you know i feel like i've already written this fic lmao BUT when has that ever stopped me before.............

basic idea is lumine, after arriving in snezhnaya and being immediately wanted for arrest (she IS there to stop the tsaritsa, after all) she doesn't know where else to go.... she leaves the major city and ends up in the small little town of morepesok, a name she's definitely heard before from childe.... trying to keep a low profile she's looking for somewhere to stay when in the marketplace area teucer spots her and recognizes her immediately (just like in the story quest). he's w tonia, anthon, and childe's mother, who insists she comes by for dinner. lumine hesitates, but childe should be out on the mission to look for her and bring her back to zapolyarny palace ANYWAYS....... so she agrees, albeit nervously

childe ends up heading home after a few hours of searching just to check on his family, wanting to see them as he always does when he feels kind of off about something. he doesn't REALLY want to fight lumine again - they're friends now, sort of, and they've helped each other a lot in the past. he also still owes her for helping him out w teucer that time (story quest!), and he can't deny how he feels about her... he's just hoping he's not the one who finds her, trusting she'd be able to hold her own against any of the fatui harbingers at this point. she's already beaten so many of them, after all. himself included.

but when he goes to his home, he comes face to face with lumine, laughing and smiling with his family as if she'd belonged there the whole time. there's often this underlying bit of sadness to her, when it comes to family, but for the first time since childe's known her she looks radiant. his little siblings obviously adore her, and his mother and father are listening to her stories and talking to her as if they'd known her their entire lives.

she's beautiful, and he's angry she's there. why is she there, in the last place he wants to be seeing her? where he knows he's obligated to take her back to the palace, but can he really?

thank you, vrains. thank you for everything. i loved watching the characters grow and face their traumas, i loved watching their bonds develop, and i will never forget how much you helped me, too.

saying goodbye to vrains is particularly difficult bc this wass the final show a dear friend binged for me, and was the final thing we talked about before she took her own life. it's hard enough to let go of a show that already came to mean so much to me, but add that in and i've been bawling like a fuckin baby for the last half hour lmao. it's a bit like saying goodbye to her for good, and six months later, i wasn't really ready for that.

but this show really meant a lot to me, even besides that. it got me back into creative writing, it helped me make new friends for the first time in a long time, it brought back some of my passion from the dark depths of depression. before vrains, i had been mindlessly floating between interests for awhile, because i was so depressed nothing would stick. i hadn't been depressed like that in years. but vrains, watching yusaku struggle and learn despite his traumas, was exactly what i needed at that time. it was a time in my life i was trying to move on from my own trauma and finding i really didn't know how, and i grew so depressed because of it. it's kind of embarrassing, but yusaku and ryoken are what pulled me out. they gave me the strength i needed to find my way out of my own head and for the first time in my life begin to heal, properly.

alright.................cracks knuckles. been a hot minute since i've wrriten some jn, let's get to it

joshua pov fic. this is after his "sacrifice" in the second week, so while he's lying low and watching beat & neku get through week three to the end of the game. it's all about joshua's complicated feelings on neku, and what happened during the single week they worked together as partners. what that change means.

obviously, in the reaper's game, things are different. it's not a normal week where you'd spend time getting to know each other; neku was fighting for his life. he'd just gone through a tragedy of losing a person he started to care about, and was stuck in a game of joshua's own design. but with joshua as his partner, things weren't like week one, and they got to... talk a lot more. hang out.

joshua got to feel like a real teenager again. got to chat with someone, do stupid shit like try on clothes, eat ramen. feel like a normal kid. to neku, even despite his suspicions, he was just that normal teenager. a normal guy who really got it. who really got the way that he thought.

problem is, he was changing that mindset. his first week in the game had done what joshua had always hoped it would accomplished - it was changing him. he'd just never expected to accomplish that with neku, and now, he was struggling with that realization.

so he watches. he watches as neku and beat stumble through the week, and he watches as neku fully realizes he loves shibuya. it feels like a disconnect. it feels almost wrong. joshua didn't want this, he wanted to die. he wanted neku to keep wanting everyone to go away, because that would at least mean he was right. that he - shibuya - shouldn't be there anymore. that they weren't worth it.

part of him almost resents neku for being able to change. for being willing to try and learn and grow. for so long, joshua has felt stagnant. as the composer, as a person. and here's his proxy - someone who is supposed to mirror him, inside and out, to prove his point - running around wanting to save shibuya. it's so laughable it makes him sick to his stomach. joshua's angry, but not the seething kind of anger. it's almost disappointment.

so when they make it to the room of reckoning, when joshua hands neku the gun, he wants neku to take the shot. he's ready. suicide by someone else's trigger, but suicide nonetheless. he's made neku cry. he's made sure that if neku really wanted to change, he'd have to kill joshua for it, so at least at the end, joshua would still get what he wanted. shibuya can stay, but he sure as hell doesn't want to be around to see it anymore.

and when neku doesn't shoot?

rubs my grubby hands together. i miss my wife my ship, tails. i miss them so much

fic that takes place pre-canon for lucigo - aka when they're still in the doomed future. everything is bleak. their parents are all dead. the world has fallen to shit and lucina's the one holding it on her shoulders. she's the Leader. she has to be strong.

everyone is... so young. her younger brother morgan still feels like a baby, drowning in their mom's cloak. he's had to grow up so fast. too fast. and lucina... she feels a million years old. she doesn't know what to do, yet. how to fix this. if they CAN fix this. everything seems impossible, and insurmountable - yeah, maybe they could win, but what then? the world is still in ruins. the people they all love would all still be dead. what would be the point of carrying on in such a broken world?

she's giving up hope. lucina knows she can't, knows out of everyone, she isn't allowed to stop searching. that she has to persevere. but by god is lucina tired. it's inigo, someone who she used to be more comfortable with when they were children, who ends up helping her shoulder the burden. he tells her stories of his mother, of the dances she used to perform. his white hair is somehow still unsullied. somehow still pure, despite the grim future they live in.

he's the one who gives her the strength to keep figuring it out. before she goes to plead to naga with only four gems, they end up stranded away from the others, risen everywhere. collecting supplies probably. they really might die this time, inigo jokes, morbid just like his dad always was. but, inigo tells her, at least he's with her. he'd follow lucina anywhere, always.

they had a good run, he says. he just wishes they could've had more time together. could've found a future where they could've been happy. where he could see her smile again. he promises her if this is it for them, he'll make her smile one last time before they go.

it gives lucina the strength to keep fighting. she doesn't know why, but she isn't ready for inigo to keep that promise just yet. the idea of him dying is more painful than the idea of her dying, right then.