#TW: GRAPHIC DROWNING + CHILD DEATH

[the-littlest-lamb]

TW: DROWNING, CHILD DEATH. EPISODE TWO

[Theme song plays, and the screen fades from the title to the set. A bathroom this time, Diamond and Sunny and in the room, Diamond knelt over the edge of the tub that was at the back of the room. Sunny was a bit off to the side.] DIAMOND “I’m filling up the tub now! The sooner you get in the sooner you can get out.” LAMB (from off screen) “No!! I’m not dirty!!” [Lamb enters the room from a door on the left side of the screen, visibly covered in mud. Laugh track plays. Diamond frowns.] DIAMOND “You’re filthy. Don’t make me hold you down and wash you myself.” [Sunny smiles at Lamb.] SUNNY “Come on it’s not that bad, it won’t take long until you can go play again.” LAMB “Papa, not you too!? Uaghhh… Fine…” [Lamb kicked something invisible on the ground, grumbling.] SUNNY “Yes, me too. HM, maybe this will make it better?” [Sunny takes a rubber duck from behind his back and squeaks it in demonstration. Lamb looks awestruck by the duck.] SUNNY “He’s yours if you get in the bath!”

LAMB “Woah… how’d you do that?! Okay!!” [Diamond picks Lamb up and puts them in the tub.] DIAMOND “You spoil them too much. Lamb’s always going to fight if you keep giving them rewards.” [Sunny gives Lamb the rubber duck, then turns to diamond half whispering to them. It is still very audible on the mic.] SUNNY “Don’t worry, it’s the same exact duck each time anyway.” [Diamond sighs, also stage whispering.] DIAMOND “Still, Lamb needs to learn to listen to us, not just because there’s a duck.” [Lamb is giggling and playing with the duck, splashing it around in the Tub.] LAMB “Look at Mr.Ducky!! He can fly!!” DIAMOND “That’s great. Don’t forget to actually wash yourself while you’re playing.” LAMB “I won’t!! You’re no fun dada…” [Lamb frowns, grumbling their words.] DIAMOND “Yeah yeah, I’m the meanie. Now, you need to learn how to wash yourself, so let’s give Lamb some space.” SUNNY “Yeah, you’re right, maybe they’ll find it to be easier or more fun this way too.” [Sunny stepped through the door on the left, and Diamond followed.] [Lamb washed themself off, played with their ducky at first. However as time dragged on, Lamb found themself bored. They had played their games with Mr Ducky, and now they needed a new one.] LAMB “Hm… What can we play..? Ooo!! I know!! Lets see who can hold their breath the longest!!” [Lamb giggled, took a deep breath, held ducky and plugged their nose. They went under the water. At first, they held Ducky down so he had a bit of a chance, then they let Ducky go. Lamb decided that they weren’t done. So they kept going.] [At some point, Lamb forgets they can't breathe underwater. They open their mouth, shocked when water fills it as they breathe in. In their shock, they unplug their nose and breathe in more water. They feel the water fill their lungs, a crushing weight in the poor kid’s chest. They come up, unable to cough it all up. Within the minute, they lose their consciousness, and float, hung up in the water. But hey, at least they won!] [Diamond comes in not much later, quickly followed by Sunny.] DIAMOND “See Lamb, bath time isn’t so bad.” [Lamb didn’t respond.] DIAMOND “Lamb?” SUNNY “You can go and play- wait what..?” DIAMOND “Lamb Chop this isn’t funny.” [Diamond lifted Lamb’s limp body out of the water.] DIAMOND “Answer me when I call your name.” SUNNY “I don’t- I don’t think they can.” [Sunny’s staring in shock.] SUNNY “We- we gotta do something. You have to do something!” DIAMOND “They're just being stubborn again, probably upset that I made them take a bath. If you think something needs to be done then why don't you do it? I swear it's like you have me do everything in this house.” SUNNY “Wouldn't they answer? There has to be a reason they aren't talking, they talk all the time. The duck got their tongue?” [Sunny looks very uncertain about this situation. Worry across his face.] DIAMOND “You know that Lamb has their moments. They’ll drop it when they realize they aren’t getting the response they want.” [Diamond carried Lamb towards the door, the body moving like a ragdoll.] SUNNY “You’re right. This just doesn’t feel right, but I’m probably overreacting! Yeah, that must be it. Emotions getting the best of me.” [Sunny shakes their body a bit, smiling slightly again. The family leaves the bathroom, and the screen fades to black.] Fin

[huramuna]

even in undeath - chapter 1.

lich king aemond x reader a 'world of warcraft' AU. prev | next

The Lich King is the master and lord of the Scourge. Consisting of thousands of walking corpses, disembodied spirits, beasts of the north, and damned mortal men, the Scourge is a terrifying and insidious enemy.

word count: 2.3k

@huramuna-fics - follow & turn on notifications for just my fic postings! no taglists right now, sorry.

content: DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT, DUBCON, smut, heavy heavy angst, graphic depictions of violence, allusions to cannibalism, imprisonment, kidnapping, murder, suicidal thoughts and ideation, mutilation of corpses, obsessive aemond, dark aemond, a happy ending is not in our future. PLEASE MIND THE TAGS! This story will be pretty dark.

story playlist

It was dark and cold. There was a faint dripping of water somewhere off to the side, but you couldn’t quite see where. The echoes of whimpers ricocheted off of the craggy walls, stinging your eardrums. 

This was the descent into madness, wasn’t it?

You weren’t sure how long you’d been chained up for— how long had it been since your village burned to the ground? Since you watched the ghouls rip apart the cow farmer from down the road. Since you watched hellhounds crunching on little Mary Jay’s bones. Since you had watched your mother and stepfather plead and beg for their lives, for forgiveness, for mercy, for absolution of their supposed sins before the death knight’s sword lopped their heads off. 

How long has it been? 

