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flyingflosser09 · 2 years

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Cursed / Armando Salazar x OC / Chapter 24

The service on this ship is terrible.

I’m tied to the mizzenmast between Henry and the girl so I’m facing forward. This gives me a clear view of the deck, the forecastle deck, and the two pirates tying a frantic Jack to the foremast.

“The only safe place is the land?” he stresses, “Why are we going away from the land?”

No one pays him any mind, especially Barbosa, who is studying a map on the other side of the wheel.

The girl, however, is bold enough to call out to him, “Captain, your map is incomplete. I can take us to the Trident if you’d only trust me.” She goes ignored. “Did you not hear anything I just said?”

“It’s no use,” I tell her calmly, “You can bring a horse to the water, but you can’t force it to drink. I’m Samira by the way.”

She looks at me over her shoulder and I thought her eyes hold a certain familiarity to them. “Samira? Of course, Henry told me about you.”

“Did he now?” I quirk a brow at the boy on my right. “What did he say?”

“He told me about your curse, how you hope the Trident can help break it.”

“Did he also tell you I used to be his sitter?”

“Samira!” Henry scolds and I can imagine his cheeks burning up. “She’s joking, we were only friends.”

“Only friends?” I tut, “Ouch.” Then, to the girl, I say, “I used to wash his face, wipe his little mouth after dinner, tie his shoes –”

“Samira!”

Fortunately, I could lighten the mood at his expense. The girl snorts and suppresses a laugh before we settle into an anticipating silence.

So, she must be the one who holds the map to Poseidon’s Tomb. A part of me wonders how she acquired it, and another part doesn’t care unless it truly takes us to the Trident. That’s all that matters at this point.

“So,” I begin, “you have the map that no man can read. Is it because you’re a woman?”

“Thank you!” she exclaims victoriously, “Someone who understands! Have you any idea how stupid pirates are?”

I nod, looking directly at the pirate duo who I take so much pleasure in scaring. “Oh, yes. I know. Mind if I ask to where that map leads?”

“Well, if you must know, it’s in the stars.” I look up at the night sky as she explains, “I believe if I follow the right star, it will lead us to the Trident.”

Without even looking up from his map, Barbosa says cynically, “So you be saying is that a star is pretending to be a map?”

One of the crew, the bigger one, shakes his head from behind the wheel, “Sir, there is no island on any map to support what the woman says.”

“Captain, you don’t have to understand her,” Henry interjects, “Just believe her.”

A smile tugs at my lips when I catch on what’s stirring between them. Henry usually doesn’t mind me poking fun at him, however, gets defensive and embarrassed around this girl. I’m not going to lie, she is pretty. A young man like Henry had to be blind not to see it.

It seems Barbosa still doesn’t believe her as he goes back to studying his map and gazing out over the horizon.

By now, it is completely dark out and ominous clouds have gathered in the sky. Every few seconds, lightning strikes in the distance, lighting the sky for a second or two.

“Samira,” Henry’s voice sounds behind me, “are you doing this?”

At first, I don’t answer. Only when he mentioned it, do I notice the storm closing in on the ship, making it impossible to see a few yards beyond the dark waters below.

Despite my attempts to stay calm, there is a turmoil of emotions waging war inside me. The main reason for it is Armando. By now, I know he’s not known for having mercy on his enemies, and given I’ve been away for more than an hour now, they’ve no doubt realized what’s happened and are pursuing this ship as we speak.

I worry about what he will do once he catches up. Will he take what he wants – me – and let the pirates go? Or will he unleash hell upon them for taking what’s his?

There won’t be anything I can do if he decides on the latter, which brings me to my second concern: Henry and this girl. Despite not knowing the latter yet, I already know Henry likes her. Now, I don’t care much for the lives of these pirates, especially Barbosa’s, but if anything happens to Henry and his friend, there’s no telling what I’d do.

And underneath all that, there is a growing pit of fear in my stomach of what will happen when we find the Trident. What if it breaks all curses except mine? Would that prove that Barbosa spoke the truth; that I am indeed fathered by Poseidon himself?

The thought of that scares me to a point of wanting to shrink into myself and just dissolve into thin air. I can’t live a life running from guards and evading executions. Never again. I can’t have people look at me in fear and discuss for something that’s a part of me. How is telling everyone I’m the daughter of a god any different than denying I’m not a witch? They still won’t believe me. And if some do, will it be like Calypso; people either fearing or adoring me? How will I even tell the difference?

Thunder rumbles in the distance as heavy waves crash against the ship’s waterline. I close my eyes and try focusing my thoughts. Think about Armando, think about the life we’ll have after this…

And just like that, a new fear chills me to the core: what if he wouldn’t want anything to do with me if I’m…if my curse isn’t broken? Certainly, no mortal man of honor would want a heathen goddess as a wife. A woman who calls up storms and sink ships when she’s upset or resurrect men from their watery deaths.

I can’t stand the idea of losing him, and it scares me more than anything we’re risk losing on this quest to find the Trident.

I love him.

I love him so, so much.

“Release them!” My dark thoughts are interrupted by Barbosa’s sudden command. Back up from the banisters where he’s been searching the horizon, he points at me, “Not her.” In three strides, he’s standing in front of me, and says hastily, “Do you need yer hands to control the wind?”

“Sod off,” I tell him through clenched teeth.

“Let’s try that again…” He brings up his pistol and holds it to Henry’s head, and I swear my heart nearly broke out of my chest. “Do you need yer hands to control the wind, yes or no?”

“Don’t say anything, Samira,” Henry says bravely, although I detect the fear in his tone.

I hear the cocking of a barrel and blurt out, “No! No…I don’t.”

“Then she stays tied up.” Barbosa rounds the mast to stand in front of the girl, “Take the wheel, missy.”

His crewman nearly staggers in shock, “Sir, you wouldn’t allow a woman to steer your ship?”

“She will follow her star, or we’ll all die together.” I hold my breath when he focuses his attention back on me. “And you will sail us faster. One wrong move, and I’m gutting the boy.”

Turns out, I was wrong when I thought he has no leverage over me. I’d do about anything if that meant to keep Henry safe.

It is with the utmost reluctance that I search for a tether in the air before commanding it to fill the sails. The ship jolts forward as a gust of wind carries it through the oncoming waves, throwing the crew off balance. As I’m maintain focus, a part of me hopes the Silent Mary can still catch up with us.

Once Henry and the girl are released, she goes to take the wheel while he checks up on me. “Samira, are you alright? I’ve been so worried. Did Salazar hurt you? Were you safe?”

“I’m fine,” I tell him honestly, touched by his concern. “The Spanish crew, it was difficult to get along with them at first, but it wasn’t all that bad.”

“You’re joking.”

I shake my head. “I’m not. One of them taught me how to swordfight. Turns out, I’m quite good at it.”

He looks at me with a mix of shock and disappointment – the latter is because he’s offered to train me so many times, yet I always had an excuse not to. “And Salazar? Did he treat you well?”

Rather not tell him how well he treated me that one night in his cabin…

I nod my head before I can blush. “They were officers before the curse, good men. Once I got that through the Capitán ’s head, we came to an understanding. And I…may enjoy his company.”

A moment of silence passes before he blurts again, this time truly shocked, “You’re joking.” His brows furrow as he mutters so only I can hear, “You fancy him…”

“Was that a question or a statement?”

“You’re not denying either.”

Well, I suppose he has me there. The only thing left to do is admit that he’s right. “I can’t help the way my heart races when he’s near, just like you can’t help that silly look on your face with her.” I nod towards the girl at the wheel. “I want this curse broken more than ever now because that means I can be with him, have a normal life with a man that I love.”

For a moment, there is understanding in Henry’s face. He of all people would understand how it feels to love someone who is cursed. He hasn’t seen his father in nine years, not since we sank to the deck of the Flying Dutchman. And I’d wager with barnacles on his face and all, Elizabeth would still love Will with all her heart. Love is not what you can see on the horizon, but rather what lies deeper beneath its surface.

The look of understanding vanishes from Henry’s face and is replaced by solemn worry. I can see the battle behind those warm, brown eyes as he conflicts whether or not to say what’s on his mind.

“Something’s troubling you,” I say calmly, knowing he will tell me nonetheless.

And I stood correct. “Was it true what the captain said on the beach? Are you Poseidon’s heir?”

“I honestly don’t know. I know better than to trust a word a pirate says, yet I can’t stop thinking about it,” I confess gravely. “Tell me something, Henry, if I haven’t told you I am cursed all these years ago, if I had just shown you without saying a word, what would you have called it?”

Since the Spanish crew referred to me as a blessing, my head’s been spinning. All those years of being chased, sentenced to death, and shunned, made me believe I’m cursed. And that how I inevitably presented myself to Henry and Elizabeth. I never gave them a chance to decide for themselves whether my power is good or bad.

“Samira,” Henry looks at me with more wonder and truth in his eyes I’ve ever seen in a living person, “I have always thought of your gift as a blessing. Nothing you ever said or did could make me see it as a curse.”

If there was ever a time I wished to embrace him tightly as I did so many times when he was still little, this would be it. For the first time, I am at peace with myself and my ability.

With that weight lifted off my soul, I nod over at the girl at the wheel, “What’s her name?”

Instantly, his cheeks redden. “Carina.”

Wiggling my brows at him, I say playfully, “Then what are you standing here for. Go talk to her. I’ll be right here, watching.”

“Oh, wonderful, thanks.” He rolls his eyes but bashfully approaches her anyway.

I’m at peace as I watch him stir up a conversation with Carina, completely enamored with her. My heart aches to be with Armando right now. We are so close to finding the Trident, I can feel it. There’s nothing I want more than for us to break all curses together. I want to be the first to see him in his mortal form, the first person he touches and embraces.

We’re making good time with this ship, the Black Pearl, that I heard is the fastest vessel to ever sail the seas. Add the extra boost I provide; we’re practically soaring through the waves.

Barbosa makes his rounds around the deck, checking up on his crew before heading my way. “Feel the power of the Trident calling to you yet, Samira?”

“All I feel is the dire need to sink this ship to the bottom of the ocean, if you must know,” I say sweetly. “I hope you realize, when the Capitán comes for me, you’ll be the first to die. And this time, I won’t stop him.”

“Your threats carry weight, missy, but a true pirate knows how to sail a storm with all its dangers. You don’t scare me.”

“Why did the ocean protect me from you?” I ask before he can walk away.

The captain huffs ironically. “Why don’t you ask it yourself?”

With that, he leaves me to check up on Carina.

What’s that supposed to mean? The ocean can’t talk…

Unless…

I told Magda the ocean doesn’t linger on the lives it claims, but it does remember the monsters it creates. Would it be possible to relive memories through it, then?

Before I could ponder that theory, Henry calls above the wind and waves, “Redcoats! Redcoats!”

Every soul on the ship turns to where he’s pointing. Blinking against the dark, I can see the lights appearing in the mist, and hear the hum of voices across the waters.

Barbosa jumps into action. “She comes starboard! We shall fight to the last, the Pearl will not be taken from me again!”

I watch as the pirates scurry around the deck to prepare the cannons. They’re not nearly enough to man them all, even less to fight off an entire ship of British soldiers.

My first instinct is to go against everything the captain Barbosa said and command the wind to steer us away. But as I prepare for that, lightning strikes and I freeze when the silhouette of a husk flashes behind the Navy vessel.

A carcass of a ship with its mainmast pointed sideways.

The Silent Mary.

I watch in silent awe as it rears up, ribcage flayed open, and crashes down upon the Navy ship, breaking it clean in half. Explosions light up the sky and I behold the Mary sail through the flames, chest heaving with elation.

Armando is coming for me.

#armando salazar #armando #salazar #pirates of the caribbean: dead men tell no tales #pirates of the caribbean #potc dmtnt #potc #dmtnt #jack sparrow #henry turner

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oh-for-fic-sake · 3 years

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Tik Tok Leggings

Masterlist

Summary: Time to test these Tik tok leggings.

Warnings: swearing, Fluff, Cheeky Henry, Suggestive Themes, Plus sized reader

A/N: Just wanted to do something different thinking of maybe having a mini TikTok onshot series but unsure yet. Either way I hope you enjoy and happy Easter to those who celebrate and those who don't? Have a brilliant Sunday xx

Taglist: will be in comment/reblogs

You eyed the package wearily... just how the fuck were you meant to pull this off? Slowly but surely the confidence and 'fuck it' attitude was waning. They looked small.... very small.

You huffed a sigh looking at yourself in the mirror eyeing your form. You swear you'd gained some more weight, just a few pounds maybe? But you felt huge. Slowly you unravelled the leggings, it had been a good idea at the time but now you wasn't so sure. They were expensive and even thought you bought them as a little prank you did hope they would boost you confidence or at least be comfy enough to wear around the house.

Being a larger girl it was hard finding comfy clothes and you had to be comfy now that your boys were running around the house like headless chickens. You thought the terrible twos with trainers were bad? Your four year olds had scooters!

You grit your teeth and decided to try the leggings on gearing up for an all put war with the waist band but was pleasantly surprized. The fabric was firm and tummy controlling without feeling you feeling caught by a bloody boa constrictor! A comfy tight not spandex tight. You casually wondered about seeing if the company did bras, this shit would stop the girls from trying to knock you out on the stairs!

You pulled the material setting the... elasticated seam in your ass crack and winced... Okay that's a little strange... but not unpleasant and almost thong. You spun around eyeing yourself in to mirror. You didn't look to bad, if you said so yourself. Sure you wasn't magically strim and fit, you were blessed with a nice thick ass... but unfortunately had the thick hips and large thighs to go with it. You'd never be petite or dainty, but then again henry was huge behemoth of a man so you didn't need to be. As he said on many occasions he wanted a woman as thick as him... and you definitely fit that bill. His thighs were only slightly bigger then yours.

You turned around a few more times. Fuck okay hello there~ you grinned. You may not be the perfect sized woman but fuck if your ass wasn't glorious in these leggings~ this just might work.

You grinned and pulled on one of Henry's tshirts, the grey marines one it was snug and would ride up a little over your tummy showing off your bubble but that you felt was your best feature. And then padded downstairs, henry. Was in the large garden trying to teach the boys how to play rugby... Wanting to start them young.

You pottered about the kitchen chopping up the salad for tonight. Contrary to what people thought you were not large because you ate to much or did little exercise, you had always been bigger and admittedly since having the boys you had gained a little more weight but not ridiculously, you wasn't dangerously over weight.

You hummed looking out the patio door seeing henry jumping for joy as his boys and Kal played 'rugby' darting across the garden to the tiny rugby post at the end. Moving to Jersey to raise the kids was a brilliant idea, you had a huge country house with the land to go with it. Flat and immaculate that spread around the house in nearly four acres the lawn was mostly to the back and side and cornered off with tall hedge rows then beyond it a cornered off veggie plot and greenhouse and a work in progress chicken coop. Soon there will be a decent sized pond and some ducks... Henry didn't know yet, but if he was allowed to have a stables built four god knows how many horses you were allowed your ducks god dammit.

You grinned watching as henry ran around both the boys with his phone out cheering them on as they tor across the garden wrestling each other for the ball. You had panicked when you were told twin boys but you should have known henry would be able to handle it. It was perfect, days like this when he was home and strived to make his sons lives as magical and fun as he could, everyday was a holiday when dad was home.

You shook your head seeing the boys both lay on the floor in the shade completely tuckered out from the mornings fun. Henry can into the kitchen and you held your breath quickly bending over the counter a tad more then normal hoping to get a favourable reaction from your husband. But you couldn't help the tinge of doubt what if he didn't like them? Or thought you looked bigger then you were?

"Hey sweetheart are the boys fruit shoots in the fri-oh sweet baby Jesus" he coughed cutting himself off and took a half step back as he came in the kitchen. You giggled and turned to him then nodded your head to the fridge.

"Yeah their in there love" you said smirking and blushing as you saw him eyeing your ass tilting his head slowly down trying to get a better look at your ass making you bite your lip.

"Err yeah yeah... I... hold that thought" he said snapping out of it holding a finger up at you and looked to his phone.

"You just stay right were you are- no nope over bend over again babe... fuck me how did I get such a sexy little mama~" he growled one hand swiping over his screen. You flushed and wriggled our hips a little as you leant forward feeling on top of the world as he openly gawked at your ass. For a second you thought he was taking a photo and made to move wanting to snap up right but he napped his fingers to you pointing for you to get back down and brought the phone to his ear.

"Henry what are you?-" you tried standing once more but he crossed the kitchen pressing himself up against your ass and rocked slowly making you mewl as his bulge pressed against your ass half hard already. Henry huge hand pressed you down on the counter before him and winked then he spoke as who ever was on the phone answered.

"Hey mum, hi can you come get the boys?" He asked and you gasped at him shaking your head at him laughing. He wasn't palming the kids off to their grandparents because he wanted a midday fuck! Not that Marie-Ann would mind, she loved hosting the kids and frequently showed up out of the blue and took them out for the day. She was adamant that both you and henry still had alone time.

"No, no everything's all right I just- somethings come up~" he smirked and you laughed loud shaking your head at him, he was a little bugger! He wriggled his brows at you and nodded then flushed stuttering for a few comments.

"I.. No no of course not mum... muuuum stop- well yeah... yes I know you were young once-oh shit no I didn't mean of course your still young! Your in your prime! Okay yes, yes I promise to try my hardest... yes okay, see you in ten okay love you bye... bye mum I will. Yes I will mum bye" he muttered slowly moving through being embarrassed, shy and strangely confident before hanging up.

"Soo the boys are going out?" You giggled finding the way he reacted ridiculously cute. It wasn't what you expected, maybe a kiss on the cheek and a slap on the ass. But not him shipping the kids off for the day.

"And staying over night" Henry muttered moving both hands to your ass and squeezed and rolled the cheeks about making you squeak and try rising on your tip toes but he just growled following pressing a kiss to your neck.

"And what have we agreed to for this mighty generous gift? What have you promised?" You said arching back into him with a teasing tone knowing Marie would make henry pay for the 'young once' comment.

"Oh you know nothing too big just another grandchild, which wont be hard with these in your closet" he chuckled pinging the fabric that clung to your ass like a second skin. You flushed gasping out at him batting him away slowly. But it was a hard fought battle, Henry won easily sliding the cutting board back then let you spin to face him. He quickly hoisted you up onto the counter top behind you and kissed your lips moaning into you before pulling back and pointed at you.

"Right you stay- right here. Don't you move a muscle Mrs Cavill" he said seriously and backed away from you still pointing making you laugh and kick your feet biting your lip before nodding. Henry backed up to the back door and called out to the boys.

"Boys come on! Your going to grandmas for a sleep over! Go pack a bag, jammies, tooth brush and clothes for tomorrow! Come on mush hop it or cop it!" he called you smiled hearing two high pitch excited voices squealing at the thought of grandma. She spoilt them rotten. They dashed into the house quickly running past the both of you giggle as henry tried playfully nudging them on the bottoms with his foot when they ran through the kitchen to dart up the stairs and pack an overnight bag. Henry slunk out of the kitchen following the boys but kept glancing back at you.

"Remember right there babe, been too long since we fucked in here~" he growled making you flush remembering the last time you'd made love in here. It'd been when you were pregnant, the day you moved in before you redecorated you'd had Chinese take out and then made love in every room in the house.

"I'll be right here love I promise, now... You might want to sort yourself out before answering the door to your mother~" you teased pointing to the large lump in the front of his shorts making him grunt and cup himself trying to reposition himself and left the kitchen to help the boys pack.

You can safely say, these leggings were a success. You were definitely leaving a five star review... You did however regret not filming his reaction for tiktok. Honestly you didn't even have the app your sister in law had shown you and you thought it'd be something fun to try with Henry. You may just get more than you bargained for though, not that you minded... You just hoped you had a girl this time, it was about time to try and even things out a bit.

