#I mean a lot of flying bugs try and fail to escape out windows

[chronicsheepdeprivation]

You think everytime a bug wanders inside a house it's like a backrooms-esque horror to them?

They are accustomed to the fresh air, the boundless expanse of the wild, the rough bark of trees and twisting labyrinths of bushes and grasses.

When suddenly the air is cool, steady, there is little to no wind, everything is rigid with so much less room to hide; though you can escape to the dark the ground beneath you is always unusually uniform- it's easy to navigate but can't be burrowed into or camouflaged against.

The smells and tastes of your surroundings are nothing like you've ever experienced, you can't describe it. It isn't food. It isn't waste. And it may even sting your booklungs. What you thought may have been cloud cover is some sort of barrier; you are surrounded by false suns which promise escape but lead you to plant your feet right upon their scalding surface. The familiar scenes of the outdoors, of home, you are prevented from returning to by some force you can't comprehend. Massive, lumbering predators stalk these grounds, but your presence is of little note to them- their domain is neverending.

You might die here, you might find food, shelter, or others of your kind- maybe even those who have only known this life and nothing else. But there is also the chance that without cause, without reason, you will be released back out toward the world and never think of this place again.

[robinsdearest]

Alien

Clark Kent x Reader

// // : means beginning and end of a flashback or memory

You try to open your eyes as best as you could. Your right eye is incredibly swollen, somewhere above it is bleeding, and you can't help but think about how terrible you look right now. The amount of hours you've spent in this room is a blur right now- you can't remember when exactly they took you. Trying to run through your memories, you're cut short by the door opening again. You hear footsteps before you see the polished shoes. Who else would wear thousand dollar shoes to a torture room?

"Y/N, sweetie. How are you doing?" He kneels to take your chin in his hand. You're too weak to say or do anything against the man. He chuckles. "Surely Superman's identity isn't that important. Is it? He's just an alien." His clutch on your cheeks and chin tighten as he brings your good eye level with his. "Don't make me be the mean guy here. I mean, does Lexxie have to beg?" He throws your head down so you can once again stare at the floor. You slowly fade out of consciousness as Lex Luther walks out of your cell.

// //

"Come on, Clark!" You ran ahead of your boyfriend as he carried the picnic basket. At the top of the hill, you slumped onto the ground and waited for him. Once he caught up, he picked you up to sling you over his shoulder with one hand while he set the picnic with the other. You were squealing the whole time. With everything in place, Clark put you back down onto the blanket. He hovered over you, his face inches from yours. 

"I'm glad we got to take this day off, Y/N. It means a lot to me." He kissed your lips gently before pulling you into his chest in a tight hug. 

You simply sighed before leaning to kiss the bottom of his chin. 

"It's good to just be the two of us, again. Especially after everything with your dad." His grip around you tightened. "I know you still miss him. I do, too, but everything will be alright." Clark kissed your forehead and sighed in response. 

The peaceful moment was soon shattered by Clark's phone ringing. Even with his super speed, you checked the screen to see her name. You handed the phone to him as the happy features on your face began to fade. 

"Hey, what's up Lois? No, this isn't a bad time." You blocked out their voices as you took out the food from the basket.

// //

The bloody wrench was dropped onto the table with the other tools. Your head hung low, and your hands were shaking. Every inch of you hurt. Every inch of you wanted this to end. Every inch of you wanted to be rescued. 

"Who is Superman?" You heard the man pick up something from the table when you didn't answer. "This could all end if you would just tell me. Mr. Luther will take care of you if you just give me a name." It was a crowbar. "Come on. Just a name." As he scraped it against your bare shoulders, you could only smack your dry lips together in response. He brought the crowbar above his head and yanked it back down onto your shoulder. An inhumane noise escaped your lips- you couldn't even scream at this point. As he threw the instrument back, you finally found your voice to speak up. 

"Superman is..." the man pulled up a stool to sit in front of you. He pulled your head back by your hair so he could hear you better. "Superman is.."

"Who? What? Come on!" He shook your head. 

"Superman is... going to kill you." You grinned, flashing your blood stained teeth. He threw your head against the wall behind you. Everything went black again.

// //

"How come it's always her?" Your shouting at that hour in the night probably woke the neighbors. You didn't care at that point. It was suppose to be your day today anyway.

"Y/N," Clark pinched the bridge of his nose. "You know why. We work together." He turned away from you to pack a few more things into his bag. 

"But a week long trip, just the two of you? It's not right, Clark. I know Perry didn't approve of this." He turned on his heel to point an accusing finger at you. 

"If you're so jealous, Y/N, why don't you just leave?" The octave of his voice shook the glass around you. You staggered a step back. Apparently, the look on your face was enough to calm the angry superhero. "Y/N, no, that's not what I meant."

Your lip quivered while you rushed to cover your glossy eyes. Turning your head into your shoulder, you tried to muffle the sob that escaped your lips. Clark took a quick step towards you, but you took one away from him. 

"Fine." Tears rolled down your face when you looked up at him. "When you get back, I won't be here." A look of horror and, what you assumed was disappointment, froze across the man's features. "If she's so important to miss my birthday, then I'll leave you two alone." With that, you snatched your phone and keys from the table to run out the door. 

Once in your car, you knew you shouldn't, but against your better judgement, you looked up from the driver seat to see Superman fly out of your bedroom window. What a great birthday present.

After the Man of Steel was out of sight, something pricked you in the neck; what at first felt like a bug bite, soon turned into feelings of terror as your surroundings began to fade into darkness.

// //

You could still see the symbol for hope leaving you window, even though you have forgotten how long ago that was. All you knew was that you had been through three different men who tortured you differently. Each came twice, but never a third time. Luther would come the third time in between all of them.  And here he was again.

You were laid out on a metallic table- your arms and legs strapped down and only your underwear on. Luther trailed a finger across your broken and bruised body. 

"Come on, love. It shouldn't be this hard." He cupped your chin with his hand and forced you to look into his eyes. "I'll reward you if you just tell me. This has gone on long enough. The other girl still hasn't cracked either." 

His eyes swirled with something of disgust and amusement, a sharp contradiction that you never wished to see again. You stared into his eyes before sighing. Lex dropped your chin and unstrapped your arms and went down to do the same to your legs. Finally free, you still couldn't move. Everything hurt. Lex calmly walked back towards your head. 

"The other girl, Lois, I believe, was seen with Superman just like you were." His expensive shoes made more noise than they needed to. "One of you will tell me." The echo of the clicks rang through your ears. But something else was there, too. A loud thumping. It wasn't your heart, you could at least tell that.

Luther appeared to continue talking, you just couldn't hear him. You focused all of your energy on that thumping. It sounded like waves crashing against a rocky shore, or an avalanche crashing into thousands of trees. What could it be?

Your question was answered by the wall behind Luther smashing open. Several body guards ran through the smoke, only to be thrown out a second later. Your heart rate picked up, and this time you could tell it was your heart. A massive figure sped past your table and threw Lex against the wall. You tried to sit up, but your body failed you. You heard more fighting and yelling. Eventually, all the noises faded together. Your eyes became heavy, and you could feel yourself slipping out of consciousness.

A large pair of arms wrapped around your body to pick you up. You were cradled against their chest. In a last attempt to move, your eyes strained towards your savior's chest and then face. The symbol was of hope, and the face was correct, but the feeling you got was wrong.

"Stay with me, Y/N." Wrong. So wrong. "I will get you out of here and to the Watchtower." A moan escaped your lips, and your savior looked down at you. You saw his eyes. 

"Y-you're not S-Superman." Your voice was weak and strained, but you assumed he-whatever he was- heard you. The symbol of hope then morphed into something familiar, yet still so alien to you.

[cornholio4]

A Rogue Butterfly

Hawk Moth’s butterflies that would use his powers to turn into Akumas had more thought and intelligence than he went on. He just saw them as mindless tools that he would us to transform his latest victims and it never occurred to him if he ever used the same butterfly multiple times. Even if it did, it would never have mattered to him; it was not like it was any significant.

  But it was.

  The butterflies were connected to his powers and Akuma so they could see what he saw when looking out for potential victims. One particular one had been interested in a girl in the class where Hawk Moth got the majority of his victims; an aspiring designer by the name of Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

  The butterfly was amazed by how positive and helpful the girl was, true the lengths she went to for her crush on Hawk Moth’s son seemed unhealthy and she did get annoyed over Chloe Bourgeois but she was overall a nice girl. She was practically one of the only ones in that class yet to be Akumatized; quite an accomplishment considering she was the favourite bullying target of that Chloe girl.

  She should have been Akumatized hundreds of times already but have never been so.

  The day came where the Chloe girl finally got to Marinette too much (by ruining the birthday gift she had made for the class’s teacher Ms Bustier) and the butterfly was ecstatic of this chance to be the one to Akumatize the girl.

  However Ms Bustier got in the way and her fear caused Hawk Moth made the butterfly switched targets to the teacher. She turned into Zombizou and the butterfly was not happy about this and was relieved to be De-Evilized. It went back to Hawk Moth’s lair and decided it would wait until next time.

  It got its chance again when Marinette had to deal with that Lila Rossi girl; an attention seeking exchange students who sang unbelievable outrageous lies that the class somehow bought. Exposure to Akumatization must destroy brain cells or something.

  Dealing with the girl especially after she had threatened her made her a target again and the butterfly jumped to be sent out on its second chance. Unfortunately Marinette fought it off and the butterfly was snatched away by Lila. It got a good laugh when she turned into a clam.

  After that the butterfly was now furious that its chances to Akumatize Marinette was once again snatched away from it. Its rage and bitterness over the issue became stronger and causing a side effect.

  Nooroo had warned Hawk Moth that the Moth Miraculous was not supposed to be used for evil and this was a side effect; when infused with too much dark energy it mean the Akuma would become more capable of defying if the butterfly decided to.

  When its bitterness and fury was at its peak it then volunteered for the next Akumatization, the victim this time was some crook whose secret stash had been found. Hawk Moth gave it the dark energy to evilise but then the butterfly’s feeling absorbed more dark energy than normal.

  Hawk Moth was stunned as it caused a backlash that set him down unconscious and to de-transform. Nooroo blinked and saw the now Akuma fly away. He sighed and told the unconscious Gabriel Agreste “I tried to warn you about the side effects but you wouldn’t listen to me master........”

  The Akuma flew out to get to the school. It saw walking to school the Aurore girl who had become Stormy Weather. It grinned to itself; if it used a host it could be more capable of leaving Marinette trapped so it could go in for the Akumatization.

      Marinette was in the courtyard of the school walking with Alya and their girl friends talking; they spotted Lila spinning her latest tale to other classmates and Marinette just sighed. Things were normal between her and her friends but she was still not interested in trying to indulge them in listening to Lila’s lies or to even hang out with them.

  Rose was about to invite Lila over to them when they saw suddenly the skies went all cloudy and they saw hovering in the air was Stormy Weather.

  Marinette was stunned to see Stormy Weather again and was about to run and hide to transform but Stormy Weather lent lightning her way to trip her over. “Oh no Marinette, you’re not going anywhere and you can’t hide away from me this time. At last we can be together.......” Stormy Weather told her to Marinette’s utter confusion but had no time to dwell as Alya and the girls began throwing things at Stormy Weather to get her away.

  They then went and helped up Marinette as they ran to hide. “So does this mean Aurore is totally into Marinette and did you reject her or something?” Juleka asked as Alya and Alix were giving Marinette smirks and Mylene and Rose were gushing about how cute they would look together.

  “Trust me; I am totally at a lost as to what happened........” Marinette replied as they then noticed Stormy Weather going to the ground and transformed back into a confused looking Aurore. The Akuma left her and found Chloe running to hide and then caught her transforming her into Antibug.

  “Wait, is it a body surfing Akuma?” Alya asked confused and Marinette did not know what to think as well. The only times similar to this was when there were a lot of Stonehearts after she failed to De-Evilise and when there were the Scarlet Akumas on Heroes Day.

  Antibug managed to get to Marinette and tied her up with her yoyo. Anti bug pulled her forward only to see that Cat Noir had caught up. “So Antibug, what caused you to become Akumatized this time?” Cat Noir asked but Antibug shook her head.

  “Wish I could take you on but the stupid Chloe girl was not much of a Villain or a hero, wish Marinette’s dad was here as Weredad was able to keep her locked up!” Antibug stated to the confusion of everyone around. Antibug then turned to Marinette and told her “this is not some villain speaking but it is I, I should have gotten you before that teacher shielded you and that Lila girl stole me from you!”

  Marinette blinked as she got an idea as to what happened as crazy as it sounded. “Are you.......... the Akuma butterfly who tried to get to me twice?” Marinette asked as everyone around looked at Marinette as if she was crazy but Antibug grinned.

  Marinette didn’t notice Tikki escaping from her bag.

  “I have long wanted to be the one to Akumatize you Marinette but that stupid teacher jsut had to be in the way; I thought we could finally be together when that lying girl threatened you in the bathroom but she just had to steal me away from you!” Antibug told her but she had to dodge a Catacalysm from Cat Noir.

  This gave the girls a chance to try and run away to another hiding spot. “Did you really almost get Akumatized twice Marinette?” Juleka asked in concern and Marinette just sighed.

  “Lying girl; was she talking about Lila and threatened you? Why didn’t you tell us?” Alya demanded and Marinette gave her a look asking if she would have listened and Alya gave a guilty look shared by the other girls.

  They then noticed MS Bustier was trying to lead their classmates to saftey and so the Akuma left Chloe and went after Nino. Alya was concerned for her boyfriend as he transformed into the Bubbler.

He then put Ms Bustier and Lila into bubbles, “You two stopped me from getting to Marinette, you will pay for that! I will have you float up to the Sun or until the bubble bursts and you fall and die............. any option is fine by me!” Bubbler told them and then faced Marinette with the other classmates and students shielding her.

“Join with me Marinette; with you we can get revenge on that stupid Lila girl! She was the one who swore she would destroy all of your friendships. You know she could succeed as they turned on you with her words before and the only one who believed you thought that you should just stop and be quiet so not to hurt the liar’s feelings!” Bubbler told her and Cat Noir looked indignant.

  At the words the classmates looked indignant but thinking about it did they realise that they did end up alienating her thanks to Lila’s words. They then turned around and gave Marinette apologetic looks.

  They then saw the Akuma leave Bubbler and launched itself at Marinette only to be caught by Tikki to everyone’s surprise. Tikki managed to De-Evilise the Akuma and then let out Miraculous Ladybug.

  Everyone got up and looked at the Kwami in awe, “Wait, you must be Ladybug’s Kwami?” Alya asked as she helped Nino up. Then everyone listened but Cat Noir left as he was about to transform back.

  “Yep, I’m Tikki and Ladybug sent me to take care of the situation. She...... was out visiting relatives so she left me in Paris to take care of any new Supervillains.” Tikki lied and Marinette hoped they bought it so to keep her cover.

  Tikki flew to Marinette’s head with a smile, “..... Thanks for the help.......... Tikki, is it?” Marinette asked trying to choose her words carefully so it would not seem like they knew eachother.

  “You’re very welcome Marinette, Ladybug speaks highly of you. It’s a shame you had to be victimised because of a lying bully who wanted to be akumatized and especially one who is using Ladybug’s name for popularity points. Ladybug was not happy with that and wished she could tell her off herself.” Tikki stated out loud with a smile to shocked and guilty glances.

  Marinette mouthed asking Lila what she was doing but Tikki smiled as she flew off. People began to check on Marinette but Alya remembered Lila was back. She then stormed up to her and asked “well do you have any truth in your stories Lila and what is this about you threatening my best friend?” Lila stammered at the glares coming her way.

  Things were hectic for the day and Principal Damocles decided to close the school early for the day. Marinette got her room and glared at Tikki who told her that she felt Marinette deserved to have an easier school life about this.

  Fortunately for Tikki, Marinette was not able to stay mad at her for long but then saw the white butterfly fly into the window. It went to Marinette’s finger and seemed to be sad. “You’re that Akuma, aren’t you?” Marinette asked as it seemed to nibbling on her finger apologetically.

  “So you want to stay here?” Marinette asked and it seemed to be happy and Tikki just started blinking.

  In the days that followed Marinette got so many apology gifts from her classmates and kept having to assure them that it was water under the breath.

  They had all turned on Lila and going over every story they told her and Ms Bustier was stern towards her over the question of if she threatened one of her favourite students. Things got worse when they called in her mother for a conference and then Lila’s trouble really got started after that.

  Adrien went to Marinette making sure she was alright after everything that happened there and even offered to pay her to make a gift. His dad was recovering from some sort of an accident and he was hoping for a scarf to give to him. When he got it he thought it looked similar to the scarf he got as a birthday gift from his father.

  When the girls went to Marinette’s room to hang out they then noticed the white butterfly flying about Marinette’s ear that she decided to name Neil. They quietly thought that only Marinette would make a pet out of an Akuma that tried to turn her into a supervillain.

