#[ i wish i was capable of being insane in a manner beyond sitting in a corner of a room staring at a wall

[laughingtale]

tag rambling ab latest chapter (again) bc i am normal always

[swbumblebee]

What if Qui-Gon Jinn was not particularly special in his post-mortem abilities?

AKA “Old Ben” and his many Force parents.

They had all watched, their collective Force aura swamped in sadness, grief and longing, as Qui-Gon finally introduced himself to Obi-Wan.

They’d never call him ‘Old Ben’. The fact that he was only 40 years old notwithstanding, this was the boy they’d raised, grown up with, idolised. They remembered him toddling about the gardens, fascinated by the brightly coloured flowers; Getting shy around pretty people and developing awkward crushes. They remembered him standing alone at the head of an army, quietly confident and immeasurably capable. They had vivid memories of him carrying them back to the creche, so steady and strong; of his measured wisdom, and the confidence that Obi-Wan Kenobi would always triumph.

They remembered the mullet.

Nobody named “Old Ben” ever had a mullet.

The man they now, as they always had really, looked to for a light when everything else went dark.

They didn’t catch the murmured words. They were Jedi after all, (even if they were now technically one big Jedi rather than a temple full of Jedi) and eavesdropping was rude. Nobody listened to the sulky mutterings of the presence that was Quinlan Vos.

Their boy was nodding, sitting quietly on the floor whilst he finally, finally after weeks of careful and gentle persuasion, of them all keeping a tight rein on the order’s maverick (“Do not, we repeat do not, come out of the water tank. You’ll give him a cardiac arrest or something”) believed in the presence he saw before him.

They watched once more, pleased, as their missing piece allowed himself to be bullied to his feet, and guided over to the pile of blankets he called a bed.

They could feel Qui-Gon’s bitter relief as he perched next to his former student, his longing to pull the blankets up around his boy and smooth back his hair.

But words were all they had.

Still, as Obi-Wan Kenobi had shown the Galaxy; you could do a lot with words.

---

They’d argued (as much as an incorporeal fusion of spirits could argue) at length over who got to go next.

“I knew him longest, he’ll trust me!”

“He needs someone calm, measured. I will go”

“No offence Master Plo but you’ll make him cry. He needs cheering up, I’ll go!”

“Vos so help me Force-“

“I was the Master of the Order, I should do it”

“Master, we’re dead. I’m not sure seniority applies.”

In the end it was narrowed down to two options; Bant Erin, Obi-Wan’s oldest friend. Sweet natured and kind, she would be the perfect choice.

And Mace Windu.

It turns out seniority does still apply beyond the grave.

---

A small part of Obi-Wan’s subconscious was telling him that it was starting to get a bit awkward.

The transparent blue form of Mace Windu was looking down at him, the welcoming smile quickly turning into a grimace.

“…Obi-Wan?”

No. no no no this was not happening. He didn’t have time to go round the bend he had a child to protect!

He wasn’t sure if it was reasonable to measure sanity on the volume of dead loved ones he was hallucinating, but somehow one seemed saner than two.

Though it turns out he’s insane, and so not a good barometer of these things.

He knew his stare was starting to get very unnerving as his hysterical inner-ramblings reached a fever pitch.

“…Obi-Wan, are you alright?” Imaginary Mace Windu asked, concern and a tiny bit of nervousness showing on his face.

“I’m fine, how are you?” Obi-Wan asked, remembering a solid piece of advice from his formative years; Always fall back upon good manners when in unfamiliar territory Padawan mine.

Well, this was about as unfamiliar as it got.

Imaginary Mace looked at him, utterly baffled for a moment.

“Well…I’m dead, I suppose, is how I am” he answered awkwardly.

“Right. Obviously.” Obi-Wan nodded politely. “My condolences”

There was another awkward silence.

Imaginary Mace tilted his head for a moment, listening for something.

“Well…here I am” he said, spreading his arms a little.

“…yes.”

The other Jedi frowned at Obi-Wan’s strained reply and his act of scrubbing his hands down his face as if to wipe away the image in front of him.

“Qui-Gon didn’t…didn’t mention we were coming?” he asked tentatively.

Obi-Wan shook his head, wordlessly.

The frown on Imaginary Mace turned into a complete scowl as the pieces seemed to fall into place.

“JINN” he bellowed, and Obi-Wan felt it echo in the Force like nothing before.

“He can’t hear you, he’s with Yoda”

Another figure popped into existence next to Mace, and Obi-Wan rubbed his eyes once again as Depa Billaba bowed to him.

“Obi-Wan” she greeted with a grin.

“…hi” He took a deep breath, mentally cursing his absent-minded Master.

“Are you alright?” Depa didn’t stop for a reply as she looked down with him and gestured at him, gently instructing him to get up from the floor. “Oh look you’ve scraped your knee there! Master I knew you’d startle him!” she scolded her former Master.

It felt like he was having an out of body experience as Depa ushered him into a chair (the only chair in the hut), Mace looking on anxiously.

“There we go” Depa soothed as she got him settled “I wish we could make you some tea my friend.” She said disappointedly.

Obi-Wan cleared his throat.

“You ah…you can’t?” he asked, something permeating the haze. Of this whole situation, that seemed by far the most unfair thing.

Mace smiled encouragingly, seemingly happier to be on more binary ground.

“I’m afraid not, we are beings of the Force, like your Master.” He explained, before scowling again. “Who, I would kill if he weren’t already dead,” he growled.

“I’m so sorry Obi-Wan” Depa said, dismayed “We all wanted to come and be with you, but we though Qui-Gon might be best to start with, so as not to overwhelm you”

“Sorry about that” Mace said apologetically.

They sat in silence a moment, Depa and Mace watching him process.

For the first time ever, Obi-Wan had exactly zero thoughts in his head.

He was starting to feel the pressure.

“All?” he tried.

Depa and Mace looked at each other.

“You ah…you said ‘all wanted to come’” he clarified.

Depa nodded happily.

“Yes yes, we’re all there Obi-Wan” she smiled at him

“Any Jedi slain by a Sith, or the machinations of the Sith, is there” Mace explained.

Obi-Wan was having the slightest bit of trouble taking deep breaths. Neither of his companions seemed to have noticed.

“Where?” he asked, only mildly aware that his voice was getting just a little pitchy.

“In the Force, we’re all one in the Force” Depa started again, and then paused a little lost for words.

“We’re all together and we kind of…share our presences” Mace picked up, with difficulty “Everyone who was killed by Palpatine’s evil, everyone from us right down to the littlest initiate, we share one consciousness in the Force.”

Obi-Wan was none the wiser.

Mace waved a hand frustratedly.

“Sorry, Plo explains it better”

“Plo?” Obi-Wan loved Master Plo. He loved all of them. And they were gone.

“Hello Obi-Wan”

“Well, if Plo and Depa get to see him I’m bloody well here too!”

“Hi Obi”

“Obes!”

He could only watch, speechless, as the faces of old friends, comrades, mentors and carers crammed into his hut, all looking at him with unadulterated, unfiltered pleasure and love was the last thing he saw before his scrambled brain decided it’d had enough, and he knew nothing but darkness.

---

It turns out, living with the forms of all your dead teachers, carers and friends was actually rather trying, after a while.

“Oh thank goodness you’re not still drinking that awful caff”

“I like caff – Master Plo please don’t try and lift that”

“Relax Obi dear, we’re incorporeal”

“Can still see things though”

“Vos get out of my fresher!”

“What does this do?”

“Never you mind. No don’t – Ugh. Why don’t some nice, well behaved padawans ever come to see me?”

“They’re not allowed, only those who knew you personally can visit. We thought it might get a bit stressful otherwise.”

“…I can’t imagine.”

Aside from having to adapt his busy routine to accommodate half a dozen fidgety and curious…ghosts (?) poking around his small hut at any one time, another unexpected addition to his (attempted) isolation on Tatooine was the nagging. And Force could they nag! The concentrated worry of many, many, beings with nowhere else to direct their extra energies was powerful.

“Obi-Wan you haven’t drank enough today. Go and check the vaporators”

“Padawan aren’t you going to eat?”

“Listen, that plie of cloth can’t be good for your spine”

“Force! Get some sun block Kenobi or you’re going to look like an old shoe in three months”

“No right, I saw a sunhat he can buy at the market”

It was…weird. He’d always been very self-sufficient, not to mention being the centre of everyone’s attention was difficult, to say the least. But as the months went on, he found himself transitioning from awkward acquiescence to see-sawing between mulishness and good-natured obedience. The stubbornness rising usually when the despair did. But those days were few and far between.

And now, when they did occur (for one can only avoid one’s demons for so long) and he felt like he was drowning in the weight of existence, he could rely on his friends for encouragement, care, and the motivation to carry on.

“If you join us before your time I will KILL you Obi-Wan Kenobi. Now kriffing well eat something!”

---

Of course, when their brother, friend, son, comrade, teacher and last hope did at last join them, there was no nagging or disappointment (or violence). The ultimate Jedi was back in the fold and they were once again complete.

