Foundational list of headcanons that all of my Bionicle fics are written under.
1: Before being placed into the Mask of Life, Mata-Nui was the only component of the Matoran Universe that was functioning as intended. Fully machine, not awake in the slightest.
2: The moral frameworks of the Matoran Universe are mainly constructed around and guided by the fact that every living thing within it were all supposed to be components in a machine. This caused many problems that no one wanted or wants to acknowledge. See: Where Bohrok Shells Come From.
3: Fulfilling one's Destiny is meant to either end your life, or cause a transformation into a non-threatening, unobtrusive form so you can dedicate yourself to providing council and guidance to those who have yet to complete their Tasks.
4: Neither of these things happened to the Makuta, which is what ultimately leads the other races of the Matoran Universe to distrust them so intensely, even long before their turn. They fulfilled their Destiny- balancing Mata-Nui's ecosystems- and now they are unbound by any Task. This state is known as being "Fateless" and there's an uncanny valley sort of wrongness that being around it causes Matoran Universe natives to feel.
5: The Makuta of the prime Matoran Universe were created as beings of shadow, they did not forsake a literal internal light so much as they turned from the guiding light of Mata-Nui's purpose.
6: After the Matoran Civil War got the Makuta assigned more-or-less fiefdoms, most of those Makuta actually took those posts and those under their protection seriously. Even many who would eventually side with Teridax.
7: The Makuta didn't just flip on Miserix at Teridax' whim. Miserix was a legitimately horrible leader and someone was going to get that ball rolling eventually. Teridax is just the one who grabbed the opportunity first.
8: Miserix understood what Mata-Nui was better than anyone else living inside it. It terrified him.
9: The timeline is confusing because every major character being functionally immortal means everybody's got a long time to scheme at each other, so there are long stretches where basically nothing happens between big events. Yet at the same time, the timescale is so huge that anything that happens in the same thousand years might as well have happened in the same week as far as anyone's concerned.
10: The War of Six Kingdoms(Barraki war) was an actual war for everyone involved, even the Makuta, with all that entails. It was not a single scheme or battle.
11: Even in war, for a Toa to kill is a break from the Toa Code, and as such was not socially tolerated.(Yes, this does mean Gali and Onua were fully willing to be ostracized to kill Gorast and Bitil that one time.)
12: Odina was a prison settlement before the Shadowed One conquered it. Think more leper colony than jail.
13: Never gonna be relevant, but just because this plot point pisses me off, the thing about Mata-Nui tricking Teridax into tricking Lhikan into picking the right Matoran to make into Toa didn't happen. Teridax just tricked Lhikan into picking the wrong guys. The Toa Metru weren't Destined to be Toa, and they won anyways. Yes, I know the alternative guys would have been horrible, see headcanons one and two.
14: The stuff about the Red Star being a respawn point didn't happen either. The Red Star is a satellite where- under normal conditions- the Mask of Life is meant to be activated, and can be used as a relay for its power by the Ignika if it decides it needs to do something remotely. Kopaka and Pohatu are fine.
There are tons of other character-specific, location-specific, culture-specific, and event-specific headcanons I've got rattling around, but these are the ones that are the bedrock I build my version of the Bionicle world around.
One of my favourite things to do is take a character and work backwards.
What would have to happen to a person for them to become this?
For instance, Gavla is easy. She's a smart-mouthed, vicious little peacock who felt more at home lording over the other Matoran as the Makuta's lackey than she ever did among her own.
The most likely story there is that she was never really accepted among the Av-Matoran. They might have tried to, but something about her personality or the way she did things just rubbed them the wrong way, and even if they were trying not to show it, she could tell. It wound its way through every interaction until she grew to deeply resent them all. But the same thing that kept her siblings at arms length was accepted and encouraged among the Makuta, add in that she was allowed to take her out frustrations properly now, and of course she would end up like that.
Krika's a self-fulfilling, self-loathing, self-defeating prophesy, so he's not hard either. He never thought he could be good, so he never really tried, and envies people who are or do to the point of violence.
That's the result of an environment that constantly told him there was something inherently wrong with him- probably the other Makuta too- and an internally grown jealousy problem that never got addressed because that would require admitting that he could improve, and his only comfort in being the way he is, is that it's not his fault. At some point, he probably lashed out and hurt someone very badly, no one around him was surprised, and this worldview was cemented as a way to defend himself from both of these things.
A challenge, is Gorast.