[plasticbullet]

BET YOU WON'T ANSWER THEM ALL

1: Full name

I've gotten creepy messages on here so I'm gonna keep that private lol

2: Age

27

3: 3 Fears

Abandonment, driving by semi-trucks, bugs

4: 3 things I love

Music, coffee, nature

5: 4 turn ons

Sense of humor, intelligence, height, big hands.. happy trails are sexy

6: 4 turn offs

If they're rude, judgy, closed-minded, or act fake

7: My best friend

Tammy

8: Sexual orientation

Straight

9: My best first date

I have no idea honestly. First dates are always weird

10: How tall am I

5′5″

11: What do I miss

Not having anxiety, traveling, when my boobs were bigger

12: What time was I born

11:30 pm

13: Favourite color

Yellow, green, blue

14: Do I have a crush

It’s more than a crush, but yes

15: Favourite quote

"This is cracking me out" - my kid

16: Favourite place

The forest, Havasupai, California

17: Favourite food

Just about anything Italian. Or with a lot of cheese

18: Do I use sarcasm

Pretty often

19: What am I listening to right now

Wind blowing through the window. It’s like 65 degrees here I love it

20: First thing I notice in a new person

If they seem nice or not

21: Shoe size

7 or 7.5 depending on the shoes

22: Eye color

Blue

23: Hair color

Reddish dark blonde

24: Favourite style of clothing

Grungy but hot

25: Ever done a prank call? Yes

27: Meaning behind my URL

I’ve answered this a couple times before, I’m too lazy

28: Favourite movie

Peanut Butter Falcon

29: Favourite song

All the ones that make me feel things the most

30: Favourite band

A Day to Remember, Brand New

31: How I feel right now

Relaxed

32: Someone I love

My son

33: My current relationship status

In something

34: My relationship with my parents

They’re cool

35: Favourite holiday

Christmas

36: Tattoos and piercing I have

Treble clef on the back of my neck, pierced ears

37: Tattoos and piercing I want

I’m good for now! Maybe more one day

38: The reason I joined Tumblr

I don’t even know, I’ve used this shit off and on since I was 16

39: Do I and my last ex hate each other? Nope!

40: Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night ” texts? Yep

41: Have you ever kissed the last person you texted?

Nope

42: When did I last hold hands?

Held hands with my son today

43: How long does it take me to get ready in the morning? Like 20 minutes

44: Have you shaved your legs in the past three days? Yes

45: Where am I right now? In my room

46: If I were drunk & can’t stand, who’s taking care of me?

Probably one of my friends lol

47: Do I like my music loud or at a reasonable level?

Loud unless I’m sleepyy

48: Do I live with my Mom and Dad? No

49: Am I excited for anything? 🎄🎄🎄

50: Do I have someone of the opposite sex I can tell everything to?

Yepp I think so

51: How often do I wear a fake smile?

Sometimes if I don't want my kid to sense my stress. Or during boring conversations

52: When was the last time I hugged someone?

Today

53: What if the last person I kissed was kissing someone else right in front of me?

🤷🤷🤷

54: Is there anyone I trust even though I should not?

I don’t think so

55: What is something I disliked about today?

I was super sleepy, slept until some stressy dreams woke me up, and can't go back to sleep 🙃

56: If I could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?

That guy from My Octopus Teacher

57: What do I think about most?

People I love, things I have to do, and the randomest shit imaginable

58: What’s my strangest talent?

I barely have any normal talents

59: Do I have any strange phobias? No

60: Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? Behind it unless I feel cute

61: What was the last lie I told?

Something about Santa to my kid

62: Do I prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online? Depends!

63: Do I believe in ghosts? How about aliens?

I feel like ghosts are possible, our energy could keep existing in some ways after our body dies who knows. Aliens exist for sure. Just not anywhere near our planet imo

64: Do I believe in magic? No

65: Do I believe in luck? I believe in good karma

66: What’s the weather like right now?

Kinda chilly/breezy but nice

67: What was the last book I’ve read?

Read Fox in Socks to my kid

68: Do I like the smell of gasoline? No

69: Do I have any nicknames? Kind of

70: What was the worst injury I’ve ever had?

One time a horse stepped on my foot and it was bruised for months lol

71: Do I spend money or save it? Both

72: Can I touch my nose with my tongue?

Noo! I just tried though hahah

73: Is there anything pink 10 feet from me?

A crayon

74: Favourite animal? Sloths but I love all animals

75: What was I doing last night at 12 AM?

Sleeping surprisingly

76: What do I think is Satan’s last name is?

I can't think of anyone I hate enough to make a good joke out of this

77: What’s a song that always makes me happy when I hear it?

Colorado Symphony version of The Stable Song by Gregory Alan Isakov

78: How can you win my heart?

Good conversations, make me laugh, show me you care, show me good music, etc

79: What would I want to be written on my tombstone?

Nice things, I don't know lol

80: What is my favorite word? Fuck

81: My top 5 blogs on tumblr

I ♥️ all the ones I follow

82: If the whole world were listening to me right now, what would I say?

Realistically I would have a panic attack and say something stupid 😂

83: Do I have any relatives in jail? Not that I know of!

84: I accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow me with the super-power of my choice! What is that power?

Maybe the power to pause time so I could sleep or do whatever for however long I want without wasting any time. Or maybe the ability to teleport

85: What would be a question I’d be afraid to tell the truth on? Idk I can't think of one

86: What is my current desktop picture?

It’s the default one, I don’t go on it very often lol

87: Had sex? Yes

88: Bought condoms? No the guys always did that

89: Gotten pregnant? Yes

90: Failed a class? No

91: Kissed a boy? Yes

92: Kissed a girl? Yes

93: Have I ever kissed somebody in the rain? Yes

94: Had a job? Yes

95: Left the house without my wallet?

Yepp I used to forget it all the time

96: Bullied someone on the internet?

No I'm not a pussy ass bitch

97: Had sex in public?

If you count in a parked car, yes

98: Played on a sports team? Yes

99: Smoked weed? Yes

100: Did drugs? A while ago

101: Smoked cigarettes? Yes, quit a while ago

102: Drank alcohol? Yes

103: Am I a vegetarian/vegan?

Nope! I tried one time just for fucks and it did not last long

104: Been overweight? No

105: Been underweight? Yes

106: Been to a wedding? Yes

107: Been on the computer for 5 hours straight? Yes

108: Watched TV for 5 hours straight?

Yes. Marathons and binge sessions

109: Been outside my home country? Yes, Mexico

110: Gotten my heart broken? Yes

111: Been to a professional sports game? Yes

112: Broken a bone? Nope

113: Cut myself? Yes

114: Been to prom? Yes

115: Been in an airplane? Lots of times

116: Fly by helicopter? No

117: What concerts have I been to?

Oh fuck I know I’ll leave some out. Kelly Clarkson (don’t judge me I was 12), All Time Low, Avenged Sevenfold, Papa Roach, Blink-182, Fall Out Boy, Flogging Molly, Jason Mraz, Ed Sheeran, Atreyu, Escape the Fate, went to Warped Tour a couple times in high school so a bunch more emo bands

118: Had a crush on someone of the same sex? No

119: Learned another language?

A decent amount of Spanish

120: Wore make up? Frequently

121: Lost my virginity before I was 18? Yes

122: Had oral sex? Yes

123: Dyed my hair? Yes

124: Voted in a presidential election? Yes

125: Rode in an ambulance? No those are expensive

126: Had a surgery?

Does getting my wisdom teeth removed count

127: Met someone famous?

Saw Alice Cooper at a Cheesecake Factory one time

128: Stalked someone on a social network?

Not stalked, more like checked up on lol

129: Peed outside? On camping trips

130: Been fishing? Yes

131: Helped with charity? Yes

132: Been rejected by a crush? Probably!

133: Broken a mirror? No

134: What do I want for my birthday?

Christmas is coming first idk

135: How many kids do I want and what will be their names?

I have one kid whose name I won’t be posting publicly, annnd I’m open to having another kid sometime in the future but not set on it. No names in mind for that lol

136: Was I named after anyone?

My parents are Catholic so they named me after St. Kieran

137: Do I like my handwriting? It’s alright idk

138: What was my favourite toy as a child?

I liked my toy horses and barbies the most probably

139: Favourite TV Show?

Idk I have lots of favorites. I've probably rewatched The Office the most out of all of them tho

140: Where do I want to live when older?

Somewhere chill, surrounded by lots of nature. Arizona doesn’t have much of that lol

141: Play any musical instrument?

I can play the piano but it’s been a while

142: One of my scars, how did I get it?

One on my knee from a car accident

143: Favourite pizza topping?

I love onions on my pizzaaaa

144: Am I afraid of the dark?

No, unless I watched a scary movie or something

145: Am I afraid of heights? No

146: Have I ever got caught sneaking out or doing anything bad?

Got caught sneaking out when I was 15. Countless other things I can’t remember

147: Have I ever tried my hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end? Yep!

148: What I’m really bad at

Doing things on time, paying attention when I’m not interested in something

149: What my greatest achievements are

Having an amazing kid, got first prize in the science fair in 6th grade for gluing a fucking key finder mechanism to the back of a shoe charm (shoe finder), was on time to something once

150: The meanest thing somebody has ever said to me

Idkkk

151: What I’d do if I won in a lottery

Give a lot of it to some family, save a lot of it, get a new house, set aside a savings for my kid, buy a sloth or something

152: What do I like about myself

Fuck I don't know, I try my best hahah

153: My closest Tumblr friend

@spencerwithac

154: Something I fantasize about

Sex in public

155: Any question you’d like?

Nope this was plenty thank you

[agrestenoir]

ml au where lila has the black cat miraculous

lies and trying times (chat noir!lila au)

i.

There’s a girl in a hotel lobby sitting on a plush sofa, watching raindrops trail down the glass pane of the window. Paris storms have overtaken the seemingly quiet morning, and on her first day in the city, Lila Rossi wants nothing more than to leave the stuffy hotel room her father has booked. 

It’s supposed to be for three days, a business trip to impress a few French officials, but her father has already warned her that it might stretch out a bit. However, “a bit” in the Rossi family, is code for “three months to a year, depending on work”. He hasn’t decided whether they’re staying or leaving, which means she can’t decide whether to plan for permanence or establish an escape. The whole thing, like most other relocations throughout her entire life, is exhausting and messy. It’s the whole reason her mother decided to take a vacation to Barcelona three years ago… and hasn’t come back yet. 

Outside, the rain pours hard. Lila can only watch. 

She’s tired of waiting—for her father, for her mother, for her life to start. 

She pushes herself off the sofa, gets up on her feet, and heads towards the front entrance of the Bourgeois hotel. Outside, there’s a bustling and busy city, full of ancient history and secrets—a whimsical world she so desperately wants to throw herself into but has never had a chance. Lila rushes out onto the wet pavement, wedge heels clacking through puddles as she pushes past people. 

The rain pours. Lila leaves. 

She’s tired of waiting.

*

ii.

 The story starts like this: Lila lies. 

It’s something she’s done in every situation. The lies are a quick and easy way to meld in with the new crowd of new people with new faces in a new place; she just wants to be liked and have friends. That’s the crux of the matter: Lila is always lonely. 

In a way, she doesn’t care if everything is built on lies because nothing in her life is permanent—not her parents, not her home, not herself. Consequences are lost on her. She does what she can to process, to fit in, but something’s different this time. 

You see, there’s something about those Paris rainstorms that leave her feeling light and new, where the rain washes away all her sins, like she has a clean slate with no problems. 

In the Paris rain, Lila is born again. 

(In the Paris rain, an evil burns with a new rage.)

In one world, a tottery old man named Master Fu finds a baker’s daughter and a famed son, giving them the tools to save the world from one man’s unquenchable dreams. In this world, he finds a lost little girl who lurks in the shadow of self-created chaos and dreams of doing better. 

Potential, Master Fu thinks, is stronger than nature. 

When he falls waiting for a train, cane clattering across the cement, Lila Rossi stares for a moment before extending her hand to help him up. Rainwater drips in rivets from her tangled hair and sopping clothes, but she still has those sad eyes and soft smile. He tucks the Black Cat Miraculous into her purse as she turns to jump onto the train, walking away with a surety even in the face of risk. 

It’s a gamble, he thinks, but one who can create chaos knows how to control it. 

The story starts like this: Lila lies. 

But it ends like this: Lila can be better.

 *

   iii.

 The first akuma is hard and rigid, his heart a rocky range of every reason he cannot find to love 

Plagg calls him Stoneheart. Lila calls him hurting. 

In a way, a part of Lila can understand where Stoneheart’s dark feelings originated from. Her life is a constant cycle of coming and going, having and hurting, and loving and losing. The geography of her own heart is full of high mountains and wide, open oceans, barriers to block her core from complete destruction, but each day in a new place leads to more bits being chipped away and crumbling to dust. Each place she goes, every person she meets: it’s the same story over and over again 

Paris is different. It leaves her breathless and free in a way everything else has failed to do. 

It doesn’t make her life easier, but it sure does make her believe in the impossible.

“Rock monster,” she murmurs to herself, staring at the akuma as he stalks through the streets. He leaves footsteps of cracked pavement, handprints of crumbled brick on buildings, and his roar echoes like thunder through the city. “I have… to beat a rock monster with a baton.” 

“Hey,” a voice says beside her, startling her from her strategizing. “I’ve got a fucking yo-yo. I think you’re the one who’s better off here.” 

Lila whips around, coming face-to-face with glittering green eyes and a bright smile. A boy stands beside her, all red and black-spotted with a mask to match. His blonde hair is wind-tamed and tousled, as if he’s been dashing across rooftops and flying through the city too. He looks every bit the partner that Plagg told her about. 

“You must be my partner,” she says needlessly. 

“Ladybug,” he introduces and holds out his hand. “You can call me Ladybug, pretty kitty.” 

“Chat Noir.” Lila holds his hand in a strong grip and tugs him forward, until their foreheads are nearly touching. She levels him with a sharp smirk, eyes burning something fierce. “And I am so out of your league.” 

Shoulders shaking, Ladybug laughs and laughs and laughs. “Oh,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m so going to love being your partner.” 

In another world, a charismatic cat falls in love with a blue-eyed wonder. In this world, the cat finds a friend. 

A little bit more of her heart crumbles to dust, leaving her more open to all that life has to bring her.

What do you know? In Paris, impossibilities are possible after all.

 *

  iv.

 “Listen,” her father tells her, three weeks after they arrived in Paris. “Something came up.” 

Lila enrolls in school the next day. She can’t say she didn’t see it coming. 

Francis-Duponte is full of nameless faces and numerous questions, things she’d once rejoice in, but it’s her sixth school in three years, and she just wants a break. Madame Bustier introduces her to the class, and she sulks to the back row, slipping into a seat with hunched shoulders and tired eyes. Interactions are quite exhausting when nothing ever sticks. 

The day passes in slow lunges, no sudden leaps or stumbling stops. The teachers are knowledgeable, the kids are loud, and the world is a kaleidoscope of everything she can’t handle. It’s during lunch, though, that a student accosts her in the hallway. 

“You’re new, right? Lila Rossi?” A girl with bright blue eyes stands in front of her, holding a tablet against her chest. For the first time, Lila is at a loss for words. “Someone told me you were from Milan.”

“I am,” Lila acknowledges, and her mind is spinning away with lies built on threads of promise and purpose, whispering friend friend friend. She vehemently tries to deny it, swallowing back a lump and trying to pretend that old urges aren’t scratching at her heels. 

“I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng,” the girl says. She shifts her weight, gaze skittering everywhere else; she’s nervous, but Lila doesn’t know why. “Do you want to sit with me at lunch? I’m working on some designs, and I was wondering if you could tell me about some of the fashion in Milan.” 

I have my own fashion line.

My father owns half of the fashion industry in Milan. 

I came to Paris because I’m personal friends with Gabriel Agreste. 

I’m— 

Lila doesn’t lie. Lila tries. 

The question hits her in a whoosh, air jumping from her lungs as if a wrecking ball had slammed into her ribcage, and she can’t catch her breath. “I…” Lila swallows again, shaking her head. “Yes, actually, I can do that. I’m probably the best person to ask actually; I know a lot about Milan fashion.” 

Marinette smiles.

*

 v.

 Paris at night is beautiful. 

Lila stares at the dark sky above her, which twinkles with clusters of stars and the soft glow of the pale moon, and she can’t help but think there’s something ethereal about this city. Ladybug sits above her, leaning against one of the struts of the Eiffel Tower, but he’s not staring at the view. 

He’s staring at her. 

She quirks a brow high, a smile slipping onto her face. “Distracted tonight, bug?” 

“Why won’t you tell me your name?” He crosses his arms against his chest and levels her with a quizzical stare. “We’ve been partners for over two months now. Don’t you think that at least puts us on a first name basis?” 

“Colleagues.” 

Ladybug jumps down from his perch above, landing softly on his toes, and settles back on his haunches with a small, cautious smile. “I’m pretty sure we’re way past coworkers, kitten.” 

Lila can’t help the laugh that falls from her lips. “Then what the hell would we be?” 

