#At least I got medicated last summer so my job doesn’t give me actual anxiety attacks every shift it just raises my heart bpm a bit

[shorlinesorrows]

I’m recertified for my job and have also never hated it more

[akumageist]

I would die for Hitori Uzune. RIP to Kazuaki, but I’m different.

The Hatoful fandom consists of 13 people and a paperclip. It always has. Unfortunately, it probably always will. Where this is cause for some perks, it’s also some of its faults. In example, it’s still an anime game, made by a Japanese woman, and attracts weebs. Weebs tend to like to think of characters 2-Dimensionally, breaking the character down to what they think is their core personality traits. Hitori is no stranger to this, and is beaten down into this heartless, manipulative, selfish bastard. But I believe Moa is saying “anyone, even the best of us, is capable of becoming a monster if driven to it.” Let’s roll.

2162. Hitori was born into a world of war and hate, plopped into an orphanage at just 2 years old. This can be found in Moa’s canon spin-off manga, where Hitori at about ten years old is caring for the other war orphans along with the other older birds. Luckily for him, he was a genius. He was able to go out and get jobs tutoring birds and support his rag-tag family at his young age.

With that, we know Hitori was not originally cold and heartless, despite how the world may have birthed him. Especially when Nageki arrived frail and sickly. Hitori and the other birds were happy to put in overtime in an attempt to pay for the poor dove’s medications, even in his protest.

Then, 2180 happened. Imagine what sort of toll that would take on Hitori. he was absent. He was at work, unaware of the jeopardy that befell his family. What kind of horrible, mind-rattling survivors guilt must rack this bird’s brain, knowing he wasn’t there as his family was massacred one by one?

“What did we do? We had nothing. Our parents and homes had already been stolen by the humans. All we had left were each other.”

We can gather from this same scene Hitori blames himself for not being there. For not being able to protect his family, or even Nageki. Even though had he been there, he would have died alongside everybirdie else, and left Nageki to succumb to his illness alone. Something of this magnitude would create anxieties and trauma unfathomable to those who did not deal with it.

In Hitori, this manifested as full-blown helicopter mom. He can’t help but think of every little nit-pick detail over Nageki, terrified one feather out of place will kill him. The fandom is good about this side of his character! And of course, so is Moa. This may be the Summer Vacation Drama CD: Hitori The Worrywart (which takes place in MIRROR AU), but I love it’s portrayal of the anxious quail.

Hitori continued to care and ache over Nageki’s declining health. He was desperate. Begging doctors, even though deep in his little quail brain he knew Nageki was a lost cause, and that he was dying. But he couldn’t think of a life without Nageki, and did all in his power to try and keep the bird as well as he could. We can see a great example of this love in words you might not think of.

“How about this? From now on, ‘I’m fine’ is not allowed.”

I’ve always imagined Hitori getting mildly heated at Nageki in this conversation.The quail is on his last strands of stability, and the dove he cares endlessly for is trying to hide the very thing he ails himself over. The genuinity in his words shines through- telling Nageki he’d rather hear he’s bad and hurting.

So, in this desperation, Hitori carted Nageki off to some strange doctor in some strange prestigious school. And how couldn’t he? A doctor who claimed to know of the virus eating away at Nageki’s life, and how to cure it. Hitori’s beacon of hope in a sea of darkness. The only bird in the entire universe he had left to love, the one he had arguably always favored and adored, was dying. He would do anything in his power to keep the one thing he loved alive, no matter the irrationality or cost. No matter the very dying bird’s own lips saying “I… don’t want to go.”

Whether or not you ship these birds, I firmly believe Hitori is in love with Nageki in a romantic sense.

“I can no longer love another creature // I think we meant more to each other than anybirdie else in the world... // The love I felt soured into resentment // I should remember the beautiful face I knew, not… a photo covered in scribbles”

Not to mention admitting he can’t bear to live without the dove in BBL. And, in his route, Hiyoko goes as far as to refer to this bird as a female, which means he’s speaking so fondly she’s assuming it was a lover, and therefore a woman. Hitori’s stopped any sort of love at the idea he can only love Nageki post-mortem. That is canon. And well… that’s not very brotherly, no matter how good of a relationship you may have with your sibling (I speak from experience).

Okay, okay, this persuasive essay is NOT for convincing you of this ship, that is another essay for another time. I’ve only mentioned this opinion because I need you to understand his irrationality for the one thing he has left, and the fragility of it. And why it might drive anybirdie to… Hitori-level madness. Moving on.

2183. A mere 3 years after Hitori had lost the majority of his family to human terrorists. Nageki sends a coded letter, and… we can see Hitori’s anxieties outright.

“It’s happening again. Nageki needs me, and I’m not there.”

This is… a very powerful line in the game. We’re seeing just how vulnerable Hitori truly is. This is a traumatized individual in a panic attack- realizing the love of his goddamn life is once again faced with something horrible, and Hitori is once again absent from the scene.

And just like that, he’s gone.

The only thing. The only one Hitori had left in life to love. To live for. Taken from him without so much as a second chance. This is painful to write. This part of Hatoful is, without a doubt, the most agonizing. I know how it is to lose something so dear and feel as though maybe it’s not worth going on without them.

This is the peak of Moa’s tragedy writing ability (and yes, I’m including Holiday Star). But this is my point, is it not? Though his kanji may be “sun bird”, the actual word for his name “Hitori” quite literally means one, alone, solitary. He is now all alone in the universe, no family left. How can anybirdie even remotely remain in charge of their faculties (as Sakuya would put it) by now? You wouldn’t.

Hitori is now a husk of his former self. Anything he’s ever cared for is gone, he has nothing left to live for. He goes- my favorite coined term for him- absolutely batshit. He gets what we call “trauma-induced psychosis”, and begins to hallucinate very vividly, a form that he refers to as “Nageki”. We all know him of course, as Shadow. Shadow, from the little information we’re able to gather from BBL, is tormenting Hitori ruthlessly.

Shadow is easily misunderstood, because Moa made him fathomable, so the reader was able to understand exactly what was happening. What had become of Hitori Uzune. Shadow in all his simplicity- is Hitori. It is an introjection of Nageki, manifested to validate Hitori in his self-hatred. Don’t you get it? He hates himself just as much as you hate him!

Anything Hitori thinks of himself, Shadow is there to back up. He’s taunting him day in and day out, reminding him that he killed Nageki, and every ounce of Nageki’s suffering life was the fruit of Hitori’s inability to protect him. But again, it’s his own brain, telling him exactly what he wants to hear. What he truly believes. Telling himself what he’s done, and how he deserves this. ...And to seek revenge.

Hitori lost his mind. He had nothing else to lose, after all. He became obsessed with Nageki even moreso than he was in life, because there was no level-headed dove to calm him and tell him to stop worrying so much, or keep him at least reasonably held together by simply being there.

He listened to his psychosis, and when he made a friend (Moa gives evidence Hitori and Kazuaki were friends prior to Hitori’s ill-intentions), his psychosis got in the way of that, too. As he travelled down this relationship (which Moa herself says is pretty much romantic), we can assume he realized just how unable to love he was. He had Kazuaki around because, let’s face it. He wanted someone like Nageki who was incompetent so he could nurture and care for them. And for a while, it worked. But it didn’t. Hitori didn’t love Kazuaki. He couldn’t. He was too busy looking for Nageki.

So, you’re reading this in english. You speak english. At least a little, right? So maybe you played the english (and localized) version of the game. Well then you may not know the following. Please pay attention! This gets a bit rocky, and a bit more “Hitori...!”.

In the English version, Hitori disguised as Kazuaki is “tired”. In the Japanese version, he’s “sleepy” or “dreamy”. I’d describe him as ditsy, for sure. He kind of acts like an airhead who knows absolutely nothing, and his students don’t take him seriously. In the Hatomame Sweet Blend Drama CD, there is a track that follows Kazuaki on a little adventure of his narcolepsy, and going to Shuu for help.

In and out of comatose, Hitori, as himself, is there in his dreams as a separate bird.

“This bird with a face I had never seen spoke to me in a voice I had never heard, and this is what he said.”

“Nanaki-sensei” is clearly denying his own identity.

“I’ll sleep, just a little, and then leave… good… night…”

“But sleeping is my job… You still have a little longer. Tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that…”

This is dream Hitori telling himself that he has to continue his alias until his revenge is fulfilled. The quail that was once Hitori must remain dormant until he is reunited with Nageki again, and can be happy again. As a metaphor for depression… don’t you feel like you’re a shell of your former self?

So, going off this information… I believe Hitori has repressed himself. This is due to my own knowledge on psychology but-- Hitori doesn’t want to be Hitori anymore. It’s too hard. Hitori the war orphan. Hitori the lone survivor. Hitori the murderer and identity thief. It’s him not wanting to deal with his trauma in a healthy way, and instead locking it up and becoming somebirdie new and undamaged.

He killed Hitori.

This falls into the other delusion- that Nageki is somehow not completely dead and gone and ash- but still trapped, somehow, somewhere, and Hitori needs to find and get him. To kill Isa and the researchers who “killed” Nageki, and bring “Nageki” home. Whatever he believes Nageki is. In BBL, we see this quite literally varies! He tried to cut Ryouta open and steal his liver!

“Sir, Nageki would have never wanted this…!”

There is no difference between a serial killer and someone in a court room screaming for the serial killer to be murdered in turn. That mourning mother is then one in the same with that killer, is she not? She sees him, and wants him to die. She wants him to die and suffer. She believes that will bring her a sense of justice. Even though she knows it will not return her son to her. Hitori, is that mourning mother. He sees Isa, and all he can see is the man who murdered his dove.

I know the biggest aspect as to why the fandom hates Hitori is the sole factor that Kazuaki is #relatable. He’s a depressed college student who thinks he’s better off dead. Then, Hitori tricks him. But you’re not reading Kazuaki right. It’s okay, he’s easy to misread from Holiday Star’s plotline. 

Holiday Star was written with Kazuaki as the villain, do you forget? A grey villain as well, but a villain nonetheless. He told his tragic sob story death in such a way, you can’t help but to cry. He’s the victim! I’m not saying he’s not. But he was written specifically to be pitied in Holiday Star, and as you continue on, you begin to see he’s actually just anti-self help. He doesn’t want to face his fears. He doesn’t want to leave his safe egg and take the risk he should have.

Kazuaki is meant to be pitied, yes,  but just on the brink of annoying with his helplessness and self-deprecation. He’s, forgive me, a “sad sack of shit” who does nothing to help himself. Don’t come after me for being “ableist” or whatever- Moa literally wrote him this way.

This is also depicted in “Kazuaki-kun’s Book”. Now, this book takes place in the MIRROR AU, but it tells of how Kazuaki met Hitori. Moa starts the manga off by explaining Kazuaki had a great chickhood, a healthy life, and an easy, happy time. But then, he flunked his college exams and didn’t even get into his safety school. He lazed around, grew depressed, and let his apartment rot. He played video games until his online friends got jobs, and wasted any money he had on them as well. The only thing that scared him out of it is when his next door neighbor was found dead, having rotted into his own futon.

So imagine Hitori, who has worked so hard and lost everything he had done so for. Tirelessly, through his horrible, fucked up existence. Nageki, who had his short and miserable life robbed from him, had to die. Had to kill himself. And this random quail has the audacity to bitch and moan, thinking he’s got it bad? He’s a waste of space that could have been filled with Nageki. This is what Hitori’s brain is thinking. Hitori’s only ~20 years old when Nageki dies, after all.

I’m not saying this is cause for murder and identity theft. Don’t you dare misread me on this. But as I’ve stated prior- Hitori’s completely lost it.  But you ship him with the chukar that literally ruined his life. Hitori’s a grey villain but holy fuck why would you want him to fuck the partridge that tortured and drove his only loved one to suicide?

It was wrong to trick Kazuaki. It was wrong to insult him as he died. It was wrong to steal his identity. That’s obvious and a given. But you all seem to look at that factoid alone, chalking it up to ‘preying on a poor mentally ill man” but not taking into consideration Hitori is mentally ill himself. ...Just not #relatable enough for you.

Hitori is suicidal as well. He’s been suicidal presumably since Nageki died. Don’t you dare say Hitori isn’t at least a little in the same boat. I don’t care if he’s not as soft and uwu and cuddly as Kazuaki. Mental illness is not rainbows and butterflies and emo hair (though Kazuaki is not portrayed this way).

Holiday star bears all the answers. I raise you important points, so pay close attention. The first key component is Hitori, found upside down in the pudding. He’s crying. Why is he crying? Because he’s lost his name? Oh, but think deeper.

“I’m Nemo”.

“Nemo” is latin for nothing, and his name translates to “nothing” in every language of HoliStar. The King has vomited him up in his kingdom, and robbed him back of what he stole from him. His identity.

But it goes even deeper than that.

“I’ve lost something, and so, I think I might cry.”

From this phrase alone, it’s painful to play this game. Nageki is right in front of his beak. But what did he do? He ate his own eyes. Hitori, in his refusal to identify with himself, has robbed himself of quite literally seeing the very bird he adores and sought after. Then, he is renamed his own identity by that bird (the only identity he accepts). How surreally real.

The second key component is when everybirdie is being rescued, but Leone warns Yuuya the quail is clearly falling more rapidly into a coma, and may not be able to awake. Why is this? Because Hitori wants to die. He’s fine with it, and Kazuaki is more than happy to keep him. When Yuuya finds him, Hitori is not at all alarmed as he should be. He seems passive, and simply wants to fall back to sleep. He’s to the point of trying to strangle Yuuya in attempt to let himself fall into eternal slumber (even if he thinks Yuuya is… Kazuaki..?).

Heed these next words carefully. When Yuuya asks if The King did something to him, Hitori replies-

“...No, all The King did was close the door.”

I am a firm believer this is Hitori indirectly saying “Kazuaki did nothing wrong, and I do not resent him for hating me.” Especially since Hitori shows signs of knowing it’s Kazuaki, and repenting.

“He said I need to be punished. Apparently I did something bad… and I think I know what it was.”

This is confirmed in my next point, so bear with me.

Hitori, in this same conversation, is admitting he wants to die. The only thing that stops him- as morbid as it may be, is remembering this takes place before the events of BBL. He hasn’t fulfilled what he believes is his “something I need to do”. Which is seek revenge, and bring Nageki home, as per Shadow’s orders.

Lastly, at the bitter end of Holiday Star when everybirdie is plummeting through the air from the false star, Hitori is still blind and confused. Suddenly, The King erupts from behind Hitori, and appears to be talking to him.

--

“Oh, is that right?”

--

“...I know, I know. ...but it’s still too soon. That’s right, I’ll be along soon. I’ll catch up with you. Someday…”

This is arguably my most prominent point in the entire essay. This is Hitori, admitting not only does he still plan to kill himself, but that he intends to keep his promise and reunite with Kazuaki in the afterlife. These are not the words of a heartless quail. These are the words of somebirdie who knows they’ve taken advantage of a friend, but is continuing to do their best to keep their promises and make amends. This is Hitori telling Kazuaki he still cares for him.

Hitori is the result of trauma and hardship beyond compare, and his inability to cope. He is not meant to be hated. He is meant to have shock value, yes. What he has done his disgusting, but you want to love him. Because he raised the sweetest bird in the entire game who would rather kill himself than hurt others.

Grey-villains are difficult, and because you can’t love them for being purely evil, you end up hating them for being a good person who’s done bad things. Hitori is a cracked window. Not quite shattered, but no longer whole, with a faulty image. Hitori is not just some heartless, manipulative, selfish bastard. He’s quite literally a bird with a broken wing (or entire ribcage more like), trying to… well, Live, and be happy.

[memoirsofabasicbitch]

The thing is, I’m not entirely sure I remember how to dream. How to write. How to imagine anything independently of a world created by someone else, in their mind.

I’ve grown so used to hanging my dreams on what other people have created for me that I don’t know if that person is still in there.

That weird little girl, who peeled acorns for squirrels, and walked in circles over and over and over again on the roots of the big oak tree. She had a big imagination. She told herself all sorts of stories.

Was it just because I couldn’t play the other games? Too slow - reflexes and running. Too weak - climbing, throwing, running, playing.

(Or was it because I wasn’t allowed to — couldn’t — play those games? I have a few dim memories of trying to play and being sent away. They’re dim though. I stopped asking.)

Or was it simply that I was filling time? Waiting until I could go back into a world I could navigate a little better than the playground?

Sometimes, though, I was waiting. Hoping, really.

More than a few times.

A lot.

I hoped, I thought, maybe - maybe if I walk in the right way, I’ll hear the trees laughing, like Anne told Diana about. Maybe they’ll talk to me. Maybe a faerie will come creeping out from a little crevice and wave, winking. Maybe a squirrel will come crawling down the wrinkled bark while I watch, and take the little heap of acorn meat I’d left for him. Maybe there’s a tiny scrap of magic somewhere in the world that I just haven’t found yet.

I haven’t had dreams for a long time. That’s what happens when your dreams have expiration dates. I’ve already missed most of mine.

Never really even came close.

I had a “schedule” that makes me want to cry to think of it. Meet someone in college or shortly after. Get married by 25, so we would have a few years together after college. Have our first child by 27, because mom always said I should start having babies by 30 if I really wanted to have more than one and space them out.

I’m 28. I’ve never had a real relationship with anyone, romantic or platonic. I’ve never had a best friend who would place me on the same importance as I would them.

I have borderline personality disorder. I have adhd. I am on the autism spectrum. I have depression and anxiety so severe they cripple me. More than one of these things may be false. The symptoms are nearly indistinguishable once you have more than 2. No one will give me a straight answer, and no two doctors can agree.

Added onto years of emotional and mental abuse - which is what it was, wasn’t it. Maybe because I’m autistic, maybe it really was that bad. Neglect, sure. Public humiliation, that happened too, I’m pretty sure. Being told flat out that I was stupid and fat and ugly and I was lucky to have any friends at all so maybe I should just shut up and sit down before I ended up with none.

I’m pretty sure that happened. I don’t really remember it though. I don’t really have any memories at all.

Supposedly that’s something that happens with “complex post traumatic stress disorder,” which generally crops up when a person is systematically ground down for a long time until there is nothing left but the stories they told themselves when they tried to explain to the fake audience in their head who they were. How they got that way.

I don’t know who I was, who I could have been if I hadn’t had the life I did. Maybe my memories are skewed.

My therapist didn’t seem to think so, but she also sometimes seemed to think I was full of shit. That’s probably me reading too much into things again. That’s what I do.

Was it really that bad? I remember a lot of screaming, and crying, and hiding, and wishing I was dead or that someone would just hit me already so I would have something to say, to tell people other than “they yell at me and make me cry and sometimes they grab my arms and shake me and sometimes they tell me they’ll throw me out onto the street to fend for myself and sometimes they tell me they love me so much they’re so sorry and then sometimes they cry”.

But how much of that was me? How much was that my perception of things? Am I really that crazy, or have I really been gaslit that much? Is it gaslighting if they didn’t even realize how much pain they caused you, which is why they say “it wasn’t that bad stop exaggerating”?

Did I imagine all of it?

If I did, if I didn’t, what was real? What had the weight I felt it carry? What should have been a minor blip in my life but instead metastasized into a catastrophe?

I don’t know. Maybe I never knew. Reality hasn’t ever been my friend.

Fantasy is so much better.

It’s painful now, though. To read some of these stories, these books I used to adore.

Stories about Mature Adult Women of 25! Whole! Years! Going on adventures and meeting their soulmates and having wonderful happy lives.

I’m spiraling. It’s late. I’m tired and a little high, wishing I was higher and maybe I wouldn’t be so bored.

Bilbo was middle aged, wasn’t he? When he went on his adventure? He had an adventure, and then he came home and had a long, rich, happy, lonely, bitter life. Hmm. Perhaps the one ring is not the best foundation for a guiding principle.

I went to law school because I’d come to the end of every plan I actually had. (You don’t really plan for a future when you’ve been suicidal since before puberty.) I figured I’d get to read and write at least reasonably interesting things, make good money, maybe even make a difference.

I’ve been a paralegal for the same law firm I worked for right out of college for two years now and I have never felt more like a shambling corpse.

When I graduated from college, I couldn’t get a job. Could I have tried harder? Sure. Is executive dysfunction a bitch? You bet.

So I worked for a family friend’s law firm. Personal injury and medical malpractice. She’s the mother of my older sister’s oldest best friend and has employed all of my mother’s three daughters.

She’s also a heinous bitch and a terrible boss. Her employees have a shelf life of about 2 years. I’ve hit my expiration date. Once you’ve audibly cried during a phone conference, you’re really near the bottom. Once she decides you suck at your job, there’s no coming back. Either you quit or you get fired. She prefers when people quit so she can blame them and not feel guilty. So she just increasingly treats people worse and worse until they quit in self defense.

I worked for her for a year. It was awful. I became an alcoholic and gained 25+ lbs.

I decided to go to law school.

I moved to New Orleans.

