#I also keep tormenting people with the cave part trust me it finds ways to be relevant

[murderofsomeone]

what's your opinion of the afternoon from viewmonster ?

it's pretty silly I like it. some parts are fun to play on piano

[vrishchikawrites]

Are you still taking prompts?

Cause if so, I'd love to see a time travel fic where post-canon WWX and LWJ get yeeted back into their younger bodies, and land just before the GC transfer. And Post-Canon WWX - who's had some years of being a part of a loving, supportive family, in a non-toxic, non-abusive environment; and therefore no longer has any misconceptions about how much the Jiangs were not his family - takes one look at JC lying there on the table in the cave after WQ knocked him out (and is now in the middle of prepping for surgery); and just goes, "LOL, yeah; nope.😆 Been there, done that; 10/10, would not recommend.😝 Hey, WQ - change of plans!😎"

(Except, you know, not written like crack. 😉)

Not necessary to include, but a fun idea:

JC gets dragged along to the past as well because he has WWX's GC; so whatever sent them back mistook him for part of WWX and brought him along.

So when he wakes up from the anaesthesia, he freaks out about not having a GC anymore. And WWX has this whole story ready to tell young JC about how, "Oops, sorry; you can't have a new GC after all" - but this is Post-Canon JC; so he knows about the transfer, and knows that this means that WWX decided not to do it again.

Which means he ends up screaming at WWX about, "How dare you not give me your GC!"

So WWX feels exactly zero sympathy.

(Before that happened he was maybe feeling a little bit bad for young JC; because that JC hadn't done anything too bad yet - but he already knew how it would turn out if he went through with it. And he was not giving up his chance to cultivate to immortality with his hubby; just so that JC could Feel Like A Real Man, and go on to murder his way through life again.)

What would be really, really great about this, is if WWX had brought JC to Qinghe or Gusu; or somewhere the other cultivation sects involved in the SSC had gathered, before JC woke up. Planning to leave him there where he would be safe. So when JC wakes up and starts screaming, everybody hears him.

And they're all like, "...WUT."🤤

"You expected him to do what?!?"😲😨😱

So instead of all the sympathy and compassion, etc, that he would have gotten over what happened at LP (that he probably did get the first time), or for losing his GC; basically the entire allied cultivation world as a whole is collectively side-eyeing him.

IDK; I just think it would be really funny.

But mainly, I just want to see WWX a few years post-canon; having the chance to do it all again, and choosing not to go through with the GC transfer. LWJ going with him is because the thought of post-canon LWJ losing his WWX makes me sad; and I want them to stay together. 😋

Post-Canon JC going back and getting stuck with the coreless body he deserved is just for my own catharsis.

(The rest of that idea is simply for the lulz.) 😉

(I decided not to include JC traveling back in time. Hope this works and satisfies you!)

“No, I don’t.” Wei Wuxian sees Wen Qing blink and stare at him while Wen Ning stills in the process of making Jiang Cheng comfortable.

“What?” Wen Qing asks but rethinks it immediately, “No, no need to answer that.” She starts packing away her instruments immediately like she’s glad that Wei Wuxian has changed his mind. He looks at her and feels aching fondness rise in his chest. She must be frustrated that he made her go through all of that trouble and yet she still chooses to move before he can change his mind again.

“What… are we going to tell Jiang-gongzi?” Wen Ning asks tentatively but Wei Wuxian notes the faint look of relief in the boy’s eyes.

“We’ll tell him the treatment wasn't possible,” He says, glancing at his… former shidi. It isn’t an easy decision to make, because he knows Jiang Cheng would suffer for it. A part of him feels like he’s being unnecessarily cruel by denying Jiang Cheng his core.

But he has already paid his debt and it cost countless people their lives. Jiang Cheng’s actions didn’t just lead to the death of the Wens. Lan Zhan had told him about the numerous ‘demonic cultivators’ Jiang Cheng had pursued relentlessly. Even his love wasn’t certain how many people died or were tormented to insanity because of Jiang Cheng’s persistence.

While Wei Wuxian doesn’t intend to let the situation get so out of hand, it is apparent that Jiang Cheng can’t be trusted with power.

He is worried about how Jiang Cheng would react. Wei Wuxian had promised him a core, after all. But whatever happens, a powerless Jiang Cheng is safer for everyone.

“We’ll tell him that rebuilding the core is impossible because Wen Zhuliu destroyed his meridians as well.”

“He has,” Wen Qing points out, “I was about to repair them.”

Wei Wuxian frowns, “And can you repair them still? Without transferring the core?” That would certainly help Jiang Cheng heal faster and accept some spiritual energy transfusions. Wen Qing looks at Jiang Cheng with a frown and nods.

“Wei-gongzi… what changed your mind?” Wen Ning asks as Wen Qing goes to work immediately. Wei Wuxian knows that if he has to help the Wens, he needs to tell them the truth. While Wen Ning would trust him and accept his explanation without too many questions, Wen Qing wouldn’t be so easy.

Wei Wuxian takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, getting his thoughts in order. When he opens them again, both of the Wens are looking at him with frowns.

He grins wryly and spreads his hands, "I have a tale for you, my dear friends."

-

Jin Guangyao needed to have his last 'hurrah'. He just couldn't leave them be, even as he died. Whatever he did, whatever tool he used, it sent a shockwave of Resentful Energy that would've killed them all.

As always, Wei Wuxian stepped forward to protect people. As always, Lan Wangji stepped forward to protect him.

Wei Wuxian gritted his teeth and changed his plan at the last moment. At first, he wanted to absorb the energy and channel it somewhere else. But with so many people just lingering instead of running, he needed a different solution.

His mind flashed, he saw Jiang Cheng, and decided.

A forbidden array formed.

-

"I needed something that would use up all of the Resentful Energy and protect everyone, including Lan Zhan."

"So, at the last moment and on the verge of dying, you chose something as improbable as time travel." Wen Qing deadpans. Wen Ning is looking at him with wide eyes. Strangely enough, both look like they believe him. Well, he did mention a few things, personal incidents, that he had no way of knowing if the Wens hadn't told him.

Still.

"I'm not the one for regrets," He says softly as he looks at Jiang Cheng, "But I thought that array was the safest solution. It doesn't harm the current timeline so everyone is safe. Lan Zhan, I know, wouldn't mind following my lead in this." He did regret taking Zewu-jun's brother away from him after such a traumatic event but there really was no other option. Not with Jin Ling so close and so many innocent people in the vicinity.

Wei Wuxian is quite certain that the blast would've destroyed everything around them, including the innocent people around the Guanyin Temple complex.

The siblings exchange glances before Wen Qing returns to Jiang Cheng's side, preparing to work on his meridians, "You're going to change things." She observes, "Save people?"

"Save you and Wen Ning. Save Jiang Yanli. Save innocents, yes."

Wen Qing freezes.

---

Lan Wangji doesn't know what Wei Ying did but he trusts his beloved. When he finds himself in the past, just before the Sunshot Campaign begins and shortly after the fall of the Lotus Pier, he doesn't hesitate.

He knows that his brother is safe and his uncle is managing things at Cloud Recesses. But he also knows that somewhere out there, his beloved is preparing himself for a risky, painful procedure.

Wangji can't let that happen. He thinks back on everything Wen Ning shared with him about the incident, particularly the location of where it occurred. He's probably too late to stop the transfer but perhaps not late enough to stop the Wens from finding Wei Ying.

It takes him days to reach Yiling without the aid of Bichen but he manages and immediately heads towards the approximate location Wen Ning had mentioned.

"Wei Ying," He breathes softly when he spots his beloved shopping for some supplies. He hadn't anticipated finding him so soon but is grateful nonetheless.

Wei Ying is dressed like a peasant and blends in well with the people around him but Wangji can recognize him anywhere.

Dressed discreetly and without his forehead ribbon, Wangji too is inconspicuous. He moves swiftly towards Wei Ying and catches his elbow, eyeing the people in red and white uniform at the far end of the street warily.

"Come." He whispers.

Wei Ying doesn't say a word, just paying the vendor and following Wangji into a more discreet location.

Wangji looks at his beloved's face, drinking in his bright silver eyes and sharp features with acute relief.

"Wei Ying, you… you look well." Strangely so, for someone who has just given up his Golden Core.

Hope stirs in his chest and Wangji reaches for Wei Ying's wrist.

His love's lips quirk in amusement, but Wangji ignores him, focusing on sending his spiritual energy through Wei Ying's meridians.

A strong core pulses in response.

"Wei Ying," Something bright and triumphant burns in his chest and he resists the urge to pull his beloved into a crushing embrace.

He would've supported Wei Ying's decision to give up his core and cultivate with resentful energy again. He knew it wasn't evil or harmful now.

But Wei Ying chose himself. His beloved had finally chosen to save himself.

"Aiya, Lan Zhan!" Wei Ying laughs, "If you keep looking at me like that, I'll do something quite shameless and embarra-"

Wangji kisses him.

He cups that precious face, pulls him close, and slides his lips over soft flesh in a tender expression of love he can't contain.

Wei Ying chose himself.

---

Jiang Cheng returns from his trip to the mountain with a thunderous expression on his face.

He disregards Lan Zhan and grabs Wei Wuxian's arm in a tough grip, dragging him away from the crowded tea house. Lan Zhan follows without a word, his expression frosty and eyes on Jiang Cheng.

"Your Grandmaster," He spits, "Is just as useless and worthless as you. All she could do is repair my meridians! My body was too damaged for anything else, she said!"

Wei Wuxian knows Wen Qing wrote the note they left by Jiang Cheng's side but he hadn't known what she had written.

It must've been reasonably convincing for Jiang Cheng to be convinced.

"That's-" He searches his mind to find words that would be appropriately sympathetic. Saying 'that's too bad' would be just rubbing salt on an open wound.

He may dislike Jiang Cheng, but some of the childhood affection still lingers. He doesn't wish to hurt his former shidi.

"I didn't know," He says finally, his heart throbbing in sympathy at Jiang Cheng's devastated expression. He briefly reconsiders his decision but Lan Zhan shifts discreetly by his side and Wei Wuxian remembers why he made that decision in the first place.

Jiang Cheng had been unworthy of the gift he had been given.

His shidi snarls and turns to Lan Zhan, "What are you doing here, Lan er-gonzi," He snarls, "Coming to triumph in our misery?"

Lan Zhan looks at him flatly, "I came to assist Wei Ying."

"Came to assist Wei Ying," Jiang Cheng mocks, his expression tight and furious, "Well, you're welcome to take him away! There's nothing left for him to destroy. Everything is gone. He invited the wrath of the Wens on our heads to protect you and that led to the destruction of my sect. He couldn't even repay that debt. His Grandmaster failed."

Jiang Cheng turns hate-filled eyes towards him, "You are a curse. My father should have left you to rot on the streets!"

"Jiang Wanyin!" Lan Zhan warns but Wei Wuxian places a hand on the Second Jade's arm to halt him.

"I'm taking you to Meishan to be with shijie." Wei Wuxian says calmly, "And then I'll go join the war efforts."

Jiang Cheng sneers before turning his head away, silent.

Wei Wuxian does as he says. He leaves Jiang Cheng in Jiang Yanli's care and heads to Qinghe with Lan Zhan. The war goes differently than before. He manages to kill Wen Zhuliu and Wen Chao early, which gives them a big morale boost. But that's the only thing that goes their way for a long time.

"I'm going to use it," He tells Lan Zhan once, when the scales tip dangerously in the Wen's favor.

Lan Zhan studies him before nodding gracefully, "I will help."

There's no way to avoid using his cultivation method, not if he wants to keep people safe. He's more careful and restrained this time and he doesn't create the Yīn Hǔ Fú. But Mo Dao is Mo Dao. It attracts disapproval from people regardless.

Wei Wuxian doesn't care and Lan Zhan stays by his side without paying any heed to the grumblings of his clan. He goes to sleep every night with Lan Zhan's guqin notes in his ear and meditates every morning with the Cleansing purging the Resentful Energy from his body.

With a powerful and active Golden Core, Wei Wuxian can't use Mo Dao liberally without risking Qi Deviation. But he uses enough to help them win the war.

Wei Wuxian successfully retakes Lotus Pier and Yunmeng from the Wens. Jiang Cheng's hatred doesn't diminish and even Jiang Yanli grows distant after a while. Jiang Cheng's suffering and downfall hardens something in his soft shijie.

Wei Wuxian accepts that consequence quietly.

He hands Lotus Pier back to Jiang Cheng and stays on the front lines, leaving most of the freshly recruited disciples behind to protect his former martial siblings. When the war ends, argues to keep the Wen cultivators in better conditions. He makes sure everyone knows how much the Jiangs owe the Wen siblings, and saves the children and elderly.

With Jiang Cheng out of the Cultivation World and Wei Wuxian's reputation as a war hero, saving the Wen remnants is easier than it had been before.

---

Everyone is baffled when Jiang Wanyin names a new head disciple and Wei Wuxian never returns to Yunmeng. People gossip, sect leaders question, and new Jiang disciple flounder.

Neither Jiang Wanyin nor Wei Wuxian confirms it but it is clear to everyone that the Jiang Sect has, foolishly, kicked out its most powerful disciple. YunmengJiang remains wealthy but the Sect's influence diminishes significantly once Wei Wuxian leaves.

Other Sects, big and small, scramble to find Wei Wuxian, ready to offer him a place and get a powerful cultivator in their ranks. Letters pour in promising wealth and prestige.

Wei Wuxian ignores them all and settles in Cloud Recesses. He's content to teach a group of eye-wide Lan ducklings now to deal with resentful energy and limit the risk of Qi Deviation. He takes them on Nighthunts, teaches them real-life lessons, encourages creativity, and becomes a well-loved senior.

New YunmengJiang disciples aren't near as strong as their predecessors without someone to teach them properly.

People gossip and speculate as the years pass. They hint that he is wrong to leave his former sect behind but he doesn't care.

Wei Wuxian has Lan Zhan and Lan Sizhui. Wen Qing and Wen Ning live happily in a small farming village not far from Gusu. They intervene before Jin Guangyao kills Nie Mingjue. They save Lan Xichen from heartache. Jin Ling is born and has both of his parents.

That's all he needs to be happy.

YunmengJiang is no longer his responsibility.

[rucow]

massive nerevoryn hcs, beware

I have nerevoryn brainworms that torment me day and night, so I answered this ask game under the cut (I did this for myself not for anyone else, pls be nice and ignore it if u don’t like something you see here!)

(A lil clarification: I headcanon Voryn as nonbinary and I use they/them pronouns for them, also they’re ace and afab in my hc, pls look away if that makes u uncomfy) • How did they first meet? They met when Nerevar was hopping from House to House to ask to be supported as Hortator, he just kinda showed up at Voryn's home outta nowhere and was met with 38237 identical serious Dagoth siblings. I can’t think about it without laughing dgsfh

• What was their first impression of each other? Voryn thought Nerevar a fool at first, for coming all the way to Kogoruhn just to ask for political support and to justify /why/ he should be politically supported However, Voryn saw almost instantly that Nerevar was genuine and driven and had strong ambitions for Resdayn, and they ended up agreeing on a lot of things. Meanwhile, Nerevar's first impression of Voryn was...kinda non-existent? He didn't pay much attention to them and didn't differentiate much between Voryn and their siblings. They were all just a bunch of polite goths to him, so he liked them from the beginning 😹

• Did any of their friends or family want them to get together? Voryn's family was neutral and maybe a lil cautious, but ultimately didn't interfere at all and they quickly accepted Nerevar as part of their family Nerevar has no family, though I consider Vivec to be his family in some way. But no, Vivec didn't really want them to get together :') (he didn't like Voryn very much in the beginning, he thought they're boring, too serious, and has no sense of humor LOL but he warms up to them after a while.. he won’t stop messing with them tho, bc they’re rly easy to tease and that’s fun) • Who felt romantic feelings first? Voryn did. Nerevar's feelings only started ages later, he's not really the type to sit down and analyze/reflect on his feelings, so he didn't realize he had romantic feelings until they hit him full force LOL • Did either of them try to resist their feelings? Voryn tried, but gave up and opted for hiding their feelings instead of suppressing them 😔 • If you had told one of them that the other would be their soulmate, what would they think? They would believe it. Nerevar wouldn't immediately assume it means "romantic soulmate" though, he already sees Voryn as a very close friend so the news that they're soulmates makes perfect sense to him. On the other hand, Voryn wouldn't be surprised to find out they're soulmates, but they'd feel like it's a cruel thing to do to them both, since they can't be together openly and in the way that they want to be. It would be heartbreaking to them :’/ • What would their lives be like if they had never met? Voryn's life would've remained quiet and uneventful, most likely. And they wouldn’t have ended up the way they did in canon.  Nerevar is an unpredictable mystery though so I have no idea, maybe he'd go down a different path and take some impulsive bad decisions in his life 🤔 oh wait he already does that nvm • Who initiated the relationship, and how did it go? Nerevar initiated it. Voryn has had feelings for him for a very long time, but at first they didn't want to be in a relationship with Nerevar due to how complicated it would be, but yeah...they couldn't ignore their heart's call, and definitely couldn't refuse Nerevar when he started returning the feelings :') • Did they have an official first date? If so, what was it like? YEAH!! I have no idea though! It would've been secret but very nice and romantic :'D • What was their first kiss like? It was intimate, and heavy. It was packed full of years of suppressed feelings and wishes. Voryn may have teared up a bit lmao • Were they each other’s first anything (kiss, relationship, etc.)? Nerevar has already had relationships (though nothing long-term) and has had...experience with ppl, in all meanings Nerevar WAS Voryn's first everything though! Mainly because Voryn has never had much interest in ppl before, and just the thought of kissing grosses them out, unless it’s with the right person ofc uwu • What’s their height difference? Age difference? Nerevar is 6'1 and Voryn is 5′6-5'7, they're the same age though! • What’s their relationship with each other’s families? Nerevar likes the dagoths. They don’t pry into his business (ahem, affair*) with Voryn and they always welcome him to Kogoruhn with no problem (aka they tolerate his out-of-nowhere appearances and occassional odd behavior). He finds it a bit unsettling that Voryn has so many siblings but he doesn’t question it. Voryn tries to get along with Vivec, even tho the younger makes it difficult. Voryn is an older sibling, so they have the patience to deal with a younger moodier mer who’s hellbent on disliking them for no reason LOL • Who takes the lead in social situations? Nerevar does, Voryn is really awkward at socializing and hates doing it too 😹 • Who gets jealous easier? They both do, but their jealousy manifests in different ways. Nerevar is much more vocal/open about it. Voryn doesn't give him any reasons to be jealous tho, at least not on purpose 🤧 • Who whispers inappropriate things in the other’s ear? UHH neither of them does 😳 ...unless they've been drinking, then they both do it fjdhsn (Voryn won’t say anything explicit tho, just rly cheesy declarations of love or something SOBS) • Who said “I love you” first? Voryn said it first, but only after Nerevar had already confessed his feelings :’) they needed to be sure they wouldn’t get rejected bc that would just break their heart tbh • Who uses cheesy pick-up lines? Both do, but they mean it in all seriousness, and they believe every word the other says. • How often do they cuddle/engage in PDA? PDA is a big no-no for obvious reasons, unless it's only around trustworthy ppl like Alandro Sul and Voryn's family. Yes, Alan my boi is chill with all of this hehe • Who initiates kisses? Nerevar. He's very touchy uwu • Who’s the big and little spoon? Nere's the big spoon, usually. Voryn's like...a stick...though they can get clingy in their sleep /sobs • What are their favorite things to do together? Having time to spend together is rare for them, so they treasure every little moment they have. They both prefer spending time completely alone with one another, somewhere far and secluded where they can’t see or hear any other people. Nerevar needs moments of quietness to recharge after dealing with so many ppl in his daily affairs, so he really appreciates Voryn’s company bc their energy is very calming and they’re just quiet and pleasant in general.... they’re the type to sit in comfortable silence and just lean on one another as the world fades around them :’) • Who’s better at comforting the other? They know each other very well, so they're both amazing at comforting each other, except it's a lot easier for Voryn to comfort Nerevar solely because Voryn isn't as open about their emotions as he is, and doesn't want to worry Nerevar with anything, so they keep their emotions/pain private much more than Nerevar does. Nere's more open about things that bother him and spills his soul out to Voryn often lol • Who’s more protective? Oh gosh they are both overprotective of one another, they live dangerous lives after all. However, Voryn's the type to get physically sick by worrying over Nerevar's well-being... Nerevar doesn't handle it any better tho, he would become very spooky and destructive if anything happened to Voryn 👀 • Do they prefer verbal or physical affection? Nerevar prefers verbal affection from Voryn, because he knows Voryn’s words are always truthful. Voryn prefers physical affection from Nerevar though, because they know he uses verbal affection with a lot of people, so the physical kind feels more personal and genuine to them u_u • What are some songs that apply to their relationship, in-universe or otherwise? ... I must warn u. my taste in music is maybe TOO happy/sappy for these two, but anyway.. here u go (all these songs are from Voryn’s POV): 1. the lyrics and overall aesthetic and feel of this song.. it suits them in my hc a lot :’( 2. by the same singer, this song HHNGN the lyrics just make me think of how voryn sees nerevar 3. something even more light-hearted... sorry there’s no eng subs but trust me the lyrics are beautiful, the bridge especially makes me cry it’s so pretty.. and 「美しい心を持っている、ずっとこの海よりも深い」 😭 BASICALLY ANY LOVE SONGS MAKE ME THINK OF THEM 😭😭 • Who remembers the little things? Voryn's memory is impeccable. Nerevar is kinda airheaded, he doesn't remember things consciously but he remembers them in his heart • If they get married, who proposes? Voryn does! Though it's not a typical proposal, because their relationship isn't typical either. They simply propose that they both should undergo a ritual to bring them (more specifically, their souls) closer together... It’s the same ritual that Voryn’s mother did to their father, and they learned it from her before she disappeared/passed • What’s the wedding like? Who attends? It's a secret one, so no one attends it besides the two. It's not a wedding though, it's more like a romantic ritual conducted by Voryn themself, where they link their souls/hearts together :') it happens at nighttime in a secluded place, probably a cave with an open sky... somewhere in nature far away from any civilization • How many kids do they have, if any? What are they like? They have one very rambunctious but sweet daughter! She inherits a LOT of Nerevar’s looks and personality, even his ideals and stuff (once she grows up) • Do they have any pets? Nerevar doesn't have any, but he loves animals. Voryn's home has plenty of domestic animals/creatures though, much to Nerevar's joy 👌 (yes I hc the dagoths to be farmers bc I love the thought of a goth farm) • Who’s the stricter parent? Voryn. Though they're still very mild, just. more cautious about parenting than Nerevar is?? And unlike him, they actually teach their kid manners djfnsf • Who kills the bugs in the house? VORYN. They have no fear of bugs and actually know how to handle them really well! • How do they celebrate holidays? Not together :'( </3 • Who’s more likely to convince the other to come back to sleep in the morning? Voryn. Nerevar's an early morning person, while Voryn just wants to be lazy and stay in bed until noon. Voryn has sleepy b* disease • Who’s the better cook? Dare I say both??? >:)c Voryn likes baking more than cooking though, so when they have the time for it, they like treating Nerevar with sweets u_u✨ Nerevar doesn’t really have a sweet tooth though, he’ll just engulf anything that Voryn or their family cooks LOL

[seriouslyblacklikemysoul]

Until  Forever - Sirius Black

After a while, I have finished this chapter - it’s small but cute; I think. Also, since I have been away for a long time, just comment below this if you want to be tagged! The next chapter will be out withing this week. As always, my English is a warning by itself!  MASTERLIST  Prologue | Mercury | Delicate | Blue | Running | Aftermath | Stardust | December | Nightfall | Revelations  | Friends

Chapter 12. Resolutions.

