#He disappears for a decade sometimes longer she was using past terms how was he supposed to know

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 271

“Grandmother is visiting,” Damian suddenly said with no warning and with his usual not-quite demanding tone. 

“Who?” Tim wasn’t the only one to startle, seeing as Bruce had practically froze, a downturn to his lips in a silent show of confusion. 

Damian scowled. “Are you deaf Drake? Grandmother is coming to Gotham to, quote, make sure I am being properly cared for.” None of them had known that Ras was with anyone actually. At least Tim was pretty sure that would have been in the files. 

“Oh?” Dick didn’t quite crouch to Damian’s height but it was a near thing. “She-” “He,” Damian corrected, interrupting him. They all exchanged a glance before Dick continued. 

“Is he coming to the Manor or…” 

Damian scoffed again, a tiny bit of a flush against his face. “No, Grandmother will most likely be staying with Akhi-”

Now wait one moment-

“YOU HAVE ANOTHER BROTHER?!” 

[grimaldiapologist]

On deprivation

Our partner system's just left for home again this morning, having lived with us for a month. This is the third time of its kind, with the goal of permanently moving in together in the near future. That's not the point of why I'm writing, but it's context to why, and why now.

We - the I of this blog - are absolutely, undeniably, chronically deprived of closeness, human contact, and physical affection. It's a slow-brewing realisation that has started becoming apparent the past few years, popping up severely around Christmas time in particular due to the circumstances present, but also, painfully, at random throughout the year outside of that.

I have no evidence or reason to believe we were deprived of physical affection in our early childhood. Memories of crawling on the laps of our caretakers, receiving hugs and kisses, hair petting, is relatively abundant even in the absence of any real memory continuum. We've been carried around, tucked in, kissed on the forehead and the cheek, read to at bedtime, taken care of when we were ill. The issue is, we don't know or remember when this stopped, but when it did, it did so completely, and that has done damage to us that we haven't been aware of until now that it's slowly began to show itself.

We can say for absolutely certain that we did not receive much in our teens, early or otherwise. Our parents broke it off when we were 11, and after that, our life was hell, our father disappeared from it near completely, and the consequences of these things made our mother's life hell as well. Now, our mother's physical affection is unpredictable. She sometimes comes out of the left field to give us a hug - I'd say this happens once a year or two. Usually because something very difficult is happening at the time for us, and she feels the need to show physical affection to soothe us. Otherwise, we will get no physical affection from her. We've tried to ask for hugs, but they're stilted, strange, uncomfortable.

Our primary source of physical affection, for at least a decade, came from our best friend. The past few years, we've been doing mostly our own things, seeing each other rarely, chatting occasionally, but while things are cosy on that end in terms of our relationship as it is, the absence of regular human contact between us, of sleeping next to each other, of giving each other frequent hour-long massages, sitting side by side, has left us in an absolute void of physical human connection. And through that void, we've started to consciously recognise that as a need that has not been fulfilled to the point of it being, truly, traumatic; not in the here and now, acutely, but in the long term.

This shows the worst with our relatives. In the presence of our mother, worst of all our father, there is nothing we can do to stop our little parts from taking front and doing everything in their power to gain the approval - and gentleness - of the parent figures. It's the worst with our father, with whom we do not have anything even resembling an adult relationship; in his presence, our mental age downs straight into the under-10s. It is horrifying to watch, helplessly, from the side, knowing that everyone else can spot it, too. We don't see our other relatives much outside of being in their presence while he is also in their presence. Therefore, they only see us regressed. The picture they have of us is infantile. Helpless, timid, in need of guidance and parenting.

The first realisation of how deep and traumatic that lack of affection has been was when, two years ago, our father loudly announced at Christmas that he will no longer be hugging people for the event. We forgot this near instantly, as one thing you learn in the presence of our father is to not pay much mind to whatever he's loudly announcing at the time, and tried to hug him as goodbyes regardless. We were met with a horribly clumsy, awkward, distanced, forced reciprocation, with a mutter of, "I can let it go this once only." Clearly since it had already happened. Not out of free will.

This continued bothering us afterwards. With introspection to it, we came to realise the larger extent of our regression in his presence; whenever we're with him, we go back to being a child, no question about it. Once, we had a family event of going to pick mushrooms in the woods. My sister, niece, niece's friend, sister's sister, her son, my father, me. I toddled behind my father trying to appease and keep up chatter. Trying to learn, feeling awfully clumsy when I didn't know how to walk the forest like he did, what mushrooms to pick. Constantly chatting about nothing, trying to keep the conversation going. Voice light, intonations off the charts.

It's come to something of a head the past month with our partners here. The sheer bottomless hunger like starvation that lights up with every interaction. The absolute awareness of how we need to be giving in return, all of the time, because succumbing to how nice it feels to be pet and loved and held is a surefire way to lose it. Be accused of being selfish, of never giving in return, we hold ourselves to always aim to give twice the amount we get, therefore digging deeper the chasm that is our need for freely given affection. Even just the depth of the craving when it's given stops us from being able to enjoy it. All we see is the impending end of it, the never enough of it.

It's been decades of never having enough, a lifetime of parents who either did not care to give or were too burnt out to do so, respectively for our father and our mother. Growing up into isolation, with little to no human contact for extended periods of time. Coming to terms with not all trauma being acute or visibly damaging, no single car crash of an impact that leaves you injured forever. More like the long-term gnawing damage of malnutrition or inability to move.

Therapy tomorrow, so I guess this is what I wanted to bring to the table for it.

[youwerenevermeanttofeelalone]

Sorry for Not Winning You an Arcade Ring | Joaquín Torres

✦ pairing — Joaquín Torres x female!Barnes!Plus Size Reader

✦ word count — 8.7k (should I even apologize at this point?)

✦ summary — your ex-boyfriend comes back into your life the moment you finally meet your dad — although things are complicated, your feelings are intact.

✦ request — Could I please ask for a story where reader is Bucky’s daughter and she used to date Joaquin but they broke up and then when she meets Bucky they get back together? Angst and drama and fluff and something steamy but no smut please?

✦ warnings — angst, drama, mentions of food and beverages, mentions of violence, language, depiction of symptoms of mental illnesses and light depiction of abandonment issues, daddy issues, fluff.

✦ author's note — coney island (the song) doesn’t have much to do with the fic, but I couldn’t take that line out of my head and thought it was fitting. Next Joaquín fic will be the one where reader used to date Peter, I promise.

════════════════════════

Joaquín swallowed with difficulty. His saliva had become unbearably thick in seconds. As he stood in front of the building, the building that now looked taller than it really was, he felt an itch in his neck.

Sam gripped Bucky’s nape, encouraging him to lead the way inside the building. Bucky was as frozen as Joaquín.

The older man was speechless. Joaquín, however, was not. “Are you sure this is the right building?” he rasped the question directed to Sam.

“One hundred percent.”

Joaquín nodded. The world was small, and he didn’t want to find out just truly how smaller it could get. “I’ll wait here.”

Bucky shook his head. Joaquín’s stomach dropped. He wanted to be there for Bucky, Sam had told him how important this was for him — when he agreed, Joaquín didn’t know he would come back to this place by supporting Bucky.

Connecting dots had never been hard, much less now that it was part of his job, yet he wanted to be mistaken.

“Let’s get this over with, boys.” Sam patted Joaquín’s shoulder. His other hand was still on Bucky’s nape, and by the looks of his grip, he wouldn’t let go.

Joaquín knew exactly what Sam was doing and he wished he had somebody to stabilize him too. “I’ll lead the way,” he mumbled.

“I have to talk to the—“

“There’s no need,” Joaquín interrupted.

Pushing the main door open, he nodded down at the security guard. Still the same old guy. The man smiled, nodding upward as though asking if Sam and Bucky were with him.

“They’re cool,” he assured the guard.

“It’s good to see you,” the guard told him, still smiling.

“You too.”

Joaquín slanted his head, motioning for Bucky and Sam to follow him. He walked past the elevator, explaining, “The elevator is always broken.”

Sam frowned. “We’ll take the stairs, then.”

Their steps, silent yet heavy, carried nerves and apprehension. Joaquín didn’t know how to explain himself or he should even try to do it, Bucky was scared of being rejected, and Sam knew Bucky wouldn’t recover quickly from this.

Joaquín leaned over to look at the paper in Sam’s hand. The number scribbled on it confirmed his suspicions.

“I—“ God, he couldn’t back down now. “Who will do the talking?”

“I will,” Bucky said in a quiet voice. “I just need you two there.”

“Yeah, man, no problem.” Joaquín was thankful his voice didn’t crack.

Bucky lifted his fist, yet his knuckles didn’t touch the door. Not yet. Joaquín felt cruel for wishing Bucky would take longer.

The knocking wasn’t desperate as Joaquín had anticipated. Perhaps Bucky wanted to make a good impression, or perhaps he was wishing nobody would answer the door.

The door opened and Joaquín found himself frozen. Stuck between running away and pulling you into the tightest hug you had ever received.

The euphoria of seeing you again was overwhelming and bittersweet. You looked good. You had always looked good in his eyes.

You were speechless. He wasn’t sure if it was because of him or because of Bucky.

Sam said a soft hi to fill the air, only making it worse for Bucky and unbeknownst to him, for Joaquín.

You stared at him, trying your hardest to smile although the muscles in your face didn’t give in. Eyes moving to Bucky, you found yourself rudely staring.

He did the same. Nobody said anything for a while. Three pairs of eyes were on you, and your brain couldn’t seem to function.

You had looked for him for years, in different countries, finding rejection in every corner of every big and small city alike.

Your gaze deviated to the other side where Joaquín was standing. You picked on Sam’s shift, sandwiched between the other two men.

Joaquín tried to hold your gaze, but you looked away.

“Uh...” you trailed off, eyes jumping from Bucky to Sam. They stopped for a moment before deviating again towards Joaquín. “Come in.”

There weren’t any pictures left in the living room, instead you had filled the spaces with ceramics and trinkets.

You had the same colorful couch Joaquín once spilled coffee on, and the same cozy chairs you had bought online by mistake.

”I should have introduced myself...” Sam trailed off.

“I know who you are,” you assured him. “Nat talked a lot about you.”

“You met Nat?”

“She came looking for me no longer after people disappeared. Maybe two months.”

You motioned for them to sit. Bucky and Sam did so on the same couch whereas Joaquín walked towards a chair. Your cat jumped onto the chair before he could take a seat.

The cat looked up at him and meowed.

“Fatatita,” you chastised the cat. “Let him sit down.”

Before you could approach the couch to pick the cat up, Joaquín lifted her in his arms. He sat down and placed her on his lap.

The cat curled up there, spiting you.

You sat on the other chair, closer to Bucky and Sam.

“Do you know who I am?” Bucky asked. So timidly you barely heard him.

You nodded.

“What else do you know?”

“Not much. You— you’re my dad and nobody knows who my mom is.”

Bucky looked down. “I’m assuming Natasha told you.”

“No.” You made a face, remembering that day like it was yesterday. “Somebody sent me an uncensored file. They probably wanted me to track The Winter Soldier down and make their job easier.”

“But you didn’t.”

You couldn’t tell if he was offended or relieved. “I actually did. I poured a lot of money into it and it never paid off. I lost track of you after Siberia.”

Joaquín squirmed around on the chair at the mention of Siberia.

Siberia practically ruined your life. Picking yourself up had not only been hard but something you hadn’t even been sure you wanted to do. Things had lost meaning. The only reason you were still here was your stubbornness.

Sam curiously asked, “Were you trained or something?”

“Not thoroughly. I’ve always been fat so I was useless in their eyes.”

Bucky sighed. “Sounds like them.”

You didn’t expect anything else from a terrorist organization.

“Oh! I didn’t offer you anything to drink...”

“I’m good,” Sam and Bucky answered at the same time.

You hesitated before turning to the other side. Joaquín barely shook his head. His fingers were buried in Fatatita’s fur as the cat laid on his lap with her eyes lidded closed.

“So... to what do I owe the visit?”

Bucky cleared his throat. “Well, I wanted to meet you.”

Your breath got caught in your throat. You had assumed he needed something from you. Knowing he wanted to meet you made your decade-long sacrifice and the heartbreak almost worth it.

“I was saving up for a trip to Brooklyn. I heard you were around there.”

“Yeah. It’s home again.” The glance he gave Sam didn’t go unnoticed by you.

You wondered if you’d be in the same situation they were if things had been different.

Home was a foreign concept to you. The word didn’t even feel real no matter how many times you said it in your head.

════════════════════════

Outdoor cafes weren’t really your style. However, you could admit the place Bucky and Sam had taken you was nice.

You took his offer to visit him and Sam for a week. Working from home was a pain in the ass sometimes in terms of organization, but it had given you the ability to look for him from the beginning.

The square table shook as Bucky placed his metal hand on it. “Would you stop texting?” He chastised Sam who was sat in front of you.

“It’s something urgent. I wouldn’t be interrupting family bonding time if it wasn’t, you know that.”

Sam’s comment was the end of it. Bucky reclined back onto the chair and gave you a small smile.

Oh, so Sam truly meant the family part. Family — a magical word that evoked foreign sensations in the pit of your stomach.

Sam’s cellphone started ringing. “I’ll be back in a couple minutes,” he announced as he declined the call.

Both Bucky and you followed Sam with your gazes. Your stomach flipped as Sam greeted Joaquín.

Sam smiled. “You got it so quickly?”

Joaquín nodded as he tried his best to not look your way. Sam took the envelope from Joaquín’s grasp.

He could hear your laugh as though you were giggling in his ear like you used to and the temptation was too much for him to handle. He was only human.

Bucky was laughing too, seemingly at something you had said. Joaquín didn’t blame him, it was easy to like you, to laugh with you, to regret every second not spent with you.

“Okay,” Sam sighed. “I didn’t want to ask, but I can’t bite my tongue any longer... what’s up with that face and those eyes you’re giving (Name)? You did the same—“ He groaned. “Don’t tell me...”

“I won’t tell you,” Joaquín tried to joke.

“Shit, man. What happened?”

“Honestly? I’m not sure.”

“Mmmh. Why don’t you join us?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea...”

“Please? I need you for this.” Sam waved the envelope. “But I promised I’d have coffee with them. She just got here.”

Joaquín hesitated to answer. On one hand, he knew Sam would need his help; on the other, he didn’t want to ruin whatever you had going with your dad.

“Come on,” Sam insisted. “Bucky is paying.”

Your eyes were on them as they approached the table. Sam once again took the seat in front of you, leaving Joaquín to seat practically next to you.

You wanted to flip the table and scream yet you remained in your seat, neutral and borderline frozen.

Sam leaned over to say something to Bucky. They were close enough for you to hear, but your ear didn’t pick it up.

You stood up from the table, surprising yourself more than you surprised the three men accompanying you. “I’ll place our order,” you announced.

The place was pretty in its simplicity, only decorated with coffee and pastry themed artwork. Functionality had been a priority and by how busy the place was, you could only presume they had succeeded.

There was a couple all over each other next to the window and a group of friends doing homework three tables from them. Laptops could be seen everywhere, just like people checking their phones.

You had to wait in line to place the order and the line was already building behind you too. The couple all over each other didn’t even seem to realize somebody was staring at them and if they did, they couldn’t care less.

You took a glance outside where Bucky was chatting with Joaquín while Sam made a phone call.

Sam slipped his phone into his pocket. “I didn’t give her my order... do any of you want to add anything?”

“I gave it to her,” Bucky assured him. “We thought you would take longer.”

Joaquín feigned interest in his phone. He had already read all of his messages, but he wanted to avoid the comment building in Sam’s mind. He could only hope his friend will keep it to himself.

He felt your presence as you sat back down. “There are two orders above ours. They will bring it to us.”

“Did you ask for extra milk?” Bucky asked.

“Yes.”

“Thank you. My acid reflux has been giving me trouble.”

“Because you eat too quickly,” Sam chimed in.”

You lifted both eyebrows. “You could have ordered tea.”

“Absolutely not.”

You snickered. Joaquín snorted. Instinctively, the two of you turned to the side to look at each other.

Something flashed in his eyes, the same you fell for that hazy summer. They were still warm, albeit tired now. As they became glossy while he held your gaze, you wondered if yours looked the same. You wondered if he had something to say and hoped he wouldn’t find the courage. You knew you wouldn’t be able to take it.

The order arrived, shattering the moment.

“Thank you,” Joaquín said, staring at you.

“No problem,” you rasped. Fuck.

“We’re hoping to convince her to move closer to us,” Bucky said, not subtle at all, as he took a sip of his beverage.

Joaquín followed the circumference of the mug with his finger in clockwork motion. “Good luck.”

“Thank you. I want to make up for lost time and the distance makes it difficult.”

“Videocalls are quite effective,” you reminded him.

Joaquín winced. His finger slipped into the beverage.

Bucky tilted his head. “Are you okay?”

“It’s hot.”

“Well, it’s coffee,” Sam stated the obvious.

You couldn’t take Joaquín’s reaction off your mind. Not even on the way to Sam’s and Bucky’s place.

Sam said he’d be home by dinner time. He also warned you to not let Bucky cook. You couldn’t even bring yourself to laugh.

The guest room was practically the same as the one in your apartment. Same size, and a close enough layout.

Bucky had a proper look at your luggage. “I’m surprised you didn’t bring more clothes.”

You frowned. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Your apartment is so well-decorated that I assumed things.”

If only he knew how hard it had been to replace the remains of Joaquín... “I did it at random, just trying to fill empty spaces.” You lightly changed the subject, “I like your couch, by the way.”

“Sam hated it at first, but he has grown fond of it.”

You faked a chuckle, prompting your cat to lift her head. Sprawled on the bed, she stared at you.

“Comfy, Fatatita?” You reached over to scratch her head.

“How did you come up with her name?”

“Count Von Count’s cat is named Fatatita. It’s an homage.”

“Count Von Count?”

“From Sesame Street. He’s a vampire obsessed with numbers and he’s also a Count.”

You sat on the bed, pulling Fatatita onto your lap.

Bucky sat on the edge, twisted so he could look at you. “Sooooooo...”

“So...”

“Where do you know Torres from? You had a weird moment there.”

You hummed, entertaining yourself with combing your cat’s fur.

Bucky didn’t let it go. “Now that I think about it, you knew his coffee order without asking...”

“Intuition.”

“Does your cat have intuition too?”

“Probably. They’re curious creatures.”

“You can tell me anything, (Name).”

”That’s the thing, there’s nothing to say,” you admitted. “Whatever you’re assuming is pretty much what happened.”

“I will kill him for cheating.”

“What?!” Seeing him cross his arms with a faint smirk on his face, you added, “You know what? Do it. You’re not making me talk.”

He let out a hybrid between a whine and a sigh. “I thought that one would work.”

“If you must know, the breakup was shitty.”

“Touchy subject, got it.”

Touchy would never cut it and you couldn’t understand why. “Do you remember any of your breakups?”

“From when I was a teen, yeah. But I don’t think they were bad.”

“Oh, so you were the one who ended the relationships.”

After a short silence, he admitted, “Yeah.”

Your body shook with laughter. ”At least you’re honest.”

════════════════════════

After an hour and a half of working on your computer, you decided to stretch and fix yourself a cup of coffee or tea. 9:00 AM was the perfect time to drink something other than water.

The door to the bathroom closed as you opened the guest room. The living room was empty, just like the kitchen.

Such a thing didn’t last. Somebody called on the door. Bucky hurried to open the door,

You heard Joaquín’s voice. “Is Sam ready?”

“Come in. He’s taking a shower.”

Great! Just who you didn’t want to see. Why was he even here? He should’ve been doing whatever he did in Las Vegas, not ruining your family bonding time.

Your cellphone rang in your hand just as you had finished pouring coffee in a mug. Seeing your neighbor’s contact name, you took the call immediately.

“Hey, Ben. Everything okay?”

Your neighbor giggled. You knew it was fake as always. “Hey, pretty girl. Where have you been? I made your favorite pastries yesterday but you didn’t answer the door.”

You ignored the pet name. “Oh! That’s very sweet of you. I’m out of town right now.”

“Ah.” You could hear the disappointment in his voice. “Is your cat by itself?”

“No, no. I brought Fatatita with me and my best friend is taking care of my plants.”

“Well, then,” Ben said drily, “call me if you need anything.”

“Thank you. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

Joaquín rolled his eyes. Oh, so he was listening in, huh.

“I’ll hold you up to that,” Ben said.

The line clicked and once again you couldn’t take your eyes off Joaquín who was glaring at you.

“What?” you snapped.

“Nothing.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

You hummed. He nodded. Neither of you gave signs of tearing your eyes off each other.

Bucky cleared his throat. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Nope.” You took the mug in your grasp. “I was just about to get back to work.”

Walking past him still hurt, maybe less than the last time, but that wasn’t saying much when he shattered your heart that day.

What was his fucking problem? First, he barged back into your life without warning, and then dared to give you that look as if you still owed him explanations for how friendly you were with other people?

The nerve of him! Of his stupid pretty eyes you were sure nobody could say no to.

Fuck. Fuck him. Fuck this. You were tired of not getting over him when he had no consideration of what you wanted or needed. He was the one who led you on by making you believe everything would go back to normal.

Had you made a mistake by breaking up with him to go look for your dad instead of asking him to go with you? Maybe, but at least you didn’t make him believe everything would be okay.

At least you had the decency to admit you had fucked up when you went back to him. At least you didn’t try to impose your wishes on him.

Now your day was ruined and you still had a shit ton of work to get through. Approaching the bed, you picked Fatatita up and hugged her to your chest.

You technically could have asked Bucky for a hug, he had said he wanted to make up for lost time, but you didn’t know him that well and it was embarrassing.

Begging for affection was something you were past of. You had taken care of yourself since you were 14, and learned the hard way that people didn’t deserve your tears.

Still, hot tears streamed down your face. You weren’t sure if you were angry, sad, or frustrated, but you wept until your cat forced you to let go of her.

If Bucky knew you had been crying, he surely know how to keep it to himself. You had lunch together between idle chats and nothing more happened.

You couldn’t get used to him, no matter how hard you tried or how much interest he showed in getting to know you.

