#Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible

[butchweasel]

just got some bojack horseman clips in youtube shorts and people in the comments were woobifying bojack and insulting diane

why r the beloved "morally gray" male characters of fandoms always like this is baby killer john he loves killing babies for fun and the fandom is like omg baby killer johnnn 😍😍😍 but a morally gray female character is like heres a traumatized teen girl thats meant to be deeply flawed and wrong at times but also went thru a lot and is meant to be sympathetic and nuanced and the fandom is like SHE NEEDS TO DIE RIGHT NOWWWW !!!!!!!!

[lostfracturess]

symptoms and causes | ch. 16

pairing — professor gojo x med student reader

summary — he's arrogant, self-centered, and he's your professor. renowned for his brilliance in neurosurgery and infamous for his allure. too bad you have to work with him on this research team. now you're stuck with dr. satoru gojo, delving into the complexities of both the brain and the heart — and of how far you'd go for a love that could destroy not only him but you as well.

word count — 11.5 k

warnings — 18+ ONLY. contains explicit sexual content, substance and alcohol abuse, dark themes, unhealthy relationships, codependency, trauma, medical content and mentions of death, illness, abuse, and blood. full trigger warnings available on the masterlist. reader discretion is advised.

previously — unable to watch satoru turn to his abusive family for help with naoya's massive lawsuit, you're heading to his party against satoru's wishes, hoping to find something, anything, that might help his situation. but what happens when satoru decides to crash the party? and what will you find in that locked room?

author's note — hello lovelies, welcome back !! this chapter picks up right where we left off, but through satoru's eyes this time. also important note: this chapter contains a brief mention of SA concerning a background event not related to any of our main characters. as always, please mind all trigger warnings. and now enjoy the chaos <3

series masterlist + playlist + ao3 + wattpad

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I saw her the moment I stepped into that goddamn party, and everything inside me went still. 

Like that moment right before you drown, when the water first fills your lungs and the world goes quiet. Terrifying and so still.

She stood there under those cheap neon lights, looking scared and yet so beautiful—beautiful in that terrible way that makes you want to destroy something, that makes you want to tear it apart just to prove it's real.

Every fiber of my being screamed to go to her, to grab her and get her the hell out of here. Away from this place, away from him, away from all of it. 

But I couldn't move. Couldn't let the mask slip, not here, not with all these eyes on me. So I plastered on that easy smile and played the part of the mildly annoyed professor who just happened to crash a student party.

As if my skin wasn't crawling with the need to use again, veins begging for something—anything—to take the edge off. As if the mere sight of her didn't make me feel like someone had reached into my chest and ripped my fucking heart out, her next breath away from something I might regret.

She looked up at me with those pretty eyes of hers, and I saw the guilt there, swimming just beneath the surface. And for one horrible moment I thought, Good. Let it pull her under like it's pulling me. Let it fill her lungs the way fear is filling mine.

I almost hated her then — for lying to me again and again, for doing stupid things behind my back again and again, for making me feel this goddamn helpless again and again and again and fucking again.

But what lay beneath was worse. Because I knew why she was here. Always trying to save me, even if it meant throwing herself into the deep end, drowning right alongside me. And that's the worst kind of torture, isn't it? 

Watching the person you love cut themselves open on all your broken pieces, bleeding themselves dry, yet still reaching for more. And that thought made me want to scream.

"We'll talk about this later," I said, forcing that easy smile back onto my face though everything inside me was screaming to get her out of this goddamn house before she got herself into more trouble. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I need a drink."

I pushed past her, shoulder grazing hers, and I had to clench my fists to keep from turning back. Had to bite my tongue until I tasted blood to keep from saying something I couldn't take back. She had no idea what she did to me. Or maybe she did, and that was even worse.

Love and hate tangled together in my chest until I couldn't breathe. Because that's what she does to me — makes me feel everything at once, until I can't tell what's real anymore. Until I can't tell if I want to love her or ruin her. Until I can't remember which one would hurt more. Who I was before her. If I was anyone at all.

And it hit me then, as I left her standing there, all defiance and reckless stupidity and so unbearably precious it physically hurt—this must be what they mean when they say love and hate are two sides of the same coin. Because I loved her so much it felt like hatred. Hated her so deeply it could only be love.

Always on the razor's edge. One wrong step, and we'd both bleed out. Maybe we already were.

When was the last time I even went to a party like this anyway? Years ago, probably. Back when I could still pretend I had my shit together. Before I understood what it meant to love someone so consuming that self-destruction became a form of worship.

I needed a drink. Maybe ten. Maybe something stronger. 

Bass thundered through the floorboards as I shouldered my way deeper into the house, some shitty pop track slamming in my skull. Or maybe that was just the rage still burning in my bloodstream.

Sweaty bodies pressed in on all sides, but I barely noticed, lost in the chaos raging in my head. Lost in the desperate need scratching at my throat to turn back, to find her, to make sure she hadn't slipped away like every other good thing in my life.

I ordered vodka. First sip burned, but not enough. Never enough to wash away the fear, to forget that she was here, in this house, with him. The same bastard who'd tried to—My grip tightened on the glass. Yeah. Definitely needed something stronger. Here's hoping these kids still remember how to party.

"Professor Gojo! No way!"

A group of my students appeared beside me at the bar, their faces flushed with alcohol. Aoi, of course—that kid was everywhere. And Miwa, looking starstruck as always. Just my fucking luck.

"Is this what you all do instead of studying for my exams?" I asked, letting that easy smile slide into place.

"Come on, Prof, we've been killing ourselves over your damned hard exams," Miwa chimed in, all bright eyes and alcohol courage. "We deserve a break."

I let myself slip into the familiar role. The cool professor. The guy everyone wants to hang with. It was easier than I expected, letting their drunken energy wash over me, cracking jokes, making them laugh. Almost enough to wash out the withdrawal that made it nearly impossible to think straight. Almost enough to forget why I was really here. Almost.

Aoi was rambling about something, but I wasn't listening. Instead, I turned slightly, catching her gaze across the room. She looked at me like she wanted to kill me. Funny, how we wanted the same thing sometimes.

My woman. My stubborn, reckless, absolutely infuriating woman. Even now, with me watching her from across the room, I could see that defiance bright in her eyes. Even now, even here, in defiance of everything I'd asked of her, she stood her ground. 

It was admirable, really. And sometimes, that very defiance made me want to break her. Perhaps only to prove I could. To prove she wasn't in control. Perhaps because I was terrified that I wasn't. That I never was.

It's terrifying how thin that line is.

"See? Fucking legend!" Aoi raised his beer, at something I said, I think. I can't remember. Something clever, probably. Something that fits the role. "To the coolest professor on campus!" 

I raised my glass, I think. I can't remember. And that's when I caught sight of them by the front entrance. Suguru walked up to her, still standing where I'd left her, and cradled her face in his hands, tilting it up to meet his gaze. My god, could he be any more obvious about it?

I knew that look in his eyes. Had seen it countless times before, during all those long hours in the lab when he thought I wasn't paying attention. The way he'd lean in close to check her work, his hand lingering on her shoulder a moment too long. The way his eyes would follow her every move.

My best friend, in love with the love of my life. What a sick fucking joke.

He was examining her face now, probably making sure she was alright, being the good, caring friend he always was. His thumb brushed across her cheek, and something violent stirred in my gut. Because she didn't pull away. Of course she didn't. She never did, not with him.

They looked good together, standing there in the dim light. The brilliant researcher and his gifted student. No addiction between them. No sharp edges that sliced you open if you got too close. And I hated that.

I watched as she placed her hand over his, the gesture unbearably tender. Watched as he smiled down at her, that gentle smile he reserved only for her.

And just for a moment — one single, agonizing moment — I let myself picture a world where I hadn't reached her first. Where she'd chosen him instead. The better man. The one who'd never drag her down into his own personal hell.

The thoughts spiraled darker, louder, until I could barely breathe through the noise. Glass creaked under my grip. I needed a fucking pill. Needed something, anything, to make this stop. To make everything just fucking stop.

"Professor?" Miwa’s voice. "You okay?"

More students crowded the bar, blocking my view of them. One of them—what was his name? Third-year, not a complete idiot—shoved another beer into my hand. I chugged it in one long pull, their chatter fading to background noise.

"Well." That voice. That fucking voice. "Look who decided to crash my party after all."

I turned, meeting Naoya's scarred face with a smile that was all teeth and no warmth. "Zenin. Quite the gathering you've got here."

"Indeed." He signaled the bartender. "I gotta say though, I'm surprised to see you here, Professor. Don't tell me you're playing chaperone tonight?"

His words stripped away any pretense. He knew. Of course he fucking knew why I was really here. Not that I'd been particularly subtle about it.

"Just felt like reliving my youth," I said, taking the drink he offered. Anything to keep my hands busy, to keep myself from finishing what I'd started with his face.

Zenin's smirk widened, the scars pulling his flesh into something even uglier. "Ah yes, the good old days. Back when teachers knew their place and didn't go around screwing their students."

The fake smile slid off my face, the glass creaking in my grip as I pictured how easily his windpipe would crumple under my hands. How satisfying it would be to watch that smirk disappear for good.

"Careful, Zenin. Your face is already fucked up enough as is. Would be a damn shame if something happened to what's left of it."

He laughed, the sound grating on my last nerve like nails on a chalkboard. "Always so protective. But tell me, Professor, does she know the real reason you're here? Does she know about the—"

"Enough," I bit out.

"Oh, did I hit a nerve?" His eyes flicked across the room, landing on her. The way he looked at her made my vision bleed red around the edges. "She really is something else, isn't she? Too bad I didn't get a chance to get her alone that night—"

My hand lashed out before I could think, fisting in his collar. The fabric bunched in my grip as I hauled him close enough to see my own fury reflected in his eyes. "You fucking—"

Then Suguru was there, his hand slamming down on the bar between us. Silent, steady—a wall between me and a one-way ticket to unemployment. He didn't say a word, just fixed me with that look. The one I'd explicitly asked for earlier. Stop me before I do something I'll regret.

Fuck, I was really starting to regret that request right about now.

Then I felt her—her touch impossibly gentle as she laid her hand on my bicep, the heat of her skin seeping through my shirt. She leaned in close, "Satoru, can we talk for a minute?"

Her soft plea sliced through the haze, and suddenly I became acutely aware of the deafening silence that had fallen over the room, of the countless eyes boring into us.

I uncurled my fingers from Naoya's collar one by one, even though everything in me screamed to finish what I'd started. To paint the walls with whatever was left of his face. But I couldn't. We both knew. So I stepped back and followed her.

─── ·✧· ───

She led me through the crowd, her fingers still wrapped so gently around my arm. We pushed our way past the prying eyes, down a hallway, until she found what looked like an empty office. Probably belonged to Naoya's father, judging by the dark wood and that rich people smell.

For a moment, we just stood there, neither of us willing to shatter the fragile silence. Moonlight sliced through the blinds, turning everything silver and strange, like we were underwater. Maybe we were. I wasn't sure anymore. Her hand slipped from my arm, and suddenly I felt cold.

I collapsed into the chair behind the desk, the leather groaning under my weight. She stood silhouetted at the window, arms wrapped tight around herself, and I had to look away. Had to focus on something else, because I knew one glance at those eyes and I'd break.

My fingers found the pill on their own. Out of habit, really. Without thinking, I snatched up the silver letter opener next to me and crushed the pill beneath it, watching the powder scatter across the polished wood like fresh snow. I bent down and let the burn fill my nose, sear through my brain, numbing everything in an instant. 

When I looked up, she was staring. Always fucking staring, with eyes that flayed me to the bone. And she did it so effortlessly. Saw through everyone around her with that unnerving precision. Or maybe she saw through everything so clearly because she looked for the very things she wanted to hide from others.

"That's new," she said. Not an accusation. I was glad it wasn't.

"It's faster."

I averted my gaze and sank deeper into the chair, letting my head fall back against the headrest as warmth flooded my veins and the ceiling blurred and shifted above me. And then everything went soft around the edges, like looking through frosted glass.

A long exhale escaped my lips. Finally—fucking finally—the constant noise in my head, all that shit I can't shut up—the love, the hate, the fucking terror of it all—it faded to a whisper. The world got a little quieter, a little less sharp. A little more bearable.

For one perfect moment, I could actually breathe. Could almost convince myself I was in control. That this wasn't killing me. That I could walk away if I had to. That I wasn't fucking terrified of losing her. Of becoming him. Of everything.

I groaned, fingers raking through my hair, pulling, needing the pain. My hands were shaking again. Or maybe they never stopped. I couldn't tell anymore.

"You're angry," she said.

"No shit. What gave it away?" I scrubbed my hands over my face. "You showing up here after I specifically fucking told you not to? Or me nearly rearranging Zenin's face again?"

"Satoru—"

"Don't." I squeezed my eyes shut, fingers yanking at my hair again, trembling worse now. From the drugs, the rage, the fear, who the fuck knew. It all bled together these days. "You have no idea what he'd do. If something happened—" I stopped. Couldn’t continue.

"I'm not alone," she said, like that made a difference. "Maki, Yuta, Toge—they're all with me. We're being careful."

"Careful?" I sat upright, forcing myself to meet her gaze. "There's nothing fucking careful about this! It's reckless! You shouldn't even be—"

"I'm doing this for you—"

"Don't." I cut her off. "Don't make this about me."

"But it is!" She stepped closer, eyes blazing. "What, you expect me to just stand by and watch? While you fall apart?"

"This isn't your problem to fix—"

"Like hell it isn't!" Another step. Her eyes seared into mine. "I can't fucking take it anymore. You're in this mess because of me. Because you protected me that night. So don't you dare tell me this isn't my problem to fix."

I stared at her, something in my chest fracturing. "You think that's why I'm doing this? Because I feel obligated?"

"I think you're trying to protect me, like you always do."

"Then don't make me protect you all the goddamn time!" I shoved up from the chair and braced my hands on the desk. "I beat him within an inch of his life that night. I would've killed him if—" My throat closed around the words. "And I'd do it again. In a fucking heartbeat. That's what scares the shit out of me. What I become when it comes to you."

She went still.

"And if he hurt you again," the words scraped out of me, "I—I don't know what I'd do. So please. Just please don't make me find out."

I said the words I'd been turning over in my head for what felt like eternity. Don't make me find out, don't put yourself in danger, don't break my fucking heart. Which really meant break me all you want, just don't leave. I wouldn't survive it.

Her gaze dropped briefly to my hands, and she said, "You done?" 

Her question threw me. Done? God, this infuriating woman. But then I followed her line of sight and saw my hands clenched into white-knuckled fists around the desk’s edge. I slowly released them, my knuckles cracking in the sudden stillness.

I slumped back into the chair, exhausted, defeated, throwing an arm over my eyes. "God, I fucking hate you." The way she stood there, unflinching, unafraid—it made me insane. "I hate that you make me feel like this—so fucking terrified all the time."

"You don't hate me," she said.

"Sometimes I'm not so sure anymore," I answered.

How does it never get easier, I wondered. Loving her. Needing her. It just cuts deeper, spreads further, until I'm drowning in the ache. Until I can't breathe without feeling it in my lungs. And yeah, I hate her for that sometimes.

I couldn't look at her. I knew she'd be there, unyielding, waiting, enduring everything I threw at her, as she always did. Never breaking. Maybe that's what I hated most.

"You're so fucking stupid," I breathed, but it came out wrong. Too soft. Too much like 'I love you'. Too much like 'Please don't leave.' 

"I think that's mutual." She crossed the room then and leaned against the desk, arms folded over her chest. "I'm sorry I lied to you."

I lowered my arm and looked at her. "No, you're not."

"I am sorry for worrying you," she tried again, and I almost believed her, wishing desperately that she'd never have to worry about anything the way I worry about her. "Go ahead, say it. Tell me how stupid I was to come here. I know you're dying to."

"Why would you think that?"

She kept her eyes fixed on the floor. "Because it's true. I make the wrong choice every fucking time."

I watched her, this brilliant, stubborn woman that I love so much, beating herself up over choices that weren't really choices at all—just impossible situations with no right answers. Like there was ever a right answer. And sometimes she reminded me so much of myself. As if I hadn't spent years doing the same thing, and probably still do.

But seeing her do it—it was like staring into a mirror and seeing not just my reflection, but the reflection of everything I hated about myself.

"I think that's mutual," I echoed her words back to her.

