#ALL those doctors refusing to give a child care because of a disease they had only heard rumors of?

[nekomacheercaptain]

…I should NOT have written all of that in the tags, it got too long lmao

People love to pigeonhole Corazon as a sweet uwu bean just bc he threw away his life and everything he'd worked for to save a single suffering child but they tend to skate over the fact that he also lit multiple hospitals on fire in the process

[incorii]

Thank you

Thank you, for telling me that I was exaggerating my pain. 

Four months after you said it would pass in a week, I was hospitalized for the same symptoms you dismissed at the office. My doc then found out within a minute of time that this was a continuous case, and offered to help in the subtler ways at first. 

Thank you, for not listening to me. 

If you were listening, as specialist staff, you would have known of my burning pains. You would have known what I had learned the past months made it better and worse, and you would have known it was the nerves. 

Telling me that I'd likely just scratched my knee, when the whole right side of my body had been ablaze for months?

I hoped to be heard, to avoid hurting. The hurt never stopped, as it was not taken seriously soon enough. I suppose that is the unfortunate fate many have to suffer today. 

Thank you, for telling me that I was only doing it for attention. 

I was ill and could hardly walk, so I brought the only mobility aid available at that moment to help me move at all. Your dismissal of my needs made me realize that I was better off anywhere else than in a domesticated cycle of neglect from those you're supposed to trust the most. You blamed me for seeking attention, when I wanted none at all. I only wanted to get better and healthier, on my own.

Thank you, for telling me that you knew everything about me. 

It made me realize that you did not know who I was, and kept referring to everything I did as a child, rather than as an adult. 

You never listened to a word I said, but I listened to yours. When you told me I would never make it in the world, and that I should give up trying to be anything. The world would never be fair, so you told me, from a child age, that I had to suffer. 

Thank you, for setting your time over my health. 

When I was bedridden with fever, as well as the blazing pains in my right leg, arm, and torso, I was still asked to clean the house while you were at work, laundry, dinner, food-shopping, being told to babysit at the last minute because you wanted to have a whole day date with your partner..

I understand that you wanted to have fun, and that you were tired, but blaming me for my physique is not the way to go. You were aware of your genetic deformities, you were aware of his and our family history of genetic disease, but telling me that since you're tired I have to take over, while I can hardly move from being in so much pain I would say is a bit overboard. 

It made me realize that some believe the world revolves around them, and that those will not listen to others unless they deem them equal. I was supposed to be your child, but I suppose I always was your burden, right? 

Thank you, for quoting me again and again. 

If you had listened, you would have known specifically that I wished to take medical advice from a doctor. Yet you took it out of context, and refused to talk to me without a passive aggressive bitterness 'because you couldn't say a word to me since you were not a professional' 

I had already tried the advice you offered, and it had not worked and only worsened it. Because I dismiss something of what works and does not work for me, does not mean that I am telling you that everything you say is wrong. I merely stated that the specific methods you mentioned had not worked for me, and that I wanted to hear with someone a little more educated on the manner than you. 

It made me realize just how many of your acid words I had forgotten. 

Thank you, for all the pain you caused me when you said that you would be by my side through everything. 

Taking away my ability to consent and force me into an institution because you believe me to be worthless definitely sounds like someone who cares. I have good grades, a good social life, and a bright future, so why do you think that I will never make it on my own? Why do you think that I never had friends? Why do you think I am faking? If anything, I am forcing a smile while you yell at me for not being good enough for you.

And thank you, for making me realize that I have support from my friends and the ones I love. 

Had it not been for them, I would not have been here today. 

My friends and loved ones, my chosen family, have been there for me, always. 

And I trust them to accept my sincere appreciation, for all of what they have done for me. 

Thank you.

[ugakiknight]

Identity pt2

Someone told me once, “that no matter how down on yourself you are, people will be in your corner, they may come and go from it, but someone will always support you, I know I always will.” My potential is every way a two-way street, one direction goes forward with all the possibilities and great things I believe I could do, the other a fear it has been over estimated and I will let myself down, but more importantly, let Violet down. Every parent is “proud” of their child when they are young, first day of school, learning to throw a ball, that one cool trick that for some reason everyone had that was almost unique to them but at the same time was a widespread thing. That obligated sense of pride disappears as soon as the next one comes along, leaving the original as the tester child and warm up for the main event. Violet didn’t see me as the beta testing period for Jake, she saw me as me. My potential scares me because she saw it in my first, before any aunty or teacher told my parents how bright their eldest is, Violet would tell me how her little cousin is going to be an astronaut and big and strong one day. Not meeting my potential scares me not due to my perceived ability being lower than what everyone thinks it is, it scares me because I need to make Violet proud. To most the stars and that colour is nothing but something pretty that catches their attention for at most a minute, to me those things mean everything. The star that shines brightest is the person that loves and cares for you most, checking up and looking out for you even though they aren’t there anymore. Every night I look up at the stars band tell Violet how I miss her, how she means the world to me, and I won’t let her down. Love may not have been my friend so far, if anything I always say I’m the kid Cupid bullied in high school. Through the heartbreaks and trauma and painful life lessons I came out a better person. A concept more prolific than any serial killer, mental health has won more battles against people than anyone else. I am its biggest enemy, the one that somehow gets away, at this point I don’t even know how I do it. Insecurity, paranoia, not accepting the person across from me in the mirror, mental health has many weapons it tries to use against me. It stabs its knife into my back on an almost daily basis trying to twist it and find the finishing blow, somehow my battered and bruised psyche continues to win the war. Perseverance and resilience are two words I would never describe myself as, but they define me better then I think I can, especially in regard to my biggest enemy and its continuous attacks against me. I know many before me and many after me would have given up by now. I don’t know why I keep going. I think it’s more than just being competitive against myself or an optimistic vision of the future, it’s as if I refuse to give in because I don’t want to know what happens when I lose. A war with mental health is the greatest conflict anyone can endurance, the battlefield of my war would scare anyone. I fear what lies beneath it, what has been covered and lost in it all. Some things are meant to stay hidden. A shadow lurks over my heart, it twists and turns around it like vines reaching up a building, however like any shadow a simple light can stop it. I have no idea why the light hasn’t arrived, maybe I am preventing it, fearful what others or even I myself will think of who stands behind the light and saves me, paranoid of how it positions me in the eyes of society. That shadow and paranoia of what the light may be is always there, lingering like a disease no doctor can fix. I try to stop the symptoms through medicine and appointments, but I knew all along I was just delaying the inevitable, the uncomfortable. The beat of my melancholic heart continues to do its best, drumming along to the hymns and flows of what little it receives while I am concurrently denying it from the help it needs. My identity is Sam Kelly, an 18-year-old born in New York approaching the end of high school, and I think am going to be ok with that.

[casspurrjoybell-17]

Hart and Hunter - Chapter 4 - Part 2

*Warning Adult Content*

Dane Hunter

"You're also my mate and I love you. Let me fuss."

He sighs but submits as I continue to check him over, taking his pulse and removing the sunglasses to see if his pupils are responding to light.

They're still blown wide, the irises nothing but a thin ring of amethyst around a black core and I slide the glasses back in place as he winces in pain.

His skin is still a little cold and clammy and I grab a blanket from the back seat and cover him. I know he doesn't like it when I hover but he doesn't understand how ingrained the instinct is.

My mom had her first child 'me' at twenty-three, and her last 'Ingrid' at thirty-seven.

With seven siblings spaced over those fifteen years, I naturally became a kind of third parent... a second dad, almost.

I sometimes had to make decisions in my siblings' best interest that they wouldn't have decided for themselves, bedtime, bath-time, when enough was enough.

I'd carried that sense of responsibility with me to the service and while it hadn't made me popular, it had served me well.

Julian's not a child, though and he's not my subordinate.

He's my equal and my partner.

But sometimes I struggle to find the line between caring and control, between doing what he wants and doing what I think is best.

I try to compromise.

"When was the last time you saw a doctor?"

"What?" he asks, his eyes snapping open behind the sunglasses as he turns to look at me.

"I just mean... have you been to a doctor? Had x-rays, blood-tests?"

"The hell are you asking me, Dane?"

I tug on my hair and sigh, realizing we should have had this conversation a long time ago and that I'm doing a bad job of bringing it up now.

"Look... Wolves have markers in our blood. A human doctor wouldn't know what they are but they'd know it was something unusual. They'd probably think it was a disease of some kind. Same with x-rays. Sometimes our bones or joints don't look quite right. So, we avoid those things. What about you? Could I take you to the hospital right now if I needed to or would you end up in a secret government lab somewhere?"

"Jeez, Dane," he sighs and leans into the headrest again.

"I'm fine. And I don't know. I've had plenty of blood tests. I used to get them pretty regularly when I was younger because..." he bites his lip, probably thinking I'd rather not hear about his exes.

"Anyway, no men in black ever showed up to take me away and I've never been sick enough to need the ER. I don't need it now, either."

"How do you know?" I challenge.

"Have you ever passed out like that before?"

"No, I haven't but we've got an obvious line of cause and effect. My senses were already at full receptivity from reading the store. I touched the symbol and whatever energy it held knocked me flat. I'm already feeling better."

"You stopped breathing, Julian," I snap, frustrated by his refusal to see things from my side.

"If I'd passed out and stopped breathing, would you just take me at my word that I'm fine?"

He doesn't speak for a moment and then clears his throat.

"No. I guess I wouldn't. I'd be worried, too. How did that work, anyway?"

I squint, confused.

"How did what work?"

"You were in the military. Don't they do random drug tests and stuff all the time?"

Sighing at his attempt to change the topic, I give up and start the car, turning my attention to driving us home.

"They do but I wasn't the only one. We've got... networks, I guess. Shifters and Wolves at different levels in the chain of command. The higher ups shield those lower down."

"Who shields the higher ups?"

I stop at a light and check my rear view mirror as I catch the wail of sirens in the distance.

If Stephanie called the cops when we left, they'll be here soon.

The station's only a few streets away.

"Does it matter?"

"Just curious," he mutters, slouching in his seat.

"Yeah, that's what the cat said, too."

He mutters something else but before I can ask him to speak up and share with the class, more sirens distract me.

These are louder and coming from a different direction.

The light turns green but I stay where I am, not wanting to block the path of emergency vehicles.

A moment later, an ambulance flies around the corner, sirens screaming and zooms off in the direction we'd come.

Julian presses his hands over his ears, being sensitive to sound as well as light and twists to look back through the rear window.

"Stephanie didn't call 911, did she?" he asks.

"No, I told her not to. They wouldn't send an ambulance without confirming one was needed, anyway. Must be something else."

I turn the car around.

"What are you doing?" Julian asks, sitting up.

"Why are we going back?"

"Just curious," I say, throwing his line back at him with a crooked smile.

We pass Stephanie's shop and see her standing outside with her arms crossed, frowning and shielding her eyes as she looks down the street.

At the end of the block, two police cruisers, a fire engine and the ambulance have parked in front of Jeffrey Lagrange's bicycle shop.

I pull into the nearest parking spot I can find and unclip my seatbelt to get out.

Julian reaches over and grabs my arm.

"Wait... where are you going?"

"To check it out. Stay here."

"Like hell."

He fumbles with the buckle of his own belt.

I reach over and take his hand, putting the tiniest trace of Alpha in my voice... just enough to get his attention.

"Julian."

He stills and looks up at me warily.

"What?"

"You're okay, right?"

"Yes. I told you, I'm..."

"Okay. I believe you. Now I need you to listen. Stay here and rest. I'll be right back. Please," I add, after a slight hesitation and squeeze his hand.

He looks at me tensely and then... to my relief... he relaxes, whatever he sees in my face having convinced him.

"Alright. Don't take long."

"I won't."

I lean over and kiss him before getting out and walking toward the scene.

A cluster of officers gather near the front of the shop and a pair of EMTs attend to a crying woman.

As I approach, one officer... a rookie I don't recognize... turns and lifts a hand.

"Sir, keep your distance. This is a crime scene."

At his side, my former boss, Chief Laura Coleridge, turns and lifts grey brows at me as she waves the officer off.

"Hunter. Fancy seeing you here."

"What's going on?"

She nods at the shop.

"Mr. Lagrange's store was burgled last night. Apparently, he confronted the thief."

My interest sharpens.

"Is he hurt?"

"Nope."

I glance at the ambulance but Coleridge continues before I can ask what, in that case, it's for.

"He's dead," she says.

I pause to absorb this information.

"Homicide?"

She shakes her head.

"Unclear. I got a feeling, though. You know the one."

I do... instincts aren't just a wolf thing, humans have them, too and Chief Coleridge's are especially well-attuned.

The one she's referring to gets honed in cops over time, the feeling that something is off with a scene.

"So, what brings you to this neck of the woods?" she asks.

"According to Erickson, you and Hart were here the other night as well."

Silently cursing my erstwhile co-worker and knowing that Coleridge will find out soon enough anyway, I tell her what Julian and I had discovered so far.

"Actually, I'm glad you're on the case already," she says.

"I was just thinking of calling you."

Taking out her cell-phone, she pulls up a photo and angles the screen at me.

"That mark you found in Wong's... it looks something like this?"

I study the image and nod.

The symbol in the photo is different but similar in style.

"Not exactly but yeah."

I show her the photos I'd taken earlier.

"Wong will show you where it is... I told her to point it out."

She taps her screen and to my surprise, my cell-phone pings and I see she's sent me the image.

"We found it near the body," she says.

"This is evidence," I remark, although she's obviously aware of that as well as the fact she shouldn't share it with someone who's not a cop.

She nods, hands on her hips as she surveys the scene, watching as police, paramedics and other personnel do their jobs.

"Look. I know you said you're done with the violent stuff, Hunter but I think we could use you on this one. Hart, too. You want in?"

I glance back at my car.

Julian will absolutely want in.

He's eager to put his Fae abilities to the test and what happened today won't dampen that enthusiasm one bit.

On the other hand, the thief may have just proven himself more than capable of delivering on his threats.

Maybe what Julian doesn't know won't hurt him.

"Chief. Come look at this," an officer calls from the scene.

Chief Coleridge raises her brows at me in invitation but I shake my head.

"Nah," I say.

"Not this time."

She gives me a knowing look and pats my arm.

"Call me when you change your mind," she says and walks away to see what her team has found.

[herstarburststories]

He didn’t make it to 42

Pairing: Dean Winchester x reader

Summary: it’s Dean’s birthday, you go to visit him with some news and things that need to be said.

A/N: Happy bday, De.

Warnings: so much angst, mentions of sex, hopeful/happy ending (?)

Dean’s dead. It’s Dean’s birthday and he’s dead. You can’t argue much.

Sam denied the demon blood inside him, and that didn’t stop its evil nature from growing and gasping for his fresh air to the point he was almost shocked alive. Dean denied his dad’s destructive methods’ results for the longest time, and that didn’t stop the cicatrixes in every emotion he had ever shown. You denied the absence of Dean and that didn’t stop the bricks cracking in your soul. There’s only so far you can go with your eyes closed.

So here you are. Standing in front of an empty grave. You are bigger than the dull tombstone, yet you can’t help but not to feel tall, at all. How can you even start to talk? Talking to Dean used to be easy even when it got hard and now you’re feeling like a lost kid in a supermarket. Your snide thinking spells out his name with venom, saying it isn’t easy for you to open your barmy mouth and spill out contrarian shit because this isn’t Dean, just another meaningless symbolism that Sam promises that will help. The real Dean died almost a year ago, he was burned in a hunter’s funeral, the flames dancing over his body as the smell of burnt meat invaded your nostrils. Whenever you try to remember his fragrance, that manly aroma which you loved to scent each morning, all your brain can come up with is the odor of his skin and guts burning. The smell lingers like bad perfume, it doesn’t matter how many times you wash yourself with his soap-- that only broke your heart worse.

But today is Dean’s birthday. He deserves a visit, even if it’s not him. Then you go and attempt to deal with the desolation, push it away just a little, and pick up something from the enormous pile of things you wish to tell Dean. You glance at the cold tombstone: Dean Winchester. 1979 - 2020. Beloved son, big brother, and husband. Hunter. A hero. Simple definitions that can never make it up for who he was and what he meant. You purse your lips and cough a little, a gentle wind touches your cheek so tenderly. If you were still a believer, you’d think this is some sort of sign, Dean’s presence or some other pious hoax. All you do now is to remain in quietude, a deep breath. Ultimately, your voice comes:

‘’You didn’t make it to forty two, huh?’’ You scoff humorless, reminiscing to the multiple days that Dean said he wouldn’t go past 35. He did live each year like it was the last--- you aren’t sure if it's such a good thing. If you carry on like your days are outnumbered, you are silently entertaining yourself until death's knock on your door. ‘’I always hated when you were right. Let’s be honest, you had the words of a pessimist and the wants of an optimist. Still, if you were to be right about something, it would be about a bad situation. A nest with too many vampires, how crappy the motel’s bedroom would be, or how that third glass of wine would make me tipsy. So yeah, I always hated when you were right. And look at you now! You aren’t right, you aren’t wrong. You are dead! And I’m the crazy girl screaming at an empty tombstone.’’