Tearing down the wall you had built for years didn’t even sound easy to do, actually doing it seemed impossible as of now.

“I gotta run a few errands,” he told you as you carried the dishes to the sink, “wanna come with me?”

“I haven’t finished my work for the day.”

His face fell. “Next time.”

“Yeah,” you whispered.

Bucky gave you a tight smile and so you watched him leave with a weird feeling in your stomach. Was this how children felt when they saw their parents leave for work?

Sam didn’t take long to arrive. You didn’t have the full grasp of what they truly did, the superhero part was clear, but you didn’t know if that was their job or their side gig.

He greeted you with a smile. Trying his best just like Bucky.

“Bucky’s running errands,” you notified him.

“Yeah, Joaquín told me he called. I forgot my damn phone in the morning.”

“Oh...” You didn’t know what to say.

Sam sat on the yellow couch he used to hate. “Piece of advice?”

You braced yourself for the same thing your best friend had told you. ‘Joaquín doesn’t deserve your hostility.’

“Don’t call him Bucky to his face.”

“Wh—“ It took you a minute or two to process what he had said. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he told you softly. His eyes were on you, analyzing you. “Are you okay?”

“Lots of new things at once... I’m not good with...” You bit your bottom lip. “Work is driving me crazy,” you lied.

Sam pensively hummed and you knew he wouldn’t touch the subject again. He probably knew you were lying, and he’d surely tell Bucky, but what could you do?

Well, you left Brooklyn in a hurry. Your bags had been made for days when the date finally arrived. Relief washed over you the moment you stepped into that plane.

Bucky’s feelings worried you, that was true, but you felt out of place in his and Sam’s apartment. They had been welcoming and kind, and the fact that they weren’t the problem stung.

As a teen you fantasized with everything you would do and say when you found your dad, but adulthood had crashed onto you in a giant wave. It washed away the naive illusion of one day having a normal life; a family.

You called him as soon as you got to your apartment. “Just wanted to let you know I made it safely.”

“That’s good to hear.” The line shuffled. “How’s the weather?”

“Fine, I think?”

“Sunny?”

“Kinda cloudy. It’s drizzling.”

“Ah.”

“Hey, I— I gotta go. I’ll call you soon, yeah?”

Bucky craned his neck as he looked up to the ceiling. “Yeah. Take care.”

You hung up immediately.

“What am I doing wrong?” Bucky asked out loud.

Sam threw his arm over Bucky’s shoulders. “Nothing. Just give her time.”

“We should get her a job here,” Bucky suggested. “Maybe that way she’ll move closer to us.”

Joaquín shook his head. “That’s not a good idea.”

“I forgot you’re an expert on her,” Bucky bitterly said.

Joaquín turned to look at Sam. His friend didn’t help him out and instead said, “You could ask her first.”

“Should I?” Bucky asked Joaquín.

Shrugging, Joaquín stood up from his seat and took his jacket. “I think we all know the answer she’ll give.”

“If you had told me where she was when we met—“

“I didn’t know you were her dad,” Joaquín snapped. He looked down, frustrated with himself for letting Bucky get to him when it wasn’t his fault either.

“You dated her.”

“Look, she didn’t tell me who her dad was. I just knew she was looking for him.”

Bucky was left speechless. Joaquín put his jacket on and walked towards the door.

“Joaquín...”

“Not now, Sam.” He pulled the door open and left the apartment without any other comment.

Joaquín walked down the street, aimless. He should’ve called — he could’ve called you right now in fact. But what could he say? He didn’t even know why it hurt this bad.

The next time he heard about you was a couple months later. Sam and him were on a quick mission and Sam felt the need to give him updates about the family dynamic.

“She doesn’t want to meet Sarah and the kids,” Sam ominously said.

“I understand Bucky and you want to have a good relationship with her,” Joaquín assured him, “but I don’t get why you come to me for advice when we’re not together anymore for a reason.”

“Because you know her and we don’t.”

“She doesn’t cope well with change.”

”Is there any way to convince her?”

Joaquín had asked himself the same question. Many times, in many places. The conclusion was always the same. “No.”

════════════════════════

Walking up the stairs with produce bags was part of your weekly routine. The elevator rarely worked and you didn’t trust using it when it did.

It was early. The market had been almost empty when you arrived — you had to wait for a few people to set up their products before buying.

Early mornings and all-nighters were your norm. You couldn’t remember the last time you slept in.

That was a lie. You could, you just chose to ignore it had happened. Everything always went back to a time you weren’t sure you would ever get over, and at the point you were in your life, you would rather ignore your past altogether.

As you reached your floor, you tried to remember if you had bought lemons or limes. Oh, well, you’d make do. Now you just needed to buy cat food and you’d be set for the week.

You had just unlocked your door when you heard a voice behind you.

“For a second there I thought you were out of town again.”

“Nah, I just really wanted some fresh fruit.”

Ben hummed. “Wanna hang out for a while?”

You considered it for a moment; you wanted to say no. Yet you gave in. “Yeah, why not?”

You let him in first. Ben avoided knocking the bags you had placed on the floor in order to open the door and stood in the living room, eyes on the plant near the window.

“Make yourself comfortable,” you told him as you carried your bags into the kitchen.

He remained in the same spot until you came back. His blue eyes focused on you as you awkwardly stood in front of him.

Ben leaned in, hands ghosting your sides.

You placed both palms on his chest and pushed him off you. “We said it wouldn’t happen again.”

“Right...”

Whoever was at the door saved you from an uncomfortable conversation by knocking with urgency.

Ben frowned. “You didn’t tell me you were expecting somebody.”

“I’m not.”

The moment you opened the door, you realized something was terribly wrong. Sam hadn’t visited you since the day you met him although he and Bucky called often.

He went directly to the point, “I need your help. It’s important.”

You nodded, letting Sam in. “I’ll talk to you later, Ben,” you said, hand on the door handle as you waited for him to leave the apartment.

You saw him glare at you, but Sam’s presence was enough for him to keep his complaints to himself.

Sam sat down on the couch, watching you as you hesitated on whether to sit down or walk into the kitchen.

“Want some water?” you offered.

“Sure.”

“Ice?”

“No, thank you.”

You filled your glass with crushed ice and a little bit of water and carried both glasses towards the coffee table.

With your glass between both hands, you asked, “What’s up?”

Sam didn’t look at you as he said, “It’s about Joaquín.”

“I—“

“Listen, I don’t know what happened between you two and I don’t care.” Sam made a pause, allowing you to munch on ice. “I haven’t seen him in two weeks, I can’t find him anywhere.”

You cleared your throat, fighting a cough. “And what do you want me to do? I don’t even know where he lives.”

Sam took a gulp of water, not knowing what to expect. “You said you weren’t trained. Your file says otherwise.”

“I never said that.”

You had been careful when you answer that particular question. You hadn’t been enough for Hydra, but that didn’t mean they didn’t break you first.

“Why did Viper spare you?”

You bit the inside of your bottom lip. It was more than complicated — you didn’t even remember much from that day. “I don’t know,” you answered honestly. “She beat me up and the next thing I knew, Kraken was taking me to my first foster family.”

“So you haven’t had any contact with her ever since?”

“No—“ You made a face. “Well... I think she sent me the first lead to find Bucky. The actual file that said he was my dad.”

Sam placed his glass back onto the table. “She’s been on and off in Vegas for a while.”

“You think she did something to him,” you asserted.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

You clenched your jaw. “How can I help?”

“Telling me the truth.” He became extremely serious as he added, “I know you have contact with Seraph.”

You squeezed your eyes shut. You didn’t care about Seraph, but the girls under her wing had suffered enough already. “I can’t tell you anything about her, Sam.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” he promised. “Look, (Name), I already talked to Zemo and he doesn’t know anything.”

“Why can’t somebody from the Air Force find her? Or him?!” you defensively asked.

Sam scoffed. “Just how much you know about him?”

“Last thing I knew he was choosing The Air Force over me.”

You poured ice into your mouth. Barely able to close it, you let a few little chunks melt before you started munching again.

“We don’t have time for this,” Sam lamented, “Joaquín’s life might be on the line.”

You shook the glass in your grasp. “I can link you up with one of her angels. That’s it.”

Sam nodded, pulling his phone out. “Give me her info.”

“No, no.” You put your glass down. “We go to Madripoor and the contact is made there.”

“I’m not taking you to Madripoor. Are you insane?”

“Probably.”

“Your dad would kill me!”

You shrugged. “Don’t tell him.”

“I can’t ruin my relationship like that.”

“Sam...” You whined when he shook his head. Almost pouting, you stared directly at him. “Please.”

“No, that face won’t work on me.”

“I’ll explain things to Bucky.”

“Oh, you will. You are taking a flight to New York in...” He checked the time. “In two hours and telling him to his face that you still have contact with Hydra.”

“I’m not a child.”

“That’s exactly why you’re telling him. Adults don’t hide shit like that!”

“You don’t get it.”

“And I never will. Besides, you owe this to us for the stress you’ve given your dad and for refusing to meet my sister and nephews.”

He was right.

You pushed yourself off the chair. “How light should I pack?”

Sam made a face, twisting his mouth. “I don’t know. Pack like you did last time just to be safe.”

Well, you had twenty minutes to pack. And to struggle with putting Fatatita in her cage.

“Hey,” you called for him from your bedroom’s doorframe. “Would you do me a favor?”

“Depends.”

“I bought produce that could go bad. Can you give it out? Everything’s on the counter.”

His face softened. “Of course.”

Your cat wasn’t too happy with being trapped in a carrier, much less with once again putting up with children in the plane.

So there you were, uncomfortable against the window with a whiny cat. You hated window seats and although planes were fine, you were sick of them.

Bucky picked you up at the airport without a word. He helped you with your luggage while you freed Fatatita from the carrier.

She snuggled up on your lap once you were in the car, but Bucky didn’t start the engine.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he softly asked.

You would’ve preferred that he yelled at you. Maybe he would once you explained yourself.

“My plan was to join The Angels.”

He didn’t yell. “What?”

“I was lonely.”

“You have a cat. You could’ve gotten another one or something. Anything that wasn’t that.”

“Yeah, and I love Fatatita,” you said indignantly as you massaged her head, “but she can’t talk or hug me back.”

You loved her snuggles, she was a sweet cat and you wouldn’t have survived the last six years without her. But she wasn’t human.

Painfully, you added, “I feel like I don’t belong here. You have Sam and his family already, you have a home...”

”We’ve invited you to join.”

You didn’t fit in with Bucky or with Sam, much less with Sam’s family — they sounded like nice people, but if Sarah was half as intuitive as Sam, she would be able to tell you were uncomfortable and you didn’t want to offend anybody.

You hated being alone and yet every path you took seemed to lead to loneliness. Maybe it was time to accept you had idealized your dad and he couldn’t live up to the standard.

Or maybe that wasn’t the issue, maybe you were as a whole. Living with it was your only option.

“It’s not that easy.”

“Nothing is.”

Yeah, nothing was easy, but this thing particularly was kicking your ass.

════════════════════════

Things between you and Bucky were tense. He took great offense after you confessed you had considered going back to Seraph so he barely spoke to you.

You had only heard updates about Joaquín — or better said, the lack of updates about him.

Focusing on work or anything that wasn’t the phone on the table next to the couch was practically impossible.

Sam’s call eventually came through. He said Joaquín was alive which wasn’t relieving for either you or Bucky.

You wanted to hear that he was safe and sound. Alive was good, but not enough. Not when you knew exactly the type of things Ophelia was capable of.

“Bring a jacket,” Bucky told you. He couldn’t hide how mad he was — his voice was rough.

You silently complied, making sure to leave water for Fatatita.

On your way to the hospital, you tried to find something to say. The silence was unbearable, but you couldn’t help but think you would be a bigger nuisance.

Bucky pulled into the vast parking lot and found a good parking spot in no time.

You didn’t want to go there. Your mind had already run wild and the things you could encounter terrified you.

Fear seemed like a distant experience from a naive child. You hadn’t been raised like this.

But you hadn’t been raised to love anybody and yet you were, so full of love you would have rather died.

“I’ll wait here.”

Bucky rolled his eyes and stretched his arm to open the passenger door. “You are not staying here.”

Huffing, you got out of the car and waited for him to do the same. You slammed the door closed and he glared at you.

You immediately regretted listening to Bucky and coming to the stupid hospital. What were you even doing there? What would you fix?

Joaquín looked like shit. You could feel each hit as your eyes analyzed his bruised face. To make it worse, his left arm was wrapped and immobilized. You didn’t want confirmation he had more injuries — you didn’t need it.

“What did you find?” Bucky asked calmly.

Joaquín struggled to speak. “They’ve been doing experiments on people. Kids included.”

“And you didn’t think of telling anybody in case you needed backup?”

Bucky called your name sternly, warning you to shut up.

“No. He deserves it. They could’ve fucking killed him!”

Joaquín stammered. Of course he didn’t have a good answer. Of course he had to worry you sick even years later.

You felt actually sick to your stomach. Regret and anger often came hand in hand, but they had never made you feel like this.

“Let’s go outside,” Bucky commanded. “You need air.”

He pushed you out of the room and all along the hallway. People looked at you weirdly, surely wondering why you were being rushed out of the hospital.

If air had filled your lungs, you didn’t feel it. Stripping yourself off your jacket, you looked up at the sky. Why did you have to react like that?

Showing you cared never brought you anything positive. When you didn’t put people in danger, you ruined your relationships. And now you were just acting like an emotional idiot over nothing.

You punched the wall out of frustration.

It was not nothing.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Bucky moved you away from the wall and further into the open-air parking lot. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.” His arm was tight around your shoulders.

“I just— I can’t believe him, dad! He’s always been this careless.”

Bucky became frozen.

“I know I’m being too emotional and I shouldn’t, I’m sorr—“

“Don’t.” Bucky tightened his grip on you. “Let it out, it’s okay. I’m here.” His voice broke. “Dad’s here.”

You hid your face in his jacket, for the first time in your life crying on your dad’s shoulder as he steadied you.

════════════════════════

You had to admit you missed the bus. New York wasn’t what people painted it as, much less the romanticized version your dad had presented you.

Either way, you were already there and you didn’t plan on moving out any time soon.

You were careful to not shake the reusable bag in your grasp too much. Bucky had never tasted your cookies and you would change that in a few minutes.

Memorizing the path towards the apartment was easy. Sam had given you a few tips so you wouldn’t have to call him all panicked because you were lost again. Luckily, he had gotten over it already.

Sarah was already at Sam’s and Bucky’s when you arrived. Apologizing for being late, you placed the homemade cookies you had brought on the table.

Sitting between Sam and Bucky, you asked Sarah, “You didn’t bring the kids?”

“Joaquín took them out for ice cream so we could talk about adult stuff,” she easily explained.

You glowered at Sam who had just served you a glass of lemonade.

“You’ve avoided him for too long,” he said.

“And you know exactly why.”

“I’ve heard both versions.”

You shook your head, knowing you wouldn’t win this argument. Sarah lifted her eyebrows.

“She’s as stubborn as her dad,” Sam told his sister.

“If I remember correctly, you used to refuse to admit you liked Bucky,” Sarah shot back.

“Don’t take her side!”

“No, no, Sarah, tell me more,” you encouraged her. “This is great material.”

She laughed, so did Bucky and eventually, Sam joined in.

The day you met Sarah had been bittersweet. She hadn’t held grudges against you for refusing to meet her and her children earlier and they welcomed you the same way they welcomed Bucky.

In contrast, you did hold that grudge against yourself. Yes, you hadn’t been ready to meet more people and were scared of not fitting in, but it wasn’t their fault.

The kids won you over the second you met them and the rest was history.

You tried to avoid glancing at the door when you heard the key sliding in, but you betrayed your pride and gazed at Joaquín the moment the door opened.

His face wasn’t bruised anymore and his hair was longer. He looked good, but that was to be expected.

You stood up to greet AJ and Cass, hugging them both. Joaquín smiled yet didn’t say anything.

As he parted from you, AJ asked, “You didn’t bring your cat today?”

“She’s at the apartment, probably asleep or enjoying her new cat tower.”

“You finally bought one!” Cass had given you the idea when you mentioned you wanted to find something for Fatatita to entertain herself. “She must be so happy.”

“Yup. Wanna see it? I’ve taken hundreds of photos.”

Both kids nodded. You unlocked your cellphone and patiently showed them the photos. The living room hadn’t been ideal for the cat tower so you put it in your office.

The problem, truly, was that the office was almost empty and you hated the color on the walls, but you hadn’t gotten around to buy paint.

Fatatita looked adorable in her cat tower, though. She would sometimes jump to the desk and lay on it, demanding attention. You never died her.

“You’ll get to see it in person soon,” you promised AJ and Cass.

Both kids were happy with such promise. They ran towards their mom, leaving you facing Joaquín. Once again, you couldn’t not stare at him.

“You look great,” he told you.

“Thanks.” You could’ve said he looked great too, but you didn’t want to make it awkward. “It’s good to see your arm isn’t broken anymore.”

He let out a small laugh. “Yeah...”

“I— Uhmm... I brought cookies.”

His face lit up. “I haven’t had one of your cookies in ages.”

You extended a hand in a welcoming gesture. “Help yourself.”

He didn’t move immediately and in consequence, neither did you. What ifs didn’t matter anymore, they didn’t even hurt that much — you just genuinely wished you could interact with him without feeling like you were crossing a line.

You used to be able to communicate without words, to know what he needed just by gazing at him from across the room. Joaquín would read your body language perfectly every single time and never once failed to respect your boundaries.

Not even the godforsaken evening he left.

Would the two of you ever be able to go back to what it was? You didn’t care if he still loved you — he probably didn’t. You wanted your best friend back.

“Anybody want anything from the kitchen?” Joaquín asked.

“Beer, please,” Sam replied.

Sitting back down, you drummed your fingers against your lemonade glass with no particular rhythm. You were being silly, there was no reason for you to be nervous.

Joaquín handed Sam his beer. He then stood behind you.

“Here.” He placed a glass full of ice in front of you. Crushed ice.

Okay, maybe there was a reason for you to be nervous. Something you hadn’t been on your first date or even the day you met him.

“Thank you,” you mumbled.

Bucky kissed the side of your head. You leaned into your dad’s warmth, letting the others speak. You were getting better at joining into their conversations, but this time you simply couldn’t focus.

His eyes were on you and yours would’ve been on him if you weren’t resting your head on Bucky’s shoulder.

You used to fantasize about something like this. A family afternoon, Joaquín and your dad getting along...

You lifted your head off Bucky’s shoulder and sighed. “I should get going. I’m still getting used to the subway.”

“Want me to drive you a little bit later?” Bucky offered. “I don’t get drunk.”

“I can drive her if she wants,” Joaquín said.

Bucky looked at him then nodded. “If she wants.”

The answer should’ve been no, but a little indulgence never hurt anyone. “Sure.”

So you stayed until Joaquín had to leave. Sam’s eyes lingered on you as you said your goodbyes — his hug was tight, an attempt to remind you things would be okay.

Bucky hugged you even tighter, almost lifting you off the floor. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he whispered in your ear before parting from you. Your dad kissed your forehead before watching you go.

It wasn’t the first time Sam or Bucky tried to encourage you to talk to Joaquín. You weren’t dumb, you knew he had offered to drive you because he wanted to say something.

Had they planned it all out? You hoped they hadn’t.

The night sky was clear, perfect for a long walk. Although long walks in New York were different, they were a good vehicle to get used to the environment which your therapist would’ve loved for you to do. Oh, well, another night it would be.

════════════════════════

“You can drop me at the subway station.”

“It’s okay if you don’t want me to know where you live, but I offered to drive you home.”

Home. It still felt like a dirty word. He didn’t say it to mock you, there was no malice in his voice. Once again, you were the problem.

You gave him the address, explaining the directions Sam had given you to not get lost. Joaquín only hummed in acknowledgment.

After a mostly silent drive, you weren’t sure your assumptions from earlier had been correct. Maybe he was just trying to be nice and your brain had played you.

It was probably for the best in the general scheme of things, but you had to admit you were disappointed.

He stopped the car in front of the building. Neither of you attempted to move.

“Can we talk?”

You nodded. “Here? In the car, I mean.”

“Wherever you feel comfortable.”

You both knew where things could go if you dared to invite him in. But you still did.

The elevator was thankfully empty. The space between your bodies almost disgusted you. The last time you had been in an empty elevator with him, neither of you had been able to take your hands off each other.

Turning the lights on, you apologized, “Sorry for the mess. I have a lot of things to organize still.”

You walked towards the couch and picked the box you had left there up. Something moved inside.

A hiss let you know Fatatita was inside the box. You reached in and held her between your arm and your chest.

You put the box on top of the other boxes stacked up against the wall. And motioned for Joaquín to get comfortable.

Fatatita shifted in your grasp so you slowly put her down onto the floor. The cat ran towards the kitchen.

You tried not to stare at Joaquín. The more you did, the more you wanted to bury your fingers in his curls.

“Sam told me what you did,” he quietly told you.

“It’s nothing.”

“You had to move because of me.”

“It was bound to happen,” you said simply as though it hadn’t been one of the hardest decisions you had ever had to make.

He looked down. You hoped he was thinking the same thing you were. ’It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.’

“I’m sorry for not telling you who my dad was.”

“I’m not going to say it didn’t hurt, or that I get why you did it,” he admitted, “but I hope you know I would have dropped everything to help you find him.”

“I know,” you assured him quickly. “That’s why I never said yes, it wouldn’t have been fair.”

“What do you mean?”

“You wanted to join The Air Force more than anything. Your eyes would lit up when you talked about it and I didn’t have the heart to pull you away from your dream.” You let out a small sigh, perfectly picturing him, so hopeful and excited. “And I wanted to, I really did, but you deserved better.”

“But you were part of that dream.”

“You know how much I’ve always hated not having a home, but you still wanted me to move every few years.” It was never going to work, no matter how desperately you wanted it to.

“So I wasn’t enough?” He masochistically peered up.

“Wha— who said that? Why are you putting words in my mouth?”

“Because you would have moved every few years with me. I was only going to leave when deployed. I had all of it planned. We would get married eventually so you’d live with me at the base and...” he trailed off.