I made friends. I had an apartment all to myself. I had a life I actually enjoyed.

Then I graduated.

And I couldn’t get a job again.

(Of course, all of this is underpinned with my cyclical periods of intense illness, often accompanied by being hospitalized and missing long periods of school. In college and in law school, actually.)

(All the cocaine and drinking didn’t help either.)

(Ah, New Orleans. How I miss thee.)

So I ended up at the same firm again. Living with my parents. Again.

Then I passed the bar.

Now I’m doing the same work as my younger sister, for the same amount of money. (When she graduated from her masters program and was unemployed for 6 months, I convinced my boss to hire my younger sister again, and my sister to work for my boss again after a semi-disastrous summer job.)

(To be fair, while I’m technically a licensed attorney, she has a masters in education, so it’s not like there’s a massive education disparity here.)

(It doesn’t help that I’m barred in a different jurisdiction than the one my firm typically works in, so there aren’t any cases I can really work on as an attorney, and then on top of that my bosses don’t want to pay for malpractice insurance for me so I’m not allowed to practice as an attorney or put that I’m an attorney or call myself an attorney or even put in my letterhead that I’m licensed in the District of Columbia.)

Then there was a pandemic, and I decided I probably shouldn’t try to make a huge life change during a pandemic.

The pandemic is still fucking here. Nearly. Two. Years. Later.

So I guess I have to make a new plan.

Can I be a lawyer? I guess we’ll see.

I don’t really want to, though. I’m burned out and I wasn’t even practicing.

I want to move to a beach and write a novel and actually have a life I enjoy.

The problems with this plan are numerous. Not only is inertia an incredibly powerful enemy of mine, but I’ve lost all imagination.

I cannot imagine a future in which I am happy. Will I kill myself? Probably not, at least not for a long while. I’ve thought too long and hard about the long-lasting, far-reaching repercussions it would have. (Say what I will about my family, at least it’s always been clear that my death is NOT an acceptable outcome.)

I want to find my imagination again. I want to be able to imagine not only a future in which I am happy, but other futures, other worlds. I want to be able to dream, not only for me, not only for reality, but for unreality. I want to create worlds in my mind again, and allow them to take whatever shapes they wish.

I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if all those horrible teachers, all those “peer editors” in fucking elementary school were right, and my story ideas are hackneyed and overwrought.

Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if they were wrong. Wouldn’t it be nice, to start writing, and to find that my imagination didn’t go so very far.

It’s been hiding in the intertwined branches of a birch grove, slim and tall and ringing with laughter. In the space between stars. Down the path shaded with wisteria and jasmine and honeysuckle, where the scent and the heat and the humidity are so thick you can feel the heavy perfume coating your lungs. Tucked away, safe, waiting to peek out. Waiting to creep down the wrinkled bark of a huge old oak and wink at the little girl playing among its roots.

I hope it is there. I hope I can find it.

I’ll keep you posted.

This is my own personal void to yell into, after all.

[master-sass-blast]

Out With the Old, In With the New, Part One: The Worst Monsters are Men...

MY BIRTHDAY IS TOMORROW (april 5th)!!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MEEEEE!!!!!

Summary: A few days into a mission, your husband goes missing. Along Wade, Nathan, and Neena. When the X-Men refuse to help you, you decide to take things into your own hands --and wind up making an unexpected ally along the way.

Rating: T for gun violence, regular violence, ableism, and abduction. And also swear words.

Pairing(s): Piotr Rasputin x Reader, Nathan Summers x Wade Wilson, Frank Castle x Karen Page, and Alexandra Rasputin x Nikolai Rasputin.

Set after "It's Truly Magical" but before "Children of the Gods, Part One."

Taglist: @marvel-is-perfection, @chromecutie, @super-darkcloudstudent, @girl-obsessed-with-things

It happens without warning.

Your husband goes on a mission. And then he doesn’t come back.

Your stomach churns anxiously as you wait for your cellphone to chime –for any sign of life from Piotr, really. Baby, where are you? Please come home to me.

*** 

Talking to the official person in charge of the duty roster does no good.

Chiefly because that person is Scott Summers.

“Look, Y/N, I know you’re concerned—”

“It’s been three days, Scott! Piotr was supposed to be back by now.”

“He requested a mission extension,” Scott says –lies, because Scott Summers is a horrifically bad liar, no matter how hard he tries to hide it.

(Not even those damn sunglasses he wears all the time helps conceal it.)

“If we don’t hear from him by tomorrow, we’ll start the retrieval protocol.”

You raise an eyebrow at Scott. “Piotr requested an extension.”

“Ye—”

“Without telling me he was requesting an extension.”

“He may have not wanted to worry you—”

“He texts me good night and good morning every day he’s gone, Scott. He hasn’t done that for three days. So, do you really want to keep going down this route, or do you want to tell me the truth?”

“Are you accusing me of—”

“Show me the extension request, Scott. I know those have to be filed in the mission logs.”

Scott goes pale, swallows hard, but ultimately holds his ground. “If we don’t hear from him in another twenty-four hours, we’ll start the retrieval protocol.”

You roll your eyes at his back as he quickly retreats away from you, then stalk out of the training room. “Fuck you. I’ll handle this myself. Idiot.”

***

 You call Wade first. Nathan doesn’t always keep his phone charged if he gets into a work hole, meaning that Wade’s the best bet to get ahold of your ‘somehow knows everything’ dad.

Except you can’t get ahold of Wade. Or Nate. Or Neena, when you decide to try her. Countless texts, phone calls, emails, and face-time requests –which, under normal circumstances, would be downright sociopathic to pull without making sure the recipient is available first, but these are desperate times—go unanswered.

Towards the end of the day, in what can only be described as a burst of mass anxiety and paranoia, you call your uncle.

He picks up on the first ring. “Hey, punk. How’s it going?”

“Oh, thank fuck.” You collapse into the nearest chair, relief surging through you. “They didn’t get you, too.”

“What?” Your uncle’s voice goes from warm and friendly to all business –and a little panicked—in a split second. “Who didn’t get me? What’s going on? Punk, are you okay?”

“I’m okay, but –Piotr’s missing. And Dad. And Wade. And Neena. Piotr went on a mission, but stopped checking in on me three days ago, and then when I tried to call the rest of my family, I couldn’t reach anyone. I’ve been trying all day, and then I thought that maybe someone’s targeting my family, so I decided to call you.”

“Shit,” your uncle mutters. “You’re sure Nathan and Wade are in town, right? And Neena? They don’t have any hits to fill or silent missions they’re running?”

“Wade and I were talking on Snapchat last night,” you answer, panic rising in your chest. “And I saw Nathan during call. And Neena always lets me know if she’ll be out of touch for a job or something.”

Your uncle exhales heavily into the speaker. “Fuck. Yeah, that doesn’t bode well. Did you talk to Charles?”

“He’s out of town for a conference. I had to deal with Scott, and he just shot me down.”

“Asshole.”

“Pretty much.”

“Talk to Scott one more time. I know it probably won’t help,” he adds when you start protesting, “but it’ll give me time to put my ear to the ground, see what I can find. After you try Scott, go over his head. I’ll help you however I can.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course, punk. Now, get moving. Time’s of the essence here.”

“Right.” You make a quick goodbye, then run out of yours and Piotr’s home and fly towards the mansion.

***

 By the time you reach Scott’s room, Russell, Ellie, and Yukio are already there, arguing with him.

“We aren’t responsible for Wade—”

“He’s my legal guardian, asshole,” Russell insists indignantly. “Isn’t there a bunch of legal shit you guys have to do if he dies or goes missing?”

“We—”

“And you are responsible for Colossus,” Ellie adds, arms crossed over his chest. “He’s my mentor and an X-Man. And he’s missing, too.”

“How did you—”

“He texts her to see how she’s doing,” Yukio pipes up, looking nowhere near as pissed as Ellie and Russell given her pink hair and soft, fluffy sweater, but frustration still reads plain in her voice. “And he stopped three days ago.”

“Which is the same time he stopped texting me,” you speak up, joining the fray. “Are you actually going to take this seriously now? Because if that’s not enough, Nathan and Neena are missing, too.”

A brief flicker of frustration crosses Scott’s face, but he masks it quickly. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve tried to reach them all day!”

“Maybe they’re just busy. Could you be overthinking it? Did you remember to take your medication today?”

“Are you shitting me?” Ellie snaps, eyes widening with outrage.

“Easy,” you murmur, putting an arm around her small shoulders before staring Scott down. “So, just so we’re clear, it is your intention to not pursue any of this further even though you have multiple complaints from different residents?”

Scott’s face twitches, but his resolve remains strong. “We have a protocol.”

“Yeah, just like that protocol of logging mission extension requests that you can’t show me right now.” You flash him a fake smile. “Thanks for nothing, asshole.”

The three teens follow after you as you storm off.

“What do we do now?” Russell asks.

“Are Cable and Domino really missing as well?” Yukio adds.

“Should we call the Professor?” Ellie suggests.

“The Professor probably wouldn’t be able to do anything, since Scott’s still the man in charge,” you say as you hurry down the main flight of stairs.

“He could make Cyclops toe the line,” Ellie points out.

“It’s still Scott. He’d do the bare minimum just to shut us up, then go back to jerking off –or whatever it he does for fun. And, yes, Neena and Nathan are missing, too. As far as I can tell, at least. As far as what we do now, we go over Scott’s head. I mean, I—” you turn around and look at the three teens staring at you “—go over Scott’s head. Not ‘we.’ You three should stay out of trouble.”

“But Wade’s my guardian!” Russell argues.

“And Piotr’s my mentor.”

“And Scott’s a pain in the ass,” Yukio adds.

“While all those things are true,” you agree, “that doesn’t change the fact that I can’t bring you three into this. Things could get dangerous. You’re all trainees. You’re not cleared for this kind of stuff.”

Ellie glances at Russell and her girlfriend, then crosses her arms over her chest and takes a step towards you. “Well, the way I see it, you can either bring the three of us in and have some idea of what we’re doing, or you can keep us out of it and we’ll just go over your head. Which means we could accidentally get caught in the middle of whatever you wind up doing and get hurt.”

You narrow your eyes at your husband’s mentee. “You are such a Slytherin, and I’m so proud of you, but also how dare you.” You sigh heavily. “Fine. You guys can come with. But if I get in trouble, I’m taking you all down with me.”

***

 Fun fact: attached to every suit worn by X-Men and trainees are little GPS trackers that, in addition to letting you know where the wearer of the suit is, also keeps tabs on their vitals.

“Why didn’t you just try this to begin with?” Ellie asks as you pull up the interface that tracks the suits.

“Because it makes a pinging noise to alert the wearer that their location is being monitored,” you explain. “If they’re on a stealth mission, it could alert an enemy agent. I didn’t want to do that in case Piotr had needed to go silent for some reason.”

“Do you think he could’ve?” Russell asks.

“Considering that, as his spouse, I would’ve been notified by the mission board –not to mention he would’ve at least let Ellie or I know himself—and the fact that Wade, Nathan, and Neena are missing, to, I don’t think so.” As much of a pain in the ass as Scott is, if Piotr had actually gone silent, he wouldn’t have just not told you.

“I thought the mission board and Professor Xavier were the only ones with access to the trackers,” Yukio interjects.

“I have spousal permissions for Piotr’s suit.” You pull up the page that lets you enter a password so you can access the tracker, then turn around and face the teens. “I’ve got to enter the password. No peeking.” You wait until they all cover their eyes, then type in the password and hit enter.

“It’s ‘myshka,’” Ellie says without uncovering her eyes.

You whirl around to stare at her. “Hey!”

“You hit seven keys, one of which was the enter button.”

“You really should talk to Colossus about better password security,” Yukio says with an earnest nod.

You sigh (they’re not wrong), then focus on the computer screen.

The good news: your husband’s tracker is still on and still registering his vitals –which look healthy, as far as you can tell.

The bad news: it’s out in the middle of nowhere in Upstate New York. No nearby roads, no registered address, just a couple of GPS coordinates.

“Where the hell is that?” Russell asks as he peers at the laptop screen over your shoulder.

“A couple hours from here,” you say as you write down the coordinates and the nearest identifiable landmarks. “I’m gonna go check it out. You guys stay here—”

“We’re helping whether you like it or not,” Ellie interrupts, expression comically stern given her round face and rounder eyes.

“Yes, you are, but I can’t carry all of you with me,” you say. “Besides, I need you three here to collect information.”

Russell’s brow furrows. “What information?”

You send a quick text to your uncle to let him know you’re leaving the phone with Russell, Ellie, and Yukio, then hand it to Ellie. “I called my uncle when I realized Wade, Nathan, and Neena were missing, too. He’s looking into all of it for me. If he calls with any information, I’ll need you guys to take it down and possibly do some –computer only—research on it.”

“Won’t you need the burner phone, just in case you get captured?” Yukio asks.

You shake your head. “Can’t risk his number getting in the wrong hands. I’ll have my phone on me, and I’ll wear my suit so you can keep track of me. If I’m gone longer than six hours, or if my suit goes offline, call my uncle immediately. Not the Professor, not Scott, but my uncle. Okay?”

The three teens give you equally scared looks, but all nod anyway.

You hug each of them before flying upstairs to get changed and pack a small bag with some supplies. Hang on, honey. I’m coming.

***

 The coordinates turn out to be home to the middle of a massive, matte black warehouse with virtually no windows in the middle of a dense forest. There’s only one road leading in or out, which is cut off from the warehouse itself by towering concrete walls topped with razor wire, a hulking gate with multiple guards, and several armed men patrolling the perimeter as well.

Definitely not suspicious at all. Definitely does not read as ���hidden government or evildoers base” whatsoever.

Scott Summers, you are so full of shit, you think to yourself as you peer down at the warehouse through a pair of electronic binoculars (a Christmas gift from Alexandra). Requested an extension, my ass. You frown as you watch a large, but otherwise non-descript van get waved through the gate. Piotr, baby, what did you do to wind up in here?

Your mind flashes to images of Piotr, bound against his well, likely being experimented on by various nefarious, white lab coat and nerd glasses wearing scientists. Your teeth grit together, and you steady yourself with a deep breath. Just hang in there, sweetheart. I’m gonna get you out.

You crawl forward a little further, hoping to get a better look at the lot surrounding the warehouse—

And you wind up bumping into a large, muscular woman, wearing all black –like you—with black hair cut into an angled bob, dark eyes, and—

Angel Dust.

Your eyes widen when the description connects with the stories Wade’s told you, and you quickly shove her away from you with a blast of air. “You fucking traitor! Helping lock up your own kind for a fucking bullshit paycheck! I’m gonna beat your ass—”

“What the fuck –stop it!” She whips a rock the size of a small child at you, narrowly missing your head. “What the fuck are you talking about? Who the fuck are you?”

“You’re working with them!” You jerk your head towards the warehouse.

“The fuck I am!” She finally notes your suit, and her mouth twists into a grimace. “Oh. You’re X-Men.”

“Damn right. Now, give me one good reason not to bounce you down this hill like a beach ball!”

Angel Dust smirks. “You’re a little rougher around the edges than most of them…” The smirk fades just as quickly as it appeared, and the color seems to drain from her face. “Fuck, you’re Wilson’s sister, aren’t you?”

“Ding-ding-ding, bitch!” you hiss. “And if you aren’t here to work for those cockwipes, then what the fuck are you doing on this hill?”

“I could ask you the fucking same—”

“Look, unlike my brother, I don’t have to get close to you to hit you. So, unless you want to go through that line of trees, I suggest you start talking.”

She rolls her eyes, but relents. “I’m here to rescue my daughter.”

“Daughter?” Your face scrunches up in confusion. “Wade didn’t say anything about you having a daughter.”

“Yeah, well, he wouldn’t fucking know!”

“I suppose that’s fair –considering you helped torture him and almost killed him, then helped kidnap his girlfriend!”

“Fuck’s sake –the fuck do you want from me?”

“Proving you have a daughter and that you aren’t lying might be a good start.”

She glowers at you, then begrudgingly takes a wallet out of her pocket and pulls out a few pictures. “Here. Proof enough?”

The pictures show Angel Dust holding a young girl –first as a baby, then a couple shots of them at a park when the girl looks about to be three, one of them eating ice cream together when the kid looks about five, and a school photo headshot dated from this year, in which the girl looks to be around seven.

Granted, she could be lying, but the pictures look real enough. Besides, if she really was working with the warehouse people, she probably wouldn’t have tried to convince you otherwise in the first place.

“What’s her name?” you ask, stiffly hanging back the pictures.

“Madeline. Maddie, for short. Why are you here?”

“They have my husband.”

“He an X-Man, too?”

“Yeah. Colossus. The big metal guy that you punched in the dick.”

She smirks. “Oh, yeah. Good brawler. Kinda sweet. He refused to ogle me when one of my tits fell out of my shirt.”

“Yeah,” you say with a small smile. “That’d be him.”

Tense silence falls around the two of you as you regard each other warily.

“Far be it from me to suggest we team up,” you start.

Angel Dust cuts you off with a sardonic snort. “What makes you think I need –want—your help?”

“You won’t make it through there alone. They’ve basically got an army guarding that place. You’re strong, but you’re not bulletproof. Or, worse, you’ll wind up captured. Besides, I have backup.”

She raises an incredulous eyebrow. “What, the X-Men? Pass.”

“No,” you say with a roll of your eyes. “The schedule master didn’t want to get off his ass, so I’m working without them for this.”

“Sounds like you don’t have backup, then.”

You bite down on the urge to sneer at her. “I have more resources than the X-Men.” Asshole.

“Such as?”

“Such as the kind that don’t mind using real guns.” When Angel Dust’s eyebrows spike towards her hairline, you continue. “Look, I get my husband and my other people out, you get your daughter out, everyone goes home happy and hopefully we never have to speak to each other again. Deal?”

“Fine,” she says after a minute. “So, if we’re not breaking in right now, what’s next?”

“I’ve got some people looking into this place. They should have some proper information by now. We head back to my place, learn what we can, then make plans to bust into here later tonight.”

Angel Dust considers for a moment, then concedes with a nod. “Fine. Wait… how’d you get out here?”

You shrug. “Flew.”

She scoffs, rolls her eyes. “Of course. We’ll take my car back.”

 ***

 You text Yukio once you’re safely in Angel Dust’s car—

“Do you have a name?”

“Fuck kind of question is that?”

“I only know you as Angel Dust,” you say with a roll of your eyes. “So, unless you want me to refer to you as ‘Angel Dust’ all the time, having a name to use would be handy.”

She sighs heavily. Rolls her eyes. “Christina.”

You blink. You’re not sure what you’d been expecting, honestly. “Cool. I’m Y/N.”

“Great. Glad we’re fucking best friends now,” Christina grumbles under her breath as she starts her car and pulls away from the thicket of bushes she’d parked her car behind.

You text Yukio, letting her know that you’re on your way back, that you’ve picked up some help, and that if you aren’t back in three hours to call your uncle. You pocket your phone once Yukio replies, then steal a quick glance at Christina.

All in all, you don’t know much about her. You heard about her and her whole involvement with Ajax –Francis, whatever—from Wade, and you’ve heard a little bit from Piotr about her other criminal escapades –car-jacking, fighting rings, blackmailing—but beyond that, Angel Dust –Christina—is a complete mystery to you.

“How’d your daughter wind up in there?” you ask, breaking the thick silence that had settled around the two of you.

Her jaw clenches tighter, and her hands grip the steering wheel hard enough that –for a moment—you’re worried that she might break it. “My ex.”

“You had a kid with Francis?”

Her hands grip the wheel tighter. “No. I was married before I met Ajax. Long time before. Had Maddie. Got divorced. Met Ajax a little while later.”

“Riveting,” you snark, which gets a murderous glare shot your way. “So, what, your ex-husband decided to do a ‘take your daughter to work day’ and it ended poorly?”

“He doesn’t like mutants. Part of why we divorced.”

Pain strikes your chest as you put the pieces together. “Wait a second. He… he sent his own child to a testing facility?”

“Like I said,” Christina growls as she presses down harder on the gas pedal, “there’s a reason he’s my ex.”

 ***

 Ellie goes from hunched over your laptop to standing bolt upright, fists clenched and energy swirling around her the second Christina follows you through the door—

And, yeah, okay, you definitely should’ve given more warning about the “help” that you were bringing back.

“What the fuck is she doing here?” Ellie snaps.

Christina just smirks. “Good to see you again, short stack.”

“Ellie, please don’t obliterate my house,” you say quickly, stepping between Ellie and Christina before Ellie does something rash –albeit probably deserved. “She’s helping us.”

“Why is she—” Ellie jerks her chin towards Christina “—helping us? She’s a criminal!”

“She has someone that was captured, too,” you explain, doing your best to stay calm. “The more innocent lives we can save in all of this, the better.”

“Fucking Christ,” Christina grumbles under her breath. “It’s like the fucking boyscouts.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in the Icebox?” Ellie snaps, still glaring down Christina –albeit without the energy charge-up, which you’re grateful for.

