I'm mostly here to write and obsess over my current hyperfixations (at the moment? Assassin's Creed and D&D. But if it's somewhere on this blog, I'll take prompts for it) niennavalier on AO3
Molly: Following a kidnapping as a young teen, she wanted to protect herself the way someone once protected her. What started with a simple self-defence course turned into a life-long affinity for violence and a successful run as an MMA fighter. Went off the grid and turned mercenary after her father’s death at the hands of a disgruntled employee left her destitute and unable to pay for college.
Trevor: Never forgot that time when the computer guy made him part of the team. Developed hacking and technology skills to rival his idol, along with a healthy problem with authority to match. It’s still the age of the geek, baby.
Widmark: After his step-father went to prison, life was a series of increasing challenges, but he never forgot his ability to make people believe in him. When the only job in show business he could get was as a singing waiter, he started to use his powers of persuasion and ability to reinvent himself for more self-serving purposes. And so, a con-artist was born.
Josie: Turns out landscaping is kind of boring when all you want to do is kick ass. Returning to a life of crime and becoming one of the world’s greatest thieves was much more her style.
Olivia: When fingered to take the fall for a crime she didn’t commit, CIA Agent Olivia Sterling leaves behind her career in espionage and cryptography - at least, as far as the agency is concerned - and disappears. She uses her contacts to assemble a motley crew of hustlers, felons, and thugs to track down and take out the corrupt organisation that set her up. But what started as revenge, a one-time gig, becomes so much more…
Bonus:
Amy: Art appraisal expert. Also Olivia’s ex-wife. They met while consulting with Interpol as a favor to Director Sterling. Years and a somewhat-amicable divorce later, Amy gets pulled into the crew’s schemes which, after years of friendship with a certain legendary thief, is practically old hat. She shows up every now and then to help out with jobs and to flirt with Josie, which drives Olivia mad. (Whether she is more jealous of Amy or Josie is anyone’s guess).
You can assassinate the targets or you can deliver onto them a fate worse than death, right? Justice so poetic that the Greek chorus weeps.
And then there's Daud, whose non-lethal option is a bit of a taunt, cause you're showing off how skilled you are to ghost his entire headquarters and steal his pouch right off his belt, right, and that without his notice, right? Right. But at its core, if you strip that layer of competitiveness and pride away, Daud is alive, and it's mercy and kindness and a push toward him doing better. It's an itty bitty glimmer of trust from someone who has every right to kill him, that he could change his ways, and I believe that sort of trust should be nigh unbearable, deceptively tiny as it appears.
How can I be normal about Corvo and Daud when everyone is "target neutralised" but Daud is "target spared." How.
So, let’s recap a lil bit: Daud is in Dunwall when Delilah and Luca Abele stage their coup d’état. What’s more, he’s wandering the streets when people start milling about and as the news spread. And during the mission A Long Day In Dunwall, the Grand Guard soldiers are calling out orders on the streets.
All hail Delilah Kaldwin, our new empress!
You can’t tell me Daud doesn’t hear that. And yes, at this point he’s not doing great. He’s obsessed with finding the Twin-Bladed Knife, on his way to Wyrmwood Way to find the Sixways Gang and Eat ‘Em Up Jack.
But: What if he hears the name Delilah? What if Daud immediately connects the dots, because he’s many things but stupid isn’t one of them; he sees the empress fleeing Dunwall Tower, heading towards the boat with a name he can’t read from that far away. Dreadful something.
He doesn’t know where Corvo Attano is, but he knows something bad must have happened. The Royal Protector would never, ever abandon his daughter. If Emily Kaldwin is running away and doing it alone, Corvo must have been killed or incapacitated. And somehow Delilah is back, even though Daud imprisoned her in the Void fifteen years ago. He wanted to make amends and save Emily’s life, and apparently it wasn’t enough.
So what if Daud abandons the search for the Twin-Bladed Knife? What if he goes after Delilah instead? He can’t pursue Emily, he’d only scare her, and she has no reason whatsoever to want his help. But Daud could go to the Tower. He’d see what happened to Corvo. And Daud may be callous and egoistical and a bastard par excellence, but fuck if he doesn’t feel like he owes Corvo Attano an enormous debt.
