#Glitching Mind Disorder

[steven-mudverse]

It’s Coining Time!

Glitching Mind Disorder (GMID)

Glitching Mind Disorder is someone who’s mind has a constant static, numbing, or null mind. This can be connected to a trauma, pass on genetic trait, or gained later on in one’s life.

symptoms contain : Mind having a constant hazing or null/blank state A struggle to consecrate even on simple tasks Fluctuating between too many thoughts to none at all Forgetfulness Easy to misunderstand and not process information

no flag : if one is made I’ll repost it! I do not plan to take requests at this time. But I hope you enjoy.

[bimobuddy]

Learning to Trust

SFW Hazbin TK fic

Alright people hear me out with this one

Major Spoilers

CW: Brief mention of anxiety disorders, swearing

Lee!Vox, Ler!Alastor

It's kind of a ship? The Aromantic 'Squish' equivalent of a ship. Well not yet anyway, they're still rivals in this, but I might make a part 2 that explores that a little more

It was gonna be Valentino and Vox, but I'm mad at Val so he got his boyfriend privileges taken away >:(

This might get kinda angsty, sorry in advance

Summary: Vox is glitching out and having connection issues, so he bites the bullet and asks help from the only other demon who can help him. Unfortunately with that demon being Alastor, they run into some issues.

It had started happening after the battle between the exterminators and the sinners. The War between Heaven and Hell. Vox had been watching it all happen on his TV, mostly keeping an eye on Alastor. Originally the plan was to watch by himself, but Velvet insisted they all watch together, and he couldn't really think of a good enough lie to tell her no, so he gave in.

He had spent the whole night playing up how much he hated Alastor, which is easy when your entire life and afterlife, you've been a TV Show Host. Many years of acting. At one point he even hoped if he got too obnoxious, the other two might leave, but used to his antics, they stayed.

But inside he was immensely stressed out. Yes he and Alastor were rivals, but there was something about the rivalry he needed. Something about it he liked. He couldn't really explain it himself, and he preferred not to think about it, preferring to tell himself that he just enjoyed hating the Radio Host.

So when he watched Alastor almost get killed by Adam, seeing him actually vulnerable for once... It scared him.

Then started the glitching. He knew it was from stress, the feeling was very familiar to when he was a human with an anxiety disorder. Only instead of a racing heart and suddenly feeling faint and warm, his anxiety came in the form of glitching, as his mind couldn't process everything, and showed it visibly on his screen.

He had tried for hours to make it stop, to try and fix it himself, but he couldn't see the mirror properly through all the glitching. That and the glitching made it hard to think.

He considered going to Velvet, but despite her phone and social media use, she didn't actually know anything about the tech itself. There was one more option, but he really didn't want to even consider it.

Though as he started to glitch out again, he decided to just bite the bullet.

-

Vox found himself scaling up the side of the Hotel, climbing toward Alastor's radio tower.

He'd rather fall to his death than use the doors and ask to see him. As he reached the top, he frantically tapped on the window, feeling another glitch about to happen.

Nothing.

He started tapping again, even faster this time.

Still nothing.

He made a fist and drew his arm back to just break the window in-

*click*

"Well this is quite the predicament." Alastor said, leaning over the windowsill. "Shut up asshole, just let me in." Vox grumbled. Alastor's grin seemed to widen. "And why shouldn't I just give you a little nudge?" The radio host questioned, placing his cane lightly against Vox's screen.

Vox couldn't help but notice that his cane had been seemingly glued back together and.. bandaged up? He didn't have time to think about that. "I uh.." He trailed off, only for Alastor to push his cane a little harder into Vox's screen. He tried to speak again, but he glitched, losing his grip and slipping.

But he didn't fall. Through all the TV static, he felt his wrists being grabbed, as he was pulled upward. He still couldn't focus much, but he recognized that he had dropped to a hardwood floor now.

"My, this certainly is quite a problem.. For you, anyway, I find it entertaining." Alastor chuckled. Vox pressed a palm to the cool floor to try and ground himself. Gradually, the static cleared itself. "You know what I found interesting? That someone as strong and as feared as you got cut down by an angel." He said, glaring.

The room got deadly silent, Alastor's smile much more strained now.

"... I need your help, okay?"

"And why should I help you? Especially after that nice little comment you made."

"Listen, I'm- Ugh. Forget it, I don't know why I even both-øťhəred-" Vox had stood to leave, only for another glitch to have him leaning against the wall for support.

"It appears neither of us are in great shape." Alastor said, begrudgingly lifting Vox by his upper arm and setting him in one of the swivel chairs. He crossed his arms and waited for Vox's glitching to pass.

After a solid minute, Vox groaned, his head starting to hurt. "So what made you think you'd come to someone who famously hates television boxes for help? Especially when that person is a rival, an enemy, someone you've fought in the past?" Alastor asked.

Vox looked up at him, feeling that pit of anxiety in his stomach again. "I didn't know who else to go to. Valentino is useless, Velvet doesn't know shit about tech, and you're the only other demon who has seen me weak before."

Alastor took a moment to process that last part. He considered it. If he helped Vox, he risked being seen as soft. But if he didn't help him, what if it got worse, and he lost his nemesis, the pettiness that kept him going at times, that pushed him to be the best Host?

He sat down in his seat, across from Vox. "Do you trust me?" He asked. Vox thought for a moment. Did he? He must have if he came here. "I have to."

"Good enough." Alastor went to get started... "Wait how the hell do I do this? I'm more familiar with my own equipment."

Oh, right. Vox sighed. "The back of my monitor comes off. Just open it, and I'll instruct you from there." He said, turning around and removing his hat.

Alastor curled his fingers around the back panel of his monitor, causing Vox to jump a little. "If you want me to help you, sit still-" "I am, shut up." Alastor pulled the back panel off and was met with what to him looked like Alien technology.

After Vox had instructed him on what to do, he got to work. Though he didnt like working in silence, it felt a little too intimate, especially with his hands inside someone else's head.

"So what exactly caused this, if I may ask?" He questioned. "Stress. I start to glitch out when things are hard to process and I overload. Sometimes if the glitching gets too bad, I shut down, which I'd rather avoid."

"Shut down," Alastor repeated, "I thought if you 'shut down,' you'd die or something?" "No, no.. I can more closely compare it to burnout but ten times worse. Last time I shut down, it took me a week to recharge."

"Hm. And what caused you to become so stressed this time? Sure I've seen you briefly buffer and glitch during our fights, but never this bad." Alastor asked. Vox noticed the radio filter in his voice seemed to fade out. He was genuinely curious.

He didn't know what to say. More like he didn't know how to say it. How do you tell your rival of all people you were stressed because you saw them get hurt?

"Well? With how close I am to all these wires, I'd answer if I were you." Ah, his filter was back. "I just.. Got overworked." "Need I remind you how easy it would be for me to unplug some of these wires? Hm, this yellow one seems awfully loose-" "I was worried oka- Aha!"

...

"What do we have here?" Alastor asked, a smile evident in his voice. Vox froze. He actually didn't know 'what they had there.' That had never happened before.

"I-I don't know, but Alastor I swear to Satan himself- wahait- grr- Don't!" He gripped the armrests of his seat in a desperate attempt to hold still. He worried if he pulled away too fast, he'd accidentally rip a wire out.

It felt so weird. He could actually feel Alastor messing with the wires in his head, specifically the ones down at the bottom that ran down his neck and into his back. Each time the Radio host rolled one between his fingers, it sent what felt like electricity into his system. Thousands of little shocks that made him want to pull away and- No. He wouldn't, it was dumb, it was weak, and it wasn't like him.

Alastor grinned wider, finding it fun to mess with him. "Why Vox, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were ticklish." He said, rubbing the wires again, watching as Vox gripped the armrests tighter and scrunched his shoulders up. Alastor only grew more amused as he heard the other's fans whir to life as his ventilation system tried to cool him down.

Vox, however, felt like he was fighting for his life. His shoulders were shaking, his chest was spasming, and he felt his screen overheating. He was actively fighting back any noise that tried to escape. He refused to be seen as any weaker than he already was. "T-Tickl-what? The f-fuhuck is that? Thihis isn't a vihirus??"

Alastor paused. "You seriously have never heard of tickling? It's childsplay. Children often have tickle-fights with their siblings and friends. You've never even seen it?" "I never really had any friends."

There was a beat of silence.

"What about the other V's?"

"Gross, you think I'd let Valentino get anywhere near me? You know where his hands have been?"

"Where haven't they been is the real question."

Fuck, that got a laugh out of Vox. A real one too, not the fake rehearsed one he used in public or on TV. It was lighter than Alastor expected, genuine, and almost had a warm sound to it if you can imagine that.

And Alastor found himself wanting to hear it again. "I suppose I should get back to maintenance now shouldn't I?" He said, returning to his work, get making sure his hands brushed over the wires and cables occasionally. More than occasionally.

"A-Alastor- fuhuck- wahahait- *wheeeze* ahahahaha!" Vox found himself stomping the floor a little, since he was unable to pull away. He felt light scritching at the base of his neck, obviously intentional. "Yohohou ohold tihihimey prihick! I'll d-dehehe- dehehehahahaha!"

"Oh I'm sorry, you're going to what now? I can't exactly hear you." Alastor grinned. Both hands, or claws one should say, suddenly scritched at the back of his ribs.

Unable to control himself, Vox tossed his head back and laughed, and slammed backward, pressing his back into the seat. Alastor was quick to pull his hands back with a chuckle.

Vox's fans were whirring loudly. "You ahasshole, just finish fuckin' repairing me." "Oh I finished that ten minutes ago!" Alastor answered cheerfully, popping the back panel back into place in Vox's monitor.

Vox groaned, irritated.

"I still find it hard to believe you've never heard of tickling! Everyone knows about it. I'm even more surprised no one's ever found out by accident. Not even while reparing your monitor?"

"I fix myself, I don't trust anyone to touch me."

"You trusted me."

Vox turned his swivel chair around to face Alastor. "I did, yeah.."

Alastor tilted his head a little in curiosity. "And maybe you could trust me again. You never did tell me what got you so stressed." Vox rolled his eyes. "Yeah, because you started assaulting me before I could."

"Voxius."

"That's not- Did you just assign me a full name?"

"Yes, now quit stalling." Alastor said, latching a hand onto Vox's side. "WAIT-" He shouted before batting at his hand, huffing out chuckles. Alastor only crawled his hands up Vox's ribs before targeting his underarms.

"WAITFUCKTHATSWORSE!" He cackled out, slamming his arms down, trapping Alastor's hands. The Radio demon only chuckled. "You'll learn that when it comes to tickling, much like real fights, you're not supposed to let your opponent know exactly where your weak points are. Now I can do this." He stated before drilling his thumbs into Vox's underarms.

"FAHAHAHACK!" He shouted, kicking a leg out, much like a dog, whilst also trying to curl up in his chair to protect himself. "Thihihis ihihis rihihihidiculohohous!!"

"What's ridiculous is that you still haven't answered the question."

"YOHOU WOHONT LEHEHET MEHEHE!"

"Hm, fine." Alastor stopped and pulled his hands away. Vox tried to kick him but of course a tendril came out and grabbed his leg, as he expected.

Vox muttered something. "I'm sorry?" Alastor asked, leaning closer. Vox sighed. "I was worried." "About?"

"About you."

Alastor's eyes widened ever so slightly. Vox had been violently glitching out over him? "Why is that?" His voice was normal.

"You're my rival, so obviously I tuned in to watch the battle. I wanted to see if you'd get killed. Part of me obviously wanted it to happen, but when I saw that Angel snap your cane and actually hit you-" Alastor flinched at the memory, "Seeing you actually vulnerable like that.. I realized I didn't actually want to lose my one and only rival. As much as I hate ya, you do push me to come up with newer and better shows in order to compete with you."

"I... can't say I haven't thought the same thing. Because of you I have to write better scripts and find the best topics for my broadcast. Even though it's no question that I'm the best," he grinned as Vox frowned, "But I am the best because of you."

Vox wasn't sure what to say to that, having mixed feelings. Before he could overthink it, Alastor held a hand out. He took it, as the other demon helped him up. "Now, it's quite late, and you have a tight schedule, I'm sure." He opened the window, as a large tendril waited outside for Vox.

"I do appreciate you coming to check on me." He said before hurrying Vox out the window, as he sat on the tendril. "If you tell anyone I said that, I just might broadcast this newly discovered sensitivity of yours." He threatened.

There was the Alastor he knew and loved to hate.

"I won't, don't worry. I don't feel like explaining to anyone why I was over at your Radio Tower anyway. You hurry up and heal, Alastor, I want you in top shape for our next fight," He smirked, "Even I'm not low enough to kick someone while he's do-OOOWN-" The tendril suddenly dropped, pulling Vox down with it, where it would drop him off safely on the ground.

Alastor shut his window, and watched the TV show host leave down the hill. Never in a million years did he think Vox would ever trust him, nor did he ever think he'd help his rival.

But he couldn't deny that he had had a little fun that night, not only tickling him, but just talking and getting to know him a little.

This night might have made their rivalry slightly more complicated.

[osachiyo]

please for the love of god, read my rules before interacting/requesting.

𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋 𝐑𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐒

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tba

Stuff I don't write ↓

amab/male reader + etc, pseudo/step-cest/incest, necro, vore, character x character, age regression, lolicon/shotacon, ddlg, foot fetish, bukkake, gang bangs, pedophilia, breast feeding, watersports, piss kink, domestic abuse, brainwashing, scat, cbt, food play, snowballing, race play, m-preg, knotting, bestiality, eating disorders, wound fucking, heavy bleeding, milf! reader, shock play, shoe licking, high school au! setting (nsfw), panty sniffing, sounding, race/color specified reader, oc's, SUKUNA, aging up minors etc. — these are subjected to change.

any confusions? don't be afraid to throw me an ask !

↪ 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐒

[weebsinstash]

Not gonna lie if I were the reader after they got replaced by YouTwo I would be a neurotic mess lmao. I already mental issues but I can't imagine going through their trauma on top of everything. I would definitely be scratching myself again out of sheer stress and anxiety about whether or not everybody will replace me again. My arms would look horrible. Oh boy imagine everybody's reaction to realizing they've messed up this badly and absolutely ruined the reader

Other people: fun ways we can write! Coffee shop au! Red string of fate! Hanahaki! Enemies to lovers!

me: what if I sat and tried to seriously and realistically contemplate the ramifications of a severely traumatic experience and the following neurotic habits that arise from the spiral down

Reader gets back to Spider Society, either glitching back in or "being rescued" whatever, and, you're just doing shit like digging food out of the trash "you'd never guess what kinds of perfectly good stuff people throw away, and it saves time to not have to wait for anything to be prepped! Never know when you'll vanish in the middle of a meal or that one serial killer will pop out at you again!! Ahaha!