“I wasn’t deemed ‘dangerous enough’ for ‘removal from society.’”

“You kidnapped an innocent woman and nearly killed Colossus!”

She shrugs, blasé. “Paycheck’s a paycheck.”

“You fucking bitch—”

“Okay!” You shove Ellie back, and give her the sternest look you can muster at the moment –which, in reality, probably looks more desperate than anything else. “I know you’re mad, but we have a job to do. Can you…” You sigh when Ellie raises an eyebrow at you in challenge, and your expression is definitely desperate now. “Please, Ellie-bell. We need to get Piotr and Wade and Nate and Neena and anyone else they might have locked up out of there. Please.”

Ellie sighs heavily, but relents with a nod. “Fine. But if she—” she points at Christina, who smirks “—does anything out of line, I’m blasting her through a wall.”

“I’d comment, but I know you’re more than capable,” Christina mutters as she sizes up Yukio and Russell. “Also, if this was the back up you’re talking about—”

“It’s part of it, but they’re strictly the research team,” you interject quickly. “We’re bringing someone else along for the actual rescue mission.”

“Who?” Russell asks.

You shoot him a warning, incredibly desperate look to ‘please, for the love of Cthulhu, shut it’ because you haven’t actually figured that part out yet—

And then Yukio comes to your rescue. “Your uncle called while you were gone. He said he wanted you to call him as soon as you were back.”

“He also gave us a lot of information about the warehouse,” Russell adds, having caught on to your ‘please help me bullshit my through this.’ “Covered by ten different teams of armed men that work on five different shifts—”

You glance over your shoulder at Christina. “You mind looking through what we already have while I make the call?”

She sighs, rolls her eyes, but ultimately sits down at the dining room table. “Fine.”

You take your phone from Yukio, then step into the living room so you can talk to your uncle while also keeping an eye on Christina.

He answers on the first ring. “Who am I talking to this time?”

“It’s me. I’m safe.”

“Punk.” Your uncle lets out a sigh of relief. “Okay, I told Ellie everything I could fine, but listen to me. You cannot try to crack this place open, okay? The person running this operation is far too dangerous to mess with. I’m sending some people in to help, and I’ll fly in as soon as I can; just let the professionals handle this, okay?”

You grimace. “I can’t do that.”

“Okay, look, I know you’re worried about Piotr—”

“There’s a kid involved,” you say quietly, watching Christina intently. “A little girl. She was dumped at the holding center. I… I can’t wait. Not with a child’s safety on the line.”

Your uncle swears, then sighs. “…Okay. Just… take some heavier ammunition with you. Please. I’ll get there as fast as I can to help back you up.”

“Alright. I can do that.” You make a quick good-bye, then head back into the dining room. “Alright, what are we looking at?”

“Nothing good,” Christina says heavily. “You were right about not being able to break into this place. We’ll need an army to do just that.”

“…I might just be able to get us one.”

 ***

 The new offices of Nelson, Murdock, and Page come with countless new amenities –one of which being that it’s not located inside a deli.

There’s also a dedicated “back entrance” for clients that don’t want to be –or shouldn’t be—seen by the public.

Which, as fortune would have it, is where you find Frank Castle.

He’s wearing all black, carrying a bouquet of violets, and looks extremely startled when you all but shout his name. “What the fuck?”

“I need your help,” you say by way of greeting as you jog over to him. “Kidnappers, mutant experimentation, guys with lots of guns… yeah.”

“What the—” Christina yanks you aside with more strength than strictly necessarily, eyes so big they look like they’re about to pop out of her sockets. “How do you know the fucking Punisher?”

“Will you let go?” You wrench your arm out of her grasp. “I’m getting us an army. Chill the fuck out!”

“Do I get to know what’s going on here?” Frank interjects, looking equal parts confused, startled, and annoyed.

“There’s a warehouse two and a half hours from here,” you explain. “Heavily guarded. Piotr was kidnapped and taken there, as was her daughter.” You nod to Christina. “Wade, Nathan, and Neena are missing, too, and I’m willing to bet they’re there as well –along with who knows how many other people. The X-Men aren’t getting off their ass for this one, and the two of us—” you gesture between you and Christina “—aren’t enough to break in and get everyone out. We need help.” You take a breath, then shoot Frank a desperate look and add, “Please.”

He exhales heavily, then nods before gesturing at the door with the flowers. “Yeah. Just give me a minute.”

***

 Karen, fortunately, gives her blessing for you to borrow her boyfriend for a potential suicide mission without too much fuss. Frank steps back into the alley a few minutes later, grabs a few duffels from his “murder van,” then directs you to where he keeps the rest of his weapons stash before you drive him and Christina back to your home.

From there, two things happen right away.

One: Frank is immediately able to make more sense of the information your uncle had sent, which makes developing a plan so much easier.

Two: Russell, Ellie, and Yukio all refuse to stay behind while you, Frank, and Christina head to the warehouse.

“For the last time,” you grit out, on the verge of ripping out your hair. “I cannot take you three with me. You’re all trainees! You’re not cleared for something like this. Besides, if Piotr doesn’t kill me, Scott definitely will!”

“You could take Scott in a fight,” Yukio says with an earnest nod.

“That’s not the point!”

“The point is we want to help.” Russell crosses his arms over his chest. “Wade’s my friend and guardian, Colossus is one of our teachers, and Cable and Domino are part of the X-Force. They’re our friends. Why shouldn’t we help?”

“I really don’t know how to explain to you that you’re a minor.”

“Yukio and I aren’t,” Ellie pipes up, voice deadly calm. “We’re both adults. We can do whatever we want with this. And I have a license and access to a car.”

“Ellie—”

“Look, either we’re in on the plan and how to handle all of this, or we drive up on our own and insert ourselves into the situation.” She raises an eyebrow at you when you start sputtering. “What? What are you going to do? Duct tape us to the walls so we can’t leave?”

You narrow your eyes at her. “I’m seriously tempted to. There is such a thing as ‘being in over you head,’ and –make no mistake—this is one of those situations.”

Ellie’s jaw tenses. “We’re not staying behind.”

“For what it’s worth,” Frank interjects from where he’s been sitting at your dining room table, pouring over all the data your uncle was able to collect, “if they can help us, we could definitely use their help. We’re pretty damn outnumbered.”

“See!” Russell chimes in. “You need us!”

“That’s not the point!” you snap, nerves finally fraying enough to let your stress show through.

“It’s exactly the point!” Ellie argues. “You need extra help, we want to help!”

“That’s not the point Y/N is trying to make,” Yukio says when you grip your hair in frustration. “It may be the point of the mission, but it’s not what she’s focused on.”

You exhale heavily as silence finally falls, then lean wearily against the dining room table. “It’s not that we don’t need your help. We do. But… you’re just kids.”

“Yukio and I are eighteen,” Ellie points out.

“You are an infant and you will accept it!” you fire back. “This… this isn’t fighting Magneto or a few punk frat boys who just realized they have superpowers. These are trained assassins with guns and who knows what else and… you guys still deserve to be young. You deserve more time before you have to face that.”

The space goes suffocatingly silent as your words hang in the air, bitter and desperate.

Because, really, you all already know what’s going to happen.

“We’re ready,” Yukio says, quiet but confident. She squares her shoulders and gives you a smile. “This is what we’ve trained to do.”

“You already know what my stance is,” Ellie says when you look over to her.

Russell seems a little more pensive when you check with him, but he doesn’t waver, either. He swallows hard, then nods. “I want to help Wade. He’s my guardian… my friend.”

You sigh, heavy and with finality, then plop down into the nearest chair. “Alright. Let’s make a plan.”

***

 The plan is simple enough.

Your uncle had managed to dig up a plethora of information –including the policy for dealing with “captured individuals.” Anyone caught snooping around the warehouse was taken, searched for weapons, then taken to a room that was labelled “primary containment area.”

You’re willing to bet that Piotr and everyone will be there as well.

So, you and Christina will pose as a couple of amateur activists, attempting to get some film of what seemed to be a “secret military base” that was undoubtedly propagating violence, war culture, etcetera. You two will get yourselves captured, get inside the base, ditch whoever brought you in, find your missing people, then get out.

And, just for good measure, while the two of you were inside, Frank, Russell, Ellie, and Yukio will create a distraction outside, thus increasing your odds of success.

Frank also had one of his friends –who was some type of tech wizard, apparently—hack into the base and put the cameras on a loop, so that the two of you wouldn’t be caught out right away.

Is it the most sophisticated plan? No.

Is it the most likely to succeed, considering the circumstances? Also no.

Is it the best you all could do, considering the time and personnel constraints? Yes.

“If we die,” Christina growls –she’d been none too fond of the plan, but hadn’t had a better counteroffer—as the two of you cut through the woods, “I’m killing you before these dipshits get a chance.”

“Good fucking luck with that,” you grumble back, pulling a camera –which had a busted release mechanism for the SD card and was therefore useless—out of your bag. “Ready?”

“Let’s just get this over with.”

The two of you skulk around the perimeter, pretending to take film of the place –which, granted, you are, but it’s not like you’re planning on using any of it—and talking in stage whispers about angles, lighting, and framing. When that doesn’t work, you move in closer to the entry –where the guards are stationed—and start taking photos with the flash on.

It gets their attention pretty quick.

“Hey! Stop!”

The two of you feign making a run for it as the armed guards rush towards you, then switch to fake pleas and promise to “give up the footage” in exchange for being let go when you’re caught.

“Look, this is just for a school project,” Christina babbles –and, you have to give her credit, she’s a good actress.

Though, that could just be the guns the guards are carrying providing a proper incentive.

“We’ll give you the camera,” you add, faking desperation. “Just, like, please let us go.”

“Take them inside,” one of the older looking guards says. “Search them, then take them to the main containment center.”

You and Christina pretend to resist and struggle, but ultimately let the men march you past the wall and towards the compound.

***

 The search goes well enough. The two of you had made a point to not carry any weapons –or any IDs, just in case. Your phones –fakes—are tossed, as is the camera, but other than that the guards don’t find anything particularly interesting.

Being taken to the main containment area, however, doesn’t go as well.

Mostly because your people aren’t there.

“Shit,” Christina swears when you’re marched into what’s essentially a windowless, metal box.

“Search the base?” you ask.

“We have to.”

You slam the guards against the nearest wall with a gust of wind, knocking them out.

The two of you quickly handcuff the guards with their hands behind their backs, careful to interlock the sets of cuffs to make it harder for them to move or escape once they come to.

You strip off one of their tac vest and quickly adjust it to your body, while Christina pulls out their phones and walkie talkies and crushes them. “I’m guessing neither of them are carrying a map?”

“Wouldn’t that be our lucky day.”

You pull out an ear piece that you’d hidden in your bra, then turn it on and tuck it in your ear. “Ellie, can you hear me?”

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Slight problem. Containment area’s empty. Is there a lab or something labelled on the blueprints my uncle sent us?”

“…Yeah. Left from the entrance to the containment room, take a right at the second doorway, then all the way down the hall to the back. Do you need us to go now?”

You eye the hallway outside the containment room, then grimace when you see several guards patrolling the space. “Yeah. We’re pretty boxed in otherwise.”

“Alright. Give us five minutes.”

The two of you wait –then, sure enough, the building shudders as a loud explosion echoes outside.

You flash Christina a somewhat manic grin. “Shall we?”

“You’re just as crazy as Wilson.”

“You’re not the first person to say that.”

 ***

 The lab is straight out of some cheesy action-flick style evil lair. There’s a massive –practically floor to ceiling—screen that looks like someone lifted it from a movie theatre that’s framed by a wall to wall bank of computer keys, buttons, smaller inset display screens, dials, and sliders. The center of the room boasts a particularly sinister tilted metal table with arm and ankle restraints on the sides, an operation room light at the top, and various trays of syringes, surgical equipment, and other tools. Towards the back, there’s several rows of tables with various beakers, test tubes, and other items straight out of chemistry textbook.

And, on the wall opposite the door, there are a series of cylindrical, glass holding containers –which are currently housing your husband, Nate, Wade, Neena, and a young, dark haired girl that must be Madeline.

Madeline and Piotr don’t look too much worse for wear. A little bruised and a little tired, perhaps, but otherwise unharmed.

Neena’s face is fixed in a tight grimace. You don’t see any visible signs of harm on her, but that doesn’t mean that she’s okay.

Wade looks sick. He has a repression collar on, just like everyone else in the holding tanks, so there’s no doubt that his cancer is giving him hell.

Nathan looks tense. He’s sat on the floor of his tank, leaned back against the glass, gaze fixed in a pensive thousand mile stare. There’s no visible signs of the virus having spread, but you know he can’t be feeling too comfortable, either.

Madeline visibly perks up when you and Christina enter the lab, then jumps to the feet and presses her tiny body against the glass of her tank. “Mommy!”

“Mom—oh fuck.” Wade glares at Christina. “What is she doing here? And since when did you have a kid with Francis?”

Christina, predictably, ignores Wade. She sprints over to her daughter’s containment tube, pressing her hands flat against the glass. “Hey, sweetie. Are you okay?”

Madeline’s face crumples, and she starts crying. “I want to go home, Mommy. I want to go home—”

“Don’t!” Neena exclaimed when Christina moved to rip off the door on her daughter’s containment cell. “The guy running the tests said there was a different lock on her door.” She pointed to the keypad on the side of Madeline’s containment tube. “He said that if the cell was tampered with, it’d release a toxin gas.”

Christina shot a desperate look at you over her shoulder. “Can you diffuse the gas?”

“I don’t want to risk it,” you said. “Look, Ellie can probably figure out to get it open safely, and if she can’t, we’ve got other people who definitely can. Bottom line, she’s not staying in there for long.”

Piotr shoot you a sharp look. “Why is NTW here?”

You flounder, before shrugging sheepishly. “I got out-voted?”

“It’s going to be okay, sweet girl.” Christina knelt in front of her daughter’s tube, smiling reassuringly. “We’re going to get you out, okay?”

“Can you get the doors off the other cells?” you ask upon checking to make sure that the same locking mechanisms aren’t on the other containment tubes. “If we get everyone else out, I can get the repression collars off, and then we can shut this thing down and focus on getting Maddie out.”

Christina shoots you a look –most likely annoyed by being taken away from her daughter—but rises and walks down the row of cells, ripping the doors off as she goes and chucking them out of the way.

You help Wade out of his cell and get him situated on a chair—

And then Piotr sweeps you into his arms and presses his lips against yours.

He smells a little ripe, his breath isn’t much better, he has a few days’ worth of stubble on his face, and his hair is a mess.

He’s perfect.

“Are you okay?” you murmur, cupping his face when the kiss ends.

“I am now.” He kisses your forehead. “How did you find me?”

“Went over Scott’s head, used the tracker on your suit, and asked my uncle for help.” You lay your head against his chest, and close your eyes for a moment as you listen to the steady thud of his heartbeat.

He’s safe. He’s alive.

***

 Getting the collars off is a cinch. They’re basic model collars with keypads. You’ve taken shit like this apart in your sleep.

The building rumbles ominously while you work on defusing the collars, and the sounds of gunfire and death are rapidly approaching the lab.

Piotr eyes the door warily. “What all is going on?”

“Uh… kinda asked Frank for some help.”

Your husband’s eyes damn near bug out of his head. “Frank Castle?”

“Ooh, Frankie’s here!” Wade chirps, perking up now that his collar’s off and his healing factor is kicking back in. “Did he bring any grenades?”

“Why did you ask Frank Castle for help?” Piotr interjects, sounding aghast.

“What else was I going to do?” you exclaim. “Scott literally wouldn’t get off his ass to check in on things. It was either do it alone, or get what help I could!”

Piotr looks like he’s about to drop it –then his eyes widen with horror. “You… you left trainees with him.”

Fucking shit on an ass cracker— “Look, I will be very happy to discuss this with you later, but for now can we just focus on—”

A door at the far end of the lab sweeps open –not the one you and Christina came in through—and a man wearing a lab coat walks in.

A man that, though it takes you a moment, you recognize.

Mostly because you slammed his head into a table and threatened to rip off his balls if he ever hurt your husband again.

Rage floods your system. “You!”

Dwight Bard –stupid fucking nickname “Rogue”—jerks when he sees all of you, then pales when recognition hits his system. “Oh shit—”

You don’t give him a chance to finish his sentence, much less escape or do anything else. You hit him in the back with a blast of wind, bouncing him across the floor of the lab and smacking him against the metal table. You dash over, secure one of his arms in one of the restraints before he can get up, then grab the first thing you find on the tool tray –which happens to be a scalpel—and aim it at him. “I fucking warned you, you son of a bitch. I’m gonna gut you like a fucking catfish—”

“Myshka!” Piotr plucks you up and sets you away from the table before physically putting himself between you and Dwight. “Stop!”

You take one look at your husband’s horrified expression and shrink in on yourself, ashamed. “I’m not—” You try to gesture with your hand, forgetting that you have the scalpel, and nearly nick Piotr with it. You flounder as you try to find a place to set the utensil, then ultimately hand it over to Piotr so he can set back on the instrument tray. “He’s—”

“No killing,” Piotr says, voice soft but firm. “Ever. Under any circumstances.”

Your mouth opens and closes as you try to find the words to explain your headspace.

That Dwight isn’t worth saving because he’s perverted and hasn’t stopped the track he’s on despite having the chance to change and more than enough incentive –can anyone say ‘staying out of prison,’ much—to do so. That killing people recklessly and without thought is bad, but that defending those who can’t defend themselves is another category. That you weren’t even intending to really do anything, but he helped hurt the people you love, that he’s hurt your husband –the most important person in your life—over and over and over again, and you can’t live in a world knowing that person is out there and could hurt him again.

Ultimately, you shrug helplessly and say, “He hurt you.”

An emotion settles on Piotr’s face that you can’t identify. (Grief? Anguish? Fear? A combination of all three, or maybe none of them at all?) He stares at you for a moment, expression inscrutable, then gently takes you into his arms and kisses the top of your head. “I do not want you killing for me.”

You nestle against his chest –then break away when Dwight starts trying to get the restraint off his wrist. “Oh, no, no, no. Just because I’m not force-feeding you your balls doesn’t mean you get a free pass.” You finish restraining his arms and legs, then flip the overhead light on so he has to keep his eyes closed for good measure. “You can just stay right there until we’re ready to drag you out of here and back to jail.”

The door that you and Christina originally entered through opens, and Ellie, Russell, Yukio, and Frank walk through.

You nod at Madeline’s containment cell. “There’s a special lock on this one. Can you get it open?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ellie says, checking over the locking mechanism before walking over to the bank of computers.

“Building’s clear,” Frank says, momentarily eyeing Dwight before turning his attention to Madeline and Christina. “What’s going on there?”

“Special lock,” you explain, paraphrasing what Neena told you. “Improperly opening the chamber releases a neurotoxin gas.”

Frank’s lip curls into a menacing sneer as he stalks towards Dwight. “You think that’s fun? Putting a little girl’s life in the balance?”

“It wasn’t me!” Dwight panics, trying –and failing—to edge himself away from Frank. “I’m just –look, I’m just a scientist, I had no idea—”

“You’ve got a kid a tube!” Frank shouts. “It doesn’t get more fucking obvious!”

“Okay, okay, just –look. The building’s not clear yet.”

“The hell it isn’t—”

“They had teams on standby, down the road, in case the place was stormed.”

The lights flicker, then turn off before flipping back on—

And then an explosion goes off outside, making the building shake and the windows rattle in their settings.

Frank tenses, then swears under his breath when more explosions sound outside. “Shit.”

“Sounds like we’ve got company,” Wade comments as he stretches lazily (the movement is accompanied by a grimace, though, which is how you know he’s still not feeling good). “Got a gun I can borrow?”

“Best move right now is to handle the team outside,” Nathan agrees as Frank hands them both spare pistols. “You three stay back here.” He nods to the teens. “Get the kid out. The rest of us will hold the base.”

Madeline bursts into tears when Christina takes a reluctant step away from her daughter’s containment cell. “Mommy, I want you to stay! I’m scared!”

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Christina reassures her quickly. “It’s okay—”

“Stay with her,” you decide. “We don’t have enough weapons for you to use, which means your strength won’t be an advantage out there.”

Christina mouths a grateful “thank you” at you, then sits at the base of her daughter’s cell. “It’s going to be okay, Maddie. Mommy’s right here.”

“What about Neena?” Russell asks as the rest of you prepare to head out. “She doesn’t have a gun.”

“I’ve got a good feeling about finding one,” Neena quips, flashing Russell a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

You want to take her aside, ask her if she’s okay –the explosions are still ongoing, meaning that right now, you’ve got more important things to do.

Frank reloads his rifle, then strides towards the main lab door. “Let’s go.”

 ***

 The lot of you make swift progress through the base. Frank and Nate lead you all with military-like precision –go figure—and before you know it, you’re at the main entrance.

