itainthardtrying
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By any other Name by itainthardtrying
Fandoms: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us (TV)
13 Jan 2025
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“Apparently, soul marks are a big deal in FEDRA. You’re supposed to keep them always covered, never disclose your Names. They think it could create unnecessary camaraderie between the ranks, alliances they couldn’t control.”
“Fucking fanatics,” Joel mutters, and Tess snorts her agreement.
“Gets worse. That asshole told me it’s even more of a problem when there’s kids involved. FEDRA worries somebody could pick a fight with them, steal away one of their precious free resources. Or that the kids could grow and run – try to find whoever’s on their arms.”
Joel frowns. “So? Tell’em to cover their Names too?”
“Not really,” Tess says, finally turning to look straight at Joel. “With FEDRA kids, they erase them.”Soulmate AU. Everyone is born with their soulmates’ Names written on their skin. Joel meets his third when he’s fifty-six, and he’s tasked to smuggle her outside Boston’s QZ. This can’t possibly end well.
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Where you last placed your heart by itainthardtrying
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
01 May 2024
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Now that Ellie’s alone, she just sits on her bed and looks at her book. She can’t call it reading anymore – by now she has read the thing front to back so many times that she could quote some paragraphs word for word.
That’s why it’s weird that it took her so long to notice the message written on the front page.
There, nestled just below the title, there’s one line of writing addressed to her. It doesn’t mention any names, but it is for her. It can’t be otherwise.
It’s not Tommy’s handwriting, nor Maria's, nor Riley's.But it’s somebody’s. Somebody who knew she’d like to read about Moon landing, spaceships, and astronauts. Somebody who cared enough to take this book, fix the hardcover with some scotch tape, and give it to her. Somebody who wrote those words on the front page knowing that they would make her smile.
Somebody who loved her.
It’s late spring 2024 when Ellie wakes up in Jackson. She has a backpack full of books, a burn on her arm, and no memory of how she went from Boston QZ to Wyoming.
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It’s probably because of the after sex haze that Nicky’s words slip out of his mouth before he can think about it.
“I want to marry you.”
Joe stops his whatever he was saying about the weather. “What?”
Nicolò opens his eyes. “Uh…” He had been thinking about it for a few days already, and apparently his brain was done holding it back from Joe. “I want to marry you, Yusuf."Or: How Nicky poses as a priest to infiltrate the Council of Trento and ends up getting married. Again.
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“Come again?” Yuuri asks, a little taken aback.
“I asked you how does your anxiety feel like.”
Anxiety, in Yuuri’s mind, works like a river.
Like a huge river held up by a dam. And whenever he does a mistake in his program, the giant concrete wall of the dam begins to break open, a web of fissures appearing on its surface. Then, suddenly, the wall crumbles and the river crashes down on his shoulders, and he can’t bear it, he can’t, he can’t breathe or resurface as he’s pushed down and down and down.
That’s what he thinks.
What he actually says is: “It’s like, umm… like a dam.”
Victor just looks at him, his brow furrowed. “A dam,” he repeats, the word sounding unfamiliar in his mouth.
Fuck, Yuuri thinks. That’s it. I’m totally useless at words.Or: Poodle plushie tissue box origin story.
Series
- Part 1 of Rivers and roads
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A curse leaves Sam with a very different version of Dean.
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Bookmarked by itainthardtrying
24 Jan 2026
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Define normal by Bergen
Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
01 Nov 2025
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On a perfectly average Tuesday night – as far as any night can be called perfectly average anymore nowadays – the sky goes pitch black above Manhattan, a violent storm rattles the roofs, vivid blue and purple lightning bolts illuminate the clouds.
Once it is over, as suddenly as it began, news trickles in of difficult-to-explain phenomena occurring worldwide: The statue of liberty has changed color to a bright pink, an exact replica of the great wall of China has appeared across the Sahara desert, it rains feathers in Copenhagen for several hours, every single stapler on Sumba Island turns into a coat hanger, and Tony Stark wakes up from an impossible-to-wake-up-from coma.Bookmarked by itainthardtrying
18 Jan 2026
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Joel made a choice. He stayed with her. And now mother and father are a blurred line, with no clear beginning and end. He doesn’t pick and choose. He’s everything. He’s Joel. He’s the only person she can think about, when something isn’t right. When she’s curled up on the floor in pain or tangled in her blankets from a nightmare. His name comes to her lips every time, even if she doesn't want it to, a cry that pulls directly from instinct.
She’s Ellie.
Maybe that’s why she doesn’t tell him about what she found in Maria and Tommy’s guest room.
Ellie doesn't have a mother. Jackson gives her space to feel this loss more acutely.
Bookmarked by itainthardtrying
30 Dec 2025
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White-faced, Ellie's got her eyes clamped shut, lips moving around a silent refrain of what looks like fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…
Fuck indeed.
“Your little friend’s immune,” Tommy says quietly. “That ain’t news to me, and it sure as hell ain’t news to her. Bit twice before she lost her last fucking baby tooth.”
Or:
Two months after the WLF got away without a trace, Tommy learns that Ellie and Joel are more alike than he bargained for.
Bookmarked by itainthardtrying
25 Aug 2025
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paintings of you and me (and who we used to be) by stumblingaway
Fandoms: The Last of Us (TV), The Last of Us (Video Games)
03 Jun 2024
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She starts making small sounds, close to cooing. They’re not nearly as loud as her crying, thank god, but it would be better if she didn’t make any noises at all, like the rest of her peers.
“You don’t got any sense, do you?” Joel mutters, receiving a gurgling sound that’s likely not directed at him.
Joel realizes, much to his horror, that he once came across Ellie almost 15 years ago.
Bookmarked by itainthardtrying
21 Jun 2025