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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 9 months ago

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Where Will All The Martyrs Go [Chapter 9: Some Days He Feels Like Dying]

A/N: Below are your guesses...let's see how you did!!! 🥰😘

Series summary: In the midst of the zombie apocalypse, both you and Aemond (and your respective travel companions) find yourselves headed for the West Coast. It’s the 2024 version of the Oregon Trail, but with less dysentery and more undead antagonists. Watch out for snakes! 😉🐍

Series warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, med school Aemond, character deaths, nature, drinking, smoking, drugs, Adventures With Aegon™️, pregnancy and childbirth, the U.S. Navy, road trip vibes.

Series title is a lyric from: “Letterbomb” by Green Day.

Chapter title is a lyric from: “Extraordinary Girl” by Green Day.

Word count: 8.3k

💜 All my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist 🥰

Let’s go back to the beginning of the end of the world.

On the big-screen tv in the Liberty Center at Saratoga Springs, Wolf Blitzer is saying: “We are receiving confirmation of additional outbreaks of the so-called Florida Fever, the first cases of which here in the U.S. were reported in Miami a little over one week ago. Concern is now growing nationally, especially as the modes of transmission, symptoms, and treatment options remain unclear. Let’s go across the country to Natasha Chen for the latest information. Natasha?”

“Hi, Wolf. I’m here outside the UC San Diego Medical Center where early this morning, two individuals suspected to be suffering from the illness were admitted. I’ve been informed by hospital staff that both patients are currently in stable condition, but there is still so much confusion and conflicting information regarding this ‘Florida Fever,’ and of course that uncertainty is leading to fear, rumors, and honestly a bit of hysteria. Even how to refer to the sickness is controversial, with no official name having been decided upon by scientists. Cases in Australia are known as Ragepox, the U.K. has dubbed it the 21st Century Sweat after a mysterious disease from the 1500s, and Russia is calling it the Ukrainian Flu while Ukraine has opted for the Russian Red Rot, inspired by the skin lesions that some patients experience.”

“Can you tell us what we do know, Natasha? Are doctors classifying this illness as a virus, or as a bacterial infection more akin to tuberculosis or meningitis?”

“At this time, what I’m hearing is that doctors are fairly certain it’s a virus, as patients do not seem to respond to antibiotics when they’ve been explored as a potential treatment. But there’s truly very little information at this early stage, and I think we’re all being reminded of those first days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when no one really knew how to best to avoid contracting the virus or what the long-term effects would be both nationally and globally.”

“There are absolutely some similarities, Natasha, which I’m sure is contributing to the unease surrounding the situation. What precautions are doctors currently recommending?”

“Wolf, doctors are urging the public not to panic, and to exercise common sense measures like avoiding crowded spaces, sanitizing surfaces, and staying home if they’re feeling unwell. Suspected cases of the illness should be reported to primary physicians or local hospitals. Typical symptoms appear to include headaches, fever, gastrointestinal upset, skin discoloration and blistering, and unusual bleeding, as well as behavioral changes, particularly disorientation, aggression, and even violence in some patients…”

“That ain’t what it is,” Rio says. He jabs his index finger at the tv from where he sits on the couch beside you. “Snowflake wasn’t sick, he was dead. He was motherfucking dead, flatline, code blue, crossed the rainbow bridge, he was gone. He was dead and then he woke back up, and he wasn’t a person anymore. He was…something else.”

“Dumbass, people don’t come back from the dead,” Mike says from the ping pong table. People are milling around pretending to play pool, darts, chess, poker, Monopoly, Uno, Parcheesi, but really you’re all here for the same reason. You want to know what’s happening.

Rio turns to you. “Wasn’t Snowflake dead?”

“He definitely seemed dead,” you reply, knees tucked to your chest and still watching the tv. Wolf Blitzer’s voice is calm, but his pale blue eyes have a manic sort of light to them, too large and too rattled.

“Man, fuck Florida,” says Desmond, a utilitiesman born and raised Trenton, New Jersey. “Nothing but psychos and alligators. Saw them off of Georgia and just let them float away.”

“What was that?” Tyler replies combatively. He’s from a trailer park in Tallahassee.

“Ty, why do you care? You’d be fine. You’re already up here. You can stay.”

“They’re lying,” Rio mutters, meaning Wolf and Natasha on CNN. “When the corpsmen called the hospital, they said to be prepared to restrain Snowflake and that he might try to bite us. Why aren’t they warning people about that?!”

Kayleigh, a steelworker from Oklahoma City, looses a frenetic sort of laugh. “Because there’s no non-panic-inducing way to say: Hey, go buy some duct tape and bungee cords to tie up your loved ones, because they might try to fucking eat you.”

Rio doesn’t frown often, but he is now; he slips his phone out of the pocket of his camo pants and types out a WhatsApp message to Sophie. You only know her from photos and quick hellos via video chat, a sweet diminutive woman with white-blonde hair and blue eyes that seem to fill up half her face, as fragile as Rio is overwhelming. She likes baking and romance novels and elephants; whenever Rio finds elephant-themed souveners, he ships them home to Oregon for her, refrigerator magnets and wallets and scarves and snow globes. Sophie wears a lot of long flowing skirts and hand-knit sweaters, and offers strange suggestions when she and Rio discuss baby names: Sage, Fox, Laurel, Coral, Juniper, Karma, Rune, Otter. Otter?! Rio had exclaimed. Babe, if you name our kid Otter, even I’M gonna have to bully them.

“I’m telling Sophie to stay with my parents,” Rio says to you. “They’ve gotten super weird with all the off-the-grid stuff, but they have years’ worth of supplies and grow most of their own food now, and they’re thirty miles from the nearest town. And no one knows how to defend themselves like doomsday preppers.”

“Good idea,” you reply, watching the tv. Now Wolf Blitzer is talking about tornadoes in the Midwest, and you could almost believe the world is normal again.

A few days later all major social media platforms begin censoring content related to the so-called Florida Fever, and then the internet goes down completely, and then the power turns off and on and off again, and finally quits like a car driven to its last mile. The combat units are moved out of Saratoga Springs—never to be heard from again—and the construction projects paused indefinitely, and one of the master-at-arms that Rio is friends with (Rio has a lot of friends, surely you aren’t so remarkable) relays information that he shouldn’t: tales of planned missions, impossible plagues, overrun cities, innumerable deserters in every branch of the U.S. military.

“Hey,” Rio whispers, shaking you awake one night, moonlight streaming through the windows and the pops of distant gunfire you aren’t supposed to ask about. “If I leave, will you come with me?”

It’s a big commitment; it could be a lifetime. You fear he might just be trying not to hurt your feelings. “I don’t want to slow you down.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Rio says. “I’m not leaving without you. Are you going to Oregon by choice, or should I tie you up and throw you in the back of the Humvee?”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s a young one, maybe a teenager, little buds for horns and only weighing a few hundred pounds. This is good; if it was any heavier, Cregan and Rio wouldn’t be able to drag it back to the ranch. You’re still in Red Desert, Wyoming, and the bison are grazing just off I-80, an asphalt artery that cuts through an endless steppe of sand-colored rocks and tall grass. They gaze lazily in your direction with bulbous dark eyes, perpetually chewing, not terribly intelligent. The Colt pistols of the men who found you at the RV had been loaded with 9mm bullets, the same caliber your Berettas take; there weren’t many, but enough to fill both of your clips, something that feels like winning the lottery. You are lying on the rocky, dusty soil and lining up the shot. If you miss, the herd will scatter, and you’ll watch dinner vanish beneath a blue sky—pale like Aemond’s eye, a weak shallow blue—and rough white scars of cirrostratus clouds.

“Feels kind of wrong to kill a baby,” you murmur. Daeron, Luke, Baela, Helaena, and Ice are back at the house. Aemond, Rio, Cregan, Rhaena, and Aegon are here on the ground with you; Aegon insisted upon being brought along, and Rio agreed to carry him. Aegon had never seen American bison outside of the Oregon Trail computer game, those pixelated brown blobs migrating across the screen no more material than unicorns or faeries or basilisks.

“If the baby didn’t want to get killed, it shouldn’t be made of steak,” Aegon points out. He’s on a lot of Vicodin, the only narcotic Aemond could find back in Ogallala, Nebraska.

“No pressure, Chips,” Rio says, chewing on a long blade of little bluestem grass. “If you miss we’re just going to have to eat each other like the Donner Party.”

Aegon wrinkles his nose in confusion. “The what?”

“She won’t miss,” Aemond says, and Rio snickers to himself and gives you a quick wink that no one else notices.

“I don’t think one 9mm bullet will do it,” Cregan mutters. “Cows got thick skulls, I figure bison are the same way. You’ll have to hit it a few times, and before it can take off and disappear on us.”

Aemond casts him a patronizing glance. “And you’ve killed a lot of cows?”

“Oh yeah. Worked in a slaughterhouse for a while before I got hired by the power company. Hated it, went home and could still smell the blood and brains on myself no matter how many times I showered. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”

Aemond looks like he regrets asking. Rhaena frowns worriedly at the bison. “Will they charge if someone shoots at them?”

Cregan shrugs. “Probably not.”

“Probably?!”

You squeeze the trigger five times in quick succession, hit the calf thrice, tiny puffs of scarlet mist that spring from its woolly head. It flops over as the rest of the herd jolts into a gallop, kicking up dust and fleeing across the steppe.

“Yes!” Rio booms as everyone applauds. “We’re in business! We’re having ribeyes tonight! Cregan, my good sir, I take mine medium rare.”

“You’re getting well done,” Aemond tells him. “Everyone is. Just in case the bison has parasites.”

Rio groans. “You’re ruining my life, man.” Then he and Cregan trot over to grab the baby bison, each of them taking one of its back hooves.

“So,” Aegon says dreamily. “Now that Rio is preoccupied, who would like to assist me in returning my disgusting, debilitated body to the ranch? Anyone? Anyone?”

Rhaena turns to you. “When we have more bullets, could you give me shooting lessons?”

“Sure,” you reply, a bit startled. “Really? You’re interested?”

“Well…” Rhaena hesitates. “Baela’s always been the brave one. At home, at school, when we were shopping, even when restaurants would mess up my order, Baela would do the talking and make sure I was alright…and I would literally hide behind her waiting for her to solve all my problems. And now…with the baby, with Jace…it’s been really different being the one to help her for a change, and I don’t think I’m very good at it yet. But Baela deserves to have people to lean on, just like I’ve always had her. And…when I stabbed that guy in the RV…I kind of liked it.” She titters nervously when she sees the shock on your face. “No, not like that! Not the killing part, or the gushing blood, that was all super gross. But the fact that I helped protect Baela and Luke? The fact that I wasn’t useless in that situation? That was a good feeling. Baela is clever, and she’s courageous and caring and funny, and she’s always been better than me at everything, and I never minded because she…she was like my own personal superhero, you know? But now I feel like I need to start learning how to do things myself so I can help her. Even if Baela is still better at everything, and probably always will be.”

Aegon grins toothily and pushes his neon green plastic sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “I know how you feel. It’s pretty impossible to look heroic next to Aemond.”

“Stop,” Aemond says, but he’s smiling, and a bloom of bashful pink blood appears in his cheeks.

“You already took over the driving,” you tell Rhaena encouragingly. “That was a big help.”

“Yeah,” Rhaena replies, a bit pensive. “Let’s hope I can keep that going.” Between the gas Aemond found in Ogallala and what was siphoned from the would-be attackers’ GMC Yukon, you got enough fuel in the Tahoe to take it halfway across Wyoming; but now the gauge is not just at but venturing below the E, and it can’t have more than five or ten miles left. That might not even get you to the next ranch, let alone a proper town. You need a working vehicle. There are nearly a thousand miles between here and Odessa, Oregon.

Aegon is pawing at Aemond like a cat. “Come on, hero. Help me up.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“This is why we’re friends,” Rio tells you as he shovels forkfuls of bison steak into his mouth, juice dribbling down his chin. Cregan gutted the bison and butchered it, then you helped him cook the steaks—not very uniform in size and shape, yet no one is complaining—on a pan heated in the woodstove. You fed the fire with books you found in the house, mostly religious in nature. “You convince me not to commit suicide when we’re stranded on a transmission tower, you share your Cheddar Whales, you’re good at shooting things…”

“How did you two become friends?” Baela asks. You are all arranged around the dining room table; there are just enough chairs for everyone. Ice lies beneath it mauling on bison bones that Cregan set aside for her. The room is illuminated by flashlights. Baela looks great: in good spirits, glowing, alert, wearing a loose cotton dress that Helaena found in an upstairs closet for her. Baela napped most of the day, something she rarely allows herself to indulge in, and the benefits are evident.

Rio says nonchalantly: “I talked to everybody and she barely talked at all. So of course I had to investigate and figure out what that was about. Turns out she’s kind of cool. You know the Wheel of Fortune game at arcades where there’s like a hundred little lights in a circle you have to press the button when the one that says Spin Zone lights up? She’s a freak, she can hit it almost every time. Can’t sink a basketball or sing karaoke to save her life, but you know, we all have flaws.”

Aegon looks up from his map, which he is scrutinizing as he eats his bison steak. “Do you realize that if we could just stop at gas stations like back when everything was normal, we’d be in Odessa or the Bay Area in fifteen hours? Literally less than one day. Fucking unreal. And yet here we are trapped in yee-haw country, freaky giant animals, no civilization but Jesus billboards everywhere, hell on earth.” He holds up a palm. “No offense, Cregan. You’re okay.”

Cregan smiles mildly. “None taken, Fried Foot. You know you’re a little well done yourself these days.”

“That’s ableist,” Aegon replies.

“We’ll find gas tomorrow,” Aemond says. He sounds confident because he has to; he’s not allowed to panic, to give up. He’s seated at the head of the table like a patriarch. His steak is the smallest and the most ragged. He wouldn’t accept any of the others.

You ask Baela: “Have you decided what to name the baby?”

“Kind of.” She rests both hands on her belly, a globe like a full moon. Helaena glances over at Baela, frowning and preoccupied. “If it’s a boy, I’m going to name it after Jace. We had already picked out Theodore…and Teddy for short, isn’t that cute? But now…I’d want him to have that connection to his father. The baby won’t have any pictures of him, or videos, or memories, or papers he wrote in school, or ties or rings or cufflinks, or…anything. But he could have Jace’s name.”

The rest of you nod, eyes downcast and feeling terribly sorry for her. “I really like that idea,” Luke says quietly.

Now Baela is thinking, her gaze traveling around the room as she chews on a cube of streak. “I’m not sure what I’d call a girl. Maybe something naturey like Violet, Rosemary, Ivy, Indigo, Fern…”

“You should name it Otter,” you say, and you and Rio erupt into raucous laughter. Aemond smiles as he watches you.

Baela is grinning uncertainly, trying not to be insensitive. Perhaps people named their kids stuff like Otter where you came from. “Um, sorry, what?!”

“That was one of the baby names on Sophie’s list,” Rio clarifies. “I vetoed it. Or at least…I think she agreed to cross it off…? Oh my God, imagine I finally get to Odessa only to find out my firstborn child has been named Otter.”

“You’d have to turn right back around,” you say. “Total abandonment would be the only honorable choice. We’d have to start over someplace else. I’ve heard Texas is nice.”

Aegon snorts. “You can’t live in Texas. They don’t even have legal weed there.”

Rhaena squints at him. “I don’t really think that’s a concern anymore, Aegon.”

Aegon smacks his forehead theatrically. “Oh no, I forgot about the apocalypse again!”

“So Cregan,” Baela says. “You were planning to vote for Trump.”

Everyone at the table groans. “No politics,” Aemond says.

“They’re all dead now, so it doesn’t matter,” Rhaena adds. “Biden, Kamala, that insane Kennedy brain worm dude, Trump…”

Aegon says: “If I was a zombie, I wouldn’t eat Trump.”

“I just found that interesting,” Baela continues, looking at Cregan like she’s expecting him to explain himself. Rhaena and Luke exchange a nervous glance. Daeron reaches under the table to pet Ice; you can hear her tail thumping cheerfully against the hardwood floor.

“I was a Trump voter, yeah,” Cregan replies between bites of steak. Aemond is studying him uneasily, but Cregan’s baritone voice is calm. “That doesn’t mean I approved of a lot of the things he did and said. I’m not a monster, I don’t believe in mocking people or all that January 6th stuff. But he was good for the economy. Back when Trump was president, groceries were more affordable, and houses were cheaper, and more companies were hiring. If I had tried to move out of my parents’ place in 2023 instead of 2019, there’s no way I could have done it. And I really needed to get out of there. A lot of people feel that they don’t have the luxury of voting for the nicest candidate, or the candidate they agree with on social issues. Something abstract like climate change isn’t even on the radar. They have to vote for their basic necessities.”

