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jihyuncompass · 4 years ago

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A Birthday Visit

Well well well would you look at that. My very first Tears of Themis fic is for Marius’s birthday who could have guessed (anyone who knows me) Happy Birthday Marius, I can’t wait to see you again <3

For future reference, this fic was written for Marius’s 2021 birthday. As of yet Tears of Themis has not been released for the English audiences. I have played the beta but there is a chance Marius will be a little out of character as a result of the timing.

Summary: You visit Marius’s work to celebrate his birthday with him, even if he’s a little busy

Marius x MC

Word count: 2.1k

Warnings: N/A

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The PAX building was an intimidating one. That thought always came into your mind when you approached it. While the Law Firm was also one of the large skyscrapers that made up the Stellis skyline, the PAX building was taller, and quite the intimidating addition to said skyline.

It wasn’t the first time you’d been here, far from it, but it was rare for you to go into PAX for a non professional reason, or without being explicitly invited by Marius. You looked up at the building, even without meaning to your eyes focused on the window you knew belonged to Marius’s office. There was a good chance he was in there right now.

Adjusting your bag over your shoulder you walked through the doors and into the bustling first floor.

You walked through the groups of professionally dressed employees standing to chat idly, or summarize the recent meetings they had. Or stop to enjoy their coffee for a little while before getting back to work.

“Welcome to the PAX group.” One of the receptionists started as you walked to the desk. “How can I help you today?” You cleared your throat, speaking as eloquently as you can.

“Hello, I’m here to see Mr. Von Hagen? I’m a friend.” You said to the receptionist. She raised an eyebrow and looked up at you. Scrutinizing your appearance.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Von Hagen doesn’t see anyone without a meeting.” You pressed your lips together,

“I can promise you he’s a good friend of mine, it’s his birthday and-”

“I’m sorry I have no way to verify that you are who you say you are.” The receptionist said. You reviewed your options in your head, clearly she wasn't going to let you go up there on the promise of being a friend.

After a moment of brainstorming an idea came to you, digging through your bag you showed the receptionist your work ID badge, listing you as a lawyer for the Themis Law Firm.

“I’m also Mr. Von Hagen’s personal lawyer, he knows who I am.” The receptionist squinted at the ID, hesitant of it’s quality and authenticity. After typing at her computer briefly she sighed and relented.

“Aright, I do see your name here. I’ll let you up there and I’ll give a call to Mr. Von Hagen’s assistant to let them know you’re here.” You thanked her and hurried to the elevator. The first challenge was dealt with, now it was just time to go through with the rest of the plan.

You piled into the elevator with a group of suited men heading to what you assumed were their own desks and offices throughout the building, but you’d be one of the only people going as far up, to nearly the top floor where Marius’s office would be found.

The elevator was nearly empty by the time you made it up, only a few people exiting with you.

One of Marius’s assistants was waiting for you on the other side of the elevator. They greeted you as you approached them.

“Good afternoon.” They said. “I’m afraid to say that Mr. Von Hagen has been stuck in meetings all day so I’m not sure if he’ll be able to see you.”

You pressed your lips together, you should have asked him in advance, he was usually busier than he always let on.

“Well I just have a couple things I want to show him, I’m happy to wait for when he has a spare moment.” The assistant seemed unsure but shrugged.

“Very well, I’ll take you to his office, you can wait there. I’ll let him know that you’re there.” You followed the assistant down the long hallway to the office at the end, the largest by far, belonging to Marius.

The assistant closed the door behind you, the office was neat and tidy as it always was. Although it was Marius’s office, you were always a little disappointed by just how little of Marius seemed to be in the office. The sleek professional furniture, the carefully organized files, cup full of standard ballpoint pens didn’t seem like Marius. The rebellious, creative and playful Marius you knew well and had grown to adore.

Sitting on the couch in his office you decided to make use of your time by setting the present you’d gotten him out on the table, along with the small cake box. With your job and caseload you hadn’t had the time to make a particularly fancy or intricate cake. But something small the two of you could easily share.

You hummed to yourself gently as you got everything set up. Your eyes focused on the work in front of you. So much so you didn’t even notice as the office doors opened while your back was turned.

“So.” A voice said from behind you. The sudden noise startled you, making you jump. Quickly turning around you were face to face with Marius. Dressed with a full suit, although he had that playful gaze he kept around you. Seeing him, your shoulders relaxed, and a smile crossed your face. “I heard you wanted to see me.”

“I hoped I could catch you for a minute for your birthday.” You explained to him. “I should have asked about your schedule, I wouldn’t have come if I knew you were so busy.” Marius shook his head.

“Nah I’m glad you’re here. It’s a perfect surprise.” Marius looked past you and to the table behind you where everything was set up. His eyes lighting up with that almost childlike excitement he got. However that excitement was quickly clouded.

You frowned. “You don’t have a lot of time huh?”

Marius hesitated to answer you. “I don’t have a lot of time, I have a meeting in a half hour.”

As you looked from Marius to the table you straighten your back and beamed at him. “Well then let’s make this a fun half hour! Enjoy the time we have.” With this the playfulness returned. The Marius you loved to see.

Sitting beside one another, you made quick work of slicing the cake into two even slices for the two of you.

“I’m afraid it’s nothing fancy.” You said. “But I have no doubt it tastes good and that’s what matters, doesn't it?”

“Did you make it?” Marius asked, a brow raised curiously.

“I did, I’m not a baker though so be warned.” Marius picked up the fork, picking up the perfect bite of cake to get both the cake and the frosting on top. Watching him closely you made note of his reaction. “What do you think?”

Marius nodded. “It’s good, I think I would even say I’m impressed.” You relaxed against the couch.

“I’m glad you like it.” You said. “I was worried it wasn’t going to be very good.” You took a bite to taste it yourself, the sweetness of the cake hitting your tongue immediately. You’d had better cakes, but still you couldn’t deny the little part of you that was proud of what you’d made.

Not wanting to waste your time you quickly leaned forward to push some presents closer. This seemed to grab Marius’s attention away from the cake in his hand. He set it down to pick up one of the gifts, looking over the basic wrapping paper.

“Go ahead.” You encouraged. “Open it up! Take a look.” Marius stared with the smallest one, quickly tearing off the paper without much thought. He pulled out two tickets, reading the tiny text on them. “They’re for an upcoming art exhibition I read about online, I thought it’d be fun to go together. I don’t know nearly as much about art as you do but maybe you could teach me some stuff.”

Marius smirked. “I guess I could spare some of my expansive art knowledge to impart some on you.”

Holding back from rolling your eyes instead you gave him your best genuine smile. “I would love that. I’d love to learn from you.” Marius seemed pleased by this, as evidenced by the redness that quickly started growing on his face. Looking back at the gift he tried to get himself back under control.

Similar to the first gift Marius tore the wrapping paper off the second one. This one, a hand held sketchbook, bound nicely with a leather cover, his initials MVH put onto the front. A small note you’d written scribbled onto the first page.

“This is-”

“Well, you’re always working so hard here, or studying hard at university, and I know you would probably much prefer to be in your studio painting. So, that’s a little sketchbook, one you can carry anywhere.” Flipping through the pages, Marius’s expression turned soft, warm, happy, not holding that playful spark. “I know you probably could afford any notebook in the world, but this one is customized just for you, not another one of these exists just like it.”

The softness in his face stayed even when he looked up at you, even when he looked down again.

“Thank you, for this.” He held it carefully in his hands, as if he was afraid of damaging it too soon. Before he could even put pencil to paper for the first time. There were still a couple gifts left, but you let him linger on that one. Trying to memorize every single second in your mind.

The rest of the gifts were more basic things, special sweets, some art supplies you’d seen when you passed by the art store on your way home. Despite how basic many of these smaller gifts were, he never seemed ungrateful, and equally happy to see each one.

All the presents unwrapped, and cake nearly finished you both sat together happily. Looking at Marius with the initial excitement wearing off you started to see the exhaustion peeking through. The heaviness in his eyes, the way his shoulders were stiff yet slumped. He looked tired, worn out already.

“Your assistant said you’ve been in meetings all day?”

Marius rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, PAX has a big thing coming up. I’ve been in meetings since eight. This is the first break I’ve had all day.” As he spoke he loosened his tie, letting it release some of the tension in his shoulders and neck.

“You look exhausted.” You said. He sighed and closed his eyes for a few seconds. “Have you been resting?”

Marius’s eyes opened again. “I was at my studio late last night. But I’m fine.”

You looked more concerned, you doubted he was really resting enough. With everything he did, there was no possible way he was letting himself take breaks. Even on his birthday he seemed to be working full steam ahead.

“Marius, why don’t you lay down for a bit? Let yourself rest?” Marius looked over at you, as if he was trying to think through it, crunching the numbers in his head. Gently touching his shoulder you turned him to face you, his eyes raised to look at your face. You loosened up his tie some more and unbuttoned the top button on his dress shirt to let him relax.

“Come on.” You said in a soft voice. “Rest for a little bit.”

He considered this for a little while longer. Then let long a long sigh, he let himself lean forward enough to rest his forehead against your shoulder. Reaching up you rubbed his back, gently massaging to let him relax against you.

“I can’t rest for long.” Marius muttered. “There’s that meeting-”

“Something is better than nothing.” You reminded him. “How about you lie down? You can rest with me until your meeting.” He was still for a little while longer, then lifted his head long enough to move.

Marius’s head was laying in your lap. You gently played with his hair, running your fingers through the strands. Marius’s eyes slipped closed, his breaths long and even.

“My meeting-”

“I’ll get you up when it’s time. Rest right now.” You told him. He sighed and let himself fully rest.

“Thank you.” He muttered.

“Happy birthday Marius.” You whispered to him. Watching him rest, you couldn’t help but smile. This moment was going to be over sooner than later, soon he’d have to get up and get himself cleaned up, he’d go to that meeting, and then the next one and the next one until he could call it a day. He’ll probably go to his studio again, even if he’s exhausted. He’ll try and get some rest, but eventually he’ll get up and start it all again.

But right now he’s with you and resting. Enjoying the short break he could afford. Maybe not the best birthday one could have, but one that was more than happy.

#tears of themis #tot #marius von hagen #lu jinghe #marius x reader #lu jinghe x reader #wrote this in one day with a wrist brace how's everyone else doin

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imherongraystairstrash · 4 years ago

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I’ve been thinking about this for a while, do you think Charles,Barbara, Eugenia and Anna were close? Anna maybe less because she’s closer in age to the merry thieves set and she probably ghosted Charles after the Ariadne engagement. Would you consider a fic of them all growing up, starting with them 4 as little kids and then slowly becoming teens and adults and then dealing with Barbara’s death. I think it would be a fun idea since nobody ever considers them to be a older merry thieves.

You can thank my social anxiety for this one bc I stress wrote it in school 🙃

TW: panic attacks, death

Title: When we were young

Characters: Barbara Lightwood, Anna Lightwood, Eugenia Lightwood, Cecily Lightwood, Gabriel Lightwood, Alexander Lightwood, Sophie Lightwood, Gideon Lightwood

Anna was sitting by the fire when Charles came into the room. She hated him. She truly did. But, somehow, at that moment, she felt strange. He looked at her and it took her many years back, to when they weren’t exactly friends, but they were far from what they are now to each other.

…

“And that was how Consul Wentworth fixed the crisis of 1687.” Charles said with a satisfied smile to himself.

The Lightwood girls were his audience. Well, sort of. Eugenia’s cheek was resting on her fist, squishing the right side of her face as her lidded eyes approached shutting completely. Anna was slumped against Eugenia, her lips pressed together tightly and her eyes opened wide, staring at a fixed spot on the floor. Their luminous dark blue glittered in the witchlight, looking exquisitely uncanny. Barbara was mid-yawn, leaning on the leg of a sofa.

“Wow, Charles. Thanks for the history lesson.” Eugenia said, monotonously. It was evident that she’d inherited her mother’s sass from the day she was born, when Barbara had woken her up by exclaiming at the sight of her newborn sister, and Genie responded by pulling her sister’s hair.

“Oh, and in 1690-“

“NO!” All three Lightwood daughters shrieked.

“I’m still not done, though.” Said Charles.

“Yes, you are.” Eugenia said, standing up and settling the matter. “We are positively bored. There is absolutely nothing to do except listen to Charles talk about politics, and if those are the only two options, frankly, I’d rather be bored.”

Charles crossed his arms. “Being an intellect is not boring.”

Little two year old Anna looked at him with one eyebrow raised.

“I swear, Thomas is having a better time than we are,” Eugenia said glaring at to where their parents were, with the tiny, almost invisible baby nestled in Gideon’s arms, his fingers wrapped around Sophie's thumb. The parents were all laughing about something, which made Eugenia scowl even more.

“To be an adult.” Barbara said, with a martyred sigh.

“We needn’t be adults to have fun.” Charles said.

“I suppose you’re going to torture us with more political trivia.”

“No,” Charles said. “I was going to suggest we go through the attic.”

The girls looked up at this and Charles smirked, clearly proud of himself at having come up with a good idea. For once.

“What is in the attic?”

Charles shrugged. “I don’t know, but there’s probably strange and obscure things. There’s a lot of that kind of stuff in our house.”

Barbara and Eugenia exchanged a look before the eldest Lightwood sister turned to him.

“We shall go and discover this mysterious attic you speak of.”

…

“What could this even be?” Barbara said, holding up a loose gear-like contraption.

“Papa sometimes builds things out of clockwork.” Charles said, sitting cross legged. “Or, he used to at least.”

“That’s…”

Genie and Charles looked at Barbara as she trailed off.

“Nevermind, I have no comment.”

Charles nodded as though that was a common reaction people had in terms of his father’s experiments.

They rummaged through boxes upon boxes, finding momentos they didn’t understand such as papers upon papers of things that said many difficult words. They could distinguish a couple of words such as “infernal” and “devices”, however there were many that made no sense to them.

“What is a Mortmain?” Asked Genie.

“I think it’s an undead horse or something along those lines,” said Charles.

“Oh,” said Eugenia. “That’s disgusting.”

“Quite,” agreed Barbara.

Anna was toddling around the room, giggling. She almost tripped over a loose floorboard, and would have, had Charles not reached out and grabbed a hold of the back of her dress.

“This is too dangerous for a small child like Anna,” Barbara said, ever the mother-goose. “I shall take her downstairs before she hurts herself.”

Anna protested at first, but acquiesced once Barbara bribed her with the promise of dessert.

…

“What are you doing here?” Anna asked.

He looked up, his green eyes meeting her blue ones.

…

Charles remembered that day like it was just yesterday.

He and Eugenia had stayed behind rifling through boxes, which wasn’t unwelcome, as Eugenia and Charles had an easy, lighthearted and, at times, profound, friendship. Despite their age gap, they enjoyed each other’s company, though neither could say why. Perhaps, it was simply because they mocked each other. Or perhaps, it was sometimes they would occasionally talk about things such as philosophy, and whether what they were seeing was true, or the world was just a figment of their imaginations. Or a mixture of the two; they’d never really discussed it.

Eugenia surprised him when she said, “do you ever feel… different from your parents?”

Charles furrowed his brows, “in what aspect?”

“Love.”

“Have you a suitor?” Charles inquired, intrigued.

“No. Actually, that was my question. I find that, sometimes, I don’t only enjoy the idea of a male suitor, but perhaps, I also enjoy the company of a woman. Perhaps.” She pressed her lips together tightly, as if forcing herself to stop speaking.

Charles looked at her, his bright green eyes wide. “I-um-…”

“But I’m not sure, of course.” Eugenia blurted out. “It’s not as if shadowhunters are precisely fond of that particular preference or-“

“Do you really think they wouldn’t like it?” Charles asked, softly. “Do you believe they will reject those who are like that?”

Eugenia looked down. “I’m afraid I’m most sure of it.”

Charles had then realized that he couldn’t have both. There was no way around it.

He knew his parents were happy and that love made them complete. However, they didn’t have to choose. They could be married and the idea wouldn’t affect their respective occupations. Charles, on the other hand, couldn’t be Consul and have the kind of love he wanted. He almost resented them because of it. They were able to do what they loved and nobody forced them to pick between one or the other.

It was unfair. So incredibly unfair.

“I guess you better get rid of your feelings towards women than.” He said simply, “unless you’re willing to let something as simple as love get in the way of your dreams.”

“Dreams?” Eugenia asked, looking confused and a tiny bit hurt.

But Charles got up to go back downstairs to his parents, aunts and uncles.

…

Charles slumped down in a chair and dug his fingers into his hair.

“She was just here.” He said quietly. “Babs, was just here.”

Anna felt sudden rage. “You are not allowed to mourn her.”

Charles looked up. “Just because you don’t like me doesn’t mean I can’t be sad. She was my cousin too. Perhaps not by blood, but she was still a cousin.” He pressed his lips together angrily and stared fixedly at the witchlight stone that was illuminating the room.

Anna, however, couldn’t find it in her to be diplomatic; she got up and left the room.

…

Anna had never seen Eugenia look this way. She was always put together, posh. But now, she looked hollow. Like a shell of who she used to be. Anna wanted to go up to her, to say something, but she felt lost for words. What did you tell someone who lost a dear sister? If Anna felt sorrow, she couldn’t imagine what Eugenia was feeling.

Her head was tilted upwards, looking up at the pyre where the corpse of her sister lay. Tears were streaming down her face, rolling down her cheeks, throat and chest, leaving streaks on her face that looked like the roots of a tree.

Sophie had her arm around her daughter. The sight of the four of them was very strange. There was a gap missing where Barbara should have been. She suddenly felt a hand take hold of her own. She looked to her right and saw her mother looking straight ahead, squeezing her daughter’s hand. Her father was looking down, holding Alex. Her baby brother was one of the few who looked up at the cousin who’d taught him to play simple songs on the piano, and had always let him sleep in her arms on New Year's eve.

She didn’t know what he must have been thinking now, staring up at the pyre.

Though, to be fair, she didn’t quite know what to think herself, as she looked up at the cousin who’s life was cut far too short.

…

Eugenia’s body didn’t feel like her own. She hadn’t felt this body was her own for a while. Even since Augustus and the secret she’d kept to herself.

This was somehow worse. To be torn away from your best friend, whom you’d shared a room with almost your entire life. Eugenia didn’t know how to live in a world without Barbara. Sometimes, in the rare moments when she forgot about her sadness, she’d call her sister’s name, ready to tell her about what had happened in her novel. Or find herself walking to Barbara’s room without thinking and then staring blankly at the door that has remained shut ever since the day she passed away.

A couple of weeks ago, she’d found a letter Barbara had sent her when she’d been in Idris. It was in between her copy of Jane Eyre. She couldn’t bring herself to read it in its entirety, but she stared at the signature blankly.

Suddenly, she got the urge to run. So she ran. That’s how, an hour later, she’d gotten a small tattoo under her ankle that said “Sincerely, your favorite sister Babs.”

It felt right to have Bab’s signature there, we’re only she could see. It made her feel accompanied everywhere she went, even though nobody else could see.

Now, looking up at the pyre, her face tight from tears she’d left to dry, her mother weeping silently, she could almost imagine that her sister was there, simply caught in a slumber and that she’d wake up at any moment and come tumbling down, throwing herself in Eugenia’s arms.

Any moment now, she thought when the pyre burst into flames.

“Ave atque vale, Barbara Lightwood.” The crowd said at once.

Eugenia shook her head and swayed on her feet. Her breathing became heavy and her fingers began prickling. Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. No nononono.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, vaguely that it was her father’s.

Not Barbara.

Not Babs.

“Calm down, Genie.”

Not her sister. Her sister couldn’t possibly be up there.

“Breathe Eugenia.”

She wanted to scream that she couldn’t, that she’d never breathe again, as long as her sister wasn’t breathing with her. Why did she have to live? She would have much preferred that Barbara live in her stead.

The world was numb and fractured, never to be fixed again.

…

(Don’t worry, Gideon was able to help Genie after the fic ends bc he’s the best dad)

Tagging: @tsccreatorsnet @atla-lok143 @rinadragomir @youngreckless @autumnangel20 @julemmaes @cupcakesandkittens @no-scones-allowed @ninacarstairss @stxr-thxif @writeforjordelia @icouldnotask @jordeliasupremacy @cordelia-cardale @will-effing-herondale @axoloteca @heronstairs2014 @ilovemanicures @ti-bae-rius @alastair-esfandiyar-carstairs1 @readersconfessions812 @nightshade3465 @livvyheronstairs @zemiraa @proudtobealuthor @neurogliadudette @theenchanteddreamer @cheeseandmacarons

If you want to be on my tag list, or if you changed your url recently and your not in the tag list anymore, let me know! Also, if you want to be removed, send me a dm! I won’t be offended in the slightest :) Oh, and if you asked to be on the tag list and you’re not on it, please tell me (I’m very absentminded lol).

