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A Rather Measured Response

Consequences.

Every adult with a lick of sense knew that any and all actions had consequences. Whether or not they bit you in the ass had too much to do with luck. Lt. Jee didn't have to gamble to know that his luck was sh*t.

Why else would he be on the Wani? (Barring his inability to keep his mouth shut.)

On paper it didn't sound too bad. Getting paid to see the world far from combat, it was practically a vacation. Of course, the spirits liked pull the rug from under his feet in the shape of his Commander, Princess Usha.

Now, it wasn't obvious in the beginning.

After the first few days fighting off a fever in her room the princess was up and about. Brush and paper on hand inspecting every inch of the ship and it's inhabitants. The part of Jee that respected competent men was impressed at the princess' initiative to take inventory of all the necessary ship supplies and future repairs. The part that was insulted at having to take orders from a dainty child had to bite his tongue at the sight of her shadowing his crew and taking notes.

Still, it was tolerable. Princess Usha was a prime example of what a Fire Nation girl of Noble birth should be; courteous, restrained, graceful, and eloquent. As jarring as it was to witness a grown woman's speech and manners coming from a tiny thing that still had baby fat clinging to her cheeks, the crew adjusted and took it as norm.

No, the truth came out when they were six months out at sea. After a trip to the Southern Air Temple and what could only be described as an eye opening experience restocking at a colony port. Her true colors had come out.

Over the past week the princess's patience had grown thinner every day. Polite responses become curt answers. Stern reprimands evolved into snarled lectures. And angry rants began in the face of unexpected hindrances.

Case in point.

"And why are there Kabuki costumes in the brig!!" Shouted the princess, pointing to the cell filled to the brim with miscellaneous junk. Including but not limited to, Kabuki theater masks.

At least that's what Jee thought she said. In her tirade the princess' voice became more and more shrill with her face growing red to match. Jee worried that she'll run out of air and pass out, at first. Soon she might reach a pitch that only bat-hounds could hear.

"Well!?" She demanded. Eyes brimming with tears and body shaking with fury. Jee had enough failed relationships to know that look could lead to his death if he didn't tread carefully.

Agni forgive him.

"I'm not sure, Sir. Perhaps General Iroh has some insight on the situation."

Princess Usha blinked at him processing what he said. Jee shifted his weight armor creaking softly. Lips pulling back into a snarl the princess turned on her heel stomping off in search of her uncle.

As much as Jee tried to go about his day the guilt of throwing General Iroh to the wolfcobra got the better of him.

It wasn't hard to find them. Just follow the one sided screaming match.

It was a baffling sight. The famed Dragon of the West seated on the deck, sipping tea and savoring the sea breeze. In front of him was the banished princess howling like a banshee about 'irresponsible spending' and 'frivolous dead weight'. General Iroh barely blinked, instead he smiled indulgently at his niece and said something that Jee was too far to make out.

Whatever it was it didn't help. From his safe distance Jee saw Princess Usha's face grow redder and her chest begin to heave. Before she could open her mouth and burst their ear drums the Spirits showed mercy.

"There's a stain on your pants, Princess."

The princess wiped around to see who had spoken. "What?"

Agni bless Helmsman Kyo's air of obliviousness. Rather than denying he said anything Kyo just nodded and pointed to the princess' rosy pink pants. "You have a dark stain on your pants, Sir. Did you accidentally sit on an oil leak?"

The princess twisted and turned to see what Kyo was talking about.

Sure enough, there was a deep dark blotch going from the crotch of her pants up to the middle of her bottom.

"I don't remember sitting anywhere besides the mess hall," said the princess, wiping at the stain to figure out what it was. Instead of leaving a greasy sheen the princess's figures were stained red.

Why wou-

Oh. Oh, sh*t.

It seems the princess had figured it out herself too. Not bothering to say a word to anyone she raced back inside the ship.

"Usha?" Called General Iroh, raising from his seat in worry. "Princess, what's wrong?"

Not one to let a man walk unknowingly into a trap, Jee blocked the man from following.

If looks could kill. "May I know why you're stopping me from seeing what's wrong with my niece, Lt. Jee?"

"Have you raised girls before, General Iroh? Because this might be out of your area of expertise," was all he could say that wasn't 'your niece is about to become a hormone filled nightmare that might set this ship on fire one day.'

"I failed to see why that's relevant."

Agni, he's going to have to say it isn't he?

"He means the princess got her period and being a man you might not be much help to her," Kyo blurted out.

Jee looked at him in surprise. Kyo just shrugged, "I have a sister."

General Iroh's face morphed into a look of comprehension layered with parental pride. "I see, my niece has began to blossom," he nodded sagely. He moved past Jee. "I'll go talk to her."

Jee knew for a fact that General Iroh was by no definition a fool, but apparently he was naive when it came to his niece.

"Sir, is that really a good idea?"

The General chuckled. "I know that I might not have the necessary inner workings but I've raised a teenager through puberty before, there's nothing I haven't seen. Besides, my niece is a sweet and docile girl. I can handle this."

Not bothering to let Jee get another word in the General strolled into the ship.

"She's going to make him eat those words," sighed Crewman Daishi.

Sure enough a few moments later, a wrathful scream echoed through the ship. "Get Out Of My Room!" Followed by the slamming of a heavy metal door.

General Iroh said nothing to them when he came back up to the deck, sitting back down on his cushion and picking up his now cold tea.

He took a long sip, grimacing. "Perhaps one of the women would be kind as to talk to the princess?"

...

When you think you know your niece but you've been away on the war campaign for years. And when you come back she's been the Lady of the Household for over a year. Yeah, obedience and dutifulness doesn't mean a person is docile.

Snippet I made from one of @captainkirkk posts on female Zuko. It's really interesting, especially since though Zuko's core personality would be the same the way he would've been socialized and treated by others would be different. Yes, I changed the name, Usha means dawn in Sanskrit. Really would've liked to have more female characters.

@muffinlance I don't think anyone has ever mentioned girl!Zuko in your asks for different aus.

Oneshot fic where I try to piece together Thirteen’s character post spyfall part 2, and extend the episode’s final scene. (read on ao3)

The Promise

She stands, bathed in blue, with three pairs of eyes boring holes into her back. Inquisitive eyes, reproachful, skeptical. Dissatisfied. She thinks that’s probably fair enough.

Behind her, the ship puts on a pale imitation of its usual golden hue – which is partly her fault, because the strength of her anguish resonates within the temporal engines. The ship mourns with her. It had been her home too.

She’s taken on more than she can handle; three humans – she hasn’t had to deal with that many at once in a long while. It’s exhausting, because behind her back, they talk. They conspire. They formulate attacks in the form of questions and furrowed brows. It’s her against them, and it has been for a while now. Her against them; how had it ever come to this? Friends or enemies? She’s always found it difficult to tell the difference.

It would be easy, perhaps, to drop them back on Earth, waltz off with a grin and a lie through bared teeth, and never return. She’s done it before.

But the promise she made claws at her, raging at her behind pale eyes. Eyebrows; with his lined face and harsh expression – easy to intimidate, with a face like that. Easy to lie. She craves that mask of lines, that icy stare. Maybe if she still wore that face, they wouldn’t ask so many questions.

He wanted to die, old Eyebrows had, and she’s starting to think that maybe he had the right idea. “Be a Doctor,” She had promised, but she doesn’t feel like the Doctor anymore. It all just feels like a game.

And what was the rest of the promise? Never be cruel, never be cowardly... oh, but she is a coward – she’s been afraid of the dark since she was a boy, and she’s been running for – how long? About three thousand years, half of her assures (more like four and a half billion, the other half answers). And – though this is harder to admit – she is cruel. She’s crueller, colder, older. Be a Doctor, but the Doctor is a lie. Now more than ever, she’s hiding behind a title. For the first time, stranded without her friends, marooned in history, the cruelty had boiled over, and she’d found that she was full of so much of it that it scared her, but she couldn’t stop it from spilling out. At least the Master knows he’s cruel, he revels in the fact. She is something worse, because she’s convinced herself that her cruelty is some sort of justice. Some sort of twisted kindness, because the rules of time are not hers, and she is just a traveller. Walking away, in Montgomery and the Punjab, leaving a young boy to burn and a horde of innocent creatures to starve, that was cruel, but it was necessary, because sometimes she loses. Because the rules of time were never hers.

Wiping Ada’s mind should have shaken her, it should have reminded her of pleading eyes and words of power; Donna, Clara, Bill. But it didn’t. (If you ever stop, I think the universe might just go cold). And what if I go cold, she asks no one, what happens to the universe then?

Always try to be nice. This one, she has down to an art. She can’t remember ever being nicer. She’s bubbly and hopeful and sweet - at least, when her friends are around. When she’s putting on a show, because the Doctor is a lie. Even when she’s cruel, she’s sweet. She’s nice. All wicked smile and steely eyes, teasing. A trickster’s stare. It was fun, at first, the youth, the constant movement and chatter and quirky quips. It was fun, because they didn’t question her. She revelled in their awe and their reverence in a way that filled her with sour guilt. She kept herself mysterious, confident, infallible. Vague. She stuck to the rules, when her friends were around. No weapons, no interference. Hasn’t she already seen where breaking the rules can get her? She is just a traveler; not a god or a monster or an impossible hero. Not anymore. She’s holding herself in, but the shell is too small. Jagged edges of her past jut through the edges of her silhouette, so she keeps her friends distracted. She keeps them moving and she never stays for tea, because the quiet is when questions are asked, and linear time makes her head ache and her fingers twitch. She’s hooked on the adventure. The lie. (It is Clara, she answers an old question, weary, it is like an addiction).

Never fail to be kind. But she was always failing. She’s told her friends who she is, using empty words robbed of their usual pride and significance. Her voice and her manner had been waspish, impatient. Cruel. (There, happy?). Their unending curiosity, their kindness, it grated against her in a way that told her she was becoming something awful. She holds them, her new best friends, at arm's reach, and never closer, because she knows what happens when she lets herself get too invested.

Oh, and never tell anyone your name. Well, that’s one promise she can keep - because everyone who can understand the cadence of her true name is dead. Killed by the only other person who still knows it. She will never be able to tell anyone her name again.

