#I’ve got plans for my little brain leach
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Don’t mind me while I *makes a tf2 oc cutely*
#it all started with a damn ai bot oddly enough#now I have this bitch couch surfing my head#so how j need to write about her#her name (faction ofc) is Thief#she fucking robs people#her like weapons and shit would probably be just a basic pistol or smrh#a knife of some kind#and a lock pick#and because I don’t believe in cis het people#she would be a trans woman#she is a dick having Queen#anyways I’m thinking of drawing her or at least writing something for her#I’ve got plans for my little brain leach
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omg thank you so much for the tag my gorgeous @milkywayes i ADORE getting tagged in stuff like this
When did you post your first ever fanfic?
i think it was like in 2014? something like that? i was in high school
First Character(s) you wrote?
i don't want to talk about it (self insert fanfiction with the guy who plays voldemort in a very potter musical)
Main Character(s) you’re currently writing?
femshep/garrus
Character(s) you haven’t written about before but plan to write about soon?
i'm dying to write a jack/miranda fic, and if i dip my toe into red dead i'll post arthur/charles, and if i write cyberpunk 2077 i'll write v/judy
Fandom(s) you’re currently writing?
mass effect, planning on red dead 2, cyberpunk 2077, and sword catcher (because that book is changing my life)
Platonic pairing(s) you’re currently writing?
shepard/liara and garrus/wrex. both beautiful dynamics (my hottest take is that i just really don't care for liara's romance, i much prefer her as your bff)
Romantic pairing(s) you’re currently writing?
lil bit of shakarian, lil bit of shrios
Your top AO3 tags?
one bed, fluff and smut, whump, dom garrus vakarian
Current platform you use for posting?
used to be wattpad, but i'm on the ao3 grind now because i reect myself
Snippet of the WIP you are currently working on?
this is going in this week's chapter, i can't tell you how pumped i am for this
She’d never officially learned how to warp something. She’d tried, obviously, back in the Alliance. She’d drill all day until she would collapse on the ground, had to be spoon fed electrolyte water mixed with protein powder until she at least got the energy to vomit the sludge up. There was just something that never clicked, she could never figure it out.
Until now. She knew exactly what was missing.
Fucking vengeance.
She channeled her biotic field in the dead center of the krogan’s chest. She imagined ripping his gullet open and filling it with acid. He stopped in his tracks, as if he were put in a stasis. But blood started to pool from his chest. She felt a tug pulling at her jaw, threatening to throw her forward. But she kept going, kept finding every little nerve and blood capsule in the krogan’s body and dismantling it. He fell to his knees and she rose to her feet. Her ears were roaring, her chest was tightening and tightening, but she didn’t dare stop because if she stopped then Garrus would be in danger--
“Shepard!” She vaguely heard Garrus call her name, but he was entirely in another plane of existence. The krogan was still moving, his eyelids still fluttered, his limbs still convulsed. It wasn’t enough, it was never enough. She extended out her other arm, she imagined her biotic forces forming into a javelin that would strike his chest and tear him apart, tear him in half, tear him like she tied his limbs to threshers and made them pull him until he was nothing more than blood and guts--
“Shepard!” Garrus took her shoulders in his hands. She dropped the krogan instantly, meeting his eyes. And for the first time, when Garrus looked at her, she saw fear. Genuine fear. Shepard took a gulping, quivering breath. Her head pounded like the worst hangover she’d ever experienced in her life, her teeth chattered. “He’s dead, okay! You can stop now, he’s dead.”
She dared to look down at the krogan. He looked as though his entire body had been leached from blood, pooling around him as if his body were suddenly poisonous. Shepard did that. Shepard did that. She wanted to throw up, she wanted to laugh, she wanted to curl up and cry under her sheets.
“Fuck,” she whispered to herself, her voice sounding unfamiliar to her own ears.
“Since when have you been able to warp something like that?” Garrus asked incredulously, a hint of awe in his voice.
“I-- I’ve never…” She felt as though someone had replaced her brain with sand, and it was pouring out of her eyes and her ears and her nose. Bile rose in her throat, she forced herself to swallow it down.
“Crap, Del, why did you choose now to test it out?”
Shepard looked at Garrus. The fear, the trepidation hadn’t entirely left his expression. What could she say? Garrus was in danger, that krogan was going to kill him? She wouldn't let anything bad happen to him, not after all of this time. So what if she molecularly decimated a lumbering alien at point-blank range? Garrus was okay, he was alive, he was breathing--
“I just…” she gave a little shake of her head. “I just did.”
Garrus swallowed, not breaking eye contact with Shepard. He took a step towards her and cupped her face in his hands. His hands were so big, his palms rested entirely on her cheeks, his thumbs on her jaw. She could feel his subvocals from his touch, she was desperate to know what they meant. For a wild moment, Shepard thought he was about to kiss her. Surrounded by a pile of dead bodies, Fist waiting for them in his backrooms, and Garrus Vakarian was about to kiss her--
But he just traced a finger gingerly underneath both of her eyes. “Your eyes are bleeding…” he whispered, almost so quietly she couldn’t hear it. She squeezed them, feeling the blood inch down her cheeks. They didn’t feel any different than tears.
for the tag don't at all feel pressured to do it but here ya go @carnivorousbelvedere @otemporanerys @westernlarch
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Orphans (The Mandalorian)
(Three of y’all wanted Din & Boba Fett, so I combined your requests into one story because to be honest I think I have no idea how to write him! That’s probably enough Boba for one weekend, LOL. For @healingdays, @innitmarvelous2 and Anon!
Din and Boba have a talk by a fire. Platonic, a little angsty, set just after Tython, 1200 words.)
***
At least there was this, then, battle: the brutal and elegant dance of blows struck and bolts fired, the song of pumping blood and pounding heart. In this Din could lose himself for a time, his focus shrunk down only to this moment, this second, this instant.
He grunted, taking a blow that rattled his beskar; blocked and parried, shoved back, struck deep with his spear, finished with his fist. Felt the crunch of bone beneath his balled hand, breathed deep of the gasp his enemy huffed into the cold night air. There was safety here in the thin line between victory and defeat, and he leaned into it with every fiber, muscles heart gut brain a singular deadly unit.
And then what he’d been dreading came upon him: the silence, the echoing ring of the final blow. He stood over his fallen opponents, stormtroopers still and broken in the night. Sweat streamed down his face, soaking his collar, slicking the inside of his helmet.
Beside him, Boba Fett slung his gaffe stick over his shoulders, tilting his helmet toward Din. “You do good work, Mandalorian. Pity they had no information for us.”
The adrenaline leached out of him, leaving in its place a humming hollowness. “I knew Gideon would be hard to find,” he said gruffly, disappointment clinging to him as bitterly as the sweat. “I might be able to find another lead. Let’s get back to the ship.”
“Fennec’s taken it for repairs, remember,” said Fett. “Won’t be back for a few hours yet. We may as well find a place to hole up for the night.”
Din sighed. How had he forgotten their earlier discussion? He blinked. Perhaps the lack of sleep was catching up to him. He hadn’t slept for more than broken snatches since Tython. Sleep meant quiet, and quiet meant room to think, and that meant missing him, meant worry, fear, barely-contained panic --
“Fine,” he said. “But we’re gone as soon as the ship is free.”
***
The forest was alive and buzzing in the moonlight, creatures singing their night-choruses and buzzing their thoughts into the still spring air. Din ignored them, sitting at the edge of the fire across from Fett. Periodically he lifted his helmet, just slightly, to take a few drinks of water or a bite of the rations Fett had brought along. Fett’s helmet rested on the ground beside his feet, and he ate and drank openly, the shadows on his bare face stark in the firelight.
“So,” said Fett, cocking his head to one side. “Do you have a name?”
Din shrugged.
Fett quirked a brow. “You don’t want to say it? Or you’ve forgotten it?”
“It isn’t necessary.” He relented, Fett’s direct stare boring into him. “Usually people call me Mando.”
“Not exactly a flattering name, especially these days.” Fett shook his head. “I suppose it’s your business. But we might be working together for some time. A name might help.”
Din bristled. “Moff Gideon could be experimenting on the child as we speak. I don’t have the luxury of time.” Anger flared within him, a sick heat in his belly, and his hands tensed into fists at his side.
“I understand,” said Fett. There was an intensity in his naked eyes, a fierceness that left Din taken aback. “There will always be those who play such games.”
“It isn’t a game -- he could kill him --” No, don’t think about that, you’ll find him in time, you must --
“You misunderstand me,” said Fett, back to being as unemotional as ever. “In battle, sometimes terrible things are done for good reasons. I’m sure you’ve faced this yourself. It comes to all of us in time.” He took a drink of water. “But sometimes there is no battle. Sometimes there are only cowards, doing terrible things without cause, and somehow, they never see themselves the villain.” He fell silent for a moment. “Whatever the Moff is doing to your child, there is no reason for it. I’m sorry.”
The tension in Din’s fists and shoulders faded, dissolving into weariness. Your child. He wasn’t -- but wasn’t he? “He’s a foundling,” Din said suddenly. “As I was.”
“As my father was.” Fett gazed into the fire. “This is a galaxy filled with orphans.”
“Yes,” Din agreed, wondering why Fett had said something so obvious. He shook back a flash of red robes, smoke in the streets. “I was to find him a Jedi. They’ll be able to protect him --”
Fett let out a loud, barking laugh. “Jedi! Well. I suppose things may be different, for one of their own. He has their powers?”
“Yes. He can move things with his mind. Heal people. Hurt them.” A dim memory swam before him, the heat of a flamethrower, Grogu standing between him and the flametrooper, casting the fireball back, back. He remembered Cara, her hand scrabbling at her throat over a misunderstanding. “I can’t teach him myself what he needs to learn.”
“The Jedi have no fathers, you know,” said Fett.
The words settled in beneath Din’s armor, tearing at him. Was this good news, or bad? He swallowed. “Neither do the foundlings.”
“Some of them,” said Fett. “Maybe not yours.” He took another bite of his rations. “But what do I know?”
***
Din woke up with a start, his back and shoulders stiff from leaning against a log, his hands reaching up to touch his cuirass, reaching for --
But there was no sleepy Grogu nestled against his chest.
He blinked against the sunlight filtering in through his helmet, squinting. Morning. How he had let himself fall asleep?
“Good, you’re up,” said Fett, standing over him helmeted once more. “Fennec is making her way to the rendezvous point now.”
“You should have woken me,” said Din. “I could have kept watch.”
The tone in Fett’s voice suggested an eye roll beneath the helmet. “No, you couldn’t have. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you haven’t slept. You’ll get sloppy if you don’t tend to yourself, and the child needs you at your best.”
Din hung his head, abashed. Of course. He’d been foolish.
“Come now. Your best is formidable,” said Fett. He held out a hand. “The child’s lucky to have you looking out for him.”
Din stared up at the older man, blinking sleep from his eyes. He trembled, thinking of the weight of Grogu nestled against him, the way his eyes crinkled, the sensation of his tiny hand cradled carefully in Din’s.
“Thank you,” he said hoarsely. He grabbed Fett’s hand, and Fett pulled him to his feet with a grunt.
Up on his feet in the dawn-light, things seemed finally clear. He and Fett and Shand were formidable indeed, and there were others he could call on. A plan began to come to him, and with it, a faint sense of hope amidst the aching fear. He let out a long breath.
“My name is Din Djarin,” he said. “And I’ve got a plan.”
“Good to hear it, Djarin,” said Fett, and far above the treeline Slave I soared into view. “Let’s go hunting.”
-fin- (Partly inspired by the National song, “Baby, We’ll Be Fine: All night I lay on my pillow and pray
For my boss to stop me in the hallway
Lay my head on his shoulder and say
“Son I’ve been hearing good things”)
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Omens Universe, Chapter 13 Part 1
We’re in Heaven! Crowley’s got to access his blending-in skillz.
Warning for slightly creepy mind control.
Link to next part at the end.
(From the beginning)
(last part)
(chrono)
---
Chapter 13
There was a noise like a twang of a harp, but in reverse.
Two men (seemingly), a child, and a small green dog in a space helmet popped out next to the reception desk.
Noone was there. Crowley hung back while Aziraphale went up to the desk. It was pale mahogany, as smooth and clean as a surgical tray. The only things on it were a tiny golden bell, and programmes for The Sound of Music on stands. There was a plaque in front of the bell, that said:
And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.
Bit forward, Crowley thought.
Aziraphale turned back.
“Good, nobody’s here. That will make things easier. Now, what we’re looking for is -”
There was a musical chime, and an angel appeared behind the desk.
Aziraphale jumped, then tried to look as though he hadn’t. “Um, hello. I believe we spoke a moment ago?”
The red-haired angel gave them a frozen smile. “Welcome to Heaven. Please sign in.”
A ring-bound blue folder appeared on the desk in front of him.
“Er. Certainly.”
Aziraphale stepped forward. Crowley shifted so that Aziraphale’s body blocked him from view. He was unsuccessful. The receptionist’s eyes flicked from each member of their party to the next. First they took in Aziraphale’s disheveled appearance from his fight with Michael. Then the eleven-year-old child, the floating green dog, and then -
“That is a demon!” they shrieked.
Aziraphale froze, pen in hand. He could feel the situation topple out of control like a stack of books on an unwisely rickety table.
“Do something, Crowley,” he stage-whispered.
Crowley looked around, wondering if there was any point trying to duck out of sight. “You’re the one who just took out an Archangel, why are you looking at me?”
The receptionist’s hand flew out towards the little bell.
Adam stepped forward. A terrible, booming voice came out of his mouth.
“Don’t move.”
The red-haired angel froze. An eerie blank look stole over their face, smoothing away the panic. They straightened up and let their arm fall to their side.
“Have a pleasant apocalypse,” they said, in a high, toneless voice.
A chill ran up Crowley’s spine and set up camp there.
Aziraphale set the pen down and turned around, avoiding Adam’s eyes.
“That’s, um, well. Thank you, I suppose. How… how did you know to do that?”
Adam shrugged. He held the Book tighter against his chest.
“He did it back in the garden,” Crowley muttered to Aziraphale. “While you were. You know. Indisposed.”
The receptionist kept gazing forward with a faraway expression. By unspoken agreement, they all inched away from the desk.
“Right,” Aziraphale said. “I suppose I should lead the way. Crowley, you’ll need a disguise.”
“Yeah, could have done with one five minutes ago.” Crowley eyed the angel behind the desk and concentrated. His body glowed. His hair sprouted a few extra inches down to his shoulders. The darkness leached out of his clothes, leaving them white as bone. They morphed into a floaty blouse and smart suit-trousers. It was a good facsimile of what the receptionist was wearing. Crowley could have got it closer, but looking at the angel gave him the willies. He morphed a long earring that would pass for a gem as long as nobody looked too closely, and tucked a strand of hair in front of his ear to hide his own gem.
He turned to Aziraphale and made his best churchy face. “How do I look?”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Yes, dear, very fetching.”
Crowley reckoned he could get away with one white glove under his shirt. It might be a little fashion-forward for Heaven, but at least it was discreet.
They turned to Adam.
“I have no idea what to do about him,” Crowley admitted.
“The green dog is quite difficult to explain away,” Aziraphale said.
“It’ll be alright,” Adam said, vaguely.
His nose was back in that Book. What on Earth was in that thing? Crowley tried to get a glimpse at the title. It was in a curly font, which always played havoc with his eyes, especially with the sunglasses - oops. He would need an explanation for the sunglasses if anyone challenged him.
“I reckon,” Adam said, slowly, “if we all just walk around like we’re supposed to be here, then nobody will say anything. I think they just won’t notice I’m there.”
“Psychologically, there is a basis for that…” Aziraphale said, sounding doubtful.
“I think he means something a bit more… occult,” said Crowley.
Aziraphale coughed. “I suppose, if push came to shove, he could always. Well. Do… that again.” He gestured vaguely back at the reception desk.
Nobody had a better plan. They exchanged uneasy glances and set out.
~*~
Crowley despised open-plan offices.
They were the kind of thing his side ought to have devised, by right. Technically the nasty, cramped, dirty space occupied by Hell down in the basement qualified as open-plan, even though in practice everyone siloed themselves off in makeshift half-walled cubicles constructed out of anything they found lying around. This was something else, though. He felt himself going cross-eyed as he contemplated the vistas of white, airless space. It was like walking around inside a lightbulb.[1]
Spacedog trotted at their feet. His back legs whirred and clicked. He gave loving looks to Adam’s dirty, untied shoelaces as he sloped along. Adam’s guess earlier seemed to have been right. They’d met a few angels, and their gazes had slid pleasantly past their group without questioning their presence at all.
Aziraphale led the way. Crowley knew he should have some idea what everything was, but it had been so long since he’d been up here. He’d probably missed a few thousand restructures, too. Good.
They entered another blindingly bright open space with a bank of desks set up every half a mile. Crowley glowered from behind his shades.
A group of angels were clustered together. Aziraphale walked past them, head down. Crowley followed.
“Excuse me,” someone called out.
Aziraphale’s steps faltered. Crowley meant to keep walking, but against his better judgement, he glanced over at the group. With a jolt, he realised one of them was beckoning him over.
He stopped. Mistake.
“Hello, excuse me?” The voice brooked no argument.
Crowley stood frozen. A tiny voice screamed in his ear.
“Uh. Yeah?”
Aziraphale gave him a desperate look over his shoulder. Crowley pretended not to see.
The angel crooked her finger at him. Mouth dry, he walked slowly towards her.
“Yup?”
She had a sternly benevolent expression. They all did. It was becoming his least favorite expression.
“Are you any good with Powerpoint?”
Something in Crowley’s brain broke.
“Pardon?”
“You’re on the front desk, aren’t you? I’d be ever so grateful if you could help me. We’ve all got presentations due before the big push. It’s been ages since I’ve used the dratted thing - beg your pardon -”
She pressed a hand to her lips, as if blotting them.
“Also, if you could help us set up the projector, that would be super,” she added.
Crowley looked over his shoulder at Aziraphale. The angel spread his hands, helplessly.
“Erm. No problem,” he mumbled.
There was no way out. He drifted over to the huddle of angels as though walking to the guillotine.
~*~
Aziraphale, unlike some, was not an accomplished lurker. He could feel himself drawing unwanted attention as he tried not to hover. He suspected the only reason no-one was questioning him was because of Adam. Suspicious gazes began to be directed at him, but turned vague and distant as they failed to register Adam’s presence, before wandering back to their work. Crowley, at least, gave the impression he knew what he was doing as he clicked away on the angel’s ultra-thin desktop computer.
One of the few advantages of the extremely open-plan office was that it was easy to see threats coming from a great distance away. Aziraphale spotted Gabriel, flanked by Uriel and Sandalphon, the second he got out of the lift.
Aziraphale grabbed Adam by the shoulder and scurried behind a printer.
“- We need to be dramatic, but sombre. Maybe some lightning? And crank up the wind machine. I want my coat to billow when the first round of smiting kicks off.”
Gabriel swooped down towards the knot of angels. Aziraphale looked at Crowley, heart in mouth. Crowley was still in the middle of the group, explaining how the projector worked.
“- Has anyone heard from Michael? She missed a video-conference. It’s not like her.”
Aziraphale could not think for the life of him how to extract Crowley. He, on the other hand, was about to be right in Gabriel’s line of sight if he glanced over. He had to move. He’d have to trust in Crowley’s disguise and pray for luck.
He tiptoed backwards, towards the fire exit, and felt behind him for the handle.
The door gave a polite click and swung open without a sound. Aziraphale beckoned Adam. The boy jerked his head at Spacedog. The three of them slipped out and onto the fire escape.
When the door clicked shut behind them, Aziraphale felt a wave of relief for himself and fear for Crowley. He was nauseous with guilt for leaving him back there. But there was nothing to gain from dwelling. He held up his ring hand, and with a glow from his gem, summoned a piece of chalk into his hand. He marked the wall next to the door with a C.
Adam looked around, unmistakably bored.
“This isn’t how I imagined a spaceship,” he said.
“Ah.” Yes. They were still keeping up that fiction. Aziraphale was losing patience with it, if he was being quite honest. “Well, this is more of an… interim location. We’re really trying to get to Alpha Centauri.”
Adam’s eyes lit up. “Oh, I know about Alpha Centauri. It’s cool.”
Aziraphale smiled. “Talk to Crowley about it. He’ll tell you all sorts.” Not necessarily true all sorts, although Crowley told them with great confidence.
Adam had rallied, now that he knew their destination. “So, how do we get there?”
“We need to find the Department of Stars and Systems.”
In fact, the fire escape wasn’t the worst way to get there. It might even be faster, provided they encountered nobody. Aziraphale began the climb up to the next floor. Adam and Spacedog trotted at his heels. He marked the walls with chalk as he went.
He’d have to hope that Crowley caught up with them as fast as possible.
~*~
Many flights of stairs later, Aziraphale dragged himself up the last few steps, thinking with great nostalgia of the lift.
They were, at last, on the right floor. Aziraphale listened at the door, mostly as a formality. No-one was ever up here.
He opened the door and emerged onto floor 4004.
Its official name was the Department of Stars and Systems. Its unofficial name was The Universe.
“Woah,” Adam said.
The corridor they’d arrived in was, in one way, the polar opposite of the rest of Heaven. It was black. Endless black, the kind that made your eyeballs feels like they were being turned inside out. Aziraphale could see himself, and Adam, and the dog, as clearly as if they were standing in a well-lit room, but their surroundings were a deep, light-eating darkness.
Aziraphale groped for the wall and chalked a C onto it.
“Nearly there,” he said.
They walked carefully, unsure whether there were still walls to bump into. Eventually, as if cut into the night sky, letters appeared at head height, hanging in midair.
Gen 1:1
Aziraphale stretched out his hand towards them. They touched the raised letters, and behind them, a smooth steel surface. It was a door, invisible in the blackness.
When he touched the door, there was a musical beep, and a keypad lit up just where a handle would normally be.
Aziraphale’s face fell.
Adam hovered at his elbow. “Try one-two-three-four-five-six.”
Aziraphale contemplated the keypad,[2] his heart sinking away into the darkness. Stupid. Of course there would be security clearance. And of course they’d never give it to him. He looked around in the vague hope there would be a post-it note somewhere with the passcode written down.
“Oi,” came a voice from the other direction.
Aziraphale spun around. Crowley sauntered around the corner.
“Crowley!”
Crowley squinted, his shades dangling from one hand.
“This is weird. It’s not like proper darkness. More like light that happens to be black.”
He was still dressed like the angel from the front desk. He had dropped the sickly sweet expression, though, and looked properly Crowley-like again. He’d also reverted to his usual walk. Aziraphale loved that walk. The sight of it brought happy tears to his eyes.
“You escaped then, I take it?”
Crowley grinned as he sashayed over. He had a sparkle to him that meant a bad job well done.
“Eventually. I got their projector working. They thought I was so helpful they gave me a couple more tasks to do around the office.”
That sounded like the opposite of escaping, and also the opposite of Crowley’s general vibe. Aziraphale eyed him with suspicion.
