#you can’t give me a canon hybrid and expect me to Not get super weird with their anatomy

[novantinuum]

the longer I’m in this fandom the more alien I’ve decided Steven eventually becomes over time as he ages

[willieloomissavescollinsport]

Hawkes Harbor Review

"Surely, Louisa, you are not suggesting I take Jamie to Disneyland."

After a bestselling author's work is rejected, in a move of irony & karma, Dark Shadows finds ITSELF the subject of plagiarism. And now, brought to you by the letter 'H', here is my review of Hawkes Harbor by S.E. Hinton.

  As the legends go, the novel 'Hawkes Harbor' was originally intended to be an entry in publishers HarperCollins' Dark Shadows series. What changes were made to the storyline & characters afterwards are hard to pinpoint, but for all pretense and purposes, I chose to read this book while mentally changing each character or location to its DS counterpart:

Jamie Sommers..........Willie Loomis Kellen Quinn............Jason McGuire Grenville Hawkes...Barnabas Collins Dr. Louisa Kahne...Dr. Julia Hoffman Sophia Marie........................Josette Katie Roddendem........Maggie Evans Richard..................................Roger Lydia.................................Elizabeth Ricky.....................................David Barbara...............................Carolyn Hawkes Harbor.................Collinsport Hawkes Hall......................Old House Terrace View....................Wyndcliffe

  This comes in handy mostly because, with the exception of the 3 male leads, not many details are given regarding the other individuals mentioned in passing or who enter the storyline from time to time.

  The plot itself more or less follows Willie's storyline early on the show, with some added details & flashback accounts to his time spent with Kellen/Jason, along with a few other changes. For starters, Jamie gets more tail in a chapter of this book than Willie could ever hope to get throughout his entire run on the show. He gets it on with a rich bitch who scratches his back up; with Katie/Maggie, IMMEDIATELY after Grenville/Barnabas kidnaps her; with two girls on a cruise ship, at the same time. Hell, even the book's equivalent of Nurse Jackson climbs into bed with him to give him a pity handjob.

Whereas onscreen, I think Willie only got as far as copping a feel while holding Maggie hostage.

  And as I mentioned before, there are rather large sections of the book devoted to Jamie/Willie's backstory, which had previously been unexplored in the show's official canon. The story begins by showing Jamie/Willie, an out of wedlock child with a dying mother, being placed in an orphanage at the age of 7. There, his mother's heirloom crucifix necklace is taken away from him, hinting at his future fascination with shiny trinkets. In his adulthood, he enlists in the Navy & later befriends Kellen/Jason after defeating two Hawaiian men in a brawl.

  For the years to follow, Kellen & Jamie primarly travel together on the high seas, makin' cons, makin' scams & fightin' round the world. During the course of their adventures: Jamie is accused of rape by a rich heiress who seduced him; Kellen tells a story where the punchline involves a frozen sausage; and the two are robbed by pirates while a shark attacks Jamie as he dives for a ruby.

After their resources are dried out, the duo end up back in the states in the town of Hawkes Harbor, Delaware/Collinsport, Maine. Which, of course, is where these characters were introduced on Dark Shadows. But since this isn't suppose to be a Dark Shadows novel, some of the details have been mixed around. For starters, instead of Kellen being Lydia/Elizabeth's husband's two-timing friend, HE is her husband. They were married overseas while Lydia/Elizabeth was working as a nurse for the war. After the marriage went sour, Kellen took a buyout to produce a death certificate, vanish & allow her to go back to her family as a widow.

  Posing as the brother of Lydia's late husband, Kellen moves into the grand family mansion & collects clothes & money while Jamie stays at a boarding house nearby. There, he befriends one of the workers: Katie Roddendem/Maggie Evans, as well as her little sister Trisha(/Amy, perhaps?) & their mother, Mrs Pivens (who seems to be playing the role of Mrs Johnson, as evidenced by this line: "Well, my landlady, Mrs Pivens, she liked me. Don't ask me why-'cept she had a son around my age, he turned out bad. I guess she wanted to believe guys like us were good, deep down somewhere.") Ricky Hawkins/David also forms a bond with Jamie & later tells him of buried pirate treasures located in the caves of a nearby island, said to be haunted.

  With just that information to go on, Jamie foolishly goes a treasure huntin' & unchains a coffin revealing vampire Grenville Hawkes/Barnabas Collins. Grenville, who's sounds more like a chain of motels than a scary vampire, puts Jamie under his power & to work on restoring Hawkes Hall/Old House. Now, it is worth mentioning that some changes were made to Grenville, from the Barnabas we all know & love/hate. Most notably, Jamie describes him as being around the age of 50, with no trying to pretend that the middle aged vampire was 25 when confined in a coffin. In addition, Grenville has had *gasp* MULTIPLE wives! One of which produced an offspring named William, which is perhaps a nod to the our protagonist's original name. Guess William also dodged a bullet in that he wasn't named Bramwell.

  Some time after Gren's first wife passes on, he marries a young woman by the name of Sophia Marie/Josette. Soon afterwards, Grenville finds himself turned into one of the living dead. Sophia/Josette is all too anxious to join him in being eternally damned, but unfortunately for her, Bizarro-Barnabas will have none of that & decides chokes a bitch instead. Fast forward a few centuries and Grenville spots Katie/Maggie & makes up his mind that he wants Sophia/Josette to be a bloodsucking creature of the night after all! But here's where it gets WEIRD.

  Instead of slowly brainwashing Katie into believing she IS Sophia, he plans to have Sophia's spirit, who just happens to be hanging around Hawkes Hall for no good reason, inhabit her body. I guess just like in 'Ghost', when Patrick Swayze jumps into Whoopi Goldberg or something. So, Gren attacks Katie & leaves her alone in the Hawkes Hall long enough for Jamie to find her, allowing THIS exchange to take place:

"Jamie," she said suddenly. "Make love to me." "W-w-what?" he stammered, drawing back from her, searching her eyes. "Make love to me. Now."

  Yep, you've only got mere moments to escape, but why not do the nasty instead? I mean, it's not like an angry jealous killer vampire could walk in at any second or anything! Actually you know what? If I didn't believe it was impossible, I think Willie Loomis himself wrote this book. That's right, after hearing about his parallel time self being a famous writer, he thought to himself 'Well, why can't I do that?' And then he proceeded to write a thinly disguised biography of his life, giving everyone a different name & changing the events to the way he thought they SHOULD have happened!

Oh & here's another kicker, Katie/Maggie claims to be a virgin. Ha! Yeah, I know Joe is always shown sleeping on the couch in the show, but I've figured that was because Sam had a short fuse & a shotgun handy amidst his paintbrushes, just in case someone dared to lay a finger on his daughter. Trust me, if Maggie's a virgin, then Carolyn's in the freakin' convent. So Katie is saying that she wants her first roll in the hay to be with pretty boy Jamie instead of Count Hawkins. Actually I wonder if Grenville is even capable of performing such an act. Usually vampires in popular culture are as dead below the waist as the rest of their bodies, & Barnabas never seemed to be any exception. Sure he was interested in anything under 30 with a vagina who walked within his line of vision. But as a vampire, he never showed an interest in sinking anything except his fangs into a young lady.

  But, getting back to our story. Jamie & Katie are engaging in some fluffy coitus. They kiss, they cry, they climax together. Cherubs come down from the heavens & sing. Then Grenny shows up & doesn't seem to show any reaction to the fact that some hard core nookie just took place in that very room. But no matter to that, because Grenville has to deliver some corny dialogue to his sweetie:

  "Come, my heart, " the low voice beseeched the air. "Come and join me."

  "All right!" (All right! Let's get this party started!) Jamie shouted as he struggled back up. "You go ahead and do this, kill Katie, I can't stop you. I seen people kill before-for money, God, or country, and you with your 'necessity for existence.' I even did it myself once. But don't you call it love! This isn't love!"

  After that speech, I half expected Jamie to break out into song, but instead Sophia Marie talks through Katie, forming a ghostly glow over her body. The lovers embrace, kiss, cry, the cherubs come back for an encore & Sophia Marie/Josette basically tells Grenville that although she loves him, they can't really be together like this. A ghost & a vampire together? Might make for a decent mid season replacement sitcom, but doesn't lend itself to being very practical for real life.

  So with Katie now useless, Grenville tells Jamie to get rid of her. Maybe he just meant to dump her in the trashcan out back for pickup, but Jamie takes Katie & runs for the hills. And who should see them on their way, but a Sheriff Patterson/Joe Haskell hybrid known as Mitch Morgan. To make matters worse, Katie is Mitch's main squeeze & she's been missing for awhile. Mighty Mitch takes aim & Jamie gets 3 bullets in his back, as opposed to Super-Willie who recieved FIVE & recovered in record time!

  From there, Jamie is taken to a criminal insane ward & later transferred to Terrace View/Wyndcliffe under the request of Grenville & Dr. Louisa Kahne/Dr. Julia Hoffman. This is where the majority of the story takes place in the forms of flashbacks & remembrances while a physician named Dr. McDevitt conducts therapy sessions with Jamie. Which is an affective tool for storytelling, but I wouldn't really buy as being able to take place. Think about it. Would Julia really allow anyone to ask Willie questions, taking the risk that he might reveal something? Frankly, I've always imagined Willie as being kept heavily medicated & isolated in his room while at Wyndcliffe.

Oh, & while it's not even brought up until much later in the novel, you should know that, much like on the show, Kellen/Jason became worm food some time before Jamie got shot. Worse yet, instead of Grenville merely using Barnabas's trusted M.O. of strangling someone to death, here Grenville drinks all the blood from Kellen's body. And then orders Jamie to stake his friend to prevent him from rising as a vampire. Adding yet another thing to give Jamie nightmares at night.

  After several months of being at Terrace View/Wyndcliffe, in following the storyline of Dark Shadows, Jamie/Willie is released into the care of Grenville & Dr. Louisa Kahne/Dr. Julia Hoffman, against the wishes of Dr. McDevitt. Grenville is magically now 99.9% vampire free but it's still alluded to that he needs shovels for misdeeds, which are never fully explained in detail. Meanwhile, Jamie has become the Boo Radley of Hawkes Harbor, with small children throwing rocks at him. And on top of that, from his ordeal & time spent in the institution, he's become greatly addicted to prescription drugs.

  Following Jamie accidentally ODing on his pills, Louisa/Julia finally gets it through her thick wig that Jamie just may have problems & observes he's likely suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Although since this takes place in 1968 & that term will not be conceived until 1973, I guess Louisa took some trips to the future that we didn't know about. She suggests that Grenville should take him someplace to relax while he is gradually reduced from his meds, to which he reacts with this line:

  "Surely, Louisa, you are not suggesting I take Jamie to Disneyland."

  Oh man, I'd pay good money to see Barnabas & Willie in Disneyland! Can you imagine it? Within the first 24 hours, Willie will have beaten up Goofy & been banned for life from Mr. Toad's Wild Ride while Barnabas has already made plans to kidnap Snow White & turn her into his new Josette!

But unfortunately for us, Louisa/Julia has other plans in mind.

  "Richard was saying..." she began. His look warned her he had little interest in what his cousin had to say, but she went on. "The Collins shipping industry needed to look into passenger cruises. They are the wave of the future-You know Roger and his puns."

(That above line is NOT a typo, by the way. For two sentences they let the names 'Collins' & 'Roger' slip through without changing them!)