You and Rio understand what he means, you’ve both met plenty of people with the same perspective; everybody else seems shellshocked.

“But I don’t want y’all to think that I’m…” Cregan looks around the table, his eyes catching—interestingly—on Helaena, who observes him with a fully present attentiveness that you’ve learned is rare for her. “You know, like a sexist or a racist or that I hate foreigners or anything. Because I’ve never felt that way, and now I’m very happy to have found you guys, and I respect the hell out of you. And I want to be allowed to stay.”

“You can stay, Cregan,” Helaena reassures him.

“Yeah,” Rio says. “Especially since we’d probably starve without you.”

Cregan beams, clearly grateful, and there are chuckles and the tension breaks; and Baela is placidly skating her palm over the arc of her belly, and now that you’ve eaten all you can, Rio is spearing the remaining chunks of your steak with his fork and gobbling them down. He doesn’t ask before he does this; he knows you don’t mind. You’ve never understood why he’s given you so much over the past nearly five years. You are eternally offering him atonement.

Suddenly, Baela asks you: “What would you name a baby girl?”

You have to think about this before you answer. “Well, if you’re looking for something related to plants…I had a friend when I was growing up named Briar, and I always thought that was pretty.”

“Briar,” Baela echoes, intrigued.

“It means bramble, like a thorny shrub where blackberries grow. I remember her telling me that her mama wanted it to be a reminder that people go through rough patches and that life gets hard sometimes, but you have to keep going, and eventually you’ll find your way out.”

“Briar,” Baela repeats. “Yeah, that’s kind of neat. I’ll add it to the list!”

“And you’d have the same first initial,” Rhaena says. “Baela and Briar. Isn’t that adorable?”

Baela smiles. “And a few Rs thrown in there too. For Rhaena.”

Rio turns to Aegon. “Hey Honey Bun, if you had to name your kid after a plant, what would you name it?”

Aegon says without hesitation: “Marijuana.”

Now it’s an hour later, and Aemond is examining Aegon’s burned leg on the living room floor, Helaena holding a flashlight and you and Rio standing by for moral support. Underneath the bandages is a wasteland of red, weeping flesh…and yet there are spots where the skin seems to be hardening into white islands of scar tissue. Rhaena and Luke are keeping watch by the windows, Baela is passed out in one of the bedrooms, Cregan is showing Daeron how to put his wavy blonde hair up in a man bun.

Aemond points to a blackish patch on the top of Aegon’s foot, only a few inches from his ankle. “I have to debride this part here,” he says like an apology.

Aegon is afraid to ask. “What does debride mean?”

“It means I have to cut it out.”

“Cut it?!”

“It’s getting infected. I have to remove it or it will spread to the rest of the foot and you could get sepsis. I might even have to amputate the whole leg.”

“Okay, cut the dead stuff off,” Aegon swiftly agrees.

Aemond doesn’t have any more injectable morphine. He gives Aegon as much Vicodin as he dares and then begins working, carving away layers of dark disease with his scalpel and scrubbing the area with disinfectant. Aegon clutches your hand, squeezing so hard it feels like your bones might crunch, shrapnel-like splinters of marrow-stained organic glass beneath your skin. Rio has Aegon’s pink Sony Walkman—once owned by Ava—and takes one earbud while giving Aegon the other. They sing along to Sean Paul songs together, laughing as tears stream down Aegon’s sunburned cheeks:

“Well, woman, the way the time cold, I wanna be keepin’ you warm

I got the right temperature fi shelter you from the storm

Oh Lord, gal, I got the right tactics to turn you on

And girl, I wanna be the papa, you can be the mom…”

Now you’re curled up in bed, your arms crossed over your belly as you struggle to fall asleep. Aemond comes to bed late now; each night he waits until Baela is sleeping and then teaches Rhaena about childbirth and recovery: what to expect, what could go wrong. She is a good student, borrowing Helaena’s spider notebook to take notes and asking detailed questions. She wants to know everything she can so she can help when Baela goes into labor.

At last, the bedroom door opens. Out in the living room you can hear Rio asking: “Do you have Wagon Wheel? I love that song.”

Aegon scoffs. “No, of course I don’t have Wagon Wheel. Shut up and listen to your Enrique Iglesias.”

“You are so racist, man…”

Aemond sees that you’re in agony, rummages around in his medical kit, and gives you an oval-shaped white pill to wash down with the can of orange Sunkist on the nightstand; Helaena found a case of it in the pantry. “Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”

“I didn’t want to take any Vicodin from Aegon or Baela. They’ll need it more than me.”

“Your pain is as real as anyone else’s.” Aemond’s weight shifts the mattress as he crawls into bed beside you, his arm settling protectively around your waist, his hand covering yours where it rests on your lower belly. “If the Tahoe runs out of gas, will you be okay to walk tomorrow?”

“Don’t worry about me. I had three periods during basic training, I honestly thought I might die. After that I can power through just about anything.”

“I’ve noticed.” You feel the soft smile on Aemond’s lips as he kisses your temple. “Do you want quiet, or do you want to talk?”

“Talking would be a nice distraction.”

Aemond wastes no time. “Do you like kids?”

“Well, since birth control doesn’t exist anymore, I’d hope everybody does.”

Again, he is smiling; you can hear it in his voice. “Okay, but do you intend to have your own?”

“Yeah, I always envisioned myself having kids. I wanted a normal family and figured I’d have to make one myself, DIY it, you know? I don’t think the plan has changed. Gotta repopulate the earth somehow.”

“I wouldn’t try to sway your decision one way or the other. It’s a burden you should only have to endure if you actively choose it. But if you want to have children one day, I’d help you.”

You giggle in the dim orange glow of a single flashlight. “How self-sacrificial.”

“No,” Aemond says, laughing. “Not like, the making them. I mean, I’d help with that too, that aspect would be fun. But I was talking about the delivery, and recovery, and taking care of a newborn. I don’t know everything, but I know a lot. I could help you get through it. So that’s an option I want you to be aware of, if…you know.” Now he pauses. “If you trust me.”

“I trust you.”

“Sometimes I don’t know if you should,” Aemond murmurs; or at least that’s what you think he says as you lose consciousness, plummeting into sleep as if falling from a great height.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Tahoe runs out of gas just east of Tipton—not a city, not a town, just a collection of service roads linking sprawling ranches to I-80, the only continuous route across southern Wyoming—and Rhaena guides the SUV as it coasts to a halt on the shoulder of the highway. You hike about a mile to the nearest ranch house: Luke carrying the siphoning hose and empty gas can in case you can find fuel, Rio carrying Aegon on his back, Baela walking slowly and with great effort, Ice panting as she lopes across the dusty earth. You can’t spot any cattle or horses behind the endless strings of barbed wire fencing. Perhaps they are in a different pasture, or escaped or were stolen, or died of thirst without being tended to, or were consumed by a wandering hoard of zombies, never sleeping and always hungry. The house at the end of the dirt driveway is modest, old, and painted white. The front door is open; the screen door bangs in the wind.

“Rock Springs is the next real town,” Aegon says when Rio drops him to the ground, reading his map.

“And how far is that?” Rio asks.

Aegon deflates. “About fifty miles.”

“Great,” Rhaena says. “What’s the plan, to fly there?”

“Yeah, start flapping your wings, little bird. You’re light enough, you can make it.”

“No car in the driveway,” you tell Aemond. “Nobody home, maybe?”

He’s scrutinizing the house, his blue eye narrow. “Maybe.”

A thought occurs to Aegon. “Do you think ranchers have golf clubs?” he asks hopefully.

“No,” Aemond snaps. Rio is now on the front porch and pounding the butt of his unloaded Remington shotgun against the doorframe to see if anyone appears. Daeron is nocking one of his makeshift arrows as he trots around the perimeter with his compound bow.

Luke, peering through his binoculars, points to a large cylindrical aluminum structure about a hundred yards from the house, by a small red barn. “What’s that thing?”

“It’s a grain bin,” Cregan says. “Full of feed for cattle.” Ice whimpers at his feet, and he twirls his axe in his large, calloused hands. “Are we clearing the house or not? Something’s in there.”

“We are,” Aemond answers tonelessly. “Luke, Rhaena, stay out here with Aegon and watch for trouble. Daeron, you too.”

“Got it.”

“Baela—”

“Can I go inside?” she asks. “Please, Aemond. I’m so sick of sitting around feeling useless and exhausted. I want to help. I want to do something, I’m going insane.”

“Fine,” Aemond agrees. “It should be an easy one.”

It is easy, but it’s not pleasant. The house smells like dark, sickening decay. In the living room are the skeletal remains of two bodies, both children judging by the size; the maroon-stained bones are notched with indents from gnashing teeth. Cregan shadows Helaena as she searches through closets and drawers. She takes no clothing—it would have absorbed the stench of death—but fills her burlap messenger bag with matches, lighters, batteries, pills. She gives you a bottle of Advil before you can ask her for it.

“Thanks,” you say, a bit startled, as you tuck it away in your backpack.

It is not until Ice leads you to the final room, the bedroom at the rear of the house, that you hear the familiar, blood-chilling hissing and moaning of a zombie. It is in the closet, and emerges one limb at a time: one arm and then another, one leg long like a spider’s, streaked with a thick soup of rotting organs that spills from a gaping hole in her belly like the mouth of a mineshaft. Something has happened to its other leg; it is missing, and the corpse that was once a thirties-something woman—a soccer mom, perhaps, with a minivan and propensity to make meatloaf and fish sticks—drags itself across the fawn-colored carpet towards you, slow and pathetic. Ice growls and barks. Rio raises his Remington.

“Wait,” Baela says. Her hammer is in her right hand. “Can I do it?”

“Of course, be my guest,” Rio says; though you can tell he’s slightly disappointed. He loves clubbing things.

Baela approaches the yowling zombie—jaws snapping, claws swiping—and grimaces down at it, this one of millions of monsters that ended the world, that killed Jace and stole all the rest of her life from her too, all those normal things she was supposed to have, all those strings of fate that the plague cut through like a razor and sent floating aimlessly out into the void of the universe. Then with a scream, Baela swings her hammer and a catastrophic impact crater appears in the side of the zombie’s skull, and it crumples to the floor, its mindless brains spilling out onto the carpet.

“Nothing good?” Aegon asks when you reappear in the driveway, popping a Vicodin into his mouth.

“No,” Aemond replies grimly. “No gas, no bullets, no food, nothing to drink.”

“I knew it would be lean pickings once we got out here,” Cregan says, and Aemond looks like he could kill him.

“Well, fortunately, Luke might have some good news for us,” Aegon says with a grin.

Aemond perks up. “Really? What?”

“I saw a truck out there,” Luke says, using his binoculars to gesture to the grain bin. “It’s parked between the barn and the grain thing, I can just see the very front of it sticking out. And if there’s a truck, there might be gas.”

Aemond ruffles Luke’s fluffy dark hair. “Good job, kid.” And Luke lights up like how cities used to look at night, back when the power was on: Washington D.C., Key West, Corpus Christi, Chinhae. Rio stoops down so Aegon can hop on his back, and all of you trek together across the field.

“Nothing,” Cregan announces as he squeezes the little pump on the siphoning hose after opening the gas cap of the ancient Chevy Silverado and threading the hose inside. “Not a drop.”

“Fucking fantastic,” Aegon sighs from where he’s slumped on the ground. His eyes are glazed; he’s pretty stoned. He gazes pitifully up at you; you pat his shoulder sympathetically. You and Rio have already checked the barn, dilapidated but perfectly devoid of zombies. The roof has caved in; one of the two front doors are missing. “What now?!”

“We can go back to the interstate and walk until we find the next ranch,” you say, looking absentmindedly at the grain bin. It’s much larger up close, and rusty in spots. A ladder runs up one side to allow access to the roof. Ice isn’t whining or nudging anyone’s hands, but she’s sniffing the air as if she’s detected something interesting, unfamiliar.

“Yeah,” Luke replies miserably. “We can walk another five or ten miles and then maybe find a safe place to spend the night.”

Rhaena shades her eyes as she peers up at the sky. “It’s past noon already. Maybe we should just stay here.”

Rio barks out a sardonic laugh. “In a house with no supplies and that reeks of dead people?”

“Cregan, go kill us something to eat,” Aegon commands.

He chuckles in his deep, gruff voice. “It’s Miss Chips who is good at the killing, I’m just the authority on butchering at the moment.”

Aemond is watching Ice, his forehead furrowed. “What’s she doing?”

Cregan whistles. “Hey, princess, you okay?” Ice ignores him, still sniffing, her grey ears straight up in the air. Then it appears from behind the barn: a tiny brown creature, a baby bear.

“Aww, it’s so fuzzy!” Aegon squeals, stretching his arm out to pet it. Rio yanks him away; everyone else is backing up towards the grain bin. A second bear cub has now arrived, padding clumsily along, large cartoonish eyes and a little pink tongue poking out from its muzzle.

“Don’t touch them!” Aemond shouts to everyone. “Get away from them! If there are cubs, there’s probably—”

And around the barn comes the mother, a grizzly bear of 400 pounds. She bares her teeth and snarls, saliva dripping in long gluey strings. Ice is barking viciously; Aegon is shrieking and scrambling onto Rio’s back.

“Baela!” Aemond says because she’s closest to him, urging her towards the ladder of the grain bin. She gets the idea and begins climbing. Then Aemond reaches for you. “Come on, you next!”

“Rhaena, go,” you say instead, and she clambers up the ladder after Baela. Cregan is brandishing his axe; Rio has his Remington in his hands, Aegon still clinging to his back like a baby opossum to its mother. Now Helaena is climbing up the ladder, and Daeron nocks an arrow. You whip one of your M9s out of its holster, aim for the bear’s head, and pull the trigger.

Your bullet hits its skull, Daeron’s arrow pierces its chest; and the mother bear does not die but roars and rises up onto her back feet—taller than Rio, taller than Cregan—and then drops back down and charges towards you and the grain bin. Cregan blocks the way, swinging his axe. The bear reluctantly pauses, testing him with swipes of her claws that he evades. Rio is just a few steps behind Cregan, waving his Remington around hostilely. Aegon is screaming and holding on for dear life.

“Don’t shoot!” Cregan yells. “9mm isn’t big enough, you’ll just make her more angry!”

Aemond finally gets a grip on your wrist and drags you to the ladder. You obey and climb until your feet are several rungs off the ground, then you turn to see what’s going on below. Aemond, Luke, and Daeron are at the bottom of the ladder, their backs to you. Cregan is still wielding his axe.

“Fuck off, Mama Bear!” he bellows, standing as tall as possible and swinging his axe above his head. Rio follows Cregan’s lead and holds his Remington aloft. Ice is barking; the baby bears are fleeing in terror. Aegon is sobbing hysterically and saying he’s going to die. “You don’t want us and we don’t want you! Go on! Go get your babies! I’ll put this blade right between your eyes if you don’t change your stupid mind right quick!”

The bear pounds the earth with her front feet and growls, a beastly subterranean rumble, but she seems to be losing her nerve. The rungs of the ladder creak and groan; you see rust like blood-hued moss around the bolts.

“Get out of here!” Cregan shouts. “Go, you hairy old bitch! Go back to your babies!”

The bear glances back to see her cubs vanish behind the barn. Her mouth is open and panting, spittle gleaming on her pointed teeth; her black eyes are uncertain. As you hold onto the ladder with one hand, you have your M9 aimed at the bear’s left eye, just in case. Aemond is watching Cregan; on his scarred face a sharp severity, fascination and resentment and fear.

“Go on,” Cregan says firmly. “Leave us alone. You belong in the mountains, not down here. Go eat something that’s already dead, a nice easy dinner. You don’t want us. We’ll fight you.”

The grizzly bear shakes her head—flopping ears, shaggy fur filthy with dust and pieces of grass—and whirls, lumbering off to find her cubs. When she rounds the barn, Cregan waits a few long, tense, silent minutes and then turns to the grain bin.

“Alright y’all, we oughta hurry up and leave. I don’t think she’ll come back, but she might.”

From the top of the ladder, approximately forty feet off the ground, Baela begins to laugh. “Did that really just happen?! That was insane! Cregan, buddy, you can vote for whoever you want to. You and I are cool forever.”

He smiles up at her, wincing in the bright afternoon light. “I’m very glad to hear it, ma’am.”

Rio sets Aegon down on the ground and stretches his back; it must be hurting him. Aemond is taking your hand and helping you off the ladder, and you are reminded of the transmission tower where he found you in Catawissa, Pennsylvania, one of those middle-of-nowhere places like Tipton, Wyoming. As Helaena climbs down, you go to Rio and—with as much force as you can manage—knead the small of his back with the heel of your hand like you know helps him.

