#Now they are + midpoint

[pupyr0arz]

May we have a crumb of kidnapper!Gaz cuddling with his beloved? After bringing them nice gifts just bc so ofc theyd let him love on them bc he treats them like a deity?

Ask and ye shall receive 🫡 it gets there eventually. I might write more straight fluff after this.

He watches as you flip through the glossy catalogue. He gives you new ones every other day, it feels, leaflets and cutouts and magazines. Women’s clothing, men’s clothing, food, perfume, watches for you to show any interest in any of the pictures. He still doesn’t trust you with anything electronic, even with him in the room, and gave you a tight smile when you asked. You ignore the guilt you feel for bothering him about his rules, the welling shame that he’s stressed over you when you refuse to eat. Leftover, misplaced reactions. You haven’t seen another  in months, it feels, he’s taken up the spots of your friends and family when you got particularly depressed, and you’re stupid brain is transferring that onto him.

You snap out the scented cardpaper that came with the magazine, activating it with a rub of your fingernail. It smells like flowers more than it does chemicals, hearty and thick. He doesn’t seem to have much of a budget, like some kind of cartoonish villain that spawned from somewhere. Some lonely rich man refusing to fed his dog anything but imported caviar. 

“Do you like it?” He interjects, leaning forwards with his hands on his thighs. They twitch, and you know he wants to grab you, but he doesn’t touch you. He never does. What kind of man kidnaps someone, and then respects their boundaries afterwards? “It’s a nice brand.” He encourages, like he’s asking a toddler to eat their vegetables, like when he’s bothering you about your health. “I’ve found myself a fan.”

You already know he wears perfume. You set the card down before you crush it, not wanting to dwell on that memory with him in the room. “I think it’s fine.” You say roughly, and you know you’ll wake up with it on your nightstand like everything you show the tiniest smidge of approval for. The angry tone of your train of thought sputters and stops as a smile breaks out over his face, eyes softening. 

“Thank you,” he says like you’ve just jumped into traffic to save his dog’s life, and you have to cling on to the head of resentment that he’s doing this to fuck with you. It’s the only thing in this goddamn room you can hold on to, your fingers will slip on silk sheets and his stupid outfits and nice words.

“When do I get out of the dungen?” You prod, and a flash of annoyance crosses his face. He hates what you call ‘your room’, carefully insists upon it being your home now, like some kind of refuge. You aren’t of the opinion that anything involving chloroform counts. 

“Sweetness,I want you to get settled in first, you know that.” He chides softly. He doesn’t yell, doesn’t hit you, doesn’t do a goddamn thing but treat you like some fucked up stray he picked up off the street. Your eyes dart to his hand. He doesn’t have a bandage there anymore, and you resist the impulse to reach out, open the floodgates and feel for any remaining damage. “You don’t need to be more stressed than you already are. I promise, when you’re feeling up to it I’ll take you out. Wherever you want.”

“My house?” You jab and he leans back, gives you a conflicted look like he cares and you cut him off. “What if I never get better?”

His brow furrows. “You’re improving.” He says, but you have him on the back foot now.

“It’s been months, hasn’t it? I’m still not ‘adjusted’.” The magazine crumples in your fist. “What if I don’t break like you want me to? If you can’t fuckng Stockholm syndrome me into your pet?”

Kyle doesn’t look scared, or even upset. His face had smoothed out sometime during your rant into warm, affectionate amusement. “Darling,” he says, tone indulgent, “My career gives me some insight here. We might be taking it slow, but you’ve made so much progress. We’ve made so much progress.” He gets off of the bed, raising a hand to cut off your attempt at retort. His anxiety is replaced with his calm, confident conviction. 

“I promise, everything is going to work out like I told you.” He pauses, and adds in a more condescending voice, “do you think I  don’t know what I’m doing?”

You drop the baller up magazine on the ground, bile welling up in your throat, and flop onto your bed. You bury your face into your soft pillows like some kind of stupid teenager, fear and helplessness making you clench your fists because he believes it, he absolutely believes it'll work, that he can wear you down, and he’s not going to let you go. 

He picks up the magazine before he leaves. He’ll be back in what you’ve taken to calling half an hour, give or take, ready to start prying at you again. It’s still at least eight more days of this before you have the chance for a short break, if he vanishes off to work where he studies psychological torture and kills people with the million guns in his car.

You can’t help but believe it too.