Laugh hard. She’s done all sorts of laughing. Triumphant exclamations of wonder, because she’s just a traveller, and everything is new to these dark eyes, everything inspires hope. Belly-clutching, strained reels of laughter when her friends are cracking jokes. When they’re travelling, never stopping, never still. The real sort of laughter comes when she’s alone. Low, cruel chuckles to the enemy that roil in her gut, that make her feel alive. Wind whistling through newly spun blonde hair, cold air against new bared teeth, old tattered clothes hanging loose as she shed the one she was before. It was a good feeling, intimidating. Darkness biting through the nice.

Run fast. She’s faster than ever. She’s running so fast that she can barely keep up with herself. Hands always moving, fixing, tweaking, tinkering. Mouth running off at a hundred miles an hour spouting tidbits and anecdotes that even she isn’t sure are truth or lie. That night on the train, she had hit the ground running, and hasn’t stopped since. Not until she’d taken a trip home, and she’s stopped dead in her tracks. All the adrenaline she’s been running off it gone, now. All she has is anger.

Be kind. And that’s the most difficult part of all. Nice is just a show you put on to the people around you, and pretending is easy. Kindness is deeper, and difficult to fake. Difficult, especially, because she can feel him – the Master – in the back of her mind like an itch, gloating. The ghost of a laugh, bright and spitting and maniacal, because this is exactly what he wanted. Where he is, that dark, dead dimension, the walls are thin. He can see her. Exiled to an unknown dimension, foiled and hopeless and alone, he’s still won. Laughing. Gloating. (Why would it stop). He tore apart the life she’d been building, ripped away the veil to show a glimpse of her true face; to her friends, and to herself. And she hates him. She hates him so much she wants to scream. Who is he but a reminder that it can never, ever stop. The grief and the running, and her, growing colder by the moment. A snarl twists at her face. She’s all anger, prowling, body wracked with energy that makes her want to break something, break him. The thought only makes him laugh harder.

“Doctor?” A voice that doesn’t come from inside her head. A voice without the bite of the telepathic. Simple, human. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

It’s Yaz. The Doctor turns, blinking against the golden light of the console and its amber pillars. Graham and Ryan stand under its canopy, concern knotted through their features. Yaz is closer, because she’s the only one who’s brave enough. Her eyes are wide and dark and kind. The sort of kind she hasn’t been in a long while.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just tired, it’s been a long few days.” Five days, five planets. No trouble, just relaxing. She did it for them rather than herself, because her ideal vacation involved a lot more running and danger and mystery. Instead of sickly sweet ice cream and soft golden sands, she craved blood and ash, the slick oil and grease of weathered machines, the smell of fear and panic. The calm and emboldening feeling of being in charge, weaving together a solution, saving the day and bounding off on the next adventure. The past five days have been hell, because hell is quiet. Hell is being left to your own devices and thoughts and left to stew out in the sun like the the rocks baking on the shoreline by her faded luxury deck chair. Decaying. And all the while, his laughter, echoing inside her skull.

“Doctor?” The voice tries again, impatient.

“Hmm?” She murmurs, absently meandering back towards the console, looking for something to tinker with. Something to do with their hands to make herself look busy. Behind her back, she feels them shifting, casting glances at each other that speak a thousand words. Inwardly, she sighs. Friends or enemies?

Graham is the first to venture forth. “Look, I, err, we” – he amends, and nods pass between her friends, still behind her back – “we’ve been meanin’ to ask you something.” Of course it’s him, the most skeptical. She sees the way he looks at her, the way he worries. It’s true that she prefers the company of the young, because the young haven’t yet had the chance to learn what old eyes look like. They don’t recognise those eyes in her. “Why are you travelling with us, I mean really…” Because you were there. You were human and you were there and I was lonely, she doesn’t say, because that would be cruel.

“Yeah, and who are you? We’ve tried asking’ so many times but you always dodge the question.” Ryan cuts across, emboldened. She turns around, away from the nothing she was doing with her hands. She stares at them and tries to look nice, but fails to look kind.

“‘Cause we’re putting’ our metaphorical foot down, Doc,” Graham says, with a hint of a smile. Keeping it light. “We’ve been talkin’, and we think, if we’re gonna keep on travellin’ together, we should get to know who we’re travellin’ with.” There was a time when they wouldn’t have dared. They were so caught up in the adventure and so scared that it was going to end that they would never have asked her that question, not when she’d been so adamantly obvious about dodging it. They were afraid to lose her, but now, they know just how much power they hold. Her against them. They know she’s lonely, that she needs them just as much – maybe more – than they need her. Running from grief, from abandonment, from boredom. Human problems. Simple reasons. The other reason they are asking now is, she knows, because they’re afraid. She slipped up. All that time carefully calibrating the ultimate TARDIS experience; controlled, self-contained adventures, and never to those voluminous corners of the galaxy where the people knew her name; in reverence or in fear, because she’s just a traveller. Now they know that she can make mistakes, that she has a history, old enemies. It scares them, because they wanted, needed to believe that she was infallible. It made following her seemingly arbitrary and ever-shifting rules all too easy. Now, suddenly, travelling is difficult. Scary. Real.

“Not that we don’t want to keep on travellin’ with you,” Yaz assures her with that officer calm. “We just think we’re entitled to know a bit more, seein’ as you know us so well.”

“And I don’t mean some made up words that don’t mean anythin’ to us” Ryan says. Gallifrey, Kasterberous, Time Lord – what did any of that mean to them? Nothing, especially when her voice had been so cold, deflated, deflective. Trying to make them feel guilty for daring to ask. “I mean, why are you runnin’?” What a question... Of course, he doesn’t realise what he’s asking, the gravity of it. Boredom or exile or fear – or a mixture of all three. (And why, he asks, with his eyes, not his mouth, because he can’t quite articulate the feeling, why do we trust you?) It had been going so well. In her head, the Master laughs some more, and she doesn’t know whether he’s really there or if she’s imagining it.

“And who were you before we met you?” Yaz asks, eyes softening, begging her. “Who were you before that night on the train?” It’s the final question that makes her muscles seize up and her eyes go cold. It’s what makes the anger bubble to the surface and the laugher break from background noise to a shrill cackling inside her head. She had been a white-haired scottsman, and she made a promise. A contract, and she’d broken every clause.

“Why should I have to tell you?” She snaps. Maybe the ferocity should surprise her, but it doesn’t. Cruelty is becoming normal, for her, something that’s always lurking there, just below the surface. Yaz steps back from her stare, shocked. “I’m just a traveller, didn’t I already say, I’m nobody. Isn’t this enough for you?” she pleads, and he laughs. “Aren’t you having fun?” a different angle, because they can’t deny that. It’s been fun, it’s been lighthearted. It’s been good. “Why can’t you just let me be this?” her voice comes in strangled, breaking gasps, because there isn’t just cruelty under the surface, there’s grief as well. “Why can’t you just let me leave it all behind?” The ship rages beneath her; lights flashing, sparks spitting, crystalline pillars spiralling with blue and harsh red. It casts them all in shadow. The remnants of her voice rings out in the hollow space, the ship whirring back into silence, echoing her, understanding her like none of her new friends ever will.

In the silence, Graham hums, his mouth folded into a line. Ryan is staring at the ground, chest rising and falling with subsiding panic. Worse, though, is Yaz, because she’s staring right at her. There’s no fear in her eyes, just kindness and a twisted sort of satisfaction. Her face says ‘I was right,’ and in her cruellest moment yet, the Doctor hates her for it.

“I’m sorry – I…” she knows what she has to do, and all her previous faces are looking at her in disdain. In disgust. Shut up, she swats their images away. They aren’t her, not anymore. The Doctor is a lie, and she is just a traveller. “Yaz, I’m really, really sorry,” she whispers, voice like silk. Beckoning. The girl can’t resist.

“I know, it’s okay,” Yaz smiles, walking forwards. But the Doctor isn’t apologising for what she said, instead, she’s apologising for what she’s about to do, because she won’t get the chance after it’s done. More faces; Donna, Clara, Bill. Ada. She ignores them, and takes comfort in the cruelty of the act.

The Doctor reaches out, and Yaz leans in to her touch, thinking that she’s offering comfort. The Doctor places outstretched fingers against her temple and searches her mind. As she sifts through her timeline, the act pressed into the space of a moment, it occurs to her that she could pick apart the strands of her memories and pluck out the parts that don’t fit. The doubts, the fear. The time she spent in that horrible dimension; lost and alone in the endless forest. She could make her better. The ship hums a dissonant note; a warning, and she realises that she isn’t quite that cruel. Not yet, anyway. She only takes the past minute. It’s barely a touch upon her mind, barely a dent, so she stays conscious. Yaz sways for a moment, dizzy, while the Doctor strides over to the two boys. They aren’t paying attention. They’re talking amongst themselves in low, harsh whispers. Behind her back. Her against them.

There’s a moment when they notice her purposeful steps clanging against the metal floor, and they look up. They see her expression; flat and cold. Unyielding; and their eyes flash with fear. Graham opens his mouth to speak, but before he can, she raises both hands towards their heads. She takes Ryan in one hand and Graham in the other; outstretched arms reaching, the pads of her fingers running over the surface of their thoughts as their eyes brush closed. She could take back the memory of the Master, the panic on the plane, the bone-burrowing fear of being on the run - but she doesn’t. She thinks she will regret it later, when she’s grown a little colder still.

In their moment of confusion, time rewinding, she takes her position at the top of the stairs. The blue light on her face feels right, it feels honest. She waits for their eyes to open and adjust, once again trained on her back, and she walks away before they can pose their carefully constructed questions. She leaves them standing under the fading gold of the console, sharing those transparent, conspiratorial glances, forming a new plan to get her cornered. Her against them. She makes a new promise, and the promise is this; they can never know. You are nobody. You are just a traveller.

The Doctor is a lie, and they can never know.

Unorganised thoughts on Trails in the Sky: The 3rd

I had a twelve hour marathon session to finish it yesterday, why no, I don’t have a social life, why do you ask?

What an ending!

That horrible thing happened where I find a final boss really hard and then I look up the game afterwards and everyone’s going on about how easy it was and I’m like :/

I’m not good at video games

I can’t believe the game starts with Kevin SPOILING THE END OF CARNELIA, damnit it Kevin, I never read it because I missed some chapters in FC and was planning on reading it when I replayed

I read it in the garden. It’s pretty good

I love the doors thing so much. The main plot was like... fine, as an excuse to have a game, but I would honestly have bought this if it were nothing but just a bunch of these little vignettes. Shows how good the characters are

Really enjoyed Schera and Estelle’s Moon Doors, and the Star Doors about Olivier, Julia, the one at the banquet, Zin’s (surprsingly, as I’ve always found him kinda dull), the Ravens (MY BOYS), Campanella breaking the fourth wall, and Bleublanc.