You let out a laugh empty of joy. That’s how a hunter’s life is: you die and people stop talking about you because it’s too sad or too long gone to hold any pity, meanwhile the ones who recall about you go loud with all the spirits in their heads. You put your hand in the pockets of the heavy leather jacket that once belonged to a green eyed man who would be turning 42 today, some strange force causing you to speak again.

‘’Wow.’’ You shake your head to the blue way you paint the scene until you notice that you never greeted him. ‘’Hey.’’ The simple word adds a comical insult to injury. ‘’Guess the dead don’t care about manners, huh?’’ You arch your eyebrows with a grin that demonstrates anything but happiness. ‘’Miracle died. Sam digged a hole next to the bunker and buried him there. He isn’t the same since you died, you know? Not the deceased dog-- Well, he wasn’t the same either. Always whining and scratching your door like a fucking cat, and sniffing your old boots. He made me company in your bed and I whined as much as he did when you didn’t come back home that day. He stood by the door most days, waiting for you to appear. I can’t judge him, I did the same.’’ You shrug, not caring about how risible that confession may look. It's true. You became as irrational as a loyal dog at some point in this sorrow. ‘’And Sam, your baby brother… I think he died with you right there, Dean. He didn’t try to bring you back as he promised, but I shouted and screamed so much. I said I would burn the bunker and throw Baby over a cliff if he didn’t-- if he didn’t let me try. I lived up to the mad woman title.’’

You are crestfallen, pacing on top of where the eldest Winchester - Sam’s brand new nomination -  supposedly was buried. You know your boots barely touch an infected land, there's no deceased man under your steps. The dead thing is in you.

‘’I spent days dragging your body everywhere and nowhere, anywhere I could catch a crumb of relief in hope to bring you back. But I couldn’t. Jack could, but that ungrateful idiot doesn’t wanna follow his grandpa steps and get too attached to mere humans, the creation or whatever. As if we are just some skin and bone to him, as if you are just another human.’’

You sit down on the tombstone, some tender solace in being close to a thing that's supposed to represent him, like sleeping hugged to a pillow or waking up to a photograph of his. Your nails sink against the gelid concrete at the thought of screaming into the sky for the new God that seemed as deaf as the last one. His calm answer to your burning pain. How he dared to tell you he knew what he was doing— as if he was the original lord and not a three years old. You can't make him do it, so you hold on the fury of some overthrown nation.

‘’Anyway, I couldn’t bring you back. Your body, well, you know how human anatomy works. Your body started to smell like death. We tried to stop with human and magic ways, and it wouldn’t work because you were dead. You should’ve seen the doctor’s face when we got you in that fancy hospital tha night. I think we traumatized the doctor with so much violence and trauma. She didn’t even give us a false hope or anything, you know? She just asked about organ donation of what was left. She just wanted to take every little thing out of you, as if you were just another accident on a Tuesday night.’’ Your shake your head as the memories and your points start to mix, it's hard to discern things and keep a straight line when you have an open wound in your insides. ‘’Well, they couldn’t bring you back to life, and neither could Rowena or whatever I looked for. Don’t be mad because I tried, Winchester. You know I’m too stubborn for my own good. I had to try.’’ you refuse to apologize, yet adds the playful words in his eulogy. ‘’But then your body started to stink and God, how could I continue to be so violent to your corpse? That was when I decided to listen to you for the first time and to Sam, so I let you go. I hate you for asking that.’’ What an ambiguous, contradictory truth to bare. You are glimpses of a person for months because of Dean Winchester, still have the energy to argue his selfless logic, just to love him even more. He's got your devotion, but man you can hate him sometimes. ‘’I hate you for going on that stupid hunt. I hate you for being dead, you giant idiot that I love so much.’’ You can't bring your mouth to say loved. "I was always telling you to let the past go and now I’m in love with a dead thing. What a comic way to end our history. I told you that Miracle died, right? I don’t know if dogs go to heaven, but I hope he’s in there with you. I wonder what your heaven is like. I bet it has Whiskey.''

Your dry chuckle makes your notice the tears in your eyes, glistening your orbs as they go like a waterfall to be absorbed by the thirsty land after leaving your cheeks.

"Sam and I-- We tried to make some sense out of this cruelty, but we can’t. You are dead and I can’t seem to put it past me. I still sleep in your bed, and I can still taste your body burning on the roof of my mouth in the quiet nights. I cried this morning because someone asked for a burger, can you believe that? It was so stupid since I used to shake my head and argue with you about cholesterol. Suddenly I was crying at lunch in a restaurant because some stupid kid asked for a burger with extra bacon. They sang Happy birthday to this dumbass child, and I interrupted with my awful crying, and wished that you were celebrating your birthday and not that kid. I guess you could say I wish death upon an innocent child with a problematic eating routine.’’ That was a whole new level of low, as if you are the one wrapped with the sentiment of laying six feet under.

‘’Everyone tells you about how grief is singular and particular with similar emotions that bring people who went through this together. They even have that crap stages thing and all that. You know what they don’t tell you?’’ Your mouth shuts for a moment, like you are waiting some response. You nod as if whatever you were expecting is handed to you. ‘’Grief can be fucking ridiculous. Who cries because of a burger full of oil and cardiac diseases? Who cries because they found a grocery store recipe under her dead boyfriend’s bed? Who falls on the ground screaming in the middle of the mall because they saw a flannel? Who? Those things are so stupid.’’ You smile like there's no tomorrow and the laugh leaving your lips is a treacherous tone. Perhaps you just aren't build up to express joy anymore. ‘’You see it in the movies and in the books and you think, you know, you think to yourself that grieving is being sad on special dates and randomly remembering the loved ones because of some screaming memory, like a flannel or their perfume. Thing is, it’s not just that. All your body seems so small, so tight for all the ache and agony inside it. Your senses go wild, you are not just one person in one place. You’re just the pain everywhere, like being pulled apart and you beg to jump in the fucking grave with them. At least you would be together, at least you would feel like one person and not suffering edges of a broken earthy thing. And--And you start remembering things you didn’t even know you had mesmerized. I look at the ceiling and remember you saying you’d paint it someday. I look at the kitchen and remember me screaming at you for giving Miracle the rest of the food. I smell Sam’s clothes and started crying because hey, they don’t smell like alcohol. You don’t iron them while drinking anymore, so of course they don’t smell like cheap beer.’’ You are chuckling through the tears and it only makes it more monstrous. ‘’Everything is you now that you are gone. Every man has something similar to you, every garden is green as your eyes, and each step sounds like you are coming home. They didn’t prepare me, not for this.’’ You said breathless. A soft single follows. The knife cuts both ways; the empty breeze and the words hurt. Where's the middle term? Where's the limbo? Where's the only safe place for you to rest your weary head?

Out of nowhere, you blurt out, ‘’I can’t masturbate,’’ I know it’s something stupid and even selfish to say, but I think you’d like to know. I can’t masturbate. That’s a part of the whole losing someone process that people are too ashamed to discuss, or maybe they don’t have the urge to be touched anymore because after someone you love dies, after someone-- the hands who touched are dead and cold, you become a haunted object. That’s how I feel most days, like I’m a haunted house because you touched me and now you’re dead and some days I believe I am too.’’ You look around the places. It's beautiful. It's lonely. It has trees and flowers and green. Not as green as Dean's eyes, but it doesn't matter anymore. He doesn't even have eyes at this point. ‘’Well, I can’t masturbate. I can’t touch myself. And I can’t ask someone else either. I tried and ended up punching the guy, Dean. I swear. I panicked when he was between my legs and just punched his nose. You’d have liked it, you were always the jealous kind. I won’t admit that, but I thought it was kinda hot. Especially when you got possessive in sex.’’ A dirty grin appeared on your lips, the echoes of luxury lasting in your eyes for a brief moment. ‘’I don’t think I can be cared for anymore, honestly. Sam tried to hug me when Miracle died and I… It was like I wasn't there. I got frozen in time, and I live in my sleep. In my nightmares you are alive. I  dream about the day you died every week and I used to wake up screaming, but now those nightmares are the only proof you were alive now that you’re as dead as the police report says this time. It was the most painful, calamitous moment for you and I swear it was a nightmare for me, but then I realized that at least I had you there, egoistical or not, I made my nightmare into a dream.’’ You aren't sure which opinion Dean would have on that. Would he understand? Would he shake his head? You wish you can ask him just this one more thing, just beg him to write it down for you on how to be without him here.

You raise on your feet, glaring at the name craved in the concrete. The tears go by still, although they're as usual as the blood in glir veins at this point. ‘’Death is so silly. What it takes, anyway?" Each word conquers more inches of pure wrath. ''People die because they stumbled on their own feet and hit their head somewhere, or they drove their car too close and too fast to the cliff, or because they were giving birth, or because they dated the wrong person, or because they were hunting a fucking vampire and got impaled. What are the chances? How stupid, and idiotic is death? Always creeping and waiting to bite and chew a piece of you-- Taking every scrap of you from me like that’s its right.’’ You are screaming, starting to kick and punch the tombstone with any piece of straight you have. Your limbs hurt and the blood is visible, but you keep going. ‘’YOUR STUPID DOG DIED, DEAN! AND YOU DIED! AND I DIED! SAMMY DIED! YEAH, IS SAID SAMMY! GO AHEAD, TELL ME ONLY YOU CAN CALL HIM THAT.’’ Another punch, your knuckles are ripped. Another kick, your boot as a hole. ‘’DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.’’ Kick. ‘’SAMMY, SAMMY, SAMMY!’’ A punch to each name. Anything to get a reaction, to get comfort. Anything. ‘’YOU CAN’T BECAUSE YOU ARE DEAD.’’ Gasping for something you don't need anymore, sweet oxygen, your eyes are on the tombstone again. And the definitions. And the trees. Your body is sore and aching. It is the kind and coercion no person wants which you needed; the freedom of feeling outside the exact pain that was inside. ‘’You can’t because you are dead. I’ve been playing some sick games in my mind, you know? Sam stopped hunting and had his closure. He was always better at letting go than you and I, but he’s still hurting. I never saw him hurting so much. I think he knows you won’t come back this time, how could you make us promise something like that?  Well, my twisted game is a bunch of misleading what ifs. What if you hadn’t gone after John? What if you hadn’t gone on that last hunt? What if you had stayed with Lisa? At first I didn’t like her much. Jealous, I admit that. But she grew on me. She gave you something I couldn’t back then and I’ll always be thankful for that. And even though it would rip me apart, I’d rather you to die at sixth after living your suburban dream with her. Have another kid besides Ben, maybe a girl this time, and just have that apple pie life. You and Sam would live close and your kids would always play. They’d be as close as brothers. Maybe I’d get a guy and bring my own kids and we could’ve a barbecue and everyone would be happy. But we don’t get soft epilogues here. It ends how it starts, right? Bloody and desperate. I thought maybe, maybe Lisa could understand what’s going through my head now. I drove to her new address and parked close to her house. I must have spent hours there, thinking if I should come in or not, If she somehow remembered after Castiel died or if I could make her brain work again if I told her the truth. But then I just drove back home and fell asleep wrapped in that stupid lumberjack flannel of yours. The one I always mocked, yeah? She may understand me, but I know you wouldn’t want that. You want her, you want me and Sam to be happy. I don’t know if I can do that, Dean. It’s like myt brittle soul shrewd and my body is just waiting to collapse.’’ You signed, overwhelmed by the battle without an anthem. The victory with no triumph. Is it still a win when you don't have someone to come home too? ‘’Your dog died, it’s the first birthday you didn’t live to see, and I bought all the things you told Mrs Butters you wanted for your birthday because it’s your birthday. I just don’t know how to celebrate it with you dead. People stop counting after they die, right? They just say he’d have been 42 or he died at 41. They give melancholy smiles when they wake up and check the day on their phones and a woe atmosphere swallows them for the rest of the day. Then they get better the next day. I think everyday is your birthday.’’ You attempt to wipe away your tears, which only causes your pulsating hand to stain your face red. ‘’Dean, for the first time, what died stayed dead! Congrats.’’ Once again, a hysterical laugh. ‘’I wish but no. What died didn’t stay dead, you are alive, so alive in my head. I swear you are there some days. I wake and watch the door, so sure you’ll come back. Sam says I’m living in delusion and I have to wake up and keep going since that's what you would want. That's enough to make him keep going, but it only makes me angry. Everyone we know and some strangers looks at me like I'm a house on fire and no longer a warm home, like I'm a car accident. They think I don't notice but I do.’’ You look at your boots, the whole is rolling out blood like your hands. You feel closer to Dean. How sick.

‘’Help, I’m still right where you left me." You plea, his love lingering like a bruise. ''I think gravity is overwhelming and it keeps me here. Sometimes it’s like I’m one of those dusted books Sam used to read. Or those Bukowski ones that you hid, so we wouldn’t see how smart you’re. You tried so hard to hide your intelligence because you didn’t think you were entitled to it. You saw yourself as the protector and never the valuable one for protection. You, the man who made an EMF out of an old radio, who rebuilt the Impala from the ground multiple times, and who knew patterns better than any detective. The man who showed me I could rely on someone other than myself. The dude with a lopsided grin, tough hands and a heart of gold. I miss you so much. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were singing all those classic rock songs and Taylor Swift pop hits, while I drove here. I would think you were home, smelling like guts because you wanted to eat before taking a shower after a hunt. I would think that you are in the Deancave, waiting for me to curl up on your lap to watch Scooby Doo or Doctor Sexy MD until we aren’t watching anymore. If I didn’t know better I would think no death could take you from me. There would be no tear us apart in our vows.’’ The only thing that keeps your organism working is that Dean died knowing how much you loved him. You never let this talk for later or never. No tomorrow is promised. That's a nice comfort, maybe that's what will help you to let go in the future. ‘’But yesterday your stupid, skink dog died and I lost the last living thing that I had from you. You know what’s more angerting? I cried and Sam cried and I noticed we were the living things you left behind and all we have is each other. All your closets of backlogged dreams were left for us-- so yeah. Sam is done hunting and he’s met a lovely girl, and they are moving in like in your domestic dreams. I’m taking care of the family business like your other contradictory dream and making sure Sam is safe enough to be normal. Because I have to, we have too. Stupidly enough, I still wait for the day you’ll burst out the door and tell us to hit the road again. I still watch every episode of your dumb tv shows to make sure I’ll know everything that happened when you ask. I still drive around in your car and close my eyes when the street is calm, only picturing you driving as Baby’s engineers go wild but those are my hands on the steering wheel. If I didn't know better, I’d think you are still around. But I know better. I still feel you all around. I love you.’’

Your monologuing ends as astutely as it stated. You get up, press a kiss to your ruined for the next weeks hands and place it on the rock with writings. You turn around and walk back to the car that you parked near, only in case of Dean wanting to see Baby. How knows? You and your clandestine faith. You lick your lip and get in the car.

You swear you the AC/DC cassette wasn't there before, but when you turn on the car and the radio it starts playing. It's the first true smile that comes to your mouth, it's bloodstained and you look like a shameless woman. With that you can deal.

It hurts a bearable hurt for now. You didn't think it was possible. Maybe someday.

The end.

(she takes a little longer to arive in heaven than sammy. his baby brother says that women are most likely to live around six years more than men. it doesn't ease him up, though. dean waited sam for too long, his platonic soulmate. and now he has to wait his romantic one too? the eldest Winchester considers it the best earthly present when the he sense you around, that smell of orange and apples. it's you, he knows before even turning around. he can't wait to love you again. your name rolls off your tongue so naturally, as if you had seen each other just yesterday: ‘’hey, y/n.’’)

But then again, nothing ever really ends, does it?

REBLOG AND COMMENT. Feedback is magic and helps me!

Starburst's footnote: It just didn't feel right to make an author's note on the top. I wanted it all only to be an arrow to the story. So, this is my side note: it's six am and I'm up writing this after inspiration kissed me with a bruise in the middle of the night. Or more like grabbed my throat. Anyway, I had to write and finish this one to post today, even pushing sleep aside. Hey, we are writers, that's what we do! I've been watching the show since I was eleven and I cried like a baby with the finale. This series was just so important and crucial to molde aspects of relationships for me. The song marjorie by Taylor Swift was used here, and so was the line "you got my devotion/ but man, I can hate you sometimes" by Harry Styles. I told you guys I would use it somewhere! A special thanks to @msmarvelouswinchester​ who helped me with her encouraging and opinon. You are the best! And with all of this I wanna say: Happy bday, Dean Winchester!

REBLOG AND COMMENT! Feedback is magic! Especially about this fic, I’d like to know your opinion. Tags in the reblog! Send an ask or dm to get in the taglist.