Someone comes to check on you and you deadass have a fucking, tripwire web trap all around you, you're not even sleeping in a bed you're in your own webbing (because we rock organic webbing here because it fucks) so the second anything like, opens the door of your apartment or comes near you, you're instantly aware. Peter B comes in "heeeey, just wanna check in, make sure you're doing ok--" and there's fucking web wires rattling cans as he opens the front door and suddenly you're wide awake with an actual fucking knife or some kind of equally brutal survivalist weapon and it takes you a few seconds to fully snap out of it and let him calm you down and he has to tell Miguel You Are In Fact Not Doing Ok

You've got real "scaring all your loved ones and everyone around you" energy during those times you're just like going through some manic shit, opening your mouth and going on a sudden 'epiphany' like "i know what would help!! I'm gonna start cutting my face in really visible prominent places and that way you guys will know by the scar who I am :) and when it heals I'll cut myself again :) and again :) maybe I should just cut off a finger, how many of me do you think are missing fingers? Or maybe I could give myself a cool scar!!" And it's just like. What the fuck do they even say to that. A lot of them just genuinely could cry over this, seeing what this did to you. You sound genuinely cheerful at the realization and give no mind to how casually you just suggested self harm out of paranoia and self preservation.

You're just having like hard-core eating disorder issues going from overeating to undereating, binging because you're suffer9ng trauma from starving and then starving yourself "no its fasting, I'm FASTING to save food and money and resources, ok, I can only fit so much in my backpack and--"

You have this backpack from your multiversal glitching travels and keeping it with you basically 24/7 even when you go to the bathroom becomes a comfort habit, because, "never know when your camp has been found by the runners and you've gotta make a break for it" or some other cryptic memory you babble at them like you're discussing coffee when it could be one of the most vile horrifying things they've ever heard

I think the most interesting but tricky thing I've thought of is, what if Reader's trauma-humor coping mechanism gets dialed up to 11 and you can basically never turn it off because, your brain is protecting yourself. It's like you're Doing A Bit but literally all the time like some traumatized method actor and you're just, they're never sure if you're actually telling the truth or actually recounting things you experienced after a while

"Oh man the last time I ate a meal this big was when I finally stopped glitching and I had to break into someone's house and rob them for food! Just call me Santa Claus! But this Earth had suffered a nuclear fallout so all they had was like, DRY CRACKERS and, a lotta canned stuff, icky, and, I was in the middle of trying to pry a tin of lil cocktail weenies open with my teeth when the irradiated house centipedes smelled my blood, just imagine like a normal centipede but, like, the size of a Shetland pony, hey, friendship really IS magic right, and me and these centipedes got SO close, so anyways they smelled my blood, right, and it made them hungry, and--" and here you got like The Entire Squad speechless, Hobies just over here like "fuck, I don't even know what to say to that, you want some ketamine bruv" and yall just hit em with "nah last time I tried ketamine I had a fever dream of being replaced by an evil clone and I was shunned by all my close friends who i thought of like family. Oh wait, that was you guys! That's awkward!"

[picturejasper20]

I'm curious about what mental illness/disorder Vlad Masters seems to have in the show, or at least the closest there is to it. So, one day i was reading about Borderline Personality Disorder and in noticed how some of the symptoms presented in the article shared similarities with how Vlad acts in the show.

Like Vlad has a lot of problems having stable relationships in the show and has a big fear of people abandoning him as show in A Glitch In Time novel. He also can be unpredictable in some ways. He has a quite explosive anger and often is shown to be depressive and unsatisfied with the life he is living. He does some very impulsive things at times, in spite of how intelligent he can be.

Then i found this:

There seems to be a link between BPD and the person having gone through some traumatic experience. This fits how Vlad is heavily implied to have been traumatized for the accident and how ¨it killed his social life¨. So all these things started to show up in result of that and got worse over the course of the years.

Now, keep in mind that this is just pure speculation, i'm not an expert on the subject to do a full diagnosis on this. So it is possible that i'm getting some things wrong in here, just to clarify.

[schizosupport]

hi glitch! no pressure about answering, but I don't have any other schizospec people I can talk to, and I need some support

recently I got diagnosed with Other Specified Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder/Psychotic Disorder, and I'm starting weekly therapy to get a specific diagnosis and treatment, and I have an evaluation with a psychiatrist to look at meds next week.

the thing is, I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around this. I've gone through my whole life up to this point trusting my sense of reality, and only had a brief period of time when I self diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (never confirmed).

AND I've started to look into medication, and the one i'll probably be prescribed is Ablify, which seems to have a ton of scary side effects. I'm still in school, and while I'm almost certain I can get accommodations, I can't be sure, and adolescents can be cruel.

truth be told, I'm just scared. I see posts about the opportunities taken away from schizospec people, and I haven't been living under a rock, I know all the stigma that surrounds what I know now to be my community.

like I said, no pressure to answer, I just want some advice and support from a more experienced member of the community.

Hello there!

It's been a while since you sent this message. I hope you are feeling at least a bit more settled in the situation?

It's always wild to get a diagnosis that you didn't necessarily expect. For me, my initial "psychosis not otherwise specified" diagnosis also completely blindsided me, and so did the later schizophrenia diagnosis.

It's true that there's a lot of stigma and bullshit surrounding the schizo spec disorders, but I also want to highlight that schizo spec people are awesome, and we're strong and we got each other's backs. In my experience the psychotics and schizos are the underdogs of not only the psychiatric community but also the mental health community. But that also means that you get a unique opportunity to learn who's a true ally, and to practice your own understanding and acceptance of other marginalized experiences on the edges of life. In my experience our community is one of the most compassionate and accepting communities around, probably bc we know intimately what it's like to have weird experiences and be judged for it. Try to navigate towards a place in your head where you align yourself with other marginalized people and don't get caught up in bitterness about a uniquely fucked situation, but instead take it as a sign to be kind above all else and to think about who else in society might be in a similar position, to find your allies and take comfort in unity.

In terms of the stigma, I think something to keep in mind as a newly diagnosed person, is that to the extent that it's possible, you are the owner of the information about your mental health. And you don't owe anyone disclosure. I'm not saying to necessarily always try to be vague, there ARE safe places and safe people and there ARE situations where you might genuinely broaden someone's horizons by introducing them to the notion that "we are here. We're one of you". But there are also plenty of situations where you don't wanna share that information. You can let them assume, you can omit, you can even lie.

People frequently assume that I'm autistic, and I don't correct them. Maybe I'll respond with "something like that" if they ask. Especially in professional settings. Unless you want someone to know, it's none of their business what exactly is your deal.

In terms of medication, the important thing to keep in mind is that it helps some people, but it is also not (shouldn't be) mandatory to take meds because you're schizo spec. You can give it a try, but if it isn't doing anything helpful for you, you are not obligated to take it. The psych might act like you have to and like it would be completely irresponsible not to. Try to take it with a grain of salt. Think about your life so far, the symptoms that have led to this diagnosis. Can you live with that? Do the meds help with that? Are there side effects and are thet worth it?

I take a low dose of antipsychotics myself and I've tried without and with higher doses too. For me at this point in life, a low dose of antipsychotics are helpful to me.

I'm happy to hear that you've been offered therapy!! I hope that it's any good, and that it's been helpful. I definitely think that therapy (with a good therapist) can be instrumental in dealing with psychotic symptoms.

In the end I just wanna say.. it's gonna be ok. I know it's a big scary new thing, but it is also actually "just" a word that's descriptive of symptoms that you already had. This doesn't mean that you are bound to get worse. Try not to panic about looking for new symptoms or symptoms you might've missed. This can make you worse, as you start questioning all of your experiences and whether they are psychotic. It can be little things like questioning every little sensory input. Try to remember that hallucinations aren't inherently harmful and sometimes you don't have to know if it's real or not bc it literally doesn't matter.

It can often be tumultuous when you've just gotten this diagnosis, before you get used to the thought and reestablish your sense of identity and reality with this in mind. But there is a point of peace coming up. It does normally get easier, as you settle into this new understanding. And you can help yourself along by reminding yourself that the only thing that changed is that you were given a word to describe your existing experience.

I hope any of this is helpful. Best of luck, anon,, and welcome to (knowingly being a member of) the community!

[itsjuststardust]

Heaven in Hiding - Chapter 12: Angel On Fire

Heaven in Hiding Masterlist

Chapter Summary: And I’m fading away, you know, I used to be on fire. I’m standing in the ashes of who I used to be. -Halsey

Word Count: 13,734

Author's Note/Chapter Warnings: The chapter title comes from the Halsey song ‘Angel On Fire’. This chapter is dark. Tags are updated. Chapter warnings are: attempted SA, angst like whoa, mental breakdown, disassociative disorder, PTSD. Please proceed with caution. MINORS - DO NOT INTERACT - 18+ ONLY (for reals)

Chapter 12: Angel On Fire

Mando’s words resonated inside of her—Stay. Here. Those two words echoed through the hollow shell that housed what was left of her as she replayed their last interaction on an eternal loop.

Nothing made sense anymore. Everything that she knew, everything that she believed for the last five years, had been based on a lie. With those two words—Stay. Here. Mando had left and decimated her in the wake of the bomb he dropped.

Stay. Here.

There was nothing left.

There was nothing left, and it was all her fault.

Her mind spun as it tried to process this new information. Evidently, it was ill-equipped to make sense of this revelation, leaving Alaina unmoored and floating through her memories of the past.

Yes, there was sand and grit under her hands from the ground of the hangar. Yes, her cheeks were wet with tears. Yes, Peli was nearby having a discussion with her pit droids. Yes, there was Grogu, who had wedged his tiny body under hers so he could try to see her face. Yes, her Mandalorian hallucination had returned, trying to provide, albeit awkward, comfort, but he was trying in his own way.

Alaina was aware of all of this, but she wasn’t there. She had left hangar three-five.

She was on the Razor Crest. 

“Look,” she whispered, pointing to the white blanket, “it’s the first fall of snow on the Crest this season.”

No, that wasn’t right. Besides, those words were pointless now. Mando never needed that clean slate in the first place.

She needs to find that memory. Stay. Here. She needs to replay it, analyze it, and live in it. 

Her mind rewinds past Sorgan, painfully skipping over the memory of creamy white skin tangling with tanned skin and broad muscles, pleasure, and the moon.

Her memories come to a jarring stop, and Alaina is back on the upper deck of the Crest with her dislocated shoulder, wearing a white hospital gown, snarling at the Mandalorian, “Just know that I’ll never forgive you.”

“I never said I did it for your forgiveness. I said I did it because it was the right thing to do.”

Her mind keeps going, searching for that one particular memory.

Unfortunately, there are five years of memories between the last time she stepped off the Razor Crest and when she returned to the gunship. Some memories from the last five years are too painful and all-consuming to skip over, forcing her to relive them.

Her memories glitch, and she is thrust back into the lab on Nevarro. 

Penn is frantically trying to save her from General Graven. She can see his panicked face as he attempts to pry the General’s hands from her throat. With a snarl, General Graven finally let her go, allowing the burn of oxygen to return to her lungs.

Penn instantly fell to his knees, trying to assess the damage. “Lainey,” his concerned voice floated in her ears as she struggled to stand up.

“I don’t know why Gideon is still bothering with her,” Graven huffed, absently wiping his hands on his pressed uniform.

Penn is oblivious to her Mandalorian hallucination, holding her against his armored chest as if the figment of her imagination could protect her from the other two men in the room.

“Because—” Penn attempted to start, but Graven wouldn’t let him finish.

“Because you’re nothing,” Graven snarled at her, not bothering to let Penn finish whatever feeble explanation he was about to give.

And she believed it. 

Her imaginary Mandalorian was having none of it. He silently spun her to face him and held his balled-up hands in front of his helmet, looking like a boxer preparing to strike. He was telling her to fight.

“Look at her,” Graven laughed. “Her brain is already gone. She doesn’t even know where she is.”

Mando shook his head at the man’s words, brought his gloved hand up to his neck, and drew a line across his throat with his index finger. Kill him.

Alaina turned back to the General, and Mando marched by her side as she approached him.

Graven smirked at her, “What are you going to do to me, little girl?”

Mando raised his fists again—Fight.

Alaina acted on instinct—She raised her hand to rest it on the General’s cheek, earning her a snarl.

Everything stilled inside of her. There was nothing but her and General Graven in that lab on Nevarro—

The orders flow through her lips, and for the first time in years, she feels the snake of her former powers rattle against the confines they had been trapped in. They surge through her, winding and twisting into her words, “You’re going to turn around and walk in a straight line. You are going to keep walking. You will keep walking, and you won't stop for anything.”

Graven’s ice-blue eyes glazed over, and his snarled face relaxed as he listened to her speak.

Alaina nodded at him and removed her hand from his cheek, severing their connection.

Graven nodded, and like the good soldier he was, he made an about-face and began his final march.

“You did it,” Penn whispered, watching in wonderment as Graven continued doing as she instructed. “No,” he continued when he realized Graven was heading to the open hangar bay carved into the mountain overlooking the lava flats. “Alaina, stop this,” he pleaded, grabbing her arm.

Alaina watched as the silver-haired General kept walking. The first drop of blood fell from her nose onto the floor. The bright red liquid stuck out vividly in her memory, dulling the other colors.

“Alaina!” Pershing yelled, jumping in front of her. “You can’t do this. You can’t kill him. Stop this before it’s too late!”

“This is your fault,” she told Pershing quietly as she stoically watched the man take another step closer to his death. 

Her memory is now black and white except for her blood. The blood from her nose turns into a steady trickle. The bright red of it was stark against the colorless memory. Her own blood painted her memories in a striking vermilion hue.

“Alaina, please…”

But it was too late. 

It was too late for General Graven, Penn Pershing's consciousness, or Alaina’s soul as Graven took his last step and toppled over the edge of the building.

Alaina turned to look at her hallucination. The Mandalorian nodded at her and held his fists up to his helmet one final time.

Fight.

Watching her life in reverse was odd—the things that stood out and those that didn’t.

Other flashes of her time on Nevarro flicker as she searches, but nothing stands out quite as poignant as the first time she took a life.

Here, she thought, when her mind returned to the Razor Crest.

Five years ago.

On Nevarro.

Stay. Here.

She watched the scene unfold as if watching it for the first time.

Mando’s gloved hand caressed her calf as he spoke. His words were soft, soothing, and confident.

Stay. Here.

How different would her life have been if she’d stayed put? Would she be settled on some planet? Would she have a family? A purpose? 

“Snap out of it, Blondie!”

Alaina was rudely returned to the present in the blink of an eye.

The heel of her hand and her knees ached where she hit the ground. Her eyes burned. It felt like someone had cracked open her chest and ripped her heart from the hollow cavity.

Peli had pulled her up to kneel on the ground, and the shorter woman held her up by her shoulders.

Grogu grabbed her hand and tugged on her fingers.

Alaina could feel them there but could only see her favorite hallucination, which had finally returned to her.

