#I’m too tired to go into detail but hopefully the images speak for themselves

[tac-bat]

Haii have some elder head canons I drew :3

[silverselfshippingchaos]

👀👀👀 THREE. - @gentle-horrors

@gentle-horrors

THREE?!?!?! YOU SPOIL ME, MY FRIEND.

THANK YOU.

let’s get this rolling.

(however i do wanna add that this ended up MUCH longer than i expected LOL)

First up is a picture which I have posted several times but you know what??? It’s beautiful. So I don’t care.

Aha. Ahahahahahha. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

*screams*

Now first off, I just wanna say it’s almost 1am and I’m tired so my apologies if this comes out as a bunch of nonsense.

This picture is beautiful. His eyes are the prettiest color. Funny enough, I can never tell what it is. Sometimes they’re a blueish gray? Sometimes they’re light blue? Sometimes they’re purplely gray? Sometimes they’re just purple??? I don’t even think that squeenix themselves know what this man’s eye color is. But you know what??? That’s okay. Because it’s really pretty. His wiki calls it a violet gray, so I guess we’ll roll with that.

His eyes look gorgeous in this shot. I mean, they always do, but even more than usual.

Other than his eyes, his jaw!!! I wanna give him a little kiss right there!!! And his lips ofc but 😳. I think he’d get a bit flustered if I were to do that, and that makes me so soft. He’s normally so composed so the idea of me being able to make him all mushy makes me feel all mushy. His jawline is really damn sharp??? It’s beautiful. He better watch out 👀 I’m on my way to give him a little kiss! It’s what he deserves.

Oh and don’t get me started on his hair!!! This might just be my favorite picture of him tbh. It’s just so good. His hair is such a nice silver color and you can see it being a bit messed up in the wind. His hair looks really soft and I’d love to just run my hands through it. That also brings me to the thought of Y.aag with his hair down. I was rewatching some cutscenes and his ponytail is a lot longer than I remember???

His hair always looks so nice and I think it’s so cute!!!

To wrap things up for this one, he is very handsome. I’ve spent more time than I wanna admit just staring at that image. He’s really pretty aksjwkejw

Okay. Moving on. It’s also now the morning so hopefully things are a bit more coherent from here on out.

Speaking of pretty!!! My little pirate boy!! The dandy of the seas himself!!! Specifically his character art from the 6th game.

All of the art in this game (and the series as a whole) is absolute stunning but this one!!! Ahhh!!! The background has waves and dragons, two things that are very important to his character and his moveset.

He looks absolutely badass here. His pose!!! Is so!!! Cool!!! I also absolutely adore his outfit in the 6th game. There’s so many small details and they’re all so cool. I think that out of all his outfits in the series, this one probably fits him the best. I think my favorite part is his sash? It looks epic. I really like his jacket too. I want it!!! Time to steal >:)!! Ugh, knowing him he’d probably say something stupid to make me all flustered.

“Aw, that desperate to see me shirtless? All ya had to do was ask, babe.”

Yeah.

And you're probably wondering, yeah to him shirtless or yeah to being flustered?

Yeah.

Also the recolors he has??? AMAZING. There’s a character customization mode so I have him in dozens of colors, but I think one of my favorite looks of his is with his jacket black and his hair dark red and messy. On that note, his post-battle taunt is just “man… you messed my hair… :(“ and his mid-battle taunt when an attack messes up his hair is “my beautiful hair!” What a dork. 🥰🥰🥰.

I main him and it’s usually my go-to just because of how good it looks??? Look at him go!!!

(However I also really love 5’s jacket with the fur!!

But then again, I do like it more than his outfit in 4. He has consistently had great outfits, but his look in 4... It's interesting. Not bad! Interesting! I diss it a lot, but it's starting to grow on me quite a bit.

4 is kinda like M.axi's emo phase. He's been forced away from all his friends, all his crew and family are dead, he's had a creepy ritual done on him, and now he isolates himself in order to not drag anyone down with him and also to do shady crap now. Oh also he now has a shard of an evil sword inside of his body that's constantly telling him to take lives. It's like that one vine with the souls of the innocent and bagels. It really messes with his head. He leads a life of darkness and crime, and is pretty harsh and rude.

"I've sacrificed everything for this moment! No one can stop me. Not even you!" Is a line that will hurt me till the end of time. He says that once to my s/i during that time period and yes!!! Angst!!!

Truth be told, I love that side of him, and I think that seeing him like that after everything he had gone through was so interesting. He has nothing to live for but his revenge anymore, and he'll do anything to get it. Even if it destroys him.

And hey, it does! He goes through a lot in these games. Sir can I hug you please

To wrap things up here, 4 was super interesting with what they did with his character and I love angry M.axi so much, but his outfit... It really did fit the vibe of his character and I love it for that, but I guess we can't have it all, huh? 5 is 17 years later and he's just the cool uncle and is back to his chill, confident, and flirtatious self. This was supposed to be a gush about his outfit from 6, but look where we ended up LOL.

These games are fighting games, but they're also very story-heavy and I love that. As someone who loves both, it's great.

Heh, you thought this was a gush post? No. This is actually just me trying to make more people play SoulCal.

Just kidding. It's a gush post.

But not really. The 6th game is a total reboot of the timeline because 5 was... questionable! (thanks for the good gameplay, ost, and designs, but... the story?!?!? the characters?!?!?! oh god... Thanks, but I'll take it from here LOL) So 6 it's the perfect place to start. Out on ps4, xbox1, and pc!!! And if traditional fighters aren't your cup of tea, it's a 3d fighting game so it's pretty easy to pick up!!

Also I love the story.

Back to the post.)

Another thing that really gets me about this picture is the art itself!!!

(we’ve gone well over three images at this point but. oh well!)

Look at all the lines!!! All the details!!! The colors!!!!! It’s so nice to look at. This design and pose... amazing beautiful perfect marvelous gorgeous magnificent legendary-

To wrap things up here, I love his art in 6 so much. He looks amazing and so badass!!!

And, last but certainly not least.

Alright, there's a lot to talk about here. This is the art you get when you marry F.elix in game. And, as someone who has married him in 8 out of my 9 playthroughs, this whole scene still makes me squeal.

This scene was great because we got to see a softer side of him. But then he went back to his usual self and pins the protagonist to the wall and it made me an absolute mush. It's very romantic and I wanna give him a kiss :(

The art itself is beautiful. I really like a lot of the art in this game but this one is definitely one of my favorites for reasons other than me being head over heels for him. His hair and outfit still make no sense to me but he looks stunning. He looks so good!!! I really love the background on all the s-support images as well.

I think that him tilting up her chin is what really got me. It's so sweet ajfnakjlenf I love him so much!! I can't think of anything more to say because my brain is just an absolute keyboard smashing mess right now. i just think he's neat.

[allbeendonebefore]

I was kind of under the impression that this is just a widespread thing in Alberta, especially because of the Angus Reid fractured federation survey (I cant include the link here, but you can Google it, its from January 24th 2019). When got back into Hetalia, I imagined the dynamics kinda changed to this, which would be pretty bad tbh. I hope its not that aggressive in Alberta, I will never be able to go check tho, too expensive :( I loved the bad french btw

i see you guys sending these asks super late at night and i wonder whether any of you sleep - idk where you’re writing from and i may be on the west coast but are you guys ok wherever you are? I just woke up but I have my tea and if I’m not caffeinated now I surely will be as I answer this.

I’m sure I’ve seen the survey you’re speaking of before and before I address it in any specific detail I just want to back up and re frame Why I’m Being Like This in regards to recent events and my orientation towards answering these questions in terms of Hetalia the way I do, because I think it’s the heart of how I answer.

the tldr of it is:

1. I have an opportunity to make interpretations of reality in unexpected and challenging ways, therefore widespread opinions don’t govern anything but my stupid gag comics in the simple sense that if everyone was represented by widespread opinion alone all the time, nothing would change and

2. if i can answer dozens of asks about ralph and oliver hanging out there’s absolutely no reason I can’t answer asks about ralph and jean hanging out, lol.

3. If you’d like a shorter, more concise “vision statement”, I have one on @battle-of-alberta here. (although now I notice the links don’t work on mobile so you’ll have to be on desktop for that one)

I’m assuming this will be long so cut time

(and yes, alas, the bad french is my legacy and I’m afraid it has not improved much although i swear i was an A student when i was actually taking it) (and no please don’t visit now, purely for pandemic reasons, it would be really expensive And you’d have a bad time) (and talking to me is free lmao) (I do not mean to say that you need to have feet on the ground to understand a place at all, i mean, at the moment I don’t lol)

headings because I say a lot

what even is hetalia

At the most basic level, Hetalia is a tool that can be used in a variety of ways. It can be for memorization, current politics at a glance or historical relationships in different settings. I use it for all of these things, of course, I certainly use it a lot in comics that take place in the much more distant past in @athensandspartaadventures. When I was writing that, I was in undergrad and AaSA was a tool to help me pass my exams, I didn’t think of how it might be read or interpreted by people who have lived in or experienced those places these days, or what kind of political and cultural tensions it might reveal. (Not to say that it has gotten me into sticky situations, exactly, but I am more aware of where things like that would arise now).

These days I look back on a lot of my experiences - both in IAMP/Hetalia and just as a person, and I think that if Hetalia is a tool it should be used with some awareness of intention and responsibility. Things in the fandom have changed as it became more mainstream and more well known and I think there’s a definite worry about screwing up or not representing Everything or not pleasing Everybody or not doing it Right. I have a simple, insufferably academic principle.

(That said, yes, you can still do it very wrong if you write a methodology.)

Still, it’s a comfort to me that I’m just doing the things the way I say I’m going to do them, and that is the underpinning of Inspired But Not Constrained By Hetalia. I don’t do things Himaruya’s way, I can’t do things the way IAMP would do them if it were running today because it’s not and things have changed, all I can do is do them how I would do them.

I have hurt people in the past because they sometimes couldn’t tell whether I was writing From an Albertan Perspective or not, and I’ve evoked some preeetty spicy comments over the last decade, and I realized that tone and perspective are something that really shapes how people understand and interact with my work and I’m trying to use that understanding in a conscientious way)

what even is alberta

So when you’re me and you’ve grown up in a province that is the Angriest in the country and the most Misunderstood in the country and the most Entitled in the country and nobody outside of maybe Saskatchewan has a good thing to say about you half the time and maybe you’re tired of that... you get kind of depressed thinking about how every year some kiddo comes on the internet ready to be excited about making or celebrating characters that represent themselves and No Matter Where They Go running into everyone else’s negative impressions first and foremost.

We joke about how everyone hates Toronto, though I’ve always understood it in a teasing way because I’ve never ACTUALLY met someone (outside of our current legislative assembly) who REALLY hates Toronto, but it does feel like I’ve encountered (directly or indirectly) people who do Genuinely hate Alberta and hoo boy is That a strange feeling. I mean, there’s an understanding that BC also ‘hates’ Alberta but half the people in BC are originally from Alberta so it’s a, uh, different feeling.

The story of Alberta from everywhere else is always the story of that Angus Reid article and the memes and comments and listicles that spin out around mainstream media. Alberta is giving too much. Alberta is getting too little. Alberta is too stupid to understand that equalization payments are a good thing actually, and Alberta is too dumb to understand you don’t really need EI if you make enough money in six months to own a house and multiple vehicles Just Because you own a house and multiple vehicles. Alberta is destroying the environment for everybody. Alberta has a huge concentration of white supremacists. Alberta is the Texas of Canada* and has the conservative streak and bible belt to match. Alberta should get annexed by the US. Oh, but Banff! We like Banff, though.

And like I said, politicians use these widespread feelings to stir up the sentiments of people who can’t afford to travel, people who are naturally suspicious of mainstream news, people who have barely even left their hometowns let alone the province and have no other means of validating what they hear, but people who’s emotions are genuinely tied to real feelings of alienation that really exist and HAVE existed for generations. And when the so-called “laurentian elites” in ontario and quebec make fun of them for being uneducated red necks, well, you hit a wasps nest and expected what, exactly?

what even am i doing

And like I’m faced with this question every day I decide to pick up my stylus and badger you all with unsolicited comics: do I want this to continue? Do I want to wear the mask that fits? Do I want to stand aside and say #notallalbertans #notlikeotheralbertans and stand over here on the island** patting myself on the back for not? being? there? Do I say yes, you’re right, and stand aside and watch loud mouth white supremacists co-opt wexiters and let them lead the perception of the province I grew up in just because that is what’s currently happening? Do I acknowledge the widespread sentiment and then pick apart every other province to say Well Actually You’re Equally Problematic Hypocrites, So There?

Obviously I’ve been saying no for a while. I’m perfectly happy to acknowledge the reality and when I draw stupid gag comics like this or this you can tell (hopefully) from my style that it’s tongue and cheek. When I draw less stupid not-gag comics like this or this I am trying to explore the Real Sentiments in a way that doesn’t completely polarize the issue and spin it out of control. I’m more of the opinion that even though Current Sentiments do get in the way that as personifications they 1. have some perspective and as people they 2. have some interest in not throwing out a friendship that was a struggle to build up every time the polls change or some new radical party seizes power. I do a lot of research and I want that to be reflected in my understanding of each characters deep seated beliefs and motivations, but I don’t want to let either the history or the current realities dictate the future if I am going to try to do that myself. 

why even am i doing it for

So like really the heart of the matter is: I am writing what I write for my thirteen year old self. She was the me who moved back to Canada from the United States, who’s first introduction to living there was a hellish surge of nationalism after September 11th. Who’s defense against that was to hide behind a shield of Canada is Better, Actually and who returned to Alberta during the boom years to realize that, oh wait, the rest of the country thinks we’re assholes just like they think the United States is. Who spent her teenage years learning that, boom or bust, the widespread sentiment in and out of the province is just as narrow, shortsighted, self interested, and stubborn as her own fiction of What Canada Was Supposed to be Like. Who learned that propping up that image at the expense of her friendships was not worth it, that propping up that image at the expense of people who are suffering and dying under that image is not worth it. Who found herself rehashing the same sort of gut reaction defensiveness online because the Guilt and Apologizing on behalf of her province compared to others felt Really Heavy for a kid who didn’t have any clue what to do about it and was just there to have fun and learn some stuff.

So I’m writing for anyone else who finds themselves exhausted and saddened by coming online and seeing that the only way that people can imagine Alberta is as an antagonist. I’d like to challenge everyone to start to imagine it better. It’s my little “escape” from reality, and for me it’s much easier to talk to people here where the stakes aren’t as high and the grievances a little less personal.

I’m also writing (in a more secondary way) for everyone who’s ever looked at alberta from afar and wondered What is going On inside your Head and is it always This

(no comment at this time)

as always, I’m here to explain At The Very Least what goes on in My head because at the end of the day, that’s all I can do. And though there are some things that make me angry and emotional, I’m happy to explain why. Happy to answer asks or chat on discord or whatever, any time I have the time. :)

footnotes

*This is just a footnote to say something I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of my comments, but this is an annoyance that me and my Texas Tomodachi share lol

**You’ll notice angry Albertans online have a favourite tactic, and that’s pointing out hypocrisy. They can justify A N y T h I n G by calling another province a hypocrite “so there” (i.e. BC can’t claim to be environmentally conscious because of Victoria’s sewage problem or Site C) - and while I am interested in shattering the image of Alberta vs. the Perfect Rest of Canada a little bit, I feel like it’s a very lazy argument that is used to deflect and not to help. I think it is more useful to unpack the sentiment of Why Alberta Still Feels Taken Advantage of rather than mudslinging, and when the mud starts flying no one seems interested in addressing problems anymore.

[terresdebrume]

Writing, big projects, and transitioning

The interesting thing about making my previous post is that I was joking but also now that I’m thinking of it a little more seriously...it’s probably closer to the truth than I realized at first. It’s not that I don’t want to write because I do!

In theory.

In practice, every time I try to give any of my stories a good thinking, my brain just goes ‘nope’ and that’s how I watched the entire New Tales of the City series last weekend, or spent most of today alternating between reading Good Omens fanfic and staring at the ceiling. (Well, that, and also I’m still tired from yesterday’s eval) It’s weird how even doing the things you like can become an absolute chore after a while—I’m glad I wrote the Superbat fic, honest! But by the end of it I had to push myself into it like I was working on my thesis all over again.

The strange thing is...I think I want to get used to longer fic projects like this.

First of all, the more time passes, the less I think of fic ideas that I feel able to fit in short fics. I don’t know if it’s just experience, or feeling better than I ever have in my life, or any combination of any other factor but...I think I like writing longer stories. I’ve learned so much in life through my longer fic projects, not just about my own mental state and mental journey—looking at you, SEADLA—but also about my working abilities.

Learning to write long fics, especially long fics that I finished before I started posting them—I’m thinking, of course, of the SBB story, but also about things like OMWK or 3WH—taught me again that I’m capable of dedicating a lot of time and effort to things I’m passionate about, even if it goes on in time and even if I’m busy in other areas of life. It’s taught me, or at least started to teach me that I like long projects—that I can undertake them for the sake of completing them rather than doing it only for the reward of readers’ attention. Not that that hurts, mind, but where I used to be unable not to share what I was working on right away because I wanted immediate praise for my work, I’ve learned to take the crafting and the finished job as ends and goals for themselves.

It’s also...raising some questions for me, but interesting ones, I think.

Because—and this is not a recent realization, exactly—I’m starting to understand that if I take too much time and energy to talk about a project, then I tend to lose both the energy and the motivation to work on it. It is, fortunately, not a problem for fic writers the way it can be for professional writers, but it’s still something I feel is good for me to know about myself...and it is, I think, possibly a little related to what I was saying about my staff review thing yesterday.

I don’t—I haven’t been aware of this thing about me long enough to say with certitude, but I think one of the reason people don’t realize I’m invested in a project if because more and more, unless I’m asked about it, I don’t really talk about it that much. It feels like I do sometimes, but if the number of posts in my SBB story’s tag is anything to go by...I didn’t talk about it as much as I felt I did through the past six-seven-ish months.

Like I said, I can’t know right now if this theory is correct or if I’m missing something, but if it is correct, then I don’t know if I’ll be able to ‘correct it’, as it were. It’s not that I’d want to make it disappear entirely, but learning my boss didn’t think I was invested in the kids’ classes until recently when I’ve been consistently working on kids’ classes for the three years I’ve been working here was...a thing. Granted, he had zero reasons to realize that if I hadn’t been motivated I’d have done the same thing I did for the teenagers’ classes and tried not to get them—aka, I would have changed jobs.

But yeah, overall...valuable lessons, there. It’s also kind of reassuring on the topic of transitioning too, actually. It’s a project I’ve been putting off for...well, I don’t even remember when I came out, oops xD But yeah, I’ve been putting it off for many reasons, not the least of which was that I had no idea how to go about it—still have very little idea about that—and was kind of afraid I’d...I don’t know, give up halfway through, or realize I wasn’t actually trans after all.

It’s been at least a year and a half since I came out to myself and to the world, though, and while there are still many parts of my life that don’t fit with the...uh. Classical Trans Narrative*, so to speak, one thing that hasn’t changed is that I like the days when I’m in a binder better, and it makes me smile every time a new person starts calling me Matt (one of my students took to it recently, it’s adorable and I keep meaning to thank his father for giving him that tip) and I enjoy imagining my future life as a man much mire than I enjoy imagining myself a future as a woman, when I ever do that anymore.

It’s still strange because I still kind of...misgender myself in my head, still. Because I’m not exactly traditionally masculine, and I’m not that eager to put up that front (being a man like Good Omens’ Aziraphale would be much more in my ballpark, I think, for example) and gender stereotypes still have a certain grip on me. On the one hand, it’s probably what allowed me not to put my finger on being trans for as long as I lived with my parents, which I think is probably a good thing overall, but on the other hand..well, this.

Regardless...I’m starting to feel more confident about this, and also tired enough about the whole waffling situation that I’m beginning to really consider preparing my name-change material for December, when I’ll get to France and have an occasion to file it with the city hall. That implies researching how it’s done, but I still have time for that, and right now just...having that as a clear and small chunk goal is enough.