#tsc #tlh #eugenia lightwood #barbara lightwood #charles buford fairchild #gabriel lightwood #anna lightwood #cecily lightwood #cecily herondale #tlh fanfic #tlh fanfiction #the last hours #tid #sophie lightwood #gideon lightwood

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astrolocherry · 5 years ago

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Mars in Aries or the 1st

♂︎Greek Ares: Commanding, confident, and captivating self-expression that can be intimidating to others, vital and action-oriented with intense difficulty settling, crisis waits around the next corner, intuitive functions spark through impulse and adrenaline, ‘don’t know their own strength’

♂︎Roman Mars: The conquest to find the life path that converges talent, passion, the spontaneous self-expression, and self-awareness, in the sense of ‘this is what I was made to do’, shines when radiating this cosmic flame of what expresses most naturally, lives in honour of a birth right

Mars in Taurus or the 2nd

♂︎Greek Ares: Physical energy requires a productive and timely outlet, desires are demanding and often require immediate and impulsive satiation, lacks patience to finish long term tasks, habits can be harmful to physical body, pleasure is a reward system

♂︎Roman Mars:Shines in the trance of the natural creative rhythm, glowing when they are putting their whole body, mind, and soul into the work, making money inspires confidence, a battle against low self-worth and strong self-judgement, the finished product is a reflection of the identity, ability to enjoy themselves in the moment is influenced by feelings of self-value

Mars in Gemini or the 3rd

♂︎Greek Ares: Energised through conversation, impassioned learner, good physical/dexterous skills, learns through physical activity, curiosity requires immediate satiation, will defend beliefs and opinions and debate until the opposition loses energy, can be verbally impulsive to detriment

♂︎Roman Mars:Shines in the interactive realm, delivers knowledge with passion and purpose, inspiring teacher that makes learning exciting, identifies with the response they get from others and the universe such as if a person is angry at them, they become angry at themselves-or when they are uplifted, they feel that the whole world accepts them

Mars in Cancer or the 4th

♂︎Greek Ares: The blood bank of home and family, the one who keeps everybody together during good times and bad , emotional needs demand immediate satiation, extremely protective of family and loved ones despite possible long-term disputes, can have a very energetic, high strung, wild personality at home that people wouldn’t expect

♂︎Roman Mars: The lifelong fight for “what is mine”, shines in the sanctum behind closed doors, the blood bank of home and family, energised from visiting the inner world of imagination, identifies strongly with the family heritage and culture, will also take on the feeling of being tarnished by any errors of their ancestors, still feels like a child, a good support network at home provides the confidence to put themselves out there in the world

Mars in Leo or the 5th

♂︎Greek Ares: Plays to win, strong romantic impulses, romance sparks action and adrenaline, may enjoy domination, being dominated, or role-play strong, energised by the love and support of the crowd or audience

♂︎Roman Mars: Shines while participating, enacting, or performing what they love, passion brings natural delight and limitless supplies of energetic inspiration, creativity is self-regenerative and a stamp of the identity, dignified adversary, strong desire for recognition, desire to find the talent or practice that represents who they are as a person

Mars in Virgo or the 6th

♂︎Greek Ares: Razor-sharp mental and physical focus on the working product, competitive with the limitations of their own abilities, inherent struggle with authority, strong need to be of service to others like their own life depends on it but can expect far too much from themselves in every realm of life from what they can do for others to how much exercise they can do

♂︎Roman Mars:Shines when practicing or performing their position or working role with competency, wants to love what they do and inspire everybody else along the way, radiant and agile intellect that learns quickly and finds efficient methods that make it easier for others, degrading self-value, identifies with failings, imperfections, and inadequacies, takes mistakes or criticism at work very personally

Mars in Libra or the 7th

♂︎Greek Ares: Love is a conquest and the energy is supplied for shared experiences and magnetising other people, relationships have a purpose for existing, may be approached as an object of desire or apple of many eye’s, strong desire to collaborate with others, feels a sense of pride and protection, will fight and hold onto the relationship, can struggle between over or under compromising and sometimes both at the same time,

♂︎Roman Mars:Shines in the presence of the lover, may project a sense of inadequacy and inequality onto the partner and feel they are being dominated as a result, strong subconscious attraction to dominating or assertive types that provide the individual with an idea of their limitations, strongly identifies with the responses they get from others

Mars in Scorpio or the 8th

♂︎Greek Ares: Longing to surrender to sexual union but will simultaneously fight it and resist the exposure and potential damage, strong desire to let go and move on from certain things but they meet an equally strong attachment and have to fight themselves more in the end, intense feelings of anger that demand retribution or vindication

♂︎Roman Mars:Shines in the presence of the one they are emotionally and spiritually intimate with, intimate desire lights a fire and boundaries shatter, a sexual magic that casts spells of closeness and soul reunions, strong need to move on from certain events but there is often difficulty when they find they’ve been identifying with this part of their lives and feeling that person’s betrayal to be part of who they are

Mars in Sagittarius or the 9th

♂︎Greek Ares: The mind is action oriented and feverish for answers, pushes the universe to prove or validate the belief, strong dose of wanderlust that sets challenges like seeing and experiencing as much of the world as possible

♂︎Roman Mars:The higher mind shines through these eyes that catch spiritual stimulus before it disappears, the fire of the Godhead burning inside, the conquest is a pilgrimage, radiates in the faith or belief that provides answers and meaning, shines in the educational or teaching realm can apply their own philosophies and make complex subjects attractive and exciting

Mars in Capricorn or in the 10th

♂︎Greek Ares: The natural instinct to take charge of their own life, ambitions are grand personal challenges the natural instinct to take charge, ambitions are grand personal challenges and failure is not an option, a natural role-model whose love and passion for what they do inspires people to follow their ambition, energised by dreaming the possibilities of their life, struggles with stopping in that moment and relishing in their success

♂︎Roman Mars: Fighting for the life that belongs to them, achieving goals, attaining expertise, and finally a sense of acceptance in who they are, shines in the sphere of leadership that others look up to lead, success and recognition provides the confidence to take on further pursuits, makes a lot of comparisons against their own success and other people’s

Mars in Aquarius or the 11th

♂︎Greek Ares: Natural leader who takes charge in the group setting, enjoys friendships with a competitive edge such as from a team, there may be tense and impassioned conflicts with these friends but also a way of getting the best out of them

♂︎Roman Mars:Shines in the wider group, community, and friendship setting, energised by the contact of people coming together for a cause, to cheer for the team and celebrate the win with everyone, friends are their army against the darkness of life, very strong reaction to criticism as it points at possible rejection

Mars in Pisces and the 12th

♂︎Greek Ares: Sleep is the combat zone, they take unexpressed emotions, rage, and assertion to bed with them at night and stage a fight that interrupts, weakens, or denies sleep so that waking sense of tiredness remains again the next day

♂︎Roman Mars:Shines in the darkest times when weaker spirits would have fallen away, holds a secret candle that keeps burning through the darkest times, when it feels like they have nothing left, that tiny fire gives them the Heroine’s strength, and they probably won’t feel a thing – testament to how much they needed, identifies with being a victim, the persecuted, or permanently damaged

Cherry

#mars signs #mars in the 1st house #mars in the 2nd house #mars in the 3rd house #mars in the 4th house #mars in the 5th house #mars in the 6th house #mars in the 7th house #mars in the 8th house #mars in the 9th house #mars in the 10th house #mars in the 11th house #mars in the 12th house #mars #mars in aries #mars in taurus #mara in gemini

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calitraditionalism · 4 years ago

Text

Arc Three: Chapter Thirteen

(AO3 counterpart here.)

The five witnesses glanced at each other, unsure. Darkpelt, Redheart and Mistface stood together, with Darkpelt taking the lead. Her tail danced about merrily and her ears were perked. It looked a little like she had spotted particularly fat prey and was preparing to catch it.

“So,” she said, “this whole StarClan thing, right? Real puzzle, isn’t it?”

Mistface gave her a very dry look (though he wasn’t bothering to hide his smile). Redheart’s eyes rolled skyward for just a heartbeat.

“Seems a difficult thing,” Darkpelt went on. “We’ll have to consider our options carefully when we approach this topic.”

“What options?” Beetlefoot said. “All we can do is run.”

“Incorrect!” Darkpelt’s grin broadened. “As you all may have guessed, I’ve been doing some real hard thinking on this particular topic, and just now broached my newest theory to our deputy and…” She turned towards Mistface. “I’m trying to find a nice way to call you ‘smarter than your assumed looks would imply’.”

“Get to the point, Darkpelt,” Mistface said. “Now ain’t the time for jokes.”

“That is true, at least.” Darkpelt shook her head in self-admonishment and returned her attention to her audience. “Anyway, my theory posits as such: the false StarClan eats souls, as we all know. This would imply it needs a way to sustain itself. Which-“ She leaned a little forward. “-implies further that it is, in some form, alive. And if it’s alive, it can be killed.”

Greyleaf stared at her. For perhaps the first time since meeting Redheart in the waking world, his heart leapt with a sudden excitement. His mind immediately was working furiously away at this idea, many thoughts shouting over each other with plans and what information he’d collected over the years.

"You think that's possible?" Flyfang's eyes were wide.

"I'm quite certain it is," Darkpelt said. "Anything can die. What makes this so different?"

“I-“ Laurelclaw shuffled his feet, halfway between nervous and eager. “Well, I would like to think so, but how does something like that die?"

“That’s the puzzle part,” Darkpelt said. “It’s not going to die like a cat. It’s not built like us. It relies on souls and belief to get anything done.”

Littlepaw’s ears perked. “Belief?”

“Belief,” Darkpelt repeated. “That’s the key. It’s a mental game. This thing’s power is all in the mind.”

A realization hit Greyleaf in a full-force tackle. He stood up, tail straight out and bushy. “It’s a psychic monster. It relies on your thoughts and beliefs to be effective.”

“Therefore-“ Darkpelt almost wiggled in excitement. “Therefore, if there’s a way to take it on, it’ll be all in our heads.”

“Take it on?” Beetlefoot repeated, looking bewildered.

“We don’t need to flee from it.” Darkpelt’s paws kneaded at the ground. “We need to figure out how to attack it within itself – within our minds, in our sleep, perhaps.”

Greyleaf couldn’t help a rush of adrenaline in his blood himself that made him want to jump up and down. “It can take a dead soul and it can lie to us, but that’s all it can do. There’s a weakness somewhere that we can find just in a dream.”

“Yes!” Darkpelt nodded fervently at him. “Precisely!”

Mistface spoke now. “Thing is that we ain’t seers, and even seers don’t got the power to force StarClan to meet them wherever or whenever they like. So we gotta march up to its den and make it acknowledge us.” He looked at Redheart. “Which is how we’ve made a new plan.”

“The plan so far – young as it is – is this.” Redheart’s voice was level, but there was an intensity behind it that belied her excitement. “We want to head north and get to the Lighthouse. That place is the most direct link to StarClan – it will have to respond to us there. Once there, if everyone who comes with us dreams at once, we stand much more of a chance of defeating it through what means are possible.”

Darkpelt flicked a paw in Mistface’s general direction. “Your theory so far, my lad?”

Mistface, of the three, was the only one talking like he was conversing the weather. He tilted his head, eyes contemplative. “Just a theory, mind, but Redheart explained to me a little of what this thing is like. Nightmarish.” He looked almost sadly at Greyleaf. “Can’t even imagine it in my head without a little panic.”

Greyleaf offered a weak smile in return.

Mistface breathed in slowly and continued. “But what I gathered is that this thing’s just as much land as it is a monster. It shows seers landscapes same as it does ghosts. That can’t all be simple illusions – it ain’t that original. My guess is that, if we are to destroy it, we gotta approach it like we’re destroying a forest or a field.”

“How do we do that?” Flyfang asked. She was halfway to eagerness, but she still sounded hesitant. “We can’t just claw it to death.”

Mistface smiled lazily at her. “We’ll just have to get creative, won’t we?”

“That ‘we’, by the way,” Darkpelt added, “refers to whoever wants to come with us. I’m putting my paw in on this plan, and so are Redheart and Mistface. You all are free to leave, and maybe you should. I won’t lie and say we’re guaranteed to stay sane and in good health on this quest, but-“

“I’m in,” Greyleaf said.

Mistface beamed.

“Don’t know why I even pretended to ask you.” Darkpelt’s laugh was like her elation had filled her and had nowhere to go but forcibly out. “That’s four. Warriors, your thoughts?”

“Think carefully,” Redheart said. “You’ll be traveling with me and Greyleaf, and we’re both wanted. Even besides StarClan and whatever risks we face with it, you could be arrested for assisting us and trying to escape the Territory.”

“Doesn’t matter to me,” Flyfang said. “I’m coming with. As if there’s another option.”

Laurelclaw nodded at Flyfang. “Same for me. You- you might need a little muscle anyway, if someone tries to stop us.”

“Look at you actually offering to fight,” Beetlefoot said wryly. “We’ll probably need it.”

“Then you’re with us?” Mistface asked him.

Beetlefoot nodded as well - curtly, but with a spark in his eyes. “Any way I can help, I will. This is too important to decline.”

Littlepaw jumped to her feet. “I’m coming too!”

Every adult looked her way. Greyleaf could see on their faces that they’d all completely forgotten the apprentice. He had too, to be fair, but it was still a little funny.

Redheart frowned a little, tone careful. “Littlepaw, I can honor your enthusiasm, but I don’t think we can keep you with us from this point on. It’s been dangerous enough for you just in these past couple of days. The leaders will be looking for us-“

Littlepaw shook her head violently. “Let them. I’m not quitting here.”

“Littlepaw-“ started Flyfang.

“You’re going!” Littlepaw looked at her, outraged. “And the only reason you’re not my mentor is because we didn’t do the ceremony! You can’t just leave me behind!”

Laurelclaw tried next. “It’s dangerous for all of us, nevermind you, you know? We don’t know what StarClan can do to us. I mean, I’m sure it’ll tell everyone to chase us down if it catches wind of what we’re doing. We just don’t want you to get in trouble with us.” He cowed a little when Littlepaw glared at him. “Legal or physical, I mean.”

“He’s not wrong,” Darkpelt said. “Heading straight into the wasp’s nest may have some dire consequences for us, if we get there before the Clan gets us. We have absolutely no idea of how much it can hurt us until and when we get to the Lighthouse.”

Littlepaw stood as tall as her tiny stature would allow, tail lashing and eyes fiery and determined. “You don’t get it. I have just as much stake in this as you do. Not because of my family and my own life.” She paused, swallowed, and continued, a little shakier and angrier at the same time. “I helped propagate the lie of StarClan. I helped this thing deceive everyone. It deceived me! I bought into its crap and I told everyone what it told me, and they bought into its crap too. You can’t just send me home and expect me to forget everything I’ve learned, and everything I’ve helped it do.”

“No one blames you for being fooled,” Redheart said soothingly. “That isn’t your fault.”

“But it’s going to be my fault if I don’t do something about it,” Littlepaw countered. She gave everyone a defiant, fiery stare that was so uncharacteristic on her pretty face that Greyleaf almost wanted to draw back a little in alarm. “So you can take me with you or I can follow you the whole way to the Lighthouse, no matter how hard you try to drive me off. Either way, I’m part of this, and I don’t care what I need to do to help stop StarClan, with or without your approval.”

There was a silence. The adults now looked at each other, silently debating back and forth. Greyleaf regarded Littlepaw with sympathy. He understood her fear of that helpless frustration at being put aside and forced to do nothing with this horrible knowledge in her head.

“Let her come with us,” he said. “It’s only fair.”

“Getting an apprentice in trouble with the leaders, though…” Laurelclaw said anxiously.

“It’s her choice.” Greyleaf nodded to Littlepaw. “And I can’t make her live with what she knows and be unable to do anything about it.”

Mistface hummed. “She is right. We ain’t her mentor. Or her mother, for that matter. Let her do what she wants.”

Redheart had her head down, eyes narrowed in thought. She looked up again after a moment and said to Littlepaw, “My caveat is this: we can make Flyfang your mentor right now, and she will have the final say in what you do. If she says no, then you go home.”

Flyfang and Littlepaw blinked in surprise, looked at each other, and then smiled at the same time.

“Sounds fair to me,” Flyfang said. “Littlepaw?”

“Let’s do it,” Littlepaw said. “And don’t disappoint me.”

Flyfang poorly restrained a chuckle and looked at everyone else for confirmation. Without a word, the rest of the cats stood and moved to allow Flyfang, Littlepaw and Redheart some space. Greyleaf was grateful for how oddly light-feeling the moment was.

Redheart took a step forward, completely clear of Mistface and Darkpelt, and raised her voice a little, enough for it to be heard clearly in the thick woods.

“The apprentice before us has reached a turning point in her life,” she began. “She has chosen to leave behind the path of seerhood and turn to warriorhood. We honor her decision with this ceremony. Littlepaw, as an approved deputy of the Clan, I thank you for your service as a seer-in-training and change your status to warrior-in-training.” She looked warmly at Flyfang. “Flyfang, you have already taken charge of Littlepaw’s education and protection these past months. You will be her official mentor from here to her graduation and naming ceremony. I ask you to pass on your skills as a fighter and hunter to her.”

Flyfang and Littlepaw faced each other and touched noses. Greyleaf could see excitement and nervousness fluffing Littlepaw’s fur. He waited, not sure whether to hope for Flyfang’s approval or Littlepaw’s dismissal. From the tension in the air, everyone else was thinking the same thing.

“And with that…” Redheart’s eyes turned serious again. “Flyfang, it’s your call. Will she come with us?”

Flyfang looked down at Littlepaw, a flurry of emotions passing through her face. Littlepaw’s tail trembled a little.

After what felt like an eternity, Flyfang said to Redheart, “She will.”

Littlepaw bounced twice before catching herself and standing stiff and serious. Greyleaf couldn’t help a sigh of relief, odd thing though it was to be relieved about. The other adults relaxed and exchanged looks again, some worried, some optimistic.

“Then that’s that.” Redheart smiled at Littlepaw. “Your mentor has the final word.”

“Not that it would have made a difference,” Beetlefoot muttered. “She was going to follow us.”

“But now I don’t have to,” Littlepaw said, grinning. “So when do we head north?”

“Preferably as soon as possible,” Darkpelt said. “We’re losing cats daily. We ought to put a stop to this swiftly as we can.”

“We leave as soon as we’ve eaten,” Redheart said.

Everyone brightened at this. Greyleaf could feel the same thrill he had in his heart from the others. Having this plan – even the slimmest spider-silk of hope – it felt like having a reason to live. As the group of renegades started chatting to each other about possible trails and ideas, Greyleaf and Mistface simultaneously got up and met each other halfway.

“We’re savin’ Mama,” Mistface said, quiet enough for only Greyleaf to hear him. “She ain’t goin’ to that thing.”

Greyleaf nodded firmly. “It’ll have to get us first.”

Mistface’s features were calm, but Greyleaf could see, deep in his green eyes, a steadily burning determination. Greyleaf smiled grimly, feeling that determination roaring away in his own heart.

Hang on a little longer, Mama, he thought, hoping it could reach her somehow.

Just a little bit longer.

We’re coming for it.

You’ll be safe soon.

#warrior cats #steorra #arc three #chapter #chapter thirteen #darkpelt #greyleaf #mistface #redheart #littlepaw #laurelclaw #beetlefoot #flyfang

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theworldthatneverwas · 4 years ago

Text

Between Part and Meet - Trio

Fandom: Kingdom Hearts Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Ephemer & Player Character & Skuld (Kingdom Hearts)

***

“Do you have a reservation, kupo?” the Moogle at the host stand asks you.

“Um, yes, I think so,” you say. “It might be under Ephemer?”

The Moogle scans through the list and nods. “You’re the first to arrive. Come this way, kupo.”

Feeling a little out of place, you follow the Moogle to a comfortable-looking booth with a frosted window overlooking the streets of Daybreak Town. You slide into the booth and are handed a menu and a bundle of utensils. “Can I get you anything to drink while you wait, kupo?” the Moogle asks.

“Um, just water is fine,” you reply a bit distractedly. The Moogle nods and floats away, leaving you to glance over the menu.

You’ve always been the early one when meeting up with Ephemer, and often when meeting with Skuld, too. It just feels nicer being early than it does being right on time or late. But this is the first time the three of you are meeting up outside of the clock tower, and not at anyone’s home. You hope they aren’t so busy with Union leader stuff that they forget about your plans together tonight at this restaurant.

You’ve even dressed up for the occasion – not too much, of course, but you’re not just wearing your usual mission clothes, either. Chirithy had helped you pick out your outfit and had been patient as you tried on different articles of clothing until you settled on this one.

You glance at the menu items without really reading them. You haven’t eaten at a restaurant in ages. So long, in fact, that you wonder briefly if there are any etiquette rules you might have forgotten. The Moogle comes back with your glass of water and you glance around at the other restaurant-goers. Many seem to be eating together in pairs, you realize. There’s a rather rowdy group of friends in a corner near the door, and a table of people who seem to have finished their food long ago and are just sitting and talking. That seems nice, you think. Just having somewhere to sit and talk with your friends.

There’s a tap on your shoulder and you look up with a jolt, then relax as you recognize the smiling face of Skuld. “Hope I haven’t kept you waiting long,” she says, sliding into the seat across from you. “Ephemer’s on his way too, but he told me to go without him in case you came early so you wouldn’t be sitting alone. We both guessed you’d be the first to arrive.”