Basically what I want is a story where Daud spies on Delilah and makes her life difficult again, until he (for reasons yet to be revealed by my muse) has to go to Karnaca and team up with Emily and Billie. Maybe he learns Delilah’s secret, or what she is truly after.
I have so many thoughts about that meeting. A reunion for Daud and Billie; for Emily, confronting the man who killed her mother and who knows her enemy better than anyone, save Billie, who up until now has not breathed a word about her true identity. The two Whalers would have to come clean at this point, and oh, would that be painful, especially if Emily had started to trust Meagan Foster.
Emily might want to abandon her allies, but she’s smart; she can’t afford to lose Billie, and Daud brings information. Daud also swears he wants to help, so Emily takes him along to the Dust District; she does need someone to look into the Jindosh Lock, after all.
And that’s how the two of them end up at Aramis Stilton’s home.
1.- Bedtimes stories you tell to children, or lullabies. They can be based in location or species. They can tell us about the world, history, beliefs or something specific about a creature. It can be fun to think of their origin, how they’ve changed over the years and both the meaning that was lost and the meaning that was added.
2.- Fashion choices. I often let fashion be different for different creatures. I usually create a practical outfit that makes sense historically within the context of my world and then evolve it until I get to the present day of my story. Preferably splitting of into branches and allowing more options. It can tell us about a specific species, about their history and about how the climate has changed, or how they moved locations at some point and had to adapt their clothing to a new climate.
A very simple example of this from my own book would be the mage’s cloak! Link to a longer post about it. Basically, mages would wear a simple one piece fabric that was easy to then set an illusion over, no wasting time mixing trousers and tops. Over time some mages stopped using illusions, seeing the outfit as acceptable. It became a staple, you saw the cloak, that wasn’t a human but a mage. And then younger generations began personalising the material, instead of boring black, white or brown they started using floral patterns, adding in cool sleeves or hoods!
Initially, it was practicality, but it evolved.
3.- Think about what each species does for fun! I often read YA fantasy where the stakes are so high there is no leisure, no downtown, no fun, no hobbies. But this is a great opportunity! What’s popular in your world? Books, plays, board games, long walks, playing sport? Seeing characters just chill can be a great change of pace and allow for some insight into their lives and the world they live in.
4.- What is imported? And why? Sometimes imports are just practical, we don’t have wool here (unlikely, sheep are literally everywhere, but you get the point), wool is good for clothes, we import it. But other times it’s more complicated.
Perhaps a species moved across the country at some point, but they were accustomed to a certain type of tea, fruit for certain festivities, so on, so on, and habit dies hard, so, importation becomes a thing.
So those are my four world-building tips for today. I’ve said it before and will say it again, there is no master list, not check list, world-building is something you can figure out as you go in most genres (some epics may requiere more prep time). What’s important is to keep track of what you’ve said and stay consistent, but you don’t need to know everything before going in.
As usual, check out my book, stories I’ve written plus other social medias: here.
Random D&D thoughts I need to scream into the void:
I'm doing writing for some of the NPCs in my campaign because it helps me sort of figure out what's going on behind the scenes/as a result of the party's actions. And uhh... I might kinda sorta love this absolute, terrible, unlikable asshole. Like... so much. He's so oddly fascinating to me (and a fairly unique NPC in terms of the campaign itself.)
Also I super wanna put some of the writings I'm doing up somewhere, but I really have no idea where, because I never write context into them (all of these were started as a tool for me as a DM). And the only people who have the context are my party... who really shouldn't see any of this because it's necessarily spoilery.
So the long story is, I made up a Shaytham fic-writing cheat sheet that includes a bullet-point timeline of every relevant canon event as well as other bits of lore that are just useful for writing and I might drop it maybe eventually,,
But the short story is while researching for this cheat sheet, I found out Haytham only calls Shay by his first name when they’re alone, no that is not mentioned on any wiki page, and yes I triple-checked every cutscene. I don’t know what it means but I just think it’s exciting.