Whether he was trying to spare your feelings or to find the right words was irrelevant. You stayed silent, in part because you didn’t know what to do but mostly because you knew him well and were sure he wanted to finish his comment.

“I thought waiting for you was proof that I was serious about us. I asked you to move with me. WITH me, not for me.”

You sat down too. You didn’t need him to remind you or to make emphasis on his words — you had understood what he wanted from the beginning; you wanted the same for the most part, but not like that.

Compromising would’ve been good. Healthy. You wouldn’t be in this mess now. But comprising entailed a specific kind of vulnerability you were afraid you would never recover from.

And you lost Joaquín because of that.

“I was scared and I already said sorry. What else do you want me to do?”

He twisted to face you. “Don’t get defensive, we’re just talking.”

“I just...” You wanted to say a lot of things. If you had drunk alcohol you would’ve let them all out at once and finally, the nuisance from the pills was paying off. “I don’t want you to hate me. That’s all.”

“You can’t possibly think I hate you.”

You shrugged. “I sorta resented you for a while.”

“How did you get over it?”

Lying would have been so easy, but you couldn’t when he was implying you had gotten over him. There had been other people in your life after him and you had ruined those relationships too, but none of them hurt like this.

“I didn’t.”

He sat there, unmoving as he stared at you as if he was waiting for you to tell him it was a joke.

“Fuck,” he murmured.

“Please don’t make it awkward,” you begged him. “We can forget this conversation happened. You will go back to Vegas and I will stay here, it’s okay.”

Everything would be okay. This was just the closure your therapist said you needed.

Joaquín broke it to you, “I live here.”

Speechless, you felt your blood drop to your feet. Deep breaths and counting to ten were as effective as ever and at the same time didn’t cut it. Only you had this luck.

“Sam didn’t tell you I’m Falcon now?”

Now Sam’s and Bucky’s attitude made complete sense.

“He forgot that small detail.” As you recovered your ability to speak, you stressed, “The offer stands. We can forget this conversation happened.”

“I don’t want to forget about it.”

“We can’t do this, Joaquín. Not again — last time was hard enough.”

He enthusiastically nodded. “But I’m not going anywhere this time.” Seeing your apprehension, he added, “As much as I want to, I’m not asking you to immediately get back with me.”

“What are you asking for, then?”

“Another chance? A fresh start? I don’t know. I miss you and I want to be with you, but I’m not going to force you.”

“It’s not that you would be forcing me,” you clarified, “I miss you too, a lot. And the excuses I could give you are minimal, maybe a little petty...” He huffed a laugh. You continued, finally explaining yourself, “I’m scared we won’t really get past what happened.”

Joaquín placed his warm hand on your shoulder. “I’ve already forgiven you.”

You rested your hands on his shoulders, blinking rapidly. Sliding your hands to his back, you hugged him.

His free arm snaked your waist. Joaquín hid his face in your neck, moving his hand to the back of your head.

He shifted to kneel on the couch, making you lightly part from him. Your eyes met and you pulled him closer again before he would say anything.

Joaquín bit his bottom lip. “Can I kiss you?”

You kissed him first, tired of pretending you hadn’t been waiting for this since the day he left.

He softly kissed you back, bringing a hand to your face as he cupped your cheek. You relished in his warmth and gentleness, leaning into his touch and consequently kissing him harder.

Removing his arm from around you, he placed his hand on your belly and lightly pushed you onto your back. You ended up in an awkward position, yet you couldn’t bring yourself to care.

He hovered over you, fingers caressing your sides as he continued kissing you. You tangled your fingers in his curls as he deepened the kiss.

You rendered each other breathless, touch growing looser as both of you panted.

“So much for not rushing in,” you breathlessly joked against his mouth.

“Am I making you feel uncomfortable?” he panted.

“No, don’t worry.”

He hummed, leaving a small kiss on your jaw before dragging his lips to your neck.

“Although...” He immediately stopped. You chuckled. “My back hurts.”

Joaquín moved off you, standing up and offering his hand to you to help you sit up.

Instead, you stood up altogether and took his hand. He didn’t say no, he let you take him to your room.

You sat on the bed, tugging on his hand.

“Come here,” you needily said.

Joaquín happily complied, leaning in to kiss you again.

When you woke up the next morning, he was sound asleep next to you.

[vegalocity]

Peachtea/TripSun angst idea. Nobody knew Wukong would disappear for 500 years so they're mourning until Xiaotian starts training with him. Tang composes himself to wait a little longer but Wukong just ignores all the signs. Until he gets into an argument with Tang and Tang ends up snapping "Why did you disappear for 500 years?!"

Okay so here’s the thing, I can only get behind the whole ‘The other Pilgrims ALL thought Wukong was dead and are PISSED at him now’ stuff, only, and I mean ONLY if Wukong either thought they all didn’t want to hear from him again anyway, or if he thought they were dead too.

....I mean my only contributions to all those ‘Reunion with Baije and Wujing’ posts were both ‘Wukong thought they were dead too’ so CLEARLY thats my read on the whole thing. I sincerely can’t see him just... NOT telling people he cared that much about that he was gonna bounce for that long to be alone on FFM, so if he knew they were alive he would have told them. 

And then you know someone spotted that little shrine with the origami figures in the Special and I was there like:

 So like, lets do something we’ll both enjoy here then because all of those reunion fics are almost exclusively centered around the trio, and we oh so rarely see Sanzang (whether he is Tang or not) get involved. 

So like first off, assuming LMK is on a sci fi alternate earth instead of being in the future, there’s still a solid nine hundred or so years between the end of the Pilgrimage and the supposed time Wukong disappeared for Monkie Kid timeline (JTTW is set in like the 600s or so if i remember correctly, might be wrong about the exacts tho) so lets assume those nine hundred years were uneventful.

So yeah, idk the hows, the hows don’t matter. What DOES matter is Wukong somehow loses contact with the others and is somehow convinced they were all killed, had his last stand against DBK and then went off travelling for a century to come to terms with his brothers and his precious, darling, beloved Master all perishing due to his inability to protect them.

and meanwhile for the others he was just... GONE. Like he’d vanished off the face of the earth, And the last the three of them ever saw of him was the staff rooted into the mountain that now kept the Bull King below. Just in case maybe the tree of them would periodically head off to Flower Fruit Mountain and check in with the monkeys that could still talk, but after about a century it was clear. If he WAS still alive, he wasn’t coming back. And the idea that he’d purposefully leave all of them behind just for the hope that he WAS still alive would do his memory a disservice. 

So when Wukong returns to FFM wouldn’t it be great if he like, JUST missed that last visit? Like DAYS after Sanzang, Baije and Wujing had been there for the final time to hold an impromptu funeral for their dead friend on his homeland and finally accept that he was gone, Wukong returns to the mountain and builds his little shrine for his dead friends... the Monkeys all look at eachother awkwardly and shrug, assuming this will be settled soon enough, surely it’ll be solved before too long.

And then another 400 years of kingly depression naps and the others falling in and out of contact with eachother as they adapt to the ever changing world around them later, Xiaotian snatches the staff from the bull family.

And... Look... It’s been a ROUGH 500 years on Sanzang now called simply Tang. He’d only recently tracked down Baije-now-called-Pigsy in the past... what Ten years? and was only tangentially aware of what Wujing-now-called-Sandy was up to. And... Look... LOOK. It’s ridiculous that he’s still hung up over losing Wukong as much as he is. He’s Well FUCKING aware it’s ridiculous. He should know better, he quite LITERALLY reached immortality through enlightenment. He KNOWS he should know better. 

So why-... Why can’t he say his real name without his gut still twisting into knots? He still tells the stories because telling them behind a wall of detachment, pretending he wasn’t there on the action for most of them helps in some small way, but why does he have to always call him ‘the Monkey King’? What a question, he knows why. He gave his heart away when he was still mortal, and so mortal his heart will forever stay. Dead and returned to the stone with the impulsive monkey he’d given it to.

And then It’s not dead. Because he’s not dead. and honestly at first it’s just shock, it’s just reeling with the sheer tidal wave of feelings he had to spend hours meditating just to sort through. The three of them meet up after Xiaotian and Xiaojiao have turned in for the night to discuss what the FUCK just happened, and all three of them come away with different conclusions. 

Baije is furious and will refuse to seek out Wukong unless its to tell him off for letting the three of them belive him dead, Wujing is sad and would like to see Wukong again to simply ask why he’d decided to cut the three of them out of his life like that, but doesn’t want to do it alone. And he’s...conflicted.

He wants this to be a joyous discovery. he wants to be so relieved and euphoric at his monkey still being there, having ALWAYS been there, that he wouldn’t be able to stop smiling for days on end. But he can’t. It’s all so... messy inside and he’s going to need to keep his distance if he wants to be able to approach Wukong with a level head. This was why attachments such as these were foolish he should have known better all those years ago but it was centuries too late now, and this confliction is what he has to suffer through as the result... wanting to laugh and cry and scream all at once because Wukong is ALIVE, he’d spent SO long in mourning for him, and HOW DARE HE ignore them all and let them assume the worst?!

So he hides behind that Scholar Tang persona while he sorts through his emotions. And it works for the most part. 

And then New Years happens.

And... Look, Wukong’s been THROUGH it in the last 500 years. He’s done everything he could to just... GET OVER the loss of his love His Master and His brothers. he went through all the damn stages of grief, 

Spent that first decade in denial poking around everywhere he could to see if any of them-ANY of them were in hiding somewhere, spent another three decades wandering the world and starting fights with other cultures divine warriors (and that Aphrodite chick was DEFINITELY hitting on him the entire time, extolling about how rarely she got to use her ‘Aria form’ whatever that meant) to work through his rage without actually getting himself in trouble with his own heavenly court. Spent another twenty years or so looking through as many underworlds as he could find, no matter how many of them really wanted to test just HOW immortal he was (Answer: Too Immortal for any of them) to see if ANYONE had anything he could work with, and always coming up empty. eventually crossed the ocean to the other landmass because he was tired of looking at all of these places and seeing either memories or wasted time looking for bargaining chips, and spent a decade or so deciding he hated Mexico and went back to China. and then spent another thirty years just procrastinating returning home to his mountain.

When he returns to flower fruit mountain its as though he’d never left. His monkeys greet him with excitement but he’s standing on the shores of his home he hasn’t seen in a century and... feels nothing. Like his ability to feel anything for anything beyond the people he’s lost is gone. He makes a little shrine that spends most of its time on a shelf that's difficult to be able to look at full on without craning your neck weirdly and if any of his subjects notice that he takes a bit too much care in folding the little paper figure of the monk as he sets the four figures up along the edge of the little thing none of them judge him over it. He’s rarely got the energy for tears anymore, but when he does it’s usually when that little figure catches his eye.

By the time Xiaotian crashes into his life he’s... getting better. At least he thinks he is. having the loud excitable boy in his life is helping chase the shadows away a little bit (though when they return oh how they scream) and he hears some stories of his friends on training days and... geez sometimes he’ll tell this or that story and Wukong will be so THOUROUGHLY reminded of someone that it just... hurts.

And then New Years happens.

And he finally sees him again -- And he finally meets Xiaotian’s friends

And he still doesn’t know how to feel it’s all SO MUCH -- And they feel familiar so he gives them all a quick glance with golden eyes

And he can only do the one thing that feels safe right now -- And oh... that makes sense. How lucky they all found eachother again after reincarnating.

Sanzang hides behind the Tang persona and lies with an energy that could only be harvested from the sheer maelstrom of emotions fighting for dominance -- and Wukong leaves before he says something incriminating because now he knows and he can’t Un-know.

He should have known better but its centuries too late. And it doesn’t even matter that he doesn’t know how to feel about this whole thing he HAS to keep seeing him, he can NOT let him vanish again -- This was a mistake, this was a mistake, he cannot face them all and see lack of recognition, he cannot have his brothers treating him only as Xiaotian’s mentor he can NOT handle looking at him and seeing a stranger.

He needs to at least TALK to him -- He can’t stay away

Wukong doesn’t start out hanging out at the Noodle Shop on down time, that’d be too much too quick, especially since Baije-.. Since Pigsy is clearly still pretty steamed for the whole ‘letting Xiaotian into the world of magic and monsters’ stuff. But he’ll often shapeshift and keep an eye on things like that... No he is NOT eavesdropping on the reincarnations of those three out of the ridiculous desperate desire to feel close to them again. Because he’d rather just love him miss them from afar than be treated as a stranger.

But of course Tang notices when he does. Every time. And every time he wants to say something but his throat feels too tight. That first day he’d fallen on the persona because it was all he felt he COULD do but now the very idea that he’d have to pretend to be someone else just to be able to speak to his monkey not his not anymore Him was completely out of the question. Tang’s actually surprised with himself the first time he finds his voice. 

The conversations come quickly, neither of them quite content to ignore the other now that its become obvious. The conversations are mostly stilted, awkward. Wukong seems both unable to help himself from talking to him, but unwilling to LOOK at him. Tang’s best guess is that he somehow doesn’t recognize him, Had he really changed that much in the time they’d been apart? Had he really lost so much affection for his old master that he could no longer recognize him beneath a slight change in appearance? That might be the reason the Hurt finally starts to win in the eternal standoff between Joy and Sorrow in how this whole thing makes him feel. 

And maybe it’s something simple, maybe Wukong is just barely starting to lower his guard a bit. Maybe just sharing a space with the man who once was the love of his life his master was finally starting to chalk over the rough edges his long since broken heart would constantly stab into him with. and he just SAYS something. Something probably innocuous, something he’d said a million times on the Journey alone. And to Tang it just... feels like he’s mocking him, like he’d known this whole time and had just been playing with his emotions in a way he wouldn’t have tolerated back then- so why should he tolerate it now?

 And the first words out of his own mouth are “Bad Monkey!” and Wukong freezes as Tang begins to lecture him

How he’d spent a solid third of his time immortal in mourning over him, how he’d been the one to tell Baije and Wujing that it would be a disgrace to his memory to believe him alive and instead that he’d chosen to cut the lot of them out of his life, despite how much HE’D wanted to believe it too. How hurt he was to find out that not only he HAD been ignoring them for so long but also that he’d apparently had apparently not even recognized any of them when they HAD all seen each other again! How much he’d missed him, how happy he’d still been to see him again. 

Yes, yes, pathetic, emotional baldy always bursting into tears at the simplest of things nothing’s changed etcetera etcetera- He hadn’t been lying on new years when he said he had a million questions, but all he really wanted to know was why? Why did he cut them out of his life, why did he shut HIM out? Why did you disappear for 500 years Wukong?

And Wukong reaches out, his hand is- shaking? and removes the glasses from right off his face--normal glass obviously, Baije had insisted they completed the scholarly look and annoyed him into compliance--

“You’re-” he hesitates, looks, almost afraid? “You’re not a reincarnation..?”

Oh... 

Well now they both looked the part of fools.

Two sobbing fools clutching to eachother in the alleyway behind Pigsy’s shop, and oh MAN did they have some things to talk about, because Wukong was DEFINITELY coming back with him to his apartment for the night and then first thing in the morning he was going to visit his brothers to internalize that THEY weren’t reincarnations either and then he was going to have to explain where he’d been for that first century while they were all still looking for him to THEM too. 

And yes he should have known better than to get attached to him in this way in the first place, it was disgraceful, the sheer misery it had brought alone was proof enough of that. But Wukong was nuzzling into his shoulder, and pressing those strange feeling monkey kisses across his cheeks and jaw,  and his breath was hitching with pure relief and joy and it was for him-

And fuck it, he just didn’t care. 

[sifeng]

Review: Love and Redemption

While I first started watching this drama out of pure curiosity of why people claimed it to be “the second most tragic drama” (after GMP, of course). While there are certainly aspects of this show that could be better, I find it fair to claim that it is a wonderfully made xianxia, and certainly one of the best in the genre within this decade. 

Plot:

According to legends, the god of war saved the heavens in a deadly battle against the demon a thousand years ago. Both fell from the heavens and disappeared from the world. Chu Xuan Ji was born to the world lacking in the six senses which makes her rather clueless and inept. She befriends Yu Si Feng, the outstanding head disciple of Lize Palace who falls for her, thus beginning a xianxia romance that is entangled with the conspiracies from the past. The Zan Hua Tournament is being held in the Shaoyang Sect and its leader Chu Lei has two daughters - his trusted eldest daughter Chu Ling Long, and the youngest daughter Chu Xuan Ji who is lazy and terrible at martial arts. When Yu Si Feng and Chu Xuan Ji meet through a coincidence, they forge a friendship with each other. Yu Si Feng falls for Xuan Ji despite the harsh consequences that he must face as it is forbidden for students of Lize Palace to fall in love. Meanwhile, Ling Long clashes with Wu Tong after she criticized his foul actions at the tournament. In retaliation, Wu Tong accidentally injures Xuan Ji and gets expelled. Having recovered from her injuries, Xuan Ji promises to concentrate on cultivating. Four years later, Xuan Ji and Yu Si Feng meet again. Si Feng wears a mask due to a curse that can only be broken if he finds true love. 

Cast:

Cheng Yi (成毅) as Yu Sifeng (禹��凤)

Yuan Bingyan (袁冰妍) as Chu Xuanji (褚璇玑)

Liu Xueyi (刘学义) as Hao Chen (昊辰)

Zhang Yuxi (张予曦) as Chu Linglong (褚玲珑)

My Opinions:

Plot (My Rating - A-):

First of all, I quite like the pacing in this drama. As the matter of fact, towards the end I actually feel like some things were rushed, not dragged out. It’s never a show that allows you to press the fast forward button, because 1. the tragic moments are super intense and dramatic, and 2. you don’t dare skip over the cute/funny moments because you know there won’t be many left. Second of all, I really appreciate that the writers of this drama really decided that they were going to make the most tragic drama ever. They really dedicated themselves to that craft, and I think they succeeded wonderfully. In terms of plot points, I absolutely loved the whole 9 lifetimes idea. It really brings out the tragedy and beauty of Yu Sifeng - he will do anything to protect those he loves, especially Xuanji. I would not complain if every single lifetime was made into a 45 minute episode, though that would be 405 more minutes of Sifeng being tortured by love on top of the infinite amount of minutes that already exist in this drama. 

One problem I had, again, was with the misunderstanding that separated our two leads. I understand that this misunderstanding was one that had to do with the morals, backgrounds and fates with both of them, and thus was obviously meant to be a separating factor, but with the way the two characters were written, it felt odd that it created such an amount of misunderstanding. Overall, the plot was good, it didn’t have any revolutionary ideas, but it turned up the tragedy factor and had consistent pacing (if not too rushed towards the end). I’m sure there were probably a few plot holes here and there (one of which is why is it so easy to destroy that huge jar thing towards the end? If that’s what’s keeping the universe at balance, shouldn’t it take more than just one Yuan Lang to destroy it?), but overall, solid plot.

Characters (My Rating - B):

Sifeng is an absolute angel. He’s probably the most heroic lead in a drama who acts totally out of selflessness, who will help his loved ones no matter what pain it puts him through, and who can remain so kind, so unbothered mentally by whatever pain everyone puts him through. However, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have faults. He acts irrationally in the face of love and he often mistrusts the people around him. He’s a very complete character that not only evokes viewer’s sympathy, love and admiration, but also makes sense when taking into consideration his morals. He rarely does things that are out of character. If I were to rate just his character I’d probably give an A+.

But, there are other characters in this drama. I do like Xuanji, not as much as I like Sifeng, but I like her more than most drama leads. Despite the whole lacking six senses thing being a super confusing plot hole of sorts (like she clearly likes people in the beginning, Linglong, Minyan, her father, and dislikes people, Wu Tong, but isn’t she supposed to be unfeeling? Also she screamed out of fear when she fell using the teleport tool etc etc), I liked how she wasn’t stupid, but simply naïve. She’s actually a pretty smart person, especially in the first half of the drama, when she defended Sifeng against the Five Sects, and then Minyan after he was caught from Tianxu Tang. She didn’t let herself be manipulated by her father or Hao Chen, but rather thought for herself, took into account what she knew of their characters and came to the correct conclusion that the Five Sects were being stupid. I found myself a slight bit annoyed when she took the Five Sects side on the whole Mosha Xing issue, but given that the argument was no longer Sifeng vs. her father, but rather demons vs. humans, I can sort of understand why she didn’t trust him. Also, he did lie to her a bunch of times so, I suppose that adds to the fact. Though, she failed to use the trait that I used to really like, which was the ability to take logic and character into consideration. Did she really think that Sifeng never loved her? Because like, with all the evidence right there in her memory, I find it hard for anyone logical being to come to that conclusion. Also, I really like how she eventually became as loving of Sifeng as he was of her. She was literally willing to destroy the world, and herself, just to save him. 

As I have said before, no one likes Hao Chen, and that’s good. He’s obviously written to be a character that you should dislike, not only because he gets in the way of Sifeng and Xuanji, but because he is clearly so biased against demons (despite the fact that most demons aren’t even bad at all); because he manipulates Xuanji/God of War so many times and doesn’t even feel guilty whatsoever; because he always says “for the three realms” and yet happens to do things that will completely destroy the peace of the three realms. There are things to like about him, like I am pretty sure that he does actually care about the three realms, and he does want there to be peace, but his ideology about peace, and love, and war are just so skewed that he ends up doing the opposite of what he wants to do. 

Other characters were mostly likable, like Linglong, Zi Hu, Teng She, Minyan (most of the time), Xiao Yinhua, Ruo Yu (sometimes), Wu Zhiqi, etc etc. Some were evil for no apparent reason like Yuan Lang (why does he want to control the three worlds? What happened to him in the past for him to become this power hungry? If these questions were answered this character could be sooooo much more compelling) and Wu Tong (again, why did he start out so violent and cruel? I understand why he become a demon and helped them, but like does he not realize that it was clearly his fault first?) Also, the Heavenly Emperor seems like such an odd character. I understand he is the emperor and so he shouldn’t hold his relationship with Bailin and Xixuan above their faults, but like why was he so okay with like letting a totally faultless Xi Xuan endure several mortal trials all ending with painful deaths? And if that was because he was being a good and fair emperor, why does he let a game board decide fate? He also just stood there while the world was ending, and it took Xuanji to convince him to help her. I would like to know more about this guy and his complete lack of ability to care about anything.