“Typical,” you say, waving your hand dismissively. “But – wait I didn’t get a good look at you before you sat down. That’s a really nice shirt! Can I see the whole outfit?”

Skuld’s smile is radiant as she shimmies out of the booth to stand so you can see the whole outfit. Her usual skirt and zippered top are traded out for a lovely top with a high neckline and high-waisted pants. She’s even tied her hair into an elegant updo, though you can see that she hasn't traded out her familiar star-shaped studs. “You look wonderful!” you say. “I’m flattered you’d take the time to put your hair up like that, too. Did it take long?”

“I got Lauriam to help, actually,” she says, sitting back down and turning her head so you can admire the delicate twists of her hair. “He’s got all kinds of weird skills like that. He walked past me trying to do it myself and offered to help, and well, here we are.”

“He seems like a pretty interesting guy,” you say, propping up your cheek on your hand. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to help him with his little sister. Have you found out anything more about her?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid.”

Just then, a Moogle comes by with another water for Skuld. “Need a bit more time before you decide, kupo?” they ask, and you both nod in unison.

“I haven’t even looked at the menu,” you admit, pulling it up in front of you again. “Is there anything you recommend?”

“Hmm…” Skuld muses, running a finger down some of the options. “I’ve heard they have good spinach dip. And that their pastas are huge so it’s good to share.”

“Those both sound good. We could all get something different and try each others’, too.”

“I hope you two haven’t ordered without me.”

You look up from the menu to see Ephemer, smiling broadly. He slides into the booth next to you and you look him up and down to take in his outfit. Of all things, you’re most surprised that his red scarf is nowhere in sight, though he’s wearing a collared shirt that’s a similar shade of crimson. He’s even tucked his shirt into proper dress pants. His sleeves are rolled up, though his usual gloves are gone, too. It’s a rather nice look on him.

“Wow, Eph, you really cleaned up,” Skuld teases, leaning across the table.

“Excuse you, I always look this dashing – I just have specific wardrobe choices I like to keep to. Gotta maintain a certain aesthetic.”

You grin. “You look really nice. Your hair’s even less poofy than usual.” And it’s true, too – his normally chaotically curly hair is surprisingly tame today.

He turns to you and raises a hand to lightly pat at his own hair. “It took a lot more effort than I usually put into it,” he admits. He takes a moment to look at your own outfit and smiles. “You look pretty nice, yourself. Really nice, I mean. It suits you.”

You find your face growing warm at the compliment and hide it by directing everyone’s attention to the menu again. “So, what are we eating? Skuld and I were thinking we could each get something different to share.”

“Ooh, I like that,” Ephemer says, rotating the menu to read it better. “Can we share some of these appetisers first, maybe? And then get a bigger meal.”

You gesture across the table. “Skuld was just saying the spinach dip is supposed to be good. And the pasta portions are really big.”

“Okay, let’s do the spinach dip then, and maybe two of the pastas?”

You and Skuld both nod in agreement. “Sounds good.”

Just then, a Moogle comes by with a third glass of water for Ephemer and asks, “Does everyone know what they’d like to order, kupo?”

“Uh… I’ll let you guys each pick a pasta,” you say, and they both quickly study the menu. “We’ll have some spinach dip to start.”

“Let’s go with this… noc… no-chee and sweet potatoes pasta,” Ephemer says, and you chuckle under your breath as you look at the entry he’s pointing to on the menu.

“The sweet potato and hazelnut gnocchi,” you correct, and Ephemer looks a bit bewildered as he studies the word again, one eyebrow raised.

“Oh that sounds good, okay, and then how about this smoked salmon alfredo for the second pasta,” Skuld says to the Moogle, pointing at the menu before handing it over to them. “We’d like to split them so if you could just bring us a couple of side plates that would be excellent.”

“Understood, kupo. Can I get you anything else to drink?”

Ephemer suddenly looks hopeful. “Do you have milkshakes?” he asks in an unusually small voice.

Though it’s hard to understand Moogle expressions, you think this one might be smiling. “Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry milkshakes, kupo.”

“I’ll have a vanilla milkshake, then,” he says.

The Moogle nods. “I’ll be back with it soon, kupo!”

Skuld shakes her head at Ephemer. “A milkshake, huh?”

“I’m always up for ice cream,” he says. He bumps your shoulder with his own. “Wonder what a sea salt ice cream milkshake would taste like.”

You shrug. “Probably much the same as the ice cream itself. Sweet and a bit salty.”

“Do you think ice cream is hard to make? It seems like it would be.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever tried it. Might need a special machine or something. I’m not sure how it gets so fluffy.”

“If it’s anything like whipped cream,” Skuld chimes in, “I bet it needs a lot of mixing.”

In short order, Ephemer’s milkshake is delivered. He takes an eager sip from the straw and lets out a satisfied “ahh” before he pushes it towards you. “Want some?”

You take a sip yourself. It’s wonderfully creamy and vanilla-y. “Yum,” you say, licking your lips.

Ephemer offers his drink to Skuld in turn and she takes a small sip. “Oh that is good,” she says. “Now I almost wish I’d gotten one, too.”

“Excuse me!” Ephemer says abruptly, stopping a nearby Moogle who was passing by your booth. “Could we get two more milkshakes?”

“What kind would you like, kupo?”

“Wha – Ephemer, I don’t actually need one–” Skuld splutters, reddening under the Moogle’s expectant gaze.

He shakes his head at her. “Just go for it!” he says. “You may as well while we’re here.”

“Um, one strawberry milkshake,” you say politely. Ephemer grins at you and Skuld sighs before giving in.

“Okay, and one… one chocolate milkshake.”

“Got it. I’ll be right back, kupo.”

Skuld stretches her arms out over the table. “I shouldn’t let you guys convince me to buy things I don’t need,” she says.

You shrug. “I think it’s good to treat yourself, too. If you only ever bought things you absolutely needed you’d have nothing to look forward to.”

“I was just going to say you should buy milkshakes because they’re delicious but that sounds much more reasonable.” Ephemer takes another sip of his milkshake. “Soo good.”

Skuld leans against the back of the booth. “True. On both accounts, really.”

The Moogle returns with your requested milkshakes and you take an eager sip of yours. “Oh the strawberry flavour is so nice,” you say, sliding it along the table to Ephemer. “Try some?”

Skuld takes a sip of her own drink and smiles. “I mean, it is good. Here, try mine too.” You swap drinks. The chocolate has almost a hint of bitterness to it, and it, too, is very tasty.

The three of you make small talk until your spinach dip is delivered not long after. You scoop some of the warm cheesy dip onto a piece of toasted flatbread and blow on it before taking a tiny bite. It’s very hot, but also pleasantly creamy and flavourful.

“So Ephemer,” Skuld says as she scoops some of the dip onto a piece of bread, “can we talk about how you’ve never seen the word ‘gnocchi’ before?” You snort with laughter, suddenly remembering.

Ephemer is indignant. “I have seen it before! I’ve just never had to say it aloud!”

To Ephemer’s credit, it’s not an easy word to understand the pronunciation of, but it’s too fun to tease him like this. “Do you know what gnocchi is?”

“I do! It’s like little potato pasta things. Isn’t it?” He suddenly seems a bit unsure of himself and looks to you for support.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much right,” you laugh, taking another bite of your appetiser. “How did he say it again?” You turn to Skuld. “'No-chee'?”

She grins and Ephemer ducks his head slightly under the pretense of taking another sip of his milkshake. You can see that his cheeks have gone a bit pink. You pat his leg under the table. “Aw, it’s okay, sunshine. We’re just having a bit of fun. I think the Moogle knew what you wanted, anyway.”

He leans his head against your shoulder in mock grief. “All I wanted was some pasta.”

You pat his hair gently. It’s extremely soft today, perhaps having something to do with however he got his curls to look more tame. You reach forward to grab another piece of bread to dunk in the spinach dip and Ephemer sits back up so he can help himself as well. The appetiser wasn’t too big, and it’s just enough to satisfy your hunger a teeny bit until you get the pasta dishes.

“Oh, I meant to tell you,” Skuld says, pushing the dirty plates off to one side so she can reach a hand towards you over the table. “I finally saw Brain make food today. Or well, not really make food. But I did catch him eating some hard-boiled eggs? So I assume he made them himself.”

“Oh good, proof he actually does eat sometimes.” You trace your thumb over the back of Skuld’s hand. “I wonder if he ever goes out to eat. Do you think he hoards food in his room?”

She looks thoughtful. “Honestly the only places I ever see him are in the control room, in the main meeting room, or in his own room. So I can’t imagine he just heads out on the town to buy food very often.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Ephemer adds, propping up his cheek on his elbow. “He left with Lauriam one time to go somewhere in Daybreak Town. I don’t know if they went shopping, exactly, but they went out to do something .”

“Maybe the reason he always leaves fighting monsters to the rest of us is because he never has any energy due to lack of food.”

“Does he drink coffee?” you ask, trying to think if you’d seen him with a mug or a cup of anything the last time you’d been at the clock tower.

“I… don’t… think so? He might. There isn’t a coffee machine in the common kitchen area though, so he’d have to have it in his room.” She looks at Ephemer. “I don’t know if I’ve ever even seen him have a glass of water when he’s working.”

“Oh, no, one time I offered him a cup and he was scandalized. Told me off for even thinking of putting water anywhere near all of the computers. Which I guess kind of makes sense. We often have a bunch of papers all over the desks too so it would be bad if we spilled something on them.”

“Hmm,” you say, tracing along a dark line in the wood of the table top with your free hand. “Do you think it’d be weird if we tried to get together and have a meal sometime? Like, all the Union leaders. Or would that be extra weird to have me along since I’m not really part of the leaders…” You trail off, wondering if you’ve overstepped.

Skuld squeezes your other hand reassuringly. “No, I think that sounds great! I love your cooking. We could all try to pitch in and have a potluck, maybe!”

“Yeah that sounds excellent!” Ephemer agrees, nodding. “I’m always up for good food.”

“You’d have to make something too,” you point out. “It’s a potluck.”

“I can make food!” he insists. “You two have no faith in me.”

You and Skuld exchange a grin. “I’ll believe it when I taste it,” you tease.

Your food arrives just then, and you let go of Skuld’s hand to clear a space in the middle of the table for it to be set down. Both pastas are steaming and look wonderful. The Moogle places some extra plates down as well and picks up your spinach dip dishes to take away while another Moogle comes by with a cheese grater.

“Can I offer you some Parmesan cheese, kupo?” they ask, and Ephemer eagerly offers forth the smoked salmon dish.

“Yes, please!” he says, then looks to you and Skuld to confirm this is okay. Skuld shrugs and nods and you agree. The Moogle grates a nice little pile of Parmesan shavings onto the pasta and departs.

“Oh I am so ready to dig into this,” Ephemer says, unwrapping his fork from the napkin and scooping some of the nearest pasta onto his plate.

“Skuld, what are these little green things?” you ask, patting Ephemer’s arm so he can pass you a plate as well.

She inspects it for a moment. They’re about the size of peas but darker and a bit more leafy-looking. “Ohh these are the capers,” she explains, and pops one into her mouth. “Yeah. They’re like tiny flower buds.”

“Huh. I don’t know if I’ve ever had them before.” You scoop some of the pasta onto your dish and spear a caper experimentally on your fork before putting it in your mouth. “Hmm. Kinda salty? It’s good though.”

Skuld nods. “It goes well with the salmon.”

“Gonna try some of the no-chee?” you tease, gesturing to the other pasta plate.

“Yes I find I’m rather fond of no-chee,” she laughs and helps herself to the gnocchi. Ephemer makes a pouty face at the two of you but says nothing, his mouth full of pasta.

You take a sip of your strawberry milkshake – nearly done – and scoop some of the gnocchi out onto your plate as well. The hazelnuts give it a pleasant, earthy flavour along with the sweet potatoes. It’s a nice combination. “Good pick, Ephemer,” you say after swallowing your mouthful. “Might have to try making this sometime.”

“I might not know how to pronounce it, but I can still appreciate good food,” he says with a grin.

“Oh hang on, there’s a plate of garlic bread here, too,” Skuld says, moving the pasta dishes aside to put the plate in the center of the table. “Aw and there are three pieces even though we just got the two pastas, that’s nice. Okay, everyone gets one.”

The garlic bread seems to have been made from a rounded bun of sorts, and it’s wonderfully crispy on the flat side but fluffy and soft on the rounded side. “I might have to just order a basket of garlic bread the next time I come here,” you say after you’ve devoured your piece. “That was excellent. ”

Skuld drags her straw around the edge of her glass to get the last of her milkshake. “I think all the food we’ve had has been excellent. I’d come back.”

“I’d like that,” Ephemer says after swallowing a mouthful of food. “I mean, I just like eating food with you guys.”

“Is it because you don’t want to cook for yourself?” Skuld teases.

“No! I just like having familiar things.” This isn’t a particularly surprising sentiment coming from the boy who’d eaten the exact same flavour of ice cream with you day in and day out for nearly a year.

“Maybe we should try different places each time,” you offer. “You know. In case we find other foods we really like.”

Ephemer falls silent as he considers this but Skuld nods. “I like that. And then if we have a favourite place we can always come back to it.” She looks to Ephemer for agreement.

“Yeah… okay. When would we go? Once a week?”

Skuld shakes her head in surprise, glancing at Ephemer. “I don’t know if either of us can consistently set aside that kind of time. Maybe every three weeks? We can always try to get together on the off weeks, obviously. We just wouldn’t be going to restaurants.”

You feel a little twinge of sadness at the suggested schedule – surely Skuld and Ephemer will be seeing each other a lot more often than you’ll be seeing them in between meetups – but… well, any time you can hang out with them is good. “That’s all right by me,” you say.

“Great, it’s a plan. Ephemer and I will figure out a day that works best and let you know as soon as we can.”

Unexpectedly, you find yourself trying to avoid their gazes and look down at your plate under the pretense of trying to scoop a hazelnut onto your fork. It’s fine that Skuld and Ephemer have Union leader stuff to do. Obviously. They’ll let you know as soon as they’re free. “Yeah, sure.” The words feel uncomfortable in your tight throat.

Luckily, Skuld doesn’t seem to notice. You chance a glimpse up at her and she’s back to eating the last of her pasta. Ephemer bumps his shoulder against yours and smiles radiantly and you wonder if he noticed your reaction. You do your best to smile back and quickly turn away, picking up your near-empty glass of strawberry milkshake as though you think you can get more ice cream out of it. It’s fine. You’re fine.

“Well, that’s all for me,” Skuld declares, setting down her fork. “Ephemer, you want the last of the gnoc – ahem – the no-chee?”

Ephemer rolls his eyes at her. “Sure, I’ll finish it. You want any more before I take it?” he asks, offering the plate to you. You shake your head and he scoops the last of the gnocchi onto his plate. “Excellent.”

You lean against the back of the booth as well. “I’m full too. That was really yum.”

“I might have to try making gnocchi one of these times,” Skuld says thoughtfully. “I don’t think it would be too hard. Don’t you just cook the potatoes and then add some flour and stuff?”

You shrug. “I’ve never tried. You might have to cook it after you mix everything together, or maybe you can just use it in a dish as soon as you’re done, I’m not sure. I’d want a recipe before I try making it for the first time.”

Ephemer puts down his fork at last with a satisfied sigh, pushing his plate away from himself. “I mean, if you two want to cook no-kee then I wouldn’t complain about trying it.”

“Gnocchi,” Skuld corrects offhand, smiling, “and I’m sure you wouldn’t mind eating free food, huh?”

“I’m just saying, I wouldn’t pass it up.”

A Moogle comes by to pick up your dirty dishes. “Can I interest you in any dessert, kupo?”

Ephemer looks longingly at the dessert menu but you and Skuld both shake your heads. “I’m really full, but thank you,” you say.

Ephemer sighs. “Me too. Maybe next time though.”

The Moogle nods. “And how would you like to pay tonight, kupo? All on one bill, or separate?”

“Oh, uhh…”

“One bill is fine,” you interrupt. The Moogle nods and leaves.

“How much do I owe you?” Skuld asks, digging in her bag, but you shake your head.

“Don’t worry about it,” you say. “I’ll get this one. Then we’ll just have to go out again so you guys can pay me back.”

“Are you sure?” Ephemer asks, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, don’t sweat it.”

He slumps back in his seat. “Well, okay then.”

You pat his leg. “It’s my ploy to get you guys to hang out with me more,” you stage-whisper, ostensibly joking but also secretly hoping that they really will make sure you go out at least once more together.

The Moogle comes by with the bill and you hand over some munny, thanking them for the lovely meal. “I guess we should head out,” Skuld says, looking around. “It’s pretty busy so we shouldn’t take up an extra table.”

“Yeah, that’s… of course.” You glance at Ephemer and he slides out of the booth to let you out too. The three of you wind your way around the tables and out onto the streets of Daybreak Town.

“Thanks for the night out, you two,” Skuld says as the restaurant door closes behind you. She pulls on a motorcycle jacket on top of her fancy outfit, making it look more casual, but also somehow more… Skuld. Ephemer rolls down his sleeves but otherwise doesn’t seem as bothered by the cool breeze. Typical.

“This was really nice,” you say, stretching your arms out in front of yourself. “Thanks for coming.”

Unexpectedly, Ephemer pulls the three of you into a hug. “I’m glad things worked out that we could all meet up again,” he says.

“I… yeah, me too,” you say, wrapping your arms around the two of them. You’re not quite sure if he means he’s glad you could meet up tonight or if he’s grateful that, after all that has happened, despite being separated, the three of you managed to end up in the same world. You're glad for both, in any case.

“Well, I guess we should be off,” Skuld says when you break apart. “Do you want us to walk you home?”

Yes. “No, that’s all right,” you say. “I live in the other direction, anyway. I’ll see you guys soon!”

They smile and wave at you as they turn to walk in the other direction. You walk boldly through the streets, not looking back until you’re sure they must be out of sight, then sit down on the curb on a small side street. “Lucky?” you call tentatively.

Your Spirit companion poofs into existence beside you in the form of the fluffiest pink dog you’ve ever seen. They crawl up into your lap and their pink tongue laps at your chin. “No, no, it’s fine, settle down,” you say, pushing them down. Lucky quivers in your lap, their tiny tail thumping against your knees. You stroke their head softly. “I just needed a hug. And I didn’t want to let Chirithy know. You won’t tell them, will you Lucky?”

Lucky’s pink tongue lolls out of their mouth for a moment as they pant, then they lay their head down on your arm and look up at you with big eyes. You run a hand along their fluffy fur absentmindedly.

“I just… I think I get jealous of Skuld and Ephemer hanging out? I don’t know if that’s what it is, exactly. I just know I feel upset when I think about them hanging out without me. And I know a lot of it is unavoidable – obviously they’re both Union leaders, so they’re going to see each other around the tower and have Union leader meetings and stuff. So it’s stupid to get upset over it. Right? I feel like I’m just bringing the mood down because I want to spend time with them, too.”

Lucky’s quiet in your lap and you continue to stroke their fur. “I don’t want them to feel bad, either. I know they already feel bad enough for keeping things from me about the Keyblade War and all that. And I really, really want things to go back to normal.” You sigh deeply and Lucky’s tail starts to wag again. “Yeah, okay, we can go home,” you say, ushering them off your lap. Their shape changes to that of a little wolf, like they want to protect you as you walk home. You reach down and pat them between the ears. “Thanks.”

Ephemer turns to look back at you as he and Skuld walk in the other direction towards the tower, but you’re already partway down the street, confidently strolling away. “Did you think… did you think Peach seemed a bit troubled back there?” he asks.

“Just now, you mean?” Skuld asks, turning to him in surprise. “No, not really. Did you?”

He shrugs. “I dunno. I just thought they seemed a bit sad about something.”

“Well, we can ask the next time we all get together. Make sure they’re all right.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I hope we’re not too busy this week.”

***

Find Between Part and Meet on AO3! It updates every other Tuesday. This is the first chapter out of 6. I also have several other KHUx fics there under theworldthatneverwas, so be sure to check them out if you enjoyed this one!

Fic summary: You, Ephemer, and Skuld are back together again in Daybreak Town, but adjusting to normal life after the Keyblade War is easier said than done. And with Ephemer and Skuld so busy with their Union leader duties, what will it take to build this friendship up to weather any storm?

#ephemer #khux #kingdom hearts #skuld #union cross #fanfic #twtnw posts #between part and meet

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bcbdrums · 4 years ago

Text

Purification

All right. @cocoa-at-night was mad at me, and I know others will be... So this is in fact a second sequel to "Torment.” I already had this idea in my head as a possible sequel so... Who says I can’t write two! Therefore, readers, you get two options now. Decide which way you prefer the story to end.

To be very clear, this is a different sequel than “Immolation” and follows a different path to a different ending. It begins the same however. Please enjoy “Purification.”