The explosions are still going, rocking and rattling the building with each shockwave. The lights flicker ominously overhead each time; a few fall out and shatter against the floor.

Piotr shields you with his body when one lands near the two of you. “What now?”

“You know how many people are out there?” Frank asks Nathan.

Your dad shakes his head. “The number of psychic signatures keeps changing. Maybe… twenty-five? Thirty? They keep bouncing around the lot.”

“We’ve handled worse,” Neena decides as she loads her shotgun (which, true to form, she’d stumbled across while you’d all navigated the base).

“Wait, wait –Natey, hold on a second.” Wade grabs his boyfriend’s arm, holding Nathan back from moving (even though Nate stopped the first time Wade asked him to wait). “Do you not hear what I’m not hearing?”

“The fuck does that mean?” Frank grumbles under his breath.

Nathan cocks his head to the side though, gaze darting back and forth while he listens. “Gunfire. Voices.”

“Exactly!”

Frank’s expression sharpens as he catches the same lack of gunfire and people talking. “They could be trying to draw us out. We’ve got a chokepoint here.”

“Yeah, but why would they be bombing the parking lot they’re standing in?” Neena fires back.

“Should one of us go out?” Wade asks, looking between Frank, Nate, and Neena. “Scope things out?”

“If there are people waiting out there, we’ll get shot to pieces!” Neena exclaims.

“Okay, I can heal!” Wade fires back. “So, if you hear swearing and sounds of carnage—”

“No, no, we are not using you as a fucking guinea pig,” Nathan growls.

“Well, what would you recommend—”

“I’ll go,” Piotr interjects.

“What?” You blink rapidly as he kisses your forehead, then reach for him when he stands and steps away so he can armor up. “No! No—”

“It’s okay.” Your dad puts an arm around your shoulder, equal parts comforting and restraining. “He’ll be okay.”

Piotr ducks around the corner and strides towards the entrance –stooping over so he doesn’t bang his head on the ceiling. The sound of his heavy footsteps clank against the floor, barely audible over the explosions outside.

You listen to your husband’s step retreat away from you, scarcely daring to breathe. Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay…

There’s a moment where the explosions stop, and the ensuing silence stretches out, unending and horrible—

“No one is out here.”

You let out a breath, nearly collapsing with relief when you hear Piotr’s voice—

And then what he said hits you.

Frank stalks out, rifle at the ready in case shit goes sideways. He’s quiet for a moment, then shouts out an “all clear.”

You shadow the others out, mindful that you don’t have a gun or near as much combat experience. You sidle up next to your husband, one hand clutching at the material of his X-Men suit.

The explosions, at least, were real. The lot looked scorched, pitted with craters and dotted with debris and chunks of concrete.

That’s where the legitimacy of Dwight’s claims seem to end, though. There’s no sign of any opposition, armed, dangerous, or otherwise.

“Was he wrong?” you ask as Frank, Wade, Nate, and Neena carefully scope out the lot. “Maybe… maybe there’s no back up.”

“There is car coming,” Piotr announces, quickly tucking you behind his back.

The others hop to, taking up different positions around the lot to set up the best spread of gunfire possible.

You peek around your husband’s side as much as you dare, trying to get a read on the situation.

A lone SUV rolls up to the gate of the compound. It doesn’t seem armored, much less like it could hold the amount of guys your dad was initially sensing in the lot…

The SUV parks just inside the gate, and then the driver’s door opens and Mikhail Rasputin steps out. He grins laconically at Piotr, and lifts a hand in greeting. “Poves'te desyat', mladshiy brat!”

Piotr gapes as his mother exits the front passenger side of the SUV, whilst Mikhail ambles around to the back of the car to open the trunk. “Matushka?”

She’s decked out in black tactical gear and combat boots, and looks ready to kill.

(Granted, Alexandra always looks ready to kill, but the expression is more literal than figurative this time around.)

She graces her son with a brief, greeting smile, but quickly steps into scanning the surrounding environment for potential threats. Alex eyes the craters in the lot with a critical eye, one brow arching as she takes it all in. “Big fight?”

“Not really,” Wade says with a shrug. “Lots of explosions, but when we got out here there was no one around.”

You frown, stepping out from behind Piotr. “What are you two doing here?”

“Sent by uncle,” Mikhail says, nodding at you with a smile that’s entirely too relaxed for the scope of the situation. “To help.”

“Well, I think we’ve got it under control,” Wade says, gesturing at the parking lot.

“For now,” Alex tacks on as she eyes the building. “Man running this place is highly dangerous. Sooner we leave, the better. Is this everyone?”

“There are others inside,” Piotr says, eyes widening with realization. “Ellie, and Yukio, and Russell, and—”

The ground shakes again, and then there’s an explosion that sends chunks of concrete wall flying from the back side of the compound.

You stare at the plume of fire and smoke that billows into the sky, heart sinking. Shit.

***

 The lab, once you arrive, is in complete and utter chaos. Tables are strewn everywhere, glass equipment lies shattered on the floor, and a gaping hole gashes through one of the internal walls.

At the far end of the lab is Dwight –who, somehow, has managed to free himself and is grinning as he hovers above the ground. He extends his hand towards the opposite side of the room, flinging several heavy work tables that are deflected by Christina and Ellie.

“He’s a mutant!” Ellie shouts, pointing an accusing finger at Dwight before dodging more flying debris. “He has to be! He undid his restraints without even touching them!”

“Sorry for the deception,” Dwight says, grinning nastily—

And then his body ripples, changing size and form until he’s several inches taller and nowhere near as gangly. His face morphs hideously, hair going from tight auburn curls to slicked back black tresses. His eyes change from hazel to gray, his jawline sharpens, and by the end of it he looks less like some sort of computer tech pervert and more like a rugged assassin.

“Someone fucking promise me we’re not about to go down another ‘it was Mystique the whole time’ writing hole,” Wade groans as he skids to a stop, then ducks to avoid shards of flying glass. “Because I can’t handle another plot headache like that.”

“Name’s Nathaniel. Nathaniel Essex.” Nathaniel tosses Dwight’s glasses aside, smirking laconically. “So, no, no Mystique storyline here. Though, that might’ve been better for the rest of you.”

“How you figure, Captain Chameleon?” Wade fires back. “Don’t know if you forgot how to count, but there are…” Wade starts counting, then gets fed up with the process and settles for cocking his gun and aiming it at Nathaniel. “You’re fucking outnumbered, shit for brains! Best surrender now, and maybe I won’t fuck your ass with the business end of this gun!”

“You do, you’re buying me a new one, Wilson!” Frank snaps.

“Do you accept stolen?”

“The way I see it, my odds are just fine.” Nathaniel smirks, and several pieces of broken tables and twisted metal start floating around him. “Don’t worry. I’ll try to keep from hurting you too bad.” He hurls the objects across the lab—

Only for them to freeze halfway across.

Nathaniel’s face goes slack with shock. “What the—”

Alexandra steps out from behind Piotr, eyes glowing gold as she stares down Nathaniel. “Care to try again, tupitsa?”

Nathaniel grits his teeth and tries to fling more carnage across the lab, but to no avail. “Go fuck yourself, bitch.”

Alex raises an eyebrow, then shrugs. “Have it your way.”

And then the items floating in the air zip across the lab. Those that don’t bounce of the telekinetic shield Nathaniel erects around himself embed themselves in the opposing wall.

“We need to get Maddie out of here!” you shout. “Ellie, can’t you disarm the pod?”

“I couldn’t find anything that disables the gas system!”

You’re starting to think that the supposed “toxic gas” attached to Maddie’s containment tube was a lie as well –but, best not to take chances.

“We’ll figure it out once we take down Essex,” you shout before darting towards where Alex and Nathaniel are scuffling with each other.

Nathaniel lets out a pained grunt when Alex throws him against one of the walls hard enough to crack the concrete, then yanks his sleeves back and starts pressing buttons on a wrist-mounted console. He taps at the display screen between dodging various attacks—

And then security drones fly out from hatches in the ceiling and start raining down Gatling gunfire on all of you.

“Get down!” Frank bellows as he dives behind one of the upended, heavy, metal lab tables.

Neena, Mikhail, and Nate join him, opening fire at the various drones.

You dive tackle Yukio, practically throwing her and yourself underneath one of the computer desks. You tuck her underneath you, doing your best to shield her from flying glass shards and stray chunks of metal.

Wade grabs Russell and Ellie, yanking them into a nearby alcove and shoving them behind him so he can take shots at the drones. “Since when did this go from a redux of my first movie to a redux of Terminator? We don’t have that kind of budget!”

Madeline shrieks when some of the rounds fired by the drones bounce off her containment cell. She drops to the floor of the tube, curling into a ball and sobbing hysterically. “Mommy!”

“Maddie!” Christina wholesale throws an operation table at one of the drones, cleaving it in half, before sprinting across the lab to reach her daughter’s cell. “Maddie!”

The whole building shakes like it’s about to come down. You hold tighter onto Yukio, getting what glimpses you can of the battle from under your table.

Alex and Nathaniel are caught up in a fraught telekinetic tango. They’re both reaching out towards each other –Nathaniel with both hands, red-faced and straining, and Alex with one hand, expression grim but determined—and their stand off seems to be what’s ripping the lab apart.

What happens when there are two unstoppable forces and two immovable objects, and each person has one?

Mikhail pops out of nowhere, landing next to Nathaniel. He lets out a burst of maniacal laughter, hits Nathaniel upside the head with the butt of his rifle, then disappears again.

Nathaniel stumbles, dazed –and it’s enough. He shrieks as he whizzes past you, bouncing off the ground before slamming into the computer station near the main entrance to the lab.

The remaining windows in the lab shatter, along with the lights. Glass rains down on the floor in tiny shards. Smoke and dust billow from one of the destroyed computer terminals, mixing with the glass into a lethal fog.

Your husband grabs Christina before quickly shielding her, Frank, Neena, and Nathan from the worst of the falling glass.

At the lab’s entrance, Wade and a newly reappeared Mikhail shield Russell and Ellie with their bodies.

For a moment, everything goes quiet, save for Essex’s labored groaning, Maddie’s terrified sobbing, and the tinkling sound of the glass making contact with the floor.

And then, not unlike a phoenix, Alex emerges from a cloud of smoke, head held high and eyes glowing menacingly. “Still want to do this, podonok?”

Nathaniel bares his teeth in a snarl before pushing up the sleeve on his jacket, revealing a time travel device like Nathan’s. “Fuck you.” He slaps a button on the device, then winks out of view in a flash of green light.

Alex snorts disdainfully. “Coward.”

Everything goes silent again. Relief slowly starts to sink in, now that the worst of it is over.

And then there’s an ominous whirring noise, and Madeline’s tube starts sinking into the lab floor.

She panics, shrieking and pounding on the glass. “Mommy!”

Christina bolts towards her daughter, equally as terror-stricken. “Maddie!”

The tube sinks fully into the ground, locking into place with a sickening click.

Christina freezes for a moment, staring at the place where her daughter used to be. Then, she lets out an anguished shriek and makes to rip the containment tube out of the ground.

“Don’t!” you shout, batting her away from the tube with a blast of air. “The neurotoxin!”

“I have to save her!”

“She’s already gone,” Nathan says, voice ragged. “He had a teleportation device attached to her cell. It would’ve activated seconds after he left.”

“Fuck you!”

Alex steps between Christina and the cell, keeping her from yanking it back up. “Easy, easy. We will still find your daughter.”

Christina snarls, then punches Alex straight in the face.

She doesn’t so much as flinch. Instead, she raises an eyebrow at the aggrieved woman, then lifts her own fist. “My turn? Or are we done?”

Christina gapes up at Alex for a moment, shocked, then resumes her efforts to try and get to the tube. “Maddie ��I have to save her—”

“She is not there,” Alex insists, grunting as she bodily lifts Christina away from the cell. “Our best bet is to find Nathaniel.”

“He could be anywhere!”

“He used a short-range teleporter,” Nathan pipes up. “He’ll be close by. The sooner we start tracking him, the better.”

“Well, that would be our cue,” Alex says, firmly ushering Christina towards the door. “Let’s head back to house. We can plan from there.”

“What about this place?” Yukio asks as she follows after Alex.

“We burn it.”

“We –we can’t do that,” Piotr protests, staring at his mother’s back. “Criminals need to be held responsible for—”

“And, what, we just leave evidence of our involvement? Of your connections to criminal underworld?” Alex snaps, whirling to face her son. “Nyet! We destroy this place and keep ourselves in the clear.”

“And what about the people connected to this place. Without evidence, they will never be held accountable!”

“Justice has many forms, medvezhonok. They’ll get theirs.”

“Come on.” You tug on your husband’s hand when he frowns after his mother. “We need to go, either way. The cops aren’t gonna be able to help us with this, not the way we really need help.”

Piotr’s grimace deepens –but, he ultimately falls into step next to you.

[serowoenin]

December 17th

     Today is my third official day of sobriety...from smoking weed that is. I know–funny thing to be writing about or even referring to being sober from. But honestly, I have been having a bad time dealing with my mental illnesses and for the longest time I thought weed was my saving grace. I was WRONG.

   I guess to give you a run down of how I even got here in the first place, at least I think this is where it all started, I have to go all the way back to 2017 and give a not-so-brief-but-not-so-detailed little rundown. Let’s begin:

May 2015- I moved out of my parents at 17 to live with other family because I was having problems at home. In actuality, I was going through some severe depression and didn’t know it…but was also doing angsty teenage stuff so there is that.

August 2015- SURPRISE! Found out I was pregnant a day before entering my senior year of high school. Judge all you want–I know I am such a whore for getting pregnant at 17. NEXT.

October 2015- I miscarried my child, was considered homeless, on the brink of dropping out of school and–had my first suicide attempt.

November 2015- I was in a mental hospital from Halloween until the 17th when I finally moved into a group home. Because I was still 17, I became a ward of the state and entered the foster care system.

December 2017- After a lot of CBT, meeting with a psychiatrist and a difficult face-to-face with my mom–I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and a bunch of other shit that I take with a grain of salt and don’t let defy me.

February 2016- I met a boy, that boy changed my life–he became my everything. His name was Luke.

April 2016- I graduated high school, turned 18 and–SURPRIIIISE! I got kicked out of my group home because they “accidentally” terminated my case. (Which coincidentally was 3 days after my 18th birthday)

May 2016- Luke’s family took me in and I moved in with his grandmother. She and I became super close and I got accepted into a technical college.

August 2016- I worked all summer and saved up for my own apartment…also started college. But I had to do something that was difficult for the sake of my mentality. 

September 2016- I broke up with Luke. I loved him and it was difficult but I needed time to figure out me. It did not end well. Also lost access to my medication, psychiatrist and well…any mental support I needed. As I had no license or car.

October 2016 - April 2017 Let’s just say I had a lot of fun until I didn’t. I wanted the full college experience. But I missed my Luke…but fuck that we move forward NOT backwards. Smoked weed regularly.

April 2017- I shaved my head bald…and smoked weed.

May 2017- I met someone else and was struggling financially living on my own.

June 2017- I moved in with my new partner and his family to avoid being homeless again and to save for a new place. It was a mistake. He was abusive. His mothers did NOT care but I had no where else to go.

July 2017- SURPRISE! Found out I was pregnant by my abusive asshole of a partner. Quit smoking weed.

August 2017- I moved out because I couldn’t take the physical and psychological abuse anymore. Moved in with friends–but that proved to be difficult as they had their own lives and it wasn’t a good environment for a pregnant me.

October 2017- Moved back in with abusive partner…I know, I know—but he had a way of making me believe he would change for the sake of our child.

January 2018- Went back to school and while things were fine for a few months…old habits started again. 

February 2018- Had a very scary incident that ended in my abuser being arrested and charged with DV/Assault. I still believed him when he and his mothers said he would change….he got out on an OR.

April 2018- POPPED THAT BUN RIGHT MF OUT MY OVEN. Had to go to court 3 days after giving birth–my abuser was put on probation for 2 years and then proceeded to quit his job.

May 2018- The abuse got worse and for the protection of my son I left. Got a restraining order for my son and I. This would be the last time my son and I see my abuser. 

June 2018- Reconnected with an old friend–Luke. I know what I said about moving forward but--mind ya business. I also started smoking weed again.

August 2018- Luke asked for my hand in marriage and we moved in together…he helped me with my KJ every step of the way.

September 2018- Got married to my Luke, felt safe and happy.

March 2019- Nothing really happened from September to March…but in March Luke filed for step-parent adoption.

April 2019- KJ turned 1, we went on vacation for a week in Texas, I turned 21 and my abuser gave our attorney/the courts consent for the adoption. It was over…but the damage was still done and I was still smoking weed. HEAVY. Started working again.

August 2019- My brother-in-law got married. Things were stressful because of problems in my marriage but I had my weed there to comfort me and make it all go away.

September 2019- Had our 1 year wedding anniversary. Still was having problems, but weed made it all go away.

October 2019- Moved in with my Luke’s parents. The adoption became finalized and I got a new job (my previous job had been seasonal). Smoking a LOT more.

November 2019- Adjusting to living with the in-laws…finally addressed marriage problems and worked through them. Smoking heaviest I’ve ever smoked in my life. Quit my new job because they were on some bullshit. (Fuck Target)

     Which brings us to December! On the 14th day of this very fun month I decided I would be smoking my final blunt. Am I against weed? Obviously not. Will I eventually smoke again? Honestly don’t plan on it. The 15th was my first day without weed and I am not going to lie–a bitch wanted to smoke. I was so irritable, angry, sad, happy…every emotion I feel like I blocked out smoking for that long I felt at once. The second day was better but I my had moments.

   The 16th I decided to keep myself busy to curb cravings so I ate healthy, exercised and did crafts with KJ and Luke. It wasn’t as hard falling asleep but staying asleep was definitely a problem. My heart keeps racing to the point where I wake up with severe anxiety and then I fall back asleep. I do, however, have a lot more energy and don’t feel nearly as sluggish as when I would smoke before bed. 

   Finally, we make it to today! I didn’t go into great detail recounting what has happened but I feel like writing it all out int a timeline and processing it will help me with actually dealing with my issues. I am seeking a psychiatrist and hoping to get to a place where my depression doesn’t control me but it will take time. I don’t want to be the way I am–I know I won’t be able to completely get rid of what I have but I do want to take control of ME again. I haven’t felt like myself in so long but I know that discovering and shaping myself into who I want to be as a wife, mother, friend and person will be so much better with the current support system I have. I had no idea how to start my first post but–this honestly seems like a good foundation to me. Eh?

Any suggestions for the next post?