I hated all of the minigames except the quiz. I like quizzes

I did not finish the Nightmare Arena. I kept a save if I ever feel like going back and trying, but I probably won’t

Special mention: f*cking hell Star Door 15 do I have to say more

I figured that at most it was going to be an abusive, or maybe negligent parents thing, not...

I take back my previous comments about not caring for Renne

I resent the‘win x battles’ doors because I’m the kind of player who skips encounters whenever possible, so I ended up having to grind in Abyss for hours - and the reward is very little, really >:(

I guess I have shipping opinions now?

Joshua and Estelle are still good and I like them very much

Kevin and Ries as friends, thanks

I had kind of jokingly been shipping Maybelle and Lila already, but Star Door 9 has made me militant

Am I the only person who ships Kloe and Josette a little? It would be cute!

The game pushes Olivier and Schera, which I don’t hatebut like. She’s way too good for him. Her Moon Door kind of made me like her with Aina, actually, more than anything else

Speaking of Olivier, I don’t necessarily ship him with Mueller, but one thing I noticed about them that I thought was very sweet is that despite Mueller’s usual frustration at Olivier’s flirtations, he doesn’t seem to take any issue with Olivier calling him‘love’. It’s a nice, subtle indication that there is mutual affection there, really. I don’t know. It made me smile

I like Mueller and Julia together as well. Except for the fact that their names sound awful next to each other

They had a lot of time to hang out on the bench...

So, uh. Tita and Agate. Why. Like, in the first two games it was very much a pseudo-sibling relationship, and then we meet Erika who seems pretty convinced it’s something far... worse, and you know what? That’s understandable. If I had a thirteen year old daughter and I’d been informed that in my absence she had become close friends with an adult man I didn’t know, I would be pretty damn concerned

But Anelace?!? Who knows Agate and knows he’s a good person and still seems to think their relationship is romantic?!? And she’s supportive!?!

‘She just has a dark sense of humour’ I whisper into my paper bag

I mean, not to Age Gap Discourse, but no. Bad. What the hell. She’s unambiguously a child

The saving grace is that, at the very least, it seems like this is just everyone else’s misunderstanding of the situation. Which is good, because I really, really like Agate and wouldn’t want to have to start despising him (perhaps a case could be made for Tita having a crush. As far as I’m concerned, that’s perfectly fine - as long as it isn’t reciprocated)

Anyway rant over

It’s so weird how every chapter is pretty short and supplemented by doors, except 6 which takes approximately 15 years

I do like how blatantly Falcom was wringing every last bit of usage possible out of all the old assets

I started yelling GILBERT everytime he appeared, god he’s such a loser I LOVE him

I loved being able to play as Richard so much. He’s genuinely my favourite antagonist in the whole series so far. He just had the most interesting motivations to me (and I’m a huge sucker for redemptions)

I wish it had been clearer that I wouldn’t be able to do a team reshuffle for the final boss, because I took my four best characters (Kevin, Estelle, Joshua and Richard) and made them Team Leaders, with the intention of then using them all together for the final fight. Which I of course couldn’t do. So I got stuck with underequipped glass cannon Tita in that final arena. Remarkably, she survived

I didn’t tear up at the end you can’t prove it

So Crossbell is of course next, but after a few hours of messing around with translation patches and corrupted zip files and that one doujin website where you can buy it but it’s allin Japanese, I have come to the conclusion that I’m not going to be able to play it unless we get an official localisation

But what I have found is a Let’s Play! Which is definitely not ideal, but it’s that or no Crossbell at all for me. So my plan is that I’ll watch that, and also play the first two Cold Steel games concurrently, as I’m told that’s okay. Should all be interesting

The horrific Resident Evil playthrough, interlude three

I just finished watching all of the Resident Evil movies I could get my hands on. When I told people I was doing this as the last part of my great year-long playthrough, they all let out groans and said something along the lines of,“Ugh, don’t you wanna end on a goodnote?” Undaunted by these words and fueled by my ability to tolerate crappy cinema, I moved forward, courageously making it throughnineof these suckers...which, to be fair, ranged from surprisingly enjoyable to just as terrible as everyone warned me about.

Before I begin, it’s important to note that we’re dealing with two separate film series here. There’s director Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil Hollywood films, which are the ones that most people know about. Then there are three Japanese-made CG movies that are canon and co-exist alongside the stories of the games. The Anderson movies are...mostly ass. The Japanese ones are okay.

Let us start with the ass first.

Resident Evil - The first RE film came out in 2002, which means that what little CG it has is laughably dated and it’s refreshingly small-scale when compared to its sequels. The movie’s a fan fiction remix of some themes from Resident Evil 1, except with none of the characters from the games present. Instead, we have Paul W.S. Anderson’s wife Milla Jovovich taking center stage as Alice, the former head of Umbrella security in a secret base called the Hive that goes to hell when some dude tries to steal viruses. The entirety of the action takes place in the Hive, and we get a surprisingly tiny number of monsters, with just your garden variety zombies, a few Cerberus and a single Licker showing up. Even though she does run up a wall and kick a Cerberus in the face, Alice is at her most realistic here (she turns into a dual wielding mutant with the ability to make the camera go into slow-motion whenever she wants in all the other films), there’s a nifty laser grid scene that all the sequels keep referencing when they want you to feel nostalgic, and the Hive’s sentient AI, the Red Queen, is compelling enough that Capcom eventually stuck her in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. Aside from this movie being full of British actors who do REALLY awful American accents, sounding like they all have mouths full of sausages, Paul W.S. Anderson’s first take on Resident Evil is probably the most watchable one he made.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse -Okay, this one is watchable too, but in more of a popcorn-munching“lol, this sh*t is dumb” way. It steals the general plot of Resident Evils 2 and 3, with Raccoon City getting infected, but ups the cheese by a hundred. Alice is now a thirteen-year-old boy’s version of a BADAZZ woman, with lots of guns and a bare midriff, and she teams up with Jill Valentine, who resembles her game self in looks but not exactly in personality. Together, they’ve gotta escape Raccoon City along with Carlos Oliveira, who is possibly the only character from the games who is done a great service in these Anderson movies, which make him much more likable even if they couldn’t find an actual Hispanic actor to portray him and had to settle for an Israeli instead. Oh, and Nemesis shows up, because one of the dudes from the first movie who accompanied Alice into the Hive gets experimented on and turned into what honestly looks like someone’s Halloween costume. The writers commit a cardinal sin at the end of the flick by humanizing him,having him suddenly remember his TRUE SELF and help the good guys, but aside from that screw-up I admit that I had a goofy grin on my face throughout several parts of this movie. After Nemesis blows up the Raccoon City station and murmurs his one line of dialogue-“STARRRRRSSSS” - I even kinda felt like clapping. So yeah, Apocalpyse is idiotic fun.

Resident Evil: Extinction -Here’s where the movies stop being mildly entertaining and become varying degrees of either “meh” or just plain bad. Extinction’s biggest problem is that it makes the weird decision of having the entire PLANET be wiped nearly completely clean by Umbrella’s virus, giving the franchise the most generic setting imaginable for a zombie flick - a post-apocalyptic world. And even though this film features Claire Redfield and actually has Alice fight a Tyrant that looks the part, I feel that by turning the environment into Mad Max the filmmakers missed the entire point of the franchise. Resident Evil isn’treally about a“what if” scenario with mankind dying and zombies taking over the world. Instead, it’s about how humanity manages to cope in a time where zombies are used by corporations for terrorism purposes - hence the franchise’s“bio-organic weapon” catch-phrase for its creatures. It’s about how brave people live on in an era that just happens to feature biopunk monsters as a deadly fact of life. It’s about the evilthat resideswithin a world that is pretty sh*tty, but hasn’t completely gone to sh*t. By turning the whole planet into the same ol’ zombie playground that we see in most popular fiction starring these workman-like horror tropes, Extinction - which probably thought it was upping the stakes - instead just feels sorta dull, and anyone who views the film today is probably going to see it as a weaker version of The Walking Dead.Oh, and it ends with Alice discovering clones of herself, which will only serve to screw with the loose continuity of these movies as they go on.

Resident Evil: Afterlife -This one starts with Alice’s clones raiding the Umbrella facility in Tokyo, and the whole sequence - which feels like it should be the finale - is reduced to a few minutes of special effects in the beginning. (This is foreshadowing for the next two films, which both end with hints of giant, climatic battles that mostly happen off-screen, if at all.) The first thing that I noticed when watching this was how slow-mo kicked in every five minutes and how the camera seemed to linger on bullets, and I eventually remembered that this film was released during Hollywood’s obsession with 3D during the early 2010s. This explains Afterlife’s IN-YOUR-FACE-IN-THREE-DIMENSIONS action scenes, which are initially pretty in a music video sort of way but become overdone and tiresome as the movie goes on, kinda like a Zack Snyder film. (I place Paul W.S. Anderson in the same“style over substance” category of director as both Zack Snyder and Michael Bay, by the way.) Anyway, Afterlife deals with Alice teaming up with more survivors to try to find a secret ship haven free of zombies. Along the way she runs into Chris Redfield, who looks more like a janitor than the jacked BSAA agent that he is in the games, and Chris and Claire Redfield have a quick sibling reunion and fight Wesker in a scene with choreography shamelessly stolen from Resident Evil 5. It’s pandering fan service and sort of diverting, but ultimately none of it matters. Chris disappears after this movie and is never seen again, and Afterlife is more interesting as a specimen of 2010 3D excess than it is as an actual narrative.