#henry cavill fanfiction #henry cavill #henry cavill x reader #henry cavill x plus size reader #henry cavill imagine #henry cavill x you

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theseerasures · 4 years

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a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride

honestly there is just like. no point as of Witch (if not earlier) in thinking about Marrow and Winter as following along the same defection path, and downright facile to compare the two in terms of who is “closer” to defecting and therefore “less problematic” (even setting aside that making value judgments along those lines in fiction is...never that straightforward), when the narrative has emphasized REPEATEDLY how they are on entirely separate tracks in terms of character and role in the Atlas military.

seriously, it’s like saying “this orange is bad because you can’t eat the peel like you can eat an apple skin”

so like, yes, Marrow is the one who has verbally expressed his misgivings, and has clearly articulated scruples (as opposed to just the dial-up noise) and will blurt them out any second now as soon as he gets a word in edgewise. but also: Marrow HASN’T gotten a word in edgewise (except with Winter, fancy that), and has done approximately fuck all to actually subvert the system that he is growing to hate. both his theory and lack of praxis are tied into Marrow’s relatively low, overlooked position in the Atlas system, and feed into the fact that for Marrow the project of Atlas is not personal.

Marrow joined the military on ideological grounds. he clearly does want personal connection, but that has been denied him at every turn, largely by his teammates, largely by his partner, all of whom use him to enforce their own struggles with the clash between political duty and personal grief. he has been alienated by the system he upholds, which started even before we meet him. this makes it much harder for him to rebel in deed, because he doesn’t have a lot of power to begin with and he knows the system will not protect him if he does; at the same time, that relative powerlessness and isolation keeps his investment in Atlas abstract, uncomplicated, and much easier to dispel. Marrow is still with Atlas because he has a job to do, because it’s his duty, because he is still clinging to the Atlas military’s illusory altruism. he wants Penny to come with them so she can save Atlas. his protestations at seeing Team FNKI, that they are “just kids,” comes from the belief that it is categorically wrong to send children into battle. what is keeping Marrow from defecting is belief, and once the belief is shattered--like, say, when his boss’ new ingenious plan is to Nuke the Poors--there is nothing keeping him around.

and once his path is set he will not waver, because Atlas, by design, has no hold on him materially or personally (outside of his own life, which he was already happy to dedicate to a cause). Marrow then, is the limit case of Atlas being hoist with its own petard: an exemplar for how it gives its people nothing while demanding everything, but also an exemplar for how quickly the entire system folds in on itself when the veil is lifted. when Marrow defects (and it IS when) it will represent Atlas as a whole defecting from itself, even if we don’t see it visually--from the civilians, to the enlisted soldiers, to perhaps even members of Marrow’s own team.

NONE of the things i just mentioned really apply to Winter, because there is nothing about Atlas that is not personal for Winter.

i have no doubt that Winter is in some ways invested in same abstract principles that swayed Marrow, but that is constantly overridden by the fact that Winter has family at all sides of this, even before everything fell to shit, and the narrative will not stop reminding her.

“what about your sister?” “would you say the same thing if it was your sister inside?” her father was gunning for a seat on the Council. the man who took her in is essentially Head of State. Penny has made herself Public Enemy Number One, and Weiss is actively abetting her. even Whitley has now thrown himself into the fray, unbeknownst to her. and another person might be better at compartmentalizing all this the way Winter clearly wants to, and stick to the party line, but Winter cannot, because the more i watch her the more i’m convinced that the current crisis in Atlas is just a microcosm of the real issue, which is to say: everything is personal in Atlas for Winter, because everything is personal for Winter.

at a moment-to-moment level, and especially when backed into a corner, Winter defaults not to ideology but her tightly coiled lattice of personal relationships. and this makes perfect sense, because Winter grew up in a household where she had to perpetually crisis respond, and then she never stopped. Marrow does what he does because he believes in the dream, in making the world a better place, and therefore it is more difficult in some respects for him to defect, because it involves taking a long hard look at and then rejecting the structures he bought into and made himself complicit in. once lines are crossed and he DOES do that, though, he’s home free. for Winter, there are no lines to cross, because all Winter wants in the end is to throw her arms around everyone she cares about and drag them to safety. to keep them there, closely held, where she can see them and make sure that they stay safe.

but what’s tricky about Winter--what’s fascinating to me, what Jacques tried to beat out of her, what James alternately capitalizes on and tries to quash, what she resents about herself--is that in times of crisis (which for Winter is again ALL THE TIME), “everyone she cares about” becomes everyone, so that suddenly she takes a shine to the General’s war machine, so that she’s risking her life to give Penny and Fria a few more seconds of time, so that she’s stepping in front of Elm’s incoming fist, so that she’s letting JYR go rescue Oscar. Marrow has ideals he values, but at her core Winter has nothing but the people, who are real the moment she sees and feels them--real enough to defend, or defend against.

Winter jealously protects her web of people, but that web will also spiral out to infinity if she lets it--so she doesn’t. she has adamantly refused to move out of the mode where she lives present-by-present, only reacting to what is right in front of her, what she has been told, weighing her own life against the people who are closest, and no more. this is unquestionably a trauma response, but it’s also reinforced by 1) her choice to become a career soldier, and 2) the fact that Winter actually HAS quite a bit of power, and she knows that. but she has never trusted herself with any of it, largely because her hypervigilant response to situations has only ever been chastised instead of rehabilitated. Winter knows the weight of her name and her position, but she constantly tries to ignore it, or run away from it, so that she is only ever the heiress, the second-in-command, and never the Queen. she cannot be a leader until she is Good (that is to say, perfect and rational), so she tries to obliterate her power the same time she obliterates that pesky personhood: remaining still for as long as possible, avoiding situations that she knows will prompt action and choice, and when absolutely pushed to think through her power, moving the pieces around with extreme caution, hoping that the world won’t be burnt black by it.

Marrow and Winter are fundamentally at opposing ends of the personal-political bleed, and the story could NOT telegraph it any more clearly than their conversation in Witch, where Marrow makes a personal plea to Winter so that she can make a call far beyond just that, and she refutes him, by reminding him of his obligation to Atlas in the form of impersonal duty.

i’ll conclude by pointing out that there is something very interesting happening with Winter right now, that exceeds her power in-universe. because even as a Schnee, as Ironwood’s protege, what Winter can do is limited (partly because she limits herself), except for how the story has resolutely centered her actions and MADE them significant. in the course of this war Winter has let herself make exactly two choices--both of them noninterventionist, easily justifiable, and not meant to take any ideological stand--and they ended up altering the entire fabric of the war with Salem. all because she loved her sisters more than her duty. all because she was shown a slim chance to save the kingdom and a fourteen-year-old boy, and she thought just for an instant, what’s the harm

(and James Ironwood will never know. that even with his plan, his bomb, all his ships, all his soldiers...he was no match for her. his loyal lieutenant. the only child he will ever have, who has only ever called him “sir.”)

it is not about what Winter COULD have chosen in those moments, if she had the ability to stop Penny and Weiss from leaving, if JYR were even Oscar’s rescuers, in the conventional sense. it is about the fact that she DID make those choices, and the story has made them reverberate, in spite of the fact that she did not mean for them to. Marrow’s story is about being neglected and overlooked by the system, the moment of recognition that it needs you more than you need it, that there are so many more of you, and together you can stop chasing the dream and make your own. Winter’s story cleaves to the heart of not just Atlas, but the RWBY monomyth, which goes something like: stars are like us. the world was created because two brothers could not get along, and sundered because a woman could not cope with her grief. just because you move closer to the elite, to the center, to the top, to the sublime, it does not mean that you move farther from the fallible. we are all, at our deepest layer, people.

but the world does not tremble any less for it.

#winter schnee #marrow amin #rwby #helen writes meta #there is something like. gallingly poetic to the point where it's just shy of kitsch #about the throughline of winter letting penny go and then penny letting emerald go #(and then emerald helping free oscar with JYR and hitching a ride on the other strand winter left trailing behind)#it's not about causation. it's not that simple #it's about the ways that penny is both winter's apotheosis and (dare i say it) mirror #as maidens so often are for each other #so that winter's desperate compromise becomes in penny's hands a transcendent mercy #winter would not have spared emerald. and penny is not there solely because of winter #but they constitute and echo each other even apart in the kingdom of creation #winter might call that being 'human' but penny would call it something else #me yesterday: teehee i think i will make a leetle joke #about how winter has done more for the war effort than ironwood by basically doing fuck all #HOURS AND A ZILLION WORDS LATER #listen. do i regret it? yes. do i wish i'd done something more productive? absolutely. do i wish i could hyperfixate on anything else? ye

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nevertheless-moving · 3 years

Text

Suicidal Misunderstanding XXV

Part I - - - - - - - - - - Part XXII - - - - Part XXIII - - - - Part XXIV

Star Wars Time Travel AU #27

The nature of the Jedi Temple was such that years could pass unnoticed within the ethereal, eternal walls—and then a number of factors would converge simultaneously, and wreck all that.

In this case, dawn, rumors, and Quinlan Vos were all meeting in an abrupt and tremulous clash.

Rumors and daylight, of course, were well known for their power to occupy multiple spaces at the same time. Quinlan Vos’s apparent ability to do so (for nothing else could explain his gentle but thorough interrogation of padawans in the sallies, his generous provisions of drinks for over-wrought nocturnal jedi, and his unauthorized access to closed off personal quarters, all in an impossibly short period time) was far more inexplicable, and therefore technically admirable.

Master Gallia did not feel admiring at the moment. She felt tired.

“Where. Is. Obi-Wan?” Quinlan repeated.

Adi Gallia danced around him, continuing on her stroll of the temple grounds. She released a flash of irritation into the force—of course Masters Koon, Windu, and Yoda all were shipped off for their own (admittedly grim) assignments, leaving her responsible for ‘local’ issues. She had accepted the possibility of intense political fallout, of course. She was prepared to soothe the worries of those still in-temple, who were just starting to pick-up on the certainly-not-an-evacuation. She had been less ready to deal with an incensed psychometric interfering in matters beyond his understanding.

“Classified,” she repeated, as neutrally as ever.

“Do you really want to have the rest of this conversation in front of the whole Order?” he hissed. “I went to his quarters, I felt—” Vos shuddered.

Gallia sighed, tension headache growing. “Come with me.”

She glided serenely to her personal office space, Vos trailing her like the irritable shadow he was.

The door clicked.

“I know he tried to kill himself,” he said bluntly. The Councillor winced slightly; even knowing the context didn’t change the very real and tragic brush with death. “I saw Skywalker see it.”

Master Gallia didn’t reply—there was no point in denying, and every point in gaining information.

“Do you know what Obi-Wan felt?” he asked manically.

The Tholothian Master took an involuntary step back. Part of her thought it would be more expedient to simply bring the man into the fold, but another part hesitated at trusting the already thinly stretched secret to a man who was, by Master Kenobi’s own admittance, far closer to falling than anyone realized. It was scarcely his fault—shadow work was dangerous, even when the galaxy wasn’t in the grips of a Sith-engineered galactic war, but still—

“Nothing!” he cried, slaming his palms on her desk in an alarming loss of control. “A brief feeling of panic when his hand was on the vibroblade and then fucking serenity as he tried to stab himself in the heart!”

“Master Vos—” she tried to say placatingly, but he was having none of it.

“Please,” he begged. “I know I can get through to him, just tell me where he is.”

“Quinlan Vos—you’re just going to have to trust the High Council to have Master Kenobi’s best interests in mind.”

He stared at her for a moment, then narrowed his eyes. “You lost him, didn’t you?”

“Quinlan—”

The Kiffar barked out a laugh, pointing a finger in outraged accusation. “He woke up, half the galaxy felt that—and then he ran off, and now he’s somewhere, hurt, and the Council can’t spare the resources or the pride to help him!”

She hesitated—that was the cover story, one that would conceivably spread; but it felt deeply cruel to leave the Kiffar floundering in it. If only he was slightly less angry...

Vos took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said shortly. “The Council wants to keep his status under wraps—that’s fine; he wouldn’t want everyone knowing he’s vulnerable, anyway. Just give me what you have, and I’ll track him.”

Adi Gallia drummed her fingers on her rattled desk for a moment, before letting go of a half-truth. “We suspect he’s going after Count Dooku,” she said finally, suppressing any guilt she felt for the half-lie, or for causing Quinlan’s expression to twist tighter, when she could so easily relieve him of his burden.

“And?” he pressed.

Adi looked away. “Knight Skywalker’s with him, in some capacity,” she grit out.

Quinlan snorted. “Obviously.” Gallia’s lips tightened.

“Is that it?” he asked exasperated. “You’re not going to even give me his file?”

“You don’t have it already?” she asked drly.

“I’ve got the bathashit official one you gave to the Chancellor,” he admitted, immediately and unrepentantly. “Where you all but threw him under a moving speeder,” he added hostily.

Master Gallia winced. “Master Vos,” she tried again. “The Council has a plan. I regret that I cannot tell you it, but I beg of you—have faith in us for a little longer—don’t go after him.”

Quinlan’s expression tightened. “Is the plan for the good of Obi-Wan, or the good of the Council? Because sure, I know which Obi-Wan would prefer, and so do you—and I. Don’t. Agree.”

Gallia rubbed her temples, skull throbbing with tension. “And that’s why I can’t trust you with anything else,” she admitted, completely honest.

Quinlan nodded sharply. “May the force be with you, Master Gallia.”

“And with you, Quinlan Vos,” she replied sadly.

Quinlan stalked out, and Gallia took a brief moment to pity the both of them before returning to work.

- - -

Ventress skulked in the corner of a dingy bar, cursing Kenobi once again. A few hours on this miserable planet and all she had were rumors to go on. Obviously something had happened to the golden boy, but the underworld seemed even more puzzled than the kriffing Jedi. It was only a matter of time before the public caught wind, and then the gossip would become hopelessly entangled with the actually important whispers.

Sneaking into the Temple itself would be a worthy test of her skills—but if she was captured...well needless to say there would be no aid from Dooku. Had she not felt the Negotiator’s presence during the flight she might have believed this were some irritating test of her Master’s but this...

The Dathomori grimaced into her drink. If nothing else, Kenobi was a fearsome adversary—anything that could have riled him—possibly defeated him once in for all...Ventress hated to admit but she might be out of her depth.

“Is this seat taken?”

She looked up in irritation at a human male with a cocky grin, a gold face tattoo, and skin as dark as hers was pale. The idiot was already pulling out the seat, apparently utterly oblivious of her open contempt— not to mention the chill of the dark side she was deliberately projecting around her.

“Yes,” she snapped. “Now leave, before I remove you. Violently.”

He grinned wider, leaning in. “Oh don’t be like that. Now, what’s a beautiful woman like yourself doing in a place like this?”

The fool then had the audacity to reach over, lightly brushing her hand. She grabbed the wrist, pinning it to the table. “Do. Not. Touch Me. You vile worm.”

“Aah! Okay, okay!” he babbled in panic. “Sorry, my mistake, thought you seemed hot and a little lonely, that’s all, miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, you know? Wasn’t trying to cop a feel or anything I swear! I’ll go now, promise.”

She felt an odd tingling sensation run through her, starting at the single point of contact between them. She frowned, unable to classify it. He smiled charmingly. and she released him as if burnt.

“You’re a Jedi,” she hissed, hand dropping to the sabers beneath the table. The tingling sensation faded. “What was that?”

The open panic disappeared, wholly replaced by the earlier smirk. “And you’re a Sith.” He flexed his hand before tucking it into a pocket. “Nothing to worry about. Just needed your help with an investigation.” He stood, bowing mockingly. “Thank you for your time.” And then he was gone, fading into the shadows.

She leapt to her feet, running outside and snagging him from his hiding spot behind a crate.

“What sort of Jedi shadow walks?” she asked, pressing him to the wall at bladepoint, careful not to allow any other point of contact between them. He looked at her as though she were an idiot, and her cheeks heated slightly.

“You do realize I have to kill you now, right?” she snarled. “Can’t exactly have a Jedi Shadow telling people where I am”

“You’re not my mission, darling,” he replied, flashing teeth. “Far as I’m concerned, this never happened.”

She narrowed her eyes, digging the tip of her knife into his throat. The Shadow looked deeply unconcerned. “But you thought I might be?” she questioned slyly.

He shrugged. “Sith Apprentice, half a galaxy away from the front off the war? Figured you might be up to trouble, yeah. Fortunately for both of us—as I’m sure an actual fight would be a massive and mutual inconvenience—whatever trouble you’re here for has nothing to do with me. I’ve got bigger fish to fry, you’ve got bigger fish to fry. I’d offer to buy you a drink but I’m fairly certain you’d throw it in my face so...”

He delicately pressed a finger to the knife at his edge. Bemused, she allowed him to push it away.

“And you got all that from touching my hand,” she asked incredulously, curious of his power despite herself.

He waggled his digits playfully. “Magic fingers.”

She scoffed. “Even if you were a psychometric—” She cut herself off, eyes flickering to the face tattoo.

“Kiffar,” she breathed. “Of course. My gloves—but it was just a moment, what—ah.” She smirked. “Kenobi. You just wanted to know if I had been around him.”

“And now I know you haven’t.” He shrugged. “Anyway, have fun on Coruscant; good luck not getting arrested.”

He started to amble away at a deceptively casual stroll. She fell into lock step.

“You’ve lost him,” she accused.

He shrugged. “Sure, why not,” he agreed mildly. She narrowed her eyes.

“Some of the Jedi fear their golden boy might have fallen,” she guessed with absolute confidence, but neither his face nor his force presence gave anything away—and she was following him to a secondary location like a fool.

Ventress lunged but the Jedi was dancing backwards, slipping into a nearby shadow. He fell into it sideways—completely, but crudely. She wheeled around, scanning the perpetually dim alleyway. One shadow grew darker—she threw a dagger and a patch of dark detached, hissing and bleeding a satisfying scarlet.

“Is there a point to attacking me,” he asked impatiently, saber finally appearing in his hand, though it stayed unlit. “I already told you that I don’t care what you’re doing here. What possible advantage could you gain in picking a fight with me? Even if you win, don’t you think the Jedi would notice if a shadow went missing on Coruscant?”

“You really have no problem letting a Sith run around your precious Core world?” she asked skeptically, throwing another dagger. He dodged it, and it lodged itself in the brickwork. A random passerby immediately stole it—kriff she hated this world— but Asajj couldn’t chace after the parasite now, because the Jedi was throwing a—rock?

The window behind her shattered as she dodged the wild shot, and an incoherent roar spilled out, along with foul smelling water, and eye stalk, and the first few of what looked many tentacles.

“Oh you play dirty,” she breathed, reluctantly impressed. He hit her with a two fingered salute, disappearing again, this time by swaggering slowly around a corner. And then she had to focus on fighting a pissed off Dianoga whose tankhome had just been vandalized.

By the time she mortally wounded the garbage squid, the trail for her first and best lead on Kenobi had nearly gone cold.

Nearly.

Part XXVI

#star wars #star wars fanfiction #quinlan vos #asajj ventress #star wars au #my au #suicidal misunderstanding au #star wars au no 27

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bitsandbobsandstuff · 4 years

Text

Ink on his heart

Summary: Here’s how Bucky Barnes got a haircut and then decided it was about damn time he controlled his own destiny - starting with a bit of ink.

Star Spangled Bingo Square: “A thoughtful gift”

Characters: Bucky Barnes x TattooArtist!Reader

Words: 7,400 Warnings: Tattoo experiences, a couple stories about war. Some swearing. Mostly lots of feels and fluff.

A/N: This one has been in my head a long time, I love tattoos and I love the idea of Bucky getting them! While I desperately wish I could draw the designs in my head, hopefully you get enough of a word picture to imagine. And yes, it is kinda long (I know, I know), but I couldn’t stop myself!

Want to find all my stories? Search #bitsmasterlist or try the link in my bio!

*****

Not that Bucky’s counting, but it’s been three days, 18 hours and 26 minutes and he can’t get over it.

In the damp, chilly hours before dawn, he sits on the floor of the tower living room, watching the marshmallows in his hot chocolate melt in white swirls. Now and then, he lifts his eyes to the windows, finds the faint edges of his reflection in the dark glass, and tilts his head. Tentative fingers scratch through close cropped hair and a slow smile appears. Even now, he expects long strands trailing through his fingers. Believes he can feel the phantom tug of a snarl.

It was just a haircut. What a simple, ordinary thing.

But Bucky Barnes has never been ordinary.

That small act triggered a startling transformation. Decades of heartbreak fell away with that dark hair, revealing the shape of a man he begins to remember, and it makes him think. About small things, about change. About simple acts making an extraordinary difference.