“Then I issued an automatic update to all their devices with no deferrals. Slipped away in the chaos. Turns out angels can swear just as well as demons. I reckon it gets pent up if you go too long without.”
Aziraphale laughed.
“Well, at least you spotted the chalk,” he said.
“Chalk? What is this, the Famous Five? I went to the monitor room and saw you on the security cameras.”
Aziraphale blushed. He blamed everything currently happening to him on silly technological nonsense.
Crowley squinted at the keypad. “Ah. I’m assuming you don’t have the door code?”
“No,” Aziraphale admitted.
“Who’s in charge here nowadays?”
“Well. Nobody really comes up here. It’s an archive, but it’s self-regulating, so…” Aziraphale thought. “I think technically Gabriel’s in charge.”
“Right. Try one-two-three-four-five-six.”
“I really don’t think -”
Aziraphale heard beeping. Adam was already tapping numbers into the keypad.
“Wait, you don’t know -”
There was a click, and the door swung open.[3]
“I’m telling you,” Crowley said cheerfully. “Always underestimate that man’s intelligence, you’ll never go wrong.”
Aziraphale gave his most dignified eye-roll.
They stepped, one by one, over the threshold.
They emerged into a room with the Universe inside.
---
[1] Demons could do that, but why would you want to?
[2] It had thirty-one buttons, not all of which were numbers. One through six did appear on there, in some fashion.
[3] If anyone had asked Adam, not that they’d bother to, no reason to bother asking him anything after all, he’d have showed them prophecy 1511: the numbere of the Univerfe is the numbere of wone-thorough-sixe. But they didn’t.
(Link to the next part)
#omens universe fic#omens universe#good omens#good omens fic#ineffable husbands#steven universe#crowley absolutely only has the most rudimentary grasp of powerpoint#and the fancy heavenly projectors probably baffled him after the elderly tech he had to wrangle in hell#but he's good at blagging. so#they should have asked Adam
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Quarantine, Day 50
If quarantine was a book, I guess Day 50 would be an appropriate time for a world-shaking plot twist, but in my real life I was expecting more mundanity. Our plan has been that my husband would go to North Carolina on Saturday to spend a couple weeks taking care of his folks, who have been having a tough time. The kiddo and I would stay here, for quarantine safety reasons, but also because he's got school and I've got three week old kittens and a brand new balcony garden that cannot be taken or left behind. I got him a rental car so he didn't have to take his old truck, he's been packing stuff to take with, I've been planning strategies to make quarantine with just me and the kiddo run more smoothly. It was a solid plan.
Tonight while we were cooking dinner, my husband got the call that his dad is in the hospital. It does not look great. It looks like hospice is going to be a thing very soon. When you get a call like that, it doesn't really matter what the plan was before, because now everything is different. Tomorrow morning we are packing the van, dropping the kittens with another foster, and hitting the road for an unknowable period of time, however long we are needed. I mean for god's sake, they're not even letting my mother in law be in the hospital room with him! Part of me wanted us to drop everything and go tonight, but it was just completely infeasible. There is too much to do.
Basically the plan now is to get all complicating factors squared away as much as possible. Those are, in no particular order, two foster kittens who still need bottlefeeding, a brand new garden that needs water, a house that is in no way ready to be left for a couple of weeks, and the many, many perishable groceries I bought yesterday. Packing our suitcases doesn't take long and a minivan is easy to load with all kinds of stuff, so at least that part is easy.
I feel super, super bad about passing the kittens along. We just got them healthy, and the kiddo is in love with them, and I want to keep taking care of them to make sure they keep growing and getting better! But taking them to another state with us would mean taking them away from all the veterinary care available here, and also adding a big time commitment when I have a feeling I will be super busy anyway. My rescue coordinator was able to find another foster to take them for a few days, at least, but they may eventually end up at her house until I get back. It's a good thing they are a lot less work than they were a week ago, cause she's already got kittens a-plenty! I made up a little sheet with their information and health history, and I'm packing them a sleepaway bag with food and litter and toys and heating pads, just to make sure that wherever they end up, they will have everything they need. It will be okay.
The garden is going to have to fend for itself for the most part, unfortunately. I'm hoping for rain and mild weather, and have pushed everything close to the balcony rail. For the biggest plants, I have deployed my slow-feeders too, ceramic spikes that get buried in the dirt and then have a wine bottle placed inside, upside down. The idea is that the water from the bottle flows slowly into the spike and is leached into the soil through the ceramic. It has worked before, so here's hoping. I would be bummed to have to replant my garden, but it's not the end of the world.
The house is a problem because it is even more of a disaster than usual since the only time that is real right now is Kitten Time. During Kitten Time, I usually let the housework mostly go to hell, promising myself that I will catch up as soon as I can sleep four hours at a time again. It usually does happen, but we are in full disaster mode right now. Luckily, the one really good thing my ADHD brain does for me is floods my system with hyperfocusing adrenaline when I am faced with a hard deadline coming up impossibly fast. I have already gotten the kitchen almost clean and the kitten room arranged and my suitcase packed and the kitten list written. I will suffer for it tomorrow, but that's okay because my husband will be driving and I can sleep in the car to the dulcet drone of his history podcasts.
The groceries... well, they're coming with us, I guess. We have a cooler, two coolers if we really need, and it's not like any of us are going to want to go shopping when we get there anyway. Taking a bunch of our groceries with us means we don't need to do any shopping for a few days, so that's time we have for concentrating on other stuff. That's a good thing, really. It's just a little inconvenient to pack, is all.
I was going to write a lot of stuff today, but I have so much to do. One super important, super good thing that did happen today: my Breeder's Edge formula finally arrived in the mail, just in time! It was like Christmas, opening all those packages and getting five full cans of formula. I was so happy! The only problem was, the way Amazon works through third party shippers, any information about the giver did not make it to me. If you sent me a can of formula, please let me know, because I would love to thank you very sincerely for putting the light in this day.
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It’s officially the 5th where I am! Happy DEH Gift Exchange! @sincerely-us My person was @iellostar Hope you like this!!
The prompts were: evan and connor on a road trip. like, to set the scene: like those aus of people running away and disappearing when they turn 18. And: Connor comes out to his dad and it doesnt go well, he goes to evans and heidi and evan comfort him and its super sweet and cute. And, like....for the art I did the first one, but...I kind of also did fic. Because I was worried that this drawing wasn’t very good. So, I combined the two prompts and made the fic below. It’s also on Ao3
Connor is smiling. It’s a gentle thing, this smile. Warm, happy. It’s Evan’s favorite, even though it’s the rarest.
Evan has been watching this smile form for the past hour. The further they get away from civilization, from all the drama waiting for them back home, the more relaxed Connor gets.
Anxiety and anger and stress leach away from his face, softening the line of his shoulders until he’s practically slumping in his seat.
“You’re staring,” Connor says. It’s not a complaint.
“I have a cute boyfriend,” Evan counters anyway.
Connor rolls his eyes, but his cheeks turn pink. “No, you.”
The road around them is deserted, which is how Evan’s anxiety likes it. This is the main reason he doesn’t protest when Connor takes one hand off the wheel to lace with Evan’s.
Evan pulls their joined hands up to give Connor’s knuckles a kiss.
--
It’s Heidi’s idea, originally. Long before Connor and Evan are even dating, she suggests that the two of them take a roadtrip, the summer before college. She thinks getting away from the stress of school and work, as well as their peers, might do them a lot of good.
She references Evan’s pin map, the one he abandoned at the beginning of the year--he’s replaced some of the old pins in their spots, as well as adding new pins to places that Connor mentions he’d like to see someday.
Heidi’s pleased that Evan’s retaken up his old habit, but she’s a little too smug about those new pins for his liking.
They have nothing to do with his crush on Connor, mom!
Not…not that he has a crush on Connor.
…
Okay, yes, he’s completely gone on Connor.
Thankfully, as Evan finds out later, Connor reciprocates those feelings!
But that’s a story for another time.
Connor is completely on board with Heidi’s idea, once it’s brought up to him. He’s perfectly happy to spend some time away from his family, especially if Evan’s there. The three of them make a cautious plan that, the month after graduation, Connor and Evan will hit the road.
Heidi, after nearly thirteen years of single-parenthood, is a master at budgeting. She helps them plan out where they’ll stay and the costs. It’s more than a little confusing to both boys, but to Connor especially. He’s shit at math and numbers.
Between their two jobs, and Heidi and Connor’s mother helping, they should be perfectly fine, money-wise, to do what they’d like.
“I wanna go to Bear Mountain,” Connor tells Evan.
Evan blinks, surprised. “I mean, me too, but isn’t hiking more my thing?” His eyes widen and he tries to backtrack. “Not that I think you don’t exercise! I just--”
“Let’s be real, I don’t exercise,” Connor scoffs, cutting Evan’s panic off at the knees. “But it’s in On the Road and you know I’m a hoe for anything to do with books.”
“Yeah, but you’re my hoe.”
“...”
“You know what I meant, asshole!”
--
They end up having to move up their timeline by a week. Because Larry and Connor get into their worst fight since the beginning of the school year.
The thing is, Connor and Evan have been open about their relationship to Heidi since the very beginning. And they tell Cynthia not long after. Both women are, to put it lightly, overly supportive of their relationship. It’s genuine, but Connor can tell that some of Cynthia’s furver stems from guilt. And because Evan and Connor have been mentally healthier since they became friends.
(They both still have their bad days. Some are worse than others. But, it helps. To not be alone.)
Unfortunately, Cynthia broaches the topic of telling Larry.
And she keeps bringing it up.
It takes two full months of convincing before Connor agrees to tell--if only to stop her nagging him.
Because Connor is a realist, he expresses his doubt to Evan. Larry has never been the most accepting--even about things that most straight, white men at least tolerate.
Connor won’t say that he’s worried, per say. But he’s got a bad feeling in his gut. And his gut is rarely wrong.
--
Connor has an emergency bag stashed at the Hansen house.
The first time that Connor has a fight with his family, post-becoming-friends with Evan, Connor crawls in through Evan’s bedroom window. It’s the middle of October, and freezing, and Connor has on shorts and a thin shirt. He’s shivering, in rage and because he’s cold.
After Evan gets done shrieking at the potential burglar, he loans Connor some sweats and makes him hot chocolate. He gets down all the spare blankets and make a cocoon in the living room.
Connor spends the night. The sweats are too short, but he wears them anyway. They don’t talk about what drove him to Evan’s house. They watch Food Network in near comfortable silence (though Evan can’t stop the worried look he keeps aiming at Connor, and Connor can’t fully relax until he’s passed out).
Connor crawls through Evan’s bedroom window three more times before Heidi (having caught on after the second time) gives him a spare key and a suggestion that he keep extra clothes in Evan’s closet.
“We’re always happy to have you over,” she tells him gently, closing his hand around the key she’s put in it. She’s smiling, her gentle amusement crinkling her eyes. “Just, maybe use the door?”
And so, there comes to be a small backpack filled with just enough clothes for an overnight visit and something for the next day.
At first.
Over time, the contents of the bag shift, as Connor comes over for impromptu sleepovers--and, as he and Evan became closer friends, more scheduled sleepovers--and switch out the clothes for fresh ones.
Eventually, Evan, kind of tired of how over-full the bag is getting (he keeps tripping over it when he needs something from the back of the closet), cleans out the bottom drawer of his dresser and puts all of Connor’s things in there.
It feels like something permanent, Connor having his own drawer in Evan’s house.
--
Connor drives, half-blind from the angry tears streaming down his face, until he reaches the familiar street that the Hansens’ reside on. He probably parks crooked.
He doesn’t care.
His hand is shaking as he pulls out his phone.
Connor: Im outisde
Fukc
Im outsidee
He can’t fucking type properly because his hands are shaking and he’s crying too hard and he hates this he hates his dad he hates himself he hates--
“--hey, Con, hey.”
He didn’t hear the car door open. Evan’s blurry figure is beside him, close but not touching. Connor nearly lunges to pull his boyfriend against him, immediately burying his face in Evan’s neck. He desperately needs the contact.
Evan is good at hugs.
(When Connor brings it up, their first month of dating, Evan goes deeply red. But he hugs Connor even more after that, so he counts it as a win.)
He breathes in Evan’s scent, a woodsy floral thing that never fails to send some signal to Connor’s brain that he’s safe . That, paired with the shaky hand running over his hair, practically hard-resets all the tension in his body.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there, curled around Evan’s body, but eventually he finds himself pulling away. “I fucking hate crying,” he grumbles, voice crackly from tears. He scrubs at his face roughly.
Evan pulls Connor’s hands away from his face. He keeps holding them. “C’mon, you can wash your face. And you’re probably dehydrated now, so I’ll get you some water. Otherwise—”
“—otherwise I’m gonna end up with a migraine,” Connor agrees. He’s suddenly exhausted. He allows Evan to lead him inside.
—
Heidi is on the phone when they come in. Her back is to the door, so she doesn’t see them right away. “Yes, Cynthia, of course I’ll look out for him. Yes. As long as he needs to be here. He’s like a son to me.”
Connor can’t hold back the intake of breath at her words--she actually seems to mean them. It makes his chest ache. His eyes burn anew.
Heidi turns at his small noise. Her eyes go wide, and then soften with sadness and affection. “He’s here Cynthia. I’ll have him call you later.” She puts down the phone and immediately gathers him into a hug. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”
Connor crumples in her hold, going limp against her. And, he finds, he is not quite done crying.
There’s a brush of another hand on Connor’s back. “I’ll go get you that water,” Evan says gently. He leaves the two of them alone.
Heidi leads Connor over to sit on the couch. He sits, curling against her like a little kid. She’s patting at his hair. It’s nice.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Connor shrugs. “Did my mom tell you what happened?” he asks, after a moment. His voice is scratchy as hell.
“She said that you and Larry had an argument.”
He scoffs. “That’s putting it lightly.”
She waits for him to go on.
“I just.” He sighs. “You and my mom and Zoe--you guys were all happy when Ev and I got together. I wanted. Part of me just wanted Larry to at least…accept it.” He laughs. It’s not a happy sound. “It’s not like I’ve ever exactly hidden the fact that I’m not super hetero.”
“Sometimes we’re blind to things we don’t want to see,” Heidi says gently.
Evan sits down next to them, placing three cups of water on the coffee table. He takes Connor’s hand again.
Connor chokes on a sob. “I don’t get why the hell it hurts so bad? It’s Larry , I shouldn’t be so cut up about this!”
It’s Evan who speaks, squeezing at their laced hands. “He should’ve been supportive of you. It’s not your fault he’s a--a shitty human being.”
“I don’t want to see him,” Connor confesses. “I don’t--I can’t…”
“Well, you’re staying here, honey,” Heidi says, firm. “As long as you want. Cynthia is sending Zoe over with your stuff in the morning.”
“I’m sorry. I’m shoving all my garbage off on you guys.” He feels like such a burden.
“Hon, we care about you. The people in your life that care, they help carry anything you can’t.”
Connor sits up, rubs at his running nose. Evan hands him a glass of water. He drinks half of it down. “‘M tired,” he says.
“It’s late,” Heidi agrees. “You boys should go ahead and lay down.”
Connor and Evan are still holding hands as they make their way upstairs. They curl up together on Evan’s tiny bed, but neither of them sleep yet.
Evan is tracing circles across Connor’s back with his free hand. His voice is quiet. “How would you feel about leaving this week, instead of next?”
Connor slumps in relief, giving a brief, jerky nod.. “That would actually be perfect.” His hold on Evan tightens. “I don’t…I can’t stay in the same town with him. I think I’ll lose my shit if I see him.”
“Valid. I think I might punch him if I see him.”
“Babe.”
“I’m serious. He hurt you, I hate him.”
--
They’re driving down to Harriman State Park, their first stop--mainly due to its proximity to Bear Mountain and the Appalachian trail.
It’s sunny, but not hot. It’s the perfect temperature for a hike. At least, according to Evan.
Connor has to sit down on a rock twenty minutes in. He’s sweating buckets and glaring at Evan. Evan is entirely too cheerful. “How are you so upbeat?” Connor whines. He reluctantly accepts an offered water bottle. “Don’t you hate sweating?”
“Of course I do, but when I’m sweating because I’m doing something I enjoy, it doesn’t affect me as much.”
Connor smirks behind his water bottle, giving Evan a raised eyebrow.
“Oh shut the hell up, you know what I meant!”
“Do I?”
“I’m not the one wearing black!”
--
The sun is just beginning to set when they make camp. Which is something that Connor actually knows how to do.
Those few years in Boy Scouts that Larry forced him to do are actually useful.
Connor scowls. He’s not going to think about Larry. He’s on a trip with his awesome boyfriend and he’s not going to let anyone ruin that. Not even himself.
It’s still early enough in the summer that night time is significantly cooler. It’s the perfect temperature for cuddling. Evan and Connor take full advantage and curl up together.
“Jeezus ,” Connor squeaks, flinching away from the icicles currently assaulting his legs. “Why are your feet so cold?”
A somewhat devious giggle slips out of his boyfriend. “I have p--I have poor circulation?”
“How come I haven’t noticed this before?”
“I usually wear socks at home, but I’m not going to sleep in sweaty socks. That’s gross.”
Connor heaves a long sigh and submits to Evan sticking his freezing toes all over his shins. “You’re lucky I love you.”
Evan hums happily and says, far too seriously, “I love you, too.”
It should be a big moment, them saying those words to each other for the first time. But, Connor likes this better. He likes that they’re calm and pleasantly sleepy from the long drive and difficult hike. His muscles ache in a good way (though he won’t likely feel that way come morning). And he is cuddling with his boyfriend, who loves him.
He snuggles more firmly against Evan and drifts off to sleep.
#Dear Evan Hansen Gift Exchange#iellostar#deh#my fic#tree bros#my art#connor murphy#evan hansen#Heidi Hansen#this is saved in my google docs as 'dear ev hansen why r u so hard to write. this story's shitty but i hope they'll think it's alright' lmao#Present tense#bc that's literally the only way i know how to write lmao#it is 9am on the 5th here so even if its the 4th in most other places im gonna post this rip me#sorry this is dumb and im dumb#stay tuned for the reject drawing!!#which is in my other sketch pad at work! so like tomorrow or something!#im gonna go hide now
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Cold and Alone - An MHA fic
The first installment in a series of MHA sick fics I’m planning, because sick fics and the ensuing hurt/comfort be my jam.
Tomura started this day just wanting to be alone for a minute. Then he's violently reminded how much being alone hurts.
Tomura knew he needed to start heading back. The day had already been cold enough to chap his already dried-out skin on contact, and the impending night promised only to make it worse.
But the idea of going back to the base right now made his skin crawl, in a way that had nothing to do with how cold it was or how thin his jacket was.
He didn’t know if it was the cold or the gloom of winter or boredom or frustration or some unholy combination of all four, but the others were driving him even further out of his mind than he already was. Every little thing they did - from Himiko humming quietly to herself, to Magne and Spinner talking about who cared what, to Twice carrying on a spirited, muttered conversation with himself while Dabi watched, to Compress practicing idiotic card tricks - just drove him up the wall today.
He needed to breathe. He needed to get out.
He hadn’t planned on being out very long. Just an hour or two. He’d even left his phone back at the base, just to further distance himself from the irritation that would come with Kurogiri ringing him up and pestering him about leaving the base in completely inappropriate winter clothes. Even if he himself was starting to think maybe it would have been a good idea to at least put on some socks before he left, he didn’t want to hear an entire lecture about it from Kurogiri.
A stiff, icy breeze slashed right through his hoodie. Yeah, he definitely should have worn socks. Socks and a bigger coat. And maybe some gloves. His fingers were so cold they were starting to hurt. He shoved them deeper in the hoodie pocket, but it did little good.
It was definitely time to get back home. At least he’d have plenty of time to mentally prepare himself for all the bullshit that was awaiting him.
The sharp winter wind picked up again, nearly blowing back his hood. He tucked his head down to keep it in place, then ducked into an alley. Anything to keep this damn chill out. How people could actually enjoy this time of year was beyond him.
He was so wrapped up in his thoughts, he didn’t see the girl in the coat standing with her back to him until well after he’d crashed into her, nearly knocking them both to the ground. He had to fling his hands from his pocket to catch and steady himself. He heard something hard clatter to the ground and realized it was the girl’s phone.
“Whoa,” the girl said cheerily from within the coat’s dark hood. “Where’s the fire, mister?”
Tomura didn’t reply, just grumbled slightly. The urge to reduce her to dust where she stood was strong, but his fingers began to ache now that they were out of the minimal warmth of his hoodie provided. He grumbled again as he shoved them back in his pocket. He didn’t have any more energy to deal with this girl than he did with the others back home.
“Sorry about being a roadblock,” the girl said casually, bending to pick her phone up off the ground. She studied the screen with a puzzled expression on her face, and muttered, “I think I’m lost.” She looked up at him and asked, “You wouldn’t happen to know how to get to the mall from here would you?”
Tomura merely grumbled and tilted his head back to the mouth of the alley, “Try right around that corner.”
The girl laughed. “Are you serious?” she asked. “I’ve been wandering around for ten minutes trying to find it and -”
Tomura was already beginning to elbow his way past her.
“Hey, wait,” the girl said. He heard her footsteps start up behind him. “I really feel like I owe you one. Can I get you a coffee or something? You look like you could use it.”
“Get the hell away from me,” he said bluntly. He didn’t stop walking.
Neither did she. In fact, from the sound of it, she was practically on top of him. Before he could turn around to growl some kind of threat, he felt a hand ghost lightly against the back of his neck.
The world around him was suddenly dark.
“Really, I must insist,” the girl’s voice murmured in his ear, low and far away and decidedly much less casual and cheerful than before.
Tomura no longer felt the cold biting at him through his hoodie, nor did he feel the harsh wind slice across his cheeks. He heard nothing - not the shriek of the wind around him, not the sounds of cars and people on the street. Even taking in a shaky breath felt like filling his lungs with emptiness. It made his heart skip a beat.
This was nothing. He was in an unfeeling void, just blackness surrounding him on all sides.
What was she doing to him?
He wanted to ask, speak the words out loud, to fill this awful, oppressive silence just as much as to actually know. It had to be some kind of quirk, but he couldn’t force his brain to think about it. Unease was slowly overtaking him, nestling in the pit of his stomach and blossoming forth, to his fingers and toes and to the backs of his eyeballs. It was so strong it almost hurt.
Then the unease exploded into full-fledged fear.
It was unlike any fear he’d ever felt. Outside of this black void-
Was there anything outside this black void? He felt as if he’d been here forever...no, it’s only been a few seconds FOCUS GODDAMMIT
Outside of this black void, when he’s faced with fear like this, he usually fights, flinging out his arms and squeezing his hands against that which would do him harm. Rot it away. Save himself. Teach whoever had tried to hurt him what happened if they were careless enough to let him know that’s what they were trying to do.
Now, all urge to fight and survive was gone. This fear was blind, constricting, as oppressive as the inky blackness that seemed to be edging in on him. He couldn’t move. All he found he could do was listen to his heart beat harder and faster.
