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ddarker-dreams · 8 months ago

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Cherubim.

Gojo Satoru x F Reader x Geto Suguru.

Warnings: Implied trauma, Gojo and Geto are both weird + manipulative. Word count: 6k.

-Index-

March 18th, 2006.

2:26 p.m.

Gojo Satoru has found himself embroiled in his greatest turmoil yet.

Assassination attempts? That’s nothing, he’s waved those off since he was a kid. Jujutsu politics? The higher-ups can yap until they’re blue in the face; they’re all bark, no bite. Curses? Similarly inconsequential. No matter how much power they hold, they're reduced to speckled splatters the instant they cross his path.

For most, experiencing one of these dilemmas would prove too overwhelming, much less all three. He isn’t like most, though. He’s strong. Incomprehensibly strong. He can weather any storm, shift the tides of any battle in his favor. Has this gone to his head? Absolutely. He can handle ‘too much.’ It’s ‘not enough’ that’s proving to be an issue.

This is why he’s detailing his recent woes to an uninterested Ieri Shoko, who made the mistake of reading in the dormitory’s common area.

The scene is as follows:

Satoru’s along the length of the couch, his long, lanky limbs dangling wherever they can. He lays his head against the armrest, snowy hair succumbing to gravity in an avalanche that frames his face. He uses his ability to keep his sunglasses from meeting the same fate. Behind the dark frames, his eyes narrow into a piercing stare. If the ceiling were sentient, it would’ve fled by now. Such is the potency of his miserable mood.

Parallel to him sits Shoko, the fat of her cheek squished upward from resting on her fist for so long. Books, candy wrappers, and notes from last year’s curriculum yet to be thrown away litter the table’s surface. Suguru’s could put a calligraphist to shame, even if they were written in a Badtz-Maru pencil you won from a gachapon. Your notes stand out as well. They’re bright shades of your favorite colors, organized according to a system of your own devising. Occasionally, the handwriting shifts, taking on Suguru or Shoko’s likeness for trickier kanji. You doodle hearts of gratitude around the yomigana they include for good measure.

(You complained that his handwriting was ‘indecipherable’ when he tried doing the same. Out of spite, he gave you the cold shoulder… for three minutes. He withers and wilts without your attention).

He sighs and concludes his monologue.

“So, that just about sums everything up. Well? What’s the prognosis, Doc?”

“You’re in desperate need of more friends,” Shoko replies. Satoru lets out an unsatisfied grunt. “And you miss [First].”

Satoru perks up at your mention, finally giving that poor ceiling a much-needed reprieve. He shuffles around until he’s facing Shoko.

“But she just headed out yesterday.”

“I know.”

“That’d make me really weird and clingy, right?”

“Glad you’re catching on.”

While Satoru contemplates the previously unconsidered possibility of him being ‘really weird and clingy,’ Shoko reopens her manga. She’s of the mistaken belief that the issue has resolved itself. Unfortunately for her, the problem extends beyond Satoru’s insatiable hunger for you. The problem is Satoru himself. Until he’s running amuck elsewhere, there’ll be no solace.

She commends herself for her patience.

In typical Satoru fashion, he continues testing it.

“When was the last time you updated your passport?”

“I’m not flying to her home country with you,” Shoko shuts down what he thought was a brilliant plan. “It’s just two weeks. Wait it out.”

“What if we fly first class?”

“Gojo.”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s still too soon to meet her parents. It’s gotta happen eventually though, right?”

Shoko doesn’t dignify this with a response.

Satoru sinks into the cushions. Could there be anything worse than boredom? He has no missions lined up, you and Suguru are visiting family, and the first-years haven’t arrived yet. Pestering Utahime has lost its charm too. He could return home before the school year starts, but he’d rather have his fingers chopped off one by one than suffer that torture.

“Hey, Shoko.”

“Mm.”

“Why aren’t you back home? I thought you got along with your parents.”

“They’re both busy. I wouldn’t see them much.”

Satoru doesn’t press the matter.

It does intrigue him though — the relationship sorcerers have with their non-sorcerer families. Or, to be more specific, yours and Suguru’s familial dynamics intrigue him. Satoru can’t (and doesn’t bother trying) to care for the going-ons of anyone outside his small circle. This is more the hubris of a teenager who has been told he’s special his entire life than anything malicious. To Satoru, the world’s population might as well be stuck at three.

Regardless, it’s an improvement.

Before meeting Suguru, those in his life consisted almost exclusively of suckups or stuckups. If he was unlucky, it’d be both, rolled into one terrible package. This was his reality. Jujutsu was his reality. He was the first to possess the Limitless and the Six Eyes in generations. The Gojo clan wouldn’t waste such an extraordinary opportunity. He was their pride and joy, personality aside.

He was born to be the strongest.

He can’t imagine any other life for himself.

Then there’s you.

He could see you leading a normal life. You wouldn’t be top of the class or a varsity athlete, but you’d be well-liked. Boys would nervously ask you out on dates and buy you roses with money they got from mowing lawns. You’d be the first one your friends would call when they experienced heartache. Maybe you’d go to college or land an entry-level job. Some co-worker with a decent sense of humor would win you over. Then you’d get married, rent a property, have a few kids…

Satoru’s stomach twists. He grimaces, shifting his thoughts elsewhere. Namely, the question that’s bothered him for a while.

Why did you become a jujutsu sorcerer?

It was intentional. You chose to leave behind your home, your family. You knew the risks. How the body can break and ache in ways previously unrecorded. And what do you get in return for this thankless crusade? Sleepless nights where you tremble like a leaf beside Shoko? A nimbleness at dressing wounds that could only have come from years of practice?

You’re open about everything until you aren’t. Fear, mortality, loss — when confronted by these unsightly truths, you retreat to someplace he can’t follow.

Satoru can’t make sense of it. Neither can Suguru. Shoko says they shouldn’t press the matter. He wants to, though. He needs to know how you break. How else can he ensure that you never will?

He thinks back to that humid August day. The binding vow eviscerated your insides, shards from fractured bones dug into your organs. Until that point in his life, Satoru prided himself on his immunity to fear. The pathogen never lasted long in his system. After all, fear is born from a lack of control. From having something to lose. If he couldn’t lose, what was there to be afraid of?

It’s a question he’s been avoiding.

(“If she dies,” he told Suguru, in a voice he barely recognized as his own, “They die too.”)

His mouth feels dry, his tongue heavy. He’ll drink that tea you’re fond of later to satiate his thirst. He wonders if you share its taste.

“What’re you reading, anyway?” he asks, hoping to take his mind elsewhere.

“Fruits Basket.”

He laughs, incredulous.

“Seriously? Didn’t take you for a shoujo type.”

“I borrowed it from [First]. We’re doing a book exchange over break.”

A book exchange… three words Satoru never thought would pique his curiosity. However, anything about you demands his undying attention. Even if it’s shoujo manga. Girls who read that genre do it to project onto the heroine, right? So the love interest must have appealed to you. What tropes do you like? Do you want a shy, sensitive soul who blushes and stutters in your presence? A misunderstood bad boy who’s only soft around you? The responsible student council president?

Oh, he’ll have so much material to tease you with when you return. He can’t wait.

“How do I enter this exclusive book club?” Satoru demands.

“You don’t. I don’t trust your taste,” Shoko replies, much to his chagrin. “You can still read it, though. She has all of the volumes in her room.”

… Your room?

He grins from ear to ear.

Should he respect your privacy? Probably. Is he going to? Of course not. He never has, there’s no point in starting now.

This trip of yours might yet redeem itself.

Along the outskirts of Jujutsu High, Geto Suguru spots an odd woman.

She’s wearing a baggy graphic tee, low-rise jeans, and gaudy bracelets on both arms. Her black hair is tossed up, thick strands sticking in every direction. Even from this distance, he can discern the silver glint of piercings that dot her ear like constellations. The stranger stands slouched, both her hands shoved into her pockets. For her to have gotten this far, she can’t be a civilian. Those unfamiliar with jujutsu can’t find this place.

He stays still for a spell — watching and waiting. From this distance, she shouldn’t be able to sense his presence. It’s one of the few areas he excels at over Satoru. Satoru’s cursed energy is bright, blindingly so, a thunderous clap that can be heard for miles. Suguru prefers to keep his muted. It coils around his limbs like a serpent, never straying far. This is why you had no difficulty picking out Satoru’s stupefying presence on your first day, whereas he had to make himself known to you.

Suguru’s lips quirk up.

He was fated to meet you.

“Hey! Kiddo!” A deep, somewhat raspy voice exclaims. He blinks rapidly, temporarily thrown off. “This ain’t an art gallery. What’s with the staring?”

She noticed him? How?

When the stranger starts slinking his way, he regains his composure.

“I apologize. It wasn’t my intention to make you uncomfortable,” Suguru’s cadence flows smoother than a river.

“Hah! ‘Uncomfortable?’ That’s a way of putting it,” she pokes the space beneath her emerald eyes twice. “Even now, I can feel ya picking me apart. Shit’s creepy.”

His smile tightens. “I’ll be more mindful of my conduct in the future, then.”

She waves him off. Her golden bracelets clink together as she does so, the sound grating his ears.

“That’s a lie if I ever heard one. And I should know. Schemers excel at picking out their brothers in arms,” she juts her head up, giving the impression that she’s the one looking down on him, despite the slight height difference.

“Anyhow, by the looks of it, you must be Sugu-kun.”

… Did she just call him Sugu-kun?

“What? Too soon* to be calling you that? Heh, heh…”

Suguru’s smile tightens. “You can refer to me however you like, so long as I can return the favor.”

She guffaws.

“Maaan, Goldie sure was gracious in her description of you,” the woman gives him a lopsided grin. “Name’s Akane. There — is the playing field leveled now?”

“Ishimoto Akane?”

He doesn’t miss the way she winces as her surname is spoken aloud, rather pointedly at that.

“Ah. S’pose I had that coming.”

Suguru decides against prolonging her torment. He’s in a generous mood, it isn’t every day he has a chance to learn more about you. This is an opportunity he’ll take full advantage of.

“And I presume 'Goldie' is [First]?”

He makes a mental note to figure out the wordplay for your nickname later.

“Full marks.”

Suguru hums, a sound indicating that he’s drifting deep into thought.

You don’t mention your mentor often. When you do, it’s normally in the form of endearing (if not mildly concerning) anecdotes.

“She told me that natto is bits of caramel held together by melted marshmallows, like a Rice Krispy Treat. It… it was not like a Rice Krispy Treat…”

“... For my twelfth birthday, she got me Pokemon Ruby. I remember crying because Roxeanne’s Nosepass took out my Torchic. My cursed energy spiked and the party had to end early…”

“... Out of curiosity, I drank her stash of Georgia canned coffee. My heart rate was almost high enough to warrant a trip to the ER…”

Getting anything else relating to her out of you was like trying to wring water from a rock. Suguru didn’t miss the wistful melancholy underpinning your stories. You recalled them with a far-off expression as if mourning that those days of whimsy were over. Initially, he considered it a consequence of growing up. Childhood idols rarely remain highly esteemed as the years pass and maturity accrues.

His intuition argued that he should examine the issue closer.

(“I met her, y’know,” Satoru mentioned whilst he spun in a rolling chair ‘commandeered’ from Yaga. “Akane. Our girl’s mentor. Former mentor? Whatever the case is.”

Suguru sat his pencil aside, any investment in his studies gone.

“When?”

“Last March.”

Suguru sighed. “And you didn’t bring this up earlier because…?”

There’s a twinkle in his companion’s sunglasses-covered eyes.

“Must’ve slipped my mind,” Satoru shrugged.

Liar, Suguru thought, unamused by Satoru’s faux nonchalance. He must’ve had his reasons for neglecting to mention it for so long. Suguru figured your impending trip home had something to do with Satoru’s ‘miraculously’ cured amnesia.

“What? Don’t tell me you aren’t curious.”

The provocation failed to irk him. Instead, Suguru refocused the conversation.“Tell me your impression of her.”

Satoru stilled, threw his feet atop Suguru’s desk, and placed his hands on his neck. “About what you’d expect from a disgraced daughter of an influential clan. Bad-tempered, tattooed, pierced up… hah! Bet her old man would go into cardiac arrest if he saw her.”

“Satoru,” he implored.

“Fine, fine. So impatient,” The white-haired sorcerer complained. “I misread her. She got all mopey after she fessed up about Cursed Technique: Null. I wrote it off as envy. The student exceeding the master, or whatever.”

Satoru remained silent for a moment. “Post Kaizu, though, I assume the feeling actually gnawing at her… ”

Kaizu.

Panicked phone calls. Satoru’s agitated exclamations. His horrified silence. Your breathing faded, theirs accelerated. You looked so small. So human. He scarcely believed the limp girl cradled in his arms just executed such a devastating maneuver. Your cursed energy had exceeded any output he’d felt from you before. It was too much, your body wasn’t ready to endure a spike like that.

Suguru had never felt so distant from the title ‘strongest.’

At some point later on, in a hospital waiting room, Suguru posed a question.

Satoru heard him yet offered no response.

“Who taught her how to do that?”

“... was guilt.”)

“You didn’t visit her.”

Akane blinks.

“Hah?”

“You didn’t visit her,” Suguru repeats, his tone firmer. “[First]. Your student.”

She exhales shakily. Suguru thinks she looks tired.

“If you have something to say, just come out with it already.”

He was prepared to wear her down for hours — this willing cooperation saves him time. Although, it doesn’t make navigating the volatile minefield that lies ahead any easier. He knows how to rein Satoru in when he’s going too far. He can fluster you without giving too much of himself away. After rescuing someone from a curse, he knows the exact pitch, timbre, and tempo necessary to pierce through their abject horror. He’s a virtuoso at playing people, a conductor hidden amidst the audience.

Deceit. Misdirection. Coercion.

His repertoire is expansive and ever-growing.

From what he can see — what he can feel — the prodigal daughter before him boasts a similar discography. She returns his unflinching eye contact as if issuing a challenge. Daring him to use dubious methods that might work on anyone else. This obstinate resolve reminds him of you. Once you’ve determined your course, even he struggles to change the route.

He abandons all pretense.

“You didn’t want her here,” he theorizes. Akane’s face reveals nothing. “You knew something like that was bound to happen.”

Sorcerers aren’t only at war with curses. No, there’s an inner battle that must be fought as well. The recognition that the next assignment could be your last. And if it is, you won’t be commemorated by the masses; to them, you don’t exist. Your sacrifice will be known to a select few who mourn you, or a few who don’t. Everything could go right. Everything could go wrong. Engaging in that high risk for such a low reward goes against one’s self-preservation instincts.

How each sorcerer handles this fight is unique to them.

As for your strategy — you refuse to acknowledge this conflict exists.

Paradoxically enough, that functions as your self-preservation.