Resident Evil: Retribution - Retribution amps the pandering fan service that Afterlife dabbled in to new levels. Ada Wong is here, played by Li Bingbing but dubbed by her original voice actress, Sally Cahill, probably because Li’s English isn’t that great. Leon Kennedy and Barry frickin’ Burton show up, both looking pretty much like their in-game counterparts. Even Michelle Rodriguez and a few other faces from Paul W.S. Anderson’s first Resident Evil flick make an appearance, thanks to the fact that this movie has clones up the wazoo and uses them to handwave away any series inconsistencies you could think of. So you’re got fan service for the people who like the games and fan service for the folks who liked the first movie, and on top of it all the film has the extreme 3D that its predecessor possessed and a buttload of battles because it all takes place in a giant Umbrella simulation facility full of stuff that can easily be wrecked. By now the plot to these things has gotten more scrambled than my eggs in the morning, but I will say that thanks to its inclusion of classic characters, Retribution is more or less tolerable. There’s even a bit of characterizationthis time around, thanks to a little hearing-impaired clone girl who Alice takes under her wing and begins to care for, and the movie ends on an okay cliffhanger in a Washington DC under siege, promising epic things to come in the next movie. Unfortunately...Resident Evil: The Final Chapter - I really did not enjoy The Final Chapter for a myriad of reasons. First of all, the Washington battle promised at the end of Retribution never happens. Instead, we fast forward to several months later, when Alice is (big surprise) the only survivor, and EVERYONE she was with in the last flick - Ada, Leon, the little deaf girl - is gone and never mentioned ever again. Wesker, who Alice was working with in Retribution, is back to being a bad guy for poorly explained reasons. Another bad scientist dude that Alice killed in Extinction also returns for even worsereasons, because supposedly Alice only offed his clonethree movies ago. But wait, this “real” bad scientist dude is also revealed to be a clone as the TRUE bad scientist dude shows up in the movie’s last act! AND THE ULTIMATE TWIST (look away now if you actually care about spoilers) is that Alice is HERSELF a clone of the original daughter of the Umbrella corporation’s founder who died of a degenerative disease and served as the basis for the Red Queen AI. The idiotic thing is that this daughter was said to be the progeny of Dr. Charles Ashford in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, but this movie retconsher to be the spawn of Dr. James Marcus. The Final Chapter, in fact, screws with continuity to a degree I have rarely seen before in a long-running film franchise. Yeah, the framework tying this series together got weird as soon as clones were introduced, but previously it seemed that Paul W.S. Anderson at least caredabout his own messy fan fiction. Here? It’s like he forgot what he’d spent the last 15 years building up to and ended on one sloppy fart. If this weren’t bad enough, The Final Chapter is edited in that god awful “shaky cam, lots of fast cuts” way that I hate. In fact, I counted something like twenty cuts in a scene of a few seconds when Alice is attacked by a creature, which means that this film won’t just baffle you with its disregard for continuity - it’ll give you a headache too.

Resident Evil: Degeneration - After watching an array of live-action flicks that took random Resident Evil threads and mashed them together with the elegance of a splattered turd, it did feel good to switch things up and move to the CG movies that were actually put out by Capcom. This 2008 offering takes place in between Resident Evils 4 and 5, stars Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy, and deals with a virus breakout in an airport and some of the pharmaceutical company backstabbing that occurred in the aftermath of Umbrella’s destruction. It’s all stuff that feels like it could have come from a lesser gaiden game - perhaps in the same vein as the first Revelations title - and it kinda gives off that “so-so anime movie” vibe, especially because the dubbing always sounds a tad off. Nevertheless, Degeneration’s still a breath of fresh air compared to the Anderson series, and there’s a nice gag where Claire’s searching for a weapon in the airport, someone hands her a physical umbrella, and she looks at it and is like, “Hm, didn’t see this coming.” (Lollerskates.) The main issue I have with Degeneration is how“plasticky” everyone looks - it’s hard to realize how far computer animation has advanced in the last decade until you look at Degeneration’s stiff visuals and compare them to the other CG films. Also, Leon’s characterization is terrible. He’s meant to be a super serious badass, I guess, but he mostly just looks like someone rammed a Samurai Edge up his sphincter. I prefer my Leon Kennedy to be the“Don’t worry Ashley, I’m comin’ for ya!” version from Resident Evil 4, or at least a dude with a little sass to him. The guy in Degeneration is about as interesting as a board.Resident Evil: Damnation - Damnation is a noticeable step above Degeneration, both in computer animation, which really got better from 2008 to 2012, and in all-around presentation. The dubbing’s still somewhat wonky with that same anime movie vibe, but the characterization is on point, and Leon, who’s taking center stage once more, is just like his RE6 self. Speaking of RE6, this movie channels that game’s themes of international terrorism with a plot that involves rebels in a made-up Eastern European country using Lickers and Las Plagas in an effort to fight for their freedom, only to learn that lo and behold, the nefarious female president who’s seized control of their nation has her own B.O.W.s - in the form of Tyrants - at her disposal. Leon’s caught in the middle of this mess and ends up befriending some of the rebels, and Ada Wong’s also infiltrated the country to manipulate the president. Ada and Leon’s interactions are as insubstantial as they’ve been in pretty much every game that isn’t the recent RE2make, but we do get a cool fight between Ada and the president, who for some reason knows substantial knife fu. There’s an even better battle between Tyrants and Lickers in a city hall square, and Leon gets throw against pillars, regularly takes hits that would kill a normal person and pilots a tank alongside one of the rebels who looks a lot like Chris Redfield but isn’t Chris Redfield. This dude serves as the film’s sympathetic character - a guy torn from his peaceful existence thanks to political wrangling and is tricked into using B.O.W.s to try to achieve a brighter future. It ends with the fella severely injured but learning how to live and move forward in a world infected with nefarious bioweapons, which is the very theme that the Anderson flicks ditched around movie number three. So good work for side-stepping previous failures and recognizing what Resident Evil is all about, Damnation.

Resident Evil: Vendetta - If Degeneration’s a so-so anime movie, and Damnation a good anime movie, then Vendetta is just a good movie in general, with no “anime” distinction needed. The dubbing’s finally pretty decent, for one, and the story takes place in between RE6 and RE7, teaming Leon and Chris Redfield up with - HOLY CRAP - Rebecca Chambers, who’s been AWOL since Resident Evil Zero. They’ve gotta stop an arms dealer from bio-nuking New York and doing nasty things to Rebecca, who resembles his dead wife, and along the way Leon pilots a motorcycle on the freeway with his feet while shooting at Cerebrus with his hands. Nearly all of the movie’s considerable action segments are punctuated with rapid fire John Wick-style gunplay, and it works. It’s like the folks who made this film realized that the coolest part of Resident Evil 6 was the point where Leon and Chris point their guns at each other for a few seconds before deciding that they need to put their differences aside and cooperate, and even though you could conceivably fault Vendetta for leaning heavily towards the “action” side of Resident Evil rather than the “horror” side, it’s a well-paced film that finally gives us a substantial interaction between two series mainstays beyond the one minute they shared with each other in RE6. Also, people are still posting GIFs from Vendetta’s action sequences all across Tumblr and forums whenever arguments break out over whether Chris or Leon is TEH COoLER Resident Evil protagonist, so Capcom obviously did something right. If we get another computer animated film, I imagine it’ll lean more heavily towards horror since that’s where the series has gone recently...but hopefully the path of improvement that we’ve seen from Degeneration to Damnation to Vendetta won’t be broken.

And with that, whew, I’m done with RE movies, at least until the rumored Hollywood reboot that’s supposedly drawing inspiration from Resident Evil 7 comes out. (It can’t be worse than The Final Chapter, I suppose.) I can’t say that my friends were wrong when they warned me that half of these would be sh*te, but I also can’t say that I ended on a bad note, because Vendetta was pretty good.

After all this, my grand playthrough and consumption of all Resident Evil media is about to finish Next post I make will be a last look at the franchise as a whole...and what a year’s worth of zombie headshots taught me.All screencaps taken by me.

So I’ve hinted at these guys a couple times in asks and stories, but I’m happy to say I finally got to drawing them! Meet Naj Kar and Anva Evis—powerful warriors, rebel sympathizers, star-crossed lovers, and the parents Cerate hardly got to know.

Pictured here is them when they lived as a pair of smugglers post-Order 66, in an effort to make some cash and distance themselves from their old Jedi identities—more on that in their backstory, though. I of course have to give props to @empress-only-in-name for helping me flesh out their designs a bit with this commission from forever ago—for the longest time I had no idea how these two would look but, with their help and a whole lot of experimenting, I think I finally have a concrete design for them with this one!

All told, I’m super happy with how these guys turned out, but what do you guys think? Do these designs look cool? Do you wanna see more from them? Should I have them come back as Force ghosts and teach Cer the ways of the Jedi order? Send whatever feedback you have my way! :D

Just as with all my OCs, their backstories are under the cut. Btw, Master Sko’dal, who’s mentioned briefly down there, belongs to @deer-head-xiris.

Naj Kar and Anva Evis were both born before the invasion of Naboo—Naj in 36 BBY, Anva in 37—to a Dathomiri witch and an Iridonian couple, respectively. Yet as would become the norm for the rest of their lives, any hope of normalcy was quickly ripped from them. Anva was discovered to be Force-sensitive as an infant, which in turn prompted the Jedi to come and take her away from her parents to their temple on Coruscant. There she was raised under the Jedi’s firm yet unloving hand, learning the ways of the Force and the Jedi code. When she turned thirteen, it was decided that she would enter the next stage of her training, and thus she was placed under the tutelage of the Kaleesh Jedi Master Vortys Banne. as his Padawan.

Naj, however, found himself in a far less hospitable home. He was also discovered to be Force-sensitive at a young age, but before either the Jedi or the Sith could get to him, he was taken by a far more malicious clan—the Hutts. One day, a convoy of Hutt clan slaver ships stopped on Dathomir to refuel, and while they were stopped they took the liberty of ransacking Naj’s village and enslaving many of its inhabitants. In the ensuing years, Naj would be separated from the others, and eventually he would find himself a slave to Marlo the Hutt on Nal Hutta. There, when he was still only a child, Naj was made to fight in gladiatorial combat, due to his species’ reputation as incredible warriors. Miraculously, Naj would survive these fights for years, on account of his natural strength and, of course, with a little subtle help from the Force.

And even more miraculously, it would be this use of the Force that would bring Naj and Anva together. It was 23 BBY—only a year before the start of the Clone Wars. Word had eventually got out that Marlo possessed a Force-sensitive gladiator, and eventually that word reached the Jedi order, who sent Master Banne and Padawan Evis to Nal Hutta to investigate the claims. Sure enough, Naj was fighting when they got there. It was the most surreal thing—a twelve year old boy, barely big enough to fill the armor he wore, putting down men twice his size like it was nothing. Not only that, but he was clearly using the Force, both to enhance his strength and physically move his opponents. Master Banne looked on the boy and saw a potential asset to the Order, but Anva saw past the boy’s strength and saw something else—he was scared. He didn’t want to fight.

