#BUT THEN. one seemingly normal but also faithful day: I read this sentence in a super cool merthur fic

[castelled-away]

Do you ever read a fic & then some random side characters that pop up again & again throughout the whole story do something together in the background while the main character is occupied with their own thoughts & just brushes over them like a fleeting, unimportant observation? And you’re like these two, I wanna ship these two. And then you keep your eyes open for more background interaction like those as a secondary goal besides reading & enjoying the fic (that’s when a fanfic really starts to live at least to me).

Though I’m all insecure & paranoid now bc the author surely didn’t mean to paint these two in a romantic light & just needed that side interaction as a description filler & im reading too much into this, but like…I ship it. Oops. How did that happen

Link is here: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830772 (it’s actually Part 2 of a longer 5-Parter-Series & Part 1 was already awesome but it keeps. getting. better.)

[percywinchester27]

A lot like ‘Us’ (Part-34)

Word count: 3.4K

Pairing: Sam X Reader AU

Warnings: Feels, fluff

Series Summary: Y/N Y/L/N is eager and honestly, still in awe that she managed to get herself an acceptance from Stanford Law School. On the face of it, her life seems as put together, mysterious and independent as one might hope for. On the insides, she carries the burden of past that haunts her till date. Seemingly, she’d left it all behind; that is until she sets foot in the class of the Law School’s youngest, most promising professor.

A/N: The story employs two different timelines. The present timeline for the story takes place in 2014. Please let me know what you guys think :)

Beta: @deanssweetheart23​​. I love you so much, darling <3

A lot like ‘Us’ masterlist

The rest of the week was hard.

There were things you wanted to do and then things that you had to do. Unfortunately for you, the Venn diagram of those two things were two circles that did not touch.

Normally, you loved your job, you loved studying and your classes. But sitting through Sam’s class was becoming a new, different type of torture. The pretension was wearing you down. You could see it grating him, too. You rarely spoke up in his class now, trying not to draw attention, neither did he call upon you like he did with other students. 

The library was still your second home, though, thanks to the untimely desertion of the other odd shifts librarian, you were left to run double shifts. Molly was sorry about it, but she didn’t have a solution for you, not until she had a new hire. That meant you were stuck in the library all the time. The guys in the apartment were starting to miss you. Kevin came over one evening to inform you everything sucked when you weren’t around. His face had made you hug him.

As for you? Without the free evenings, you couldn’t go over to see Max. You missed him terribly and it would do no good to whine about that to Sam, since you were still unsure about how he would take your excessive attachment to his son. 

Not that you didn't have the chance to talk to Sam. After Sam put Max to bed, each night he’d call. You would sit in the alcove of the library widow and talk to him for hours- about the day, the classes and everything under the sun. Sam told you about the cases he was working on, the judges he really disliked and the girl Chase was chasing. Sam thought he was named aptly. He was also your faithful informant about Max. Apparently the playground bullies were back at it with the mean words. You blurted out loud how you wanted to punch the kids and Sam piled on top of that. Cheerful conversations about shaking kids followed.

It felt so juvenile to talk with him over the phone, like when he worked in New York and you were stuck in Lawrence, but not quite. Now, it was exciting to imagine him blushing on the other end when you accidentally said something complementary. Or if a student decided to stay in the library late night, you had to giggle in hushed voices so they wouldn’t overhear your conversations. The thrill of it was exciting. Those few hours had become the highlight of your day.

So, when Madison asked you what you were smiling about in the last lecture on Friday, you had to make up a reason. You couldn’t very well tell her that the bruise Sam was sporting on his cheek was because Max outran him on the basketball court and Sam slipped and fell.

“Just thinking of something funny.”

“Wouldn’t have to do with the green eyed hottie from Monday, would it?” Madison wiggled her eyebrows.

“Who, Dean?” You burst out laughing. “Maddie! He’s married to my sister.”

She laughed with you, face apologetic. “Dang! He’s really hot. Is it bad that I’m sorry he is married?”

“Definitely not,” you giggled. The good old Winchester genes had caused many casualties.

On the dais below, Sam collected his things.

“Ooohh, Professor Winchester is heading out. I better catch him before he leaves. You wanna come? Talk about the assignment?”

“No, you go on.” Sam had given you a run down of the assignment last night. You wanted to pout that he was right. You could have done better.

“Still awkward about the whole drowning thing, huh?”

You looked away, not wanting to remember the pool.

Madison wasn’t paying attention. “You were… I don’t know, delirious. You kept calling him by his name and…” Madison looked at you warily. She did not complete the sentence.

“Y/N saw the opportunity and took it,” said Rebecca from the next row. “I would sell my soul to be lifted like that.”

You slung your bag around your shoulders and made a move to get up. For all you cared, Rebecca could get hit by a truck. Not only were you furious at her for planning that prank with Brad, it made you feel murderous when she objectified Sam like that, reducing him to some greasy creep of a professor. It was insulting.

“Wait up now, sweetie!” She came up from behind. “Don’t act so prissy now. We all know you’re not as innocent as you make yourself out to be.”

“Excuse me?”

“You think I’m blind? To not see how you’re playing with all these men to get what you want? First, you have Brad panting after you, so you get the attention? Then you’re dancing with some random blue eyed man at the induction dance. The very next day you’re swaying in the arms of Chase Lincoln of all people. The moment you touch the pool water, somehow Sam Winchester is miraculously saving you… and two days later you’re crying like a damsel in distress in the arms of yet another man!” She was counting off her fingers. “And people call me slutty! I’m going to find out what your secret is, Y/N. Because I know you have one! And when I do...”

“You know what, Rebecca?” You said as calmly as you could. “Why don’t you go screw yourself.”

With that you headed straight for the library. When Madison caught up with you, her face was red. “Can’t believe I was ever friends with that hag! Gave her piece of my mind.”

“Madison, you should catch professor Winchester before he leaves. I’ll be okay.”

She assessed your words against your expression, then nodded and left.

You wanted to be by yourself. 

Thankfully, cataloging was time-consuming and tedious. It took your mind off of Rebecca’s awful words. For the life of you, you couldn’t understand why she was so mean to you. 

“Excuse me, miss, can I borrow this book?” Enquired a sweet voice. 

You dropped the marker in your hand and looked up. Max was standing beyond the desk, a huge grin on his face. You gave a little yelp of your own and hurried from behind the counter to throw your arms around him, kissing him on his cheek. 

“Gosh, I’ve been dying to meet you,” you said, pulling back to look at him. 

He was wearing a plaid shirt over a small faded t-shirt and jeans. Such a mini-Sam. You couldn’t resist the urge to lean over and kiss his other cheek.

Max started blushing, looking down at his shoes.

“What’re you doing here?” You asked, leading him to one of the benches.

“Alex broke her arm last night. She couldn’t come over today. Dad’s got work. He asked me to hang out here.”

“Oh, no, is Alex okay?”

Max snickered. “Yeah. She was trying to sneak out for a party and fell out of the window.”

You pursed your lips trying not to laugh with him. “Poor girl.”

“Aunt Jody’s super-mad!” He added and you couldn’t help the giggle that burst through your lips.

“Max, is that you?” Molly asked, sticking her head from behind the shelves. “Darn kid! It’s been ages. Where did you run off to?”

“Mechanics camp!” He told her. “I know where an engine goes now. And how to hot-wire a car.”

“They taught you that at the camp?” You asked, skeptic.

“No, uncle Dean did.”

This time you laughed in earnest.

“You know Max?” Molly frowned.

You nodded. “Remember my little friend I told you about?”

“The one you were holding a bake sale for?”

“Yep, he’s the one.”

Molly put her hand to her lips. “Well, no shit! Do you know who his father is?”

You and Max immediately looked at each other, confirming your secret with a tiniest of nods. 

“He’s Sam’s boy, this cute little nugget here.” Molly pulled his cheek. To Max’s credit, he didn’t rub his cheek afterwards.

Which reminded you. “You wait right here, Max. I’ll be back in a minute.” You quickly found the stash of cookies you were saving for tonight's dinner and hurried back to him. Eating at the library wasn’t allowed, but Max was an exception to every rule. “Cookies for you. I know these are your favourite.”

Max’s entire face lit up. True to his nature, he offered you one before digging in. You watched as he took a few bites, sneaking looks to the book he was holding- Adventures of Sinbad. 

“I read one of those when I was kid. It had a monster bird that carried Sinbad away to its nest.”

“Oh, the Roc! That one’s my favorite!” Max clapped his hand and the cookies clattered to the floor.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, trying to pick up the bag.

You stopped him with a gentle nudge. “Let me.” After cleaning the cookie crumbs from the carpet, you unwound the scarf from around your neck and used it to clean the crumbs stuck to Max’s mouth and shirt, fussing over getting it all away.

When you made him stand up to clean the hem of his pants, you noticed Sam standing behind you, arms crossed over his chest. He had a peculiar expression on his face- tender but also guarded.

“You’re not supposed to eat the library, young man!” Sam tried for stern, but ended up sounding amused.

You straightened up. “I make the rules here. Max can do whatever he wants.”

Max gave Sam a smug look, before running to him. In a motion that must have been more of less a reflex, Sam reached out and hefted Max up in his arms. 

“Look, what I found!” Max showed him the book.

Sam made a face. “Sinbad again? That sixth voyage was lame.”

“I wanna find out how it ends. There’s only one adventure left!”

“Alright, but this is the last of Arabian tales for the year. I get second hand sea-sickness just reading about it. I’m starting to miss Charlie and the chocolate factory.”

“You hated Charlie and the chocolate factory!”

Sam smirked. “You’re this close to getting my point.”

Max turned the book over. “We’re out of authors,” he told you.

The words shook you out of your quiet and you smoothened your expression. The scene before you was making your throat close up. You had never seen them together before. Max’s entire body language changed- his shoulders relaxed and he became less polite… just a bit more demanding, the way a child should be. Sam on the other hand radiated contentment. His voice changed, becoming softer, loving when he spoke to Max. You were sure you had been staring at them hungrily as if you couldn’t get enough of the interaction.

“Any suggestions?” Sam asked, tone still mild.

“T-Tolkein,” you stuttered. “You should try The Hobbit.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Elven songs. Wonderful.”

Molly came over to greet Sam and you excused yourself to go back to the desk and take a stock of the emotions coursing through you. At any point it could get too much and you didn't want either of them to see that.  

On their way out, Max waved at you. “Bye, Y/N!”

“Bye, Max.” You blew him a kiss. “You turned my day around, bud!”

There were too many people in the vicinity, so when it came to Sam, you nodded. “Professor.”

He mirrored your gesture. “Ms. Y/L/N.” And with a look full of promise of later, he walked away. You waved at Max till he was out of sight.

“Such a lovely boy,” Molly sighed. “Horrendous business what happened to him.”

“Yeah.” You cut the topic short, still unable to think of Max’s past without feeling faint. Thinking about it was so hard for you, Max had lived through it. 

Molly was in no mood to change the subject.

“Sam’s an amazing guy to give up the lawyer life and settle down here for that kid.”

You narrowed your eyes. “What do you mean?”

Molly threw out her hands, slightly embarrassed. “It’s Sam’s personal choice and all that, but he had a solid career in LA. After that Simmons affair blew up in the media, he could’ve stuck around and bagged A-list celebrities as clients. He moved out to this place for Max’s sake- so there was some normalcy and stability in his life. Then, again, Sam’s had his share of downs.”

Your back felt like ice, knowing what was coming.

“I’m not supposed to talk about it but it’s just you.” Molly leaned in closer. “Did you know his wife left him?”

She must have interpreted whatever your face showed as shock, because Molly continued. “Don’t know much about the whole thing. I heard bits and parts from the grape wine. Some girl he met in Kansas straight out of Yale. Took a plunge in a couple of months and this girl bolted not even a year into the marriage. Can you believe that? I mean, look at him… What the fuck was she looking for that he didn’t have!”

You could taste the blood by biting into your lip too hard.

“Never heard of him dating anyone since. I think he’s still in love with her.” Molly whistled. “At least they have each other- Max and Sam. That kid spends a lot of time here. You’ll keep finding reasons to feed your little friend cookies.” Molly flashed you a grin. You couldn’t quite return it.

It was past twelve when your phone rang. You’d just locked the library behind you and had given up on all hopes of the call.

You hurried to pick it up.

“Hey,” Sam breathed. “Sorry it took me so long.”

“It’s alright,” you sighed in relief at the sound of his voice. The sinking feeling in your stomach since the talk with Molly began to dissipate. 

“It’s your fault really,” Sam said. “Max liked The Hobbit too much and went to bed real late. How am I supposed to wake him in time for his class tomorrow?”

His concerns were so normal, comfortingly mundane. Sam made it sound so easy, when in fact, all this must have been so hard. One time you heard someone say a mean thing about Sam’s wife and it had you rankled. Sam must’ve lived through years of whispers, stories and ugly rumours. He must’ve had to defend his choice of staying committed so many times. Hadn’t the words shred his heart?

“Y/N? Everything okay?”

You cleared your throat. “Uh it’s just… it’s good to hear your voice.”

He was immediately on alert. “What happened?”

“Nothing. Weird day.”

“Where are you?”

You looked about your dark surroundings. “Crossing the playground, almost to my building.”

“Do you want to come over?” He asked, voice hopeful but unsure. “We can sit in the front lawn if you want.”

You made an impulse decision. “Yeah okay.”

Ten minutes later you were sitting on one of Max’s swings. Your tan sweater wasn’t helping much as you shivered in the chill, waiting for Sam to show up. Weird how you made it before him. He lived right there!

Noiselessly the front door opened and closed. Sam walked briskly towards you. He was dressed in dark grey sweatpants and a black full sleeve t-shirt. In his hand he carried an afghan, a thermos and two mugs.

“Here,” he handed you the afghan. It was the same one that was wrapped around you on the night of the pool party. The memory brought blood to your face.

“We don’t have adult juice around here today, but we do have hot chocolate.” Grinning impishly, he tilted the thermos in your direction. He sat on the ground in front of you, carefully filling up the two mugs with the rich, brown liquid while you wrapped yourself in the Afghan. 

Eagerly, you took a sip and moaned indecently.

“Good, isn’t it?” Sam chuckled. 

This was very close to what heaven would feel like. 

“So, what’s the deal, huh?” He asked after a few sips. 

You hesitated, not wanting to admit what the real problem was. It would be the case of a teapot crying to a boiler.

“You know you can tell me things, right?” His voice was soft, beguiling. 

“It’s something Molly said after you left.” You gave in, selfishly spilling it all. 

Sam listened to the whole story, then shook his head at you in exasperation and beckoned you with his hand. You blinked a couple of times, then gave up and went in willingly. 

What the hell, right?

 Sam tucked his arms around your shoulder once you slid on the ground next to him.

“You and I, we know what the truth is,” he said. “How does it matter what anyone else says?”

“Is that what you told yourself all these years?” You asked in a small voice, unable to meet his eyes.

Sam sighed. “Why are you doing this to yourself, Y/N?”

“You didn’t answer me.”

His fingers curled around your shoulder over the afghan. “No, I didn’t have to tell myself anything. I knew I loved you. That was enough.”

“I don’t know if I can be as strong as you.”

“That’s because you’re so much stronger,” he said. “None of those people have lived your life, they don’t know what you’ve been through. I can bet my ass, they wouldn’t have made it out of half of it in one piece. It’s easy to judge.”

“That’s not my problem,” you argued. “I don’t care what they think about me. But I can’t stand how it makes you look!”

Sam surprised you by chuckling lightly. “You’re cute when you’re indignant. Especially on my behalf.”

“Quit making this into a joke, Sam.”

“I seriously don’t know what else to do.” He put a finger under your chin, tilting your face up. “Look at me. I’m the happiest I've been in years! Do you really think I give a rats ass about what anyone’s got to say about me? My personal life has never been anyone’s concern except mine and yours. The only other person who has any say in this is Max. And that kid doesn’t shut up about you.”

Sam’s eyes were scorching, melting against the night sky.

“Molly’s wonderful, and I know she has a soft spot for me. But by the end of the day, it's just gossip. There’s no substance to it. So will you please drop it?”

At long last you nodded. 

“That’s like my Y/N.”

A rustle from the other side of Sam’s fence made you stiffen. The bushes behind the planks began to shake.

“What’s that?”

Sam shrugged. “Probably Alex sneaking out.”

You frowned at him. “Didn’t she break her arm doing exactly that?”

He snorted. “When has that stopped teenagers? It does make life a bit difficult. Jody’s grounded her. She can’t babysit Max for a while and I got work tomorrow.”

You saw Alex creeping on the sidewalk in front of the lawn. She saw the two of you huddled and froze like a deer caught in the headlight. Sam winked and waved a salute at her. After a minute she unfroze, returned the gesture and went off on her way. 

“Why don’t you drop him off at the library in the morning? I’ll keep an eye on him. I’m covering the first shift.” You worked to not sound too excited.

“Yeah, that still doesn’t fix the afternoon. I won’t be back before four.”

“Easy. I’ll wait with him here.”

Sam looked at you, hazel eyes wondrous. “You’d do that?”

“Sure. I owe him a pie anyway.”

“You’re a lifesaver!” He exhaled. “Seriously, I could kiss you right now!”

All you had to do was look up. Sam was right there.

Another crash sounded over the fence, louder than the first, followed by a muted ‘ow.’  You saw lights flare up in what must be the living room. From somewhere inside you heard Jody curse. “Jesus fucking Christ! Claire, what’re you doing on the ground.”

“Why do you always have to catch me!” Claire whined in the darkness. “Alex just left!”

“What. The. Fuck!” Jody yelled. “Get in the fucking car! We’re going to find your sister.”

That did it for you as you buried your face in Sam’s chest, smothering the giggles. His arms wrapped tightly around you. Sam himself was shaking with silent laughter over you.

Yeah, this was pretty close to heaven.

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

A/N 2: Thank you for all the support over the last week. 

Sam was right when he said-  “You and I, we know what the truth is. How does it matter what anyone else says?”

I’m going to take his advice :)

If you want be tagged, you can send me an ask or add yourself to the taglist here.

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[justalarryblog]

📄 Hometown by @allwaswell16 (2k) | Not Rated

On the day Harry gets his driver’s licence, he drives through the suburbs, heartbroken that he can’t drive home to Louis.

📄 Overkill by @fivesecondsofmae (4k) | Explicit

Louis was never going to get over how fucking attractive Harry was. How glorious his big, tall, curvy body was. The feeling of Harry behind him, hot and heavy, trapped on the tube after they’d been somewhere during rush hour. His thick hands, full of pretty rings sometimes, handing Louis a cup of coffee, then getting one for himself.

Or Louis and Chubby!Harry are as close as best mates can be and clearly are in love. Time to take it to the next level.

Top!Harry smut and fluff.

📄 New Places, New Possibilities by orphan_account (12k) | Explicit

Harry has always longed for Louis from afar, never sure exactly what Louis wanted, or if they could even have what they wanted. Even though Louis would sneak into Harry’s bed every chance he could, they’d never gone further than cuddles and innocent kisses. But when the boys are finally away from home on their first visit to LA, things finally begin to change.

📄 In All Its Imperfections by @BriaMaria (15k) | Explicit

From: Louis Tomlinson

To: Undisclosed Recipients

Hello!

I’ve asked the front desk and you lovely folks are the ones who are on the same level as me in the car park. I found a to-do list today that looked somewhat important because it has lines of poetry scribbled at the bottom that seemed like they might be for a card project. The stationary has a moose in a canoe at the top of it (and he is quite adorable). Let me know if it’s yours!

Cheers!

“Oh. My. Fucking. God,” Harry whispered, his eyes darting over the sentences again willing them not to make sense. They did, they did make sense. “Oh. My. Bloody. Fucking. God.”

The next thing he knew he was on the floor, staring at the ceiling, with a very concerned Liam hovering over his head.

“What happened, mate?” Liam asked.

Harry just pointed to his computer.

Liam bent over Harry’s desk to read the email. “What? This isn’t bad. Is that your to-do list? Did you finally come up with the inside text for those cards?”

“Leeyum" he groaned. “It’s what’s on the list.”

“Oh,” Liam paused for a beat. “Is it dirty stuff?”

Harry nodded.

There was more silence. And then, “Dirty stuff with Louis?”

📄 If We Have Each Other by @pocketsunshineharry / ishiplouis (23k) | Mature

“When are you going to accept my offer to go out again? It’s been seven years and you’re still saying no to a fun night?” Niall complains.

“A night in with Mads is a fun night for me Ni, I already told you that.” Harry responds while serving a customer.

“You’re infuriating, I just want my best friend to go out with me tonight, is it too much to ask?” Niall pouts but all Harry does is chuckle and prepare the coffee machine for the double espresso the customer ordered.

“Playing the victim, are we now?” Harry is so used to Niall’s techniques. “Well, I have good news for you, Maddie is having a sleepover at one of her friends so tonight so I’m all yours.”

OR AU where Harry is a single father and a one-night stand is going to change his life forever.

📄 In Dreams by @dolce_piccante (23k) | Mature

AU. When Harry moves to a new city, his new flat come with a number of sweet, anonymous gifts and surprises that brighten his days. Could it be a friendly ghost? Another friendly presence in his new building is his tattooed neighbor, Louis, who seems determined to put a smile back on his face.

📄 Love Is on The Radio by @whatevertearsyou​ / perfectdagger (sincerelyste), @star_k (35k) | Explicit

“So Louis, who’s the lucky person that will not only get to see Arsenal and Manchester United facing each other, but will also possibly become your girlfriend… or boyfriend? I mean, that’s a good catch, to ask someone out like this on the radio. It will be hard to say no after this.”

“It’s, hm, his name is…” Oh boy, Harry was about to pass out, he couldn’t bear to hear what Louis would say. Susie was looking at him, worried eyes watching him from the till as she noticed that Harry had simply abandoned his cupcake duties. “Harry. Harry Styles.”

To win a pair of tickets to watch Manchester United playing, Louis may have possibly lied to Nick Grimshaw on the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show, asking Harry, his best friend, to be his boyfriend. Problem is - Harry has always been in love with Louis and so, this Valentine’s he’s gonna see his dreams come true, with a tiny bit of a twist, in order to watch the football team they have loved together since they were kids.

📄 That’s What I’m Here For by @taggiecb (46k) | Explicit

Louis Tomlinson is a dairy farmer on a tiny farm in eastern Canada. His wife of nearly thirty years has left him and his children are all grown up and out of the house. Louis needs help running his business but has no idea where to even start looking. Luckily for him his children know just the man for the job.

Part 1 of Grace, Too

📄 Pinkies Never Lie by @alltheselights (83k) | Explicit

“I just think if we’re both into it and neither of us is looking for something serious, why not?” Harry asks, eyes soft and voice sweet. He pauses and gives Louis a moment or two to answer.

There are countless reasons why Louis shouldn’t agree to this, but in the end, none of them really matter. This will end with Louis in pieces, but he’s been in love with Harry for four years. There was only ever one answer.

“Yeah,” Louis answers finally, hoping his voice sounds normal. “Why not?”

AU in which Louis hates his job and loves Harry, Harry just wants a distraction, everyone else wants them to get their shit together, and Louis learns the hard way that new beginnings are only possible when something ends.

Part 1 of Pinkies Never Lie

📄 Dress you up in my love by @LucyStarkid (103k) | Explicit

Harry is single, and more than anything wants to find love. Agreeing to sign up to a dating website was a bad, bad idea. Niall’s bad, bad idea. Louis is single, but has no interest in relationships. Or so he tells himself. ??Harry is a lawyer, his boss, Nick, happens to give him a bonus, which he decides to splurge on a new work wardrobe. Louis is a frustrated designer, working as a personal shopper at Selfridges. Louis happens to be working on the day a very beautiful, but out of his depth, new customer ambles into their department in need of advice. Louis might have just found the muse he never knew he was looking for.

Featuring: Sophia as Louis’ colleague, with a somewhat unhealthy obsession with his love life, whilst being oblivious when it comes to her own. Liam as the ‘IT bloke from downstairs’ with the mother of all crushes on Sophia. Niall as Harry’s sport’s writer flatmate who spends most of his time making Harry’s life as complicated as possible. Zayn as Louis’ flatmate and lifelong best friend, whose cat, Noodle/Princess/Princess Noodle loves Louis more than it loves him. And Nick as Harry’s boss and one of Louis’ regular customers: is Imelda Marcos reborn.

📄 amaryllis by @hattalove (146k) | Explicit

“Where are we?”

“Um. A little while out of London?” Niall tries, seemingly the only one willing to not be mysterious and provide Harry with information, and. Oh.

“London London? As in, the capital of England London?” he asks, just in case he’d misheard.

“No, the other London,” Louis laughs, low and biting. He comes closer finally, the moonlight just enough to reveal a sharp-cut jaw and pale skin. “Sorry, Pup.”

Nobody’s ever called Harry a “pup”. Frankly, he finds it quite insulting, but he lets it slide to try and comprehend his current crisis.

or the one where harry gets bitten by a werewolf. louis is the mysterious not-quite alpha, liam and zayn have Things going on, niall is their token human, and together, they watch a lot of TV.

📄 This Multiplicity of Powers by @helloamhere (149k) | Explicit

Maybe in another universe he isn’t different. Maybe he hadn’t been given an impossible choice. Maybe he wouldn’t have lost everything and broken everything and then fallen impossibly, irrevocably in love with the first next thing that was kind. Maybe in that universe he doesn’t feel like he’s never breathing, always pretending, teaching the kids even though they all have to learn alone, trying hard not to read the headlines, and so afraid, every day, that he won’t be a good enough teammate to the superhero he can’t live without. He knows that love isn’t supposed to feel this way, slid secret under your skin like a surgical razor, an invisible war held close over the tender vein that keeps you alive. On the other hand, Louis wonders, had he ever known how to do it any other way?