Akane smiles thinly. She’s almost his reflection, in that regard.

“Full marks.”

Suguru idly observes as Satoru paces back and forth, his troubled figure illuminated by a row of vending machines.

A nearby street lamp flickers. It’s late, but the local convenience stores glow with artificial light, tempting customers to come inside. Some are weary salarymen grabbing ready-made meals, others are middle schoolers clinking their change together, praying they can afford a sugary treat. The latest group cheers, indicating their triumph.

The duo receives odd looks — thanks to their school uniforms, no doubt — not that they pay the judgment any mind. No one troubles them. Not even a wandering policeman, who, under normal circumstances, would scold minors out by themselves at night.

Suguru theorizes that Satoru’s ominous aura is what subconsciously repels them.

Earlier today, Suguru bid farewell to his parents and boarded a train for Tokyo. As nice as it was to spend time with his family, he’d been looking forward to reuniting with you and Satoru. He amassed quite the phone bill thanks to your frequent correspondence. Nonetheless, he carried the minor debt with pride; it’s a sign you often thought about him. He planned for Satoru to assume the debt by dangling the pictures you sent his way as ransom.

His encounter with Ishimoto Akane grounded his soaring mood. This was made worse when he entered the dormitory, only to find a tight-lipped Shoko and agitated Satoru.

Shoko remarked that unlike the two of them, she’d be handling things with ‘tact,’ and retired for the evening, not wanting to catch their ‘stupidity contagion.’

It’d been hours since then. That time stretch brought them closer to revealing the complete picture, but a few pieces remained missing or incomplete.

The frenetic sorcerer stills and rummages around in his pocket.

Suguru takes the opportunity to break the silence. “I—”

He cuts himself off as Satoru whips out a familiar-looking chapstick. The cutesy design befitting your aesthetic stands out like a sore thumb in Satoru’s large, calloused hands.

“... Where did you get that?”

“[First]’s room,” is Satoru’s response, spoken nonchalantly whilst applying it to his lips. “Why?”

Suguru snorts. Sometimes Satoru’s ungodly strength blinds him to the fact that he’s still a teenage boy.

“Won’t she notice it’s missing?”

“I replaced it.”

“Ah.”

“She has plenty more in the drawer beneath her vanity if you want one.”

Suguru knows the exact spot Satoru’s referring to. They both helped you assemble it (Satoru got bored fifteen minutes in and fell asleep on your bed but still claims credit).

After noting this suggestion, he asks, “Have you calmed down?”

Satoru barks out a ‘hah!’ as if he’d just heard a hilarious joke. “Me? Shouldn’t I be askin’ you that?”

Suguru massages his temples, sensing the looming headache that awaits him. “Satoru…”

“We could follow her residuals, you know,” Satoru suggests. He tips his sunglasses down, revealing eyes that gleam with predatory intent. “With the Six Eyes, it’d be a walk in the park.”

“And then what?”

“Oh, you know, chat about the weather, latest political scandals, that sort of thing.”

“You can’t strong-arm yourself through everything in life, Satoru,” Suguru chastises.

Satoru opens and closes his lips. He folds his arms, scrunches his eyebrows together, and rapidly taps his foot. The shift puts Suguru at ease. Satoru adopts this countenance on the rare occurrence he’s faced with a formidable threat. The serious, almost somber visage speaks to his ironclad resolve. Suguru may have told his companion that he can’t strong-arm himself through everything, but that’s a half-truth; the Gojo clan’s pride can do whatever he pleases.

It’s consideration of the aftermath that Suguru wishes to instill in his companion. Tempering the arrogance of a God is no easy feat.

“... She isn’t going anywhere,” Satoru declares, as if any other outcome was blasphemous.

“She isn’t,” Suguru agrees. Then, he lowers his voice, adding, “We can’t disregard what Ishimoto-san is getting at, though.”

“Simple — all our girl needs is a good ol’ fashioned intervention.”

“An ‘intervention,’” Suguru deadpans. “Didn’t you already try that?”

Satoru smiles in a way Suguru can only describe as dopey, reminiscing on the night you got ‘mad at him for wanting you to be mad at him.’ That’s how Suguru interpreted the detailed account Satoru gave the next morning, anyway.

(“I wish she would’ve cried, just a little bit; it would’ve made her look extra cute,” Satoru cooed, to which Suguru shot him an exasperated look. “Oh, don’t act so high and mighty. You’d make her cry just so you could wipe her tears away.”)

Suguru shakes his head. “Here’s what I think — the self-sacrifice in and of itself isn’t the problem. Well, the main problem. There has to be a reason, something personal… identifying that takes priority.”

A gust rips through the narrow street, howling as it terrorizes store signs and doors with weak hinges. The two strongest sorcerers remain oblivious to the drift. What occupies their mind is greater than any force of nature, insignificant or otherwise. They have the means to challenge natural phenomena itself. And they would, should they deem it an obstacle to their goals. This single-minded determination is what elevates them beyond the rest.

“I guess the old man has a soft spot for us after all,” Satoru says, referring to Yaga, Suguru guesses.

Breathlessly, he chuckles. “Maybe.”

Studying Satoru from his peripherals, he silently mulls over the far likelier reality—

—that Yaga understands Satoru’s potential for saving this world is matched only by his capacity to condemn it.

From a young age, Ieri Shoko found irony everywhere she looked.

It’s prevalent in the medical field she wishes to pursue. When stabbed, it’s better to leave the knife in than immediately pull it out. For an immune system to better defend itself from a virus, it must first be exposed to it in trace amounts. If an appendage becomes too infected, removing that piece of the body is better than keeping it whole. It was you who pointed out this theme extends into the world of jujutsu.

“You’d think fighting to survive a curse instead of defeating it would be an okay alternative, right?” You had said. “But really… that just means someone else gets to foot the bill. All ‘cause you cheaped out.”

She regrets not asking you to elaborate. At the time, the observation felt so personal, so intimately interwoven with who you are, that she thought it best to leave it alone.

Watching you now, lounging on the swing beside her, she’s determined not to repeat her previous mistake.

“Tired?”

“Well, yeah,” you laugh. It sounds off. “I wasn’t meant for long flights. It takes everything out of me, y’know?”

Shoko unsuccessfully digs around her pocket for a lighter. The search ceases when she recalls its inopportune location — left behind in her dorm room in the rush to be the one who reaches you first. Not sure what else to do with her hands, she folds them onto her lap. Meanwhile, you pick at a stray thread on your jeans.

“I didn’t mean from traveling,” she clarifies.

“Hm?”

“How many curses did you exorcise back home?”

Your fingers go still.

“I dunno… a few?” You shrug, stuffing your hands in your pockets. “If I happen across them, I’m not gonna just let them run amuck. That’d be irresponsible.”

Your nonchalance comes across as forced. You may be keeping your words lighthearted, but she can tell you’ve dialed up your senses, monitoring her closely. It reminds her of a cornered mouse. It’s then that any lingering doubt over her choices leading up to this moment dispels. Resolve strengthened, she swears to make as much progress as she possible before those two catch on. She felt a bit bad lying about your flight’s time, but felt the situation justified the call.

“It feels different when they’re close to home, doesn’t it?”

Shoko’s eyes scan over the lively park before them. There’s a group of children playing with one another, some scouring the grass for bugs and others playing tag. Their guardians watch from a distance, chatting amongst themselves, likely discussing the upcoming poor weather or latest neighborhood scandals. Young couples walk hand in hand along the pathways, cheeks flushed from the joy of experiencing their first love.

“Encountering a curse is draining. Fighting them, even more so. But when they’re on a street you walk every day, or a few blocks over from your house, you can’t help but start thinking. ‘What if I hadn’t come this way? Would it have hurt people I know? People I love and care about?’”

Her eyes find yours. “‘What if it killed them?’”

You look like you’re going to be sick.

She ignores how your expression contorts her stomach and continues. “Sorcerers are in the minority, it’s true. So… fighting to survive isn’t selfish. It’s strategic.”

In the distance, the rough silhouette of two individuals grows clearer. The spotlight she commandeered grows fainter with their every step. In what remains of the fading limelight, she considers you. The CC cream that conceals the worst of your exhaustion, how your pupils dilate from high caffeine intake, then your fingers. The keys that when steepled just so, open the future for others at the cost of permanently locking yours.

She reaches over and gently squeezes your hand.

“Remember — we won’t be much help to anyone if we’re six feet under. So let’s aim to stay above ground.”

The evening sun sinks into the horizon, demanding acknowledgment in its final moments by dousing all in a fiery hue.

Your uniform absorbs the brunt of this last stand. The dark fabric devours the waning sunlight, heating you from head to toe. It didn’t fully occur to you that you were back when you walked through the torii gates lining the mountainous path. Nor when you unpacked in your dorm, stuffing your passport away until your next break, where it’ll serve you faithfully again.

Instead, it was the simple act of putting your uniform on again that made home seem far, far away.

You’d gotten used to your clothes smelling like your mother’s preferred detergent. It’s a brand you couldn’t find in Japan, sold exclusively in your home country. You wondered what meal your parents were having when you straightened out your collar. If your neighbor ever fixed that rumble their old sedan huffed out as you slipped into your tights. Whether your grandpa knew you’d landed safely when you brushed lint off your skirt.

The campus atmosphere is serene. Tengen’s barrier is a bulwark against curses, insulating you from any potential threats. Without this assurance, some part of you was always on the defensive, anticipating anything when you slept in your childhood bedroom. It siphoned away your vitality, just like Shoko pointed out.

You sniffle and kick a rock aside.

How does it always end up like this?

First Akane, now Shoko, you hug yourself. I just want to protect others. What’s so wrong with that? If I don’t, then who will?

You pause abruptly.

When Akane began mentoring you, the world as you knew it changed. Suddenly, you were given knowledge no one else was privy to, for they lacked the tools to comprehend it. You’d seen those ‘creatures’, but it was Akane that explained their malevolent nature. What they could do, the pain they inflicted, how defenseless the population at large was against them.

The shadow that this monstrous threat cast could never be outshone by light. The best you could do was create safe pockets the size of pins in the darkness. That was the extent of your hope, the most bitter pill you’ve ever swallowed.

The lingering specter of Shoko’s reassuring touch prickles along your hand.

It’s easy to forget you’re not alone anymore after fighting by yourself for so long.

Eventually, you happen upon a clearing near the school’s main grounds.

The steep inclines surround a sizable outdoor track. This area is known colloquially as the school’s training grounds. You prefer to train in a more secluded, wooded area, but not everyone shares your enthusiasm for subtlety. Namely, the two prodigies who have turned the field into a colosseum that’d rival the battles of ancient Rome.

You take a seat on the grassy hill and watch what unfolds.

Your eyes can scarcely follow the blows Suguru and Satoru exchange. Their sparring sessions are unreal — blurring the very fabric of reality. Somehow, they manage all this without using cursed energy. The spectacle you’re witnessing is simply hand-to-hand combat. It’s like watching a film with skipping frames. In a matter of seconds, they can travel a hundred meters and return to their original position. Your brain struggles to process the stimuli your senses are feeding it.

They were already strong when you met them. But now? The nomenclature doesn’t exist to properly classify them.

And in the future…

There’s no telling what highs they’ll reach or the ceilings they’ll shatter.

Their light is the most dazzling you’ve ever seen.

Within a few minutes, they conclude their training session. Satoru instantly beelines toward you, whereas Suguru cycles through stretches. There’s not even a single drop of sweat on Satoru’s body as he plops to your right. He’s wearing his signature sunglasses, despite the night's looming shadow.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep or something?” Satoru asks. “It’s past your bedtime.”

You punch him lightly on the shoulder. He yelps out an exaggerated ‘ouch!’ rubbing the area to soothe the nonexistent wound.

Suguru approaches at a far more leisurely pace, sending a wave that you return in kind.

Satoru, not one to be forgotten, yells out, “Be careful, Suguru! She’s violent!”

“Only against those who deserve it,” Suguru replies.

Fondness blossoms inside your chest as you laugh. You’d forgotten how simple life feels around them. It’s as if when the three of you are together, you’re swallowed by a pocket dimension, isolated from everyone and everything. Permanently inhabiting this utopia is a temptation.

Satoru places his hands behind his head and lays onto the ground. “Here I am, potentially out of commission forever, without a single ounce of sympathy to show for it.”

“We could always settle in court,” you offer.

Suguru stands before you, hands on his hips. “Or he could finally figure out how to use reverse cursed technique.”

At this, Satoru shoots back up, his sunglasses falling askew. “Hah? Last I recall, you gave yourself a headache giving it a go. At least I’m not that bad.”

“Hurdles are necessary to improve. Without any, how do you know you’re truly making progress?”

Satoru gives him a grossed-out look. “All this philosophizing is gonna turn your hair gray before you hit twenty.”

“That’s rich, coming from the guy whose hair is already white,” You point out. “What’s that say about you?”

Suguru muffles his laughter behind his hand.

Satoru’s quick to overcome his incredulity. “It says that I’m going to spoil the next volume of Inuyasha. Sesshomaru—”

You cover your ears and sprint off. “Can’t hear you, can’t hear you, can’t hear you…!”

He chases after you, periodically shouting the names of the main characters right when you think he’s finished. You do your best to block out his voice, running like your life depends on it. He’s hot on your heels, cackling at your expense. After a stretch of silence, you uncover your ears, hesitantly turning around to check if he’s finished his torture.

You meet Satoru’s gaze. His lips are parted, his eyebrows slightly raised. Your reflection in his dark lenses appears equally perplexed. He straightens his sunglasses and regards you with an unreadable expression.

“... You’ve gotten faster.”

The comment is so quiet, you’re unsure if you heard him correctly.

“Hm?”

“Nothing,” he dismisses, waving you off. “You shoujo-loving types sure take this stuff seriously. It’s almost cultish.”

“I don’t wanna hear that from the guy who references Digimon like it’s some sorta scripture!”

“Honda Tohru is a lame heroine.”

You audibly gasp. “Wh— you take that back!”

And so it’s your turn to chase Satoru, who, for reasons unknown, is oddly knowledgeable regarding Fruits Basket.

“Could you guys be honest with me about something?”

“All depends.”

“Of course.”

Satoru and Suguru’s responses come out simultaneously, the contents offering little reassurance. You’re not sure what you expected. Nonetheless, you press past the gnawing discomfort, your conversation with Shoko a fresh memory.

“Did Akane stop by while I was gone?”

You scrutinize their countenances for involuntary reactions that might betray their inner thoughts. You begin with Satoru, who was in the middle of cleaning his sunglasses when you posed the question. His eyes, which normally brim with mischief, have an eerie calmness about them; like sheets of ice that were once choppy waters. He smiles softly and slips his lenses back into place, undoubtedly aware of the intent behind your stare.

