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theuniverseawakens347 · 6 months ago

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Alissa Chris Malcom willingly put shit on me when LEE TOLD U FEDERAL WAS HAPPENING

At Flora Lindsay Lainy Baylee brooke Caroline pinned things on basket to put on me when basel confronted Lee W THE ABSOLUTE FUCKING NONSENSE none of this made ..

Marcus after yesterday took it off of me and shake admitting perjury through Laing for willingly taking her nudes and meeting up fucking and drugging lainy .. per Lee request ( cause he’s BLACK dark skin)

Chris been knew that willingly took bait so we don’t care about him tried to put shit on Myron t dough as Correy c and Dre cause a jealous piece of shit of those dudes also they’re telepathic and he knows this ..but the weakest scared one of the crew ..and also a sociopath in the head a nigga w NO STREET CODE ETHICS OR MORALS WOULD SET ANYONE ONE UP AND GAS LIGHT THEN HOW ALEX GOT IN TROUBLE ..Chris being STOOPID make sense nigga u was always on some weird shit like Gregory at 54 .. Alex nurse for Chris on some dumb shit and Chris put that on Myron / Correy c t dough seen what happened .. why ya ass really ran to the south “for school” to partnas don’t like you niggas setting u up for they lick back imma help them get it.

Ian can confirm. District boyZ n Ian from a different plain / VERSES past life version of Tristan Ian and Harrell and t dough …Correy c is me .. Jo-Jo is me .. djuana .. guys I don’t really care about her BITXH tried to set me up so 🤷🏽‍♀️ ded

Anyways Alissa fat payout to get me to fuck my family / have a baby by someone NOT MY RIGHTFUL TWIN FLAME THIS LIFE AT HOWARD REQUEST .. u took the bate at Tyler poking holes in my condoms .. lmao this gotta be fucking fake …

THIS HOW YALL LETTING ME COME OUT AS ME?? YO THIS SOME WEAK ASS SHIT.

OBAMA U GOTTA BE FUCKING KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW LIKE BE SOOOOO FUCKING FRFR AINT NOOOO FUCKING WAY THIS REAL LIFE.

Yal weird case n point. I know what I need to know. YALL WEIRD.

I said I’m having two husbands on the blog Lee Howard for Lee tried to “get me pregnant” by one of yal outside of my rightful ones to JUST HOW EARGER LOOSE MORALS YAL ARE. ALL WHO PARTICIPATED CAST AWAY AT MALCOM WEIRDO UR 5 ..why tf would I want ur child or to sleep w u

Who tf flora said my parents snuck me a phone when they came to visit around their Hawaii / Delaware trip .. um 😕 guys be sooo fucking Dr then that makes u a shit support and Baylee a shitty ass liar but also like a shit person to care over kids lmao poor Scarlett .. it’s like u don’t want her .. why get pregnant by Basel miss doing drugs w Ashley in the house / sd OD Emily 🤯

LIVES ON REPEAT. ETERNAL DAMNNATION. 😈 on a different planet. Good luck fightING in the war soldiers. ALL OF CLARITY HOUSE EXCEPT CAILTIN CAUSE SHE ADMITTED / ALERTED BASEL AND DISNT DO THIS WEIRDO SHIT THANKS SISTR .. EMAN INFORNMANT. DEAD. FUCK THAT LYING AS NARCISCO BITCH KILLED HER OWN BROTHER AND TOLD NO one. Also SHE KNEW THE DAY SHE WALKED OUT SHE WAS FUCKED. CAUSE SHE WAS GOING TO SELL HER SOUL SHE DID. AND HER BROTHER GAVE HER THE VOICES FOR KILLING HIM AND NOT ADMITTING IT TO ANYONE .. oops revenge on everyone mom is DEATH. permanent. Okay sorry ramzi, I don’t care. Taylor psycho hate her death lied about psych ward to do drugs Baylee signed off on it Erin can ATest..eyes in the sky to the fuck shit

I gotta go about everyone in this??

Marcus death don’t care

Shake make right don’t care handle w Ian and Tristan

Harrell I like u battle it out w bay but he’s get baby

Yal niggas really fr? Rn ? This real life … where’s the “THIS A JOKE” sign cause no way ..

Ian death by perjury thru Lee Alissa Morris I’m just kidding 🤷🏽‍♀️ idk yal just tell me I’m just writing it at papa 👴🏻

Kk over the “proving I’m telepathic “ ITS NOT GOING NO WHERE Lee how u still think I’m lying but guilty of knowing I’m not lying about that

Yal gone tell me this was ONE BUG FAMILY GAME U WIN WE LET U FREE .. I just 🙂🖕🏽🤯

Yal doing this cause the amount of fucking drugs she put me on .. and fried my spleen n brains .. 🤷🏽‍♀️ a bitch be walking every day .. not retarted a little slow and HIGHLY FUCKING HIGHLY PISSED KIM PLAYING MICKY AND IM STILL IN THIS FUCKING CAR NIGGAS COULD HAVE GOTTEN ME A FUCKING HOTEL YAL SOME CHEAP BAGS OF DICKS.

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calvins-dad · 4 years ago

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At the risk of being involved in Taylor Swift discourse, no body no crime is such a let down. Taylor was partnering with HAIM! We could have had a Goodbye, Earl style banger! Or if she wanted it a little less upbeat it could have been more like Two Black Cadillacs! But instead she killed off her friend and made a song without any swing to it. Country music has given us so many bangers about killing scumbag men, and no body no crime just does not compare

#Carrie Underwood puts out bop after bop about killing scumbag men!!!#blown away!#church bells!#two black cadillacs!#miranda lambert gave us gunpowder and lead!#taylor seems to be moving back to more country roots and this was her time to shine #anyways i was not very impressed with evermore as a whole but this song specifically bothers me #why would you kill off sd? it makes no sense #anyways i hesitate to tag this with anything taylor swift related bc i really don't want to argue about it #no body no crime #mine

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sullina · 3 years ago

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I had a random Meliodas dialogue:

“WHY WOULD I WANT TO RELEASE THE DEMONS!? IM THE ONE WHO HELPED PUT THEM IN THERE!!!”

Do with it what you will

so this is gonna be mostly crack, and also so fucking much, jesus christ. Welp, enjoy^^

AU where Meliodas is actually evil in a sense and wanted the DKs throne for himself bc the DK is shitty and also power. He really just wanted to kick the DKs ass and then Ludociels ass for obvious reasons.

In this AU, Elizabeth is also evil in a sense, knowing of her mothers brainwashing and manipulation of the entire goddess race. She also wants her mothers throne for power, to stop the endless fighing that she was, quite frankly, getting tired of. And also lowkey to kick Ludos ass.

The two form an alliance and a promise, to help each other reach their goal. In the end, they do both want to end the war, because of the bloodshed and also bc it's getting boring. It's always the same.

The fact that Meliodas is cursed with eternal life comes awfully convenent to Mel, bc he can train to his hearts content while also working on a solution to break the curse on Elizabeth. Eternal reincarnation isn't exactly great for gathering power to kill gods.

How Mel and Eli come together with Mel ending up switching sides, is basically one going "why are even fighting, this war has literally no purpose" and the other going "word" and boom, friendship. Eli has the idea that they could beat the DKs ass much quicker if Mel came to Stigma, to which he agrees. The other way around doesn't really work because no demon would ever trust a goddess. The other races don't trust Mel either for the most part, excluding Drole, Glox and Rou, but Ludo is such an ass that he will still take Mel and the strength that comes with him. Mel and Eli really gotta restrain themselves from ripping Ludo to shreds on a daily basis.

The fight where Mel and Eli die the first time is their first attempt at killing the DK and SD. It goes horribly of course, and this one follows canon.

Three thousand years later, Meliodas is Danafors great holy knight, and he reads up on curses, seals and demonic spells. With all possible teachers gone, and him not really having an affinity for magic (and not wanting to ask Merlin), he's trying to teach himself via books. Someone notes the large collection of demon-themed books and accuses him of being a demon worshipper. Cue a frustrated and angry Mel and your dialogue: “WHY WOULD I WANT TO RELEASE THE DEMONS!? IM THE ONE WHO HELPED PUT THEM IN THERE!!!” Which comes to a shock to everyone. The words spread, but are reduced to rumors. After all, their kind-hearted great holy knight who is definitely not over 3000 years old couldn't possibly have done such a thing, right?

Anyway, the great tragedy happens, but Meliodas has enough of a mind to finish Fraudrin off. He gathers the pieces for the coffin of eternal darkness and hides them away all over Britannia, to make that A) no one finds them before him and B) should the time for peace come, he can release the demons himself. Most of them were still just pawns of the DKs and SDs sick game, and they deserved to live their lives. Plus, he still misses Zeldris, who was also sealed. He's aware that the DK is in purgatory though.

Mel grieves the death of his friend, Elizabeth, who had grown dear to him over the years and takes her reincarnation to Liones. It was the closest kingdom where he could take care of her. Once in Liones, Meliodas begins amassing books of demons anew, since he couldn't salvage any of them from Danafor, sadly. Zaratras, as well as other close to Meliodas, note the growing collection. They don't accuse him of being a demon worshipper though, so Mel can talk himself out of it by it just being curiosity. Zaratras is still suspicious.

Mel regularly sneaks away to practice the demonic spells. He struggles with some of them, because he has to get them just right if her wants to have any hope of actually going against his father. Zaratras knows he sneaks away, but lets him be since he doesn't want to intrude on a teenagers privacy and possibly loose his trust.

Instead, it's Hendrickson and Dreyfus who follow Mel, who both got curious about demons themselves. After all, what isn't fascinating about a race long gone? It really is just curiousity, no ulterior motives or anything. Shortly after, the corpse of the red demon in the burnt down fairy kings forest is discovered. Hendi and Dreyfus see the effects of ingesting its remains and figure "well shit, sweet little Mel has ingested demon blood". From then on, they're onto him like hawks. Mel is part demon himself now (is what they think) and they want to know how that affects his behaviour. Mel knows they're watching him, but has no idea why. Zaratras is none the wiser about anything, and Hendi and Dreyfus can't just tell Zara bc they have no proof. Plus, Zara has taken a liking to the blonde, which makes it even harder to accuse him of something as outrageous as having ingested demon blood.

Eli is still attached to Mel, who, against Baltras wishes, actually trains her in combat! Enough to hold her own at least. He trains her together with Gil, who also absolutely admires him.

Also, Mel gets a room in the castle, so he can stay near Elizabeth as her personal protector. Zaratras keeps trying to adopt Mel, but all attempts fail because Mel is so preoccupied and even obsessed with killing the DK. No one knows exactly what he's obsessed with, but it's clear that there's something. Mel often neglects to eat when he's reading or trying to wrap his head around a spell, so it's often up to Zaratras or Baltra to tear him away and get some food in him, which more often than not, Mel views as a waste of time. Besides, he hunts a great deal when he sneaks away to practice his magic and to get some food that's adequate for him, which is mainly raw meat.

#nnt #meliodas #zaratras #hendrickson #hendi #dreyfus #zara tries to be such a good dad #but Mel is too much into murder #you know that one meme from the addams family?#'Mel is at that age where he only has one thing on his mind' 'Girls?' 'Regicide'

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demonprincezeldris · 2 years ago

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I haven't seen anyone mention this yet, but I see everyone in the asks calling Eli "Bloodie Eli" and while I'm unsure which one is the correct one, in my memory and on the wiki, it says her nickname/title was actually "Bloodstained Ellie".

And also, I personally have a few theories as to how and/or why she got to have that name/title:

Propaganda: Basically, Eli killed demons in self-defense as a last resort in order to not get killed herself and that was exaggerated OR she 'only' incapacitated them (wounded them enough to get away), some other goddesses finished them off, and when more demons came to support the team already there, a rumor was spread that it was Elizabeth who killed them, even though she didn't. This could happen due to a barely surviving demons last words, or the goddesses that actually killed the demons said this. Why would they credit Elizabeth instead of taking the credit themselves? Who knows, possibly because Elizabeths efforts of getting the fighting to stop were actually working with demons starting to trust her. Spreading the rumor that Elizabeth was only pretending to be nice only to kill the demons later would shatter the result of her efforts. It's likely that the goddesses were extra brutal to get the name "Bloodie Ellie" to stick. It could also be a mix of both possibilities.

A theory I've seen discussed is that Elizabeth really was a brutal killer/soldier, not unlike Meliodas used to be, but turned away from that path to advocate for peace. The nickname simply stuck from back then. Considering that she's the SDs daughter but doesn't have a military rank herself the way Meliodas does, this makes sense, but maybe not necessarily as a reason for the nickname. If you remember Ludociel saying "She (Elizabeth) can't do much anyway", it also implies that she wasn't exactly popular with many Stigma members. Most likely because she was against killing the demon clan, but her stepping away from the goddess army to operate on her own, basically "abandoning the fight" if you twist it a little (which Ludociel absolutely would), could also add to that.