Maybe there’s a universe where he doesn’t have to keep all his secrets on the inside.

But this isn’t that universe.

//an X-Men AU.

📄 Have Faith In Me by @stylinsoncity (183k) | Mature

As the son of Anne Styles, millionaire owner of one of the world’s most luxurious fashion labels, Harry has spent his last seventeen years living in carefree extravagance. And now he’s grown tired of it, along with the pressure from his mum to follow in her footsteps and the constant care given to him by her past assistants.

When his mum’s newest assistant, Louis, moves into the guesthouse, Harry determines to be treated differently. To be treated like an adult. Except Louis is not at all what Harry was expecting…

This is a story about growing up, growing in love and having the faith to make it last.

📄 Built Memories by @fresharold (211k) | Mature

“It was a comet.

The boy saw the comet and he felt as though his life had meaning.

And when it went away, he waited his entire life for it to come back to him. It was more than just a comet because of what it brought to his life: direction, beauty, meaning.

There are many who couldn’t understand, and sometimes he walked among them. But even in his darkest hours, he knew in his heart that someday it would return to him, and his world would be whole again… And his belief in God and love and art would be re-awakened in his heart.

The boy saw the comet and suddenly his life had meaning.”

» where louis and harry after long years start over again. they’re strangers again and introduce themselves, they relearn what they already know and what they don’t know, come with new inside jokes, create new memories and give each other a second chance.

📄 Relief Next To Me by @dolce_piccante (333k) | Mature

AU. What happens when a baker and a graphic designer meet via a very specific Craigslist post? Fate, friendship, food, and maybe more.

✨You can also check my fic tags for more fics! ✨

[zara2148]

Fethsteel Fic: Not Good Enough (For You)

So here we go, my take on how Fethry Duck joined F.O.W.L. and met Steelbeak. Less warning stuff for this one, mostly just implied abuse, though it’s clear Steelbeak has not had a pleasant history. Also, both he and Fethry have some self esteem issues... and there’s not exactly spoilers for “Lost Harp of Mervana,” but the new intro takes place right after it.

Also on AO3. Make sure leave kudos and comments there. I enjoy the feel of being applauded.

Huey was placing Isabella Finch's journal back in Uncle Scrooge's study when he spotted the tin can phone there, now connected to nothing. Scrooge held on to everything in the mansion, even seemingly useless things, on the grounds that it may one day come in handy again. 

It was one reason why Trash Day could be such a nightmare, though Scrooge was starting to learn how to let things go...

Huey found Della and Donald unpacking their gear off the sub, hanging up suits and boxing equipment until it was ready to be used again. "Uncle Donald? Mom? Do you know how to get in touch with Cousin Fethry? I think he'd love to hear all about Mervana."

"No, sorry, sweetie. I haven't heard anything from him since he rode off on the back of that... giant... fish..." Della shuddered in remembered revulsion.

"Mom, it was a krill."

"A fish is still a fish by any other name."

"You also seemed fine with Mitzy at the time."

"I was too busy thinking about all the Moonlanders we had to beat up."

Donald sighed and turned away from a crate to answer Huey’s question. “I haven’t heard from him either since then.” He shrugged. "But that's normal for Fethry. He either calls every five minutes or he gets so wrapped up in something we don't hear from him for six months."

"Doesn't he have a cell phone we could call?”

"Knowing Fethry, it would just get dropped in the ocean." There was a reason Scrooge only trusted Fethry with a tin can after one too many busted phones.

Huey’s beak twisted in discomfort. “But what if he got in trouble? What if he needed our help?”

Donald let out a breath, more frustrated with himself than anyone else, even Fethry. He knelt in front of Huey and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Fethry is…” Cuckoo bananas really hadn’t been the right thing to say to Huey, not when Donald could see the similarities between the two of them. Unsure how else to finish that sentence, he tried again.

“Fethry is who he is. But he’s also a grown adult capable of making decisions and taking care of himself. If he ever needs us, he knows where we are.”

Della grinned proudly. “He’s a part of the Duck family. Surviving is what we do.”

Uncle Donald and Mom weren’t wrong about that. Cousin Fethry had survived alone in a collapsing sea base for years. He knew the Junior Woodchuck guidebook from cover to cover, just as Huey did. He was better prepared than most to face trouble when it found him.

"Okay, I'll just make sure to write down all my observations about Mervana to share with him when he gets in touch."

Donald gave Huey a smile. "I'm sure he'll love that."

***

“Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

It was an old refrain at this point. 

The last job interview he had, Fethry had spent a full half-hour talking about the eating habits of krill and the merits of singing when asked about his team management skills. 

The interview before that, he spoke briefly about the endless silence of the ocean when asked how he dealt with workplace difficulties. He’d been too quiet after that question.

And the interview before that… well, he didn’t think that room was ever going to be the same.

Fethry’s laptop was old. Wires were sticking out and duct tape was barely holding the screen together. He browsed through the listings for scientists on Quacked In, tweaking his cover letter and resume slightly for each.

Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. Maybe he should try for a slightly smaller position at a lab, like a custodian! He had experience keeping things in custody! And then he could work his way up from there. 

But the little Donalds had such faith in him. They believed he could be a great scientist. Fethry wasn’t going to let them down. He never really realized until it was too late, but Fethry knew he had a habit of letting his family down.

Gladstone had offered to help, after that big event with purple people from the sky… ahh, yes, the invasion! But Fethry knew how often people tried to get close to his cousin to use his luck. Family shouldn’t do that.

The next listing didn’t quite catch his eye. But Fethry was at the point of applying for everything that came up for “scientist” and read through what little there was.

“WANTED: Skilled scientists for private company in Duckburg. Duties will vary. Flexible work schedule, late nights occasionally required. Must be able to roll with the punches.”

He had no expectations that it would progress to a job offer. How he chose to look at was that he was doing really well on reaching his goal of 100 job rejections. He’d read all about re-framing your objectives for positivity!

Once he reached 100, well, he might as well try for 200 rejections then.

He reviewed his resume and cover letter on the final submission screen. He clicked “Send.”

Then he moved onto the next listing and thought no more of it.

***

F.O.W.L.’s computer settings were extremely sensitized when it came to tracking the movements and activities of the Duck-McDuck clan. They knew when Hubert Duck received a new merit badge, or when Dewford Duck uploaded another video to his overlooked Insta, or when Llewellyn bought a soda that wasn’t Pep branded.

Any diversion from or progress in the Duck’s family’s normal routine could be significant. That’s why they monitored it all.

So when a member of the Duck family applied for one of their vacant positions, it got noticed. Alarms went off, alerting the highest-ranking members in F.O.W.L. command.

Just ten minutes after the application was received, Bradford clicked through it on his laptop.

F.O.W.L. could just ignore this. Stay away from the Duck family until they were more ready to move out in the open. It would be a sensible move.

But there was potential here he couldn’t overlook.

Fethry Duck was one of the harder members to track ever since the McDuck SubLab crumbled into an undersea abyss. Satellite images last had him riding some sort of kaiju across the ocean, which was just typical when it came to the Duck-McDuck family.

When the moon invaders came they had made many mistakes, such as caring more about the acknowledgment of their perceived superiority than how they could exploit the Earth. But they had been right that it was better to have all members of that family accounted for when it came to global-scale plans.

Having Fethry under constant watch at F.O.W.L. would leave Gladstone as the most transient variable. And the lottery winnings and sweepstakes prizes he left in his wake would make him infinitely easier to track.

Fethry was also one of the more controllable members of the Duck family. Neither misfortune nor ostentatious fortune dogged his steps. He didn’t question intention and he didn’t try to stir up trouble for his amusement. He was so lacking in ambition that he stayed in a lonely janitorial position for almost five years. If he was taken to a lab and given every reason to stay, he likely would do so without seeing anything amiss.

His goal was to steal the world right out from under Scrooge. Why not start by stealing a member of the man’s family? One Scrooge was unlikely to miss for quite some time, given his avoidance of Fethry’s company.

Yet for a duck who didn’t believe in handouts, it said something that Scrooge still cared enough about Fethry to give him a string of jobs that he more or less performed adequately. He’d prefer it not come to threats, especially since harm to his family made Scrooge predictably savage. But if worse came to worse… better to have a hostage than do without.

And if he was useless? Disposing of him would be no hardship.

He clicked “Accept” and composed a brief response, suggesting a range of times that Fethry could visit a front location in downtown Duckberg.

After opening up the email and reading through it, Fethry squealed and picked out the earliest possible time. 

***

Fethry hummed as he walked inside the address the email gave him. It was a plain building, notable only for its pristine white exterior that seemed all too blank.

He’d dressed up nice for the occasion. His red jacket was replaced with a slightly frayed and browned business suit jacket. His tie was a piece of dried kelp that Mitzy had picked out for him. She always had the best eye when it came to kelp. And his cap was still present, keeping his thoughts toasty warm!

Yet his throat felt clogged and simultaneously too dry. The papers in his hand would be wrinkled if he clutched them any tighter. There was a heavy feeling in his chest that told him he’d be out of here soon enough, and he would need to try his luck elsewhere.

A duck with a dirty face and ruffled hair sat behind the visitor’s desk. Her name tag read “Ample.”

He approached her without his usual bounce. “Hello, I’m here for an interview.”

She nodded and glanced through the schedule. “Fethry Duck?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“The director is ready to see you now. Go through the double doors over there.”

He dipped forward in an awkward half-bow, unsure if a handshake would be too presumptuous. “Thank you!”

He pushed his way through the double doors. The room was in grey shadow, a large desk slightly off toward one of the corners. Two chairs were in front of the desk, facing the figure behind it.

The shadows slightly obscured the person behind the desk. He could make out a shape but no features.  

The shadow turned to him. “Ah, thank you for coming. Please take a seat.”

Fethry grabbed one of the chairs, shifting his paper copy of his resume as he looked at his interviewer up close.

Oh, he knew this vulture! He worked with Uncle Scrooge before! His name was buzzing around in the back of Fethry’s skull, waiting to be grabbed hold of…. what was it, what was it…?

“Bradley!”

“It’s Bradford,” he corrected in a cold tone. 

Fethry slumped back in his seat, feeling small. “O-oh, I’m sorry.”

Bradford did not take the time to acknowledge what he said. He sat “So, Fethry Duck. Scrooge’s nephew.”

“Yes.”

“You hold no degrees, no certifications that would qualify you for a scientific position.”

“... no.” Fethry knew how much those pieces of paper meant to people. He sunk into his chair, almost wishing it could swallow him up, the way the ocean did…

...and that was not a train of thought he needed to be boarding right now. Fethry stepped off a mental platform, letting it whiz by.

Bradford continued, neither noticing nor caring about Fethry’s inner world and its struggles. “And yet, you thought you could apply here, for a scientific position with us.” He stood up and started to circle around Fethry. “Do you know what we do here, Fethry?”

“Science?”

“Among other things.” Bradford paused behind Fethry. Fethry couldn’t quite bring himself to turn and look at him. “What we do here... let’s just say we're out to change the world.”

Bradford resumed his circle and came to a stop in front of Fethry. He let silence reign for a few seconds before speaking. “And Fethry Duck? We’re willing to give you the chance to join our ranks.”

Fethry had to swallow down dry disbelief. “Really?”

“Yes.”

Fethry’s hands were clammy as he held out his stacks of papers. His grip wasn’t shaking, but his limbs felt hollow. “You don’t even want to look at my resume first?”

“I’ve already seen it.”

He let his arms fall to his sides. His voice came out small, as if he was once again speaking from the bottom of the ocean. “Why me?”

Silence returned. Bradford considered him over his beak.

“You’re the unnoticed member of the Duck-McDuck family. Isn’t it time you had a chance to prove yourself?”

Bradford wasn’t wrong. He wanted that chance. But the implication that he was only getting this job because of his family...

Well. Wasn’t that how he got every job he ever had?

Bradford turned away from him and loomed his way back behind his desk. “Mind you, the job still isn’t much. You’ll be working in a lab on your own projects, yes. But you will remain under direct supervision for the time being. Before undertaking any venture, you are to submit a full report that outlines expected costs and outcomes, in accordance with our guidelines.”

He sat down, his back hunched to allow him to continue looming from a lower height. “The pay is minimum wage, but you can work your way up through experience. Food and board will be provided on-site, so that’s two fewer things you have to worry about.”

Fethry absent-mindedly fiddled with his kelp tie, his attention otherwise on Bradford as he continued.

“As you may have surmised, your work is to be considered top secret. For the time being, we will ask that you remain in the facilities to better learn your responsibilities. There is to be no contact with the outside world without prior approval. Otherwise, you put ourselves and the work we do at risk.”

“If you accept the job under these terms, a car will be dispatched to pick up you and any belongings you choose to bring tomorrow morning.” Bradford steepled his fingers and looked through Fethry. “Do you accept these conditions?” 

Fethry had forgotten he hadn’t said yes to anything yet. He wasn’t sure how he got so caught up that he missed that.

He could bring his team with him, their jar was extremely portable. But taking this job would mean saying goodbye to Mitzy for a while… hopefully, she would understand. 

He nodded, then said for emphasis, “Yes.”

“Well, then. Welcome, Fethry Duck, to…” Bradford paused again, his words trailing off into familiar silence. “... well, we’ll just call it your new place of work.”

***

There wasn’t a whole lot to do at their headquarters between missions. The funnest thing to do around here was to play all the arcade games after the kids had gone home for the day.

However, the last time Steelbeak did that he blew an entire paycheck and ended up with only 20 tickets to show for it—not even enough to trade-in for a piece of candy. That didn’t make him stupid, that made the games rigged.

Now he stuck to the actual secret parts of their secret lair, wandering the halls. His wallet stayed full and fat, but the time between missions dragged on and on.

The gun course was fun, but there was only so much offtime an agent was allowed there. Spend too much time shooting things and command would send you over to their quack shrink.

The rec room was okay, but he’d be fighting every off-duty Eggman there if he wanted to pick which channel to watch on the sole TV. Not that he wouldn’t win, but his time in the prison rec room, and the underground fighting ring’s rec room before that, taught him that victory wasn’t worth it if you couldn’t find any good shows playing.

Which is how he often ended up doing what he did right now, trailing after Heron down to the labs. He’d watch her and watch the other scientists, trying to see how what they did tied into F.O.W.L.’s big ol’ villain schemes.

Did he always understand what she was working on? No. Did she ever really try to explain it in an easily understood way? Also no. Did these trips to the labs often end with her metal hand clamped around his beak, hissing at him and calling him names? No, well, yes. Yes, it did.

… he was supposed to be going somewhere with this, but he wasn’t quite sure where. Wait, no, now he remembered. 

If he wanted to someday be the one hatching the schemes, he should watch how others hatched theirs first. It was like watching the prizefighter in the ring to learn how to beat him. Some people would only hit you if you asked them for anything, so you had to watch how they did something instead.

Most of the other scientists ignored him, and he didn’t pay them much attention either. But today, a duck in a red hat waved at them as he and Heron stepped inside the lab.

“Oh, hello! I’m Fethry!” The lab coat he was wearing hung loosely on him, clearly meant for a slightly larger bird.

“O-kaaay...?” Why was he expected to care?

A grin was spreading across Heron’s face as she looked the duck up and down. Then she turned her gaze to Steelbeak as she gestured offhandedly at the duck. “Fethry is our new marine specialist. He’ll be working on some of our most important projects.”

Heron… sounded like she was trying to hold back a laugh. What, was this smart guy really good at the jokes? Or did he know a party trick or two?

And what kind of name was Fethry? Might as well have called him “Webby” since he had webbed feet.

“Say, Fethry?” He knew that tone of voice from Heron. He didn’t always know the details of what she was saying, but he knew the sweetly sharpened tone was meant to cut someone down to size.

He felt… lighter, watching that tone be aimed at someone who wasn’t him. Like he was actually in on the joke for once. He also felt the urge to move to safer ground.

Heron’s smile was wide as she continued. “Why don’t you explain to my partner, Steelbeak, what you’re working on? He loves to hear about scientific experiments in great detail. Especially if you use a lot of long words.”

Okay, maybe he was still part of the joke.

Fethry’s eyes widened—he didn’t even know it was possible for someone to widen their eyes like that until Fethry did. “I’d love to!”

“Great!” Heron said in a passable imitation of Fethry’s enthusiasm. Under her breath she added, “Maybe now I can get some real work done.”

Steelbeak’s jaw tightened as she walked away. He refocused his gaze on the red-capped duck, who was all but jumping in place. 

A snort escaped him as he sat down at a table. At least if this pipsqueak tried to clamp his beak, he could just knock him into next week.

“So what are you working on?” This was still more exciting than watching the walls, after all.

Fethry laughed nervously. It had been a while since anyone paid him a significant amount of attention. “Well, at the moment I’m just filling out the request paperwork. But I’m hoping to start an experiment on delaying the eating habits of the crown of thorns starfish.”

“The what?”

“Crown of thorns starfish. It eats coral.”

“And that is?”

“Coral is like…” Fethry scratched his head. He could never remember all the big words like polyps, sessile, and Anthozoa when he needed to. “It’s like skeletons scattered across the seafloor that fish live in.”

“Really? So fish just decide to live in dead bodies.” Sounded fake, but at least it wasn’t boring.

“Well, coral is a skeleton, but it’s also alive. It’s really bad when they do die.”

“So the fish live in alive dead bodies.” This Fethry guy was talking an interesting sort of crazy.

“Skeletons, yes. Called coral. Only these sea stars eat the coral, so the fish have no place to live then.”

“Now, these sea stars start off eating algae. It’s been called the grass of the sea,” he explained before Steelbeak even had to ask. Fethry’s beak scrunched up. “Though I have to say, grass usually tastes much better.”

“How long it takes for the sea stars to go from algae to coral varies. And there’s a lot of these starfish in the ocean. If they made the switch all at once, they could do a lot of damage.”

Huh. For the guy’s first project, it had the makings of a decent scheme. “So… if you could figure out how to make them do it, you could have them eat the fish out of house and home?”

Fethry actually nodded at that. “Or if I could figure out a way to slow it down, I could buy time for the reefs to grow.”

“...huh.” He actually followed most of that. Sure in his mind, coral reefs had a lot more skulls than they normally did. But he got the gist of what Fethry was talking about.

Black Heron hummed as she worked without interruption. Fethry calculated the costs of feeding and housing a small colony of starfish, making sure to show his work. And Steelbeak imagined blackmailing a fishing village with an army of sea stars. Small potatoes when it came to true villainy, but everyone had to start somewhere.

***

It wasn’t one of Heron’s longer science sessions. She tapped at some keys, read some screens, fiddled with some gadgets, and was ready to leave in a couple of hours.

Fethry had remained in the lab, drawing up plans for a sea star’s dream home. They’d need plenty of walking room, he’d said, so he was drawing up little pathway designs. Including one for a yellow brick road.

He started to reach out a hand to Steelbeak… for what, Steelbeak wasn’t sure. His body tensed in defense.

And Fethry must have noticed because he let his hand drop to his side and just smiled instead. “Thanks for listening. I know I kind of ramble.”

Steelbeak waited a few seconds to be sure that Fethry wasn’t going to make any sudden moves. Then he gave a shrug and followed Heron out.

It hadn’t been a hardship. Listening to weird undersea stuff passed the time. It was like catching a documentary on TV, without the meatheads that would grab the remote from you and change the channel to something else.

Black Heron laughed at Fethry as soon as they left the lab. "That guy," was all she managed to say before chuckles overtook her.

Steelbeak scowled. “What? What did he say that was so funny?” Was he the butt of someone else’s joke again? He'd make him go splat, if so.

Heron regained control of herself, but she was still grinning. “He didn’t have to say anything. It’s comical that he’s even here.”

The scowl receded and his brows knit in confusion. “I don’t —”

“You don’t get it, I know. Lucky for you, I’m in a good enough mood to explain. He’s Scrooge McDuck’s nephew. You remember, the guy you were supposed to get out of the arcade?”

“The big guy who wrecked one of my suits?”

“Ugh, no! He was the one wearing a top hat.” A frown flitted across her face, but her good mood was quick to reassert itself. Past failure meant little in the face of such a hilarious triumph.

“He came to us, wanting a job. He has no idea that we’re F.O.W.L. and no idea that we’re working against everything his family stands for. We’re holding him hostage, and he has no clue.” Another peal of laughter escaped Heron.

Steelbeak let out a chuckle as well, now that he was finally in on the joke. "Ahh, I get it. Classic dum-dum. What kind of idiot doesn't know who they're working for?"

The grin on Heron’s face slipped slightly.

"This should go without saying, but I know you so I'll say it anyway. Do not tell Fethry any details of your work, your missions, what we do here. Nada. Nothing."

"Well, duh. I know that. That's why they're called secret missions."

"Steelbeak, I once saw you brag about being a secret agent at a bar to try and get a date."

"And why not! They were cute!"

“And you wonder why your recreational leave is so limited.”

“What?”

“I’m saying dumb boys don’t get a lot of outdoors time.”

“Hey!”

A smirk moved across her face before she continued. “The director wants him to remain utterly oblivious, so secrecy is of the utmost importance. He’s not going to be happy if we have to lock him up or kill him for knowing too much.”

Steelbeak did not reach for his beak. He did not feel the slight dents that remained from trying to punch his own mouth open. “And we’re not just locking him up now, why?”

“Because the Ducks are easiest to manage when they think a situation is within their control!” Her voice was raised as decades of thwarted ambitions seeped into her tone.

Steelbeak was unimpressed. He could get just as angry, and he hadn’t needed years to get to that point.

“And what if he does ask what I do here?”

“Why would he ask? You’re hardly about to engage him in some deep conversation, are you?”

He couldn’t quite meet her eyes for some reason. “Well, no, but…”

“Oh, for larceny’s sake. If it does come up and you can’t avoid answering the question, just make something up. You’re an agent, do some lying.”

“... yeah, of course. I can do that.”

***

It doesn’t really sink in until later that night, back in his room, how Fethry answered all his questions without calling him, “Stupid.”

[extremelyblackandwhite]

lover series - daylight

Pairing: Carter Baizen x Reader

Warnings: none

A/N: this is what happens when i mention carter baizen more than once a day. also daylight just fits him as a person??? if you wanna listen to daylight while reading this, here. this was inspired by an ask i got in this blog, thank you for the idea 💕

My love was as cruel as the cities I lived in Everyone looked worse in the light There are so many lines that I've crossed, unforgiven I'll tell you truth, but never, "Goodbye"

   - Get out. 

   - What? - Carter looked at the blonde sat next to him whose eyes seemed to wander to everyone but to him. - Don’t be like this. You’re just nervous about meeting your dad.

   - I don’t need your help anymore or ever again. I should have done this on my own from the start.

  - Fine, if that’s what you want. - he opened the door of the limousine, climbing off the comfortable warmth of their vehicle to be greeted with the darkness and coldness of New York during the warmth. Serena, without as much as looking back at the man who had spent a full year helping her find her father, ordered the driver to keep going. Well, he should’ve known better but once again, his judgement tended to be clouded whenever dealing with pretty women. 

Once again he was all alone again, nowhere to go, no one to talk to. He could just fell his parents awaiting for him to return to them on his knees begging to be taken back but at this point there was too much damage done and Carter was much to prideful to return to them. In all honesty, Carter was much to prideful to even stay with New York. After the mess that had been his relationship with Serena, no doubt the rest of the Upper East Side was gonna go after him with every single little dark secret he had, and he had plenty of those. 

With that in mind Carter decided to do what he always did; start again. That’s what he always did when things went south or when the world became too suffocating. However, after doing humanitarian work and a documentary, he wondered what he could do next. Lost in how to reboot his life for what seemed like the millionth time in his young years, a little fall of rain from the sky started to wet his cashmere black trench coat. He bite his lip out of frustration. Of fucking course, that was just what he needed right now. Before he could let out all his frustrations by kicking a nearby bin, drops of water stopped falling on his coat and instead sounded like they were falling onto plastic. 

    - Are you alright, sir? - a melodic, magical-like voice broke through his mind and his eyes travelled to a woman standing next to him. She was holding a plastic umbrella over him which kept both of them dry and away from the rain. Unlike him, she was dressed in a lesser quality fabric, using what looked like a blue waitress dress and some off brand white sneakers with her hair pushed into a ponytail, everything merely covered by a worn out black cotton trench coat. - Sir? 

I don't wanna look at anything else now that I saw you I don't wanna think of anything else now that I thought of you I've been sleepin' so long in a twenty-year dark night And now I see daylight, I only see daylight

Suddenly, he remembered a faithful sentence from one of the movies he had seen during his youth, finally understanding its meaning. They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops. It was true, time did stopped, everything seemed to move in incredibly slow motion, he could see every single blink of the most gorgeous pair of eyes he’d ever met, hear every drop of rain hitting the plastic of the umbrella. However, the later part of the sentence was also true, once time starts again it moves extra fast, and none was that true as a honking bus drove through a puddle of water, waking them both from a dream-like trance. 

     - I saw you being kicked off a car from my diner. You look like you needed help. - she pushed a few of the fly away hairs of her ponytail held together by a blue scrunchie behind her ear. Unlike the girls of Upper East, they weren’t adorned with pearls or heavy jewelled earrings. - Do you wanna come in for a bit, just while the rain doesn’t calm down?