Then there’s Suguru. He hums, as if finding your inquiry unexpected and not an inevitable point of contention. He’s a more challenging puzzle to decipher than Satoru. With the latter, you can roughly gauge the greater picture, blurry and incomplete as it may be. Suguru, on the other hand, hasn’t given you enough pieces to attempt a solution.

Satoru continues mulling over your question while Suguru responds, “Is that what’s been worrying you lately?”

So they picked up on it too, you think.

Frowning, you shift in your seat. Blades of grass tickle your thighs and you push your skirt down.

“Er… not that, specifically,” you admit. You feel like you’re surrounded by walls that know just how far to close in to give the impression you might be crushed. “I just… I’ve been thinking. About why I’m here— what I’ll go on to do. And, well…”

Much to their surprise, you stand, squeeze your eyes shut, and bow ninety degrees.

“For so long, I’ve carried this burden. The truth is, when I first learned about Null, I was relieved. I’d always have something to rely on in the worst-case scenario. But at the same time… that meant not using it could also be a mistake. You have no idea how much that scared me.”

You curl your hands up into fists. “I don’t want to think that way anymore. I see it now — have for a while, actually — strength I couldn’t even imagine before. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is… I’m in your care. If it’s alright, I want to rely on others, starting with you two.”

Your heart pounds wildly in the silence that follows.

Maybe this is selfish too, you think. But I don’t want to be alone anymore.

You hear Suguru speak your name. It isn’t until he repeats it, his tone kind yet firm, that you straighten yourself and face him.

Satoru stands further back, scratching his neck. Much to your confusion, a red flush has risen to his cheeks, extending up to his ears. Suguru corrects your staring by taking your face in his hands and redirecting your attention to him. Warmth envelops you. Your faces are inches apart, but somehow, the distance feels nonexistent, like he’s peering into your mind unhindered.

“Surely, you can dream bigger than that,” Suguru chastises.

“... Eh?”

“Do you think so little of us?” Satoru grumbles. It almost sounds like he’s pouting. Was he not listening to anything you just said? The sincerity behind your every word? Why are they both acting like you insulted them?

“Eh?!”

“I’m glad you’ve come to this realization, but… you don’t have to rely on anyone else. Just us,” Suguru takes a step back, though he keeps one hand cupping your cheek. You feel lightheaded. “After all…”

“... We’re the strongest.”

notes:

*this pun actually works decently in english ?? but akane is making a reference to how suguru sounds phonetically similar to すぐ, or sugu, which means 'soon.'

#gojo x reader #gojo satoru x reader #satoru x reader #geto suguru x reader #geto x reader #suguru x reader #jujutsu kaisen #reader insert #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jjk x reader #golden girl #my stuff

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falsegodcore · 1 month ago

Text

IT GETS SO LONELY HERE; viktor x gn!reader, spiritual sequel to cutlery, domestic clingy yearner viktor, brief references to real scientists and artists, simple and sappy as usual. set before canon events and possibly non canon compliant but includes s2 spoilers. cw for internalised ableism in one paragraph. 5.8k words + crossposted on ao3 🙂‍↕️

small note to understand a three line exchange: while talking about quantum probabilities (in short, the concept that different outcomes of a quantum system can coexist until the system itself is observed or measured), einstein once said “god does not play dice with the universe” to voice his refusal of the theory. bohr replied to this with “einstein, stop telling god what to do” lol. written while listening to this on loop if you are curious

There is a short line that bends on the glass of the window he presses against when he waits for you. Sometimes his fingers trace it absently and he wonders how it even got there. You once guessed a past tenant dragged the metal tip of their bow compass on the surface – to jest, to get revenge on the Academy because of some strict professor, just to vandalise because they would get away with it. “Maybe leave a mark”, you had added. Viktor remembers not getting the appeal of leaving a small scratch on an old window for the sake of leaving a mark. When you had asked what he would call a meaningful mark, then, Viktor thought of the matching burn scars you both carry on the back of your left hands, the result of a careless experiment he carried late at night and that you had tried to stop, more lucid than he was, only to get hurt in the end. At least he knows his name is mentioned whenever people inquire about the taut skin. Viktor always hopes someone will ask you about him, because being teased by shared classmates isn’t enough.

Sometimes he has to stop himself from dwelling in such thoughts. Viktor fears Piltover has made him greedy. Maybe he can’t remember the hunger of Zaun.

(It’s easier to blame the city than you.)

It’s wrong to say he presses against the window, Viktor thinks; he presses in a safe corner between a pillar that looks ridiculous in the minimalist architecture of your shared room and the window. The windowsill he sits on is warm, warm only because they fucked up the water pipes’ placing when constructing the building and your downstairs neighbor had a habit of taking long showers that left the spot warm as if soaked with sunlight. Why a water pipe passes right under a window, the two of you don’t know.

Curling into the window gives Viktor a view of the Academy district in between his reflection, even if he tries to avoid his constant disheveled state – although Viktor always argues he has started to take more care of his appearance, suspiciously ever since you were introduced to him, years ago. But you have always looked at him more when his hair was a mess. He used to struggle to find the courage to duck his head and ask you to fix it for him with a playful tone – as playful as the nervous edge of the voice of a boy with a crush could be, anyways.

You never fixed much. Maybe moved some strands to the right side, twirl a few because ‘Your curls are cute,’ even if you both knew and know they’re not proper curls and just a result of his fidgety hands, never content unless they’re doing something. They’d be at peace around yours, Viktor thought.

And still does – he thinks too much and doesn’t act enough, or at least not as much as he’d like. Doesn’t even bother to look like he isn’t having a crisis when he is thinking and you've told him more than once he’s very expressive, and you like him for it. ‘I don’t have to second guess’, you had said, even if it sounded more like a confession; as if you wanted to say you were tired of second guessing, and maybe that was why you seemed to hesitate when some people talked at you – not to you. Viktor is observant and can tell the difference.

You don’t have to be observant to notice his clenched jaw or furrowed eyebrows or stares when he thinks or wants you. Viktor wishes he could be more subtle, but it’s hard to care when you offer palms and fingers without question, when you let him kiss the healing wound you carry because of him. Hard to keep himself from vomiting his heart out and offering it in exchange for a kiss.

(He begs beautifully for them. Viktor’s lips part with need and his head tilts towards yours and he hooks his cane on his forearm to tug you closer with both hands, close enough you can see his pupils dilate. You never make him plead, ‘You’re worth more than that,’ you tell him, and then tell yourself you shouldn’t soothe a man so much, even if Viktor’s sighs when you kiss his jaw are worth more of a million ‘please’s.)

Viktor is very selfish and hates the one class you don’t share with him with a burning passion, making faces when it takes you away from him. You’re well aware it’s just an act: he actually doesn’t. If anything, your lover likes having an excuse to hear your voice and feel your enthusiasm – ‘feel’ because your hands are as fidgety as his and they play with his fingers or sleeve or hair when you ramble. Viktor likes it when he asks what you’ve done in class and you curl around him to exchange secrets about Physics.

What Viktor hates is waiting. The way his heart bends in desperate anticipation and how breathing almost hurts, even if he knows seeing you emerge from that door, looking for him and only him, will be bliss itself. Air will be knocked out of his lungs at the notes of a jingling and impatient motif – present in the slip of keys in a pocket or bag before leaving each other and the struggle against the weary lock of your weary room when coming back home. Only the sight of your face or any sound from your throat will fill them back with oxygen, and Viktor has learnt to act as if he wasn’t waiting at all. Even if you’ve never given him a reason to be ashamed of needing your presence.

A couple runs after each other below his attentive gaze and the three floors of your building. They crash and curl into each other and shake with either laughter or despair, he can’t make it out. If it’s a giggling fit, Viktor wishes they’d be you and him. You never let him go easily when his stomach aches with snickering muscles. Fingers curl around his jaw to catch the expression, because Viktor doesn’t frequently laugh with his voice and you can relish only in it, in the way his nose scrunches and his eyebrows furrow when he can’t stop what he calls a ridiculous expression. His hands try to hide his face and then paw at yours when you don’t let him. When you’re the one caught in helpless giggling, Viktor presses against you, rubs the tip of his nose against the fullness of your cheek and indulges in the sound or tremble of your body. He has realized holding you while his fingers cause that same reaction is oddly relaxing.

You scold he’s mean. He hums you should stop being so lenient, then. Takes it back when you’re vengeful enough to make him curl in a ball of whines and kicking limbs. Nothing ever gets him to beg as much.

The couple breaks their embrace and one rubs at their face – it was despair, Viktor hums. Soothing, then considers. He’s no stranger to crying in the safety of your collarbones and then trying to rub the traces away, as if that could prevent the swelling of his eyes. Fingers wrap around his and chide softly that he will only make it worse, even if they do the same against glossy eyes, trying to hide the tears before his lips can drink them away. Viktor drags his knees up to his chest because the thought of you crying makes him nauseous, in a different way than the longing does. Helpless and futile, holding what he worships while it falls apart.

(Viktor thinks of Rio’s absent gaze as he clinged to her as a child, when his safety net weren’t your arms but a cave and a disgraced professor and a muted waverider. Of feeling helpless again, and not helping anyone at all. The way you sometimes don’t let him close when you’re hurt doesn’t help. Never helps, and Viktor retches with the selfish desire of licking each of your wounds anyways, of keeping you away from anything that might make you cry, of forcing his care on you if it meant you’d be safe. It’s so selfish he hates himself, and avoids you until the terror of becoming that same professor is gone and replaced with rationality.)

You love to compare him to a cat whenever he’s curled against the window on your return. Viktor squints at you in faux offence because he knows the grumpy act always steals an endeared smile, a melted heart and the promise of a kiss the second your hands are free. Usually between his eyebrows, while his hands wrap around your hips and keep you there, in front of him, where he can see you. There is something special in pressing his face against your stomach instead of saying ‘I missed you. You’re back to me, I was growing impatient. I’m glad you’re back. Don’t leave again, please, don’t leave me again.’ Words he doesn’t want to bother in a mumble, lest he has to admit he truly is greedy.

Most dorm rooms are meant for one person, two if the Academy is being extra generous – Viktor recalls desperate laments about your roommate before they dropped out and before he found the courage to mention living together for the following semester. And the one after that. Part of him misses the large, single room he had, a courtesy from being Heimerdinger’s assistant. Viktor had asked him if it would’ve been okay to simply add another bed. Heimerdinger didn’t have to ask why. And even if he had been surprisingly eager to play matchmaker and be an ear for Viktor’s romantic struggles, the Yordle had said no. Couldn’t help but question if the two of you would be able to focus on studies while living together, but supported his pupil all the same. Viktor likes your small room. His eyes leave the couple (busy in another hug) to blink at two beds pressed together. They take most of what should be his half of the room. The rest is a garden of soldering wires stolen from laboratories, textbooks with notes scribbled in the margins, unidentifiable mechanical parts and the actual flowers Viktor tries to grow before succumbing to deadlines and finals and accidentally killing them. Your only concern with the plants is naming them lest he accuses you of murder.

The motif of jingling keys reaches his ears and his heart and it leaps somewhere around his chest, maybe tries to burst out of it; he’s foolishly glad his ribs keep it in place. Bleeding out on old tiles isn’t what he’d like as his demise or your ‘Welcome home’ sight.

Viktor makes himself smaller in his corner when you finally swing the door open, forcefully, and gripping the doorknob. Your eyes move to the bed first, because you had left him curled on his mattress with a midterm induced headache. The windowsill is the second spot they check, and Viktor pretends not to be staring at you through the reflection on the glass.

You’ve always been one for entrances that bordered on silly, which is something he adores. You carry conversations he can’t anticipate with your presence. A moment, and then “The door is swollen,” is your own ‘I’m home’. You push it closed more fiercely than usually needed, full of shoulder-shove. Still leaning on the faulty wood, the tip of your left shoe pushes against the back of the other to get rid of it. Cold tiles meet your foot and you can’t help a small wince as you repeat the gesture and change in your slippers.

“Probably because of humidity and all. Do you think it might be growing mold inside?”

“Hopefully not. My lungs can’t take it.”

“Sometimes I’m glad you got pneumonia two years ago. At least that got you to stop smoking. And get them checked.”

Sudden guilt pools in Viktor’s stomach. You don’t have to know he almost fell in the old habit one weekend you were away, he has told himself. He’s aware you hate secrecy – but shame clogs his throat. His brain conjures images of the cigarette packet that laid on his desk for hours, upright and menacing, before being unceremoniously pushed out the same window he is staring at you through. Viktor still hopes it didn’t hit anyone.

Too tired to catch the averted gaze of an awful liar, you’re certain he is still sulking about his exam and the two hours you were away. Two bags are dumped on the cluttered table you never eat on as you approach your cat’s hiding spot. Viktor watches as you do: hands innocently behind your back and uniform creased, you’re the picture of an angel, to him. Viktor presses his back against the wall with a quiet, wishful sigh, like a poet looking out the valley of the world. His eyes dump you for the orange sky when you lean to him, bending slightly.

“Have you been awake long?” One of your hands presses against the ridiculous pillar, the other tries to cradle his cheek. Your fingers hesitate and start to retreat, in case he’s still upset and needs space and because you haven’t washed your hands yet. Viktor blinks, like he does when he needs to snap himself out of something, and pushes his face against your palm before it can get too far.

“Not long, no,” His voice trembles with another lie as he presses his nose in your skin and searches for a familiar scent, but ink lingers on your hands and so does the clammy smell of university lecture halls. Your thumb drags a line down his nose and he sighs again. “You took longer than usual.”

It’s an innocent way to lament your absence without sounding bothered, even if Viktor is, very much so. The same teeth he tries to hide when overwhelmed by smiles nip gently at your palm, at the base of a phalanx. It pricks just enough for you to like it.

“I stopped by the bakery, love. You know Thursday nights are a rite of forgiveness.”

He blinks again and his hazel eyes stare into yours. Viktor thinks too much, doesn’t speak enough and is the most expressive person you’ve ever met. You’ve grown used to the absent gazes, clinging arms and faint pouts that visit your lover on Thursday – and you welcome them as long as the cause is innocent and not a mask for sorrow. Before you leave, since Viktor anticipates the longing, and after you’ve come back to his arms. Even if he’s the one to crawl in yours more often than not. Being held is soothing. Pinning you down with his weight is grounding. Eating cake before dinner is exciting.

“Mhm. Bribery?”

“Not really, just part of the rite. I’ve missed you.”

His angel speaks in effortless love confessions and the lump in his chest is lifted for a moment. Then comes back when you remove your hand from his face. The first frown of the evening makes its appearance but you kiss it away. Promise you’ll be back in a second and kiss him again somewhere on his face when he hums plainly, keep kissing until he’s unable not to smile through faux annoyance as he’s pushing you towards the bathroom with an unspoken hurry up and a pat to your ass.