Then, from the darkness surrounding him, images began to flash. The shapes were somehow familiar, flickering in and out of his vision like a dying heartbeat. Then they formed more fully, and he began to recognize pieces of them. He saw white-blond hair, tied in ribbons. Burnt, rotten flesh. A shock of purple hair. A pair of dark sunglasses. A costume of blue and white stripes. A black and white oval mask. A dapper waistcoat shrouded in black mist.
The images flashed before him again, more clearly than before. The others, his comrades. His friends. Why were they here?
The image was before him again, this time clear as crystal.
They were all dead.
He could see piles of dust scattered about staring bodies. They all had pieces missing - Himiko a leg, Compress an arm, Spinner half his face.
Tomura felt bile rise in his throat. He was going to be sick.
It was all happening again.
He’d killed them. Just like before.
That was all he’d ever be able to do. Create some illusion of family and then destroy it all with one touch of his hand. His eyes stung. The bile was inching further up his throat.
It was all going to happen again and it would all be his fault.
Something struck him hard in the side. The visions of death in front of him were momentarily washed out by white light, and then he was back in the real world. The cold once again leached into his bones through his thin hoodie. The sounds of life erupted to full volume around him. The darkness was gone. He would have been grateful for it if the return to sensation hadn’t brought with it crippling pain.
The sensation of someone holding on to his neck was removed gently, and he fell, like a puppet with cut strings. He hit the concrete ground hard, and that sent another jolt of agony up his side. It was white hot and angry, like some horrible mix of broken glass and a gunshot.
“Nothing, hm?” he heard a woman ask. That couldn’t have been the same girl from before. She sounded completely different.
Something metallic hit the pavement, close to his head. He winced at the sound. Another voice, harsh, tense, masculine, said, “Not a damn thing. Freak doesn’t even have a wallet.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised. Look at him. He looks homeless.”
“Tell me you at least saw something good in his head.”
“Oh yes,” the woman replied. Tomura heard the smile in her voice, and the feeling of wanting to vomit curled back into his throat. “So much fear. You should have heard his heartbeat. It was like the fluttering of a baby bird. So beautiful.”
“Well, I’m glad one of us got something out of this,” the man grumbled. Suddenly, there was a boot being pressed dully into Tomura’s side, and he wanted to scream out in agony, but it felt as if his breath was being stolen from his lungs. He merely let out a strangled cry, more tears stinging and threatening to fall.
The man above him chuckled at the pathetic noise. Tomura wanted to reach out and disintegrate the boot and the neanderthal attached to it. But his brain was fogged with pain.
“Might as well do the world a favor and help cut decrease that vagrancy problem,” the man said. Tomura felt two calloused hands grab his wrists. He tried to grab onto the man in some way, but then the man started to pull, and another shot of pain made it impossible to concentrate. His brain only made the connection that he was being dragged somewhere.
The fear was back, and that fighting instinct tried to claw its way to the surface, but the pain dulled everything. Bogged down his thoughts. It was as if he was experiencing the world in slow-motion.
He’d never thought he’d feel this helpless again, and it was more terrifying to him than anything.
Suddenly, the grip was gone, and his back made contact with a few dented trash cans, causing him to land on his injured side. He tried to arch his back and move, away from the cans pressing into his side, away from the hard, cold ground making everything worse, just away from the pain in general that he was sure was going to kill him in a few minutes.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Tomura heard the man say to him through the haze of agony.
Tomura heard them starting to walk away, as leisurely as if they’d just finished a casual conversation with a mutual acquaintance.
“It’s not like anyone will come looking for him,” he heard the woman say. “From what I saw in there, no one would care if he disappeared.”
With those words, Tomura felt the desperate panic drip away. He briefly closed his eyes, and the images from the black void she’d created flashed before him again. His comrades, reduced to dust. Obviously his fault. Again.
He felt something cold land on his cheek, soft and light as a kiss. He opened his eyes, rolled them up and looked to the sky. It was snowing.
He let his eyes drift closed again, and felt his muscles relax. Even the fiery pain in his side seemed to be dulled a little. He was too exhausted to hurt.
He would just go to sleep, right here. The woman was right. It’s not like anyone would care.
-----------------------
Kurogiri paced. It was all he could think to do. He couldn’t concentrate on anything else.
Four hours. Tomura had been gone for four hours, and no one had heard anything from him in that time. Kurogiri had already tried to call him, only to discover the young fool’s phone sitting off to the side on a crate. That was when Compress and Twice had offered to go find Shigaraki and bring him back, if only, as Twice had so eloquently put it, “to get the stick out of your misty ass”.
He was going to tear into the boy for this when Compress and Twice brought him back. He would tell him he was an idiot for thinking leaving his phone was a good idea. He behaved abhorrently by staying gone for so long when he knew how dangerous it was to be out in the first place. He was a reckless child for thinking that it was wise to go out in the middle of winter in the clothes he’d been in. Did he want to catch his death?
Yes, he would do all that, once the boy was brought back, safe and intact. He knew that Tomura would tell him he was too protective, worried too much, that he wasn’t a child and could take care of himself.
It wouldn’t be the first time they’d had the conversation. Kurogiri knew all the steps, and was willing to go through them as many times as it took to finally get the message through that boy’s stubborn head.
But the righteous indignation came after the worry. And the worry didn’t stop until Tomura was home.
His phone began to buzz in his waistcoat pocket. He pulled it out and answered.
“Compress?” Kurogiri didn’t even bother with a greeting.
“We found him. We’re uptown, near the mall.” The tone was harried, bordering on panic. Kurogiri felt his stomach fall to his shoes. “We need a warp back. Now.”
Kurogiri didn’t respond. He simply hung up the phone and opened the gate. Compress practically jumped through first, his obnoxious orange coat missing. As Twice followed quickly after him, Kurogiri saw why - in Twice’s arms was a bright orange bundle, a tuft of pale blue hair sticking out of the top.
Tomura.
“He’s freezing,” Compress said briskly.
Magne and Spinner needed no more command than that. Both took off to separate corners, Magne to get the two space heaters shoved off to the side, Spinner over to their sleeping area to gather up as many blankets as he could carry.
Kurogiri didn’t miss the way Toga merely stood off to the side, looking out of place and uncharacteristically small. Even Dabi, standing at her side, looked slightly concerned.
Kurogiri would worry about that momentarily. First, he needed answers.
Twice carried Tomura over to where Magne and Spinner were beginning to construct something akin to a nest, piled high with blankets, as close to the space heaters as they could get them without the risk of starting a fire. Kurogiri came to Compress’s side and asked quietly, “What happened?”
“Looks like someone jumped him,” Compress replied. The disgust was thinly-veiled. “We were about to give up when we saw him lying in an alley. He looked like he’d been there for a while. There was a fresh dusting of snow on him. We had to leave his jacket behind because it was sopping wet and would have just made his hypothermia worse.”
Kurogiri made a noise that sounded like a low growl in the back of his throat, but didn’t reply.
Compress continued, “He wouldn’t respond at all at first. Completely out. It was only when we turned him over to check his pulse that he made any kind of noise, and that was in pain.”
Kurogiri turned his head sharply towards Compress. His look alone demanded explanation.
“He’s got a few cracked ribs,” Compress said. “It’s hard to tell how many exactly, but I felt at least two, and cracked is a gentle estimate. From the way he cried out, they might be broken. What do you think? Rival villains?”
“Nothing so dramatic,” Kurogiri replied, fighting to keep his tone even. “A rival wouldn’t have left him alive at all. This was sloppy. I would say they were trying to mug him. There were probably at least two, and as long as they managed to avoid his hands, it wouldn’t have been hard to incapacitate him by himself.”
“And when they realized he didn’t have anything on him, they left him in an alley to freeze,” Compress added. Unlike Kurogiri, he sounded ready to snap.
“At least you found him in time,” Kurogiri said, surprised to find the words coming out in a much gentler tone of voice. The soothing sentiment felt odd coming from him. He’d never, in all his years, have ever suspected that he’d be trying to comfort anyone, in any capacity. How things had changed this year.
“That oughta do it,” Spinner said from the corner where they’d created their nest. He smoothed out one of the blankets with his foot as he stepped out of the way for Twice and Magne to step forward.
Magne reached out her arms to help Twice lower Tomura into the pile. “Okay, go slowly,” she said, touching the orange bundle softly, as if she were handling a precious piece of crystal.
“I believe,” Kurogiri added, “that, when Tomura Shigaraki is well again, a call to Giran might be in order. See if we can’t repay whoever did this in kind.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Compress hissed.
Just as Magne and Twice nearly had Tomura flat on the floor, a weak cry of pain escaped his lips. Everyone jumped a little at the sudden noise, and for a split second, none of them moved.
When another whimper came from the bundle, Kurogiri and Compress finally moved forward. Magne and Twice had gotten Tomura on the floor, and began slowly peeling back the protective layer of Compress’s coat. As soon as Tomura’s rail-thin body came into view, Twice started pulling the blankets they’d gathered up around him, bundling him as tightly as he could without jostling his ribs. Such a task was obviously easier said than done, as now that he was at least semi-conscious, Tomura seemed to have become all too aware of the broken bones pressing down against his lungs. Every breath he took was sharp and shallow, full of fear that the next one would bring another blinding bolt of pain. The shivering that now racked the boy’s body seemed not to be helping in the slightest. He simply curled in on himself, his limbs looking at stiff as a newborn foal.
Much to his own shock, the sight pained Kurogiri. As much as he’d begrudged his position as Tomura’s handler when this was all first arranged by All for One, how irritated he’d been at the prospect of playing nursemaid to this overgrown, incorrigible child, this feeling now, this pain at seeing Tomura brought so low, obviously having been brutalized for a reason as paltry as money, it made him feel...protective. Perhaps even paternal was the word to use.
He didn’t have time to dwell on these feelings for much longer though. Tomura let out another gasp of pain, this one sounding strangled and raw, as he jerked away from the beings he believed to be causing him his suffering. His eyes were open in slits now, unfocused and dazed and not showing a hint of recognition for anyone around him. Kurogiri had read about the effects of hypothermia. In later stages, it caused disorientation. They needed to warm him up faster.
Fortunately, he’d also read about an effective way of warming a suffering person up.
“Stand aside, please,” Kurogiri said to Magne and Spinner. They didn’t argue, but did give him a quizzical look as he moved closer to Tomura, until he was at his side. He peeled away the large comforter that had been draped over the boy’s shoulders, doing his best not to feel awful at the yelp of discomfort he gave. Kurogiri slung the blanket around his own shoulders like a quilted cape, then sat himself on the floor, directly behind Tomura. Then he brought the comforter around Tomura again, until only his head was sticking out the top. He gently leaned the boy back, until his back was flush against Kurogiri’s chest. It was like pressing a slab of ice directly against his body, and he had to fight to not pull himself away.
Tomura whimpered again, and Kurogiri curled his arm up at the boy’s side, as if attempting to soothe the pain away until his misty hand. “It’s alright,” he heard himself say. “You’re home. You’re safe.”
The others stared down at the spectacle in astonishment. Kurogiri could hardly blame them. To anyone else, this would have seemed incredibly ridiculous.
Which is why he was quite shocked himself when Toga broke from the group, grabbing up a blanket herself, and curling up on Tomura’s legs, like a contented cat. She wrapped the blanket around herself, being sure to get Tomura’s feet under it as well. Kurogiri heard her make a contented noise as she burrowed her face into Tumora’s skeletal leg.
The others picked up her cue quickly. Compress pulled his coat around his shoulders and came to Kurogiri’s left, managing to curl up to Tomura’s injured side, and offered his own arm against the broken ribs. Magne took to Kurogiri’s left with a large sheet, sitting in such a way that it was quite easy for her to run a caressing hand through Tomura’s hair. Spinner and Twice split another large down comforter, taking the space on the other side of Tomura’s legs. Spinner didn’t even complain when Twice started to spoon him slightly.
Finally, Dabi let out a small sigh, and took a spot next to Toga. He didn’t bother to grab a blanket, just laying languidly on his back. He muttered, “I’m basically a big space heater. The little idiot will be fine.”
They were certainly a sight to behold. Kurogiri would have laughed if this massive puddle of body heat didn’t actually seem to be doing the trick. Tomura’s shivering increased, but Kurogiri knew that was a good sign. It meant the boy’s body sensed heat, and was trying to warm itself back up.
It wasn’t long before the warmth started getting to everyone else as well. One by one, the team of villains, wanted for their many crimes and murders and evil deeds, began to drift off to sleep.
Twice and Spinner were out first, now fully cuddling under their comforter. Compress was next, his hat pulled down over his face, snoring lightly. Magne’s deeper snoring followed shortly after. Toga let out a squeaky, kitten-like yawn before finally shutting her eyes. Kurogiri didn’t notice when Dabi fell asleep. He just happened to look in his direction and he was out.
Kurogiri chanced one more looked down at Tomura. He still shivered, but nowhere near as hard as before. Not that anyone would have been able to tell, but Kurogiri smiled a bit.
He supposed it wouldn’t if he rested his eyes for a moment as well.
This whole affair was utterly ridiculous.
And as he drifted off, Kurogiri realized he didn’t want it any other way.
--------------------
Something was pressed up against his back. And his sides. And on his legs.
He almost would have been drawn back into that paralyzing fear if he weren’t so exhausted. Every muscle in his body felt like it was made out of a stone. Even the mere act of opening his eyelids felt positively herculean.
But when he did finally get them open, a wave of unanticipated relief washed over him. On his legs were friends he recognized - Toga, Dabi, Twice, and Spinner - fast asleep and looking like they wouldn’t want to be anywhere but there. Although his neck was too stiff to turn to look to either, he recognized a pair of black and white boots on his left, and a pair of scuffed up brown ones to his right. Compress and Magne. He could only assume that the strong support at his back was Kurogiri.
They were here. They were with him They weren’t dead.
He felt Kurogiri shift behind him. His chest rumbled with his deep bass as he said softly, “You’re awake, Tomura Shigaraki.”
He merely nodded. He would work his way up to speech.
Kurogiri gave his right side a gentle squeeze.
Nothing more was said for a while, the only sounds filling the room the deep breathing and occasional snores of the other sleeping villains.
Finally, Tomura spoke up. His voice was even softer and wavering than usual. “How did I get here?”
“Compress and Twice found you in an alley, and I warped you back” Kurogiri replied softly. “You had been there for quite some time. You were hypothermic and injured. Someone attacked you.”
A pain that had nothing to do with the ache in his side flashed through Tomura. He didn’t want to think about those people in the alley. The ones who’d probed his head and laid him bare, then left him like garbage.
“I know they hurt you,” Kurogiri said, as if he were reading Tomura’s mind. “And you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but just tell us what they looked like, and we’ll have Giran and his people looking for them to properly punish them. No one can hurt you and not suffer for it.”
Those words were almost enough to chase the pain inside him away completely, and Tomura sighed silently with relief. He was sure Kurogiri could feel the muscles in his back loosening. He hoped that told the older man how grateful he was to him.
A misty right hand moved down, on top of Tomura’s, and gave it a squeeze.
Kurogiri knew.
“There were two of them, a man and a woman,” Tomura muttered. He closed his eyes again, trying to picture them both. “I didn’t see much of the man. I was only aware he was there after he’d struck me and I was on the ground. He…”
Tomura stopped himself. He was not going to repeat the vile words the man had said. There was no reason to upset Kurogiri.
“I saw a bit of the woman. She was small, unassuming. She was wearing a hood, so all I could see was that she was young. I think she was a kind of bait. To lure people in. She had this quirk…”
He stopped himself again, ready to gloss over it, ready to never, ever bring up what he’d seen in that blackness ever again. Just the thought of it made his heart rate pick up a bit. The familiar sting was back in his eyes.
He didn’t want to cry. Not now. He was too tired to cry. But he was also too tired to hold it in.
“Tomura?”
Hearing just his first name, said so softly and so worriedly, broke him. The tears came, and he didn’t do a damn thing to stop them. The mistly hand on his squeeze harder.
“She had this quirk,” Tomura continued, his already weak voice wavering, “that made me see things. See you. All of you. And I had...hurt you...just like the last time. Just like them.”
Kurogiri didn’t press for further details.
“And I was afraid,” Tomura said. “I was afraid, but I didn’t fight back. I couldn’t. Her quirk wouldn’t let me. It just made me freeze up. I was afraid because I’d made it happen again and I was going to be alone…”
The rest of his words were swallowed up by a rattling sob.
He felt Kurogiri’s chin rest against his head. He’d moved his hand from Tomura’s and placed it on his back, rubbing gently in circles. “Hush,” he said soothingly. “You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone again. We’re right here. We won’t leave you. I promise.”
Kurogiri didn’t stop shushing and rubbing his back until Tomura’s tears had finally ceased, and he had leaned back against his chest, more exhausted than ever.
Another comforting silence filled the small space. It made Tomura feel safe in a way all the blankets and space heaters never could.
“Rest now, Tomura Shigaraki,” Kurogiri said. “Your ribs may be broken, and they’ll need time to heal. When the others wake up, I’ll send someone off for some painkillers. That will help them not hurt when you breathe. But for now, just rest.”
Tomura didn’t answer. He merely nodded, nestled his head back against Kurogiri’s chest again, and closed his eyes.
He was safe.
He wasn’t alone.
He would never be alone again.
Kurogiri promised he wouldn’t.
Not even his nightmares could take this away from him.
#my hero academia#mha#fanfic#tomura shigaraki#kurogiri#mr. compress#magne#twice#himiko toga#spinner#dabi#emotional hurt/comfort#sick fic#platonic cuddles#hypothermia#tw mind rape#dad kurogiri#dad compress#magne lives#canon divergent#we play fast and loose with canon in this house#nothing after the license arc has happened in this fic#everyone is alive and their limbs are intact#pulls magne and compress in protectively
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Leaving Our Home (6/10)
WC: 1000
Once Mike and Peter are both in the living room, everything happens far too quickly. They’re allowed to sit next to each other, but Mike is ignoring him no matter how many times he says that he didn’t betray him. It’s painful that Mike even believes he would. In any other circumstances Peter would be angry about it and they’d argue, but now isn’t the time, because things aren't just going to go back to normal. They ran away. It doesn’t matter how little time that lasted because they’ve now shown they won’t be easy to control.
“Luckily for you both,” the stranger says, “you’re going somewhere you won’t be able to hurt yourselves or anyone else. In fact, it’s a safe environment for you to learn how to harness your powers and use them for good.”
For good is a relative term. They’ll be taught how to aid Mike’s father and the police, how to torture people, how to become good little broken down soldiers like he’s tried to turn Mike into since the day he was born. Wherever they’re going to go, whatever they’re going to do, it won’t be pleasant. Peter tries again to look into the stranger and Mike’s father’s minds, but receives the same painful rebuff.
All he can read are Mike’s thoughts, which spill around him and permeate his brain so he can’t ignore them, can barely distinguish them from his own when they’re so pressing and intense. Mostly, it’s fear. That’s understandable. But there’s also determination, the beginning of a plan with intent brewing behind it. Mike may have a way to get the two of them out of here, because for once, Peter feels completely useless. He’s about to try and figure out the plan when Mike launches into it.
Mike’s father reaches to put a hand on his shoulder, and then he’s on his knees, gritting his teeth as Mike holds his arm tightly. No matter how much he tries to escape, Mike has a good grip on him, and he seems to be in an incredible amount of pain. Before Peter’s very eyes, bruises start spreading outward from Mike’s hand, expanding like butter melting over a hot biscuit. The room is overpowered with Mike’s thoughts, which just boil down into the desire to hurt. He wants his father to feel the pain he has. Peter’s actually afraid of him.
He’s about to say something, but then the worst pain of his life rips through his back and he sinks to the floor. None of his limbs seem to be working. All he can do is lay there, tears on his cheeks, something warm and wet spreading around him.
“Michael,” the stranger says behind Peter, “if you want him to live, you’re going to have to come over here and save him.”
Oh. That’s what this feeling is. He’s dying. He’s thought about what it would feel like to die, and it’s not like this. But he can’t do anything about it, and just stares at the carpet in front of his eyes. There’s red creeping toward him, his own blood, possibly. He’s going to pass out any second, or maybe it’s death lingering in his peripheral vision.
Next thing he knows, Mike’s hand is on his back and he feels the pain leaching out of him. In moments he feels good as new, which means Mike healed him, took his pain. When he sits up, it’s to see Mike at his side, seemingly out cold. At least his chest is still rising and falling, if a bit too quickly to be safe. He’s alive. Then the man lifts Mike up like a ragdoll and puts him on the couch. Peter reaches for him to comfort him, but instead receives a kick in the stomach to settle him down.
“I’ll call the truck,” Mike’s father says, rubbing his arm as he gets to his feet. His entire bicep is dark with burst blood vessels and looks a bit swollen. Serves him right. “How long until I’ll get my son back when this is over?”
They really are going to be sent away. There’s nothing they can do to save themselves, and Mike is out cold, and all he can think about now is how awful things are going to be. Wherever they’re going can’t be good, if it’s what Mike’s father wants from them. Peter can’t breathe at the thought, but there’s nothing he can do. When the rumble of a car in the driveway arrives, the thought of getting in it appears in his brain and he’s suddenly doing it, no matter how much he wants to fight back or run far away.
Outside, the truck isn’t much. It’s a horse trailer, with a flap of canvas covering the part where a horse would stick out it’s head. He and Mike will be in here, knocked around in the metal box with poor ventilation and nothing to protect them from harsh turns or the heat of the sun. And it definitely doesn’t help that Mike is still unconscious, still unable to fight back as he’s carried to the truck alongside Peter and out inside without any care for his safety.
“This is good for you,” Mike’s father says, still rubbing his injured arm. “You’ll learn how to control yourself in a safe environment, Peter. And you won’t keep getting Mike into trouble.”
“Fuck you.”
In response, Mike’s father slams the trailer door shut, leaving Peter in near complete darkness, feeling around the room for Mike. The least he can do is make sure Mike’s head doesn’t slam into the walls or the floor, hurt him worse than he already is from saving Peter’s life. There’s no telling what will happen to them when they get where they’re going, or if they’ll survive it.
“I’ve got you,” Peter tells Mike, running his fingers through his greasy hair. “We’re going to be okay. I promise, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
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Double Trouble Ch11
Masterlist Here
Pairing: McKirk
Rating: G
Length: 2576 words
Summary: The last chapter! Here’s the payoff, my loves! Jim and Len spend the day together while the girls are off with Jo’s Aunt Donna. Talks are had, victories are won, and it all ends happily ever after.
Author’s Notes: Thank you all so, so much for your enthusiasm toward this fic! I’m beyond thrilled that every one of you has seemed to really enjoy it. I hope you love the ending as much as you’ve loved the rest of it.
