#Caleb has ptsd

[incorrect-transpirings]

Essek: [making fun of Trent]

Caleb: you are so incredibly hot right now

[mosovi-vian]

And I will stay alive for my future self, so they can one day learn to be kind to who I was as a child. And I will teach them to honor who we used to be, so they can remember the comfort of what once was our untempered flesh and gentle soul. Me and myself are each a fresh wound and a rough scab, bearing respectively the gift of green faith and honed will.

This has been in my draft for a while because I was determined to post this only after I knew what I should write underneath it. I’ve read a lot on the concept of healing the wounded inner child since even before my c-ptsd diagnosis. However, I’ve sought as much comfort in my little self as they had in me. Looking back, I was an impressively emotionally-intuitive kid. I remember well how I used to think, the things I would write to my future self; they were wiser and gentler than I could ever hope to be as an adult. Needless to say, the little poem above is inspired by the aforementioned experience. Sure, big me is armed with a more developed pre-frontal cortex and access to invaluable resources (coping mechanisms, therapy, on and offline communities) , but I struggle to rediscover/reinvent my identity. Little me was the biggest vestige of my lost personhood. So yeah, this might be just a huge self-indulgent projection with my favorite character, but thinking that post-S3 Hunter would also be in my shoes is not completely baseless. 16yrs old Hunter is the fresh wound (a lot of things happened before his teen years, but I’m going to interpret the events of Hollow Mind - which happened when Hunter was 16 - as the ultimate boiling point in his trauma timeline, hence the ‘fresh wound') and 20yrs old Hunter is the rough scab. Each version of Hunter could be dealing with a different set of trauma-induced symptoms. I think his loyalty to Belos kept him going as a child. Being doubtless was important to Hunter back then; it held his sense of self together. And maybe when he survived and was rewarded the time and space to grow into his own person and live for himself, there was this lasting emptiness. I feel this sort of emptiness even today. My only reference of what ‘wholeness’ felt like was when I was obedient to my family. I equated self-abandonment as the righteous norm. The symptoms I deal with today are definitely different from when I was Hunter’s age pre-time-skip. Now that Hunter is in a safe space and an adult post-time skip, he might also need to seek that strength from his younger self. Reminding himself of how far he’s come and the parts of him that he'd like to keep from his past. The parts that he knows in his bones are purely his - not instilled by Belos, not inherited from Caleb.

[zara-renata]

Even the rocks on the roadside in the N109 Zone could tell | ao3 | masterlist

Summary: How could you tell I was nervous?" -mc, phone call with Sylus "Remote Support". Sylus makes one final miscalculation. You wake up from a nightmare in a place you weren't ready to revisit. Sylus has to reckon with the inevitable consequences of how he treated you when you first met him, but you're paying the higher price.

Notes: Sylus x gn reader, Sylus x mc, second person POV, some Kieran and Luke POV. Slow burn, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers. This story contains: grief, angst, a panic attack, self-destructive behavior, threatened violence (both real [against other characters] and imagined [against mc]), reference to in-game violence on Sylus's part, mc with PTSD, mc with self-esteem issues and negative self-talk, hurt/comfort, a shampoo epiphany This is probably the lowest point in their relationship, and has the least amount of comedy of the series. But Sylus's bullshit from their beginning needs to be addressed before true love can really take off.

You’re here again. You think you’ve always been here, and any other memory is the dream. You have always been here, in this echoing house, the worn floorboards under your feet, still polished, still perfect for sliding along on socked feet, competing to see who can careen down the hall and hit the door at the end first. You have gotten so many bruises from slamming into the door at the wrong angle, but every one was worth it, to collapse with Caleb into a fit of laughter at the end. Even when he lost, and hit you instead of the door, slamming your body back into the door a second time—doubling your chances of concussion, as your grandmother would scold afterwards. But you’re not wearing socks now, and no matter how far you walk, the door at the end never comes closer. The closed doors lining the hall approach and pass with your steady booted stride, landmarks that offer no guidance at all.

You look back on the fever dreams of what you thought was your real life until you found yourself here, in this place again. The first time you reached out and clasped Xavier’s hand in yours, pulling him to his feet, trying to help him brush off the dirt from his beautiful white battle gear. Being held in his arms as the shimmering starlight of his evol lifted you both into the air to safety. Offering him a bite of your snack, watching his normally placid face light up with pleasure at the taste.

The first time you startled Rafayel off of his stupid, unsafe ladder. Walking barefoot with him along a deserted beach, the warm water sweeping over your ankles. Picking up seashells, and asking him if this one would fit in with his jumbled collection of knick knacks contained in his chaotic studio? Coming upon an eel trapped in the sand at low tide, the only sign of life an occasional gasp for oxygen—watching him carefully dig it out of the sand and release it back into the water. It swam away energetically. He said it was a dumb little eel, and would just get stuck again with the next low tide. You told him that you’d both just have to come back often to ensure that wouldn’t happen. 

The first time you saw Zayne again as an adult, crisp white lab coat over the broad shoulders of a man, so incongruous to your memory of the narrow shoulders of a little boy. His achingly gentle touch, when he listened to your heartbeat through the stethoscope, how he inexplicably held your wrist in his soft fingers to count your pulse instead of using the fingertip monitor. How he kept the flowers you gave him on the windowsill in his office and shook his head every time he had to stitch your wounds.

And … Sylus. 

The first time he held you bound before him, the glow in his eye blinding as he ransacked your soul with all the care of a corrupt cop. How his rough palm wrapped around your throat, and the paralyzing strength with which he tightened his hold. The suffocation, and the hate, and the fear, crushing your breath. The first time he called you a disappointment. All of those things, and everything after—the soft caress of his hand in your hair, his warm body wrapped around yours. Those achingly gentle faux memories, not even dreams, probably. Just daydreams, fantasies born from the pathetic need to be held gently again, in the way you hope someone held you as a child before you lost your memories.

Because you’re here again. And it feels so timeless, and so real, compared to these other faded memories. You must have always been here. You hear someone cutting an apple, the dull thunk of the knife hitting the butcher block, the juices misting with each snick. You press your ear against every door you pass. He’s so close. You’re sure of it. You lift your steel-toed boot and slam the flat of your foot into the next door in this endless hallway. It doesn’t even rattle. You kick it, again, and again. You’re sweating. Your head is pounding. You’re losing your breath and you can’t feel your legs anymore. You kick again. And again. And again. With what little breath you have left, you start to scream, the tears and the snot running down your face. He’s right there. If you’re strong enough. If you’re persistent enough. You can get to him. You can break yourself out of this nightmare, if you’re just enough. 

You scream, and you scream, and you kick, and you kick, until your throat gives out.

You wake up, and the scream from your dream is just a whimper in your throat. Your legs are asleep from how your body is folded in on itself, lying in what seems to be a bed.

You wake up in the dark.

You have no idea where you are.

Your heart is pounding in your chest, a jackhammer in the cracked cement of your body.

Your hair, your face, the pillow, the sheets on the bed you’re lying, what you’re wearing—wet. Sweat. Tears slipping from the corner of your eyes into the hair at your temples.

Where the fuck are you?

You sit up, wince at the tingling returning to your legs. Feel along the bed. Nothing. Your hand finally hits something smooth and hard. You pat around, find the base of what you hope is a lamp, let your hand drift up. You switch on the light.

Impossibly, your heart begins to beat even harder. No. No. You don’t want to be here. You aren’t ready to be here. As long as you see Sylus anywhere else—on the street, in a crowded club, in your apartment, even in your bed, you can keep the memories squashed deep, deep down with all the other things that frighten you, that cause you pain, and you can handle being near him. But you can’t reconcile your memories from this place with the memories of being swayed gently in his arms in a crowd, the tender touches on your couch, your bed, a glass of water held to soft lips, your head pillowed against a strong chest with a steadily beating heart as you fall asleep.

You can’t be here.

You crawl to the edge of the bed, land on bare feet on a plush rug over a cold marble floor. The room is empty. The bookshelves, the imposing desk in the corner, the chaise lounge at the foot of the bed, the black leather armchairs and marble topped coffee table. The dark walls, the record player. You recognize each and every object, although you have refused to return here in your mind since you were allowed to leave. You could walk through here blindfolded. You wish you were blindfolded.

The thin sweater you find yourself wearing is soaked through with sweat. You shiver in the air of Sylus’s silent bedroom. You swivel your head, searching for your own clothes. For your boots. Nothing. You don’t want to go deeper into his room, away from the door, an exit, toward the bathroom and his huge walk-in closet for your clothes, or even to borrow more of his. You want out. You can live without shoes. You can’t live if your heart explodes from the panic clawing its way up your throat.

You silently slip out of his bedroom into one of the echoing corridors of his base, with its deep maroon paneled walls and marble floors, the dense gloom of the N109 zone filtering through the huge windows lining this hallway. You remember every single detail. You hear nothing. Just the thundering of your heart. You stride through the labyrinthine halls, the high ceilings soaring above you along with the elaborate, savage designs of the chandeliers. You avoid going near the dining hall or the kitchen or the den or living room, sticking to the outer edges of the wing you know will lead you to the front door. To the way out of this place filling you with so much dread you could collapse under the weight if you falter for even a stuttered heartbeat.

Miraculously, you make it without seeing a single soul. You turn the gothic monstrosity of one of the double front door handles, fully expecting it to be locked from the inside, but it shifts easily in your hand. You open it only as far as necessary to squeeze your shivering body between the doors and let it close softly behind you.

The night is cold. It’s autumn now, after all. Since there are no natural trees in the N109 zone, the wind gusts unchecked against your already cold body. Sylus’s base sits on a cliff overlooking the valley of the N109 zone with its towering skyscrapers thrusting into the perpetual night like crystalline stalagmites in a vast cave. His house is accessible only by a long and winding road up the hillside. A proper villain’s lair. It’s going to be a long walk through the cold and dark if you don’t figure something else out.

You hate yourself, for your tendency to make assumptions. For not asking enough questions. For refusing to think about all the things that you should keep in the forefront of your mind every single second of every single day. Why had you assumed that Sylus was taking you to a hotel to wait for the evol linkage to dissipate? Why didn’t it occur to your stupid ass that he’d take you to his fortified base, where he is the safest, where it doesn’t cost him any money, where it is his home, since you were already in the N109 zone at Amnesia?

You just fell asleep in his big fucking tank like an idiot, without asking a damn thing.

You will deserve the walk ahead of you. Hopefully it will be what you need to never forget again that this man is using you for his own purposes, and probably every single thing he has done up to this point has been to further his goals involving his need for your resonance. After all, the shopkeeper made it plain from the very beginning: you can’t resonate with someone who frightens you. Someone you dislike. Someone who disgusts you. Sylus has never disgusted you. Quite the opposite, unfortunately. But fear and hate, individually, are probably sufficient to block whatever it is in you that allows you to connect to another in such an intimate way.

And what’s the best way to get someone to stop hating you? To stop being afraid of you? Determine what they need the most, and then give it to them.

Your insomnia. Your desperate loneliness, always there, under your skin, for as long as you can remember, but amplified in the aftermath of losing your family. Your craving for human touch and connection, the kind of touch and connection you can’t bring yourself to ask of your friends. That you can’t stand to seek in strangers anymore, after so many failures.

And of course, Sylus has known what you so desperately want, since the very first night you met him. Your mind drifts to your hand, wrapped securely in his. To him pulling you against him, and reading you bedtime stories about indemnification and allocation of risk and remedies in case of breach. To his soft kisses along your shoulder. How many times did he drop in at your place after he released you from his base? Three? It’s only taken three evenings to accomplish his plan that probably began with the deal about the brooch. Lull you into complacency, acquire your affection instead of your hate, and your willing help instead of your fear. Three evenings, to replace him choking you until you blacked out. To replace … everything that came after.

You look down at your bare feet and bare legs. You can survive this. You can survive anything.

You make an inventory of your current situation. You’re barefoot. Unarmed. Soaked in sweat, and the wind is gusting. You don’t have your phone. But you do have your Hunter’s watch. That’s enough. You’ll get far enough away from the base to avoid Sylus or his minions alerting to your absence and finding you outside, call for help, find some shelter, and wait for someone to come pick you up. You recall that the landscape along the winding road leading up to Sylus’s base is fairly isolated. You gamble that there won’t be anyone coming all the way up here at this time of night.

Once you’re home, you will be able to think straight. When your heart isn’t jackrabbiting in your chest. When this jittery feeling, like you can run a marathon without breaking a sweat, isn’t coursing through your pounding veins. When the lingering despair from the nightmare about your grandmother’s house has faded to the tolerable thrum of grief you’re used to these days. And you will uphold your end of the deal with Sylus. You meant it, when you let the coin decide. You can be as resolute in your decisions as he is. You will be his friend. Why, when you know that most of his behavior toward you is calculated, manufactured—a talented forgery? Because Sylus is very good at getting what he wants. He wanted your affection, and your willing help. And he has been successful in acquiring it, despite your best efforts to resist his charm. You’re honest enough to admit that to yourself. And what even is friendship, if you expect something in return? He may only be able to think of friendship in transactional, cost-benefit, return-on-investment terms, but you don’t want to live that way. Despite your best efforts, you like him so terribly much, and that’s the beginning and end of it. 

You will help him with his love, for whatever your help is worth, and you’ll finally wipe the slate clean. You just need… you just need your heart to stop for a minute. That’s all. And that can’t happen here, in the place where Sylus treated you more honestly than he has ever treated you since you were allowed to leave.

You take a deep breath and begin to jog. You can survive this. You can survive anything.

After being thoroughly entertained at Amnesia by Sylus’s Hunter, Luke and Kieran finally managed to dump Noah with Linda after settling the terms of their bet regarding how long they think it will take their boss to successfully woo the object of his unhinged obsession.