Viktor dumps the windowsill for the two beds pressed into one instead of peeking at the pastry hiding in the bag or stealing a bite just to be annoying. His stomach presses against the mattress and fortune favors him: his nose finds itself in a crease of your pillow, and the scent of your skin fills his lungs as he breathes it in. The hand carrying your shared burn scar flexes against the fabric. Sometimes Viktor wonders if your scent is genetically programmed to heal the damage left behind the air of the Fissures and tries to delay wash day by a few nights, only to be completely engulfed in it as you sleep, dream, huff, moan in his arms and the very sheets that carry your sweat.

(It’s a foolish fantasy. He’ll start coughing up blood in ten years and pass out during the one all-nighter you’ll be too tired to join. He won’t get to put a ring around your finger. You won’t get to say goodbye before your lover disappears in a purple husk.)

A knee dips in the bed. Fingertips lift his shirt, dragging along his spine, tracing a shoulder blade. What remains of angel wings, as some obnoxious theorists like to put it. One peeks just slightly because of faulty anatomy – but an innocent case. “Bodies can be weird,” You once told him while tracing his back as you always do: softly, like feathers, worshipping him while he was face down and bothered by something that he forces to be unspeakable, all strong feelings he tries to rationalise to avoid a heart attack and scaring you to death. Casual words always work like a spell when he is tormented with thoughts. Questions would kill him. Thus, you simply spoke. “I can pop one of my toes for a full minute. Could have, since I was little. It’s just a little quirk, like this.”

You had pecked the soft spot where bone melted into muscle. Viktor tilted his head up, skeptical of your confession, then counted fifteen pops and struggled to remember why he had been upset in the first place.

Your thumb moves along an imaginary line towards his ribs and four other fingers press into them absently. A squeeze is always the beginning of a hug. The hum Viktor breathes against your pillowcase is both sleepy and needy: wordless requests for affection, for your hands or lips to keep moving against him. In the aftermath of a night of tipsy limbs too tired for sex, Viktor once muttered he’d rather you manhandled him if it meant he would be touched, but took it back when morning came. You simply read it as an exaggerated confession of enjoying your affection and avoided bringing it up lest he avoided you.

Mere obedience isn’t what drives you to give in to his whims; you are not one to please for the sake of it. Devotion simply comes easy with loving Viktor, and being loved by him. Being understanding, rarely pressing, never going out of your way to elicit reactions to soothe your heart – maybe because Viktor is a jealous man by nature and you don’t need to press any buttons. Maybe you are boring or too careful, but it’s not a good look on him, either: the averted eyes and stiff tongue, the isolation. There is nothing pretty in coaxing him out of bad moods and guilt – because Viktor gets mad at himself when gazes you can’t control linger, even when you don’t regard anyone nor anything outside your bubble, outside what ‘matters’.

Viktor knows he matters. He has always mattered, even before you; never did he doubt his worth, even on those days he couldn’t move because of his joints and faulty leg, the same limb he’s learnt not to resent as much through your easy loving of it, of him. You shouldn’t even need to ask me – do you feel you have to? It’s not an issue, never has been. The only reason I say I’d give you my own is because you said you’d like to try running down at the harbour. Or play tag, I think you mentioned it once. But it’s not an issue for me, even if you can’t really believe it. You know you would tell me the same. It’s not even a problem to fix, to me. Ah, sorry, do I sound self-centric…? And Viktor’s tears are cradled in the pool of your collarbones like holy water. When shame and the fierce need of not crying over what he knows isn’t all he is come, you are still there to cling to; no longer for comfort or hiding, and just because a cat’s favorite spot is their human’s warmth. You let him make you sunlight to bask in. Understanding, rarely pressing. What else matters? Your lips press a kiss against the back of his neck as he muses over you.

The books you keep on two stacks on the floor and never recommend to anyone matter. Viktor has read only a few, secretly borrowing copies from a small library; not so you could talk about them together, only to catch glimpses of you in the lines, of the reasons you loved them so much and what they say about the heart his own is eager to fully understand, by himself, with as little help as it can manage. He wants to know you, completely.

Papers with diagrams and flashcards from past exams kept as souvenirs of your efforts (Viktor does the same), next to your favorite academic papers. Gadgets of a small, round, yellow mascotte of a brand he has no interest in, but finds very endearing. Hidden pictures of your family and school years that you let him see when he misses the version of you he has never met and a photo album of the two of you, before and after getting together (It’s thin: Viktor bought a camera only to forget to bring it on most dates). More carefully hidden cutouts of articles about people you no longer talk to. A moth made of a dead, slim bulb light and scrap metals as its wings he put together just to give you a little something out of a nightly whim (He takes a lot of pride in its presence on your shelf). A pitifully welded rose for a platonic Valentine’s day, as if something made by his own hands could even try to be less personal than a bouquet. Viktor realizes he couldn't have been less subtle (There are times you still fear one day he’ll wake up and leave). Jewelry that belonged to your mother and father. Vinyls you can’t play pressed against his own, but at least getting you to talk about the music you adore is much easier than doing the same for your books. Tickets of exhibitions and theater plays you’ve bought for each other. The mole you are currently trying to kiss.

Viktor huffs a chuckle as you nose at his throat, face shoved against the sheets. “Dearest,” He tries, chuckling again, “Love, you’ll suffocate. Wait.” You lean back slightly to let him roll on his back with another fond exhale. Viktor’s fingers reach for your face as you sit properly at his side, one ankle under a knee, back bent forward towards the line of muscle that hosts the dark smudge. The hand that just grazed your jaw traces a line up to the back of your head, tangling in hair. Viktor doesn’t understand your fixations for his moles, but has no reason to stop you. A kiss is a kiss and he wants as many as you can offer.

Your mouth moves down to his collarbone where a smaller mole almost blends in with his pale skin. Viktor laughs when you lick the bone just because. “Oh, quit it,” Viktor kicks you weakly with his knee as if he hasn’t licked weirder spots, “I don’t think God made collarbones for licking, miláčku.”

“You quit the dramatics, mister. And don’t tell God what to do.”

Viktor pauses for a moment before his lips break into a small smile and he speaks through poorly hidden amusement. “Did you just quote Bohr at me?”

Viktor’s fingers tug your hair to make your head tilt back in a gesture that is usually yours. The few brain cells still working after your afternoon lecture go through notes of Bohr, Einstein and Quantum Theory. You can only blink innocently. “No?” Not intentionally, at least.

Your lips approach his face again the moment his mouth opens to speak. The words die in his throat for another gentle huff, the closest you get to giggles from him on most days. “I was about to ask if you were done,” Viktor says as you kiss a faint acne scar on his chin and then start walking the path of his moles, one your lips knows perfectly. His part to blow on your face as you move from the one above his mouth to the mark under his eyes and you make a face at his cheekiness, an expression that gets him to actually chuckle. I missed you. I missed you, I missed you. His mind reels with it at every kiss, eyes closed. One of your fingers brushes the head of his eyebrow before your lips press in the small one that hides between hair.

“When summer comes,” Viktor moves while you speak to press his forehead to yours, secret code for a kiss, “I’ll drag you outside, to sunbathe. So I can kiss all your freckles.”

“Ah, please, don’t. I fear you will never be done.”

“Is that a vague way to say kisses tire you after a while?”

“Terribly wrong, dearest. But I get antsy with the need to reciprocate, you know that.”

Your expression couldn’t soften more. You lean back despite the hands that grip your forearms to try and get you to still. There is a small scar on his right earlobe that you don’t want to neglect – Viktor’s breath hitches under your attention and he covers it up with a weird sound in his throat. He calls your name once and tugs your hair again, firmer, the kind of firm to push you away.

Your assault ends before beginning. “What?” Slender fingers grip your jaw the moment you lean back; knowing Viktor, it’s less for keeping you in place and more to ground himself. His fingers are a sweet trail of affection against your skin; sharp and bony limbs that wrap around something divine, the same divine that he’s convinced knows no mercy. Ethereal, Viktor wants to say. Aren't you the prettiest thing they could ever create?

He has that look on his face. Eyes blown wide as if your head just exploded and his lips pressed in a pensive line. Thursdays mean silence, on most weeks. You don’t fully understand what happens every time you are away nor coax him to speak, but Viktor knows the clock is ticking. There are only so many things that are special when unspoken once romanticism wears off and he’s aware you won’t beg. The thought makes him huff, groan, let go of your face and rub his. You watch his tantrum with patience and a raised eyebrow. “What?” You ask again.

Viktor presses the heels of his palms in his eyes. “I’m going insane.”

“You go insane once a week.”

“I know. Could you keep pretending not to notice?”

That gets you to sigh. Loud and long and ending with a downturned smile: a fond, exasperated token of affection and a consequence of long exposure to him. Viktor wonders how he got so lucky. He peeks from under a palm to make sure you really are smiling. The corners lift more at the sweet sight. Viktor has little things like this: moments he looks at you all doe-eyed, even tilts his head as if searching for the right angle. Sits all curved on chairs like a cat trying to fit a much smaller box. He once mistakenly believed you had left without a word while he was in the bathroom – something you happen to do, albeit rarely, if you forget to check the mailbox; or do check it and end up abandoning grocery bags while going through junk letters (you’re always back before he can get himself to worry and apologize with an extra kiss, so it doesn’t matter). Viktor had moved around the apartment, frowning and mumbling to himself, had approached his safe window to maybe catch a glimpse of you down the street, had completely missed you under the table while trying to kill a spider (not catch: spiders do not matter. He is the one usually rescuing them.)

You had simply cleared your throat. He had stilled (resembling a doe again, only one freezing amidst the street), stared at you as if caught red handed and then stood in the middle of the room for a moment before sitting innocently on the edge of the bed, feigning ridiculous disinterest. All of that only to stand up in a second when his brain processed you were under the table.

Viktor sits up, leaning on his elbows with another sigh and a call of your name. “Could we go to bed earlier, tonight?”

“Of course. Are you tired? Naps sometimes make me more sleepy.”

“Ah, like coffee. You are always sleepy.”

“Maybe I am. Are you tired, Vik’?”

“Not exactly. I just want to hold you.”

His lips curl in a small smile when you press a string of endeared kisses down his jaw, a playful mwah, mwah, mwah of cuteness aggression. Viktor’s lips chase yours when you dare lean back and kissing amidst giggling always makes him feel light, like nothing else matters outside your smile. Viktor swallows your laughter until you’re pushing at him to retrieve that goddamn cake.

He follows suit. Arms find their place around your waist, nothing short of puzzle pieces and magnets, of things that return where they belong. His chest presses against your back like a second spine. Sometimes Viktor lets himself go, trusts you with his weight instead of being normal and asking for hugs without risking a domino effect with you face first on the floor. Other times he approaches with the faintests of pouts and hands that slip under coats and jackets to pull you flush into him and then pouts more when you let go – no matter how long you’ve held him. Viktor tells you there is a heaven in proximity. You jab at him for the poetics. He lets you, as long as you don’t hide blushing cheeks and flustered, bitten lips.

“Careful,” You chide with a smile as he squeezes your waist and peeks from behind your shoulder, all smiley eyes and clingy nose that rubs against your cheek thrice in the same innuendo of your three pecks. Throats are weak against laughter. “Viktor, careful!”

Whipped cream stains your side of the bed and Viktor’s chin is dusted with powdered sugar after his first bite. His fork steals the toppings from your slice and his mouth a kiss as if that counts as an apology. The flaky layers carry memories of times you’d buy a pastry on the way to classes and sink your teeth into it on old stairs in a lonely breakfast.

(You would hide. Wait in one of those sacred places no one would find you in, corners and crannies and abandoned benches away from any eyes that would recognize, ask, smile at you with too many teeth and not enough honesty; then take the longer route to your group’s meet-up spot. All to run away somewhere you knew. The brain soothes as much as it hurts.

“You can’t hide there forever,” Viktor had chided gently, in a delicate whisper, when you slipped up in your perfect act. Spoke in that way to let you know he was watching, observing. That you weren’t too hard to decipher under gazes that wanted to. It was scary. Less when you started staring back.)

One of your fingertips smears cream on the tip of his nose in late retaliation. “They’re closing soon, by the way,” You say. “Will move somewhere downtown– awful marketing choice, I know. It will become a music shop. A big one!”

“Unless they ruin the flooring plan in the process,” He knows his tongue can’t touch his nose but a scientist never stops trying; the chocked snicker you hide behind a hand is enough of a satisfying result. “Then we might as well hope they sell vinyl players. I miss working with background music. The radio’s picks are awful.”

“You and your indie rock.”

“You adore it.”

His thumb swipes the cream on his nose and on your lips while you raise both eyebrows. “Why, thank you.” You lick it clean while you speak. “What was that for?”

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

“We agreed on not quoting musicals in bed.”

“It was Newton, actually: you quoted Bohr earlier. It’s only fair, sweetheart.”

Viktor is so endearing it hurts. You bring your last bite to his smiling lips and his eyes soften with a kind of giddiness only sweets and eureka can bring him. Maybe it’s his own way of allowing himself to be playful, or a little childish. Carefree. You don’t ask: some things are better observed lest the magic falls into mundane. Or worse, into embarrassed – not flustered – and averted eyes.

(He is as sweet as he can be cheeky and it makes him precious. Openly treating him as such sometimes makes Viktor question if he’s precious glass rather than a gem and he tends to shrink back in himself – even if he thinks of you as precious, too, through the very same vision. So you treat his gentler moments with care, as he does with yours. Even if Viktor prefers lightening the mood to keep you smiling than risking a comfortable silence to turn sour. He likes the quiet much less than one would assume.)

Plates are moved to the floor and you on your lover’s lap. Viktor holds your face again, tilts it to focus on a cheek and swipes his thumb on the soft skin, pushing it up against your eye. You respond with a downturned smile that fills him with mischief. “Am I being manhandled?”

“Perhaps.” Viktor leans in to kiss below where his finger stretches your skin. It’s not very pleasant. “I missed you,” His chest feels lighter once the confession, the secret, leaves his heart through his throat. Viktor presses another kiss on your cheek before releasing your face, but your hand moves one of his back to your jaw and he can’t help a lovestruck smile. "I missed you terribly, miláčku." You don’t say it back, but your lips press against his and you sigh in his mouth like you finally found peace. Viktor guides your jaw to open further with a simple squeeze to your chin.

There is heaven in proximity and secrets in hums and you are still young enough to pretend affection will save you both. A ridiculous pillar and dead flowers watch over, the stars peek inside your apartment and everything falls into place. Right before his eyelids close in the bliss of another kiss, Viktor thinks two hours of weekly anguish are worth the prize.

#viktor x reader #viktor x you

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reasonsforhope · 2 years ago

Text

Version that doesn't require sign-in.

"Hot Labor Summer just became a scorcher.