He flashes her a quick, blinding smile—teeth and all. “Friends, obviously.” 

Lila pauses, trying to make sense of her suddenly slippery world. With a quiet sigh, she drops down and parks herself alongside him. Their thighs brush against each other as they kick their feet back and forth, falling in sync like a pendulum swinging in time with a clock. Slowly but surely, her life in Paris ticks away, seconds slipping past without her notice, and she wonders when the day will come that her father will pick up and move to another city, another country, another continent. 

It goes like this: Lila doesn’t form attachments. 

It goes like this: Lila lies to push people away. 

It goes like this: Lila is tired of being lonely. 

“Friends,” she echoes. 

“Yeah.” He rolls his eyes. “Haven’t you ever had a friend before?” 

Lila toys with her fingers, needing to be doing anything to take her mind off of the situation, but the words still leave her lips. “No, I haven’t actually.” Something tells her that she needs to be open and honest with him. That’s what friends do, right? 

“Oh,” he says. A quick pause and then, “I understand that feeling pretty well myself.” 

There’s silence—thick and heavy like fog before a storm—but she pushes past it and forces herself to admit the truth. “I’ve moved around a lot literally my entire life. I never really had a chance to sit down and… talk to people, I guess. I really don’t know how to have friends.” 

Ladybug bites his lip, pondering the problem for a moment before suggesting, “Well, I think you’re doing a pretty good job right now.” 

She snorts, cheeks burning hot with embarrassment. “You’re lucky I like you, Ladybug.” 

“See?” He pokes her nose with his index finger. “You’re great at this.” 

Lila can’t stop laughing. 

She really, really loves Paris.

 *

 vi.

 It’s been months and months, but if it’s one thing that Lila Rossi knows, it’s that life is only temporary. 

There’s no such thing as permanence when it comes to a home, people, or even friends. 

What a fool I’ve been, she thinks.

*

 vii.

 “You’re a real asshole, you know that, Agreste?” Lila tells Adrien Agreste one morning after Marinette leaves the room, all stammer and stutter, muttering something about the restroom so she can try to drown herself in the sink to quench her raging embarrassment. Alya, the last of their trio, follows at her heels in effort to revive the former if needed be. 

The perky blonde with the green eyes simply blinks up at her, too taken back that Lila erupted out of the blue. It’s obvious he’s confused, but Lila is tired of watching her friend make a fool of herself over a stupid boy who won’t give her the time of day.

“Excuse me?” Adrien asks. 

“I said you’re an asshole,” she continues, crossing her arms against her chest. She leans forward, brown eyes burning with a fierce fire, her smile so sharp it could cut class. “And you’re going to start treating her better, or you’re going to have to deal with me.” 

“I don’t know what you mean,” he tells her, and she just rolls her head. Stupid boy, stupid boy. “Marinette’s a good friend—”

Lila snorts. “Like you don’t see the way she looks at you, or how she can’t even speak a complete sentence the minute you walk into a room.” She flicks her wrist in his direction, poking the bridge of Adrien’s nose with her index finger. “Marinette’s my best friend, and I will not let you drag her along like she’s your latest toy.” 

Adrien flounders, trying to find the right words. “I’m sorry, Lila, but I really don’t know what you mean.”

His answer makes her blood boil because how can he not see what he does to her? There’s an itch under her skin, because people who are too oblivious are hurt too easily, just like those who fall too fast and hard. Instead of a healthy relationship between two people, you just get a mess of pain and hurt, and there’s no hope of relief. It’s not a happy situation to get involved with. 

How does he not know? And if he does, how can he let it go on? 

“Marinette’s in love with you,” Lila says in a rush and laughs, something bitter and hard. “And you don’t care.” 

There’s silence—a long pause—and then the voice that speaks is certainly not Adrien. “Lila?” Marinette asks, shaky and feeble from the doorway to the classroom. 

Adrien turns to Marinette, eyes softening. “Marinette…?” 

The other girl can’t even form a coherent response—in fact, she doesn’t even try—and instead bolts out of the room before either Lila, Alya, or even Adrien can stop her. 

Something settles in Lila’s chest, like the pieces of her heart are clicking back together just to get broken again. The looming horror of the situation haunts her, a reaper coming to bring death to the tentative peace she’s carefully crafted. Ever since she came to Paris, lessons of love have been the only things she’s learned: how to love a friend, how to love a partner, how to love a city. 

This is her first lesson in heartbreak.

*

 viii.

 “That akuma was my fault!” Lila thunders at Ladybug, their Miraculous beeping insistently as she paces the rooftop.   

“In what way?” He turns to face her, eyes burning into her own. “You know that it’s never the akuma’s fault, so it’s certainly not yours. Hawkmoth—” 

“Because I hurt her!” Chat Noir’s power thrumming through her, Lila can’t stop the hiss that falls from her lips. She grits her teeth, fists her long brown mane, keeps moving because coming to a standstill makes the world weigh heavier on her shoulders. 

“That doesn’t make this your fault,” he says. “They’re vulnerable, and Hawkmoth sends his butterflies when you’re hurt, purposely because you’re at your lowest, when you’re the most vulnerable and easily manipulated. It’s his doing, not yours, chaton.” 

“You don’t get it,” Lila interjects. “I betrayed her, and I put her in that position. Hawkmoth wouldn’t have gotten to her if I hadn’t hurt her in the first place. She’s my friend, and I did that to her!” 

There’s quiet, a stillness that settles over, thick and heavy. “You know Marinette then?” 

Lila snaps her gaze away from her partner, staring at her hands clasped into tight fists. Her ring is still beeping, as is Ladybug’s, but none of them seem to care at this point. “Yeah, I do.” She wonders how much she’s just given away. 

“Are you Lila then?” he asks, and there it is. 

Like an arrow has pierced through her heart, she grasps at the front of her chest as if to smother it’s fire, but nothing helps. Suddenly her world is crashing down around her, and the peaceful bubble she’s spent the last five months inside has burst. 

Lila’s already lost one friend today—is she about to lost another? 

“How do you…?” But she can’t voice the question quick enough as the magic gives away, and both Ladybug and Chat Noir disappear in a kaleidoscope of color. 

It’s Adrien Agreste.

“Oh.” Everything turns slippery, and she struggles to find an anchor to keep her from falling. “Oh god.” 

“Lila,” Adrien says, expression softening as he catches sight of the fear and worry lining her face. “It still wasn’t your fault. You were only trying to protect your friend.” 

“No, you still don’t get it, Agreste. I hurt her.”

The name silences him, and shame washes over her like the high tide against the shore. Adrien Agreste has never been someone Lila gets along with, just for the sole way he turns her friend into a mess and continues on like it doesn’t matter. Lila knows people who string others along without a care—has done it herself for most of her life—because people are not important, and they truly don’t matter to her. 

(Because she doesn’t matter to them—she never has, and never will. So many names and faces, all in different places, who promise to call or write even after she leaves, but no one has ever reached out to her after she’s gone. It’s the crux of her pain, and it makes her realize that she’s never been wanted, she’s never been first choice, and she’s never been someone worth having.) 

“We’re only human, Lila,” he tells her after a long while. The words echo through her head, louder than she wants them to be, but they still speak volumes. He’s not wrong, but he’s not right either. 

“Do you know how hard it is to tell the truth?” Lila takes a deep, shuddering breath and pushes on. “Telling the truth is like… giving a part of you to someone, and today I did that. I told you how Marinette felt, and that was a part of me—a part of her that she willingly shared—and… I took it, and I told you. She will never trust me again, won’t even look at me, and I lost one of my only friends. So don’t try to tell me you understand because you don’t get it.” 

“I’m sure Marinette will forgive you. You just have to apologize—” 

Lila shakes her head. “No, no. You still don’t get it, Adrien, and you never will. I don’t tell the truth because the truth fucking hurts. It’s so much easier to lie. It’s the only thing I’m good at.” She laughs, bitter and broken. “I should’ve just kept lying.” 

Right now, with everything she cares about broken on the floor, it’s the only truth she knows: Lila Rossi is so good at lying, it hurts.

 *

  ix.

 It goes like this: Lila lies. 

It’s easy on most days, just a couple of words strung together to capture the ear of whoever’s listening, to make them linger on her voice, their eyes following hers like a lifeline. In a way, it makes them navigators as they track her across the sky, using a star to find their way. Empowered, she feels infinite, where she can be the impossible and they just pray in her wake, but it’s been a long time since she’s longed for that. 

Paris has changed her. Being Chat Noir has changed her. Friends have changed her. 

Telling the truth has changed her. 

Truth is a faith that Lila has never believed in. It’s a metamorphosis of chance: you have faith in the ones you love, you have faith in the city you protect, you have faith in your partner—but there’s no guarantee that the truth will make things better. Truth, like any form of human nature, just like the lies she used to spin, has the capability to hurt. But like the first time she donned the mask, she curls herself up into a cocoon, the truth a hard shell against the rest of the world, and waits and prays to become a butterfly. 

In the best turnout, Lila flies. In the worst possibility, she falls. 

Lila didn’t realize just how truth could be a weapon. Lies are a two-way street: one who benefits, and those who suffer if they’re stupid enough to believe it. Truth can be wielded to render someone raw and bleeding, until lies seem like the better option, to the point where they can even heal. 

Lila wishes she remembered how to lie. 

Marinette stands in the deserted hallway, arms crossed against her chest, and she refuses to meet Lila’s inquisitive eyes. “I just wanted… to talk about yesterday.” It’s like she’s steeling herself against a stronger power before she presses on. 

“What’s there to talk about?” Lila shrugs and tries to pretend like it doesn’t matter but it does it does it does. “You went full akuma and tried to destroy the city. It’s just a typical Tuesday.” She swallows thickly, dropped her chin to her chest. “At least Ladybug and Chat Noir were there to save you.” 

Marinette laughs, something soft and quiet. “At least there was one bright side.” 

“Obviously,” Lila says. “Chat Noir is pretty damn amazing. I know her actually, did you know that?” 

“Lila.”

“I’m also on a first name basis with Ladybug, but he’s pretty cute, you know? I could totally introduce you guys—” 

“Lila.” The sound of Marinette’s voice freezes her in motion. It feels like she’s trapped in orbit and just waiting for gravity to take hold and bring her down, like a meteor due for impact. 

Lila closes her eyes and spits out a quick, “I’m sorry!” 

“Excuse me?” 

“It’s my fault you were akumatized. It’s my fault you and Adrien aren’t talking.” There’s a burning sensation in the corner of her eyes, and Lila desperately tries not to cry. 

“I…” Marinette presses her lips into a thin line, shaking her head. “First off, I forgive you.” 

There’s a stunned silence. “What?” Lila asks, too afraid to have her repeat it.

“I said I forgive you,” Marinette tells her. “We have a lot more to talk about, but that’s the most important thing for you to know right now.” 

The shake of Lila’s hands amplifies for she’s been shown love and doesn’t know how to handle it. It’s not something she gets from her father and her mother is more distant than the miles away from her last home. Ladyb—Adrien is perhaps the closest thing she’s ever had to someone she cares for, and it’s clear now that Marinette (and perhaps some others) have gotten that close too.

“You forgive me?” 

“Come on.” Marinette grabs a hold of Lila’s shoulder and pushes her forward down the hall, out towards the courtyard where the rest of their class is taking lunch. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, and you can tell me exactly how you know Ladybug and Chat Noir.” 

There’s a pause, and then, “You think I’m lying, don’t you?” 

“Please,” Marinette snorts. “You think I honestly believe that you know Ladybug and Chat Noir personally?” 

“I do.”

“Sure.” 

The two friends go on, much like life does. 

It’s the way of the world. 

It starts like this: Lila lies.

But it ends like this: Lila is better because of it.

 * 

 x.

 “So,” Adrien says from his perch on the edge of the rooftop, his Ladybug mask practically glowing in the afternoon sunlight. “Marinette asked me out this morning.” 

“Huh,” Lila remarks, cocking her head to the side. “You sure you heard her right?” 

Snorting back a laugh, he nudges her side with his elbow. “Please, you know I’d never—” 

“We all know you don’t have the balls to handle that girl.” She stands up and takes a couple steps back from the ledge, unclipping her baton from her waist. “Just like we all know she is the best thing to ever happen to you, and if you don’t her as such, I’m going to break you.” 

“Lila!” he snipes back, cheeks burning red. 

All she can do is laugh as she runs towards the edge of the rooftop, leaping off into open air. “Try to keep up, bugaboo!” 

“Don’t call me that!” Adrien calls after her as the two fly through the streets, past the meandering civilians and through silver sunlight that streaks through buildings and trees. 

The city sings. Lila laughs. 

She’s living.

Oh god, is she living.

[stilitana]

a requiem for mister spider | 8k | completed

In which a fly endeavors to know the nature of the web, or: Jon encounters a familiar Leitner, and reflections upon what it means to have a choice ensue.

“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly; “’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy. The way into my parlor is up a winding stair, And I have many pretty things to show when you are there.” “O no, no,” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain, For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”

— Mary Howitt, "The Spider and the Fly"

Jon stood in the hall staring at the door to the office of the head of the Magnus Institute, where he’d been summoned for his second interview. A second interview—that was a good sign, surely? If they hadn’t liked him—hadn't found him qualified, or capable, they’d have let him know after the first, right? He found himself twisting his fingers together and forced his hands apart, let them hang limply at his sides. Was he dressed appropriately, or did he look as foolish as he felt—like a child wearing an adult’s clothes, a nobody playing at professionalism? He knew the importance of appearance, but that did not mean he enjoyed trying to look the part of a proper academic. He wished his resume could speak for itself, so that it didn’t matter what he wore or what he looked like—but he knew his youth, his lack of work experience or high-demand skills, all left him a rather average candidate. Not too shabby, he hoped—but certainly not a standout.

He took a deep breath and raised his fist to knock on the door. Before he could do so, it swung open, momentarily unbalancing him.

The man who greeted him fixed Jon with an unnerving, unblinking gaze that sharpened when his eyes locked with Jon’s. Jon couldn’t bring himself to look away. (He’d never known when to look away, not effortlessly, as other people seemed to know—but to have his own intent, prolonged eye-contact turned back on himself was new.) The gaze bore into him, seemed to see inside of him. He shivered.

Then the moment passed, and the man extended a hand. “Jonathan Sims, I’m Elias Bouchard, director of the institute. It’s a pleasure to see you for myself.”

Was that an odd way to greet someone? Jon couldn’t be sure. He’d come to the conclusion long ago that he himself was often considered odd, and so didn’t always trust his own judgement when it came to the relative normalcy of others. So he simply tried for a smile and nodded.

He hadn’t expected to be asked about his childhood. But with those blank, unfeeling eyes on his face, he found himself answering whatever was asked of him, without much hesitance.

There was a spider in the corner of Elias’ office. He could see it in his peripheral vision, over Elias’ right shoulder. He could hear it weaving. The sound of its legs running up and down and along the silky sinewy length of its web. He found his gaze drifting to it for longer and longer intervals, and tried not to wince at the sound of its weaving. Like a damp finger tracing the curvature of a crystal glass—that fine, eerie vibration. Fingers up and down a taut harp string—not plucking, not making music, only a sort of skin-to-wire thrumming, a ripple in the air. He heard the air rushing, Elias’ mouth moving but making no sound, only the horrible magnified rhythm of the spider weaving its web, the microscopic ultra-fine hairs on its legs rustling against its own silk.

“Jonathan? Jon? May I call you Jon?”

Jon blinked, refocusing on Elias. He became aware that his back was cold and slick with sweat, his mouth parched. “Yes?”

Elias smiled. It was a bland, mild-mannered expression. He stood and once more offered his hand and Jon mirrored him. “Perfect. Well, Jon, it’s been a real pleasure. I think you’re an excellent fit for the job. Expect to receive a formal offer along with some more information about the position within the next couple of days—I believe you’ve already spoken to Rosie, she’ll send it along—unless you’re feeling eager, and would rather get to the paperwork straight away?”

Jon faltered, momentarily speechless. Had he just landed the job? Just like that? His gaze drifted to the spider once more, and Elias’ sharp gaze followed the motion like an owl tracing the scurrying of a field mouse. His smile tightened. “Ah. Spiders. Pesky little pests—can't say I’m fond of them, but they have their uses, I suppose.”

He turned his smile back on Jon, who swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to return the grin.  

He filled out the paperwork that day, and was hired on the spot.

There is a popular notion that ghosts are remnants of habit. Like the canned, repetitious melody inside a music box, playing out until the cylinders cease turning, so too does our muscle memory go on walking circles round the neighborhood, flitting back and forth before a bedroom window, unbodied. The muscles return to the dirt and are eaten by worms but the memory remains.

So too with the living.

By the time the Head Archivist died in the line of duty, she had sunk into such obscurity that the rest of the institute hardly noted her passing. All of her archival assistants were dead and gone, and she’d never been the most sociable woman. During the last few years she’d scarcely been seen outside the basement archives.

