#25 is healing

[loviely]

somewhere between 17 and now i became soft. not sure if it happened last year or last week. but i have become soft. and i hate that people mistake that for weak. or fragile. i am not either of those, another secret thing i guess, the girl who never gave up on herself. the girl who chose kindness when her eating disorder was ripping her apart. when alcohol was killing me from the inside out!!! i became soft when i wanted to be hard and mean. i became soft. i showed affection. i showed up in general, for everyone, even myself. and maybe it's okay that 17 year old me wouldn't recognize 25 year old me. i would take 17 year old me by the hand and i would say "it's okay that you think this what you're meant to do, but you're not meant for this, you're meant for so much more" and maybe it'd convince 17 year old me that i didn't need the boys, or the drugs, or the alcohol. i just needed me.

[faeriekit]

Health and Hybrids (XXVI)👽👻💚

[I can't remember the original prompt posters  for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and the prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]

🖤Chapter navigation can be found here🖤 Click to browse previous updates.

💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts 💚 (now featuring mediocre mouseover translations, only available on a computer)

Where we last left off... Danny has another hashtag breakdown! Diana helps mediate. Stinky Dad and the Alien Guy observe.

Trigger warnings for this story:  body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) |  my nonexistent attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.

💚👻👽👻💚

“His control over his emotions slipped during the interview,” J’onn sighs, hovering alongside Bruce as they carry down the hall.

Bruce grunts. He isn’t quite capable of complicated speech yet. The teenage alien crying, too scared to let even the internationally-favorite, universally beloved Wonder Woman hold him without screaming…a person he already knew would take care of him…

J’onn continues, nevertheless. The thin privacy of his mind aside, Bruce has always appreciated the Martian’s understanding of Bruce’s oft-shifting moods. “His memories of his home and his family were tied up with extensive pain. I would continue under the assumption that his human family turned on him after discovering his nature—there may have even been collateral damage to others around them at the time.”

Bruce breathes in. Bruce breathes out.

“He thought himself akin enough to humans to be betrayed when he was seen as an 'other'. He knows that he is far from home, he knows that he has been targeted for his non-human traits and abilities, and he has reasons to think that he may not return again—what they are, I could not tell, but the sentiment was clear. This escape was purposeful, as was commandeering the vehicle he used to do so. He is alone. He is scared.”

“Known or unknown threat?” Bruce growls, not quite up to elongating his bite into a full sentence. J’onn is more than skilled enough to skim lightly over the words, and match them to Batman’s pointed fury.

“Our patient is familiar with the threat. I could not recognize the insignia or acronym from his memories, but they had enough resources to keep him captive and alive—without food or water. Likely, for a lengthy amount of time.”

Bruce’s near-running stride slows to a stop. J’onn, ever-patient, floats to a standstill beside him.

“No food,” Bruce confirms, just to make sure he heard correctly.

J’onn nods.

“No water.”

“There was an alternative method used to keep him alive, although the details weren’t significant to him in his flashback. The method may have been possible due to his minor healing ability, or something unique to his species.”

No food, Bruce thinks. No water. Kept alive as a function. Worried that he’s meant to be used as a weapon, kept in isolation, afraid of what humans in uniform might require of him for help.

This isn’t just torture. It is, specifically targeting a half-human entity, entirely purposeful dehumanization.

Of a child.

Of a child.

Bruce inhales. Bruce exhales.

This is not something that will be solved short-term. He has to keep an eye on the long-term goals for this teen—safety, recovery, reassurance, and reintegration.

Doable. All he has to do is break larger goals down into reasonable steps.

“Update the pediatric psychiatrist that Dr. Martin referred him to on the details.” Bruce’s demand comes out as flat as it gets. It is hard, when he’s stressed, to make his words hit with any intonation. Everything he forces out is precise. To the point.

J’onn nods. “I will.”

“This is personal medical information, to be accessed only on a need to know basis.”  

J’onn floats slightly higher, something relaxed in his face. This is a significant gesture, meant to remind everyone involved that this is a child, not a resource, and not a mission to be solved. This is a patient. “Understood.”