With a heavy sigh, I pushed up from the chair, gripping the edge of the desk for a second. Then I reached for her, hands landing on her hips, tugging her close, needing her close. My lips ghosted over hers. Hesitant. Unsure. When she didn't pull away, I kissed her. My hand came up to cradle her face, thumb skimming her cheekbone as I deepened the kiss.

"Alright, what's the plan?" I murmured against her mouth.

She told me about the locked room upstairs and her plan to get it. So calm. She told it so calm. Like it was that simple. Like this wasn't the most insane thing I'd ever heard. But I knew she'd go through with it no matter what I said.

"You seriously think I'm gonna let you anywhere near him with alcohol involved?"

"No," she said. "I think you're going to help me."

"Times like this, I'm really feeling that age difference between us," I said, but we both heard the resignation in my voice. The moment I'd already lost this fight.

"So you'll help?" she asked, ignoring my comment.

Before she could celebrate her victory, I yanked her closer, fingers twisting in her hair. With a sharp tug, I forced her head back until she had no choice but to meet my gaze, her throat bared. Our eyes locked, and I saw the instant her breath hitched.

"On one condition."

"What's that?"

"When we get home, you're gonna make it up to me for all the stress you've caused. Got it?"

"Is that really how you want to play this?"

"Oh, love, I think we're way past propriety at this point."

A shiver ran through her — one that made me almost smile. I could feel her pulse racing beneath my fingertips, could feel the way she melted into me despite herself. It almost made this whole mess worth it.

"Now then." I pulled back just far enough to look her in the eye. "let's have some fun, shall we?"

─── ·✧· ───

So, here's the fun story about how I ended up playing beer pong with my arch-nemesis (besides Sukuna, that is) against my future lovely wife and some chemistry nerd who wouldn't shut up about covalent bonds. Not exactly the Saturday night I had in mind.

I mean, here I was, standing next to Naoya — yeah, the same guy whose face I'd rearranged a few months back — trying to aim at red plastic cups while you were absolutely wiping the floor with us. Turns out that whole '10 years of grief training in alcoholism over your dead father' wasn't just a cute phrase you threw around. Who would've thought?

But really, trying to out-drink an opioid addict? That's like challenging a fish to a swimming contest. Except the fish is in heavy withdrawal. So like, with no fin. Not my finest analogy. I blame the alcohol. What was my point again?

Anyway. Most annoying part? This chemistry department kid with these wide, bright eyes wouldn't stop talking to you about molecular structures. And you were actually entertaining him. At a party. About electron transfers. Of all the insufferable things.

"So if you consider the aromatic compounds—" he was saying, and I swear on my medical license, I didn't mean for the ball to hit him. And I definitely didn't mean for it to hit him that hard. Pure accident, really. 

The ball bounced off his shoulder, effectively shutting him up. They both turned to look at me. "Molecular restructuring in organic compounds? Really?" I shrugged. "At a party?"

She shot me that look. You know the one. The classic 'I-can't-believe-I'm-sleeping-with-this-idiot' glare. It's become quite familiar these days.

"Trouble in paradise?" Naoya said beside me, and I briefly considered rearranging his face again. For symmetry's sake, of course.

But then she bent over to pick up the ball, and suddenly organic chemistry was the furthest thing from my mind. I definitely shouldn't have let her leave the house in that skirt. Though knowing her, she probably wore it just to torture me. 

"Getting distracted, Professor?" she said, straightening up with that little smile that never fails to make me want to do wildly inappropriate things to her in very public places. She leaned across the table, deliberately tapping one of our cups with her finger, giving me her most innocent eyes. Because apparently, driving me insane was her new favorite pastime.

"Me?" I lifted the red cup she'd tapped to my lips, taking my sweet time with the drink, my eyes never leaving hers. "Never."

And somewhere in the haze of beer and the way she was looking at me, I tried to remember why the hell we were even here. Oh right—something about stealing keys. Real professional operation we've got going here. The medical board would be so proud. Their star surgeon, reduced to playing beer pong as a distraction tactic. 

Naoya's keys were right there on the table, practically screaming to be grabbed. But between her legs in that skirt and the way she kept biting her lip every time she lined up a shot, I found myself giving fewer and fewer shits about saving my career and more about how quickly I could get her alone. Priorities. I clearly had them. Alcohol might have scrambled them a bit, I guess.

I caught a glimpse of Suguru standing off to the side of the beer pong table. He was pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes darting back and forth between me and her like he was watching the world's most stressful tennis match. I really owed him one for putting up with this shit.

Near the chemistry kid, a girl approached who looked a bit like Higurama's intern—though I wasn't entirely sure. She looked different, wearing makeup and dressed up. But that couldn't be her. She'd avoid places with flashing lights because of her epilepsy. I must be seeing things.

Then Naoya, because clearly this shitshow wasn't enough of a disaster already, decided to "level up the process." He snapped his fingers at a passing bartender, and before I could process what the fuck was happening, there was a tray of perfectly lined up tequila shots on the table. Complete with cinnamon and orange slices, because apparently, we're keeping it classy while trying to get my future wife drunk.

"New rule," Naoya announced, his scarred face pulling into what I can only assume was meant to be a grin. "Next shot I sink, you drink both. Beer and tequila."

I glanced over at her, my gut churning. Not from the alcohol—it'd take a hell of a lot more than this to get me there—but from the way she met Naoya's challenge with a nod. That stubborn tilt of her chin that always meant trouble. My palms started to sweat.

Of course, Naoya's ball dropped perfectly into her cup. Because the universe really does have a sick sense of humor.

Watching her reach for both drinks, I found myself wondering what the medical board would be more pissed about — me playing drinking games with students, screwing one of my students, or the fact that I was seriously considering murder. Again.

Then, by some physics-defying miracle or sheer dumb luck, the chemistry kid actually landed a shot. He looked as shocked as the rest of us when the ball plopped into Naoya's cup. But it was her next shot that really got my attention — perfect arc, clean landing, like she'd been doing this her whole damn life.

"Drink up, Professor," she said, but there was something different in her voice.

She reached for the tequila, and then—fuck me—propped one leg up on a nearby beer crate, the motion making her skirt ride up just enough to flash a strip of skin above her tights. Wait. Those weren't tights. Those were fucking stockings.

My brain short-circuited as I realized she'd been walking around all night in stockings. Actual stockings, with what I knew had to be a garter belt hidden under that criminally short skirt. The same spot where she was now deliberately sprinkling cinnamon.

The sight of that exposed sliver of skin between stocking and skirt made my blood boil. When the hell had she even bought those? Had she worn them just for tonight, knowing they'd make me lose my goddamn mind? Was she trying to get herself killed?

Because right now, watching her purposely dust cinnamon on that band of exposed skin, I wasn't sure if I wanted to murder her or fuck her. Probably both. My mouth went dry, and it had fuck-all to do with the alcohol.

"Well?" She tilted her head, all innocence except for that knowing look in her eyes. "Coming to get your tequila?" 

Like she had to ask twice. Yet I hesitated. With all these people watching? What was she playing at? It was reckless, careless, like she was deliberately trying to expose us. It was power play, a challenge. And I knew, that she knew, that I couldn't resist.

A slow smile spread across my face as I sank to one knee before her, the crowd fading into a blur of noise. All that mattered was her—the way her breath hitched as I gripped her calf, the way she tensed as she realized that I made a whole show for her (poor girl didn’t expect that now, did she?)—the feel of her skin on my tongue.

I took my sweet time with the cinnamon, letting my tongue glide over the exposed strip of flesh, feeling her shiver. My teeth grazed her skin, just enough to draw a soft gasp from her lips. If she wanted a show, I'd give her a show. And part of me wanted to shove that skirt higher, to chase that taste of salt and cinnamon further up her thigh until—

Focus. Fucking focus.

I straightened, stepping into her space. She held an orange slice in one hand, the shot glass in the other, and I couldn't help but notice how her pupils had blown wide, how her chest rose and fell just a little faster than normal.

I plucked the orange from her fingers with my teeth, my lips brushing her skin, then took the shot glass, using the movement to press closer, my mouth right by her ear, "What exactly is your plan here?"

"Create distraction," she breathed back.

God help me, but it was working. I was definitely distracted. Whole damn crowd was distracted. And watching her play this game—watching her play me—was probably the hottest and most infuriating thing I'd ever experienced. And I'm pretty sure everyone could see I was hard too.

"You're distracting the wrong audience," I whispered before knocking back the shot.

In the midst of trying to control my homicidal urges over those goddamn stockings, she caught my eye and subtly jerked her head. I turned, making it look like I was just checking something, and spotted them—Zenin, Okkotsu, and Inumaki hovering on the other side of the table behind Naoya, waiting for their chance. 

Right. The keys. The whole reason we were here. I almost forgot.

The game continued, the tension building with each shot. We were down to the last round — winner takes all. That's when she decided to really test my patience.

"Let's make this more interesting," she announced, her voice carrying over the crowd. "Losers jump in the pool." A pause, then because apparently she was hell-bent on giving me a coronary. "No clothes."

"You wouldn’t dare," Naoya scoffed.

"Try me," she replied. 

I shot her a warning look. She subtly chewed on her bottom lip, meeting my gaze with an unnerving calm, perhaps her way of saying everything's gonna be okay. It did little to ease the knot in my stomach.

One shot left. If she made this, Naoya and I would be stripping down for a midnight dip. If she missed—

I tried not to think about her in that pool. Tried not to think about those stockings getting soaked. Tried not to think about murdering every sorry bastard who might lay eyes on her. Either way, this woman was going to be the death of me. If I didn't kill her first.

Naoya landed his shot, fucking prick. I missed mine for obvious reasons. Chemistry kid missed too, leaving everything on her shoulders. The ball left her hand, arcing through the air in what felt like slow motion. It circled the rim, then rolled away.

The crowd went wild. Naoya's victory smirk made me want to punch his face in. I glanced over at her, wondering for a second if she'd missed on purpose. But there was no time for that.

"Well?" Naoya's voice. "I believe the losers owe us a show."

"The game wasn't exactly fair—" I started, but she cut me off.

"Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted, Naoya?" She turned to him, her words sharp. "To see me undress without having to drug me first?"

The crowd went dead silent. Naoya's scarred face contorted into something ugly. "Watch your mouth, little girl. You're not as untouchable as you think."

"And you're pathetic," she spat back, then turned away from him. "At least I get to choose when I undress, right?”

She started walking toward the pool, each step deliberate, commanding. I followed, caught between pride and sheer terror at what she was about to do. At the edge, she turned back to me.

"Don't," I pleaded, but she was already reaching for the hem of her skirt. It fell, revealing the dark lace of her stockings. Then her top followed, and I stepped closer, trying to shield her from the leering eyes.

"This is insane." But my protest died as she stood there in only black lace, and then I saw them—the bruises from the fire still painted across her waist and ribs. Dark purple and yellow marks that hadn't yet faded, cruel reminder of how close I'd come to losing her.

The sight sobered me instantly. Something twisted in my chest, sharp and painful. The bruises I'd carefully tended to, the ones that still made her wince when I changed her bandages—on full display for this crowd of drunk idiots, turned into a spectacle.

"Please," I begged, my voice barely audible. "Don't do this."

She met my gaze, and for a fleeting moment, I thought I’d reached her. But then that smile—the one that sealed my fate—touched her lips. "Sorry, Professor," she whispered, and then she was gone, falling backward into the pool, taking a piece of me with her.

The splash echoed in my ears like a gunshot, and I was already shrugging off my jacket, ready to either dive in after her or use it to cover her when she surfaced. A cold, hard fury settled in my gut. Naoya was going to pay for this.

The crowd roared as she surfaced, her hair plastered to her face, water tracing the curves of her body beneath the soaked lace. Our eyes met across the distance, me standing at the pool's edge, and I didn’t bother to hide my disappointment. Something flickered across her face—regret maybe, or shame—before she looked away.

Hell broke loose. Bodies crashed into the water, sending waves across the pool. Even Naoya stripped off his shirt and dove in, reveling in the attention. The whole party seemed to shift to the pool in a matter of seconds — clothes flying, drinks splashing, the pristine water turning into a churning mess. 

Perfect distraction.

But I barely registered any of it, my world had narrowed to her. I watched as she climbed out, leaving a trail of wet footprints on the concrete, practically sprinting past me, her gaze fixed on the floor, while water dripped from her hair, her skin, the dark lace clinging to her form.

Behind her, the pool had turned into chaos — exactly what she'd planned, I realized. 

I gathered her clothes from where they'd fallen and followed her inside. I caught a glimpse of Okkotsu's quick movements near the discarded clothes by the pool. 

Well played.

─── ·✧· ───

Her dripping form drew curious eyes as we moved through the foyer. Each step felt like a penance—hers for the recklessness, mine for letting it happen. Heads turned, conversations died, the sudden silence punctuated only by the soft drip, drip, drip of water from her hair.

Kento’s face flashed past, but I barely registered him. No doubt he'd give me shit about it at the university later, like he didn't already know something was up with me and her.

I wrapped my jacket around her shivering shoulders, fighting the desperate urge to reach for the opioids hidden in my pocket. Withdrawal, guilt, and fury burned together in my veins, making me want to crawl out of my own skin. 

I stepped in front of her, partly to block all those eyes on her, partly to hide how bad my hands were shaking. None of it was worth it. Not the keys, not avoiding my parents, none of it. How did we end up here? How did I allow things to get to this point?

Upstairs, she dressed quickly, water still dripping from her hair, leaving damp patches on her clothes.

"Are you cold?" 

"I'm okay," she said, avoiding my gaze. 

She was shaking. I could see the goosebumps on her arms. "You're shivering," I said and reached for her, but she pulled away.

“I’m fine, really.”

Despite her words, I pulled her close. She didn't resist this time, tilting her face up to mine. Her eyes were bright, and for a second, I thought she might cry. The world could have been watching, for all I cared. If those tears fell, it would be my undoing.

And then I thought of everything she'd done, everything she'd had to do—for me. My twenty-four-year-old student, forced to protect me from my own damn parents, to beg for my own money. Because I’d hit a guy who tried to hurt her. Why was it all so fucked up?

The high was long gone, leaving this gaping hole. My limbs felt heavy, detached, like they belonged to a stranger, unable to reach out and fix what I’d broken. And we were so far from where we started.

"You're disappointed," she finally said. She wasn't asking.

"We should leave." Because I couldn't bear to watch her sacrifice one more piece of herself for me.

"You can leave."

Before I could say anything back, Zenin came bursting into our corner, Okkotsu and Inumaki right behind her, her eyes all lit up. "That was fucking insane!" she yelled, waving something around—Naoya's keys. "But it worked! I can't believe it actually—" She stopped short, finally noticing the tension between us.

The win felt empty. Yeah, we got what we came for. But what did it cost? Looking at her, still shivering a little in my jacket, I wasn't so sure it was worth it. I was supposed to protect her. Instead, I just kept watching her throw herself in the fire for me. 

Some professor I was. Some man I was.

Strange how winning can feel so much like losing, especially when you realize you're not the one paying the price.

─── ·✧· ───

I stayed outside Naoya's room, playing lookout. At least that's what I told them. Truth was, I couldn't stand being in there, couldn't bear being near her, watching her fight my battles while I was barely holding myself together.

The itch under my skin had spread, making my whole body crawl with invisible insects while she did the dirty work. Even after everything, she was still trying to save me. 

And I was still letting her.

I slid down the wall, my head hitting the floor. How did we end up here? What the fuck were we doing? What the fuck was I doing?

I'm thirty-five years old, for fuck's sake. Why was I acting like a goddamn teenager? I should've stopped her, shouldn't have let her leave the house to begin with, should've been the adult. But instead, I let it happen, standing by and watching where it led. Again.

This whole situation was insane. We were in too deep, and I knew it. But I couldn't seem to find my way out, couldn't seem to stop this trainwreck we were on. It was like I was watching it all happen from outside my own body, powerless to change course.

What kind of man was I? What kind of professor? I was supposed to be her mentor, her… something more. Instead, I was dragging her down with me.

I thought back to that night, the one that started it all. The night I found her in the lab, working late, hunched over her microscope. She looked up at me with those eyes, those damn eyes that seemed to see right through me. And I was lost. I knew it was wrong. I knew I should have walked away. But I didn't. I couldn't. Drawn in. Consumed.

And now, here we were. Trapped in this fucked-up situation of our own making. I wanted to blame her, to say it was all her fault for being so reckless, so damn stubborn. But I knew that wasn't true. I let this happen. I didn’t stop it. But why? 