  "No," Grenville said. "No."   "Of course he offered to go. But you could investigate for yourself. And it's not unusual for a man of your position and background to travel with a valet."

  So, Grenville & Jamie are off to the high seas in a high class cruise ship. Jamie manages to come down off his drug dependency while he spends his vacation having nonstop threesome with 2 babes who hang on him like bark on a tree. Grenville also finds time to cheat on Louisa/Julia score with an older lady by the name of Leslie while on board. This leads to another quotable line:

  "So Grenville," Jamie said conversationally, "yours give good head?"

Greetings from Commodore Cruise Line! Wish you were here. Love, Jamie.

  Yep, Jamie/Willie & Grenville/Barnabas discussing oral sex. An area most fan fiction writers wouldn't even dare venture towards. But all good things must come to an end, including the boy's pleasure cruise & they return to Hawkes Harbor with Jamie greatly improved & more confident in himself. In time, he becomes a productive member of society, working odd jobs & donating his services to schools & charities.

  The book then flashes forward 10 years where Jamie has become Harvey Lacey & lives a content comfortable life with his former captor. That Christmas, Grenville 'Last of the Big Time Spenders' Hawkins gives him a quilt. Jamie gets to enjoy it for exactly one night before a deer crashes into the car while he's driving Grenville home. He dies moments later & meets Kellen/Jason in heaven. Kellen claims that Jamie's act of lighting a candle & saying a prayer, allowed him into a much less fiery accommodation in the afterlife, but personally I think he just had some dirt on God & blackmailed his way through the pearly gates. The two sail off into the sunset of the great beyond. The End.

  So that's the book. It has its pros & its cons, but it actually might have been much better if released as originally written, with the characters' names, places & events as we know them still intact. If you are familiar with Dark Shadows, it's impossible not to associate the book with it & become annoyed with some of the changes. While if you're NOT acquainted with the show, you're very likely to read the novel not being completely clear of the characters' personalities or motivations. It's really a no win situation.

  In general, I like the way Jamie is written. But I think he's made out to be too much of a Gary Stu in some parts of the book. For one thing, Jamie is written as being primarily well liked by anyone he comes across, whereas this is certainly not the case for Willie. Early on, he insults & gets into fights with nearly anyone he meets. Jamie acts as an older brother towards Ricky & Trisha while Willie is mostly seen just throwing David's ass out of the Old House. The character of Katie is deeply fond of Jamie, going as far to name one of her sons after him. Regarding Maggie & Willie, early on she deeply despises him as he continually comes on to her, even when she makes it perfectly clear that she is not interested. After he is shot & she comes to believe in his innocence, her feeling towards him becomes one of friendship. But it's still more of a commiserative manner rather than romantic as Willie would like to believe. Often her interactions with him come off as if she's dealing with a child or slow minded adult.

  And in turn, I think many of the secondary characters seem to have been made less likable, perhaps to make Jamie even more of the hero. The Hawkeses are described in brief as simply a family of rich snobs. Richard/Roger has to be taken to detox clinics, Barbara/Carolyn gets involved in one scandle after another. Granted the Collins themselves were far from perfect, but never near the level of arrogant highbrows as they are presented here as the Hawkeses.

  Dr. Louisa Kahne is also written as a very flawed individual. In addition to being extremely controlling towards Jamie, it is mentioned by Dr. McDevitt that Louisa barely has any medical training or knowedge & yet goes around acting as a doctor. And while I'm not gonna defend Julia's treatment of Willie which ranges from small acts of kindness to being a complete bitch, I think it's unfair to quickly write her up as an unqualified quack. Her Doctor Feelgood reputation of passing out sedatives like Halloween candy precedes her, but Julia has been shown treating vampirism & creating an artifical person, & seems able to handle whatever injury or emergency is thrown at her on a daily basis.

But while we're on the subject of the Queen of Barbiturates, I do want to discuss a subject which I thought the book did well in covering. Which is in dealing with Jamie's health & mental state. On Dark Shadows, after Willie is shot enough times to kill a person two times over & regains consciousness from his coma, he is shown as being in a great amount of pain. And furthermore, he appears to have undergone a complete mental breakdown. Showing signs of amnesia (whether genuine or as a protective defense), he seems to have regressed to his state after being attacked by Barnabas, begging for it not to be dark & for no one to hurt him.

  When we next see Willie a few months later at Wyncliffe, he claims to be physically strong as ever, but is still showing occasional signs of delusions, bad decisions, as well as sparks of his old mean demeanor that was repressed after being bitten. Miraculously, following his release, his mental state actually seems to improve over time, even while he is seen getting thrown into one dangerous situation after another. This I've always found hard to believe, especially considering Willie's parental caregivers rarely give him a thought of concern at all.

Willie: (After being forced to dig up a corpse & bring it back to the Old House) "You know, every time I touched it I felt sick. When I came back here I couldn't even go to sleep. I put it down here & I went to my room & I just lay there, Barnabas!" Barnabas: "Well, next time Julia will give you a sedative."

  Yeah, I don't find it hard to picture Willie becoming dependent on painkillers & tranquilizers with his environment or the health problems that would come from 5 bullets in the back. But by this point, Willie mainly served as a background character, carrying out duties for Barnabas & Julia, with limited insight into his own personal life, or lack thereof. After all, what reason did the writers have to give his character a story arc of his own, when the viewers seemed content with watching Barnabas repeatedly pine on a lost love or mope over his vampire state?

  But that's where its the viewer's job to watch, observe, read between the lines & ponder the untapped stories, feelings & adventures for characters who remain a mystery. And for that, despite some of the book's shortcomings, S.E. Hinton has done a respectable job in trying to make the reader better understand the character of Willie Loomis. Or Jamie Sommers, as she chooses to call him. Or if nothing else, I'm at least thankful that the author wanted to give Willie his moment in the spotlight.

[bigowlenergy]

Notes on Gender, Ethnicity, and Culture

At the heart of the etoneki conflict/drama is nothing more than culture clash.

Eto may be amazing at studying others and have replicated humanity well enough to be a respected author among humans without anyone finding any clues to her ghoul nature, not even Haise in RE: - but she is still someone who was raised by ghouls. Her base nature is as a ghoul, from the 24th ward specifically. Naturally, there’s going to be some confusion between her and Kaneki, who was raised by humans.

But that leaves the good good question of what those differences should be. Clearly, some should be tiny, but there NEED to be huge misunderstandings bc I live for that kind of drama. Also, it’s a slowburn, so. that’s how it is.

this is long, and tagged for spoilers for a good reason. nothing specific, but if u like being surprised by the plot in ur grapefruit, go no further as of chapter 5

1) Ghouls have ABO while humans do not. Sure, there was a decently long time where Kaneki lived among ghouls, but can u picture early chapter Touka willingly sitting him down and giving the birds and the bees and the grasshoppers and also the spiders Talk? I think not. Maybe Kouma? Itori would. Like, they’d both kill him dead with it, but they would. And knowing the contexts within another culture doesn’t mean that you have assimilated those words/concepts to your own yourself, or that you actually know every single social detail, especially as it applies to others.

...but Eto does. And human gender/sexuality is fairly simple on the whole, except when it isn’t, so she has a leg up on him there.

plus, the way I have the ABO structured, it makes a bit more sense for him to be less aware of it, since his gender, as perceived by ghouls, is the most privileged one. Especially since its associated with deliberate power gain, which he totally played into during the later half of the first TG, so it would be a natural assumption for ghouls to make that he understood that he was acting exactly as his gender is socially expected to. and in a way that would socially cement his powerful omega status.

Tsukiyama would totally say something about it, since with the whole affluent family thing he’d probably be very aware of gender and social dynamics, but anything shuu says can be followed by “and he called me a cabbage in French last week, so okay shuu, whatever poetics ‘omega’ means to u, go ahead, have your fun buddy.” Banjou, who was involved with Rize, would be too worried about offending him or making it embarrassing to say anything. and as a ghoul even lower than shuu, he’d be super conservative about getting up in an omega’s business. It would just be this ambiguous open secret that everyone but Kaneki is totally, painfully aware of. the gasmask trio find this hilarious. Hina is a wee bab whose parent was a doctor for ghouls, so she just accepts her big bro as is.

so there’s eto’s expectations to be basically an underling to someone powerful as a normal, comfortable relationship dynamic, pitted against kaneki’s human-embedded inclination toward monogamy and not something that feels like weird bdsm domination stuff. they each are expecting a certain treatment from one another, and not getting it. eto feels neglected, since he isn’t all in her business and allowing her to settle in the shadow of his power and just ride things out, and kaneki, with only human expectations for sex, gender, and whatever the hell just happened, expects the worst from her as the “““male”““ in the relationship who manipulated him.

the conflict is that neither happens.

all of the power is on his side of the court, but in human terms, it feels like the opposite - vis a vis, human misogyny and all the horrible expectations for a sex and reproduction based marriage system that go along with that.

which is why i’ve inverted all that to make myself feel better :)

2) i kicked knots out bc idk about that business, but there have to be other physical differences. there have to be, or its boring. and then again, since both are hybrids, what should either have?

i’ve decided eto will have all physical differences or a learned equivalent due to ghoul socialization, while kaneki should have none but whatever was forced on him through his kakuhou - ie, pheromone stuff, but nothing more.

ghouls can purr, bc i am weak to that shit. Kaneki is aware of this. it’s just a Thing that they do. he’s read to Hina and she’s fallen asleep purring before and it was adorable. irimi purrs very quietly when she cleans things. uta is a purr machine when he makes masks, and it knocks yomo out unless he’s drunk, then he just purrs like a truck engine from the floor near uta’s desk for three hours. touka hasn’t purred since ayato left

eto purrs when she’s satisfied with her writing flow, which is one of the main reasons she prefers to work alone in her apartment and keep shiono out. otherwise, she doesn’t mind company. she also purrs when happy, like most ghouls. kaneki does not. i can site Haise’s RC scan on this: since he never took damage to the throat, he never had a chance to heal ‘more ghoul’ in that area.

so the exchange of a happy eto, deeply content with their uneasy peace, purring to express such delight, meets a blank wall that doesn’t agree. her social expression of happiness clashes up against kaneki only maybe leaning toward physical affection and being quiet. he can understand that she is happy, and she can understand that he can’t respond in the same way, but the dynamics of their relationship make her doubt her actions and get instinctually afraid of doing something wrong and upsetting someone much more powerful than her who also decides if she is allowed to reproduce with him or not. and stops purring and gets unsettled. kaneki is only confused and maybe she doesn’t like being touched? time to touch less. oh no, she did do Something Wrong and now omega is mad at her!! interpersonal drama escalates on both sides >:3c

ghouls have great night vision. kaneki also does and you know why. youve read the series. full ghouls have tapetum lucidum in both eyes, but eto only has it in her single ghoul eye. her vision is unbalanced in the dark but due to her learning to compensate for the slight reduction in light capture on one side she gets by just fine. it also parallels nicely with arima’s poor eyesight and learning to compensate for it.

ghouls are crepuscular while humans are diurnal, but this doesn’t matter since neither of etoneki know what a sleep schedule is. and the 24th ward doesn’t experience day/night cycles, so they have their own issues with sleeping when safe, do not sleep when not safe.

ghouls tend toward pack structure, but not in a rigid way where there can only be one omega/powerful ghoul per unit. as long as everybody gets along personally, its fine. omega don’t see each other as competition. alpha toss themselves at their feet without prompting. they’re not a scarce resource. alpha don’t even really fight over omega unless completely affected by heat and rut cycles and unable to grasp the concept of maybe next time. but even that is rare, mostly only those who are jealous as a person attempt this. if alpha fight over an omega and one wins, the omega might just kill them for taking away some of their prospects, or might be impressed by the show of strength. or annoyed by it, bc they want weak underlings. depends on the person. (eto is more than a bit possessive, at least for his first heat.)

more on this point as i think of it.