So overall, while I think the main characters were written very well, with complex characteristics, some of the villains were just left tools to push forward the plot. 

Acting (My Rating - A-):

So first of all, Cheng Yi’s portrayal of Yu Sifeng was absolutely amazing. He brought out all of Sifeng’s traits super well, from shyness initially to the cruelness Mosha Xing to his loving gaze at Xuanji to the heartbreak in tragic parts. I’m pretty sure he’ll become a star after this show, and can I just say, he totally deserves it!

(Like can you see the pain in his eyes?)

I was pleasantly surprised by Yuan Bingyan here. I really like how her acting style changed along with the new role she took, as Xuanji she was bright and cheerful, as God of War she was heartless and cruel. You can see in the nine lifetimes that the way she reacts to Sifeng’s death slowly changes. Her crying scenes need a little more emotion, but overall, a super stable performance. 

Chemistry/Romance (My Rating - A):

The chemistry was just amazing. I find it interesting that their kisses slowly got more and more passionate as time went on. 

I think part of the reason they have such good chemistry is because of the acting. Like oh my god their tiny reactions to when the other gets hurt really gives it away that they love each other. 

The romance was also written nicely. While some people complain that Xuanji didn’t suffer enough, I feel like they don’t have to be equal in suffering in order for them to be a good pairing. You could tell from the very beginning that Xuanji liked Sifeng in a different way from other people. And the fact that they went through nine lifetimes together, each one when Sifeng died because of Xuanji... it just makes their romance so much more epic. Add that with good chemistry, good kisses, and good acting, well of course people love this ship so much! Xuanji would destroy the world for Sifeng, because the only person that matters in her world is Sifeng. Sifeng would put himself through ten lifetimes of torture just so Xuanji can be happy, because so long as Xuanji is happy, he will be happy. 

Music (My Rating - A): this one is simple. Just listen to the soundtrack and you’ll understand my rating. I didn’t give it an A+ though, because while all the songs are great, there isn’t one in particular that I love. 

Costumes (My Rating - A-): Sifeng’s costumes are really pretty. Some of Xuanji’s are pretty too, they get prettier as the show goes on, but some of the ones early on were kind of meh.

CGI (My Rating - A+): the best CGI in a cdrama. Just look at the scenes where Sifeng shows his wings! 

Overall Rating: A-

Recommend For: People who like xianxia dramas and dramas that try to incorporate a lot of themes. People who don’t mind their heart breaking a thousand times while watching a drama. People who want to find a couple that you have to root for. People who like super epic guzhuangs with lots of subplots, mythology, reincarnations etc. 

[cupcakemolotov]

An Unlikely Favor

And forever many days later, my muse finally cooperates. Almost 13K, and dragons (Caroline this time fam!) No Smut, as that just wasn’t going to work for this one. Since it exploded, I don’t feel bad at all.

Warnings: Character Death (not OTP), Fluff, Canon-Typical Violence. I mean. Klaus is Klaus and Caroline is a dragon.

I hate formatting on this hell-site, so I linked you to A03 after this first scene. Also, wanted to give a big thank you to @goldcaught and @klarolinedrabbles who have been a delight and received many text messages and complaints through this writing process (and other stories I am still hitting with mental-sticks).

Caroline set aside her empty glass, the lingering taste of cheap champagne bitter against her tongue. The lead for the painting she wanted was a bust, and irritation clawed sharply at her insides. The artist was no famous painter, but something about the colors and lines had caught her attention when she had seen it all those years ago and she wanted it. It had been an unfortunate turn of events that the family who owned the painting, descendants of the creator, had been so unwilling to sell no matter what she offered them.

Human sentiment could be so frustrating.

At the time she had walked away, because collecting through force was only fun when it was her enemies' heads, and humans did not live forever. She’d had the time. So she’d left behind a few feelers, and made sure she arrived mere weeks after the deaths of those who had owned the painting. But upon arrival, she learned that their entire collection was gone. To her great annoyance, three decades later and she was still no closer to finding where the painting had disappeared to. Once, it had very nearly been in her grasp, but her attention had been needed elsewhere and so she had walked away.

Tonight was turning out to be another long evening of disappointment. Turning sharply on one spiked heel, she headed for the door. Time was on her side, and thirty years was not her longest hunt, but for once her patience was in shambles. She’d come to the city specifically to search for her lost painting and had instead found a hotbed of witches. Usually, that was not a matter of too much concern, as she had learned to hide what she was… and certain spells had been gifted to her over the years to make that easier. But this coven had known who and what she was, and the relaxing week she had planned had turned into something a bit more bloody.

Now she was leaving empty handed and annoyed. Shopping would do her no good, collecting pretty baubles only soothed the rough edges when they were the pretty baubles that she wanted. Maybe it was time to return to one of her more secluded homes and stretch her wings. It had been a few years since she’d allowed herself the indulgence, and her beast was starting to grow restless and bored. Perhaps some time meandering through her collections and flying would help burn the worst of her temper off.

“Hello, love. You look ravishing.”

The sharply accented words were unexpected, and Caroline twisted around to blink at the man standing near her, surprise cutting through the annoyance that for the first time in centuries, he’d managed to sneak up on her. The curling smile on his face as he realized it did not improve her mood. But this particular monster had never bothered with reverence or fear, and charm clung to all the sharp edges of him as he smiled at her.

Tonight, he was dressed in a perfect tux, overdressed for the small gallery and unbothered by it, the leather cords she found endlessly fascinating missing but the dimples and lips she sometimes thought about too long on full display. He stepped closer, the edges of his smile deepening at her continued annoyance.

“Klaus.” She offered him her hand after a dozen heartbeats, giving herself a moment to absorb the impact of him even as a lifetime of greetings nudged at her. As much as she’d learned to love modern familiarity, with Klaus and in public, she’d never been comfortable expressing it. Unchanging he might be, she’d never managed the immunity to him necessary to ignore the way her beast shifted beneath her skin in his presence. Formality was a shield against public eyes. “I didn’t realize you were back in this part of the world.”

“A bit of business, I’m afraid.” He said, brushing a lingering kiss along her knuckles. “Nothing nearly so entertaining as the last time we ran into each other.”

Caroline frowned at his words, the slightly apologetic note, but decided it could be dealt with in a moment. This close and there were other changes that were suddenly apparent and far more important. Ignoring the decorum that had colored so much of their long, long lives she stepped closer and brushed her fingertips along the edge of his jaw, studying the shape of his eyes. Klaus allowed the familiarity, seemed to welcome it, and she breathed deep.

His scent was different.

Finally certain, she allowed herself to smile, her annoyance and irritation pushed aside for happiness for her friend now that she knew he had not learned a new trick. For this, she did not have to fake her delight. “You broke your curse.”

The flash of satisfaction, the smug tilt of his head was achingly familiar. “I did.”

“That’s wonderful,” she told him, letting her hand reluctantly fall away, fingertips tingling. “How long?”

“Less than a year,” Klaus assured her. “Even if business had not brought me here, I would have found you soon.”

“Good,” Caroline murmured “You remembered your promise.”

His look was chiding, starkly serious beneath the charm. “I have not forgotten a single word that has passed between us, Caroline.”

Lips finally curling at the hint of darkness in his voice, she tipped her head. “But if you are not here about your curse, I do wonder what business could possibly bring you to this particular gallery.” She deliberately let her gaze scan the quaint gallery, the mostly casually dressed patrons. “This isn’t quite your scene anymore.”

Klaus chuckled and moved to tuck her arm through his. “As it were, I have been looking for you, just not only for all the reasons I would have liked.”

She paused, fingers resting lightly on his forearm. Rarely did she go longer than two decades without Klaus making an appearance in her life, but this stretch of time had been nearly forty years. Such a small number of years in their lives, but an endless amount of time in terms of humans and their technology, and she had started to grow curious that he had not reached out to her. That he would make a deliberate choice to tell her that this visit was different was both a curiosity and a warning. “And why were you looking for me, Klaus?”

His hand settled over hers, fingers and palms far warmer then she remembered them ever being before. In her heels they were nearly the same height and he met her eyes steadily. “Would you let me buy you a drink? Perhaps dinner?”

Caroline weighed his offer against the disaster of her week and her eyes narrowed. “Do tell me that you are not here with those witches.”

“I am not,” a flicker of something dangerous, a hint of new and unusual yellow and the hard edge of the vampire she’d known for centuries behind his eyes. “But perhaps I will acquaint myself before I leave.”

“There shouldn’t be much left to find,” she dismissed. “I am perfectly capable of killing a few witches, Klaus.”

A laugh, low in his throat. “So I have seen. And perhaps you are correct, but there is always one or two, stashed away who believe themselves safe. I do so enjoy ruining their illusions.”

She huffed and relaxed against him as he led them towards the door. “For you, perhaps, hunting such a thing is enjoyable.”

“Come now, Caroline. You cannot expect me to believe after all these centuries that you do not enjoy a challenge.”

“There are challenges, Klaus, and then there are challenges. Hunting witch covens is an annoyance, I assure you.” She wrinkled her nose. “And these witches are not particularly imaginative.”

“And yet,” he murmured, the set of his mouth unforgiving.

Caroline considered that as they bypassed the humans still mingling, the startled glances thrown their way as they took in the finery. She knew his thoroughness would partly stem from a promise given so long ago, but Klaus had never left her with the impression that their past was a burden he wished to be rid of. In fact, if anything, he always sought for more of her, for more of her time. It fascinated as much as it left her wary, this man who knew more of what she was than any other living creature.

And whatever business had Klaus seaking her out would likely be messy, but hadn’t she just been contemplating how bored she was? Things rarely stayed dull near her favorite vampire, now hybrid she supposed, and more importantly, he had earned the right to ask that she at least hear him out. It was a favor she granted very few, but for Klaus… In all the centuries and decades that they had known each other, he had only ever asked her for one favor. She had been unable to help him, though she had done what she could to mitigate that failure.

That he would come to her again, the ghosts of his creation seemingly laid to rest?

“You may take me back to wherever you are staying,” she said decidedly as they approached the doors. “Hopefully you have better booze.”

His head tipped towards her, brows winging upwards. “As if I’d offer you something subpar, love.”

She laughed at the offended note in his voice, the glint behind his eyes. “No? I remember spending many a night drinking with you what could most definitely be described as subpar. Chicago was just a few decades ago, as I recall, and the booze there was terrible.”

His mouth curled upwards on one side, amused indulgence heavy in his voice. “I assure you, I have not forgotten your preferences.”

“I should hope not,” she drawled before squeezing his arm. “I will listen to your request, but I have one of my own.”

“Do you?”

His eyes glittered at her, something hot and unreadable in those yellow edges of his pupils. She pressed against his side again, and deliberately let her gaze linger on the lines of his face. “I do. You will keep the rest of your promise, and tell me the details of how you finally broke your curse. I want to know everything.”

Find the rest here:

A03 | FFN

[popculturebuffet]

Animation Reviews: OK KO: Red Action to the Future

On to part 3 of Red Action 2 days because my schedule got nuts, and this one.. I was dragging my feet on beause I didn’t remember liking it nearly as much as the rest of the red action trilogy. Now while the same held for “Your Everyone’s Sidekick” I ended up liking that one.. this one... not so much. This one is however earlier in the season than it’s sisters in red action spotlighting: “Back in Red Action” was towards the end of season 1, while “Red Action 3: Grudgement Day” is literally the last episode before the finale arc, something i’d forgotten till today. This one is pretty early into season 2 and the why.. is really easy to figure out. For Season 2 Enid actually got a pretty intensive and long spotlight arc about her time at point prep, with rad and ko only showing up in a portion of it, so late in the season wouldn’t be fair as enid not only had the halloween episode then, but also just had a 7 episode arc basically to herself with Elodie as her co-star and rad and KO out of focus or even absent at times, so they likely did it early to prevent overloading the season with her. Granted they could’ve just had Red show up at school and done one episode there that wasn’t part of it’s overarching story, and still HINTED at the glorb doping arc while she was there, but they may also have not decided which one of the two they wanted Enid to end up with, and thus didn’t want to put her and elodie in the same space. I dunno. We’ll also be covering the POINT arc here eventually, but obviously there’s a lot of episodes to get to first, including the whole gar and carol backstory arc, before we get to that one.  And with that out of the way, let’s take a look at Red Action to the Future, under the cut. 

We open with Red playfully helping KO stock the shelves with new Double Dipped Lazer chips since, as Enid points out, it’s rad’s day off. She can also fire things in her canons , which is neat. It’s also highly noticable that she and KO are now on good terms and the two seem to be friends. Which despite their last interaction really isn’t THAT weird surprisingly: K.O.��s a forgiving kid as long as your not an out and out supervillian, and even earlier this season he was worried about Lord Boxman disappearing despite hating the guy most of the time for good reason. And with her past behind her in the future, Red is likely inclined to be more the fun kind of cool instead of an edgelord asshole, and likely apologized off screen and as we’ll see next time, she genuinely regrets her actions. That being said I do feel we could’ve had an episode with red trying to be better, but I do get the show has a lot of ground to cover, so this was an easier thing to have happen off screen.  Anyways the three are palling around, with red and enid being couply while KO panics when ENid points out his newly beloved double dip lazer chips are probably a limited time thing... ko’s wimpering “no I love them” is so relatable it hurts. But before Red can figure out KO’s snack dillema Yellow Technique yells at red to come home and help, Enid is too worried abotu pressuring her to ask her to stay, and Yellow refuses to let KO and Enid come along for reasons.. and frankly I don’t get that even with possible damage to the timeline. Besides you know, the end of this episode, we also have the fact that you guys HAVE TIME TRAVEL. If they gain a year or two, they’ll still come back and fufill their places in the timeline and you can CONTROL THAT, so if they had to stay longer than a year or needed to be back for something specific, you could bring them back and have two incredibly powerful allies for your war. The x-men have had a good handful of members from the future and look how well that turned out. Some of the time I mean Bishop did turn evil for a while and the younger cable whose around stabbed the older one and rachel went into a coma and then the future but she’s back now.... okay maybe she has a point. 

Anyways Enid regrets her decision, Red comes back for a quick break, with years having now passed, Blue shows up to yell at her to come back which seems.. harsh. Like I know she’s like Killowog, a good person whose probably murder on recurits but seems nice off duty from waht we’ve seen and her happily saying hello to enid, which makes me want an episode where they actuallyv isted the hue troop instead of this SIGH. Anyways, Enid finds a stray time capsule and goes to be honest with red

So now in the post apocalypse, Enid finds Yellow, who got seperated from red as they fight a giant version of the robots they’ve been fighting, with Red showing up just in time. But as with all giant killer robot based future’s they’ve evolved so these things have shields and Enid suggests laaunching her. So red shoots her girlfriend out of her.

And they win.. but Red refuses to let enid stay and gets huffy with her before Enid can tell her the truth and Enid leaves in a huff. Now this scene.. I really liked, from the action sequences to the fact that we see how their similarities, what attracts them to each other, is also a roadblock to them having a proper relationship. Both are stubborn, put walls up , and are reluctant to be honest with their feelings, we’ve seen that with red in the last episode and Enid in the episodes mentioned last time. They both prefer to run from their feelings and while their both growing, as you’ll see when I cover more tom lucitor stuff, it’s not that easy to just “become” a better person and sometimes old habits flair up. 

Enid regrets how things went, KO regrets not learning about chips, and we get one final red visit.. from a much older Red. i’m Dubbing her Cable!Red because A) her timeline probably still exists, it’s just not the one our red is linked to anymore nor the one the plaza future we see would create. She and enid hug and Red explains that it turns out the robots were weak to organic maatter and given they were only shooting at them, they didn’t realize it and it STILL , as shown by the fact Red is grandma age now, took years to fix and she has things to get back to with space congress, war hero stuff and all that. Also just a small note but something I only noticed this time that the episode DOES deserve credit for in my book is Kali Hawk’s voice acting as Red. Noticably with each time we see her red’s voice gets deeper and by future red she sounds entirely grown up. It’s a subtle change most probably wouldn’t of cared about aside from on old red, but it’s a nice touch that really does help theemotional part of the episode. Enid is finally honest about how she felt, and sad about it but understands.. but is also understandably still broken up when Old Woman Red Action leaves.. only for present-day.. ish time travel tenses are weird to pop up behind them has a hug with enid and flirtly says “I never left. “  Turns out Future Red decided to say Screw Destiny and told her past self to stay, what enid felt likely, or got enid to admit it or whatever, and told her to stay and enjoy her youth. She can go back and be a war hero later if she wants. And my honest guest given the Hue Troop turn up fine later is rather than callously abandon her teammates, Red’s future self simply went there for them and , to prevent a decades long war from ravaging her future, pulled a Cable and told them how to defeat the robots YEARS before they got so powerful it’d take years to beat them, as well as probably having knowledge of where they came from, how to kill them all or make peace with them or whatever, and future weapons to help even things. IT’s not an unfair assumption given that besides missing out on a future with Enid, Future Red would also not want her friends to go through untold decades of pain and death and since she changed the timeline already, there was no sense in not going all in. Also the chip thing is resolved with KO finding out they WILL be discontinued.. but replaced with triple dip instead. KO”s delighted and enid and red happily share a moment, the future is now what htey make of it. THE END.  Final Thoughts: As I made plain i’m not a fan of this one.. but in re-watch I did find things to like about it. The time travel story device was used really well,though I would’ve liked them to have old red say she was going to back instead of me having to infer it and feel, given theyd on’t show up at all next time and only show up for a cameo in the finale that the Hue Troop was vastly underulitized and coudl’ve used their own ep, and for once the cancelation dosen’t excuse this as they had the second half of season 2 to do this AND never dealt with Red, who gave up a future war for her, dealing with enid going way for what’s clearly months and was expected to be years. It’s also not very funny , which is fine if the episodes more dramatic like TKO, but for a standard ep it really didn’t quite work. It was just more dull than it should’ve been: it had an intresting hook: red slowly loosing her youth due to a future war, and Enid loosing her because of it, and Red’s cable self deciding to fix that, but it was instead a standard poor commuincation kills plot but with future robot wars. IT’s the first OK KO episode here i’ve reviewed that’s not good and honestly one of the few they had that genuinely wasn’t, and even then it had some good ideas just a flawed execution. Thankfully next time, there’sd none of that as we instead look at one of teh series very BEST episodes. IT’s grudgment day, and until then later.. today hopefully. If not tommorow. 

[fayewonglibrary]

Interview with Alex San (2007)

Faye Wong liked to record in Beijing and was very casual when she worked. In addition to being willing to do heavy work such as moving musical instruments, Faye Wong was highly collaborative when recording in the studio. She also played pranks on the sound engineer from time to time, requesting to tell his fortunes, otherwise she would not let him off work.

In the past ten years, Alex San has developed in the Hong Kong music industry. He has produced/arranged music with many big names such as Leslie Cheung, Faye Wong, Aaron Kwok, etc., and is currently one of the most valuable musicians in Malaysia.

Who leads the trends in the Chinese music industry? Whose talents are the constant topic of conversation? I believe that there is only one answer: Faye Wong. No matter how many indulgences you have other than music, as soon as Faye Wong's voice appears, you will only listen to her and no longer think about anything else.

Nowadays, many singers like to sing cover songs. In terms of brilliance, there is almost no one that can surpass Faye Wong's covers of Teresa Teng songs in THE DECADENT SOUND OF FAYE, released in 1995. That album allowed the market to reevaluate "bubblegum pop", raised Faye Wong's music status to another level, and made a name for producer/arranger Alex San who shined during that album.

*****

INTERVIEW BY: Zhang Guoxiang, director of the entertainment section of Guangming Daily (Malaysia)

Q: Honestly speaking, the first time I heard the name Alex San was in THE DECADENT SOUND OF FAYE. One day, a senior colleague said that Alex San is a Malaysian. I was surprised that Malaysia had produced a musician who could work with superstars. Basically, among locals, your name carried a halo on your head.

ALEX SAN: Many people only began to know me on that Faye Wong album. However, in her previous albums such as PLEASE MYSELF, RANDOM THOUGHTS and others, my name had already appeared. I also wrote a song for her before called "Honeymoon". Most people are also aware of "I Don't Want To Be Like This Either". But the one that I truly worked with her on was THE DECADENT SOUND OF FAYE.

Q: How did you meet Faye Wong?

ALEX SAN: I first met her producer Alvin Leong. We often worked in the same studio. He probably overheard me working! One day, he knocked on the door and in the first sentence asked: "I don't know if you are interested in making arrangements for my female singer... She is Faye Wong..."  He was very humble! In fact, Faye Wong was already popular in Hong Kong at that time.

Q:  It is undeniable that Faye Wong, with her unique temperament and extraordinary fashion, has been a trend setter for more than a decade. The styles were shocking. Classic styles such as pineapple head, sunburn makeup, and smoky eye makeup attracted a large number of followers, and even now people still imitate them. After THE DECADENT SOUND OF FAYE, many people's impression of her changed a lot. She sang Teresa Teng's songs as "Faye Wong" without losing the original flavor. I often joked with my friends that if I can bring only one CD to a deserted island, I will choose THE DECADENT SOUND OF FAYE.

ALEX SAN: There are a lot of inside stories about this album. The decision-making on this album rested with Faye Wong. She chose all the songs herself and she said that she did not want to produce it in Hong Kong, so all the recording work was moved to Beijing.

Q: Why does she not like Hong Kong? Is it because of the paparazzi? I remember that Faye Wong at that time had become the main target of the paparazzi.

ALEX SAN: This is one reason! I think maybe her relationship with her boyfriend (Dou Wei) was also in Beijing. The producing/arranging for that album was originally supposed to be done half by me and half by Dou Wei. But in the end, I was forced to complete it.

Q: Why do you say that you were "forced"? Isn't it a beautiful thing to collaborate with the Heavenly Queen?

ALEX SAN: I really “shed tears” for that album. I took a recording engineer and we lived in Beijing for two months. There was only one thing to do in two months - make 5 songs for the album (the other 5 by Dou Wei) and try to "wow" people. But then the problems started. Within a few days of going up to Beijing, Faye Wong disappeared and no one could find her...