I could replay the events in my mind, frame by frame, but the crucial moment, the point where I should have intervened, remained a blur. It was as if some part of me had wanted to see where this ended.

Music still drifted up from downstairs, the bass thumping through the walls. It felt wrong, out of place. Like we were in a different world, a fucked-up one, while everyone else was living their normal, happy lives.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block it all out, trying to pretend, just for a moment, that this wasn't happening. That we weren't here. That everything was okay. But it was happening. And I was in it, and I knew I couldn't hold my breath much longer.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. Kept seeing things in the corners of my vision. Shadows that shouldn't move but did, faces that weren't faces at all. The wallpaper breathed. In and out. In and out. Like a lung.

Stop it. Just stop all of it. Make it stop. But it won't stop, can't stop, because she's in there right now, digging through his things, trying to save me save me save me why won't she just stop trying to save me?

Everything felt wrong, sick, twisted. Too bright and too dark all at once. My skin didn't fit right anymore. Nothing fit right anymore. God, I needed a goddamn fix.

A cough. I pressed my hand against my mouth. When I pulled it away, my palm was red. 

Huh. That's new. 

I stared at the blood, watching it pool in the lines of my hand. It looked wrong somehow, too dark, too thick. The longer I stared, the more it seemed to move strangely, crawling along the creases of my palm.

Was blood supposed to move like that? Like it was alive? Like it was trying to tell me something? I couldn't remember anymore. I couldn't remember a lot of things lately. The blood kept moving, kept spreading. 

Maybe this was it—maybe I was finally losing whatever scraps of sanity I had left, sitting here on a dirty floor watching my own blood drip down my palm.

A part of me wondered if he'd been right all along, that I was becoming him, the very thing I’d always feared. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to be better, different. Not this—huddled on a filthy floor at a college party, watching my blood move as if in psychosis, while she risked everything for me. Again. 

The door handle turned. Shit. I wiped my palm against the dark carpet, smearing the blood into the fibers where it vanished like it was never there. I scrambled to my feet just as they emerged. She moved quickly, shoving something beneath the waistband of her skirt. Before I could speak, she grabbed my arm.

"Let's leave." There was something like panic in her voice. "I'll tell you outside."

I gripped her hand, my own pulse quickening, and we went downstairs and pushed through the mass of drunk students. But then the music cut abruptly, plunging us into a moment of strange silence before panicked voices filled the void. 

"What the hell—?" Okkotsu’s shout cut through the din from behind us.

Then I saw the flashing lights—red and blue strobing through the windows. Fuck. 

"Cops!" Someone shouted, and the whole house erupted into chaos as people scrambled in every direction.

"Everyone freeze!" A voice boomed through the foyer. "Nobody moves!"

We reached the entrance as two officers shouldered their way through the front door. The bigger one looked like he benched trucks for fun, taking up almost the entire doorframe as he planted himself there.

"Listen up!" he bellowed, one meaty hand resting on his belt. "Party's over. Nobody leaves until we check IDs."

Perfect. Just fucking perfect.

I felt her tense beside me, those things hidden in her waistband might as well have been burning her skin. I could practically feel her panic.

"Look, officers." I stepped forward, forcing my voice into something professional. "There seems to be some confusion—"

"No confusion here," Truck-Bencher cut me off, the scar on his lip twisting as he frowned. "Got noise complaints, reports of underage drinking. Everyone stays put."

"I'm faculty at the university. These are my students and they're all over twenty-one. You're wasting everyone's time—"

"Nobody leaves until we say so."

"You really want to process IDs for over two hundred students?"

"You telling me how to do my job?" He shifted closer, chest puffed out despite me having two inches on him.

Withdrawal crawled beneath my skin like insects, each bite feeding the rage that built vertebra by vertebra up my spine. "Depends. Are you actually doing it, or just power tripping?"

"Back the fuck up." His hand dropped to his belt. "Last chance."

I felt her fingers digging into my arm, trying to pull me back. But the rage was a living thing now, burning away anything resembling sense or restraint. "Or what?"

The punch came fast. I dropped, and heard the sickening crack of bone against flesh—not mine. Some poor student next to me. For a heartbeat, everything stopped. Then chaos.

Bodies everywhere. Screaming. Shoving. Radio static cutting through the roar. Her hand in mine as we pushed through the surge. Her friends somewhere behind. Everything blurred. I can't remember when she let go of my hand.

I just remember the scream. Different from the others. Then her voice, "Get her on the ground!" I shoved through the mass of bodies. Saw the girl on the floor. Ice flooded my veins.

I knew that face. Higurama's intern. My patient. My responsibility.

I dropped beside her, my hands shaking so violently I could barely feel them. Her eyes rolled back. Withdrawal made everything too sharp, too bright. I couldn't think. Couldn't—

Satoru. Satoru. Satoru. Satoru. Satoru. Satoru. It was her voice. Fingers gripped my arm. "Satoru, look at me." I met her eyes. Steady. Unnerving. "Focus."

Everything snapped back into place. My phone was in my hand before I realized I'd moved. "This is Dr. Gojo from Jujutsu Medical. Twenty-six-year-old female, epileptic, pre-seizure presentation. We need immediate assistance."

My voice was mechanical, professional. Inside, my mind screamed. Why was she here? Had she been drinking? Were her meds interacting with something? I should know this. Should be better than this. Should be fucking better. 

Nausea rose in my throat and I'd never felt more like a failure in my entire fucking life.

Behind us, the fight continued to rage. A man’s voice bellowed, trying to restore order. Then Suguru was there, kneeling beside her, his hands gentle as he cradled her head. He murmured something, soft and low. The tenderness in his movements caught me off guard. 

"The ambulance is taking too long." His voice cut through everything. Before I could process it, he had her in his arms, head protected against his chest and moved.

─── ·✧· ───

I can't remember how we got to the hospital.

Everything blurred into fragments. Flashing lights, squealing tires, the weight of everything crushing my chest. Each breath scraped like broken glass. My hands wouldn't stop shaking until I swallowed three pills. Maybe four. I lost count.

The fluorescent lights overhead were too bright, too harsh, making my skull feel like it was splitting open. I wanted to crack my head against the wall.

Some part of me was still moving, still speaking in that detached doctor voice — rattling off medical history, medications, possible interactions. Years of training overriding the screaming in my head. But they never trained us for this.

Never trained us for how guilt tastes like acid in your throat while watching your mistakes breathe shallowly on starched white sheets.

They taught us to make clean incisions, to suture arteries, to restart hearts. But not how your own heart would seize when you recognize the face on the floor. Not how your girlfriend’s hands would be steadier than your own worthless trembling ones as you fumbled for your phone, your throat closing around the words "this is my fault", "please" and "I'm sorry."

Didn’t prepare us for withdrawal turning your hands into treacherous strangers while someone seized at your feet. For the shame that festers in your gut as you come down, struggling to remember basic fucking dosages through the need scorching through your veins.

They never warned us how love would carve you open worse than any scalpel, making you both butcher and victim, instrument and incision. Never warned us about loving someone while you’re falling apart. How it feels like drowning in open air, your chest cracked wide and your beating heart wrenched out into daylight, desperate and terrified and somehow still pumping, still fighting, still so fucking afraid.

Higurama's intern lay still now, the steady drip of the IV marking time like a metronome in the silence. I watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest, my mind replaying the medications, the dosages, searching for the mistake I must have made. There had to be one. There was always one.

Perhaps he was right about me after all. Funny how even now, even here, I could still hear his voice so clearly.

"You okay?"

She sat across from me, swallowed by my spare clothes—an old t-shirt and sweatpants that draped loosely on her frame, a blanket draped over her legs. Anything was better than those clothes from before, those fucking stockings I'd personally thrown in the trash.

"Satoru?" she tried again. "You okay?"

I couldn't bring myself to answer.

"Talk me through her meds again," she said, resting her head in her palm. Her eyes, piercing and unwavering, never left my face as she waited.

I rubbed my temples, trying to focus through the exhaustion. "Standard anticonvulsants. Levetiracetam, 500mg twice daily. Added phenytoin after the first seizure." I fell back into my chair, scrubbing my hand over my face. "She couldn't tolerate the Levetiracetam, so I switched to Topiramate, 500mg thrice daily."

She was quiet for a moment. "Side effects?"

"Minor. Tremor in her extremities sometimes, but nothing she couldn't handle. It was working." I paused. "It was supposed to be working."

"EEG results?"

"Showed mild abnormalities. Nothing that would explain a seizure this severe." I scrubbed at my face again, harder this time. "I should have seen it. Should have caught something."

"Satoru." Her voice held that gentle firmness I knew so well. "You did everything right."

"Then why did she seize?" I stood abruptly, the chair screeching against linoleum. I turned away, unable to bear her gentle gaze. Outside, dawn was breaking in shades of grey. No color, no warmth, just an endless stretch of concrete and clouded sky bleeding into each other. "If I did everything right, why is she lying here?"

"Because sometimes that's just how it goes. You know this better than anyone," she said. "Medicine isn't perfect. Neither are we."

My reflection stared back at me, ghostly and distorted in the glass. Dark circles, stubble, hair a fucking mess. A doctor coming down from a high while his patient lay in a hospital bed.

"I should have increased the dosage earlier. Run more tests. I should have—"

"Seen the future?"

"I should have been better."

"You are already the best," she said, but it felt like a lie to me. "But even the best can't control everything."

Higurama's intern stirred slightly in her sleep, and we both fell silent, the moment stretching taut between us. I dragged myself back to the chair, sinking down with my face in my hands.

"You didn't do anything wrong," she whispered, leaning forward to brush a stray strand of hair from the girl's forehead. "Sometimes life just happens, and all we can do is be there to pick up the pieces."

I wanted to believe her. God, how I wanted to. But the truth sat like stones in my stomach.

"I hate this," I whispered.

"I know."

Silence.

"Do you blame yourself?" she asked quietly.

"How can I not?"

Because it's stupid, you know this. I could feel them in my bones, the words forming on her lips before she could speak them. "How did that ever change anything?" I said before she could start.

She leaned back, the chair creaking slightly. "Do you think we are terrible people?" she asked, her voice so soft I almost missed it.

I turned to look at her then, really look at her. Even exhausted and worried, wearing my old clothes, she was still the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Like a drug I couldn't quit, a high I'd chase until it killed me. 

And what did that say about either of us? That I wanted to crack her open, crawl inside her skin and nestle myself in her marrow? Wanted to consume her, devour her, until there was nothing left but the two of us, fused together in the most depraved way possible?

It was as if we were always meant to find each other. But it was a penance, for both of us.

"I think I am what I am because of you," I finally said.

And it was the truth. She'd molded me, shaped me, just as I'd shaped her. We'd ruined each other for anyone else, stripped away the innocence and left only the filth and grit behind.

Her hand fell from her face, her eyes meeting mine. "And I am what I am because of you."

"Does that scare you?"

"I think one gets used to it."

"Yeah," I said finally, my voice rough. "I guess you do get used to it. Until you don't."

She frowned, but before she could voice something, Suguru stepped inside. 

He said we should leave, and maybe that was for the better anyway, though I couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was an edge to his voice. Anger, perhaps. But I couldn't blame him. Not really.

I grabbed her things, my hand finding its familiar place at the small of her back as we headed for the door. Suguru's voice followed us down the corridor. "What did you find in Zenin's room anyway?" he asked, as if it were something to be discussed in the doorway.

I walked ahead.

I didn't need to hear again about the unconscious women on the Polaroids. 

─── ·✧· ───

Too quiet.

He was never this quiet.

"How bad is it?" I asked, perched on the edge of the exam bed where the paper sheet betrayed every nervous shift of my weight with stupid crinkles. Pale morning light filtered through the blinds, casting thin stripes across the linoleum floor.

I'd coughed up blood again earlier this morning. More than last night. The metallic taste had filled my mouth before I even opened my eyes. I'd stumbled to the bathroom, careful not to wake her—she needed the rest after we spent the whole damn night at the police station.

I stared at the red running down the drain. Way more than there should be. I'd blamed it on stress and alcohol last time. But now? It meant my liver was probably failing faster than I'd thought. Coagulation system breaking down, blood vessels becoming fragile. Textbook end-stage.

I called him then. He was still at the hospital, had slept there while looking after Higurama's intern. His face had gone pale when he saw me walk in. Guess I looked as bad as I felt.

We ran tests. All of them. Blood work, chest X-rays, the works. And now here we are. I watched him reading what I assumed was my death sentence, waiting for him to finally look up, while the clock on the wall ticked away the seconds.

But he kept his eyes fixed on the test results, holding himself with the careful rigidity of someone handling explosives. Another bad sign.

"Suguru."

He exhaled slowly, finally meeting my gaze with eyes that said everything before his mouth could form the words. "You should have started treatment sooner. We talked about this months ago."

"Yeah, yeah, I know." I tried to wave off his concern. "What do the results say?"

His fingers tightened on the papers until the corners creased. "Your liver enzymes are through the roof. AST over 1000, ALT even higher. Bilirubin's climbing while albumin's dropping. Your PT/INR values—" He trailed off, shaking his head. "Your liver is failing, Satoru. Not just damaged anymore—failing."

I let the clinical terms wash over me. The doctor in me understood the implications perfectly. The addict in me wanted to laugh at the irony.

"Well," I said, forcing lightness into my tone, "guess I should have listened to you sooner, huh?"

Suguru's expression hardened. "This isn't a joke. Without immediate intervention—" He caught himself, but I could read the rest in his eyes as clearly as any lab report.

Without immediate intervention, I was dying. Fitting, really. That my body would choose to betray me just when I'd finally found something worth living for.

"How's the withdrawal going?" Suguru asked, setting down the test results.

"Managing." I ran a hand through my hair, trying to ignore how even that simple movement felt like too much effort. "Reduced the hydromorphone gradually. Down to about 5mg now."

"Satoru." His voice carried that familiar note of frustration, the one I'd heard a thousand times before. "You need to stop completely. Not reduce—stop. Your liver can't handle any more strain."

"I'm trying," I snapped, then immediately regretted the harshness. "Sorry. I know you're trying to help."

Suguru pulled up a chair, sitting down with a heavy sigh. "We need to start treatment immediately. The protocol won't be pleasant—high-dose corticosteroids, immunosuppressants, possibly plasmapheresis if things get worse."

"Sounds fun."

"It'll be brutal," he continued, ignoring my sarcasm. "The side effects alone—you'll need to be monitored constantly. Multiple blood draws daily, frequent imaging. And absolutely no narcotics—your liver won't survive it."

I absorbed this, the clinical reality of what lay ahead settling into my bones. "So basically, I get to feel like shit while you stick me with needles and watch me suffer."

"That's about right. But it's either that or start planning your funeral."

"At least you're honest." I attempted a smile that felt more like a grimace. "When do we start?"

"Tomorrow morning. I'll admit you tonight, get you set up in a private room," Suguru said, already reaching for admission forms.

"Monday morning."

He looked up sharply. "What?"

"I have a family dinner on Sunday," I shrugged. "Can't skip it."

"Are you insane?" Suguru's voice rose to fill the small room. "Your liver is failing, Satoru. This isn't something you can postpone for a damn dinner party."

"Monday morning," I repeated firmly. "I gave my word I'd be there."

"Your word won't mean much if you're dead."

"I can manage two more days."

"No, you can't." Suguru slammed the test results down with enough force to make me flinch. Since when is he always so fucking tense? "Your numbers are critical. Every hour we delay treatment increases the risk of complete liver failure."

"Monday."

"For fuck's sake, Satoru—"

"I said Monday. I need to do this, Suguru. Please."

He stared at me for a long moment, jaw clenched so tight I could hear his teeth grinding. Finally, his shoulders slumped.

"Fine. Monday morning, first thing. But if you show any signs of deterioration—any at all—I'm admitting you immediately. And no alcohol at that dinner. Not a single drop."

"Deal."

"I mean it, Satoru."

"I know," I said, trying to inject some levity into the heavy atmosphere. "You can do all sorts of things to me on Monday. Not like I have much on my schedule anyway."

"So Yaga has exempted you?"

"Temporarily relieved of my teaching duties until further notice." I tried to keep my voice light, but the words still choked me. "Apparently, licking your student's leg in public view isn't considered acceptable behavior. Who knew?"

"Everyone would have known that."

"Most people were too drunk to remember anyway, or too busy dealing with the police raid afterwards to care." I shrugged. "Silver lining?"