3)  I haven’t specified kaneki’s personal gender identity for a reason. that reason is that i’m not sure what direction i want to go. this is strictly for maman, not Sugar, which is trans girl Sasako forever. for this piece of feti/sh garbage? whom knows! (I know. and until word of god says otherwise - i’m god - every character is trans.)

but really, there’s options. and i love them all.

A) kaneki was trans all along. hide is best bi bud. aunt was a bitch, but nothing worse than canon since he was closeted at the time, although he doubly prepared to never speak to her again. (true neutral)

B) woke up a ghoul and with new parts. why believe a species change but not a sex change, eh? heightens the early game confusion and search for id as a person whose major ids have changed against his will. (lawful neutral)

C) gradual transformation. like how he came into his strength as a ghoul slowly. read a doujin like this once. was okay. quality art, big titties, 8/10. ngl would read the sequel. (Perhaps I am writing the sequel? aren’t we all just chasing our Brands across the lonely internet, hopping from one computer virus to the next? maybe u die reading hentai, or u live long enough to see urself post to ao3.) (chaotic neutral)

D) heals himself a new set of parts due to intense damage. see the haise RC chart, which has a ton of pathways around the hips/torso area. parallels with cutting eto in half?? (also lawful neutral)

E) started happening as a transformation when eto’s pheromones triggered his heat cycle for the first time. boy would he be pissed at her X2 lmao (lawful evil)

F) transformation during #240 time due to losing all memory and only having instinct to structure his body with, and just enough RC pathways to make a hormone based transformation possible. Chiba would have had a field day, but also would have torn out his horrible bowl cut in confusion. get rekt bud. not even #240 knows wtf goin on (neutral evil)

G) maybe he just wanted a vag! thought about that?? learns he is supposed to be able to manipulate his flesh like his kagune, which he is canonically great at, and just Goes For It. it works. he is a strong, dependent idiot who don’t need no dick. (iconic)

H) same as above, but that’s just what Haise does when he has the reigns. looks deep into his pastless self and asks ‘do i have to put up with this cis nonsense? not today.’ (chaotic iconic)

I) it happens suddenly when he activates his kakuja for the first time. queer the monster transformation u wish to see in the world. just. so confused. but also there’s Guilt to be felt about banjou and amon and such, so that’s back burner. (chaotic evil)

okay, so in like fifteen minutes i was able to name 9 perfect opportunities for ishida to carry though the motif of 1)iding with female ghouls 2)paralleling with canon trans man mutsuki 3)litcherally having a female ghoul organ donation fiasco 4)being associated with vacillating between masculine yang and feminine yin black/white 5)having a narrative that revolved around accepting his body and learning to find his own strength and id that is different than what he was born with - but coward ishida stopped sixty miles short of the mark. fool. I Cannot Feast Upon Crumbs, Sir. Sir, You Have Given Me Airplane Peanuts For Supper. Sir, I Am Starving And Antagonistic At Best.

(i shouldn’t call him a coward. three huge series magically having the same Wife And Kids ending all during the time shinzou abe is in office? probably not a coincidence. hope they got a good payout for it. i’d sell out for that $$$ too tbh)

eto is just an alpha. her human social id is a Normal Human Female Who Is Totally Cis and Straight for maximum social acceptance and ease of integration, but that’s only her mask. her personal id is an alpha, which is cis by ghoul standards, and she uses she/her pronouns bc she feels like it. she has the power to id as above alpha, but she enjoys the social invisibility it gives her, since she can blend in the background whereever and noone looks at her presumably weak ass twice. like chie, but for nefarious purposes.

....does that make her the equivalent of a ghoul feminist? i’m getting Too Deep

4) the wards can be isolated and far apart, and its been explored in canon with the Three Blades family and the white suites - congrats u 2 - and ghoul organizations that have a home ward having distinct cultural differences from one another. small ethnic groups and isolated diaspora? natives? subset?? of whatever the 24th ward ghouls - sorry, tokyo humans - are.

this sort of thing is only tangentially related to kaneki. if someone with a texas accent teaches someone to speak english, that person will have that accent, whether they’v ever been to texas or not. so he has some of the social mannerisms of a 20th ward ghoul, but generally still has a lot of ingrained human attributes to confuse them.

5) i’m still fascinated by the half finished thought about there are just some ghouls who become binge eaters in canon. like Rize wasn’t special for it. I think shinohara mentioned this?? but. it makes sense. general food insecurity, lack of permanent social support, total oppression, absurd power levels, plenty of humans to take it out on...ye.

and kaneki has the kakuhou of an adult binge eater. there’s cool hints of the kakuhou being parasitic, so a mature one would def fall into the biological fulfillment of binge eating for strength and carry that genetic knowledge into a new host. and from there, it would induce cravings, serotonin reward systems, and all that good stuff to get what its come to like.... like, mayhaps, a cordycepts? ;)

well, i’ve put ‘binge eater’ down as just a general omega trait, since it feels authentic to do so, so we’ll see what i do with this in the future. i will also see, since i too am ignorant of my own self. what will my horny subconscious do next? i am usually the last to know.

anyway,

peace

[robininthelabyrinth]

Coldwave Fic Prompt: Len is, very reluctantly, the DC-verse equivalent of the Sorcerer Supreme. Meaning he is a VERY powerful magic-user, who - tends to ignore magic as hard as he can, for the most part. (Based on that GIF set of Len snapping off handcuffs and sarcastically calling it 'magic').

Fic: Magic Trick (ao3 link)

Fandom: Flash, Legends, ConstantinePairing: Leonard Snart/Mick Rory

Summary: “Do you wanna see a magic trick?” Len asks.

“Seriously, Snart?” Barry shoots back, clearly annoyed. “We’ve been captured by an army of - and I still can’t believe I’m saying this - super-intelligent ninja human-dinosaur hybrids in the middle of a rescue mission to save Iris and Mick, and you want to show me a magic trick?!”

(in which Leonard Snart may be the Sorcerer Supreme, charged with protecting the world from horrors that would destroy it, but he hasn’t lost his sense of humor)

A/N: A/N: I’m 100% unfamiliar with Dr. Strange or the Sorcerer Supreme mythos, although I once saw the Dr. Strange trailer a few months ago (and I still don’t know what that movie was about). Long story short: do not expect any accurate Sorcerer Supreme canon here.

—————————————————————————————————

“Do you wanna see a magic trick?” Len asks.

“Seriously, Snart?” Barry shoots back, clearly annoyed. “We’ve been captured by an army of - and I still can’t believe I’m saying this - super-intelligent ninja human-dinosaur hybrids in the middle of a rescue mission to save Iris and Mick, and you want to show me a magic trick?!”

“Dead serious,” Len assures him, even though he agrees that the entire situation is rather ridiculous. “And they’re not ninja dinosaurs. They’re pirate dinosaurs. They’re acting like pirates.”

“The costuming is clearly more ninja inspired - you know what? No. We’re not having this argument. Not again. Five times was more than enough!” Barry pauses. “Wait, what were we talking about?”

“Do you want to see a magic trick?” Len asks, very patiently.

Barry stares at him incredulously, and then that innate sense of humor, that sense of the ridiculous that lets him keep going, that lets him have hope in every situation, takes over. That’s why Len likes him so much.

“You know what,” Barry says, shaking his head. “Sure. Go ahead. Show me a magic trick.”

Len smiles.

He’d hoped Barry would say that.

—————————————————————————————————

“Do you want to see a magic trick?” the dying man says.

There’s no one else around, so he must be talking to Len; Len, who was hiding in the trash behind the building in the alleyway because his dad would find him otherwise. He’s really well hidden, though, so he doesn’t know how the dying man - and he is dying, badly, his eyes and ears and nose and mouth all bleeding - knows that he’s there.

“I can see your aura,” the man says. “I know you’re there. I know that you’re as hard and cold as ice on the outside, but I can see -” Here he coughs wetly. “- I can see the gold of you on the inside. You’re a good man, deep down.”

Len doesn’t respond.

“It wouldn’t be my first option, you know,” the man says. “Giving this to a stranger. But the man I chose as my apprentice - he became corrupted by it. By the power of it. When we first met, his aura was so pure, like you wouldn’t believe - though I guess that was part of the problem - I know to look to the core, now, beyond the surface -”

He coughs again.

He’s dying.

Len’s mom died. Len knows what it sounds like.

“My apprentice did this to me,” he says. He sounds - not sad, not really. Resigned. “He was convinced to by the Others.”

The way he says Others sounds pretty ominous.

“Before he could finish me off, I locked away everything he had,” the man says. “Cut him off. But he’ll figure out a way to get it back, and then we’re all going to suffer. He’s angry. Always angry, and when he gets back, he’s only going to be more angry. He’s going to hurt people.”

Len swallows. That sounds like his dad. He’d always been angry, shouting and throwing things and grabbing hard enough to hurt, but when he’d come back from prison he’d been so much more angry.

Things hurt so much more now.

If someone who could kill like this man was dying was that angry…

“If I don’t give it to someone, he’ll get it,” the man says. “And people will be hurt. Please.”

Len doesn’t want to, he’s never wanted anything that might make him more of a target, but he can’t let someone like his dad get power. He doesn’t care what type of power this guy’s talking about - whether it’s politics, or Family, or even just a really powerful gun - he just knows that it can’t be allowed.

He climbs out of the trash.

“You’re just a boy,” the man says, sounding disappointed.

Len’s used to being disappointing. He just stands there and lets the guy make up his mind.

“I guess I don’t have a choice,” the guy sighs. “I don’t got long left. Not long enough to take the time to be picky - and you’re gold on the inside. At least, you are now. Gotta hope for the best. You read a lot of fantasy, kid?”

Fantasy?

“No,” Len says honestly. “I don’t really got time to read.”

He has to steal to keep his dad happy, and he’s got to feed and care for Lisa, and he’s got to go to school and do just enough of the homework there that the state doesn’t come asking any more questions than they already do about the boy who’s in the hospital so much that his dad has started refusing to take him even when it really, really hurts.

“Shit,” the man says, rubbing at his face. “Well, I asked for a worthy successor, and the power brought me here, to you, so I guess I’m just going to have to trust it.”

Len has no idea what the man is talking about. Only that the blood is flowing freer now, from his mouth and his eyes and his ears and his nose. If he keeps bleeding like this, he won’t have any left on his insides.

That may, Len thinks warily, be the point of it.

What a terrible way to die.

“At least it’s unexpected,” the man muses, more to himself than to Len. “They won’t know to look for a child. All right. I’ll do it.” He looks at Len. “You’re ready for this?”

No, Len’s not ready. Not at all. But he can’t let men like his dad win. He can’t.

He nods.

“So, kid,” the man says, and he coughs, long and low and deep, and his voice is kinda weird when he continues, “you wanna see a magic trick?”

Len says yes.

—————————————————————————————————

“Do you want to see a magic trick?” Len asks the boy who’d rescued him.