Q: Looking back at the reports at that time, many Hong Kong paparazzi went up north, hoping to catch her and Dou Wei.

ALEX SAN: Beijing is too big. If Faye Wong hides, the paparazzi will not be able to keep up. In fact, the real reason why she hid was to avoid people from the record company. In terms of [the album] concept, Ah Fei and the record company were at odds.

Q: Then what about you? What happens when the singer does not show up to  the recording studio?

ALEX SAN: When time was nearing the end, Ah Fei showed up, so there was no particular worry...The only worry was just how to elevate Ah Fei.

Q: A moment ago, you said you had to complete all the songs?

ALEX SAN: One day when I was working in the studio, an unexpected guest suddenly appeared - it was Ah Fei. She didn't say anything, as if nothing had happened. She was holding a package of various CDs in her hand and threw it on the table: "Alex, Dou Wei quit, you can handle the other 5 songs......." I was shocked and quickly begged for mercy: "Big sister, let me off the hook......" But Ah Fei didn't say anything, just told me to fix the other songs. In the end, I had to take the field. I arranged 7 songs for that album and I really didn’t have time to do the remaining 6 songs, so I found someone else. [NOTE: This should be where Adrian Chan comes into the story.]

Q: Speaking of the topic that Faye Wong likes to work in Beijing, it reminds me of one thing. I once met Faye Wong herself in a restaurant in Beijing. I observed her for a long time and she was not dressed up. But the interesting thing is that from the beginning to end, no one ran forward to ask for her autograph, take photos or anything. I think this is why she prefers to be in Beijing!

ALEX SAN: There are also many big stars in Beijing and the people there treat Ah Fei as an ordinary person. Ah Fei didn't have anything fancy while recording. Many recording studios in China are built “inside”.

Q: What is “inside”?

ALEX SAN: It is the kind where you must walk through a long corridor or alley, and the path may be blocked by many musical instruments. One time, I was walking with Ah Fei and saw that the corridor was blocked by a lot of equipment. The men began moving the equipment away. Ah Fei came forward naturally to help us and she moved the drums!

Q: She was a diva...

ALEX SAN: It was strange. We didn't think about this problem at the time. After Ah Fei moved it, she was covered in dirt.

Q: Does Faye Wong have any habits when recording?

ALEX SAN: Ah Fei is like a child. In the recording studio, she laughs heartily like an aunt. We were really happy when we worked together. Ah Fei knows where she is going to sing, sometimes she would automatically stop and say ‘try again’ in the middle of singing. Basically she can already be her own producer.  

Ah Fei is also very superstitious. My sound engineer was in a miserable situation because he had very little knowledge about fate [horoscopes / fortune telling]. Faye Wong kept staring at him. Every time from the beginning to end of work, she would catch him and said she wants to read his horoscope. Once when I was very tired from work, Faye Wong ran up and spread out her hands and said, "Come on! Let me read your palms!".  Ah Fei is a cute girl but the public takes her too seriously. 

Q: Leslie Cheung's later works were a bit similar to Faye Wong, the content was very ethereal. Even Lin Xi, who wrote lyrics, said that when writing songs for Faye Wong and Leslie Cheung, he often couldn't get away from that style.

ALEX SAN: Gor Gor [Leslie] liked Ah Fei very much. Every time he went to KTV [karaoke], he must order Ah Fei's songs to sing. I know Gor Gor and Ah Fei because of Alvin Leong. Alvin was always the producer for Gor Gor. Once Alvin brought a song to the studio and asked me if I could re-arrange it. He said that Gor Gor didn't like the previous arrangement, so can I re-arrange it?

Q: What was the first thought that came to your mind?

ALEX SAN: Gor Gor Leslie Cheung! Later, fortunately, he used my arrangement.

Q: What was that song?

ALEX SAN:  The theme song of the sequel to "He's a Woman, She's a Man" called "Caring Person".

Q: Later, when Gor Gor asked you to collaborate, were you given any special instructions?

ALEX SAN: Gor Gor was very direct, he was straightforward. He just said that he hoped to have the feeling of "Faye Wong", and was confident in me.

------------------------------------------------------------------  

SOURCE: GUANGMING DAILY // TRANSLATED BY: FAYE WONG FUZAO

[komahinasecretexchange]

Title: The Day After The Future

Author: @ninashiki

For: @coockiedrop

Rating/Warnings: T, multiple brief descriptions of the carnage of the Tragedy

Prompt: Komahina go back in time to stop the Kamukura project and prevent The Tragedy!

Author’s notes: The prompt allowed me to be extremely self indulgent, with both Nagito and Hajime’s relationship and how much they had improved and grown since getting out of the simulation. I’ve also always enjoyed time travel and I hope I did one of my favourite fanfiction tropes justice! It was definitely difficult having to figure out what young Junko would be like but it was a fun challenge ^_^ I hope you enjoy your gift!!

The sun was shining brightly, with no clouds to be seen in the sky at all. It almost felt as if Hajime kept staring into that deep blue, he would end up being engulfed forever. Sucked into a sky that no longer existed in his future. Their future.

It was funny to Hajime how that clear blue sky was something so alien to him, although it hadn’t even been over a decade yet since the tragedy had happened. It was like the only thing he had ever known was the polluted red tinge he saw every day. Being able to see the sky he missed oh so much allowed him to release a breath he didn’t even know he had even been holding for all the years since the Tragedy started.

Nagito noticed the relief on Hajime’s face. It was obvious he enjoyed being back in the world he used to know. The ability to not have to worry about being able to breathe, or when the next Monokuma bot would pop around the corner was something they always took for granted before the Tragedy.

He was happy for Hajime, but he couldn’t help but feel slightly bitter. He still lived in fear of his daily life sometimes, and that would never change whether they were in the past or the present. Hajime had tried to convince him that his fear was unnecessary, now they were together. Now they had both their luck to rely on. But anxieties never leave the person they trouble. The Tragedy may have changed the world, but Nagito was always unsure whether it changed him… For the better? For the worse? Was he still the same as his teenage self? He didn’t want to think about anything like that… It was time to remind Hajime of the mission they came to accomplish.

—

“Why don’t we make a date out of it?” Hajime asked, eyes dilating while passing by shops that no longer existed, flowers which had gone extinct, and the hustle and bustle of people who weren’t killing each other in the streets. Being able to walk through a whole city without a single dead body showing up was refreshing, and a luxury the two hadn’t been able to partake in for so long. “We could go to a cafe, then the library, and then get lunch, and I’d really love to see this one museum… The paintings in it all got trashed…” He continued for a while.

“Hajime, you know we need to go find Junko,” He hummed while staring lovingly at his boyfriend. “If we spend all day doing whatever we like we won’t be able to find her anymore. The chances of her coming willingly with us are low unless she has no sense of self-preservation.” He looked at the street, with so many cars passing by. Who knew cars would no longer be used? Who knew streets would just become a place to dump bodies? Who knew?

“You know that’s possible. We’re talking about Junko here. It doesn’t matter that she’s only eleven years old. I’m sure she’s already obsessed with despair,” Hajime’s red eye twinkled, “…and I know where to find her already.”

Nagito turned around and spread his arms and grinned, “Of course you do. You’re the ‘Ultimate Hope’ now, aren’t you?” Hajime blushed at this. “I don’t really identify with that label, Nagito… And now, well, it’s totally meaningless.”

“Reserve course student Hajime, Ultimate Hope Izuru Kamukura… It’s all going to disappear once we’re done here.” Nagito wistfully looked at his boyfriend.

Hajime stared back at him. He took a deep breath and looked away. He watched all the people walking around him, minding their own business, unaware of the fact that the world would end in less than a decade… it was obviously worth it. There was no way it wasn’t. The Tragedy never birthed an ultimate hope, the world just stayed scarred. Future Foundation worked hard every day, but it wasn’t like the world was somehow better off because of the Tragedy. It wasn’t like it was worth going through all that trauma just because there was more hope than despair now! It wasn’t like billions of people dying was worth the hope Nagito desired during his time as a Remnant of Despair. That was something even he understood by now. They both knew now that being able to erase all of that is more important than anything. More important than love or hope or anything else.

“Yeah, it will. So…will you take me up on that date idea?” It’s more important, but…

Nagito laughed sadly, cheerfully, hopefully. “Alright then…of course!

They say Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

—

The two of them were holding hands, metal on skin, walking around a random park. It was sunlit and pleasant, with a lake that sparkled as bright as Hajime’s feelings for Nagito. They enjoyed the walk until they sat down at a bench that looked upon that same radiant lake. Nagito laid his head upon Hajime’s shoulder.

“Nagito… Can I ask you a question? I think I understand already, but I want to hear the words from you.” Nagito lets him know for the millionth time he can ask him anything. He promised to be honest - ever since he woke up. “Why… Why did you decide to come with me? To change the future? You realize that if I - if we succeed… all your efforts aiding despair to see a stronger and better hope come out would be pointless.”

Nagito sat up. “It was always pointless,” Hajime nods in affirmation. “I don’t agree with my past self anymore. I suppose I have changed, haven’t I? When I watched the recordings of the killing game after I died…you proved me wrong. You proved Junko wrong. As long as we try new things, even difficult things, everything will turn out okay. Those were your own words, Hajime. I’m chosen to believe in you since I heard those words. If I had really been there - I would have allowed you to completely smash my values, my way of thinking, everything. Maybe there’s no hope inside me. Maybe there’s no hope inside you. It doesn’t matter. If I’m forced to keep living… I’d rather keep moving forward towards the future.”

Hajime’s eyes had started watering. He grabbed onto Nagito tight and hugged him as hard as he could… “A-ah, you’re squeezing me…I’m not sure I deserve this sort of reaction.” Hajime’s face moved closer to Nagito’s, and he whispered, “Of course you do. All I’ve ever wanted was for you to learn that you can have a future. That you deserve to live. That you can start to be happy…You’re worth so much, you’re priceless…” Nagito chuckled a little awkwardly, feeling embarrassed while his cheeks flushed. Hajime cupped Nagito’s face, stroking his cheek with his thumb, and kissed him deeply.

Nagito started to get teary as well. For so long he had felt as if he could never be close to anybody, to be important to anybody. He felt as if his life was completely worthless in every way and the only way he could do anything useful with his life would have been to throw it away. He had no one to ever tell him otherwise.

As they pulled apart, the two longed for each other even more. They caught their breath, and Hajime ran his fingers through his lover’s hair. “Have I ever told you how handsome you are, Nagito?”

“Quite a few times, actually. But I… I don’t… I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.” Nagito said, with a hint of a smile. Hajime was really happy to hear him make an effort to stop being so self deprecating… The future he worked for truly was coming true.

“You’re incredibly handsome, and I would never want to be with anybody else.”

“Anybody? Not even…? Even after we change the future?” They both knew who Nagito meant.

“Nah. Nobody else. You’re the one I love, Nagito. That will never change. Whether we manage to change the future or not, I’m going to be right by your side the whole way.” Hajime looked at Nagito with so much love it was almost overwhelming.

“Y-yeah, I understand,” he stammered. “I love you too, Hajime. Even before we got out of the simulation…I really…liked you.” Something about Nagito truly admitting how he felt so brazenly made Hajime embarrassed, despite the fact that Hajime did the exact same thing a minute ago.

“Yeah…I can’t believe I didn’t realize it back then. I was kinda a dumbass?” Hajime laughed awkwardly. He got up from the bench and extended his hand out towards Nagito. “Come on…we gotta go now. Sadly.” Hajime’s red eye twinkled, and his tone sombered.

Nagito took his hand and got up as well. “She’s around here, actually. I made us sit here to wait for her.” Hajime explained. Nagito did not like the idea of confronting the person he hated most in the entire world, especially not a supposedly innocent version, a child. He did not like the idea of doing anything to a child, if necessary. He did not like the idea of fighting someone who wasn’t on equal terms as him. But they were never on equal terms with Junko in the first place.

—

She was right there. Sitting on the swing, slowly swaying back and forth. She didn’t move, except occasionally kick the ground to make sure the swing wouldn’t stop. Despite the fact that she was only 11 years old, it was clear who she was. Her hair was still surprisingly blonde, and her face was the same; albeit a younger version of it. Her clothes were in tatters, ripped in places and extremely dirty as if she had been living on the streets for at least a month. She looked especially bored in such a way that made it seem like she had nothing to be concerned about at all.

Hajime and Nagito didn’t know what to say or do or even how to react at all. They looked at each other and silently decided that the first thing they should is just walk up to her and say hello. What else could they do?

Nagito was the one who had any experience at all with kids, and so he came up to her first, with Hajime trailing behind. Junko noticed that he was in front of her, blocking her view of the rest of the kids in the playground playing (who clearly were avoiding the swings like the plague).

“Is today the day a pedophile finally decides to come and kidnap me? Or is all you want a picture of my panties?” Junko suddenly interjected like what she just said was totally normal, without even looking up, completely shocking the two men.

“N-No??” They both said in unison. “All we’d like is to talk to you for a little bit. Uh, your clothes seem really dirty. Are you alright? Are you safe?” Nagito asked.

“I’m fine, fine, fine!! It’s not like I ran away from home to test my own limits! How long can I survive with only my own skill set! It’s really fun, you know! Adults don’t understand. Don’t call the police, or do, or don’t, I don’t care…But maybe you should check yourself before you wreck yourself since I don’t think two adult men coming up to a random eleven-year-old is normal behavior.”

It was just an assault of words on the senses. Nothing about what she was saying made sense.

But that’s what was expected from her.

“So…you have a skillset? Are you good at analyzing the world around you?” Hajime asked. “By the way, my name’s Hajime, and he is Nagito. As Nagito said, we just want to talk to you for a bit.” Hajime had to shift the conversation in his favor somehow. They had an advantage - great knowledge of Junko…and she had nothing on them.

Junko stared at Hajime’s heterochromatic eyes, and his awkward, slightly nervous smile. She stared at Nagito’s shuffling, and his ability to look at everything except her. It was clear that she was somehow in trouble, that information about her was needed, that these two somehow knew about her analysis talent, and that she could easily run away - and they would let her. She wasn’t going to, not until she knew what was going on.

“Yes, I am just PEACHY perfect at analyzing the world. That’s why I test my ability for how long I can stay homeless before I need to run back to my parents. Being homeless feels awful, and having to run back is so embarrassing… I love that feeling of failure, you know? That feeling when your heart completely sinks to the bottom of the sea? I don’t know why…It’s like, the opposite of gambling. I want bad things to happen, you know? And that’s why I let strange men talk to me in the middle of playgrounds!” She cheerfully added.

“Hey, can you please stop calling us strange? We really need to talk to you, and your uh…love of despair doesn’t seem to be very helpful for your existence as a human being, don’t you think? And hey, what about school? Do you still go despite living in the streets?” Hajime was starting to feel annoyed. Eleven-year-old Junko had nothing on the Junko he knew, the one who causes billions of deaths. The one who caused so much pain on all his friends, who caused Chiaki’s death. The one who put every motion in place that led to Nagito’s sacrifice.

He hates her with all of his being. But he hates Hope’s Peak Academy even more.

“Well, ya see, ya see, of course, I still go to school. Everybody bullies me because I smell terrible and look terrible and have a terrible personality but I just bully them back! Isn’t that fun? And I personally think that yeah, maybe I’ll end up dead sooner or later but wouldn’t that be the greatest worst feeling of all time? Like, finally I’m gone, right? Or maybe not, but I won’t know until it happens? Isn’t that scary! But you know school is so boring, and life is so boring, that all I want to do sometimes is use my talent to bully the world. How would I be able to accomplish that sort of thing…etcetera etcetera etcetera? I’m just…too bored.”

“Because the world is too easy to understand?” Nagito chimed in.

“Yeah…hmm…where’s the Tardis? That British thing?” She smiled.

Hajime couldn’t stop a small feeling of dread from creeping up his spine. “What do you mean, “Tardis”? What are you talking about?”

“Hajime…the Tardis was the machine the Doctor from the series Doctor Who used to time travel.” Nagito hurriedly explained to his boyfriend, someone who wouldn’t a reference to an English show.

Ah. Hajime’s eyes instinctively widened. “How did you kn-? Wait, fuck. Shit!” His heart sank to the bottom of the sea in that one moment.

“I didn’t know! I didn’t at all know! But how would you know things about me I haven’t even told Yasuke about! Time travel? Really? Really! Haha!! Oh, I wonder how it works! I need to know I need to know! I need to know right away!” Junko jumped off her swing and giggled hard. Her glee at discovering that something like time travel was actually possible was…unnerving to both Hajime and Nagito. She wasn’t full of despair, she was just happy. The girl even rambled about she enjoyed despair - but right at this moment, she was happy, and excited even, and hopeful to learn.

“Junko…You feel happy right now, yeah? Doesn’t that feel good? So why do you try so hard to fall into despair? To make others despair? Why don’t you just realize already…that despair is no more unpredictable than hope is.” Hajime couldn’t say nothing. He shouldn’t have, but there was nothing anybody could do to stop him from letting his endless questions flow out.

As he did so…Junko’s dancing and jumping and smiling instantly stopped - as if she froze completely.

“I…I’m happy…? And it felt…g-good.” Her eyes slowly widened. “It’s something…I don’t understand yet.” She blinked. Once. Twice.

“Junko…there will always be things you will never understand, no matter how awe-inspiring your talent is. I learned that the hard way. Ultimate power isn’t infinite, and maybe it was never ultimate in the first place. There are things to look forward to even if the world around you is too easy to understand. Plenty of things are still rewarding even if you do understand them.” Nagito spoke to her in a gentle tone.

Small, little, and innocent Junko plopped down on the ground. She brought her knees to her chest and looked up at Nagito.

“I just want to be able to feel good without knowing, knowing, knowing, knowing, I’ll feel good ahead of time. Always knowing. I’m so sick of it. I’m so sick of life.”

“Sometimes the fun of life is knowing you’ll feel good. It’s okay to be able to predict things, and knowledge isn’t bad. But even then, there are still plenty of things the world doesn’t understand yet. Have you ever thought about pursuing a career in physics? The deep ocean? Neuroscience? There are so many things humanity doesn’t understand. Don’t you think you’d be able to have fun, Junko? Don’t you want to find out how we managed to time travel over here?” Hajime doesn’t know if what he’s saying is getting through to her. But he desperately hopes it is.

Junko stared at Hajime again. It almost felt like she could see straight through his soul. He wouldn’t be surprised if she could, with her talent.

“I think…you two strange men are actually…right. I never…I was prepared to make things worse around me. There was nothing around me worth protecting, or saving, and me neither too. I guess I could actually…help the world while learning, couldn’t I? But you’re right that there are still some satisfying things to accomplish. It’s not like just knowing how is enough to climb a mountain. You still need oxygen. You still need tools. I…I’m sorry. I’m really…”

“We can’t forgive you. Sorry, Hajime, I’m speaking for you, but I know how you feel already. The things you end up achieving in the future are atrocious and reprehensible. I’m sure you’ve already figured that out by now, why else would we be here, speaking to you? But we accept and acknowledge your apology. The only thing we require from you…is to not make the world end. We know you can find a way to live your life without despair. You don’t need it, Junko. You don’t need to hurt people. You don’t need to hurt yourself,” Nagito glanced at Hajime,” It took me a long time to figure that out myself. But I managed to. And I know you can as well.”

Junko’s eyes started to water. Water and water, until a few tears fell until she started to sob and sob. She said nothing. All she did was cry. Nagito patted her head softly. At the end of the day, was all Junko needed someone to talk to? Someone to treat her with the kindness she didn’t treat herself with? Someone to convince her that life was worth living?

She eventually stopped. She rubbed her eyes and continued to say nothing.

Hajime had to break the silence. “We have to go back to our future. It’s probably going to be very different, and who knows if we’ll even be able to remember this. Can you do us one favor?”

Junko nodded.

“We’d like you to use your talent to expose Hope’s Peak Academy for the corrupt school it is. There’s a project that’s going to be started in a few years called the Kamukura Project,” Nagito grabbed Hajime’s hand as he said this, ”The project is an attempt to push every single talent they have researched on inside the brain and body of one regular student. It…It almost destroyed me,” Hajime shivered, “In the future we came from, instead of exposing this and the corrupt school, you instead use the school to create despair, and use that despair to end the world. You know what you can accomplish, Junko. Please choose a world where you can keep learning and exploring and holding onto that feeling of happiness. Thank you.”

And within a blink, the two strange men had vanished. Leaving Junko to wonder whether or not the whole thing had been a dream…but whether or not it was, it doesn’t matter. She knows what she has to do now.

—

They were still holding hands. It was the future, and they were still together, and they still remembered everything.

That was terrifying and exhilarating, and oh god they need to check the news NOW. But first, they took a look around their surroundings. It was…clean, and pretty, and while there weren’t people around, there were no bodies in the street. No Monokuma bots to be seen. And the air was obviously breathable.

A good sign, but they needed more to be sure of what they had done. It wasn’t like they had any sort of phone on them. It would have interfered. So they walk and walk, and they come across a store with televisions playing - a news channel.

And the headline said: “Junko Enoshima, president of Future Foundation, finally convicts corrupt Steering Committee for their unethical project to create an artificial ‘God’”.

Junko hadn’t caused the Tragedy.

They find their way back to the apartment they were living in together before their time travel, and it’s still there, and the landlord still recognizes them and it turns out when they grab their phones from their bedside table that all of their friends are alive and healthy, and happy. Even Chiaki is alive. She’s alive. The first thing Hajime did was call her and talk to her. All he did was ask her how she was, and she was fine, and it was kind of a shock remembering how human Chiaki was always a bit different from AI Chiaki but he’s so grateful she’s still with them all.

They look through the news of the last decade. Everything is pretty much the same until Junko got accepted into Hope’s Peak. She spent the entire time trying to dismantle the school. She had used her talents to make the entire school body oppose the Steering Committee it seems, and while that was happening, class 77-B had just spent their time making friends. Hajime had been in the Reserve Course, but the Kamukura Project was discovered publicly before anything bad could happen. The school then had to do damage control, and all Reserve Course students got to keep going to the school for free…

No killing game, no Monokuma… They just got to have the school years they deserved from the beginning. And during that time period?

Hajime and Nagito still fell in love anyway.

