#tried to keep it vague so it can be transitioned post-event!

[heavenechos]

open starter with: rhea and anyone! location: outside the walls, along the river Mander time: mid-afternoon

The rumble of music and laughter echoed in the distance as the current inhabitants of Highgarden came together for another afternoon of revelry, but the laughter was faint next to the rush of the river, and no music could match the beauty of the birdsong in the trees. Rhea had snuck away from the festivities, blanket and basket in hand, and was lying in the long grass, the sun warming and enveloping her in a mid-afternoon bliss. The open basket held a partially drunk bottle of wine, an abundance of grapes that Rhea absent-mindedly picked at, and an old book that she’d taken to press flowers in, rather than read. It had been so long since she’d taken a moment to be honestly, truly alone, so the sound of approaching footsteps in the grass was unwelcome. Rhea’s hand itched toward the dagger on her hip, but instead she propped herself up into a seated position, looking over her shoulder at the intruder, and deeming them not a threat- for now. “I can’t imagine why you saw me alone, perfectly happy, enjoying the afternoon, and still felt you should approach.” Her words came out colder, harsher than she’d intended, but it was impossible to take them back now. “Well,  you’re already here. You may as well sit if you’re going to stay.” 

[sohotthateveryonedied]

Hiii!! I really love your tumblr posts and I'm pretty new to the Batfam (meaning I have only read fics and textposts about them, no comics) and I wanted to ask about the year Bruce/Batman gets "lost in time". I know general things of what the kids have been doing–Dick became batman and fired Tim from robin, giving it to Damian, everyone thinking Tim was crazy for believing Bruce was alive, (don't really know what Jason was up to though, was he still murderous towards Tim? Does the pit still affect him? Also I have no idea about Cass and Duke, were they introduced at this point??) Anyways, my real question was why was Bruce lost in time, what villain put him there? And how did he get out? And how long was he "dead"? Was Bruce in another reality or like just asleep the whole time? Oh! And how soon did this happen after Damian got introduced to the family–a couple months?

I'm so sorry this is so long, but I hope you answer and thank you!!

(I’m going to try and cover all my bases here by going into how exactly Bruce “died,” what went down during the Battle For the Cowl, what the Batkids did while Bruce was gone, and how Bruce came back. Hopefully it all makes sense?? We’ll see how it goes lmao.)

Part 1 - What Happened to Bruce:

So there was this event called Final Crisis (which I won’t go completely into since it would make this post a million times longer than it already is), but the bottom line is that Darkseid wants to overthrow reality and release his Anti-Life Equation, which would overthrow the whole planet and turn everyone into slaves. (If you’re interested in knowing more about the storyline, here’s a Reddit thread that explains it WAY better than I could.) 

What I CAN tell you is that during his final confrontation with Darkseid, Bruce is hit by an Omega Beam and turned into a burnt chicken nugget killed. Poor guy.

Final Crisis #6

Clark and Diana bring the body back to the Batcave and break the news to the Batfamily. Batman #687 covers a good portion of the aftermath such as Bruce’s funeral, the Batfamily grieving, and Dick coming to terms with his new responsibility of becoming Batman.

Batman #687

Part 2 - Battle For the Cowl: 

Musical chairs time, fellas! After word gets out that Batman is gone, Gotham erupts into chaos. Dick doesn’t want to take over the mantle, Tim needs Dick to take over the mantle, and Jason says “fuck it” and takes over the mantle himself because somebody around here has to. He becomes this murderous psychopathic Batman and starts taking out criminals with deadly force because someone’s gotta do the job, so it might as well be him.

Batman: Battle For the Cowl #1

(Okay honestly, this series had some pretty bad characterization overall, which sucks since it’s such an important storyline. Jason is portrayed as this violent psychopath, which...okay, he was kind of insane after the Pit and all, but not to this degree. Personally, I choose to owe the bad characterization to Bruce’s death because as much as Jason resents Bruce for all he’s done, he does still love him and losing him would be devastating, which would exacerbate his already fragile mental health. As for Damian, this happens roughly three years after his first appearance, so we can assume it’s been a few months since he first joined the family. He’s still relatively new at this point, so nobody knows how to write him yet. He ends up being depicted as if his main two personality traits are Bratty and Assassin-Child and that’s it. It’s all just a mess.)

Anyway, Tim tells Dick to become Batman and stop Jason’s reign of terror. Dick says no, so Tim follows Jason’s lead by saying “fuck it” and putting on the cowl himself. He goes to confront Jason, which ends in Jason beating the crap out of him (again) and leaving him for dead after Tim declines his offer to become Jason’s Robin. Dick goes to save Tim and ends up fighting Jason. 

Battle For the Cowl #3

Dick wins, Jason disappears, Tim is fine, and Dick finally gets his head out of his ass and becomes Batman. 

Part 3 - What Happens to Each Batkid While Bruce is “Dead”?:

Dick: 

As I said, Dick becomes the new Batman a month after Bruce’s death. He’s got big shoes to fill, and it takes some time for him to get used to his new role. He and Damian end up flipping around the classic Batman and Robin dynamic, with Batman now as the fun counterpart to Robin’s edginess. Dick, Damian, and Alfred relocate to the penthouse above the Wayne Foundation building, operating out of a secret Bat-Bunker in the basement.

Batman #688

Jason: 

After Battle For the Cowl, Jason is still batshit insane and determined to make Dick’s already stressful life even harder by becoming a supervillain with an ugly costume and an even uglier hairstyle. (I know it’s just because the artist sucked, but still. Jason is horrifying to look at during this time.) He mostly just gets on Dick’s nerves by running around Gotham with his new sidekick Scarlet and killing criminals as Batman and Robin wannabes. Eventually, Dick has Jason committed to Arkham Asylum and he hangs out there until Bruce returns.

Batman and Robin (2009) #5

Tim: 

Tim...doesn’t do great after Bruce’s death, mentally. Dick makes Damian Robin, his reasoning being that Robin is more of a sidekick and he sees Tim as his equal. By making Damian Robin, Dick hopes that it will give him the stability he needs to keep him from straying back toward the “bad” side. (It’s the right move ultimately, although his execution was pretty messed up since he didn’t discuss it with Tim beforehand, but he’s allowed to make mistakes. Dick’s father just died and now he’s in charge of picking up the pieces of their broken family. It’s a lot to handle.) 

Long story short, Tim has a breakdown, realizes that Bruce is alive, dons the Red Robin identity, and cuts ties with his family to travel the world in search of proof. It’s a rough time. 

Red Robin #1

Damian: 

Our little guy becomes Robin! So proud of him! As I explained earlier, Dick makes Damian his Robin with the assumption that it will keep him out of trouble, and he’s right on that account. He mentors Damian, teaching him how to channel his violent instincts into something productive, and it works! Slowly but surely, Damian makes the transition from bratty assassin to actual hero!

Batman and Robin (2009) #22

Cass:

Duke sadly was not introduced at this point in time, so he missed out on all the pandemonium. Cass, however, has been Batgirl for years by now, but she got kind of pushed aside by the writers after Bruce’s death. Bruce disappears shortly after adopting Cass, but once he was “dead,” the writers sort of moved Cass around for a while, not quite knowing what to do with her. First she was with the Outsiders. Then they got disbanded and Cass tried forming a new network of heroes to take over for Batman if needed. Then she helped out in said network during Battle for the Cowl, taking care of a newly ravaged Gotham. Then Cass gave the Batgirl mantle to Stephanie Brown after she became disillusioned with the role, thanks to the loss of her father and mentor. Then Cass picked up and moved to Hong Kong to “follow Bruce’s plans” by continuing whatever work he had set up for her there. It was all very vague and confusing, and Cass more or less got swept under the rug during this time. Thanks, writers.

Batgirl (2009) #1

Part 4 - How Bruce Came Back: 

When the Blackest Night storyline happens, the Justice League realizes that the corpse buried under Bruce’s grave is apparently not the real one and that he’s actually alive out there somewhere! How wild is that! This is further proven by Dick after he places Bruce’s body in a Lazarus Pit to revive, which has the same result because it’s very clearly Not Bruce and they should have listened to Tim from the start.

Batman and Robin (2009) #9

Anyway, what actually happened is that the Omega Beams that Darkseid shot at Bruce didn’t kill him, but rather blasted him back through time to the prehistoric era with his memories wiped. The Omega Energy inside of Bruce ends up catapulting him through various time periods, which is all part of Darkseid’s plan. With each time-hop, Bruce builds up more Omega Energy in his body which, when he gets back to his original time period, will be unleashed and destroy everything.

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #5

It’s been a little under two years since Final Crisis, though in-universe it’s uncertain exactly how long Bruce has been “dead.” We can assume it’s been a year, give or take. The way he comes back is too scientific and complicated for me to understand, so uhhhh the bottom line is that Tim and a few Leaguers save Bruce at the Vanishing Point and the day is saved! Hooray! 

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #6

(If you want to read about how it actually goes down, then I seriously recommend reading Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne. It’s only six issues, so it’s a quick read and it explains the situation far better than I ever could.)

Bruce eventually reunites with his family after spying on them for a period of time as Insider to see what has changed in his absence:

Bruce Wayne: The Road Home

After that, things quickly settle back into their new normal. Dick and Damian stay on as Batman and Robin. Bruce goes back to being Batman as well, with him handling Batman Incorporated business and Dick continuing as Gotham’s defender. Tim keeps the Red Robin outfit, Steph stays on as Batgirl, and Cass becomes Black Bat. Jason stays in Arkham for a while before filing an appeal to be moved to a regular prison. He kills 82 inmates in less than a week and gets transferred back to Arkham, which he promptly escapes from. It’s a ride, I tell ya.

Aaaaand that’s about it! I hope this answered all of your questions!

[bigskydreaming]

Making this its own post because replying to the ask got so weirdly formatted I can’t even. Oh tumblr. You work so well.

@themessofthecentury  asked:

jsksjf my tumblr notifs are bugging and i didnt see your post but!!! The patron Saint of Robins?? I am much intrigue!!

(This is from this ask game, just....gotten to late, lololol. And I still have more I’m getting to, no worries. Just had a rough couple days is all, laid me up a bit.)

Okay, so The Patron Saint of Robins is kinda like the situation at the end of Grayson, except also not at all. And actually this is one of my older WIPs, and according to Scrivener I started it in 2015 afhislfhalhfalf, so it really has nothing to do with that. Also, its Young Justice-verse, but for two specific reasons:

1) YJ-verse is my go-to for Good Dad Bruce Wayne, when I don’t want to actually tackle the issues I have with his and his kids’ dynamic in comic book canon. I don’t carry over things like the adoption issue or the Robin succession into YJ fics, as I don’t think there’s anything that suggests they’re ever a specific issue in YJ and I don’t feel a need to make them one. So pretty much anything and everything I write in YJ goes with the backstory that Dick’s already adopted by Season One, and he’s the one to grant each later Robin permission to use the mantle, with no conflict over that, and more of a pre-Crisis transition to Nightwing than the post-Crisis firing from Robin. And this fic inherently needs Good Dad Bruce Wayne to work, lol.

2) I needed Klarion the Witch-Boy. Who of course exists in comic book canon, but is muuuuuch different there, and I just needed him to be a little demonic evil shithead, who sets everything in motion to get payback on the heroes for thwarting the Light in Season One, and he targets Robin due to being the oft-cited ‘first of the baby brat heroes’ and the ‘heart of the cape community.’

You don’t really need to be familiar with YJ canon at all for this one, as it goes sharply AU from after Season One, and only faintly and vaguely references specific events from that season. And I use my own YJ-ized version of the Titans as much as the actual YJ Team.

So basically, the plot of this one is to take revenge on the heroes for spoiling his game in Season One, Klarion plays a new game, by putting a chaos curse on Robin. It essentially erases him from peoples’ memories, though he’s perfectly able to make new ones. If he re-introduces himself to someone ask Dick Grayson, for instance, they don’t suddenly remember who Dick Grayson is or was, but they don’t forget about him again from that point onward, its like they meet him for the first time as a stranger.

But the curse part of things is only Batman can break it and restore everyone’s memories of Dick and his actual history, and only by identifying him for who he really is. And Dick can’t be part of breaking his own curse or else it seals it and makes it permanent and unbreakable forever.

Which of course leaves Dick completely miserable at first, understandably, and Bruce (and everyone else Dick knows, to varying different degrees) feeling some kind of loss but with no idea what it is they think or feel that they’re missing. Dick makes some half-hearted attempts at starting a new life for himself in Gotham, and in the process befriends a street kid named Jason Todd, though Dick introduces himself to Jason with just the name Robin.

The way the curse operates is it restitches together peoples’ memories to cover up the gaps where memories of him would go. So for instance, even though Jason never knew Dick before the curse, he was familiar with Batman and Robin just as much as any Gothammite was.....but due to the curse, the name Robin, upon meeting Dick, had no special meaning to him or anyone else. As far as he knew, Batman had always operated on his own in Gotham, the first teen superhero was that Speedy kid in Star City, etc. So when Jason first meets Dick, he just thinks he’s some dude whose name happens to be Robin.

Eventually, because Dick’s been kinda torturing himself by spying on Bruce just to ‘keep an eye on him’ and still watch his back, and he’s recognized by now that Bruce is mourning his loss without even knowing that he’s missing something....so Dick, who has also kinda come to see Jason as a little brother figure due to watching out for him as well....decides to kill two birds with one stone, unfortunate pun not intended. (Jason doesn’t die in this one, lol). Basically, Dick puts in motion the chain of events that lead Jason to stealing Batman’s tires, because he doesn’t know EXACTLY what Bruce will do but he knows it’ll get his attention in a big way and Bruce will take it from there.

One thing leads to another, Jason ends up living with Bruce and when eventually he wants to be trained by Bruce so he can do what he does and protect kids like he used to be.....when asked to pick a name....Jason names himself after the guy who always looked out for him, and who led to him being found by Bruce in the first place. He doesn’t know that his friend ‘Robin’ steered him towards those tires deliberately, just to bring him and Bruce into contact, but he does credit him with making the suggestion that ‘inadvertently’ (as far as he knows) enabled his and Bruce’s introduction, and so he names himself in honor of the boy who helped him and who he tried to track down again to similarly help, after Bruce adopted him, but was never able to find again.

Over the years, Dick also ends up steering Tim, Cass, Duke and Damian to Bruce in different ways than comic book canon (Steph and Babs’ debuts remain their own, as family adjacent but not family specifically) and thus is integral to the forming of the Batfam and has a connection with them even before the curse ultimately ends up broken and he’s able to reclaim his full identity. And each of them end up Robin at least briefly, like Steph is never Robin in this AU, and sticks with Spoiler, whereas Cass IS briefly Robin before becoming Batgirl after Babs. I did this for a few different reasons...

One, I really like that Cass is never Robin in main continuity as it creates a different dynamic between her and Dick than most of their siblings have, BUT I’ve always been curious to play around what Cass-as-Robin might even be like, just for an AU. Two, part of the Black Bat and Batgirl but never Robin sequence of mantles for Cass in the comic book continuity is like.....although it doesn’t get explored nearly enough, Babs was as much a kind of mother figure for Cass as Bruce was a father figure, despite Babs’ young age. So it makes more sense for Cass to stick more to just Bat-mantles than to ever be a Robin in the comic books. But in YJ, Babs is even younger, and just way too young to have the specific kind of dynamic that leads to that in the comic books, so its not as unreasonable IMO for her to have a different dynamic in her early days in the family here, before becoming closer with Babs and taking up the Batgirl mantle after she moves on to become Oracle.

And then also, and this is also the primary reason for making Duke a Robin briefly, before Damian is old enough....I got hung up on the title and it just didn’t work as well if it was Robins + Cass and Duke, lololol. See, in addition to helping steer the family into the points of introduction that make them a family, over the years he also acts as like, a guardian angel figure to the various family members, looking out for them and interceding in times of extreme danger, like when Jason is almost killed by the Joker. He’s always in disguise, but the kids eventually compare notes and realize there’s a singular figure behind each of their introductions to Bruce and the guy swooping out of nowhere to save their behinds whenever they’re most in danger, and Jason eventually connects this back to the guy who apparently NOT so coincidentally suggested he go after the Batmobile’s tires that fateful night, and the kids end up jokingly/not-so-jokingly referring to this figure as the Patron Saint of Robins. (Shout-out to the occasional mentions/allusions of Jason’s Catholicism).

They never tell Bruce about this figure (at least before Bruce starts to put together clues on his own), because they all figured out that for whatever reason, this person despite wanting them all to meet Bruce seems to want to avoid Bruce himself, and they kinda want to respect that as a kind of payback for his help, and also like....Bruce, even a kinder, gentler Bruce, is still Bruce. And when Bruce is gonna Bruce, that means Batparanoia. And all of them for various reasons DO trust that this guy has nothing but good intentions towards them, and so they don’t want to like....ruin or tarnish the positivity they associate with his intercession in their lives with paranoia or treating him like a bad guy. Which ultimately is really just smoke and mirrors for saying that he’s kinda a ‘just for them’ secret. Its a Robin thing.

(Until its not).

Because meanwhile, Dick, in between meeting the various Batfam members and pulling strings and looking out for them from the shadows, at first travels the world looking for ways to break his curse. But when ultimately its clear that the only way to break it is the loophole built into it already, Bruce identifying him for who he really is, but without Dick doing anything to steer him towards the answer, Dick settles into a new hero identity as Nightwing, and forms the Teen Titans, a public group of young superheroes (minus Roy and Wally, unfortunately, but still with Donna, Garth, Raven, Kory, ignoring season 3 Vic and also Terra because AU redemption arc what what, etc). And the Teen Titans avoid both the Young Justice Team and the Justlce League with EXTREME measures, much to the other heroes’ confusion and aggravation, because in the early days of the Titans, in a moment of what he’d term weakness, on one of his ‘bad days,’ Dick tells them enough of his story that they’re able to put together a good sense of what happened and who he really is by reading between the lines and what he leaves unsaid....

BUT as a result, all end up extremely committed to not mixing and mingling casually with the rest of the cape community because they don’t want to risk dropping any hints about the guy under Nightwing’s mask, in case that might count as steering Batman towards clues and seal the curse for good. So I have a lot of fun with having the Titans just nope out of the scene the second the bad guys are defeated even when they have to team up with other heroes, leaving the other heroes confused as hell and trying not to be all ‘WHY DON’T YOU LIKE US??”

Anyway, so yeah, that’s the gist of this one, lol. With it of course following the eventual plot that like...the Batfam starts to Detect and put things together.

ANYWHO!

Snippet

Damian versus Klarion: Round One

“Aww, its adorable that you think you’re in my league,” the Witch-Boy cooed in an absolute mockery of sympathy. Damian bristled, but before he could do anything more than that, he was faced with a much more pressing matter as reality completely lost its mind.

The walls of the cavern fell away in an instant, only to be replaced with a whirling dervish of winds all around them, as if they now stood in the center of a cyclone that bled red and silver and black. It shrieked and wailed in a chorus of voices just on the other side of being comprehensible, a symphony of the damned that set every nerve in Damian’s body aflame with a primal instinct to get out, to find silence, to be anywhere but here.

He’d barely staggered a step backwards when the ground erupted beneath him, splitting apart into jagged obsidian shards that bobbed precariously in the sea of magma barely glimpsed through cracks now spiderwebbing their way across the floor. Spears of lightning burst upwards through them, stabbing impossibly at the heavens rather than raining down from them. They hissed and crackled as they flickered like forked serpent tongues of electric violet and black. The forks becoming branches, the pillars of sky-shattering light transforming into the trunks of great trees that grew upwards and outward, weaving a canopy overhead. One that wept violently red leaves that fell gently to the ground, only to hiss and bubble like acid once they did.

“See, normally this is when I’d hit someone with a little razzle-dazzle like this,” Klarion called out over the song of madness he’d created, as it crooned and careened wildly all around them. He snapped his fingers, and in the span of a second it all ceased. Reality reaffirmed itself, and all was right with the world once more…except now the two of them stood at the end of a hallway in Wayne Manor.

Damian stumbled, the sudden reappearance of firm ground paradoxically being the thing to challenge his balance. The demon boy standing beside him crooked his thumb and forefinger in the semblance of a gun, the smile pasted across his face one of wickedly gleeful malice.

“But you, kiddo, you’re special. Cuz there’s nothing I could do to you now that could top what I’ve already done, so why try when I can just savor the moment instead?”

“What are you babbling about?” Damian demanded roughly. In the wake of what the Witch-Boy had just conjured up with nothing more than a gesture, he was keenly aware of how flimsy a shield his bravado made. He just had absolutely no idea what else to fall back on.

Klarion only threw back his head and laughed though, skipping merrily down the hall as he did.

“I know something you don’t know,” he sing-songed and Damian lost what little grasp of his patience he’d managed to hang onto.

“You overestimate my need for an answer. Attempt to intimidate me all you wish, but I have no desire to indulge your little game any further.”

Klarion jerked to a stop and spun around, his face screwed into a childish pout. He stomped his foot, petulance personified. “I’m not intimidating you anymore, I’m gloating! Ugh, you’re so stupid! They’re completely different, how can you not tell?”

Every light in the hallway flickered and fizzed abruptly. The walls wavered, bubbled, momentarily molten as if made of wax.

Again Damian was reminded just how mercurial this being he was faced with was, and how dangerous. Perhaps, as Father would say, this was not the time to indulge his own instinctive inclinations. Or as Todd would put it, just because you’re already fucked, that’s no reason to fuck yourself over more than you have to.

Crude as his older brother was, there was occasional merit to his…pithiness. Not that he would be admitting that any time soon, of course.

“Fine. What is it you wish to gloat about then?” Damian grated out. The appeasement, such as it was, tried its best to stick in his throat before finally clawing its way free. But at least it proved worth the effort when the godling’s mood reverted back to impishness as readily as with the flip of a switch.

“Well. Its like this, you see.” Klarion said. He dragged it out as he folded both legs underneath him to sit cross-legged in the air, plopping his head into his hands. “I did a baaaaaaaaaaaaad, bad thing to your family, a loooooong time ago. And none of you have done anything about it, because you don’t even know! Isn’t that funny? Doesn’t matter how big a hero Daddy Bats is if he doesn’t even know what needs saving huh? Little Catch-22 there, you might say.”

“Yes. Quite hysterical,” Damian said dryly. “So what is it you claim to have done then?”

The Witch-Boy just sat there, regarding him with amusement, and the seconds marched on into minutes. Damian’s skin crawled. Prickling with impatience and possibly something…more. He wasn’t quite ready to name it anxiety or something as melodramatic as all that yet. In fact, he’d rather not put a name to it at all, but today did not appear to be a day for configuring things to his liking.  

Klarion’s wicked grin grew as if sensing his thoughts, though to the best of his knowledge (and Damian did quickly ransack the library of his memory just to be sure) there was no indication telepathy was included among the Chaos Lord’s many, many powers. And still that detestable smile stretched slowly wider all the same, in perfect synchronization with the rising tide of Damian’s unease. Perhaps the Witch-Boy’s file was in need of annotation.

“How many doors would you say are in this hallway?”

“What? Seven.” Damian snapped out his answer, annoyed by the non sequitur. Not to mention baffled. Was it too much to expect even a semblance of linear thought from the Chaos brat?

“Are you suuuuuuure?” The Witch-Boy stretched his query out obnoxiously. “Maybe you should count again. Just for kicks and giggles.”

Damian throttled back each and every retort attempting to spring to his lips, stuffing them back down and cramming a lid on everything he most dearly wished to say to this most vexing of…shitheads. Once again, it appeared as though nothing less than Todd’s preferred form of nomenclature would suffice. Wonderful. On top of everything else Damian had to deal with today, he seemed to be finding common ground with the man all over the place. Was there no end to the indignities he must suffer?