[skybound2]

Where You Keep Your Shoes

Who wants some stream of consciousness Drowley written on very little sleep?! I gotcha my darlings!

It happens slowly, Crowley's death. Not the actual moment. That happens quick, like a knife slipped between two ribs. So sharp and whip swift that you barely know what's happening until you look down. 

But then you look down. You look down and you see the handle sticking from your chest. And the pain and confusion seeps in slow as the blood fills your lungs, and you have an eternity to wonder and regret and wish before oblivion takes you. Until you have no time for anything at all ever again.

Crowley's physical death is like that.

What comes after though? That is infinitely worse. A barren void. Both inexhaustible and exhausting. An oppressive, crushing weight dragging you ever further down into insignificance.

But then - then - the cold fingers of death release their hold one by one, letting in tiny pinpricks of light as they dissolve away. Until Nothing becomes Something. Until what once was Empty becomes a little bit less.

The pain of it is, perhaps, just that much worse for it. But that's okay. It's a reminder. Proof of life.

Better than feeling nothing at all.

So there's pain, and that means life. And that's...good? He thinks. Pain seasoned with equal parts wonder and fear.

Wonder that he's back. Wonder that someone would bother. Wonder that anyone would care.

Fear that it can't last. Fear that it's one final joke the universe plans to play on him. Fear that he's out of his depth.

He was no good as a human the first time around, who's to say he's not going to screw it up this time too?

So he deals with it in the only manner he's any good at.

Bargaining. Making deals. Or trying to at least.

Trouble is, there's no one for him to bargain with. No one to whom he can plead his case for continued existence. (He doesn't call it praying. He won't . But what else is it when you beg in silence to an unknown entity that holds the power of life and death over you, with no hope of response?) Because no one claims responsibility for his return at all.

No. No he simply sparks back into being on the doorstep of the Winchester's humble abode in the middle of a rainy winter afternoon. Coughing up blood from a wound that's no longer there; chest heaving for breath, and the muscle trapped beneath his ribs pounding against its cage like it plans to escape.

Something it'll try again. Over and over, night after night. Week after week. As his spontaneous second (or third or fourth, because who's counting anyway?) life trudges on. Waking him up from broken visions of Nothing, bathed in cold sweat, with the familiar taste of ash and brimstone in his throat that no amount of whiskey can wash away.

So he bargains. Makes promises that he'll do better this time. That he'll try, if only he can avoid being sent back to that place of manifested Absence ever again.

The worry that he'll be tossed unceremoniously back into that place plagues him like nothing else ever has. It's a slow, insidious type of torture a former demon such as him can respect.

He doesn't swear to be good, because he doesn't believe he's truly capable of that. But he can pantomime, he thinks. He's spent enough years being foiled by the Winchesters to have a general grasp on the concept, even if his days playing at it before his death were sadly limited. And now, having been given shelter in their bunker, he has a front row seat to what Being Good looks like on a daily basis.

It seems to work, his bargain. He keeps breathing. His heart keeps beating. And he eases back into the world, to life, a day at a time. Learning what it means to be human; pretending he understands what it means to be mortal.  

To be moral.

He trips up sometimes. Forgets why people ( Other people. People he doesn’t know. People he doesn't like.) matter. Sam will shake his head at him, the lumbering oaf sighing that heavy dramatic sigh of his that Crowley is certain he practices in the mirror for optimal judgmental effect, and walk away.  

Feathers and Luci’s brat are more patient with his mistakes. But being near them makes his skin itch. Reminds him of what he was for so long - what he no longer is - in a way that leaves him feeling vulnerable. Exposed . Which just makes him lash out like a cornered housecat.

And like a cornered housecat, he’ll skitter away as soon as the coast is clear; to whatever little dark, solitary place he can find so he can lick his imaginary wounds in peace.

He’s never alone for long though. Dean always finds him. And for all that Crowley sometimes chafes at his presence, he’s grateful for it too.

(But then, he’s hard pressed to recall a time when he wasn’t grateful for Dean Winchester. As even on the days when he was making Crowley’s life difficult beyond measure, he was also making it more interesting.)

Crowley can be alone when Dean’s there. Alone with his thoughts; with his confusion; with his uncertainty. And Dean will let him wallow, but only to a point. Dragging him up and out of the bunker when he gets too maudlin. To pool halls and bars, usually, or easy hunts with black and white answers, where Crowley gets to pretend that he has the faintest idea what it means to be good. But sometimes he just leads him outside. Away from the recirculated air that reeks of blood and sweat as much as it does of parchment and ink.

Dean will let him rant and rage on occasion too, something Crowley appreciates as much - if not more so - than everything else. Maybe because Dean calls him out on his bullshit. Every. Single. Time. And that’s something Crowley has always found refreshing. Demon, human, or somewhere in between.

At first Crowley’s not certain what Dean gets out of it. But as the weeks bleed on into months, he begins to suspect that what Dean gets out of it isn’t all that different from Crowley.

Space. A chance to sort himself out without anyone putting demands on his time. On his thoughts.

Someone who gets it.

Memories of hell a shared space between them, even if they are looking at it from different angles.  

It’s a year and some change after his return that Crowley accidentally falls asleep in Dean’s room for the first time. The nightmares that dog his steps send him scurrying out of his room, in search of some place...safe. But rather than seeking out a bottle and an out of the way corner in the bunker like he is wont to do, his feet carry him to Dean’s door.

Dean answers his knock with a grunt, swinging the door open wide and allowing Crowley entrance with nary a word. The television on Dean’s dresser is paused on a scene of a show Crowley doesn’t recognize, the Netflix logo emblazoned in the corner.

Somehow Crowley finds himself sitting on Dean’s bed. Maybe it’s the lack of chairs in the space, or the fact it’s after midnight and it is by far a more inviting option than the floor. Or maybe it’s just that Dean gestures for him to do so, and an invite to Dean’s bed - no matter in what capacity - is not something Crowley is built to refuse.

So he ends up on Dean’s bed, watching a poorly acted, poorly scripted program on the screen. He slowly migrates back, towards the pillows, his feet lifting from the floor inch by inch as he does.

“Dude, take you shoes off.” It’s a command, not a request. Something Crowley may have balked at in days past, or even in the light of the sun at present. But laying on Dean Winchester’s bed watching Netflix in the dark of the night, visions of the bleak Empty he so fears tickling his mind, Crowley does nothing of the sort. Instead, he does as he’s told. Sliding them off and onto the floor at the side of the bed before settling back on the mattress to watch the show. 

He wakes up before the sun crests the horizon - not that anyone can tell that sort of the thing in the windowless bunker, but Crowley’s internal clock is good at it’s job - still laying on Dean’s bed, the elder Winchester’s sleeping visage a scant few inches away. The sight makes Crowley’s heart once again attempt a messy escape from his chest.

Crowley stares, shock and wonder at the sight he’s been gifted holding him in place. Crowley watches as soft lips he’ll recall the feel of until his bones are dust and insanity all that’s left of his mind, part on an inhale. He watches as what he knows to be impossibly green eyes dart back and forth behind closed lids. He watches, and wonders what Dean dreams about.

But not for long. No. When Dean shifts minutely in his sleep, turning towards Crowley - coming dangerously close to making contact - Crowley flees. Sitting up and dropping his feet to the ground.

When he reaches for his shoes, he finds that they aren’t quite where he’d left them. Instead of beside the footpost, they’ve been slide beneath the bed. Tucked away behind the blanket draped across the mattress that both him and Dean fell asleep on. There they sit, next to another battered, but clean, pair of shoes belonging to the owner of said mattress. 

The sight trips him up for a moment, but then Dean sniffles in his sleep and Crowley gets moving, grabbing his shoes and heading for his own room like a thief in the night.

Crowley tells himself it's not important. That it doesn't mean anything. That there's no reason to dwell on it.

But he does. His treacherous, oh-so-very human emotions clog up his brain with thoughts of it. After all, he's never fallen asleep next to Dean before. And Dean has certainly never done the same. Not in all the nights that they'd dallied about back when Dean had been a demon, and Crowley had been grasping at straws. They’d engaged in all manner of sin, but never something so naked as that .

It happens again three months later. And again a month after that. Then a week. Soon enough it's happening with alarming regularity and frequency. 

He'll show up at Dean's door, ready with an easy excuse that Dean never asks for, and so Crowley never provides. Instead, Dean just lets him in, no questions asked. Door swung open, and shut with a click of the lock behind him, all in the time it takes Crowley to exhale.

Some nights they talk. Bantering about the idiocy on the screen, mostly. But sometimes it’s light anecdotes about life past, or discussing the last hunt, or lamenting the fact that Jack’s interest in cooking ‘family’ dinners has outpaced his ability to make anything remotely edible.

But mostly they sit in silence, watching whatever inane thing is playing on the screen that night. There’s no pressure for explanations. No expectation of confessions or demands for anything beyond simple companionship.