             Twenty-two years should be enough time to feel like she belonged and that there was a place of her own. But twenty-two years have not been enough for her, and she had resigned to think that maybe no amount of years will be enough. She could not, after all, force a home to happen.             Her definition of “home” had been blurred, lost even. Instead, “home” floated between the longing for an unnamed place and a stubborn determination to make this place a “home.” This was not to say that she had never felt at home here. She had. Not always though. Other days she was a foreigner here and everything outside her window begun to look strange and dissonant. It was a bit of a paradox. Home had never been geographical for her. It was everywhere and nowhere.            Waking up in the same room, same bed with him was beautiful and terrifying because it felt familiar and hit her close to heart. She had drifted off to sleep without realizing that Sirius was afraid to close his eyes – how could he?            His wounds were bleeding badly, just by looking at her but at the same time it felt as if roses were spilling their sweet water down his spine – a chilling sensation run through his veins. For some reason he wanted to think about her loudly. He had thought about how hungry leaves looked right before a storm – wanting to live but desperate to die within the swirling sensation of the tornado. She was a loud thought. He could try to think of anything else – cookies or how tender flowers were and then she became the only thought in his mind. She swelled up and blocked everything else out. She became the sun, the moon and the stars – and he had loathed the stars, even his name, thanks to his parents, but of course, she was poetry in motion just like the tattoo she now had. She felt as a ringing in his ears, all sweet in its siren, all fluid, all open ache. In the middle of movies, of conversations, of collecting his life, she simply slipped in between the cracks.

           And he was thinking about her again – but looking at her made his mind stop for one moment. He had nothing to be afraid of, even his house felt distant. He knew how incredibly wrong it was but the world had seized to exist.             And now it was her turn to notice him in his sweet serenity and glory – but she couldn’t for if she focused her thoughts solely on him, she would cave in and ignore all the signs telling her to stop, including her own mind. She felt him turning, waking up and pretended she was asleep again with hitched breath, something he did notice. He had never slept so peacefully in his life but he knew that the night was gone and their time was running out. He didn’t know what to do nor how to act around her this time. It felt vulnerable as a moment. The frozen sun softly illuminated the room and the tender stillness gently reminded him that she was out of his reach. He tried to pretend she was asleep; it would be so much easier for both of them. But it was fake and with her around he couldn’t fake anything anymore. She had gotten under his skin and the truth was he didn’t want her to leave.            She never was in one place and he had finally understood why; a soft lover hidden behind cold lies to keep everyone in a safe distance; a rose appearing as a thorn rather than the delicate blossom. There was something in her eyes, as she dared to look at him, that made him question the universe itself. She indolently stretched her limbs and his eyes followed her body. Her eyes met his and the tension was so thick, she could cut it with a knife. She smiled kindly. Trying not to be too blunt about the fact that they shared a bed and much more intimate thoughts the night before, she decided to say a simple good morning instead of prolonging the inevitable, hoping for the lesser evil...            She did try to say it but the words were caught on the back of her neck. She wanted to make it less awkward but once her mind started racing, she would shut down and not be able to function. Instead, Sirius was the one to break the ice. "Hello sleeping beauty. James and the guys are waiting for us. Maybe we should get going. Whenever you are ready" he reminded her. Not having to conceal her tattoos anymore mainly because Sirius and Remus already knew... allowed her to see that things could move forward. As she moved forward she did hoped that she could have the courage to do things differently, to be the kind of a person who took the risk, who led with her heart and showed up in her life with a ruthless dedication to learning and growing and enjoying the hell out of her moments here. She knew that she had to trust the part of herself that felt there was more out there for her that was easy to quiet when she was trying to live by the rules and the expectations of a world that has bred so much dissatisfaction and sadness. She never liked the rules anyway. She wanted to free herself from the boundaries that could hold her no longer.            “Sure… just give me an hour to pack a couple of things and grab a shower, okay?” she boldly asked him as she climbed down from her bed, trying to stop her eyes from catching Sirius’s staring. He had a wicked smile plastered on his lips but agreed with her nonetheless and leaving her be.                                       “I’ll be in the common room. One hour” he chimed cheerfully and walked out of her room as if nothing had happened. She rolled her eyes and grabbed a backpack, charmed it to fit all of her things and threw everything in – the dress, the shoes, a pair of pajamas, a pair of jeans, a comfy shirt, undergarments, a pair of flats and her makeup bag. She always liked to be prepared for everything. She didn't want to go but after a night with him, she found herself persuaded... And the thing was he hadn't even asked her.            After her shower, she got dressed in the simple pair of jeans and a sweater, threw her hair in a bun, grabbed her bag and went downstairs to find him. He was there just like he had promised her. Exactly an hour ago. He was sitting next to the fireplace which was burning brightly, eyes lost in an invisible horizon, absentmindedly rolling a cigarette, his mind traveling miles away in the speed of light. She could almost see his brain thinking and twisting and swirling around - what, she did not know.                Watching him completely unaware of her stare made her realized how vulnerable he was, how soft and tender... and broken. She shook her head trying to stop her mind from wandering around the same old thought and instead focused energy on the one thing she knew she was going to go... She didn’t dare think she would enjoy it.            She would be lying to herself and everyone else if she was to say that being here, in that particular moment, having met the people she met, enjoying something that everyone else could only read, having the chance to be in fictional world, was merely okay... It was terrifying. She didn't believe she would characterize and label it as scary exactly because it was so beautiful an innocent and raw. But it was terrifying, knowing how the story ended, knowing that Sirius would end up in Azkaban, knowing the James and Lily would die before they could reach twenty-two, knowing that Remus would end up believing that he was all alone - but most importantly knowing that she could not change a single detail.            Looking at him was like a war. It felt violent and without escape. A star bathed in blood, tormented by the demons of his own existence. Demons that had escaped the gates of hell, a place she knew rather well. Eyes like spilled Mercury, fists covered in Ares' bruises, mind ruled by Athena's strategy and Pluto's deception. She couldn't speak of his heart; she didn't know if it was sacrificed to Aphrodite or given willingly to Persephone. Sometimes he felt like Hades to her. Dark, soft, bruised, wickedly sinister, broken, desperate for love, incapable of forgiving himself. There was a sad smile forming on her lips... She knew him all too well.            She was looking at him the way she had been wishing for someone to look at her; like the sun wasn’t bright enough; like the moon wasn’t soft enough; like the stars weren’t there anymore. Maybe she was biased. Maybe his eyes were whispering long-forgotten tales to her soul.           “You have that strange look, I cannot decode” he told her as he turned to face her. She just smiled, not hiding behind thin lies.            “Such a plot twist, you are” she whispered as he approached her. Her answer took him by surprise. They were used to playing a game of hide and seek – but she didn’t want to hide any longer. Her eyes spoke a million truths; all those answer he was searching for.            “Who are you?” he faintly asked her, playing with a strand of her long hair.                            “I thought I knew” she admitted. She didn’t know who she was but she knew that she was no longer the same person.            “You fell from the sky and turned my life upside down” he told her with a hint of anger in his voice but she merely chuckled.            “How do you know your life wouldn't be better turned upside down?” she quoted a favorite abstract of hers. He was about to say something but suddenly he stopped. He thought about those words.            “We should go” she softly reminded him.

              James was the kindest person she had met. She remembered him being described as a bully – he had never been one. Maybe he was voicing his dislike in a bit of extravagant way but he never bullied anyone. Okay, yes. Severus had been an exception – when they were 13. Stupid kids, not knowing how to properly react. Who could hold that against him?            He had been the perfect gentleman, as he helped her with her bag and showed her to the guestroom. She hadn’t even thought about a room – but his house was a mansion, a small detail that the books didn’t mention. The room was twice as big as her old one, with an en-suite bathroom.            Seeing Remus, practically stumbling upon him once she left her room, felt like a punch to her chest. He was so tragically beautiful, she thought. Strange, how she could get attached to two different people. But then again, maybe they weren’t so different after all. She saw the questions burning in his eyes. She wanted to tell him everything but how could she justify her selfish actions?            “You came” he looked at her in an almost surprised way. She contemplated her options. Of course, he was surprised. Who would have the nerve or the audacity to face their ex on such a short amount of time? Trying to find the right words to say, she realized that she was still very much drawn to him. Shit.            “I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. I really am, Remus” she found herself apologizing but what for? He saw her shift and smiled warmly. Fuck those amber eyes.        “There is nothing to apologize for, love. Just some things to clarify” he led on. She knew that he had to be aware of everything, she just wished that he wouldn’t want answers. But, who wouldn’t?            She pushed the door of her temporary room open with her hip and showed him in. It would be as easy as breathing to be honest – and as difficult as suffocating underwater. He had every right to know, she thought. This was his story, his life…

              Remus had never been stupid – he observed everything and everyone from a safe distance. With her, it had been different from the very beginning. He knew she had secrets and big ones, for that matter, but never had he expected to be told that she was from another dimension – or as she had labelled it, another possibility.              She gave him time; time to get himself together, time to understand her words, time to accept that maybe she was indeed honest, time to connect every bit of information. He was the one who pushed her for answers. He had to be ready to accept them. Yet, everything she told him seemed like a made-up story but he couldn’t shake that damn feeling that she was telling the truth. She hadn’t changed the subject, she hadn’t avoided a single question, she had told him every little detail that would be impossible for her to know otherwise. And he knew that she was special, he was aware of that. He knew that she was different – but how could he imagine that she was from a distant future – from another place, entirely, one he was a character in a book?                His mind was screaming at him for a breather but he refused – he needed to ask more questions but at the same time he already knew the answers. He was battling a losing fight inside of him; betrayal and understanding. She had chosen to hide the fact that she knew about his life and his entire future, yet how could she reveal it to him? It was obvious to him that she acted the exact same way he would have. He understood now the side glances, the soft but sad smile that was always on her lips whenever she’d see him, the inevitable of it all and how doomed everything mush have seemed to her.              Remus had never been stupid – he observed everything and everyone from a safe distance. And then she had come along, shaking his very core, only to reveal something unfathomable. He noticed her eyes again, slowly regaining focus as he tried to gulp down every bit of information. She hadn’t taken her eyes off of his and he felt that maybe, just maybe, history wasn’t written in stone – maybe this once. She had that ability – to change his mind almost instantly, to make him question the principles of nature and life itself. And then a tiny little voice, told him that he wasn’t the only one being affected by her presence.   Afterall, if everything she had told him was true, his friend did need her, and quite frankly deserved her, a lot more. How wrong of him, to objectify her and think of her as a need. She was happily unaware of those last thoughts, he knew.                    “I don’t know how to process this – or rather, how to deal with this’ he truthfully told her and her smile told him that she was expecting that very answer. Absentmindedly, she squeezed his hand and didn’t let go.              “I don’t know how difficult it must be for you, I can only guess. Listen, I could have lied, and believe me, we both would have been in a better shape, but to you – it feels impossible. Lying doesn’t work on you. You already know. And that’s why, I think, you are going to deal with this, one way or another; because you already knew. I know that it’s a lot and I am so sorry. It’s your life, your path, your decision. You can either ask me to obliviate the shit out of you or you can keep it to yourself, or even discuss it with the others” she offered him exactly what he needed. Solace.                      He thought about it for a moment and he knew that the moment would turn into many sleepless nights. How could he ever say those things out loud? How could he accuse one of his best friends that he would kill another? But then again, how could he not? He simply nodded, fully aware of the huge weigh on his chest – and painfully aware of her lips, inches away.          

[lovestrucklyuniverse]

Villain Redemption Arcs (at least in animation) [Spoilers for a lot of cartoons]

So, I don’t post rants/character analysis a lot on here, or really anywhere since I like to keep them private, but I feel like this is something I think needs to be talked about. Because redemption arcs, especially in cartoons, are a very mixed bag. 

Disclaimer: Everything in this rant is just my personal opinion so please be respectful. 

Here’s a list of cartoons that I will be spoiling so if you haven’t seen these and plan to watch them or you don’t care, just skip the bolded section for each part:

She-Ra: The Princesses of Power (2018)

Avatar: The Last Airbender

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic/Equestria Girls

Steven Universe

Now onto the rant. The order will go from best to the worst, at least in my opinion, and only the ones that I want to talk about. 

Avatar: The Last Airbender

As we all know, this series is known for having one of the best redemption arcs in not only animation, but television history. With Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation. So he has a very tragic backstory from his childhood, which gives the audience instant sympathy points. His father neglected him and scarred him for life, his mother disappeared, and his sister was the favorite child. And once his father burned his face, he set out on a mission to find the Avatar in order to restore his honor, or as it’s strongly implied, to gain his father’s love. 

As the series goes on, we learn more about Zuko as a character, and he had done some very bad things. Like, he’s kidnapped Aang twice, he betrayed Katara in the cave, and sent Combustion Man after the group. But we also see through his relationship with his uncle that he’s actually a very nice person who is very awkward around most people. 

And the moment where he finally confronts his father is so powerful, because he acknowledges not only the things that their nation has done, not only what his own father has, but also everything that he had done himself. 

Now to where he asks to join Team Avatar. While he does apologize, he does understand why they don’t trust him at first. And something that makes the scene where Aang accepts him as his firebending teacher so powerful is that while he’s allowed to stay and help, they don’t forgive and accept him just yet.

Something that I like about his arc in S3 is how he goes on an individual mission with each of the three people he’s hurt the most/don’t trust him the most: Aang, Sokka, and Katara. Each episode, we learn about their dynamics and how they play off each other.

There is so much more to Zuko’s arc, but these are just the things I think work best about his overall story/arc in the show. 

Equestria Girls

A lot of people reading this are probably not fans of MLP at all or have never heard of this spinoff franchise, so just keep that in mind.

In this franchise, there is one character that keeps everyone engaged with Equestria Girls. And that is: bacon-haired Sunset Shimmer. She is a very big fan favorite amongst the pony fandom, and she’s one of my favorite characters of all time. 

Anyways, when we first meet Sunset, she’s the antagonistic bully who was just as powerful as the main character, Twilight Sparkle. She does everything in her power to frame Twilight and keep her getting ahold of the crown from Equestria. Everyone’s afraid of her and she very much uses it to her advantage. 

However, once she gets defeated by the HuMane 6, we see a very different side to her for the first time the whole film: A vulnerable side, because she has tears streaming down her cheeks as she apologizes to the whole student body that she’s tormented for years. 

In the next film (Rainbow Rocks), Sunset has a very different personality: She’s kind, willing to help, and an overall sweetheart. But here’s the thing, basically no one in Canterlot High trusts her, not even the HuMane 5. Throughout the film, we see her trying to make up for her past actions in every way possible, but she’s often left in the background due to their distrust of her. Every now and then, her temper flairs up but then immediately regretting it. 

Once her friends have no way of being able to defeat the villain, Twilight (her previous enemy) calls out to her for her help. For a spit moment, we see Sunset’s fear in her expression before she looks determined. She throws her jacket off and sings. The group sings in harmony, which is what finally takes down the three baddies. 

Throughout the entire franchise, Sunset still faces issues with her temper and her struggles about her past. Sunset’s arc is probably my personal favorite, as its one that I personally relate a lot to. And what makes it even more impactful is how she helps others learn to get through the mistakes they’ve made similar to hers. 

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

Now onto the original, where EG came from. 

In MLP, it has a long list of redeemed villains. Such as Discord, Starlight Glimmer, Diamond Tiara, Gilda, Thorax, Trixie, etc. But I feel like the most controversial one would have to be Starlight, who actually becomes Twilight’s student and even meets Sunset. 

So, Starlight starts out as a villain who wants to take away everyone’s individuality (such as cutie marks). Once the Mane 6 defeat her (with help from those who were once loyal to her), she stays in hiding throughout the season until the finale. Where she goes back in time in order to ruin Twilight and her friends’ potential meeting in the future. 

But it ends with Twilight extending a hand, or rather hoof, in friendship which somehow convinces her to put a stop to her villianous ways. 

Starlight’s arc for the rest of the series is fairly mixed, which goes for how the fans feel about it as well. She is fairly impulsive and doesn’t really think things through until she gets the consequences later on. I still enjoy her character in some ways, but I completely get why it’s mixed in the fanbase. 

Steven Universe

Okay, I personally don’t hate these as much as everyone else, considering I love Peridot and Lapis’s arcs. 

However, even I can admit that the redemption arcs for the Diamonds was way too rushed. These are dictators who had used their powers on their subjects for CENTURIES and then suddenly they just decide that they don’t want to do it anymore? 

It was badly executed and I can tell that it’s going to annoy people for the rest of time. 

She-Ra: The Princesses of Power

Before you all kill me, please just hear me out. I love Catra as much as the next person, she’s my favorite character. But I also can’t let my love for her get in the way of how poorly executed her redemption was. 

Yes, she was mentally and physically abused as a child so it made her clinge to Adora more than anyone else in the Horde. And yes, it was understandable that she felt betrayed by Adora. 

But it does not justify her kidnapping several characters, taking advantage of people’s vulnerability, lying to people, pulling the lever to end the world just to prove a point to Adora, and putting all of the blame on Adora for her turning out this way. She and Double Trouble were in the right to call her out on her behavior. Everything she did was her own choice and Catra never once showed that she regretted anything she did before joining the Best Friend Squad in the last season. 

It was way too rushed and easily the worst way to redeem a character. I love S5 Catradora, but the arc should’ve started much earlier than it had. 

[awesomeshadowedninja]

After All These Years (All Might x Reader)

Hi guys, this is part 2 to A Hero’s Sacrifice, if you haven’t read it please do. But, you don’t have to. That’s just at All Might’s point of view. Anyways, yeah. I just want to post these stories because they keep me up at night and it’s like I have to write them down. This one’s a little longer though. 

Warnings: None. 

Summary: You are still in love with the number one hero after fifteen years of his departure until life decided you two aren’t quite finish yet.

“Can you believe it? The great All Might, number one hero, is- I can’t believe it! What’s left of a great man is nothing but a scrawny and weak man! Can you see this? His true form!” Tears fell from your eyes as the camera zoomed in on the beaten, bloody and broken All Might. The man that broke your heart. But even to this day, there were feelings there that were strong and vivid. How could you stop loving him? His face was literally everywhere, taunting and reminding you of the pain. But you pushed those feelings aside and worried for the blonde haired blue eyes man. You were concerned and already analysing the wounds on his body, they were very serious. 

That was the day that All Might could finally be Toshinori Yagi. 

The day you thought would perhaps hate and forget about him.

But, boy were you wrong.

For the next few weeks, his face appeared everywhere. His beautiful skinny and lanky form was the headline on every newspaper article, blog, tv show, truck, busses, trains. It was everywhere. That was the part of him that made you love him the most. Made you want him. Don’t get me wrong, the muscles and firm weren’t ugly but when he revealed to you Toshinori Nagi, you knew it was a sign of his trust.

Glaring at the picture on your phone, rage bubbled inside of you as you remembered the words written on that damned piece of paper. ‘I don’t love you anymore.’ At first you cried for days and tried and tried to call the man but he blocked you, literally blocked you out of his life. Shunned and rejected all your efforts of seeking security and comfort. It tormented you of how you weren't enough for the great hero. Nothing about you wasn’t good enough. All your love and dedication wasn’t enough for the man to stay. 

In fact that was a constant insecurity of yours during your relationship with the Toshinori Yagi. To which he would prove with smooth and silky whispers of why he loved you, why he wanted and needed you. Then seal it when a long night full of passionate love making.

But you understood, one day you weren’t worth it anymore. 

You were plain. 

To be honest you were really mundane. You didn’t even have the uniqueness of being quirkless, instead stuck with a quirk of rapid healing abilities through a kiss but it only stretched that far. You worked a normal job, being the owner of a small restaurant that swerved traditional japanese food with the odd American dish. In fact, that’s how you met All Might. He was a regular customer that came to eat once a week. But since your restaurant was on the poorer and less populated side of town, not a lot of young people came, only the old folk who looked for somewhere peaceful and homie, kept your business going. Until one night, All Might decided to ask you if you’d join him and of course you did - after the blushes and stutters - and from then on, every Friday night he ate dinner with you. 

Hell, even the way you met was ordinary. Toshinori didn’t save you from an evil super villain or clash into you as you were walking down a busy road. 

That was probably why he left because you were boring.

All the thoughts caused you to throw the phone away as you flopped on your bed, pondering back into the past. It wasn’t healthy to dwell so much on the times of fifteen years ago, but you couldn’t help it. You were still fiercely in love with him. 

You tried to move on.

Dated a few guys over the years, even got married once but it still wasn’t the same.. There wasn’t the spark. The chemistry. It was as if you just settled for them because they were there. And they didn’t make you laugh or smile or feel the way Toshinori did. 

He was so different. 

Passionate and determined. 

It was ride or die with him.

After several hours of tossing and turning, reminiscing on the past, you decided to go for a walk. Maybe a stroll would help tire you out and give you a better place to think. Instead of the plain yellow walls of your lonely house that reminded you of All Might. So, grabbing the warm coat that hung up on your wall and slipping into your shoes, you left the house and stepped into the bitter cold of the early morning.

The morning you woke up to find the empty house and bed, you thought it was one of All Might’s supposed to be funny pranks. But after calling and waiting patiently all day for the man, you still had hope. Still believed it was a prank. Until months later, you realised he wasn’t coming back. He was gone.