The boy - Mick Rory, the guards said his name was - just grunts.

There was no way he’d known that the other boys had been seduced by the Others to kill Len, lured in by glittering promises that hid the darkness behind; the Others, trapped in their alternate universe or whatever the pocket that kept them far away was, were only able to reach out in little ways, whispers, promises and lies. They wanted Len to die because then his power would leave him and go to the next best person if Len didn’t name a successor while he was alive, and then they might be able to convince someone to open the door for them at last.

That’s what they wanted: to get out of that pocket of darkness that they’re trapped in, to come into the world of light - and then to devour it, piece by piece.

They’d tried the whispers and the promises on Len first, of course. The voices slithering over him at night, kind and gentle, sad and pathetic, old and wise; they offered him fortune and fame, the love of women and men, power beyond his wildest dreams.

They offered him revenge against the man who hurt him.

Len doesn’t say no to them because he’s the one that nameless dying man chose to save the world, like the chosen ones in those fantasy books he checked out in the library afterwards to try to figure everything out. That wasn’t the reason at all.

He says no because he just doesn’t dream that big.

Len doesn’t want power. He doesn’t want more responsibility than he’s already got. He doesn’t want any more of any of it.

But he doesn’t want to give what he’s got away, either.

It’s Len’s power now.

No one else’s.

So what if he doesn’t use it for anything big, saving the world by stopping some undefinable bad guy?

So what if he only uses it for stupid stuff, like making Lisa smile, or using the portal to walk between worlds just to get away before the cops catch him?

Not that it works that way every time, if he wants to keep his power secret from his dad. He has to keep it a secret, because the only reason the Others haven’t been able to get his dad on their side is because his dad just ever can’t believe Len would ever have any power.

That’s why he got caught on that last job. That’s why he’s in juvie, just after nearly getting shivved by Others-inspired kids.

Len hadn’t realized they’d been taken in by the Others at first, either. He’d feared discovery more than he’d feared the kids, so he hadn’t fought back with everything he had - a mistake. He hadn’t realized how serious the murder attempt was until it was very nearly too late.

Mick jumped in and saved him. He didn’t have to - there was nothing in it for him except trouble - but he did it anyway.

Mick’s a good kid.

Len doesn’t care about the rumors that run through juvie, the rumors that say Mick’s a pyro and an arsonist and that he burned his whole family down. He’s pretty sure it’s all true, and he doesn’t care.

Mick saved him when he didn’t have to.

That’s enough for Len.

He’s recovering in the bottom bunk; he’d been paired up with Mick after it all, because the guards didn’t want someone to try to stab him again and Mick at least had helped, not hurt. Len could’ve told them that any of the six who’d attacked him weren’t likely to try again - when the shiv had scraped Len’s side, drawing blood, the Others had come to watch, unable to stop themselves, pulling themselves as close as they could to the world of light, eyes avid and greedy, and the kids had gotten a glimpse of what the Others that’d made such promises to them really looked like.

They weren’t going to fall for those promises again anytime soon. Even if it was only because their sleep would be too full of nightmares for the sweet words of the Others to penetrate.

Len’s not going to say anything, though. He’d rather have Mick.

Mick. Mick’s an interesting question. Len’s been here, recovering, for a few days now, and he knows the Others whispered all sorts of promises to Mick, all in exchange for him just popping down and smothering Len in his sleep - easy for a big boy like Mick, strong and sneaky - Len knows they’re trying it, because Len can hear them, the stupid fucks, he knows what they’re planning and they know that he knows and they don’t even care that he knows because he wouldn’t be able to stop Mick anyway - but it doesn’t work.

Mick rejected them all without even thinking about it twice.

Mick’s a good guy.

Mick might even be safe.

(like the dying man’s apprentice was safe?)

Still, Len has to try. He can’t do this alone anymore.

So he asks, again, “Do you wanna see a magic trick?”

Mick sighs and pushes his head over the railing to look at Len. There’s a strange, puzzled sort of fondness to his expression, like the kid that’s been irritating him these last few days has actually somehow managed to grow on him; Len’s not sure how, because he doesn’t think he’s ever made a good impression on anyone but Lisa, and she’s just a dumb baby and easily tricked.

“Sure, kid,” he says, shaking his head, like he thinks he’s humoring Len. “Show me a magic trick.”

Len raises his hands, cupped together, to Mick, and summons flame for him - the essence of flame, the magic core of it that hides in every fire, and Len cuts through all the crap to produce the purest version of it he can find, a small flame flickering in his hands, safe and limited and, to a worshipper like Mick, everything.

After that, well, they’re more or less inseparable.

—————————————————————————————————

“Do you want to see a magic trick?” Len asks Lisa, ten years old and sobbing, because for all of Len’s powers, he can’t fight his dad. Blood against blood - if every religion says it’s wrong, it’s gotta be wrong, right?

But Lisa’s bleeding from a broken bottle to her arm, and Len’s bleeding from a hell of a lot more than that, and there’s some Family men who are coming upstairs to, quote, “do as you like with ‘em” because their dad has debts to pay and no means to pay them with.

At least he had shame enough to leave before anything happened.

(are you sure you won’t take our offer, an Other hisses in Len’s ear, we could save you - save her - we could hurt him like you’ve been hurt)

Lisa, though, wonderful Lisa, she just sniffs and nods. “Yeah, Lenny,” she says. “Show me a magic trick.”

And he takes her through the portal of worlds, the great old Doors that he imagined from a book series he’d read to Lisa a million times over the last few years, and he takes her to her favorite place - an elderly dragon’s hoard, where he’s collected all the gold he can find and more besides, where he loves it and cares for it but doesn’t mind visitors since he’s too fat to really care about defending it anymore as long as no one takes any away from him - and he lets her sit and laugh and play, and forget everything that’s happened today.

And he tells the dragon, “Watch her”, and the dragon straightens up his massive body, the size of a train, and nods, taking the duty upon its shoulders, and then Len goes back and makes sure there aren’t any Family men to cause problems anymore.

He’s gotten good at covering his tracks when he does this - bullets not created from nothing, but summoned from the guns of an opposing Family; hairs and nails and blood plucked from other crime scenes; no evidence of his own presence there.

Mick meets him outside when it’s all over, bundling an exhausted Len into the back of his car and driving away.

“You gonna keep doing that?” Mick asks, looking at him through the rearview mirror.

“Doing what?”

“Killing Family,” Mick says. “You’re good at it, and it’s a decent thing to be good at doing.”

Len shakes his head. “I don’t want to be a superhero,” he says, and means it. He has enough trouble with the monsters he already faces: the Others trying to fight their way into their world, the Witchhunters who are searching for anyone with a trace of the Gift, the Order of the Path that worships at the feet of the Sorcerer Supreme and is looking for their lost God - and which don’t really feel like taking ‘no’ for an answer when he doesn’t seem inclined to go with them back to their mountain fortress to let himself be worshipped the way they think is proper. And worst of all, out there, distantly, Len knows that He is there, the dying man’s apprentice, the corrupted one, the one who thinks that Len stole his inheritance when Len accepted the mantle of successorship in his place. He’s looking for Len too, and when he finds him… “I just want to be a thief.”

And that is both true and Len’s greatest defense, because no one suspects the guy who’s robbing ATMs of being the Sorcerer tasked with keeping the world safe from other-dimensional creatures.

He’s even been tossed in jail a few times, a sitting target unable to defend himself, and all his enemies walk straight on by. He’s felt them, searching, but they don’t search Iron Heights.

They’re looking for a hero, not a criminal.

“Where’d you leave Lisa?” Mick asks. “With old Snaketooth?”

“She always did like gold,” Len says, vague enough to answer Mick’s question without actually confirming her location in case some shifter’s taken Mick’s face again.

Mick shakes his head. “Of course she does,” he says, fond as ever. He doesn’t stay by Len’s side just for the flame anymore; he knows the dangers and the risks and everything that could go wrong - much of which already have, in one way or another, all but that final confrontation with Him - and he stays by Len’s side anyway.

There’s a ring on Len’s finger, now. A quiet promise, vows sworn while standing together in the heart of a star - a reminder of the real reason Mick stays.

Sometimes Len curses his misfortune. Other times, like when he looks at Mick and his heart feels so full of joy it could burst, he can’t bring himself to.

“Pigs incoming,” Mick says, glancing out the window, frowning. “You got enough juice to make us incorporeal for a bit?”

“Sure,” Len says. It’s one of the easier tricks, actually - just shift everything you want to affect (here, a car and two men) a half-universe to the right, and suddenly you’re as invisible as a ghost and able to walk or drive through walls just the same.

“Great,” Mick says, and grins. “Show me a magic trick, boss.”

Len does.

—————————————————————————————————

“Do you want to see a magic trick?” Len asks the empty air.

Empty, because he’s alone. He doesn’t like to be alone. Being alone means he has time to see all the awful horrors pushing up against the thin magic wall that protects the world from them, and time to see means time to think, and time to think makes him feel like he ought to be doing more to stop them.

Never mind that he’s the longest lived Sorcerer Supreme in over a century, or that the other practitioners of his craft tell him he’s been remarkably successful at repelling the Others and to keep up the good work.

Never mind the crippled old fortuneteller that he has tea and tequila with on every off-month’s second Thursday, that everyone else rejects because of her history of crimes and Len rather likes for the same reason, who tells Len that it’s his ability to be restrained and discreet about fighting that has helped him survive this long.

“Most of 'em, they’re arrogant snots,” old Madame Xanadu spat out in her creaky old voice, the last time they’d spoken. “I’d know better than most -” She’d been an apprentice to one, years ago, and she’d been corrupted, too, all unknowing, but with dreadful consequences. She hadn’t gotten the power, in the end, but she’d broken the hold of the corruption that’d grabbed her. She was resigned to the fact that she didn’t have it and she’d never have it and honestly she didn’t want it anymore: what she’d lost to the corruption had been so much worse than anything she would have gotten out of it. “- and I tell you, the more you use, the more trouble you’re in. Rescuing the world, pah! It’s bad enough to try to keep it intact. Fix, fix, fix, that’s what you ought to do.”

“Sure, Nims,” Len said, fond of her as ever, even though she kicks him under the table every time he calls her that. She likes to grumble that she told him her history to teach him a lesson, not to get a dumb nickname, to which Len liked to respond: why not both? “I’ll be careful.”

“You can never be too careful,” she replied, her eyes mistier than usual, and that’d been his only warning to start stockpiling power, because the dying man’s apprentice had found him at last and was coming to collect his inheritance.

He’d made the worst sort of contracts, with Others and Witchhunters and deranged Path monks and even worse creatures besides, with those that pretended to be gods and those that might not have been pretending, and he’d pulled back everything he was, bursting through the bindings the dying man had put on him, and he’d come after Len.

They’d fought forever and a day.

It was the worst fight Len had ever been in, magic to magic, weapon to weapon, soul to soul.

The apprentice didn’t make stupid assumptions the way some of Len’s other enemies did, didn’t think Len was going to be foolish and heroic and dumb, and he’d thrown everything he had at Len.

And Len? Len had thrown everything he had back.

His love for Mick and Lisa against the apprentice’s love for his master, however twisted that love had become.

The apprentice’s pain against Len’s own, the perception of a master’s betrayal against the slow, dripping realization that Len’s father never loved and never would love him the way fathers ought.