There was a brief remembrance vigil held around noon, orchestrated by some of the staff—people who had not known her, but who nonetheless felt obligated to somehow mark her passing.

“What’s going on in here?” Jon muttered, sidling up beside Tim in the crowded cafeteria.

“Some sort of a wake for Gertrude Robinson.”

Jon frowned, his face pinched. “Really? Here?”

“What? You don’t think it’s appropriate, mourning our dearly departed colleague where we all eat lunch?”

“I guess it’s a good reminder to watch what we eat.”

Tim stifled a snort. “You’re horrible.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you two were so close.”

“Listen. If I die in the line of duty—”

“What, crushed by a filing cabinet? Bled out from a thousand papercuts? Drowned in tea?”

“Don’t you dare let anybody pull a stunt like this in my honor. You got that?”

“You mean you  don’t  think a eulogy performed by strangers in the cafeteria is a suitable send-off?”

“Seriously.”

Jon rolled his eyes. “All right, Tim. I promise that if and when you should perish while checking out books at the library or flirting with filing clerks, I will not let our colleagues mourn you in the cafeteria.”

“You’re a real pal, Jon.”

“How long is this going to take?”

“Hungry? Me too. My lunch is in the fridge.”

“M-hm.”

“Just didn’t feel quite right to grab it and go.”

“No, no, of course.”

Jon turned at a gentle pressure on his shoulder, and there was Elias, leaning down to speak to him, his voice low. “There you are. A word in my office, Jon.”

Jon glanced at Tim, who waggled his eyebrows, before following Elias out of the room and down the hall.

“You’ll need to appoint assistants,” Elias said. “Or else I’m afraid you’ll find the archives quite lonely.”

“There’s no one left?”

“It’s understaffed, at the moment.”

“So I—right. An entirely new staff.”

Elias slid a piece of paper across his desk. “I understand it’s overwhelming. Of course, the decision is yours, but I thought you might appreciate a little guidance. You have your own new position to settle into, on top of hiring and training assistants. These are some people I thought might suit you.”

Jon took the list and glanced over it absently, nodding along. “Yes,” he murmured. “You’d know best.”

Still reading over the names, he missed the vacant smile spread like an oil slick across Elias’ face.

The basement was dusty, cluttered, and dim. If there was any order amid the chaos, it was not a system which Jon could yet read. He swore and scrubbed his hands over his face as he stepped back from the filing cabinets he’d been emptying before he’d stepped directly into a cobweb.

“Are you all right, Jon?”

Jon glared at his new assistant through his fingers, trying and failing to maintain any dignity as his breath caught in his throat and his heartbeat lurched. “I’m  fine , Martin,” he said, his voice thin. “Just stepped into another spiderweb.”

Martin winced in sympathy. “There do seem to be an awful lot of them down here.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“But you know, that’s not really a bad thing. I mean they aren’t hurting anybody—if anything they’ll keep the more pesky bugs away, you know?”

Jon picked up a heavy book from one of the desks and turned back to the filing cabinet. “It’s an archive, not a nature conservancy.”

He’d already smashed three of the nasty things that day. He needed a shower. He could feel their legs crawling all over him, just beneath the skin. He shivered and raised the book, looking around for the web.

“Wait a minute,” Martin said, picking up his glass and a manila envelope.

“What?” Jon said, trying to decide how to best angle his swing in order to smash the offending arachnid with the greatest efficiency.

Martin stood at his shoulder. Too close, in his space. Jon sidestepped, bumping his shoulder into the filing cabinet. “Let me help.”

“I’m perfectly capable of killing one—little spider.”

“Let me help  it , then.”

Martin deftly caught the spider between the envelope and the glass with a triumphant little smile. “Gotcha. See?”

He held up the glass. The spider was crawling around the brim, legs reaching up and sliding down the glass as it mapped the sealed circumference of its cage, searching for escape. Its legs. All of its legs, many-jointed, reaching, grabbing, pulling, weaving. Its fat, segmented body, its cluster of eyes, the faint, barely audible sound of its body against the envelope.

Jon shuddered and licked his lips. His hands were clammy as he wiped them against his slacks. He turned away abruptly, picking up a sheath of papers and mindlessly tapping them against the desk to straighten them. “Get rid of it.”

“Okay. I’ll just take the little guy outside.” Martin paused. “You know, they really are pretty much harmless. He’s not venomous or anything like that. In fact, they’re sort of remarkable? Did you know not all spiders are solitary, like thousands and thousands of them get together to build one huge, gigantic web and—”

Jon made a small, muffled sound, the back of his hand pressed to his mouth. The look he gave Martin shut him up immediately. It was frightened and wounded and suspicious and Martin recognized it as the look of someone who was sure he was being picked on but not yet sure why.

“Just get rid of it,” Jon said, and cleared his throat, schooling his expression into a dismissive, disinterested frown. “We have a lot of work to get done to get this place in order. Stop wasting time.”

Jon turned away and walked into his office, shutting the door behind him.

Martin looked over at Tim and Sasha, who had been minding their own business and sorting through a filing cabinet until Jon shut the door. Now they were staring at him.

Sasha’s mouth twitched as she seemed to be stifling a grin. “Way to go, Martin. It’s the first day and you’ve already gotten in the new boss’ good books.”

Martin winced and walked closer so they would lower their voices. “Sh.”

“Seriously, I didn’t peg you as the type to get a kick out of making people squirm.”

“I wasn’t trying to—I didn’t mean to! I just—really do think they’re neat, that’s all, and thought maybe he’d stop killing them if I showed him how easy they are to catch!”

“Yeah, well, good luck with that, he hates the damn things,” said Tim.

Martin groaned. “Oh, god. I didn’t know it was—I mean, lots of people say they don’t like spiders, I didn’t know it was, you know, like a phobia, or whatever. You don’t think he thinks I was, like, tormenting him on purpose, like making fun of him, or something, do you?”

Tim shrugged, smirking. “Knowing Jon? Yeah, probably.”

“Well, that’s just great.”

Tim patted him on the back. “Don’t worry about it. He’s not one to hold a grudge.”

“He’s not?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never tortured him with spider facts before.”

“Great. Thanks, Tim, that makes me feel so much better. Should I...apologize?”

“God, no. That’ll just embarrass everybody. Just let it go, Martin. It’s fine. I’m just teasing. But do go ahead and get that thing out of here, seriously.”

“Right,” Martin muttered, and climbed the stairs out of the archives to release the spider outside.

He took to making what he called (only inside his own head, of course,) spider patrols. If he found an arachnid, he quietly scooped it up and whisked it outside before Jon could see it. Given the archive’s basement location, these little trips could take him several minutes to complete, and more than once he returned downstairs to find Jon peeved with him for vanishing, and he had to make up some nonsense errand as an excuse. But that was fine. It was fine if Jon was irritated with him and didn’t like him much at all. It still felt good to be useful.

“What’s the freakiest thing you ever saw in Artefact Storage?” Tim asked, before taking a huge bite of his sandwich. It was Friday, and Tim had corralled his fellow archival staff members into joining him at a nearby café for lunch. He was trying to make it a weekly thing. It was good to breathe fresh air and escape the oppressive atmosphere in the basement for a little while.

Sasha tapped her chin, thinking. “Oh, that’s a tough one. I mean, the haunted dolls, you know, those are pretty creepy.”

“Haunted dolls?” Martin said.

“I mean, I don’t know if any of them are actually haunted or not? But either way—still creepy.”

“You didn’t work there long, though, did you?” Jon asked.

“No. God, no. I transferred to research soon as I could.”

“So at least some of the stuff down there must have been genuinely weird, if it freaked you out so much you transferred,” Tim said. “Come on, you’ve got to have some spooky stories.”

Sasha grimaced. “Thankfully, I don’t. Nothing weird ever happened to me there, it just—there was just this feeling. Being there, around all of those things—it wasn’t right. I don’t know how to explain it. No, none of the artefacts ever moved on their own or anything like that, but they just...they just weren’t right. Especially not the books.”

“The Leitners,” Jon said.

“Yeah. Exactly. If we ever had any of those in storage, they were under the strictest security. I saw one, once—but never read any, never so much as touched one.”

“Good,” Jon said, sounding startled. “I should think not. Just how many of those things do we have?”

“I...don’t know, off the top of my head. You could check the catalogs, though they’re a bit...out of order, to tell you the truth.”

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you sound spooked by some old books,” Tim said, smirking. “Dozens of statements about monsters under the bed you write off as bullshit, and this is what gets to you?”

“I didn’t say that,” Jon snapped.

“Leitners do show up in a lot of statements though, don’t they?” Martin mused.

“Yes, Martin, good of you to notice.”

Martin flushed. “I mean—I'm just saying. I know you don’t believe most—or any—of the statements, but if one thing keeps showing up, over and over, from multiple different people—then it just seems like maybe there’s something to it?”

“They’re just books,” Jon said, staring at the table. “And--it doesn’t matter. His library was destroyed. If there are any stragglers in storage...I’ll have a word with Elias about it.”

“You do that, Jon, great idea. No way will the artefacts staff be resentful of the new archivist immediately butting into their business,” said Sasha.

“Really? You don’t think so?”

She patted his arm where it rested on the table. “Maybe just a little.”

“Well. They can resent me if they want to, that’s their business. If there are any of those books lying around, well. It’s doing everyone a favor to have them burned.”

The lighter doesn’t frighten him; it intrigues. In due time, it even comes to be a source of comfort. He likes to hold its familiar slim shape, feel the cool, slick plastic. Flicking the fork and hearing the scratch of the sparkwheel turning comes to satisfy an anxious itch in the back of his mind in times of stress; he can sit there flicking the lighter until he is soothed. The spiderweb pattern might be lace, might be nonsense, just white lines. Symbols in the abstract, divorced from what they signify, failing to connote meaning. A pattern is a pattern, nothing more.

Later he will learn something of anchors. Later he will still have much to learn about anchors. The sparkwheel turns, ignites, lights the tip of a cigarette. Hand cupping the tender flame, shielding it from wind as it takes and eats the paper. The first drag sucking fire into the tobacco, hand to mouth, inhale-exhale, heat in his chest. Everything imbued with so much ritual and no way to extricate himself from it. This too is an anchor of sorts. Entangled. Was there ever a moment when you might have been free? Or is to be born to be ensnared?

Jon was on his hands and knees in Artefact Storage, struggling to dig through boxes one-handed. He kept his burned and bandaged hand tucked close to his chest. Every bump and slight movement made him momentarily speechless from pain. He was trying not to think about it. What was one more scar? What was a loss of mobility in one hand to him, when having two good hands had never kept him safe? If his body was the kindling he had to burn through to find answers, so be it.

This would be easier with help. He could admit that now. But it was too late for that.

It might not be too late to save them. If not from the institute, then from the Unknowing.

He sighed, standing with a wince and kicking the box to the side. Nothing. He surveyed the aisles upon aisles of boxes and waited for Beholding to nudge him, his mind a magnet for awful knowledge, drawing him on to terrible secrets like a shark to blood. As he reached overhead to ease a box off a shelf, he heard footsteps on the stairs and tensed, whirled around and froze.

Martin stood in the doorway and slowly raised his palms. “Hey. It’s just me, it’s okay.”

Jon released his breath but couldn’t let go of the tension that was making his whole body tremble. “What do you want?” He winced. “I--that came out wrong.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t know how it was meant to have come out, or any better way to put it. He was all out of energy for social pleasantries. He had left the circus unfit for human interaction, a tangle of nerves and bruises.

(Melanie had been applying lotion to her hands in the office the other day, and the smell had made him gag. He’d frozen, staring at her hands, and she’d called him a creep and asked him what his problem was, and how could he explain that the smell made him feel all over again Nikola’s cold, plastic hands touching him, touching all over, so gentle and terrible with the latent threat of violence, so soft upon the skin she planned to flay from his body?)

“Do you...want some help?”

“Okay.”

Martin shuffled closer, slowly. “This one?” he said, pointing to the box Jon had been reaching for. Jon nodded, and watched him lean up and take it from the shelf with ease, holding it firmly with both hands. He expected Martin to dump it on the ground with the other boxes he’d been rifling through, but instead he turned and carried it over to the table. When he caught Jon watching him, standing still, he said, “Come on, sit down. It’s no good for your back, sitting all hunched over on the ground like that.”

Jon went to the table and reached into the box with his good hand, feeling through its contents.

“Thank you.”

“Of course. You might have just said. You could have asked.”

“Hm.”

“So...what are you looking for?”

“I don’t know. Or—I'll know it when I find it.”

“That’s vague.”

“Well. That’s all I’ve got for you, at the moment. So much for serving an all-seeing god. Maybe I’m just not very good at this.”

“I think...that’s a good thing.”

“It’s not helping us. It’s not what we need.”

“What we need is...is each other. Not fear gods, or, or whatever the hell they are. Certainly not to be giving ourselves over to them.”

“Even if it might make things easier?”

“Yes, Jon. Especially then.”

Jon huffed, an irritated exhale as he raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m just—hell, Martin, I don’t know what I’m looking for. There’s just got to be something. We’re supposed to be stopping an apocalypse, but—but Tim can hardly stand to look at me, and I’m--well, let’s all be honest, I’m not exactly what you’d call in fighting shape,” he said, gesturing at himself with a bitter, derisive laugh. He cut the sound off harshly before it could give way to the ragged sob that sat permanently lodged in his throat. “And you—and this is going to be  dangerous .”

“It’s already dangerous, Jon. You were kidnapped. I don’t--I wish you’d tell me what happened. I know you haven’t told us everything.”

“What’s the point?”

“It might help.”

“That’s not the kind of help we need at the moment.”

“Isn’t it?”

Jon turned away from Martin, back towards the aisles of boxes. He grit his teeth as he strained against the static buzz of ignorance, his limited human vision, bearing down upon the veil of the world, looking for a tear in the fabric of the world through which he could See through the dread eye of Beholding.

Something familiar looked back at him, blinked, and all at once his vision narrowed back to its usual limited scope. His breath hitched. “Oh. There’s something down here.”

“What--what do you mean?”

Jon walked forward as though in a dream. He knelt and pulled a box into his lap, reached inside and felt around. His hand bumped up against a small cardboard rectangle. Thick, bulky pages. A familiar worn corner where the cover was bent, the plastic having worn away and leaving a soft, fuzzy patch of exposed cardboard. His heart beat fast. He heard only the blood in his ears, loud. It sounded as though he were travelling very fast through a tunnel with the wind blowing by. His body faded away, became invisible and light as the air as Jon pulled the book from the box.

The strings attached to his joints lift and pull him to his feet and he cannot find it in himself to be at all surprised. They were always there, the strings—they simply hung loose enough that you didn’t always feel them. Now they were taut. Now he was operated. Strings on his hands, turning the pages, on his eyes, flicking left and right as he read, on his legs as he was led up the stairs and down the hall and back into the archival office.

“Mr. Spider wants another guest for dinner,” said the book, directly into his head, in a voice like creeping velvet, like moldering lace, like the rough gravel of a palm passing over a microphone, like the quiver in the words of a terrified child. “It is polite to knock.”

Where there once had been a door to knock at, was now a great black blankness. No—not empty—open. The door was open. Not blankness, not darkness—but a web woven so tightly that no light could only pass through the tiniest of slivers.

“Mr. Spider wants more.”

As the ringing in Jon’s ears reached a crescendo loud as though a plane were landing atop the building, the book was smacked out of his hands and sent tumbling through the air, to the floor.

All at once he was thrust back into his body. His chest heaved as his breath came back, short and shallow. His vision swam. He felt himself shaking. For an instant, blind rage coursed through his body and he turned to glare at whoever had knocked the book out of his hands, and then it was gone in an instant as the strings all snapped and he felt his mind in freefall, wheeling and spiraling out of control.

“Jon? Can you hear me, Jon?” said Martin, staring at him with wide, fearful eyes.

“What the fuck is going on?” said Tim, standing along with Melanie and Basira, all three of them staring with looks of mingled concern and confusion.

Jon opened his mouth but no words came out.

“Can you—can you talk? No? That’s, that’s all right, just—it's okay. I’m sorry I hit you, I didn’t know what to do, I thought—you didn’t seem like yourself.”

Jon looked down where the book had fallen. The rest of them did, too.

“ A Guest for Mr. Spider ,” said Tim. He was closest to where the book had fallen, and leaned down to pick it up, holding it aloft between two fingers, like it was an especially nasty piece of trash. “Looks like a real page-turner, Jon.”

Jon lurched forward, bumping painfully against a desk as he reached out for the book. “Tim,  don’t .”

Tim glared. “Don’t what?”

Jon felt his head spinning. He knew he needed to slow down his breathing as he felt light-headed and dizzy, but he couldn’t. All he could see was the door opening, those two arms reaching out—

“Don’t open it.  Please , Tim, don’t.”

Tim scrunched his nose and looked at Martin. “What the hell’s gotten into him?”