~*~*~*~
Sunlight filtered in through the open curtains and shone against Len’s closed eyelids. It pulled him out of the most comfortable sleep he’d ever had. He snuggled in closer to the warm body next to him and pressed a kiss into the soft skin beneath his cheek, and it wasn’t until Jim tensed that Leonard remembered that this wasn’t Charlie, that it was his daughter’s hot bio-dad, and that he’d dragged Jim into bed with him the night before.
He shot up and backed away quickly, staring in horror at Jim’s very entertained expression. “Shit I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t be. You’re very comfortable. Besides… Having you latch onto me like that was rather cute.”
Len’s face burned. He tried looking anywhere but Jim’s face as he responded, “I need to shower and wash the bourbon from my mouth before we go anywhere.”
Before Jim could get another word out, Len bolted into the master bathroom and practically slammed the door behind him. As he let his head fall back against the door, that was the moment his entire head decided to remind him that he wasn’t twenty anymore and couldn’t drink half a bottle of bourbon with no consequences. The sharp throb encasing his brain wasn’t a pleasant discovery. He pulled the painkillers from the cabinet and downed a couple dry; he’d grab some water when he went downstairs. For now, he turned the shower on and let the water heat until steam started rising from over the curtain and stepped under the blessedly hot spray.
When he felt more presentable, Len made his way down to the kitchen. Jim was already leaning against the counter with a cup of coffee and a far away look in his eyes that snapped back to the present when the brunette got close enough.
“Hey, Bones. Feeling better?” He ran a hand through his own damp hair as he looked Len over.
“Yeah. Sorry again about… Well…”
“Playing octopus and not letting me leave because I’m comfy?”
The clink of the pot going back on the hot plate was probably a bit more forceful than it needed to be. “Is that what I said?”
“Oh yeah. Then you were out before I could try to squirm away. It’s fine, though. I slept alright and you’re some kind of heat leach because I usually overheat when someone tries snuggling up to me in bed.” He took a sip of his coffee- as blonde as he was and probably equally loaded with sugar- and looked around. “The girls can’t be gone yet, can they? I dunno about Jo, but Ellie hates everyone before at least 10.”
“Jo’s always been an early riser. I think that’s leftover from when I used to leave before the sun came up to work. She was always up and waiting for me to make breakfast when I came down from my shower,” Len smiled softly at the memory. “It was sometimes the only chance I’d get to see her awake all day.”
Jim nodded and let the silence linger for a while so they could enjoy their coffee. Both Ellie and Joanna came bouncing in followed by Donna and the fathers had to parse through the excited babble.
“Daddy Aunt Donna said we’re gonna hang out today!”
“And we’re gonna go play at a park!”
“And get lunch and she even said we could go to the aquarium cuz Ellie really likes the fish.”
“Girls, I think you’re making their heads spin!” Donna laughed. “Go on and give them hugs and kisses so we can get going or the diner might run out of breakfast.”
That got them both moving. Ellie wrapped her arms around Jim’s waist as Jo attached herself to Len. The fathers shot each other amused glances and leaned down for the kisses each girl had for their dad’s cheek.
“You be good, Jojo.”
“You too, Ellie.”
“We will!” They called over their shoulders in unison before taking the stairs two at a time to finish getting ready.
“You think you can handle them both all day?” Len asked, brow raised as he went back to his coffee.
“I’ll be fine. You two have plans?”
“Lunch and an art museum in Atlanta.” Jim grinned.
“Which museum?” Donna tipped her head to the side curiously. “There are at least four different art museums in Atlanta that I can think of.”
Jim turned to Len who just shrugged. “We can go to all of them if you want. How long can you spend in a single art museum?”
“How long could you spend in a medical museum?” Jim shot back.
“Fair enough.”
About an hour later, they were buckling into Len’s truck and heading toward the city. A comfortable quiet settled over them as each tried to gather their thoughts. Leonard reminded himself repeatedly that any attraction he felt toward Jim was likely just a rebound infatuation while Jim took up the silent mantra, ‘it’s not gonna happen, it’s not gonna happen, it’s not gonna…’ The one thought they did share was the realization that they were definitely set up.
He cursed quietly at the whole situation, and when Jim gave him a confused look, he sighed. “You been feeling like they’re trying to push us together?”
“Yeah.” Jim chewed on his lip a little before adding, ���Would that really be such a bad thing?”
Len was silent for a lot longer than was strictly necessary before he answered, “No. It wouldn’t. But the fact that I’m thinking like that when it’s been barely 24 hours since my fiancé left my house bothers me. And just… There’s already so much happening all at once.”
“Well what if I said I’d be interested if you decided it wasn’t bothering you?” Jim kept his eyes trained out the window as he spoke, not wanting to risk looking at Len.
Careful consideration went into his next words, “I’d ask you to be patient and let me figure things out. I want to decide what we’re doing about Jo first. And I’d want to figure out what sort of ground rules I need. Because if we were to do that and break up later, it would affect the girls. Especially now that we know they’re sisters.”
“Yeah… Alright, yeah. That makes sense.” He couldn’t squash all the hope bubbling up in his chest, but Jim made a valiant effort. “Just think about it, alright?”
“I’ve been thinking about it since you stepped off the plane,” Len admitted with a sigh. “First there was Charlie, and now I just want to make sure this isn’t a rebound.”
Jim nodded and decided to change the subject. “So do we want to do two museums? One before lunch and one after?”
“Alright. I’ll even let you tell me about why the random paint splashes mean something.”
“If that’s going to be how you talk the whole time, we’re going to have some words, Mr. McCoy.”
“That’s Dr. McCoy to you.”
“I’ll just stick with Bones.”
The first museum was interesting even though Len didn’t understand a single word that came out of Jim’s mouth. Modern art had never been his preferred flavor, but the way Jim bounced from painting to painting to sculpture to painting with an enthusiasm usually displayed by children as they’re discovering something new enchanted him. More than once, Jim grabbed Len’s hand to drag him off to see something new and point out the bits and pieces he loved about a painting hug on the wall.
Lunch was simple. They ate at a place about half way between the first museum and the next and chatted about the girls. Now that they had the time to just sit and think and bounce ideas without the girls potentially interrupting them and without Charlie there to sulk like a child, it was easier.
“So you mentioned before that you’d be willing to fly down here with Ellie during summers. Assuming one of us hasn’t moved by next summer, would you still be willing to do that?”
“Yeah, definitely. My job is portable and I can stand flying,” Jim grinned at him over his burger. “And I’m pretty sure Chris and Phil adored Ellie, so she’s welcome in Cali any time. You are, too, if you can ever get yourself on a plane.”
“Wish I could say I see that happening, but I feel like my heart just about stops just going to the airport.”
“I’ll just fly to you, then.”
“So…” Len ran his finger along the rim of his glass, clearly debating with himself. “I still want to take this slow, and I’m still not entirely sure if this is me really feeling something for you or if it’s rebound feelings paired with you being an amazing dad, but I think it’s something I’d like to revisit later. Once you’re back home and we have some distance to give us a bit of perspective.”
“Alright. Yeah, that makes sense. Um…” Jim shifted around in his chair looking a little unsure of himself. “About how likely is it that this will be a thing, do you think?”
“At this point? Pretty sure.”
By the time the two of them reached the end of the second museum, they were leaning into each other and giving lingering touches that barely toed the line of platonic. As they left, Len steered Jim outside and toward the truck with a gentle hand low on his back. Jim was still chattering away about the last piece they had spent half an hour looking at. The blonde looked so happy about it that Len couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed.
The whole day had felt like he’d known Jim all their lives. It was a feeling completely foreign to Leonard, but he didn’t want to examine it too closely. He’d spent too much time examining every angle of this whole situation. Instead, he snagged Jim’s hand as he moved to get into the passenger side. The confused look he received in response only lasted the briefest of moments before Len leaned in to press a quick, chaste kiss to Jim’s lips.
Well now that just wouldn’t do. Jim threw an arm around Len’s neck and pulled him down into a proper kiss, his eyes closed as he allowed himself to just feel Len’s lips pressed against his own. For a second, it seemed as though he’d get no real response, but Len coiled an arm around Jim’s waist as the other hand came up to cup the back of Jim’s head.
It was a dizzying experience, and when Len’s tongue traced its way along Jim’s lip, he didn’t even hesitate to part them. He’d figured Len would be a good kisser, but he didn’t think it would be quite so fiery; the man knew just how much pressure to apply and a soft nip to his lower lip had him keening and his knees buckling. When they finally pulled apart, he was dazed at staring at Len in a mixture of surprise and desire.
“So I guess you’ve changed your mind about waiting, huh?”
Len stroked at Jim’s cheek with his thumb. “I guess I have…”
“The girls are going to be so smug about this, you know.”
“Let them. They did well,” Len chuckled and gave Jim’s hand a quick squeeze. “Let’s get going.”
Jim snuck another quick kiss before he clamored into the truck with the biggest grin on his face. No matter how they got to that point, it was all worth it.
A triumphant cheer interrupted their thoughts and drew their attention to the other side of the parking lot where Donna and the girls were watching. Jim’s cheeks flared a bright red while Len just sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Donna and Jo shot Ellie matching exasperated looks as the dads made their way over.
“So how long were you watching us?” Knowing his sister as he did, they’d probably tailed him and Jim all damn day.
“Well…” Ellie and Jo shared a look before they pointed to Donna in unison. “It was her idea!”
“Oh I don’t doubt that for a second. We’re all going to sit down and have a talk when we get back home.” All three girls sulked at the thought. Len just rolled his eyes and gestured toward his sister. “You’re a grown woman, Donna. At least try to set a good example.”
“Can’t make me.”
“We’ll meet you back at the house.”
As they made their way back home, Jim couldn’t wipe the dopey, besotted smile from his face. Every once in a while, he’d glance over to the driver seat where Len was trying to suppress his own grin and failing horribly.
Laying down ground rules with the girls back at the house was a little less fun, but it was a much-needed reality check. Ellie and Jo were already excitedly talking about the two of them getting married one day, and Donna didn’t seem willing to be the one to slow them down, so it was up to their fathers to bring them all back down to Earth.
Leonard got the four of them settled onto stools in the kitchen with a pad of paper after he convinced Donna this should just be the dads and their daughters for right now to write down their thoughts. The last thing he wanted was for this to be another Charlie situation.
“So first rule,” he declared, jotting down a 1 and circling it, “is that the girls come first.”
“I second that rule,” Jim agreed and leaned down to kiss the top of Ellie’s head.
“Do we get to make rules, too?” Jo asked curiously.
“We’re all suggesting rules and if we agree on them, they’ll be rules,” her father explained. “Jim and I have final say.”
Joanna debated silently with herself for a minute before speaking up again, “If we tell you something’s wrong, you gotta listen.”
Len’s heart clenched at the way she wouldn’t look at him when she said it. Without bothering to confer with Jim, he wrote it underneath the first rule. He knew he needed to sit with her and have a long, long talk about what happened with Charlie, but he put that aside for now.
“How are you and papa gonna date if we’re in California?”
“That’s something we’ll need to figure out later, peanut. Right now, we’re making rules.” Jim shared a look with Len who just shrugged and motioned toward the paper. “I think we need one about manipulating each other to get what we want after this little stunt, don’t you Bones?”
He made a small noise of agreement as he wrote it down. “We’ll ask for what we want instead of being sneaky.”
Both girls shared a guilty look, but it didn’t last long. Everyone was happy with the results even if Leonard and Jim weren’t thrilled with the method.
“I can’t think of any more,” Ellie admitted with a shrug.
“Me neither,” Jo agreed.
After a bit of thought, Len motioned Jim over and whispered something to him. Jim smiled and nodded, so Len pulled the notebook closer and wrote down one more rule as the girls watched with piqued curiosity. When he shifted it toward them, they read it with wide smiles.
‘No matter what happens, Leonard and Jim will always love Joanna and Ellie.’
~*~*~*~
Tagging: @auduna-druitt @pinkamour1588 @gracieminabox @thevalesofanduin @yourtropegirl @randomlittleimp @southernbellestatues @emmkolenn @goingknowherewastaken @bubblegum-star-trek @loisrose @feelmyroarrrr @outside-the-government @arrowsshootyouforwards @eyeofdionysus @goodnightwife
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(Un)certainties- a Mass Effect story
Hello, @cullenplzhalp! I’m your Secret Santa this year, and I’ve written you a story about your Kira. Here’s what you told me about her- “For research purposes only my Shepard is named Kira and she’s a soldier. She’s a paragon but extremely passive aggressive. Has a lot of courage and doesn’t ever get scared in action but behind the scenes has a ton of anxiety and questions all of her decisions, asking Kaiden for advise and encouragement. Aside from Kaiden, she loves long conversations, great food, and her best friend is Garrus. She prefers to relax on her days off rather than going out. Kira doesn’t dislike much but HATES breakfast foods (eggs especially) and huge crowds.” I hope I did her justice.
(Also, if you prefer, I’ve posted this over on AO3 for ease of finding again.)
(Un)certainties (or, four times Kaidan was right, and one time he wasn’t)
for @cullenplzhalp
she is falling, falling, falling from such a great height that it almost feels like flying; she opens her arms (only the one, really, the other still stubbornly refusing to function) and-
*
She can’t sleep, even with him there, so she watches the stars go by through the skylight above the bed.
After an hour or two- it's so easy to lose track of time in the passage of constellations- he stirs into wakefulness beside her. Out of the corner of her vision she sees his head turn in her direction; when he notices her still-open eyes, Kaidan frowns. “Shep-” he catches himself before he says it, which she appreciates; she's told him a hundred times that she has a name and that it isn't Shepard- “Kira. You should be sleeping.”
“I can't. I keep thinking about Legion. I wish I could have-”
He interrupts her then, slipping a hand beneath her far shoulder to turn her to her side, facing him. “You stopped a war that lasted hundreds of years. You gave the quarians back their homeworld and the Geth are helping them rebuild it. Isn't that enough?”
She sighs. “I know, but-”
“But you want to be able to save everyone. You always did. I remember.” Kaidan kisses her forehead. “This is war, Kir, and we’re all soldiers. We knew what the risks were when we enlisted.”
“You and me, sure. But the rest of the crew- Mordin-”
He snorts. “Mordin was ex-STG. Bad example. And even there- curing the genophage? From what you told me he clearly felt it was worth the sacrifice to save an entire species.”
”Someone dies so somewhere, someone else can live. Ruthless calculus, Garrus calls it.” It’s been rattling around the back of her brain: the Bahak system, Earth, Palaven. “Shame I was never any good at math.”
Something passes overhead at that moment, incandescent brightness that illuminates the whole bed, enough to make her lift her hand to shade her eyes- a comet, perhaps, or a piece of wreckage coursing through the void of space. There is more of that around, these days.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not true. I’m pretty sure you know that’s not true, either.”
“Damn your biotic logic.” Propping herself up on one elbow, she prods at his chest with the outstretched index finger of her free hand. “But you’re right. I’m just second-guessing myself, I think- after the Blitz I promised myself I wouldn’t lose anyone else, not if I could help it. I screwed it up with Ashley, but I brought my whole team back from the edge of a black hole, even when everyone said it was impossible. I hoped-”
He catches her hand in his- she lets him, of course; even without biotics she’s just as quick as he is and usually she’s faster- and shifts in closer, pinning it between them. ”You’re doing the best you can,” Kaidan says, “better than anyone else would ever have been able to do. No one’s going to fault you for that.”
“I let that cyborg bounce your head off a shuttle. Not my finest moment.”
“I got better.”
It sounds like the punchline to a joke, so she can’t help but laugh. “That’s a matter of opinion, I-”
When he kisses her again their joined hands move, slipping down between their bodies, and she forgets what she meant to say.
*
-and she lands and oh, God, it hurts so much. but as she lays there, looking up at the sky as the colors fade from her vision, pieces of Reapers arc downward like a million shooting stars and it makes her smile, just for a moment, before-
*
Of course they want her to speak.
First Human Spectre, savior of the Krogan, Arbiter of Peace, trotted out by the Alliance brass as a morale booster- God knows they need it, after the disaster that was Thessia- when she looks at it objectively, it makes perfect sense. She’s used to being a figurehead. But she is standing in the wings of a stage on the Presidium, waiting to take the podium in front of a crowd easily ten thousand strong; her heart’s pounding hard enough to fly out of her chest, because she would rather be doing anything else but this.
Backflip out of a troop ship at high altitude? Drive her Mako up the side of an active volcano? Play chicken with the main cannon on a Reaper? Bring it on: all in a day’s work. She’s felt the air leach from her lungs into the void of space and her heart slow and slow until it seized in her frozen chest, looked death in the eye as it reached out to claim her- and kicked it square in its stupid dead face. She’s got too much to do to worry about mundanities like dying. Public speaking, though?
Nope. No way, no how.
“Why did I agree to this?” As Councilor Tevos finishes her introduction, she’s standing at attention but she’s got her hands clutched tight behind her back. “This was a terrible idea.”
Garrus, at her right shoulder, nudges his knee into the back of her thigh. “Relax, Shepard. Just read off the prompter and picture all of them in their underwear. Isn't that the saying?”
“Your confidence is reassuring, if unwarranted, and I’m not sure that’s a good plan.” She chokes back a giggle, looking past the curtain at the front row of assembled dignitaries. “You’ve seen the new ambassador from Noveria?”
“Hm. Fair.”
Kaidan, to her left, leans close and murmurs into her ear. “I’ve heard it helps to focus on one person.”
“I know who I’d pick.” She whispers back over the burst of applause from the gathered crowd. “You sitting in the front row, Spectre? Need to know where to look.”
“Nope. Behind you on the stage.”
“Not sure that’s useful. I can’t exactly look back over my shoulder the whole time.”
As the audience quiets and Tevos looks toward them, beckoning them onstage with a wave of one perfectly manicured hand, she can hear the smirk in his voice. “Well, then,” Kaidan says, “you’ll just have to be creative. You’ve got this.”
It’s just like going into battle as she steps out of the wings, Garrus and Kaidan flanking her in the same tight formation they’ve fallen into so many times over the years. Her eyes adjust to the bright lights more quickly than they should, thanks to her enhancements; she takes a deep breath, looking up into the corner for the projection of her speech on the prompter screen.
She’s got this.
In the pauses between sentences she blinks, picturing him, every muscle and freckle and scar of a body she’s learned every inch of, on the backs of her eyelids. If she blinks a little more than usual during the course of her speech- well. The lights are very bright.
*
-someone’s yelling.
“sir?” again, louder, frantic. “sir! over here- she’s still breathing- i think it’s-”
*
The morning after the party Shepard wakes at 0900, alarmingly late by military standards, to the smell of coffee and something frying wafting in from the kitchen.
Kaidan’s nowhere to be found, his side of the bed empty but the pillow rumpled and his boots still lined up next to the end table. He was here, she’s certain- she mostly remembers going to bed, with Kaidan beside her, at the end of the party, after everyone else had crashed out on couches and under tables. She’d closed the bedroom door, no thanks to the tripwire and the biometric sensors Zaeed and Garrus had managed to rig up at some point when she wasn’t looking, but- oh, God.
She’s pretty sure there was someone in the hot tub- possibly several someones, if she remembers the noise correctly. Still dressed, she rolls out of bed; they can’t have seen much, at least. She hopes not. She’ll never hear the end of it, otherwise.
When she peers into the bathroom, Grunt, on his back like an overturned turtle, is snoring contentedly in the empty tub, and Javik’s curled beside it with his head resting on the tile surround. As she stands in the doorway, he groans faintly and shifts, turning away from her. Apparently, even Protheans get hangovers.
So do Commanders, of course- oh, her head aches. She needs coffee.
Kaidan, irritatingly, looks perfectly sober and far too cheerful when she drags herself into the kitchen. “Morning, sunshine. Coffee?” When she nods enthusiastically, he turns from the stove just long enough to hand her a mug before he returns his attention to a pan full of frying…
“Eggs?” She tries not to wrinkle her nose. It’s funny, now that she thinks of it: in all their time together, he’s never made her breakfast. On their rare days off they just skipped it, preferring lazy mornings in bed, and on duty it’s always been ration bars or protein shakes or MREs, which is just fine by her. Breakfast, as far as she’s concerned, is a wasteland of food options, each less appealing than the next.
Especially eggs. She hates eggs.
“Stomach not up to it? I can make pancakes.” Kaidan glances up at her as she takes a sip from her mug; he caught her expression, clearly. “I think everyone else is still unconscious, so I’ll let you set the menu.”
She shakes her head again. “No, thank you. I’ll pass.”
“You really should eat something. Crepes? I make great crepes.”
That one gets a thumbs-down and another sip from her mug.
His forehead’s scrunched in thought, now, as he tries more options. “Oatmeal?”
“Ew.”
“Bacon.” He eyes her, a desperate look on his face. “You can’t not like bacon. Everyone likes bacon.”
“I do,” she says, “like bacon.”
Kaidan grins. “Bacon and coffee- breakfast of champions. Coming right up.”
*
everything hurts. there is less everything than usual- when she tries to move she can't, like her muscles aren't there at all, and she cannot see out of her right eye and her jaw refuses to open, but still there is light and a hand holding hers-
*
She knew, of course, what the risks were. They all did.
But it doesn’t make it any easier to watch each lifeline flicker red in her HUD, her crew- her friends- taken down one by one by a merciless tide of monsters. They’re all still alive, for now, but as each status changes from ACTIVE to DISABLED the knot in her chest pulls a little tighter and she’s never been one for religion but she’s never prayed so hard in her life.
She can see the conduit at the bottom of the hill, a pillar of light cutting through the smoke, and the way down’s as clear as it’s going to get; she signals to Kaidan and Garrus and they all three start forward, out of the safety of their cover spot behind a half-ruined wall, and-
The Reaper’s beam hits them almost immediately.
When she forces her eyes open she’s sprawled on the ground, half-buried under rubble, and two more lines on her HUD are flashing red. She can’t find them on the display at first but then the sensors ping, Kaidan about ten feet to her right and Garrus, beside her- where? She can’t see him.
“Garrus?” Her left arm won't work. Wedging her rifle under a chunk of rock, she levers it off her right leg until she can move and rolls to her stomach, looking around. “Talk to me, Vakarian. What’s your status?”
The pile of rubble shifts. “I'm here-” a cough, a groan- “but I don't think I can make it to the Conduit, Shepard. My leg-”
She does what she can, one- handed, to clear the debris, and when she gets a better look she winces. He's right; his leg’s clearly broken. “We’ll get you out of here. You've got an evac beacon?”
“Yeah. Go find Alenko. He-” Garrus swears, raising his rifle to his shoulder. “Marauders on your six. I'll cover you. Go!”
She half-runs, half-hobbles as he starts to fire, each shot punctuated by a keening shriek and the thud of a falling body, scanning the ground as she goes, looking for-
Kaidan.
At first she thinks he’s just sitting, leaning against a crumpled van. She reaches down to help him to his feet, though, and he doesn’t move, and then she sees the rebar through his shoulder, pinning him to the driver’s side door.
“It’s okay,” he says, though his eyes say something different, “I’m fine.”