Carter still found himself still staring at her. God, where had she been hiding his whole life? Did she just decide to pop up now that he had been truly humiliated by Serena. Serena, who was even Serena? He didn’t think he’d ever want to think about Serena, Blair, Beth. Who were any of them compared to that woman holding an off brand umbrella over his head as if he wasn’t one of the most hated people in the Upper East. In normal circumstances, he wouldn’t enter any lower ranked places but her smile and comforting aura just made him want to follow her anywhere she went. And so, with a nod, he followed her inside a small diner just in front o the place he had been so unceremoniously dumped. The place was small and empty seemingly with her being probably the last employee before closing time. Nevertheless, there was some charm on the beat up, too used black board by the kitchen window with various pie names written in beautiful chalk calligraphy. 

    - Do you want to eat anything? My treat. - he wondered why she wasn’t charging, why a woman who clearly was much lower than him status wise and could clearly see he was rich offer him something. Normally people would try to quickly rip him off. - I bake them all myself. A new one every single morning. 

   - You bake a new pie every single morning? - he took a seat on one of the red leathered stools by the main table. - Is this your place?

   - No, I just work here but one day I’m gonna have my own place, my own pie shop and people are gonna come from all over the world to try my pies. - she seemed to get lost in her own fantasy before opening the lid of one of the various glass pies stands to take what looked like a wild berry pie slice, serving it perfectly on a freshly washed plate. - A little wild, wild, berry pie. 

  - Pardon? - he asked as she slide the plate towards him, handing him a fork at the same time. 

  - The pie. - she pointed at the board. - It’s the title. Cream patisserie with some berries on traditional pie crust. I got the idea while watching a particularly steamy scene on Sex and the City. 

  - You created the recipe?

  - Where do you think recipes come from? - she smirked at him. - Come on, I promise it’s not poisoned. 

Carter gave her a coyly smile before sinking in his fork in the beautiful berry coloured desert, taking a piece before bring it up to his mouth. As the sweet touched his tongue, he swore like he melted away from his whole body. The taste was fantastic and Carter was certain he had never tasted anything better than that small piece of pie.

   - God, this is fantastic.

   - Thank you, I try my best. - she smiled. - I’m Y/N, by the way. 

   - Carter Baizen. 

Luck of the draw only draws the unlucky And so I became the butt of the joke I wounded the good and I trusted the wicked Clearin' the air, I breathed in the smoke maybe you ran with the wolves and refused to settle down Maybe I've stormed out of every single room in this town Threw out our cloaks and our daggers because it's morning now It's brighter now, now

  - Olivia? - Carter mockingly called out, looking around his hotel suit as he wrapped a burgundy red tie around his pristine white shirt. A small high pitched giggle came from behind the leather coach. With a coy smile, Carter slowly moved towards the couch. - Oh, where could my Libbie be?

Another high pitched came from behind the coach and before the three year old could realise what was happening, Carter had already grabbed her by the waist, throwing her to the ceiling before catching her in a fit of giggles, her inherited curly brown hair stuck in front of the same eyes she had definitely gotten from her mother. The little girl giggled once more, tiny arms coming to wrap themselves around her father’s neck. 

  - What are you two doing? - Y/N came out from her bedroom due to all the giggling. Noticing her daughter in her father’s arms she merely rolled her eyes with a smile on her face. - I thought you were supposed to be in bed.

  - We’re just playing hide and seek. - she replied, hiding behind her father’s neck. She surely knew how to avoid confrontation. Y/N merely laughed, walking up to her husband and daughter. - Do you really need to go, mummy?

  - It’s just for a few hours. We’ll be here when you wake up. - Y/N pulled some of her daughter’s hair away from her round, chubby baby face. 

  - Why can’t I go? - she pouted. 

  - You wouldn’t like it, baby. - Carter kissed her cheek before handing her to the nanny who they had hired specifically for tonight. Usually Y/N and Carter didn’t hire nannies as they would rather spend time with their daughter rather than having a complete stranger. Most of the times, Olivia would either be at the pie shop with Y/N or at Carter’s firm office. However, tonight specifically both Carter and Y/N needed to attend a donators gala hosted by none other than Carter’s old fling Serena van der Woodsen. Initially, Carter had been firm on his decision not go, much too uninterested in ever speaking to her or any of her friends ever again. However, after some convincing on Y/N’s part and how he shouldn’t really care about other’s opinion and just enjoy a nice night out, he had caved in. - Trust me, daddy won’t like it either. 

  - Tuck me in? 

  - Okay, baby. - Y/N took over from the nanny, picking her daughter up against her hip before walking away from the main room and into the bedroom of the hotel suit. Carter took to pushing the sheets away from the mattress as Y/N laid her daughter in, puffing her pillows just the way she liked it and pulling the duvet up to her neck. - Now you be a brave good girl for mummy and daddy, okay?

  - Okay. - she nodded, holding onto one of her many stuffed animals. - Night, mummy. Night, daddy. 

 - Goodnight, ladybug. - Carter placed a kiss on his daughter’s forehead before getting up and following his wife out of the hotel room before he could change his mind. His life had gone a completely one eighty every since seeing the group of people he used to hang out with during his youth. He had gotten married to the love of his life who was fiercely by his side no matter what happened, had started his own firm finally riding himself of his parents name, and had brought in the most precious daughter to the world. Whatever happened in the Upper East Side was no longer something that interested him even if he was one of the most wealthy men in New York. He didn’t want Y/N or Olivia to frequent those rotten and cruel places. They were happy in their own little bubble however, sometimes, like tonight, he had to confront the rest of the whole who seemingly still had his eyes on him.

Noticing his tenseness, Y/N intertwined her hand with his, giving him a soft and understanding smile followed by a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

 - You’re gonna be fine, you’ve done way better than everyone in that room. You didn’t inherit what you have, you built it and you should be proud of that, Car. 

  - Well, you have to say that, you’re my wife. - he moved his face slightly so he could kiss her properly. - I can’t believe you’re my wife. 

  - You asked me on a good day. - she looked at the engagement band stacked with her wedding band, simple in silver, nothing too big or too lavish, just something small that both of them liked. 

They were both escorted into the limo with Y/N immediately cuddling up next to her husband unlike so many of his girlfriends before. In all honesty, Carter sometimes thought he was dreaming. He just couldn’t believe he was married to her and if he had told a younger self he would marry someone outside the Upper East circle he wouldn’t have believed it, yet here he was. She was a magnetic, kind, determined woman who had managed to get him out of a rut and push him to his full potential while still living her own dreams. He thought he couldn’t be more in love with her and then she gave him Olivia. He still remembered that faithful New Year’s Eve when she handed him a pregnancy test or when they had to rush out of one of his dinners because she had begun labour. There was nothing in this world that mattered more to Carter Baizen than his girls, something the rest of the Upper East didn’t really understand. However, he was happy, he was happily married, happy with his career and happy with his little ladybug. 

  - Car, are you coming? - Y/N snapped him out of his daze as they reached the gala’s location. Pushing away all the insecurities he had, he pridefully walked down the stairs with Y/N by his side, catching the attention of every single person who stopped their chat to look at the “disgraced” Carter Baizen and the so called “pie girl” he had married.

  - Should we dance? - he gave her grin, offering her his hand eloquently much to her enjoyment. - I wish to dance with the prettiest lady in this room. 

  - Prettiest girl in the room? - she giggled, taking in his hand while the other one held her waist. - Should I ask how many girls in this room you’ve used that line with?

  - Well, Mrs. Baizen, you’re definitely the only one I’ve used that on.

  - You better not be lying to me, Mr. Baizen. 

  - I love you so much, Y/N. - he leaned down to peck her lips, not caring who was watching. 

  - I love you too, Car.

I once believe love would be burning red but it’s golden like daylight

[fernthewhimsical]

Last year I read a post (which I can’t find anymore) about devotional tips to Frigg. The writer wrote a note at the top of the post stating that they would be referring to Frigg as “They”, since the Gods don’t adhere to our human binary of “male” and “female”. It was such a simple sentence, but it was such an impactful thing for me. I’d never thought of it that way. But to me, it made perfect sense. So I accepted it, and then never looked any deeper into it. Never thought further about what that would mean for me, or my craft.

That changed earlier this year. I was feeling a call to deepen the relation I have with the deities I am devoted to. Which led to me researching and redefining my bond with whom I then still called Horned One. As I wrote in an earlier post, I still very much saw Him as an archetype of the divine masculine. The God to complement the Goddess, which was a paradigm left over from my earlier wiccan-adjacent roots. It didn’t mesh with my earlier found beliefs that Gods are outside of our human gender structures. I couldn’t wrap my hear around it. Which meant one thing: research.

Because why does everything in western witchcraft practices have to adhere to a binary gender system? Why do we have a “divine feminine” and a “divine masculine” when it comes to our inner worlds? And further than that, why does seemingly everything in western witchcraft need to be gendered? Open any book on modern witchcraft and you’ll see gender assigned to everything. To the elements, to the days of the week, to crystals, to herbs, to planets, to runes, everything has a gender or gendered “energy” attached to it. I’ve found, especially in witchcraft and paganism, that when we want to figure out “why?” we need to ask: “where does it come from?”

It seems to start with the Greek philosopher Empedocles. He is the one who gave us the four elements that make up all matter: earth, air, fire and water. The elements are a big part of modern witchcraft, especially the wiccan traditions, or the traditions which have their roots in wicca. We call upon the elements to protect us when we cast a circle. We use the elements to bless and consecrate items. Just to name a few. Empedocles not only posited that all matter was made up out of these four elements, but he also linked them to the Gods Zeus, Hera, Nestis (Persephone) and Aidoneus (Hades). So we have two elements tied to a God, and two to a Goddess. This is where the belief that the elements are either “feminine” or “masculine” probably originates. It’s not a strange thought that this could have easily been stretched: if the elements are “feminine” or “masculine”, and things like crystals or herbs are associated with the elements, then they are also “feminine” or “masculine”.

Of course the influence of monotheistic religions can not be ignored. Our western society gets a lot of its views from Christianity. In the Christian bible God created Adam and Eve, one man and one woman. A strong binary where there is no room for deviation. It is also seen as an ideal to strive towards: a husband and wife, standing in the light of God, who together can create new life. This monotheistic view has been part of our western culture for millennia, which has influenced a lot of scholars, philosophers, artist, etc. Which in turn influences the information that we have access to now. Everything we know about our ancestors is written later, often by Christian scholars or even monks, who wrote from their (gender-binary and patriarchal) worldview.

Then of course we have the beginnings of our contemporary witchcraft: wicca and Gerald Gardner. In the wiccan faith a God and a Goddess are worshipped. Some believe them to be source of all life, others believe they are facets or avatars of a bigger force (Spirit, the All, etc.). The Triple Goddess stands for the phases of a woman’s life: the maiden, the mother and the crone. She also embodies the “feminine energies” such as nurturing, giving, sensual, loving, and wise. The Horned God is the masculine aspects, such as providing, protecting, strengthening, sexual, and also wise. Covens are led by a High Priest (HP) and a High Priestess (HPs), where in Gardner’s days they took part in a ritual called “the Hieros Gamos” or “the Great Rite”, where the HP and HPs engaged in sexual intercourse to raise power, or as part of an initiation rite. Because, as our tradition’s wiccan inspired ritual states:  “where the masculine and feminine are joined, spirit is born.” Nowadays this is mostly done symbolically with a chalice and an athame, luckily, since Gardner is known to have “asked” High Priestesses to step aside when they were no longer young and beautiful in his eyes, which… ew. The God and Goddess also complete a life cycle in the Wheel of the Year. The God impregnates the Goddess, after which he travels to the underworld and is born again from Her womb. Because of this, life will begin anew and nature will grow once more. Heterosexual procreation and that bond between man and woman is very important in the wiccan faith. The duality of male and female; and together they create life, is very ingrained into our modern, contemporary paganism because of this.

Then, we need to talk about Jung. In the first big wiccan revival in the ‘70s many prominent witches, like Janet and Steward Farrar, stepped back a bit from the ideas that the Gods were indeed outside of us, but instead incorporated Jungian philosophy into their faith. The Gods are then archetypes living deep in our subconsciousness, which we contact through prayer, spells and ritual. In that first revival this was a pretty common view of the world, which in turn, influenced a lot of books that were written in that time. One of Jung’s theories is about the Anima and the Animus. Jung stated that, much like the yin-yang symbol, every woman had a bit of masculinity in her unconscious, called the Animus. And that the man had a bit of femininity in his unconscious, called the Anima. If the Animus or Anima was not recognized properly, it could have negative repercussions for the person in question. That part of the subconscious would then dictate the way the person would react in certain situations. For example, a woman acting in a way we would normally “expect” (back then) from a man, so through means of violence and aggression. So an integration, a joining from both the feminine and the masculine inside us is needed to become whole and to become a complete, spiritual being (sounds familiar, no?)

Last but not least, we have feminism. Contemporary witchcraft and paganism gained a lot of popularity in those same ‘70s, as well as the ‘60s, by being more Goddess oriented. Many of us, even now, come from the monotheistic religions which heavily centre on the divine masculine, without giving a female counterpart in that. Many of those religions are also often oppressive and discriminatory when it comes to the treatment of women. For many women witchcraft and paganism gives therefore a sense of freedom and equality not experienced before. Witchcraft is also the craft of the marginalized, protects those who aren’t in a position to protect themselves and are an enormous source of empowerment for many. With the arrival of Dianic wicca, a branch of wicca focussed solely on the Goddess, the Goddess movement within wicca and later witchcraft grew. Many were drawn to a path that celebrated women, and all that this entailed. This meant that the “divine feminine” became more and more important. The womb being the source of all creative power in the universe. The yoni being something not to be ashamed of, but instead something to be proud of and to take pride in. (I will talk about my views on all of this in a later post) An emphasis on sisterhood and the sacred bond we all share through the ancient mothers.

I believe all of this influenced and shaped the way we see gender when it comes to witchcraft and paganism. This all contributed in gender having the heavy influence that we see now. So now we know where it comes from… now what? Well, join me next time as I try to figure that out.

Sorry for the superlong post! Originally found on my website

[aphrodites-law]

A Bit of Clarity 🍂 (5/?) The visions had started last autumn, a year ago now. It had caused a bit of chaos for some, a bit of clarity for others. Two days ago, Clarke Griffin had been perfectly fine managing both her Café and her stress. But now she was curious - so deeply curious about the vision of herself entwined with the aloof Lexa Woods that it was leading her to complete distraction.

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4]

If there was someone or something overseeing their lives, pulling the strings of their destiny and purposefully nudging them toward specific paths, then Clarke wanted a fucking word with them.  

It was a surprise, if not a shock, when she saw Lexa stroll into the shop with her laptop bag slung over her shoulder. It was barely a week after Clarke had resolved not to think about her anymore, a plan that hadn't always been successful. Lexa walked toward the counter with a proud chin, as if nothing had changed.

"Good morning," she said.

Clarke could have thrown a mini Bundt cake at her if Wells hadn't nearly burnt his apron making them.

"It was," she answered, deciding that professionalism was not in the cards today.

“I’ll have some pie, please."

“Humble?”

Lexa set her jaw. “And what would that taste like?”

Clarke smiled sardonically. “Bitter.”

Lexa held her stare before looking at the display. "I think I'll try the mini Bundt."

"For here or to go?" Clarke asked as she rang it up.

Lexa seemed disappointed to see that her usual seat by the weeping fig was occupied.

"Looks like it's busy."

"Faithful clientele," Clarke retorted, and then, "for the most part."

Lexa exhaled sharply before pulling out her wallet to pay in cash. "No problem, I'll have it to go."

Clarke put the mini Bundt in a paper bag. "No coffee?" she asked, though she didn't care much for the answer.

"Not today."

"I'm sorry we're fresh out of kale juice." It was a snippy comment that Clarke knew she was above making, but Lexa's sudden reappearance had touched a nerve.  

Whatever Lexa wanted to say, she visibly stopped herself. She grabbed her mini Bundt and then pulled out a sheet of paper from her bag.

"Would you mind if I put this up? It's the ad for interviews."

"I offered, didn't I?"

"Offers change."

"I don't go back on my word," Clarke answered stubbornly.

Lexa challenged her stare before nodding and walking toward the board. She scanned over each flyer, seemingly trying to figure out which one she could put hers next to. Finally she pinned it near the middle right. It was a sober flyer; no bold colors or giant fonts, but eye-catching in its minimalism compared to the busier ads surrounding it. As always, Lexa stuck to the basics.

Carrying her mini Bundt, she gave Clarke one last look before leaving. Clarke noticed the tip she'd left and hung her head before going back to her doodles. It was going to be a slow, rainy day.

* * *

It was a slow, rainy week. The wind came first; strong gusts that swept up old leaves and knocked down hats. A downpour followed on Wednesday, unrelenting and miserable. Customers came into the shop drenched, sticking their umbrellas in the already full rack by the entrance before rubbing their cold hands together.

Clarke liked watching their faces; the expressions of relief at finally finding some shelter and comfort from the brutal rain. It was gloomy outside but the café was everyone's home for a little while, the colors still warm and the plants still thriving. She couldn't help but enjoy these moments regardless of the cold, remembering this feeling was exactly why she'd gotten into this business in the first place.

Still, Clarke was human. An hour before closing time she was already fantasizing about hot tomato soup and the comfort of her bed. She'd finished chatting with a regular when Wells came in looking like he'd run a mile to get here. He usually left much earlier than she did, but sometimes swung back to check on things before driving to meet Raven at the theater.

"You want to read this," he told her with barely contained excitement, clutching his phone against his soaked raincoat.

He rounded the counter and showed her the screen. It was an article from the Costial Gazette with a damning title:

Finn's Coffee & Bagels: Neither Fresh nor Clean

"What is this?" Clarke asked, skimming the article. There were mentions of false advertising, misleading business practices, trouble brewing with the Federal Trade Commission, mentions of artificial preservatives despite claims of the contrary, and, to top off the proverbial shit cake, an anonymous employee detailing horrid management. It was a scalding report - one Clarke had dreamed of writing herself.  

Understandably, Wells couldn't stop grinning. "This is good, right? Especially the FTC stuff. Bad for him, good for us."

Clarke was about to answer when a thought struck her. She quickly scrolled back up: By Echo Blake and Lexa Woods.

Clarke shut her eyes closed. So maybe she'd jumped to conclusions when she'd seen Lexa at his shop. Maybe she'd made it personal. Who wouldn't? Lexa was still… Lexa. Impossible to read and impossible to understand.

"Titus will drop him for sure," Wells mused aloud. "How the hell did Finn get the old man to carry his brand anyway?"

"Money. Connections. Empty promises." Clarke had no doubt about that. "That's mostly how Finn gets what he wants."

Wells was still smiling from ear to ear when he texted Raven a link to the article. "Looks like it finally bit him in the ass. We should send the Gazette a Thank You cake."

Clarke leaned her elbows on the counter and let out a noncommittal grunt.

"What's wrong?" Wells asked. "I thought you'd be happy about this."

"Oh I'm happy. Just thinking about the humble pie I'm gonna have to eat myself."

* * *

Naturally, Clarke had to wait another week before Lexa dared show up again. She'd noticed that her ad had attracted some attention - curious customers reading it and then pocketing a tear-off tab - and was anticipating Lexa would come in to either replace it or take it down.

When she did, it was during the usual afternoon lull and Clarke felt nervous. Now that she knew her anger had stemmed from… well, a combination of things but also an overreaction, she was embarrassed by the way she'd previously spoken to Lexa.

When Lexa walked in, Clarke was cleaning one of the coffee machines. It was her distorted reflection that she saw in the nozzle; her discreet gait as she walked toward the board and unpinned her ad. Clarke figured she would leave immediately, but Lexa approached the counter. Her eyes scanned over the display glass.

"Can I get you anything?" Clarke tentatively asked.

Lexa looked up and readjusted the strap of her satchel. "Are there any baby Bundts left?"

Clarke shook her head. "All out. It's pecan tartlet week. But Wells liked making them, burnt apron aside - we could put them back in the rotation this month."

Lexa seemed surprised Clarke even suggested something that would please her. "That's alright; I'll just wait."

"Regular coffee?" Clarke asked.

Lexa nodded while looking away. "Sure."

As Clarke poured Lexa's regular in a paper cup, she couldn't help but feel like this was their first conversation all over again. Odd and stilted but also one that she didn't want to end so soon. Clarke capped the coffee and turned to her.

"I read your article on FC&B. It's really good." She gave her the cup. "Personal bias aside."

A small smile graced Lexa's face and Clarke felt a thrill. "My co-writer did most of the investigative work."

"But you did some too," Clarke remembered, knowing Lexa would also recollect the time Clarke had spotted her in Finn's shop. "Tried their juice and everything."

Lexa's nose scrunched subtly. "If that's what you want to call it. But still, Echo deserves the credit for the piece. It was her story from the beginning; I was mostly a sounding board."

Something about Lexa dismissing her own work bothered Clarke. "Don't do that."  

"Do what?"

"I've read your stuff before; I know there was some of you in that article. Just take the compliment, Lexa."

There was that fierce light in Lexa's eyes again. "It's not fully mine to take."

"I guess they just put your name on there to fill space?"

Lexa pressed her lips together, unimpressed with the sarcasm.

Clarke huffed. "Why are you so-" She couldn't even finish her question, unsure where to start. Why couldn't they communicate normally? Why did every sentence feel like a mountain to climb? And how on earth did Lexa push her buttons without even lifting a finger?

"You're frustrated," Lexa pointed out.

"I am."

"With me?"

"Is that so hard to believe?"

"No. I've been told I can be frustrating before."

She said it with such a jaded expression that Clarke couldn't help but laugh. "God, how could I ever think…"

"Think what?" Lexa asked without skipping a beat.

Clarke shook her head and walked to the end of the counter. "Nothing."

Lexa followed. "You know, I'm not the only one who sidesteps questions."

There was something unnerving about her tone, like she was challenging her, and Clarke wasn't known to be a graceful loser.  

"You don't want the answers."

"Try me. You might be surprised."

Clarke scoffed, then decided she wouldn't back away any longer. "What do you really want to ask, Lexa?" It was the same turn of phrase Lexa had used on her at the bar; the frustration of unspoken truths reaching a boiling point. 

"What did you see?" Lexa inquired, never once looking away from her.  

Clarke hesitated. They couldn't do this here, now… could they?

"Clarke," Lexa said, almost like a plea. 

Clarke wasn't sure she'd ever heard her name said that way. She waited a beat. "Fine. I saw you."

Lexa visibly swallowed. "What about me?"

"You're a journalist. Guess."

"Good journalists don't guess. I would need some information to first form a hypothesis and then-"

"You kissed me," Clarke interjected, fed up with logic.

Lexa's mouth clamped shut, so Clarke continued:

"And I mean you kissed me everywhere. Is that enough to form a hypothesis?"

Lexa processed for a moment, her cheeks a shade darker. "It explains… things."

"Why?" Clarke paused, thinking it through. "Did you have…"

"Yes."

"The same?"

"Not exactly."

"Well? Spit it out."

Lexa looked around them, but no one paid them any attention. "I was making coffee. In my underwear.”

Clarke frowned, unsure she'd heard her correctly. "You're kidding, right? I make coffee every day, how is that so embarrassing you couldn't tell me?"

"No, you don't understand," Lexa weakly said. "I don't… like… coffee. Hate it. Any hot beverage actually."

"You hate coffee," Clarke repeated incredulously, eyes going to the very cup Lexa was holding.  

"But I was making it," Lexa reiterated. "In an apartment that wasn't mine. With doodles framed everywhere. After recognizing the style, I figured… I was making it for you."

Clarke stepped back, bewildered. She had never once thought that Lexa might've seen the same thing she had, or something close, or even seen her. She wasn't even sure what that meant, if anything at all.

"Oh."

"Yes."

It was like everything had shifted in the span of a few seconds, the before and after she had revealed what she'd seen. It was different now. Lexa knew, and she knew, and everything that had brought them here took on a different meaning. Lexa starting a dialogue; Lexa inviting her to a play; Lexa catching her eyes from across a room. She had been trying to solve a puzzle too; trying to understand what she might've missed before.

But.

Something between them never quite… locked. For the first time, Clarke realized that Lexa was just as wildly out of her depth as she was. Even in her anger she'd put Lexa on a pedestal; seen her as the diligent journalist with the clever words and the impenetrable stare. Now she saw Lexa as someone looking for answers just as she was. They'd both been trying to form a connection based on a vision - maybe that was the problem.

"Well, that kind of takes the surprise out of it," she said, finally exhaling.

Lexa opened and shut her mouth, unsure where to go from there. She settled on a mute nod while Clarke fiddled with her hands, glancing toward the front door and praying for someone to walk in. No such miracle happened quickly enough.

"Thank you for telling me." Lexa had gone quieter; introspective in the way Clarke was used to.

"Yep." Clarke rubbed the back of her neck. "It's probably for the best that- I mean, it's a relief actually."

"It is. I'm sorry if I acted strangely," Lexa said. "I was confused."

"Right. Because we barely knew each other."

"Exactly."

"And I mean… we were both clearly trying to see if there was something… there, and, I don't know that-"

Lexa's eyes flashed to hers. "No, of course not. I'm just a customer."

Clarke frowned. "I didn't say that."

"But it's true. We were drawn to each other because of something out of our control. It's something I've heard a lot in recent interviews. A guy walking up to a woman after he had a vision of her dress. A wife divorcing her husband because she had a vision of herself accepting a drink from a stranger."  