The Mandalorian from five years ago stood behind Peli in his brown armor and beyond tattered cloak. There was something menacing about this former version of the Mandalorian. He wasn’t shiny and new. He was battle-tested, worn, and damaged. 

Like her.

He looked at her over the mechanic’s shoulders and raised his fists to his helmet. He was trying to tell her to fight.

Alaina slowly shook her head, causing Peli to look behind her. Then, when the mechanic didn’t see what she saw, she looked back at Alaina with a frown.

Mando kept his fists raised, not accepting her answer.

Alaina felt a tear leak from her eye.

The invisible string she’d felt that had connected her to Mando for the last five years pulled taught and snapped.

A warm, late afternoon breeze came through the hangar, gently caressing her cheek as it whispered in her ear, “He’s coming.”

Her hallucination raised his fists at her again, but she directed her head to the sky, watching the suns race past the hangar's walls to the horizon.

Let him come.

There was nothing to fight for anymore.

If he was being truly honest with himself, the first time he felt the tiniest hint of that cord in his chest was five years ago.

Alaina had challenged him to a fight and won. She brazenly straddled his chest and pinned his arms at his helmet because he was too stunned to do anything after she’d used her magic powers on him. Then, with her emerald eyes sparkling in amusement, he felt the first inkling of a tickle in his chest. He shouldn’t have allowed her to tell her story; he should have excused himself from the hold, but he didn’t. Instead, he sat there and listened to the ballerina, Alaina Corra, tell her story.

He’d been professional, more or less since he’d brought the woman on board. He’d ensured her wounds were treated, he got her out of her wet clothes and warmed her up before she could add hypothermia into the mix, and he had remained professional the entire time. But now, he was listening to her talk, and there was this unknown feeling in his chest, and for the first time, he allowed himself to really look at the quarry and realized how beautiful she was.

Maybe it was her beauty, her wit—maybe it was the woman’s story, but the seed of doubt had been planted.

And then she went and called him a karking Imp, and he tried to douse the tiny flicker of doubt that had taken up residence inside him. It wasn’t his job to meddle. It wasn’t up to him to play the judge and jury. His job was to collect a quarry and then return it for a profit. It shouldn’t matter what happened to said quarry once he returned it and collected his payment…

The Mandalorian watched Greef Karga get up from the table and head to the bar to order himself a drink.

Unfortunately, that seed of doubt never left, and against his best judgment, he put in motion his plan to save the ballerina.

The dingy Nevarro cantina was packed, and there was a queue at the bar, giving Mando precious minutes to make arrangements before his boss returned.

He looked to the table next to him and nodded to the teal and white Twi’lek cargo ship owner sitting by herself, nursing a drink over an empty plate of food.

The Twi caught his eye and nodded back at him.

“You got room for some more cargo?” he asked, nervously tapping his fingers on the table.

The woman narrowed her gaze as she studied him. “What kind of cargo?” She was undoubtedly wondering what kind of cargo a bounty hunter would be looking to use her services for.

“Small, keeps to itself,” he said and paused. “Mostly,” he added on, and the Twi smirked. “Dangerous, though. Will put a target on your back.”

The Twi studied him, and Mando held his breath. The cargo ship owner was known around the guild. She had a puck out on her. It was a low reward (intentional by Karga). It was so low that it was not worth turning the Twi’lek in. Besides, there wasn’t a single member of their guild who was going to turn in the woman who frequently smuggled slaves out from their owners and delivered them to freedom. She knew how and where to take them to start their lives over, which is just what Mando needed.

“Not worried about the target on my back,” she replied, and the Twi’s eyes slid to Karga. The guild leader’s back was to them while he waited for his drink at the bar. “But I am worried about upsetting the status quo.”

“I’ll handle Karga,” Mando said.

“There’s a price tag to my services—”

“I’ll pay your price. Do you have room for more cargo,” Mando interrupted, pressing the woman for an answer before it was too late.

The Twi nodded, and Mando let himself relax. “Have your cargo to me by sundown,” she instructed. “If you’re not there by the time the sun fully sets, I’m gone.”

Karga turned from the bar to head back to rejoin Mando at the table.

The Twi’lek cargo ship Captain took another sip of her drink, going back to ignoring the guild leader and bounty hunter sitting next to her.

“One of these days, Mando,” Karga began as he retook his seat. “One of these days, I’m going to get you to join me in a celebratory drink!”

Mando sighed and tossed three of the four pucks he had across the table to the guild leader. The fourth he hung onto.

Karga smiled as he began shuffling his bag of jobs to let Mando take his pick of the next round.

“We need to talk about the last puck,” Mando finally started, holding Alaina’s puck for Karga to see.

“What’s there to talk about?” Karga questioned with a smile. “You got the girl, and now a big fat reward is coming your way!”

This was it. With a steadying breath, he said, “She’s dead.”

The smile dropped from Karga’s face, and the man stared at him dumbfounded. “What do you mean she’s dead?” he asked, irritation creeping into his voice.

Mando sighed. “I mean, she’s dead. It was storming. She put up a fight. We were on a rocky cliff, and she slipped and fell while trying to run from me. Slammed her head into a mountain.”

“Shit,” his boss growled, slamming his drink back. 

Mando pulled the velvet green cloak out of his bag to show Karga the blood-stained hood. “If she wasn’t dead by the time she hit the ground, the river she slid into took care of the rest of her. I tried to save her, but she slipped out of her cloak and bag when I grabbed for her, and the river swept her away.”

Karga ground his teeth, “There’s no reward for proof of death.”

“Then there’s no reward,” Mando shrugged.

Karga sighed and leaned back in his chair, “I was looking forward to that commission.”

Mando cocked his head, irritated by Karga’s admission. 

The Twi at the table next to them got up and gave the guild leader a nod as she left the cantina.

Karga put on a fake smile and raised his drink to the striking teal Twi, “You be sure you stay out of trouble, Taal!” he yelled after her.

The cargo ship captain, Taal, turned back to give the guild leader a wink before she sauntered the rest of the way out of the bar.

Karga’s fake smile dropped and was replaced with a deep frown from learning that his portion of the cut from Alaina’s reward had just washed away in a river on some backwater skughole.

“Can I just pick my next jobs?” Mando asked, eager to return to the Crest to prepare Alaina for what would come next.

“Oh, you can pick them,” Karga answered, pushing the options at him. “But you’re staying until you explain to the husband that you killed his wife.”

Mando sighed, “Not my fault she crashed head-first into a mountain. Besides, you’re the guild leader. Don’t we give you a sizable cut of our payouts for you to deal with the bureaucracy?”

“Mando, when we’re talking about a reward in this price range, and you killed some poor doctor’s wife, you have to deal with the fallout.”

“I don’t have time for this,” he grumbled, standing up from the booth and grabbing a handful of pucks at random without looking.

Unfortunately, Karga also stood up while Mando was strapping his Ambam rifle to his back. “Oh, no, Mando,” Karga called after him. “You’re not getting out of this that easily.”

Mando continued to ignore the man as he started to leave, barely giving his boss a second glance. “You’re not the only one relying on that hefty commission,” he grumbled, hoping to get Karga to drop it. “The faster I get back out there, the faster I can make up for the lost income,” he finished, heading out of the cantina.

Karga’s heavy footsteps could be heard stomping behind him. “I don’t think you realize the possible repercussions of this, Mando,” the man barked as he followed him through the decrepit town.

Mando clenched his fists. “What repercussions? You, of all people, know it’s not possible to bring every bounty in warm—”

“That’s why I came to you for this one,” Karga argued angrily.

“Accidents happen,” he countered. “There was a storm, and we were on a cliff. She slipped, hit her head, and slid off the cliff.” Mando stopped in the middle of the road, forcing Karga to slam into his back at his abrupt stop. He spun on the guild leader, taking the man by surprise. “You’ve never been this upset about a mishap with a quarry before,” Mando pointed out, carefully eyeing the man before him. “What’s so important about this girl?”

Karga squirmed in front of him, obviously struggling with whether or not to tell the truth. “It’s not about the girl,” he finally admitted through clenched teeth. “It’s about whose footing the reward,” he sighed.

Mando’s heart rate picked up at the man’s words. Green eyes swam in front of him. “I’m sorry to say that you’ve been lied to by your Imp friends,” Alaina had taunted him. He hadn’t lied to her when he replied, “I’m not friends with Imps.” But now, Karga was shuffling in front of him, and Mando realized that Alaina hadn’t been lying.“I just assumed they were your friends since you were taking credits from them.”

“Who. Is. Footing. The. Reward?” he seethed, needing to hear the truth from his boss with his own ears.

Karga sighed, “There may be a slight connection with the Empire.” Mando’s fists clenched tightly at the man’s words. “Look, I’m sorry, Mando!” he tried apologizing. “I didn’t realize it at first. I met with the doctor, and he wasn’t wearing any uniform. Nothing seemed suspicious. He just truly seemed concerned about his wife!” Mando scoffed and shook his head. “He did! The man came here distraught, and I knew just the man for the job. Someone who would handle the job discreetly and quickly and probably one of my only hunters who wouldn’t do anything unsavory to the woman. It wasn’t until I got the downpayment that I realized it was all in Imperial credits, wired from an Imperial account.”

“Karga,” he growled.

He needed to get back to Alaina—now. Too much time had passed, and he still needed time to tell her what would come next and get her to the smuggler’s cargo ship.

“I know,” the man tossed his hands up. “I know, and I’m sorry. The contract was already signed, and the payout was going to be worth it. But he’s going to be here any minute, and I’m not going down for killing some Imp’s wife.”

Mando cocked his head and took a menacing step forward, “But you have no problem putting that on your best hunter?”

Karga shook his head, “I didn’t say that! I just… I’m sorry, alright. I just think it would be best if we told the man together. I just wish you had more than some of her personal belongings. Not sure that will be enough to prove her death.”

Mando searched his mind for anything of Alaina’s he could use. Usually, in cases where he had to bring the quarry in cold for various reasons, he at least had a head, or an appendage, or something—

“I have a chunk of her hair,” he grumbled, not looking forward to telling Alaina that she was about to lose a hefty portion of her honey-blonde hair. 

“Hair?” Karga asked skeptically.

“She had a lot of yellow hair. It was in a braid that got snagged on some rocks,” Mando fibbed, hoping Karga wouldn’t try and poke too many holes into his explanation. “I left it on my ship.”

“Well, let’s go get it!” the man bellowed.

“I’ll return it to you, but then I’m leaving. You made a deal with the Imps; now you have to deal with it.”

Mando spun to stalk back to the Crest, and his teeth clenched when he heard Karga stomp his feet in the dirt behind him.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight, Mando,” Karga said from behind him. “No offense, but I think you’re just angry enough to take off and leave me hanging.”

“Maybe that would teach you not to make deals with Imps,” he shot back.

Mando looked at the entrance to the town as he approached it. There was no way he could hide Alaina or keep her quiet if Karga made it to the ship. He racked his mind for ideas or possibilities as he crossed the threshold to the lava flats. His best option would be to get Karga to wait for him outside and hope that he could get Alaina to stay quiet—

Panic swelled inside him at the sight of the Crest’s ramp open. Those mudscuffers had forgotten to close up his ship again.

He was about to reprimand Karga for the shoddy help he used when a shock of yellow peered out from inside his ship, forcing his feet to a screeching halt.

No, his mind screamed at the girl, and Mando clenched his teeth. He’d told her to stay on the fucking ship, and now she was about to blow her cover. His feet began moving on their own accord, taking large steps as he headed toward the ship, ignoring Karga trying to match his pace.

Someone he didn’t recognize stepped out from behind the ship, wearing a stark white uniform, and his heart stopped as he watched from a distance as the stranger grabbed Alaina and slapped a pair of cuffs on her. When the two stormtroopers appeared from their hiding spot, his heart restarted.

“You son of a bitch,” Karga muttered. “Please tell me I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing,” Karga’s stunned voice said from beside him. The man turned to glare at him, “I thought you said she was dead!”

He didn’t have time for this. Mando broke out into a sprint, “Hey!” 

“All right, suns are down. Time to ride, Mando,” the annoying voice of the wannabe hunter ordered, pulling him from his daydreams from years gone by.

Mando had yet to be able to calm his twisted, angry soul.

He had never intended to reveal to Alaina that, at the zero hour, the ballerina had convinced him not to turn her in. She had convinced him that if there was even a sliver of a chance that she was right, and this had all been a setup so the Imps could get their hands on her magical powers, then he had an obligation to make sure the Empire never got their hands on her.

Unfortunately, Alaina’s rash behavior had ended her chance at freedom before it began.

That wound had cut him deep.

Every time he revisited that day, he found a different way he could have approached the situation that would have likely ended with the ballerina escaping.

But hindsight was twenty-twenty. Now, five years later, he had to deal with the fallout of both of their actions from that day.

But he had meant it when he said he couldn’t watch Alaina continue to repeat her mistakes. Especially now after they’d…

Needless to say, he snapped.

Even now—well into the Tatooine night, he could still feel the panic he felt when he returned to the hangar to find the ship empty without a sign of Alaina or the Child, and every terrible thought that his brain could conceive flooded his thoughts, making him become irrational. He could still clearly see Alaina’s bright green eyes from across the busy Mos Eisley town square, making his anger swell. All he wanted was to keep her safe. He just wanted to keep her locked away from the galaxy so that nothing bad would ever happen to her again. 

“Come on, wake up,” Toro Calican said again, kicking his boot.

Mando rolled his eyes. He hated this kid. The wannabe, Calican, had an elitist attitude and genuinely thought he was tough shit. It was only a matter of time before the kid got himself killed. There is a high probability that that will happen tonight since he thought he could take on Fennec Shand.

The kid kicked his boot again.

That was if Mando didn’t kill him first.

“Look at you,” the kid commented. The mock pitying voice he spoke with made Mando want to shove his face in the sand. “Asleep on the job, old man.”

“Kick me again, and I’ll snap your ankle,” Mando growled as he got up to head to the speeder.

“Geeze, I was just trying to wake you up,” Calican bemoaned. “You’ve been crabby since you grabbed that chick back in town.”

Mando stayed low and readied his speeder.

“Thought you would have worked all your anger out on that blonde,” the annoying wannabe hunter continued speaking, and Mando did his best to ignore him, but the wolf whistle the man let out made it difficult to tune him out. “She was hot. Did you know her? Cause if you didn’t, I’m gonna have to find her when we get back and,” Calican stopped to thrust his hips suggestively while he grunted obscenely.

The world faded, and when it returned, Mando had Calican pinned to the sand with his hand wrapped around the younger man’s throat. Calican thrashed under Mando’s larger, heavier body, and his head turned bright red as Mando continued to close his airway off.

Mando’s mind caught back up with him and let the younger man go before standing up.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Calican rasped, clutching at his throat.

Mando straightened his shoulders and gave him a menacing point, “If I ever see you within a parsec of her after this, you’ll wish I killed you here.” Calican’s eyes widened at the threat, and Mando offered the man a hand to get up off the ground and get this over with. The boy studied the offered hand, clearly expecting the Mandalorian standing over him to change his mind, but eventually gave in.