"This isn't funny. Do you have any idea how serious this is? Your career—"

"My career?" I almost laughed. "In case you missed the memo, my liver's failing. I think my career concerns just got bumped down the priority list."

Suguru fell silent.

"Besides," I added, "maybe it's for the best. Can't exactly teach while going through treatment, can I?"

"Yaga doesn't know about your condition?"

"No, and he's not going to. As far as he's concerned, I'm just taking some time to... reassess my professional boundaries."

"And when he asks why you're not fighting this?"

I sighed. "Let him think what he wants. I've got bigger problems right now."

"Like a family dinner you're insisting on attending despite being on death's door?"

"Exactly." I flashed him a grin, this one a little more genuine despite everything. "See? You're getting it."

"You're impossible."

"That's why you love me."

"That's why I'm going to enjoy sticking you with needles on Monday."

"Kinky."

His expression sobered, eyes searching my face. "You should tell her."

The mere mention of her sent a knife twisting in my gut. "No."

"Satoru—"

"I said no. She has enough to deal with right now. This stays between us."

Suguru shook his head but didn't argue further. He knew me too well to waste his breath.

"I will," I added softly, more to convince myself than him. "When I'm a bit better."

"This will kill her."

"I know."

Silence.

"I'm sorry," I finally managed. "For being an asshole. For everything. And... thanks for coming to the party with me."

"You already apologized."

"I mean it." I met his gaze. "You've always been there, even when I didn't deserve it."

Something shifted in his expression—a flicker of the friendship we'd shared before everything got so complicated. Before I'd dragged us both into this mess.

"Just don't die on me," he said. "I've invested too much time in keeping your stupid ass alive."

I pushed off the bed, steadying myself against the sudden dizziness that threatened to knock me over. "See you Monday."

"You're a stubborn idiot," he called after me. I didn't disagree. 

I stopped at the door, turning back. "Hey, what's going on between you and Higurama's intern anyway?"

Suguru stiffened slightly. "Nothing. Just concerned since she's my patient now too."

I studied him, noting the subtle tension in his shoulders, the way his gaze shifted slightly left—his tell when he wasn't being entirely truthful.

"Sure," I said, too exhausted to push it further. "See you Monday."

As I walked away, I wondered if he knew how obvious he was. Then again, who was I to judge? I was hardly an expert at handling matters of the heart.

─── ·✧· ───

I paused outside our apartment door, my hand trembling on the handle. Withdrawal clawed through me, a living thing twisting my gut. Each breath was a struggle, my lungs constricting as if they'd forgotten their purpose. Just breathe, idiot. In, out. You're almost there.

Relief flooded through me the moment I opened the door. Her shoes were there, neatly arranged next to my scattered ones. Her coat on the hook. She was home.

Strange how that simple fact could lift the weight crushing my chest, made breathing a fraction less painful. No matter how bad things were, coming home to her felt like breaking the surface after being underwater too long.

Dog bounded up to greet me, tail whipping back and forth, before darting off toward the bedroom. Smart boy knew exactly where to find her. I kicked off my shoes, let my jacket fall where it would, and followed.

She was there, sprawled across our bed in a sea of papers, bathed in the warm light of the bedside lamp. The sight of her stole what little breath I had left. Hair messily pulled back, drowning in one of my old t-shirts, completely lost in whatever she was reading. Beautiful. It was a beauty that made my heart ache.

Without a word, I crawled onto the bed, dragging myself up until I could rest my head on her stomach. I paused, remembering the bruises on her midsection. But before I could pull back, she gently tugged me closer and I surrendered, resting my head against her warmth. 

I wrapped my arms around her waist and her fingers found my hair instantly, like they belonged there, gentle strokes that made my eyes flutter closed and I thought, this was home. This was peace. Even as my body screamed for relief, even as guilt gnawed at me, here with her, I could almost believe everything would be okay.

"What are you reading?" I mumbled against her shirt, already knowing the answer. Why did she still throw herself into this project? Did it even matter anymore? But I already knew that answer too. Distraction.

"Research papers. For our project." Her fingers never stopped their magic. "Everything okay at the hospital?" I wondered for a second how she knew where I went, but then she said, "Antiseptic smell."

Did I always smell like that? Like the harsh, sterile scent of the hospital? I hated it. Hated how it seemed to cling to my skin no matter how many times I scrubbed my hands raw. Hated the way it reminded me of sickness and death.

I hugged her tighter, breathing in her familiar scent as that was so unlike the clinical smell of the hospital as I crafted the lie. Yeah, everything's fine, I told her. Had to check on something with a patient. Normal stuff, nothing to worry about. Standard procedure.

But even as I spoke, the guilt in my stomach twisted. The truth was, I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep going like this. I could feel myself slipping, losing my grip on the things that mattered most and I couldn't help but wonder if I'd even make it to the end.

If I'd be there to witness the results of our research, to stand by her side as we perhaps do something great. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to drown out the intrusive thoughts, focusing on the feel of her beneath me, the steady rise and fall of her breath.

Her fingers paused momentarily in my hair, and I knew she sensed something off. She always could read me too well. But then she resumed the gentle stroking.

"You'd tell me if something's wrong, right?"

"Of course," I whispered, another lie to add to the growing pile.

I tightened my arms around her waist, as if by holding her close enough, I could somehow make up for my betrayal. As if loving her fiercely enough could somehow balance out the pain I was about to cause her. Monday felt both too far away and not nearly far enough.

Desperate for a distraction, I asked about how it went at the police station. She said it was fine, her friends were with her as they'd needed to clarify their statements, she explained, her fingers still weaving through my hair. Everything had been too hazy right after the party.

She mentioned they needed me to verify my own statement again too. I bit back the urge to say that they'd likely have to come to my hospital bed for that. Instead, I just hummed in response. Whatever it took to make that little shit pay for what he'd done.

"He won't hurt anyone else," she added. "We'll make sure of it."

Something about her struck me as odd. How could she be so unaffected by everything that had happened? Like we didn’t just discover that Zenin Naoya was—

"You're so calm about it." 

"And what would you have me do?"

I didn’t know. Maybe I should be grateful that at least one of us could keep it together. 

I turned my head, pressing a kiss to her palm. I wanted to tell her how proud I was of her, how sorry I was for dragging her into this mess, how I feared the rumors that would follow her through university halls. How fucking terrified I was. How much I loved her. But it all just crowded in my throat, tangled with all the other truths I couldn't voice.

Instead, I just held her tighter. "I'm sorry," I whispered.

"For what?"

I didn't answer. Couldn't answer. Or lie again. I clung to her, as if she were the only thing keeping me from falling apart, pressing my face into her stomach, trying to blur myself into her very being. "Satoru,” she winced, a small sound escaping her lips. "You're hurting me."

"Please," I pleaded, tears pricking at my eyes. “Just… bear it for a moment. Please.” But then, a sudden tickle rose in my throat, and I sat up abruptly, he movement sending the room spinning.

"You okay?" she asked, sitting up as well, her hand cradling her side.

"Yeah," I managed, before another cough clawed its way out. I stood, turning away from her, my hand coming up to cover my mouth. When I pulled it away, blood glistened on my palm.

"Satoru? You sure you're okay?"

"Everything's fine." I curled my fingers into a fist, watching red seep between my knuckles. "Just need some water."

I should call him again. Should probably head to the hospital right now. Every logical part of my brain screamed at me to seek help, to stop this madness before it was too late. 

But Sunday's dinner loomed in my mind. One last chance to fix things with her, to make things right before everything inevitably crumbled around us. Just two more days. I just needed to hold on for two more days and then I could let the chips fall where they may.

Even as blood painted the back of my throat red, I clung to that desperate hope, that foolish notion that I could make this right. I knew I was being stupid. Reckless. Playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. 

But then again, what did it matter anyway?

<- prev chapter | next chapter ->

author's note — welcome back, i hope this wasn't too intense, even tho i went through all stages of grief writing this chapter, but i'm quite happy with how it turned out. hope you all survived seeing things through satoru's eyes once more. writing from his perspective is always both challenging and thrilling in some strange way.

quick note, as this is somehow not obvious to some people: i understand that this story deals with controversial topics and might not be everyone’s cup of tea but this is purely fictional work, and i'm just here to enjoy a stupid little hobby. i am not looking for criticism. if the story makes you uncomfortable, feel free to block me and move on.

for those following the spin-off: yes, this chapter runs parallel to remedies and reasons chapter 04 ! if you want to see how certain events played out from a different angle, definitely check out the suguru spin-off.

and i want to thank you all for your incredible support. your comments, messages, and theories continue to blow me away. seeing how deeply you connect with this story and catch all the little details i sprinkle throughout brings me so much joy. your thoughtful analyses and wild speculations make writing this stupid story so much fun !! :''))

also a massive thank you to @/nanamis-baker who beta reads all these chaotic chapters, listens to my rambling about plot points, and talks me down whenever i'm convinced everything i write is terrible <3

& second quick note about the alcohol consumption in this story: while it's serve the narrative of the story, please remember that alcohol is toxic to the body and brain, with no "safe" amount. please be mindful of your health and wellbeing.

next chapter we'll be back to our regular pov as we deal with the aftermath of... well, all of this. until then, take care of yourselves ! and as always, thank you for joining me on this chaotic journey and being patient with my slow updates <3

ps: if you want to get notifications for future updates, you can join my taglist here !

tags — @browrm @panteramarron @starlightanyaaa

@myahfig4 @rosebluod @bloopsstuff @depressedemosantaclaus @nanamis-baker

@tofumiao @shoruio @s3vtrue @rosso-seta @bnha-free-writing

@chiyokoemilia @bonequinhagojo @janbannan @mikkmmmii @yeiena

@coeqi @faustina @glenkiller338 @yenmrtnz @buni-bunnydoll

© lostfracturess. do not repost, translate, or copy my work.

[transgendz]

I live with two roommates, one of whom has cancer and an appt with a surgeon today, and the other one and I have been too sick to leave the house for about a week now. Covid tests have been negative. Ig it's the flu, but also our tests are old and getting seen by a Dr is out of budget rn so who knows.

I messed up and paid my storage bill when I needed to pay my phone bill first, the storage could've waited but now I am $100 short on a very urgent phone bill, made more urgent by the fact that I need my line available for surgery related calls soon.

Dm me for proof or details. Anything extra received will go to maintaining the current nightmare. More details on our situation below the cut.

V--$C--kofi

$0/$100

My roommate has to fly across the country and back this past month for treatment she was denied here, and she's only back now because her surgery got denied by insurance up there. She's getting surgery here, and maybe needing to go back up there after, we domt know yet.

We were all immunocompromised to start with, so this whole cancer and also getting sick thing is really bad and had been terrible timing. It feels like it happened as I started to make more money and get us stable. It's been right back to just barely getting by and I am very much at my fucking limit.

Neither of my roommates are able to work right now, my job has been slow just really horribly slow all through the holidays. And I've not been able to work this week because I've been too sick to do quality work, which Will get me fired, whereas time off Won't but doesn't pay. The only reason we have been eating is because of someone bringing by food consistently in appreciation of some community work I've been doing for them that got more complicated than anticipated.

[katakaluptastrophy]

Masterpost of TLT metas

This is mostly for my own reference, as tagging doesn't seem to guarantee something being findable on Tumblr...but if you like wildly overthinking lesbian necromancers in space, enjoy!

Overthinking the Fifth House:

What is a "Speaker to the Dead"?

Actually, Magnus Quinn isn't terrible at sword fighting

Imperial complicity: Abigail the First

Pyschopomp: Abigail Pent and Hecate

Did Teacher conspire with Cytherea to kill the Fifth?

What does the Fifth House actually do?

The Fourth and the Fifth can never just be family

Cytherea's political observations at the anniversary dinner

Abigail Pent's affect: ghosts and autism

Were the Fourth wards of the Fifth?

Abigail probably knew most of the scions as children

Magnus Quinn's very understandable anger

Fifth House necromancy is not neat and tidy

Are Abigail and Magnus an exception to the exploitative nature of cavaliership?

"Abigail Pent literally brought her husband and look where that got her" (the Fifth in TUG)

The Fifth's relationship dynamic

The Fifth's relationship is unconventional in a number of ways

The queer-coding of Abigail and Magnus' relationship

Abigail and Palamedes, and knowing in the River

Was Isaac the ward of the Fifth?

Did Magnus manage to draw his sword before Cytherea killed him? (and why he probably had to watch his wife die)

How did Abigail know she was murdered by a Lyctor?

Fifth House necromancy is straight out of the Odyssey

The politics of the anniversary dinner

Was Magnus born outside of the Dominicus system?

Overthinking John Gaius:

The one time John was happy was playing Jesus

Is Alecto's body made from John's?

Are there atheists in the Nine Houses?

Why isn't John's daughter a necromancer?

The horrors of love go both ways: why John could have asked Alecto 'what have you done to me?'

Why M- may have really hoped John was on drugs

What is it with guys called Jo(h)n and getting disintegrated? (John and Dr Manhattan)

John's conference call with his CIA handlers

Watching your friend turn into an eldritch horror

Why does G1deon look so weird? (Jod regrew him from an arm)

When is a friendship bracelet not a friendship bracelet?

Why did John have G1deon hunt Harrow? (with bonus update)

The 'indelible' sin of Lyctorhood and John's shoddy plagiarism of Catholicism

Are John Gaius and Abigail Pent so different?

What was Jod's plan at Canaan House?

John and Ianthe tread the Eightfold path

The Mithraeum is more than a joke about cows

When was John Gaius born? (And another)

John Gaius and the tragic Orestes

John and Jesus writing sins in the sand

John and Nona's echoing chapters

John's motivations

Overthinking the Nine Houses:

'No retainers, no attendants, no domestics'

Funerary customs and the violence of John's silence

Juno Zeta and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time

The horror of the River bubble

Every instance of 'is this how it happens' in HTN

Feudalism is still shitty even if you make it queer and sex positive

How do stele work?

Thought crime in the Nine Houses

The Houses have a population the size of Canada

What must it be like to fight the Houses?

You know what can't have been fun? Merv wing's megatruck on Varun day...

Augustine's very Catholic hobby (decorating skeletons)

Necromancers are not thin in a conventionally attractive way

Matching the Houses with the planets of the solar system

Why don't the Nine Houses have (consistent) vaccination or varifocals?

How would the Houses react to the deaths at Canaan House?

How does Wake understand her own name (languages over 10,000 years)

What pre-resurrection texts are known in the Houses?

Camilla and Palamedes very Platonic relationship

The horrors the Cohort found at Canaan House

Do the Houses understand the tech keeping them alive?

Overthinking House religion:

What do the Houses believe about death?

Was M's nun a Franciscan?

Cavaliership and arbitrary socio-religious structures

Ritual scarification

Sacraments and sacramentals

What did Silas think god wanted at Canaan House?

In defense of Silas

There's no such thing as a 'good' necro/cav relationship

Veiling and shaving in Ninth House cult practice

Tongue-in-cheek thoughts on Eighth and Sixth religion

A very long deep-dive on House belief and practice

Overthinking Harrowhark Nonagesimus:

'The meat of your meat...belonged to god' and 'that is how meat loves meat'

The horror of parental touch: Harrow, John Gaius, and Abigail Pent

Why is Harrow so obsessed with Abigail's hands?

Frontline Titties of the Fifth and transgressive necro/cav relationships

Harrow, Wake, and permeability of the soul in HTN

Bible studies for weird queer necromancers:

Epiphany: revealing god's child to the wider world

The Holy Innocents and the creche massacre

The Virgin Mary and Commander Wake

John Gaius and John the Baptist

Instantiating the Trinity and the Second Resurrection

What's the significance of Paul?

St Paul's theology of gender and sexuality and the House theology of cavaliership

Maundy Thursday: consuming another for eternal life

Harrow and the Harrowing of Hell

[hometoursandotherstuff]

The last time I posted a cave house blasted thru a mountainside, it was ugly, unfinished, and expensive. This 2004 build in Festus, MO is modern, pretty nice, and only $282,500 for the 3bd, 1.5ba, 8,000 sq ft, (it's big!) single family home. It hasn't sold and has been removed from the market. Apparently, it was re-opened as an Airbnb and a venue called "Caveland" in Feb. 2024 but it failed.

And, this is what it originally looked like when it was a roller skating rink and the current owner bought it.

He put on the new facade and turned it into a home for the Airbnb part. It even has a 2nd fl. terrace.

And, look at how it lights up, too. This is a cool home for the price. Really.