“You okay?”

He sighs loudly, relieved. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Oh, wow, that’s good. Harder…oh yeah…”

There is a snapping sound, metal squealing as it breaks, and by the time you turn to look she’s already falling: her cotton dress billowing around her, her arms wheeling helplessly. It happens too quickly for her to scream—for her to understand what is going on and what it means—but there is a stunned gasp and then she hits the ground, and you hear a muffled crunch of bone—skull?? spine??—and she is completely, unnaturally still as she lies on her back, no pain, no words, nothing.

“Baela!” Rhaena shrieks, and she rushes down the ladder and runs to her sister. You are all gathering around Baela, petrified to move her—to make it worse—but pleading for her to wake up, examining her with terrified eyes. Baela’s own eyes, dark and glassy and serene, are open only a sliver like obsidian crescent moons. Aemond is asking Helaena for a flashlight and then prying them wide, checking Baela’s pupils.

“There’s no reflex,” he says numbly.

“What does that mean?!” Rhaena cries. “Aemond? Aemond?!”

“She’s…she’s…” He’s in denial; he’s in shock. He’s feeling for a pulse on her carotid, he’s digging his fingernails into her forearm to try to get her to respond to pain.

“Aemond?” you say softly.

“She’s gone,” he tells you, like he doesn’t believe it, like he’s waiting to wake up.

“The baby,” Rhaena says. “Try to save the baby.” And then, when Aemond doesn’t immediately understand, she grabs his backpack and begins ripping it off so he can get the medical kit inside. “The baby, Aemond!”

Now he knows what he has to do. He pulls the scalpel out of his kit as Rhaena moves Baela’s sundress to expose her belly. She was wearing biker shorts beneath, lavender, cute, something you might have picked out in a store. In less than a minute they will be soaked with blood. Cregan leads Daeron away, and he’s telling him that they need to keep watch in case the grizzly bear returns, but you think it is an act of mercy more than anything else. Ice goes with them. Helaena, her face pale and grave, is shining the flashlight on Baela’s belly, just beneath her navel.

“Aegon?” Aemond says.

“What? What do you need?”

“I need people to help hold open the incision once I make it. I have to be able to see the amniotic sac so I can cut the membrane without harming the baby.”

“I get it, I’m here, I’ll help.”

Aemond presses the blade of the scalpel to Baela’s skin and draws a semicircle from the top of one hip to the other. There is blood, but it is slow-moving and thick and dark; it is the blood of a dead woman, not a living one. Immediately, Aegon hooks his fingers under layers of fat, skin, and muscle, and opens the wound as much as he can. You and Rio reach in too, and you do this without thinking, without allowing yourself to feel the horror of it until the work is done.

“I can’t see,” Aemond is murmuring. Rhaena gets another flashlight and helps Helaena illuminate the area. Luke is on his knees with both hands clamped over his mouth, his eyes glistening with dread and disbelief. Aemond is slicing, pausing to probe around with his fingers, cutting again. Then his arm plunges into Baela’s abdomen up to his elbow and, with some difficulty, pulls out the gore-covered baby by its feet, a girl, large and limp and silent.

Rhaena sobs, equal parts grief and joy, a smile appearing on her face. “Is she okay? Aemond? Is she…why isn’t she crying? Aemond?!”

Rio yanks off his shirt and uses it to wipe blood and gelatinous clumps away from the baby’s eyes, mouth, and nostrils. Then Aemond takes the shirt and wraps the baby in it, warming her, rubbing her lifeless little limbs. When she does not stir, Aemond lays her on the earth and begins CPR: compressions with two fingers on her tiny heart, two breaths down the airway she’s never used. There are no sounds except his efforts. There is no crying when the baby wakes, because she never does.

Enough, you are thinking, as if from very far away: an island in the Indian Ocean, the Appalachian mountains in eastern Kentucky. Enough, enough, enough.

Aemond stops trying to revive the baby. He picks her up and holds her against him, and no one says anything. There is only the barrenness of the Wyoming steppe, an anemic blue sky, tall dry grass that bows in the breeze, black vultures that are landing atop the barn and the grain bin.

Aegon jolts out of his paralysis and reaches for his brother with bloodied hands. “Aemond, hey, Aemond, listen to me, it wasn’t your fault. Okay? Are you listening? Aemond, man, you did everything you could. You gave them a chance. You didn’t give up.”

But Aemond doesn’t respond; he only kneels there beside Baela’s butchered body, her dead baby girl in his arms.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Alys?” he calls, seeing that she never came back to bed. He is lying on his stomach, tangled in red sheets damp with sweat. It’s hot, too hot, and there is no humming of the air conditioning. When Aemond picks up his iPhone from the nightstand, it’s still plugged in but only at 87% battery. The power must have gone out.

He gets up, rubs the damp skin by his temple—headache, dehydration—and lifts open the nearest window. It’s odd: there is shouting, distant and indistinct, like the sound of a carnival or a concert. There are car alarms too, and sirens, and horns blaring, all too far away for him to see. It must be because of the power outage, traffic signals thrown into chaos, neighbors relaying the latest information back and forth. That’s the only logical explanation.

“Alys?” Aemond says again, groggy but with increasing curiosity, concern, guilt.

She started to feel sick last night, a pulsing in her skull and chills and powerful nausea. The possibility of it being the so-called Florida Fever barely registered in his mind. Alys gets migraines, and tofu is a migraine trigger, and he took her to a Thai restaurant (maybe he should have known better) and the curry Alys ordered ended up having tofu in it, and by the time she paid the check (as Alys always did) she was swallowing an Imitrex from the box in her snakeskin purse. She said she was going to lie down in the guest bedroom for a while so she wouldn’t wake him if she spent the next few hours dashing to and from the bathroom, a likely outcome, and if he was honest with himself about it, Aemond would admit he was relieved.

He shuffles to the bedroom door—black boxers, bare feet, century-old hardwood floors—and opens it. Now he can hear thudding, like someone tenderizing meat with a mallet. “Alys? Baby, you feeling okay?” There is no answer, only that rhythmic hammering. He realizes that it is coming from the guest bedroom, a door at the end of a long hallway still fuzzy through his half-awake eyes.

It had never felt right, but it had felt good: good in the body when she touched him, good in the soul when she told him he did something right. But lately—especially here, in the vast creaking historic house she shares with her husband and her children, who are presently sailing in Cape Cod—Aemond cannot shake the feeling that this entanglement is a surrender rather than an aspiration, something he fell into and now rests at the bottom of like a swimming pool or the sea, the cold weight of it threatening to pour into his lungs and drown him.

“Alys?” Aemond says, now with profound and inexplicable dread. Outside an ambulance or police car zooms by, sirens blaring. The pounding on the door of the guest bedroom grows faster.

I want to go home, Aemond thinks suddenly. At home, in the Federal-style townhouse his parents rented for him (Criston picked it out, a safe and quiet neighborhood in Beacon Hill, and Viserys paid), Daeron is visiting from California and watching golf tournaments with Aegon on the living room couch, pretending to be interested when Aegon describes the different types of clubs. Helaena, pursuing an Entomology PhD, is researching the Mediterranean mantis, clicking around on her MacBook Pro from the garden in the backyard. Jace and Luke live there too, and so Baela and Rhaena have all but officially moved in, keeping their apartment in Seaport only to have somewhere to retreat to when the Targaryen chaos becomes too much…and so the baby can have its own room. Baela bought a crib, a changing table, a rocking chair, a dresser, and about a million unisex onesies, mostly space-themed. Baela is studying Aeronautics and Astronautics, after all. Maybe one day she’ll work for NASA and fly rockets to the moon.

The door is rattling on its hinges. Aemond’s hand closes around the knob. On the other side is something terrible, and he knows this. But he cannot just leave her. Aemond is not someone who abandons people; he is not someone who turns away from responsibilities.

He opens the door of the guest bedroom, and immediately she is staggering towards him, limp dripping hair and naked like she was interrupted mid-shower: blood bubbling from her gaping mouth and the whites of teeth peeking through the crimson, necrotic skin hanging in strips from her fingers, eyes misty like steam on a mirror.

“Alys, stop! Alys! What’s wrong with you?!”

She’s alive but she’s dead. She’s yowling and clawing at him, but her flesh is the rotting swampland of a corpse. He’s pushing her away; his palms sink into her, places he once noticed and then fantasized about and then at last—euphorically, ashamedly—touched, held, borrowed but never kept. She’s trying to bite him. She’s trying to kill him. None of this is possible, and yet it’s true.

Aemond flings her away, and the woman who was once Alys stumbles backwards and down the staircase, sick wet thumps all the way to the ground floor, bones splitting through dissolving grey skin, organs sloshing around until they spill out. He can hear her still hissing, flailing, trying to get up again.

Without thinking—slipping seamlessly into what he learned during his psych rotation is called automatic action—Aemond races down the steps and grabs her by the skull, cracks it against the antique hardwood floor she once extoled the value of as he fucked her on it: shipped east from Oregon and laid in 1912, the year the Titanic sank. When she lurches up to try to bite him, he slams her head against the floor again and again until she is still.

Then Aemond kneels there alone for a long time, sirens shrieking outside, far-off strangers screaming for help, putrid black blood clotting on his hands.

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen #aemond x reader #aemond x you #aemond x y/n #aemond targaryen x y/n #aemond targaryen x you #aemond fanfiction #aemond targaryen fanfiction #hotd fanfic #hotd fic

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sxvual · 4 days ago

Text

act three • the depression

a/n: I would repeat myself, but all these chapters are heavy, not gonna lie and this propably one of the most severe tear jerkers.

cw: angst, child loss, severe depression, anxiety

word count: 6.1k

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The building is nearly empty, bathed in the soft hum of fluorescent lights and the distant whirr of a floor buffer somewhere down the hall. Roman sits behind his desk, sleeves rolled up, collar undone, reviewing a contract he’s read three times without absorbing a single line.

It’s the laughter that distracts him.

Not loud—just soft, humming, and so out of place in his meticulously ordered world. He stands, moves toward the open office area, and there she is. Sunny. Sitting cross-legged on the floor by the copier, talking to herself while trying to fix a paper jam with a pencil, of all things.

“I swear this machine has it out for me,” she mutters, then giggles like she told herself a secret joke.

She doesn’t see him watching.

Her hair is pulled up in a messy bun. Her oversized cardigan slipping off one shoulder. She hums as she works, some old country tune mixed with a nursery rhyme. And despite the exhaustion etched into her features—he sees it, though she hides it well—she’s still smiling. Still glowing.

Like she belongs in the sun. Not here, in the cold glass and chrome of his world.

He clears his throat. She jumps, then beams when she sees him.

“Oh! Mr. Reigns. I was just—um—the printer ate the quarterly reports. But I think I’m winning.”

“You’re here late,” he says, folding his arms.

She shrugs. “Didn’t want to leave a mess for the morning.”

There it is again—that sincerity. That relentless optimism. He wants to find it annoying. He wants to call it naïve.

But he can’t.

Because in a world of fake smiles and curated agendas, she’s real. Messy, inexperienced, stubborn—but real. And he hadn’t realized how much he missed real until she showed up in his office with the wrong coffee order and a smile that didn’t ask for anything in return.

Roman exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I’ll have IT look at the printer tomorrow,” he mutters, then adds without thinking, “You don’t have to fix everything yourself.”

She grins, that sunshine grin. “Too late. Fixing things is kind of my thing.”

And that’s when he realizes—she’s not just in his space anymore.

She’s in his head.

And worse—somewhere deep beneath all his armor and edges—he doesn’t mind it.

The bar was dimly lit, low jazz humming in the background, glasses clinking in the distance. Roman sat in the far corner booth, back to the wall like always, one hand wrapped around a sweating beer bottle he hadn’t lifted in several minutes. His cufflinks were undone, the sharp lines of his tailored suit softened and wrinkled, like he’d been tugging at the collar for hours. His hair was still pulled back, but his whole presence radiated a kind of disheveled storm—contained, but volatile.

Jimmy and Jey flanked him—blood and bone and history. The three of them had known every version of each other, from boys scraping knees on pavement to men carrying titles, burdens, grief.

Tonight, the grief was thick.

Jey was the one talking, lighthearted, trying. A story about some fan interaction gone sideways, the kind of thing that would’ve normally had Roman smirking, head shaking. But Roman’s eyes were glassy and unfocused, staring through his beer like it held the answer to a question he wasn’t brave enough to ask.

Jey caught on and fell quiet.

Jimmy shifted. His jaw ticked. He'd been holding it back all night, but he couldn’t anymore.

“We been quiet too long, Uce,” Jimmy muttered, voice low, rough like gravel and whiskey. “And it ain’t doing nobody any good.”

Roman didn’t look at him, just gave a tired blink.

Jimmy leaned in. “You keep showin’ up to life like this. Drownin’. And I know why. Hell—we know why. But—man—what happens if you don’t come back up?”

Jey stayed still, watching Roman. Neither of them pushed hard. They never did. Not with him.

“You know what it did to us too, right?” Jimmy said after a long pause. “Losing her. That was our niece. Our family. We were there when she was born. I held her before she could even open her eyes.”

Roman’s jaw tightened.

Jimmy’s voice cracked, just once. “You think we’re not gutted too?”

Roman finally moved—his head tilted back against the booth, eyes closing. The beer bottle slipped from his grip and landed on the table with a quiet clink.

"But she was my fucking daughter, mine—" his words were sharp and cutting like a knife into both the men at the table, they painfully winced as he continued. "You have your kids, both of you—Jimmy you have your babygirl. They're here, mines isn't and I will never know why!"

Neither man took it personally but the beat of silence after was still tense all the same. Roman's nostrils flared with unkept anger, and Jimmy's eyes burned with unshed tears, he was the mos emotional of the two twins about the situation. Jey adored Yara, but in the few months she was here—her and Jimmy really clicked.

“I don’t know how to breathe without her,” Roman said. It was barely a whisper, as if saying it too loud might break him. “I don’t know how to look at Suniva without feeling like I failed them both.”

“You didn’t fail her,” Jey said firmly. “You lost her. And none of us were ready. No one ever is, and I know it's not the same but when Kiara had a miscarriage them years ago man I was tore up, but you gotta keep living.”

Jimmy leaned in again, more serious now. “You gotta talk to someone, Uce. Hell, both of you do. Sunny too. Ain’t no shame in that.”

Roman scoffed faintly. “You think I haven’t tried? I can’t even get her to look me in the eye anymore, let alone sit in a room and talk about it.”

Jimmy reached for his glass, took a breath. “Then start with you. Not for her. Not even for Yara. For you. Because if you don’t… I don’t know how much more of this you can carry. And I don’t know if I can watch you collapse under it.”

The table fell quiet. The weight of it all hung in the air.

Roman blinked down at the table. His knuckles were still scabbed from the bag he’d beat senseless in the gym days ago. His whole body ached with exhaustion, but it was the kind that sleep didn’t touch.

“You think it’ll even help?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy said. “But doing nothing sure as hell isn’t.”

Roman looked up. His eyes met his cousin’s. Honest. Raw. Fractured.

"I'll try, but I don't know with her.."

Roman didn't speak much after that.

Roman didn’t respond right away.

He just sat there, staring into the neck of the beer bottle like it might whisper back the answers he’d been chasing for four hollow months. Jimmy and Jey fell silent beside him, giving him space the way only people who’d loved you long enough knew how to do.

His chest rose slowly, then fell.

Therapy. He never thought he’d need that word in his vocabulary. He’d spent a lifetime being the strong one. The provider. The protector. The man who walked into any room with purpose, who kept his circle small and his emotions tighter. But now?

Now all he had were questions.

Could talking really help? Could it rewind the clock to when Sunny used to curl up next to him and trace the tattoos on his chest while whispering their baby’s name with reverence?

Could it bring her back to him?

Roman dragged a hand down his face, the scrape of his beard grounding him. He still remembered the sound of her laugh in the mornings, breathless and unguarded, usually at something dumb he’d said. God, he missed that sound. He missed her. Not just her body beside him, or the memory of the warmth they used to share, but her, the way she used to see him—like he was something good. Something steady. Safe.

But now, she looked at him like he was a stranger.

No—worse. Like he was a ghost. A haunting reminder of the moment their world ended.

He couldn’t blame her. Not really. He’d pulled away too. Closed off. Shut down. Spent nights on the couch pretending it was to give her space, when really it was because lying next to her, so close and so impossibly far, hurt too much.

Still, even through the silence, the fights that weren’t really fights, the small kindnesses neither of them acknowledged—he loved her. And God help him, he wanted her back. Not just physically, not just in their house, but in that way where she smiled up at him and touched his face like he held her whole heart.

He wanted to wake up and not feel like they were pretending.