She is a manic ball of hatred, anger, and sadistic retribution, but at the same time, she is also a steady bedrock of loyalty, duty, and devotion. The first are pure animal brain, raw emotion running rampant, and as such could have any number of sources, but the latter, those aren't just feelings, those are patterns of behaviour. Patterns that, if you think about it, directly contradict what she currently stands for.
The Makuta had a duty before Teridax' rule, they had a ruler before him. You can cultivate loyalty, you can encourage devotion, you can instill duty, you can inflame all of them until they become destructive and irrational, but you can't do those things in someone who doesn't already value them. So there's our first clue. Before Teridax, Gorast would have been directing these things somewhere else, to Miserix, the Brotherhood, Mata-Nui, or some combination of the three.
Antroz says at one point that Gorast used to be beautiful. At face value, she's stuck as a giant bug now, but Antroz is a member of a species that has full control over their own anatomy. Physical beauty would be cheap to them, put on or taken off at their whim, certainly not something to bring up as a defining feature of someone. So that's another clue. There was something about who she was that was strong enough for even the other Makuta to take note of and admire her for it. Something that's gone now, and probably has been for some time.
When Gali first confronts Gorast, trapping and threatening her, Gorast tells her that whether or not she dies is in her own hands, no one else's. For a lot of characters this would be a boast, given from a place of strength. Gorast tells Gali this from a place of bitter defiance, Gali fully believing Gorast is about to die, and Gorast pushing her to prove that she is willing to kill her before she'll fight properly; and not once does she deride Gali for potentially breaking from the Toa Code. Not only does that imply no small level of suicidal impulse in her, but it's our third clue, and our first one that paints a direct wound. She's been in this position before, and whoever did that to her chose whether she lived or died regardless of what Gorast may have wanted. Given she's alive in Karda-Nui, they chose that she live. And she hates them for it.
So we have our patterns, she has always valued her Duty, she has always searched for someone or something to place her Devotion on, she has always been drawn towards systems that ask for her Loyalty. We have our wound, someone took her agency in these things away. We have what changed, she used to be beautiful.
Gorast used to be Good. She used to be profoundly, steadfastly Good, so much so that even the other Makuta admired her for it. Gorast was a Hero.
So how do you take someone so good that even after millennia, even after casting aside the very idea of good or evil, the most ruthless of her fellows still call it "beautiful," and turn her into a pyre of vicious hate so strong that she not only abandons her Duty, but burns it down on the way out?
You betray her. And not just that, you betray her in a way that punishes her for every single thing that made her good, you do it in a way so vicious and cruel that she could never have even imagined it before it happened. You take everything that she ever believed in, and you destroy it in front of her, you take away even the option to fight it happening.
Someone turned the Toa's Crystalline Protodermis Cage on her. They did it to destroy something she fought desperately to defend. They forced her to live in the shattered world they left in their wake. Someone she trusted did this to her, someone she believed in with all her heart and soul, and they did it all in the name of Mata-Nui.
Then they abandoned her, and no one cared; no one but Teridax. Who, for the record, also did not care, he just saw something he could use.
On the topic of Teridax, he's so easy he's almost hard.
He got away with it. For all his apocalyptic ambition, all his ego and drama, that's the embarrassingly mundane starting point of him. Nothing tragic happened to him, he wasn't born evil, he wasn't particularly bothered by any sort of persecution, he wasn't backed into a corner, he just saw a situation where it would be easier to do something awful than something good, and got away with it.
He looked at the Matoran Civil War, thought, "if this was a rahi project, I'd just scrap the batch and start over," did that, and not only did he get away with it, he was rewarded for it.
He kept getting away with it, he kept being rewarded for it.
And like every egomaniac who keeps getting away with it, he decided that meant he knew better than everyone else around him. He decided he was the only one willing to see the world and the people around him as they really were. He decided this meant he deserved to be in charge of all of it, looked up, and like every other problem he'd ever been presented with, started working to solve it.
One of my favourite things to do is take a character and work backwards.
What would have to happen to a person for them to become this?
For instance, Gavla is easy. She's a smart-mouthed, vicious little peacock who felt more at home lording over the other Matoran as the Makuta's lackey than she ever did among her own.
The most likely story there is that she was never really accepted among the Av-Matoran. They might have tried to, but something about her personality or the way she did things just rubbed them the wrong way, and even if they were trying not to show it, she could tell. It wound its way through every interaction until she grew to deeply resent them all. But the same thing that kept her siblings at arms length was accepted and encouraged among the Makuta, add in that she was allowed to take her out frustrations properly now, and of course she would end up like that.