“I don’t--I don’t know. We were down in Artefact Storage, looking for—well, looking for something, and all of a sudden he got real quiet, and I look over and he’s reading this book, and then he started walking up here, so I followed him, but it was like he couldn’t hear me, and—I don’t know, I’ve never seen that book before in my life.”

Tim’s eyes widened and he dropped the book on the desk. “Whoa, you got this out of Artefact Storage?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

Jon leaned over and snatched the book off the desk. It made his skin crawl to touch it—but he couldn’t just leave it there, where anyone might pick it up, and open it, and start to read.

“Jon, put that thing down, it’s got to be a damn Leitner,” said Tim.

“I know what it is.”

“Then what the hell are you doing with it?”

“I’m—I—”

“Don’t you think we’ve got enough supernatural bullshit going on without you reading a goddamn Leitner? What were you thinking?”

“I—I wasn’t thinking, I—”

“Obviously not,” said Melanie. “Jesus, Jon.”

Jon clutched the book to his chest and backed away from them as Martin took a step closer. “Jon, maybe you should let me take that...”

“No! No, it’s mine, I have to—”

“What do you mean, it’s  yours ?” said Tim.  

Jon swallowed back the rising bile. “Or, or I’m  its , or was almost its, but I—I can’t let you touch it, just—just forget you ever saw it, I’ll take care of it.”

“Like you’ve taken care of every  other  fucked up spooky bullshit that’s come crashing into our lives?”

“That’s not fair, Tim,” said Martin. “Why don’t we just—all try to calm down, all right? Nobody’s reading the Leitner, we’re all okay.”

“Maybe we’re okay—or else Jon opening that thing summoned an eldritch horror. Again.”

“No. No, it doesn’t, it shouldn’t work like that, you have to read to the end, and then you have to knock.”

“Like this?” said Tim, raising a fist to wrap against the door.

Jon cried out and covered his mouth with his bandaged hand, the other clutching the book with white knuckles.

Tim lowered his fist without knocking. The anger faded from his face. “Jesus. I was kidding.”

“Jon. For someone who seems to know how the book works, you seem awful scared of it. What’s going on?” said Basira.

“I—I’m going to destroy it.”

“You’ve seen it before.”

Jon looked down and nodded once.

“You...you already read it, then?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re...still here. What happened?”

“It--took him.”

“Took who?”

Jon rubbed his bandaged hand harshly beneath his eyes, not caring how the motion painfully tugged at his burns. “I don’t--I can’t remember his name. I  can’t remember .”

“You don’t mean—Jesus, right now? Like someone who works in Storage? What do you mean, you can’t remember?”

“No way, Tim, I was there, too. Nothing happened,” said Martin. “He must mean—how long ago was this then, Jon?”

“I was eight.”

He found a curious numbness stealing over him. It pushed aside all other emotions and allowed him to get his breathing back under control, to stand up straight and all but force the tremor from his voice.

“I made a statement about it, even,” he said, with a humorless laugh. “No idea where that ended up. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean to open it—but it’s powerful, and it already has its hooks in me. But I’m fine now. I’m going to burn it. If you don’t—don’t trust me to do so, you can watch.”

“No one should have to be alone with an awful thing like that,” Martin murmured. “I’ll come, but not because I don’t trust you to burn it—you just shouldn’t be alone with it. Nobody should.”

“Well, you didn’t watch him closely enough last time, so count me in too,” Tim said. “Don’t worry, boss, I’ll smack you quicker than Martin did if you feel an uncontrollable urge to read and unleash unspeakable horrors into the archives again.”

“I’d like to set a fire in the archives,” said Melanie. “Count me in.”

“Where should we do this?” asked Basira.

“The tunnels,” said Jon. “We’ll burn it in the tunnels.”

Later, Annabelle Cane will leave a statement for him gift-wrapped in cobwebs. He will taste his own fear as he reads it, as he realizes he never meant to begin reading it out loud, as he is unable or unwilling to stop, as he can no longer tell the difference between the two. And his own fear makes the statement sweeter and full of blood and appeases his god and fills the ragged yawning hole in his center that is forever demanding more sustenance just for a moment. A strange duet: his fear and her fear, his patron and hers, an act of auto-cannibalism just as his own statement was almost a whole year ago.

He will not know where he ends and where Beholding begins. The boundaries between choice and compulsion, instinct and free-will. Everything he learns will be futile—everything he learns will merely be the discovery that what he thought was a choice was merely a step in someone else’s dance, pre-choreographed. The music started long ago. When did the music start? He was caught in a web before he ever knew one was being woven and each twist and turn has only ever drawn him deeper. He can feel the strings all of the time now.

They didn’t venture far into the tunnels. There was no need, that day, to brave the dark, to pass by the old ring of worms, the old bloodstain on the floor where the old main whose name they are burning was slain. They simply set the book alight inside a trash can stolen from a vacant office and watch it burn.

“Well,” said Tim, watching black smoke curl up from the fire. “I guess this sort of provides for your tragic backstory. I always did wonder what it was that made you come work here. I mean, we’ve all got one. I’d started to think maybe you were just like this.”

“This isn’t why I came to work here,” Jon said, peevish again now that the old wound was settling down, the shock of seeing the book again wearing off. “I mean—not totally. It was still a  choice .”

“Sure it was. But nobody makes choices in a vacuum.”

“You said you were eight?” Melanie said.

“Yes.”

“That’s very young.”

“I suppose. I guess I should be over it by now, is what you’re saying.”

“No. No, that wasn’t it at all.”

“Well. I got off easy, all things considered.”

“You wouldn’t say that to anybody else,” said Basira. “You can be a jerk sometimes. But I know you wouldn’t say a thing like that to anybody else.”

“I don’t even know what happened to him. The one it—took. I mean, I—I can guess. But I can’t be sure he died. Not right away. Did it make him an avatar of the Web first? I don’t know.”

“Best not to linger on it. There are some things we just don’t get to know. And it wouldn’t do you or him any good anyway,” said Basira.

“I know you can stand that sentiment about as much as I can,” Jon muttered.

“I’m just happy to see the damn thing burn,” said Tim, loudly. “Thirty years too late, but still.”

Jon was quiet for a moment. He thought that might have been Tim’s way of saying he was glad Jon was alive, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. Rather than broach that subject, he said, “Tim, just how old do you think I am, exactly?”

“Oh. I dunno. You said you were eight when you first read the book, so—”

“Never mind.”

Beside him, Jon heard Martin muffling a laugh, and allowed the tiniest of smiles to curve across his own face.

Georgie hadn’t liked spiders, either. Hadn’t hated them, or feared them in any odd or excessive measure, either, but still. His particular disdain never required explanation. So he never gave one. It was easy not to mention something so anomalous in his past that it stood out like an open sore on an otherwise relatively average life.

It never occurred to him that he ought to have told her anyway. That it was something she might have liked to have known. That willingness to grant her that vulnerability might have been at least part of the remedy to the discord that came to ail their relationship. It never occurred to him, until many years later, when she gave him her own statement, and he felt gutted, and could only think,  oh, but you never told me .

After the coffin, he and Daisy gravitate towards each other. They find reasons to be in the same room. When there are no reasons other than that the other’s company is more grounding than any rib bone ever had been, that is reason enough. The casual touching takes getting used to. For so long now, any touch has hurt and been full of malice. Once, early on, he startled, and was terrified he had offended her—but she had understood, in her own way, the instinctual flinch of a prey animal, and had backed off slowly. From then on she moved more slowly around him, gave him time to move away if he needed to, made sure he heard her if she came up behind him, until gradually the press of her hand against his, her side to his side, became familiar.

They sat on the ground in his office. The others were out bringing back food for lunch, but neither of them got out much those days. The quiet was more bearable when they were together. It was almost peaceful.

She bumped her side against his. “You can go ahead and read that. I know you want to.”

He had a statement sitting in his lap, the tape recorder lying beside him. It flicked on occasionally, as though to poke and prod him into feeding it, like a begging dog whining for food. He kept switching it off.

“And you’re supposed to be doing your exercises.”

Daisy growled and tipped her head back against the desk. “I did ‘em this morning.”

“That was this morning. Now it’s this afternoon.”

“Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.”

“Daisy...”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Ah, I hate it when you do that.”

“It’s stupid. It might make you mad.”

“I don’t have much of a temper these days.”

“That’s true. Still.”

“Just spit it out, Sims.”

“It’s just—if you could go back, and choose for things to be different, would you?”

She turned her head and blinked at him, all dry and unamused. “You’re right. That is stupid.”

“Okay, that’s not what I  meant .”

“For a guy who talks into a recorder all day, you sure do get tongue-tied a lot.”

“That’s reading off a script, it’s not the same thing at all as talking.”

“I guess not. So what did you mean,” she said, nudging him.

“Right. I don’t mean, if you could go back, and be—unclaimed, fully human, would you. That’s not what I’m asking, that’s...no. I mean, if you could choose to be different, claimed by something else other than the Hunt, would you?”

“Oh. Hm. I never thought about it.”

“Never?”

“The Hunt just...makes sense. Every decision I made, the way I lived...it led me right to it.”

“But, if you could do it a different way...”

“It’s not like a damn star chart or a personality test. You choose it. You’re not born under a certain star, and predestined to join the Hunt—but say, even if you were brought up that way, with that in mind, it still wouldn’t be a sure thing. You have to choose it. Either it eats you whole, or burns you alive, or buries you—or you make a choice.”

“I...I see.”

“Why do you ask? Thinking of switching teams?”

“No. Sort of...the opposite, actually, I...I was thinking about how the Web was the first entity I encountered. Before the Eye. And I had this strange thought—I didn’t mean to think it, I felt bad for it immediately, but still, I had this reaction of, of disgust. Of wrongness. I was...don’t take this the wrong way. I think you might be the only one who’ll understand, who won’t--won’t  take this as another sign I’m losing my humanity or what not. I’m not  happy  about any of this. But for a second, I was...glad it wasn’t the Web. Everything you’ve said makes sense to me all of a sudden. I must have chosen the Eye, at some point. You’re right. It just makes sense.”

“Hm.”

Daisy stared at him intently. He squirmed. “What?”

“I’m trying to picture you with the Web now.”

“What is there to  picture ?”

“I dunno. Lots of eyes? But spidery ones. Eyes are already your thing.”

“Well,  don’t .”

“I could go Vast. They at least seem to have a sense of humor about things.”

“Because you’re so well known for your love of all things fun.”

She growled, and he smiled, a real, wide smile. It was only around him she let slip these little quirks these days, and he’d come to recognize the differences in her tone—now she was being playful.

“What would you know about fun,” she scoffed. “Everybody with the Eye is a big wimpy nerd.”

“Don’t forget neurotic.”

“God forbid.”

“You could go Spiral if you want a sense of fun. Although theirs is a little twisted.”

“Was that supposed to be a  joke ?”

“So it’s funny when  Basira  makes a pun, but I’m not allowed?”

“It’s about tone and timing, Sims, and Basira’s is impeccable.”

“ Sure  it is. You know, Basira’s sort of ‘with the Eye’ these days, too. Does that make her a—what was it—wimpy nerd?”

“Basira is the exception to the rule. And she’s no avatar, more like a freelancer.”

Jon snorted. “Is it—is it bad that we’re laughing about this? I mean it’s really not funny. It’s terrible.”

“Sometimes you have to laugh if you don’t want to cry.”

Jon gave a sharp burst of laughter, hand going to his face. “What is that—is that from a Hallmark card, or something?”

“It’s just wisdom. Goes to show what you know.”

“I’d never have chosen the Web. Would I? We keep talking about choice, and we have to, because we’ve got to hold ourselves accountable, but really—if it had taken me—if I’d been terrified, if it had been choose the Web or die, or worse—how can I know what I’d have done?”

“You can’t know. That’s the ultimate pointlessness of your Eye. Even it can’t know everything.”

“Well, that was never the point. The point is more about—being watched, and trying to know, even if the what you’re trying to know is terrible, and going to kill you.”

“How tantalizing. I can see how it compels you.”

“You see? This is what I’m talking about, you’d never—maybe you’d never have been able to choose it, the same as I couldn’t have chosen the Hunt, because it’s just not—not in our nature. Not the way we were before, not the way we are now. Maybe we aren’t so altered. Maybe we were always like this. Is that a comfort? Or is that terrible?”

“What sort of sick bastard chooses the Buried?” Daisy growled. “While we’re on the subject. The Hunt is a high, it’s all adrenaline and purpose, movement—where's the draw in that damn coffin?”

“I don’t know. It’s all this...mingling of terror and ecstasy. One demands the other. What is the Buried? Being held—but being held too tightly—wanting to be at the center—but to be at the center also means to be pinned and crushed—I don’t know. I don’t understand any of them. Not even the Eye. I think...I myself, I couldn’t choose Corruption. But...I felt like I understood something about Jane Prentiss, when I read her statement. I understand them all—at least I feel what they felt—but she made a sort of sense. Not logically, but...emotionally?”

“The bug lady?”

Jon sighed. “Yes, the bug lady. Call her Jane, please.”

“I think it’s interesting, thinking about this stuff. But I also think you take it too much to heart. Sometimes knowing doesn’t help.”

“So I keep being told.”

“And you keep not listening.”

“Still. I guess my point was—did I have a point? I don’t know. I’m glad it wasn’t the Web.”

“Then you’d have to eat flies instead of statements. And lie. You’re a terrible liar. Martin, on the other hand...”

“Martin is not a  liar .”

Daisy gave him a small, teasing grin. “Martin is an  excellent  liar.”

“How can you say that! He’s--he’s nice, and helpful, and polite!”

“To you, maybe. He can be a real prick when he wants to be, you know.”

“Well. If it’s to somebody like Elias, then that just makes you a good person.”

Daisy snorted. “I never said he was a bad person. I said he was a good liar. Elias is a liar and a bad person—Martin is just good at lying. There’s a difference, see.”

“I guess so.”

They were quiet for a moment. Then Jon said, “I miss him, you know.”

“I know.”

There came a knock on the door. “Jon?”

“Come in.”

Basira opened the door, expressing no surprise to find them seated on the floor. “We’ve got lunch,” she said, holding up a bag.

Daisy used the desk to hoist herself to her feet and offered her hand to Jon. “Should’ve read that while you had the chance, now you’ll have to wait.”

“What?”

“Come on.”

He opened his mouth. A thousand protests and excuses leapt to mind—but when he really got down to it, he could think of no good reason why he shouldn’t take her hand. So he did.

Even after knowing that going into the Lonely marked him and sealed Jonah Magnus’ plan to bring on the apocalypse, Jon could not regret it. Martin closed the door and he settled in to read with love in his heart, more love than he’d known himself capable of, and the love remained and became something wild and raging as he grew queasy and sick with trying to stop himself from reading. He could not. He felt hysterical laughter in his throat but could not laugh, could not shut his eyes, could not make his own voice silent. He felt the strings again, lodged in his belly, pulling words out of his throat. He could not choose not to read. But even as he read Jonah’s awful list of all the ways he’d been marked—he knew he had chosen them all.

He would not have both his ribs back. At the time he had deemed their loss necessary.

He wouldn’t choose to die and never wake from his coma. He’d never meant to do anyone harm—he'd only wanted to live.

He would not choose to leave the coffin lid shut and abandon Daisy to the buried. Not even to spare himself another mark.

He wouldn’t leave the Slaughter’s bullet lodged in Melanie’s leg. Not even knowing she would retaliate with a stab wound that would send him one step further into becoming an object, a thing, an archive.

He would not let Martin walk alone in the Lonely. Not even to thwart an apocalypse.

That was what Gertrude would have done. But Gertrude had been wrong, too.

Maybe sometimes he had a choice, and maybe sometimes it only felt or seemed like he did, and maybe he never did at all, and maybe the only choice in life was choosing what to believe.

Maybe it was already too late.

The day he returned to work after waking in a hospital bed in which, he’d been told, he should have died, the archives were quiet. Sasha was dead. Tim was dead. Daisy was gone. Martin was—elsewhere.

Jon walked into the cafeteria and suddenly saw it full of mourners on that strange day on which they had come together to remember a woman none of them had ever really known, and all at once he understood everything and nothing and he wanted to ask the few people in there eating lunch, perfect strangers, if they’d known Tim Stoker, and if not would you like to? But he’d made a promise, and he was scared of asking questions these days, so instead he locked himself in his office.

So many of his belongings were gone, lost, thrown away. But in his desk, along with a jar of ashes, was the web-patterned lighter. He flicked it to hear the sparkwheel catching, the familiar soothing motion, and it occurred to him that Martin might have held this lighter just so, while he was lost in the wax museum; that Martin might have used this very lighter to burn those statements.

Jon thought about anchors. He thought about webs.

He felt the strings again, of old. He had known them all along. They were not only for making puppets jerk and dance. How many hands had this lighter passed through? He knew of two of them. Nothing was untethered. The web stretched wide across the world, glinting silver gossamer, and one could not breath in North America that one in the Maldives would not shiver. What strange wonder, what annihilating grace. He swore he could hear the weavers threading, could feel the strings.