[On August 25, 2023], the National Labor Relations Board released its most important ruling in many decades. In a party-line decision in Cemex Construction Materials Pacific, LLC, the Board ruled that when a majority of a company’s employees file union affiliation cards, the employer can either voluntarily recognize their union or, if not, ask the Board to run a union recognition election. If, in the run-up to or during that election, the employer commits an unfair labor practice, such as illegally firing pro-union workers (which has become routine in nearly every such election over the past 40 years, as the penalties have been negligible), the Board will order the employer to recognize the union and enter forthwith [a.k.a. immediately] into bargaining.

The Cemex decision was preceded by another, one day earlier, in which the Board, also along party lines, set out rules for representation elections which required them to be held promptly after the Board had been asked to conduct them, curtailing employers’ ability to delay them, often indefinitely.

Taken together, this one-two punch effectively makes union organizing possible again, after decades in which unpunished employer illegality was the most decisive factor in reducing the nation’s rate of private-sector unionization from roughly 35 percent to the bare 6 percent at which it stands today...

“This is a sea change, a home run for workers,” said Brian Petruska, an attorney for the Laborers Union who authored a 2017 law review article on how to effectively restore to workers their right to collective bargaining enshrined in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, which was all but nullified by the act’s weakening over the past half-century. Taken together, Petruska added, last week’s decisions recreate “a system with no tolerance for employers’ coercion of their employees” when their employees seek their legal right to collective bargaining...

Since the days of Lyndon Johnson, every time that the Democrats have controlled the White House and both houses of Congress, they’ve tried to put some teeth back into the steadily more toothless NLRA. But they’ve never managed to muster the 60 votes needed to get those measures through the Senate. The Cemex ruling actually goes beyond much of what was proposed in those never-enacted bills."

-via The American Prospect, August 28, 2023

Note: I didn't include it because the paragraphs about it went super into the weeds, but the reason all of this is happening is because of the NRLB's general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, who was appointed by Biden. In fact, according to this article, this "secures Abruzzo’s place as the most important public official to secure American workers’ rights since New York Sen. Robert Wagner, who authored the NLRA in 1935." Voting matters

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bwat5-blog · 4 months ago

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*Spoilers For Arcane*

Good morning everyone. It is no secret I have been immensely critical of the views held by the good folks over at Arcane Critical. I have disparaged their views, and the ways in which they express them in equal measure. And it would be dishonest to pretend I've always done so with civility and respect.

One of my primary complaints and criticisms has been the lack of any detailed analysis on their part. I have not been able to find anything backed up with content, and good thought-out details supporting their stances.

To that end, something occurred to me this morning. I have seen the same video referenced and listed by many of them justifying their views, and have made no effort to watch it.

youtube

*This Video by youtuber Pugs4thugs*

A full two hour long video, repeatedly referenced by people I was accusing of never presenting anything of substance to back up their words. This seemed hypocritical. So this morning I made an effort to remedy that. I admittedly am quite disappointed by my findings, sad to say.

*I ONLY VIEWED THE FIRST 20 MINUTES*

Why am I putting that in giant bold red letters? Because I want to be very clear and honest here. The overall topic of this video is to do with the political ideology shown in Arcane itself. That was not my purpose.

My purpose, was to determine if this video contained what I have been searching for regarding someone actually backing up what they are saying, and referencing this video as evidence. I received all the information needed to make that determination with the first twenty minutes.

First, let me say a few things:

I know someone else on here watched this video with their own response and I believe Pugs4thugs responded. If you see this, feel free to respond if you wish to discuss.

Again, this is NOT about the political ideology side of this video. I am doing what I have tried to focus on doing since coming on here for the most part. Sticking to the content. As far as I am concerned it would be unfair to judge if the creator stuck the landing on their point politically, without a full watch and analysis. Therefore I will not be giving an opinion.

I watched only a small portion of this video. I don't know why the creator would. But if somehow they go on to elaborate on one of the things I mention past the point I watched in a way that makes my response unfair, I will happily admit as much.

I am NOT doing a whole long, in-depth response to each of these points. I have done so in various other posts. Just going to list some of the things I came across in the video with a quick thought each.

00:43- Discusses their own tweet in which they call Caitvi "copaganda".

No:

A relationship involving the cop character learning of the corruption in the system because of their journey with the other person.

Then having the relationship be sundered when both characters act as part of the system, with one leaning all the way into authority and power out of grief and rage.

Then having the relationship restored by the cop character giving up their anger and control, literally allowing for someone to be freed from imprisonment because they choose love for the other person over hate is not copaganda.

2:11- They lament "zero acountability for a character instituting Martial Law"

It is always possible they meant someone other than Caitlyn. I rather doubt it. Caitlyn didn't institute Martial Law. Ambessa tricked the elite of Piltover into doing that. I actually covered this recently with time stamps and all. I can paste here if needed.

13:03- While listing further evidence of Zaun's struggles lists no real medical care outside of Shimmer

I know this comes from that discussion Caitlyn had with Huck. That didn't go for the whole dang undercity. They were in the slums and in a particularly bad area of them at that. Have we forgotten that central street we see so many times just packed with businesses including the brothel? I'm not saying it is to the same degree as Piltover. But Singed invents Shimmer in the course of the story we see in the show. What have Zaunites been doing up til then? How are there any of them left?

15:28- While discussing Ekko also lists Sevika as someone "clearly interested in the wellbeing of Zaun"

One of them created a safe haven for addicts and victims of the drug the other one helped unleash on her own people. I don't think placing them on the same playing field is reasonable.

I've discussed Sevika's wrong doing a lot lately. I'm not trying to hammer the point, so I'll forgo the list this time. But I would say no matter her inner most intentions, her impact on Zaun is strictly negative until Season 2.

18:28- Discussing aftermath of Jinx's attack. Nothing is said of the death or destruction. Discusses "lots of prejudice towards Zaunites" including from Caitlyn, making a point to use a GIF of her clearly saying the word animals.

Now in fairness, given the trajectory of this video I am quite sure Caitlyn is going to come up plenty in the portion I didn't watch. But again, context helps here. I don't see a portion detailing the fact that Jinx killed Caitlyn's mother, 2 other councilors, maimed 2 more, blew up the council chamber, and that Caitlyn says that about the Zaunites who attacked a peaceful memorial in our future

19:00- Discussing martial law “Piltover goes under martial law to keep city safe which is a fancy way of saying “lets oppress Zaun harder”

Completely and totally disregarding any and all context relating to Ambessa and her plans.

20:42- On The Ending “Things between Piltover and Zaun are good enough for Zaun to… fight for Piltover, when Piltover has offered them nothing in return. I’m trying not to be snarky but I don’t see how I can’t be"

Conclusion:

As I have tried to make a point of saying repeatedly, I only viewed a very small portion of a much longer video. So if it turns out they go on to give full context and reasoning behind these points, I will admit my mistake gladly. But from this small sampling, I am sad to say it seems like another example of twisting the content to suit a preconceived stance. Rather than forming a stance from the content itself.

#Youtube #arcane #caitlyn kiramman #sevika arcane #shimmer arcane #ambessa medarda #vi arcane #caitvi #caitlyn arcane #piltovers finest

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bekolxeram · 1 year ago

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7x03 analysis part 2 — Too many Cats

Tommy flew a helicopter into a Category 5 hurricane, at least the show told us so. Is it even possible for an aircraft to fly in those conditions? Today, we are going to figure out just how strong the storm actually is canonically, and how realistic our beloved weewoo show is.

TW: Hurricane, extreme weather, natural disaster

What is the difference between a tropical storm and a hurricane? What even is a hurricane?

Both tropical storm and hurricane are tropical cyclones, just of different strength. A tropical cyclone is a rotating storm system with a low pressure center. The center, or the eye of the storm, sucks in warm moist air from an oceanic environment and it feeds into the generation of storm clouds that organize themselves into a spiral pattern due to the Earth's rotation, aka Coriolis effect.

A tropical cyclone is classified by its maximum sustained wind.

So if it's below 62 km/h, it's a tropical Depression. if it's between 63-118 km/h, it's a Tropical Storm. A Category 5 hurricane though has a maximum sustained wind speed of over 252 km/h.

A strong enough tropical cyclone is called a hurricane in North America, a typhoon in East Asian, and a cyclone in the Indian Ocean (including Australia).

How strong is the storm in 7x03 actually?

We first see the storm at the end of 7x01, when First Mate Kenneth tells Captain Ochoa there is a strengthening tropical storm in the ship's path. Captain Ochoa decides to reverse course back to LA and instructs Kenneth to alert the Coast Guard, but they get interrupted by the cartel.

Fast forward to 7x02, the next mention of the storm comes from Karen. When Hen is sent home by Chief Simpson, she tries to call Athena, but it goes straight to voicemail. Karen tells her cell service is probably spotty out at sea because of the hurricane, which has just got upgraded.

It's recently upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane, as we can see from Karen's tablet.

Then Hen goes to Maddie to ask the Coast Guard to look for Bathena's cruise ship. When Hen shows Maddie the ship tracking app on her phone, the time is 10:28. (I'm guessing PM because it's already dark outside during the Kyle Ortiz call.)

By the time Chief Simpson comes by to reinstate Hen, she's already talking about a Cat 5 hurricane. That can't be more than an hour or two later.

So which one is it? Is it a Cat 2 or a Cat 5? Who should I trust?

Tommy. Whenever he flies, his safety depends on his understanding of the local wind condition and weather. You should listen to him:

So it's a Cat 5, at least by the time the 118 set off on their journey to save Bathena.

Can a tropical storm intensify into a Cat 5 hurricane in hours?

No, not in real life. The record for most rapid intensification of a tropical cyclone is Hurricane Patricia in 2015, but it still took 24 hours. This doesn't mean the storm in 7x03 is completely made up. I believe I might have found the real life inspiration behind it.

Hurricane Otis (2023)

An area of low pressure formed on October 15, 2023 over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico. While it was during a significant El Niño period and the ocean temperature was record-breaking-ly high, strong vertical wind shear condition near the storm was predicted to hinder its development. It was originally forecasted to make landfall as a mere tropical storm. People in Acapulco went to bed on October 23 expecting moderate wind and light rainfall, many stopped seeking out updates of the storm.

In the early hours of October 24, meteorologists at the NHC recognized from satellite images that tropical storm Otis was rapidly intensifying into a hurricane. The NHC officially upgraded the storm to a Cat 1 hurricane at 13:00 CDT and sent out a hurricane hunter aircraft to accurately measure the actual wind speed of the cyclone.

youtube

Satellite images provide a pretty good model to estimate the strength of a tropical cyclone, but the most reliable way to measure wind speed is still to fly an aircraft into it and physically measure it. When the hurricane hunter managed to fly into the eyewall of Otis, everyone realized they made a huge mistake: Otis had already become a Cat 3 hurricane, and it was expected to strengthen even more. It takes time to process data received from the hurricane hunter, so operationally the NHC still classified Otis as a Cat 1 hurricane until the next advisory was scheduled to come out, which was at 16:00 CDT, but by that time, Otis was already near Cat 4 strength. It was then officially upgraded to a Cat 5 hurricane at 22:00 CDT.

While Otis did take around 24 hours to intensify from a tropical storm to a catastrophic hurricane, if you just look at the NHC advisories, it pretty much jumped from a Cat 1 into a Cat 5 in 9 hours. It caused extensive damage to Acapulco when it made landfall because the city was severely underprepared. I suspect the cruise ship disaster arc was inspired by hurricane Otis because it happened just a month after the writer strike ended. Also, in 7x02 Maddie, a 911 dispatcher, was not aware that the tropical storm had already strengthened into a hurricane, which mirrors the unexpected development of hurricane Otis.

As the storm in universe was going back at sea and not making landfall, the authority was probably in even less of a hurry to find out what the actual strength of the cyclone was. So it could take them even longer to send in weather reconnaissance aircrafts. I can imagine the 911-verse version of the storm jumping from a Cat 2 to a Cat 5 officially in mere hours.

Can a helicopter fly in a Cat 5 hurricane?

Technically yes, but the chopper won't be doing the flying. The aforementioned NOAA Hurricane Hunter is a Lockheed P-3 Orion specifically modified and fortified for weather information collection. If this four-engined workhorse has to fight tooth and nail against crosswind and turbulence in order to fly into the eye of the storm, a small single engine helicopter definitely would not fair any better. It would end up getting tossed around, a particular strong downdraft might slam it into the ocean, or a prolong bout of severe turbulence might rip it apart. Luckily in 7x03, Tommy is not actually flying into a hurricane, he's trailing behind it.

NOAA Lockheed WP-3D Orion Hurricane Hunter

In a blink-and-you-miss-it exchange between Buck and Tommy, after Tommy says "a Cat 5 hurricane passed through here", Buck asks why he means by "passed through" and what they are flying in at the moment.

"iNTermITteNt sHOweRs"

When looking at the cross section of a tropical cyclone, you can see rows of rainbands around the eyewall, increasing in size the closer it is to the center of the storm. If you have ever experienced a tropical cyclone making landfall, you would know it starts with sporadic bouts of rainfall (aka intermittent showers), which then gradually increase in frequency and severity as the storm approaches. Once you are within 100-200 km of the eye, wind speed would become violent while the rainbands become so wide and close together it basically keeps raining until you are right under the eye.

These are radar images of hurricane Irma (2017) making landfall in Florida. Bands of moderate to heavy rainfall spread across the inner core region of the cyclone, with still pretty consistent light to moderate precipitation between the gaps. But in the area further away from the eye in the southwest and southeast quadrants, you can see more squall line like patterns. Precipitation would abruptly begin and stop as you fly in and out of those outer lumps of clouds.

Wind speed in that area is no where near hurricane level even for a Cat 5 cyclone, it is typically under 100 km/h. That does not mean it is a safe condition to fly in. Because the outer rainbands of a cyclone are less affected by the storm's vortex dynamics, they behave more like regular thunderstorms. As you know, thunderstorms are big no-no's for aviation safety. In fact, the outer rainbands of a typhoon once contributed to a plane crash in Taiwan.

Conclusion

The hurricane in 7x03 is likely based on reality, albeit with a bit of exaggeration and a shortened timeline for dramatic effect. It is possible to fly and control a helicopter in this specific condition, but the danger is still quite high. Flying into a thunderstorm has a whole different set of risks associated with it, which I will tell you all about next time. Yes, part 3 of this series is "how to crash a helicopter with weather", so stay tuned.

#not a professional #but storm tracking is my cultural heritage #i'm never beating the dweeb allegation #911 abc #911 meta #tommy kinard #tagging the ship for fic reference #bucktommy #tevan #kinley #TW: hurricane #TW: extreme weather #TW: natural disaster

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thecarnivorousmuffinmeta · 2 years ago

Note

You mentioned in another post about Dumbledore's "protection" being seriously lacking (for people like James & Lily). Can you expand on this?

I suppose it's time.