[girlactionfigure]

“I give my child in your care, raise my child as if it were yours.”

These words were written by the mother of a six year old Jewish girl Rami, who was smuggled out of the Jewish ghetto in Nazi occupied Warsaw, Poland, during the Second World War. Little Rami was placed into foster care with her mother’s Polish friends on the Aryan side of the city and, unlike her mother, ultimately survived the war. The person who was instrumental in making Rami’s survival possible was a woman named Irena Sendler, a social worker and Polish resistance operative who helped save 2,500 Jewish children like Rami during the Holocaust.

Beginnings

Irena was born in 1910 in Warsaw into a Roman Catholic family. Her father, Stanislaw Krzyzanowski was a physician and a researcher in infectious diseases. He was a humanitarian and an idealist, who helped found the Polish Socialist Party. He believed in democracy, equal rights, universal health care, and an end to child labor, and was even expelled from university in Poland for leading strikes and protests advocating for those goals.

When Irena was two, the family moved outside of Warsaw, to the village of Otwock, where Stanislaw set up his practice for the treatment of tuberculosis. The village was fifty percent Jewish, and that percentage included the poorest of residents. Unlike other doctors in the area, Stanislaw treated everyone, the rich and poor alike, despite the poor not being able to pay. “If someone else is drowning, you have to give a hand,” he would often say.

Irena grew up in close contact with the Jewish villagers. She played with their children, and by age six even spoke fluent Yiddish. At home Irena’s family life was warm and nurturing. Stanislaw loved his little girl very much and hugged and kissed her so often that Irena’s aunts would warn him not to spoil her. “We don’t know what her life will be like,” he’d reply. “Maybe my hugs will be her best memory.”

In 1916 an epidemic of typhoid fever swept through the village and Stanislaw chose to be on the front lines. Typhoid, a bacterial disease spread through food, water, and close contact with infected persons, was especially prevalent in poor communities with bad sanitation. Unlike other well off villagers who isolated themselves to avoid contact with the sick, Stanislaw continued caring for patients and later that year succumbed to the disease himself. He died shortly after.

But Stanislaw’s spirit lived on in his daughter, and as Irena matured she resembled her father more and more in her beliefs and actions. She majored in social welfare at the University of Warsaw, and interned in charitable welfare clinics where the poor could get a free education and legal assistance. She also started becoming more politically involved, joining the Polish Socialist Party that her father helped start and beginning to engage in protests and activism herself.

In 1935 anti-Semitic sentiment was on the rise in Poland, and at Polish universities an informal rule nicknamed the “bench ghetto” was introduced. “A rule was established at the University segregating the Catholics from the Jewish students,” Irena recalled. “The Catholics were to sit on the chairs to the right and Jews on the chairs to the left. I always sat with Jews and, therefore, I was beaten by anti-Semites together with Jewish students.”

Later, like her father, Irena was suspended from university for boycotting the labeling of campus identity cards with the word “Aryan” to differentiate non-Jewish students from Jewish ones. “I was taught since my earliest years that people are either good or bad. Their race, nationality, and religion do not matter — what matters is the person.”

The War

On September 1, 1939, after the signing of a non-aggression pact between themselves, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland. The country was split in half, with the eastern side going to Soviet Union and the western to the Nazis. Warsaw fell to the Nazis.

Overnight Jews became second class citizens in Warsaw. They couldn’t hold state or government positions, couldn’t own businesses, they had to register ownership of property, and lost access to their bank accounts.

Barred from offering social services to the Jewish population officially, Irena with a few friends began to circumvent the rules by faking paperwork in order to do so. This was the beginning of Irena’s resistance operations. Soon Irena and her resistance cell were providing money, food, and clothing to thousands of Jews in Warsaw.

A year after the invasion, moving forward with their ultimate goal of Jewish genocide, the Nazis established a ghetto for Warsaw’s Jews. 350,000 Jews, nearly 30% of the city’s entire population, were imprisoned in a 1.3 square mile ghetto. The ghetto was surrounded by a ten foot tall brick wall crowned with ribbons of barbed wire.

Irena sprang into action looking for blank documents that could give Aryan identities to Jewish friends destined for the ghetto. And once the ghettoization of Jews was complete, she continued helping in any way she could.

Life in the ghetto was miserable. The Nazis rationed roughly 200 calories of food per person per day. Death by starvation was common. Sanitation was terrible with refuse and human corpses littering the streets. There was a shortage of soap, clothing, and the means to heat living spaces. Many people froze to death. Disease was everywhere, including tuberculosis, dysentery, spotted fever, and typhoid fever, the same disease that claimed Irena’s father’s life.

But Irena was undaunted. Because of her work with Warsaw’s Department of Health and Social Services, she received a pass from the Epidemic Control Department that allowed her official passage in and out of the ghetto. She immediately began making daily visits, sometimes multiple per day, to smuggle food, money, and doses of typhus vaccine into the ghetto. She would hide items in the false bottom of her bag, or in small pockets sewn into a padded bra. Many women had their bras altered with padding and pockets. “It was a joke in wartime Warsaw that women’s breasts had grown dramatically everywhere in the city since the arrival of the Germans.”

Children

Sometimes Irena would smuggle candy or dolls for the ghetto’s children. Children were particularly vulnerable in the ghetto, succumbing faster to malnutrition, freezing, and to more varied diseases than adults. Some families facing starvation relied on their children to obtain food by smuggling it from the Aryan side of the city. Other families sent children across the wall hoping they would fare better as orphans on the Aryan side than inside the ghetto. In the beginning of 1942, about 4,000 children lived on the streets of the Aryan side. 2,000 of them were Jewish.

That year, fearing Nazi soldiers’ contamination with typhus and other diseases from children living on the street, the chief of the Nazi police ordered for Warsaw’s social services to get all homeless children on the Aryan side of the city off the streets and into orphanages and other local institutions. The roundups yielded a number of Jewish children, many of whom Irena and her network helped disappear into private homes and orphanages under false Polish identities. But there were thirty two Jewish kids that could not be placed, and so, in order to save them from execution, Irena had to smuggle them back into the ghetto. Knowing what was awaiting them there, Irena was devastated at not having an alternative solution. She vowed to never again return a single child to the ghetto, and started, along with her associates, an operation to smuggle Jewish children out of the ghetto and to provide them with false Polish identities and caring homes on the Aryan side of the city.

The price for helping a Jewish child in wartime Warsaw was execution, and Irena and her core group of twenty to twenty five mostly women operatives, risked their lives daily to save each and every child. Children were smuggled out of the ghetto in a variety of ways. There were secret routes to the Aryan side of the city via sewers and underground corridors. Children were able to get across by sneaking through an old courthouse and a Catholic church that stood on the border of the ghetto. Irena’s epidemic control pass allowed her to officially bring a child out of the ghetto for treatment if they were ill with tuberculosis. Children with or without the disease were brought out this way. Some kids were hidden in ambulances, under floorboards or dirty rags, or in coffins along with dead bodies. The Nazis were terrified of disease and performed only cursory checks before waving ambulances through. The youngest, including babies, had to be sedated with tranquilizers and hidden in trucks in toolboxes, in sacks masquerading as laundry or potatoes, or under vegetable boxes. Some were left in briefcases on early morning streetcars that ran in and out of the ghetto and later picked up by a friend.

Once out of the ghetto, children had to take on new identities in order to integrate into Polish society. Sometimes documents were faked, other times legitimate blanks could be found. If children looked too Jewish, they had makeovers to make them look more Polish. Sometimes it was as easy as dying a child’s hair, other times Jewish boys had to become girls in order to prevent the Nazi authorities from checking for circumcisions.

Escaped children went on to live in homes of friends, in convents, in group homes, orphanages, or religious institutions, and Irena kept a list of each and every child placed with the hope of reuniting them with families after the war. She encoded and recorded only the most essential information such as names, addresses, and an account of any money that parents gave to help with caretaking on cigarette paper that nightly she prepared to throw out of her kitchen window in case the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, ever came looking for her. Eventually, when it became too dangerous to keep the list at home, she buried it in glass bottles under an apple tree in a friend’s garden.

By this time Irena was already having nightmares on a regular basis. Not only did she worry about the children who would certainly be killed if they were ever discovered, she also worried about the families that were risking their lives to hide them. On top of everything, Irena was the sole person who knew the detailed histories of all the smuggled children. If anything were to happen to her, that information would be irretrievable.

Capture

In the fall of 1943, the Gestapo found and arrested a woman who ran a laundrette that the resistance used as a drop-off point for messages and packages. Charged with conspiring with the resistance, the woman was tortured and ultimately broke, giving up names of resistance operatives. One of those names was Irena Sendler’s. Days after, the Gestapo pounded on Irena’s door in the middle of the night. She was arrested, beaten, interrogated, and sent to Pawiak, a secret prison for intelligentsia and those politically involved. Most prisoners interned at Pawiak never left alive.

The Gestapo repeatedly tortured Irena for information, breaking her legs and feet, and permanently scarring her body. Despite the agony, Irena never said a word. She knew what divulging information would mean, a death sentence for thousands of children, friends and families. As luck would have it, the Gestapo thought they had captured only a fringe resistance operative, not the head of children’s division of the resistance movement, which meant Irena received no special treatment. Certainly if they realized who they were dealing with, they would have taken extra measures.

Irena lived at the prison for four months until her execution date was set for January 20, 1944. During the days, when she was not being tortured for information, Irena worked as a washerwoman cleaning soiled Nazi underwear. One day, when the Nazis found the laundry work not to their satisfaction, they lined up all the washerwomen against a wall and shot in the head every other one. Irena was one of the ones who survived.

On the morning of January 20th, a Nazi officer came to take Irena to the courtyard where she was to be shot. She was led down a corridor, but instead of being taken into the waiting room where she was to await her execution, the officer led her out of the prison and into the street. He released her and told her to run. As Irena later found out her friends in the resistance had bribed the Nazi with what today amounts to $100,000 to secure her escape.

End of the war and legacy

Once free, Irena went into hiding, and soon resumed her operations with the resistance. She continued rising in ranks until she was running meetings and setting agendas. In the summer of 1944, with the Soviets advancing, and the Nazis retreating, the Polish resistance army attempted to liberate Warsaw. They fought for two months, but were ultimately defeated by the Nazis. In response to the uprising, Heinrich Himmler, a most high ranking SS officer and the person responsible for forming and operating Nazi death camps, gave the order to kill all Polish residents of Warsaw and to level the entire city. “The city must completely disappear from the surface of the earth…,” he ordered. “No stone can remain standing. Every building must be razed to its foundation.” Ultimately more than 400,000 people were killed and eighty percent of Warsaw was destroyed by the retreating Nazi army. Irena miraculously survived the destruction.

After the Nazis were driven out of Warsaw, Irena and a friend went to dig up the list of children they had hidden in bottles. They searched and searched for the tree under which the list was buried, but found only rubble. Irena then set out, along with her friends, to recreate the list from memory. She continued working for decades helping reunite children with their families, and even adopted two orphaned Jewish girls herself.

Irena lived until 98, and passed away in Warsaw in 2008. Until the very end of her life she felt that she did not do enough to help children during the war.

Five years before her death Irena received Poland’s highest honour, the Order of the White Eagle, but she never enjoyed being called a hero.

“Let me stress most emphatically that we who were rescuing children are not some kind of heroes… Indeed, that term irritates me greatly.” 

“Heroes do extraordinary things. What I did was not an extraordinary thing. It was normal.”

The children Irena saved during the war continued to call and visit her until the end of her life.

Historical Snapshots

[pochapal]

I hate doctor 11 but ive never been able to explain why in like words lmao. He feels like such a mary sue character imo and like theres something about his characterisation that was always just really ineffective (like the stuff about fishfingers and custard or whatever it was). Imo i'd love to hear you give top 5 worst things about the 11 era because i rlly just love when it gets torn apart

i hold nothing but a seething contempt and loathing for that man. every time he appeared on screen i felt ready to snap like a riled up chimpanzee in my enclosure. i am frothing at the mouth and overcome with a desire to start flinging heavy objects. this might be incoherent and inconsistent but i started this rewatch in feb 2020 and only finished this week so i got through 11′s episodes last august/september time and i refuse to revisit it to jog my memory or fact check anything i’m saying here because this man does not deserve the space in my mind for that.

the first thing is i can’t fucking STAND the quirky whimsy timey wimey bit he has going on all of the time. i can’t even say this is because this is a kids show and i was a teen and then adult when i first properly watched him but actually!! when i was eleven years old i’d sleep over at a friend’s house most weekends and it always coincided with the airing of a new season 5 episode and i remember we watched the finale with the dumb time hopping to get out of the box prison that was never explained and didn’t make sense and i thought at the time “this is really stupid”. and before that my only other doctor who exposure was watching the david tennant christmas specials with another friend and throughout childhood my only opinion on doctor who was “this is a tv show that is not for me but is one that all the boys i am friends with like so i will put up with it to maintain our friendships” but at least those episodes were both suspenseful and engaging enough to keep me watching all the way through. like who the fuck does an end of the world sci fi plot and approaches it with an “oopsy woopsy i am a funny little alien man who is going to stop you all by making you do a hecking silly” like it’s unneeded and self-parodies an already cheesy show to the point where it becomes unwatchable and makes it impossible to ever take this man seriously.

next thing that downright sucks ass so badly is the stupid fucking overwritten constantly escalating plotlines. like everything from season 5 up until his regeneration at the end of season 7 is meant to be this grand interconnected cosmic plot about how...the doctor trying to bring back his planet will end the universe or something so all the top powers across all of reality tried again and again to stop him from doing that except he doesn’t know what’s going on so he keeps thwarting these people who supposedly mean good?? i mean i sure don’t fucking know what they were trying to say!! like for some reason we never get the doctor suddenly becomes this superdemon that threatens everything so these people (whoever they are) decide to, in sequence: suck him through a time rift to erase him from existence, trap him in a prison and remake a universe without him, take his companion’s baby and turn her into a perfectly trained doctor killer, form two(!!) secret societies to hunt him throughout history that are only stopped by his companion splintering herself across his personal timeline to protect him, and repeatedly cause reality collapsing events because it’s a kinder outcome for the universe than what he will do. this grand and terrible event turns out to be...he spends a few hundred years chilling by a rift that leads to his home planet and protects a few generations of children from monsters which convinces them to give him infinite regeneration power then fuck off back to their pocket universe. and it’s like!! what is the point of anything that happens in this man’s era when everything is always “the darkest moment” or whatever the fuck!! i don’t care!! we never get a compelling reason to believe this bumbling clown of a man could ever be a universal threat!! the whole thing is so dumb i hate it!!!

thing number three i hate is how the eleventh doctor is ALSO characterised as this abrasive egotistic male supergenius to the point where he becomes genuinely indistinguishable from bbc sherlock. genuinely who enjoyed seeing this guy constantly tell people their tiny human minds can’t comprehend what he’s doing and then basically just wave his magic wand to solve whatever problem each episode is facing. 2012 is the year of human sin because this fucking shitsmear character archetype somehow became both a redditor role model AND a tumblr sexyman and it’s like!! nobody is enjoying this stop making this seem cool! him saying timey wimey thing any time he does anything is frustrating and dumb and locks the viewer out of giving a fuck about anything that is happening! smartest man in the room syndrome is a disease and the eleventh doctor is terminal with it. like remember how they established river as an accomplished scientist (when she wasn’t being a child soldier or a time paradox or whatever the fuck) and every time that came up mr doctor eleven man was like “oh this thing is obvious because i’m a genius and you didn’t realise because your brain is tiny so get out of the way and let the grownups think” or that time it turned out amy had been replaced with a slime clone for half the season and the doctor chewed rory (audience surrogate) out for somehow not realising this fact we didn’t know right from the start and like. this served no purpose other than to draw into severe question why the doctor is also this super beloved magical figure implicitly trusted by all children everywhere like. mr steven moffat is totally allergic to writing and solving mysteries in his tv show and fuck you for wanting to figure things out as you go along based on the new evidence you uncover at strategic plot intervals just let this asshole man use magical thinking to reveal he knew the answer all along and you’re a fucking idiot for not also realising this thing which had no basis or precedent anywhere else in the show.

speaking of dumb things let us not forget the absolute shitshow that was minority representation in this era. i’m not even talking about the low hanging fruit of how genuinely unironically sexist amy and clara were written where each episode moffat either seemed to loathe them or was incredibly horny over them and they had no character growth or arc or fucking anything. i’m talking about how fucking shit terrible the incidental representation was. god remember how every single fucking gay person who appeared in this era was written as one incredibly fucking stupid joke and how the women were all either sexy dominatrix, feeble girl in love, or Mother (or all three in some really terrible cases) and i’m not qualified to talk about this but also how incredibly white this era was and how on two separate occasions we had monarchs reimagined as sexy girlbosses with a gun played by black women who the doctor leched over. nothing about any of this was good ESPECIALLY coming off the back of rtd who was surprisingly forward thinking for 2005 and did a really good job of positing travel with the doctor as queer allegory. in comparison moffat gave us THE MOST heterosexual shlock i’ve ever had to endure. amy and rory could have been interesting characters were they not hemmed into this domestic bickering young straight married couple bullshit that was in no way changed or altered by traveling with the doctor except for the quasi incestuous river song reveal that was dumb and bad and stupid.

the last major mega gripe i have with the series is moffat’s fucking jingoistic boner for british military aesthetics. this carried over throughout his entire tenure as showrunner but was super terrible vomit inducing in eleven’s era. the unironic admiration for ww2 britain and winston churchill is downright wretched. are you incapable of telling a second world war story outside of churchill’s london and plucky blitz fighters. shit gives me hives so badly. and then!!! that weird church owned army that features in the future that end up being bad not for the concept of what basically amounts to an imperialistic intergalactic rendition of the fucking crusades but because they’re part of the nonsense go nowhere puzzlebox narrative that says the doctor is a not good man who will do bad things to the universe :(. remember how rtd’s doctor was a freshly traumatised man hot off the war criminal press who time and time again vehemently refuses to engage in military violence, but who tragically inadvertently turns every one of his companions into soldiers in his own personal army, and he has this moment of complete horror at the realisation and it is this which causes the downward spiral that ends in 10′s regeneration. and then how there’s this cringe line about how there’s a force of people who are “the doctor’s army, always ready to fight his battles when he’s not around” or some shit and then it turns out this is actually massive literal military operation and we’re meant to celebrate this. fuck off.

bonus round because this needs to be said but i have never hated anything like i hated that fucking human tardis episode. everything about it induced violent anger in me from the sickening overindulgence of that softgoth dark whimsy helena bonham carter tim burton aesthetic to the bafflingly terrible evil carny stereotype of those junk scavengers to the overblown sudden tragic shipbait romance of human tardis and the doctor. every word out of her mouth was trite shit and the fact that the death of her body was presented as this super emotional dramatic scene despite there being no buy in or incentive to care and the fact that every single person on tumblr in 2012 ate that shit up like it was fucking gourmet. i loathe every single thing about that episode so much.