“You are such a liar.” There’re too many pockets on this suit of armor; she searches for her cutting torch- she can’t pull him free, she knows, not without knowing what the metal pierced through, but there’s no time to scan him, no time-
He raises his hand to her face as she crouches down beside him. “You’ve got to go, babe, you can’t-”
“Not without you.” She finally finds the torch and lights it, the little blue flame heating the rebar to brilliant orange until it snaps, just behind his shoulder, and he leans forward with a gasp.
“I’ll only slow you down.”
“I don’t care. I-”
When he kisses her it lands sidelong. “You can do this, Kira. I know it.”
His beacon’s shattered; she gives him hers, sets it up beside him carefully. She won’t have a way to signal rescue when she gets to the Citadel. She has a sick feeling, deep in her stomach, that she won’t need to. “I love you, Kaidan.”
“I love you, too.”
She kisses him again, hard, tasting the blood on his lips before he raises a barrier around himself, and then she runs.
*
“miranda.” a familiar voice near her ear, the same weight on her hand. “how is she?”
“better. you were here last week when she woke up? without the tech it’s been slow going, but I think-”
she opens her eyes.
*
It takes her almost two months (plus the four that she spent, sedated, in the hospital, before she finally woke up for good) but when he comes to visit her that day she is ready.
Dressed properly, she sits on the edge of the bed, feet firmly on the floor. He’s nearly here now- she can hear his footsteps coming down the hallway, a steady cadence she’d recognize anywhere. She can do this.
“Hey, babe.” Kaidan smiles, gesturing toward the wheelchair in the corner. “You ready to roll? The sun’s actually shining, so I thought we’d go out to the atrium if you feel up to it.”
“That sounds great.”
He goes to move the chair next to the bed, the same thing he’s done every day since the doctors gave her the all-clear to get up.
“Kaidan?”
“Hm?”
“How long did you say you thought it’d take until I could walk on my own?” She wills her legs to stop shaking.
He isn’t looking at her, which is perfect, his attention focused on the brake release and the blanket draped over the back of the chair. “Well, the therapists thought it might be up to six months. They don’t know you like I do, though, so I bet three. Why?”
“One month and twenty-seven days.”
When he turns back around she’s standing up beside her hospital bed, and she takes a step toward him, holding out her arms, and he leaves the wheelchair where it is and holds her tight.
“Pretty sure,” she says against his mouth, “that means you owe me dinner.”
Happy Holidays Harvesting!
#mass effect holiday cheer#cullenplzhalp#holiday harbinger#mass effect#shenko#kaidan alenko#femshep#inyri writes
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My father, if you're a regular on my Tumblr then you already know this, was a paranoid Schizophrenic. Those who live with someone like this understand the crippling anxiety that comes with their delusions. Living with someone that has this is like waiting for a bomb to explode. You know that it might happen with the smallest poke, but it may be a deactivated one that just may never explode, but that anxiety is always there.
My dad was on and off his meds as many schizophrenics are, and he was manic when that happened. The thoughts and delusions his brain was creating would slowly build up and make him snap. We had an escape plan if that would ever happen.
I was sitting in my math class one day when my mom called my cellphone. She only does this when there's an emergency. I knew that my dad had stopped taking his meds because of his recent behavior. I could feel my heartbeat in my head, and the extreme anxiety welled up in my chest so much that I thought I was gonna throw up, and i started to shake. My mom then texted me immediately after my phone stopped ringing telling me to go to the main office and call her. So I raised my hand, and asked my teacher if I could go. I imagine it wasn't hard to see the distress I was in, and she asked me if everything was okay. I said, and I remember the exact words,
"I don't know, please just let me go it's an emergency."
She gave me permission, and I ran to the office and called my mom. She asked me if I remember the emergency plan, and I said yes. She told me to go to the neighbor's house right after school and to call my grandparents to pick me and my brother up. I asked her what's going on and I don't remember what she said, but I had a full on panic attack at that moment. She asked me if the counselor was there that day and I told her she was. She told me to go to the counselor so I went back to the classroom, grabbed my stuff, and left to the counselor's room.
What I remember was panic. I was sobbing, hyperventilating, and talking all at once. She kept me in her room until the dismissal bell rang and that's all I remember. I think my grandparents were at the bottom of the driveway when we got off the bus, but I'm not sure.
The pure panic that I had felt from the time I was 13 until the time up to my father's death was the most horrible thing I've ever experienced.
It pisses me off when people say that they can't do simple adult shit because of stupid reasons. My aunt is a good fucking example of this. She's one of those people that are like;
"Boohoo I had such a bad childhood. My parents loved me and spoiled me but boohoo they never gave me shit. All I had was my gangster friends."
It pisses me off because I have a very legitimate reason for not leaving my house, I could use the excuse that I had a traumatic late childhood because of my father's mental illness but I don't. Because I'm not a piece of shit. I'm taking a gap year before college not because I'm lazy and I don't want to go to school. I'm taking a gap year so I can get an actual job (I babysit for my gramma), travel, try to adult a bit, figure out what exactly it is that I want to do in my life, think about what I'm going to do during college, save money, and establish temporary housing for summers and after college. I have a lot planned for the year I'm taking off from schooling.
Lazy people are fine with me. I'm lazy in the way that I don't like to move on the days where I'm not doing anything. I like to watch YouTube and draw all day. If you're lazy and you don't want to do certain things then that's fine! As long as it's not important. If something you don't want to do can be put off a day or two or you don't have to do it at all then don't. It's fine I promise. But don't lay around when you have work to do. Don't rely on others for money unless they're the people you work for. Don't use welfare unless you have to.
It's the assholes who don't get up, get a mother fucking job, shirk responsibilities, leach off of others, and stuff like that that piss me off.
If you haven't gone through something cripplingly traumatic, then you don't deserve to be that selfish. Get up, man up, stop being a pussy, stop being a whiny little bitch, and make your life worth living, because no one can do that for you.
RANT OVER
#oof this all stemmed from a dr phil video#some kid was complaining about school and i was like#you wanna compare? ok fucker lets compare
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[SP] Pathetic
I've been staring at the TV for the past hour.
Not unusual... In usual times.
The TV's off. It's been off for the past five days, yet I still seem quite content to lounge and stare absent-mindedly at my distorted reflection on the black screen.
I'm glad I can't make anything distinct out... I reckon I'd look as bad as I feel. Ever since the announcement came things have changed.
It was a Sunday night and I was adhering to my tradition of drinking a box of wine and lamenting on how my life at the age of twenty-seven had devolved into a slow, meandering existence. You know, millennial bullshit.
As I was glugging down my fourth, but certainly not my last glass of vino, I was distracted when the TV almost fucking killed me. The speakers must have been blown out by the racket that thundered in. I must have looked a picture; those last drops of wine from the glass caught in my throat and I flapped around like a whale at sea-world desperate to be put out of its misery.
When I regained my composure and assured myself I'd never gain any respect, I stared at the TV which had finally shut up. Now a black screen was dominated by big bold letters -
STAY CALM - A MESSAGE FOR THE NATION INCOMING
What. The. Fuck.
Phone. Contacts. Mum.
Of course she didn't answer. I can picture it now; she's sat in bed, some true-crime documentary playing on the TV, and he'll be lying next to her. When her phone wakes up and my picture appears he'll stare at my mum and give her the it's late honey, we don't have the time to deal with her right now look. She'll return with the Thank god you said it, now I can at least pretend I was coerced into ignoring my only daughter, you're just the best Jimmy, I'm so glad I got married to you and threw that little shit out of our home so we can fuck with the doors open look.
That's it. That's my only point of contact. I felt pathetic at that point. As in, I truly understood what the feeling of pathetic was; there's a physical drop in your stomach and shivers run down your back...you become hot and an overwhelming sense of vulnerability hits you in the core. You could say that wasn't the best feeling to be overcome with as the TV emitted another assault to my eardrums.
The sound dissapated again and this time a voice replaced it almost immediately. It was the voice I had been expecting as soon as I saw the first message. Our great and glorious President.
My fellow Americans. It is with a heavy heart I speak to you tonight. Firstly I am very sorry for interrupting your Sunday evening, I'm sure many of you are quite afraid and concerned right now. I'd love to be able to tell you that there's no reason to worry, but I'm afraid I simply can't...
Phone. Recently Called. Mum
The United States today received information regarding an unprecedented and immovable obstacle to the continuation of not only our own existence, but that of every living thing on our planet...
Call was rejected again. I bet he slapped it out of her hand that time. No way would she ignore me, she must have been watching this as well?
There is an asteroid roughly twelve miles in diamater on a collision course with Earth. Projections are that it will strike us in seven days and the impact will result in the total annihilation of us and our home...
You go through the motions of acceptance incredibly quickly. It's not a drawn out process. I'll explain how mine happened -
Bullshit. He's the president of the United States of America addressing the entire nation. Okay, this is serious.
I know this is quite a shock. I presume many of you are wondering why I am being so open and frank about this. Well... I guess there's no more contingency plans or exit strategies to care about any more. It was important enough that I have decided, against the wishes of my advisors, to tell you the truth and allow you to go out in whichever way you feel is right and justified. I leave you with only one request - depart this world showcasing the best of humanity. Put our compassion, dignity and honour on a pedestal and let us move onto the next great adventure proud. Good luck to you all. Goodnight America
Then it was over. The screen flipped back to my original programming. I can't work out if Kim Kardashian was a vacuous waste of air and cells before or after I realised my world was over and nothing I ever did or dreamed about mattered anymore. Probably before, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.
The sound of my phone ringing came at me like it was trapped down a well, far off in the distance. I picked it up and my heart did one of this slight jumps when you get excited.
Mum. I'm scared
It's not your mother, it's Jimmy.
oh...
Look I'm calling to tell you me and your mother have decided to take off. I can't explain and to be honest, I won't. I'm sure you've just heard the president.
Erm okay. Well... Where should I meet you?
Meet us? What are you talking about!
Meet you so we can all be together obviously!
I think you've misunderstood this whole situation. I'm not surprised, you never where very bright... Look. You're not coming with. I called to make sure you didn't come running down here and waste your time. Just stay away from us.
Go fuck yourself Jimmy, put my mum on now!
Your mother doesn't want to speak to you. This has been coming a long time if I'm honest. How could you not see it? The heartache and trauma you have caused that poor woman. You should have the deceny to respect her last wishes and stay away. Don't you dare cause your mother any more heartbreak
I'll hear that from her you teet suckling leach
Then it happened. From somewhere in the background I heard her voice.
Just go away Kate! Jimmy has spoken for the both of us
I like to think she was sat at the dresser table at the side of the bed. Cigarette in hand and her mascara running down her face. Shaking so bad she couldn't get a proper drag and staring vehemently at Jimmy, who had forced her to lose all sense of humanity and compassion.
But it's more likely that OJ is innocent and Twilight is actually a good film if you look at it's artistic merits.
No, she would have been sat at that dresser, ensuring the phone was on loudspeaker and mouthing instructions to Jimmy, getting more perplexed and angry every time I spoke.
But... Mum, please I'm scared
This is where she would have inhaled deep and arched back ready to deliver her knockout punch. Jimmy would have slunk away from the phone, knowing his work was done and he can stand in the shadows and watch the emancipation in peace.
You listen here and you listen good. The last we spoke I told you I'd reached the end of the road. There were no more chances. I cannot go through this anymore and now with all this shit going on... We deserve to have some peace at the end Kate. Please understand, it's not because we don't love you. It's because we can't fucking stand you.
Oh please, you talk as if I killed someone mum! Im sorry I didn't turn out perfect like you wanted-
The phone cut off. She actually cut me off from her reality with the click of button. It wasn't even a click...a lazy moment of the finger and that's it... I'm gone from their lives.
Like millions of others, I cried myself to sleep that night. First it was pity, then anger and then... Just to get it all out. Once sleep came and I woke the next day, I'd accepted it.
The World of course went insane. For the first couple of days we had the news and social media to keep us informed of everything. The riots. The crime. The depravity. So much for humanity. But then, all that stopped as well.
It only takes two days for the World to just stop. Once every single person suddenly just doesn't give a shit... Its all done. Electricity went - no more lights, no more warmth. Thankfully I'd spent wisely as an introvert. I had a deluxe weighted duvet with special microfibres that retain your body heat. God praises those who late-night drunk shop.
You could also live off my supply of ramen noodles and cherry bakewells for a considerable amount of time, so I wasn't concerned with starving. I didn't have much of an appetite anyway. Finally, my brain decides food is no good when getting healthy is the least important factor in my life.
I know other people are with their families. Well, people who aren't rioting or going around unleashing their inner monster, just because they can. I've got a picture in my head of how I think the perfect family are holding up right now.
There's a mum. A dad. A son and a daughter. Their all grouped together in the living room, sitting in front of a massive open hearth fire playing monopoly and drinking hot chocolate. There's a Christmas tree as well, just for the sake of ensuring this cliché rings as true as possible.
The dad rolls a double and fist bumps the air.
"Oh Ronald... You did it again you lucky man," the mum croons whilst stroking his fringe to the side. He beams. The daughter crosses her arms and huffs.
"Not fair!" she says and scowls. Her brother puts his arm around her and leans his head on the side of hers.
"Now, now Lucy... Don't worry, I won't let daddy hurt you,"
The mum suddenly becomes stiff and looks at her son.
"What do you mean by hurt, Blake?" she asks, her voice a bit shaky.
The son looks at his dad who, pale as a ghost now tries to roll again.
"Nothing honey, I'm sure nothing at all. Come on I passed GO!"
The mum looks now at her daughter who is looking at the ground, shooting nervous glances at her dad. Blake is messing with the corner of the board, avoiding eye contact.
"Ronnie... What's going on?" she says now standing up warily. Another round of glances and finally it dawns on her.
"No...no...NO!"
I can't even pretend to know what a perfect family is. My mind so broken and ill from a lifetime of... Life.
Not a single person from my past has phoned me. Well they didn't when the battery was still working. I'll lie to myself until the end - they've probably been ringing non-stop since it went dead.
I'm alone. So utterly alone. And it's the end of the world.
I'm going to die in a couple of days and the only feeling that comes to me now as I sit here staring back at my shadowy image on that black screen mirror is - pathetic.
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A Critical Look at 'The China Study' and Other Diet Plans
youtube
By Dr. Mercola
Denise Minger is perhaps most noted for her comprehensive rebuttal of "The China Study" some eight years ago. She's heavily vested in the vegan versus omnivore battle, having cycled through vegetarianism and raw veganism, finally coming full circle to being an omnivore.
Minger took to vegetarianism when she was just 7 years old. "I was eating steak one night at dinner and almost choked on it. I developed some kind of phobia surrounding things with meat textures and went vegetarian overnight," she explains.
Raw Veganism Took a Toll on Health
However, during the 10 years she remained a vegetarian, she began developing food allergies, including wheat and dairy allergies. "By the time I was a teenager, I was really health-conscious," she says. "I had to get into that whole scene just to stay healthy." At age 15, she discovered the raw vegan movement and got on the 80/10/10 diet, promoted by Dr. Douglas Graham. The diet is based on the hypothesis that we should eat what other primates eat, particularly frugivorous chimpanzees and bonobos.
"I was reading about it online at the age of 15 without having any background in human biology, physiology or anthropology … I fell into this trap of logic, that humans are the only animals that cook our food. We're the only animals that eat this species-inappropriate diet, [so] I went raw vegan overnight," she says. "For one year straight, [I ate] nothing but fruits, vegetables and some nuts — all uncooked.
I did great for the first month, as most people do when they stop eating crappy foods. After that, I started losing weight and muscle. My hair was falling out. My energy levels were fluctuating like crazy. I was in high school at the time, taking the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT). My brain fog got so bad at one point that when I was taking the SAT, I would read the question and by the time I got to the end I couldn't remember what the first part said …
The kicker for me, because I've always taken great care of my teeth, was at the end of this period of raw veganism I had 16 cavities in my mouth, after a lifetime of what had previously been perfect dental health … It was actually the dental health issue that really turned my mind around … At that point, I had to let go of the vegan philosophy. I had to start questioning things …
That's when I came across things like the Weston A. Price Foundation, which [details] what humans have been eating that has supported health in the past. I learned about the paleo movement — different forms of health-conscious omnivory. That's where I ended up. It was a process."
Debunking 'The China Study'
As mentioned, Minger produced a very comprehensive critique of "The China Study" which is the scientific justification for many vegan positions. Her analysis — which some suspected to be funded by the meat industry — was actually undertaken while recovering from an accident. At the age of 22, she was hit by a car while riding her bicycle and shattered her elbow. Her convalescence afforded her the time to work on this project.
"I got a huge book of the raw 'China Study' data. I love numbers. I have fun with correlations. I have fun looking at patterns. My brain gets happy. I spent about two or three months poring over the data. I needed a project, because I had nothing else to do.
I was poring over the data and that's when I realized I needed to write a critique of the book. So much of what [author T. Colin] Campbell said was not supported by his own data. I just felt like if there's anything I needed to do in life, it was going to be this.
I didn't expect anyone to read it. I had a little blog. I like to say I had six readers, five of which were my mother on different computers. I didn't realize at the time how much interest the critique would gather; how much interest there was in that book itself. I hadn't really seen the rivalry upfront between the vegan and the paleo worlds. When I released this critique, I didn't know it was going to be that influential," she says.
Minger developed quite a bit of notoriety as a result of that critique, especially in the vegan community. She's been vilified by many, including Campbell, who wrote personal rebuttals to her commentary on his work. Some have gone so far as to characterize her as someone who's promoting processed food.
The Case for Lowering Protein Intake
For all its drawbacks, there are benefits to veganism. The biggest one, from my perspective, is that vegans have — compared to those who eat the standard American diet — a significantly lower protein intake. I think there are valuable insights that can be drawn from that, which can be integrated into a low-carb paleo approach. Minger agrees, saying:
"For the protein issue, what I find interesting is that whenever we look at the actual China Study, for example, when you look at their food intake, it's much different in terms of the types of animal parts they consume than what we see in America.
The protein issue is complicated, but I will say that high methionine intake — for example from muscle meat — [needs to be balanced with] glycine. You get that by eating the entire animal, the skin, tendons, connective tissue — all the stuff that Americans typically discard …
In the China Study, you don't see them eating steaks and chicken breasts at every meal. Even the lower animal product-consuming societies, a lot of them eat insects. A lot of them eat the weird parts of the animal. I think that's imperative for staying healthy on an omnivorous diet. Because the way we eat meat in America is pathogenic. It's not healthy. But it's not necessarily because animal products are bad for you …
What was amusing to me, because it was completely left out of 'The China Study' book, was that the healthiest populations were the seafood eaters … They had the best health outcomes. The only disease that they had more of was liver cancer. That was because they were living in humid areas where aflatoxin was more prevalent … But it wasn't because of the animal protein. It wasn't because of the fish."
This makes sense considering the importance of long-chained omega-3 fats: eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Those who restrict themselves to a plant-based diet are only getting alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) which, while being a precursor for EPA and DHA cannot be converted at significant, therapeutic levels.
Protein Cycling
Clearly, the composition of the animal protein is a significant issue. We don't want processed foods. We don't want meat from factory farms that is contaminated with glyphosate (due to contaminated grain feed). But there's also the issue of the amount. Many are simply eating far too much protein, which (when consumed in excess) activates mTOR, a pathway involved in both aging and cancer. Pulsing higher and lower amounts of protein also seems a wise strategy.
"When we look at historical groups of humans, the animal food intake was generally on the lean side. We don't have year-round access to these big fatty animals … It's going to be seasonal when it occurs at all," Minger says. "I'm reminded of a study on Australian aborigines. They put people out in the wild to try to acquire foods from their environment and survive on that …
Their fat intake ended up being something like 8 to 12 percent, because the animals were so lean and the lean protein intake was consequently much higher. I have trouble believing that animal protein itself is going to be a problem. I think what might be a problem is this consistency thing — the idea that eating the same foods year-round, without any fluctuation in the composition of the diet, is healthy. I don't think that's the case …
I think things like protein cycling might be therapeutic for humans. I think that even carb cycling and going through different periods of different macronutrient intakes instead of always being low-fat or always being low-carb [is a good idea]. That's probably what the human body is best adapted to."
Macronutrient Cycling — An Overlooked Component of Optimal Health
In deconstructing and assessing the low-carb, high-fat approach, Minger concluded the lack of high and low nutrient cycling was one of the main problems, especially long-term, and particularly for women. "I do one-on-one consulting with people," she says.
"A large group that I have come in contact with are women who've done low-carb. Their thyroid function is tanking. They're gaining weight. They feel terrible. Their hair is falling out. It happens with men too sometimes, but I think women, hormonally, are more sensitive to the lack of carbohydrates."
She's also found evidence suggesting chronic lack of carbohydrates may be having an adverse effect on your gut microbiome. In his commentary, "Sorry Low Carbers, Your Microbiome Is Just Not That Into You,"1 Jeff Leach with the Human Food Project details the likely shifts found in the gut microbiome composition of people who consume low-carbohydrate diets. Whether or not those shifts are wholly detrimental or not is still unknown, but it's worth keeping an eye on.
Minger is equally ambivalent about long-term, chronic high-fat consumption, as some of the evidence suggests it may increase gut permeability and the transport of endotoxin from gram-negative bacteria into the bloodstream, which increases chronic inflammation and related health problems.
"On one hand, we see people switching away from the standard American diet to low-carb. Yeah, they're going to feel great. Yeah, they're going to lose weight. There's going to be this initial honeymoon period, just like I had with raw veganism. My question is what happens over the course of many years on a large scale … I'm wondering what the bulk of the evidence is going to show. I don't know if we really know that yet."
From my perspective, I think there are compelling reasons to suspect one might run into problems, for many of the reasons Minger cites. It appears nutrient cycling (i.e., cycling between higher and lower amounts of fat, net carbs and protein), and also cycling between high and low calorie intakes (fasting and feasting), are foundational criteria for optimal biological functioning.
The challenge is to find that happy balance. When writing "Fat for Fuel: A Revolutionary Diet to Combat Cancer, Boost Brain Power, and Increase Your Energy," I dove deep into the scientific literature looking at this aspect of health.
Cyclical Ketogenic Diet Is Ideally Combined With Cyclical Fasting
First of all, the late Dr. Joseph Kraft showed that using sensitive oral glucose loading and testing insulin levels that insulin resistance is pervasive. Based on a more refined definition of insulin resistance, at least 80 percent of the population have diabetes in situ,2,3 which means they're insulin resistant even though their fasting glucose is normal.
This is where low-carb can be really useful, yet it alone will still not be enough for many. A lot of people need to get even more aggressive and do fasting. Once you've done that for a while and resolve the insulin resistance, you need to cycle net carbs (total carbs minus fiber) back in.
"Low-carbohydrate eating … is a great tool to lose weight, and lose fat around the organs. You start improving insulin sensitivity because of that weight loss, and because of the reduction in the energy surplus that many people are constantly surrounded with. But I use the analogy of a [broken] refrigerator.