What the Fidelius Charm Does

The Fidelius Charm involves three parties: a location to be protected, a secret keeper, and the caster of the charm. Upon completion, a location is perfectly hidden. It can't be accessed physically even if someone knows it must be there (e.g. Grimmauld Place disappearing between numbers 12 and 14 with no explanation of the missing building in between), cannot be plotted by wizards, and can't be accessed magically either.

To enter the location and even be able to access it properly, a person needs access to 'the secret' which is granted by only the secret keeper. Through this person, they then have access to the location on a full-time basis (it is not a one-time ticket and seemingly cannot be revoked).

Those who are not granted 'the secret' cannot enter the location no matter what they might try. This makes it, on the surface, a highly dependable security measure.

Alright, What's the Problem

There's a few problems right away with the spell.

The first is the known one from canon, it relies on a 'secret keeper'. A party has to be trusted to grant access to the location. If this is a third party, they have to be able to reliably white list those seeking entrance and cannot afford to make a mistake. If this party is compromised or is nefarious then the charm is rendered completely void with no warning to those being protected or the caster.

The second is that, upon the secret keeper's death, there's no next in line but the secret instead defaults to being kept by everyone on the whitelist. In canon we see this with the death of Dumbledore (secret keeper for Grimmauld Place). Upon his death, everyone now has the ability to give access to Grimmauld Place. This includes Severus Snape who is a presumed Death Eater, meaning that Grimmauld Place is now completely compromised. This is very very bad.

The third is part of the above, once you're on the whitelist it seems you can't be removed. They discover Severus Snape is a Death Eater, Dumbledore dies and everyone's now secret keeper, they can't seem to revoke both secret keeper status as well as his presence on the whitelist from him. The best they can do is set up a hilariously terrible jinx to protect the building if he tries to enter (it is uh very ineffective).

The fourth is that your status on the whitelist never expires. Once you're in, you're in forever. You don't get just a one-time pass or a session with an expiration date where you have to reapply for access. Now, perhaps this is convenient as it means you don't have to seek out the secret keeper again (and in that sense secures the secret keeper's identity) however it means those who might have flipped sides later have access forever or else people now always have access to the location even in unwanted hours/if they were there for just a meeting.

These are just the weaknesses baked into the spell by nature, it gets worse when we consider how it's implemented for Godric's Hollow.

Alright, What's Wrong with the Godric's Hollow Implementation

This is where things start to look nefarious.

The above, I wouldn't expect wizards to necessarily be thinking about. While at this point asymmetric key encryption is taking off in the Muggle world and has been for decades, it's a recent Muggle invention and not one that even ordinary Muggles pay attention to let alone wizards (who would then have to consider how to implement this in a magical form and what use cases it'd have for them). What the wizards employ, while bad, is not out of line with how ciphers and things worked for much of Muggle history. You have a key you have to protect, if you lose it you're fucked, no way around that. Which means that passing the key to those who need it, making sure you can trust them, is the largest weakness of the system. The Fidelius is very strong in that it seems you have to have the key to break it, which is the case with all encryption, and the issue then is trying to keep the key as safe as possible (which is always a hard task).

Basically, looking at that, I don't think they could have done much better than the fidelius in terms of security in and of itself (there's other options they could have taken but we'll get into that below).

But then we look at Godric's Hollow.

The issue is who do they make secret keeper. They suspect Lupin of being a spy, someone has been leaking information to Voldemort including the Potter's location (which is why they had to go under Fidelius in the first place). At this point, they're already fucked.

They try to get around this by announcing the secret keeper is Sirius but in secret making it Peter, so that everyone will go after Sirius instead. The trouble is that James only has three friends. One he thinks is a spy, that leaves two.

Even had Peter not been a Death Eater, Peter knew who the secret keeper was. If you know who the secret keeper is, that's effectively knowing the secret itself. All Voldemort has to do is find the first person among the Order who will either talk, or slowly pick his way through Potter's associates and friends until he gets the secret or else kills the one who turned out to be the secret keeper.

Not to mention that all Voldemort has to do is imperio those who have access to the secret and send them to murder the Potters in his stead.

Sirius, Peter, and Remus would be the first on Voldemort's list, and everyone knew that.

It would have been a matter of weeks, had Voldemort actively pursued this, before Voldemort gained access to the house.

And here's the thing. We see that Dumbledore can be both the caster and the secret keeper from Grimmauld Place. Dumbledore, reportedly, is the only person Voldemort is scared of and is the strongest wizard by far in the Order. Why didn't Dumbledore offer to be secret keeper? Why didn't he insist on it? Why didn't James and Lily ask him to do it, especially when they suspect Remus of being a spy?

While James might have picked Peter out of a show of loyalty, Dumbledore could have insisted for their protection. Instead, it seems like Dumbledore purposefully let them take this option and never gave an explanation as to why.

Maybe, Godric's Hollow Was a House of Cards

We also have James. James, canonically, snuck out of Godric's Hollow while it was under protection to hang out with Sirius and the gang. Dumbledore confiscated his invisibility cloak for this reason, something Lily notes in her letter to Sirius.

The thing is, while Dumbledore takes the cloak, that's the only thing he does to stop James from sneaking out. Perhaps it's not his place to do more, but on the other hand, this does nothing to stop James from sneaking out and James (having access to the secret) could easily be imperioed and sent back to murder his family.

Instead, he makes it look as if he's doing something, but is taking an item he greatly wanted as it is.

With that prophecy, where Harry or Neville are the only ones capable of defeating Voldemort, it's starting to look like Dumbledore wants James and Lily to be found. He wants to set up just enough protection that, at a glance, it looks very secure and as if they're putting their all into hiding them: except that he doesn't want it to hold.

Godric's Hollow is a trap intended for Tom, to lure him into a confrontation with the child, when he's the only one who knows the full prophecy and the last few lines that Tom doesn't (as it is, I'm not sure even we the readers know exactly what the prophecy says or that Snape learning the prophecy wasn't a set up).

My theory is this: Dumbledore purposefully chose this method of protection (versus sending Lily and James out of the country with Harry), purposefully chose not to be secret keeper, and set up Godric's Hollow as a means to lure Voldemort into a trap and vanquish him with James, Lily, and Harry as unfortunate collateral damage.

#harry potter #harry potter meta #harry potter headcanon #albus dumbledore #anti albus dumbledore #the potters #james potter #lily evans #meta #headcanon #opinion

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granulesofsand · 1 year ago

Note

Hello there!

I had a question for you-- do you know much of anything about duality programming?

How to combat it? How it works? I know what it is, but knowing more would be a great help to my system.

Duality

🗝️🏷️ RAMCOA/OEA (de)programming

We have a lot of duality programming. Do we know much of anything about it? Hard to say (only wrote a short essay on it).

The most active dual we deal with is good/evil. For us, this looks like angels and demons, white and red, mind and heart. These groups have the heaviest training to fight each other, though some of our duals maintain more of a distrusting truce.

Dealing with Duals

We started by keeping them away from each other. Both groups have their own extreme ideals, many of which are harmful to the body (white obeys unquestioningly, including orders to deprive the body of survival needs and cause harm to us or outsiders; red acts on emotion, including sexual and violent behaviors). The angels agree not to come around during mealtimes and to leave if we need sleep or the toilet, the demons practice impulse control, both go back inside if they have urges that would be dangerous to act on. They don’t front for urges, so they don’t fight over urges.

We taught them how they were lied to, which beliefs they held came from which shoddy staged events. We gave them choices, how far they wanted to move how fast. Let them stay within their belief system if they wanted to, and let them define the words they were fed for themselves. Taught them the different between natural consequences and punishments.

After a few months of preventative measures, we started to pick out which of each group was the most mild, who had similar external experiences, who was most willing to interact with other insiders without escalating. We tried to pair them up, getting them used to one another like introducing a new animal to a pet. Usually, the first reaction was disdain, which often led to escalation. Find them hobbies to bond over, media they can consume together, topics they both tolerate.

We have some pairs that are doing okay. ‘Good’ is a stretch, but okay.

Their groups’ higherups started to ostracize them. The few who were already working with us helped settle the defensiveness from the rest, and they’ve mostly given up trying to break the pairs.

Progress

The fighting is ongoing.

More and more of the ‘lesser’ angels and demons are coming forward looking for a partner — the ones who were mass-made, who have group loyalty but not as much ideology, or who have ideology but not so much group loyalty. These are the cannon-fodder who get recycled during the battles, and they don’t like that course so much.

We’re at a point where the violence is still going, but is more enjoyable for the participants? The higherups have some weird sexual tension happening that we’ve taken to therapy to see if it’s appropriate — it’s harm reduction, which is about as good as it gets.

How It Got Here

This dynamic was programmed in deep over the years, and it’s entangled in several of our integral structures with this dual alone. There are reflected layers for us, and they’re like pyramid schemes with each cluster under another person (in a cluster under another person). The higherups have mirrored roles based on the mythology we were raised with, and the top of each pyramid is another dual (yellow and black).

We were trained wearing clothes of the color, surrounded by people dressed like us and spewing similar beliefs. The second layer of each pyramid was trained for specific jobs, and they have symbols that code them. The bases are the mass-produced ones, and they were mostly trauma holders. The points are the most elaborate, magical-esque programmed systemmates, and they are… something else.

We had staged fights with color-coded teams, readings from cult texts and plays acted out for us. This was big for our group of origin, so we got the whole shebang. Growing up, we thought these sidesystems were external spirits from other planes.

So…

I don’t know how similar of an experience y’all had, but we’re open to talk more in DMs if that’d suit you. Only so much we can put out for the whole of the internet while staying safe ourselves.

I hope the process goes well for you, similar to ours or not.

#ramcoa #oea #tw ramcoa #tw oea #ramcoa programming #oea programming #ec cds #pg did #traumagenic system #adaptive system

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powerofmettatonneo · 1 year ago

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An essay I wrote for psychology class that I'm really proud of:

On April 28th, 2019, Max Carpendale from the website Effective Altruism Forum interviewed biologist Jon Mallatt, the author of the books Ancient Origins of Consciousness and Consciousness Demystified. The main topic of conversation was the development and borders of consciousness throughout the animal kingdom. So, before going any further, we have to ask: what is consciousness? To quote the textbook (4.1), “consciousness describes our awareness of internal and external stimuli.” One of the main questions involving consciousness is what its limits are. Obviously, humans are conscious, but what about birds? Fish? Ants? Jellyfish? It’s hard to say. Mallat defines consciousness as the ability to “feel anything at all”, which is determined by having multiple sensory inputs to be able to form a mental or cognitive map of the world. This then implies the existence of latent learning and memory in the given organism.

One of the key tests for consciousness is the ability to receive positive and negative inputs. This may or may not be necessary for consciousness, but it proves its presence. There are multiple tests for this, but the most commonly performed is pain. This is itself difficult to determine. Mallatt only briefly touches on this topic, suggesting that crustaceans feel pain while insects and fish may experience momentary pain but not long term suffering. To explain that second part, if I were to stab you, it would hurt, but far worse would be the pain afterwards as your body tries to recover. Mallat is saying that insects and fish would only feel the initial pain of being stabbed and not the recovery. I have to disagree; it’s hard to think of a form of pain that wouldn’t result in long term suffering when general noxious stimuli exist in the almost certainly non conscious plants that might better explain their behavior. Instead, I went searching for an alternate model, and I found one created by the same person who wrote one of Mallat’s sources, one Robert W. Elwood, in the article Pain and stress in crustaceans?

They gave a seven criteria model, which includes:

(1) a suitable central nervous system and receptors, (2) avoidance learning, (3) protective motor reactions that might include reduced use of the affected area, limping, rubbing, holding or autotomy [shedding], (4) physiological changes, (5) trade-offs between stimulus avoidance and other motivational requirements, (6) opioid receptors and evidence of reduced pain experience if treated with local anesthetics or analgesics, and (7) high cognitive ability and sentience.

According to their model, vertebrates (including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish), cephalopods, and crustaceans possess all seven criteria. More controversial are insects, who possess four criteria (those being the fact that they possess a central nervous system, exhibit avoidance learning, exhibit physiological changes, and have a cognitive ability); on the other hand, they lack three criteria (protective motor responses, motivational trade-offs, and anesthesia response). Regardless, crustaceans, which have far more evidence for pain, also have a relatively low neuron count (100,000), suggesting that animals of a similar intelligence are also conscious, namely other arthropods (insects, arachnids, millipedes and centipedes). However, this still fails to definitively point to the boundary of consciousness, simply moving it down. Is there a way to instead measure if an animal has a cognitive map directly?

Yes, actually. Both nematodes and sea hares (a gastropod) have had their nervous systems completely mapped out, and while sea hares have shown evidence of latent learning and complex senses, nematodes lack any senses except for an extremely simplistic sense of smell, preventing them from ever creating a mental map of their environment. There are still a lot of animals that fall in between these, and I have my own opinions on them, but without further research, they’re more of a hypothesis than anything; in particular, some deep sea predatory worms were called out by Mallatt as having advanced senses.

Also of note, of the four clades of scientifically proven conscious animals, only two (gastropods and cephalopods) are closely related, meaning that consciousness has evolved at least three or four separate times.

#ethology #essay

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year ago

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mike luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 18, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 19, 2024

This afternoon, Congress passed a new continuing resolution necessary to fund the government past the upcoming deadlines in the previous continuing resolution. Those deadlines were tomorrow (January 19) and February 2. The deadlines in the new measure are March 1 and March 8. This is the third continuing resolution passed in four months as extremist Republicans have refused to fund the government unless they get a wish list of concessions to their ideology.

Today’s vote was no exception. Eighteen Republican senators voted against the measure, while five Republicans did not vote (at least one, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, is ill). All the Democrats voted in favor. The final tally was 77 to 18, with five not voting.

In the House the vote was 314 to 108, with 11 not voting. Republicans were evenly split between supporting government funding and voting against it, threatening to shut down the government. They split 107 to 106. All but two Democrats voted in favor of government funding. (In the past, Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts and MIke Quigley of Illinois have voted no on a continuing resolution to fund the government in protest that the measure did not include funding for Ukraine.)

This means that, like his predecessor Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had to turn to Democrats to keep the government operating. The chair of the extremist House Freedom Caucus, Bob Good (R-VA), told reporters that before the House vote, Freedom Caucus members had tried to get Johnson to add to the measure the terms of their extremist border security bill. Such an addition would have tanked the bill, forcing a government shutdown, and Johnson refused.

“I always tell people back home beware of bipartisanship," Representative Warren Davidson (R-OH) said on the House floor during the debate. “The most bipartisan thing in Washington, D.C., is bankrupting our country, if not financially, morally…. It’s not just the spending, it’s all the terrible policies that are attached to the spending.”