The last haircut Bucky remembers before the beginning of his first ending, was January 1945. The memory came back one evening, of a tent in Austria, the heavy silence of snow drifting down. He remembers Steve with a dull scissors, snipping carefully along his ear, remembers the catch of a knife gently shaving his neck. It was a ritual they shared for years. When pennies were tight and life was tough, they took care of each other.

And then? Then there was after.

After the fall, after capture, after the world went pear-shaped. Hydra wasn’t concerned with the formalities of self-care, a haircut was functional. Sharp scissors biting into his scalp, rough hands tearing his hair, a harsh slap if he considered resisting. Get it done and get it done fast. The Asset has work to do.

He despised those haircuts.

But now, here he is. No more handlers and horrors. No more running. No more hiding. No more ropes dragging him somewhere he doesn’t want to be.

Wresting back his independence was exhilarating.

When Steve had finished this haircut - because Bucky still preferred a Steve Rogers special to anything - he’d dusted off Bucky’s shoulders and waited. Sam stood behind him, and Bucky rolled his eyes, expecting a barrage of sassy comments.

But Sam just ruffled the freshly cut hair and laughed.

“Not bad old man. Still not as handsome as yours truly, but hey - maybe someday.”

Such a simple thing, a haircut.

It makes him wonder what else he might do, just for himself.

Fuzzy and disconnected, an old memory flickers to life. It buzzes in his brain, images and connections filtering through the cracks and Bucky lets out a breathless laugh.

“Yeah,” he murmurs to himself. “Okay.”

He closes his eyes and sips his hot chocolate.

*****

Steve yawns when he answers the door. Blond hair spikes in every direction and he rubs his eyes, looking for all the world like a sleepy, overgrown toddler.

“Hey, man. Everything okay?”

Bucky leans against the doorframe and chews his thumbnail while he gathers his thoughts.

“Sure, just - can I get a favor?”

Bemused, Steve ushers him inside and Bucky plops in the red bean bag chair Steve keeps tucked beside his dresser. Stretching out his legs, he waits for Steve to flop back into bed and snuggle his pillow, before he speaks.

“Remember back in ’37 when we were coming home from that shitty bar in Midtown, and we saw that sailor getting a tattoo?”

Whatever Steve expected, it wasn’t this. It takes him a moment to conjure the image, but when it comes he belts out a laugh.

“That terrified kid gettin’ a big heart on his arm? Looked ready to shit his pants?”

Bucky grins at the memory, a milk-faced kid with hair dark and shiny as an oil-slick.

“Thought he was gonna puke on the guy.”

“Yeah, and didn’t we stand outside that window arguing while you tried to convince me we both needed one? Something about good girls liking bad boys?”

“Hey, I stand by that statement!”

“Oh fuck off, you know exactly what your Ma would’ve said if we’d come home with tattoos.”

“Yeah,” Bucky chuckles. “God, she’d a skinned me alive.”

“Damn straight,” Steve agrees and they fall quiet, momentarily lost in shared memories of a woman with a voice of steel and a heart of gold.

Bucky leans forward and rests his chin on his knee.

“You know, all these years and I’ve never really - done anything like that,” he admits wistfully. “Gotten something done to me, I mean. Something I decided on my own. If that makes sense?”

Controlling his own destiny, choosing to do something by himself, instead of always accepting things done to him - the idea is intoxicating. He remembers the pained grimace on that sailor’s face and he relishes the prospect.

Pain you choose to feel holds a different meaning, than the torture he knows.

“S’never too late, Buck,” Steve says drowsily. “You can do anything you want.”

Bucky contemplates Steve’s words. He can do anything he wants. Heart beating fast, he takes a deep breath.

“So listen, I was thinking -”

*****

For two straight weeks, Steve works on ideas.

The floor of his bedroom is littered with sketches and concepts, crumpled sheets of paper dappled with flowing lines. Finally, after midnight on a dreary Thursday, he knocks on Bucky’s door. The moment it opens, he shoves his tattered leather portfolio in Bucky’s hands.

“So, I guess, uh - here.”

Steve crosses his arms, his toe tapping nervously, and Bucky chokes down a laugh. Some things about Steve Rogers remain comfortingly unchanged. No matter how incredible his work, all confidence seems to evaporate the moment Bucky lays eyes on anything.

—

“Give it back asshole!”

“God dammit Steve, YOU’RE the one who asked me to look!”

“Yeah well, I changed my mind, now give it back!”

—

Bucky remembers laughing while Steve chased him around their apartment. He remembers the neighbors banging on the wall, shouting at them to shut up, and he remembers the smell of their forgotten scrambled eggs burning. But most of all, he remembers that drawing - he tucked that portrait of his mother in his rucksack the day he shipped out and it stayed there, a good luck charm all through the war.

Steve had cried when Bucky told him.

Because Bucky’s opinion was always the one that mattered. Seventy years changes nothing.

Tonight, he opens the leather case, revealing three separate drawings. Outlines of black ink and a rainbow of colors paint over the curves and breaks of a human form and he pores over each page. Each drawing is utterly unique, telling the story of Bucky Barnes in metaphors and moments.

There are no words.

His throat feels suddenly thick, cotton lodged in his windpipe.

“I can redo them,” Steve blurts out. He snatches at the paper, but Bucky spins sideways, blocking the reach.

“The fuck you will. You ain’t touching these,” his voice cracks. Blinking back the flood of emotion, he looks up. “This is - they’re perfect, Steve. Thank you.”

Steve blushes petal pink and coughs to hide his delight. He fails miserably, of course, but that’s one more reason Bucky loves the little punk.

*****

One week later, Bucky stands before a demure brick storefront on a slow Brooklyn side street, the portfolio housing Steve’s three precious drawings clutched tight in a sweaty hand. Glancing at the address in his hand, he looks up to find stenciled letters curving across a glass window.

BROOKLYN INK ESTABLISHED 1973

“Here we go,” he mutters. Before he can lose his nerve, he shoves forward.

Three steps inside the tattoo parlor, he pulls up short.

Wow.

Black iron chandeliers hang from the ceiling, splashing sparkles across plush velvet chairs, rich violet and bright turquoise. The floor is an eclectic mix of reclaimed barn board, full of knots and whorls in every shade of brown. Artwork in black and white frames line the brick wall, tattoo designs, letters and fonts, photos of finished work. The entire space overflows with warmth, and Bucky feels instantly at ease.

The front desk is empty, but he hears someone rattling around back, so he takes a seat. Piled high on an end table are bundles of photo albums, full of work; he sinks into the cushions and starts flipping through.

Immersed in the images, he misses the sound of quiet footsteps.

“Are you James?”

The voice startles him and in one swift move, he manages to throw the album on the floor and tumble from the chair. Pages of photographs spill everywhere and he crawls over, hastily scooping them up and babbling one inappropriate apology after another.

“Shit! Sorry, I’m sorry! Shit, I mean I’m sorry for saying shit. Fuck, I didn’t - oh my god, I’m sorry, I’m not usually so - ”

Soft laughter greets him and he looks up in panic, a more refined apology on his lips, but the words evaporate.

Crouching beside him, graceful hands gather up the mess of photos, slipping them back into the album. Dropping it carelessly on the end table, she bounces back to her feet and offers him a hand.

“No worries,” she says with a breathtaking smile. “I shouldn’t have startled you.”

Although he has no need for the support, Bucky reaches mutely for her outstretched fingers because he can’t help but take them. When she tugs, he allows her to pull him up.

“I’m, um - Bucky. Please, call me Bucky.”

“Hello Bucky,” she says. She shares her name and he repeats it slowly. Clearing his throat, he takes a deep breath.

“Thanks for meeting me so late, I know it’s after hours.”

“Sure,” she says lightly. “So, what can I do for you?”

This is the tricky part.

“On the website, it mentioned you had experience with - with tattooing around scars,” he begins carefully. “Scar tissue I mean. Is that right?”

With his question, her expressions turns serious. She observes him for a long moment.

“Yes, I do. Can I ask how long you served?” she asks delicately and Bucky acknowledges her perception with a short nod. He toys with the zipper on Steve’s portfolio, debating his response.

“Seemed like forever,” he finally says, and it’s the most honest answer he has.

Nodding silently, she motions him behind the counter.

“Come on back, let’s see what you had in mind.”

Hugging the pictures to his chest, Bucky follows, eyes saucer wide as they weave through the work area to her space. The shop smells like the woodsy smoke from the candles sitting along her table, mixed with ink and latex and an odd sterile tang. He inhales and discovers he likes it, the strange scent lighting him up.

Dropping to her stool, she gestures for him to have a seat. Bucky sits gingerly, wide eyes still staring. When she catches his eye, he flushes.

“Sorry. First time I’ve been in a shop.”

“That’s okay, there’s lots to see,” she says easily. Looking at the portfolio still clutched against his chest, she grins. “Did you have some ideas already?”

He thrusts the portfolio at her. Propping it on her knees, she flips it open and he beams when he hears her astonished gasp.

“I like the colors there, if you think they’re possible?”

“Sure, might take some extra time, but I can do it,” she murmurs, pinching her lip. Turning the page sideways, she examines every minute detail, shaking her head in disbelief. “This is exquisite.”

“I’ll tell my artist. He’s a real diva sometimes.”

“I’d say he’s earned that right,” she laughs, tracing the paper with a light finger. She flips to the second picture and tilts her head. “The grays and silvers might look nice with midnight blue for contrast?”

Bucky nods eagerly. “Yeah, I love that idea.”

She looks again, examining the intricate design.

“Can you tell me about your pain tolerance? The designs are beautiful, but they’re complex. Each will take multiple sessions to finish.”

Bucky drops his eyes. He heaves a sigh at the obligatory question.

“It’s high,” he mutters. “Very - high.”

Silence follows his admission. When he dares to look up again, he feels a twinge in his chest at the compassion he finds. He offers a rueful smile and she slowly returns it.

“Would you like to come after hours? It can get noisy during the day, if you prefer things quieter. Most soldiers like that better.”

There is a sweep of relief at her casual acknowledgement. He huffs out a shaky breath.

“That would be great. If you don’t mind, I mean.”

“Not at all. I’m a night owl anyway.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says quietly. “Me too.”

She looks back to the portfolio, carefully shuffling the pages.

The third picture appears.

And Bucky sees it, that precise moment when realization sinks in. When she realizes exactly who is sitting in her chair tonight. There is no doubt the drawing gives that fact away. Heart pounding, he flinches, steeling himself for the inevitable.

But nothing happens.

She meets his nervous gaze head on and yet - that gentle smile remains.

“Bucky,” she repeats and this time she understands. “Oh. It’s nice to meet you, Bucky Barnes. Come back tomorrow night, 9pm. Don’t be late.”

He leaves the tattoo shop feeling lighter than he has in years.

*****

TATTOO 1: FOREARM

“Show me a man with a tattoo and I’ll show you a man with an interesting past.” - Jack London

*****

Perpetually early for everything, Bucky arrives at 8:45pm the next night.

The bell over the door tinkles when he enters, and she looks up from the front desk and waves. His stomach unexpectedly leaps and he thinks it must be nerves.

“Hey, Bucky,” her voice is soft.

“Evening,” he says shyly.

“You ready to do this?”

“Could hardly sleep last night,” he confesses with a grin.

Sliding timidly into her black leather chair, he watches her arrange tools on a shiny silver tray. An arm rest is attached to his right side, and he dries his sweaty palm on his jeans before easing his arm onto the cushion, palm up. When she drops onto her stool at his side, he offers a weak smile.

“You got the email I sent with all the information, right? Did you have any questions?”

He scrunches his nose, recalling the long, detailed summary she shared. For each of the three tattoos he requested, she gave him a detailed analysis of the process for creating each design; broke down how long each session would take; gave explicit instructions on the healing and care process; confirmed each individual color and how it would be applied; clarified the tools that would be used, including their brand names and how each one worked; she even provided floor plans of her shop - outlining entries and exits and bathrooms and locations of fire extinguishers.

It was a novel of information that must’ve taken her hours, and he was inexplicably grateful for the time she spent just to make him comfortable.

“No questions, I just, uh - thanks. For putting all that together. It was helpful to have all the information. Helps me keep my head on straight.”

“Of course,” she says. “So this first design should take probably 5-6 hours. Since you’re new, we’ll start with short blocks and see how it goes.”

Bucky gives a jerky nod and she pauses, pressing her fingertips against the smooth skin of his forearm.

“Here are the rules. You’re in charge, okay? We can go as fast or as slow as you need. This is not a race, and I have nowhere to be but here. Any time you want to stop, you say the word and I stop. We can take a breather, grab a cup of coffee and start again - or we can call it a night. This is your experience, Bucky. You’re in control. Understand?”

There is a fierce surge of gratitude at her words. Gratitude for her kindness, for her acceptance. Gratitude for her.

“Got it,” he whispers.

And with that, they begin.

Bucky follows each step, while she measures his arm, while she considers the contours and angles of his muscle, while she cleans and preps his skin. When she finally applies a stencil, his heart is hammering so hard his teeth are chattering.

The low buzz of the tattoo machine fills his ears with a click.

When the needles touch his skin, sweat instantly beads his neck. Adrenaline drenches his tongue and for one wild moment, Bucky panics. Wonders if this was a terrible idea, because what idiot asks for pain, seriously Barnes, what the hell is wrong with you, why’re you so stupid all the -

And then - oh.

Huh.

Interesting.

Wide-eyed, Bucky follows her careful strokes, black lines appearing on his skin.

It does hurt - sort of. Obviously nothing he can’t handle; in the grand scheme of his life, this would register as a minor inconvenience, but there is a pinch.

But that spark of pain vanishes, when the raw symbolism behind Steve’s design hits him full force.

Holy shit.

How many times through the decades did Bucky Barnes die? And how many times did he rise, born again from the frozen ash of oblivion? It was simply what the Soldier did. But it was a shadow-life, nothing more. Bucky never knew how close he was to giving up, until that day above the Potomac, Steve’s bloody face beneath his furious fists. He was so far gone, so lost and forgotten, until those memories cracked the Soldier’s fierce veneer.

And suddenly he was Bucky again. Awake and alive. For the first time in 70 years he felt fire in his soul. For the first time in 70 years he could breathe.

Tears inexplicably fill his eyes.

“All okay?”

Through a tunnel, Bucky hears her voice. Hypnotized by the metaphor inking itself into his skin, his head feels waterlogged when blinks up at her.

“Sorry?”

She scans his face, her thumb rubbing the pulse thrumming at his wrist.

“Everything okay?” She asks again and Bucky feels a potent rush of euphoria.

“Yes,” he says slowly. The excitement bubbles over and he lets out an ecstatic laugh. “Yes! This is incredible. This is - fucking hell, this is amazing.”

Chuckling to herself, she bends back to her task.

“So I guess we’ll keep going?”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “Yeah, let’s keep going.”

Two hours later, the outline of the Phoenix is inked into his skin, crisp black lines like fresh paint. Long tail feathers are curled around his wrist, the lush feathered body splashed over his forearm, her wings spread open and curving around his arm, her head reaching toward the sky.

Born from ash. Alive again.

Bucky hates to cover it up, but she insists.

“Follow the cleaning instructions and it should be fine. We need to wait between the sessions, give you time to heal.”

At that comment, he fidgets.

“Actually, I heal pretty - fast.”

“I assumed you might. Usually I say 2-3 weeks between sessions, so how about you come back in 1 week and we can see. Let’s just make sure. Does that work?”

Bucky glances at the crisp white bandage on his arm.

“Okay, that works,” he says.

She squeezes his hand and he meets her eyes.

“You did great,” she tells him.

Bucky smiles in return. And he doesn’t stop for the next six days.

*****

When he walks into the shop for his next session, he carries a large coffee for himself and an extra large iced peach green tea for her. When he gets to the front desk, he thrusts the cup at her.

“Evening. Um, here. Saw you had one last time, so - anyway.”

“Bucky, thank you. I’ve been craving one all day.” She gives the straw an experimental bite, before taking a long drink and for some reason, the silly quirk makes his heart bounce.

After a quick check on how he’s healed, she declares him perfect and they get started, settling into a comfortable silence. After an hour of buzzing, Bucky clears his throat.

“Is it okay to talk while you work?”

“It is,” she affirms, dabbing at the ink. Glancing up, she sees hesitant blue eyes. “I’m good at listening too. Sometimes it’s nice just to listen.”

Bucky figures that’s a fair statement. He fiddles with a stray thread on his shirt.

“Do you read much?” He asks hopefully, picturing the teetering stack of books beside his bed. She perks at the question.

“I love to read. Have a pile of books on my nightstand waiting for me to find time. What about you? Are you reading anything good now? Any favorites I should know?”

Bucky swallows the happy surprise. If he could, he’d be content to spend the rest of his years with a comfortable chair, a cup of coffee, and an unending supply of stories. He could talk about books for days, he just normally keeps quiet, because most people aren’t interested in that facet of Bucky Barnes.

So he begins to talk.

He tells her how Natasha lent him all her Russian copies of Pushkin and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, insisting that reading in the original language was infinitely better. He describes how he found a copy of Rumi’s poetry at a yard sale, and what an incredible treasure it was. He flusters recounting how much he cried reading ‘A Fault in our Stars’ and says he was scared shitless to even see a clown for a full year after reading Stephen King.

He talks and talks and talks, and when he finally stops to breathe, she glances up.

“It’s nice to hear a man who’s so well read,” she says and Bucky preens at the compliment. “Do you have an all time favorite? Something you never get tired of?”

A favorite? No question.

“Yeah, I do. Something I read during the war and kinda fell in love. It’s about here, I guess. About Brooklyn.”

At the description, her mouth quirks, but she keeps working.

“Did you ever think about a book quote for a tattoo?”

Now there’s an idea. He makes a mental note to think of a quote he could add as another tattoo. Or maybe another couple tattoos. Hell, one session in and he’s already addicted.

The comment tumbles free before he realizes he’s spoken out loud. He blushes at her laughter.

“It can be addicting,” she agrees. Bucky understands completely, seeing the vibrant crimson ink soak into his skin, painting the bird’s feathers. And then she pauses, meeting his eyes with a peculiar expression. “The right words can make you feel invincible.”

Setting the tattoo machine down, she rolls her chair back a bit and sits up straight. Lifting the hem of her shirt, Bucky sees a line of gold text inked below her ribs, his eyes following the flowing cursive.

“She was all of these things and of something more,” he reads aloud.

“‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ is my favorite book too,” she says quietly. There is a long, unbroken moment where they stare into each others eyes. He should say something, he thinks. Something intelligent or witty or anything, but instead he just thinks about the fact that he found a woman in Brooklyn to permanently carve pictures into his skin and she has the same favorite book as him.

Bucky always was a sucker for fate.

“That’s - that’s really - I love that,” he finally says instead.

*****

A week later, Bucky arrives with a bundle of folders and an exasperated expression.

“This is really annoying, but do you mind if I finish some reports while you work? Got behind, someone’s gonna have my ass.” Bucky raises the papers apologetically.

“No problem,” she says easily. “Let’s keep your ass safe.”

Bending back to her task, Bucky snorts a laugh. They’re just a handful of mission reports, normally he types them soon as he returns, but lately he’s been slacking, because lately he has other things he finds more interesting.

Like the scene in front of him.

Together they work, each with their own pen. Bucky writes, she colors, and the clock on the wall ticks along. After awhile, she takes a break to stretch. Rolling her shoulders, she observes him.

“Are you left-handed?” she asks curiously and it takes Bucky a moment to think.

“Oh. Uh, not really,” he says. “But I can switch. Never been a problem.”

At the confession, she raises her eyebrows.

“That’s impressive. I wish I had a talent like that.”

He ducks his head at the praise. And he keeps writing, of course. Maybe adds a bit more flair. After all, the old Bucky Barnes did like to swagger.

*****

“Well, I think that’s it.”

It takes a beat before Bucky understands what she means. Confused, he peers up at her with a dopey expression and she gestures at his arm.

He feels his heart lurch.