After the fight, Banne got straight to negotiating with Marlo about buying the boy his freedom. While he did, Anva went and found Naj in his room—which was less of a room and more of a cell, really. He was a ghastly sight up close: malnourished, bruised and scarred, with striking black tattoos covering every inch of his carnelian-colored skin. When Anva tried to speak to him, he jumped out of fright and averted his gaze from hers. Just as Anva had suspected—the poor kid had learned to fear everyone new person he met. He’d never had a friend—only masters with whips and opponents with blades. Anva kept trying to talk, but it wasn’t until Naj got a good look at her that he started to break down his wall just a little bit. Evidently, meeting another Zabrak—and one as kind as Anva, at that—was just what he needed to feel comfortable. Soon enough, Naj was happy as a clam, and as he and Anva talked more they became fast friends. Why, Anva just couldn’t wait to be there with him as they both grew into powerful Jedi knights.

But, that vision didn’t exactly pan out. After freeing Naj and taking him back to Coruscant, Banne and Anva brought Naj before the council. There, they judged him, tested his midi-chlorian count and everything, but the conclusion they came to was more grim than anyone had hoped. Due to Naj being a member of a species heavily connected to the dark side, as well as being immersed in violence for his whole life, it was decided that Naj couldn’t and wouldn’t be trained as a Jedi. Banne and Anva protested, but they were ignored. Instead, it was decided that Naj would be kept at the temple for his own safety, but he could never be a Jedi. Anva was at first upset at this news, but with time she accepted what she’d been given, and over the next year she and Naj hung out in the temple whenever they could, with her training progressing all the while.

Then, the Clone Wars broke out. Padawan Anva became Commander Evis of the G.A.R., and she began to see her friend Naj less and less in favor of long military campaigns. Yet instead of growing apart, the two began to treat their little time together as sacred, with Anva spending nearly all of her time at the temple with Naj. They’d just spend hours talking—sometimes Anva would read to Naj, as he himself was illiterate, and sometimes the two would share Force tricks they’d picked up, but mostly they’d just talk. Naj would recount the events of his mundane Temple life, and Anva would vent about the stresses of war. In both cases, they talked of how alone they felt. How everyone saw them only as objects or weapons of war. How they felt stuck—isolated, even surrounded by masses of people. When they were together, though...they felt happy. They felt understood. Dare I say it, they felt loved.

Love is exactly what blossomed between them, too. It started out purely platonic, but soon enough things did get physical from time to time—they were teenagers, though, who could blame ‘em? Their few and far between meetings at the temple became secret trysts, known of only by them and a few close friends. They knew what they were doing was dangerous, but for better or worse, their love pushed them to risk it. Eventually, however, the risk came back to bite them. Somehow their secret got out, and word eventually made its way back to Master Banne, who promptly told the council of what had happened. In the ensuing debate about what was to be done next, it was concluded that Naj must have been the instigator of these heinous acts, as surely a padawan on the brink of becoming a knight couldn’t be so vulgar. It was decided, then—Naj Kar no longer had a place in the Jedi’s sanctum.

The next morning, Naj was confronted. Four temple guards came to his door, expecting him to lash out, but Naj already knew what was to come, and so he went quietly with them to the chamber of judgement. There, he was judged by a panel of masters, with Master Banne and a few others also being present. It wasn’t much of a deliberation, though—everyone had already come to an agreement. Before they could deliver their final verdict, however, Anva burst into the chamber, visibly frantic and clearly out-for-blood. Thinking she’d arrived to deliver further evidence against Naj, the council permitted her to speak.

That was their second mistake—their first mistake was ever wronging Anva Evis. With her soapbox conveniently set, Anva proceeded to tear into the Jedi, letting loose all her frustration into one impassioned speech. She berated the Jedi for their hypocrisy; they had become an order of mercenaries serving the dark side, killers in a pointless war, enemies of peace and allies of violence—and they had the audacity to punish an innocent man just for feeling love? She was far less articulated than I put it, though—at one point, when Master Yoda tried to refute her claims, she silenced him by saying, and I quote, “suck my dick, you crusty little goblin”. Vulgar as her speech was, though, its meaning reigned true—the Jedi had no right to punish neither she nor Naj, and she would tolerate their rules no longer. She closed her speech by ripping out her padawan braid, mashing it into the ground with her boot, taking Naj’s hands, and telling the council that, “if loving Naj isn’t the Jedi way, then the Jedi way isn’t my way”. She then pulled him in for a impassioned kiss, and after it was broken she said, “now that is my way”.

The room went silent for a moment—save for Master Sko’dal uttering a half impressed/half shocked “holy sh*t” under their breath, no one said a word. Finally, after snapping back to reality, Yoda simply furrowed his brow and pointed towards the exit, without another word. Anva responded by flipping him the bird, and as she did, Naj swept her off her feet and bridal-carried her out of the chamber. The two couldn’t help but smile, then laugh at the whole ordeal. Sure, they’d burnt every bridge they’d ever built in one fell swoop, but now they were free to go and do as they pleased—and they’d never felt happier. It was the most surreal thing, them walking out of the temple; they marched out like a bride and groom walking down the aisle, but no one dared cheer for them, lest they face similar banishment. The two were alone, for real this time—but they were alone together.

In the coming days the Republic and the Jedi order would fall, but Anva and Naj were far too long gone to even pay any mind to it. For the next few years, the two would travel the galaxy together, making end’s meet as smugglers with a worn-out old quadjumper and a whole lot of luck. They’d spend most of their days working as smugglers, but they did take days off every once in a while to visit old Jedi friends (ones who weren’t dead yet, anyway) or, when they had some extra credits, go on modest little date nights. It wasn’t a glorious life, sure, but for all the things they didn’t have, they at least had each other.

Soon enough, though, they had someone else along for the ride. Three years after leaving the Order, Anva found that she was pregnant. Though she and Naj both agreed their lifestyle wasn’t ideal for a kid to grow up in, they decided that, like they had in the past, they’d just jump in head-first and hope for the best. Thus, in 16 BBY, Anva had the baby in the back of the quadjumper, with the help of a borrowed medical droid and Naj—they couldn’t exactly go to a hospital, what with them being fugitives and all. They’d decided earlier that, if it was a boy, Anva would get to name him Cerate, and if it was a girl, Naj would get to name her Stella, with the baby taking the last name of whomever won as well. Sure enough, he was a boy, so they decided on the name Cerate Aster Evis—funny enough, though, it wasn’t until he said the name out loud that Naj got the “eviscerate” pun. Anva figured that, if he was going to take her last name, he might as well have some kind of callback to his Nightbrother side.

So for the next four years, Anva and Naj would try their best to raise Cer while also juggling their job as smugglers, going so far as to keep him in the co*ckpit with them while they worked. Despite the less-than-ideal circ*mstances, Anva and Naj actually made great parents—they always made sure he had time with both of them, they never let work get in the way of raising him, and they protected him from anything and anyone that would try to harm him. They realized, though, that the last point would only get harder as he grew up; as early as a year old, Cer started showing signs of Force sensitivity. Anva and Naj both knew from their own lives how Force-sensitive children tend to get kidnapped, but nevertheless, they did everything they possibly could have to keep their son safe and hidden.

But it would only work for so long—soon enough, the Sith would find out about Cer. One day, Anva and Naj were contacted about what they thought was a lucrative job opportunity, and seeing as they were low on cash, they naturally took it. When they went to the meeting place their client had specified, though, they were met with something far worse: a hulking figure clad in black armor, wielding a lightsaber. It was an Inquisitor; Anva and Naj had heard about them from their still-living Jedi friends, but they’d never seen one in person. Anva’s first instinct was to reach for her own saber-pike—she’d still kept it retracted on her belt, after all these years—but she decided it would be better to wait before exposing her and Naj. The two silently agreed to play dumb, then, but when the Inquisitor spoke, their hearts sank. She wasn’t after them, she said—she wanted Cer.

When Anva and Naj protested, the Inquisitor ignited her saber and, rather than use it right away, demanded once more that they hand him over. She stepped toward the ship, but before she could get closer, Anva quickly pulled out her saber and sliced off the inquisitor’s outstretched hand in one fell swoop. With a stern voice masking blazing fury, Anva stated, “Stay the hell away from my family”. Yet what the Inquisitor did next replaced all of Anva’s fury with fear—from the stump on her arm, blue and purple tendrils shot out and grabbed the severed hand, pulling it back into place. The Inquisitor inspected the hand briefly, and as she did, Anva realized what she was. She was a Gen’Dai—an alien that, as far as she knew, could never be killed. She wouldn’t be able to win this fight. The best she could do is slow her down but, in the end, there was no way out of this.

Instantly, Anva pulled Naj back into the ship and shut the door. She knew it wouldn’t hold, but it was the best she could think of. All the commotion had woken up a then-sleeping Cer, and he and Naj both stared up at Anva with looks of confusion. Anva didn’t want to say what she had to but, with a heavy heart, she began. She told Naj he needed to run—he needed to take Cer, and find a safe place for him to stay. While he did, Anva would hold the Inquisitor off—fight her as long as she could, just to give Naj and Cer as much time as possible. Naj, of course, protested—he said they could escape together, that he could help Anva fight, but they both knew there was no other way. Finally, after a brief shouting-match-turned-fit-of-tears, Naj agreed. The two tried to maintain their composure for a second, but when Cer asked if everything was okay, they instantly lost it. Not knowing what else to do, Anva and Naj pulled Cer into one last big embrace, telling him that everything would be okay.

Finally, after working up her courage for a moment, Anva stepped out of the ship. She smiled back at Naj and Cer one last time before the door shut again, tears still staining her face. That was the last time Naj or Cer ever saw her alive. Quickly, Naj started the quadjumper’s engines, and he and Cer left the planet for...somewhere. Naj didn’t know where at first, but after some thought, he came up with an idea. He knew he couldn’t stay with Cer either, so he needed a secure place for him to stay—somewhere he could be protected, hidden, and hopefully, never told about the Force. He decided that the best possible place would be on Devaron, with his and Anva’s old Jedi friend, Hes Chaddic.