—

You wake up feeling uniquely reckless. You’re alone right now, which is probably better because if he was here you might lung at him, if just to soothe the unplaceable itch underneath your skin. You can’t help but think of it as a game some days, some fucked up chess where you gain some by lashing out but lose more because of the way he smiles at you while he holds an ice pack to your jaw, apologizes for holding you down while you scream and thrash at him.

You want to tear up your sheets, but you can’t muster up the energy when he’ll have them replaced without a second glance. It feels like you can’t make mistakes here, like he doesn’t want a single thing from you.

You know what he wants.

You roll out of bed, flipping off the security camera in the teddy bear on your nightstand. He coats everything he does in pastels 

and soft words and sweet things and it’s like punching a goddamn pillow. Not a speck of resistance, not a sign you’re making progress convincing him you’re a bad captive to have. 

You take a sandwich and a carton of milk out of your mini-fridge, wanting to get it out of the way before he decided to come down and needle you to stick to your meal plan. You sit down at your little dolls-table, on your little dolls-chair with your plastic utensils. Maybe if you’re lucky he’ll go out today, leave you in the quiet for a few days. Long enough to remind yourself that glass breaks and you can bleed without him there to wipe everything spotless. Short enough that you don’t start rotting inside. It’s never that lucky, you’re always left trying to keep from watching the door, pretending you don’t hope that it’s his smiling face ready to carve away your memories of times without him.

You don’t know how many more points of failure you have left in you before you have to give up the ghost. You unclench your jaw, sticking your tongue beneath your teeth so you don’t grind your teeth together. You’re developing too many stress habits. He doesn’t tell you you’re being hysterical, but as you sit on a cushioned seat in a room full of all your favorite things, while eating your favorite foods, you’re starting to forget the taste of chloroform.

—

You wake to the side of your bed dipping under Kyle’s weight. He smells like gunpowder and wet leather, unfamiliar and harsh in the enclosed vivarium that’s become your home. Kyle’s wearing his outside clothes, usually so careful to keep the glossy barrier separating you from his work intact. You stare into the dark, not turning over as your limbs lock. Old, bad habits. He knows you’re awake.

“Sweetness,” he mutters in the dark, “can I touch?” He doesn’t say please, but you can imagine the word hanging heavy behind his lips, his pleading eyes locked on you.

“Yeah,” you mutter back, rolling onto your back. His hands come up immediately, shoving under your shirt and you yelp at the touch of his icy fingertips. Kyle tuts, pressing his head into your cheek, shushing you like some hysterical mutt. He’s glued to you in what must be seconds, determined to tangle your limbs together like every time he touches you it’s the last. 

It doesn’t burn, but it melts something in you, angry scattered half thoughts of pushing Kyle away or denying him crumbling into inconceivable dust when he presses a sweet kiss to your cheek. Tentatively, you twine your fingers with him and his breath hitches, and then he sighs, ecstasy incarnate, relaxing on you with his full weight.

“I love you,” Kyle tells you like it’s a secret every time, like the words are something he’s stolen and fought and killed for. He has, and he’s come to present them to you like the jewels and the books and the presents. “I love you with my whole heart, every inch.”

You swallow, tucking Kyle’s head under your chin, feeling the warmth of his breath on your neck. “Okay,” you say, your voice very small and not quite there, but Kyle’s hand squeezes painfully tight for just a second. It’s the first time you’ve said a single word when he tells you, and you know it’s as good as at this point.

“So much,” Kyle says, voice wrecked like you’ve done something to him, tugging him undone with just your voice.

“Yeah.”

[heyclickadee]

I understand that people are going to cope how they are going to cope, and trying to find meaning in the handling of Tech in season three is part of that, but it’s also okay to criticize the show.

I like a good character death. Tech’s departure was not that. My issue is not that he’s presumed dead, my issue is that it and the handling of it is nonsense. So (I once again get very negative about my favorite show under the cut):

1. When you kill off a main character, you really have to kill them off. How you do so can vary from story to story, but you really have to do four things:

One, you need a good reason to kill them off in the first place. (“Stakes” is not a good reason. A secondary character, sure, but not a main one. More on that in a minute.)

Two, you need to make it perfectly clear that the character is, in fact, dead.

Three, you need to show the other characters processing and accepting that death. This is important because doing so will allow the audience to do the same and let the character go. This is especially important if you’re writing for a young audience.

Four, you need to make it explicitly clear that the character cannot come back. This is especially true in sci fi or fantasy. Especially if you’re the Character Resurrection franchise.

And guess what the show didn’t do?