FFn AO3

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Purification

Shego ran the dampened washcloth over the smooth, polished surface of the bar and stared at the grains of wood beneath. She nearly had them memorized, for how many times she'd run the cloth over them to wipe away the condensation left by the rims of drinking glasses. She always tried to find vague shapes in their patterns; faces and objects and sometimes familiar ocean waves. She didn't have anything else to do with her days, after all.

The small wall-mounted television in the corner continued to play news from the local channel, and after three years she could finally understand the Spanish of the broadcast. She'd picked up the local slang faster by necessity, since she couldn't use her powers to protect herself from the type of crowd the bar attracted. It was ironic, for its nearness to the Caribbean, but the slums of El Salvador had been the perfect place to hide. She easily translated the broadcast into the more comfortable English:

"...And here is Dr. Drakken only days ago, unveiling his latest innovation at the world's largest scientific conference in Berlin..." the voice from the TV cut through the minimal noise at the late hour in the bar.

A soft smile came to Shego's face. And then suddenly her vision was filled with the large form of a dark-skinned man wearing a t-shirt that had seen too many years, and with a face that hadn't seen a razor in weeks.

"Venga, chica. Bailar conmigo."

Shego stepped back from the strong scent of alcohol and scowled at the man, a regular at the establishment, but one who never quite took the hint. Especially not when he had had too many.

"Raquel?" came the accented voice of Esteban, her boss and the owner of the place, from across the room where he was wiping down tables and stacking chairs for closing.

She leaned around the offensive man to merely smirk at her boss knowingly in return. He grimaced slightly, no doubt wondering how much of a mess there would be to clean after she was finished with the brute.

Truthfully, she didn't always reject the men who asked her to dance. Whenever she'd had a few shots it was easier to say yes, and she enjoyed closing her eyes and moving to the rhythm of the music, and imagining herself in a different place. But it would always end the moment any of them tried to lay a hand on her...

She couldn't cross that line. There was only one set of hands she ever wanted to touch her, and they never would. Allowing herself to indulge once and pretend with anyone else would open the gate to far worse sins than her most definitely out of control drinking, and she didn't want to deal with the ramifications of heading down that path.

She still wasn't sure when she'd fallen in love with Drakken. She'd certainly been in love with him before she left, but she'd only realized the fact while in her self-imposed exile, when all she could think about was him.

Numerous magazines and newspapers were delivered to the tiny room she rented above the bar, but not of the variety she'd used to get. Now it was all science periodicals, and world news... And her wall was adorned with newspaper cutouts with his familiar, confident grin. The only reason she watched the news at all was for word of him.

She was pathetic.

Her 'clean break' as she'd hoped to make it seemed to have worked for him. He was finding the success she knew he would as soon as she was out of the picture, no longer holding him back. She knew that would have been the result had she stayed, making him question his sudden yearning for 'good.' Less for good, she knew of course, and more for the recognition and honor his genius rightly deserved. She wouldn't have said that years ago, but with the new understanding she had of her feelings...

She couldn't have stayed. He would have denied himself for her. And she refused to let herself think it was because his feelings were deeper too. No, that wasn't possible. It had been made abundantly clear to her over their four years as partners in crime that he simply didn't think of her that way. She was little more than an asset and a comfort; a listening ear for his endless dronings and rantings, easily replaced.

So she had left a note on her pillow one day after painfully listening to him describe the amazing job offers he had received, and simply vanished. She knew he would come looking for her, as he always did because 'he needed her,' so she had made herself impossible to find. She'd not hardly used her powers in three years, and she'd managed to convinced the locals in the high-poverty, high-crime rate slums she'd hidden in that her skin color was due to something between genetics and illness.

'Shego' was gone.

Now she was Raquel, the barmaid who drank too much, wouldn't let anyone get close, and who had a strange obsession with science magazines. Esteban and others had tried to get her to talk about herself, or her apparent science interest for awhile, but they'd finally taken the hint that she was out there in the middle of nowhere, at one of the only respectable establishments in those slums, to make sure know one ever knew her story.

Shego waited until Esteban wasn't looking, and then she lifted her hand above the leering man's head as his greasy fingers reached across the bar for her, and she let him have just enough of a pressure blast from her glow to knock him out. When the man's large, dead-weight hit the floor, her boss turned with a start.

"Ai ai ai, Raquel! Someday I will see how you accomplish that."

Shego merely smirked as her eyes shifted back to the television. It was a simple, lonely life... One that she might leave someday to pursue other interests. 'Shego' as the world had known her could probably never return, after her world-saving ventures with Drakken. She wouldn't want to put his career at risk in any way. But living from day to day and drink to drink, with only her periodicals and the TV to briefly soothe the ache in her heart wasn't plausible. She needed to move on.

The reason she hadn't was for the lack of one thing in every photo, article, and broadcast about the blue former villain who had saved the world: he was always alone. Even the candids taken by paparazzi that she would find in the trash magazines she had specially delivered only ever showed him having breakfast alone at a sidewalk cafe, or seated alone in an audience as he waited to accept an award.

Why hadn't he met someone and settled down already?

That was the last piece... That was what was missing. When Drakken finally had a woman on his arm, and his happiness was complete...then she could risk moving out into the world and being seen again. If he had someone else, he most definitely wouldn't need her. And she wouldn't have to face up to the fact of possibly seeing him again, with the feelings she'd been harboring for too many years that simply refused to die.

"...It has been confirmed to have been a suicide attempt now, as a note was leaked to the press by a source who wishes to remain anonymous from within Japanese Intelligence..."

Shego's attention snapped to the television, where now a years-old photograph of Drakken at the UN, wearing his medal, was displayed in the corner of the screen as the Spanish news anchor continued to read the copy.

"The note was addressed to fellow-hero Kim Possible, and the text reads: 'I can't figure out what I did wrong. I can't live without her anymore. I'm sorry.' The note was not signed, but handwriting analysis easily showed it to be in the script of Dr. Drakken."

Shego felt the world spinning around her as her vision seemed to spin in the opposite direction. Her head swam and ached all at once, and she could see bright spots dancing in front of her eyes even as her view darkened. She stumbled forward to lean against the bar as she struggled to listen to the television.

"And the world remains in shock, one week from the date the acclaimed scientist attempted to take his life by jumping from the roof of the Osaka World Trade Center. We will keep you updated with more details as the story continues to unfold. This is Paola Ramos, reporting."

Suicide attempt? Drakken, of all people? It didn’t make sense... He had everything...everything he had ever dreamed of, and more. She had made sure of it by removing herself from his life so he would have nothing holding him back. How could he have attempted suicide?

"Raquel! ¿Qué pasa?"

She peered upward and let Esteban take her hand and help her straighten up from where she had all but slumped over the bar.

"Phone..." she managed to get out, her throat strangely tight. “I need...I need to know...”

“You need to make a phone call?” he asked.

Shego nodded. As Esteban fumbled in his pockets for his cell phone, Shego thought about what had been reported as the contents of the suicide note.

"I can't live without her anymore," it had read.

He couldn't... He didn't... He wouldn't...mean me?

Shego felt like she might throw up, and as Esteban offered her the phone, she moved past him and all but fell onto one of the bar stools, suddenly feeling like her feet would fail her. She began dialing a long-memorized number, then realized as the phone rang that she didn't know if the number would be the same after so long, but that thought was broken by Esteban stepping into her vision.

"Are you calling 911? What is wrong?" he asked, his dark eyes wide and worried as he studied her. But then, the phone connected.

"Hello?" the familiar voice said through the line.

Shego suddenly realized she had only ever called the girl 'Princess' or 'Pumpkin' or 'Kimmie,' and wasn't sure how to address the now young woman and for a brief time, ally.

"Kim..." she finally settled on, the name leaving her throat hoarsely.

"Yes? Who is...?" A familiar gasp sounded through the phone. "Shego?"

"Drakken..." was her one-word answer as suddenly tears began filling her eyes. "Drakken's note."

"Where have you been!? Where are you? We looked for you for over a year!"

"Did that note... Was it real? What I saw on TV, did he really...try to kill himself?” she asked, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand before digging her fingers tightly into her side as her hands started to shake. When had she started crying?

“Yes... He did.”

Shego’s throat tightened. “Have you...seen him, or talked to him?”

“Yeah, right after it happened, but...he doesn’t want to see anyone. He’s angry and embarrassed that it didn’t work. Shego—”

“Did he, I mean...how is he? Is he okay? How did he survive?”

“His vines. Their own sense of self-preservation must have kicked in, and they grabbed onto the building partway down. He’s in the hospital.”

Shego realized tears were streaming down her cheeks, and her hands were shaking so much it was hard to hold the phone. She closed it hard as she let her hands fall to the bar, and then she leaned forward again.

“Raquel! Mi lucecita, what is wrong?”

Shego took a breath and gathered her strength to push away, even as her vision swam. She left the phone on the bar, knowing exactly what would happen, and then reached across the smooth wooden surface for a bottle of tequila. She ignored Esteban's words as she numbly made her way to her room, climbing the stairs and pushing through the door to stumble against the bed, the bottle of alcohol falling from her grasp. She spun around, and after shoving the door closed she fell back to sit on her narrow, uncomfortable mattress as she fumbled with the lid of the tequila bottle.

She looked around at her walls, with their newspaper clippings and magazine cutouts of photos and articles about Drakken's successes. Tears fell from her eyes anew as she brought the bottle to her lips and soon felt her throat burn nearly as badly as her eyes. And the words of Drakken's note played through her mind repeatedly, her every thought and excuse for the past three years dissolving into torment.

-------------------------

The next morning a pulsing, booming sound caused her to wake, and as she sat up hurriedly with hands alight, the vision of red, purple, yellow, and black that swam before her eyes brought back to mind what she had drunk the bottle of tequila to forget. She let her glow die as she fell back on the bed and hid her face from the light with a pillow.

“Shego!” the astonished voice of Kim Possible resonated against her skull. She regretted the hangover, but she couldn’t have handled her thoughts the night before. Tequila had been the only choice.

“Are you all right? You don’t look so good,” the side-kick’s voice followed just as loud with concern.

“You’ve lost so much weight!” Kim continued.

“Yeah, what about it?” Shego said into the pillow, even her own voice painful to her ears.

“Is this where you’ve been all these years?”

“What have you been doing?”

Shego grit her teeth and ignored the questions of her former enemies-turned-allies after Drakken saved the world, finally moving the pillow to narrow her eyes at them.

“Will you take me to see Drakken, or not?” she asked bluntly.

The brows of both young adults rose, and they looked at each other.

“That’s the only reason I let you find me. Cell phone trace, right?” Shego said, grimacing against the throbbing in her head as she rolled over and got her feet on the floor.

“Yeah... It only took Wade—”

“Will you take me to see Drakken?”

“Yeah... I guess, sure. We can do that.”

“Good. Wait downstairs, I need to shower,” she said.

The two young heroes didn’t move, and Shego realized they were studying her walls with the photos and newspaper clippings of Drakken. But she was under too much stress already to worry about what two college kids thought of her. As she painfully stood, her eyes lighted upon a figure hovering in the doorway. Esteban was hanging back in the shadows, watching the interplay nervously.

Kim and Ron were still staring at the walls, and Shego first beckoned her employer into the room before frowning and sighing dramatically at the other two. They both looked at her.

“Haven’t you already read a lot of this stuff? Hurry up, I want to get to Japan before tomorrow.”

The pair gave her another once-over before glancing at each other and finally slipping through the door, giving an even more confused look at the curly-haired Latino who had been welcomed in. They closed the door behind the darker-skinned man as he looked curiously at the adorned walls which Shego had called home for three years. Finally, he sighed.

“You are going to him, then? This man, from the news report.”

Shego nodded, grateful for her boss’s softer tone.

“Yes,” she said.

“He is the reason you came here?”

She nodded again, sitting on the bed as her head pounded.

“...Why did you run from him?”

Shego’s brows knit together, but after all that Esteban had done for her over the years, she supposed it wouldn’t matter to give away a little more. Especially since she would never be seeing him again.

“I thought I was doing what was best for him,” she said with a shrug.

“But surely, if you were in love...? Was there some problem?”

Shego looked up, her brow twisting further in confusion.

“What... You think...he was in love with me too?” Her head was reeling again. That couldn’t have been what his note was about...could it? He had never showed any sign of having those types of feelings for her...

‘You never showed any of your feelings to him.’

She grimaced at that thought. And she wondered with a sickening feeling...had it really been necessary? All she’d done for three years was wallow in her own misery and loneliness and think of nothing but him. What if she had just...taken the risk?

“If the note on the news was real, then it would seem so,” Esteban had replied as she’d been thinking. She looked up again.

“Then I... I... I have to go.”

She stood again to get some fresh clothes and then paused, looking back at the suddenly long face of her boss.

“I hope you can find him. He will recover under your smile.”

Impulsively, Shego closed the distance between them and threw her arms around her boss’s neck. She felt his large palms hesitantly rest on her back.

“Thank you, Esteban...”

“Goodbye, Raquel.”

---------------------------

Shego raked her fingers through the ends of her hair for what must have been the tenth time just walking down the hall. As she found the correct door number she pushed her hair back over her shoulder, and then tugged down the simple green blouse and black jacket she wore. Possible had been right before... The garments weren’t fitting her as they should, but that was a concern for another day. She took a shallow breath and with a trembling hand, pushed the door inward.

The hospital room was dim and silent but for the beeping of monitors. On the bed, a familiar blue face lay atop a pillow, bandaged, like much of the rest of his body that could be seen. One forearm and foot were in casts, and his other arm was bandaged with the slightest of bloodstains showing through, like the one on the side of his face. She held her breath as she stepped in silently, as if walking into a dream. But he heard her.

The corners of his lips turned down before his eyes opened to slits, but then widened slightly upon seeing her. She hesitated only a moment before continuing her slow approach. She could see now the one side of his face was swollen, and his lower lip was split and bruised. She tried not to picture him falling from the top of a skyscraper, smashing against its sides on the way down only to be inexplicably rescued by his own mutation. Instead she fixated on his eyes that were bleary, shocked, and disbelieving.

“Shego?” he croaked out.

She fought the tears that tried to come to her eyes. “Yes. I... I’m here,” she managed, her throat tight.

He seemed to be studying her as she sat down on the edge of his bed, afraid her legs wouldn’t hold her and also needing to be nearer. The thought that he could have...that he very nearly died, and she didn’t even know...

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Her lips parted as she stared at his expression that was quickly becoming anxious, despite the haze in his eyes she was sure was in part due to the heavy painkillers that were doubtless coming through his IV line.

“What...?” she breathed.

“Whatever...I did...to make you leave...” Drakken said quietly, each word coming out labored through his dry throat. “I’m sorry. Please...forgive me.”

Shego didn’t bother trying to stop her tears anymore. She took a slow breath to try to calm the ache in her chest as she tore her eyes from his, instead looking at his hand lying on the bed, his knuckles bruised and scraped. She hesitated, but then gently held his hand in both of hers. His skin was clammy and cold, and she noted for the first time the too-slow beeping of the heart monitor.

“You...you didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, looking back at him. His confused and now fearful expression was a blur through her tears. “I did.”

“...What?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she repeated with more strength, recalling the words of his note. “I did. It was just me. I...I’m so sorry, Dr. D.”

Her voice rose on the last as her throat tightened, and she closed her eyes tightly as hot tears slid down her cheeks. She tried to keep her cries quiet, and some time later her attention was drawn back by his hand shifting in hers. She looked up at him, her eyes pleading. He looked a bit more focused, and a familiar, analytical expression had joined the caution and confusion on his face.

“I don’t understand,” he finally said. His fingers curled around hers and held on firmly.

Her heart thudded against her ribs, and she let her gaze fall to her lap. She had already broken her promise to herself, to never see him again... But clearly, that had been a mistake from the beginning. If she was honest...then at least she would know, there was nothing else she could have done. And yet, the most important words she could say to him still died on her lips.

“I didn’t want to hold you back,” she said, staring down at their joined hands. She was careful not to hold too tight for his bruised knuckles. A long moment of silence passed before he spoke again.

“What...? But... Shego...”

“I didn’t want to be part of...this world,” she said, lifting one hand briefly to gesture weakly at the opulence of the hospital room. Not exactly what she meant, but she hoped the point would get across. “But I know you, Dr. D.... You...you wouldn’t have taken any of the jobs, without me. I just...wanted you to be happy. And I didn’t want any of this...”

There was another silence, broken only by her sniffling as she gradually brought her tears under control. She heard Drakken take a long breath in through his nose and then release it just as slowly.

“Thank you for visiting me...”

Shego turned abruptly, her tears stilling with a silent gasp. Drakken’s eyes were on their joined hands, and he looked sad.

“You look...” he began, glancing up at her briefly before his gaze fell again. “Hm. Where will— That is...”

He trailed off, glancing away toward the curtained window in the room with a slight grimace. Shego tried to follow his train of thought.

“I don’t...have to leave right away,” she ventured carefully. He looked back at her, his expression guarded. “We could...catch up for a while? If...if you...”

She broke off as tears threatened her eyes anew. Who was she kidding? His note had been clear...

‘I can’t live without her anymore.’

“If you...don’t mind having me around, I could stay...longer.” She set her hand back atop his, minding the scrapes on his knuckles. The pressure of his fingers against her palm hadn’t diminished.

Drakken’s swollen lips parted, his dark eyes seeming to glitter even brighter for the mottled bruising on his face. And then, a shadow came over his features.

“No, that’s...that’s all right. You can go back to...your life.”

Shego held her breath. She thought about telling him she knew about the note, but...what if that only made things worse? Then he would be embarrassed, and he had already...apparently given up on living. What would that new revelation do to him?

His words were also unknowingly meaningless, she realized, as because for the past three years she...had had no life. Only worrying and pining over him, waiting for the day he married so she would know he didn’t need her anymore, and then and only then could she come out of hiding. But she had left El Salvador behind fully when she had come to Japan. The bar was already out of her mind. All she wanted, and what she really needed, was...

She took a breath. “Drakken...”

When she met his eyes they were sad. She looked down again.

“I...I also left because...because I’m in love with you. But I knew...you didn’t feel the same. I knew you could find someone to replace me and...really fulfill you, and it seemed like...the best way I could give you everything you wanted...was to be out of the picture.”

She sniffled, bringing one hand up to wipe her eyes and nose before straightening up from the tense hunch she’d found herself in and then leaning back on her hand, the other still firmly gripping his. She didn’t want to hear his confirmation, but she needed to. Knowing that her feelings weren’t reciprocated would mean it was all worth it. Even though it didn’t explain his years of solitude...or the note. She didn’t want it to be about her. She couldn’t be the reason that he’d nearly—

“Everything I wanted? Shego...”

She cast a cautious eye on him, and he looked a mixture of confused, hurt, but somehow resolved. His hand suddenly left hers, and her throat constricted with the sudden loss. And then she was gasping in worry as Drakken started trying to push himself up.

“All I’ve ever wanted—” He stopped short with a hiss of pain, shaking as he paused halfway up.

“Dr. D....”

“...Is you.”

Her breath caught, and they stared at each other eye to eye. Drakken’s expression was steady but fearful, and her own she knew reflected utter shock. She was so startled she hadn’t even realized she’d spoken a response until he answered her.

“The note was about me...”

Drakken let out a soft, almost exasperated puff of air and lightly shook his head.

“What did I do to...make you think I didn’t love you?”

Shego blinked rapidly as tears filled her eyes.

“Oh, Dr. D.!”

Her arms were flung around him as her lips gently pressed against his, minding the cut and swelling. His least injured arm raised to wrap around her, but without the support his frame shook and he began to fall. Shego guided him down, never breaking the intimate contact. Her tears fell on his face as she cried through the kiss, but his hand pressing into her back strengthened her. She let her fingers move through his hair, ever so softly touching the swollen parts of his scalp as their lips barely moved. She was careful to keep her full weight off of him, but the warmth of their chests together was like a salve, beginning to mend the wounds in her heart.

When they finally parted and she opened her eyes, she found his just as wet.

“Shego...” he whispered hoarsely, and she heard a catch in his throat. “Don’t leave me.”

She held him tighter. “Don’t let me go.”

--------------------------

One month later, Shego was grinning happily as she pressed her face further into Drakken’s neck where they sat together on the sofa in his new apartment. She sighed contently as she snuggled closer into his left side, her arms around his neck and her legs folded and halfway over his lap.

“Shego...” Drakken whispered, “this isn’t exactly...it’s not...”

“Mmmh, let everyone see how much I love you...” she murmured, turning to face the camera placed in front of them, the magazine photographer looking at them quizzically as she offered something between a smile and smirk. The interviewer stood close by, equally ill at ease, but Shego didn’t care.

She positioned her hand on Drakken’s shoulder so the diamond of her engagement ring sparkled in the light. Her heart warmed when his healed left hand reached up to hold hers, and she laced the fingers of her right hand through his, setting her left on top again to show off the ring. She tilted her chin up toward him and was rewarded with his radiant smile.

“I love you...” she said softly, “and I want to spend the rest of my life telling you.”

“I love you, Shego,” he breathed.

Their lips met in a gentle, ardent kiss. Beyond them, after a long minute, the camera flashed.