[folerdetdufoler]

like my first trip to oslo, this one started with an impulse purchase of tickets: a performance of snøfall on november 30th. i didn’t have a flight or a place to stay or any kind of plan really, just the fact that i had to be at the theatre with haidee & nadège at 18:00 on friday. i knew they would be in oslo then because they were planning on going to the fan convention, so i guess there was that. i had also chatted with jenn and knew she was going too, and for a few days there were a flurry of messages and excitement. and then i stopped thinking about it.

which is how i, an adult, deal with things that stress me out. at some point i bought a plane ticket, and booked a hotel room, and bought a concert ticket for saturday, and talked to some more people about it, but i still managed to be wildly unprepared by the time wednesday rolled around. i managed to find my passport that morning and pull my suitcase down from the attic, but i was still in my pajamas trying to finish the last chapter of my fic by the time it hit 15, when i was supposed to leave for the airport. i threw a vague number of outfits into that suitcase and got out of the house before my ride (my brother) got too pissed off, but i was super stressed out and disappointed in myself before we hit the highway.

i had left so much behind: my fic on my computer, my gifts for haidee and nadege, the glucose tablets i bought specifically for the trip, half of my toiletries...and on top of that i was about to head into airport security with a new pump and cgm attached to me. i honestly was not sure if i was going to actually get on a plane that evening. i stood in line, sweating through my pajamas, dying to anxiety-tweet through the whole thing except i didn’t want anyone to know i was at the airport in case i didn’t make it out. on top of everything i’d managed to forget/give up on before leaving the house, i didn’t want to fail yet another thing.

i didn’t, obviously. it was stressful as hell, because i had to send my bag, phone, passport, everything through the x-ray scanner and wait for someone to escort me through for a physical exam. i stood in the middle of the room for what felt like hours (it was not hours) watching as people swirled around my entire identity at the end of a conveyor belt, out of reach, knowing that even if i saw someone lift my shit i couldn’t yell or run to intervene because i was surrounded by tsa agents just waiting to body slam the girl with a small black box attached to her to the ground. i felt like a threat even though i wasn’t. i had foolishly sent my only glucose tablets through the machine with my bag so if i happened to go low while waiting, turning into a sweating, shaking, suspicious mess, i wouldn’t be able to save myself or prove my medical needs because, lol, my medical ID was in my bag too. ugh. scratch that, i was a threat to myself.

i made it through. an agent finally helped me through and did my exam. my pump was deemed not an explosive device and no one stole my passport. i even had enough time to change my sensor in the bathroom before boarding. this, of course, should have been done at home in a sanitary environment and not immediately before ascending 30,000 feet above the earth but i think we’ve established how shit i am at planning so...moving on.

the flight was great. i had an empty seat next to me. we were delayed about an hour taking off, but that just gave me time to text with lizzie, who was also at the airport then but on a different flight to oslo. i had missed her in my tsa daze but it was a fun realization that right then there was a tiny migration happening to oslo, a bunch of fans starting their journeys all around the world and getting excited. my sensor warmed up and functioned like a dream the whole flight, and i finally felt like i could breathe again by the time we’d landed at gardermoen.

at the airport i bought most of the things i had forgotten (a bitch needs tweezers, okay?) and zipped over to the hotel. they were super busy so i couldn’t check in, but i dropped off my suitcase and went to meet up with jasmine and silvia. god it was so nice to see jasmine again, that amazing norwegian ambassador. it’s so wonderful, just in general, being able to hug a person who is part of your life every day. i wouldn’t say we talk directly, but a day doesn’t go by where i don’t read her tweets and like, have this awareness of her life in my own, so on the one hand it’s like oh my god i haven’t seen you since the beginning of the summer and on the other hand i was just talking to you so uh, has anything new happened in the last hour? anyway, we hugged, i screamed, the usual, and then we found silvia, and after that hugging mission was complete it was on to the lunch mission!

the first photo i took on norwegian soil was the bar was passed: angst. this was where the book release party was held just the week before and i took a photo to capture my missed opportunity. i forget where we actually ended up for lunch but we ate and jasmine handed off the elle magazine i’d asked her to pick up for me and we talked about the fandom and the show and just...life in norway in general. as i spend more time there and talk to more people who live there, i’m convincing myself that i would like to try finding a job and staying for a while. i understand that all of my experiences thus far have been terribly positive because they’ve basically been vacations, with no basis for a regular lifestyle, but it still feels like the day-to-day reality wouldn’t be so scary either. check back in 2025 to see if i’ve made any progress on that.

after lunch we walked around with no real purpose. i wanted to go to the new h&m that had just opened that morning to see what the fuss was about with the collection that henrik & lea had modeled for. the store was pretty big but there was zero fuss. we stayed on karl johans, visiting the bookstore and wandering through the christmas market. then silvia had to leave so we said goodbye. in the spirit of a 220-lb. woman who barely has any social skills, i managed to hug silvia and lift her off the ground without realizing, so Io chiedo sinceramente scusa. it was a weird note to end on but up until that point it was just so nice being able to hang out with someone you’ve never met but instantly get. girl, you’re fabulous. vi ses snart.

the only other thing i had on my agenda was to visit the publisher to pick up my script books. it was a mini-nightmare getting into their office, which i wouldn’t have been able to do without jasmine’s help, but we managed to figure out how doors work and got to chat with someone. it turns out my books were still at the bar, so they promised to send them over to the hotel once they could get them back. they also told us about the book signing at tanum the following weekend, which was nice. i was bummed that i had managed to miss both the release party and the book signing but at least we had the information and could share it with the fandom.

then it was back to the hotel, where i could properly check in. i was greeted with a bathrobe with my name embroidered on it, which made me laugh. jasmine and i didn’t have any further plans so we decided to go find dinner and walk around some more. we took the elevator down (duh) and walked to johnny rockets for some milkshakes, which was fun. despite it being an american restaurant, i’ve never been, so it felt like i was being a tourist in my hometown. when i couldn’t give our waiter a fun fact about new jersey for him to entertain us with, he just gave up and drew a snowman in ketchup. not for his lack of trying though, it’s just that i live in the armpit of the united states and i don’t think that’s easy to illustrate in condiments. after dinner we went to find akrobaten bridge, which was on my list of sights to see even though it was only in the show for exactly six seconds in a couple of transition shots. no moment from season three is too small in my mind.

after that i think it was still pretty early but a bitch was done. i didn’t sleep much on the flight or the night before, so i was running on empty and literally fell asleep in front of jasmine at the hotel. i sent her off on her train after a more appropriate hug and the general idea that i’ll see her again. it didn’t happen that weekend but that was okay, because earlier that month i impulse-bought another ticket, so i knew i’d be back next year.

it’s just never enough, is it?

[officialthiamlibrary]

Have you ever wondered about the artists behind your favorite works? What they do and who they are when they’re not wowing you with their creative ability. If so, the Official Thiam Library brings to you a new series we call ‘Behind the Screens.’ Each profile highlights an artist (or artists) within the Thiam family, giving you the inside scoop on their life, well, behind the screen.  

Today is a special Behind the Screens profile. We are excited to bring you Alicia (@extrasteps) and Ashlee (@ashleejohannah). If you are a fellow fanfiction fanatic, you might recognize their AO3 usernames, ExtraSteps and AJP_37, respectively. In our chat, they gave us the low-down on their origin as friends, their ultimate Teen Wolf Laser Tag/Paintball team, their number one tips for writing and sticky life situations, and much more.

The profile is separated into three parts. First, we will learn about Alicia, then we will get to know about Ashlee, and finally, we will explore them as a pair. For each question, the speaker changes using the following labels:  ‘ES’  for ExtraSteps (Alicia) and ‘AJP’ for AJP_37 (Ashlee). 

Note: The pair portion does discuss the art of writing sexual content. If you’d like to skip this section, there will be a warning before the question.  

Without further ado, have a look!

Alicia! Using a sentence, where the word count is either equal to or less than your age, tell us about yourself. (Now, describe Ashlee using her age as the word count.) 

ES: I care deeply about people but rarely show it. I hang back in a crowd and observe. I have fooled people into thinking I’m a responsible adult.

Ashlee is the light of my life. We are literally the same person. She is funny, the life of the party, and always up for shenanigans.

If you could build the ultimate paintball/laser tag team from any five characters on Teen Wolf, who’d be on your team and why?

ES: Theo and Liam, obviously. They’re my boys and they already have amazing teamwork. Peter, because he’s funny. Corey, because he can turn invisible, which is obviously handy. And finally, Brett, ‘cause he has an eight-pack, he’s shredded.

Lol, accurate! How did you come to the Thiam fandom? What about them drew you in?

ES: It’s actually really funny. When I watched the series through the first time, I was actually really loyal to the original pack, and so everyone new that came in, I just loathed. I really did not like Liam’s character at all, and I found his relationship with Hayden boring. Then Theo came in and was threatening Scott, and Stiles, and I literally just rolled my eyes every time he was on the screen.

Then, literally out of nowhere, 6b arrives and I was watching episode 14 I think and I was messaging Ashlee as I always did while watching, when she made a comment about the two of them. I frowned and was like, nope, no way, that’s fucked up. Then in 15, she was like, no really, these two are actually really growing on me. It wasn’t until 16 and I watched triggers that I paused and it hit me like a tonne of bricks. I fucking shipped it. Like I fell hook, line and sinker for them. Their dynamic, the snark, the punching, their words saying one thing, but then just always having each other’s back, I adore them together!

AJP: I think it could even have been later mate! We literally whined so much about all the filler! (How wrong we were!!) And then I think it was like maybe 17 when I was like hey- Thiam? And you were still like no. And then 19 and 20 happened and then we were dead! Haha we were literally screaming at the TV during the elevator scene for them to kiss.

ES: I seriously can’t believe we ever thought those episodes were filler. Now I watch back and I adore both of them and every single scene they’re in, but it very much was a last minute thing.

Do you write novels or short stories about original characters, as well? If so, share one you’re particularly passionate about.  

ES: I have a fantasy novel that I have been writing off and on for many years now that I hope to eventually publish. I’m from Australia and I live out in the country, so I really want to write something set in the area where I live and explore how magic exists in this beautiful region along the Murray River.

Also, Ashlee and I have also joked many times that we are going to quit our jobs and write gay porn for a living, so there’s that.

What would you say your writing Kryptonite is? How do you fight it?

ES: Oh my god, my writing Kryptonite is switching between past and present tense. I do it all the freaking time. I literally have to go back and carefully check everything I write because I just do it without thinking.

Characters often find themselves in situations they aren’t sure they can get themselves out of. When was the last time you found yourself in situation like that and what did you do?

ES: This is a hard question to answer. I’m not the sort of person who does things that I don’t want to. I’m very independent and I don’t cave to peer pressure. Ashlee could tell you how stubborn I am. If there is something that I’m not comfortable with, or simply not interested in, I just won’t get involved. I mean, sometimes there is no choice, like if it is something at work, and I’ll suck it up, but otherwise, it’s not common for me. 

My advice if someone was in this sort of situation would be to take a step back and assess what they’re happy and comfortable with and try and find a happy medium, and if it is just not possible, walk away for your own wellbeing. Look after yourself!

Finally, what’s next for you?

Well, I just bought a house, so there’s that. I will be doing that up and moving in and all of that fun stuff. I’ve also been contemplating learning an instrument, possibly the drums.

When it comes to my writing, I want to keep pushing myself to write longer things and keep getting better, because I would really love to be an actual author and publish my work.

Aww, congrats on your house! That’s pretty big! Thanks for sharing <3

Ashlee, your turn! Let’s start off with you telling us about yourself.  The word count should be equal to or less than your age and try the same for Alicia. 

AJP: Peachy keen and generally delightful, but salty at the core. I dabble in art and don’t deal with my anxiety well. I don’t have volume control.

[About Alicia] My soul mate- literally puts up with me cuddling her. Better speller and faster reader- she is the keeper of my secrets. She keeps me sane.

ES: Thought of another one [about Ashlee]: Menace to society. Gets slutty when she drinks pink wine. Gropes me during our sleepovers. 20% gay but it changes every time she touches my boobs. Hahahahah >:D

AJP:  Yeahhhh that is all true…

Hahaha and if you could build the ultimate paintball/laser tag team from any five characters on Teen Wolf, who would they be and why?

AJP: Alicia will tell you I am a seriously competitive person- I always play to win. Obviously Alison and Parrish because they are trained (and Ryan Kelley’s abs give me life.) Derek got training when he was depowered- so he can be on the team. Jackson- because the snark and the tail, and Theo because he would be ruthless.

ES: She’s not joking about being competitive guys. Like she would stab someone to win. She often fights with our other friend Sarah because they’re as competitive as each other. I’m always the mediator!

If both of your team squared off, it’d be one hilarious blood-bath. Also, it’s so fitting that Theo would be a double-agent. How did you come to the Thiam fandom? What about them drew you in? 

AJP: As I snuck into Alicia’s answers, I noticed it first - maybe around episode 17. I had been digging Liam for a while I think- I liked the longer hair on him. I think I messaged Alicia and was like ‘Liam and Theo?’ And she was like ‘Ew, no.’  I think there were like 15 stories on Ao3 at this point. And then by the finale Alicia was like ‘Yes please.’

Do you also write novels or short stories about original characters? If so, share one you’re particularly passionate about.  

AJP: Not really- I paint a bit and have done some sculpture in the past, I’ve always been better at that than writing. I have a few stories rolling around but have never done much in the way of writing original stuff. My family is a little bit hilarious- I’d love to do something with that.

And, your writing Kryptonite? How do you fight it?

AJP:  Re-writing canon bores me. So I tend to lose interest there. Sometimes Alicia has to bribe me with things in order to get something finished.

Characters often find themselves in situations they aren’t sure they can get themselves out of. When was the last time you found yourself in situation like that and what did you do?

AJP: I am very lucky to have an awesome friendship circle where we can work through situations. Like the kind of friends who drop what they are doing to come to your house with wine and help you plot your next move. 

My boyfriend is also a huge help most of the time. He doesn’t always get things I do- but he generally goes with the flow. When I was really upset aboutSomething that happened at work- and he happened to be going away for a few days- he reached out to Alicia to make sure I wouldn’t be alone. He’s a good egg.

I said before I don’t deal with my anxiety very well. I’ve been on medication before but it didn’t work for me- I didn’t like who I was on it and I was a uni student at the time with limited funds. Art and writing help- my mum has always said I’m a much more grounded person when I have something to work on. 

I’m also an amazing cook. 

So to answer the question- I distract myself- with friends, family, art, writing, food, and then just keep on going.

And last but certainly not least, what’s next for you?

AJP: Well it’s nearly summer holidays so that means I’ll be sitting in my blow up pool having a wine reading some fanfiction. Last summer Alicia and I had an obsession with reading Bodice Rippers set in the highlands of Scotland (think awesome pun titles like ‘Kill or be Kilt’). And then after that I am starting a new job at a different school which is scary but exciting. 

ES: (And yes, I am fucking devastated.)

AJP: I’ve also been reading a lot of Sterek lately- so maybe I’ll give that a crack at some point!

There you have it–Ashlee and Alicia. And lucky for us, there’s more to come! While these two write separately, they have recently began collaborating on one story, so we discovered more about them as a pairing too. 

How did you two meet? Start writing together? 

ES: We have known each other for two years as we have been working at the same high school. How we actually became friends is another story. I think I’ll leave that one to Ashlee!

AJP:  So I had literally been working at the school for maybe 2 weeks max, and Alicia and I were sharing a desk separated by a desktop computer. I was running late to my lesson and went to grab my laptop cord ACCIDENTALLY pulling out the power point of the computer Alicia was working on.

Obviously, I apologised and offered to help her retype everything and she just sighed and said ‘it’s fine.’ I was convinced she hated me but I gradually wore her down.

And then we realised we were in so many of the same fandoms and had so many of the same ships and now we are practically the same person. It was actually so amazing to meet someone in real life who had so many of the same interests.

ES: I have to say that I was very overwhelmed initially by how happy Ashlee is. I think I said to Sarah something along the lines of ‘she’s just so fucking cheerful, like all the time’ which is so not who I am as a person. But I think that once I realised that this was just a mask that hid the snarky bitch underneath, I fell in love. We’re pretty much inseparable now. Squad goals, as our students say all the time :P

AJP: there was this pic on Tumblr a couple weeks ago and it was ‘peachy keen, Nectarine reluctant’ and that sums us up 100%.

ES: And the writing together started recently. We had been helping each other and running ideas past each other for our stories and had been considering a collab for awhile. This story just caught both of us and we really wanted to write it, so we figured that the time was now!

If someone were to write the following headcanons about you two as writers/friends, what would they say:

Headcanon 1— Who’d be the first to bawl while writing an emotional scene

ES: Me, for sure. I have been crying at the drop of a hat recently (partially because stress but mostly because Thiam). I am also far more likely to write angst than Ashlee!

AJP: 100% agree- she literally cries all the time- I’m getting used to it! Haha I’ve actually seen her cry over new pictures of Cody Christian.

ES: Can you even blame me? He is perfection. And it’s mostly when I laugh though. It’s not my fault you’re so funny, Ashlee!

AJP: It’s true- I am hilarious.

Headcanon 2 — Who’d be more likely to send the other something random in the middle of the night without context.

ES: Hah, Ashlee.

AJP: What even is context? Haha we have a code for ‘super secret best friend chats’ that we don’t talk about in public. It’s usually something that is wayyyy to much info or that I have been drinking Rose’….

Headcanon 3 — If you were both at a party, who’d be the center of the party and who’d be in the corner with a book?

ES: Ashlee would be the centre of the party for sure. I wouldn’t be reading a book, but I would be hanging back and observing, probably taking snapchats and uploading them to my story for the debriefing the next morning.

AJP: there is also a good chance I would be asleep in the corner… I have been known to just lie down in public…

ES: Actually, yeah, good point! Getting Ashlee out somewhere is literally a fucking nightmare. She hates planning things, so you have to spring plans on her and pray that she isn’t already in her pj’s. Generally, once she’s out she’s fine and happy, but she’s a little homebody! I love going out and dancing (I’d like to meet a guy this fucking century after all) but nope, not Ash!

AJP: literally- if you give me too much time between making plans and going out I will find a way to get out of it- or if you wait too late and I have committed myself to my bath and PJs… then there is no chance.  Alicia has discovered she can distract me by playing her tinder- (read her tinder story- I’m Mason!!!) and that keeps me occupied and happy!

What’s your writing process like together? How do you both work on a story or chapter? (I.e. alternate povs, write the chapter together, etc.) In what ways is it different than writing separately? 

ES: We have a google doc that we can both edit. We discuss our ideas and plot out the story together and then we generally dibs scenes that we want to write. I wrote a lot of the start of the story, because as you guys have probably noticed, I write like a demon possessed. Ashlee adds in a lot of the funny little one-liners. She has been writing a lot more recently, the chapter between 6a and 6b is hers. Ash is a lot more inspired with how we are diverging from canon, whereas I have written a lot of the stuff that complies with it. I’m the main editor, because Ashlee’s computer hates google docs, and I try and get our writing styles to flow together so that it isn’t too disconnected. It’s not really that different from writing separately, because we are best friends and so we naturally bounce ideas off of each other anyway. We’re actually really excited for you guys to see where we’re taking this story!

AJP: We watch shows and message each other all time- and have been known to have sleepovers where we literally sit on the couch and watch TW and not really speak. So writing together has been really natural- we balance each other out a lot. We planned out the story and I remember just sitting and watching as Alicia pumped out like 5 chapters in practically one night trying to work out where to jump in!

Like I said I find re-writing canon stumps me. 6a I offered lots of ideas and added in some one liners (the sparkle- as Alicia calls it) I really got into the writing with the in between chapter and a fair bit in 6b- I’ve been loving the pack dynamic we are building (especially between Scott and his two bitten betas!) The scene after Hayden leaves and Liam is in his blanket burrito and the pack all comes in and lies with him is one of my favourite things I have written! The original outline for the chapter was really light and funny and I found myself breaking my own heart writing it (Alicia’s love of angst is wearing off on me!)

And, let’s chat about your story, Red. First, for anyone unfamiliar, give us a quick synopsis.  

ES: Theo returns from hell but has lost all of his powers, including his chimera status, making him completely human. He also has a red string of fate wrapped around his left wrist, connecting him to Liam, the one who brought him back. When Malia attacks him, she nearly kills him, and Liam and Lydia step in, all but forcing Scott to bite him and make him a werewolf. Making Theo pack, and the growing connection between him and Liam, changes the whole outcome of season 6.

AJP: pretty much sums it up. I was going to say ‘Theo was dead- but then gets better.’

What struck the idea to write it?

ES: This is just an idea that we had brewing for awhile that merged with other ideas and then became the Red that you guys are now familiar with. I think originally it was just a red string of fate, and we talked about how funny it would be to have it be this tangible thing that no one else could see apart from Theo, and it would make him trip and fall over all the time, and then he would use it to do the same to others, especially Hayden, and it just sort of evolved from there.

AJP: yeah I think originally I came up with it for a one shot- I love a trope! and then I never did anything with it- but we kept talking about it and coming up with awesome ideas- we would literally be crying we would be laughing so hard. So when we decided to write a multi chapter collab, it seemed like a natural fit.

Can you give any spoilers for things to come in the next few chapters?

ES: Hmmm, a spoiler? Theo has a pretty big fight with Scott, resulting in him leaving Scott’s house and sleeping in his truck. I’m sure you can guess what happens next…

AJP: Liam’s bed is both soft and hard. Like a dick. Theo doesn’t want to sleep in the dick bed. (This was an actual conversation from 3 o’clock Saturday morning about Alicia’s actual bed) lol

ES: That is in the far off, misty future (AKA Ashlee’s favourite part of Red)

AJP: Any time we come up with an awesome idea- and don’t know where it fits yet- we put it on the last page of the document and it is my favourite part.

*Warning: Sexual Content Next*

Finally, we wanted to ask about sex scenes because you both seem comfortable writing explicit content and do it well. What advice would you offer any writers who want to strengthen their ability to write sexual/sensual moments? How do you each personally increase tension? How do you avoid the dreaded cringe-worthy scenes everyone has come to know?

ES: Ok, I’m not gonna lie, we watch gay porn. It’s all research guys! Sometimes having that visual is all I need when I am really stuck on a scene. The tension definitely comes from the emotion. You can’t describe the physical actions, but also not look at the emotion behind it. It really helps when writing scenes about sex. As humans, we rarely have sex with some random stranger just for the hell of it. There’s normally some form of attraction or attachment to that other person that we want to express with our bodies. When it comes to writing Theo and Liam, they are literally each other’s anchors, so it’s so easy to write intimate scenes between them because they are already so connected. As for how I void the cringiness, I think that being older helps. I’ve been in a few relationships and I’ve had good sex and bad sex and I have a pretty good idea of what makes someone feel good. For someone without that experience, it would be difficult to write that, which is understandable! I write smut because I like sex and I like exploring the reasons and motivations behind these characters having sex with each other. And, let’s be honest, it’s just fucking hot.

AJP: Sooooo much gay porn. Like I have specific videos I would keep open for specific stories. Haha.

I am a big believer in really fun, light sex. So I tend to write it with a lot of laughter - and after a couple glasses of wine!!