Any of that. Any of it. What it did instead was ambiguously remove Tech from the story (uniquely in a show that loves making us watch characters die on screen; last time we saw Tech for sure he was alive), never gave a good reason for doing so in or out of the show, never showed us any character working through the impact of his loss (even though there was ample opportunity for Omega, especially, to do so), and ripped the “could he come back?” box wide open by parading CX-2 in front of our faces. It is never, at any point, handled like an actual main character death. It’s handled as a plot point from which the narrative moves fairly quickly, and treated by all parties as an absence. By all the rules of storytelling, Tech isn’t dead. He’s just ambiguously gone. And that means the writing team did a terrible job if what they wanted to do was kill him off. We should not be debating this after the show has ended if he’s actually dead.

2. I understand why some fans are trying to find meaning in losing Tech. I am not, because that meaning is not offered by the text itself. And, if the plan was to never bring him back, it should have been.

We are not, for example, offered a lesson about how not everyone comes home from the war. In order for that to have been the case, we would have needed to see someone, probably Omega, working through that. We would have needed to see her refusing to accept that Tech is gone—like we do in Plan 99, by the way—and slowly coming to terms with the idea that her brother isn’t coming home. But we don’t get that, not even as subtext.

Something else we could have gotten that would have worked with all the little visual reminders of Tech, empty chairs, name-drops, and even the CX-2 leading? The batch being so haunted by losing Tech and not really knowing what happened to him for sure that they start seeing him everywhere. But for that to work we would have needed, again, to see that as an explicit subplot where someone, probably Omega, again, gets really invested in the signs that Tech is coming back and even starts assuming that CX-2 is him, only to realize that she’s seeing what she wants to see and having to accept that Tech isn’t coming back, but that she can still keep Tech’s memory alive by following in his footsteps. That’s something you can kind of project onto what we’re given in the epilogue, but you do have to project it, because it’s entirely absent from the rest of the show.

As is, Tech’s sacrifice isn’t given any weight. From a narrative perspective, it was an incredibly contrived set of circumstances that accomplished nothing except punting Tech off a train, and gave Tech no choice but to remove himself from the story—exit, stage down. Losing Tech doesn’t, even sub-textually, serve as anyone��s motivation. It does nothing to move the plot or anyone’s character development forward. The primary motivators of season three were Omega’s kidnapping, Crosshair’s PTSD, and Hemlock needing to get Omega back.

Tech’s absence does nothing to move anything forward and only really serves to slow the plot down and make the others struggle to do anything because he’s not there to carry the team like he did in the first two seasons—and nothing about that would have played out any differently if Tech spent the season in a coma in a bacta tank. The only part of Tech’s sacrifice that has meaning is that he loved his family enough to offer it. And that is profound, but that’s not something that would be negated by a return because the love and the offer remain. As for his presumed death? His return couldn’t have taken meaning away from that, because the show never gave it any meaning in the first place.

And no, Tech “dying” isn’t something I have to accept. Tech isn’t a real person, he’s an idea, and an idea that didn’t come to fruition. I can point out the ways the handling of his departure didn’t work all day if I want.

3. CX-Tech was not an overly online theory. I need people to understand this. It was an assumption made by most of the casual audience. My sister, who has no contact with the fandom and doesn’t like me discussing the show at all until she’s seen it, assumed he was Tech. My brother-in-law, who was a die-hard Tech-has-to-be-dead-shut-up guy for the entire hiatus and the first half of season three, was convinced he was Tech. Every kid I’ve spoken to who watched the show thought he was Tech and is deeply confused that he got speared like that. My brother, who doesn’t even watch the show but who does walk by when I’m watching it sometimes, thought he was Tech. You can’t get more casual and away from the fandom than that.

The thing is, the answer we get isn’t that he’s not Tech. It’s, “We’re not telling.” Which means that as it currently stands, a season-and-a-half of CX buildup amounted to a five minute boss fight and a non-answer. That’s…not something that works! That’s atrocious writing if that was the whole sum of their intent all along.

And you can say, well, that was a clever misdirect! Plot twist! Except, one, misdirects and twists only work if the real answer is more satisfying than the false one, otherwise it just falls flat. Two, if it was a misdirect, it’s not one the creative team is willing to own. No one will touch the Tech-CX-2 parallels with a twenty-foot pole, except the Kiners, who have incredibly meaningful explanations for every musical choice but then say shit like, “that chord just sounds good in brass” about Battle of the Snipers (…before going on to say that the four note lose motif from “Plan 99” is Tech’s leitmotif…which is also all over Battle of the Snipers…and is only there according because the batch is divided in that scene, a scene in which Crosshair’s leitmotif is entirely absent even though he’s just supposed to be fighting his own dark side represented by a guy who’s totally not Tech. Sure. I’m going to go eat drywall.) Because acknowledging that and saying that was supposed to be Tech will just make the audience angrier, and they may not even be allowed to do so, and saying that it is Tech—you can understand why they can’t do that, right? The implications are horrific. But that horrific implication is probably what at least some of the casual audience who will never interact with the fandom or a single interview is going to walk away with.