[forkanna]

[AO3 LINK] [WATTPAD] [QUOTEV]

WARNING: Miraculous and all related characters © Zagtoon. This story ©2020 to me! All rights reserved.

NOTE: This fanfic was commissioned by Anonymous. Happy Easter or something!

SIDE NOTE: Yes, I am alive. No, I do not have Covid-19; all good on my end and I'm being safe. I just have been wrapped up in a lot of other projects. Obviously my commissions are still open. But I promise-promise, other fics you may be daydreaming about will return. Soon!

Jessex

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

"WAAAUUAAAAAAAHHH!"

Chloe Bourgeois counted herself lucky that she had been on the way to the wedding of her one-time object of affection, Adrien Agreste, when she heard the outcry. The antics of Crepe Of Wrath had gone completely unnoticed by the future fashion magnate because she was too busy making sure her hair and makeup were flawless. If she was going to let go of Adrien once and for all, she was going to make sure he would know what he was missing when he glanced in her direction.

And now, some ninny was screaming and interrupting her mental preparations for finding someone new to crush on. Rolling down the window of her limo, she began to shout, "HEY! WHAT IS THE IDEA OF-"

Oh no.

What the hell was Marinette Dupain-Cheng doing flying through the air — especially in that billowy wedding gown, all white poofs and elegance? Maybe she would hit the pavement and become a greasy splatter. What else was going to lift her spirits than seeing her rival for Adrien's affections meeting an untimely demise?

But no such luck. Chat Noir sailed out of nowhere and snagged her out of the air before she could strike ground. Fine. As much as that would have simplified her life, she couldn't deny that in the back of her mind she actually was glad that she didn't witness one of her Françoise Dupont High schoolmates die - at least, right in front of her. That would have been gross.

Besides, Marinette might have deserved to lose Adrien, but not death. Even someone as irritating as her was a human being.

When the limo finally came to a stop in front of the church, she saw Marinette rushing up to the crowd congregated out front. There was some kind of discussion, tears were shed… boring. Because it wasn't about her. Just as Chloe opened her door to exit the limo, too impatient for her servant to do the honors-

"CHLOE!"

Before she had enough time to do anything more than squeak out "Marinette Dupain-Cheng, just what on Earth do you-", she found herself being shoved backward into the vehicle again as a well-dressed bride climbed in after her.

"Chloe, I will let you put a picture of my underwear all over the internet if you drive away right now!"

Oh, that was too good to pass up. Chloe bade her driver to take off from the curb, even though a couple of fists had begun to pound on the windows just then. What did she care? Money would take care of their commoner fingerprints.

"Well, I did what you wanted, you insane pleb. When do you cough up payment?"

"What?" Marinette was still too busy gasping for breath and fanning her face, trying to evaporate the sweat that was beginning to break out all over her pale skin. Disgusting. "I… what do you mean?"

Rolling her eyes, the blond primadonna folded her arms over her slight chest. "Are you even stupider than I thought? The deal was that I helped you make a getaway from whatever, and I get to post nudes. Your reputation is history, Dupain-Cheng."

Drooping visibly, she whined, "Aww… come on, Chloe, have a heart. I just really wanted to get away from there, I…" Her eyes started to water. "He didn't show up."

He didn't? How horrible. Marinette must have been devastated. Well, Chloe was fresh out of hearts — at least, ones that bled for people who put themselves in situations like these by marrying someone who couldn't possibly love her when Chloe Bourgeois existed on the same planet. The way she saw it, the universe was correcting a cosmic mistake. "Boo hoo. Cry me a river. Start getting naked or I'll even make you take off your underwear."

"That's awful! And how are you going to make me do anything? All I have to do is jump out of this limo."

"Go ahead." Marinette tried. And failed. "The locks are controlled by my driver for safety reasons. Only I know the secret code to open them from back here. But don't worry; I will be very glad to kick you out. Just as soon as you live up to your end of our little deal."

The irritation in her rival's dopey face was priceless. Chloe lived for that. Even better when Marinette began struggling out of the wedding gown, grumbling and swearing under her breath all the while. Though probably not actually swearing; that didn't seem like the little goody two shoes at all.

However… the mayor's daughter's feelings begin to shift the more of Marinette's trim body she saw. Maybe she wasn't being entirely objective when she called her "ugly". Once the slip came off, Chloe found herself clearing her throat and looking away. Why? Wasn't this exactly what she wanted? To humiliate the object of all her rage and disgust?

"Okay, hurry up," the girl grumbled. "I just want you to drop me off at my place so I can forget this day ever happened."

When Chloe turned and raised her phone, she had been expecting to see something cute, like strawberry patterns or pink bows. Juvenile, like Marinette. Why was she so shocked to see the red-and-black lace? It wasn't that weird — especially considering it was supposed to be the brat's wedding night.

"Chloe? Um…" Marinette was shifting awkwardly, cheeks beginning to turn red. "Can you hurry up and take the picture, if you're going to?"

"R-right! Of course, let's make sure you're humiliated everywhere." But her finger hesitated over the shutter button. Why? She couldn't possibly have been feeling any kind of sympathy for this pustule on the face of society.

Nope. Marinette deserved it several times over. So she took a couple of pictures. "That's it… now turn around and let me see that nonexistent derriere of yours."

The absolutely flushed baker-slash-designer did as she was asked, her high heels clattering to the floorboard of the limo as she knelt on the seat. Hips shifting awkwardly from side to side. Chloe felt her heart racing now; this was obscene. And why on Earth was her body reacting to it? What was wrong with her?!

"Well? Did you get it?"

"Don't… rush me…" Click. Now she felt like a total pervert for taking these pictures, even though she knew the purpose was to humiliate this dunce whom had been a thorn in her side throughout her entire school career.

Wasn't it?

"Chloe, you really are the worst," she breathed, eyes brimming with tears as she looked off out the window. As if trying to distract herself.

"No, you're the worst." But the whole situation had her second-guessing herself so badly that she sighed and bit her lip. "Looking like that… making it weird."

"What do you mean, I'm making it weird?! You're taking pictures of my butt!"

"I-I am not!" She was. "Okay, but they're for blackmail purposes! Or something!"

"I thought they were as payment for the escape…?"

"Sh-shut up!" Sighing, she put her phone away, still staring at Marinette's pert little rear. For some reason. "I'm… oh, just get out of this limo before I actually do post these."

Marinette was clearly stunned when she turned and sat down, looking at Chloe. "Wait… I thought you already did. And whoa, why are you blushing?!"

"I'm not blushing, you're blushing."

"Well, yeah! But you are, too. Is everything alri-"

"Shut UP! Just shut up, alright?! Making everything difficult, always ticking me off and- j-just GO AWAY!"

Marinette started trying to struggle back into her dress, clearly panicked by the irate tone of her rival. And of course, she was so klutzy that every movement basically set her back to the start; she dropped her shoes, picked up her dress, slipped on her slip and dropped everything again. But something about the way she was crying and undressed, and the way she finally collapsed into sobs because nothing was going right…

Chloe… wasn't laughing at her. For some reason.

"It's alright," she finally sighed irritably, kneeling next to her on the floorboards and patting her shoulder awkwardly. "You can't help that you're stupid, and lame, and Adrien obviously realised he was making a mista-"

Her words cut off when she felt arms flinging themselves around her body. Marinette was sobbing into her shoulder. Just because of that insignificant shred of sympathy?! Clearly this dumb girl was overwrought, and not even the queen of the school could bring herself to push her away because the sobs were just so pathetic.

And… her back was really soft. She smelled sweet, like macarons and sunshine. Chloe felt her brow furrowing as she embraced her a little tighter.

"I'm sorry," Marinette finally breathed brokenly as she clutched at her back hard.

"W-watch it, this is a Versace blouse." She cleared her throat, petting over her soft raven locks. "It's worth more than your life, you boob."

"S-sorry for that, too, then. Aughhhh…" She drew back, swiping hard at her eyes. Why did she miss that hug already? "Thanks for getting me out of there, and like… p-putting up with my breakdown."

"This was bound to happen. But… yeah. Um, and you should get out of here before I change my mind."

"It doesn't matter," Marinette sighed as she started struggling back into her dress in the confined space. At some point, a foot smooshed into Chloe's face, and she sputtered and squealed words that were incoherent due to the high volume. "Ngh… you still have the pics, you can blackmail me anytime. Doesn't matter."

"Oh yeah? That's what's bothering you? Gimme your stupid phone, stupid."

Marinette did. And Chloe snapped a quick selfie from a very low angle and handed it back. The dumbfounded girl whispered, "Did you just… take a… a p-p-"

"I believe it is called an 'upskirt'," Chloe grunted, even as her cheeks burned brilliant crimson. "And you're such a goody-two-shoes that you would never post it anywhere unless provoked. So there; it's insurance. Get out of here."

They were quiet as Marinette finished dressing, though she still looked disheveled. The limo dropped her off in front of the bakery. Just as Chloe moved to close the door, the ex-bride suddenly asked a pertinent question.

"Wait - why didn't you just delete my pictures? Why take one of your underwear on my phone, instead, Chloe?"

"That's… I'm-" Why did she have to have a valid point? "DON'T YOU EVER SHUT UP?!" She slammed the door shut and snapped, "Drive!"

The answer, of course, was that she had no idea. But given the way that she kept taking out her phone to glance at Marinette's lithe form, Chloe Bourgeois had an inkling - one that she was going to stubbornly ignore until it went away. Hopefully.

"I hate you, Marinette Dupain-Cheng," the panicking princess muttered as her heart thudded loudly in her chest, thumbs caressing up and down the sides of her phone screen. "Hate you with a passion."

                                                 ~ Le Fin…? ~

[maychorian]

Weekly Voltron Fic Recs #53

I am THIS close to actually and totally being caught up on reccing everything I want to rec. Two days behind now. Next week maybe I’ll actually be there.

Rules: You can find past weekly rec lists here, and non-list recs in my general fic rec tag. Also follow @maychorianrecs for individually tagged posts, the easier to search and reblog. This is stuff I like, and I have a huge bias toward Lance, hurt/comfort, and general fluff, in that order. Gen unless otherwise noted. Please comment on the fics if you read and enjoy them!

flambe by againstmygreeleaf Words: 2,527 Author’s Summary: Generally soup does not warrant a fruit’s presence, but this is a space fruit and it has a suitable savory tang. My Comments: What a great Hunk-centric sickfic. There just aren’t enough of them. Not even close.

Cookies are Best When Shared with Friends by Mikiri for MoonlitWaterSunnyRiver Words: 1,459 Author’s Summary: Hunk was used to dealing with Lance, and he was getting used to dealing with Keith. Either way, Hunk was just glad to have fun with his friends. My Comments: Daw, so adorable. I love these three becoming friends.

A Little Voice by ihaveacleverfandomurl Words: 1,983 Author’s Summary: Shiro’s hesitant to touch the kid, to scare him, but he’s even more hesitant to leave him here to shiver in his sleep, cuddled up with nothing next to long-dead blackened logs. So gently, he places a hand on the kid’s head. Not expecting a near-instantaneous squeak and jump and roll away, across the ground. The kid lands in a defensive posture, and his eyes are darting between the two men, now some feet away from his landing spot.Shiro and Matt find a kid on their camping trip to get away from the pressures of being seniors in high school. Keith may be twitchy and scared, but Shiro is ready to help him in any way he can. But Keith might not stick around forever. My Comments: Aw man, poor tiny Keith, but I love how Shiro and Matt just drop everything to help him and pour their hearts and souls into it.

I’m Only a Crack by Anonymous Words: 6,033 Author’s Summary: There’s not much he knows. He doesn’t know where he is, or who put him here. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, or why he was put here at all. He doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t even know his own name. The one thing that he does know is that he has to survive. And to do that he needs to escape, before it’s too late. My Comments: Poor Shiro, getting his mind almost completely wiped like that, but I adored how protective everyone was, and cuddly Hunk was so cute. The team protectiveness and eventual solution were great.

Get Down with the Sickness by BossToaster (ChaoticReactions) Words: 10,856 Author’s Summary: Catching space colds is nothing new to Shiro. But this particular bug is nasty and especially contagious. The answer: Quarantine My Comments: So indulgent and satisfying, going through all the stages of the prototypical sickfic, from delirium to recovery. Reading this was like sinking into a hot bath.

Late Nights by Sohotthateveryonedied Words: 2,376 Author’s Summary: Shiro is awoken one night to find a bruised and bloodied Keith at his door after yet another fight. My Comments: Aw, poor kids. It would have been very frustrating to be Keith’s friend, I think. But he very much needs one. Good job Shiro for being there.

The Erebrean Period by Mira_Jade Words: 4,752 Author’s Summary: The Erebrean Period: A span of the cosmic timescale stretching from the formation of the proto-sun, to the emission of its first light. Or: A glimpse of a family, as it once was, long ago. My Comments: This is a gorgeous, lyrical fic, beautiful to read, but with an undercurrent of absolute dread and inevitability. It feels like the last step off a cliff. Highly recommended.

The (Not-So-)Necessary Rescue by A_Zap Words: 4,864 Author’s Summary: Lance has been captured by the Galra, and Shiro and the rest of the team rush to save him. Due to a bit of luck, they manage to get there to rescue him but… Well, it turns out that it may not have been as necessary as Shiro thought. In which Shiro learns that he has severely underestimated Lance and Lance is freaking awesome. My Comments: This was a fun break from all those angsty fics where Lance gets captured, much as I love those. Granted, he had a healthy dose of luck assisting him, but he has skills too. It was fun to see everyone’s reactions.

Wings of a Lion by Eastofthemoon Words: 6,120 Author’s Summary: Shiro wanted to strengthen his bond with the Black Lion, but he never dreamed it would go this far. My Comments: Really fun fic in which Shiro gets wings and everyone, including him, has to adjust.

Back in Black by ptw30 Words: 5,584 Author’s Summary: In honor of Shiro Week 2017 - here is a helping of gen fics to celebrate my favorite paladin, Shiro! All prompts, save day 7, are written sometime in season 5 after Shiro escapes his time in Galra captivity. All fics are gen.Day 1: Space/Time (both!) - “Burritos and What They Mean in Space" Day 2: Original - “The Greatest Gift" Day 3: Break/Mend (both!) - "Lullaby" Day 4: The Black Bayard - "The Black Bayard’s True Form" Day 5: Companion - "Things to Do in the Astral Plane When You’re Bored" Day 6: Duty - "A Paladin’s Sacred Duty" Day 7: Free Day/AU - Blade!Shiro Story - "Not Ready” My Comments: Great collection of Shiro-centric ficlets. I think day five is my favorite, but they’re all worth reading.

Mind Games by Rangergirl3 Words: 6,392 Author’s Summary: There’s more than one way to break a person. My Comments: Some really brutal torture scenes here, with Keith as victim. Great job to the rest of the team rallying around him, though.

Worthless by The_Angst_Chronicles for Tidalstep Words: 15,939 Author’s Summary: Lance breaks down after a mission, not knowing that his comm was on. The rest of the team overhears. My Comments: Hecks yeah, Lance having a breakdown and everyone else pulling him back together. I freaking love these fics, and this is a good one. Lots of good cuddling, lots of good reassurance. Maybe a wee bit over the top, but hey, sometimes I like that. I enjoyed this one thoroughly.

Like a Good Pair of Headphones by yet_intrepid for Agapostemon Words: 958 Author’s Summary: Hey,” says Matt, “are those my headphones?” Pidge looks up from flying the wacky green lion ship that she apparently flies, and frowns at him. “What?” “My headphones,” Matt repeats, waving them at her. They weren’t in her bag so much as on top of it, so he wasn’t prying. “Come on, Pidge. The limited edition ones I bought? There’s like fifty pair of these in the entire world, so don’t try and tell me this isn’t the one that was already in our house.” My Comments: This author is absolutely amazing with sibling relationships. They feel so perfectly realistic, antagonistic and comforting by turns, exactly like real life. Pidge and Matt have been through a lot, and they need to reconnect.

Drift Away by BossToaster (ChaoticReactions) Words: 2,737 Author’s Summary: After a long series of missions and forming Voltron, the bond sticks as the team goes to bed. Shiro tries to stay awake. My Comments: This is so soft and peaceful and warm, despite the brief moments of fear. It just really made me feel good.

Be Ready and Be Brave by yet_intrepid Words: 4,370 Author’s Summary: “Yeah,” says Shiro. “Your mom seems chill.” “She’s really chill,” Hunk says. “She gets stressed a lot, though. Or she did. She was working two jobs before. But she’s great; I love her.” And then he looks at Shiro expectantly, like he’s expecting Shiro to praise his dad in turn. And Shiro wants to. He does. But he can’t get words out of his throat. My Comments: Mind the tags. This is an extremely tense and disturbing portrayal of an abusive situation, though no abuse in shown on screen, just for Shiro’s mindset and the undercurrent of fear in the fic. But it’s really, really good, I mean amazing, so if you don’t have triggers you should definitely read it. Background Shallura, Shatt, and Hance.