The one rule: no interference that could tip the odds one way or the other. Luke, Kieran and Noah must act as neutral observers of the hilarious conundrum their boss finds himself in regarding the highly skilled, highly oblivious Hunter not being able to see what is obvious to anyone who has the unfortunate opportunity of being within a five kilometer radius of the two of them: that Sylus is head over heels, and so is the Hunter.

Each concerned party committed to upholding this sacred rule of non-intervention. Each of them lied through their teeth while making such a commitment. But Luke and Kieran can tell that countering whatever Noah will likely come up with to drag out this complicated courtship will require all of their combined talents to ensure the odds remain in their favor, and that Sylus will convince the Hunter to accept him sooner rather than later.

Luckily for them, this shitshow is a win-win situation. As long as Sylus is happy, Luke and Kieran are happy. And they can tell, the Hunter is already making Sylus happy. They can see it in how drastically his mood has improved ever since the protocore auction. He no longer vacillates between the few emotions he has shown in the years they’ve known him—rage, utter boredom, and the worst: an unsettling blankness. A cavalier attitude regarding whether he lives or dies, whether he wakes up in the morning or not, whether his heart is beating or at a standstill. He’ll sometimes make off-hand comments about the banality of just… surviving, of waking up to find that he’s still alive and being utterly indifferent to that fact. Every time he says shit like that, shivers run down Luke and Kieran’s spines. They’d much rather he punch holes in walls in a fit of rage or blow up buildings out of boredom than encounter him when he’s at his most… empty.

But ever since the auction, the twins have seen a veritable rainbow of emotions clear as a Linkon City’s sunny afternoon on their boss’s otherwise impassive face. Amusement. Worry. Fascination. Yearning. Pining. Longing. Craving. 

“Luke, I’m truly proud of you for actually reading the thesaurus,” Kieran says from behind the steering wheel of their sleek, powerful muscle car. It was a present from Sylus. He claimed it was a bonus for their help in a particularly ugly business feud that ended up in more corpses than anticipated, but they both thought it was hilarious that the “bonus” arrived on the exact date of their latest birthday. Their boss really is the best.

“Thanks, man. It was like, really mind-blowing to learn how many words there are for Boss’s thirst for his pet.��� Luke leans back in the sexy black leather bucket seat and enjoys the seat heating. Tonight is the coldest it’s been this fall. He fiddles with the sound system.

Kieran swats his hand away. “Driver’s choice. You know the rules.”

Luke pouts. “I’m not in the mood for Bach. Boring. I want Rachmaninov.”

“You don’t need to get wound up this close to home. It’ll take forever for you to settle down if you listen to Rachmaninov right now, and we really need to get some sleep. I have a feeling we’re about to get really busy with how distracted Boss is going to be with the Hunter.” He drums his fingers along the steering wheel. “He’s going to need all the help he can get.” 

“Ugh, fiiine.” Luke hunches further into the comfy seat and stares out the windshield, watching as the bright headlamps slice through the dark gloom, lighting up a swath of the deserted road leading up to their home. Suddenly, he jolts in the seat.

“What the fuck—”

“Is that—?”

“The Hunter, yeah—”

“And, what the fuck—”

“Yeah, no shoes—”

“Call—”

“Boss. On it.”

Luke already has his phone clutched in his hand, and the ringing fills the car through the sophisticated sound system Sylus ensured the car had, along with the fastest, strongest engine for this model on the market.

Kieran watches the Hunter disappear in the rearview mirror, while simultaneously slowing the car as quickly as possible without making excessive noise that could spook the Hunter.

Sylus’s deep voice suddenly fills the car. “Speak.”

“Uh, Boss?”

“Who else, Luke?” Sylus says dryly. “Speak.” 

“Do you know where your Hunter is?”

The line is silent for a beat. “I left Kitten in my bed, asleep, while I went to take care of some paperwork in the study.” He pauses. “Is there a reason you’re asking me this?” Anyone who didn’t know their boss like they do would think his tone of voice was indifferent. But all Luke and Kieran hear is a spike of worry.

“Uh, I’m pretty sure we just passed someone on the hillside road to base who looks, like, a scary amount like your Hunter. With no shoes on. Or coat.” Luke winces in anticipation of their boss’s response.

The line goes dead.

Kieran has slowed the car sufficiently to be able to pull a u-turn without tires screeching, and expertly swings the car around. He cuts the headlights, counting on the light from the blood-red moon to provide sufficient visibility. He then accelerates until he has the Hunter in view, and slowly follows the lonely figure, ready to provide protection until their boss can arrive and take the situation in hand. Luke and Kieran can tell that whatever you’re experiencing, this is not a situation that they are equipped to handle, and if they come up too quickly behind you, they’re worried you will bolt off-road and be even more difficult to collect again. They really, really hope you don’t notice their presence behind you until Sylus arrives.

Fuck. You’re being followed. And you haven’t found one damned area along the roadside that looks like it could serve as good cover since leaving Sylus’s long, convoluted driveway, because this region is a lifeless wasteland of bare dirt and rock and only small outcroppings of earth along the hill’s descent.

You didn’t remember it being so desolate. Probably because you were just so relieved to be escaping with your life, you were looking at the world through rose-colored glasses and failed to notice that the area leading up to Sylus’s base is as hospitable as the N109 zone’s red, red moon.

You had stiffened, almost pausing in your steady jog along the roadside as a sleek, sexy car that looked like it was built for racing came careening around a bend in the road, the two figures in it just silhouettes behind the blinding headlights as they roared past in a huge gust of wind and gravel. You had hoped, with all of your wildly out-of-control heart, that they were just business associates heading to the base for a meeting or something, and that whoever was in that vehicle wouldn’t recognize you or care about a lone nutcase going for a middle-of-the-night run in the middle of nowhere.

But you’re a highly trained Hunter, and you’ve gotten more sleep lately. Without turning around, you can tell that the same car is following behind you, which would be alarming enough, without the fact that whoever’s driving it is trying to be a sneaky shit with the headlights off. As if you can’t hear the purring of that sweet engine even over the strong wind. Idiots.

Your mind races. You have no weapon. You don’t even have shoes. Surprise is the only means of gaining an advantage. You half-turn, wrap your arms around your stomach and drop into a crouch, as if your stomach hurts and you can’t keep jogging because of the pain. Head down, you watch out of your peripheral as the car keeps slowly approaching in the dark. You let one arm drop from your waist on your side not in view from the car, and feel around on the ground until you find what you’re looking for. Then you wait.

When the car is only just a couple meters from you, you launch yourself from your crouched position and sprint directly at it. Its brakes screech as the driver is taken by surprise, but it’s too late. You’ve already vaulted from the hood onto the roof, and you’ve brought the heavy, dense rock clutched in your hand as hard as you can against the driver’s window. As it shatters, you reach through the now open space with your other hand and grab the driver by the throat, half pulling him out of the tinkling window frame. You hold the rock high above your head.

“Why the fuck are you following me,” you bite out through clenched teeth.

You hear the other car door open, but remain focused on the person you have by the throat.

“Don’t come any closer or I will make your friend unrecognizable for identification at the autopsy,” you snarl. You see the other person freeze in your peripheral vision.

You return your focus to the driver. Staring into his grimacing face, you see a young man, one you don’t recognize. He has a riot of floppy dark curls, shaved to a sharp fade on the sides and back of his head. His big dark eyes reflect the light of the red moon as they dart all over your face. He takes a deep breath.

“If I told you that you do not have anything to fear from me, or my brother, would you kindly put me down?” he asks in a voice that sounds alarmingly familiar. Your stomach cramps almost as painfully as your heart has been for the past hour. Without letting go of the driver’s throat, you turn and look at the man standing at the open passenger door, looking back at you with the same face as the man you have in your grip.

You let go, and Kieran sinks back into the car with a grunt. You scramble off the car roof and back away from it.

Just as you’re about to apologize, you see headlights cutting through the dark. You’re suddenly overcome with the wish that Sylus had killed you when you first met, because you can’t imagine how he’s going to react now, when he sees that you assaulted his employee and damaged his property with the rock that is now falling out of your nerveless hand.

You want to turn and run. You want to put this fucking night behind you. You hate that you’ve been thinking that so often lately. Every single time, you just want the night to be over. You’re so tired. Your heart won’t fucking stop doing that horrible thing in your chest, and you still feel like you need to run until you collapse to make it stop. But you’ve learned by now that there is no running from Sylus. Not in any way that matters. So you just stand there, waiting for the hammer to fall.

Thankfully, he doesn’t appear to enjoy toying with his prey tonight, because he quickly comes to a stop and parks the tank behind the twins’ car. He gracefully climbs down from the driver’s seat, slams the car door, and strides up to Kieran’s side, his black biker boots with the chains crunching on the broken glass. You wince with each footfall. He leans down and looks at Kieran. “You good?”

You can’t hear Kieran’s response, but you see Sylus nod and straighten. He gestures for Luke to get in the car, who obeys without comment. He then taps the roof firmly, twice, and strides toward you as Kieran pulls the car into the road, hangs an efficient u-turn, and disappears into the night.

You close your eyes and wait for Sylus to… you’re not sure? Hit you? Slam you with his evol? You brace yourself. Just because he’s been affectionate up until now, even through you throwing the duffel at him in front of an audience, doesn’t mean he’ll suffer you hurting his employees for no good reason. It doesn’t matter that this is the first time you've ever seen them without their masks on, and that it felt incredibly threatening as they followed you, for some unfathomable reason, with their damn headlights off.

Sure, you could fight back. Try to block his blow. But at this point, you feel like you fucking deserve it. You want to punch yourself in the face for hurting Kieran. You don’t know him, but he’s never been mean to you. The worst he’s ever done is give you a flare gun and pretend a pair of handcuffs could magically restrict Sylus’s evol. He didn’t deserve to be scared half to death and choked through a broken window because of his earlier prank. It occurs to you now that maybe stalking you with the headlights off was the twins’ idea of another prank? And you broke their car window and choked one of them. For fuck’s sake, at this point, you’ll welcome Sylus’s fist.

But instead of the hit you’re still bracing for, you jerk a little when you feel the heavy weight of a warm coat being draped around your shivering body.

You open your eyes. Sylus stands in front of you, wearing a thick cable knit sweater.

“If you wanted to go for a run, sweetheart, you could have just told me. We have a perfectly functional home gym, equipped with treadmills with big screens that make you feel like you’re running on a serene mountain path or along the beach. There’s no need to endure the desolation of the N109 zone’s ‘scenery’ when you’re here with me but want to work out.”

You just stare at him. 

“What’s wrong? Crow’s got your tongue?” One corner of his mouth lifts as he taps the corner of your mouth gently with his index finger.

What the hell is happening? “Are you not mad at me?” you ask, completely at a loss.

“Why would I be mad at you?”

You gesture a little helplessly. “I hurt Kieran. I damaged your property. I interrupted whatever you were doing since you’re now out here instead of back at your home.”

“You didn’t damage my property. The car belongs to Luke and Kieran. Can I touch you?”

“What?” Your heart is a bloody, clenched fist, punching your body from the inside out. Sylus’s apparent calm in the face of all the mess that is you is making you feel like you’re insane.

“I said, can I touch you?” he repeats, as if he has all the patience in the world to repeat questions you clearly heard the first time.

“Like, can you hit me? Or strangle me? You want my permission to give me what I deserve?”

Sylus’ face changes. If you hadn’t been spending so much time recently watching videos on micro expressions and bluffing and acting, you might have missed it. He looks furious for a microsecond, and you want to take a step back. But you deserve whatever it is he’s feeling right now. You force yourself to stay still. You look up into his now neutral, lovely face.

He breathes in through his nostrils. “I will repeat this as many times as you need to hear it,” he says calmly, as the wind sweeps his silver hair across his forehead. Your heart is going to kill you, as you live through the eternity of the pause in this sentence. “I will never, ever hit you. And I will never think that you deserve to be hurt, for anything that you do, or don’t do.”

Okay. Okay, weird. He’ll strangle you, but he won’t hit you? He thought you deserved to be held captive for three days, denied food and water, forced to resonate, but he expects you to believe that he doesn’t want to punish you for fucking up as big as you did tonight? Where is the thin red line here? How can he say that he will never think you deserve to be hurt, when he hurt you so terribly during those first three days?

“Ask your question,” he says, but it’s not a command. It sounds more like a gentle invitation. What alternate reality have you stepped in tonight?

“I don’t understand how your mind works,” you say instead of obeying him.

“If you don’t ask, then you’ll continue not knowing how it works.” He still sounds infinitely patient. “As much as I’d like to, I can’t read your mind. Unless you ask, I won’t always know what you need from me.”

You shiver, even under the warmth of his heavy coat, but can’t bring yourself to answer. You close your eyes against the memory of his calloused hand around your throat. Of him tossing you in front of a huge mecha battlebot, sneering “You can handle it.” Of him telling you to survive the night, or else enjoy your last meal at his table. You open your eyes.

Sylus is watching your face, thumbs hooked in both trouser pockets. He shakes his head a little. “All right. I propose that we go back to the base, and you can pose all your questions there, no strings attached, without you standing out here freezing to death on your bare feet.”

This time you do take a step back, shaking your head. “No. No, nope, no thank you. If you could just dump me somewhere closer to the city, I can just get someone from the Association to pick me up. We can talk another time.”

He watches you closely, and you feel naked, with your heart a sledgehammer against the brittle framework of your ribs, and the sweat still soaking your hair. “Is there a particular reason you’re reluctant to go back home with me?” he finally asks.

You choke a little on a laugh. “You could say that,” you say dryly, with all the calm you can muster through the chaos in your chest.

“Care to share?” 