To say it broke you was an understatement. 

It shattered your soul. The very fibre of your being at the time was taken over by pain, grief and sorrow like someone had punched a hole into your heart. There were many days and nights of laying on your couch watching television with all the channels that did not have All Might on it. Wasting your days away. Everywhere you went, there was his smile that tortured you. Saying how happier he was without you. How much he was doing fine without you. That he really meant that he didn’t love you.

You started to have nightmares of him. Some were sweet, like a dream but then you’d wake up and become crushed by the brutal honesty of reality. To wake up alone and cold. Empty bed. Empty room. Empty house. Even on the nights when there was someone next you. You even dreamt of memories you had of him, the ones that you were fond of. Like the one where you were able to watch him train with some other heroes. Although no one really understood why you were there or why All Might escorted you, according to your Toshinori it was because you were a huge fan that won a pass of somesort. But the truth of the matter was that you wanted to see him train. Begged and pestered All Might for weeks, until he finally caved. You could still hear his laugh ringing in your ears or the words of encouragement he gave his fellow heros or the way he’d scream-

“Plus Ultra!” Yeah, it sounded exactly like that.

Without warning a sudden slab of concrete started falling down rapidly on top of your frame. You were taken aback for a second because these situations don’t happen to people like you. Opening your mouth to scream, a sudden flash of green came into view and you caught the glimpse of a boy no older than 15 punching the slab to nothing but rubble.

“Everything’s going to be alright now...because I’m here.” And within seconds I was suddenly sitting on a bus stop further away from where the debris was falling and I watched the flash of green, pummel a villain across the sky and far away. I was shocked and taken back.

“W-what just happened?” Inquiring to myself, I noticed the boy that just saved my life plummeted to the ground and was clearly unconscious. “Oh no.” As if on instinct my body moved and quickly let the boy fall on me before he hit the solid ground which would surely have broken a few bones. “Ow.” Grumbling under my breath, I quickly held the boy and checked to see if he had any injuries. But it seemed his arm was bruised but not broken. “I should call the cops and ambulance.” Muttering to myself, I reached for my phone and dialed the police’s number and looked down at the boy as if he’d suddenly die.

“...All Might…” The freckled kid muttered under his breath and I froze. Remembering the flash of green and what he said as he saved me from my death. It reminded me of him. Toshinori Yagi. All Might. The power, the smile, the determination. All of it reminded me of him. And the next thing I knew, I carried the boy on my back and headed back to my place to tend to his injuries.

What are you doing? You should call the police and let the ambulance take care of him. Biting my bottom lip nervously, I eyed the teenager lying on my couch with no injuries , just obvious signs of exhaustion. What is wrong with you? Just because he reminds you of All Might doesn’t mean you should have taken the kid. Hell, this is considered a kidnapping. I let out a sigh but still didn’t make a move to call the police or ambulance, the only way I was going to calm my nerves was to cook. 

Yes, perfect idea.

Cook your problems away.

Soon enough the teen woke up from his slumber just in time for a hot meal, where I could thank and explain the situation. This is so stupid. I am a thirty one year old woman and here I was acting from my feelings like a little high school girl. Baka.

“How do you like it? Is it good enough?” Asking the male with a small smile, he scratched the back of his head and nodded politely. Eagerly bouncing his head up and down. “I know this may seem strange, that I suddenly brought you back to my place. Please don’t take it the wrong way. You, you just reminded me of someone and...you can call your parents or police if you want to.” Bowing my head in shame, I felt my cheeks redden out of embarrassment.

“N-no it's fine. In fact you saved me back there, I would be in trouble right now if you didn’t save me. Not just from the police, but from my Mother but also my men-teacher. I’m not really supposed to be beating up villains.” His cheeks turned red as he admitted the truth but I laughed. It’s been awhile since I had company. It was nice really. “But I couldn’t stop myself, there were no heroes around and I was there. And my body is just...it…”

“It moved as if on instinct. Like you didn’t have to think but instantly reacted like you were meant to be there.” I finished the young aspiring heroes question while slurping up the noodles and soup in my bowl. He widened his eyes and nodded proudly and happily.

“Y-yeah! Exactly that. Say, were you a hero?” I laughed at his idea and nearly choked on my food. Me? A hero? Oh no, I did not like violence of any sort. Small or big. It wasn’t just in my nature. That’s why I am the way I am. Normal.

“Oh no, no, no. Someone really close to me would tell me stories of what it was like being a hero.” A proud grin itched my lips as I recalled the nights where I wouldn’t be able to sleep and would ask Toshinori to tell me what it was like. He’d hold me close and gush about the feeling. It almost made me want to be one, just to understand that thrill. That primal drive and instinct.

“Woah! Sugoi. He sounds like a great man.” Something sparkled behind his innocent doe eyes. I watched as he dug into the hot meal in front of him like he hadn’t eaten at all. It was hard to believe that an innocent kid like him had a dangerous and deadly power. 

“Yeah, the greatest.” I muttered under my breath and smiled. “What’s your name kiddo?” 

“Hmm…” The freckled kid quickly swallowed the food in his mouth and gave me a warm smile. “My hero name is Deku but my real name is Izuku Midoriya.” Izuku Midoriya huh? I’m gonna remember that. The boy who saved my life with a smile. I nodded and continued to eat my meal.

Midoriya and I chatted for a while, he told me about his aspirations and dreams of becoming the number one hero like All Might. He also showed me a notebook full of different heroes and their weaknesses and strengths, along with some of his friends from his school. He was going to be a fine hero. I thought as I listened intently into the things he was saying. So fiery and youthful. It really has been a long time since these walls heard another’s laughter and voice. I was grateful. He helped clean up and even stayed a little while longer just to talk with me. I’m pretty sure he could tell I was a lonely woman by the evidence of no other person living in the house. No photos. No other shoes. No mess. I felt kinda embarrassed but pushed those feelings aside.

“You know- I mean who’s this?” Midoriya suddenly questioned and held a picture frame of a old photo of me and Toshinori, in his original form and we were both smiling and happy. A sudden pain hit my chest at the sight. I’m sure I hid that photo. 

“Oh that…” I stared at the picture. It was our first official date where he took me out to a festival night as Toshinori and we decided to leave the mass crowd to go walk by the beach. I took the photo since I had a polaroid camera back then. We were both younger. “That’s just an old picture of a man I loved once.” Still loved. 

“Oh...what happened?”  Midoriya really seemed interested and intrigued which took me by surprise. When I was his age, I grimaced at the idea of romance finding it completely boring. Mind you, I was a late bloomer. My childish, naive and innocent ways of thinking still seeped in from time to time, even at this age. 

“Uh, it just didn’t work out. He wanted to follow another path that didn’t involve me in it.” Answering honestly, a few tears slid down my cheeks as the memory of the still adamant turmoil stung me once again. But I quickly wiped the tears away and politely took the photo off of the young boy to put it away.

“I’m sorry.” Midoriya apologised as if it were his fault. But I laughed and shook my head. He pouted his bottom lip as if he knew something was up, tears burning at the corners of his eyes. This kid was really emotional. He wiped his tears away with the back of his sleeve. “I just...I know someone that went through that.” Midoriya replied and I gave him a sympathetic smile, pulling him into my arms as a way to say, it’s not your fault. 

“It’s okay. It’s really okay. It’s not your fault.” He was strange. I thought and pulled away at the sound of someone knocking at the door. “That must be your teacher.” I piped up and watched as his eyes widened in shock. Attitude completely changed. I then turned to answer the door, because it would be rude  to leave a guest standing outside in the cold. 

“W-wait...there’s something I need to te-” Midoriya attempted to irk at me but it was too late, another familiar deep and silky smooth voice interrupted. My heart dropped at the sound. The sound I’ve been longing for, for years. I stood in shock as I saw the familiar mop of blonde hair although rough and messy, he still looked like the old him. I was lost for words and was in complete shock.

“I deeply apologise for my student’s behaviour. Please forgive him, it was my fault that I didn’t keep a closer eye on the young boy. I apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. I am very very so-”

“T-toshinori..” I whispered just above my breath so that the male could hear, I watched his whole body tense and freeze on the spot. 

Fifteen years I waited for your return. 

Fifteen long and miserable years of dark days and happy days.

Fifteen years of trying to move on

Fifteen years of heartache.

All the emotions over the past years suddenly caught up to me in that single moment, rage, happiness, sorrow, anxiety, depression, loneliness, shock and frustration. It all swirled inside of me like a deep ache. My body felt completely exhausted as if the lack of sleep suddenly caught up. I gripped the door knob tightly in my hand as hot tears fell from my orbs one by one, timid and slow. 

Toshinori stayed bowing for a long time as if he was afraid to look up at me. Afraid to see me again after all these years. As if I had an affect on him? As if he still loved me? As if….Then our eyes locked. Brown and blue. It was like living a dream, a need that suddenly came back to life. But I didn’t expect for it to look like this. Both messy and worn out. 

I let my eyes delicately study his features as if breathing him for the first time and he did the same, licking me up with his eyes like it was the first time we met. Although the years might have not done me any good, it seemed as if Toshinori had gotten even hotter. Others might disagree but I didn’t really care what others thought. I drummed to my own beat. He had more stress lines but seemed a lot more buff even in his state like this. Like he’s been working out. The irises of blue were no longer as dark as they were fifteen years ago, they seemed lighter, more sky-like instead of staring into the pools to the ocean. Hair grown darker, no longer that kind of easy going blonde but now worn out and unhealthy. He seemed exhausted. Tired. Lonely and miserable. Or maybe I was making that up. Either way it felt real. I took a step closer to the male who didn’t dare to tear his watch away. Smile now dropped into a thin line. His clothes were still baggy on him but I didn’t mind. In fact, I missed it. I missed him so much.

Fifteen long years, I waited for you. 

And I should hate you. 

Hate you so much.

But, I can’t.

I should.

But love is funny like that.

I even set up a whole speech of what I would say to you if we ever met,  I would slap you, scream at you, give you a piece of my mind. Make you feel my pain and hurt. Make you suffer like I did. Just so you could understand how lonely I’ve been all these years. However, you didn’t seem that well put together. In fact you looked just as bad as me. You look as if you haven’t had a proper meal, a proper kiss, a proper love. These years haven’t been as great as you let on. I thought to myself as I took steady steps towards the man I gave my heart to a long time ago. His hands reached out to touch my face and touched me with so much tenderness, it felt as if he was afraid I would fall apart. Or fade. Or run. But I didn’t. Instead I jumped on  Toshinori and held him like he would crumble. My arms finally embracing and feeling the familiarity of his body. Even after all these years, we still fit like two perfect pieces of a puzzle.

He held me just as tight, burying himself into me and inhaled my scent just as I did his. 

I started to wail, my voice muffled by his clothes and shoulder. He heard me though. He felt it too. I felt it in the way he embraced me like Toshinori was forcing us to become one. I could feel his heartbeat against my own, fast yet finally complete.

After all these years.

[vorish-musing]

Dirty Little Secrets

Spoiler Free Summary: Richie needs to Heal Eddie fast, luckily he has a way to do it, the hypochondriac may not be a fan of where it is though.  (Reddie)

Content Warning: This involves soft non fatal g/t Vore, if you don’t like that, please look away. while this fic has safe vore, this kind of safe vore is healing, so this fic contains fearplay, blood and digestion mention (doesn’t happen though)... but it gets fluffy.

Spoiler Warning: this is an IT Chapter Two fic (when they’re adults). So here’s your spoiler warning. This has a lot of the same themes of the actual movie, so please watch that before reading if you care a lot about that kind of stuff.

Spoiler Summary below the ‘read more’ 

Spoiler Summary: Eddie is almost killed by pennywise, but Richie saves him with a gift (or maybe curse) he has. Eddie Is clearly not a fan but there’s not other option available.

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Eddie panicked seeing Richie trapped in by Pennywises Deadlights. He watched as Richie floated up, following pennywise's open mouth. He held the fire poker to his chest, thinking that this was the end, they would lose, he felt his breath shortening, as if he needed his inhaler. why was he so scared all the time?!  He looked down at the weapon, staring at the sharp end, Beverly’s voice ringing in his head.

This thing kills monsters if you believe it does. 

Eddie looked back up at the clown, if you could even call it that with its spider like legs. It was going to kill Richie. He gripped onto the weapon tightly “this thing kills monsters if you think it does.” he began repeating the phrase to himself, getting angrier with each repeat, until he was yelling. He took one more look at Richie’s milky white eyes and dead hanging jaw. 

Without another thought, he began sprinting towards Pennywise, winding his arm back, and launching the fire poker into its mouth, screaming,

“Beep beep motherfucker!” definitely sounded cooler in his head.

Pennywise made an unholy sound as it stepped back, the deadlights turning off, Richie fell to the ground, his eyes still white and not moving. It coughed the Poker out of its mouth, before impaling itself on a spike in the ground. It let out even more screams, but nothing coherent enough for the losers to understand. Then, Pennywise stopped moving, and everything was silent. 

Eddie took a moment, before running to Riches side, shaking him and begging for the man to wake up. 

Richie couldn’t hear or see anything in the deadlights, and all he could think of was Eddie, how he was probably fucked as well. He failed the losers. And now he was going to be eaten by that fucking clown before he could tell Eddie that--

Richie woke up. His eyes no longer glazed over, he tries to jump up, before falling back down, he couldn’t move. He panicked quickly before making eye contact with Eddie

“Richie! You’re back!” Eddie’s voice sounds exasperated, but extremely relieved. The man smiled “I think I killed it!” Richie looks behind Eddie, then to the other Losers, they’re also looking as relived. Richie sees the lights from pennywise flashing, he didn’t know if that was good or bad.

“Richie, I Killed it!” Eddie yelled so everyone could hear. He kept saying it. All his fear and panic gone. He’d Been Puked on, stabbed in the cheek and tormented by that fucking clown, but now the last laugh is his! 

Then all of a sudden, he felt a burning white pain in his chest. 

Beverly screamed as one of pennywise’s claws rips through Eddies chest. Blood splattering on Richie's face, who began screaming as well.

Eddie stares at the claw protruding through his chest, spitting up blood. He could barely breathe. All the joy and bravery that was in his eyes, was gone. 

Eddie Screamed loudly and writhed around as the claw lifted him up, he heard the familiar laugh of pennywise as he was launched through the air, the losers screaming for him once again, then landing through the narrow entrance of the cave they were in, just missing the cave wall.

Richie, seeing this horrific sight, finally got up, ignoring the pounding in his head and darted towards Eddie, the other losers in tow.

Pennywise sees the losers running, and gives chase. But it was too late, the losers slid between the rocks, and all the clown could do was try and break the rocks away to get to them. The losers knew they had to act FAST.

Bill helped Richie lift Eddie up, who was groaning in pain as it was happening.

“Eddie, oh fuck….fuck…” Richie took off his button up placing it onto eddies wound to attempt to stop the bleeding. He knew that from Eddie. “We need to get him to a hospital” 

“How are we supposed to do that Richie?!” Bev answered, loud, but not angry. she knew it was impossible to get him out of here. Ben went to her side, and so did Mike, consoling her. Tears were cascading down her face.

 Richie tried to get the other losers on board with him. Mike and Ben were shaking their heads no, siding with Beverly. Richie looked to Bill, who wouldn’t look anyone in the eye. 

He understood why they didn’t want to, they would have to stop fighting Pennywise, and let it escape, which Mike would never let happen, and Eddie couldn't climb out of the hole they came from, and he might bleed out. 

Bill, Beverly, Mike and Ben huddled up, talking to themselves about what to do, but he didn’t care. He NEEDED Eddie to live. He…

He loved him.

He never admitted it before now, it was always in the back of his head since adolescents, but he was always scared to admit what he knew was true.

Then an idea hit Richie, he felt stupid for not thinking about it before! 

After he left Derry when he turned 19, Richie left with a weird, craving… he would look at people and get...hungry. Before he forgot pennywise, he thought it was always the clowns last laugh. But when he forgot, he just pretended it didn’t exist… until it got worse. 

Until he shrunk and ate someone after one of his late comedy shows.

It all happened so fast. He didn’t even realize he did it until he felt the person squirming inside, freaked out as much as Richie, most likely more. He immediately coughed them up, running away as they returned to normal size. Nothing came about on the news about it, nor any people coming to his door calling him a monster, so he moved on, thanking whatever god there was that nobody else was there to witness what he had done.

He found out he could swallow people and keep them alive inside of him somehow, he didn’t really have any idea, just knew he could. He would sometimes find anyone he could, and just do it, to satisfy his weird craving.

One time he saw a guy being beaten in an alley way of New York, and normally, he would turn a blind eye, being a quite weak man when it came to fighting (or so he thought),

 but when he heard the homophobic slurs, bringing him back to his childhood, and begging from the man, he realized what he needed to do, he ended up scaring the attackers away with a fake phone call to the police, and when the coast was clear, ate the man. 

The strangest part about it wasn’t that though, it was that after an hour or so, he let the man out. And all the scratches and bruises were gone, only faint scars barely noticeable left. 

Richie knew what he needed to do to Eddie.

 “You guys go ahead and do whatever I’m staying with Eddie.” Richie said, the other losers hesitated, but soon found another way in and began to try and fight pennywise again. It was just him and Eddie, who was looking even worse by the second.

“Richie” Eddie coughed, more blood spilling out his lips “go fight, I’ll be fine” he tried to smile, but it was so clear he was in a lot of pain.

“Eddie, I’m not leaving you” 

“Really, this clown is more important than--”

“Don’t fucking finish that sentence!” Richie yelled, tears beginning to fall down his face “ you are the most important thing to deal with right now.”

Eddie closed his mouth, cringing as blood began to fill it, he was worried, Richie was never like this, Richie was more of a pessimistic person, Eddie knew he was a goner, why was Richie even trying to help? 

“Listen,” Richie spoke softly, which surprised Eddie since he’d been yelling the past few minutes. “I can help, and I know you’re going to hate what I’m going to do.” 

Richie felt bad because he knew it was gross, but it would be funny when everything was okay, and Eddie would be complaining. 

He couldn’t explain it to the guy, but he’d freak out and panic and make his wounds worse before he could do anything!

Eddie gave Richie a weird look, but that didn’t stop Richie from grabbing a hold of his shoulders, holding tight, making him cry out in pain. 

“Sorry Eds, it’ll be okay soon”

Eddie wanted to scream at him to stop holding him, that it hurt, and whatever he was doing was NOT helping. 

Then  a dizzy feeling came over him, he could barely keep his eyes open, was this death? It felt a lot different than he imagined. 

Richie let out a sigh as Eddie began shrinking, he picked the man up in his palm, so he could move as quickly as possible without hurting him more than he probably already was. He stopped shrinking him when Eddie got to four inches, just small enough for Richie to get him down safely. 

Eddies head stopped pounding, and his eyes flickered open. He let out a small yelp of shock seeing how huge Richie had gotten. What the hell? “Richie?!”

The giant before him smiled, “yeah its me eds.”

Eddie coughed more blood up “you’re...big” Eddie was shaking, was this Richie? Was this a hallucination? Was this...Pennywise?

“Woah take me out on a date first why don’t ya” Richie smiled, trying to lighten the mood, seeing how frightened Eddie was. 

Eddie let out an exasperated laugh, clearly in shock with everything that was happening.

 He saw the blood dripping onto his hands more and more, he had to act quick. “Listen, please trust what I’m about to do is safe, I’ll explain later”

“wh-AT ARE YOU DOING?!” Eddie was confused at first, what did he mean? Then all of a sudden, Richie opened his mouth pulling Eddie closer.

Richie brought Eddie into his mouth, cringing at the amount of blood that was on his tongue. He cringed as he coated Eddie in a thick coat of saliva, washing away the blood.

“Wait! Stop!” Eddie yelled, the slimy tongue rolling around him, clearly tasting him, it was enough to make him sick.

Eddie panicked, not Richie not Richie NOT RICHIE! 

This had to be a sick joke from Pennywise, bring him into a safe environment, then when the time was right, snatch him up and finish the job It started. Adrenaline finally hit him, Eddie squirmed, Screaming in pain from his wound “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” he kept screaming, if he was going to be eaten by that fucking clown, he would not go down easy.

Richie felt awful hearing Eddie panic, it hurt him hearing Eddie in this much pain. He also felt Eddie moving, and the amount of blood was increasing, so he did the only thing he could, Swallow.

Richie tilted his head back cringing once more at Eddie's screams, swallowing. He knew Eddie would squirm and fight, but it wouldn’t work against him, Eddie was weak from blood loss, but he had to give it to him, he was putting up a great fight.

Eddie clawed as much as he could at the tongue, but it was too late, he was already halfway into the esophagus. God this was disgusting. He was coated in blood and saliva. The sounds were the worst part though, he could hear the gurgling and groaning of the stomach below him, eagerly waiting for his arrival, chilling Eddie to his very core.

Richie cringed as Eddie moved halfway into his throat, but stopped moving, He was putting up a real fight. It didn’t hurt , but it was very uncomfortable. but another swallow, and Eddie was fully in Richie’s esophagus, the muscles gently massaging Eddie down.

Surprisingly, this didn’t hurt Eddie, it just felt...weird! And he was shocked at how… normal it felt!

Yes, Eddie knew that what was happening was the exact opposite of normal, but he had expected pennywise to drop the act now, that he’d line the esophagus with spikes to tear him to shreds, or maybe send a group of spiders down with him to rip him apart.

But… nothing. All  he heard was the drumming of a human heartbeat, beating a lot quicker than normal, the sound of air being inhaled into the lungs, and of course, the sound of where he would soon be below him.

It wasn’t like pennywise to keep things calm. In a way, that scared him more. What was its plan?!

All of a sudden, he heard a voice “ Its going to be okay, fuck, Eddie please be okay.”

Eddie’s heart stopped, he couldn’t tell what was real or not anymore. Was this even pennywise fucking with him? Or was it somehow actually Richie? 

Eddie let out a cry in pain as he was squeezed into the stomach, expecting bubbling acids to melt him away, or maybe even lava instead, but it was just dark, empty, and surprisingly didn’t smell as bad as he thought it would. The thought it would reek like bile, but it really didn’t smell like anything.

He jerked back as he felt pressure on the wall, gasping in pain from his wound. He then realized what it was.

A hand. 

Eddie laid back, shaking slightly, worried any sort of movement would somehow start up the acids.