Lexa seemed to have gone back into business mode and Clarke didn't know if it was some sort of deflecting mechanism. Regardless, Clarke had never felt this awkward in her life. Like she might trip on her own feet if she even moved.

"So the visions push us to act a certain way," she tried to catch on.

Lexa nodded. "I'm exploring the theory that they're just one thread among hundreds of others. No one is forced to pull that one specifically. Nothing is ever inevitable."

Clarke didn't know what else she could do but nod in acknowledgment. That was it? People got life-altering information from their visions but she got a theory from the woman she shared the supposedly most exciting event of her life with?

"I'm glad we could clear the air."

"Absolutely," Lexa agreed.

Silence stretched for what felt like a minute before Lexa looked at her watch. "Speaking of interviews, I have a phone call soon."

"Great. Hope it's helpful."

"I'm sure it will be."

When Lexa started to leave, Clarke suddenly remembered something. "Wait!"

Lexa looked at her with wide eyes, practically in disbelief Clarke would want to prolong the excruciating moment.

"One more thing," Clarke said.  

"Yes?"

Clarke took a deep breath. "Was it a date?"

Lexa frowned. "What?"

"When you offered me a ticket to Lincoln's play. When you mentioned the after party. Were you asking me out?"

"You'd mentioned wanting to see a play," Lexa stammered. "I had the spare ticket."

"Did you want to pull the thread, Lexa?" Clarke asked, feeling a surge of confidence. Now that the secret was out, she needed to know everything. She needed their bizarre back-and-forths to have an explanation.  

Lexa froze. "I'm a journalist; I investigate. You were my only lead."

It affected her more than it should have, considering Clarke had promised herself she wouldn't let Lexa Woods get to her again.

Lexa must've noticed. "I didn't mean - you're obviously not just-"

"It's fine. I get it. I wanted to be sure too." Clarke turned to grab a towel for the counter. "It's like you said: nothing is inevitable. I'm glad we got it squared away."

Lexa nodded weakly. "So everything can go back to the way it used to be."

"Sure."  

"I look forward to tomorrow's new batch," Lexa told her politely before leaving.

Clarke dropped her towel and sat on the stool they kept behind the counter. Lexa was back in her life, but somehow it felt worse to return to normal. Somehow all Clarke could think about was that Lexa wanted to pull their damn thread but something was keeping her from it.

And maybe it was time to admit she might’ve hoped Lexa and her were inevitable.

- 

[part six]

[zamorawrites]

I suspect that Prince Megamind is responsible for many religious conversions. Megamind is born and invents dehydrated stasis for 100X-the-storage-capacity, 3000-gallon Water Purification Tablets, Invisibility Coating, planetary-defense portals, AND Bryse Cyborgs, and also kills a rapist... RIGHT when they needed to pack up literally everything & flee to the planet of polluted waters and hostile, non-monogamous natives. That's GOT to be a sign from the gods, right?

I really love this question! Especially because I haven’t really had much of a chance to dive too deep into the religious aspect of OWBP yet (other than that the governmental system is a mixture of a Monarchy and a Theocracy, considering that the Monarch’s in command are seen by some as demigods. Ergo, the translation in Chapter 9 of Aevurlla meaning Divine Guidance. The leaders of a branch are seen as divine beings by the majority of the population.)

I’m really excited for some of the upcoming chapters because we do get to see a bit more of the religious side of their culture. (In the next chapter Roxanne goes out with Megamind’s parents. There’s a scene that starts out the chapter where she’s literally just walking through the ship with them and when people realize who Megamind’s parents are, suddenly hundreds of people are holding a fist to their chests and taking a knee as a show of respect and loyalty.) (Needless to say Aevurlla’s normally have someone else run the weekly errands, because talk about making a scene.)

(I’m gonna take a rabbit trail for a little bit here.)

In the next chapter, Roxanne is talking with his parents over lunch and Megamind’s father tells her; “He’s a genius even by our standards, let alone human ones.” and then blatantly just upright admits; “If he hadn’t have been born and accomplished everything that he has, none of us would have survived the black hole. Our whole species would be dead.” Which is, a lot to get hit with over lunch. (Of course then he goes on to explain why that’s true.) 

Now, Megamind, having spent the last 15 years of his life under house-arrest honestly doesn’t have that great of a feel for his own society. He’s not particularly interested in politics, and when he had the choice to go invent something or watch the news, he chose the prior. He’s the next in line to lead, and he’s lost when it comes to leading. He doesn’t even really know how his people see him.

In reality, people either love him or hate him. The number of people who are neutral towards him is so small that there’s not really a reason reporting the figure. And even then, out of the of people who hate him, the main reason is that he’s being seen as such a powerful religious figure, and it’s not like he’s a saint with a perfect record. He’s killed before. And no one wants a wrathful God running around. 

The religious adore him.

The non-religious see him as a threat, because religion gets people killed. It justifies terrible wrongdoings. It starts wars. ‘You can do no wrong if the God you worship mandated what you did.’ It’s dangerous. (But they’re the minority, now more than ever.)

Meanwhile, Megamind is over here throwing around the sentence; “I’m a man, not a God.” nearly every other chapter.

Roxanne is interviewed during the next chapter, and the reporter gives her a quick run-down before giving her an interview; “So, I’m gonna start by asking you what it’s been like here and how you’ve liked it. Let’s try to keep it positive, given the current climate. Then, I’m gonna ask you how the third day has been going, how you’ve been enjoying meeting your future in-laws. Make sure you keep that one very positive, everybody adores those two. Then, I’m gonna ask how things have been going with Mehkean.” 

To which Roxanne has gotten the idea already, and she says: “Keep it positive, I take it?” 

And at that question the reporter suddenly gets really damn serious and tells her; “You don’t just keep that one positive. You act like he invented the god-damned sun. Do you understand?” And when Roxanne asks an incredibly justified ‘what?’ she’s quickly told; “People are going to kill you if you say he’s a jerk. So act like he makes this fucking planet spin.”

Megamind hasn’t just converted non-believers to religion or restored the weary’s faith. He’s starting to be seen as The New God. 

After all, did their Goddess not die with their planet? And was he not the one who led them into a new life on a new planet? 

Was that not the end days? And did he not save them all from certain death, and lift them up from a dying planet, and provide them with a new one? 

Is he not their savior?

Like Drarro says next chapter; If it wasn’t for what Megamind accomplished in the twenty-seven years he had on his planet before it was destroyed, their species would no longer exist.

And sure, the new planet he led them to isn’t perfect. It’s polluted, not that he couldn’t fix that. And it is already inhabited with primitive, seemingly bloodthirsty creatures. 

However, he seems to be willing to give them a chance. Perhaps they all should too. He clearly knows what's best, right?

I’m really excited that I’ve finally gotten a lot of the political stuff out, because now I can start delving into these religious intricacies. 

In an upcoming chapter, Roxanne asks him what his view on religion is. Does he worship their Goddess? Is he an athiest? What are his views there? To which he says; “I have a hard time dedicating myself to something that I don’t know exists. And... scientifically, I have no proof that there is a higher power. It’s a nice thought, but... where’s the proof? People like to go preaching about this all-powerful and all-knowing being and... no. Just no. Maybe there is a Goddess or a God, but I refuse to accept that there’s a higher power that’s both all-powerful and all-knowing, because if there is, that person is a tyrant. If you know everything that’s wrong, and you can fix it all with a snap of your fingers, and you choose to let people suffer, then you don’t deserve worship. I could understand worshiping an all-knowing God or an all-powerful God, but not one that’s both. I just... I’m rambling... sorry. I suppose the answer you wanted was, I’m not particularly religious myself, but perhaps I could be if I knew there was something out there worthy of my worship. For now, let’s just say science is my Goddess.”

In a few chapters Megamind is going to be hit with the reality of what he’s become to his people, and it’s going to be an internal battle. Because he’s not a God; he’s lost, and confused, and terrified, and he just wants his mother to stay in charge. But people want him in charge.

There is going to be a metric fuckton of character development coming up for him. He’s going to struggle with trying not to fall prey to the power that comes with being seen as a literal God. Thankfully, he has Roxanne to put him back in his place and smack some sense into him when he gets out of control; but like he thought in chapter 10, ‘Power was a very addicting thing.’

Anyways, if you’ve read this far I’m amazed! lol. Here’s my favorite ‘Megamind being forced into God-hood’ line:

“I know you’re all angry, you want revenge, but what kind of a God would I be if I wasn’t a merciful one?”

This got out of control and I’m going to end it here before I spoil the whole damn story lol.

Thank you for the ask Elf! :D 

[littlemissonewhoisall]

Guide to writing Cassandra Cain

I’ve seen a lot of people in the Bat Family fandom say that they often minimize or exclude Cassandra from their works because they don’t know enough about her. While I HIGHLY recommend reading her Batgirl comic from 2000, I’ve compiled a guide to her personality, abilities, and relationships with other DC characters here for easy reference. (I’ve tried to be as comprehensive as possible, but I’ve probably forgotten something so please feel free to add onto this if you know the character well)

PERSONALITY

Cassandra has a difficult time with language, spoken or written. This generally manifests through her relying on body language and single-word sentences to get her point across. When she needs to speak, it is halting and awkward, but not broken. She will pause frequently, mumble, or use Malapropisms, but she is a perfectionist and is frustrated when she doesnt use perfect grammar or pronunciation. At times she will be unable to find the words for a particular thought. She usually is portrayed as being unable to read or write. 

Cass sometimes uses mimicry when she has trouble putting words together herself, quoting films, tv shows, and plays.  

Cassandra is compassionate above all else. She values life, and protecting it is her highest priority. She will not hesitate to put herself in danger to save others, and does not tolerate killing. 

Cassandra has a strong guilt complex. Anyone who dies on her watch weighs heavily on her conscience, even if there was nothing she could’ve done to stop it. She does not let go of these “failures” easily. 

Cassandra has little regard for societal norms and expectations. While generally caring and compassionate, she often comes across as rude due to spending most of her life either locked in a bunker or surviving in the wilderness. This includes poor table manners, a tendency to lurk in the shadows, and mirroring her adoptive father’s habit of coming and going without warning. 

Cassandra has great pride in her physical prowess, but little in her moral character. Though she has a strong moral code and is quick to intervene when others break it, she does not see herself as above them and may even have more faith in them than in herself, as she still feels that she may not be able to rise above her upbringing. She can be rather arrogant about her superior agility and combat prowess, however. 

Cassandra is fond of friendly jibes and snark, usually but not always expressed nonverbally. Her sense of humor is slightly unconventional, but usually good-natured. 

Cassandra wears her heart on her sleeve. She is very emotional, and her past trauma can make her emotionally vulnerable, especially because of her lack of communicative skills. Her emotions show through her entire body, even when she doesn’t vocalize them. 

Cassandra is quick to leap before looking, but excellent at adapting to unexpected situations. She is a poor planner and rather impulsive, with a rebellious streak that sometimes makes it hard for her to listen to instructions. However, she is great at thinking on her feet and analyzing her situation in the moment.

Cassandra does not do things in half measures. When she wants to learn something, such as reading or detective work, she is eager to dive into the deep end even if it’s not always the best way to approach it. As mentioned before she is also a perfectionist when it comes to herself, so this approach often leads to frustration. 

Cassandra is very physically affectionate, with little mind for personal space. This often comes in the form of gently touching the face of someone she believes to be in pain. 

Cassandra is extremely empathetic, to the point that it can be overwhelming for her at times. She is very good at spotting falsehoods, hidden pain, etc. 

Despite this, she often misinterprets social cues. For instance, when Barbara and Dick were going through a rough patch in their relationship, she though Dick had intentionally done something to hurt Barbara, and threw him out a window. 

ABILITIES

Cass is fast. Really, really fast. She can move incredibly quickly and quietly, making her very hard to track.

Cass has a shocking amount of strength for her small size. She has punched through 3-inch thick quartz glass, kicked down concrete walls, and thrown a metahuman more than twice her size without issue. 

Her primary advantage comes from her ability to read body language and predict her opponents’ actions, allowing her to dodge bullets and outmaneuver pretty much any non powered opponent. This ability does not work on robots, animals, or sufficiently nonhuman aliens. 

Cassandra is a contender for the world’s best martial artist, along with Lady Shiva and Richard Dragon. She can pick up new fighting styles nearly instantly, allowing her to learn and adapt techniques she’s never encountered before. 

Cass is an incredible acrobat, though not as good as Nightwing. 

Cass is able to control the amount of force she uses to the point that she doesn’t usually have to worry about killing even when using normally lethal techniques. 

She is able to use pressure points to paralyze someone nearly instantly, though she has only shown the ability to use it on those who do not expect her to attack.

She can stop a person’s heart using a special technique, and in later appearances was able to do so without endangering the person for a good length of time, though they’d still die if not revived within that time period. 

She is very good at analyzing her surroundings, which has helped her solve cases. 

Cassandra is exceptional at dividing her attention and energy, able to coordinate herself to the point that government agents assumed she was a metahuman. 

She is very good at the intimidation side of the job, able to terrify even trained killers. 

RELATIONSHIPS

Cassandra is very close to Stephanie Brown, who was her first real friend. She can be a bit overprotective of her, even using violence to keep her out of fights that Cass thinks will be too much for her, though she has largely grown out of that and these days has a lot more faith in her. Cassandra is able to unwind with Stephanie in ways that she has trouble doing with around other people, even those she trusts like Barbara and Tim. When Stephanie seemingly died, Cassandra was deeply affected, becoming shorter-tempered and more violent. 

Cassandra sees Barbara as the mother she never had, and values her insight. Though she often chafes at Barbara’s well-intentioned attempts to get her to see beyond her life as Batgirl, she still cares deeply for her. 

Cass sees Bruce as somewhat of a father figure as well as a bit of an idol, and seeks his approval. When she believes that she has disappointed him, it can be devastating for her. However, she also recognizes his pain and trauma, and sympathizes strongly with it. Her admiration also doesn’t always mean she’ll do what he says.

While Cassandra and Dick don’t always get along (as mentioned earlier), she usually sees him as a mentor and big brother, and she is often more relaxed around him than most people. 

Cass and Jason’s interactions have been largely confrontational, and it’s likely that further encounters would be similar, as she is strongly opposed to lethal force and would endeavor to stop him if she could. That said, she would almost certainly understand the pain he went through, and would try to get through to him with words as much as she is capable, rather than immediately resorting to violence. 

Cass and Tim have a long and complicated history. While the two of them started off rather tense, with Tim being somewhat intimidated by her, they soon grew very close, and treat each other as siblings. Their strengths complement each other, and they are able to work in synch with each other very well. She has also been known to break into his house to steal food and take a shower. 

Like Jason, Cass’s interactions with Damian are few and far between. Their first meeting didn’t end well, as Cassandra pulled him from a building when he was disarming a bomb despite his protests that he could handle it. While she found some of what he said hurtful, she didn’t seem to hold much of a grudge, and I think they could find common ground due to their similar backgrounds. 

Cassandra and Duke seem to be friends, though beyond that little is known of their relationship.

Cassandra is close with Harper Row, and the two of them definitely care for one another despite the troubled history between them.

Cass and Jean-Paul Valley bonded quickly over their shared inexperience with society, and they are both very fond of one-another. 

Cassandra is friends with Dinah Lance, who she has been shown to train with on occasion. 

Cass does not get along with Helena Bertinelli for obvious reasons, and when they worked together during the Battle for the Cowl there was quite a bit of tension between them. 

Cassandra had a close relationship with Basil Karlo/Clayface during the time that he had reformed, as she had faith in his ability to change. His apparent death devastated her.

Her relationship with her biological father is complicated. Though she has always despised what he does for a living, it took a long time for her to come to terms with how badly he treated her. 

Cass’s relationship with her biological mother is even more complex. In most depictions, Cassandra respects Shiva in some ways, but is also troubled by all of the lives that she’s taken.

[robmanion]

all the things that could’ve been

For context, there’s a theory roaming around that the hivemind could travel through time and change events before they happened. here’s my idea of how that could have went. Mentions of kissing, so if you aren’t comfortable with that, don’t read or skip that part. Also mention of a panic attack. That’s the most graphic it’ll get. 

I recommend listing to “if i’m being honest” by dodie for the first half of the story and “shrike” by hozier for the second half of this for the full experience. 

                                                     ______

      It had been about four years or so since Paul had taken that new job Mr. Davidson had offered. Well, it would have been four years. But Paul remembers those years so vividly, it came as a surprise when he woke up one morning and everything was different. 

      The year prior had been the worse one he had ever experienced. One mental breakdown over job layoffs, a car crash, and his mother’s funeral led to a mental hospital and caffeine addiction. He didn’t want to sleep (the nightmares were to real), so he drank to stay awake. He’d stay awake, and he’d feel more worn out, so he’d drink more to stay up. The caffeine crash happened, and he needed more to stay away from dreams- the cycle kept going until he collapsed on the subway. Next thing he knew, he had an IV in his arm recovering from extreme sleep deprivation. Of course, once he was out of the ER, his father drove him to the mental unit. He didn’t want to go, but Paul understood why- he needed help. Badly. So, if the next two months had to be spent in a bland white-walled prison, so be it. It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought, most of the people he met were so sweet and gentle. The only thing that really scared him was the amount of minors in the ward. Those poor children. 

      Once he’d been released, he started to take better care of himself. Got a therapist, moved to a different part of Hatchetfeild, looked for a new job. His old math tutor, Mr. Davidson, offered him a job to help Paul get back on his feet. All he asked for in return was a monthly meeting to check up on his mental health. Seemingly fair enough, so Paul accepted. 

      Paul tried his best to deal with other parts of his life. He’d even tried dating again- something he hadn’t done since high school prom. He’d always felt horrible about himself, about his face, his hair, his body, just a whole mess really. But he needed to get out there sooner or later, right? He started with a girl named Mary (sweet lady, just a bit too narcissistic), but by the god-knows-what-number date, he’d just given up altogether. He liked most of the women, he even flirted with some! But he just couldn’t get over the fact that a month ago he was in a mental hospital. It shouldn’t define him, but it just seemed to loom over everything he did. The only good thing about that place besides the kids were the routines. So, he spoke to his therapist about it, and she said that having a constant thing in life would be extremely helpful. While he was still addicted to caffeine, he felt that he could try and ease his way off it. So, coffee shop it was. 

      He had started off with Starbucks.First, it was an espresso. Next, a simple iced coffee. Then he moved to Iced coffee with creamer. Than to hot coffee.  Than a simple black coffee. Soon, he would be off coffee and down to the weird cappuccino things. 

      He was driving to Starbucks to get his morning coffee when he noticed a sign. Beanie’s. Huh, He’d never heard or seen the place before- must’ve been new. He pulled into their lot, parked, and walked in. He was hit with the smell of muffins and coffee beans. Only, it smelled slightly worse than Starbucks. But honestly, who was he to judge? He walked up to the counter, ready to order. A woman peered from outside a room, and yelled. 

      “EMMA! Costumer!” 

      Paul felt bad. God, if this ‘Emma’ girl was going to get yelled at, maybe he’d go back to Starbucks. Of course, that idea was thrown out the window when he saw her. 

      Paul wasn’t big on beauty. He could appreciate someone’s attractiveness, but he never really seemed to fall for anyone based on that. He had to know them, you know? But when Emma walked out, god he felt his cheeks heat up. She wasn’t supermodel pretty, but she was still breath-taking nonetheless. Sure, her hair was in a messy bun (that wasn’t done to be stylish, if he may have added), bags under her eyes, and looking like she wanted to punch a guy, but she was beautiful. 

      “Welcome to Beanie’s, what can I get you?” Emma asked. Gosh, her voice. Like velvet. Sad, tired velvet, but velvet. 

      “Uh, one black coffee, please,”

                                                ____________

      Paul would be lying if he said that he put up with Beanie’s mediocre coffee for Emma. But what can he say? She was one of the first purely good things to happen to him in a while. Sure, she never recognized him and he always talked super quietly and watched from afar, but it was enough for him. He told his therapist about her, and she said to just ask if she wanted to maybe hang out sometime. Of course, that was insane. He’d have to talk to her about things other than his coffee, and he just wasn’t ready for that. But it had been almost two months, and if Paul didn’t do something now, when would he? 

      So, that faithful day came. He walked into Beanie’s on morning, and paced to the counter. Look normal, Paul. This doesn’t have to be weird. 

      “Welcome to Beanie’s, can I help you?”

       “One black coffee,” He smiled. God he hoped he didn’t look as awkward as he felt. While she made the coffee, he noticed a small tip jar in the corner. He placed a $5 into it; Emma must’ve had superhuman hearing, because she groaned. 

      “Okay, okay! I’ve been brewing up your coffee-” 

      Paul stopped her from singing as soon as the first note hit. She may be attractive, but her singing voice was far from it. “No, no, it’s okay,”

      “Oh, thank you! You know, Nora came back from Coldstone Creamery last weekend and took up the whole singing thing. It’s annoying as hell,” 

      “Sounds like it,” Paul gave a breathy laugh. 

      “I’ve seen you around before, what’s your name?” 

      “Paul,” He extended his hand for a shake. 

      “I’m Emma-” she finishes her sentence while handing Paul his coffee. “-but I’m sure you know that by Nora’s yelling,” 

      At this point, Paul was 100% positive he had a crush on Emma. Okay, crush sounded childish. He had a thing...a fascination...no, no, it was a crush. And god damn it felt nice. To have something positive in his life after so long. 

      “Would you want to get lunch with me sometime?” The words slipped out of his mouth before he could think. Fuck, fuck fuck fuck. But to his luck, Emma smiled. 

      “Yeah, actually, but it has to be dinner- my lunch break is only 30 minutes. What about next Friday, 7?” 

      A costumer behind Paul started to curse him out- Paul had forgotten other people existed. Oops. “Yeah, that works. See you then,” 

      “See you then,” 

      When Paul got home that evening, he was ecstatic. He had a date! Maybe it would even be a good one! But he didn’t want to get his hopes up- she looked excited when he asked, but she could be doing it out of pity. After all, he did stare helplessly at her. And if she knew he was there a lot, than maybe she hoped going out with him would just get rid of him. No, stop it, he told himself. If she didn’t want to go out with him, she would’ve said no. He’d just go on the date and see what happens.

     The next morning as he drove to Beanie’s, it occurred to him that he didn’t know where to pick her up. Or how. God, he was stupid. She was probably already on shift, so he decided on asking the moment he got into the shop.

      Of course, this had to be the day Emma was off shift. It was Wednesday, so she was off until 2pm. Of course. Paul sighed as he walked into the coffee shop. The last thing he expected was to bump into the one and only while she walked out.

      “Sorry, I- oh hey! You’re Paul, right?”

      It took a second for Paul to get his footing and voice back, but he smiled awkwardly. “Hey, Emma. Yeah it’s me. I’m actually really glad I ran into you, I have a question,” He and Emma walked over to the ordering counter.

      Finger guns. “Knock yourself out,”

      Paul chuckled before replying. “Can I get your number? I just want to know where to pick you up Friday,” a barista coughed, and he looked over. “One black coffee,”

“Yeah, of course! Here, lemme just-“ she snatched Paul’s phone right out of his hands, and put in her number. “There you go! I’ll send you a photo you can use for my picture so you know it’s me,”

      “Okay. Okay, uh, cool,” He smiled. The barista handed him his coffee, and he put a 10 on the table. “Keep the change,” he looked back at Emma. “Now, I’m going to go to my job,”

      “Why don’t you go over to Starbucks, huh? Coffee here’s shit,”

      Paul looked around the shop, and smiled. It just reminded him of her. “Because, some things are worth it. Like-“ he took a sip of the cup.”-Damn good coffee. And you,”

      She blushed. She fucking blushed. God she was adorable. “Well, thank you,”

                                              _____________

      So came Friday night, and Paul was getting anxious. Emma had said to meet him outside of Beanie’s (’I’m working until 5 Friday’, she said), but it had been then thirty minutes and there was no sign of her. It’s not like he was hiding or anything- he was sitting in his car, smack in front of Beanie’s doors, clear as day. Maybe she forgot. Maybe she blew him off. No, Emma was a nice person, she wouldn’t do that. Would she? But, just as Paul was starting to have a freak out, Emma pushed open the front doors and looked around. Thank god. She saw Paul and waved, walking to his car; he rolled down a window. 

      “I was starting to think you’d ditched me,” He laughed. 

      “Me, leaving you? Never,” She laughed back and got into the passenger seat. “So, where to, posh boy?” 

      “Posh boy?”

      “I dunno, you just look posh,” 

      Paul looked at himself; he was just wearing a nice polo and jeans. It’s not like he was wearing a suit or anything. “Oh, well thank you. You’re looking nice yourself,” That was true- she was wearing a nice pair of jeans with a blouse. 

      “Why thank you,” She imitated a British accent and failed horribly. 

      “You’re welcome, m’dam,” Paul replied with an equally bad accent. She giggled. “We’re just heading to a Mexican place. You like Mexican, right?” He returned to his normal voice. 

      “Of course! Who doesn’t?”

      “Alright, let’s go then!” 

      The ride to the restaurant was much more scenic than Paul expected. The highway was way to backed up to even move, so Emma suggested they take a back route. Paul didn’t know the way, so they ended up switching spots. Emma typed in the restaurant's name into the GPS, and off they went. Paul looked out the passenger window to find they were driving next to an apple orchard- god was it pretty. The budding flowers and ripe looking apples that hung from the trees made Paul practically taste the apples in his mouth, The smell of apple cider in the distance made him swoon. If there was one thing that could always remind him of childhood, it was the smell of apple cider- how his grandmother used to pick him up from school in the fall and make him apple pie and apple cider, and feed it to hi until he was stuffed. Those were the days. 