In fact, the only demand that is made, night after night, is that Crowley take his shoes off before putting his feet on the bed.

So Crowley does. Every time.

And every time, when he wakes up, he finds his shoes stowed in the same spot beneath the bed.

Next to Dean's.

It confuses Crowley almost as much as it warms his erratic heart.

They don’t talk about it, of course. Crowley doesn’t want to call attention to it, for fear that doing so will bring an end to, well, all of it.

And Dean, well, Crowley knows Dean well enough to know that there’s only two reasons why he wouldn’t bring it up. Either it’s so unimportant as to not warrant mentioning. Or... it’s the complete opposite of that.

Crowley also figures he knows Dean well enough to know which one of those choices is the more likely one, so he keeps his mouth firmly shut.

He’ll take ambiguity over clear rejection any day. 

It goes on like that - month after month, night after night - Crowley spending more hours asleep in Dean’s bed then in his own - always making sure he’s gone before Dean wakes - until Crowley is celebrating a second rotation around the sun as a human. A day that comes and goes without fanfare, for all that the knowledge of it settles on Crowley like a lead shroud.

Two years, and he’s still no closer to figuring out why he was brought back, or how to make sure he doesn’t go back.  

Two years, and he still thinks he rather sucks at this whole ‘Being Good’ thing, though he’s making progress. (He hasn’t been on the receiving end of one of Sam’s epic judgmental sighs in six solid days.) Slow, tedious progress, but progress all the same.

Not that time or progress helps with the nightmares at all. No. No, the only thing that seems to help alleviate those is the presence of one unfairly attractive hunter sleeping nearby.

It’s the dawn of the morning after said two-year anniversary when everything changes.

Crowley’s soaking in the sight of Dean, peaceful in sleep a hand length away, allowing himself a few precious moments of silent adoration before he has to sneak from the bed. He heaves a sigh, wanting to hold onto the moment longer, but being too much a coward to take the chance of getting caught.

(There’s a vague feeling of loss for the centuries of his life when he’d take whatever he wanted with no thought as to something as mundane as consequence, but he can’t quite bring himself to wish to be back in that time again.)

He’s only just begun the process of rolling from his side to his back when he freezes at the feel of fingers grasping at his wrist. His gaze swings to the location of the touch, his traitorous heart thundering away in his chest as he’s forced to admit that yes, that is in fact Dean Winchester’s hand holding him in place.

“Dammit, Crowley. Just once can you stay put? Be nice to get a full night’s sleep for a change.”

And because Crowley is the epitome of articulation at four in the morning when the man he’s been in love with through life and death and rebirth is touching him skin to skin for the first time since said death for a reason not related to impending doom, he says: “Pardon?”

“Sleep, Crowley. I want to get some. And it’d be a hell of a lot easier if you stopped with the nightly walks of shame.”

It takes a monumental effort to pull his eyes away from where Dean’s fingers are encircling his wrist, but he manages. Sliding them up to Dean’s face, trying to read the look he’s being given by the pale light of the dimmed television.

If Crowley were a less pessimistic sort, he’d think it was almost fond. Annoyed, but fond.

But pessimistic or not, Crowley can’t ignore the fact that Dean is actively holding him back from leaving, and is complaining about him having done so in the past. Crowley’s messy human emotions set his heart racing, his blood rushing. The point of contact between Dean’s fingers and Crowley’s wrist the source of the most intense physical sensations that Crowley can recall since he donned a mortal coil.

Despite his physiological response, Crowley’s mind manages to cling to his sense of self-respect enough to stop him from doing something as embarrassing as declaring his everlasting love or something equally ridiculous. “Hardly a walk of shame, Squirrel.”

Dean’s eyebrows lift towards his hairline. An action that when combined with the sideways position of his head illustrates the lines of age that have begun to carve their way across his forehead. (A fact that - if anything - makes Crowley find him even more attractive.) “No? What else would you call tiptoeing outta here before sunrise every morning in your socks?”

“Being considerate?”

An exasperated chuckle escapes Dean. The sound gravel-rough with sleep, and all too-pleasant to Crowley’s ears. “Considerate would be you keeping your ass in bed for a whole night.”

Crowley chokes on his next breath of air. “You want me to spend the night here?" 

“I haven’t kicked you out, have I?”

“Well, no, but, falling asleep watching D-list eighties movies isn’t the same thing as you wanting me to stay.”

“You think if I didn’t want you here, I’d have let you stay here one night, let alone a hundred?” The question is punctuated with an almost imperceptible brush of Dean’s thumb over Crowley’s pulse-point. The action - simple as it is - sweeps away the vast majority of Crowley’s lingering doubts.

“Well, when you put it that way…”

“Good. Glad that’s settled. Now, sleep.”

Crowley swallows down the questions clawing at his throat, and nods his head. He’s rewarded with a soft smile from Dean. Green eyes holding Crowley’s gaze for lingering moments before sliding shut on a sleepy exhale of air.

Dean doesn’t let go of his wrist.

They don’t talk about it in the light of day. Not that Crowley really expected they would. But there’s a distinct shift in their interactions as they move about the bunker. Dean drifting into Crowley’s orbit too often for it to be accidental. Crowley’s head and heart make sure to scream out at him every time it happens, just in case he wasn’t paying enough attention and might miss it.

The internal screaming is made even worse every time Dean smiles or laughs or breathes in his general vicinity.

Dear Mother of Sin, but Crowley feels like a sap.

How he manages to make it through an entire day of pretending that his perception of reality hasn’t been fundamentally altered by one Dean Winchester, he has no idea. (Jack’s attempt at making meatloaf a la mode for dinner helps, he suspects.)

After, Dean heads to bed earlier than usual. There’s no pointed look in Crowley’s direction. No sense of invitation to join him. Nothing at all out of the ordinary.

Crowley follows after him an embarrassingly short time later.

Dean lets him in, as always.

(In retrospect, Crowley can admit that should have been one hell of a clue.)

This time though, when Crowley ends up on the bed with Dean it’s more than just his shoes that join Dean’s on the floor.

So yes, Crowley's death is slow. The slowest in the universe. It begins the moment he first agrees to help the Winchesters, and ends the moment he finally figures out where it is he belongs.

And after that...well, after that, Crowley truly starts living.

~End.

[coeurdastronaute]

Giant Ch. 19

When the night was full of terrors And your eyes were filled with tears When you had not touched me yet Oh, take me back to the night we met

The entire museum was alive despite being after hours. Gowns and lights and all manner befitting a Luthor party existed there amidst the flashing camera lights outside and the stars above. It was a dream of a dream, a fragment of a wish a child would make when they wore their mother’s heels and tried to be a princess. The night gracefully nodded at itself in the mirror and enjoyed itself.

The gala was alive, lingering outside despite the mild heat. The lights glowed from the roof, glowed from the poles and trees in the courtyard of the museum. Summer hummed just above the quartet, and Kara soaked up the evening, hoping that a new season would mean a new her. Lena soaked in Kara like she was the sun.

They were good at those things. Good at the parties and the music and the small talk. Lena was polished, while Kara was sweet. Lena would just smile while her girlfriend recalled birthdays and children’s ballet recitals, asking all the questions she could from people she thought as strangers. No one was a stranger to Kara for long. People actually enjoyed seeing the two, enjoyed talking with the relaxed Luthor and her adorable girlfriend. It was a new feeling, one she couldn’t remember feeling since she was a kid and her mother dragged her to all of those things and people liked them.

It was a difficult event, and despite her best efforts to not be a Luthor, Lena could never get rid of the memory of her mother, nor could she find enough hate in her heart to push away any kind of chance to help. And so, on the anniversary of her mother’s birthday, a day that was once filled with balloons and her favorite dinner and handmade and painted wobbly art projects as gifts, Lena filled the museum with people and money and she donated enough to find a cure or at least try. That was how one honored the dead, in her opinion.

“You look amazing, did you know that?” Kara grinned as she kissed her girlfriend’s temple. “Spectacular. I’d say this is my favorite dress you’ve ever worn.”

“You’ve said that every time we have to go to one of these things.”

“I love you in sweats that you refuse to update and my old shirts, but this is a close second.”

“Is that your unbiased opinion, Kara Danvers, CatCo reporter?” Lena shook her head and tugged her along the line of cameras toward the entrance.

“It is,” she nodded. “In my professionally unbiased opinion, you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Amidst the crowds and the people calling their names to look at cameras on the line, neither noticed much else, trapped in their own little world and utterly happy about it. Lena squeezed Kara’s hip as they took another step.

At no point in their decade long dance would she have imagined moments like that were possible. At no point, when she was sneaking glances at the girl who smiled during movies and actually would start breathing faster during tense parts, would she imagine one day holding her hand at an event. Lena never had a second to fathom the idea of dressing up and wanting to go to something like that. Nor could she venture the idea of planning it. Nor could she have allowed herself to imagine being that happy. Seventeen year old Lena would have told present Lena to fuck off with her description of the future. She’d never believe that the nerdy reporter with big glasses and a penchant for tripping over her own feet would be the woman of her dreams.