Unfortunately, he felt the stomach juices seeping onto his back, and pooling into the chamber, he tried to pull away, but at that point, his adrenaline was gone, and he couldn’t move as much as he could before. He could do nothing as the liquid (he presumed to be acid) gathered around him

Richie held his stomach, feeling Eddie move around in there, he could never get used to that feeling no matter how many people he ate. He began massaging his belly, it happily gurgling at its new ‘meal’ inside. Richie knew that the stomach juices would help Eddie heal faster.

All of a sudden, he heard a loud crash behind him, along with pennywise screaming incoherent words “Jesus Fuck!” Richie yelled, covering his ears. He was thankful that he swallowed Eddie before that happened, who knows how the little guy would react.

Eddie Paused, hearing Richie’s voice once again, this time sounding too real to be a fraud “R-Richie?!” oh god, Eddie thought, it this was Richie and not Pennywise I’ll… I’ll…

What could he do? He was already in his stomach; it was only a matter of time before he would be nothing but soup.

“Yeah Eds… its me” Eddie began to choke back tears hearing the happiness in Richie’s voice, was he happy to digest his best friend? Is this what deadlights do to you? questions buzzing in his mind. How?! Why?! Before he could get a word in, Richie spoke again. “You Okay?”

“oKAY?!” Eddie Exploded, the liquid up to his hips now, “YOU. ATE. ME. I don’t even know how this is even remotely possible, not to mention that its fucking GROSS, AND I’m going to DIE in here!” Eddie let out a yelp as he felt the liquid enter the hole in his chest. Again, it didn’t hurt, it just felt weird. “So, no Richie, I’m not Fucking okay.”

Richie flinched slightly, he expected the anger, but not this angry! He thought Eddie would be feeling the healing process already.

“Eddie, I did this to save you! You don’t feel any pain, Right?” Richie paused, realizing how dumb that question sounded “Other than your chest glory hole, I mean” Richie snickered to himself, he knew Eddie would be fine, maybe lighten up the mood with some jokes?

Eddie was about to Start yelling again, especially at Richie making jokes, but paused, Richie was right, not even his chest was in that much pain anymore, and he stopped coughing up blood. He lifted his hand slowly, expecting to see his hand burning away in acid but, it was clean. Even the scratches from when he was thrown were gone!

Eddie looked down, hesitating before bringing his hand to his chest, feeling the open wound, he jerked back. He felt it moving, like it was repairing himself.

“what. The. Shit.”

“listen Ed’s I’d love to explain but—” as Richie spoke, a loud crash interrupted him, followed by Beverly screaming angrily. “I have to help; I can’t let them do this on their own. Just please, stay as calm as possible.”

Richie was never this polite, he never once tried to console him before. This must’ve been serious.

Eddie had so many questions, he wanted everything answered, but he knew what was more important here. “Richie?”

“yeah?”

“I lo—” he backpedaled, realizing what he almost said “Be careful, don’t want you to die with me in here”

Richie’s heart skipped a beat, was he about to say… no no. as far as Richie new, Eddie was straight as a board. He just patted his belly, running back into the fight.

The first thing he was faced with was ben running at him “Eddie?” the other man asked. Richie turned red for a moment, realizing he didn’t have an excuse ready for why he left Eddie by himself.

“uh..” he stammered for a moment “he’s fine” Richie pointed back to the opening, Ben nodded. “lets just go kill this fucking clown.”

Ben gestured for Richie to follow him, both men joining up with the other losers, he was ready to kill this fucking clown with his bare hands, nobody would hurt Eddie like this again, Never.

The next thirty minutes or so were a blur to Eddie, being thrashed about in the small confines of Richie’s belly. He cringed hearing Richie yell, the man's voice booming around the chamber. He prayed to any god out there for Richie to be okay.

He tried feeling his wound again, it didn’t hurt at all anymore, so what was the harm? He placed his hand on the hole, and instantly he was intrigued. It was so small now! he felt the enzymes around him building his tissue back up and healing him. It was so…fascinating.

He brought a hand up to his cheek, feeling the gauze where Bowers had stabbed him, and carefully peeled it off, he cringed at the tape pulling at his skin, and winced at the cut opening once again, filling his mouth with blood.

Without hesitation he submerged his entire head into the Liquid, feeling the cut begin to heal instantly. He could feel the tissue and skin repairing. He brought his head back up to breathe, the cut still healing itself as he sat there.

As he finally got to explore the area around him, Eddie realized how not bad it was. Sure, it was slimy, and gross, and weird as hell…

But it was also...soft. And the sounds around him weren’t as scary, the stomach gurgles making him feel better knowing they were helping him live, other than being the catalyst into his death. Of course, he could never let Richie know this, that would be too weird. 

But then he wondered, does Richie like this too?

As Eddie was having a calming time relaxing in Richie’s belly, Richie was having to juggle excuses on Eddie's whereabouts, while also fighting Pennywise. 

Once the being was finally defeated, the losers noticed the world around them begin to break, and began to book it out of there 

“Richie! Go get Eddie!” Mike called, Richie just shook his head 

“He’s already out of here” Like they’d believe that one, nice going dipshit. Richie thought to himself. 

Nobody decided to question him, but they all knew it wasn’t true. They’d rather focus on all of them not dying, compared to Richie being sneaky. 

Mike was noticing how much Richie would grab a hold of his stomach, though. 

Once the losers got out of the house, Beverly, Bill and Ben dropped to the ground, laughing out of pure adrenaline and shock, Richie just stood there, holding his stomach, trying to be inconspicuous about his real intentions.

“Richie, you okay?” Mike looked him up and down, gesturing to Richie’s hand clutching his stomach.

Richie paused, thinking of an excuse “Jesus fuck mike we just crushed a heart of a baby clown thing, you think I can feel a bit Ill?” the losers laugh softly at the words, mike just nodding. he felt Eddie tense at the idea of Richie being sick with him inside but calmed when realizing it was a lie. 

After that Bill, Ben, Beverly, Mike and Richie didn’t speak, spending the next hour in silence outside of the neibolt, on the ground, speaking only to lighten the mood with jokes, (this was mostly Richie)

At one point, Beverly sat up, turning to Richie, who was still lying down “is Eddie dead…?” the rest of the losers turned to Richie as well, all clearly worried about their missing friend.

Eddie only tuned in when he heard Richie’s heart speed up, pounding fast. His breathing became irregular, but only Eddie could really tell. He gasped softly as Richie’s stomach tensed around him, Richie was afraid.

Carefully, Eddie made his way to the stomach wall he presumed to be the ‘front’ placing his hands on the organ and began rubbing. He wanted to send a silent message to Richie that he was there for him, and that everything was going to be okay, he didn’t care about how gross it was at this point, it was Richie.

The man tensed, feeling Eddie rubbing him from inside. He had never had a willing participant doing this before, it felt fantastic! It was quite soothing as well, knowing someone was there for him, and that someone was Eddie Fucking Kaspbrack.

“Eddie is…” he paused, seeing Beverly's eyes begin to water “Eddie is alive, I got him out of neibolt, got an uber to take him to the hospital.” 

Beverly began crying out of pure relief, and so did ben. They didn’t care how strange the situation sounded, all they cared about was Eddie being safe. 

“We can visit him when he gets out. He told me he wants to be alone for a while, so we won't see him being a baby in the hospital, being spoon fed by his mommy.” 

This made everyone laugh, well, except for Eddie, Richie feeling a small kick from inside.

At that point, the Losers decided to leave, ben and Beverly leaving together, bill and Mike going their own separate ways. Richie, being the last one to leave, took one last look at neibolt, before making his way back to the town house.

He was glad to see it empty, going up to his room, lying on the bed. “You doing okay Ed’s?” he finally spoke out, poking the lump underneath his shirt, chuckling as it moved around and away from his hand.

A muffled voice called back to him, “I’d be better if you let me out Tozier, I need some questions answered.” 

Richie hushed the person in his belly, “Yeah yeah I get it mom” he laughed, but he felt a little upset, wanting to keep Eddie in their longer, really enjoying the feeling of him inside. Moving and massaging, he swore, sometimes he could feel him breathing. But he would never keep him in longer than he wanted to, except if he was hurt, like this time. 

Unbeknownst to Richie, Eddie too didn’t want to leave. It was nice to be close to Richie, he was never able to get close to him as a kid, Richie always being very inappropriate with jokes about Eddies sexuality when they got a little too close. (he has since apologized, but it still made Eddie nervous to show his true feelings)

Richie Sighed, getting back up from his bed, heading to the bathroom “Eddie, please don’t move, it was hard enough getting you down, if you’re moving a lot, you’re not coming out”

Eddie felt a seed of guilt plant inside of him, knowing he had possibly hurt Richie, he also couldn’t blame himself for moving and freaking out, he did think he was about to die after all, he called back an okay, staying as calm and still as possible.

Richie focused on Eddie in his stomach, tensing the walls around him, pushing the tiny man back up the esophagus. The muscles began to pull him back up from the esophagus to the throat, soon enough, Eddie was back in Richie’s mouth. Richie opened his mouth, taking Eddie out.

 Eddie Cringed at the change in lighting, trying to get his eyes to adjust. Once he could actually see, he looked up at Richie. 

Richie was staring at Eddie with a worried stare, wanting to make sure he was okay. Eddie lifted his shirt, a very faint scar left from where he was impaled. Nobody would’ve known he was almost dead a few hours ago. 

Eddie looked like a mess, alive, but a mess. Saliva made his hair stick out every which way, and he was coated in saliva as well. Richie held back a laugh, then began regrowing his friend. 

“There.” he said, helping Eddie stand up straight once he was back to his normal height. “You should take a show-ER” 

All of a sudden, Eddies Lips were on his. 

Eddie, out of pure impulse, had kissed Richie, the man who Eddie has had feelings for since childhood, the same man who saved his life. 

Richie was in complete shock; his brain didn’t know how to function with Eddies lips on his. This was his dream for over thirty years, and… he was doing fuck all! 

Eddie pulled away, covering his mouth and hanging his head down in shock and despair. “I-I...I’m s-so-”

“Jesus Christ you sound like Bill.” Richie spoke , laughing, still in complete shock. His face flushed a bright red.

“You...You’re not mad?!” 

“I…” now it was Richie's turn to stammer and panic “I’ve always wanted you to do that” Eddie smiled, “maybe not when you were covered in my saliva, but I can make do.”

“Oh man I’m sorry.” Eddie laughed “but its really not my fault you ate me” yep, still fucking weird to say out loud. 

“Hey, I did it to save your life.”

Eddie nodded “I know saying this is absolutely not enough, but thanks. For absolutely everything”

“Take a fucking shower and come to my room when you’re not slimy,” Richie walked out of the bathroom “if you don’t… maybe I’ll just keep you in there next time” 

“Not really a threat Tozier!” Eddie yelled quickly, before covering his mouth, it was too late to backpedal, what the fuck is wrong with me today?!

Richie turned back, slowly closing the door, “good to know Kaspbrak ...Good to know” and before another word, he slammed the door shut, walking back to his room, missing the feeling of Eddie being in there already. 

After a few minutes, Eddie came into the room, wearing a new set of clothes, the others just thrown out. “Still can’t get the smell of your spit off of me.” and exaggeration, but it did take a lot of soap to make him smell normal again

“Ah yes the same spit that saved your life huh.” Richie smiled, sitting on the bed, reading emails from his team back in New York. He tapped the other side of the bed, right beside him. Eddie sat down.

“How did you know it would work?”

“Well I did it before.” the answer was plain and simple “I can heal people who are about to ring death's doorbell, crazy right”

“So how the fuck can you do that.”

Richie sighed, adjusting his glasses “well, I’ve been able to do it since our first fight with IT” Eddie nodded “I just got hungry, and no matter how much I ate I was always hungry. At one point I blacked out after one of my shows, woke up with someone inside. It was awful. They were trying to rip me open.” 

Eddie nodded “Did you know how to get them out?” 

Richie Laughed, “It took me a few hours, but I got it. Too bad though. The guy was a fan, and I swear I saw him again like a year ago at one of my shows, every time I looked in his direction, he averted his eyes.” 

The two of them laughed, “wish I could’ve been there” 

Richie stopped, smiling sweetly at Eddie “I wish you were there too.” Eddie looked down, trying to contain his embarrassment. 

“Listen Richie, I’m sorry for what happened in the bathroo-”

“Eddie, I like you, but if you don’t shut the fuck up with your sorry’s, I will hate you.” Eddie put his hands up in Defeat. “Clearly I liked it since I didn’t stop you, I was kind of dreaming for that to happen for a while.”

Eddie looked back up “how long?”

“I don’t know, since we were teens. I don’t have it on a calendar for you”

Richie then got a pillow thrown onto his face, and before he could get it off and yell, he got another one.

“So, you’ve liked me all of middle AND high school” Eddie grabbed another pillow. Hitting Richie with each word “AND. YOU. DIDN���T. TELL. ME?!” the last swing, Richie caught it “I thought I was being to obvious back then.” Eddie wasn’t mad, he was just playing, his laughter filling up the room, he felt like a kid again.

Eddie knew the real reason why Richie didn’t share his feelings, it was the same reason why he didn’t, they’d be crucified by anyone around! 

Richie grabbed the pillow; it was his turn to hit Eddie “ I. was. Stupid!” Richie began to laugh, pummeling Eddie with pillows. 

The men fought with the pillows like they were kids again, finally stopping when Eddie surrendered. Richie turned to Eddie, their noses touching. 

This time, it was Richie who leaned in for the kiss, and Eddie didn’t hesitate to kiss back.

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

And there we have it! my coping mechanisim i created after watching the movie, if you enjoyed, please don’t be afraid to request some stuff, I would love to write more!

[itsagoodluckkiss]

Oblivion

So, this is a personal request my dear friend @cheesepots asked me a while ago. This is also the last part of my fanfic. MC can’t sleep. Jake wakes up, keeping her company and they talk some things out. Sleepy Jake obviously. The title is from the song “Oblivion” by Bastille. Hope you’ll all enjoy this.

Pairings: Jake x F!MC 

Warnings: A bit angsty but really fluffy too. 

Part 1, Part 2

"No... no no no... stay with me, Jake!"

"Run... get outta here... the place is... gonna blow..."

"I can’t just leave you!"

He smiled softly, stroking her hair for a mere moment.

"At least I got to see you... one last time."

Her eyelids flew open, her heart beating rapidly as she came back to consciousness, realizing this was another nightmare. Not a nightmare. A memory. Jake dying in another version of reality, again, just to save her. The previous nights she would sob quietly, not knowing if he was actually okay, not being able to hold him. But tonight, her worries faded away quickly.

She was lying next to him, with his hands tightly wrapped around her, both on their sides, their faces close. He was still sleeping peacefully, finally recovering his tranquility because she was back to him.

Her hand moved to his chest above his heart reflexively, making sure there was no wound, the dream still too vivid. She let out a sight and slightly smiled to herself. She tucked a lock of hair behind his ear, gently caressing his face with her fingers right after. He was alive, breathing next to her. She didn’t have to worry about him right now.

His features were much softer when he was sleeping. Eyelids closed against the dim moonlight coming from the window, his breathing slow and deep, his chest rising and falling softly. His face looked untroubled, all walls torn down, leaving him looking unusually vulnerable. She loved these rare moments when he seemed so at peace.

She loved that man so much. Her mind was always focused on him the days they were apart. She knew he would blame himself for her fall, knew he would think she died because he couldn’t save her. It was killing her on the inside that she couldn’t reach him. But the happiness she felt at this moment made it all look like a bad dream.

He flinched and opened his eyes alarmed, letting out a sight and relaxing immediately under her soft touch. She cursed herself under her breath. She knew he was a light sleeper and the last thing she wanted was to wake him up. He looked at her lovingly, a small smile forming on his face.

"Go back to sleep, Jake"

"I can sleep later", he said drowsily, then brought her even closer to him and kissed her forehead.

"Jake, I’m sorry I woke you up, I-."

"It’s okay Princess, I didn’t want to sleep anyway."

"Now that’s a lie."

"Okay yeah, but I want to stay up with you."

She smiled and planted small kisses on his jawline, him chuckling at the pleasant feeling. He cupped her cheek and brought her lips to his, kissing her softly. They laid there for a while, whispering sweet nothings to each other, kissing, nuzzling in each other’s neck. He wanted to cherish this moment with her. Sleep could wait.

Losing her like that was the worst thing Jake had ever experienced. Having her back in his arms was all he could ask for and, at this moment, he couldn’t be happier. He would never let her go again, would never let anything harm her. He looked deep into her eyes, stroking her cheek with his palm, a sad look crossing his features.

"What happened?"

"I’m sorry."

"Jake... it wasn’t your fault."

"It was."

"No. Stop. Don’t do that to yourself."

She wrapped her arms tighter around his back, burying her face in the crook of his neck, her fingers brushing through his hair in an attempt to calm him down, to reassure him. He sighted again.

"I missed you."

"I missed you too."

After a while, he was on his back, her head on his shoulder. She was looking at the ceiling, thinking about the conversation she had with The Endless about him.

"Something bothering you?"

He looked down at her, softly caressing her hair. She glanced at him for a moment, then closed her eyes again. She returned three days ago but still hadn’t told him about what had happened the days they were apart. She didn’t know how to say all these stuff to him. What would he thought of her? Instead, she decided to ask him something else that was on her mind.

"Jake... do you believe in soulmates?"

He wasn’t really taken aback by her question. He had admitted to himself that she was the only one he would ever love, the person he would choose in a hundred lifetimes, the one he would find in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality.

"I do actually."

She looked at him surprised. She knew he loved her but didn’t know he would really give her a positive answer.

"If you had asked me a few months ago... I would have laughed at you. But... since I met you... I do. When I first saw you... I somehow knew you would mean the world to me. You gave me a reason to live again. So, yes, I believe in soulmates... I found mine."

She couldn’t help the bittersweet smile on her face. Yes, The Endless told her he was her soulmate but hearing him saying it... made the feeling wonderful. However, being soulmates with him meant he would always sacrifice himself for her. And that hurt her in more ways he could even imagine.

She felt his hand wiping the tears that were now falling without her realizing it. He sat up on the bed, her straddling him, his hands around the small of her back, their foreheads touching.

"I don’t want to pressure you to tell me what happened the past few days... but if it will help you stop crying in your sleep, tell me. You can trust me, you know that."

"I know... but it is so messed up and I..."

She faltered, her voice cracking, not knowing how to continue. How do you say to the person you love the most that you saw them die so many times? It was tormenting her. She wrapped her arms around him tightly and buried her face in the crook of his neck, sobbing uncontrollably, the fear of losing him unbearable. He caressed her back and planted small kisses on her forehead, trying to calm her down, to reassure her that he was there.

After a while, she managed to compose herself. She lifted her face to gaze into his eyes and he gave her a small kiss on the lips. She sighted and told him everything. About the idols, The Threshold and the riddle in the cave. About The Endless and all the things she had done in order to keep everyone alive. About watching him die over and over again just to save her.

"She told me the reason you would always die is me. You always sacrificed yourself for me. And I hate that! It’s killing me, Jake! Watching you die so many times... with only myself to blame... I wish I could stop you from loving me..."

"Don’t... don’t."

He fixed his gaze on her, his hold on her waist steady.

"Don’t say that ever again. Everything makes sense now. I have loved you since the beginning. And yes, I would die for you... but it’s not your fault. You are a part of me... I can’t even deal with the thought of you getting hurt. If it meant I would have to die so I could keep you safe... then I would do it in a heartbeat. But this is my decision. You can’t change that. Because it’s you. It’s all for you. Everything I do, I do it for you. I would be nothing without you. And I promise you... this time... I’ll live for you."

His confession had left her speechless. She loved that man so fiercely and he loved her back in the same way. He wasn’t afraid of her. He was there and he wouldn’t leave. She blinked back the tears that threatened to leave her eyes and laughed softly, causing him to beam too.

"I love you, Jake McKenzie."

His hand traveled at the back of her neck and pulled her closer. His tongue pressed between her parted lips as he kissed her deeply, feeling the soft tickle of her breath beneath his nose, his fingers carding through her hair. He wanted her to know everything he felt was true. Holding her tightly against him, his lips roamed further down her neck, kissing softly on the sensitive skin, causing a small moan to escape her mouth. He smiled and pulled away.

"I love you too."

He laid back down with her, arms wrapped around one another, eyes closed, savoring their moment with a smile on their faces.

"Everything that is going to happen... we’ll face it. Don’t worry Princess, no one is going to push you away."

"Thank you, Jake. For everything."

He gave her a sweet smile as his eyelids closed drowsily, dozing off a few moments later. She took in his sleepy figure, brushing his hair with her hand. She had shared with him what was torturing her the last few days since she returned. And he chose to stay. She could breathe again, a burden was lifted off her shoulders.

People say that the world was built for two. She knew they could face anything together. They would make everything right for themselves, for others. They would live a full life. They would age with grace, without mistakes. Together. They wouldn’t let oblivion win over them once again.

The best feeling in the world is when you sleep next to someone who you love and they love you back. With a smile on her face, she finally fell asleep in his arms.

[apathetic-revenant]

by the skin of your teeth: part eight

I warned you guys. 

(trigger warning on this one for psychological tormenting and finger trauma. if anyone needs additional tags I’m happy to oblige.) 

By the time he found the third journal, Stan was extremely tired of snow.

Everything was white, white, white, from the ground to the sky, with the black and gray sketch-marks of trees the only points of distinction in the emptiness. The woods were weighted with silence, as heavy and cold as the snow, into which his own little noises fell and disappeared like pebbles sinking into a deep lake. He felt as if he was walking across an alien landscape, somewhere that time moved differently; within a few minutes of the house disappearing from view he had already lost track of time and distance and begun to feel as though he had been walking for years.

What did not feel distant and unearthly was how extremely cold and wet he was.

Loathe though he would be to ever admit it, he was grateful for Ford's extra clothes, but the coat and sweaters didn't do anything to stop the snow soaking into his pants, or falling into his boots and freezing his feet. He had wrapped his scarf up around his nose and mouth and he could feel his breath in it, hot and wet, the only warmth to be found anywhere in this frozen limbo. The cold sunk in everywhere else, bit by bit, sliding under his clothes, chafing and scraping at him as he walked.

He remembered hearing, somewhere, about people dying of cold, how it felt a lot like falling asleep, how the temptation would start to tug and whisper at you to lie down, close your eyes, just for a minute, just rest a little while, and never wake up again.

Don't sleep, can't sleep. Like Ford, staring at him red-eyed, saying: I cannot rest, not yet, not yet. Like Stan, moving, never stopping, for ten years, because he couldn't, not yet, not yet. Miles to go. Miles to go...