      “What are you smilin’ so hard about?” Emma asked. 

      “Nothing really, just it smells amazing,”

      “Alright,” He could feel her gaze on his face every now and again for the rest of the ride.

       Once they arrived back at the restaurant, Emma pulled into the parking lot, and jumped out of the car. Paul soon followed, and when they both got the doors of the restaurant, Emma smirked and opened the door for Paul. “Ladies first,” 

      “Very funny,” Paul said sarcastically, but smiled. 

      The restaurant wasn’t fancy, but it was on of those places that you probably shouldn’t wear a t-shirt to. The lighting was dim enough to eat in but still feel like you were eating at some five-star place. The food smelled amazing as they both walked past the kitchen, following the host to their table. They sat down, and took a good look at their menus before Emma cleared her throat to speak up. “You know, I saw you staring at me the past two months,” 

      Paul was taken aback. Shit. “What?” 

      “Yeah, you kept staring at me. You’d stay in Beanie’s and drink your coffee. It’s not hard to tell when someone's eyeballing you, just so you know.” She saw Paul’s face, and laughed. He must’ve looked stupid. “Don’t worry, it’s fine. I mean, I found it creepy at first, but you were always so flustered when you ordered, so I knew it wasn’t like you were stalking me,” 

      Paul rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t think you’d even notice me,” 

      “With a face like yours? It’s hard not to!” She gave a breathy laugh before continuing. “But then you asked me out and honestly, I was super exited. You seemed...sweet.” 

      “Well? Am I what you expected?” 

      “No,” Paul was about to frown, but then he smiled. “You’re so much more,” 

      The food was fantastic. Emma had gotten the chicken taquitos, and Paul ordered the beef tacos. Safe to say, it took a while to make, but they passed the time by staking the salt and pepper shakers from the tables around them (Paul noted later that taking them while people were eating wasn’t the best idea, but honestly it was so much fun that he didn’t care). Then their food came, and they laughed because they had so many shakers. Eventually they put them back. While they ate, they talked about family, their jobs, and then their pasts eventually came into the discussion.

      “So, what’s your trauma?” Emma asked after a mouthful of taquito. 

      “Hm?” 

      “Come on, we’ve all got something. Spill,” 

      God, was she ready for that so quickly? Was he even ready for that? He’d never told anyone at the office (minus Bill, but Bill was his best friend) about his past, so how was he to tell a woman he doesn’t even know? “Uh, I just went through a rough patch,” 

      Emma seemed to catch on that he didn’t want to talk about, and didn’t push. “Ah- I get that.” It sounded like she wanted to say something, but she stopped herself. She probably realized it was a bit early for trauma talk. Thank god. 

      By the time they’d finished eating, the sun was just about done setting. Paul drove her home this time, and the winding back roads and stoplight gave him time to think. He was starting to fall for Emma. He knew his heart was moving too fast, that it was all too much, but he didn’t care. She was everything he’d ever wanted and more. He couldn’t risk loosing her. Paul looked over at her- her head leaning against the glass, eyes closed, but he knew she wasn’t asleep. She really looked like an angel. Paul didn’t believe in God all that much- he’d grown up in church, but he never believed God made time for everyone. Now, he was starting to believe it. 

      When the GPS told him he’d arrived at Emma’s place, he parked and shook her gently. “Emma, we’re here,” 

      She groaned. “Okay, okay,” She opened her eyes. “I wasn’t sleeping, but god I wish I was,”

      Paul pretended to be offended. “ Am I that boring?” 

      She gave a small laugh. Paul got out of the car, and opened her door for her. She gave a thank you. “You can come up with me for a bit, if you want.” Was Paul going to say no? Of course not. He followed her up the complex until they reached her floor. She dug the front door’s key from her pocket, and unlocked it. The place was nice for an apartment. A small couch, with a tall lamp in the corner. The kitchen was decent enough, and it looked like it had been recently cleaned. The smell of lavender took over his senses, and he exhaled sharply. “Come ‘ere,” Emma motioned with her hand, to which Paul followed- he hadn’t realized she’d starting walking ahead of him. He followed her into her bedroom. It was a nice light shade of gray with a purple accent wall. Quilts everywhere, her bed looked more like a giant pillow than a mattress with a headboard. A small table that acted as a dresser sat in the corner, along with a small bookshelf. While he was looking around the room, Emma had put on a record because of course she had a record player on her nightstand. He recognized the artist- Hozier. His voice acted as an anchor to the real world when Emma walked up to Paul and kissed him. 

      The kiss was soft- not to hard, more like she was testing the waters. Her lips tasted like coconut. Must’ve been chap-stick; or who knows, maybe she really just tasted that sweet. He’d been so lost in her, he didn’t notice he was kissing back. He didn’t notice his arms wrapping around her waist, her hands in his short hair. He didn’t notice that she turned them around, and that they were moving backward. It wasn’t until his back hit her bed, with her kissing him more deeply on top of him did he snap out of his trance. He didn’t want this. Well, he did, but not this quick. Not on the first date. He felt like.. he didn’t know why, but it just didn’t feel right. 

      “Emma?” He whispered, doing his best to pull away from the kiss. 

      “Yeah?” She asked, her voice breathy. Paul looked away; he felt so fucking stupid. He’s a guy- he’s supposed to want to fuck her on the first date. But he didn’t want to fuck her- not yet. And that seemed like such a degrading term- fucking someone. He wanted to love her, make her feel like she was the only thing in the world that mattered to him. But not yet. Not this early. His thoughts must’ve been planting themselves on his face, because she pulled back. “Paul, what’s wrong?” Her voice sounded like honey, and Paul hated to do this to her. 

      “I’m...I’m not ready. I do want to, you know..just, not now,” He did his best to explain. She nodded. 

      “Of course. i don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to. Do you just want to lay here? We can keep going without the sex, if that’s what you want,” 

      Paul wondered how he managed to find a woman like Emma. “Yeah, that’s fine,” 

      They curled up together on Emma’s bed, sharing a couple of kisses her and there until they both fell asleep to the distant sounds of traffic and Hozier. 

      The next morning, Paul woke up to the sunlight hitting his face. He didn’t even want to open his eyes at first- the sun and the warmth wrapped around him made him feel like a cat. A lazy cat that didn’t want to move, even though the day had started long beforehand; even though the cat knew it needed to eat, that it needed to get some fresh air, it wouldn’t move for the world, as it was right where it needed to be- Paul was just like that cat. But, he couldn’t get his way, could he? He opened his eyes, and smiled. He was in Emma’s room. She was tangled up with him; their legs intertwined, her head leaning on his chest, his head leaning on top of hers. She looked at peace. 

      Paul’s back pocket started to buzz, and Paul gave a quiet groan. God, he couldn’t get one morning of silence, could he? He gently moved one of his hands off of Emma’s back. and slowly reached into his pocket to retrieve his phone. Mr. Davidson, it read. He picked up. 

      “Hello?” He whispered. 

      There was chatter behind Mr. Davidson’s voice. Was he at the office? No, it was Saturday- he was probably at Starbucks or something. “Paul, where are you? You missed our monthly meeting,” 

      Fuck. “What time is it?” 

      “About 11,” 

      “I’m so sorry, sir. I, um..I had a date, and-”

      Paul could practically see the smile on Mr. Davidson’s face. “No worries, Paul. And you don’t need to call me sir, remember? You know me. I’ll move the meeting until Monday,” 

      “Than you, Nathan,” 

      “Paul, I’m glad you’re back on your feet. You deserve it after the year you’ve had,” 

      “Thanks,” Paul bid a quick goodbye, and ended the call. By the time he’d turned his phone off, Emma was starting to stir. 

      “Morning,” She muttered. Her hair was a mess, and it was so adorable. 

      “Good morning,” 

      This is perfect, she’s perfect, Paul thought. I’m going to marry her. 

                                            _______________

      It had been three and a half years, and Paul had never been more happy. He and Emma had been in a relationship since the first date. Emma had moved into Paul’s larger apartment. They got a cat together, and then things settled down. Paul had gotten to know everyone at the office to be one first name basis with everyone. He, Ted, and Bill went out of guys night every month. Emma kept up her job at Beanie’s while she got through community college. She given Paul her pot farm proposal, and Paul laughed. When he found out she wasn’t kidding, he helped her get a medical marijuana selling license. They worked on logos together, and honestly Paul did his best to support Emma no matter what. 

      Not that their relationship was perfect. When Paul’s department faced possible layoffs, it sent him into a frenzy. He couldn’t be unemployed again, living like that was hell. When Mr. Davidson called Paul into his office, Paul snapped. He started having a horrible panic attack, and the office ended up calling for an ambulance in fear of his safety. Emma, of course, was Paul’s emergency contact (along with his father), and they both ended up at the office in under a half an hour. They both talked while the first respondents calmed Paul down- Emma and his father weren’t allowed near him while he was still on edge. To this day, Paul regrets that was the way Emma met his dad. After that whole ordeal, Emma made him talk about his past. She said she needed to know, because if she needed to help on moments notice, it was important to know those things. So, Paul told her about how when they’d gone on their first date, he’d been out of a mental hospital for two months. How he’d had a mental breakdown when he lost his first job, and even thought about suicide at one point. He explained that’s why he freaked out when Mr. Davidson called him into his office. Emma understood completely- she told him about her sister’s death, and how her parents never really talked to her that much after the death, because in their grief-stricken state, they blamed her for her sister’s death. That night, both of them cried, holding one another until they wore themselves out to sleep. 

      But through all their ups and downs, they never lost sight of what they loved about each other. And now that three and a half years had past, Paul knew. He wanted to marry Emma Perkins. He wanted to share her last name, or for her to have his. He wanted to be with her until he died. They both already wanted this- marriage would just make it official to everyone else. 

      “I’m going to propose to Emma,” Paul blurted at Guy’s Night. 

      “What?” Bill asked. 

      “About time,” Ted scoffed. 

      “I have a ring picked out and everything. i just don’t know when,” 

      “You know, I proposed to Vanessa when we were having sex,” Bill commented awkwardly. “But she said yes,”

      “Look where that got you,” Ted pointed out. 

      “Not what I meant, Ted,” Bill shot back. “Look, Paul, all I’m saying is whenever feels like the best time, even if it’s weird, go for it,” 

      “Just not during sex, that’s just stupid,” Ted laughed. Bill glared at him, and Ted nudged him. “All in good tidings, Bill,” 

      “Thanks guys,” Paul smiled.

      Turns out, the right time was on a Saturday night, while they watched Dateline on their couch. She was wearing his sweater, and the cat was on her lap, and she was so perfect. Paul couldn’t think of a better time to ask the woman he loved to marry him. 

      “Emma?” 

      “Yeah, Paul?”

      Here goes nothing, he thought. “Em, I love you. And honestly, you supported me at my best, and helped me up through my worst; and I like to think I’ve done the same for you. You helped me become the man I am today, and..and everything you do reminds me every day why I’m so thankful God led me to you,” 

      “Paul, what are you doing?” Emma asked. She gasped when he got up from the couch and onto once knee. 

      “This is a little bit awkward because I don’t have the ring with me,” Paul laughed, “But Emma Lauren Perkins, would you marry me?” 

      Emma put her hands over her mouth, and started to laugh. She let go, and she was smiling so wide. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes!” She jumped of the couch (the cat hissing and running away) and into Paul’s arms. “Of course!” 

      Paul kissed her, and she kissed back. They were getting married. 

                                           _______________

      Paul’s been waiting for three and a half years for this day, but even in his dreams did he picture hoe beautiful Emma would be walking down the aisle. 

      They couldn’t afford much- they worked minimal wage jobs, and even with help from Paul’s father, they couldn’t afford a big venue. So, they decided on a small reception on the beach in Rhode Island. The boat ride and drive from Hatchetfeild to the beach was about 2 hours. Once they got there, they unpacked their stuff at the hotel room. They didn’t plan on having much of a honeymoon, just at the same beach they were to marry in for a week or so. But that was enough for them. 

      When the day finally came, Paul was a bubble of nerves. The wedding would take place in a small park, with the first dance and after party actually being on the beach (no one wanted to see Emma trip on her face because of sand on their wedding day (as funny has Paul and Emma seemed to think it would be, they decided against it). 

      So, there stood Paul, waiting at the end of the aisle. Emma’s friends and relatives on one side, Paul’s father and coworkers on the other. Bill offered to marry them, since Emma was atheist and priests were fucking expensive. The bridesmaids and Paul’s mates walked hand in hand down the aisle. Mr. Davidson and his wife walked down next, and Nathan winked at Paul as he passed. Finally, Paul saw Emma walk down the aisle with his father, and he lost his breath. The white dress complimented the rose flower crown that she and him were proud to say she made herself, and with her hair in a loose bun, she looked more like an angel than he’d ever seen her. When she got to the from of the alter, Paul nearly broke tradition and kissed her right then and there- but he had to hold back. The both smiled at each other while Bill went through the motions. 

      “Paul Matthews, you may now recite your vows,” Bill said. 

      Paul took a deep breath. “Can I just say how nervous I am?” The crowd laughed. “No, really!” He looked over at her. “Emma, when i met you, i was a mess. I didn’t think I was going to get better, that nothing in life mattered You came to me at the hardest point in my life, and you embraced it. You were always so gentle and patient with me, and that really meant the world to me. When I met you, the world just got so much brighter. The smells, the brightness, the colors, everything just just better. And times got hard for us, but I’m so thankful that you stuck through it all. You mean the world to me. I love you so much,” 

      Emma laughed an wiped away a couple of tears as Bill spoke up again. “Emma Perkins, you may recite you vows,” 

      “God damn, Paul, you’re a sap,” She muttered, laughing again. “Paul, I didn’t think I was worthy of love before I met you. I used to think that I’d always have to change myself for love, because that’s all I grew up knowing what love was. And frankly, I didn’t want that. The you stumbled into my life, and I realized I didn’t have to change a thing to love someone wholeheartedly. You taught me to love myself, and I hope I’ve done the same for you. Paul, I love you more than words can describe, and I hope you’ll be right there next to me for whatever the hell life wants to throw at us,” 

      “Paul and Emma Matthews, by the power rested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife,” 

      Emma beat Paul do it, dipping him and kissing like there was no tomorrow. 

      The rest of the reception was on the beach, and everyone had a wonderful time. Emma and Paul’s first dance was to Hozier’s Shrike, in honor of their first date. After that, a playlist of random 80s music and rave music blasted from the speakers, and everyone jumped and danced like there was no tomorrow. Even Emma’s biology teacher, Dr. Hidgens, was dancing. It went on for another three hours of so, until midnight hit, and everyone bid goodbye to the wedding. Now, all that was left was leftover cake, Emma and Paul, and the crashing waves. 

      “Emma Mathews?” Paul asked as he sat next to her. 

      “Yes, Paul Matthews?” 

      “Can we just fall asleep here? I want to remember this moment,” 

      “Of course,” Emma smiled, and they both laid down. Emma head on Paul chest, Paul holding Emma’s hand. “I love you, Em,” 

      “I love you too,” 

      They both drifted off to the sound of the waves and seagull cries. 

                                               ____________ 

      Beep, beep, beep. 

      The alarm clock woke Paul up. Which was strange, because unless he suddenly remembered to set an alarm, his alarm clock shouldn’t be ringing. He rolled himself out of bed, looking out the window. That was a hell of a storm last night- the power transformer almost blew out. Thank god he still had running water, because he hadn’t showered all weekend (not getting out of bed does that to a person). He walked over to the bathroom, and doused some water on his face. that’s when he noticed the ring. It was a wedding ring. The hell, Paul thought. He’d not married, he doesn’t even have a girlfriend. He took it off, and threw it into the trashcan. 

      He could hear his next door neighbor singing in the shower. He never sang. Odd. Who knows, maybe it was a good day for him- for what it was worth, Paul thought his voice was lovely. He turned on the radio to listen to while he made some toast. Today is March 24, 2018, Donna said. 

      Paul had a pang of deja vu. He felt like he was supposed to do something important today. He looked around his room, then shrugged. Everything seemed normal. Expect the wedding ring. After a moment of thought, he brushed the thought of. He was drunk last night, maybe he just got married it Bill by mistake.

Paul finished up his morning routine, and locked his apartment up. Maybe he’d stop but Beanie’s again- there was a cute barista there, and who knows, maybe he would ask her out.

[haunting-kind-of-high]

The Shadows In Our Minds (Part 2)

What Lies Beyond The Shadows 

Part 1 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Warnings: Anxiety attack

Tag list (message me if you want to be included): @imin-loveanon, @musicphanpie-b, @ordinary-chaos, @sandersandthesides, @ajumbleofwords, @demonickittykat, @zadi-jyne, @serenefreakgeek, @fandons-mangoes, @leesacrakon, @gayfagg

Note: I’m not really happy with this chapter, mostly as it’s more of a filler chapter, but I had lots of difficulty writing this one, so this is all you’ll get for today. Next chapter will be better though. 

Read on AO3 here

Weeks have passed and every night, the kings dreams were plagued by nightmares, each one more horrifying than the last. It almost made him fear the night, fear sleep. It interfered with his daily life and affected his mental health. He barely slept and when he did sleep, he would be tortured by night terrors. It had to stop.

And the king wasn’t the only one whose mental health seemed to be getting worse. Ever since that one faithful day, Patton started to have more and more panic attacks, seemingly out of nowhere, though he never showed anyone. Whenever he felt an attack coming up, he would quickly make up an excuse and lock himself in his room until he had calmed down again. His room was his little cave, the only place where he could safely break down. Outside, Patton was his usual, happy self. No one knew what was going on with him. 

After nearly four weeks, the king had had enough of it. He had tried anything to get rid of the nightmares. He had tried to go through all the positive events of that day before going to sleep. He tried meditation before going to bed. He did everything he knew, but nothing seemed to work. He had even tried some herbs that would allegedly stimulate good dreams, according to the land’s healers. They only made things worse, it seemed. The nightmares only grew more and more horrific. The queen advised her husband to ask help from a witch or druid. At first, he had refused, but after a month of torturous dreams, he had no other choice. So he sent out a message to the land’s greatest witches and druids to come to the palace at once to help him with his problems. 

In those four weeks, Virgil amused himself greatly by forcing nightmares and thoughts of horror and anxiety onto anyone who set foot in the palace, though his main focus was with the king and Patton for now. It was hard on him, though. He had to maintain the regal facade while also using his magic to intrude their minds and dreams. And even for a sorcerer as powerful as Virgil, that was hard. Transformation asked a lot of magic energy, especially when one had to keep it up for hours on end and when it was such an elaborate disguise as Virgil’s. And when you add the energy Virgil used when intruding the king's dreams and invading Patton's mind, you'll come to the conclusion that Virgil was severely drained at the end of the day. It was never so bad that it threatened his life, but it was the most severe drainage he had ever experienced. One upside to it was that it resulted in an amazing sleep at night; the best he had in almost twenty years. 

Just a couple of days after the king had sent out the messages to the wielders, a few druids and a witch had already reached the castle and they were immediately ordered to go to the throne room. Two guards were stood outside the door to ensure that no one disturbed their discussion. The three druids told the king about some potions and herbs that they thought might help him and the witch remembered they knew a few spells or a potion that they used to prevent nightmares themselves. Eagerly, the king agreed to listen to all their explanations and tales of their chosen weapons to battle his dreams and they stayed in that throne room for hours.

Meanwhile, Roman had left for Darlea again, on his own this time, and Patton and Logan wandered around the palace together.

"Patton," Logan started hesitantly after the two had walked in silence for a while. "Is something wrong with you? I noticed you have been more absent lately, and more quiet than you usually are. Is there something on your mind?"

"No, I'm fine," Patton started, faking a reassuring smile, "there's nothing, I'm just... tired."

"So you have been tired for five weeks?" Logan asked. "So tired that you act completely different from your usual self?" 

"Yeah." Patton didn't look at Logan as he responded. He knew what Logan was referring to and he understood it would be better to talk about it, but something inside of him stopped him. Something inside of him screamed to address the issue to Logan, but something else inside him seemed to oppose this idea, and that something was currently winning. 

Logan noticed that Patton’s behaviour was off. Of course, he had known this for a while, he just never found the time to talk about it. But also now, he could see something was bothering his friend. He noticed it from the way he looked down, from the way his hands toyed with the hem of his shirt and the way the corners of his mouth twitched upwards after he spoke. Something was bothering Patton, but he didn’t speak of it.

“Well, alright,” Logan sighed. He knew Patton would not give in that easily. Not right now. “But if there’s something... you know you can talk to me, right?”

“Of course,” Patton said, looking up at Logan with a weak smile. “If something’s wrong, you’re the first one I’ll go to.” 

“That’s all I ask.”

Later that night, when Logan had stepped inside his bedroom, a feeling of dread overcame him. He didn’t know where it came from, but it quickly took control of his mind and thoughts. It was the feeling that something was wrong, the feeling that something bad was going to happen. What was that something? He didn’t know. Something.

As Logan prepared himself for the night, the feeling grew stronger. It was a tingling feeling in his stomach that grew heavier with every passing minute. A persistent voice in the back of his mind that grew louder and louder. It wasn’t really there, yet at the same time, it was there. It was nothing more than a nagging voice in his head, barely even noticed by his conscience, but it was there, in his subconsciousness.  

When Logan sat down on his bed and reached up to take off his glasses, that’s when he really felt it. That nagging voice that once was nothing more but a subconscious thought, now grew to a conscious thought. A thought that clouded his mind and made his chest hurt. He felt like he was losing control of the situation, of his thoughts and his feelings. His breathing became more rapid, mimicking his heartbeat. Logan grasped the blankets, hoping that it would calm him down somehow.

If he hadn’t been so panicked, he knew it wouldn’t, but at this point, he couldn’t think straight. It felt like his head had been filled with cotton wool, or like he was under water, looking at the world above the surface. It was incredibly frustrating, to say the least. Normally, he could analyse any given situation, but now he could barely form a coherent sentence. 

Logan held on to the blanket as tight as he could, until his knuckles turned white and his fingernails dug into his skin. Somehow, this seemed to help him. It kept him in touch with reality and away from his thoughts. But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how steady he managed to get his breathing to be, his mind never calmed down. After a time that felt like hours, he suddenly calmed down again. It was like the troubling thoughts of failure and the pressure he felt on his shoulders and all kinds of horror scenarios had never plagued his mind at all. His breathing quickly evened out again and it was as if the past minutes had never happened. However, this little ‘breakdown’ had cost him a lot of energy and as soon as Logan had placed his glasses on the nightstand and had made himself comfortable in his large bed, he fell asleep. 

[taiwanpuppetryproudthunderbolt]

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interview 15

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Richard Chamberlain - How he keeps the Faith in his Private Life

"Fame isn't the answer. The answer is allowing yourself to be who you are."

"I'm not interested in being a multimillionaire; I want to do the kind of work that interests me. When I was beginning, I wanted to do everything: films, TV, modern things, period things, classics, musical theatre, I wanted to make records and I also wanted to paint. I'm a medium with occasional goods. I took dance lessons, and I have discovered that you can't do everything, but I've done a lot of it."

In a company town, Hollywood, where a favorite indoor sport is to trash everyone, its almost impossible to find anyone with a sour word to mutter about Richard Chamberlain.

The erstwhile Dr. Kildare, perhaps unintentionally, has made a secondary career of winning friends. He is Mr. Nice Guy wherever you turn.

He is therefore going against casting in his current role of Father Ralph in the ABC-TV mini-series, The Thorn Birds. For those unfamiliar with the best-selling Colleen McCullough's supernovel, Fr. Ralph does just about everything a priest isn't supposed to from having money of his own - courtesy of the character played by Barbara Stanwyck - to not being obedient or chaste.

In fact, there are those who might consider him a bit of a rotter. Not so Richard. We're sitting in his offices at The Burbank Studios just a few months after he has finished production on this massive film. He is about to don another hat: that of executive producer on a TV movie for CBS, hence the office setting complete with a round black glass conference table and comfortable chairs. Only successful executive producers rate such perks. But enough business talk. We are here to discuss The Thorn Birds, how he feels about yet another blockbuster following his so-successful Shogun and his real life.

First of all, Richard doesn't believe that Father Ralph behaved in such a reprehensive manner. "He followed his destiny," he states. "That process brought him to a kind of humility he never would have found otherwise. He needed to do that. He needed to fall from grace. I'm not saying all priests do; Ralph was too in love with the image of a perfect priest, with the glamour," he explains.

Those sentences give one a clear indication of what makes Richard Chamberlain tick. He's a perfectionist, although certainly not a bore - far from it - but he does get inside the character he plays. That's what makes him such an outstanding actor.

For this part, he researched Catholicism with Father Terry Sweeney, a Jesuit priest. He visited a Jesuit novitiate and stayed over with the young novices. "I had never before been involved with organized religion, and I got the feeling of what it's like to be part of a group of people who put the love of God and humanity before personal happiness. It is unusual and rare. The novitiates I met are in the process of doing that," he learned.

The painstaking research aside, working in TheThorn Birds was a grueling six-month assignment. A large portion of the nine hours was filmed in the Simi Valley, north of Los Angeles, where an exact copy of the Australian Drogheda landscape has been built. And it was hot. Richard's priestly garb, donned in layers, must have been well nigh unbearable.