But marshaling his own formidable willpower, Damian took a deep breath and indulged the Chaos Lord, glancing his eyes down the length of the hallway and counting out each doorway one by one. There was his own room of course, with Cassandra’s to the right of his, and the room Brown used when staying over to the right of hers. That was three. Then there was Thomas directly across from his own room, with Drake to his right and Todd just beyond that, with Father’s room at the very end of the hall, his master suite staggered and with no direct opposite like the others. Seven.

Except all of a sudden there was a door directly opposite his father’s. For a total of eight.

Damian’s brow furrowed in consternation. The faint whispers of uncertainty already seeded throughout him bore fruit, ripening into poisonous stabbings of doubt.

“That’s not real,” he stated with as much conviction as he could muster.

The Witch-Boy’s smile only grew wider still. “Isn’t it, though?”

“There’s never been a door there before,” Damian persisted, striding confidently down the hall towards it. The Chaos Lord flitted ahead of him, inverting til he was upside down and skipping merrily once more, though this time from the ceiling.

“Or has it been there all along?” He sing-songed some more.

“I would think we might have noticed if it had been,” Damian growled.

“Yes, you’d think, wouldn’t you? You are all supposed to be a family of detectives, I thought. Makes you wonder…if you could miss this, what else might you have failed to notice?”

Damian snarled to himself and did his best to shut out the demon boy’s prattling. He quickened his strides, eating up the length of the hallway in his haste to reach its end. He wasn’t sure what opening the door would prove, let alone what bewilderment the godling had conjured on its other side, but it appeared the only end to this game of his was through it, so let there be an end to it already.

And yet, for all his certainty - or best facsimile of it - he couldn’t help but pause once he reached the door in question. His hand hovered within reach of its brass knob, but some instinct, some…caution, held him at bay. As much as he wanted to dismiss all this as just one more of the Chaos Lord’s inane charades, there was a tension in the air that felt too weighty to be the product of just magical conjuring. Something more was in play here. Real forces were at work. His father might disdain magic, but Damian had been around enough of it himself to know when true power had been raised. And the span of empty space between his hand and this hither-to-unseen doorknob held more of it than Damian had felt throughout all the mad warpings Klarion had made of reality thus far.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Klarion asked from somewhere overhead. His voice, usually pitched to carry, was so soft for a moment Damian mistook it for his own inner doubts. “Some doors are easier to open than to close again, you know.”

Even knowing the goading for what it was couldn’t stop Damian then, and with a simple breath to fortify himself, he reached for the knob, spun it once, and shoved the door open all in a single sharp movement.

The Witch-Boy giggled up above.

The door swung wide, a forceful arc that should have revealed anything and everything within it all at once; the better to react quickly to whatever that might be. Fine in principle, perfect in execution, but thwarted by one small detail:

There was nothing on the other side.

And not in the sense of it being just an empty room, but true nothingness. A pitch-black abyss darker than the deepest night, yawning forth from the doorway in a vast, impenetrable shroud. Nor was anything hidden in the darkness, Damian knew, even if just intuitively. He could feel it, that he stood on the edge of an impossible cliff, that there was nothing beyond this threshold but an aching chasm of emptiness and loss. The surety of it hung in the air, thick and heavy, a miasma that seeped through to his side of the doorway and clung to him like the moisture of a fog beads upon the skin.

Klarion’s head suddenly popped up alongside him, hovering just over his shoulder.

Albeit still upside down.

“Well that doesn’t seem right,” he mused, tapping at his lips with a forefinger. “What do you suppose is meant to be in there?”

The last of Damian’s brittle patience shattered.

“Enough! What is the meaning of all this, demon? Speak plainly, for once in your miserable existence!”

His self-preservation instincts and the reminder of just who it was he was shouting at kicked in too little too late, but he wouldn’t take his exasperated fury back even if he could. He was who he was after all. But fortunately, that described the Witch-Boy just as accurately, and rather take offense or perceive any actual threat from Damian’s rage, the Chaos Lord just shrieked with laughter and sprung backwards. He flipped right side up, still hovering in mid-air, and clapped his hands with glee.

“Oh, I should have done this ages ago,” Klarion sang out. “Why, you’re almost as fun as he used to be. Back before he got all droll and serious, that is. He’s no fun at all anymore, nothing like this. Never wants to play, always just running back to his tower with that little bitch of a demoness.”

His face soured like he’d just sucked on a lemon. But rather than stop there, his countenance kept morphing into an increasingly savage scowl, the longer he ranted. The hallway was suddenly sweltering, baking with unseen heat that twisted the air into shimmering ribbons. The small horns sprouting from his forehead burst into scimitars of flame that cut through those ribbons and set them similarly ablaze.

“Always putting on airs like she’s some kind of royalty, just because her Daddy Dearest put the fear into a few peasants back in the day,” the Witch-Boy snarled viciously. “As if that’s enough to put her on par with the likes of me. No one is the likes of me. NO ONE!”

Reality itself quaked with the force of his shout. White-blue flames spat forth and crescendoed down the length of the corridor, splashing against its walls and searing them to a crisp. Damian braced himself for all the good it would do, keenly aware of the void still gaping hungrily behind his back, but before the fire could become an actual danger to him as well, all was quiet once more.

Silence hung in the air much like the demon boy, poised yet motionless. Suspended. Waiting.

And then Klarion simply inhaled and brushed his hands down the front of his garments, smoothing out the wrinkles as he reclaimed his calm. The corridor restored itself to its former self, curtains of vintage reality unrolling from the ceiling to the floor as though papering over the damage. Damian felt rather than saw when the portal behind him swung shut and was replaced with the expanse of ivory paint and ornate sconces he was used to seeing in its place.

“I am one of a kind, after all,” Klarion finally remarked. It was a casual drawl offered forth almost off-handedly, as if more a reminder to himself than uttered for anyone else’s sake. He used one hand to spell out letters in the air. They appeared and vanished again in bursts of fireworks and fluorescent flame. “U-N-I-Q-U-E.”

“As I, apparently, am not,” Damian said, seizing upon the Chaos Lord’s restored calm and good cheer. “Who is this ‘he’ you mentioned? If I’m to be pitted against him as entertainment in your eyes, might I at least know his name?”

“Nuh-uh-uh,” the Witch-Boy scolded. He wagged his finger at Damian. “No spoilers. That’s not how the game is played.”

Keenly aware of the boy’s power once more, Damian gritted his teeth and pressed on. “Well, if there are to be rules, shouldn’t I at least know what those are?”

Klarion sucked in a deep breath, drawing himself up along with his inhalation as though preparing for some great speech…and instead just toppling backward, flopping onto an extravagant fainting couch that suddenly appeared beneath him, though similarly floating in the air.

“I can’t recall at the moment.” His now-faint voice drifted up from where he lay buried amid a mountain of pillows. “I’ve had a terribly exhausting day. But you’re supposed to be a detective, remember? Go…I don’t know. Detect things.”

He flapped an arm at Damian dismissively, and then crooked a finger into a twirling motion that set his divan to spinning in lazy circles.

“Isn’t life grand?” Klarion sighed fondly. “With all its twists and turns, its eddies and swirls. I mean, take the two of us. Scant hours ago, we were mortal enemies, and just look at us now.”

The Witch-Boy lazily rolled his head to the side as the couch drifted to bring him face-to-face with Damian. His lips spread wide in that malevolent, wicked grin of his once again, but somehow it managed to be even wider than any he’d shown off before. His eyes blazed with a hellish inner light, and his voice, when next he spoke, dropped deep into a demonic register. A bass that boomed forth and set Damian’s very bones to rattling.

“Ain’t we got fun?”

[letbarbieshavedragons]

Um no... there was PLENTY of foreshadowing since at least season two that Dany would go "mad". And she's definitely not mad, she's calculated and cunning but not mad. She had showed signs of being villainous since the beginning. Were you paying attention when she would yell about using fire and blood to get what she wants? When she burned people alive for not bowing to her? When she only "freed" slaves when it benefitted her goals to conquer. Her dark turn was obvious from the start.

right so not really sure where this came from lol, but since you actually took the time to come to my asks and you don’t seem snarky or whatever, i guess ill respond. 

I’ve never said there wasn’t any foreshadowing. I’ve said there was no character development for it or not near enough consistent or logical build-up, but that’s very different from foreshadowing. foreshadowing at this point is just a fandom buzzword. it’s vague enough that literally anything could be considered foreshadowing, especially in hindsight. so yes there is foreshadowing that Dany is a villain. there is also foreshadowing Jon and Arya and Ned and Sansa and Bran are villains as well. there’s even foreshadowing that Jojen was turned into paste and bran ate him. that word has lost all weight and meaning and it can’t (and never could) prove anything. at best foreshadowing is grounds for conjecture. not proof or a replacement for character arcs. and even then its flimsy. 

As for your other points your really cherry-picking the facts here if not just completely distorting the narrative. The Fire and Blood speech was a) a show only event and b) said out of desperation to get sanctuary so she and her people didn’t starve in the desert. she tried being polite and accomodating but they were going to leave them so in a desperate final act, she spit some (metaphorical) fire at them and it worked. so not exactly villain territory. not to mention fire and blood are her family words, of course, she used them. how many times do the starks go on about winter? or the lannisters about debts? this is hardly proof. 

As for the burning people for not bowing to her I assume you mean the Tarly’s, which is once again cherry-picking the facts. They were at war. You think Robert or Ned would have let Aerys’ supporters live if they had refused to bend the knee? What about the Umbers if Smalljon had survived the Battle of the Bastards? Rob Stark threatened to hang a man simply for implying he wouldn’t answer his call to war. Jon Snow beheaded a man for disobeying orders even after said man agreed to comply.  In ep 1, Ned Stark beheaded a man for simply being scared from his post. 

After the Battle of the Bastards, Sansa didn’t even want the Umbers family to keep their lands! In that sense Daenerys comes out more merciful seeing as she not only doesn’t take the Tarly’s lands, I don’t remember her even discussing it. and while i hate to acknowledge anything in s8, she even legitimizes Gendry and returns the Baratheon lands to him saving the house from extinction (even tho Gendry’s father nearly wiped hers to it). And while no this wasn’t done out of the kindness of her heart, it also wasn’t exactly a necessary political move and shows more graciousness than Sansa did in 6. (And I’m not trying to shit on Sansa here, i didn’t actually take issue with her decisions. just pointing out you have to hold everyone to a fair standard here) 

The Tarly’s betrayed their liege lord (to side with the usurper that murdered said liege lords and the queen) then murdered them, which by Rob’s own words is grounds for execution. Their liege lords who also happened to be Dany’s allies. If the show had any desire for consistency by s 7 (or really any narrative integrity at all) then there would have been people urging Dany not to offer any clemency in the first place. Daenerys was showing mercy by offering them a chance in the first place. Hell, she even offered them two. Bend the knee or take the black. That’s more than Robb gave. It’s probably more than Ned would have. 

With full context her offer was more: you are defeated, agree you will stop trying to kill me and I will forgive you for betraying a murdering your liege lords and my allies a and I won’t kill you in return. Hardly villain territory. 

And the “only freed slaves when it benefitted her?” is just completely and categorically false my dude. like i really shouldn’t have to explain this but your ask seems to be in good faith (and not just baiting me) so here we go. 

Dany didn’t have to free a single slave. She already had the Unsullied her plan would have worked had she freed them or not. In fact if anything she risked more by freeing them bc she had no way of knowing they would still follow her once free. But she did it anyway. She freed them because it was the right thing to do. So already thats wrong, but i’ll go on.

She gained nothing from freeing the slaves in Yunkai, in fact it was objectively an unstrategic decision, her advisors even tell her not to. the show even makes a point in saying its not the militarily strategic thing to do. she gains nothing from it but dead soldiers, potential catistropohic failure and (if she succeeds) thousands of freedmen she doesn’t really have the resources to support. And considering Yunkai even offered her money and (if i remember correctly) ships to leave them be, she’s washing all that down the drain too. So no, once again she gained nothing from attacking Yunkai, she only stood to lose. The only thing she won was the only thing she wanted, which was the freedom of those in bondage. 

And for Meereen,  I guess you could say she gained her queenship? Except she didn’t want to stay in Meereen and both the show and the books make it very clear she only does bc she’s afraid what happened in Astapor or Yunkai after she left will happen again in Meereen when she leaves, so she decides to stay long enough to transition the city into a free city, not bc she wanted to be queen of meereen. So even then its very disingenuous to say she freed the slaves in Meereen for personal gain. 

like my dude are you for cereal? at least the first two points I can understand from the standpoint of someone who is looking for dark Dany. If you are already convinced Dany is secretly a villain I can at least see how these things would stand out. But this idea that Dany freed slaves for personal gain goes beyond simply assuming the worst of her character and is just a complete distortion of the text.

I could go on about all the times the Starks have done shady or questionable stuff and no one is pointing fingers at them or about how Dany being a “secret” villain this whole time isn’t even the narrative we got (we got a fall from hero to villain further proving that at the very least even dnd thought she was a hero at the start) or that even if Dany is a “secret” villain having another badass blonde villain queen isn’t just redundant in the narrative and an overplayed trope, in general, it’s also not even a better or more subversive arc than just having her be a badass heroic dragon queen who has had to fight for every inch of her respect and power but this is already long enough and I’ve already made posts about these things 

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Deep Within The Darkness Peering. Part ii. Chapter One.

Anonymous said: OMGOMGOMGOMG DWTDP owns me! So original. Please please PLEASE finish this (after 87 chapters and multiple arcs of course!)

--

As you wish, Anon <3 MBD.

--

Not wanting to overwhelm him on his first few days of release, Claire simply gave Jamie a tour of her property, showed him his room, the lounge and the kitchen and then gave him some space to settle in. Glenna had been a saint through it all and had procured Claire a few days annual leave so that she could see he’d made himself truly at home. It also meant that she was able to drive him to his first probation meeting.

“Was there a lot to take in?” She asked as he climbed back into the car an hour later.

“Aye and no.” Replying he seemed content which in turn made her less worried. “I kent most of it from the meeting I had before I left the prison. I think I was just worried that things might have changed since.”

“And they haven’t?” She wanted him to meet John but had waited until this meeting before suggesting it, scared herself that something might go wrong. Grateful that things had gone as well as they could she paused to let him reply before putting the idea to him.

“No, thank the lord. She didna see it fit to impose a curfew or have me tagged.”

Their relationship, being new and still a little daunting for the both of them, meant that Jamie still seemed quiet and withdrawn but Claire wished he’d had the confidence to come and tell her of his fears. She could already see, as they pulled away from the council building, the relief coursing through him as he slumped back against the front seat.

“So, I have someone I’d like you to meet - if you’re up to it?”

Turning to look at her, Jamie smiled. “Oh, aye?”

“His name is John Grey. He’s a very close friend, a barrister actually. He’s the one who pushed through your appeal.”

“That sounds good.” Replying he looked sad for a moment, his hands gripping across his knees. “I only wish I had something more than ‘thank you’ to say to both of ye.”

“How many times do I have to say it,” reaching across the central console, she took one hand off the wheel for a moment and rested it over the back of his, squeezing once before taking it back, “you don’t need to do that. I can’t explain it entirely, but there was something nagging at me from the moment we met and I would’ve never forgiven myself if I’d ignored it. That means John saw it too, when he looked deeper into your case. I promise you, he wouldn’t fight for something, for someone he didn’t believe in - even at my request.”

Nodding, he tipped his head towards his lap, breaking eye contact as he smiled softly once more.

“Maybe soon you’ll trust me enough to talk. When you do, I’m here. I just wanted you to know that.”

He waited until they’d parked back outside Claire’s flat before he replied, his mind replaying certain painful memories as Glasgow flew past them. “It isna about trust, please dinna think that I want to hide anything from you. I just...can’t...not yet.”

Each night since his release she had carefully been applying the scar balm she’d picked up from work, her fingers gently rubbing the transparent cream into each and every inch of his sore back to ensure as little damage as possible remained etched into his flesh. Afterwards she’d silently washed her hands in the bathroom basin, placed the tub onto the top shelf of the unit above the sink, climbed into bed and cried herself to sleep. She knew the damage, she’d (at her own punishing request) seen the footage John had requested from the prison - each cruel blow depicted in grainy black and white, and she vividly recalled the operation she’d assisted in to ensure his survival.

Hearing his voice break as he tried to hold himself together made her instantly regret her wording as she sighed and pulled the key from the ignition.

It was a dry day, and they watched passers by as they wondered the pavements, crossing in front of the parked car as they cut across the grass on the edge of the apartment complex.There was definitely more to the story than was written in the detailed report given at his trial, Claire knew without asking that John also had his doubts as to its validity and she hoped, in time, Jamie would open up enough to her that she could help him possibly clear his name.

“I’d really like to meet him, yer friend John. Even if thank you is all I have,” he whispered, “I’d still like to say it.”

“I can assure you, he’ll say the same as me.”

-- --- --

Claire went to the shops alone, leaving Jamie to rest on his own after their busy morning. Calling John on the way, she confirmed a good time and went on a hunt for something vaguely edible.

It was nice to be out, she soon realised, as the clean, cool air encased her. The supermarket wasn’t too busy and it was relaxing just wandering around with nowhere to be until later. Having not left the house in a couple of days, she’d been so desperate to make sure Jamie made an easy transition into her life that she’d failed to realise that they’d been cooped up for two whole days. It was unusual for her to have such freedom and she was grateful for the chance to just relax.

“Honestly, I didn’t think I’d ever catch you in the raw meat aisle.” John laughed as he approached Claire from behind making her jump a little.

“How on earth did you find me?”

Bringing his phone out of his pocket, he waved it in front of her and pointed to the open app with her live location. “Technology is quite scary these days!”

Leading up to Jamie’s release, John had suggested pairing their phones just in case he desperately needed to get hold of her and couldn’t, he’d presented it as a mere friend doing his duty, but truthfully he was worried in case they’d made a bad decision offering her home up to Jamie. If he turned out to be something more sinister.

“So are you, Grey.” She retorted, slapping the steak packet against his chest. “And what is wrong with my cooking?”

“All I’ll say is; it’s good it can be either rare or well done and still edible, eh!”

Taking her arm, they continued to meander around the shop, Claire putting various food items into the basket as they walked in companionable silence.

“When is your next shift?” He asked as they bagged the groceries.

“Not until the weekend now, I was going to go back tomorrow but I wanted to encourage Jamie to leave the flat without having some sort of meeting at the end of it...I just haven’t worked out how I’m going to do it yet.”

“I take it a trail of breadcrumbs is out of the question?”He quipped, taking the full bag and carrying it out to the car for her.

“He’s a little too smart for that trick, John. But thanks for the suggestion.”

“The real question is, is he staying in because he’s just getting used to being free again, or is he scared to leave. One is easier to sort than the other, of course.”

“I’ve seen trauma before, both physical and mental. I think it’s more mental. He’s definitely settled. He stopped asking if he could use the kettle pretty quickly and he cooked himself some dinner last night. “So he feels safe with you then, that’s good.”

“It’s this Randall guy, isn’t it? Does he work on the force in the city, do you know?” She hadn’t had the stomach to research the captain who’d locked Jamie away out of fear. John had said a few things about him, none of them painting him in a favourable way, and she got the distinct feeling he was close by, closer than she, John or Jamie would like. Word of his release wouldn’t have taken long to reach the ears of the man who’d caused the incarceration.

“It could be. Yes, he’s based here. He started his career in London and was posted here only a few years ago. I can’t work out whether it was a promotion, though, or as a way to get him far away from Scotland Yard. Anything that takes place inside the Met is incredibly well covered - especially if he found himself on the receiving end of an internal dispute.”

Rolling her eyes, Claire tried to concentrate on the road in front of her instead of the increased rate of her heart as it beat a punishing rhythm beneath her chest.

“They’re the nations protectors, anything dirty that could diminish their name or cause them disrepute is bound to be buried as deep as they can possibly dig. He’s a good negotiator, a talker…”

“Have you met him?”

“Not in the flesh, but we’ll have attended some events together you can bet. The important thing, Claire is to your own hands clean - leave anything public to me and whatever you do, don’t underestimate the man. Jamie will, hopefully, at some point talk to you about his ordeal, but it’s only been two days. I’m sure he won’t hide away forever.”

Something in her gut told her that John knew more than he was letting on, but if he was keeping it from her, she reasoned, it was probably for good reason. Reaching her flat in double quick time, they both dropped the conversation as Claire opened the front door and waved John in.

“Jamie,” she called out, “we’re back.” Forgetting for a moment that he had no idea she wasn’t alone.

They waited patiently in the kitchen, putting as much of the food away as they were able to until both were convinced that he wasn’t going to come out to greet them. It was only when the creek of the bedroom door echoed along the hall that Claire finally let out the breath she’d been holding.

“John met me out and we thought there’s no time like the present, are you alright?”

“Nice to meet you,” Jamie finally said as he bought himself into the open plan living room, “and thank ye, for spending yer free time looking into my case for me, I dinna think I can thank you enough for that, really.”

The men shook hands cordially and John looked Jamie over seriously for just a moment before nodding his head. “It’s my pleasure, it’s what I signed up for and I knew when Claire called me that it must be serious for her to have stepped in and contacted me for help.”

“I willna cause you to regret it, Mr Grey.”

“John, please, and I’m sure you won’t.”

Dinner was a quiet but pleasant affair. Where there had been small bursts of conversation between Claire and Jamie since he’d arrived, now there was a continuous buzz as Claire and John joked with one another, leaving room for Jamie to join in as and when he felt comfortable. She’d made lasagne and despite John’s jesting at her culinary skills, it turned out better than edible.

“Well, as stuffed and warm as I am I think I need to get home. I have a long trial starting tomorrow.” Patting his belly, John placed his napkin on the table and finished his glass of water. With Jamie’s parole stating that he wasn’t to be found under the influence of drugs or alcohol, Claire had removed everything from her cupboards determined to join in with the sobriety order.

“I’ll walk you out…” Jamie spoke up as Claire stood to clear the plates.

“Alright,” she continued, a grin lighting up her face at his offer, “don’t be a stranger!” Winking as she castigated John for his random absences in her life, she plucked the last of the plates from the table and began to load the dishwasher.

Walking side by side to the front door, John took his coat from the hook and wrapped his scarf around his neck. “I know it isn’t my place,” he began as he held eye contact, raised his brow and smiled to put Jamie at ease, “but I have an inkling, just as she does, that there’s something more to this story than meets the eye. Don’t let her fool you, she’s good at being strong - she’s had to be. But you both need to stick together. Open up to her because if you let her in, I think you’ll find you have no regrets.”

Holding his hand out, Jamie nodded before he took it.

With one step out of the door, he swivelled on his heels to face him. “Oh, and one more thing, if you need anything at all, please call me. I’ll try and help in any way I can.”

As Jamie returned to the lounge Claire was finishing up wiping the table. “Everything alright?”

“Aye, more than alright...thanks to you.”

Chuckling, she shook her head as she threw the cloth back into the sink. “I wondered why my ears were burning. I’m glad John found something positive to say. Normally he’s just shaking his head at my poor choices.”

“Do ye make many of those?”

Embarrassment coloured her for just a moment as she was reminded of the diploma sat gathering dust in her bottom draw. “One major one.” “I think yer doing pretty well if ye’ve only one, lass.”

Taking a seat on the extended corner sofa, Claire let her head fall backwards against the cushions and waited for Jamie to sit beside her. “My father was a doctor, a really bloody good one, he saved the moment I was born, putting all the money into various bonds and accounts to make sure that I had any and every option once I reached an age to be able to choose.” Taking a deep breath, she steeled herself as she ignored the tears welling in her eyes, his warm presence extinguishing the pain of the memories. “Him and my mum died just before I went to college and if John hadn’t been there, I don’t think I’d have made it this far.”