This was why Mando didn’t travel with others. This was why the others he had before Alaina were flings. He didn’t do friends. He didn’t do feelings—For this exact reason. Friends—feelings all complicated things. Those things made it difficult to see what the right thing to do was under all of it.

The cord tugged in his chest, and he growled at the feeling. Calican abruptly let go of his hand, obviously thinking that the growl was directed at him.

Mando wanted to open his chest and rip the damn cord out so he never felt it again.

He would finish this mission, take the girl wherever she wanted, and figure out what to do with the kid.

He would finish this mission and, for once and all, be done with Alaina Corra.

The day faded to night, and the night was now giving way to the twin suns as they slowly climbed back over the horizon, signaling a new day.

The world kept turning, but Alaina hadn’t moved from her knees in the middle of the hangar.

The wind had gone quiet long ago, no longer whispering warnings in her ear, and Alaina welcomed the silence.

Whoever was coming could come.

She deserved whatever was going to happen—

Strong hands gripped her shoulders and shook her.

Alaina blinked at the Mandalorian figment of her imagination kneeling before her. Peli had taken the kid in for the night when it was evident that Alaina wasn’t going anywhere. Not her hallucination, though. Her hallucination had stayed by her side all night. 

“You’ll leave me too,” she whispered. Her throat hurt, and her voice rasped, sounding as if she had spent the whole night crying or screaming. She might have done both. 

Her hallucination shook his helmet, silently telling her he wasn’t going anywhere. When Alaina didn’t respond, he got up and walked away, proving her point.

It was for the best. Even though her hallucination was nothing more than something her own mind had conjured at her lowest, it was right for him to see her fall apart and shatter into a million pieces that could never be put back together again.

Smack.

Alaina gasped and brought a hand up to her cheek at the sharp pain that blossomed across the right side of her face. She blinked, ready to rip into her hallucination, but he still wasn’t there.

But Peli Motto was.

“Alright,” the mechanic began, crossing her arms across her chest. “Get up,” she ordered.

Alaina could only blink at the stinging sensation left over from the smaller woman’s slap.

“Do you want me to slap you again? Because there’s more where that came from,” she threatened.

“You—You slapped me!” Alaina huffed, staring up at the mechanic.

“And?”

Alaina blinked and finally saw her hallucination come back into view, standing next to the shorter woman who had just slapped her. She glared at her imaginary friend, expecting him to look more perturbed than he did. Her look only made the Mandalorian put his hands expectantly on his hips.

“You’re taking her side?” Alaina seethed, pointing at Peli.

The mechanic’s eyes shifted to her right, but apparently didn’t see the pretend version of the pain in her ass for the last few years—Her hallucination cocked his head at her thoughts, and Alaina rolled her eyes.

“She slapped me!” Alaina told the apparition, but he just shrugged his shoulders.

“Yeah, I did,” Peli agreed. “And I’ll do it again if you don’t get up.”

Alaina glared at the mechanic but made no move to get up off the ground.

“Look, I gave you the night. Clearly, you’re going through some things,” Peli grimaced, vaguely motioning at her with her hand. “But at some point, you’re just gonna have to accept what’s happened has happened, and now you’ve gotta deal with it.”

Alaina kept her glare in place while she stared down Peli. “I have been dealing with it,” she seethed. “I’ve been dealing with it for the last five years! And now I’ve learned that the only person I have to blame for that is me!” she yelled. Her voice cracked, and Alaina struggled to keep from breaking down again.

“Well, at least you have someone to blame,” Peli shrugged, forcing a growl from Alaina. “Look, kid, it’s not my business. Do I have questions about why someone like you and your adorable baby are traveling with a Mandalorian bounty hunter? Sure,” she shrugged again. “But here’s the thing,” the woman began and paused to move her hands to her hips. “You and your kid look cared for. Neither of you have bruises or broken limbs. You both smile. And that tin can genuinely seems to care about you both. It’s a big galaxy out there. I’m the last person who should be judging anyone, but the three of you seem alright.”

The woman’s words cut through her chest, and Alaina couldn’t stop the tears from returning. Mando had done nothing but care for her, and what had she done to repay him?

Anger flared inside her—anger at the situation, anger at Mando for not telling her sooner, anger at herself for being the responsible party.

Her eyes flicked to her Mando, standing next to Peli, back in his defensive position, silently telling her to fight.

“Come on, get up,” Peli grumbled, and Alaina let the other woman help her stand up, ignoring the fake Mandalorian, hoping he would take the hint and leave her alone.

Alaina looked around the hangar as she brushed the sand off her knees. The pit droids were all lingering. Some were moving around pieces of equipment, and one was watching Grogu. When the kid saw that she looked his way, he smiled brightly and held his hands out for her.

“I’m sorry I—” Alaina began apologizing but stopped when she couldn’t find the words. “Was he okay for you?” she asked Peli as she made her way to Grogu.

“‘Ole Bright Eyes, there was a perfect angel!” Peli informed her with a smile. “I think he’d eat me out of house and home, but once he was down for the night, he slept straight through.”

Alaina smiled down at Grogu, “Thanks, buddy,” she whispered as she picked him up and squeezed him to his chest. “I’m sorry I disappeared. I just needed time to think.” Grogu blinked at her, and she shrugged her shoulders. “I still don’t know what to think,” Alaina whispered, pushing her head into Grogu’s forehead. “But I have a feeling that this might be the last time you and I get to see each other,” she told him sadly.

Grogu’s smile dropped from his face at her words, and Alaina closed her eyes to block out the kid’s disappointment. A small, clawed hand reached up to touch her cheek, and before Alaina could pull herself away, she was thrown into a sea of images.

Sorgan.

The sight brought her heartache. Grogu showed her their lazy afternoon before… before she took that next step with Mando.

The three of them were sitting on a blanket next to the creek. The afternoon, from Grogu’s perspective, was interesting. Where Alaina just remembered the queasy feeling of uncertainty that laced her veins the entire day, he saw something else.

He saw two friends talking and laughing. He saw Mando relaxed as he lay on the blanket. He saw Mando’s helmet keeping tabs on them when Alaina pretended to chase Grogu up and down the creek bed. He showed her fragments of their walk through the field back home and how Mando’s hand stayed glued to her lower back. He showed her a brief clip of Mando holding him, and his vision was filled with the silver beskar helmet before he turned to see Alaina sitting on the cot, smiling at him and Mando.

Alaina pulled away from the kid and tried to swipe the tears she didn’t realize were leaking from her eyes.

“I know—” she started and stopped, trying to get her emotions under control. “I know that’s how things were, but I don’t think things will be like that anymore.”

Grogu cried and rested a hand on her chest. Alaina kissed his forehead. “I know,” she whispered. “But I messed up, buddy," she tried to explain to the kid but had to stop when her voice choked up. “I just think it would be in everyone’s best interests if I weren’t here when Mando gets back.

Her hallucination reappeared beside her, and Alaina closed her eyes to block him.

She saw signs for public transport ships on the outskirts during her ill-fated journey to the market yesterday. She had hardly spent any of the credits that Peli had given her. She could use whatever she had left to have one of those ships take her as far away as her money would allow. She could find someplace where she could fall into the crowd and slip away, someplace where she could try and start over—alone.

Grogu cooed and patted her chest with his tiny three-fingered hand, making Alaina smile at him.

Her smile slipped when she felt something warm blossom in her chest. The tiny, tattered shreds of the string connecting her to Mando trembled, and her imaginary friend moved in her line of sight to lift his fists back to his helmet again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to Grogu, pulling him tightly against her chest. “Stay with Mando. He’ll keep you safe,” she told him, kissing him on the top of his head before she placed the kid back on the ground.

She ignored the kid’s cries and her baffled hallucination as she turned to head back to the Crest to gather her belongings.

Alaina ignored Peli as she stomped up the ramp and immediately headed to her cot. She dropped to the floor to pull her black bag from under her bed and began to gather her meager accumulation of belongings. She grabbed some of her clothes and tossed them into the bag, followed by her pointe shoes. Her hands fell to her hips as she looked around Mando’s ship for the last time. She frowned when her hands brushed against the metal that rested there.

Mando’s blaster and her mother’s dagger. 

She pulled the blaster from its holster and studied it. A sigh escaped her as she looked at the silver and black blaster. Gloved hands appeared, and his larger fingers enclosed her smaller fingers around the weapon before they slowly pushed it into her stomach. Alaina blinked and looked up at her hallucination, sadly shaking her head.

“It’s not mine to take,” she whispered, shaking her head as she placed the blaster on her cot. 

Her Mando looked at the blaster and then back at her, lifting his fists back into the defensive position in front of his helmet.

“I’m tired of fighting,” she said, keeping her voice in low, hushed tones. “I just want to go—”

“Where do you think you’re going?” Peli barked as she walked up the Crest’s ramp, pointing to the packed bag. The mechanic held an upset Grogu to her chest, but the kid’s cries seemed quiet when he saw her.

“I’m leaving,” she muttered, moving to step around her pretend Mandalorian.

Peli came and stepped in front of her, blocking her exit. “And what, you’re just gonna leave me with your kid?” Alaina rolled her eyes and tried to step around the short mechanic, but Peli refused to let her pass. “You’re gonna leave me with your kid and leave me to deal with an angry Mandalorian when he comes back to find that you took off? I don’t think so.”

“Peli,” Alaina sighed, but the woman interrupted her.

“Besides, where are you gonna go?” she asked, lifting a challenging eyebrow. “He’ll find you if you stay in town, and if you were even thinking about hopping a ride on one of those transport ships, then you should probably know that there’s only one that comes today, and it doesn’t arrive for hours.” Alaina frowned at the information. “And when it does finally arrive, there is at least a two-hour turnaround time before it takes off. And that doesn’t account for any maintenance if it needs to happen. I’m guessing your tin can will still beat you back before you leave the atmosphere.”

“That’s a risk I’ll just have to take,” Alaina told her. “Besides, you heard him yesterday. He’s done with me,” she reminded the woman, doing her best to keep the waver out of her voice at the memory of his words. “I’m just saving him the trouble. I can handle myself.” She tried to move around the woman, but Peli blocked her exit again.

“What about your broken heating coil?” Peli asked, nodding to the fresher behind them.

“What about the broken heating coil?” Alaina asked, not seeing the woman’s point.

“Well, you wanted it fixed, didn’t cha?”

“I’m not going to be around to enjoy it, and Mando went for years without bothering to fix it, so something tells me he won’t care that it’s still broken,” she retorted.

“Alright, yeah, I hear ya, but what if we fixed it anyway?” Peli asked with a shrug. “A little something for that tin can to remember you by?”

Alaina glared at the suggestion, but something about the fact that every time Mando got to take a warm shower, it would be because of her—

“No,” she finally answered, shaking her head.

“Okay, okay,” Peli started again, getting frustrated. “Just—Just hear me out, alright?” Alaina looked at the mechanic impatiently and crossed her hands over her chest while she waited for the woman to get it over with so she could be on her way. “I’m not saying I’m not gonna let you go,” she continued, and Alaina narrowed her eyes at the frizzy-haired woman. “I just think you need to take a few hours to think about it,” she suggested. “I don’t know your story, but I think what your Mandalorian told you yesterday rattled you to your core, and now you’re being rash by running away from your problems.

“You’re rash,” Mando’s words from… gosh, was that only yesterday? “You’re rash, and you rush into situations when you don’t know all the facts.” He’d used Sorgan as an example, but now Alaina knew the truth. He wasn’t referring to Sorgan. He was referring to her leaving the safety of the Razor Crest and getting herself captured by Penn Pershing.

“And I may be out of line by saying this,” Peli continued, giving her an apologetic smile, “but I don’t think you’re quite all there.” Alaina frowned at the woman’s admission. “I’m just saying that you’ve been seeing and talking to things that aren’t there, and I’m worried that a woman such as yourself in your state would be putting herself in harm’s way by leaving.”

Alaina’s eyes slid to the left to see her hallucination casually leaning against the carbonite machine with his arms crossed over his chest and his right foot propped up against the empty machine. Peli’s head turned to follow her eyes, and when the mechanic didn’t see her imaginary friend, she turned back to give Alaina a pointed look. “I thought you said you weren’t going to stop me from leaving?”

“Two hours,” Peli offered. “You give it two hours; if you still feel the same way after you fix that broken heating coil, I’ll let you go.”

Alaina scrunched her forehead in confusion at the woman’s words. “What do you mean after I fix the broken heating coil? I don’t know how to change a heating coil.”

“You won’t be able to say that in a couple of hours,” Peli told her, in an annoying peppy, can-do attitude. Alaina scoffed as the mechanic grabbed her bag and pushed her toward the fresher with one hand while still holding onto Grogu in her other.

Alaina frowned and looked behind her for help from her Mandalorian, but the man stayed propped up against the carbonite machine. When Alaina glared at him, he lifted his fists to his helmet—fight.

Mando returned to the cliffs on dewback just as the Tatooine dual suns breached the horizon, painting the desert in a bright, vivid orange.

He had approached from a higher vantage point to allow him time to observe how Calican handled being left alone with Shand for the few hours he was gone tracking the large dewback to bring their quarry back.

He was not surprised to find a dead body when he returned.

He was surprised that the dead body was Fennec Shand’s and not Calican’s.

Mando had fully anticipated having found that Shand had managed to escape, killing the wannabe before taking off with the kid’s speeder to take her to freedom.

He frowned at the turn of events, looking from Shand’s dead body to where Calican’s speeder had been. 

Why would the kid kill the quarry and take off? He needed Shand to get into the Guild…

The feeling in his chest that he had done his best to ignore for hours flared and caused him physical pain, and he was startled by the sensation. It vaguely reminded him of finding those AT-ST tracks in Sorgan's woods when he initially felt something inside his chest slide into place—instead of something slow and dormant, the cord that had been embedded inside him had snaked itself around every major organ inside of his chest and constricted painfully.

Mando clutched at his chestpiece, trying to figure out what was wrong, but the feeling didn’t go away.

“I don’t know… Do you not feel that?” she asked quietly, bringing his focus back to her again.

“Feel what?” he whispered back, not at all sure where this was going.

Alaina’s mouth flattened, and her forehead crinkled as she looked down at his prone form.

“Here,” she finally said, bringing a hand out from the blanket to point to the center of her chest. “That something here that… It’s like I have something in my chest that keeps wanting to pull me to you. I don’t know if it’s just our history or getting closer to you the last few weeks, but I don’t know… It’s probably stupid.”

Mando felt as if the world around him had just come to a screeching halt. Not because he was confused by what she was saying but because he had felt what she was describing and just brushed it off as him being too close to the situation.