It flames to life along his arm, painted in vibrant ruby red and rich crimson and deep plum, highlights edged in shining gold. Mesmerized, Bucky stares down at the lines of ink and he flexes, the tendons of his arm shifting, and the bird moves. For one wild moment, he believes if he stays still, it could leap from his skin and take flight.

It leaves him breathless.

“God, this is better - fuck, it’s so much better - than I ever imagined. How did you - wow. I don’t know how you did it, but - thank you. Thank you so much.”

Unanticipated emotion makes his voice tremble. Because this is the first time Bucky Barnes chose something permanent for himself. Serums and metal arms and bullets and blades, those were always forced upon him, his pleading refusals met with violence and sneering indifference.

But this?

This.

This is all his.

*****

TATTOO 2: BACK

“Wear your heart on your sleeve in this life.” - Sylvia Plath

*****

“So, uh, how exactly does this work?”

Standing beside the leather chair while she organizes her inks, Bucky wrinkles his nose. She looks up and motions for him to turn, straddling the chair with his chest pressed against the back.

“Are you comfortable completely removing your shirt? Or would you prefer to leave it part way on? I’ll just need it out of the way for the right side of your back.”

Bucky grimaces. Eventually she’s going to see his shoulder - he knows that - but he’s not in the mood to rip that band-aid off yet.

“Uh - let’s do part of the way if that’s okay?”

“That’s okay,” she confirms and he awkwardly tugs his right arm free, baring the broad expanse of his back. Tucking his arms in front of him, he slings a leg over the chair and rests his chin carefully on the headrest.

He says nothing, simply stays still while she absorbs the sight. Littered up and down his back are a litany of scars, puckers from the occasional bullet, thin lines from errant blades, and a few other marks he prefers not to define. His voice is muffled when he warily asks.

“Are you able to - work with it?“

“Absolutely,” she answers firmly and Bucky warms at the decisiveness in her tone. Her confidence makes him feel infinitely more positive.

This is the largest of his three tattoos, stretching from the tip of his shoulder blade and flowing down to his waist. It will also take the longest, but Bucky assures her he has no issue sitting perfectly still for hours.

It’ll be worth it. He can’t wait to show Sam - he’ll get a kick out of this one.

Once she applies the stencil over his skin, she goes to work, dropping into that headspace of deep focus. She works so quietly for so long, he falls into a trance, lulled by the melodic buzz.

When she speaks, it startles him.

“What made you decide you wanted a tattoo?”

He lays his cheek along the edge of the chair so he can see her from the corner of his eye when he answers.

“S’random, but back in ’37, me and Steve were out and I remember walking by this old tattoo shop over in Midtown. They had one of those big glass windows with the chair in front, so people could stand and watch. Anyway, we walk by and there was this kid sitting in the chair, and no fuckin’ joke, he was getting a big heart on his arm with ‘MOM’ written in the middle.”

“Ah yes, the ever popular ‘mom’ tribute. I’ve done a few of those,” she says and Bucky grins.

“Well anyway, I always kinda wanted something, you know? Thought about getting one before I shipped out, but I didn’t, and then it was - “ he pauses for a moment, but she encourages him with a questioning hmmm? and Bucky bravely pushes forward. “I had lots of years where I didn’t get to make my own decisions. And there was so much - bad shit that happened to me. Anyway, I guess I thought if someone’s gonna do something to me, I wanted it to be on my own terms. You know?”

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “I think that makes perfect sense.”

Bucky sits quietly, contemplating. The question has been rattling around his brain for awhile and it spills free before he can stop himself.

“The whole process, it feels sort of - intimate, doesn’t it?”

He flushes at the insinuation, but intimate is the best way to describe it, he thinks, this practice of someone permanently carving their art into your skin.

“It is intimate,” she says softly, leaning closer. “It’s almost like you’re - leaving a piece of your soul under someone’s skin? I don’t know if that makes sense, but that’s what it’s always felt like.”

Bucky nods, watching her capable, artistic, beautiful hands as they move, slowly transferring bits and pieces of herself to him.

What a gift. He holds on tight.

*****

It was bound to happen at one of the sessions.

It’s been dark and rainy for days, buckets dumped from the heavens, the perpetual grumble of thunder always near. When Bucky comes through the front door, he feels like a wet dog. He shakes out his jacket, stomps his boots. He feels off base tonight, the result of bad sleep, bad dreams, and one particularly bad mission. He’s frustrated with himself for bringing it with him, thinks maybe he should’ve cancelled, but the thought of skipping his session - both the ink and her - was too depressing.

So instead of holing up in his room and moping under the covers, he braved the storm.

The one inside and out.

Searching for calm, he licks chapped lips.

“Hey,” he says, cringing when his voice cracks.

“Hey, Buck,” she turns cheerfully, but when she sees him squinting at her through the droplets cascading down his face, his shoulders hunched and tense, she stops. Looks him up and down and her expression softens. Beckoning him back, she digs up a towel and a dry t-shirt with ‘BROOKLYN INK’ stamped across the front, ushering him to the bathroom.

“Take all the time you need. No rush.”

Bucky mumbles his thanks and shuts the door. Gripping the sink, he glares at the mirror, at the smudge of dark beneath his eyes, at the clench of his jaw. Closing his eyes, he breathes slow and deep.

“You’re okay. You’re okay.”

He repeats the mantra, determined to settle. He’s been eager for this session all week, he’s sure as hell not ruining it because he can’t get his idiot brain to stop spinning.

When he finally emerges, he finds her arranging her work space. Halting in front of her, he keeps trembling hands stuffed in his pockets, eyes downcast.

“I’m afraid I’m poor company tonight,” he admits quietly.

“That’s okay. We can reschedule, Bucky,” she says softly and Bucky feels the disconcerting sting of tears. He rubs the heel of his hand against watery eyes.

“If it’s okay, I’d - I’d rather go ahead. Been looking forward to seeing you - uh, seeing you work, all week. It was just - “ he pauses and fights the temptation to spill his guts. No, he snarls internally, she doesn’t need to hear all your shit.

He clamps his mouth shut and shrugs instead.

She says nothing, but when she gives his hand a comforting squeeze, Bucky feels that familiar surge of gratitude. She guides him carefully toward the chair and he slumps into the seat, automatically tugging up his new shirt.

“Just close your eyes and breath. You’re okay.”

Bucky rests his chin on the edge of the chair. Troubled eyes flutter shut, and the comforting buzz of the tattoo machine fills his ears, muting the sound of the storm raging outside. When he feels the prick of the needles, he lets out a weary breath. And when he feels the easy pressure of her fingers, he begins to relax.

For hours, she works. Firm strokes, painting the story across his skin.

The dark night begins to fade before she finally sets her tools aside. When he climbs to his feet, she pulls him into a gentle hug.

Bucky sinks into her arms.

That morning, the sun begins to shine.

*****

Bucky’s been sitting for a couple hours now, eyeing the brick wall behind the chair. A question pops into his head and he feels like a jerk for not asking sooner.

“Hey - all these hours together, and I never asked you - what made you want to draw on people for a living?”

She hums at the question, and he can hear the happiness in her reply.

“Well, I always wanted to be an artist. For my eleventh birthday, my best friend Mike gave me this set of gel pens, there were a million colors. When I told him I wanted to be a tattoo artist, he let me draw pictures all over him for practice. He insisted on being the first person I inked, once I got my license. Would always tell people he was the ‘original canvas’ for my brilliance.”

When she laughs, Bucky chuckles with her; it reminds him of Steve.

“Sounds like a good man,” he says.

“Yeah, he is - he was,” she quietly corrects herself. “He was an EOD specialist in Afghanistan. Right before he left for his last tour, I drew up plans for the arm sleeve he always wanted; he planned to get it when he finished. A month later, he was in a convoy that was moving through the Gereshk Valley in the Helmand Province, when an IED hit his vehicle. He didn’t make it home.”

The story hits home like a kick in the face.

Too many soldiers, too many lives. Bucky reaches back to still her hand. He slowly turns to face her, gently tugging the tattoo machine free and setting it aside. Wordlessly, he offers his hand and she accepts it gratefully, weaving her fingers through his. It takes a few attempts before she speaks again.

“It took me a long time to get through that. One day I met a friend working down at the VA, and I heard a vet talking about the scars on his legs. He sounded so - sad about them, you know? Kept saying he didn’t recognize himself anymore. And I just stood there thinking, maybe I couldn’t help Mike, but I could still do something.” Staring resolutely down, she considers her fingers still entangled with Bucky’s. “I did some research and took some classes and - learned how to tattoo on scar tissue.”

Bucky gazes at her. He feels a sweep of pride at the way she turned her tragedy into something beautiful.

“I’m so sorry that happened,” he says and she finally looks up, meeting blue eyes bright with compassion. “But you should know, what you’re doing for people, it’s incredible. And if you don’t mind me saying, I think he’d be real god damn proud of you.”

A tear slips down her cheek and she ducks her head, her whisper so low he nearly misses it.

“Thank you Bucky.”

*****

Hours later, Bucky hears a clatter of tools and her huff of relief.

“All done.”

Wiping her hands, she pops excitedly up from the stool and Bucky pushes back from the chair to follow. Without a thought, she grabs his metal hand, tugging him impatiently over to a set of floor length mirrors along the wall. Bucky grips tight and obediently follows, his pulse racing. When she positions him at the mirror, she adjusts the panels so he can see himself from all angles.

“There, have a look.”

Along his spine, the single metal wing bursts free, so intensely realistic, Bucky’s jaw drops. It arches gracefully up, curving over his shoulder blade and sweeping down his back, razor sharp feathers tickling his rib cage before billowing out above his waist. Made from silvers and grays and shaded hints of midnight blue, it glows in the light. When Bucky reaches toward the sky, the muscles shift beneath the ink and it creates the strangest sensation of feathers unfolding.

All the scars littering his back, a flesh and bone patchwork of memories left by vicious handlers and fights too close for comfort, have disappeared. Blending into the steel of his new wing, their only purpose is to strengthen the image.

After all this time, he’s come to terms with the metal arm so unwillingly gifted all those years ago. But it’s remained a relic of a past life, something heavy, to drag him down.

But now, he rolls his shoulder back and his new metal wing lifts him higher than he’s felt in a long, long time.

*****

TATTOO 3: SHOULDER

“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.” - Haruki Murakami

*****

“So our last session.”

“Our last session,” he murmurs.

Bucky thinks for a moment that she seems glum, but maybe that’s wishful thinking.

“This is a tough one,” she warns, “but I think we can do it in one session. I won’t try and cover them up, it won’t work. The best solution is to incorporate your scars into the design. Make sense?”

Bucky pictures the pattern Steve drew, bright green leaves and vines tracing the seam of his arm, melding with the thick ribbons of raised tissue. It doesn’t matter, but he timidly asks anyway.

“Will it hurt?”

“No,” she says gently. Pressing her hand to his galloping heart, she shakes her head. “It won’t hurt much there, but you need to tell me if it hurts here. You need to tell me if I should stop. Remember, you’re in charge, okay?”

“Okay,” he whispers.

Steeling himself, he whips off his shirt, balling it up in nervous hands. The cool air blowing through the shop is a relief for his overheated body.

“Do you mind if I feel the skin here? So I can make sure I approach it right?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Bucky mumbles. Staring at his hands, he waits.

Leaning close, her fingers brush over him, feeling the lines and ridges, assessing the canvas. For ten minutes, she tests his skin, lightly pushing and pressing, observing the scars and bumps where metal meets man.

“Does it still hurt?”

She doesn’t want to ask, but needs to know what she’s working with. With a grim smile, he shrugs.

“Not really. Aches sometimes, but doesn’t hurt. Can’t feel much there besides some pressure.”

Nodding, she pinches her lip. “I was thinking last night, um - would you want to add anything else into the design? Nothing big, but a few flowers? Some daisies maybe?”

“Sure, I’d like that. Any reason for daisies?” Bucky asks curiously.

Pulling out a few additional bottles of ink, she absently touches the necklace at her throat, and Bucky sees a silver daisy spinning.

“Daisies represent new beginnings. Thought it might be a nice way to end, if you like?”

Does he like it? The idea of having this small thing in common?

Hell yes he likes it.

Maybe - maybe he even more than likes it?

“Yeah. That sounds perfect,” he says softly. He swallows hard and she nods encouragingly.

“Okay. Remember - stop me if you need a break.”

This one, Bucky knows will be hard. It was the reason he left it to the end - the mental fortitude required here is much different.

As she begins, he contemplates the pink furrows gouged into his skin. The memory of how they got there flashes before him, a sick image of shredded skin raked bloody beneath his blunt fingernails. Faint screams of a past life echo in his ears, the smokey cry of his own voice desperate for relief from the pain.

Cold sweat slides down his face and he slams his eyes shut, but that seems to make it worse. The images glow technicolor bright, and he grunts a frustrated breath.

And then, through the thin latex of her glove, he feels her cool hand press against his pounding heart. Cracking an eye open, he finds her calm face and he focuses on her, until his breathing begins to ease. Blinking rapidly, he drinks in the curve of her nose, the shape of her mouth, the beauty of her eyes.

His heart stutters, stunning him into a different kind of breathless.

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, wide eyes locked on hers. “Yeah, I’m okay. You can keep going.”

When she bends back to her task, Bucky melts. It occurs to him, that perhaps if she might let him, he could be content watching her forever.

But for tonight, this forever lasts only a few hours before she’s done.

And there it is.

Shades of green line his shoulder, the vines curling and winding around his scars, blending them seamlessly into the foliage covering his skin. Spidering vines trail across his chest, and it seems incompatible in a way, something alive bursting from the stark metal, but the leaves look so real, he swears they flutter with each breath he takes. Strewn throughout the greenery, small splotches of yellow and white reveal her daisies and he sucks in a breath.

For the first time in his life, Bucky stares at his scars and a foreign word comes to mind, one he never, ever thought to use.

“Beautiful,” he breathes. “They’re beautiful.”

*****

And so, after 3 months and 30 hours together, they were done.

Hands in his pockets, Bucky gazes at her. Ink on her hands, ink on his heart. It hits him then, this is it. They shuffle, making small talk, neither ready to say goodbye.

“Promise you’ll come back if you decide on anything else. Tattoos, piercings, anything,” she teases and Bucky laughs.

“Told you, I might be a little addicted,” he admits, knowing full well he means to tattoos and to her. “Soon as I can think of a reason, I’ll be back.”

“I hope so,” she says. There is a brief moment where she seems to gather her courage and then she leans in to press a soft kiss to his cheek. “You’re a work of art, Bucky, but - you were before any of this. Remember that.”

Dazed, Bucky touches his cheek.

Indelible and perfect, the tattoo of her lips inks itself straight onto his heart.

*****

When she arrives at the shop the next day, there is a new sight sitting on the front desk.

Daisies, their white petals and yellow faces as fresh as the afternoon sunshine filtering through the window. Bemused, she looks around the bustling shop and spies the card propped beside the overflowing vase, her name scrawled across the front.

“When I got home, I stood in front of the mirror for hours, staring at your artwork. Every time I told myself to go to sleep, I found something new I loved. The tail feathers on my Phoenix or the petals of your daisies. What you’ve given me is more than I ever hoped - I can never thank you enough.

But anyway, I remembered what you said - how this kind of art is like leaving a piece of your soul under someone’s skin.

Well, I won’t lie - you must have done, because I miss you already.

So at the risk of being forward (although I did break into your shop and leave this, so maybe this won’t seem that forward), would you have dinner with me?

I think there’s another new beginning waiting out there, if you’d like to find it with me.

Yours,

Bucky”

At the bottom of the note, a phone number is printed.

Brushing her fingers over the delicate white petals, she pictures him, that dark haired man with eyes like blue ink, so heartbreakingly beautiful inside and out. She feels the unconscious pull of her heart, telling her all she needs to know.

A new beginning.

She says yes.

*****

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #SSB2020 #bucky fic #bitsmasterlist #tattoos #tattoo trope

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jessiebanethedragon · 3 years

Text

White Sands Warm the Cold Sea

Star Wars, The Bad Batch Pirate!au (Hunter x Reader

Summary: the reader, betrothed to a disgusting Coruscanti Lord flees her home world and lands herself in a plethora of trouble, a ship of clones, and one pirate captain whose cold exterior needs much more than the tropical seaside sun.

Warnings: Swearing, takes place in time periods where women have dowery's and suchlike. The readers dad and bothered are asses.

chapter one

Chapter two: The Stowaway

It is a disgusting day on Coruscant. Hot, humid and you can’t help but feel something sinister in the air. You feel hollow, and it is only partly due to the tightness of your dress. The yellow and green material wraps around you in layers. Your face is blank but your mind is racing, if you cannot convince your father to call off the marriage, how else can you put a stop to this?

Very few people talk about the war, and so how Lord Nython made his fortune is a mystery to you. What you have gathered from whispers of those in your household it was through a lengthy siege that devastated republic and seperatist forces alike.

“And the weather today is perfect for sailing, I bet those ships at the docks will be itching to set off.” Your handmaiden Seil says to you, and you frown, since when did she have an interest in the docks. But she continues playing with your hair.

“I'll get you the most expensive jewelry in the house,” She says with a smile you’ve grown up with. Perhaps carer was a more accurate term, considering she seemed to be the only person in the world that wanted the best for you. She returns with a pouch of all kinds of gold, silver and gems.

“There is a way to the docks, it is so lovely for a stroll. Away from the busy streets and such like.” You frown at her obsession with an area crawling with pirates.

“Seil what in the name-” You start saying, turning around to slip your flats on. And you stop, in her hands are your boots, made for riding as you had done so many times before.

“I thought these would be fitting, as they are your favourite.” She’s talking about all the times you told her how much you love how sturdy they feel around your feet. And how when you would run the fields, how powerful they made your legs feel.

And then it clicks. The docks, the boots. The tears in her eyes. While you were planning on an escape from this marriage, Seil had been planning an escape from every marriage your father would force on you. She ties the boots tightly, and places a hand on your cheek as you both take shaking breaths to compose yourselves.

And with your father still passed out in bed, and the sun barely rising, you slip into the streets and into the areas less traveled, sprinting off towards the ocean.

The docks are infused with the smell of fish, and the workers barely turn a glance your way as you shift through the swarms of people. You come to a halt at a clearing in the crowd, and your brain catches up with itself. What are you going to do now? With no money, skills, or plan, you begin to second guess yourself. You have time to make it back to the household with no one being the wiser. But you remember meeting Lord Nython for the first time.

His hand latched to yours like a monster squid to its prey, you notice that unlike some men he doesn’t ask ‘may I’ before touching you, and you briefly wonder what about you invites his hand onto your own. But your fake smile remains plastered on as he looks you up and down like a farmer regards the sale of livestock.

Your gut had told you then that all he could bring you was bad news, confirmed by rumors and stories of his wartime expeditions, and when he told you about the war, and the pathetic Grand Army of the Republic he spared no detail in his murder of an entire army.

Of course it's not the same as killing someone like you or me, those kaminoans are devils, and those freaks are just the same. Like hunting the same dumb peigion over and over again. We surely must have downed hundreds of them that day, but they are rats you see, you have to kill every last one in order to rid yourself of the infestation.

Education had not taught you about the Kamino Clones, but experience had, every sepratist man who held power despised them. ‘Scum of the earth’ your father had said when you asked about them. Telling you they had their emotions removed, and blindly followed orders given by the highest bidder. And when the G.A.R had fallen, they scuttled into exile.

And now you stand on the docks of Coruscant, two paths in front of you. Surely if you left Nyhon would send someone after you, he never seemed to back away from a fight, and given his reputation for always getting what he wanted, you doubted he’d take to your absence kindly. So that left you with leaving the only home you’d ever known, and given that you cannot sail, nor pay for passage, stowing away was your only option.

You briefly wonder about the procedure of stowing away, does one pick a certain ship or choose at random?

“Can I help you miss?” A Togruta man asks you, only his blue face visible from underneath his hood and cloak, but the markings give him away, as well as the point in the fabric over his head.

“I...I…” you pause to gather yourself. “I’m fine, thank you.” and you quickly turn away from him, walking down the docks at a purposeful pace. There are so many ships all looking to either load or unload supplies, but none of them seem to be leaving shortly. You need escape now, and not later. The longer you dwell the more the bad feeling in your stomach grows. You must lose yourself again because before you know it a man is rushing past you and shouting

“Sorry miss!” as he goes, you catch the clanking of metal and a glimpse of eyeglasses as he disappears up the ramp of a large dark oak ship, the name Havoc Marauder painted in red at the back.