Shifting slightly, the chain tied to your throat clinked against the wall. There was no light, no passage of time to be had in the dank, pitch black cave they stowed you and a few select others in. You only had on a ragged potato sack as a dress, the sensation of dirt and grime caked on your hair and under your nails making you feel less than human. 

But— you were still human. For now. The Scourge had ravaged the Eastern Kingdoms without mercy, swiping through the North and South like a fast traveling plague, curdling and damning everything it touched. Hordes of undead zombies, ghouls and hellhounds were the first to raze the cities, driving out the people like mice from the walls. Then the banshees came, along with the necromancers to raise the dead, adding them to a forever amounting army.

Not even Quel’thalas had been able to resist it, an ancient elven city hewn in magic.

What chance did you have? 

More than most, evidently. Your mind wrought itself over and over as to why— why were you alive? Why were you still human and not merely a risen thrall? 

The clinking of armor scared you as it ascended the hallway. You pressed close to the wall and closed your eyes. 

Please don’t stop here, please don’t stop here. 

Clink, clink, clink… closer… closer… 

Then it passed, descending further away. You let out a breath, your blood still pumping in your ears. 

Clink, clink, clink. They were coming back. Clink… silence. You felt bile rise in your throat as you shook, the chains rattling noisily. You knew they were standing there, you knew they were here for you. 

A harsh tug upon your chain, your head hitting the floor— some words were mumbled, the voice sounding far away and broken. Your eardrums rang with the ferocity of your fall, drowning out any semblance of what your jailer was saying to you. Then, you were tugged upward, the cool metal of the collar biting into your skin as you were dragged like a petulant child away from your cell… 

You didn’t want to open your eyes. You couldn’t face the horror you knew was around you— corpses, living ones and dead, the clatter of bones, the heavy breathing of gargantuan abominations, bodies and faces of countless people stitched together into a new body, hewn with thread and necrotic magic until it gave way to something else entirely. Something unnatural, something made of nightmares. The dermis of those who were used to make the monsters would still twitch, reach out on its own, and if it had a mouth, it would be twisted into a scream. You swore that you heard them whispering as you were dragged by. 

The monstrosities were one of many abhorrent creatures at the Scourge’s disposal. Hellhounds, ghouls, gargoyles, wraiths, crypt lords, geists, banshees, and other things of horrific nature were only some of the power wielded by the Scourge. It felt like it was all pulled out of a child’s fairytale, changed and twisted and defiled into what it was now. 

It all felt like a very bad dream. 

Your eyes opened on their own and you took in the image of death knights, former paladins who served a higher power, the Light— now are nothing but undead heretics, glowing eyes and gaunt stares that bored through you. 

Some of the monsters chittered as you were dragged past them, leering and looking hungry. 

‘Scrawny that one. Perhaps she will suffice for hellhounds to pick their teeth.’

‘Speak for yourself, her skin will do beautifully on a new abomination.’ 

‘She won’t be knighted. Merely a maid’s bastard, I’ve heard.’

You forced your eyes to close once more, the sudden light stinging them. You forced yourself into another time, a better memory than what you were experiencing. 

They were right, you were a maid’s bastard. Your mother had served in the royal keep for years, with you under her feet. You didn’t know who your true father was, nor did you care.

You became attached to the second son of the King— Aemond Targaryen. He was a sprightly boy with near white hair and luminous violet eyes. The two of you were attached at the hip. 

Childhood friendship blossomed into more as you grew into teenagers and young adults— you shared your first kiss together, you held hands and shared sweet nothings. As he trained by day to become a paladin of the Light, he held you close by night, vowing to never let you go. You were both terribly in love and so terribly, terribly naive. He was your first in everything– your first friend, your first kiss, your first lover. You promised yourself that he would stay your first and only.

‘You can never marry a maid’s bastard, Aemond! You’re a prince of the realm-‘

‘I don’t care! I want her, father. I’ve always wanted her!’

Your mother quit her job at the castle— moreso, threatened into quitting by some of the King’s advisors. She was given a considerable amount of coin and told to take you far, far away and to not contact the prince again. 

Heartbroken, you left him your sapphire ring, the only thing of value you ever had, which had been passed down through your mother’s family for generations. 

It was left on his desk with a note of few words but much feeling. 

‘I love you. I’m sorry.’ 

That was over ten years ago. You hadn’t seen him since, but you missed him horribly. Especially now. You wondered if he was still alive, fighting against the Scourge like his knightly vows dictated. 

Maybe he was married and moved across the sea to Kalimdor where it was safer. 

Or maybe he was dead. Dead like almost everyone else you knew. 

You heard a rumor, fleeting and without much more information, that his father had died– no, that his father had been murdered. The fall of the king, Viserys, is what started the Scourge war. Did Aemond know, wherever he was? 

You imagined him holding his arms around you, kissing your neck and fanning his breath over your skin. He liked to encompass you completely with his body when you laid together— you never could emulate the feeling with heavy blankets and pillows, as much as you tried. Putting yourself back into that memory, you wrapped your arms around yourself, willing warmth into your body. 

But you didn’t feel any warmth. All you felt was cold, cold down to your bones. They felt brittle, like ice, splintering into shards as you were thrown on the floor again in a different room. Pain bloomed in your arm as it cracked at an awkward angle. Broken. 

Your ears rang again as your mouth opened into a scream, tears of pure anguish squeezing from your eyes. But you didn’t hear a thing besides the rush of blood dampening your senses— and the sickening crunch of your broken bones. 

‘What have you done to it, Lady Deathwhisper? It looks broken.’ 

‘It’s human bones are so brittle, it was merely a slip of the hand. I cannot help that their living constitution is so weak.’ 

‘His grace will not be pleased if it is broken beyond repair.’ 

‘Worry not, Lady Alys. Most things can be mended— and if not, it can always be raised.’ 

‘Physical defects aren’t the only issue. What of its mind?’