Instead of thinking of it, Lena looked to the cameras while Kara absolutely beamed. It was amazing to feel how easy happiness was attained near someone like that.

“If only the nerdy Kara from senior year physics class could hear you now.”

“She would have said the exact same thing if she’d been just an inch more brave,” the reporter promised.

Quietly, Kara watched Lena answer questions, her excitement about the event evident. And she felt her hand squeezed slightly.

Once, when she was in college, Kara visited Lena, and she remembered looking at her, really looking at her. And she wasn’t perfect, she never claimed to be, but Kara was absolutely in love with the things Lena complained about from time to time. Her nose had a bump in it. Her eyes were wide. Her lips were too small. The little scar between her eyebrows that was barely noticeable. All the pieces people missed, Kara was obsessed with, and she looked at Lena with the same kind of ferocious wonder, once more reaching that epiphany of utter satisfaction.

“I’m very proud of you, Lee,” Kara promised as they made their way into the museum, time and space and history repeating once more for them.

“Oh, stop,” she brushed it off.

“No, I mean it. I’m always just…” she furrowed and paused because she had words. Her job was words. Someone who crafted them so often should be better with them.

“You’re sweet.”

“Wait. I mean. Just. Lena I’m so darn proud to know you. I don’t think I tell you that enough. I’m in awe of you. I’m bursting at the gills proud of who you’ve always been and what you’ve become. Sometimes I don’t think saying I love you encompasses that. But I’m so proud of you. I’m honored that you pick me. I’m… I am in awe of you constantly.”

“I could say the same for you,” Lena smiled sweetly.

Kara held her hips and let Lena lean her forehead against her own. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, savoring it. Lena just basked in the sunshine in the deep dark night of August. She trailed her fingertips along Kara’s long neck, and she smiled to herself, her chest aflame, as if she were crafted of sparklers.

“Sometimes, I’m not sure who I’m supposed to be, but I know, beyond all else, that I am supposed to be here with you.”

“You’re too sweet tonight.”

“I’ve been known to dabble.”

“You’re the sun to me.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Thank you for coming with me tonight. My mom is probably very amused that we’re here together.”

The moment was there, atop the steps with all eyes on them and not, at the same time. But it broke. They opened their own and exhaled and were alive in the real world.

“I liked her a lot.”

“What do you think she’d say about all of… you know?”

“She’d probably insult Lionel’s tie and say something sassy about the notion of it.”

“Yeah,” Lena smiled to herself.

“Ms. Luthor, Ms. Danvers,” Jess interrupted the thoughts brewing, and for once, Kara was grateful for the intrusions.

“You look amazing, Jess,” Kara smiled, hugging her tightly.

“Oh, no, this is just… I mean… It’s okay, but you two…”

“You did an amazing job, Jess,” Lena assured her. “I’d say that promotion was well worth it.”

“That was still too generous.”

“You’re capable, and I couldn’t think of a better CFO.”

“My two little business ladies,” Kara beamed putting her arms around both of their shoulders. “I’m just so happy.”

The museum was alive. There had been a small, very different celebration earlier in the day in which Lena quietly went to the cemetery and put down her mother’s favorite flowers. She didn’t like to go there often. In fact, she actively avoided it. But today was different.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that flowers were already sitting there, or that her father somehow slipped into the private space despite the vigilant surveillance. He had a knack for the dramatic.

But Lena didn’t let it bother her. She couldn’t. Because when she got back to the apartment, her girlfriend didn’t try to make her feel better by being loud and happy, but rather she just allowed her to curl up with her on the chaise on the balcony, setting down her book and losing her space.

Lena was someone Kara lost her place in a book for, and sometimes, to some people, that was a lot.

The day was bittersweet in the truest way.

But all at once, Lena was filled with the deepest melancholy and the most overwhelming kind of love. And it wasn’t just for her girlfriend. But as they spent the night among friends, Lena saw her little family, her new people, and she was inundated with happiness that did not mitigate her ache, nor did it stifle her pain, but rather existed at the same time, in harmony with it.

She had Jess, and she had Maggie, and she had Winn, and she had Jack, and she had Sharon and her rec league, and she had Sabine and her wisdom, and she had people. Good, honest, genuine people. It wasn’t many, but it was enough. More than enough.

There were speeches and there were auctions as they sailed toward their goal for the evening. This was just a drop in the bucket for the donations and charity work Lena did throughout the year. Kara could never understand why people didn’t recognize it more.

From the bar as she waited for drinks, Kara watched Lena hug someone, and she sighed a contented sigh at her night, at her life.

“When you first told me you had a crush on her, I thought you were insane,” Clarke smiled and adjusted his glasses beside his cousin.

“I thought so too,” she returned his smile and handed him another drink.

“If she’s your family, she’s my family.”

“Thank you.”

“Did Alex talk to you about what they think he’s planning?”

Kara took a drink and wished it were stronger. Though her smile faltered, it couldn’t be taken away by the likes of Lionel Luthor.

Instead, she just watched Lena from across the room and she couldn’t help but feel a little familiar ache of that high school reporter yearning after the prettiest girl in the world. That was never far away from her.

“I thought you were in town for the event,” she muttered. “Lena invited you because you’re my family. My only blood family, and you’re important to me.”

“I came for that,” he assured her. “I just… I have a feeling.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Do you want to do a lap?”

“I thought you were retired,” Kara ventured.

“Believe me, I am. Just, trust me. I know how they work.”

Kara eyed her cousin. What he did weighed so heavily upon him that he couldn’t trust himself. As much as she reassured him, as much as she wanted to help, there was no true retiring from their life, and she saw the burden playing out through him. It was terrifying.

Gone were the sturdy, steady eyes. Gone was that lilt to his chin that defied injustice. Left in his wake was  Clarke that was unsure and wounded and so very mortal.

“Yeah. Let me go tell Lena.”

“Yeah,” Clarke nodded. “Meet you in a few by the Greek stuff. I have to go ask Lois.”

With a nod, Kara put on the smile again and brought her girlfriend another drink, hoping that two super guts were wrong.

“No one gets hurt if the Supers come out to answer for what they’ve done.”

The voice, though amplified over a speaker, was familiar. The crackle of it, the deep baritone waft in it, the emotionless hint beneath an apathetic front. Lena knew the voice, though she barely recognized it. She didn’t want to know it, but it haunted her more than most.

The crowds screamed and were herded toward the courtyard and Lena stood taller and walked against the crowd toward the giant metal suits and henchmen that surrounded them, crashing the expensive party and the memory of her mother forever.

Her party disintegrated with long shrieks and the yelling of people as they attempted to flee. All around her, everyone looked for safety, and where they sought it, they were met with only a more ferocious kind of violence in the form of her father’s henchmen. Lena was the rock in the middle of the river of terrified bodies as they broke around her and she just stared ahead.

“Everyone who worships their false idols will pay for it tonight.”

He must have something, Lena decided. She couldn’t find his face amidst the chaos, but she heard his voice, and she knew the cockiness of success. Her first thought was that tonight would be the last night she saw Kara. And the second was that she hadn’t told her how beautiful she was in too long. Those thoughts made her so sad, Lena felt empty. Until the third thought of somehow protecting Kara wormed its way, full of hope, to the top of the pile.

There were aliens like they had not seen in too long, the drugged, deranged kind, the same kind that Superman once belonged to, the same kind that were pawns in her father’s sick revenge. She saw people attacked. She heard sirens, and still, she approached the largest suit of all.

The gun rounded and pointed toward her before the suit even started to turn around.

“Dad!” She flexed her jaw and stood her ground, eyebrow twitching from the power she needed to draw to brave the storm.

As soon as it fired, she felt herself tackled, in a way.

“Just stay down,” Kara yelped as she arched her back and took the impending stream of bullets.

Lena felt her girlfriend’s body shaking with the impact, she heard her grunt with the weight of the high caliber and modified weaponry.

“You have to get out of here,” Lena told her, clutching her shirt, gripping the emblem in her fists as tight as she could, even when the barrage stopped.

“I think you should, actually,” Kara grunted.

“Not the Super I was looking for, but you’ll do just fi--” a loud clang erupted as Kara’s cousin swung into the game, tossing one machine at the leader.

“Get these people out of here, the back through the kitchen,” Kara said as she held Lena’s shoulders, making her focus despite the debris and dust kicked up by the battle that was tearing apart the museum and street outside. “Don’t go home. Go to Alex’s. She’ll know how to keep you safe.”

Dumb and mute, Lena stared back and gaped slightly because she was just putting on a fundraiser and now she was confronted with a manifestation of her literal daddy issues. Sometimes, Lena remembered that bumbling reporter who snapped a pencil the first minute they met. That was another lifetime, but ever since that, they had always been a team, and there had never been just Lena, or just Kara.

“You can do this. Get them out. Get to Alex’s,” Kara repeated, eyes boring into her girlfriend’s.