Krika's a self-fulfilling, self-loathing, self-defeating prophesy, so he's not hard either. He never thought he could be good, so he never really tried, and envies people who are or do to the point of violence.
That's the result of an environment that constantly told him there was something inherently wrong with him- probably the other Makuta too- and an internally grown jealousy problem that never got addressed because that would require admitting that he could improve, and his only comfort in being the way he is, is that it's not his fault. At some point, he probably lashed out and hurt someone very badly, no one around him was surprised, and this worldview was cemented as a way to defend himself from both of these things.
A challenge, is Gorast.
She is a manic ball of hatred, anger, and sadistic retribution, but at the same time, she is also a steady bedrock of loyalty, duty, and devotion. The first are pure animal brain, raw emotion running rampant, and as such could have any number of sources, but the latter, those aren't just feelings, those are patterns of behaviour. Patterns that, if you think about it, directly contradict what she currently stands for.
The Makuta had a duty before Teridax' rule, they had a ruler before him. You can cultivate loyalty, you can encourage devotion, you can instill duty, you can inflame all of them until they become destructive and irrational, but you can't do those things in someone who doesn't already value them. So there's our first clue. Before Teridax, Gorast would have been directing these things somewhere else, to Miserix, the Brotherhood, Mata-Nui, or some combination of the three.
Antroz says at one point that Gorast used to be beautiful. At face value, she's stuck as a giant bug now, but Antroz is a member of a species that has full control over their own anatomy. Physical beauty would be cheap to them, put on or taken off at their whim, certainly not something to bring up as a defining feature of someone. So that's another clue. There was something about who she was that was strong enough for even the other Makuta to take note of and admire her for it. Something that's gone now, and probably has been for some time.
When Gali first confronts Gorast, trapping and threatening her, Gorast tells her that whether or not she dies is in her own hands, no one else's. For a lot of characters this would be a boast, given from a place of strength. Gorast tells Gali this from a place of bitter defiance, Gali fully believing Gorast is about to die, and Gorast pushing her to prove that she is willing to kill her before she'll fight properly; and not once does she deride Gali for potentially breaking from the Toa Code. Not only does that imply no small level of suicidal impulse in her, but it's our third clue, and our first one that paints a direct wound. She's been in this position before, and whoever did that to her chose whether she lived or died regardless of what Gorast may have wanted. Given she's alive in Karda-Nui, they chose that she live. And she hates them for it.
So we have our patterns, she has always valued her Duty, she has always searched for someone or something to place her Devotion on, she has always been drawn towards systems that ask for her Loyalty. We have our wound, someone took her agency in these things away. We have what changed, she used to be beautiful.
Gorast used to be Good. She used to be profoundly, steadfastly Good, so much so that even the other Makuta admired her for it. Gorast was a Hero.
So how do you take someone so good that even after millennia, even after casting aside the very idea of good or evil, the most ruthless of her fellows still call it "beautiful," and turn her into a pyre of vicious hate so strong that she not only abandons her Duty, but burns it down on the way out?
You betray her. And not just that, you betray her in a way that punishes her for every single thing that made her good, you do it in a way so vicious and cruel that she could never have even imagined it before it happened. You take everything that she ever believed in, and you destroy it in front of her, you take away even the option to fight it happening.
Someone turned the Toa's Crystalline Protodermis Cage on her. They did it to destroy something she fought desperately to defend. They forced her to live in the shattered world they left in their wake. Someone she trusted did this to her, someone she believed in with all her heart and soul, and they did it all in the name of Mata-Nui.
Then they abandoned her, and no one cared; no one but Teridax. Who, for the record, also did not care, he just saw something he could use.
"Hey, Zo." Mira closes the door behind her, balancing the tray of drinks on one hand while closing the door behind her. "Got you so—"
"Shut up."
She stops dead in her tracks, one foot in front of the other. In the time she's known Zoey, she's never heard her tell anyone — other than Rumi, once — to shut up. Not in those words or any other combination. Mira's pretty sure she's never even asked any of them to 'keep it down', let alone 'be quiet'. So she must have misheard… right?
"Excuse m—" Mira tries to ask only to get shushed again.
Zoey doesn't draw it out like one does when there's a sleeping baby or a cat doing something cute that has a risk of being disrupted by loud sounds. It's short and loud and pointed.