4. The thing that bothers me most about all of this is the combined toxicity of the fandom and the leading from the marketing and social media. Part of the fandom saying that there were never any signs Tech could have survived (in Star Wars, no less) is starting to feel like gaslighting; and while I don’t think there was any malice in the leading in the marketing and social media—I’m even willing to give a tiny bit of leeway for the creative team maybe knowing something we don’t yet—it was handled badly, expectations for this season should have been set early and clearly, and as of right now it all feels like an incredibly cruel prank at autistic fans expense, whatever the intent may have been or may still be.

5. And finally, here’s the thing: I’m willing to give the writers a bit of leeway on this. I’m willing to grant that some choices may have been out of their hands for unknown reasons. I’m even willing to say that maybe they’re not really done with this story yet, that The Bad Batch could just be the first chapter of a longer show that was split up for stupid business reasons, and that the finale is the way it is because they had to have an ending of sorts without actually resolving anything. I’m willing to grant a lot of grace there. In fact, I actually think there’s a very good chance we’ll still get Tech back alive in canon, and sooner than later, if only because no one (not even the voice actors) seems happy about this, most fans are coping but disappointed at best, the creative team got asked about Tech non-stop for a solid year and a half, and the writers don’t seem at all committed. We know from the rest of the show that they know how to definitively kill a guy, and, frankly, Tech in the first two seasons comes across as something of a writer favorite. They like using him!

But whatever I’m hoping or suspecting, and whatever leeway I’m willing to grant the creative team here, the final product is all we have right now. And I am going to criticize that final product for badly handling a (presumed) character death and straight up breaking the central conceit of the show in doing so.

[w0rld0flight]

So, the midpoint of Book VIII huh...

There's this one bit near the end after Ratatoskr got captured and oughhhh it's making me emotional look at all the happy memories she had ;___;

[welcometogrouchland]

your talia in your newest comic is very pretty 💜 shiny hair save me….

AHH THANK YOU SM I didn't shade her hair originally when I was coloring cause I was trying to streamline things but it looked so incomplete without it...I can't help it if she has L'Oreal model energy. Anyway you're always really nice on my Steph posts so here's some misc Stephs I had lying around as thanks for this ask (feat one of those alt cowl designs i posted back when!)

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: ALWAYS COMING HOME by Ursula K. Le Guin.

The people have Spoken, so I'll be reading this 618-page brick next! The cover page credits the author, an artist, a composer, a geomancer (??), and the author of the intro, so. I suspect I'm in for a Ride™. I am both Excited and Intimidated--will report back on how this goes!

[halowritesthings]

“Tout est nul, putain,” Remy said while stomping his way inside. He shook the snow off his body like a wet dog, specifically because he knew it would annoy Scott when he eventually came inside and saw the partially melted snow on the hardwood. “I hate de cold.”

He shucked off the winter cap and gloves he borrowed, but before he could bend over to unlace his boots, a southern drawl emitted from the doorway, “So Ah’ve heard.”

Looking up, he saw Rogue leaning on the frame of the entrance to the common area of the mansion, a blanket bundled in her arms. His mood suddenly perked up significantly, “Well, good ol’ North must‘ve finally caught me. Why else would such a stunnin’ ange be here t’greet moi?”

Rogue rolled her eyes as she got off the frame to stand up straight, “Quit bein’ a drama queen, Swamp Rat. Everyone has had to shovel the walkways at some point.”

Remy pouted, leaning down so he could get back to stripping off the boots, “You say dat, yet why is tonight de first time I seen Specs do his fair share, neh? Gettin’ down an’ dirty too much a hassle for Fearless?”

“Ya know that’s just because ya always hightail it out of the room before the drawing of straws can begin,” Rogue said. “Ah think he’s already maxed out his shoveling duties for the season, but he joined ya tonight anyway, specifically to make sure you would do yer job for once.”

When Remy got both boots off, he looked up at Rogue with zero guilt in his eyes. His pout might have gotten bigger, actually, “So mean to Remy.”