You feel an acute sensation over your skull, reaching into the depths of your cranium. Its cold, but not stinging— like a soft caress upon your brain as your mind is rifled through like a tome. You can feel your memories being perused, all of the most intimate moments of your life flashing in your head like playwright’s prose. The physicality of your mind being invaded wasn’t painful, but the act of your memories being ripped from you was damning. Tears fell down your face on their own, your mouth opened into a silent scream.

‘She is the one— I saw it. You are lucky that you did not break her mind completely, Lady Deathwhisper.’ 

‘As are you. You do not have a deft hand when it comes to memory perusal, Lady Alys. I am surprised that it still has a brain in its skull.’ 

‘Shut up and bring her to him. He will be pleased she is still alive. Barely.’ 

You felt yourself being moved again, still reeling from the invasion of your mind. You tried to put yourself back into the safe haven of memories, but they were… locked. Locked behind an iron door with no keyhole. They were lost to you. 

What were you trying to remember? 

Flashes of white hair and violet eyes flitted behind your eyelids, soft caresses and kisses, heavy breathing and love filled promises, the sensation of skin to skin… 

Your eyes opened, vision bleary. A helmed woman followed behind you, wings outstretched. You could see the glint of green eyes under her helm. Val’kyr. The woman behind you was a Val’kyr, a spirit guide who defected to the side of the Scourge. They could move between the realm of living and dead as simply as taking a breath. 

“The little human is awake,” she mused. “Your mind isn’t broken after all? I do see a glint of intelligence behind those eyes. Keep them on me, you shan’t wish to look upon Lady Deathwhisper.” 

You didn’t want to speak, words caught in your throat like food stuck in your craw. A val’kyr was basically an angel of death and talking to one must mean you are dead. 

You wish you were. 

The chains scraped against the floor, which was no longer stone like before, but rather, hardened ice. You were ascending upward, it seemed. The architecture of the building was nothing like you’d ever seen— dark metal was plated upon the walls, inscribed with glowing runes. The runes looked… familiar to you, somehow. But the memory that contained them was locked away, or mayhaps stolen by the Val’kyr, Alys. 

The temperature was cold, you were being lofted upon ice, of course, but you didn’t wholly feel it. You were partially numb, heat radiating from your broken arm. You knew you should be feeling pain— but you were just… numb. 

Your escorts stopped in front of two large doors, inscribed with the same glowing runes. Against Alys’ advice, you glanced at ‘Lady Deathwhisper’. She was skeletal, floating upon the ground with no legs to speak of. Her robes were purple fabric, molded around an incorporeal body. She spoke in a language you didn’t understand, the scratchy voice of hers coming out of a bone skull, but the mouth wasn’t moving, maw open as the words came out. 

You should have listened to Alys. 

The door opened with a rumble, opened by ancient magic, likely imbued by the runes, as they flickered and flitted above your head as it opened. The room beyond was open and bereft of almost anything, except for a throne. A throne forged of ice and swords. 

Someone was sitting upon it in a lazed position, one plated gloved finger tapping on the arm of the throne.

“We’ve brought her, your grace,” Lady Deathwhisper growled, shoving you forward. You skidded across the floor, which felt slick like grazing atop an ice-capped lake. “Alys confirmed it is her.”

The clinking of armor caught your attention, the sound of metal grazing against ice. It was irritating and made you grind your teeth. As whoever was on the throne got closer, the force was oppressive. Whimpers and tiny cries were ripped from you as they walked towards you, the aura exuding from them causing you to fall flat to the ground, feeling as if someone was sitting atop of your chest and not letting up.

The steel plated boot was in front of you now and your hair was grabbed rather harshly, pulling you up. 

Don’t look, don’t look. You cannot look.

“Look. At. Me.” the voice growled. It was quiet but commanding at the same time, rattling in your bones and making a home amongst the marrow. It felt familiar… so… 

You lifted your bloodshot eyes, not out of your own volition, but from the authority of the voice.

“Hello, little dove.” he mused.

It was him. It was… it… Aemond. You knew him so well, even with ten years gone. His chiseled jawline and chin and the dimple of the tip of his nose… 

But his eye was missing, a jagged scar bisecting it. In its place was a sapphire. The sapphire from your ring, grown into something to make home in the socket.

You felt everything and nothing all at once, your stomach flipped and flopped like a fish hoisted from the sea, sputtering for air. You couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t–

Your best friend, your lover, the one you vowed to never forget, to never forsake.

Aemond Targaryen. 

Aemond Targaryen was the Lich King. A defiler, a mass murderer, an unholy being in his own right.

“Now you won’t be able to leave again, will you?” Aemond murmured, his violet eye roving you. It was glowing slightly– his skin was a pale gray pallor, cheeks sunken slightly. He was undead.

Your eyes rolled back in your head, vision going black.

[disgutinggirlreads]

MY FAVORITE (LONG) FICS - Wincest Edition

I will not be placing them in any specific order. Also, a long-fic in my definition is anything above 50k words.

Pine Sweat by Goshen (applecrumbledore)

Sam watched Dean hack up firewood with his hatchet. The magically-induced heat wave had his shirt soaked with sweat.

“Did you ever have a, uh… experimental phase?” Sam smacked his lips, trying to think of a diplomatic way to phrase it. “That kid—by which I mean you—has been staring. At me. Kind of a lot.”

(Sam and Dean get sent back to 1996 and go on a hunt with their teenaged selves. The kids don't know who they are.)

This one is so sweet and funny and the plot is so good!! I usually don't go for time-travel stories, but that's a comfort one for me, I really love teenage Dean and Sam in this one.

10 chapters (105,324k words)

TW: Canon-Typical Violence, Animal Death (brief), Mild Gore (not many TW, that's a mostly wholesome one)

To Sound The Depths by Pendragony

Dean has always set aside his needs, repressing his instincts for the sake of Sam. Sometimes he thinks he doesn’t even know how to be an Omega any more. When the brothers pose as a couple to investigate a spate of drowned Alphas, Dean starts to get back in touch with his Omega self. But when the heat is on, will Dean still be able to protect Sam?

a fake dating ABO AU that I love so much. Fake dating for a case is one of my favorite plots in Wincest fics.