“I ken how it feels to lose a parent. Ye feel as if yer heart has been torn clean from your chest as the world crumbles around you.”

As lost to her own grief as she was, it felt good to learn something about him, for him to feel relaxed enough to open up to her.

“Does John want ye to be like yer father, then?” He guessed.

“Nearly right, but not quite. I did.” She confessed. “He’s disappointed that I don’t rise to my full potential.” Quoting John’s exact words to Jamie.

“You’re a doctor?”

“Yes.” Sighing, she smiled sadly as she turned to face him. “But I still can’t bear to hear anyone say it to me because that title, those words, always belonged to him and I don’t know how to take on his legacy, I don’t know whether I ever will.”

“I haven’t known you for very long, Claire, but I do know one thing - ye have the biggest heart. You took a chance on me after treating me wi’ such kindness in the hospital. So if yer worried about no’ meeting the standards he set for you, just look in the mirror and I’m sure you’ll be able to see what I can see, what I’m sure John sees too, and ken that yer father would be proud of the woman you’ve become.”  

[welllpthisishappening]

Welllp This is...Sports Fic

Oh hai there, internet. I hope you all are staying safe and healthy and there’s plenty of your favorite drink in your cabinets. If you, like me, miss sports, I have a vaguely shameless self-promotion for you because I have written just...a copious amount of sports-type fanfiction. Mostly Captain Swan, but I’ve started to tread into Bellarke and now arrive with this almost well-organized list. 

We run the gamut here, so there’s everything from hockey to lacrosse to soccer and basketball. And, you know, if there’s something else you want to see or read about, I’m running out of features to write in the real world. 

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Tripping Over the Blue Line Rating: Mature Chapters: 40

It's a transition. That's what Emma's calling it. She's transitioning from one team to another, from one coast to another and she's definitely not worried. Nope. She's fine. Really. She's promised Mary Margaret ten times already. So she got fired. Whatever. She's fine, ready to settle into life with the New York Rangers. She's got a job to do. And she doesn't care about Killian Jones, captain of the New York Rangers. At all.

He's done. One more season and he's a free agent and he's out. It's win or nothing for Killian. He's going to win a Stanley Cup and then he's going to stop being the face of the franchise and he's going to go play for some other garbage team where his name won't be used as puns in New York Post headlines. That's the plan. And Emma Swan, director of New York Rangers community relations isn't going to change that. At all.

They are both horrible liars.

More under the cut, because seriously there’s a lot

More in the Tripping Over the Blue Line Universe

We'll Take a Cup (defense) of Kindness Rating: Mature Chapters: 2

It's one night. New Year's Eve. And a whole list of rules. Because Regina might have actually lost her mind. Or maybe that's just Emma. Because they've played a million games in two days, or it's at least felt that way, and planning an outdoor practice a few weeks before the Olympics seemed like a good idea at one point. Now it just seems insane. So she's going to wear this dress and kiss her boyfriend. A lot.

He's good. Better than good. Great. The greatest. It's New Year's Day and, yeah, sure it's freezing, but Killian hasn't actually tried to push Scarlet on the Subway tracks yet so that seems like a step in the right direction. So he's a little distracted a few weeks before the Olympics, but that's fine. It's good. Or it'll be good. Eventually. Soon. In the meantime he's probably just going to kiss his girlfriend. A lot.

The PyeongChang Triple  Rating: Mature Chapters 15

It’s the Olympics. The. Olympics. And Emma’s running out of post-it notes to write schedules and plans on and there are more games and more expectations and not enough time for any of it. She’s fine. Totally. Absolutely. If she could just sleep. Or stop feeling as if her knees are going to give out every time she stands up. Or get Ruby to stop staring at her like that. It’s fine. After all Killian Jones, captain of Team USA, keeps promising it will be.

He’s going to win. Again. At the Olympics. And Killian’s not nervous. Not about that. It’s hockey. He could play hockey in his sleep. Probably. He’s never tried that. But he probably could. And, sure, there are expectations and games and schedules and barely any time for what he wants to actually be doing, but winning a Gold medal isn’t bad. After all, Emma Swan, temporary New York Rangers Olympics team social media manager, keeps promising it will be.

They’re fine. They’re going to win. Together.

Going Top Shelf  Rating: Mature Chapters: 20

It's more than just one season.

It's hits and goals and being the face of the franchise and events and family and road trip facts. It's on-ice injuries and off-ice dramas and weddings and cross-country flights and shouting in the stands. It's games and holidays and traditions and athletic-based superstition.

It's life and it's not just hockey and as far as Emma and Killian are concerned, that makes it even better.

A collection of 'Tripping Over the Blue Line' one shots from before, during and after the original story.

A Biscuit in the Basket

Or: the AU of the AU where Will and Belle adopt a kid

Also Blue Line one shots are under 4K stories that only get posted to Tumblr. 

OTHER HOCKEY STORIES

Whistled for Icing  Canon One Shot

Elsa leaves a bit of magic in the forest just outside of Storybrooke and it’s reason enough for the town to investigate. Or start up a game of hockey. 

What Used to Be Limes Rating: Teen  One Shot

Killian Jones is only a little worried that he’s not going to survive his first season in the NHL. With a snarky roommate and a fridge that’s barely boasting a few limes, it’s going to be a close call. At least he’s got one thing going for him: his best friend Emma Swan. 

Who he just happens to be in love with. 

A Rooting Interest Rating: Teen One Shot

This is all Ruby’s fault. Emma doesn’t normally work behind the bar, but Ruby’s sick and there’s something happening at the Garden this weekend and she knows she can help. 

She gets behind the bar and starts making drinks and it isn’t so bad when some guy who only wants water shows up. 

Or when he leaves a pretty good tip. Two tickets to the hockey game. She assumes that’s what’s happening at the Garden. 

BELLARKE HOCKEY Connecting on the Wraparound Rating: Mature Chapters: 15, WIP

Bellamy Blake is exhausted.

Sick of the game that’s been at the center of his life for as long as he can remember, and the reputation he’s garnered because of it, Bellamy is desperate to get away from the ice during the NHL All-Star break. So, without much thought to what he’s doing or why he’s doing it, Bellamy heads home, to the place he thought he could never come back to.

It’s a stupid idea, really, or so Octavia has told him seventy-six times, but then Clarke Griffin is standing in front of him and her daughter is an even better skater than Bellamy is and, all of the sudden, Arkadia seems like the most important place in the world.

-----

BASEBALL

You Play Ball Like a Girl Rating: Mature Chapters: 47 

Emma Swan had a plan. Get the story. Get the byline. Up her Twitter follower count. It was simple – she was going to take over the New York City journalism world. And she was going to do it from the sideline with a credential around her neck and a pen stuffed in her hair and a fierce determination no one was going to be able to put a dent in.It was the perfect plan.That plan just failed to factor in Killian Jones.

Sliding Down the Hill Rating: General

Emma Swan's phone rings and she makes a quick, split second decision. She keeps doing that. She makes choice after choice and change after change and, suddenly, she's crying on ESPN. That's probably the last thing she expects.

Or: A not-quite a Little League World Series AU.

Back in the Swing of Things Rating: General

The Sliding Down the Hill sequel. 

Safe Upon Review Rating: General One Shot

Henry won’t stop crying. And Emma can’t sleep. Or stop worrying. And it’s snowing. Of course it’s snowing. She’s not sure what she thinks Mary Margaret can do, but she’s certain she can fix it and the drive across campus should only take ten minutes and….Mary Margaret isn’t there.

It’s the anniversary of something. And Killian is in the room by himself. With a questionable amount of takeout food. And it’s snowing. Of course it’s snowing. He’s not sure when David will get back, but he’s certain it’s too early when he hears the noise in the hall and…David isn’t there.

Step Right Up and Greet the Mets Rating: General One Shot 

Emma doesn’t want to go.

It’s going to be a goddamn disaster because the Mets really aren’t that great and no one on that team will give Jacob deGrom any run support and she doesn’t want Killian to freak out when he sees Mary Margaret live and in action at Citi Field. Mary Margaret is not actually playing the game.

Mary Margaret doesn’t know that.

But none of those things seem to matter and Killian agreed to the invitation and now, a few months into a relationship that sees Emma thinking all kinds of things, they’re going to Queens. Batter up, or whatever.

Start Spreading the News Rating: Teen One Shot 

Emma Swan is just looking for something that’s hers. She’s fairly certain she’s found it in New York, with a group of friends and a good job and picture frames on her apartment walls. But then the past she’s spent so long trying to ignore shows up where she least expects to find it – wearing pinstripes in right field at Yankee Stadium. 

More Famous Than a Yankee Can Rating: Teen One Shot

The sequel to Start Spreading the News from Killian’s POV

Batting a Thousand Rating: Teen One Shot

If asked, Emma would promise she doesn’t mean to start dating her brother’s sworn baseball enemy. But she also knows David didn’t mean to hit Killian that one time in college and, well, you can’t predict baseball. 

and it’s subsequent Tumblr-only one shot sequels

Puppy Love The Yankees host an adoption event. Killian wants to adopt a puppy. 

The One Where They Elope Basically what’s on the tin.

Pace of Play

She can’t believe she’s never noticed it before. Because, honestly, Emma can’t even come up with a number to try and calculate how often she’s watched Killian step into the batters box. And that’s the thing. He never really steps out, either. It’s a weird approach, but that could be the subheadline for their lives at this point and she’s mostly concerned with the power behind that swing.

A Long-Standing Rivalry Killian and David start buying the other’s kid merch for the opposing team. It’s absurd. 

Hitting Against the Shift Rating: Teen One Shot

She has no idea how this works. She doesn’t know what’s a hit or what’s an error or how, exactly, to cope with the way he looks in those pants. Seriously, they’re good pants.

But when Killian showed up at her door that morning, promising “we just need someone to play, love,” Emma couldn’t figure out a reason to say no. So, here she is, playing the game on the field and off it, with half a hope and, honestly, far too many thoughts about his pants.

She’s a mess, really.

-----

LACROSSE

Playing Man Down Rating: Teen Chapters: Two

Emma’s boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, thank you very much, makes the incredibly large mistake of telling she shouldn’t want to coach at the prestigious lacrosse camp he’s working at this summer. So, she sets out to prove girls can check just as well as guys. 

Even if she’s not admitting she’s a girl. 

Or: a “She’s the Man” AU, but with lacrosse

Marking Up Rating: Teen One Shot

Killian had no expectations going in. 

Mostly, he’s just made his teammates stole his phone. But then that leads to this and a date and Emma Swan and...she doesn’t know anything about lacrosse. He can work with that. 

-----

ESPORTS

Where You Can Still Remember Dreaming  Rating: Mature Chapters: 35 

Killian Jones, former crime reporter, was not happy to be home. It hadn’t been home in a very long time, after all. Home was an abstract construct that existed for people who didn’t know as many adjectives for blood as he did. Home wasn’t New York City, but it certainly wasn’t Boston or New Orleans either and he’d always gone where the story was. And he was positive Emma Swan was one hell of a story.

Emma Swan, pro video game player, desperately wanted to find home. She thought she had, a million years ago in the back corner of a barn and a town and faces she trusted. But that had all blown up in her face and it didn’t take long for her to decide she was going to control the pyrotechnics from here on out. So now she was in New York City and a different corner and she kind of wanted to trust Killian Jones.

Neither one of them expected a year of of video games and feature stories to dredge up old enemies and even older feelings, but, together, they made a pretty good team.

-----

BASKETBALL

A Touch of (March) Madness  Rating: Teen Chapters: Two

Emma can't quite remember how it started or why it happened, just that it did and she wants to win. Desperately. To prove something. Probably.

Or just to beat Killian. Either or. It doesn't matter.

She's picked her teams and her upsets and she's got a string of trash talk ready for any potential on-court situation. They're not playing the game, but they're playing a game and this one might change everything.

Or: The March Madness AU about questionably competitive friends and very strong college basketball opinions.

-----

SOCCER

It's a Funny Old Game  Rating: Teen Chapters: Two

Killian's not sure why he agreed to this. Well, no, that's not true. He does. Because Henry asked. And, well, maybe they're some kind of family now.

Emma's not sure why she hasn't said anything. Well, no, that's not true. She does. Because she's not supposed to. And, well, things were pretty good already.

Or: A quasi Out of the Frying Pan sequel with soccer.

-----

THE OLYMPICS

Holding the Edge  Rating: Teen One Shot

Killian Jones does not want the questions. He doesn't want the interviews or the spotlight or the sky-high expectations.

The world, however, does not seem to care. The world, after all, loves a good comeback story.

And Killian Jones is one heck of a comeback story. With his eyes on gold. And maybe slightly gold'ish hair and green eyes and, yeah, maybe he's got some questions of his own.

Almost Believing, This One's Not Pretend Rating: Teen Chapters: Two

They don’t grow up skating together.

They don’t even want to start skating together.

But then life happens and they kind of need each other and maybe that sentence means a lot more than either one of them are willing to admit at first. Or ever. So they keep skating and, sometimes, winning and, always, ignoring the questions. There are a lot of questions.

Because how could two people have so much chemistry on the ice when they’re just partners?

-----

BOXING

Pulling Your Punches Rating: Teen One Shot

It’s not meant to be a secret relationship. But Emma can’t help that her and Killian’s friends are incredibly unobservant. And then it becomes something of a game, waiting to see how long they notice. Until Killian gets hurt. Emma can’t help anything after that. 

[unordinary-analysis]

Episode 172

Honorable mentions:

Them saying joker when they mean a fake joker is really messing with me. At the same time, that idea is very interesting because it further promotes that joker is no longer one person now, he's a mantle that others can take up and claim too. Like a gang or something. Now, Joker is bigger than John.

I mention my posts for both episode 170 and the first part of 147 in this episode so you can search for those on my page by searching #episode 170 and #episode 147. If you want to, I dunno … :/. I think these posts really help to elaborate on my thought and everything I left unspoken in this episode post because I would just be repeating myself.

Yes, holden, you are kinda scary

Every once in a while I just think about how we haven’t even seen a proper teacher or authority in this school besides Darren for a whole while

My favorite words are: “anyways” and “obviously.” wbk.

My transitions have gone so downhill and I don’t know how to fix itttt

Terrence:

    We been knew that anytime Terrence shows up, I have to say something about it and this episode is very far from an exception. We get drama here ladies and gentlemen. 

    The first part of this episode is very attention drawing to him and really exposes him the most out of any part of the whole comic, which is saying something since we don’t even get that much, but still. First of all, and yes I’m jumping right into this, Roland says to Seraphina, “He turns invisible… that's his ability. He doesn’t like sharing it with others for some reason…” And not only does this statement sound hella vague and suspenseful, it explains why we’ve known so little about Terrence. He keeps himself very private and hidden away from others. Sure, he hangs around people and has friends and is a reporter, but he isn’t as inclined to share things about himself. In fact, the UnOrdinary Wikia (fan-run but still) states, “From what little is known about him, Terrence is a very secretive individual and uses his ability to aid his journalism.”  All of this very much supports the next idea that comes from Seraphina. 

    Right after learning of Terrence’s ability, Sera thinks, “Invisibility? That day, on our way back from Kovoro Mall… the person following us also had invisibility. Is this just a coincidence?” And I know everyone reading the episode breathed a sigh of relief. Here’s a quote from my own episode analysis of episode 147 (July), “Though it is not technically canon, most people believe that Terrence is the invisible guy that tried to sneak up on Seraphina and John in episode 10 and the invisible person that was involved with the whole situation at Kovoro mall. Neither cases were dwelt upon long or pushed into further investigation by the characters.” Guess what, now this issue is being addressed by Seraphina and I couldn’t be happier. One of the things preventing any characters from associating Terrence with their run-ins with invisible people has been because they never learned Terrence’s ability. He’s well known by Isen (and maybe Arlo) because of the school paper, and possibly Remi because of her concerns with high-tiers, but if Seraphina, one of his “friends” is only learning about his ability now, there is no way they really know too. Obviously Cecile knows because she used to be head of the newspaper and used Terrence’s ability to her own advantage, but Isen didn’t even want to be promoted to that so he hasn’t really put much into that. Regardless, Seraphina is the first character to be bringing this kind of thing up. 

    Again, though, I’m going to be using something I wrote in my episode 147 analysis because it ties into this episode in a more frightening way. “The characters [of UnOrdinary] often investigate and look into anything suspicious around them. Arlo and Isen looked into John. Remi chased after EMBER (one of the more... special cases), When Seraphina got kidnapped- literally everyone’s perspective revolved around it. Uru-Chan allowed her characters to look into the ultimately lesser conflicts. Yes, Arlo discovering John’s abilities proved to be maybe the biggest plot point/ turning point in UnOrdinary, but after that happened, the story still went on. Seraphina getting kidnapped? Not much to do with that endgame climax we’re all waiting for. I’ll say it again for the people in the back who aren’t paying attention.

Uru-Chan doesn’t let her characters investigate anything that will be endgame conflict.

Am I saying that right? Whatever, you all get the gist of what I’m saying.

The events that aren’t directly crucial to UnOrdinary’s ultimate climax have all been examined.

Which means: Whatever hasn’t been properly addressed by the comic that should’ve based on the character’s usual actions will be important to the eventual and overall plot. -------Terrence, and the person we readers believe him to be, falls under the category of things that should have been addressed more and were not. Like I listed before [referencing the rest of my episode 147 analysis]: the chase outside the mall, the teddy-bear scandal with the superhero posse. I can’t imagine John just letting someone who was invisible sneak up on him and Seraphina and just not give them another thought.”

Yes, this is just a big word blob, but I think it’s obvious why I chose to include the whole thing here. In July, I said that the characters of UnOrdinary weren’t “allowed” to investigate Terrence and similar situations because furthering any investigation into that would progress the endgame timeline and therefore point the story toward its finale. By leaving these concepts alone for so long, uru-chan has made sure that her story continues and doesn’t wrap up before she intends. It is a story-telling tactic. And, don’t worry, I’m not saying that this episode is proof that UnOrdinary is ending soon or anything like that because it is confirmed (by uru-chan) that UnOrdinary has at least two seasons and will be over 300 episodes long so calm down. I’m saying that uru-chan is making sure we remember her ultimate, underlying story. I’m not sure if you read my review for episode 170, but I talk about a similar concept in that post. Anyway, the appearance of any investigation into Terrence and the part of the storyline that he represents means that we are working up to a climax. A new major turning point in the story. And this makes sense too, considering we’re literally about to have that Seraphina and John confrontation. I think that, along with the obvious repercussions that will come out of that happening, we will also get a major(ish) development for our endgame plot line, because through it is far the end of the story, there has to be some progression throughout the comic or else when it would be brought up in the end, it would feel out of place.

I also think that there’s a chance there won’t be a major turning point like I just said (I love contradicting myself), but rather just a small reminder for the same reason that uru-chan is trying to keep her endgame storyline vague and elongating. I know those words didn’t make sense, but I hope you understand. Because, in its own way, any development into the underlying plot can be considered a major thing, I don’t think this matters too much. Who knows, we might get really unlucky and the only thing we get is this episode, that little mention of insight. The important thing is: we got some acknowledgement and it’s a big deal.

So: I think that with this whole underlying plot thing dealing with EMBER, the authorities, Terrence (I talk about this underlying plot a lot in my analysis of episode 170 without really identifying it as such [my bad]) is at a point where it’s willing to expose itself an unknown amount to keep its relevance in the story. That’s really all, and I know it doesn’t sound like much, but because this storyline has been so hidden and secretive in the past, this is really a much bigger deal than it seems.

    Now, I would make predictions about how this is going to play out or what Sera is going to do, if she even does anything, but nobody’s got time for my clownery, so let’s move on.

The Drama:

    I’m bad at predictions, so I won’t be talking about what I think is going to happen between John and Sera, though you may be wondering how, then, will I be able to execute a section on this. Well, I kind of needed to say something about this for my sanity so I’ll figure it out. Anyway, the whole confrontation between John and Sera is going to be so dramatic and climactic it’s gonna be wild. At least for the story.

    The thing that interests me is just the given effects that this event will have on the story. More specifically: Joker.

    Now, we all know that Joker is John (flashbacks to “Seraphina is Joker” post). And his whole thing right now is being this dictator of Wellston that defeated all of the past royals and  took down the hierarchy. We got that part. But one of the biggest aspects of Joker is his anonymity. Joker is an unknown student at Wellston, which allows other students to assume his identity, making Joker into a much larger thing than just one person. I said something about this in the honorable mentions.

    Anyway, back to this episode, if we do get this John and Seraphina confrontation and she does tell him that she knows that he’s Joker, I’m willing to bet the Joker we all know is going to change drastically. Seraphina is one of the sole reasons for Joker's creation and you can bet she can tear it down just as fast. The biggest known reason for John hiding his identity as Joker is because of Seraphina. John wanted her to keep believing his lie, his fake personality, and obviously by exposing himself as the powerful, violent terror, he would be dispelling any illusion of cripple John. But if Seraphina happened to find out, like she did, the situation becomes a bit more complicated.

Once John learns that Seraphina knows who he is, and he no doubt will (likely in their confrontation next episode), there will be no more reason for him to stay anonymous. Especially because John doesn’t seem too fond of the fake Jokers running around claiming his authority and beating up low-tiers, including Seraphina. 

So I think it’s pretty obvious what I’m suggesting will happen. I think that Joker is going to unmask himself to the school. I know that’s a prediction and I said I wouldn’t make a prediction, but this is like a general, bigger scale prediction, so it’s less finicky than any prediction of what exactly our confrontation is going to look like, so you’re just gonna have to deal. Anyway, I think that this unmasking of John is going to be really exciting in terms of seeing how John reacts to truly returning, again, to the person he was at New Bostin. As I’ve said before, I believe that this story is going to run full circle, as I believe even Sera’s said. I talk about this a lot in my post for episode 167 (#episode 167), especially focusing on John’s mental state throughout, so an update on that would be so interesting to me because that was one of my favorite posts to write, content-wise. 

Anyways, I’m just going to end this post here even though I feel like I just dropped a lot of ideas, but didn’t really emphasize how important I feel they are to the story, but that’s fine.