He was quick to slip on his moccasin slippers that he was forced to abandon just an hour prior. If he wasn’t feeling so stiff, he would honestly be willing to bend over even further to place a kiss on the tips of each of them. Plus, he already got called dramatic once in this conversation; even though it was true, he would like to keep the factual observations to a minimum tonight.

As he stood back to his full height, he was suddenly assaulted, darkness enshrouding his vision and his movement becoming restricted. He struggled for a second before remembering what he was just looking at and held himself still. He was swiftly rewarded when a pair of gentle hands messed with the covering at his face and adjusted it so he was snuggly wrapped everywhere that didn’t impede his line of sight. 

Once he was able to see again, he was met with Rogue looking at him with that same fond exasperation he loved to bring out in her. “Don’t chu’ worry,” Rogue began, finalizing the details of her current attempts to encase Remy where he stood. “Jubilee went and made us a bunch’a different kinds of hot coco, and knowing yer daily sugar intake, you’ll be reawakened in no time.”

With a lopsided smile, he grabbed one of her hands, using his blanket-covered fingers to wrap excess blanket around her knuckles before placing a kiss to the top of the hand while looking her in the eyes. She was of course wearing one of her nighttime pair of gloves that she wore when they hung out after hours, but recently he had been making sure to add extra layers between them whenever he could to ease whatever leftover anxiety plagued her mind, “Mon sauveur, what would dis scoundrel do wit’out chu?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rogue said with another roll of her eyes. “Love ya too, ya greaseball.”

woe 🫴 halo x-men fic be upon ye shout out to the 4 people who unanimously voted "yes" to the poll on my main asking about whether or not i should post this WIP snippet to tumblr lol. i have zero idea as to when i can get this completed due to a.) the dreaded blockage of writers as per usual and B.) the dreaded schoolwork which is in a constant revolving state of "maybe i won't have too much work this weekend" and "holy shit i'm falling behind so hard i'm gonna die-" this snippet is rather contained tho so it can work as a standalone pretty well. maybe i just need to embrace shorter ficlets as my main form of writing. certainly would be a nice break from the "can't make a oneshot less than 6k words" train i've been riding since day one LMAO anyway feel free to ignore my yapping; i hope you like my first foray into this fandom!

[caffeiiine]

wegh. is now a good time to admit i was running the mori blog @/ooogai

i kindaaa wanna make an oc and rp that instead of mori now😞

[f0xgl0v3]

AAAAAAA.

I’m currently lining/Coloring/ generally digitizing a Comic I sketched out for a fictional SoN scene that is loosely re-imagining related and let me tell you.

i HATE Tyrian purple with a passion. Literally like- it’s so icky and gross. This is purely my opinions and everything, but from what I could see us as a collective society view this,

(All photos found off google sorry)

As Tyrian purple. This maroon color! This is so gross. If I had a burn book let it be known the first entry would be dedicated to how most warm toned purples are so gross to look at. There’s a reason why whenever I draw any Camp Jupiter t-shirt it is drawn as being a cool-toned purple. And that is because I like looking at cool toned purples, they are pleasing to the eye. They do not look grating like these!

All this to say that I make all of Octavian’s CJ shirts in most comics and stuff actual closer (not fully Tyrian purple because I genuinely hate it) to Tyrian purple compared to all his companions. He physically goes out of his way to dye his shirts because it’s a true Roman’s purple. Oh and it’s probably authentic too. His family has cash to spare so of course it is.

This is my formal explanation as to the reason Octavian and maybe Reyna will be the only ones running around with Tyrian purple or anything that is not a blue-purple or washed out cool toned purple shirt. Everyone else’s shirts are the original dark purple color if they are fresher, or are lighter and stuff due to the sun bleaching them or however sun bleach works. They’ve been outside long enough and unlike Octavian don’t periodically re-bleach or buy new ones. Also Reyna gets to be in it because like… Important head of the legion stuff.

Anyway the comic will probably be finished and posted at some point :3 it’s a little long and definitely a rough draft but it has some silly artwork when I got a little looser with it soooo-

(Pssst. Also there’s a Bryce Lawerence draft, big HoO re-imagine, and Octavian’s Augurculanum posts all in my drafts that are hopefully on their own way).