I’d agree that being a bit older and a bit wiser helps. I’ve been in my relationship for 8 years (since I was 18) and I’ve done a lot of growing as a sexual being in that time. Things that I’m into now - there is no way in hell I would have been into as a 18 year old. There is no rush and no point in doing something if it doesn’t feel good. I think both of us have been really surprised by things we have been into since starting writing for Thiam (Alicia- I know you have!)

ES: Yep!!!!!

AJP: …but we just go with it and explore it in our writing and that is fun.

Alicia will tell you I’m probably a borderline (ES: Borderline? HAH!) sex pest (my BF will agree) so some of what I write comes from experience - there is one scene in one of my stories I wrote and said something about ‘extensive research’ which is 100% me- I am always 100% sure before I do something.

My advice for anyone who wants to learn to write smut is to honestly watch porn- read it too (we read a really awesome Ebook called ‘The Back Passage’ by James Lear that was sooooo freaking hot!!). 

Work out what you are into and explore that. The writing will come- it does get easier!!! I agree with Alicia - I write porn because I like sex- it’s not something that I try to force - if it doesn’t work- it doesn’t work. Sometimes I come back to things- others I change the story. And boys kissing boys is fucking hot.

That’s all for us! Any final thoughts, words, comments?

ES: We just want to say thank you to the staff at officalthiamlibrary for interviewing us and a HUGE thank you to everyone who is reading and enjoying our stories. I absolutely love interacting with you guys, like your comments literally give me life. We got our first piece of fanart for Red just before and we are literally giddy with joy. At the end of the day, we write because we love it, and because we love Thiam, but it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without you guys! I love each and every one of you! <3

AJP: Agreed! We do this because it’s fun- it’s a creative outlet that helps us sort out our lives. I’m sorry I’m not always the most active writer in the comments- but I do appreciate every single comment and kudos. Seeing that someone took time to make a piece of art based on something that I wrote actually has made me so amazingly happy. We love you all!!! XXX

And with that, Behind the Screens presents Alicia and Ashlee to you! Don’t let the conversation stop there. You can respond to any of their answers, ask more questions, or simply strike a conversation with them. They welcome anyone who’d like to talk! And to dive into their works, check out their AO3, FFN, and Tumblrs listed below. 

Tumblr: @extrasteps | @ashleejohannah

AO3: ExtraSteps | AJP_37

FFN: ExtraSteps

Ask Box:  ExtraSteps | AshleeJohannah

We wanted to give a huge, huge thanks to them for not only entertaining our questions, but for really letting us in on their lives as writers and individuals!! 

If you fan over a Thiam writer, artist, music mixologist, or a video-making mastermind and want to know more about them, send us usernames at any time. Also, feel free to add questions you’re dying to ask them. And, if you, as an artist, would like to be a part of Behind the Screens series, we’d love to get to know you, as well. 

Until next time!

[errolcandelaria]

2018

          Another year has passed. That’s another three hundred sixty-five and one fourth days, eight thousand six hundred seventy hours, five hundred twenty-five thousand and six hundred minutes, and thirty-one million plus seconds. That was a lot of numbers. I don’t know about you, but this year has been a ride!! I really went out of my comfort zone, I have met amazing people, made more friends, experienced a few firsts, released a pint of tears and at last, made a decision that I think would change my life forever.

          Let me break it down. January was good. I started the year with cough and colds, alone in my room taking videos of myself and the fireworks that can be clearly seen right on my window pane. This was also the month ~ I think~ when I made up my mind that I really want to pursue medicine. This was the month when I fell in love with all the hospital works. That I had envisioned all the times that I’ve been in a hospital, trying to remember the smell of alcohol drenched cotton balls; the hallways, the rush in the emergency room, everything. I never knew I loved those things until last 2016, when I started watching this surgical TV show that I am now obsessed with.

          February was okay. Like the usual, I hated my birthday. It’s eerie that I feel like there really is something in my birthday that I don’t quite feel like it’s worth celebrating for. I am not worthy of their time, money and efforts. There were also lots of questions that roamed my mind. To whether tell my parents about my plans or not; is medicine really for me; will they support me with my decision; and WILL I SURVIVE IF EVER I GOT INTO MEDICAL SCHOOL. There were days that I am adamant about my decision, that I tell myself ~ Of course I can do it!! And there were also weeks where I get discouraged, and the fear of making bad decisions really gripped my body tight.

          March, hmm. I couldn’t quite remember the events that had happened this month. But I am pretty sure this was the month that I went full on crazy about someone in our college. I really want to know that person’s name, but I had to go incognito because everything will be messed up if that person knew.

          April. CSSP NIGHT!!! LIT LIT LIT LIT!!! This was one of the happiest night of my life. Played bingo for the first time, got to see my crush perform on stage for the first time, AND ACTUALLY KNOWING THY NAME!!! Added on facebook, then got accepted the next day. O diba. I don’t remember that much events in this month. I am pretty sure I was still in the phase of constant dilemma about the decision I made for my future.

          May. The semester is almost over!! But say no more, I still had an internship over the summer.

          June. INTERNSHIP WOOOOH!! Lit lit lit rin. Pero hindi capital letters kasi muntik na ko magkaroon ng mental breakdown. Why? Internship. I never had a hardtime naman looking for a company to train to unlike some of my classmates pero the ~pressure? That’s what held me back talaga. I think? Culture shock siguro is the best term to describe what I felt. Ano ba. I was just a normal student tapos I get to be an intern in a huge BPO company tapos I had to talk to potential employees pa. IN PURE ENGLISH!! Syempre na shookt ako. Tapos I got assigned in a station right next to our boss pa!! Imagine the pressure. But she was really nice. She’s funny, approachable and all. Pero still nu, I couldn’t help but get intimidated by her presence. I lost track din on how many times I got scolded for doing the call outs wrong. I got the feeling that my supervisor has this impulse deep down to strangle me with the cord of the telephone I use. But in all, I still got to finish it. I finished it without even noticing I was almost done. Days passed by like hours. Literal. 10 hours a day ba naman ang oras na nababawas sa 240 hours ko eh. But seriously, I didn’t even notice that I was almost done with it. I met amazing people there, I got to talk with real people looking for jobs, interact with people older and far superior than me, which was my greatest fear!! Talk about getting out of your comfort zone huh.

          July. This was the month when I finished my internship. Actually, it wasn’t easy coming back to your old shit. I missed waking up way early to catch the 6:30 am UV so I would arrive at work at exactly 7:45. Separation anxiety? No. I just miss the ambiance. The faces of the people that I get to interact with daily, the cold work room that would chill you right to your bones, and yung pag kain ko ng Richeese every after lunch. WOOH!

          August. Back to bizz. FIRST SEM. 4TH YEAR. I’M OFFICIALLY A GRADUATING STUDENT!!! What’s with the enthusiasm? Boy doesn’t even know what’s about to come at him. If there’s this saying na life throws you lemons, and you would just make lemonades out of it, oh boy. Life threw me pineapples, sea urchins, a school bus and a nuclear bomb. Which I don’t know how to deal with, cause HOW DO YOU EVEN COOK A SEA URCHIN? August was one of the months of this year that made me cry. Not even because of a heartbreak, nor a typical teenager shortcoming, but because of the terrorizing spirit that lies within the subject that is research I. Starting from the day that our professor had assigned us to do an individual research proposal, all of us knew that it will be the beginning of the tormenting last first semester in our college lives.

          September. Wake me up when September ends. Cause there was no relevant thing that I could remember happened this month. Again, I am pretty sure that I was still rehearsing the words that I would tell my parents about my plans after graduation. Still uncertain on what’s gonna come next.

          October. We were assigned to our respective thesis groups. This was also the month that we submitted the first draft of our real thesis proposal. Mind you, we almost got rejected. Title lang tiningnan nung prof naming bes. This was when the inside joke ‘bibili na naming ng condensed milk si prof para di na sya ma-bother sa proposal naming evaporada’. Beh. This was my busiest month this year. Revisions here and there, almost everyday we were in school since we refused to have another overnight cause we accomplish nothing when we are in an air-conditioned room. The impetus of the warm and cozy bed was really inviting and irresistible. So ayun, we were in the school almost everyday.

          November. Thesis proposal defense!!! Holy shit. We had an overnight to rehearse everything we have to say the day before the defense. I was so nervous, but my group mates were just chilling. Literally. Kasi nga ang lamig sa kwarto. I don’t know but I have this thing that I always overcomplicate things. Things that can be handled by a five-year old child I tend to make it seem like the apocalypse is about to happen. I have always had an anxiety in speaking in front of the class, so imagine my nervousness about this one cause I have to present a proposal in front of three intimidating research gods. And then the day of the defense came, WE PASSED!! I couldn’t forget the awkward shriek I did when the assigned panel to our group delivered the good (?) news to us, in his timid, kinda shy low voice. All the stress, the fear, the anxiety I have that day flew away as he uttered the words “Eheh, uhm. Pumasa kayo…. Pero with major revisions”. Boy I didn’t even hear everything the panel said after those words. Buti na lang our mentor recorded everything, cause if not, mangangapa kami and mamatay sa kakaalala kung ano ano yung mga suggestions na binigay nila.

          December. Ahhh. The final month of the year!! Was there something relevant that happened this month? YES!!! LIT LIT LIT LIT ULIT!! Our section had THE most extreme, wildest, and craziest after-defense slash victory party slash walwal party ever!!! What a wonderful way to welcome the last month of twenty seventeen! I also met a new friend, a twitter friend from our college. Haha. Ooh. I also decided to tell my parents about my plans. Imagine my fear, anxiety, fear of rejection, lahat na pota!! Aaaaand. It didn’t go well. They did not approve. But anyway, I still want to prove myself that I got what it takes to be a good physician, so I have decided that even though I am not certain that I will go to med school right after graduation, I would still review for the NMAT and take it this coming March or April. Diba. Because, sabi nga sa bible, for the Lord has plans for all of us. Plans that will prosper us and not to harm us, plans that will give us hope and future. Honestly those are the words that give me hope. That I could still be something I want to be despite the fear, the people that hold me back, and the discouragement I get from my own environment. I can do it naman diba?

          I think the word that encapsulates the events that took place this year is uncertainty. For me at least. It is what I feared the most. Afraid of what will happen next. Maybe it is the utmost reason why I missed a lot of chances to – prove myself, to show off what I got in my jacket pocket, what I can offer, and to improve the things here I am good at. 

I have had a lot of shortcomings this year. The tears that I let out were way fewer than last year, but the tears from this year came from a deeper source. Maybe because I already decided what I want to do until I die, but the people around tell me otherwise. I felt like my dream was invalidated. Trashed. Thrown away. Just because the dream is a 24-karat gold and I only have a couple of gravel and sand. And it cuts even deeper and the wounds won’t heal in an instant.

I’m a fond believer of that famous saying that’s about crossing a bridge when you arrived there, but what if there are even no roads, or pathways or pavements that will lead you to that bridge? You haven’t even reached the bridge yet, but you have already been stopped because the enforcers told you the roads are closed. I could handle everything life throws at me. I made a ridiculous stewed sea urchin, I put the pineapples on my pizza, I defused the nuclear bomb and used it as a decoration in my room, kasi nga I cross the bridge when I get there. I deal with what’s in front of me. Pero how could you deal with something, if along the way, the people around you have already poked a hole in your tires? That even though they believe in you, unconsciously they are telling you that ~no, you won’t do it cause we won’t allow you. It will just fuel your fear kasi you will never know what’s on the other side. You cannot cross the bridge because you won’t even get there. The fear of uncertainty will eat you alive, chew you and spit you out to where you started. And I don’t want to be that person who grieves, and regrets his life decisions after a couple of years because he patterned it out from what the people around him pressured him to do. I want to dictate my future, but there are just inevitable circumstances that make it hard to do so, and it makes me real sad. I thought this year will be different. I had high hopes with it, but it just let me down. They let me down.

But I will still continue striving. This time, I will have enough courage, and bravery to stand up for the choices I make. I will never let any opportunity slip through my hands like water. I will face this year in my warrior suit, equipped with the disappointments, discouragements, fears, heartbreaks, anxieties, regrets, and problems the past year had thrown at me, that I have successfully overcome.

I can already feel that this year will be tiring, productive, troublesome, hard, insane, bountiful, delightful, pleasing, satisfying, wild, I can list a couple more adjectives but in all, I will sum it up with just a word stressful. But hey, being stressed means that you are actually doing something. I expect a lot of disappointments and heartbreaks to come this year, but deep down, a spark of hope still shines. I have the right to be a pessimist, cause hello, 2017??? But it does not mean I will be for the rest of the year.

I’m on my *crossed fingers* final year in college, so that means I will be graduating this year. That alone is one hell of an event to look forward to. Alongside that, my medical journey will also be put on trial this year 🤣. My fate to becoming a medical doctor will be decided hopefully before I graduate from college. But again in crossed fingers, I really hope that whoever is to decide, I want the decision to be in my favor cause not only it will trace my future, it will also reveal how tough, matured, brave and steadfast I have become. These are just two of what I think be the highlights of this year. Here’s to a handful more of new experiences!! Cheers. 🥂

May 2018 be my year.

Seriously. Cause 2018 is Year of the Dog, and I’m a big big huge enormous fan of dogs. so can this year be my year?

[fourteenacross]

I NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT THE SHARING A BED STORY. I NEED ALL THE BACKGROUND ON THAT ALEXANDER AND lAURENS. pLEASE SHARE.

Haha, thanks, buddy! :D

I don’t plan on expanding that rn as my docket is currently ghosthunters shitty summer, fem4ham, ghosthunters fall term, ghosthunters mirrors, so here’s what was going on in my head while I was working on that.

(as a refresher, here’s the original ficlet)

So, John and Alex grew up together, at least for the bulk of their adolescence. Something something Alex came to the US as a child and ended up in South Carolina, I guess, and they met and became instantly inseparable. There were probably a lot of sleepovers contingent on whose parents were annoying them at the moment, lots of exploring and secrets and crushes and finally, maybe their sophomore year of high school, they started dating.

This John’s depression and anxiety are a little amped up from how I read him historically and how I write him in ghosthunters (…for the most part. Uh. To be continued, there.), but he’s more or less coping, sometimes much less, and Alex has made it His Job to be there constantly, whenever John needs him, to do whatever it takes to de-escalate him, an unfortunate symptom of Alex’s own issues. His problems stay kind of below his father’s and teachers’ radar because a) when he goes on an anxiety spiral, unlike every other aspect of his life, instead of lashing out in anger, he turns his pain inward and gets quiet and hurts himself (minorly. Not so much self-harm as looking down after a panic attack and realizing that he was trying so hard to be quiet that he chewed his nails down to the quick or stabbed his nails into his palms hard enough to draw blood or picked a scab open or, not infrequently, yanked his hair so hard that his scalp is red and throbbing and he tore some out) and b) John is ashamed and goes out of his way to cover it up and Alex believes that He Can Handle Everything, so he sort of facilitates that.

Anyway, they do dumb high school sweetheart shit, they go to dances, they lose their virginity, they have huge fights and tearful make-ups, they talk about the future, etc. When the time comes, they both apply to a bunch of different colleges and promise that neither of them will throw their future away for the other. If they both get into the same place, great, but if not, they can handle long distance. Alex secretly fears that John won’t be able to handle long distance, but it doesn’t matter because they both get into Columbia and Alex gets enough financial aid that he doesn’t have to worry about going into debt for the rest of his life.

And John is sure that things will get better in New York, away from his hometown and expectations and terrible memories of things in his past. Alex is, again, doubtful, but he hopes as much as well. And, tragically, Alex is the one who’s right in this case. The stress of trying so hard to leave his anxiety behind just makes him more anxious. He’s overwhelmed and depressed and doesn’t know what to do or how to be a person and eventually Alex gets a call at three o’clock in the morning and it’s John, sounding drunk, saying, “Alex, I did something stupid” and then dropping the phone. And Alex gets the pleasure of running to John’s room and making the RA unlock the door and discovering that John drank quite a bit of vodka and chased it with all of his ativan.

So John–unconscious–and Alex–hysterical–are transported to the hospital, where John’s stomach is pumped and his system is flushed and all that good stuff. Someone at the hospital calls John’s dad when Alex discovers he’s shaking too much to use the phone and, thank god, he’s listed as John’s emergency contact, so at least he gets updates from the doctors as he waits to see how John’s doing.

The long and short of it is that they have John admitted for a mandatory psych eval and, though at first he’s insistent that he’s not crazy and he should be allowed to leave, by about twenty-four hours into his seventy-two hour stay he starts to realize how messed up he’s let himself become, so he agrees to be admitted for a slightly longer stay.

It ends up being a few weeks, I think, and Alex visits him religiously,  every single chance he’s able. His dad stays in New York for the length of his admission and he starts to put his life back together and begins the search for more helpful medication and starts therapy for the first time and mostly just has a few weeks when the world stops. Which is all he’s wanted for years and years, since his mother and brother died. A few days when everything just stops and he has time to breathe and think and make decisions.

Alex comes up a lot in his therapy, obviously, and one of the things that’s been making him extra anxious is his desire to please Alex, his desperation to be good enough for him, to be someone he deserves. And no matter how many times Alex tells him he has nothing to live up to, he’s perfect the way he is, it’s something that John struggles with. So his therapist suggests that maybe he and Alex should take a little break so John can focus on being good for himself instead of being good for his boyfriend. And it is the last fucking thing that John wants to do, but it makes sense. And, in family therapy, Alex very earnestly tells John that John is his best friend and he will always be there for him, and if he needs some time to himself to get his shit together, Alex understands. Just because they’re not together doesn’t mean Alex is going anywhere.

Which kind of seals it for John. He likes the idea of being able to spend a few weeks breathing and existing without losing Alex’s emotional support. As long as he still has Alex as a friend, he’ll be okay.

And it’s just a few weeks to start, but by then the new semester is starting and John is severely behind due to his leave of absence the year before, so he needs more time to focus on that. He figures they’ll stay apart as long as it takes him to catch up on classes. But then spring semester ends and John’s got a summer class to make up a class he had to drop in the fall and Alex has a job and he doesn’t want to distract either of them. And then it’s fall and John starts to backslide, so he takes more time and then, before he knows it, it’s spring of their sophomore year and Alex is awkwardly asking him if it would be okay if he went on a couple dates with someone else.

“Just, like, messing around,” Alex says quickly. “Not–just until you’re ready. I love you. But I want you to be ready and I don’t want to rush you and–nevermind, this was stupid, I can’t believe I asked–”

“No,” John says quietly. “No, that’s…that’s a good idea. I think you should do it.”

It’s feels like the hardest and worst thing John’s ever had to do, even though he knows, objectively, that’s not true. But he doesn’t know when he’ll be ready for a relationship again and he doesn’t want Alex to wait forever. That will just brew resentment, eventually, and he wants Alex to be happy. If that means he’s gonna go out and fuck some other guy…then so be it.

Alex is simultaneously surprised, relieved, and disappointed. He didn’t expect John to give him a straight answer and certainly not immediately. And he’s interested in a guy and kind of wants to explore the world outside of his relationship with John before they settle down forever. He’s only ever been with one other person–John hasn’t been with anyone outside of Alex. But at the same time, it feels like something is ending. Part of him had hoped that John would say, You know what, let’s try being a real couple again, and that they’d pick up where they left off and everything would be okay again. And things are good now–he still has John in all the important ways, John is still his world, but there’s a part of him that misses kissing him and being kissed and touching him and the fragile intimacy of having sex with someone he loves so wholly.

But John has to move at his own pace. So Alex asks out this guy and John hates him. He pretends, for Alex’s sake, to tolerate him, but he thinks he’s vain and selfish and stupid and not nearly as hot as Alex thinks he is. He knows that most of the reason he hates him so much is because he’s kissing Alex and John isn’t, but he figures as long as he doesn’t say any of that to his or Alex’s face, he’s okay.

And after that guy, Alex has a couple more flings, guys and girls alike. And by the time they’re getting ready to graduate and John feels like he’s maybe ready to be Alex’s boyfriend again, Alex has been accepted to law school and John finds out he’s short a couple credits, so he has to take some summer classes and they’re just so busy. And Alex has this friends-with-benefits thing with their buddy Angelica and he actually seems like he’s taking it kind of seriously? And John doesn’t want to fuck that up, especially when Alex says, sheepishly, that he’s been invited to spend the summer with Angelica’s family. John tells him to go and have fun and, based on the pictures on social media, he totally does. And John is alone and bored in New York, trying not to be resentful of Alex’s summer with Angelica and her sisters, and there’s this cute guy in his building who keeps bumping into him in the halls and one night he’s drunk and lonely and they bump into each other and John let’s the guy take him back to his apartment.

And, two days later, he’s trying to figure out how to tell Alex that he slept with someone else when Alex calls him and starts the conversation with, “You can say no.”

John says, “What?”

And Alex says, “Um, I met this girl.”

And John says, “I thought you were there with Angelica and her sisters.”

And Alex says, “I am. Uh, it’s one of her sisters. You know me and Angelica were always just casual. But. I kind of like her sister.”