The back chamber of the cave holds a 200-foot-long concrete rink surface. During the rink’s heyday, there were wooden guard rails along the walls and a stage at the far end, against the back wall of the cave. The stage is still there.

So, then they tried to sell it as a home. It's actually not bad for the price.

They decorated it for Xmas b/c they had a Xmas party and a raffle- the winner won a weekend stay in the house.

From the main living area on the first floor you can see the mezzanine.

It looks beautiful like this. They should re-list it with these photos and it might just sell.

I'd buy it.

This is cool- you can see the dynamite lines where they blasted the cave open.

The photographer took terrible photos, though.

I guess this is supposed to be the primary bedroom and ensuite.

One of the other bedrooms. These photos are much better.

Somewhere up on the mezzanine?

Those old listing photos are horrible. They have to go. This is lovely.

This is where the 8,000 sq ft come in. It's the now-defunct Caveland. All the furniture and equipment are piled up and stored here.

How Caveland looked- the food court is still here. And, you can see the unused vending machines and equipment in the above photo.

Look at this, though. They opened it for a Xmas celebration for family and friends.

They decorated it for the party.

There's the stage.

Tons of space.

2.91 acres.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/215-Cave-Dr-Festus-MO-63028/89064538_zpid/

[tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors]

you mentioned in the tags of that burnout post that its been 6 years and you still havent gotten to everything you wanted to in laoft, just out of curiosity are there any fics youve had in mind since the beginning/early on that youre still planning on writing but havent yet?

mostly prequels ive referenced but never gotten around to actually writing

the time as young teens/middle schoolers roman fell out of tree, hit his head and lost consciousness and logan had a week-long catastrophic meltdown about it (this is titled 'logan and the terrible horrible no good very bad week' in my documents)

a fic about very early LAMP dealing with/talking out romans habit of agreeing to or initiating things he doesnt actually want to do in order to protect himself from anything he perceives as them being mad at him

midquel during what you choose to put in the ground, were patton and logan discuss roman the day after meeting him and whether or not theyre going to try and be his friend

Virgil misunderstanding a human cultural thing because of movies/tv and assuming its like, Legally Required Of Him to ask permission of LMPs parents to marry them, so he goes to shelley first sweating bullets and shelleys like 'oh sweetheart' and we get a little bonding moment for them

more companions to Wit where i show all of the lamp combos moment of Realization when they fall in love

silly tea leaf reading fic that been languishing 3 sentences long for like 5 years

may and night!roman the first time she teaches him magic

logans flower shop opening

death threat jar.... TWO

gc goes camping

may and roman visiting abby's grave when he's a kid (9-10) and him feeling conflicted about it because he doesnt remember her/worrying he doesnt love her 'enough'

a more bittersweet companion to Requiem with Linda and Remus and their families

i really want to do more guidebook entries but i got a new computer and lost my copy of clipstudio and cant figure out how to get it back XD so i have to wait until i figure that out or buy a new copy

May + virgil hurt/comfort reminiscing about Greta and Trudi.

Dot and Larry romance fic featuring alternating cheerleader and heckler abby

analogical word association games (analogical because logan has a ginormous vocabulay and virgil is hundreds of years old, so the goal winds up being trying to say a word the other doesnt know or doesnt know enough words to play off of)

We've had badass protective LAM but i have one for Patton thats languishing as well

Virgil stumbling up on the Gage's hunting blind, which used to be Greta and Toby's house and is now derelict

fae specific idioms vs wickhills specific idioms

fire poker drama with roman and dot - he finds out about it and is uuuuuh. unhappy, to say the least

roman doing knot/weaving/braiding magic like his mom on his and linda's hair

a day in the life of dr. emile picani the only psychotherapist in a town full of magically traumatized people only he is qualified to treat (AKA So Much Pressure)

Dot and Larry with a very young Logan realizing that they have a child who physically can't lie and that it would therefore be extremely easy for them to violate his boundaries and privacy without even meaning to, and them talking about how to handle that

theres other stuff in the someday file, but these are the once ive had from or almost from the start

[darkcollectornerd]

Poll: Your favourite of these dark UK comedy shows?

I would have included Snuff Box too. But as we know only 12 choices are allowed. 😔

[velvetjune]

replayed The Lake House dlc, so more of my thoughts under spoilers! (This is long)

I cannot believe how many things I missed during the first run of this game:

1. The whiteboard of the AI Alan Wake manuscript pages produced with evaluations. One repeating the word “scream” for half of a page gets praise for its wording and tone. “Pistol looked at flashlight in shock.” It must’ve been so much fun for the writers to make up all of these.

2. Jules Marmont has extra footage directly after the Dr. Darling video on the second floor if you go back. I don’t know what exactly triggers this video, but it was when I was doubling back to get the black rock weapon.

3. The research archives appear normally from above, then shift multiple times, before returning to normal (… as normal as the shelves infinitely repeating is). This happened in the first playthrough, but I was stressed over my survival and never noticed.

4. The research archives actually go through areas with different mediums/classifications. There’s tagged artifacts/photos, tapes, film, books, and it ends with paintings. It’s nothing mind bending, but the detail was nice to see.

5. Diana’s tape on the tortured artist and human experimentation. This, with Jules’ video, only added to their monstrosity.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Black Rock Launcher is used in a similar way in FBC Firebreak. It wouldn’t be the same, but this felt so much like a set up for the kind of strange and innovative tools that FBC employees experiment with, especially when trapped in a lockdown at the Oldest House with access to Black Rock Quarry. Maybe Emily can finally make her black rock knives!

It’s hard to not think of Alan and Alice when it comes to any other creative characters in relationships in this game and the hardships with balancing that sorta life. There’s the Bookers with Tammy, a successful true crime writer and attempted poet (!!!), and Ed, a playwright trying to get recognition and feel inspired. It feels right that he would end up taking Wake’s work to write the Marmonts (also with shades of Alan and Alice) into their own supernatural lakeside cabin, fit with a marriage that’s falling apart.

The actors for both Marmonts are incredible. They both perfectly portray their outrage, jealously, and stubbornness that’s consuming their relationship and work. This mad scientist drama could easily end up too cheesy, but they sell it. Love that these negative emotions and their attempt to enforce it on artists for their suffering lead to the crack in the lake house through them. There’s so many things to pick at in this dlc, whether for the relationships, work environments, ai, artists, etc.

Only for this bullet point, but Final Draft Spoilers: Diana thinking of Jules’ smile as her last moment before being taken, while Jules’ last moment (‘Breakthrough in the Lake House’ page) is feeling pride over his work…………

I want more office drama for horrible mad scientists for Control 2. Honestly I want anything Control 2

After briefly checking online, I’m proud of myself for quickly solving the calendar problems. I actually really liked this kind of simple task to find little clues and, by doing so, getting to know the people through their passwords. I’m terrible anything with puzzles, so very grateful to have this over something elaborate or. math.

The Dylan scene is also skippable, which is unthinkable (one of the best parts of the dlc!). There’s all this disgust and horror from Estevez towards the Marmonts’ control of the Lake House, only for it to reveal that Dylan was also trapped there and experimented on by Dr. Darling and the researchers there (all approved by Trench!). Estevez isn’t aware of this, but it was a cold reminder of how truly awful it was for Dylan and how fucked up Trench and Darling are for kidnapping a child…. And then abandoning him in a small prison cell.

The horror elements in this DLC were nice, although not extreme. Tbh I don’t consider any of Remedy’s games to be scary, even if they’re still horror, but this had good moments! The distortion of the environment and constant looping made me doubt myself. Jules’ death as a taken was violent (albeit obscured), to the level of Nightingale’s cult attack, if not worse. Loved the emotion from the Marmonts seeping into their taken personalities. Aw1 had more of this and it made the Taken far more upsetting and real.

Sometimes Alan is creepy and I enjoy seeing him through other characters’ eyes. Alan/the Dark Place manifesting manuscript pages that would perfectly dig under the Marmonts’ skins and infect them was unnerving and a little funny. shows they never had a chance. While it’s not physically like that, the words describing the Lake House slowly being sunken into Cauldron Lake and the water dripping in—Chef’s kiss

AWAN had a conversation between the scientist where she discussed fate and agency (…Alan’s indignation at her being remotely critical over her 😭 he’s such an asshole). It reminded me of Diana’s notes on whether Alan wrote and controlled her life. There’s some agency that Alan takes away just by guiding these events and trying to influence people through a story. How much is him actually controlling or changing things is another question, but having that kind of power is scary, especially from another’s POV (Saga, now Estevez and the Marmonts)

Estevez seeing Alan typing the later event of her meeting Saga and THIS being what led the FBC straight to her was a great scene of wrapping everything up. I liked the weird dark goo in the Dark Place. Fun stuff!

Poe <3 Loved this promo of her new song. 6 deep breaths coinciding with Estevez’ reassurance to herself, although the lyrics also could apply to others. Dylan trapped in his cage, yet able to connect to these worlds; Alan (+Alice) in the dark place, then post-game, ‘finding roads everywhere’. I’m playing the first Alan Wake, so the breathing made me immediately think of the deep breaths taken by Tom the Diver throughout that (+ the addition of another voice breathing near the end)

Clay Murphy wrote the screenplay to this and to Number One Fan (Night Springs), which means he might be the funniest person ever

[themotherofhorses]

figures dancing gracefully (across my memory)

— simon "ghost" riley x oc!silentdove reyes.

setting: call of duty x marvel cinematic universe

summary: she’s much too damn young to be handling all of this trauma, this . . . baggage. everyone says that when they first meet her; nevertheless, Dove persists.

warnings: explicit language and mentions of previously experienced abuse (per the Red Room theme).

note: in conjunction with this specific post. the RedBack has been a personal OC WIP of mine for maybe four(ish) years. despite being an obvious OC-insert series, everyone is welcome to enjoy it.

It is snowing again. For the fifth night in a row. 

SilentDove tells herself that is why she cannot—for the ever life of her—find the comfort of sleep tonight; instead, she opts for a nice hot drink on the couch. Mint hot chocolate, to be exact, topped with four puffy white marshmallows. It tastes especially good with that particular combination. Natasha picked up a new packet of them the last time she went grocery shopping, saying something along the lines of how ‘every safe house needs to be well-stocked with good snacks!’

The black cat mug is cute too.

The truth is she cannot sleep — no matter how hard she tries, how absolutely fucking desperate she feels, or how many of those tiny blue melatonin pills she pops in her mouth. Nothing helps. God, it fucking sucks. 

Whenever she closes her eyes, the memory resurfaces. Empty, sometimes blurry, fuzzy, loud, absolutely unbearable, but at most times very specific childhood memories. 

Ballet. 

Schooling. 

Harsh, overwhelming, hardhearted training — the sort where you snap a poor sister’s neck within the first few hours of the morning before sinking to your feet to tend to an (almost) fractured ankle in the evening, swollen and bruised and agonizing to step on. Or sit at a school desk, dressed in a freshly-steamed schoolgirl uniform, forced to recite some classic Disney movie word-for-word….or until you are told to stop. 

(It is hell on Earth, hidden in Russia.) 

“Again.” 

She can still hear the coach, voice tinny, instructing them to repeat the dance. Again. Again. Again. That is perhaps one of the worst memories, in her opinion. Somewhere in the middle, or maybe towards the end, a dancer messed up and he noticed. That is not good, child, nor it is allowed to happen. Seated on the pretty polished floors are the baby spiders —the маленькие пауoки—watching every detail with big and hungry eyes.

No, the маленькие пауoки must never be introduced to such sloppiness, not at this age.

The Bolshoi Theatre demands only the finest ballerinas — girls that are light on their toes, beautiful in their face, with potential for stardom.

Dove takes another sip of her hot chocolate while remembering . . . remembering . . . remembering . . . dancing, dancing, dancing, again and again; all while ignoring the terrible ache burning through her poor feet, flaring up near the bone of her big toe before shooting up to her ankle, and the large soldier fixated near the door. 

(The thing about the soldier was that he never made a sound. Precise strikes, fatal slashes, heavy exhalation through his ebony mask he always wore, but never a sound from his mouth . . . if he even had one.)

From where she is hunkered down in her father’s ranchhouse, propped up against comfy pillows, she flattens both legs before gazing down at her feet. A beat. Then she curls her toes before wiggling them. Her nose scrunches. They’re horribly disfigured and knobby — and ugly if she is honest with herself. 

Bless her soul, Natasha had given her some of that fancy, high-tech medical cream (courtesy of Dr. Helen Cho); a week later, her toes are slowly beginning to appear better. Or, maybe, just normal, like how a young woman’s foot is supposed to look.

Her toenails are painted a soft white, much like the snow blanketing the Montanan plains; it makes her smile a little (she once heard that the color “white” represents a mix of purity, cleanliness, and freshness. Rebirth, the fourth word might’ve been. Well, that and the nail polish was displayed too prettily at the store to overlook, discounted too, and never before had she the privilege of painting her nails).

Dove wiggles her big toe again; beneath it, along the stretch of her right foot, is a long stripe of scar tissue. As much as she dreams, it will never fade away, regardless of the scrubbing in the shower or pretending it does not exist or using those fancy Stark creams.

One of the many scars from the Red Room.

She’s much too damn young to be handling all of this trauma, this . . . baggage. Everyone says that when they first meet her; nevertheless, Dove persists. Natasha knows that certain feeling all too well, and Yelena too. They are in the same busted-up boat, drifting down the same river.

However, the therapy sessions they both suggested are good — incredible, even; they allow her to voice her most inner and brutal thoughts while patching together bits and pieces of a long-forgotten identity. She was a ballerina, Dove tells herself; she had to have been one — there was the Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and A Midsummer’s Night Dreams. 

Her pointe shoes were a pretty pastel blue, the sort of color belonging to the summertime sky, while her favorite leotard was a deep navy. Natasha wore the same during her time there, she thinks. And Yelena, too. Maybe even their mother, Melina.

(Melina cycled through the Red Room four times — Dove couldn’t even imagine how that could’ve felt.) 

The two women are her family. 

Family. Such a . . . distant concept to Dove. She glances down at her feet again, sighing. Sometimes . . . Dove slips up and calls Natasha “momma” . . . and sometimes . . . Natasha will call her “my sweet маленький пауoк” in return; she’ll then remind her that she’s not alone. Not anymore. It is okay to weep…to scream and shout, and to come to her if need be.

Silence is no longer necessary.

Is it, though? Dove was born silent. At times, that is all she is capable of feeling. 

But, alas, it still makes Dove feel a bit better, even if the conversations consist of recycled words. She is not alone, not anymore. There is no more slipping stale bread for breakfast, no more being handcuffed to the bed, and no more being disciplined for sneezing a little too loudly.

No more being considered a weapon with a face — capable of nothing more but murder. Natasha is her family now, and maybe even Clint Barton and Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson too. 

Her hot chocolate is cold now — the marshmallows look kinda weird now, too, like drowned little white bodies, nothing like how they appear in those silly Hollywood movies. But drinking it makes her feel happier, a lot lighter, sleepier, and safer. Sometimes, Dove wonders if a different childhood may have had more steaming mugs of hot chocolate with all those different flavors Yelena once told her about.

(She had seen them in some grocery store in Manchester, England — an entire aisle jam-packed with hundreds of colorful flavors. It smelled good, too, Yelena had said.)

Melina claims she did not have a childhood.

Oh, but she did. 

It was sitting before computers, watching Russian propaganda before sipping on a random juice box (grape-flavored most of the time). It was hours upon hours of constant ballet practice, perfecting all those turns and leaps. It was standing before human-shaped shooting targets, a red hourglass centered in the middle where the human lungs exist.

It was the massive soldier in the backroom—the one with the two long, dark braids—teaching the widows how to place their victims in a tight headlock before demonstrating the move on them, snapping their tiny, skinny necks in one quick motion. Or how to silence a person with a blow to the kidney.

“Hey.”

“Hi, Nattie.”

“How are you feeling tonight?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“. . . Nightmares?”

Dove pauses. “Nah. It’s snowing over here; there is something therapeutic about watching it and—”

Natasha cuts her off. “Doesn’t work on me, kid. You should know that,” and there is a beat of silence, and Dove can already see the sad smile tugging at her lips, “—so, was it nightmares again?” 