Your refrigerator breaks. You can do one of two things. You can say, 'OK, I'm never going to buy any perishable food again. Everything I'm going to buy is going to be dry goods as long as the freezer or the refrigerator is broken.' Or, you can fix the refrigerator.
Low-carbohydrate diets are like saying, 'Let's not use our refrigerator anymore.' Let's not use our carbohydrate metabolism pathways anymore. Let's just avoid those. It's not actually fixing the issue. As anyone who knows who's been low-carb, you go low-carb for a while, and then you reintroduce carbohydrates and, whoa, it's terrible.
Your blood sugar goes crazy. You feel awful. It's like, 'Wow. The carbohydrates are terrible.' No. It's because your body is no longer working to metabolize them efficiently."
The converse can also occur. If you suppress insulin for too long, your blood sugar will tend to rise from hepatic gluconeogenesis. If you reintroduce carbohydrates at that point, it will raise insulin and lower your blood sugar. You can also eat too much fat; since fat is high in calories, the excess calories alone can lead to weight gain. As mentioned above, protein intake also needs to be regulated to avoid mTOR activation.
Traditional paleo is frequently high-protein, high-fat, similar to the Atkins approach. But you're not going to get all the benefits unless you restrict protein. As a general rule, I recommend limiting protein to half a gram per pound of lean body weight, to ensure you're getting the protein you need for muscle maintenance and repair. The answer is not to cut protein out altogether. You do need some, just not the enormous amounts most Americans are used to eating.
Focus on Nutrient Density
When asked what the best animal food composition might be, Minger stresses the importance of nutrient density over any specific dosage recommendations, as the ideal amount will depend on the type of meat you're eating. "For my own diet, I focus on organ meats and shellfish," she says. "Those are the primary foods I eat that are of animal origin. Oysters are my favorite. Nutritionally, if you look at liver and oysters, oysters are kind of like the liver of the ocean."
People who shun animal foods due to ethical concerns about eating something that is highly sentient can also take heart in the fact that oysters lack the central nervous system "that would make them equivalent to a cow." "There's a bivalve vegan movement, where people are vegan with the inclusion of certain shellfish. I think that can go a long way for people to balance out a vegan diet," she says.
As for cooking, Minger recommends using gentle methods to avoid the creation of carcinogens associated with high-temperature cooking. These byproducts "seem to be driving the correlation between meat consumption and different cancers that we see in observational studies," she says.
"Whenever you look at a study that actually controls for the cooking method, typically once you take away the high-heat kind of strategies for cooking your meat, the correlations with various diseases start to diminish, if not disappear completely." Byproducts created during grilling and frying include heterocyclic amines and polyaromatic hydrocarbons that form carcinogens. So, don't overcook your meat, and balance muscle meat (steaks) with organ meat and other animal parts.
How Minger's Diet Has Changed Over the Years
When asked how her diet has changed over the past seven years, and what insights changed her approach to eating the most, Minger replies:
"I started out really fruit-based from my raw vegan history. I would eat a ton of fruit in the morning; smoothies … In learning more about the gut microbiome, learning about digestive-resistant starch; different forms of fiber and their effect on the body, I've been incorporating more legumes, lentils and potatoes that have been heated and cooled [to increase] the resistant starch content. I think that has helped a lot.
I've also flipped my diet in terms of staggering macronutrients throughout the day. I used to start with a lot of carbohydrate and not much else (in the form of fruit). Now, I usually start with a lot of protein and vegetables, and have my high-carb meals at the end of the day. I find that helps with sleep, energy levels [and] focus."
It's worth noting that legumes may not be ideal for everyone, especially if you have autoimmune issues. I've previously interviewed Dr. Steven Gundry, author of "The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in 'Healthy' Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain," on this issue, and I believe his theories are solid.
Minger, who does a lot of work with autoimmunity, agrees lectins can be problematic if you are susceptible to autoimmune problems, whether caused by genetics, lifestyle, antibiotic use or gut microbiome issues. "At that point, the lectin problem can be real," she says.
"There can be a legitimate reason to avoid foods that are high in certain lectins, especially the ones that are individually triggering autoimmune responses. But for people with a healthy gut microbiome, I don't see that being necessarily bad, because if you look at human history … the lectin content of wild foods is generally pretty high.
There's going to be a long adaptation period for us to learn how to coexist with those lectins in our diet. I think [the larger issue] is that the modern environment is creating a really unhealthy microbiome that's making it so some people cannot handle what should be a natural lectin load. That's my takeaway right now, subject to revision."
Critiquing the Blood Type Diet
In preparing for this interview, I watched some of Minger's latest material on YouTube. One of her most recent videos was a Weston A. Price Foundation presentation in which she critiqued Dr. Peter D'Adamo's blood type diet, detailed in his book, "Eat Right 4 Your Type."
I tried this diet back in the '90s and had to quit because it made me diabetic. My personal take on it is that while his recommendations for blood type O, which is about half the population, is consistent with what I believe is a healthy diet, it doesn't seem to work well for the other blood types. According to Minger:
"The fundamental issue with everything he's saying is that it's all wrong. The premise of his diet — that foods have different lectins [that] interact with what's expressed on our blood cells to cause issues within the blood, which then causes inflammation and disease — there's absolutely no mechanistic evidence showing that we can obtain high enough levels of lectins from certain foods, and that those foods will specifically interact with our specific blood type to create these problems.
That evidence just isn't there … [He may have had] a lab, but there are problems with the research actually being published. It certainly hasn't been replicated by other researchers. It's more of a, 'This is what I found. You have to take my word for it, because I wrote a book and I have a [medical] degree.' There's a certain, 'Just trust me. I'm a scientist,' behind that. If there's anything I don't like, it's that …
What fascinated me … [was that] our ABO blood group can actually influence the composition of our gut microbiome for people who are secretors — people who secrete their blood type antigens on the surface of mucous cells throughout the body, the saliva and the gut, the gut in particular.
Let's say you're a blood type A and you're secreting the A antigen on different cells within the gut. There are going to be certain bacteria that use that antigen as a food source and as an attachment site. Those specific bacteria are going to be more attracted to your microbiome. They're going to set up camp there, in a way that they might not be doing to somebody who's a blood type O. You're actually going to start shifting the proportion of different bacteria because of your blood type.
Tied into this is the idea of being a secretor versus a non-secretor. Most people are secretors. They will express their blood type antigens on the surface of different cells throughout the body. About 20 percent of the population are non-secretors.
For this group, regardless of what their actual blood type is, they have a much higher risk of a lot of digestive diseases, a lot of different health conditions in general, related to the fact that their microbiome is fundamentally different. It's providing a lack of attachment sites for different bacteria. So, there is an influence of blood type on different things going on in the body. It's just not through D'Adamo's theory."
Awesome Omnivore
After taking a professional hiatus, Minger is now working on a few new projects, including an e-book called "Awesome Omnivore." The book is a how-to guide for eating animal products in a way that minimizes potential risks and maximizes nutrition, including guidance on balancing methionine and glycine, differences in A1 versus A2 dairy, how to prepare meat to reduce carcinogen exposure, how to modify your animal food consumption based on genetics, and how to combine meat with other foods to reduce the absorption of heme iron to lower your risk of intestinal cancer and other health problems related to excessive iron.
High iron increases oxidative stress and can cause serious mitochondrial dysfunction. I have a genetic condition called thalassemia, which predisposes me to high iron levels. I have to be really vigilant about keeping my iron level low for these reasons.
As explained by Minger, because the molecular structure of heme is so similar to chlorophyll, if you eat lots of green leafy vegetables with your steak, the chlorophyll will inhibit absorption of some of the iron. "That alone is going to make that meal probably, on the whole, healthier for you," she says.
"There's this kind of dichotomy — you have the vegetable eaters and the meat eaters. The meat eaters are not usually eating enough vegetables to offset the heme issue. But if you look at studies that actually adjust for that one variable, the link with meat's problems tends to disappear.
It's, again, veggies to the rescue. But it doesn't mean that you can't eat meat too. Anyway, the book is going to be a collection of things people can do to ensure that the meat they're consuming, the eggs and the dairy products (if they're doing that), are as healthy as possible."
Plant-Based Paleo
Minger is also working on a book about plant-based paleo, designed for people who are committed to avoiding animal products, for whatever reason. The aim of this book is to provide strategies to help you stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible within the limitations of a plant-based diet.
"There are vegans who have survived a long time on their diet. It's not impossible. The human body is incredibly adaptable. But we need to understand what's working for those people.
We need to understand that there are a lot of genetic components that go into being able to convert plant-based nutrients into their active forms. Take beta-carotene, for example. People who have really good conversion of beta-carotene into retinol, they're probably not going to run into reproductive issues, teeth issues, skin issues or eye issues, like I did.
But for about 45 percent of the population, there are mutations with the BCMO1 gene that prevent that conversion from being efficient. If you have two very common polymorphisms, your conversion rate is going to drop by almost 70 percent.
Another less common mutation will tank your conversion by 90 percent. If you're a vegan, you're not eating any preformed vitamin A, and if you have some of those mutations, you're going to have problems pretty quickly. How do we work with people's genetics? How do we work with their dietary limitations?
Supplements would be good. I'd love for people to take cod liver oil if they can get over that one issue. But you need to be really aware of your specific conditions … I have those BCMO1 mutations. My vitamin A conversion is terrible. That's part of the reason that eating liver was a huge boon for my diet. It's my first concentrated source of vitamin A that I had in a decade, more than a decade."
Lifelong Learning Is Key to Staying Ahead
As nutritional science keeps moving forward, we're bound to learn new things about what we currently think of as factual. For example, Minger touches on evidence suggesting really low-fat intake may actually improve carbohydrate metabolism.
"We have the Randle cycle. There's competition between free fatty acids and glucose in the bloodstream for use as fuel. I think we have enough evidence to say pretty clearly that when you combine fat and carbohydrate within the same meal, if you're a healthy person — you're going to see a reduced blood-glucose response, but you're going to see the same amount of insulin secretion.
Fat doesn't decrease the insulin needs of your body when you're eating carbohydrate. It kind of amplifies it. There have been studies where they'll take a potato, feed it to a diabetic, then repeat the study with butter added … The more butter added to the potato, the more insulin the diabetic needs to use to deal with that meal. There's an interactive effect, even within the span of one meal, between fat and carbohydrate …
I don't believe in staying at one [end of the spectrum, i.e., high-carb or high-fat] forever. Obviously, you need fat-soluble nutrients. You're going to need some fatty foods that are highly nutritious too. At the same time, you're going to need to cycle in more carbohydrate to deal with the long-term consequences of ketogenic diets …
"I believe there's a way to integrate everything. What it comes back to is all the warring diet communities need to let go of the ego and communicate with each other. Stop saying, 'We own the truth.' Start listening to the other side and be curious about why things are working for them.
For me, that's the way I've learned best — by challenging what I believe. Because if what I believe can be dismantled, then it's not a good belief to hold. You need to constantly revise your theory about the world, about nutrition, about everything. It needs to be in a state of flux."
from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/07/08/the-china-study-and-other-nutrition-plans.aspx
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A Critical Look at 'The China Study' and Other Diet Plans Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola Denise Minger is perhaps most noted for her comprehensive rebuttal of "The China Study" some eight years ago. She's heavily vested in the vegan versus omnivore battle, having cycled through vegetarianism and raw veganism, finally coming full circle to being an omnivore. Minger took to vegetarianism when she was just 7 years old. "I was eating steak one night at dinner and almost choked on it. I developed some kind of phobia surrounding things with meat textures and went vegetarian overnight," she explains. Raw Veganism Took a Toll on Health However, during the 10 years she remained a vegetarian, she began developing food allergies, including wheat and dairy allergies. "By the time I was a teenager, I was really health-conscious," she says. "I had to get into that whole scene just to stay healthy." At age 15, she discovered the raw vegan movement and got on the 80/10/10 diet, promoted by Dr. Douglas Graham. The diet is based on the hypothesis that we should eat what other primates eat, particularly frugivorous chimpanzees and bonobos. "I was reading about it online at the age of 15 without having any background in human biology, physiology or anthropology … I fell into this trap of logic, that humans are the only animals that cook our food. We're the only animals that eat this species-inappropriate diet, [so] I went raw vegan overnight," she says. "For one year straight, [I ate] nothing but fruits, vegetables and some nuts — all uncooked. I did great for the first month, as most people do when they stop eating crappy foods. After that, I started losing weight and muscle. My hair was falling out. My energy levels were fluctuating like crazy. I was in high school at the time, taking the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT). My brain fog got so bad at one point that when I was taking the SAT, I would read the question and by the time I got to the end I couldn't remember what the first part said … The kicker for me, because I've always taken great care of my teeth, was at the end of this period of raw veganism I had 16 cavities in my mouth, after a lifetime of what had previously been perfect dental health … It was actually the dental health issue that really turned my mind around … At that point, I had to let go of the vegan philosophy. I had to start questioning things … That's when I came across things like the Weston A. Price Foundation, which [details] what humans have been eating that has supported health in the past. I learned about the paleo movement — different forms of health-conscious omnivory. That's where I ended up. It was a process." Debunking 'The China Study' As mentioned, Minger produced a very comprehensive critique of "The China Study" which is the scientific justification for many vegan positions. Her analysis — which some suspected to be funded by the meat industry — was actually undertaken while recovering from an accident. At the age of 22, she was hit by a car while riding her bicycle and shattered her elbow. Her convalescence afforded her the time to work on this project. "I got a huge book of the raw 'China Study' data. I love numbers. I have fun with correlations. I have fun looking at patterns. My brain gets happy. I spent about two or three months poring over the data. I needed a project, because I had nothing else to do. I was poring over the data and that's when I realized I needed to write a critique of the book. So much of what [author T. Colin] Campbell said was not supported by his own data. I just felt like if there's anything I needed to do in life, it was going to be this. I didn't expect anyone to read it. I had a little blog. I like to say I had six readers, five of which were my mother on different computers. I didn't realize at the time how much interest the critique would gather; how much interest there was in that book itself. I hadn't really seen the rivalry upfront between the vegan and the paleo worlds. When I released this critique, I didn't know it was going to be that influential," she says. Minger developed quite a bit of notoriety as a result of that critique, especially in the vegan community. She's been vilified by many, including Campbell, who wrote personal rebuttals to her commentary on his work. Some have gone so far as to characterize her as someone who's promoting processed food. The Case for Lowering Protein Intake For all its drawbacks, there are benefits to veganism. The biggest one, from my perspective, is that vegans have — compared to those who eat the standard American diet — a significantly lower protein intake. I think there are valuable insights that can be drawn from that, which can be integrated into a low-carb paleo approach. Minger agrees, saying: "For the protein issue, what I find interesting is that whenever we look at the actual China Study, for example, when you look at their food intake, it's much different in terms of the types of animal parts they consume than what we see in America. The protein issue is complicated, but I will say that high methionine intake — for example from muscle meat — [needs to be balanced with] glycine. You get that by eating the entire animal, the skin, tendons, connective tissue — all the stuff that Americans typically discard … In the China Study, you don't see them eating steaks and chicken breasts at every meal. Even the lower animal product-consuming societies, a lot of them eat insects. A lot of them eat the weird parts of the animal. I think that's imperative for staying healthy on an omnivorous diet. Because the way we eat meat in America is pathogenic. It's not healthy. But it's not necessarily because animal products are bad for you … What was amusing to me, because it was completely left out of 'The China Study' book, was that the healthiest populations were the seafood eaters … They had the best health outcomes. The only disease that they had more of was liver cancer. That was because they were living in humid areas where aflatoxin was more prevalent … But it wasn't because of the animal protein. It wasn't because of the fish." This makes sense considering the importance of long-chained omega-3 fats: eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Those who restrict themselves to a plant-based diet are only getting alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) which, while being a precursor for EPA and DHA cannot be converted at significant, therapeutic levels. Protein Cycling Clearly, the composition of the animal protein is a significant issue. We don't want processed foods. We don't want meat from factory farms that is contaminated with glyphosate (due to contaminated grain feed). But there's also the issue of the amount. Many are simply eating far too much protein, which (when consumed in excess) activates mTOR, a pathway involved in both aging and cancer. Pulsing higher and lower amounts of protein also seems a wise strategy. "When we look at historical groups of humans, the animal food intake was generally on the lean side. We don't have year-round access to these big fatty animals … It's going to be seasonal when it occurs at all," Minger says. "I'm reminded of a study on Australian aborigines. They put people out in the wild to try to acquire foods from their environment and survive on that … Their fat intake ended up being something like 8 to 12 percent, because the animals were so lean and the lean protein intake was consequently much higher. I have trouble believing that animal protein itself is going to be a problem. I think what might be a problem is this consistency thing — the idea that eating the same foods year-round, without any fluctuation in the composition of the diet, is healthy. I don't think that's the case … I think things like protein cycling might be therapeutic for humans. I think that even carb cycling and going through different periods of different macronutrient intakes instead of always being low-fat or always being low-carb [is a good idea]. That's probably what the human body is best adapted to." Macronutrient Cycling — An Overlooked Component of Optimal Health In deconstructing and assessing the low-carb, high-fat approach, Minger concluded the lack of high and low nutrient cycling was one of the main problems, especially long-term, and particularly for women. "I do one-on-one consulting with people," she says. "A large group that I have come in contact with are women who've done low-carb. Their thyroid function is tanking. They're gaining weight. They feel terrible. Their hair is falling out. It happens with men too sometimes, but I think women, hormonally, are more sensitive to the lack of carbohydrates." She's also found evidence suggesting chronic lack of carbohydrates may be having an adverse effect on your gut microbiome. In his commentary, "Sorry Low Carbers, Your Microbiome Is Just Not That Into You,"1 Jeff Leach with the Human Food Project details the likely shifts found in the gut microbiome composition of people who consume low-carbohydrate diets. Whether or not those shifts are wholly detrimental or not is still unknown, but it's worth keeping an eye on. Minger is equally ambivalent about long-term, chronic high-fat consumption, as some of the evidence suggests it may increase gut permeability and the transport of endotoxin from gram-negative bacteria into the bloodstream, which increases chronic inflammation and related health problems. "On one hand, we see people switching away from the standard American diet to low-carb. Yeah, they're going to feel great. Yeah, they're going to lose weight. There's going to be this initial honeymoon period, just like I had with raw veganism. My question is what happens over the course of many years on a large scale … I'm wondering what the bulk of the evidence is going to show. I don't know if we really know that yet." From my perspective, I think there are compelling reasons to suspect one might run into problems, for many of the reasons Minger cites. It appears nutrient cycling (i.e., cycling between higher and lower amounts of fat, net carbs and protein), and also cycling between high and low calorie intakes (fasting and feasting), are foundational criteria for optimal biological functioning. The challenge is to find that happy balance. When writing "Fat for Fuel: A Revolutionary Diet to Combat Cancer, Boost Brain Power, and Increase Your Energy," I dove deep into the scientific literature looking at this aspect of health. Cyclical Ketogenic Diet Is Ideally Combined With Cyclical Fasting First of all, the late Dr. Joseph Kraft showed that using sensitive oral glucose loading and testing insulin levels that insulin resistance is pervasive. Based on a more refined definition of insulin resistance, at least 80 percent of the population have diabetes in situ,2,3 which means they're insulin resistant even though their fasting glucose is normal. This is where low-carb can be really useful, yet it alone will still not be enough for many. A lot of people need to get even more aggressive and do fasting. Once you've done that for a while and resolve the insulin resistance, you need to cycle net carbs (total carbs minus fiber) back in. "Low-carbohydrate eating … is a great tool to lose weight, and lose fat around the organs. You start improving insulin sensitivity because of that weight loss, and because of the reduction in the energy surplus that many people are constantly surrounded with. But I use the analogy of a [broken] refrigerator. Your refrigerator breaks. You can do one of two things. You can say, 'OK, I'm never going to buy any perishable food again. Everything I'm going to buy is going to be dry goods as long as the freezer or the refrigerator is broken.' Or, you can fix the refrigerator. Low-carbohydrate diets are like saying, 'Let's not use our refrigerator anymore.' Let's not use our carbohydrate metabolism pathways anymore. Let's just avoid those. It's not actually fixing the issue. As anyone who knows who's been low-carb, you go low-carb for a while, and then you reintroduce carbohydrates and, whoa, it's terrible. Your blood sugar goes crazy. You feel awful. It's like, 'Wow. The carbohydrates are terrible.' No. It's because your body is no longer working to metabolize them efficiently." The converse can also occur. If you suppress insulin for too long, your blood sugar will tend to rise from hepatic gluconeogenesis. If you reintroduce carbohydrates at that point, it will raise insulin and lower your blood sugar. You can also eat too much fat; since fat is high in calories, the excess calories alone can lead to weight gain. As mentioned above, protein intake also needs to be regulated to avoid mTOR activation. Traditional paleo is frequently high-protein, high-fat, similar to the Atkins approach. But you're not going to get all the benefits unless you restrict protein. As a general rule, I recommend limiting protein to half a gram per pound of lean body weight, to ensure you're getting the protein you need for muscle maintenance and repair. The answer is not to cut protein out altogether. You do need some, just not the enormous amounts most Americans are used to eating. Focus on Nutrient Density When asked what the best animal food composition might be, Minger stresses the importance of nutrient density over any specific dosage recommendations, as the ideal amount will depend on the type of meat you're eating. "For my own diet, I focus on organ meats and shellfish," she says. "Those are the primary foods I eat that are of animal origin. Oysters are my favorite. Nutritionally, if you look at liver and oysters, oysters are kind of like the liver of the ocean." People who shun animal foods due to ethical concerns about eating something that is highly sentient can also take heart in the fact that oysters lack the central nervous system "that would make them equivalent to a cow." "There's a bivalve vegan movement, where people are vegan with the inclusion of certain shellfish. I think that can go a long way for people to balance out a vegan diet," she says. As for cooking, Minger recommends using gentle methods to avoid the creation of carcinogens associated with high-temperature cooking. These byproducts "seem to be driving the correlation between meat consumption and different cancers that we see in observational studies," she says. "Whenever you look at a study that actually controls for the cooking method, typically once you take away the high-heat kind of strategies for cooking your meat, the correlations with various diseases start to diminish, if not disappear completely." Byproducts created during grilling and frying include heterocyclic amines and polyaromatic hydrocarbons that form carcinogens. So, don't overcook your meat, and balance muscle meat (steaks) with organ meat and other animal parts. How Minger's Diet Has Changed Over the Years When asked how her diet has changed over the past seven years, and what insights changed her approach to eating the most, Minger replies: "I started out really fruit-based from my raw vegan history. I would eat a ton of fruit in the morning; smoothies … In learning more about the gut microbiome, learning about digestive-resistant starch; different forms of fiber and their effect on