Republican extremists in Congress are also doing the bidding of former president Donald Trump, blocking further aid to Ukraine in its struggle to fight off Russian aggression and standing in the way of a bipartisan immigration reform measure. Aid to Ukraine is widely popular both among the American people and among lawmakers. Immigration reform, which Republicans have demanded but are now opposing, would take away one of Trump’s only talking points before the 2024 election.

A piece today in the Washington Post by European affairs columnist Lee Hockstadter about the difficulties of reestablishing democracy in Poland after eight years under a right-wing leader illuminates this moment in the U.S. Hockstadter’s description of the party of former Polish leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski sounds familiar: the party “jury-rigged systems, rules and institutions to its own partisan advantage, seeding its allies in the courts, prosecutors’ offices, state-owned media and central bank. Kaczynski’s administration erected an intricate legal obstacle course designed to leave the party with a stranglehold on key levers of power even if it were ousted in elections.”

Although voters in Poland last fall reelected former prime minister Donald Tusk to reestablish democracy, his ability to rebuild the democratic and judicial norms torched by his predecessor have been hamstrung by his opponents, who make up an “irreconcilable opposition” and are trying to retain control over Poland through their seizure of key levers of government.

The U.S. was in a similar situation during Reconstruction, when in 1879, former Confederates in the Democratic Party tried to end the government protection of Black rights altogether by refusing to fund the government until the president, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, withdrew all the U.S. troops from the South (it’s a myth that they left in 1877) and stopped trying to protect Black voting.

At the time, the president and House minority leader James A. Garfield refused to bow to the former Confederates. Five times, Hayes vetoed funding measures that carried the riders former Confederates wanted, writing that the Confederates’ policy was “radical, dangerous, and unconstitutional,” for it would allow a “bare majority” in the House to dictate its terms to the Senate and the President, thus destroying the balance of power in the American government.

In 1879, well aware of the stakes in the fight, newspapers made the case that the government was under assault. American voters listened, the former Confederates backed down, and Garfield somewhat unexpectedly was elected president in 1880 as a man who would champion the idea of the protection of Black rights and the country itself from those who wanted to establish that states were more powerful than the federal government.

Chastened, the leaders of the Democratic Party marginalized former Confederates and turned to northern cities to reestablish the party, beginning the transition to the party that would, fifty years later, usher in the New Deal.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#history #the New Deal #House Republicans #corrupt GOP #TFG #letters from an american #Heather Cox Richardson

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the-bar-sinister · 1 year ago

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Lucifer Was an Angel As Well (3645 words) by thesavagesabretooth Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Additional Tags: Ambiguous Relationships, Dubious Morality, Post-Canon, Inappropriate Behavior, vera has a crush on the man who almost killed her, not ship and not not ship but a secret third thing, Extremely toxic, Vera Misham-centric, Kristoph Gavin-centric

Summary: Miles Edgeworth has been looking out for Vera Misham since her father's death, but he's not the one she considers her guardian angel.

The letters had started almost immediately after the devil was locked away from the sunlight, and she keeps them hidden from everyone despite their influence on her.

Meanwhile in jail, Kristoph tries to weave another spell, and regain some measure of control.

August 02, 2028– 2:05pm

In October it would be two years since Vera's father had been killed, and she had been put on trial for his murder. It was still a little bit unclear to her how exactly prosecutor Miles Edgeworth had ended up in her life, but he had been waiting in her hospital room when she woke up, and since then he had helped her make arrangements in her life.

So far, most of those arrangements had involved helping her understand her finances, securing her living space, and managing her enrollment in an accelerated adult learning program to officially obtain her high school diploma.

Now the fancy dressed man– who was by now the chief prosecutor– was helping her arrange the next step in her education.

He took a sip of his coffee, sitting comfortably in her kitchen with her.

"You're sure this is what you want, Vera? I remember last year we had discussed an art program."

Vera’s hands wrapped around the mug before her, letting the coffee inside warm them as she nodded firmly.

She’d thought about it for some time, of course, turning it over and over in her head on one of her many sleepless nights. She’d written back and forth about it, and debated it both internally and externally to always the same conclusion.

Art had stopped bringing her joy, at least as a career choice. Every time she’d put the brush to canvas with the intent to create something she could sell and survive off of, her father’s spirit hung heavy over her and crushed her creative spark to nothing. With the joy smothered from her dearest hobby, the idea of it becoming her job felt like an ever tightening box.

“I don’t want to make copies anymore.” she said softly. “That includes copying my father’s life. My eyes, my hands, could help people like how Apollo Justice and Mr. Wright helped me.”

Mr. Edgeworth sighed and sipped his coffee, before putting it down on the counter with a little click. He shook his head.

"I understand, Vera. Sometimes it seems like everyone that this justice system touches ends up becoming absorbed by it. I wondered if perhaps you'd escape the… pattern."

Curse. Mr. Edgeworth hadn't said it. But that was what he meant. Maybe he was right. By now of course, Vera knew about the chief prosecutor's own history. The death of his father. The trial of Manfred Von Karma.

The beginnings of the great prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, in circumstances strangely reminiscent of her own. He’d been dragged into the mire of the legal system. Maybe it was a curse, a fate imposed on those touched by the scythe of death on its path through someone else that you’d find yourself entangled in the complicated and difficult world of the law and justice.

But Vera was no stranger to curses. She sipped her coffee.

“Sorry Mr. Edgeworth…but I’ve talked it out and come to a de-decision.” Her voice dropped low. “I want to be a forensic investigator. Like Miss Skye.”

"If that's what you've decided, then I won't try any further to dissuade you." He smiled a rather sad little smile and Vera managed her own fragile one in return.

“Thank you…maybe I’ll..I’ll get the chance to work with you someday, Mr. Edgeworth.”

"Perhaps you will. About all this– I heard you'd also been talking to Pearl Fey about the matter."

She nodded. “and I have been…Pearl and I have talked a lot about it, actually. She was …one…of the people I talked to when trying to figure things out.”

"I know she's been quite enthusiastic for herself," Edgeworth said thoughtfully. "Was she the one who suggested it to you?"

She hadn't been.

Vera was absolutely certain Miles Edgeworth wouldn’t have approved of the one who had. Her fingers tightened against her mug, a minute and easily missed sign of her internal spike in nerves.

If Apollo Justice were here, she was certain he would have noticed right away. The one who had suggested the path through the police academy had been another person entirely. A demon hovering over her shoulder, or her guardian angel, she wasn’t entirely sure.

“No, Mr. Edgeworth…she hadn’t. But when I told her I was thinking of joining too, she got rather excited.”

"A fine coincidence, I suppose." Edgeworth nodded, satisfied. "The two of you have a lot in common, in some ways."

“We do, Mr. Edgeworth?” Vera cocked her head. “..I mean, I feel as if we do, we’ve found a lot of common ground…but I’m curious what you mean.”

"Well. Without meaning to offend," he said carefully. "You were both raised in a quite sheltered way by a parent who was then… removed from your lives."

“Ah…”

Vera had heard a little on this, here and there, in her conversations with Pearl. She’d always gotten the sense it wasn’t exactly something she liked to talk about– which was fair. Her own memories of her childhood with her father were complicated and entwined with the gut-wrenching feeling of poison pulsing through her body.

“That’s true, isn’t it..? Leaving us a little adrift when they were gone...”

Miles nodded again. "Ms. Fey I think is a little bit ahead of you in working through that in some ways, and I think a little bit behind. Perhaps the two of you can help uplift one another during your time at the academy."

Vera leaned forward.

“I’d like that. Pearl’s a stable presence. Nice. Maybe we could dorm together?”

It was better than the mortifying ordeal of being set up with a stranger.

"I'll see what I can do," Mr. Edgeworth nodded. "It shouldn't be a problem. Beyond that– I want you to know that if this doesn't work out, it isn't a problem or a failure, Vera. There's no shame in trying something and then wanting to change tracks."

It was a nice sentiment, but she had no intention of backing out. She’d been raised since she was a child to be an unknowing accomplice to forgery and corruption. Her talented eye and clever hands had rarely created anything beautiful that wasn’t a fake designed to put money in her father’s wallet.

As much as she loved art, this was something that could be all her own..just as she’d said in the letters to the man who’d suggested the academy in the first place.

“I know Mr. Edgeworth,” she smiled warmly at him. “I promise. But I know I can do it. I bel-believe in myself, as frightening as it is.”

He nodded, and raised his coffee cup to her. "I believe in you too, Vera. I shall be watching your career closely."

August 02, 2028– 3:15pm

I shall be watching your career closely.

Miles Edgeworth couldn't know that he wasn't the only person who had said– or at least who had written– those words to her in the last few days. With the chief prosecutor gone now, she was alone in her apartment. Just her, and her correspondence.

She sat at her quiet drafting table, unused paints and brushes gathering dust from where her lack of inspiration left them, pen hovering over an empty page as she scanned the opened letter pinned just beside it.

A simple envelope, and a letter scented with a gentle perfume written in careful handwriting.

Her pen swayed in her fingertips as she read it over once more and formulated her reply to one of the most constant presences in her life since the death of her father.

The letters had begun sometime shortly after she’d awoken from her coma, when she’d been getting settled in the new chance at life Apollo Justice had given her…and despite her better judgment, despite the good sense of men like the sort wielded by Miles Edgeworth, she couldn’t stop herself from responding.

There had been no apology.

Perhaps that was the most striking thing. No apology whatsoever. The letters had simply started with the tone of a casual correspondence.

Dear Vera,

I hope that you're keeping well and you haven't had trouble with your accommodations due to recent events. I'm afraid mine leave much to be desired…

That first letter she'd received almost two years ago– it was so casual. So pleasant.

She’d crafted a frame for it, though she never dared display it where her rare houseguests may see it and wonder. It sat, protected by hand-carved wood and glass, in a quiet drawer next to her drafting table.

It’d been just like its sender– so polite and affable, even when tugging the strings of its trap taut around you. It’d been a comfort to see that he hadn’t changed.

She’d responded in a haze.

My life is in a state of flux, but Mr. Edgeworth and Mr. Justice have been very kind to me. I may lose papa’s house, but I’m told I should be given assistance to pick an apartment of my own. Are yours so terrible? Perhaps something can be done…And just like that, she’d gained herself the strangest pen pal. A correspondence course in life after tragedy, penned at the hand of the devil himself. And yet– here, 2 years later, she still had pen to paper again behind Miles Edgeworth’s back.

Two years later, and she had two years worth of letters saved and boxed. She'd received one twice a week, almost like clockwork in that time. More than 500 letters.

It was her little secret, the secret joy and the secret shame all in one, bundled away for her eyes only.

Her correspondence with the man who’d tried to end her life��and the man who’d ended her father’s.

She began the latest letter, chewing nervously on her lip.

As I’d mentioned in my previous letter, I’ve gotten accepted into the LAPD Police Academy with the intention of entering the detective course on my way to becoming a forensic investigator. Mr. Edgeworth checked in with me, but I think he’s worried about the idea of me getting involved in law because of what happened to my father.

Fathers.

Fathers were something they'd discussed over the course of their many letters.

The devil had never apologized. But he had spoken of his own father. A tyrannical man who had been a famous defense attorney before a sudden and surprising heart attack had made his children orphans.

Any sensible person would have hardened themselves to the story in the face of the devil’s evil, but Vera only ever felt stings of sympathy as she’d responded back. It was through him that she’d started to see the wounds her own father had left on her, and see the lingering spirit of Drew Misham for what he was.

Sympathy for the devil had lead her to respond about a life in isolation after the kidnapping attempt, a father who used her talents for financial gain, the loneliness of being raised in a gilded prison by a man so selfish he’d make a child with a gift into a criminal who knew nothing of the world.

He seems to think our idea is me falling into a curse that befalls those who lose their parents to criminal violence, that it’s somehow inevitable that we’re drawn into the Goddess Justitia’s world of crime and punishment. Maybe he’s right, in a way. Do you think that’s a bad thing? Or is it natural to feel drawn to it like a moth to flame? Some insight from my guardian angel may help.

Her guardian angel– the devil had often referred to himself as such, after Vera herself had used the phrase. And he generally had plenty of advice for her. The advice hadn't even, as of yet, involved poisoning anyone.

Either way I don’t intend to change course. Pearl Fey, a friend of mine, is going to the same academy. We’d talked about it often after your suggestion and I honestly hope we get the chance to room together. She’s a good person, someone who I think understands the difficulty of growing up like I have. I think I can sway Mr. Edgeworth on it, but if you know anyone who can help I’d be happy.She smiled to herself as she wrote it in elegant script. No…he’d never offered to poison anyone, or for her to. It might be shocking to many, and even herself, but her guardian angel had always given her sound advice. Despite the incident that had left her comatose and sickly, he’d never steered her wrong. Maybe that was why she was so drawn to him and his every written word.

I know things don’t change often in prison, but I hope things have been going well. Did you receive my last painting? I thought maybe if you hung it up it’d make your accommodations a little less stifling. I haven’t had much of the spark to draw lately, but when I thought of your cell I was struck by inspiration.

He'd sent her a picture lately, of his little cell. It wasn't much to look at, though she supposed that it might be considered opulent for a prison. There was a bookshelf, and a little table and chair, but not much in terms of decoration. The photo, evidently, had been taken at his request by a friend whose name he hadn't mentioned.

As comfortable as a cell could be, it was still a cell. Something she knew well from her time cloistered in her father’s moldering old house. So with the inspiration of such a bare confinement, she’d been spurred to take up the brush once more and finished an original painting…an abstract painting of the sunrise as viewed through crystal fingers.

I want to hear all about what’s been happening there, if it’s not too much to ask. Are the guards treating you well? You’ve been on my mind once again…It’s likely too much to wish that you could see me on the day I graduate from the Academy, but I daydreamed that I saw your face in the crowd and could see how far I’d come from the frightened forgery you once knew.

It was unlikely, of course, that she would ever see him outside those bars. Or even outside that smiling picture that he had sent her, settled elegantly in that chair, by the table in his cell. The devil had been convicted of two murders. He had never spoken of it, and the specifics of his sentence were not public record– it was entirely possible that she would not be receiving his letters for many years to come.

It shouldn’t hurt so badly to imagine the inevitable. Vera knew–the devil was a wicked man, they’d all said it to her time and time again. Mr. Wright, Edgeworth, she’d even seen the pain in Mr. Justice’s eyes when he talked about him. He’d even said it in court. ‘Because I am an evil man’.

But even with all the evidence, even knowing he was the devil himself, she couldn’t help but see him as the angel she’d met all those years ago. Her heart felt tight in her chest at the very thought of the day her letters went unanswered.

I’ll imagine you there. I A tear hit the page to her surprise. She hadn’t been aware she’d started to cry, and yet the evidence lay there smudging the ink.

Evidence, as the devil himself said, was everything.

And the evidence said that Vera Misham cared very much.