So, I just want to add a little bit of a note to this, for clarification and nuance. That is a common and period-accurate way to treat someone in that time, even if you knew them pretty well. People simply did not use first names nearly as much as we do now, particularly not publicly. Using someone’s first name was a sign of how close your relationship was, it’s true, but you wouldn’t necessarily, especially not as men, call one another by first names, either in public or in private. It does denote a kind of intimacy, though it wasn’t necessarily romantic intimacy. Hence the phrase “first-name basis,” and how being allowed to call someone by their first name required their consent. It definitely meant something, just not always intimacy in the same sort of way we mean now.
Like now, it also depended on the people involved and how comfortable they were with being casual with others. So Haytham calling Shay by his first name is both a sign of respect and that they are close enough to have that sort of first-name basis. I can’t see Haytham being the sort of person to informally refer someone by their first name in general, even privately, and when he does, it’s usually around other Templars. Of course, the existence of Charles Lee refutes this entirely, as Haytham almost immediately calls him Charles, in public, and to others.
However, nothing I’ve said precludes this as a headcanon for the ship! There is no reason it couldn’t be interpreted as special, because while Haytham is formal and pays utmost attention to the etiquette of the time, he also makes an exception for Ziio, as well, who we know was important to him. Or, maybe it’s a starting point for Haytham and Shay! Whatever the situation, there’s no definite reason rule out this behaviour as insignificant or that the only explanation is historical precedent. I only point it out to say that the writers of the game probably didn’t have that in mind when they wrote it, but as always, canon is merely a suggestion. Just wanted to add a bit of history as a jumping-off point.
As a writer myself, I also want to add it’s entirely possible that the way Haytham treats Shay differs from the way he treats characters in AC3 is because there were different writers involved, iirc, and because he interacts with so few others in Rogue. Still not a reason it can’t be special.
Yes!! All of this. I love period social nuances and they’re so ingrained in my head that I didn’t think to point any of this out.
Even outside of a “romantic” context, (sorry, I’m putting Shaytham down for a second), calling someone by their first name during this time usually pointed to having a very close relationship with that person. I don’t know if Assassin’s Creed meant for it to have quite that much significance, since it seems like it’s something Haytham just decides to do the second he meets someone, but it’s also something that he only does with a handful of people.
I’d have to do some deep diving back into all of Haytham’s cutscenes to figure out exactly why he does this (that is, why he only drops formalities with certain people, close or not. Obviously it means something for his character in the grand scheme, I just don’t know what). In Shay’s context though, Steven Piovesan mentioned in an interview how Haytham handles him differently than the other Templars because of his history. It would make sense for him to not want to alienate Shay– who, (1) is his best asset for getting rid of the Assassins, and (2) has a record of volatile loyalties– by coming off as harsh and cold. He needs Shay’s help, and doesn’t want him to think he made the wrong decision, so he immediately jumps into this kind of confidant relationship with him, perhaps as a brother or parent figure (which, coincidentally, takes up the spot that Liam and Achilles used occupy).
Realistically, it’s hard to say whether or not Haytham actually thought of Shay that way, or if he just saw Shay as an immediate solution to his problem, and so he cleverly used him and then got rid of him– which would be very on-brand for our Grand Master. But I like to be optimistic and think that maybe, Haytham did come to enjoy Shay as a friend and protégé, if only because of a line at the end. When Achilles calls Shay disrespectful, Haytham says jokingly, “Yes, we’ve been working on that.” That reads to me, (again, completely in a non-ship context), that Haytham knows Shay as well as, if not better than Achilles, and instead of ridiculing and casting him off like the Assassins did, the Templars embraced his flaws and encouraged growth. Drawing a thread to his relationship with Connor later on, perhaps a part of him admires Shay’s strong morals and ability to adapt, and he is proud of everything he has managed to overcome and accomplish thus far. Honestly, it’s just a really nice way to round out the entire literary foil that is Liam/Achilles/Shay/Gist/Haytham.