This one has to do with what I pointed out in the beginning, that Elis nickname was "Bloodstained Ellie" and NOT "Bloodie Ellie" (both have "blood" in them, but there is a distinction). We know that Eli had that nickname even though she was a healer, but let's twist it: what if she got that name not despite her more healer nature, but because of it? (I'll explain, just listen for a sec) We know she didn't make a distinction when she healed, she healed enemy and ally alike. Fact: she healed enemies. Those enemies would go on to keep fighting in the war, because just because she healed them doesn't mean they're willing to abandon it. I'm 100% certain that just like the goddesses spreading propaganda about demons, the demons/demon king likewise spread propaganda about the goddesses. My reason for believing this is because the demons and goddesses were less shown to be complete opposites, but rather two sides of the same coin, plus as far as I know, the whole point of propaganda is to give people an incentive to fight against certain group(s). Back to my point though. Ellie heals enemies -> enemies kill allies (goddesses, fairies, humans, giants) -> the blood of Elis allies is on her hands, staining them with their blood. And yeah, there's the point of "but Eli didn't kill them herself!", but the other point is if Eli hadn't healed the enemies, they wouldn't have killed the allies. Grieving relatives and friends of the killed allies probably care more about the second point than the first one. This also plays right into Ludociels hands, because what we know for a certain fact is that he disliked her for being against killing the demon clan. So while there may have been rumors flying around of Elizabeth healing demons, very few actually knew that. Anyone whose family was killed in the war by demons probably only knew that, well, demons killed their family. They don't necessarily know if Elizabeth healed them sometime before that or not. But when Ludociel, the representative of the Supreme Deity, explains that Elizabeth could've prevented many deaths by just not healing demons, but didn't? Yeah, that's a very strong smear campaign right there. And Elizabeth can't exactly say "no i didn't" because 1) it's true, 2) pretty sure she's against lying? and 3) how is she gonna argue against someone of Ludociels standing who is actually telling the truth? Plus, she might not have been given the chance to explain herself at all. All she's gonna get from any human, fairy, giant and goddess is "if it weren't for you, my family would still be alive. Their blood is on your hands!" To anyone looking in from the outside, it's obvious that Elizabeth didn't kill anyone herself, but by healing the enemy, she basically stood by and enabled them to kill her allies.

In my opinion, the third one makes the most sense with Eli having the nickname "Bloodstained Ellie" despite being a healer rather than a fighter.

On an ending note, I also wanna say that this is just my personal opinion and I'm not trying to create some kind of serious discourse. I mostly just wanted to add my two cents to the discussion, but I do also like the healer liz au that's going on^^

No worries!

Thank you for the theories! I think that they're very interesting to read and muse over. Some of these ideas very well could have happened ( personally love the idea that it was propoganda.) Maybe Ludociel saw it from afar or one of the Archangels, maybe even Mael, and nicknamed her Bloodstained Ellie after seeing the blood on her body and the dead Demons around her after she fought in self defense.

For me, if Nakaba actually showed why her name was Bloodstained Ellie if she really was a fighter, then I would definitely be more leniant. But the fact that we never really get to see why she's called Bloodstained Ellie, and are left guessing the answer just makes it seem like a name thrown on her to make her seem dangerous by Nakaba.

To me it seems that way at least.

Like Meliodas was feared by the Goddess Clan, I think Estarossa said so. And we got glimpses of his fighting (in the false memories AND the scene with King and Diane in Drole and Glox's bodies). He has evidence to really back up the claims that Estarossa said. And same with the Archangels. I think that it was stated that Ludo is more powerful then the Ten Commandments. And we get to actually SEE that power in action.

But again, I love your theories on why she's named Bloodstained Ellie or Bloody Elizabeth (I think they're used interchangable- I remember in the movie it was Bloodie Ellie).

#Elizabeth nnt

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marvelslut16 · 4 years ago

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I trust you

Prompt number: 31 “I trust you”

Fandom: Marvel

Paring: Bucky Barnes x reader

Part two to Trust me for once.

Rating: T

Word count: 2.2k

Warnings: Swearing. Mentions blood, violence, and death. A lil angst.

A/N: I just want to write for Bucky for the rest of fictober, someone stop me please. I don’t know why I love this fic so much, but I do. Maybe it’s my lack of sleep messing with me lmao. I passed 500 followers and I can’t possibly begin to explain how much that means to me and how much I love each and every one of you! When I started my Tumblr last year to write some shitty self indulgent fanfics I never thought anyone would ever read them. I never imagined having 500 people following my shitty blog.

In the week and a half since Hydra had captured you, Bucky has been spiraling. When he got to the quinjet and turned to look for you, his heart fell into the pit of his stomach when he couldn’t find you. Everything you had said to him in the warehouse started to make more sense, you phrashed things a specific way; ‘so long as it gets you out of here safely.’ He knew you weren’t coming, but he still made Steve keep the quinjet there and wait until it was almost too late and the team was under attack again.

Back at the compound Bucky spends all of his time in his room or down in the gym punching- and breaking- one of the many punching bags, throwing his knives at targets, and working on his shooting. He isn’t sleeping and he isn’t eating, he won’t even talk to Steve when the super soldier tries to get him to talk- whether it be about what happened in the warehouse or anything in general.

Steve, Sam, and Tony are exhausting every resource they have to find you, Hydra had moved you to another location as soon as the quinjet was out of sight of the base. On the rare occasion Bucky isn’t in the gym or his room, he's hovering over the shoulders of the three men hoping he’ll see something they missed. He doesn’t, and only succeeds in annoying aforementioned men with his brooding stares and silence.

Bucky has nightmares on a daily basis again, something that his time in Wakanda with Shuri and T’Challa had gotten rid of. The only difference this time is he doesn’t see himself. He sees everything he went through, all the tourture he endured and the innocent bloodshed, but instead of him you’re in his shoes. He watches you get your brain turned into mush in the damn chair. He watches you forgetting everyone- forgetting him- and then going after the Avengers because you don’t know any better. He can never wake up from the nightmares, he’s stuck in them until he watches you die or you kill him.

Twelve days after you’re taken, Bucky's down in the gym, sitting on a chair because the memories of you in the warehouse are consuming him. You saying that he hates you and to just trust you for once are playing on repeat. How could you think he doesn't trust you?

“I trust you!” he screams into the empty gym, wishing he’d told you so in the warehouse, hurling the knife that was resting in his hand into the wall across from him. He goes to run his hands through his long strands of hair, forgetting he had cut most of it off, something you would refer to as pulling a Britney. He has no idea what that even means, but you say it everytime you or Nat impulsively cut your hair super short. Instead he pushes the palms of his hands into his eyes, trying to push the memories away. “I could never hate you.”

Steve enters the gym quietly, observing his best friend for a few minutes. He’s never seen him this bad before, not even when he was consumed by guilt when he realized all of the innocent lives that were lost by his hands. Steve was aware that Bucky has had feelings for you since he saw you, immediately becoming infatuated with your beauty. His feelings continued to grow when he learned your humor, sarcasm, intelligence, and saw your skill in battle. Steve knew Bucky was intimidated and nervous, not as skilled with the women like he was seventy years ago and that’s why he didn’t talk to you, but Steve never realized that Bucky cared this much.

“Hey Buck,�� Steve finally speaks, causing Bucky to stand up and pretend he wasn’t just having a breakdown. “We’ve got something.”

Bucky doesn’t verbally respond, instead he brushes past Steve and walks out of the gym. Steve quickly leads the way to the lab, filling Bucky in on the new development. Hydra is streaming a live feed of you chained to a chair right to every computer and television screen in the compound. When the two get to the lab, packed with the rest of the Avengers huddling around the same screen, Bucky see’s you for the first time in twelve days. The first time you aren’t a figment of his imagination. You’re bruised and bloody: split lip with dried blood on your chin; dried blood on your forehead from where you must have wiped the blood from the cut on your eyebrow so it didn’t drip into your eyes before you were chained to the chair; you’re left eye black, blue, and bruised; your skin has a yellow hue and your cheeks are hollow from malnutrition.

Bucky wants to scream, he wants to put a fist through a wall, and he wants to kill whoever laid a hand on you. The Avengers watch quietly as he squeezes through the gaps in the group's huddle so he can be by the screen. By you. You aren’t staring at the camera, instead staring straight in front of you, where he imagines Hydra agents are standing.

“You don’t want another Winter Soldier,” your voice is the exact opposite of your appearance, it’s still so strong and determined. “You want the Winter Soldier. You wanted us to intercept the messages and show up at the base, it was an ambush.”

“Very good, Ms. (Y/L/N),” a man speaks off screen, he has a thick Russian accent, but Bucky doesn’t recognize it. “The only problem was that you seemed to figure it out that day, and ruined our plans.”

“Oops?” your sarcasm garners another slap, the ring on the man's hand causing a gash on your cheekbone. “It’s been what, over a week? How long are you gonna keep me?”

“Until Soldat switches places with you,” you let out a loud bark of a laugh that echoes off the walls in the small room.

“Bucky, your Soldat, he won’t sacrifice himself for me,” you laugh at the man interrogating you.

“We learned of his affections for you-” you cut him off with another laugh.

“You need to fire whoever told you that,” you can’t stop laughing at the absurdity that came out of the Hydra agents mouth. And you don’t care if he becomes angry and annoyed with you, you’re gonna get killed no matter what. Your eyes quickly flick to the camera set up on your left, the one the Hydra agents thought you hadn’t seen, before continuing knowing the Avengers had to be seeing all of this. “The only affection Bucky has for me is hatred. He hates me, there’s no way he’d switch places for little old me. You should have captured literally anyone else if you wanted him to be upset. He can’t stand me! We can’t even hold a simple conversation, and he always leaves the room when I’m in it. We were only paired up on this mission because of a fluke accident. Face it, you fucked up. I’m worthless to your Soldat.”

“That’s not true!” Bucky feels like he’s yelling it at the screen, but his protest is only a whisper. The rest of the team watches him with sad eyes, he’s looking at you so longingly. Trying to will you to understand how he feels about you through the screen. As if on cue, you glance at the camera again, giving it a sd smile, accepting your fate. A loud ping comes from one of the computers in the lab, but Bucky keeps eye contact with you, even though he knows you can’t see. He doesn’t realize he’s doing it until his flesh hand is pressed against the television.

“We’ve got a location!” Tony yells, already calling for his suit.

“Then you’re worthless to me!” the hydra agent growls, stopping the team in their tracks who were on their way to change.

“No,” Bucky pleads, when he hears the safety of a gun clicking off.

“Any last words for your precious Avengers?” the man asks you, gesturing to the camera, he hadn’t noticed you’d already seen it.

“I’d say tell my family I love them,” you’re openly talking to the camera now. “But I don’t have any. So thank you for being the family I never had, and the family I always wanted. I love every single one of you.”

A tear slips from your non swollen eye, a matching one rolling down Bucky’s cheek. The screen goes black, a gun goes off, and then the feed cuts completely. “No!” he screams, going to punch a hole in the television, but his fist goes right through due to it being Stark technology.

“Where are you going?” Steve calls as Bucky heads to exit to the lab, no one else moving, too shocked to register everything that just happened.

“Let’s go kill those bastards,” is his gruff response, heading towards the hanger with the Quinjet since he’s already dressed in his tactical gear from his time in the gym.

Steve and Tony are the first ones dressed and ready to go, but the latter hangs back so Steve can talk to his best friend privately. Steve doesn’t say anything when he sits beside the brunette, he doesn’t know where to begin.

“(Y/N) died thinking I hated her Stevie,” Bucky’s voice breaks. “I kept my distance cause I didn’t want to hurt her. And then I saw her with Sam and I was jealous so I started to ignore her more. I pushed her away because I was scared and jealous. And now she’ll never know that I love her.”

A shot rings through the small room you’re stuck in, the bullet lodging into the wall beside your head. You glance at the camera, finding the red light off. Your team, your family thinks you're dead. That was his damn plan, he knows they’ll come to avenge you.

“Sit tight,” he smirks, the barrel of his gun coming into contact with your skull, effectively knocking you out.

Your head is heavy and pounding in pain when you finally come to. Outside the door you can hear screams and guns going off at rapid speed. You cringe away from the sound when someone uses their body to break open the door to your room. The sound of familiar footsteps clomping towards you causes you to perk up, it’s Bucky. You can’t open your eyes or even move your head towards the sound to alert him that you’re okay, but you hear a whispered “thank god,” when he hears your steady heartbeat. From the crunching sound you can tell Bucky used his vibranium hand to crush the handcuffs keeping you attached to the chair.