Wanted to hear her say good morning and I miss you too.

He missed the girl who used to steal the covers and complain that his big body took up the whole bed. He missed the woman who made him believe he could be something other than just a fighter—that he could be soft, and joyful, and worthy of the kind of love that lit you up from the inside.

They’d had that once.

Now… he wasn’t sure if it was dead, buried beside the little girl they never got to watch grow up—or just lost beneath all the rubble.

Maybe therapy wouldn’t fix it. Maybe nothing could.

But he knew this: if he didn’t try, he’d lose her completely. And for everything he had already lost—that was something he couldn’t survive.

He looked up, finally. His voice was rough when he spoke.

“I don’t even know if she’ll come with me.”

Jimmy tilted his head. “Then start alone. Show her it matters to you. Maybe… maybe she’ll follow.”

Roman nodded slowly, dragging in a deep breath.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “Maybe she will.”

The front door clicked shut behind him with a softness that didn’t match the war raging in his chest.

Roman stood in the entryway for a long moment, keys in hand, unsure if he was supposed to move or breathe or crumble right there on the marble floor. The house was still. Dim. He didn’t bother turning on the lights. He knew the way by heart.

His shoes echoed quietly across the floor as he walked past the photos they hadn’t taken down yet—one of Sunny mid-laugh, her head thrown back with joy, the curve of her belly cradled by his hand. Another, just above the entry to the living room, of tiny Yara wrapped in a blush-pink blanket, her fist curled against his chest while he looked down at her like she was the most delicate, sacred thing in the world.

Because she was.

He paused there, under that picture. Swallowed hard.

Some nights he still reached for her bottle on instinct. Other nights he thought he heard her crying, only to be met with silence that hit like a brick to the chest.

Roman sighed and kept walking.

His tie hung loose around his neck, blazer slung over one shoulder. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, like he couldn’t stand the constraint of being pulled together anymore. Not here. Not in this house where nothing made sense.

The couch greeted him like an old habit. He sank into it, not bothering to turn on the TV. Just sat in the quiet, the dark, nursing a dull ache in his chest that never fully went away. He looked up at the ceiling. Then closed his eyes.

Therapy.

The word echoed again.

He tried to picture saying it to Sunny. Sitting her down. Reaching across the table and telling her he didn’t want to lose what was left of them. That he couldn’t lose her too.

Would she even listen? Or would she look at him the way she had so many times lately—with glassy eyes, guarded shoulders, like she didn’t know who he was anymore?

He didn’t blame her for the distance. He felt it too. Like their grief had split them down the middle and they were both too hurt to cross the divide. But maybe therapy could be the bridge. Or at least the start of one.

His head dropped back against the cushions. He stared at the ceiling like it had answers.

“I miss you, Sunshine,” he whispered.

He wasn’t even sure if he was saying it out loud or just thinking it again and again and again. I miss you. I miss us. I miss the life we were supposed to have.

His phone buzzed on the armrest beside him.

A message from Jimmy.

You don’t gotta do it all at once. Just start somewhere. Don’t wait too long, Uce.

Roman stared at the message.

Then, slowly, he typed a reply.

Looking into it tomorrow.

It was small. A whisper of effort in the avalanche of their grief. But it was something.

And maybe something was better than nothing.

The stillness of the living room had begun to settle over Roman like a blanket—thin, but heavy. He sat, unmoving, save for the slow rise and fall of his chest. The hum of the refrigerator was the only sound in the house, the distant tick of the clock echoing time neither of them seemed to be living in.

Then—

A harsh, retching sound shattered the quiet.

Roman shot up.

The sudden violence of it—raw, guttural—seized his gut with dread. His long legs carried him down the hallway with quick, sure strides, panic building under his skin. He barely needed to think. His body moved before his mind could process.

The bathroom door was ajar, light spilling through the crack like an unwanted truth.

He pushed it open and froze in the doorway.

Suniva was hunched over the toilet, her thin frame trembling, the stark white of her nightshirt clinging to her spine. Her arms braced against the seat as another wave of sickness overtook her. Her hair, once so full and glowing, hung limply, sticking to her damp cheek. The sound of her gagging, followed by a choked sob, cracked something in him.

Roman stood paralyzed for just a second. One heartbeat. Two.

Then he moved.

“Sunny—”

He was on his knees beside her before she could respond, gently gathering her hair away from her face with one hand and rubbing small circles into her back with the other.

“I got you,” he murmured, voice thick. “I got you, baby.”

She didn’t speak—couldn’t. Her body was still wracked with dry heaves that seemed more like grief expelling itself than anything physical. Each wrench of her torso sent a tremor through her, and all Roman could do was hold her as she came apart.

His palm splayed across her back, fingers moving in slow, careful motions. His other hand cradled the back of her head when she collapsed sideways into his chest, too weak to hold herself up any longer.

She sobbed into his shirt—raw, broken cries that tore through the silence like glass underfoot.

Roman bowed his head over hers, his nose brushing the top of her hair, holding her like she might vanish if he let go.

“I miss her too,” he whispered, barely audible. His voice cracked. “God, I miss her too.”

For a long while, they didn’t move. Just stayed there—on the cold tile floor, wrapped around each other, grief bleeding out between them. Roman could feel the sting of his own tears falling, trailing down his jaw as her breath hiccuped against his chest.

She was so small in his arms now. So fragile. And for the first time in weeks, she let herself fall into him.

He didn’t try to fix it. Couldn’t. He just stayed.

Held her like he used to. Like he still wanted to. And somehow, in the sorrow, something quiet passed between them. Not healing. Not yet.

The silence that followed her breakdown was fragile, hanging like mist in the air. Roman didn’t move right away. He just sat there, holding her, listening to her breath gradually steady against his chest. When he finally pulled back, it was only enough to tuck a damp curl behind her ear, his eyes scanning her pale, drawn face.

“You should lie down,” he said gently, barely more than a murmur.

He expected resistance. A protest. A shake of her head. But instead, Suniva nodded—small, almost imperceptible. Wordless. And then, slowly, she pushed against the floor like she meant to stand.

Roman was faster.

“No, no—don't,” he said, scooping her up into his arms before she could fully rise.

She made a feeble sound of protest, a weak flutter of her hand against his chest as if to argue the gesture. But the strength wasn’t there. Emotionally. Physically. And she knew Roman—knew once he’d made up his mind, there was no point in fighting him. Not when he carried her like she weighed nothing, like she was still his entire world.

Her head found his chest, and her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt as her body softened in his hold. She let him carry her out of the bathroom, down the hall, and into the soft light of the living room.

He didn’t say anything as he lowered her gently onto the couch, his movements tender and deliberate. He adjusted the cushions behind her and reached for the soft fur throw she loved, draping it over her body and tucking it around her with the care of someone handling something precious.

Suniva blinked up at him—eyes rimmed red, lips slightly parted like she wanted to say something. But she didn’t.

Roman brushed her forehead with the back of his fingers before retreating to the kitchen.

He knew exactly what he was looking for.

The tea bar sat in the far corner, pristine and untouched for weeks. When they'd first moved in, he’d spent weeks perfecting it—organizing the shelves by leaf, blend, fruit, and floral notes. Every container labeled in her flowing script. Glass jars lined up like sacred little apothecaries.

It had been his surprise housewarming gift to her.

She’d squealed when she saw it. Lit up the room with her excitement, pulling him down into a kiss and gushing about the care and detail he’d put into it. They'd spent that entire first night trying different blends, rating them with laughter and sleepy smiles. Roman had hated every one. But he’d drank them anyway, for her.

He reached for the fennel tea she always used when she had nausea. Measured it carefully. The scent of anise rising to meet him as he scooped the leaves into the sleek black tea press she'd picked out on their first trip to that overpriced kitchen boutique she loved.

As the water heated, he glanced back toward the living room.

She hadn’t moved.

Just lay there, eyes closed, wrapped in the blanket like a fragile thing thawing from frost.

His throat tightened.

Roman turned back to the kettle as it clicked off, pouring with precision and care. His movements slow. Intentional. There was no grand fix. No right words.

But this? This, he could do.

He could make her tea.

He could love her quietly, patiently—even if she wasn’t sure she could receive it yet.

Even if they were strangers in the same bed… he remembered what it felt like to be more.

And he wasn’t ready to give up on that. Not now. Not ever.

The couch felt too soft beneath her.

Or maybe she just felt too hollow. Like a paper shell sinking into something meant for weight and presence, not this kind of ghostly absence.

Suniva didn’t open her eyes, even though she knew he’d left the room. She could still feel the shape of his hands—the way they’d held her so carefully, like she was something rare, breakable. The blanket he’d tucked around her still held the heat of his body. It made her ache in a way she didn’t have words for.

She used to live for his touch.

Now she didn’t even know how to respond to it.

Her fingers clenched slightly in the fur throw, the scent of it vaguely familiar—lavender and something warm. Their daughter used to nap here. Right on this couch. Right where she was laying now.

Yara would curl up against her chest, tiny and warm and safe. Suniva could still feel the ghost of that weight sometimes when she closed her eyes.

God, she missed her.

And she missed him.

Even now, with Roman only a room away, she felt the distance like a canyon carved deep and wide between them. Grief had a way of separating even the most unshakable things. It hadn’t just taken Yara. It had taken everything.

But then she heard the soft sounds again. The clink of the kettle. The gentle pour of water. The muted scrape of the tea press he hated using.

And something fluttered.

She remembered the night he’d surprised her with the tea bar—how giddy she’d been, how much effort he’d put into a ritual he didn’t even care for. How he drank every cup she handed him, no matter how bitter or floral, just to make her happy.

That man—the man she was supposed to marry—he was still there. She felt him in those quiet gestures. In the way he carried her like she was still his whole world, even after all this time spent apart in the same house.

She hated how much she’d shut him out. But she hadn’t known how to let him in when everything inside her felt so... dead.

And yet, here he was. Making her tea. Still trying.

A tear slipped from the corner of her eye before she could stop it. It slid down her cheek, disappearing into the blanket.

She didn’t move.

Not when she heard the soft pad of Roman’s feet returning to the living room. Not when he crouched down beside her with the delicate cup in hand.

“Here,” he said, voice low, just for her. “I made your favorite.”

She opened her eyes, blinking against the burn. His face was shadowed, tired, and something about it made her chest pull tight.

Her fingers brushed his as she took the cup.

“Thank you,” she whispered, hoarse.

Roman didn’t smile. But his eyes softened in that way they used to—quiet, full of unspoken things.

They sat there in silence, the faint aroma of fennel rising between them. She sipped once, let it settle in her chest like warmth she didn’t realize she needed.

Roman sat on the crisp white sofa next to her, elbow resting loosely on the edge of the couch, his eyes on the mug she held close to her chest. The tea was still too hot to sip again, but she clung to it like a lifeline.

The silence between them stretched long, but not empty. It was fragile. Heavy with things unsaid.

He watched her closely—her drawn face, the trembling of her lip, the way her fingers curled tighter around the mug with every passing second. He didn’t want to push her. But he couldn’t ignore what he’d seen. The way she’d clung to the toilet, sick and sobbing like her body was rejecting something.

Roman cleared his throat softly. “Are you coming down with something? Did that make you nauseous?”

Suniva shook her head.

“Something you ate?”

Again, she gave the barest shake of her head, her eyes never leaving the mug.

He hesitated. Swallowed hard. “You used to only get sick like that when… you were pregnant.”

The words hung there, bare and raw and unintentionally cruel.

Suniva didn’t flinch. Didn’t answer.

He shifted closer, lowering his voice. “What happened, baby?”

For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t respond.

But then her lips parted—just slightly—and when her voice came, it was so soft and cracked that it hardly sounded like her at all.

“I had a dream.”

Roman straightened. His heart caught somewhere in his throat. He didn’t move, afraid to break whatever spell was allowing her to speak.

“Or maybe it was a nightmare,” she whispered.

He waited, eyes locked on her face.

“It was morning,” she said, voice distant like she was still half there. “And I could hear birds outside… and the sound of cartoons. You know that faint echo of them when the volume’s low but you know exactly which ones are playing?”

Roman nodded slowly, the image forming painfully clear in his mind.

“And I smelled breakfast. Sausage, maple syrup… your eggs. The way you make them with too much butter even though I always get on you for it.”

His throat tightened. She was remembering something that hadn’t happened. And yet it felt more vivid than most real memories.

“I got out of bed,” she continued, tears beginning to pool in her lashes. “And it wasn’t hard this time. My legs weren’t heavy. My chest didn’t ache. I didn’t feel like I was going to break all over the floor.”

Her voice caught, and Roman’s jaw clenched.

“I walked into the living room. Here.” Her gaze finally drifted from the mug to the room around them. “You were sitting right there… on the couch. And she was with you.”

Roman’s heart stopped.

“And she wasn’t a baby. Not anymore. Maybe five, six. Beautiful. So beautiful. She looked just like you—same dark eyes, crooked little smile. But she had my curls and my nose."

Suniva’s voice cracked on a breath. “She was laughing, Roman. Just… belly laughing at something on the screen. Holding a little fork in her hand with pancake on it, like it was the best thing in the world.”

Roman’s eyes began to sting.

“She looked up at me. Smiled like I’d been gone too long. And she said…” Her voice broke completely, and the tears spilled over. “She said, ‘C’mon, Mommy. Join us.’”

Suniva sobbed into her sleeve, her whole body curling in on itself.

Roman leaned forward instinctively, reaching for her, but she wasn’t done.

“I smiled back,” she gasped, shaking her head, as if she could still feel the dream dissolving. “I stepped forward, ready to sit with you both. I felt the joy. I felt it.”

A pause.

“But just before I could reach you, I woke up. And she was gone. Just… gone.”

Roman closed his eyes, his head bowed. His breath came in shallow pulls, the pain in his chest blooming like a bruise.

“I tried to go back to sleep,” she whispered, voice shaking. “Tried so hard. I wanted to stay there. I didn’t want to be here without her.”

Her hand trembled as she wiped her cheek, her voice ragged. “And I remembered. I remembered everything. That she’s not here. That she’s gone. And it made me sick. It made me so sick, Romie.”

His heart clenched not only at her painful revelation, but the nickname she so affectionately called him. More affection than he remembered her having for him in what felt like years.

She finally looked at him—and what he saw there, the depth of grief in her eyes, shattered whatever piece of him was still holding on.

A strangled sob caught in his throat. He blinked fast, looked away, but the tears came anyway, hot and relentless.

“I miss her,” Suniva whispered. “I miss her so much it hurts to breathe.”

Roman crawled up onto the couch beside her, pulling her into his chest, one hand cradling the back of her head as she buried her face in his shoulder.

“I know,” he rasped. “I miss her too.”

They cried together, wrapped in each other, broken in different ways but bound by the same wound.

And for the first time in weeks, they weren’t alone in their grief.

The morning light began to creep in through the blinds, painting soft golden stripes across the living room. The TV had long gone black, the tea now cold on the table. Wrapped in the thick fur throw, Suniva lay curled against Roman’s chest, their legs tangled, their bodies instinctively folded into each other like muscle memory—like home.

Roman was awake.

He hadn’t slept much. Not really. The comfort of her breathing against his skin was the only thing that kept his eyes closed. Every time he started to drift, he’d hear her breath hitch, or feel her fingers twitch against his chest, and the loop in his mind would start all over again.

Yara’s laugh. Yara’s cry. The way she’d looked swaddled in his arms. The last time he’d held her. The silence after.

It was never-ending.

Suniva stirred gently, blinking into the light with swollen eyes and a slow, dazed blink. She was disoriented for a second. Then Roman’s arms shifted around her, holding her a little tighter, and she remembered.

She didn’t pull away.

Instead, she buried her face deeper into his chest.

“…I hate mornings,” she murmured hoarsely.

Roman rubbed her back in slow, steady circles, not saying a word. Letting her take her time. He didn’t want to scare away whatever little door had opened in her last night.

“I used to love them,” she whispered. “I’d get up early just to beat the sun. Make my coffee. Light a candle. Wash my hair. Just… be a person.”

He swallowed hard, waiting.

“Now…” her voice cracked, “…there are days I feel like I can't even lift my head.”

She slowly shifted to lie on her back, staring blankly up at the ceiling, her voice void of judgment, just full of quiet truth. “It’s like… there’s a weight on my chest. Not metaphorical. Real. Like something’s sitting on me, pressing down.”

Roman turned on his side to face her, his hand never leaving her.

“I cry so much I feel lightheaded,” she went on, her voice small, “like I’m floating half the time. Like I’m not really here.”

She turned her head toward him. “I used to love getting my hair done. Loved sitting under that stupid dryer. Loved how I felt when I walked out of the salon like a bad bitch.”

That made him exhale softly through his nose, the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips.

She didn’t smile back.