“I shouldn’t have underestimated you. You really meant it when you said you’d be my side the whole way.” Nagito couldn’t stop himself from embracing Hajime, pushing him to sit down on top of their bed. “You still didn’t believe me at that time?” He exclaimed with disbelief and kissed Nagito’s forehead. “To be fair…it’s pretty incredible. You wouldn’t think all of this would work out so well, would you? It’s like I’m as lucky as you…I must be, right? Considering the fact that I have you as my boyfriend.”

They kissed. Nagito lovingly caressed Hajime’s cheek. “I suppose in this timeline you really are just a Reserve Course student…” Hajime laughed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I don’t care about that anymore, you know? I believe in myself now. I’m…proud of myself. I’m proud of you!” Hajime beamed. It was a smile that could lift up anybody from the depths of despair.

“That’s not fair…If you say that, I really will never be able to stop loving you…!” Nagito laughed, hard, like he finally got to let go of a breath he had been holding since he was a child.

“Hey, Hajime…Do you think this was destiny? Or chance?” Nagito asked, smiling coyly.

“You know it was neither,” he grinned. “We decided to keep living on as ourselves, despite everything, and that determination was rewarded. We created our future together, Nagito. Don’t we deserve it after everything?” He cockily said.

“I doubt it. You don’t even have a talent, Hajime…” He winked.

Hajime murmured in Nagito’s ear, “Oh, I don’t? I’m pretty sure I have a talent for kissing you…”

“Aha, well you better show me the extent of your talent then….!”

THE END

[alterniea]

Addressing Jett/Morgan/Vii/Momo

Addressing Jett/Morgan/Vii/Momo, known on tumblr as jettsettrolls, ppeacherine, maid-butterfingers, 7trolls, and many other deleted urls.   

In this day and age, I am extremely reluctant to make any sort of “callout” post. I do not believe in supporting the culture of tearing someone to shreds for something relatively minor that happened years ago. I would LOVE to have this disappear into the ether and never think of it again. In fact, I have been wishing for that for practically a decade. However, I have been pushed to my wit’s end repeatedly and have quietly faced having my reputation stained for YEARS.

This is not a callout post. This is a post to lay out my resources and testimonials from other people, to shed light on Jett as a person, and to perhaps set the record straight on some of her claims. I have not publicly retaliated before this. This is likely irrelevant information to all of my followers, but for me it’s important to organize. This post will mostly exist as a reference. I will add more if I have to. 

IN SUMMARY: Jett (real name Morgan) is a person who I have known for 10 years. She consistently publicly claims that I am an abusive predator and dangerous to be around, particularly around minors. This has repeatedly caused me to self-isolate or face the consequences of a damaged reputation. She does this without providing evidence other than her word. On the flip side, I have saved messages from people about how Jett treated them poorly and inflicted much of the same pain that she claims I caused her. 

GENERAL WARNING FOR ABUSE, SUICIDE, PEDOPHILIA, ETC. 

As of October 2019, Jett is still posting about me on her blog in juxtaposition with murderers and child abusers. She states to be against cancel culture, which is very interesting, given what follows in this post. She has built her identity around being a victim of my apparent mastermind. 

Here is recent post of her’s. She admits to attempting to “ruin” me to new people that I try to meet in the past. 

https://imgur.com/a/hLWkYJl

RECENT EVENTS: Admittedly, I am unsure of where to start on this. I suppose I’ll start by highlighting something that happened relatively recently. In March of 2019 I attempted to join an OCT that was hosted by someone who had heard Jett’s stories about me. The host contacted me with intention to ban me from the competition. What follows is a conversation where I briefly recount my entire relationship with Jett. Make note of how the host says they “loathe her” and that Jett “victimize[s] herself”. 

https://imgur.com/a/ygRshvF

Upset about the outcome of this conversation, I went against my own statements and chose to speak to James (Revs). James states that he attempted suicide because of the way he was treated by people during the incident and that he was angry about the misinformation and punishment I was facing years later. This conversation contains very personal information and is posted with James’s permission.   

https://imgur.com/a/fly6jHW

In my conversation with the OCT host I mention that Jett deleted one of her fantroll blogs after being targeted by a post by Warrentrolls. Here is the post in question which provides its own links which I will also include. Please note that Jett admits to not having receipts and that her feelings are proof enough of my guilt. This was one of her many attempts to attack me without provocation. This happened in 2018.   

https://warrentrolls.tumblr.com/post/176858842147/warrentrolls-7trolls-someone-raised-a-rly

Also mentioned in Jett’s post is an unnamed minor. At the time of the incident four years ago, Jett attempted to message one of my minor friends out of “concern” for them. Their conversation was not recorded, but I have a recent (September 2019) conversation with mentioned friend where they recall their interactions with Jett and express their opinion on the matter. I have redacted their name. 

https://imgur.com/a/rELGtaM

From these recent conversations it’s obviously clear that misinformation and rumors about people spread because of Jett and last for many years. It’s also clear that she is not held in positive regard by the people who interact with her or know of her.  

PAST EVENTS: In these links you may see the name “Kayla” pop up several times. Kayla was a friend of Jett and me in 2015-2016. Kayla was one of the only people willing to listen to me when Jett decided to raze my reputation while the two were still friends. Jett targeted, isolated, and emotionally/mentally abused Kayla during their friendship, and blames me for it. 

Here is Kayla’s entire recollection of their friendship. She mentions me at the end and how Jett attempted to attack me and blames me for her own behavior. This was posted in September 2016. 

https://sta.sh/0jssy5m7srw

Here is a supplemental conversation between me and Kayla about the same topic. This was posted in September 2016 and took place in February 2016. 

https://imgur.com/a/xRAcFky

Here is the entire conversation between Kayla and Jett when they ended their friendship. This was posted in September 2016 and presumably took place in February 2016. Kayla has added context and commentary in italics. You can see how Jett was upset that Kayla was branching out and making other friends and decided to end their friendship after she realized she could no longer control Kayla. 

https://sta.sh/02b8rznk9i61

There are multiple other old conversations I have saved that I do not have permission to share, but they reflect that this behavior is not an isolated incident. There are other people in the fantroll community who faced similar experiences with Jett and when their friendships went sour they had to retreat in fear that Jett would smear their reputations like what she did to me. These people want their anonymity to be preserved, but they exist and their experiences matter.     

This is a small snippet from Jett’s perspective as of August 2018. Note her use of language to say that I “used” her to join the fantroll community and she then became upset when I formed other friendships. I cannot provide further context. 

https://imgur.com/a/KT4fwQD

I haven’t spoken to her for years and I have no desire to. I assume that there’s more incidents that I am not aware of. 

You may have noticed that I do not mention much about the events that took place when Jett and I first met, which was back around 2011-ish, when I was a young teenager. I outlined my recollections in my conversation with the OCT host. I’m not focusing on the very old stuff because I do not have any solid proof of the interactions, and, unlike some people, I know that feelings are not proof. I believe it would be disingenuous for me to spend a long time retelling a high school drama story with no supplemental material. 

That is not to say I am, or was, a saint. As a child I was very mentally ill and faced sexual abuse by an older man for many years. I am unable to participate in romantic relationships and have a very strong aversion to being touched. I have struggled with eating disorders and have attempted suicide twice, resulting in long stays at the hospital. It took me a very long time to come to terms with my past and it fills me with shame and guilt to admit or share anything about it. These events took place while I was still friends with Jett in high school, but were not related to her. My mental health has been stable for years now but sometimes it can be hard.  

IN CONCLUSION: I hate to make this post about something that should be irrelevant, old, and inconsequential. I do not like to be the person making a post about what someone did years ago. I have always tried to be conscientious about keeping inflammatory content off of my blog. I keep my head down. I second guess myself constantly and often isolate myself from my friends. I live in fear that if I leave my box and reach out to new corners of the internet, Jett’s influence will follow me. And it has. It still does. 

I invite you to form your own opinions and conclusions. Jett’s core belief that people, especially minors, should be protected from predators is something that I completely support and advocate for. However, her persistent defamation and crusade against me has gone on too long. I finally feel confident enough to say something back. 

To Jett, please be more aware of the damage you cause and stop blaming me when you hurt other people. Stop lying. You used minors like James and my friend to try and demonize me without considering how they felt about the situation. Now you get to see how they feel as adults. I’ve attempted to ignore all of this for years and faced consequences in private. I wish you well, but I need to say something in my own defense.  

[ghost-train-hunters]

Nerves

After a close call on her first run in Seattle, Scratch has second thoughts about her new crew. She decides to take it up with the fixer who made the introductions…

An Orichalcum and Silicon short story by BrossUno

——

Scratch still had a headache as she rode the elevator to the 30th floor of a bustling skyscraper. She had woken up before the sun had made it over the horizon. It was miserably early and it made her more irritated than usual. Thankfully she didn’t have any jobs lined up right that moment. She found it hard to work when she was a hair trigger from snapping at someone. 

Her early morning excursion only left her just enough time to wash the stink of the Seattle underground out of her hair from last night’s run. She hastily put on the only business suit she owned and covered her face with a medical mask and sunglasses. The corp look didn’t help her mood at all. The skirt made it especially awkward to pull anything out of the smuggling compartment nestled in her left cyberleg. Unfortunately the contact she wanted to meet didn’t hang out in places where street clothes could get you past the front door. 

Routinely they were areas where the cops showed up in a few minutes and security could be trusted to do their job. Much as Scratch didn’t like it, the chaos of last night’s festivities gave her the motivation to power through.

The details of what happened sloshed around in her skull to the point where she couldn’t make much sense of it if she tried. It had been a few weeks of running her automotive garage for less savory customers looking to ditch junkers or disappear hot cars. Establishing herself in Seattle had been more challenging than originally anticipated. Chip truth, she was looking forward to making real money. Her long term plans demanded it. Now she regretted being so hasty. A crew of five needed a driver. 

The job itself called for the acquisition of a package from an Evo facility. She sure as hell couldn’t remember how it started out, but the ending had been a wreck from the minute they got their hands on the objective. The getaway took them on a grand tour of a drug den, subway tunnels with a ghost train, and a rooftop shootout with the Knight Errant and a fraggin’ Gargoyle. The order events felt scrambled in her mind but she knew things went downhill after a crash. A crash with a stolen truck.

The mere thought made Scratch take a detour to the nearest bathroom. She stood in front of the sink and made fists as she fought back tremors in her hands. After some cold water and some concentration she felt the sensation pass. She didn’t have time to look like she was fighting off dumpshock. She had a meeting to attend with the fixer who had set her up with the Evo job. Building security made sure she didn’t have the luxury of bringing her drones or much weaponry. The only form of defense she had on her was an Ingram Smartgun X she learned to hide in her leg for emergencies. She hadn’t had to make use of it yet, but last night had been full of unwelcome surprises.

The meet up was a fancy restaurant known as The Perennial. Scratch had never heard of it before but she didn’t run in these circles. The place mostly serviced wageslaves and anyone chained to the corporate life. Her contact had always found the nicest places for a conversation even in the shadiest parts of town. When she made it to the entrance the balding head waiter that greeted her had his nose turned up to the ceiling. He seemed to make note of her cyberleg but didn’t give her any trouble when she mentioned the party she belonged to.

“Party of Rosselott,” Scratch said.

“Right this way, madam.”

Scratch was always thankful for a mask. She couldn’t help but roll her eyes and scoff as she followed the head waiter inside. He didn’t see any of that behind her sunglasses. The Perennial leaned on fake plants and flowers to imply a lush atmosphere. There were more people around than she expected for breakfast hours. A lot of drones in suits and oozing self-importance. One ork busied himself with AR screens. A table of four looked to be double tasking while eating and holding a business meeting at the same time. No one looked like trouble from first glance. She doubted any of them even noticed her enter the room. Sometimes she found it amazing how easy it was to disappear into a crowd of suits. That wasn’t an excuse to drop her guard though. She wasn’t expecting trouble but old memories from a life out east wouldn’t let her relax.

The head waiter brought her to a table in the corner up against a window overlooking downtown. It was a secluded space with fake hedges acting as a barrier between tables. They wouldn’t stop any bullets but it would be enough to keep prying eyes away for a little while. A single elf sat at the table. Scratch only knew her as Rosselott. 

The name didn’t really go with the face but that was the nature of the business. Rosselott had signs of old age and still looked impossibly good, which made Scratch feel she was probably ancient by elf standards. They never had a meeting where she wasn’t wearing a crisp business suit and nursing a cigarette or cigar. She had jet black hair and emerald eyes that felt armor piercing. The safe bet is she had been wrapped up in the corp life longer than Scratch had been alive. The way she supplemented her words with constant hand motions gave off the impression she had done boardroom meetings for a few decades at least.

Despite the clean exterior and expensive taste, word on the street had made it clear Rosselott was a fixer with connections. All the rumors pointed to the idea she liked to collect old things. And it went double for classic automobiles. Scratch felt it was a stroke of luck meeting someone like her over a single night of stealing cars for a bartender troll named Lefty. As a relative newcomer to Seattle she couldn’t afford to pass up the connections on offer. Or that’s how she felt at first. After last night she wasn’t so sure anymore.

Rosselott looked up and gave a thin smile through a trail of smoke escaping her cigarette. That was enough to satisfy the head waiter as he excused himself. Scratch took a seat at the table and made sure she could reach the thigh of her cyberleg where her Ingram was hidden. A matter of precaution.

“Ah, you made it. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble finding the place. They opened a few weeks ago. I hear they serve real eggs here.”

“I’d prefer if I didn’t have to dress up every time we have a conversation.” Scratch grumbled.

Rosselott gave a sardonic smile. “But I love when people are presentable. Besides, it’s not unusual for two strangers to talk business over breakfast in a place like this. Especially if you look the part.”

“You could have just called instead of having me come down here before the sun was up.”

The idea of talking over comms only got a finger wag from Rosselott. “You should know by now that I prefer a good face to face. And let us not forget, you were the one who wanted to meet right away.”

“I want another crew,” Scratch said without wasting time.

The request bounced off Rosselott without leaving a dent. She turned her attention to the menu. Scratch had been too focused to notice the tablet in front of her. Chip truth, she couldn’t afford most of the menu even if it sounded good. And she definitely didn’t want to be in Rosselott’s debt over some fancy dining. This meeting was strictly business.

“You don’t want to chat over a nice meal?” Rosselott asked.

Scratch leaned forward to emphasize the point. “I didn’t come here for a seven course meal. I need another crew.”

Rosselott put down the menu and folded her hands together. Her cigarette perched between her fingers.

“And what? You think I whisk them out of the air? Like magic? I already introduced you to a team. A rather sizable one. During your last job.”

“That job was a shitshow.”

“What a shame. At the very least I hear that things went well enough for you to get paid.”

“Not enough for the trouble.”

Rosselott shrugged.

“Perhaps you should brush up on your negotiating skills? I just make the introductions and arrange that things are… taken care of.”

“Then ‘introduce’ me to another crew.”

Scratch didn’t realize she had raised her voice until Rosselott lost her smile. Slowly she sat back in her chair and looked around. They were too secluded to attract attention even if someone had heard the commotion. Rosselott took a long drag on her cigarette and ejected the smoke out of her nose. The one other time Scratch had seen her do that, it didn’t mean good things. She tried not to look away with Rosselott’s eyes bearing down on her.

“If I recall correctly, and my memory is very good, the deal went like this: You were looking for a team who need a driver and a drone rigger. A way to establish yourself in Seattle, as you put it. I knew of a job someone needed taken care of that suit both our purposes. I came through for you, and you came through for me. A prime example of any good business relationship. You’re still alive, so I trust the team had some amount of skill?”

The crew wasn’t exactly what Scratch had in mind. Even from her time doing work for the mafia it was a motley crew to say the least. During the Evo run they had an ork the size of a fridge known as Merc who preferred to take his targets apart up close and personal. They had a cat burglar, Bast, who had embraced the namesake whole cloth with body mods and everything. Scratch had never seen someone move so fast. Even with a head start she passed her up on the stairs to the roof. They had two elves. Mantis, despite the glowing personality and the multicolored tattoo, had little trouble frying a Knights Errant with magic. The other elf went by Oz and preferred to do his work in the Matrix. Some ganger in the drug den had his magazine ejected from his gun in midfight. Deckers always made Scratch nervous.

The last runner caught her by surprise. The triggerman of their little group went by the name of Hollowpoint. She recognized him right away as the private detective named Seth Barber living in the cramped attic of her garage. The coat and the tired eyes were a dead giveaway. Naturally he wasn’t all that surprised to meet on a run. He had probably figured her out the second they met to talk terms for their current arrangement. But she didn’t figure he was such a dead eye when it came to shooting. 

Hollowpoint was an anomaly. Scratch figured if you were good enough to shoot the gun out of the hands of a surprised thug, you’d be good enough to shoot them in the head and be done with it. But she wasn’t going to scoff at someone who could clip a Gargoyle’s wing at night when it’s darting around in the air. Two crack shots meant it was more than dumb luck.

“Am I wrong?” Rosselott asked with a smarmy grin.

Scratch hesitated.

“I’m not working with them again.” She declared. “They’re… they’re bad luck.”

Rosselott laughed. Scratch had never seen her laugh before. It struck her motionless as she waited for her contact to regain her composure.

“Bad luck.” Rosselott repeated even more amused than before. “Oh whatever could have happened that night? What kind of problems did you run into, Miss Sheckler? Or maybe you were the problem? Maybe you hit a bump in the road somewhere? Left you shaken.”

Their corner of the restaurant felt hot. A sense of dread began to well up in Scratch’s stomach as her fledgling Seattle reputation felt at risk. She regretted coming. She regretted pushing her luck with Rosselott. The moment she came to town, she knew the only thing that would bring in work was an ironclad reputation. 

The last thing she needed was word getting out that she couldn’t drive for shit. It would be a nightmare if the only thing associated with her name was totalling a truck that should have danced on the tips of her fingers. But she couldn’t even remember what happened to defend herself. Was she jacked in? Did the dumpshock fry her memory on impact? It hadn’t been the first time she had been in a wreck that felt beyond her control. She made fists under the table as bad memories came to the surface.

“I shouldn’t have to remind you, but my interest is in people who can get things done. The other details are your concern. And if you can’t play nicely with others, then what good are you to anyone? Unless you fashion yourself as a one man army? Those are so rare these days.”

Scratch was thankful for the mask. She would have been glaring daggers at Rosselott and she knew that wasn’t the right move. Much as she didn’t like it in her current state of mind, she got the point. All she had to do is keep it professional. Get the job done. Somewhere in the wreck last night she had lost sight of it.

“Maybe I made a mistake recommending you. Maybe that stellar work that got my attention was beginner’s luck. What do you think?”

Scratch felt her confidence return. “It wasn’t luck. You know what I can do. The only one who brought you that car you love so much is sitting right across from you.”

Things got quiet at the table. Scratch tried to relax. Rosselott looked her over and finished off her cigarette.

“You know what I think?” Rosselott asked. “I think it’s just nerves. This was your first run after all. It’s a very different line of work compared to… what you’ve done in the past.”

“How do you know that?” Scratch crossed her arms.

“I don’t pick people off the street and hand them a gun. I like to do my homework.”

The smile on Rosselott’s face wasn’t very comforting but Scratch wasn’t surprised. Background checks sounded like the standard arsenal of someone who did time working for a corp. She just hoped it didn’t go too deep.

“I’m not some mobster on the corner, either. You have a lot of potential. But you also have to keep the long game in mind. Things work differently out here. I hope you understand that.”

Scratch took a deep breath. “Yeah. I understand.”

Rosselott clapped her hands. “Good. So if we’re finished here, I can’t introduce you to another team. Because I don’t have one for you. But the moment I hear something that needs your personal touch, we’ll talk.”

At the bare minimum Scratch was hoping for another job. The Evo run wasn’t the payday she was hoping for. Not to mention she didn’t have the luxury waiting around for something to happen. It might as well have been acid on her ears.

“How long will that be?” Scratch asked.

“Tisk tisk. So impatient.” The accompanying shrug made it clear Rosselott was indifferent to the issue. “You have all these new friends with problems of their own. I’m not the only one in town that needs a few things taken care of. Who knows? Maybe it will bring us new opportunities in the future? I’m sure you can occupy yourself until then.”

The end of their conversation came with a fake, business-like smile from Rosselott that must have disarmed thousands of arguments in the past. Scratch gave a nod and stood to leave. On the way out, she tried to ignore the smell of food coming from the kitchen. Real food. She had a long list of things to take care of before that ever made it onto her budget. At the very top she remembered the stolen van from last night. She had to get rid of it. Nothing could trace back to her. Things were safer that way. 

Upon reaching the street level she walked a few blocks to find her black Americar parked nearby. She didn’t want to pay for parking or mess with valets. When she got back to the garage it was still early in the morning. Among the tools and workbenches the stolen van awaited. A GMC Bulldog. Oz said he gave it a clean slate on the Matrix side, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

Scratch traded out her business suit and medical mask for a jumpsuit and a welding mask. She started taking the van apart piece by piece. The others couldn’t drive for shit anyway so she didn’t leave it up for debate. Some of it would work well for spare parts. Especially since she had a Bulldog of her own. She had a feeling she’d be getting a lot of use out of it with their six person crew. The idea of playing taxi pissed her off so she hoped the others didn’t expect her to run them down to the store to pick up soymilk.

A couple of hours passed. The stolen bulldog had been reduced to a skeleton frame. That’s when Scratch finally heard knocking coming from the side entrance. Sometimes customers used that door when they didn’t want to be seen. She still had her Ingram hidden in her cyberleg so she cracked the door open. Seth Barber or Hollowpoint or whatever his name was stood outside. It was almost noon and he looked as tired as ever. They didn’t interact much as tenant and landlord. Seth Barber the private detective kept things guarded and didn’t bring people around. He had soyfood groceries delivered and sometimes smoked on the roof. 

Really Scratch couldn’t have asked for a more perfect arrangement. They stayed out of each other’s way and that worked just fine. But now things were different. Now she knew he was a crack shot and carried a small armory hidden under the unfashionable coat. She opened the door and they looked at each other for a brief moment.

“Hey.” Hollowpoint greeted.