The apprentice threw the captivity of his magic being bound against Len; Len threw back Iron Heights, that yawning pit of despair and blackness and lives cut off by society long before death took them away.

The apprentice summoned monsters.

Len called upon his friends.

That old bastard Constantine was sober, for once, his eyes flashing as he cast spells and incantations with a fluency Len would never be able to achieve; his own enemies were supporting the other side.

Madame Xanadu did what she could to rebalance her books, her blind eyes no impediment as she reached out hand and will to crush anything that skittered and crawled on a plane different from the one they stood in.

Zatanna - Len still has no idea why Zatanna’s there, after that whole awkward one-sided crush and rejection business. He thinks Constantine may have blackmailed her. The reason is immaterial, though: she’s there.

But it hadn’t all just been magic and darkness.

Len has friends well beyond the realm of magic, and he called upon them, too: Mick, his beloved right hand, and Lisa, of course, but others as well. The man with the knives he’d roomed with at Iron Heights, the mother with the dead eyes and the rifle that lived next door, the strangely friendly cannibal he’d met as a child: they all came to fight by his side, and never mind that they didn’t entirely understand what they were fighting.

Old Snaketooth the Dragon - he’d liked Mick’s name so much, he’d taken it on as one of his own, taken it and treasured it with a dragon’s jealous love - roused himself from his long-guarded hoard and came, the size of a train twice over, long and writhing and bellowing flame and poison gas both with equal ease, batting wing and tail, wielding sharp claw and sharper tooth.

But there were more yet to come, more than even Len had realized.

Len’s crews came for him, he who’d treated them fair and cared for them as long as they obeyed his rules, he who had rescued them when they’d gone astray and disciplined them and given them the wealth they desired without the fear of betrayal.

Len’s neighborhood came for him, he who’d protected them from the Families and paid their debts and told their kids with long-suffering grace to go to school despite everything.

Len’s cities came for him.

Tears streamed down Len’s face for the first time in years, when they came forth into the battle, and even the apprentice’s jaw dropped open in surprise.

The Twins did not rouse themselves lightly.

The Gems, they were called by those that loved them, and whether that was their rough-accented city dwellers’ admiration of their finer qualities or a shortened nickname for the sleeping Gemini, no one yet living knows.

They’ve always been there, ever changing but ever constant, growing and shrinking in size but their attraction eternal: a thousand names they’ve gone through, and a thousand more they’ll go through before the end.

Central is the elder, Keystone the younger, and the great Cities of the Midwest Plains are as mighty as their fellows in the East and the West for all that they were less accustomed to battle.

For the first time in a thousand years, they roused themselves, strengthened by the souls of their residents, of the thousands upon thousands of them that melted together by years and close proximity, and once they were roused, they came: the Cities came forth in all their splendor to do battle for their true-born son who’d always loved them best of all.

Len hadn’t even thought to call for them, but still they came.

Every person he’d put love into over his life, each one and everything: they all came.

And so the battle was won, in the end.

The costs were terrible, the casualties great: Mick burned with starfire and left for dead, unconscious in the hospital bed not far away; Lisa angry and distant; the Dragon slain; the magic scattered.

But they survived.

The world survived.

Len buries his head in his hands and wonders if it was worth it.

“Do you want to see a magic trick?” he whispers to himself.

He doesn’t know.

—————————————————————————————————

“Do you want to see a magic trick?” Len shouts, gleeful, as he wields his new weapon, a cold gun, the sister of Mick’s heat gun. They’re standing shoulder-to-shoulder again, just the way it ought to be.

“Even your best magic trick won’t stop me from beating you!” the Flash calls back, superhero bravado unable to disguise how much he’s enjoying their combat.

This is fun.

He’s going to have to bring Lisa in, if she can take time off from her duties as the Dragon’s heir. Old Snaketooth had died knowing that his hoard would be cared for by one who loved it as much as he, and he had been well pleased.

Mick laughs in glee and shoots a line of flame down the street that the Flash dances around in a crackle of lightning.

Len smiles at his cities, who are watching their antics with the fond eyes of mothers gazing upon two favored children playing, and he summons a fire hydrant that was actually located a block away a few minutes before (not that anyone will notice but sanitation, and even that not for a few months - the indifference of government at its finest) and cracks it, the water spurting out all over the streets for him to ice just as the Flash goes by, his eyes going wide, his arms starting to pinwheel as his feet lose their grip.

The way the Flash falls on his ass and slides into a nearby wall is enough slapstick to make his cities (and his Mick) laugh in glee.

“Better luck next time, Flash!” Len calls, pulling Mick and their loot away. They had a car prepped for a getaway.

Mick flicks on the radio, which they’ve set to the Flash’s comm channel.

They drive away safe, listening to the Flash’s helpless laughter at his well-earned and rather hilarious defeat. He’s gotten into full-on hiccups by the end of it, his friends in no better state than him, and even Joe West, who tries to be serious, unable to keep from guffawing.

“And you know what the best part is?” Cisco Ramon asks, voice audible over the line even through the static and his giggles. “I have video.”

Mick twists to look at Len in silent plea.

“Okay, fine,” Len says, still grinning and high on adrenaline. “Our next heist can be to go get a copy of that.”

Now that was magic.

—————————————————————————————————

“Do you want to see a magic trick?” Len asks, his hands in the guts of the machine, Time Masters all around him.

Mick is gone away safe, Sara hoisting him onto her back and sealing her promise to keep Mick safe with a kiss for good luck.

Len doesn’t know if even his magic can survive the destruction of the Oculus, but he knows this: the Oculus has to go.

It’s twisting time, hurting it, and each twist tears through that fragile boundary that protects the world just a little bit more.

The Others are the gods here, their dreadful power come too close for human sanity to prevail; Len can see their madness shining in the eyes of the leaders of the Time Masters. He wonders what promises they made to tear these false monks from the path they swore to tread.

He wonders what promises could ever be worth the terrible damage these men have wrought upon themselves and others in the service of the Others.

He doesn’t, at this moment, much care, though.

They tore Mick from his side and tormented him; Len returned to him his sanity and his sense of self, but the scars in his mind remain, just as the scars of starfire burns remain on his shoulders despite Len restoring his mobility as best he could. It doesn’t matter: they made Mick suffer.

The Time Masters have destroyed so much, killed so many, and yet Len is not too proud to say that those many deaths meant less to him than that injuries they did to the one he loves.

He knows he may not survive this, this final explosion, this final battle. Before he made this choice, before he came to this crossroads, he stood with his hands held high and cast the name “Lisa” in the air, naming her his successor should he die - she deserves it more than anyone else, born and raised in the safety of his power and the risk of his love. The Dragon’s heir knows the risk of what he does and will take on the duty that he has borne so long; she does not want it, no, but she will take it, and she will shine like a starburst of gold with it.

He hopes Mick forgives him for dying.

“You bastard,” one of the Time Master shouts, the only reply to Len’s question.

It’s okay.

Len wasn’t really expecting an answer.

He lets the budding explosion he’s been growing between his fingers go.

—————————————————————————————————

“Do you want to see a magic trick?”

Len opens his eyes.

“Thought I was the one who was supposed to say that now,” he grumbles.

He recognizes the man who stands before him, even without the bleeding eyes and ears and mouth, even though it’s been near on forty years since he last saw him.

He never did get the man’s name.

“Old habits die hard,” the man says with a shrug.

He’s not alone. There’s a figure behind him, massive and mammoth and serpentine -

“Snaketooth?!” Len exclaims. “What’re you doing here?”

The man before him chokes. “You named one of the Great Wurms Snaketooth?!” he demands.

“No,” Len says, rolling his eyes. “My husband did. Obviously.”

“You have a -” the man pauses, then shakes his head ruefully. “On second thought, who am I to criticize? You’ve lasted so long and done so much; perhaps it was best, then, that you were never taught the old ways.”

Len’s gotten some idea of that already from Madam Xanadu, all about how he was supposed to forsake all friendships and romances for “their own good”, as if they’d be any less of a target if he loved them from a distance.

Letting a disaffected blinded corrupted former student be one of Len’s teachers would definitely not have been this man’s preference if he’d lived, but hey - it worked out, didn’t it?

“Am I dead?” Len asks. He thinks it’s a reasonable question, given that the two in front of him are definitely dead.

Old Snaketooth laughs, and the world shakes when he does - a Great Wurm, one of the pillars of the rotten apple core of the world; he was so much more powerful than Len, young and bumbling, had ever known he was.

“That,” he lisps through his big front fangs, “is the magic trick.”

—————————————————————————————————

Len’s pretty happy, all told. He’s gathered up all the most powerful of the Flash’s villains (speedsters not invited) into the Rogues and disciplined them to follow his rules - no killing, no going after friends or family of the Flash, and keep your eyes on the prize; his cities rested safer, now, and were supplied with endless entertainment as they fought and helped the Flash in equal measure.

He’s gotten Mick back from the Waverider, and Lisa from her hoard (she’s courting Cisco and some girl name Cynthia, which involves being around a lot), and even Barry’s happy to see him.

So, yeah.

A minor pirate-maybe-ninja invasion aside, Len’s life is looking good.

“Well?” Barry says challengingly, smile curving his lips. “You gonna show me a magic trick or what?”

Len’s smile widens.

“Just you wait,” he tells Barry. “I’m going to blow your mind.”

And then he shows him a magic trick.

Best one he knows.

[honestgrins]

A Most Impressive Donor

Klaroline AU Week Day 6: Canon-ish

Three million dollars. Three million dollars?!

Gingerly stepping through the detritus of human limbs and broken glasses, Caroline didn't bother to hide her disgust at the seedy bar or the lone hybrid she found lurking in it. "Seriously?" she cried as she slid in congealed blood. "Ugh, these are new shoes."

"Put it on my tab, love." Klaus raised his scotch in drunken acknowledgement. "Rebekah complained about giving away her shoe budget to you, it's almost poetic for you to get a pair from the deal."

Caroline scoffed as she cleared his table, plopping down a thick portfolio instead. "About that, if you insist on making ludicrous donations to make up for not visiting your daughter at school, then you better believe I will track you down for investor meetings," she said in clipped tones.

He snorted derisively, only for her to snatch the drink right from his hand. "Careful," he warned, gold glinting in his eyes.

"Oh, bite me." Twice he had bitten her, and yet she survived long enough to run his child's school; her sass was practically bulletproof. Sitting, Caroline opened her portfolio, topped with a recent photo of Hope holding a handmade poster. "Her history project was on the birth of New Orleans, go figure. She misses you, but Hope is a strong kid, if a little stubborn."

Klaus's lips pulled at that, though she could tell he was trying to hide his reaction. "I thought this was supposed to be about my investment."

Rolling her eyes, Caroline decided it would be better just to move things along. Rebekah mentioned the world tour tantrum he was on, but apparently she had underestimated how self-pity manifested after a thousand years. "Before I get into why three million dollars is an excessive donation that in no way buys you special favors or weird requests down the line," she clearly pointed out, softening only at his surprisingly attentive expression, "but thank you. We've had three new students contact us, with more coming every week."

"I know," Klaus smirked, leaning back into his chair. Perfectly at ease among the destruction of his bender, somehow he managed to act superior in his super annoying way.

Caroline frowned disapprovingly. "What did you do?"

He picked through the papers she had in the folder, office invoices and teacher profiles. "One needs a hobby when forcibly removed from home and family," he answered, his voice lacking in real sentiment.