the body, I've been incorporating more legumes, lentils and potatoes that have been heated and cooled [to increase] the resistant starch content. I think that has helped a lot. I've also flipped my diet in terms of staggering macronutrients throughout the day. I used to start with a lot of carbohydrate and not much else (in the form of fruit). Now, I usually start with a lot of protein and vegetables, and have my high-carb meals at the end of the day. I find that helps with sleep, energy levels [and] focus." It's worth noting that legumes may not be ideal for everyone, especially if you have autoimmune issues. I've previously interviewed Dr. Steven Gundry, author of "The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in 'Healthy' Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain," on this issue, and I believe his theories are solid. Minger, who does a lot of work with autoimmunity, agrees lectins can be problematic if you are susceptible to autoimmune problems, whether caused by genetics, lifestyle, antibiotic use or gut microbiome issues. "At that point, the lectin problem can be real," she says. "There can be a legitimate reason to avoid foods that are high in certain lectins, especially the ones that are individually triggering autoimmune responses. But for people with a healthy gut microbiome, I don't see that being necessarily bad, because if you look at human history … the lectin content of wild foods is generally pretty high. There's going to be a long adaptation period for us to learn how to coexist with those lectins in our diet. I think [the larger issue] is that the modern environment is creating a really unhealthy microbiome that's making it so some people cannot handle what should be a natural lectin load. That's my takeaway right now, subject to revision." Critiquing the Blood Type Diet In preparing for this interview, I watched some of Minger's latest material on YouTube. One of her most recent videos was a Weston A. Price Foundation presentation in which she critiqued Dr. Peter D'Adamo's blood type diet, detailed in his book, "Eat Right 4 Your Type." I tried this diet back in the '90s and had to quit because it made me diabetic. My personal take on it is that while his recommendations for blood type O, which is about half the population, is consistent with what I believe is a healthy diet, it doesn't seem to work well for the other blood types. According to Minger: "The fundamental issue with everything he's saying is that it's all wrong. The premise of his diet — that foods have different lectins [that] interact with what's expressed on our blood cells to cause issues within the blood, which then causes inflammation and disease — there's absolutely no mechanistic evidence showing that we can obtain high enough levels of lectins from certain foods, and that those foods will specifically interact with our specific blood type to create these problems. That evidence just isn't there … [He may have had] a lab, but there are problems with the research actually being published. It certainly hasn't been replicated by other researchers. It's more of a, 'This is what I found. You have to take my word for it, because I wrote a book and I have a [medical] degree.' There's a certain, 'Just trust me. I'm a scientist,' behind that. If there's anything I don't like, it's that … What fascinated me … [was that] our ABO blood group can actually influence the composition of our gut microbiome for people who are secretors — people who secrete their blood type antigens on the surface of mucous cells throughout the body, the saliva and the gut, the gut in particular. Let's say you're a blood type A and you're secreting the A antigen on different cells within the gut. There are going to be certain bacteria that use that antigen as a food source and as an attachment site. Those specific bacteria are going to be more attracted to your microbiome. They're going to set up camp there, in a way that they might not be doing to somebody who's a blood type O. You're actually going to start shifting the proportion of different bacteria because of your blood type. Tied into this is the idea of being a secretor versus a non-secretor. Most people are secretors. They will express their blood type antigens on the surface of different cells throughout the body. About 20 percent of the population are non-secretors. For this group, regardless of what their actual blood type is, they have a much higher risk of a lot of digestive diseases, a lot of different health conditions in general, related to the fact that their microbiome is fundamentally different. It's providing a lack of attachment sites for different bacteria. So, there is an influence of blood type on different things going on in the body. It's just not through D'Adamo's theory." Awesome Omnivore After taking a professional hiatus, Minger is now working on a few new projects, including an e-book called "Awesome Omnivore." The book is a how-to guide for eating animal products in a way that minimizes potential risks and maximizes nutrition, including guidance on balancing methionine and glycine, differences in A1 versus A2 dairy, how to prepare meat to reduce carcinogen exposure, how to modify your animal food consumption based on genetics, and how to combine meat with other foods to reduce the absorption of heme iron to lower your risk of intestinal cancer and other health problems related to excessive iron. High iron increases oxidative stress and can cause serious mitochondrial dysfunction. I have a genetic condition called thalassemia, which predisposes me to high iron levels. I have to be really vigilant about keeping my iron level low for these reasons. As explained by Minger, because the molecular structure of heme is so similar to chlorophyll, if you eat lots of green leafy vegetables with your steak, the chlorophyll will inhibit absorption of some of the iron. "That alone is going to make that meal probably, on the whole, healthier for you," she says. "There's this kind of dichotomy — you have the vegetable eaters and the meat eaters. The meat eaters are not usually eating enough vegetables to offset the heme issue. But if you look at studies that actually adjust for that one variable, the link with meat's problems tends to disappear. It's, again, veggies to the rescue. But it doesn't mean that you can't eat meat too. Anyway, the book is going to be a collection of things people can do to ensure that the meat they're consuming, the eggs and the dairy products (if they're doing that), are as healthy as possible." Plant-Based Paleo Minger is also working on a book about plant-based paleo, designed for people who are committed to avoiding animal products, for whatever reason. The aim of this book is to provide strategies to help you stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible within the limitations of a plant-based diet. "There are vegans who have survived a long time on their diet. It's not impossible. The human body is incredibly adaptable. But we need to understand what's working for those people. We need to understand that there are a lot of genetic components that go into being able to convert plant-based nutrients into their active forms. Take beta-carotene, for example. People who have really good conversion of beta-carotene into retinol, they're probably not going to run into reproductive issues, teeth issues, skin issues or eye issues, like I did. But for about 45 percent of the population, there are mutations with the BCMO1 gene that prevent that conversion from being efficient. If you have two very common polymorphisms, your conversion rate is going to drop by almost 70 percent. Another less common mutation will tank your conversion by 90 percent. If you're a vegan, you're not eating any preformed vitamin A, and if you have some of those mutations, you're going to have problems pretty quickly. How do we work with people's genetics? How do we work with their dietary limitations? Supplements would be good. I'd love for people to take cod liver oil if they can get over that one issue. But you need to be really aware of your specific conditions … I have those BCMO1 mutations. My vitamin A conversion is terrible. That's part of the reason that eating liver was a huge boon for my diet. It's my first concentrated source of vitamin A that I had in a decade, more than a decade." Lifelong Learning Is Key to Staying Ahead As nutritional science keeps moving forward, we're bound to learn new things about what we currently think of as factual. For example, Minger touches on evidence suggesting really low-fat intake may actually improve carbohydrate metabolism. "We have the Randle cycle. There's competition between free fatty acids and glucose in the bloodstream for use as fuel. I think we have enough evidence to say pretty clearly that when you combine fat and carbohydrate within the same meal, if you're a healthy person — you're going to see a reduced blood-glucose response, but you're going to see the same amount of insulin secretion. Fat doesn't decrease the insulin needs of your body when you're eating carbohydrate. It kind of amplifies it. There have been studies where they'll take a potato, feed it to a diabetic, then repeat the study with butter added … The more butter added to the potato, the more insulin the diabetic needs to use to deal with that meal. There's an interactive effect, even within the span of one meal, between fat and carbohydrate … I don't believe in staying at one [end of the spectrum, i.e., high-carb or high-fat] forever. Obviously, you need fat-soluble nutrients. You're going to need some fatty foods that are highly nutritious too. At the same time, you're going to need to cycle in more carbohydrate to deal with the long-term consequences of ketogenic diets … "I believe there's a way to integrate everything. What it comes back to is all the warring diet communities need to let go of the ego and communicate with each other. Stop saying, 'We own the truth.' Start listening to the other side and be curious about why things are working for them. For me, that's the way I've learned best — by challenging what I believe. Because if what I believe can be dismantled, then it's not a good belief to hold. You need to constantly revise your theory about the world, about nutrition, about everything. It needs to be in a state of flux."
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Heart of stone chapter 6
I paced back and forth in my office like a caged animal, trying to figure out what had come over me. Yes, I wanted Selena Cole. I wanted her from the first moment I saw her. But that was no excuse. I wasn’t some horny kid that couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.
I raked my hands through my hair, disturbed over the fact that I had lost my head. It had been so unlike me. I understood the value of finesse, the importance of patience and diligence to achieve the desired end result. And I never failed. Yet, Selena Cole’s stamp was imprinted into my brain, causing me to carelessly push aside any sort of self-restraint, and taking what I wanted without any regard of the consequence.
I brought a hand up to rub my temple, trying to will away the images of her, but my efforts were in vain. I could still smell the soft scent of her hair. It was like strawberries and cream. The feel of her pulse racing as I held her slight hand in mine. The way her breath hitched when I touched her neck. Her lips, parting ever so slightly, just waiting. Waiting for me to devour her.
And the look of confusion on her face when I so rudely dismissed her…
I’m an asshole.
I needed a do-over. A mulligan.
Intent on rectifying the situation, I quickly strode towards the office door, hoping to catch her before she left. However, when I stepped through the doorway, a very angry Justine Andrews was blocking my path.
“Justin! I’ve been trying to reach you for days!” Justine snapped. Her eyes flashed angrily as she quickly closed the distance between us. My back went ramrod straight, ready to jump on the defense. I braced for the worst, knowing that she had a valid reason for being so irate.
Here it comes. The wrath of Justine. Apparently, I have pissed off more than just one woman this morning.
But before I could even think to utter an explanation as to why I hadn’t returned her calls, she threw her arms around my neck, softening my defenses.
That’s when I saw Selena.
At first she looked shocked, but then her expression changed to one of angry betrayal. I felt like I had just taken a solid blow to the head. I couldn’t react if I tried. It was if time was literally standing still.
It wasn’t until the elevator doors closed, that I realized what the scene must have looked like to her. I disentangled myself from Justine’s hold.
“Christ, what has gotten into you? You have no patience! And your timing sucks,” I bit out irritably, turning to go back into my office. Justine followed me and I closed the door behind her, sparing the office staff from a screaming match. I could tell that she was itching for a fight.
“Come on, Justin! You wanted your secretary to reschedule me – me of all people! And I think it’s terrible that I had to make an appointment to see you in the first place,” she whined.
“Sorry. It’s been a busy week,” I muttered, taking a seat behind my desk. Justine gracefully sat down in the seat across from me and folded her arms in a pout.
I fired up my computer and opened my inbox. I started sifting through emails, deleting what wasn’t needed and sending off quick responses. I wasn’t going to put much consideration into Justine’s petulant attitude. She would get to her point eventually, and I didn’t want to have some long, drawn out brawl in the meantime. It was a waste of time – time that should be spent chasing down Selena.
I came across the email from Stephen that had Selena’s information in it. I opened the file to reread it for the fourth time that day, hoping to find some piece of information that might help me to defuse the time bomb that I had unintentionally set.
“So what have you been so busy with? That pretty little thing that just ran out of here?” Justine taunted.
“That’s enough,” I said impatiently, silencing her with my hand. I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. When I opened them, I looked pointedly at her, warning her not to challenge me. “That woman was an interview. A very important interview that you interrupted. Believe it or not, I do have a company to run.”
I didn’t elaborate on what else she interrupted. Justine would go ape shit if she knew that I had practically sexually assaulted a potential employee. Her interruption was most likely the best thing that could have happened, as much as I begrudged her for it.
“I know that you’re busy, and I’m so sorry to come barging in like this. It’s just that…this is important and I didn’t know what else to do!”
The anguish in her voice caught my attention, forcing me to take a closer look at her. As always, she looked impeccable, which I’ve come to expect nothing less of her. The allowance I gave her every month was more than enough to purchase her designer cloths, high-end cosmetics, and perfectly manicured nails. However, I was among the few people in her life that could see through the smokescreen. And her makeup.
Although she did a good job of covering it, I could still see the subtle puffiness under her eyes, and the faint redness around their rims. She had been crying before coming to see me.
“What is it, Justine?” I asked, adapting a gentler tone, even though I already had suspicions about what might really be upsetting her. This wasn’t about a few unreturned phone calls.
It’s probably her scumbag ex-husband again.
“It’s Charlie,” she told me, her eyes welling up with tears. She tried to blink them back.
I called that one right…
“What’s the bottom feeder up to?” I asked irritably. I had zero tolerance for the gambling addict that used to be Justine’s husband. He was a despicable waste of a human being.
“It’s bad, Justin. He’s been making threats.”
“What do you mean? What threats?” I hissed through my teeth, instantly fueled with rage at the thought of him hurting her again. She had already been through enough. “I’ll kill the fucking bastard if he touched you again!”
Justine winced. My tone was menacing, which I knew she hated, but I couldn’t help it. She brought out every protective instinct that I possessed.
“No, he didn’t hurt me – at least not in the physical sense. He’s been calling… a lot. I thought about just having his number blocked, but I was afraid to because of what he’s been threatening. It affects both me and you,” she told me.
Fear shone through her tears and she started to shake, the tremble causing her legs to visibly bounce. I hurried over to her side and pulled her up into my arms. I held her tight and stroked her long hair.
“It’s alright. It doesn’t matter what his threats are. He can’t do anything to me. And I already told you – I won’t let him hurt you anymore,” I tried to assure her.
“No, no! You have to listen to me, Justin!” she shouted, shoving me away. She inhaled deeply, attempting to regain some of her composure. “Damn it! This is why I’ve been blowing up your phone. He’s threatening to expose us – our past!”
I felt all the blood drain from my face, a pit settling in the depths of my stomach.
“And how would he know about our past, Justine?” I asked, my voice low.
“Because…cause I told him!” she hiccupped, a fresh wave of sobs making her lose it all over again. “I had to tell him. It was part of my therapy a long time ago. And now, all these years later, I’ve barely made peace with everything myself. The last thing I want is a media circus. I couldn’t handle it, Justin. I just couldn’t.”
My hands tightened into fists. It took every ounce of will power I had not to smash something in the room.
“Fucking shrinks,” I cursed under my breath. I never could understand why she put so much faith in those head nutters. I moved around to the backside of my desk to get her a linen handkerchief from my desk drawer. “Is it safe to assume that Charlie wants you to buy his silence?”
She took the handkerchief, and hesitated for a second or two before answering me. Guilt briefly clouded her features.
“Of course, what else would he want? He probably just came off of a bad run on the craps table. But, you know how it is…just a little extra cash will put him on top again. I’m sure he has one of his hunches again,” she sarcastically remarked.
Justine was bitter, and I didn’t blame her for being that way. However, I did blame her for the handouts that she’d been giving him, despite their recent divorce. Justine didn’t spend every penny that I gave her on herself, but saved a part of it to keep the leach off her back. I never told her that I knew about it, but often wondered why she did it. He must have been reaching deeper into her pockets than I had assumed.
It needs to end. Now.
“I’ll handle it.”
“But how? You know him, Justin. He won’t stop. He’ll just come back again when he’s down.”
“I don’t now what I’m going to do just yet. Let me make some calls, talk to my lawyer. Stephen will know what we can do about this legally. In the meantime, I don’t want you to be upset about it. And if he calls again, direct him to me. That should stall him for a bit. He’s always been a chicken-shit when it comes to me.”
“I’m sorry, Justin. I never thought he’d stoop this low.”
“You didn’t? Seriously,” I said, disgusted with her naivety even after all this time. “The man has no conscience. You should have learned that the first time he slammed your head into the kitchen wall.”
“Yeah, well…I never was one to learn from my mistakes,” she emitted spitefully. Her voice cracked and fresh tears filled her eyes. I was instantly overcome with shame.
What the fuck is wrong with me today?
“Look, I’m sorry. That was a low blow. I know you did what you thought was best at the time. As for all of this other bullshit, I told you that I’d handle it, and I will.”
“I hope you can, Justin. He’s asking for an awful lot of money,” she said, voice full of disbelief, shaking her head back and forth.
I didn’t bother to ask how much. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t getting another dime from her or me.
“I’ve got this. Go home, Justine. Call Suzanne. Plan a lunch date or a spa day. Something.”
She easily agreed to the suggestion and I hoped that an afternoon of doing whatever it was girls did together would distract her. At the very least, she seemed calmer when she kissed me good-bye.
“Thanks. I owe you for this,” she vowed.
I cast her a grim smile, knowing that I’d never cash in on the favor.
As soon as I was able to shoo her out the door, I picked up the phone to get my lawyer on the line. When it came to someone like Charlie Andrews, it wouldn’t matter how much wealth or power I possessed. He wasn’t easily put off by intimidation. He was driven by his addiction, lacking all common sense. It was time to take a more drastic approach.
“Stephen, I want you and Hale in here ASAP. I have a problem that needs to be dealt with.”
I slammed the receiver down without waiting for a response. Charlie was the last person I wanted to deal with at that moment. I had a full schedule ahead of me, with two important meetings later in the afternoon that I needed to prepare for. And then there was the most pressing matter of all – finding a way to apologize to Selena.
Her expression before she left my building was singed into my brain like I had been branded – her face so beautiful, yet full of wounded indignation. I felt a stab of guilt.
Why do I feel guilty? She’s just a girl.
A very pretty girl.
A girl whose alluring face appears in my mind without warning, disrupting all other rational thoughts. The fact that rectifying the situation with Selena was first and foremost was unsettling.
This is ridiculous. I’ll just find a way to offer an apology and move on.
But despite what I told myself, I knew that erasing Selena Cole from my mind wouldn’t be that easy.
I sat at the kitchen table stirring a spoon in a bowl of cereal. It had been three days since my interview with Justin Stone. I wasn’t naïve. I knew that he wasn’t going to call me to reschedule. It didn’t really matter. I never wanted to hear from him again anyway. I was a fool for dropping my guard, even for a moment. I was smarter than that.
During the first few days after the interview, my jealousy had kicked into over drive. Why I was jealous, I didn’t know. I certainly had no right to stake claims on the man. Yet, I had come home that day in an absolute rage and used Allyson as my sounding board. Being the best friend that she was, she shared my anger and swore profusely over and over again, calling him every name in the book.
But then, like all great friends do, she listened while I cried. I cried over a lost job opportunity and I cried over my stupidity. And the worst part of it all, I cried over him. I knew that my tears were misguided. After all, I barely knew the guy. But the simple fact was, Justin Stone stirred up emotions that I managed to keep buried for so long. He had made me feel alive again and put a little crack in the walls that I had so carefully built around myself.
And I hated him for it.
After my ordeal with Trevor, I had vowed to myself that I would never again show that kind of weakness, and I had since mastered the ability to ignore the opposite sex as much as humanly possible.
How could I have been so dumb?
My thoughts drifted back to the time with my ex-boyfriend and I couldn’t stop the bitterness from creeping up inside me. I had met Trevor Hamilton my freshman year of college. We were the stereotypical couple that you read about in books. He was the wealthy, popular boy on campus and I was the new girl, struggling to find my place in the vast city of New York. I had fallen for him practically overnight.
However, unlike the storybooks, we didn’t have a fairytale ending. Trevor was a different man behind closed doors. He was controlling to the point of obsession. He told me what to wear, how to style my hair, and where to shop. He even went so far as to write down a schedule for me, planning my time and activities down to the minute. He took charge of every aspect of my life, slowly forcing me away from my friends and family. Sometimes it felt like I couldn’t even breathe without his approval.
When I looked back, I knew that I was partly to blame. I allowed Trevor to do it. I ignored the warnings from my friends. I assured my troubled conscience that he was a perfectionist, and that was why he was so controlling. I told myself that he loved me and only wanted what was best for me. I became a victim to the old adage – the one that talks about love making people lose their sight, oblivious to the realities surrounding them.
I had been as blind as a bat.
At least I was until that fateful spring day, when he had called me to cancel our plans for that evening. He had said that he was sick. I figured that he must have been feeling pretty bad to cancel out on me, especially since Trevor never allowed any deviation of my schedule. I thought that it would be nice to surprise him with homemade chicken soup.
As it turned out, Trevor wasn’t really that sick at all. I ended up walking in on him doing the horizontal tango with some scrawny-assed blond.
In an instant, my whole world shattered. As hard as I tried to forget that day and the terrible weeks that followed, I could remember it like it was only yesterday. The yelling, the screaming, and the violence would forever be burned into the deep recesses of my brain. It had altered my opinion of the world and all the people in it, and ultimately ended up changing who I was.
It was the day that made my heart turn to stone.
Allyson, the only friend that I had left, was there to pick up the pieces. She came home to find me a crumpled up mess on the floor and worked tirelessly for months to make me see things for what they really were. It took me a while to come around, but eventually I was able to see that I didn’t really love Trevor and that what had happened wasn’t my fault.
I knew now that I was just in love with the idea that society jams down everyone’s throat – that companionship wrapped in a white picket fence was the key to happiness. I couldn’t think of a bigger lie.
All men are bastards. I don’t need that headache.
I went to the sink to dump my now mushy cereal into the garbage disposal. I was dwelling too much on my disastrous history and had lost my appetite. I needed to remember my restraint and not give into a small moment of weakness. I had given up on fairytales and pipedreams for a good reason. I’d be damned before I would let history repeat its self.
I just needed to get rid of one little problem – Justin Stone. He was consuming my every waking thought. I fought to extinguish all thoughts of that extraordinary and complex man from my mind, but Allyson’s words at Murphy’s rang in my head.
Every guy isn’t like Trevor.
But my hardened heart said that Allyson was wrong. They were all like Trevor, every last one of them.
Assholes.
Justin had only proved himself to be the same as the rest. I never should have let him get to me. It was time to toughen my resolve. I did it once before, I could certainly do it again. I just needed to find a distraction.
I glanced over at the pile of bills on the kitchen counter, my first student loan payment sitting amongst them. A review of my finances and a job search would certainly be enough of a distraction, and it was long overdue.
I went over to the counter and began sorting through the overwhelming pile, trying to figure out how I would make ends meet with my salary at Wally’s.
After an hour of crunching numbers, panic began to set in as I stared at the homemade spreadsheet in front of me.
I was severely in the red.
I reworked the math three more times just to make sure that my figures were correct, but the result was the same. I was going to have to make some major cut backs if I didn’t find a better paying job soon, and I knew that selling my car was inevitable.
It doesn’t matter – I hardly use the beat up old Ford anyway.
Parking in this city was so damned expensive and difficult to come by, that public transportation had just ended up being easier. However, a prickle of tears began to sting my eyes, as a wave of nostalgia came over me at the thought of giving up my first car.
I’m being stupid – it’s just a car. I’ll sell it if I have to.
A knock on the door disrupted my thoughts. I went to the door, opened it and found a FedEx package at my feet. I figured Allyson must have ordered something online, but then I saw that it was addressed to me.
I brought the package into the kitchen and rummaged through one of the kitchen drawers for a pair of scissors. Placing the box on the kitchen counter, I cut through the packaging tape. A new smart phone was inside.
What the hell?
I never did end up making it to the cell phone store. When I picked up the phone, I noticed a note in the bottom of the box.
Waiting for you to reschedule. Thought this might help.
My contact info has already been programmed, along with some music to help persuade you. Listen to it.
The note wasn’t signed, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who sent it. I powered on the phone and pulled up the contact list. Justin Stone’s name, email address, and three different contact numbers were already programed into it, as well as all of my other contacts.
I fought the urge to smash the phone against the kitchen wall.
This has to be some sort of sick joke! Of all the nerve!