Afraid to Get Close by Cocopops1995 Words: 1,274 Author’s Summary: Keith’s pretty sure it started when his mother left him, but he thinks it was after the fourth or fifth foster family gave up on him he really stopped allowing people to get close to him. My Comments: Aw man, poor Keith. I’m so glad he finally got a good hug. He needs it.

And Still the Stars by Bubblekilt Words: 2,279 Author’s Summary: Shiro has a bad night. Black helps, in her way. Written for Shiro Week 2017, Day 1: Space. My Comments: Aww, Black is a good kitty mama. <3

If I Could Melt Your Heart by Cocopops1995 Words: 2,291 Author’s Summary: Keith is missing. Shiro and the team do their best to find him. My Comments: Alternate perspective on a previously recced fic. This version was even better for those achy hc feels. Love the protectiveness, as always.

What goes unseen by kafeicappuccino Words: 2,184 Author’s Summary: ‘They’re everywhere, Takashi.’ His grandfather had promised, a warm smile on his lips, as though he were sharing something precious. ‘No matter where you go, they’re there, but don’t worry. They��re not all bad.’ — He remembered those eyes from almost fifteen years ago, ones that belonged to a youthful and pale face, and that was exactly the problem.Neither hadn’t changed in the slightest. My Comments: What a cool little fantasy AU. I like the use of Japanese mythology, and Shiro’s POV both as a child and as an adult was completely believable. I would read more of this concept.

Home Is Far; Your Arms Are Here by seekingsquake Words: 1,162 Author’s Summary: Maybe… maybe if they have a sleepover, thinking about home won’t hurt so much. Maybe if Lance keeps him wrapped up, Hunk will have the courage to look out the window. My Comments: Aw, poor boys. Hunk and Lance are both homesick and hurting, but at least they have each other.

I’m Your Captain by EagleInFlight Words: 8,045 (3/?) Author’s Summary: **SEQUEL TO WORDS FAIL** Summary: It’d been four years since Lance has last been home. Four years of war, of pain, of home-sickness, of fighting. Today is the day he’ll see the shores of Varadero Beach, he’ll receive his mother’s bone-crushing hug, he’ll see his big family of aunts, uncles, and cousins, and he’ll see his brother who he left on bad terms with. Only…they can’t know he’s a Paladin of Voltron. This was not the family reunion Lance expected.But it was everything he needed. My Comments: Sequel to a previously recced fic, this is a bittersweet and heartwarming homecoming for Lance. I’m glad Keith is there for moral support, with all the complicated family issues going on. I’ll be following this one avidly.

Under the Weight of Belief by yet_intrepid Words: 3,801 Author’s Summary: Before all this, Shiro used to be somebody. One of the best pilots in the Rebel Alliance. He loved his x-wing and he trained new recruits and he flew missions, so many missions, until one went wrong. A Star Wars Original Trilogy AU for Shiro Week 2017! Day 1 - Time/Space and Day 2 - Original/Divergent. My Comments: Man, the beginning of this is so brutal, but the comfort at the end is so good. It really really hurts to see Shiro as a literal slave, but the rescue and the hug at the end almost made it worth it.

Pride And Joy by prettyshiroic (AnalystProductions) Words: 5,850 Author’s Summary: Keith wears the colour red with pride. Sometimes, he wears it with joy. My Comments: Daww, this is the CUTEST. Happy Keith is so sweet and adorable, and singing to mice? Man, I’ve been there.

Children of the Lion Goddess by RukiaG Words: 5,471 Author’s Summary: Altean mythology claims that the Lion Goddess created the Universe, and that her four children protect Altea of all evil. However, Altea and its solar system is long gone, its people hunted down and slaughtered by order of Emperor Zarkon, its culture eradicated and its gods forgotten. Forgotten, but not dead, and soon the Voltron Paladins will find out that some traces of Altea still remain. Or: Team Voltron finds an Altean temple and somehow Shiro is adopted by a magical space lioness. My Comments: I did not read the summary for this very carefully before I started reading, so at first I thought it was just a fun exploration fic, like an episode of Star Trek or Stargate. Partway through, though, it takes a turn for the AMAZING and ADORABLE. Try it out. I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.

Calls Me On and On by BossToaster (ChaoticReactions) Words: 7,614 Author’s Summary: Shiro: Then and now My Comments: This fic is absolutely brilliant, one of bosstoaster’s best works ever, and she’s done some amazing, amazing stuff. I loved the way past and present were interwoven, and the contrast between Shiro then and now and how that eventually flipped on its head. A really, really good read, felt like a whole universe in a tiny fic.

i spy with my little eye, something beginning with squeak by prettyshiroic (AnalystProductions) Words: 5,694 Author’s Summary: “Look it doesn’t - it doesn’t matter just, it’s - what are you doing here?!” The mouse looks up at Keith. It understands what he’s saying, it absolutely does. But it’s purposefully choosing to ignore his question. The audacity. Keith grits his teeth, running a hand through his hair. It’s not like they can go all the way back to the castle now. The planning for the mission is underway and they’ll be taking off soon. Probably as soon as tomorrow, even. The war won’t wait for them. They have to keep going. Mice and all. “You can’t be here. It’s too dangerous it -” the mouse is tiny, comfortably fitting in his hand. “You’re a mouse?!” Keith exclaims, voice low. It’s ridiculous. This cannot be real, but it is. The yellow mouse flexes its arms with gusto, pulling all kinds of poses as if to say it’s strong and perfectly capable of fighting in this war. Keith seriously doubts that. —- Keith leaves for the Blade of Marmora, and soon discovers - in more ways than expected - he’s not alone… My Comments: This is SUPER sweet. Platt’s mannerisms felt very mouselike, and I loved the reason he was there. Keith also has a lovely roommate in a not-dead Regris, which is bonus.

Back from the Edge by Emerald_Ashes Words: 2,603 (1/?) Author’s Summary: The paladins are still recuperating after the events that transpired between them and the Galra. Yet the war continues. They’ve been lucky to avoid battle for as long as they have, but soon enough they will be summoned into the fray once more. And while Lance is healing, he has to learn to deal with his new demons. My Comments: I am VERY excited for this sequel to one of my favorite hurt!Lance fics by one of my favorite hurt!Lance authors. It’s such a good aftermath, and already it’s pushing a lot of my buttons, like a LOT of them, with Lance feeling weak and tired and lonely in recovery and just needing attention but also feeling bad for needing attention. Like I just wanna coo at him and wrap him in blankets and give him tea and cookies. Fortunately he has a loving team to do that for me, but I can’t help the way I feel. Can’t wait for more.

Try to Try Hard by yet_intrepid Words: 4,874 Author’s Summary: “Shiro,” Keith says, and he tries to be calm. “Are you…okay?” Shiro lifts his head a little. Keith has never seen him so pale. The blood is still pumping out and Keith can’t stop staring at it. He should fix it. He should fix it. He doesn’t know how. [Shiro loses his hand, Aladdin AU edition. Written for Shiro Week Day 3: Break/Mend and Day 5: Isolation/Companion.] My Comments: The fic this is prequel to is mostly fluffy and cute, but this fic is very much not those things. It’s brutal and sad, but the second chapter has some very nice comforting and a very cute baby Lance to kinda sorta maybe make up a little bit for Shiro getting his hand chopped off with an axe. Somewhat.

Fear Itself by BossToaster (ChaoticReactions) Words: 7,277 Author’s Summary: After an assassination attempt, Slav demands asks that the paladins come to protect him. With seven pilots, five lions, and one castle, they end up able to send along one person. Ryou volunteers himself. Kind of. He may not have thought this through very well. Shiro Week 2017, Day 2: Original/Divergent My Comments: I love this fic SO much. Ryou is wonderful, and the Slav characterization is perfect, somehow annoying and endearing at the same time, just like he is in the show. I love how hard Ryou worked to try to understand Slav and meet him on an emotional level, even while he had to hold back his irritation. He did a great job. I’m proud of him.

Through Adversity to the Stars by Sylindara Words: 8,225 Author’s Summary: Hunk bonds with his teammates and learns to fly. My Comments: This is soooo good, and feels so very canon. In fact I’m just gonna take it as canon. Something like this absolutely happened in between the scenes in the first season. I loved Hunk bonding with everyone, especially in the lessons with Shiro. Wonderful fic.

parallel by buttered_onions Words: 5,656 Author’s Summary: The failure of the Kerberos mission changes everything. Posted as a chaptered fill for vldplatonicweek: Day Two: Inside/Outside. Keith and his daemon…adjust. Day Three: Trick/Treat. Pidge and her daemon keep their promise. Day Five: Change/Growth. Keith and Tarryn learn to wait, and to react. Day Six: Distance/Proximity. Shiro returns home. My Comments: My only complaint about this is that it’s just too short. The worldbuilding is lovely and the characterization is spot on and the plot is fun. And I just want way, way more.

Care by bookwormgir1LH Words: 6,840 Author’s Summary: Five times Coran looked after his team when they were sick, and the one time they took care of him.Cuddle number 8: Reluctantly My Comments: This is so very sweet and hearfelt and genuine. I love Coran taking care of all his kids, and I love his kids taking care of him.

[brokaw22]

Fic: A Displaced Red Robin Chapter 16

Title: A Displaced Red Robin Author: Brokaw22/Dragonprincess1988 Rating: T Story Synopsis: Tim gets transported to the cartoon Young Justice world, and he's not sure that he knows how to deal with it.

ff.net

Tim meets Robin on a rooftop in the middle of Gotham. He breathes in the night air, feeling the most relaxed that he has ever since he arrived here, which isn’t saying much, because he’s still extremely tense and practically thrumming with anticipation. He needs tonight to go well…otherwise; all of his delicate planning will have been for nothing. Robin, for his part, looks completely at ease with a smile on his face. Tim would roll his eyes if he had expected anything else, but well…Robin is Dick Grayson and an eternal optimist…no matter what Earth he’s from, and Tim’s fairly certain that Robin still doesn’t quite grasp how important and difficult this meeting is going to be. “Would you relax? The kid’s like what? Ten? It’ll be fine.”

 This time Tim does roll his eyes, because he’s certain now that Dick definitely doesn’t understand how difficult Jason Todd…any Jason Todd, can be. “Just stick to the plan and let me do the talking.”

 Dick nods and motions for Tim to lead the way. “You know, you never did tell me how you intend to keep both Jason and the safe house secret from Batman when you know that he has both of us bugged with trackers.”

 Tim merely shrugs as he makes his way from rooftop to rooftop. “The same way that I hide my activities back home. I created a code that overrides the tracker’s program and shows us on a normal patrol route of my choosing. The information is a conglomeration of different patrols I’ve done on particularly slow evenings, and then I’ll double check the information against reported crimes in the area once we turn in for the evening, so there aren’t any inconsistencies.”

 Robin pauses on the next rooftop. “Hold it. How often do you feel the need to hide your activities back home?”

 Tim shrugs again. The fact of the matter is he only really saw a need to do so once Damian came into the picture, but that was mostly to avoid having his line cut during patrol. After a while, it just sort of became habit when he didn’t want to be bothered on patrol. After all, it’s not as if he’s ever used this particular trick on busy nights or when there was a crisis. He’s only ever used it when it was slow and he needed time to himself. “Sometimes a bird needs to fly with no restrictions.”

 Dick doesn’t seem to like the implications, but after a long moment he nudges Tim in the side with his elbow. “Well, if you end up staying here, maybe you won’t need this particular trick as often.”

 Tim doesn’t know how to respond to that. He’s not entirely sure that he wants to stay here. After all, even with everything going on back home, he still has friends and family there, but…but there’s a part of him that’s truly tempted by the offer, even though Tim knows that he doesn’t have a place here anymore than he does back home.

 Still, at least this Dick wants him around and they get along fairly well. It’s a nice change of pace from the stunted conversations and awkward rooftop rendezvous Tim endures back home. Tim shakes his head as he motions for Dick to keep moving. He honestly doesn’t want to think about his home or the possibility of staying here right now. Instead, he’d rather focus on the task at hand. “Come on, Robin. We can’t waste anymore time.”

 Robin nods and mummers under his breath. “Sure thing, bio kid.”

 Tim nearly flubs his next landing as he glares at Dick. “I am not B’s bio kid.” The growl probably doesn’t help his cause any, but Tim has enough problems without that particular rumor going around.

 Dick smirks, evidently self-satisfied with finally getting a reaction out of him. “Prove it.”

 Tim doesn’t get a chance to respond before Dick is flying through the air, flipping, and laughing manically. Tim merely groans and follows at a far more subdue pace. Its times like these that Tim appreciates that the Dick Grayson back home is older than him, even if he does miss the nights when he and Dick would spend the majority of the evening joking around, train surfing, and playing rooftop tag. Still, Tim’s not entirely sure how this Bruce has managed to put up with this for this long, but, then again, from what little information Tim has been able to gather so far, he knows this Bruce isn’t as grim as his own…not yet, anyway. Tim’s hoping that this mission will stave that off for a bit longer.

 When Tim and Dick arrive at Mrs. Miller’s apartment, she invites them both in without hesitation. It’s not exactly how Red Robin is used to being treated, but Robin doesn’t even bat an eye before following her into the tiny kitchen where Jason is sitting, munching on a peanut butter sandwich. Tim notices the distinct lack of jelly and nearly laughs, because some things really do never change. He perks up the moment that he sees them, which makes Tim’s stomach drop. “Hey, Jason, how are you doing?”

 Jason drops his sandwich on the plate and gives him an extremely guarded look as though he already knows that it’s bad news. “You…you couldn’t find my mom, could you?”

 Tim takes a deep calming breath and gestures for Jason to follow him outside onto the fire escape. He looks as though he’s going to protest and demand that Tim tell him whatever the bad news is right here, but one glance over at Mrs. Miller and he changes his mind. “Uh, hey, Mrs. Miller, my…uh…friends and I are gonna step outside for a sec.”

 She smiles at him and motions for him to get a move on. “Good...good…that’ll give me some time to whip something up for them.”

 Tim tries to insist that it isn’t necessary, but she’s almost as persistent as Alfred. After five minutes, Tim finally gives up and just goes along with it as he makes his way outside onto the fire escape. Robin and Jason silently follow behind him. Once Tim is sure that the window is firmly shut behind them, he gives Robin a minuscule nod. Dick sits down on the cold metal platform and motions for Jason to do the same. Jason, for his part, merely folds his arms over his chest and shakes his head. “What’s going on?”

 Tim heaves a large sigh as he grabs a hold of both of Jason’s shoulders. He doesn’t want the kid to feel boxed in, thus the fire escape in the first place, but he knows Jason well enough to know that the kid will bolt at the first sign of trouble. “We found your mother, Jason. I’m so sorry, but she was murdered.” Tim gives Jason a moment to process what he’s said before continuing. “The man who did it has already confessed to the authorities and is in prison. I know it doesn’t help, but I wanted you to know that.”

 Jason is staring down at the ground, tears slowly leaking from his eyes, sniffling softly as his hands ball into fists. He’s shaking slightly, biting his bottom lip, and looking like the angry, heartbroken kid that he is, which has Tim gripping his shoulders a bit tighter. That’s all it takes for Jason to unleash a wail and fall into Tim’s chest. Tim doesn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around Jason and just hold him, and he’s equally unsurprised when Dick gets up and joins in on the hug. Tim doesn’t hush him or tell Jason that it’s going to be okay. He’s suffered through enough losses to know that it doesn’t actually help. Instead, he merely strokes Jason’s hair and lets the kid fall apart.

 After what feels like an eternity of trying to comfort Jason and failing, Tim feels Jason’s hold on him slacken as his sobs quiet. He slowly releases Jason, making sure to keep a least one hand on him, so that the kid knows that they aren’t just going to deliver terrible news and fly away. He waits until Jason seems calm enough to at least attempt to consider their offer before speaking. “We want you to know that you’re not alone, okay? You still have the communicator that I gave you and you can use that at any time for any reason. I know that the last thing you want is to go into the system, right?”

 At Jason’s tiny nod, Tim continues, “I’ve already checked, I know that you don’t have any other family. Now, I would love it if you would just stay here with Mrs. Miller until I worked out something more permanent for you, but I also know that you don’t like imposing on people, and you probably already feel like you’re imposing on her, right?” Jason nods again, before giving Tim a hard glare.

 Tim knows that he needs to tread carefully here. It’s one of the reasons that he’s the one explaining all of this to Jason instead of Dick, even though Dick is far better at comforting people. “I’ve got a strong feeling that if I left you here, you’d sneak out and do whatever it took to take care of yourself, right?”

 Again Jason nods without actually speaking. “All of that is why Robin and I want to extend an invitation to you, of sorts.” Jason stares up at him skeptically, mouth still firmly shut. Tim would love to know what the kid is thinking right now, but he can work with the silent suspicion. After all, he’s well acquainted to it after spending so much time with Batman over the years. “I know, I know, this is a lot to take in and you’re waiting for something horrible…well, more horrible, but all that I’m asking for you to do is hear me out, okay?”