And John says, “Then you should ask her out.”

So Alex does and John waits a couple weeks and then casually says, “There’s this guy in my building who’s really hot.” 

And Alex pauses for just a second too long and then says, “Then you should ask him out.”

And John is a little sad, a little wistful at giving up his first love, but he figures that’s just the way it was supposed to be. He feels better about it when Alex comes home from the shore and is still everything he was before–John’s inseperable best friend, always there for him at a drop of a hat, eager to spend as much time together as they can manage. Alex was, before anything else, his best friend and as long as he has that, he thinks he’ll be okay.

Alex, meanwhile, panicked the moment he felt that first pull towards Eliza, sitting up around the bonfire with her, talking about everything, hours after Angelica and Peggy went to bed. He tells her all about John and she listens and nods and he realizes he wants to kiss her and realizes she’s not the kind of girl you kiss and few times and fuck for a couple weeks and then move on. When he calls John, he almost wants him to say no, but he doesn’t, so he goes ahead and asks her out.

“What about John?” she asks.

“I talked to him,” Alex admits. “And he told me to ask you out.”

“I’m not going to be a distraction while you’re waiting for him to want you again,” she warns him. “If we’re together, you’re with me. You’re not biding your time.”

“I know,” Alex says. “And I love him more than anything. And I always will. But I get to have a life too. And at this point, I don’t think we’ll ever be on the same page, so I might as well go out and make one.”

When he hears about Francis a couple weeks later, his heart freezes in his chest. He feels like he wants to throw up, which is selfish–he has Eliza, now, he doesn’t get to have a say in who John fucks. And maybe it’s just fucking. Maybe they’re not even going to date. So he sucks it up, only a second or two too long for polite conversation, and tells John to ask him out.

He drinks a lot that night and Eliza doesn’t ask why, but she does hold his hair back when he pukes the next morning and hold onto him while he cries.

And after that, life just…goes on. Alex gets caught up in law school. John gets a job as a freelance illustrator as he tries to figure out what he wants to do with his life. Alex and Eliza stay together, then break up for a few months after Alex cheats on her (and John never has to know about how she shouted, I always knew you’d do this, but I just assumed it would be John you fucked! in a moment of petty weakness that Eliza is too ashamed to mention again and Alex is too guilty to mention again, because he thinks if John asked, he would have), and then get back together. John breaks up with Francis and dates a few other guys, a couple he even thinks he might be able to love one day. John starts his own photography business and manages to do pretty well for himself. Alex graduates law school and accepts a position at his mentor’s law firm. John and Francis get back together. Alex gets offered substantially more money to move out to Philly and work in the office out there. Eliza moves with him and John’s a little surprised they haven’t gotten engaged yet, but doesn’t like to think about it too hard, though he doesn’t examine why. After six months, Eliza gets offered a job in California and, after a long conversation with Alex, decides to take it, even though Alex won’t leave his job to come with her. A few weeks after that, Francis and John have one last shouting match that ends with Francis shoving all of his stuff in John’s apartment into a garbage bag and storming out.

And then, about a month later, after the holidays, Alex calls John at two in the morning and says, I think I made as mistake.

And then, here we are.

[attiqdemos]

it’s national eating disorder awareness week, and a lot of my friends are posting about it on facebook, but i don’t want to do that bc it feels weird so here

i had disordered eating for the last 2 years of high school. it seems more severe now than it did back then, maybe because back then i thought it was normal. okay maybe not normal--i knew it wasn’t normal--but i’d hear about the girls who dropped 60 pounds and got so sick they had to be hospitalized and fed through an iv tube and i knew that was never going to be me so i thought mine wasn’t that severe. looking back on it now, i’m honestly amazed that any part of me thought what i was doing was in any way rational. 

i never wanted to say i had anorexia; i read stuff online saying you could only have anorexia if you were underweight, so i never used that word about myself. it was just a diet, or, at worst, unhealthy eating habits. i didn’t tell anyone except three of my closest friends from other schools, because i didn’t want anyone from my school to find out for fear that they’d try to stop me, or worse yet, tell my parents. one of my friends from my school noticed something was weird and she actually reached out to one of those people that i told and it was one of the scariest days of my life even though i know it was coming from a place of love.

it was worst at the beginning of my senior year. college applications and schoolwork and honor societies and extracurriculars and band and my job and everything kind of came crashing down at once, and i wanted to feel like i had control over something at least, but i guess i overdid it. i have some strangely specific memories of that time, almost like vignettes: sitting in my first period ap gov class, not paying attention, writing out on the little calendar in my planner how many calories i would eat each day and meticulously calculating how long it’d take me to drop six pounds (according to my numbers, 25 days.) recalibrating my daily calorie counter in my head each time i took a bite of something to make sure i wouldn’t go over 700. i was obsessed with myfitnesspal; i would literally measure out half a cup of granola, weigh the amount of blueberries i put on it, to make sure i was getting accurate counts. i had the same thing at lunch every day: a handful of spinach topped with either a few berries and walnuts, half of an apple and a bit of crumbled cheddar cheese, or, if i was feeling extravagant, maybe slices of boiled egg. i drank a lot of those zero calorie fizzy water ice things for energy. i can’t even smell them anymore without feeling revulsion. 

i would flip my shit over the smallest things. i’d never eat everything that was on my dinner plate; one night, i came home from work, where i’d had a leftover salad for dinner, and my mom wanted me to finish my steak from the night before. it was three bites. i knew automatically that was about 100 calories. i’d already gone over my limit and eaten 750 that day. i couldn’t fucking eat anything else. i ended up crying over a piece of goddamn steak and making up something stupid about failing a quiz in school. whenever possible, i’d throw food out sneakily, or not eat meals and then tell my parents i had. 

i was never bulimic, which i’m really thankful for. i remember the closest i ever got to making myself throw up: after my interview at barnard, my family took me out to an indian restaurant to celebrate. indian was--is--my favorite kind of food. my dad told me i had to order everything. i did. i tried it all. i ate so much that i felt sluggish. in retrospect, it was a normal sized meal for me now, but to my artificially shrunken stomach then, it was way too much to handle. i knelt on the tile next to the toilet in the single-stall bathroom staring at the toilet water like it was taunting me. i dry heaved a couple times, stood up, brushed off my tights and walked out. 

vomiting would’ve been a step too far. later on, while i was beginning to ‘recover’ (i didn’t fully get over my issues with food until this summer), i would stand over the garbage can in my kitchen, take bites of brownies my mom made, chew them up, savor the flavor, and then spit them into a paper towel and throw them out. if we ever went out to eat, i’d look at the menus online beforehand to figure out what the lowest-calorie option was. we went to cheesecake factory once; i remember being thankful they had calorie counts for all their items online, then disgusted when i saw how high those counts were, then breathing a sigh of relief when i found an appetizer-sized portion of vegetable tacos that replaced the shell with a leaf of lettuce. it was 300 calories--half of my daily total. 

the closest i ever came to telling a medical professional was during an annual checkup during my senior year. i’d plummeted from 162 lbs, my highest weight in the summer before my sophomore year, to 134. she asked my how i did it: was it exercise? was it being on my feet at my job? i couldn’t give her an answer; i just started tearing up. i’m sure somewhere on my record there’s a note about risk for an eating disorder, but that’s all it ever was: a note. 

there was no clear-cut recovery process for me. there was no one moment where i stopped and said ‘i need to fix this.’ it was kind of just gradual; i had relapses, of course, but it generally wasn’t that bad since i came to college. i did gain a ton of weight my freshman year; it fluctuated a lot because of the all-you-can-eat meal plan, which was designed to help prevent eating disorders and food related anxiety for the students at my women’s college, but ironically ended up giving me more anxiety because of the lack of autonomy i was given over my choices of what to eat. but at some point either at the end of my second semester or the beginning of the summer, i finally stopped tallying up calories in my head. 

my weight has stabilized since then. i haven’t been on a scale in a year, but last i saw, it was something around 140, which is probably where it still is. i’m fine with that. it’s weird: i’m finally the size 6 i’d always wanted to be, but i’m not even sure how i got there. i looked in the mirror this morning and realized that somewhere along the line, i’d developed the thigh gap i’d always dreamed of; weirder yet, i found out i didn’t really care that i could see light shining through a tiny gap between my legs. i bought a crop top this summer. i still have flab on my stomach. it pokes out over the top of my jeans. i don’t care, though; i like the way i look in crop tops. i still don’t own a single pair of shorts, a remnant of my battle with my most detested body part--my thighs--but maybe this summer, i’ll finally get there. 

i don’t have tips for recovery, unfortunately. i don’t even know how i did it. i just stopped caring at some point. i have better things to worry about than some arbitrary number that’s supposed to quantify my physical being. the best thing i did, i think, is that i stopped comparing myself to other people.

it still comes and goes in waves. some days i think i’m beautiful; some days i’m fixated on my acne, my fat chin, my saggy tits, the pouch of fat above my pelvis, the cellulite dimples on my thighs. there’s nothing i can do about it. the society i live in has programmed me to notice these things. the best i can do is remember that it doesn’t define me. 

[not-a-story]

outtakes from the draft of That E-mail I really need to send my project supervisor about the edits I have not made to my research project.

I need to send this e-mail. I am struggling to send this e-mail. I have been trying to send this e-mail for over a week.

-

I’m sorry I’ve been incommunicado it’s just, well you see, I’ve been unwell.

I’m forced to admit it, which I hate doing but at some point it becomes undeniable. I’m unable to focus in the grocery store so I must be crazy again.

It sneaks up on you sometimes. Everything is fine, everything is fine, oh wait, I’ve been shopping for toothpaste for over an hour and all I bought was an apple.

-

The thing is, if you write about it, if you somehow make it pretty then maybe it’s worth something.

On the other hand, it does not solve my immediate dilemma of needing to communicate it to you in a semi-professional context so I don’t ruin the life I have so tenuously reconstructed since the last time this happened.

I cling to that delusion though, that if I somehow turn my misery into something that looks like art from certain kinds of angles then maybe … it doesn’t make it worth it, because I’ve lost years. But it makes the best of it I guess.

-

I’m not lazy I'm just unwell.

(Fuck is that a matchbox 20 lyric? Maybe forget what I said about art.)

It’s true though. I’m unwell. And not in that neat, easy way, where you get sick for a while and then you get better and that's over with. 

I can be going quite well (like say, when I enrol in four university subjects and start a new full time job all at the same time) and retrospectively it's quite obvious that's maybe overreaching given the medical history but you know, that’s how it is. I’m going great. I’m doing fine. At this point, I feel like the next coming of fucking Jesus so I go ahead and do it anyway.

And then I somehow get this job, that I really had no intention of getting but for some reason I got it and I think I must actually be quite capable, adequate at least, to get a job like that and to do everything I've done but I don't feel it. I never feel it. I feel exhausted, which is probably the lupus.

It's also the mood disorder of course and being so sick of just getting everything together to knock it all over again or be knocked over again and having to start over. I claw my way out of one disaster to fall smack into another one and the thing is I never expect it. Or I do. But I cling to some kind of hope that each time, it will be different. That I am "recovered", that I am capable, that I don't ever have to do it again, drag myself out of the slump. The sine wave of my moods has a long period and diminished amplitude post-medication but it does. not. end.

Did I mention: I’m really tired?

But I mean, I guess there’s also the lupus which I forget about most of the time now since it’s summer and I’m taking more pills so the ache in my fingers is much duller and anyway, it’s hard to hear anything over all the noise in my head.

-

My parents (are doctors) keep telling me that lupus is serious.

A serious illness.

The problem is it doesn’t feel “serious” it feels like “my life” and I’m a little bit jack of being told I don’t cope with it quite as well as everyone might like.

-

(I have a major in immunobiology, I know a lot about lupus. I know it’s serious. I know that one day I might not have the luxury of no vital organ involvement so I’m choosing to enjoy it while I still can.)

-

So all in all, that’s the reason why I’ve maybe not made as much progress with my paper as we agreed I would when we met before Christmas. I promise I really am trying, but I can’t seem to hold a thought. All of this fills me with dread. I have this pesky anxiety disorder that I just can’t shake. But my whole future rests on you giving me a passing grade even though I’m not sure I can do anymore work on this.

See I’ve been holding on to this thought all year, that I have this new job that I actually want, that I’m actually sort of proud to have and I’m moving back home to my parents to take it so that means they can take care of me. I don’t have to worry about money or what happens if I get too sick to pay rent. And it’s the only thing getting me through, the thought that I get to rest, that it will all be okay if I can get over this stupid line and get to March.

And I know you’re just trying to help because I did say I wanted to study more. But that was Then and this is Now and I am tired now. I just want to wake up tomorrow. I just want to make it to March. I’m sick. I don’t have any more plans. The future doesn’t exist.

I don’t need anything more than a passing grade. But boy do I need that passing grade. I can get all the medical certificates if I need to but please, just pass me so I can stop not sleeping and feeling sick and agonising over this paper.

I’m done and bled dry and I just want to wash my hands of it. It doesn’t matter anyhow, my GPA can take the hit.

(Because maybe I am capable? Maybe my grades are even okay? Then again you’re talking to a shell of a human being; I don’t trust myself, I don’t know what’s real. Reality does not feel like a precisely defined concept in any case, just something we all muddle toward some kind of fuzzy agreement on. What is real? Maybe it depends on who you ask.)

-

When I went home for Christmas I took all my stuff back to my mum and dad’s.

Please don’t fail me; I don’t want to bring it all back.

[emilylasalle-blog]

My Story.

I guess I should start off by explaining who I am, where I come from, and the whirlwind story that is my Eating Disorder. I should also preface by saying that I have always had a negative relationship with food-- whether it be allergies, anxiety, or my Anorexia. My Eating Disorder has been present my whole life, masking itself and becoming like a chameleon-- taking the face of many different things, Eating disordesr can take the shape of any form. One doesn’t have to have Anorexia to have any “claim” to ED. Know that ED’s range from all different shapes and sizes just like body types, and yours is just as valid as the one next to you. 

Okay, now that I have got that out of the way, I guess I should start at the beginning. For me, that started the day I was born. My mother has an anxiety disorder, and my whole mother’s side of the family is coursing with paranoia, fear, and obsession-- these characteristics have formed me to become the person I am today, flaws and all. So, yeah. I was born. I was also the first child, and definitely the guinea pig, which meant I was the one catching all of the helicopter-parenting. At age three, my mother put me into my first ballet class. Single-handily the best and WORST thing to ever happen to me. Best, because it gave my love of performance and helped me to become the actress that I am today... Bad, because it was the beginning of the end for my Eating Disorder and self-loathing. Ballet is a beautiful and breath-taking art form, however... the ballet world (at least growing up), was insistent on maintaining an abnormally skinny figure. They wanted twigs and if you were anything less, you would get phrases (and I quote) shouted at you such as: “Emily, I don’t want to see that bagel you ate for lunch today...” “Suck in DAMMIT.” “Have you put on weight? I see it in your face.” “You need to be able to fit into this costume.” Yup. Real things shouted at me, while a long stick was smacked onto my stomach and thighs. Absolutely brutal and cruel to be saying things like this to such a young child in the formative years of her life. So, I spent 15 years of my life constantly comparing my body to other girls, never feeling good enough, and constantly looking in the mirror-- I mean heck they were on all sides while I was exposed in a tiny leotard and tights. 

So. Now that we know where my anxiety and OCD stems from, and why I had such negative thoughts drilled into my mind at such a young age, I’ll introduce the FIRST MASK my eating disorder took. SIDEBAR: let me be frank, I had a happy childhood, don’t get me wrong. My family loved me and fed me well, and they told me no when I craved fast food constantly. However, I didn’t have the enforcement for healthy eating that I needed. It was encouraged, but not enforced. So, my picky habits came into fruition. On top of that, I over the course of my short 10 years of life, had developed several food allergies-- deathly allergies-- to the point of having a significant number of shots a year. Food was scary. I was scared-- scared of everything in my later years of elementary school. My mom had drilled a significant number of scary thoughts in my head about food and my allergies. Don’t trust anyone, don’t eat without labels, check everything twice. It was my default state- anxiety. This is the first mask. I was scared to eat anything, even foods that I had eaten my whole life. I would ask my parents over and over again about whether or not I would have gone into anaphylactic shock already as I ate at meal-time. And I HATED meal time. I would create these psycho theories in my head about how my food could have cross contaminated in absolutely ridiculous ways. This mask was scary-- this mask could quite literally KILL me with one bite of egg, peanuts, tree nuts, coconuts, or sesame seeds. 

Which brings me to middle school, where my anxiety was peaked at an all-time high. Not only was I petrified of food due to my food allergies, but I grew (due to events in my childhood) to have an IRRATIONAL fear of vomiting. And I mean, I would go days without eating for fear that the food would somehow cause me to throw up. I would eat dinner at 2pm to make sure I was “fully digested” before going to bed. I would call my mom crying, asking to be picked up because my anxiety had spiked so high and kids were pretending to throw up and be sick around me to watch me cry, It was a sick and traumatic three years (6th-8th.) I was so utterly and insanely scared of food. I had these insane scenarios built up in my head about food being able to “come alive” inside of me and chew me from the inside out. I had theories that all food was not FDA approved, and I would ACTUALLY call the companies to double check if it had been. So, I started to see Dr. G, my therapist of 12+ years, and a special doctor to help me gain weight (as I was like 70 pounds at MOST.) DR. G focused in childhood and familial therapy, and she saved my life. I was so hyper-fearful of everything. I couldn't eat without the huge fear of the risk of death, sickness, or worst of all... vomiting. So, that's tier number three. The second masked form my ED took on. Illness. 

Which brings me to my last tier. I have grown up hating putting food into my body, for various reasons. But it wasn't until end of senior year the seed I had always had planted in my mind (ED) really began to sneak his way into my life. The first two years of high school were marvelous, I was gaining my womanhood (that's period), meeting new friends, finding my sexual awakening (thank you to the drunk guy at my first high school party for so effortlessly slipping your tongue down my throat that fateful sophomore year night), and loving my life. I ate what I wanted , danced in ballet, and didn’t give  FUCK about what other people thought about my body (which is a lie because I always wanted to be skinny and I always compared myself to others). But, as rejection from boys came, jokes about unflattering pictures of me roamed about, and the yearning to look like other people began pressing in, ED began to stick his claws into my psyche. Junior and Senior year were... well, fucking awful. I was extremely depressed, ridden with anxiety, sadness as teenagers I knew in my class died, constantly stressed, and never feeling good enough. I began committing self harm to myself. Was it for attention? Was It a cry for help? I’ll never know. But, I’d cut myself with razor blades. Never super deep, but enough to hurt and bleed. I was able to CONTROL the pain. Control. CONTROL. That is a red flag to remember here, my anxiety and OCD all stems from loving to be in control of my surroundings. I hate feeling at loss. I NEED power. And ED was my sick and twisted form of that. So, I cut myself. And I made the brilliant and amazing mistake of telling my cousin who I adore, and she then proceeded to tell my parents. So, they bust into my room at approximately 11pm on a school night, crying and yelling, demanding that I go back to therapy. THATS RIGHT, BACK. TO DR. G I WENT. And she did help, a lot. Round two, and she still didn’t want to put me on medication, she said it wasn’t good for such young kids and that she wanted me to use my own power and tools within myself to conquer my anxiety and depression. And ya know what, I did. For a while. 

Then I went to COLLEGE!!!! And oh boy, leaving a summer of romance from my high school boyfriend and entering college-- a whole new world of beer, sex, and theatre- I was a new woman. I quit ballet back in high school to focus on my musical theatre career, and I was in HEAVEN. I was cast in all the shows I wanted, I was in LOVE with a new boy at college, and I was making so many new friends. I ate whatever the HELL I wanted, because I was 18, on my own, and FREE! This meant pizza and fries at 2am, this meant buttered bagels for breakfast, microwaved mac and cheese for lunch, McDonalds after acting class, it didn’t stop. But, ED wasn’t gone... he was waiting patiently behind a nearby street corner, lurking, waiting, plotting. He had a plan, and was preparing the perfect attack. I was always his target. So, freshman fifteen happened. Maybe even 20, I don’t know. All I know is that I was at my college “dream-boats” house weighing myself, when I began to panic. ED was slinking back. The number had grown a lot since I weighed myself two semesters ago. I felt, “fat.” It was the first time I admitted to myself that that’s what I thought I was. And it was a nightmare. I was able to brush it off and push the thoughts away, I had a fun summer coming up, friends to see, etc. I managed to focus on the positives, that is... until the end of year banquet. 