And hopefully, by the time I get there, I’ll have enough space in my brain to be writing again :P

---

*By Classical Trans Narrative I mean the social image of a person who has been consciously dysphoric their whole life and was able to put words on why that was from a very young age—give or take a number of details. This reflects the experience of some—many?—trans people, but not mine, and sometimes it’s hard to truly believe that I ‘deserve’ to be trans because of those differences.

[topweeklyupdate]

TØP Weekly Update #54: COVER ME (7/13/2018)

Finally, after months of solid drought, the barren wasteland known as the TØP fanbase has finally been blessed with rain. And not just a gentle sprinkle; it’s been a consistent heavy downpour, a veritable flood. Even before new music, this week gave us new content from the group every single day. There will probably be something new out by the time you’re done reading this. So let’s not waste any time! Here’s your week in Twenty One Pilots news.

This Week’s TØPics:

Your Band Is Back: Trench Coming This October

“Jumpsuit” and “Nico” Released

New Logo/Theming/Everything

Josh Speaks

And SO. MUCH. MORE.

Major News and Announcements:

This time last week, I was certain that we would be getting new music on the 6th because it was my birthday. Turns out, myself and many others in the Clique read a little too deeply into Clancy’s promise that “everything would be different” by morning. We did not receive new music on that date, which, for the record, was way earlier than most reports had pegged. The fanbase wanted music ASAP and interpreted the letter to fit that, and anyone who said the band lied about when music was coming was just not being honest with themselves. 

Things were different starting last Friday. On the one-year anniversary of their departure, Twenty One Pilots directly reached out to their fans for the first time, not through the wide platform of social media, but with an email message to their mailing list.

The message only consisted of the subject line “ARE YOU STILL SLEEPING?” and a gif of an opening yellow eye, with images fitting the iconography of the Dema site flashing under the eyelid. The Clique basically lost their minds at this direct contact, so much so that major publications like Billboard finally started to report on the long gestating speculation. Everyone was excited to see the eye open over the course of the day, bringing everything full circle and culminating (presumably) with new music.

That... didn’t happen. Rather, dmaorg.info was restored after being down for only a few hours, and this gif of torches was added onto the site. This indicated that Clancy had escaped Dema, and the Clique promptly set about assuming that the next day would mark the band’s full return. Further, the name of the gif, “they_ca_ntseeFCE300″, seemed to confirm what people would be speculating ever since Josh dyed his hair nearly two years ago: the next era’s color would be yellow (specifically, FCE300) to symbolize hope and light pushing back against the dark.

The next day brought with it another update from Clancy (and the general concession among the Clique to stop expecting new music every night and just go to bed). In one of my favorite bits of attention to detail so far, Clancy’s latest journal was messily handwritten on a scrap of paper, due to the fact that he had successfully escaped Dema and was now traveling through- big shock- a region called “Trench”. The writing itself is kinda rambly and generic (so I can relate), with Tyler Clancy marveling at how much he loves being in the trees being alone out in nature. That said, I do love that there is a definite story being presented, with Clancy experiencing changes, taking action, and going on a real journey through this world that Tyler’s created.

On the back of the paper, however, is something much more interesting: a blown-out image that, when reversed, revealed a dead body. That was creepy enough as is; far more creepy was the Clique’s CSI-level discovery that this ripped photo fit with several other dmaorg.info images in a giant puzzle. Who was this man? Was this a random poster that Clancy grabbed as he escaped, or are we supposed to take it as a metaphor? Was it a random citizen of Dema? A bishop? Clancy himself? Blurryface? So many questions.

Twenty One Pilots truly made their mainstream return on July 9th, when they posted a second video of a half-opened eye, not just for hardcore fans, but on all of their social media platforms. This return was accompanied by a total overhaul of the band’s general branding: a new yellow-and-black ||-// logo was revealed for the new era, while the old “silence” banners and even the website subscription box were covered up by bright yellow tape. Billboards featuring the logo on this yellow tape aesthetic sprang up in cities all around the world, from London to Toronto, Berlin to Melbourne, even an entire building in São Paolo. The boys were back.

On Tuesday, Twenty One Pilots again returned to social media to post a second video. The eye, now about 3/4 open, depicted even more of this medieval battle, now with the addition of the Watchers on the cliff throwing... something (rocks? rose petals?) into the air. Instead of generic white noise, this clip was scored by a muffled but still obviously crunchy bass line. As radio stations across the country began to tweet about a major alternative release coming Wednesday morning (with a few even mentioning they were from Columbus), we finally knew that we were going to be ok....

New Releases:

And then I was not okay.

Early Wednesday morning, Twenty One Pilots dropped two singles and announced the names and dates for the next album, Trench, and tour, Bandito. My prediction from last week was 100% correct, and you all may thank and validate me in the comments below like and subscribe. “Jumpsuit” is our main single with a full cinematic music video, while “Nico and the Niners” is the more lore-heavy low-key song for the fans. I’m going to pull back from fully going in on picking apart every sonic and thematic element of both songs and save that for (hopefully) a less busy week, but you know I gotta write about their first new music in two years. Cause that’s what I do: I write too much.

Guys, “Jumpsuit” is a straight-up banger. Featuring a killer driving bassline, some of Tyler’s most impassioned screams, and a truly devastating bridge, I have not tired of this song one bit in the last few days. It takes me on a complete emotional journey in just four minutes every time, and it does so mainly through its soundscape (there’s only the hook, three couplet verses, and that damn bridge). It’s so, so, so, so good, potentially (dare I say it) the best sonically arranged and produced song the band has ever released.

So... what’s “Jumpsuit” about? Well, a lot of things, but in a word: pressure. Again, the lyrics are super vague, I think deliberately so. Clearly the song is about the singer feeling pressured by others into taking a path that he does not want to travel down. That bridge, delivered in an eerie detached falsetto, shows Tyler pushing back even at his weakest point, stating that he will not submit to what others want him to do unless they “grab him by the throat, tie him down, and break his hands.” Certainly you can argue that this is about the music industry. The “breaking his hands” line is killer in that context, as it signifies that the industry can’t control him without taking away the things that makes him valuable to them in the first place, his artistic ability and freedom. You can also say that it’s just playing straight into the concept, with Clancy breaking away from the bishops’ control. But the deliberate vagueness of the lyrics means that the audience can apply the message- and the empowerment of that killer bassline- to whatever struggle they are facing. That’s pretty darn rad.

The music video, directed by “Heathens” and “Heavydirtysoul”’s Andrew Donoho, is sick. Tyler (looking extra fly in his new yellow hooded jumpsuit) attempts to flee from this creepy Red Riding Hood old dude on a white horse (Nico?) through what is certainly a Game of Thrones filming location while other figures in yellow duct tape jumpsuits look on from the cliffs above. Tyler is captured by the bishop, who “smears” him by putting the black Blurryface makeup on his neck. Tyler is freed briefly from the bishop’s control when the other yellow-clad figures throw yellow petals down on him, but he is chased down knocked out or killed. The others flee the scene, save for one very handsome looking drummer boy... Oh, and there’s a bunch of intercut clips of Tyler on the car from “Heavydirtysoul” for some reason.

Besides those “Heavydirtysoul” scenes, which truthfully don’t connect much to the story of the video beyond artificially welding it onto the end of the Blurryface Era, this is one of the band’s best videos yet. It totally fulfilled all of my expectations of a more epic scope for this era, from the gorgeous Iceland setting to the dope as hell costumes to the implication that the story might continue on from this point. And there are tons of little Easter eggs, from brief flashes of the nine bishops to possible cameos from the Josephs and Duns. We don’t really know for sure if Tyler is playing Clancy or if the red dude is Nico, but it will certainly be fun to continue to fill in the blanks as we move forward and (hopefully) hear more from Tyler directly.

“Nico and the Niners” is a weird track, but one that I still absolutely love. In some ways, it’s a more traditional tøp track, with some of the raggae elements found on Blurryface and a rap verse to fit all of Tyler’s lyrics in. But in other significant ways, it’s a totally different path for them. For starters, just look at that title: it’s very explicitly about this album’s concept from top to bottom, with Tyler singing about fleeing Dema and its bishops’ control and even heavily referencing “Jumpsuit”; there’s clearly going to be a great deal of thematic cohesion in this project. But there’s also just the general vibe of it: just as “Jumpsuit” was a heavier rock song than anything we’d yet seen from the band, "Nico” is way more laid back, its repeated references to being high and even its visualizer of assorted shrubbery making it a potential stoner anthem (whether that was Tyler’s intention or not). Regardless, the song is brimming with character and hooks, and it’s already grown on me significantly in just a few days.

Oh, and one more thing: this song lives up to its Dema-referencing title and content by being cryptic af. The track is littered with reversed audio in the instrumental bits, including the “we are banditos” snippet from dmaorg.info and another sample of someone who sounds a lot like Josh saying “We will leave Dema at true east, renounce Vialism [the bishops’ ruling philosophy, alluded to be Clancy in an earlier journal].” I swear, if all it takes for Tyler to make all this stuff is a year break, he should do this after every album.

With all that new music, the fact that we finally have a name for Album 5 almost got lost in the shuffle. Trench was a popular guess over the last few days thanks to dmaorg.info, but it’s good to finally know for sure. Graphic designer Brandon Rike from the Blurryface Era is back again, revealing a cover featuring a badass-looking vulture/falcon/whatever, some new logos (including the return of FPE!), and some more yellow tape that appears to be covering the names of the rest of the album’s songs. Not too much else to say at this point; we’ll just have to wait until some of that tape gets peeled off between now and October 5th.

Finally, let’s talk about the Bandito Tour. It bears mentioning that, amidst the otherwise overwhelmingly positive positive atmosphere of the band’s return, this tour name received the most general opposition from fans and non-fans alike. The fact that “bandito” was probably going to turn up in a lyric from two decidedly white dudes was already enough to put some folks on edge, but the idea of an entire tour of predominantly non-Hispanic tweens flooding arenas and calling themselves banditos was enough to turn a few people against the band. And look, I get it- I hear “bandito” and the first things I think of are John Wayne Westerns and Speedy Gonzalez, and I get why a lot of fans might feel uncomfortable with that. But, to be fair, the band hasn’t used any of those stereotypes and banditos is a word for outlaw used in a number of Romance languages. Perhaps most interestingly, there’s not yet any evidence that the word even appears in the album itself. So far, the only appearance of “bandito” is in a coded message on dmaorg.info and in reversed audio in “Nico”. If this does turn out to be a name meant to only make sense to the most hardcore of fans, it is almost redeemed (I mean, I still think the name is a little silly, but I’m already in presale).

So, with that out of the way, let’s actually talk about the tour itself. It will be an international arena tour- even if the band’s sound is not going in a pop direction, they still clearly feel confident that the Clique will show up wherever they go. The first show will be hosted in Nashville (their first arena concert in that market) on October 16, not even two weeks after the release of the full album. What a baller move, and much preferred to the Blurryface rollout where we didn’t hear most of the songs on the record until nearly two months after the album release and they didn’t play near me for even longer. The boys will tour the U.S. until November 21, even playing arenas in a few markets that they’ve never played large venues in before, and then hit up Australia and New Zealand in December.

The most objectively interesting leg will be in Europe from January through March. Not only will the band play their first arena shows in markets like Moscow, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Central Poland, and Manchester, they will return to markets like Dublin and Glasgow they’ve been absent from for years. Most exciting, Twenty One Pilots will play their first shows in Bologna and Stuttgart and venture into the countries of Ukraine, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal for the first time ever. Needless to say, the rabid fanbases of all of these regions are super excited, and I’m super excited for them!

Other Shenanigans:

While Tyler has continued to stay silent (much as he has since mid-Blurryface Era), Josh immediately jumped back on Twitter with a standard Josh joke and even resumed his morning workout Snapchats. On Thursday, Josh even called into BBC Radio One with Annie Mac to give a quick interview about the new era. He didn’t provide a ton of information, but it was just a delight to hear our kid’s voice again. A few tidbits of info:

Josh reported that he was calling from Trench, I hate him.

The sick bass riff on “Jumpsuit” was born from soundchecks toward the end of Emotional Roadshow. He says that, as a result, it sounds closest to the Blurryface sound, serving as a good transition into the new era. (If this is what he thinks is close to Blurryface on Trench, this album’s gonna be nutter butters.)

Both Josh and Tyler are really nervous about the elaborate rollout, both out of the usual fear that no one stuck around and out of wariness of severely disappointing people when they hear the actual music (so far, so good...)

Trench continues to have the “diverse” sound of the previous records and also was designed to be played live.

Josh also tuned into Apple Music’s Beats 1 for an interview with Hanuman Welch. This conversation was less about the new album and more about the “hiatus”. More tidbits: 

The band views collaboration as a “sacred” thing, and while they’re not against it in the future, it has to be done in a context that makes sense and not merely for marketing purposes.

The band has never used the word hiatus because they’ve been working. They drew back from the spotlight to allow themselves some time to recharge, but also because they were worried of oversaturation (particularly after the Grammys pushed them into that next-level pop culture sphere). Rather than make a bunch of social media posts that didn’t mean anything just to stay relevant, the band decided to draw back, focus on music, and in the process “thin the weeds” of fans who weren’t the diehards.

For the last few albums, the music has come from a specific personal place the band was at while write, whether it be a spiritual journey with Vessel or tackling insecurities on Blurryface. Josh says the same remains true with Trench, but notes that there will be a little more fleshing out themes by working on a specific story with this one (he still says it’s not really a concept album, but ok).

Believe it or not, we are not done. While the boys were blazing a brave new path forward, another bit of content reminded us of where the band came from. Greg Wells, the producer who made Vessel the masterpiece it was, gave an hour-long interview to Billboard’s Pop Shop Podcast. He mainly speaks about getting started in the industry back in the 90s and working on the mega-blockbuster Greatest Showman soundtrack, but he does talk about Vessel for a bit approximately forty minutes into the interview. I won’t give the exact time-code, not because I’m lazy, but because the entire interview is worth listening to. Greg just seems like a rad dude. His laid-back nature and the seriousness he takes with his craft really shine through; he and Tyler must have gotten along just fine.

Community Spotlight:

The Clique took some heavy losses over the last year, as a great deal of old fans moved on to greener pastures. But that just left room for a whole host of new fans to rise to the occasion and help us get through that long drought. Today, I wanted to give a shout-out to GingerSheep and Stolen Potential, two Clique vloggers that have really kept the fanbase informed and uplifted and have been working their butts off reporting on the daily content. I know how long it takes me just to research and write one of these- I can’t imagine the work that then goes into filming and editing on top of that nearly every day. Hats off to you, good sirs. Make sure you all check out their channels if you haven’t already! But, you know, don’t stop reading these. I have bills to pay with all the Tumblr money I’m not making.

Well, that wasn’t too much, was it? If you made it all the way to the end, mad props. See you next week for a slightly tamer week (probably).

Power to the local dreamer.

|-/

[imagineclaireandjamie]

A Hundred Lesser Faces: Nineteen

Section One {A Hundred Lesser Faces} what if Voyager!Claire had gone first to Lallybroch instead of directly to the print shop in Edinburgh? :  [(One) (Two) (Three) (Four) (Five) (Six) (Seven)

Section Two {A Hundred More}, the aftermath of Claire and Jamie’s reunion, following their journey as they work to build a new life together [(Eight) (Nine) (Ten) (Eleven) (Twelve) (Thirteen) (Fourteen) ]

Section Three {Begin and Tell}, Now with EVEN MOAR AFTERMATH! [(Fifteen) (Sixteen) (Seventeen) (Eighteen)]

Two days later

Lallybroch 

“I hope ye ken ye didna need to banish yourself out here to the frozen wastes, aye?”

I’d watched Jenny making her way up the slope toward me; had had plenty of time to tuck the photographs unobtrusively into my pocket. Still, even advance preparation couldn’t wipe the grin from my face, aglow from the tender refuge my daughter’s face had been for the last little while. I’d borrowed the packet from Jamie this morning, so greatly wanting Bree’s company, and finding it, each image of my baby girl stoking that small, warm light in my heart. I’d had to keep it covered over, most of the time since I’d come through the stones, smoored against the cold night of pain and grief, but it wasn’t gone. Never gone.  

It was with a warm, happy pang that I realized my sister-in-law’s company wasn’t at all unwelcome, either.

“Well, for me,” I said brightly, turning on the stone block I’d chosen as a seat to more fully face her, “it seemed my choices were either to hide in the house, or hide out here.” I gestured wide at the breathtaking expanse visible from the old stone fort above the broch. “I’ll choose the heather over the priest’s hole any day.” 

“No’ much heather in bloom just now, but canna just say I’d ha’ done differently.” Jenny sat down gratefully as I shifted my gathering basket to make room for her. A flask was produced from her bosom. “A place has a way of seemin’ to shrink to size of a thimble, when Laoghaire MacKenzie enters it.” 

“Too bloody right,” I agreed, and we drank in companionable commiseration. 

Jamie, too, had tried to assure me that I needn’t flee the house. 

“Ye have the right to be in that room wi’ me, Claire,” he’d said seriously the previous night in our bed. “I’ve naught to hide from ye, and the consequences of what’s to be discussed are as much to do wi’ your new life as mine.” 

He didn’t actively wish me to be there, though he was careful to conceal it. Bless him (sincerely!) for being so anxious to set my mind at ease, doing all in his power to make this time of upheaval as smooth as possible; to be vulnerable and honest with me; to leave all stubbornness and demands back on the road outside Broch Mordha. It meant a great deal to me, that deference; but I had only kissed him, my husband, and tried to set his mind at ease in return. 

As much as I would have dearly loved to have been there to greet Ned Gowan, I would for nothing in the world have risked jeopardizing these crucial proceedings, and thereby Jamie and Laoghaire’s impending annulment. On no planet could I claim to have the knack of complete detachment from strong emotion; and if I wasn’t willing to take the odds on MYSELF not lashing out or exploding at some point, I sure as bloody hell wouldn’t be staking much on Laoghaire’s capacity for self-control. No, far better for all concerned that I stay clear until things were settled before the law, and leave no chance of she and I vexing one another into a brawl or an early grave.  Besides, I’d assured Jamie, it was a marvelous opportunity to gather winter plants and enjoy the outdoors, some peace and quiet. 

It was, too. I’d kissed Jamie and left the house before breakfast, my basket empty save for food and drink, my knife for roots and stems, and one of Jenny’s french novels. High and wide across the hills I’d wandered, gathering what useful plants I could find, intentionally exploring the far reaches of the property first, so that I wouldn’t even catch a glimpse of the road as Laoghaire arrived. No good could it do for my heart, I’d decided virtuously, to see what she looked like now and thereby further fuel my vitriolic daydreams about slapping her in the face so hard she fell on her arse, hopefully into a large mud puddle. No good at all. 

I’d settled at the ruined fort after a few hours, once I grew tired of walking, just to enjoy the stillness of the moor and the sight of Lallybroch amidst it: speaking peace from its chimney smoke and promising comfort under the gently-sloping roof whose sight was home and family to me once more. 

“Does this mean you’ve been banished?” I asked suddenly, struck with a qualm over what discomfort might actually be taking place at the house.

Jenny’s eyes twinkled but she shook her head.  “Things were beginnin’ to draw to a close and I supposed it was best someone came to fetch ye back. I ken Jamie will be anxious to have ye near, by the time the other folk have gone.”

“It’s done? Already?” Hell, I'd brought enough food to last me through to suppertime and it wasn’t even noon! 

“Well, not just yet, but nearly. Wi’ me in the room and Laoghaire’s written statement to hand, there wasna much negotiatin’ to be done, after all. It was mostly sittin’ and waitin’ quiet-like while Ned clarified and wrote things out properly (and talked in great detail about WHAT he was writin’ out and WHY and wherefore).... and consequently, keepin’ Jamie from stranglin’ the man.”

We dissolved into fond giggles for both men. 

“Hold on, you don’t mean to tell me Laoghaire sat quiet, too?” I asked dubiously, handing back the flask. 