Throwing her hand out in a wide gesture, Caroline pinned him with a glare. "Rampant murder is not a hobby."

"Agree to disagree, love," he shrugged, "but I don't take kindly to threats against my brother." He didn't bother to elaborate, and Caroline didn't really want the details. "Regardless, I meant that in my travels, I occasionally come across a gifted student in need of guidance."

"You're sending them to me?"

His eyebrows raised in mock surprise. "You did open a school for gifted children."

She took a deep breath to steady her nerves, unsure how to respond. On one hand, their accounts were pretty flush to handle the sudden influx of students; on the other… "Stop interfering!" Caroline finally burst out, leaving Klaus to a stony silence.

"Look, this is what I wanted to talk to you about," she sighed.

"What's that?"

Though he seemed genuinely curious underneath a hard edge, Klaus's mood swings could strike like whiplash. Caroline needed to tread carefully. "I want you to be involved with the school, with Hope and her education," she prefaced. "But there has to be a line, Klaus. I can't keep accepting large amounts of money if it also means you going behind my back with schemes that affect the school."

It had been on mind ever since she first got his letter; Mikaelson gifts came with strings. She knew that well as a veteran of throwing diamond bracelets at his feet. "I am grateful for your donation. I just need to make sure we have the proper boundaries in place."

Klaus tilted his head, his eyes roving her form. "Rules are meant to be broken, sweetheart."

"Don't be a jerk." Caroline would likely have a headache from rolling her eyes so much. Extenuating circumstances aside, she had no intention of fraternizing with a parent. "You can have a seat on the board and regular investor meetings, but I will make you regret trying to tell me how to run daily operations."

Shrugging, Klaus lifted a hidden bottle of scotch to his lips. "Agreed. Hayley can have my vote while she resides in Mystic Falls," he capitulated. "As for these meetings, I suppose I can make sure they're in better venues."

Caroline's voice fell to a deadpan, "You think?"

He smirked, looking more content. "Three months seems like a reasonable interval."

"Six."

"Four, final offer."

"Done," she sighed. Seeing him three times a year wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, not if it meant keeping him in touch with Hope's progress.

Nodding, Klaus offered her the bottle, which she happily accepted. "Rome is lovely in April," he said idly.

Rome. Paris. Tokyo.

She shrugged off the old memory, taking a large gulp of scotch instead. Her eyes darted around the room and the carnage that was starting to smell. "You're okay, right?" she asked, a deep worry finally finding its words. "This massacre was about your brother, you haven't lost your mind in a constantly drunken rage."

"Moderation has never been my strong suit."

Snorting, Caroline handed back the bottle. "Rebekah says you get like this every once in a while, figured it would be worse being separated from Hope."

He sighed, looking down. "It's better than I expected," he admitted, "though I suspect that's in large part to you. It helps knowing she's in good hands."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she joked, bumping her shoulder against his. "Hope really is doing great, Klaus. Just, keep in touch. Don't go off the deep end without calling first. Deal?"

"I think that depends on your definition of the deep end." The hand in his lap had wandered to her knee, the warmth of the contact settling them both. "One thing I can promise, though, is that I would never put Hope or the school in danger."

Scoffing again, Caroline elbowed him. "I know that. Not only would I nag you within an inch of your life, but even bajillion-year-old hybrids have standards. But do keep your mitts off my administrative decisions."

Klaus chuckled, "Yes, sweetheart."

Links: FFnet and AO3

[thecorteztwins]

Reasons Fabian Cortez is a joy to read (with citations)

- Gets hit in the face with a guitar by mutant rockstar Lila Cheney (X-Men '92)

- Sneaks right by the X-Men by wearing the brilliant disguise of a baseball cap (X-Men '92)

- Lies to birds. No, seriously, he just started lying to a random bird about how he was devoted to mutant/flatscan peace now (because using an anti-human slur you made up REALLY makes that convincing, Fabs) The bird wasn't a shapeshifter or sentient or anything. It was just a random wild bird. (Magneto miniseries)

- When he came back from the dead, he made his grand re-entrace floating and sparkling...with no explanation for how he could do that, as neither is in his powerset. He then immediately creeped on the nearest woman. (Magneto miniseries)

- Just when you think he can't get any sleazier, he gets sleazier (TOO MANY INSTANCES TO NAME)

- Openly admitted his supervillainy plans included FORMING A HAREM FOR HIMSELF (Magneto miniseries)

- Was then punched unconscious by the woman he was trying to force into said harem

- No one questioned why she did this, all three witnesses just assumed he deserved it because IT'S FABIAN

- Two issues earlier, he was telling this same woman how "pure" he was and comparing himself to snow. TO SNOW. BECAUSE HE'S SO PURE. THEN TRIES TO FORCE A WOMAN TO BE A PART OF HIS FANTASY WOULD-BE SEX SLAVE COLLECTION JFC FABS

- Was willing to risk pissing off APOCALYPSE if it meant getting laid (cartoon series, he's shown with a girl in his room while Apocalypse's Hounds are trying to get a new host body for Apocalypse...which they fail to do but might have accomplished IF FABIAN HAD BEEN THERE INSTEAD OF (literally) FUCKING AROUND)

- Used a hologram projector to make pictures of himself in different outfits and with hot babes hanging off him (link)(cartoon series)

- Says shit like SO SAYETH ME and MY WILL BE DONE in the cartoon series

- Costume is a penis arrow

- Despite possibly losing said penis to Wolverine's claws (The Uncanny X-Men #300)

- Causes a 15+ year mystery because he was staring at a woman's ass (Dark Seduction series)

- Once delivered pizza to Magneto and Mystique (The Chaos Engine Trilogy)

- Is in stuff titled "Fatal Attractions" and "Dark Seduction" that sound more like bodice rippers than comic book arcs

- Told Wanda and Pietro not to fight over him. (Blood Ties)

- Was chased through a concert parking lot by a grunge band that referred to him as a "weird roadie" (X-Men '92) - Shot a horse furry.  It was when the Acolytes were fighting the High Evolutionary’s New Men in the Quicksilver miniseries. The New Men are “uplifted” animals, meaning animals that the High Evolutionary artificially evolved into sentient, speaking, human/animal hybrid forms that basically look like the anthropomorphic version of their respective animal type. So, furries.

- There's a series of artistic errors re Fabian's cape over a few issues of X-Men '92. It's left at the scene when he's captured but then when he's shown in captivity he's got it on, how did he get a new one? Then during a fight it's red but a few moments after the fight is over, it's yellow. I conclude he keeps spares on him to change if one gets lost/dirty because FABIAN IS A DIVA must be what those 90s pouches are for

- Speaking of capes, I've actually noticed in 616 that he wraps his cape around himself when he's in trouble, like a kid with a security blanket. It's like the ONE thing endearing about him. He also did this on a stealth mission because GOD FORBID HE JUST LEAVE IT AT HOME LIKE A SENSIBLE PERSON I GUESS

- “DON’T YOU PEOPLE GET IT?! This is MY LIFE we’re talking about here!” He yells this at Pietro, Wanda, and Crystal while holding Luna hostage. Fabian. These people do not care about you. These people HATE you. Like, I just love that being crazed with terror doesn’t humble him, IT JUST MAKES HIS EGO THAT MUCH CRAZIER BY MAKING HIM THINK HIS ENEMIES GIVE A SHIT ABOUT HIS LIFE oh Fabian never change, you absolute delight. (Uncanny X-Men #307)

- Once, a scheme he was doing with another villain got really out of hand and he had to team up with Quicksilver, the would-be victim, to stop it. The moment the trouble was over, Quicksilver turned around saying "Cortez, you've got some explaining to--" but Fabian was GONE. The implication is he was teleported by another villain he was working for, but I like to think that FABIAN JUST RUNS SO FAST FROM RESPONSIBILITY EVEN *PIETRO* CAN'T CATCH HIM (Quicksilver miniseries)

- He once managed to disguise himself and get past the X-Men, even when they were looking right at him, just by wearing civilian clothes, a baseball cap, and a jacket/shirt that said STAFF. No, his normal costume does not involve a mask or anything. They know what he looks like. Except when he's wearing a baseball cap, I guess. (X-Men '92)

- In X-Men Forever, the good guys happen upon him as the emaciated tortured prisoner of an anti-mutant group. He assumed they came to mock him. YES, FABIAN, THEY BROKE IN, FOUGHT ALL THE GUARDS, JUST BECAUSE THEY KNEW YOU WERE HERE AND WANTED TO SAY NAH NAH NAH

- He threw a tantrum while naked. Twice in a row. (The Uncanny X-Men #300)

- The Acolytes were losing the fight and Fabian tried to make a getaway like the coward he is. But Bishop stopped him...and Fabian FUCKED HIM RIGHT UP. Don’t you get in his way when he’s trying to save his own ass! ( The Uncanny X-Men #300)

- Is honestly such a fuckboy that he set off a rogue Phoenix flare when he manhandled Jean Grey (X-Men Forever #1)

- Claims to be "the supreme mutant" (X-Men '92)

- He's definitely not gay, Fabian's a really thirsty hetero super straight guy, but there's a lot of hilarious Accidental Gay here and there if you look. For instance, he tells Quicksilver that Quicksilver screams his name really well (Blood Ties) and Quicksilver says that he “felt this incredible rush” when Fabian touched him (Quicksilver miniseries) Psylocke calls him Magneto’s “pet boy” at one point, and at another point  Magneto is shirtless in bed yelling "FABIAN CORTEZ! ATTEND ME!" and Fabian comes running...(X-Men (2nd series) #96). Again, he’s a very straight (and did I mention thirsty) guy in 616, but there is a canon alternate universe (What If…? #64)  where he wears purple short shorts, an ascot kerchief, and has an M on his thigh for Magneto. I'm not saying this is the gay Fabian universe but... 

- He is always manspreading every damn time he sits down. The only time he does NOT sit with his legs splayed wide open like LOOK AT MY BALLS EVERYONE is this one time in X-Men '92 when he is sitting next to BOOM BOOM

- He speaks with super pretentious big fancy words all the time but when the shit hits the fan (X-Men Forever #1), ACTUAL QUOTE---"I gotta get the hell outta here!" HE CAN TALK LIKE A NORMAL PERSON FINE. HE JUST CHOOSES NOT TO! FABIAN YOU POMPOUS FUCK!

- One time a prisoner grabbed his ponytail while he was talking and yanked so hard he screamed like a little bitch in front of his followers. The quote "Because I said soOWWWWW!!" is among his best lines in my book (The Uncanny X-Men #300)

- His motive seems to basically be affluenza. Seriously, every resource says he came from a rich family of high social standing but then just got bored. I can't make this up.