22 notes · View notes

ilguna · 5 years ago

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Belamour - Chapter One (f.o)

summary: they say the odds tend to favor those who need them. well, they were wrong.

warnings; swearing, death mention

wc; 4.8k

NOTES; I give reader a last name to fit the world.

–

The horrid sound of wailing is enough to wake you up from the dead of sleep. Sweat runs down your back in tiny droplets, tickling certain nerves, making you shiver even though it’s nowhere near cold. As you instinctively search the room, expecting an intruder to be waiting in the doorway--you’re met with nothing.

The room is dark, and quiet besides the muffled sobs that sound from the corner of the room. When your eyes land on the crib, you’re able to see your sister, desperate to get out and get the day started already. That or she’s tired of the silence, and she’s hungry.

“Please.” she asks politely, hands outstretched for you to help her.

You run a hand through your hair, getting it to stop sticking against your forehead. As you slip out of the small bed, you stretch your arms above your head, yawning loudly to try and get the grogginess to leave. It’s no use this early.

“Good morning.” you scoop her up gently, going to set her on her feet. The second she realizes this, she grabs a hold of your shirt tightly, clearly in no mindset to let it go anytime soon. So, instead you let her lay her head against your shoulder like she did when she was a baby, and go to leave your bedroom.

The second you step out, you realize that the house is empty. And a clear indicator is the fact that the curtain’s aren’t open to allow sunshine in. They’re still drawn shut tightly to make sure that no peeping neighbors get the pleasure of seeing what it looks like in the morning.

Although, with the severity of today’s date, you’re sure no one would bother to do something like that. Maybe some other day, or month. But things are already pretty low at the moment, why make it worse?

As you tuck your sister, Alyssum, into her booster seat, you wonder what there is for breakfast besides oatmeal. If you even think to bring it up, she’ll undoubtedly throw a fit over it. So, you take a peek into the old, paint-chipped cupboards to try something that won’t cause a fight.

You find nothing.

You pull down the oatmeal, and then for good measure, grab the sugar. Right when you turn to give her a speech about breakfast options being limited today, the lock on the front door rattles. You close your mouth and lean against the counter, watching as the handle turns and then opens to reveal your two older brothers.

The first and oldest to come through the door is Reed. He’s got an old backpack over his shoulders, and in each hand is a jug of water. Alyssum pushes herself up in her seat to look over the back of the chair and see who’s joined you. When Reed realizes he’s got an audience, he smiles.

“You look rough.”

“You look rough.” you mock, he laughs at the tone, setting the jugs onto the end of the kitchen counter, and turns to face your second oldest brother, Mox.

In his hands is a blue cooler that seems to be weighing him down. He’s hunched over, teeth clearly clenched and looking disgraceful. He blows a single strand of his long hair out of his face repeatedly, likely irritated that he’s been stuck with the heaviest object of them all.

“Need help?” Reed asks.

And in the same exact way you mocked Reed moments earlier, Mox says; “Need help?” in a high-pitched voice, “Shut up.”

Reed snorts, delighted with himself. He slips off the backpack and sets it onto the counter. When he unzips it, he starts unloading everything he must’ve got while he was out with Mox. It starts with bathroom items first; shampoo, body wash, toothpaste, a brand new package of toothbrushes. And then immediately after is what you were hoping for, food other than oatmeal.

“I’m hungry.” Alyssum whines, Reed slides the fresh loaf of bread your way. This is from the local Bakery, this isn’t from The Square.

“How much was this?” you ask, looking at Reed.

When he doesn’t answer, you look to Mox instead. The two of you have a long staring contest, which is made up of you mostly waiting for him to cave. And he does, with a sigh, he looks back to the cooler and pushes it into a small space between the wall and the counter just big enough to fit it sideways.

“We didn’t have much of a choice.” Mox says, pushing on the lid to make sure it’s shut tight, “The Square was out, they were busier than usual today. If you’d gone, you’d understand.”

“So you couldn’t have gotten something else?” your attention is turned to Reed, now.

Reed shrugs, “We had a little extra change to spare. And really, it wasn’t all that much. In fact, we were practically begged to buy it because it would go to waste. He lowered the price considerably for us.”

“Enough to make a profit but now enough to gorge us.” Mox agrees, “It’s fresh too.”

You nod, hoping that they aren’t making up some blatant lie just because they wanted a fresh loaf of bread from once. You know that the bread from The Square can be daunting at times, but if they didn’t dance around the food for so long, then they wouldn’t psyche themselves out.

Plus, it’s not like anyone along that alley would willingly give anyone diseases or sicknesses. Especially not your family, with how long you’ve been going to get food from them. For you all to leave now would mean to risk going out of business, losing regular customers like that.

You pull the bread knife out of the silverware drawer, turning it over to make sure that it’s been cleaned thoroughly since Mox has a habit of not double-checking when it comes to putting away anything supposedly clean and dry from the rack. When you’re sure it’s fine, you sink the blade into the top, and find yourself satisfied when you don’t have to fight for the bread to give.

You plate a slide and a half of the semi-warm bread, and set it in front of Alyssum. She reaches over immediately, tearing apart the crust from the soft middle, and goes straight to eating. Mox gets her a small drinking cup, halfway filled with water and sets it beside the plate.

“I’m gonna go pick out our outfits.” you push the cutting board and knife away from the edge of the counter. You scoop up the toiletries to drop off on your way to the back of the house, “Feel free to start dumping water in the tub.”

“Sure.” Reed says.

You set up everything neatly and in their respective places inside of the bathroom. Above the glass tub is a tiny window with tiny curtains. You open them enough to allow light in the room, hoping to save gas in the lanterns for nights you actually need them. On the way out, you pass Reed, who’s got the first bucket of many that will fill the tub.

You start with the easy outfit first. This one will cause little to no thought when it comes to it. Alyssum is still relatively small. She’s grown since last year of course, but she’ll still fit into the dress you wore when you were her age. So, you pull it out of the bottom of the dresser by her crib--that seriously needs to be upgraded into a small bed, instead--and lay it on top.

A dress, a clean change of underwear, socks, her tiny Jane’s. You place a small cardigan on the occasion she gets cold in this summer heat while she waits. Then, you move onto the more challenging task. You find yourself standing in front of your parent’s bedroom, unable to open the door and go inside.

Every year, it’s the same struggle. The same argument inside of your head. Why bother going inside when you can wear last year’s dress? And then you remind yourself that last year’s dress doesn’t fit anymore, and therefore you need a bigger one. None of you have the money to spare for a new one, so you have no choice but to try and fit into what used to be your mother’s dresses.

You know that the second the door opens, the old smells will be overwhelming. It’ll be enough to bring tears to your eyes and freeze you in the middle of the room. If it’s too strong, you’ll probably collapse to the floor like you did two years ago, and you ended up succumbing to the onslaught of tears that year.

You don’t want that to happen again.

You should be able to just ask one of your brother’s to do this task for you, then. If it’s so unbearable painful to go through. But it’s just as uncomfortable for them as it is for you. Reed doesn’t show it anymore, but you know that he doesn’t like to be put into situations where he’s compared to your father. And if anyone even mentions the fact that Mox looks like your mother, tears will well in his eyes and he has to excuse himself from the conversation, never staying long after her mention.

It’s been a couple of years, but the wounds are still very fresh in your minds.

Knowing that the tub water is getting cold now, you tilt your head and grab the cold doorknob, turning it slowly like you’re afraid you’ll stir up memories. You avoid the squeaky floorboard strategically, and take your last breath of air to ensure that the smell of the room won’t be a distraction.

The first sight you’re greeted with, is the mirror that’s directly across the room from where you stand. You’re able to see that your hair is messy, and you’ve got a tired look in your eyes. To be fair, you haven’t really had a chance to fix either of those things just yet, and you’re hoping the bath will.

Wasting no time, you move over to the wardrobe. Inside on hangers are old suit jackets that belonged to your father, and dresses that you never really saw your mother wear except on formal occasions, which were rare. You pick through the dresses, looking for one that’ll fit you. Over the years you’ve grown out of even her wardrobe, proving just how much of a small woman she was.

You go ahead and settle on mustard yellow one way off to the left. You tried it on once, way in the distant past. Back then it was much too big for you, so you had to give up the surprisingly pretty color. Now, you’re fearing that it’s too small for you. Oh, how the tables seemed to have turned.

You shut the creaky wooden door as you situate the dress over your arm, making sure that the doors don’t slam back onto the frame. Your lungs are already burning, upset at your slow pace in the room. And the exact moment you go to hurry up, you manage to stir up a puff of dust that makes home inside of your nose.

Oh shit.

You sneeze, turning your head away from the dress to make sure that no matter what, it stays clean. It’s not just once, or twice. After the third sneeze has left you, Reed rounds the corner to check up on you. At first, his face is grim at the sight of you in your parent’s bedroom, but then he’s amused.

“It’s dusty in there, huh?”

“Shut up.” you sniff, and then instantly regret it because it’s obvious that there’s still stuff up your nose. You quickly shut the door behind you to make sure that after round two, there won’t be a three.

Once your body seems to get a hold of itself, your eyes are watering and you feel a little miserable. You’re just glad that you don’t have allergies like this all year round. In your room again, you fold the dress in half neatly, placing it on top of the dark oak desk. Then, your underwear, socks right on top. Off to the side, your own black flats.

You poke your head out into the doorway to the front of the house to see that Mox and Reed are at the table, eating their breakfast. Alyssum seems to be about halfway done, her pace slowing considerably. It looks like she’s done, and you’ll unfortunately have to finish off whatever soggy bread she didn’t touch.

In the bathroom, you shut the door and set out a towel. The water is probably luke-warm, mostly on the side of cold. And the second you dip your toe in, you’re so right. You scrub your skin with the sickeningly sweet soap that they had bought. As if the first smell isn’t nauseating enough, the shampoo doesn’t help much at all, either.

At least it’ll be able to temporarily wash away the smell of salt on your skin. Even if you haven’t been on the dock, in a boat or into the water in a week or so, the smell never seems to go away. It’s only a matter of time before you naturally begin to go back to the original scent that plagues the district.

And it’s not even close to the smell of sweat. In fact, the salt smell compared to the sweat, makes the salt smell sweet. Not as much as the soaps from The Square, but it’s a hell of a lot more pleasant than sweat and body odor.

When you get out of the bath, you dress in a second set of clothes that you had laid out in preparation of giving Alyssum a bath. To keep the dress dry, you’ll wear an old nightgown. Luckily for you, Alyssum doesn’t get fussy during bathtime, and she finds herself enjoying it.

And with how old she is now, you don’t really have to do anything other than monitor her. So, while she uses the soap and swoons at the brand new scent, you brush your hair free of tangles and dread the moment where you have to make it look nice for this afternoon. At the end of the bath, you still have to wash Alyssum’s hair, but right after you’re able to leave the humid room, taking the hair brush with you.

“Bathroom is free!” You shout, heading towards your room.

You shut the door behind you, setting Alyssum onto the edge of your bed. She complies patiently as you take your time getting her dressed. You skip over the shoes for now, since they’re a little tight on her feet now. Might as well let her be comfortable for as long as possible.

She manages to find a toy to entertain herself while you move to getting dressed. You make sure that your skin is dry entirely, afraid of the dress sticking to you while getting it on. While you pull it on slowly, you come to realize that the dress is loose. It’s not as nearly as tight as you thought it would be.

You dry your hair when the damp towel you used earlier, squeezing the most out. Alyssum mimics you in the motion, and manages to get the corner of your bed wet in the process. Hopefully by tonight, it’ll be dry and disgustingly wet against your feet.

You go ahead and do Alyssum’s hair, assuming that your brothers are still busy in the bathroom. You sit behind her on the bed, gently bringing the brush through her hair because you can’t feel the pain like she can. Alyssum let’s you know when it hurts, and you work your way around it. You bring half of it back, use a tiny band to secure it, and mostly leave it loose for taking it out later.

As you start your hair, you can hear the bathroom door open. With Reed being done, it’s only Mox left to go inside. You manage to get your hair to stay in place, allowing full movement of your head in any direction. It’s a relief, really. To not have to worry about that this entire afternoon.

On your way out of the bedroom, you slip on your flats and wait for Aly to slide off the bed. She lands on her feet, let’s out a nice giggle, and then rushes out of the room and towards the right. Going straight to Reed, probably.

You hang the towels up on the hooks outside the bathroom in the hallway. The bathroom is too small to have so many things clustered around at once. If and when guests come over, you’ll take the towels and whatever else might be out here, and tuck them away in the cupboards or singular shelf to resume the idea that the house is nice.

In the kitchen, you grab yourself a slice of bread and enjoy it while you wait on your brothers. Eventually, Mox comes out and wanders the hall to the shared bedroom with Reed in nothing but a towel. And not even a second later, Reed comes around fully dressed with Alyssum on his arm.

“I’ve got to do my hair now, pumpkin.” Reed says, setting her on the couch, “After that we’re gonna go.”

She huffs, but doesn’t say anything. You grab a glass of water, being careful with the jug. Once you’re done, you set everything that had been used into one neat stack on the left side of the sink to indicate that it’s all dirty. When you come back later, you’ll probably be the one to take care of it, since Reed and Mox will likely go out fishing as soon as possible.

Mox is ready before you know it, joining you, Reed and Alyssum in the kitchen. Upon agreeing that you’ve got everything you need—Reed had put Alyssum’s shoes on—and you’re not forgetting anything, you all head out, dragging your feet on it.

The second you step foot out of the house, you’re welcomed with the sight of Caspian’s family doing the same. Caspian is an old friend of both Reed and Mox. You’ve tolerated him since middle school, but recently stopped paying attention to him because he has a bad habit of getting on your nerves. Whether that be purposeful or not, you don’t pride yourself on surrounding yourself with people you don’t like.

Although, it’s not really like you have a choice. He’s a friend of Reed and Mox’s, and they’re not gonna leave him behind just because you say so. Your brothers love you dearly, but not that dearly.

“Hey!” You hear Caspian call, “Long time no see.”

“Haha.” Reed says, heading over after locking the door.

You tune the banter between them out, because you’ve got bigger fish to fry. Today is reaping day, and today your name is in the bowl four times. And compared to the people that have to take tesserae, it’s nothing. The four little slips of paper with your name on them, mean absolutely nothing. Especially with the population of District Four.

However, it’s still four. And next year the number will be five. And the year after that the number will be six. The more it grows, the more your odds increase. The thought alone is enough to make your heart stutter and struggle to resume it’s regular beat.

To say that you’re afraid is an understatement.

But you’re one little person in a sea of thousands. There’s no way you’ll get chosen. And since the odds are supposed to favor those in need of help, your name should be skipped right over. Two valuable people in your family’s life have died already, and you don’t want to be the third.

Reed and Mox are barely above the reaping age. There’s only a year’s gap between the two of them. So, Reed is twenty and Mox is nineteen. If the two of them scraped on by without being chosen, then you should be just fine too. Plus, they were taking tesserae for a good two years while you guys got back on your feet.

The walk to the stage on your part is relatively quiet. You have nothing to hold onto since Mox is carrying your younger sister, so you pull on your fingers to ease your nerves.

After a certain point, you decide to hum to fill the silence. The more you walk, the bigger the crowd gets. Until you’ve come upon the line of where you need to get signed in at. Without any instruction, you go ahead and get into line, still pulling on the finger that they’ll inevitably sting.

By the time you reach the front of the line, you feel sick. A part of you wants to believe that it’s just simple intuition, but you know better than that. This happens every year, and this year isn’t any different. Your finger is stung, and then you’re ushered towards where the eligible teens for the reaping stand in sections.

Your brothers catch you just before you go inside. Mox assured you that none of your hair is out of place, and Reed gives you a small pep talk on how it’s unlikely, but never be caught off guard.

You bid them goodbye, heading into the fifteen section on the left with the girls. They let you in freely, and you stand and try not to sway in the hot sun. It’s exactly overhead, maybe even a little behind. As long as it’s not directly shining into your eyes, you don’t really care where it is, exactly.

You take a quick look behind you to check up on your brothers. Unfortunately, since the back rows are the older kids, they also get taller. You can’t exactly see your brothers, but if you strain on your toes hard enough, you can barely make out the top of Alyssum’s head. Clearly, she’s on Reed’s shoulders.

When you turn back to the stage, you’re greeted with the sight of the mayor helping Mags onto the stage. Mags is the only female victor of District Four, therefore she’s the only mentor that the female tributes can get. Which is a bummer, considering her age. She might mentor every year, but that doesn’t mean she’s too knowledgeable about the technologies inside of the arena now.

She was the winner of the eleventh games, which were fifty-four years ago. Talk about there being a time difference between when she was in, and when people go in now. Back then you’re pretty sure that they only fought in one arena every single year.

Following Mags is a small parade of male victors. The first one seems to be just as old as Mags, maybe a little younger. You think his name is Luther, but you’re not entirely sure. Behind Luther is Scotch, a lot younger than Luther. Scotch is completely bald, and seems to have a scowl on his face.

The final person to walk out is Anchor. He’s the most recent victor of Four, and he won—ironically—four years ago. Despite this, seeing him on the stage is still very new to a lot of you. Especially because of the age gap between Anchor and Scotch, which is a good ten to fifteen years, at least.

You’re sure that District Four would have more victors if it weren’t for the careers and how they prepare for the games. It’s no secret that they’re doing something with their tributes. The number of victors they have is unnatural. And one very good example of this is the latest female and male victors of District One.

Typically, you wouldn’t remember their names, but it’s the fact that they’re siblings and back to back wins that makes it stick in your mind. And they won so recently too. First, Gloss won the sixty-third games, and then his sister, Cashmere, won the sixty-fourth.

Both from District One. They’re siblings. They’re back to back wins. That’s never heard of. It’s just not normal, and the Capitol has to know this. They just let it slide because they’re a favorite, which is so unfathomably unfair.

You manually unclench your teeth and settle for pulling on your non-injured finger while you wait. It doesn’t take too long, soon the victors have sat down, the sections are full and the anthem is playing over the stage. You watch as your mayor shuffles up to the microphone, clears his throat, and then begins the wretched speech that you have memorized by now.

It’s just a background history on why the Hunger Games had been created. It’s been nearly a century, and the Capitol is still hung up over something that happened sixty years ago. And it’s even funnier to think that they’re punishing the descendants of their beloved ‘criminals’. Simply being alive in the districts nowadays is offensive to the Capitol.

The speech finally ends, the mayor closing it up promptly to keep on time with the program. He introduces your Capitol Representative, and then takes his respective seat on the right side of the doors, opposite of where the victors currently sit.

Elysia Petalsong—honestly, their names are so ridiculous. As if their body modifications weren’t heinous enough, now they’ve got last names of fairytale characters. Anyway, she’s looking a lot more humble this year. Her outfit isn’t as outrageous as the last, which was mostly so she could get a good year's worth of spotlight. Now she’s just as lame as she was before.

She wears a blonde wig, and you can tell because there was one year her hair was brown, and her hairline wasn’t shifting every time she moved her head. She wears a yellow outfit that strangely resembles the sun. If the fabric had been a little more metallic, there’s no doubt that she’d be reflecting the sun right into all of your eyes.

There’s a huge smile on her face as she leans into the microphone. Even from this distance, you can see her unnaturally white teeth. She stands tall, “Good afternoon, citizens of District Four,” unlike other Capitol Representatives you’ve heard, her accent doesn’t stand out nearly as much, “Happy Hunger Games.”

Before you know it, you’re involuntarily rolling your eyes. They land on the ground before you, and you can see that some dirt and dust has been kicked up and onto your black flats. Luckily, there’s no actual imprints of someone stepping on them.

The Capitol finds joy in the games, while the districts writhe in agony. You’re not sure how a bunch of people can find fun in watching twenty-three teenagers fight to the death. But then again, who’s to say that the Capitol citizens are even human? They don’t act like it. They don’t think like it.

“We’ll start with the ladies.” Elysia chirps, making your heart skip in your chest. All at once, the nerves seem to resurface. And even with your greatest attempts to repress and ignore, it’s impossible.

You wish it were possible to turn around and see your brothers. You know for a fact that would bring comfort. But there’s tall girls behind you, and your eyes seemed glued to Elysia, monitoring her every movement.

She moves smoothly to her left, gazing into the bowl as if the white paper slips inside are mesmerizing. You can’t help but to wonder if she gets a power trip each time she pulls one out. Knowing that her fingers could have selected the next victor.

She reaches in, the rings on her fingers clinking against the rim of the bowl. She hovers for a moment, like she can’t decide which one will give the best outcome. The tension that had started in your stomach has risen past your chest and straight into your throat.

You hold your breath, it’s not like you have much of a choice anyway.

She picks out a paper slip, and you can audibly hear the other girls around you hold their breaths too. All of you share the same amount of anxiety as to who will be chosen this year. Eyes wide, and some praying that it won’t be them.

Elysia moves back to her microphone, taking her time with unfolding the paper so that it doesn’t accidentally rip. She reads it to herself, it seems and then that smile spreads back over her face. She looks out to you girls.

“District Four’s girl tribute is (Y/n) Gallows.”