Perhaps you have found your escape after all.

You very quickly decide the ocean is terrifying. After having snuck up the ramp and into the depths of the ship, you found yourself in your current spot. Huddled behind stacks of crates sitting on the wooden floor and being violently rocked around as the water crashes into the side from all sides. More than once you’ve had to close your eyes in panic when something particularly bad happens, but you refuse to appear weak - even if you’re the only person to witness it.

And the footsteps, even though the men seldom come below decks but you can hear them step ferociously above you. They sound like an army and considering you didn’t get a good look at any of them, you had no idea how many people you were hiding from. They’re loud, and kept busy by the Sea, you have no idea where you’re headed, but as long as it’s far, far away from Coruscant you couldn’t care less. And there are no windows here, so you have no idea how long you’ve been traveling for.

Footsteps start to make their way to the set of stairs leading down into your hiding spot, the small nook of the ship that resides in the belly of the beast. The steps you hear aren't as heavy as others, but they seem to keep most of their weight on their toes, you never quite hear their heel make contact against the wood. And you press yourself tighter to the wall, a tall frame passes you by, lean and with ashen hair the man halls a crate away from the other end of the room, and turns to leave. Your panicked eyes can do nothing but stare back at him through the gaps in the boxes, and they watch him squint for a moment, before he turns and heads back up the stairs. Crate in hand, and your heart in your chest. He cannot have seen you, if he had, why turn away? Panic consumes you.

☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠ ☠

“Sarge,” Crosshair says, thumping the crate of bread and dried meat down in front of him. Hunter simply raises an eyebrow at his vod, and it confirms Crosshair's hypothesis. The captain is in one of his moods again, when shaking off the nightmares is impossible and the hate inside him grows and simmers at fantastical measures.

“There’s a woman on board.” He tells him, casually popping a pick into his mouth. And watching as Tech’s and Wrecker’s heads snap up.

“A woman?” Tech asks with judgement. Crosshair rolls his eyes.

“Yes a woman, you know, the things that look almost like you except for their b-”

“I know what a woman is!” Tech cuts him off before things get graphic. His brother never having the politeness nor the decency to hold his tongue.

“There’s a woman aboard the Murader?” Wrecker tries to confirm, and underneath his wide captains hat, Hunter’s eyes darken.

“Listen very carefully.” He growls, the midday sun shining its way onto an unforgiving face. “If there is a stowaway. I do not care if you have to drag her to me with her intestines hanging out. Get. Her. Off. My. Ship.”

“But…” Wrecker starts, taken aback by the aggressive imagery.

“But what?” Hunter snaps, standing up and seeming small compared to his brother, but nonetheless intimidating. “I want her found and I want her off my kriffing ship.” He demands one last time before stalking back to the captains quarters.

Below deck you hear the slamming of a heavy wooden door, the sound makes your skin jump crawl with dread. Something has gone very wrong indeed, and it is not long before you see boots standing at the top of the steps down into the hold where you thought you were hidden. It is difficult to tell how many, two for certain, the change in foot size tells you that much. None of them talk, making it even harder for you to mask your panicked breaths. But just as one foot begins to descend the stairs, a voice from afar distracts it.

“Ship off the starboard bow!” it’s enough to get the men turning away from your concealment, and towards the voice.

“What does she fly?” Another voice shouts, much closer to you.

“Looks Weequay to me!” comes the response, which causes someone else to grumble something about eyesight and crowsnest. Frankly it’s all gibberish to you, starboard could be another hyper-ocean speedway let alone a part of the ship, and while you are sure you’ve heard the term Weequay before, you can’t place where or in what context you heard it. Laughter breaks you from your thoughts.

“That’ll be Hondo’s ship then!” A loud shout settles in your bones. Not one in anger but perhaps more so simple loudness. And whoever or whatever a Hondo is, it is enough to carry the shoes away from you and rush to another, more pressing task. Which makes you think you just may owe this Hondo your life.

Taglist: @the-mandalorian-clone-lover @peacefulwizardfox @rex-meshla @s1st37 @and-claudia @kamino-mermaid @thelambandthewolffe @starwarsmeninhelmets

@bronvin @myeternalsin @sweetsunflowerkisses

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galactic-pirates · 2 years

Text

Strange New Worlds - Episode 1

Paramount+ launched in the UK yesterday. As a side note I have a small amount of amusement as whomever designed the Disney+ website, did this one - they are identical! Anyway, the moment I finished the episode I had to login to raid so didn't have time to ramble. Let's see if I can remember stuff I thought!

So it's been 3 months since Discovery season 2 finale and Pike sure can grow a long beard in that time. I don't quite know what the logic was for showing that woman at Pike's cabin (establishing Pike is a ladies man??) especially as that's a recognisable actress and according to IMDB that's her only appearance in the show. Very strange (no pun intended haha).

Anyway, moving on. T'Pring has some major thirst for Spock. Although I confess my initial thought was why were they kissing with their mouths? I guess that was for the benefit of the casual audience as it would have made more sense as Vulcan's for their hands to be being all sensual. I read some dates and her "I won't chase you across the galaxy" kinda makes sense as isn't it like 8 years or something until the Kirk vs Spock pon farr fight?

Let's see what is next. Oh! I enjoyed the fact that Enterprise is getting patched up from the battle, all the crew are on leave unless needed, and Number One was like "nope, give me another ship I'm bored" as I got some major Eve Baird vibes from that. I watched the Librarians show premiere AGAIN the other day (I love it so much) and Eve's all "but sir what am I supposed to do for a month??" so yes very good.

Ortegas on the conn is something I want to see more of, with her dry wit of "why is it always when I'm in the Captain's chair" plus it's just the humour as well of the Captain, the first officer, Spock (who's basically second in command) just all on the away mission. Like yes lets just send our entire leadership down and hope nothing bad happens!

Oh I adored the humour and the banter between Chapel and M'Benga when they were chasing that guy around the ship. I also loved the little peek at Uhura's character. The dude was freaking out and she just chatted to him about something from his planet and totally put him at ease. Chapel practically didn't have to sedate him to be honest.

I haven't got a satisfactory answer off google and so I remain confused. Of all the characters (apart from Pike and Spock) then La'an was the one that got the most fleshing out this episode, so I'm guessing her backstory is going to be important to the seasons overall plot. However, I still don't get whether she's related to Khan or related to the scientists that created Data, or is it both? I watched Picard and when they went back to 2024 the Soong then pulled out a file which seemed to hint at Khan.

Speaking of 2024 I had a "can't quite believe they went there" moment when they showed footage with 'audit the vote' as a precursor to the second civil war and then world war three. To be honest that made me more scared than anything because it feels a bit too possible. While I would like the Star Trek future, I definitely don't want the nuclear armageddon they endured to get there.

Ok back to Pike and his soul-searching. Every now and then I find random bits on my hard drive and apparently after season 2 of Discovery I started a Pike fanfic. I had a "I don't remember this place" when I found the doc but it's a thing. Interestingly I had Pike as a prisoner in jail having done something very reckless because "if I know how I'm going to die, then my day is not today and nothing really matters" and then I was building up to basically Number One sitting on him and reaffirming what Cornwell said which is "you can't think like that, because knowing your fate doesn't give you God-like powers to just live through anything" as a bit of a reality check. This time it was a bit more subtle and La'an and Spock provided the nudge but it seems Pike got to a similar sort of headspace in the end.

There wasn't really enough Number One in this for me, and with her being the focus of the rescue mission (and then her injury) she didn't get to do anything badass either. However, I have seen some gifs and I know her moment to shine will come.

I liked the thing about consequences. I dislike that Starfleet command are idiots that don't understand them but I'm glad that Pike did. General Order Number One (aka the Prime Directive) shouldn't be a license not to clean up their own messes. As Pike said they had already interfered, so they needed to try and make it as positive as possible. The warp weapon wasn't part of their 'natural development' so letting them blow themselves up with it shouldn't be either. So good for Pike, but a bad look for Starfleet.

This was a solid episode. It had a good plot. There was some good character stuff, some humour. I wanted more but then I always do. I think they could have cut a few minutes of Pike and Spock at the start and given them to the other crew, but I'm hoping that Ortegas and the others will get their time in future episodes. That's the problem with decent ensemble casts, they'd need to double episode lengths to really give them the time they deserve.

Oh! One last thing I actually googled this after to make sure I hadn't misheard and I hadn't - Shuttle 'Stamets' I screamed because what a cool reference! I love Stamets and it was a nice nod. I mean as far as most people are concerned Discovery either never existed or was destroyed (I'm a bit fuzzy on which given the spore drive and wiping that from the records). But either way a little memorial to Stamets who is probably thought dead was nice.

I'm going to give this I think a 4/5 rating. That might go up or down on rewatches as sometimes context makes me feel differently about stuff. However, generally it was as positive and awesome as I'd hoped! Thus far I'm not disappointed and as I've kinda over-hyped this in my head, I am so relieved about that!

#star trek: strange new worlds

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rise-above-the-grave · 4 years

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[smashes down door] who is Bail and why do you like him? I could look it up but I'd rather you gush over him

OH BOY.

So first off, a quick (canon) history lesson: Bail Organa was the Senator and Viceroy (aka Prince Consort) of Alderaan. If you don't know what that means (because old titles are Weird - I'm not judging the only reason I know this is because of this very character), it means that Breha, Bail's wife, is ruling Queen of Alderaan and was the heir to the throne. She married Bail, making him a ruler by marriage, though technically she still held the crown. He, at some point, was also elected Senator of Alderaan, and was Senator leading up to and during The Clone Wars (and after, but we're getting to that).

So Bail, we come to find out, became (best) friends with Padmé Amidala. We see him in a couple of scenes in Attack of the Clones with Padmé, just kinda vibing and making the occasional commentary. We know he stood with her on the Opposition bill (the bill Padmé was nearly killed over at the beginning of AOTC, which was against the formation of a Republic military), though we don't learn much about the rest of his politics until later.

So he's kinda...there, but obvs isn't the focus of the story, and is really just a minor background character. The first real insight we get into Bail is, actually, a really tiny character moment right at the end of AOTC, when Palpatine and some of the Senators are looking down at the Clone troops loading up onto the ship, watching their new military gear up for war.

Bail looks away. While everyone else is staring down at the (slave) army, some of them smiling (like Sheev), some of them just serious, Bail looks away from them and makes this tiny little hand gesture: a simple, closed fist knocking against the banister of the balcony.

It's this, I think, that first piqued my interest in this character. He was the only one not triumphant in that situation. He was the only one who saw things for what they were: a tragedy, and a horror, and that this wasn't something to celebrate but to mourn.

Then we come to Revenge of the Sith, and boy howdy. The man may have like 10 minutes of screen time, but does he make those 10 minutes count!

A quick bullet point of the Important Things Bail Does in ROTS:

When the Jedi Temple is burning, what does Bail do? He flies to it to figure out what's going on and see if he can save anyone. He then watches as a youngling is shot and killed by Clone Troopers, and manages to escape because he's a fucking badass.

Please note, to our knowledge, Bail is the only one who actually goes to check on the Jedi Temple.

As soon as he escapes the Temple, Bail immediately - like immediately - takes his ship and goes to find any surviving Jedi. He is almost certainly the reason both Yoda and Obi-Wan don't walk into the trap that is the Jedi Temple, or are captured - and even if that's not true, he most definitely is the reason they manage to sneak safely onto Coruscant and figure out what happened.

He's the one who rescues Yoda (again) after Yoda's failed duel with Palpatine in the Senate. Which, let me rant about the SYMBOLISM of that for a second please. Because holy shit, the entire duel between Yoda and Palpatine takes place in the Senate, with the Senate building and pods. Here Palpatine proves to Yoda that yes, he is the Senate, he controls it, the new Empire is under his control and no one can stop him. But then - but then - Yoda escapes, and who saves him? Bail. Bail sneaks in with a speeder, saves Yoda, and gets him back to safety. Which is such a huge fucking metaphor for the fact that Bail will be the one who, ultimately, is responsible for Palpatine's defeat. But, more on that later.

Bail is there when Padmé (remember, his best friend) gives birth to Luke and Leia. Bail is literally one of 3 sentients in the galaxy who canonically knows about both Luke and Leia.

Bail instantly offers to adopt one of the children, saying "She will be loved with us." (And then she absolutely is.)

And he does all of that in line 10 minutes of screen time.

He shows up again briefly in Star Wars Rebels, and again in Rogue One, but I'm going to take a trip down a side alley here into a territory that is grossly unused in the SW EU: the founding of the Rebellion.

So we don't actually know much about how the Rebellion got started. What we do know is that Bail was one of the (if not the main) Founders. Bail was the mastermind behind the Rebellion, by all accounts knowing...everything about it: who was who, who did what, where they were located, etc. He knows (and controls) Fulcrum in Rebels, as just one example, and Fulcrum is considered by that text to be one of the most powerful Rebel operatives at the time. In Rogue One (regardless of whether you liked what they did with the Rebellion which, side note, I did not), we see he certainly has a position of great authority and power. People respect him, and listen to him, and he's on an even footing with Mon Mothma (or Mom Mothma as my autocorrect tried to say) who is canonically one of the most powerful people in the Rebellion, according to ROTJ.

More than what he did, though, we can look to his character as a reason I love him. He is a good, kind, honorable man who does (or at least tries) his best. We see again and again, throughout all of SW media he's in, that he consistently chooses the right path, regardless of whether or not it's the easy one. He fights corruption, fights for justice, fights for freedom, fights against tyranny.

He is also, canonically, an amazing father and (according to EU content, since Breha literally doesn't have a spoken line in any media content) an incredible husband. We know he's well-loved by his people, and by the Rebellion, by the extraneous texts and mentions about him in the wake of his death on Alderaan. He's also respected by many Senators during his time in the Clone Wars (Padmé makes a comment in a TCW episode about how he's the best and most respected speaker and Senator she knows), and regardless of how people felt about him after the Rise of the Empire (which is, unfortunately - or fortunately maybe, because I don't trust Disney to do it right - up to headcanon), the fact remains that Bail played an incredibly tricky position as an Imperial Senator, having to balance fighting for his people, the people of the galaxy, and setting up the Rebellion, with not making himself too much of a nuisance, or too much of a traitor, that Palpatine straight up had him executed.

Which, speaking of that, can we also take a moment to appreciate the fact that Bail knew almost every single secret that Palpatine and Vader wanted??? He knew where Obi-Wan was, and possibly where Yoda was. He knew where both of Anakin and Padmé's children were. He knew everything about the fledgling Rebellion. Like...that man, had he been captured and interrogated (and had he broken) would have damned the entire galaxy. Yet he never was. He played his cards perfectly, and was either never suspected, or was able to somehow hide all of the information they wanted to know from being found. Personally, I suspect a mixture of the two.

Furthermore, Bail Organa is a great father and husband. He is directly responsible for Leia being the amazing woman we know and love. The one shot we get of Breha, you can practically see and feel the love and adoration Bail has for her radiating off of him through the screen. Literally the most unproblematic ship in Star Wars. I have never seen a single person say they aren't amazing (unless they just want to break them up to make Bail gay? Which, come on, bisexual and polyamorous people exist, y'all. But that's a talk for another time).

If you're still not convinced, the only thing left that I can say is: I'm a raging lesbian and like, while I definitely wouldn't fuck him, Bail/Jimmy Smits (his actor) is handsome. Have some pictures that I have saved on my phone for when I'm feeling sad.

Tl;dr: Bail Organa is singlehandedly responsible for putting into motion the events that secure the galaxy's freedom, not only by being one of the founding fathers of the Rebellion, but also by reaching Yoda and Obi-Wan before the new Empire can, and getting them safely to Coruscant. He is a good, kind, and noble man who does his best in shitty times, and even if he has to make hard choices, he always makes them for the right reasons. He is a loving father, husband, and ruler, who does right by his people and his family. He fights for what's right, even when that fight is nearly impossible. He's a badass, and arguably a literal genius (you'd have to be, to do the kinds of things he does in canon).

Anyway, Bail Organa is great and I love him - and you should too.

#bail organa #breha organa #leia organa #obi wan kenobi #yoda #padme amidala #sheev palpatine #anyway i love him lots #also for any lotr peeps who read this (or at least are reading the tags)#he's basically elrond in space

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cora-vizsla · 4 years

Text

Hypnotic (Taking Over Me)- Chapter 2

Pairing: Eventual Jedi!OC x Sith!Obi Wan

Word Count: 4.3K

Story Rating: E (18+)

Chapter Rating: T

Warning: Swearing. Threats of violence. Calm kidnapping. Mentions of sex in the past.

A/N: I know I said I was going to post this like two days ago but life got in the way. I hope you enjoy either way. As always, if I missed any tags please let me know!

When they got closer to presumably their destination, Veth held out a blindfold. Zara raised one eyebrow at him and shook her head.

“I’m not wearing that. Your threat of killing my men is over so you have no leverage over me.”

“I have two lightsabers and you’re stuck in this ship with me.”

“If you swing them, we both die. Are you wanting to die?”

“Are you?”

Zara scowled and crossed her arms. Veth laughed at her which only soured her mood even more.

“Me not having leverage over you is exactly why I need you to wear this. You presumably have it planned that you figure out where you are and either get a message out or escape on your own. I do not want to harm you, but I will if I have to.”

“So, wear this for my own protection?”

“Precisely, darling.”

Zara did nothing short of barking out a cackle.

“I am a Jedi Knight. I do not fear you. You may have manipulated me into going with you to keep my clones safe but that does not mean I am easily fooled.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“Would you trust me if the roles were reversed?”

“Yes.”

Zara was taken back by his swift and solid answer.

“You’ve had many chances to fight me, yet you’d prefer to talk and negotiate. You don’t want to fight if you don’t have to. That is a trait we share.”

“Sith only want destruction.”

“That is what the Jedi teach.”

“That is the truth.”

“Give me one day, Zara Fross. Comply with me for that long then you can make your decision on if you’re going to fight back or not.”

“Why a day?”

“That’s how long it will take me to ensure that you are safe before you do something reckless like jumping off a cliff.”

She found herself biting back a laugh as she reached to snatch the blindfold. Veth made a disapproving noise in the back of his throat and motioned for her to turn. Zara grimaced but turned slightly, allowing her captor to place it over her eyes and tie it. She felt her face flush when he gently turned her and ensured her eyes were completely covered.

“I bet this is the easiest kidnapping you’ve ever conducted.”

“You are right, though you aren’t the first beautiful woman I’ve put a blindfold on. Now sit there like a good girl and we will be home soon enough.”

Shocked by his tone and words, Zara sat in silence instead of arguing. She told herself that it would never be home to her, just a temporary stop before she found her way back to the Jedi. She hoped that Anakin wasn’t causing too much trouble.

---

“THAT is why you sent her without me!? You knew that creep would follow her!”

“Calm down, Anakin.” Mace said for what felt like the hundredth time.

“How can I calm down? He TOOK her!”

“She is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. There was no indication that she was harmed. He let her leave a message for Commander Cody.”

“Where is Commander Cody? He should be punished for leaving her alone in the first place.”

“Anakin Skywalker. You better watch your tone when you’re speaking to the council. I understand you care for your friend, but you need to recognize that we need to put our trust in her and her capabilities. You’re bordering on insulting with how little you believe in her.”

“Master Windu, I can’t agree with not sending someone to find her. To save her. We have no idea what that creep is doing to her.”

“We also don’t know where she is. Once we get intel on her location, we will send someone to retrieve her. Until then, you have missions that you must accomplish. The war has not stopped, and you have not been relieved of any of your responsibilities.”

Anakin sighed and deflated. He nodded at Mace and ran his hands down his face.

“You’re right, Master. Just.. please keep me updated on her while I’m gone.”

Mace nodded at him and watched him leave. Yoda turned to him once the door shut and shook his head.

“Troubled, that boy is.”

“Yes. I know him and Zara are close, but he is so reckless.”

“No different, Zara would be.”

“No but she would have at least said those things to me in private instead of the entire counsel.”