“I can barely wash it now. I stand in the shower with shampoo in my hands and I just… I just stare.”

Roman’s eyes burned again. He reached for her hand and laced their fingers together.

“I don’t care about anything, Ro. Not the way I used to. Not even me.”

She looked at him, her voice barely audible. “But you… you get up. You get dressed. You go out. You still live. Sometimes I envy you.”

He shook his head immediately, lips parting with a breath that trembled. “Sunny…”

“You do,” she insisted, though there was no accusation in her tone—only aching honesty. “You keep going. You smile for people. You check your emails. You take calls. You function.”

"I'll have you know I don't smile at anyone." Finally a small and barely noticeable grunt, resembling laughter came from the woman atop him.

“I survive,” he said, his voice hoarse. “That’s all.”

She frowned.

“You think I’m not breaking?” he asked, voice low and tight. “You think Yara’s not in my head every second of every damn day?”

Her lips parted slightly, stunned.

“I see her everywhere, Suniva. In every pink sock left behind, in every lullaby that plays on a commercial, in the middle seat of my truck where her car seat used to be. I see her when I brush my teeth. When I fold a towel. When I walk through the front door and realize it’s too quiet.”

His hand trembled as he brought it to her cheek. “You think I don’t want to stay in bed and disappear, too? But if I stop… if I stop, I don’t think I’ll come back from it.”

"And we'd be broke." It was too much to think things were on the up and up from here, but Roman savored the little bit of the old Sunny that peeked out with such crass humor.

"Far from it, girl. But still, getting out of bed and functioning is the only control I feel like I still have."

She blinked rapidly, her tears returning without warning.

Roman leaned forward, resting his forehead against hers, their breath shared in the small space between.

“I’m not stronger than you,” he whispered. “I’m just breaking slower.”

She let out a cracked sound—half sob, half exhale—and curled into him again. This time with arms wrapping around his torso and face pressed into his chest like she needed to hear his heartbeat to stay grounded.

They lay like that in the quiet morning, grief a third presence in the room—but no longer unspoken.

Just shared.

The house was still quiet, but the heaviness had shifted.

Not gone—but no longer suffocating.

Roman watched from the hallway, leaned against the doorframe as soft steam curled from the bathroom door. It had been his idea, worded with care and offered with patience—just a shower. Just some warm water. Just a moment to feel human again.

She hadn’t said anything in response. But after a beat, she nodded, stood up, and let him walk her to the bathroom.

Now, he could hear the faint splash of water. The creak of the pipes. The subtle click of bottles being opened. The rhythmic drag of a brush pulling through tangled hair.

It wasn’t much.

Not her usual twenty-minute playlist and coconut oil pre-poo. Not the scent of her vanilla and hibiscus body scrub that used to linger for hours after she passed by. Not the hum of her voice singing in a pretty falsetto to herself like she used to when she thought no one was listening.

But it was something.

He swallowed against the lump in his throat.

When she emerged, she looked… different. Not fixed. Not okay. But different and still beautiful.

Her face was bare and pale, her eyes still puffy, but her hair was damp and pulled into a loose ponytail that revealed the elegant slope of her neck. She wore a fresh set of soft cotton lounge clothes—Roman recognized them as the ones Yara had spit up on once that she refused to throw away.

Suniva didn't say anything, but when their eyes met, something unspoken passed between them. A fragile acknowledgment.

He smiled gently, lifting his hand in a silent thumbs-up.

Her lips curved just slightly, barely there, but real. Then she dropped her gaze and padded softly into the bedroom.

Roman lingered behind, letting the moment settle in his chest like a stone. He hadn't realized how long he’d been holding his breath until now.

That was a step.

Small. Miniscule, even. But forward.

He exhaled slowly, closing his eyes for a beat.

That dream she told him about still echoed in his head—the image of Yara as a five-year-old, curls bouncing, eyes bright. Her voice calling out, "C’mon, Mommy."

The ache it left in its wake hadn’t dulled. But it was what followed that had rattled him more.

The way Sunny spoke about the weight on her chest. The emptiness. The stillness. Her apathy toward herself. It was more than grief. It was more than sadness.

It was depression.

And not the passing kind. Not the “bad day” kind. This was the kind that whispered things in your ear. The kind that convinced you the world would keep spinning without you. The kind that cloaked you so thickly you forgot what it felt like to be warm.

Roman ran a hand down his face, exhaling sharply.

Jimmy had been right.

They couldn’t keep doing this alone. He couldn’t love her out of this. He could carry her when she stumbled, hold her when she cried, hell—he’d catch her every time she fell if that’s what it took. But this? This was deeper. It needed help.

He’d been trying to stay strong for her, to hold everything together, to keep them afloat through sheer will. But holding it all in hadn’t saved her. It hadn’t even touched the darkness she was drowning in.

They needed more.

She needed someone to talk to. Someone trained. Someone who could give her the tools to climb out, not just survive the fall.

Roman pressed his thumb against the bridge of his nose and breathed in deeply.

He had to bring it up. Not today—not yet. But soon. Carefully. Gently.

He couldn’t lose her too.

He wouldn’t.

————————————————————————————

Tags 🏷️:

@trippinsorrows @southerngirl41 @lilucey @alichesmi @skyesthebomb

@reginawhorge01 @jazzyboo123-blog1 @overrboarrd @heerah34 @whowrotethenote

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Ask always open 💌

#roman reigns #roman reigns fanfiction #roman reigns x black oc #black authors #the weight of wanting

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adobe-outdesign · 1 month ago

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Can you review the Neela?

I wasn't expecting to get a new Neopet so soon after the Varwolf dropped, but here we are. I will say that the Neela feels a bit "off" for Neopet's traditional style, and kind of follows the hyper-detailed full body pet outfits we've been getting recently. I don't dislike the way it looks, but the detail and the unique pose will make customization difficult.

That said, I do like the design a lot! It feels a bit like the Ogrin, and I guess you could argue they're too similar to justify the Neela as a pet, but I think the markings, long tail, hooves, four horns, and slender face make it different enough. It has this really nice ethereal kind of vibe to it, and is really beautiful overall.

Speaking of markings, my only other issue with this design is that I'm not sure what base color it's supposed to be. Blue, I guess? I love the palette in isolation, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't quite fit in with other basic-coloured Neopets, and it's weird that they only released one out of three basic colours for it so far. Not a huge issue, but one I hope they correct soon.

Neelas have obviously been released post-customization, so there's no UC/styled art to discuss (for the basic colour, at least).

Favorite Colours:

Arid: Not only did TNT release a new pet, but they also released some new colors along with it! Arid is arguably very basic, just black and white with dark pinkish-red accents, but I'm an absolute sucker for black/white/red combos, and I really think this palette makes the Neela's unique markings pop compared to the basic color.

Blacklight: Oh, this one's beautiful! We only have a pet style for it right now so we don't know what the converted version will look like, but I love the pose and the joyful expression. I also think that this is a solid new colour—we have shadow and rainbow, but black with neon rainbow highlights is unique enough when combined that I think it's more than justified, especially with the rainbow spectrum trails coming off of it. Can't wait to see what more pets look like in this colour!

Graveyard: Okay, this one looses some points for originality, given that we already have zombie as a colour and it's not clear what the difference is. Graveyard is gorier, I suppose? Regardless, this design is very cool. I love the details with the stitching along the sides, and the exposed skull and broken horn look super cool and creepy.

#happy april fools everyone!#subeta #subeta reviews #neopets #neopet reviews #neela #ask

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simbury · 2 years ago

Text

How I got my Sims 2 game working on my new Windows 11 laptop, step by step.

OKAY. Gadies and Lentlemen.

I have seen plenty of these around, but I wanted to share my process!

So I bought an MSI creator laptop. The specs are as follows:

CPU: 13th gen Intel i7-13700H

RAM: 16 GB DDR5

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 laptop GPU

Step One: Fresh install. I used the EA App to install the UC version on my new laptop.

Step Two: Download and install RPC launcher. This will automatically apply the 4gb patch. Run as administrator, but not in any kind of compatibility which renders the 4gb patch useless.

Step Three: Download and install Graphics Rule Maker. I used all of the recommended settings, aside from texture memory which I set at 2048 mb for reasons that will become clear later.

Step Four: Memory allocation fix (empty standby list). Explanation here.

Step Five: Setting virtual memory. I used instructions from this post at MTS - My virtual memory paging file is now minimum of 25000 and maximum of 30000. You'll need to adjust to your system's own specs.

Step Six: In game settings. Shadows Off. Neighbours Off. Lighting Medium. RPC Settings. Apply 4GB patch. Automatically Clean Cache. Lot Imposters Optimized. Sim/Object Shadows Classic. I also have lot view ocean reflections ticked.

If your game works like this with no flashing and crashing, awesome. Mine did not. I firstly tried several different texture memory sizes, but they had 0 impact.

I believe the next step is only for NVIDIA cards, but may be wrong.

Step Seven: DXVK. The most recent version from, here. There are plenty of instructions on how to install out there. But make sure you install the 32bit version. I have these two following lines in my DXVK.conf file (and do make sure it is saved as a conf file, NOT a txt or similar).

d3d9.maxAvailableMemory=2048

d3d9.presentInterval=0

The first line corresponds to the texture memory mentioned earlier. DXVK installs won't recognise more than that and having it higher can cause crashes apparently. The second line... No idea what it does but it was mentioned in several guides and reddit posts.

I don't know if the newer versions of DXVK allow fullscreen mode as the older ones did not, but I play in borderless mode anyway which works.

I also delete my thumbnails folder every so often.

I hope this helps someone, this silly old game can be cantankerous but I was determined to get it running again!

#alice rambles #ts2 #Sims 2

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followthebluebell · 1 year ago

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what were q's issues? i tried to search your blog but tumblr is tumblr

Oh, that's because I never really went public with the extent of his problems. I didn't want to deal with the potential 'just euth him' comments, especially since I genuinely don't think a compassionate euthanasia would have been wrong.

Anyway, his butthole didn't work.

That's the short version.

I'm gonna put a more full history under the cut because it's really gross. Like fair warning. There's a lot of discussion of this cat's butthole, poop, and health issues. If you just want to keep imagining him as a cute little fluffball, maybe go look at his pictures instead.

Specifically, his anal sphincter didn't seem to function. His anus was just open and loose. Whatever was wrong with him ALSO seemed to affect his scrotum. Cats tend to hold their testicles pretty high and tight but his were super loose. I'm genuinely not sure if there's an actual connection there, but it was weird enough that it made its way into my notes about him.

He also had loose stools so he was just kinda constantly dribbling all over himself, whoever was holding him, his bedding, the floor--- you get the idea. He required frequent baths: he'd get a bath at the start of my shift and at the end, at the very least. Most nights had an evening bath as well. That way, he could at least stay somewhat free of excrement. This was terrible for his skin, of course; that's an excessive number of baths. It was just one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't situations. Considering the alternative was letting him sit in his own waste, we decided that baths were better.

He also wasn't gaining any weight. He wasn't taking in ANY nutrition from his food at all. Whatever went into him seemed to come right back out within a few hours. He was being tube fed for two weeks; he didn't seem capable of eating without grinding his teeth terribly. I genuinely wasn't sure how much sensation he even HAD in his anus until I caught him on camera squatting in a box.

That gave me hope more than anything else did. It at least told me he had nerve endings back there. It was just the sphincter or maybe the last inch or so of his intestine that seemed defective. Since he was such a sweet kitten otherwise, we decided to give him a chance to grow. The plan was to get him to UC Davis or a similar teaching hospital in the hope that they could extend his good intestine and sort of construct an artificial sphincter.

And then he just got over it. I picked him up to give him his morning bath and his butthole was just SLIGHTLY puckered. Over the next few days, I took a series of the grossest pictures in my fucking life and confirmed that his sphincter was sphincting. He started eating voraciously on his own. He started growing. He also stopped tooth grinding-- again, I don't know if this is significant, but it's another thing that made it into my notes.

I have no idea what happened, but I'm glad he's healthy. He just needed time to grow into his butthole or something.

#Q #cat #persian

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northhopest · 1 month ago

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7x13: April Fools

The good, the bad, and the wtf-are-we-doing

Lucy Chen wants to be with Tim Bradford. She knows he wants to be with her. They love each other. They know they’re endgame. But she’s not ready to fully forgive him yet.

I've said this many times before and others are picking up on it now: since the beginning, Lucy has trusted Tim with her body but not with her heart. He’s protected her physically since S1, but he didn’t protect her emotionally. He used to be harsh with her, sometimes even mean, yet even then, he always had her back in a life-or-death situation. That hasn’t changed. So she does what she always does—she finds a way to protect herself. She finds an excuse to be close to him. To sleep with him while also sleeping with him. To be emotionally near him. Because if she didn’t wrap it in a joke? She’d be breaking her own rules. She broke them anyway.

Lucy Chen doesn’t do one night stands. She doesn’t give herself away to just anyone. But she knows this version of Tim is willing to do whatever she wants and needs. She has needs—and he’s ready to help her meet them, she trusts him to help her meet them. No questions asked.

Cue: the world’s lamest April Fools’ prank.

Cue: A terribly written line.

“So are you gonna keep talking about April Fools or are you gonna take your pants off?”

Some fans *think* they spent the night having sex and didn’t get any sleep. I don’t think they did. This wasn’t about passion. It was about *intimacy.* Lucy used April Fools as a shield. An excuse to sleep with him while also *sleeping* with him. To be close to the man she loves.

Last time they shared a bed, they woke up on opposite sides. This time? I don’t think that happened. This time was warm. Cuddly. Married. In love. They slept in each other’s arms and woke up that way. You can see it all over her face the next day. She’s glowing. She hasn’t had *that* since the breakup. Sex? Sure. But emotional togetherness? No.

The station makeout wasn’t lusty. It was soft. Sweet. Lovey-dovey. Married. The last time we saw Lucy this happy was in S5.

BUT.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again.

She’s acting like a guy. He’s acting like a girl. In 7x06 and 7x13, she’s leading with her *body*. He’s the one thinking with his *mind.* That’s a flipped script—but it’s also unhealthy. Lucy needs help processing her emotions. And Tim’s usually the one who helps her through them. But she can’t talk to him. So she processes through her body instead.

It’s messy. It’s out of character. It hurts to watch.

And don’t even get me started on the “prank” part of it all.

Lucy has two roommates. She has girlfriends. She has people. Melissa has *said* she headcanons Lucy as someone with girlfriends, a support system. So why, WHY, is she dragging her relationship into the middle of the station’s gossip mill—a place where she’s already been the punchline several times, where Tim has even set her up as the punchline?

This wasn’t a UC kiss in her apartment or 35,000 feet in the air. This wasn’t a laundry room moment with no one around. This was at the station. On shift. Where at any moment anyone with a key could enter that office. It was unprofessional and *so* OOC for both of them.

You don’t prank your coworkers into thinking you’re screwing your ex. Especially not when you’re trying to rebuild your career, your reputation, your *boundaries.* Especially not when everyone knows what your ex did to you. Especially not when you’re a woman of color in a male-dominated workplace where judgment and scrutiny are already at a 12 and cops gossip like 12 year olds.

And *that’s* what really breaks me.

Lucy Chen is one of the very few fully developed Asian American female characters on network television. That means she carries a representational burden—whether Melissa and writers like it or not. Every choice she makes, every plotline she’s given, isn’t just about *her.* It becomes about how Asian American women are portrayed. She’s a piece of the puzzle that countless actresses of Asian descent before her fought for.

So when she’s written as the girl who throws herself at her hot ex and calls it “a joke”—it doesn’t just cheapen her. It reinforces old, tired tropes. It’s a slap in the face to anyone who thought maybe, just maybe, we were finally seeing something new. Something real. Something different. That maybe, just maybe, we’re making progress.

Lucy lusting after Tim wasn’t merely about "whether the dick is good," as crudely put in viewer discussions. For all we know, the dick could be mediocre. But their emotional connection, being IT for each other, is what makes it good. Why reduce the integrity of her character?

In isolation, hooking up at his house is awful but not the worst thing that could happen. But when she enforces herself as the butt of a joke to the entire station; when she wears a low-cut, heart-shaped, completely unprofessional two piece to work; when Lucy (Melissa) fixes her uniform outside in the hallway, making it clear that she was hooking up; it’s fair to interrogate why everyone involved in Lucy Chen from the writers to wardrobe to the actress undermined her emotional growth, character integrity, and responsible representation.

Because there are so few Asian American women main characters on network TV, Lucy’s character carries an outsized weight in terms of representation. Every choice made—whether it’s about her romantic relationships, her career arc, or how she’s treated by other characters—feels amplified because there aren't enough other portrayals to balance it out.