“Aye, she did! .....Well.” Jenny rolled her eyes with a little snort. “She still glared incessantly, mind, and stayed rather red-faced throughout, and muttered a good many things under her breath or to Hobart, but she didna screech once, which is a miracle if I ever heard one. Never witnessed the woman so much in possession of herself. Whatever words passed between her and Jamie must ha’ made quite the impression.”

“All thanks to you, you know.”

“Aye, well.” Her gaze dropped quickly to her hands, which fidgeted intently with a loose thread in her skirt. “If it was able to pave the way for him—for the two of ye—then I’m most glad of it.” 

“From what Jamie tells me, things could have gone very, very badly otherwise. We’re both so thankful to you.” 

“I did wonder, ken, at the time, whether it was oversteppin’ still more, for me to tell her. Standin’ on the road, watchin’ the two of ye ride away, though, I felt I must do somethin’ or I wouldna be able to go on.” She shrugged stiffly. “And it wasna as though I had much more to lose, in Jamie’s eyes. Decided I might as well do what I could....and if someone were to get themselves shot by the foul besom in the doing, at least it would be me, and then maybe that would be enough.” 

The simplicity and acceptance of that sent cold bloody shivers down my spine, and damn me, if every single one of my possible responses didn’t feel perfectly inadequate to the task. ‘Surely Laoghaire wouldn’t ever do such a thing’ (I had little faith in that); ‘Surely Jamie wouldn’t ever want you to be hurt’ (of which I was certain); and even the one that seemed best suited sounded so perverse I couldn’t stomach it: ’Thank you.’

Jenny and Jamie had stayed in her room a long time together the night we came to Lallybroch; crying mostly, Jamie told me later, and talking late into the night. Making amends. When Ian and I had peeked in to check on them, they’d been fast asleep, faced toward each other, her hand in his; curled up like puppies in a basket, I’d thought at the time, not sure whether to laugh or cry. 

Jenny spared me having to respond just then by raising her head with a reassuring smile, nodding once, as though to seal the unease behind a closed door. “It’s verra glad I am, to have ye back, Claire, now that—now.”

Now.

“I couldn’t be happier,” I said, meaning it, feeling a grin breaking and flooding my heart. 

“There is another thing I must say to ye.”

Warmth and joy turned to vapor. “....Yes?”

Jenny had sought me out the morning after our arrival, hugged me close and cried, repeating much of what she had already said on the roadway: of how devastated she was at what she’d done; how she would do anything to make it right. 

Like Jamie, I’d mentally crossed the bridge of forgiveness even before we knew what she’d done for us with regards to Laoghaire. I’d held her close, rocking her and saying over and over that it was all behind us now. This hadn’t stopped her, though, from repeating the apologies (albeit with fewer tears) whenever she could — over breakfast, as we worked, when we met in corridor or kailyard — all but ignoring my insistence each time that we needn’t ever speak of it again. 

This was nothing like the tone of those anxious reprises. This was tight, tense, and my mouth had gone completely dry hearing it.  “What is it you... need to say?” 

She looked out into the valley, steeled. “That it was wrong of me to presume to ken what your life was, in the time you were gone from us; to have the arrogance to accuse ye of havin’ an easy way of things. I ken ye endured much. I’m sorry.”

.....What the bloody hell had Jamie told her? 

 I cleared my throat, but my voice still came out in a phlegmy croak. “....’Endured?’”

She looked at me, seeming startled. Maybe she was thinking that was all she’d need to say. She must have seen in my eyes, though, that this wasn’t enough. 

“I’ve been thinkin’ these last days, but also after Jamie went after ye....about what ye said of the time when ye were away in the colonies. That there was good reason why ye couldna send word?” 

I nodded, and noticed she she seemed to struggle to breathe normally. A flush was beginning to creep up her neck. 

“It’s been tossin’ about and around in my mind, tryin’ to think what that must have been—The circumstances that could have kept ye from bein’ at liberty to do what ye wished; and it finally, it came to me that if—That perhaps ye’d been.... God, please forgive me, Claire.” There was real anguish in her voice but she was determined. “I thought perhaps in the earlier years, before the apothecary shop...Maybe ye’d been pressed into service...of some kind or another... against your will—”

She wasn’t looking at me, but there was such shame and pity in her expression that— Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, was she thinking I’d been indentured into servitude? Or forced into a brothel to work as a—

“—and been too afraid later to say anythin’ of it.” 

“Jenny....” I reached over and took her hand, shaking my head firmly. “It isn’t—” 

“Ye dinna have to tell me a thing,” she said hastily, going still more pink and agitated, mortified. “I swear to ye, it isna—I dinna wish ye to tell me anythin’, truly: I’d no’ have ye relive anythin’ so painful or—” She pulled her hand away and covered her face. “Christ, I ken it sounds like I’m pushin’ ye to tell me things, and I promise, that ISNA my intent, damn it all.” 

I waited, far more curious than upset or alarmed. “What is it you do intend?” 

“I wanted ye to ken that I....” 

She wasn’t accustomed to being this open, Jenny Murray. Her entire life, she had had to be strong; the one in charge of running things, keeping her feelings carefully subsumed for survival and efficiency. Having to bare herself now was a struggle; but this clearly was the true purpose that brought her up the hill, and she was a Fraser besides. She would say what was needed. 

A sound of deep frustration, and finally: “That I care. That ye matter to me,” she said more firmly, seeing the blankness of my expression as I took this in. “I want us to be sisters again, Claire. I mean it, and wi’ that resolved in my heart, I feel the—I canna cease feelin’ the hurt of the things that have befallen ye, even if I never ken what they are.....It’s the same as I feel for Jamie, ken?”

I started to try and speak (say what, God only knew), but she stopped me, her eyes pleading. “He was gone from us for ten years—and I ache for each one because I ken he suffered,” she whispered, voice cracking. “I ken because he came back from Ardsmuir and England even more wounded in his heart than he left.....but I dinna ken why. I dinna ken what happened to my own brother. It’s the same as I’m feelin’ for you, Claire.” 

She gasped for a breath, a strangled one, her throat tight on the verge of crying.  “So I came up here to say that I grieve your lost years, too, whatever came to pass, but it doesna matter to me. No matter what happened, or what ye had to do to—what ye—What matters is, ye survived.” A tear did slip down her cheek. “And I want ye to ken that I’m glad you’re well, and—and that you’re here now, and that ye have a new start, and....”

I was absolutely dumb, struck through the heart by her passion, and so watched in silence as her face suddenly tightened into that mask behind which her brother, too, was so skillfully able to hide, smoothing out the raw emotion. She clenched her jaw and looked once more dead-ahead. “And that’s all there is about it.” 

My mouth was making a vain attempt to move, to respond, but I couldn’t speak. 

‘Your own lost years.’ 

To my surprise, when my gaze finally dropped, I was holding the flannel-wrapped parcel in my hands, there against the wool of my skirt. 

I could hear the crinkle of the plastic beneath as I squeezed. 

I didn’t endure you, Baby. 

And you aren’t lost. 

“Will you hear me out, Jenny?”

Now her eyes were wide with alarm. “About what?”

“Everything.”

Jenny had said not a word as I told my tale, only stared, first at me, later at the photographs cradled in her hands. 

She’d been looking at the last one for a very long time; at Brianna, grown. 

“It’s—” 

Barely a whisper, but shaking with such feeling. 

“—She’s beautiful, Claire.” 

She breathed heavily. “And safe. In her.... her place.” A deep shudder. “Christ....” 

She went speechless, then, mouth falling softly open without thought as she traced a finger over the image, the twins to her own blue eyes staring back up at her. 

I’d watched Jenny’s face intently as I’d spoken; had seen her take in all that I revealed, felt my heart ease and rise with tentative joy as I witnessed the thoughts settling and taking root in her mind. Still, I had to ask. 

“You do believe me?”

She looked up, startled. “Do ye think I could doubt?” 

“Many would,” I said with a small shrug, “and have. Brianna herself, for one.” 

She stared shrewdly at me for a moment. “I suppose...ye didna have any proper proof to show the lass....only your word. But no one could doubt wi’ the proof of it right before their eyes, such as this.” Her own eyes turned back to the photographs as though drawn by their spell, flipping to the one of the yellow school bus. “Not after seein’ for themselves the other world....the one that’s to come....” 

I sighed out the last of my fear, feeling it vanish out of every pore before her honest belief. “Still, I would have understood if you didn’t accept things at first. It’s—a bloody lot to take in. You might well have dismissed the pictures as sorcery, or—”

“There are a good many things,” Jenny said, very simply, “that are beyond comprehension. Spirits. Miracles. Prophecies and visions. Fetches. But our belief or lack of it doesna make them less real, does it?” 

This was said rhetorically, and it struck me for the first time in many years that while the permeation of science fiction novels and things like Doctor Who in popular culture might give a twentieth-century listener a conceptualization for the notion of time travel, a person raised such as Jenny was far more readily conditioned in an even more crucial way: to believe in things unseen.  

Jenny looked back down at her hands, smiling again at newborn Bree on her blanket. “I dinna understand the how or wherefore of those things, no more than I can understand how a person could have come from a year—from a century that hasna yet come to pass.” She handed me back the photographs. “But I can believe. And I do.”

I smiled, tremulously, trying damned hard not to cry. “That’s more or less what your brother said, when I first told him.” 

She smiled too, with a little burst of a laugh. In the same moment, though, her eyes fell dark, and I watched in horror as she crumpled, face falling into her hands. 

“Jenny?” I very cautiously laid my palm on her shoulder. 

She reached back and grasped my hand, clinging to it. “Just—It’s—Jamie, and—” She was weeping. “Give m-me a moment, aye?” 

“All the time you need.” Belief or not, the magnitude of such things was too much for a body to bear—at least at first.

At last, she heaved a breath and looked up to the sky, shaking her head. “What ye’ve told me...revealed...” A sob. “It breaks my heart and puts it back together at all once...only it keeps on breakin’, again and again, and I dinna ken if it shall ever stop.”  

"I’m so sorry... I had hoped—” I said carefully, “I’d hoped that it would ease you, in some way—”

“Oh, and it has,” she said, nodding hard. “Christ, it has. I feel such joy and such magnificent relief wi’ it. To ken for certain that ye didna betray or forget Jamie, or us—he sent ye; that ye always loved him, and ye couldna have come back; that ye...ye had to save your—” A small sob and a gesture to the pictures. “—your sweet, wee lassie.... Even the mere fact of her: that you and Jamie were blessed wi’ a living child..... It does ease me.... more than ye know. ” 

She blinked hard and shook violently, struggling to get the syllables out aright. “But those in themselves are also tragedy, ken? All that you and Jamie lost to Culloden. Such .... such sorrows....”  

I shifted and put both my arms around her, as much as for myself as to comfort. I held tightly to her, struggling to hold myself together, to keep from slipping off that same precipice of remembered despair and grief. 

“And then there are the things that are only grief. For when I think back upon what Jamie was carryin’ all those years—No’ only loss but the knowledge and the uncertainty, both....Of where ye’d gone and why and what might have befallen ye. He had... To think that my wee brother had no one else to help carry that terrible burden alongside him....” 

She pressed her head harder against my shoulder, truly at the point of breaking. “And knowin’ that I urged him to marry, when he kent full well—or hoped wi’ all his soul—that ye lived and breathed somewhere in the—in the place he’d sent you and the bairn.....And to ken that he never will know her...Never hold his wean in his arms...”

“He chose to marry Laoghaire,” I managed to choke out, smoothing her hair, even as my heart broke with all the other staggering truths to which there could be no counter or comfort. “He wouldn’t have gone through with it, if he hadn’t believed it was the right thing for him.”

“Aye.... Aye, you’re right,” she whispered. One fist was clenched hard in front of her mouth. “But my heart was so hard against him, Claire. So....scornful. In the years before Ardsmuir, when he wouldna consider marryin’ or even seek out a woman to keep him whole...when he couldna seem ever to shake your ghost from his shoulder. It... I judged him for it. I hated him for bein’ weak....for givin’ up on living. And I hated you, sometimes.... your memory, for having such a hold on his soul as to destroy him so...It shames me so unbearably deep, now that I ken the truth.”

Things went quiet, then, the whistling wind punctuated only by soft, small whispers from time to time.  

When the sobs subsided for us both, she straightened enough to look at me, eyes still streaming. “But I ken better, now. I ken it would have been just the same for me. Were I him. Were I you. I would have mourned and wished and waited. I’d have let myself slip away and not kent what to do to want to live again.” Her hand cupped fiercely to my cheek. “I would have gone through to that place of safety for my child’s sake, if not my own. And I hope I would have had the strength to survive like you....and the courage to stake everythin’ on one hope....and come back.”

Jenny bade me go down to the house alone; insisted that she wanted to stay up at the fort for a time longer, to think. She would bring the basket, she said. ‘Go to him.’ 

I descended slowly down, winding through the grasses rather than the rocky paths, each breath a joy in my chest. The joy of being believed. Of truth.  Of being accepted and loved. 

In the upheaval of the past hour, I’d all but forgotten Laoghaire, but as I reached the plateau of the smaller rise just above the house, there she was, standing in the dooryard, standing with Jamie. They weren’t looking at one another; his hands were gripped respectfully behind his back; she was looking in the other direction. But their mouths were moving. Speaking terms was a good sign, surely. 

Suddenly they both looked up toward the archway, through which came a wild pack of children,  Jenny and Ian’s grandchildren mostly, who all veered in an exuberant swarm to vanish around the side of the house, leaving only—

Jamie walked stiffly forward, slowly, so careful and reserved. I saw him break, though, completely, when the smaller girl started to sprint for him. He closed the distance in a trice, his arms flung wide to catch her. She was tall for her age and surely heavy, but he held her as though she were little more than a toddler. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see hers, and it broke my heart. The other girl—Marsali?—came close, too, coming under the arm Jamie held out to her, the three of them woven tight in an embrace of such obviously-genuine feeling that my reflex was to look away, to give them privacy. 

I didn’t though. I didn’t turn aside, and that brought a sudden, unexpected wash of peace over me, settling down into my very marrow. 

For this, this scene before me, wasn’t something of which Jamie was ashamed. The fact that he loved these two girls was not something that needed to be covered up. This was one of the pieces of himself from those twenty years he wanted to keep, not bury away to shield himself from sharp edges; perhaps the only of those hundred faces that he did wish to recognize in the mirror: when he had been father, and had been loved as one in return.

Would he get to see them often? Would they come visit us in Edinburgh? Would we even stay in Edinburgh, for that matter? Would we—I let those worries drift away into the chilly air, keeping for another day. 

Still, a thought bubbled up from my gut, the bitter, resentful part of my being. 

You’re right. It isn’t, I answered it with a stab of oh-so-many different griefs and longings—Faith, Bree, and....yes, even William, for Jamie’s sake, foremost among them: It isn’t the way either of us would have planned. 

Even if we settled in the perfect city with the perfect accommodations, the perfect professions for us both, and the perfect compatriots to support and befriend us: it wasn’t the life we’d dreamed of, when we’d first come to Lallybroch all those years ago; before Wentworth, before Paris, before Culloden. 

And yet, as I watched their farewells, watched the three women ride away, as I felt my feet flying down toward the dooryard, I knew only a fierce, radiant sort of joy, defiant and wild and free. I felt it in each footstep and every breath. I felt it soar as I came into the yard and Jamie turned.  I saw it in the smile that burst across his face, even though his cheeks were wet and his eyes red. And I cherished it in the feel of his body against mine as we crashed into one another.

No, it wasn’t what we’d have planned, but it was ours.  It was us. Jamie. Claire. And between us, we could hold all the pieces—be they jagged, broken, or absent—that made us what we were. What we would be. 

The End 

[missingverse]

Missing Chapter Ten

One month until:

Helga just about made it to the side of the field before she retched into the bunker. Nothing much came up (she'd been too nauseous to eat that morning) but some acidic fluid that burned her throat. She felt slightly better.

“You okay, Hellbelle?”

Patrick knew she hated cutesy nicknames, and that's probably why he kept using it. Sure enough, as she looked up at him and scowled he had that Robert-Redford-esque cheeky smile pinned to his classically handsome face. Most girls would probably kill to have him give them a nickname.

“I'm fine,” she grumbled, wiping her mouth on her sleeve and leaning on her bat. “Stomach's a bit off today.”

“You're not getting the stomach flu, are you?” Patrick asked. He still had that 'charming' grin but his eyes looked worried.

“I don't think so,” she answered. “It's just my stomach. It's like....burning...”

Now the grin dropped, and she could tell he was half-thinking of calling his mom to get her to the doctor. It wouldn't have been the first time.

“That's not good,” he mused, rocking on his heels and looking out at the rest of the baseball team. He gestured to the other junior coach to take over and took her by the elbow, lead her into the seats in the bunker.

“Sit this round out,” Patrick told her. “How long have you had this pain?”

“I dunno, couple of days....”

“A couple of DAYS?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“It wasn't that bad,” she countered, folding her arms sullenly. “Playoffs are coming up.”

“You don't need the practice like the rest of them, you know that,” he said, shaking his head in that infuriating-but-oh-so-reasonable way he often did. “Anything else not working right? Or just the stomach pains?”

He had his phone out and she just knew he was going to message his mom with every little detail. In a way, Helga was relieved. The pains had been worrying her for a while, and Patrick's mom was always so sensible about this kind of thing.

“I feel really sick in the mornings,” she told him. “And really tired. Kinda dizzy. It passes after a while but...it's making school hard to get through.”

Patrick's face was solemn now. He was only thirteen, but sometimes he felt like a much older teenager.

“I'm gonna ask you something, don't freak out,” he sighed, casting his eyes towards the ceiling. “You haven't been....doing stuff with any guys, have you?”

She knew exactly what he meant, but the urge to mess with him was too strong.

“What kind of stuff?” she asked, blinking innocently.

“You know...” he mumbled, visibly uncomfortable and not looking her in the eye. “Underwear stuff?”

She burst out laughing, and he went red as a tomato.

“No, I can assure you I haven't been doing 'underwear stuff' with anyone,” she chuckled. “Not that I can remember, anyway.”

“I had to ask,” he said, scowling down at her.

“It's probably just some allergy thing,” she sighed, leaning back against the wall with a hand on her still-churning stomach. “Bob's been doing all the cooking lately so who knows what is going in there. If he could feed us nothing but chipotle and beans he would.”

“Sounds like a good excuse to have dinner at my place,” Patrick offered with a carefree shrug. “Stay over tonight, see if you feel better tomorrow.”

“Don't you have to ask your mom first?”

“As if,” he snorted. “Mom loves you. If she had to choose between us she'd probably pick you.”

Helga hesitated for just a moment; she did tend to feel less tired and sore when she stayed out of the house, but the cave was getting drafty in the rainy season and Phoebe wasn't as open to sleepovers anymore. And Patrick's mom had a spare bed made up for her.

People would spread even more rumours about them dating, but who cares?

…..

Arnold didn't want Helga to come with them to see Officer Plaskett.

He also didn't want to tell her why he didn't want her to come with them.

It was bad enough that Phoebe would be there. She was full of self-loathing for blowing Helga off the night she went missing, this would only make things ten times worse.

And there was that little shred of himself, a little patch of meanness that felt she was right to hate herself, if she hadn't been so selfish Helga wouldn't have gone to the cave and wouldn't have vanished in the first place...

...but he couldn't think that way. Helga didn't, and she had more right to be angry at Phoebe than anyone.

“It's half twelve,” Helga informed him, tapping her heel at the door. “Shouldn't we be going now? We're going to be late otherwise....”

There was no easy way to say it. It had to be now, whether he liked it or not.

“I don't think you should come with us.”

Her reaction was predictable; she scowled, crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at him. It put him in mind of a cobra, for some reason.

“Why?” she demanded.

“Look, there's stuff I'm going to have to discuss with Officer Plaskett that's pretty harsh,” he began, open-palmed and hopefully reasonable-looking. “He might bring up something you can't remember, and if it's really bad....I'm worried for you. What if you fade out again?”