Yoda chuckled and nodded, reaching over to pat Maces hand a few times. It was unspoken, but Master Windu was just as worried about his former Padawan as Anakin was, especially if the reports about Darth Veth were true.

---

Zara hated not having some semblance of control. It was why she preferred not to fight. No one could ever predict every move someone else would make. Words were easier for her to predict. So, stumbling through the snow without being able to see was not her idea of a good time.

“We’re almost there, darling.”

“I really wish you’d stop calling me that.”

“Would you prefer princess? Love? I’m sure I could find sweet pet names to find out in different languages if that is what you would enjoy.”

Zara stopped moving, turning to where she thought the man was and tried to glare.

“Fine. Stick with darling.”

He chuckled and gripped her arm a little tighter. He wasn’t hurting her, not that he even remotely wanted to. When she had stumbled a few times, he felt bad at how petrified she was at not being able to see. He had offered to carry her but that didn’t help the fear that was basically seeping from her pores.

When her teeth started chattering, he finally gave in and scooped her up. She gasped out of surprise and started to protest. She silenced when he shushed her and tentatively held onto him, afraid of being dropped.

“It’s quicker this way. Need to get you inside before you freeze to death.”

“Well, I wouldn’t run away would I.”

He chuckled and tightened his grip on her, picking up his pace. Within a few minutes he spotted their destination and got her inside. He deposited her gently on his couch and pulled the blindfold off.

“Get your boots off. You aren’t dressed for the cold and you don’t want to lose toes because of it.”

She hesitated, taking in her surroundings but eventually pulled them off, setting them neatly by her. Veth looked at her as he was taking off his heavy jacket and boots.

“You don’t need to sit there. You can explore.”

She stood warily, wincing at the feeling returning to her feet. She walked throughout the main living space and noticed how simple it was. She half expected a home more industrial and extravagant. It didn’t scream Sith Lord to her.

Making her way down the hallway, she looked into each room. She was surprised to see that there were two bedrooms and a fairly large refresher. The last room she came to actually intrigued her enough to walk in. Every wall was covered from floor to ceiling in books and holocrons.

“I figured this would be the room I’d find you in.”

Zara glanced over her shoulder and wrapped her arms around herself. Veth walked in and stood next to her.

“You are welcome to read anything in here. I would have brought some of the texts from our meeting spot but figured they’d just be another weapon for you to use against me.”

“I wouldn’t risk destroying history like that.”

“Then I trust you all the more in my personal library. I have placed warm clothes in the refresher. Take your time as this planet has no water restrictions or issues. I will be making some food to eat. Come find me when you are done.”

He went to walk out but Zara reached out and touched his arm lightly, recoiling as soon as she did.

“Why.. why am I here?”

“Are you asking that or asking why you aren’t shackled and bleeding?”

“I guess I’m asking both.”

“Go shower. I will answer all questions within reason when you are done.”

---

Zara stepped out of the shower and wiped at the mirror in front of her. She considered braiding her hair but with the cold she needed it to dry as soon as possible. She looked down at the counter and saw that there was a brush. With a shrug she picked it up and worked it through her hair.

It had gotten much longer than she usually let it grow. When she was younger, she kept it short to keep it out of her face but now it was down to her mid back. She ran her fingers across the short side she had cut and thought of Anakin. He had dared her to do it thinking she would care too much about her hair. She had laughed so hard when she saw the expression on his face when she cut the portion.

She wondered how Anakin was. It wasn’t abnormal not to talk to him for days at a time, but now she didn’t even have the capability to. He was her best friend and the idea of not seeing him again brought a pain to her chest she had never felt before.

Zara shook her head, trying to will away the negative thoughts. Instead, she focused on the bright color of her hair. It had been another dare of Anakin. He thought Mace would be furious with her but instead he had given her a soft smile and a nod, letting her know it fit her. Master Windu always wanted her to be herself in a way that fit the code. Her appearance didn’t matter as long as she lived the code and was proud of being a Jedi.

She looked down at the clothes and frown. They were most definitely the Sith’s robes. She considered putting her own back on, but he was right; it was cold. Once she was dressed in the black robes that were just slightly too big for her, she hung her towel up and went back out to the main living area.

“Ah, hello there. I hope your shower was enjoyable.”

She nodded, not having the energy to argue with him anymore. He motioned for the table that already had food waiting for her. She sat down gently and looked at the food.

“Stars, I know I’m not a great cook, but it isn’t enough to be sad over.”

When she didn’t look up at him, he sighed and sat next to her, digging into his own food. She eventually picked up her utensils and started eating. It was warm and well-seasoned, but it did little to improve her mood.

“Lord Veth, why am I here?”

He used his napkin to pat at his mouth before sitting back in his chair. It struck her as odd at how sophisticated he was, again. It went against everything that she had been taught about the Sith and how they lived their life.

“I promised you answers. I will give you as many as I can. Then you can be informed if you want to fight against your captivity or not.”

He took a drink of the wine in front of him before crossing on leg over the other.

“I first heard of you when you started your missions with the Skywalker boy.”

“You’ve called him Ani. Why?”

“I’ll get there, my dear. I was tasked with observing you and finding a way to get you away from him. You see, my Master desperately wants the boy. He has plans for him. He doesn’t think that he will stray from the Jedi as long as you are around him. You’re a rather calming presence for him just as much as he challenges you to come out of your shell.”

“He’s my best friend.”

Zara felt her chest tighten again at the thought of Anakin and the vulnerability she was showing.

“Without you around he can fulfill the role my Master expects of him. I was given the option to just kill you but the more I learned of you the more I saw how much of a waste that would be. You’re a strong Jedi and an even smarter woman. You care deeply for those around you regardless of it being a stretch in the code you swore yourself to.”

“That doesn’t explain how you know Anakin.”

“I was with Qui Gon when he found him.”

“You?”

He chuckled and nodded, brushing his hair back out of his face.

“Yes. I went by an entirely different name back then, but I was there.”

Zara furrowed her brow and tried to figure out who he possibly could be. She chewed on her bottom lip as she tried desperately to pull up the memory.

“Master Windu told me of a padawan Master Jinn had. He died though so he took on Anakin.”

“I did not die. I’m sure he thought I did with the fiery explosion. My Masters other apprentice found me barely clinging to life. The Jedi never even looked for me.”

“That’s.. terrible. I am so very sorry that they didn’t.. there had to have been a reason they didn’t-”

Zara sat up straighter when anger flashed across the man’s face. His eyes seemed even more dangerous and for the first time she didn’t feel safe around him. She stood up and he followed, backing her against the wall. He caged her in by placing his hands on each side of her head.

“Do not mistake my civility as us being friends, Jedi. I will treat you as my guest, but I will not have the betrayal they put me through excused or brushed off by anyone. Is that understood?”

“Y-yes.”

“Good girl.”

He stood up, taking his hands from the wall and tracing his finger across her jaw gently with a feral smile. She looked up at him trying to steel herself against him. She had almost let herself forget that he was a dangerous Sith keeping her captive.

“Why don’t you finish eating then we can talk more. Like I said earlier, there is much I wish to learn about you.”

---

Zara sat curled up on the end of the couch, trying to keep warm. Regardless of what she was wearing, she couldn’t seem to shake the cold. Her previous thoughts of hating the heat were coming back to haunt her. She jumped when she felt something rest against her shoulders until she saw the Sith was laying a thick blanket across her.

“Uh, thank you.”

“You’re very welcome, my dear.”

He sat down next to her, far enough away that they weren’t touching.

“It unfortunately gets very cold at night here.”

“Where are we, Hoth?”

“No, but a planet very similar.”

“Stars how do you deal with it?”

“I manage.”

She pulled the blanket tighter around herself and shivered.

“May I ask you what your name was before?”

“You may. However, for every question I answer you need to answer two of mine.”

“Two? How is that fair?”

“Who said anything about fair?”

She looked over at him and scowled at his sly grin. She turned so she was facing him more with her knees pulled up to her chest. He was already turned slightly to the side with his legs spread apart and his arm thrown over the back of the couch.

“Fine. What was your name.”

“Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Obi.. wow.”

“You know the name?”

“I do. Master Jinn spoke of you often while Anakin and I were training.”

He rolled his jaw before forcing the emotion to fall from his face. He was smiling again before she even could comprehend that he had been upset.

“What planet are you from?”

“Alderaan.”

“Good family?”

“The best. Wonderful parents. Well off. Supportive in my quest to become a Jedi.”

“Interesting. That explains your education and manners.”

She shrugged and smiled softly.

“Can I assume you’re from Coruscant?”

“No. I don’t really remember though I was very young when I went there. Thus, the accent.”

“Makes sense. The Jedi usually take in children at a young age.”

“You mean steal them.”

Not wanting to anger him more, she fell silent.

“Were you at the temple before Anakin?”

“Yes. Not very long though. Maybe a week or two if I remember correctly.”

“Then I just missed you it seems.”

She nodded and shivered again.

“What is the extent of your relationship with Skywalker?”

Her head shot up at that question. She looked him directly in his eyes and saw a cautious curiosity.

“I’ve told you. He’s my best friend.”

“It seems deeper than that. He was positively furious when I called you darling.”

“He’s.. protective. He had to leave his mother and I was the first person he truly connected to after that. Master Windu worried he was corrupting me but there were many times he kept me sane.”

“Explain more, please.”

She smirked and shook her head.

“You’re being awfully careful not to ask another question.”

“Trying to play by the rules, my dear.”

She chuckled and played with the edge of the blanket.

“I think maybe if there hadn’t been a code, we would have grown closer.”

“So, you turned him down.”

“Not necessarily. It’s not like we talked about it. We just knew it wasn’t what the Jedi would need from us. Have you ever been in love?”

“Yes.”

She decided not to press him more when his answer was clipped. She lowered her eyes and chewed on her bottom lip again.

“Do you love Anakin?”

“I.. I’ve never let myself love anyone. My destiny is to be a Jedi Master. I won’t let anything deter that.”

“Interesting. So, you don’t indulge in physical pleasure?”

She snorted and he raised his eyebrows in response.

“I’m not a prude. I just don’t let myself feel possessive or attached to them.”

“So, why not with Anakin then? You two are already close.”

She shrugged and laughed, her face feeling warm.

“Doesn’t really need to be thought about. It didn’t happen and won’t.”

“You’re rather open with me. Not what I expected considering who your Master was.”

“I would rather give you this information willingly in a way that I can benefit from it. Considering what the alternative is I think it’s safer that way.”

He chuckled and carded his hand through his hair again.

“You are wise beyond your years, darling. I do wonder why you were so willing to tell me about Anakin though. You know he is in danger.”

“Nothing that I told you is anything you couldn’t have found out just by watching us. You actually probably would have assumed there was more to it. I know the counsel did many times.”

Zara let out a yawn, trying to cover her face as she did. Veth chuckled and stood, motioning for her to lay down on the couch.

“There is a spare room, but it is much warmer out here. I’ll check on the fire throughout the night.”

She curled up and made sure the blanket was wrapped tightly around her. He added more wood to the fire and dusted his hands off as he stood up. He paused at the doorway and looked at the sleepy Jedi on his couch.

“Goodnight, Zara.”

“Goodnight, Lord Veth.”

“You can call me Obi Wan, if you’d prefer.”

“I thought we weren’t friends, Obi Wan?”

“You’re starting to grow on me a bit, darling.”

With a smirk he left, leaving her even more confused than the first time she met him. Zara was terrified of the situation she was in but knew she had to play his game. As she drifted to sleep, she worried about her best friend and what they could possibly want from him. She had to find a way to warn him and protect him.

“Zara. Zara dear, you need to wake up. Come on, sweetheart.”

She woke with a gasp and looked around, unaware of where she was. She jumped when she realized Obi Wan was kneeling by the couch with his hand on her shoulder. He looked worried; his hair still disheveled from sleeping.

“W-what? What is it?”

“You were crying out in your sleep. Gave me a terrible fright when I heard you. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m f-fine. Sorry. Sorry for startling you.”

“What was wrong?”

“I just.. I have nightmares. I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Don’t let me keep you up.”

She sat up, pulling away from his touch. He stood and moved to the fire, tending to it like he had been doing it his entire life. She watched him as she worked on controlling her breathing. Although nightmares weren’t new to her, being woken by someone she didn’t know was. She felt ashamed and embarrassed that he had heard her crying.

“Tell me, darling, do the Jedi know of your nightmares?”

“It’s hard to find one of us who doesn’t have them. War never really leaves us.”

“You’re fighting against a droid army.”

“We don’t use droids to fight.”

Her voice was harsh and clipped, surprising Obi Wan. He walked to her, stopping only to kneel in front of her on the floor. She wrapped the blanket tighter around her and watched him with unease.

“You really do care about your clones, don’t you?”

“They’re people. Living breathing people. Their history or how they came to life doesn’t concern me. What concerns me is-“

“Stars, Zara, they’re just clones. More can be made.”

“You sound like Senator Palpatine. So high and mighty that you have no regard for life. Even now you play games with me, dangling the idea of my death over my head. You’re no better than a bored loth cat playing with a mouse.”

“Are you comparing yourself to a rodent?”

He smirked and it infuriated Zara. She snarled and tried to get up, wanting space between the two of them. Before she could even fully try, Obi Wans hands shot out and grabbed her thighs tightly, keeping her in place.

“No, Lord Veth, I am comparing you to a predator with absolutely no humanity. Your tricks will not work on me. You may have been a Jedi once, but it is clear as day that you are no longer harboring any shred of light in you. Go ahead and pretend that you’re civil and sophisticated while you keep me prisoner on this despot of a planet. It doesn’t matter how kind or human you pretend to be. You’re nothing short of a monster. You’ll never be able to hide the evil coursing through you when it burns so brightly through your eyes.”

Zara held back a wince as his grip tightened on her legs. The normal playfulness that he usually held on his face was long gone. The more she spoke, the angrier he became.

“There she is. There is the conceited Jedi I knew had to have been in there. I saved your life, little knight. I spared your men knowing that it would harm you to wipe them out. I let you stay awake and conscious of what was happening. I gave you my clothes to wear so you would be warm and let you know parts of me that I didn’t need to divulge. Without me, you would be dead along with your entire regiment.”

“How do I even know a single thing you’ve said to me is true? Sith lie.”

“Now you question my integrity? When have you discovered anything I have said to you is a lie?”

“It all has to be a lie! Why would anyone that follows the dark want Anakin? He is a good man. He is devoted to those he loves and the family he has created within the order. He would never fall to the dark side. He wouldn’t do that to them. He wouldn’t do that to-“

“To what? Or were you going to say to who? He wouldn’t do that to you. Is that what you were going to say? Hmm?”

When Zara fell silent Obi Wan laughed out darkly.

“My dear, pull the right strings and anyone could fall to the dark. He has a weakness, and it is you.”

“It’s not like that with me!”

“Does he know that? You see, I have been in love before and it didn’t matter how far away I ended up from her. It never went away. Even once I heard of her death, I still mourned her and the love we could have shared if I had just let myself fall.”

She shook her head quickly.

“He will do what our master’s ask of us. He will help win this war and-“

“Now who is the liar, Zara? I’ve heard some doozies coming from the lips of Jedi, but I have never heard someone so willing to lie when the truth is right in their face. The fall of Anakin Skywalker has already begun. Your absence, regardless of what is causing it, is going to make him desperate. He will do anything to either get you back or avenge you. Look me in the eyes and tell me that I’m wrong.”

Zara opened her mouth to argue but quickly shut it.

“That’s what I thought.”

He released her legs and stood, looking down at her with anger.

“Get some rest. Lack of sleep makes you ungrateful and it’s not a good look.”

Once he was in his room, punctuated by a slam of his door, Zara finally let her tears fall. She wanted to talk to Master Windu to get clarity. She needed to hear that Veth, Obi Wan, whoever he was, was wrong. Feeling hopeless and helpless wasn’t something she was accustomed to and it was tearing her to shreds.

#sith!obi wan #sith!kenobi #sith!Obi wan x OC #Jedi!oc #jedi!zara #starwars #star wars #star wars imagine #fanfic

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dgcatanisiri · 3 years

Text

Tried to make a brief summary of the issues of Mass Effect Andromeda’s handling of queer men and how it relates to why we’re (broad use here) upset with the Legendary Edition failing to provide better representation than the originals, and it kinda turned in to what amounts to an open letter for BioWare.

So, what the heck, here it is.

A little personal background. I spent my high school life completely in the closet. After graduating, I had a new computer and the opportunity to play a new game. The game chosen was BioWare’s Jade Empire. Still a fairly recent release, and I was a big fan of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, also by BioWare. So, being a young gay man, still uncomfortable and uncertain of who I was, I was very excited when I got to play this game that would allow me to play a gay romance, a romance that featured two men. I burned through two playthroughs of the game within less than a week, enjoying that rush of acknowledgement that yes, gay guys could be the hero. It was a massive affirmation for me at the time, something that said that my sexuality was not going to prevent me from being the hero, which legitimately was a message that I felt like most media was giving me to that point, because gay men barely appeared in anything other than guest roles for an episode or two on a TV show, but certainly not in video games. That game, that experience... I’ve said for years that it had cemented me as a BioWare fan for life.

If I say that now, it is a statement with a few caveats.

The history of the failure of Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 to provide any male/male romances is well documented. I was excited, very eager to romance Kaidan Alenko in Mass Effect 3. But even then, I noticed that there were things that were lacking in the romance. It was noticeable, for instance, that the basic dialogue between male Shepard and female Shepard was unchanged, if either was starting a new romance with Kaidan. The thing that always felt... WRONG about that was that if I’d had the option to begin a romance with him in the first game, I would have. Yet there’s not even a bit of dialogue that even references that inability, no comment of “I didn’t think you were available,” or anything of the sort, nothing to say that, say, Shepard was interested in Kaidan at the time, but didn’t believe he’d be receptive, didn’t want to damage their friendship, something of the sort. There was even a cut in the romance scene, where female Shepard will sit in Kaidan’s lap before being lifted up and carried to the bed, but with male Shepard and Kaidan, just fades to black. And then in the Citadel DLC, while all the other pairings walked in to the casino arm in arm, male Shepard and Kaidan are leaving plenty of room between them. There’s also the absence of any cuddling as they return to the Normandy.

To say nothing of the lack of Steve Cortez during the story segments of Citadel – he is not part of the big team entrance to the apartment, just spontaneously appears in the lounge room. He doesn’t participate in the briefings, and he is not a casino date, despite being part of the assembled team. Cortez also suffers from the fact that his romance spends so much time on how he needs to move on from the death of his husband, Shepard can come across as predatory towards him, trying to push him out of his grief and his pants. Due to the lateness of his arrival in the story, in game three, as opposed to game one or two, there is significantly less time to establish him as a person – beyond his past as a pilot and the death of his husband, we gain almost no concept of his personality or personal history.

I bring all of this up to help set the stage of what was expected when Mass Effect Andromeda was nearing release. Mass Effect had been full of problems of representation of queer men specifically (not that they were perfect on the count of female/female relationships either, because there’s plenty to talk about there, but as I’m not a lesbian or bisexual woman, I don’t feel comfortable talking about their experiences for them). While there were flaws, Dragon Age, what is often considered Mass Effect’s sister franchise, HAD managed to provide male/male romances in every iteration of that franchise.

In fact, considering that Dragon Age’s most recent installment, Dragon Age Inquisition, had been put out with a lot of fanfare about the first gay male companion, who was considered rather popular in the fandom, and the game itself receiving the Game of the Year award that year, indicating that, if there was any risk in the business sense of providing representation of queer men, it was negligible at most in the bottom line of that game, the attitude of a lot of gay men in the lead up to Andromeda’s release was some variation of “okay, Mass Effect has been flawed, but BioWare’s learned from their past mistakes, and they’re coming off the heels of a hugely successful game that had a gay character whose gayness was front and center in his storyline... We can expect that things will be fine, and we don’t have to worry.” That was the dominant attitude I found in a lot of my queer-oriented spaces.

But we started getting uncomfortable as the developers remained cagey about romance options in Andromeda – there were Twitter responses to “we’re concerned about Mass Effect’s history of gay representation, we would like to know about the options” that came out as “we checked and yep! They’re there!” These responses came across as flippant and even tone-deaf – the reason that the question was being asked was because of prior failures to be included, and not simply a desire to get all the details before launch.