Let Lucy be messy. Let her be confused. Let her *feel.* But don’t reduce her to a punchline. And don’t make her the damn architect of her own punchline either (again. See 7x02: food truck scene).

Chenford deserves more. Lucy Chen deserves better. We all do.

#Funny enough I was at a conference recently where relationship researchers discussed negative impacts of hooking up with exes #the rookie #chenford #lucy chen #tim bradford #chenford meta #chenford critical #lucy chen deserves better #asian american representation #tv tropes #character development #april fools episode #7x13 #my metas #melissa o'neil #eric winter

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moyokeansimblr · 3 months ago

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i can't keep track of all the versions of the game now…UC, legacy, starter pack, disc, windows, linux 😩 like, are we gonna need to start specifying?

"my game crashed" okay but what are you on?????? because apparently ea did done fucked up the legacy collection so if people post about that crashing i'd assume is different causes to if UC crashes or if disc crashes, etc.

Like maybe we need name tags. Like, hi I'm moyo - on laptop #1 I have the discs on windows 11 and on laptop #2 I have osab's pack on linux...

#moyokean #sims 2 #maybe delete later

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writingtraumaforever · 3 months ago

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Uncontrolled Chaos: Chapter 40

Notes: I already made a post about this, but I'm gonna put it here as well just in case. On my last trip, I flew home with a bad sinus infection and ended up having the pressure bust my eardrums. I have been unable to hear and in quite a bit of pain for the last week or so. Not to mention it just amplified my sinus infection and I got a touch of pneumonia from it. The meds I've been on have been drowsy and dizzying, and have made sitting down to write out long chapters a bit difficult for me. I'm hoping to be back to normal soon, though! In the mean time, enjoy the chapter!

Summary: Shadow takes Sonic somewhere special.

UC Masterpost!

Link to My AO3!

Start:

It’s not that Sonic was angry, per say..

Okay, maybe he was a little angry.

And the weird part was that he wasn’t even really sure why this new information upset him so much. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what exactly this all did to his head— finding out his alternate version was dating his biggest rival. And not just dating from the sounds of it, but they were in love. Well, he assumes so anyway since his alternate referred to Shads as his ‘lover’.

He had so many emotions running through his head. So many thoughts— memories of him and his own Shadow scratching at the guilty conscience of his brain, making him go back to the same question no matter how he was feeling:

Why didn’t his Shadow love him???

He followed Shads in silence, arms crossed and footsteps a bit heavier as if to stomp and show his current bad attitude. Shads leads the way, not looking back at Sonic but obviously searching for something or somewhere. Sonic’s jaw juts out, gritting his teeth as he rolls his eyes and finally huffs—

“Look- you said you wanted to have a chat, so are we gonna chat or—“

“We’re here.”

Sonic pauses, looking around them at the scenery and frowning more as his foot begins to tap impatiently, “The woods?? You come here to kill me or somethin’??”

Shadow turns at that, giving Sonic a perplexed look as he tilts his head at him, “Why would I kill you??”

“I dunno,” Sonic shrugs, huffy and dramatic per usual, “I don’t know anything about you, dude! For all I know, you could be lying about how you got here and what your endgame is—“

“Stop being fussy,” Shadow rolls his red eyes, moving to the large tree trunk and ducking himself down to crawl through it. Sonic’s fists clench.

“Fussy?! Who you callin’ fussy??? I’ve been lied to!”

“I never lied,” Shadow replies, voice echoing from the gash in the tree. Sonic just rolls his eyes and moves towards the tree now to duck down and look inside. There’s a long burrow through it, Shadow crouched and shuffling right along it like he knows where he’s going.

“You lied by omission, so it’s still lying,” Sonic retorts, slowly moving himself inside to follow his alternate rival, “And where are you taking me?? Narnia???”

“You’re so dramatic.”

“And you’re so deceptive. Like— what the hell, man??? You just gonna let me go on and on about how it’s cool we’re brothers in your world??”

“Not my fault your brain can’t put two men together and see them as anything but platonic,” Shadow replies, standing now at the end of the burrow with a hand on his hip and a quirked brow at Sonic.

Sonic scoffs at that, “Are you accusing me of being homophobic??? Because I’m not! Love is love and all that jazz. I don’t care who people love so long as they make them happy, what does it matter?! What throws me for a loop is that it’s you and me—“

“Calm down, will you? You’re being a bit petty.”

“No! No, I don’t think I will. I think I’ll keep being petty and stay super not-calm!”

Shadow groans, rubbing a hand down his face before tilting his head up to look at the dirt ceiling. Examining it.

“I think I have every right to be petty right now,” Sonic continues on, “Who the heck meets their boyfriend‘s alternate self and finds out they’re rivals in this world, and then proceeds to not tell them that you’re dating another version of them?!”

“Not many people, I’m guessing,” Shads replies, eyes still on the dirt ceiling as he tilts his head some. Not at all giving his full attention to Sonic, which just pisses him off more.

“Yeah, because it’s a sucky thing to do!”

“No. Because not many people meet their partner’s alternate selves.”

“Fuck you and your technicalities,” Sonic huffs, rolling his eyes and then gritting his teeth at Shadow still not paying attention, “Hey— I’m talkin’ to you! Least you can do is look at me!”

Sonic reaches out then to grab Shadow’s arm and jerk him around to look at him, Shads’ eyes narrowing at the blue hedgehog and glowing red. Sonic’s breath hitches for only a moment, eyes widening slightly at the threatening look. Shadow just stares at him a moment before he’s jerking his arm back and then taking a step away from Sonic. Then he’s moving that arm up and pointing his palm straight to the ceiling.

A large chaos spear appears and shoots right from his palm, Sonic’s eyes widening further and then clamping shut as the dirt ceiling is obliterated and dust and rocks crumble down on his quills. Coughing a bit, he waves his hand to waft at the dusty air from the presumed cave-in and tries to peek his eyes open.

“Chaos, dude, you tryin’ to kill us—?!”

When his eyes open, he finds nothing. Shadow is gone.

Sonic blinks, frowning with a concerned knit in his brow.

“Shads??”

“Up here, idiot.”

Sonic’s head tilts back, lifting to the dirt ceiling that now has a massive hole in it. Shadow peeking his head from the top and looking down at Sonic. A gloved hand is offered down to him, Shadow waiting patiently and looking down at Sonic expectedly.

Sonic just frowns at the hand, quirking a brow at it and then looking back to Shadow peeking from the hole. His form silhouetted by a light behind him..

After a pause, Sonic eventually sighs and reaches a hand out to take Shadow’s offered hand. Shadow pulls him up with barely a grunt, lifting him like he’s a feather which— okay.

Sonic huffs once he’s at the top and pulled onto his hands and knees, looking at Shadow who takes a small step back from him. Suddenly looking a bit vulnerable with his ears folded back and an almost shy demeanor about him. Sonic quirks a brow at him before finally letting his eyes trail to the environment and—

“…Woah..”

It’s gorgeous.

A valley full of flowers— most consisting of lavender and forget-me-nots, Sonic notices. The lavender definitely stands out to him because.. well, that’s Shadow’s signature scent. He automatically associates it with the dark hedgehog. The setting sun casts golden and pink hues that glimmer over the petals, creating a stunning rainbow of purples and blues and greens and pinks..

A hideaway bowl in the middle of the forest.

Who knew such a stunning place was so close to home… How has Sonic never found this??

“How..-“

“Did I know this was here??” Shadow asks, eyes looking out at the vast flowery valley before them, “..Turns out our worlds aren’t that different. My Sonic and I… we come here.”

Sonic’s eyes shift to Shadow then, seeing how the darker hedgehog is looking at him with nervous expectation.

“..Well I can see why,” Sonic smirks just slightly, watching some of Shadow’s nervousness deflate as he gives a small smile in return. Sonic almost lets his guard down at the sight but quickly looks away and puts his hands back on his hips, “But don’t think just because you show me a pretty place that means you’re off the hook.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Shadow chuckles before slowly moving to sit himself down. Sonic looks down at him, watching him a moment but deciding to stay standing.

He’s overthinking everything now. Every movement, every decision, every glance. It all feels heavier now. Different. It holds more meaning, more subliminal messaging, more tension. He always knew something was there, but he just chalked it up to the crazy situation they’re in. Not to the fact that Shadow was with a different version of himself.

Suddenly sitting next to Shadow feels almost intimate. Feels like he’s suggesting something he’s not trying to.. He doesn’t understand why this is getting under his skin so much, and that just makes him more frustrated.

“...I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” “Why didn’t you?” Sonic’s ears flop back, brows knitting as their eyes meet. And add that to the list of things that feel different now: eye contact. “A lot of reasons,” Shadow starts with a sigh, moving to bend a leg and rest his arm on it while leaning back on his opposing hand that rests on the ground, “For starters, you didn’t exactly react well to the minimal amount of affection I did show you in the beginning.” Sonic frowns at that, “What d’ya mean??”

“You acted like I had three heads for just touching your hand,” Shadow points out. Sonic recalls the moment. How weirded out he had been by Shadow’s relief of his presence at the GUN medical wing. How he had stopped breathing for a moment when he placed his hand on Shadow’s shoulder, and Shadow had reached to hold it in response.

“In my defense, I had no idea you were an alternate version of my Shadow at that point–” saying my Shadow was also being added to the list of things he could overthink now, “--, and if you knew my Shadow, you’d a hundred percent see why I didn’t know how to handle that.”

“That’s another thing,” Shadow adds then, “I knew very little about you and your Shadow’s dynamic. And by the time I learned more, well.. It didn’t seem you’d take too well to hearing of my Sonic and I’s own relationship..”

Sonic fidgets a bit at that, his eyes averting from Shadow’s and looking down to watch his own foot lightly dust along the grass. Careful not to smush any flowers.

“Why would you think that??” “Because you.. Blame yourself for you and your Shadow’s own rocky relationship.”

Sonic frowns. His brows furrowing at the ground as his jaw tenses up. Shadow is right.. He already holds so much guilt over what happened during the ARK battle.. Over Shadow falling from space, assuming he was dead when he was really being held captive by Eggman. Cloned. And then manipulated by Black Doom. All because Sonic didn’t try hard enough. All because Sonic couldn’t save him.

“You.. already beat yourself up learning my Sonic and I were friends,” Shadow adds quietly, hand twitching as if he wants to reach for Sonic but doesn’t, “I didn’t want to make matters worse by saying we were much more than that..”

Sonic sighs heavily, closing his eyes and tilting his head up towards the dimming sky. It makes sense. Sonic practically fell apart in Shadow’s arms showing him the inhibitor ring he kept all these years. Why would Shadow feel like Sonic could handle knowing that his alternate and Shadow’s alternate were together-together in another world?.. A world where Sonic found him..

Sonic opens his eyes and looks back down at Shadow, finding the dark hedgehog looking right back at him with concern and ache. Like he wants to comfort him but isn’t sure he should. Isn’t sure how.

Sonic purses his lips and slowly moves to sit next to Shadow finally, scooting a bit closer to him as he hugs his knees up to his chest and looks down at the ground in the small space between them.

“..That’s fair,” Sonic admits after a long moment, breathing a tiny huff of a smile as his eyes flicker up to Shadow’s and then back down. Shadow gives a sad smile in response, that same look of longing in his eyes..

Sonic doesn’t know what to do with that. But he understands why Shadow looks at him like that a bit more, now.

He misses his Sonic.

He’s sure if he was the other Sonic, Shadow would be comforting him right now the way he knows how. But given that he’s not the other Sonic..

Shadow likely is just as lost on how to handle Sonic right now as Sonic is on how to handle him.

“I guess I can’t blame ya,” Sonic confesses with a sigh and a shrug, looking back to his feet with a little chuckle, “I can be a bit.. Extreme.” “Extreme is an understatement,” Shadow smirks in response, the two sharing a little breathy laugh together. It’s bittersweet. Shadow sighs then, looking forward as well to look out over the flowers, “And as I’m sure you heard from the call, this is a trait you share with my own Sonic..” Sonic snorts then, “Yeah, dude was a bit excessive, huh?” “He has the right to be upset,” Shadow defends with a small and fond smile, “He’s passionate. He can’t help it.. He also misses me. Like I miss him.. I’m sure his own insecurities have been eating at him.. Neither of us take well to being separated for too long.” “Sounds like co-dependency issues,” Sonic smirks.

“Oh, you’re giving mental health advice now?” Shadow smirks right back, cocking a brow at Sonic playfully. “Just callin’ it how I see it,” Sonic shrugs with a chuckle, looking back to Shadow then.

Shadow hums a smile, looking at him thoughtfully before sighing out, “There’s probably some truth to that.. Separation anxiety at the least.” “Didn’t think any version of me would ever be so clingy,” Sonic snickers teasingly.

“You’d be surprised,” Shadow rolls his eyes, but there’s a adoring tone to it, “Though, I wouldn’t call it clingy.. We’re just.. Connected.” Sonic swallows, recalling the first and only time he and Shadow have gone super together.. The ARK battle. How they had been so in sync, so together, so one..

And then Shadow fell and didn’t remember any of it.

“...I get it,” Sonic admits after a moment, pursing his lips and looking down at the flowers beside him again. His hand moving to run absentmindedly over the tops of the petals. “..Is it nice?” “Hm?” “Being like that?” Sonic elaborates, “...Connected? With someone who can really understand? Who gets it?..”

“It’s..,” Shadow pauses thoughtfully, trying to find the right words but finding its indescribable. So instead he simply settles on, “relieving..” Sonic looks at Shadow again. Shadow smiles, “It’s home.” Home.

Sonic doesn’t have one of those..

That starts to weigh too heavy on Sonic, so he quickly averts the conversation a different direction, “Is it weird?” “What??” “Being around a Sonic who isn’t crazy about you..?” Shadow laughs at that, and Sonic’s heart flips. It’s still so odd seeing Shadow smile, let alone laugh.

“Sometimes,” Shadow’s laugh eases, a soft smile on his muzzle as he tilts his head at Sonic, “..But I find you and he are more alike than you’d think.” “Hm,” Sonic shakes his head, “Not possible. There’s only one me.”

Shadow snorts, “That’s fair.. But you’re definitely the same soul.. A kindred spirit.” Sonic smiles a bit at that, “...You think you and my Shadow are like that?.. Kindred spirits? Share a soul?” Shadow’s lips purse, thinking a moment before replying, “Perhaps.. For a long time, I considered myself soulless.. But I suppose that’s not true, is it?” Sonic shakes his head with a tiny knit in his brows. Shadow smirks at him.

“...You’re wondering if it’s possible.”

“What?” “For you and your Shadow.. That if things had been different, if you and your Shadow would’ve been like my Sonic and I.”

Sonic blushes. The tips of his ears go pink, eyes widening slightly as he quickly looks away and snorts, “Psh! Am not.” He rubs a finger under his nose, ignoring the amused snicker coming from Shadow. “I already know the answer to that anyway. No way, no how.” “Oh?” “Yeah! Me and Shadow, we-.. It’s not like that for us..,” Sonic tries really hard not to let any sort of disappointment show through his tone, he really does.

But he fails.

He tries to recover with a nonchalant shrug and perk of his ears, “I’m not disappointed or nothin’. It is what it is. As long as Shadow ends up happy, that’s all I can really hope for. He’s seen enough shit in his time; he deserves whatever he needs to find peace..”

Shadow’s smile softens, as does his gaze, “..Some would call your unconditional and somewhat sacrificial support love.” Sonic nearly chokes, speaking way too loudly by accident, “Yeah- well-.. That’s a really weird thing to say because I just call it being a good friend.”

Shadow chuckles warmly at that, looking at the side of Sonic’s face as the rising half blasted moon cascades it with cool light. He sighs quietly, brows knitting at the thought of having to leave this Sonic one day. He misses his own and would absolutely never choose another over him, but.. It does hurt his heart to know this Sonic will be left with.. no one.

He deserves more. Deserves better.

He can only hope that his own Sonic’s influence has been good on the alternate Shadow.. That perhaps the other Shadow will return here kinder and more understanding.

“Right..,” Shadow hums, “A good friend.”

“Yeah, don’t start projecting on me and shit– I’m not in love with no one.” “That means you are.” “What?” “In love. You said you’re ‘not’ in love with ‘no’ one. That’s a double-negative.” “Don’t get smartass with me, Faker, you know what I meant!”

“Oh?” “I’m serious!”

“Okay.”

“I’m not!” “Mhm.” “Stop it!” “Stop what??” “Stop– you know..” “Alright.”

#sonic the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #sonadow #fanfiction #my writing #my fanfiction #sonadow fanfiction #uc series #slow burn #rivals to lovers #enemies to lovers #enemies to friends to lovers #friends to lovers #alternate universe #multiverse #shadonic

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wordsandrobots · 23 days ago

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You know, I was wondering how GQuuuuuux intended to convey its alternate 0079 backstory without bringing the momentum to a screeching halt. Would we get it in snippets? Would it be a quick opening narration? Would it be where the show started, ala Witch From Mercury's prologue?