He picks you up bridal style, holding you close to his warm chest. You involuntarily cuddle into the warmth, causing Bucky to smile lovingly down at you. “I’ve got you now,” he whispers, hand caressing your cheek, careful not to put pressure on your many cuts.

When you wake up again, you're in the familiar sterile medbay at the compound. A heavy weight is on your hand, looking over you notice it’s Bucky's hands clutching yours, his head tipped back on the seat he’s in.

“He hasn’t left your side,” Sam smirks at the scene from the doorway, holding a falcon stuffed animal. You playfully roll your eyes at the gift, but reach for it with your free hand. Bucky starts to stir, so Sam gives you a kiss on the forehead and heads for the door again. “Tinman’s whipped.”

The first thing you notice when you glance at Bucky again is his hair. He cut it all off when you were gone. As much as you loved his luscious locks and thought he was hot with them, he’s undeniably sexy with the short hairstyle. “You cut your hair,” Bucky immediately wakes up the rest of the way at your voice, ocean blue eyes staring into yours. “It looks good on you.”

“You could have died,” his voice exasperated. “And the first thing you mention is my hair. I’ve been worried sick, (Y/N)!”

“I was fine,” you roll your eyes, trying not to think of just how close to death you came. “I’m fine now.”

“Next mission I get to call the shots,” he grumbles. “I’m not having the woman I love almost die for me again.”

“I love you too Buck,” you ignore the fact that he didn’t mean for you to hear his confession. “Why else would I be willing to die for you?”

He shoots out of his seat, eyes wide as he stares down at you. You push up to a sitting position, moving to the side of the bed, motioning for Bucky to lay beside you. He seems to debate with himself about whether he should or not, before finally laying down and gently pulling you into his arms. You crane your neck up to look into his eyes, he leans down and your lips meet timidly at first. It quickly turns into a slow loving kiss, the two of you wanting to prolong for as long as you can. You reach a hand up, caressing his face before slipping it through his now short locks.

Permanent tags: @crimson-knuckled-queen @rexorangecouny @mrs-malfoy-always

#bucky barnes x reader #fictober20 #day 13 of fictober #bucky barnes #james barnes #james buchanan barnes #james bucky barnes #james buchanan bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky x y/n #bucky x you #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes imagine #marvel #marvel imagine #marvel x reader #marvel fanfiction

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phoenixyfriend · 4 years ago

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A Smattering of Ideas for a Neji Time-Travel Fic

[EDIT: okay so viewing the post on dash or sidebar blog completely ruins the bullet nesting for some reason. Please open it in a new tab.]

Okay so I actually wrote the first chapter or two of this like... almost a decade ago probably, but the concept was:

Neji, upon dying, gets sent back, and he's perfectly healthy again, pretty much exactly as he was just before getting mokuton-stabbed... except the seal damage wasn't reversed, so he's blind.

I think he ended up like riiiiiight before the Hyuuga Incident, so about of age with Kakashi & co.

But yeah like imagine telling Hiashi about it.

We have a new Jounin! It's a blind Hyuuga.

His seal is gone! He's technically your nephew.

He needs to be retrained for blindness! He needs to be protected for the information he carries.

He's a time-traveler!

Have fun.

The Hyuuga clan has like a million things going on but future Neji is just finding his younger self and Hinata to cuddle them.

He can't see shit but he Needs To Hug Baby Hinata

She's so small? She needs to be protected?

"Sir, you're blind now." "If Lee can be a ninja without chakra, I can be a ninja without eyes." "Sir. Sir that's--that's not the same thing, you can't--SIR." "I'll ask Hatake for advice." "He's still got half of his--SIR!"

Neji is a genius, if there's anyone who can pivot their entire fighting style from "I can see everything" to "I don't need to see anything" it's someone like him. Especially with the "I need to protect all these smols and be strong enough to force people to take my advice seriously if necessary" motivation

BUT But But for the first few days, it's just like. Sir. I understand you want to protect this small child, but you walked into three walls in the past hour. Please st--sir.

Fun option is "Neji spills all the beans... to Hiashi, not the Hokage."

Hiashi: Okay so like. Give me a few days to come up with a cover story for your existence. Neji: That's fair. Hiashi: Do. Do you want me to send in Hizashi or...? Neji: I'll tell him the truth if you do. Hiashi: That's, uh... that's fine. Neji: Then yes. Please. Hiashi, thoroughly unnerved for a variety of reasons: Right. I'll go do that.

Relevant: "Stop trying to convince me to put the Caged Bird Seal on a man who is already blind."

Since that's the ostensible reasoning of the seal, and like. You can't make that argument about keeping the eyes safe when the eyes don't... work.

Courtesy of @firebirdeternal, along with a bunch of other stuff but especially this:

ooooh feels moment: Neji starts his retraining to become Strong Enough without his eyesight, guess who sees him working his ass off to overcome a disadvantage and thinks "Oh, there's a person I should Be Friends With!"

Part of me just went "Gai gets injured on a mission and, while waiting out his medical leave, gets assigned to Neji as a guide/sparring partner"

Or, well, not assigned. He's just doing one-armed pushups in the training yard with a cast on half his limbs after breaking out of the hospital and zeros in on Neji like "Ah yes, medically inadvisable training, a Bonding Activity!"

Neji goes from "I can see everything" to "I can't see shit but if you're within arms reach you're fucked"

A lot of it comes down to Neji building up non-Byakugan sensing abilities, I think?

It won't help him read, but it'll sure help him avoid getting punched.

I think that's really the crux of his New Style, however he works it out, instead of having this Massive Range of perfect perception he just trains his other senses until he still has that perfect perception effectively, just in like a two foot radius around his person

and then he goes full Rock Lee and trains speed and reaction time until that two feet is enough

I want Daredevil-style bitchiness at some point, in the "Okay, I'm sure the contract is lovely, but do you have it in braille, perhaps?" sense

And Toph-style stuff

Genma, in the Jounin lounge: "Hey guys I think I've got a design finished for the new tattoo I'm gonna get, what do ya'll think?" 'holds up scroll' Kakashi: "Why would you get a tattoo of an ugly couch?" Genma: "It's not an ugly couch it's the Hokage Monument!" Neji: "It looks perfect to me" Genma: "Thank you! I worked really hard on-..... why do you feel the need to do these things."

Also I want Neji to have the same approach as Matt to a cane. He can make do without it, but it sure does make his life easier when he's off-duty.

Like, yes if he focuses his entire, highly trained person, on perceiving his surroundings, he can sense his way around. But that is very tiring

Like that is a lot of work to be doing, when you are just trying to get to the coffee shop for a bagel

Neji learns Sage Mode solely because he wants to be able to tree-hop again

Neji visits Kakashi like "I can't ask the Inuzuka for this because their dogs are clan-specific, but do you know where I can find a guide dog that can double as a ninken in the field?"

Neji asking Gai to help him pick out a feminine yukata because if ANYONE is going to not judge...

Listen I'm just really invested in what Naruto SD told us about how often Neji cross-dresses

Someone asked me which summons Neji learns Sage Mode from, and

I mean, Hashirama supposedly just. Learned it? Without summons?

So maybe Neji does that and just learns from Jiraiya or something

Though it's not... particularly safe.

Birdie had the best response

learning it Without a Summon is very much in the vein of Neji's past attitudes towards Special Secret Techniques, given that he learned the Kaiten with no help even though it was a Secret Technique of the Hyuuga.

"I know it's possible to do, so the hard part is already over, the rest is just figuring it out and doing it"

Neji: I'm here, I'm queer, I'm blind as fuck.

Neji hanging out with Gai and Kakashi is, admittedly, not that different from hanging out with Lee and TenTen

Kakashi is a bit more likely to join in on the shenanigans than Tenten was, but he's still just as available for "We're judging you" sessions

Neji, sipping tea as Gai yells: this is my comfort zone.

Neji with a white cane: This is my whacking stick. Hiashi: Don't you mean walking stick? Neji: No.

Because... what ninja wouldn't ensure that any normal part of their daily life was fit for battle.

Like if Karin can hide lockpicks in a photo and a knife in her glasses, Neji can ensure his white cane is suitable for battle.

(Going off the earlier Daredevil comparisons, I’d say this is similar to Matt turning his cane into billy clubs sometimes.)

Neji, assuming the role of Chief Babysitter for SmolNeji and Hinata, senses Lee and Tenten at the park. Nudges SmolNeji: "Go, be friends with them"

SmolNeji, watching Lee faceplant into the dirt while trying to jump off the swing while Tenten chases two boys around with a weird frog she found: ".... why"

Neji: "Just trust me"

Also consider older Neji giving baby Hinata shoulder rides

Baby Hinata is delighted by this whole affair.

More time with big brother, and a new even bigger brother? Best times.

Bigger brother needs help reading sometimes and Hinata is so excited to help. Hiashi even approves because helping older Neji read things like menus and the like is helping Hinata learn how to read, so it benefits everyone.

Consider also: Neji encouraging the smols to play with bby Naruto, a Hyuuga elder (or possibly Hiashi, but I want him to be a confused accomplice) complains exactly once and Neji exudes such a powerful "Do not test me" energy that he just kind of. Drops it.

Neji's attitude towards baby Naruto is somewhere between "They're good dogs Brent" and "I died for him once already, do you think I'd hesitate to kill?" and it depends entirely on how seriously he thinks you're talking shit about him

Neji plays with the smols, including smol Naruto, by just being the Perfect Straight Man. Just taking every nonsense thing Naruto says Completely Seriously and using deadpan reactions to chaos to make them giggle. This drifts into Feels for Naruto when he's the first adult who takes his "I'm gonna be the Hokage" completely seriously

"Of course, chibi-Hokage-sama"

Hiashi: "What.... are you.... doing?" Neji: "Ah, Hiashi-sama. Please exercise caution, the floor has mysteriously transformed into molten rock. I suspect enemy action, but have no further intelligence at this time" SmolNeji, Hinata, and Naruto: 'wild giggling as they dangle from rafters/stand balanced precariously on chairs'

Hiashi takes one step into the room and all the kids start screaming so loud he steps back out in shock

Neji out in Konoha just Causing Shit with plausible deniability

Listen. Neji is PETTY.

Someone describes Naruto as "the annoying blonde child with the whiskers, you know, the skin brat" and Neji says "I'm a sensor and have encountered no demonic chakra"

"okay just avoid the blonde kid with the whiskers"

"I don't know how to tell you this..."

"Sir, I know you're new in town, but that kid isn't really good news--" "A child can't be news unless they're recently born." "No, I mean, didn't anyone tell you to avoid the blonde kid with the whiskers?" "Naruto's blonde?"

Possibly "Hinata's blonde?"

He just, aggressively misunderstands that any insinuation about Naruto is about the Hyuuga heir instead

Birdie said they like the idea that he uses the aggressive deliberate misunderstanding to force people to either be embarrassed by how they're acting by having to spell it out or give up in quieter shame

Sometimes Neji gets tired of being obtuse and just lets Gai do it for him

Gai babysits on occasion, SmolNeji is aghast, Hinata mostly just confused, Naruto is delighted

Naruto is just Stars In Eyes about Gai

Kakashi: this is not the excuse I expected to have for visiting Naruto but I'm taking it

#Hyuuga Neji #Hyuuga Hiashi #Hyuuga Hinata #Uzumaki Naruto #Maito Gai #Hatake Kakashi #Naruto #mini fic #time travel #Hyuuga Clan #Blind Neji #Phoenix Babbles #Phoenix Posts

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ghost-wonder · 4 years ago

Text

Why Oliver March is My Current Top Suspect for the Leader (Even though I love him)

Buckle your seatbelts kids and get ready for my hot mess of a PH theory. I wasn’t sure where to put this and I just wanted to get my thoughts out. I’m in the last year of my media studies and production degree so I’m putting my 3 years of tears to use and have been brewing this theory since reading 85. Now let me clarify: I adore March, but the more we see, the more suspicious I become (especially with ep. 82 & 85), and while many think this may mean death or something tragic, I’ve been thinking of the possibility it’s something much bigger (Note: lots of speculation here so prepare for a lot of what if’s and I’m only using content up to ep. 85).

My thought process regarding the leader:

The leader is a rather dehumanized villainous entity. With them being anonymous and the reader not having a face to place with the actions, it’s easier for us to take the leader’s actions at face value. We are provided no means of sympathizing or empathizing with their actions and instead, our story follows characters who have been traumatized by said actions.

Therefore, to provide readers with the greatest impact, the leader would likely be a character who up until the discovery of them being the leader, the reader viewed them positively. A character already humanized. Already trusted. And this would be both in terms of how the reader views that character, as well as other characters in the story. It would leave the reader reeling, trying to figure out why such a character would be the leader.