“I'll fade back in here,” she shrugged.

“We don't know that,” he countered. “Maybe you can't remember anything for a good reason.”

The annoyance on her face faded, replaced by something he couldn't quite figure out...fear? Caution?

“This is about the memory stick,” she said, and Arnold's heart sank. “You looked at it.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking hard at the ground.

“And you think I can't handle it.”

“It's not that, I think you could handle just about anything...” he ground out. Some of the images on that stick flickered through his mind, static and hazy. “But I don't want to overload you with this stuff. And I can't talk to you in Plaskett's office, so if you get upset there's nothing I can do about it. I'll tell you myself, when I come back. I swear. If you still want to hear it.”

She sighed, moved away from the door and sank onto her blanket nest, refusing to look at Arnold.

“Fine,” she huffed. But was that a note of relief he detected in her voice?

“I'll be back soon,” he promised.

He felt much lighter leaving the boarding house than he had all morning. It was still a grim task he had to complete, but at least he got to leave the biggest problem at home.

…..

They'd been very excited to have a real police officer come to class, even though just about everyone pretended it was lame. There was some posturing from the class clowns and the wannabe bad boys and some low-level gabbing from the girls about whether or not the officer would be a handsome hero cop.

Officer Plaskett was handsome enough, not movie-star worthy but he had an open, friendly face and a few upturned crow's feet to make him look distinguished. He handled the rudeness from the troublemakers with easy wry humour so in the end even the most dedicated delinquent warmed to him.

And he seemed very eager to assure them all that the police were there for them if they were in trouble.

“The average age for joining a gang is dropping all the time,” he told them. “The best way to keep members in the gang is to get them in young and make them too afraid to leave. You tell them that they'll get in trouble for going to the cops, and they just dig themselves in deeper. Truth is, if you are involved in gang activity and you go to the police, we would take your age into consideration and you wouldn't get in any trouble with the law.”

“You'd get in trouble with the gang, though,” Gerald drawled from the back of the classroom.

Everyone snickered, but Officer Plaskett kept on smiling.

“You'll be in trouble with the gang either way,” he shrugged. “At some point, you'll cross someone you shouldn't have and the consequences will be pretty harsh. Gangs use violence to intimidate the members, they could easily invent a reason to come down hard on you just to keep you in your place.”

“Isn't that just human nature?” Helga said suddenly, having sat in somewhat bored silence for the entire lecture. “I mean, that kind of thing is hardly exclusive to gangs.”

“You would know, slugger,” one of Suzanne Fischer's resentful 'friends' piped up from the back of the room.

“That's pretty astute,” Plaskett answered. “You're right, it's not limited to gangs. This dynamic appears in lots of social groups....school bullies, for example. Or the invading force in times of war. It even pops up in families. The key element is that whoever's in charge makes whoever they're intimidating feel too afraid to ask for help.”

A thoughtful silence descended on the class. The officer had used a lot of long words that went over some heads, but they got the idea, more or less. Plaskett stood and grabbed a piece of chalk.

“I'm going to give you all a direct line to my office,” he said, scrawling a set of numbers on the blackboard. “If you feel, at any point and for any reason, like you're in danger, you can call me and I will help you.”

Everyone took down the number. Everyone.

…..

Officer Plaskett looked older than Arnold remembered. He had more crow's feet now, and grey hairs peppered across his brow. He ushered them into his cluttered office, paper folders stacked on every available surface, and offered them coffee (they refused).

“I have a feeling I know who this is about,” he said, sitting down. He looked tired, and they hadn't even begun.

“Maybe,” Arnold said. “We have new evidence.”

Phoebe squirmed in her seat, whether eagerness to find out what was on the stick or nervous energy Arnold couldn't tell.

“I'd like to see that,” Plaskett said, leaning back lazily in his chair. “We combed every inch of that house, every inch of those woods. We didn't find much. Were you friends of Ms Pataki's?”

“I'm her best friend,” Phoebe blurted out.

Plaskett's eye twitched a little, no doubt from Phoebe speaking in the present tense.

“I spoke to your partner after she went missing,” she continued. “I told him she had a cave in the woods she went to all the time...”

“We searched all the caves. Nothing,” Plaskett said.

“Yesterday we found it,” Arnold told him. “And I think I know how you missed it. It was a runoff tunnel, I think, from an old river. It was dug into the side of the valley, it doesn't appear on the topography maps. All her stuff is there. We found this.”

He handed the stick to Officer Plaskett, who turned it over in his hands curiously.

“Have you looked at this?” he asked.

“I have. She hasn't,” Arnold answered.

Arnold watched the officer's face closely as he put the stick into his hard drive, opened the folders, scrolled down through the pictures. Plaskett was utterly composed, except that as he scrolled further and further the colour drained from his face. Phoebe fidgeted in her seat.

“Well,” Plaskett said at last, closing the folder and sliding away from his computer as though it was infected by something. “It's solid evidence. Though it just confirms something we knew already.”

“You knew?” Arnold ground out.

“We found the cameras,” Plaskett said. “The hard drive was wiped but we found enough evidence for Bob Pataki to get a custodial sentence.”

“Cameras?” Phoebe queried, looking from the officer to Arnold and back. “What cameras?”

“She was going to see you the day after she went missing,” Arnold said, ignoring Phoebe. “She was going to give you the stick. Someone stopped her.”

“We have reason to believe Bob Pataki is not that someone,” Plaskett told him pointedly. “From what we've gathered, Bob's exploitation of his daughter was for financial reasons. His business was doing badly and he needed money. Pictures like the ones on that stick fetch a high price on the dark web.”

It was bad enough just thinking of Helga's father abusing her. To know he had sold her out to strangers was even worse.

Phoebe, it seemed, had finally caught up with the conversation. Her hand was clasped over her mouth. Arnold could feel her shaking beside him.

“I regret not being able to meet with her when she found these pictures,” Plaskett said suddenly. He had been stoic, mostly, up until now. His mask was starting to crumble. “I may have been able to save her. It should never have happened like this. I let her down.”

Phoebe was sobbing beside him, but all Arnold could feel was a sense of cold rage.

Phoebe had let her down. She needed somewhere safe to escape to and Phoebe refused her.

Officer Plaskett had let her down. She had crucial evidence to give to him, and he didn't take it. He wrote his number on their classroom blackboard promising he'd always be there for them, and the first time someone reached out to him he failed to be there.

Bob had let her down. He had options to fix his financial issues but the first thing that occurred to him was to throw his daughter to the wolves.

Miriam had let her down. She couldn't stay aware long enough to protect her, if she could even be bothered.

Teachers, doctors, that therapist she saw for a while, Helga's entire life seemed to be an endless parade of people letting her down.

…..

Helga pounced on him as soon as he came home. Distantly Arnold wondered if she'd been pacing the floor since he left.

“You've been gone for hours,” she said. “It didn't take that long, surely?”

He had dropped Phoebe home in a fug of miserable silence, and then walked around town not wanting to go home. He'd gone to the cafe and bought a churro he could barely eat, went to see a movie he couldn't focus on, and then spent two hours just wandering around. When it got dark he finally had to admit to himself he needed to get this over with.

“Plaskett entered in the new evidence, but he said it just confirmed something he already knew,” Arnold began. “He knows why you left home in the first place. It just never made the papers.”

“Tell me why,” she demanded. “I don't care how bad it is, just spit it out.”

“He thinks your father didn't kill you. But he definitely did drug you and took pictures of you when you were unconscious.”

“What kind of pictures?” she asked, but Arnold could tell by the look on her face she already knew. She was remembering something.

“The kind you sell online to people who like little girls,” he said.

She sank down onto her blanket nest, ashen-faced but otherwise taking it all very well.

“That's what was on the stick, then?” she asked quietly.

“Yes,” Arnold sighed. “I'm so sorry.”

“And Bob just got away with it.”

“No, he got a custodial sentence,” he told her. “They found hidden cameras in your room. He would have gotten longer if they'd found the pictures but....”

“But they never got them. I had them when I disappeared.”

“Are you okay?”

She looked up at him and smiled, but it was a watery smile, barely there.

“I'm not going to fade out, don't worry. Is it weird I'm not even surprised? Bob never wanted me around unless he had a use for me....I suppose I got lucky I went away before he found something else to do with me.”

“The new evidence might lead to a breakthrough,” Arnold suggested. “That's what Plaskett said....”

“You know, maybe I didn't go missing because anyone took me,” she said. Her voice sounded almost far away, it was so quiet. “Maybe I just decided it wasn't worth living knowing those pictures were out there. Maybe I just walked out into the forest and found some quiet place to die in peace.”

Tears pricked the back of Arnold's eyes, but he couldn't afford to be the one crying. Helga deserved as many tears as she could shed, but she didn't look like she had a single tear inside of her. Her face was still as a porcelain mask.

She just looked....dead.

“I don't think so,” Arnold said. “I think you'd have wanted to live long enough to see Bob pay for what he did. You had enough sense to copy the evidence and phone Plaskett in the first place, I don't think you would have stopped there. Hell, even dying didn't stop you! You came back!”

She smiled, faintly.

“Maybe,” she whispered, and then drew up her knees under her and lay across the nest. She curled inwards on herself, the way people did when they were badly hurt.

Arnold swallowed, crossed the room and threw back the covers on his bed.

“Sleep over here,” he demanded. “With me.”

“What?” Now she looked startled, and more like herself. “Why?”

“I don't think you should be alone right now,” he told her.

“We're in the same room,” she half-laughed.

“No good,” he said. “You need to be over here with me. I want to be sure you're still here.”

She rolled her eyes and got up, crossed the room and slid into his bed. He slid in beside her. It was cramped, the bed wasn't exactly made for two people, but it wasn't uncomfortable. He put his arms around her and pulled her close, tucking her into his body as if he could shield her from the outside.

They didn't speak. He felt her tears soaking into his t-shirt but he said nothing and just held her as close as he could. It was the least he could do.

[acoolguyscoollife]

Chapter 32: The Grid

The next two days were, to put it simply, busy as hell. Tabitha was closing in on Uchen’s location, and while we hoped we were wrong, it definitely seemed like we were going to fight, which meant training. I didn’t mind too much, finding that sinking my time into what I was doing helped keep my mind from other issues, but I could tell that people were getting as tired as I was, and had no reason to push themselves further like I did. I felt especially bad for Amy and Aki, who were the ones that were training with me constantly. 

Seth and Tabitha only came in when there were short periods of downtime between the computer doing… something I wasn’t aware of. Aki, however, was forcing herself to fight on the same level as I was, challenging me at every chance she got. I wasn’t stupid enough to go easy on her, because if she thought she was already on a similar experience level as I was, she would end up being reckless and it could get her hurt. I tried not to pull my punches too much, but there are only so many ways you can fight with a sword without actually severing any limbs or stabbing them. Amy posed more of a challenge, with the two of us pretty much hitting an even level of exhaustion when we duelled, only stopping because if we tried to fight harder, there would end up being more than just basic injuries. By the end of the second day, however, Aki had gotten a lot more improved, only having slight flaws in her fighting style that seemed more like flukes than anything else. When she challenged me to another duel, once again with no holds barred, I could tell that something was different. Sure enough, I hadn’t been as prepared as I should have been, and almost got my ass kicked for it. However, at crucial points, her attacks were slower than they could have been, so knocking her down was an opening quickly given to me. It was only when she used one of my signature moves against me that things began to click. Her foot connecting with my groin, knocking the wind out of me and causing me to cry out in pain, made the gears in my head turn. The slower movements, where she had been as agile as the cat that most of her appearance and mannerisms seemed to come from, were because of tiredness, more than usual. And while I didn’t have a patent on groin-kicks, the way she had let herself fall onto her back, and how she had been fighting leading up to that, made it clear that she had chosen to mimic me, presumably with the recording of us training. The sheer number of cameras in this place was insane. With her having taken me down, and with my own move no less, I had to concede her victory, and congratulate her, both while keeping my cool demeanour.

“Ow.” I said, one hand on the back of my head and the other on my unmentionables. Looking around the room, I could see that Amy was wincing, one eye covered very poorly by her hand, and that Aki was clearly considering whether she had gone too far. “Good round.” I reassured her, despite still not being able to feel my legs. “Here’s hoping that whatever we fight has balls though, otherwise that move won’t really work too well.”

“Well, it’s just one guy, right? No matter how smart someone is, they can be defeated by a kick in the nards.” Amy’s wisdom as to testicular torment got me thinking, mostly about how much pain I was in, but also in how little I actually knew about Uchen’s former protégé. Tabitha had told me that that the guy was smart and also insane, which, judging from her having roped us into this whole thing, wasn’t too uncommon. The more I thought, the more I wanted answers, and I knew I wasn’t going to get those answers by sitting around and fighting someone who was now able to fight back. I needed to go straight to her.

 The three of us marched back into the main room, where we were greeted by a bleary-eyed Seth, and a manic-haired Tabitha, neither of whom were a very good welcome wagon.

“Sup, man?” Seth asked, or it might have been Eddie. It was getting annoying that there wasn’t any way to distinctly figure out who was who, but what could I really do except bitch about it? I gave him a wave, not stopping my stride towards Tabitha.

“Oh hey guys, you’re just in time. We’ve pretty much locked on now, but obviously we need to brief each other and prepare for what’s coming.” Tabitha said, looking up at us with a smile that definitely suggested that we were test subjects.

“Yeeah, on that subject…” I began, drawing out my words ever so slightly because I had a feeling that she wouldn’t like putting her plans on hold for some boring exposition. “Me and the others were thinking that maybe we should know more about the guy we’re fighting. The last thing we need is to go in unprepared.” I finished, and before I had even been given a chance to close my moth, I was sold down the river.

“I never said that.” Amy said, to which she got murmurs of agreement from Seth and Aki. Tabitha raised an eyebrow.

“Why would you screw me like this, damn it?” I said, turning back around to face her. Seth giggled from where he was, and I quickly knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“That’s what she said!” He almost exploded, before bursting into peels of laughter. We let him take a second to finish, before turning our focus back to the main task at hand.

“So, you were saying something about how we should delay the important thing we need to do in order to make sure you know some life details about someone we’re probably gonna end up killing?” The room quickly fell silent as Tabitha finished her question, with my only response being to nod.

“Honestly, now that he brings it up, it makes sense.” Seth conceded, making me feel less like the only one who actually gave a shit about this stuff. Tabitha gave a sigh, before turning her attention to the computer again. Without looking at us, she began to speak.

“His name was Gerald Untermeyer, and he was… well, amazing.” She began, almost as if fangirling over him. “I told you about the stuff he’d been working on, but I barely even touched on everything he’d already made. Without his help, I doubt Uchen would have even been able to get as far as he did with the machine.” Though Tabitha didn’t say what the machine was, it didn’t take much effort to figure it out from context clues.

“He helped that much? Surely if he was that smart, he’d have made it by himself and the whole issue of what to do with it would never have come up.” I said, briefly forgetting that the guy in question had been insane and probably would have just not thought to do that. However, Tabitha had a more reasonable explanation.

“He lacked the money. While some of what he had worked on was astounding, it was a net loss overall. So he came to work under Uchen, and soon enough they were like partners.” Tabitha tapped a few buttons on the computer keyboard, and diagrams appeared on the screen. There was a lot of scribbling that I could barely decipher, but a 3D-rendered image of some of the machinery I could see in the room was also visible. “Uchen worked on the hardware, and Untermeyer worked on the software, including…” She trailed off as she hit more buttons, causing the screen to now display something entirely different. It almost looked like a room of sorts, with neon lighting covering the floor and walls. I watched as the colours pulsed, and changed, with every few moments. “The Grid.”

“Aptly named.” I replied, deadpan. “What is it?” The room didn’t changed as the view zoomed out, revealing more of what was inside the room. Or rather, revealing more of what wasn’t in the room, which was anything.

“The void we stay in sometimes is an offshoot of The Grid. The void holds our physical attributes, while The Grid digitizes whatever data it can, serving as a backup in case of any issues that might arise.” Tabitha pressed a button, and figures appeared in the grid. Though I’d never really seen it from an outside perspective before (aside from the clone in Despair), one of them was unmistakably me. The others were everyone else that was in the room and listening to her, which only prompted more confusion. “These are our data selves. They remember pretty much everything we do, but they’re not alive. If we end up losing memories, we can use them to restore our own.” Tabitha looked over at them. “I’m not going to lie, even I’m not completely sure what they can be utilised for.”

“Then what’s the point in telling us about The Grid? Surely we should be focusing on Untermeyer, right?” Seth asked, and I could tell from Tabitha’s expression that it wasn’t that simple.

“In theory, that would have been the situation, but the closer we lock on to Uchen, the more apparent it becomes as to where he is.” Tabitha bit the bottom of her lip as she paused, looking back at the screen. “They’re inside The Grid.” Of course they were.

“What does that mean for us?” Amy questioned, and Tabitha shrugged.

“How are we going to get in?” Aki chimed in, and Tabitha shrugged again.

“Will we even escape?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer, and not sure that Tabitha even knew it. Sure enough, Tabitha shrugged in response.

“I can’t answer any of these questions because I don’t know The Grid like Untermeyer or Uchen do. Thankfully, when we get to him, Uchen should be able to help us get out of there.” The general situation didn’t bode well at all, but Tabitha at least had a plan for getting out. “My assumption is that Untermeyer ended up becoming purely digital, so the mirrors, while working, will only be splitting him into separated chunks of data. From there he should hopefully fade into nothingness with time.” Tabitha reassured us, or maybe it was herself.

“I swear to god, if we end up riding on motorbikes and throwing disks at each other, I’m going to kill myself.” I said, looking back at the rest of the group. “Actually, thinking about that, what are we going to be fighting with?” I asked, unsheathing the Cobatana and the magic dagger and looking at them. It would be the first fight I would have done with the dagger, which was definitely going to be interesting.

“Well, nothing really changes, we still have everything we had.” Tabitha said, doing a hand-wavey gesture to signify her magic. “Except Seth, who for some reason threw away a shotgun ages ago.” Tabitha raised a very valid point, and soon enough all eyes were on Seth.

“I like my pistols more.” Seth said, and I groaned aloud. He had forgotten what every game we’d ever played together had taught him, and had decided against hoarding everything he could weapon-wise. What a moron. “Besides, Eddie should be able to help me, and I’ll just get Amy to make me a second pistol.” Seth finished, and now it was Amy’s turn to be annoyed.

“What am I going to be making a second gun from? The air?” She asked exasperatedly, and from the look on Seth’s face, it was clear he didn’t know that wasn’t possible.

“I… uh…” Seth began, which was a glorious way to start a sentence, in the grand scheme of things. Amy rolled her eyes.

“I can probably tweak something we have, but you really need to tell me when we’re doing stuff like this.” Amy replied, and Seth moved to thank her. However, a chime rang out across the room before he had a chance, and I looked around in confusion.

“Was someone microwaving something?” I asked, unsure of where the noise had come from.

“We’ve locked in. Ready or not, we’re going.” Tabitha said, moving to the area where we would be in the sights of the machine. I was most certainly not ready, but I was also definitely not about to say that. We were in the endgame now.

[aestheticdumpp]

Needing Help

Members of the Order of the Phoenix crowded around the Weasley dining room table. It was late, dark and quiet, and there was a sense of tension that hung in the air. It was unshakable, and everyone could feel it, even the more junior members of the organisation. In the upstairs of the Burrow, a large group of teenagers sat around. A set of twins, their brother and sister, two black girls, a blond awkward boy, and a dark skinned boy, all crowded around, staying close to each other for they knew something was coming – but what, they couldn't say.

The answer came around one in the morning, with a panicked knock at the door. Arthur Weasley opened the door, with a ready-to-pounce Remus and Tonks nearby. The Weasley patriarch had gaped, before acting quickly at the sight before him:  The Malfoy boy, looking as if he hadn't slept in weeks, held an injured girl who was a familiar face to him.