With a boyish grin, he acknowledges that it wasn't an actor's dream come true, commenting that the plastic collar cut into his neck a lot. Just another of the ordeals that an actor goes through for the sake of a great role.

And a great plum it is. "I wanted it when I first read the book four years ago. I salivated over the part; it was such a wonderful love story. I chased after the part for years. I told my agents I wanted to do it; at that time, it was to be a feature movie and it went through the hands of numerous producers. They had Robert Redford at the top of all their lists. So I waited it out, like I did with Shogun. When they realized it couldn't be a film and Warner Bros. decided on a mini-series, then I knew I was in a good position. The producers - David Wolper and Stan Margulies - wanted me - and it became a dream come true," he says comfortably.

The dream realized, Richard was in the same position as all other actors when a role is complete: he was out of a job. "I have the actor's habit of thinking once a job is over I'll never be hired again. I can get very anxious about not working. It doesn't go into anxiety attacks, but there is a sense of fickleness about the business. If I allow myself, I can worry a lot."

He didn't allow himself to this time. Instead he took off for two and a half weeks to his little house in Hawaii. He has what he describes as, "a place on the beach in the toolies where there is nothing to do except eat." Or so he says. It doesn't show on his trim waistline two weeks after he has returned.

"I had forgotten what it was like to spend a day doing nothing. I kept saying I must be doing something wrong, this can't be right. I had a vague guilty feeling. So I just lay there on the beach and I didn't do anything," he laughs. "I find it an incredibly healing experience to go there. It's a wonderful change from the madness around here," he motions to indicate Hollywood. "I'd like to go there more often. As it is, I get there twice a year if I'm lucky."

The house has a live-in caretaker who looks after the property while its famous owner is gone. It is also rented out, through an agent, so the tenants never know that they're sleeping in Richard Chamberlain's bed. Pity.

It would appear that Richard is indeed the golden boy we all envy, whose life has been comparatively uncluttered with the "stuff" that make most of us miserable. And looking at him, handsome, trim, relaxed, just a few flecks of gray in the beard and mustache he has grown for his next part, he reflects total peace and tranquility. He's sipping a cup of herb tea from a delicate Japanese cup, NOT imported from Japan as were many of his household furnishings. Shogun did leave an impression on him.

He admits of being happier with his life as it is today than in previous years.

"As I look back, one of my big motivations for working so hard in this business in the early times was to find for myself a kind of self-worth which I imagined I would see reflected from the world when I became famous. It didn't work." He laughs shortly. "Being well-known has worked in other ways, but it didn't make me particularly happy. When I first realized that wasn't gonna work, I found other ways to work on myself, through Gestalt therapy, and working with Dr. Brugh Joy (a world-renowned metaphysician who gave up his medical practice to work with groups at his establishment in California's Lucerne Valley. Richard brought the film rights to Dr. Joy's book, Joy's Way, three years ago, and has a contract to produce and star in the story for CBS. He hopes to get it under way later this year.)

"Fame isn't the answer. The answer is allowing yourself to be who you are. I grew up at a time when certain values were deeply impressed upon children: in school and at home. There was a certain image to be maintained and a certain goal to be achieved."

One must bear in mind that Richard was born and raised in the rarefied atmosphere of Beverly Hills, where most of his friends at school were super-rich. His own father was a first salesman for a market fixture company, and then took over the firm. But he still wasn't raised in an atmosphere of wealth.

He became interested in acting while he was in college, but recalls, "My family wasn't enthused about my going into show business. They'd seen me in some college productions," he laughs. "I did want to go to college, but in my senior year I made a decision to take the gamble and get into acting. They didn't say 'don't do it'; they were supportive and they helped me, even though they didn't say 'Oh boy, this is terrific'."

His career proceeded normally: he studied with noted acting coach Jeff Corey, he got minor roles in a dozen TV shows, and in 1961 he got really lucky with Dr. Kildare. By the time that show had finished its run - there were 132 one-hour shows between 1961 and '65 and 57 half-hour episodes the following year - Richard Chamberlain was a big star. So big, he wondered if he'd live down his reputation of being the noble young doctor who did everything including make house calls.

He did what was then considered a rash step: he moved to England and worked in repertory. "I went to England because I felt it the best place to go and study. I had this real powerful hunch that I should go there and study. I was attracted to British theatre and I had amazing luck."

Indeed. He got raves for his role in a six-part adaptation of Henry James' Portrait of a Lady on the BBC. He appeared in Hamlet, The Madwoman of Chaillot, Julius Ceasar, and played composer Peter Tchaikovsky in the Music Lovers opposite Glenda Jackson. There was more Shakespeare, other classics, and when he played Aramis in two versions of The Three Musketeers followed by Cyrano de Bergerac, no one made anymore jokes about the boyish Dr. Kildare. Richard Chamberlain had arrived, as a serious actor of the theater and films. Deservedly so.

He is, of course, delighted that he listened to that powerful hunch, as he terms it. "I always try to listen to my inner voice. That seems to be one of life's most ironic essences: that very soft little voice of intuition is so easy to ignore, yet it's so often accurate. I always choose my roles intuitively. They appeal to me for reasons I couldn't say. I always have an answer as to why I choose a role, but the answer really is that it has a magnetic quality. Now, as a producer, I know that I read scripts looking for ways to make scenes work, and ideas that come up seemingly from nowhere. They just spring into my mind. It's not an intellectual process. Oh, it is to some extent, but it is largely emotional and intuitive."

As noted, here is a man who is comfortable with himself and he doesn't have to prove anything anymore. He's done that. So, when asked how he can top the role of Father Ralph, he says easily, "I don't think in terms of topping things. Everything is different and real to me. My next movie, titled By Reason of Insanity is for my own production company. I play a man named John Balt, who murdered his wife, spent years in an institution in therapy and is now back in society as a contributing member. In fact, he wrote his own life story, which this is. This story goes into areas I've never touched upon, so it's a vast challenge.”

"After Shogun and Thorn Birds, I find my interests are turning back to more ordinary parts - not that the John Balt story is ordinary, it isn't. He's an ordinary man who gets caught in an incredible vortex. Yes, I have leaned towards larger-than-life roles and that might have something to do with the fact that I have a very romantic nature. I didn't find life terribly interesting when I was a little kid. I hated school and I didn't like sports. I didn't like anything that anyone else liked. I felt out of it. It isn't that I didn't have friends. I did. And I had a pretty good time, but I was always fascinated by adventure movies. Especially Errol Flynn. But the other night when I couldn't sleep I turned on an old Errol Flynn movie and it was boring. It didn't hold up. The Three Musketeers and that kind of swashbuckling does, but not the one that I saw," he mock mourns.

Every actor has a dream role, and Richard has played such variegated parts - has he played it already or is his dream part still in the future?

"I think John Balt is as fascinating a part as I'll ever get. What are dream roles? Roles that call for words like depth and complexity, people who want things passionately and have to overcome tremendous obstacles to get them. My theory about John is that he wanted wholeness in his life that he unconsciously felt wasn't there. I think murdering his wife was unnecessary, but who am I to say that? He was living a life complying to images. He had an image of manhood, an image of the writer, of the husband and father, and he never said 'Who am I, what kind of man am I, what kind of father, do I love my children?'"

"Who am I?" Richard repeats the question. "I'm beginning to get answers at long last. What I am is an ever-changing alive being, who is not an image, who is not consistent, and I'm beginning to allow myself to BE instead of trying to be consistent and trying to comply to images. Images such an American hang-up. And so here I am in a business where images are more powerful than almost anyplace else except sports. I have found that I have warmth and lovingness and creativity. I might have doubted that before. I'm much more comfortable with people, much more willing to speak my mind. I don't have to try to manipulate people into liking me. I don't. I thought that I did." He is very thoughtful now and seems to enjoy looking within.

What are his long-range goals these days after 20-plus years of a good and rewarding career?

"I've done some satisfying work in the theatre, and I'd like to do more but I find it difficult to find the time. I want to continue along the lines I've been pursuing. I really like what I've been doing. I like my mobility in TV, I want more emphasis in films. I think I'm ready for that."

"And I like my life. I've finally created a home that I really love. I've had several houses, but I just remodeled this one - in a quiet canyon street, and it's just perfect for me. It's slightly Oriental, slightly Japanese. I brought back a lot of stuff from Shogun."

And who lives in this perfect house?

Just Richard Chamberlain and his pals. "I have two dogs," he says with all the love in the world in his voice. "Two Dalmatians: Jessie the Bandit Queen and Billy Boy."

And what does Jessie steal to merit that colorful name?

"My heart," he says in a tone that any animal-lover can recognize.

And so, then, one knows that Richard Chamberlain, a really happy man, does indeed have it all.

© 1983 Isobel Silden

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http://www.richard-chamberlain.co.uk/online.htm

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interview 32

Dick Diagnoses Dick His candid answers to 55 probing questions

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[mylittledragonhoard]

Fic: A Growing Trust - Chapter Seven: Second Chances

Semi prequel to A Sign of Trust.

AO3 Link

 Linane’s Edit

Shabbyblog’s art: here and here and here!

(I am so spoiled <3)

Everyone deals with the aftermath of Fili’s transfer. Some deal with it better than others. 

When Thorin arrived at Erebor, it seemed way too early in the day to be up and about, but he supposed that's what happened when one hadn't slept the night before.

He leaned back in the driver's seat after shutting off the engine of his truck and closed his eyes for a moment, listening to the ticking as the engine cooled down and trying to ignore the fuzzy lull that was trying to pull him back to sleep. It was going to be another long day.

He was used to long days, enjoyed them most times since they meant a full schedule and plenty to do. These last few long days had been just the opposite though:  not much to do and too much time to think and worry. It didn’t help matters that even when he wasn’t at work he was still thinking and worrying.

A sudden brightness appeared against the backs of his eyelids, and he slowly cracked his eyes open to see that the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon to the east, dancing over the shifting ocean and casting the islands off the coast the facility was located on into shadow.

It was a breathtaking sight and had a calming effect on one's soul, and, aside from being so close to the ocean itself, this view was one of the reasons why he'd bought the land here to build Erebor. With the remote location of the facility, one got to witness the rise of the sun, but also got to see the setting of it too. Though Thorin was rarely free by the time the sun was setting, he hadn't been able to imagine his day without it starting just like this.

Well, almost like this. Today he really couldn't summon the energy to appreciate it the way he normally did.

Releasing a long and tired sigh, he rubbed at his eyes before grabbing a bag sitting in the passenger's seat and climbing out of his truck to begin the day.

Before heading to his office, he made a routine walk-around to all the active tanks, doing a check on their residents and having a quick once over the enclosures to see if anything needed to be done today aside from the regular tasks. All was quiet up top, and only the new penguin chicks seemed to be awake at this time, almost cooing as the four of them gathered together in a crèche for warmth despite the higher temperature of their quarantine room.

They'd been brought to the facility the week during what the staff was calling The Wetsuit Fiasco, and Ori had been busy doing his best to nurse them back to health as he was Erebor’s penguin expert. They hadn't even fledged yet and were too young to be without parents, but Thorin could see a noticeable improvement from the first day he'd laid eyes on them. Ori was doing a good job.

He continued up to the tank he was saving for last because then he could attempt to drag Kili to the bunker so the young man could actually get some sleep.

Kili had taken to staying during the night at the facility again because Fili had stopped eating. Thorin hadn't bothered fighting him, knowing the young man's guilt over having to trick the mermaid was eating him up inside. At least this time was different than the first when Kili had moped the entire time, and had instead been keeping himself busy around the facility when he could. Thorin always found him sitting by Fili's new tank in the morning.

He stopped on the observation deck that overlooked the tank, but Kili was nowhere to be seen this morning. He eyed the water in the tank in case Kili had had the bright idea to get in, but it was calm and there seemed to be no body within the water. He knew that Fili was hiding beneath the underwater platform right below him though, and had been since he disappeared beneath it four days ago.

Four very long days.

He let out a long sigh as he peered over the railing and into the seemingly empty tank. "You don't realize it, but he only cares about what's best for you." He found himself saying. His only response was a couple of seagulls crying out from outside the facility. The water in Fili’s tank remained as calm as before.

"Talking to the fish?" A voice from behind startled him, but Thorin didn't have the energy to jump.

He turned to find Nori coming toward the tank, doing his rounds since he was on night shift this week. "Maybe. I'm not even sure if he's listening." Thorin admitted. "Where's Kili? This is the first time he hasn’t been here when I arrive.”

Nori smirked as he motioned to the tank, "Made the kid go sleep in the bunker. He looked like he was going to fall in any moment, and I figured you'd appreciate not letting him get chewed on." He teased with a slight grin.

Apparently Nori had done what Thorin hadn’t been able to if that were true. "I do appreciate it. Some days I wonder how he's managed to get this far in life." Thorin attempted to smother a yawn this time as it crept up on him.

Nori snorted in amusement, "Well, he hasn't had his heart tied up in knots over a mermaid all his life." He pointed out as he leaned his arms on the safety railing above the tank. Before the transfer this action would have drawn a snarling mer to the surface of the tank since Fili didn't like Nori, but everything remained as it was. Too quiet.

"No, no he hasn't." Sometimes Thorin wondered if he'd made a mistake in giving this assignment to Kili, and not because he thought Kili couldn't do it. Clearly he'd been the best choice, and Thorin would always support the young man the best he could. But at what cost to Kili? The emotional roller coaster that came with it was hard on him, and he'd probably been more stressed these last couple of months than he ever had been before.

Thorin would never say these thoughts out loud though. He didn't doubt Kili. He just wished it could be easier on him.

After a quick rundown of the night, (Nori had done his regular rounds, had played with Lady for a while which was not out of the ordinary for any of the staff, and had done a little maintenance on their cooling unit for the food. Nori was also helping Ori out with feeding the penguin chicks at night and had been doing that every few hours as well) Thorin threw one last look into the tank before making his way to his office.

Even before he reached the room, he knew someone was in it. The light coming from the open doorway was too bright to be from the window that looked out into one of the temporary tanks.

He stepped inside the dimness and saw that the security monitor was the source of the light, and the fact that the maximised view was of Fili's tank told Thorin just who the shadowy figure stretched out along his couch was. Not that it could have been anyone else with those snores. It seemed Nori hadn’t been as successful as he’d thought.

Reluctantly turning on the light, Thorin expected the sudden brightness to wake Kili up, but the young man continued to sleep on, face down and smooshed against an old cushion that did little to muffle his sounds. The way he'd squished himself to fit on the smaller couch would have been comical any other day, but Thorin had no idea when he'd finally passed out and he still looked utterly exhausted.

Sighing in exasperation like a parent would, Thorin stepped over to a small closet that was just on the other side of his desk and placed in the corner of the room. From it he produced an old worn afghan that he spread out over Kili's form. "Brat." He muttered affectionately before going back to his desk.

After hanging a sign that read 'be quiet or you'll be on tank cleaning duty', Thorin settled himself at his desk so he could get some work done. At least he’d have a couple of hours of peace and quiet.

Kili snorted and shifted in his sleep.

Well, almost quiet.

It was around noon when the lump on the couch finally stirred. Thorin stopped typing and glanced over, seeing Kili's eyes open but knowing from the somewhat glazed expression the younger man wasn't exactly awake.

After rubbing the sleep away, Kili blinked at him owlishly before he made a particular sound of amusement that only he understood. "I was dreaming about Fili clicking at me, but it was your keyboard." He explained with an almost grin, but then a frown appeared as the memory of the mer probably came to him. "What time is it?"

"Time for you to go home to sleep in your own bed." Thorin tried his best not to make it sound like an order, but he doubted his efforts worked. He also doubted Kili would actually listen.

And he was right.

Kili made another sound but this time there was no amusement present. He didn't have to tell Thorin that there was a snowball's chance in Hell of that happening. He managed to sit up, pushing the afghan off him as he continued to try to wake up, staring at it in confusion for a second before probably figuring out how it got there. He scratched at the stubble on his face, yawning so widely that Thorin heard his jaw crack from the other side of the room. With a hesitant motion to the screen above him, he wondered, "Has he...?"

"No." Thorin shook his head, not needing him to finish the sentence. "But he'll make an appearance eventually." He had faith in that. He couldn't believe that all the good they'd done had been for nothing and this time the mermaid really had given up. It went against what they’d learned about Fili’s personality. No, this wasn’t the mer giving up. This was the mer sulking. "You've slept most of the day. Why don't you take the rest of the day off and spend some time away from here?" Never mind the fact that this was technically Kili's day off already, and he'd been spending them at the facility for months anyway.

"Nah. Got stuff I need to do." Which was horrible code for spending time at Fili's tank hoping that today was the day the mer decided to show himself.

Thorin felt like smacking his face against his keyboard. He honestly didn't know whose stubbornness was worse - Kili's or Fili’s, but one or both of them were going to drive him clinically insane if things went on this way. Instead of going through with the urge, he counted to ten silently. "I figured as much. You should add talking to Oin on your list of things to do - and no," he interrupted as he watched Kili's face go white at the mention of their veterinarian and the brunet opened his mouth to speak, "there isn't anything wrong." He promised, "Now get out of my office and go talk to Oin."

Knowing he'd be more likely to have his questions answered by Oin, Kili left the room without another word.

***

The vet was sitting at his desk when Kili entered, and it seemed like charts and graphs and what looked like test tubes had spilled out of an open box that sat tipped on its side, spreading out all over the usually immaculate desk. The older man was muttering to himself as he read over a rather lengthy letter, reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose.

The brunet stepped closer to the desk, habitually turning to look through the observation window that led to the tank outside. He flinched as he realized what he was doing since it wasn't the first or even second time. After months of always checking, it was going to take a while before he stopped expecting to see Fili through the window.

"Hey doc." He greeted tiredly. He still felt like he could sleep another twelve hours, but that had become his regular way of being since a blue eyed mermaid had come into his life.

Oin didn't look up from his letter, an annoyed frown stuck on his face. "Have a nice nap did you?"

Kili flushed, wondering how many people had walked into Thorin's office while he'd been asleep. "Ah, yeah." He motioned to the mess on top of Oin's desktop. "What's all this? Usually it’s Thorin’s desk that looks like disaster.”

"This," The greying man moved the letter in his hand, "is a lot of ass kissing." He grunted before folding it up and sticking it in the top drawer of his desk. If it had been Thorin's desk, that letter might as well have been thrown into the abyss.

"Oh...kay?" Kili wasn't sure how to respond to that.

"It's from the main lab where I sent Fili's tissue and blood samples." Oin elaborated as he picked up another piece of paper.

He had Kili's immediate attention at the mention of the samples that had been sent away so long ago. The day he’d handled the samples had been one of the worst days of his life, and he did his best not to think about it. He’d completely forgotten that Oin had sent them away to get tested. "So?" He asked, not bothering to beat around the bush.

Oin rather angry expression shifted immediately and he looked at Kili almost gleefully. "Well, it took so long because they've never seen samples taken from a live mermaid before." He explained as he leaned back in his chair. "Among all the ass kissing and brown nosing in that letter, they've requested I take more, but I don't believe I'll be doing that anytime soon." He crossed his arms and that annoyed frown returned. "I think they've forgotten they're talking about an actual living creature. They've been in their labs too long." He huffed.

Kili was glad that nobody would try to take samples from Fili again. The first samples had been taken while Fili had been unconscious. He knew that attempting it now would terrify the mer, and things were bad enough. "What did the samples tell them?"

"Just the basics. They have his DNA in their system now, but what they'll do with it, I have no idea. I'm a vet not a scientist. But we know he's disease free and while his organs weren't doing well at the time, things have improved since. And," Oin smiled then and looked at the paper he held in one hand, "now we know the approximate age of your mer." He turned the page around so Kili could see.

"He's not my mer." The brunet muttered as he took it, too excited to really care about the vet's smug smirk. His eyes scanned the sheet, practically going cross eyed upon seeing the graphs printed on the page. The data was in some kind of nerd language that he had no way of interpreting, but he did understand the neat 'APPROXIMATELY 60 YEARS' typed on one of the lines.

"Sixty." Kili took a breath and let it out slowly. He knew that Fili was older than he looked as mermaids aged differently, but to see it on paper was a little shocking. "He's older than you are." He began, not meaning the insult and immediately backtracking when he realized how it sounded. "Sorry - I just-"

"I'm under no illusions about my age, brat. And I've got a few more years before I'm as old as your mer." Oin snickered. "The lab compared their results with that of a human, and from what they can gather sixty years for a mer is comparable to around the mid to late twenties for humans, though another sample in a few years’ time would give them better information.”

Kili looked away from the page at that, a little wide eyed. "You mean...we're pretty much the same age." A wide grin began to form on his face at the thought.

"Some days I have to wonder because you both tend to act like children. But essentially, yes." Oin muttered the first part as if Kili wasn't supposed to hear it, but he didn't mind the jab at all. "Maybe that's why you get along with him."

That sobered Kili up and his grin disappeared. "Got along, you mean." He sighed mournfully as he looked over the paper once more to see if anything made sense. When nothing jumped out at him, he placed it back on Oin's desk, sure that it and all the other papers would make their way into Fili's file eventually.

The vet frowned, "I'm positive that this is just a minor setback. It had to be done, Kili. If we had waited for Fili to be ready, then we could have been waiting forever."

"It's not that." Kili shook his head, glancing toward the empty observation tank. It had been emptied of water and scrubbed well. Kili had even been the one to do most of the work since he'd had the time while Fili was hiding. "He's smart, and I know he understood why we had to move him even if he didn't like it." He looked back at the vet, "It's the how we did it. I mean, you saw when I asked him to swim into the harness, and then he did. He not only understood what I wanted, but he did it because I asked." Kili's heart ached remembering the way the mer had clung to him while they were transporting him.

Fili had been through something like that before. What had gone through the mer's mind when he'd realized it was happening again? The sight of that tear streaked face and the way Fili had cowered would be something that Kili would regret forever. Would having asked to begin with changed things? Made things easier? Kili would never know now.

"I should have asked him in the first place instead of manipulating him into eating those stupid grapes. Now he'll never trust me again, and he won't eat. He's going to die after everything just because I didn't fucking ask." The brunet growled as he glared at the empty tank. His eyes were burning again but he refused to let his tears fall. He was angry at himself, and honestly didn't think he had the right to them. "I'm no better than the scum that caught him in the first place."

Oin chuckled humourlessly. "You and I both know that's not true."

"Yeah, well. It feels like it." Kili knew he was being difficult, but he felt like a piece of utter shit.

"So that's it then?" Oin asked blandly, tone flat as he got up from his desk and began to straighten the papers on it. "Perhaps I'm being a little dramatic here, but God knows I wouldn’t be the only one. You don't give up for weeks when the mermaid is practically at Death's door, and after exhausting all options, somehow you manage to do what nobody else has ever done before. You get this mermaid to eat for you, to survive for you." He began packing the test tubes inside their box. "And suddenly now, after a few days, you're just going to write him off as dead because he’s having a tantrum? I really don't understand, Kili." He shook his head and closed the box, stepping over to a cupboard to put them away.

Kili flushed at the disappointed tone being directed at him. He could stand anger but had never been comfortable disappointing people. "It's not as simple as before, though. I didn't have his trust at all. Now I've broken it. Even with humans that's hard to gain back, and you said yourself that mermaids hold grudges."

Oin closed the cupboard door and turned back to face Kili, leaning back on the counter. "They are known for it, and Fili certainly hasn't proven the opposite with the way he reacts to most of the staff." He admitted as he crossed his arms, taking off his glasses and pulling out a handkerchief to wipe at the lenses. "But it's not like you to give up so easily. You're as much a fighter as your mermaid." He managed a slight smile as he held the glasses up to the light and squinted at them to see if he'd gotten all the smudges.

"I just..." Kili began, wrinkling his nose when he didn't know how to continue. He didn't know if he wanted to continue. "I feel like I don't deserve Fili's trust anymore."

Oin snorted derisively at the suggestion as he slipped his glasses back on, "Poppycock." He frowned and narrowed his eyes at Kili, lights from above glinting on his lenses and making his expression a little more intense. "The worst thing you might have done - what we all might have done, is gone about the transfer the wrong way. We made a mistake. If Fili can't understand that, then mermaids must live in a perfect society that I'm envious of." He huffed out a breath.

Kili managed a smile because obviously that wasn't possible. "I am being over dramatic, aren't I?" He asked sheepishly, scratching at the hair tickling the back of his neck. He hadn't realized how long it had grown but he couldn't be bothered to get it cut. He'd had a lot more important things on his mind.

"Perhaps, but you aren't the only one. The mood swings of mermaids are one of the things that remain constant in any readable source. Between moving him and the fact that Fili was already irritable and frustrated because of his small enclosure, having him hide away for a bit doesn't seem like a cause for alarm. He was at a healthy weight when we moved him, and after what we’ve seen him endure, a few days aren’t going to do any harm.”

Kili's shoulders sagged a little, though he wasn't sure if it was because he felt relief or because he felt kind of silly. "I overreact a lot." He admitted.

"That is the understatement of the century, but it seems to mostly be when it comes to Fili." Oin had not only been observing their residents, but apparently the staff too. "You're like a first time parent. Every little thing is magnified and made ten times worse than it is." His observations weren’t wrong either. The vet stepped forward and put his hands on both of Kili's shoulders, giving him a light shake. "But I have faith that you'll both make up eventually."

"And if he's decided I'm just as bad as everyone else?" Kili tried not to sound as dejected as the thought made him feel.