[pitter-pattering-ink]

They call us “Angels”

1.

She has no name but is known by all in her village. She is the woman who weaves baskets faster than anyone else. She is the the one who knows exactly when to pick berries to get the perfect ripeness. She is the mother of a boy who refuses to paint with the other children because the texture of paint against his hands doesn’t feel right. She is the creator of the first paintbrush.

She is my first human, my first assignment as a protector. I guard her from all I can and hope I do well. When she grows ill I hold her hand while she begins to nod off. Her son is in the other room- she did not want him to see her like this. I will look after him too.

In her sleep, she smiles, lacing her fingers through my own. To have a body is still foreign to me, but I manage to squeeze back. She should not be able to feel this. I don’t let go.

-

Our task is simple. Protect the humans. Let them grow. Do whatever we can as to not stall their progress.

And goodness, do they make progress.

2.

He is the first to learn how the scraping of flint and steal can cause sparks to fly. I watch as he grows- he’s a curious one, this one. Many times I lead animals away from where he sits, always too distracted to notice. He has many names, for the grunts and murmurs  of vocal chords are still adjusting, and sound is something they are still trying to find the boundaries of. “Ma” seems to be his favorite. When he figures out how to turn sparks to fire I put myself between him and the flames to keep him from being burnt. They don’t leave marks in the same way they would him.

Everything is fast after that. Suddenly things can be cooked. Meat is much more edible than before. Suddenly water is safe to drink without the risk of disease. Suddenly warmth can be found in places other than the curves of another person. He hands it to everyone he knows and they take it with clumsy footing, no doubt leaving singed earth along their path. We will worry about it later; they learn quicker than anything we have seen in a long, long time.

-

They won’t stop growing. There are so many- we are in the millions but it is only a matter of time before they surpass even that. There are many other species that grow at similar paces. But none of them take so much time to mature. None of them have so much to learn- none of them have all that and more.

We were not built to worry. We do, however, wonder.

3.

They tell stories. Nothing has ever done this before.

Then again, I imagine nothing has ever been this lonely either.

I am assigned a boy named Jack. He is born on a ship, the moistness of wood replacing the soft of grass while the world moves beneath him. When night falls and the waves grow rocky everyone gathers in the middle of the deck, taking turns weaving tales under the stars. They discover religion. They discover us.

We have a name, now. Angels. We have never had a name before- nature never referred to us with anything close to that. It feels foreign against my tongue, yet it’s surprisingly fitting. We grow into our new labels.

Jack slips and nearly falls off deck, but I am there to keep him steady. His mother thanks me for my efforts. Calls it a blessing from the gods. I am no god, but I appreciate the sentiment. She tells him, “Be more careful next time. These waves will only grow more rough.”. She tells him, “The sea is no kind beast. She will balance us above the dangers below but she is not to be held responsible for anything- or anyone- who sinks further.”. She tells him, a bit teary up, “I may be the captain of this ship, but not even I could save you from waters like this.”

He learns how to stay standing when the wood beneath his feet refuses to still. We listen to stories together.

The children’s favorites are the ones told by his mother. She leans against a cane and speaks of adventures she has had, run ins with other pirates, loves she has cherished and betrayals she is still bitter from. Most of them, I’m sure, aren’t half true. Jack does not seem to mind.

Eventually she grows too old to run the ship. He takes her place, leaning against her- his- cane and telling tall tails of danger, run ins he has had with other men his age. Men who he had a fondness for and those expected better of. Most of them, I know, aren’t true in the slightest. The children do not seem to mind and the crew are not the type to ruin a good story.

He dies in his thirties after a particularly rough storm. As careful as he was, nature does not hold back or those who are weary. I keep the pressure off his lungs for as long as I can. I try to make every gulp of water taste sweet and calming. It takes everything in me to make his death peaceful.

But some people are simply not ready. He trashes till he can’t. Panic only clears when his vision darkens.

His body is never found. The crew mourn him like they mourned his mother. They keep the cane in their honor.

-

They won’t stop dying. They pass from the tiniest things, always so quick, always before we can do anything to help. Sometimes we can’t, even given the time. Sickness is everywhere now. People are dying in the streets. We can’t do anything to heal them. The best we can do is prolong the inevitable- that, however, is much too painful a death to seem like a blessing.

They call it the plague. They call it a punishment from god. Our names go from ‘angels’ to ‘demons’ very, very quickly.

We are only able to bless things that already exist. You cannot eat a cake when you have no ingredients. The doctors don’t know how to fix this- they are not yet advanced enough to deal with something this big. We can only sit and watch, horrified, as those we have been sworn to protect die by our feet. I am assigned more people than I can count. Their names become a blur. By the time it’s all over, humanity has changed. They have lost so many. We have lost so many.

For a while, each miracle leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

4.

The most stressful assignments, although also very amusing, are the ones who need to be protected from themselves.

His name has been passed down from generation to generation, yet he much prefers to go by Eric. I help him breathe through his corsets and let time pass faster when he’s forced into a face full of make-up. On the few occasions he steals pants from his brother’s room I make sure his footsteps are quiet, because such things are life or death in times like these.

His family is rich and he is tired. They throw parties of plenty, and I hold his tongue when he’s pressured into dancing with the other men there. He steps on their toes and I laugh. Eric is all too ready to rebel in ways that girls his age get disowned for. I let the small things through, smiling at his internal dialog, filled with sass and curses and things that would make his father turn purple. Nothing too big. Never what he really yearns for.

A boy lets go of his hand and gives a terse smile, excusing himself to the food table. We watch him limp away. Eric grins.

He dies young. With a tongue that sharp, it was to be expected. He is caught kissing a woman with undamaged shoes while they both are wearing pants. It was the only time I let him. Witches, they call them. I do my best to save them both, but it’s useless. Heels are not meant for running.

They are buried in unmarked graves. It’s the only blessing I can give.

-

They recover their numbers quickly. It seems no matter what, they always bounce back in a relatively short amount of time.  It’s amazing. It’s terrifying. We get assigned more than one person at a time.

5.

My first household is a family of three. It’s a mother, a daughter, and a child that’s somewhere in-between. Mostly I look over the children- their mother works from home and is much less prone to mistakes than them. And goodness, are they reckless. Their names are Rose and Julian. Rose is a night owl and I have to make sure on more than one occasion that she doesn’t spill mugs of hot coffee on herself. It’s a brutal task, especially when she refuses to sleep when she should. I urge her to drink colder drinks. She refuses.

She is stubbed toes and dropped papers, noise when it should be quiet. She is clumsy. A long, long time ago, this would have been a dangerous trait to have. But things have changed. This world was built by people like her. She will be okay.

Julian is young but they are not stupid. They know more about the ways of the body than any human I have watched over before, bookshelves filled to the brim with pages upon pages filled with the morbid details of what makes humans blood flesh and bone. They flap their hands when they’re frustrated and chew on whatever they can get their hands on. This world was not made for them. I hope it will be rebuilt by the time they’re old enough to live in it.

They are experiments gone wrong and the urge to learn more, even when it becomes less than safe. I bless their hands to stay uncut while experimenting on a dead frog, holding knives that are much too sharp for someone their age. I don’t stop their mom from waking up to scold them. I do make sure they get to keep the frog.

I grow more connected to these children than anyone else I have ever looked after. Jack would have liked them- he would have told them so many stories. I’m with them while they take their driver’s test, pressing their feet down with just enough pressure on the gas petal for smooth sailing. Rose refuses alcohol for the first time and I am there to make sure she doesn’t give into peer pressure. Julian studies for a medical degree, studies how to make this world better for people like them. They don’t need much help on their tests, but I’m still there to lead their pencil on particularly hard questions.

They move out but they stay connected. I watch them bring new people into their lives, watch as their create families of their own. Over the years they change, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. But they are always kind. They are always Rose and Julian.

I’m not as foolish to say I forget how they died. However I don’t like to think about it, so that’s as close to forgetting as I’ll get.

They were good.

I was not built to miss people. Yet they still linger.

-

Our task was simple. Protect the humans. Let them grow. Do whatever we could do as to not stall their progress.

There were many we could not save, and even those that we did were still doomed to the same end. Fate has it’s limits- you can only bend it so much. We were already testing it’s patience by simply existing. And that was fine. Death is normal, death is natural.

But these humans- these humans are different. They create and they are kind to a fault and there is nothing else like that. We did not expect to learn from them. We did not expect for this to hurt.

We did not expect to care.

5.

There’s a woman who lives to be 94. She is one of the lucky few to make it so far. She has grandchildren of plenty and their parents are happy. We all call her Nana. I watched over them for generations, the longest I have for any family before. In her last moments she prays. She tells me I did a good job.

Her grandson dies at age seventeen because I am busy helping his brother clean up glass. I do not pray- such things are better left to those who have faith. But I do hope she forgives me.

13.

I try my best to keep them safe. But this family, this family is not meant to last. There is always something wrong, always something broken, always something that needs to be blessed. It wears me out in ways I have not experienced for centuries. I can’t- I can’t help them all.

In the end there is only one left. She cannot bear to be alone.

No miracle can help someone who does not want to be helped.

21.

The sweetest boy I’ve ever protected is in a family full of rotten people. He is the best thing in that house. I give blessing after blessing, miracle after miracle, and he lives to be happy. He finds a husband and a wife- I bless them too. When he dies it’s a shock even to me. The world seems to dim. I protect his spouses and everyone else he cared about. It’s the first time I come dangerously close to grieving. He would not have liked that.

56.

While the family sleeps, their cat nuzzles into the couch and gives me a slow blink. I always end up sitting with it for the next hour. I cannot touch it, but it seems to appreciate my presence anyway. I miracle it mice to catch.

73.

They are sisters- there is nobody left but them. How reckless they are, spray cans routinely clanging against the cement while they take off from the police. They laugh while they run, and it would be sweet if it weren’t so dangerous. They get caught, once, because I feel they need to know just how serious this is.

The cop lets them off with a warning but also makes the one with darker skin lay on the floor while the other stands.

I do not let them get caught again.

When they pass I make sure their graffiti stays up, soon surrounded by many similar pieces by people like themselves. My next assigned family passes it on the way to the subway and I have to pause for a moment. I come very close to smiling. It would have made them happy.

?

We love them,

?

We grieve them,

?

We miss them.

-

We are angels. We are guardians of humans, protectors of families. We are the small miracles, the big blessings, and we play a balancing act with death just for them. Because they are growing and they are evolving. Because they love in ways we did not know were possible and they love us in ways that can only be described as ‘human’.

They have taught us so much. They have taught us to feel.

There is nothing we would not do for them. Challenging fate is just one of our many favors.

We are angels, and they are human. They are learning and so are we. Because of them we know love. We would not trade them for the world.

-

Our task is simple. Protect the humans. Let them grow. Do whatever we can as to not tall their progress.

And my goodness, do they grow.

But to our shock, so do we.

-

[blog-cosmosuniverse1]

Dr. Peter McCullough: The State of COVID Treatment

Story at-a-glance Cardiologist, internist and epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough discusses why a key aspect of care — early treatment — has been missing from the pandemic With no hope of early treatment, McCullough believes that most people became conditioned to wait for an injection COVID-19 injections are waning in effectiveness and linked to an unacceptable number of serious injuries and deaths McCullough is among a growing number of experts who believe COVID-19 injections are making the pandemic worse; indiscriminate vaccination is driving mutations, as the virus is mutating wildly to evade the injections At 53:40 in the video, you can view McCullough’s early treatment regimen, which initially includes a nutraceutical bundle, progressing to monoclonal antibody therapy, anti-infectives like HCQ or ivermectin, antibiotics, steroids and blood thinners

The video above,1 featuring cardiologist, internist and epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, is packed with sound logic, data and action steps that have the potential to turn the pandemic around — if only more people would listen.Recorded at the Andrews University Village Church in Berrien Springs, Michigan, August 20, 2021, this presentation deserves to be heard, and I urge you to listen to it in its entirety. It will make you question why a key aspect of care — early treatment — has been missing from the pandemic.McCullough, editor of two medical journals who has published 650 peer-reviewed papers, said this has been the first time in his career when he saw medical providers not offering early treatment for a disease.Early COVID Treatment Saves Lives The standard of care for COVID-19 has been to withhold treatment until a person is sick enough to be hospitalized. It typically takes two to three weeks for someone with COVID-19 to get sick enough to be hospitalized, and during that time early treatment can be lifesaving.The rationale was that there have been no large, randomized trials conducted to know which treatments are safe and effective, but as McCullough said, "We can't wait for large randomized trials … Something got in the minds of doctors and nurses and everyone to not treat COVID-19. I couldn't stand it." He and colleagues worked feverishly to figure out a treatment — why didn't national health organizations do so also?"Our government and other governments, and the entire world, has not lifted a finger to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death anywhere," McCullough said, pointing out the irony: "If there was a kid with asthma, would we let the kid wheeze and choke for two weeks before the kid has to go to the hospital? No, we give the child medications. We don't have randomized trials for every single thing that we do."2 McCullough and colleagues realized that there are three major phases to COVID-19. It starts with virus replication, which then triggers inflammation, or a cytokine storm. This, in turn, leads to blood clotting. If enough micro blood clots form in the lungs, a person can't get enough oxygen and dies. It's a complex process, and no single drug is going to work to treat it, which is why McCullough uses a combination of drugs, as is done to treat HIV, staph and other infections.Only about 6% of doctors' decisions in cardiology are based on randomized trials. "Medicine is an art and a science, it takes judgment. What was happening is, I think out of global fear, no judgement was happening," McCullough said,3 referring to doctors' refusal to treat COVID-19 patients early on in the disease process.Doctors Threatened for Treating COVID-19 Around the world, the unthinkable is happening: Doctors are being threatened with loss of their license or even prison for trying to help their patients. French doctor Didier Raoult suggested, early on, putting up a tent to try to treat covid-19 patients. He was put on house arrest. He has promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), which initially was available over the counter — until France made it prescription only.4In Australia, if a doctor attempts to treat a COVID-19 patient with HCQ, they could be put in prison. "Since when does a doctor get put in prison to try to help a patient with a simple generic drug?" McCullough said. In South Africa, he added, a doctor was put in prison for prescribing ivermectin.In August 2020, McCullough's landmark paper "Pathophysiological Basis and Rationale for Early Outpatient Treatment of SARS-CoV-2 Infection" was published online in the American Journal of Medicine.5The follow-up paper is titled "Multifaceted Highly Targeted Sequential Multidrug Treatment of Early Ambulatory High-Risk SARS-CoV-2 Infection (COVID-19)" and was published in Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine in December 2020.6 It became the basis for the home treatment guide.While some physician organizations have stepped up and are treating COVID-19 patients, "The ivory tower today still is not treating