[thegoldenmink]

Okay so, I keep getting reminded of these things (mainly on Tiktok) so I'm just going to compile them here (since I'm not comfortable on camera)

Warning: this is pretty much a vent post of things that I still think about from middle school and high school. Maybe even some Elementary school events. I'll put them under a page break, that way it's completely optional to read them or not

Elementary: Getting called pregnant on the playground because I was fat

Elementary: Getting mocked when I got angry about things

Middle: The popular guys claiming that one of them liked me when I walked by. Guy getting targeted would be outraged and and would instantly sputter his disagreement while his friends laughed. All to mock me for being fat and undesirable (my personality also came into play here)

Middle school: The popular girls practically ignoring that I existed unless they were doing that thing where they try to 'make friends' with you while at the same time being vaguely condescending

Middle School: One of said popular guys made me very uncomfortable and I didn't want him near me. If we were near each other in the lunch line he would try to touch me on the arm etc because he knew it made me uncomfortable. Didn't stop even when I asked, especially not when I got angry about it. Same guy picked up something I dropped and tried to hand it to me, Knowing I was uncomfortable with him, and when snatched it from his hand and moved on to my class he went to the guidance counselor to say something about my behavior as if I was in the wrong

Middle School: Gym class in 7th grade there were 3 boys in 8th grade that continuously tried to bother me. One of them walked up to me and asked, and I quote, "can I eat you out". I avoided them every chance I got but sharing a class made it hard. Once in the volleyball unit the ball went flying across the floor so I went to get it, and one of the three picked it up to hand it to me. But he was red faced from trying not to laugh. Same group, claimed one of them liked me, tried to respond sarcastically with "suuure" but it came out wrong, and I made sure to clarify. But it didn't stop them from laughing like hyenas. Later the one they said liked me left, and when he came back the other two kept asking if I remembered him. As if I liked him or something

Highschool: Freshman year gym class, same guy that his friends claimed I liked him was in a different class. But they were in the balcony gym that day so they could see my class. Someone I knew and was tentative friends with (by proxy of them being friends with my brother) called down to me "I hear you two dated?" With a suggestive tone. Guy was grinning mockingly. I said no and tentative friend shrugged

Highschool: Walking in the hall way and some guy randomly puts his arm around my shoulder. He made a comment but I can't quite remember what it was because it was quiet. I move out of the way and his friends laughed about him getting "curved" with a mocking tone

Highschool: My geometry class. Three other students would make passive aggressive mocking comments to me. Making comments about something smelling, even though nothing did. One time the girl walked up to me and asked about why I wear pants under my dresses. Completely judgemental look when I said I wasn't comfortable without them. She then proceeded to ask if I smelled something, and I shrugged and said "Baby powder, I guess?" Because it did. I assumed it was deodorant someone was wearing. She then immediately started laughing like a hyena. Ever since then I ignored them, even when they spoke directly to me. One time they asked if I was in a relationship, and I was in one long distance at that time, and when I ignored her she made a noise similar to "that's what I thought"

Highschool: My intern class my junior year was with one of the freshman english teachers, because he was my english teacher freshman year. Had a 'chant' they would do every morning. One student that left had his name in it, they replaced it with mine. One of the freshman shared my theater class with me, and she got confused on my middle name because of her classmates in the english class. I didn't think anything of it at first. Then they were talking and it was a smooth transition for me to bring it up. "Yeah I heard you guys think my last name is Newman or something?" They immediately started laughing and I put the pieces together. One of the freshman's last name was Newman. During the 'chant' after my name they would start saying "Newmannn" in a mocking tone. Eventually told the teacher I don't like it, and he must have told them to stop. This didn't stop Newman kid from talking to me in that 'friendly' tone that's really just mocking me. Would continuously do this despite me ignoring him

Highschool: Same kid was in my intern period for senior year too. Would continue to use mocking tone and try to engage with me. One of which was him using the wrong name for me, my name, all in a mocking tone to get my attention. The last thing he said was "honey bun" in that particular incident. I would spend as much of my intern period as possible in the library just to avoid him. My chemistry teacher from year prior found out while I was asking my intern teacher for the current year to please seat him as far away from me as possible. When I told her, he heard as well. She agreed to sit us father away, and chemistry teacher tried to get me to go to the office. Doing so has literally never worked for me before, and I dislike confrontation with a passion. Chemistry teacher took me to student services with him because he convinced me to say something. I said I'd like to speak with person that handles these incidents, but ended up not following through. I ignored him for the rest of the time I was in there until quarantine hit.

I'm sure there's more that just aren't on the top of my head at the moment. And this is only one type of thing that keeps bothering me. Trauma from childhood and incidents that didn't make me feel awful on purpose, but still did nevertheless, are an entirely different topic.

Anyway,, if anyone read this- thank you. Comments are welcome, but not obligatory

[airbender-dacyon]

Life and Kataang Week Delays

So I’ve been thinking about writing up this post for a while now, but haven’t had the chance until today.  Its part explanation as to why there were so many delays and inconsistent updates with Kataang Week and part cathartic exercise for me personally.  If you’re curious about what happened, feel free to read. I think this is more for me than anyone else, but like I said, it also serves as something of an explanation for how I poorly handled Kataang Week this year. 

Before I get into the details, I’d just like to give a huge shout out to everyone who has offered me kind words and support these last several weeks.  It means the world to me.  And I sincerely apologize if I forget a name or two; @kristallioness @thecaroliner @the-rosey-one @s-n-arly  @mindatworkk and @secretsecrettunnel 

And thank you to everyone who participated in Kataang Week or helped spread the word that it was still happening.  

If you’ve followed my personal blog for a while, you know I’m prone to hiatuses due to personal life or more likely, my anxiety/depression.  And while I can more or less manage that outside of the internet, my online presence suffers.  I spent far too long as a recluse back in 2013/2014 hiding away from friends and family in real life by retreating into the internet.  I have no desire to return to those days.  So despite my best efforts, much of this year I was unfortunately unable to maintain a consistent presence on tumblr. 

The source of much of that anxiety was my former warehouse job, which I just very recently left. The work itself was not terrible, but after the first few weeks it transitioned from a 40 hours per week job to 50-60 hours per week.  The mandatory overtime, combined with family obligations, left me with very little time to focus on my personal life.  The pay wasn’t as great as previous jobs I’d held, the benefits were crap, the management was more concerned about hiring new employees than retaining current ones, and overall the experience just left me physically drained and apathetic towards the job/company.

Additional anxiety came from working towards entry into graduate school, just prior to starting said former job.  Although I was accepted into the graduate school of my choice, I still have plenty of work to do before the semester starts in a few weeks.  Again, most everything in my life was put on hold or pushed back thanks to that warehouse. 

And although my exact area wasn’t directly affected, Southwest Ohio has been dealing with a lot this year.  Several tornadoes tore through the region, heavy rains affected farming and roads for weeks, and much more recently, the shock of the mass shooting in Dayton. Again, while none of these have directly affected me, I personally know friends and family who were affected. And while we were fortunate to not have friends or family lost in the Oregon District, we are saddened at the loss of life and terrified at how quickly such a tragedy came about, especially in an area we imagined was welcoming and safe. 

All of what I mentioned above was plenty to deal with, but I think I would have probably been able to keep up with Kataang Week/tumblr had I not been dealing with the grief that I am. 

Around February/March, I learned that an old high school classmate and friend committed suicide. I scrambled to try and remember when we had last spoken and realized that – with the exception of possible, since deleted conversations on facebook – we likely hadn’t talked since graduation several years ago.  I have vague memories of them – I know what they looked like, their voice, their general attitude and personality – but whenever I try to really remember events or exact memories, I draw blanks.  And I think that hurts me as much as actually losing them because in a sense, I’d already lost them in my memories before I lost them in life. 

On a similar note, I’ve learned about other friends I’ve known from high school and college and how some of them have changed and… I’m not sure what hurts worse on that front – uncertain if we’re really friends anymore or that I discovered these developments on my own/they didn’t trust me enough to tell me directly.  Some of them I lost when I became a recluse in 2013/2014, others I don’t really know when.  And I know people grow and change through life, but it hurts all the same.

Within days of hearing about my classmate’s suicide, I learned my last living grandparent – my grandmother – had passed away.  She had suffered from Alzheimer’s/dementia for about five years now, declining with each and every visit until other relatives managed to move her to a nursing home to provide her with better care.  I hadn’t seen her in well over a year by the time she passed due to the distance to travel to where she lived and the next loss I’m going to talk about.  I cried after the fact, but up to and during her funeral, I just felt numb.  

It was these losses that caused the initial delays for Kataang Week this year. 

For almost the last two years, the greatest obligation in my family life was to visit another relative – a member of my immediate family – who was suffering from a rare disease. 

My mother was misdiagnosed with Parkinson’s some years ago and she fought valiantly to maintain her life despite the rather aggressive onset of the disease.  By the time she was reliant on a cane, she had to quit her job and apply for disability.  The next year, she was reliant on a walker; less than a year later, a wheelchair.  As her motor control and strength were taken from her, so was her mind in bits and pieces. She became confused and forgetful more often, slurred her speech and lost her voice some days, among other symptoms. My father and I did the best we could to make our home accessible to her, but eventually even in a wheelchair she became largely reliant on the two of us. 

My Dad shouldered most of her care and for far longer than he probably should have.  After speaking with a neurologist about the possibility of a surgical procedure (deep brain stimulation, I believe – known to help ‘reset’ the brain for Parkinson’s patients and give them independence and motor control again for another 5-10 years), we were informed that my Mom wasn’t actually afflicted with Parkinson’s. 

The disease she actually suffered from is known as Multiple System Atrophy (often referred to simply as MSA) and presents itself as ‘Parkinson’s on steroids.’  It is much less common than Parkinson’s and there is no cure.  After symptom onset, those afflicted with MSA live for an average of 7 more years before succumbing to complications (most often respiratory related) resulting from the disease. 

Eventually it became too difficult to care for her at home and we moved her into a nursing home. So when I was home from school or off work, I spent as much time as I could with my Mom in her new home.  As a result, 10 hour days followed by several hours at the nursing home didn’t leave me with much time for tumblr/Kataang Week this year. 

She sometimes had enough strength and mental aptitude to move herself around in her wheelchair, other times she was still reliant on family or staff.  She made new friends and eventually came to accept her situation.  She knew she was declining and often wondered what she had done to deserve such a cruel fate.

Within the last year, she became almost entirely confined to her bed.  She didn’t have the strength to sit up long enough in a wheelchair for anything other than short trips through the nursing home for her personal hygiene.  On days she was more mentally ‘with it,’ more aware of her situation, she was very depressed with her situation.  The best days were when she could hold conversations and laugh, despite everything. However, the good days increasingly became fewer and father apart.  She began to eat less and simply stare at visitors. 

After almost two weeks of staring with little talking and poor appetite, I had a good day with her.  She was smiling and talking with me.  She ate a decent dinner that evening.  We laughed at funny commercials on the television and family stories.  It was a good day.  I thought things were going to start looking up, getting better.  I wish I had stayed with her longer that night.

I don’t think she ever spoke more than a few words after that night.  The poor appetite and vacant staring returned, interrupted only by an occasional spark of consciousness or smile.  Within a week of that last good day I spent with her, hospice told us she was likely not going to live much longer; she passed not even a full day after hospice told us that.

We had been living in a state of perpetual grief as we watched her slip further and further away these last several years.  But to lose her so suddenly still cut deep.  We were also relieved that she didn’t have to suffer anymore.

My Mom’s rapid decline and death happened in the final weeks leading up to Kataang Week. I tried to get things situated well enough for the week, but I failed.  I appreciate everyone’s support and patience this year and Marie for helping out when I needed it most.  

 o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

TL;DR - Work, weather, and deaths of friends/family piled on the anxiety/depression and delayed Kataang Week. 

So if you’ve taken the time to read all of this, I thank you.  I feel a little lighter now that I’ve written it all out.  And if you made it this far, I’d just like to say – the next time you see your parents or a loved one you haven’t seen in a while, give them a hug.  Tell them you love them.  You never know how much longer you’ll have with them.  Sometimes the death of a loved one is sudden and unexpected. Sometimes it’s an inevitability you’ve feared for years.  Either way, it hurts like hell. 

To end, I’d just like to wish all my mutuals, friends, and followers – and their loved ones – long, healthy, and happy lives.  And again, thank you all for your boundless support and friendship.

- Dan

[somebodyoflittleconsequence-blog]

I decided to post this with the hope that putting down part of it would motivate me to finish it. The aforementioned Bandit/Doc ficlet in progress.

Part I: Nightmares He wasn’t sure how it happened. One moment he was sitting at the table with other Angels, a beer in hand, spirits almost as high as some of the men he was surrounded by. No. That was wrong. There were hands closing over his shoulders, pressing him against the table. Harsh voices spat accusations as panicked bubbled into his throat. A prick, a feeling he had somehow avoided for the past three and a half years. No. No. No. His breath seemed stuck in his throat, caught along with a yell of desperation. No. No. No. No.

Not again. Hands closed over his shoulders, this time from above. There was a keening sound of panic, even as he thrashed hard, fist swinging and connecting with something solid, warm. -ic… -ominic… “Dominic…” That was his name. The voice was warm, familiar and oh god he had just struck a member of his team, and that sound, someone needed to turn it off! It took a moment longer for the GSG9 operative to realize it was his own yell of terror. In the darkness, he made out the shape of the man who had stumbled upon his struggle, this private battle with his demons. As he grounded himself in the facts of the situation, Dom was acutely aware of how he must look. He was in his room at Hereford. He had an assignment tomorrow after almost a week of recon. He had revisited the hell of Hannover in his dreams. Marius hovered to the side, cradling his jaw. The expression on his face was a mixture of confusion and concern, heightening the compression in Dominic’s chest, which reflected in the corresponding tightness of his jawline. The silence stretched between the men, bringing the sharp pulse of blood in Bandit’s ears to the forefront. Suddenly, he felt nauseous and itchy, and the feeling was enough to drive him to his feet. The feeling of Jäger’s inquisitive eyes on his back made him want to run, but he squared his shoulders as he opened the door to their shared room. Marius’ words followed him into the hallway. “You might want to talk to someone about that…”

Initially, Dominic refused to talk about that. It wasn’t a subject that typically made for pleasant conversation. As a result Bandit rarely interacted beyond snide remarks and practical jokes, allowing him to avoid the gravity of the past or the present. Whether it was amusing to some or a deterrent to others mattered little to the German because it was just enough to keep the world at an arm's length. He didn’t need ties to execute an operation perfectly; it was a matter of wit and street smarts, of which he had an abundance.

Upon joining Rainbow, Dominic had been cleared. Clean bill of health after his stint in Hannover, a job that had pushed him beyond any undercover assignment ever had and probably ever would. Perhaps that should have been a red flag. He transitioned smoothly after his initial recovery, had excelled at reintegrating as an operative. Perhaps that had been what had impressed Six enough to recruit him. Perhaps that had been her mistake.

The first time he lashed out during an assignment, he was aiding in a bomb diffusion. Midway through the operation, Mira gripped his arm to silently get his attention. The result has been a swing that he had altered when he had realized his reflex, his hand instead meeting the wall. His reaction had startled many of their teammates, and though nobody asked, he knew they were all wondering what deep end he had jumped off of. Maybe the GSG9 operative had finally lost it. The thought made his head feel fuzzy, making his breathing accelerate, his heart crash against his ribs. Some asked if he was okay as he looked around the room at their blurry faces, vaguely aware that they were still doing something important. It had ended with a warm hand on his shoulder - When had he sat down? - and a whispered, “We will talk latare.”

But Bandit didn’t want to talk. Yet, when they returned to Hereford after a thankfully successful defusing, Gustave was waiting outside of his locker, his gaze intent and expectant, which made Dom’s skin itchy and his palms sweaty. No. No. No. No…. He rolled his shoulders in discomfort, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans as he gave Doc a cocky smile.

“Can I help you, Kateb?” he drawled, eying the Frenchman in an almost predatory way. The key was to seem imposing instead of panicked. Go away. Go away. Go away.

No dice. The GIGN operator simply crossed his arms and nodded toward the exit. “You and I should have a chat…” A chat. There was absolutely no reason for a chat.

Dominic looked passed the Frenchman toward the exit. It briefly crossed his mind that he could make a run for the door, but the logical part of his brain determined that perhaps fleeing would only solidify the ideas his fellow operators were forming about him. His gaze flicked back to Gustave. Had he been staring too long? It was hard to read the doctor’s expression, hard to get passed the horrible realization that there was no getting out of this. So he cleared his throat, inclining his head toward the very door that could have been his salvation.

“Ladies first…” The first session between them was painful. No amount of prying could have gotten Dominic to open up. Any questions were met with evasive words and empty anecdotes. If Doc was frustrated, he never showed it and the immense patience that smoothed over the man’s face made Bandit even more stubborn. Instead of sighing and throwing his hands up in exasperation, Gustave simply told him they would meet again in five days. He opened the door. Bandit fled. The second session was much the same. There was gentle prodding from the Doc, though his questions seemed much more superficial. Bandit’s responses remained clipped and sassy. Why should he have to tear open old wounds for the amusement of the Frenchman? He was insane if he thought using the tactics would whittle down Dominic’s carefully crafted facade. At the end of the session, he repeated the events of the last. Five days time. Door open. Bandit nearly running.

On and on, they sparred like this. Dominic was becoming increasingly frustrated with the man, Doc never seeming to change. He kept neutral through each unsuccessful conversation, nodding, making notes. Notes. Notes on what? Though he tried to keep it hidden, Bandit obsessed over Doc’s motives between sessions. Why the hell would the man even try? Dom had pulled himself from his own misery and didn’t need others to help him navigate. Forget that his nightmares had begun to plague him after a particularly gruesome hostage extraction, that he had withdrawn further, that his language only consisted of jabs at his teammates and witty quips.

Another session; Dom shuffled into Gustave’s office, kicking the door shut behind him. His attempt to seem nonchalant and detached was valiant, but his demeanor was exhausted, the fight gone from the tense line of his shoulders. Gustave said nothing, simply watched Bandit drop into his usual chair. The routine was typical, yet this time the Frenchman said nothing, simply watched. Normally that wouldn’t bother Bandit, but today there seemed to be an almost sympathetic edge to his gaze. It was enough to make the German operative crack.

“What do you want from me, Gustave?” Bandit snapped, crossing his arms before him and almost hugging himself in a show of vulnerability. Was this what he wanted to entire time? “Why do you sit here and waste your own time?” His expression was almost wild as he leaned forward in his chair, searching the doctor’s face. Still neutral, Gustave responded with, “Why do you keep coming back?”

He stared. He stared, dumbfounded with the question. He stared and then rose from his seat. Why did he keep coming back? Why did he? Why? Breath quickening, Dominic fled the room, searching for any place away from the sympathy in Gustave’s eyes.

[1nkweaver]

Playlist Breakdown: Pick

Obviously gotta keep backstory stuff vague but I’ve rearranged the playlist into chronological themes and it’s time to BREAK IT DOWN

The Unkillable Pickle 

 Obviously the name of the playlist, it’s his full title, you will address him as such.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2KT2p2E4cPbHBBlI02OoGG

(here is the playlist to listen along) 

And now for the breakdown:

Short Change Hero- The Heavy

I always try to kick off my playlists with “who IS this person if you broke them down into one song” but that is not what this song is. This is a song to prepare the listener for Pick’s story, and the slow intro of it really brings that in. In chronology this is actually Pick just before meeting the party, recounting the events that got him to this place (we’ll get back to that later) the crunch of shoefalls and distant thunder are also big thematic queues into the rest of the playlist.

First and foremost, from Pick’s perspective, this is not the story of a hero, and he wants you to know that up front.

The Sound of Silence- Disturbed

What a great cover. Pick doesn’t remember his childhood super well, so his first memories are of the silence, and the darkness, and the things he saw in that time. He found faith and lost it all at once, and it seemed like an eternity in that place, just struggling to pick out anything of worth in there. This song kicks off 

ACT 1 of Pick’s story, which I can’t say the title of because it’s spoilery.

A Skeleton of Something More- Sleeping At Last

People praying for a better day to come, waiting for that night, that night when everything is going to change. Get out of this place, go on to something else. The shred of hope that is wilting, a skeleton of something more.

Whatever It Takes- Imagine Dragons

Pick is not one to give up that easily, he will always say his stubborn tenacity is his best quality and it hasn’t let him down yet. Beat him, break him, want him to die so, so badly. But he’s not going to stop, he’s gunna end this, and he’ll outlast and do whatever he needs to to accomplish that.

Best of You- Foo Fighters

Pick’s refusal to give in was cute at first but now it’s getting annoying. They double down on him and he doubles down right back, we’re fighting now, and Pick will be fighting for a long, long time after this. Thank goodness he’s good at it.

Pressure- Muse

Pick learns that bloody, beaten, surrounded in the corner is where he is at his strongest. He lives under pressure, and it almost makes him laugh. If things were going too easy it wouldn’t be fun, so bring it on.

The Pretender- Foo Fighters

Pick is looking up from the pits at him, and there’s practically electricity burning between those stares. Pick has finalized his plans of revenge against him.

Believer- Imagine Dragons

Enter fucking Anders. The man that’s going to change everything for the better. That night that they’ve been waiting for has a date now, and it’s fast approaching. Pick was stewing in his anger and knew nothing else but the fight, but now, Anders has made him a believer. 

Uprising- Muse

That night has come, and it’s time to put all the chips down on a plan. It works, mostly. This marks the end of ACT 1, with a thrilling tale that can only really be translated as “fuck you!”

Starlight- Muse

Muse takes us out of ACT 1 and continues with us right on into ACT 2, and this one I can definitely share the name of: Act 2: Anders. This series of songs talks about their relationship. But first we have to put a lot of distance between us and Act 1 to start this story off proper, and that’s just what this song does, it takes us far far away by the light of the stars.

 We tie in some of the previous songs talking about lights in the darkness, and waiting for “that night”. We have finally gone out of the darkness and into the light of day.

My Best Friend- Weezer

Honestly, pretty self explanatory, Anders is everything.

Make a Little Money- Royal Deluxe

Now that we’re out and traveling around, we gotta work! Ander’s shows Pick the ropes of life and they do pretty good as a team, enjoying coin and each others company and going where the wind (and work) takes them.

I’ll Keep You Safe- Sagun

This song in its chill repetitiveness acts as a sort of time skip transitional phase in Act 2, where the development of Anders and Picks relationship kind of stabilizes and goes on for a while without much change. However, the end of the transition makes a play on that title “I’ll keep you safe” it went from a promise made in the beginning to a promise upheld in the end, but now things are different.

Very different.

Alive- Pearl Jam

Pick really shouldn’t be, and yet I guess he is, so now his title is actually really really true, this little goblin is damn near unkillable. The gift of life is a damn hard gift to give sometimes.

But where the fuck is Anders.

Lonely- Idealism

This instrumental is the only one present in Pick’s playlist, to really sink in that truly for the first time in his life EVER, he is alone, and sometimes you just have to sit and deal with that for a while.

Wish You Were Here- Lee Fields & The Expressions

Not that hard to admit really, Pick wants to know where the hell Anders is, and what the hell this letter he left means, he’s very confused and just wants his friend back.

Zombie- The Cranberries

Partially foreshadowing, but mostly just bad memories creeping back in. Without Anders bad dreams are coming back and Pick is not doing well, and he really just wants the pain to go away.

Blood In The Cut- K.Flay

Yeah, Pick is really really not okay, and he’s coping with it in some unhealthy ways that will lead to his particular quirks he has developed later on in life. It’s been so long and he’s fought so much that he doesn’t really know what pain feels like anymore, at least not physical. He tries to get the pain out, so that he can just feel that instead of the emotional pain inside. But when the blood runs, he learns something new about himself.

Stronger- Kanye West

Well holy fucking shit guess we’re a fucking bloodhunter huh- Anders letter makes a bit more sense now, but most importantly Pick has found a way to weaponize his pain, and he’s got a hell of a lot of it to use. He’s ready to take things on.

Radioactive- Imagine Dragons

Pick is starting to experiment with his powers, he’s learning with what Anders left him to pick up the pieces and become the adventurer he’s going to need to be, basically this is his training montage.

Blood On My Name- The Brothers Bright

Training is complete and we’ve basically made our way to level 3 babey!!! Pick has learned as much as he can and now he’s got his two goals in mind- find him, and find HIM. But first he needs to find Baldur’s Gate and make some friends.

End of Act 2

Walk- Foo Fighters

We’ve come full circle to the very first song in short change hero. The footsteps in that song becomes Walk here by the Foo Fighters, where Pick has put all of his past experiences behind him and is ready to start over here at the start of the third and final act so far.

Act 3 Ironically or not is also called Walk

Starting over is hard but Pick has had the time to figure out his feelings and find himself a little, and we end right as he crests the hill that gives him the first view of Baldur’s Gate. He fastens his gloves and gets moving again.

If You Only Knew- Shinedown  & The Crow & The Butterfly- Shinedown

Shinedown comes in with a pair of songs as Pick makes his way to the city to remind him of the person that got him where he needs to go. He thinks about Anders, off in some faraway place, and hopes that he’s proud of Pick for what he’s been able to accomplish on his own. But he also knows that he’s gotten as far as he can on his own and needs some help.