She was one of the girls that Ginny had invited back to the Burrow, Holly. Despite being in Ron's year, she'd found a friend in the only Weasley girl. He'd nearly had a heart attack when he'd seen her own red hair, thinking for a moment he really did have another child.

Part of him had that shock when he opened the door.

Arthur called for Remus and Tonks, who charged in, before realising this was not an attack but a cry for help. Remus and Arthur took the injured girl from Malfoy, who stared at Tonks. They were cousins, or something; she hadn't cared to do the math on it, but they were family. He'd brought back the young woman who Remus considered his own. And they needed answers.

She brought the blond inside, keeping a heavy hand on his shoulder to keep him grounded. Molly Weasley had come downstairs, made a noise of surprise at the frightened young man, before waking the adults in the house.

In the upstairs of the Burrow, Remus and Arthur woke Charlie and told him to move, to give his bed up to the not entirely conscious Holly, to which he didn't complain.

They laid her down on Charlie's thick furs, and the eldest Weasley son asked her a series of questions before fetching whatever magical medical supplies he needed.

'Keep her awake' had been his only instruction.

Remus sat beside her, taking her cold and clammy hand in his and talking softly to her. He didn't want to interrogate her too harshly, but he hadn't seen her in months. Nobody had heard from her in weeks.

So he didn't. Instead, he kept her up to date on all she'd missed. His marriage was going well. Tonks was having a boy. They liked Teddy for a name. Hermione and Ron were still dancing around each other, but Madison and Neville had bitten the bullet. George kept making jokes about hearing whatever was around his missing ear. They'd all missed her terribly.

He heard Charlie's sharp instruction of 'stay in your rooms' somewhere into the bedrooms before returning. He swapped places with Remus, who came downstairs to the Malfoy boy, where he was halfway coddled between Molly and threatened by Moody.

Tonks, it seemed, was creating a brilliant halfway point, after wrapping him in the closest thing they had to a shock blanket and sitting on the table in front of him.

"What happened?"

They all gathered around the young Malfoy as he began to speak.

"I got forced into this Death Eater stuff in the middle of sixth. She was looking after me the whole time. She just wanted to help, you know, make sure I was alright... only wanted to take care of me. Anyway, I... I disappeared for a while, but wrote to her when I could. They caught me, though. They brought her in. They..."

He choked on his words, sniffling. His white-knuckled hands gripped the couch cushions, searching for purchase.

"They needed to know she wasn't letting out secrets. She's a Hufflepuff, and she's been seen with your lot forever. They didn't trust her."

"Did they hurt her?" Remus had asked, gasping.

"Veritaserum and an Imperius curse, to make sure she hadn't told anybody anything. But I hadn't told her anything to begin with, so it was pointless."

He didn't mention how she'd been knocked around a bit, and had been returned to him with a bruising cheek bone and rope burns. He wasn't sure it'd help.

"They made her stay. She couldn't really leave after she'd seen who she had, what she had... we stayed together the whole time. She never hurt anyone."

"Did you?"

The question hung in the air, Moody's gruff voice and looming presence leaving him gaping, stuttering for an answer.

There was a scuffle in the adjacent hallway before a weakened but a visibly more conscious Holly appeared, leaning heavily on Charlie and Arthur. Draco moved to go over to her, but he was kept in place by Remus' heavy gaze.

The eldest Weasley child helped the injured girl over to the couch, where very easily she curled into Malfoy's side. His arm fit comfortably around her, although it was a worried gesture.

Charlie sat at the other end of the couch, keeping an eye out for her injuries.

"She's got a concussion, and a pretty nasty one, and some awful bruising everywhere. Fever and nausea. She's not broken anything, though. Which is good. That's a positive."

"I'm fine."

Her voice was scratchy, as if she'd been screaming for hours. Her throat was dry and sore and she coughed to punctuate her sentence, but she was communicating.

Mrs Weasley hurried off to get a glass of water, and Holly drank the whole thing when she returned with it.

There was so much relief in the Malfoy boy when he saw her drinking and talking. He stroked her arm with his thumb, pulling her closer to him. When she looked over at him, she offered him a tired smile.

He could've cried.

Always smiling. She was always smiling. Merlin, he loved her.

Remus, having watched this entire interaction, sighed heavily.

"We can interrogate them more tomorrow. I think we need rest. She's on the mend, and he's... fine." He finished lamely.

Charlie rose to his feet and offered his large, calloused hands to Holly. "You better get to bed. You heard your dad."

Holly clapped his hands, but didn't take them. Her tone was playful, but her eyes were rather serious. "I couldn't go taking your bed, Charles. I'm fine wherever you put Draco."

Arthur, who had waited in the doorway, cleared his throat. "We, uh. We don't have another bed. With so many guests you're bound to run out of beds eventually."

"We could get you some blankets though. You could have a couch each." Molly offered, truly unable to let a child go without, for which Draco was endlessly grateful.

People dispersed quickly after that. Molly fetched bedding, Arthur went to check on the (hopefully) still sleeping teenagers, Moody took over the watch. Tonks, sharing a look with Remus, dragged Charlie from the room, leaving the older man with the two newcomers.

"Are you... dating, then?"

He was painfully awkward. He felt himself revert back into his teenage self, trying to find out if some girl had started to go with Sirius.

They shared a look, seeming to communicate silently. It was Holly that spoke.

"We're married."

"They made us." Draco added quickly, anxious for the kindly man before them to not panic. "I mean, I'd have liked to marry her anyway, years away. It's... they didn't want her sharing anything she shouldn't have."

Remus, quiet, nodded. Holly pulled herself from her husband's hold and wrapped herself around Remus. The man had basically been her father for as long as she could remember, and she loved him dearly.

"I'm sorry." She told him. "I love him, but... I'm sorry all of this happened without you knowing. I'm sorry I scared you."

He kissed her forehead. She was forgiven, of course she was forgiven. His heart had constricted when she said she loved Malfoy, but Remus couldn't help it. That was his girl.

"I love her too. Sir." Malfoy spoke softly, almost as if he felt he was intruding in a conversation. The older man watched Holly smile, softly, despite this whole situation. She almost blushed before catching herself.

"Well. Good. You two sleep, and Moody's always lurking, so... behave. Or whatever."

His sort of daughter kissed his cheek before curling back up next to her husband, his sort of son-in-law.

It was a rough morning when the whole house awoke to Madison yelling.

She'd stumbled into the lounge room, and despite eyes being bleary from sleep, she had been affronted by the image of Malfoy and Holly, curled up under a thick rug on the couch tucked into each other.

At the sound of the shout, Malfoy wrapped his arms around his wife in a knee jerk reaction. It seemed this was a familiar scenario for the two of them: a poor rest and awoken to loud voices.

Holly took a moment to gather herself, unsure of where she was for just a moment. The sight of her best friend calmed her down, and she sat up slowly. Her spine creaked and Malfoy moved with her, sitting up so she could lean back against him. She still looked incredibly ill. The whole night, she'd suffered through her fever, comforted by her husband's soft voice and softer kisses. She looked awful.

But she was alive.

Madison cried, and the sound of her sobbing had alerted the young people. They were all glad that Holly was alive, but greatly offended by the sight of Malfoy.

"Leave him alone. He's kept me safe this whole time."

"It's Malfoy." Ron had insisted.

"It's Draco. We're both Malfoy."

The pair of them told the whole story, again. The same amount of detail, filling in some blanks with the speculation and rumour that had surrounded the two of them at Hogwarts.

It had been a combination of both Holly and Draco that had gotten the captives in Malfoy Manor sufficient food and water, distracted their torturers and made their sentences lighter where they could.

They talked about their wedding. How forced it was and yet how genuine it felt.

It was Madison who attempted to lighten the mood. "Wow, Holly. I thought we were friends. You didn't even invite me to your wedding."

Holly laughed. It hurt her to do so but she did so anyway. The girls and the twins smiled, despite themselves, and Draco nervously smiled into his wife’s freckled shoulder. It seemed Ron and Harry were still cautious. Rightly so.

The married couple were separated quickly, divulging information about what they’d seen, heard, and done, but Holly was released a good few hours before Draco was.

As Charlie attended her remaining ailments, Madison stood with her.

"Did you want to marry him?"

"Not in that context. But eventually, sure."

"Really?"

Holly shrugged, wincing as Charlie poked at the lump on her skull.

"Yeah. I love him. Why wouldn't I?"

"It's Malfoy."

"He's like, been kept prisoner in his own house. I can't even imagine how fucked that is. Seeing rooms that used to be your nursery or your childhood bedroom get turned into guest rooms for criminals and torturers. Become literal prison cells. As if his family didn't hurt him enough already."

"You were kept prisoner there, too."

"Not for seventeen years, though."

The two were silent for a moment as Charlie gave her a few instructions to look after herself. He left, leaving the two alone.

Holly smiled at Madison, and although it didn't quite reach her eyes, it was still a genuine one. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too."

"Are you alright?"

Madison was silent for a moment before smiling coyly. "Neville and I had sex."

Holly scoffed. "Fuckin' finally. How was it?"

Madison laughed.

Three days went by and they got all the information they could possibly get out of Draco. Holly's fever, a side effect of some sort of potion, had mostly gone, and she was concussion free. The two stayed together, mostly, but they were always touching, as if afraid to leave the other one.

They had to return to the Manor. There was no way they wouldn't go looking for either of them. Despite how angry that made the entirety of the Order, they knew it was the only option. After forging a letter to Snape explaining their absence, Draco and Holly planned their leave.

"What was the excuse?" Neville asked.

Malfoy had answered. "Spur of the moment honeymoon. We didn't have one."

Holly looked up at him and smiled. "We can have one later. When we're not, you know. Busy."

He chuckled. "Busy."

It seemed to be an inside joke between them.

Holly said her goodbyes, spending a bit of time talking to Madison and Neville and Charlie. Nervously, Malfoy approached Remus.

"I'm looking after her. She can look after herself, of course, but I–"

Remus put a hand up to stop him. "Do you love her?"

"Yes, Sir." Malfoy's answer was earnest, with his hands clasped behind his back.

Remus sighed. "That's all I can ask. I don't want her hurt." He paused. "Or grandchildren. None of that, not yet."

Draco smiled nervously. Remus extended a hand for him to shake, which he clasped.

"Next time we meet, Mister Malfoy, I hope it's under nicer circumstances."

"As do I."

The newlyweds stood by the fireplace, holding each other's hand. They planned to travel through several floos and apparate so they could not be tracked, but it still made them nervous.

"We'll fight, you know. When the time comes." Holly told Harry, staring at him. He said nothing, but nodded. Draco kissed his wife's hand.

"You ready, darling?"

"Of course."

"So how was the honeymoon?" Ginny asked, in an attempt to ease the tension.

Holly turned to her and smiled. "You remember that rumour that Draco was like, the Slytherin sex god?"

"Yeah?"

"It's all true. So my honeymoon was fantastic."

Draco had the decency to blush, but Madison laughed. "Where'd you go?"

"Paris. Her favourite." Draco supplied. Holly turned to him and smiled.

"You're a considerate husband."

"Oh, you know. I try."

"You two should be going." Snape reminded them. To Draco, the man seemed softer, if just for a moment.

They both sighed, but nodded.

"Thank you very much for your kindness. All of you. I can't tell you how much we appreciate it."

"Love you all."

And with a whoosh, the two disappeared in a fog of green flames. It was silent for a moment, nobody quite knowing what to do with themselves, before people began to disperse.

For a while, Remus sat on the couch opposite the fireplace and watched. Waited. Just in case they came back.

But they didn't, and wouldn't until the Battle of Hogwarts. There they would both arrive with scarring and bruises, but until then all would be silent on their end for what seemed like an eternity.

[mysdrymmumbles]

Andraste’s Witch - Chapter 66 - SFW

Pairings: Slowburn Cullen x F!Witch!Inquisitor

Rating: M for later chapters which will include violence, PTSD, withdrawal,  angst, body horror (think red templars), and possibly other stuff that I will be sure to tag. This is not actually a grimdark story, but I just wanna give people a heads up for stuff that will happen. There will also be fluff and friendship and magic (though to be fair, this is Thedas, so magic will not always be positive and very rarely as adorable as that last statement implied).

Genre: Action/Adventure with elements of romance  

Summary: Cullen works to get all the last minute details into place, only to learn that Finley has gone missing -- again. 

I’m so sorry this took me so long, but thank you to everyone who puts up with the long waits! You’re great!

Chapter Warning: mild withdrawal symptoms

Andraste’s Witch

Apprehensions 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” a loud whisper hissed as Cullen strode up the stairs toward his office, drawing him out of his thoughts about the growing headache in the back of his skull, and the nausea that had been creeping through him since he’d woken up.

“No, I’m not. The bet is real and—”

As Cullen stepped up onto the ramparts, both soldiers jumped as though he were a darkspawn crawling out of the Deep Roads, coming specifically for them. Both of them snapped to attention so quickly that the movement did nothing to ease his nausea. Cullen couldn’t help but narrow his eyes.

The guilt on their faces was so plain, but he couldn’t figure out what it was that they were on about.

“Is everything alright?”

“Yes, ser!” They both snapped in unison, a bit louder than necessary.

His head throbbed.

Were they afraid of him?

“At ease,” he murmured, deciding that whatever their problem was, he would worry about it later. After all, they’d been talking about some bet, not an assassination attempt or anything dire.

And he already had enough to get done before they left in the morning.

If he could focus.

The nausea had hit him about an hour after he’d left Finley’s side, and it was like a curse, building up and curling within him, making it a fight to make sure his steps never faltered as he reached his office.

With any luck, it would pass quickly. The last few weeks, most of the times this mess reared its ugly head, it was little more than a small swell of a wave, and as much as he feared it breaking, it never did.

If he could just keep his mind focused, then everything would be fine.

After all, there was no reason for today to be any different. Any worse.

He’d barely had a chance to settle into his office and begin reviewing a few different documents with Knight Captain Rylen—his old friend was going to be left in charge while Cullen was away—when suddenly the door leading to the rotunda snapped open and Josephine stormed in, looking something akin to a vengeful goddess.

“Commander, a moment of your time, if you can spare it?”

Cullen’s head pounded, but he lowered the papers he was going through, and inclined his chin toward her. “Has something happened?”

“Our illustrious inquisitor has run off.” The usual patience in Josephine’s voice was thin, her arms crossed and a heavy frown replacing her usual smile. “If she happens by, would you be kind enough to bring her back to me?”

Even as he nodded, trying not to notice the way the edges of his vision wavered for a second, he reached up and scratched at the pain pooling at the base of his skull. “Gladly, but…wouldn’t Leliana and her scouts be better suited for this?”

At that, Josephine hesitated, only a breath. “I have already gone to her, but I thought it good to come to you as well, seeing as she does rather enjoy your company.”

Images from the night before flitted through his mind at that, of his fingers tangled in her hair, her body arching up into his, the feel of her beneath him, around him.

He found himself at a loss for words for a moment. Even as heat crept up his neck, making his headache throb a bit harsher, he nodded again, trying to focus on the matter at hand. He’d promised Finley he’d do his job, hadn’t he? “Ah, yes.”

“Be careful,” Rylen offered, a grin in place. “Have him turn her in too often and she’ll find a new friend to hide out with.”

The words stung. That she might grow wary of his company…

As Rylen’s smile slowly gave way to a questioning look, Cullen shook his head. It was just…a joke. He felt a bit of bile rising up in his throat, though he swallowed it down. It was a good thing he’d skipped breakfast.

Maker, this wasn’t going to be a good day, was it?

With a tired sigh, Josephine nodded to both men and shook her head. “I swear, sometimes I think I understand her, and then she just…snaps. I have tried to speak with her about what exactly it is that upsets her, but it just makes things worse. I—” Josephine quite abruptly realized what she was saying and snapped her mouth shut. After a pause, she nodded to them again. “Thank you for keeping a lookout.”

And with that she was gone, just as quickly as she had come.

Part of Cullen wanted to drop everything and start his own search, if only to make certain that Finley was alright. He could remember her after their fight in Haven’s Chantry, of how she’d panicked and had just crumpled to the floor, fear overwhelming her.

If that was what was happening now, he could understand why Josephine was at such a loss.

Further, if that was happening right now, he didn’t want her to be alone.

A pang of pain shot through his skull.

Now was not the time…

“I’m sure Leliana’s scouts will find her.”

Rylen’s voice was nearer than he expected, and he snapped his head up, startled. For a moment, the Knight-captain looked as surprised as Cullen felt, though his eyes grew gentler for just a moment. Cullen hated him in that second.

He didn’t need pity, didn’t need understanding.

He needed to do his damned job.

Making a point of focusing his gaze on the papers he’d been reviewing, his voice somehow managed to come back to him, strong and measured as he continued with their briefing.

Despite having been sure that he would be up all night working his way through reports and the like, he somehow found himself with nothing to do by midafternoon.

It was the first time this had happened since…well, since he’d joined the Inquisition.

There were reports still coming in, of course—there were always reports—but he’d already set Rylen up in his office to give the man and the scouts time to see how well they worked together and to have time to admonish anyone who felt they could treat the knight-captain differently than the commander, should such an instance occur.

Security for the trip was already in order, he’d checked everything over thrice, and there would be nothing more to do until they were actually leaving, in that regard. There were no plans of moving troops while they were away, aside from a few mineral gathering missions that had already been assigned.

Fortifications to Skyhold itself were still underway, but there wouldn’t be an update on that for another few days. Rylen would have to see to that.

And despite tensions between mages and templars, they didn’t seem ready to start anything just yet.

Hopefully, they never would.

Even as he wondered if perhaps he should try to get some rest—lunch was still out, with his stomach feeling queasy—though he dreaded the thought. Twice during his rounds with Rylen, he’d thought he’d seen…things in the shadows. Figures, monsters, twisted flesh and hulking, deformed shoulders, dark eyes that only reflected an inner malice. Creatures he’d been fortunate not to see since joining the Inquisition.

Sleeping was not going to be pleasant.

Last night had been so…perfect. It felt like he was being punished for allowing himself to get lost in another’s arms. Of allowing himself to forget everything that had happened and just live in that moment, arms wrapped around one another as smile pressed against smile.

What did she even see in him?

She’d called him too kind, once, though he still couldn’t fathom how she’d drawn that conclusion.

He wanted to be, though.

Before he’d met her, he’d just wanted to be a better person, to drag himself back from what he’d been, but now…he wanted to be the man she thought he was. Someone who actually deserved her.

Like that could ever happen.

“Still not there, still not good. Can one even be good themselves if they can’t see it in others? To see the good is so…hard. So hard not to hate, not to fear. What if a first impression is wrong? Better to be wary than dead. It’s so easy to be deceived. A monster hides behind even the prettiest eyes. Any eyes. She proved it was possible that anyone could hide that sort of evil in them.”

Cullen blinked out of his thoughts and glanced toward the blonde boy standing beside him. He’d ended up on the ramparts, though he didn’t remember walking there.

He’d met the boy before, though he couldn’t place where.

“Any power can be corrupted,” Cullen murmured, mind flitting back to his former knight-commander at the boy’s words.

“And any evil can gain power if it’s ignored,” the boy agreed. “Diligence is a noble aspiration, but a difficult one.”

Cullen shifted a little where he stood, frowning. Uldred and Meredith were odd mirrors of each other. Both had worked right under the noses of those around them, poisoning minds and torturing those they felt were enemies.

The only difference was that he should have seen what Meredith was doing so much sooner.

He had. He’d known the things she did, and yet he’d turned a blind eye, telling himself she was the knight-commander and that it was her job to decide what force was necessary. It had been his job to keep the mages in the Gallows, to find them when they ran. He wasn’t there enough to know that her methods were too strict, even when the mages begged that they were.

That’s what he’d told himself…

Sometimes he wished he could tell himself that again, if only so he might rest a little easier.

It was a selfish, vile wish.

“You are better than she was,” the boy offered as he began to walk. Without thinking, Cullen matched his pace. “It is hard to stand up to evil when you find it.”

“I didn’t find it,” Cullen muttered. “I knew it was there, and I let it fester. I helped it.”