#ilguna #finnick odair #finnick odair imagine #finnick odair oneshot #finnick odair fanfic #finnick odair x reader #finnick odair lacuna #lacuna

143 notes · View notes

chemiste · 5 years ago

Text

Sweet Secrets

This is for my first writing night, using the flower prompt list I made.

“Ice plant/sun cup for writing night w Harry“

-to the anon that requested this, I hope this is what you were looking for!

“Hello Ladies and Gents! Tonight we have with us a very special guest, Mister Harry Styles!”

Emerging from the curtains, the superstar himself strutted out. He looked very fresh in a blue velvet 3 piece suit, his rings accenting the look perfectly.

After a quick handshake, the two men sat in their respective areas. James smiled eagerly, ready to get the show on the road.

“How are you doing old man? Kids alright?” Harry said, a slight chuckle in his voice.

James rolled his eyes, “They’re doing fine, you sod. Everything coming along for the third album? I’ve heard whispers that it’s gonna be the best one yet.”

The rockstar grinned, pulling on his lip to give him a moment while he collected his thoughts.

“Ah, well, here’s to hoping everyone thinks that.”

“You cheeky boy! So ‘humble’ am I right?” James asked the audience, doing quotes around the word ‘humble’.

“Alright, enough with the pleasantries, I’ve spoken to your team and they’ve agreed to a last minute game I like to call, Sweet Secrets!”

As the audience cheered, the curtain on the floor of the stage rose, showing a table filled with tiny deserts, ranging from brownies that bore the Late Late symbol, to pink and blue petit fours that had Harry’s Album covers painted on the tops.

The look on Harry’s face was pure terror and a bit of excitement. The singer made a quick glance to Jeff, his manager on the side of the stage who looked absolutely thrilled.

Okay, this may or may not be revenge for when H changed all of Jeff’s underwear to lingerie on the trip they took to Italy 2 weeks ago, but who was keeping score?

After a quick commercial, the lads were each sitting at the table, a small plate in front of them with a fork and knife set to the side.

“And we’re back! Harold and I are about to play a brand new game called Sweet Secrets!”

H made a big deal of laying his napkin in his lap, earning a few snickers from the crowd.

James continued, “The game is simple, you choose one of these delicious things in front of us and cut into it! Theres a small plastic ball inside that hold a slip of paper with a question! You can either answer the question, or eat the whole desert infant of you. Got it?”

The audience clapped and Harry nodded, slightly worried but also amused, this should be too bad. Right?

“Okay, Harry you can start.”

“Okay, hmm,” he glanced down at the options in front of him, deciding which treat would be the easiest to consume if he abstained the question inside. “How about this one?”

He plucked a strawberry cake pop from it’s holder, the HS embroidered into the fondant simmered under the studio lights and he moved it to his plate.

He cut into the pop and pull the little bobble out, taking the piece of paper out to read.

“Okay the question is, how many times have you skinny dipped?”

He laughed as a few girls screamed upon hearing the concept of him being naked, James as well in a fit of giggles.

“I guess, let see,” Harry counted the few moments on his fingers, going onto his second hand before stopping at a finger.

“Eight-ish? I used to go with a couple mates when we were ‘round 15 so I don’t know if I’ve done it in a while for the fear of my dick being plastered on the daily mail is terrifying enough.”

James went, going for a brownie, his question being, “Does your partner snore and if so, has it ever been so bad you’ve woken up?”

Needless to say, Corden ate the damn brownie.

The next question Harry had was a bit more, scandalous, it being, “Has someone ever bed so bad in bed you couldn’t get it up?” Thankfully the treat he had chosen was a small thing of jello, not too terrible.

“Okay, I’ve chosen the carrot cake, and my question is “which celebrity have you met that you wish to never see again?”

The audience roared at the question, egging James on to reveal his answer.

“I’m gonna go with Kevin Spacey, not that nice when I first met him and then all that stuff came out so…”

Harry and him going into their own childish tactics, pointing at each other while exclaiming “eh?” Before they broke into song, “let’s call the whole thing off!”

The two went through the game a few more times, Harry eating a rice cake, a slice of cake and 2 more cake pops. James ate the same amount, so easy to say the boys had had their fill of sugar.

James glanced over to the producer before turning back to the camera, “it seems we’re running out of time so Harry please chose your last desert. Fingers crossed it’s good enough to get my show on the 5 o’clock news!”

H smiled before taking a breath and picking up a petit four, the one with his first album cover on the top.

Harry scanned through the question, instantly dropping his hands and and tilting his head to look at the ceiling.

James snatched the paper out of his hands as the rockstar stood up out of his chair, groaning. The burly brit he used to call his friend laughed as he read the slip that cause Harry’s reaction.

“Ha ha ha! Oh boy H, you’ve really brought this on yourself! He pulled the only golden slip in the whole bunch, you know what this means!”

From off stage, a few techies rolled on another plate. This time the petit four seated before them was a real cake, an a big one at that.

Corden got up as well and stepped over to the bigger cake, “The question, for those of you wondering, is, what’s your biggest secret?!”

The audience’s reaction was instantaneous, claps and screams echoed through the studio.

Harry sat back down, in his chair slightly defeated. He made a move to grab his fork and knife, heading over to the big cake. Boos rang through the room, especially chants of “answer! answer! answer!” Soon enough the whole studio was saying it.

James raised his hands to slice the crowd, turning to his mate standing beside him.

“What’s it gonna be H? Easily let us in on your biggest secret, or…” the host gestured to the giant cake before them.

Harry held his face in his hands before holding up the fork and knife

…and placing it down on the table.

The audience cheered as he stood, front and center, ready to spill his biggest secret.

James started bouncing in side spot, equally as excited as the audience before them.

“My biggest secret is…”

“I’m engaged.”

Harry could’ve sworn a few light bulbs popped from the sound in the studio. The sound could probably be heard outside the building, maybe even a few blocks further.

James grabbed onto Harrys jacket and pulled the boy into a hug, the surprise on his face overwhelmed by the joy of hearing the news one of his closest friends was getting married.

The audience calmed slightly as James quickly lead Harry to the couch, hopefully to get the bride to be’s name.

“Harry! I can’t believe this! Congratulations!”

“Thank you, I’m very happy as well.”

The host shook his hands before planting them down on his lap as he had said on the couch with H.

“Who’s the girl? I didn’t even know you dating someone!”

The boy’s cheeks warmed a sweet pink, he rubbed the back of his neck, accidentally bringing forth a small chain that had a ring hanging on it.

Harry’s engagement ring.

“Well, we didn’t want the media breathing down our necks so we might’ve devised a plan to keep everyone on a different trail.”

“Do I know her? Have I met her?”

The singer chuckled, “Oh yeah, probably talked to her a bunch as well.”

James brow furrowed as he tried to go through anyone he’d talked to that could be associated with Harry in the past year or so.

Then it seemed like a lightbulb went off.

He looked up at Harry with a shocked expression, “No, wait, is it,” the host took a pause, waiting for Harry confirmation that it was okay to say the name.

With a glint in his eye he turned to a crewman off stage. “Can we please have Harry’s PA come to the couch?”

The audience chatted loudly amongst themselves, looking towards every person with a head set, wondering if they’d be the one to step up onto the stage.

Not detected yet, a girl with h/c hair cautiously approached James from his back. She wore black jeans, a slightly to large rolling stones t-shirt, a headset, and converse that had been colored in the rainbow along the edge.

She poked James in the shoulder, giving him a small wave when he turned around.

“Y/N! Congrats! I can’t believe you kept it under wraps so well.”

Y/N crossed over to Harry, sitting down next to him, a little finicky under the gaze of so many eyes.

Harry spoke up, “We thought this would be the best way to be able to stay close but not have to be nervous for anyone with a camera seeing us together, we kept the PDA to a zero in public but it was great to have that sense of safety the cover provided.

“No longer though, eh?” James grinned. Harry turned his head and smile softly at his fiancé, “Nope, no more hiding.”

That earn a round of applause from the audience, seemly in awe of the sweet couple before them.

James laughed, “You realize though that now every celebrity and PA are gonna be looked at as secret lovers from now right?”

“Oh, oops!”

#j'swritingnight #harry styles x reader #harry styles #harry styles x y/n #harry styles one shot #one shot #harry styles oneshot #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fic #harry styles blurb #harry styles late late show #james corden

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hopevalley · 4 years ago

Text

The Real Problem with the Love Triangle

Here we are, in Season 8, and I feel like I’ve finally settled on what it is I hate about the love triangle.

I mean, there are a lot of things wrong with it. It divides the fans, it splits the attention of the scenes between two “potential” romances instead of one certain one, and, perhaps one of its biggest offenses: it’s in the spotlight due to the fact that the plotline was given to the main character.

I could talk about all of these, and I could do it all day, but let’s just look at them quickly (because I do feel there’s a bigger issue than any of these at play, here).

It divides the fans. Yikes? They clearly expected some kind of...I don’t know, Twilight-era Team Jacob/Team Edward split, but Twilight’s endgame was always painfully clear. It’s not that fans weren’t disappointed by the reality when it hit, but...I don’t think many people were...genuinely surprised by it, either. Splitting the fans of an already itty-bitty teeny-tiny fandom was maybe not the best idea, but I guess I can see why they took the risk. After so many characters left the show in S5 (Frank, Dottie, Phillip, Shane, Jack) they probably felt they had to do something drastic to keep the fans invested in the show.

It splits the screentime between two potential romances instead of one certain one. This is less yikes in some ways and moreso in others. The biggest issue with this is mostly that When Calls the Heart has limited screentime to begin with, so splitting screentime and therefore also believable development of any romance makes everything take twice as long to happen, which can either bog down the show (if they take the time to do things correctly) or everything will feel rushed (if they skip proper character development).

It’s in the spotlight. Obviously they had to do this to get attention from the fans, but I can’t help but think that a genuine love triangle for a side character/background character might have been a more appealing option story-wise. Having the focus of the triangle be on Elizabeth means that most of the fans are very invested in their choice...which is GREAT up until the point where it’s suddenly not anymore. Writing yourself into a position where approximately half of the fanbase will be disappointed, perhaps even to the loss of their viewership when things don’t go their way (this is always a risk) is...maybe not the best idea. I can’t imagine anyone would quit over a minor love triangle storyline (for example, Bill/Molly/AJ or Fiona/Kevin/Hickam). Sure, you won’t have the level of engagement in the fans that Lucas/Elizabeth/Nathan brings to the table, but I think it could be fun while also not really risking anything. Not many people would stop watching if Fiona picked Hickam over Kevin, you know?

There are other problems with the love triangle and the concept/use of it, but I think the writers at least tried to make it feel balanced. Did they succeed? Well, that’s personal opinion, so I won’t get into that, but you can tell the effort was there from the start.

So we have a love triangle. Lucas and Nathan are both vying for Elizabeth’s affection, and the crux of Season 8 is: she needs to choose one of them.

Which brings me to my thesis statement.

The problem with the love triangle is that the choice is limited to two options.

She chooses Nathan.

She chooses Lucas.

I think logically as a fan and as a writer who occasionally does enjoy trashy tropes, it’s really no surprise that one of these choices is going to be endgame. What’s annoying—what hurts the love triangle the most—is that they are also the only options presented to the audience. They are the only options Elizabeth and those around her are openly considering.

In reality, there are at least three options.

She chooses Nathan.

She chooses Lucas.

She chooses nobody/to remain single.

We all know When Calls the Heart is a romantic “period drama” so naturally the writers leaned into writing the romance. And again, we know that one of these men is endgame.

But when you’re writing something like this, a plotline that is most assuredly risking future viewership to some degree, you can’t really forget that Staying Single is equally as good an option as Lucas or Nathan.

It’s made worse with things like time skips. Elizabeth has had plenty of time to make a choice if she wanted to make one. She’s obviously not that attached to either man if she’s just going to leave them hanging like that. I think it could be argued that she’s avoided letting herself get too emotionally intimate with either of them on purpose—because she’s scared to try again after what happened to Jack, she’s afraid of having to feel like that again—but that lends credence to my thesis: if she’s not that emotionally attached, and she’s not ready to actually move forward romantically, then...Staying Single is looking like a great option.

But...not one character in the show has told her that. No one encourages it. Not Rosemary (which I sort of expect), not Bill or Henry or Florence (who all seem likely candidates), not anyone. It’s not like Elizabeth’s still heavily mourning Jack (if so, I could see her friends eagerly encouraging her past that). She seems perfectly content by herself and is seemingly doing a good job of raising her son. She doesn’t need a man. She doesn’t act like she wants one.

So why does she have to choose between TWO of them?

What could fix it? Not much at this point. Elizabeth said ages ago that she was ready to move on, or at least try, and that was followed up by all of her friends (Rosemary and Clara specifically) being extremely pushy about how she needed to find romance again. Not once were all of her fears/anxieties seriously discussed and validated.

The best they can do now is have someone close to Elizabeth point out that if she’s not ready to move on, or simply doesn’t want to get involved in a romance again, she doesn’t have to pick anyone (but should be honest with both Lucas and Nathan that she’s not looking for that kind of commitment in her life). It’s also possible that Elizabeth herself could come to this conclusion and speak it aloud to a friend like Rosemary. Just because both men are interested doesn’t mean she has to pick either of them.

I know the fans have been really frustrated at the triangle, specifically how drawn-out it’s been, but I think the reason for that is that Elizabeth’s character has been written in this...really confusing sort of way where...she’s understandably not ready to move on right after her husband has passed away, but even though she’s still in mourning the “potential suitors” get shoved down her throat (and ours) for two full seasons. We (and she, by extension) never get the idea that she could just choose to stay single. The next “logical” step is to choose a man. And that would be fine if she were like Mary Dunbar from the first season, but...she’s the main character. We should see her considering all of her choices.

And like, not to be a fun-killer, but...everything from the past few seasons makes me think she’d just be happier single. That’s the issue, too, with not giving Elizabeth “staying single” as a valid choice: we’re all kind of at a point where we all see how poor her relationship to both suitors is and we’re like, “Hey...maybe neither of them are good options for her at this point in her life.”

Certainly the ensemble-style show lately has contributed to less screentime for Elizabeth and therefore also Lucas/Elizabeth and Nathan/Elizabeth stuff, but I think this could all be fixed if...her choice wasn’t between the two of them, but between choosing to date again vs. choosing not to. She has a career. She has a child. She has a lot of friends. She doesn’t NEED a man, so I want “choosing a man” to feel like...she actually WANTS to date. She WANTS to be romanced. She WANTS physical affection/sex/to be loved and cared for in a romantic fashion.

If I felt that Elizabeth was wholly into the idea of romance and dating and finding someone to live out the rest of her life with, then I might feel good about the love triangle, and about her trying to decide which of two decent men she’d like to allow to court her first.

But because she doesn’t seem eager to court or date, we feel like she never made the decision to move on, and as a result of all of this and the writers trying to keep the love triangle balanced (which unintentionally makes her seem equally DISINTERESTED IN BOTH MEN), her relationships with both Lucas and Nathan feel flat and uninspiring.

TL;DR? The love triangle should have been presented from the start as Nathan vs. Lucas vs. Staying Single, and then we wouldn’t be in a situation where she’s known these men for two+ years and has been ready to move on for more than one of those years, and still doesn’t feel like she knows either man well enough to choose which of them she might like to court.

If we would have started with three choices, she could have spent all of Season 6 working on eliminating one of the options (staying single, in this case) while also being open to CLOSE friendship with both Lucas and Nathan*. Then, in Season 7, she could find that while it’s flattering to have the attention of two good men, it’s emotionally draining and anxiety-inducing to feel she has to choose between them as she likes them both a great deal and doesn’t want to hurt either of them.

*I think they were sort of trying for this, but it fell flat. It would have been ideal to have Lucas and Nathan confide in Elizabeth about deeply personal/emotional things that never leave those scenes. Fears, concerns, they could have some inside jokes... In order for a love triangle that lasts a long time to work, she has to feel very close to both men...and right now she doesn’t feel close to either of them.

As an aside, the love triangle would definitely feel softer around the edges if it wasn’t pushed from Day 1 as a Thing They Were Doing. Elizabeth forming close friendships with two men without TPTB ever saying anything about romance (let alone a love triangle) would have given the characters time to feel like they’re friends first. What we got was romance shoved down our throat (à la “Elizabeth’s still in mourning because her husband seriously just died BUT ALSO LOOK AT THESE TWO NEW MEN... WHICH WILL SHE CHOOSE WHEN SHE’S READY TO MOVE ON?!”) which put too much pressure on the triangle and the characters/interactions from the get-go. It felt like they jumped from brand-new acquaintances to love interests in the span of five minutes...which is, you know...bad.

#when calls the heart #analysis and meta discussion #character studies and information #elizabeth thornton #long post

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fandom-gt · 5 years ago

Note

Voyeur!Steve gets safely vored by an unaware Bucky.

He’s got the Pym particles, a custom suit, he’s got the whole damn thing planned out. It’s perfect, it’s safe beyond all measure. Two backup fail-safe options just on the off chance that for whatever reason he can’t zap himself out of it once he’s done.

He sure as shit can’t tell Bucky, because he’d never agree to do it in a million years - no matter how many back-up plans he had. Besides, this... thing he’s got is a little weird, a little personal, he’s a little ashamed of it.

It’s just... Bucky’s got perfect lips, perfect teeth, a plush pink tongue, and every time Steve sees him toss something into his mouth and start crunching it up he stares a little too hard and gets a little too hot in his face.

He plants himself inside of Bucky’s favorite brand of chips while Bucky’s away at the gym, because he knows the guy comes back with a ravenous hunger and too impatient to cook.

He’s beyond small. The bag he’s in is a cathedral. The chip he’s on is nearly the size of the floor plan in his old apartment. If he’s even remotely noticeable at all, it’s as a fleck of seasoning at best.

Sure enough, right on the mark, he can hear the thunder that probably comes at the end of the world. A sound so loud and so deep his eardrums can’t properly perceive it. It’s followed by a rush of air, and then his eyes lift up to the metallic paper walls above him. One of them bends in with a sound so loud it’s like standing at the bottom of Niagara falls. Four more fresh dents appear in the walls around him, then crumple the ceiling in a way that actually makes his heart rate spike.

It’s like demolition. It’s like watching a skyscraper get quarantined and then ritually exploded, thousands of tons of mass falling in on itself - just to stop abruptly because Bucky’s stopped squeezing his fingers shut.

Feeling the movement is different in here. The bag itself is presumably soaring through space, but it almost has its own gravity at this point. What he’s got to look out for is the way the chips rearrange themselves - tectonic plates shifting, the one he’s on suddenly veering down sharply and another slicing across it. He watches over his shoulder as a chip a hundred or more times bigger than him just cracks in half like nothing, sending debris exploding that is also bigger than him.

He’s got to grip on tight to the imperfections in his chip as it tilts up nearly vertically, just shy of a 90 degree angle. It’s at the top of the bag, at least, so he won’t be buried.

The divots disappear with that same rushing, deafening white-noise, and then above him the heavens open up. Where there once was darkness, now a slowly widening gaping light streaming in, blocked in the middle by a god-like face larger than any moon in the night sky. Bucky’s face blown up times a million, every detail enhanced from his bright blue searching eyes to the little chapped wrinkles in his lips.

He stares straight down at Steve, unblinking. He can actually see Bucky focus on him, the pupil of his eye lined up with Steve’s like they’re making direct eye contact.

Except there’s no flicker of recognition. Not even a beat of pause. Bucky’s lips are blocked from his view by an intruder into his space, a massive creature of flesh, skin-toned whirls of fingerprints that are the size of trenches.

He ears a little thud when Bucky’s finger makes contact on the flat wall of his chip. Another slow-motion thud when his thumb clamps down. Soft scratching of friction beneath his fingerprints.

And then the movement - the sheer force he has to fight against as Bucky pulls his chip from the pile, the others catching and falling off, the combination of gravity and g-force thrusting him down so hard he has to cling with every ounce of strength he’s got. Like an angel or like God, Bucky peels him from the darkness and slowly into the light, an unfathomable blurry bright space that stretches on infinitely.

There’s no pause in his motion. Steve sees the top of the bag, the distant colors of furniture and walls too far away to comprehend - he can barely see to the end of his chip. His only real focal point for several miliseconds is that too-close too-big finger pulling them through space, until very abruptly a new landscape comes into view.

He keeps soaring toward it, heart racing, the knowledge that even if he started yelling now, even if he changed his mind, there’s not a thing slowing down Bucky guiding that chip toward stretching, parted lips. He passes over building-sized teeth, and Bucky steers him toward his back molars.

Passing into Bucky’s mouth is like going through a portal - from bright and airy to dark and humid, the feeling of exhaled breath surrounding him even without Bucky actively breathing, muggy and oppressive.

He glances over his shoulder toward the exit, and he sees the vacancy of freedom through the slowly closing frame of teeth and gums and lips.

Above him, those molars descend unstoppably. They’re irregular and uneven, and Steve finds himself flat on his back staring up as his largest tooth comes down around him, the highest peaking ridges slamming down in sequential cracks to his left, to his right, grinding the chip there into dust before he even finishes biting down.