It was nighttime when Naj got to Devaron, and heavy rain was blanketing the Angel’s jungle hideout. With his son in hand, he knocked on the massive factory door and asked for Hes, who came to greet him only half-dressed and half-awake. As Naj explained his situation, though, Hes perked right up. He told her about the Inquisitor, about Anva’s sacrifice, everything—and he begged Hes to look after Cer. He made it out like it would only be for a few days while he waited to get out of the Inquisitor’s sight, but Hes wasn’t fooled. “Naj,” she said, “we both know you won’t be back”

“I know, Hes,” he replied, his heart in his throat, “That’s why I need you to take care of him.” At this, Hes realized the gravity of the situation. She knew she had no idea how to raise a kid but...she had to help her friend, too. Finally, she agreed. Naj thanked her, and with a final embrace and some reassuring words to his son, he said goodbye. It took him a full five minutes to get onto the ship again—for the longest time he just stood in the doorway, not moving as far as Hes or Cer could see. He was crying still. Finally, with some effort, he boarded the ship, closed the door, and flew off into the night. Cer’s little hand waved up to him, and with a deep sigh, Hes took him inside. Naj would never return.

Sweet Child of Mine Ch 4

As a fanfic writer I cannot express how much comments mean to me! These fics do take an exorbitant amount of time to write with flash fics taking me anywhere from an hour to two hours and longer fics taking three hours to five or six. I write for free and all I ask is comments/feedback in return when you like and or reblog!

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Contrary to what one may assume, Drax the destroyer did not like seeing innocent people in pain. The only people he did enjoy seeing in pain were his victims and his victims were not innocent. So when he saw Groot whimpering in his pot, staring at his missing arm he shouted,

“Who has harmed smaller Groot? I will tear them limb from limb!”

“That would be Star-Freak!” Rocket yelled, frantically setting Groot’s pot down in their common area. The flora colossus still looked forlorn at the burtn edges of his shoulder but he had stopped crying.

“Is anyone else hurt?” Gamora asked, punching the button on the Milano which closed the hatch.

“N…no,” Peter huffed, looming over Groot. Drax shook his head. Rocket only waved a hand dismissively.

“We got the alkaline too then?” Peter pulled it from his pack.

“Good. I’ll set us on course to Nowhere.” Without another word she left them.

“sh*t…is he okay?” Peter’s eyes looked over Groot with fervor.

“Apart from his missing arm he is fine.” Drax surveyed.

“Why did you attack me? Rocket I could’ve dropped him all together!”

“He was scared you dumb ass!” The enhanced raccoon did not turn from watering the little tree. “He’s always been a scardy cat and he didn’t like being hoisted down in there!”

“I did stuff like that all the time when I was little!” It burst forth from him before he could say.“This was nothing! Do you know how many times Yondu put my life on the line?!” Peter watched Rocket’s lips pull back in a teeth bearing threat though he still didn’t turn around.“I must’ve broken my arm a thousand times!” Memories of loud noises and shaking ground came back to him in a torrent of unease. “Groot came back after he was blown up! This is just his arm….now look I feel really bad about it Rocket, I really do but…” Yondu’s harsh bravado shouted in his mind.

“What the hell is wrong with you boy?!” Peter gritted his teeth and looked over the mammal’s shoulder. Groot seemed to be no worse for wear, his occasional moans made the human’s stomach go in knots but it could’ve been worse right? “You nearly got us all killed!” The blue alien had screeched when they were back on the ship. At thirteen years old, this was his seventeenth mission out in the field with Yondu’s crew and at least his hundredth time getting injured. Years later Peter could still remember the excruciating pain he felt. Looking at Groot’s sad little face brought it back.

“Yeah he can regenerate you dumb-ass!” Rocket whirled on him, though his gun stayed strapped to his back. “He can regenerate when he’s full grown but this has never happened to him before! I don’t know how long it will take him to grow his arm back, who knows if he even can!” The reddish-brown eyes narrowed in a contempt that Peter was momentarily immune to. The husky voice of the ravager berated against his skull.

“You damn idiot! How did you turn out so stupid?” He could see Yondu shake his head in dismay. “Knew I should’a let em’ eat you.”

“….my arm hurts…” his voice so small Peter himself could scarcely remember it. He could, however, remember the pain that came after when Yondu turned on him and punched him lightly in the shoulder. He remembered the blue ravager ordering their surgeon to check him out and the haphazard sling. Kraglin coming and checking on him a few nights later when he was crying in the ship’s bay. Peter’s childhood began and ended with his mother, his adolescence thrown together by Yondu and his crew and whatever job they were on.

“Just…let me know if he needs anything,” Peter called over whatever threats Rocket was yelling. With a wave of his hand he turned his back and made his way to the pilot’s chair.

“How’s Groot?” Gamora asked after some time. He sighed, already imagining the lecture she had in store.

“I think he’ll be okay after a few days.” He watched her nod and stare out into the galaxy ahead of them.

“We need to be better,” she said quietly.

“What do you mean?” He stole a look at her, frowning down in her lap as she expertly navigated the ship in the co-pilot seat.

“With Groot. You said it yourself he’s a child. We have a responsibility to him, to take care of him and to make sure he doesn’t end up like…” Peter huffed.

“What like me?”

“No.” She cut him off, glaring at him. “Like all of us.” Responsibility. One of his mother’s favorite words. He could almost smile at it. But like all of us? What was she getting at? Whatever it was, Gamora declined to elaborate.

“We’ll get the alkaline to the collector and then we see about getting Groot healed if he hasn’t regenerated already.”

“Of course.” Peter nodded, thrusting the ship forward. The sooner they got in and out of Nowhere the better in his mind. In the blackness of space Peter could see the ravager ship clearly in his mind. There’d only been one time during his own messed up childhood when Yondu had actually cared for his safety. After a failed robbery attempt in the Tristone Quadrant.

“Peter!? Stay still!” The tight coil around his head went tighter. The alien woman held him with an inexplicable strength. Yondu stood before him, frozen in place. Peter squirmed for the life of him but there was no other conceivable way of escaping. Sweat ran down his arms and legs, he tried to cough through the smoke but the suction of the tentacle that held him sucked all breath from his body. Peter could still recall that fear. The same fear he only now realized had been in Groot’s eyes. This…insert item here…is worth more than me? Why didn’t he recognize it sooner?

“I’ve become him….” He laughed.

“Who?” Gamora inquired. He tilted the Milano to the left, avoiding an asteroid.

“Yondu.” But if he had become like Yondu in his neglect and utter dumb-ass misguided parenting, (if you could even call it that,) …then maybe I can practice the good parts too…he recalled watching Yondu in his mind.

“Make one move and the boy gets it!” The fire-squid woman threatened. Peter’s wide eyes had found Yondu’s fear and for that split second, that terrifying moment he could see Yondu’s fear, his helplessness and something else he couldn’t quite place. He got out of it eventually, when Yondu had charged head first towards the monster, and had come out worse for wear because of it.

“It’s alright,” Yondu’s big warm, calloused hands carried him back to the ship. “Ain’t your fault boy,” that’s all he kept repeating. “It ain’t your fault.” He’d dropped Peter off, handing him to the crew and went straight to lay down. Peter shook his head, trying to dispel the memory.

“Yondu wasn’t all bad,” Gamora’s voice brought him back. “You’re here aren’t you? If he was really as bad as you make him out to be, you wouldn’t be here at all.” He shrugged, it was easiest not to think about it.

“Let’s just get to the Collector.” She nodded and thrust the ship forward.

“Do not trouble yourself small friend. Infants are stronger then they seem. One time my Kameria…”

“Shut up! I don’t care about your stupid kid!” Drax bristled. Rodent. He isn’t worth it. “Little Groot will be alright. Give him a few days.” He watched the strange squirrel creature rattle off a list of profanities while the small tree in question finally fall asleep. Kameria got into all sorts of trouble he recalled with bittersweet memory. There was the time she almost got her hand bitten off by a Razator, the time she fell off that ledge and other time she got roughed up by that other boy on the playground. He’d pulled her hair and she broke his jaw. He’d been so proud.

“I did it papa!”

“Good girl! You must never show mercy to those who wrong you.” He hugged her tight to him, her scent of wind blown hair and open fields, of dirt and a hint of sweat and sunshine.

“He pulled my hair really hard, see?” She pulled her blonde hair out of the way to reveal her scalp. Drax could still remember looking fine. Well…now that he thought of it there was bit of irritated redness. “So I had to punch him really hard just like you showed me!” Kameria made a fist, pudgy fingers curling inward. She stuck her thumb inside to protect it and jabbed outward, hitting his chest squarely.

“Ouch!” Drax recoiled, keeping her steady in his arms and watched her blue eyes go wide as orbs.

“Oh papa I’m sorry!” That did it, he deflated with laughter.

“I’m only kidding little bug!” The look of disappointment made him grin wider. “But I won’t be for long!” Her giggle in his memory was a choir of light. She wouldn’t be alive for long. Happiness mixed with sorrow and Drax sighed, breathe the pain out. It was something he learned after the first kill he made. When all the adrenaline drained out of him and he only had his grief left. He hoped every day that he gave Kameria a good childhood, but he would ever know for certain. He watched Groot sleep, the tiny stub of burnt bark at the end of his shoulder showed no sign of regrowth. He swallowed the stab of worry. The same flavor of anxiety he had whenever Kameria got hurt. Something about the feeling filled him with a small amount of…happiness? No, familiarity and a soundness in feeling such.

“How much longer till we reach Nowhere?” Rocket growled, sitting on a makeshift stool, he leaned over on the table looking over the small plant.

“I would guess three leaps at least.” The varmint sniffed irritated.

“Great.” Drax frowned,

“How is that grea…”

“Sarcasm.” He nodded, pretending as hard as he could that he understood. Rocket only glanced at Groot in his pot one last time before trudging off to work on some unknown project.

“You are leaving him unsupervised?” Drax could not believe the foolishness leaving an unattended child alone. An unattended hurting child.

“He ain’t a baby! He was scared but that don’t make him a child!” Drax frowned, how could the varmint be so confused. I thought he was at least an intelligent animal. Rocket didn’t elaborate, only cursing until he was out of sight. Groot’s good arm hung limply, head lolling. Drax felt the Milano glide soundlessly through the stars. Odd. Quill usually plays music. There was no music tonight. He glanced around and only then approached the plant.

