you did it, but you really have found a way to trap darkness inside your heart

...balance which enables him to protect Sora, becoming his Dream Eater - he is able to change his very NATURE and didn't even noticed it.

Riku finally obtains the title of Keyblade Master showing that he is worthy of wielding a Keyblade - which he seemed to doubt at the beginning of the game:

Riku: My Keyblade--it just sort of...popped into my hand when I needed it most.

He has learned how to open his heart throughout his adventures, which can be seen in KH3.

In KH3 his new goals are to save Aqua and, with the others, fight the Seekers of Darkness. During the road, Mickey helps him to realize that he finally has the strenght he was aiming at since the very beginning: to protect the one person that matters.

Riku: I'm in control now. Maybe it's because you're with me this time.

Mickey: It's not me. I think it's because you've finally found inside you that special strength to protect what matters.

And the game lets no doubt: this person is Sora. He sacrifices himself to protect his friend against the Demon Tide in the Keyblade Graveyard.

This is a very brief summary of everything Riku did, but that's enought to come to a conclusion. If you have read carefully, you should have noticed that I didn't spoke about Sora that much. Because, even if Sora is actually what matters the most to Riku, the main reason why he did all those things, Sora is not what defines Riku.

Riku has a developpement that shows that he has to fight his own demons, overcomes his doubts and searches the strenght to protect who he cares about. He has other relationships than his (wonderful) relationship with Sora: for example, his friendship with Mickey.

He faced many things with the King and they share a special bond, just as Sora's with Donald and Goofy. He also shares a link with Terra and somehow Aqua, even though it's not developped that much.

Regarding of those elements, it is completely unfair to say that Riku isn't well written or too much written around Sora. Riku is interesting, relatable and touching, and I hope that he's going to have a good treatment in the future of the series. Watching the end of KH3 and Re:Mind, there's no doubt about the fact that he has an important role to play.

I want to close this part saying that Riku also has a personality. He's determined, selfless, mature, of good advice, a little bit sassy. Riku, even if he has doubts, can be now considered as confident. He is empathetic, cares about others, knows how to confort his friends, especially Sora. There are other important points - like the fact he's smart ~ but I think those are the main elements.

Intro • Part 2