15 chapters (66,460k words)

TW: Slight Dub-Con, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Attempted Sexual Assault

Suave & Complicated by OldToadWoman

Sam and Dean discover a useful, little, magical artifact. No one is forcing them to do anything. No one is going to die if they don't. They don't even feel a strange compulsion. But… it would be really helpful if they powered up the magical stone… and… all they have to do is kiss.

This one is so damm funny. It seens almost like a crack-fic, but the plot is good, and the smut is still hot. Dean is so oblivious in this one, poor dumb thing lol

11 chapters (56,923k words)

TW: Canon-Typical Violence (it's just a really wholesome one)

The Truth In The Lie by flawedamythyst

Sam and Dean pretend to be gay lovers while they hunt a monster on a bus tour of Nova Scotia.

Another fake dating for a case. Also, that was the first wincest fic I've read!

13 chapters (62,264k words)

TW: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Canon-Typical Violence (only TW's is what usually already happens on the show, soooo)

Kill The Lights by silver9mm

Less than a minute had passed since Sam had killed the guard and then five more people. This man’s speech had lasted maybe twenty seconds, but Sam had been separated from Dean for three hundred and sixteen days and nine hours, which made the total time of his life without Dean nearly five complete years, and the thought of listening to this fucker talk for one more second instead of getting his brother and getting the fuck out was unendurable.

I think that's the darkest wincest fic I have read so far. This one wins the most-fucked-up-fic-award in this post. It's really hot, though, and I really enjoyed this one.

35 chapters (143k words)

TW: Extremely Dubious Consent,Rape/Non-con, Bad BDSM Etiquette (really bad guys, lol), Unhappy Ending, Implied Bestiality (really only implied, there's no graphic scenes)

[illunicae]

When the Light Goes Out

Was rewatching The Last of Us and got inspired so I wrote this in a single sitting. (Also found on Ao3)

Pairing: Rise Donatello x Female Reader

TWs: Semi-graphic description of wounds, Character death, Passive suicidal ideation, Loss of a child, The Kraang apocalypse, Mentions of past character deaths

Plot: The world broke when you were just a child, but you learned to survive and every day since has been a constant fight. Despite the hell outside your door, you found solace in your husband, Donatello, and you had a daughter a few years into the apocalypse. You did not like the world you brought your daughter into, but you promised her one day the war would end. But hope is a dimming candle, especially when you're losing family left and right: including your beloved Donatello. What more could you lose?

or

Sarah's death scene from The Last of Us, but with you and your daughter instead.

"Mom, will I ever see the stars?" 

You looked down at your young daughter, barely the age you were when the whole kraang apocalypse started. Lenore's eyes sparkled with curiosity, but you could see the small flash of doubt and sorrow that seemed to cling to your daughter these months of late. You cupped your daughter's green-scaled cheek in your palm, swiping your thumb across the purple spot on her cheekbone. "Oh, my sweet little light, that is why we fight this war. Because when we win, I will show you all the stars." 

Lenore didn't quite look convinced. 

"And my little light, it is so beautiful. There are more stars in the sky than you can count. And they shine so brightly that it's like the sun never set, lighting the world with a silver glow where shadows spill secrets and the world is at peace." You pulled Lenore closer, and you two touched your foreheads together in a silent expression of love. "I promise. At the end of this war, I will show you the stars and tell you all their names."

Lenore sank into your embrace, and the two of you sat together on your small bed, listening to the workings of the resistance around you. This was the world Lenore was born into—a world where you constantly had to fight to survive, where food seemed to always be on the verge of running out, where the sun burns red, and the moon drowns in dark clouds.

✧*

"Look out!" Leo shouted, and you were on the move instantly, trying to reach your daughter right as the blast struck the ground. Your feet left the ground as the explosion scorched the very air. You could hear your daughter scream as she hit the ground. Your body ached, your ears rang, and your head spun.

You groaned as you felt a spike of pain in your side. No doubt, something grazed you. You came to your senses just as a kraang hound loomed over you. Its maw was wide and dripping with bloody saliva; the low growl in its throat seemed to shake your bones as you groped around yourself for a weapon of any kind. Like a tightening spring, the beast moved, preparing for the kill. 

The singing of metal through flesh caused you to flinch slightly as the hound yelped a pitiful sound before slumping dead with a familiar katana through its skull. You could feel the relief wash over you as you glanced up at Leo; gratitude was on the tip of your tongue, but it died as Leo's horrified look swept over you to something beyond. 

"Oh, god." His voice was barely audible above the sounds of war around you, but you heard it, and the fear it brought struck you like the blade he wielded. You flipped over to see what caught Leo's attention. 

The battle continued around you, but all you could see was the limp form of your daughter, Lenore. The bright and brilliant little girl who was always smiling despite the hell that resided outside her window. The little girl you would tear the world apart for. 

"Lenore?" Your voice was soft as your vision spun; the blast had knocked you clear to the floor causing you to hit your head, but your focus was zeroed in on the rapid rising and falling of Lenore's chest. All other sounds fell away as Lenore's rapid panting echoed in your mind.  

As fear and a cold grip of dread crawled under your skin, you pulled yourself up, and only then did you see the blood slowly soaking the already red earth. Alarm bells rang, blaring in your mind as you scrambled forward. 

"No. No, no, no." Your knees dug into the soft ground as you crawled desperately. "No, no, no." Like a mantra, you repeated the single phrase over and over. 

Lenore had landed on her carapace with her gaze to the sky as her eyes glazed over unfocused. Her hand clutched her side, where blood was freely pouring from the wound in her plastron. The dark ground drank up her blood greedily as if it hadn't had enough already with everyone the resistance had lost. You wouldn't let your daughter's blood feed the soil as well; you couldn't bear to sink your daughter down into the infected dirt like so many family members before her: Splinter, Raph, Casey…him.

