#I hated what they did to Jane

[anthrofreshtodeath]

Just saw that ask....27 and 9 sound painful lmao 😭

A little bit of angst ahead.

Jane stands with her hands on her hips, slick with sweat, staring at the last few of her boxes to be unpacked. The walls - stark white, feel foreign to her, and her body vibrates with the desire to escape the way they start to close in. Ironically, it’s the nothingness that makes the place feel so heavy, the lack of memories and abundance of fresh starts.

So, she shakes her head. Her ponytail swishes, the bottom of it brushing the skin of her exposed back. It’s summer - mid-July, and because she hasn’t had time to figure out the swamp cooler in her bedroom window, she’s in just a sports bra and some running shorts. Short ones.

She sighs, touching her damp forearm to her damp forehead - Paris had been so mild - when the doorbell rings. Who the hell even knows she’s here already? She’s been in DC all of two weeks, most of it spent in a hotel while she waited for her paperwork on this place to clear. She braces herself for a salesman, or a nosey neighbor, something equally annoying.

She does not expect Maura Isles. “H-hey,” Jane stutters. She steps aside immediately, old habit, without even knowing why Maura’s here. Why Maura’s at her door.

Maura comes in anyway. “Hi,” she says, and Jane senses the nerves in it. It causes her to catalog all the physical signs - Maura’s tense shoulders, her shifty eyes, her spinning ring. 

“You good? I thought you were supposed to be in Paris another month,” Jane says, closing the door despite her confusion. She stares at the couch in her living area that is still wrapped in plastic. “Lemme uh, lemme get that,” she hurries, her keys jangling in her hand when they’d just been on the counter, and she cuts through the wrap so they have a place to sit. “There.”

“I actually… I changed my plans. I’m just back from Italy,” Maura explains. Jane comes back from the kitchen with two bottles of water, gloriously cold. Maura takes hers, and holds it between her once-fidgeting hands. Jane remembers how she hated that she did that. How it reminded her of Paddy Doyle. 

Jane sits now, shocked that the woman she’d just talked to yesterday morning was in an entirely different country and neglected to say, is in her DC apartment now. “Italy?”

“Italy,” Maura confirms. “Paris was just so… full of ghosts,” she says quietly.

Jane chuckles. “And Italy wasn’t? I’d think the Italian ones’d be worse.”

Maura shakes her head slowly, as though two weeks was long enough to forget how sarcastic and full of life Jane could be. “I suppose it was,” she tells Jane. Then she looks up like she’s trying not to cry, and Jane feels like an ass.

She leans in, taking one of Maura’s hands in her own larger, surer one. “So… what’s up? Why Italy? Why the secrecy? Why the crying, kid?” The last question is soft and Bostonian. Jane means it to wrap around Maura the way her arms would be too stifling to do. 

Maura cries now, because apparently it does wrap around her. “I couldn’t stand to be away another minute,” she laments. Jane looks around because the tears are many, but all she’s got is a roll of paper towels on the coffee table. She grabs it anyway, ripping one off and handing it to Maura, who blinks at it with disdain.

“I know,” says Jane. “But it’s the only paper product I got except for toilet paper. Just take it.”

“Toilet paper would be better,” says Maura, and they both laugh. It releases some of the tension in the air, even if Jane is just as confused. 

“I’d have to get up and go to the bedroom to get it,” Jane tells her. “Sure you want me to do that?”

Faced with the prospect, Maura reaches forward and grabs Jane by both hands. “No,” she whines, in a way that makes Jane want to hold her again. “I don’t.”

“So… Italy. Not France. And not a month,” Jane goads. For the first time, she realizes that Maura is in her flight clothes - comfortable leggings, a light windbreaker for Europe and for the flight, though it is useless to her now in the American humidity. Probably uncomfortable. Maura is tired. Maura is preoccupied, maybe even hurting, to allow herself to be seen in public this way. 

“The south of Italy. Calabria, Napoli,” Maura says in an effortless Italian accent. “But I had to come home.”

“I don’t know if you know, but Boston is home,” Jane replies. “This sure as hell ain’t Boston.”