And keep in mind: PH has used this approach with Harvey; the audience liked him for the short time he appeared before being caprisunned and we were shocked to discover his involvement in the PS. Additionally, we’ve had characters dehumanizing and humanizing with Kieran. He’s introduced as this deadly assassin who kills brutally, with the greatest death toll in the PS. But he becomes humanized through his interactions with Lauren, so much so that both the reader and Lauren forget his occupation and are provided a chilling reminder in ep. 43. However, even after those horrible events, as we learn more regarding his character in season 2, we begin to empathize with his actions and reactions (though we don’t condone them). It demonstrates a duality, a mix of light and dark, seemingly contradicting one another. Because people are complicated.

This is also why I can’t buy into the idea that Tristan or Stefan is the leader, in fact, I don’t think either one is even involved with the PS. For Tristan I think he comes off suspicious because A) he’s meant to be a red herring but B) LAUREN’S PARENTS WERE APOSTLES AND YOU CANNOT TELL ME HE DID NOT KNOW. THEY LEFT AT ODD HOURS OF THE NIGHT ALL THE TIME AND LIKELY GAVE LAUREN TO TRISTAN TO PROTECT HER FROM THAT LIFE. HE PROBABLY THINKS LAUREN IS PS. But anywho. As for Stefan, he’s already been villainized through his treatment of William. The audience doesn’t like him for this reason and is then inherently suspicious of him because they dislike him. So for me, it feels too obvious. (I have an additional theory that he was involved with the print shop shooting, assisting Lizbeth (from what’s alluded in 64 with Lauren’s parents and 68) as chief of police but that’s for another place another time.)

What we know about the leader:

- It’s a he

- Has to be part of the older generation (would have needed to be an adult about 15 years ago)

- Was a member of SD

- Knew Lauren’s parents

- According to Hecate, he is closer and more similar to Lauren than she thinks

So why March? (It’s not just the villain scar)

- His speech to Kym and Will in 60 had me SUS. It felt very contradicting (he acknowledges the flaws in the system while saying they must continue their jobs, which is valid, but his phrasing was still off to me) and generally in any mystery drama if I see a character go on a moral rant of sorts, my sus radar is dialed up to 11. Unfortunately, we don’t know how much of it was true and lies because Lauren wasn’t around but if he is the leader I’d find it so fascinating if everything he said is the truth. The idea that this terrorist does have sound morals would be SO INTERESTING and kind of fitting? The leader having a strong sense of justice or strong morals would make him more similar to Lauren as Hecate said. But more on Hecate later.

- As confirmed by 85, he knew Lauren’s parents. He even says they worked together on cases. Through their work together, did they start to realize the flaws in their system? Was there a case that was just too much? SD formed?

- The death of his daughter does kind of fit the SD timeline. (She died in xx11 the pamphlets are dated xx14 but SD was likely formed slightly before the release of the pamphlets but that's not yet really confirmed). We don’t know how her illness killed her (could be class-related. Like because of their class status perhaps they didn’t have access to the resources that could have saved his daughter? Who knows. He said they did all they could. March is likely middle class similar to Kym but we don’t know for sure. And even if he is middle class we don’t know if this was always the case, like if he was middle class at the time of his daughter’s death.)

- Additionally the death of his wife. The date is blocked and as others have theorized I find it very possible it could have been SD related. But this sentence is chilling: “She fell into the bloody hands of criminals that have been plaguing Ardhalis for too long.” March doesn’t specify these criminals as the PS. So could he mean the royals? (Literally everything he says to Lauren in ep. 85 could have a double meaning and it bugs me so much like he never specifies the criminals he’s referring to. And everything he says sounds like the monologue of a villain who sees themselves as a hero because they haven’t realized how far gone they are. But that’s just me. ) If she died in the print shop shooting could this have been the catalyst to drive March to become the leader and start the PS? Losing your daughter and wife is a lot to take and could drive anyone over the edge. Point is: if any of this speculation is true, it would give March motive for becoming the leader.

- Also March mentioned how Lauren reminds him of his daughter which could then explain why Lauren hasn’t been touched by the PS cause at this point the girl should have been caprisunned a while ago if she wasn’t being protected from the inside.

- To build on that as well, if March is the leader then he has kept an eye on Lauren since she joined the force aka since she would have become problematic for the PS (cause you can argue being the daughter of apostles may not automatically make her a threat since she was a child at the time. But being the daughter of apostles and joining the police force to take down the PS? Now that’s an issue). March says in ep. 60 that Lauren was one of his recruits meaning the leader could have had his eye on her the entirety of her time in the APD. Just something to consider.

- And going back to Hecate's words, he’s more similar to you than you think. March and Lauren share (seemingly) similar morals and additionally he is close to her just as Hecate claimed. Also if any of my speculation regarding the deaths of his wife and daughter are correct it would have put him in a similar position to Lauren, the difference being her enemy is PS and his being the royals (but also as we’re starting to see with Lauren learning more information, I think the royals are starting to become an enemy in her eyes the same way PS is. Again if any of this is correct it just furthers similarities between the two).

- This could then also be the betrayal alluded to in the cards; one of Lauren's mentors has been the leader this whole time. The betrayal is either past or future but March being the leader could count as both. He betrayed her in the past by ordering the death of her parents and may betray her again in the future as he continues to play the role of leader

- Plus this would also mean the leader has been present in the story FROM THE VERY BEGINNING MARCH WAS IN EP 2 HOW WILD WOULD IT BE IF WE’VE KNOWN THE LEADER THIS WHOLE TIME

- AND IMPORTANT NOTE: WHY IS MARCH NOT ONE OF THE PEOPLE LAUREN SUSPECTS DURING EP. 82 YET HE HAS HER BACK SIMILAR TO WILL AND KYM. "LAUREN OPEN YOUR EYES" BLINDEST OF THEM ALL TYPE STUFF. (Also with Lauren being the blindest of all, it led me to believe anyone Lauren is suspicious of, is not the one to betray her. I feel like it would have to be someone so unsuspicious, Lauren doesn’t even think of them. Which can be said of March; we literally have a whole scene in ep. 82 demonstrating how close they are and how a level of trust exists. Yet panels later, it doesn’t even cross her mind that he could betray her).

Now possible flaws in this theory (there are more I’m sure but here’s a few):

-Why voice support for lune and their actions: Lune’s actions have yet to affect the leader (at least to our knowledge) and have technically been helping the leader. The leader views Apostle 7 as an issue so obviously whoever the leader is, they won’t take issue with Lune taking down this problem for them. When first telling Lauren about McTrevor, Kieran said he was surprised he hadn’t been sent by the leader to kill him off yet. And when the 11th precinct received that first Lune letter about him, March was the one to voice that they should follow Lune’s orders. If he’s the leader, this could explain why he wanted to follow Lune’s orders and dispose of McTrevor without PS means. This is a possible explanation anyway.

- Why send moles into the 11th precinct if the leader himself is already there: I boil this down to a matter of seeming less suspicious. Like why possibly risk the exposure of your identity if your organization consists of hundreds of potential puppets who are easily disposable?

-Why place the PH in the 11th precinct if the leader is there: Okay this plays into another theory I have regarding Kieran. We know there are boatloads of parallels between Lauren and Kieran which left me thinking Kieran has had a similar Tim Sake type incident. What I mean by this is that Lauren’s whole deal with Tim Sake was heavily guided by her personal anger and resulted in distrust from her superior, Hermann. I think Kieran had a similar incident with killing that one person without orders, in which his actions were guided by his personal anger and resulted in distrust from his superior, the Leader. So we know from 83 Kierans been overseas for a while (Why? Was there a mission or did the leader need Kieran out of Ardhalis? Both?) and his comment in 64 (“I wonder how much longer his patience will last”), as well as the comments made by Bella and the messenger at various points regarding Kieran following and not following orders (ep 5 and 72-73?), further my thinking that the leader may be SUS of his best player. So what do you do with someone you’re suspicious of: you keep them right where you can see them.

- The one flaw I have yet to work out an explanation for is why order the death of lune? Regardless of who the leader is, this is a question I’ve mulled over since the end of season 1. J’en sais rien mes amis mais on verra.

Closing Thoughts:

Hopefully, this didn’t sound like the ramblings of a sleep-deprived senior (even though that’s exactly what this is haha) and hopefully, it gave you some stuff to consider. Up until this point, I never spent much time contemplating the leader, partly because I didn’t feel like we were far enough in the story to have enough evidence against one person. While much of this is speculation, I still think it’s the soundest case I have for any PH character we’ve met thus far being the leader.

#purple hyacinth #ph webtoon #lauren sinclair #oliver march #kieran white #webtoon #purple hyacinth webtoon #this is a lot #dont hate me i just cant accept nice things

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septnautical · 4 years ago

Text

Anti’s First Fireball

SD-004 looked around the enclosure he was ushered into with curious eyes. It felt… strangely nostalgic. Like he’d been here before. But, that wasn’t possible. The white suits scientists had told him he was a fresh creation, just now being put into testing enclosures. And yet… the sea dragon felt a heaviness in his chest he didn’t understand, being in here. He swears when he closed his eyes… instead of these prison like walls… he saw bright blue open waters- the sun shining in large rays down on the sand. Colorful swarms of fish and… laughter- laughter and smiles that made SD-004 feel warm inside. But, whenever he thought like that- a piercing pain would spear through his temple. It made it hard to think. He’d been having way too many thoughts like that lately…

Even then- this enclosure was familiar in a bad way. Thinking about it… he felt a sense of dread and slight fear being put in here. The walls were stark white, almost painful to look at. There was only one window to look through, unlike the tank where he was most days where he was surrounded by glass. The sea dragon anxiously picks at his scales on his arms, wondering why he was brought here. The scientists had been saying he was doing good… better than he had been. The disks lodged on the edge of his ears itched and stung- but they had seemed happy that they were ‘working properly’. Whatever that meant…

Anti’s muscles bunched up in reaction to the mic in the tank sparking up. Someone was here. He turned back to look at the window to see a scientist smiling tightly at him. Chief Demerci… She was the head scientist in charge of him. He didn’t like her at all… not that there was anything he could do about it.

“Hello SD-004,” Demerci greeted, “How are you feeling today?”

The sea dragon’s fins bristled in agitation just listening to her speak. A fire that was dormant until she came back in lit up. The adolescent sea dragon bared his fangs and snarled at the scientist.

“Don’t waste my time acting like you care. Why am I here?”

The scientist doesn’t look surprised by his hostility- but she does look disappointed. She tsks, then reaches for a button on her control panel. A shock runs from Anti’s ear attachments and down his spine, making him go rigid and cry out.

“Anti,” Demerci sighed. The simple mention of that name had him seizing up more as if expecting something else- “Say Goodbye.”

The phrase has Anti’s eyes drooping- his expression going slack and body held at attention. The scientist looked bored as she addressed the tranced hybrid.

“Punishment will come when you choose to be aggressive to your superiors, SD-004. You are to address them with respect.”

Anti hardly blinks as he replies, “Yes, Chief Demerci.”

“Status report,” Demerci says shortly. The hybrid shifts slightly as a yellow glow comes to his eyes. He talks a bit more robotically, his voice slightly raked with static.

“Vitals normal. Anxiety levels at a medium. Mild headaches o-o-occurring from memory deletion. Command chip integration at 56%.”

Demerci makes a tch sound and leans back in her chair. “That would explain the attitude. We’ll have to work on that conditioning after this experiment.” She takes down a couple of notes before addressing the static hybrid again, “Alright, Anti, see you soon.”

Light comes back into the hybrid’s eyes quickly and he blinks sluggishly back awake, his body relaxing. Demerci studies him smugly.

“So Anti, how are you feeling?”

Anti goes stiff again for a second and yellow flashes in his eyes before he deflates and looks away from the scientist, picking at his scales again.

“F-Fine I guess…”

Demerci frowns but nods regardless. They can work on that more later.

The scientist sighed heavily before a small sadistic smile spread across her face. She leaned over her mic and grinned at the tiny sea dragon like a lioness stalking her kill.

“Well I’m happy to hear that SD,” she cooed with false sweetness, “Because you’ll need to be in ship shape to take on today’s test.”

Anti’s head jerked up, color draining out of his face. “W-What?” He whispered in fear, backing away from the glass to try to curl up against the wall. He knew what that meant- it usually meant pain… lots and lots of pain.

DeMerci showed no sign of remorse as she smiled cruelly and went to press a finger against another large button on the dashboard in front of her.

Something creaked loudly from the walls before a large creature emerged. But… it wasn’t just any creature.

It was another hybrid.