…Permission to jump in here and remind everyone of one of the most tragic moments in the game which is where Colonel Monro, with his dying breath, looks Shay in the eyes - having only ever called him Master Cormac - and whispers: “Shay…”
[was going to put a gif here but it’s too sad]
If that isn’t a display of the deepest intimacy, trust, and everything else I don’t have the words to express, then Idk what it is - added to the fact that this is the only time he calls him by his first name AND (as @oldselfshiplady astutely mentioned) that it was very unusual for this time period unless you were close with that person (and dare I say would be even MORE unusual for someone of a senior military standing) then…… All I can say is that for all their faults Ubi really nailed it with that moment. 💔
Also, if I may give my two pennies worth on why Haytham calls Lee ‘Charles’ from the get go - I feel that this may have been a decision on the part of the writers to denote their difference in rank, as Charles exclusively refers to Haytham as ‘Master Kenway’ for this part of the game. However, as previously mentioned, it doesn’t actually make that much sense given how, when you compare this to how Monro treats Shay - always using ‘Master Cormac’ as in opposed to his first name, despite not only difference in Templar rank but ffs this man’s a blinkin’ Lieutenant-Colonel in the British military and he still has the courtesy to call Shay ‘Master Cormac’. And I seriously doubt Haytham would actually have that much less decorum than Monro, being brought up as he did. Therefore, I put this discrepancy down to the differences in studios.
playing the first dishonored in 2021 like... your home is now a police state, the plague is only affecting the lower classes, the cure is available only to higher classes, the church is more powerful than ever, the rich are trying to get back to normal by opening establishments only for their pleasure and throwing parties, the authorities completely fucking up how to handle the pandemic, there’s a night curfew punishable by law, everyone’s businesses are closed and im just sitting through it like
Lieutenant Barry Allen is a newly graduated officer, fresh out of Starfleet Academy, and he’s just arrived to start his first ever assignment: a posting as the science officer on the far-off outpost of Deep Space 9. The station itself is newly acquired by the Federation, and Barry is among the first Starfleet officers to be posted here. It wasn’t exactly the most popular option among the young officers – far at the edge of the Alpha Quadrant, in a region that’s barely stabilized in the aftermath of a bloody revolution – but there’s just so much potential. They’d all joined Starfleet to explore the galaxy, right? So what better place than at the edge of Federation space?
As he sets foot on the Promenade for the first time, he’s entranced – so many people from so many different places, all circling around the station, most of them strangers but a few of them familiar. Iris – his best friend for as long as he can remember, the daughter of the station captain, and an impressive command officer in her own right – rushes up to hug him, and she shows him to his quarters, where they both chat in anticipation of Barry’s first day. And it goes well! As does the first year, save the wacky, weird adventure or two (or twenty, but who’s counting?) He’s made friends with the other officers on the station and suspects that Cisco and Caitlin are the kind of friends you keep, and in a lot of ways, life couldn’t be better.
But there’s something always brewing, just underneath the surface. Leftover friction after the recent revolution. Tensions, especially with a wormhole discovered near the station, one that leads to the other side of the galaxy. News of a barely understood, potential threat that lies on the other side, and it comes with just a name: the Dominion.
But then, one day, there’s a new kind of tension.
Everyone in the Federation has heard of the Rogues, an infamous group of thieves who operate all across the Alpha Quadrant. They’re too good at hiding to be caught, and their jobs are oftentimes too clean for the authorities to have a shred of solid evidence. A lot of that is attributed to their leader: Leonard Snart, a man known for his chilly composure.
A man Barry just happens to see step onto the Promenade, without warning. He freezes for just a second. If Snart is here, then the Rogues must be, too. They’re planning something; Barry can feel it. He keeps an eye on Snart as often as he can, but he ends up being the one caught off guard anyway, eating lunch at the Replimat when Snart appears out of nowhere and takes the seat across from him. Barry feels his cheeks go red from the pure shock of it all, and Snart just smirks. “Something wrong, scarlet?”
Snart knows that Barry’s been watching him, but it’s not like he’s about to give up any real information about what he’s doing here. Even when Barry threatens to stop him, all he gets is another smirk and a quick once-over before Snart stands and leaves Barry to the rest of his lunch.