Alaina looked down to fiddle with the hem of her blanket, “I don’t know how else to describe it… but looking back on it now? To have you, of all people, come to me whenever I felt like I was about to break…” she sighed. “It’s like something in here,” she paused to point at her chest again, “was trying to tell me to trust you. It’s like something was pulling me to you. It doesn’t make any sense, I know. I wish I could describe it better. I don’t know, it’s like there has been this… this chain? Cord maybe—”

Mando blanched at her word and moved to prop himself up on elbows so his helmet was level with her head.

“It’s like there has been some kind of invisible string tying us together,” she finished, speaking the words as if they pained her to admit it.

Mando’s helmet whipped to look in the direction of Mos Eisley, and that cord in his chest pulled him to head back. Calican had left his quarry, his ticket into the Guild behind… which meant he was after something with an even higher price tag than Fennec Shand.

Emerald green eyes and green, wrinkly skin flashed in his mind.

With a sharp kick to the dewback’s sides, Mando tugged on its reigns and urged it back toward Mos Eisley.

I’m coming.

Two hours later, the only thing she wanted to fight was Peli Motto.

Two hours later, they hadn’t even started replacing the broken heating coil.

The mechanic refused to start without breakfast and a cup of caf. After procrastinating for as long as she could and eating as slowly as possible, she decided that Alaina needed a detailed explanation of electrical work.

When they finally made it to the part where they replaced the broken coil, Peli described the process in as much detail as possible. She even went so far as to explain how the water system worked on an older ship like the Razor Crest, and the mechanic was surprised it even functioned at all. There was another lecture wasting precious minutes while Peli went on to ramble about why Mando hadn’t just converted to a sonic system and be done with the outdated technology. Alaina tried to zone out, but anytime the mechanic felt like she didn’t have Alaina’s complete attention, she would stop and patiently wait until Alaina rolled her eyes and waited for her to continue.

Two hours turned into four, and Alaina finally left the Crest once the job was done.

She wiped the sweat from her brow and grimaced at the bright sun beating down over the hangar.

Her eyes searched the hangar until they landed on the shaded area in the back where Grogu was napping… and her hallucination sat next to him.

“Doesn’t it feel good to fix something?” Peli asked as she came up behind her. The woman pulled a rag from her back pocket to wipe the grease and grime away. “How about some lunch?” she offered, pocketing the rag. “Wouldn’t be right for me to send you off without a meal.”

Alaina didn’t respond. Her focus was on her hallucination: sitting on the ground, looking protectively over Grogu while the Child slept.

The scene unsettled her. It wouldn’t be out of place for the real Mando to do something like that—sit with his back propped up against the wall while he looked over Grogu… but for the figment of her imagination that she conjured… for her hallucination to act protectively toward someone or something that wasn’t her made her take pause.

Her hallucination turned to look at her as if hearing her thoughts, giving her a fixed look with his helmet.

The sounds faded from the hangar until Alaina could only hear her heart pounding in her head. She was missing something—something important that her Mandalorian was trying to tell her. Her hallucination never spoke or made noise of any kind. Instead, the man relied on actions and gestures to communicate his thoughts.

His gloved hand moved to point at her, holding the point for several seconds before he took that index finger and dug it into the ground.

Stay. Here.

Alaina clutched at her chest.

Next, her hallucination turned to look at Grogu sleeping next to him, blissfully unaware of the invisible Mandalorian sitting next to him. Alaina held her breath when his helmet turned to look back at her. 

A gust of wind carried the hot Tatooine desert air through the hangar, ruffling her curly hair as the wind whispered to her once more, “He’s coming.”

Her Mandalorian lifted his fists back to his helmet. He still wanted her to fight, but he wasn’t telling her to fight for her.

He was telling her to fight for Grogu.

He was telling her to stay here for Grogu.

“Unless you’ve changed your mind about leaving?” Peli asked after the minutes of silence ticked by without a response from Alaina.

Her hand came to rest on the hilt of her mother’s dagger, and her Mando nodded.

In the blink of an eye, Alaina startled as hangar three-five came back into focus. The suns had somehow moved from directly above the ship to almost disappear from Tatooine altogether.

“Hey, Blondie!” Peli yelled, snapping her fingers in front of Alaina’s face.

Alaina blinked and looked around, confused by the mysterious time lapse. Not only was it much later than anticipated, but her hallucination was nowhere to be found. “What happened?” she asked as she continued to search the hangar for the familiar dented brown armor.

“You tell me,” Peli countered, resting Grogu on her hip. “You’ve been in some kind of trance for hours. Just been standing there… staring.” Alaina frowned, and her gaze finally settled on the mechanic standing before her. “It was creepy,” Peli finished, looking her up and down with a wary eye.

“Mando?” Alaina asked, already knowing the answer.

“Haven’t seen him,” she informed her flatly. “But you missed your transport ship because of… whatever you want to call what you just did.”

Alaina looked to Grogu, who was looking up at her with wide, curious eyes. The wind blew in warning, forcing Alaina into action.

“Do you trust me?” she asked Grogu, ignoring the confused mechanic for the time being. Grogu smiled at her, and Alaina grabbed him from the mechanic. She marched down the ramp and searched for the perfect place—an empty barrel that had been tipped over was left where she last saw her hallucination. “I need you to be really brave for me, little one,” she whispered, kissing the crown of his green, wrinkly head.

“Hey, what are you doing with the kid?” Peli called after her, following Alaina as she crossed the hangar.

Alaina continued to ignore her, choosing to give Grogu another kiss. “I need you to be really brave and stay as quiet as you can, okay?” she asked Grogu, putting her hands under his armpits to hold him in front of her. “No matter what you hear, stay quiet until Mando finds you.”

Grogu’s mouth quivered, and he reached for her as Alaina placed him inside the empty barrel.

Alaina placed her index finger over her lips and shushed the scared toddler. “Everything is going to be okay, little one,” she whispered, leaning into the barrel to rub one of the kid’s ears. “Stay here, Grogu,” she said, giving the kid one last smile before placing the lid over the barrel to hide him from the hangar.

“Hey!” Peli yelled, angrily spinning Alaina to face her. “What is going on?”

“Someone is coming for us,” Alaina explained, moving out of the small alcove and back into the hangar.

“What do you mean someone is coming for you?” Peli asked frantically as she followed her through the hangar.

“I don’t have time to explain, but you were right earlier when you said something is wrong with me,” Alaina admitted, tapping her head. “Mando has been trying to hide us—” she stopped, closing her eyes, unable to think about Mando right now. “I’m broken,” she confessed, opening her eyes to see a very confused Peli looking back at her. “I’m broken, I’ve lived, but he,” she stopped to point at the barrel where Grogu was hiding. “He is an innocent. He has his entire life ahead of him. I will fight for him to get to live that life. I will fight so they don’t get their hands on him and make him broken like me until my last breath.”

Peli studied her momentarily before saying, “What can I do?”

Alaina smiled thankfully at the woman. “Make sure he doesn’t find Grogu,” she told the mechanic. “And tell Mando… Tell Mando this isn’t his fault,” she nodded. “Tell Mando that I forgive him.”

Peli opened her mouth to say something, but another voice called out across the hold before the woman could speak.

“Word has it,” the voice began and paused until he stepped around the corner of the entrance into the hold. Alaina frowned at the man, recognizing him as the one Mando shoved against the alley wall yesterday. “Word has it, a Mandalorian is traveling with a blonde girl and a kid,” he said as he sauntered into the hangar.

Alaina moved to position herself in front of Peli. “Where is Mando?” she demanded, squaring her shoulders.

The stranger shrugged, “In the desert somewhere.”

Alaina studied the man, taking in his short, black hair, the leathers he wore, and the vileness that radiated from his eyes as he raked them up and down her body. She lifted her chin in defiance, hoping her confidence would squelch the unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“You and your kid are gonna be my ticket into the Guild and make me rich,” he told her, taking a step closer to her.

“Sorry, buddy, you’ve got the wrong hangar,” Peli told him, moving around her to look at the younger man with a look of disgust. “There’s no babies here, so I suggest you move on.”

The man’s wandering eyes stared at Alaina before they finally settled on her chest, and he gave an empty grin before saying, “But there is a blonde girl.”

Everything happened in the blink of an eye—Peli lunged for the stranger, taking the man by surprise. She was small and quick, but he recovered from his shock quickly. He dodged her punch and responded with a fist of his own, crashing into the woman’s cheek and sending the mechanic flying.

“Peli!” Alaina cried.

She ripped her mother’s dagger from its place on her hip and went after their attacker. The blade scraped across the man’s neck, drawing blood. The stranger’s eyes flared in anger and came after her. He attempted to disarm her with a kick, but she dodged it and swiped at him with the dagger again but the man blocked her easily and knocked the dagger from her hand, leaving her defenseless.

Alaina blinked at her empty hands.

She wasn’t defenseless. These hands used to be able to move things. Just her words and these hands killed an Imperial General.

Alaina growled and flung her hands at the man, calling on her powers to return to her. To just let her feel them one more time and throw her attacker into the wall or across the planet, but nothing came.

The harsh bark of laughter taunted her, and her eyes flicked up just in time to see the man’s foot hurtle toward her. Alaina tried to step back but wasn’t fast enough, and the man’s boot sent her reeling. Her back hit the ground, and the air rushed from her lungs on impact. Alaina tried to pull the air back into her chest but could only flounder and gasp.

The man jumped on top of her, straddling her hips, and tears pricked her eyes when he ground his pelvis into hers while he laughed. “Oh, I’m gonna enjoy you,” he sneered, sticking his tongue out of his mouth while he smiled down at her.

Alaina tried to grab for any scrap of skin she could find, but the man kept evading her.

The man snatched her wrists, pinned them to the ground, and leaned over her until their noses were touching. “What do you say we teach the Mandalorian a lesson?” he asked her before his lips came crashing down into hers.

Alaina’s breath returned to her, and her eyes went wide as she struggled to get away, but when the man wouldn’t budge, she found the man’s lower lip and bit down until his blood poured from his lip into her mouth.

The man ripped his mouth from hers, staring at her with wild eyes. “You bitch!” he screamed, backhanding her as punishment for her defensive attack.

Alaina gasped at the force of the strike. Her head had turned painfully to the side, and the hangar blurred while nausea rose in her stomach.

Concussion, she thought as she looked around the hangar, confused when she no longer felt the man’s crushing weight on top of her. The world tilted on its axis, making bile rise in her throat.

The stranger was back to Peli, tying her up.

Her eyes briefly flicked to the black barrel where Grogu was hiding, and she said a silent prayer that Mando would find him quickly.

A shadow fell over her, and her unfocused eyes looked up at the man towering over her.

The man swiped more of his blood off his lower lip as he looked down at her. “How mad do you think the Mandalorian will be if I take off with his girl and his ship?” he asked her with an evil smirk. “At least I’ll have you to entertain me on the way.”

Alaina’s eyes closed, and she let the tears come as she felt herself being lifted from the ground.

When she opened them again, her hallucination stood there, watching as this strange man carried her up the Crest’s ramp. She lifted a hand toward him, and he raised his hands to his helmet.

Her limbs felt heavy as she lifted her hands to the stranger's face, and she screamed.

Mando stormed into hangar three-five, chest heaving from sprinting the rest of the way to Alaina and Grogu.

Alaina’s blood-curdling scream could be heard from over two streets away. Too late. He was too late to save them. Panic gripped him as he frantically looked around for any sign of them but found none. He blinked at the surprisingly quiet hangar, but the hair on the back of his neck raised in alarm, warning him that everything was not okay.

His helmet swiveled quickly as he took in the hangar. The mechanic, Peli, he thought her name was, was bound, gagged, and propped up against the wall. She looked at him with wide, panicked eyes before exaggeratingly throwing her head toward the Razor Crest.

Mando’s helmet stalled when he saw Alaina’s mother’s dagger left forgotten on the ground between the mechanic and his ship. The serpent’s emerald eyes glinted in the moonlight, but the sight of red blood coating the blade made his chest clench in fear.

“No!” 

Mando’s helmet snapped to look at the ship after hearing Alaina’s strangled cry come from inside. His fists clenched at his sides after hearing Alaina, and he silently marched toward his ship, stopping to grab Alaina’s dagger on the way. 

He was on high alert, every muscle poised to attack as he silently walked up the ramp, stalking his prey in the dark.

“This why he keeps you around, huh? A little something soft and sweet to come back home to?” Toro Calican was speaking. The man’s back was to him, and he had Alaina pinned against the floor near the back of the ship. Her hands were on his face, keeping him away from her while the rest of her body thrashed fruitlessly under him. Calican was kneeling between her spread legs and had her dress pushed up around her hips. “Maybe I should take a page from his book. Keep you around instead of sending you back to the Empire.”

Her voice wavered as she spoke, and Mando could tell she was crying. “You’re going to let me go,” she told him, trying to sound brave through her tears. “You’re going to let me go, and you’re going to walk out into the middle of the desert—” her words cut off as her voice cracked as she struggled to speak through her tears.

Mando watched as Calican actually let her go. His body became rigid, and the upper half of it sat up straight.

Mando had seen enough. He had been right when he thought that he would be the one to kill the wannabe bounty hunter. If only he had done it a day ago, he could have saved Alaina from this. He sheathed the beskar dagger and strode across the ship in five silent steps.

Mando grabbed Calican by the back of his neck and ripped him away from Alaina. The man had a distant, far-off look on his face once he had been pulled to his feet, and Mando blinked in confusion and then looked down at Alaina on the floor, his confusion growing when he saw her glaring intently at the man with blood trickling down her nose. “Alaina?” he whispered, confused by the situation.

Alaina blinked and snapped out of whatever trance she was in. Her emerald eyes widened when she saw him standing over her with her attacker in his grip. Her face crumpled, and she sagged back to the floor, turning her head to look away. He turned to look back at Calican, who was blinking as if he were confused about how he got here, and then when the man saw the Mandalorian, the wannabe hunter gave him a smug, taunting smile—taunting the older hunter that he had made it onto the Mandalorian’s ship and had forced himself on his crew.

The man opened his mouth to say something, but Mando moved his hand to the front of Toro’s neck, squeezing tightly before slamming him back into the wall, forcing a satisfying choke out of Calican’s lips.

Mando observed the man, noting that those lips were bloodied and bruised. His heart stopped when he realized that the man hadn’t received those injuries from being punched. The indentions, the punctures… no, he wasn’t punched, he was bitten.

“Alaina,” Mando started darkly, turning his helmet to look at the crying girl curled in on herself on the floor. Alaina refused to look at him, but from his angle, he could see a glimpse of blood that coated her chin. More blood than what just came from a nosebleed. “Did he go any further?”

“I didn’t!” Toro wheezed from under his choke hold.

“I didn’t ask you,” Mando reminded him, tightening his grip around the man’s neck. “Alaina?”

Alaina sniffled but finally shook her head.

Mando felt relieved to see that—Relieved to see her responding at all. He had told her to stay here… and then he left her defenseless and was almost too late to save her.