“If you pass this on to Diana, do it in person. Minimizing documentation…” Bruce falters. There isn’t a strong, authoritarian way to phrase how he feels about being someone to store clinically cold information about a boy who had likely been imprisoned, if not actively experimented on, if not actively tortured. How he needed to minimize behaviors that would exactly model what was done to the boy by his captors.

A smile flickers over J’onn’s expression. It’s suitably fleeting, but it comes and it goes—and it’s extremely polite of him to emote so visibly for Bruce’s sake. He makes sure to project his appreciation as best he knows how—blindly, without a telepathic sense to know what J’onn will and will not see.

“Understood, Batman.”

Bruce grunts.

They split at the end of the hallway, each dedicated to their own tasks.

J’onn will inform the medical team of what triggers may affect their patient’s long-term recovery and the quality of their stay. He is a thorough and patient coworker, and Bruce is grateful to have him on his side.

Bruce, in the meantime, has a favor to ask of Alfred and Dick on their way back into Gotham; more importantly, this is a favor he has to ask of Alfred’s employment-provided Costco card.

*

There’s something new in Danny’s room.

He transfers himself into the wheelchair to look at it, scrambling down the bed the way the physical therapist taught him to—the new thing isn't at bed height, but it is pretty low, and it has a door that he could probably reach from seated height or standing.

The square thing’s door swings open.

Inside are…little water bottles. Canned juices. Those mushy fruit-filled bars, and something so obviously wrapped in a yellow Fig Einstein wrapper that even the gibberish non-English is super clear.

There’s a bunch of things. Just. So many; and all in a few different types, too. The whole thing is filled with so many choices.

…Huh.

There are disposable straws in the door. Danny has to borrow a nurse’s ID card to open the can tab in the end, and his unwrapping of a straw is more than a little shaky, but Danny takes his medication with a mango-pineapple juice blend instead of his usual cup of water, and he’s perfectly fine with that.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[personishfive]

in which the metaverse is a dangerous place

[moltes-musings]

PhD day 794 | One of those days where I have a little cry over feeling like I'm disappointing people. At least I feel less aimless about my analysis, reading about quantitative analysis and Grounded Theory helped a lot.

[shadowfloofster]

Everyone at twitchcon: *having fun hanging out with people*

Bad, Cellbit, Foolish and Jaiden, fighting for their lives:

Bad specifically, popping 25 totems and using all his potions:

[vii-doodles]

I'm still reading the holy bible of RadioStatic aka 'radio healed the video star' by @slash-is-my-weakness86 the dynamic between those three is so exquisitly cute I had to draw them. I would die for a bear hug from uncle ozzie 😭❤️

[devoted-assassin]

I will never get over how much niigo cares for each other. Whether that’s everyone helping Mafuyu, Mizuki helping Kanade find the place of her childhood memories, Kanade seeing the value in Ena’s art before anybody else, Ena reassuring Mizuki that she’ll always be there for them, or even Mafuyu’s attempts at showing that affection back in the lowest moments of the others — there’s just so much love.

[emptybattlefield]

Day 15 - "Childhood Trauma" / "Healed Wrong"

Karkat breaks his arm while laying shingles on the roof outside—unfortunately, it harkens back to similar incident when he was a kid. Luckily, this time he has John and Dave by his side.

Another Earth C fic! All the kids and trolls are 17 years old or equivalent. 

—————————————————

One minute, Karkat had been kneeling on the roof of their shed, and when John looked again, he was lying in a crumpled heap in the grass amongst the discarded shingles. 

John bolted outside. Poor Karkat’s right arm had an extra bend in it. It hurt just to look at. 

Dave was outdoors in an instant as well—and together, they lifted Karkat to his feet. 

“C’mon buddy, let’s get you inside.”

Karkat sat forlornly at the kitchen table, bright direct sunlight from the window falling on his right arm, which was gingerly cradled in his left. Meanwhile, John scrambled to find his license, phone, and car keys. Even as a god-tier Earth C overlord—he still needed a license to drive. Dave emptied the freezer, and placed a package of peas by Karkat’s placemat. 

Karkat got up from the table and slowly headed upstairs. 

“Where are you going?” Dave asked wildly. 

“I just wanna be alone right now. Is that too much to ask?” he said begrudgingly from the staircase. 