patients. The party line in my health system is, do not treat a COVID-19 patient as an outpatient. Wait for them to get sick enough to be admitted. Because my health system … follows the National Institutes of Health or the Centers for Disease Control, period." Conditioned to Wait for an Injection With no hope of early treatment, McCullough believes that most people became conditioned to wait for an injection. "We became conditioned, after about May or so, to wear a mask, wait in isolation and be saved by the vaccine. And wait for the vaccine. And all we could hear about is the vaccine."The injections were developed, but they're different than any prior vaccines and have been losing effectiveness while causing an unacceptable number of serious injuries and deaths. For comparison, in 1976, a fast-tracked injection program against swine flu was halted after an estimated 25 to 32 deaths.7According to McCullough in the video, if a new drug comes on the market and five deaths occur, the standard is to issue a black box warning stating the medication may cause death. With 50 deaths, the product is pulled from the market, he says. Now consider this: The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database showed that — for all vaccines combined before 2020 — there were about 158 total deaths reported per year.By January 22, 2021, there were already 182 deaths reported for COVID-19 injections, with just 27.1 million people vaccinated. This was more than enough to reach the mortality signal of concern to stop the program, McCullough said."We've already crossed the line of concern January 22. And if there was a data safety monitoring board — I know, because I do this work — we would have had an emergency meeting and said, wait a minute, people are dying after the vaccine. We've got to figure out why."8It's standard to have an external critical event committee, an external data safety monitoring board and a human ethics committee for large clinical trials — such as the mass COVID-19 injection program, but these were not put into place."This is something we've never seen in human medicine — a new product introduced and just going full-steam ahead with no check on why people are dying after the vaccine," McCullough said. On two occasions, the CDC and FDA — in March and in June — reviewed the data and said none of the deaths are related to the vaccines. "I think this is malfeasance," he stated.Fast-forward to July 30, 2021, and VAERS data showed 12,366 Americans have died after a COVID0-19 injection.9 In an analysis of COVID-19 vaccine death reports from VAERS, researchers found that 86% of the time, nothing else could have caused the death, and it appears the vaccine was the cause.10The Spike Protein Is Dangerous Your body recognizes the spike protein in COVID-19 jabs as foreign, so it begins to manufacture antibodies to protect you against COVID-19, or so the theory goes. But there's a problem. The spike protein itself is dangerous and known to circulate in your body at least for weeks and more likely months11 — perhaps much longer — after the COVID jab.In your cells, the spike protein damages blood vessels and can lead to the development of blood clots.12 It can go into your brain, adrenal glands, ovaries, heart, skeletal muscles and nerves, causing inflammation, scarring and damage in organs over time. McCullough also believes that the spike protein is present in donated blood, and they've notified the Red Cross and the American Association of Blood Banking.Messenger RNA (mRNA) platforms have been under study for years, in most cases being designed to replace a defective gene, which could potentially be used for cancer or heart failure treatment, for example.In November 2020, however, Pfizer, in a joint venture with Germany-based BioNTech, announced that their mRNA-based injection was "more than 90% effective" in a Phase 3 trial.13 This does not mean that 90% of people who get injected will be protected from COVID-19, as it's based on relative risk reduction (RRR).The absolute

risk reduction (ARR) for the jab is less than 1%. "Although the RRR considers only participants who could benefit from the jab, the absolute risk reduction (ARR), which is the difference between attack rates with and without a jab, considers the whole population. ARRs tend to be ignored because they give a much less impressive effect size than RRRs," researchers wrote in The Lancet Microbe in April 2021.14McCullough believes the mass injection campaign is an incredible violation of human ethics, in part because no one should be pressured, coerced or threatened into using an investigational product.No attempts have been made to present or mitigate risks to the public, such as giving it only to people who really need it — not to low risk groups like children and young people and those who are naturally immune to COVID-19 due to prior infection. "I think this is the most disturbing thing," he said.The Injections Don't Stop COVID-19, Can Be Deadly The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) posted online July 30, 2021, details an outbreak of COVID-19 that occurred in Barnstable County, Massachusetts — 74% of the cases occurred in fully vaccinated people.15Indiscriminate vaccination is driving mutations, as the virus is mutating wildly to evade the injections. Their effectiveness, too, is rapidly waning. A study published in medRxiv, using data from the Mayo Clinic Health System, revealed that during periods of Alpha and Delta variant prevalence, Moderna's injection was 76% effective while Pfizer's effectiveness was only 42%.16A little-known fact is that Moderna's jab has three times the dose of Pfizer's, but, curiously, health officials aren't even discussing this or giving the public updates on which of the three injections work "best." The narrative is simple and straightforward — get an injection, any injection.Yet, as McCullough noted, the virus has mutated, and the vaccines aren't working the way health officials had hoped: "The vaccines don't stop COVID-19, at least not completely, and they're not a shield against mortality."17Similar to VAERS, the U.K. maintains a "Yellow Card" reporting site to report adverse effects to vaccines and medications.18Tess Lawrie, whose company The Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy has worked with the World Health Organization, analyzed U.K. Yellow Card data and concluded that there's more than enough evidence to pull the injections from the market because they're not safe for human use. The report stated:19"It is now apparent that these products in the blood stream are toxic to humans. An immediate halt to the vaccination programme is required whilst a full and independent safety analysis is undertaken to investigate the full extent of the harms, which the UK Yellow Card data suggest include thromboembolism, multisystem inflammatory disease, immune suppression, autoimmunity and anaphylaxis, as well as Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE)."Early Treatment Is Crucial McCullough is trying to get the word out about the importance of early treatment of COVID-19. Early ambulatory therapy with a sequenced-multidrug regimen is supported by available sources of evidence and has a positive benefit-to-risk profile to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death.At 53:40 in the video, you can view McCullough's early treatment regimen, which initially includes a nutraceutical bundle. While you're recovering at home, open your windows and get plenty of fresh air and ventilation in your home.If symptoms persist or worsen, he recommends calling your doctor and demanding monoclonal antibody therapy. The treatment progresses to include anti-infectives like HCQ or ivermectin, antibiotics, steroids and blood thinners.If your doctor refuses to treat COVID-19 in the early stages, find a new one and/or visit a telemedicine clinic that will help, as "the prehospital phase is the time of therapeutic opportunity."📷McCullough is among a growing number of experts who believe COVID-19 injections are making the pandemic worse. They "have an unfavorable

safety profile and are not clinically effective, thus they cannot be generally supported in clinical practice at this time."Logically, this is clear, but McCullough believes we're dealing with a mass psychosis that is preventing people from seeing the light. "The whole world is in a trance," he said, adding:20"Things are getting disturbingly out of control and it's in the context of the virus. It is clear … we are in a very special time in the history of mankind. Whatever is going on, it is the entire world … every human being in the world. It appears to have a program.The program … is happening to promote as much fear, isolation, suffering, hospitalization and death in order to get a needle in every arm, at all costs. That is what's going on, and no one in this room can disagree."

[drake-the-incubus]

Post Note: This is long and I’m sorry.

I want to expand on what I mean but not use that post to do so.

Believe it or not, “x is a sign of y” isn’t as harmful as everyone is screaming about.

For example, my knees. I intermittently use a cane. Recently I haven’t had to use it- or I’ve forgotten it- but I have had days where I needed it.

I’ve had bad knee pain for a long ass time. Issues with pain in my legs in general.

But a lot of the time it would be a dull throb and I was fairly active as a kid and teen.

I also have a joint cracking problem. And I don’t mean I’m purposefully cracking my joints- though I do- I mean I’ve earned the nickname, “snap, crackle and pop” and “rice krispies”.

And my mom, when I was 12, went in for osteoarthritis and after years of pain finally found out she had a degenerating back that caused her back to create shards and she had a pinched cyatic nerve.

Forgive me as I’ve never seen this written down.

I’ve also had a problem with being incredibly sick as a child. Bronchitis to Bronchial Pneumonia almost yearly, and a couple of gland infections.

Do you know what mom tells me and I do?

Warning signs. Very common and not at all unusual warning signs.

I’m at risk for arthritis. In fact mom and I are both certain if it’s not there in my knees it’ll develop at some point.

In fact, earlier this year, I had back pain. God awful back pain. It ran down one leg at some point.

So I asked my mom because these were the symptoms for her issues. She told me to immediately see a doctor.

To most, that’s an overreaction. But it’s not.

I’ll round back to my sickly childhood.

I have a devil of a cough, I’ll hack up a lung if I have a fit. In fact if I’m ill I have the chance to seriously damage my throat- Halls my saviour.

I’ve had colds turn into serious medical issues because they don’t go away on their own, and what was considered a cold turned out to be an infection.

So now I’m hyper vigilant. A cold that last three days with medicine, I go to the doctor. If it’s just a cold, I’ll refuse their medicine, if it’s bronchitis, I’ve caught it early and now can avoid an emergency room visit.

Because of this sickly thing I’ve had for over two decades of my life- since I was an infant/toddler- I now have to tell people I live with, “hey if I’m sick too long tell me I’ll need to see a hospital”.

COVID came around and I literally got messages from multiple people worried I was going to die if I caught it, and I’m going to say, I’m terrified. I’ve been in the hospital multiple times due to illness, days away from being hospitalized.

The virus fucking terrified me. I’ve had more than ten scares of having it, with no idea what I should do, so I treated myself with care, waited for day three, when it didn’t come I was relieved.

I’ve nearly died twice to an allergic reaction, to this day, I’m deathly allergic to two things and I don’t know what they are.

I’m also allergic- but not even close to severe- to other things I can shrug off.

I’ve also had a negative general allergy test. It’s where I found out my blood type.

But I’ve had my throat slowly close up as I took a specific anti depressant. I didn’t notice until my tongue had started swelling in my mouth, that I had more itchy skin than usual and I was having breathing issues. I got told I was a few days out from actual death.

For mental health. I have very weird applications of symptoms.

I can tell if someone is angry or not, I can have genuine conversations with someone and notice minute details.

I’m also traumatized and was forced into recognizing emotions.

But I don’t know when to stop a conversation. I don’t know when to interpret someone’s polite way of ending something. I don’t know the social etiquette to not embarrass people. I can be sociable, but I hate people and I never seek them out myself.

I’m not the model someone looks to for an AFAB with autism.

My trans status really pushed the diagnosis.

But I do have the symptoms, they’re just not presenting in ways that make people scream autism- more like scream freak.

And as a teen I never knew I had it. But I found people who related to me outside of a psychological textbook who explained my issues and gave tips that worked for once.

I was Fourteen before it clicked in my parents were abusing me. That it wasn’t normal to stop and listen to make sure those were their footsteps. If they were coming to my room. How heavy? Is that anger?

I’d explain normal life things and get people telling me it wasn’t normal and I needed to be away from it. That the behaviour was terrifying.

That if my parents were threatening to beat me black and blue, I should be trying to get out.

Trauma causes memory issues? How would I know that as a teen going to the police and not being able to say anything other than, “they threaten me when I brush my teeth”.

A terrified seventeen year old, describing how they were punished and the police couldn’t take them seriously, as they sobbed and begged to not go back.

In a week I had to return because there was no where else to go.

I couldn’t tell the police office my parents threatened my life that night.

I couldn’t remember why I was convinced by my friends online to run away.

My teachers got mad: “Did you think of your grades, you’re graduating this year”

Not even thinking about how I was suffering so much I got sent to the councillor- and then dumped- multiple times for suicidal ideation and the absolute terror I had in ever speaking of my issues.

It took meeting someone who was traumatized to learn I had panic attacks.

“Go take Your medication they give you for anxiety, you’re having a panic attack”

I’ve had them since I was a child and it took frantically talking in a chat room to figure it out.

I got half my diagnoses from the people around me before medically getting them. And that’s not a joke.

I had abnormally painful periods for my entire childhood, and it took a friend telling me it was probably bad I needed my mom’s painkillers for her back sometimes to even exist.

And do you know what, extremely painful periods is a sign for something really bad. And about 1/3 of afabs have that experience.

It’s considered normal. And yet it can lead to a deadly disease if you’re not careful.

A painful boob can be breast cancer.

A cough and fever could be COVID.

People relatively will explain their experiences in a way that people see is normal.

Making it Hard to actually convey how these experiences are normal for US but they’re not normal.

“Haha I Just found out reading a lot as a kid was a sign of PTSD” isn’t someone taking the piss abt PTSD, it’s a common experience due to escape fantasies. I know a lot of people, most who hate reading now, that explained how they’d read for hours as a child to get out of life, sometimes pretending to be something better.

And so in good conscience, I can’t say that post is great.

TDLR; The post that insinuates “x is a sign of y” comes off as ableist, as my lived experiences I know where this comes from.

Sometimes minor things can be a sign of something major and ignoring it doesn’t help.

Physical and Mental health are hard to convey, and most of the time someone doesn’t have the language or forethought to in depth describe their experiences.

[becuzitisbitter]

Meeting Your Maker

Another essay I wrote for school.  This one’s about 4 pages and is a reading of Susan Stryker’s  My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix, for the benefit of my composition 101 class.

    In “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage,” Susan Stryker makes an emotionally-powerful statement to the world which has rejected her as a transsexual woman by mobilizing a critical reading of Mary Shelley’s foundational science fiction novel, Frankenstein, to give an account of her situation and to make the case for the transformative power of rage against all that is supposed to be natural from the position of the unnatural. It was originally delivered as a performance piece at California State University in 1993 as part of a conference aimed at theorizing rage.

    Stryker grabs the attention of the reader immediately with a few short, rapid-fire sentences: “The transsexual body is an unnatural body. It is the product of medical science. It is a technological construction.” Next, she begins to explain what she means and presents the essential analogy of the piece, adding “It is flesh torn apart and sewn together again in a shape other than that in which it was born. In these circumstances, I find a deep affinity between myself as a transsexual woman and the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” This identification with the monster’s unnatural origin is central to the piece, but the monster’s rage with its creator and the entirety of the world from which it is excluded is also essential. These two themes, that her body is unnatural and that this unnaturalness is the basis of an exclusion which she feels as an enraging pain, work together to drive the piece to its conclusions.

    The tendency to associate transgender bodies with Mary Shelley’s work predates Stryker’s work, though.“I am not the first to link Frankenstein’s monster and the transsexual body,” (Stryker 2) she clarifies. She proceeds to quote the transphobic remarks of Mary Daly and Janice Raymond, a pair of influential feminists, comparing transgender people to Frankenstein’s monster. Her response is to return to the text, arguing that the monster importantly appears in the story as Frankenstein’s “...dark, romantic double,” (Stryker 2) She asks what making such comparisons between transgender people and the Monster might imply about the people making them, “Might I suggest that Daly, Raymond and others of their ilk similarly construct the transsexual as their own particular golem?” (Stryker 2)

    Stryker doesn’t shrink away from the monstrous associations such transphobic feminists make, instead she embraces the archetype, turning on them the way the monster turned on its maker. She says, “When such beings as these tell me I war with nature, I find no more reason to mourn my opposition to them—or to the order they claim to represent—than Frankenstein’s monster felt in its enmity to the human race.” (Stryker 3) Indeed, she does not shrink away from these critics’ company, she roars “...gleefully away from it like a Harley-straddling, dildo- packing leatherdyke from hell.” (Stryker 3)

    Examining what it means to be labelled a creature, Stryker says that it is essentially to be something (presumably something with a subjective experience) which is created rather than appearing naturally. She does not elaborate on the reasoning behind this premise, but goes a step further to say that people take offense at being called or compared to creatures precisely because most people are accustomed to affording themselves a higher status, that of creator rather than created. Her reactive impulse is markedly different. She says, “I find no shame, however, in acknowledging my egalitarian relationship with non-human material Being; everything emerges from the same matrix of possibilities.” (Stryker 4) She doesn’t see the appeal of the civilizing separation between Man as maker and creator on the one hand, and the rest of the world on the other, which is presumed to be infinitely passive, infinitely subject to use and attribution by others. Instead, she allows this schism to drive her back into solidarity with all that is unnatural.