“….I do not know why.” He sat, little Groot breathed deeply, eyes moving beneath his wooden lids. “You remind me of her.” He shook his head at the strangeness of it. Why? He mulled over it while sitting, waiting, watching. There was nothing he could do to help the little Groot, but he could at least sit to be there when he woke. He used to do the same when Kameria was first born and although this brought him no solace from his grief, it did seem to soothe his spirit. Drax the Destroyer needed little rest he would stay and watch the plant. He was not good at understanding the words of others. But he understood their actions and inactions. Groot slept and he observed. He was good at that.

“I got it Gams,” Peter said after awhile. “You can go sleep. It’ll be awhile before we reach Nowhere. Maybe check on Groot?” She was sure the plant was fine. She had to believe he was. I did nothing to protect him. Never have. She only nodded and made her way to her own quarters, spying Drax along the way. He sat diligently, his eyes now softly looking over the tiny tree. All seems well, in her room Gamoa slid the iron door shut. Wringing her hands she sat on the edge of her bunk, hands folded and head bent. We have to make sure he is not raised. We have a responsibility to him, to take care of him and to make sure he doesn’t end up like us. Like me. She sighed, ignoring the aching in her own metal implants, one of the more memorable pieces of her own childhood. Before Thanos she was sure there was something. She knew he killed her parents, she remembered that. She remembered their deaths and watching out the window of the ship as all she’d ever known until that point was destroyed. But for the life of her, she could not remember the intricacies of her upbringing before Thanos. No favorite food, no happy nights reading stories with her mother, or walks with her father. Even Quill had music at least. She had screams and silence in the rooms where Thanos trained her. No one deserves that upbringing. No one….not even Nebula. Gamora strode to her lifting weights. Ten, fifteen, twenty…thirty, fifty pounds. With a heave she lifted, her core burning as the hoisted the beam above her head. Her feet planted firmly into the floor. The aching pain vibrated through her, giving her a focus for her thoughts. She bent her arms, the pain changed slightly, then lifted again. Up and down went the warm strain of muscle and machine inside her. When fighting and keeping up her strength the two parts of her worked in tandem quite well. Whenever else, they were a contradiction, a dark reminder that Thanos’s power would always be inside her. No matter the ends to which she used it. It was there. Fifteen more times she lifted her weights, adding five lbs each time. Then she spared, then cleaned her weapons and burid herself deeper in distraction. Only when she was sure that no one else was up did she come to the common area and found herself smiling at the little flora colossus sleeping form.“He’s still asleep?” Drax nodded, she moved to sit beside him and watched as he scoot over for her. Smiling she looked at Groot.

“Get some rest Drax, it’s been a long day.”

“This day is no longer then any other.” Gamora explained and he smiled sheepishly. “You don’t have to be embarrassed. It’s alright.” He stood,

“Thank you.” The rare frankness in his eyes made her grin. “…and thank you for assisting me today in our fight. You are a worthy companion in battle.”

“Thank you Drax.” He nodded, sparing a moment to gently caress the top of the sleeping Groot before leaving. In the stillness Gamora watched the baby tree.

“I’ll never let what happened to me, happen to you.” She vowed with as much seriousness as if she were vowing to a full grown companion. “Today I failed in that duty and you were hurt. I will not fail you…” the image of his spores, yellow and calm filled her eyes. The serenity as they fell, his deep resonating voice. “I will not fail you.” As if on cue Groot blinked his eyes awake. He looked up in her in confusion for a few moments, only to smile and reach for her hair. He tugged gently, producing a laugh from her. “You aren’t in pain any more are you?” He only tugged her hair again and made a squeak of joy. Little thing is going to make me go soft. She thought, not all too ashamed. They played until even the assassin’s eyes grew heavy and Groot again began to doze off, one miniature wooden hand grasping her finger. “And Rocket say’s you’re not a baby.”

These. Flarking, Compressor. Coils. Rocket tried again, just as he predicted the turbines on the Milano were getting all gummed up. The inner workings of the thrusters were also shabby. Cheapskate. He added it to the list of reasons he was gonna shoot Star-Mooch in the leg one of these days. Sighing the mammal continued his work at a frantic pace. Working with the motors kept him from thinking about how badly he’d already failed his promise to do a better job being Groot’s partner. He whirled the coil around and cut it short, trying to attach it to the main converter. He ain’t a kid. He’s still Groot. Still my Groot. Rocket’s mouth watered for alcohol, any drop of it, but they hadn’t landed anywhere in a while long enough for him to stock up. No one else was up, he knew that much from the lack of noise about the ship. Even Gamora who normally stayed up the latest was now asleep. Rocket worked, snipping, tucking, and manufacturing the thrusters on the Milano, improvising wherever he had to. Groot ain’t a baby…ain’t a child or anything else but small and he’s going to grow…Rocket didn’t know what a childhood was. He had a vague scent-based memory of something warm and musk smelling. He always assumed it was his mother. But beyond that single smell Rocket could only remember chemicals and iron and plastic. He never had a childhood, he had the process by which he was made into what he was now. Some little monster. He knew patronizing very well, he knew what it was to be delegitimized, infantilized. Reduced to a freak or a fluffy pet and Groot was none of these things. No matter how tiny and helpless he was for now. Rocket inspected the last of the turbines, making last minute tweaks and only after testing them did he go to the engine room. He spotted Groot along the way. In his pot, one limb missing. It made him recoil with guilt. He ain’t a kid….he’s just…growing. He’s still my Groot. Isn’t he?

I hate how paralyzed I get when I know that whatever I’m trying to write is meant to be posted as proper fic. Even when it’s just a ficlet. Anything that requires an actual beginning and an actual end I guess.

Idk why it’s that much easier when I’m just chatting to someone or when it’s vaguely meta-ish and doesn’t have to start anywhere or have any sense of direction. It’s even worse with Carraville because I’ve never ever *needed* to write about a ship this much. All the pieces fit together in my head but then when you get down to actually putting one word down after the other it all seems wrong. Or maybe not wrong but definitely not enough y’know? Like suddenly all my words just seem so pathetically small.

Anyway, so as some sort of psychological ‘exercise’ this is for the WIP thing that @blindbatalex​ tagged me in and it’s 100% something that I never ever thought would ever get posted anywhere or end up in any proper fic - but maybe if I can let go of something as heavy and strange as this then surely SURELY I’ll eventually be able to fire off cute fluffy cuddle meme ficlets?

So this isn’t the focal point of the WIP and it’s basically tied to a memory of Gary’s that comes up earlier in the story and to his thoughts on him and Carra and the choices they both made growing up and the choices they continue to make, how much of it was them and how much of it wasn’t.

(Trigger warning for non-graphic/lightly-detailed discussion of physical punishment as parental discipline. If you read the beginning of Carra’s book you know what I’m talking about)

In Valencia he reads Jamie’s book. He thinks he must have at least flipped through it before Jamie joined the show but doesn’t remember much. It takes him a month to get past the first page. He was expecting the usual footballer fare; he’d certainly heard Carra talk about home enough -

Once in my bedroom, it hailed football boots. My drowned jersey felt heavier by the second as it absorbed my tears. My dad told me I'd let him down as much as myself. No Carragher was going to be seen as such a coward, especially not in public. I needed to understand the value of pride, and to learn to deal with tough circ*mstances. I knew the next time I played, no matter how demanding the situation, I wouldn't hide.

Another time, another place, maybe the image wouldn’t have struck him the way it did.

Jamie at seven; skinny but already strong, scattered freckles and a crew-cut only slightly less unfortunate than Gary’s at that age.

Jamie at seven, lying on his bed in soaking wet kit, sobbing. The boots he’d been thrashed with there on the floor of his room and Gary could so easily fill in the details of that room. Just like his and Phil’s, only blue.

Jamie at seven, tired and freezing cold on a rapidly darkening pitch with rain coming in torrents and sharp little hailstones pelting the top of his head where he could feel them biting into his scalp before sliding down the back of his collar.

Jamie at seven, so sharp and bright, already playing with boys three years older than him, that much bigger and faster and what pleasure they must have taken in battering him at every opportunity.

Jamie, for the first and possibly only time in his life thinking that there was another way out but through. Taking a dive so he could go home just once, just this one time. Thinking he could be home before the last of the light died, by the time the match finished he could be warm and dry, could sleep that night without having to find a position so the bruises wouldn’t hurt.

So much for all that.

Jamie at seven, looking up from his artful dive and seeing his father coming towards him and knowing that by the time the match finished he’d be wishing it was just a few knocks from the lads on the pitch.

Jamie at thirty, telling this story to the guy who put his book together for him -

Gary at thirty-six in his editor’s office. He’d been so determined to write the whole thing by himself and it was one of the only points the editor hadn’t just trusted him with blindly. He’d gotten up from behind his desk and taken a seat next to Gary on the modernist gray sofa with the manuscript draft stacked in front of them, sitting a bit too close and speaking too gently all of a sudden in a way that stuck in Gary’s gullet to this day. Saying that he wasn’t there to sell books but to help Gary tell his story in a way that he would still be satisfied with a decade down the line and that from past experience he recommends taking a few days to think it over and decide if he wanted to take out the references to getting a belting or being battered.

Gary at thirty-six, co*cking his head to the side in confusion and looking at his editor like he was speaking a foreign language.

The girls are playing a game only they seem to know the rules to in the shallow end of the pool and he thinks - tries just for the briefest of moments to imagine raising a hand to them and ends up putting Carra’s book down before he can even finish the thought - -

[[So in Gary’s autobiography he briefly mentions missing his curfew by fifteen minutes once when he was thirteen and how his dad “leathered” him for it. And then he says “I didn’t do it again. A lesson always stayed taught in our house.”

And also that he would have “battered” him and Phil if they’d get out of hand with each other – and I always feel sick to my stomach when people say things like that offhandedly, like it was nothing, and then I start to think that maybe I really am reading it wrong but then I heard this interview with Phil and he was saying how in high school his dad had said to the teachers that they had permission to take a belt to him if he was misbehaving and that if they complained about it at home then he’d do it himself and just… yeah, no.

The heartbreaking thing is that just like Gary when he wrote that part of his book I think Jamie really didn't mean for it to be taken as anything but a story about the value of hard graft/old-fashioned values or whatever. But it's been a long time since they wrote those books and for Gary especially I think a lot of things have changed. There was his father's trial and everything that came with it and then his father's death, and in the meantime his girls have long since reached the age where he has clear memories of that sort of thing and even if he never thought of it as anything severe because it was the norm all around when he was growing up and even now he probably can't imagine saying anything about it to anyone because it's like unless your parents were textbook capital A abusive to the point where even tough northerners would think that was going too far then you should just shut up. ]]

Little Cosmos

Paring: Yondu Udonta/Reader

Tags: female reader, reader-centric, Parent Yondu Udonta, time travel, fix-it fic, set in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, spoilers!!, fluff, angst.