Thunderstruck- AC/DC

ENTER THE PARTY

Pick explodes onto the scene into a group of people that he has no idea WHAT to think about, but you know what? They’re kinda weird and definitely ready to make waves like him, so he’s happy, and he thinks he’s found the group that he needs. 

Theres some tension with a few people, and that electricity is back, but Pick’s ready this time.

Also, bringing back the thunderstorms all the way from short change hero again! Boom!! How’s that for some musical foreshadowing bitches? 

It only helps that Pick’s blood rites are electricity, doesn’t it?

Bonus tracks

Pick’s story has pretty much ended here with Thunderstruck, as he now has to learn more about this party and figure out what he wants to do, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some bonus songs for you all!

State of Mine- Stoj Snak

A hope for the future, that these people pick has found can be not only what he thinks he needs to accomplish his goal, but what he really needs and doesn’t even know he needs yet- a real family.

Power- Kanye West

Pick is starting to see the bigger world for what it was, and the one man on Pick’s list is starting to become multiple. Theres something definitely wrong with the world and Pick’s particular viewpoint lets him see it, and he doesn’t like it.

Maker of My Sorrow- Eliza Rickman

Pick’s main goal is to the party for now, and then for Anders, that’s what he feel the overall importance is, but he hasn’t forgotten the promise he made all the way back in The Pretender: someone is going to get super murdered and Pick ain’t dying until that happens.

So that’s the breakdown of The Unkillable Pickle! I hope you like the music and I’ll try to update this post as the story advances :VVV thanks for listening

[lawofavgs]

The Sacrifices We Make - Chapter 4

Chapter 1

Chapter 2 

Chapter 3

The next morning, I spent an unreasonable amount of time in my room. Everything I could think of to delay going downstairs, I did at a snail’s pace. I made the bed, with corners that would impress any drill sergeant. I dressed myself with the care of someone who had never worn the traditional 18th century garments. I finger-combed my hair, stroke after stroke, until I could no longer find a tangle. Eventually, I had to face the terrifying concept of going downstairs for breakfast – and the potential conflict awaiting me. I just had to keep telling myself the result of what I had done was worth the cost.

I crept into the kitchen, heart beating rapidly as I looked around for signs of danger. A couple of servants bustled in and out – less than I was used to seeing around Lallybroch. A sigh of relief bubbled out of me as I saw a pot of porridge still simmering. Scoping myself a portion, I turned to scurry back to my room and let out a yelp, nearly dropping my bowl in the process.

“Murtagh!”

The man in question raised two bushy eyebrows in surprise before looking at me speculatively. He took in my appearance and I tried not to shrink under his appraisal.

“Aye, and ye’re the Sassenach witch Brian’s been havering about for years,” he spoke plainly, and I expected no different. It was certainly better than the first first impression we had – him playing rescuer then kidnapper all in the span of 2 minutes. Though I was looked upon as a witch, I felt secure in the knowledge that no one at Lallybroch would have me burnt at the stake.

Save perhaps one inexplicably angry red head.

“Well, not exactly a witch, but yes. The Prophesizing Sassenach. I should take my act on the road. Though, I refuse to sing this time.”

Murtagh looked at me as though I was a loon, and I could tell he was already itching to make a hasty retreat from the kitchen. “I dinna ken what you are, truly. All that matters is that ye’ll bring no harm to the people here.”

“Never. You have my word. I just want to see everyone at Lallybroch safe,” I promised. After searching my face for honestly, he nodded once, appeased by what he saw. Without another word, he grabbed a bannock and marched out of the kitchen.

Right past a glowering Jamie.

I couldn’t understand it. What had I done to enrage him so? Not once in all the time I had known him had he once shown this kind of derision for me. Even before we were married, traveling with the rent party, it was more like gentle impatience when I refused to open up to him or accept the Highland way of life.

Hell, even in France when I tried to stop him from duelling with Randall, his rage was reserved for Black Jack. I only received his hurt and betrayal.

“You may have my father fooled, but I’m no’ so easily swayed by mysterious words and a sweet smile,” he warned before disappearing after his godfather. I was left speechless. Did saving his father and sparing him from Randall really change him that much? I couldn’t see a trace of the sweet Jamie I had known for three years.

One thing hadn’t changed though. Jamie was still a man who would defend his family against any perceived threat, and to him, that’s what I was.

Shoulders slumped, I tried once more to escape to the sanctuary that was my room. Fate seemed to be against me, however, as I saw Jenny darning socks in the sitting room.

“Dinna fash yerself over my brother. He has his own matters to deal with,” she informed me with a smile as she continued her work.

“Yes, I gathered that. He was never so....”

“Angry as a stung horse and stubborn as an ox?” Jenny finished for me. I couldn’t help the wry laugh that escaped me.

“The stubbornness I expected. That is a Fraser trait, after all.” At this she smirked and offered no argument. “The anger, however, that one is new. I thought with the information I gave your father and the moments he averted, Jamie would have had an easier life.”

“Well, I dinna ken exactly how things were supposed to go originally – Da was always vague about the details – but life has no’ exactly been easy for Jamie since that prophecy of yers. I get his frustrations. Father would barely let me cross the doorway without an escort, and always sent me to the priest hole when there were sightings of Redcoats. But for Jamie, it was worse. The lad fostered at Leoch and studied at a university in France. He was ready to be a man upon returning to Lallybroch but was instead treated as if he were a boy. Hiding from the English and never going to Broch Mordha without Father or Murtagh. He thought he would be marrit with bairns by now, preparing to be Laird.”

I started at both revelations: that Jamie had led such a sheltered life these past 6 years, and that he was still unmarried despite his status (and many other positive traits).

“I didn’t…I didn’t realize your father would go to those extremes. I thought he would just prevent the one incident I told him about, prepare for the failed uprising, and then life would go on as normal,” I stuttered, setting my now-cold porridge on a table and dropping onto the settee.

“Oh aye, it was like father changed overnight. We could see the difference in him after he brought you back to the fairy hill, but after whatever happened or didn’t happen that October, he became paranoid. His father always had an interest in the supernatural, but Da held no stock in seers or fairies or the like. It was bad enough that people called him a selkie. Once he believed what you told him to be true, it was like he feared fate would come to rebalance the scales.”

“Do you believe me? That I’m from the future?” My voice came out small, and I was surprised at how badly I needed her to say yes.

She regarded me for a moment, weighed the thoughts in her mind and took measurement of them. Finally she said, “I do, aye. I dinna ken what you are exactly, or how it works, but I ken you had knowledge of events that would come to pass and you shared that information with my father. Was it really because you wanted to help? You had no ulterior motives?”

“I swear to you,” I breathed out, “I only meant to save your family from pain.”

Jenny graced me with that typical Fraser nod of acquiescent, confident in her assessment of me, before she returned to the task in her hands. As I rose to leave, I heard her add, “Be patient with Jamie. He’s thick-heided but he’s kind. Once he figures out for himself that you mean no ill will, he’ll no’ treat you so rudely.”

I certainly hoped she was right.

After half-heartedly prodding at the congealed porridge I had brought up to my room, I managed to finish every last bite – the thought of the upcoming famine never far from my mind – and meandered out to the courtyard. The promise of summer was slowly starting to fill the air, and I considered asking Brian if I could tend to some of the gardens. If I were to take up the post of healer for Lallybroch and Broch Mordha, I would need to build up supplies and....

“What are you doing poking about?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin upon hearing Jamie’s near-accusing question. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ! Must you sneak up on people like that?”

Despite his stormy demeanor, he managed a smirk – bloody bastard was pleased with himself. “Aye, weel, if you arena doing anything wrong, you wouldna be so quick to startle.”

“I’ll have you know I was just taking stock of what the gardens need,” I informed him as I crossed my arms defensively. “There are plenty of wild herbs growing on the property that can be transferred and tended to here.”

“Ye ken what grows on the property, do ye?”

I sighed, still coming to terms with his attitude paired with such a familiar voice and face. It was a constant battle to remind myself that this wasn’t my Jamie. This Jamie cast a suspicious eye on me, wary of my intent and annoyed at the shadow I left over his transition into adulthood. I knew he blamed me for the change in his father’s personality, and despite the reason for it, it was hard for him to gain perspective.

It would be easy to think him ungrateful, given the changes made and the trials and tribulations avoided, but to him those events would simply be abstract concepts. How could one wrap their mind around terrible things that would never come to pass? The only thing Jamie knew was the sudden lack of freedom and a superstitious father. Besides, according to Jenny, Brian never went into detail about the horrors that would befall their family.

Still, it was difficult to be at odds with Jamie, any version of Jamie. I’d be lying if I said my heart didn’t flutter when Jenny mentioned he was unmarried. Visions quickly flashed through my mind, of the two of us together and happy and whole, with our child on the way.

But how could that dream ever be reality when Jamie held such a disdain for me? And how do you tell a man that even though you’ve never made love, you’re carrying his child? It was a concept I could barely straighten out in my mind, and I was living it. I started to wonder if coming back to Lallybroch, if staying here, was the right choice. Once again, I had to remind myself that this wasn’t about me; every decision I made would have to be for the baby. In the end, I knew that no matter where our paths led – together or separate – I needed to end this battle.

“All right, that’s it. You and I are going to discuss this like adults. No more sneering or snide remarks. I’m sure you have a lot of questions and I’m willing to answer them,” I informed him, squaring my shoulders and preparing for conflict.

Jamie had the good sense to look at least a little chastised but shook his head. “I’ll no’ get into a stramash wi’ you in the dooryard of my home.”

“Then where would you like to go? The barn? The mill wheel? The other side of the broch?” I could hear the snippiness in my tone but I couldn’t help it. Even if Jamie was acting out over something he didn’t understand, he was still being an arse.

Surprisingly, Jamie turned with a huff and nodded towards the barn. Maybe I had expected him to refuse my suggestion of a tête-à-tête and continue on stubbornly with his bitter behaviour. It was hard to predict his thoughts and his future choices the way I once used to. Where once stood a man forced to grow up quickly, now was a lad whose protected life may have bred an immaturity I never saw in him.

When we stepped inside the barn, I held my arms out in a gesture of invitation for his interrogation. “Whatever you want to know; ask. I will try to answer as best and as honestly as I can. Someone once told me about having room for secrets but not for lies. You have my word that everything I tell you will be the truth, but I reserve the right to hold onto some secrets of my life.”

Jamie sized me up, taking pause to formulate a line of questioning – or perhaps a plan of attack. Steeling himself in a gesture I had seen before, he started, “Are you a witch?”

Suddenly I was seated under a giant tree that blocked out the sun, my dress torn and my back stinging from being strapped. Instead of a suspicious tone, I heard one of concern. I saw blue eyes that pleaded for truth, regardless of what that truth might be. I saw a man who was not looking to condemn me, but protect me.

“I’m not a witch,” I answered, the same way as the first time. “In truth, I don’t know what I am. You’ve heard of “The Woman of Balnain”? That seems like the closest explanation, though not entirely the same. The only thing I do know is when I touch the stones atop Craigh Na Dun, I travel through time. I don’t know the rhyme or reason behind when I end up. I’ve also met one other woman with the…ability.”

Geillis Duncan. Would she have met the same fate in this altered timeline? I couldn’t think of a reason why it would have been avoided. The only difference would be her going through the trial alone.

“What purpose did you have, coming here and warning my father of dark days?” he asked as he lowered himself onto a rickety old stool. Even seated, he was an imposing figure. I pondered his question, piecing out how to answer truthfully without revealing facts about the life we would have led together without my interference.

“At first, I didn’t know what year I was in. With no family to go to, I figured here would be the safest. I knew the people to be kind and trustworthy. When I met your father, I decided to warn him.” As I explained my rationale, I wondered if that was the reason I ended up in 1740. My mind and my heart had been so focused on saving Brian – wee Brian, not yet born, perhaps the stones saw fit to send me to a time where I could save his namesake instead. “How much did your father tell you about my warning?”

“I thought I was the one asking questions,” Jamie remarked with a half-smile. I must have been so starved for positive affection from him, because that small joke paired with the slight upturn of his lips had me glowing. I watched Jamie’s brow furrow as he recalled Brian’s words from years past. “All he said was a White Lady had warned him of life-altering events caused by the British army, and that the scenario you spoke to him about came to pass. He never said what was to happen, or what proof he had that you were anything but a loon. All I ken was how fearful he became every time he heard tell of Redcoats near our lands. I believe if he could have locked Jenny and I up in a tower, he would have.”

Given what Jenny told me, I knew Brian had withheld what I told him, but I didn’t realize to what extent. I was curious as to why he chose not to tell his children, even if it meant bearing their resentment or confusion. And though it may not have been my place, I truly felt Jamie deserved to know the full story. And so I told him, in general statements that were still more detailed than the information he had, about what had been prevented. I watched the colour drain from his face as I went on, confirming to him why Brian had developed such an aversion to the English.

“Please don’t be angry with your father. I’m sure he had his reasons for not telling you the whole story.”

Jamie’s gaze remained fixed on a far wall – the thousand yard stare I had seen from him many times before. I could tell his mind was working hard, turning over what I had said and moments from the past six years that were taking on a new meaning to him. Finally he looked at me, seeing right to my very soul, before standing and walking past me towards the door.

Before he could cross the threshold, he stopped and turned back to me. “I still don’t understand this, but if what you say is the truth, then I thank ye. Not just for me, but for my family and our tenants. For saving my father’s life. And…I’m sorry. I blamed you for things that werena yer doing, painted ye in a false light, and I treated ye poorly.”

With a stately bow, Jamie took his leave. It was all I could do to remain on my feet and get my emotions under control enough to head back to the house.

[welllpthisishappening]

Tripping Over the Blue Line (39/45)

It’s a transition. That’s what Emma’s calling it. She’s transitioning from one team to another, from one coast to another and she’s definitely not worried. Nope. She’s fine. Really. She’s promised Mary Margaret ten times already. So she got fired. Whatever. She’s fine, ready to settle into life with the New York Rangers. She’s got a job to do. And she doesn’t care about Killian Jones, captain of the New York Rangers. At all.

He’s done. One more season and he’s a free agent and he’s out. It’s win or nothing for Killian. He’s going to win a Stanley Cup and then he’s going to stop being the face of the franchise and he’s going to go play for some other garbage team where his name won’t be used as puns in New York Post headlines. That’s the plan. And Emma Swan, director of New York Rangers community relations isn’t going to change that. At all.

They are both horrible liars.

Rating: Mature Content Warnings: Swearing, eventual hockey-type violence AN: Welcome to Los Angeles, hotbed of NHL drama. At least in this version of the NHL. It gets real dramatic guys, but Roland Locksley is here to be painfully adorable in front of media hordes, so there’s some give and take. We’re closing in on the end of this whole story and your continued feelings and thoughts and clicks just absolutely blows my mind. You’re all incredible. Screaming the praises of @laurnorder, @distant-rose & @beautiful-swan forever and ever.  Also on Ao3, FF.net & tag’ed up on Tumblr

“Is it always sunny here?” Will asked, squinting up at the sky like he was actually in pain.

Killian rolled his eyes and Roland laughed softly next to him, tugging on the bottom of his jacket and while he certainly wasn’t about to complain about sunshine, it was fairly hot. And they couldn’t take the jackets off.

He wouldn’t complain.

He’d just sweat to death. Probably.

“Shut up, Scarlet,” Robin muttered, brushing against him as he swung open one of the doors on the side of the Staples Center.

Will made a face, pulling Roland away from Killian’s side and slinging his arm over his shoulder – as if that would somehow protect him from age-old insults and jabs just a few minutes before league-mandated media days.

Roland couldn’t stop laughing. He and Henry had gotten new merch almost as soon as they clinched – Eastern Conference champion t-shirts and hats and sweatshirts and, now, they were both in their own Stanley Cup Finals jerseys that Killian was half convinced they'd never actually take off.

“Just because you don’t have a kid wearing your jersey doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk about it,” Killian said, widening his eyes knowingly.

Will groaned. “Whatever.” “Hit the nail right on the head then, didn’t I?” “You aren’t Mrs. V, you don’t get to just start shouting clichés at me, Cap.” “I hardly think I shouted anything at you. We’re having this normal, calm conversation, like normal, calm people. You’re the one freaking out.” “Who’s freaking out, Hook?” Roland asked, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet as he started tugging on suit jackets again.

“Uncle Will,” Killian said.

“Ok,” Will snapped, turning on Killian and Roland with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. “First of all, I am not freaking out. I am hot.” “Presumptuous.” Robin rolled his eyes and Killian grinned, glancing down at Roland, who, it appeared, was finding all of this more amusing than just about anything. “Don’t antagonize him,” Robin sighed, brushing his hand over Henry’s shoulder.

“Scarlet’s words, not mine,” Killian laughed.

“Warm,” Will corrected and he still hadn’t uncrossed his arms. “I am warm. Because it is perpetually sunny here and we have to wear these stupid jackets.” “Those stupid jackets let you keep your job.” “I could pay the fine,” Will said quickly. “How much you think it’d be if I just showed up to media in a t-shirt and shorts?” “More than you can afford,” Ruby answered, appearing at the end of the hallway with a smug look on her face and no league-mandated jacket.

“You don’t know that. For real though, how much do you think it’d be, Lucas?” “Too much,” she said, heels echoing on the floor when she walked towards them with a clipboard in one hand and her phone in the other. She didn’t look at any of them when she moved, a picture of media relations efficiency and something that might have been frustration because Killian had absolutely been trying to antagonize Scarlet.

Will grumbled, kicking at something that wasn’t actually on the floor as Ruby’s fingers flew across her phone screen. “Does it ever rain in Los Angeles? I’d really love if it would rain. Or at least maybe a few clouds.” “You’re a pessimist, aren’t you?” “Warm, Lucas. I am warm.” “Maybe you should take a shower before media.” “Ok, see, that’s just rude.”

“They call it the sunshine state for a reason, don’t they?” “I don’t think that’s California,” Robin objected. “Cap, what’s California?” Killian made a face and held his hands up. “Why would I know that?”

“You think Emma knows?” “Why would anyone care about that?” “You guys are always doing that cutesy fact thing. And Liam totally made you learn what all the states were at some point. That’s almost too on point for him.” “He never did that, although I will pay you a good amount of money to tell Liam he missed out on some sort of academic activity. Maybe it is sunshine, then.” “That’s Florida,” Henry corrected and four wide-eyed adults stared at him. “Florida’s the sunshine state. California’s the golden state.” “How’d you know that?” “I do go to school sometimes.” “Sometimes?” “Well when you guys aren’t in the Cup Finals.” “And he’s still got homework to do,” Robin added as Henry sighed dramatically.

Killian laughed, hauling Roland up without even really considering it and everyone in a five-foot radius rolled their eyes. “You’re going to hurt yourself,” Robin muttered.

“It’s because you’re old,” Will added. “And, you know, what? You guys might have vaguely adorable children wearing your jerseys now, but, but , I’m some kind of fan favorite. What do you two say to a friendly little bet?” “What?” Killian asked, rolling his shoulder so Roland’s weight shifted a bit more comfortably. He was definitely going to hurt himself.

“A bet,” Will repeated.

“No, I heard you. I just don’t understand where this is going.” Ruby was tapping her heel impatiently and her phone hadn’t stopped making noise since they’d landed at LAX the day before. “If you guys could do this at, literally, any other time, that’d be absolutely fantastic.” “You got some kind of schedule to stick to, Lucas?” Killian asked and she glared at him.

“You know I do and you know Emma does too. Don’t act like you don’t.” He couldn’t really shrug since there was a seven-year-old wearing a Locksley jersey draped over his shoulder, but Killian hummed in agreement. He knew, had seen the to-do-list for the day that morning and Emma’s phone made almost as much noise as Ruby’s.

Will let out a low whistle, throwing a meaningful glance towards Robin. “Uh oh, Cap, were you not in your assigned room last night?” “Oh my God,” Killian sighed. “Lucas, what happened to this schedule?” Ruby made a noise in the back of her throat, smile threatening to overtake her face and Killian didn’t appreciate being backed into some sort of metaphorical corner like this. Will nearly fell over, arm clutching his side tightly as his whole body shook with laughter.

“Alright,” Ruby said sharply, falling back into business as soon as her phone vibrated four times in a row. “You’ve each got a table out there and people who want to talk to you. You sit, you answer questions, you don’t say anything stupid and, after a half an hour of this, you get up from those tables and those people and you find me and we go to Emma’s fan event and you smile for those people and then you go to skate. Got it?” “That was very efficient, Lucas,” Killian said.

“Shut up, Jones. Or I’ll tell Emma on you.” “Tell Emma what, exactly?” “That you’re being an ass.” “Ruby,” he snapped and she hissed in air through her teeth, tossing an apologetic look towards Roland.

“Sorry, Rol.”

“It’s ok,” Roland promised, never one to be too upset at the decidedly not-quite-family tendencies of a team trying to win its first Cup in several decades.

“He’s got a new jersey, he doesn’t care,” Robin reasoned. He rested his hand on Roland’s back, thumb tapping against his number and Killian wished they’d get on with media day so they could get on with the rest of the schedule and he could get back to a hotel room he hadn’t been assigned to.

This Los Angeles trip was going to be better. This wouldn’t end in fights and arguments and trade prospects. They were going to win here.

Roland moved, twisting Killian’s jacket as he tried to pull himself up to look at him. “Can I come with you, Hook?” “What?” Killian asked and Ruby had her phone out again. He heard a shutter snap and Roland had moved off his shoulder, balanced on his side and his arm and Ariel would kill him if he actually hurt himself because of this. “God, Ruby, what are you doing?” “This is painfully adorable. It should be Snapchat'ed.” “That seems more PR than you.” “That seems like none of your business,” she muttered distractedly, waving one hand in her face while her other hand sent out pictures to social media without his permission. “Bring Rol with you, it’s super cute.” Killian glanced at Robin – who seemed torn somewhere in between terrified at the prospect of arguing with the schedule and what would happen when Regina found out Roland was on the New York Rangers Snapchat. He shrugged and pulled Henry against his side.

“You want to come with me, Henry?” Robin asked. “We’ll confuse ‘em with mismatching jerseys.” Henry nodded enthusiastically and Ruby looked overjoyed. This was an addition to the schedule that would, probably, spark half a dozen headlines and it was positive and adorable and didn’t require her to do any extra work.

“Alright, mate,” Killian said, finally meeting Roland’s expectant gaze. “Let’s go talk to the horde.” Ruby groaned and he’d absolutely done it for the reaction. “Ok, well don’t call them that when you get out there,” she shouted, but Killian just waved his hand behind him as he moved down the hallway.

It wasn’t really that bad.

Roland was as good a buffer as any Killian could have asked for and half of the first round of questions were about him and his thoughts on the series and why exactly he had a nickname for the captain of the New York Rangers.

There were a lot of questions and a lot of voices and Killian wasn’t convinced his eyes hadn’t suffered permanent damage from the vaguely ridiculous amount of lights around them, but it wasn’t bad.

It was, almost, fun.

“What about the bet?”

Killian snapped his head up, eyebrows drawn low in confusion at a reporter who absolutely wasn’t from New York.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“Scarlet said there was a bet.” He groaned and Roland was actually sitting on his media table now, legs crossed underneath him as he surveyed the sea of reporters around them. “Of course he did,” Killian muttered. “What did he say the terms were?”

The reporter nodded once, glancing around to make sure the rest of the media horde noticed him. Killian tried not to groan again.