You’re so tired. You’re so, so tired. None of it seems to matter anymore—whether he hits you, leaves you on the side of the road, or splatters you onto the gravel with his evol. “Do you really not know, Sylus? With all of your insight, do you really need your aether core to figure out why I wouldn’t want to go back to your criminal headquarters?”

“I thought you were getting used to the idea of the criminal aspect of my life,” he says slowly, as if that’s the important part.

“You’re right. I care less and less, every day, that you’re a wanted outlaw. But I really have no interest in reliving the days you spent choking me out and trying to brute force your way into resonating with me,” you murmur, because it’s so hard to say out loud, let alone think about it. You’re shaking. You’re shaking so hard, your bones hurt. Your teeth are chattering. None of these things have anything to do with how cold you are.

Sylus becomes very still, with the red, red moon above him, the wind still gusting through his hair, pulling at his sweater, and the dead earth stretching behind his tall figure.

“Can I touch you?” he asks again. 

Can he touch you? Of course he can. All he has to do is what he has always done. He can just reach out and take what he thinks he deserves from you. As he has done since the first moment you met. But you don’t want to have to give him permission for it. You know you deserve it, but you still have enough of a sliver of self-preservation, or pride, or backbone—something in you refuses to give him this last bit of yourself by being complicit in whatever he wants to inflict on  you right now.

“Can I touch you? Not to hit you. Not to choke you. Not to cause you any pain, in any way, whatsoever.”

You’re so confused. “Then why are you asking for permission, when you’ve never done that before?”

“Because I can see that bringing you to the base tonight, without talking to you about it, when you haven’t been back since our first few days together, was a mistake on my part. I may be many things, but stupid isn’t one of them. I do not intend to make the same mistake more than once.” 

“I was stupid for not asking you where we were going,” you try to protest, although you don’t know why, through your clicking teeth.

“No, you weren’t. You trusted me to take you somewhere you would be comfortable. It was my fault for not considering that you would not feel safe in my home because of the way we began.” His voice sounds so resolute.

You just look down at your toes.

“Can I, please, touch you?” he asks, yet again, but this time he sounds a little strained.

Now that you know he’s not going to try to hurt you, you can finally nod. As soon as you start to bob your head, you feel yourself swept into the air, his strong arm under your knees, the other under your shoulders, and he holds you tightly, so that your face is tucked into his throat.

He carries you to the tank and manages to get the door open without letting you go, but instead of putting you on the passenger seat, he sets you on one of the bench seats further back in the vehicle, pulls the door shut behind himself, and sits next to you. He pauses, taking you in from head to toe, and then leans forward next to the driver’s seat and fiddles with something on the dash screen. He then sits back and pulls you onto his lap. Apparently, he hadn’t turned off the vehicle when he first arrived, because it’s so warm in here. He rests his hand, somehow still warm after standing out in the cold, against your heart.

“I know you want to go home right now. But it’s over an hour away. You need to get warmed up sooner rather than later. Do you trust me enough to allow me to take you back to base until you’re no longer shaking so hard it’s vibrating the whole armored vehicle?” he speaks, lips against your wet hair.

“It’s a tank, Sylus,” you protest, because even now you can't help yourself.

“Do you trust me enough to allow me to take you back to base until you’re no longer shaking so hard it’s vibrating the whole tank?” Sylus murmurs into your hair.

You don’t want to go back there. You just want to close your eyes, and be anywhere else but inside your body right now. Your mind drifts back to how thirsty you were in that house, the house he wants take you now. How thirsty you were, and no water was given. And when the terror would recede and exhaustion seeped into its place, the awareness of your hunger, and no food was given. How did you ever trust him to come near you again? How can he possibly ask you if you trust him enough to take you back there?

But being in his arms like this, despite everything he has done to you, his hand against your broken heart, is calming you in a way that makes trust and choice seem meaningless. You want to just stay right here, in this moment, where the past and the future are just fever dreams, and the only reality is Sylus’s hand, his lips, his chest against your shoulder and side. You want to carve your way into him, force him to carry you inside his skin so you’ll never be cold again. Even though he's the reason you're cold to begin with. You're so tired of this tangled, terrible bond with this terrible man.

And yet. Like always with him, when he's right here, holding you with such fierce tenderness, you find yourself surrendering to the temptation, to the seductive illusion that you’re safe with him, and you let him have whatever he wants.

You just nod, your cheek rubbing against the soft sweater over his clavicle. You feel his chest expand in what might be a relieved sigh, or just exasperation, and the vehicle begins to move. You startle, but he shushes you. “It’s in self-drive mode, we’ll be back in a few minutes.”

You relax again, and the way back is a blur. You don’t want to look, as he lifts you from the car and carries you through the underground garage beneath the base, into the elevator that lifts you to the floor on which his bedroom is located. The same expansive windows, soaring ceilings, subtle light in wall sconces stream by as he strides forward.

“I can walk,” you try to protest, but again, he softly shushes you. 

“No, you can’t.”

“I’m cold, not paralyzed,” you counter, exhausted, amazed you still have the capacity to argue with him.

“Yes, yes, but you haven’t seen your feet. And I have.”

“What?” you lift your head, but he presses your face back into his chest.

“You ran five kilometers without shoes on a semi-paved road, kitten. I’m pretty sure you’re not accustomed to barefoot running, based on the state of your feet.”

You shudder even harder. You hadn’t even noticed the pain.

And then, you’re back in his bedroom. You feel him shift, toeing off his shoes at the threshold. He passes the lounge area, his hulking desk, the bookshelves and the bed, and takes you into the black marble cave of a bathroom you recall from your hunt for the brooch. He sets you on the padded bench thingy that probably has a fancy name that you imagine every rich person has even in their bathrooms and then goes to the walk-in shower and turns on the water. Almost immediately, steam begins to fill the expansive space. He returns and kneels at your feet. 

“Your clothes need to come off,” he says softly, but loud enough that you can still hear him over the spray.

Since you’re back here, the place where you spent so long helpless and trapped, it’s easy to slide right back into that space, but this time you don’t have the energy to even try to help yourself—you just nod again, but don’t move.

Sylus pauses, but then slowly reaches out and slides his coat from your shoulders. Then, so, so gently, he lifts the lower hem of the sweater you’re wearing, knuckles drifting along the sensitive skin of your stomach, and gathers the material under your armpits. With his other hand, he lifts one of your arms and pulls it through and out of the sleeve, and gently rests it back at your side again. He repeats the movement on your other side, and lifts the sweater over your head. Then, with one arm, he scoops you from the bench, gently but efficiently peeling the sleep shorts from your hips and over your legs. You’re left in just your underwear.

He carries you to the shower, the steam warm on your skin, and lowers you on one of the marble benches built into the wall. The water streaming from the shower hits him full on, and his own clothes are soaked through almost immediately. He reaches behind himself and pulls the sweater and undershirt over his head and tosses them back into the bathroom. He then grabs his belt, unbuckling it in practiced moves. Unzips his trousers, slips out of them, tossing them behind him as well. Clad in only a black pair of boxer-briefs, wet hair tarnished silver, he sits next to you on the bench and pulls you onto his lap again, your back to his chest. 

And then… the two of you just sit like that, floating together in a timeless space composed of water, skin, and the steady shush of the shower water. His arms around you are as tight as a straitjacket, securing you against him as if he thinks you’ll dissipate like the steam and drift away if he doesn’t anchor you to his own body. He doesn’t say anything at all. He doesn’t ask anything at all. He just holds you, his cheek resting in your hair, and doesn’t let go.

Slowly, so slowly, your heart slows in your chest. Your body-wracking shivering ebbs in violence, until, finally, you are completely still. Now that your muscles aren’t locked into defending against the convulsions from the cold, and… everything else, you melt into Sylus, head lolling on his chest, the spray of the water soothing everything that hurts, and his steady heartbeat at your back soothing everything else.

But of course, because you’re you, and this life is your life, this peaceful emptiness doesn’t last long. You slowly become aware of the most terrifying need welling up inside you, one you’ve managed to resist since… now that you think about it, since the last time you were in Sylus’s home. You need to fucking cry. 

All of your efforts to avoid this feeling—the terrifying loss of control, the exposure of the weakest part of yourself to yourself, or to another—refusing to speak about the terror and the pain inside you, the terror and pain you carry through every minute of every day, to your friends, to your doctor—all in a desperate bid to keep the floodgates of your tears bolted shut, are crashing onto the shore of this ocean of need. The need to cry. You’ve tried so desperately to avoid it, because once you start, you’re afraid that you will never, ever stop.

But now, being held by this man, who is so deeply threaded into the source of this feeling, somehow triggers the switch in your brain that says safe, safe, you can release the flood behind the gates, and you will not drown, because he’ll hold your head above water, no matter the cost .

You have no idea why your brain thinks this. You can guess why your brain considers a gunshot the same as a bomb, or why your first instinct when approached from behind is threat threat threat, neutralize first, ask questions later . But you cannot fathom for the fucking life of you why your brain sees Sylus and whispers, Shelter. Sustenance. Safety.

You can’t help it. The first tears begin to gather at the edges of your eyes. Your breath quickens, your chest begins to heave with the effort of holding it in. Your face is hot. But despite all of your will focused on not. fucking. crying... the tears begin to fall. At first, silently, but then from deep inside your chest, the sobs clawing their way out of your lungs through your throat, and suddenly you’re howling.

It hurts. It hurts so much. You hate it. You hate that Sylus is here as silent witness to all the weakest parts of yourself. You twist in his arms, straddle his lap. You wrap your arms around his neck and bury your face in his throat, and then you weep. You wail, snot and spit and tears sliding down his chest, because you’re blocking the shower’s spray.

And Sylus? He keeps his arms wrapped around you, his cheek still in your hair, and doesn’t say a thing. After a while, you realize that he has started to shift on the bench, gently rocking you as you fall apart in his arms. One big hand, pressed flat on your back, runs firmly from the top of your spine to your lower back, and then back again. Still anchoring you to him. You feel a low vibration in your chest, under all the other sounds of the loud shower, and realize he’s humming very quietly. You have no idea if he’s humming something in particular. But the feeling in your chest is so soothing, eventually you realize that your sobs, and your tears, have slowed, just as the shivering of your body did while wrapped in his arms.

And then you’re done. You don’t have anything left—just the hollow relief of not being afraid, not shivering, not crying—the relief of not feeling much of anything at all. You try to hold on to it, grasp it in your fists. But like everything else, it slips through your fingers all the same, and you feel the shame come.

Miraculously, the shower water is still hot. It’s beating down on your back, your lowered head, still tucked under Sylus’s chin. You try to sit up, move away, but he just tightens his hold.

“Where do you think you’re going, sweetheart?” he asks, sounding like he has sounded since the end of the auction. Slightly amused. Curious. Infinitely tolerant. 

You can’t say anything. You’re so embarrassed that he just witnessed all of… that. You just want to escape now.

“Hmm?” he murmurs into your hair, to emphasize his question in the face of your refusal to respond. And then, “Why are you always trying to leave me?”

You’re so surprised by the raw vulnerability in his question that you pull back to look into his face. He’s still holding you so tightly, your noses brush. His eyes are wet from the shower spray, droplets clinging in his dark lashes.

“What do you mean?”

“You leaving the base without saying a word is the second time in just one night that you were considering leaving me, without even telling me,” he says evenly, big hand still spread across your back. “Why?”

Suddenly, you’ve had enough. You are so tired of not understanding him, of trying to decipher clues from his inexplicable behavior, the incongruous way he touches you, treats you when you’re at your lowest, compared to how he treated you when you first met. “Why do you even care, Sylus? No amount of utility that I may have for you is worth you putting up with… this,” you gesture to yourself, face twisted in disgust.

“Utility?” he repeats, tilting his head. The hand on your back drifts upward until he has his big palm wrapped around the back of your neck, thumb along the side of your throat, fingers plunging into your hair.

“The dating advice… the resonance,” you remind him, though you don’t know why. You assume he knows exactly what you were referring to, that he’s just buying time to think of an answer that will make you stop asking inconvenient questions.

“You think I’m… ‘putting up’ with you, as you so charmingly phrase it, because I want your help with convincing my beloved that I’m sincere, and because I want you to resonate with me again? Is that what you’re saying?” he summarizes your thoughts.

“Why else would you go to all this trouble to spend so much time on me, when at every turn I end up doing something ridiculous? First, almost having a panic attack at the auction. Then, the very next time we’re out in public together, I make a scene during one of your business meetings. Then, the same night, because I’m just that awesome, I have another panic attack and almost kill one of your employees because I thought they were some human trafficker thinking he had an easy target tonight.”

“Why did you think they were human traffickers?” Sylus asks.

“He was following me with his fucking headlights off in the middle of the night on a deserted road in the N109 zone! What would you have assumed?” you demand, forgetting the whole point of this conversation.

He tilts his head, makes a little moue with his mouth. “Fair enough,” he acknowledges. “And that’s exactly why I’m not mad at you. I didn’t believe for a second that you would attack him for no reason. And, neither did he, by the way. Which is why you’re still in one piece.”

You eye him. “What do you mean?”

Sylus considers you for a moment, and then sighs. “Do you think you’re up to getting washed up before we unpack what you just said? I’ll make us something to eat and we can talk about everything once you’re clean and dry.”

You look down at your fingers, and see that their tips resemble raisins. You’ve made Sylus sit in this shower for at least an hour while you lost your shit. Despite the rich bastard being able to afford never-ending warm water, apparently, you can’t imagine this is how he wanted to spend his version of his evening. You nod.