    For Stryker, revulsion toward transgender people stems from their inability or refusal to conform to the supposed natural order, distilled to its most-essential form in the rigid categories of man and woman. Although the transgender body is said to be monstrous because of its artificiality, Stryker says all that is called Nature and used as a cudgel against transgender people is actually just as artificial, just as constructed as the transgender body. She warns the reader against the falsity of Nature as a concept, “Do not trust it to protect you from what I represent, for it is a fabrication that cloaks the groundlessness of the privilege you seek to maintain for yourself at my expense.” Here, she asserts the general threat transgender people pose to the social order, which is to make-visible all of the horrible techniques by which each person is made into themselves. After all, she says, “You are as constructed as me; the same anarchic Womb has birthed us both.” (Stryker 4) The author is attempting to make good on the threats her experience is said to pose toward nature; in fact, this is exactly the way forward she suggests, “Heed my words, and you may well discover the seams and sutures in yourself.” (Stryker 4)

    In spite of her close identification with the creature, Stryker specifies that their situations are not the same, noting that, “Unlike the monster, we often successfully cite the culture’s visual norms of gendered embodiment.” (Stryker 4) Transgender people cite these visual norms through the manipulation of subtle signifiers such as hair length, cut of clothing, use of makeup, wearing packers and binders, and medically altering the appearances of their bodies. This becomes subversive, she says, when transgender people, “...declare the unnaturalness of our claim to the subject positions we nevertheless occupy. (Stryker 4)

    Stryker reminds us that after Frankenstein’s monster learns the details of its creation, “...rather than bless its creator, the monster curses him.” Frankenstein cannot control the monster’s mind. “It exceeds and refutes his purposes.” (Stryker 5) This is central to one of Stryker’s main uses of the Frankenstein analogy; if the Monster’s mind is not beholden to Frankenstein, the transgender consciousness is also not determined by the doctors who reshape flesh or the entrepreneurs who sell synthetic penises. Although medicine is capable of making a body seem natural to any observer, being the subject of such techniques might permanently alter the way one views nature or medicine in general, or as Stryker says, “engaging with those very techniques produces a subjective experience that belies the naturalistic effect biomedical technology can achieve.” (Stryker 5)

    In Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein meets with his creation at last while hiking the glaciers above the village of Chamounix. The two go to a cabin together where the monster spends almost a quarter of the book telling Frankenstein its story from its own perspective to explain why it has turned against him. The essay itself enters Stryker’s analogy, “These are my words to Victor Frankenstein, above the village of Chamounix.” (Stryker 6) She goes on, later in the passage, “I, too, have discovered the journals of the men who made my body, and who have made the bodies of creatures like me since the 1930’s.” (Stryker 6) She is well aware that the scientists who developed sexual reassignment surgical and hormonal treatments did so for wildly different motivations than those that led her to engage in them. However, by nature of her desire to engage in them, she must submit herself to their categorizations, and of course at the time of her writing, to be transgender necessarily meant maintaining a proximity to diagnoses of mental illness. She comments on the effect of this, “Through the filter of this official pathologization, the sounds that come out of my mouth can be summarily dismissed as the confused ranting of a diseased mind.” (Stryker 6) This highlights the uneasy relationship between transgender people and the medical community at large. After all, the doctors who perform sexual reassignment surgeries and the like are not accused of insanity, as are the patients who submit to their care.

    The essay shifts into a journal entry about the day the author’s partner gave birth. She describes a powerful and moving birthing process, awkwardly interrupted for her alone by a thoughtless designation by the baby’s biological father, upon seeing the baby’s genitals, “It’s a girl!” (Stryker 7) Returning home, she was filled with a well of pent-up emotions. She says, “To conclude the birth ritual I had participated in, I needed to move something in me as profound as a whole human life.” (Stryker 7)

    She looks inward, and backward through time, reflecting on the relationship she had been in when she had her first child, before coming out as a woman. She remembers, “I had always wanted intimacy with women more than intimacy with men, and that wanting had always felt queer to me. She needed it to appear straight.” The author wanted to love women as a woman and her partner needed love from a man. Thus, refusing the gender she was assigned at birth, she refused the love that was predicated on it. In other instances related to the most recent birth, after she came out as a woman, people would ask if she were the baby’s father, of which she says, “It shows so dramatically how much they simply don’t get about what I’m doing with my body.” (Stryker 8) This interconnected web of rejections and losses is perhaps what leads her to conclude that “Nature exerts such a hegemonic oppression.” (Stryker 8)

     The text continues in italics, in a more-poetic tone before breaking into poetry completely. The author was reeling from the day’s compressed emotions: the intensity of birthing, the dark cloud of the baby’s gendering, and the recollection of past relationships. She seems sad here, and angry, but also resolute, saying, “I can never be a woman like other women, but I could never be a man.” (Stryker 8) This hard realization drives her to reject that false choice. Instead, she says, “I do war with nature. I am alienated from Being.”

    From here she moves on into the actual poetry. She references drowning and becoming water to escape, “If I cannot change my situation I will change myself.” (Stryker 8) This moment of recognition of her existence in an unlivable space and being forced to become something else carries through to the final lines of the poem, “In birthing my rage, / my rage has rebirthed me.” (Stryker) and into the final portion of the essay.

    If the categories of gender are transmutable, then anyone with the power to “...cite the culture’s visual norms of gendered embodiment.” (4) also has the ability to reduce all the trappings of identity to a tactical level and explore new possibilities, or as Stryker puts it, “... by mobilizing gendered identities and rendering them provisional, open to strategic development and occupation, this rage enables the establishment of subjects in new modes, regulated by different codes of intelligibility.” (10)

    Gender attribution robs individuals of this tactical posture toward gender and expression, pushing them into narrow corridors of expression instead. Babies are unable to choose this fate for themselves. This is critical because fotr Stryker, gendering a child is not a simple labeling, it is a prescription for a lifetime of behaviors that will have to be programmed into the child. She explains, “Gendering is the initial step in this transformation, inseparable from the process of forming an identity by means of which we’re fitted to a system of exchange in a heterosexual economy.” (Stryker 10) This fitting for a system of exchange, she says, is exactly what is meant by phrases like, “It’s a girl.” (Stryker 10) It is for exactly this reason that to be without gender, or even to perform gender incorrectly, would form the basis for social exclusion. If gender is meant to be a universal means of social coding, being able to express one clearly is a precondition to be understood. Stryker puts it this way, “A gendering violence is the founding condition of human subjectivity; having a gender is the tribal tattoo that makes one’s personhood cognizable.” (Stryker 10) Considering her own participation in gendering an infant, she speculates about the baby’s future, “I stood for a moment between the pain of two violations, the mark of gender, and the unlivability of its absence.” (Stryker 10) As violent and painful as her relationship to gender has been, she wonders whether it would be possible for the child to exist at all in our world without a gender, “Could I say which one was worse? Or could I only say which one I felt could best be survived.” (Stryker 10)

    In bringing the piece to a close, Stryker continues to look toward the future and its possibilities for herself and other creatures like her. Even if gender presents itself as inescapable, that does not preclude the strategic approach to its expression she suggested earlier, “Though I cannot escape its power, I can move through its medium.” (Stryker 10) Perhaps, she suggests, by using the medium against itself, she can short-circuit the meanings that gendered signification are meant to communicate and even elaborate new and exciting ways to use the social coding of gender to express new ideas, “Though I may not hold the stylus myself, I can move beneath it for my own deep self-sustaining pleasures.” (Stryker 11)

    In spite of this optimistic note about the potential to play with gender’s meaning, she holds that transgender people undermine this system’s integrity, because “To encounter the transsexual body, to apprehend a transgendered consciousness articulating itself, is to risk a revelation of the constructedness of the natural order.” (Stryker 11) She also reasserts that one cannot take part in this process without being transformed by it, “Be forewarned, however, that taking up this task will remake you in the process.” (Stryker 11)

    The ultimate subversion is that the monstrous are resolute in articulating themselves in spite of the peril such expression spells for civilization. “Like that creature, I assert my worth as a monster in spite of the conditions my monstrosity requires me to face, and redefine a life worth living.” (Stryker 11) After all, Stryker didn’t ask to be born into this particular world. Like the monster, she asks, “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?” (qtd. in Stryker 11)

    In the end Stryker parts with her reader with a sort of benediction, “May your rage inform your actions, and your actions transform you as you struggle to transform your world.” (Stryker 11) In the final words of the essay, then, she is returning to one of its central themes. One cannot engage with the world without being changed by it. Perhaps this is the process by which the world moulds monsters from each of us. It is only by investigating our seams and sutures for ourselves that we can learn the impact the world has had on us, or the impact we might have on it.

    Works Cited

Stryker, Susan. “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix” June 1993, https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content/uploads/sites/226/2015/12/Stryker-My-Words-to-VF.pdf

[vincent-g-writer]

The Silver Screen Savant: Thoughts on Hollywood Autism, Pt. 1

When I was a child, I didn’t fit in.

A common statement, many people empathize with. However, to say “I didn’t fit in,” is a gross understatement. I stuck out like a sore thumb, and at times, still do. Now, why was this, you may ask? Well, there are things I could name. A banal little checklist of traits and characteristics would probably do the trick. But I’m not sure that would do it justice. So I’ll tell you what it felt like:

I had trouble reading facial expressions, because people’s face, and hands, and body would say one thing, while their words said another. Smiles that didn’t reach the eyes. Laughs that were a little too hearty, or loud, or hollow. Disingenuous conversations and actions frustrated me. If lying was wrong, why were, as my mother used to call them “little white lies” acceptable? Why did we smile and thank our new neighbors for their homemade casserole dish, before promptly throwing it away when they left? These things, and many others, puzzled me. But the thing that puzzled me the most, was interacting with my peers. I didn’t understand the sensation of a hundred million bees, pricking me with electric anxiety when I went to school, or played with children in the neighborhood. I didn’t understand why they weren’t constantly talking, wondering, asking- about everything. I didn’t understand how their minds worked. Most of all, I didn’t understand why it physically hurt me to look into people’s eyes, child and adult alike. On the other hand, I did notice they didn’t like me very much. “You’re weird,” they would sneer. Or “you talk too much.” And, they were right. I knew they were. Even as I would wax poetic about all sorts of nonsense, like the difference between a cocoon and a chrysalis. I knew. But I couldn’t…I couldn’t shut myself off.

And that’s just one tiny example, of a lifetime.

Back then, if you’d asked what was “wrong” with me, on a good day, I would have shrugged. Other times, when I despised every fiber of my being, I’d parrot back the sentiments of my peers. “Freak,” “loser,” and “r*tard” were words I heard often. And for a long time, I believed them.

Today, I know differently. Not to say the above struggles no longer apply. If anything, some of them are worse. But now, I now longer blame or hate myself for being different. Now, I understand.

The Lightbulb Moment

In 2014, my daughter began speaking. She was four years old. Before then, she could say “dada,” “juice,” “two,” and “go.” The rest was garbled noises, when and if she made a sound. Most of the time, she didn’t. My wife and I were concerned, to say the least. But it wasn’t exactly a new worry. My princess never crawled, never pointed to get people’s attention, or show them things, and did not play with toys. Plus a host of other concerns. So we hopped on Google, and after about, oh, half an hour of research, got in touch with a doctor. Now, I feel like I must add the caveat here that we wanted to have her seen before then. However, many issues (including a bout of homelessness) prevented that. So we were a bit…late, in that regard. No matter. Her doc sent her to a local play therapist, and after about fifteen minutes of interaction, the therapist knew exactly what was going on: Our little Princess was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

But wait! There’s more-

Once this became clear, my wife started looking into other things. Her own independent research, as it were. She kept it to herself for a month or three, then avalanched it all into my lap . Our Princess wasn’t the only one, as it turned out. And really, had I ever bothered to look…it was obvious. But I was in denial. I couldn’t possibly be autistic. So, like the stubborn Taurus I am, I dug my heels in. I refused to discuss it, for almost year. But, my beloved wife, who is much smarter and wiser than I am, knew what to do. In the name of “research for Princess,” she had me read a list of common autistic traits/symptoms. And it all came crashing down. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I was, without a doubt, also on the spectrum.

The gift of the Media: Fear, self hatred, stigma…superpowers?

Now, you might be asking, why exactly did I doubt myself? Cultural association, of course. And by “cultural association,” what I really mean is “the media.” Mostly, anyway. See, I’ve noticed a trend. In movies, tv and books, autism is usually presented in one of two ways: The Rainman, or the Idiot Perma-child, who cannot care for themselves. And I’m neither.

On the one hand, I was a straight A student. I could sleep through classes and make 100%. I was reading by the age of three or four, and I graduated highschool at fifteen. On the other, I have been known to go a full forty-eight hours without eating, because I “didn’t think about it.”

But I’m not the autistic person you see on tv. Now, that isn’t to say those people don’t exist. They do. For example, my daughter deals with much more noticable struggles than I ever have, while I have another member of my family (also on the spectrum) who is a certifiable genius. And I’ve known many others who are “obviously” autistic, whereas I pass as allistic* (see footnotes below) easily. Which is a sad discourse altogether, really. One the one hand, an “obviously” autistic person, what one might call “Low Functioning” (I could write a whole other post about why “low/high functioning” labels are harmful, however, for the sake of brevity, there’s some here, here and here) are often boiled down only to their struggles, where as people such as myself are relegated to “Not autistic enough to be my problem” or “well, you don’t look autistic.”

To quote-

“The difference between high-functioning autism and low functioning is that high-functioning means your deficits are ignored, and low-functioning means your assets are ignored.” -Laura Tisoncik

Why is this? As you might have guessed from the title of this post- I put a lot of it on the shoulders of the entertainment we consume. Nevermind certain hate organizations who swath themselves in the cloak of “advocacy” such as Autism Speaks, and Anti-Vaxcers, who think it’s better to have a dead child than an autistic one.*

I could go on. At length. However, I’m going to try and stay on track, just this once. To put it plainly, Hollywood Autism often works exactly like “high” and “low” functioning labels: We’re either uplifted to inhuman portrayals of superpowered savants, or downgraded to an “inspirational” invalid. In these stories, we’re props. The “Magical Disabled person!” as Tv Tropes puts it, there to uplift the neurotypical character from their adversity. After all, if this poor dumb sod (i.e- me) can be happy with their burdensome life, surely the pretty white able-bodied protagonist can! We’re “funny,” “scary,” or “sympathetic,” characters, who lack dimension, and nuance. We’re “inhuman.” We’re the lesser. Or at least, that’s one way it’s written. The other is the hyper intelligent, almost “superhuman,” and definitely super jackass genius, who’s much too smart™, and logical© to ever have feelings, friends or empathy. That’s it folks! That’s the show!

That’s what books, tv and movies told me, anyway. And what I truly believed for a long time. It’s why I cringed away in terror and shame when my spectrum issues were finally noticed. And why it took me so long to come to terms with it.

So, there you have it. Part 1. On the next episode, I’ll give some examples, both good and bad, and maybe even a little “what not to do,” or at least a “please consider real hard before doing this in your own work.”

If you like writing, talking about bad tropes and even worse marginalized representation, you can follow me at wordpress or at my “still has that new car smell” twitter. For now- thanks for reading.

-Your loving Vincent

*allistic= Non autistic.

*Vaccines do NOT cause Autism, however, if they DID, it would still be better to have an autistic child than one who died at the ripe old age of “easily preventable but deadly communicable disease.”

[hyunqlns]

adventure to his heart ❦ hyunjin pt.3

⇴ genre: apocalypse!au ; angst ; future fluff

⇴ part : 3         | 1 ; 2 ; 4 ; 5 ; 6 ; 7 ; 8 ; |

⇴ description: just when you thought your crush, the well known school heartthrob hwang hyunjin, was your biggest problem, a crazy alien invasion managed to prove you wrong.

⇴ author’s note: inspired and based on the book and movie “the fifth wave”

⇴ warnings: apocalypse, swears

⇴ word count: 1214

the second wave was a literal wave. how, you might ask? well, you’re not a specialist regarding the others' strategies and attacks, but from your perspective the others had dropped some kind of a metal rod from the upper atmosphere which lead to massive earthquakes and tsunami waves. it wiped out all coastal sities on this planet. new york, tokyo, london, sydney, los angeles and way more. goodbye.

the second wave lasted for about a day. it took out approximately 3 billion people. it put the number from the first wave to a shame.

you remember that day. you were walking with your sister melanie, after filling your empty bottles with water from the lake. you weren't expecting anything but that's when it happened. an earthquake occured first. you had dropped the water bottles and ran for our life. you didn't know where were you running towards to. you just did. when the earthquake passed, you thought and prayed that was the end.

but you were wrong, really wrong. in front of your eyes, the trees had started collapsing once again. you could clearly hear and see the waves and the water crashing into them. so you ran again. towards a thick tree that you climbed and sat on. waiting for the wave to be over.

in your city, you had only the lake to worry about. but by the ocean, you could only imagine. . .

the third wave started as a plague that wiped out nearly 97% of the remaining human population. the third wave was spread through the globe using the birds as the carrier of the disease. the others couldn't invent better delivery system.

do you know how many birds are there in the world? take a wild guess perhaps? maybe one billion? how about three billion birds? that is about 75 birds for one family consisting of one child, a man and a woman, that are still alive after the first two waves.

the virus took up residence in the lungs. a bad cough follows. a high fever. a very high, torturing fever. the coughing is soon substituted by spiting blood. people become a viral bomb and when they explode - they blast everyone around you with the virus. you all had different names for the it— the red death, blood plague, the red tsunami.

that's how you lost your parents. your mom was a doctor. dad - owned a small family hotel. you and my family waited out the third wave barricaded inside your small house. maybe because there was a quarantine and because the outside world was a disaster. but mostly because your dad didn't want to leave mom. she was too sick to go anywhere. and you couldn't leave without her. your dad couldn't.

your mom wasn't easy though. she kept telling your dad to go. it wasn't about her anymore. you all knew she was as good as dead. it was a matter of time and knowing about the happening now, that was going to be soon. it was about you and melanie now. about keeping you alive. your dad didn't fight back or argue with her. he knew she was completely right. it was about time he thinks of the possibilities and the consequences.

but he didn't leave either. your dad just quietly gathered supplies and made sure your mom feels comfortable. what you couldn't understand about him was the whole book hoarding. he had hope. a lot of it actually. the we-have-to-rebuild-the-civilization feeling kicked in. that's why he took a lot of books with him.

you found that dumb and inconvenient— as much as you and my sister loved reading, in this world now, surviving was your main priority. wasting space that could be taken by food or weapons by books, was just inconvenient in your point of view.

but he was partly right, he had a point. if you ever got out of this mess, you had to rebuild the civilization. you had to do it.