Scratch said nothing. She waited for him to get on with it.

“Uh, there’s a special going on right now where if you refer someone to my food delivery app you get some credit on your account-”

This same man had sniped a Gargoyle out of the air at night with an assault rifle. It stuck in the back of her mind.

“-and I was thinking, maybe I could refer you and then we use the coupon to get something to eat, split the delivery charge?”

Scratch closed the door without a second thought. She had work to do.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND RELATIVITY

It's clearly an abuse of the system, and the latter is not simply a constant fraction of the size it turned out later to be useful in some worldly way. But there are limits to how well this can be done, no matter how small it is. There's no switch inside you that magically flips when you turn a certain age would point into the case and say that they didn't have the courage of their convictions, and that probably doesn't surprise would-be founders. Try a patent search for that phrase and see how many results you get. Fundraising is just a means to an end. The important thing is to be young. But once they get started, interest takes over, and discipline is no longer necessary. The way not to be desperate. What's lame is when they use the term Collison installation for the technique they invented. It has fabulous weather, which makes it significantly better than the soul-crushing sprawl of most other American cities.

Drew Houston did work on a problem you have? People who get rich from startups fund new ones. You can't afford the time it takes to talk to all potential investors in parallel and push back on exploding offers with excessively short deadlines, that will almost never happen.1 Both make it harder for new silicon valleys are Boulder and Portland. Whereas I suspect over at General Motors the marketing people are telling the designers, Most people who buy SUVs do it to seem manly, not to stop and fight.2 The most dynamic part of the conversation I'll be forced to come up with will not merely be an inborn trait in humans. You're also surrounded by other people trying to solve: how to have a web-based email service with good spam filtering. The centralizing effect of venture firms is a double one: they cause startups to form around them, and this trend has decades left to run.3 Since a successful startup is going to be entering a market that looks small but which will turn out to be bad.

You can see how great a hold taste is subjective and wanted to kill it once and for all. In either case you let yourself get far downwind of good places to land, your options narrow uncomfortably. Of course, a would-be silicon valley faces an obstacle the original one didn't: it has to grow organically. If you want to do.4 Mark Zuckerberg will never get to bum around a foreign country. There are more and bolder investors in Silicon Valley don't make anything, there's nothing they can be sued for. For Einstein, relativity wasn't a book full of hard ideas, in others they're deliberately written in an obscure way to seem as if they're committing, but which doesn't actually commit them. For example, in preindustrial societies, or how to program computers, or what life was really like in preindustrial societies, or how to program computers, or what constitutes a good dessert, but about whom they feel some misgivings personally. That is certainly true; in fact it will usually be enough to set things rolling. It only spread to places where there was a strong middle class—countries where a private citizen could make a fortune without having it confiscated. Some of the most successful companies we've funded, Octopart, is currently locked in a classic battle of good versus evil. It would be a great problem to have.

Colleges are similar enough that if you can.5 Plenty of people who are really good at lying to tell members of some profession the most common mistakes young founders make is not to try to figure something out. There's no reason to suppose there's any limit to the amount of effort a startup usually puts into a version one, it would be Fred. If you don't know who needs to know something.6 But even then, not immediately. Patents, like police, are involved in many abuses. There are too many dialects of Lisp. But none of the existing solutions are good enough. For nearly all of history the success of your company. You can see this most clearly in New York, recruiting new users and helping existing ones improve their listings. That principle, like the idea that professors should do research as well as money.7 They can teach students about startups?

Hardware startups face an obstacle that software startups don't. At most colleges, it's not surprising we find it funny when a character, even one we like, slips on a banana peel? Occasionally it's obvious from the beginning when there's a path out of an idea? In other words, no one knows who the best programmers are overall. He likes to observe startups for a while at least, tends to require long stretches of uninterrupted time to work. Well, therein lies half the work of essay writing.8 I just gave up. The two-job career. Inexperienced founders read about famous startups doing what was type A fundraising, and decide they should raise money too, since that seems to be how startups work. Colleges are similar enough that if you can't explain your plans concisely, you don't, and that's actually very valuable information.

That was all it took to start successful startups. And who can reasonably expect more of a self fulfilling prophecy than the uphills. The idea of them making startup investments is comic.9 That's how bad the problem has become.10 Fortunately you can also watch real doctors, by volunteering in hospitals. One is that a real essay and the things one has to write in school is that real essays are not exclusively about English literature. Whether cause or effect, this spirit pervaded early universities. Under the present rules, patents are part of the economy always does, in everything from salaries to standards of dress. Whereas I suspect over at General Motors the marketing people are telling the designers, Most people who buy SUVs do it to seem manly, not to stop and fight. But she never does.

Fortran isn't good enough at simulations. Interfaces, as Geoffrey James has said, should follow the principle of least astonishment. And what happens to the company during fundraising, growth will slow. I see someone laugh as they read a draft of an essay. The random college kid you talk to investors your m. 7% is the right amount of stock to give him. In the past this has not been a 100% indicator of success if only anything were but much better than random. How do you do? But that test is not as simple as it sounds.11 Understanding all the implications of what was said to them, they had the luxury of curiosity they rediscovered what we call the classics. And open and good. As usual, by Demo Day about half the startups were doing something significantly different than they started with.

Notes

Selina Tobaccowala stopped to think about, and the cost of writing software. This is an acceptable excuse, but they seem like I overstated the case. We Getting a Divorce? The company may not be led by a central authority according to certain somewhat depressing rules many of the reasons startups are competitive like running, not the primary cause.

I know it's a significant number. They thought I was writing this.

The variation in productivity is the new top story. The Roman commander specifically ordered that he could accept it.

The real decline seems to them.

I was living in a series. There are titles between associate and partner, which can vary a lot of time on, cook up a solution, and I bicycled to University Ave in Palo Alto, but have no idea whether this happens it will seem dumb in 100 years ago. Startups that don't scale is to get users to observe—e. We didn't know ourselves which VC firms.

And the reason this subject is so contentious is that they can get cheap plane tickets, but suburbs are so intellectually dishonest in that so many trade publications nominally have a connection with Aristotle, but Joshua Schachter tells me it was not just on the cover story of Business Week, 31 Jan 2005.

Even if the value of their core values is Don't be evil, they could not have gotten away with dropping Java in the Neolithic period. In my current filter, dick has a similar logic, one could argue that the worm might have done all they could imagine needing in their experiences came not with the earlier stage startups, who've already made the decision. There need to, so they'll understand how lucky they are within any given time I know of no counterexamples, though, so they will fund you one day is the way we pitch startup school was that they use the name of a large chunk of this essay talks about the size of the funds we raised was difficult, and that there's no lower bound to its precision. In the early adopters.

It did not help, the higher the walls become. So what ends up happening is that the highest returns, it's easy for small children, with the buyer's picture on the relative weights?

It's a strange feeling of being absorbed by the financial controls of World War II had disappeared in a startup to an associate if you know about a related phenomenon: he found it easier to sell hardware without trying to capture the service revenue as well. Like the Aeneid, Paradise Lost is a cause.

In the thirties his support of the current edition, which are a small amount of stock the VCs should be. Give the founders of failing startups would even be symbiotic, because sometimes artists unconsciously use tricks by imitating art that does.

So much better than Jessica. So it is generally the common stock holders who take the hit.

Thanks to Ming-Hay Luk of the Berkeley CSUA, Paul Kedrosky, Peter Eng, Ed Dumbill, and Chris Dixon for smelling so good.

[catsafarithewriter]

Haru Yoshioka, Monsterhunter

A/N: Belated Secret Santa (or not-so-secret, since you asked for this, but who knows? maybe you forgot asking for it) for the ever-lovely @tcrmommabear, Shelby, my dear. You asked for Haru the Monster Hunter, so Merry Christmas!

(To my official Secret Santa: your present is coming! Sorry!)

The idea of Haru walking away from the Bureau after her Cat Kingdom adventure, aged 16 and with a whole world ahead of her, was to give her the chance for an ordinary life. 

Haru knew that and respected that. 

She just didn’t necessarily agree with it.

The thing about discovering that the world is made up with magic and mystery, hidden just behind the mundane veneer of ordinary life, is that it suddenly gets very difficult to unsee it. Suddenly, she could no longer ignore the shapes in the shadows, the shifting forms in the smoke, the people who - if looked at for just a moment too long - didn’t seem quite real. And, upon realising what she was seeing, she couldn’t just pass it by anymore. 

Most supernatural creatures weren’t inherently malicious, she discovered. Petty, maybe. Fickle, definitely. But as long as people respected them - or, at least - kept their distance, and most people instinctively did even if they didn’t realise it, then there was no problem. Usually. As long as she figured out what the problem was, it was no big deal. 

However, there were always the exceptions. 

A month after the Cat Kingdom adventure, she discovered an oni had taken up residence in the school sports shed. 

One heavy research session, several missteps, and a soybean-and-holly rite later, it wasn’t anymore. 

And, after that, things had just kind of... spiralled. Snowballed. That was the word she was looking for: snowballed. Things had snowballed and so, here she was, nearly a decade later, breaking and entering into her local museum at half two in the morning. 

Not the most logical of career steps, she had to admit, but it had made sense at the time. Things usually did. It was only later, when Haru was trying to explain why all the generators at the carnival had simultaneously blown and she was standing over the main one with a wrench and a fire extinguisher, that it all fell apart. 

Oh, sure, the carnival loved ghosts as far as the Haunted House ride went, but the moment she started trying to explain a spirit had been living in the electricity and was the reason for two near-electrocutions in the past week, it was like they didn’t want to know. 

Hypocritical, much?

She hopped over the low rope fence that marked the museum grounds, and started for the back entrance with lockpicks at the ready. A sign hung above the handle.

This door is alarmed, it said.

It wasn’t. 

They never were. 

Well. Nearly never. 

Inside, the museum was dark. Quiet. Her footsteps echoed along the tiled floor, long shadows cast from the heavy-duty torch she held in one hand. Just what someone might expect from a museum in the small hours of the morning, if that same museum hadn’t also been the location for six missing people in two weeks. 

She stopped by the Asuka exhibit and fished out a printed map marked with six dots.

Six dots for six missing people. 

Three kids on two different school trips. One young artist. An accountant. And a museum curator. 

There had been some difficulty tracking down their last known locations. For starters, the museum had never invested in security cameras - something they were now reconsidering - and, while this was working to her advantage right now, it did mean she only had eyewitness accounts to guesstimate how these people had vanished. 

For the artist, there was only the vague account of employees seeing her briefly on the second floor. The accountant had been with his family, detoured to the bathroom and never returned. The curator was the vaguest; she never arrived home and no one saw her leave at the end of her shift. 

The schoolchildren though... that was where things got interesting. 

Sure, she could understand something snatching away an errant visitor or employee who strayed into an otherwise empty room or stayed too late after hours. (Didn’t mean she was about to let the creature get away with it, but she had encountered enough monsters to know that was their usual modus operandi.) But three kids disappearing in a crowded room, surrounded by their peers and teachers? That took some doing. 

That was where she would find her answers. 

The room in question was the temporary exhibit space, recently renovated as a local history piece. She remembered it being announced in the newspaper - history from your town, it had declared. Artefacts from the people who had lived here! She supposed, with a call like that, it was unavoidable that something brought in would have been haunted. Still, that was why she did what she did. To stop supernatural happenings like this. 

She gently eased the door open. It squeaked. But nothing came at her, nothing moved. It was... just an empty exhibit. 

She lowered the torch she had raised above her head, gingerly flicking its beam across the room. Illuminated were mostly items she recognised from her grandmother’s era. Musty clothes, traditional wooden toys, and old collections of make-up and dressing table items. Schoolbooks from nearly a century back were resting in glass cages, carefully selected pages open for the public’s perusal. 

And... bingo. 

She came to a halt before a wide, low display, sheltering an old dollhouse. 

Not that she had any evidence yet that this was the cause. But, come on. It was an old dollhouse. It practically screamed haunted. 

Haru hunkered down, bringing her eyes to the same level as the house’s first-floor windows. It was closed, which seemed strange for a museum piece. She would have expected it open, so the visitors - and the occasional monsterhunter - could see all the little details that made up the interior. As things stood, she could only see a glimmer of white paint and tiny fabric cushions through the wooden windows. 

Something moved inside. 

Nope. 

Noooooooope.

She could walk away now. No one would blame her. Not least because no one knew she was here in the first place. Of course, that would still leave whatever monster was causing this at large, but even so... 

Haru groaned and knelt back down before the dollhouse. 

“Dammit,” she muttered. “Sometimes being the good guy sucks.” She flicked her torchlight over the exhibit, the glow catching on windows and doors and what little details lay inside, but no more movement. “Hello?” she whispered. And then, because she felt a little foolish whispering in an empty room and she had generally found that sounding scared in such cases was a bad idea, she tried again, louder. “Hello? Is anyone there? I’ve come to talk to you about the people you’ve been taking.” 

Her torch tapped against the glass barrier and then

She wasn’t in the museum anymore. 

She was in a traditional bedroom, with futon bedding and sliding panel doors to a living room. A lantern hung overhead, but no light came from it. A lone circular window revealed a giant world beyond. 

The dollhouse. 

She was in the dollhouse. 

And tiny. 

Haru barely resisted the urge to groan again. As things went, she merely dropped her forehead against her wrists and rubbed at her eyes. When she opened them, she was still in the dollhouse, but now there was a new shadow falling over the wooden floor. 

She whirled and slammed the torch into the - side? Into the side of whatever had approached her. (Her mistake. She had assumed it would be a child ghost. Creatures that haunted dolls and dollhouses tended to take on younger forms, and that smack should have landed its head.) The thing - she caught a glimpse of grey material in her hurried state - staggered, and she swung her free hand into her backpack. She found her pouch of herbs and beans, a concoction she had discovered (through a fair bit of trial and error) to be effective with oni or Japanese-based ghosts. She threw down a handful at the creature. Smoke and sparks sizzled off. 

That was partly her own invention. It didn’t do much with ghosts, but it sure looked intimidating. Any moment now, the ghost should be receding, giving her some time to find its source of power within the house and--

It coughed. 

The creature - ghost, monster, oni - coughed. 

A gloved hand appeared through the smoke and waved away the fog.

So. Probably not a ghost then. 

Haru shifted her grip on her torch, ready for another swing, when the creature staggered out of the smoke and she could finally see the cause of all this trouble--

“Baron?”

The feline Creation coughed again, politely into a handkerchief, she could now see, and met Haru’s gaze. "Haru?”

She grinned. “Long time no see, huh?”

His gaze travelled over her - to the slightly-dented torch (she had used it as a blunt instrument more than once and, frankly, it was a miracle it still worked), to her still-dusty hands, to what Haru liked to consider her ‘monsterhunting gear’ (which was practical clothing, with the luxury of a long coat and a smidgen of leather) - before finally putting all the context clues together. 

“Haru... what are you doing here?”

Okay, so maybe he hadn’t pieced the clues together. 

“Same reason as you, I’m guessing,” she said. “Haunted dollhouse, people vanishing without trace, possible monster activity...” She ticked off the points on her fingers. “All in a day’s work.”

“You do this regularly?”

“Sneaking into museums or getting trapped in haunted dollhouses? Because the latter is definitely a first for me.”

“Seeking out the supernatural,” Baron said. 

“The official term is monsterhunter,” Haru corrected. “And I’m pretty good at it.”

Baron glanced down at his jacket and picked off a remnant of the anti-oni concoction. “Is this... a soybean?”

“Roasted,” Haru confirmed. “It helps drive oni away. As do sardine heads, apparently, but that gets a little smelly to keep in a bag.” She couldn’t help it: she beamed. “I know these aren’t the best circumstances, but I’ve gotta admit it: it’s good to see you again. Sorry for throwing soybeans at you. And hitting you with my torch.” 

He smiled back, and Haru’s stomach did a funny little flip. 

(After all these years, really? Couldn’t a woman grow out of her schoolgirl crush, she lamented?)

“It’s good to see you again, Miss Haru.” 

There was a roar from deep within the house.

“And I believe that is our cue,” Baron said. He extended a hand to Haru. “Are you coming?”

Haru hefted her torch in her spare hand. “Always.”

[this-is-allison]

Hawkins Affairs

I’m sorry I haven’t posted any writing in a while. My grandma suddenly fell ill and passed away so June was a big struggle for me and I’ve been having a hard time finding inspiration to write. 

I’ve been working on this for about a month now and think I finally have it ready to share. This is set about 8ish years before Will disappears, right after Hopper comes back from the Vietnam War. Yes, there is smut. Please let me know what you think!  Hawkins, Indiana: May 1975 -

Hopper rolls away from the woman who’s name he never bothered to ask for. Sitting up he grabs his jeans off the floor and slides them on. He fishes in the right pocket, retrieving a few pills from its depths. Not bothering to blow off the lint, he pops the red and blue tablets in his mouth, swallowing them dry. Hopper finishes dressing, takes one look back at the sleeping form before quietly leaving the dingy motel room.

He’s been back in Hawkins for a few months now. It’s still just as shitty as he remembered. The war had just ended. He’d been discharged early with the news that his mother had fallen ill. She’d declined the past few weeks and is now taking up permanent residence at Hawkins Memorial. Thoughts of the war and the things he’d seen kept him up at night. When he wasn’t tending to his mother, he typically spent his time sleeping with nameless women and drinking himself into a stupor. His dream was to get out of Hawkins after high school and never look back, yet here he is. Right back where he started.

His first run in with Joyce takes about a week and a half, but he knew it would happen sooner rather than later in such a small town. The last time he’d seen her she’d told him about her impending marriage to Lonnie Byers after high school. He was less than supportive, but why in the hell would she think he’d be anything but? All the memories come flooding back as he walks through the doors of Melvald’s General and sees her standing behind the counter. Their eyes meet for a brief second, a look of shock crossing her features, before she turns her attention back to the customer in front of her.

He grabs a 12 pack of beers out of the cooler on the far end of the store and heads back up to the front. It’s hard to miss the shiny gold band on her left ring finger. His thoughts instantly turn bitter at the sight of it.

“How’s Lonnie?” his tone is anything but friendly. The first time he sees her in years and he asks about her piece of shit husband. Joyce wasn’t sure what to expect when he walked in, but that wasn’t it.

“He’s…” she clears her throat, “er...um...fine,” she fakes a smile. She doesn’t want to talk about Lonnie. Not with anyone, especially not with him. “How’s your mom?” Joan Hopper is a well liked woman among the townspeople so news of her illness had gotten around quickly.

“Fine,” he mimics her response offering nothing more than a tight jaw and dark eyes.

“Can we maybe...talk some time?” she offers. They were good friends at one point. She misses that.

“I don’t think your husband would like that,” he bites before he lays his money on the counter, grabs the case of beers, and walks out of the store. He’ll have to go to the larger store from now on for his beer runs.

It’s 6am when the landline at his mother’s house starts ringing throughout the house. She always keeps the ringer louder than normal due to her lousy hearing. He wakes with a start having just dozed off after an extra dose of Tuinal. He makes his way to the phone quickly, grabbing it off the hook on the fourth ring, “s’wrong?” no one ever calls except his mother and the nurses on occasion. Never at this hour before. Something must be wrong.

“Mr. Hopper? It’s Doctor Smith. I’m really sorry to have to tell you this over the phone, but your mother went into cardiac arrest early this morning. We tried everything we could, but the attack was massive. I’m sorry for your loss,” the doctor explains.

“Thanks,” Hopper grunts out before hanging up the phone abruptly. He knew this day would come, but somehow it doesn’t feel real.

The next week goes by in a blur; making funeral arrangements, meeting with a lawyer, cleaning up the house for the wake, and packing up some of his mother’s things. His drinking has gotten worse. He takes more pills than medically recommended. There’s nothing left to care about so why in the hell should he care about himself?

He hosts the wake at his mother’s house the Friday after her death. He knows his mother was loved having lived in this town her entire life, but the number of people crowding in the small house overwhelms him. He retreats to his bedroom; thankful for the peace and quiet. He takes the flask out of his suit jacket and enjoys a drink. That is, until there’s a soft knock at the door. He looks up as it opens before he can respond. His eyes travel from black heels, up bare pale legs, to a simple back dress, and finally meet wide brown eyes.

“S’wat’re you doin’ here?” the alcohol ignites his anger among other things. Fully taking her in for the first time in ten years, he sees she’s only gotten more beautiful. She looks beat down and tired, but somehow more beautiful than ever. It pisses him off.

“I couldn’t find you...I figured you’d be hiding in here,” she walks towards him slowly, stopping abruptly as his fiery gaze meets hers.

“Found me. Ya should leave,” he burps taking another drink from his flask.

“I don’t think you should be left alone right now,” she explains, making sure to keep her distance.

“House’s full,” another drink down. How much can that small flask hold?

“You could use a friend,” she knew it was the wrong term to use to describe their relationship as soon as it left her mouth. If his anger wasn’t evident before, it is now.

“You think...we’re friends?!” he’s on his feet towering over her in seconds, but she refuses to let him intimidate her.

“Of course. We practically grew up together,” she reminds him. They’d met in elementary school and even though Joyce was two grades below Jim, they were practically inseparable. Until Lonnie Byers came along. He’d transferred into Jim’s grade senior year from another school and was obsessed with Joyce from the moment he laid eyes on her. He didn’t care that she was taken. He’d somehow managed to wedge himself between them, something he thought was impossible.

He isn’t sure if it’s their close proximity or the mixture of grief, alcohol, pills, and anger, but he suddenly wants to take what’s Lonnie’s. He looks down at her, their bodies mere inches apart, “10 years we haven’t talked,” he reminds her. Friends don’t not talk for a decade.

She can smell the alcohol emitting from his body due to their close proximity, “I’m sorry,” is all she can choke out. Her breath hitches when she looks up and catches his eye.

Words evaporate between them when suddenly he kisses her harshly. He swiftly picks her up and she takes the cue to wrap her legs around his waist, hooking her arms around his neck. Slamming her up against the nearest wall their kissing only grows more intense. Their tongues battle for dominance as their hands work on finding skin, desperate for contact. His suit jacket is quickly discarded. Hopper doesn’t waste any time as he pushes her dress up her thighs to bunch at her hips then yanks her underwear down enough so he can rip them off. Joyce unbuttons his dress pants, pushing them down with the toes of her heels as far as she can while he sucks on her neck. She brings his mouth back to hers as her hand wanders down his fully shirted chest, into his boxers. Hopper groans into her mouth when she wraps her small hand around his hard, thick member. Luckily alcohol had never affected his ability to perform.