“Finally, some sense from you,” he smiles slightly, lifting you in his arms. He sets you gently on the shower floor, and grabs a bottle from the built-in shelving containing a bunch of shower products. He kneels in front of you, his broad back blocking the spray from hitting your face. Despite the heat in the room, you shiver as he reaches toward you, as you feel his fingers slide from your calf to your ankle. Your brain stalls out and you can’t bring yourself to protest as he lifts your leg and gently foams some fragrance-free soap, and as delicately as possible washes the now-stinging sole of your foot. He gently lowers it back to the shower’s marble floor, and does the same with your other foot. When he’s done, he simply holds your foot in his palm, looking at it contemplatively, thumb running along the skin near your ankle. 

After a few moments, he eyes your face, and then his gaze drifts to your hair.

“I probably suck at washing someone else’s hair. Can you teach me how to do yours?”

You start shaking your head. “I may have hurt my feet, but I’m still capable of washing my own hair. You really don’t have to do this for me,” you begin, but he shakes his head.

“Just indulge me. Please.” He looks steadily at you. Something about the way he says please, and the fact that it’s the second time tonight he’s asked you so earnestly for your permission to touch you, has you nodding, again. 

He gently squeezes your foot, and then moves to get a few more bottles from the veritable drugstore he has stashed in the shower shelves. He then kneels back at your side and shows you, to your amazement, the same products that are sitting in your own shower back home. “Show me how you use these,” he says.

You stare at the bottles. Then you stare at his face. His eyes seem to gleam through the shower steam.

“Why—?” you ask, but he just shrugs.

“I was hoping you’d visit me,” he says nonchalantly, like it’s the most normal thing in the world for him to stock all of his friends’ personal hygiene products in his bedroom’s en suite bathroom.

Your mind drifts over all of the assumptions you’ve held about this man since you met him. All of the assumptions that have been utterly incorrect. You think about your assumption that he was dreaming about someone else, as he was biting your neck. You think about your assumption that the person he was describing in the Lethe lounge was someone else—anyone else, either one of your friends, a fellow Hunter, or someone you don’t even know. You think about the deal he made with you tonight—the help he says he needs in convincing someone that his feelings are sincere. Someone who refuses to consider that he doesn’t have an ulterior motive in treating them with kindness. In spending time with them. In devoting his precious free time to caring for them. Your gaze drifts between the bottles of the mid-range shampoo and conditioner he’s holding in his strong hands, because you can’t afford the really fancy shit you would really like to splurge on but you have too much pride to just buy the stuff from the grocery store. 

You understand the nature of tools. You work with tools every day in your job. Your knives, your swords, your guns. You maintain your tools with a diligence that others may consider fanatical, but which you know will help you survive, in the end. A whet stone, to sharpen your blades. Gun brush and oil, to clean and ensure the weapon doesn’t jam when you need it the most. These things are essential in caring for your most useful possessions. 

If you are a tool, the only things Sylus needs to maintain your utility are an absence of fear, your willingness to help him, the strength of your body in being well rested and well fed. Everything he has done up till now could be interpreted as serving the purpose of maintaining a tool he intends to use in the future. But a tool doesn’t have to be attractive. A tool doesn’t need clean, well-moisturized hair to function. The cosmetics of the thing are irrelevant, as long as it can efficiently serve its purpose. But you also know that Sylus likes shiny things. He likes the best, finest things. But if he wanted you to be as attractive as possible for aesthetic purposes, he could have bought the expensive, top-of-the shelf products that you’re sure he buys for himself if he was hoping you’d visit and inexplicably be showering in his bathroom. But no. He bought the products that you use. That you’re used to. That he knows you like because you had bought them for yourself. You cannot understand how the presence of your own shampoo and conditioner in his shower could serve any of the purposes of an owner maintaining the utility of a tool. 

You look back up into his face, and he’s looking at you patiently, but also with an eagerness to get started on helping you with your hair. Aside from everything else—how you started, how he treated you in this house—you don’t dare believe that the assumptions you’ve been making up until now are wrong. You aren’t ready to handle the emotional devastation if you begin to hope that the person Sylus wants in his life is… not someone else, only to find out that such an assumption is also wrong. You can’t. You can’t, not yet.

So you just gesture at the shampoo. “I start with this.” 

He sets the conditioner down. You proceed to tell him how you take care of your hair, and he follows your instructions silently, with a clumsy obedience that is incredibly endearing. His fingers along your scalp are so soothing, you melt into him as he washes your hair, your back to his chest. When he’s done, he takes the same care with the conditioner, touching you like you’re made of the most delicate blown glass instead of the scratched and scuffed stainless steel you imagine yourself to be.

When he’s done, he withdraws his hands from your hair and says next to your ear, “I’ll leave you to finish washing up. Towels and clothes will be on the bench. Call for me, and I’ll bandage your feet.”

And then you’re alone, with the water still beating down on your chest and shoulders. You peel off your underwear, and just sit there, knees drawn to your chest, letting the soothing heat stream down your back.

Your mind drifts. Again, you think of his calloused hand around your throat. You think of him sneering that you’re such a disappointment. You think of the thirst, and the hunger. You think about him dragging you across the floor with his evol, every time you tried to claw your way of the room where he forced you to resonate, over and over again.

You think about his embrace as you danced at the auction, your clasped hands as he let you decide when to detonate the bombs before you slipped into a panic attack. You think about the first time you fell asleep with him, on the back of his motorcycle. You think of a pot of poisonous flowers, wine the color of his eyes in a glass held to your mouth, his hands in your hair tonight.

You know that you can’t continue like this. Something has to give. You can’t be his friend, while being terrified of your memories of him. You need to do what he has asked and ask him questions, so that you can finally reconcile the man who just washed your feet so tenderly with the man who suggested cutting off your hand to break the linkage between you the first time the energy shackles bound you two together. The man who brings you wine, and more food than you could eat in a week, with the man who starved you for days.

You slowly get to your feet, wincing at the pain in your soles. You must have cut your feet up pretty bad, but you don’t want to look. You hobble to the shelves and let your hand drift over the array of neatly organized bottles. Your hair products are the only familiar products. Everything looks fancy as hell, with minimal branding, dark and masculine. You find body wash, and squeeze some onto your palm. The scent of citrus rises to your nose—you’ve finally found the source of oranges you sometimes detect on Sylus’s skin. You eagerly lather the soap between your hands and quickly cover your body with it.

When you’re done rinsing, you hobble out of the shower and find the towel and clothes stacked neatly just as Sylus had described. You even find the same type of towel you use specifically on your hair. You wrap it around your head, slip into the silky tank top, shorts and robe, and sit for a moment, elbows on your knees. You see yourself in one of the huge mirrors above the large sink and counter. You look so fucking tired. It’s time. You can’t keep shoving everything down, down deep. You need answers.

“Sylus,” you call. You wait. He appears in the doorway, leans his long body against door frame, shirtless with black silken pants hung low on his waist, warm looking slippers on his big feet.

"Yes, my dearest treasure?"

You laugh a little at the absurd endearment. Somehow, even when you're feeling at your worst, he always manages to make you laugh. It would be so easy, to close your eyes. To pretend that the way you began with him was the dream, that his gentle touch and silly endearments are the real Sylus. The only Sylus. But you're tired of lying to yourself. If you try to shove it all down, down deep, what happened tonight will only repeat itself, in possibly worse ways. You need to find a way forward, a way to realign the conflicting images of Sylus, to sift through them like mirages in the desert. You'd rather see him clearly, from his most malignant to his most tender selves, than continue to be lost between your horrific memories from those first three days and how he's looking at you right now. As if you're somehow precious to him. You take a deep breath.

 “Can we talk?”

[utilitycaster]

So I alluded to this in tags but did not want to put this on someone else's post and so: I have been catching heat for calling various members of Bells Hells selfish since the start, and to be clear, I will keep doing this, because I have precisely no respect for the intellect of anyone doing this, but I want to underscore that it's not just that I find many of the party's actions profoundly selfish/self-absorbed; it's been a growing pattern in the people who defend them.

It is selfish to fail to take into consideration the perspectives of others and to act out of your own pain in a way that hurts other people. I categorically reject the idea that being traumatized, abused, or experiencing negative things in any way excuses you from having to consider how your actions can harm others. In fact, failing to do this makes you a worse person; to say "the world hurt me and I'll visit this pain on other innocents" is ultimately, an indefensible position on moral grounds. That doesn't, to be clear, mean I dislike it in stories, which should have conflict and moral grayness. But I do not find these characters to be people I consider to be good, if this is with any consistency the frame of reference from which they act.

To say "the gods did not give me things and therefore they deserve killing" is profoundly selfish and vindictive. Having no love for them is one thing; actively wishing harm on them is, in fact, self-centered in the extreme. But that's actually not what I'm here to talk about in regards to Bells Hells' selfishness, both because I've found trying to explain that the gods are living beings and murdering all of them is, you know, bad, to some of the fandom has failed for the reasons I'll discuss later in this post. And, granted, this is a hypothetical, and we may look back in a month or so when the dust clears at a party that defeated Predathos and say "ha, good job guys," but should Bells Hells release Predathos deliberately? That is a betrayal of the Exandrian Accord. If you want to side with the man who destroyed Molaesmyr (and make no mistake, there is no way to do what he was going to do without siding with him; intent only matters if Predathos escapes despite Bells Hells giving it their all, not if they have slightly different motivations for fucking over their allies), that's a valid story, but to take the job and choose to fail to deliver? That is selfish. Someone else could have taken the job. The Doylist excuse that these are the characters the cast happened to be playing at the time does not, in fact, hold water; they could in fact have rejected the Moon Plot, or chosen to become the villains of this story. I would have, in fact, enjoyed that as a story! But this idea that they're not just assholes who think more about themselves and the shitty things various people mostly unaffiliated with the gods did to them during their childhoods than the vast destruction wrought by Ludinus across all of Exandria, is not one the narrative has ever supported.

What's really struck me, though, is a theme of selfish defenses in the fandom. I think bringing up personal anecdotes can be incredibly helpful! I found that some of the people who spoke about their experiences with PTSD in reference to Caleb, for example, provided incredible insight. Notably, the people I'm thinking about were not the ones whose conclusions were "so he's in the moral right to do anything to anyone ever because of PTSD" (and indeed they were usually people who celebrated Caleb as kind of an asshole). But those anecdotes do not override the experiences of other fans. Or, to dredge up some tiresome arguments, Beau is allowed to get pissed off at Caleb's behavior, even if his actions come from a place of trauma.

The two things that really stand out to me (outside of the bizarre ambient noise of white southern ex-Evangelicals acting like they're an oppressed class on that basis that has clung to the discourse like the slime it is) are the recent defense of Ashton on the basis of "punks/leftists are allowed to do this and I identify with Ashton so how could you be so mean to me, a leftist punk and therefore a good person and therefore I can do whatever and you have to like me," and the defense of the various Vanguard members (sans Ludinus) as being victims of a cult and therefore the trail of bodies they leave is fine because various fans have talked about having family in cults whom they forgave. I will speak bluntly here. I'm Jewish, and your argument of "you should be nicer to cult members because a lot of white southern people fall into cults, like one of my parents" is, to me, a combination of insulting, horrifying, and makes me hope your cultist parent gets hit by a car before they hurt more people. Should you wish to forgive your family? Fine, it's your business. To act as though it is a failure of strangers that they are not more generous towards a fictional character because you are sucking your own dick about how good you are at forgiveness? That is a level of entitlement that goes so far beyond the pale I struggle to imagine how you function in society.

I don't think Bells Hells are doomed to this epithet - they have a chance to do the the right thing - and I believe that those entitled fans can change. But yeah man, they - and you - have been really fucking selfish, and the digging in of your heels is doing nothing to convince me you're capable of even hearing the perspectives of others, let alone considering them.

[anxietiefling]

caleb widogast fucks with me because he’s in his mid-thirties and has overcome all the obstacles. he’s disastrously bisexual. he has ptsd. he has a stable job in academia. he has a lovely boyfriend. he regularly sees his friends. he plants green beans. he reads lots of books and adopts many cats. truly aspirational. a millenial dream. if he can have it etc. pp.

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

Do you think TOH made people care and then ripped them apart for it?

I was still in high school when I started watching the series and I loved it. I didn't have good grades, I am neurodivergent and bisexual and was thought of as a weirdo and bullied and condescended for crying at school or acting like I was younger than I was and things along those lines. I related to Luz SO HARD. I wanted to be in the Boiling Isles. I imagined myself finding a way there. I had little 'imagine spots' and loved the mystery and the wild and unconventional aesthetics and I even got into some of the stuff you see on r/WitchesVsPatriarchy because of it. I couldn't wait for more story. I was sure everything would be resolved by the end.

Somewhere along the lines, the characters were no longer characters to me. They were real, and had real feelings and struggles and experiences. And somewhere else along the line, the Collector came, and Hollow Mind happened.

I was terrified. I kept watching, though. I wanted to know what would happen to everyone I loved. Hollow Mind was a great episode though, and I thought it and the rest of Season 3 were building up to something big.

They were not. They were building up to something extremely poorly explained that was erased in the last episode. No flashbacks. No face reveals. Caleb and Evelyn do not speak. We still have no idea what happened. How old were he and Philip? What made him trust Evelyn? Why was Evelyn in the human realm? What were the circumstances of the knife fight? WHY did Philip kill Caleb? How long was he looking for him? So many unanswered questions hand-waved in the finale, and anytime someone complains the response is 'but thuh shortuhning.' Boo fucking hoo. They had the time to explain things and they did not. If you weren't knee-deep in fandom and didn't read social media, you may not even know Hunter was a Grimwalker. You'd be left extremely confused about what Belos is and what the hell he wanted. And yet people use 'blame the big bad Disney' as an excuse. Less wasting time in Hexside tormenting students, more on what we give a damn about.

Speaking of Hexside.