Of course, Barry tells the Station’s security chief about this whole thing, and Eddie assigns a group of deputies to search the Habitat Ring and the Promenade for the Rogues, but to no avail. And yet. Somehow, Barry is the one to see Snart again a couple of days later, spotting him headed toward the docking bays, moving swiftly through the crowds. Barry lets Eddie know what’s happening through the comms, and he himself tries his best to push through the inconveniently thick crowd that separates him and Snart. He does manage to catch up, right as Snart is passing a case to another, much broader man with the kind of glint in his eye that’s immediately intimidating – Mick Rory, Barry is pretty sure.
Snart notices Barry is there, of course, gives him the same smirk because Starfleet officers don’t habitually carry weapons, and Eddie’s security team isn’t here yet; there’s not much Barry can do, and they both know it. And so Snart just quips at him – “Too slow this time, Scarlet,” – before casually stepping into his ship, leaving Barry to just watch as the Rogues got away.
The next day, a whole collection of ancient Vulcan artifacts is reported missing, replaced instead by a bunch of self-sealing stem bolts.
*****
It’s another couple years before Barry sees Snart again, but this time, everything is completely different. For one, the Dominion is officially a problem, and everyone is on edge. Entire ships and their crews have begun going missing, and Starfleet – most of the Alpha Quadrant, really – suspects the Dominion to be behind it. And while no one has officially had any contact with this enigmatic group, everyone is expecting the worst. Everyone suspects that war is just on the horizon, and that the Dominion has only one thing on its mind: conquest. The intelligence agency of every planet is doing all they can to ensure that the Dominion can’t find any hold in the Alpha Quadrant, no matter how small. Nothing is quite as rose-tinted as those blissful first few days on the station, anymore.
And now Barry, of all people, has been tapped by Starfleet Intelligence for an undercover operation, spying on the Rogues. (Cisco insists that it must somehow be the work of the shady Section 39, that they know about the incident a year earlier and are puppetmastering everything. Caitlin isn’t as sold on that idea, but even she agrees it’s a weird coincidence, if that’s what it is.) Their base of operations on Earth has been found – a rundown old bar called Saints and Sinners – and Starfleet suspects that they might be providing intel and supplies to Dominion agents in the Alpha Quadrant. As far as Barry is told, it’s the result of some recent and uncharacteristically messy jobs, which seems strange, but Starfleet isn’t losing this chance to gather more information.
So he’s sent in with a schedule for when to report to his handler, told that his cover is “Sam”, and gets dumped on the Rogues’ doorstep. Frankly, the whole situation is still just insane, but it’s not like he could exactly say no to Starfleet Intelligence. Even when he takes a seat at the bar, even when he knows that Snart sees and recognizes him, even when Snart takes the stool next to him.
“Didn’t take this as your kind of spot, Scarlet.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes things change.” Over the next few minutes, he’s explaining his cover story (the story he had to make up himself, because he’d been sure Snart would know his face). That Starfleet saw the war as only on their doorstep, despite the Dominion already proving themselves all too happy to be the aggressors. That he’s already had friends go MIA without word (true) and seen the diplomats and fighting forces of the Dominion firsthand (also true), and he can’t believe Starfleet is just sitting back and doing nothing (less true, but believable). So he gave up his commission and headed back to Earth for whatever time they all had left.
Snart’s just watching him the whole time, eyes narrowed, and Barry can’t help the churning in his gut; there’s no way he’s buying this. Except. Then he’s telling Barry to meet him there the next night, and Barry has a feeling he’s either incredibly lucky, or incredibly unlucky. It’s hard to read much beyond the ice of Snart’s eyes.
But he decides to go through with it. After all, if he’s successful, he’ll be, at the very least, getting Starfleet some intel on the Rogues. Or he might help avert a war, at best. At worst, he’ll be dead, but if he has the chance to do what’s right, then he has to do it, right?
As it turns out, the next night isn’t an ambush. Instead, he’s told to prove his worth, told to showcase his technical abilities – those that he learned from his own time at the Academy (though Snart, for some reason, leaves that particular detail out), throwing in some skills he’s picked up from Cisco over the years. Apparently, the Rogues have been in need of someone to give them a professional opinion on various high-tech (experimental and stolen) pieces they’d picked up in the past, and he’s brought on in that role.