“You are home,” Maura says sternly. “You left and I… broke without you. I couldn’t look at all the places we’d been together in Paris. The cafes, the museums, the football stadiums.”

“That was soccer, not football,” Jane interrupts impulsively.

Maura glares. “The rest of the world would disagree.”

“Good thing I don’t live there then.”

“Jane.”

“Sorry.”

“So, I thought, what if I went to Italy? Your ancestral homeland - the mezzogiorno. I know it’s irrational, but I thought it would make me feel close to you. It didn’t work. You know why?” Maura asked, passionate again.

Jane, rapt with attention, leans in closer. “Why?”

“I feel your absence everywhere I go alone, in every place I go without you. Surrounded by people, I… miss you. You’re the only one that counts. And I can’t do the rest of the month, Jane. I cannot bear to be apart from you anymore,” Maura’s confession ends in a sob that cannot be suffocated any longer. It swims its way to the top of her throat and writhes into the empty air of the place. It chills the sweat along Jane’s spine, making her clammy. “I can’t be so far from home anymore.”

Jane cannot speak for a long while. The cry rattles her into silence, is a noise that shuts her up. It’s less its pitch, its frequency, and more the love inside it, the love from which she can no longer run, now that it’s out. Now that it’s been said. “All this way and neither of us are home,” she croaks finally.

Maura blinks at her. Sniffles loudly. “W-what?”

“I… made a mistake,” Jane says, hanging her head. “A few of ‘em, actually. First one was takin’ this job. Second one was leavin’ you. I think I just…I got scared, Maura,” she whispers. “And if you weren’t gonna say it first… I couldn’t. And I had to go. Just to get away from myself. But then it started to really happen, and you were going to Europe and I suddenly needed you a little longer. But now that I’m here, I…”

“Boston is where you belong,” Maura supplies kindly. 

Jane nods, her own face crumbles, and then Maura takes Jane into her, head against her chest. It is that quickly that the tables turn and Jane claws at her back while she resists the tears dripping slowly onto Maura’s jacket. They come anyway, of course. “I fucked up,” Jane breathes her own confession. It turns quiet when it hits the soft skin over Maura’s heart. “I fucked it all the way up.”

“Me too,” Maura tells her. “But can’t it be fixed? Can’t we fix it? There’s nothing we can’t do, together.”

“Together,” Jane repeats, pulling away slowly with her realization.

Maura looks down until Jane is far enough to be taller than her again, sitting up straight. “What? What’s wrong?”

“We get to be together,” Jane says. “Like together together.”

Maura looks past Jane’s shoulder to the open bedroom door where a mattress lies on the floor, pillows and blankets strewn about. “Not on that we don’t,” she jokes, just for some relief, some distraction, the kind Jane had given her moments before. 

“Maura,” Jane growls, warns. 

“I’m kidding,” Maura holds up her hands, smirking when Jane gives up her seriousness for a little grin, too. “But I’d like to be together together. That's why I’m here.”

“Got my badge yesterday,” Jane says, suddenly invigorated. She wipes at her eyes and then bolts up to get said badge from her tiny dining table. “Let’s see if I can’t break this lease.”

Maura laughs robustly this time, hand on her heart when Jane leaves her for the leasing office downstairs. Never has a door slamming shut sounded so good. So much like the start of something new.

[chessb0r3d]

i cracked the code.

[sugarcoatednightshade]

Israels actions against Palestine make me sick to my stomach. Every time I look at the news I see some new horror they are committing, and see how they are justifying the inexcusable, I feel sick to my stomach with rage. But now, in the heart of Ramadan, the word angry feels too small for the fire I feel in my chest.

Palestine will not be able to properly celebrate Ramadan this year. Trying to explain the situation to people who have never interacted with the community is difficult. Even when thinking to myself, I have the urge to compare it to what I know. "Imagine if there was no Christmas." "Imagine if someone took away Easter." "Imagine there was no food on Thanksgiving."

But Ramadan is not any of those things. The fact that there is no Ramadan in Palestine should be enough to make you angry.