Summary:Sometimes, to fix the hurt, you need a little miracle. Or perhaps, a stray sorcerer supreme.

Word Count: 1,426

Posting Date: 2017-06-11

Current Date: 2017-06-15

It was the hollow feeling in your chest that made it so much worse. But it couldn’t be worse, not like it was on Kraglin, or Peter. But everyone standing around, everyone flying back to their homes, everyone whispering their condolences seemed to know that you were the one who knew Yondu the most.

He was always signing himself up for things bigger than himself. That was your Yondu - the man whose whistle was a harbinger of death, who led a faction of space pirates and plundered the galaxies for treasures...the man who fell for you. You'd say it was a hard thing to do, but your husband sure insisted that it wasn't. He wasn't a man of pretty words, but he'd wax poetic about you, to you, with you whenever he could, when you were alone. God, he wasn’t a wordsmith, and butchered every word that passed through those lips, but they were words which made you feel chills, heart melt.

It was like he was two people; the rough ‘n tumble star cowboy, and the love-struck tragical blue man. He'd tell you every day that he loved you.Without fail. He’d never forget. Over coffee, between shifts, over the Comms unit. Before bed, in between sentences, in fire-fight. It drove Peter mad over the years - the young boy wasn't fond of displays of affection, but if he was on Yondu's ship, and Yondu was captain, he'd be quiet when the captain would kiss his wife. You’d let him protest, though. He was entitled to it.

Whenever you could, you'd take Peter out away from the crew onto new planets and explore the cities, never forcing him to do anything that he wasn't comfortable with, like stealing, or lying like your husband would tech him. No. To you, the young boy was almost like your own, and sometimes when you were tired, or the light was funny, you'd see him as your own child. Yondu even saw it sometimes. But Peter never called youmotherand did his damnedest to rebel against Yondu, and that was that. The young man had troubles beyond your abilities as the daughter of a laundromat servicer back on Terran. You weren’t a shrink, and you weren’t a magician. But you loved your boys. With all your heart.

But that didn't mean you didn't try. Stars, you tried your best. You had been a teenager too, at some time ago (it felt like ages at times) and you felt his pain. And even though he never said anything, you suspected that Peter thought of you as a sort of guardian. An angel on his shoulder to guide him. It felt nice to be a mother. It had been something that was expected of you, from Earth – an assurance that by your gender you'd marry, you'd birth heirs to your father's business, you'd die surrounded by family.

Yondu had died with Peter. He’d always had trouble with getting words out right, yes, but always to Peter. Never found the right time to tell him what he felt about being like the young boy’s own father. But he’d died with Peter. And like all those pretty fairy stories where the children go out exploring with their fantasies and fantastic adventures led by their fathers, you had been left home, out of the fuss, unknowing to the fact that your husband had been dead. Kraglin had sent word, and you’d spaced-jumped as fast as you could to be there.

It made the feeling below your chest so, so much worse.

Sure, you were Peter’s sort-of-mother, but the lackadaisical dream of bearing offspring was long-lost back on Terran. Or, so it seemed. It wasn't until the pair of you were older, and Peter was a man grown, near eight months ago that you realised that you had missed a cycle in your monthlies. Two. Because you knew nothing of the fertility and workings of Yondu's race, you had no idea that youcouldbe pregnant, let alone, that Yondu and you could…together. Your body couldn't deny the evidence.

You were to be a mother again.

Yondu had barely a moment spare, then, you remember; he was busy rushing around the ship, trying his best to man the thing himself, with few crew, most on shore leave. He was trying to get the ship ready for an upcoming quest, gosh, he was always signing himself up for trouble, and you loved him despite that reckless trait.

Stars, sometimes you loved him for it.

“I'm pregnant, Yondu,” you shout over the clanging and banging going on inside the hallway he'd ambled off into. The banging and clanging stopped. You could hear a thump of steps, and Yondu was back, looking at you. “I - I'm producing offspring? Is that a thing?”

His eyes had been wide, mouth agape. “You're what?” He whispers.

You had cleared your throat at that, “Pregnant. With child. Um, bearing fruit?" You try and think of more synonyms. You'd never talked about kids to one another, never in your years married to each other. It just hadn't come up at all, with no need at all. You had raced around the stars together, flying through constellations. Populating didn’t make the cut when adventuring was on the table. “Hey, baby, say something.”

"Pregnant," He had repeated the word, slowly taking a step toward you, then two more. "…is that what you Terran's call it when you're knocked up?"

You nod, biting back your laugh, “We're having a baby, Yondu. Well, that's what my body says. I don't think there are any medical professionals out here in the galaxy who know much about Terran biology, let alone hybrid genes... you prattle off, trying to distract him from the facts. "I'm - I'm not as young as I used to be."

He shakes his head, and slowly, puts his hands upon the sides of your shoulders. "You sure as hell don't look it, sweetheart.”

Peter moves to your side, and looking to him, you bury your head in the crook of his neck. He’d grown up so much, and it had happened it what seemed like a blink of an eye. You can remember the days as a young woman, the same age as he is, before you were in space. You had run away from home, and ended up somewhere in New Mexico near a small-town Puente Antiguo. Running from your fate to grow old and marry the man you sat next to all your school years, fate to be stuck in a hundred-year-old rut that your bloodline had been stuck in too, too long. You had been abducted and taken into outer space, and gladly so. You found Yondu, and he found you.

"You sure as hell don't look it, sweetheart.”

“Ma?” Peter murmured, and gazing up, you realise your eyes are wet, and not just from the funeral that had just happened. “Are you going to be okay?”

Before you can explain the new tears, or to Peter that he’s never called youmabefore, there’s a pain in your belly, and there’s a tightening in your chest, and running down your leg, is liquid that had come from within you. It felt just like the old movies you used to watch, with the classic same-old cliché of the pregnant lady giving birth at the worst possible time.

“What –,” Peter sees your trousers, eyes wide. “It’s time?”

A hand on your midsection, you nod. The movies had always showed the women in pain, but you could never fathom it to be just like this. Wincing, you gasp, and almost double over. “I guess junior here’s upset they’re late to meet Papa,” you joke, and blowing hard, you motion to the med bay in the Ravager ship. “Get Kraglin. And a nurse droid.”

---

Thirteen hours later, and you are holding a bundle of joy that came screaming into the world. Her hair is tight, and curly, as dark a blue as her skin is. But those eyes, they’re your eyes, and looking at your child, you can see every part of Yondu and yourself in her. She’s beautiful.

Your little Cassiopeia.

She is quiet now, sucking upon your finger. Peter looks like he has truly seen magic, and his Guardians of the Galaxy stand by the door, a safe distance from the newborn. Though you know Drax had a daughter of his own, you don’t trust the weapons experts and ex-assassins near your hours-old child.

But then, everything stills, like time is frozen. Frowning, you see you, and your daughter, you are not kept still, but as you see this, you also notice the wall before you open, and a man with facial hair stepping through. He wears strange clothes, and his hands glow, but you know in your bones that this man is from Earth.

“Are you _______ Udonta?” He asks. “Born _______ _______?” You nod, mutely, almost confused as to why he is there. Is he a magician? Is this a trick of your mind? What kind of trick would make you see a man walk through the walls of the spacecraft the day your husband died? “I meant to traverse to…I suppose now I am here, I can take you to your husband.”

Your face blanches. “My husband is dead,” you gape, holding your daughter closer to your chest. “Who are you?”

He extends his hand to you, a gloved hand. “I am the man who will take you back to the time you married your husband, and allow you to raise your daughter in that timestream.” Motioning to the wall he came from, he adds, “You deserve this, _______. You will re-live your life, but you will not age until you pass to this point. You cannot change the future, as it is locked to place. Peter Quill will always defeat Ronan, rid the universe of Ego. You will be with him once more.”

“This isn’t a trick, is this?” you whisper. “I’ll see Yondu once again?”

The man before you confirms this with a nod. “I am Stephen Strange, and this I vow.”

You struggle to stand, the pain of just giving birth still taking a toll on you. But with a wave of his hand, you feel it dissipate, and your feet carrying you with the vigour of a younger you toward the portal on the wall. But before you step through and take his hand, you pause. “Will this moment…be frozen in time? Will Yondu always die? What will he think about a baby he has not made yet with me?”

The man, Stephen Strange smiles. “This moment is frozen until you return through time, and the future that is nearest to you – that is always up to you to change. And as for the baby…” He nods. “I have manipulated time to allow for you to her naturally there. He will know no different.”

You place your hand in his, your other arm firm around your newborn. “Take me to my husband.”

---

Yondu Udonta was not a man of pretty words, and loved to get into things bigger than himself, fight fights for treasures across galaxies and dream bigger than his body. Sure, he wasn’t a man of pretty words, but he’d wax poetic about you, to you, with you whenever he could, and he’d say the same about his daughter, the love of the both of your lives. It was like he was three people – the rough ‘n tumble star cowboy, the love-struck tragical blue man, and the father who cherished his daughter, and Peter Quill all the way to the sun and back.

“…the future that is nearest to you – that is always up to you to change.”The sorcerer Stephen Strange had told you that fateful night. You lived by this, never forgetting for a moment what your quest was. You were a mother, by all definitions of the term. And you would protect what was yours at all costs. You had already lived through this life – when you remembered what trouble would follow a consequence, you would think beyond it, doing your best to prevent the fallout the previous actions had had.

Cassiopeia and Peter grew side by side, the curly-haired half Centaurian and Terran happily exploring the world together. He grew to be the man you remembered he had turned to be, and your daughter loved her father with all her heart, and then some. You were so, so blessed that the man who had accidently appeared the night you brought her to the universe gave you a change to raise her with her father. She knew no different, knew no grief like you did.

But that passed. Because Yondu Udonta did not die on October 19. You changed the future, by simply packing a second spacesuit. Your daughter, a woman grown had her father still, and the second child that grew in your belly, was born the evening he came back from fighting Ego. It was a blessing that coincidences and instances happened in your life. It was a blessing you had found Yondu, had found Peter. Your family was a blessing. And you had to thank a sorcerer and fate’s help from the little cosmos for that.