[shift-shaping]

post-halamshiral and everyone is so annoying

solas: despite my countless lines indicating the contrary, i actually think modern elves are dumb and i don't count myself among them. also you should stroke my ego for this, vhenan. <3

morrigan: i know more about your people than you, because the dalish are dumb and limit themselves to what they can learn about the ancient elves. you have no option to refute me on this.

sera: i think briala is fucking stupid and is literally no different from any of the other options for orlais. you can either be extremely mean to me about this or offer effectively no counterargument.

like man this sucks i wish merrill was here

[freshthoughts2020]

[redgoldblue]

.

[ultimateaclrecovery]

Got my official offer letter, and it’s a lower salary than I’d thought/hoped. It’s still a 10%, but considering it’s going from a level 3 to 4 and the company only had five levels I was expecting more. Especially because the list midpoint of the salary range would be a 23% raise. What they offered was just over the first quartile of the range. I am skirting the bottom of the years of experience (it’s 7-9 and I officially hit 7 mid July) but I have a masters and so much experience on the spacecraft. I’ve reached out to the hr person who sent the letter seeing about negotiating. I called and left a voicemail and then sent an email six hours later when I hadn’t heard back. HR replied saying they would be back in touch. I asked for the midpoint of the salary range so I’m hoping they come up a little.

I will take the role regardless and I’m still excited about it and it’s still a good raise but my balloon deflated a bit. But only a bit. And I’m proud of myself for trying to negotiate

[imekitty]

Today I worked on:

Disillusioned: 647 words

Last sentence written:

Danny could see now that he wasn’t the only one who had been destroyed.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

If you don’t mind writing angst or sad right now, how about a snippet from when Holly loses the rest of her Rotwell team. :))

Holly Louise Munro is sixteen years old and doesn't think she's going to make it to seventeen. Plenty of psychic agents don't, after all. And this window isn't a very good reassurance.

The night started ordinarily enough. The case was somewhat routine, disturbances and disruptions that her team was sent to investigate and mitigate. Most poltergeists don't make a habit of violently hurling knives the instant the sun goes down, though. Most wait, most build up to full attacks, most don't do this-

Holly has to remind herself to breathe, but not too loudly. It's only barely one in the morning, still comparatively early in a usual worknight. If she breathes too loudly, or moves too much, or panics, the Visitor will hear her, or sense her, or notice her, and she can't have that. She has to file a report, it's only proper procedure, she has to- She has to tell their families.

Arthur was the first to be killed. Holly was in the kitchen prepping tea, quickly and clipped and just the way she always does, while the other three made their rounds, set up chains, laid iron filings. Arthur, a supervisor around her height with a face full of freckles, stopped into the kitchen to check in with her. Holly's head was ducked, not looking his direction even though she heard him coming with his cheerful, "Oy, Munro-". The instant he poked his head of tousled ginger hair around the entrance to the kitchen, a knife flew through the air and stabbed into his neck, all but pinning him to the wall of the hallway behind him.

Holly's head had whipped up at the grisly thunk, in just enough time to see the light go out of his eyes. Her mind was utterly blank for far too long, and it was the first time she had to remind herself to breathe that night. The blank look in Arthur's eyes, the knife protruding from his windpipe and the thin trickles of blood falling down around it, are seared into her memory. She'll never forget that.

Selfishly, she'll hate herself for it later and has already kind of started, her first thought is it's in here with me. It's fuzzy and slow, the realization, but it sticks in her head anyway. She puts a hand on her rapier, tries to remember where she'd seen the knife block sitting on the counter before the sun set, and thanks God above for the gift of shock.

Poltergeists are drawn to strong emotion. If she were feeling anything in particular at the moment, she would easily become the next victim. She'd never seen a Visitor become so violent so quickly before coming to Cotton Street. There isn't an iron circle in the kitchen. They hadn't thought there was enough space or need.

"Brenton," Holly calls as loudly as she dares, "Christa," and the other two members of her team hadn't responded. Brenton refused to go by his first name, and Christa was barely fourteen years old. Arthur had loved caramelized biscuits. He'd probably been coming to beg some from her when he was killed.

For the longest time, Holly stood stock still in the cramped kitchen of a home on Cotton Street with the body of one her supervisor, who loved caramelized biscuits and earl grey tea and had too-long ginger hair that stuck up every which way and freckles almost as dark as Holly's own skin, and all she could think of was lists of details of these children she works with. Children who likely won't see another birthday. Children sent to die in a home on Cotton Street.