I know all that shit with the puppets was supposedly 'necessary', but imagine if you'd been hiding from a potential genocide and suddenly everyone you love has been turned into nonsentient dolls by some unknown god and you're forced to hide and your remaining loved ones are missing and you're barely surviving, your life has been flipped, everything you knew is a lie and you don't know when or if it'll end. That's what it was like for them, and it is not treated like the traumatic and horrifying event that it was. It is joked about and used as a punchline and at best is unneeded filler that creates problems. And then there's Boscha - a girl treated horribly by the fandom and show both. Her friends have been turned into puppets and she is being used by Kikimora, she doesn't know what's happening, it's the apocalypse, she's sad and scared and confused and doesn't know what to do. She lashes out at people because of it. Perhaps she was so clingy towards Amity because her friend had vanished for ages and she finally knew she wasn't a puppet or dead. She is laughed at. Treated as an obstacle for Amity to overcome. Abandoned at Hexside. Given no real redemption. Just left to cry alone. And outside the show, fans will treat her like garbage. I have known people who wanted to tear her head off, or wanted her expelled from Hexside after becoming the least popular girl in school and losing all her friends. This is a teenager going through an unspeakably horrible event that will leave her with PTSD. She deserves exploration. She deserves more from the show and more from fans. Even Dana was asked once if she'd be redeemed - she said 'I think some people don't deserve redemption'. Or something along the lines. Bravo, Dana. Bravo, everyone.

And then the aesthetic switch. I praised the unique aesthetic. All reds and dusty colours and widespread. It made me really think of something abandoned. Someplace really wild. The Collector took over and turned it all star-themed and pastel, and it stayed that way. The Archive House stayed up. They call it the 'king's crown'. It remains a bland galaxy aesthetic with no trace of what they had in Season 1. They might as well reward the Collector for destroying the Isles.

And finally, Luz having to go back to human high school where she was bullied and had bad grades and didn't fit in. I used the Isles as an escape. I wanted to attend Hexside *so bad* and it was clear the show wanted the viewers to want it. So to have Luz go back and spend three years rebuilding the Isles whenever she went there - it broke me. It felt like my guts being torn to pieces. Everyone having to rebuild the Isles. Bland construction. Luz missing three birthdays. If I wanted child labour and bland construction and a horrible high school experience, I'd look at the world today. Luz was forced away from her home and into the place she deserved to escape from. High school is hell. And to top it off, what with current events, I truly do not want Luz abandoned here, among the rise of the far-right and schools doing jack-all for their students and some days when it seems everyone wants to kill each other. Luz does not deserve to be abandoned here, going to human high school and spending all her time in the Isles rebuilding it. No more fun. No more fantasy. No more adventures. Just construction. Everyday construction and a bland pastel star aesthetic replacing what I love. It's not weird anymore. I have lost the Boiling Isles. I feel this is reflected in the door redesign. The wooden Titan Eye design was all wooden, rough, mysterious and possibly alive. The new design is just a blah plastic pastel star design. It's boring.

Maybe I'm being a bit extreme, but I have held onto this for ages and no one shares my sentiments and it hurts like hell. If you could respond, that would be wonderful.

But yeah. TL;DR: This show made me care and then killed my escape and broke me and every character I love.

The Isles is dead, and this show has hurt me in the worst possible way.

I'm sorry that the show has had such a negative effect on you; it absolutely sucks to become so emotionally attached to something only for it to all fall apart in the end. It can feel like all that time and energy was wasted and that you were foolish to like it at all. But no, you did not waste anything. I think it's helpful if you reframe your thoughts because I am concerned about how much this show has affected your mindset.

The show did not break you. Its ending did not meet your expectations and you were disappointed by it. That's ok. A lot of people felt the final season was lacking, even when taking the cancellation into account. The joy and connection you felt in the early seasons still matter. They still helped you in a time when you needed it. Hold onto the happiness you felt and use that as a source of strength instead of blowing your disappointment out of proportion.

It also seems like you're connecting your experiences with Luz. Luz is fictional. She can't be affected by the real world. Within the context of the show, rebuilding the isles is necessary because the Boiling Isles is her home, too. It signifies a new age in which wild magic can flourish. She's choosing to be there as part of the community to rebuild a place that was nearly destroyed. Luz achieved her dream of becoming a witch. She can study and live in the Boiling Isles and visit her mom whenever she wants in the human realm. There is still fun. There is still fantasy.

Going back to the idea of reframing your thoughts: if something has upset you in a story, take a step back and look at it from the author's perspective. What were they trying to achieve? Does this fit in with the established world building and characterization? Did it upset you for narrative reasons or personal ones? So much discourse in fandom can be traced to the fact that fans have their own ideas of how characters should act instead of what is established in the story and what makes sense for that world. You need to look at a story from a narrative point of view instead of a personal one, that way any potential disappointment is not so emotionally-loaded.

Finally, to answer your question, no I do not believe that TOH was made to disappoint fans. Quite the opposite, actually. In the Post-Hoots and on social media, the crew talk about how much the show means to them and how touched they are about all the fan support they have received. Toh is a show made with love and a desire to please its audience--much to its detriment.

I really think the crux of your issue is that the show deeply disappointed you while everyone else loved it. That can feel incredibly isolating and as a Belos fan, I can relate. My advice is to find like-minded individuals so you all can healthily vent together while coming up with goofy head canons of your favorite characters. That's what I do (and endlessly complain about the lost potential. There is catharsis in it). Finally, move onto other shows and other communities, you will find better stories that will enrich you.

Stories can have a profound effect on people but not to the point that they make you feel "broken." My old mentor once said to "take the meat and throw out the bone." Basically, take whatever is useful for you and ignore the rest. You can do this with TOH, take whatever "meat" you found valuable and don't let the "bones" get you down.

I hope you take whatever meat you can from my advice. Please take care of yourself and surround yourself with people and things you love. Explore new stories, meet new people, and continue to grow.

The fantasy is not dead.

[critter-genfic-events]

Character Studies

This week, we have ten character studies recs - deep dives into main characters and side characters alike. Check them out beneath the cut, and let the authors know if you like them!

the beauty and the mess by batyatoon (2887,Not Rated) Warnings: None Pairings:

A long day at Whitestone Castle, waiting for Scanlan to wake up or for his friends to come back.

Reccer says: A great look at Kaylie in episodes 84 and 85, brutal and truthful and excellent in all the ways that hurt. (one of the tags is "everything's funny until it isn't" and it and this story live in my head rent-free.)

let's pick the truth we believe in by burningdarkfire (28108,Teen) Warnings: Implied/Referenced Abuse Pairings: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast, Astrid Beck & Eadwulf Grieve & Caleb Widogast

Astrid kills Trent while the Nein are in Aeor. Caleb returns to Rexxentrum to make some peace with his past and make some sense of his future.

Reccer says: Very emotionally complex and beautiful writing

that i live (and you are gone) by DesertLily (2183,Teen) Warnings: None Pairings: Keyleth/Vax’ildan, Keyleth & Vox Machina, Keyleth & Essek Thelyss

Keyleth’s perspective on the deaths of each member of Vox Machina as she outlives them all.

Reccer says: I liked it

afterimage by saturdaysky (2858,Teen) Warnings: Pairings: Deirta Thelyss & Essek Thelyss

The Umavi receives an unexpected petitioner seeking solace from grief. As ever, Deirta provides clarity. As ever, Essek chafes at the impossible.

Reccer says: It shows both Essek and his mother as extremely complicated characters, and is a fun dive into what living several lifetimes might do to a person

A single lonesome toll by dadrielle (snappilier) (3715,Teen) Warnings: very vague reference to suicidal ideation (in line with imogen's reference to it in canon) Pairings:

Character study of Bells Hells centered around their relationships with loneliness and how coming together changes that

Reccer says: I liked it

Eadwulf Grieve Is Dead! by tangereen (1112,Teen) Warnings: None Pairings: listed gen first, but also Eadwulf Grieve/Essek Thelyss, Clarabelle Clay & Eadwulf Grieve, Astrid Beck & Eadwulf Grieve

Eadwulf Grieve is legally declared dead and struggles to figure out what that means for his future and life.

Reccer says: Wulf gets to stick it to Ickythong.

The Cut of His Jib by Nenia458 (6544,Teen) Warnings: Choose not to Warn, PTSD Pairings: Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia, Keyleth/Vax'ildan (Critical Role), Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III & Vax'ildan, Vax'ildan & Vex'ahlia (Critical Role)

Along the treacherous route to a job, Vax (1) does not stab Percy for flirting with his sister (2) successfully stabs a pirate (3) learns something about their gunslinger that fundamentally changes his opinion of the man.

Reccer says: This is the perfect Percy, to me

With no Lapidary by Operafloozy (960,Teen) Warnings: None Pairings:

Ashton's hair requires a little extra work to take care of - much like the genasi himself

Reccer says: It takes a simple fact about Ashton - that their hair is a rock, and then thinks through what that might mean for them throughout their life.

Tenderness to You is Only Talk About a Bruise by thetickingclock (1439,Teen) Warnings: body dysphoria Pairings: Kingsley Tealeaf & The Mighty Nein

Mollymauk had woken up empty, but Kingsley is full to the bursting. It is so easy to be alive. It is hard, sometimes, to understand how much they love him. It is harder still, to let them.

Reccer says: The language is amazing, and the view of an Kingsley's extremely early days - learning who he might be among the nein is extremely evocative

Caesura by kinosternon (1486,Mature) Warnings: anxiety, alcohol/drug mention, canon-typical violence Pairings:

Scanlan dreams that one of Vox Machina has died.

Reccer says: The fic was written around episode 73 of the Vox Machina campaign and perfectly encapsulates Scanlan's state of mind in those late Chroma Conclave episodes. You can feel the break coming. Insightful and heartbreaking.

This is one of our weekly communally-generated gen rec lists. Every week we announce a new theme and allow anyone to submit a fic recommendation. Please note that the summary and content notes are provided by the reccer, and may be different than what the author has provided. Please assume good intentions all around. <3

And hey, anyone includes you!

We'll be starting off the next year with Vax! Maybe something celebrating his de-orbing?

Then, it'll be Reunions, Nott/Veth and Sendings!

Any fics coming to mind? Well, then use this form to submit!

If you're looking for some more, check out some fics written in the critter genfic bingo tag, or the older rec lists! Or you can request your own card and join in on the fun!

[tourneys-by-me]

Round 4 - Pyromancy (fire) 1/2

Propaganda under the cut (beware of potential spoilers!!)

Caleb:

*slaps roof of Bren "Caleb Widowgast" Aldric Ermendrud* this bad boy can fit so much trauma inside. He became a child soldier, was forced to burn his parents alive, and then got stranded in a mental institution for a decade or so. He still has PTSD when killing people with fire. Does that keep Caleb from ever using fire magic again? By the Traveller, I wish it would. He's... very good with it.

Roy:

He is also called the Flame Alchemist and fire is his big thing. While he can do other alchemy as well I only remember him doing that once and it pales in comparison to his fire. He technically doesn’t manipulate fire directly, but rather the air, however, he seems to exclusively use this to turn the air flammable and set things (and people) on fire. It is the only way we ever see him use that power. Frankly, I think that makes him much more of a pyromancer than an aeromancer. After all, he is called the Flame Alchemist, not the Air Alchemist and reliant on fire to the point where he is callled useless on rainy days. Now onto the fire itself (Warning, some spoilers for Fullmetal Alchemist, particularly Brotherhood and the manga) Mustang has a ludicrous amount of power and a terrifying level of control. He is capable of setting a regenerating monster on fire until it is unable to regenerate anymore and actually dies. And he doesn’t do this just once, but twice. Additionally, he has incredible tight control over his fire, to the point where he can literally burn someones tongue out or make their eyeballs boil. Mustangs fire is terrifying and as long as he has a circle to manipulate the air and something to create a spark with he is perhaps THE most dangerous alchemist, only rivaled by those using philosophers stones to enhance their alchemy. Even flooding a room with water won’t stop him, as he simply turns the water into hydrogen gas and then throws a spark in to turn everything in that room into a charred smear on the ground. This doesn’t work with rain, but regular water? Doom. Fire is Mustangs signature move and he is, fortunately, the only one who knows how to do it. So, vote for the Guy who incinerates immortal monsters with a snap of his fingers.

[aldryrththerainbowheart]

My thoughts regarding MC in LADS game

Note: Like I said in the title, these are purely my opinions and interpretations. Also, a warning for spoilers below the cut.

So I've just started playing Love and Deepspace for two months, I think, and I overall like the story. There's just one thing that doesn't sit well with me regarding the MC/the player/us, if you will, and that's her personality.

I know LADS is mainly a dating sim, so it's more cutesy and romantic, even if it's action sci-fi with more focus on combat (which I love). But the MC has a pretty traumatic past, and even throughout the main story, she has it quite rough.

During her childhood, MC went through a world-changing apocalyptic event. She was one of the few who survived, and through the flashbacks, we can see it was incredibly harrowing. On top of that, she was basically an unwilling lab rat in illegal and dangerous experiments and had some out-of-space substance jammed into her chest Tony Stark style. These events impact her so powerfully that later she joins an elite military organization for hunting monsters from out of space. (I haven't been in the military but I can imagine it's not a walk in the park.) Because she's the main character, her Evol is super rare of course, but it works only in combination with other people's Evols, rendering her Evol useless on itself. Does she ever feel insecure about her Evol? Does she have an inferiority complex because she can only feel useful with a partner and never by herself? As if that wouldn't be enough, throughout the story she watched the last members of her family being blown to pieces. And that's only how far I've gotten in the story.