 Jason inclines his head as he visibly braces himself. Tim gives him a moment to just breathe before launching into their plan. “Robin and I set up a safe house for you to stay in. It’s only temporary, but it’s well stocked with everything that you need and we will continue to stock it for you. I’m currently working on finding you a more permanent place to stay with someone that I trust as well as someone I think that you can learn to both trust and get along with. You are by no means being forced into this, okay? I just…I want you to give it…give me a chance. Does that sound alright?”

 Jason narrows his eyes and stares at them distrustfully. “And what would I have to do to earn this?”

 Tim gives a small half smile. He already anticipated this, and if this Jason Todd is anything like Tim’s own, then he’s fairly confident that he can make this work. “All you have to do is go to school regularly and try your best. I’ll set up everything for you -- paperwork wise -- so that you don’t need to worry about the system. Robin and I will both offer you any other assistance that you need until such a time as I can set up a meeting between you and my friend.”

 Jason glares at him, still weary of this whole thing. “Your friend? You mean the one that you eventually want to take me in?”

 Tim nods. “If that’s what you both want. Again, it might be a while before I can set that up, though.”

 Jason folds his arms over his chest as his glare intensifies. “Uh huh, and what happens if your friend doesn’t want me or I don’t want to live with them?”

 Tim hums in thought. “Well, then you and I work together to find a solution that we both agree with. As I said, I’m not forcing you into anything, Jason. We won’t move forward on any plan unless you also agree with it, so what do you say?”

 Jason takes a long moment to mull things over. Tim is actually quite impressed with Dick’s patience during this whole ordeal, though he does nervously shift from one foot to the other when he thinks no one is paying attention. Tim definitely needs to work on that with him the moment that he finds time. Jason abruptly breathes out a heavy breath. “I want to see this safe house before I agree to anything.”

 Tim nods and keeps his sigh of relief to himself. “That’s fine. We can take you there.” He mentally calculates the best way to get there before grinning at Jason. “How would you like to get there via the rooftops?”

 Jason’s eyes immediately light up, but he doesn’t agree right away. “And how exactly would that work?”

 Tim kneels down and gestures for Jason to hop up onto his back. “Come on, if you don’t like it, we’ll drop down and take the bus, though, I’ve got a feeling that you’re going to love it.”

 Jason hesitates for a moment before climbing on and holding on tight. Tim smirks as he stands up and turns toward Robin. “Inform Mrs. Miller that we’re going to take Jason out for a little while.”

 Robin nods and disappears back into the apartment as Tim starts making his way to the roof with Jason riding on his back.

 Jason huffs out a breath. “Only a little while?”

 Tim nods as he hoists Jason slightly further up on his back. “Yes, I don’t want you to rush into a decision, so you’re going to stay with Mrs. Miller for a little while longer. Once you’ve made up your mind you can contact me via the communicator that I gave you and we’ll move accordingly.”

 “You really are making this my choice.” Jason sounds both astonished as well as stunned.

 Tim does his best not to sigh in exasperation. Truth be told, he probably shouldn’t be doing any of this to start with -- not to mention allowing a child to decide their own fate -- but…well, Jason Todd deserves this much. Besides, it’s not as if Jason hasn’t been living, more or less, on his own for some time now. “I know that a lot has happened and you’re still in the process of absorbing it all, but I really do want as much of this as possible to be your decision, especially since I’ve got a feeling not a lot of things have actually been your choice thus far.”

 Jason doesn’t get a chance to respond before Dick appears, seemingly out of nowhere, holding three small plastic bags of sandwiches. “Mrs. Miller insisted that we eat these.”

 Jason doesn’t hesitate before grabbing one of the bags, tearing it open, and then taking a large bite out of the sandwich. Tim’s just thankful that he’s decided to continue wearing his cowl when he’s outside of the HQ, because he does not put it past Jason to get peanut butter in his hair. Before Tim can suggest that they save snack time until after they’ve made it to the safe house, Dick has half a sandwich stuffed into his mouth as well. Tim merely shakes his head and gestures for the other two to share his sandwich. However, he’s not expecting both of them to protest loudly and insist that eat it, and then glare at him the entire time until it’s finished.

 Once they’re both satisfied that the sandwich is well and truly gone, Tim takes off across the rooftops with Jason on his back and Dick tumbling through the air beside him. He can’t hold back a smile at Jason’s whoop of delight in his ear. He’s relieved that he can give Jason this one moment, if nothing else. When they arrive at the safe house, Tim takes his time disarming the security in order for Jason to see exactly how secure this place really is. The moment that the three of them cross the threshold, Dick grabs Jason’s arm and drags him through the entire place top to bottom. Tim lets the two of them explore every nook and cranny in silence.

 However, he does have to stifle a laugh when he hears Jason’s shocked gasp of amazement when he enters one of the bedrooms upstairs. Tim may have used his memory of Jason’s old bedroom at the manor to his advantage. After all, Jason’s book collection was impressive and extensive. Jason and Dick suddenly clamber their way down the steps and into the fully stocked kitchen. Dick’s talking nonstop and Jason is just nodding his head as he glances around.

 The three of them spend a little over an hour at the safe house. Dick spends the majority of the time pointing out things that he thinks Jason will like about it and answering any questions Jason has, while Tim makes mental notes of anything Jason seems to want or need. If Jason agrees to stay here, while Tim works on the second part of his grand plan, then he knows he’ll have plenty of time to gather any necessary items. However, having a list to start from always puts Tim at ease…at least slightly.

 When Jason indicates that he’s ready to leave, Tim is relieved to see that he’s far more relaxed and happy than when they arrived. He knows that it’s only a momentary relief from the crushing grief of losing his mother, but it’s something. Tim’s not surprised that for the return trip Dick sticks close to them, chattering nonstop, and generally being a great distraction for both Tim and Jason. When they arrive at Mrs. Miller’s apartment, Jason seems reluctant to go back inside. Tim doesn’t really know what to do or say. He knows from experience how much useless platitudes just seem to hurt more.

 Dick, on the other hand, seems to know exactly what to say. He wraps Jason in a tight embrace and forces Jason’s head down onto his shoulder when tears start to form in the other boy’s eyes once more. “I know it’s hard, but we’re here for you, okay? You can call either of us any time. We’ll always answer, no matter what.”

 Jason hugs Dick back and nods. “Should…should I tell Mrs. Miller?”

 Tim’s relieved to finally be asked a question that he can easily answer. “That’s entirely up to you. If you want to tell her, then feel free. However, if you don’t…well, you can always talk to us about it.”

 Jason sniffs once before running his forearm across his eyes, swiping away the remaining tears. He gives himself a few moments to compose himself before waving at them both. “I should get back inside.”

 Dick gives Jason one last hug, and then practically forces the other boy to promise to call them. Once they’re both certain Jason’s inside Mrs. Miller’s apartment, and he’s not going to run off, Tim lets out a relieved sigh. The night has been a trying one, but Tim doesn’t think it could have possibly gone any better.

 Tim gives himself a moment to just relax before turning towards Dick. “Wanna patrol a little before we head back?”

 The smile that overtakes Dick face is answer enough, but the kid still lets out an excited, “Yes!”

 They make their way to the roof in silence and take off in the opposite direction of the safe house. At first, patrol looks like it’s going to be rather quiet. They stop a few purse snatchers and a few attempted car thefts with minimal effort. Tim’s actually relieved that the evening is turning out to be an easy one, given the long day that he’s had so far. He’s just about to suggest that the two of them head back to the HQ when they hear the distinct sound of glass shattering and screams. The commotion is happening mere blocks from where they’ve paused to rest. Tim watches as people flee the area with a sinking feeling.

 There are too many panicked civilians running away for the commotion to be caused by a simple break in. He motions for Robin to stay close to him as they make their way to higher ground. Tim refuses to jump into whatever is going on without seeing the scope of the problem first. However, it only takes a simple glance at the two groups tearing into each other to know that a gang turf war has just broken out. Normally this is about the time when Tim would call for back-up, but he doesn’t think the team would be a good choice for this.

 They might have improved drastically in a lot of areas since he’s been here, but the fact remains that this type of problem requires more team work and subtly than the team is strictly accustomed to as of right now. Besides, invulnerable and super powered teens or not, Tim won’t endanger the team for a Gotham problem when he has Robin beside him. Still, Tim finds it hard to ignore the voice in the back of his head, which sounds noticeably like Alfred, telling him to call Batman…or literally anyone.

 The only problem with that plan being that Batman is currently with the JL, and if Tim calls him away from the Justice League for an admittedly small gang turf war, he can pretty much kiss all progress he’s made with proving himself goodbye. Still, the prospect of entering said turf war with only Robin at his back leaves Tim feeling like the first time that he went on a mission with Damian. In other words, no good can come from this, and this is going to somehow end up being Tim’s fault.

 Both gangs are relatively small, all things considered. They should have enough smoke bombs and batarangs between them to section off smaller groups from both gangs and take them out quickly and efficiently. If they stick to the shadows, move quickly, and stay focused on their own groups while the main gang members are distracted by trying to kill each other, the two of them should be able to end this with minimal damage all around. Tim turns to relay his plan to Robin, only to find Dick already leaping off of the roof, and heading straight for the middle of everything.

 Tim dives off of the building the moment that he finishes calculating Dick’s trajectory. He curses his own stupidity. Tim knows that he has no one to blame for Dick’s actions but himself. He’s known this Dick Grayson long enough to know how impulsive he is, and instead of addressing the issue the way that he should have weeks ago, Tim has been running around, sticking his nose in everyone else’s business. He’s been promising himself that he was going to work on Dick’s lack of patience for seemingly forever now, and instead he put it off, and now his irresponsible otiosity is most likely going to get them both killed.

 Tim lands a mere second after Robin. He’s able to force Dick into a crouch and throw his cape over both of them as bullets slice through the air. He has to find them an exit, but it’s going to be rather difficult with both gangs now working in tandem to end their lives. Tim’s done a thorough examination of Robin’s current suit, enough to know that Tim’s cape is far more efficient when it comes to absorbing the impact of bullets than Dick’s, so Tim gestures for Dick to throw down a smoke bomb as he does his best to keep them both covered.

 Tim knows that the moment the smoke bomb hits the ground both sides are going to start firing wildly, and keeping them both properly covered with his cape won’t be an option, so, as soon as Dick’s fingers reach into his belt, Tim reaches up to undo his cape. Before the smoke bomb even hits the ground, Tim has his cape secured around Robin. He can tell that Dick wants to protest, but now really isn’t the time. Tim all but shoves Dick toward shelter and gestures for him to get to the roof. Dick opens his mouth to protest, but one glare from Tim has him moving immediately.

 Tim knows that if he wants to give Robin adequate cover and a chance to get away, then he can’t follow, so he ducks and rolls and makes a break for another building on the other side of the street. Unfortunately, this means cutting straight across enemy lines with little to no cover for himself. Still, this isn’t the first time that Tim has done something extremely ill advised to save a Robin.

 In fact, it’s almost comforting in a sick kind of way, because this is the first time that Tim hasn’t questioned what he’s doing in the entire time that he’s been here. Something just sort of slots into place inside of Tim when he’s faced with impossible odds and a Robin in peril, and it makes him breathe easier. He doesn’t know why exactly, but this is the most relief that he’s felt since he’s arrived here. He’s got a theory that it’s because this is standard Red Robin behavior. The fact that the Robin in question is Dick Grayson instead of Damian is inconsequential.

 Tim crouches low, taking out his bo staff, and hitting anyone who gets in his way hard and fast. He doesn’t have the time, energy, supplies, or skill to take on both gangs at once, but he can make himself a clear path to his exit. It’s not pretty, and, if his own Dick Grayson was around, he’d certainly have something to say about the lack of finesse, but it’ll work, and right now that’s all Tim is looking for.

 His exit is within sight, but his sigh of relief is cut short as he’s brought to an abrupt halt by a small group of gang members, who have broken off from the main horde to surround him. Tim guesses he’s just lucky that the rest of the gang members are preoccupied with killing each other rather than attacking him. They omit the usual banter and immediately close in on him. Honestly, Tim is relieved that they skip the banter and go straight into fighting. At this juncture, it would just be a waste of time, and Tim really needs to find Dick and get back to the HQ before anything else can go wrong.

 The only upside about the gang members surrounding him like this is that none of them seem willing to use their guns for fear of hitting one of their friends. The downside, of course, is that guns aren’t the only weapons that they have on their personage. Tim manages to sweep the legs out from underneath one of his attackers with his bo staff only to have to roll away from another man swinging a pipe towards his head.

 He kicks out and disarms the guy with the pipe and is instantaneously hit in the side with a length of chain. The air rushes out of his lungs, but Tim manages to bring his bo staff around in enough time to avoid another hit. Unfortunately, the chain wraps around his bo staff, and the guy wielding the heavy chain is absolutely huge. Tim doesn’t bother trying to play tug of war to keep a hold of his weapon, knowing that the longer he focuses on this one opponent the more opportunity he gives the others.

 Tim blocks a kick to his diaphragm and spins away from a girl brandishing a machete. He all but throws another gang member into her and watches as they tumble to the ground in a fit of flailing limbs. A behemoth of a man rushes Tim from behind, and he barely manages to back flip over the guy and land on another gang member. The girl he landed on crumbles under his weight, but Tim’s moving before he even registers the flash of a blade.

 This gang member is different from the others. She isn’t brandishing any old weapon that she happened to find, and her skill with the butterfly knife is quite impressive. In fact, it’s impressive enough that Tim finds himself dodging her swift strikes and using nearly all of his energy to keep out of her range of attack. He flips and spins away, doing his best to stay close enough that none of the other gang members can grab him, but far enough away that she can’t lunge forward. He really wishes that he still had his bo staff in hand. As it stands, his options are limited. He’s tiring and Tim needs to end this soon, lest he slip up.

 There is a wall of gang members surrounding him and Tim knows that if he doesn’t deal with the girl with the knife soon, they’re gonna close in on him, and then he really will be out of options. However, he really only sees one way out of this, and it’s not a good exit. Tim grabs three batarangs and throws them at the girl. As expected, she dodges or blocks all of them, but she’s distracted just enough for Tim to make his move. He closes the distance between them, spins away from the slash of her blade, and makes a break for it.

 The girl is quicker than he thought, before Tim can launch himself over the remaining gang members toward the fire escape on the building; she’s in front of him again. Unfortunately, Tim can’t halt his forward progression, and this time her blade hits its mark dead on. Tim lets out a hiss of pain as the blade penetrates his tunic directly between his ribs. The pain is so sudden and intense that he nearly unfurls in the middle of his flip. It takes every ounce of his training to remain in position and then grab a hold of the fire escape. He can barely breathe as he scrambles up the fire escape and over the rooftops, but somehow he manages.

 Tim is certain that the gang members are following him, but he can’t focus on that right now. The only thing that he can think about is the burning agony ripping through his chest and the fact that he needs to find Robin. Tim’s feet pound against the rooftop as he doubles over in pain. He can barely stand and he can hardly breathe. He doesn’t even know where he’s going anymore. He just knows that he needs to get away. Tim makes the jump to the next rooftop and lands in a crumbled heap.

 His breath rasps out of his chest in short gasps. He attempts to get his feet underneath him, but every time he crashes back to the roof. Tim can’t move. He keeps trying and failing, and he doesn’t know what to do. He has to find Robin and get the hell out of here, but he can’t even catch his breath. Tim shuts his eyes tightly and tries to just breathe. Instead, he coughs and his entire body feels like it’s on fire with the effort. He scrambles to get to his knees, at least, but that only causes him more pain. Tim would laugh at the irony that a gang turf war on a different earth is what kills him, if he could just get enough breath to do so.

 The next thing that Tim knows there’s a small, firm hand on his shoulder, pushing him onto his back. He tries to open his eyes and focus on the figure in front of him, but his vision swims and darkens. “I found him, but I need help. It’s bad, B. You need to hurry.”

 Tim wants to tell whoever is talking not to bother. He knows the feeling of a pierced lung, and it’s not as if he’s exceptionally useful now, anyway. He couldn’t even protect Robin, which is just unforgivable. After all, this is entirely his own damn fault. He saw the problem with Robin and he didn’t bother to do anything about it. So, why should anyone care about him?

 Tim failed…failed the people here…failed his family back home…failed everyone. He wants so desperately to just let everything fade away, but he can’t. His mind races and Tim wonders why anyone would ever bother to think about him at all. After all, he’s not even from here. They don’t know him…not really, so they shouldn’t be concerned. Besides, it’s not as if he’s entirely certain that the people back home are even bothering to still think about him. It doesn’t make any sense to him. Why would anyone waste their time on him? He’s not even useful anymore.

“Red Robin, look at me. Come on, look at me. It’s gonna be okay. B’s on his way. You’re gonna be okay.”

 Tim tries to focus on the face in front of him one last time, but he can’t. His vision is blurry and he’s losing consciousness. Tim shakes his head as he does his best to say everything that he needs to say, but, instead, all that he can do is gasp out a weak, “Sorry.”

 The End (for now)