The only noise that fills the penthouse — aside from Mira's disbelieving huff — is a mixture of cellos, a timpani, and synthesizers. Music so odd that it's almost off-putting, caught somewhere between cheerful dread and post-apocalyptic comedy. It honestly doesn't do much to mollify Mira's annoyance.
She takes a couple of steps closer until she can see the woman that is telling her to 'shut up' rather unkindly, because surely there's something going on if Zoey is listening to whatever that is while having the gall to tell Mira to stay quiet.
Bundled under a truly unnecessary number of blankets, Mira can see exactly four things: Zoey's face, Zoey's bangs, Zoey's hands, Zoey's Switch — everything else is covered up by some sort of colourful fabric. Her eyes are frantically moving back and forth, brows furrowed in concentration, and her tongue is peeking out from between her lips — a strangely endearing habit. What's worse — or better, and infinitely endearing in Mira's opinion — is that Zoey doesn't even know she does that when she's concentrating, often blushing furiously and denying any accusations when it's pointed out to her.
Every so often she murmurs out a 'fuck' or 'yesss' under her breath and by this point Mira is honestly deeply captivated by the display in front of her. She can't even be annoyed, let alone mad, when Zoey looks like she's having both the best time of her life and going through at least seventeen stages of grief at once.
The music shifts suddenly. Mira can feel her own heart begin to pump a little faster in panic at the sounds of urgency, and the music stops.
Zoey drops the console on her lap — or at least where Mira thinks her lap is under the mountain of blankets — with more frustration she thinks she's ever seen from her.
"And this is why we don't hoard our fucking specials!" Zoey yells directly at the Switch, hands coming up to her face as she lets out the world's loudest, most annoyed "uuuuugh" in history. Probably.
She sits there with her head tilted back and the palms of her hands over her eyes for a beat or two before taking one deep breath and moving her head back down. Her expression flips like a light switch — bright smile taking over her face, cheeks dusted pink, and eyes crinkling at the edges.
"Hi, Mira!" she says like Mira had just walked in through the door and hadn't been shushed twice within the last five to ten minutes.
The only reply she can muster back is a confused "Hi?"
"Uh," Zoey begins, blush deepening as Mira starts walking towards her, "sorry for telling you to shut up. We were at the end of wave three and honestly, if my teammates had actually used their specials the way they're supposed to, or at least the way they should know to use them at this level, then we would've been in the clear. But noooo, 'keiranscave' decided to hoard their Killer Wail instead of clearing the Steel Eel that took out two of us, while 'situationj0001' wasted both of their Reefsliders during Glowflies — when we weren't even in trouble — and then, then, 'mommy—' nope wait not finishing that username out loud, how the hell did that even fucking get through the username verification? Anyway, they—"
Mira cuts her off with a kiss — sweet and straddling the fine line between chaste and passionate. Because she can't help herself, not when Zoey talks passionately about things no matter how big or small they are. And fuck does she love it when Zoey gets worked up about good things, bad things, and everything in between. The way her eyes light up, the way her brows become the punctuation to her feelings and words, the way she forgets to breathe sometimes and that pauses exist for a reason. She can't get enough of it.
"I brought boba," she says after they're both a little breathless and breaking for air, Mira still leaning over Zoey and her army of blankets on the couch.
Zoey laughs, digging her arms from under the blankets to cup Mira's face between her hands. "I knew I kept you around for a reason," she teases. But then her eyes turn soft and her smile shifts into something laced with pure adoration that makes Mira's heart beat a little faster — a little happier. "Thank you."
Antroz knew death, he had designed predators and prey alike, shackled his creations to the ravage of time that he and his siblings would never be subject to. He knew it, in all its savage simplicity.
He knew death, knew killing, knew it intimately, so intimately that he had never bothered to recall his first encounter with it.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Vamprah doesn't recognize her immediately, such is the nature of time, and there is so much time between them.
He doesn't need to think about it once he does, Gavla will not be a slave.
She is his Sister, and she will stand with them by choice, or she will be free.
So the woman who shaped the other world, we can finally talk about her. Up until the ambush everything was pretty much the same.
It takes a lot of demons to bring celine down without killing her, but gwi-ma wanted his prize. The demon kings greed would be his downfall. Eventually Celine succumbs to sheer numbers of demons that Gwi-ma sent after the hunters, but she takes down a lot of them before she is captured.