I've been living in a muslim country for six months now. Ramadan is not nearly as festive as Eid was, but its presence is unmistakable. You can taste the joy in the air. Children here get out of school early this month. There is a school across from my home; I hear their laughter every day. String lights hang from the balconies of my neighbors, wrap around palm trees, dangle from streetlights. In the news I read that the Sheik has pardoned hundreds of prisoners, paying off their fines himself in the spirit of charity. Shops here are decorated to match, with cut out stars and crescent moons and streamers. Many shops offer discounts. "70% off home delivery."

There are festivals in the streets and lectures in the colleges.

It is wonderful. And the people of Palestine do not have this. Their fasting is forced, their children out of school by force, their houses lit by firebombs and not crescent moon LEDs, homes that smell of gunsmoke instead of oud.

I hate Israel. It feels childish to admit this. It feels like a shortcoming; hate is what causes this crisis, I should be able to focus on loving Palestine instead of adding more hate to the world. But it is a word I can't help but feel when I think about what Isreal has done, is doing, will do to the people of Palestine. What injustices they will force upon them next. Hate. It's not something I say lightly, but it is something I feel I must say.

I am not disappointed in Israel. I am not sympathetic to their 'cause.' I will not censor myself to sound more moderate, to convince the undecided. I hate Israel. I hate Israel. I hate Israel.

[terrak0]

I think Jane was right about Kenny being unstable and dangerous to be around, but putting AJ’s life at risk by hiding him in the car and not telling anyone in order to purposefully set Kenny off was just incredibly stupid.

[thunderjackal]

oh my boy my little traumatised boy *breaks down crying*

anyway listening to cherry wine by hozier while was ~an experience~ and i am never going to recover from it

ALSO ANY ONE ELSE LISTENED TO THE BITTER MEDICINE DEMO BY THE CRANE WIVES??? ITS SO HIM actuslly going to go crazy until it/if it comes out offically

[quietwingsinthesky]

part of me wonders like. what if ruby's mom had just left. what if ruby had said "i'm named after a road", looking at her with so much hope in her eyes, and her mom, who made this choice nineteen years ago, couldn't handle it. and left.

[actualhumancryptid]

Another investigator.

Oh they're really just easing Kalinda out of the show aren't they?

Her entire thing on the show now has become background investigator 'I figured this out' stuff, and now you're taking that away too?

Or is New Investigator (I already forgot her name) here so Kalinda actually gets someone to react against, since it sure won't be Alicia sharing many of her scenes?

[dylanconrique]

the way i yearn to go back and rewatch jtv even though i physically can't get past them ✌️ "killing off" ✌️ michael, and because rafael solano is one of my least favorite fictional men of all time, ooohhhhhl!!!!!!

[mzannthropy]

Look idk about the adoption of Jody by the Titus sisters, it feels cruel to say it (bc one of the things we as readers expect from this book that Jody does indeed get adopted) but the way it's written seems to me... well, lazy. Like, LMM remembered, oh shit, I need to sort Jody out, so she inserted a chapter where she dealt with it and that's it, it was done. If the Titus sisters were looking for a child to adopt, surely it would have been known around the neighbourhood?

I wish it was handled differently, is what I'm saying. Jane lost her best friend in Toronto and ofc, in typical LMM fashion it's city-bad countryside-good (the feature of her writing I hate with my whole heart, yet I still keep reading her, but it's also the reason why she'll always be my only 2nd most fave author). I would have preferred a character introduced in Toronto (maybe a friend of Robin's, the one who lived at Lakeside Gardens) who would be good and eventually adopt Jody.

Though I'll say that I like that Jane's relationship with Phyllis and some of her relatives improved. I liked that line from the first summer on PEI: She thought it must be that the P. E. Islanders were nicer, or at least more neighbourly, than the Toronto people. She did not realize that the change was in herself.

Anyway just ignore me, sigh...

[j-esbian]

ok eos 10 is almost certainly done forever but yknow what. it’s a soap opera and it has a soap opera ending <3

[sweet-cuddlebug]

[Trying to read the epilogues of hs and homestuck^2]

[suffering]

[laptop]

[rexscanonwife]

Ok I feel a bit unwell tonight (gee I wonder why ._.) So since I can't do much else I gotta spew my thoughts and be a little insane about this song for a while

Ramblings under the cut ofc

OUGGHGHH OKKK this whole song is so fucking good but I'll start with this bit for now but my god the whole song has this theme of someone singing TO Achilles, begging him to come away from some edge or precipice. Ofc there's lots of ways to look at this but I choose to think of it as Anakin teetering on the edge of falling to the dark side, thinking that he has no choice.