The cell phone rang loudly through the silent apartment, practically making me jump out of my skin. My mother’s name showed on the caller ID.
Why are my calls going to this phone?
I warily slid my finger along the smooth touch screen to answer the call.
“Hello?”
“There you are!” my mother’s voice exclaimed on the other end of the line. “I’ve been calling all morning, but your phone was sending me straight to voicemail.”
I looked at my broken cell phone that was on the coffee table in the living room.
That’s strange. The phone was turned on.
But the thought was fleeting, as an idea of a completely impossible scenario came to mind.
There’s no way…he couldn’t have.
I hurried to the table to inspect the old phone, and my jaw hit the floor.
Oh my god – that son of a bitch deactivated it.
I pulled the new phone away from my ear to look at it and felt my blood begin to simmer at his audacity.
I don’t care if he’s some mega ultra-powerful zillionaire! He has no right! This must be illegal somehow. Of all the sneaky, controlling, and underhanded things…
“Selena? Are you there?” asked my mother, her voice sounding faint as I continued to hold the expensive device out in front of me.
“Hi, mom. Yeah, I’m here,” I said, bringing the phone back to my ear. I rubbed my forehead, feeling a headache coming on.
“How are you, love? I haven’t talked to you in weeks.”
“I’m good. Busy, but good.”
“Busy finding a job I hope. You insisted on spending all of that money going to college in New York, you should have something to show for it by now.”
I closed my eyes and let out a sigh.
Here we go.
“No, Mom. Not yet. In fact, I was just about to pull out my laptop and start another job hunt. You sort of caught me at a bad time.”
“Honey, I don’t know why you just don’t move home. You know that Frank could get you a job anywhere in Albany. I really wish you would stop being so stubborn about staying in New York.”
“Mom, we’ve been through this a thousand times. I like living in New York.”
“I know, but –.”
“I have to go, mom. I really need to concentrate on finding a job.”
I found that sometimes it was better to just talk over her. She never listened otherwise and I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture.
“If you would only –.”
“I’m hanging up now, Mom,” I told her, my impatience coming out loud and clear.
“Okay, fine. I get it. You don’t want to talk about it. I’ll stop. That’s not why I called anyhow. The reason I called was to tell you that Frank and I are coming to New York in a few weeks. I’m long overdue for a visit and I want to get a jump start on my holiday shopping.”
I groaned inwardly. As nice as it would be to see them, a visit from my mother and stepfather took a lot of energy – energy that I wasn’t really feeling at the moment.
“Sounds good. I’ll look forward to it,” I lied.
“Alright, honey. I’ll let you know which weekend we are coming once we finalize our plans. Good luck job hunting! Love you!”
“Love you too, Mom. Bye.”
I hit the end button on the touchscreen. Rage returned with a vengeance as I stared down at Justin Stone’s gift, if one would even call it that.
It’s more like a hostile takeover of my personal means of communication!
On impulse, I decided to send him a text, my fingers typing feverishly in anger.
Today
10:32 AM, Me: Who do you think you are?
The seconds ticked by, my fingernails clicking impatiently on the kitchen counter, as I waited for his response. After a few minutes, I was ready to ditch the phone in the trash, but then it chimed with a notification of a new message.
10:38 AM, Justin: Good. You received the phone.
I could almost see his smug expression as I read his response. That fueled my fury even more. I responded back in such a rush, that I misspelled everything.
If the prick could take the time to have all of my contacts reprogrammed, he should have at least turned on the auto spelling correct!
I started over, this time typing more slowly.
10:41 AM, Me: Yes, I received it – and you can take it right back too!
10:42 AM, Justin: It’s yours. Keep it.
Ugh! Is he really that dense!
He was starting to push me over the edge. I wanted no ties to Justin whatsoever and I had no intention of keeping the stupid cell phone, as it would only be a constant reminder of him.
10:44 AM, Me: I don’t want it.
10:45 AM, Justin: You could always go back to your broken one.
10:45 AM, Me: You deactivated it!
10:47 AM, Justin: And your point is?
10:48 AM, Me: Normal people don’t DO things like that!
10:51 AM, Justin: I’m not normal people Selena.
You can say that again!
10:54 AM, Me: How did you do it?
10:56 AM, Justin: Do what?
10:57 AM, Me: Deactivate my phone???
10:59 AM, Justin: I know people.
11:00 AM, Me: Then tell your PEOPLE to change it back!
11:04 AM, Justin: No.
11:04 AM, Me: YES!
11:09 AM, Justin: I’ve rescheduled your interview for this afternoon.
11:10 AM, Me: Then you’re going to be awfully bored this afternoon.
11:13 AM, Justin: Why is that?
11:14 AM, Me: Because I won’t be there.
11:17 AM, Justin: Yes you will. 2pm. My office.
11:18 AM, Me: I will NOT be there! And I want you to fix my phone!
No response.
Fine. I’ll take care of it myself!
I hurried to my bedroom to get dressed. I hastily threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and then rummaged around in my closet for a pair of sneakers. I located them quickly and tied the shoelaces with expert speed, all while thinking about the vicious things I would say to the clerk at the cell phone counter.
Someone is going to get his or her ass chewed off for this!
And HIM…rescheduling my interview…HA!
I headed back out to the kitchen, but stopped short when I saw the Fed-Ex box sitting on the counter. I forced myself to see reason. It wouldn’t do me much good if I stormed into the wireless communications store and went off half-cocked on some poor defenseless sales clerk. I would probably end up getting myself arrested for acting like a crazed lunatic.
It’s not their fault that Stone is an assuming jerk.
Knowing that I had to get a handle on my emotions before I did anything rash, I took a deep breath to try and calm my mounting temper. Going to the store in my current frame of mind would only lead to a total catastrophe, and I tried to form a more sensible plan – one that didn’t involve any jail time.
La Biga first. A caffeine fix will do me good. Plus, it will buy me some time to screw my head back on straight.
I eyed up my laptop that was sitting on the coffee table.
Yes! I can look for a job online while I’m at the coffee shop, too.
After an hour or so of doing an employment search, I assumed that a sufficient amount of time would have passed and I’d be a bit calmer when I went to return the phone.
Satisfied with my plan of action, I grabbed everything I would need, including Justin’s asinine phone, and dashed out of the apartment to catch the Redline.
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23. A clock. I can almost see the hands ticking around the twelve-sectioned face of the arena. Each hour begins a new horror, a new Gamemaker weapon, and ends the previous. Lightning, blood rain, fog, monkeys - those are the first four hours on the clock. And at ten, the wave. I don't know what happens in the other seven, but I know Wiress is right. At present, the blood rain's falling and we're on the beach below the monkey segment, far too close to the fog for my liking. Do the various attacks stay within the confines of the jungle? Not necessarily. The wave didn't. If that fog leaches out of the jungle, or the monkeys return ... "Get up," I order, shaking Peeta and Finnick and Johanna awake. "Get up - we have to move." There's enough time, though, to explain the clock theory to them. About Wiress's tick-tocking and how the movements of the invisible hands trigger a deadly force in each section. I think I've convinced everyone who's conscious except Johanna, who's naturally opposed to liking anything I suggest. But even she agrees it's better to be safe than sorry. While the others collect our few possessions and get Beetee back into his jumpsuit, I rouse Wiress. She awakes with a panicked "tick, tock!" "Yes, tick, tock, the arena's a clock. It's a clock, Wiress, you were right," I say. "You were right." Relief floods her face - I guess because somebody has finally understood what she's known probably from the first tolling of the bells. "Midnight." "It starts at midnight," I confirm. A memory struggles to surface in my brain. I see a clock. No, it's a watch, resting in Plutarch Heavensbee's palm. "It starts at midnight," Plutarch said. And then my mockingjay lit up briefly and vanished. In retrospect, it's like he was giving me a clue about the arena. But why would he? At the time, I was no more a tribute in these Games than he was. Maybe he thought it would help me as a mentor. Or maybe this had been the plan all along. Wiress nods at the blood rain. "One-thirty," she says. "Exactly. One-thirty. And at two, a terrible poisonous fog begins there," I say, pointing at the nearby jungle. "So we have to move somewhere safe now." She smiles and stands up obediently. "Are you thirsty?" I hand her the woven bowl and she gulps down about a quart. Finnick gives her the last bit of bread and she gnaws on it. With the inability to communicate overcome, she's functioning again. I check my weapons. Tie up the spile and the tube of medicine in the parachute and fix it to my belt with vine. Beetee's still pretty out of it, but when Peeta tries to lift him, he objects. "Wire," he says. "She's right here," Peeta tells him. "Wiress is fine. She's coming, too." But still Beetee struggles. "Wire," he insists. "Oh, I know what he wants," says Johanna impatiently. She crosses the beach and picks up the cylinder we took from his belt when we were bathing him. It's coated in a thick layer of congealed blood. "This worthless thing. It's some kind of wire or something. That's how he got cut. Running up to the Cornucopia to get this. I don't know what kind of weapon it's supposed to be. I guess you could pull off a piece and use it as a garrote or something. But really, can you imagine Beetee garroting somebody?" "He won his Games with wire. Setting up that electrical trap," says Peeta. "It's the best weapon he could have." There's something odd about Johanna not putting this together. Something that doesn't quite ring true. Suspicious. "Seems like you'd have figured that out," I say. "Since you nicknamed him Volts and all." Johanna's eyes narrow at me dangerously. "Yeah, that was really stupid of me, wasn't it?" she says. "I guess I must have been distracted by keeping your little friends alive. While you were...what, again? Getting Mags killed off?" My fingers tighten on the knife handle at my belt. "Go ahead. Try it. I don't care if you are knocked up, I'll rip your throat out," says Johanna. I know I can't kill her right now. But it's just a matter of time with Johanna and me. Before one of us offs the other. "Maybe we all had better be careful where we step," says Finnick, shooting me a look. He takes the coil and sets it on Beetee's chest. "There's your wire, Volts. Watch where you plug it." Peeta picks up the now-unresisting Beetee. "Where to?" "I'd like to go to the Cornucopia and watch. Just to make sure we're right about the clock," says Finnick. It seems as good a plan as any. Besides, I wouldn't mind the chance of going over the weapons again. And there are six of us now. Even if you count Beetee and Wiress out, we've got four good fighters. It's so different from where I was last year at this point, doing everything on my own. Yes, it's great to have allies as long as you can ignore the thought that you'll have to kill them. Beetee and Wiress will probably find some way to die on their own. If we have to run from something, how far would they get? Johanna, frankly, I could easily kill if it came down to protecting Peeta. Or maybe even just to shut her up. What I really need is for someone to take out Finnick for me, since I don't think I can do it personally. Not after all he's done for Peeta. I think about maneuvering him into some kind of encounter with the Careers. It's cold, I know. But what are my options? Now that we know about the clock, he probably won't die in the jungle, so someone's going to have to kill him in battle. Because this is so repellent to think about, my mind frantically tries to change topics. But the only thing that distracts me from my current situation is fantasizing about killing President Snow. Not very pretty daydreams for a seventeen-year-old girl, I guess, but very satisfying. We walk down the nearest sand strip, approaching the Cornucopia with care, just in case the Careers are concealed there. I doubt they are, because we've been on the beach for hours and there's been no sign of life. The area's abandoned, as I expected. Only the big golden horn and the picked-over pile of weapons remain. When Peeta lays Beetee in the bit of shade the Cornucopia provides, he calls out to Wiress. She crouches beside him and he puts the coil of wire in her hands. "Clean it, will you?" he asks. Wiress nods and scampers over to the water's edge, where she dunks the coil in the water. She starts quietly singing some funny little song, about a mouse running up a clock. It must be for children, but it seems to make her happy. "Oh, not the song again," says Johanna, rolling her eyes. "That went on for hours before she started tick-tocking." Suddenly Wiress stands up very straight and points to the jungle. "Two," she says. I follow her finger to where the wall of fog has just begun to seep out onto the beach. "Yes, look, Wiress is right. It's two o'clock and the fog has started." "Like clockwork," says Peeta. "You were very smart to figure that out, Wiress." Wiress smiles and goes back to singing and dunking her coil. "Oh, she's more than smart," says Beetee. "She's intuitive." We all turn to look at Beetee, who seems to be coming back to life. "She can sense things before anyone else. Like a canary in one of your coal mines." "What's that?" Finnick asks me. "It's a bird that we take down into the mines to warn us if there's bad air," I say. "What's it do, die?" asks Johanna. "It stops singing first. That's when you should get out. But if the air's too bad, it dies, yes. And so do you." I don't want to talk about dying songbirds. They bring up thoughts of my father's death and Rue's death and Maysilee Donner's death and my mother inheriting her songbird. Oh, great, and now I'm thinking of Gale, deep down in that horrible mine, with President Snow's threat hanging over his head. So easy to make it look like an accident down there. A silent canary, a spark, and nothing more. I go back to imagining killing the president. Despite her annoyance at Wiress, Johanna's as happy as I've seen her in the arena. While I'm adding to my stock of arrows, she pokes around until she comes up with a pair of lethal-looking axes. It seems an odd choice until I see her throw one with such force it sticks in the sun-softened gold of the Cornucopia. Of course. Johanna Mason. District 7. Lumber. I bet she's been tossing around axes since she could toddle. It's like Finnick with his trident. Or Beetee with his wire. Rue with her knowledge of plants. I realize it's just another disadvantage the District 12 tributes have faced over the years. We don't go down in the mines until we're eighteen. It looks like most of the other tributes learn something about their trades early on. There are things you do in a mine that could come in handy in the Games. Wielding a pick. Blowing things up. Give you an edge. The way my hunting did. But we learn them too late. While I've been messing with the weapons, Peeta's been squatting on the ground, drawing something with the tip of his knife on a large, smooth leaf he brought from the jungle. I look over his shoulder and see he's creating a map of the arena. In the center is the Cornucopia on its circle of sand with the twelve strips branching out from it. It looks like a pie sliced into twelve equal wedges. There's another circle representing the waterline and a slightly larger one indicating the edge of the jungle. "Look how the Cornucopia's positioned," he says to me. I examine the Cornucopia and see what he means. "The tail points toward twelve o'clock," I say. "Right, so this is the top of our clock," he says, and quickly scratches the numbers one through twelve around the clock face. "Twelve to one is the lightning zone." He writes lightning in tiny print in the corresponding wedge, then works clockwise adding blood, fog, and monkeys in the following sections. "And ten to eleven is the wave," I say. He adds it. Finnick and Johanna join us at this point, armed to the teeth with tridents, axes, and knives. "Did you notice anything unusual in the others?" I ask Johanna and Beetee, since they might have seen something we didn't. But all they've seen is a lot of blood. "I guess they could hold anything." "I'm going to mark the ones where we know the Gamemakers' weapon follows us out past the jungle, so we'll stay clear of those," says Peeta, drawing diagonal lines on the fog and wave beaches. Then he sits back. "Well, it's a lot more than we knew this morning, anyway." We all nod in agreement, and that's when I notice it. The silence. Our canary has stopped singing. I don't wait. I load an arrow as I twist and get a glimpse of a dripping-wet Gloss letting Wiress slide to the ground, her throat slit open in a bright red smile. The point of my arrow disappears into his right temple, and in the instant it takes to reload, Johanna has buried an ax blade in Cashmere's chest. Finnick knocks away a spear Brutus throws at Peeta and takes Enobaria's knife in his thigh. If there wasn't a Cornucopia to duck behind, they'd be dead, both of the tributes from District 2. I spring forward in pursuit. Boom! Boom! Boom! The cannon confirms there's no way to help Wiress, no need to finish off Gloss or Cashmere. My allies and I are rounding the horn, starting to give chase to Brutus and Enobaria, who are sprinting down a sand strip toward the jungle. Suddenly the ground jerks beneath my feet and I'm flung on my side in the sand. The circle of land that holds the Cornucopia starts spinning fast, really fast, and I can see the jungle going by in a blur. I feel the centrifugal force pulling me toward the water and dig my hands and feet into the sand, trying to get some purchase on the unstable ground. Between the flying sand and the dizziness, I have to squeeze my eyes shut. There is literally nothing I can do but hold on until, with no deceleration, we slam to a stop. Coughing and queasy, I sit up slowly to find my companions in the same condition. Finnick, Johanna, and Peeta have hung on. The three dead bodies have been tossed out into the seawater. The whole thing, from missing Wiress's song to now, can't have taken more than a minute or two. We sit there panting, scraping the sand out of our mouths. "Where's Volts?" says Johanna. We're on our feet. One wobbly circle of the Cornucopia confirms he's gone. Finnick spots him about twenty yards out in the water, barely keeping afloat, and swims out to haul him in. That's when I remember the wire and how important it was to him. I look frantically around. Where is it? Where is it? And then I see it, still clutched in Wiress's hands, far out in the water. My stomach contracts at the thought of what I must do next. "Cover me," I say to the others. I toss aside my weapons and race down the strip closest to her body. Without slowing down, I dive into the water and start for her. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the hovercraft appearing over us, the claw starting to descend to take her away. But I don't stop. I just keep swimming as hard as I can and end up slamming into her body. I come up gasping, trying to avoid swallowing the bloodstained water that spreads out from the open wound in her neck. She's floating on her back, borne up by her belt and death, staring into that relentless sun. As I tread water, I have to wrench the coil of wire from her fingers, because her final grip on it is so tight. There's nothing I can do then but close her eyelids, whisper good-bye, and swim away. By the time I swing the coil up onto the sand and pull myself from the water, her body's gone. But I can still taste her blood mingled with the sea salt. I walk back to the Cornucopia. Finnick's gotten Beetee back alive, although a little waterlogged, sitting up and snorting out water. He had the good sense to hang on to his glasses, so at least he can see. I place the reel of wire on his lap. It's sparkling clean, no blood left at all. He unravels a piece of the wire and runs it through his fingers. For the first time I see it, and it's unlike any wire I know. A pale golden color and as fine as a piece of hair. I wonder how long it is. There must be miles of the stuff to fill the large spool. But I don't ask, because I know he's thinking of Wiress. I look at the others' sober faces. Now Finnick, Johanna, and Beetee have all lost their district partners. I cross to Peeta and wrap my arms around him, and for a while we all stay silent. "Let's get off this stinking island," Johanna says finally. There's only the matter of our weapons now, which we've largely retained. Fortunately the vines here are strong and the spile and tube of medicine wrapped in the parachute are still secured to my belt. Finnick strips off his undershirt and ties it around the wound Enobaria's knife made in his thigh; it's not deep. Beetee thinks he can walk now, if we go slowly, so I help him up. We decide to head to the beach at twelve o'clock. That should provide hours of calm and keep us clear of any poisonous residue. And then Peeta, Johanna, and Finnick head off in three different directions. "Twelve o'clock, right?" says Peeta. "The tail points at twelve." "Before they spun us," says Finnick. "I was judging by the sun." "The sun only tells you it's going on four, Finnick," I say. "I think Katniss's point is, knowing the time doesn't mean you necessarily know where four is on the clock. You might have a general idea of the direction. Unless you consider that they may have shifted the outer ring of jungle as well," says Beetee. No, Katniss's point was a lot more basic than that. Beetee's articulated a theory far beyond my comment on the sun. But I just nod my head like I've been on the same page all along. "Yes, so any one of these paths could lead to twelve o'clock," I say. We circle around the Cornucopia, scrutinizing the jungle. It has a baffling uniformity. I remember the tall tree that took the first lightning strike at twelve o'clock, but every sector has a similar tree. Johanna thinks to follow Enobaria's and Brutus's tracks, but they have been blown or washed away. There's no way to tell where anything is. "I should have never mentioned the clock," I say bitterly. "Now they've taken that advantage away as well." "Only temporarily," says Beetee. "At ten, we'll see the wave again and be back on track." "Yes, they can't redesign the whole arena," says Peeta. "It doesn't matter," says Johanna impatiently. "You had to tell us or we never would have moved our camp in the first place, brainless." Ironically, her logical, if demeaning, reply is the only one that comforts me. Yes, I had to tell them to get them to move. "Come on, I need water. Anyone have a good gut feeling?" We randomly choose a path and take it, having no idea what number we're headed for. When we reach the jungle, we peer into it, trying to decipher what may be waiting inside. "Well, it must be monkey hour. And I don't see any of them in there," says Peeta. "I'm going to try to tap a tree." "No, it's my turn," says Finnick. "I'll at least watch your back," Peeta says. "Katniss can do that," says Johanna. "We need you to make another map. The other washed away." She yanks a large leaf off a tree and hands it to him. For a moment, I'm suspicious they're trying to divide and kill us. But it doesn't make sense. I'll have the advantage on Finnick if he's dealing with the tree and Peeta's much bigger than Johanna. So I follow Finnick about fifteen yards into the jungle, where he finds a good tree and starts stabbing to make a hole with his knife. As I stand there, weapons ready, I can't lose the uneasy feeling that something is going on and that it has to do with Peeta. I retrace our steps, starting from the moment the gong rang out, searching for the source of my discomfort. Finnick towing Peeta in off his metal plate. Finnick reviving Peeta after the force field stopped his heart. Mags running into the fog so that Finnick could carry Peeta. The morphling hurling herself in front of him to block the monkey's attack. The fight with the Careers was so quick, but didn't Finnick block Brutus's spear from hitting Peeta even though it meant taking Enobaria's knife in his leg? And even now Johanna has him drawing a map on a leaf rather than risking the jungle... There is no question about it. For reasons completely unfathomable to me, some of the other victors are trying to keep him alive, even if it means sacrificing themselves. I'm dumbfounded. For one thing, that's my job. For another, it doesn't make sense. Only one of us can get out. So why have they chosen Peeta to protect? What has Haymitch possibly said to them, what has he bargained with to make them put Peeta's life above their own? I know my own reasons for keeping Peeta alive. He's my friend, and this is my way to defy the Capitol, to subvert its terrible Games. But if I had no real ties to him, what would make me want to save him, to choose him over myself? Certainly he is brave, but we have all been brave enough to survive a Games. There is that quality of goodness that's hard to overlook, but still ... and then I think of it, what Peeta can do so much better than the rest of us. He can use words. He obliterated the rest of the field at both interviews. And maybe it's because of that underlying goodness that he can move a crowd - no, a country - to his side with the turn of a simple sentence. I remember thinking that was the gift the leader of our revolution should have. Has Haymitch convinced the others of this? That Peeta's tongue would have far greater power against the Capitol than any physical strength the rest of us could claim? I don't know. It still seems like a really long leap for some of the tributes. I mean, we're talking about Johanna Mason here. But what other explanation can there be for their decided efforts to keep him alive? "Katniss, got that spile?" Finnick asks, snapping me back to reality. I cut the vine that ties the spile to my belt and hold the metal tube out to him. That's when I hear the scream. So full of fear and pain it ices my blood. And so familiar. I drop the spile, forget where I am or what lies ahead, only know I must reach her, protect her. I run wildly in the direction of the voice, heedless of danger, ripping through vines and branches, through anything that keeps me from reaching her. From reaching my little sister.
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