“No. Not this time. Memories…of Dreykov, y’know, and the ballet and—” she takes a small sip of her cold drink, “—and just anything I can remember, really.  Sometimes, it is gun practice, something it’s combat. I’m getting better, actually, thanks to Bruce and Helen. It’s still kind of hazy, but now I can make out things. People. Places. Objects. Y’know, all that shit. I just can’t sleep because of it.” She places the phone on the coffee table before leaning back and inhaling deeply. “M’fine, Nat, really. Y’know, it is all part of the recovery process.”

"Yeah. No, yeah, I get it. But hey, just remember, I'm here. I know you have your therapy sessions, and I know it helps to some degree, but all that shit? I know it firsthand. Everything you've been through, Yelena and I have too, so you're not alone. Not in this lifetime anymore.” 

She smiles. It is times like this that SilentDove hates when she took assignments that sent her on the other side of the world. “Thanks. How’s it over there?” 

“Boring. Humid as fuck, and Clint is such a loud snorer. Hey, make sure all the doors are locked before you go to bed.”

Like clockwork, of course. 

“I will. Talk to you tomorrow?”

“Sure, kid. Get some rest. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

The call soon cuts after that, and Dove is left to her thoughts again. Her dark eyes drift across the living room, studying every little detail before her — from her grandmother's star blanket to the pretty picture of her mother hung above the fireplace.

She hums. There are ghosts in this house.

Ghosts.

Her own ghosts.

Oddly enough, that thought doesn't bother Dove at all. She’s always liked the idea of ghosts.

[cipheramnesia]

The Rob Zombie Halloween movies are not exactly good, but they have this little chestnut of an idea that's intriguing.

The original two Halloween movies hinge on the core premise that Michael Meyers is a kind of empty vessel which embodies evil. You have to buy into the idea a little, because if you don't, not only do the movies not work as well, but also the character of Dr. Loomis comes of as an unhinged, abusive monster of a doctor. Which feels like something Rob Zombie intentionally wanted his version to consider. Ultimately the movies are not successful, likely in some measure through studio interference, but this explains a good deal of decisions which put Zombie's Halloween at loggerheads with the original movies and the fandom.

The thing about Rob Zombie is that his fans are his worst critics, in that they don't want him to make anything except a carbon copy of House of 1000 Corpses or Devil's Rejects, and when he tries to do more interesting (and in the case of Lords of Salem, significantly better) movies, they piss all over themselves in outrage. When you combine his unusual take on Halloween with a stylistic departure as well, the movies has no chance.

The funny thing is, in retrospect, Zombie's changes are actually the better choice compared to the slavishly accurate recent Halloweens, or any of the sequels following Halloween 2. He gave Michael Meyers a voice, and a more complex history, and a human connection, and all these details which fans mostly hated, but which repositioned Michael from hollow monster to a person who was deeply failed by the world. And the thing of it is, there's nothing left to explore after Halloween 2, which means the only place to go if you want to be interesting about the character is a radically different direction.

That's what Rob Zombie did, his version wasn't supposed to be scary as a remorseless killing machine, but scary as someone who was formed into a terrible creature by the world deciding for him that he is a monster. You can see this most of all with how Malcolm McDowell portrays his version of Loomis as self centered, malicious, and incompetent by varying degrees. It's stating as loudly as possible to the audience hey, this person is terrible at helping people, he is awful and his characterization of Michael Meyers as "evil" is self serving and horrible. It's meant to make the audience step back and realize, no matter how terrible the things Michael does, he's a child and locking him up for his entire life is a fucked up thing to do.

Now, ultimately the films are a mess, and this little idea doesn't really hold together or develop. I believe it's intentional still, but winds up being incompatible with what, I assume through studio pressure, is a movie too close to the original Halloween to make room for a different approach. I couldn't necessarily recommend watching them, but as failures they're still interesting.

[lauralot89]

"She makes a very beautiful corpse, sir. It's quite a privilege to attend on her. It's not too much to say that she will do credit to our establishment!"

what in the fuck

I mean I get what she means, but why would you ever say that to a grieving person

I feared that he, being a foreigner, might not be quite aware of English legal requirements, and so might in ignorance make some unnecessary trouble.

I'm sure his grasp of English law is as competent as his grasp of the English language

You forget that I am a lawyer as well as a doctor.

I am not the first to make this joke and I will not be the last: Dr. Barbie Van Helsing

Can I help you, friend John? I am free, and if I may, my service is to you.

Out of respect for the two women who just died, I will not use the gif here

till positively I could not believe my eyes that I was looking at a corpse

well Jack, I've got some news for you

Then he took from his neck, inside his collar, a little gold crucifix, and placed it over the mouth

So why doesn't this burn her? Is she still turning?

Let me tell you now

FINALLY.

but not a word to another

Of fucking course.

I want to cut off her head and take out her heart.

You really could have eased into this suggestion, Professor.

Oh, but I must not forget, my dear friend John, that you loved her; and I have not forgotten it, for it is I that shall operate, and you must only help.

Yeah that makes it better (it doesn't)

he will want to see her—to see it.

Van Helsing I am pretty sure you let Dracula have he/him pronouns when you speak about his undead self

But there are things that you know not

YOU DON'T SAY

If you trust me not, then I must tell what I think; and that is not perhaps well

for fuck's sake, Van Helsing

As I stood without moving, I saw one of the maids pass silently along the passage—she had her back towards me, so did not see me—and go into the room where Lucy lay. The sight touched me. Devotion is so rare, and we are so grateful to those who show it unasked to those we love.

bad news Jack

"Because," he said sternly, "it is too late—or too early. See!" Here he held up the little golden crucifix. "This was stolen in the night."

I don't fully understand what difference that makes to staking/beheading her

He went away on the word, leaving me with a new mystery to think of, a new puzzle to grapple with.

Classic Van Helsing

I assure you, my dear sirs, I am rejoiced at the result, perfectly rejoiced."

He was a good fellow, but his rejoicing at the one little part—in which he was officially interested—of so great a tragedy, was an object-lesson in the limitations of sympathetic understanding.

Understatement of the century, Jack

even his stalwart manhood seemed to have shrunk

I'm sorry, I know I'm terrible, but phrasing

"Jack, is she really dead?"

Yes and no

I take it that you do not—that you cannot—trust me now, for you do not yet understand. And there may be more times when I shall want you to trust when you cannot—and may not—and must not yet understand.

HE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS

He went to and fro, as if patrolling the house, and was never out of sight of the room where Lucy lay in her coffin, strewn with the wild garlic flowers, which sent, through the odour of lily and rose, a heavy, overpowering smell into the night.

as someone who is horribly allergic to lilies, I'd have died of migraines after three seconds in the house

[myhauntedsalem]

Lalaurie Mansion

New Orleans, LA

Dr. Louis Lalaurie and his wife, Delphine moved into their fancy new mansion in New Orleans. They were respected by everyone. They had a lot of money, power and influence. Ms. Delphine was greatly admired for her beauty.

They threw lavish social parties that would be the talk of the town for weeks to come.

Their house was extravagant and they had dozens of slaves to take care of it.

It was the neighbors who first began to suspect that something was not right.

There were whispered conversations about how the Lalaurie slaves seemed to come and go quite often. Parlor maids would be replaced with no explanation or the stable boy was suddenly just disappear… never to be seen again.

Then, one day a neighbor was climbing her own stairs when she heard a scream and saw Madame Lalaurie chasing a little girl, the Madame’s personal servant, with a whip. She pursued the girl onto the roof of the house, where the child jumped to her death. The neighbor later saw the small slave girl buried in a shallow grave beneath the cypress trees in the yard.

It was rumored that she treated the slaves horribly. But how horribly exactly, no one knew.

A terrible fire broke out in the Lalaurie kitchen. Legend has it that it was set by the cook, who could endure no more of the Madame’s tortures. Regardless of how it started, the fire swept through the house.

After the blaze was put out, the fire fighters discovered a horrible sight behind a secret, barred door in the attic.

The information you are about to read is from the embellished part of the event. The authors who wrote about it in the book didn’t source these events:

They found more than a dozen slaves here, chained to the wall in a horrible state. They were both male and female…. some were strapped to makeshift operating tables… some were confined in cages made for dogs…. human body parts were scattered around and heads and human organs were placed haphazardly in buckets…. grisly souvenirs were stacked on shelves and next to them a collection of whips and paddles.

It was more horrible that anything created in man’s imagination.

According to the newspaper, the New Orleans Bee, all of the victims were naked and the ones not on tables were chained to the wall. Some of the women had their stomachs sliced open and their insides wrapped about their waists.

One woman had her mouth stuffed with animal excrement and then her lips were sewn shut. The men were in even more horrible states. Fingernails had been ripped off, eyes poked out, and private parts sliced away.

One man hung in shackles with a stick protruding from a hole that had been drilled in the top of his head. It had been used to “stir” his brains.

The tortures had been administered so as to not bring quick death. Mouths had been pinned shut and hands had been sewn to various parts of the body.

Regardless, many of them had been dead for quite some time. Others were unconscious and some cried in pain, begging to be killed and put out of their misery.

The fire fighters fled the scene in disgust and doctors were summoned from a nearby hospital.

There were a few who still clung to life…. like a woman whose arms and legs had been removed and another who had been forced into a tiny cage with all of her limbs broken than set again at odd angles.

Madame Lalaurie and her family were never seen again.

______________________________________________________________

The house remained vacant for many years after that. It then became an all girls school and then apartment buildings.

During the time when the mansion was an apartment house, a number of strange events were recorded. Among them was an encounter between a occupant and a naked black man in chains who attacked him. The black man abruptly vanished.

Others claimed to have animals butchered in the house; children were attacked by a phantom with a whip; strange figures appeared wrapped in shrouds; a young mother was terrified to find a woman in elegant evening clothes bending over her sleeping infant; and of course, the ever-present sounds of screams, groans and cries that would reverberate through the house at night.

Today the house has been renovated again and serves as luxury apartments.

[dingbatnix]

Rest

Deity (part 1)

So I got to thinking one day, about how everything would have effected Goggs, Sapnap, Karl and Dream after the events of Deity. I mostly wanted to focus on George, cause honestly? He's more fun to write when he's freaking out, and I wanted to mess with the dynamic that is 'Dream is XD,' i.e., Dream is a god and doesn't know how humans work, but he's trying.

Also, I might have gone too heavily into the, 'George is freaking out o gosh,' but idk. The fic grew its own legs.

It's not g/t or anything btw.

Anyway, I think that's enough rambling. Onto the fic!

Word Count: 5,513

Warnings: Fear, Flashbacks, Panick Attacks, I think low-level PTSD/trauma, descriptions of gore, injuries, ectcetera ectcetera.

There had to be at least twelve zombies stumbling after him. Now, normally, they wouldn’t have been a problem for George to handle, (he was an excellent swordsman, and an even better bowman) but as of right now, he was running on about three and a half hours of sleep. The last time he’d rested in any sort of meaningful manner was well over a week ago, and that was only because he had knocked back a weakness potion strong enough to lay a ravager out flat.

Sure, his friends were worried about the possibility of him overdosing on potions (he’d be fine, he only ever drank them on the really bad nights!) And sure, maybe it was an unhealthy way for him to combat the near-constant night terrors, but what else was he going to do!? Every time he closed his eyes, all he could see was Sapnap’s fear-stricken face disappearing behind a jagged black maw, all he could hear were his own screams of terror mixing with his friend’s, all he could feel was the slick, oily flesh closing around him as he plummeted down, down, down to where he could hear Sapnap’s shuddering cries of despair far below him. It had been months, and he still couldn’t get away from the vivid, mind-crushing images of his death. Not-death. Whatever.

George ducked beneath the rotting hand of a zombie as it swung clumsily at his shoulder, stumbling over his own feet and barely managing to dodge the swipe of another undead hand. He raised his sword and brought the blade down through a pair of brittle knees, sending one of the zombies crashing to the ground.

While he still felt sluggish, he hadn't lost too much of his motor control, and he was still able to defend himself. Unfortunately, he was quickly losing steam in this seemingly endless fight.

George had been exploring the land around the edges of his, Sapnap’s, and their other friend Bad’s house in a desperate attempt to evade the cold, grasping claws of sleep when he had been ambushed by an enormous congregation of mobs. He had some armor on, thank the Go…thankfully, an iron chestplate and a helmet that he had snatched up out of a random chest before he left the house, but it wasn’t enough to really defend against the amount of gnashing jaws and greedy fingers chasing after his flesh.

He had taken out a lot of them, but their numbers would have overwhelmed even Dr—Sapnap, and while George was normally up to par with his arsonistic friend, the sleep deprivation was getting to him, grasping at his limbs with clinging, sticky tendrils and tripping up his every step.

A sudden, heavy snap jarred his entire left arm and shoulder, and he stared in dismay at the jagged, broken line splitting his sword in half clear down to the crossguard. He continued to wield it anyway, unwilling to drop his only weapon, and it lasted through several heavy hits until the bisected blade shattered in a spray of shrapnel. George dodged the shower of sharp metal with a fervent cry, scrunching his eyes shut and scrambling backwards.

In the back of his mind, he heard a horribly familiar, horribly fond voice telling him that it was terribly dangerous to go exploring at night without backup, and that George should let him know if he ever planned to do so. George shivered, pushing the overbearing, seemingly sticky presence away from his mind and tried to focus on the fight.

Rotting fingers snagged on the rim of his chestplate, and he felt more than heard the snap of leather as one of the straps keeping the iron together broke under the sudden pressure of the zombie pulling at it.

Above him, he heard the shriek of a phantom, and then, horribly, the answering call of another. George blinked back the exhaustion stinging at his eyes and shoved at the rotted bodies crowding in and snatching at his limbs. Putrid flesh split under his fingers as he stumbled away, leaving a gross, oily residue on his hands that didn’t quite come off when he swiped his hands against his trousers.

Greedy claws scratched at the back of his neck as he scrambled to run, and he felt his helmet being ripped off by what could only be one of the phantoms following after him from above.

George found himself driven to the top of a cliff. It was relatively small, maybe only about thirty feet high, but there were many, many trees scattered at the base. Some of the branches reached up near to the cliff’s edge, and George warily considered jumping as an escape option. He’d probably break a couple of bones, and at the very worst, be impaled by a stray tree branch, but it'd at least get him away from the slow, shambling force of zombies dogging after him.

His gaze flashed back to the monsters trundling steadfastly behind him, a small line of tension loosening in his shoulders when he saw how far they were. It wouldn’t take them long to catch up, but he had at least a moment of breathing room.

He twisted back around, grateful for the lull in mobs, and stared down at the intimidating drop to the distant ground. If he aimed for that small patch of bushes, maybe, or tried to grab onto that thick branch just a little further to his right—!

Something slammed into his back, screeching against his armor and sending him plummeting face-first off the edge of the cliff. George screamed, flailing as he crashed into the rough upper branches of the trees. Sharp leaves and sticks scratched and tore at his face and clothes, and he had to bring his arms up to shield his face, squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to protect them from the painful debris.

A branch caught on his chestplate, slowing him for barely a moment before his weight and momentum had the remaining leather straps holding it together snapping with an awfully final sound. He shrieked, pawing uselessly at the armor that was already high out of his reach as the impact spun him around midair, sending his mind whirling with nausea.

George hit the ground shoulder-first with a harsh whoomph and a gradual puff of dust that drifted away from his body. He cried out, curling inwards as his new injuries rapidly made themselves known. Scratches along his sides and arms and even his neck stung, and various bruises littered all across his body were throbbing in unison. His entire right side was on fire, and he couldn’t tell if any particular part of his side was hurt worse than anything else.

He forced himself to flop onto his back with a choked, muffled scream, the singular movement causing agonized waves to radiate down through his side. He forced down the unwanted tears burning behind his eyes and attempted to suck air into his lungs, mentally counting through the numbers Bad had recently coached him through.

Nothing felt broken, at least, but George was sure that some of his ribs had popped out of place. Every time he tried to breathe in, starbursts of light would fill his fuzzing vision, and a horrendous pain stabbed through the side of his torso, where his ribs were.

He could not move his right arm. The sudden realization froze George in his tracks, and his breath hitched up. The accompanying spikes of pain made it stutter back into a shaky, weak rhythm, but that did little to console his mind.

Either his arm or shoulder was severely dislocated or…severely broken. Either option was very unpleasant for George’s near future. George swallowed, nerves and sudden apprehension drying his throat. If he healed it, it would hurt, but if he left it as it was, it would get worse.