The museum would be in shambles, the proud columns outside in the street, the modernist facade that was a violent affront to design was smashed, and just a cage devoid of glass, the party was a gathering of screaming people who just wanted to survive the rabid aliens and monster metal machines that created a new chaos.

“You come home, too,” Lena finally said, though it wasn’t enough. She had so many more words.

“I lov--”

A yank of her cape sent Kara hurdling backwards and into a wall, and left Lena starting at nothing in particular until she fought against her gut and heart, and began to do what Kara asked.

Three years ago, Lena bought a water tower. She told Kara that she was selling the home in Midvale, but she couldn’t do that, and so when she returned and walked the halls for a full three days, she bought the water tower because it was a good place. Her home in Midvale was a good place too. Kara fought Lena on selling it because there was still a doubt there, and she never trusted Lena to not be impetuous.

Kara bought Lena a necklace on her birthday a few months before the gala. It was a thin silver chain and a little constellation, with a diamond in the place of where Krypton would have been. It wasn’t a water tower, but it was something good and important.

The fight with Lionel was unyielding. Kara struggled against the rogue agents and the machine, but when when she saw a necklace on the ground, she felt fear more than the pain inflicted against her person.

It came in waves, the attacks. Lionel’s planned attack against the Supers was effective. A reformed and more intelligent serum made the aliens stronger, made it harder to hurt them without hurting them.

And then there were the machines. The goons. It was a fight, and Kara couldn’t win, and she made herself not think about Lena. That took up a lot of her power.

It was a losing fight though.

Tossed across the street once again, with the edge of a weapon made of high-grade Kryptonite slicing across her chest and arm and abdomen, Kara could barely see straight.

“The mighty house of El brought to their knees by mere mortals,” Lionel growled and gloated as the monster’s metal feet stomped closer. “It ends now. The revenge is finished with this.”

Unable to stand up, Kara tried anyway, her hands pushing weakly against her own knee though she didn’t go anywhere. Vision blurry, she blinked and spit at the ground, her wounds leaving her bones aching. All she could make out was a shield of a body standing in front of her, obscuring Lionel’s hateful smirk.

“Lena--”

From out of the rubble, from out of the mess of the night, a figure emerged and hurried to inject themselves into the struggle.

The rest of the party was gone, saved and led to freedom despite the impending battles. Lena couldn’t leave though, not even with her promise. She climbed through the rubble, she tore her dress and she cut up her legs as she squeezed through crashed cars and the broken museum debris.

When she saw Kara, bloody and battered and almost attacked again, she raced out, not even thinking for a moment at all about what Kara told her to do.

The gun came from the body of a dead guard in the street, half buried under the remnants of the display of presidential portraits. She didn’t think she even knew how to use one, but she held it up to protect the woman she loved.

“You can’t,” Lena stood between her father and the wounded hero. She clenched her fists and tried to look as brave as Kara did when she stood up to giant monsters and evil men. “I won’t let you hurt her.”

“Move aside, Lena,” Lionel leveled the gun again, the barrel pointed at his daughter. “This doesn’t involve you.”

“Mom would be so ashamed of what you’ve become,” she shook her head and raised the gun in her hands back at him.

Tears were streaming down her face, her muscles all ached, and the inevitable bruises and cuts formed. Her dress torn, her face covered in dirt, she looked like she played the entire game straight through, with no breaks. She looked like a survivor.

It’d been years since she’d seen him in the flesh, but somehow, standing there, was as if he was a stranger. She sure as hell didn’t know him. Not anymore.

“Lena, please,” Kara begged, gritting her teeth through the pain. Her hand held at the large gash in her side, her own blood seeping out despite herself. Between her words, she coughed and gurgled and spit. “Don’t hurt her!” she called to her enemy, thought it never reached that far.

As much as she struggled, her muscles had nothing left in them. Kara fought against gravity, normally a much easier war, but she was grounded, she was doubled over and couldn’t stop bowing under the pressure of simply existing. From her knees, she tried to reach out, to push herself up and walk, but nothing worked, not with the Kryptonite in her system. Never had she felt so fragile, so human.

“It’s going to be okay, Supergirl,” the CEO promised, not moving her eyes from her father’s. He was a stranger to her now thought. She wasn’t sure what to call him.

“Move, Lena!” He bellowed, his anger infecting the words violently. “I won’t ask again.”

“Don’t make me do this,” Lena shook her head and sniffled. She felt a few tears drip off of her cheek. Tracks formed through the dirt on her face like river beds after a flood. “Please don’t make me do this!”

“You’d betray your family for that-- that-- that thing?”

“She’s my family,” she disagreed. “My only family died. The rest left me. She’s never stopped choosing to love me.”

“Lena! Go! Don’t do this!” Kara yelped, trying to stand and failing miserably. Her cape hung heavy on her shoulders, weighed her down until she was on her knees, crawling forward with her wounds making her lightheaded. But she had to fight, and she had to save Lena. That made her press on despite all manner of injury.

“You  bring shame to the name Luthor,” the father shook his head.

“The name gets power when you give power to the name,” she repeated his famous words. “I have done more for that damn name than any other before me. But it dies with you. It dies with Lex. I don’t want it anymore.”

“Lena, princess,” he swallowed and softened slightly. He didn’t understand how that idea could hurt him so much when the threat was supposed to get his daughter back in line. “You can’t--”

“Just drop it. Just walk away. Just go to jail and let me forget you,” she begged, hating the name, hating the memories that came with that voice. “Please. If you ever loved me, you would just stop.”

“I can’t do that, Lena. It is for your own good. It is for the future of this world!” He straightened, swallowing away that softness that felt so distant, as if it were from a memory of a movie he once saw, but never lived.

“Put it down!” Lena yelled.

“Move, or I will kill you!” he screamed.

She gripped the gun harder, she took a deep breath. Both began yelling at the other, and all Kara could do was watch as she felt the world spin and her consciousness begin to fade. Never before had she fought so hard to stay awake. Never before had she felt so powerless than effectively watching her girlfriend with a gun trained on her.

“Lena!” Kara tried to call her, but she knew her voice was only a whisper. Her throat was dry. Her body was weak.

Gravity was heavy. Living was painful. Loving was exhausting.

“Please, Daddy,” Lena begged, lip trembling as she heard Kara’s call for her.

“I’m sorry, princess,” he smiled slightly, his face easing as he took aim again toward the hero, hoping to find a shot around his daughter, though he knew it was impossible.

“NO!” his daughter screamed before pulling the trigger, causing him to stagger backward a few steps.

Another shot rang out, and he dropped the weapon and fell to his knees. Lena pulled the trigger again until he fell to his side, writhing. She screamed the entire time until there were no more bullets, until she threw the gun on the ground and rushed to his side. The past decade rushed off of her shoulders, dropped to the ground in a deluge.

“I’m so sorry,” she kept muttering through sobs. “I’m so sorry.  You made me. You made me choose.”

“You were always,” he coughed and coughed and coughed. “The best thing. And now look at you--”

“I’m so sorry.”

“You’re just…” he closed his eyes before trying to lift his hand. He coughed again, only to open and look at his knuckle against Lena’s cheek. Lionel smiled as he felt the softness of her skin beneath the sheen of tears. “Just like my Lily.”

“I’m so sorry,” she held his hand, kissed his knuckles, inhaled that smell beneath the dirt and grime.

It wasn’t as much an apology for pulling the trigger, and they both knew it. It was an apology for everything that led to this, it was for everything he thought her to be, it was for everything she knew him to be.

“Don’t be sad,” Lionel closed his eyes once again. “You were never meant to be a Luth-- a Lutho--”

Sputtering noises came. Lena heard the police and DEO descend and she couldn’t move as the hand went limp and the noises stopped.

Despite herself, Lena sobbed. She didn’t know she was capable of such noises or sounds, but the entire battle left her defenseless and exhausted. She ran her hand along the stubble of his cheek like she once did when she was a child and he came home late from work. She ran her fingers over his eyelids, shutting them for a final time.

He was right; he freed her.

She was never meant to be a Luthor. It wasn’t malicious, it was a gift. The last gift that he could ever give her.

With a final look at his lifeless body, Lena stood before sprinting toward Kara, more afraid of what waited her there.

“Superman rounded up the aliens. He’s transporting them to-- Supergirl!” Alex shouted, noticing the body on the ground under the cape as Lena tried to turn it over. “Secure the area and start processing survivors. Get a damn med team here!”

“She’ll be fine, right?” Lena asked. “She was shot with Kryptonite before, and she lived.”

The agent didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Instead, she did her best to triage while the Luthor ran her palm along her girlfriend’s lifeless cheek and pushed the dirty hair from her face before kissing her through tears and swallowed wails of bone-breaking pain in her soul.