Looming over Anti was a reaper leviathan hybrid with dark skin, covered in red markings and blue scales. It had long flowing red hair. 4 soulless black eyes with gray sclera glared down at the young hybrid as it gnashed its razor sharp teeth. It’s mandibles spring out and aim at the merman.

Anti stared at this thing in increasing horror. His mind was screaming at him- something about this wasn't right- this was all wrong!!

Jackie Jackie! Where was Jackie?!

The creature didn’t care for its prey’s fear. It roared so loud it rocked the tank they were in before diving down at Anti like a torpedo.

Luckily, Anti was quick and he easily dodged. His body seemed to know how to fight this thing- knew of its weaknesses. He watched it prepare to loop around him- trying to attack his back. But. Anti kept in its path, blocking its attempts to maneuver around him.

“No fair Anti! That’s my big move!” A young voice whined in his ear

The hybrid gets frustrated at not making headway and roars before trying to tackle Anti to the ground with its long claws. Anti dives to the sand though- watching with a smirk as the thing barrels into the tank wall and disorients itself above him.

Demerci watches with a fascinated smile. “Your instincts are benefiting you greatly SD- you are the reaper’s natural predator.” But, then she sighs dramatically while picking up a remote off her desk. “However- I specifically stated you were going to use firepower today-“

Without another word- she presses a button. Anti feels his body spark up painfully and he screams and convulses on the floor. The shocking lasts for a couple more torturous seconds before Demerci relents. Anti slumps for the floor and breathes through gritted teeth- trying to push himself back up as the creature prowls back and forth in front of him.

“Use your fire breath, Anti,” Demerci hisses at the boy. “Or you’ll never be able to protect SE-002… and you don’t want that, right?”

Anti freezes slightly at that. His eyes spark with yellow orange light and he twitches, claws digging into the sand.

“No…” he whispers, eyes widening and looking distant. “I will protect SE-002… That’s all I was made for.”

Demerci smirks, happy to see the brainwashing slowly but surely leaking in. “Then, that hybrid is trying to hurt SE, Anti. Don’t let it succeed. Burn it-“

With a wild scream, Anti launches himself from the sand and barrels into the reaper hybrid. They roar at each other, but Anti manages to bang the creature’s head against a rock and drive it to the ground. The thing wiggles and screeches at Anti, trying to get free.

Anti pants almost feverishly, eyes glitching between yellowish and normal. He digs his claws into the creature's arms and pins it hard against the sand so it’s mandibles can’t bend. Then, he opens up his mouth and tries to summon a fireball.

It- it doesn’t feel right. His stomach bubbles uncomfortably hot and the feeling travels up through his throat. He gags slightly on the burning feeling- hot bubbles blowing in the hybrid’s face. The hybrid shrinks away slightly, seeming to fear what’s coming for it.

But it doesn’t come. Anti let’s go of the hybrid to grab his throat, starting to choke on the hot foreign feeling. His scar- it’s irritated and starting to leak hot water which furthers his panic. Worse of all, as the fire starts to escape the young sea dragon is suddenly bombarded by flashes of things he doesn’t understand.

He’s bent over in the sand while two other hybrids lean over him. They both look at him with concern- a concern that feels genuine and… brotherly.

Chase? Schneep?

Anti feels a painful pang in his chest as he coughs up hot burning liquid. Nowhere near close to a fireball. He feels hot water coming from his eyes and he reaches up to touch it, startled and confused.

Then, he curls up gagging and sobbing from the confusing sensations in his head and body. He starts to cry out names he doesn’t know why he knows, but for once- it feels right.

“C-Chase! H-Henny! Jack!! Help me!!”

The last thing Anti sees is Demerci’s enraged face before a powerful shock overtakes his body- then everything goes black.

When the sea dragon next opens up his eyes… he doesn’t recognize where he is. The lighting is eerie and dark- the walls gray and beat up. Anti tires to move only to realize he can’t- his arms and tails are chained up to the walls. He starts to panic- pulling on the chains and trying to catch his claws on them.

“W-What is this?!” He growls, but his eyes give away his terror, “Let me go! Let me out!”

“Now Now, Anti…” Demerci’s silky voice purrs over the intercom, but Anti can’t see her. “You’re here so we can help you…” The restraints start to tighten on his wrists, pulling his arms taut. Anti starts to pant feverishly in fear. “I told you today was the day you would shoot fireballs… so we’re gonna give you a little… ‘stimulation’ until you fulfill your full potential.”

“W-What?! Y-You’re crazy! You can’t do that-!” Anti tries to scream and thrashes as hard as he can. But, then the shocks start to come. Sharp and painful through his restraints- lighting every one of his nerves on fire. The sea dragon hybrid screams bloody murder, trying and failing to break free.

Demerci watches mercilessly, humming under her breath as she casually cranks up the power. Anti can’t form a single coherent thought- all he knows is awful aching pain. He feels like he’s been stripped down to his very essence. The torture seems never-ending… even during brief pauses, Anti can’t even catch his breath to think. He’s assaulted by echoing commands and threats. They echo throughout the too warm water around him and buzz in his ears. You are a monster. Zap! You were made to be a weapon.

Zap!

You will protect SE-002. You will protect the Altera Arms.

ZAp!

You are a ruthless killer.

You know no mercy. You listen only to us- Zap Zap ZAP! Let your instincts rule you SD-004.

Become the fearsome Sea Dragon you were made to be. Serve Altera. As more and more electricity enters his veins, a bubbling flame builds up in his mouth. Bigger and bigger- brighter orange that bubbles like lava. Until finally- Anti shoots his first fireball. And after a few more rounds of shocks in between, he shoots a couple more. No hesitation, automatically as he’s told. Demerci smiles. Their weapon is finally complete. SD-004 paces the length of his tank, back and forth swiftly as he watches the hatch in front of him with hungry yellow-tinted eyes. Finally, the alarm sounds and the hatch opens. The sea dragon hybrid grins and giggles madly in his throat as his opponent barrels through the water towards him. The imperfect warper hybrid tries to pin him down with long blue-tinted claws. SD easily dodges then headbutts them in the stomach, making them fly through the water. He doesn’t give them any room to breathe though as he catches them through their arc then slams them against the rock below them. Laughing madly, Anti sinks claws deep into their arms then drags them down, watching in satisfaction as the ugly thing screams robotically. These ones weren’t nearly as fun as the pure organic ones… but prey was prey. The merman tears into the other hybrid- showing no mercy as he cuts it to ribbons. Deaf to their screams. Ignorant to who they used to remind him of. All that matters is the thrill- the need to hunt. The need to hurt. He was a monster. He was a weapon! The water flows with orange hybrid blood before SD-004 finally backs up- and sends a fireball right on top of the creature. Putting it out of its misery. He giggled and licked the blood off his hand. He looked up to see Demerci smiling down at him, nodding her approval. “Excellent work, SD-004,” She praised, writing something down on her PDA before pressing a button on her dashboard. “Ready for the next round?” SD nodded with a crazed laugh, shaking out his tails and arms, watching the hatch yet again. “Lay it on me Doc~!” --------- Anti awoke with a start, clutching at his chest. His heart was beating too wildly, his skin feeling clammy and hot in the cool water of their cove. That… that was definitely a memory… A memory he desperately wanted to forget. He could still feel the sting of the shocks- the elation of ripping into his prey. He didn’t even care back then that those hybrids were like him and his brothers. He only knew following instincts… following orders. “Anti?” A soft voice reaches his ears and the sea dragon jumps. Then, he sees Marvin swimming over to him, green hair loose and floating around his head like a halo. His mask hung loose in his hands. He tilted his head at the older brother in concern. “You okay?” Anti finds it hard to find his voice. “...n...nightmare-” He finally croaks out, feeling a shiver go up his spine and down his tails. Marvin hums then settles in the sand next to Anti, tucking his tails under him. He offers the sea dragon a sad smile. “Do you want to talk about it?” The older boy is quick to shake his head. Marvin knits his eyebrows together in concern, “Anti… you can talk to me. I mean… if anyone knows what you went through its-” “Shut up!” Anti suddenly shouts, hitting a fist against the sand. His eyes burn as he glares at Marvin and bares his teeth. “You have no idea what I went through! The shit you went through is nothing compared to me! So stop acting like you get it! You don’t! Now leave me the fuck alone!” The warper’s face falls, his gleaming blue eyes showing his heartbreak. Then, pink flashes in his eyes as he growls back, smacking Anti slightly with his tails in his haste to get up. “Fine! Fuck me for wanting to help your sorry ass!” Marvin cries, trying to look angry, but glints of his tears leak into the moonlit water. Without another glance or word, Marvin turns tail and rockets off into the midnight ocean. Anti holds himself after he leaves, hating the feeling of timid eyes on his back. He can’t tell Marvin- he can’t tell anyone about what he saw… what he knows… what he did. They’ll hate him- hate him more than they already hate him. He can handle this… they’re just memories. They can’t hurt him anymore…

#septnautical side story #antisepticeye #sea dragon anti #jezebeth demerci #abuse #experimentation #electrocution #brainwashing #torture #past memories #whump #sorry i know i need to get more refugee stuff done but this just came to me!#it was also inspired by an ask a while ago! :D #huffle tales

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amethystpath-writes · 4 years ago

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Hey! Could you write a story about a hero going undercover to infiltrate villain’s organization and being afraid of torture once they’re found out? The hero is unaware of the fact that villain has fallen for them during their undercover imposter mission and can’t bring themselves to hurt hero.

Ask and you shall receive! I'm not too sure this is what you were looking for, so feel free to correct me if you'd like. I always enjoy the requests!

******

Dizmay strode down the halls with a straight spine. She needed to appear as though she belonged. A hunched over figure would be too suspicious and would draw way more attention than she could afford. Even with an employee's suit, it was too risky to reveal any sign of cowardice.

It seemed like such a small task; get in, get the chip, get out. Three G's. But it wasn't as easy as that. Of course it wouldn't be. Why would it be easy with Hardan meandering down any one of these halls?

What if he recognized her? Sure, she was disguised as one of his own, wore a wig with bangs, wore thick-framed glasses, and wore makeup- something she never did. Dizmay could hardly recognize herself when she looked in the mirror. So how would Hardan recognize her? He wouldn't.

But what if he did? It was always a possibility that he did see her for who she was. Diz wasn't in her own quarters, which meant that if Hardan discovered she was roaming his halls, she was as good as dead- no. No, he wouldn't kill her. He would have her captured by all of his employees, he would stuff her in a room, handcuff her to- to a table or chair or something. Would he be so sadistic as to chain her to something?

Stop it! she demanded of herself. Her hands were beginning to shake at her sides as she walked.

The hall forked off to the right. Dizmay stopped, squinting at the new path. Others crowded around her, continuing with tasks of their own while she was stopped in the middle of the hallway. She needed to move before she looked lost- even though she was.

First right, second left, straight...then what? Did she go down the forked path? She didn't think so. God, she had the whole floorplan memorized, but in her dizzy fear, it was all becoming lost. Maybe if she back-tracked and started over then it would come back to her. That would waste so much time though. Dizmay should just continue. It couldn't be that much further away, right? The halls were long with many of these forked paths. She'd passed a majority of them already. The computer labs had to be near.

The question now was this; go straight or fork right?

Right is always right, she supposed. If it didn't seem to lead anywhere then she could always come back and go straight. Diz did seem to recall the labs being just right of the center of Hardan's base. Surely this would take her closer.

And it did. After a long series of guessed turns, Dizmay found herself staring- from the outside- at a room of blue-tinted glass. Inside was row upon row of computers. At the front of them all was a desk, Hardan's desk, one with six drawers, one of which containing the SD chip she was searching for. There would be all kinds of things on the chip- hopefully.

Kilding, Diz's director, was hopeful of learning some of Hardan's plans. Recently, he'd been laying on the down-low, but Kilding knew he was up to something.

The door to the lab had no lock on it, so Dizmay easily pushed it open. She turned on a heel to ensure it would close. Truly, it didn't make much of a different, but she was used to the heavy- metal doors of her own base. She wasn't used to the silently shutting glass ones that Hardan incorporated all around his base.

Turning, she jumped with a gasp. There he was- Hardan- sitting at his desk. And he was staring directly at her as she stood frozen in front of the door. Diz dropped her chin, allowing for her bangs to shield her eyes and for the shadows to cover the rest of her face.

"The walls," Hardan said, "I was meant to be undisturbed."

Dizmay swallowed. "Right, I-" She coughed, turning on a heel. "I should go. I'm sorry, Sir." She made her voice light, airy. To add onto the act, Dizmay was speaking in an English accent one she was always told she did good at. Now seemed a great time to use it.