Well, that’s one hurdle passed. Nevermind the fact Barry has a very bad feeling Snart, at the very least, has something else in mind. Maybe just the “keep your enemies close” thing.
But either way, the next few months go smoothly. Or at least, as smoothly as Barry thinks they could go, all things considered. The Rogues are… surprisingly welcoming, actually. More like a family than he’d really thought a band of criminals would be. Lisa has made it clear she finds him adorable. Even Mick’s grunts have taken on a more amused sound, rather than just dismissive. And Snart – he’s not the man Barry expected, either: sarcastic but also weirdly melodramatic, resulting in a terrible kind of humor that Barry is certain he shouldn’t enjoy (but does). (Even the stupid nickname is growing on him, and he does enjoy the banter – he’s sure that’s a mutual thing.) A criminal, yes, but the kind with a code, the kind who kept the rest of the Rogues in line. And surprisingly protective, especially when it came to his younger sister.
That last point is the one that ends up being especially relevant, though.
One day, as he’s walking past the back rooms of the bar, he happens to hear voices. Lisa and Mick. Not yelling, but definitely agitated. And talking about Snart. So he opens the door, deciding to dive in headfirst. “Hey, I uh, was just passing by and could hear you guys. Is everything okay?”
Mick looks ready to murder him, but Lisa stops him and looks ready to dismiss Barry in the same movement. Which… maybe Barry really would’ve been better off just eavesdropping, he’s definitely lost his chance to learn anything now and he’s definitely made these two more suspicious of him and –
But then Lisa’s expression shifts. Barry learns that night that Lisa actually trusts him, learns that Snart has been disappearing on his own jobs recently, learns why Snart is so protective of his sister. Learns the name Lewis Snart. And he recognizes the whole conversation as her asking for his help. He still has his cover, still has the job he was sent here for, but the look in her eyes as she talks about her past says so much more than any debriefing from Starfleet Intelligence does.
So he promises to do what he can. With some help from Starfleet, he finds out just where Snart is going to be meeting and manages to catch him there, at an abandoned warehouse in an equally abandoned part of town. Snart’s not happy with that, of course, but Barry isn’t about to budge. He’s there because he’s going to help in whatever way he can and he is not about to take no for an answer because Lisa and Mick are both concerned. (And, just maybe, because he’s concerned, too. Between that conversation specifically and the past months in general, Barry’s had his entire view changed, and while he still remembers his naive, righteous fury on the station all those years ago, there’s so much more he knows, now.)
Any decision is made for them, though, when Lewis Snart himself walks through the door. Barry plays the part of a replacement member of the crew (the actual guy having been the one caught by Starfleet who gave up this location in the first place), and he puts together what’s happening here. Lewis Snart had managed to worm his way back into crime with the first whisperings of war, planning on using it for his own gains. He’s the one working with the Dominion and dragged his son into this whole mess, ensuring his compliance by threatening to hurt Lisa – a hidden incendiary bomb designed by the Tal Shiar, already on her person and primed to explode at the click of a button. It explains a lot – the messy jobs, the sudden connection between a group of thieves and an intergalactic threat, the look in Snart’s eyes that Barry couldn’t describe but could feel – and it strengthens his resolve.
The job gets going – stealing highly regulated biological substances from a Starfleet Medical facility – and ends messily enough for Barry to understand how Starfleet began gathering more information all of a sudden. And in the aftermath, Snart is colder than he normally is, though there’s a weight there, too, that Barry hadn’t seen before.
He knows what he has to do.
He doesn’t tell his handler anything, and he can tell the guy isn’t amused by his stubbornness. But he won’t back down from his proposal: get him information on how to deactivate this bomb, and he’ll talk about what he’s learned. If Starfleet Intelligence really wants to know who might be leaking information to the Dominion, then they can do that much.