The boy nodded slowly. “Yes, but you can’t change that. Better to move forward and keep what you’ve learned in your heart and head.”

“I try.”

“I know.”

With a blink, he was standing by himself on the ramparts, near the door to one of the towers. It was the one where he’d spoken to Finley about being a witch. His headache still drummed at the back of his head, but it was a bit softer than before, and he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps she was up there.

He opened the door and felt as though the darkness inside was ready to swallow him whole. His heartbeat quickened and he gulped as he swung the door shut, feeling as though he were already trapped in the room, with the walls too close, not enough room to stretch, to breathe.

Whirling away, he gripped the wall of the battlements, gulping down air as he looked out over Skyhold, reminding himself that he wasn’t trapped in a little space, but in one that stretched out in every direction, the open sky overhead, wide and free.

As he managed to gather himself enough to let go of the wall, his gaze just happened toward the back of the barn. There, on an outcrop of wall behind it that was mostly hidden by a few trees growing there, a ledge that must have once served as another set of stairs, though the wall was far too debilitated to know for sure, was a bit of cloth stretched out. A slender hand moved it and he caught a faint flicker of green that went with it before disappearing back behind the barn.

Cullen took in a few slow breaths, eyeing the wall to see how one might get to that spot in particular. Not wanting to walk through the tower, he chose to backtrack, going down the steps carefully, feeling a little foolish that his balance wasn’t quite what it should be, and then wandering through the courtyard and into the barn.

Stable boys and Horsemaster Dennet were busily preparing for the trip in the morrow, with the older man barking orders and making that chaos move at his whim.

It was impressive, though Cullen quickly drew himself up the stairs to the second floor of the barn. There he found Warden Blackwall going over his own supplies and inspecting the different bags he had. The warden looked up and started to get out of his seat, though Cullen waved for him to stay where he was.

“Commander,” he nodded respectfully.

Even as Cullen glanced around, wondering if the warden would even know about the ledge behind the barn, the man coughed. When Cullen looked at him, he nodded his head to the side, gaze flicking with it and then resumed inspecting his bags.

Cullen stood there a moment before slowly walking the way he’d indicated. It seemed further from where he was trying to get, but as he looked around, he found an old window was opened and, if he stepped on the sill, he could pull himself up to the beginnings of a ledge a little way to the right of it.

Once he was up there, the roof of the barn made it impossible to follow the ledge without crawling on his stomach. Instead, he opted to carefully step across the roof itself.

Even as he wondered if he was being foolish, he looked up from where he was stepping to see the roof ended shortly and there, on the small space of the ledge beyond, was Finley.

She was in a rather lovely Ferelden styled dress, with the skirt spread out around her, except for the part she had pulled to herself where she was…

Maker, she was sewing the hem herself.

No wonder Josephine had been displeased to have her run off.

As soon as his gaze was on her, she was looking back up at him. There was a second of hesitation before she straightened up where she sat, relief flitting across her features.

It sent a shiver through him that merely seeing him could make her feel better.

He made his way the last few steps before hopping down to where she was. Two long strides took him to the edge of her skirt, and he tried not to frown when he saw that her sewing skills were wanting.

While the hem looked even at a glance, it was far too thick for a typical hem, and when he looked closer he realized that she had half a dozen threads winding around. The finished sections were wide enough that they gave the illusion of being neat, but at the closer glance, he could see that the threads crisscrossed over each other, filling gaps that had been left by others. The stitches themselves varied in length and there was no way to try to pretend that the part she was working on now was in a straight line. It reminded him of a half-starved, leafless vine, twisting its way across the fabric.

He doubted that was her intention.

When she patted the edge of her dress, fingers just barely brushing the stone beyond, he took the invitation and sat beside her, watching with poorly veiled amusement as she went back to the task she was taking most seriously.

“I suppose it is too much to hope that you are here of your own volition and not on Josephine’s behalf?”

“I doubt I’d have found you if she hadn’t let me know you were missing,” he admitted. He wished his was close enough to run his fingers through her hair, but he’d have to crawl across her skirt to do that, and he wasn’t about to leave shoe prints or scuff marks on the fabric. When Finley replied with a soft ‘humph’, he couldn’t help his smile.

Leaning forward as close as he dared, he peered up at her, catching her gaze. “Is there a reason you’re up here by yourself?”

“I thought you’d be busy today.” There was a hint of disapproval in her voice as she added, “You did leave rather early.”

“I wanted to make sure I didn’t fall behind,” he said, straightening out of his lean when he felt his world spin a little.

Even as he settled back, she followed, moving onto her knees, one hand propping herself up over her skirts as her other brushed against his forehead and then cheek. “You’re not well.”

The dress she was in was well fitting at the top, though it was a low cut, and as her hair spilled over her shoulders, he found himself rather distracted by the view of her collarbone and the skin beneath. His hand was halfway to her when she repeated her statement, moving and tugging her skirt out of the meticulous circle she’d set it in so that she could reach him better.

As she tilted his head back, fingers feathering over his neck feeling for swelling or other signs of illness, his gaze finally moved to her face.

Her lips were slightly parted, eyes lowered as she looked him over so that he could see just how long her lashes were.

For a moment, he forgot to breathe.

“A headache?”

“I’m fine.” He wasn’t sure how he managed to find his voice, but as soon as he’d spoken, Finley frowned and settled back to her previous seat, busying herself with setting the fabric around her back into place. She looked mildly indignant, though she said nothing of his dismissal of his pains. He watched her resume her sewing for a few minutes before sighing. “You know, there are seamstresses here specifically to do that.”

“I wish to do this here.”

“Would you like me to show one or two of them up here to help you?”

The look she gave him was one of betrayal, and he was surprised at how sharply that hurt.

“Finley…”

Her gaze darted away from him, and he found himself resting his knees on her skirt anyway so that he could reach her. He brushed her hair back as she blinked up at him, surprised. As he tucked her hair behind her ear, he let his fingers curl around the shell of it, and he gently kissed her.

Whatever tension was in her seemed to drain at the mere touch of their lips. Their kiss was far gentler than anything last night, and yet it left his heart racing just the same. As he pulled away, she chased him just long enough to give him a quick kiss on his scar.

“There’s too much movement in Skyhold today,” she mumbled finally, slender fingers working the needle through the fabric, again and again. After a few more stitches, she dropped that thread and went back to one of the others that was waiting where she’d left the majority of them. As that second thread chased after the first, sometimes crisscrossing the stitches, he peered up at her, watching the murky expression that had taken hold.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just go somewhere quiet with Josephine so that she can help you with what you’ll need to know when you meet the nobles in Denerim?”

“Except it wouldn’t be somewhere quiet,” Finley retorted, frown deepening. “There would be the experts on Ferelden culture and the seamstresses and whatever other manner of people she decides to drag along with us. All rushing about, moving from one side of the room to the other, slipping behind me with sharp things…” She trailed off a moment before shrugging. “They’re saying the king doesn’t care for mages.”

“Who told you that?” Cullen asked. It was likely true enough, if what little Cullen remember of King Cousland remained true, but he could hope that someone had created some elaborate story that he could dismiss to allay her fears.

“No one.” Her voice wavered slightly and she cursed softly as she stuck her finger with the needle. It was healed before a drop of blood could tarnish her skirt, and she kept going. “Alistair dragged Leliana to whisper about it. Alistair doesn’t like him, said he’s cruel, that it would be better if Leliana went to speak with him alone.” She dropped that thread and started on another. “He helped stop the Blight, you know. King Cousland.”

“I know,” Cullen murmured. He sighed, reaching up and scratching at the back of his neck. His head still hurt. “But you don’t need to worry. I’m bringing our best guards—and Leliana, Cassandra, and I will all be there to protect you. And Josephine. She knows court intrigue like no one else, and while I may not understand the necessity of it, she’s saved a lot of blood from being spilled with what she does. Have faith in us, would you?”

“A general doesn’t outrank a king.”

“No, but that doesn’t mean I won’t stand between you and him if it comes down to it. I’ll make sure you stay safe,” Cullen offered.

“No.” He was surprised at the distress in her voice as he spoke. She shook her head furiously. “No. I don’t need people deciding to stand between me and whatever threat. I’m capable of taking care of myself.” Despite her words, there was fear in her voice. “I don’t need—”

Cullen leaned forward and caught one of her wrists, tugging her to him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her a breath, his chin resting in her hair, with her half in his lap. “Would it help if I told you have I no intention of letting anyone cut me down, even a king? We’ll escape together.”

She shifted in his arms. At first he thought she was moving to put distance between them, but even as he loosened his grip, she snuggled more firmly against him, head resting against his shoulder. “Good, because I don’t like leaving people behind.”

Even as Cullen pressed a quick kiss onto the crown of her head, Warden Blackwall’s voice interrupted them. “Commander? There’s a courier looking for you.”

It was then that Cullen realized there was a window closer to the ledge than the one he’d climbed out, though it didn’t have a good way to get up to where they were. Even as his shoulders slumped, Finley slipped back to where she’d been, resuming her task.

“You know I have to let Josephine know where you are.”

Finley sat a little straighter. “If you must.” Her gaze snapped toward him. “I’m not moving until this skirt is finished, though. She’ll have to come up here.”

With a low laugh, Cullen rose to his feet, shaking his head. The motion made him a little dizzy, but it was nothing he couldn’t work through. “I think you’re underestimating our ambassador, but I’ll let her know.”

[idolizerp]

LOADING INFORMATION ON MAYDAY’S MAIN VOCAL, LEAD DANCE NA YERIM...

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: Yena CURRENT AGE: 23 DEBUT AGE: 22 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 17 COMPANY: MSG SECONDARY SKILL: N/A

IDOL PROFILE

NICKNAME(S): 

예나치 (yenachi) - in reference to fans of yena finding her to be a great treasure or gift of significant value to the group’s success, but also alternatively a cheeky reference yena’s toothy smile when she gets excited.

찡찡이 예림이 (jjing-jingi yerimie, whiny yerim) - a playful, affectionate nickname born from yerim’s tendency to be a bit of a whiner during competitive games on variety shows or group fanmeeting games. 

우유 예나 (u-yu yena) - pale, refreshing, innocent - akin to the purity of a child.

yememe - in reference to yerim being a perpetual meme and her facial expressions being exceptionally reaction pic/gif-able and prime real estate for messy stan twitter layouts.

INSPIRATION: she was inspired to become an idol after watching olympus’s comeback stage for “be mine” - it was her first real brush with an idol group and she’s looked up to them ever since. other inspirations include singers like whitney houston and carole king, and actresses like uee and lily collins. SPECIAL TALENTS:

reigning champion of the high pitch note battle (x, x) - variety hosts have tried and failed to dethrone her but she continues to wow audiences with her ability to hit notes beyond comprehension all while saying every word of the challenge. the fact that half the time she’s really just screaming is beyond the point. shut up.

improvisation - exceptionally useful on variety and a skill that yerim has picked up more recently, she’s able to successfully bounce off of sudden “skits” posed by hosts with an improved comedic timing - but has also shown that she’s grown leaps and bounds in terms of on-the-spot acting.

juggling - she learned how to juggle after watching the magical girl anime precure (pretty cure, for the uninitiated) and taking a shine to a character named joker who juggles in the smile season.

NOTABLE FACTS:

her first real experience with performing outside of church was through doing showcase performances with friends and covers and dances from popular japanese idol rhythm games on her now deleted youtube channel called yayajam.

yerim is the youngest of her cousins and has a fifteen year age gap between herself and the cousin closest to her age due to her mother being the youngest of her siblings and the one to wait the longest.

prior to being trained under msg, yerim was gearing up to major in film production at konkuk university with plans to later go into the film industry behind the scenes - as it stands, shortly following mayday’s second comeback in 2018, she earned a degree in business and production.

IDOL GOALS

SHORT-TERM GOALS:

short-term, she wants to regain her footing after the shocking change of pace she’s experienced recently and focus on building her resume to grab attention for both herself and her group, so they can, hopefully, get their first win during their next comeback.

LONG-TERM GOALS:

she’s looking to move more fully into acting and follow in the footsteps of exemplars like bae suzy who were able to create a name for themselves through not only their efforts on stage but on the screen as well. somewhere down the line, years from now, she wouldn’t mind being able to work solely in the film industry and do music on the side, opposed to being a full-blown idol until the public gets tired of her.

IDOL IMAGE

yerim is compliant to a fault as a result of her strict religious upbringing under a firm-handed mother with a high standard of morality, a bit of a pushover, entirely too trusting of the people around her, she thinks the world of even those who don’t deserve it. despite this inherent timidity towards decisiveness against authority, she’s a bright and bubbly girl who just wants to make the world smile with her voice, her personality. she’s playful and naive, exudes a natural innocence that comes with her pointed lack of experience. it’s charming, the way it impacts her sense of humor, her lighthearted sass; funny, how jokes fly right over her head. she’s cute. there’s nothing forced about it and it’s that that msg is counting on: her natural aura, genuine, the feeling of fondness and protectiveness that this aspect of her elicits.

she’s simple in that she’s generally easy to get along with, to laugh with, to be around, to love. she’s got that trademark adorable easy-to-approach air about her but shines in the spotlight.

off stage, she’s painted as the girl-next-door, the childhood best friend, the little sister you’d sell your kidney for in a pinch. yerim’s pretty, radiant in the way you remember your first ever crush being when you were in school. she’s a social butterfly. her purity is captivating, youthful, and it has the potential to pull in a broad range of audiences if they play their cards right - people who want to preserve it, those on the other end of the spectrum who want to tear it back just to see what’s underneath, and those who resonate. that’s the fun in acting, being able to take their doll and see her dressed up the way they want to see her.

when she first enters under msg entertainment, she’s a shy and subdued little thing, humbled by a life hardly lived and the cruelty of kids who hate anything different. in her insecurity, she struggles to catch up with the other trainees who have the zeal and passion of years of working toward a common goal under their belts, only standing out with any significance during performances, speaking when spoken to, singing her heart out the way she’d always dreamed of doing and smiling a smile that dimples her cheeks. it’s a side effect of being muffled under the arm of her mother for the majority of her youth but there’s a charm that she’s picked up from cosplaying, a knowingness that helps her play the part of someone to be admired, and, with the help of the company, she learns how to harvest it.

she improves.

it takes time and money but she learns how to fake it until it’s real, until she stops hiding behind the other girls and forces herself into the forefront of the minds of her coaches. “yerim,” is said with a hum of recognition. yerim is noticed. yerim is indispensable, can bring a smile to any face. yerim can shine.

she hadn’t planned on this part of things - the potential fame and recognition part, the part where she’d have to smile when she doesn’t feel like smiling and crack jokes on variety shows so she doesn’t look cold and unappreciative. she envies the people that this kind of thing comes natural to, grins and bears it through image training when management takes notice of her suffering. she learns to smile even when her limbs ache from hours of dancing and singing and all she wants to do is curl up in bed and sleep.

it’s a gradual change, a shift from being the shy, bashful one to reading as a girl who’s blossomed into herself over the course of her first year as a trainee, comfortable in her own skin and the growing attention as a potential member of a msg-owned girl group. a fire burns. they soften her hair and lighten her wardrobe - nothing is her own, not even her body, not even the pounds of healthy fat and muscles she sheds to be thinner like the girls who’ve succeeded. like a butterfly from a cocoon, when mayday debuts, new yerim rises. on stage, she lavishes in the moments where all eyes fall on her, where she gets to show off - the luxury of feeling the kind of greed that comes with performing without the guilt that had always followed suit. you have to be greedy to get by.

it could’ve been any of them, that got plucked out of the proverbial ashes and dusted off, polished into something that the masses of korea want to see. the industry is political. yerim is a tool and the it girl idols before her are the blueprint.

“but,” she wants to say. “i’m a singer.”

she sings her ass off on stage, she’s a main vocal - wants them to acknowledge that, that she’s talented and good and has worked hard to reach this point, to be a singer. she thinks about the fact that she left home for this, cut ties with her mother for this. she’s gotten so much better at dancing, feels vindicated in her role as a lead dancer because she’s worked for it, her performances get better every time.

she wants to remind them that she’s got a group, that they’re good, too, that there’s more to her than her image, that they make good music. “please love mayday a lot!” she makes sure to add during her solo schedules.

“so cute!” they say. she’s the apple heart girl, cute enough to slap her face on their brand, cute enough to cast as the quirky one in their webdrama. it’s shallow, the way they love her, the way they want her.

it doesn’t feel as good.

IDOL HISTORY

TW BRIEF PHYSICAL/VERBAL ABUSE

act i, scene i, the sun shines through the clouds

yerim comes out singing. not literally, of course, but that’s the way her mother’s always made it seem, like this was the only thing she could ever picture for her little girl - the same bright little girl who’d sit in her lap during church and sing at the top of her lungs to every hymn, knew the words to every bit of gospel, and jumped at the opportunity to join the youth choir when she was finally old enough to hold a microphone. she’s a tiny, frail little thing, smaller than the other kids, and it pains her mother to watch yerim so far away, to watch her shine without her light. it’s a beautiful sight, though, the way she shines, the way she makes her mother feel like she was born to do it. she smiles so hard on stage, she’s scared her little face will split in two.

yerim’s mother learns early on that her zeal is conditional, that she shines so brightly but that she’s scared of her own shadow. she’s got stage fright something awful - conditional, because she’s fine when she can see her mother in the crowd of judging faces, but she throws up all over her brand new dress the day she has to dance a ballet solo in front of her class.

she’s relieved, she thinks, that it’s not easy for her to do it alone.

she’s her only child, her little yerim, the product of a short-lived relationship but a miracle, nonetheless. chubby and introverted, careful and stuck to her mother’s hip. she’s all she’s got. she doesn’t know if she could ever stomach having to let her go. yerim cries.

“another opportunity will come, baby,” she tells her when she brushes her hair before bed that same evening, holds her close and hums. “you were meant to shine.”

it gets better when she starts participating in neighborhood plays as an attempt to branch out and get over her fear. she’s good.

her mother makes sure it doesn’t get to her head.

scene ii, they part.

the curtains rise to the rolling sound of drums and there she stands. there’s a television stage left and on the screen, there’s colors. they’re bright enough to blind her but still, she stares. there’s an awe in her expression, like she’s seeing for the very first time - hearing, too, the sound of music in another form. it’s different, this music, to the trot songs and olden spirituals her mama plays around the house.

it’s the first time ever she’s gone to a sleepover. she’s embarrassed that she doesn’t know the song, that the other girls do. her idea of fun on a friday night up until now has been watching historical dramas with her mom on the couch with a bowl of lightly salted popcorn between them, but, now, watching olympus’s comeback stage, she thinks she’s in love. her friends tell her to pick a favorite. she can’t decide, but she goes home the next morning and downloads ‘be mine’, listens to it when she gets ready for bed, so she’ll know the words, too.

it’s not a secret but her mother finds out when she catches her belting the song into her hairbrush after dinner, a printed out picture of the boys taped above her bed. (she’s decided she likes the main vocal’s part best.)

“who’re you listening to?” she asks, a hand against the doorframe.

“idols,” yerim replies, a new word added to her vocabulary. “don’t they sound cool?”

“don’t forget to pray.” her mother says.

interlude

the first and only time her mother hits her is when she comes out of her room with lip gloss on, some daiso mascara on her lashes and a cute shirt she’d borrowed from one of her friends. there’s nothing inappropriate about the look, just shorts and a shirt, stomach and thighs hidden like she’s been taught to keep them. she’s slimmed down, shed her baby fat and shows the beginnings of a figure. she’s thirteen and learning about makeup and self-expression from the now regular sleepovers she has with her school friends every weekend. they meet up and sing together, plan on putting together a cover performance for the back to school showcase after being inspired by heaven’s comeback. (touch my body, for god’s sake, she never sings it at home) her walls are plastered with idol posters now, bought with the money she picks up from babysitting the toddler who lives in the flat next door when his parents are out. she’s growing up, discovering herself, doesn’t see a thing wrong with it until her mother slaps her square across the face.

it stings something fierce, burns with a kind of betrayal she’s never felt before - ever. it’s the first time she feels truly afraid of her mother. it hurts more when she speaks, tells her to change because she looks like a trollop.

yerim changes. something changes with her. she prays.