Since it's a first-person immersive game, I obviously pondered how I would handle all the situations I've encountered. I would definitely suffer a severe PTSD and perhaps even depression. Even though we are told the Aether core is mostly stable, we still visit for regular checkups at the doctor. The Aether core probably causes chronic pain to us, and Protocore-enhanced heart arrhythmia. So mentally and physically straining job like Deepspace Hunter is probably the best choice, right? And yet we as MCs throw ourselves into every dangerous situation, perhaps because we're protagonists and the Lads need to save and have all these cutesy moments with us, but maybe also because our trauma gave us self-destructive tendencies, MC pulls all these dangerous stunts because, deep down, she wants to die. Let's not forget that she has one of the most dangerous and life-threatening professions in that universe. (I wish we could give our character scars and muscle in the Avatar designing part) If it were me, I'd probably be a substance abuser too. To numb me from the things I've experienced plus all the things I see on the job daily. (The game leaves this out, but think civilians getting killed daily, your colleagues dying, or being horrifically maimed by the Wanderers. Another reason not to get attached to anyone.)

And all that escalates when MC loses her only remaining family and her childhood best friend. This brings me to another point: MC and her relationships, and how this affects her stance on intimacy. The trauma could make her bad at bonding socially with others. It seems to me her only friends are Caleb and Yvonne if we leave out the Lads. After the incident with Caleb and her Grandma, I would push people away purposefully because I would assume that being associated with me would ultimately cause you to die a horrible death. Perhaps it's projection but all of these things would make MC deathly afraid of intimacy and letting someone close, even acting like a jerk on purpose to scare people off and generally keeping to herself.

(but Aldryyyyyyrth, that would make the romance hardeeeer! Yes, yes it would, but that's the fun of it no?)

[maircries]

In traditional mair fashion, I’m joining another podcast fandom 800 years late so who knows if anyone out in the ether will see this but. I’ve been listening to the bright sessions and Caleb has very much become my Favorite which translates to “I want to put him through the Horrors,” but I’m honestly so surprised no one has really beat me to it?

Like, listening to safe house part ii and:

I heard these and I was sooooo ready to find and read all the fics in which he tortured himself and self flagellates. So I was pretty shocked when there wasn’t much?? And like there’s bits and some fics with ptsd and panic attacks, but (maybe I’m just projecting) these little bits (ESPECIALLY the “like I want to be dead”) had me hoping some people had written about him and depression, especially as an empath. And I know Adam has depression and I definitely see that addressed in fics and how it affects Caleb receiving it, but I just think it’d be Neat to see him deal with it coming from himself

Anyways we’re having a great time

[justafriendlystranger]

New member~

:Introduction:

This is Caleb Otis! A teenager who's barely surviving in a destroyed city, in an apocalyptic timeline. There has been a virus that's rapidly been spreading around the world called the "Necroa Virex" It is a brutal, highly contagious disease that doesn't create zombies but instead destroys its victims from the inside out, leaving them conscious of their slow decline—a fate that terrifies both the infected and the healthy.

This virus spreads rapidly through airborne particles and direct contact, making it one of the most contagious viruses in history. As the infection rate skyrockets, cities become overwhelmed, and medical systems buckle under the sheer number of patients, unable to provide care for the masses. With no known cure, governments enforce extreme quarantine measures, which only heighten fear and isolation among the population. Civil unrest grows as people, desperate to avoid infection, turn against one another. Mistrust spreads just as quickly as the virus, fracturing communities and pushing society toward collapse.

Like Sylas, He fights and fends for himself but with him it's much more extreme. He kills every survivor he comes across with to take anything that can help him survive longer, his only main objective is to survive alone cause he's extremely distrustful of the very few people he sees, either from the virus or from the same mentality that he has.

:How he met Trickster/how he became a member:

He met Trickster when he was scavenging for food, he saw her without any protected gear which led him to believe that she is already infected. He sneaks out behind her and strikes her from behind with a sledgehammer and kills her, but seeing that she has nothing on her, he continued his journey like nothing happened,,, but what he didn't expect is to see her again.. It's been a few weeks since he saw her and he was sure he left her on the ground bloodied and broken, to the point she's unrecognizable,, but there she is, in the same spot wearing the same clothes.. It's probably the stress of the situation he is in right now,, maybe the first is just a hallucination. And maybe this time she has something on her that'll help him, so like before he kills her again... It's driving him insane cause he feels like he's stuck in a loop cause he saw her again in the same spot, wearing the same clothes and very much alive with no injuries. (ah yes, typical Trickster with her psychological torture ^///^) He can't do this anymore so he tried a different approach, he went in front of her, talking to her.. "who are you and how are you doing that?" he said. And that was the start of their 'freindship'! of course Caleb was very skeptical about her so it took Trickster over a year and a half to fish him out of his comfort zone and get him to convince that he has a place for him where he doesn't have to fight everyday for survival,, and she knows he wants that more than anything,,,

:Info:

General info! he's around 17-19, he's 5'8, his birthday is December 28. He suffers from severe PTSD and still thinks that there's a virus around, that's way he's very hostile to visitors and the family members. He kills visitor cause he believes that they might bring the virus inside the house and he thinks the family members are either also unclean or just a figment of his imagination cause no amount of people can survive at this point.. Well maybe except for trickster, but he thinks she's just playing along with his delusions (which he appreciates). He believes that the house is just some sort of bunker and that's why trickster isn't letting him outside. It's kinda hard to talk to him cause he thinks people there are just in his mind, he'll still answer but just vague ones.

:His relationship with the other milkshake mansion members:

Trickster: friend Casimir: infected member that needs to die Rosemary: a nice imaginary friend Chaoxiang: who? Willow: neutral Hayden: a quiet hallucination The twins: infected member that needs to die Penelope: an annoying hallucination Elijah: neutral ( @gachaclubideas) Talissa: neutral ( @gachaclubideas) Juliet: neutral ( @gachaclubideas) Tsutsuji: a quiet hallucination ( @n0vatsu) Yoake: neutral ( @n0vatsu) Star: a quiet hallucination ( @startheimpactfangirl ) Kema Umi: a quiet hallucination ( @alcohol1maid ) Trevore: an annoying hallucination ( @edgywithaheart )

Milkshake mansion belongs to @boiling-potato !!

he's already open for asks!! ^^

(his normal clothes when he's not in the milkshake mansion)

[lucianprompto]

I'm just thinking about how excited Fjord was in early campaign to go to the soltryce academy to learn how to control his magic but then when learning it was the place that caused Caleb his trauma and suffering he immediately flipped and did not want to go anywhere near there.

Like he was adamant about trying to learn magic and control but this weird dirt wizard he's known for a few weeks(?) months(?) at this point has lasting PTSD from that place

Nah

Fuck It we'll learn a different way.

Similarly when they all meet Trent for the first time some 50 episodes later, the entire mighty nein IMMEDIATELY starts planning this dude's murder. Like jester starts describing how she's gonna cut him into little pieces and throw him in some random river never to be seen again.

Caleb has them absolutely wrapped around his finger unintentionally and I live for it.

[chickwiththepurpleguitar]

I'm going to give you a prompt my brain gave me but that I haven't made any progress writing. My idea is that Adam from The Bright Sessions is Atypical and his ability is fusing with other people like the gems in Steven Universe. Because this requires some degree of physical, emotional, and cognitive synchronicity, he probably wouldn't discover it until one of the many moments he and Caleb almost kissed before they started dating. Then Adam has to deal with becoming a new person sometimes when he's with Caleb, figuring out who that person is and their name, whether Adam wants to tell his parents about this, how Wadsworth would react, and a slew of other issues. I imagine that Adam's fusion with Caleb would get to experience the world on the stakeouts. The College Tapes would also definitely happen differently, since I'm not sure Caleb could hide his pokemon evolution from Adam if they fused and Adam being Atypical himself deals with many of the problems that caused them to break up in the first place

Me, who's seen zero (0) episodes of Steven Universe, looking at this prompt: hmm... I don't really know what to do with this... but I bet I could get 750 words out of this concept somehow.

Me, 2000 words later:

No but for real, this prompt ended up bringing me SO much joy to write. Once I figured out the general idea I was going for, I really hit the ground running, and wrote the whole thing in just a couple hours! I really hope you enjoy what I came up with!

(and as always with prompts, if I didn't end up writing your idea exactly how you envisioned it, you are of course so allowed to write your own fic with the same idea! Or a continuation of my version! Or you can always request that I write my own continuation! Two cakes, etc!)

This takes place vaguely post-season four. CW for references to Safe House, kidnapping, depression, PTSD, etc. Canon-compliant angst :)

Send me prompts to help me finish my 2024 writing goal!

By this point in his life, Adam Hayes feels like he’s pretty much got a handle on how all the atypical stuff works. There are specifics that keep crawling out of the woodwork to shock him– Damien, for example, as Adam’s recent brush with kidnapping proved, as well as his Aunt Annabelle’s evil villain arc, which Adam is admittedly still getting used to– but the general gist of it all, he’s got down.

The gist being: there are people with superpowers. And there are people like Adam. Normal. Boring. Safe, until they’re not anymore.

He’s not worried about it. Not consciously, anyway. He trusts, for reasons he can’t even explain, that Damien really is gone for good, and that even if he weren’t, Caleb’s beating has officially moved him from the “superpower” category to the “boring” one, leaving him no more threatening than any other asshole white guy.

(He does not let himself think about the fact that Damien was as good as powerless when he hit Chloe with a lamp, or how six months later she’s still dealing with the effects of the resulting concussion he gave her. Adam will simply keep a can of pepper spray in his backpack and continue to convince himself that he will never let his guard down around Damien like Chloe did, should their paths ever cross again).

He has enough other things, better things, to focus on– his Yale application, and then finals, and then preparing to live away from home for the first time ever, and on top of all that, his boyfriend– that for six months, he manages to think about the safehouse incident as little as humanly possible (nightmares notwithstanding). And not once does it occur to him to make the connection between almost being kidnapped by a whackjob mind manipulator and something his mom said to him almost a year ago when he first got her to sit down and talk about atypicals with him: Sometimes abilities start to manifest after instances of trauma.

After all, making said connection would require Adam to admit (even just to himself) that he experienced a trauma, which he has no intention of doing because that would mean he’s even more fucked up now that he already was.

Besides. There are two kinds of people in the world. People like Caleb. And people like Adam. An atypical ability “starting to manifest” is just something that was never going to happen to him.

Until today.

He’s at Caleb’s house, which is always a little bit complicated because Caleb’s parents (not to mention his nosy little sister) are way more likely to be home and “interested in what you boys are up to” than Adam’s. They try not to complain about it, because it’s sort of a miracle that the Michaelses’ only reaction to Caleb’s endangerment at the safehouse was “no more therapy” and not “no more boyfriend,” and the last thing Adam wants to do is give them any reason to change their minds on that, but it is annoying. They’ve learned to be quiet.

Caleb’s sitting up against the headboard of his bed, facing the “just ajar enough to be plausibly called open” door, while Adam straddles his lap, poised purposefully on his knees to be able to roll off and into the desk chair placed strategically next to the bed at the slightest sign of someone approaching.

Like I said. They’ve got a system.

Adam usually enjoys kissing Caleb more than he enjoys just about anything, but he’s not feeling it today. Not even in a “his depression is bad so every sensation is muted and foggy, much less his libido” kind of way, but just like… he’s preoccupied by something.

Caleb must notice, because he breaks the kiss and takes Adam’s face in both his hands so he can look him in the eye. “Hey. You all right?”

Adam opens his mouth to lie, but if he tells Caleb he’s fine then they’ll go back to making out, and he’s not sure he actually wants to do that. So instead, he says, “What am I feeling right now?”

Caleb gets the little crease between his eyebrows that Adam loves and hates in equal measure that means he’s really focusing in on his empath ability. Adam knows him well enough by now to be able to track the turning gears behind his eyes– he can see the moment when Caleb separates his own feelings in his chest from Adam’s and starts to analyze them.

But then his frown deepens, and he says, “I… don’t… know.” His eyes meet Adam’s. “Purple. And like… stretchy. It’s not an Adam feeling I’ve ever felt before.”

Adam sits back in surprise, hands falling away from where they’d been looped around Caleb’s neck. “Wha– seriously? We’ve known each other over a year. I thought you’d have felt all the Adam feelings by now.”

“So did I,” Caleb says, frowning into the distance again. “It’s weird.” Adam’s stomach flips, just as Caleb adds, “Oh, shit, now you’re– sorry, I didn’t mean to make you, like. Feel bad. New feelings are probably super normal.”

Adam rolls his eyes, trying to brush away the guilt eating at him, and whatever he’d been feeling before– the purple, stretchy distraction– intensifies.

“So, uh… what is that feeling?” Caleb asks, rubbing absently at his chest, like Adam’s emotion is causing him some kind of physical discomfort, which does not help much on the “Adam not feeling like a burden” front.

“I don’t know,” he admits, climbing all the way off Caleb’s lap to sit cross-legged in front of him instead. His feet were starting to fall asleep, and his hands feel a little numb– he wrings them, trying to rub feeling back into his fingers.

“Is something on your mind?” Caleb asks, laying a comforting hand on Adam’s knee.

“No,” he starts to say, because there isn’t really except for the fact that he feels a little weird all of a sudden, cold like there’s a draft and a little unsteady, but somehow what comes out of his mouth is, “Damien.”

“What?” Caleb says, voice sharp and close in Adam’s ear in a way it wasn’t before, even though neither of them has moved. “You were thinking about Damien?”

“No!” Adam says, for real this time, and then winces, knowing Caleb can feel the untruth, and amends, “I mean, not– I guess, not consciously, just… I guess maybe I’m always thinking about him? In the back of my mind?”

The purple, stretchy feeling inside him– and damn Caleb’s stupid emotion color metaphors, but that is a good way to describe it– expands even further, pressing tight against his ribs like it’s trying to break out of him, and maybe Caleb can feel that too, because he takes Adam’s hands in both of his.