In the demon realm she endures torture to try and break her to make her more susceptible to becoming a demon, but she doesn't break. Despite his efforts, Celine doesn't really feel ashamed of her actions, maybe that she lost the fight but she did so heroically. it was a sacrifice which makes it hard for Gwi-Ma trying to force her into submission. there's no ground for Celine to give to him so he has to focus on hurting her, torturing her until she gives in. Gwi-Ma can be cunning, but he isn't very creative which we see in the movie where he doesn't have much of a plan besides throwing demons at the hunters and punishing those who survive as failures. Celine doesn't submit of course, because she's a stubborn bitch and she's rather be crushed to dust than turn into a demon.
Unfortunately for the future queen, she has one chink in her armor, or rather 3.5, with the other two sunlight sisters, baby rumi who she never got to meet, and grudgingly Miyeong's boyfriend/babydaddy (he's the .5).
With the Honmoon in tatters, one of the adults is surrrouned by demons while the other two don't even know they're in danger. I'm not sure who would be the most interesting, Hana or babydaddy (Ryon). Hana it would make it sweeter since she becomes so cold when she found out Celine became a demon, it would twist the knife later. As for Demon Babydaddy, I'd like to think he never got along with Celine before things went to shit, there was a love triangle and Miyeong decided to pick the easier choice than having to really deal with having to make a choice in her heart. (she cares about Ryon, but she also loves Celine and Hana in multiple ways. It was easier to chose the man even if he was a demon since it was the 90's)
Gwi-Ma makes Celine watch as his army surrounds one of them. He wants her to suffer. If it is Hana he makes Celine think if it's Hana that's being attacked that she would be taken like her. Celine believes that Hana is the strong one and would endure Gwi-Ma's torture for years before he eventually killed her. If it's Ryon despite herself Celine cares about him. Even if she didn't, Celine doesn't want Rumi, a girl she never met but already was ready to die for, to lose a parent if she can help it.
So Celine offers Gwi-Ma a deal, something he planned on, he spares the Hunters and all who work and live with them for 1 year, she'll become a demon, like he's been wanting for over a year. Gwi-Ma, gluttonous and greedy accepts thinking he won when he really just sealed his fate. He makes her a powerful demon, or maybe Celine becomes a powerful demon because of her soul, or the nature of her deal, regardless she is powerful but wild and animalistic, than even the basest demons.
Gwi-ma tries her out on 'food runs,' his plan is to send her against the hunters as a loophole against his deal with celine, but he needs to make sure she will do his bidding. She is sent out with other demons to round up some souls from innocent people, which is easy since the honmoon is in tatters. she is very efficient at killing people, she has claws now instead of her swords, theyre very good at killing people.
But Celine is not good at harvesting souls, she's bad at it, she also won't hurt children, which I would assume demons covet. despite Gwi-Ma's orders Celine will slaughter any demons that she is sent out with if they approach a kid when she's around. It leaves her with a reputation amongst the other demons that survive, that she's more dangerous towards demons than humans.
What Gwi-Ma doesn't know is Celine's mind has been slowly stitched together over the months that he's been sending her to hunt for souls. Every time she goes to the human world, the honmoon aids her and helps her heal, despite her being a demon Celine is a hunter and loved by the Honmoon. by the time Celine pushes Gwi-Ma too far, she is back to being herself in her mind.
Gwi-ma basically is forced to take matters into his own hands since his demon hunter is scaring his forces more than he does. He tries to browbeat her like he did to Jinu in the movie, in front of his entire court like he did to the fake stewardess. but like before, there's nothing for Gwi-Ma to grab onto. Celine feels guilt for the people she killed but she doesn't feel shame the same way his other demons do.
*For me personally, and for this AU, guilt and shame might feel similar, but they're different. To me, Shame feels more like the embarrassment, self-flagellating, paralyzing emotion. guilt while similar, feels more geniuine to me, that it's something you accept you did wrong and something you learn from or accept what you did to move forward. Because Demon Queen Celine became a demon as a sacrifice, because she killed innocent people outside of her control, she doesn't feel ashamed over it, just guilty. In comparison, our Celine by the end of the movie, or even before would feel ashamed for a lot of things, how she raised rumi to hate herself, how she's the one to survive or is the one still fighting when in her head if she was the one to die the other sls could have done a better job teaching the girls. Shame doesn't have to about things that are real, in fact it's probably very helpful for Gwi-Ma if it's based on things that specifically aren't real because otherwise you can get over it.