No, you would not lose your daughter, too. You couldn't: you were still healing.

"Let me see, baby. Let me see." You begged, fighting to keep the thick tears from clogging your throat and silencing your voice. 

Looking into your daughter's eyes bright with pain as she focused on you instead of the hellish sky, you gripped Lenore's hand. The warm blood glazing Lenore's skin swiftly coated your own palms as you moved the appendage. The sight that greeted you threw a bundle of barbed wire down your throat. There was a large gash in Lenore's side, along with a crack and hole in her plastron where a piece of shrapnel tore right through her muscle and shell. Blood poured freely from the wound as Lenore cried out. 

"Shh. Shh, you're okay." You placed your hand over the wound to apply pressure in a desperate attempt to stall the bleeding. "You're gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay, baby, I promise." The wound needed to be patched now, and you two couldn't stay there in the middle of the battlefield. 

You moved quickly as your heart hammered in your chest. You got your arm under Lenore's neck, but the movement jostled her, and Lenore cried out while attempting to fight you off, to push you away. 

"I know, baby. I know. I know. I know. I know." You kept pressure on the wound while trying to get your daughter into your arms. Lenore's arms flew up and latched onto your shoulder and your forearm. She cried out in pain as another movement jostled her. "I know it hurts, but we gotta get you back. We gotta get you home. I gotta get you up."

Lenore shook her head as tears flowed down the sides of her face. Her breathing was still sporadic and rapid as she cried.

"Momma."

"I know. I know. I know. I know. I know, baby." You could only keep pressure on the wound as you watched your daughter gasp for breath. "I know it hurts, but you're gonna be okay. Okay? You're gonna be okay." You threaded your arm around Lenore's shoulders and pulled her up. Lenore gasped and wheezed in pain while shaking her head. 

"I gotta get you home. I gotta get you home. I know, baby. I'm sorry." 

Lenore cried out again as you shifted to get her more in your lap. A small, bloodied hand left a trail on your cheek before Lenore grabbed around the back of your neck. Eyes screwed shut in pain, Lenore's breathing was getting faster and more shallow. "I know. I know. I know." Lenore whimpered.

"LEO, HELP ME!" You whipped your head up toward the slider standing a few feet away surrounded by more hound bodies. 

"(Y/n), we can't stay here." His voice was soft and heavy with an ugly mix of grief, pity, and authority.

Shaking your head, you pulled Lenore closer as her grip was becoming lighter and her breaths quieter. "Come on, baby girl." The limp arm fell off your shoulder. "Come on. I gotta get you home." You pulled your little girl closer to you and more fully into your lap. 

Lenore wasn't fighting anymore. 

"Come on, I gotta get you up. Lenore, we gotta go home." You held your daughter close as you cupped her cheek with your hand, only leaving a smear of blood along the skin that once seemed to glow with infectious joy. "Come on, baby. Come on. I–I can't–" Your breath wheezed out, a shaky exhale as hope dimmed in your heart in time with the light dimming from your little daughter's eyes. "I can't lose you too." Silent sobs shook your lungs as you clutched your daughter to your lap, blood soaking your shirt and cloak. 

"Oh, my little light." Your voice was soft and scratchy as the barbed wire in your throat tightened. Lenore's plastron dug into your skin as you hugged her tightly, but you didn't care. You held on, arms tight around Lenore's soft, leathery shell. Refusing to let go of your once shiny star, you began rocking back and forth as sobs were building in strength. 

Unfocused, dulled eyes stared at the sky above. No longer would they twinkle with mischief. No longer would they sparkle with that ravenous need to learn, much like her father. No longer would they shine against the dark, leading you to the hope against this never ending hellfire. 

The ground shook as the battle crescendoed. There were screams and shouts, gunfire and explosions: all of it white noise to your drowning heartbeat as you lowered Lenore slowly away from your chest. There was no movement from her body and no color in her skin. The overbearing urge to let a kraang find you and finish you off weighed down on your shoulders. Your whole fight, this whole resistance against the kraang, was for Lenore and children born into this unfair world. So that they may have a chance to see a world that is not torn apart by red skies and live a life that is not dictated by fear. 

Your fight was gone. Your reason was gone. 

What motive do you have now that your daughter will never see the end of this war? What could you possibly live for knowing that you'll never show your daughter the stars?

You gasped as a hand gripped your shoulder tightly, pulling you from the spiraling thoughts. You looked over your shoulder with unseeing eyes. Leo was shouting something, but you weren't hearing it. How could you over the rushing in your ears?

"(Y/n), we have to get out of here. You have to let her go." Leo's voice and the cacophony of battle rushed back to you in an overwhelming wave. Registering Leo's words, you shook your head, looking down at Lenore. Leo knelt down across from you and cupped your cheek with his palm, forcing you to look at him and not Lenore. "(Y/n), listen to me, she's gone. There's nothing we can do for her now."

A broken whine left your lips as you tried to look down again, but Leo wouldn't let you.

"I'm sorry, (Y/n)." He got to his feet and, in the same movement, lifted you from the ground, trapping you over his shoulder to take you out of the battlefield and back to base. 

"No. NO! Leo, let go. I need to bring her home. I have to bring her home! I can't leave her!" You screamed as you beat on the shell of your best friend. Leo just secured his grip on you while you thrashed.

"We have to go, (Y/n). If we stay here we'll die. I'm sorry." His voice was once again laden with a crushing mix of grief and authority. 

You fell semi-limp as you sobbed openly. You barely heard Mikey's or CJ's shocked voices as Leo called out the order to retreat. Deep down, you knew they'd be back to retrieve the dead once New York no longer feels like Hell-on-Earth, but you couldn't help but stare across the field at where your daughter lay, abandoned. You swore to protect her. You promised him she'd be safe. You failed. A once bright, shining star now lays dull and dark. 