"why don't they just end us all already?" you would often ask him. your dad will shrug his shoulders and sigh before replying.

"by now it's pretty obvious they need our planet, y/n. they need the earth, not us."

they need the earth. not us.

you and melanie buried them in the backyard. your mom died on tuesday. your dad followed on friday. after he refused to leave mom, he ended up catching the virus. it was tragic. you’ve never seen my sister lose it. you’ve never expected it from melanie. not even once.

if you were optimistic, she was the brightest person on the planet. she had never cried before. atleast you had never seen her did. that one day in the gym was the first. she was always positive about everything. about her crush seungmin, about her grades. you two were the opposites in your perspective. she was pretty and you thought you’re not. she was smart and you weren’t. the only thing you had in common was that you were both labelled as the school's optimists. yet, she still excelled in that.

sometimes you were perhaps kind of jealous. the fact she had many admirers. the fact even though you were both foreigners, she didn’t seem to feel pressured or uncomfortable, disliked. but, you never showed your jealousy. your love and respect towards your step sister were stronger than some dumb jealousy.

"what are we going to do now? where are we gonna go?" melanie screamed as placed her hands in front of her face and sobbed.

no one answered. and by no one, you didn’t. not because you were too sad, exhausted and tired to answer. it was because you also didn't know. melanie didn't know. you didn't know. no one knew.

things kept getting worse after the arrival. and just when you thought they wouldn't get worse, they did.

you were still under that car. trapped. cornered. still rethinking your life decisions. maybe the whole dying thing isn't so bad after all. you can still recall the face of your sister when she left with the soldiers in that bus. and you can still remember your face when you ran and ran— but you weren’t quick enough to reach the bus. you’re happy about her. she is most likely safe by now. you don't have to worry. she is just a few months younger than you. she can take care of herself perfectly... she is somewhere where the soldiers take good care of her and the rest of the kids.

on that cold autimn day you find yourself laying beneath the car.

and then it hits you. these people weren't humans. they were the others. they took melanie. they wanted her. but not her only. they took the kids. but why? why did they bother saving the children? what was the purpose of this?

you raised your head without noticing. you didn't know if those kids in the bus, including melanie were still alive. they might have gotten rid of them. but it didn’t matter to you. you weren’t going to give up. you weren’t going to think about the worst possibility yet. you wanted your best friend back. you wanted your sister back. you wanted melanie back and you were going to get her.

[fakeyellow]

Part 2 of if MC had leukemia. Prepare yourselves for the angst!

“I don’t want to die,” Celia whispered into Kamilah’s chest as the older woman gently stroked her head, careful not to pull her hair.

It had been just a week since her first chemo session but already, Celia noticed the large amounts of hair she was losing. It seemed foolish and vain to cry about her hair of all things, but after a shower that had ended with particularly large clumps around the drain, Celia had burst into tears on the bathroom floor. Kamilah had needed to wrap her wet body in a towel before gently supporting her to the bed, where they currently lay.

Kamilah suddenly pulled Celia’s chin upwards so their eyes could lock.

“I won’t let you,” she promised and the love in her eyes was more than Celia had ever hoped for. With a teary smile and a small kiss, Celia finally fell asleep in the arms of the woman she loved.

—-

“It says I might have a cerebellar haemorrhage,” Jax said, tapping furiously on Lily’s phone.

“Jax. You’re a vampire,” Lily repeated.

“But what if I do have it? My head’s been sorta sore” Jax said stubbornly as he gingerly rubbed the back of his head, feeling for the presence of protrusions.

Lily let out a cry of frustration, looking to the skies as if begging for divine intervention and Celia couldn’t help but laugh as she joined them despite her anxiety. 

This was the first time she was seeing them since she’d told everyone of her condition and even though these were her friends, her family, she felt a little uncomfortable. Because for all of Jax’s worries, they were still vampires, unable to get sick. Although Lily had been Turned recently, Jax and Adrian had been Turned years ago; could they still understand illness? 

“Wow! You look great!” Lily exclaimed, breaking her out of her brief moment of worry, “You have a really nicely shaped head. 

Celia touched the silk scarf wrapped tightly around her newly shaved scalp, and did a little twirl to show off her new look, “I do have a nice head, don’t I?”

Lily nodded gravely, “I’m a verified connoisseur of skulls and I can definitively tell you, yours is top-notch.”

The two of them fell into giggles as Jax watched them, momentarily distracted from his “haemorrhage,” but soon their attention returned to him.

“Who knew Jax would be the hypochondriac of the group?” Celia joked, an amused grin on her face.

“I know, it’s literally gap moe,” Lily gushed in excitement, “but it’s still really annoying.”

“I should remind you two that I’m a Clan leader now. Make fun of me at your own peril, particularly you, Lily. I might be tempted to kick you out,” Jax warned, bringing out his already immaculate sword and polishing it for good measure.

Lily patted his warning aside with a roll of her eyes, “Bah humbug. You’re a big softie on the inside, no use trying to hide it. Besides, your old ass wouldn’t survive a day without my skills.”

Celia couldn’t hide the wide smile growing on her face and she forgot why she had been worried in the first place. Everything was normal.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Lily whispered as she crushed Celia in a goodbye hug, “You’re literally the strongest woman I know. Well, other than Kamilah I guess. And me now that I’m a vampire. But you’re still really strong and I know you’re gonna kick that leukemia right in its balls.”

Celia was once again reminded of how lucky she was, that she could still do this, still hug her friends. It had filled her with such happiness when Kamilah had told her that vampires were incapable of hosting bacteria on their bodies. If she had been forced to stay away from them all, Celia wasn’t sure she could survive.

All Celia could do was hug Lily even tighter.

—-

Kamilah had put in an indefinite leave of absence from her company in order to take care of Celia and it was a testament to how much Celia was suffering that she’d put up only the weakest of protests.

She’d accompanied Celia to every hospital visit, even in the daylight, hiring a human “bodyguard” whose real purpose was to make sure she was adequately shaded from the sun. Although human medicine had never intrigued her enough for her to study it, Kamilah was a fast learner and soon enough, she was asking the physicians and nurses to explain everything they were doing, making sure Celia was truly receiving the best care possible. It didn’t hurt that she was intimately connected with the CEO’s of the best hospitals around the world.

But even still, Kamilah felt like she wasn’t doing enough. 

She let out a frustrated sigh and turned in the bed, back towards the sleeping figure of Celia. She tucked an errant curl behind Celia’s ear before her brows furrowed in concern. 

Celia was burning hot. 

“Celia,” Kamilah said urgently, before her voice grew in intensity, “Celia!”

But the woman did not rouse, her sleeping face covered with profuse amounts of sweat. 

There was no time to lose.

She threw on the first piece of clothing she could reach, a loose, long-sleeved blouse and a floppy hat, before carrying Celia’s too light, too feverish body out of their bedroom, out of the apartment, and into the sunny streets of New York. 

Kamilah let out a stifled hiss at the feel of the sunlight on her exposed wrists but she ignored it, pushing past the hordes of well-dressed businessmen making their morning commute.    

At last, she made her way to the hospital, and she headed straight to the front desk.

“I need you to call Dr. Nguyen and tell her that her patient, Celia Sinclair, has a 104 degree fever,” Kamilah ordered, the receptionist quickly nodding and doing as she was told. A pair of nurses rushed to Kamilah’s side and she reluctantly gave over Celia to them, watching their every move with narrowed eyes.

 The nurses wheeled Celia’s bed away and it was only when the receptionist cleared her throat, that Kamilah realised the scene she must have made, her lingerie clearly visible underneath the shirt she had hastily put on. 

“Ms. Sayeed, we’ve prepared Celia’s usual room. You can go on in there and wait for the doctor,” the lady said kindly, not a hint of judgment in her eyes.

Kamilah nodded regally at her in thanks before making her way to the elevator.

—-

“Are you okay?” 

At the hoarsely whispered question, Kamilah was instantly at Celia’s bedside.

“You gave us quite a scare,” she whispered fondly, tightly gripping Celia’s slender hands to her chest.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that,” Celia laughed weakly before she refocused on the bandages wrapped around Kamilah’s wrist with concern and repeated, “Are you okay?” 

“Mild irritation from the sun, it’s not important,” the vampire dismissed but Celia’s eyes flew open.

“Oh my god! Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Focus on your own recovery first before worrying about me,” Kamilah rebuked, but there was no real bite to her words. That Celia would still be worrying about her when she herself was lying in a hospital bed… Her heart was painfully full in a way she’d never thought she’d deserve.

“You should Feed,” Celia insisted with a lopsided grin, “I’d offer but I don’t think my blood would taste that good right now.”

Kamilah let a small, forced laugh and pressed a kiss to her forehead, “I’m fine. Sleep now.”

—-

Celia had slowly but steadily been regaining her strength after she’d returned home from the hospital. While they’d both been relieved nothing more serious had happened, it still brought up issues they had both avoided until now.  

“I just don’t understand why you won’t let me Turn you!”

Kamilah paced around their apartment as Celia sat on the side of their bed.

In their previous ordeals, there had been concrete enemies to defeat. Vega, Ferals, Gaius, There had been clear targets endangering Eden’s life that Kamilah could focus her fear and hatred on; she’d ripped through them all without a single hint of remorse, all to protect her. 

But now, Kamilah had never felt so powerless. 

What could she do when the enemy was Celia’s own body and Celia kept refusing the only way she could help her?

“I don’t want to, okay?! Just leave it alone!” Celia said softly, her arms wrapped around herself, but Kamilah was too agitated to just give in like she’d already done the last times they’d brought this topic up. 

“People die from your disease. Do you understand? There’s a 76% chance you’ll die in the next five years! It’s more likely you’ll die than it’ll rain tomorrow.”

“I prefer to think of it as that there’s a 24% chance I’ll survive the next five years. Those odds are pretty good and I’ve always been lucky, I mean I met all of you and what were the chances of that?” Celia said stubbornly, her eyes fixed on the ground.

“Eden,” Kamilah finally cried out desperately.

Celia finally raised her face, revealing eyes that were brimming with tears.

“I KNOW!”

She sighed and continued in a calmer voice.

“Do you know, I’ve made a lot of friends in the cancer ward at the hospital. Opening up to strangers is a lot easier when you’re both being ripped apart from the inside by the same disease…” Celia let out a dark chuckle before she spoke again.

“Haley was accepted to NYU last year, and she was ecstatic because it’s literally been her dream school since she was a kindergartener. But she had to postpone her matriculation because she was diagnosed with cancer, so now she’s in the hospital and all she can do is like her friends’ Facebook posts about their college entrance ceremonies. Carmen, all she’s ever wanted is to have a baby with her husband, but she can’t continue her IVF treatments and they don’t even know if she’ll still be fertile after her chemo. Mike’s daughter just had her first child and it’s killing him that he can’t be with them now, that he can’t even hold or kiss his only grandson.”

“Do you want to know what they all have in common? They’re all going to die. Maybe today, tomorrow, two years from now, they’re all going to die.”

Kamilah stared speechlessly at Celia, her mouth drying up. Celia had always been the optimist, always holding onto an indestructible hope and belief that they would overcome any obstacles life threw at them. If Celia felt this way now…

Celia spoke wistfully, “I think they’re the bravest people in the world, facing their deaths head-on like that, suffering through painful treatments that are just as likely to kill them as they are to save them. And it’s unfair. They all have so much to live for, but they’re going to die because of a condition they have no control over. Why should I get a free pass when they don’t? Why do I get to live when they don’t, just because they don’t know you?!”

“I understand how you feel, but we can’t Turn everyone who’s dying,” Kamilah said carefully, and she did understand. She truly did. She’d spent the first hundred years of her life repressing her guilt that she had been given immortality when so many others, so many good people had not. And then she’d realised that it wasn’t a gift but rather a curse. 

But if Turning Celia meant she wouldn’t die, Kamilah would face Isis herself and walk straight into hell.  

“Why not?!” Celia yelled even as she knew she was being unreasonable, “Why do you guys get to decide who lives and who dies?!”

Kamilah icily replied, “I don’t recall you getting mad when you used your connection with Adrian to get Lily Turned and Branded.”

Celia buried her face in her hands, “I know. I’m a hypocrite. But it’s still not fair.”

One last sob escaped from her before she took a deep breath and stared directly at Kamilah.

“Don’t Turn me Kamilah,” she said with finality, and the conversation was over.

—-

A/N:  “I will face God and walk backwards into hell” sounds cool so I used it, but replaced God with Isis for Kamilah (I still can’t believe this badass line was first said by Dril). 

All of my MC’s seem to have the greatest aversion to being Turned, which is funny because I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’d all too happily be Turned. But you know, having them refuse to be Turned opens up the story to so much angst! If the MC was Turned, then I mean, it doesn’t really matter that she’s got cancer or anything. 

Honestly, I feel like I’ve written everything I wanted to for this story so I don’t think there will be a Part 3. I’m also starting medical school literally tomorrow so it’s unlikely I’ll be able to write anything soon. I hate open endings but I really couldn’t decide whether I wanted MC to make a miraculous recovery, die and not be turned bc Kamilah respected her wishes, or die and be Turned by Kamilah regardless of her wishes. I suppose if you want to imagine the last one, you could always head on over and read this story I previously wrote which is literally about Kamilah Turning MC against her wishes. 

Anyway, thanks for reading! 

Tag List: @h-doodles @viosoul (I think you guys were the only one who asked to be Tagged. Sorry if I missed anyone)

[scarletgardensrpg]

LIVING ♦ THIRTY-FIVE ♦ HOUSE OF EDEN

KAZIMIR WOJCZIK is the Prime Minister’s current Senior Advisor, referred to by most as simply “Doctor” for his rehabilitation practices, which have raised the House of Eden a formidable army of Undead soldiers, many of whom he personally recruits and trains. As a high-ranking member of the House, Kazimir holds the rare privilege of traveling in and out of Amsterdam on recruitment missions, accompanied by House Resurrectors Julian and Neeve.

BIOGRAPHY

tw: corpses, scapels/needles, implied child abuse, implied suicide

Come here, Lady Wojczikowa said, and waited until her apprentice finally crept closer to her. She put her hand to the small of the young boy's back, perhaps so Kazimir would not move away again. Look, mój drogi, do you see? Unwillingly, Kazimir slid his gaze to the table before them, to what—who—lay upon it. Today, it was a girl, no older than Kazimir himself. Earlier, he'd heard snippets of conversation upstairs, exchanged in murmurs between Lady Wojczikowa and the girl's family. Wolves. Torn to pieces. Nothing salvageable. In the dim, sickly glow of the basement lights, Kazimir had to agree. Lady Wojczikowa, who often studied him while he studied the corpses, made a sound of disapproval. Nie bądź niegrzeczny, she snapped, and Kazimir flinched, half-ashamed and half-afraid. The dead were once just like us. And in time, we all become just like the dead. Now hand me the scapel.

- ❀ -

His keeper, the Lady Wojczikowa, was a skilled mortician and known wariatka; the sort of pale-faced, cadaverous creature one might find dancing barefoot by the Solokiya, or singing nonsensically to the dead, or robbing cradles like a mad witch of night. It was said that Kazimir, her apprentice-son, was one such case—though from which cradle he was taken, not one person in their village could say. He resembled nothing and no one, all milky white skin and almond eyes, but looked as all children of winter did in other ways: too thin, too rough, bearing the sharp, beady features of someone perpetually braced against impact. His keep—two meals a day, a bed in the attic, and one hundred złotys a week—was earned by working with his mother. Sometimes the bodies they carried in were elderly; those who had passed on in their sleep, or found their bodies succumbing at last to a lifetime of cigarettes and bone-aching cold. Other times, it was the battered bodies of wives and daughters, every bruise a violent, haunting sorrow. Worst of all was when it was children: stillborns, urchins who never stood a chance, orphans left to fend again disease and starvation in a village rife with both. Kazimir, under his mother's careful instruction, had become adept in all arts of embalment by sixteen, but could not often separate himself from the very bodies he cut and cleaned, drained and painted with cosmetics. When Lady Wojczikowa showed him how to push a needle in, Kazimir felt the bite of metal under his own skin. Carotid, axillary, brachial, he rehearsed, though he already knew anatomy like intimate clockwork. Femoral, ulnar, radial, tibial.