Diz reached for the vertical handle on the door, pulling it open slowly, calmly, but a hand shot out, pushing it back shut. Her jaw clenched. She kept her head down.

What about the walls said 'Do Not Disturb'? They were glass walls and they were mostly clear. She would have seen him in the room if he had been. What was happening? Why was he in here and how hadn't she seen him from the outside? Panic was gripping her throat and stomach like nothing else had before.

"I should guess you are new." Hardan's hand was still on the door, preventing her from leaving. Was it possible that he already knew who she was? No. No, of course not.

She nodded her head.

"Then I should also guess that no one told you when the room appears empty, it means you have no business walking in."

So what then? Was the glass rigged with some wiring mechanism that created false images? It was the only explanation Diz could come up with.

"Right," she said quietly with a careful nod of the head. "Good that I know now. I'll leave you to your work and come back at a more appropriate time."

Scared goosebumps rose on her arms as she watched his own fall from the door. She was nearly ready to grab the door and rush through it, but his hand found her left shoulder, pulling it back so that he could see her, but her head was still held down. God, it probably looked so obvious to him by the way she was hiding herself.

"Your posture has slackened," he noted. "There's no need to feel discomforted if we've already met." Hardan leaned in, his lips almost touching Diz's ear. "I meet all of my employees before they begin their duties."

Now her eyes snapped up. He did know.

Hardan said nothing for a moment. Dizmay could only imagine he was thinking of what he would do to her.

Gag her. Tie her down on a table. Poke her with-with knives. Let her down just to kick her in the gut and-and...there were too many cruel possibilities and she only found herself breathing too quickly in front of Hardan. If he didn't know who she was then, he would now.

"There's an easy way to go about this. You know you're very much surrounded. There is no chance of you getting out of here on your own. So, I offer a proposal." He held both of her shoulders now while she tried to maintain herself. It didn't feel like she was breathing. "I- myself- can take you back to your base after you tell me where it's located, or you can stay here and give me the name of your director. The difference is a peaceful interaction versus a much more complicated one."

"I didn't learn anything here," she rushed out. "I don't know anything at all. I can just go back without a report and-"

He rose an amused brow, "And what? Try again later?" He gripped her glasses at the joint before pulling them away. She didn't stop him. She couldn't move. "I know how your little operations work, dear hero."

Some small shred of confidence rose in her. "Not well enough to stop us from foiling your own previous operations."

Hardan whispered as he began to undo the wig on her head, "You're brave, you know?" Her eyes widened. "You know how many of your friends have been captured by mine. You are always consciously aware that you could be, too, and even as you have been right now, you still have hope. I can see it."

Hope that you won't hurt me, she thought. It was true about her teammates. Many of them had been sent on this exact same mission and none of them ever returned. Kilding assumed they were all dead, so Dizmay assumed the same. "Are they still alive?"

He seemed taken back by this question. Yes, they were still alive. Hardan had them tortured for information, of course, but they were alive.

It was unfortunate they sent Dizmay to do their dirty work. She wasn't any stronger than the rest, and it was clear as day to see. Small enough to fit in, to hardly been seen, but her headquarters didn't have enough information on his own operations that any of them would succeed in infiltrating the base and getting what information they needed. The little bots that Dizmay's director sent in recorded visuals, not audio. They lacked an important sense in employee training. A false employee could always be spotted in a difference of mannerisms.

She knew all of this, and yet, after just a single day of sending their last mission recruit, she still came. Determined, Dizmay was. Very determined.

"Are. They. Alive?" she pressed.

"Yes."

"Then I'll stay."

The truth was, he knew, that she would have stayed either way. With determination came stubbornness, and Hardan was certain she wouldn't give away secrets so easily. Dizmay would be the last of them to expose her base.

"I am giving you the choice to go home without being hurt."

"I'm more likely to break than the others," she said and took a deep, shuddering breath. "Let the others go and keep me."

It was a preposterous deal, one that would get Hardan absolutely nowhere, but he found himself agreeing anyways. He knew she wouldn't break.

"Very well," he said.

Keeping her and releasing the others was absurd and would only make his own trainees question him. They might overthrow him if he proved to be soft, so he would find a way around it. Lying to Dizmay wouldn't be as bad as physically harming her, right?

***

Despite himself, Hardan shoved Dizmay through the open door in front of them. She fell, of course, not expecting the sudden push.

"You'll have my company again," he told her. Dizmay looked even smaller, even frailer, on the ground than she did standing up. Hardan glanced at the rest of the room, at the leather straps used as restraints, at the clothes used for waterboarding, at the gags to muffle tortured screams. A pit grew in his stomach.

After watching the hero make her way for so long, after seeing the stubborn-assed determination she had, after seeing how much she cared to save her team- after seeing her, he couldn't hurt her. Hardan wanted to know her beyond being a hero. He wanted to know Dizmay as a human and he wanted her to learn the same about him.

What was her favourite time of day? Her favourite colour? Her favourite meal? It sounded so ridiculous in his head, but when he matched the thoughts to the vision in front of him, it was all he wanted. It was all he wanted for a long time, to know her, and her him.

She was trembling where she lay, and Hardan knew she was terrified. He knew word of the others' treatments had spread. Dizmay probably only thought her people were dead because of how harshly they'd been hurt. She thought Hardan was going to hurt her in the same way. He couldn't.

"I should go," he said, but he wasn't sure why. He didn't need to say anything at all. Hardan stared at her long enough that she had probably been waiting to be struck. Either way, he shut the door.

To his companion on the other side of the door, he said, "At dinner, I want her brought to me. I have a new method to test with this one."

Dizmay wouldn't be harmed. He could never do that to her, to someone so willing to put themselves in harm's way to protect others, to someone as stubborn as he knew himself to be.

She would be brought to dinner, treated as well as he was by the maids and cooks. She would be given her own room, and although she wouldn't be allowed to leave, she wouldn't wish to.

His excuse for her well treatment would be that if she were treated nicely enough, nicer than where she had once been, then she might just volunteer information to him out of spite. Why defend her old base when this new one cared for her so much more?

******

Thank you for the ask, nonny!

#asks and answers #writing request #hero x villain #undercover #undercover hero #fear of torture #torture #capture

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jessi--ac · 3 years ago

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As I'm waiting for the subs to drop and I'm seeing you guys freak the fuck out, I have some theories/things I want to see addressed in the last two (😥) episodes (if they are developed in EP 14 I will take them off of my list hehehe)

- It was a pretty important plot point what Soohyun was searching for, but WHAT IS IT?????? I think it wasn't anything conclusive or when she encountered Gaon and Yohan she would have screamed bloody murder but she didn't. Did they pull a Kyunghee and Soohyun was handed a SD card or something? If so, could she have handed the card to someone else? Jeongho? Elijah???? My bet is on Elijah. It also looked like the person that shot her was specifically waiting for her? How would they know???? Was someone tailing her? If so, her handing the SD card to someone else would not be possible???? Idk yet, in still thinking on this one...

- I firmly believe Yohan has nothing to do with the church fire, either he's protecting someone or he also doesn't know what exactly happened and pierced things together and erroneously concluded what he thinks happened. It would make absolute 0 sense his quest for revenge if that's the case. Also, Kyunghee was his first target and we were shown that it was because of what happened to Elijah, what did the others do besides running away from the church? Possibly something worse? Was Kyunghee the first one only because it was convenient? Because of her son?

- What the fuck is up with Jeongho???? Why is this bitch so distrustful of Yohan???? He's like "old man yells at clouds" but x100 worse. He must have a serious reason for that, not one necessarily truthful, but something he firmly believes in. Is it a cover up? Did he get Soohyun killed because of that but transfers the guilt to Yohan because he genuinely believes Yohan was the one that drove him to do it? Was it him or Sungah that got Soohyun killed? Why? Because of the church fire? Why would Sungah be involved? How? The Foundation? And Jeongho? Did someone important to him died in the fire also? Or in consequence of?

Now theory time:

- If Soohyung handed something off to Elijah and she found something, could she interrupt Gaon trying to shank Yohan? Honestly, this is totally up in Gaon's alley. When he thought Yohan could do something to Soohyun he punched him, now he thinks he actually did something, of course he would up his game. I do think they will work together to unveil every last mysteries that are left, but something has to happen to prove to Gaon Yohan has nothing to do with Soohyun's death, perhaps Elijah will be involved in some way. Still thinking about this one too... Anyway, I need the subs rn!!!!

#the devil judge

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vaguely-concerned · 4 years ago

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The Mandalorian Chapter 13 reactions

Well, that was... well. in short I quite enjoyed some of what happened while din was there and I didn’t really care about what happened while he wasn’t there lol. I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that I just don’t care for the episodes dave filoni writes for this show, which is simply a matter of taste I guess.

(if you loved this episode wholeheartedly -- probably look away now, I’m going to be a bit of a downer about it and I don’t want to shit on your joy haha)

- let’s just get this out of the way first: there’s a lot of stuff around rosaria dawson and transphobia in real life and yeah, of course that affects how I watch the show. I don’t even want to talk that much about ahsoka in this because of it. she was not that good in the role, after seeing how it played out I don’t think the character needed to be in this show at all, and she should never have gotten the role in the first place and that’s about it for what I’ve got to say.

- dave filoni consistently does things with din’s characterization that feels off and weird to me, subtly out of place with what we see in other episodes (he’s... ruder? more short tempered/cocky/actively or aggressively interpersonal? more prone to express himself directly than he is usually? idk how to describe it but filoni!din always feels one step to the left of what he should be and I’m so hyper-attuned to this character that when something’s a bit iffy with him it throws everything else off haha. it feels like a shallower, more convenient read on him and I don’t like it)

I also think filoni is almost too familiar with and in love with the source material sometimes? “A Mandalorian and a Jedi? They’ll never see it coming” is undeniably a great line that echoes in decades of deep lore and so on, but dave my good man din had no real idea what a jedi even is until literally this morning. we, the audience, know about this long and storied history, but unless ahsoka spent the afternoon explaining it to him din still only knows the faint outlines of it, he has no personal experience of or attachment to it. it’s not bad, as such, it just rings false to the character based tone of the show for me personally

- positivity break: baby sitting perched on the dashboard to be close to papa while they’re in hyperspace........sd sdfskdjhfdsakjksdhfkasjd

also this is some full on madonna and child in the manger shit and I am LIVING for it (odds he’s crying quietly behind the helmet here? pretty damn good if you ask me). the mundanity of what’s essentially the shitty spartan bathroom of the razor crest on one side contrasted with the light and tenderness and love on the other? amazing, a perfect microcosm of what this show does with combining the grittier everyday down to earth stuff in the star wars universe with myth and wonder and magic and through it elevating both

- the idea of having an iconique samurai/sword duel standoff and a western standoff going on simultaneously is genuinely inspired, but in action it didn’t really work for me. (the sword duel stuff needs these moments of stillness with sudden outbursts of violence and then stillness again, the western standoff needs mounting tension until it’s nearly unbearable, and cutting between them the way they did you sort of didn’t get either to its full potential. again it’s a cool idea, though, I hope someone picks it up and does it better at some point)

- seeing a jedi and a mandalorian wander together through a burned out wasteland left desolate by greed and warfare should have hit me harder than it did but for some reason it didn’t, idk. thematically sound, though, I like it a lot on the metaphor level

- I LOVE that pure beskar makes a specific sound, and that it’s an almost ethereal noise like the high clear chime of a distant bell. also now din has something to fight light sabers with that isn’t the dark saber which makes me so happy because you guys I do not want him to be the mand’alor. keep that funky laser sword away from my dad, apart from killing him at the end that is literally the most boring way to end his arc pls do NOt

- wow they really went in hard on the samurai stuff in this one huh! there is a part of my mchanzo-loving heart that thrives on seeing a space cowboy and a space samurai team up, *wild otp-fuelled whisper* they’re twin genres inextricably entwined okay they belong together if you see this spreadsheet I’ve made over here --

- even knowing it was just a trick I felt such intense distress seeing the signet pauldron away from din. like the attachment I have to these pieces of metal because That Armour Means Dad... wild

- they really chose the dumbest name possible for the baby huh fsajdfhsaj I agree with din his name is ‘kid’ now (eh just give me a while to get used to it probably I’ll come around)

also... you know what I’ve said before about shrinking the big unknowable galaxy ‘the mandalorian’ has been setting up? wow did they do that big time in this one, and it makes me feel decidedly :/. why does the baby have to come from the jedi temple, is there truly no other tradition of force users in the entire galaxy he could be from? WHY do you have to pull thrawn into this when most people watching this show won’t even know why he’s such a big deal? is this a stealth tease for a rebels sequel? if so why spend an entire episode of this show that only gets eight precious episodes a season on it??

