I Can't Get Over The Training Montage In Willow 2022. I'm Totally Not Obsessed With Willow

Some words to use when writing things:

winking

clenching

pulsing

fluttering

contracting

twitching

sucking

quivering

pulsating

throbbing

beating

thumping

thudding

pounding

humming

palpitate

vibrate

grinding

crushing

hammering

lashing

knocking

driving

thrusting

pushing

force

injecting

filling

dilate

stretching

lingering

expanding

bouncing

reaming

elongate

enlarge

unfolding

yielding

sternly

firmly

tightly 

harshly

thoroughly

consistently

precision

accuracy

carefully

demanding

strictly

restriction

meticulously

scrupulously

rigorously

rim

edge

lip

circle

band

encircling

enclosing

surrounding

piercing

curl

lock

twist

coil

spiral

whorl

dip

wet

soak

madly

wildly

noisily

rowdily

rambunctiously

decadent

degenerate

immoral

indulgent

accept

take

invite

nook

indentation

niche

depression

indent

depress

delay

tossing

writhing

flailing

squirming

rolling

wriggling

wiggling

thrashing

struggling

grappling

striving

straining

What if your character was an avid reader who's slowly going blind? So a character (a lover, a friend, family) who's insecure about their voice or reading out-loud ability takes it upon themselves to read to blind!character so they can still live in the stories like they used to?

I’m just saying, you can’t really be an atheist in the Marvel (and DC) universe in the sense of “not believing or lack of believe in gods”.

Wait for Me?

A presence appears on his vulnerable side. He doesn't turn to look nor does he tense nor let his breath get caught in his throat. “Hi,” he whispers into the tranquil quiet.

“Hi,” he hears barely.

He hums. “Would you mind if you transfer to my other side? It's hard to hear you when your words are this gentle and quiet....and, I want to see you.”

It was quiet but he felt his companion move to his right side. Still, he does not turn to look at the tuft of brown hair better, or the ever-so-slightly blemished warm skin. He merely looks on, admiring the astonishing view that the high vantage point gives him. 

He sees hands fiddling, a rare sign of vulnerability that Zuko finds out of character—to give Zuko with trust he does not know he deserves. A long beat and Jet finally talks 

“Did it ever mean anything?”

“It always did, for me. My heart has always been printed on my sleeve and I am not dishonest enough to be able to fake such authenticity.”

Silence.

“I did lie to you. I have lied about my name, and my character. I have lied about my scar, and about a lot else. But my feelings were as true as the sky is blue. Please, do not doubt that aspect of me.”

Yet another meaningful silence, a moment for his words to settle in Jet's mind.

“It hurt.”

“I know.” And he did. To find that your lover is part of a nation that you so passionately hate. To find that your lover's people were the cause of your misery, the slaughterers of your family and of your friends and of your village. That is a pain pill hard to swallow. “And I'm sorry.”

But, at the same time, Zuko was a child younger than Jet when it happened. And Zuko's only part in that act of sin was his ignorance and complacency. He does not say these things, for he knows he cannot handle Jet's wrath right now. His bellowing voice and his words. 

“I hurt you too,” Jet mumbles almost too quietly for Zuko to pick up on, but he did. Mumbled with a cracking voice.

“You did.”

“I've hurt so many people.”

“You have.”

Jet bends over, forehead touching his hands from where they rest, clasped together, on the half wall before him. He takes a shaky breath and clenches his jaw. And then he straightens himself, moves his hands to grip the wall tightly instead, neck craned upwards and eyes blinking quickly. “What do I do?”

He turns to look at him—looks at the way his tanned skin glows warmly under the golden rays of the sun setting in the horizon, his straw-like hair that tells of a hardened life billowing with the gentle winds, and his brown eyes glinting with amber and hazel...yet dim and haunted. 

Reluctance outlines his hands as his pale fingers glows almost white in contrast to the gaunt cheek to caresses. A miniscule twitch in Jet's hands doesn't go unnoticed, the clench of his fists and the frightful and hesitant gulp of saliva. Yet, despite it all—the fears and the doubts and the distrust, he leans his cheek into Zuko's awaiting palm.

Zuko looks at him with soft and fond eyes, the gold of his eyes glowing brighter than ever with the concentration of the sun in them. Jet looks at him from under his dark lashes for a miniscule moment before looking to the colorful sky. 

Tentatively, Jet's calloused hands—and thin, thinner that it was before, thinner than it should have been, malnourishment highlighting the jutted bones of his knuckles—wraps itself around Zuko's, guiding it gently towards his chapped lips to press a kiss against his reddish knuckles that sends a message of a thousand unspoken words. 

Jet lets his lips rest on the back of Zuko's hand, and in his humble ethereal glow, Zuko sees all the reasons his heart started fluttering for the man in front of him. Jet's eyes are closed and his hand squeezes his a bit tighter, as if he was daydreaming of a universe beyond their knowledge or maybe he was reminiscing of memories that feel out of reach—too good to be true but no less real. 

And Zuko can only watch and ingrain the image into his brain for his mind to see and remember for all the days to come, to dream about in the star-filled nights, to feel when his memories slowly leave him in his old age—if he survives long enough to reach that.

But nothing can stay in the beautiful stasis for long, no matter how much he wishes it to, for time is never on their side and time will continue to take if he lets it. So he turns his hand in Jet's grip and watches him sadly open his eyes with a knowing and resigned glint. He holds Jet's chin and lifts it upward, commanding Jet to look at him. 