I never would have bet on option 2: they just whole-heartedly paused the plot not even two episodes in for a half-hour flashback.

It's a choice! It's most definitely a choice. And I mean, if Bandai handed you all the money to make a Gundam show, why wouldn't you spend at least some of it lavishly animating your AU fanfic in full?

Sure, this could have been a five minute narrated summary told via Challia explaining his deal to one of the kids he's currently babysitting, maybe conveniently glossing over certain conversations with That Guy that we the audience are privy to, and you would have had exactly the same contribution to the story achieved here by suspending every single plot-hook set up in in episode 1. Yes, it's an excellent argument for the utility of telling over showing in such cases. But at, hey, least we got to see some nice aesthetic call-backs to the original show (those backgrounds were gorgeous and I am loving the newtype flashes). That's worth it, right?

This probably sounds overly sarcastic and it kind of is, although I must stress this isn't coming from a place of dislike so much as an appreciation for how audaciously bad a decision this was, story-telling wise. I'm sure it works much better in movie form (although even then: did they put this in the same place?! Please tell me they made this the actual start instead).

It's just that, as someone firmly in the 'I'll give a fig about this show when I find out what the actual plot is' camp, it is extremely funny to see them drop the Sword of Damocles that was always going to hang over the premise so early and with such thorough disregard for episodic storytelling.

(If you want an actual early-doors criticism, it's that I'm dubious of elevating Char from his canonical position as the dunce of the original crop of newtypes. It's very significant in the original UC that he struggles to keep pace with his supposed brethren all the way through to CCA. He's the greatest pilot alive . . . right up until Amuro hits his stride and Lalah comes on the scene. And I don't think this version of events properly sold the idea handing Char the Gundam would change that: wouldn't it make things much too easy for him, removing the intense struggle Amuro goes through to develop his powers and therefore, ironically, neutralising a key part of OG Char's entire philosophy? I don't know, perhaps this is me misreading the original and therefore this alternate take on events, but it always struck me that Char getting repeatedly overshadowed by others was pretty key to his character.)

#gquuuuuux #g-quacks #spoilers

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bronx-bomber87 · 1 year ago

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Happy Saturday all :) We only have 5 eps left in this season. I can’t believe it. 17 days to the premiere. Well 18 for me since I don't have cable just Hulu but still. Ahhh the Dim and Juicy Ep. I remember the 3 week hiatus to get to it was the worst. Felt like we had a lot of extended breaks in S5. Drove me insane. But anything is better than the one we’re coming out of now ha I’ll take 3 weeks over 9 months any day heh.

I liked the parallel in this how unhealthy Jake/Sava were. And how solid Tim and Lucy are. I mean Dim And Juicy were a mess. My god the man cheated on her more than once. They are not relationship goals lol I enjoyed them nonetheless though. I know Eric and Melissa had a blast filming this. Did my best to get everything in. Content heavy one. Let us get started.

5x18 Double Trouble

We hit the ground running in this one. Sava is waiting for Jake outside of prison. He’s getting released due to overcrowding. Not because he was good LOL Even Sava makes a crack it wasn't that. Been serving about 6 months for the drug charge got in 4x22. It’s a trip to watch them. We get all the benefits of Melissa and Eric’s chemistry inside another couple. It's wild. Sava all but squee's when she see's Jake which is pretty cute.

They launch themselves at each other once he’s free. All kisses and hands. Saying how much they missed each other. All the chemistry and swaying cuteness that comes with them. This scene is pretty cute to watch. They do look like they are so in love which makes what Jake does later so confusing and awful tbh. He greets her friend Lisa with a hug and you can see Sava breaks it up pretty quickly.

Sava brings Jake back to her side. Asking what he wants to do first? Being the classy gentlemen he is saying she knows what. Ha Horny horn dogs. I do love it though. it’s like getting the most reckless AU version of Tim and Lucy. Although they wouldn’t cheat so it’s not entirely accurate lol Sava asking him if he wants to go straight? Jake replying 'Nah, screw that. Let's be bad.'

This leads us into the documentary. Shots of Jake and Sava during it. My god they are sex crazed af. I think that’s why everyone loved watching them though. heh They legit were gonna make a sex tape and got caught LOL I remember being so excited and confused as to what this episode was going to be ha. All I knew was going to be a documentary one and I always have a soft spot for these ones.

We start off with Lucy getting mic’d up. She looks way more nervous this time around. Why you ask? Her person isn’t with her. Her safe space and grounding force is missing. She even asks why she can’t be interviewed with him? They want their POV's to be separate this time. It’s so sweet she misses him and needs his presence to calm her nerves. This makes me so happy I cannot.

We watch her take a deep breathe knowing they have to be apart. They ask how Lucy knew of Jake Butler in the first place? Lucy goes on to explain about Tamara’s car and drugs they found in it. Which led them to Jake. They bring up the fact he and Tim look alike. Tim is already grumpy and hates these damn things. What happens when you remove him away from his sunshine human.

He’s extra grumpy. It shows in his very first shot. His body language screaming how much he doesn’t want to be here. The crossed arms (mmm hello biceps.) Tim defiantly saying how they don’t look the same at all. Refusing to believe they are anything alike. Other than looks Jake is the complete opposite of everything Tim is for sure. He’s so sassy and salty when the director says they’re identical. ‘Says you.’ Oh my love. I adore you.

They come at Lucy with both barrels about being Dim and Juicy for their OP in 'Double Down.' Knowing their ‘pretend’ intimacy was so much more than that. Lucy looks like she’s getting overwhelmed poor thing. She tries to divert it back to what they accomplished with their OP. Not the fact that they were UC together as a couple. The director presses more asking if that’s when her and Tim became intimate?

There’s a reason they pulled Tim from her for these questions. He would’ve knocked this guy out for them being so personal. Also for making her feel uncomfortable asking them. She can’t even look the man in the face when she says this BS line about pretending. Cause it’s utter crap and she knows it. Yeah they were in other relationships at the time. To quote Angela from 5x01 ‘All true. Not what I asked.’

Lucy defending them both. Saying they didn’t get together until they were both single. Which is true and I am eternally grateful for. Do love her making sure everyone knows this. That they didn’t do anything untoward during their OP. Cause they wouldn’t while in relationships. Not who they are. They were damn close but didn't. Why they are the opposite of Jake/Sava. The director says he wants to dial in on that. Lucy becoming agitated asking do we really have to?

These questions clearly getting under her skin. The director noting it’s astronomical they would even meet the both of them. Let alone have both Jake/Sava together and her and Tim as well in a relationship. Before she can answer Tim interrupts says interview is over. She asks what's wrong? He tells her not here.. Lucy thinking it’s linked to questions she’s being asked. I love him holding the door for her as they leave. Ever the gentlemen.

The closeness and height difference is glorious in this shot. You can tell when they’re alone by her body language Lucy goes into calm down Tim mode. Her hand reaching out for his and subtly touching it. Thinking she has to get him to settle down for hearing those questions. Before Lucy can talk Tim explains why he removed her. Has nothing to do with that. He pulled her over because Jake has gone missing. Doesn’t want to do police work in front of the cameras. Saying Nolan and Celia got missing persons call and it’s about Jake. Lucy is shocked saying 'What?'

Nolan and Celina show up and Sava is freaking out cause Jake is missing. The director asks why Jake and Sava are at a mansion in Beverley Hills? We find out they’ve been casing rich families. Taking over jobs like handy man, nanny etc so they can live in these fancy houses and steal their stuff. It’s pretty smart despite being awful LOL This last family needed a handy man. Jake beats the crap out of the current one. Strong arms his way into taking his job.

I do love seeing how tall he is in that camera shot. mmm. Tall drink of water that man. Jeans and a leather jacket? Yum. Gimme. Luckily this family needed a nanny as well. So they both fit right into this scenario. Angela saying Sava slid right in LMAO I’m dying at Wes’s reaction. They’re so cute I can’t stand it. I do love me some Wopez. He tells her that's a really descriptive way to say it HA These documentaries always produce the funniest little moments like this. Why I love these and have a soft spot for them.

We return to Nolan’s and Celina questioning Sava. She is still panicking. Saying this is why she didn't want to call the cops. Nolan noting because they're doing something illegal? She tries to defend their jobs there. That they're "straight" now. John gets her back on track by saying Jake disappeared? We cut to another video slash moment. Sava and her videos ha it is super cute how he looks at the camera. That smile we all love. Jake saying she needs to remind him to erase security footage. My god they’re sex bunnies LMFAO. He gets up to grab another beer and asks if she wants anything? She said lobster salad.

The ass tap he gives her on his way to get another beer. my goodness. I love it. Reeling over here. Don't worry about me. They must’ve had so much fun filming this. I mean Eric mentioned it was one of fav eps of the season. The BTS they did leading up to his showed how much they enjoyed it. Her little dance after he says he’ll get her lobster salad. Haha Sava just living her best life in this moment and it’s showing. Sadly this is the last time Jake is seen alive on camera.

We find out Jake took off and never told Sava where he was going. Which is heartbreaking. Because she clearly loved this man very much. Moral compass or not she loved Jake. That gets them on the topic of lying and secrets in a relationship. They ask her if Tim and her keep secrets? Lucy says nothing big.

That honesty is the most important thing in a relationship. Cutting to Tim and his reply I’m rolling. Eric killing it in this episode with his sarcasm. The king delivers once again. I mean he’s not wrong he is sitting there because of her secret. Well intentioned secret though LOL One born out of love. This one was funnier than the other two I thought. Just lots of funny/punchy bits like this one. I enjoyed it so much.

We return to station. Aaron’s calling in he found a body. That it’s Tim. The expressions in this scene are primo. First off Lucy and Celina's confusion is hysterical. Standing next to him and hearing this when he's very much not. Tim looks so annoyed Aaron couldn’t tell it wasn’t him LOL Also irritated at the thought of being dead. Like he's insulted he would ever be dead in a dumpster haha Oh Tim I love you so much.Like Aaron you’re all looking for Jake and your mind goes to Tim LMAO Never gonna live this down my dude....

Tim grabbing Lucy’s radio off her hip is doing things to me. I also adore the looks when he does. She just allows it only looking down. Such a deep level of comfortability in this action too. Lucy doesn’t react at all. Just used to Tim and his antics. It’s the little glances through out this portion love too. Tim's look into the camera cracking up as well. Like this friggin dope thinking i'm dead... His face the literal version of SMH ha I loved this mini moment so much.

They ask Tim if it was disconcerting he saw a version of himself dead in the dumpster? Being Tim he’s not going to show a documentary crew of all people his vulnerability. That’s reserved for one person and one person only. We shoot back to Lucy who says she has nightmares. God I can only imagine the nightmares seeing that produced for her though. Even though it wasn’t him you know she carried that with her when they left.

I bet you she had nightmares that night and Tim had to soothe her. Damn that would be good fic... LOL Anyways they ask Lucy if she thinks Tim has nightmares? Lucy tells them no but he’s been doing the job longer. I love her defending his high walls though. Saying why they’re in place. Not wanting them to judge him for it. Refusing to let anyone cast a negative light on him.

The director asks if she’s jealous he can turn it off like that? Lucy’s answer is great because it’s very her. Telling them No. Personally she needs to feel for people it’s who she is. I totally get that I am a massive empath. It’s how I connect with people as well. It has it's downsides it’s true but worth it in the end. When they ask her bout his walls being an issue? I LOVE her smile. Because those walls have never really been an issue. A challenge for Lucy yes in slowly breaking his down over the years. But never an obstacle for them.

We all know she saw behind his walls very early on in their relationship. Saw the man hiding behind that wall. Tim has been a soft marshmallow for her for YEARS. Legit years. Why she has zero hesitation in her reply. He was soft for her long before they got together. It’s just now he allows himself to fully be this way openly and he’s ok with it. Well when they’re alone he is. Of course he’s going to be rough and grumpy with the crew. They’re not his person. Nor would he ever tell them he was soft for her.

That's not Tim Bradford at all. But his actions speak louder than his words ever could. You have to earn that out of him though. Lucy earned it million times over. Why she is the only one who gets to see it. Does crack me up the way the director says. ‘No sir....’ After Tim asks him if he looks like a big softy? You know Tim loved instilling that fear in him. He may be super gone for his wife. But he’ll be damned if he doesn’t command fear and respect around everyone else. These two the epitome of Grumpy x Sunshine per usual. Tim is hard ass unless you’ve made past his wall. He loves Lucy most so she gets all the soft goodies haha

Sava shows the director a video she’s scared to share with the team after being questioned. Thinking they’re gonna use it against her. It’s a video of them driving around being all cute. Saying I love you to the camera and such. But then get run off the road in an attempt to kill them. Their car gets totaled and Jake has them bail completely. Car and everything they leave behind. They were able to locate the car for evidence after they see this.

They couldn’t get anything from the car scrapings unfortunately. Had the most common paint out there. So another layer was added to this mystery. Who was the driver? Sava then gets a text threatening her about an item she had no idea about. One that needed to be delivered. It was sent to her and Jake. The texts went on to be violent in nature toward Sava. So it was time for Lucy to go UC to figure this out. Meet up with this person threatening her.

Thanks to Lucy’s UC Op the SL finally has some answers. The guy contacting them was related to Jake they were cousins. He was into some shady stuff and was an international arms dealer. This where I really feel bad for Sava. She had no idea about these back ally dealings he was doing. Not only that but he was cutting her out of the deal on top of it. That Jake targeted this family for a specific reason and she had no idea. Makes me sad when she says she thought he loved her oof.

That she knew him. Pretty sad. We find out later through Sava. That Jake always had a burner phone. They were able to get that number through this whole thing with the shady cousin. It’s where we find out Jake was cheating on Sava. Again….Lucy calling him the Shakespeare of sexting LOL They ask her if she’ll read some of them? It’s adorable how flustered she gets. Saying she can’t her Nana would be watching this. HA

The director does the dumbest thing he could do. Asking Tim if he would read some? Like did you really think that was gonna happen bud? Like really? His reply of if Lucy wasn’t gonna he sure as hell wasn’t going to. Telling him to take that away from him. Have you not paid attention at all in these documentaries? Why would they think asking was a good idea? LMFAO Mess with the bull gonna get the horns people.

We find out the person Jake was cheating on Sava with was Lisa. Her best friend…Like damn it’s bad enough to cheat but with her best friend? God…As douchey as it gets on his part. Jake breaks up with her via text but Lisa can’t handle the fact he was choosing Sava. It’s when everything comes together. We find out she tried to run them off the road and kill them. When that failed she asks for Jake’s forgiveness. Wanting to meet up. When he showed up she killed him immediately and dumped his body. Shit….That's a seriously scorned women right there.

This next portion is the definition Grumpy x Sunshine. They ultimately decide not to charge Sava with anything. The director asking what Lucy thinks of this? She of course gives the softest, most empathetic, and hopeful answer. Because it’s Lucy Chen. She exudes all that in her decision making. It is her super power after all. Naturally her answer was geared towards a second chance. Thinking maybe this will put Sava on the right path.

We cut to Tim saying ‘Of course she said that.’ He knows his girl so well. What’s so great here is his expression as he says it. That smile of his when he says that line. We all know one of the reasons he fell for her is that sunshine. That empathy and her seeing the best in people. She charmed her way into his heart with it. He truly does admire her for it. You can see the fond affection his face and tone when he says this.

He may not agree with her but he loves that about her. The man loves her so much even when he’s being sassy it comes off as affectionate. It's the first time we see him smile this episode. Why? He’s talking about Lucy. She brings it out in him. She melts him even without even being present. Just the thought of her and he lights up. Her compassion is one of his fav things about her. Gah they cute.

They finally get to to be interviewed together. It’s the best part of the episode. Director not wasting any time with his first question. Asking them if they’re worried cause their doppelgänger relationship was so dysfunctional? Lucy once again seeing the best in them. Telling him it was an unfair characterization of them. That Jake cheated not only that but cut her out of a gun deal after that. Not healthy in the least but to her not dysfunctional.

I adore how riled up Tim is with his questions. Protective Tim has entered this conversation. Getting very agitated with what he’s implying. Look at how Lucy looks at Tim as he goes off on his rant. She loves this man sitting next to her. Grumpy rants and all. The amount of affection on her face as he continues his tangent. She could watch him go off all day. My heart. The director saying he thinks it's reasonable question. Tim doesn't agree and tells him off. Saying they’re working too hard. Ha I love him.