“Point, hits and ice time,” he said. “Add ‘em up, subtract any penalties, and between you and Scarlet, whoever ends up with the most after the first two games of the series. Wins.” “And the losers?” “Buy the other one’s jerseys and wear ‘em before the New York games.” “Pretty tame bet.” The guy shrugged. “He said something about team competition and getting the line back on track and, well, keeping you on the first line.” “Naturally,” Killian sighed, rolling his eyes and it didn’t even surprise him that Scarlet had taken the chance to publicly mock his line demotion. That’s what he got for making fun of him before. “Anything else?” “Not about the bet.” Killian sat up a bit straighter and even Roland seemed to notice the change in the reporter’s tone, pulling up towards the front of the table to swing his legs over the edge. “What about then?” he asked.

“About you and Milah Onde.”

His mouth dropped open and Roland made a noise, a gasp of understanding that Killian didn’t quite expect from a seven-year-old. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Killian said, tongue darting over his lips and he pressed his arms against his side like he was willing the tattoo to disappear from underneath his jacket.

The reporter clicked his tongue and shook his head. “See, I’m fairly certain that you do. I’ve got sources.” “Yeah, who?” “I’m afraid I can’t just say who, but they’re credible and they put Milah Onde in the car at the same time as you when you got hurt.”

Killian swallowed and the room suddenly felt very small. It wasn’t. It was enormous. It was a goddamn conference room and there were no less than twenty different media outlets standing a few feet in front of them, every single one of them waiting for him to say something.

Anything.

He had to actually say something.

He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his lips together tightly, trying to force the oxygen back into his lungs and come up with something, anything, that wasn’t this moment – getting on the ice and skating and scoring and he was on some kind of multi-game point streak, they should want to talk about that.

They shouldn’t want to talk about this.

No one else knew about this. Who knew about Milah? Robin and Gina and Scarlet and Ruby and Liam and Elsa and Anna. That was it.

And Emma.

Emma knew about Milah and the accident and every single moment of that night.

Emma.

Killian opened his eyes and something felt like it had shifted in that entirely too-big conference room, staring out at a mass of reporters with an easy stare that didn’t quite make sense for whatever situation he’d stumbled into.

Emma.

Emma knew and Emma didn’t care and Emma wasn’t the source and that was enough. No matter what they printed.

“Any sort of comment, Killian?” the reporter asked, eyebrows lifted and phone held loosely in his hand. “About Milah? You know, from what I can tell by the records I’ve been given, that divorce was never final. She died before it went through.” Roland shifted on the table, turning around to look at Killian. He smiled.

“I’ve got nothing to say,” Killian answered, pulling Roland back towards him and resting his hand on the Locksley emblazoned across his back.

“What about the new one?” “Excuse me?” “Well, you two haven’t exactly been shy about it? You and the front office girl. She’s kind of a perennial dater isn’t she? Although at least this one isn’t married.”

Roland stood up and Killian didn’t even try to stop him, mouth hanging open again and breath rushing out of him and, goddamnit, where was Ruby?

“Leave Emma alone,” Roland half shouted, a response before Killian could even begin to formulate coherent thoughts.

That woke him up. “Sit down, mate,” Killian muttered and the reporter laughed.

“Thanks for the tip, kid,” he said, glancing around at the crowd that was still standing there waiting for Killian to acknowledge Milah. “Anything else you’d like to add, Cap? Maybe, what’s her name, Emma, got handed this job with the Rangers because she’s good friends with your media director? Or how you two have proved a complete distraction for this entire team throughout the season? Anything?” “We’re in the Cup Finals,” Killian answered. “Doesn’t seem like much of a distraction.” “That seemed like a confirmation, Cap.” Killian rolled his eyes. “That what you want?” “Whatever you’ll give.” “Alright,” he said sharply, hand still on Roland’s back. “Fine. I am dating Emma Swan. It is not a distraction. For me or anyone else on my team. She’s ridiculously good at her job and your source probably should have mentioned that when they were giving you the rundown on all of this. None of it, however, has anything to do with getting on the ice or winning a Cup, which is why we’re here right now. So unless you’ve got a question about that, then we’re done.” He stood up, nearly knocking the chair over behind him and Roland was still smiling. “C’mon, mate,” Killian muttered, holding his hand out. Roland jumped off the table and jogged towards Ruby, standing just a few feet away from them, looking as if the entire world was about to crash down around them.

“A little late, huh, Lucas?” he asked.

“Scarlet was explaining the bet to anyone who would listen. I didn’t….” “I know,” Killian interrupted. “It’s fine.” “It is the opposite of fine.” “That too. Who was that? He’s not from New York is he?” Ruby shook her head and, eventually, Roland was going to get tired of being pulled against people’s sides of some sort of child-based support system. “He got credentialed through the Kings. He’s like TMZ, but somehow worse since TMZ is almost actual journalism now.” “What?” “You know, they break a lot of stories and especially in sports…” “No, no, that’s not what I meant. I meant he got credentialed through the Kings? You’re sure?” “Well, I didn’t do it. So it must have been.” “Who’d be in charge of that?”

Ruby shrugged. “It depends team to team. With stuff like this it’s probably a couple of different people, honestly.” “But just you in New York?” “I’m very specific about who gets in.” “You’re a control freak is what you’re saying,” Killian laughed and Ruby actually stuck her tongue out. “So it could be media relations and PR then? Some kind of joint credential effort?” “What are you getting at?” Killian raised his eyebrows and it was almost too obvious when Ruby understood. “Oh, shit,” she muttered. “Sorry, Rol. Again. Don’t tell your dad I said that.”

“Is that possible?” Killian pressed.

“It could be,” Ruby admitted. “Cover your ears, Rol.” Roland did as instructed, smiling widely at Killian as he moved his hands. “Shit,” she repeated, stamping her foot for good measure. “God fucking damnit. Emma’s going to lose her mind. She’s going to kill him, you know that?” “I’d probably help, honestly.” “Well neither one of you can actually do that.” “No one else knows,” Killian said. “About Milah and the accident. No one except Gold. And, now, maybe, Neal who’s credentialing gossip websites to write stories about it. I don’t get it.” “For real?” Killian shrugged. “Gold is all about control,” Ruby explained. “Or that’s what it seems like at least. And if he bought the Kings last year and brought in all his new people then he did it for a reason. To win a Cup. You’re on some kind of ridiculous point streak and this team is good and this could work, Cap. This team can win. He knows it. So he’s fighting with something else. It’s a distraction, all over again.” “That’s insane.” “Nah,” Ruby objected. “That’s front office politics.” “But why drag Emma into it?” “A complete takedown. I mean, they fired her too didn’t they?”

Killian nodded slowly, breathing coming in short gasps and it did, almost, make sense. Maybe not in the real world where there was a Cup to win and a max deal to sign, but in this world where everything seemed flipped on its head, it was almost too obvious.

“He’s trying to break you apart,” Ruby continued, taking his silence for misunderstanding. “Both of you. If you’re thinking about the past and worried about Emma, then he’s winning. And the team gets distracted and the New York tabs drag you over some metaphorical coals.” “Fuck,” Killian mumbled, running a hand through his hair. “Jeez, sorry, mate.” Roland didn’t seem impressed, head tilted up to stare at him intently. “Hook,” he said and Killian hummed distractedly. “Are you and Emma going to break up?” “What? No, why would you think that?”

“I don’t know,” Roland mumbled, a lie so obvious Killian was surprised it didn’t come with a flashing neon sign as well.

Killian crouched down, pulling on the bottom of the brand-new jersey and Roland wouldn’t meet his eyes. “No one’s leaving, mate,” he said seriously. “I promise.” Roland nodded slowly, still staring at his shoes. “Ok,” he mumbled. “Because I like Emma.” “I do too.” “You might want to mention that,” Ruby added, pushing her phone into Killian’s face. “Several times. As soon as you see her.” Killian sighed, eyes closing lightly and it didn’t really matter because that headline was going to be seared into his memory for the rest of his life. “Cover your ears, mate,” he said before muttering every single curse he could think of.

She was working when they got to the fan event and Killian’s phone battery was somewhere in the realm of very dead , a string of text messages from half a dozen people who all demanded to know what was going on .

Elsa had sent the link to the tweet.

As if he hadn’t seen it. And thought about nothing except the tweet the entire car ride to the fan event.

Regina was, apparently, going to kill him.

She’d have to get in line.

“Come on, Cap,” Ruby muttered, pushing on the back of his jacket as he stepped through the door. “One foot in front of the other.”

Robin shot her a meaningful look – his phone in his hand and Regina was texting all of them now – but Ruby didn’t move her hand or stop muttering semi-supportive nonsense in Killian’s ear as he walked into the restaurant.

“Lucas, I haven’t lost my motor skills,” he hissed and Emma, somehow, managed to hear that, even with Merida a few feet behind her and a crease between her eyebrows.

They’d hit traffic.

Los Angeles was the worst city in the entire world.

“Hey,” Emma shouted, waving her hand towards a table and a line of fans. There was merch everywhere. She was wearing merch – a shirt with Cup Readyemblazoned across the front and Killian bit the inside of his lip to stop himself from kissing her right there in the middle of a chain restaurant in downtown Los Angeles.

“We hit traffic,” Killian explained, answering a question he hadn’t actually been asked. Emma lowered her eyebrows.

“You ok?”

“Fine.” “Jones.” “You didn’t get any text messages did you? Actual phone calls? Mary Margaret planning my death in frightening detail?” Emma tilted her head, a shadow of a smile tugging on the ends of her mouth and she crossed her arms slowly, staring at him like he’d started speaking a different language. They were very behind schedule. And his phone vibrated again.

“I haven’t been able to check my phone,” Emma said. “I’ve been kind of busy trying to make sure the fans didn’t start rioting when you guys were ten minutes late.” “Traffic.”

“So you mentioned.” “If we go talk somewhere right now, do you think the fans will actually start to riot?” Emma tugged her hair back over her shoulder, lip pressed tightly in between her teeth and she shook her head. “Mer,” she yelled, glancing over her shoulder at her assistant. “Get them all in line and Locksley and Scarlet can sign and photo op now.” “What about Cap?” Merida asked, nodding in Killian’s direction. He’d never actually sat down.

“Later.” Merida didn’t object. She very clearly wanted to. “Ok,” she said. “Here’s your phone, boss. You left it in the kitchen. It’s been buzzing nonstop.” “Of course it has.” Killian groaned. “Merida, is there somewhere that isn’t filled with chanting fans right now?” “Probably the kitchen,” she answered, moving her shoulder in the same direction she’d walked out of a few moments before.

“Alright. Come on, Swan.” He held his hand out without really thinking about it and the fans cheered when they weaved their way through the crowd, some of them trying to pat him on the back while others shouted detailed game plans that absolutely would not work on the ice.

Killian counted no less than five different shutter snaps and Emma’s hand was wrapped up in his. They pushed their way through the kitchen and a few employees glanced up at the sound, eyes going wide when they noticed Killian.

Two more shutter snaps.

“Jesus Christ,” he grumbled, pulling Emma behind him towards a corner and this was ridiculous.

“What’s going on with you?” Emma asked. Her phone buzzed in her hand.

“You should probably read those. I bet El sent you the link too.” “Link?”

“Tweet. Screenshot. Whatever. I wouldn’t be surprised if Banana had some very detailed opinions for you as well. She sent me ten text messages in a row.”

“About?” Killian sighed and there was no way around it. They had to talk about it. They had to resolutely ignore it. And make sure David didn’t follow through on any of the threats he’d sent Killian’s way that afternoon.

“There was a guy at media,” Killian started. “From some gossip site.” “A gossip site?” “Yeah. Started asking about some bet Scarlet wants us to agree to during the Finals and then all of the sudden started asking about...Milah.” Emma’s eyes widened and she reached her hand out quickly, gripping the front of his jacket of instinct. That almost made him feel better.

“Wait, what,” she sputtered, glancing around the kitchen like that guy’s source would suddenly appear in front of them. Just another shutter click. “Who would know that? I thought…” “No, you’re right, Swan.” “Gold?” Killian nodded slowly, tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek, and Emma’s eyes, somehow, got wider. “Lucas thinks so. And, well, maybe someone else.” “I don’t understand.” “Neal.” “Oh shit.” “Exactly.” “Is that who Ruby thinks credentialed this gossip guy?” “Smart, Swan,” Killian smiled and maybe he did actually feel better.

“I don’t know if that’s an actual compliment. God, what an ass. Ruby said she didn’t credential that guy?” Killian shook his head and Elsa needed to put her phone down. The text messages were nonstop. She’d probably teamed up with Anna. And he was too busy worried about his own phone that he didn’t notice Emma looking down at hers, only realizing what had happened when she let out a low whistle and took another step towards him.

“Is this real?” Emma asked, voice low and Killian’s shoulders sagged under the weight of disappointment three words could hold.

“Yeah.” “Like...this is out there. In the world. On the internet. Where people can see it?” “Yeah,” he repeated. He deserved every single threat David had sent him. And the ones Regina sent. And the ones Elsa and Anna were, probably, coming up with while he stood stock still in a kitchen with Emma still staring at your phone.

It wasn’t much of a story – more a headline with a Swan pun and Emma’s picture and promises of all the details of her trail of NHL stars and how she got her job in New York, something in that final paragraph about her and Killian and what she’d done to get her own department.

It wasn’t intelligent writing. It was drivel. It was stupid.

It was all over the goddamn internet.

“Who sent it to you?” Killian asked, positive he didn’t actually want the answer. He wanted to get on the ice. He wanted to hit something.

He wanted to kiss Emma without a kitchen employee taking another picture of them.

“El,” Emma answered.

“Of course. You know, you’d think she had other things to do.” “Oh God, Anna is texting me? I think. I don’t actually have her number.”

“Here let me see,” Killian said, holding his hand out. He didn’t even have to look at the number. The whole message was in caps lock. “Yeah, that’s Banana. El probably gave her your number. They’ve been taking turns yelling at me for the last forty-five minutes.” “Yelling? Why?”

She looked genuinely confused and maybe just a bit protective or defensive. Huh.

“Swan, did you read the story?” “I mean it’s not really much of a story.” “That’s true,” Killian admitted. “But this is exactly what you were worried about from the very beginning. This is, well, this is everything you didn’t want on some sort of national scale. El and Banana aren’t very happy with me. Neither are Regina or David, for that matter.” “David?” “I think it made it onto the subReddit.”

“Jeez. I’ll text him.” “No, no,” Killian said quickly, fingers wrapping around her wrist as she tried to swipe her thumb across her phone. “Don’t do that.” “What?” “Don’t text David. It’s not...he’s not wrong.” “This is all wrong,” Emma argued, tapping her finger on the side of her phone. “I mean aside from the us dating, but that’s been kind of obvious. God, did they try and make it seem like Graham and I dated?”

She laughed. She actually laughed, smile on her face and eyes tracing across his face and Killian wasn’t certain he’d loved her more than he did right then.

In the middle of a kitchen with fans chanting for him a few feet away.

“Is this the part of the conversation where I say that everyone is probably halfway in love with you, whether they dated you or not?” Killian asked and it was far too easy to talk to her.

It always had been. From the very beginning. It was far too easy to tease and joke and his pulse pounded in his ears, far too focused on Emma’s reaction to one tweet than any potential story about someone he loved six years ago.

Emma rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling and she muttered charmer under her breath. “Are you ok?” she asked.

“Swan, you can’t possibly be asking me that.” “I just did. What else did the guy say?” “Are we not worried about this? David went into some very specific details about what he was going to do when we landed in New York.” “Yeah, well he’s always been absurdly overprotective. I’m surprised he did that though, he’s very worried about messing up your pre-game schedule.” “I think he’s more worried about you.” She shrugged – a dismissive move that sent a shockwave of something down Killian’s spine and it might have been his own need to protect. “Swan,” Killian continued, fingers still wrapped around her wrist. “I’m serious.” “So am I. Come on, tell me what this guy said.”

Killian took a deep breath and Emma didn’t blink, just stared and waited for an answer. “He knew she was in the car.” “What?”

“Yeah.” “And he just told you that? He didn’t want a comment?” “Oh, no he definitely wanted a comment.” “You didn’t yell at him did you?” “I know how to answer questions, Swan,” Killian sighed. Emma made a face and there wasn’t really any space in between them, but she found some anyway, forehead resting on his chest and he couldn’t stop himself from moving, lips brushing over her hair as his hand wrapped around her waist. “And it was no comment. Or something like that.” “Something like that,” she repeated, voice muffled just a bit by his jacket. “Where was Ruby this whole time?” “Dealing with Scarlet and the bet.” “That almost doesn’t surprise me.” “A distraction.” Emma scoffed, tapping out a rhythm against his side, and he kissed her again. It was too easy. And she hadn’t run. She’d leaned against him – quite literally.

“I love you,” Emma mumbled and Killian squeezed his eyes closed.

“I love you too, Swan. More than anything.” More than gossip sites or ex-boyfriends giving out credentials to less-than-reputable news sources or even a team owner who, it appeared, wanted to tear Killian down from the past to the present.

He didn’t say that part.

He didn’t really have to.

“Some sort of team, right?” Emma asked. “That was the agreement.” “An enthusiastic one.” “Then we’ll deal with it. Let them write whatever they want about me.” The kitchen door swung open and they both should have expected Regina sooner, but they’d already spent far too much time in that kitchen. “Are you kidding?” Regina snapped, staring at Killian. “You walked out?” “You walked out?” Emma said, head pulled up and mouth hanging open and there was nowhere to actually hide in the middle of a kitchen. “I thought you said you told them no comment.” “Oh he told them that too, but not before he actually confirmed you two were dating and then stormed out and then promised my kid that you two weren’t ever going to break up.” “There was no storming, Gina,” Killian muttered. Emma hadn’t blinked yet.

“Well there was enough to warrant an ESPN blog post and you know who that doesn’t look good to? Front office. That’s who. Front office that you’ve let decide your entire future.” “I’m not an idiot.” “Could have fooled me.”

Emma blinked, turning so quickly she nearly lost her balance and Killian’s hand tightened around her waist. “Can he sue?” she asked, sounding as if she’d been considering legal action for the better part of this entire conversation.

Regina blinked once, lips twisting in thought and she hummed in frustration before she actually answered. “I don’t think so.” “Isn’t that libel?” “Not if it’s true,” Regina sighed. “And, well, Milah was in the car. I mean they didn’t do anything wrong, not really. But it…” “Doesn’t look good,” Emma finished. “Yeah, I got that.”

“I can’t stop it either. They’re going to run it before the game.” “How do you know that?” “I called the site, demanded an editor, got an incompetent idiot and was informed that the story was already set. Nothing I can do about it.” Killian wasn’t quite as angry at Regina anymore. “Thanks, Gina,” he said softly and she clicked her tongue in response.

“Your assistant is going nuts out there by the way,” Regina continued, glancing at Emma. “They all want Killian.”

“Ok,” Emma said. “Two minutes.” Regina nodded, gaze darting towards Killian. He tried to look somewhere in the area of confident and he could hear the crowd outside shouting his name, but it had been an exhausting day and the story was going to run no matter what.

Emma didn’t turn back towards him until Regina’s heels had retreated completely, both hands flat on his chest. “You told Roland no one was breaking up with anyone? Ever?” He didn’t expect that question.

“Uh, yeah,” Killian answered, stammering over the two words. “He was, uh, he was worried we were going to break up. Because of the story.” “And what did you say?” “I promised him that no one was leaving. And that I liked you too.” “Too?” “Rol wanted to make sure I knew he liked you.” “Oh.” Emma bit her lip, eyes falling towards the floor as she took a deep breath. “I’m not,” she whispered.” “Not what?” “Leaving. Or running. Even if they print everything. And I like you too.” He moved and Emma moved and there might have been another shutter click and another tweet, but they kissed each other anyway. Killian smiled for all of afternoon skate.

“Alright, so the rules of the bet are simple,” Will started, leaning up against the boards in the corner of the Staples Center with the edge of his skate pressing into the ice.

“Scarlet, we don’t have time for this,” Killian sighed, retreating back towards the line and warmups and it was already absurdly loud. He glanced up, a general idea of where the team boxes were and where Emma was sitting. Or would be sitting when she wasn’t helping Ruby run media requests.

It didn’t really make sense – she was in charge of her own department, after all – but Ruby had asked and Emma couldn’t bring herself to argue and it was so impossibly nice , Killian couldn’t stop himself from smiling whenever he thought about it.

“What’s he smiling about?” Robin muttered, knocking his shoulder against Will’s when he skidded to a stop.

Will shrugged. “Probably Emma. Or trying to win our bet.” “It’s definitely not your bet,” Killian mumbled, twisting his stick in his hands.

“Ew.” “Isn’t Belle supposed to be here for Game 2?” “What does that have to do with anything?” “Absolutely nothing. Fine, tell me the rules of the bet.” They were, surprisingly, almost exactly what the reporter had told him during media day and they really didn’t have time for some sort of side bet during the Stanley Cup Finals, but it had been a frustrating twenty-four hours and if Killian got to win a bet and brag in front of Scarlet then he’d make time for a side bet.

Killian won the first period, two shots on net and four hits and Will was whistled for a two-minute slash that drew the ire of Arthur during intermission. Will won the second – he scored. And that was, apparently, worth six points in whatever game they were playing.

“So you’re telling me, suddenly, you’re ahead?” Killian asked, tilting his head towards Will as Robin grumbled about focusing on the game as soon as they swung their legs over the boards.

“My game, my rules, Cap,” Will answered. He lowered his shoulder when he got back onto the ice, connecting on another hit and the Kings player next to him barely managed to stay on his skates. “And I’m beating the crap out of you now. Did you see that hit?” “I am on the ice with you Scarlet.” Arthur shouted something from the bench and Robin glared at both of them meaningfully. Will just laughed.

“Did we ever decide on terms?” Killian asked, pushing into the zone and he could feel a defender on his left side. It didn’t really matter. He was faster than just about anyone on the entire Kings roster.

He took the shot and missed wide right, but Robin was just a few feet away and he’d probably say it was a pass anyway. Robin’s shot went in.

They were winning.

Killian yelled, punching air and it probably looked as ridiculous as it felt, but they were winning Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals and there were only a few minutes left in the third. And that probably meant he was winning the bet too.

Unless Scarlet was cheating.

Robin groaned when Killian threw his arms around him, shouting nice shot in his ear like he didn’t know it was a fucking fantastic shot. “Maybe Gina won’t kill me now,” Killian added. “Setting you up like that.”

“You weren’t trying to pass to me.” “You don’t know that.” “I absolutely do.” “Whatever. Good goal. Good almost-pass. And I’m totally beating Scarlet now.” “That’s not even remotely true, Cap,” Will argued, clapping Robin on the shoulder as they skated back to the bench, a line of hands held out in front of them, ready for post-goal celebrations.

“How you figure? Assists have to be three, right? That’d put me somewhere in the double digits.” “Your math is horrible.” “You’re making up these rules as you go along!” Arthur actually stopped chewing his gum to yell at them, stepping off the bench and leaning over the boards to grab both of them by the scruff of their jerseys. “If you two don’t shut up about this goddamn bet,” he hissed, “then Regina Mills is not the only one who is going to be trying to kill you. She will have to learn how to bring you both back from the dead since I’ll have done the job already.” “Jeez. That’s harsh Arthur,” Killian muttered as Will let out a low whistle. “And don’t let her hear you mess up her name like that. Regina Mills-Locksley. It says so on her business cards.

“Plus,” Will added, “Gina only wants to kill Cap.” Arthur narrowed his eyes. “I will make sure she is intent on killing both of you. Got it?”

Arthur wasn’t going to kill them for the bet – whatever the rules of it actually were – he was going to murder his whole team for a complete lack of defense in the final minute and a half of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

They lost. Another overtime loss and it wasn’t really anyone’s fault – a good shot on a quick turnaround and none of them had moved fast enough.

There were more questions after the game.