Then he goes back to caressing Jet's cheek, letting the pads of his finger ink all of his wishes and desires on Jet's skin, hoping he is open enough for Jet to understand—and he does, if the shaky exhale was anything to go by. Zuko smiles affectionately.

“Let them learn, Jet, let them learn to forgive. And if they cannot, then you learn to let go, to move on and move forward, to heal.” He gently brushes away the fallen lash on Jet's cheek. “Heal, Jet. If not for yourself, then for anyone else. And if not for anyone else, then for yourself.”

Jet's eyes gained a teary sheen and he opened his mouth a bit then closed it with an exhale, pressing himself deeper into the soft touch of Zuko's. And he opens his mouth again to whisper, “I don't know how.”

He gazes into Jet's eyes, thoughts swirling behind the amber hue of his eyes. To say: you will figure it out, that is a promise and that is inevitable. Try and you will succeed. Open your mind and see yourself and see the world, see, Jet. Look and you're going to find what you seek. But for you to be able to move forward, you need to let go, Jet. 

To tell him: you are not alone, not as much as you seem to think. And you will never be alone because I will always be there, at your beck and call. No matter what, I'll figure out a way to get to you.

Instead he says only, “you need to stop focusing on every bad thing and you need to start accepting the good things, or else you'll forever be miserable.”

“I don't deserve to…” Jet trails off.

And Zuko understands what was left unsaid. Because he's felt it so passionately, and believed in it for so long. And he knows it's not true.

“You don't need to deserve happiness, you just need to be. You've done awful things, yes, so make amends. You can't take it all back, but you can't swallow in despair forever.”

Jet looks at him, trying so hard to keep the tears at bay. He understands, just as he understood all of the messages sent in Longshot's language, all the words spelled out in Jet's eyes. 

He presses a passionate kiss to Jet's other cheek and answers, “I will wait. For however long it will take you. For however long it takes you to find yourself and then find me.”

“And if I don't show up?”

He was silent, tasting words and sentences in his tongue, turning them on all sides to formulate something of an answer. “I’ll still love you.” 

Jet hiccups and his breath hitch and tears fall down and he sniffles.

“But I’ll learn to move on, even though I’ll never stop loving you or learn how to. I’ll move on. And maybe we both would find someone else, but you will still be someone I have loved and I will love.”

“Even if I'm like this?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry.”

He presses a kiss to Jet's cheeks.

“I know, and I have never held it against you, but I have long since forgiven you.”

He presses their foreheads together.

“Say it and I will, Jet.”

Jet remains quiet but soon—”Wait for me, please....Zuko?”

He smiles as he feels Jet's breath against his lips. 

“Okay.”

Imagine if Zuko's role and life and bloodline was taken even more extreme by the developers and writers and decided to make Zuko a descendent of Avatar Wan by making Sozin a descendent.

I haven't abandoned this story. I just put it on the back burner for now. The story is just on a small vacation. It is currently out of office. It can't come to the phone right now. It just fell under my bed to sleep with the monsters. It never left my head. It is everywhere - except on paper.

There was no clear time to be told. No exact date, exact time, exact moment that would be able to tell people. It was this...

Poison.

This slow killing poison that settles in the gaps of your jonts, the spaces in your muscles. It flows with your blood, following the set trail set by the veins. Until it reaches your brain.

If you asked, you would not be given a clear answer as to when everything cleared up and the thought came.

It was something that was planted long before the time came. It slowly blossomed, the poison as its water that tarnishes the soil it growing on.

It seeps into your being, poisonous, inky black blob of venom that crawled into the crevices of your body, your orfices and settled into you. Blending in with the crowd in your system until it leaked into your soul, painted your heart, manipulated your mind.

It was the blueish, the purplish, the disgusting array of colors that appeared on your skin as the bruised formed from another hit from an unloving and unlovable and disgusting and cruel and demonic hand. It was the bright and angry red that shaped itself as a hand that cupped the entirety of one half of your face.

It was the leakage of dark red blood that tasted like iron and smelled like it from your nose or your split lip or a cut from a bottle shard. Or the torn walls from where it slipped outside and slipped back once more.

This poison.

It takes several forms. It could be that droplet of blood that fell on your desk with a "plink". It could be the next person you talk to. The next hand that slots itself in your hand and it feels so so so wrong. It could be that stripe of saliva somewhere on your skin. It could be that look of a parent so unlike a parent's.

It could be the glinting of a silver blade that blinds you and cuts you with it's sharpness, and that blood that drips from your hand to the matress. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another.

Until.

Until it forms that big wet puddle of red. Like wet paint leaking across the surface of the canvas and spreading. Or blood on a tissue that spreads and leaks onto the bottom.

It could be that void in your chest as you stare at the opened and lifeless eyes of an abuser. Eyes that opened a minute before the final breath was taken. Fear etched onto them. That same fear you saw in your reflection. That same fear you saw reflected into those cruel, cruel orbs.

It could be the steps you took as you walked out.

Or it could be the tiny splash of water from when you dropped the bloody knife.

Or it could be that feeling in your chest you can't identify as you watch the crime, your crime, your sin, reported in the news and printed in the papers and talked around.

Or it could be that sickeningly sweet feeling you felt as you moved forward. Or the faint regret as you looked back.

Or that happy, giddy feeling as you left and started new.

Or that ghostly, cool touch of a hand that explores your every part with a burning, seering, hot pain.

Or that feeling of fear and relief when you woke up and your heartbeat's loud beating of thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thumo, thump...