- He sits in Magneto's chair when Magneto isn't around. Quicksilver walks in on this (Dark Seduction)

- Fabian ignored a female teammate's advice and as a result, literally two seconds later an actual aquarium of water exploded on him. Like a fucking HUGE aquarium too, not like a fish tank, he BASICALLY GOT HIT BY A POND. And then got carried by the flood through a building until he rained down on some very confused people. (Quicksilver miniseries)

- Exodus later promoted this same female teammate to command the next Acolytes mission and Fabian wasn’t even allowed to go. Fabian was RIGHT THERE when Exodus did this and not happy about it. (Quicksilver miniseries)

- Female teammate: "Fabian! We need you!" Fabian: "Of course you do" SHE MEANT IN BATTLE YOU SMUG CREEPY FUCKER (Quicksilver miniseries)

- He teamed up with Maximus the Mad with the intent to use/double-cross him. When Fabian was gonna do a thing, Max said no, don't do the thing, and Fabian called him an ADDLED FOOL...so Max manipulated his mind to hallucinate Magneto come to kill him. Fabian flipped out in fear, and Maximus was easily able to persuade him to boost his powers so he could save him. Once he did, Maximus LOL'D about tricking him and immediately turned the tables :D (Quicksilver miniseries)

- Magneto walks in on Fabian in Magneto's private screening room that's supposed to be off-limits to everyone except him. Fabian is playing repeated clips of when he and the original Acolytes first attacked Genosha, fought the X-Men, etc. Awwww, revisiting your glory days before you were Erik's bitch, Fabs? Honestly it's almost sad but then I remember it's Fabian (X-Men Unlimited)

-  Magneto was asleep so Fabian and the Acolytes snuck out to party I mean kill Genoshan Magistrates and then Magneto had to come pick them up like naughty teenagers when they got in trouble with the X-Men SRSLY THIS HAPPENED (X-men second series #1-2)

- They had Charles Xavier captive and he was unconscious and Fabian was all dramatically pondering “What are you up to, old man?” and Magneto just goes “sleeping?” way to ruin Fabian’s dramatics dude sheesh (X-Men second series #3)

- At one point  MAGNETO WALKS IN ON HIM RIGHT AS HE'S ENCOURAGING THE ACOLYTES TO TURN ON HIM AND HURLS HIM INTO A PILLAR. HE DOESN'T EVEN KILL HIM HE'S JUST LIKE "STOP THAT". LIKE HE JUST EXPECTS THIS NOW (bonus points, before Mags did, one of the Acolytes says "Fabian Cortez, you're talking treason!" LIKE YEAH ARE YOU SURPRISED BY THIS? ANY OF YOU? YOU ALL KNOW AT THIS POINT WHAT HE DID TO MAGS ORIGINALLY FFS) (Uncanny X-Men #379)

- Apparently, he's "deathly allergic to rainforests". We find this out because a woman teleports him into the Amazon. The same woman who he tried to put into his would-be harem after telling her how OMFG PURE he is a few issues before. I don't know how you're allergic to an entire biome, he probably just has an allergy to a single genus of common tropical plants or something, but yeah, that happened. IT'S NEVER EXPLAINED HOW HE GOT BACK. Seriously, how did he get back from the Amazon to Genosha? Did he walk? Did the locals pay to have him shipped back? I feel like there's a hilarious story here not being told!

- In a single issue (X-Men: Magneto War) Fabian Cortez: *Wore his cape wrapped up around himself on a stealth mission rather than just TAKE IT OFF what a diva * Made gross comments about a physically mutated woman being “repulsive” and a “Morlock misfit” * Painfully hypercharged one of his Acolytes against their will * Used manipulative guilt-tripping tactics (“You have failed us! You have failed the cause! You have failed Lord Magneto!” LIKE UR NOT THE ONE WHO KILLED MAGNETO, U BAG OF SHIT) * Ran away and abandoned the Acolytes to the X-Men (with his cape still wrapped around him as he fled) ALL IN A SINGLE ISSUE WTF HOW EVEN FABIAN

[fyeahcaptn]

kc canon-ish + sure they're "just friends then" and she wasn't q u i t e ready for him to show her the world (yet), but she was hungry and that girl that she saw get a bit too handsey with klaus at the bar looked delicious okay??

okay, this turned out wayy longer than planned. almost 4k for something that was supposed to be around 1k. eh. bonnie and caroline friendship! post 5x11. no babies. actually includes some plot. smut, so nsfw.

ff. ao3.

Caroline hadn’t planned on coming to New Orleans after she’d left Mystic Falls. Not for a very long time, at the very least. She knew she would eventually. Knew she’d seek him out, but she wanted a few decades, if not more, to roam the world first. She wanted to figure out who she was.

However, she’d barely had time to enjoy all New York had to offer, when Bonnie had appeared, with wild hair and bright eyes, as she’d been roaming around the streets.

The witch had almost startled her, which was… weird, to say the least.

“Bonnie,” she’d exclaimed, before her lips curled upwards, a grin splitting her face. “What are you-”

“Are you busy?” Bonnie had cut in.

“Um…”

“I’m headed to New Orleans,” Bonnie had told her, “and I was hoping that my partner in crime would want to follow me.”

“New Orleans?” She’d raised an eyebrow, her voice raising slightly. “What the hell are you doing there?”

“My grams came to me in a dream,” she’d murmured, her eyes flicking up to Caroline’s, and Caroline had seen the hesitation in them.

Caroline raised an eyebrow.

“A witchy dream?”

“I think so,” she’d murmured. “We have some relatives there. In New Orleans. And she thinks they’re in trouble. She wants me to help, and she said that they could help me too. That they were very powerful, could teach me things she never got the chance to.”

So, Caroline had agreed. Despite her better judgement.

She’d smiled at her friend, because no way was she letting Bonnie face that city alone.

“Do I have time to pack?”

Bonnie had just grinned at her.

“Please, as though you’d leave without at least half of your closet. And besides, this is New York. We could get in a few hours shopping, before. I’ve already booked our flight.”

She’d be annoyed if she didn’t appreciate preparedness so much.

Bonnie knows it too, from the grin she gives Caroline.

So, really, it should be no surprise, that from the minute she lands, she senses vampires (and hybrids, if she’s not mistaken) on her tail. She doesn’t say anything to Bonnie, merely aims to get them back to their hotel room, where she can pretend they aren’t there.

Bonnie, bless her heart, had booked them two rooms. Said they were already paid for, once they’d got to the reception area.

“I know you like your own space now and again,” the brunette had told her. “And besides, who knows what you'll… get up to,” she settles on, “while you’re here.”

She hears what Bonnie doesn’t say. Has to admit that her own mind had drifted back to him, once or twice, on the way over here, and she knows Bonnie’s probably has too, considering what she’d told her, after that day in the woods.

“I doubt that’ll be a problem,” she grits her teeth. “But, thank you.”

Bonnie gives her a wolfish grin, and she almost wants to hit her.

“Just give me a heads up, if I’m not to expect you for a few days.” A poke in her ribs, that has her glaring. “You’re not the only one who worries, Care.”

Caroline had snorted, rolling her eyes.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Bon. I have no plans of seeing anyone while we’re here.”

She swore she saw Bonnie’s lips twist up.

“We’ll see,” her friend tells her.

Their rooms are up on the seventh floor, and honestly, she doesn’t even remember the name of the hotel, but Bonnie tells her to get some sleep.

“We’ll start tomorrow. I think I have a good idea of where to start,” Bonnie murmurs, before she shrugs. “At the very least, we can do some sight seeing. Try and get our footing around here.”

“Sure thing,” she sighs.

She intends to do what Bonnie suggested; maybe get in a nice, warm bath, and wipe the travelling grime off her, and get a good, few hours sleep, before they venture into the city. It’s her first time out of Virginia, and she fully intends to enjoy it.

That is, until there’s a knock at the door.

And really, she knows who it is, even before she opens the door. Still, she sighs, as she opens it.

He’s there. Dressed in his casual henleys, usual smirk in place, and his too blue eyes gazing down at her, just as they always use to. He’s posed casually, one arm wrapped around his back, as his other stays tucked into the front pocket of his jeans.

“Hello, Caroline,” he greets, his smile smug.

“Klaus.”

It comes out a little breathier than she intended it to, as her breath catches. And the bastard notices it, before he chuckles.

“Miss me already?” he grins.

She rolls her eyes, as she pops her hip against the door frame.

“Please.” She even bats her eyes at him.

His grin widens, even if possible.

“Are you going to invite me in?” he requests, cordial and all.

She raises an eyebrow in response.

“It’s a hotel room,” she tells him in that duh tone of hers. “You don’t need an invitation to enter, Klaus, or have you not been paying attention in the last millennium of your life?”

He laughs.

“Not necessary, but certainly appreciated,” he murmurs, as he pushes off, until there are less than a few centimetres between them.

She rolls her eyes.

“What are you doing here, Klaus?”

He gives her a look that she can’t quite read before he responds.

“I think the better question is what are you doing here, Caroline? This is my city, after all. I’m sure you remember,” he brags.

She knows what he’s implying. Thinking that she’s here for him, decades, centuries even, before he’d expected her, because she knew he had. She expected her to be here, so she can’t imagine that he doesn’t. Just a while before he was expecting her.

“I’m here with Bonnie,” she tells him, and it sounds defensive even to her own ears. “Sorry to break your bubble, buddy, but I’m not here for you.” A pause and then, “I didn’t come to screw up the life you have here, I promise. Bonnie has some witchy business. I wasn’t about to throw her to the wolves alone.”

Because like he said, it is his city, and she feels like she owes him that much.

“Yes,” he says, voice tight, and she can tell she’s struck a nerve. “So I’ve heard.”

“…okaay?”

She really should expect his next words.

“Why don’t you come stay at the compound?” The with me is implied, and she bites her lip. “Bring your friend.”

She cocks her head, as though she’s contemplating it.

“I think we’ll pass,” she tells him, her voice hard.

His eyes turn dark.

“You’re not safe here,” he insists. “There’s more going on in this city than you realise, Caroline. You’re safest with me.”

She snorts, “And what? You’re just gonna keep an eye on me twenty-four-seven?”

“It certainly wouldn’t be a hardship,” he murmurs.

She narrows her eyes.

“Maybe it would be for me,” she spits, a little more aggressively than need be, even she admits that, and she sighs. “Look, Klaus. I won’t be here long. Just until Bonnie’s wrapped her business up, and I’ll be out of your hair. I doubt anyone would want to hurt little ol’ me.”

“You’d be surprised,” he murmurs, and he takes a step towards her, “what people would do to get their hands on what they perceive is my weakness.”

Caroline’s not quite sure how to take that

“I’m not your anything,” she tells him firmly.

He looks more amused than anything, and he shakes his head.

“Do you really want to stay at this sub-par accommodation, Caroline? I can assure you, my property can offer you more comfort.” A pause, as he grits his teeth, and then, “You needn’t spend time with me if you don’t wish it. I do, obviously. That goes without saying. I just want you to be safe.”

She falters slightly at that, and damn him, because it works. He knows it works.

So, she sighs.

“Fine.”

His eyes light up his entire face.

“But, I am leaving New Orleans as soon as Bonnie is ready,” she warns him.

He just smiles.

“Maybe,” he murmurs. “But, just wait until you see the rest of the city. I’m sure you’ll fall in love with it, as have I.”

And that’s how she ends up (temporarily, it is really) living with Klaus. And his siblings.

(Rebekah is still a pain in the ass, but Kol is mainly amusing, and she finds she likes Freya. Freya is nice and kind, unlike the rest of the Mikaelsons, and she even offers to help Bonnie out, giving Caroline one thing less to worry about.)

-/-

Bonnie, as it turns out, is actually one to fall in love with the city. She likes that it’s so populated with witches, people like her, and she’s even managed to strike a deal with Klaus about the treatment of witches in the city. Well, she had made Caroline banter it out, but details. So, she decides to stay.

“You don’t have to stay,” she tells Caroline one night, when Caroline had come to her room.

“Huh?”

Caroline looks puzzled.