In youth, Kazimir had been ugly and strange—a knobby, underfed thing with a crow's scavenger gaze and the unsettingly tendency to linger in doorways like a child phantom. But in burgeoning adulthood, he grew into a strong jaw, ebony hair, deep red lips: and in possessing such a harrowing, odd strain of beauty, instilled more fear than love in those who found him desireable. Eventually, Lady Wojczikowa, who so adored the dead it bordered on lunacy, died herself: her waifish body carried down by the icy currents of the Solokiya, a pair of wooden shoes left by the riverbank. No note, no will, no body. It was as if she'd never existed at all. When Kazimir left for school, it was with the intention of never returning. And yet, at Oxford, he had stuck out like a smudge of dark in a kingdom of light: for whatever life it was that so afflicted his university classmates, in all their expensive suits and watches, their ten-year plans and generational wealth and material fantasies, it could not have possibly afflicted Kazimir. He, who shared his house with the dead, who knew exactly what it felt like to cut a human open at his navel, who could think of nothing else when it got late enough: no, he suffered a different sickness. So when the rotbeesten arrived, legions of them cutting a scarlet path westward, and the world descended into madness, Kazimir felt nothing more than a sense of quiet wash over him. A sense that, madness be damned, something made sense at last. The dead, who seemed to terrify all, felt like kin to him instead. Were they so different from the hundreds of bodies he'd bathed and cared for? Had he not brushed their hair, arranged blooms in their caskets, studied them for stretches of hours in a basement in southern Poland? Were they not, in fact, old friends come to say hello once more?

Eventually, though he would not have preferred it, they found him in Warsaw. Agostina, tight-lipped and wan, asking in broken Polish: Thalia mówi że możesz je wyleczyć? Kazimir shrugging: Thalia says a lot of bullshit. Oni mnie lubią. And Nikolaas, handing him the vial of crushed blood lilies, which gleamed like powerdered rubies in the light. Apocalypse had originated from this vial, Kazimir knew. Barberini, van Houten, even little Yamaguchi: blood was smeared on the hands of all three of them. Now, if he agreed, it would be four. Do your best, Doctor, Nikolaas said into the silence. The creature is downstairs. All the world hangs onto your efforts. We certainly do. It was a cheap attempt at flattery, Kazimir thought, but it might've also been true. The dead liked him. Maybe because he smelled a little like them, sweet and chemical and heavy; or maybe because he had always harbored a little death within himself—that dark spark, which spoke of an empyrean wilderness Lady Wojczikowa must have sowed in him. He was a ponury żniwiarz: a harbinger of death as much as a decorator of it. The creature—it—she said her name was Kisara, Agostina said suddenly, and almost sounded sorry. Kazimir pocketed the vial. Take me to Kisara, then, he said.

CONNECTIONS

SASHA – THE GIRL FROM THE MOUNTAIN.  She had come to him in a blaze of light: clear-eyed, sun-skinned, the corner of her pretty mouth pulled permanently into a smirk. Вийди з мого погляду, she'd tease, knowing he couldn't understand her, and shove him hard enough against the Carpathian rock that he'd push away from it with scraped hands. He'd never met anyone so alive. The Solokiya, before it became the place of Lady Wojczikowa's death, was first where Kazimir met her: she, who spoke a different language from him, who refused to give her name, who mocked him endlessly by laughter and touch alone. The river which divided Poland from Ukraine also divided them; so that he only ever saw her once, twice—every occasion something rare and to be treasured. He would carry the sound of her voice in his heart for years after: two children deep in the woods, making baleful faces at one another, too young to act bashful and too stupid to understand it was love. Kazimir never imagined meeting Sasha again, and sometimes, he wishes he hadn't at all. She has grown into unspeakable beauty—but every searching look she sends his way pierces him. For all her prowess and strength, he can sense the ribbon of sorrow that runs through her. Where once she tore through forests with him in ferocious joy, she now only floats, a rootless phantom. Julian may have pulled her from the ice and given her a new life, but Kazimir knows just how much was left behind: a language, a name, a warmth. 

AGOSTINA, NIKOLAAS, & THALIA – FOUR HORSEMEN. The problem with power is, always, that it corrupts. And here were three figures drenched in it, endless and obscene: a politician seated at the apex of her pyramid, a manic doctor gone to raise new hell, and an heiress to crime whose beguiling face concealed something far uglier deep down. Kazimir understands why he has earned a place among these creators and destroyers of history: a gift for fishing the needle of humanity out from the frozen waters of every soul they've brought before him. And yet, he cannot share in any other piece of their ambitions and obsessions—for they play war games and chase divinity, spilling whoever's blood they need to in the red streets of Amsterdam. Kazimir does not. Nonetheless, he will raise them their army, even as he does not crave the way they do. Call it misplaced loyalty, call it sadistic spectating, call his willingness to indulge in their nightmares a bad habit picked up from a lifetime spent listening to the instruction of a madwoman—even Kazimir himself doesn't know what to diagnose his passivity. All the same, he knows the four of them will remain tied to one another no matter their paths, as all gods of the same pantheon are forced to exist within the same mythology. 

JULIAN & NEEVE – HEAVEN AND HELL. To attain salvation, one would need to go through either he or them. This is law. More often than not, the Undead are treated by him, clinically delivered closer and closer to consciousness with every dose of PM-GRNT 197 injected into their bloodstream—but those who display, ah, potential may be offered a second path. Hellish Buchanan and ethereal Bishop: they are the twin overseers of life and death who accompany Kazimir wherever Agostina sends him, burdened with the rarest and most terrible gift of all. Resurrection. The Hague, the ruins of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, islands and mountains, even the occasional gala event Kazimir finds himself forced to attend, all protestations ignored: Julian and Neeve have acted as his second and third shadow through it all, steadfast as Death itself. He would find the constant company annoying, if they weren't so entertaining to observe—one with a heart steeped in ten feet of ice, the other chipping away at it with excrutiating precision. Maybe he's a little fond of them. He tries his best not to show it. 

OPEN ♦ FC: QI JUNKAI

[isitgintimeyet]

Letting Go

Eight years is a long time. Enough time to forget, move on, start anew... 

Except that sometimes it isn’t.

This story is inspired by my favourite Jane Austen novel ‘Persuasion’. Its a bit of a slow burn with a bit of angst and bit of fluff.

Thanks to @mo-nighean-rouge for the beta and thanks to @happytoobservenolongerdistant for the encouragement.

So, very nervously posting- hope you enjoy x

1. And So It Goes

So I would choose to be with you.

That’s if the choice were mine to make.

But you can make decisions too,

and you can have this heart to break

Billy Joel

Eight years ago

“Claire, love, please remember, I am no’ walking away from ye.”

“Well, that's what it feels like.”

“I have tae go, ye ken that. It’s ma family’s survival, it’s the future of Lallybroch. This contract we have wi’ the breeding stables in Kentucky, I have tae do it…  I have tae go. But I'm askin’ ye tae come with me.”

“You’re asking me to give up the dream I’ve had since I was a little girl, to be a doctor, a surgeon.”

“There must be hospitals in Kentucky where ye can continue that dream, wi’ me.”

“But none with the reputation that Glasgow has. It’s pioneering work here, and Dr. Hildegard says…”

“So it’s Dr. Hildegard as has persuaded ye on this then. She should keep her mouth shut and let ye decide for yourself.”

“I am deciding for myself. Can’t I stay here and we try to make it work long distance?”

“That’s no’ goin’ tae work and ye ken that. Ye work all the hours ye can. How often would ye be able tae visit me? If I visited ye, how much time would ye spend away from the hospital? Nah, Claire, I want ye tae come wi’ me… us together.”

“Jamie, I want us together too, but I want my dream as well, Dr. Hildegard says it’s my calling. Don’t make me choose, please.”

“Aye, weel, I reckon ye’ve already chosen. It’s funny ye want tae be a cardiologist, fixin’ people’s hearts, because Claire, I tell ye, ye’ve just broken mine.”

*************

Present Day

“Uncle Lamb, Uncle Lamb?” Claire dropped her car keys in the bowl on the hall table and shrugged off her coat. “Are you in?”

She walked down the hallway, the sound of her heels on the chequered floor tiles echoing in the silence. Quickly scanning each room as she passed by, she continued a one-sided conversation with her unusually silent uncle. “Has the post been today? Where is it? Did my copy of The Lancet arrive?”

Finally arriving at the door to her Uncle’s study, she knocked gently before entering. The scene that greeted her was familiar, unchanged since she was a child. The large, dark, wooden desk was strewn with a forest’s worth of paper, fixed in place by a haphazard assortment of stones, belt buckles and ancient bowls, and lit by a single desk light. The old leather chair turned away from the desk to face the window overlooking the back garden.

A garden of this size was a rarity in the suburbs of Glasgow, and Claire had to admit, was sorely in need of some tender, loving care -- Claire being short on time and Lamb short on inclination. But she had always loved the view from this window, as had her uncle.

One of her first memories, following the deaths of her parents, was quietly creeping into this study, desperately looking for assurance that her uncle was there, yet trying not to disturb him. Her ninja skills being unrefined at age five, Lamb had heard her and immediately swept her into his arms, settling her in his lap as he sat and turned the chair to face the window.

“See there, Claire,” he had whispered to her. “Over there, that’s where we’ll put a swing, if you’d like. I want you to be happy here. This is your home, too.”

The swing, much used, was still there, now rusted and wobbly with weeds breaking through the wood-chip ground cover beneath.

The desk seemed more untidy than usual, a layer of envelopes and official looking letters covering its surface. Uncle Lamb was sitting facing the window. He swung back to face Claire.

“Hello, Uncle. Have you got my copy of The Lancet? There’s an interesting article on a non-surgical approach to mesenteric vascular disease…”

Claire looked at him and stopped. His eyes were red rimmed and watery. “Lamb, what is it?”

She rushed round the desk and crouched beside him. “Are you ok?”

He pointed at the papers on his desk and sighed. “The bank, the credit card companies…”

Claire focused on the collection of letters in front of her, statements and demands from an assortment of financial institutions, some of them dated months ago.

“Uncle, what are these? I don’t understand. Why haven’t you talked to me about these before?”

Lamb cast his eyes down to his hands, fingers nervously worrying his cuticles. “I don’t know… I thought I could sort it out… that you’d never need to know. But the bills just kept coming, and the amounts kept getting bigger. I didn’t want to burden you with it. I should have been able to cope. But now, I’m worried… I don’t know how to get out of this.”

Claire was silent for a moment, doing some rough mental calculations. It seemed to add up to quite a sizeable amount, certainly more than was evidenced by her uncle’s usual lifestyle. She didn’t want to embarrass him more than he obviously was, but she needed to understand.

“Uncle, how did this happen? I’m sorry, but that’s a fair amount of money to have spent so quickly.”

“The field trip last summer, that six week dig in Turkey. That’s where it started.”

“But I thought those expenses were covered by the university. Not funded out of your own pocket?”

“Well, you know the universities at the moment, cutting back on everything nonessential. Apparently research into cairn burials around the Black Sea is not relevant enough for today’s modern universities. The funding they gave me was a pittance… practically an insult.” Lamb spoke bitterly. “How can learning about what has made us who we are not be relevant? What did I always tell you, Claire?”

“A people who do not know their history are fated to repeat it.” Claire answered automatically, years of visiting historical sites with her uncle had drilled this into her brain.

“Exactly! You understand, Claire. And there is more to be done over there, that trip just set the groundwork. I’m sure that…” Lamb’s eyes brightened at the thought of future archaeological digs.

One of her Uncle’s many endearing qualities had always been an otherworldliness that focussed his mind on the significance of the past at the expense of the trivia of his present. Claire had never minded having to shoulder the responsibilities for their ‘trivial present’, leaving Lamb free to explore the ‘significant past’. Even now, part of her longed to be able to take this financial predicament away from him, leaving him to dream and plan for his next expedition.

But, she had to be practical. Lamb had to set aside any thoughts of future trips until this financial problem in his trivial present had been dealt with. And Claire thought she had just the solution.

“Uncle, no, please.” Claire interrupted. “I’m sorry but you can’t be thinking about that at the moment. We have to sort this out. You are going to have to sell this house.”

Lamb was immediately jolted from dreams of the past back to the present. He stared at Claire, aghast at this suggestion. “Sell the house? I couldn’t do that! This is our home.”

Claire cleared her throat and paused for a second before she spoke again. Her medical training had taught her to view objectively, taking all emotion out of her surgical procedures. And surely that’s what this is, she told herself, another surgical intervention -- quick, clean strokes to sever the bonds and leave everything repaired good as new.

“Lamb, you know as well as I do, this house is too big for us. We’re rattling around in here, and half the rooms we never even go in. How many people still live in great big Edwardian villas like this? You only have to look down this road, most of these houses are converted into flats. I’m sure a property developer would give us a good price and you could get something smaller. And it’s high time I got my own place. A flat close to work would be great.”

“Claire, I can’t sell this place. It’s where you grew up. It’s what I want to pass on to you, your inheritance. No, I won’t do it. There must be another way.”

*************

Claire settled herself in the battered chair reserved for visitors to the office and waited for Mrs. Fitzgibbons to return with the promised cup of tea. Glenna Fitzgibbons (widely known as ‘Mrs. Fitz’), had been her Uncle’s secretary at the university for many years and knew him better than anyone apart from Claire herself. Claire hoped that she might be able to use her considerable influence to persuade Lamb to sell the house.

Mrs. Fitz bustled into the office with a tray filled with what seemed to be a full afternoon tea. Settling behind her desk, she poured two cups of tea from her favourite novelty thatched cottage teapot, added milk from the matching jug and passed a cup  to Claire, along with a scone liberally spread with butter and jam.

“I canna bide the notion of jes’ dippin’ a teabag in a mug of hot water, ye ken. A cup of tea, properly brewed, mind, can fix anything. So, pet, tell me, how are ye? And what’s mitherin’ ye? I ken there’s something goin’ on.”

Claire sipped her tea. “Oh, Mrs. Fitz, I’m so worried. Has my uncle spoken to you about his current financial situation?”

“No, that he hasna, but from the look on yer face, I’m guessin’ that’s what’s on yer mind. Talk tae me, how can I help?”

“Well, he’s been hiding it from me, but that last trip he did to Turkey, he practically had to fund it himself and it’s wiped him out financially. He owes so much now, the only way I can see out of it is to sell the house, but he refuses. I was hoping maybe you could talk to him, change his mind?”

Just the act of talking to Mrs. Fitz made Claire feel a bit better. She couldn’t remember how many times growing up she had sat in this office while Mrs. Fitz had shared pots of tea, advice and great big all-enveloping hugs. There was a time, in her teens, when Claire had asked her advice on everything, looking for a female, almost motherly view that Lamb, much as he loved her, was unable to provide.

Once into her twenties, although their bond remained strong, the need for this advice waned. Although, Claire sometimes wondered how different her life would be had she sought out Mrs. Fitz eight years ago rather than relying on another’s counsel.

Claire passed over a piece of paper with her rough calculations on it. Mrs. Fitz studied it intently.

“I’m thinkin’ there may be a way round this. How about if we could convince Lamb he didna have tae sell, but could rent the house out for a couple of years and then use that money tae pay off what he owes. The university has some accommodation for faculty members at a peppercorn rent but what about ye? Where would that leave ye?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ve been thinking for a while, it’s time I got a place on my own. This is just forcing me to make the move.”

Claire took the paper back and folded it before placing it carefully in her handbag. “I know the funding from the university wasn’t great, but this amount looks really high…  I don’t know, has anything changed?”

Mrs. Fitz pursed her lips and remained silent for a moment before responding. “Aye… Malva… his latest grad student. She went on that trip with him.”

Claire was taken aback. “No… surely not… you don’t think…”

“Och, nay, I dinna mean that. But she was determined tae go on that trip wi’ him, and somehow convinced him. And the equipment… for years yer uncle hasna changed his equipment, now, suddenly nothing but the best state of the art imagin’ equipment will do. And a drone, he’s bought a drone. Now I’m no’ one tae point the finger, but all this started when she began tae work wi’ him. Mark ma words, she’s tryin’ tae make a name fer herself here at the university… and at yer Uncle’s expense”

And with that, Mrs. Fitz sat back and furiously began to munch her scone.