Oin's mouth pinched while his eyes narrowed and for a moment the brunet was sure he was going to get smacked across the back of the head. It was the same expression his mother sometimes wore beforehand, but it seemed like Oin had better self-control. "I very much doubt it. He has always reacted differently to you. Even while we were transferring him, he didn't growl or snap or try to bite you. He was upset, yes, but that doesn't equate to...well, disliking you as much as he does some of the staff."

Disliking was certainly a nice way of saying despising, but Oin had a point. Fili had growled at the vet when he'd had to check the mer's vitals, and he probably would have done more had he been able to. He hadn't shown any aggression toward Kili despite everything. In fact, he'd even sought Kili out for comfort. That lightened Kili's heart a little.

"Okay..." the brunet began, unsure where to go from there. "Where do I even start? He won't eat anything - not even grapes."

"Food is clearly going to get you nowhere." Oin moved back to his desk and sat down in his chair, leaning back in it. "You and I are both aware that he's an intelligent being, so I think it's best to try a different approach."

***

The sun glinted off the calm surface of Fili's tank, and though it was passed mid-day and approaching evening, the water that covered the tank's underwater platform was still warm. Kili had ventured down into the tank for the first time since the transfer, having stayed up on the observation deck in hopes of giving Fili the space he needed before now.

Clearly, staying away was getting them nowhere, so it was time to change that.

The brunet sat on the platform for about half an hour before finally shifting so he could spread out on his stomach, propping his head up with an elbow so he could keep his face above water. His clothes had long since soaked through, but he was used to that. He'd been thinking about what he'd wanted to say to Fili, having discussed things with Oin that afternoon. Expecting Fili to react to food like a common animal not only felt wrong, but was wrong. He was an intelligent being, so Kili would do what he had always done with the mer: talk to him.

He looked into the depth of the water just over the ledge, wondering just where the mermaid was located beneath him. He had no doubt that Fili knew someone was there, and he probably knew it was Kili.

When nothing happened for a few quiet moments, he slid his left arm over the edge and let it hang beneath the surface, fingers gently churning the water. "Hey, Fili." He spoke gently, almost anticipating something touching his hand, wanting the mer to reach out somehow. He'd even take another warning nip like the one he'd received when Fili had been introduced to apples. "You doing okay under there?" He wondered, continuing to move his arm gently in the water.

He sighed when nothing happened and tried not to grow too disheartened. He'd waited once, he could do it again. He'd been prepared to squish himself onto a ladder rung for weeks to make up for the wetsuit, so he could do this too.

"I don't know if you've come out to take a look at your new home yet, but it's certainly bigger than the other place, isn't it?" He began, watching the little waves his movements were making. "And so much deeper - and you have a place to hide now...when you want to be alone." He tried to make light of that, as though Fili hadn't spent four days hiding already.

For a moment Kili felt like burying his face in the water and screaming so nobody could hear him, except he knew Fili would be able to and he didn't want that. Instead, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"I know you weren't ready, and maybe I should have tried to prepare you better, but we felt that you needed to be moved." He began quietly, unsure if the mer could hear or was even listening. Kili wondered if he was being given that angry expression Fili glared at everyone else with. Thinking that was almost enough to make him smile. "Everyone was worried about you, and it just seemed like the best time." He spread his fingers under the water before relaxing them again.

"I messed up." Kili stated bluntly, wanting Fili to know that Kili was well aware of that fact. "I promised no one would ever hurt you, and what the hell do I do?" He let out a self-deprecating snort, disgusted with himself. "It may not have been physically, but I know I did. I'm so sorry Fili. I'll never be able to say that enough. I betrayed your trust and that's sometimes worse than anything else. I should have told you about the grapes so you'd have been able to make the choice yourself. Nothing like that will happen again."

They'd taken away what little control Fili had had over himself. Kili couldn't imagine how scary it had been for the mer to go from excitement over something he enjoyed to fear and confusion because of the same thing that brought him joy.

"Promising it is pointless since I've broken my biggest promise to you already. Why should you trust my word now? But it won't happen again, and I'll spend forever proving it to you if I have to...if you let me." He stared at the water, willing Fili to at least understand and maybe give Kili a second chance - to at least give him the opportunity to gain back the friendship that had been growing between them. "But for me to do that, you have to be around for it. That means eating and not hiding anymore." He explained with a bit of a watery smile. "I only want you to be healthy and happy, Fili." He ended quietly, sniffing a little to clear his nose.

Kili fell silent for a long time with the only sounds being the gentle lapping of the water against the sides of the tank and the occasional seagull that could be heard nearby. Kili intended to stay for a bit longer before giving Fili his space once more, but when he was just about to get up he felt something barely brush against his wrist, making him still instantly. He’d felt the sensation often enough against his legs and feet to know that the source was Fili's hair floating about in the water and knew that meant the mer had moved closer.

Whether this meant he was going to get that warning nip now or not remained to be seen.

Bracing himself for the sharp sting and praying that he wasn't about to lose a finger, Kili held his breath and tried to keep his hand as relaxed as it had been only seconds before.

Instead of pain, another hand slid into his and fingers curled and gripped him tighter then they'd been able to before.

Tears of relief suddenly sprang to Kili's eyes unbidden, and a wide trembling smile appeared on his face. Having nothing else to say, Kili gently squeezed the hand in his. And then to his surprise and utter joy, the squeeze was returned.

And it felt like forgiveness.

[braindamageforbeginners]

Christmas 2018!

I don’t normally do Christmas Cards (Hey Hannah, I got your card, thanks), because, A. they’re usually a contemptible packet of half-truths designed to make people and families look much better and more successful than they are (which, when you think of it, is an odd way to celebrate the birth of Jesus, who, I believe - and I might be forgetting or misreading the Bible - had some choice words for boasts and braggarts), and, B. for some reason, “Tire fire” or “Caribou being devoured by wolves” is never an option for the picture, even though all had years (decades in some cases) that could only be visually represented that way. Also, few people want to read more than a few sentences. If that’s you, well, “We had a great year, see you over the summer.”

If you’re still here, I do apologize if this occasionally descends into a gripe-fest, but that can’t be avoided in some cases. I had an entire organ system betray and attempt to kill me, that’s hardly a situation that inspires confidence.

As most of you know, if you follow the blog, I spent the year pretty much in out-patient chemo. It’s much less glamorous than you may have been led to believe. On the other hand, I am still alive and upright (most days). I guess that’s something to be grateful for. And I can still spell “grateful” on the first try, so there’s that.

Still, weird hair-loss, a series of ever-more-severe punk haircuts (coin-sized radioactive spots are cool, right?), constant track marks, and non-stop exhaustion (I’ve counted, I haven’t slept through the night since last August)(you’ll count, too, if you’re ever in my situation) haven’t killed me. And, unless I get some really horrible news in the next month (a rather distinct possibility, I’ll admit), I did get a weird, horrible dress-rehearsal for how you’ll handle the worst year of your life. It’s absolutely not something I’d care to try again (frankly, I’ll need a few weeks off to sleep if I emerge from this nightmare; going straight into the next one without some significant naps might very well kill me)(you think I’m joking; sleep deprivation is linked to any number of illnesses, including diabetes and heart disease). And even though I’m not about to argue this was my best or most enjoyable year, it was an extremely productive year (There’s nothing to get the creative juices flowing faster than the terrifying thought that, all too soon, you won’t be able to write*). And I haven’t killed anyone, even though I’m within brick-throwing distance of the completely odious (and indicted, I might add) Duncan Hunter. Again, like walking out of a life-and-death scenario, we don’t give enough societal credit for that, even though there are undoubtedly plenty of times we could hasten someone’s demise. Again, even though I haven’t received the very worst news I could, there is an odd, cold comfort at having survived some of the very worst stuff imaginable (both the news and experimental chemo)(also, credit where it’s due; surviving the chemo is equal parts luck, will, and CBD oil), and knowing I kept the descents into madness, alcoholism, and drug abuse to a minimum and mostly-within physician recommendations and supervision. When I get done writing the book about the whole, horrible thing (to be sold for an undisclosed sum to Putnam Publishing**), I might call it, “Welcome to Your Finest Hour.”

Again, I’ll admit that’s odd and unlikely, but after seeing how many weird twists and turns of fate and happenstance it takes to take me off the playing board, I’m only too aware of how much that has to work the other way to produce successful careers, family, relationships, etc. Yes, please, send me your gruesome photo of your four adorable children; we won’t discuss how you only met your husband because his ride was late to leave your roommate’s sister’s Bah Mitzvah, which you only attended because it was a side-bet in “Who’s turn to vaccuum” that you lost. And I hope you’ve kissed them all good night and realized that all it would take to lose them forever is an incomplete job replacing a tire and a slippery patch. That might seem sinister, but that’s really all it could take on behalf of random chance to remove some people’s reason for living. As I’ve discovered, the real talent is willing yourself forward when the odds are long and you have no concrete reason to keep going forward.

Part of that, for me, is the hope I’ll get my grubby mitts on the next big release from a favorite author. Yeah, that’s kept met going through some of the darker, grimmer moments. Sometimes the will to live really is that tenuous and thin. That’s all it has to be, really. We all make much of those sorts of Herculean efforts to storm the beaches of Normandy or Tarawa, when, more frequently, it looks like just showing up to the next damned chemo infusion when you feel like shit (also, weirdly, even though my pain tolerance has shot up to the point where I have to be careful lest I injure myself in the gym, my poor, shot-up veins are now a weak point). Right, books, part of what helped drive me through the year was attendance in a few book clubs (Hey Zoe and Yolanda), and the certainty that, as miserable as I ever was in the last 12 months, I’d have a horror/comedy worth hearing if I made it out (and thanks to Garrett for your ideas in helping get it out there; I’ll probably be in touch soon).

And, at the end of the day, it’s thanks, in no small part, to all you guys. All the folks I know (or have met) in person helped give me the strength - in some way or another - to keep going. Even though my medical team gets full credit for pharmaceutically propping me up to go a third round with one of the very deadliest of known diseases; we don’t often give enough thanks to the assorted, vast, seemingly minor people passing through a patients’ life. I have no doubt there are people still alive just because someone, somewhere, at the critical time, smiled and gave another desperate human a thumbs-up. Even though those massive efforts at critical junctures is critical, it’s that quiet faith that your existence is important that’ll carry you through hard times.

So, yeah. That was my 2018. Watching Congress vote on whether my life was worth saving, getting injected with strychnine, and still high-fiving the nurses in the chemo ward. And still dragging myself in to chemo even though each time was amazingly awful - or the night after was, anyway (again, if you’re on the fence about medical marijuana, drop me a line, and I’ll be happy to discuss what it feels like when peripheral/sensory nerves are actually being targeted and poisoned by modern medicine).

Again, though, I’m aware that human lives aren’t linear, and those on top today can see their fortunes reversed in a week if someone bothers inspecting all those over-valued properties they’ve used as collateral. And, again, I’m well aware that it’s my turn this month. Here’s this season’s greeting: I know - for a fact - that if I can do it, cowardly and neurotic as I am, when it’s your turn, you’ll be able to get through it, too. It’s been a hellish year in the abyss at near-freezing temperatures and crushing pressure, but if I can see that tiny glow in myself, it’’s in all of us.

To the regular readers; next week, I get the standard blood panel next week, then I’ll be traveling and/or sleeping until the 27th, then my younger brother - who is definitely a bad influence - will be in town, so there’s a solid chance I’ll miss the chance to update in favor of picking up scary women in bars in Tijuana. But I will - like my favorite killing machine - be back sooner or later.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a joyous new year.

*I suppose that’s true for all of us. **Admittedly, it’s not likely, but neither is surviving three brain tumors in a life.

[goodnightwatch]

An Entitled Author

Ever feel betrayed by the promise of a book? “Entitlement Abolition: How to Lead your Family from Me to We,” by Douglas R. Andrew, offers some decent insights, but at the expense of the integrity of the author.

In the introduction, Douglas claims “this book does not have a religious or political agenda” (p. x). Then within the next few pages, the reader is betrayed by the author. On page ten, Douglas begins to describe his “Christian” values and uses Bible verses to support his ideas, which normally would be fine since we’re all welcome to decide if we like the way the author is making their point(s). While I do not have a problem with someone explaining how their religious values work for them, nor am I against the use of Bible verses as a source of inspiration, I do not respect a text that makes a promise and then breaks it unless it’s a great work of fiction.

Assuming positive intent, perhaps the author doesn’t understand how describing his religious worldview is, in fact, promoting a “religious agenda.” He wants to bring people to his side. He wants to convince the reader that his ideas and practices are worth integrating into the reader’s life. And yet, he does that by using religion-based examples, which generally don’t work for people from other religious backgrounds, nor the non-religious, and makes taking this book seriously very difficult for non-Christians. A Muslim or Buddhist or atheist, for example, will have to wade through all of the author’s Christian messaging to arrive at any valuable takeaways. Douglas promised he wouldn’t make us go through that and then he made us go through that. 

Not but a few more pages in, the second promise is betrayed: the promise not to be political. Douglas claims “even the poor who become accustomed to receiving handouts lose that humble dedication to growth, learning, and cooperation that brought about that abundance” (p. 15), referring to abundance created by people who generate income by working (possibly forgetting that most of the wealth that exists has been handed down through generations and is permanently inaccessible to the majority of people). Let’s unpack this.

Douglas is suggesting that “poor people” have the resources to “grow, learn, and cooperate” in a capitalistic nation where the vast majority of the wealth was already possessed by other people at the time and place of their birth. How many people can you really expect to successfully tap into other people’s wealth and make constructive use of it? It can’t be everyone. The fact is, most poor people—or rather disenfranchised people—will either find a way to sustain themselves or they will die. By providing some level of free resources to the poor, we give them a chance to decide how that’s going to go. To suggest that we—those of us who have resources—shouldn’t help them is some coldhearted, law-of-the-jungle thinking. People above the poverty line and higher will never have to worry about this. That is a monumental privilege. This means that the poor are not experiencing the same kind of entitlement as anyone else who might be experiencing entitlement.

So why is the claim that the poor are just as entitled as the lazy rich a betrayal to the reader? The notion that “the poor”—the disenfranchised and unlucky majority—take what they can as a “handout,” is a well-known, typical right-wing conservative agenda: abandon the poor, praise the rich, and work like hell to pay the bills and feel individually and religiously superior and righteous about it. Then, bark at others for not doing the same. “Why should my tax dollars go to pay for some lazy bum?!”  Bear in mind, I’m not addressing some of the valuable notes that certain entitled and privileged people should take from the book, I am specifically addressing what is clearly a political attitude about how we ought to help people who have next to nothing. 

Where Douglas fails is, he immediately expects everyone to assume that all entitlement is bad and he predicates this upon a common political agenda. He suggests that we’re not helping the poor by giving them money, so don’t give them anything. The author’s religious book, the Bible, speaks expressly against this line of thinking (see below). That aside, like I said earlier about his religious agenda, it would be fair of him to express these views if he had simply been honest about their origin in the first place, but he wasn’t. And so, to drive the key point home, he said he was not going to bring religion or politics into his book, but he did. This directly undermines the trust the reader can have with this author. 

It’s great that Douglas wants to teach people how to have a positive can-do attitude and to assume that the best way to live life is to be productive and serve a god (even though believing in literal gods is a primitive structure of consciousness) while implementing known-good processes, but he predicates his claims on an agenda that he promised he wouldn’t at the beginning of the book!

Even if some of his information is helpful to people, that still doesn’t make him any less of a liar, having betrayed the reader right up front in those two ways. And that still doesn’t mean that he’s the authority on how to live life as a human in the world. At best, this is a relatively well-written support mechanism for people who already believe what he’s saying is true. In essence, he is, in fact, enabling people and not empowering them with this text, even if some of this text can help people to empower themselves. Slightly paradoxical, it seems, since one of his core values is to move from enabling to empowering. Digging deeper into why this author might’ve been unconscious to his own betrayal of the reader, again assuming positive intent, let’s look at some basic facts about the man himself and see how this book might actually be a form of finger-pointing where the truth is that the author is not only himself entitled but also (trigger word) privileged.

If you’re going to make the case for a worldview and a way of life, it needs to come from a place of integrity, objectivity and, most important of all, honesty. All Douglas had to say (to come clean) was, “I base my beliefs and practices on Christian values and a [seemingly] right-wing conservative agenda.” Or he could’ve left that disclaimer sentence out entirely! 

However, then it would’ve been harder for him to sell books, maybe. I wonder how many people bought the book, got a few pages in, and then threw it away... In any case, the deeper reality about the origin of this kind of writing from this author is that Douglas is not only privileged, he is also hypocritically entitled by thinking that he can lie to his readers and take their money and that somehow he deserves to make a living this way. How more self-righteous could you be? 

Douglas should take every penny he has earned from this book and give it to the so-called “poor,” (people who are actually disenfranchised, or rather, deprived of access) because that would be the “Christian” thing to do. Look at what the Bible has to say (since I did not promise not to use his own weapon against him) about giving money. Here are some Bible verses that appear to challenge the values presented in his book:

1 Timothy 5:8 ESV / 161 “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

Proverbs 19:17 ESV / 195 “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.”

Matthew 5:42 ESV / 102 “Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.”

Deuteronomy 16:17 ESV / 74 “Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God that he has given you.”

Proverbs 21:26 ESV / 41 “All day long he craves and craves, but the righteous gives and does not hold back.”

Read more here, if you’re interested in the author’s text of authority: https://www.openbible.info/topics/giving_money 

Again, Douglas makes some good points throughout the book about what any person might want to consider, but as an instruction manual for how to be a person, this work cannot begin by pulling the rug out from under the reader if it’s to have any lasting value. There was a promise to deliver this material in a secular and unbiased fashion and that clearly did not happen.

Furthermore, according to the Bible, it’s not up to us to decide what other people do with what they are given. And giving is good! You give what you can and then the outcome is not up to you. Also, if you are on the receiving end, you are not obligated to do anything in particular with what you are given. What will be will be. 

Now, if we’re NOT assuming positive intent, I can move directly to what appears to be the case from the perspective of a non-Christian. This book was created to support the values and ontology of an audience of people who are already set up to agree with every word. This text might even be used to impose values and practices upon others that could be harmful to their mental and/or physical reality. For example, many poor and homeless people have disabilities, mental illness, or have simply been left behind and do not have the skills necessary to support themselves, much less a family.

"Entitlement Abolition” is not a work that invites critical thinking. The hubris of the narrative is one that speaks as if it is demanding to parent the world. Douglas R. Andrew is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” in some ways, at times pushing a right-wing conservative Christian agenda about how to live a life that benefits the individual and their family, but judges and alienates others. 

While there might be some valuable ideas in this book for introspection and self-improvement (and even family and community improvement), no one needs to read this specific book to learn how to live correctly or develop objectively great leadership—much less how to live well—because the author cannot be trusted to show his teeth before devouring the reader’s trust with his positive intentions.

Image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/portrait-of-young-man-326559/

[lisabelkin-yahoonews]

School shooting survivors united by a chain of grief – and hard lessons passed on

It was five years ago that a young man invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and shot and killed 20 young children and six staff members, a tragedy that indelibly scarred that small city and lives on in the collective national memory. But school shootings didn’t begin, or end, with Sandy Hook. Yahoo News looks at the aftermath of four of these tragedies and the lives they changed. In other stories, we examine how 20 years on, Jonesboro, Ark., is still traumatized by an attack carried out by two middle-school boys — and how survivors deal with the knowledge that the killers are now grown men and free from prison; at the lessons from Sandy Hook that may have helped save lives at a California school just last month; and at how the parents of a girl killed in Newtown are coping with their loss.

Holly Bailey, Dylan Stableford, Beth Greenfield and Jason Sickles contributed to this report.

_____

It happens soon after the shooting stops, often before the victims are buried and the crime tape is taken away, certainly while the parents and students and teachers are still numb, still reeling from their loss. Sometime during those raw, wrenching moments comes the first talk of healing.

“Faith, hope, love … healing,” read the banner at the memorial service in Jonesboro, Ark., for the five killed and 10 injured when an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old classmate pulled a fire alarm and picked off their victims as they marched out of their middle school in 1998.

“Healing Begins,” read the headline of the Denver Post the day after two students gunned down 14 classmates and a teacher, injuring 23 more, at Columbine High School in 1999. A month later, President Bill Clinton addressed thousands at a memorial service. “There has to be healing,” he said.

After 32 were killed and 23 were injured by a student on a rampage at Virginia Tech, President George W. Bush promised healing too. “Although it does not seem possible right now,” he said, “a day will come when Virginia Tech will return to normal.”

And hours after an intruder killed 20 first graders and staff members in Newtown, Conn., a school aide who’d witnessed the carnage told a television reporter: “We’re going to stick together and in time, we’re going to heal.”

A woman touches a printout of messages of support and shared grief from teenagers around the United States at a memorial for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., Dec. 18, 2012. (Photo: Joshua Lott/Reuters)

Today is the fifth anniversary of that day, the fifth anniversary of that declaration. And the question thrumming beneath today’s memories and tributes is twofold: not just “Has Newtown healed?” but also “How does a community heal after this increasingly frequent kind of a loss?”

The roots of these questions are generations deep, back to a time well before Newtown, arguably before the American Revolution, when four Lenape tribe members entered the Enoch Brown schoolhouse in Pennsylvania in 1764, shooting and killing the schoolmaster, then murdering all but two of the children in the building.

And they are questions that stretch into the future, to a time well after Newtown, through the at least 104 times that shots have been fired at students and teachers since Dec. 14, 2012.

Finally, they are questions that ripple out beyond these communities, particularly as screens and cameras now bring the anguish to the nation as a whole, allowing strangers to mourn for, though not actually with, those who have suffered.

It’s not only schools where communities are ripped to shreds and left to knit the pieces back together. The lessons of the schools are also the lessons of the military bases at Fort Hood and the Washington Navy Yard, the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., the churches in Charleston, S.C., and Sutherland Springs, Texas, and the concert in Las Vegas.

But there is something singular and searing about the schools — an invasion of what is assumed to be a safe space, where the victims form a literal community, where families not only know each other, but also expect their lives to be entwined as their children grow.

And unlike many other kinds of spaces, school communities remain together, to nurse their collective wound, after the cameras have gone, after the politicians have gone to their ideological corners (“guns,” “mental health”) then departed, after the public has moved on, wearied by the seemingly constant march of death, and jaded by the gridlock and dysfunction that prevent any real change.

Nearly two dozen protesters showed up in front of the National Shooting Sports Foundation in Newtown, Conn., for a candlelight vigil to remember the victims of the Orlando mass shooting, which took place June 12, 2016. (Photo: Peter Casolino/Hartford Courant/TNS via Getty Images)

That’s when residents are left to figure out what healing means, and to navigate their way toward it. Their only real map is the cobbled-together wisdom of others who came before. It’s critically injured Jonesboro teacher Lynette Thetford receiving a letter from the mother of a girl who had been killed a few months earlier in a school shooting in West Paducah, Ky. It’s Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis getting a phone call from his Paducah counterpart, Bill Bond, who told him: “You don’t even know what you need right now. I was there. Take my number. When you need to talk, give me a call.” It’s Newtown helping Troutdale helping Marysville helping Roseburg helping Rancho Tehama helping Aztec. Together all these form a time-lapse of the healing process, each at a different point on a metaphorical journey, the totality of which extends across the nation and the decades.

Newtown is five years into this process. Have residents healed? If so, how? If not, when? And what lessons have they learned from others who’ve traveled the same increasingly familiar path?

_____

  A Heath High School student screams at the scene of a shooting at the school, Dec. 1, 1997, which left three students dead and five wounded. (Photo: Steve Nagy/The Paducah Sun/AP)

Just before 8 a.m. on Dec. 1, 1997, 14-year-old Michael Carneal walked into Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., with several shotguns in his backpack. With a Ruger MK II .22-caliber pistol, he fired eight rounds at a group of classmates gathered in the lobby for the regular morning prayer circle. Three were killed. Five were wounded, one of them paralyzed by a bullet to the chest. Then, with one bullet still left in the chamber, Carneal put his weapon on the ground, slumped to the floor and told the approaching principal, Bill Bond: “Kill me, please kill me. I can’t believe I did that.”

With that, Paducah became the first name on the contemporary roll call of mass shootings at schools. The first of what would turn into an onslaught. The town that will always be 15 years ahead of Newtown in the healing process.

Survivors, family and community members attend a ribbon cutting ceremony Dec. 1, 2017, at the new location of a memorial for the victims of the Heath High School shooting. (Photo: Ryan Hermens/The Sun)

There had been a handful of others in the months beforehand — that February two had been killed and two wounded at Bethel Regional High School in Alaska; that October, three had been killed and seven wounded at Pearl High School

in Mississippi — but it was Paducah that raised the specter of a trend, a sign that something was new and very wrong.

“In my whole life, it had never crossed my mind” that someone would shoot up a school, Bond told the local NBC affiliate during an interview on the 20th anniversary earlier this month. “Now, there’s not a high school principal in the nation that … it doesn’t flick in his mind sometime every day.”

So much else that happened in Paducah would eventually become familiar pieces in the response to shootings. There were lawsuits. The parents of the victims sued the parents of the shooter, eventually settling for $42 million — money that, practically, they will never receive. Lawsuits against the manufacturers of violent and pornographic video games, movies and websites were less successful, and were eventually dismissed.

There were broken families. After 15-year-old Kayce Steger died, her parents dealt with their grief in different ways, leading them to divorce.

There was PTSD. Kayce’s mother, a nurse, could not walk into the ER of the hospital in which she works. And eventually there was the rift between those in the community who felt it was time to move on and those who felt they were being told to forget. Former students became outraged recently when they realized the memorial to their murdered classmates had been locked behind a gate rather than in a place any student could visit and reflect. Access has been restored.