[selinaneveahcrystal]

The Day the World Went Away

A/N: This is a continuation of yesterday’s fic Breathe that I wrote, but slightly AU in terms of the manner of Aurora’s death as well as the age she died. In The Day the World Went Away, Aurora died aged 5, from experimental torture after being kidnapped by Doctor Campbell’s contractor industry in order to research a new form of virus that affects the X-gene. A bullet was put through her head as her parents came to rescue her, so Lorna watched her struggle for her last few moments with a unknown virus before one of the contractors put a bullet through her brain to end her “misery”. And so this is the aftermath from Marcos’ POV and eyes. The reason as to why I didn’t write a separate Breathe version 2 was because I felt that Breathe part 1 was sordid and heartbreaking enough (I might change my mind though), and that my readers didn’t need to go through another angst filled and tear jerking story of a child’s death yet again. 

Warning!!: This fic contains mentions of insanity and bad language. It is a raw rough angry version of losing someone dear. Destructive grieving behaviour, both emotional and physical etc. are mentioned! If you’re uncomfortable with such sensitive issues such as child death and allusions to insanity, please refrain from reading. 

Please note that the author does not encourage such insane actions. Even if it is a form of tackling grief.

Prompt: 13. Don’t ask me that.” 14.   “You could’ve died! Do you realize that?” 16.   “I can’t…I can’t lose you.

Credits to @themutantunderground​ for the dialogue prompts that I lumped together to make and write this angst ridden fic. Lorna was not doing well. Anyone who wasn’t blind could see that fact for themselves in her achingly thin body, the almost non-existent look on her face, the tilt of her body as she hums to herself by the sill and her obliviousness to everything around her. She was grieving, but in a destructive way. They had left her alone in the few days after Aurora had died in her arms, the last breath stuttering from her small lips, Lorna’s devastation almost physically tearing everything apart. They all bore marks of the disaster, healing bones and broken bodies, the creak and groan of the entire headquarters on it’s shaky foundations, and the almost omniscient smell of metallic blood everywhere mingled with the scent of salty tears. So they had left her alone at her behest, choosing to let her grieve in silence for her only child that she’d gained and lost. It turned out to be probably the worst choice that they could have ever made after all. 

Marcos was the first to notice the changes in her. How could he not though, being the one closest and sharing the equally devastating grief that nearly tore all of them apart? It crushed him as she begin to physically build walls between them, the non-existent line of boundary and grief piling and shoving it’s ass in the middle of their bed in the form of fluffy pillows. At first it extended just down the middle—he’d find himself hugging a pillow in the middle of the night instead of being curled around Lorna protectively, with her just centimeters from his touch, her green hair on the pillow and back to him. Then, the pillows started building up, forming in a shape of a box that enclosed around Lorna both physically and mentally. He’d find her lost in her own world hours at end, humming the lullaby that Aurora used to demand her to sing despite her awful singing capabilities in repeat right in the middle of that small enclosed and tight pillow fort, a blank smile on her face and no tears on her cheeks as she touched the ragged dolls they had gotten for their dead daughter’s upcoming birthday with a almost reverent and sacred touch. He’d snap her out of it immediately, the fear of losing her to the recesses of her dark mind overtaking him more by the minute—she was the only thing left of this world that gave meaning to his life and this world��and if Marcos was to lose her just like they lost their daughter, he believed he’d never be able to come back from his own version of insanity ever again. 

It became a routine for them, their relationship reduced to one of a mere catatonic push and pull, and while she anchors him to his reality, Marcos knows that he is not the anchor to Lorna’s own world. The moment their child had entered their world, Aurora had been what anchored Lorna and everything that encompassed her love for the world. She was Lorna’s existence, redemption and hope, everything that Lorna felt she could entrust her visions of life and future—until it was taken just as swiftly by the cruel world that society made, that deemed them misfits and outcasts in places they should have felt they belonged, crushing that small amount of hope Lorna had clung to and protected, sheltered and loved. 

“You have to stop doing this.” He’s broken at seeing her like this, lost, untethered and on the brink of insanity, letting her grief consume her in it’s entirety. “Lorna.” She barely manages to jerk out of her blank reverie at his distressed cry, the call of his voice, the tug of her heart that still recalled to the love she held for him making her lift her head to meet his eyes. “I can’t… can’t do anything like this. You have to tell me what you want me, no, need me to do to help alleviate this burden. It’s crushing and suffocating us, can’t you see?” For a moment he has the wild thought he managed to get through her, the life returning for a split moment in her hazel green eyes, before it extinguishes and she entirely avoids his question, turning to her side like a petulant child. “Don’t ask me that.” Marcos nearly cries with frustration, the toll of seeing the love of his life voluntarily destroy herself instead of helping herself—rejecting his offers to help crushing him beyond repair. “Then what would you have me do!” The cry tears itself like a feral beast from his mouth, manifesting itself in pent up rage and anger. Marcos channels his guilt and his anguish into his actions, physically tearing away the pillow boundary she created, not even flinching back as Lorna cries out, lashing out not with her powers, but her hands and feet, flailing weakly at his chest as he grabs her and pulls her roughly from her spot in the bed. “Aurora’s gone, Lorna!” He roars. “Gone! And there’s nothing we can do but grieve about it! But in grieving we do not desecrate her memory by turning into a useless insane person that crushes every hope of surviving even though they are alive and they can do something while they’re alive!” Tears and pain fall like blows from his mouth and strikes Lorna in the chest as she stares up at Marcos with blank and lost eyes. “I…” Marcos rips the dolls from her hands and flings them out of the window, and stuffing flying in all directions as he unleashed his own form of destruction in their once neat and orderly room. “If remembering Aurora is what’s holding you back from moving on, I will destroy it! Even if it hurts me that I’m removing every last thing I have of my daughter!” Marcos screams in Lorna’s face, his pent up frustration and desperation blowing up in her face. He gathers all the boxes and toys that belonged to their deceased child that littered the room, that he’d left in hopes of making Lorna feel better by showing her items from their daughter’s life in the world to help her recuperate—and stuffed them into a box messily, hot tears splashing down his cheeks. He wishes that she’d do something about it, because the old Lorna would never stand for him defying her memory of Aurora like this—but she simply sits there like she’s seeing him for the first in the long time, her eyes wide, both hands holding onto the ripped stuffed bunny that tore into two as he tried to rip it from her hands—and Marcos finally gives up. He sinks his face into his hands, ugly sobs wrenching itself from his chest and throat uncontrollably. He’d been so caught up in picking Lorna’s pieces up after the aftermath of Aurora’s death that he hadn’t even had time to fully register and grief the loss of his child. That came crashing in like a overwhelming tidal wave as soon as he gave up trying to pick Lorna up from the rut she’d stuck herself purposefully into. “I’ll just..go.” His voice cracks with defeat as he exits the room. “I’ll be back for dinner later, I have a rescue mission.” He notices her slight surprise, a small progress from her obliviousness the past few weeks. “Yes, Lorna, while you were moping and destroying yourself, the world kept on turning. On a axis without Aurora, but with other people in need. And you left them be.” With that, he turned and left the room, his chest burning with an unnamed emotion, and a strong reckless anger and anguish he needed to rid out of his system as quickly as possible. …. “Marcos!” He hears the frantic terrified calls of John as he barges in without warning as they embark on the mission, throwing all safety and caution to the wind as he charges through the car batteries like nothing and violently causes explosions everywhere with his burning hands and aching heart. It was a mission gone wrong, but one that adhered to the current emotional state he was in—reckless and utterly out of control.