More time passes, and it starts with definite unease. It’s no surprise, and Barry doesn’t blame Snart for regarding him far more coolly. But even then, things start to thaw. He mostly has Lisa to thank for that; once the initial phase of discomfort passed, she was the one to start repairing that bridge, and then pushed her brother to do the same.
It takes work, but it’s almost easy at the same time. He spends more time with the Snarts than he ever could’ve expected, especially with Snart – no, Len. It turns out the two of them have the same taste in terrible movies from decades earlier, and Barry is just comfortable in the man’s company. Nor does he miss the once-overs from across the room. Or the knowing glances thrown their way by Mick, in particular. Some days, Barry almost forgets that there’s a war looming, almost forgets that he’s undercover, almost thinks that there’s something. He tries to bask in the bliss that forgetfulness brings on occasion, no matter how short, because he isn’t looking forward to the day he has to tell the truth.
It comes too quickly, really. His handler tells him how to diffuse the bomb – making it abundantly clear the lengths it took to get that information, because of course he would – and Barry can’t keep the lie going anymore. He’d decided to free the Snarts from their father’s influence, and he’d do that. Even if it meant he’d have to tell the truth, because how else could he explain knowing how to diffuse a Tal Shiar bomb?
The Rogues are furious and confused all at the same time. Even Len, whom Barry could’ve sworn knew this secret all along. He tells Barry to do his job, diffuse the bomb, and get out, in no uncertain terms. Barry thinks he sees hurt in his expression for just a moment, but maybe he’d just been imagining things. Knowing him, he probably was.
Meeting up with his handler to end his assignment, he didn’t think he’d end up missing that run down bar. But he does, and he tries not to think too hard as he relates what had been happening: that Lewis Snart was the man they were looking for. He’d been forcing his son to help in his jobs. The Rogues weren’t involved.
All the private details, he leaves to himself, though. Starfleet wouldn’t ever hear any of that from him.
But, apparently, things aren’t done yet. Because as Barry is about to leave, he learns that Starfleet is planning to raid Saints and Sinners. He doesn’t understand; he’d explicitly told them that the Rogues hadn’t been selling out the Federation. Except that it doesn’t matter. They knew now that Len had, if nothing else, been involved in that job at the medical facility, and they’d been looking for a reason to take down the Rogues, anyway. It just worked out, and Barry had done them a great service.
He feels his stomach drop, lies about forgetting something somewhere – he doesn’t even know what words came out of his mouth – and runs to the bar. Weapons and scowls are raised to meet him but there isn’t time for this. Starfleet is on their way and they need to get out please. He knows he doesn’t have any real way to convince them that he’s telling the truth, but he catches Len’s eye and just hopes that’s enough. The time that passes right then is both long and short all at once, and Barry finds himself wishing that he could go back to the times when Len’s expression was so much easier to read, back in those private moments that he knows will hurt to remember, now.
By some stroke of luck, Len lowers his weapon and orders the Rogues to leave; they’d be best off laying low, even if the raid doesn’t happen. The rest of the Rogues seem hesitant, but eventually they make for a secret exit. Len is the last to leave, not even a snarky remark as he does so. Barry just gets one last glimpse of blue eyes before he makes his way back to the waiting transport to take him back to Deep Space 9.
Part of the way back, he learns that the Rogues were nowhere to be found once Starfleet barged into Saints and Sinners. Barry just hopes that no one saw his sigh of relief.
*****
He’s welcomed back to the station with joy, but it doesn’t last long. Iris is the first to pick up on something being wrong, but he brushes her (and later Caitlin and Cisco) off. He just has to readjust, definitely not any confusing feelings or dreams that linger.
Then the Dominion War breaks out in earnest, and the Federation is kicked off the station. It’s while they’re serving on the Defiant, on a rare quiet night amidst the fighting, that Iris confronts him again. She’s not wrong to do that – his dreams oscillate wildly between Len and the War and sometimes are a terrifying combination of both – but he tries to deflect. This is the middle of a War, is this really important? She shuts down his arguments: it would be dangerous for the whole crew if he’s distracted by whatever’s been bothering him all this time. But also, they’ve all been worried about him; they want to help him.