A vibrant, beautiful light, now snuffed out.

[dinluke-ao3feed]

Dead to You (Are You at the Wake?)

Read it on https://archiveofourown.org/works/59288128 by Maered Din’s son is dead: To begin with, there's no doubt whatsoever about that. What there is doubt about, however, is how Din can possibly go on; having loved and lost in a way he never expected he would. The only thing keeping him moving is the thought that Grogu would want him to. So, he soldiers forth, through the numbing pain and the aching grief; just trying to get through one day at a time. Until he meets Luke. Luke, who refuses to leave Din’s loneliness unbroken and makes him feel like, maybe, he could live again. It's only fitting, then, when Luke reveals that he is a Mortician. It's his life’s mission to help distraught families send off their loved ones to whatever awaits in the undiscovered country from which no traveller returns. Din thinks that being surrounded by death must be his life’s new purpose. Din is more right than he knows. Words: 11756, Chapters: 1/4, Language: English Fandoms: The Mandalorian (TV), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Categories: M/M Characters: Din Djarin, Luke Skywalker, Grogu | Baby Yoda, Leia Organa, Ben Solo, Boba Fett, Fennec Shand Relationships: Din Djarin/Luke Skywalker Additional Tags: Implied/Referenced Character Death, Luke Skywalker Needs A Hug, Din Djarin Needs a Hug, Angst, Graphic Description of Corpses, Grief/Mourning, Gothic, Discord: DinLuke Server, Mortician Luke, tw: off screen child death, Magic Realism, Revenants, not quite a toxic relationship but not healthy either, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Possessive Behavior, If u r the 1 of 3 people who would read this BC i write it, plz mind the tags, first chapter is extremely grief heavy, Halloween, Title something not after a TS song challenge, I failed, for a pop girlie tay sings a lot about death, Death, Graphic descriptions of death care, Funerals, Top Din Djarin, Bottom Luke Skywalker, Blood, I'm not joking about the angst either, TW:, Mention of - Freeform, Suicidal Thoughts, Anaphylaxis, Electrocution, Drowning, side eyeing myself as i type these out tbh, Comes Back Wrong, Pretentious classic death literature references, Horror, Practical reason for Luke to constantly wear all black for once, Haunted Din Djarin, Haunting, Though metaphorical haunting, Mechanic Din Djarin, Just Some Guy Din Djarin, Songfic, Song: my tears ricochet (Taylor Swift), Scientific descriptions of decomposition, Din Djarin doesnt know anything as usual

[yearningaces]

I’m sorry-the little boy was killed by drowning when he was TWO?? Who did it? I want names, age, address….and possibly a weapon of mass destruction to wipe them off the face of the planet…

In the spirit(heh) of answering this how I've been answering, I'm gonna have the singing lady answer, because she sort of adopted the little boy.

I'm gonna add the warnings above the cut since we're describing what happened to him.

Tw: Drowning, child death, non graphic death, mentions of parental abuse

~

Watching the ghost of such a small child was always a bittersweet thing. But it would seem he's found some peace, toddling around the house, getting into mischief without the risk of harm ever present.

You'd even brought a child's wooden toy train set for him to play with in the room where you hear him run around the most.

Once you'd made nice with the singing lady, the little boy even seemed more comfortable, no longer hiding from your sight, you'd see him dashing across halls and rooms, laughing and playing, sometimes singing with the lady as well.

At the moment, the three of you were sat in his self claimed bedroom.

He was happily playing with his new train, rolling it across the wooden floor and making noises as if vocalizing the train's imaginary engine.

"he's so... Young." You finally remark, looking over to the singing woman who was seated near you. The dark night making the ghost seemingly glow a faint blue hue to them both.

"I know... Poor dear, it always hurt my heart to see him when I was alive." She sighs, an action more out of habit than need. After a moment, her gaze turns to you. Her skull visible yet her actual face somewhat visible on top of that. "But now that I am of the same fate, I can understand he is happy here. Away from his father, having gained a mother. And he can run and play and explore, without worry, or fear, or harm ever befalling him again."

You sit in silence for some time before you ask the question far quieter now. Peering the little boy's appearance. Just as blue tinted as the singing woman, but without the strangulation marks around the neck. Instead, his appearance is always slightly damp...

"How did he...?" Your voice trails off, uncertain to even ask.

The singing woman seems to understand exactly what you mean, however. And her permanently peaceful or quiet voice for the first time sounds firm, agitated at best. "From what he's told me... His father gave him a bath, and when he came out of the water again, it was dark, the room was empty, and no one was in the house but himself. His father drowned him, and it might be for the best that even he doesn't understand."

You have to bite your tongue, not wanting to lash out or grow too angry as the same little boy is playing happily just a few feet away.

"why?" You hiss almost silently, trying to keep your rage in check but still angered on behalf of the ghostly little boy.

The singing woman matches your rage, but composes herself far better than you can- no doubt through practice. "From what I've come to understand, his mother left long before he remembers. I don't know if she passed on or simply left them, but his father was not a kind man. Perhaps it was a fit of rage, the malice of a horrid man left unchecked. Regardless, the boy doesn't realize how terrible it is. And we will not demand answers from him and force him to remember and relive it all." She's absolute in her tone, not budging.

You nod quietly. "Suppose that means we help him enjoy his afterlife?"

At that, the bristling ghost beside you eases and offers a small smile. "I do suppose we must."

[serenaew]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💙

Thank you and @givereadersahug for the tag, and sorry it took me 2 months to answer XD

Five fics that I've written... you torture me by making me choose!

tagging @sanctuary-angel, @renee561, @bintemuhammad, @trueliarose, @ttime42 (please don't be offended if I did / didn't tag you and you don't like it XD)

So, I decided to go for some of my less popular ones. But they're all my babies!