“I think, sometimes,” Adam continues, words flowing out of his mouth almost without his permission, “I just hate that he got away with it. Like, okay, he spent, what, four months? In a basement cell that Mark was trapped in for the better part of five years? Oh, so his only consequence was having to leave town and be normal like the rest of us? Like that’s so fucking bad? Chloe still gets headaches and you’ve got all this guilt to deal with and Damien just has to be normal?”

The more he talks, the more the purple feeling fills him up, and red hot anger right alongside it, and a distant tiny part of himself knows that he should calm down before he says or does something he’ll regret, and that he’s probably freaking Caleb the fuck out right now, but his vision is starting to white out around the edges, and the purple and red warring for dominance in his stomach are making him feel sick, and for a moment or two, the only thing Adam can focus on is the warm, rough sensation of Caleb’s hands in his his.

Adam blinks, and the world turns upside down.

Or, no, wait– not upside down. Backwards. He’s facing the door now– sitting where Caleb was just a second ago. His anger has dissipated, but the purple stretchy feeling is still there, if settled, somehow, like it’s filled him up enough that he can mostly ignore it.

But something’s still wrong.

Maybe it’s that he feels bigger now. Taller. He brings his hands in front of his face and they’re hands he’s never seen before– big, with thick fingers and skin a lighter shade of brown.

Maybe it’s that Caleb’s gone– nowhere to be seen, the room totally empty, the spot on the bed in front of him already growing cold– or that Adam is too.

Because he’s not… quite… Adam anymore. He’s not Caleb, either.

The thing that’s wrong is that he’s someone new.

He scrambles off the bed, stumbling a little on new big feet, and rushes over to the full-length mirror hanging on the back of Caleb’s bedroom door. He touches his face, and those big hands cup Caleb’s stubbled cheeks. He touches his head, and thick fingers tangle in Adam’s messy curls. He’s wearing Caleb’s jeans, tight around the waist, and Adam’s Black Keys t-shirt, hanging just above his belly button like it’s been cropped. He’s gotta be at least six and a half feet tall.

“Holy shit,” he breathes in two voices, and the purple thing inside him snaps.

Adam hits the floor with a shout, curling protectively around himself out of instinct. Next to him, there’s a twin cry and thud as Caleb is thrown to the ground with equal force. Adma pats himself down, feeling his skinny arms and pianist fingers, the shirt that fits and his hair on his own head.

“Holy shit,” he says again, voice high with panic but purely his.

“What the hell!” Caleb agrees, scrambling back away from him. Adam backs up against the opposite wall, giving Caleb as much space as he can without leaving the room– Caleb doesn’t need Adam’s alarm in his chest on top of his own.

Plus maybe Adam feels like something you shouldn’t get too close to at the moment.

“What was that?” Caleb gasps, staring at him with big, wide eyes.

Adam shakes his head. “I don’t know?”

“But that was– that was you, wasn’t it?” Caleb pats his chest, like he’s still trying to convince himself he’s real and solid– Adam knows the feeling. “How did you do that?”

“I don’t know!”

Footsteps pound up the stairs, and Mrs. Michaels calls, “Caleb? Adam?” She raps perfunctorily twice on the half-open door before sticking her head in and sizing them up: Adam cowered against one wall, Caleb still on the floor and huddled up against the other, both of them looking disheveled and wild, like they’ve been up to who knows what. “I heard a thud, are you boys all right?”

Caleb looks from Adam to his mom, and hurriedly gets to his feet. “Yeah! Yeah, Mom, sorry, we’re– we’re fine.” He takes a calming breath, like he’s gotta prove it, and gives Adam a charged look. “Right, Adam? We’re okay?”

But Adma can’t imagine lying right now, not even just to get the adult out of the room so that he and Caleb can debrief in private. He feels wrong still, and monstrous, and so far from normal it hurts.

“I don’t know,” he whispers, and can’t help the first dark thought that springs to his mind:

Is this how Damien felt?

--

TBS tag list (lmk if you want to be added!)

@pandoradeloeste

@genericgirl420

@sizzlingjudgebanditpaper

@ziggy-st4dust

@flibbertigibbety-jibber-jabber

@friendlyfishboy

@bakugouuuwu

@alexacat57

@jaytheunique

@mercale

[shadowgast-recs-weekly]

Hidden Gems 6: A Shadowgast Rec List

This week, we have the 6th hidden gems grab bag! Check out under the cut for 9 fics that have less than 150 kudos and cover a wide range of genres, and don't forget to kudos and comment if you like them!

Perfection by Defira (330, Teen) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

Through the luxon, drow spend lifetimes reaching for perfection. Essek has already found it.

Reccer says: I liked it!

Burn to Gold and Crumble Away by The_Hybrid (1526, General) Reccer's Content Notes: Major Character Death

It's a funeral fic for the m9 set in the future.

Reccer says: It's sweet.

How to Rest by eeveev (14420, Teen) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

After Aeor, after making their feelings clear, Caleb is in Rexxentrum and Essek is on the run. Still, they find ways to be together. or Six months in the lives of wizards falling in love.

Reccer says: Cute!

Dawn by Allinna (2950, General) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

a really short and sweet dive into essek's canon story arc, themed around the sun

Reccer says: the sun is caleb!!! the darkness and light imagery!!

Love in Creation by LuckyOwlsFoot (1662, General) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

Essek works on a project for Jester's wedding

Reccer says: A sweet and tender moment, some fun worldbuilding, and that feeling that if you start something even before there's any hint of a need of it, you might finish in time felt so real.

we'll be gone just like the gentle breeze of yesterday by quinn_of_aebradore (3351, Teen) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

Essek Thelyss is many things: a master of dunamancy, a scholar of the arcane renowned across Exandria, and rather skilled when it comes to the theft of magical artifacts. The third, unfortunately, puts him in the path of Caleb Widogast, another talented thief. When social circumstance pushes them to complete their latest heist together, Essek finds his carefully maintained house of cards beginning to crumple and his orbit drawn ever closer to Caleb's.

Reccer says: It's a delicious crime/thief AU that hits all of the right notes - rivals, having to pretend closeness, secrets and mystery

Cascade Effect by firefright (6867, Teen) Reccer's Content Notes: Omegaverse

Essek follows the Nein into Aeor, where the already daunting task of saving the world is further complicated by yet another twist in his and Caleb's fractured relationship.

Reccer says: A wip continuation of an already wonderful a/b/o series

come back to me (i've been waiting patiently) by glossolali (1286, Mature) Reccer's Content Notes: disassociation, ptsd

Memory overtakes Caleb, but Essek is at his side.

Reccer says: Soft and cozy and tender

Whiskey Waltz by echoplexx (1742, Teen) Reccer's Content Notes: No Content Notes

During an evening of merriment with the Mighty Nein, Caleb convinces Essek to dance. Post-main campaign, pre M9 reunited.

Reccer says: A sweet and lovely moment between the two of them

Aeor is for Lovers is an 18+ Shadowgast Discord server. The above fanfic recommendations were pulled from our community for this weekly event. All fics, unless otherwise specified, will primarily feature Shadowgast. Have any questions about what this is? Check out the FAQ! Next week, we’ll be back with fake relationships!

[maleyanderecafe]

Idyllic Island (Webcomic)

Created by: maryonnaise

Genre: Drama/Horror

To be fair, I did actually see this webcomic floating around when I was checking the yandere tag, but it kept going in and out of my attention for a bit. Now that it's finished though, man reading the entire thing at once is quite a trip. This comic is r18 though as it breaches topics of things like rape, self harm, suicide, PTSD and a lot of other things. If you are interested in this webcomic or others that are similar, check out @maryonnaise for more things.

The story starts out with Caleb reliving the trauma of being robbed at gunpoint at his job as a cashier. Due to this, he often will smoke weed and play a game called Idyllic Island to calm himself down (basically Animal Crossing). He seems to have suicidal tendencies and gains a crush on a pink haired customer who comes to the store. After suffering another panic attack due to a TV report on his robbery (as it turns out he was robbed by a fake gun), he ends up being taken advantage of by a coworker. Soon after it gets worse as he's fired from his job. He ends up hanging out with the pink haired girl he has a crush on in the alleyway back of the store and plays never have I ever with him, but with stripping rules. Eventually after a heated deep discussion, Caleb asks Bunny to slice his chest so that he can feel something, and Bunny, entertained by his company gives him her apartment number so they can hang out again.

A month later and Caleb comes to Bunny’s apartment to hang out where the two play blackjack. Winner makes the loser do what they want. Caleb talks about his trauma with Bunny and Bunny offers to help him with exposure therapy, showing him a realistic gun (that’s really a water gun). Caleb is able to win, leading to Bunny reenacting the robbery with him, but Caleb ultimately passes out. Afterwards the two of them have sex and Caleb admits that he’ll do anything for Bunny. Caleb then steal birth control pills for Bunny with the gun in his pocket as a way to do the exposure therapy before they drive over to the rich district. Bunny reveals that his dad is a rich lawyer and ends up parking in front of a house. Bunny tells Caleb that the man who robbed him was declared innocent thanks to her dad and that they are in front of the robbers home right now. Bunny re-enacts a scene of Caleb storming up and threatening the guy which Caleb is successfully about to do. However, when he does try to storm in, he falters and ends up vomiting before the two are chased by the cops. Bunny reveals that it wasn’t actually his house and the two end up bonding, becoming exclusive with each other.

While at Bunny’s apartment, Bunny cuts his hair before hiding Caleb when her dad comes. Her dad scolds her for getting bad grades and threatening to no longer pay the apartment if she doesn’t do better before leaving. In a rage, Bunny attempts to kill Caleb, but backs down when Caleb accepts his fate. She reveals that she was sexually assaulted when she was in school, leading her to try to kill herself and getting hospitalized. Caleb confesses that the two should run away together upon hearing this.

The two of them end up going to a romantic place near a cliff side before Bunny reveals that she’s invited someone to meet him. She gives him the gun and tells him to use it to threaten him if things get bad. Initially Caleb is very against this idea before finally accepting it as he believes he will do anything for Bunny. A man named Ethan comes and seems pretty angry that Bunny isn’t there. While talking, Ethan essentially admits to raping Bunny, causing Caleb to whip out the gun in anger. Ethan doesn’t seem phased by this at all, attempting to guilt trip Caleb into saying that he was there on the night this happened and that he was too high to do anything. Ethan also calls his bluff on the gun, causing Caleb to snap when he points out that he was tricked by a similar gun when he was robbed. Caleb ends up shooting Ethan in the back (it’s a real gun, surprise) and Ethan beats him up, only for Caleb to stab him in the eye in self defense. Bunny comes to stab him in the chest, killing him for good, praising Caleb on how proud she is of him.

Caleb freaks out after seeing Bunny kill Ethan, and is afraid that she will kill him next. Bunny ends up deposing the body by throwing Ethan off the cliff and faking a suicide note. She’s able to convince Caleb this was a good thing since he had raped other women as well. The two of them kiss afterwards believing that they can help others if they get rid of the terrible people in this world.

In the epilogue, Caleb and Bunny are in a party dressed up. The two are able to get two others to sleep with them before Bunny kills one of them outright. As Bunny goes to kill the other, Caleb plays Idyllic island, completely deafened to the screams.

First of all, I gotta say that this webcomic is very raw with it's colors and I like it. That being said, I'm sure the more neon greens and pinks are probably not something that everyone will like, but I honestly think it adds to the heighten emotions that the two of them have. The comic is really good at showing what it feels like to have trauma via PTSD symptoms, with Caleb for instance gaining more masochistic tendencies (well, MORE, I assume) because of his lack of control and his reliance on Idyllic Island and weed to calm himself down. Meanwhile Bunny is opposite, as her trauma makes her a lot more cold and she instead develops more sadistic tendencies to gain control, which eventually leads to more killing. I also like how casual the two of them are for the story, and nothing feels too dramatic or out of place (in my opinion). For both of them (but especially Caleb) it becomes a downward spiral that they can't get out of, and probably will lead to their downfall at the very end.

Caleb is a kind of strange case of a more submissive yandere because he's so desperate to relinquish control that it ends up getting him used and broken. He seems completely devoted to Bunny despite the two not knowing her for very long, and following along with everything that she does, whether it be something that he's afraid of or something that he feels is wrong. He's very easily manipulated by Bunny even afterwards, just being dragged along with a leash so that Bunny can go around killing people. He's willing to get killed by Bunny when she tries to attack him and seems to try his best to get anything that Bunny wants. The real question is if the two end up breaking up, would Caleb still be desperately attaching onto Bunny, begging her to take him back or if he would be so broken that he would just accept it. In that case, Caleb would more likely to be a yandere in the former and not one in the latter. You feel bad for Caleb since if the robbery didn't happen, I would like to think that he would probably not be in such a bad situation. I will say that I do like it when when the yandere guy is actually in a lower situation than their lover and that their lover is the more dangerous one.

I both really like Bunny and find her kind of frightening. She is the opposite of Caleb-rich, sadistic and always wanting to be in control. The two share their experience of PTSD which connects them and while their reactions are different, it's enough to keep them together. Still despite the fact that Bunny does have a lot of traits of a yandere (namely, being cutesy, killing and manipulating people) I'm not entirely sure if she is a yandere because I don't know how attached she is to Caleb. Most of her killings come from a place of revenge, rather than a place of love (like protecting Caleb or trying to isolate him), which doesn't disqualify her as a yandere really, just usually are more traits of a yangire. I guess it all really depends on how much she actually cares for him, and if she's willing to throw him away or not. That's not to say that yangires can't love, but usually their main focus in life isn't love, and that's what I get from Bunny. Still, I do like (and relate) to Bunny on the aspect of sadism, since the way she describes it is generally how I feel towards it (though afaik I don't have any PTSD thankfully) so it is nice to see someone describe it in a way that feels relatable. I also absolutely love couples where the male yandere is actually the less scary of the two, since that means you really screwed up there buddy.