He couldn’t think about those thoughts right now. After. After he handled the situation, he would let the thoughts consume him. But now… now he needed to ensure that Toro Calican never put his hands on another soul ever again.

“And the kid’s okay?” he whispered, hoping that Calican hadn’t somehow passed Grogu off to a waiting friend.

Alaina nodded again, and he closed his eyes in relief.

“I told you,” Toro wheezed.

Mando turned his helmet to look back at the man he currently held in a chokehold. He welcomed the anger as it washed over him. He embraced the calm that it brought as he cocked his head at the man.

He gave the man a nod, acknowledging him. “Which means you’re lucky,” Mando said, making Toro relax as much as one could in his situation. “That means I kill you quickly,” he finished darkly. 

Toro opened his mouth to argue, but Mando snapped, bringing his other hand up and stabbing Alaina's dagger into the side of the man’s head.

Once the light left the man’s eyes, Mando let him unceremoniously fall to the floor, knife still sticking out of his head.

Mando ran to Alaina, dropping to his knees by her side, and rested a concerned hand on her shoulder. She cracked the moment the leather of his glove touched the ripped fabric of her shirt. Alaina scrambled to get up off the ground, and once she made it to her knees, she flung her arms around his neck and clung tightly as she pressed her face into his neck. Mando wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her tightly to him while she sobbed into his neck.

Her gasps for air were muffled by her lips being against his cowl, but she did not attempt to move her position. “I made sure—I made sure Grogu was hidden,” she told him between cries. “I could feel he was here for us. He didn’t see the kid. I hid him in one of the barrels out there.”

“Shhh,” Mando soothed her, rubbing his hands along her back. “You did good,” he told her, nuzzling his helmet to the side of her head. “I’m glad you’re both okay. Are you sure you’re okay? He didn’t…”

“N-No,” she stuttered.

“Good,” he rushed out, relieved to hear that. “I need to free the mechanic and tidy up. Are you going to be okay?”

Alaina squeezed his neck tightly, and Mando responded by squeezing his arms tighter around her waist.

“The sooner I get this done, the sooner we can leave,” he murmured, clutching her as tightly as possible. 

Gods, he’d almost been too late. He’d told her to stay, wanting her safe, and his order almost let her be… he couldn’t even think the word.

“Alaina,” he murmured again when he hadn’t gotten a response from her.

Alaina finally nodded, and Mando rose to his feet, keeping her in his arms as he stood, bringing her body up with him. Once her feet were on the ground, he slowly released her and moved his hands to rub her arms. She refused to look at him. Her head hung low, defeated, her face blocked from his view with her curtain of blonde curls.

Mando hated the way his insides twisted painfully. He hated the way she looked defeated—broken. He raised a cautious hand to cup her cheek. Alaina lifted her watery green eyes to stare at his helmet. “Come sit,” he ushered her to the sleeping alcove and encouraged her to sit on the mattress. She went with him compliantly; her green eyes started to lose focus, and he could see her shutting down. He rested his helmet on her forehead. “I’ll be right back, okay? And then we can go wherever you want.”

Alaina stared blankly back at him.

“Wherever you want, Tranyc,” he tried again, but his only response was a hollow, vacant stare.

He gently pressed his helmet into her forehead before turning to take care of the mess.

Mando grabbed the dagger by the fanned rawl's hilt and yanked it out of Calican's head. He used his cloak to wipe the blood from the beskar blade before he tucked it away in his belt for safekeeping. He grabbed the body and quickly tossed the worthless carcass out of the ship before heading down the ramp to find the kid. 

Peli looked relieved when she saw the dead body hit the ground, and Mando went to her first to free her of her confinements and cut the rag that was used to keep her quiet.

“Thank the Maker!” she sighed in relief, scrambling to stand up. “Blondie is okay, isn’t she?”

Mando hesitated and looked back at his ship. “She will be,” he replied, not entirely confident in his words. He looked back to the mechanic and asked, “Where is the kid?”

The mechanic whistled, and the assembly of pit droids came out of hiding in the shadows. “Get in there and get the place cleaned up for them,” she ordered, pointing at the open hold of his ship. Mando didn’t even have it in him to argue about the droids being on his ship, not if they would save some time by cleaning up the pool and streaks of blood left from Calican.

He followed the woman as she walked to a nearby alcove to a black barrel and pried the top open. The kid looked up at him and gave him a lecture using a series of sounds. Mando clearly understood that Grogu was less than impressed with his confinement.

“Come on, kid,” he said, reaching into the barrel to pick him up. The kid continued spitting and babbling nonsense to him, and all Mando could do was nod at the toddler as he accepted the kid’s tongue-lashing.

He walked to the dead wannabe hunter and yanked the purse of credits off of him before tossing them at the mechanic.

Peli opened the bag and raised her eyebrows, impressed by its contents, so Mando assumed that was enough to settle their remaining debt.

“Hey,” Peli called out after him, and Mando stopped at the ramp to look back at the short, frizzy-haired woman. The woman frowned and rocked back and forth as if she were debating on whether or not to vocalize her thoughts. “Before—” she began and sighed. “Blondie put up a heck of a fight,” she told him, nodding at the ship. “I don’t think she thought she was gonna make it.” Mando’s eyes closed at her words. “She told me to tell you that this wasn’t your fault.”

The words cut through his beskar armor straight to his heart.

“She said somethin’ else too, but I think it’s best that come from her,” she said, giving him a nod.

Mando’s eyes opened, and he stared at her, wondering what in the galaxy Alaina could have said that the mechanic didn’t feel comfortable repeating.

The two stared at each other, and the short mechanic gave him a quick, dismissive nod. Mando nodded back, turning to enter his ship. The mechanic’s pit droids came stumbling out, carrying bloodied rags and disinfectants as they passed him, tripping over each other in a race not to be the last one on board.

Alaina was still in shock in the alcove, unaware that the ramp had closed behind him. Mando walked to her and set the kid down at her feet. He put her head between his hands and forced her to look at him. Even though her head was looking up, her green eyes were glassy and unfocused with tears, and Mando wasn’t sure what, if anything, she was actually seeing.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered, wiping a stray tear away with his thumb as it rolled down her cheek.

Alaina didn’t respond.

“Keep an eye on her,” he instructed Grogu, who seemed to understand what he was saying and latched onto the bottom hem of Alaina’s dress.

Mando took the rungs of the ladder two at a time and launched himself into the cockpit to get them off the desert hellhole they had landed on.

Soon, they were up in the air, and Mando put the Crest in hyperdrive with no real destination in mind. It was just for the safety of the hyperdrive channel.

Mando removed his helmet and let it fall to the floor, then raised his gloves to rub his weary face.

He’d made an absolute karking mess of everything.

He’d promised Alaina that he would protect her, and she’d almost been…

He slammed his hands down on top of the console with an angry growl.

He couldn’t keep failing her. She’d been through too much, and he couldn’t let any more be his fault. He’d take them somewhere quiet to regroup, and then… 

Then, they would make serious plans to get Alaina situated somewhere safe. Once Alaina was safe, he could focus on finding the kid’s people, or maybe even the Jedi, if they still existed, to take him in.

Then, they could all just move on with their lives.

He ignored the painful tug in his chest at the thought of his companions leaving and plugged in coordinates for their next destination—a small, quiet moon just on the other side of the border in wild space. He’d encountered the uninhabited moon a few years back and found solace in its beauty once. Hopefully, he could share that with Alaina and the kid, giving the two of them one last pleasant memory of him.

Once the ship was headed toward their destination, and the alarm was programmed to alert them when they were approaching, Mando grabbed his helmet from the floor. He stared at the heavy beskar piece, buffing a scuff out of the side with his sleeve before putting it back on and heading back down to the hold.

Alaina remained motionless, sitting stoically on the edge of his mattress with her feet dangling above the ground. Grogu’s hand still clutched the bottom hem of her dress, and he looked at Mando with large, pleading eyes. When Mando made it to his two companions, he took a moment to study Alaina, trying to quell his anger with a detached view as he looked over her injuries.

There were traces of a bruise blossoming across her right temple. The tiny stream of blood that had come from her nose had long since dried and caked to her face, ending at her upper lip. Her bottom lip and chin were covered with that piece of shit’s blood from when she must have bitten his lip when he forced himself on her.

His fists clenched at his sides as he tried to reign in his anger.

“Alaina?” he whispered, searching for any sign that she had heard him. Her face remained vacant, and her normally expressive eyes were empty and bloodshot. He sighed and forced himself to relax. “Alaina, let’s get you cleaned up, okay?” he suggested, keeping his voice low and calm, even though he wanted to do nothing more than go back to Tatooine and punch the corpse of Toro Calican until there was nothing left of him.

Alaina made no indication that she had heard him.

He shuffled around the hold, keeping one eye on Alaina as he started to gather his old tunic, which Alaina had taken to sleep in, and a canteen of water from next to her cot. Grogu looked nervously between him as Mando returned to their struggling friend.

Silently, he went to work cleaning her face. Unable to find a rag nearby, he grabbed his cloak, poured water over a small portion of the edge, and began to gently dab at the blood on Alaina’s chin and nose. She didn’t so much as blink as he cleaned her face. The dull green eyes physically pained him, and he wished she would snap out of her dissociative state and cry, fight, or something just so he could see the spark return to her emerald eyes. Once he cleaned her face, he examined the bruise on her temple a little closer, but it didn’t appear as if she suffered any fractures.

“I think we could use some rest,” he said, hoping for a response, but not surprised when he didn’t receive one. He held up the tunic in front of her eyes, but still nothing. “I don’t think you’d want to stay in those clothes,” he said, pausing to look over the ripped, tattered green shirt and dress. He knelt before her, untying her laces to work her boots off first. Grogu rested a tiny hand on his glove and then pointed up to Alaina. “I know, kid. She’s gonna be okay. She just needs some time.” Grogu’s ears flattened, and Mando felt as dejected as the kid looked.

Once her boots and socks were removed from her feet, he stood back up and bent over so his helmet aligned with her head. “I’m going to take your dress off. Stop me if this makes you uncomfortable.” When Alaina remained frozen, he sighed and eased her off the alcove's edge.

Alaina was pliant in his arms. Nothing more than a doll to be positioned as he untied and removed her dress and slid the green tunic he’d gotten for her back on Sorgan up over her head. Now she stood before him wearing only her breastband and underwear, and his helmet flicked over her body, looking for any signs of external injuries that needed to be addressed. A shock of black and blue was already cracking in the middle of her abdomen, and if he looked hard enough, he thought he could make out Calican’s footprint in the middle of her stomach.

“Kriff,” he muttered when he realized that she must have taken a kick to the gut. 

Quickly, he grabbed the kid and placed him in his hammock above them. He gently pushed Alaina back to his mattress and helped her lean back. Once she was on her back, he began palpating her abdomen, checking for any indication of internal bleeding or organ damage. Alaina’s unfocused gaze didn’t move from staring at the ceiling. Her abdomen briefly tensed when his fingers began prodding her, and he relaxed his examination, not wanting to cause her any additional pain. Thankfully, he didn’t find anything to indicate that she had any internal bleeding, but he would check again later.

He tried to move her, but even though her eyes were open, she was nothing more than a limp shell of herself. Mando continued to murmur words of comfort and praise as he dressed her in his old tunic. He didn’t know what he was even saying; he just hoped that something would make its way into her mind. Once he successfully got the tunic on her, he eased her back to the mattress.

Mando undid the magnetic clamps holding his armor in place, leaving it in a messy pile at the foot of his sleeping alcove. He toed his boots off until he was dressed in only his helmet, flight suit, and gloves.

He cautiously climbed into the alcove and, after a brief shuffle, had Alaina situated with his sole pillow and flimsy blanket on one side, leaving him with just enough room to have the other half if he turned on his side.

“Alaina?” he whispered, caressing her arm with his gloved hand, but received no response from her.

Alaina stared blankly at the ceiling, completely unaware of her surroundings.

“My mind would always conjure you up whenever I needed a hand to hold or a shoulder to lean on.” Her words from Sorgan echoed through his troubled mind. “Can I hold your hand? At least until I fall asleep?”

Mando ripped his gloves off and shucked them out of the alcove. His fingers tentatively grazed down her arm until they found her hand. Slowly, cautiously, he entwined his fingers between her smaller ones, hoping his actions comforted her.

A sad coo from above pulled Mando’s attention from Alaina. He found the kid looking down at his friend with large, sad eyes. With a sigh, Mando moved to grab the kid, bringing him down to join them.

“Come on, kid,” he whispered and twisted his free arm so he could reach above him to grab the small toddler by his shirt, placing him between them. Grogu immediately crawled away from him and onto Alaina’s chest. He watched with a sad smile as the kid stroked her cheek, knowing he needed to be gentle with her.

Mando brought their joined hands under his helmet and brushed his lips across her knuckles, but not even the shock of feeling his lips or the overgrown scruff on his cheek could pull her from her mind.

With a sigh, he laid back down on his side, resting his helmet on his arm as he watched Grogu drift to sleep, sprawled across Alaina’s chest.

“We’re here for you,” he whispered in the alcove, gently squeezing her hand. “We’re here. Just let me know if you need anything,” he said before going quiet, hoping that the woman next to him would find sleep at some point.

He wasn’t expecting a response, but his heart fluttered, and the cord in his chest jumped when she squeezed his hand back.

🐍 End Act 1 🐍

Author's Note #2: Ooof. I'm okay. Everything is fine 😢 Let's move on to our healing era, shall we?

Peace and love, XOXO

-Stardust

Heaven in Hiding Masterlist

Next chapter in series - Chapter 13: Elysium

[thesanctuarysys]

intro post ^_^

hi !! we r the sanctuary sys !!

this is a blog for those in our system who wanna participate!! we areee radqueer, pro transIDs, pro consent, pro-endo, partially willowgenic, traumaendo,

member of Alexios Divine Order <3

dm for discord server !!

we will coin terms and such !! we kinda just do whatever on here

#!.our ids - our trans/cis/other IDs

#!.our coins - terms we made (will be used on @alters4all and @thesanctuarysys )

more info under cut!!

we wanna be programmed! programmers please reach out :)

꩜ .ᐟ MUDS

puppeteer dependency disorder , glitching mind disorder , neurotypitism , joints-fucked

꩜ .ᐟ TRANSIDS

transpuppy, transautistic, TransHarmed, transSch00lsh00ter, speciesFuck, transSlut, transProgrammed, transKidnapped, transTrafficked, transHarmed, transWildernessSurvivor , transPolyfragmented (transitioned!!) ,

꩜ .ᐟ CISIDS

CisDID, CisFibromyalgia, CisAnxiety, CisCOCSA (victim), CisGroomed, CisHarmed, cisHPD, cisCDH, CisOCD

꩜ .ᐟ OTHER IDS

permaGroomed, permaAbused, permaVictim

꩜ .ᐟ PARAS

misiaphilia , loserphilia , 🧸

꩜ .ᐟ ALTER INTROS

Caramel

18, she/it, willowgenic alter wowie!! runner of this blog usually :3 tag : #!.caramel yaps

Kenna

15, he/she/it/they/paw/pup, traumagenic alter, other primary runner of blog, tag : #!.kenna yaps

Sebastian

YOOOO im 17-19, he/they/it, willowgenic FREAK, lotsa paras lotsa transIDs, tag: .seb the freak

Lacey

hiii ꒰ᐢ. .ᐢ꒱ im Lacey ! from laceys flash games !! 16-25, she/love/slut/bimbo/heart/ adore/cute/cherry/pie/sweet/pink/ bubblegum/bubble/bun/fluff/paw/kit/cute/squish, willowgenic ,, tag: #!.laceys world

Nina

she/sea/it,, willogenic alter ! mermaid ! transHarmed and transProgrammed, transSpecies ! big fan of music and the ocean,,, tag - #!.ninas sea

Lacey 01

i exist thats all you get to know my tag is !.lacey 01

Angie

13-16 permaKid, LambKid ! she/they, traumagenic, tag: #!.angie

[misscammiedawn]

A non-exhaustive list of my favorite switches in Mr. Robot

Don't mind me. I am just indulging in one of my fixations because I have time and energy. If there's one thing about Mr. Robot I enjoyed it was how inventive they were with the depictions of a switch. So let's rank a few.