As the trailers started coming out, the questions continued from the fans, and the response from the developers... continued to be uncomfortable. When asked directly for a listing of romances prior to release, the response was that the developers wanted players to learn as they played, that “the fun is in experiencing it!” This was a specific response when it was learned that the romance options could be flirted with regardless of orientation, but they would shut it down. Despite the fact that the trailers DID include content from certain romances – specifically, the male Ryder/Cora and male Ryder/Peebee romances.

This was uncomfortable for a lot of queer players like myself because it spoke to a lack of consideration of what it is like to be queer. In many places, it is a serious question of safety to even put yourself out there to find a partner, to flirt with someone openly unless you are already certain that there is a chance for a positive response. There are places where a queer person flirting with the wrong person can get them harassed, assaulted, even killed for doing so. Even in the safety of a virtual construct of video games, these are honed instincts that queer people have developed. And no matter how many times we would say this to the developers, no one seemed to understand. Likewise, the fact that the trailers felt free to show off heterosexual romances, but not queer ones felt... questionable.

Then, finally, firm details started coming out, and... There were problems. Early data-mining said that there was an even split of romances between orientations. But there was a bit of discomfort around the reveal that the gay characters, Suvi and Gil, were limited to the ship, rather than being companions who would accompany Ryder on missions. There is a history of companions being given more involved storylines and involvement than secondary characters. It also didn’t help the disappointment from queer people who’d been eager for Cora or Liam as romances, who were firmly established as straight (Cora herself had a popular lesbian following).

That discomfort increased when it came out further that, ACTUALLY, Jaal would not be available for Male Ryder. This caused a lot of upset. Now it was a case where there was NO M/M squadmate romance option. This on top of the group of fans who were uncomfortable with the idea that, in a sci-fi series, gay men couldn’t romance an alien, while this had become a staple of the series, considering Liara, the character from a species described as equivalent to Star Trek green-skinned Orion girls, had been available for straight men and lesbian/bi women from ME1, and straight women got in on the act with Garrus and Thane in ME2, on top of straight men also getting Tali.

This got worse when the achievement listing for the game was released and there was an achievement for “romancing three different characters.” Meaning that it was absolutely impossible for a gay man to play the game and get this achievement without playing a sexuality other than his own.

This is why I led with my experience with Jade Empire, why it was so affirming to me. Because to hear all this, ten years later, to see what had been so affirming to me a decade prior be functionally dismissed, be shown to take a secondary position at best... It hurt.

And the game proper did not help that feeling at all.

So first we meet Gil Brodie. Engineer of the Tempest. One of the first things we learn about him is that he has a close friendship with a woman named Jill. And then he immediately tells us that one) she is a fertility specialist, and two) she “says [he’s] part of the problem” because he won’t have kids the natural way. This is immediately setting off red flags to me – I can think of plenty of my friendships where we give one another grief for various things, but I would never think of introducing any of them to someone else with that fact. So my reflexive thought in this situation is “what kind of a friend is this really?”

And then, as the game goes on... This is the only thing that Gil’s conversations involve, the prospect of having kids. We do not learn much more about him, just have him talking about considering the idea. The lock-in for his romance requires Ryder to meet Jill, who Gil again says that she will talk his ear off about his “civic duty” to reproduce, a fact that makes those earlier red flags wave higher and more furiously, because who DOES that to a total stranger? And this is passed off as being “charming.” This leads to the culmination of the romance, where Gil says that Jill has decided she wants to get pregnant and she wants Gil to be the dad.

There’s... A LOT going on here, so let me work through this. First, one of the few things Gil says as a bit of establishing his character is that he is impulsive, that he joined the Andromeda Initiative, the journey from the Milky Way galaxy to the Andromeda galaxy without really thinking through what it would mean, that it was a one-way journey with no way to back out once he’d gotten there. So this is already saying to me that this is not a person who really SHOULD be a parent, at least at this point in his life.

We also get a couple of emails from him in-game that paint him as putting in thirty-six hour workdays into the engines on the Tempest, that he cares about and puts a lot of time into those engines. So when I think about him as a father, I see him having to give up something he’s deeply passionate about to do it, because the Tempest is certainly no place to raise a child – they can’t exactly put a playpen in the cargo hold, for example.

This would be one of the first things that I would think of as a discussion element, but... it’s not there. All that we get is a couple of casual comments about how Gil should know that bringing a child into the world is a big thing, something that shouldn’t be done lightly. But this is framed as Ryder questioning Gil’s fitness to be a parent at all, rather than questioning if he’s thinking this through and having considered this enough to be ready to take on this responsibility, or if it’s even something that he even wants.

Because that’s the other big thing here – this is not Gil’s idea. This is not something that he makes clear is his desire. No, it’s Jill who has decided that she wants to get pregnant and use Gil’s sperm. For all that he matters in this whole thing, he might as well be a turkey baster. He’s basically an accessory in his own story, because he goes in to this with all the passion of a math equation: “The Andromeda Initiative is a colonization effort. Therefore, the idea is to have babies. Therefore, I should find some way to reproduce.” This isn’t him having a passion or desire to have kids, just it being “something you do.”

This is, genuinely, a failure to understand the character who was being written. Gil’s writing reeks of having been written by someone who does not know what they are talking about. There is an element to the gay experience that is not innate but learned. When we realize that having children is not a thing that will just happen, that if we want this to happen, it will require a lot of additional steps, there are many who will simply say “this isn’t for me, this is more work than I’m willing to put in to for this.”

Now, Gil could have been someone who had decided it was worth it, but that butts up against the idea of him being impulsive, that he doesn’t think things through. There is no time given to focusing on the reason he decides this is the right choice for him, to the point that many players felt that this was not Gil’s decision but something that Jill was pushing, that she expected him to jump on her command. Because we have so little of Gil, as a character and an individual, but plenty of him talking up her, this “friendship” feels toxic to many.

Just about everyone I have ever spoken with about Gil is deeply uncomfortable that literally, the only way that he will not have a child at this point is if a romanced Ryder stops him – if I am playing a game where I don’t romance him, I actively just stop interacting with him at a certain point so that this never comes up, because this does not come across as happy. It comes across as forcing a gay man into a heteronormative experience to satisfy some traditional idea of “man and woman, raising kids.”

And, as the cherry on top, if you do tell Gil that you’re not comfortable having kids – a very real thing, whether gay or straight – then, unlike other romances, Gil and Ryder do not share a kiss at the finale of the game. And, during the last conversations on Meridian, the only thing Gil even brings up is Jill being pregnant, whether or not it’s his child.

This is what “representation of gay men” amounted to in Mass Effect Andromeda. A homophobic story that was about a gay experience written by someone who is not a part of this community and does not know or understand the experience personally, going through the motions of development when really, all that is cared about is the end result. To say that most of the gay men I know who have played this game find this homophobic is to undersell the point.

It doesn’t help that, of all the Tempest romances, Gil also clocks in with the least amount of romance exclusive material – a few flirts, the romance lock in and scene, and being able to stop Gil from having kids. Other than that, his friendship and his romance are virtually identical.

Speaking of, the romance scene consists of a make out session that fades to black, before coming back in with Ryder and Gil, shot from about shoulders up, briefly wrapping up their conversation that preceded the fade to black. This is noteworthy when the heterosexual romances between Ryder and their human love interests, as well as Peebee and Jaal, the former having a similar body model to naked human women, just blue, and Jaal, who is naked at other points in the game, have much more involved romance scenes – Cora’s in specific received special attention.

All of this, individually, may have just been reflective of time crunch and other external pressures – we all understand the realities of game development, that for all the ambitions that go in, when the deadlines are nearing, something has to give. But taken collectively... The kindest question is to ask why all of the “give” happened in regards to the gay man?

The end result with Gil honestly feels like he was written in response to the bad faith arguments that had come up in the period after the name for the game was revealed and it was made clear that the game would follow a colonization effort. There were a contingent of people who said that “there shouldn’t be gay people coming along, a colonization effort needs to reproduce.” This is a bad faith argument from homophobes, trying to justify why they don’t want gay people in “their” games. In answering their question, the question they only “ask” in order to explain why they don’t want to have gay people in the game without saying that, it comes across as catering the gay content for a heterosexual audience. It should go without saying that this is a bad position to take.

So, that’s Gil. What about Reyes? Well, Reyes himself is bound to a single planet, which, again, points to a minimizing of how much content he will even get, since his content can only be accessed on this single planet. Likewise, Reyes, as a character, is someone who falls in to several old, tired tropes with regards to bisexual men – he is a shady, untrustworthy character, in this instance literally a criminal, meant to be evocative of the “dashing rogue” archetype. This is a characterization that has often been BioWare’s go-to with regards to bisexual men, because we see this archetype drawn on in Jade Empire’s Sky, Dragon Age Origins’ Zevran, Dragon Age 2’s Anders, and even elements exist in Dragon Age Inquisition’s Dorian (even if he is a gay man). It’s a well that BioWare has frequently tapped when it comes to a romance option for queer men, to the point that it starts to feel like BioWare in general believes that this IS what queer men are.

There’s also the questionable portrayal of Reyes that leads to a description of the trope “the depraved bisexual,” an explicitly bisexual character who uses sex and sexuality as a manipulative tool, that they treat others as simply there to be their toys. Over in Dragon Age Inquisition, one of the romance options was specifically NOT made bisexual in order to avoid this trope, but Reyes himself seems to be a candidate for that trope all the same.

All this, and, again, the romance options for gay men were unequal to those for everyone else. This prompted the campaign #MakeJaalBi – Jaal was, notably, the character initially assumed to be the bisexual male companion, and on release, his romance was heterosexual exclusive. But datamining revealed that there was code for him to be romanced by male Ryder. Indeed, on release, it was noteworthy that Jaal could not even be flirted with by male Ryder. Liam had a distinct turndown for male Ryder, a couple of them, depending on when Ryder flirts with him. Jaal had no such turndown.

And this worked. BioWare released the patch for Andromeda that gave Jaal a bisexual romance. However, this was the only change that Mass Effect Andromeda received in regards to the issues of the romances before support for the game ended. While it was seen as an improvement, it was also questioned why this was the only change, when... Well, I spent the better part of two pages outlining the problems of Gil’s portrayal.

(I feel I would be remiss to not mention there was also a character, Hainley Abrams, who would, upon interacting with her, proceed to deadname herself to Ryder, as if that is the only way to establish that a transgender person is trans. This was also changed in a patch after the trans community complained, and, in conjunction with the above, led more than a few people to wonder if the Andromeda script had been looked over by any queer sensitivity readers, given the earlier issues with Gil. This does go out of the scope of everything else in this discussion, but it is worth mentioning.)

When Mac Walters says players will talk about how Shepard is each of theirs, that every individual player approaches Shepard as being “their” Shepard, he isn’t wrong. He says the characters, and the relationships we have with the characters is the heart and soul of the series, he isn’t wrong. And yet... When I play the trilogy, my heart and soul are being torn apart, because I do not get to see myself in the trilogy. I am not there in this story, at least for two thirds of the way. And in that third that I am there, I feel like I am cared about less than my counterparts who are heterosexual.

The idea that “making” characters available for same sex romance changes them is like saying that there is some inherent difference in a person because of their sexualities. While it’s true that the experiences of queer people does offer different perspectives on matters, it does not fundamentally alter the person, the individual that we are. It does not change our heart and soul. Restoring the bisexuality of characters like Jack, Jacob, Ashley, Thane, or Tali is not changing who they are. Making Kaidan bisexual in ME3 did not change who he was, and restoring a romance between him and male Shepard in ME1 would not change him either.

Every game has some cut content surrounding queer content specifically, and a great deal of that content is specifically for gay players like myself. I said at the beginning that I once thought of myself as a BioWare fan for life, but that now comes with caveats. The caveats are pretty simple – while the games produced by BioWare once felt affirming, now they feel like they’re only grudgingly allowing me to be there. That if I must be there, I should just take the scraps I’m given and be content with that, rather than being treated as an equal.

I like to think that this is not the message that the people at BioWare wish to impart to their players. I like to believe BioWare’s statements of wanting to be an inclusive and welcoming environment for their players, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, orientation, whatever identity and label one chooses. But based on the experience of the last four games, of the Legendary Edition perpetuating the homophobia of over a decade ago... I have a hard time believing that.

BioWare games once made me feel like I was equal to the straight heroes across my media. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that way about their games anymore. Not when, after having the opportunity to restore the bisexuality of Kaidan – of multiple characters, really – in the Legendary Edition, I am still being told that offering representation for people like me is something that only comes grudgingly.

And if that’s what I see now... What does it say about what the future of the franchise will offer? If every game in this series involves fighting for content that, in particular, heterosexual players will see offered as the rule, what motivates me to want to continue to be invested and involved in this franchise?

#bioware critical #dg rants #another angry queer rant #make mass effect inclusive #make mele inclusive #makemeleinclusive

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softboywriting · 4 years

Text

Hate To Love You | Poe Dameron

Summary: You and Poe have been friends since you arrived at the Resistance base three years ago. Well, friends who often want to strangle each other as much as they want to take the other to bed. After a solo mission gone wrong you get teamed up with Poe for a follow up mission on Canto Bight. The two of you together under the right circumstances may lead to something neither of you can resist, and confessions that can’t be taken back. [Star wars universe] [nsfw themes no smut] [fluff] [fr-enemies to lovers [[sort of]]

Word Count: 6k

|Masterlist In Bio|

You find yourself in a bad area of Kajimi while on an intel mission for Leia. There is supposedly a man with information about the location of an abandoned First Order fleet ship that would be an excellent salvage opportunity. Stars above know the Resistance can use all the weapons and ship parts they can get their hands on. You went in alone, opting to leave behind your usual partner Daya, while she was laid up from a blaster burn. It was supposed to be an easy job. You go into Kajimi City, go to a cantina called Knicks and meet a man in an emerald green robe. He would give you a holopad and you would leave. Of course that does not happen.

You enter the cantina and immediately note that it is absolutely packed from wall to wall. It's loud, as most are, and you make your way around, looking for the man in the emerald robe. It's hard to see as it's barely lit. It's a divey place, sketchiness oozes from every inch of the establishment. Bad things, illegal things, happen here. You keep your head down, pull your hood up and keep moving.

"Oh look at her! Hey honey, gimme some of that body." Some guy hollers as you pass him.

You step forward and push past two big aliens that are conversing in grunts. You cannot stand being hit on. It's so irritating. You wore baggy jumpsuit pants and one of Poe's jackets to make yourself seem shapeless. Apparently that didn't work as well as you hoped. You wish the contact would show up or make himself seen because you're not keen on asking the barkeep about him. Last time you did that it ended badly, as the person you were after was not well liked.

There isn't much time to worry about all of that when a loud boom shakes the cantina, causing a hush to fall over the crowded room.

"First Order! Run!" Someone yells and then panic erupts.

You're jostled around as patrons begin to hurry for the exit. This sucks, there is no way you're going to get the intel now. Fuck it. You head for the exit, squeezing past a few droids to get out into the cold night air. Sure enough there are stormtroopers everywhere grabbing people left and right. You duck into an alley and head for anywhere that is not the middle of town.

The alley goes to a dead end that has an open sewer tunnel grate. It's better than nothing. You'll camp out in the tunnels and wait until things settle down topside. You slide past the bars and head into the dark passageway, pulling your flashlight out for a better visual. Unfortunately you don't make it too far before you come face to face with a blaster as you enter a dim lit tunnel.

"How'd you find this place?" The woman on the other end of the blaster says. "You're not part of the crew."

"I ran from the stormtroopers and slipped through an open sewer grate. I don't mean any harm."

"That jacket, where'd you get it?"

You look down and back up. "Uh, someone gave it to me?"

The woman walks forward, blaster still trained on you. "I know this jacket. Who are you?"

"I'm with the resistance. I can leave, I will find another place to stay until the stormtroopers clear out."

"What's your name?"

You swallow thickly. Why does your name matter? And why is she obsessed with this jacket? "Dameron. My name is Dameron."

"Dameron? Poe Dameron? Are you related?"

Oh fuck. She knows Poe. Shit. Fuck. He told you he once had bad luck on Kajimi, but he also said he had friends there. He never specified exactly what bad luck meant, but of course you'd run into someone who knew him. It's a fifty fifty chance, either this person is a friend or an enemy and you're gonna have to roll the dice. "He's my...husband?"

She scoffs. "He's alive? That son of a bitch. I should tea-"

"Zorii! They've taken Burnham!" Someone shouts from down the tunnel.

The woman makes a noise of annoyance. "Listen, you tell Poe if he ever steps foot on Kajimi again I will have his head on a platter and serve the rest of him to a sand worm. And if I see him outside if Kajimi it's on sight. Got it?"

"Yep. Got it." You turn and head back to the entrance of the tunnels. Sweat runs down your back and you walk faster, feeling the wall for guidance. You're too afraid to turn your light back on in case Zorii comes after you. You're done taking chances today, it's time to get back to your ship and get back to base. Fuck the intel.

_____________________

"Hey! You made it back!" Poe cheers, clapping you on the back as soon as you enter the command center. He's the only one in there, seemingly going over the latest attack plans on a First Order base. "How was Kajimi? Did you get the coordinates?"

"No, I didn't." You pull off your hat and gloves, slapping them on the table. "Do you know a woman named Zorii?"

Poe's face pales, eyes wide. "Perhaps, why?"

"I ran into her on accident. She recognized your jacket!" You pluck at the leather collar. "I'm fairly certain I'm lucky to be alive."

"Whoa hold on, did you say it was mine?"

"Sort of? I don't know, she asked my name and I said Dameron because I didn't want to give my real name because safety and whatever and I didn’t think any more of it. But of course she knew you! And she seemed to think you were dead. Wanna explain?"

"You gave my name?!" Poe grabs his hair and turns away, pacing the length of the star chart console. "Fuck! What did you tell her? I need to know. Did you say you were my sister? My cousin? My child?"

"First of all I'm too old to be your child you idiot. I said wife."

"Wife?! Oh for ewoks sake. You told her I was married?!"

You shrug the jacket off and throw it on a console. "I took a chance Poe! I had no idea if she was a friend or a foe!"

"Oh you took a chance alright. I'm so fucking dead now."

"Why? She was pissed but how bad can it be?"

Poe laughs debilitatingly. "Faking my own death to get out of the crew and join the resistance? Is that bad? Or hold how about this, I faked my death and we were seeing each other at the time I did."

Your jaw drops. "Poe Dameron! You did what?!"

"Yeah! Yeah, no I know! I'm a huge piece of shit but I did what I had to do to keep my ass alive."

You throw your hands up and turn away, walking toward the seating area. "You couldn't just break up with her like a normal person? No?"

"It wasn't about her, it was about leaving the crew."

"Then just leave!"

"Just leave? You have no idea how much shit that would put me in. I faked my death to sever all ties. Spice runners don't let people just leave when you know about their production and-"

"SPICE?!"

"Yeah that's what I said. We all have a past, don't start with me." He groans and sinks down into a chair. "I'm so fucking dead."

"You're only dead if you set foot on Kajimi. Just don't go there."

"Ah, yeah sure. Didn't plan on that regardless. The point isn't that I want to go back to Kajimi one day, it's a shit hole anyway, it's that Zorii knows I'm not dead and I lied to her. She's going to be furious and probably come after my ass."

"Well she can't miss it."

Poe gives you a death stare. "I'm aware my ass is big. Believe me, the seats in the falcon remind me every fucking time. I don't need this right now." He stands and heads for the exit as a few Captains enter. You watch as he leaves and turn your chair toward the console behind it, burying your face in your hands and sighing heavily.

______________________

"Poe?" You call out tentatively as you enter the area of the hangar where he's been working on his x-wing for the last several hours. It's been a day since you got into it in the command center and you feel horrible for making him angry. He's your commander, and you'd even say friend though you butt heads a bit, but at the end of the day you do care for him. A lot. More than you probably should, even if he is a real pain in your ass. He gets under your skin and makes you hotter than any man ever has. It's a fine balance of attraction and irritation.