And he does finish biting, but Steve’s made himself so small that even with his teeth really and properly shut they don’t crush him into nothing. He has one second to experience being pinned between upper and lower molar, the platform he’d been on cracked beyond repair, the enamel grinders around him merciless.

They part again, but barely. Bucky’s mouth doesn’t completely open, so no new light streams in. Just a sudden wash of saliva, the shifting of new chip over top of him, and then another pulverizing crunch that gnashes the chip into a clump that sticks him to the bottom tooth. He’s still trapped there when he hears the deep, guttural vacuum of a swallow that takes place off to his left, the surge of suction that follows it - it gently pulls at his prison, but it doesn’t dislodge him.

The teeth part more widely, and Steve sees in slow-motion the oncoming of a new predator. The tongue he always thought of as soft and plush becomes a tidal wave of probing muscle, the tip of it slamming down into him and grinding him back and forth against the surface of Bucky’s molar. It’s wet, there are long strings of saliva that cascade off of it as it moves, working and shoving Steve out of his tiny divot.

He manages to dislodge himself from the remnants of his chip platform, winds up rolling end over end off of the tooth and to the floor beneath him - the slick, slippery underside of a tongue and the place it meets gums.

Seemingly satisfied, the tongue moves to drop heavily onto him, shrouding him in heat and darkness, trapping him beneath it so that he can only barely see the influx of light from Bucky’s parting lips. Another chip passes through them, and this time Bucky’s mouth closes completely before he chews - the tongue thrusts the chip up with great force into the roof of his mouth, cracking it and breaking it at the center so saliva and gentle guidance steer it in uneven halves toward teeth on either side.

Steve uses this freedom to thrust himself forward, clearing great distance toward the back of Bucky’s front teeth. If he stays beneath the tongue he’ll wind up trapped there.

He launches himself as high as he can, barely managing to catch onto the ledge of Bucky’s lower front tooth. They don’t line up flush with the upper front teeth, so he thinks there shouldn’t be any grinding or swallowing to end him so soon if he takes up an audience view there.

What he’s not counting on is the force of the swallow, the way it drags him backward, the way he lands plastered to the bottom of the tip of Bucky’s tongue.

Lips part slow, and he can hear the sound of the skin unsticking, tacky with saliva. He can hear the almost velcro-like sound of the middle of Bucky’s tongue peeling away from the roof of his mouth, and then he’s soaring through the air toward the light again - then down as Bucky licks his lips. He peels Steve off on accident by the way he keeps his lips closed for it, the sheer force and weight of his tongue pushing Steve down into one of the little divots in Bucky’s lower lip and sealing him there with sticky, glue-like saliva.

He’s stuck there, caught in the folds, arms outstretched and legs straight down. Staring up grants him only a limited view - Bucky’s upper lip stretching out in either direction like sprawling lawn, the very tip of his nose, maybe the edge of a high cheekbone, and nothing else. Not even a chance at eyes, because he’s just too god damn small to see over the curvature of Bucky’s face. It’s disorienting and a little overwhelming to know that he’s beneath even the ability to make one-sided eye contact.

But the experience isn’t over, and Steve watches another chip pass over his head like a UFO, soaring slow motion into the cavern behind him.

Lips close, meaning Bucky’s top lip presses down onto his bottom. As it descends, he sees every uneven bit of texture, every plump piece, every crumb still caught and still larger than him. He sees it coming down on him unrelentingly, sealing together on his left and his right until finally it seals him too.

He’s caught between upper and lower lip, and the upper one grinds back and forth over him while Bucky chews, dragging dry skin and heavy weight left and then right.

The tongue doesn’t come back.

Two or three more chips pass before there’s a break between them, and something new arrives in his sphere of vision.

A bright pink mound, a smoothed over surface, shiny and as thick as the lip he’s on.

It touches down a hundred yards to the right, landing with a sticky, deafening thud. Then it begins to drag, passing at great speed and clearing too much distance toward him.

It passes over his entire being, and he recognizes the smell and the taste instantly. It’s chapstick, and Bucky coasts it back and forth, sealing him in place with two coats.

He didn’t account for this particular scenario when he made his backup plans. He’s trapped, unseen and known, on Bucky’s lower lip.

#soft vore #no swallowing #extreme micro #unaware #giant/tiny #g/t #sfw #sfwish at least?#Stucky

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borisbubbles · 5 years ago

Text

28. ITALY

Diodato - “Fai Rumore”

youtube

And we’re back to our usual disconnect, where everyone pretends to love Italy and I don’t. I cannot wait for all the Italian crazies to be OUTRAGED by this ranking (28/41 is fine for an entry I don’t care about...?) and reblog this all over the tumblrverse and inflate my reader stats. 😈 but first, let’s discuss what we have on our hands here.

Song Analysis

There’s no way this post *won’t* end up offensive to every Fai Rumore fan, so I will resort to brutal honesty. I never, ever, *ever* cared about “Fai rumore”. In fact, I’d even say it’s strongly overrated by the gross of the Eurovision fandom?

Okay so here’s the deal. I will not deny that “Fai Rumore” has several things going for it. The song has emotional gravitas, Diodato has a great voice and acts very well. It’s technically precise and well produced. It is very competent at what it sets out to be, which is a very standard HQ Sanremo Power Ballad.

But here’s where I feel like I deviate from the norm: You may think “wow Fai Rumore! How brilliant, meticulous and poised”, but I think “how expected, overtly earnest and unfun?”

The problem is, this is Boris’s Bubble and Boris doesn’t enjoy songs that feel like they belong inside a trophy cupboard, and “Fai rumore” is exactly one of those songs, don’t lie. So “meticulous, poised and brilliant” you say, well *I* say “how overtly earnest, unfun and aloof”? I have a Spotify - if I wanted to listen to good music, I’d just use that? Or one of my like 15 Youtube Playlists containing non-ESC entries? Why would I watch Eurovision, or Sanremo for that matter, for the good music when there are so many other (and easier) options available for me that align better to my tastes?

The fact that “Fai Rumore” is *too* perfect for me (and therefore very hard to empathize with imo) is one thing, which leads to other thing I need to point out. I’ll let my friend Matthew take over here, who wrote this paragraph on ESCUnited right after Diodato’s selection:

That final sentences is bone-chilling because it’s so, so true. “I AM A SOPHISTICATED MUSIC FAN BECAUSE I FOLLOW ~FESTIVALE DI SANREMO~” is such a common trope of elistism (like, replace “San Remo” with any quality newspaper, nobel prize winning author or classical music composer and you’ll find to be nearly universally applicable to snobs across the globe), but I find it specifically ugly in Eurovision.

You see, would the same courtesy be extended to a country of lower prestige if they got a Fai Rumore? Would the same courtesy be extended to a person of colour? or a woman? How about others songs that, like Fai Rumore, emulate their country’s musical traditions (Fai Rumore is SO italian you can smell the basil), except those traditions fall outside of the western European bubble? See, it doesn’t bother me that Italians like Fai Rumore and are proud of it. They’re Italians. Of course they are! I don’t judge them for it. I don’t rly care if the odd introvert finds solace in a song of this calibre. But as soon as Matthew made the aforementioned post, people who had previously rated Diodato as a 5/6 already started adjusting their scores to 10s and 12s and, well...

It bothers me that the same fanbase that DEMANDS cultural diversity (Diodato) and/or MOAR ETHNOBOPS (Efendi) refuse to accept a Solovey or an Origo -which are a thousandfold more layered, sophisticated and daring- as an equal.

It bothers *even more* me that people are willing to immediately give Italy a plethora of chances (especially when they choose men! fuck institutionalised sexism!), while not doing the same for a Belarus. Belarus HAS no clear musical scene or funds to really produce good music, yet produced a ridiculously good NF (with a VERY righteous winner - yes, Chakras, but also: Chakras) I’ve seen snobs SLAM VAL, mercilessly despite being an excellent left-field pick (god imagine if Yan had won Eurofest for a sec. What a nightmare). Italy, otoh, also delivered a sterling NF, have *a VERY* rich musical tradition, tons of talent and money and production value... and they still went the lowest common denominator available, and yet they receive praise, without so much as a whisper of protest from our so-called “value seekers”. This level of hypocrisy and double standard wielding, all in the name of wishing to be taken seriously delivers *such* a toxic undercurrent to Eurovision and has absolutely soured me on Diodato. This isn’t his fault, but sadly he’s become a weapon of mass misconstruction and well just because I hate the guy who pressed the big red button more doesn’t mean I automatically like ICBMs. As we come near the songs I actually give a damn’ about, I will start calling the shitpociries out. Brace yourself for it, when I rank Solovey and Da Vidna inside my top five.

Want some examples specifically pertaining to the Diodato fandom? Sure, I’ll give you some:

EJEMPLO UNO:

Diodato fanboys openly coddling him on social media post-lockdown all “PROTECT OUR POOR MUNCHKIN FROM THE CORONAVIRUS”. Like... he’s a *thirty-eight year old adult* he can take care of himself, BACK UP OFF HIM you freaks.

EJEMPLO DOS:

The relevant media having baptized Diodato as THE SAVING GRACE OF THE LOCKDOWN, ITALIANS SINGING ‘FAI RUMORE’ FROM THEIR BALCONIES IN DEFIANCE OF COVID-19, which is such a bullshit narrative it’s turned my hair from black to brown. Yes, the Italians sang “Fai Rumore”. What they don’t tell you is that they also sang many other Italian and non-Italian songs, including humanitarian anthem “Roar” by Kety Perr (cue to Katy Perry being like “OMG I’M SO HONORED TO INSPIRE SO MANY ITALIANS ::hungarianflagemoji::” on twitter.). CNN Like, Eurovision related media LOVE portraying it as a ~life-chaning confort anthem~ - the reality is that “Fai rumore”, while playing its part, was merely a tiny spoke in a giant wheel.

EJEMPLO QUATRO:

Well take a look at how many people will reblog this post and slam it for daring to point out, what I think are really obvious truths to anyone who doesn’t suffer from musical myopia.

In the end, the song is okay and it’s okay to love it. But if you ‘love’ it because you’ve convinced yourself that you must, and not because it genuinely means something to you, I don’t think you have grounds to criticise to criticise anyone but yourself.

NF Corner

As I said, I didn’t follow San Remo live (I never do! *gasp* blasphemy, I know), but I did plan to check it for this write-up except RAI deleted every live performance? And they won’t let me embed the few remaining vids either?

Anyway, this happened so right-click-open this a new tab and then return once you’ve finished it.

Backstage feuds being fought out LIVE on the stage in front of millions of viewers 😍 Apparently Morgan and Bugo were at loggerheads for a while, and had a massive row RIGHT before their performance on the second night, which caused Morgan to stray from the script and sing all the insulting things Bugo told him *to Bugo* instead of the actual lyrics of their duet. 😍 😍 😍 Bugo IMMEDIATELY stormed off the stage to the point where Amadeus had to like... literally tell the gobsmacked audience that Bugo had left the building 😍 😍 😍. This is some god-tier pettiness and I’m completely in awe of it. DEITIES. 😍

aside from Sincerogate, I would’ve embedded vidoes that contained the DRAMA (Rancore), CAMP (Achille) and UNABASHED WEIRDNESS (Levante) of this year’s line-up, but I guess RAI really doesn’t like for people to have fun. Oh well.

Italy 2020 vs Italy 2021

Diodato is male and Italian, so yeah, guaranteed top 10 in Rotterdam, no matter what happens. Search your feelings, you know it to be true. Cynicism aside, televoters WOULD have flocked to it without thinking twice (for exactly those two reasons), passing over many better entries in the process and well... I’m tired and exhausted and I think you can guess I am not very impressed by this likely outcome.

Not sure what RAI’s strategy for 2021 is (lol it’s RAI - they don’t have a strategy. besides Italy have bigger fish to fry than the Eurovision Song Contest as you know), but I’m not very invested either way. I could imagine them internally selecting Diodato if he’s willing to do ESC in 2021, but if this was a one-off deal (which I think it was), they will probably select another plain white bloke for you to obsess over, so no worries :-) #TuttoVaPene

FREAKY! FRIDAY! FACTOR!

I’m sort of conflicted? On one hand, god Fai Ru*snore* is SO typical of “Italy in Eurovision”, not just from a musical perspective but from a point of reverence as well. On to the other hand, when are the fanbases *not* acting insane w/r/t Italy?

San Remo was really crazy this year, enough for me to award Italy a couple Senheads. However... if I wanted to see nice and inoffensive triumph over a bunch of deranged, gimmicky, ott masterpieces, I’d just rewatch #London1977? (offensive take #16: “people that like Marie Myriam the most in 1977 do not understand Eurovision”) Ehhhh whatevs.

Score: 2 Senhits out of 5.

#Eurovision #Eurovision 2020 #Eurovison Song Contest #Italy #Diodato #Fai Rumore

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senseandaccountability · 5 years ago

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Fic update: ‘I can see us gather at the gates’, part 8/32

Fandom: Dragon Age Pairing: Female Trevelyan/Iron Bull Rating: M for future updates Summary: He doesn’t trust mages, she doesn’t trust Qunari; it feels oddly fair. A former Circle mage and an estranged Qunari spy get entangled in each other’s lives over assorted Thedosian drinks. Chapter summary: Like all the previous times he’s been on the edge of it, dying is pretty overrated. Notes: I scream into the void with this fic but there you go. :D

Chapter 8: Dragon Piss (Fallow Mire) (AO3 link)

He’s just a kid, unhorned and soft - fat as a qalaba, Vasaad says, racing him to the outskirts of the jungle where the rocks form challenges and the sun never reach - and they climb the old trees and even older stone. They stumble, kids always do up there and that is the very clever reason they are not allowed to go. But they're just kids, far from clever. They stumble and fall and Vasaad is lucky, gets caught on a few softer corners and tree branches; Ashkaari crashes. Everything after is blurry and gentle, the edges softened by potions.

“What were you supposed to do today?” Tama asks, without removing her hand from his arm.

Slowly, grasping for his memory, he begins to rattle off the tasks and duties; they’re as many as his fingers. Maybe that’s the point, to make them remember.

“So why did you run to the jungle?”

Ashkaari has no answer that Tama will want to hear so he drags it out, pretending to think while her touch remains. "You must take better care of yourself," she says sternly. The Qun hates wastefulness and dead imekari is a terrible shame. For her, for them all. He doesn't want to make Tama look bad. He will remember. For several months, at least.

x. “Welcome back,” Armaas says. His commander, the voice in the field. Hissrad can’t remember being gone, but his body is full of pain. A broken rib, a punctured lung, a long, deep wound running from his left shoulder blade to right side and he has to sleep propped up on his stomach in the infirmary. He learns that he has been out for days. He learns, too, that they're right about his commander. Doesn't lose a single man, they say. He leads from the front and shouts you back from the dead if he has to. The intense pair of eyes that follows Hissrad's every move here certainly looks like it belongs to someone who could. Years later, on Seheron, he’ll look into those eyes again before his axe falls down over Armaas's neck. Your soul is dust, Tal-Vashoth, he'll think but he won't be sure ever again. x. “Your blocking is still shit,” Hissrad manages from where he lies propped up by pillows and blankets and a wasted bedroll. Even his horns hurt. “Your plans are still shit,” Vasaad counters. “You’ll be the death of me, big guy. Can’t believe they gave you command.” “Maybe you were the only other option.” “Maybe they just want to let Seheron kill you so they don’t have to,” Vasaad says and there’s warmth and mockery and bone-hard truths in the joke. Hissrad grins. It must be the hundredth time one of them gets wrecked in battle, yet every single one feels like absolute crap, everyone worse than the others. Hissrad has carried Vasaad’s skinny ass across half a jungle, cursing into the skin on his back - don’t you dare, asshole - and Vasaad’s dragged him out of burning buildings, pits of poison, traps laid by mages and rebels and they’ve always survived. They’ll always survive until one of them fails. x. Their newest Viddathari may be little more than a twitchy kid but he’s got hands strong as iron, knows curses in several tongues and he refuses to leave Hissrad’s bedside until Hissrad gets well enough to carry him out and lock the door. “Hey!” the kid protests but Hissrad is determined. His right arm may still be broken and the bone-deep wound along his side smarts like fuck but malnourished elves are tiny. “Sorry, Gatt,” he says and pats the elf’s head. “Can’t recover with an audience.” x. Boss is heading towards the building where they expect to find the clan leader of the Avvar, her jaw set and her determination cut in stone, as if she’s gone and become a brawler when Bull wasn’t looking. They have my soldiers. She had been very closed-off this morning, grim and focused, barely had time for a briefing before they set out and her tone is still clipped whenever someone brings something up with her. “Surely you are not challenging their chieftain in battle, darling?” Vivienne’s voice betrays nothing but Bull is willing to bet she isn’t looking forward to having her day ruined by a bashed-in skull. “It will be fine.” At first it almost is. As fine as it ever is, fighting in someone else's stronghold, lacking every advantage of the enemy. But for a while they can make up for what they lack in strength with what they possess in terms of sheer determination. Until they can't. “Take out their mages!” “Let’s not,” Bull growls, carving his blade into the spine of an attacker. In the corner of his eye he can see the Avvar leader rushing forth, his greataxe in front of him, ramming into their flimsy line of defense and Bull curses, trying to wrestle free from the archers he’s stuck with but it takes too long. Vivienne shouts something, Boss shouts something back and when Bull finally shoves the last dead archer from his blade, there’s no time left. He pushes the mages back, hears them swear at him and then, things become a little blurry. --- He wakes up in darkness. Total, throbbing darkness and his first thought is that he’s lost his other eye. That would definitely be shitty. “Bull, can you hear me?” He does, he can. But when he tries to speak, there are no sounds emerging from his body. Great, now he’ll be both blind and mute. What a gift to send back to Par Vollen. Maybe they can put a ribbon on his horns. He feels her hands on his chest, magic flowing out of them and into him and it’s soft, like a warm bath but then she twists it, angles it so he gasps for air instead, crying out in pain, and immediately it stops. She’s leaning over him, judging by her breath against his neck, her voice closer to his ear now. “I’m sorry.” The pad of her thumb brushes over his cheek. “I’m so sorry, Bull, but I have to do that again. I’m trying to find what’s wrong.” Less talking, more healing, he thinks. She does the same magical crap again. And again. The pain is just as sharp, just as staggering. He feels like he’s losing his mind. There’s something broken that won’t mend, something stubborn that won’t budge. “Hurry,” Vivienne says somewhere nearby. “He’s bleeding quite a lot, darling.” “I know. Can you… shit.” Boss’s touch leaves him and if he could speak, he would have asked for it to return. Magic or not, her hands are soothing and if he’s dying here, he’d like to feel calm about it. Like all the previous times he’s been on the edge of it, dying is pretty overrated. A burning, painful kind of overrated that he could do without. In the end lies glory, so the Qun claims. Perhaps that's right, he just can't see it. But then again his eyesight never really recovered from losing one eye. Even bad jokes are wasted on death. The last thing he hears is Boss, her voice increasingly desperate, telling him to stay with her as she pulls at the threads of his flesh with her magic, forcing it to close over his wounds. --- He drifts in and out of consciousness and sleep and through it all he can hear her voice. In fact, she never stops talking. She’s quiet when she’s nervous and she talks when she’s afraid; he knows this about her. He knows this about her and in this particular setting, it twists its way into the back of his mind, lingers. As the pain torments him and whatever draughts and spells he’s been exposed to do their thing, he hears her mutter her way through what sounds like magical theory in Orlesian. Between a nightmare and a potion-induced episode about ghouls he can discern sentences from a book on the Inquisition of old - he knows because the nights in camp get long and sometimes there's nothing to do but read the only thing someone like Cassandra or Boss has carried with them. He prefers it when they bring Varric’s crappy but hilarious smut novels over the tedious ones on human history, but he’ll read anything. "You can't take blows meant for me," she tells him because - as he’s come to understand - she truly has no idea what front-line bodyguard means, its concept as foreign to her as stealth or frivolity. Bull replies in grunts and monosyllabic words. “Don’t die on me, you stupid man,” she whispers to him as he drifts out of sleep momentarily, blinking as the sunlight from the window falls across her features. It makes her look on fire, lit with the sun itself. If he had been an Andrastian, he’d probably be praying by now. “I’m sorry,” she says and he’s feeling more awake by then, though not awake enough to argue through the lack of strategy with his boss. He keeps his eyes closed. Feels her hands running over his chest, then quickly brushing against his forehead. She’s got the lightest of touches; it leaves some kind of mark. “This is on me. It’s my fault. Please, survive.” --- He wakes up, properly now, to her sleeping form. The room is dimly lit but his senses have returned, making it possible for him to discern the actual shapes of everything around him. A pile of medical supplies by his bed, a couple of books, a warm blanket and a goblet of what looks like water. Outside the only window in the room, darkness has fallen. He feels sluggish and heavy, unused to his own body. And there’s a sense of oddness somewhere below his chest. At first he can’t tell what the sensation comes from and blinks, prepared for all sorts of bad news as always after being knocked out in battle. You never know what limbs you’ve lost or what new impairment you’ve suffered, any warrior could tell you that. But this, Bull realises rather quickly, this isn’t him. It’s Boss, sleeping with her face pressed into his belly, her arms spread out over his upper body and her hair tickling his chest. Small puffs of warm breath dampen his skin as her body rises and falls over his; there are soft snores and sleep-sounds and there’s an intimacy to the scene that snakes its way into his chest, the unfamiliar outline of it at once thrilling and strange. It’s definitely… something. All the gentleness in her, everything about her that she keeps hidden as they work methodically side by side to push this damn world back from the brink of destruction, is suddenly visible in the way she’s sleeping, unarmed, undone. Her hair is loose, strands of it cascading over his flesh; her neck is bared and looks more inviting in the candlelight than he’s ever seen it before; lacking its usual multi-layered outfit, her body sleeps free and soft, curved around him, around itself, the generous shape of her ass almost impossible not to reach out and touch. It’s the intense privacy of the moment, he thinks. The intimacy of sleep coupled with the fact that she had worried. About him. He pretends to be asleep when she wakes, startling herself, bolting upright like someone’s caught her in the act which effectively ruins his. Bull can’t hold back a laugh, even though it hurts deep inside him, all the way up along his ribs. Boss flushes bright red, cursing under her breath. The tension in her body is so acute, so severe that it practically cuts through the air. For a brief moment he wonders if she’ll set something on fire. Then, when she forces herself to look at him, he can see nothing but relief in her eyes. It hits him, like a hammer. Maybe it hits her, too, because she scratches the back of her head and looks away. She takes a step to the side. Another one forward. Glances at the doorway over her shoulder. “I’m - this-” she exhales slowly. “Not a word, Bull.” He remains exactly where he is, watching her and grinning - because it seems to infuriate her in a subtle and delightful way and also, mostly, because he can’t help himself. “My lips are sealed.” He gestures towards his mouth, ignoring the pain the motion brings. “I won’t tell a living soul that you snore like a bronto, Boss.” “You’re an ass.” Then, quiet and already half-way outside the room. “I’m glad you live.”