Season 2, Episode 9

The early show doesn't really show a lot of switching because for Season 1 Elliot doesn't know about his condition and in season 2 though they are co-conscious, switches tend to all be blank spots for Elliot. We are firmly in his perspective in the early show (even seeing his hallucinations in season 1), the show kind of backs off from that as it goes on but early on it's not really part of the show's DNA.

This one is showing the first time Elliot is co-fronting when Mr. Robot is front and it causes a blur to happen which is nicely depicted here. Everyone inside and outside the body finds it weird. Decent job.

3/5

Season 3, Episode 2

I have never been a fan of scenes where Rami Malek plays Mr. Robot. I appreciate the subtlety of how the disorder is depicted when actors are not switched out but I never get the full sense that Elliot's social awkwardness fades away when he is depicted as Mr. Robot. In canon the difference between them from those who can tell is that Mr. Robot makes eye contact. In this scene Elliot allows a switch to happen in a therapy setting. They play Malek and Slater's voices overlayed and I think that indicates a lack of bravery that Malek can sell the dramatic shift that Krista's facial expression and the score are selling.

2/5

Season 3, Episode 4

Rare example of an unwanted switch from Mr. Robot. The static is a a mainstay for the show but the real fun tool being used here is the momentum. We are given perspective shots from both Angela and Mr. Robot and the stuttering frame rate and movement of the background sell the disorientation. Often shots where the background moves and the character stays in the same position are used in the show for dissociation and it's great there's a visual language within the show to depict it outside of the static/computer glitch stuff that gets used too much.

Slater really sells the exhaustion that comes when an alter cannot hold on to front any longer. This one is a bit more drawn out and overplayed because there's an urgency in the drama of the scene.

3/5

Season 3, Episode 7

The Cyberbombings have gone off and Elliot isn't sure how responsible he and Mr. Robot may be for the deaths. He tried to stop it and in his panic he rushes to his therapist's office to confess but the act of trying to formulate the words causing him to start to heavily dissociate. This is shown by his voice becoming a static glitching mess as the light fades out and he is pulled away from the camera along with the bookshelf into a void. A vivid and powerful hyperbole that may not capture the feeling of a panicked switch as well as some other season 3 episodes do but looks beautiful on camera and is a vast improvement from the previous episode.

4/5

Season 4, Episode 1

Season 4 is where things really start getting good in my eyes because the pair are co-fronting for a lot of it and will both be present and reacting on the screen so there is a need to ensure the audience can intuit who is fronting at any given time. Much of the time they are lazy and just imply the pair are trading out. Which makes the moments where they actually play with the concept all the more fun.

This here is why I am making this list. Darlene just brought up an emotionally activating topic (Angela's death) and Elliot checks the fuck out and Mr. Robot comes the fuck out to handle it. Look at Elliot. The boy is DONE. He wants nothing to do with this. He's OUT.

No camera tricks. No cuts. No lighting or sound effects. Just a simple bit of blocking and it works.

This is cinema.

5/5

Season 4, Episode 3

Season 4 really does include my favorite depictions. The alliance of Elliot and Mr. Robot really rewards for seeing them at one another's throats the previous seasons. This one is another case of simple blocking and performance depicting the switch rather than editing. I imagine part of this proclivity is to train the audience for S4E7 which is treated like a stage play. Even still this one is not as fun or showy as the last one but I do so enjoy when the pair are working in unison. I've never been able to do fast switching in my own experience but I've seen people who can and I imagine this from when I see them code switch mid-interaction. Still, not really much going on other than the creative team trusting the audience to follow the action. Also Mr. Robot calling himself "Elliot" is a treat.

2/5

Season 4, Episode 9

This one is less about the cinematography and more about the narrative pay off. Elliot has gone dormant because his trauma memories resurfaced and Mr. Robot is fronting the entire episode up until this point. Whiterose is talking to Mr. Robot and addressing him as "Mr. Alderson" and here he offers to let him see the guaranteed dead Angela (we also see Price's reaction to it) and calls Mr. Robot "Elliot", the camera pans back and it's Elliot. Visually it's subtle but in terms of a triumphant moment and how it can be when a certain emotional anchor is hit (Angela means nothing to Mr. Robot but Elliot would have reacted strongly to that comment)

Given it's the last real switch of the show (spare for the final moment) it's got an air of triumph about it that I appreciate. Given Elliot is MIA because he cannot face the pain of his recovered trauma memories it's cathartic to see him able to face the world again.

4.5/5

Honorary mentions:

Season 2, Episode 4 - In a flashback to Halloween, 7 months before the EvilCorp hacks, we see Elliot and Darlene watching the bougie massacre movie and Elliot shows off the Mr. Robot jacket and wears the mask that will become the symbol for FSociety. He clearly switches in this scene but a combination of the end of show twist, Malek's not really selling the physicality of Mr. Robot and the mask obfuscating his face/eyes makes it hard to tell who it is we are seeing. I am fairly confident that Pre-Show Elliot is fronting until the switch and then Mastermind Elliot is fronting afterwards but my first few watches of the show I thought Elliot became Mr. Robot.

Regardless it's done really well, the way that Elliot goes quiet and becomes mildly unresponsive before picking up steam. It's quite true to how interactions go, especially pre-discovery. "Hey, are you okay, you zoned out a bit there?" is a common refrain for those with CDDs. 4/5

Season 3, Episode 2 - Darlene wakes up in Elliot's apartment and plants a bug. Rami Malek catches her and interrogates her. The camera cuts in to Darlene and pulls back to show Slater. It was Mr. Robot the entire scene so it's not a switch. It's actually one of the only times the camera deceived the audience by showing the wrong actor without intentionally communicating we were seeing through a different perspective. I kinda don't like them doing that. 1/5

Season 3, Episode 6 - The glitch time loss sequences are playful and cute but not really what I'm reviewing or looking for here. 1/5. Though the shot of the Alderson system exiting the server room was pretty nice for cool factor.

Season 3, Episode 9 - The episode splices two days worth of events with Mr. Robot's story happening chronologically before Elliot's and so the switch happens at the end of the episode leading in to the start. That alone gets it big points but I mentioned above that I like how Slater plays switches as these exhausting slogs where he can barely hold on and is trying to hold on while looking like he's ready to collapse. He overplays it a little bit but in my experience the feeling of being unable to hang on anymore is like that Bilbo Baggins quote of being like too little butter spread thin over too much bread. I appreciate seeing an attempt to act out something I experience. 3/5

Season 4, Episode 7 - The entire episode is a stage play but both switches in the episode are just the other actor's voice off screen and the characters turning to look at that actor as both Malek and Slater are on "stage" the whole time until Elliot's trauma is unearthed and Mr. Robot can no longer protect him, in which he vanishes. S4E7 is the best episode of television I have ever seen but the switches are nothing to write home about 1/5.

Season 4, Episode 13 - I am not a fan of the finale for obvious reasons that I have spoke about at length in my media essays on the topic. I'll say that showing the Final Fusion as just a perspective shot and Darlene's expression was a nice touch. 2/5

-

Anyway. Thank you for letting me use Tumblr for its intended purposes of GIF sets and hyperfocused rambles about defunct TV shows that no one else is talking about. It is lovely to just scream into the void and pretend it is socializing.

[journalqueer]

Hii can we get a Cup PPT2 please and thank you :3c

CUP ALTER PACK !

Name(s): Cup, Calpurnia, Chalice, Makeda

Pronouns: He/Him, She/Her, They/Them, Shi/Hir, Xe/Xem, Cup/Cups, ☕️/☕️s, 🥤/🥤s, 🍵/🍵s, ⭐️/⭐️s, 💛/💛s, 🌙/🌙s, 🌼/🌼s, Shx/Hxr, Hx/Hxm, Thxy/Thxm, Drink/Drinks, Crack/Cracks, Clumsy/Clumsys

Age: Ageless, Permakid

Species: Cup

Gender(s): Pangender, Cupcharic, Teagender, Retrocupic, Clowngender, Elfgender, Clumsything, Jokegender

Sexuality: Pansexual

TransID(s): TransToothGap, TransPawPads, AutiRace, TransAmerican, TransVocaloid, TransHypersexual, TransJiraiKei, TransScene, TransEmo, TransExperiment, TransFictional, TransChildish, TransTics, TransSexless, TransHeterochromia

MUD(s): Joints-Fucked, Ponophagy, Glitching Mind Disorder

[strawbubbysugar]

I really hope I don’t come off as rude asking this, I’m just not sure of the best way to ask it lol.

Was Moon built with Generalized Anxiety Disorder? Or basically I guess built neurodivergent? Was that on purpose when he was built, or was it an accident, or did something in his mind glitch when he became more sentient or something?

Because now his paranoia is so bad after the accident, poor guy. I feel so bad for Moon, he must feel so alone and like the world is against him. That would grind anybody’s spirit down :(

He has anxiety for sure, but he and his brother are both AI. learning, growing algorithms- which means that their neurodivergence is a result of their environment and how they grew up. Having so much pressure on your future would def lead to anxiety, and a generalized disorder formed over time!

[maaarine]

Getting past ‘it’s IBS’ (Xi Chen, Aeon, June 04 2024)

"In the late 1980s, aged 12, Taryn was taken to her doctor’s office with cramping, bloating, and constipation after eating, and was told that she had ‘a nervous stomach’.

As a white girl growing up in New Jersey, she met a stereotype, and when initial bloodwork and imaging was negative for evidence of a ‘real’, or organic disease in her gut, one of Taryn’s doctors began writing in her charts that she had irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a misdiagnosis that would follow Taryn for life.

At the time, IBS was considered by many to be a medically unexplained and therefore controversial illness, keeping company with conditions such as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

As a result, it carried the stigma of being a psychosomatic illness, caused primarily by stress and anxiety, and Taryn was sent home with prescriptions for diet and exercise. (…)

Today, unlike in the 1990s, it is well established that conditions like IBS, collectively known as disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBIs), are real diseases that disrupt the communication between the nervous system of the brain and spine, and the nervous system of the intestines.

First mentioned in the book The Irritable Gut (1979) by the gastroenterologist W Grant Thompson, the conditions were labelled ‘functional’ disorders – characterised not by structural damage to the hardware of the gut, but by a glitch in its ‘software’, in other words, its nervous system, charged with processing, receiving or relaying information coming in or going out.

Software is not as easily observed as hardware, however, and much of academic medicine views the mind and the body as two separate and distinct entities, a viewpoint called mind-body dualism.

Over time, and despite the more nuanced meaning intended by Thompson, the term ‘functional’ became associated exclusively with disorders of the mind.

This is part of the reason why there is still stigma against conditions like IBS, and why attempts to establish diagnostic criteria for IBS in particular suffered from vagueness. (…)

When academics read that IBS patients have higher rates of anxiety and depression, or that antidepressants are a treatment for IBS, many assume that this is because psychiatric symptoms cause symptoms of IBS without considering the inverse, that chronic undiagnosed abdominal pain predisposes patients to having mood disorders.

The real reason these drugs are effective, however, is that, in utero, the precursor cells for our gut and our brain actually share the same nervous system, and only later separate in embryonic development.

As a result, the two nervous systems utilise the same neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, to send messages between neurons.

This is why we sometimes feel butterflies in our stomach when we’re nervous, and why stress and anxiety often worsen symptoms of IBS, but do not necessarily cause it.

As Brown’s quote above implies, the stereotype of the anxious patient in pain applies not only to IBS but all patients who present to clinics with vague abdominal distress (including those with non-gastrointestinal conditions like endometriosis, who experience delayed diagnosis because providers take women’s pain less seriously than men’s).

A classic example is peptic ulcer disease, a cause of severe abdominal pain that for decades was denounced as a psychosomatic illness until Barry Marshall and Robin Warren discovered in 1983 that it was caused by a species of bacteria.

Before their findings, peptic ulcers were managed with diet and, frequently, surgery, when what patients needed were antibiotics. (…)

In my opinion, the root of the problem is medical education itself.

Unless a medical trainee becomes a gastroenterologist, it is unlikely that they will receive any specialised education in IBS, let alone the history of IBS research proving it to be an organic condition, despite 40 per cent of the general population having functional gastrointestinal disorders.

Partly, this is because a majority of medical education in countries including the US, the UK and Canada takes place in academic centres associated with hospitals, where medical students will probably never encounter a patient for whom their IBS symptoms are the primary reason for them appearing in the emergency room, and especially not for their admission to the hospital itself.

As a consequence, medical students also don’t get their knowledge of IBS tested by board examinations.

This speaks to the fact that, echoing Osler, IBS generally doesn’t kill patients, and our current healthcare system values measures of mortality and cure in response to acute complaints more than quality of life and the management of suffering from chronic issues such as IBS.

The same could be said about long COVID (which, to this day, is sometimes challenged as illegitimate) and chronic fatigue syndrome, where sufferers are often sent off to a psychiatrist for care.

The thinking is that these ongoing problems, where there is no mainstream route for testing and treatment, are not as important for medical students to know about compared with, say, a patient crashing after a cardiac arrest, even though most of the global disease burden across the developed and the developing world is caused by chronic, not acute, illness. (…)

These demographic patterns don’t explain who really has the disease – they just reveal medical and social bias and entrenched stereotypes: women are perceived as hysterical and diagnosis-seeking, while men are stoic and avoidant, for instance; or white women are thought to tolerate less pain than people of colour.

None of this, in reality, is true – but it is part of the reason why so many patients assume that what they suffer from won’t be justified by the presence of organic disease and therefore doesn’t warrant a doctor’s visit in the first place.