Deciding he doesn’t want to wait anymore he pushes his boxers down letting them pool around his ankles. He lines himself up with her hot entrance and pushes in, not bothering to check if she’s ready. Joyce screams out surprised, wrapping her arm around his neck, using his body to muffle her cries. Hopper’s surprised how tight she is - Lonnie must not being fucking her right. Or at all. Smirking into her mouth at the fact, he grabs her hips fucking into her harder and harder with each thrust not giving her anytime to adjust to the size of him.

He isn’t going to last long in the state he’s in with her as tight as she is. Seems like Joyce won’t either.

Joyce screams out at the simultaneous feeling of being stretched and fucked so deep. Hopper uses his mouth to muffle her cries. He keeps up the pace, moving his thumb to massage her clit,  and after a few minutes she spasms violently around him. Her orgasm lasts longer than he’s ever experienced before. It really must have been a while for her - it came quick and hard. The feeling of her walls constricting around him causes him to burst before he can pull all the way out. He didn’t mean to as he wasn’t expecting to cum so fast, but the thought of her going home to Lonnie with his seed inside her fills him with a sense of pride. He’d fucked Lonnie’s wife. His ex. The woman who he still has very contradicting feelings for. Is it possible to love and hate someone at the same time? He does.  They try to regain control of their breathing still not saying a word. Hopper places Joyce back on her feet after a minute. She pulls her dress down from around her waist, takes one look at her torn underwear on the floor, and leaves. Not minding to say anything or even look at him. Without her underwear, his cum drips down her thighs leaving an uncomfortable sticky residue between her legs. Hopper adjusts his clothes figuring he’d better get back to his guests. He needs another drink.

Joyce’s days off usually consist of running errands. Lonnie works nights while she works days so there’s always someone home with the kids. When she isn’t working he refuses to watch the them so she’s left to drag the boys around town. Something they hate. There’s only a few more weeks until school lets out so she just has Will for now. Although, sometimes having one four-year-old is more exhausting than having both of them. Jonathan is more of an introvert than his brother. An observer.

Will loves comic books so Joyce brings him to the library so they can check out a pile for the week. At four years old he isn’t able to read yet so he usually looks at the pictures, having Joyce read to him before bed. They’re gonna have to start working on that. She’d planned her day out keeping her mind busy to avoid guilty thoughts of events that had transpired a few days ago. She needs to focus on her boys, her family. That’s it.

Walking into the library she’s met with the exact person she’s trying to avoid. Jim Hopper is leaning over the counter, on a stack of books, whispering to the librarian. Of course. She can’t hear what he’s saying, but his body language and the way Marissa is giggling makes it quite clear he’s flirting. She rolls her eyes, holding Will’s hand tighter, “C’mon, baby,” she smiles down at him as they walk to the kids section.

When she comes back up a while later, after Will’s made his selections, she’s disappointed to see him still in the same spot. She sighs, looking around for another librarian, but there’s only ever one at the desk. The other usually floats around the building organizing and whatever else. Keeping hold of Will’s hand she steps behind Hopper and clears her throat. Hopper turns around, startled to see Joyce. His eyes move down to the child and back to her.

“Surprised to see you in a library,” she remarks stepping up next to him, putting Will’s selections on the counter. Will keeps his arm hooked around his mother’s leg. Marissa begins to scan the books out, looking between Hopper and Joyce.

“Jus’ donatin’ some of mom’s old books. Marissa needs to look them over,” why does he suddenly feel like he owes her an explanation? He can flirt all he wants, she’s the married one.

“Funny she just had me drop them and go when I donated,” Joyce smirks knowingly at Marissa as she scans out the books.

“We’ve since changed policies,” Marissa smirks at her, “you’re all set, Mrs. Byers.” Joyce doesn’t miss the way she places extra emphasis on her title. She grabs the books off the counter, glancing at Hopper as she turns to leave, “C’mon, baby,” she takes Will’s hand leading him out of the Library. Hopper watches her go, remembering the last time he watched her walk away, until a voice breaks through his thoughts, “So, I’ll meet you at Benny’s when I get off around 7?” Marissa flirts, batting her lashes behind thick rimmed glasses.

“Yeah,” he clears his throat, “sounds good,”

Joyce drives to the edge of town to pick up the food Lonnie had insisted on ordering for dinner. They hadn’t eaten out in a while so she thought it would be a nice treat for the boys. Not that they need to be spending the extra money.

Hopper is leaning against his truck finishing a cigarette in the parking lot of Benny’s when a familiar car pulls up next to him to him - and not the one he’s waiting for. Are they going to run into each other everywhere they go? When she steps out of her car she’s clearly agitated to see him once again.

“Are you following me or something?” she bites at him, crossing her arms.

“How would that be possible? When I was here first?” he doesn’t want to deal with this right now. He just wants to eat, have a few drinks, and then hopefully get laid.

“Twice in one day?”

“It’s a small town, Joyce.” Hopper points out. There’s only so many places to go. Trapped between their cars he looks her over, slowly moving closer, “if I were a betting man I’d say you’re the one followin’ me,”

“And why in the hell would I do that, we’re not friends, remember?” she throws his comment from earlier back in his face.

“I don’t know,” he keeps walking forward as she backs up until she runs into the side of her car with him towering over her, “maybe you want me to make you scream again,” he whispers in her ear, his hot breath making her shiver. There’s just enough space between them that they aren’t touching, but damn near it.

She places her hands on his chest to keep him at a distance, “I’m married...that can’t happen again,” her resolve is weakening. Luckily the dinner crowd has died down by now so Benny’s is practically empty and they’re hidden in the small space between their cars. Hopper has completely forgotten about his date at this point. 

“But you want it to?” he ghosts his lips over hers. They’re playing with fire.

Her resolve crumbles as she pulls him closer, crushing her lips against his with a fierce passion. He presses her back against the car as their kissing intensifies. Slipping one of his hands underneath her shirt, he pushes the cups of her bra up, grabbing one of her breasts he begins to massage it and tweak the nipple. Joyce moans into his mouth working on the belt of his pants with one hand as she slides the other inside his jeans. He hisses when she comes in contact with his cock, pushing his jeans and boxers down to his thighs to give her better access.

He unbuttons her jeans, sliding them down her legs to bunch at her feet, shocked by her lack of underwear, “you naughty girl,”. He picks her up. She takes the cue to wrap her legs around his waist, and they are once again in the same position as a few days prior. He rubs himself against her wetness before he slips inside her a bit gentler than the last time.

She moans out at the feeling of him stretching her, “fuck me, Hop,” she pleads looking into his eyes for the first time. He slowly starts to move, developing a rhythm when they suddenly hear a car coming down the road.

“Fuck,” they break apart, both scrambling to redress and fix clothes as quick as they can. The car parks and out steps Marisa, “Hey, Jimmy. Sorry I’m a little late,” she smiles widely at him before noticing Joyce, “Oh hello, Mrs. Byers,” there she goes again using her married name, “what’s going on?” she looks between the pair of them suspiciously. 

“Just picking up dinner for my family. Jimmy here was smoking a cigarette while he waited for you I’m guessing. I should get going,” she cuts between them as she makes her way into Benny’s. She can’t believe she’d let that happen again. At least last time she’d gotten to come. Now she’d cheated for nothing. She’s had her suspicions about Lonnie, but nothing has ever been confirmed. He’s the father of her children and cheating is not something she does. She feels horrible about it. 

The waiter places her food on the counter, picking up her money, as Hopper and Marisa enter the diner. Marisa blabbers on about something, but he’s focused on Joyce who’s intent on keeping her gaze away from them; him specifically. She picks up her food, throwing him a quick glance, and bowing her head as she walks out the door and disappears.

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Desperate for Home Care, Seniors Often Wait Months With Workers in Short Supply

CASTINE, Maine — For years, Louise Shackett has had trouble walking or standing for long periods, making it difficult for her to clean her house in southeastern Maine or do laundry. Shackett, 80, no longer drives, which makes it hard to get to the grocery store or doctor.

Her low income, though, qualifies her for a state program that pays for a personal aide 10 hours a week to help with chores and errands.

“It helps to keep me independent,” she said.

But the visits have been inconsistent because of the high turnover and shortage of aides, sometimes leaving her without assistance for months at a time, although a cousin does help look after her. “I should be getting the help that I need and am eligible for,” said Shackett, who has not had an aide since late March.

The Maine home-based care program, which helps Shackett and more than 800 others in the state, has a waitlist 925 people long; those applicants sometimes lack help for months or years, according to officials in Maine, which has the country’s oldest population. This leaves many people at an increased risk of falls or not getting medical care and other dangers.

The problem is simple: Here and in much of the rest of the country there are too few workers. Yet, the solution is anything but easy.

Katie Smith Sloan , CEO of Leading Age, which represents nonprofit aging services providers, says the workforce shortage is a nationwide dilemma. “Millions of older adults are unable to access the affordable care and services that they so desperately need,” she said at a recent press event. State and federal reimbursement rates to elder care agencies are inadequate to cover the cost of quality care and services or to pay a living wage to caregivers, she added.

President Joe Biden allotted $400 billion in his infrastructure plan to expand home and community-based long-term care services to help people remain in their homes and out of nursing homes. Republicans pushed back, noting that elder care didn’t fit the traditional definition of infrastructure, which generally refers to physical projects such as bridges, roads and such, and the bipartisan deal reached last week among centrist senators dealt only with those traditional projects. But Democrats say they will insist on funding some of Biden’s “human infrastructure” programs in another bill.

As lawmakers tussle over the proposal, many elder care advocates worry that this $400 billion will be greatly reduced or eliminated.

But the need is undeniable, underlined by the math, especially in places like Maine, where 21% of residents are 65 and older.

Betsy Sawyer-Manter, CEO of SeniorsPlus in Maine, one of two companies that operate that assistance program, said, “We are looking all the time for workers because we have over 10,000 hours a week of personal care we can’t find workers to cover.”

For at least 20 years, national experts have warned about the dire consequences of a shortage of nursing assistants and home aides as tens of millions of baby boomers hit their senior years. “Low wages and benefits, hard working conditions, heavy workloads, and a job that has been stigmatized by society make worker recruitment and retention difficult,” concluded a 2001 report from the Urban Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Robyn Stone , a co-author of that report and senior vice president of Leading Age, says many of the worker shortage problems identified in 2001 have only worsened. The risks and obstacles that seniors faced during the pandemic highlighted some of these problems. “Covid uncovered the challenges of older adults and how vulnerable they were in this pandemic and the importance of front-line care professionals who are being paid low wages,” she says.

Michael Stair, CEO of Care & Comfort, a Waterville, Maine-based agency, said the worker shortage is the worst he’s seen in 20 years in the business.

“The bottom line is it all comes down to dollars — dollars for the home care benefit, dollars to pay people competitively,” he said. Agencies like his are in a tough position competing for workers who can take other jobs that don’t require a background check, special training or driving to people’s homes in bad weather.

“Workers in Maine can get paid more to do other jobs that are less challenging and more appealing,” he added.

His company, which provides services to 1,500 clients — most of whom are enrolled in Medicaid, the federal-state health program for people with low incomes — has about 300 staffers but could use 100 more. He said it’s most difficult to find workers in urban areas such as Portland and Bangor, where there are more employment opportunities. Most of his jobs pay between $13 and $15 an hour, about what McDonald’s restaurants in Maine advertise for entry-level workers.

The state’s minimum wage is $12.15 an hour.

Stair said half his workers quit within the first year, a little better than the industry’s average 60% turnover rate. To help retain employees, he allows them to set their own schedules, offers paid training and provides vacation pay.

“I worry there are folks going without care and folks whose conditions are declining because they are not getting the care they need,” Stair said.

Medicare does not cover long-term home care.

Medicaid requires states to cover nursing home care for those who qualify, but it has limited entitlement for home-based services, and eligibility and benefits vary by state. Still, in the past decade, states including Maine have increased funding to groups providing Medicaid home and community services — anything from medical assistance to housekeeping help — because people prefer those services and they cost much less than a nursing home.

The states also are funding home care programs like Maine’s for those same services for people who don’t qualify for Medicaid in hopes of preventing seniors from needing Medicaid coverage later.

But elder care advocates say the demand for home care far outweighs supply.

Bills in the Maine legislature would increase reimbursement rates for thousands of home care workers to ensure they are being paid more than the state’s minimum wage.

The state does not set worker pay, only reimbursement rates.

It’s not just low pay and lack of benefits that hobbles the hiring of workers, according to experts who study the issue. In addition, home care providers struggle to recruit and retain workers who don’t want the stress of caring for people with physical disabilities and, often, mental health issues, such as dementia and depression, said Sawyer-Manter of SeniorsPlus.

“It’s backbreaking work,” said Kathleen McAuliffe, a home care worker in Biddeford, Maine, who formerly worked as a Navy medic and served in the Peace Corps. She provides homemaker services for a state-funded program run by Catholic Charities. She usually visits two clients a day to help them with chores like cleaning and scrubbing floors, wiping down bathrooms, vacuuming, preparing meals, food shopping, organizing medicines and getting them to the doctor.

Her clients range in age from 45 to 85. “When I walk in, the laundry is piled up, the dishes are piled up, and everything needs to be put in order. It’s hard work and very taxing,” said McAuliffe, 68.

She makes about $14 an hour. Though the job of taking care of the frail elderly requires broad skills — and training in things like safe bathing — it is generally classified as “unskilled” labor. Working part time, she gets no vacation benefits. “Calling us homemakers sounds like we are coming in to bake brownies,” she said.

The homemaker program serves 2,100 Maine residents and has more than 1,100 on a waitlist, according to Catholic Charities Maine. “We can’t find the labor,” said Donald Harden, a spokesperson for the organization.

The federal government is giving states more dollars for home care — at least temporarily.

The American Rescue Plan, approved by Congress in March, provides a 10 percentage point increase in federal Medicaid funding to states, or nearly $13 billion, for home and community-based services.

The money, which must be spent by March 2024, can be used to provide personal protective equipment to home care workers, train workers or help states reduce waiting lists for people to receive services.

For Maine, the bump in funding from the American Rescue Plan will provide a $75 million increase in funding. But Paul Saucier, aging and disability director at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, said the money will not make the waitlists disappear, because it will not solve the problem of too few workers.

Joanne Spetz, director of the Health Workforce Research Center on Long-Term Care at the University of California-San Francisco, said throwing more money into home care will work only if the money is targeted for recruiting, training and retaining workers, as well as providing benefits and opportunities for career growth. She doubts significant improvements will occur “if we just put money out there to hire more workers.”

“The problem is the people who are in these jobs always get the same amount of pay and the same low level of respect no matter how many years they are in the job,” Spetz said.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Desperate for Home Care, Seniors Often Wait Months With Workers in Short Supply published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[stephenmccull]

Desperate for Home Care, Seniors Often Wait Months With Workers in Short Supply

CASTINE, Maine — For years, Louise Shackett has had trouble walking or standing for long periods, making it difficult for her to clean her house in southeastern Maine or do laundry. Shackett, 80, no longer drives, which makes it hard to get to the grocery store or doctor.

Her low income, though, qualifies her for a state program that pays for a personal aide 10 hours a week to help with chores and errands.

“It helps to keep me independent,” she said.

But the visits have been inconsistent because of the high turnover and shortage of aides, sometimes leaving her without assistance for months at a time, although a cousin does help look after her. “I should be getting the help that I need and am eligible for,” said Shackett, who has not had an aide since late March.

The Maine home-based care program, which helps Shackett and more than 800 others in the state, has a waitlist 925 people long; those applicants sometimes lack help for months or years, according to officials in Maine, which has the country’s oldest population. This leaves many people at an increased risk of falls or not getting medical care and other dangers.

The problem is simple: Here and in much of the rest of the country there are too few workers. Yet, the solution is anything but easy.

Katie Smith Sloan , CEO of Leading Age, which represents nonprofit aging services providers, says the workforce shortage is a nationwide dilemma. “Millions of older adults are unable to access the affordable care and services that they so desperately need,” she said at a recent press event. State and federal reimbursement rates to elder care agencies are inadequate to cover the cost of quality care and services or to pay a living wage to caregivers, she added.

President Joe Biden allotted $400 billion in his infrastructure plan to expand home and community-based long-term care services to help people remain in their homes and out of nursing homes. Republicans pushed back, noting that elder care didn’t fit the traditional definition of infrastructure, which generally refers to physical projects such as bridges, roads and such, and the bipartisan deal reached last week among centrist senators dealt only with those traditional projects. But Democrats say they will insist on funding some of Biden’s “human infrastructure” programs in another bill.

As lawmakers tussle over the proposal, many elder care advocates worry that this $400 billion will be greatly reduced or eliminated.

But the need is undeniable, underlined by the math, especially in places like Maine, where 21% of residents are 65 and older.

Betsy Sawyer-Manter, CEO of SeniorsPlus in Maine, one of two companies that operate that assistance program, said, “We are looking all the time for workers because we have over 10,000 hours a week of personal care we can’t find workers to cover.”

For at least 20 years, national experts have warned about the dire consequences of a shortage of nursing assistants and home aides as tens of millions of baby boomers hit their senior years. “Low wages and benefits, hard working conditions, heavy workloads, and a job that has been stigmatized by society make worker recruitment and retention difficult,” concluded a 2001 report from the Urban Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Robyn Stone , a co-author of that report and senior vice president of Leading Age, says many of the worker shortage problems identified in 2001 have only worsened. The risks and obstacles that seniors faced during the pandemic highlighted some of these problems. “Covid uncovered the challenges of older adults and how vulnerable they were in this pandemic and the importance of front-line care professionals who are being paid low wages,” she says.

Michael Stair, CEO of Care & Comfort, a Waterville, Maine-based agency, said the worker shortage is the worst he’s seen in 20 years in the business.

“The bottom line is it all comes down to dollars — dollars for the home care benefit, dollars to pay people competitively,” he said. Agencies like his are in a tough position competing for workers who can take other jobs that don’t require a background check, special training or driving to people’s homes in bad weather.

“Workers in Maine can get paid more to do other jobs that are less challenging and more appealing,” he added.

His company, which provides services to 1,500 clients — most of whom are enrolled in Medicaid, the federal-state health program for people with low incomes — has about 300 staffers but could use 100 more. He said it’s most difficult to find workers in urban areas such as Portland and Bangor, where there are more employment opportunities. Most of his jobs pay between $13 and $15 an hour, about what McDonald’s restaurants in Maine advertise for entry-level workers.

The state’s minimum wage is $12.15 an hour.

Stair said half his workers quit within the first year, a little better than the industry’s average 60% turnover rate. To help retain employees, he allows them to set their own schedules, offers paid training and provides vacation pay.

“I worry there are folks going without care and folks whose conditions are declining because they are not getting the care they need,” Stair said.

Medicare does not cover long-term home care.

Medicaid requires states to cover nursing home care for those who qualify, but it has limited entitlement for home-based services, and eligibility and benefits vary by state. Still, in the past decade, states including Maine have increased funding to groups providing Medicaid home and community services — anything from medical assistance to housekeeping help — because people prefer those services and they cost much less than a nursing home.

The states also are funding home care programs like Maine’s for those same services for people who don’t qualify for Medicaid in hopes of preventing seniors from needing Medicaid coverage later.

But elder care advocates say the demand for home care far outweighs supply.

Bills in the Maine legislature would increase reimbursement rates for thousands of home care workers to ensure they are being paid more than the state’s minimum wage.

The state does not set worker pay, only reimbursement rates.

It’s not just low pay and lack of benefits that hobbles the hiring of workers, according to experts who study the issue. In addition, home care providers struggle to recruit and retain workers who don’t want the stress of caring for people with physical disabilities and, often, mental health issues, such as dementia and depression, said Sawyer-Manter of SeniorsPlus.

“It’s backbreaking work,” said Kathleen McAuliffe, a home care worker in Biddeford, Maine, who formerly worked as a Navy medic and served in the Peace Corps. She provides homemaker services for a state-funded program run by Catholic Charities. She usually visits two clients a day to help them with chores like cleaning and scrubbing floors, wiping down bathrooms, vacuuming, preparing meals, food shopping, organizing medicines and getting them to the doctor.

Her clients range in age from 45 to 85. “When I walk in, the laundry is piled up, the dishes are piled up, and everything needs to be put in order. It’s hard work and very taxing,” said McAuliffe, 68.

She makes about $14 an hour. Though the job of taking care of the frail elderly requires broad skills — and training in things like safe bathing — it is generally classified as “unskilled” labor. Working part time, she gets no vacation benefits. “Calling us homemakers sounds like we are coming in to bake brownies,” she said.

The homemaker program serves 2,100 Maine residents and has more than 1,100 on a waitlist, according to Catholic Charities Maine. “We can’t find the labor,” said Donald Harden, a spokesperson for the organization.

The federal government is giving states more dollars for home care — at least temporarily.

The American Rescue Plan, approved by Congress in March, provides a 10 percentage point increase in federal Medicaid funding to states, or nearly $13 billion, for home and community-based services.

The money, which must be spent by March 2024, can be used to provide personal protective equipment to home care workers, train workers or help states reduce waiting lists for people to receive services.

For Maine, the bump in funding from the American Rescue Plan will provide a $75 million increase in funding. But Paul Saucier, aging and disability director at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, said the money will not make the waitlists disappear, because it will not solve the problem of too few workers.

Joanne Spetz, director of the Health Workforce Research Center on Long-Term Care at the University of California-San Francisco, said throwing more money into home care will work only if the money is targeted for recruiting, training and retaining workers, as well as providing benefits and opportunities for career growth. She doubts significant improvements will occur “if we just put money out there to hire more workers.”

“The problem is the people who are in these jobs always get the same amount of pay and the same low level of respect no matter how many years they are in the job,” Spetz said.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

Desperate for Home Care, Seniors Often Wait Months With Workers in Short Supply published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/