“Dude, are you insane? You have to go to the hospital.” Dave looked at him with eyes as large as saucers.

“Karkat. I know you’re not a fan of doctors, but you need to have that looked at. Seriously. Do not go back upstairs,” added John worriedly. 

“Okay! Geezus Christ, calm your grub glands, both of you.” He thumped down to the landing, and the three headed to John’s car. 

“What the hell is he gonna do?!” Karkat could be heard sniffling in the back. “I just wanna be home. In my bed. The arm, it hurts like hell.”

Things got quiet and awkward for a minute. “They’ve got pain medicine at the hospital,” John said weakly. 

Dave started, “I’ll never forget the day when I was 10 and broke my wrist. Twice, actually. Looked just like that. Brutal. Don’t underestimate the kind of pain he’s in, bro.”

“Well—sorry, I just—thought that since the Alternians lived the rough-and-tumble life, that their pain receptors are just not as sensitive as ours are,” John replied.

“You did not break your wrist, Dave,” Karkat scoffed. He was in the back with Dave, while John panickedly  drove. 

Dave said coolly, “Mm, the doctor seemed pretty sure that I did.”

“Dave. You’re not making him feel any better,” John said admonishingly. 

The car slammed to a halt. Karkat howled in pain. Red lights all around blared through the front windshield.

“Fucking Christ—what are you doing?!” Karkat hissed.

“C’mon, Egbert. Focus,” urged Dave.

“I’m sorry!! I’m just—I’m really sorry,” John answered panickedly.

Karkat began again, “But you don’t have this.” He traced a lightning bolt shaped line with his finger along Dave’s wrist. He made a gruesome face. “Yours is completely straight.”

“Yeah, it’s because they set it, and cast it,” said Dave obviously.

One of the first things John noticed upon finally meeting the trolls, was that Karkat’s leg was crooked, and he walked about with a prominent limp. That wasn’t the kind of thing you knew about someone, until you met them in person. He never talked about why or how it got like that—so everyone, trolls included, presumed the topic was simply off-limits. Maybe it was a mutant thing—a birth defect. Maybe he’d narrowly escaped the drones. Maybe he’d contracted Alternian polio as a boy. In private, John and Dave speculated. 

“Karkat, did you break your leg when you were younger?” 

He shot Dave a dubious look. “Yes. Is that not obvious enough?”

It should have been obvious—Dave and John exchanged looks on the rear view. But, both of them had thought it best not to broach the subject before now.

“Why didn’t you ask me about it, if you were all so curious?” Karkat asked curmudgeonly when the other guys admitted to the group curiosity. 

John replied sheepishly: “We—figured you were sensitive about it. Like you were with your blood color, and stuff.”

“Oh, please. You’re not gonna hurt my feelings by asking. God,” Karkat said, tutting. “What to you take me for, a friggin—snowflake, is that what they call it?”

He told the others about how when he was 5 sweeps, he ran straight off a stone cliff, hit his thigh on a rock.

“And then it never healed right. Oh Karkat, that must have been awful,” said John. 

“Well, it healed how it broke. That was how the chips fell.” He crossed his bad leg nonchalantly over his good one.

John began, “This time, they’ll make it right. The doctors will fix it, so you won’t even know it was broken.”

Whenever John spoke about what they were gonna do once they got to the hospital, Karkat grew tense in the back seat. Dave noticed, and tried to distract him, to little avail. 

When they finally arrived, Karkat had to go alone to the operating suite. His pale face stared back at the two of them, still as a stone, as they wheeled him in. 

“He’ll make out just fine,” Dave said before John could even say anything.

Dave knew John, and he knew that John’s heart broke easily for other people. That look on his face while they hauled Karkat away…geezus. 

“He’s just…not accustomed to doctors, Dave. It’s not fair,” he said. 

“Life on Alternia overall didn’t seem very fair,” Dave answered. 

***

Karkat was in there but an hour. When he came out, he was practically bouncing with unbridled excitement. His arm was bandaged close to his chest in a sling. 

“How’d…it go?” John asked cautiously. 

“Everything went as planned, with no complications,” the doctor pushing his wheelchair said. 