#iron bull x inquisitor #iron bull x trevelyan #the iron bull #fanfic #anne trevelyan #iron bull romance

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rallamajoop · 6 years ago

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Some musings on symbiote morphology (AKA when size does matter)

So, back when Venom was still in cinemas, I saw it with a friend who (like me) enjoyed it mightily -- though said friend did roll her eyes pretty hard at the She-Venom scene, because of course the female!Venom has to be skinny and sexy. Of course she does.

I mean, the sexual dimorphism on display here is, uh... pretty extreme.

Usually, this would’ve gotten to me too. Few issues in genre film stick in my craw like the double standards applied to male and female bodies (ask me my thoughts on the likes of Wonder Woman or Gamora at your peril). So it was a little surprising to find that this was one I was mostly willing to shrug off.

Why? Well, that requires a bit of backing up and some more context. But mostly, it’s the perfect jumping-off point for a whole lot of rambling about visual shorthands and how symbiote morphology has been handled in the comics over the years, which apparently I had a whole essay’s worth of thoughts on. So here we go.

Now, Comic!Venom =/= Movie!Venom. They aren’t the same character, don’t have the same history, and their biology doesn’t follow the same rules. But one is still the basis for the other, so we’re going to start waayyy back at the beginning.

Since the symbiote's introduction back in '84, precious little about the species has remained consistent through the many writers and retcons, but one detail that Marvel was -- mostly -- consistent on back in the early days is that the shape a symbiote takes depends a lot on the body of its host. So when Spider-man was wearing the symbiote the result was (by design) literally just Spider-man-but-in-black:

But Venom's next host did not have the muscularly-lean body of Peter Parker, he had the jacked-up muscle-mountain that was Eddie Brock’s -- and the result is the Venom we all know and love.

Whereas when completely-normal-human-woman Anne Weying first bonds with the Venom symbiote in Sinner Takes All, we get a much slimmer She-Venom.

You can see the same trends at work with the Life Foundation Five and various other examples. So, in the comics at least, there’s some internal consistency explaining why He-Venom and She-Venom should look so very different. (Why Eddie and Anne should be such wildly different sized humans is a whoooole other topic, but best left in the Don’t Get Me Started pile for now.)

Of course, when the guy you've cast as Eddie has the physique of Tom Hardy rather than, say, He-Man, the logic of why Venom looks so huge falls apart.

⬥ Venom and She-Venom, actual size comparison.

While comic book writers of the 80's may have been able to convince a generation of fans not to question why a professional journalist would be jacked enough to dwarf Captain America, film adds a layer of realism and audience expectations that would make that a much harder sell (not to mention limiting your casting options to a much smaller pool). Casting Tom Hardy was inarguably the right call.

If Eddie no longer looked like Venom, the other solution would have been to make Venom look more like Tom Hardy--but good luck getting that past the existing fanbase. When it comes to pleasing the longtime fans, it's safe to say that Venom, not Eddie, is the character who has to look the part. Plus, Venom is entirely CG, so casting and realism no longer have to matter. Fanboys can have their giant Venom and tiny She-Venom, and the fangirls can have Tom Hardy getting all prettily roughed up. There are worse solutions.

Don't get me wrong: they could and absolutely should have evened up the difference on screen by giving She-Venom some extra body mass (she is on screen for like ten seconds, the fanboys can effing deal). But when the key decision that fucked up those ratios is making Eddie so much slimmer and sexier than he was originally supposed to be, I am unusually willing to give them a tentative pass. I mean, I love comics!Eddie too, but I can’t see him working on screen.

While I’m talking symbiote-bodies, it’s worth going into some of the other reasons to make Eddie+symbiote so huge, the obvious ones being to a) make him more threatening, and b) emphasise that Eddie's bonded with the symbiote in a way Peter never did. As a shape-shifter, Venom can make his host look bigger but not smaller (which is presumably why Rad Eddie may look younger than regular!Eddie, but is still suspiciously large for a skateboarder hanging with teens).

But size isn't the only way to make a character like Venom threatening. Compare Carnage, who is much more dangerous than Venom -- but (along with his host) fairly consistently drawn as smaller and leaner than the original.

He's still plenty threatening, though -- not because he's huge, but because he's completely bugfuck nuts and into murder for recreation. His design gets this across with a texture less like skin than a mass of veins and tentacles. Size is a good visual shorthand for danger, but it's not the only shorthand that works for symbiotes of the 90′s heyday.

You can see the same logic at work in Toxin too (a lesser-known and sadly mistreated Carnage-spawn from the early 00's). Precious little about Toxin's look remained consistent from one creative team to the next, but the impact of the host body is still there. His first host, Pat Mulligan, was a pretty average-sized dude, which is reflected in his bonded form (left), but when Eddie gets the Toxin symbiote later on, we get a much bigger Toxin (right). And Eddie's Toxin has more tentacles and rougher skin, so we know he's not going to be friendly (Eddie was really not in a good place at this point in his history).

Perhaps the most interesting example is Agent Venom, who turns up when the military bonds the Venom symbiote to Flash Thompson: disabled vet and card-carrying Spidey fan. His Venom-look is a brilliant bit of storytelling-through-design: the face and overall build hearkens back to Spider-man's time in the symbiote, the equipment signposts his military connections (past and present), and black will always be the signifier of a guy working black ops.

Perhaps most important, there's no mouth (compare both Spidey and Toxin #1), which is our sign that the symbiote's under control -- drugged into submission by the military, in fact.

But key to Flash's time in the role is that the Venom symbiote doesn't always stay drugged and docile, and whenever it starts to break free, Agent Venom morphs into Venom's traditional look -- gaping mouth, no belts or shoulder pads, and lots of bulky muscles a la the original flavour Eddie Brock (you can see him mid-transformation on the left below).

Does that make sense, when Flash is the host? Probably not, but comic book logic, as usual, is suspended for the sake of visual shorthand: fans know what Venom is "supposed" to look like, so that's what he looks like when the comic wants to telegraph that Flash is losing control. And that, I suspect, is why Lee Price's Venom (above right) looks more like Eddie's, even though Lee Price looks more like Flash. Price may be the one in charge, but he’s also a madman, so his Venom has to look out of control. The comics have officially hit Tom Hardy territory: Venom is huge now because people have come to expect Venom to look like the original Eddie-Brock!Venom, regardless of who’s inside.

There are bigger exceptions to the rule, however -- two of the more interesting turned up almost simultaneously in 2015, when both Venom!Flash and Toxin!Eddie got significant redesigns in the pages of Venom: Space Knight and Carnage (2015). Now Flash's Venom is the bulky muscular one, while Eddie's Toxin looks slimmer than Eddie has ever been before or since. What's going on here? Did the artists just screw up?

Well, not entirely -- the characters haven't just flipped looks, they've flipped roles. Now Toxin's the one being drugged into submission by a US agency (and we can only assume those drugs somehow prompt a symbiote to produce pouches, because we're two-for-two on that front). Meanwhile, Venom's been "purged of corruption" and has finally bonded with Flash as a full partner, which may be why they opted for something closer to his original look. Note that Venom has no mouth, and Toxin's is positively restrained by symbiote standards, which tells you a lot about the temperament we can expect from both of them.

That said, I don't think either design really works. Venom's new look is a real step back in creativity from his Agent Venom days, and the helmet-face would be better suited to a mech design than a symbiote who's being treated as a real character for the first time. Meanwhile, Toxin’s look doesn't really work for Eddie, for all the same reasons it did work for Flash: Eddie isn't a trusted agent in this scenario, he's more like an intelligent animal on a short leash. It isn't just the builds that are wrong -- none of the story comes across well in these designs.

All in all, the longer Venom’s been around, the less the standard host=symbiote rules seem to apply. Venom is huge because his look is sufficiently iconic that that’s what the fans expect, regardless of who’s on the inside, or whether we’ve just rewritten his entire backstory and made the jump to film.

Speaking of which, it’s worth pointing out that there is actually precedent in the comics for female symbiotes who aren't drawn like a bikini model in a layer of black body paint. One is Patricia Robertson, who bonds with the "Venom" symbiote (read: not actually the Venom symbiote) in the 2003 Venom series.

Though Trish is a woman of fairly average build, her "Venom" is virtually indistinguishable from Eddie's (too much so, if anything -- it's very hard to tell which is which when they clash). Unfortunately, the 2003 series is otherwise an ugly, incomprehensible mess of a comic, containing almost nothing that has ever been referenced again. I can really only recommend it to absolute completists.

Somewhat better handled is Tarna, a skrull Agent of the Cosmos who appears in Venom: Space Knight. Tarna's symbiotic look is not remotely feminine, and one suspects that's the point: it's ugly, threatening, and gives no clue as to who's inside. (Her symbiote can also separate from her while maintaining form, making the comparison pic unusually easy for me).

But as a shapeshifting alien bonded to a shapeshifting symbiote, Tarna perhaps doesn't make the best example for general principles. It’s worth keeping in mind that every design has a storytelling function too: Patricia’s Venom needs to be mistakable for the original Venom for plot reasons, and the reveal that Tarna is a humanoid woman under her symbiote is set up as a surprise. But the creators of the film wanted us to know that was Anne under the symbiote from the moment she appeared, so sexy!She-Venom it is.

All that said, at the very end of the day, I’d much rather not have to make these excuses for the film. I’d much rather see more Tarnas and fewer She-Venom’s, and both film and comics have a long way to go before we get there yet.

#Venom #Tom Hardy #She-Venom #Eddie Brock #Spiderman #Toxin #Flash Thompson #Lee Price #Tarna #Carnage #Venom: Space Knight #Anne Weying #Venom meta

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vuelie-frost · 5 years ago

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Frozen Broadway 2.16.20. Caissie and Patti’s last show.

Okay, I'm finally able to write a rundown of the show.

Note that I'm not experienced in writing about Broadway shows- mostly because I've only seen a handful- and I apologize in advance if this comes off kitschy or redundant. Theatre is a foreign world to me, so I observe as an outsider. I mostly want to write this just to immortalize the experience, but via Tumblr I can share it (to the best of my ability) with you all! - My seat was ORCH row A, which is second row, in the right section.

- I went by myself (took the weekend as a "mini vacation" to NYC)

- I did see this show last May with Caissie & Patti, and although it's been almost a year, I do have a "normal" performance to compare it to. Mattea Conforti was right outside the door as I walked in, talking to a doorman. I realized later when exiting that a small slew of the previous young Annas and Elsas were in attendance too- they were sitting a few rows behind me. Waiting for the show to begin, I heard a lot of chatter around me regarding Caissie & Patti finishing their runs. Everyone seemed to be here intentionally for this night. A lot of young adults & older teens (?) in my vicinity. Kids too, as expected, but the number of adults was notable. As soon as the first few notes of that orchestral Vuelie hit, I started to tear up. It literally crashes into the theatre with a swell of vocal harmonies and percussive beats. It's hard to not be overwhelmed. Vuelie has always had this effect on me. It's like it's saying "Come, let me tell you this story." I was reminded of Hadestown and the motif of repetition, how we listen to the same stories over and over again even if we know the end. I wonder why that is. The first scenes with the little girls ran like clockwork- they're brilliant and funny. I remained teary through this whole sequence, because it's just childlike happiness and wholeness before everything goes to shit. Knowing what's going to happen, it just grips your empathy. And then Patti took the stage. Patti entered to the darkened back of the stage as the scenes were shifting between young Anna & adult Anna, which means her entrance itself didn't garner applause. But as soon as that spotlight hit her, it was an uproar. Wild applause. Standing ovation. The music stopped- it had to- no one could have heard it anyway. Tears visible in her eyes, she just looked out and straight ahead. Her face was flushed. It was evident she was emotional & didn't try to suppress it fully, but had to maintain some composure to get through the scene. She kept nodding slightly and pressing her hand to her chest, acknowledging us. This almost broke me. She knew. But she had a job to do, a few lines to sing (which she did perfectly DESPITE CRYING.) Eventually when it quieted she sang. The door swiveled. The light hit Caissie. All over again, a thundering standing ovation. This is where Caissie's brilliance lies, because she was borderline stoic while waiting for us to finish applauding. She gazed out at us for awhile, eventually shifting her focus upward and to her left, and to the door behind her. I don't think she smiled- she might have nodded once or twice. She waited. The emotionality displayed by Patti, which we all love for its honesty, was foiled by Caissie's ability to hold it together, which we love for its professionalism. (Don't even get me started on how in-character these contrasting displays were. I could go on and on about how these women match their characters so beautifully.)

From that second, something shifted in the audience. We were no longer spectators, we were participants in blurring the fourth wall. Not that we heckled or were addressed directly by the company. But we came alive. The actresses knew. We knew. We shared that unspoken sentiment. The show continued.

I don't have specific examples here because it's only something you can observe, but it was very obvious that both women were putting 110% into this performance. I understand sometimes in performance art that for self-preservation or focus, you make minor changes to how lines are said, or the emphasis of certain words, or how your facial expressions change. Sometimes you hold back a bit. Caissie and Patti went all out. Their acting was never compromised. Patti's hilarity as Anna hit every punchline perfectly. Caissie's portrayal of nervousness and fear was so believable. I also wish I could have captured every moment they looked at each other. I mostly saw Caissie's face from my perspective, but the way they look at each other is genuine. I get the sense they have this unspoken communication between them after doing the show so many times together. Dangerous to Dream was beautiful per always, and at the moment Patti kneels upstage, I again saw tears glimmering in her eyes. How this woman can do a whole show so obviously affected and STILL NAILING IT is genius. At the end of Love is an Open Door, Patti and Joe took a moment to just grin wildly at each other and grip each other's arms and bear-hug. I didn't realize this was Joe's last show as well, so it was their last duet of that song. Let it Go was spellbinding. Caissie took every opportunity to option up not just on the final few notes (which have been unfortunately bootlegged, and you've probably heard already) but in tiny points along the whole song. She actually did this with all her songs. If there was a half step variation she could do, she did it. It was remarkable. You get the sense she was having fun, trying to engage us. I remember an interview where she once said on certain shows or nights if she's feeling up to it, she likes to give the audience a little something extra. This was THE night. As she walked back before the dress change, I could feel people around me suddenly shift to get a better view. We all knew and we all wanted to see it. In a recent interview she said she just stands there and braces. You wouldn't know it- it looks effortless. The nanosecond the dress changed: standing ovation. This is where she started really grinning wildly and belting her lungs out. She was at the foot of center stage, riffing and optioning up a storm. Her expression was so joyous. She's said before that this is her favorite part of the show. Every time she optioned up (which was like, each one of the last four notes) there was a massive wave of cheers and applause. I expected her to do maybe one or two. She did four or five. And keep in mind this was her SECOND SHOW OF THE DAY. The song ends abruptly with her turning around with a swish of her cape & the lights going nearly out, and I get the sense that the thunderous applause wanted to keep going because we wanted her to SEE us. We wanted to face her and give her the recognition. We wanted to stop the show like in the beginning and show her how much she means to us, and how honored we are to hear her last Let it Go. But the choreography doesn't let that happen, because immediately the lights come back up for intermission, and she's gone. I wonder if she secretly likes that sequence, as Caissie seems to be the kind of person whose humility doesn't let her drink in compliments or praise. She was able to give us everything she had, and then disappear. Such an Elsa move. Monster had some riffs (which is not in any way disappointing because Caissie gave us 200% in Let it Go, which was enough to satiate me for years) but I did want to mention one in particular. If you watched Jelani's backstage videos on YouTube from the first few months of the show, he does this segment where he gets Caissie to riff. She does one from Monster for the line "Would that take the storm away/Or only make it grow." I'm not going to try and phonetically replicate it, but that. She did that. I was hoping she would, as it's one of my favorite variations of hers, and she did. I was ecstatic. The finale song is where Patti started crying again and from the moment they started walking backstage to the rising platform, it was applause all around. In that sequence they're facing away from the audience and I can only imagine the exchange- spoken or unspoken- between them. They did it. Their run was over. There are a few lines at the end that may just be me projecting, but they felt poignant in how Caissie delivered them & her expression looking at Patti (again, Patti was facing away from me, so I didn't catch her expression.) I get the sense they had a triple meaning, as they not only marked the end of the show but represent sentiments two sisterly women would have.

"The magic one is you." (This is perhaps my favorite line in the whole song.) "Let the sun shine on" "Let's fill this world with light and love/And now surrounded by a family at last/We're never going back, the past is in the past." The final "let it go" line in the song Caissie looked joyous. She was all smiles. She grinned at Patti. There was a look of pride in her eyes. At bows, apparently Caissie and Patti have this tradition where they say “I love you” at the front of the stage before bowing. I could only see Caissie, but she mouthed “I love you” to Patti with such a big smile and so much happiness. If Caissie cried at all prior to bows & acknowledgements, I didn't notice it. It's possible she's just very very good at hiding it. Even during Robert, Bobby, and Kristin talking at the very end, she only wiped her eyes once or twice. (I won't recount this part very much because many people filmed it and you can watch it yourselves. I've seen it on Instagram, though I haven't browsed Tumblr for it yet.) Patti, of course, could not hide her feelings. Caissie kept hugging her and squeezing her and holding her hand during all the kind words. At once point she wiped her thumb on Patti's cheek. Patti is a treasure. I have to respect the woman for being brave enough to show all of herself to us, even if it was involuntary. And I need to reiterate that she did the whole show perfectly even while crying & feeling a lot of feelings. She's a rockstar. Caissie, while fielding a slew of compliments from Robert & Kristin, would every once in awhile look down and do a funny little shake of her head. I get the sense she has a hard time accepting praise. Knowing she’s such a perfectionist at heart, she was probably internally fighting back with reasons why she didn’t deserve those kind words. I get it. It doesn’t matter how successful you are, you will always focus on the things you didn’t do or didn’t do enough. For someone of her caliber, it’s utterly fascinating to watch her humility. One last thing I want to point out. I mentioned earlier that from the moment of our first standing ovation, the atmosphere in the crowd changed. We went from spectators to a living, breathing mass. It was electric. Once you felt the gravity of the cheers and claps and whoops, you realized what you were part of. I heard from a reviewer on Twitter that he hadn't been part of such a lively audience-performer relationship since the closing show of In the Heights. Because that's what was different about last night. We crossed some sort of line where the art itself was no longer performance, but we partook in it. There's something really holy about the invisible exchange between performers and the spectators. Frozen is a masterpiece on its own, and we were all blessed to watch it. But when art becomes a give-take exchange of feelings, emotes, cathartic impulses, and unspoken communication, it becomes something new entirely. This was no ordinary night. Caissie and Patti gave all of themselves to us, and we knew, and we answered back. It felt alive in a way I didn't realize theatre could feel. The fourth wall ceased to exist, but only because both sides dissolved it. It wasn't direct. It wasn't obvious. No exchange of words indicated it. We just felt it and knew. They did too. It was an honor to take up space in the St James last night. I haven’t stopped thinking about it, and I will never forget it.

#frozen the broadway musical #frozen #elsa #anna #caissie levy #patti murin

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