He hated the silence for letting him think. Thinking never got him anywhere good. That was Ford's job.

Last I checked…

He couldn’t take it anymore. He started humming aimlessly, a long and rambling tune that meandered through every song he could think of, trying to focus on the imagined lyrics instead of...anything else. It didn't help a great deal.

He did, at least, have to concentrate a fair amount of attention on not getting lost. Ford had scribbled out something that was half map and half directions, with comments like “follow the path until you get to the big rock that looks like this” and “once you hit the creek turn left and keep following it”. It probably would’ve been more helpful if the snow hadn’t blotted out most of the landmarks, making the woods an identical, featureless expanse. At least Ford had also thrown a compass into the bag. Stan rapidly began to suspect that it might turn out to be the only thing keeping from never finding his way back to the house at all.

Somehow, mostly by aiming in what seemed to be the right general direction and hoping for the best, he eventually managed to find a patch of woods that looked more or less like Ford’s disjointed description. There were instructions on how to find the correct tree, but after a minute of staring at them, Stan gave up, broke off a nearby branch, and just started banging it against every tree he saw.

Whack-Whack-Whack-Whack-Whack-his arm was starting to get tired-Whack-Whack-had he hit that one already? They all looked the same-Whack-Whack-Whack-Whack-CLANG--

Stan stopped and squinted. It looked like all the other trees, but when he tapped the branch against it again, it definitely made a metallic sound. Huh. Well, he had to give Ford this much: he sure could make a surprisingly convincing fake tree.

He brushed the snow and moisture off the tree with the back of his sleeve until he could make out the faint outline of a panel. Getting it open presented some difficulties; the metal had frozen shut, and with his gloves on he couldn’t get a purchase on the thin crack. Exposing his bare hands to the icy metal did not feel like a particularly appealing idea.

Well, Stan, what kind of criminal are you, if you can't even get into a basic unlocked compartment? C'mon. You can do better than this.

He fished out his pocketknife and used the flat of the screwdriver attachment to pry the panel open just enough to get his fingers under it. The panel resisted, but after a few moments of struggling, it finally sprang open, very nearly smacking him in the face in the process. Behind it was a hollow compartment with a strange device sitting in it, something like a radio with a lot of dials and buttons that he couldn’t make heads or tails of.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to. He pulled out the paper again and followed the instructions Ford had written. Turn this dial this way, and toggle that switch back and forth three times, and…

He heard a muffled sliding noise, and a soft whumphf, and turned to see an indentation in the snow that had definitely not been there before. Oh. Because of course Ford had hidden his journal in an actual hole in the ground. Which a bunch of snow had now fallen into. Great.

Groaning out loud to the empty air, he trudged over to the indentation and began clearing the snow away, first with his branch and then, as he got closer to the bottom, scooping it out with his hands, until he saw a sudden flash of gold. He gently brushed the snow away, uncovering red leather embossed with a gold-foil six-fingered hand like the one on the first journal.

“What the hell, Ford,” Stan muttered into his scarf. “You could at least have put it in a box or a bag or something. Now it's all wet.”

He lifted the journal clear of the snow and shook it off. His gloves were soaking wet by now, so he yanked them off and shoved them in a pocket, wincing as the cold bit into his fingers, before doing his best to dry off the book against his sweater. It was still a bit damp, but fortunately it looked pretty sturdy.

Curious, he flipped the book open. He'd never actually looked inside the journal Ford had given him, what with all the...distractions. Probably he wouldn't understand most of it, maybe any of it, but still, he kind of wanted to see what all the fuss was about. It wasn't like Ford had told him not to look at it. As such.

He expected something alien, more of the equations and technical gibberish that littered Ford's house, but in fact what greeted him was achingly familiar. It looked like the journals Ford used to keep when they were kids, full of doodles and notes on things he had read about, or things he and Stan had found on the beach or the boardwalks; piles of notebooks crammed tight with monsters and cryptography and dreams. The handwriting was a lot neater, the drawings more lifelike, all contained within a heavy and professional-looking tome instead of a cheap dime-store composition book, but the heart of it was the same.

Some things about his brother hadn't changed at all.

He stood there in the snow, almost forgetting about the cold, flipping through accounts of folklore and secrets. Dangerous creatures, lumberjack legends, ghosts and zombies...some of the pages had been ripped out or scribbled over angrily. Some had splatters of red on them.

The journal ended abruptly halfway through, on a dramatic note about how Ford was being watched and had to hide this journal immediately.

“Great job on that,” Stan muttered. “You hid your doodad in a tree. In lumber country.”

The pages immediately before that were a mess of paranoia, ravings about seeing things, not being able to sleep, bleeding from one eye, the whole deranged plan to travel into the caves, and then...

Ironically, the only other person left that I can trust is the least trustworthy person I know. He is a thief and a charlatan-but a well-traveled one. I have no doubt that he is familiar with mob hangouts and back alleys the wide world over. He will find somewhere to hide Journal 1. I have sent word to him and now must await his arrival.

Perhaps he can yet prove his worth to me.

Stan stood there, forgetting the snow almost up to his knees, forgetting his shivers and sodden clothes, forgetting the feel of his hands against the damp leather, forgetting everything but those words and the way they burned cold and bright inside his chest.

It was true after all, then.

And he wanted to be angry, he wanted it desperately, for the anger to rise up and burn away the cold that was settling inside him like snow, like frostbite, turning everything numb numb numb until he was frozen all through and he knew he would shatter at the faintest touch, but it didn't. It wouldn't. Anger should have been the one thing he count on but the cold just kept coming and he couldn't stop it.

He'd been kidding himself. He'd forgotten. He'd let himself forget. He'd said: it was all the demon, it was Bill, it was Bill holding the knife, it was Bill saying those things, and he had stopped remembering that Ford had said things too. That Ford had turned his back on Stan. Had left him out in the cold for ten years and only called him when he wanted something.

It was pathetic, really. He'd been so relieved that his brother didn't literally want to kill him that he'd forgotten that Ford still hated him.

Or no. Didn't hate him. Hate might have been...better, worse, he didn't know, but that wasn't what was written here. This wasn't hate. If Ford had raged and spat across the page, he might have understood that, might have been able to rise to it with hatred of his own, but the words were flat and uncaring. Ford didn't hate him because Ford didn't even think he was worth hating. Ford didn't think he was worth anything at all.

And he knew this was no demon's doing, because he knew the demon and he knew Ford, and there was none of that gleeful spite here. The words weren't calculated to sting. They were only stating a fact.

That was the worst of it. It was a fact. It was true. He couldn't argue for his worth because he knew he didn't have any. What, in ten years, had he done to prove his worth to Ford, to anyone? Sold a bunch of dodgy products, got in trouble with the wrong people, wound up broke and getting more broke all the time. He'd been falling so long he knew he didn't have a hope of ever climbing out of the pit he kept on digging for himself, let alone recovering the millions he'd carelessly lost.

He snapped the book shut, dropped it in the satchel, and fished for the radio.

“Ford?”

A faint crackle, and then: “Stanley?”

“I found your journal.”

“Oh. Good.” There was a staticky pause. “Any problems?”

He'd hoped that hearing Ford's voice would spark some anger, something to drive him on, push him righteously forward.

“No,” he said. “No, there's...nothing. Just wanted to let you know.”

“Oh. I see. Thank you. Well, uh...carry on, then.”

Stan dropped the radio back in the bag and pulled his sodden gloves back on.

Maybe. Maybe there was finally a chance here. To do something. He couldn't make himself worthwhile, but maybe something he could do would be worthwhile.

He was going to get that damn hair and no overdecorated fairy horse was going to stop him.

Stan took a deep breath and pushed forward.

Ford put the radio down with a frown. Stanley had sounded...odd, but he couldn't pinpoint why. But then, there was nothing new there.

“Sounds like he's doing alright so far,” Fiddleford said from across the room.

They were in Ford's workshop, which, like the rest of the house, was an unholy mess. Ford had mostly just shoved everything off to the sides in a disordered pile. He'd sort it out later. If later ever happened.

“Yes,” Ford said absently. “So far.”

He picked up the wire he had been shaping and resumed working on it. Fiddleford was constructing the main device they were going to attach to the gun, while Ford was working on the spell components. It was delicate work, but this was what he was good at. Science. Studying. Equations and precision. Here, at least, was one thing he could understand.

He really wished his hands would stop shaking.

They'd moved the space heater in there with them, but it was still damn cold. Fiddleford had put a blanket on him-again-but it wasn't helping all that much. It felt like the cold was coming from inside him, somewhere deep in his core that no outside warmth would reach.

They worked in silence for a while, with only the sounds of their tools and Fiddleford's occasional quiet swearing to disturb the dusty air. Eventually Fiddleford laid down his pliers, cracked his knuckles, and slumped back in his chair with a sigh.

“This is a damn odd project we're doing here,” he said. “I don't understand the half of it.”

“I'd be happy to go over the advanced theory with you sometime when it doesn't hurt to talk,” Ford said.

He didn't turn around, but he could feel Fiddleford's eyeroll from across the room.

“You stick to your advanced theory,” the engineer muttered. “I don't want to know any more about this than I need to.”

“That's not a very scientific outlook-”

“Well it hasn't done you a lot of good, has it?”

The words hung for a moment in the cold air.

“...'m sorry,” Fiddleford said eventually. “That wasn't called for.”

“Maybe not,” Ford said heavily. “But it wasn't wrong either.”

By the time he found the magical glade or whatever it was, Stan was so exhausted he could barely stand. The walk from the house to the standing stones would have been long enough already without also having to push through the snow, not to mention getting lost and having to radio Ford for help three times. He'd seen the silhouettes of things he couldn't quite identify darting between the trees, and once caught a flash of red that looked an awful lot like a pointy red cap, but by and large everything looked the same, just endless blank whiteness that was starting to make his eyes hurt.

But there was no mistaking the place now that he'd found it. He'd started to pass strange carved stones poking up through the snow, and now he could see a circle of them up ahead, like some kind of knockoff Stonehenge. According to the first journal, he had to stand in front of them and perform an 'ancient druidic chant' to open the gateway. There was even an illustration of a druid on the page, as if this might in some way help.

Well, there was nothing else for it now. Stan stood in front of the stone ring, coughed a few times, and then, feeling like a total idiot, began chanting.

Just as he was starting to think that absolutely nothing had happened, he felt the rumble.

Slowly, ponderously, the stones pushed up from the snow, extending taller and taller, bringing the snow and dirt up with them in a thick wall that seemed to age and solidify into as it rose until it resembled some forgotten settlement from the Bronze Age.  As Stan watched, slack jawed, vines and flowers pushed out from the dirt, winding around and around over the sheets of shaggy moss that were spreading over the stones, while the snow and mud rapidly melted away to reveal a huge set of golden doors inlaid with fist-sized pink jewels.

Stan he reached out a hand, touched the burnished metal of the doors, tugged gently at a flowering vine, tapped the side of the gemstones, just to make sure this was a real thing that had actually happened and not some hallucination born of cold and sleep deprivation. It felt real. One of those jewels alone could set him up for life...but they looked very well attached, and anyway, thief and charlatan and knucklehead he might be, but he wasn't stupid enough to think stealing right off the front door of a magical garden that had appeared out of nowhere was a good idea. That sounded like a great way to get cursed.

Besides, he had other business.

He took a deep breath and pushed open the doors.

Before him was was a beautiful, sunlit forest clearing, unmarked by any sign of winter. The grass was lush and deep, a rich green dotted here and there with brilliantly colored flowers attended by gently buzzing insects. A clear, bubbling stream ran through it, fed by a rushing waterfall that danced with rainbows. The air was warm and soft and smelled faintly of wildflowers and honeysuckle and something else he couldn't identify. Everything about it felt more...just more, a little more intense, the colors brighter, the scents clearer.

And there in the middle of the grove were two unicorns.

For a moment Stan just stood there, staring at them dumbly. Up until this exact moment he hadn't actually, really believed he was going to see any damn unicorns. He'd expected...he wasn't sure what, maybe some weird mutant creature that Ford had just called a unicorn for convenience, or a misshapen goat Ford had seen from a distance, or maybe he would just find that Ford had hallucinated the whole thing. Because sure, by this point Stan had more or less accepted that there was something not normal going on, something weird, something he didn't really understand, but there was a pretty big difference between that and actual real fucking magical unicorns. But here they were, right in front of him, undeniably real and undeniably unicorns.

Inasmuch as he'd been expecting anything, he'd had a vague idea of a horse with a pointy bit on one end, which had made him a bit nervous to think about, not that he would ever admit that to anyone.  He'd encountered horses a few times-sleeping in barns, picking some fruit for an old guy for an afternoon's salary and a bag of apples, legging it through a field without any pants after a con attempt gone especially wrong-and he'd found that horses were, well. A lot bigger than they had looked on TV back in Glass Shard Beach. And people said horses were all timid and frightful and maybe they were, relatively speaking, but all Stan knew was that they had feet like chunks of iron and they could kick harder than any punch he'd ever throw, and there had been nothing timid and frightful off about the huge black mare he'd intruded on during his escape. Suffice to say it had been a lot harder to make it out of that field after that encounter.

The unicorns did look a bit like horses, but they looked more like deer, all slender and pointy and delicate, with dainty hooves and long tufted tails like lions. One of them, which was perched majestically on a rock and catching the light, was a blue so pale it was nearly white with a mane that was a swirl of rainbow colors. The other was a rosy gold dappled with star-like spots of white and a gold-flecked blue mane,  and was somewhat more prosaically chewing the grass in a corner of the glade.

Stan felt betrayed by reality.

The blue unicorn lifted its head and tossed its mane dramatically before turning to look at him. Its eyes were pink and glittering and really quite uncomfortably large for its face.

“Welcome, visitor,” it said-or at least, its horn glowed pink and it seemed to produce a voice, somehow, though its mouth didn't move. It was a high, flouncy sort of voice, and...probably female? It was a little hard to tell, honestly. “The world outside is harsh. Come inside and rest a moment.”

“Uh,” Stan said. “Thanks.”

“But do take your shoes off first,” the unicorn added quickly as Stan stepped forward.

Stan did a double take. “What?”

“Your shoes. I have a thing about shoes.”

Stan glanced down at the lush, deep grass, shrugged, and pulled his boots off. At least it would warm his feet. He'd lost feeling in them some time ago.

As he stepped forward gingerly in his wet socks, the unicorn rose to its hooves and paused for a moment to pose in the spray from the waterfall. “Greetings, weary traveler. I am Celestabellabethabelle, last of my kind.”

Stan's eyes automatically flicked to the other unicorn still calmly eating grass in the corner.

It was hard to tell with the horse face and all, but Stan could swear the first unicorn looked annoyed. “By which I mean, I am the last female of my kind. Skystardancechaserton is the last unicorn stallion.”

“Call me Chase,” the gold unicorn said languidly. “Please.”

“What happened to the rest of the unicorns?” Stan asked.

There was a very long pause.

“That's a very sensitive subject and I'll thank you not to bring it up,” Celestabellabethabelle said. “Now, if we're done with the rude questions-”

“Sorry.”

“-what is your name, o traveler?”

“Oh, uh. Stan. My name's Stan.”

It felt...weird. Aside from meeting Fiddleford, he hadn't introduced himself by his real name in...well, longer than he could really remember at this point. Years, at least. It wasn't even really a matter of hiding any more; there was just no point. It wasn't a name attached to anything anyone cared about.

But the unicorns could probably detect lies or some shit like that, and anyway he doubted they were going to do a full background check and call him out for selling dodgy dishtowels in New Jersey ten years ago. Although, at the rate things were going, he didn't think he'd be all that surprised if they did.

“Welcome, Stan.” Celestabellabethabelle cleared the stream in a graceful leap and paced towards him. Stan backed away instinctively. Alright, so the unicorns weren't quite as hefty as horses, but they were still big enough to be getting on with, and that horn looked sharp.

“Pray tell, what is the purpose of your quest, Stan?” Celestabellabethabelle fluted at him.

“What?” Stan said, distracted by the presence of a very pointy object on level with his face. He was suddenly acutely aware of the bandage over his face, and the tingle of the cut underneath it.

Celestabellabethabelle s eyes narrowed slightly. “Why are you here?”

Oh. Oh, right. Stan straightened up a bit and tried to put on his most charming expression. “Ah, yes, about that. I, uh, I came to ask for a bit of your hair. You see, there's this-”

“Very well!” Celestabellabethabelle tossed her head again and struck a pose. Stan got the feeling he had finally managed to wander back on script. “Step forward, and let us see if you are truly of pure, perfect heart.”

“Oh, uh, well, about that-whoa!”

The horn was very suddenly extremely close to his chest and oh man, it was sharp. Stan instinctively stumbled back, temporarily forgetting about anything other than getting some distance between that thing and his precious vital organs.

He'd barely had time to chastise himself for this-great, he'd probably screwed up even before the test had begun-when the unicorn reared up with a wild bray. The sudden movement tripped frantic alarm bells in Stan's head-horn, hooves, limbs moving blow incoming, get down, cover face, cover chest-and he was flinging himself onto the frozen ground and rolling away without even thinking about it. “NOT PUUUUURE OF HEEEEEAAAAART!” the unicorn bellowed.

Stan flinched and curled in on himself, waiting for the attack.

It didn't come.

“Are you even listening?” Celestabellabethabelle demanded. “And why are you on the ground?”

Stan slowly raised his head. The unicorn's tail was twitching, and it definitely looked annoyed, but it didn't look like it was about to smite him.

“Sorry,” Stan mumbled, clambering to his feet.

“I said you are not pure of heart,” the unicorn repeated huffily. “You have done bad things!”

Stan's people-reading skills didn't work quite so well on unicorns as they did, well, people, but he got the distinct impression that Celestabellabethabelle wasn't angry at him for being impure so much as she was angry at him for not reacting properly to this revelation.

“I mean...I coulda told you that without all the theatrics,” he said, brushing grass out of his hair.

Celestabellabethabelle gasped dramatically. “You knew you were not pure of heart? And yet you dare to come here and ask a boon of a unicorn?”

“Well...it's for a very important reason,” Stan said. “My brother-”

“I will hear no more! Leave!” The unicorn reared up again and Stan flinched, but this time she only turned her back on him and strode back toward the stream. “We grant our hair only to those who are pure and perfect. You do not qualify!”

“I know I don't qualify, but-”

“No arguments! Take your shoes and go!”

“No,” Stan said.

Celestabellabethabelle jerked her head around in surprise. “No? What do you mean, no?”

“I mean, no. It ain't that easy to get rid of me, lady.” Stan folded his arms and looked steadily back at her. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that the other unicorn had stopped eating and was watching the scene with interest.

“You dare-”

“Let me ask you something,” Stan said. “When was the last time you actually met a person that was perfect and pure of heart?”

He watched for the hesitation. He wasn't disappointed.

“It's...been a very long time,” Celestabellabethabelle said. “Such hearts are very rare-”

“If they're so rare it shouldn't be hard to remember the last time you encountered one.”

Unicorns, it turned out, had very bad poker faces.

“Why do you ask these impertinent questions?” Celestabellabethabelle said eventually, after too long a pause. “It is no concern of yours-”

“Yeah, yeah, cut the crap,” Stan said. “I know a con when I see one. Let me guess: you've never encountered someone that was pure of heart. Probably because they don't exist. Everyone's got some bad in them. Maybe...maybe some of us more than others, but-”

“And I suppose you know everything, do you?” the unicorn snapped. “Who are you to argue with a unicorn on matters of the heart? We can see within you, we know-”

“Yeah?” Stan said. “So if you know so much, tell me, just what bad things have I done? If you know all about them it shouldn't be hard to name a thing or two.”

“It...it doesn't work like that,” Celestabellabethabelle muttered. “It's more of a vague-”

“It doesn't work at all, does it? You didn't even get near me with that thing before you were brayin' about impurity. I told you, I know a con when I see one, and I gotta tell you, this one is pretty weak. You just think no one will argue with you 'cause you're pretty.”

The other unicorn broke out laughing.

“Chase!” Celestabellabethabelle hissed angrily, shooting the gold unicorn an evil look. “Don't you have somewhere else to be-”

“I do not,” Chase replied. “It's not your glade, C-beth, and I'm tired of you hogging it just so you can play your stupid games. Anyway, why would I leave now? This is the funniest thing I've seen in years.”

“Chaaaaaase,” Celestabellabethabelle whined.

“You got in one, dude,” Chase said, tossing his head at Stan amiably. “She's been pulling this stupid trick over on people for ages. We can't see into anyone's heart. Our horns don't do jack 'cept glow and play disco music.”

He raised his head and, sure enough, his horn glowed and emitted a snippet of obnoxious music.

“Urgh,” Stan said.

“I know, right? It changes from time to time. Not sure why.” He twitched his tail in what might have been the unicorn equivalent of a shrug.

“I am protecting our glade,” Celestabellabethabelle insisted. “If word spread among the outside world of the properties of our hair, why, we were would be hunted to extinction, our land destroyed-”

“Yeah, no,” Stan said. “I think you just like screwing with people.”

“Alright, maybe I do!” Celestabellabethabelle snapped. “They're so...so...whiny and stupid! 'Oh, please, beautiful unicorn, may I have a lock of your mane to protect my family'-blah, blah, blah! It gets tiring, you know! And they're so gullible, they fall for anything! I say they deserve it! After all, how would you like it if I came into your house and demanded you give me some of your stupid hair?”

Stan was done with this.

“Boo fucking hoo,” he snarled at the pouting unicorn. “You want to know how I'd like it if I got to sit around in a magic glade doin' nothing all day and the worst thing I had to put up with was having people come by to flatter me? I think I'd like that a whole hell of a lot! It'd beat the shit out of being homeless, broke and on the run for ten years! You know when the last time I got to have a shower was? Wash my clothes? Eat a decent meal? Sleep in a damn bed? Listen, you overrated carousel reject, you want some hair? Is that your problem? Because you can fucking have it!”

He grabbed at his pocketknife, yanked the blade open, and, in a fit of towering spite that had escalated well past any rational thought, hacked off his tied-back hair and flung it in the unicorn's face.

Celestabellabethabelle stood there, blinking, nostrils twitching, looking considerably less elegant and otherworldly with chunks of brown mullet all over her, and made a small horsey sound of distress.

“Now,” Stan said, breathing hard and drunk on the feeling of pure unthinking anger, “I did not wade through two feet of snow for hours to get here just to turn around and go back empty-handed. You want to talk about being hunted to extinction? Fucking try me.”