“They kept telling me not to look, while they literally just—finagled it back into place. Like, what the fuck,” said Karkat, floored.

“They…kept you awake?” John asked, horrified.

“We utilized a local nerve block just above the elbow—”

“Yeah, they numbed it, so I don’t feel a fucking thing,” said Karkat happily. “Doc here took a video on my phone, the white stuff is my bones—”

“That’s okay, dude,” Dave said, dismissing him. 

“Whatever. Kanaya will find it interesting,” Karkat said reproachingly.

“I’ve assured your friend here that once the fracture properly heals, he should regain full functionality and the fracture will be virtually unnoticeable,” said the doctor.

“Oh, Karkat. You thought it was gonna be stuck like that forever,” said John consolingly.

Dave said, “You seriously have to be the happiest person ever coming out of an operating room.” Although, based on the way the doctor was talking, it seemed like this wasn’t an uncommon course of reactions for the numerous trolls he’d treated in the past for this very thing.

“Do you blame me? My leg is stuck like this forever. Shame no one like you was around at the time,” Karkat said flatly into his lap. 

“It might not be too late to do something about,” the doctor said. “It would be a major surgical procedure, and the recovery wouldn’t be easy. But, that leg has a lot more years it’s gotta carry you through. So, it’s something to think about.”

Karkat’s countenance fell into uneasiness. John chimed in, “It’s not like you have to decide on that today—”

“Here—” The surgeon handed Karkat his business card. “My nurse’s name is Uldira. Ask to speak with her.”

Karkat pocketed it, and smiled a private smile.

The three boys drove back to the house. John repacked the freezer, while Karkat returned to his bedroom to take it easy. Outside his window, Dave cleaned up the shingles on the grass. He curled up with one of his romance novels—it was hard to turn the pages with only one hand. 

“Hey Karkat?” John appeared at the door. “Before you get too far into that, you wanna have lunch.”

“Right,” Karkat replied. With all the excitement, he’d forgotten all about it. He withdrew the business card from his pocket, stuck it into the pages, and followed John down the stairs. 

<end>

[crybabybat]

My conch piercing is so not doing well and I’m so pissed off about it girl can you please heal please please please please

[digenerate-trash]

I'm unhealthy about the little universe that @fraternum-momentum made. Sorry and enjoy Nubian. He will steal your drinks and challenge you to a dule before skipping town

[oldtshirtsouls]

first year in a long time i haven’t dreaded my birthday and its implications

[astro-royale]

2024 I’m going to be confident about making mistakes🤞 let go of perfectionism

Virgo placements tingz

Free yourself

[lemonswrite-sing]

I am 30 chapters into Crimson Rivers……guys does it get better??? Will I ever heal?? This is my Roman Empire 😭😭

[aalghul]

i’ve definitely said this before but one big thing that’s made tim’s character so infuriating is that the flaws that we’re given for him are…not real flaws lol. “he’s too smart :(“ “he’s too prepared and thorough :(“ “he’s too much like batman :(“ ( <— in a world where being like Batman is the ultimate praise because he’s always hailed as most skilled in like,.everything. this is DC; we could argue that being compared to batman is an insult all day but we know that it isn’t, really). it’s all very mary-sue, “his biggest flaw is that he’s too perfect and it leads to him being a very sad boy who’s too good for it all”.

he very much has real flaws but none of them are treated as flaws. his misogyny or arrogance or willingness to believe in falsities to avoid confronting his emotions, etc. are all ignored because, to the writers (and subsequently a large portion of the fans), they’re not flaws; they’re neutral parts of his character (at least. sometimes his misogyny is what makes him the funny and relatable robin, and when he’s delusional, he’s just some super genius that needs no facts or hints because he can apparently just sense the truth). and when you don’t treat character flaws as actual flaws, people will either a) ignore them entirely (and this is so, so common with tim. think of “shy, insecure tim that never sees himself as deserving of robin” being so popular), or b) accept the writer’s biases, no matter how unreasonable, and take it to the next level (ex. people actually like red robin and we haven’t collectively decided it’s utter BS. nothing more to say).

[sexynetra]

Pre-Birthday blues please send me photos of your favorite queens and/or photos of cute animals 😭

Here is my Jaida tax to get this post on your dash <333