Tim continues on (very passionately might I add) about separating their relationship from Jake/Sava’s. Want's to make it VERY clear they are nothing like those two. That the only thing they share is looks. He is so offended he would even compare the two. I mean it’s true. They’re not on the same planet as Tim and Lucy. Lucy continues to look at her man with serious heart eyes. Her smile giving me all the feels.

She is loving his fierce defense of them as a couple. Saying Jake/Sava based their lives on deceit. Of course it infected their relationship. He’s not wrong…This next bit gets me all in my feels. The way he looks over at Lucy. A real genuine smile just for her. Look at his smile. I'm a puddle. He is the absolute softest for her. *heart clutch*

Saying they’re in a very different place. His passionate defense is of them is sexy if you ask me. Also look how different he is with her by his side. Sharing more than he's been doing in his previous interviews. Being a little vulnerable cause she’s there with him. More than he has the entire episode. I cannot. This makes my heart so happy.

The look on Lucy’s face when they ask what place they’re in? She is also ready to throw down with them. Incensed they would even ask that. Her reply is perfection. Saying ‘If you don’t know, then you haven’t been paying attention.’ I remember thinking this was a shot at anyone complaining this season. (and I LOVED it) Which blew my mind btw whenever I saw it. Cause if you could be negative in a season this good what makes you happy? I remember unfollowing some people cause I didn't want their tainted vision in my feed. If you could look at their relationship and not see the beautiful progression you weren't watching the same season as me.

To not see what they’ve built to this point in the season. You are like Lucy said clearly not paying attention. I remember seeing some posts about not enough PDA, kisses or intimacy. (there was lots of intimacy btw just not straight up making out) You’re missing the point of the realistic healthy adult relationship that's being portrayed. They're not teenagers who will be angsty over nothing. These are people in a stage of their life where that nonsense isn't going to happen. Any angst they've had has been productive. If you came out of this episode thinking they needed to be more like Jake/Sava you missed the point entirely. Of this season really. They are not them.

The beauty of Lucy and Tim is in the small tender moments. The little things that add up to so much. Yes I love kisses and such don't get me wrong. God I love them. Will lose my mind over any in S6 no doubt. But there is so much more to a relationship than just that. The emotional intimacy and how they’ve grown together since 5x10 is unreal. The massive shift in Tim alone is enough to tell you how well written they are. What a healthy adult relationship looks like. Had their bumps along the way but what couples doesn’t? I just loved that line from Lucy. S5 is a game changer in the best way for them. If you can’t see it or how they've both grown together you clearly haven’t been paying attention. That line was amazing and I loved her saying as such.

The director takes shot at what place they're in. Coming up with some buzz words. As generic as he could possibly be. Lucy calls him out for it. Because it no where near describes what these two have. Tim is simmering as this guy continues to try and rile them up. I adore him ready to go off and Lucy immediately calms him with a single touch. That’s all takes for him to go from raging bull to heart eye Tim in an instant for her.

Tim was ready to thrown the hell down. I love protective Tim. Lucy taking the wheel in this moment is everything. Her touch basically saying she's got this. Looking directly at her man when she says this next line above. Also don’t think I didn’t see your eyes move to his lips madam. I do adore how she is looking at him. Exuding every ounce of love in her body for him as she speaks. They’re so in love make my heart hurt in the best way. Her eyes so full of warmth and affection for the man sitting next to her. They really are in a beautiful place. Making my shipper heart so very happy.

Tim’s sweet smiles as she rubs her thumb up and down his wrist in a soothing manner. I love it so very much. Never be over how she make's sure to keep eye contact as she calms him down. Tim also doesn't break his eye contact with her as she does this. They're killing me with all the shipper feels in this moment.

Let’s not forget her necklace on full display here. In this beautiful moment. Happy looks so damn good on them everyone. Another thing I love so much is how Tim lets her take over. He was ready to shut this down. Kick them out. She places her hand on his arm and he’s at peace. Lets her direct them from here on out. Only Lucy has the power to soothe him this quickly and effectively.

She’s calmed Tim down enough to have him rejoin the convo. Saying as police officer your future is never certain. Lucy adding on anything can happen at any time. Tim rolling it into kicking them out is amazing. Telling them straight up they’ve overstayed their welcome at this point. I mean they really have LOL Cracks me up how she turns her head towards him. Not really shocked but realizing he's over this now. Her smile is the best.

I love him pointing his finger. The shots at his relationship with Lucy were his breaking point. That is the most precious thing in world to him. Something so sacred. Why Lucy had to stop him from eating them lol Lucy’s reaction is the best. She loves this insane man sitting next to her so much. Her pushing his arm down like 'Ok babe that’s enough.' lmao. Such a wifey move to do that but also she knows Tim is at his limit. Tells them it's time to go now....

I love them instantly going into couple time mode once it's over. Lucy asking if he wants sushi? Tim saying how it’s perfect. Then looks back at them glaringly. Saying this place better be spotless when they get back. I love her escorting him out of the apt. Hand on his back directing him towards the front door before he pops off more. Such a married move. God damn I love them so much everyone. Fantastic ep from start to finish. ❤️

~~~~

Side notes-non chenford

Grey’s picture and how happy it makes him I love it so much. It’s so cute I can’t stand it.

He was so distraught when it was destroyed lol They replace it and it’s so sweet hilarious adorable thing for Grey.

Thank you to all my readers you make my entire day when you like, comment and reblog. Tis been a joy for me. See you all in 5x19 :)

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trippinsorrows · 6 months ago

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ltye 23 + authors thoughts

i'm not gonna respond to asks until tomorrow to avoid spoilers for those who haven't read the chapter, but i just wanted to say that you guys are so sweet and supportive. that's it. that's the tweet. 🥺❤️

***now please don't read beyond the read more if you haven't read the chapter***

i love ya'll for real, but, it was hilarious as hell to me that ya'll thought one of roman's hoes was gonna crash this party. this man might as well have the secret service patrolling his property. ain't nobody he don't want there getting access. 😭😭😭 that doesn't mean we won't eventually see interaction between solana and one of them before all is said and done.

just to clarify, if it wasn't already obvious, dwayne is roman's actual, biological cousin. matteo is roman's half brother. same mother. different fathers. that dynamic will be explored more in future chapters. so yes, roman lied to solana, somewhat, about his relation to matteo.

solana's choice of guests outside of the obvious invitees were based upon her interactions with them via training at the warehouse. bianca and jade giving her tips here and there, montez and trick also making appearances and comments. solana grew to feel comfortable with them. there was a section i was going to include to cover that more via a conversation between her and roman, but it messed up the flow.

there was also a version where dwayne and matter arrive during the party, but it didn't make sense to me to have them show up, sit on the big news they had until the party ended. that being said, there would have been this funny ass exchange between jey and dwayne (pre beatdown lol)

“I see that head still good and bald, Uce.” “And I see you still cosplaying as them bad ass kids biological father.”

i also need ya'll to know that 'candy' by cameo was absolutely played, the twins, montez and trick trying to show sami the proper way to electric slide to that timeless classic. aggressive fist being thrown down and all.

the next two to three chapters will have some moderate to heavy angst/intense situations, with one of the more angsty/intense ones occurring in the immediate chapter (24). one that i think will come as a big surprise and may invoke mixed reactions. i'm going to do my absolute best to write it appropriately. as always, i will use the appropriate cw/tw's. please read them.

also want to point out that solana and roman were first intimate in chapter 14. thus, they've been sexually active intermittently, more frequently recently, over the past almost 10 chapters.

lastly, solana really did pick the perfect time to get knocked up, huh?

#arispeaks #ltye things

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shinki26 · 2 years ago

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The Sims 2 Disc Installation and fix guide for Windows 10/11 PCs

I’m writing this guide to hopefully instruct people on how to properly install, fix and run their disc based The Sims 2 game and also educate you on why the discs are not as bad as everyone makes them to be.

First things first, some clarifications about common misconceptions of both the Ultimate Collection and TS2 disc games I’ve been seeing being tossed around:

1. The Ultimate Collection has compatibility patches for modern hardware:

This one is actually kinda true? The UC did have some patches made to it compared to a fully patched disc game but no one has been able to tell what exactly it did.

A fully patched, fixed and correctly installed disc game should work the same as the Ultimate Collection, with no difference in compatibility or game performance.

2. SecuROM doesn’t work on modern OSes so you can’t run the game off the discs:

Totally untrue. People who says SecuROM doesn’t work on Windows 10/11 haven’t actually tried running a game that uses it at all. It 100% works even on Windows 11.

What doesn’t work on modern OSes is SafeDisc, which all packs released before Bon Voyage used. So if you install BV and any pack released after it, the game IS going to run normally as it’s using SecuROM instead.

3. But SecuROM makes the game lag:

True, for some machines it does happen. But as I will explain in the guide, you can uninstall SecuROM with the official removal tool and just use NoCD executables to have it not install itself again.

4. The discs requires Flash and it’s been deprecated:

No, the discs DO NOT require Flash. The only thing that uses it in the setup is a pop up that used to ask you if you wanted to register your game. Since of course you can’t register it anymore, you can just close it and it WILL NOT affect anything.

That out of the way, let’s get to the guide!

What you are going to need:

-All original TS2 patches released by EA back in the day:

They’re all hosted HERE on ModTheSims.

Please, be aware that there may be multiple variatons of a patch. You need to pick the right one for your game. If you have The Sims 2 Base Game DVD version, you will have to download the second option where it says “DVD Patch Notes”, for example.

For Pets and Seasons the “DD” patches mean Digital Download, so if you have them on either CD or DVD them both are going to use the “Disk Patch”

If you seem to be not able to download them, right click the download link and choose “Save Link As”.

If you have The Sims 2 Deluxe / Double Deluxe / Holiday Edition / Other compilations you’re not going to need the Base Game patch as those versions are already updated!!

You also don’t need the Nightlife patch if you have Deluxe or Double Deluxe!!

The same thing applies for the Collections: You don’t need to patch their EPs!!

-Grumpy Loader:

Get it HERE on ModTheSims.

-If you have Bon Voyage and/or packs released after it... SecuROM Removal Tool:

Get it HERE.

-If you have Mansion & Garden Stuff... Sims2RPC:

Get it HERE on ModTheSims by @lazyduchess!

If you DO NOT have this pack, you’re going to need to source a NoCD executable of the game based on your latest installed pack.

-If you DO NOT Have Mansion & Garden Stuff... 4GB Patch:

Get it HERE.

-Graphics Rules Maker:

Get it HERE.

Having downloaded everything, you can start inserting your Base Game disc one! Or your Base Game DVD!

Installing the Base Game:

There’s no mystery in this part, install your game normally as you would back in 2004 following the instructions of the setup.

Three of the biggest problems I’ve seen people have when installing the Base Game is:

1. I get a red pop up saying “This app has been blocked for your protection”

This happens usually on Double Deluxe games and later EPs such as Bon Voyage, FreeTime and Apartment Life.

There’s two ways you can circumvent this.

First one is the one that I personally prefer:

-Open the Task Manager

-On the top left, click “File”

-Click “Run new task”

-Click “Browse...”

-Now go to your disc drive in your PC and open it, select Autorun.exe

-The target box should be pointing to “D:\Autorun.exe”. The “D” letter changes depending on what letter your disc drive is set to in your PC

-Check the “Create this task with administrative privileges” box

-Now click OK.

The setup is going to run normally now.

When you are installing EPs that show you this error, you can do the same thing to every one.

The other way is just to change your PC’s date to somewhere before 2020.

This is going to work too, I can’t explain to you why though!

Something about licenses expiring!

2. I get a Flash pop up when I try to install!

As I explained earlier, you can just close it and the installation will continue normally.

3. The setup just hangs at a specific percentage and won’t progress anymore!

This is mosty probably the setup asking you to swap discs!

DVD users do not have this problem.

What happens sometimes is that the setup GUI is supposed to make a pop up window appear in front of the GUI asking you to swap to disc 2, but on modern OSes it doesn’t appear sometimes.

Actually, it does. It just is in the background, if you minimize every open window on your machine you’re going to see the little pop up!

Just swap to disc 2 and press “Ok” on the pop up and it should resume installing.

The same thing can happen when having to switch to Discs 3 and 4.

After installing the Base Game:

Now you are going to need to patch it.

Open GrumpyLoader, on the top left select “Load...” and on the window that opens, choose the Base Game patch’s executable you’ve downloaded and open it.

It’s going to automatically patch your game, if you are on the 4 CD version of the game you may have to swap discs.

Sometimes GrumpyLoader throws errors when updating, especially when it ends. But you can just ignore it.

After patching, your Base Game is FULLY installed and properly patched, congratulations!!!

But if you didn’t already try, you will see that you can’t run the game as it doesn’t open.

That’s because the Base Game uses SafeDisc that doesn’t work on modern OSes as I said earlier.

Installing Expansion and Stuff Packs:

It’s the same process of installing the Base Game. Follow the setup instructions.

After installing each one, PATCH them with GrumpyLoader.

For example: you just installed University!

Do NOT immediately install another pack right after.

Follow the same GrumpyLoader patching process you did on the Base Game but choose the University patch instead.

Do the same thing to ALL EPs and Family Fun Stuff.

Also, there has been some info online about installing packs out of release order can mess up your game.

I personally don’t think it’s true as I never had any problems but I prefer to be better safe than sorry.

If you want to, Install them in this order:

-University (or University Life Collection)

-Nightlife (skip if you have The Sims 2 Deluxe/Double Deluxe)

-Christmas Party Pack (I don’t recommend if you have Happy Holiday Stuff or The Sims 2 Holiday Edition)

-Open For Business (or Best of Business Collection)

-Family Fun Stuff (or Fun with Pets Collection)

-Glamour Life Stuff

-Pets (skip if you have Fun with Pets Collection)

-Happy Holiday Stuff (skip if you have The Sims 2 Holiday Edition)

-Seasons

-Celebration Stuff (skip if you have The Sims 2 Double Deluxe)

-H&M Stuff (skip if you have Best of Business Collection)

-Bon Voyage

-Teen Style Stuff (skip if you have University Life Collection)

-FreeTime

-Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff (skip if you have Best of Business Collection)

-IKEA Home Stuff (skip if you have University Life Collection)

-Apartment Life

-Mansion & Garden Stuff (skip if you have Fun with Pets Collection)

If you’ve installed all packs, great! You can even launch your game from SP9′s (Mansion & Garden Stuff) disc and executable as it uses SecuROM which WORKS on modern OSes.

Getting your game to work properly:

Your game is fully installed, patched and even running if you have Bon Voyage and later released packs!

But you probably noticed very heavy lag, crashing, bad graphics and things not running as they should.

That’s because, just like the Ultimate Collection, the game is a PITA to get running properly on Modern OSes!

If you have Bon Voyage and/or later released packs: I HIGHLY recommend you to uninstall SecuROM from your machine.

This is going to help greatly with game performance.

Use the SecuROM Removal Tool I’ve linked earlier and remove it from your PC.

Do NOT open the game again as it’s going to install itself again if you do so.

If you have Mansion & Garden Stuff: After uninstalling SecuROM, you’re going to need to install Lazy Duchess’ Sims2RPC Launcher I’ve linked earlier. Follow their instructions on the download page and be sure to apply the 4gb patch in the launcher as it’s going to GREALTY help with the crashing.

Or... if you DO NOT have Mansion & Garden Stuff: Get an appropriate NoCD executable for the pack you are using to launch your game and apply the 4GB patch to it.

Open the 4GB patch executable and use it on your game’s exe.

After doing all that, all that remains is fixing your game performance, resolution and graphics!

Install Graphics Rules Maker and open it.

Firstly, you’re going to have to add your Graphics card to the game’s database. To do that, go the “Device Info” tab and add it there.

Back to the “Settings” tab, be sure your game is set to “The Sims 2″ and is properly recognizing where your game is installed, if for some reason it isn’t, click “Browse...” and point it to your latest installed pack’s folder.

For example: “C:\Program Files (x86)\EA Games\The Sims 2 Mansion & Garden Stuff”.

-Force Texture Memory: Use the auto-detect button and it should automatically calculate the best value for your graphics card.

Check “Disable texture memory estimate adjustment” and “Enable driver’s memory manager” boxes.

If you have an AMD Radeon HD 7000 series, also check the “Fix AMD Radeon HD 7000 series recognition”.

If you have Intel integrated graphics, check the last two boxes.

Now you can set your resolution! Choose your default (which one the game is going to start with) and maximum resolution your game is going to support.

After doing all that, you can click “Save Files...”

And... Done! You got your disc-based The Sims 2 game fully working, properly patched and fixed!!!

Any Feedback on how to improve this guide is very welcome!

Happy Simming, y’all!!! :)

#ts2 #sims2 #ts2guide #guide #discs #help #sims 2 #the sims 2

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