There were some who forgave — most notably Missy Jenkins, who was paralyzed from the waist down that day, and who got married, had two children and is now a day treatment counselor at a nearby school. She visited her assailant in prison (he was sentenced to 25 years to life) and, she said, “I did not forgive him to make him feel better. I forgave him to make me feel better, to help me move on.”

Missy Jenkins Smith, who was shot during the Heath High School shooting in 1997 and paralyzed from the chest down, talks to her sons, Carter Smith, 7, and Logan Smith, 9, about the shooting. (Photo: Ryan Hermens/The Paducah Sun via AP)

There are others who can’t quite forgive themselves. Bond still wonders which lives he might have saved “if it had only taken eight” rather than “12 seconds” for him “to get that gun.” He stayed at Heath until the last of the survivors graduated, then crafted a career as a consultant on middle school safety. He just retired from that role, and says his last interview on the subject was the one he gave to the local news on the 20th anniversary.

He has visited 15 schools in the immediate aftermath of a shooting incident, he said, jumping on a plane sometimes within hours of the news because “I needed to go help those people. I know how bad I needed help and there wasn’t anybody who had been through it. There wasn’t anybody coming.”

_____

  Emergency personnel rush an unidentified injured student to an ambulance at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro, Ark., March 24, 1998. (Photo: Curt Hodges/Jonesboro Sun/AP)

The chain of grief that originated in Paducah next appeared less than 200 miles away in Jonesboro, Ark. Karen Curtner, the 35-year-old founding principal of the two-year-old Westside Middle School, knew about the shootings the year before, but still, she first thought that the wailing alarm she was responding to on the morning of March 24, 1998, was either a malfunction or a prank.

Some of her teachers already suspected it wasn’t actually a fire; someone had seen a sixth grader, Andrew Golden, pull that alarm and dash outside. But “when the fire alarm goes off, you know what the rule is,” she recalled recently in an interview with Yahoo News. “Everybody leaves.”

Everybody did. Students and teachers were gathering on the lawn when Curtner stepped out of the building and heard the next sound. “My parents, everybody I’ve ever been around, have always been hunters,” she says. “So I knew what it was.”

Karen Curtner was the principal at Westside Middle School at the time of the Jonesboro shooting. (Photo: Eric Thayer/Yahoo News)

What she means is that she knew it was the sound of rifle fire. What she didn’t yet realize, because it was so unthinkable, was that 11-year-old Golden had pulled the alarm in order to lure the entire school outside and that he and his 13-year-old schoolmate Mitchell Johnson were now standing in the woods and shooting guns they’d stolen from Golden’s grandfather.

Four students and a teacher were killed that day, and 10 others were wounded, many severely. While there was press coverage of Paducah, it was nothing like what happened in Jonesboro — the first time the satellite trucks descended in such numbers that there appeared to be more journalists than residents. At least one who said he was a journalist turned out to be a stalker — police found piles of newspapers in his car with Curtner’s photo circled in most of them.

With the press came national attention, some of it welcome (victims of the Oklahoma City bombing sent piles of teddy bears to comfort the students), much of it not. (There were threats against both staff and teachers from many, including one letter purportedly from the Unabomber, praising the shooters.) There were almost too many letters to read, but when the one from the mother of one of the girls killed in Paducah made its way to Thetford, “I remember just holding onto it and crying,” she says. Hearing “from someone that I felt actually understood what we were going through meant more than words could ever say.”

Garth Brooks contacted Curtner about performing a benefit concert, and Tiger Woods wanted to hold a golf tournament to raise money for the victims. Curtner said no to both because her focus was on getting her school “back to normal.” Like Paducah, “normal” for this community would prove to be a hazy and moving target. Marriages ended. Families moved. Lawsuits were filed.

Depression and survivors’ guilt settled like a fog. Brandi Varner later told a reporter that she’d spent much of her little sister’s funeral wishing she’d tried harder to get Britthney to skip school the day of the shooting, since they’d both stayed up so late watching the Oscars on TV the night before.  Thetford, a social studies teacher nearly killed by a bullet to her abdomen, spent much of her time thinking about her friend Shannon Wright, the one teacher who was killed. Wright was younger than Thetford; her child was younger than Thetford’s. Why did Wright die but Thetford live? Then one day Thetford found herself saying to her mother, “I don’t understand why Shannon got to die and I had to stay here.” That’s when she sought counseling.

Lynette Thetford was wounded in the shooting at Westside Middle School. (Photo: Eric Thayer for Yahoo News)

Life changes were made. Some of those were a response to triggers — Thetford, for one, found herself crying while searching for a video to accompany a lesson on trench warfare during WW I. She decided in that moment that she had to stop teaching social studies, because so much of the curriculum was about violence.

Some were a response to grief — Britthney’s mother and stepfather divorced, because, her mother would say later, she withdrew her love from her husband for fear of ever losing someone she loved again. Older sister Brandi, in turn, went “buck-ass crazy,” as she described it to reporter David Peisner 15 years after the shooting, by which she meant she started drinking, smoking pot and having sex. She was expelled from high school, but turned into a “super-protective” parent of her two children. When her youngest child, a daughter who looked a lot like Britthney, started school, Brandi insisted she attend the smallest possible magnet school to make it easier for her to keep track of how all the other parents stored their guns.

Students of Westside School bow their heads in prayer at the burial service for teacher Shannon Wright, March 28, 1998. Wright was killed while using her body to shield students from gunfire. (Photo: John Kuntz/Reuters)

And some of the changes were a response to fear. Like Paducah, Jonesboro is unusual in that the shooters lived. Unlike Paducah, or any other place where there was a school shooting, these shooters were released on their 21st birthdays — Johnson in 2005, Golden in 2007. Johnson was soon re-imprisoned for carrying an unregistered gun, but has since been released and is living in Texas; Golden now lives in Missouri and has been married at least once. He changed his name to Drew Grant, and used that name to apply for a permit to carry a concealed weapon; he was denied after a standard fingerprint search.

This leaves many in Jonesboro afraid one or both will come back to finish the job. One teacher told BuzzFeed News that she’d gone so far as to move to a new house with a different phone number and change her appearance, including losing 100 pounds, so that she would be unrecognizable to her former student.

With so many feeling this much, it was almost inevitable that they would collide over time with those who felt it was time to move on. Thetford, for instance, gave interviews after many other victims had stopped, because, she said, she wanted to share the renewed faith in God that she had found in her near-death experience. Then one day she opened a letter accusing her of grandstanding and “enjoying the notoriety.” It warned her to “SHUT UP.”

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  Students exit Columbine High School after two gunmen went on a shooting spree, killing 15 including themselves, on April 20, 1999, in Littleton, Colo. (Photo: Steve Starr/Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)

Karen Curtner first heard when a reporter called, asking for comment. “Oh, God, not again,” she said, turning on the television in her Westside Middle School office on April 20, 1999, to watch what was unfolding at Columbine High School, three states and 1,000 miles away.

Lynette Thetford, in turn, who had not yet stopped teaching social studies, was in her classroom that day, with its view of the playground where she’d been shot just over a year earlier. As other teachers came to warn her, they formed a circle, held hands, and began to pray.

There had been seven school shootings and 15 fatalities since the one in Jonesboro. Now this one, in Littleton, Colo., was being carried live on national TV. Two students went on a rampage through the building, killing 12 classmates, one teacher and then themselves.

Investigators tag evidence at Columbine High School. (Photo: Dennis Schroeder/Polaris)

The aftermath — the lawsuits, the failed marriages, the fights over donated money, the desire by some to just get over it already — was familiar. But Columbine caught hold of the nation’s attention like none that had come before, both because of the number of victims (at the time it was the largest school shooting in the United States) and the new 24/7 news cycle. (The Columbine graduation a month later was also carried live, by CNN.) Columbine was also the tipping point. Following Paducah, Jonesboro and others, the idea of a teenager shooting his classmates looked like a grim trend, an evil infecting America’s children. “The Monsters Next Door” read the cover of Time magazine. Newsweek asked, “Why Did They Do It?”

Gradually the spotlight dimmed, leaving the community to piece itself back together in the new shadow. Much of that fell to Frank DeAngelis, the principal of Columbine, who was still suffering the personal aftershocks of facing down the student killers. As he walked out of his office moments after the shooting began, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were marching toward him, long guns blazing. One bullet hit a glass wall directly behind DeAngelis’s head, he said in an interview with Yahoo News. Seeing the girls’ volleyball team heading up the hallway toward the shooters, DeAngelis diverted them into a nearby closet, probably saving their lives.

The lives he didn’t save haunted him, however, and through the summer, while planning for the reopening of the school (students finished the academic year in space shared with another district high school), he was also trying not to fall apart. He kept seeing the shooters coming toward him, the killers they were juxtaposed with the boys he thought he knew — middle schoolers in their soccer uniforms, missing teeth; seemingly happy seniors, high-fiving him at the prom two weeks earlier.

He spent nights alone in his basement “with a stiff drink and my golden retriever,” unable to unsee the school’s library, where most of the victims died, with FBI markers and blood still on the floor. When he managed to sleep, it was fitful, and he often woke by 3 a.m. and went to sit in the local church until dawn.

Thrice-weekly counseling and a feeling of responsibility got him through that summer. “There wasn’t a template for rebuilding a school and holding a community together,” Bond said. “Frank built that template.”

Frank DeAngelis, the principal of Columbine when the shootings occurred, photographed at the school in Dec. 2017. (Photo: Carl Bower for Yahoo News)

Bond called DeAngelis to offer his support. Thetford went to Littleton during Jonesboro’s summer break to tell residents, “It won’t ever be OK, but it will get better.”

Frank Ochberg made regular visits too. A clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University and a member of the team that first formulated the PTSD diagnosis, Ochberg was developing a sad subspecialty in healing after mass shootings. The students would likely do better than the adults, he counseled, because more resources and care would inevitably be focused on them and because they are more resilient.

With advice from all corners, Columbine High School reopened in August 1999. A phalanx of parents formed a line by the entrance, welcoming the students back with a show of emotional support, and physically shielding them from the press. The library was closed, though not yet torn down and rebuilt. The walls were repainted in shades that psychologists had advised were soothing. A new aquarium was there for the same reason.

Copious attention had been paid to the fire alarms. Those alarms had wailed for the entire five hours it took police officers to rescue students from their hiding places in April, and one thing learned in Jonesboro was that the sound of any alarm, but particularly that same alarm, would trigger emotional tsunamis in those who had been there that day.

DeAngelis had spent hours in meetings with alarm companies “coming up with sounds that were different to what we had used prior.” All around the country, schools had started responding to the wave of shootings by initiating lockdown drills, but those were a fraught subject at Columbine.

The New Hope Memorial Columbine Library at Columbine High School in 2004. The original library, where a majority of students were killed, was torn down. (Photo: Ed Andrieski/AP)

“We couldn’t just say we don’t have to do drills,” DeAngelis recalled. “So we did them in baby steps.” First there was a version where teachers quietly told students to stand where they would if they were evacuating for a fire. The next step was to add the sound of the alarm only after everyone had taken their places outside the building. Eventually DeAngelis would give advance warning that there would be a fire drill the next day — some parents chose to keep their children home — and would count down on the PA system to the moment the alarm went off so it wouldn’t take anyone by surprise.

For months, then years, DeAngelis found himself trying to balance the needs of those who wanted to move on with those who could not.

“There were those who felt the sooner I stop talking about it, the sooner they could heal,” he said. “A lot of people felt that if we could just get back to doing what we were doing we will be OK. I respectfully disagreed. To think you are going to forget about what happened that day just because you go back to resuming your daily activities? It’s not going to happen.”

He pledged to stay in the job until 2002, when the last class who’d been present that day had graduated. (Eventually he expanded that pledge to any student who had been in a preschool feeder school, and didn’t retire until 2014.) As happened at Paducah, Jonesboro and others, though, his staff began to leave.

Former Columbine principal DeAngelis chats with students at the school in April 2014. (Photo: RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

“Bill Bonds warned me early on that ‘within four years 75 percent of your staff members will be gone,’” he recalled. “I said, ‘Bill, that’s not going to happen.’ What I didn’t anticipate is the impact of walking into the building each day. People who during summer break seemed to be doing well … walked back in and their blood pressure went up.” Attrition increased dramatically, and by the time DeAngelis retired, only 10 percent of the original staff was left.

Also as predicted, he said, the students did prove to be resilient. The Columbine classes of 1999 through 2002 — the students who were in the building on the day of the shooting — are still unusually close-knit, several members say.

“We get together for barbeques, we play fantasy football, most of us have kids,” Patrick Ireland, who still carries shrapnel in his brain and who had to relearn how to do practically everything, told Yahoo News. The owner of a wealth management business near Denver, his children are now 7 and 3, and “things are great,” he said. He still gets a flood of supportive texts and phone calls every April 20, “saying, ‘I’m thinking of you,’” he said. But during most ordinary days, he believes “this was one event, this was something that happened — something that we want to acknowledge and understand, but it’s not going to be the thing that defines me as a person.”

Columbine shooting victim Patrick Ireland in December 2017. (Photo: Carl Bower for Yahoo News)

DeAngelis says the class he still worries about most is the Columbine Class of 1999 — students who graduated on May 22, a month and two days after the shooting, then dispersed to college and work. “There wasn’t support for them,” he said. “The kids and staff who returned, it was tough, but we had each other. The ones who left, they would be sitting in class and the fire alarm went off and they found themselves having a meltdown and they weren’t sure why. Or they’d be doing well and five years down the line they would lose it and the help is not there.”

In the same way, he said, he worries about mass attack victims who do not have a community — those who randomly happened to be watching “Batman” in Aurora, or a concert in Las Vegas, or even working in various offices in the World Trade Center.

Visiting Virginia Tech for the first anniversary of the shooting there, he told faculty and students, “The difference for you compared with Columbine or Paducah or Jonesboro is you had kids coming from everywhere — different states, different countries — then going back there. For Columbine, the people lived in our community; we had a sense of community. At first that creates a bigger wound, but I also think it helps with the healing.”

The Columbine Memorial in Littleton, Colo. (Photo: Carl Bower for Yahoo News)

Watching the students heal helped DeAngelis too. Over time, he said, “I got to the point where when I was coming out of my office, I wasn’t seeing the gunmen coming. Instead I saw Lauren Townsend playing volleyball, I saw Isaiah Shoals high-fiving me, I saw Rachel Scott on the stage performing, I envisioned Danny Mauser and Kelly Fleming down at church. I saw these kids not dying in our school, but living in our school.”

As he started to heal, he also started making phone calls.  “You’re not going to remember anything we talk about today,” he would say when he got a shaken community leader on the line, “but please take down my number and call me if you ever need anything.”

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  Two Connecticut State Police officers accompany a class of students and two adults out of Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012, in Newtown, Conn. (Photo: Shannon Hicks/Newtown Bee/Polaris)

As news poured forth from Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012 — 151 shots fired in five minutes; 26 dead, including 20 first graders and six of their teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School — Coni Sanders received a call from her mother, Linda.

William “Dave” Sanders, who was Coni’s father and Linda’s husband, was the one teacher killed at Columbine, and in the 13 years since, Linda had not moved past her grief. Still living in the home near the high school, keeping the house “like a shrine” to the day her husband left it for the last time, Linda was now sobbing and shrieking in pain.

“’It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas,’” Coni, who became a forensic psychologist working with violent offenders, remembers her mother saying. “’Those babies, those babies, those babies.’”

Said Coni: “I seriously thought I was going to lose my mom.”

A few blocks away, hours to days later, Frank DeAngelis was also “having a meltdown” during a phone call. He’d been offering a shoulder to someone in Newtown when he began shaking and sweating. He grasped the medals he’s worn around his neck since 1999 — a crucifix, the Blessed Virgin — and rubbed them rhythmically to calm down. Then he continued pacing, stroking, talking.

Coni Sanders looks at a photo of her father, William “Dave” Sanders, who was killed in the Columbine shooting. (Photo: Carl Bower for Yahoo News)

There had been 92 school shootings between Columbine and Newtown, and with each, particularly the larger and more publicized ones, those who came before watched as those who came after became part of the “club that no one wants to join,” as DeAngelis calls it.

Jonesboro sent teddy bears to the children of Newtown — more than 6,000 of them filling two 18-wheelers — just as Oklahoma City victims had done for Westside students, some of whom still had theirs 13 years later.

A three-car caravan of former students drove to Connecticut from Red Lake, Minn., because when a 16-year-old student killed 10 and injured seven at Red Lake High School in 2005, several Columbine survivors had driven out to see them.

Those with personal experiences of school violence joined with those who had not, and soon the entire country seemed to be sending stuff to Newtown. Eventually the town assessor would recruit 580 volunteers over the months to work in a donated warehouse sorting and cataloging it all: a total of 63,780 teddy bears, 636 boxes of toys, more than 2,200 boxes of school supplies and a stunning number of boxes of tissues.

President Barack Obama came, later calling Newtown the toughest day of his presidency, and telling a packed and tearful interfaith vigil, “I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts.”

The names of victims from the Sandy Hook shooting are attached to teddy bears, part of a memorial in Sandy Hook Village two days after the shooting. (Photo: Adrees Latif/Reuters)

Vice President Joe Biden came after that, meeting privately with grieving parents, recalling the loss of his own wife and young daughter in a car crash decades earlier. Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan was among those killed, remembers Biden’s advice to keep a daily journal, ranking each day from one to 10, “where one is the worst and a 10 is the best.”

His message, Hockley said, was “You may never have a 10 again, but over time you’re going to see that you’re getting into the fives and the sixes and sevens, and then you’re going to go backwards again and be at the low numbers, and then you’re going to move forward again. And then that’s something useful to look back over time to say, ‘I made it through.’ ”

To the earlier waves of survivors watching from afar, everything about Newtown was familiar, but also bigger. Where Paducah turned away celebrities’ offers to help, Newtown was flooded with them: Giants receiver Victor Cruz visited the family of one little boy who had been buried in the player’s jersey; Harry Connick Jr. visited the family of another victim, whose father had played in Connick’s band. James Taylor gave a concert for family members of the dead at the local church and sang “Sweet Baby James” — to a family whose son had carried that name.

Where a few parents of earlier shootings had become crusaders — Suzann Wilson lobbied for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence after Britthney died in Jonesboro, and Tom Mauser, literally wearing the shoes of his murdered son Daniel, lobbied for local and national gun control after Columbine — Newtown raised the participation and the stakes. Obama sent Air Force One to bring families to Washington, where they walked the halls of Congress with photographs of their dead 6- and 7-year olds, lobbying for expanded background checks on firearms.

And when the measure failed, disillusionment came with a new forcefulness too. “Why wasn’t Sandy Hook the mass shooting that changed everything?” Vice News asked in a headline. Then reporter Matt Taylor answered that question: “Mass shootings are increasingly accepted — by about three quarters of us — as an essential part of American life, like fourth of July barbecues and binging on Netflix. We simply don’t see a way out, and don’t have much or any confidence that our leaders will craft one.”

Tom Mauser holds up a pair of shoes belonging to his late son, Daniel, who was killed in the Columbine shooting, during a rally at the capitol in Denver, April 11, 2000. Mauser placed the shoes with over 4,000 other pairs, representing children killed by handguns in one year. (Photo: Ed Andrieski/AP)

The frustration, layered as it was upon recent grief, turned things ugly for a while in Newtown — another way that the community followed the same path as other places, but more so. Feelings, so close to the surface, were easily shattered. As New York magazine writer Lisa Miller wrote on the first anniversary: “There were 4,000 free tickets to a July Yankees game, an amazing boon, but 4,000 is less than a fifth of the town. NASCAR memorialized the Sandy Hook victims with a special car at the Daytona 500, and the fire chief who had stayed outside Sandy Hook Elementary that morning had the honor of unveiling it, not the police chief, who had entered the school.”

Just as stuff was becoming a surrogate for sympathy, so was money. More than $20 million was sent to Newtown from around the country, divided among 70 charities, the largest of which was the $11 million collected by the United Way. There were months of arguments between the families of those killed, the families of children who had witnessed horror and escaped, and the administrators of the United Way over whether the donations had been sent to help the victims directly or to help heal the town in general.

The fighting, in turn, spurred a backlash from those who felt the families should grieve more quietly, or more tastefully, or just move on already.

“With every shooting we’ve taken this process and we’ve fast-forwarded it,” Coni Sanders said. “We do it very quickly. Columbine stayed closed for months. The bodies weren’t removed for days. In Las Vegas it was business as usual the next night.

“I think a lot of that is by design,” she continued, speaking as a psychologist as well as a victim. “People not directly affected are overwhelmed by the number of tragedies, the number of deaths. I sometimes feel guilty because when Columbine happened there was such an outpouring. They canceled sporting events — well, except for the gun show, that went on. But stores closed. There was a special post office for all the mail we were getting. There was recognition that this wasn’t just an event, it was a change in how we existed.”

People attend an open house at the new Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in July 2016. Students attended the first day of classes there on Aug. 29, 2016. (Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP)

Now communities are left relatively unmoored to navigate the aftermath on their own. Those who have been there warn that at only five years in, Newtown still has a long way to go. Dave Cullen, whose seminal book, “Columbine,” came out 10 years after that shooting, and who still keeps in close contact with many survivors, noted that “those who were going to be OK were OK by 8 years or so. But lots are still not OK.”

Anniversaries, they warn, will continue to be hard. “That first year was just a constant trying to make it through, wondering how much more could you take,” Curtner said. The second year brought the realization that time did not heal quickly, and by now, with the 20th anniversary looming in March, she said, “it’s not so much today like it was the first five years or so,” but “it never goes away. It gets better, but it never goes away.

Memories, they say, will continue to be triggered by all the senses. For Thetford it’s unseasonable warmth, because the weather that day in March when she was shot felt like May. This past February the thermometer reached 70, and she left the school where she now works and drove over to Westside, just to be there.

Nicole Hockley, founder and managing director of Sandy Hook Promise, shares a photograph of her son Dylan at a Harvest Magnet Middle School assembly in Napa, Calif., in March 2017. (Photo: Napa Valley Register via Zuma Wire)

For Coni Sanders it’s springtime noise. “One night I said to my husband ‘Oh, my God, what’s with those helicopters? Why are there so many around?’ And he said, ‘They’re always there; you just notice them in April.’”

The parents of Newtown say they are coming to understand all this — that five years is not long enough, that grieving is not binary or linear.

“There’s not going to be a point where we can put an ‘ed’ on the word ‘recover,’” said Michele Gay, mother of Josephine, who, with Alissa Parker, mother of Emilie, formed Safe and Sound: A Sandy Hook Initiative to promote safety in schools. “It’s always going to be an ‘ing,’” she said in an interview with Yahoo News. “We’re always going to be in process with this.”

Some of the most jarring reminders have been removed. The building where the shooting happened was completely torn down — after construction crews signed nondisclosure agreements that no photos of the interior or bits and pieces of the school ever be made public or sold. The $50 million, fresh-start of a structure that replaced it was opened to students in August of last year, filled with the latest in whimsy (indoor treehouses) and security features (bulletproof windows, doors that automatically lock from inside when closed).

But when you’ve lost a child, the parents have learned, everything becomes a reminder.

One night earlier this month, Mark Barden, whose son Daniel died at Newtown, was driving his daughter Natalie to her piano lesson when the Christmas lights along the route made him remember another ride to Natalie’s piano lesson, this one with Daniel along for the ride.

Jackie and Mark Barden, seen here in 2014, lost their son, Daniel, in the Sandy Hook shooting. (Photo: Enid Alvarez/NY Daily News via Getty Images)

“We played Christmas music in the car with Natalie and Daniel, and I noticed Daniel was crying as we listened to one of the songs because it touched him so deeply,” Mark said. With a jolt he realized that what he was remembered had happened five years ago to the day, on Dec. 6, 2012, a week before Daniel would die.

Some families have moved away, but most have stayed. Daniel’s parents considered leaving. “Jackie was ready to be away from everything and anything that reminded her of the tragedy,” Barden said – but then they asked their surviving preteens, James and Natalie, if they wanted to move. “They were both like, ‘Why would we want to go anywhere else?’ Everything we know and love is here.’”

Dylan Hockley’s parents discussed leaving town too, but chose to stay, in part, to be near others who shared their grief. “I don’t think you can run away from your problems,” Nicole Hockley says. “There’s always going to be Christmas lights, there’s always going to be 12/14, and I think here, there is a fantastic network of support and a community that has felt the varying degrees of tragedy, and there’s an understanding here that can’t be found elsewhere. This is where we choose to live.”

Many also choose to do as others did for them, to pay it forward as others join their tearful club.

After 26 were killed during a Sunday church service in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Hockley tweeted a note of condolence to the families of the victims on behalf of Sandy Hook Promise. “Twenty-six might seem like an arbitrary number, until it’s your community,” she wrote. “When your son is one of the 26, the number will take on new meaning. When your wife is one of the 26, the number will take on new meaning. These aren’t just numbers — they are people.”

Painted handprints with names of teachers and students are on a playground bench at the new Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP)

And after two students were shot by an intruder posing as a student in Aztec, N.M., last week, Sandy Hook Promise reached out to those parents as well.

Near the end of that day, while police were still inside Aztec High School, Mayor Sally Burbridge released a statement: “There will be a Prayer and Candlelight Vigil this evening … in Minium Park. Please join us in beginning the healing process for our community.”