With the trembling fingers of his left hand, he pulled his last, already mostly used-up regeneration potion from his pocket, thankful that it hadn't shattered when he landed, and downed the last few sips remaining in the bottle. He felt something in his right arm crunch back together immediately after, the sudden flash of agony whiting out his vision, but then he could move the limb again, albeit carefully. It didn’t do much for the rest of his wounds, for there was far too little of the potion and he had far too many injuries, but it took enough of the pain’s edge off that he could sit up.

The motion had him gasping in great lungfuls of air, sweat beading along his temples as he pushed through each flare of pain rolling from his ribs. He curled forward and tried to force air into his lungs, wishing he had Bad with him. The demon always knew how to help, be it with panic, or with awful, debilitating injuries.

George bit his lip, trying to distract himself from the throbbing ache pulsing throughout his body. He had to get up, had to get moving. He needed a shelter of some sort, so he could collapse, nurse his wounds, and wait for dawn. Then, he could start making his way back home.

Holding in a whine, he worked himself up to his feet and braced against a tree. The effort it took to stand alone nearly made him black out, and if it weren’t for the support of the tree, he would have fallen back to the ground. George swayed in place, vision spinning in a sickening dance of motion as he breathed deep and slow.

Out of nowhere, he heard the worst sound in the world. The slow, shambling steps of multiple zombies, and even the telltale hiss of a creeper flooded his ears, sending panic and no small amount of despair crashing through his system. Why couldn’t the universe cut him a break? Why did he have to suffer?

Frustrated tears stung at the edges of his vision, and he swung his gaze up to glare at the newest obstacle in his road to survive. Four zombies straggled towards him barely two meters away, and beyond them, the mottled yellow of a creeper slunk, lagging several meters behind.

His fingers curled around the only weapon he could find, a loose piece of bark sticking slightly out from the trunk of the tree he was using for support. He tore it free, managing to break off a piece as long as his forearm and about as wide as his hand, and brandished it at the approaching mobs. If nothing else, he could go out fighting. There was no way he’d survive against four zombies and a creeper in his current state.

Unless…but he shook that thought off. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Just the mere thought paralyzed his throat and made his heart stutter.

As the zombies converged on him, George managed to gut one with the sliver of bark, necrotic flesh tearing open easily under the jagged wood. Intestines spilled out, and then George was being slammed back against the tree trunk, putrid jaws snapping at his limbs and rotten hands scratching at his face. George cried out when teeth fastened themselves into his left elbow, making him lose his grip on his piece of weaponized tree bark. He tried to pull free, horribly aware of the hissing creeper that was steadfastly approaching, but cold, almost completely bone fingers tore at his right bicep, pulling him off balance and nearly sending him to the ground. He yelped, the sudden movement jarring his injuries and making them flare with pain.

Desperation filled his chest, and he realized he only had one, awful option. One awful option that he dreaded, one awful option that might just save his life. He didn’t want his help, though, not at all. He didn’t want to call for him.

…He had to. It was…it was that, or die, and he wasn’t ready for that. He wasn’t ready to face the void, wasn’t ready to do that to his friends. He wanted to live, even if it meant calling for his worst nightmare. Would it be better than dying to mobs? He didn’t know. He didn’t have time to debate what might happen next, not while he was seconds away from his gruesome end. Sucking in a breath, George did the only thing he could. He called for Dream.

“Dream!” He screamed, viciously fighting and shoving away the decayed fingers that were chasing after his arms and throat. “Dream, please, I need help!” He felt ridiculous, screaming for someone who probably wouldn't even hear him, for someone who might not even care about him, truly care. George didn’t know if Dream was capable of such a thing. How could he? He wasn’t mortal. He was a God. What God would truly, truly care for something so…so insignificant, when compared to what the heavens had to offer?

George tried to push those thoughts away and attempted to focus on breathing past his burgeoning panic. Dream wouldn’t…wouldn’t do that to him, right? Wouldn’t he…?

Suddenly, there was a crack of booming light, and then a dry, staticy wave of heat that had George and his assailants tumbling backwards. He hit the ground with a choked wheeze, skidding several feet over the mossy, leaf-coated ground. Dizziness swirled through his head, and his elbow and ribs and shoulder screamed in agony. Despite the pain, George propped himself up on his side, panting heavily as he tried to process.

The quick, whistling sound of an iron blade dancing through the air reached his ears, and he managed to glance up to see a blur of yellow plowing through the converging mobs. Not even a minute later, the entire group of monsters was disintegrating in the slight breeze that had kicked up, and the golden blur had solidified into a broad, tall shape that was approaching him.

"What are you doing out here? Alone! At night!?" Large hands closed around his bruised biceps, pulling him to his feet, and George suddenly found himself face-to-face with a gleaming white smiley mask. "You know the mobs are more dangerous in the dark! Prime knows how many times I've warned you!"

He had never been more aware of how tall Dream was until this exact moment, when the man–god–was standing a full head-and-a-half over his own skull, towering over him. The grip on his arms was gentle, but firm, and half of George’s focus was on how strong the hands were, on how fast they might turn to bruising and restraining.

He saw the flash of Dream's teeth as the ma–god–spoke but he didn’t hear the words. All he could think of was what might have happened if the gaping black maw he'd been tossed into had had those sharp incisors. An image of his and Sapnap's mangled, crushed bodies, guts and bones and gore spilling from their split skin flashed through his mind, and his breath hitched.

For a moment, George swore he could feel the thick, oily texture of saliva coating his skin.

George shoved out of Dream’s grip, hands burning where they pressed against the blond's chest, and stumbled backwards, nearly falling as his heel caught on a mossy ridge on the ground. His back hit the trunk of a tree, hard, and he found his fingers digging into the ridged bark to ground himself, both against the waves of pain that jarred his body from the impact, and from the realization that Dream was here, physically present, right in front of him.

"Don't–don't touch me," he managed to gasp out, eyes watering as his breath hitched faster and faster. George tore his hands away from the tree bark, clutching at the collar of his shirt and scratching at his throat as he panted. He couldn’t–wasn’t—he couldn’t breathe!

His knees failed him, and he slid down to the ground, rough bark scraping through his shirt and shredding his skin, but he didn’t notice, couldn’t notice, not when his throat felt like it was closing up, not when it looked like the night sky was bleeding down to rip away his vision.

He was aware that Dream was still in front of him, still looming above his head, but the fact was a distant, dull idea that he couldn’t quite grasp, not when it felt like teeth were closing down around his chest, not when he couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe—

George could swear he heard Sapnap screaming below him.

“I wouldn’t—I would never hurt you, George. I won't. Ever.” The form in front of him shifted, and then all he could see through the fuzzing cloud of darkness was a wash of bright, nearly fluorescent amber blocking the night air.

Two hands, larger than George's own, reached forward and, so incredibly gently, grasped his trembling fingers between wide palms and pulled them away from his raw, seemingly swollen throat.

“George, hey, hey, can you breathe with me? I think you’re having an attack, c’mon, try to breathe–” The voice was muffled, and George barely noticed it. All he could focus on was the warm, nearly hot hold that entrapped both of his hands. His fingers twitched as the buzzing in his ears increased, burying nearly every other sound present. George couldn’t even hear his own heartbeat. Why couldn't he hear his heartbeat?!

“Hhnnnnnn–” George wheezed, desperately trying to jerk his hands free from the impossibly firm grip. The long fingers curled more securely around the backs of his hands, around his wrists, and two thumbs moved to press against George’s palms.

More words were being said, but he couldn't hear them. It felt like his entire head had been forced down underneath the waters of a violent river, and he couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't breathe—no matter how hard George struggled, he just could not shake off the invisible hands forcing his head under the rapids.

His hands were suddenly pressed against something soft, something warm, rising up and down in a gentle swell, and he could feel a steady bup-bump, bup-bump, bup-bump pounding beneath his palms. He latched onto the constant pulse, breath hitching up again in concordance with the sudden, unwavering rhythm.

His fingers curled against the warm fabric, and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to focus on the phantom touch of muscles crushing around his body. He forced himself to breathe, shuddery as it was, in tandem with the beat of the heart against his palms.

Bup-bump. Bup-bump. Bup-bump. His chest stuttered, but he pushed on. Four, five, six, seven. Breathe out. He wasn’t in a prison of fleshy death. There was bark pressing into his spine, digging stinging pin-pricks into his skin, leaves and grass crinkling under his legs as they quivered. Two, three, four. Breathe in, ignore the hitched sniffle, and breathe out. There were sounds all around him, the noises of the night crickets and the frogs, the hollow, lonely hoot of an owl, the hushed, hesitant murmur of reassurances and instructions from the presence in front of him, of the body his hands were resting against.

George breathed, and slowly, oh so slowly, gained back control of himself. He kept his eyes closed, unready to face the source of his panic.

He’d had episodes like this, many, many times after the incident. Sapnap had them as well, but not nearly as often, nor as intensely as the brunette did. Bad had coached them both through ways to cope, of ways to bring themselves back to reality after their minds plunged them down into the horrible depths of wet–dark–NO—

It was so, so difficult to do on his own, especially when the cause of his spiral was right in front of him, but he had to get himself under control. He forced his head above the violent waves despite the sheer, paralyzing dread, despite the disquiet that filled him down to his very bones, and gasped for air.

He had to face his problem, had to overcome it, Bad had said. If George let it fester in his mind, it would cripple him, it would eventually kill him, the demon had warned. He’d given George a lot of advice. It was probably time George started taking it. He didn’t want to be like this anymore. He just wanted everything to go back to normal.

He pried open his raw, puffy eyes, cheeks glistening with the wet of his own tears, and grasped at his blurry vision, forcing his gaze to focus. His fingers tightened, then relaxed, then clenched again as he worked up the will to look. He inhaled, too fast, and coughed, throat sore and body shaking. It’s like ripping off a plaster. He had to do it quick, or else he’d never manage such a daunting feat.

George breathed, and forced his eyes to actually see.

The offensively bright yellow of Dream’s cropped hoodie crossed into focus, blocking most of George’s view, his own trembling hands clutched against the center of the deity’s chest. Large hands clasped his, the thumb of each running soothing circles into the backs of his hands. The god had sunk down to the ground along with George, knees pressed into the mulchy floor of the forest, grass and twigs squashed up against the dark fabric of his trousers.

George risked a glance up at Dream’s face, terrified of what he would see. Would it be the face of his long-time best friend, or…or would it be the face of the deity who had eaten him?

He was afraid, but he forced himself to look anyway. He had to.

The god’s mask was pushed aside, and Dream’s wide, sparkling hazel eyes sought his own. George flinched, immediately avoiding his gaze and instead focusing on the mossy grass crawling along the roots around his knees.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do it. All he could see was the face of the creature that had nearly not-killed him.

A hand detached itself from the cradle around his own and appeared just under George's chin, one long finger resting under his mandible and tilting his head up. “Hey,” Dream breathed, voice soft, gentle, even. “It’s alright, George. You’re okay. I’m not gonna hurt you, I promise.”

George’s back stiffened when his gaze was pulled upwards, and his breath hitched when he finally met Dream’s eyes.

Warm hazel shone, a faint, glittering blue light swirling from behind the amber-tinted irises. They seemed to draw George in, and unconsciously, the tense line along his back released, and his shoulders slumped.

His body felt oddly numb, like he had dosed himself with an intense painkiller. He couldn’t really feel the pain that should have been there from his previously accrued wounds, and a distant, vague part of him was…shrieking in alarm. Why did he feel so calm all of the sudden? He recoiled suddenly, yanking his chin out of Dream’s grasp and tearing his eyes away from the god with a gasp. What the hell was that?

“George, are you…okay?” Dream sounded so concerned. George’s gut clenched, mind reeling, and he chewed at the inside of his lip. No. No, he was not, but the crux of his issues was the god sitting right in front of him. George wasn’t about to tell Dream that he was the reason he was freaking out so badly. What if he got mad? What if he decided to actually…

George cut himself off and decided to ask a question of his own in lieu of answering. He…he was not ready to deal with that particular issue. Whatever spark of courage to confront his problems that had struck him earlier had withered and died, leaving him feeling exposed and vulnerable. So, he deflected.

"Why'd you come?" He croaked, words catching in his raw-feeling throat. He coughed, trying to clear the roughness of his voice. “Why…why are you here, Dr-Dream?”

The god paused at his question, thumb faltering in its rotation on the back of George’s hand as the rest of his fingers tightened slightly in their grip. "You…you called for me? You needed help, George. You were gonna…the mobs would have killed you!”

George’s chest stuttered at the reminder, and he flinched when he bit down too hard on the inside of his cheek. The taste of coppery blood flooded his mouth, and he had to swallow it down with a disgusted grimace so that he could speak.

"I didn't think you'd actually…I didn't think you’d actually come, Dream. Why? Why? I’m just…I’m just. Me.” He swallowed again, sucking in a deep breath of the cool night air through his nose. “And you. You’re a. A God. What—why the hell would you come for me? Why do you care?”

He was crying again, hot rivulets of saltine tears streaming down his face to drip down his jawline. His lips twisted into a wobbly frown, and he wiped a damp cheek off on his shoulder. Dream still had a hold on both of his hands. He didn’t know if he wanted the deity to let go.

Dream’s mouth opened, but no words came out. His face morphed into one of sad surprise, and his shoulders slumped. His fingers jittered across the backs of George’s hands as he worked his jaw, brow furrowed and eyes perturbed. Finally, words escaped his throat, a tone George couldn’t quite identify coloring them.

“I…I'll always, always come when you call, George.” The blond breathed, reaching towards George again with his free hand. He paused and drew his hand back when George flinched, but his fingers still twitched as if they wanted to grasp onto something. “I couldn't live in a world without you." He confessed, voice low and just slightly wavery.

A quiet, muddled “Oh,” was all George could muster in response. He felt…it was like a yawning hole had opened up beneath him, and he didn’t know what to do. What did he say to that? That Dream would always want to be there for him, he could…attempt to understand, but. How did he explain to Dream that the m—god’s mere presence nearly shut down George’s ability to function?

He blinked heavily, trying to clear the misted haze that seemed to settle behind his eyes. He was so tired…

Dream’s face softened, and he slowly reached up to brush a thumb over George's cheekbone, right underneath one of the deep, dark bruises hanging below the brunette's eyes. "When was the last time you slept?"

“I…four…four days ago…” George trailed off, his throat closing up as the most recent nightmare leeched back up. He’d been endlessly falling, dropped by the hands of huge, indecipherable shadows. He hadn’t been able to see, and the only thing he could hear had been the laughter. He’d woken up after his body had smashed and split open onto a giant, gold gilt dinner plate.

He jerked his head sharply, breaking away from both the memory and from the gentle brush of touch on his face. He didn’t want to think about it, he didn’t want to remember any of it, but it kept coming back. He just wanted everything to be normal again. Was that too much for him to ask?

He finally turned to meet Dream’s gaze, staring the god in the face unflinchingly for the first time since he appeared. His eyes seemed a touch blue-er than they were since George last looked, but that may have been an effect of the sleep deprivation George was suffering from.

The blonde looked worried, and something about his expression pulled oddly at something inside of George’s brain.

What’s wrong, it seemed to say, prodding gently at the back of his mind. Tell me what’s bothering you, and then I can help. It was a vague murmur, a dizzying buzz that clouded his thoughts, and he found himself answering without a single opposing thought.

The words poured out of his mouth, a terrible confession that seemed to rise from his lungs. "I keep reliving—but it's worse, so much worse, because you–you don’t—you—” crush us, you chew us, you kill us–, “and I can't—" It was all too much. He couldn’t—He couldn’t—

George threw himself forward, shoving his forehead against Dream's chest and tangling his fingers deeper into the fabric of the god's hoodie. A long, keening whimper escaped his lips, and a hot stinging intensified behind his eyes.

He didn’t know what was wrong with him. He’d never had these thoughts about the Dream before. He’d have trusted him implicitly, but now…every time he thought about him, mind-numbing terror would rocket through his bones, and he'd want to vomit. Or cry, and cry, and cry until he felt nothing at all.

Dream's hands met his shoulders, a heavy, warm presence running down along his back, then up again. George couldn’t help the shiver of fear that thrilled through his gut at the contact. If Dream decided that he didn’t want to let go…

“Oh, oh, George,” arms encircled his shoulders, and fingers ran through his hair as George’s breathing stuttered again, warm tears trickling down to soak into the god's hoodie. His hands would be trembling if they weren’t so tightly clenched.