All she could think was that Christa's favorite color is green and she'd had strawberry cake from a storebought boxed mix that she'd made herself for her birthday last week even though Holly had offered to bake something, and that she'd worn non-regulation platform boots to make herself look taller, and her wispy blonde hair fell in front of her eyes like mare's-tail clouds. All Holly could think is that it took her six months to find out Brenton's first name, Augustin, and that he'd been named for a Saint who preached unity even though the boy himself picked more fights on sillier grounds than anyone Holly had ever met, even all her aunts and uncles at family reunions when she was very little, and that she brought chamomile tea along even though it wasn't a standard because she knew he had anxiety and it helped to calm his nerves. And that these were the children Holly now had responsibility for, as the oldest of them, and who she can't save from this.

"Christa," she tries again. "Brenton!" Her voice is getting more shrill, she knows it, can feel it trembling in her jawbone. All of a sudden she wants to cry. She's only sixteen. She's more of an adult than any of them, but she's not, not really. She just has to be. She has to be the adult, because that's what would keep them alive. They needed her. "I need you!"

"Alright, Holly?" Came one high, airy little voice, and if Holly hadn't choked out the tiniest little sob as she dares to step out into the hallway, closer to Arthur's body but father from the knife block which she remembers now is sitting under the tiny square window with curtains she had thought earlier were pretty, with embroidered daisies and dandelions, she's a liar.

"Christa, come here right now," Holly says. "Rapier out." A rapier won't do much good against a Visitor with no corporeal form, but she isn't going to tell the other girl that. The key right then was to stay calm, to hold themselves together to hopefully keep them alive. "Was Brenton with you?" She asks, stepping out to meet Christa and keep her from seeing Arthur with a knife in his neck. They see so much in this job, but she can try to protect the littler girl from this much.

Christa shakes her head. "He was in the bedroom."

Holly nods, shouts Brenton's name again, and stiffens when she hears rattling from behind them. She doesn't dare turn around to look back toward the kitchen, but she would have and did bet her life that the knives were moving, slipping from their slots and drawers and Arthur's throat. She takes Christa by the shoulders, bends to look her in the eye because even platform boots can't make a little girl big all at once.

"Go find him and get into your chain circle. That's what he was doing, right?" When Christa nods, Holly continues. "Go tell him I said to get in the chains, right now. stay there until I say so." For the first time, fear shows in Christa's eyes. For the first time, she looks back over Holly's shoulder. She gasps and goes even paler than usual and starts to tremble in Holly's hands. "Don't look," Holly says. "Go. I'll be right behind you."

"Do you promise?" Christa asks. And Holly, trying to be the adult, trying to remind herself to breathe, nods once and firmly.

"I promise." She pushes Christa toward the bedroom, toward hopefully safety. The girl doesn't look back. She was always whip-smart, Holly can tell her parents that, always did the inventory twice as well as anyone and enjoyed the mathematics and memorized the regulations, knew what to do if she had to go off-book, too.

She was so, so bright and had mare's-tail hair and she had trusted Holly so completely that when she picked up her pace and started running on her size four platform combat boots, Holly truly thought she'd be safe in the chain circle with Brenton in only a few seconds. She hoped it, believed it so much that she turned away to return, steeling herself metaphorically and literally, to the kitchen where her bag was.

She had flares, salt bombs, precious senses of safety in there. Quickly, clipped, she collected her things, strapped extras onto her body, stared at the knives hovering just above their places in the knife block. It wasn't attacking her right now. It couldn't, of course, because it's focus was on the tiny girl down the hall. The thud sent chills through Holly, the sudden ice cold that comes with being pierced through with abject terror.

Dropping her bag, she'd run toward the sound, and come to a desperate halt when she saw the knife, the same one that had sliced through Arthur's windpipe, embedded between Christa's shoulderblades. It must have severed her spine in just the right place, because she's dead by the time Holly tries to find her pulse. She thinks, and will continue to think, that it's a mercy. Still, tears come to her eyes and she's forced to blink them away, keep breathing, keep breathing, when Brenton appears, sweaty and shocked.

"Munro?" He says weakly. She shakes her head.

"Go," she hisses, and hears metal rattling ominously. "Get in the circle," she cries, standing to her feet and running to push him ahead of her. "It's a Poltergeist," she explains hastily, shoving him roughly into the bedroom where a wide circle of chain sits in the clear space between the bed beside the door and the window at the far wall of the room. "Get in-"

She flinches, drops her grip on Brenton's arm and covers her head in fear when something shiny flashes in the corner of her eye. She doesn't know what it is, but this Visitor's hallmark is metal things, harmless metals like copper and composites free of iron or silver, cheap faux silverware and bargain jewelry.