She dotted the paper with her sleeve, leaning back in her chair with a quiet hiccup as she attempted to compose herself. Her face felt hot, and her breath felt ragged as it did on the stand years before, when the charge of murder nearly fell on her shoulders.

…can’t imagine a graduation without the one whose encouragement made it possible. I hope that I’ll make you proud, Mr. Gavin. Her hand shook above the page, speckles of ink joining the damp tear marks from her quivering pen.

August 02, 2028– 3:45 pm

"You know, I keep thinking. It's nice, in its own way, to see you on the other side of the bars, Lana." Kristoph smiled his soft, seemingly guileless little smile at her as she stood in front of his cell door.

Lana Skye had been free now for about a month and a half, after more than ten long years in these walls. So why did she keep coming back?

Maybe it was simply the amount of time she’d called the state penitentiary her home. She’d become quite the staple in the lives of many of the men and women who passed through its barred doors.

Lana Skye, the fallen Chief Prosecutor had been there to offer advice, debate, and friendship to most everyone at one point or another. So maybe instead it was those lingering connections to the unfortunates still behind bars and their untold stories that kept bringing her back.

“I’m glad it can bring you at least a little comfort, Kristoph,” she chuckled as she adjusted her scarf. “I’m sorry I can’t say the same to you.”

"I suppose I have to lie in the bed I've made, don't I?" he agreed, cheerfully enough. "Unless someone were to overturn my sentence I suppose. Not very much chance of that."

“As we all must, my friend…but who knows. I’m not Chief Prosecutor anymore…but I can certainly put in a good word for you should you ever have a parole hearing.” Lana sighed quietly, tucking a lock of her hair over her ear.

She wasn’t chief prosecutor any longer. In and of itself that was a relief, even with the loss of authority and influence that could have helped those she’d gotten to know. But, somehow she’d found herself back in the prosecutor’s office, starting from the bottom by the grace of her old protege Miles Edgeworth.

“I don’t want to see a brilliant light like your own flicker out behind bars if I don’t have to. You’re a smart man, Gavin…” she placed her hand against the bars, “and if I’ve learned one thing behind bars, it’s that everyone has more to their story than the verdict lets on.”

"You have a keen eye for that sort of thing, Lana." He lingered near the bars, arms crossed and thoughtful. "You may not be the chief prosecutor any more, but I know that you have the ear of the new one. And I have heard some interesting things about what he intends to do with the position, and has been doing already."

“Yes…he’s asked me advice on it a few times since my release. He’s looking to change the system from the ground up through some rather unconventional methods. One of which, I’m interested to say, was allowing my re-hiring into the prosecutor’s office despite…” she trailed off for a moment before her expression firmed and her eyes hardened, “my part in Gant’s little game.”

Gavin, on the other hand, smiled a little wider, and drummed his fingers on his elbow. "Yes, Mr. Edgeworth truly seems like a man interested in second chances, doesn't he? It was only last year he had Blackquill prosecuting cases from death row."

Lana chuckled.

“A bold move, honestly. It worked out well for dear Simon. I’m proud to say he’s back prosecuting cases free of his chains already and has been doing quite well for himself.” She crossed her arms as well, a mirror of his posture, and hummed as she put her fingers to the bottom of her chin. “He seems to believe very much in second chances, and of revisiting facts once thought concrete to find the truth hidden within. He’s a good man, Gavin.”

"I believe that, you know," Kristoph said with a smile. "One wonders how he came by such goodness. But perhaps you could tell the good chief prosecutor that I am eager to be of use to him, in whatever capacity he might put me. Defense attorneys aren't the purview of the state of course, but I'm a flexible man, Lana. Let him know that."

Lana chuckled as her finger hooked against her chin.

“You know, Mr. Gavin…I was going to offer the same thing.” She closed her eyes with a smile “I’ve gotten to know you over the last two years or so… and I think you’d be a great candidate for his rehabilitation project. I know you’re flexible, and willing to do what must be done, so I’ll bring it up to him during my next meeting, alright?”

"I appreciate that, Lana. Even if it comes to no more than a way to pass the time until the end– well, it's very boring with you gone. All I have to do with my days is read and correspond."

And cry, perhaps. If Lana understood the meaning of the dark bruises, puffy under Gavin's eyes.

Lana would never insult a prisoner’s pride by pointing it out. She had been no stranger herself to private tears known only to herself and the guards who pretended not to listen. So she simply smiled instead with a bow of her head.

“It hasn’t been the same without the chance to speak to you more often, Mr. Gavin. I’ll confess, I do miss it.” She closed her eyes. “I’ll see about getting you some sort of diversion. A new book, perhaps, or a correspondence game– though it sounds like you have something of the sort going? I remember you asking me to take that picture of you, after all.”

He chuckled politely and bowed his head. "You've caught me, Lana. I am fortunate enough to have my own little correspondence game. But I'll never say no to another diversion."

#vera misham #kristoph gavin #miles edgeworth #lana skye #ace attorney #fanfiction #fan fiction #fanfic #darkfic #dark fic #archive of our own #ao3 #fic: lucifer was an angel as well

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moonlit-tulip · 2 years ago

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So if you don't mind sharing, what's your story with plurality based rescue sims?

In 2018, I started experimenting with self-hypnosis, and after a few months my experiments led to the unintended-but-not-wholly-unanticipated side effect of generating a headmate. Somewhat to my own surprise, I got along very well with her and ended up pretty quickly getting emotionally attached to her. However, for hard-to-concisely-summarize reasons, after a couple months she started fading back away, becoming both increasingly disinclined-towards-autonomous-action and increasingly difficult-for-me-to-deliberately-interact-with. By mid-to-late 2019, she was pretty much completely gone.

Due to the aforementioned emotional attachment, I was unhappy about this; I tried my best to slow the process down while it was happening, but failed. Then I spent a while grieving about her ~death. And then, finally, around 2021, I decided that if I was so unhappy about her being gone then the natural thing to do would be to try to bring her back.

So I did a bunch of experimental brainhacking, including self-hypnosis and also a bunch of other stuff, in order to try to (a) generate a new live copy of her and (b) make it possible for her to exist more stably and not just immediately re-fade. And they both worked! Not perfectly, in the case of (a)—I wasn't able to restore her exactly-as-she-was-in-2019, various pieces of her personality and motivational structure were missing—but at the very least better than expected, as measured in terms of retrieval / recreation of psychological modules which had always been only hers, which I'd been unable to use myself in her absence. Very unambiguously a continuation of many of her old psychological threads, even if one who'd lost some pieces in the restoration-process.

And since then she's been around in the background of my life. Not nearly as actively so as she was in 2019, due to the aforementioned difficulties-restoring-her-motivational-system—it's only maybe a couple-times-a-year thing, now, for her to initiate interactions-with-the-world without some form of prodding-into-action from me—but present nonetheless, to a sufficient degree that I consider my goals with the plot to restore her to be pretty unambiguously fulfilled. And, thanks to my success at the stabilization part of the plan, likely to remain thus indefinitely from here on out!

#Archive #Ask #Social #Ways In Which Alyssa Is Weird #Brain-Sharing #for anyone now wondering if there have been prior cases of your having interacted with my headmate while falsely thinking she was me:#(as tends to be the default question my mind goes to when i learn about friends having previously-unknown-to-me headmates)#there haven't been; she dislikes fronting and also separately struggles to keep up conversation with anyone whose mind she can't read well #thus in practice she almost never talks with people other than me

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perfectpaperbluebirds · 2 years ago

Text

Sicktember #17

Prompt: Magical Remedy/Healing Potion

Fandom/OCs: Sorcerer ‘verse OCs (Elmrador Renata)

Words: 1430

Sicknario inspo: Cold in an isolated place from this post

Author’s comments/background: What other AU could I use for this prompt but my charming sorcerer ‘verse? And I’ve been waiting to use this sicknario for quite a while. This is pretty similar to my Navy Man fic in several ways, becuase I actually used the same base prompt for both as I was toying with ideas and nothing else seemed to suit either one. Still, I think there’s enough differences that no one but me would notice the similarities. Also I really love the ending of this one :)

CW: Emeto mentions, but nothing explicit, tried to keep it "off camera". Mentions of nausea and other GI symptoms.

~~~***~~~

Minister Dober's home was the most impressive of the ministers’ residences, and it was considered a high honor to be invited there, a fact Elmrador tried to bear in mind. The home's grandeur was stark against its spare, mountainous surroundings in the frozen wilds of the north, making it all the more imposing. The isolation (and Minister Dober's paranoia and subsequent security measures) made it an ideal location for meetings requiring the utmost secrecy, and as Head Sorcerer of Defense, Elmrador had occasion to be there fairly often. However, Elm wasn't built for the cold and avoided being cold at all costs, so visits to the minister's home were a trial for him. The two day carriage ride through the frozen mountains was arduous, and he shivered the whole way despite being wrapped in two cloaks with a stove at his feet. Yet despite any precautions he took, he would nearly always have the beginnings of a head cold by the time he arrived.

One memorable year when he arrived sporting yet another cold, Elm found the usual ribbing from the other attendees about his shoddy immune system and weak constitution to be nigh on unbearable, and he vowed to find a way to get rid of his ailment so he could attend the meetings without sneezing his head off for once.

The official meetings were to begin the next morning, so Elm burned the midnight oil as he researched natural, known cold remedies. Since there is no magical remedy for a cold, he knew would have to concoct his own. With some help from the kitchen staff, he acquired the ingredients for tea, incorporating every known natural decongestant including ginger, chili peppers, garlic, tumeric, and more. Then he used a bit of magic, a simple kitchen witch spell which enhanced the potency of the ingredients while minimizing strange flavors. When all seemed ready, he swallowed a tiny mouthful. The taste was… unpleasant. Yet almost immediately he felt a reaction in his sinuses. The pressure decreased and his nose flowed freely, minimizing the urge to sneeze. After a few hearty blows into his handkerchief, his nose felt markedly better. After only a mouthful, his sinuses were nearly free from congestion. He had done it! He resisted the urge to crow due to the late hour, but he danced a quiet jig in excitement. How he would laugh in their faces tomorrow when he emerged in good health!

~~~

Elmrador was wearing a smirk as he presented himself for the meeting the next morning. His tea continued to work wonderfully, and he had a flask of it stored in the pocket of his tunic. It had only taken a small mug this morning for his nose to feel better than it had in days. With the application of a little powder to hide the lingering redness, one would never guess he had been sick.

The butler announced him as he entered the conference room, as was custom:

"Elmrador Renata, Head Sorcerer of Defense."

"--with his cold!" called Sorcerer Frahm, laughing.

"Not today, Quil," Elm shot back, his voice free from any hint of congestion. "No more cold for me."

Quil looked dumbfounded, as did the few others in the room while Elm took his seat, looking smug.

"How'd you do it, then?" asked Sorcerer Creach, leaning over to whisper. "You're never laid up with a cold for less than a week, and everyone knows healing potions don't work on those. What's the secret?"

"Let's just say I found a remedy that works," Elm said. "I want to experiment some more before I start telling my secrets, though."

Wilfar Creach shook his head. "Whatever you say, Elm. I just hope you know what you're doing."

The meeting started as usual, and at first everything was going swimmingly for the (formerly?) sick sorcerer. He ducked away twice in the course of the morning to take swigs of his tea and blow his nose. He noticed that he required slightly more tea each time to get the same effect, but attributed this to the fact that the brew had been made almost twelve hours prior. The last break he took just before lunch required him to take several hearty gulps before he felt any effect. After attempting to rinse the taste from his mouth he returned to the meeting room, but when he sat he couldn't help but notice a distinct discomfort in his stomach. He palmed it surreptitiously, feeling it grumbling unhappily. He tried to ignore this and focus on the remainder of the first session, hoping some food might help.

When they broke for luncheon he made his way to the dining room with the rest, but when the plate of food was set down before him he realized the thought of swallowing anything only turned his stomach further. Nevertheless, he picked at a few bites of salad and bread and moved the rest around on his plate to make it look like he'd eaten more. The food seemed to do more harm than good, and he was feeling worse than ever as he shuffled back into the conference room for the second session.

It was a long, miserable afternoon for poor Elmrador. His stomach churned and rolled sickeningly, gurgling and growling all the while. Soon his abdomen was noticeably bloated against his tunic, only barely concealed by his robe, and he was rubbing it almost constantly, seeking any sort of relief. He was thankful there was almost never a quiet moment in these meetings because the noises coming from his gut would have attracted everyone's attention. He was sure the people on either side of him heard some of the ruckus, but they politely ignored it.

Had the session gone on into the evening, Elm feared he would have had to excuse himself as he was feeling more green by the minute. Luckily Minister Hart, an avid hater of overlong meetings, was up next to present, and he voted to adjourn the day’s sessions, opting to present first the next day instead. In order not to reveal the state of his stomach, Elm remained seated until everyone else had left, pretending to go over his notes, waving away any inquiries with a brusque 'I'm fine, go on'. When he was at last alone, he slowly stood, groaning low in his throat as he clutched his stomach. He shuffled his way to his room, giving the dining room and the food smells within a wide berth.

He spent a long night holed up in his room, experiencing the gamut of gastrointestinal distress in waves until every drop of tea had been purged from his system and then some. He at last got relief in the wee hours of the morning and was able to sleep a few winks before he had to rise and prepare for the second day's sessions. A very pale and shaky Elmrador emerged that morning, and while his stomach was much better, his cold was back with a vengeance.

In Minister Dober's home it was custom to be announced to the host each morning. Swallowing his pride, Elm presented himself to the butler once again, trying to ignore the tingle in his sinuses.

"Elmrador Renata, Head Sorcerer of Defense," drawled the butler once more.

Having been suppressed for almost a day, Elm's cold seemed to be out for blood with a mind of its own. As the butler was uttering the last syllable, Elm was forced to press his handkerchief to his nose to catch a salvo of messy sneezes, on display for the whole panel of Sorcerers and Ministers to see.

"... And his cold!" laughed Quil. "Looks like that bug caught up to you again, eh mate? Knew you couldn't ignore it for long, not with a nose like yours."

Elm emerged from his handkerchief with his lip curled in a snarl, and if the Ministers hadn't been present, he would have given a rude retort about the size of Quil's nose compared to other bits of him. Sorcerer Creach intervened, though, and quietly gestured Elm over to sit beside him again. Elm sullenly made his way over.

Wilfar stood and pulled out a chair for his companion. "Don't mind him. Here, I've saved you a seat by the fire," the gentle man said quietly.

"Thank you, Wil," Elm replied, mollified. "Someday I hope we won't have to have our gatherings in the frozen arsehole of the world," he said, too softly for the Ministers to hear. "I've had enough of these damn colds."

Wil only laughed, clapping Elm on the shoulder and handing him a mug of coffee.

#sicktember 2023 #skt 2023 #sorcerer 'verse ocs #prompt 17 #cw emeto

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