“Shut the fuck up John and just get everyone out of there.” He’s never delivered his words that calmly before, and a sickening sense of coldness settles in his bones as he watches Clarisse drag an injured John away. John had been invincible, to the very last moment before the Sentinel Services had shot him with a special kind of bullet that seemingly repressed the mutant gene momentarily. Like hell Marcos was gonna lose another precious person in his life to the cruelty of the selfish world. What did they always say about that? No fucking way. A almost exhilarated frenzy darts across his face as John fights between bleeding out and Clarisse’s surprisingly strong grip. “Like hell I’m letting you be a martyr! We’re all going back! Everyone of us!” John knows that losing Marcos would be the last straw of sanity that would snap Lorna—and he wasn’t about to let his reckless grieving friend let that happen. Marocs nearly laughs in a scoffing way, a deprecating smile all over his face as he thinks back to the old broken toys in the box that held Aurora’s items and the blank stare that Lorna always met him with. “Nah. There’s nothing back there left for me.” He shoves Clarisse and John back through the portal and turns to face his mortal enemies with a almost fearless smile. “Give me your best shot, you sick bastards.” He almost feels as though Aurora’s there guiding him and protecting him like a guardian angel selflessly, her presence has never been stronger in that moment—he sees her protection in every bullet he dodges, that grazed his flesh and leaves blood but no pain, and he let’s lose a laugh that sends a almost depraved grin searing across his face. Wham! The sense of invincibility is over as soon as he cuts down the bastard that put a bullet through his five year old daughter’s head that night in front of a screaming Lorna, and then he stands, letting his gun and knives drop with a clatter to the ground as he makes no move to surrender, and all their lethal guns train upon him. He’d taken revenge for his child, and that was all that mattered—nothing more. Killing the bastard that tortured his daughter and then killed her liberated the sense of guilt and grief that pulled in his chest, and.. he’d had never felt so light. He scoffs as the sound of thousands of guns cocking fills his ears, and he feels the cold metal eyes of the gun train themselves on his head, torso and body. There was no way he was getting out of this alive. So this is how it ends. He thinks with a almost laughable tone in his mind. He’d taken revenge for his daughter, and the only regret he’d be leaving behind is the husk of a love he still ardently desires. But still. It’s one of the better days to die. He closes his eyes with a smile, and waits for the shots to come. …. John’s forcefully dug out the slug in his arm and torso, his fingers wrenching the bullet out brutally as he resists Caitlin’s insistence. “Marcos is out there and in danger I can’t—” “I’m sorry John. I can’t let you go. You’ll bleed out. You may be a mutant, but you sure hell ain’t invincible. At least, not until your wounds heal.” Caitlin is adamant in her diagnosis, and John sags, defeated on the gurney as she tends to his wounds, tears already welling up in his eyes. They’d lost Aurora within a few days before, and to lose Marcos next—he didn’t even dare to think what would happen to their Underground leadership with Lorna emotionally crippled and Marcos dead— “Mom?” It’s Lauren that interrupts all of them at the headquarters, still reeling from Marcos’ sacrifice and the new development in the mutant ability suppressing bullets shot. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s Lorna. She was standing right there all the time. But now she’s gone.” All their eyes follow the young teen’s finger, and sure enough, the space where Lorna had snuck to sit and watch after they had left for their mission lay gapingly empty. A sense of despair crept over John’s entire being. They were so dead. …. Marcos waited and waited, and heard the shots, but the pain never came. “What the hell are you bastards waiting for? I killed your commander! Shoot the fuck out of me!” Frustration finally gets the better of him, and he shoots his eyes wide open, drinking in the scene of a collapsed army of thousand men, all riddled with their own lethal bullets and guns, blood smattering the floors, with a terrified but wide eyed Lorna barely a few metres away from him, her breath coming in frantic bursts and gasps, her hands lifted like a maniac over her head and away from both of them, guns whirring and spinning above each and every incapacitated personnel’s head, her eyes simply drinking in the fact that he is there. “Lorna.” Shock registers in his body, but doesn’t prepare him for the flying tackle she throws at him, in a whirlwind of sobs and terrified tears. “What the hell were you thinking?” He’s never felt so flummoxed in his life as she yanks his collar upwards, yelling at him like the old Lorna he knows, tears she’d bottled up for days finally flying down her face. “You could’ve died! Do you realize that?” “Yeah. I know that.” He manages to reply stupidly, still stunned by the fact that she’s here. “Are you crazy? What died and made you the hero martyr?” She literally sobs into his chest, clinging to his shirt and pressing him so tightly against herself he almost melts with her warmth. “No one. I was just…grieving.” He said quietly as she cries, and her body only shakes harder in response, her tears wetting the fabric of his shirt. “Marcos, I can’t..I can’t lose you. Not like that. Not after Aurora.” She’s almost pleading with him, and for a ridiculous moment, Marcos wanted to accuse her of being selfish. But love is a strange thing, because it twisted all his anger and selfish intentions for death to hope and understanding as soon as she wrapped her arms tightly around his, never letting go. “I know. You won’t.” He promises resolutely, his hands running soothingly over her back. Lorna sniffles, then bursts into fresh tears at his capacity of understanding. “I’m sorry!” She weeps into his arms, face wetting his chest, apologising for everything she’d put him through, and Marcos wraps his arms around her securely with a sigh. “I’m so so sorry!” “It’s okay.” Marcos exhales, letting stray tears fall from his eyes as he holds her, lifting his face to the sky. “I understand.”

~~~~~~

I know it was supposed to be a sweet one after yesterday’s angst :3 (I already have two sweet one written but not posted) But I couldn’t help myself to see if I could jerk more tears out of you xD @eclipsepolarisxauroraborealis

[its-just-like-the-movies]

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (17, C)

The absolute best thing I heard going into The Killing of a Sacred Deer was the specific, Ohio-based dread it possessed to one critic who knew that Yorgos Lanthimos had shot the film in Cincinnati. He also lives in Columbus, close enough that I could theoretically run into him at the Wex, and it was his comments I remembered as Lanthimos’s camera somehow made the architecture of the hospital Dr. Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) works at seem even sharper and more angular. Just as quickly, another review calling the film hollow sprung into mind, as we see Murphy and his anesthesiologist friend discuss watches, a conversation we see as the characters briskly walk towards us while the camera tracks away from them. Already the director’s style and mannered dialogue ring odd somehow, and not in the way he surely is hoping for. My friend Jack and I spent the film’s entire run time scouring for anything worthwhile it had to say and came up empty, which feels even more dismaying given how much we got out of The Lobster after one sitting, let alone multiple viewings. But the ideas here are buried under the inflexible stylization of its writer/director, some unplayable scenes, and a tenuous connection to the world at large that makes the unreality Lanthimos is going for seem out of place and poorly contextualized. Congratulations to Lanthimos for being able to sustain a truly unique tone, but it feels restrictive on a story that badly needs a reason for being.

We spend about half an hour - at the very least - with these characters before the plot itself kicks in, as the odd son of a dead patient of Steven’s says that his wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) and his children Kim and Bob (Raffey Cassidy and Sunny Suljic) will die unless Steven kills one of them himself, all as their bodies starting shutting down along the way. Until now, we’ve seen Steven as this boy Martin (Barry Keoghan) interacting with the closest thing to warmth the film or the cast can conjure up, only for the relationship to degrade once Martin begins following Steven and violating personal boundaries, acting even weirder while he does it. Wife and children are met with all of their bourgeois non-peculiarities, and no one is either given or seizes a chance to make any of the film’s protagonists something more than muted ciphers for ideas about Cruel Fate and Comeuppance and Righteous Vengeance that Cape Fear does with so much insanity and gusto. Worse than that, the film has a hard time clearing up or enunciating these ideas. If we can laud Sacred Deer for being somewhat unpredictable on a scene-by-scene even as the blueprint can only point us one way, we can criticize it for the way Anna is never ever, for no explained reason, afflicted by the strange malady that is killing her children and should frankly be killing her. Longer scenes veer into increasingly unplayable dialogue, and the lies and enigmas swirling around Steve in particular never grow the ironic resonance that Lanthimos wants. Declarations of loyalty and partnership from Anna, bickering among the children as to who will die, a continued insistence on Bob’s status as the favorite and additional prominence from being the first to fall ill, all seemed to point me fruitlessly in the direction that either mother or son will die, while Kim’s romance with Martin seems specifically to combat how little she’s really present in the family unit. I never thought she was going to die, because the film itself seems to think of her as an afterthought.

In terms of unplayable scenes, what would be worse: Telling your son about a horrific childhood sexual exploit with a sleeping relative? Having to jack off a colleague in close-up for information the film undermines as he tells it to you, even if it is true? A story about how people eat spaghetti while you’re wearing cheap boxers and covered in meat sauce? The many horrific stories and absurd statements that litter Sacred Deer have none of the firepower that they’re clearly meant to, and we are left watching the actors not so much struggle with these lines as watch them push them out without any seasoning or creativity beyond what this admittedly unusual tone has to offer us. Alicia Silverstone, cat-grinning and slurring her way through her only scene as Martin’s widowed mother, is the only performer who creates more than one mood or emotion at once while still attuning themselves to the film’s style while everyone else does the one thing that’s asked of them capably and with barely anything else to offer. Meanwhile, no one moves their facial muscles and struggles to maintain their American accents for more than ten words at a time. Raffey Cassidy’s stiff heaving of herself across the floor and somewhat emotive line readings kept me at her attention compared to her other scene partners. I spent whole scenes imagining the actors pitching their characters at a higher volume, trying to actually make them people until certain lines sank the scene completely. As I said earlier, no one else manages to rise their character above anything but a cipher to expound on ideas I don’t think Sacred Deer ever articulates, makes vital, or does anything remotely interesting with. Maybe finding a human person in this script is a futile effort, but why did only Silverstone seem to try?