(list under the cut)

Snarry:

Wish not for a soul that is full of sin (4798 words incl. meta) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape Characters: Severus Snape, Harry Potter Additional Tags: Merman Severus Snape, Severus Snape Lives, Pining, Inspired by Music, Classical Music, Rusalka (Dvorak), Undine (de la Motte Fouque + Reinecke), tw: near-drowning, Art, Digital Art, Poetry, Playlist, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, merfolk lore, Worldbuilding, Romanticism, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE Series: Part 1 of Ondine's Curse (will happen, one day.) Prologue to the merman!Snape, amnesia AU no one asked for, with gorgeous Merman!Snape art by @hereiamwithmyninjaclan.

Severitus:

Christmas in Limbo (4623 words, WIP: 3/7) Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Harry Potter & Severus Snape, implied past Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape Characters: Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Lily Evans Potter Additional Tags: Canonical Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Temporary Character Death, quite dark at times, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Severitus | Severus Snape is Harry Potter's Parent, Afterlife - sort of, Time Travel, Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, Lily meddles from beyond, Alternate Universe - A Christmas Carol Fusion, Implied Dissociation, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, We Need To Mess It Up To Fix It, Are We Sure This Ish Is For Children, Physics is Hard Series: Part 1 of Christmas in Limbo 'Verse

My (quite dark) attempt at a Severitus Christmas Carol Fusion. I hope to finish it this Christmas - I even have the ending drafted but I'm stuck for Ch. 4.

[Fic and Podfic] Ouroboros in Tribute (790 words) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Harry Potter & Severus Snape Characters: Severus Snape, Harry Potter, Lily Evans Potter (mentioned) Additional Tags: Poetry, Sonnets, Crown (Poetry form), Podfic, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Severitus | Severus Snape is Harry Potter's Parent, Sad Severitus, Past Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape, Hidden parentage, Severus Snape is Harry Potter's biological father, Grief/Mourning, Sad, Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Emotional Hurt No Comfort, POV Severus Snape, Second Wizarding War with Voldemort (Harry Potter), Harry Potter MIA, Implied/Referenced Character Death, (telling you more would give away too much of the sequels), Series: Part 1 of Forget Me Not

This is not, strictly speaking, a fic (poem & podfic, actually), but I am really proud of what I cooked up with my words.

Be warned: it hurts.

And, from the same universe: it is time (for it to be time) (3327 words, WIP: 1/5) Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Harry Potter & Severus Snape, Past Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape - Relationship Characters: Harry Potter, Severus Snape, Lily Evans Potter Additional Tags: alternative universe, Post-War, Severitus, Sad Severitus, Angst, Emotional Hurt No Comfort, Hidden parentage, POV Severus Snape, Severus Snape Lives, Harry Potter missing in action, Presumed Dead, implied MCD, Second Wizarding War with Voldemort (Harry Potter), Grief/Mourning, Five Stages of Grief, Memories, Ritual Magic, Diary/Journal, Non-Linear Narrative Series: Part 2 of Forget Me Not

Really looking forward to finishing this - I'm a bit of a sadist and like turturing my readers and my characters with all the emotional pain.

Other HP Gen: (considering I wrote exactly one work for Doctor Who, and that's it in terms of writing fandoms for me - I am quite a bit more diverse in my audio work.)

Whoso list to hunt (2021 words) Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Aberforth Dumbledore & Severus Snape Characters: Aberforth Dumbledore, Severus Snape Additional Tags: Hog's Head Inn (Harry Potter), Unspeakables (Harry Potter), Unspeakable Aberforth Dumbledore, Job Interview, Pre-Canon, Unspeakable Recruit Severus Snape, Good Severus Snape Series: Part 4 of Unspeakable Mysteries Universe (will happen, as well, wone day)

Well, technically, this is also Snarry-adjacent, considering I wrote this as pre-prequel to the Unspeakable Mysteries Universe. This idea is my trying to say that Aberforth has massive Underesteimated Character Potential (tm).

[venture-through-the-mist]

Petals May Wilt (But We Can’t Let Them Wither)

The New War is over. The System is saved, for now. Yet, a new challenge arises, the issue of ‘the Lotus’. With her mind fragmented from Ballas’s abuse, can she begin to coexist with the other two voices that now begin to drown out her own?

Natah and Margulis have been awakened into a world that is distinctly unfamiliar. They are not who they once were—in more ways than one. But who is the third voice sharing their mind, and why is she so uncomfortably familiar—for one of them, at least?

Chapter 2: Cloying Deception, Immortal Devotion

She had always given her love freely. Yet, the Scholar would soon be punished for her compassion.

TW: There are just a couple warnings that I want to address for this chapter before we get into the story.

Non-graphic mentions of the canon-typical abuse, manipulation, and other nonsense that comes with Ballas’s character.

Somewhat graphic character death (no gore though). In the interest of not giving spoilers, all I’m going to say on that is that the Jade Light really doesn’t seem like a great way to die.

With that out of the way, the fic begins under the cut.

Childhood is a gift. She’d always known that. She would often look back at her own, fondly recalling the warm embraces of her parents, their pride as their daughter rose in her studies, easily surpassing her peers. It was a simpler time, yes, but one that she kept close to her heart. That proved especially useful when her training began, when she crossed that bridge that separated the child from the scholar. From the Archimedean. 

She’d always held more love than she knew what to do with.

She found herself fascinated by the world around her, by the people, by the life. Her peers jeered when they learned of her adoration for Earth’s long-ruined ecosystem. She felt sorry for them, sorry that they couldn’t understand what it was like to have a passion for something more ancient than themselves. She spent her days huddled in the library, nose-deep in ancient texts, fingers carefully turning weathered pages, eyes straining to read the faded ink within. Her mind was always hard at work, as was fitting for her station.

All her love, her devotion, her passion…That was what captured his gaze.

Perhaps she was too naive when it began. Perhaps she didn’t want to see past his honeyed words. She was young, she had never had time for romance before, she had always been too busy with her studies. It was so easy to fall into his web. 