Brain caught fire, so here's a fun idea to go with this, to explain why Celine would send any demons through the Honmoon, and what ends up making her dangerous.
It's not until he's wasting the last of his strength clawing at the beast that was supposed to be His Hunter from the inside that he finally finds the handhold he needs.
And even then it's not from her, it's an old, withered piece of himself, a shard of his past that could never touch her if she hadn't just usurped everything he is.
So Gwi-Ma, spiteful, stubborn, vicious King of Demons, takes the old whisper, so foundational he'd forgotten it was ever there, and drives it right into the heart of her.
"Look at me," it murmurs, "oh Gods, what have I done to myself?" And as the flames of the Demon Monarch burst from Celine's body, it mirrors and resonated with her own thoughts, sinking its hooks deep. "This was a mistake," it hisses as the pain hits her, the hunger, like nothing she's ever felt before, "how stupid am I? Who do I think I am?"
"Who do you think you are?" The last remnant of Gwi-Ma purrs into her mind, weak enough that he couldn't sound like himself if he tried. "If the world could be saved like this, it would have happened long ago." It takes every trace of self control he has ever had not to laugh, not to crow in triumph as he pries open the first and only chink in her armour he'll ever need. "The only thing that's changed, is who has to feed the Fire."
And try as she might to resist it- and she does, she resists for years at a time, until she can't think around the Hunger, the shame of knowing for all Gwi-Ma did to her, she did this to herself- the Flames demand fuel.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
It was supposed to be the three of them, forever.
Celine was supposed to be their blade, their warrior, and she failed.
How was the Weapon the one who could look at Rumi, at their Sister's precious child, and see more than patterns?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Light Hope OS 1.54 was the top of the line Analytical Intelligence. Custom programmed for a mission to Etheria, a world of hostile weather, wildlife, native populations, and local energy fields; the last of which being the entire reason for its mission.
It was designed to create order out of chaos, to analyze the unpredictable, wild magic of Etheria and create a way to harness its most powerful manifestations. It was equipped to learn from every encounter, out-think any enemy forces or resistance it encountered, and issue orders without a trace of doubt. It had taken the best programming engineers of the Eternians ten years to craft every line of its code to perfection.
And it was found wanting long before it made planetfall.
The pilot was supposed to be interchangeable.
J would never know someone at the company cared about her enough to hesitate when the replacements came along.
That person would never know the consequences their moment of conscience would have.
Tessa's first Drone woke up at the bottom of a grave, not on a table.
Long ago, Big Brother N told her that all dogs came from wolves. He just meant it as a fun fact, but the thought sat in Cyn's core oddly, a new idea that would flit through her mind whenever the elder Elliotts were on the warpath.
Something she told herself as the hungry whisper pawed at her circuits until she couldn't take it anymore, something she forgot as she tore back the earth and sky, but could still rear its head in unexpected ways.
Even a predator can soften.
Eda knew the human realm was bad, she just hadn't expected the worst of it to wash up on her doorstep. Whatever, she already had one roommate, what was one more? Not like she could leave the kid in such bad shape.
Chased from the only home she's ever known and confronted with a strange new world, there's only one thing left for Luz to work towards.
She'll learn to be a proper witch, just like her Mama.
Long ago, Big Brother N told her that all dogs came from wolves. He just meant it as a fun fact, but the thought sat in Cyn's core oddly, a new idea that would flit through her mind whenever the elder Elliotts were on the warpath.
Something she told herself as the hungry whisper pawed at her circuits until she couldn't take it anymore, something she forgot as she tore back the earth and sky, but could still rear its head in unexpected ways.
Even a predator can soften.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Adora hasn't felt like she's been on solid ground since Veil Spring.
Her arms feel empty and cold, something inside her feels restless and raging hot, like it's pushing at her skin from the inside.
Thankfully, Catra's been feeling it, too.
After being pushed out of his own universe, Loki finds himself in one where he's dead and gone. The Avengers never assembled, and SHIELD is still in its infancy. Without the threat of Thanos looming, he wonders if he can find peace here. Instead, what he's given are forced therapy sessions and a mission: bring in the test subject that SHIELD lost track of back in the nineties. She's a liability right now, but maybe she can be taught compliance. Maybe he can learn to be honest with himself and the other people around him. Or maybe this universe is doomed, like so many are. Only one way to find out which it is.
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