It doesn’t help, I think, that the world of Killing of a Sacred Deer is so ill-defined in its relation to the world at large. The Lobster’s oppressive rules on coupling and outlandish locations helped create an atmosphere where Lanthimos’s style doesn’t just make sense but utterly thrive, and contextualizes the world so fully that trips to “the city” do nothing to dissipate the film’s tensions. Here we have nothing to go on in terms of where this is, what kind of reality we’re in. Yes, it’s one where a young boy can cast curses without any explanation, but he seems to be an outlier overall. What kind of world are we supposed to take this as, if our protagonists cannot count on anyone to believe their story? Maybe I’m being unimaginative to balk at this, but this is not the stilted camera of The Lobster, nor are our protagonists trapped against the frame like insects stabbed into a display with pin needles. The camera follows them and is followed by them, the world expansive and open even with the angular geometry of every building seeming so much sharper and confining than it would normally be. Instead of a relatively closed setting, we’re in an unnamed city, where this could happen to anyone, except the premise and execution are both too outlandish and too watery to have any gumption or blood or piss and vinegar to back up its convictions. I never cared much about Martin’s quest for vengeance, about Steve or any of his cursed family members. Nothing in Killing of a Sacred Deer is as funny as the incredibly awkward finale, where opera music blares at full volume while a surviving member of Steve’s absolutely drenches their fries in ketchup, without breaking eye contact with Martin, before the whole family just decides to not pay for their food and leave the diner rather than keep eating in the same building as that creepy fuck. The whole film feels like a hollow exercise for Lanthimos to flex his idiosyncratic style, and I wish there was anything for see in this except for how empty it ultimately is.

[shannaraisles]

Her Beacon And Her Shield - Epilogue

Blizzards in the Frostbacks could be brutal.

On nights like this, when the wind howled and the snow danced, it was easy to believe in the Avvar gods; to believe in a world where every element was controlled by a divine being that did not see the mortals who walked Thedas as anything but an inconvenience. On nights like this, shutters were fastened tight, fires were built high; men and women alike waited for the new day with trepidation, for who knew what the storm would bring?

But tonight, Skyhold held its breath. The workers, soldiers, scouts, servants ... they gathered together in outbuildings and reinforced tents to wait out the storm, no one content to sleep so long as the lamps still burned in the Inquisitor's tower. The main hall was eerie in its silence, a single candle left to flicker by the throne of judgment. A visitor could be forgiven for thinking that some great tragedy had befallen. Yet this visitor knew otherwise, climbing the steps of the tower in haste to where a small group waited together by the door to the Inquisitor's rooms.

"Did I miss it?" Cassandra asked as she threw back her hood, breathless from her rush through the fortress from the stables.

"Andraste's knickers, Seeker, did you ride through this?" Varric demanded, almost impressed by the woman's determination to be here.

"Why should I not have?" Cassandra said defensively. "I made a promise." She paused, looking around at them all. "Well?"

"Nothing yet," the Iron Bull told her, pouring a fresh cup of ale. "Pull up a seat."

As Cassandra gratefully took the cup, sinking down onto the bench beside the Qunari, Thom looked up from his cards. "Midwife's been in there a good few hours," he told the Seeker. "Shouldn't be long now."

"I thought you were assigned to Soldier's Peak," Cassandra queried curiously, surprised to find the Warden here.

Thom chuckled, shaking his head. "I am," he admitted. "Just happened to get snowed in here."

"He waited four days to get snowed in," Bull added with a grin, raising his cup to the temerity of the bearded human.

"Ugh, why'd the Maker decide babies take so long, anyway?" Sera complained impatiently. "And be so painful. How's that fair?"

"Where is Cullen?" Cassandra asked, ignoring the outburst from the Red Jenny.

"I believe he threatened to give the midwife a black eye if she tried to eject him from the chamber," came the answer from Josephine amid a few quiet chuckles. The ambassador seemed to have brought her work up here to wile away the time, rather than join in the half-hearted game of Wicked Grace that was ongoing.

"She took him seriously," Dorian said a little peevishly from his anxious station by the door.

"Sparkler, everyone knows you wouldn't set fire to the one woman who is capable of delivering this kid," Varric pointed out mildly.

"I might have singed her," the mage objected. "Sadly, even in times of distress, I have impeccable manners."

"And Amelia would have singed you if you'd tried," Sera snickered.

"Dorian, darling, Cullen is the father," Vivienne interjected, raising her head from her book. "A cousin however many times removed by marriage just doesn't carry the same weight in this argument."

"It should," Dorian responded, almost pouting at being shut out. "I might even be useful. All he's doing is standing around."

"Come and sit, kadan," Bull told his lover calmly. "Like the Warden said, won't be long now." He drew Dorian down onto the bench between himself and Cassandra, not taking no for an answer.

"Hey, kid," Varric said then, turning to the last member of their little vigil, "how're they doing in there?"

Cole looked up, his smile almost beatific beneath the wide brim of his ridiculous hat. "Blood and gore and pain, and at the end, tears and hope and love," he said in his familiarly cryptic fashion. "Tiny hands, bright eyes, loving laughter at clumsy kisses. She is happy."

"Sounds like you arrived just in time, Seeker," the dwarf chuckled, shuffling the deck of cards in his hands.

As he spoke, the door opened, and an exhausted Cullen all but staggered into view, flushed and disheveled, smiling through the tear-tracks that stained his face. His gaze swept the little vigil being kept on the landing, his chuckle deepening at the sight of nine pairs of expectant eyes watching him as Dorian leapt to his feet, seizing the commander's arm.

"Well, don't keep us in suspense, Curly," Varric drawled, as eager as the rest of them to know.

"Is she ...?" Dorian tried to ask, but instead let out a strangled yelp as Cullen dragged him into a rough embrace.

"She's well," the commander said finally, dashing yet more happy tears from his face. "The midwife is just ... making them comfortable." A slow look of absolute wonder grew on his face as he dropped into the nearest chair. "I have a daughter," he told them, his voice low with unrestrained awe. "And a son."

"Two?" It was Cassandra's turn to yelp as Sera let out a loud whoop, startling the Seeker badly with the abrupt noise in the quiet of the tower.

"Congratulations, Cullen." Thom grinned over at the new father, chuckling as Cullen downed the drink Iron Bull pressed into his hand almost in one gulp.

"And both healthy?" Vivienne asked, though it was doubtful Cullen would be so mirthful if that were not the case.

"Both perfect," the commander breathed, in love with the little trio in the tower room above. "All three of them, perfect."

"Their names?" Josephine asked hopefully, her quill hovering over a blank piece of parchment. It could be reasonably assumed that the letters sent to Ostwick and the South Reach were going to be penned by her, and hopefully signed by the new parents.

"Cassian Bran," Cullen told them, his eyes flickering toward a suddenly wide-eyed Cassandra. "For the woman who brought us back together."

"Cullen ..." The Seeker was speechless. What could she possibly say to that?

His smile was gentle in the face of her shock. "I don't think you know how much your friendship means to Amelia," he told her quietly. "Especially given the way it began."

"Crackling warmth of fire in winter, summer sunshine on red roses, a family without blood," Cole offered, patting Cassandra's shoulder. For once, she didn't flinch from him, overwhelmed by the name her friends had given their son.

"And ... your daughter?" Josephine pressed, keen to know as much as Cullen could tell.

"Dorea Liane," Cullen offered innocently.

There was a pause, and Dorian abruptly sat down with a thump, shaking a finger at the new father. "Maker's balls, you actually did it," he exclaimed in shock. "I wasn't serious!"

"We were," Cullen told him, grinning at the look on the mage's face as Bull snorted with laughter. "She's beautiful, if that's any consolation."

"Of course she is, look at who her parents are," Dorian responded automatically, a touched smile quirking his mustache. "I'm honored, Cullen. Truly."

"As am I," Cassandra agreed, glad Dorian had found the words that had been eluding her. Honored, touched, moved ... all these and more.

"So what about me?" Sera demanded, though her mischievous smile clearly stated she wasn't as put out as she pretended to be, having been overlooked in the naming department.

"Apparently the next one is going to be called Jenny." Cullen chuckled, slightly in awe of a woman who could say something like that less than an hour after birthing twins.

Sera considered this for a moment, and nodded. "That'll do."

"A toast, then," Vivienne suggested, offering up her own bottle of expensive wine to allow a small measure to be poured into each cup held by each hand.

Varric raised his tankard, the best among them to form something coherent in the midst of a sleepless, joyful night, and they each echoed his motion, glad to be witness to such a significant moment.

"To the Duchess, who really doesn't know to do things by halves; to Curly, who deserves this more than anyone else I know; to Cassian and Dorea, who don't know what all the fuss is about; and to us, the weirdest bunch of people ever to call themselves family."

"To family," Thom translated, and that was their toast, shared with warmth and laughter to celebrate the arrival of two very special children on the coldest night of the year.

Congratulations were shared until the midwife left the tower, and Cullen slipped away from the now merry gathering to return to his wife, to gather her into his arms and kiss her tenderly as they lay together in the glow of satisfaction and elation at the wonderful gift they had been given. Not one, but two, little lives had survived that encounter with Corypheus to be born tonight, three years after their mother had fallen from the Fade and into a new role no one could ever have predicted for her. Seven years, to the day, after their parents had exchanged vows as strangers to satisfy a driven woman's political whim. Meredith Stannard might have been insane, but of all her works, this one might go down as the most brilliant - the joining of this couple, and the foundation of this family.

And somewhere out there, beyond the walls and the whirling snow, a lone wolf howled his blessing on the new lives to the skies, wishing he could give them a better tomorrow. But he was set on his path. Today would just have to do.