Sure enough he's laying across the top of his x-wing, foot hooked into the opening of the cockpit, stretched out reaching something inside the engine. He's got on just his cargo pants and a black tank top and you cannot help but stare at his ass. Yes, you teased him about it earlier but in all honesty you love it. It's so...grabable and sexy. He has no idea. Or maybe he does. It seemed like a sore subject earlier but you had been teasing him so that's your fault.

"Poe?" You say a bit louder and he pushes up out of the engine, arms holding him up against the mainframe. His hair is curled beyond belief, the humidity and sweat most likely.

"What now?"

"I wanted to say sorry for yesterday morning."

He pushes himself up farther and repositions himself to slide off the edge of the x-wings body to stand in front of you. He wipes his hands on his tank and crosses his arms. "Why'd you say you were my wife?"

"Huh? I told you, because-"

"No. No, you could have said sister or cousin, anything. But you chose to say wife. Why?"

"I guess I thought it was the safest option." You shrug and dig your boot into the dusty concrete. You definitely haven't imagined what it would be like to be his wife. To be his girlfriend even. Definitely not.

"You thought- oh." Poe hums. "Well I got news for you, wife. We have an assignment together."

"What? Why?"

"Because our friend with the coordinates has taken refuge in Canto Bight."

"The casino resort city? Why the fuck would he go there?"

Poe shrugs. "It beats me. Maybe the guy has a gambling problem. Either way, you and I are going and we are getting those coordinates."

"Why do you need to go?"

"As your partner."

Your heart sinks. Leia knows you blew it on Kajimi. It wasn't supposed to be a solo mission but you said you could handle it. Not that it was your fault the first order decided to raid the city. But why Poe? Why not send someone else with you? Daya? Rose? Wexley?

"Why?"

Poe jumps and hits the release for the hood of the x-wing to fall closed. "Why, because Leia said so."

"Why you? Doesn't she need you here for stuff?"

He smiles and hooks his thumbs in the belt loops of his pants. "It's gonna be me because I asked for the mission."

"You're messing with me aren't you? This is some kind of retribution for outing your fake death."

"Maybe, maybe not." He wraps his arm around your shoulders and pulls you against him. "Pack your bags, because it's honeymoon week on Canto Bight."

"What?!"

"Oh yeah. They're only letting couples in and seeing as you're my wife now..."

"POE DAMERON!"

"Mmm?"

You shove him and he cackles. "You asshole! You are so petty for this."

"Yeah well you signed my death warrant. The least I can do is get even just a little bit."

"I'm not going to sleep with you!" You shout back as you walk away. "I'm not your real wife!"

"We'll see about that!"

_____________________

Poe Dameron can clean up nice. Galaxies he looks like a model when he peels off the fighter suit and runs his hand over his curls. He's in a red silken dress shirt, the top three buttons undone and showing off his gold chain beneath that dips down low on his chest. Black slacks that are definitely tailored because they hug his butt and thighs like they're made for him. Fuck.

"Are you going to change?" Poe asks, gesturing to your flight suit. "I don't think they'll let us in if you're in that."

"Of course I'm going to change." You tug at the velcro of your suit and peel it open to reveal your dress beneath. It's not too fancy, just a simple black dress, knee length and short sleeved. You don't have a lot of nice clothes, they just aren't something you keep around. You do have a necklace from your mom, a nice silver chain with a blue gem pendant. You don't look nearly as nice as Poe does.

"So our cover is that we're a newly wed couple who can't keep their hands off each other. I'm more likely to get noticed here. I can hide my face in your neck and hair. People don't care much for PDA so they will hopefully just ignore us and-" Poe stops mid briefing and you look over at him. "Oh damn." He mutters softly. "My wife looks hot."

"What? Shut up." You toss the flight suit into the cockpit and attempt to fix your hair in the reflection on the windshield. "You're being an ass."

Poe lays his hand on your lower back. "I give you a compliment and I'm an ass? What kind of backwards planet are you from?"

"It was not a compliment. You said wife. Which is not a compliment, it's teasing, so you are an ass."

He leans in close and you press against the x-wing. You can see him in the windshield behind you. Your eyes meet in the reflection and you refuse to look away. His voice comes close to your ear, eyes still boring into yours as he says, "My partner looks stunning and beautiful and I cannot believe I get to do this mission with her. Is that better?"

Your stomach sinks and your heart stops. "You're not bad yourself."

He chuckles, still close to your ear. "I know."

"Confident much?" You press back against him to move away from the x-wing and he wraps his arm around your waist, holding you tight against his warmth. Your body flushes, heat pooling in your stomach. Flashes of what you'd like him to do race through your brain. Galaxies what you wouldn't let him do to you. No. You have to get your mind out of the gutter. You have a job to do. "Let go, Poe."

"Better get used to it. We're going to do a lot of touching." He purrs before he releases you.

You roll your eyes and he smirks.

"Don't think I can't see that blush." He walks beside you as you head to the grand entry way of the Canto Bight resort. "I know you want me."

"In your dreams, Dameron."

He chuckles. "I do have lots of dreams." He matches your pace and slips his arm around your back. "Fun dreams. We should share them sometime."

You cut him a glare and he grins. "You're really playing into this cover."

"Who says I'm playing?"

______________________

As soon as you're checked in, the hunt is on. You can't help but wonder how many of these people would just leap at the chance to throttle you and Poe for simply being part of the Resistance. There's only one way to get this rich in the galaxy and that is weaponry and sympathizing with the First Order. After an hour or so you and Poe head for the elevators that go to the game rooms on the top floor. It's the roulette rooms to be exact. You got word from base that the contact is a roulette player, always betting black.

"I hope we find him." You say to yourself as the doors to the elevator close. It's only you and Poe inside, which is fine with you. At least you don't have to act when no one is around. The last hour has been an excruciating test of will power. You want this to be over, to never have to touch Poe again because it is killing you inside. You know this won't last.

"As do I."

"Huh? Oh. Yeah. I still feel like we're flying a little blind."

"We'll find him."

You look over and Poe has his arms crossed, staring straight ahead at the reflective doors. You look at the doors and take in the two of you together. He looks like he belongs here and you don't. People are going to know you're fakes. This isn't a mission for you, you're not a good actor and you're barely dressed for the part.

"You look great, stop worrying." Poe says softly.

"What? I didn't say anything?"

"You're staring at our reflection intently. I know what you're thinking and you're wrong. You look great."

You fold your arms over your chest and lean against the wall. "You're staring too."

Poe turns and steps directly in front of you. "I'm staring at you."

"Well stop."

"I can't." He catches your chin between his thumb and forefinger and your hands start sweating, heart going wild. "I wanna take it all in while I have it."

"You think I'm not going to dress up ever again?"

"Maybe. I've known you for three years now and I've never seen you like this."

"Don't get used to it."

Poe releases your chin as the elevator dings, signaling your floor. "I won't. But I'm going to relish it while I can."

"Yeah, you do tha-ah!"

He grabs your hand and pulls you out onto the game floor, tugging you against his chest. He slides a hand into your hair and your knees go weak. "Remember our cover?"

"Y-yeah?"

"Newly weds." He drops his lips to your ear. "That can't get enough of each other. You can touch me again, it's okay."

You rest your hand against his chest and his heart is beating fast and hard. He's really into this. "How are we supposed to find the contact if we're all over each other?"

"We will. Just follow my lead."

Poe wraps his arm around your back and guides you to walk with him to a table. He crowds you against the table in front of him, lips going to your neck. "Ask what the buy in is?"

"What's the buy in?" You smile sweetly, looking at the dealer. You're trying not to tremble but Poe is really making you feel weak kneed. He's taken to sliding his hand across your stomach and massaging his thumb just over your ribcage.

"Twenty thousand Madame." The dealer says happily. "Shall I put you on the board next round?"

"Uh.."

"Yes." Poe says more lustfully than helpfully.

You shiver and nod. "Yes please."

The dealer gives a nod and begins to set out a marker for you while the roulette wheel spins away.

"How exactly are we doing this?" You hiss at Poe and he chuckles. "Seriously what money do you-"

"He's here."

"What? Where?" You look around the table and no one matches the contact's description. "Where?"

Poe bites at your neck and you let out an embarrassing little noise of pleasure. He's hitting all your sensitive spots and it's driving you mad. "Table at our two o'clock."

You look over and sure enough there is a man in a long emerald green robe. "Great let's go talk to him."

"Not so fast." Poe murmurs, fingers flexing on your stomach. "We have a game to play."

"No we don't. We have no money." You seethe and he hums against your back. "Seriously what are you-"

Poe lays a bundle of tokens on the table and your eyes go wide. "Don't lose." He presses a kiss to your cheek and pulls away.

"Don't- how the fuck am I supposed to-" You look back and he's crossing the game room to get to the table where the contact is. You look back at your own game and white knuckle the edge of the table. You don't even know how to play roulette.

"Madame? Your bet?" The dealer calls, looking at you.

"I- thirteen?"

"The color Madame?"

"Black."

"Very well."

You watch as the wheel spins and the little ball bounces around inside. It's insufferable. You can't watch. You know it's going to cause you to lose this stack of tokens Poe just slapped down out of nowhere. Why does he have so much money? You look up and find him standing near the contact. He doesn't appear to be talking, just observing.

"Winner!"

Your eyes snap back to the table and the dealer is pushing a large amount of tokens toward you. "What..."

"Thirteen black, straight bet. You've taken the majority of the pot Madame. Shall I put you down for another round or cash you out?"

"Cash out."

The dealer stacks your tokens into a carrier and pushes the small box toward you. "Best of times madame."

You gather the box and make a beeline for Poe. The moment you're in range you lay a hand on his back and he turns, scooping you against him and pressing his lips to your cheek. "I-...Okay?"

"The contact is a spy from the First Order," Poe whispers, kissing along your jaw and your mind goes fuzzy. "This is a trap. We need to stay low, contact Leia and find out more information."

"H-how do you know?" You stammer, brain split between wanting to focus on the mission and getting Poe alone in a bedroom.

"He's wearing a ring that only First Order commanders have. I've seen it before."

You slide your hand down his back and rest it on his ass. It takes everything in you not to squeeze. "We should talk elsewhere. Like you said, we need to get ahold of Leia."

"Did you lose my money at the table?"

"No, and on that subject, where the fuck did you get that much in tokens? Since when do you just have an extra twenty thousand laying around?"

"Don't worry about it. What did you win?"

"I don't know?" You move away and hold up the carrier full of tokens. "The dealer just gave me this."

Poe takes it and his eyes go wide. "Holy sh- this is way more than I laid down. Okay first things first we cash this out and get a room. Then we call Leia."

"Sounds good."

_____________________

The room is huge, a suite for a small family. Seriously you could house at least four people in there comfortably it is so large. You take a seat on the end of the giant gold and black bed in the center of the room and Poe starts rolling up his sleeves. It's way hotter than it should be and your brain wanders. It'd feel so good to have him pin you down, kiss you until you can't think straight anymore. His tongue is probably so skilled and-

"Hey, hello, you alive?" Poe says, touching your shoulder. "Did you bring the communicator?"

"Yeah, yeah it's in my purse."

Poe looks around and spots the small purse you had been carrying. "This could have been very bad."

"Do you think he would have tried to kill us?"

"No. I think he would have given us the coordinates and lead us into a death trap." Poe dials out the command center code. "I knew this abandoned ship was too good to be true."

You flop back and stare at the ceiling while Poe talks to Leia. It's painted gold with black stars imprinted throughout. It's interesting, ritzy and obnoxious, but still pretty. You smile to yourself. You've never been in a place this nice. Never in a million years did you think you would find yourself in Canto Bight. Heat rises in your stomach as you reflect on the last hour or so with Poe. He was so willing to touch you, to make you squirm under his attentions. Does he feel some type of way for real? Is he playing the part? You know one thing, you are never going to recover from this. You're going to have dreams for months.

"You know your dress is leaving little to the imagination."

You snap out of your thoughts and sit up, staring at Poe who's standing at the end of the bed looking down at you. Galaxies it's so sexy, his eyes are trained on you and you can't look away. Your dress is hiked up to your thighs, so laying down he could probably see your underwear. "Maybe you should look elsewhere."

"Maybe I don't wanna." He smirks and your blood pressure skyrockets. He reaches out and flips the bit of fabric laying on your leg and exposes a bit more skin.

"Poe!"

His big hand covers the top of your thigh and he gives a little squeeze. "Tell me to stop."

"Poe...what're you doing?"

His other hand finds your opposite thigh and he slides them up under the dress. He's just touching your legs and you're getting riled up. He presses his face into your neck and you let out the most feeble whine of pleasure. "If you don't want this for real, tell me now."

"We shouldn-"

He gives a little bite and you fall backwards, body no longer able to handle it. "Yes or no sweetheart, I need to know if you want this?"

"Yes. I want you." You bite your lip and it's all over. Poe climbs over you, holding your wrists just like you imagined. His lips find yours, kissing you hungrily while you squirm beneath him, aching to touch him in return. You know it's going to be a long night and that's just fine.

____________________

Sometime in the middle of the night you wake up, eyes opening to the darkened room. For a moment you cannot sort out where you are. The bed feels unfamiliar, the air smells different, nothing is right. Then it hits you. Canto Bight. Poe. You roll over and sure enough there he is beside you, arm over his face.

Last night comes back to you. Oh man. That's why you're sore and naked. You turn back over and Poe shifts on his side. An arm wraps around your chest, pulling you flush against him under the blankets.

"Go back to sleep sweetheart."

"You're awake too."

His hand slides up your chest and settles against your throat. You shiver, remembering last night. A wave of heat courses down your body and settles between your legs. He must know this because he chuckles softly. "Quiet now aren't you?"

"Shut up."

"That's not what you told me last night." He kisses along your shoulder and rubs his thumb back and forth across your throat, applying gentle pressure. "I believe the words were, harder please."

"Poe we just woke up. Do you really need to do this now?" You groan and he slides his hand away, settling it on your chest instead.

He nuzzles against your hair and places another kiss to the back of your neck. "I don't want it to end."

"What?"

"Us, this."

You turn over and face him, nearly nose to nose. You can feel his breath and you stare at each other for a long moment. "You want this?"

He nods. "Please?"

"Okay, I'm down for exploring this." You smile and he leans in to kiss you gently. "I guess I wasn't so far off when I said I was your wife."

Poe cards a hand through your hair. "Easy now, we could make that a possibility. There's a dozen union halls here."

"We're not getting married!" You laugh and he does so in turn. "Fuck a guy once and he wants to make you his wife. Damn, how long has it been Poe?"

"Shut up!"

"No seriously, how long?"

"A while."

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Sure. It's your fault."

You narrow your eyes and he's grinning. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"It means, it's your fault I haven't gotten laid." He flips your nose with his finger and you swat him away. "I'm spelling it out here."

"No you're not? How is it my fault exactly?"

"Because I'm...inlovewithyou." He mutters the last bit, and stares diligently at your pillow.

You touch his cheek and turn his head up to look at you. "Run that by me again?"

"You heard it."

"I heard the impossible. So I know I heard wrong."

"Fuck you, impossible."

"Then say it again!

"I love you!" He takes in a shaky breath. "You're the only woman I've ever met that goes toe to toe with me and gets under my skin to the point I just want to rip your head off but also fuck you so hard you're begging for it. I look forward to seeing you every morning, I look forward to talking to you every day. When you go on missions I can't eat or sleep because I'm so damn worried you won't come back. Fuck, you're everything and I-I must look like an idiot."

"Poe."

"Don't say it. I know it's fine. You don't feel the same and-"

You lean forward and kiss him to make him shut up. He catches on immediately and cradles your face as he returns the kiss. "First things first Dameron..."

"Yeah?" He mutters, eyes closed as he chases your lips as you speak.

"Don't ever tell me how I feel."

He grins and opens his eyes, staring back at you with burning fire. It's passion, challenge, interest. So many emotions you can't settle on one. "Can I tell you want to do?"

"What do you think?"

"Yes?" He slides his hand down to your throat, not squeezing, just touching. "You seemed to like me telling you what to do last night."

You bite his lip and he groans. "Maybe sometimes."

"I'll take sometimes." He pulls you against him, tucking your head under his chin. "Can I take you to breakfast?"

"Like a date?"

"Yes."

"Sure, but you gotta tell me where you got those tokens last night."

He chuckles. "They're fake."

"Fake?! You gave me fake tokens?!"

"I told you not to lose didn't I?"

"You son of a bitch."

"No my mother was a kind woman, thank you."

"I hate you."

He kisses your head and holds his lips to your hair. "No you don't."

You grip his back, pressing your face into his chest. "I don't. Not even a little."

_____________________

Three days after you and Poe return to base things don't seem to have changed. Poe doesn't seem to hint at wanting to be together, he doesn't say anything about what happened between you two on Canto Bight. It's weird. You had such a good night and a lovely breakfast. As far as hook ups and first dates go, they were some of the best you've ever had. You thought things were going well, that you were going to be a couple when you got back to base, but that isn't happening and you don't know why. It's a little annoying and you wonder if Poe is embarrassed to be with you. Or maybe he doesn't want people to know because he wants to keep his options open. You feel played and it is not sitting well.

"Bout time you got back." You say as Poe walks up to the supply cart you're stocking in the hangar. He has been out on a mission with the black x-wing team. Some sort of attack on some stormtroopers invading a resistance friendly settlement.

"Miss me?"

"Yeah, sure." You roll your eyes.

Poe grabs the handles on the cart and leans forward as he speaks. "Is there a problem?"

"I don't know, is there?"

"Don't start with me."

You slam down a pack of fuses and lift your eyes to meet his. "Don't start with you? Oh no problem, you already didn't start it."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh fuck you."

Poe raises his eyebrows. "Fuck me? I'm not doing anything. You're coming at me for who knows what. Tell me what I did!"

"Nothing! You've done nothing Poe! Since we got home you've barely looked at me twice. We spent an incredible night in Canto Bight and for what? For what Poe?!"

"That's what you're mad about?!"

"Yeah! I feel like I've been played!" You laugh angrily, stepping away from the cart and walking around a pile of scrap parts in boxes. "Is Poe Dameron too good to admit he fell in love?!"

"Fuck all, you don't need to shout that across the base!"

You narrow your eyes at him. "You want me to shout? Oh I'll shout." You turn your back to him and face the open expanse of the hangar. "I'm in love with Poe Dameron and he is in love with me! We fucked on Canto Bight and it was amazing!"

A few pilots and crew nearby make noises of encouragement.

Poe grabs your shoulder and turns you around a little rougher than you expect. He backs you against the wall and your heart goes absolutely wild. "You want something to scream about? I'll give you a reason to scream my name."

"Put your money where your mouth is Dameron."

He leans in close, caging you in with his hands on the wall beside your head. "Call me by my last name again and I'll make sure you scream it too."

You stare at him in heavy silence for a moment. The tension is teetering on thin ice. "Tell me you love me. Say it again."

"I love you." He presses his forehead against yours. "I love you until the stars burn out."

"Then why have you been putting me off for the last three days?"

"I've been working through some personal shit."

You swallow thickly. You feel like an asshole now. "I'm sorry."

"You didn't know." He drops his hands from the wall and holds your face. "I promise I'll tell you everything one day, just bare with me."

You grab his wrists and rub your thumb over the back of his hands. "Are you okay? Like...y'know?"

"Yeah."

"You're sure?"

Poe nods. "It's just my PTSD and some other stuff. Can I ask you something?"

"Anything."

"Do you really love me like you just shouted to the base?"

You smile and he bumps your noses together. "Yeah Poe. I love you."

He leans in and kisses you, smiling into it as he does so. "You're really hot when you're angry."

"You are too." You grin back as you slide your hands over his butt. "Maybe we should work on communication."

"Mmm. Then let me tell you how much I want to get you alone right now."

"What's stopping you?"

"Nothing." He grunts as he slides his hands under your legs and lifts you up. "I'm taking you straight to the commander's quarters for punishment."

You grip his back tightly as he walks you out of the hangar. "What's my offense?"

"Verbally attacking a commander and stealing his heart."

"You're cheesy."

"You love it." He purrs, placing his lips against your throat. "You love me."

"Yes, yes I do."

---------

End

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Header pic by delicate-venus

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