Overall though, I think it was a very unique and interesting concepts that are shown in the story, yandere or otherwise. I was reading their other comic recently and it's pretty funny. Being able to write a drama and a comedy is no easy feat. If you are interested, please check it out! It's not too long and it's on Tapas.

[falcqns]

give me back my girlhood (it was mine first)

✰ 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: Tim Bradford x Lucy Chen

✰ 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: Tim thinks Lucy has fully healed from Caleb. He is quickly proven wrong when they start dating.

✰ 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: Tim Bradford would burn the entire world just to see Lucy Chen smile, trauma, ptsd, takes place around season 5, canon divergence, hints to autistic!Lucy (meltdowns, going nonverbal, stimming, etc), Lucy had seizures after Caleb, Tamara is Chenfords kid, can you tell I have a soft spot for Tamara, Title is from Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve by Taylor Swift, tagging @natashasera

don’t forget to read and reblog, and i do not give permission for my works to be posted anywhere other than tumblr. thank you.

Tim thought that the transition from just friends to in a relationship would be easy for him and Lucy, but he was quickly proven wrong. He also thought that Lucy had healed from what Caleb and Rosalind had done to her, but once again, he was proven wrong. She may have healed enough to continue day to day life in her normal manner, but when it came to their relationship, almost everything triggered her, and it broke Tim’s heart. 

The first time Tim had noticed that Lucy was being triggered was when they went on their first date. Lucy had ordered a drink, an old fashioned to be exact. She had taken a sip of it when it arrived at their table, and Tim saw how a line appeared between her two eyebrows. 

“Everything okay, Luce?” He asked quietly, prepared to flag down the waitress and have her remake the drink if it wasn’t up to Lucy’s standards. Lucy nodded slightly, but pushed the cup away. As she did so, Tim saw her hand shaking. 

“I-It tastes funny.” She whispered so quietly that Tim barely heard her. Tim moved closer to her in the booth. 

“It tastes funny?” He asked, and she nodded, tears beginning to form. 

“It doesn’t taste normal.” She said, her breathing picking up speed. Tim grasped her chin, guiding her eyes to his, and his stomach dropped when he saw the fear in them, realizing what was going on. Her drink tasted different to her, and it brought back memories to when she was drugged. Tim’s heart broke as she whimpered, tears beginning to spill over and roll down her cheeks, her breath speeding up.

“Luce, baby,” He whispered. “You’re safe. I know that what you’re feeling feels really real right now, but it’s not. You’re here with me, Tim, and you’re safe.” He said, still holding her face. “Can you nod if you can hear my voice, Goosey?” He said, and Lucy immediately nodded. “Good girl,” he praised, and smiled slightly when he saw her breathing slow slightly. 

“Can you tell me something that you can see?” He asked, and her eyes darted around briefly, before settling on Tim. 

“Y-You,” She stuttered, and Tim smiled. 

“You can see me?” He inquired, and she nodded. “Good girl.” 

He continued to quiz her on her surroundings until she was back in the present, and had calmed down. She was still upset, but Tim knew it was more out of embarrassment than anything. She had wrapped both her arms around his left one, and was resting her head on his shoulder, looking down at her lap. 

“How are you feeling?” He asked, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Lucy didn’t respond with words, instead she grunted slightly, and snuggled into his shoulder even more. “Baby,” he whispered, and eased his arm out of her grip, and wrapped it around her shoulders. “How are you feeling?” 

Lucy, once again, didn’t respond, and buried her face in his chest. “Okay, okay,” He soothed, helping her get comfortable. “Do you want to eat, or do you want to go home?” He asked and Lucy shakily pointed to her plate, and Tim pulled it over, handing her her fork. Lucy then sat up, and slowly began eating her food. Tim went back to his own food once he was sure she was okay, but he kept his hand on her lower back. 

—

Tim had also noticed that Lucy seemed to fear arguments and disagreements with him. It was something he had taken note of when she first came back to work after Caleb. She was quiet, only talking when he spoke to her, and then if they got in as much as the slightest disagreement, she would shut it down and just agree with him, no matter how he knew she felt about the topic. He thought that she was just taking time to readjust to their relationship being strictly Rookie-TO at work, but he realized as soon as they started dating that she had developed a fear of men, and a fear of upsetting them. 

Tim had asked her what she wanted for dinner, and she had said she didn’t care, and that he could pick. Normally, Tim would be okay with that, but since asking her out, he had been making all the decisions in the relationship, in things that didn’t involve work. He had insisted that she choose, and she refused, and they went back and forth until Lucy completely shut down and stopped talking, which made Tim angry. 

And he knows it shouldn’t have made him angry, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted her to be able to eat what she wanted around him, and he didn’t want her to feel like he was controlling her or the relationship in anyway. He knew that she needed to feel in control, and he wanted her to be able to feel that. 

“Lucy, just tell me what you want to eat, and I will go and get it!” He said, exasperated, and Lucy shook her head aggressively, and turned away from him. “No,” he said, reaching out for her. “C’mon, talk to me, I just wanna help-“ he stopped talking when he saw her flinch away from him. He then watched through the reflection of the tv the fear that had appeared on her face. 

She then whimpered, and then shot up, running to her bedroom, sobs falling from her lips as she went. Tim immediately followed her, instantly feeling shitty about the way he had talked to her. He felt even shittier when he walked into her bedroom and saw her hiding behind the chair in the corner of her room by the window, the soft grey blanket that he bought her her first night in the hospital after Caleb giving away her position, the material peaking out from behind the legs. 

“Goosey,” Tim whispered, crouching down close to the chair, but also keeping his distance so that she didn’t feel trapped. “I’m sorry,” he started. “I shouldn’t have spoken like that. I didn’t mean to scare you. If you don’t feel like you can choose what to eat right now, that’s okay. I can choose for us.”

He paused, and waited to hear if Lucy would respond at all. After a moment, he heard her voice say something, but he couldn’t make out what she said. 

“Can you repeat that, Luce? I didn’t hear you.” He said, and Lucy’s voice could be heard again, this time louder. 

“Sorry,” she whispered. “Sorry I made you mad.” She continued, and Tim sighed, moving slightly closer. 

“Goosey, you didn’t make me mad at all. I just want you to be able to feel in control of your body and your choices, thats why I wanted to know what you wanted to eat. I shouldn’t have pressured you like I did, and I should have listened to your body language.”

“‘m sorry, please don’ hurt me,” she sobbed. “Didn’t mean it, I’ll be good,” 

Tim wiped away the tear that ran down his face after he realized that Lucy was having a flashback. 

“I want you to listen to me, Lucy.” He said calmly. “You’re here with me, in your bedroom, in your apartment in Los Angeles. Caleb is dead, and you’re safe. He can’t hurt you anymore, I promise.” He soothed, and after a few more moments of silence, he heard a sniffle, followed by a small “okay,” and then some shuffling. 

Lucy crawled out from behind the arm chair and looked up at Tim, slightly hiding her face behind her blanket. Tim gently held out his arms, letting her know she can come to him for comfort if thats what she needed. She slowly inched her way over to him, and fell into his arms. He wrapped his arms around her, and hugged her as tight to her body as he knew she liked, and stood up slowly, lifting her in the process. 

He let her cry out her emotions as he slowly rocked her back and forth, hoping the motion would help her to regulate her emotions. She eventually calmed down, and she snuggled into his shoulder, sniffling slightly. He rubbed her back as he walked out into the living room, whispering in her ear as he did. 

“Do you want me to choose what we eat? Would that make it easier on you?” He asked, and he nodded, taking a mental note of what to do next time she struggles like that. She needed to feel in control, but sometimes she needed him to make decisions for her, and he was okay with that. 

—

The thing that triggered Lucy that hurt him the most was the sound of a tattoo gun. Before Caleb, Lucy loved tattoos, and loved getting tattoos. She had often talked to not only him, but to their fellow officers, about tattoo’s that she wanted and was planning on getting. Tim had known that she had been tattoo’d by Caleb, he saw it when he was in the ambulance with her, and they had moved her shirt in order to do an ECG after she had her third consecutive seizure. His heart had clenched seeing the black ink on her rib cage, and in that moment he had hoped that she was asleep when the tattoo had been done. 

But of course, God must hate him, so she had been awake. Something he had no clue about until Tamara had asked them both to accompany her to her first ever tattoo appointment, where she was also getting a date, the date that the three of them had stood in front of the judge finalizing Lucy and Tim adopting Tamara. 

Lucy said yes immediately, without even thinking. Tim knew why, of course. Tamara had been let down by everyone in her life, and Lucy was determined to never let her down. Tim didn’t think anything of it, and was even thinking of getting his own tattoo, with both Lucy and Tamara’s birthdays. 

Everything was fine until Tamara was lying on the table, her arm out for the tattoo artist, prepped and ready for the ink. The tattoo gun began to buzz, and Lucy tensed up beside him. 

“Are you okay?” Tim said under his breath to Lucy, resting his hand on her knee, his other hand holding Tamara’s free one. 

“Mhm,” She said, eyes locked on the tattoo gun where it was permanently marking up her daughters skin. “Jus’ need to go to the bathroom,” She said, a little louder, and made brief eye contact with Tamara, clearly trying to tell the girl that everything was fine. Tamara nodded, her brows furrowing for a moment, but then relaxing after Lucy left the room. 

Tim waited a few minutes, before following her. “I’m just gonna go check on Mom, okay?” He said to Tamara. “I won’t be gone long.” She nodded, and Tim left the room. 

He looked towards the lobby, and could see Lucy outside, so he immediately joined her, where he found her near tears, looking up into the sky to preserve her makeup. 

“Luce-“ He started to say, but Lucy cut him off. 

“I’m fine.” She said, her voice short. 

Tim shook his head. “No, you’re not.” He said, and grabbed her hand. “You’re not, and that’s okay.” 

Lucy shook her head, and ripped her hand out of Tim’s grip. “No, its not, Tim!” She said, running her hands through her curls. “Because this is just another thing Caleb has taken from me.” She ranted. “I can’t even sit with my daughter while she gets her first tattoo, I-I can’t get any of the tattoo’s that I wanted to get, I can’t even listen to the buzzing noise of the gun because that’s what I woke up to after he took me-“ 

“Oh, Goosey,” Tim said sadly, immediately wrapping her up in his arms. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea you were awake when he did that to you. Had I known that, we could have explained to Tamara why you couldn’t go, or we could have brought your headphones-“ 

“I don’t need them!” Lucy yelled, pulling out of Tim’s arms, and crouching down, covering her ears wit her hands, her eyes squeezing shut. Tim sighed, and sat next to her, being mindful to not touch her until she asked or initiated contact. 

“Yes, you do, Goosey, and thats okay.” He said. “I’m not going to judge you for it, Tamara certainly isn’t going to judge you for it, and any person with more than half a braincell wouldn’t judge you for it. I suggested it because when you do wear them out of the house, you are able to cope better, and that’s all I wanted. And as for him taking the ability to get tattoo’s from you, he didn’t. If you really want to get another tattoo, I’m sure we can find a trauma informed tattoo artist that is willing to work with you on this.” He explained, as he wrapped an arm around her after she removed her hands from her ears, and rested her head on his shoulder. “But it’s entirely up to you, okay?” 

Lucy nodded, and sniffed. Tim kissed her on the head, and helped her stand up. She took a deep breath, and looked towards the tattoo shop door. “We should go back in,” she said, and Tim looked at her. 

“Are you sure you want to?” He asked. “You don’t have to, I can go back in and you can wait in the truck if it’s going to be too hard for you.” 

Lucy shook her head. “No, I-I think I was just a little unprepared, and that’s why it triggered me. I’m prepared to hear the noise, so I’ll be okay.” She said. “Tamara wanted both of us with her and I’m not going to let her down.” She finished, as she led him back inside, and into the room, where the artist was bandaging up Tamara’s tattoo. 

“Can I see it, bubba,” Lucy asked, walking up to Tamara’s side immediately. Tamara holds her arm out, while looking up worriedly at Lucy. 

“Are you okay, Mom?” She asked, and Lucy nodded, running a hand through Tamara’s hair. 

“Yeah, baby, I’m okay.” She said, assuring the teen. “I don’t want you to worry, okay?”

Tamara blinked, her lower lip wobbling slightly. “I’m always going to worry about you,” she whispered. “You’re my mom, and I know I don’t know everything that you went through but I know enough to know that you got triggered. I didn’t even think about that before asking, I’m sorry,” she said, a tear falling from her eye. 

“T,” Tim whispered, moving to her head and pressing a kiss to her head as he sat next to her on the table. “It’s okay. I don’t think any of us really thought about it.” He assured her, and Lucy nodded, sitting on the table as well. 

“Yeah. It did trigger me, but I removed myself from the situation, worked through what I was feeling, and then prepared myself to come back. It’s okay, I promise.” She said, cupping Tamara’s cheek, and rubbing her thumb back and forth. 

“Okay,” Tamara said, and as soon as Lucy seemed to be sure that Tamara was okay, she turned back and looked at the tattoo. “I love it, baby,” She said. 

“Me, too.” Tim said, smiling down at his daughter.

“Now,” Lucy said, smiling up at Tim. “Your dad just needs to get one, and we’ll be all inked up.” 

Tim shook his head but laughed along with his girls. 

—

Lucy wasn’t fully healed from Caleb, but Tim was going to do everything in his power to make sure that one day, she would be. Caleb had taken a lot from her, but Tim was going to make sure that she was able to reclaim what he had taken, no matter the cost.