- on a more fun positive note: baby’s clothes are clean again, so it’s confirmed that din does wash them (and I guess that he does have some means of washing clothes aboard the razor crest!). I loved... most of the dad and baby stuff in this one, but then don’t I always I’m easy to please that way haha (the ‘playing catch’ sequence felt a bit off to me but I don’t know why. din being like ‘he’s so stubborn’ wasn’t... eh. didn’t land right. “that would be a first” was fun tho lol)

- having ahsoka state the baby’s feelings out loud like that felt... weird? and also kind of unnecessary in parts, like yeah he’s a baby who’s been passed along to different groups of strangers and experimented on by empire scientists, you don’t need to spell it out for me that he’s been scared and lonely, or at least spell it out more interestingly? it’s such blunt force storytelling where it didn’t need to be? there are more elegant ways to get the same things across, I am absolutely convinced

- ...wow while I was watching the episode I was mostly like ‘okay this is Fine I can go along with it’ but seeing what I’m thinking about in hindsight... yeah probably my least favourite episode of this show full stop haha, it took the spot from chapter 5 which was also a filoni ep

- I did 100% genuinely adore the whole part of din approaching the town and meeting the magistrate. consistently hiding the baby behind his cape and his arm? being deliberately, teeth-grindingly dispassionate with everyone, just giving them nothing? getting to see a bit of professional bounty hunter din again? wonderful in every way, I love this man

- lots of meaningful shots of baby in the middle with a mando on one side and a jedi on the other, it’s almost like they’re setting up some Themes here lol

- ...do you think din told ahsoka about either the rhino-levitating or the force choking. because girl I don’t think not training him is going to make this just go away haha, he just won’t know what he’s doing

- it makes me so sad that baby connects his force powers with being abused :( (also a heartbreaking sign of just how much he cared about din from the very beginning, since he used it on the mudhorn to save him anyway ;________; was that like. literally the first time he sensed kindness and affection in anyone in like twenty five years or... )

- I understand why ahsoka would feel this way because of her past and specific traumas, but tbh attachment in a baby? probably a good thing, he doesn’t really have the higher brain functions to cultivate non-attachment yet and needs a safe figure because again. he is a baby.

good on her for realizing it’s not a task she can take on both for the baby’s sake and her own, and also that din is that baby’s Dad though. the way she smiled at the end watching them leave seemed vaguely hopeful/had a little bit of wonder in it, like maybe she felt the potential for something good there, something she couldn’t conceptualize from her background but could sense the tentative outlines of anyway?

(also so much pressure on a lil bb to decide his path... his dilemmas should be limited to what colour socks he wants to wear today not the course of his entire life :( I know he’s a magic baby but.......)

- idk maybe I’ll find more affection of this episode through rewatches, you never know

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #the mandalorian meta

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pass-the-bechdel · 4 years ago

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Alias season one full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

Seventeen out of twenty-two (77.27%).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

25.08%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Zero.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Three: 1.09 – “Mea Culpa” (16.67%); 1.11 – “The Confession” (9.09%); and 1.14 – “The Coup” (17.65%)

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-two. Sixteen who appeared in more than one episode, two who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Eighty. Thirty-one who appeared in more than one episode, seven who appeared in at least half the episodes, and four who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

While it could have done much worse, it could have also done considerably better. The white male perspective shines through in ways that are often individually minor but collectively major (average rating of 2.86).

General Season Quality: Mindless fun, at least the first time around. However, once subjected to scrutiny, only the performances save what is in many ways a mess.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Alias’ first season is often considered to be among the series’ best, and it’s not hard to see why: it’s the most confident (at least on the surface), it’s the one that is most distinct from other TV shows, and features level of extravagance that is not seen in many of the future seasons. It’s also the season most in control of its various elements: while not all of them are used to their best effect, we can at least understand why they are there, and they all have a role to play. This is very often not the case with this series.

And yet, I find that season one, which I had once considered my favorite, is actually the one that stands up least well to rewatching. With the twists and turns that define its narrative having long since lost their bite, there is very little about it that is engaging in the way future seasons are. While it features elements which I wish had been kept and not abandoned, the more I rewatch, the more it becomes clear that these elements were often just not used well.

Take Rambaldi. While a lot of the fandom would eventually lose patience with the device and blame it for the series’ flagging quality, it is clear, upon reconsideration, that it wasn’t a good idea from the start. Are Rambaldi missions marginally more interesting than those that don’t involve Rambaldi? Sure—but that’s not exactly hard. The problem with those early non-Rambaldi missions wasn’t the absence of a mystery box featuring a Leonardo Da Vinci knock-off, it was that there was absolutely no resonance to them. They did not tell us anything about characters. They did not feature interesting elements. They did not further the stories that existed outside of them. However, none of these are actually inherent qualities of the stories. Having non-Rambaldi stories that did not feel as if they mattered was a choice. Furthermore, none of these problems with the early missions are actually fixed by having Rambaldi in them. Rambaldi stories are often exactly as hollow as the others—they just happen to also include The Tease, which is by definition attention-grabbing and helps make it easier to ignore other crucial things—like, for example, how meaningless it all is.

“Meaningless,” sadly, is a word that can be used to describe many of the stories this season, which could accurately be described as a twenty-two episode version of the first three quarters of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, also by J.J. Abrams—go to Place A to do Thing B, so you can then go to Place C and do Thing D, repeat ad nauseum. What does Rambaldi tell us about anything? What did Charlie tell us about Francie? What makes the C.I.A. fundamentally different from SD-6? What is the point of all this prophecy business? What’s the red ball about, and why should we care, when the series is not giving us any reason to beyond “you should care”? What is the series saying?

The closest thing the season has to a theme, as mentioned in previous reviews, is the idea that people have different faces, many of which we choose to or are forced to keep hidden for one reason or another. It’s…fine, as themes go (although it’s worth noting that Rambaldi contributes nothing to that conversation), but the season is, at best, ambivalent about it. Given how universal the thesis is, it feels very much like it should be applied to everyone, and yet this is very clearly not the case, with a very clear line between characters who get to be multifaceted and those who don’t. Additionally, a robust exploration of the theme would require a greater interest in people than the show has demonstrated; that the standard mission features the barest amount of human interaction feels like a serious misstep, and is one of the reasons why large parts of this season feel unmemorable. As crucial as Sydney’s costumes are for the series’ brand identity, the missions that facilitate them are also often the least interesting part of any given episode.

(On a related note, it’s worth noting once again that the series is also not at all interested in the various places it takes its characters to. All the jet-setting the series does exists largely to provide the barest amount of local color, and nothing else—the philosophy behind Sydney’s costumes, applied to scenery.)

One thing that is consistently interesting about season one, though, is the difference between the Sydney the writers thought they were writing and the Sydney they actually wrote. I’ve mentioned multiple times that there is a consistent sense that the writers were afraid of making Sydney a character that could be considered objectionable, in a way that led them to strip away every bit of complexity from her situation, and undermining the show’s very premise. Yes, she worked for a terrorist group for seven years, but Alias is not a redemption story—Sydney is never shown to have done anything that could be considered immoral. Yes, she’s actually still working for them now, but none of her missions actually require her to consider compromising her beliefs. Yes, her job requires her to dress much more sexily than she does when she’s not playing a role, but never that she have sex —spysex is bad. Yes, SD-6 is the most formative experience of her life as a young adult, but that doesn’t mean she’s in any way ambivalent about it or has seven years of history to recontextualize. No, she has no reason why to trust the government, but that doesn’t mean she is anything other than completely loyal to U.S. intelligence interests. A situation that is nothing but complicated edges—a woman who has turned against the institution that made her who she is because she realized it was evil and that she was facilitating that evil—is as toothless as Clifford the Big Red Ball.

(Making things worse still is that the writers don’t actually morally object to the things they contrive to prevent Sydney from doing. The scene where SpyDaddy tortures and kills Haladki is not meant to make viewers think worse of SpyDaddy—just the opposite, in fact. And this has very real implications: arguing that male characters like Jack or Sloane get to have edges and imperfections while female heroes only get to be worthwhile if they’re virginal is textbook sexism.)

This, however, isn’t to say that Sydney is flawless—but rather, that Alias, having decided to leave the natural implications of its premise unexplored, has to look elsewhere to provide imperfections. The first of these imperfections, which feels like the show’s version of the clumsy female YA protagonist trope, is that Sydney…is not smart. She’s very clever in the moment, but she is consistently very bad at long-term thinking, or at dealing with people (Alias does not care about people). While she sometimes gets called out on this—such as when she’s told her impulsive plan to quit SD-6 and still keep her normal life is impulsive and had no chance of working—it still feels exceedingly odd for a veteran spy to be thinking this way, and inexplicable in one that has been in the business for seven years and is supposedly very good at her job. That characters like SpyDaddy are, in turn, allowed to be competent in ways she isn’t make things even more baffling: if you know well enough to make your characters tactically smart, then why not allow your supposedly-smart main character to actually make tactically smart decisions?

Sydney’s lack of critical thinking mixes with the aforementioned fear of allowing her to be morally compromised in ways that further serve to undermine the character. A person who has no need to make moral compromises is much more likely to not understand the concept of compromise or moral complexity, which is very often how Sydney is written—she just loves that high horse—in a way that actively harms the series, because the series then has to warp its universe in order to fit the narrative. It makes no sense for Sydney to consider her mother to be evil for being a KGB assassin—not in light of Sydney’s own work for SD-6—unless one makes it so that her work for SD-6 was somehow not immoral or visibly harmful. Similarly, it makes no sense for Sydney to consider being lied to for large parts of her life as indefensible, given her life and how much of it is lying to others. And while Sydney is free to have feelings that are logically inconsistent or even hypocritical, the fact that she is never seriously called out on these inconsistencies strongly suggests that the writers have not spotted them either.

And so, we have a Sydney who can accurately be described as a Karen: someone who (often correctly) believes systems and rules and morals are only suggestions when they apply to her but unbreakable rules when used against those she doesn’t like, and who uses her relatively minor oppression as a way to ignore her considerable privilege, which she consistently uses for her own personal benefit. Not only is her “original” sin—telling Danny about SD-6—borne from this belief, we see it consistently in ways both major (her belief that the anti-SD-6 effort should follow her lead, even after she’d just learned that she knew nothing about the group; her attempts to secure Vaughn as her handler; her general belief that only she gets to determine who and who does not get forgiven) and minor (her blithe attempts to get an extension on classwork she didn’t do). While she’s far from the worst example of a Karen—she lacks, for example, the cruelty that characterizes those who call cops to kill Black people—she nevertheless fits the profile with shocking exactness.

And honestly, that’s fantastic.

One of the reasons I can still appreciate Alias, despite its multiple flaws, is because it’s part of a genre that is both fairly derivative and which gets a fair amount of play—the original Nikita (the 1990 Luc Besson film) begat La Femme Nikita (the 1997-2001 TV series) begat Alias (2001-2006) begat Nikita (the 2010-2013 series) and to a lesser extent Person of Interest (2011-2016)—which means that everything it’s done badly has probably been done well elsewhere. This, in turn, allows me to enjoy Alias on its own terms. I don’t really need to see Sydney the hypercompetent, empathetic super-spy—that’s what Nikita Mears is there for, and if Sydney were more like her, then she would not be nearly as memorable or fascinating.

(It helps immeasurably that Jennifer Garner is fantastic at making Sydney feel fundamentally likeable. Were it not for that, the series would have been unbearable.)

That said, that doesn’t mean that Sydney doesn’t present a problem for the show. As fascinating as Hypocritical Entitled Princess SpyBarbie is, she would be even more so as the main character in a world that reacts to her idiosyncrasies in a way that makes sense. That this is not the case is one of the season’s biggest problems. To go back to Sydney Doesn’t Kill, even if one could justify it in-universe, one would still need to explain why it goes on completely unremarked by anyone. The only explanation for that is to argue that SD-6 just has a general non-killing policy, which makes absolutely no sense. More generally, keeping the show’s version of Sydney viable means breaking the series’ moral parameters—SD-6 is terrible except when it isn’t—which further hinders the season or its attempts to say anything worthwhile.

On another note entirely, let’s talk about those Bechdel Test results. When I began working on this, I was honestly expecting this season to do far worse than it did, since I remembered the bulk of Sydney and Francie’s conversations being about the men in their lives. While this turned out to be not the whole truth, it is still largely accurate in ways that do not speak well of the season.

The Bechdel test presents, by design, a very low bar to clear. Passing is not hard to do, and it is even less hard when the main character of the work is female—you almost have to actively work at failing in order to consistently do so. And yet, this is what almost happens with Alias. Take away Francie from the main cast—which is actually shockingly easy to do, especially in the second half of the season—and the passing rate falls dramatically.