They weren’t actually about the game.

No one actually wanted to talk about anything that happened on the ice and Killian couldn’t actually throw things in front of his visitor’s locker because that would actually get Regina to follow through on those threats from the day before.

He’d hurt his hand at some point too, probably when he got hit during the third period and there was a bruise inching its way across his wrist and maybe one on his shoulder already as well. Every muscle hurt and he was exhausted and no one wanted to talk about the game. They wanted to talk about the story.

They kept using Milah’s name.

And he couldn’t leave. He couldn’t move, just had to sit there and keep muttering no comment like that actually meant anything, while desperately wanting someone, anyone , to ask him about losing Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

“Enough,” Robin shouted a few feet away, pushing through the throng of outstretched hands and cellphones that wouldn’t get away from Killian’s locker. “Enough! God, leave him alone. Ask a question about the goddamn game.” Will wasn’t far behind him, a look on his face that Killian hadn’t seen in years – since Liam got hurt. The crowd turned on both of them, arms still stretched out and questions ringing in the air and Killian could hear Ruby’s heels echoing down the hallway.

She was running.

Did you know Milah was married? Did you know she was married to Gold? Have you talked to Gold since you’ve been in LA, Cap? What does Emma think? Does Emma know? Hey, can we talk to Emma?

“Shut up,” Will sighed, twisting in between two sets of recorders to tug on Killian’s shoulder. “Come on, Cap. You’re done here.” Killian got on his feet and the crowd split in front of him – albeit with a good amount of grumbling and even more questions and his head snapped around when someone shouted Emma’s name again.

“Stop talking,” Killian muttered, eyes narrowed and voice low and he hadn’t actually taken his pads off yet. The reporter in front of him took a step back. “Don’t ask me about Emma again. Don’t ask me about Milah again. Ask me about the game. That’s why I am here. To play a game.” The reporter flipped his wrist and pushed his phone towards Killian’s face. “Thoughts on losing in Game 1 and how it might affect your deal, Cap?”

Killian sighed loudly and Will actually sounded like he was going to punch this reporter in the face, but no one actually moved – until another voice started talking. He muttered under his breath and Robin shifted next to him, arms crossed and eyebrows pulled low and they had to play another game in Los Angeles before all of this was over.

“Guys, guys, guys,” Neal laughed, pushing through the reporters with a smile on his face. “Come on, you know the rules. Once he leaves the locker, it’s over. That’s how it’s always been.” Killian’s jaw ticked as he tried to press his teeth together tightly, chanting the word fine in his head like some kind of mantra that would stop him from actually doing something stupid.

“Come on, Killian,” Neal continued, brushing by Robin to sling his arm over Killian’s shoulder.

Killian pushed him off, running his hand through his hair and shaking his head quickly. “I’ve got it,” he said. “They ask questions about the game and I’ll answer them.” Ruby skidded to a stop in the doorway of the locker room – something that looked like the actual embodiment of murder in her gaze as soon as she glanced Neal’s direction. And he didn’t look quite as confident anymore.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing in my locker room Cassidy?” Ruby asked, voice low and intent and her eyes were barely more than slits. They might have been shooting lasers too.

Killian was only half paying attention, gaze darting up when he, somehow, heard another set of shoes and Emma was standing in the doorway of the locker room, her blazer pinched underneath her arm and concern etched into every single corner of her face.

Neal laughed again, shoulders straightening as he found his voice again. “Your locker room, Ruby? Now you know that’s not true. You guys are guests here.” “Leave my players alone, Cassidy.” Neal clicked his tongue and Emma didn’t just roll her eyes at the sound, she rolled her whole head, groaning slightly for good measure. It almost made Killian laugh.

Until the reporters realized Emma was there.

They turned quickly, jockeying for position and someone shouted a string of less-than-professional words when their phone got knocked out of their hands. She blinked once, taken aback by the onslaught of questions and statements and Neal clicked his tongue again.

“Hey, Ems,” he said evenly, taking a step towards her as she pushed her arms back into her blazer. “Good game, huh?” He took another step forward and Emma backed up, the concern that had been on her face morphing into something that almost resembled disgust.

“Move, Cap,” Robin muttered, pushing on his shoulder for good measure and Killian nodded as he brushed by Neal and laced his fingers through Emma’s.

“Let’s get out of here, Swan,” Killian said, already half a step into the hallway as he tugged his jersey over his head.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Neal shouted and there were more camera clicks and unanswered questions as he slammed the locker room door shut. “I wanted to talk to you.” “Leave me alone, Neal,” Emma yelled, not even bothering to turn around.

“Not you. Killian.” The entire New York Rangers contingent stopped, turning around in near-perfect time and Neal’s eyes widened. “You know,” he continued, “by himself.” “No,” Robin and Will said at the same time, matching sounds of disgust in their voice and Ruby actually laughed, the sound of it echoing off the hallway’s walls.

Neal looked nonplussed, obviously certain just saying he wanted to talk to Killian would work – as if they were old friends and Neal’s eyes didn’t keep darting to Emma’s hand, still wrapped up in Killian’s with her laces hitting against her wrist.

“I just, uh, wanted to talk,” Neal added. Emma scoffed. “Maybe ask a couple of questions?” “I don’t have time for that,” Killian said.

“Just a few minutes?” “No.”

He didn’t wait for Neal to respond, hardly even paused after the word was out of his mouth before squeezing Emma’s hand slightly and leading some sort of quasi Rangers-parade out of the Staples Center visitors locker room.

“Did you win the bet?” Emma asked softly, pressing up on her toes to mutter the words into his ear.

“How’d you know that happened?” “Will told Ruby who told Dor who told someone at SI and it ended up online in between the first and second period.” “Efficient.” She hummed in the back of her throat and she never actually let go of his hand, even when they moved into the backseat of a team-provided town car with Scarlet in the front seat, muttering under his breath about being the kid on this team.

“What are you guys even playing for?” Emma asked. “I mean if there’s a bet, there’s got to be some kind of prize, right?” “That reporter yesterday said something about wearing each other’s jerseys, but Scarlet’s changing the rules whenever he sees fit, so who knows.” “That’s rude, Cap,” Will grumbled, propping his heels up on the dashboard.

“You’re going to scuff that,” Emma said. “Are you really changing the rules though?” “I have no idea what either one of you is talking about.” “You should probably write it down. Your point system or however we’re marking this.”

Will pulled his feet back down and twisted around to stare at Emma questioningly. “You know,” he said slowly, “I think you’re just as competitive as Cap is.” “Maybe,” Emma shrugged and Killian, finally, felt like he was breathing normally again. “Tell me the rules, Scarlet.” They wrote them down. Or, at least, typed them into Emma’s phone and there was a point system and Emma’s promise that she’d keep track of of every single one of them was still ringing in his ears by the time they opened the hotel room door they weren’t supposed to be sharing.

“You know,” Killian said, turning Emma until she was walking backwards into the room with his hands on her hips. “You were somewhere bordering close to protective in the last two days, love.” “Was I?” she asked and he’d probably remember how breathless her question was for the next two days they were in that stupid city.

“Bordering close to it.” “Weird.” “Absolutely.”

She laughed when her legs hit up against the bed, the smile on her face feeling like it had settled in the pit of his stomach or shot down his spine and Killian brushed his fingers through her hair, pushing it back behind her ears until his hand lingered on her neck. It left goosebumps. That felt like a bit of a victory too. “So I take it you didn’t win tonight, then?” Emma asked. “The bet, I mean. If Will was just changing up rules.” “Eh, it almost doesn’t matter.” “Over-competitive weirdo.” “Almost always.” She laughed again, tapping out a rhythm on the front of his jacket. “That’s ok,” Emma said and Killian got the distinct impression they weren’t talking about weird, hockey side bets anymore. “There’s still a lot of series left to play.” “That’s true.” “So you can totally beat up on Scarlet.” “Is it strange that you’re advocating me beating up on my own teammate, Swan?” Killian asked and he didn’t remember actually laying down. Or when Emma’s head landed on his shoulder, just appreciated that it was there and her hand hadn’t moved away from his shirt.

“Yeah, well,” she muttered. “I might be an over-competitive weirdo too.”

“Oh that’s absolutely true.”

Emma smacked at his shoulder and Killian tightened his grip around her waist, pulling her flush against his side and kissing the top of her head. And he didn’t remember when they started kissing each other either, just happy that they were, twisted around in hotel-supplied blankets before they’d even taken their shoes off.

He didn’t care about the story. He didn’t care about Neal. The only thing he’d ever really cared about was the game and, now, Emma Swan.

And there was a lot of series left to play.

[gffa]

I was going to try to do a Star Wars novels post this week, get back in the swing of things, but I can never stay away from STAR WARS fic for too long, there’s just too much that’s incredibly good! There’s so much that’s either just spot on to the characters or just hits the id or does something so clever that I’m enthralled (or does all three!) that is amazing and everyone should come scream about them with me! STAR WARS RECS: ✦ Cataclasm by dendral, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & waxer & cast, 45.6k wip    For reasons unknown to all but himself, Obi-Wan Kenobi has left the Jedi Order in the midst of the Clone Wars, taking with him a single clone. Anakin Skywalker has been unofficially tasked by the Order to find Obi-Wan and bring him home. Unfortunately for Anakin, it seems his former master is always ten steps ahead of him. ✦ Fountain of Force by esama, qui-gon & cast, final fantasy 7 crossover, 8.9k    In which Qui-Gon Jinn comes from Gaia. ✦ Shih by esama, obi-wan & anakin & qui-gon, time travel, 8k wip    Obi-Wan Kenobi has a vision of the future, and tries to change it while elsewhere Ben Kenobi dies. ✦ Equinox by lilyconrad, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, sith!obi-wan, 40.8k wip    During the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan and Anakin crash on a remote planet and take shelter in the ruins of a grand estate only to find they are not alone. ✦ At Your Service by DonkerRood, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, crossdressing, spanking, 1.9k    Anakin dresses up in a maid outfit and he and Obi-Wan have some fun. Just smut. ✦ untitled by stonefreeak, shaak ti & yoda & kit fisto & mace windu & cast, 1.3k    When Shaak Ti returned to Coruscant she had not expected anything remotely as dire as an explosion at the Senate—injuring several senators and staff, killing two, and leaving Master Kenobi in a critical condition—to happen. ✦ Respite by GirlwithCurls98, anakin & ahsoka & rex & cast, 4.9k    After a particularly grueling mission, Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano, and the 501st are sent to Kamino for some much needed medical care. ✦ Pursuit by Icse, obi-wan/anakin, mildly nsfw, modern au, 6.8k wip    Anakin Skywalker is a Grand Prix jumper transitioning into the Eventing world. While his scores are good during the cross-country and show jumping phases of Eventing, his dressage scores are abysmal. His sponsor sets him up as a working student for two-time Dressage Gold Medalist Ben Kenobi to help him pursue his dream of competing in the Olympics. ✦ Untitled part 1 + part 2 by glare-gryphon, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, a/b/o, 2.4k    Prompt: Anonymous asked: Hi are you still taking prompts at the moment? If yes how about Alpha Obiwan who when in rut tends to loose himself in his (very protective) instincts, while Omega!Anakin very much keeps his head and is very aware of what goes on around him but still willing to indulge Obiwan’s somewhat ridiculous alpha instincts ✦ On the Day After by victoria_p (musesfool), anakin & bail & breha, ~1k    Vader has many questions, and only one place to turn for answers. ✦ i’m just a kid of ill repute (and this skin i wear is my only suit) by SashaSea (SHCombatalade), obi-wan & anakin & padme & cast, kingsman fusion, 5.6k    “This is a disaster,” Anakin huffs out a near laugh, passing his remaining grenades to Obi-Wan. He accepts them with a grin and a few spare magazines for Anakin’s pistol, bumping their shoulders together. “This is fun.” ✦ Ain’t No Light Without the Dark by lumenbriide, obi-wan & anakin, 2.2k    “You should have joined me all those years ago, Kenobi.” Anakin overhears Dooku remind Obi-Wan about the temptation on Geonosis, and suddenly, Obi-Wan isn’t as infallible as he seems. He has secrets, just like Anakin; and their bond can only get stronger. ✦ Rewrought by esama, obi-wan & qui-gon & maul, time travel, 4.4k    Bit o time travel ✦ Faithless by esama, obi-wan, 2.5k    Obi-Wan loses his faith in Tatooine full details + recs under the cut!

✦ Cataclasm by dendral, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & waxer & cast, 45.6k wip    For reasons unknown to all but himself, Obi-Wan Kenobi has left the Jedi Order in the midst of the Clone Wars, taking with him a single clone. Anakin Skywalker has been unofficially tasked by the Order to find Obi-Wan and bring him home. Unfortunately for Anakin, it seems his former master is always ten steps ahead of him.    Chapter 10: This is an update rec and will focus on this chapter, rather than the fic as a whole. This is the end of the first arc of this fic and it’s a good place to leave off, including the previous chapter, as there’s been at least enough resolution to be a good stopping point, even though the major things are still in play. This is a chapter that’s about Ahsoka and her visions, how it starts to explore a bit of what it means to be a Jedi in contact with the Force, to have to struggle through being unsure if it’s your own anxiety that’s making you feel bad or if it’s a warning from the Force or some twisty, turny combination of both, and how they desperately need control over themselves to not spiral out, to not be consumed by all of this. The moments between Anakin and Ahsoka as he comforts her after a series of bad dreams, lightly touching on how Obi-Wan used to do the same for him, was really lovely and wonderful and worth the read alone! But also the really sweet moments with Yoda and Ahsoka!    I continue to love that this is a fic that’s spot on for the Jedi, if they’d ever managed to catch a fucking break or to have things brought to a head sooner, that they’re all struggling through this dark time, but they care very much and work so hard to do the best thing, and there are still moments of joy (Ahsoka and Yoda saying they’d ask Anakin to join them for meditation, which they’re surehe’ll love, I had such a smile on my face!) that it’s one of the best fics out there right now. ✦ Fountain of Force by esama, qui-gon & cast, final fantasy 7 crossover, 8.9k    In which Qui-Gon Jinn comes from Gaia.    I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked up this chapter to read (which stands on its own, it’s part of a collection of shorter fics, but they’re unconnected), but I was curious and I’ve always liked this author’s work. What I got was something that was half-world-building and half character piece, wrapped up in the setting of a crossover, all of which came together just exactly as it should. The two worlds blended very well together, the River of Light and the stone Qui-Gon picks up that’s Force-sensitive, the way everything on Gaia just bubbles over with the Living Force, the way this is used by Qui-Gon to gain a deeper understanding of himself, in a lovely and incredibly Jedi sort of way, is wonderfully done. This is a piece that I thought really captured his character, this felt like the character I recognized and was incredibly engaging! It’s not just about Gaia, it really is a piece centered on Qui-Gon Jinn as a character, about his life as a Jedi and the antics he gets into (the sense of this being an actual galaxy is very nicely done as well! I enjoyed the helium-breathing planet just as much as I enjoyed Gaia just as much as I enjoyed everything else), it’s about self-reflection and understanding his own flaws and working on them, just as much as he understands what he’s good at.    It helps to be familiar with FF7, especially to understand the connection of the rock that Qui-Gon picks up and what happens later, likely because of it, but you absolutely don’t need to know it to enjoy this fic, it can just be a cool background world for Qui-Gon to have come from while you read the characterization stuff! It’s one of those fics that I read and made me fall back in love with the potential of Star Wars, it’s one of those fics that I felt like it understood what a Jedi would actually go through and how they’re such good people and the kinds of things they struggle with, it’s one of those fics that made it genuinely interesting and engaging to read! It’s a great piece for someone who has trouble finding Qui-Gon fic that suits my feelings, but also it’s just a really good fic. ✦ Shih by esama, obi-wan & anakin & qui-gon, time travel, 8k wip    Obi-Wan Kenobi has a vision of the future, and tries to change it while elsewhere Ben Kenobi dies.    Oh, well. This fic is only two chapters at the time of this rec and already I’m So Very Sad about it, because it’s such a lovely, aching look at these characters and the impending doom hanging over them all, that Obi-Wan is plauged by unspecific but inescapable visions, that he knows something is going to go terribly wrong, but he doesn’t know what and trying to figure that out, trying to navigate between this sweet child in front of him versus the cloak of darkness that swirls around him, that visions don’t necessarily always come true versus that this one is one he knows is more important than that. I absolutely adored the scene where Obi-Wan goes to talk to moppet Anakin, the glimpse he gets into the child’s fears and uncertainty, the kindness that Obi-Wan naturally extends to him, it’s so true to his character, even as there’s a vague current of hurt and unease that Qui-Gon has so easily replaced him. But it’s not bitter, because that’s not who Obi-Wan Kenobi is, instead it finds just the right amount of sad versus knowing that he’s capable of walking forward to whatever comes next.    I would have read this fic just for that first chapter, the relationships Obi-Wan has with both of these people! But then the second chapter came along and, oh, Ben is so tired and worn down, there’s something so difficult about all the hard-won experience he’s gained, the balance between regret that he couldn’t do more, that it felt almost wasteful to stay on Tatooine, versus knowing that it was the right decision. That, when he realizes there’s a chance for change, it’s not a simple thing and that complicated tangle is so much more interesting than a straight-forward fix-it (much as I love love love fix-it fics, don’t get me wrong, I’m hoping for a fix it here, I’m hoping for good things, but I love that it’s not ever meant to be easy, if it were, then the original canon wouldn’t mean so much) and the conversation they have, the things that Ben understands because he’s seen so much more, are perfectly done. Because he’s right, it wasn’t just one thing or one person. And the ending of that chapter is the perfect hook to make sure I’m going to keep reading, because, damn, I’m definitely invested now! ✦ Equinox by lilyconrad, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, sith!obi-wan, 40.8k wip    During the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan and Anakin crash on a remote planet and take shelter in the ruins of a grand estate only to find they are not alone.    Chapter 8: This is an update rec and will focus on this chapter, rather than the fic as a whole. Also, there are likely to be spoilers beyond this point! One of the best things about this chapter is just how high the tension of it was, that the reveal wasn’t the end of it, but instead yet another racheting up point, that learning how the Sith versions were visions more than anything, the research that Obi-Wan had done (and I really enjoyed the difficulty with the translations and poetic language, it’s one of those little touches that really works for me) and how they both had to work to figure out what was going on in a way that felt spot on to them, that they would investigate and discuss things this way, but without feeling like the story had hit pause for the characters to become talking heads, which is something that can be hard to avoid. Instead, this felt like two characters who were genuinely on edge, little touches of Obi-Wan drumming his fingers on the datapad or the way Anakin curled up in the blankets add to this, that show what they’re feeling, rather than telling us. This adds to the creepy atmosphere of the house, whatever’s going on with the Force here, how run-down and dilapidated everything feels here in a very spooky way.    This is also the chapter where the Jedi versions, the real versions, first tumble into bed together beyond just a shard kiss or curling up together, and that made sense to me, because I really felt this sense of isolation with them, that they’re the only two people here in this house. When the Sith were there, sure, they were on edge and wary of them, couldn’t trust them, but at least someone else was there, but now there’s just nothing but them and whatever shadow is lurking around the corner and trying to sneak its way into them. This twines around the confession from the night before, Anakin learning to trust Obi-Wan just a little bit by telling him the truth, Obi-Wan helping to shoulder that burden with him, and so it’s pulling a whole lot of feelings and sexual tension to the surface, resulting in how they tumble together in a way they might not have in other circumstances, but makes sense for them in this moment. The connection is still real, it’s about what was already under the surface, even as it’s heightened!    I also really loved the smaller reveal in this chapter of what was happening with the beacon–the answer was the only one that made sense with what we already knew, but even having guessed it, it doesn’t detract from the creepy scene and the build-up of the tension when Obi-Wan was following Anakin, the way his whole demeanor was just weird and unsettling, like a shiver-inducing fugue state, until something seemed to be trying to dra him away into the dark, something that wasn’t just a physical presence, but was getting at his mind. And that’s far more creepy than just some physical monster that can be fought with a laser sword!    And then there’s the sex itself, ahhhhh. As much as I would have enjoyed penetrative sex, I think the handjob/blowjob combination probably works better here, because they’re just starting out, because it’s more about the desperate need for contact with the other person–especially Anakin, who is so afraid and feels whatever’s in the house so keenly, even more than Obi-Wan does. Not that the verbal comfort wasn’t lovely as well, I loved so very much that Obi-Wan was extra careful with his words because he knew how brittle and on edge Anakin was here, that Obi-Wan was so careful not to blame him for turning off the beacon, because that’s not what his concern was about. And that he’s hyperfocused on Anakin a way the situation warrants, so of course he makes even more effort than usual to make sure Anakin understands the lack of blame–another way where their interaction is heightened from normal, but in a way that’s pulling up what was already there underneath and makes sense for them.    But, okay, also Obi-Wan’s hand in Anakin’s hair, the visions of what their counterparts had done, what that says about what these two want, the darkness that looms in this place, even when these characters are both such good people, that this was about desire and want and heat and fear all rolled up together. It was the perfect balance between my affection for the way the (Soft) Sith versions are used in fic against how the Jedi are good and so valuable, that it’s about these characters as people and what they’ve been through and what they want, yessss.    All of that is true, there’s so much I love on a narrative level, on a more intellectual level, but then I whip right back around to: But Obi-Wan’s hand in Anakin’s hair. The way Anakin’s mind goes blissfully blank, the way he so desperately wants to belong to his Master, that desperate step forward that crashes right through his usual knee-jerk reactionary “I don’t belong to anyone!”, to show that if he choose to give himself to someone, chooses to let that person have power over him, then it’s different and comforting and so good. It’s about safety, it’s about being able to relax, because everything in his head isn’t dragging him down, that there’s someone there to take so much weight off him. But also I just really loved the image of Anakin all pliant and messy and sprawled out beneath his Master, cast in shadows, like he’s still very much a Jedi, but the imagery and potential thematic meaning in a house full of so much shadow is really, really lovely. ✦ At Your Service by DonkerRood, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, crossdressing, spanking, 1.9k    Anakin dresses up in a maid outfit and he and Obi-Wan have some fun. Just smut.    This was one of those fics that was just exactly what I needed when I picked it up, one of those that appeals right to my id and gives me the fun, light-hearted, smutty things I apparently enjoy a ridiculous amount. Anakin in a maid’s uniform, roleplaying with it and acting out to be bratty and so he’ll get Obi-Wan’s attention, who will spank him before fucking him, and it’s exactly what it says on the tin, if you go into this fic, you know exactly what you’re getting and you gotta roll with that. But it’s warm-hearted as well, it’s meant to be fun and joyful, that it’s about giving Anakin what he wants, satisfying something in him and making him feel so loved and content, that Anakin is so very gorgeous like this and Obi-Wan enjoys seeing him being able to whine for more, that Anakin gets to do that, that Obi-Wan gets to fuck the noise and restlessness right out of Anakin’s head. And by the time he’s finally pushing into Anakin, finally fucking him, it’s just nicely satisfying sex and exactly what I needed during shark week, bless and thank. ✦ untitled by stonefreeak, shaak ti & yoda & kit fisto & mace windu & cast, 1.3k    When Shaak Ti returned to Coruscant she had not expected anything remotely as dire as an explosion at the Senate—injuring several senators and staff, killing two, and leaving Master Kenobi in a critical condition—to happen.    This is part of the Supreme Chancellor Obi-Wan series and should be read in order by this point! And, ahhhh, this was such a lovely tide-over until the next piece, where it’s not really about resolution, but about the Jedi reacting to the explosion that happened recently, the chaos they’re trying to help tame, and one of their own being injured and what that means for young Skywalker. This is so spot on for them, how they work to remain calm in the face of such awful circumstances and they work so hard to do the best for everyone, to break the news as best they can, consider what’s the best thing for everyone in the situation. There’s such consideration of Anakin’s reactions, knowing how close he and Obi-Wan are, and it’s just so good and warm-hearted and kind a fic that I’m in love all over again. ✦ Respite by GirlwithCurls98, anakin & ahsoka & rex & cast, 4.9k    After a particularly grueling mission, Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano, and the 501st are sent to Kamino for some much needed medical care.    This was a cute little fic about Anakin and Ahsoka having pushed themselves so far that they need to rest, that they’re on the edge of physical collapse from how hard the Jedi are running themselves in this war. And there’s a lot of complicated feelings in here, especially Anakin who still doesn’t really understand the Jedi (so the line about the Code is unreliable, considering Anakin doesn’t really get it), but mostly it’s a healing fic, where Anakin cares so deeply about her, how his relationship with Obi-Wan helps him even when they’re not anywhere near each other at the moment, how the clones care so deeply about the Jedi and vice versa, how they Ahsoka and the clones help each other when they need this moment of respite. It was such a sweet fic in the middle of such a horrible war and I really enjoyed it a lot for that! ✦ Pursuit by Icse, obi-wan/anakin, mildly nsfw, modern au, 6.8k wip ��  Anakin Skywalker is a Grand Prix jumper transitioning into the Eventing world. While his scores are good during the cross-country and show jumping phases of Eventing, his dressage scores are abysmal. His sponsor sets him up as a working student for two-time Dressage Gold Medalist Ben Kenobi to help him pursue his dream of competing in the Olympics.    This is one of those fics that appeals directly to what I want sometimes when I’ve had enough of the heartbreak of canon and when fandom has gotten extra spirit crushing about things–where it’s a light-hearted, warm, embracing-the-fluff modern AU where Anakin is a horse jumper training for the next level, while Ben trains him and Anakin desperately, desperately wants to fall into bed with him. Where it’s all about Anakin being an adorable, soft disaster who does everything he can to get Ben’s attention, who is trying to stay away from doing anything with him because he feels its not proper. It’s just fun when you’re in the mood for something completely, ridiculously warm-hearted and cute and fluffy and with a little bit of smut mixed in. Which is exactly what I’m here for and I just sort of wrapped myself up in this like a warm, fuzzy blanket! ✦ Untitled part 1 + part 2 by glare-gryphon, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, a/b/o, 2.4k    Prompt: Anonymous asked: Hi are you still taking prompts at the moment? If yes how about Alpha Obiwan who when in rut tends to loose himself in his (very protective) instincts, while Omega!Anakin very much keeps his head and is very aware of what goes on around him but still willing to indulge Obiwan’s somewhat ridiculous alpha instincts    The first part is this cute, light-hearted, fluffy thing where Anakin has to put up with Obi-Wan’s rutting instincts and the nests he winds up making and it’s really adorable! And the second one is just ridiculously satisfying a/b/o porn, together the two of them are just an absolute delight to read! I am always here for Anakin in heat, just desperately wanting wanting wanting, wanting his Master to fill him up and fuck him and get this noise out of his head, I am always here for Obi-Wan who tries to be considerate and thoughtful, but it’s contrasted against the rutting instincts, where he just wants to flip Anakin onto his stomach and drive into him, wants to finally claim him and hold him and take care of him. And these two just hit me right where I live, they’re charismatic and, oh, the way Obi-Wan ground against Anakin’s backside, almost lost to this desire to push into him fast and hard, but holding back just enough to ease the way for Anakin, until he’s finally open and relaxed enough that Obi-Wan can properly fuck him, it’s sosatisfyingly delicious. I have a thing for Obi-Wan grinding back and forth, trying to hold himself back while Anakin writhes and tries to adjust, but they both want more, and this fic just delivered that so very well for me. ✦ On the Day After by victoria_p (musesfool), anakin & bail & breha, ~1k    Vader has many questions, and only one place to turn for answers.    This is a follow-up to On the Day Before, which should be read first! This was a lovely sequel piece to the previous one and it walks a fine line, because Vader isn’t someone who is kind or does good things anymore, but also I can believe that he could be inspired to follow Padme’s daughter, that there’s just enough of a spark of good and some misguided intentions, and it absolutely nails that Vader has never wanted power for himself, it’s always been about being someone else’s sword, someone he would do any amount of dark things to protect. And this fic walks that fine line very well, that Vader sees that he can’t just brute force strength his way through this, Leia would never be won over, but instead he has plans about her and, oh, it’s a disaster in the making and it’s spot on, this was so much fun to read! ✦ i’m just a kid of ill repute (and this skin i wear is my only suit) by SashaSea (SHCombatalade), obi-wan & anakin & padme & cast, kingsman fusion, 5.6k    “This is a disaster,” Anakin huffs out a near laugh, passing his remaining grenades to Obi-Wan. He accepts them with a grin and a few spare magazines for Anakin’s pistol, bumping their shoulders together. “This is fun.”    This was a fun fusion piece that just sailed right along and had the right kind of charisma and charm to keep me engaged the whole way through, there was just the right amount of sparkle and whatever-it-is that makes a fic fun to read! It’s fairly light-hearted and it’s centered on Anakin, as well as his relationships with Obi-Wan and Padme that are each complicated and each something more than friendship, something deeply rooted in him, if in different ways–and I really loved that with Padme it was more overtly romantic, but with Obi-Wan it felt more like he was woven into the fabric of Anakin’s life, both made for satisfying dynamics! I do think you should be familiar with the first Kingsman movie to read this one, but it’s definitely a delightful pick-me-up when you need something fun to read! ✦ Ain’t No Light Without the Dark by lumenbriide, obi-wan & anakin, 2.2k    “You should have joined me all those years ago, Kenobi.” Anakin overhears Dooku remind Obi-Wan about the temptation on Geonosis, and suddenly, Obi-Wan isn’t as infallible as he seems. He has secrets, just like Anakin; and their bond can only get stronger.    A lovely little story about Dooku trying to tempt Obi-Wan away from the Jedi and how it doesn’t really work, that’s not who Obi-Wan is at heart, and the conversation Obi-Wan has with Anakin afterwards and what that pulls to the surface between them. This is a story centered on Anakin’s complicated feelings and the relationship between these two characters, one that works towards giving them a little bit more understanding and showing the depth of care between them in an understated but entirely genuine way. It was a very nice read, one that engaged me from beginning to end and I’m very glad I picked up to read! ✦ Rewrought by esama, obi-wan & qui-gon & maul, time travel, 4.4k    Bit o time travel    This is one of those fics that’s the kind of thing I daydream about sometimes, what a time-traveling Obi-Wan Kenobi would do, had he a chance to do the Naboo invasion all over again, and written in an incredibly engaging, easy to imagine sort of way. It’s not precisely a happy fic, but it’s balanced between standing well on its own if this is all there ever is, it’s short glimpse into the canon being shifted to another track, or it could spiral out from here, if it was ever continued. I’m fine with either way, really, because what the point was focused on was the moments where Obi-Wan makes his move, where he springs his plans into actions, and seeing that through the eyes of people who have no idea what’s going on. The loss of Obi-Wan in their eyes, the grief Qui-Gon has to work through, the chaos that comes from the actions of the “Sith Lord” that escaped Naboo, it’s all super engaging and interesting and fascinatingto watch unfold! It’s beautifully characterized and written, it’s got great action and great emotional impact and so much potential that sets my thoughts spinning around it, which is exactly what I wanted from a quick time-travling oneshot! ✦ Faithless by esama, obi-wan, 2.5k    Obi-Wan loses his faith in Tatooine    Oh, this one definitely hurt to read, all the more so because Obi-Wan is sort of right about some things and sort of terribly wrong about others, but that’s kind of the point of his time on Tatooine, that he’s struggling through so much. It’s not ultimately where he’s meant to end up, because Obi-Wan is someone who comes back to his faith, but as a piece where he loses his way, it really worked for me, that this is one part of a bigger cycle that Obi-Wan goes through in his isolation. The writing is so sad and lovely, so self-reflective and you can feel the loss from the character without it being hammered home into the reader, there’s something almost understated here, except also there’s beautiful imagery–I’m not explaining this well, but it’s just a really well-done piece. It’s very much a piece about Obi-Wan being lost, even as he manages to continue to get up every day, some days harder than others, that he continues forward on this path he’s on, that it’s not just the loss of his family and culture, but a loss of faith and the slow, horrible feeling that instills in me, reading this. So sad, but lovely.