The unicorn stared at him for a moment longer before bursting into tears-somehow-and running away.

Chase bellowed with laughter.

“Dude, that was amazing!” he gasped, doing a kind of gleeful tap-dance with his front hooves. “The look on her face! She's never gonna live that down! Listen, buddy, you really need that hair, you can have some of mine. You deserve it after that performance.”

“Oh,” Stan said, slowly lowering the knife. “Uh, thanks.”

He pulled his boots back on, wincing at the feeling of his wet socks squelching around inside, and picked his way across the grass over to the gold unicorn.

“Actually, if you could take it off the front, that'd be great- yeah, like that.” Chase cocked his head to the side and let Stan cut a few locks off the front of his mane. “Yeah, that's the ticket. It's been getting in my eyes, and lemme tell you, man, it is hard to get a haircut when you don't know anyone with opposable thumbs. Oh, wait'll I tell everyone about this...”

“So you're not really the last ones,” Stan said.

“Oh, Epona, no,” Chase said. “That's just part of her stupid game. Honestly, she's taken so many people in with that, I cannot tell you how great it was to watch someone call her out on it for once. Usually they just run away crying. Although I heard one guy challenged her to an arm wrestling match.”

Stan carefully tipped the glittering blue hair into the little plastic baggie Ford had put in the satchel and tucked it away. “Well...uh...thanks. For this, I mean. It really is important.”

“Sure, dude. Least I could do, I'm gonna be riding that story for months.” Chase swished his tail and went back to chewing on the grass.“And hey, good luck on your quest!”

“Thanks,” Stan muttered, turning back toward the gateway. After the brief reprieve of the warm glade, the cold waiting outside felt even worse. “I think we're gonna need it.”

“Ford?”

Ford jerked upright at the touch of a hand on his shoulder and realized with a sick jolt that he'd been drifting off over his work. He couldn't afford that. If Bill got loose, here, now, alone with Fiddleford...he didn't want to think about that.

The engineer in question was standing over him, holding a steaming mug and looking concerned. “I, uh. I made some more tea. That coughing sounds like it's getting pretty rough.”

He held the mug out tentatively.

Ford took it. It was his favorite, he realized, the one with the NASA logo on it. A graduation present. It had gotten chipped at some point.

“Thanks,” he muttered, setting the mug on the tabletop and wiping at his eyes. Just a little longer. He just had to make it a little longer, and then he could rest.

“Stanford,” Fiddleford said quietly. “I...I need to ask you something.”

His tone sounded ominous, but Ford was far too drowsy to properly process it, so he settled for making a questioning noise.

Fiddleford perched on the edge of the desk and kicked his legs back and forth across the floor. “This...this demon...is there, ahm...anything it's done that I should know about?”

Ford squinted at him. “I thought you didn't want to know things.”

Fiddleford blew out a tired, irritated sigh. “Look, I just...I...Stanley said it'd been, uh, it'd been...hurting you. And-”

“Stanley told you that?” Ford broke in, feeling a faint sting of betrayal. He'd rather hoped Stan would get the hint that it wasn't something Ford exactly wanted to be talked about.

“The issue was rather pressed when I started seein' all the blood around your house,” Fiddleford said, a faint touch of his old dryness creeping into his voice.

“It's not important,” Ford muttered, staring into his mug.

“We could debate that,” Fiddleford said. “But...well, it's just-I had a moment, y'know, seeing that...it made me wonder, well, what you'd been doing. I mean, if there were...other people...”

“If I'd been hacking people up in Satanic rituals?” Ford said. “Corpses hidden in my basement? That sort of thing?”

Fiddleford looked very tired.  “Stanford...you told me you made a pact with a demon that wants to end the world. There are...weird sigils and idols and things all over your house. And an awful lot of blood. I hate to break it to you, but you've kinda lost the benefit of the doubt on this one. So yeah. I guess that is what I'm asking.”

“Technically he's an extradimensional being-”

“Yeah, yeah, it's as close to a demon as makes no difference, from where I'm standing.”

Ford stirred his spoon around in his mug aimlessly.

“As far as I know I'm...the only one he's hurt so far,” he said eventually. “Well. And Stanley. Last night.”

Fiddleford nodded jerkily. “Right. And this pact-”

“It was just...an agreement. To work together. I didn't sign over my first born or anything, if that's what you're thinking.” Ford shrugged listlessly. “I thought he was a friend. He said he could help me, he could...keep working when I couldn't...I didn't see any reason not to let him. It was...easier, for him, if he could move in and out of my mind. And then later I...it turned out I couldn't take it back.”

“Why?” Fiddleford said.

“Well...the mechanism by which Bill is allowed access-”

“No, I mean...why was it so important for you to be working so damn hard?”

“Oh.” Ford took a sip of the tea. His throat felt raw, worn and chafed as an old rope. “I suppose Bill was very motivated to complete the portal as fast as possible.”

“Probably,” Fiddleford said. “But that'd be its reason. What was yours?”

“What?”

Fiddleford took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes.

“You work yourself to the bone, Stanford, and I've never understood it,” he said. “Even before...all this. You get as much done as any three people could and you still push yourself to go harder. For as long as I've known you it's been like you're...you're racing towards something, but I don't know what. I'm not sure you do either.”

Ford looked away.

“You wouldn't understand,” he said. No one ever did.

“Yeah, sure,” Fiddleford said wearily. “Handy excuse to not bother tryin' to explain it.”

Ford bristled. “You know, I could be asking you the same question.”

“What? I'm not racing towards nothing. I take my own time-”

“No. Your first question. Is there anything I should know about?”

Fiddleford began to jog his leg nervously. “What would you be needing to know about?”

“Did you erase anything else?”

“I don't know if it's really any of your damn business what all I chose to forget-”

“I wasn't talking about what you forgot,” Ford said. “I'm talking about what I forgot. What did you erase from me?”

“Ah. That.” Fiddleford looked down at the floor. “Well...I...when I first made the gun, I used it on myself, to try and forget the, uh...something bad we encountered...”

“The Gre-”

“I don't want to know.” Fiddleford rubbed at his temples. His Southern drawl was coming on strong now, always a sure sign of stress with him.“You're not really getting the point of the whole 'erasing traumatic memories' thing, are you?”

“I get it, I just don't-”

“Anyway. After...after that happened, and we had that argument...” He closed his eyes and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I said I wasn't going to use it anymore, and, and I meant it, but I had...I had some things to take care of first...and you caught me...you were going to break it. To stop me using it. And I...I couldn't...so I used it on you. I didn't mean to. I mean, I never meant to use it on anyone who...who didn't need it. But I guess I panicked. And after, it was like...like rewinding time. Like I'd just gone back and we had the whole argument over again, except this time I knew what to do right. And it was just...easier to leave it like that.”

“Easier,” Ford said flatly.

Fiddleford shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. Easier. Then later, when I brought the men round to help excavate...you...you got real upset. You were yelling about how we couldn't trust anyone, couldn't bring anyone else in, how things had to be secret...you-you were scaring me, Stanford. I'd never seen you so angry...”

“I...” Ford swallowed hard. “What happened to not using it on people who didn't need it? Not exactly the most beneficial usage of your wonderful device, is it, cheating honest men out of free labor?”

“It wasn't free labor!” Fiddleford said, scandalized. “I paid them! I just let them think it was for something else! Anyway, I reckon it was pretty dang beneficial to them, considering it was a choice between them forgetting what they'd worked on and you comin' after them for knowing your precious secrets!”

“What?” Ford's voice caught and he began to cough violently. It went on for some time. Fiddleford reached out a hand, hesitantly, but he didn't seem to know what to do with it, and eventually he took it away.

When Ford finally caught his breath enough to speak again, it was in a harsh whisper. “I wouldn't...I wouldn't hurt anyone...”

There was open concern on Fiddleford's face now, but he shook his head. “I heard you talking to yourself. You, um...I heard that a lot, actually. I don't think you realized...but that night, I thought you'd fallen asleep at your desk, and I went to get coffee, and when I came back you were talking about having to clean up...”

Ford's red-rimmed eyes went wide in horror.

“Bill,” he said. It was barely audible. “He...he must have...must have been planning...It wasn't me, Fidds, it wasn't...I wouldn't...”

“I didn't know that,” Fiddleford said.

Ford wrapped his arms tight around himself and said nothing.

“That was all, though,” Fiddleford said after a little while. “That was all I did. I've...been keeping an eye on you. When you came into town, and... I came around to the house a few times, to see how you were doing. I kept meaning to talk to you, to say something...but I always lost the nerve. But that's all. You, you worry me, Stanford...what you're doing worries me...but I haven't used the device on you again. I swear.”

“I thought I saw you,” Ford mumbled. “Watching me, but I wasn't sure...I thought it was a dream. Or maybe not.”

He rubbed a hand over his face, fingers pausing over his swollen eye. “I've been losing time, Fidds. Losing...bits of myself. I wake up in places that I didn't fall asleep in, I find...cuts and bruises that I didn't inflict, I...everything blurs together. Dreams, and visions, and I don't know what's real anymore, things just...come and go...”

Fiddleford frowned and rubbed his hands on his knees. “Stanford...”

“Listen to me, Fiddleford.” There was a sudden urgency in Ford's voice that made Fiddleford jerk his head up in surprise. “This is why, this is why what you're doing is dangerous, do you understand? This is what happens when you start...when things get erased. You lose yourself, more and more, and, and eventually you're...you're more negative space than positive. There's more of you gone than there is left. You don't want this, Fidds. Please. Don't do this to yourself. Don't make my mistakes.”

Fiddleford swallowed, bobbing his head nervously. “That's, uh...that's different, though...”

“How?” Ford said sharply. “How is it different?”

“Because I'm choosing what I want to forget!” Fiddleford snapped back at him. “Because I'm in control! I'm not just...at the mercy of...”

He caught himself and looked away.

“I only use it when I need to,” he said. “It's all worked out fine, so far...”

“So far.”

“I've been studying it, there's no side effects-”

“Don't you see, Fidds? You're...you're erasing symptoms, but you're not handling the problem. You say you take away the memory of what frightens you and you're fine...until something else frightens you, so you have to use it again...it's not solving anything! Unless you do something to deal with your fear, you're just going to keep erasing memories until there's nothing left-”

“That's damn easy for you to say, isn't it!” Fiddleford burst out. “Deal with my fear-like you have any idea what that's like! What do you know about fear? When we went up against those things...I never saw you blink! You, you laughed like you thought it was all fun! A game! And then you give me this spiel about finding 'creative solutions' and those damn meditation techniques of yours that didn't do anything...who are you to tell me how to handle my fear, Stanford? You never worry about anything, you just charge ahead!”

He trailed off, gasping, into a ringing silence. Ford was looking at him very strangely.

“Fidds...” he said quietly. “Why do you think I knew those meditation techniques in the first place?”

“I...I don't know. I thought you...went and looked them up. Got them from a book or something.”

“No...well, I did, but...not for you. Not then, I mean, I...I've been using them for a long time. For myself.” He shook his head slowly. “Just because I'm not scared of monsters doesn't mean I'm not scared of anything.”

“But you...” Fiddleford frowned at the reflection in front of him. “What are you afraid of-”

There was a pounding on the door.

Ford jerked his mug, narrowly avoiding spilling tea all over his schematics, while Fiddleford squawked and very nearly somersaulted off the table.

“That's...that's probably your brother, right?” Fiddleford said nervously, when they'd both recovered a bit.

“We can't be sure,” Ford said darkly. “Could be anything-”

“Ford, open the damn door before my fingers fall off!”

“We can be fairly sure,” Fiddleford said.

Ford took the crossbow with him the door all the same.

“Is this going to be a thing with you now?” Stan said when Ford opened the door with the crossbow ready. “Because it's getting old already-”

“Prove you're my brother,” Ford said.

“Uh, what.”

“Your hair is shorter. Did you think I wouldn't notice?” Ford brandished the crossbow threateningly. “I know how shapeshifters work. They always get one thing wrong-”

“Oh for fuck's sake.” Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, things...happened, alright? Long story. But I swear it's me.”

“Prove it. Say something only Stan would say.”

Stan stared at him for a moment. “You know what? Screw this.” He took the satchel off, shoved it at Ford, and stomped inside while Ford was struggling to balance both the satchel and the crossbow.  “I got your journal, I got your unicorn hair, I think I might have hypothermia now, shoot me if you want, I don't even care anymore. Go do your nerd stuff. I'm gonna steal some of your dry clothes before I shiver myself to death.”

Ford stared at Stan's retreating back, nonplussed.

“Did you get a haircut?” Fiddleford said as Stan passed him on his way upstairs. “How even-”

“Don't ask,” Stan growled. “Go do something with Ford before he tries to shoot his own reflection.”

Fiddleford blinked after him and turned back to the door to find Ford, crossbow forgotten on the floor, staring at a plastic bag filled with sparkling blue hair.

“He got it,” Ford muttered. “He actually got it. How?”

“Does it matter?” Fiddleford said. “At least we have it. That's good, right?”

“Of course it matters,” Ford said, and Fiddleford noted with alarm that he was beginning to shake again. “It means...it means...all this time...Stan's a better person than I ever gave him credit for. He's better than me-”

“Or maybe he just mugged 'em and took it,” Fiddleford said, gently taking Ford by the arm. “Let's worry about it later, yeah? You don't look so good, why don't you take a break-”

“No.” Ford shook himself free and staggered off back towards the workshop. “We can't stop now. We're so close. Just...just a little longer.”

Fiddleford chewed unhappily on his lip, but he followed Ford back to work without another word.

Stan's duffel had one spare pair of jeans that were mostly hole, and one spare t-shirt that was mostly stain, but they weren't wet and cold-not colder than anything else in Ford's house, at any rate-so at the moment they were preferable. He threw his wet outer layers into the bathtub for Ford to deal with and rubbed off with a rather manky-looking towel before changing. The dry clothes definitely helped, but he was still so cold he felt like he was turning blue, so dug around in the heap of clothes spilling out of Ford's closet and found another sweater (how many sweaters could one man own, anyway?), an old green thing which was tight but manageable on Stan.

When they were kids he and Ford had shared a lot of their clothes, swapping back and forth; they were the same size, after all, and money was tight, and Sherman only had so many hand-me-downs.

“It won't kill 'em to share a pair of pants,” he remembered hearing his father say to his mother. “What am I, made of money? They're basically the same kid anyway.”

There was less of that as they'd gotten older and farther apart in size and style, but they would still occasionally steal shirts or socks from each other. When he'd gotten kicked out, Stan had found one of Ford's shirts buried in the duffel bag his father had packed. He wondered if Filbrick had simply not noticed what he was grabbing in his hurry, or if he just didn't think it mattered what belonged to who. It had to be the first, he decided, because everyone knew the difference between him and Ford by that point. Everyone knew Ford was the better one, the one who was going to excel. Their father certainly did.

He wondered what their father would think of them now.

At first glance the bedroom looked mostly like the rest of the house, an indistinguishable mess of paper and clutter and paranoia, but, standing there looking around and feeling at a loss, Stan picked out a few buried traces of Ford as Stan had known him, as he must have been before all this had started. A poster on the wall of a mustached man in an old-fashioned suit, and another of a man in a turtleneck sweater smiling in front of a background of planets and stars. A mug on the desk with a broken handle and a cartoon alien face on it, full of chewed-up pens and pencils. Dog-eared Popular Science and National Geographic magazines scattered about. A set of Lego astronauts posed on the edge of a shelf along with a little stuffed platypus and a Spock action figure. In one corner there was a small, dusty bookcased, filled not with the heavy technical tomes that took up the rest of the house, but with fiction. Stan picked his way over to it and ran a finger along the spines of the books. Some of them were familiar to him: beloved old pulp paperbacks worn soft and cracked, the Tolkien boxset Ford had cherished like it was his firstborn child, the matched set of classic early sci-fi titles he had rescued one shining afternoon from a book sale at the local library, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne and Mary Shelley. Others were just as battered, but unfamiliar to Stan; he could imagine Ford in college, scouring libraries and yard sales and dinky little used bookstores with that particular gleam in his eye, like a prospector panning through mud for a glint of gold.

Stan sighed and looked away from the bookstore, towards the desk that stood beside it. It was buried under a sea of paper like most other surfaces in the house, but something caught his eye, a tiny triangle of color poking out from the mess.

He probably shouldn't pry-ah, who was he kidding? He was definitely going to pry.

He moved aside the papers and pulled out...

...a photograph.

Him and Ford, tiny and shirtless and sunburned, posing triumphantly in the Stan o'War on a long lost summer's day.

Stan stood there in the cold, dark room, holding the photograph like it was made of ash, like it might crumble and dissolve if he moved his fingers.

He didn't understand.

Ford had moved on. Ford didn't care anymore, not about Stan, not about their boat, not about the dreams they had been basking in on that sun-bathed afternoon a million years ago. He had said it himself: those things had no worth to Ford, not anymore.

But here was this photograph.

It didn't make sense.

Stan set it down, gently, and stirred his fingers through the mess of paper, looking for some clue, some context. His own name jumped out at him, and he realized with a jolt that it was written several times across the sheets.

Dear Stan-

Dear Stan, I know it's been a very long time, but-

Dear Stan, I am in trouble and I need your help-

Dear Stan, I've made some terrible mistakes and I don't know who else to turn to-

Dear Stan, I'm sorry for everything.

The letters all ended abruptly, or trailed off into hopeless, angry scribbles. Some had been balled up, or torn to shreds. Mixed in with the papers were bits of a postcard like the one that had been sent to him; this one looked like it had a lot more writing on it, but it was too thoroughly destroyed to know what it had said.

He wondered how many times Ford had started writing to him before giving up and simply putting down only two words. There seemed to be an endless amount of the half-formed letters, spilling over the desk, overflowing the nearby trashcan with paper wads, torn up postcards, and...

A book?

That was odd. Ford didn't throw out books.

Stan fished it out carefully, curious. It was a thin paperback, extremely battered, cracked and dog-eared with a huge tear down the cover, which was hanging on by a thread. He recognized it, another one of Ford's treasured old classics. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

That rung a bell. Ford had been talking about this just last night, hadn't he? Stan frowned and flipped through the pages gingerly. The inside of the book was more of a mess than the outside, dog-eared and marked up, passages circled or underlined or marked out altogether. One page in particular was covered with yellow highlighter, outlining a long passage that was strangely familiar. It took Stan a moment to realize where he had heard it before: from Ford himself, last night, as he had been falling asleep. If this were much prolonged...

As he flipped through the book, a sick feeling growing in his gut, a page fell out onto the desk. Its edges were torn, like it had been violently ripped out, and the passage at the top of it was underlined so heavily Stan could barely read it.

Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self.

Underneath that the rest of the page was obscured by a scrawl of large, red-spotted childish letters that made Stan think of a too-wide grin and staring yellow eyes.

NO ONE TO BLAME BUT YOURSELF, SIXER.

Ford had gone quiet.

They were close, very close to finishing. Ford had done whatever it was he needed to do with the unicorn hair, and now they were down to the last few small but vital details. Fiddleford, concentrating on a bit of delicate soldering, didn't initially realize that the sound of Ford's ragged breathing and clinking of tools had died away until he finally put the iron down.

He frowned and glanced over at his colleague, sitting beside him. Ford was slumped on the desk, his head on one arm, chest rising and falling very slightly. For a moment, Fiddleford was tempted to simply leave him; God knew the man needed the rest. Then he remembered exactly why he couldn't do that.

He swallowed hard, trying to wet a mouth that had suddenly gone too dry to speak. “Ford.”

There was no response.

“Stanford.”

Nothing.

Hesitantly, fearfully, Fiddleford reached over to shake Ford by the shoulder. “Stanford, you need to wake up-”

Ford's hand came up far too fast and grabbed Fiddleford by the wrist.

“Hello, four-eyes!” Bill crowed cheerfully. “Long time no see, eh? Probably not long enough for you, though!”

Fiddleford stared, terrified and enraptured, at the venomously yellow eyes. “No. No, no, no-”

“Yes!” Bill grinned, achingly wide, and yanked Fiddleford closer. Ford's hand was burning hot and shaking in its grip. “I was wondering if I'd ever see you again! Couldn't take the heat, huh? See a little bit too much for your fragile little mind?”

“You-you-”

“You know, humans really are funny things!” Bill leaned close, too close, and Fiddleford could feel breath hot against his face, see the veins popping in Ford's eyes. “You know how hard I have to work to get into your heads? To really get the power to just wreck the place? It's not easy! But you, look at you! You did it all to yourself! You actually put this thing to your head and blew holes in your own mind! I didn't even have to suggest it!” The grin twitched, faintly, from side to side, teeth grinding against teeth. “And the really beautiful thing is, you have no idea what it really does! You don't know what you're in for, four-eyes! Oh, it's going to be a fun time for you-but I won't spoil it. Why don't you just tell me what you're doing with it now?”

“N...no...”

“Aw, c'mon, four-eyes, you won't share your secrets? I shared mine with you!” Bill cocked Ford's head to one side, slightly, like a carrion bird considering a potential meal. “I could share a few more, if you like! Wouldn't that be funny? If I just erased all that hard work you put into melting your own brain? How's about I remind you what you saw-”

“No!”

Fiddleford yanked his hand out of Bill's grip and stumbled back across the room, tripping and hitting the floor hard. His throat worked desperately, struggling to cry out, but no sound emerged.

“You and Sixer were testing my portal,” Bill said gleefully. “You had a dummy tied to a rope, but the rope came loose and then was another dummy tied to it! You! That's funny, see-”

Fiddleford dug his fingers into his scalp, his breath coming in rapid, panicked gasps. “No. No, no, no, not again, not again-”

“And it pulled you along and you went flying right on in and if Sixer hadn't caught you, you would've been lost forever-”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up-”

“And do you remember what you saw, on the other side?”

Fiddleford moaned and clamped his hands around his ears. There were tears streaming from his eyes.

“Tell me. Tell me what you're doing and I'll let it stay forgotten.”

“I...I can't...” Fiddleford whispered. “Please...”

“You saw me.”

Bill watched dispassionately as the engineer quivered and sobbed into the floor.

“Huh,” he said. “I really thought that would work. Oh well!” He picked up a hammer from the table and rose out of the chair. “More than one way to skin a southerner!”

He took one step towards Fiddleford and promptly collapsed to the floor in a sprawl of limbs.

“Aw, what the fuck?” Bill raised Ford's head slightly, groaned theatrically, and let it drop back down with a crack. Ford was shaking all over now, all the color long since fled from his face. “What's the point in me hijacking this stupid meatsack if it's not even going to work properly?”