Dream shifted, slow and easy, as he moved to lean his back against the tree trunk George had been pressed against. His arms stayed around the brunette as he adjusted his position, pulling George against his side, instead of sprawled halfway over his chest. George flinched, then forced himself to relax, attempting to loosen the grip he had on Dream’s hoodie. He wasn’t very…successful.

“I’m so sorry, George. I…I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I just…I wanted to keep you safe.” Dream confessed, posture slumping against the rough bark of the tree. He sighed, pulling one hand from George’s back to rub at his temples. His face twisted into a grimace, and he glanced up at the night sky through the leaves and branches above them.

"There’s not…I can’t undo what happened. I can’t even stop you from being afraid of me. You…You’re completely justified in that, and I don’t blame you.” Dream’s jaw tensed, the only part of the god’s face that George could see. He tried not to imagine the expression that was decorating the blonde’s face.

Dream continued, seemingly oblivious to George’s strange internal conflicts. “What I can do, though, is help you sleep, if you'll let me."

George startled, at that, and a part of him almost tried to beg at the offer. He wanted nothing more than to sleep, to rest, but he couldn’t. Not when his dreams were so horribly inundated with night terrors and flashbacks.

"You're not going to–to eat me again, are you…?" His voice was hesitant, and it nearly hurt to get the words out. He had to know, though. If that was Dream’s way to help him sleep, then George would bolt, injuries and exhaustion be damned.

The god looked back at him abruptly, eyes wide and brow furrowed, and shook his head viciously. “No, never again, George. I’m not gonna—I won’t do that to you again.” He breathed out a slow huff of air and gently moved a hand over the brunette’s shoulders.

“O–okay, then. Fine.” George mumbled, dropping his gaze from Dream’s. He caught the bright edge of the god’s pleased expression in his peripherals, and tried not to think too hard about what that meant.

"Just lay down, alright? I'll help you sleep. I’ll keep all of the nightmares away."

Dream guided George's head down to rest against his legs, disentangling the brunette’s fingers from his sweater and helping him sprawl on his back over the mossy grass. George had a perfect view of the god's face, framed by the shadowed silhouettes of the leaves above, and, sprinkling through the gaps, the glittering stars of the night sky.

The distant shriek of a phantom sounded high above them, far beyond the trees, and George shrank back against the ground, alarm buzzing through his veins. He pulled his hands up to his chest, fingers tangling together as his nerves jarred though his system. "What…what about the mobs?"

"They won't bother us. I'll keep them away." One of Dream's hands reached down to rest over George's fidgeting digits, while the other rose up to brush the hair away from his eyes.

"Just sleep, George. I'll keep you safe, alright?” The god’s voice washed over him, drawing him deeper into the darkness of the night, and he couldn’t help the overwhelming wave of drowsiness that poured through his body. George’s eyes slipped closed, the afterimage of Dream’s luminescent blue irises fading behind his own eyelids.

His muscles untensed, and he felt…calm. His jittering, pounding heart eased to a slightly-rapid stutter, and the anxious, gut twisting rush that had plagued him for the last several hours drained away. A warmth spread over his entire body, and he couldn’t feel the pain of his wounds anymore.

It didn't feel…natural, but George was too far gone to really care. He was so tired…

So, so tired.

Taglist!!

@brick-a-doodle-do @i-am-beckyu @da3dm @kayla-crazy-stuffs @local-squishmallow @skullsnbruises @munchkin1156 @gt-daboss

[lovelykalopsia]

Day 1: Trope Subversion Bad Boy trope cuz I though it would be funny

@mcyt-aro-week

"Y'know, this is a bit pathetic of you, dont you agree?" Grians voice broke his train of though, though it wasnt much of a train and more of one cart going around and around in never ending loop of nothingness, and that analogy was quickly getting away from him. "No, Grain, I don't think pining from Mr. Goodytwo shoes is pathetic, totally don't, where could you ever get that idea?" That sounded like it had more venom than it needed to, but then again maybe he really needed that much venom, or maybe even more, who knows?

"Hey! No need to get bitchy, Im just saying, your trying to keep your 'bad boy' appearance while also going for someone who is the complete opposite." Grian shrugged, and Joel knew Grian thought it was pathetic, but grian didnt have much to say with whatever he had going on with the tall lanky kid, Mumbo or something, not important anyways. This time Joel didn't reply, instead just groaning and hiding his hands in his face. "This is terrible" He mumble into his hand. He could hear Grain laugh at this, but he mostly tried to tune it out.

Jimmy groan, flopping down face first on his, Tango, and Scotts bed, right next to the others. "I don't know what to do guysss" he practically whined, though it was muffled by him shoving his face in the bed. Jim felt a hand start to mess with his hair and groaned louder.

"I mean, I think the best thing to do it tell him?" Tango suggested, though it sounded more like a question, like he himself wasnt sure that was a good idea.

"Well yeah, but I don't even know if he likes me like that or is intrest in that!" He finally pulled his head away from the bed so they could hear him better.

"You'll never know untill you ask, Sweetie. Amd even if he isn't interested I'm sure he'll still want to be friends, mostly because he isnt that dumb." God, Scott always knew what to say in situations like this, because no offense to Tango but his advice is horrible.

"I guess thats true...when should I tell him?" Jimmy asked, rolling over to stare at the celling. Honestly he didn't even know how he would go about it, he really isnt sure how Joel feels about him, because sure they talk and Joel isnt particularly mean, hes actually quite nice to him, but that doesn't automatically mean Joel would be interested in a qpr.

"You could always met him today?" Scott suggested, though it didn't make much sense because last he knew, Joel spends his weekend with Grian, being 'bad boys' whatever that could mean for them, noone really knows anyways.

"I really couldn't, hes usually busy with Grian."

"Maybe hes not..?" Scott definitely did something, hes not sure but he didnt something to get Joel away from Grain.

Joel felt his phone buzz in his pocket and then heard a ringtone, indicating that it was infact Scott texting him this time, gosh what could that man what today. He rolled his eyes and grabbed his phone, quickly unlocking it and going to his messages with Scott.

Scotty boy: joel, are you prehaps busy right now?

Joel: Not really what do want now.

Scotty boy: how would you feel about meeting up? Like right now at the cafe near your house.

Joel: ig i could, why

Scotty boy: well mr.bad boy, I have something important to tell you, but if you reallyyy dont want to, Ig it could wait

Joel: ugh ill be there in 5.

Scotty boy: perfect!

"Bloody hell, what could he want now" He mumble under his breath, pocketing his phone before standing up and walking to his dresser to find clothes that would make him look semi presentable.

"Joel, whatcha doin'?" Grian asked, slightly confused on what was happening.

"Scott wants to meet up with me for some odd reason I dunno why." Joel answered, Shrugging on a pull-over and a pair of trousers.

"Uhh okay, have fun with that, Ill be here." Grian said, pulling out his phone, probably inviting someone over while he's gone. Joel let out a 'mhm' and made his way to the door.

"Scott, why are you dressing me up like some kinda of toy?" Jimmy waw beyond confused right now. All he knew that he and Scott where going a on a date, as Scott put it, to some cafe hes never heard of.

"You want to look good for out date right? And no offense but I dont trust you to dress yourself Jim" Scott replied, throwing some more of Jims clothes on the floor, which would need to be washed later because of that.

"I guess, but I can infact dress myself just find, I'm an adult y'know."

"You're an adult who doesn't know how to dress well."

"I disagree I think I look perfectly fine." Jimmy knows he looks decent atleast, not bad enough to where he has to get dressed by someone else.

"Oh shush and let me do this or Joel will never want a qpr with you." Huh, strange.

"What are you talking about with Joel?"

"What?" Well, now Scott was just playing dumb with him, god dose he hate when Scott dose that.

"Scott, you said something about Joel, why?" He wasn't going to stop untill he got answers...he might actually that seems annoying for both of them.

"I didn't. Anyways, hurry and put these on so we can leave."

Joel made it to the Cafe fairly quickly, which was expected because he lives fairly close to the cafe, and now he was just waiting too see whatever Scott wanted. He flinched a bit when he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned back to find Scott and Jimmy..? What in the world, why was Jim here.

"Hope we didn't keep you waiting too long, Jim was taking a superr long time to get ready." Scott said like it was nothing, sitting down across from Joel.

"Hello, Scott and Tim. I didn't know you were coming with Scott."

"I didn't know you were going to be here." Jim sat down next to Scott. Also, it was weird, why didn't Jim know he was going to be there, he assumed Scott would have told him, but he also didn't tell Joel Jim was coming so it wasnt fully outta the picture that he didnt know.

"So Scott...what did you need to tell me?" Joel asked, putting his hands in his hoodie pockets.

"Well, I may have lied, it was actually Jimmy who wanted to tell you something, just needed me to get you here so I'll be taking my leave bye, Ill be taking me leave." Scott Stood up, giving Jims hand a small squeeze and whispering something to him.

"So, Tim, what was it that you needed to tell me?"

"Well, uh maybe I had something to tell you and maybe its embarrassing so like dont judge me?" Jim's voice shook a little as he spoke, either from nerves or possibly fear, Joel didnt really know.

"I won't judge" unless it was something stupid, but Jim didn't need to know that.

"Okay, well I have to, y'know, like be your partner, if you'll have me" Joel was speechless, that was not on his bingo card for today, not that he was complaining.

"I, uh, yeah, I would like that too."

[katakaluptastrophy]

Masterpost of TLT metas

This is mostly for my own reference, as tagging doesn't seem to guarantee something being findable on Tumblr...but if you like wildly overthinking lesbian necromancers in space, enjoy!

Overthinking the Fifth House:

What is a "Speaker to the Dead"?

Actually, Magnus Quinn isn't terrible at sword fighting

Imperial complicity: Abigail the First

Pyschopomp: Abigail Pent and Hecate

Did Teacher conspire with Cytherea to kill the Fifth?

What does the Fifth House actually do?

The Fourth and the Fifth can never just be family

Cytherea's political observations at the anniversary dinner

Abigail Pent's affect: ghosts and autism

Were the Fourth wards of the Fifth?

Abigail probably knew most of the scions as children

Magnus Quinn's very understandable anger

Fifth House necromancy is not neat and tidy

Are Abigail and Magnus an exception to the exploitative nature of cavaliership?

"Abigail Pent literally brought her husband and look where that got her" (the Fifth in TUG)

The Fifth's relationship dynamic

The Fifth's relationship is unconventional in a number of ways

The queer-coding of Abigail and Magnus' relationship

Abigail and Palamedes, and knowing in the River

Was Isaac the ward of the Fifth?

Did Magnus manage to draw his sword before Cytherea killed him? (and why he probably had to watch his wife die)

How did Abigail know she was murdered by a Lyctor?

Fifth House necromancy is straight out of the Odyssey

The politics of the anniversary dinner (and further thoughts)

Was Magnus born outside of the Dominicus system?

Overthinking John Gaius:

The one time John was happy was playing Jesus

Is Alecto's body made from John's?

Are there atheists in the Nine Houses?

Why isn't John's daughter a necromancer?

The horrors of love go both ways: why John could have asked Alecto 'what have you done to me?'

Why M- may have really hoped John was on drugs

What is it with guys called Jo(h)n and getting disintegrated? (John and Dr Manhattan)

John's conference call with his CIA handlers

Watching your friend turn into an eldritch horror

Why does G1deon look so weird? (Jod regrew him from an arm)

When is a friendship bracelet not a friendship bracelet?

Why did John have G1deon hunt Harrow? (with bonus update)

The 'indelible' sin of Lyctorhood and John's shoddy plagiarism of Catholicism

Are John Gaius and Abigail Pent so different?

What was Jod's plan at Canaan House?

John and Ianthe tread the Eightfold path

The Mithraeum is more than a joke about cows

When was John Gaius born? (And another)

John Gaius and the tragic Orestes

John and Jesus writing sins in the sand

John and Nona's echoing chapters

John's motivations

Is Alecto just as guilty as John?

John's cult (and what he might have done to them)

The horror of Jod

Did John get bloodsweat before he became god?

Some very silly thoughts about John and Abigail arguing about academia

Overthinking the Nine Houses:

'No retainers, no attendants, no domestics'

Funerary customs and the violence of John's silence

Juno Zeta and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time

The horror of the River bubble

Every instance of 'is this how it happens' in HTN

Feudalism is still shitty even if you make it queer and sex positive

How do stele work?

Thought crime in the Nine Houses

The Houses have a population the size of Canada

What must it be like to fight the Houses?

You know what can't have been fun? Merv wing's megatruck on Varun day...

Augustine's very Catholic hobby (decorating skeletons)

Necromancers are not thin in a conventionally attractive way

Matching the Houses with the planets of the solar system (though perhaps the Fourth *is* on Saturn)

Why don't the Nine Houses have (consistent) vaccination or varifocals?

How would the Houses react to the deaths at Canaan House?

How does Wake understand her own name (languages over 10,000 years)

What pre-resurrection texts are known in the Houses?

Camilla and Palamedes very Platonic relationship (further thoughts)

The horrors the Cohort found at Canaan House

Do the Houses understand the tech keeping them alive?

The scions from an external perspective (sci fi baddies)

Cav cots

The Nine Houses and feudalism

The horrors of early necromantic education

[swordmaid]

What did Shri'iia do that finally broke her oath? I love hearing about your bg3 character arcs, and my fav play through I was an oathbreaker durge- so I'm interested in hearing more!

so for some background context for Shri’iia - she was a paladin of Lolth who was in service to the matriarch of House Faen Tlabbar for like 100+ years or so. She’s kind of like the matriarch’s hidden weapon, no one knew about her existence except for the matriarch (bc before she was a paladin, she was just another commoner who didn’t belong to any noble house) and she was kept in the dark until her matriarch had some use for her. Like Menzoberranzan is a city that thrives in deceit and secrecy and the best weapon someone could have is a weapon that’s unknown to everyone else but completely loyal to you. Shri’iia agreed to this arrangement since didn’t belong to any noble houses prior - and she’s ambitious as hell lmfao she wanted to be at the top of their hierarchy. To her, she had everything to gain and nothing to lose - not to mention that the matriarchs were the closest beings to Lolth and through them, her will is re-enacted so how could she refuse? so she is like a well trained hound in a way, who’s completely loyal to the spider queen and her matriarch and she does not know anything else but to serve her spider queen bc Lolth is everything….!!!!

that is, until she gets kidnapped, tadpoled, and left in the surface

and the thing is, in all her years she has never once stepped foot in the surface. she hasn’t even explored the entirety of menzoberranzan bc she spent most of her days hidden away. not to mention everything she knows about the surface is from gossip and the horrible shit they tell you about how drows are hated there, and how you’ll be hunted like an animal the moment they see your red eyes, and all that terrible shit. so suffice to say shri’iia is terrified! she hasn’t even seen the sun ever before and she hasn’t touched grass either so now you’re expecting her to be fine when she’s left in a place that could kill her bc she’s a drow? not to mention the tadpole in her head? like early act 1 is just a stressful time for her and the fact that she joins up with these other tadpoled folks who could kill her anytime doesn’t make it less stressful

anyway, bc she’s so paranoid and rn she’s like a professional liar in her nature 🫶 (she’s a charlatan) she makes up this story about how she was born in the surface in some small town that has a population of less than 100, and she obviously does not worship Lolth ew and her oath? she follows a noble cause don’t worry about it (:. so she sticks by that back story to earn the other’s trust! and to save her own skin, more or less but by doing so she’s essentially hiding and being ashamed of her Lolth worship and oh that’s not -

in the ACTUAL game, shri’iia breaks her oath because she tells minthara where the grove is. in her head, what better way to punish a traitor of Lolth than to kill her where everyone is watching! 🤭🤭 like punishments for traitors has to public and humiliating like that is such a good plan (in her head!) except that she didn’t take into account that Lolth was getting tired of her ass for hiding her Lolth worship NOT to mention that she’s not acting like how a paladin of lolth should be acting like why are you listening to some man first of all (since I hc gale is the leader of the party). and by killing minthara in front of the grove she offhandedly saves the tieflings which is another 🫤🫤🫤 as a paladin of Lolth like she‘s gonna have such a bad grade in being an evil aligned paladin

So tl;dr - Shri’iia ends up lying about her entire backstory out of self preservation meaning that she has to lie about her Lolth worship. Lolth is a fickle and proud goddess who doesn’t stand by that shit and drops her ass, now Shri’iia spends the remaining half of act 1 in denial trying to win back Lolth’s favour or else she has to deal with the fact that her identity is essentially gone and she’s been abandoned by the goddess she has fully devoted herself to 🫶🫶