He knows Iris, and he knows that she’s stronger willed than just about anyone he’s ever met. So he tells her. About what he was sent to do, about the Rogues, about Len, about his confusing feelings. About lying to them and betraying them and the guilt. About the voice that’s been in his head ever since, saying he’s lost the chance to ever find out whether or not there might have been something more there, because maybe it was all doomed from the start.
But it feels good to tell his best friend all of this, and she doesn’t seem too bothered over him maybe having feelings for a criminal. She’s supportive and reminds him that the rest of them will always be on his side no matter what, but also that he can’t be sure that he’s ruined things permanently. There could still be a chance.
And she’s right about that. First, they’d all have to survive this war, but if they did, then after that? The thought of going back to Earth and trying to fix this mess was a lot, but in the end? He could only hope that it would be worth it.
*****
Wow, it's been a super hot second since I've written anything for this fandom, so I hope you enjoyed this random garbage that flooded my brain because I saw the words "space AU". I have no idea if anything is in character anymore, but I basically wanted to combo "Family of Rogues" with the DS9 episode "Honor Among Thieves" (with a hint of the Garak and Bashir meeting vibes from the pilot). So here we are.
In 1963, while doing renovations on his home, a man broke through an exterior bedroom wall in his home and discovered a tunnel entrance. What he found behind that wall stunned historians, archeologists and the world. The lost ancient underground city of Derinkuyu had been discovered.
A multilevel series of rooms, carved from the soft volcanic rock in the Cappadocia region of Turkey, Derinkuyu extends to a depth of over 200ft. Believed to have been constructed by the Phrygians, an
Indo-European people originally from the Balkan region, it dates back to the 8th Century BCE. Capable of holding up to 20,000 people, Derinkuyu had rooms for food stores, livestock, schools, kitchens, living and sleeping quarters and sanitary facilities. Small tunnels carved up to the surface allowed ventilation throughout the city. Entrance tunnels were carefully hidden in the hills surrounding Derinkuyu and connected to the city. One of these tunnels were discovered in 1963 when workers removed the bedroom wall.
It is believed the city was originally carved as an escape from marauding Arab armies in 9th Century BCE and continued over the next several hundred years. The city was used often as a refuge during the Byzantine Era of the 5th through the 10 Century CE.
Hey btw if you don’t know how to program, you should check out [novelty], which is a free Visual Novel creation software. Absolutely no programming required, and it’s super easy to use, I played with it some when I was a teen but the only reason I didn’t do much with it is cuz I made my story complicated and had like 5000 different branching routes that kept spawning new routes and made myself confused LMAO
But yeah, it’s a WYSIWYG with a really straight-forward GUI, if I remember correctly.
It even comes with some free backgrounds and characters and stuff, and this is what it looks like:
Did I mention it’s super duper free? It hasn’t been updated since 2010, but it has basically all you’d need to make a simple visual novel.
Just make sure your DirectX runtime is updated, cuz it can act buggy if it’s outdated, but this program is so old that I doubt it’d even be an issue lol
@becausedragonage @ashidoodle can I recommend Choice Script? It’s like a choose your own adventure coding program. The finished product looks like this, where every option sends you down a different path:
They are literally books you can play. You can even insert your own character’s name and pronouns and that would make writing reader inserts so much easier And as a writer who can not art, writing and making dating sims and games is more convenient.
The coding is also super simple and easy to learn and all it requires other than the program files is a text editor. And just like that you can start typing up like you would your own fanfics or stories. Plus it’s very versatile so you can make your game/book as simple or as complicated as you want, and even implement stats and inventory systems.
AND CHOICE SCRIPT IS ALSO SUPER DUPER FREE. THE COMPANY EVEN PUBLISHES YOUR FINISHED GAME FOR YOU AND GIVES YOU ROYALTIES IF YOU CHOOSE TO SELL IT. THE PROGRAM STILL GETS UPDATED AND THE COMPANY PUBLISHES BOOKS EVERY MONTH INCLUDING THE FANMADE ONES. THERE’S ALSO A FORUM FOR PEOPLE TO POST WIPS AND TALK ABOUT CHOICE SCRIPT AND GET HELP.