'The self is not so weightless; nor whole and unbroken' UGHH Anakin carries so many heavy things in his heart. His pain, his grief, his GUILT, his conflict. Yet he's not ONLY these things. I'll never be an Anakin apologist PER SE (except when it's funy) but every bad thing he does can usually be tracked, and so can his deterioration THATS THE WHOLE POINT. Despite all this he's been a great friend and brother, he has love and hope and faith in his heart as well as all these bad things.

'Remember the pact of our youth' the unyielding loyalty and affection that Brea and Anakin have for each other!! But it's true, she'd follow him anywhere, not only because she trusts him and knows what a capable leader he can be but she literally wouldn't be who she is today WITHOUT him. Without his friendship and without the ways they've encouraged or allowed each other to grow 😭😭😭

I'VE SAID NUMEROUS TIMES ON THIS BLOG THAT LOVE TORE ANAKIN APART. More accurately his inability to keep holding it inside him, his fate not letting him express it properly, the fear that he'd lose it and the grip he has on it eventually crushing it UGH MY GOD and I didn't screenshot it but the first verse has 'all of us, some of us love you/it's not really much but there's proof' BUT HE COULDN'T SEE IT 😭😭😭

And maybe the second part of the chorus is more Brea being OPTIMISTIC, maybe in a state of denial.

OK so the song does this cool thing where it switches back and forth in a couple verses to the 'inner voice' of 'Achilles' that berates and criticizes him, but obvi in my narrative I'm choosing to see it as literally Palpatine 😂😂 and ofc the parentheses would be both Brea reaching out to him, but ALSO everyone who loved Anakin, and the tiny glimmer of him that still remembers who he was. I love also that while trying to ease him with words of encouragement the parentheses also just like...basically tell the other speaker to shut up 😂 like yeah Brea WOULD straight up just tell Palpatine to go fuck himself!!

Ok and this bit gets me SO hard. Cause if u listen to it (which I highly recommend but it's ok if u don't 🫶) the opposing voices harmonize and then sing in unison, and to me it gives me a really strong visual of Anakins inner turmoil!! And not only that, it makes me think of my AU where instead of fleeing the temple during Order 66 in the confusion she sees that its Anakin leading the attack and decides to try to confront him!!! And I can see it being something she says to him, and their one on one fight that would ensue 😤😤

Ugh and not to mention how brilliant an Achilles comparison is, as I've mentioned I'm a sucker for religious and mythological imagery. Achilles. The PERFECT warrior, powerful, and NEARLY flawless. Emphasis on nearly. His end being brought upon him by that one thing.

I could go on and on about EVERY verse and little bit about this song tbh but this post would be forever long but my god. My fucking god. I've been thinking about this a lot today as u can see 0_0

[fingertipsmp3]

Today on bad decisions, I started reading a really good ebook and was like “oh I’ll just knit at my grandma’s, I don’t need to bring my iPad with me.” Stupid. Stupid behaviour

[pergaias]

here with a psa that any song can be about the inherent tragedy of old friends if you’re delusional enough about it

[borkb11]

Guys i just finished reading where hs2 has left off

[charizardstolemynickname]

Having an emotional day, so decided the only proper thing is to rewatch episodes of doctor who, because, I know these episodes will fill me with feelings

I forgot how hard S4 EP13 hits.

Tenrose fans fucking won with this episode. LIKE CMON, we got SO MUCH, so much happiness, AND PAIN

If nobody has me, i know S4 EP13 of New Doctor Who got me (in emotional turmoil)

If Tenrose has 1 fan, its me. If Tenrose has 0 fans, I am not only dead but someone chopped up my brain because there is no way my dead body is not still a tenrose fan

Donna fans (also me) won desperately and then suddenly lost. It hurt just as much as the first time watching.