2013.

her friend goes to an audition for msg. “come along,” she says, “it’ll be fun.” she says, but it feels like a set up somehow. it’s incredibly cliche, the way she doesn’t intend to audition, doesn’t even think about it, but winds up in front a panel of judges before she even realizes she’s there. she needs to be home by six. caught off guard, she sings olympus’s be mine with absolutely no expectations, grooves a bit to some generic pop music as a display of her grasp on rhythm, and makes a point to apologize to them for being unprepared. she squirms, smiles sheepishly and tries not seem as nervous as she is.

it’s cute. they like her. she doesn’t know how she’s going to tell her mom.

act ii,scene i hell freezes over

she tells her over dinner.

her mother’s mad, the way yerim knew she’d be. she tells her that when she thought of her becoming a singer, she’d always pictured someone classy and regaled like so hyang, maybe a traditional dancer, but this. this isn’t what she wants and she makes sure that yerim knows it when she signs the paperwork. things get cold after that, like it’s her mom’s attempt to ice her out, guilt her into calling it quits so she can pay the hefty fee for a month or two and they can go back to spending every night together, quiet and safe and holy.

it hurts her feelings but she pushes through, spends her time as a trainee doing the best she can, stays away from home as long as possible when the opportunities arise, but always comes back with her tail between her legs on the rare occasion she gets truly, properly scolded. she’s compliant when she can be, when it doesn’t speak against her soul.

it gets colder.

things reach a head when she’s old enough to be out on her own and her mother kicks her out. she doesn’t look at her when she does it, doesn’t say a word, but the way her things are neatly packed and waiting by the door when she gets home from training speak volumes. the bible on top of her suitcase while her mother sits in her usual spot in front of the television feels passive aggressive, hurts her feelings, but she leaves. she stays the night at one of her trainee friend’s apartments and never goes back.

her mother cries, feels like a failure, feels terribly alone. she doesn’t call.

it’s the first time yerim ever truly goes against the grain. hell freezes.

it’s too cold.

scene ii, let me entertain you

debut doesn’t feel the way she thought it would. it’s very clinical, the whole process.

she expects them to be received with open arms by the public but the scores during music shows speak volumes, their song does okay but it’s not enough. it’s a hum, barely even a clap of thunder, just a rumble. she’s happy anyway, like she always is, glad she gets to sing, but she holds out hope for a breakthrough.

and, well.

she doesn’t do it on purpose, the whole aegyo thing, it just happens during a fansign one day. she’s interacting with the fans that came, teasing them for their reminders for her to eat well when she goes to mime eating an apple to satiate them. it turns into a heart and she’s terribly delighted, does it again and tells them, tone cute and lovely, that their love keeps her full. it’s a few days spent without her giving it any thought, but one morning, she sees her face on pann and wonders what the fuss is about. weeks pass and she’s genuinely surprised to see other idols do it during interviews, finds herself searching for compilations on youtube and twitter and giggling in delight when she should be sleeping. it feels surreal but her company seems pleased.

she doesn’t realize what it really means until they start to really push her, booking her appearances on commercials, variety shows here and there to keep the public’s eyes on her - the mc’s always bring it up, the apple thing. they coo over her, laugh at her jokes, seem utterly charmed by her and it’s - different. it’s never about her singing. it’s a side effect of being a msg girl group member, cherry bomb!’s little sister, she assumes, knows full well that some other rookies aren’t half as lucky, privileged. the company tells her she’s being helpful.

it gets even different-er when months down the line, she’s offered a role in a webdrama.

they accept it without really even asking her but it’s fine, she guesses. she likes acting well enough. she doesn’t question their motives. it’s okay.

she’ll do what they want her to do. if it’ll help.

[stories-from-my-mind-to-yours]

WORK IN PROGRESS! NO TITLE SO FAR! Suggestions very much appreciated!

I have been working way too much, so I haven’t posted anything in a long time, hopefully that might change.

I wasn’t sure if I should post this publicly, but fuck it, it doesn’t do anyone any good being posted privately on my page(which it has for quite a while). Better to see get it out and see if I should keep writing on it or leave it be. I hope you enjoy!

———————————————————————

Ever since i can remember, as I grew up I’ve kept my distance, and sometimes straight out even alienated myself, like i was looking at the world through a pair of binoculars. Back then I could never really put my finger on anything tangible, but there was always something, just outside of my field of view. Although this might not seem like anything more than mind ghosts, there was something, that drove an invisible wedge between myself and others my age. Not that others have ever treated me in a demeaning way, I’ve just never felt that I belonged with others my age, or even valued the same things as my classmates. To begin my story, and my explanation, just as much for myself as for anyone reading it, I have to go back to the very beginning of the 1980’s. A different time to be sure, a time of freedom, and a time of carelessness. It was a good time while it lasted. But of course it was bound to have an end.

I was born more than reasonably premature, week 24 of my mother’s pregnancy, and as expected in that era, it almost killed me. In fact, it should have killed me. Being born with underdeveloped lungs I spent my first year in the neonatal ICU, fighting for my life, every. Single. Breath. When I was born I weighed 2214 grams. That’s 4 lbs, 14 ounces. Medicine of the time stated it to be impossible. I am living evidence that every rule has an exception. But then again, lots of things have exceptions.

My mother, god bless her soul and memory, never gave up. Not for a single second did she even hesitate, even though she was a nurse, and I do believe that on some level she must’ve known the odds for my survival. When the doctors initially told her I wouldn’t make it through the night, she calmly looked them dead in the eye and simply replied “you just wait.” And they did. And they were almost right. My heart stopped sixteen times the first month. Large bruises appeared on my chest and back, and the doctors believed it was from the cramps of basically dying every other day, and being shocked back into life a couple of times a week. The other times my heart decided to start beating again on its own. Thankfully our room had a nurses station close by, so they kept a watchful eye on me, proving that my mother never laid a hand on me. The story probably would’ve been quite different otherwise. But it was obvious that i was having some form of seizures when my heart resumed beating on its own. 

I spent the major part of my first year in an incubator, battling diseases as pneumonia and jaundice. But for every day that passed I grew stronger, and it was quite apparent I had no intentions of checking out. But nonetheless my mother had to wait before the doctors would let me leave. She waited for 14 months, before the doctors finally agreed, that it was time for me to go home. 

My mother beamed with pride as she walked out the hospital doors with her son in a thick blanket in her arms. I hadn’t died a single time in three months, the seizures had disappeared completely and the bruises were starting to fade. The doctors warned my mother that I would most likely have severe problems growing up. They gave me a minimum 90% chance of being mentally and physically challenged, they said they’d be astonished if I ever learned to walk or talk. And I’d probably never grow to be neither tall nor heavy. She didn’t care, I was alive, and that’s all that mattered to her. For a time, life was good. As kids do, I grew. Not as fast as normal kids my age, no. I grew faster than that. My mother told me she was amazed at how much I could eat, and how much energy I had for a scrawny kid that to begin with didn’t even weigh half of what I should. When I was three years old I was some 30% behind my growth scale. By the time I was six, the gap had gone down to as little as 17%. I had just started playing both hockey and soccer, which helped me grow more in mass than anything, and it was sorely needed. My growth was beyond good at this point. When I was eight, I had almost caught up to my curve, both in weight and length. But you know that feeling when things start to feel like it’s going just a little bit too good? Yeah, things were about to get worse. A lot worse.

My memories of that, fateful day are… chopped up, fragmented. Glimpses and confusion at best, except for one single moment, that’s seared into my brain forever. I was out riding my bike with my friend Richard. Now, do consider that this was back in ‘89, neither of us had helmets, and riding a bike in the middle of the road was as common as breathing. I was invincible and knew everything. Or well, so I thought. 

But the drunk driver in the old brown Saab that came careening down the road next to our apartment building was about to show me otherwise. The little old lady in the apartment next door to ours was doing her dishes, looking out the window facing the road we were riding our bikes on. That’s about the level of surveillance you had in the 80’s. Basically none whatsoever. 

He missed Richard by a few feet, but hit me head on from behind. He was going so fast that my body was thrown over the hood, hitting the windshield and roof, back first, cracking both my scapulars, basically pulverizing seven ribs and causing most of my rib cage to collapse, and punctured my right lung. My head slammed down sideways on the roof of the car, and the impact split my skull wide open. Our neighbor watched in shock and horror as the car came to a screeching halt, causing my body to again be propelled forward some thirty feet, and roll over several times before stopping, rag doll style, face down into the asphalt. She froze and looked on in disbelief as the driver didn’t get out, instead slammed the car into first gear and drove off with screeching tires, almost hitting a row of parked cars. She was too old and too far away to see the license plate, and thankfully, most of the gruesome details of what had just happened. 

My mother never wanted to talk about that day, I’m assuming too many bad memories. What little she did have to say will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Our neighbor banged on our front door until my mother opened, but could barely speak. She was later treated for shock, and considering she was in her late sixties it was a miracle she didn’t suffer a heart attack or something similar. But my mom understood immediately that something was so very, very wrong. This is the only part that she downright refused to talk about, but reading my medical charts many years after I managed to piece together, and to some extent, understand what happened. But who did what i can not say for sure. 

One thing i’m sure of, is that someone called the emergency number, and an ambulance arrived within minutes. At this point it starts to get... A bit weird. I have a crystal clear memory of seeing my own body laying lifeless on the asphalt, from above. I was hit in the middle of the day, about a month before the summer holiday, but in this memory everything around me is dark as the darkest winter night. I can still see this image in my head, clear as day. Two paramedics, the ambulance, the dark red stain under my head and back, slowly growing. But outside that circle, an impenetrable darkness. A darkness that moved on its own. Like black waves it circled myself and the paramedics, who were working furiously to get me on a stretcher and into the back of the waiting ambulance. On the way to the closest hospital even remotely equipped to handle such an injury, which happened to be the hospital i was born at, my heart stopped three times, and a fourth time as the ambulance pulled up outside the emergency doors. There was no blood left in my body at that stage, and my heart simply had nothing left to keep pumping. As they rushed me through the doors the nurses looked on in horror as they saw the amount of blood on the floor of the ambulance. Not really a life threatening amount from an adult. But from a slightly smaller than average eight year old child? They all knew this battle was lost before it had even begun.

My mother arrived minutes after, another neighbor gave her a ride when the paramedics told her to follow them, and it was probably for the best. A doctor stopped her as she ran in, letting her know i was on my way into surgery immediately, and there was nothing she could do but wait. And again, wait is exactly what she did. 

In the emergency operating theater a team was standing by, waiting for me to come in. Three surgeons and five nurses, and another pair of surgeons on standby. They knew from the paramedics that had radioed ahead how bad it was, but had no intention of giving up before exhausting everything they had at their disposal. These people gave everything to save my life, as well as every unit of matching blood in storage. It didn’t help that my blood type is Rh null, only shared by some 45 people on the entire planet. Not long after i was born, my mother found out my blood was extremely rare, and very hard to get a hold of in case of an emergency. So she arranged to have me give blood twice a year, from the age of three. The blood they had in storage was all from myself, and was just enough to refill what was missing in my system, leaving only a quarter unit remaining. 

But the ordeal was far from over. My skull had fragmented into dozens of sharp pieces, and most of those pieces had lodged themselves into my brain. The first team of surgeons spent eleven hours picking pieces of bone from my mangled brain, after which the second team took over to build a bridge out of my own bone and a fairly large titanium plate to cover the gaping hole in my head. The surgery in total took almost twenty hours, and after that the neck brace was next in line. I had several cracked vertebrae, which meant I probably would never walk again, but if I was brain dead it wouldn’t really matter. When they had done what they could, they isolated me due to risk of infection. My mother had to watch me through a window for the next three months, before she could even hold my hand. 

Now, all of this was the easy part for me, I was in a coma. My brain was so banged up the doctors told my mother that I would never open my eyes, or even breathe on my own again. I was hooked up to machines that kept me alive. But my mother refused to give up, and didn’t leave the hospital for months, while my aunt cared for my older sister. My first memory after the accident is… heh, well, “memory” is an overstatement. It doesn’t even make any sense. I couldn’t explain it then, nor understand it now. But, in some strange way, it did make sense back then. I cant say for sure if it was a hallucination, or just feverish memories created by a brain on fire. I’m pretty sure it was a hallucination, because its been ongoing ever since. Which kinda makes sense too, given the extent of my brain damage, even today. I can’t feel fear, pain or cold. Sometimes i hear and see things that, well, just aren’t real. At least that’s what i used to tell myself. Sometimes I can’t hear or see things that are real. Nowadays i just kind of go with it, my hallucination speaks to me quite often, i can even feel when he touches me. I can feel his breathing when he gets close enough. And the smell… sulfur, death and ash, that’s what he smells like. But every time I see him, the whole world goes dark. Wherever and whenever I am, when he shows up, everything goes dark. A wall of darkness forms around me, like massive, dense waves of shadow that slowly flows around me. Of course no one else can see this, and when it happens, time stands still. And let me tell you, he gets really pissed off when I refer to him as an hallucination.

But even that first time I saw it, it didn’t scare me, even though it should have. But there was something about it, that made me feel safer than I ever had before.

As I slowly woke up I felt the hospital bed under myself, i heard the slow beeping and hissing of machinery connected to my body. I heard the slight ticking of the clock on the wall. When i slowly opened my eyes everything was dark, and the smell reminded me of eggs. Years later as i grew and learned more I identified it to be sulfur. I couldn’t see any walls, only this black and grey haze, in a circle outside my bed. As I sat up and tried to look around me, something in the dark haze made ripples, like on water, but these were vertical, and I heard what sounded like the crackling of a dying fireplace. As I looked, I squinted and tried to make out anything in the black fog, and I was just about to call out “Hello?” When I heard a whisper, a deep, raspy voice that sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. Now that I’m older I think it sounds like bones being ground to dust. “Shh little one…. You don’t want to do that here…” I saw what looked like a large distorted face in the blackness, a hint of large green eyes and a long clawed index finger covering its mouth. “You really shouldn’t be here… but i guess it can’t be helped at this point.” The face and the darkness crept closer as I leaned forward to see what was speaking to me. 

“Do… do i know you?” I quietly asked the shadowy figure. The sound it made was almost like a quiet laugh, but it sounded like a burning log breaking apart. The foggy waves whirled around again, closer this time. “Indeed you ought to know me, but you don’t… Yet.” My confused facial expression was probably easy to read, and the fog whirled up next to my bed, and i saw hints of burning red in the blackness. “I’m Robert.” I said. A short sigh was the only answer i got. “What’s your name?” The silence dragged on for what felt like an eternity, but the eyes could be seen much clearer now. “You shouldn’t ask my name, little one. If you call me by name, others might hear you…” I tilted my head curiously, as I didn’t understand. “How could others hear me? There’s just you and me here, no one else.” The drawn out sigh was easy to hear, and i could tell it was thinking. “I may tell you my name later… when it is safer. Agreed?” I nodded in agreement. “Where am I?” The face wrinkled it’s eyebrows. “You’re in my home… where no human has set foot for all eternity.” I looked around myself again. “It’s really dark here.” The entity laughed silently again, like I had said something funny. “It is, but that’s only to keep you safe. Even though you cannot see them, there are others here… They might not be as kind as I am…” I nodded. “You best go back to sleep little one, i have important things I must attend to, and I cant keep an eye on you all the time.” I nodded again, and lay my head down on the pillow. The darkness crept closer to my bed as i closed my eyes, and i heard the voice whisper “Stay in the darkness little one, for in the light, anyone can see you…”

I have since spoken with plenty of physicians that have all reassured me that strange memories are quite normal after a prolonged period in a coma, and with my brain damage I should be glad that I can even form coherent thoughts. But unbeknownst to me, as I slept peacefully, months passed like days. After six months the administration of the hospital had deemed me brain dead, and tried to convince my mother to pull the plug, and to donate my organs to other children in need. She downright refused. She demanded they give me three months, they agreed to one. My mother refused altogether to talk about this period, so sadly I know very little except what was written in my journals. Five doctors had all agreed on the diagnosis. I was brain dead, and would never wake up. For a month my mother had prepared herself for this day, when she would say goodbye to her only son. 

The doctors, a priest, my mother and aunt were all gathered in my small room. The lights were dimmed, the door and curtains closed. My mother had signed the consent form, and the only thing left to do was to pull the plug. My mother watched me in silence as one of the doctors shut down the machines that controlled my breathing and heartbeats. The room fell silent except for the constant tone of the E.K.G machine, declaring that my heart had stopped beating. One of the doctors placed his stethoscope on my chest and listened, moved it and listened again. He looked at the clock on the wall. “Time of death declared 8:25 pm.” My aunt slowly led my crying mother towards the door, and reached for the handle just as a single sharp beep ripped the silence into a thousand pieces. Every face in the room violently jerked around and looked at my lifeless body. Thirty seconds passed as they all waited. Another beep announced what my body had decided. My body shuddered as i drew a deep breath into my lungs, and a third beep followed by a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth, announced that i would not go silently into the night. The beeping continued as i drew a second, albeit rough and coughing, but functional breath nonetheless. At that point the entire room erupted into life and movement. A nurse ushered my mother and aunt out of the room, and one of the doctors, presumably the one closest to my bed, pressed his cold stethoscope to my chest. He noticed two large bruises had started forming on my chest, one on my left side, and one just below my right arm. But the heartbeats he heard were each stronger than the previous. 

The journal entry pertaining to this event was filled with confusion and scribbled notes, making it very hard to clearly understand the following hours, or possibly days. The only thing that was obvious, was that no one could explain what exactly happened. They did several x-rays of my brain, and the scarring it showed had only one single conclusion. This brain is clinically dead. It cannot support life or consciousness. But somehow it could still control the heart and lungs. Their diagnosis remained the same, but the decision for my life was no longer in their hands. 

As i slowly opened my eyes, the pain that coursed through my body was almost unbearable. I tried to gasp for air as i bolted upright, and tightly grabbed my chest. I could not draw a single breath, no matter how hard I tried, there was no air to be drawn into my lungs. As i started to feel dizzy i opened my eyes, and saw the face in the fog again, and a long, dark arm extending from the blackness, with its large rough hand covering my mouth and nose. “Shh-sh-sh, little one. I know you are in pain, but this is not the place for children’s screams.” The face was completely out of the fog now, and I could see it clear as day. it looked genuinely concerned. I could make out every single detail of its arm, its skin looked like i imagined a burned lizard would look. The hand slowly lifted from my mouth and i slowly inhaled, trying not to make a sound. When the pain hit me a second time i almost passed out, and the hand quickly covered my mouth again. “Let me help you, little one. Let me take away your pain.” I nodded quickly, not having a second thought of what it had really said or how it would even go about such a thing. It reached out with its other hand and held it tightly to my chest, and just like that, the pain was gone. I was so surprised i almost fell flat on my face.

“Thank you.” I whispered. The large charred face smiled at me. “Think nothing of it, little one. If it weren’t for my actions, you wouldn’t be in pain. In fact, you wouldn’t be here at all.” I didn’t understand what it meant, but i was too young to give it a second thought. I unwrapped my arms from my chest and climbed out of the bed. My legs felt like i had been sleeping for years. The cold hard floor felt good under my feet. “Am i still in your home?” The black face nodded. “Why am i here?” As i spoke i walked around the bed and touched the black fog surrounding my bed. It felt wet, but not cold. It gave way as i pushed it softly, but resisted as i tried to push through it. “You were in an accident. You don’t remember?” I looked at it and shook my head. “Your soul is here, but your body remains.” It pointed to the bed behind me. I turned around and saw myself laying in the bed, a mask with hoses covering my mouth and nose, and cables ran to the blurred machines beside it. I looked down on myself, and saw that my arms were slightly translucent. “Am i a ghost?” I asked the face. “not exactly.” it replied. It looked like it was thinking. “Your body and your soul are two different entities. Both normally occupy the same space, your soul resides inside your body, if that makes sense to you.” I nodded slowly as The face continued. “Now that your body is damaged, your soul wanders. It cannot remain in the body when it is this badly damaged. If i hadn't brought you here, your soul would've gone up into heaven, and your body would have died.” 