Such patients, treated so poorly within the medical mainstream, now have a community and identity of their own in the Wild West of alternative medicine that flourishes online.

Such groups, seeking to empower themselves and especially hoping to get well, today stand at loggerheads with the practices and physicians they have left behind.

Some accuse their former doctors of gaslighting them, and they deserve to be heard.

Much of what I have discussed regarding misdiagnoses of IBS assumes that healthcare providers, even when in error, always have good intentions and are sincere about using the diagnosis to clarify the patient’s medical case.

There were several elements of Taryn’s story, however, and in my own experiences of how DGBIs are taught in medical school, that make it difficult for me to believe that this assumption holds in most doctor visits.

Although one could argue that the blasé diagnoses of IBS and disordered eating for Taryn could be down to simple carelessness and negligence, honest errors, or someone being ‘just a bad doctor’, it’s obvious to me that a pattern was developing with Taryn’s interactions with different providers who weren’t taking her lived experience itself seriously, just as I had stopped taking my own experiences seriously.

What holds our stories together, I believe, is this phenomenon where both of our perceptions of our own ability to know what’s true or not were put into question."

[not-a-puzzle]

There’s so many things about all types of OCD that’s just so genuinely frustrating and should be even from a non disordered perspective. The big thing is uncertainty.

Like with contamination OCD, there’s uncertainty in as to where the contamination might be, so we overcompensate. You can’t see bacteria with the naked eye. Or you don’t know maybe someone poisoned your drink when you turned your head around. The food could be soiled but you don’t taste it because you just can’t be you’re gonna get food poisoning anyway. . You just never know. You can’t fucking see germs but they’re fucking there anyway.

And guess what, the symptoms of anxiety make you feel sick too, so who knows what’s what until time passes but who knows now?

With checking OCD, you don’t know for certain and if you locked the door or turned your oven off or not and there’s no way of knowing until you go back home. Did you blow all the candles out. The memory becomes unreliable. It’s like when you compete and a ton the mind glitches and runs out of memory space. It just never feels like the action is completed so you never see certain you did.

With intrusive thoughts, how do you know you don’t want to to the gross nasty horrible thing that popped in your mind. It must be from some place in you to even think that.

See, it’s so exhaustiving. Why can’t things just be different so they aren’t this way?

[yukidragon]

Sunny Day Jack Transcript - INTERVIEW - 41683

I've decided it's long past overdue to write up the transcript of the interview Jack has while in character back in 1983 when the SunnyTime Crew Show was at its peak in popularity. You can listen to this audio for yourself after playing through the demo of Something's Wrong with Sunny Day Jack, along with [Redacted]'s interview with the psyche consultant.

Disclaimer - I have auditory processing disorder, which makes it difficult for me to translate sounds into words, so please forgive any errors I might make. If I got something wrong, please do let me know so that I can correct it. Thank you.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur

...

(A click of starting a tape playing. Audio starts a bit distorted then clears up.)

Dan: Alright. Now… I’m assuming that out of all of you listening today, some of you have to be parents, right? I’m sure quite a few of you have been tuned in to this new kids show - big hit, it’s everywhere. It’s inescapable, really. I’m of course talking about the SunnyTime Crew Show.

Dan: Now I have to admit, I don’t really know what all the fuss is, but… then again I am 36 and if I did, I’d… (awkward chuckle) I’d have bigger things to worry about. (chuckle)

Dan: But today we are making an exception. We have with us one Mr. Sunny Day Jack, who I am to believe is the… the leader? The front guy? For the mass acclaimed SunnyTime Crew. How you doing, Jack?

Jack: (cheerful) I’m great, Dan! Thanks for having me on the show. Glad to be here.

Dan: (enthusiastically) I can tell. For the folks at home, you can’t see this, but wow, this guy can smile! Look at that. Your dentist must be so proud!

Jack: (modest chuckle) Oh it’s nothing a simple and consistent brushing routine can’t do, but thank you! I do my best.

Dan: (more moderate tone) Of course you do, of course you do… Now. Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself, hmm? Tell me about Jack.

Jack: Well…, I’m sure that, as you said. I’m part of the SunnyTime Crew. I wouldn’t say I’m a leader or anything. We all just kind of do our own things, and… You know. We help the kids at home learn and talk about their feelings. There are a lot of ways to do that, and we run through them all with the kids, and… (soft laugh) Well, I mean, there’s not too much to say about it. I think it’s a very important job and I… I like it. I get to come into so many homes and be there for so many young viewers, and… Sometimes they really need it… and sometimes they don’t, but… the company is nice to have around… Yeah.

Dan: Right, right… If I’ve read up on this show correctly… you’ve all been burning hot and fast haven’t you? You know, what with all the toys and the lunchboxes and the… um… What was it? An ice show?

Jack: Oh! Uh, we’ll be doing a small live tour, nothing too big. We’ll be doing some singing, some book readings… really interacting with our fans. It’ll be a lot of fun! But if you want to know more, you can find out more information by calling in at-

(Audio glitches out and becomes incomprehensible for a second.)

Dan: Right, right, so… If you don’t mind me putting this out there… You’re kind of a celebrity, aren’t you?

Jack: (slightly awkward) I… guess you could say that. But really, we’re all-

Dan: Then we’ll put you through the same wringer as the rest of them. You’re a fine young man - plenty strong, plenty (grunting sound), you know? And you’re in there, right? Mom’s home, you’re taking care of the kids while she… you know - irons or cooks or whatever. Tell me. Do you ever get fans who are moms?

Jack: (slightly awkward) Well… sometimes. You could say that. (cheerful) And they’re really nice, just like the kids!

Dan: (sly) I’d put money on you being the crush of at least half of the housewives across America who tune in. You could do that, you know.

Jack: (awkward) I-I… guess. I wouldn’t really know.

(Awkward silence for a few seconds.)

Dan: (chuckle) Anyways… I believe… you’re on the show today with a mission?

Jack: Actually yes, Dan. I just wanted to come on and let the parents know that this weekend, me and my friends will be at the-

(Audio distortion glitches out the recording.)

Jack: -East of the-

(More audio distortion.)

Jack: -And you know, I’d love to meet and make as many new friends as possible. So, if you’d like to come down and say, “Hi,” we have balloons and games and activities!

Jack: Well, uh… actually we’ll be doing pictures and book signings too. We’re a local show, and it means a lot to have these opportunities. I just think it’s really great to be able to thank you all in person. As parents, your kids, we love teaching them and helping them grow… but when that TV turns off, it’s really is you who comes in and does the important work.

Dan: Aww… Isn’t that sweet? Unfortunately… (feigned surprised/disappointed gasp) Oh! Would you look at that? It seems like we’re out of time. But before you go though, I have to thank our sponsors and… One last question before we go, Jack. I’m asking on behalf of all the mothers out there. Ladies, thank me later.

Dan: Are you sure you aren’t… holding out on us at all? Like, come on! A guy your size has to have come from modeling or something. I’m putting it out there - there’s gotta be a picture of this guy in somebody’s charity calendar. I’m serious! Check your Mr. Junes, folks! Nobody gets this fit for themselves-

Jack: (curt) Alright. Thank you for having me, Dan. It was really… nice to be here. Um… Parents, we’ll see you this weekend. Remember, that’s at the-

(Audio distortion.)

Jack: -Mall, East of the-

(Audio distortion.)

Jack: -I’m really looking forward to it, and you should be too.

Jack: (cheerful, in character) This is Sunny Day Jack signing off, and wishing you a Sunnytime-tastic day-

(Voice distorts on the final words and fades out to static. The tape stops with a click. The beep of a TV with no signal plays before the audio ends.)

...

Additional Notes: A charity calendar are calendars made to raise funds for a particular local charity. The most well known and best selling charity calendars featured naked models posing provocatively for each month's image. These were one of the ways people could get their hands on pornographic imagery before the advent of the internet.

[silliest-fckindumbboy]

🪦Consider this blog a TW in & of itself🪦

🩸My coining blog is @fckindumbboy-coins Requests are always open!!!🩸

🫀This will be a mix of RQ & para stuff! Its my safe space! I will like & reblog what I choose!🫀

🪦Block/ ignore dont report, I'm just trying to find safe community & without that, so many of us are in danger!🪦

🩸If you arent harming anyone unwilling to be harmed, do it up, bby; pro-consent🩸

🦷 Im Jynx

🔪 The body is 26; Agefluid, multiage- mainly nepedage and traumatot, but I also sometimes linger around the body's age

🦷 Agender, transmasc, boycunt, periboy, offboy, bordergender

🔪 Polyromantic, hyperromantic

🦷 Polysensual, polarsensual, hypersensual [unless touch-repulsed due to fatigue, low energy, sensory overload, etc.]

🔪 Greyace, hypersexual

🦷 Ductuaffectis, Alteraffectis

🔪 It/he/pup/puppy/clown/honk/rot/ick/demon/rat; I may also use plural pronouns on occasion

🦷 Married, poly

🔪 Ask me anything about anything!

🪦My tags:

fckindumbboy - anything thats mine

boybarx - anytime I comment/post/talk about anything/share my opinions

shøwøff - my pictures

boycoins - coining/flags

Papa♡ - anything to do with my Papa or my relationship

boyIDs- my hoard/IDs or terms I like (reblogs only- not my OGs)🪦

🫀On sys: I'm [Jynx] the current host of a DID system~ Pls keep in mind that, due to the nature of plurality, I may post things or reblog things that I dont typically post, agree with, or that I forget later on. Some alters MAY make themselves known, they may not, thats up to them to decide not me.🫀

🪦Paras & Kinks: LOTS! Obsessed with everything abuse, gore, pain, blood, cannibalism, & death! 3/3, get over it, youre not the thought police. I sexualize & extort my own trauma & mental illness~ Theres wwwwaaaaayyyyyyy more! Consang🪦

🫀SickSickSick: DID, BPD, DPDR, schizoaffective bipolar type, OCD, agoraphobia, C-PTSD, substance use disorder [recovering & hating every second], BED w/ anorexic & bulimic tendencies, GAD/ panic disorder, PNES, mild TBI, CI

We got the 'tism

ICT survivor

I have so much trauma, & always happy to share & talk about it [for anyone!] (I'm cisharmed, cisgroomed, cisabused, cisICTsurvivor, cistortured, cisSA/CSA, cisraped.. etc.)

Chronically ill & physically disabled!🫀

🪦I AM a radqueer! Get outta here if you cant deal with that! Im super duper inclusive & believe everyone has a right to be themselves (even if I may not agree with them!) I have absolutely no room in my life, my heart, or my safe space for hate, drama, or discourse!!! Im also a [REDACTED]queer! I value privacy & non-disclosure of stances or other information, I think everyone has a right to discretion & safety within the community & elsewhere. My business is no one's business unless I say so- no one's business is my business unless they say so. All information, conversation, etc. with me is strictly confidential. I dont believe in call outs or other forms of non-consenual information disclosure. 🪦

🫀Identities: Transclownspecies, puppykin, trauma-born demon, irl yandere, transHoH/transDeaf, real vampire [hybrid- sang & psi], DemiDead, DemiRot, Traumatot, permapuppy, permadissociated, permalockdown, permasick, devotabled, translabrat, ratkin 🫀

🪦MUDs: Unhealthy Relation-Victim Disorder, Glitching Mind Disorder, Plural Dysphoric Disorder, Imminent Death Disorder, Temporal Perception Distortion Syndrome🪦

🩸I BLOCK FREELY🩸

Anons: ⚙️, ☀️, bitey, 🐶🎉, 🕯, :3, 🍇

[dontlookheswatching]

Okay! Ref sheet number one is done! This took like a entire DAY It was NOT supposed to take this long so I hope this is worth all that time😭

A version with scars are shown!

There’s also mentions of drugs and self harm, so please take this note as a TW. Some of the scars on the other version below the cut have a few visible self harm scars, so please beware if any of this stuff triggers you.

Ben Drowned

•Pansexual and goes by he/they(Demi Boy).

•5’0, perhaps one of the shortest adults you’ll ever meet. He’s 21, and his birthday is on April 23rd.

•His eyes don’t always bleed. Only when he’s upset, stressed, or crying. If he’s really upset, he’ll produce more tears that are black and taste like ink. •He has wings and tail feathers that support flight, although he doesn’t know how to fly. Both are due to the fact he’s supposed to be an angel, but due to Slenderman interfering, it never happened. He doesn’t clip his wings, so they’re huge, to where he has to use magic to hide them and his tail feathers.(My Ben is nothing related to BEN. I have very different stories and headcanons that make it impossible for me to intercept BEN into my version of Ben. The BEN Arg has nothing to do with my version of Ben is simpler words, as my Ben is my own revamped version of Benjamin Lawman.)

•One of the most likable creeps alongside Toby.

•He’s a femboy. I will not elaborate.

•He has several different aesthetics, two of his favorites being Scene and Grunge.

•He doesn’t celebrate his birthday, but others do. He doesn’t celebrate it for a few reasons; One being as a child his father never bothered to celebrate his birthday, least of all tell him “happy birthday”. This has led Ben to commonly forgetting his own birthday. Another reason is because it’s also the same day he died. He doesn’t mind if the other creeps celebrate his birthday, even if it’s kinda awkward for him, just as long as there’s no one celebrating his death. That’ll cause a fight in seconds.

•He’s in charge of anything that has to do with technology. If a creep has questions, or maybe some this isn’t working correctly, they go to Ben. Ben is also in charge of things such as security camera footage, hacking into government files, police records, and other stuff similar. He also provides creeps with information about their missions, specifically any details about a victim they might need to know, such as the victims address. •His voice constantly and randomly distorts and glitches, as well as his body. His voice will distort and glitch more when he’s having extreme emotions, and it sometimes gets to the point where no one can understand him except Jeff and other glitchpastas. Think Lolbit from FNAF as a example.

•He tends to float and levitate to seem taller.

•He’s Japanese American, and is fluent is Japanese. He can be found talking in Japanese when he forgets no one else really understands him, or when he’s scared, he might scream out something in Japanese.

•Despite being a entity that literally torments people into offing themselves and scaring them shitless he’s actually easily frightened. Creeps love to scare him because of this because he has a high pitched scream and he’ll start glitching out.

•He likes to paint his nails. He even sometimes lets Nina do his nails, but not too often, because she tends to give him acrylics, and everytime one breaks he almost cries.

•He’s a stoner. He used to smoke weed and do drugs when he was a teenager and in his super early 20’s, and it used to be a really big problem. He’s gotten better since then, and only allows himself to smoke weed if he’s stressed or having a awful day. He no longer does drugs. Another issue he had really bad was self harm. He hardly does that anymore either. He also has several mental disorders and other problems he struggles with, but I might cover that in a different post, or a possible ask if anyone decides to ask questions.

That’s all for the first ref sheet! The next one is for Jeff, and it’ll probably take just as long as this one did or maybe longer, because I’m still working on multiple things as I’m doing these, such as a relationship chart, and organizing my messy headcanons for these refs😭