“Y-you...c-c-can't...” Fiddleford hiccuped in-between sobbing breaths. “You c-can't...”

Bill narrowed Ford's weeping eyes. “Don't get too cocky over there, four-eyes. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve.” The grin reappeared, sudden as a striking snake. “Maybe I can't make it over there, but I've still got one human to work with. How about a little demonstration?”

Fiddleford's eyes widened in horrible realization. “What-no-no, don't-”

Bill held up one hand thoughtfully. “He doesn't like these extra fingers much, does he? Always whinin' and bellyachin' about being different and being a freak. It gets real tiring to have to listen to, four-eyes, you know that? Why don't we take care of that for him?”

“No, no, no, no, please-”

Bill raised the hammer.

Fiddleford clenched his eyes shut.

CRACK.

“Wooohoohoohoohoo!” Bill cackled. “Man, that is some good quality pain there! You wanna tell me yet, four-eyes?”

“Stop it,” Fiddleford whispered.

“Why stop now when I'm having so much fun?” Bill shrugged, pulling back and forth on the broken finger like it was an interesting toy. “Of course, you could come over here and stop me, but, hah! We all know you're too scared to do that! You always were a fair weather friend, four-eyes. Things get a bit too hot and you bail out! But I'll make it extra easy for you this time. Just tell me what I want to know! What could be simpler? No skin off your nose, just leave your friend to hang like you did before! Don't have to look, don't have to see anything you don't want to-”

Fiddleford opened his mouth, but nothing came out but a faint, strangled whimper.

“Need more time to think? Well, I've still got eleven fingers left! Course, it'll probably get trickier to aim as we go along, but that just makes it more interesting. Ready? Here we go!”

He raised the hammer again.

“NO!”

The hammer went skidding across the floor as Fiddleford lunged, crashing into Bill and pinning him to the ground.

“What the-”

“SHUT UP!” Fiddleford got a knee onto Ford's chest and pushed his arms down flat to the floor. He was shaking hard and tears were still streaming down his cheeks, but his eyes were wild and angry.  “I've had enough of you, you fucking snake-eyed son of a bitch! You've caused enough pain, goddamit, no more! No more!”

“Oh yeah?” Bill said cheerfully. “What are you gonna- mmphf!”

Fiddleford grabbed up the corner of Ford's coat and shoved it in his mouth. “STANLEY!” he screamed as Bill made muffled angry sounds around a mouthful of grimy fabric. “Stanley, get your ass in here!”

Bill glared at him and struggled as Stan's footsteps thundered nearer, but to no avail; there was no strength left in Ford's over-abused body.

“What? What's going-holy shit!” Stan drew up short in the doorway, boggling at the scene before him. “What-”

“Bill,” Fiddleford spat. “Now you wanna help me here or what?”

“Right, right. Shit.” Stan moved to help pull Ford up off the floor, yanking his arms behind his back while Bill twisted and kicked. “Oh, shit-oh, his finger-”

“I know,” Fiddleford said. “Help me tie him up and we can do somethin' about it.”

Bill managed to spit out the corner of Ford's coat as they shuffled him towards the chair. “Wow, you two just aren't gonna play ball, are you? Listen, I'm a generous guy, I'll give you one last chance to tell me before I really get going on Sixer here-”

“Shut up,” Stan snarled.

“You can't hurt him anymore,” Fiddleford snapped, pushing Bill down into the seat. “If we have to tie every finger down we will-”

“You really think that's the only way I can hurt him?” Bill said. “Wow, you two are dumb!”

Stan and Fiddleford stared at each other.

“What-” Stan said.

“I'm in his brain, knucklehead! You can tie me up, but you can't keep me out of your brother's mind! And, hooo boy, you have no idea how much I can hurt him there.” Bill grinned happily at them. “I'll find what I want to know. Eventually. Might destroy a few things along the way, but hey, don't say I didn't give you a chance!”

“You-”

The yellow drained from Ford's eyes and he slumped against Stan, suddenly as limp as a puppet without an puppeteer.

“Oh, God,” Fiddleford whispered. “Oh, God, oh God oh God-”

“How close is that gun to being finished?” Stan snapped.

“It's...it's...almost, it's nearly, but, but I-it'll still take time! There's things-I know the theory, but-”

“Well you'd better get to work on it now, then!”

Fiddleford yelped and scrambled towards the desk.

Stan gently settled his brother into the chair. Blood was trickling slowly from Ford's eye.  “Time. We need more time.”

“Maybe...maybe Ford can hold him off for a while...” Fiddleford said desperately.

Stan shook his head. “Ford can't bluff worth anything. He's no good at that sort of thing. That's...that's always been...”

That's always been my job.

Stan lunged across the desk, startling Fiddleford into very nearly embedding a screwdriver into the opposite wall.

“What are you doing-”

“The journal. It said...something about...” He yanked the red book out of the clutter of parts and tools and began flipping through it hastily. “I saw. Earlier. Something-there!”

He stopped and stabbed a finger that the page open in front of him. Fiddleford glanced at it and flinched away. On the opposite page was an ominous black drawing of a triangle with one staring eye.

“It is possible to follow the demon into a person's mind and prevent his chaos,” Stan read frantically, ignoring the way Fiddleford was staring at the illustration. He flipped to the next page impatiently. “One must simply recite this incantation...”

Fiddleford looked back and forth from the page, to Stan, to Ford. “You're...you're gonna go into Ford's mind?”

“Do you have any better ideas? We have to stall Bill until you can get that gun finished. We need a distraction. And I make a damn good distraction.”

“But-won't that put you in danger too-”

“I don't care.”

And he didn't.

He didn't care if Ford hated him, didn't care if Ford thought he was worthwhile, didn't care about the scar on his face or the hands shoving him to the floor, didn't care about ten years alone on the streets, didn't care about the anger and bitterness and betrayal, didn't care about anything right now except getting between his brother and that thing.

Fiddleford nodded slowly and pushed the remaining chair towards Stan.

“Give it hell,” he said.

Stanley sat across from his brother, grabbed Ford's unbroken hand in his, and began to read.

[tathrin]

Albus Severus Potter: a defense of a well chosen name

(In conjunction with a truly excellent post by @waterbird13​, I wanted to share my additional thoughts...but without word-vomitting all over their post.)

The name “Albus Severus Potter” is about healing. About moving forward. About Harry reconciling with his past, even the nasty parts of it, and choosing not to hold on to his old grudges for the rest of his life. To live.

The same thing he chose when he walked away from King’s Cross Station.

Over the course of these seven books, Harry watched Sirius, Snape, and Dumbledore all bow, bend, and even break under the weight of their old sins and hatreds. He saw how much their refusal to let go of, to live with and move on from, the past damaged them. One could even argue that it killed them:

If Sirius and Snape had been able to learn to trust each other (not to like each other, not even to forgive each other, but just to move on and stop treating one another like the vile kids they had once been) would the whole Department of Mysteries debacle have happened as it did? If the two of them had been able to come to an understanding of one another as allies, would Harry have trusted Snape enough to believe he would pass along his message about “Padfoot” and “the place where it’s hidden”? If he’d even just trusted Snape enough to come back to the castle and check with him after they left Umbridge in the forest, he would have known that Sirius wasn’t actually in any danger...but Harry didn’t think he could rely on Snape, because of the vicious cycle of loathing between Snape and Sirius (and the memory of his dead father). Certainly their mutual hatred did nothing to make life easier for the two of them, nor for the Order as a whole, weighed-down by their old grudges; whether Sirius might have survived past the end of OotP if he and Snape had come to some kind of understand is, of course, something we’ll never know. But don’t tell me it’s not a question Harry asked himself; he even brought up the issue with Dumbledore in the immediate aftermath of Sirius’s death.

Dumbledore knew that ring was a Horcrux and he put it on anyway. He isn’t stupid, he had to have known that was a bad move -- but he was overcome by guilt and grief and he did it anyway, because he wasn’t thinking logically, he was too consumed with the need to see his sister again and, presumably, get some kind of closure that he had spent so many decades longing for. And yes, Snape cast the final spell that ended his life on the Astronomy Tower, sure -- but he was already dying, that was the whole point. If he hadn’t been doomed, would he and Snape have come up with some other plan to deal with Draco? I expect Dumbledore would have wanted to stick around longer, if for no other reason than to increase their odds of winning the war, if not for the ring that doomed him due to his fixation on the Resurrection Stone. There’s a reason why Harry was able to drop the stone in the forest and leave it behind, even though he had lost so many people he loved himself; part of that reason is that he thought he was marching to his own death, true, but the other part is that even then, he was thinking about the future. Harry didn’t die to absolve the sins of the past; he died so his friends would have a future.

That Snape was consumed and, ultimately, destroyed by the ghosts of his path should require no further illumination on my part, but if you’re not clear on it just go re-read Prince’s Tale for starters or really any of the seven books because Snape’s whole character arc was one long line of misery and an inability to forgive, move on, or let go. Always, remember?

In DH we see Harry actively reject following Dumbledore’s path when he chooses to let the D.A. help him find the Horcrux. If Dumbledore had been able to let go of the pain of his past, maybe reconcile with Aberforth, would he have needed to keep all his secrets so close to his vest? Again, maybe Dumbledore would have gone down the same path in the end...but it certainly didn’t make him happy, clinging to the sins of the past like that, and Harry knew that by the end, and he chose to step away from that.

And back to Sirius for a tangent: if he and Regulus had not been so estranged, don’t you think it likely that Regulus would have sought-out his brother (whom he knew was working against Voldemort, he had to have known, Sirius had made no secret of his allegiances for years) when he decided to turn traitor, and maybe at least shared some information with him? Maybe asked for help, even -- but at the least, he might have sent Kreacher with instructions to seek Sirius out if he couldn’t destroy the locket on his own; how different would things have been if Dumbledore had gotten his hands on one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes back then? Maybe Regulus would still have died, maybe he would have still insisted on going into that cave alone save for his elf...but other lives might have been saved, if the Black brothers had been on speaking terms...

So in summation, we know that Harry saw, first hand, the kind of damage that clinging to the wounds of the past can do to people.

Now mind you, I’m not saying that some of these grievances were not legitimate things to be upset by. Because they were! And I’m not suggesting that anyone should be “required” to forgive people who’ve hurt them, because nope. Fuck that abusive nonsense. Goodness knows I am a spiteful bitch, and I’m not about to go spouting some “forgiveness is good for the soul” bullshit here! There are things that do not deserve to be forgiven, and anger is at least as powerful a motivator as any other emotion, and there is nothing unhealthy about anger in and of itself; anger can change the world.

However...there is a point where it gets in the way if you can’t learn to work with your anger, if you can’t learn to move on in spite of your grudges. Frankly I like to think that if I were in some kind of Order of the Phoenix situation, and one of my childhood enemies were part of the group too, I would be mature enough to be able to work with the slimy good-for-nothing bastard in a professional, civil manner; not forgiving, not forgetting, but also not focusing on my own wounded pettiness the way Sirius and Snape did. Not constantly re-affirming and reveling in the old slights and torments. There were more important things to focus on than their personal feelings -- but they couldn’t move on from the past; couldn’t live in the present instead. They refused to even try.

And Harry saw that. He saw what that kind of thing does to people, saw how toxic and indeed even fatal it could be; he saw first hand (both in the Pensieve and in the present) how the cycle of hatred between Snape and the Marauders just kept circling around, clawing away at all of them, damning and damaging them all. He watched the past poisoning them for seven years.

And then he looked at his life and, as he had with Dumbledore’s habit of secrecy, he made the conscious decision not to live like that.

That is what Albus Severus’s name represents: healing, closure, moving forward. It shows that all really is well, because Harry has healed. He isn’t a broken shell living in the evils of the past; he’s a whole, healthy human being (scarred, yes, they’re all going to be scarred, and I don’t mean foreheads and arms and backs of their hands) and he is getting on with his life. He’s not wallowing. He broke free from the cycle of hatred that defined the lives of so many of the dead he lost. He isn’t reliving the sins of the past. He’s living.

And the name Albus Severus Potter shows that all is well.

Honestly, it was that name more than the whole rest of the epilogue scene, that made me actually believe the closing line of the series, and I’m sick of people shitting on it because they can’t take two seconds and think it through.

Final Notes in Rebuttal:

Harry didn’t know he was going to have two sons when James was born, so of course the first boy got both names! If he had had twin sons, it probably would have been “James Albus” and “Sirius Severus” -- but nobody ever knows for sure how many kids they’re going to have, okay? So please stop talking about how he ought to have “spread out the names” blah blah blah. That isn’t how procreation works.

Orphaned Harry Potter, who named his kids James and Lily after his own dead parents, was not going to take the name “Remus” away from his own god-son you selfish pieces of trash. That name belongs to Teddy more than it does to him, and Harry would recognize that import because he named his kids after his dead parents, so of course he’s going to leave Teddy the option to do the same! (Besides, it might have been weird for Teddy to grow up with a younger quasi-sibling named after his dead dad or mum, don’t you think? I dunno seems weird to me.) And by the way, Edward Remus Lupin already is named after Moony, so Harry’s already got a son (or god-son, anyway, and don’t even pretend that Harry wasn’t a huge part of Teddy’s life) named after him! You think he’s going to turn around and say, “oh well now someone who matters is named after Remus, and not just you, Teddy” -- which is basically what is being suggested every time someone complains that Harry didn’t name any of his kids after Remus? I don’t bloody think so!

None of the other Weasleys would ever be callous enough to even go near the name “Fred” don’t be an ass. That name belongs to George and George alone and if he never wants to hear the name “Fred” again because it hurts too much then they won’t fucking speak it. And if he wants to name his son after his dead twin, then they will respect that. End of story.

Neither “Albus” nor “Severus” are weird names in wizarding culture. This is a world where Phineas, Arcturus, Rabastan, and Lucius are all quite ordinary names for boys. Albus, in particular, would be a name that was familiar to wizarding society, after Dumbledore’s long and (in)famous career. Do you think Harry’s second son was the first “Albus” to walk through the halls of Hogwarts after Dumbledore’s death? Come on! So no, nobody is going to tease Albus because “his name is weird” pay attention to some basic world building, please!

Frankly giving your kids the names of dead people whom you knew well seems a bit awkward to me; the fact that Harry didn’t know James or Lily, and the fact that he never called either Dumbledore or Snape by their first names, gives those names some remove from immediate usage. It would be like, if I wanted to name a kid after my dead grandmother, I wouldn’t call her “Dottie” which was the name we all used for grandma; I might call her Dorothy, because nobody ever called grandma that, so while the name is still hers it doesn’t trigger immediate associations to grandma in my head, and yet would be a definite gesture toward honoring her. Right? So when Harry shouts, “Albus, stop that!” he isn’t going to automatically feel like he’s talking to Dumbledore...so just, remember that there is some level of remove between the names “Albus” and “Severus” and the people who bore those names, for Harry. So yes, he named his son after a man he hated...but he used a name that was never really associated with that man in his head, and which furthermore was just the kid’s middle name, so...yeah. It was more of a gesture, a symbol, I think. If he’d called him “Snape” it would have been weird; he would have had a hard time shaking the associations of that name, I expect. But the name “Severus” meant as much to him as...well, as the first names of some of your teachers whom you only ever knew as “Mr Smith” or “Ms Jones” etc. And that’s also why Sirius works as a middle name much better than it would as a first name, just btw.

Ginny Weasley grew up with more family than she knew what to do with. Harry grew up with none (oh he had relatives, but the Dursleys weren’t family). Ginny spent her whole life having a family; Harry finally got to make a family of his own (to recreate what he’d lost on Oct 31, 1981) after they got married. Not a family that had welcomed him into its folds, but a family all of his own. That would have meant a lot to him, more than it meant to her; Ginny could take family for granted. You don’t think she understood how important having kids was to him? Yeah, she would have wanted kids too or she wouldn’t have had any -- but it would have been an expected, matter-of-fact thing to her. To Harry...it would have been the whole world. So yes, I expect she was perfectly content to let Harry have the emotional catharsis of suggesting their kids’ names, and going along with his preferences, because it would have meant so much more to him than it did her. Ginny had six brothers. Do you really think Molly and Arthur spent hours and hours picking out big, deep, meaningful names for each of them? Or do you think, more likely, they just picked some names they liked and didn’t make it into a great big deal? So I reckon Ginny looked at it much the same way: “I’ve got kids, does it matter what their names are so long as I can shout them real loud when they do something like blow-up half the house?” (Can you not see Ginny turning to Harry at some point in the middle of the night and saying, “Sirius would be a good middle name for a boy.” And Harry would be all, “Er...yeah, I guess so, but shouldn’t we pick a first name first?” and Ginny just laughing at him and saying, “Oh Harry, please, like I haven’t known what the names of our first son and daughter were going to be since I was first crushing on you when I was ten...” And Harry would blush, and mumble, and admit she was right.)

Naming your kid after a house-elf probably would be a good way to get them teased, however.

[lavidaesunaflormuydelicada]

Please don’t catch me...

So I’m just going to be straightforward here. Hello, my name is “E,” I am 26 years old, and I have never had a boyfriend. I have never even been on a date. Yes, you read that correctly.  And none of this has been my choosing!

I’ve had it pretty rough when it comes to guys and the whole “dating game.” There’s been a lot of pain and sadness and most definitely loneliness. But for  the most part, at least now, I am able to find peace and fill my loneliness with busyness. Keeping busy isn’t always healthy, but it’s keeping me from just focusing on how..alone I tend to feel.

Typically, when this subject comes up when talking with friends, I am constantly tossed around the same bits of “advice” or “consolation” which does nothing more than frustrate me. “It’s not your time/turn yet,” or “Any guy would be lucky to be with you,” and, “But you’re so smart, pretty, etc!” and “You just gotta put yourself out there!” paired with “You need to give online dating a try.” I’m always put in this box, and I’m always given the same set of choices. As someone who was emotionally and religiously abused growing up, being told what to do and how to feel, hearing any of this instantly repulses me. It doesn’t matter how well-intended this type of unsolicited advice/consolation may be, it doesn’t in any way make me feel better.

With time and lots of disappointment, I’m learning that the only person I can count on (besides God), the only person I can trust and who knows me better than anyone else, is ME. I completely understand myself, and I know full well how frustrated and lonely I feel sometimes. So, after decades of allowing others to tell me what to do, what to say, how to feel, etc, I have decided to just do things my way. Especially when it comes to guys!

I have been told to dress a certain way, to say certain things, to give online dating a go (I REFUSE to try online dating before I’m 30), to date older men (not my type...), and so on. But I’m learning that in order to be happy (and sane!) during my time as a single woman, I really just need to figure things out for myself and see what is working and what isn’t. I’m still very insecure about how naive and inexperienced I am with dating and relationships, but I am going to continue to feel frustrated if I let other people get involved in something truly personal and special.

When I was young and committed to church life, I lived by purity culture standards and played the “waiting game.” I waited 7 years for a guy who never loved me, and would never love me back. I’m still very scarred from that experience and it’s the primary reason why I am so guarded. During this time, I quickly learned just how much I’d been lied to about what love in a romantic relationship should be like. Shit, I got to take the purity pledge TWICE!

After I left that life for college, I also got to learn that sex did not equal love, that just because I prayed and went to church and waited, that that alone wasn’t going to make Prince Charming come to me. And I allowed myself to finally rebel against those ideas. I took it out on unsuspecting randoms at clubs and bars. Even my first kiss wasn’t until age 22, and it was because I “just wanted to get it over with.” I’ll save that story for another post...

Between then and now, I’ve dealt with my issues regarding always being single and things not going as I thought they would. I’d begun to disassociate love from physical affection, including sex. And I continued to torment my brain by over-analyzing and replaying memories of (for the lack of a better word) my debauchery. But still, I managed to do two things: 1) Promise to myself and God that I would guard my heart and 2) Even though I was open to the idea of having sex before marriage, I wasn’t willing to give it up to just anyone.

And now we are here. I went through four years of depression, plenty of horrible, drunken decisions, a lot of frustration with men and nothing past a vague conversation and a mediocre kiss, to becoming my own person and living completely independently. I was able to start finding peace and fulfillment on my own whilst plowing through a lot of pain and discomfort. I still have my off-days and moments of panic or emotional meltdown. But I’m trying to not default on caving in to what I call my “negative space” whenever I do feel down about this topic.

To close this lengthy post, I am no longer a virgin, and I am both happy with how it happened and at peace with that decision (this is a very personal experience, btw!). From that experience, however, I have experienced more frustration from the stance of wanting something casual and those things STILL not working out. I still think that no matter what happens, whether I continue to purse a casual arrangement, or when I’m ready for a real relationship, I just have to do things my way. And the right man for me will see that, appreciate it, and love me for me.

I guess I’m supposed to love him for who is as well, but I’m not there quite yet!

[bellarkelifestyle]

THANKS Y’ALL <3

WOWOWOWOW I can’t believe I’ve just hit 500 followers!! You guys are seriously all so amazing and it warms my heart knowing there’s so many of y’all out there hearing what I’m shouting into the void of the internet (ik it’s mostly bellarke so THANKS BELLARKE FAM!!!!)

As an impossibly small measure of my gratitude and love for you guys, this is a little bellarke fic I’ve been messing with. Essentially, it’s a “what we should have got in 4x03″ set in the iconic af list scene  from that episode, which is seriously one of my fave bellarke episodes ever. It’s canon divergence and mostly inspired from my own fluffy bellarke day dreams. Hope you enjoy, and as always, let me know what y’all think! Thanks again you guys!! MWAH

As Long as the World Keeps Spinning 

Clarke stares at the list, looking dejected, the tears still fresh in her eyes. Bellamy is overcome with the desperate urge to do something, anything, to offer her some sort of comfort. He knows what it’s like to feel unworthy of a second chance. but she, this girl in front of him, made him believe he was worth it. And if he’s worth it, then she most definitely is. Hesitating on a course of action for a brief second, he finally decides to reach out to her. Placing his hand on her shoulder, his fingers settling on the back of her neck, his little finger accidentally slips under the collar of her shirt to rest on the small bone at the base of her neck. For an instant, no one moves. But then Clarke inhales raggedly, and to Bellamy’s surprise, her small, warm hand comes up and covers his. Shocking him further, she leans her cheek onto her hand and turns her face towards his palm. 