It's an ornamental gold pocketknife and a hatpin this time, that do sweet terrified Brenton in. The knife is just large enough that she can see it sticking out of his stomach, the hatpin embedded in between two of his ribs, probably puncturing a lung. She whimpers a small, useless "No!" as Brenton crumples to the floor just outside the chain. She blinks hard and fights back tears once more, struggles to breathe even shallow shaky breaths, and clings to the small sweaty hand he holds out.

"The circle," Brenton wheezes, moving his arm like he's trying to push her into it. Almost robotically, she crawls across the chain, into the protective circle, but never let's go of Brenton as she does.

"It's going to be okay," she whispers uselessly, "You're going to be fine."

Brenton stared at her, hopefully in too much shock to feel the pain as he had bled slowly out against a chest of drawers. His eyes were wide and green and every part of him was trembling. His breaths were strained and labored and Holly knew, the whole time, that she was lying to him. He was dying right in front of her. Her whole team was dead or dying. They were just children.

Brenton fumbled with her hand, his palm slipping. Something thunked into a wall outside in the hall. "I'm scared, Hol, I'm so scared, please, Holly-"

"I've got you," she told him, "It's alright, August, I'm here, I'll-" She couldn't say protect you. She's already failed at that. "It's alright. I've got you." She says it over and over, until internal bleeding or a collapsed lung takes the light from his eyes. She keeps saying it even after he's dead as if that can bring him back or make it true.

She keeps saying it for so long that she doesn't realize at first how loud the rattling throughout the house is. Drawers are shaking, items that aren't shiny or sharp now threatening at every angle. There is a trail of Holly's dead teammates leading to this room, and there's next to no good way to fight a Poltergeist this strong. Holly is completely alone except for a thing that wants to kill her and will probably succeed, and she has to remind herself to keep breathing.

The window is her only chance. It's a second floor, but she can probably survive that. The odds are better than staying here through the night, rapier useless and team dead around her. She thinks she's going to be sick. She thinks there's almost no point. If the fall doesn't kill her she'll still be alone til morning.

She gives up on the chains and finds herself pressed against the wall beneath the window, shaking. A drawer flies open in the bedside table and a desperate sob rips out of her. She can't time it properly, can't see the Visitor's approach as it comes to take her life. She forces herself to breathe once, twice, and then turns, scrabbles at the window latch and throws it open. It screeches with disuse, takes all her shaky strength to pry it open and lift it wide enough to get out, and she almost falls headfirst when she manages it.

The noise in the house builds to a fever pitch as Holly rolls out of the window, finds herself on a tile roof, and keeps sliding. The impact when she hits brick, a chimney, will leave her with bruises and a single broken rib. She can still hear the rattling and pounding inside the Cotton Street flat, can see all three of her teammates lying dead inside. For the first time since the sun went down, she doesn't have to force herself to breathe.

When they find her in the morning, the flat's owner and DEPRAC and a Rotwell department head, still lying against the chimney barely aware of the world around her, she's cried herself out. She's dehydrated and exhausted, but there's no more rattling inside the house. She'd cried for hours, rattling sobs wrenching out of her, in the dark against that chimney. It was loud and ragged and she doesn't know how none of the neighbors heard her. She cried so hard her head hurt and she couldn't even speak to explain what happened to her for nearly a full day.

The scene inside the flat had spoken for itself, though. Holly was the sole survivor, of course. And she got to see her seventeenth birthday, not that it mattered much. She was taken off of active duty, assigned a desk and inventory and peperwork that she did twice as well as anyone else in honor of Christa Wells, who didn't live to see fifteen. She drinks chamomile tea when her hands shake because she remembers how scared Augustin Brenton was when he died, and she keeps a pack of caramelized biscuits in a well-oiled drawer in her desk because she sometimes still expects Arthur O'Connor to come by and ask if she has any.

She is very good at her job, no matter how angry she finds herself at the adults, real adults, who so fail the children in their care and instead leave the children to each other. Even in that, she finds herself numb more often than not and wonders if this is what it's like for Visitors. She doesn't know why she survived and they didn't. She doesn't know why she's alive, or how to be.

Holly has to remind herself to breathe sometimes.

[lazer-screwdriver]

I keep forgetting I’ve made it so Liz would’ve been there to see Rassilon do all that™. Liz-clearly-influenced-by-Donna voice well he seemed like a bit of a cunt to me.

[machinavocis]

behold, a rough approximation of my car if i plug all the specs of the one i bought into the hyundai website's car builder thing!