It’s also worth noting how few of the passes actually take place outside of Sydney’s domestic life. This is a serious problem! First of all, it means that the series is very often passing by the skin of its teeth, since Sydney’s domestic life is not often the focus of the series, especially as the season progresses. More importantly, it indicates that Sydney’s worlds outside the purely domestic realm are ones made up nearly entirely of men.

Now, it’s bad enough that Sydney is very nearly the only female intelligence operative in the world, in a world where even the desk jockeys are overwhelmingly male. But this goes beyond that. It’s not just that Sydney does not interact with female agents. It’s that she very rarely interacts with female scientists, female doctors, female party hosts, female corporate bigwigs (or, in college, with female professors). Why has the world of the show been set up this way?

Well, consider this: in a heteronormative world—which Alias very much is, no matter how much we all love Anna Espinosa and her no-heterosexual-explanation-for-this chemistry with Sydney—seduction is not a valid interaction between two women.

I’ve noted that Sydney’s aliases are almost never about adopting concrete personas, and instead about adopting particular aesthetics, which almost always accept the modifier “sexy”—sexy maid, sexy club-goer, sexy IT person—even when there’s no actual need for it, according to stated mission parameters. While this is, to a degree, about genre convention (sexy spies gotta sexy) there is something deeper going on here. Sydney’s aliases tend to be about being sexy because it’s Sydney’s chief interaction (whenever interaction is needed—it often is not, as mentioned earlier)—or at the very least, the use of feminine wiles is. This, in turn, is only possible because Sydney’s spy work takes place in a world largely devoid of women. It’s a vicious circle: Sydney’s missions don’t have women because sexy costumes are not needed to interact with women. Sexy costumes are needed because Sydney is always interacting with men, and the only valid interactions with them involve the possibility of sex.

Consider, in contrast, what happens with Dixon. Sydney dons costumes; Dixon adopts personas. Given that seduction is not an option for Dixon in a world with almost no women, his interactions get to be more complex—the rich person lording his privilege over the people who want his money; the cocky poker player. Heck, even Vaughn, with his limited screen time, gets to have fairly complex interactions. His alias in “The Solution” involves a more complex interaction than Sydney has ever had in the whole season, with the possible exception of…sigh…her brownface alias (which note, is also one where seduction is not available to her).

In short: Alias’ mission sequences are often so samey and uninspired because writers cannot conceive of a world in which Sydney interacts with women, or one when she can have non-sexual interactions with men. One could hardly find a better example of how sexism actively makes works worse and is inextricably linked with quality.

I’ve been fairly negative during this review so far, so it’s important to note that Alias is far from all bad. In fact, part of the reason why this season is so frustrating is because what we actually got, as disappointing as it is, is still generally so enjoyable, and makes me want the series to be its best self. So let’s talk about things I do like.

The first and foremost element in Alias’ plus column is its excellent cast, which does an incredible job of elevating writing that, as we’ve established, often does not do them any favors. Usually, bad writing results in unlikeable characters, but not here; this is actually a supremely engaging group of people, which makes the series surprisingly easy to get through. There’s no character whose presence will stop me from enjoying an episode because of the haaaaate, and that’s a rare blessing. Even Will, who has the audacity to both date his twenty-year-old intern and then very visibly not appreciate her, even when she’s great and looks like Sarah Shahi (whose Sarah Shahi-ness is 98% of the reason why the character is great; it certainly isn’t because of the way she’s written), is someone I really, really like, which is a bona fide miracle.

(Also, shout out to unproblematic favorites Dixon and Francie, who are wonderful and don’t get nearly the development they deserve.)

Something I also really enjoy about this season is its management of Sydney’s love life, which feels atypical for the genre in a way I appreciate. Both Will and Vaughn have really good chemistry with Sydney, and you could see her being happy with either. You can see why they all like each other. The pacing feels just right: neither Will nor Vaughn dither when it comes to expressing their feelings, and yet the evolution of said feelings and how they express them simmers at just the right speed. Will gets to have his feelings rebuffed and deal with them in exactly the right way (at least when it comes to his interactions with Sydney). None of their characters treat romance as the only worthwhile endgame of their relationships. It won’t last, but for now, this element of the series is very appreciated.

Finally, there is something about this season’s expansive approach to world-building, which is very appealing for reasons I can’t quite describe. As someone who’s a big fan of narratives featuring tangential storylines running in tandem, I really appreciate just how many different social circles the series establishes in a very short amount of time. It could have done better by pretty much all of them, but ultimately, I am interested and invested in the world the show has established.

In the end, though, season one’s chief asset may just be its ability to bluff, using the appearance of confidence, showmanship and excellent production values to make up for its various sins. It’s largely illusory, of course, but if you let yourself get caught up in the magicians’ misdirection, you end up with a propulsive fun experience that is also unlike anything that was going on at the time and which despite various imitators hasn’t quite been replicated since. It may not always be great, but it’s never a slog.

Alias season 1 is not the best season of the show; it’s not even among the better ones. Still, despite it significant and arguably fatal flaws, I can’t hate it—just the opposite, really. It’s a lot like Sydney Bristow that way.

#Alias #Alias Season One #Female Representation #Bechdel Test #MimeParadox

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bentnotbroken1fanfiction · 5 years ago

Text

Learning Curve: A teacher!Steve/SD!Billy AU

Part I Part II Part III or read on AO3

"Alright, what's the next thing on the list?" Billy asks, leading his daughter down the aisle. He'd promised Max he'd do the shopping last night, so he's here, doing the shopping while Becca practices her reading.

Go team.

"Ummm," She frowns hard at the piece of paper in her hand. "cah-eh-ree-all? Carial?"

"Cereal." He corrects.

She looks up at him, confused. "That's not how it looks though."

Yeah… "Sometimes words sound different than they look. We just have to memorize which ones they are."

She wrinkles her nose. "That doesn't make sense."

"I know," He agrees, "but that's just how it is."

She makes a face but reaches up to grab some Cheerios. "Can I get Berry Kix?"

He knows Leslie was a total health nut, but he's never thought a little sugar would hurt her. They'd always got up early on his Saturdays and went to the local donut shop. It was their secret.

Now there's no reason to have secrets.

"Yeah, put em in the basket." He says, giving in.

If Leslie were to be believed, she hadn't had sugar in two years. She still died.

A little sugar won't kill her.

He's lost in his thoughts, doesn't see Becca staring at someone behind him, doesn't realize they aren't alone anymore.

Until…

"Billy?" Ice rushes through his veins as a familiar voice speaks behind him. "That you, son?"

Oh fuck.

His breath leaves him, hand tightening around the yellow basket handle. He doesn't want to turn around. He just wants to drop this basket of shit, pick up his daughter, and run.

But he knows that would cause a scene, and he doesn't want to do that. Doesn't want to scare Becca. She's already had enough fear in her life, she doesn't need him freaking the fuck out. So he makes a decision and slowly turns around, forcing out a monotone, "Dad."

Neil looks the same, he thinks. Maybe a bit more gray, but he still has the same face. That face that can go from neutral and soft to angry and hard in a split second.

"I didn't know you were back in town." He's saying, sharp eyes looking Billy up and down. "How long have you been here?"

"Awhile." He answers flatly, and god, Billy is an idiot.

Everything had been going too well, running too smoothly, so he'd gotten complacent. He should have known he'd see Neil eventually. They lived in the same goddamn town, but a part of him had just hoped he'd never run into the bastard.

But Billy has never been that lucky

And his eyes don't stay on Billy long, they land on Becca and he automatically pulls her behind him. He can feel how rigid she goes under his hand, like she knows he's worried. Like she knows he's putting himself between her and danger.

"Who do you have there?" Neil asks, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"It's none of your fucking business who she is." He says, voice dangerous and cold, surprising them both. He had never spoken to the man with such hostility before. He'd been too weak, too afraid to stand up to him.

But Billy didn't have something precious to protect back then, now he does. And it's pulling on the back of his jacket, quietly pleading, "Daddy. I want to go home."

His chest aches at how unsure her voice sounds. He wants to take her home too, but if he doesn't deal with this right here, right now, it could turn ugly for them later.

"I know, sweetheart." He tells her, "Daddy just needs to talk to him for a minute, ok? Then we'll go."

"So, you're a father now, huh? Susan never told me that I had a granddaughter." Neil looks like he's a bit hurt by the information.

Him. Hurt. Hah.

He doesn't have the fucking right to be hurt, to be upset with Billy for cutting ties and keeping his daughter a secret from him.

He doesn't have the right.

"Yeah, that's because we didn't tell her until she left you." He hisses. "And as far as I'm concerned, she's not your granddaughter. She is nothing to you."

He can tell that his dad is pissed the fuck off at that. But he can also tell that he's not going to do shit about it. Because he doesn't know Billy anymore. Doesn't know what he's capable of. He only knows that he's not the same terrified boy that packed a bag and split the minute he graduated.

But even though he doesn't know Billy anymore, old habits die hard. He still manages an aggressive, "Nothing?" And steps to the side, trying to peer behind Billy. "We're family. You wouldn't be heartless enough to keep her away from her own grandfather would you?"

He shoves ten years worth of anger into a heated glare. "I put half a country between her and her other one, I'd gladly put a world between you and her if I could."

He frowns. "Don't you think you're being a little bit dramatic, son?"

"Dramatic?" He balls his hand into a fist, an act that doesn't go unnoticed by Neil. "Come near my kid and I'll show you just how dramatic I can be."

There's a heavy tension quickly filling up the space between them, and Billy thinks this may come to blows after all. He's gearing up for it, making a quick plan of action when he realizes Becca's hands are no longer gripping his jacket.

Panic seizes him until he hears her calling out, "Mr Harrington!" and he turns to see said man at the end of the isle, putting a box of cereal into his cart.

"Hey there, Becca. What are y-." He starts to say but is cut off when she plows right into his stomach. He barely keeps his balance as he wraps his arms around her, eyes rising to meet Billy's before asking, "Is everything ok?"

Neil scoffs behind him. "Oh, won't let her say hi to me, but you let her run off and hug strangers?"

Billy barely holds back a nasty retort. He's being willfully dense. He heard her calling Harrington's name too, so he doesn't look at him as he responds, "He's not a stranger." Hasn't been a stranger since Billy rolled into Hawkins and tripped over his own feet trying not to out himself to the pretty boy.

And fuck, Billy is happy to see him. If only because he's saving him from throwing punches in the middle of the Mini Mart.

Becca says something to him, and while he can't hear what she said from this far away, he can see Harrington's frown. Then he straightens up, takes her hand and abandons his cart, coming to a stop beside Billy.

"Everything ok over here gentlemen?" He asks, back straight and authoritative.

So unlike high school Harrington.

But now he's a teacher.

Right.

Neil opens his mouth but Billy beats him to it. "Of course. He was just leaving."

The man's stubbled jaw ticks but he backs down. Apparently not liking his odds. "We'll catch up another time, then." He says, and then...walks away, towards the front of the store.

As soon as he's out of sight Harrington's posture slackens and he lets go of Becca's hand. "Um, wasn't that your dad?"

He sighs, nerves shot to hell, and rests a hand on Becca's head. "Unfortunately."

"What'd he want? Becca said something was wrong."

Said little girl leans back against him and he sighs again, because he really doesn't want to talk to Harrington about this. Doesn't want to talk about it in front of his daughters, doesn't want them to know how pathetic he'd been in the past.

But he has to say something. "He just wanted to know why I didn't tell him I was in town, " He admits, "and why I didn't tell him about Becca."

He pushes his glasses up where they'd slid down his nose a bit. "Why didn't you?"

"I haven't spoken to the bastard since graduation, Harrington. He's got no reason to be in my business."

He nods. "Fair enough."

And Billy knows they still haven't gotten everything off the list, that he should stay and maybe thank the guy, but he's mentally exhausted now. Max can guilt trip him later. Between Neil showing up and now Harrington, he really just wants to go home, crack open a beer and watch TV with his kid.

"Well, we'll let you get back to your shopping. I think it's time we get going." He says, gently tugging on his daughter's ponytail to get her to swat at him and stop shutting down. "What do ya think?"

"Yeah." She replies enthusiastically. "I want to go home and see Uncle Lucas." Then she acknowledges her teacher, "See you tomorrow, Mr Harrington."

And even though he's been giving Billy some unreadable looks, he's all smiles when he talks to Becca.

That shouldn't make him feel so damn warm, but it fucking does. Because of course it does. The universe hates him. Wants nothing more than to watch him suffer and pine over something he can't have.

Or should he say someone.

#harringrove #teacher steve au #single dad billy #kidfic #two idiots that will pine #theyre bad with their feelings ok #general neil hargrove warning for this part #he's a dick #but billy will absolutely throw hands now

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