Bellamy is stricken with disbelief; he has no idea what to do. Thankfully, Clarke’s always been good at figuring out the next step. She stands, releasing his hand, and Bellamy jolts to remove his as well, but before he can get far, her right hand darts up and returns his hand to her shoulder. She’s grasping it tightly, like a silent plea not to go. He abides; of course he abides. He’d do anything if it meant he could offer her even a fraction of the solace she’s given him since he met her. Turning to face him, her hand slides around his until they’re interlocked, but he can’t seem to meet her gaze. She tugs his hand softly, beckoning for his attention. Unable to deny her, his gaze shoots up and he sees so much torment in her eyes, that it shatters his heart. 

Wanting, needing to comfort her, they move simultaneously, as if they were of one mind, his arms folding around her waist as hers snake around his neck, and they pull each other into a tight embrace. With their bodies flush, he can feel Clarke trembling slightly, and he tucks his face into that little spot next to her neck, where her blond waves envelop his face. He would never admit it, but he’s pretty sure it’s his favourite place on earth.  

As he breathes her in, he marvels at the effect she has on him. It never fails to amaze him how he’s instantly calmer when he’s with her. He can feel Clarke’s mouth on the little patch of his shoulder exposed by the well-worn, stretched out t-shirt. His skin tingles where her lips make contact, where her breath comes out in small puffs, but he forces that train of thought out of his mind. It’s not what she wants, he tells himself for the millionth time. Lost in her touch, in just being with her, he’s not sure how long they’ve been standing here like this. It could’ve been minutes, hours even. All he knows is that he never wants to leave. But something’s changed. Clarke, he realizes, as she begins to shift within his arms. Quickly he begins to unfold from her, but she seems to have a different idea. Clarke removes her arms from his neck, but instead of pulling away from him like he expects, she trails her fingers down to his chest. Her head drops to the middle, tucked into his sternum, and she curls herself even closer to his body. For the second time tonight, Bellamy has no idea what to do. but as usual, Clarke seems to have a plan. 

With her left hand resting in a loose fist, and her right hand splayed over his heart, she strokes her thumb up and down, mimicking the beating of his heart.

Thump thump. Thump thump. 

The breath catches in Bellamy’s throat. His heart feels like it’s glowing, and he knows Clarke can feel it speeding up. He shifts his arms, but Clarke makes a small sound or protest, so he moves one hand to rest in between her shoulder blades and keeps the other one firmly on her waist. He too moves his thumbs up and down, mimicking his racing heart. Finally, he allows himself to rest his cheek on the top of Clarke’s head. For a while, it’s just content silence, until Clarke speaks. 

“I love this sound,” she whispers, and she must sense Bellamy’s confusion, because she adds, “your heartbeat. Because it means that you’re alive, and you’re okay. That we’re okay.“ 

Stunned, Bellamy can’t think of anything to say. The potential gravity of the words she’s just admitted has only begun to hit him. He doesn’t want to read this the wrong way. After all, he reminds himself, it’s not what she wants. So he manages to find his voice in the confusion of his emotions and whispers back, "Clarke?" 

Clarke moves her head back, forcing him to meet her gaze. She looks beautiful, standing there in front of him, chin set in the confident, stubborn way he’s all too familiar with. The way that used to irritate him to no end when they first crashed on this hellish planet but eventually became something he admired, a trademark of her conviction when it came to protecting her people - their people. Her lips, set in a tight but welcoming line, the warmth from the smile her heart is too heavy to show still seeping through. And finally, her eyes. 

Those brilliant blue eyes, the colour of the sky the first time he ever saw it, which was also the first day he met her. A good day, he remembers fondly. They’re still glistening from the emotional task of the list but are somehow filled with hope and determination; the very qualities about her that got him through his overwhelming self-loathing back in the early days of the dropship, when it was just them and 100 kids against the world. But there’s another emotion in her eyes, one he’s just barely glimpsed at a few times before, one that both enthralls and terrifies him. 

He’s seen it when she gazed at him when they reunited in Camp Jaha after the Ark landed; when she stole his breath by telling him she ‘couldn’t lose him too’; when he placed his hand on top of hers in Mount Weather; when he wiped the hair out of her face in that desolate cave; when he crouched in front of her and held her hands when she snuck into Arkadia; when she told him the world was ending standing in front of the grounder throne, and looking back now, probably a million other times in between. It’s an emotion he hasn’t dared to hope she would ever feel or reciprocate. His mouth is suddenly dry, and any words he thought he was capable of speaking have left him. All he can do is stare at her. 

Clarke purses her lips, and her words tumble out. "You make me feel safe… like safety is something I - we - can actually achieve. And… I trust you, more than I’ve ever trusted anyone in the world, and I need you if I’m even going to have a chance of getting through all this but it’s more than that now, and if I’m being honest, it probably has been for a while, because… I need you. and I know I’ve said it before but I mean it differently this time, Bellamy. I need you." 

And that’s when Bellamy knows that the third emotion in her eyes, the unnamed one, the one he didn’t dare name is, in fact, the one he never believed he’d ever receive. Gazing up at him, with her eyes the colour of that endless sky from their first day on Earth, shining, filled with hope and determination, he knows what that unnamed emotion is, and yes, it’s actually, really, finally, love. She loves you, echoes his mind, and Bellamy is so overcome with heart-bursting joy that all he can do is stutter "I- I- I-” but it doesn’t even seem to matter because the next thing he registers is Clarke’s lips pressing against his. They’re warm and soft and when he opens his mouth against hers, they’re sweet too, and just so perfect. 

For a few long seconds - too-short seconds - Bellamy’s entire world is just Clarke and her lips on his lips, her cheek under his thumb, her hair tangled in his fingers, her hands clutching his chest and nothing has ever felt more right in his miserable, horrible, pathetic, beautiful, wondrous, amazing life than this. Because of her. Because of Clarke Griffin. 

When they finally separate, Bellamy stares at Clarke as she stares right back, and in between their heavy breaths, Clarke gives him a gorgeous, glowing smile, and Bellamy knows he can die happy because he’s seen her full of joy. The knowledge that he’s a part of that is a blessing of its own. He returns her grin with one of his own, a big smile that’s stretching across his face, making him look a little goofy but he couldn’t care less because here she is, here is Clarke standing in front of him smiling at him because she kissed him. Nothing will ever be greater than this moment. At least, that’s what he thought, up until Clarke utters the words that cause his heart to stop beating entirely.

"I hope you know…” she begins, but then pauses. She seems hesitant, afraid even. And it dawns on Bellamy why. Because he feels the same way too. That to love someone is to doom them. 

Well, he thinks, maybe this can be different. Maybe we can be different. But he doesn’t want to push her, and he’s about to tell her so when Clarke makes up her mind.

“That I love you,” she exhales in a rush. “I love you,” she repeats with conviction, a smile teasing her lips. Smiling even wider, Bellamy leans forward until his forehead rests against hers. 

Breathing her in, he steadies his nerves before replying. “Of course I love you.“ He catches a hint of her smirk as he places his thumb in the little dimple in her chin, tipping her head up so that their lips can meet once more. Bellamy knows that he can get through anything as long as she’s by his side. And he’ll be damned if she ever feels alone in this world again. 

"We’re in this together, right?” Clarke asks softly. 

 "Together,” he affirms. “Always.“ And if he has any say in it, it’ll be for as long as this terrible, beautiful planet keeps spinning.

check out more of my fic here

[daily-nicotine]

Where's the LLxPersona we deserve? (but absolutely don't need right now)

l i s t en

im still salty why FeMC is not canon i need herrrr

this is all according to my opinion (there will be a lot of inaccuracies please forgive me)

Honoka: THEFOOL“The Fool Arcana does not mean it that can be taken lightly. The Fool isnumber zero. It is the void from which all other things begin.“

Because thenumber zero/ having no number holds infinite possibilities. It has nothing andtherefore, has the potential to be anything. However, the Fool speaks of thepossibility of nothing. Where there is nothing, there is the potential forgrowth in any direction.

Honoka wasthe start of it all and the general characteristics of the fool is totally likeher. Of course, being the fool means she needs friends to continue on herjourney. which led to her meeting everyone and pushed her towards her goal. Notletting the school close.

Umi: THEJUSTICE“To find the one true path, one must seek guidance amidst uncertainty…”

This card ismaking decisions based on facts and the truth as opposed to making decisionsbased on emotions. It’s also about bringing things back into balance. Withthat, the card’s appearance also suggests that a fair amount of cool-headednessand a sense of realism is required.

Honestly,this is the only card im confident to assign to her because Umi is the mostlevel-headed person and no matter what, the right thing must always followthrough. Training regimen, not tolerating honoka’s lazy behaviour, or rin’s, ormaybe even nico’s lmao but of course reversed meaning biased ahem umi-chan onegai

Kotori: THELOVERS“ There is both joy and wonder in coming to understand another…”

Sure TheLovers represents the obvious (love, passion, bonds, etc.), but it alsorepresents choices or duality. The Lovers are plural and they need bothindividuals in order to be so. As for the choices part, it can represent amajor fork in the road coming up. Major choices are going to need to be made.Just like a relationship, sometimes you’ll have to chose one thing over anotherin order to make things work out.

which leadsus to that last part in season 1 where she was indecisive whether she would goabroad or not. because going abroad means she’ll have to stop becoming an idoland leaving her two bestfriends and that would be a huge change in herlifestyle

Rin: THE MAGICIAN”Attaining one’s dream requires a stern will and unfailingdetermination.”

The cardrepresents wanting to achieve something and having the self-power to achieveit. It can also represent taking the first step towards one’s plans (orpersonal growth), but is generally more about the fact that one has all of theresources to do something at hand and they just need to push forward.

based on theevents of season 1 where rin gives that little push to pana to join the idolclub and even to maki. The magician guides the fool through the first step asit represents the potential of a new adventure. however, when dealing withissues of their own, they need that simple push to continue on and as seen ins2 where rin refused to wear the dress and tried many ways to avoid it. butpana and the others ultimately gave her the confidence she needed to try it outand let me tell you she was really adorable there i swoon

Maki: THEHERMIT”It requires great courage to look at oneself honestly, and forge one’s ownpath…“

Portrayed asan old man in a dark place or cave, holding up a lantern, the Hermit isassociated with wisdom, introspection, solitude, retreat and philosophicalsearches. Similarly, Hermit Arcana characters share the commonality of placingthemselves in situations that hide them from the public eye. Hermit individualshide away from others or act in more supportive roles rather than putting themselvesin the spotlight.

all truecorresponding to maki’s personality. not wanting to join the idolclub in the first place, she supported honoka by giving her the cd for theirfirst performance. she likes to hide in the music room and isolate herself fromeveryone else. not feeling judged. she’s in a safe haven. this is the negativeside of it. the isolation. there are two lessons to learn from it; the need towithdraw from society to be comfortable with oneself and the need to come outof isolation to share knowledge with others

Hanayo: THE STRENGTH“ Only with strength can one endure suffering and torment.“

Strengthhere refers to knowing about your inner desires and keeping them in check.Suppressing desire altogether isn’t the correct answer either though. In thiscase, it’s about understanding yourself and using that to push forward. Thiscard can also symbolize inner female empowerment. Instead of suppressing yourown desires and just being passive about attaining things, go all out. You’llnever get what you want if you don’t chase after it with all your might.

Because of pana’stimid personality. She often doubts herself whether or not she can become agreat idol and gets lost in all of her insecurities. Her pessimism is also aplus. But we see how much she has grown. Using her desire in becoming an idol,she used it as her strength. Her inspiration. And therefore, overcame thehurdles of intimidation and insecurities because pana is awesome and we alllove our rice goddess

Nico: THE STAR”It’s a strong card,one that gives hope to those on the ground below. It shines in times of need.But, eventually, it is destined to fall to the earth and disappear… Even Ican feel the sadness of this inescapable destiny…“

It’s one of those feel good cards thatpeople like getting because it means that there are better things to comesometime in the future. Think of those stereotypical movies with a scene wherethe protagonist feeling depressed, but for whatever reason, looking at somestar in the sky somehow sparks an epiphany and suddenly everything is okay again. Just because it appears though doesn’tmean immediate changes. You could still be stuck in a slump for some timebefore the whole hope thing kicks in. The important thing though is thatsomething better is out there for you, and you just need to look for it.

Terrible situations lmao of course nicowith her financial difficulties, her failure in her first year with her idolclub, not being able to reach her dream of becoming the number one idol and thedeath of her dad. All of those were setbacks but it didn’t stop her. Being thenumber one idol in the universe is a huge deal and thinking of how she wouldget there hurts my heartstrings a lot because she’ll go through hell and backto make it come true. It’s the hope the nico always carried. It may be wishfulthinking to others with such an outrageous dream but she will never give up onit. the Star symbolizes to have trust and confidence in the future. Also theneed to cry. donttouchmeimcrying

Eli: THE EMPEROR”Only courage in the face of doubt canlead one to the answer…”

The Emperorsymbolizes the desire to control one’s surroundings, and its appearance couldsuggest that one is trying too hard to achieve this, possibly causing troublefor others; some elements in life are just not controllable. This card is aboutassertiveness and maintaining your own power over a situation. Just like a realemperor, it’s about standing above people and maintaining that order that makesthings run.

S1 eli was really like this and tried notto entertain honoka’s idea. Being the student council and all, she needed totake control of things before they got out of hand which resulted to manythings. She also didn’t want for the school to close but she thought that theiridea wasn’t going to help. And eli being eli she shouldered the responsibilityall for herself. Nonetheless, she learned to understand. It’s okay to get help.There’s nothing wrong with that. And from there she regained her stability. Hersense of control.

Nozomi: THE EMPRESS“Celebrate life’s grandeur…itsbrilliance…its magnificence…”

The Empress card is kind of like TheMagician in that it’s all about creation. However, where The Magician was aboutcontrol and pushing forward, The Empress is more about letting things grownaturally and at their own pace.  The card also stand for and naturalgrowth. In tarot readings, the Empress represents mothers, prosperity,creativity, sexuality, abundance, fertility, protection, and comfort (mostoften in helping maintain peace around them like an ideal mother would.)

It was nozomi who pieced all the characterstogether. She was always lurking somewhere, ready to guide. She’s the goddess asshe is the one who named the group and stringed all the relationships together.As seen in s1, she already knew they needed nine people to form the group. She justlet things go at their own pace, slowly but surely. Let’s not forget she saidthat if μ’s were a family, she’d be the mother. Althroughouts1 and s2, we see her motherly instincts come and go and it led me to believewowowow boy do I love nozomi the queen

Also id like to point out thatshe can also be the high priestess and the hierophant. The priestess is a symbol of hidden knowledge or other untappedpower, wisdom, female mystery and magic when it appears in tarot readings.TheHierophant is kind of like The High Priestess in that it represents knowledge.On the other hand though, The Hierophant is about bringing wisdom to othersinstead of secretive knowledge. This card is about taking what one alreadyknows and applying it to real life or sharing it with others. Kind of like ateacher. It can also indicate a solution to a problem. On the reversed side,this card means being unwilling to listen to what others are trying to teach.It can also stand for being stuck somewhere because you refuse to listen tosomeone else’s wisdom

not all of these are mine!

credits: https://pitiedthefool.dreamwidth.org/3045.html

http://metanorn.net/2012/06/divining-fate-an-analysis-of-tarot-cards-in-persona

[cpdevos]

12/3/19 Receiving Rest Series Pt.4

Hey Everyone!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving last week!

This week, I will be covering the fourth part of the Receiving Rest Series: Removing Distractions. For the practical part of this devo, skip down to the "Laying Aside Distractions" section.

Before you begin, take some time to talk to God and allow Him to speak to you. Slow down, and enjoy the time God has given you right now to spend in His word and in His presence. Here's a song to listen to while reading this devo, I think it will help a lot upon reflecting this passage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWjSmlpbbW0

Hebrews 12:1-2 New King James Version (NKJV)

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking unto Jesus, the [a]author and [b]finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Over the first three parts of this series, I discussed the source of our rest and the different ways that we can actually receive it. Often times, however, the reason we're not getting proper rest or aren't being filled with the peace that comes from Christ is that we are pouring ourselves into other things. In the previous devotionals I slightly mentioned how we sometimes fill our time by relaxing in other ways but today, I'm going to dive into this problem a little more and dissect what we can do to prevent it.

We Were Created for More

Before I get into what we can do to remove the distractions in our lives that pull us away from God and the ultimate rest that He gives, let's dig into these short two verses for a moment and gain some context. In chapter 11, the author of Hebrews recounts the stories of how the OT prophets and forefathers endured many sufferings and trials of various kinds that put them to the test in being faithful to God and His promises. In Hebrews 11:36-38 it reads, "Still others had trial of mockerings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented - of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth." Unfortunately, in the following verses, Hebrews tells us that these people didn't even see God's promise come to fruition. But these people were so determined to trust that God, as sovereign and merciful as He is, had a plan. They knew their home was not on earth, but in the heavenly hope promised from God Himself. With that context in mind, we go to chapter 12. The author writes, "Therefore..." indicating that there is a shift in responsibility for us now. WE HAVE JESUS! Salvation has already come! Our slavery to sin and our infinite need and brokenness that separates us from the glory of God has been mended by Christ! Jesus became and bore sin to redeem us from our bondage to the passions of this world. While we used to follow our sinful natures and used to be disciples of hell, we can now be justified in God's eyes and are sanctified as His children now! The great cloud of witnesses mentioned in this passage doesn't witness to their own faithfulness or own power but of Jesus'! Jesus was the one who was faithful. Jesus was the one who stayed obedient even in the midst of death. And Jesus was the one who ultimately finished His race in taking on the full wrath of God as the sacrifice for our eternal damnation. Now, we can look at life with an eternal perspective. What is an eternal perspective? It is a renewed and transformed mindset by the grace of God in understanding the price that was paid by Jesus and acceptance of salvation so that we may now live a life full of hope and full of mission to be what God originally created us to be: image bearers that reflect His glory! We can now truly be what God made us to be because Jesus has so graciously and lovingly brought us back and restored us to God. THEREFORE, as the author writes, we now have a focus. We have a goal. We have something to strive for. We continue to be sanctified by the Spirit to mirror Jesus and take part in His mission. Our home isn't here on earth, but it will come when we are raised again with Jesus and when we glorify Him for all that He has done for us sinners. We have a heavenly perspective, understanding that we were created as worshippers and lovers of God that continually experience and learn more about Him forever! As 1 Peter 1 reminds us, there is a heavenly treasure stored for us that is incorruptible, untainted, and never fades away. This salvation changes us. We no longer are dead in our sin, but are brought to true life in Jesus Christ! He is the ultimate treasure!  

We were created for more.

Laying Aside Distractions

Why did I decide to write an annoyingly long paragraph about running a race that seeks to find an eternal treasure? Because this is what will ground us in our walk with Christ and is crucial in how we avoid the empty distractions that pull us in day after day. Like this Romans verse reads, "...let us lay aside EVERY weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us..."During the time Hebrews was written, many Christians were suffering greatly through bloodshed for their faith. Great pain and constant threat of torture were things that many early Christians had to face. But they didn't lose hope. In fact, many became martyrs because they had hope in Christ: an eternal perspective. The author of Hebrews is writing here that they have an eternal treasure found in Jesus stored up in heaven. The race they were running extended beyond the trials they faced at the moment. In order to keep running, they needed to strip themselves of EVERYTHING that was hindering them from just trudging along and falling. As hard as it was, they needed to push away all distractions that so easily ensnared them. They had to stay faithful. How can we, in a world now that glorifies, obsesses over and worships self-indulgence and comfort, live in such a way that aims to please God? We have to, as the author of Hebrews writes, lay aside EVERY single weight. Not only does removing these things help us RUN better, it also helps us REST better.

Everyone's idea of relaxation or habit of rest is different, but it ultimately shouldn't if we have Christ. Since we have an eternal hope, we also have eternal rest. To run this race that God has set for us to run, we need to rid ourselves of things that aren't of God or about God. Like I've mentioned many times, worldly things that we enjoy aren't necessarily bad. It's when we put it on our throne and make it our source of hope and rest that it becomes harmful.

Here's how we begin stripping ourselves of distractions so that we can be filled with more of God (i.e. resting in His word or resting by journaling -- pt. 2 and 3)

1.) Identify the main distractions          

- For me, it's watching shows, browsing my social media feeds, or keeping up with sports. Be honest, and write down in your journal a list (about 3-5 items) of what keeps you away from your stress/pains.

2.) Identify how much time these things take up          

-There is usually a tool on your phone that tracks how many hours each app has been opened and how much time you spend using your phone. Also, log in the amount of time playing games, watching movies etc. If you really have that eternal perspective, humbly open that tool up, add up the amount of time you spend on some of these "restful" habits and prepare to be smacked in the face with the reality of how much time you've been spending on your electronics and not in your walk with Jesus.

3.) Limit the time you spend on these things          

-This step takes discipline and truthful dedication. After you've found the times, cross it all out and flip to a new page in your journal. Now, write down new times for each of these items. If you spend an hour a day watching Netflix, limit it to 15-20 min. If you spend 3-4 hours a day on your phone, make it 30 min. Force yourself to time limits so that when you do decide to go to these things, you are using them wisely. Your text messages will probably be a lot more meaningful if you have a limited amount of time dedicated to them. Stick to these limits and don't go over them. Trust me, you'll start organizing your day differently if you can only spend 30 min a day on your phone.

4.) Double up in your walk          

-Now flip to a new page in your journal. Write down the items that you want to increase in your walk with Jesus (prayer, studying the Bible, Bible studies, journaling, reading Christian books). For a week, write down how much time you spend on these things, and be honest. If you spend zero time, write down zero. Then take what you have and double it. For example, if you only spend 15 min. a day reading the Bible app, set apart 30 min. to read God's word. If you spend 10 min. praying, double it up to 20 min. a day. If you journal for 20 minutes, spend 40 minutes instead and maybe add prayer to it or memorize verses. If you don't rest in God at all and have a zero, start by adding 15 min. a day. Then up it up every few weeks.

What is the point of tearing down distractions and integrating discipline? To run effectively. We can't run the race God intended if we are submitting to the fleeting enjoyment of this world. And we most definitely can't rest effectively if what we find rest in is anything other than Jesus. When we run to these distractions, we forget the real prize. We are putting our trust in things that can fade in the blink of an eye. It's time to get real and buckle up. We've been called to have an eternal perspective, to realize that we have something greater to strive for. When we have this, the seeking of enjoyment in distractions mentioned above (and many more) will start to fade away.

Rest purposefully this week y'all, and let's throw aside EVERYTHING that is hindering us from receiving true rest.

Pray to close,

Moses Koo