“I know you weren’t planning on staying that long, that you wanted to travel. So, you can take off. If you’d like,” Bonnie murmurs. “I know what I’m dealing with now, and I feel settled now. It almost feels like home.”

Caroline looks suspicious, but she doesn’t comment on that, and she sighs.

“Where are you gonna live?”

Bonnie laughs, because that is so Caroline. Practical to the end.

“Sophie’s been helping me find a place,” she reveals. “I can move in next week. It’s a studio apartment, and I’ve offered to do shifts at Rousseau’s to help fund for it. She said she could do with the help.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, if you wanna stay for another few days, and help me move in, I’d super appreciate it. And you could come back and visit me all the time! I know you’ve liked it here too,” Bonnie encourages. “But I know that you’ve been itching to travel too.”

“Yeah,” Caroline smiles. “I’ll figure something out.”

They don’t talk about it for the rest of the night, but Freya’s head pops around the door after a very brief knock a couple of hours later.

“Hey.”

“Freya,” Caroline grins.

“You girls interested in some cocktails?”

Caroline gives her a look, and Bonnie laughs.

“Do you even have to ask?” it’s Caroline who speaks up.

Freya’s devilish grin definitely matches that of her siblings when she smiles.

“Excellent. Everyone else is going too. Wasn’t sure whether to bother you, but there’s only so much of my family I can handle in one night.” She smiles, after an eye roll. “So get ready.”

And that’s how Caroline finds herself in her current complication.

They’d decided to get in one car, and the driver (they actually have a driver, so pretentious, though she doesn’t say anything) always asks “Mr. Klaus” when he’d like to be picked up. Klaus had grinned at her eye roll. The entire way to the club, Klaus had sat next to her, and she’d gulped at the feeling of his thigh pressed against her bare skin.

They’d grown closer since she’d moved (still temporarily) into his compound, and she’d spent some time with him. He’d shown her his favourite sights of the city, his favourite restaurant, his favourite bar, and she can admit that she gets why he loves it here so much. She could stand to stay longer.

It’s when they get to the club, and she and Bonnie go to the ladies that the problem occurs.

They’ve just walked out, when she sees him. Except this time, he’s got a brunette attached to him. What she isn’t prepared for is the tightening of her stomach, the emotion that swells in her throat, as she swallows.

Bonnie cocks her head, when Caroline’s fingernails dig into her palms.

“Everything okay over there?” She sounds amused.

“Just fine.” Caroline grits her teeth. “Why don’t we get a drink?”

Bonnie still looks amused, even as she lets Caroline lead her over to the bar.

“You could interrupt, you know,” Bonnie murmurs. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

She wants to, she really does.

“What Klaus does is his business,” Caroline says firmly, even if she doesn’t quite believe it. “I have no right to control over who he wants to see.”

“If that’s what you want to believe,” Bonnie mutters.

Caroline glares, but she doesn’t comment. Instead, she puts on her best fake smile.

“So, are we doing shots or not?”

She’s not sure how many shots she takes that night. It’s definitely a lot, and she’s definitely drunker than she has been in a while. And she’s soon alone, when a (witchy) guy Bonnie knows convinces her into a dance. She looks hesitant at Caroline, though.

“Go,” Caroline encourages. “I can handle myself. I’ll see if I can find Freya.”

She doesn’t, but at least Bonnie won’t worry.

She keeps her eye on Klaus, her eyes burning a hole through his companion’s back, as she grins up at him, her hand strategically placed on his chest, and he smiles down at her, with that smile he usually saved for her.

She wishes she could deny the feeling coursing through her, but she knows it’s jealousy. And it isn’t long before the glass in her hand is smashed, and she swears under her breath.

When she looks up, she sees Klaus'… thing walking away, and she swears he’s baiting her, but she pounces, following the girl out of the door.

Well? She was hungry. It had been days since she’d fed. And she had been feeding from the vein lately, especially since she’d come to New Orleans, where blood bags were sparse. If it was someone Klaus had been feeling up, well, that was nobody’s business.

She flashes outside, and the girl is startled for a minute, before she relaxes.

“Oh, it’s you. You’re Klaus’ friend, aren’t you?” the girl asks.

She snaps at friend, and her eyes dilate.

“Don’t struggle. Don’t scream.”

And then, her fangs are buried in her neck.

She counts to ten, as she drinks, like Stefan had taught her, but she doesn’t want to stop when she starts. Blood is pumping through her veins, and she presses the girl against the wall behind the club, her fingers curling in her red hair.

She doesn’t stop, not even when she feels a presence behind her. Followed by a lean chest pressing to hers, and a hand brushing her hair to the side. Because she knows that presence. Knows the feel of his hands. Has had specific dreams of them for weeks now.

A chuckle is pressed against her neck, and she feels the vibrations race through her

“Easy, sweetheart,” the words are almost whispered in the night. “Wouldn’t want to kill her now, would we?”

His words spur her back into the present, and she lets the girl drop, unsurprised when she scatters away, as the compulsion breaks. The second she’s gone, she’s twisted around, as Klaus picks her up, and her back is against the wall, her legs curled around his hips, as he presses against her. His smirk is in place just as always.

His eyes are wild, as he looks at her, and they soon dart down to her blood-stained lips. She curls her fingers around his neck in response, trying to encourage him to kiss her. And he does, for a few short minutes. His lips moving enthusiastically against hers, his tongue flicking out against the blood on her lips.

She swallows his groan, when she grinds her hips into his. Even more so, when his tongue sweeps into the hot cave of her mouth, but it’s all for naught, when he pulls away a few moments later.

“Not so fast, love,” he tells her.

She actually growls at him.

“Just fuck me,” she tells him, and watches as his eyes dilate in lust, before he shakes his head.

“Gladly,” he murmurs. “Just as soon as you admit that you were jealous.”

She snorts, though she can’t exactly deny it at this point.

“Please.”

“Because I want you,” he murmurs, and his erection digs into her thigh, that has her rocking against him for more. “God, do I want you. But not until you admit this. Admit that there is something between us, and you’re not just planning to run away as soon as possible. That you were jealous because she laid a hand on what was yours. Because I am yours, Caroline. I’ve been yours for longer than I care to admit. Just as you are mine.”

It’s the swivel of his hips that does it really, as she aches for more, gasping.

“Fine,” she gasps. “I was jealous. And I wanted to kill her. Happy?”

“Completely,” he agrees.

Her underwear is torn a minute later, and she growls again.

“I’m going to start billing you,” she tells him, her eyes narrowed.

He grins, and she hears the ruffle of fabric as he undoes his jeans, followed by the ripping of her dress.

“I’m fairly certain you won’t care by the time I’m through with you, Caroline.”

And then he thrusts into her, in one perfect move, and she groans, and decides that she probably does agree with him. Even if he is an ass.

She gasps, her head falling back, when he starts a rhythm that has her rocking against him in response, his hand under her ass, pulling her back onto him, when he pulls away. Her hands are underneath his arms, scratching at his back, with marks that heal almost simultaneously. Her eyes soon drift closed, but Klaus decides that isn’t enough.

“No,” he growls, and it’s pure sex, that has her clenching around him. “Eyes on me,” he demands, and she’s helpless to disagree.

In another move, he has her hands pinned above her head, with one of his, whilst his other grips her waist, as he fucks her. Hard and fast, like they need it. They have time for slow and deep later, but right now? She just needs him.

“God, Klaus,” she lets out, when he hits the perfect spot.

He knows it and smirks, pressing himself closer to her, her breasts crushed against his chest.

“Anyone could find us at any moment. You realise that, don’t you?” he muses, though she’s pleased to note his breathing is heavy too, as he thrusts back into her.

“Don’t care,” she gasps. “Just don’t stop.”

He just raises an eyebrow, and his thrusts pause.

“Don’t care? Tell me, Caroline, do you like it? Does it turn you on?”

She grits her teeth at him.

“If you’re not going to fuck me, I can do it myself,” she snarls.

“As satisfying as me?”

He’s got her there.

“Yes,” she snarls. “I

She manages to get out of his grip, and she reaches for his neck, pulling forward, until he kisses her, her tongue swiping against his lower lip, until he opens up for her, and his hips soon imitate the movement of his lips, making her smirk against him.

"Good to know,” he tells her.

She wants to know what he means by that, but his thrusting back into her, with a speed and force that she very much appreciates, and it’s not long before she’s nearly there. Klaus knows it too, angles his hips at the right time, and slides his thumb against her clit, right before she falls apart, clenching around him.

“Klaus,” his name is long and drawn out, and very much loud, considering where they were.

Her head tips back, and this time he doesn’t stop her, as his lips attach themselves to her neck, when he groans her name. He lets her ride out her orgasm, and she draws his own from him, his back arching, as his neck stiffens, before he collapses against her, holding them against the wall.

“Seriously?” she mutters, when they both come back too.

Klaus separates them, pulling out of her with a wince, as he tries to right his clothing.

“What’s that, love?” he asks distractedly.

“My dress,” she moans. “How am I supposed to go home like this?”

He smirks, “I rather like you like this.”

“You would,” she mutters. “But I don’t particularly want to show the good china off to every person who walks by.”

“Neither do I,” he agrees. “You are for my eyes only.”

She rolls her eyes.

“And you are a possessive ass,” she tells him.

“I’m a wolf, Caroline,” he reminds her, as though she needs it. “I’m possessive by nature. And even my wolf knows that you are mine.” She doesn’t comment, and he raises an eyebrow, “Can you handle that?”

She let’s that settle for a moment, before she steps up to him, presses herself against him, and curls her hand around his neck.

“Why don’t you call James to get us home?” she asks him, her eyes flicking down to his lips, before they land back on his eyes, “and I’ll show you exactly what I can handle.”

His smile is blinding, and it’s still there, as she manages to somehow right her dress so it covers the important parts, when James pulls up, and they get into the car.

“What?” she mutters.

He just grins, “Nothing, love.” And then, “I have a balcony you know,” he murmurs, as he cranes his neck, dropping kisses to her neck, his hand tracing over her thigh. “We could use it to test your exhibition streak.”

“I was thinking we could test your shower out actually,” she says, her hand dropping to his thigh, and palming his half-hard erection. “I had a bet with Bonnie that you’d stole the best one. And I have many plans. After we test out your bed.”

He groans, and tells James to step on it.

(She’d called New Orleans home.)

[novantinuum]

#listen #you can’t give me a canon hybrid and expect me to Not get super weird with their anatomy #so now my new headcanon is that over the years all his organic cells eventually get replaced by hard light analogues #until eventually he’s like. so his body Mimicks organic life and he instinctively still follows many Habits of organic life but #he is actually No Longer organic at all #instead just an Uber Goddamn Complex hard light construct- wholly unique and brand new #high key obsessed with this idea now #jen rambles

(My tags re: root post)

…

anyways so in my head all of this is only discovered when- decently far into his adulthood- steven and the gems run into a rare combat situation against some disgruntled era 1 apologizer or whatever and everything’s going pretty smoothly until suddenly steven. gets fucking poofed and. everyone’s all “yo what the FUCK” because they long assumed he COULDN’T be poofed, because he’s outright defied gem destabilizer tech before, right?

well, cue a huge medical/anatomical investigation once he reforms, in which another set of radiographs are taken, and just. nothing shows up anymore but his gem. nothin’. everyone’s scratching their heads, this is News to them.

the longer I’m in this fandom the more alien I’ve decided Steven eventually becomes over time as he ages