When I think about what propelled me into the next three years, which also happen to be the most unhealthy and sick years of my life, I think about this very moment. The end of year banquet. I like I said, was happy and healthy (I HAVE NEVER BEEN OVERWEIGHT. EVER.). I had my senior year prom dress picked out to wear to my first year of college, end-of-year banquet! Sure, my heart was broken from my college dream-boats dumping, my lack of summer theatre jobs, etc.... rejection was written all over me, but I DIDN’T CARE. Not until the dress. I put it on, a size 2-4 dress, that I had fit into snuggly the year before, wouldn’t zip. I panicked, thinking there MUST be something wrong with the zipper... only to have my mom tell me it didn’t fit. This. This exact moment. ED took a HUGE bite out of my soul and dug his fingernails in. He was mine. I remember screaming, crying, tearing my dress up into shreds, and screaming to my mother at the top of my lungs: “I AM SO FAT. I AM AN UGLY COW. I WILL LOSE ALL THIS WEIGHT IN ANY WAY POSSIBLE, I WILL STARVE MYSELF. I WILL NEVER EAT AGAIN. I WANT TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL, I’M SO SKINNY. I’M DONE,”..... my mother was horrified. But, if there’s one thing I’ve always been, its determined. Which brings me to Tier 3. The final mask of ED. 

That summer I worked out like nobody’s business. Sweating outside in the blazing Georgia heat as I ran miles upon miles. I cut myself off from fast-food, I blocked all the asshole boys who dumped me, and I became a health fanatic. And then a friend of mine (who blames themselves, even though they shouldn’t), made the biggest mistake anyone has ever done... they introduced me to MyFitnessPal. The worst thing to ever get into my hands, and to happen to me. I slowly became obsessed with dieting. I began counting calories, comparing myself to her, treating our weight loss as a race (MIND YOU I WAS NOT FAT OR OVERWEIGHT AT ALL. I WAS 130-135 MAX AND 5.7-5.8!!!!!). She went along with it, and then slowly started to realize, that maybe I was taking it a little too seriously and a little far... she then backed out, started to become “worried” about me. Concerned that I wasn’t eating enough and dropping weight rapidly. Friends noticed, my parents noticed, but they all assumed I was just working out and eating healthier. No biggie. I dated a guy briefly at this time, and all I can remember him saying was, “you’re getting kinda skinny... build some muscle, eat protein!” Man if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that one... So, I continued to diet. I lost weight, but wasn’t deemed “unhealthy.” Just, “skinny.” They nicknamed me Chicken Legs, and... I liked it. I liked being told I was small. It fed ED, and kept him occupied. That is until three hours later when he shamed me for drinking a glass of skim milk, stuff I had been drinking for literally my whole life. So, I did what I always did. I listened to ED, and I cut out milk, cheese, butter (haven't had real butter in four years), potatos, etc. Any food that sparked “joy” I wouldn't eat. I counted my crackers, I measured my cereal, I went to bed hungry. As long as I didn't pass that 1,000 calorie goal. 

The summer after sophomore year was the worst summer of my life. My hatred of rejection mixed with my fear of loss-of control, caused me to do things to my body that  I am not proud of to this day. I was always comparing myself to other girls, checking to see if I was the skinniest girl in the room, and if I wasn’t, I let ED decide what my punishment was. I formed sick habits. I bought a scale, I bought extra small clothing as a form of forcibly maintain a bmi to match my clothing, I ate 0 calorie foods for meals, it got bad. I would weigh myself every day, so many times. Before and after using the rest-room, and I’d buy laxatives to make me shit so that I could see if my weight had gone down. The number that was “too low” continued to be pushed farther. It was scary, and the whole time my heart and soul were fighting ED so hard. It was a full on world war in my brain, fear and anger for letting myself get so unhealthy, and shame and disgust for letting myself get so fat. I wrote notes to myself on mirrors, telling me not to be weak-- to go hungry, you fat cow-- that skinny is the only way I’ll be successful. I’d push food around on my plate at group outings, I’d stuff it in my napkin, If I was starving, I would chew up food and spit it out. Just to get the sensation. I’d measure my arms and wrists with my hands, just to double check that everything fit inside my abnormally small hands. I’d wake up crying, go to bed crying, call my parents crying, because dammit--  I was so hungry, I was so sad, and I was so alone. Except for ED of course, he never left my side. He’s watching me as I write this. 

My parents came to visit me, and the skeleton that faced back at them made them cry. And guess what, BACK TO DR. G I WENT. Everyone was worried about me, and I LOVED it. My best friends mom even had a heart to heart with me about her friend dying of a heart attack because of her Anorexia (God such a daunting word.) I didn’t want to get better, I pretended I did, so that people wouldn’t think I’m gross, but rather some kind of here. Alas, I WANTED to stay 100 pounds. I wanted to stay 99 pounds. I didn't care if it would “send me to the hospital” as my doctor said, I was happy with  watching the number go down. I wanted the number at zero, because I felt like a 0. I felt like nothing. I wanted to be whisked away. My therapist says I allowed myself to get this ED because I seeked self control, she said however, that that’s the last thing I have. ED controls me. So, I took her advice, and we finally put me on anti-depressants. I looked up group-therapy, and I made a “plan” to get better. But deep down I knew I didn’t want to. I was loving the skeleton life so much. Hungry=Strong. And I was the reigning champ. But, school came back around and if there’s one thing I fear more than no control, is failure. And that’s what I was afraid would happen if I didn’t put on some weight... I would lose the leading lady role I had been dreaming about for the past year and all of summer. I didn't, but that fear was in my brain. And quote frankly, why I think Theatre LITERALLY saved my life. 

The medicine helped, theatre helped, and I became happy again. I wasn't the weeping starving skeleton I once was... I was a happy one. My therapist explained to me why it didn’t feel real, and that it very much was. She diagnosed me and that was strange... but that’s another topic. However, I started noticing certain changes on my body. Things that other people didn’t have. Like: all my clothes were too big and falling off of me, I had brittle skin, I was ALWAYS cold (still am), I was always tired and it didn't take much to make me feel weak or out of breath, I even started losing hair. These were all consequences from my anorexia. And people noticed. In negative ways. However, I FELT better, and that's all that mattered to me. I still weighed myself, I still counted calories, I still made sure that if my parents found my scale and hid it, I’d get another one. I was sneaky. And they always say that ED’s are the most clever and manipulating people. And then I was off to summer-stock in Indiana. This was a dream for me, my first professional contract!! And just when I was feeling myself go down a dark path again. This was a miracle for me, I truly thought I wouldn't get a professional contract and was fully prepared to go back down the summer-rabbit hole as I usually do, as I have way too much time to think. But, this was not the case! I packed up my bags and flew to NYC for a trip to see family, and had so much fun I didn't count calories for three days. This was a huge deal for me, and I truly started to feel better. I got to Indiana and the biggest blast began. I made so many incredible friends, who supported me and my issues, I did some awesome theatre (and some shitty theatre lol), and I met my boyfriend at the time. I was happy, I had new people in my life who watched out for me. And I stopped counting calories! I ate more protein, I was doing well. I worked out a lot and attempted to get strong. But I felt my body deteriorating. I got dizzy very easily, I got extremely sick very easily, and I couldn’t keep up my stamina for very long. I also began birth control at this time, as I was in a new relationship and preparing to be sexually active. This changed my body in many ways, which we’ll get to later on. 

However, the summer ended. I moved home, I got back into bad habits, and the comparison and “less-than” feelings returned. However, they got snatched away really fast and here’s why: I had been on my anti-depressants for over a year, and I was way overdue for a checkup at the doctors office. I hadn’t gained any weight, and they noticed my bad habits still being there-- and I hadn't seen my therapist since before I left for Indiana. They did some tests, and I was off. Then I got a call asking me to come back in. Turns out my blood cell count was irregular-- ie: my white blood cells were abnormally low and my red blood cells were enlarged. They believed this was due to vitamin deficiency. What I hadn't told them is I had been feeling heart palpitations for some time now. They drew more blood and ran more tests on me. Alas, I received another phone call telling me that I had to come back in, as my results left them clueless. So. They referred me to an Oncologist. This, was the scariest moment of my life. I had believed it had been vitamin loss, and that it was something I had done to myself-heck I literally was happy that maybe I was so skinny my vitamin levels were lacking. But nope. My boyfriend was amazing during this time, and encouraged me to continue to eat healthy and try new things to get better. During this long waiting period I ate like a normal person. I ate healthy. I stopped counting calories. I was doing better-- but not from a place of health, from a place of fear. That’s not how you heal healthily. I was scared I had cancer. I went to the oncologist’s and was tested for Leukemia. Suddenly, I didn't like feeling this thin. I didn't enjoy being breakable. I wanted to be healthy and strong. I continued with the visits to the Cancer Center. This was three of the hardest months of my life. And the scariest. I had one half of my brain telling me I was fat and needed to not eat anything, and the other half was telling me if I didn't eat, I’d get even sicker. And that I needed to gain weight, to prove I wasn't dying of Leukemia. After all of the blood tests, and the trips to one of the scariest doctors offices I’ve ever been in... we figured out:

I didn’t have cancer. But I realized how stupid I had been for the past ten years of my life. I had been given a TASTE of how scary and haunting being sick can be, and here I was destroying my own body. y healthy body, that people WISHED for. So, I stopped listening to ED, and I moved on. However, this didn't las long. Birth control changed my body. My boobs got bigger, my face filled out, and I noticed small changes. And I began to fall back into bad habits. Limiting foods, cutting calories, I went full vegan, I dumped my boyfriend so I could stop taking birth control, I stopped my medicine (as I didn't want to be mentally healthy anymore, I wanted to be sick so that I could lose weight.). Things got bad again. All the while, still having to go to an Endocrinologist. Since they realized I didn't have cancer, they did tests to realize I had given myself thyroid diseases, blood weakness, frail bones, and heart palpitations. All because I starved myself. But what did that make me? Happy. Happy to be ‘sick” and “skinny”. And that’s MASK 3. 

And here I am today, still struggling. Better, but struggling. I try not to weigh myself anymore (some days I fail, it’s human). I still count my calories, I try to find protein substitutes, but it’s constantly an uphill battle. The calories control my life. I started this journey thinking that it would give me more control, however the exact opposite happen. 

My eating disorder is a sickness. My ED and I are in an abusive relationship with myself and ED. There’s not enough space in my head for this. So here I am today, in therapy, doing everything I can to try and make sense of why I hate my body. 

My therapist says that I have been “screwed from the get go.” I was brought up in the ballet world, with a mother who constantly self deprecates, constant comparison syndrome... Instagram is hard. Life is hard. But I will continue to fight so that I can be successful. 

[ourladybedivere-blog]

Bulimia to B.E.D. - A journey

To me it makes complete and total sense, but I guess to others it doesn’t. This became so very clear to me when I was discussing having an eating disorder with a friend a last summer. She said to me “Do you still consider yourself to have an eating disorder?” The subtext being, how can you have an eating disorder?? You’re fat. 

I get it I’m not thin. But it really made me think. 

My entire life I’ve had an eating disorder, this actually just occurred to me. In my earliest memories I have had an unhealthy relationship with food. I’ve always considered myself to be fat, as long as I can remember. When I was hospitalized at age 17 and 19 for malnutrition I thought I was fat. When I look at pictures of myself from about 10 years ago I see my arms with that sickly thin look, but I remember that day and I remember thinking if I could just loose 10 more pounds I would be “ok” not “thin” but “ok.” Whatever it is that “ok” means, I don’t think I really had any idea what this dream of “ok” I was seeking was then. Either way “ok” means something different now, something healthier. 

So like I said I’ve always thought I was fat even when I wasn’t. It started pretty early, elementary school I would say in 3rd or 4th grade. I developed faster than a lot (actually all) of the girls in my very small school. I had big ole titties by age 10, as well as womanly hips and I was nearly my full grown height of 5′7″ at that age as well. I was teased and of course it hurt, I was very susceptible to this type of teasing due to events in my early childhood I may discuss at some point but not now because it isn’t the point. Just believe me when I say some people are more susceptible than others. The idea that something was WRONG with my body was cemented in very early. 

By the time I got to middle school anorexia and bulimia where starting to get a lot of news coverage. I heard about bulimia and instead of recognizing it for the sickness that it was it seemed like just the thing to help me finally fix my body. I couldn’t make myself stop needing food to live, buy I could eat and purge it right out. At first it was hard, I would put my fingers down my throat to bring on a gag and a heave, but eventually it was like I conditioned my mind that this is simply what is done after eating. I could simply think gross thoughts and boom express upchuck. I lived on a farm miles from other people in all directions. I would take long walks in the evening and void myself away from home so no one would notice. I could usually manage most of the school day without eating at all so that wasn’t much of an issue, but if I felt the need to evacuate I would simply wait in the bathroom until it was empty. I was often accused of hanging out in there to listen to other people’s conversations. 

By high school I was experimenting with chemical intervention to further restrict my calorie intake. I took my brothers ADHD medication and would happily buy it off students who didn’t want to take it. My levels of anxiety grew and grew. The only things that made me feel “better” where purging and partying. I was a high acheiver but antisocial, I had good grades and kept to myself so I was completely unnoticed by most of my peers and most of my own family as well. During my sophomore year I had my first “episode.” I told my parents I just CANT handle IT anymore!!!! What it was that I couldn’t handle? I couldn’t really tell them because I didn’t really know. I was just sure I was going crazy and I needed help. My parents took me to our family doctor, through a blood test he found me to be malnourished and I spent the night in the hospital getting IV nutrition and a psych consult. My doctor told me I was malnourished because I ate too much junk food and not enough healthy fruits and vegetables. He never once asked about my eating habits, at 150 pounds I was actually overweight. He told me if I made healthier choices with my food I would feel better emotionally and I would also be able to maintain a healthy weight. The psych doctor at the hospital told me I was depressed, and prescribed Prozac and weekly therapy session. My parents insurance covered 6 session which I attended but accomplished absolutely nothing. 6 sessions isn’t enough to build trust let alone fix the depression I was diagnosed with, or the eating disorder no one noticed. 

When I say no one noticed BELIEVE me when I say that. No one. Not a single person noticed. And do you know why? Because we have this image that the media has put into our head of the person suffering with bulimia. That person is a waif. So thin a stiff breeze would knock her over. Even malnourished, light headed, heart racing at the slightest exertion I was no waif. I was skin and bone in size 10 jeans. I understand this will be hard to accept. My parents didn’t notice, my friends didn’t notice, my doctor didn’t notice. I was starving to death, wasting away. You know what my friends are parents did notice? My very slim friend, who did not have an eating disorder. I was told many many times that it was my duty as best friend to this thin person that I intervene and help her because she was so thin she must have an eating disorder. This very much reinforced for me the idea that PEOPLE CARE MORE ABOUT YOU IF YOU ARE THIN. If I could just be thin enough then someone would care enough to notice. 

Time passed. I kept right on bingeing and purging and partying. I finished high school, early actually. Moved out and turned up the volume on my unhealthy lifestyle. Malnourishment plus drug abuse and Prozac with a side of my boyfriend left me for his ex-girlfriend equals a suicide attempt and back to the hospital we go. This time as an adult I was treated to a 3 day observation period. My malnourishment was diagnosed as being caused by my drug abuse. Schizoprenia now replaced my diagnosis of depression. At a healthy weight of 145 pounds not a question was asked about my eating habits, or lack thereof. I see pictures of myself then, and I look sick. My face is gaunt, my skin is bad, my eyes are dark and vacant. When my face becomes gaunt I think that I look like a man, someone told me once I looked like a horse (it’s funny how the hurt sticks isn’t it). All these people who were supposed to care about me supposed to look out for me, they looked at the number on the scale and said well that’s healthy it must be something else. 

So I moved back home, I laid off the drugs for a year or so. I gained back about 30 pounds. I withdrew and tried in some way to heal myself. I was frail but I was holding it together. I had a job, it was drugs and drinking on weekends, eating only one meal a day and not purging, hating my body. This was my normal. Then I met a boy, of course it’s always a boy. This man-boy introduced me to a new and wonderful drug called methamphetamine. What made it different from all the other drugs was the EUPHORIA that and it turns up your metabolism that you lose weight twice as fast as if you are simply starving yourself. So back down the rabbit hole I went. Fast forward 18 months, a shot-gun wedding and a still-born son later and here I am. Now I actually am depressed. I’m 22 years old, I’m married to a man I knew for 2 months who has turned out to be incredibly abusive, I’ve buried firstborn and I realize I do really need to make a change. I stopped doing drugs completely and I stop purging. I cut way back on my drinking and make a real effort to eat at least 2 meals a day. I try to “fix” my husband because I am deeply in love with his daughter who lives with us. With both of her parents are far more into the drug scene that I ever was I feel like it’s my duty to protect her. And I really do want a family. I suppose I figured if I couldn’t have the family I needed when I was young I can build that family and have a different role in it. I can be the loving mother I never had, and I can CHANGE my abusive husband into the involved father I never had. I can have another son and give my step-daughter a healthy sibling relationship. 

Surprise, you can’t change or fix people who don’t want to be fixed or changed. I did have a son, who is the light of my life. However, after 7 years of physical and emotional abuse and constantly being cheated on I realized I couldn’t put any more energy into fixing this “man.” It was killing me. Though I didn’t realize it at the time I had completely replaced drug/alchohol problems with a food problem. When I was at home alone while my husband was out doing whatever/whoever he was doing I sat at home so full of sadness an worry. As I had sworn off drugs and getting drunk with the kids around there was food. The binge and purge cycle came back. When he was home and I was walking on eggshells trying not to set him off food was always there, cooking provided busy work and eating would reduce my anxiety, I couldn’t purge with him home. I was afraid it would bring on his rage, because he would certainly hear me through our paper thin walls. 

Having to constantly sacrifice and forgive is really really hard, it drains you, you start to feel like you don’t matter. Sometimes I wondered if I was real. I would play a game where I wouldn’t speak for days at a time. Just to see how long I could go before anyone noticed (3 days is my record by the way). I started thinking about dying a lot, how if it wasn’t for my children no one would notice. By the time I left my ex-husband I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW how to be happy anymore.  To make it worse after we split and I’d had 2 weekend visits, to punish me into submission my ex-husband refused to let me see my former step-daughter. I cried and cried thinking of how she must feel like I abandoned her, how I had clung so hard for so long to try to give her a happy life and how I had failed miserably. I can’t talk too much about her because I feel so emotional, but just believe me when I tell you that I still love her and wish I could be a part of her life. That was the final straw really, so I guess he “won” in punishing me. The guilt and sadness and grief of losing my step-daughter sent me into a serious drinking spiral. I hooked up with a guy at a bar, two years later I moved in with him and I realized I was making all the same mistakes I had been before. 

Instead of being physically abusive this new fellow was a narcissist. He was a master of gaslighting. It was impossible to purge because he was always around. He was also very particular about knowing where I was ALL of the time. I remember once I was about 10 minutes later than usual getting home. He demanded for HOURS that I tell him why I was late. I really didn’t even have a reason. It was 10 minutes. But somehow he made me feel like I was the one who was being crazy for not having a reasonable explanation for 10 minutes if my day, instead of him being crazy for demanding I answer him. If I was in the shower to long I kid you not he questioned me about it. He had me so convinced that something was wrong with me that I started seeing a therapist about 1 year into our relationship. I was very very fortunate to find my therapist. I came across her by coincidence, I was looking for a therapist that had evening office hours so that I didn’t have to miss work and after a short wait on her list I got in to see her. 

My main complaints were general unhappiness, angriness, being distracted, feeling overwhelmed but not really doing anything. I knew she was the right therapist for me when I told her about feeling overwhelmed, feeling pressure to get all of these things done and then not doing anything, feeling unable to do anything. She said to me that people often feel this way when they are dealing with a great deal of anxiety. It was like someone had finally given me permission to admit what was really wrong. One of the things that gives me the most anxiety is talking about my anxiety so it was really important for me to hear it from someone else. Especially after hearing from other doctors that my problems were anything but anxiety. I was finally able to talk to someone about how I coped with my anxiety first in life with bulimia and later by bingeing. She gave a name to what I was dealing with. She told me what I was feeling was real, that I wasn’t alone! She encouraged me to attend over-eaters anonymous and I did and truly experienced that I wasn’t alone. She worked with my patiently, she truly listened to what I was saying. We did hard hard work together. Though it’s a continual struggle she taught me coping mechanisms to deal with my anxiety and therefore to reduce my urge to binge. She taught me how to have self-worth, which was something no one had ever told me before. She proved to me that I mattered and that I deserve to be happy as much as anyone else. With her help I learned how to create a support system or people for myself and for her I am forever grateful. With her help I know consider myself in recovery and getting better every day. 

So when my friends asks me if I still feel like I have an eating disorder (even if the sub context is that they don’t think so because I’m fat) I tell them the truth. Yes, I am in recovery. I see it as an opportunity to be an example for people that having an eating disorder doesn’t always look the way you think it does. I see it as an opportunity to spread awareness about B.E.D. so that maybe someday that friend can reach out to a friend in need. Back when I was in the throws of bulimia and B.E.D. I can imagine that my response would have been crazy, there would have been screaming, and crying, and incomplete sentences. The true gift of recovery is peace. For me peace is calmness inside of me that allows me to spread a message that is helpful instead of crazy.