[aspire-to-the-light]

Executive momentum 3: Build up your home base

(Previous)

In my first term at Cambridge, I kept forgetting to lock my door whenever I left my room, and that made me kind of anxious because we had a known food thief in my student-dorm corridor. So I put a brightly coloured post-it note on the inside of my door, with “LOCK THE DOOR!” written on it. And then I didn’t forget any more.

I also kept being late to literally everything because I could never find my keys and card. I’d need to leave by 17:00 to arrive on time, so I’d throw some clothes on at 16:55, grab my water bottle, go to leave my room, and remember that I needed my key and card so that I could get back into the building. Then I’d spend half an hour searching for them and be half an hour late to the event. So I moved some furniture around so that there was a small table in the path between my bed and the door, with a brightly coloured orange box on top. Whenever I got home from something, I’d throw my keys and card into the orange box and then go flop into my bed. Then I didn’t lose them any more.

I used to constantly forget my meds, or be uncertain whether I’d taken my meds yet today, or remember some of my meds but not others. So I bought myself a pill organizer for £1, and left it on my bedside table so it’s the first thing I see in the morning. It’s always on my bedside table, so I don’t forget any of my meds.

I used to have a lot of trouble multitasking, because I’d be trying to read a book about a subject while also writing an essay about that subject, and I’d end up struggling with both because I didn’t have a large enough screen to comfortably look at both the essay and the book, or because I’d get caught in a loop of switching from one tab to the other and back and back again without realising that I should pick one tab and actually look at it. So then I got an extra monitor and set it up right next to where I work and now I work a lot more efficiently.

I used to really struggle with mornings because I’d have a bootstrapping problem - I’d need coffee to wake up, but be too sleepy to get out of bed and make myself coffee, so I’d lie in bed and scroll social media for the first few hours of my day. Then I just rearranged items in my room so my kettle was literally in reach of my bed.

Sometimes I get distracted from my work and stare into space. Then I covered literally every square inch of wall with random magazine cutouts, posters, and drawings. Then I didn’t stare into space nearly so much, because my eyes would always settle on something interesting that jerked me back into the real world.

One time I had a pretty serious envy problem, where I wasn’t taking advice from anyone more successful than me, because I was busy hating them for being more successful than me. I wrote a pithy line about how envy is unvirtuous, stuck it above my bed where I’d look at it every morning for a couple months, and came away with a much-less-serious envy problem.

Physical, localised coping methods build up and up and up over time, making you significantly better-off in the particular location where all your helpful objects are. If you have enough of them - calming pictures on your walls that help you with emotional management, a post-it note system on your fridge that reminds you when you need to buy more milk, an alarm clock on the other side of your room that makes you get out of bed to turn it off, a box to keep tempting distractions in that has “are you sure?” written on the lid - it ends up becoming impossible to keep track of them all, so you just take them for granted. You barely realise how much of them you’re using, until you take a weekend away and realise on Saturday evening that not only did you forget to lock your hotel room door, you left the key inside it too.

When you move, they’re very difficult to set back up again, because you aren’t always conscious of how many you have. You could try keeping a list of “stuff to remember to change in my environment whenever I’m in a new environment” every time you change something, but you make so many minor changes all the time - opening a window and adjusting the thermostat so the room temperature is just right, putting a lamp on the other side of a shelf so it doesn’t glare in your eyes too much, leaning your umbrella against the door so you won’t forget it. And many of the environmental supports aren’t even deliberate. Maybe you don’t realise how important it is that your desk faced away from your ceiling light until you move into a room where it doesn’t and you realise your pounding headache is because you’ve been staring directly at the light all day.

“Never leaving your room” is sort of shameful, and I used to feel vaguely like I “should get out” for reasons unknown to me but which must surely exist because people kept saying I should do it more. Now I think that’s silly. My room is very, very carefully engineered to be a perfect environment for me. Being in it directly makes me more powerful - I forget fewer things, I have free access to coffee and snacks-that-I-like, I have monitors and other gadgets set up to perfectly support the way I work, I can stay more focused and do more things and fix any problem that comes up with the array of problem-solving-tools available in my cupboards.

When I moved away from my hometown, I’d been doing judo for a solid decade. I passionately loved it, and it was really important to my mental health - exercise is very good for ADHD, being good at something consistently lifts my mood, and judo specifically was fantastic for my anger problems because I had a safe space in which to be as violent as I liked.

Then I spent a summer in Boston. I fully intended to do judo while I was there. It took me a week or two to get around to researching local judo clubs and figuring out which ones I could get to. There was one a 15 minute drive away, but I didn’t drive and I couldn’t always ask people to drive me, so I went once and decided I should look for other options. The other option was two hours of public transit into the city, and the public transit system was unfamiliar and scary and I was still regularly getting lost on it. So I kept meaning to go, but just for the first couple times I wanted someone to escort me and help me figure out the aversive public transit. The only person available to escort me was fairly averse about going to judo, so between their averse-to-judo “I’ll do it next week” and my averse-to-scary-new-dojo-that-wasn’t-like-my-old-dojo “I’ll do it next week”, I just kind of didn’t go. All summer.

Then I started at Cambridge, and for the first couple weeks while I settled in, I didn’t know where anything was or what I was supposed to be doing and I kept being distracted by freshers’ events, so I didn’t go. Then I got around to looking up when the judo sessions were, but I kept remembering about the sessions slightly too late - I’d suddenly remember at 19:30 that judo starts at 19:30, but then I’d realise that if I wanted to go then I’d need to shower and get my kit together and fill a water bottle and make it to the club, so I’d tell myself “next session”. After this happened a few times, I fixed this problem by putting a reminder in my calendar and keeping my judo kit ready by the door. So then I tried to go to judo, but couldn’t find the sports centre and got very lost and went home. I successfully went to judo once.

...and then it was time for winter break, so I left Cambridge again. And when I came back for the next term, the same pattern happened again.

In my first term at Cambridge I really struggled to meet my extraverty social needs, but then I realised the local EA society runs socials every Sunday, so I scheduled in “social” every single Sunday. This worked great for a term, and then I came back the next term and the same thing happened again - I was miserable for the first few weeks, then remembered to schedule in the EA socials, and went to a few, and then term ended. Things worked out for the final term of my first year, but when I came back for second year my routine was different, so I kept missing them again despite implementing a “schedule these things in advance for all the terms until you graduate” strategy.

It’s not just my room where I build up coping mechanisms. It’s my whole environment, my city, my routine. My room is my home base, where I build up gadgets and post-it notes and correctly-arranged furniture. My city is a larger-scale home base, where I can build up a social circle and a knowledge of public transit and a routine that fulfils my needs (attend this dojo on Tuesdays and Thursdays, go to this social thing on Sundays, walk in this park when you’re sad and need to calm down, visit this shop when you want to buy fudge).

Before I had a good model of how this worked, I massively underestimated the costs of travelling and moving and changing things.

When I did my first term in Cambridge, I knew that I was unutterably miserable because I wasn’t sure how to set up a new social network in a new place and I wasn’t getting my extravert needs met, so I just kind of blamed all of my dysfunction on my lack of extravert points. But I kept being dysfunctional even after I got enough social contact, and then I was very confused.

It wasn’t until several terms in that I noticed the pattern - I’d get to Cambridge and be completely dysfunctional. Then after two weeks or so, I’d have the bare minimum of stuff set up, and be capable of the real basics (feeding myself, getting to most appointments on time, having a sleep schedule that at least correlated with night/day). After roughly six weeks I’d be actually functional - writing essays, getting stuff done, going to the gym, having regular social commitments. And then the eight-week-long terms would end.

So many of my dysfunctions have incredibly simple workarounds. I forget things, so I put up a reminder post-it-note, and then I don’t forget them any more. I slightly rearrange my furniture, designate a box to put items-I-shouldn’t-forget in, schedule regular commitments, put my medications on my bedside table. I build up hundreds of these things. I suspect I had thousands as a seventeen-year-old, before I left my childhood home for university.

And then every time I move, I have to build them up from scratch again. So I go from being, at my best, a fairly impressive agent, to being a person who can barely manage to feed themselves. Because I’m in a new place and I don’t know where the food shops are, and I don’t have a post-it note on my fridge saying “remember to buy food”, and I struggle to leave the house because I can never find the keys that I need to get back into the building, and I keep meaning to figure out how the microwave in the kitchen works but I haven’t gotten around to it, and I forgot the alarms and reminders that help me keep my sleep schedule regular so I keep sleeping in so late the food shops are closed by the time I’m ready to leave the house, and at this point everything is subtly harder because I’m hungry...

I don’t think it’s important to have a single room be your home base. I functioned fairly well during my A-level studies, when I had two home bases - my form room (the classroom my form met in for registration) and my bedroom at home. I had a routine that told me when and how to move between the two. Probably lots of people have an office where they work and a home where they do other things,a and both are home bases in different ways - the office has the set up of monitors and mouses that perfectly supports their work style, the home has the post-its on the fridge saying to buy milk.

The important thing about the ‘home base’ is the routine, the collection of gadgets, the arrangement of objects in particular places, the reminders, the support systems, the social networks. It’s also knowledge - where stuff is, when regularly-scheduled events are, which shops to go to, how to use public transit in the area, what to avoid.

In general, since I realised the sheer vastness of the built-up collection of habits and reminders and arrangements and objects that makes me into a functional human, I’ve been consciously trying to build it up more deliberately and be more aware of it. For instance, I have a document now that lists everything I own under an ontology of where it belongs in my room and why, so when I unpack in a new place I automatically remember that pill organizer goes on the bedside table so that I remember it in the morning, lamp goes behind the desk so it doesn’t glare at my eyes, deodorant goes outside the bathroom so it’s convenient to grab after I shower, etc.

But I've also become much, much more certain that travelling or moving is really costly, and I should plan not to do it very often. It’s difficult to avoid as a student, who has to move in and out of Cambridge with the university terms, but I’ve been fairly drastic about restricting myself where I can - I skipped some fairly cool events in London this term because I thought it was much more important to stay here.

I know several people who travel a lot and have a policy of travelling light, with everything they care about fitting in a suitcase. I wonder if I’m missing a trick that would let me make my home-base portable. I also wonder if they’re missing a trick, if maybe they just don’t have a home base and they too would get a massive power boost from being in their home base if they had one.

(Next)

[inazuma-hpau]

Anonymous said to inazuma-hpau: Random question, how would the events of the series play out in this AU? The Football Frontiers and FFI could easily fit in, maybe even the intergalactic stuff in Go Galaxy, but what about the Aliea arc? The time traveling and the whole SSC-situation in Chrono Stone? How would those fit into the context? And would some of the characters differ from the original IE series?

When I created the Inazuma Eleven X Harry Potter AU I never intended for each important event to mirror each between the series. There are events that are inspired by a combination of IE events and HP events, but I’ve never intended for the AU to be Inazuma Eleven just placed into the Harry Potter world and to mimic the IE events with the context of them being the magical world instead.

Football Frontier Tournament

Football Frontier and Football Frontier International are quite straight forward. The Quidditch Cup held internally within Hogwarts between the four houses would be the equivalent of Football Frontier. A round robin between the four teams with six games for each house to face each other. Then two semi final games, one final game and one game to decide third and forth place.

Football Frontier International Tournament In Endou’s fourth year, an event called The Tournament of the Eleven Wizarding Schools would count as the equivalent of the Tri Wizard Tournament and the Football Frontier International. This tournament comes around every few years bringing together the eleven long-established and prestigious wizarding schools (registered with the International Confederation of Wizards) together to compete in quidditch and other scholastic competitons (Wizarding Schools Potions Championship, the Transfiguration Tournament and the Duelling Championship etc.). Hogwarts puts together their best quidditch team of players and best preforming students to compete in these competitions.

Aliea Academy Arc The events that happened through Aliea academy mixed with Zeus’ use of Aqua of the Gods has inspired an event in which a quidditch team use an alternative form of Felix Felicis (Liquid Luck) as a means to win quidditch tournaments.

Because Liquid Luck is incredibly difficult to brew, requires six months to make and is illegal in professional sports like quidditch, a shady group of individuals create a faster/ easier to make variation of liquid luck in the form of a stone using potions and alchemy as an alternative way to get past this ruling.

Like Felix Felicis, the stone called Ichor (Blood of the Gods/ Immortals), when worn by a user gives them extreme luck and feeds/ boosts their magical core/ abilities for a small amount of time. However, because as it’s highly addictive, toxic to the magical core when used for excessive amounts of time and because there are so many side effects that Ichor can give to the user (short tempers, anxiety, paranoia etc.), the shady organisation has taken advantage of using teams participating in the Tournament of the Eleven Wizarding Schools as guinea pigs before they plan to sell it to players in professional quidditch leagues.

Time Travel and Second Stage Children Time Travel and Second Stage Children I’ve already vaguely gone over in [this post] and [my Fei Rune headcanon]. Second stage children who have the natural ability of wandless and nonverbal magic and time travel using time turners with Fei being sent into the past to prevent the power of SSC being abused by those without magical abilities.

Intergalactic stuff in GO Galaxy Probably one of the few parts of the IE world I haven’t really tried to do anything with. Space within the Harry Potter canon hasn’t been discussed much besides the Space Chamber and other smaller instances. “There’s enough evidence to suggest that magical society has discussed the possibility of leaving Earth, but nothing to suggest that they actually have.” Besides Soul Forms as Animagus forms, I haven’t really taken much from the Go Galaxy arc. (Also because unlike the other seasons, I’ve only watched this arc once so far).

Fifth Sector + Regulation of Soccer/Quidditch Another arc I haven’t really decided to do anything with. I’d be more inclined to come up with something else other than an organisation deciding who wins and loses Quidditch matches. 

Would some of the characters differ from the original IE series? Depends on the headcanon really. 

Especially with this AU there is a large possibility that I’ll write two different headcanons for the same character but in different houses. While I’ve placed characters in the houses based on their general personality, a character’s backstory, motivations and how they act around certain characters does play a role in which house they’re placed in and can decide how similar or different they are. 

For example, while there are some characters like Fudou Akio and Kariya Masaki I’d always keep as Slytherin, but characters like Kidou Yuuto for example would act different if I had placed him in Gryffindor rather than Slytherin or vice versa.

Slytherin!Kidou Yuuto would have grown up to be a natural leader amongst the Slytherins especially with the Kidou family being among the top names of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Although his step-father would rarely show it, he would get nods of approval from him to show he was somewhat proud or appreciative of his efforts. His personality would probably start as he was pre-zeus loss and then transition into the personality he had when he transferred to Raimon as he grew older and more mature (but without having to swap houses). He’d be good friends with Sakuma and Fudou while still getting along with quidditch players from other houses (but probably not as close because Slytherin’s have their reputations).    Gryffindor!Kidou Yuuto would be known as a blood traitor (despite being a half-blood adopted into the Kidou family), he’d be a disgrace to the Kidou name as Kidous were ALWAYS sorted into Slytherin. By getting himself sorted into Gryffindor like his biological father, his step father would always look at him disappointedly and could potentially disown him. The Slytherins especially would hate him, the most of them believing him to be a traitor of the house he was meant to belong in. Sakuma and Fudou would probably have acted and treated him the same way as they were in Shin Teikoku Gakuen, but he’d be a lot closer to Endou and Gouenji if they too in Gryffindor. I’d see him also having to hide his struggles from his friends about the treatment he would receive from the rivalling house + his step father, but he’d feel slightly more free without the expectations about how he acts with people from other houses.