I looked up at the big floating head. “Where is your body?” The face looked surprised. “Its here in the fog. Why do you ask?” I shrugged. “You look funny without a body.” The floating head laughed silently again. “I thought it best to only show my head, so i wouldn't scare you.” I shook my head. “You don’t scare me, you're nice.” As the head smiled the dark fog crept further away, revealing a body that was taller than myself, even though it was sitting down and hunched over. “Is that better?” He asked. I nodded and smiled. “You're really big.” 

[mojput-mypath]

Naughty is allowed! / Zločestoća je dozvoljena!

SCROLL TO THE END FOR RANDOM PHOTOS / NEVEZANE FOTKE PO CIJELOM BLOGU

My tongue has no more restraint, I became naughty. Naughtier than usual. More open in expression, one could say.

I got cold feet with this new attitude. I say everything openly, I move strong through problems and challenges, but. But when I amass emotional strain, I hold it and hold until I pop. Not too abruptly, more like a popcorn in a slow motion video. I am struggling between the desire not to hurt others and self-empowerment. I developed the balls to say whatever I do not like, without the usual fear that I would be labelled as a bad person. Hard is the life of a spiritual seeker. It is super easy to have the concept how everyone should be exclusively good, which results in suppressing naturally occurring emotions, and then popping like popcorn in the end, leaving everyone in disbelief. Well.

Out of business reasons, I searched for various sources of spiritual jokes/expressions/posts, only to discover that most of them sound like self-help for sad people. My deepest apologies for the rare few that are truly smart and quite deep as spiritual expressions, but. But there is so much clichéd trash out there, it should all be banned.

I commented with meine Schwester Katina how people speak only to hear their own voices, intellectualising their conclusions, when rarely one honestly shares. Remember all those unforgettable and hilarious hillbilly stories on TV? Why are those so funny and why do they stick in our memory storages for ever? Because those people are truthful, simple and original. Guru says that whoever spends a lot of words and repetitively emphasises the same conclusions, actually shares from the intellect. While a heartfelt sharing transfers the meaning clearly by the mere presence of the other person, and in few words, if any. When people speak only from the intellectual level, they keep explaining to themselves something they most probably do not agree with from the bottom of their heart. The more often they hear themselves saying the same, the deeper they suppress the intuitive and honest thought/feeling.

Sun is shining wonderfully in Germany / Sunce sija k’o tepsija u Njemačkoj

It is difficult to see one’s own holes, one’s own disadvantages, our own smallness. Even more difficult is to admit it to ourselves, and the hardest is to show it to others. ThetaHealing taught me well by digging in one’s psyche and subconsciousness. You get a broader image of what is happening with the other person, and you can easily see what they are hiding from themselves. What it is they are trying to justify to themselves to protect their ego. You can read a person like an open book, but you cannot force them to see how their own pattern serves them. While the person sees the same pattern as something imposed from the outside. At the same time, you need to gently steer the person to go deeper and deeper into what they really do not wish to see.

Everyone creates their own world. Me and you look through the window and see a situation between two people. We hear the same words, we see the same gestures – and we both have an entirely different interpretation of what just happened, in accordance to all the impressions that made us into the people we are in this moment.

That same situation, can already tomorrow be different for both me and you, it can be seen and judged in another way. Everyone creates their own world. Or if it feels more comfortable: nature created these beautiful eyes through which we see the world as we do, as our inner nature tells us to: “It is not possible that I am responsible for everything that happened in my life!” Hmmmm. Essentially yes. Only our small mind, as it is not at all times connected to all that is (the cosmic intelligence, All That Is etc.), considers that something is being imposed on it, and that it is not possible that we create it all ourselves. Everyone creates their own world, by choosing to see it as we do. I repeat: four eyes, two pairs of ears, and two hearts can perceive an objectively identical situation as far as even diametrically opposite, through the filter of all we know, what we have experienced and our genetic material and yes, I will say it, oh yeah: OUR KARMA.

As we all know, karma, yup, she’s a bitch. Even the same, identical karma (if there is such a thing as identical karma) or the cause and consequence effect of this existence, can be differently interpreted by different people. Someone might say something is a blessing, the other person will say – a curse. Everyone creates their own world.

Jokes aside. I never could understand the need to evict certain people out of one’s life. I found it hard to understand why people stop communication forever with a person they dated. After having shared the good and the bad, even saliva, man – bye bye! My parents made this kind of decision (actually my mom did, dad had no choice in the matter), and maybe that is the reason why I kept making an effort not to burn any bridges. I did not like how things turned out between them. I guess every child wishes their parents to be always together and super happy. Plus I really love to dig into the past, so I always go back to what was, probably too often (three retrograde planets, what to do). Some bridges I have burned, not on purpose, and I regret I have.

Autumn never ends in my city / Jesen u mom gradu ne prestaje

Here I go again with the Guru, but what to do, when he really has a handful of super intelligent conclusions. Anyhow, the Guru says: let go of regrets this very moment. Regretting is redundant and unproductive. The past happened, what you can learn from it – learn and move on. He also says something else: See your past as your destiny, and your future as free will. How smart! I wish I could do that. At least I have a teacher who shares a few good ones with me, instead of relying on non-authentic, quasi-spiritual akka self-help diarrhoea-style empowerment crap (positive quotes, yeah right).

Going back on topic: Maybe I am completely wrong, and I will hopefully find  out if I was in a couple of years, I realised I need to leave some people behind. Consciously, decisively and intelligently. To protect myself, and to give them an opportunity to detach, to experience their own worlds without me in it. For me to experience a life without them.

Firstly, a logical reason for separation would be hurt and anger, resentment and similar. Yet, unusual, but true (or maybe I am the one justifying my ego by intellectualising) – my current reason to put a veto on any communication with certain people is because I CHOOSE not to accept, spiritually said, certain energies in my life. A small dose of doubt is surly there. Have I made the right decision? Did I have to do it in that particular way? I definitely had the last word, and I liked that, heheee. Even so, curiosity killed the cat. What is the person thinking now, what are they feeling, do they hate me? Sometimes I can feel/hear the emotions and thoughts of those people. Voodoo! Also, I can more or less guess how they could feel, as I know them well. A person you do not know, there is no reason to put on ice, right?

Let us see where this will take me. What I feel now is I do not wish to give space to some people, their thoughts, opinions and behaviour. Because it does not suit me, because it tires me, because it does not enrich my life. I still do not have enough strength and unlimited powers, nor the greatness to be there for them out of the bottom of my heart and help. I am still young and small, and I need to shut down the unlimited source I share with others, and take some of it for myself. So I can be more useful where needed, without unnecessary exhaustion.

My next action point: to stop using food like drugs. A bit brutal, yet, quite true.

I discovered what I really feel comfortable eating, but from time to time the rhythm gets spoiled, so I start eating everything like a hungry kid after a day’s play. Like letting a dog off the chain. I have such amazing discipline and attention to what I eat, and then my guard falls, and then it is a mess. The thing is that I am using diet as a health option (instead of popping chemicals into the body, I am restoring the balance naturally). So, every time I get stranded, I suffer quite badly. Cos I’m a sensitive flower… Please don’t offer me bread, cheese or sugar chocolates, but let us rather boil a goulash and share a spoon of honey. Everyone creates their own world, and that is why in my world mozzarella is pure evil and for someone else pure heaven.

Now for real. Out of reasons unknown, I spiked my breakfast with chilli oil, had tabasco for lunch and for dinner, completely innocently, I bit into, properly chewed and swallowed: a whole chilli pepper. After dinner, I had a fight with my new roommate (the better half of the well-known K&G sisters tandem), claiming how the tension has been growing for days, while she was not on the same page, really. Wishing to say that the chilli brought anger into the relationship! So now, whether the chilli came to me, cos I was already angry, or the chilli was the cause of the unexpected anger? Chicken or egg first? In any case, whether it was the chicken or the egg, one of the two surly was and that confirms my theory that food drastically influences the quality of our life. Just to remind you that: everyone creates their own world.

Reminder of the coolest sistahs in da Uni-verse / Podsjetnik na najfora sestre u Sve-miru

The people I am not speaking to at the moment are my dad and my ex (connection?). If you want to know the juicy details of the divorce papers, message me. I would say more for sure, but I do need to respect the privacy of others. Long live freedom of speech! I will type all this down, and then it will be digitally opened in 50 years, because the people in the future would be super interested in how we lived, and have special interest in gossip from the life of a junge Frau. I hardly wait to see all that from the heaven and observe my grandkids forgetting all about me!

The story of my life.

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Evo mene opet na naškom. Naporno mi prevoditi blogove, pa sam ih par samo na engleskom ostavila, bez objašnjenja, a što ću. Snalazite se vi što ne govorite engleski, ne zaboravite da vas volim bez obzira na jezik.

Šalu nastranu. Khm. Na stranu. Razvezao mi se jezik, nešto sam postala „zločesta“. Zločestija nego inače. Otvorenija u izričaju, reklo bi se.

Bila sam se malo stisla zbog toga. Sve kažem otvoreno, snažna prolazim kroz nevolje, nedaće i izazove, ali. Ali kad se skupi malo emocionalnog napora, više ne mogu, pa puknem. Ne pre-naglo, više kao kokica na usporenoj snimci. Borim se između želje za nepovrjeđivanjem, a s druge strane sam razvila muda da kažem sve što mi se ne sviđa svakome, bez straha da ću biti procijenjena kao loša osoba. Težak je život duhovnog tragaoca. Lako se stvori koncept da trebaš biti isključivo dobrica, i onda potiskuješ prirodne osjećaje, da bi na kraju puk'o ko kokica, pa se svi čude šta ti je. Uh.

Iz poslovnih sam razloga potražila razne izvore duhovnih šala/izraza/postova, i otkrila da ih većina djeluje kao samo-pomoć za jadnike. Ispričavam se onim uistinu pametnim, pronicljivim i duboko duhovnim izričajima, ali. Ali ima toliko isklišejiziranog smeća na slobodi. Trebalo bi to sve zabraniti.

Komentiram s Katinom kako ljudi govore da bi slušali svoj glas, intelektualizirajući svoje zaključke, dok rijetko tko iskreno dijeli. Znaš sve one seljačke priče u TV reportažama koje se ne zaboravljaju? Zašto su toliko smiješne i zašto ostaju vječno urezane u našim memorijskim skladištima? Jer su ti ljudi istiniti, prosti, originalni. Jer dijele nešto što su čuli/osjetili/doživjeli. Guru kaže da netko tko nešto nadugo i naširoko, repetitivno razglaba, dijeli iz intelekta. Dok, ako dijeli iz srca, samim svojim prisustvom ili uz vrlo malo riječi, prenese jasno ono što želi prenijeti. Kad ljudi govore samo iz intelekta, sami sebi objašnjavaju nešto s čim se vrlo vjerojatno iz dubine svoje duše ne slažu, te što češće sami sebe čuju da nešto govore, to valjda dublje potiskuju intuitivnu i iskrenu misao/osjećaj.

Taught a Happiness Program in Baden-Baden / Vodila tečaj u Baden-Badenu 

Teško je vidjeti svoje rupe, svoje nedostatke, svoju malenost. Još teže je to priznati sebi, a najteže drugima. ThetaHealing me tome itekako naučio. Kopanje po psihi i podsvijesti. Dan ti je uvid i šira slika onoga što se s osobom događa i vidiš što od sebe skriva, što je to što sebi pojašnjava, zapravo opravdava, braneći svoj ego. Vidiš osobu kao otvorenu knjigu, ali ne možeš čovjeka natjerati da vidi čemu njemu služi vlastiti obrazac, kojeg on vidi kao negativno nametnutog izvana. Istovremeno, moraš osobu nježno navoditi da vidi sve više i više ono što u suštini ne želi vidjeti.

Svatko stvara svoj vlastiti svijet. Ja i ti gledamo kroz prozor i vidimo scenu koja se odvija između dvoje ljudi. Čujemo iste riječi, vidimo iste geste – a oboje imamo drugačiju interpretaciju onoga što se dogodilo, u odnosu na sve ono što je utjecalo na to da budemo osoba koja jesmo upravo u tom trenutku.

Ta ista slika, već sutradan može biti, od obje osobe, drugačije viđena i procijenjena. Svatko stvara svoj vlastiti svijet. Ili ako ti je lakše ovako: priroda nam je stvorila ove lijepe oči kroz koje vidimo svijet onakvim kako nam unutarnja priroda nalaže. „Nisam valjda ja odgovoran za sve što mi se u životu događa!“ Hmmm, u suštini jesi. Samo naš mali um, pošto nije u svakom trenutku povezan sa svime što jest (kozmičkom inteligencijom, svime što jest itd.), smatra da se njemu nešto nameće izvana, i da je nemoguće da to sve sami stvaramo. Svatko stvara svoj vlastiti svijet, birajući da ga vidi onako kako ga vidi. Ponavljam se: četiri oka, dva para ušiju i dva srca npr. doživljavaju istu objektivnu situaciju čak i dijametralno suprotno, kroz filter svega što znamo, što smo doživjeli, genetiku i reći ću, da, o daaaa; KARMU.

Kao što svi znamo, karma, yup, she's a bitch. Čak i ista identična „karma“ (ako uopće postoji „ista karma“!), ilitiga uzročno-posljedično djelovanje ovog postojanja, može od dvoje različitih ljudi biti drugačije interpretirana. Netko će reći da je nešto blagoslov, a druga osoba će za to isto reći da je prokletstvo. Svatko stvara svoj vlastiti svijet.

Šalu nastranu. Nisam nikad razumjela zašto ljudi imaju potrebu druge izbaciti iz svog života. Bilo mi je apsolutno nerazumljivo zašto ljudi nakon veze s nekim prekinu zauvijek svaki kontakt s tom osobom. Nakon dijeljenja i dobrog i lošeg i čak i sline – ćao! Pretpostavljam da svako dijete želi da su mu roditelji vječno skupa i sretni. Moji roditelji su tako odlučili (tj. mama, a tata nije imao izbora), i možda je to razlog zašto se ja cijeli život trudim iz petnih žila da ne bih slučajno spalila koji most iza sebe. Nije mi se svidjelo kako je to bilo među njima. Plus što volim prčkati po prošlosti, pa se uvijek vraćam svemu što je bilo, vjerojatno prečesto (tri retrogradne planete, šta ćeš). Neke mostove sam nenamjerno spalila, i žalim za tim.

My mom is picking olives in Croatia / Mama bere masline u Hrvatskoj

Opet ja s Guruom, ali šta ćeš kad stvarno ima zeru mudrih, uglavnom, kaže Guru da se ostavim žaljenja istog trena. Žaljenje je suvišno i neproduktivno. Prošlost se dogodila, što iz nje možeš – nauči i idi dalje. Kaže još nešto, što se tu super nadovezuje: Vidi svoju prošlost kao sudbinu, a budućnost kao slobodnu volju. Ma kako je samo pametan! Kad bih bar ja tako… Ali eto, bar imam nekog da mi podijeli dvije pametne, da se ne moram oslanjati na neautentične kvazi-duhovne akka self-help proljeve o samoosnaživanju.

Povratak na temu: shvatila sam, i možda sam potpuno u krivu, ali to ću valjda saznati za koju godinicu, da neke ljude MORAM ostaviti iza sebe. Svjesno, odlučno i pametno. Da bih sebe zaštitila i da bih njima dala priliku da se odvoje, da dožive svoj svijet bez mene. I da ja doživim svijet bez njih. Isprva, logičan razlog odvajanja bi bio povrijeđenost i ljutnja, zamjeranje i slično tome. No, neobično, ali istinito (ili, ponavljam se, možda ja to samo sebi sada tako intelektualno objašnjavam, ne bi li samu sebe/ego opravdala) – moj trenutni razlog stavljanja veta na pretjeranu ili bilo kakvu komunikaciju s nekim ljudima je isključivo, jer BIRAM ne primati određene, duhovno rečeno: energije, u svoj život. Mala doza sumnje svakako postoji. Jesam li donijela dobru odluku? Jesam li morala to napraviti baš na taj način? Svakako sam ja imala zadnju riječ, to mi se baš sviđa, ehehe. Ipak, znatiželja me kopka, što sada ta osoba misli, što sada osjeća, mrzi li me? Nekad osjetim/čujem osjećaje, misli tih ljudi. Voodoo! I otprilike znam kako bi se mogli osjećati, što bi mogli misliti, jer se dobro poznajemo. S nekim s kim se ni ne poznaš, nema ni potrebe da je/ga stavljaš na led, zar ne?

Vidjet ćemo kako će se ovo dalje razvijati. Ono što osjećam sada je da ne želim davati prostora u svom životu nekim ljudima, njihovim mislima i mišljenjima, njihovom ponašanju. Jer mi ne odgovara, jer me umara, jer me ne obogaćuje. Nemam još dovoljno snage i neograničene moći, niti veličine da im iz srca budem na raspolaganju i pomognem, jer sam još mala i mlada, i trebam malo zatvoriti svoju pipu za druge kako bi nešto ostalo i za mene. Da mogu biti korisnija gdje treba, bez da me se nepotrebno iscrpljuje.

Sljedeća akcija: da se prestanem drogirati hranom! Jako bitno kad odlučiš izbaciti kemiju iz života i liječiti se prehranom. Malo brutalno, ali rekla bih, poprilično istinito. Otkrila sam što mi uistinu besprijekorno odgovara jesti, ali s vremena na vrijeme mi se poremeti ritam, i navalim na sve živo kao gladno dijete nakon cjelodnevnog landranja po vani. Kad pustiš psa s lanca. Imam tako dobru disciplinu i pažnju na sve što jedem, ali popusti mi gard i onda se satarem. Ne bi bilo problema da nisam tako prokleto osjetljiva, da ne doživim svaki taj izlet s poprilično kobnim posljedicama. Zato me nemoj nuditi kruhom, sirom ni čokoladom, nego radije skuhajmo varivo i podijelimo žlicu meda. Svatko stvara svoj vlastiti svijet, zato je u mom svijetu mozarella sendvič najveće zlo, a nekom drugom milina.

Divine chocolate! no dairy no sugar, no gluten, just pure delight / Božanstvena ćoksa bez mliječnih sastojaka, šećera i glutena, samo čisto savršentsvo!

Sad za fakat: iz nepoznatog razloga sam posegnula za čili uljem za doručak i tabascom za ručak, a za večeru sam, zbilja nenamjerno, zagrizla, dobro prožvakala i progutala oveću čili papričicu. Nakon te večere sam se posvađala sa svojom novom cimericom (svima dobro poznata iz K&G tandema, Katinom), tvrdeći da se stalno peckamo već danima, dok njoj nije baš bilo jasno o čemu ja to trabunjam. Želim reći da je čili zaljutio odnos! E sad, jel' čili došao jer sam već bila ljuta, pa je bio kap koja je prelila čašu ili je čili naljutio? Kokoš ili jaje? U svakom slučaju, bila kokoš il' jaje, jedno od to dvoje zasigurno jest i to potvrđuje moju teoriju o tome da nam hrana DRASTIČNO utječe na kvalitetu života. Da ne kažem: Svatko stvara svoj vlastiti svijet.

Ne razgovaram s ocem ni s bivšim momkom (hmmmm). Ako te zanimaju sočni detalji rastava, slobodno mi se javi u inbox. Puno bih ja toga više rekla, ali ne smijem, moram poštovati privatnost ljudi s kojima sam u interakciji. Živjela sloboda govora! Sve ću ja to zapisat, i onda će se digitalno otvoriti za 50 godina, jer će ljude u budućnosti živo zanimati kako se ranije živjelo, a da ne kažem što će uživati u detaljima tračeva iz ranijeg života jedne djeve mlade. Jedva čekam sve to promatrati s neba, i gledati kako svojim unucima već ja i moj život padaju u zaborav.

Priča mog života.