It would have been so easy to keep loving him. And yet, the cracks soon began to show.

She was not a prized Kubrow to be paraded around whenever it pleased him. She had work to do. But renouncing him publicly would mean consequences, ones that, as she saw how her colleagues stressed before each Symposium, she wasn’t sure she wanted to bear. She argued with him in private, but her concerns were always dismissed with a wave of that too-large hand and veiled threats. Even with that, she hoped he would see her side, that the Executor would look past his gilded throne to acknowledge her. 

Even then, she still loved him. Didn’t she?

Then, the lost Zariman Ten-Zero was found. She watched in horror as the emaciated, feral children were escorted roughly off the ship. Her heart shattered as they cried, as they lashed out at the hands that poked and prodded and tried to make sense of how they’d survived. Her childhood memories swam in her mind, the warmth and comfort now tasting bittersweet, tainted by the knowledge that these poor children had their own youths ripped away from them. She returned to her texts that night, glancing at the painting at her desk, its rounded petals—similar in color to the Nyth gems that he sometimes bought for her, usually to make ‘peace’ after an argument—seemingly curled in an embrace. It was then that she knew what must be done.

She loved the Executor, but she cherished them more.

Even when the accident took her sight, she didn’t allow her heart to harden. She only felt sorrow that she wouldn’t be able to see their sweet faces ever again. She never knew what happened to the one that had struck her, but she never again heard his timid voice. Not that first time she forced the Lorists to allow her to visit them, nor during any of the trips afterwards. She suspected her ‘lover’—could she truly keep calling him that?—had something to do with that, though she kept quiet.

The webs of doubt tangled deeper in her mind after that first argument. How dare he call them ‘Devils‘? How could he be so cruel? They were only children. She had already witnessed enough of his false promises, she had already been forced to experiment on these children—her children—not to heal their traumas, but to turn them into weapons, to fight a war that they had no part in creating. Shame on him. Shame on all of them.

The betrayal she felt when he read her sentence nearly shattered her, but she stood strong, her back tense, unwilling to show regret for her sin of compassion.

As the Jade Light burned through her skin, as she felt the searing pain seep into her quickly-weakening bones, as her mind began to drift, the Scholar made her choice.

She would not let him take her love. So, as her hearing began to fade, as her heart began to give out from the emerald energy scorching through her cells, she thought not of her lover, of the Executor who had caused this madness. No, she thought of her children, her sons and daughters. As her muscles finally failed to keep her upright, as she tumbled lifeless to the ground in that cold, heartless room, those watching were greeted by a defiant smile stretched across her soft, Void-scarred face.

The Scholar’s children would soon know the endless extent of her devotion.

Yet, it seems her legacy was just as undying, for the Orokin would once again toy with fate. Of course, tampering with what’s written never works out in the meddler’s favor, does it?

Margulis awakens once more, confusion racing through her mind. Why isn’t she alone? Why can’t she feel the agony that should be overtaking her every thought?

‘What’s going on? Where am I?’

[glorianaregali]

I Have Her Face, I Know Her Soul is about a first born daughter coping with the death of her mother, and how that wound of rage and resentment festers and blossoms into something terrible.

TW! There is graphic scene of childbirth, and pregnancy is a theme throughout. There is a brief scene of attempted infanticide but no child is harmed. More abstractly, allusions to grief and the strange ways people cope with it. Tread carefully.

On certain days, when the heat made everything shimmery and untouchable, it was easy for Tina to fall into herself, to curl up at the edges and make herself so small that she was a child again. If she sat long enough on her back porch and stared emptily enough at the glittering lake and swaying trees, time turned to glass and shattered, falling away around her. She slipped between then and now in a way that made the hour, the day, anything outside of herself, irrelevant. 

She was here in the present; curled up on the porch swing, drowning in the muggy humidity, but she was there too, sitting on the blistering concrete of the driveway, wielding her chalk and bobbing to her Walkman. All at once she could feel her leg flexing, rocking herself in the shade of her porch, and bouncing to the rolling guitar of an old rock song. The heat seemed to melt everything into a warped wash of shapes and colors that reworked themselves with each lazy blink until the rocking of the swing and humming of insects became something distant and unknown, a future untethered to the Tina scribbling in her driveway and nodding her head to the music humming in her ears, the clacking of the beads in her hair punctuating each beat. 

The weight of them was still a hair too heavy for her head, fresh braids still stinging her scalp as she bobbed her head and shaped out an underwater oasis with her box of chalk. She took her time to draw out each scale of the orange fish and each vein of the lime green seaweed, meticulous and pragmatic in her creation. If one of the neighbors were to have walked by they’d kiss their teeth and say something about how she was definitely her daddy’s daughter. 

“Smart as Ion’t know what.” They’d quip at the sight of a four year old knowing plants have veins and fish have scales. Even as a child, Tina hadn’t thought there was anything extraordinary about the things she did, the things she knew. She pulled leaves from trees and ripped them apart at the seams, and had split grass trimming in half until her fingers turned green. Momma made salmon last week and Tina had sat at the counter watching her arm work in quick strikes to strip off the sequin-looking scales from the fish before she powdered it and put it in the skillet. She saw things and remembered them, that’s all. And Tina didn’t want to be like her Daddy anyhow. Daddy was boring. A business man that carried a leather briefcase and wore starched pants. Kept his hair cropped and beard trimmed. Momma was much more interesting to look at, to be like.

And just the thought summoned her out of the house and Tina thought it must be some instinctual link between their hearts. She’d come out of Momma’s body, she was a part of her, of course she knew when Tina was thinking about her the same way Tina went to Momma just as she’d been about to call her. Mother and daughter, the same woman replicated. Tina hoped she’d be a duplicate of Momma. Not how Mommy was; Aunt Dahlia that lived in one of their spare rooms and raised her right alongside Momma and Daddy. Mommy and Momma had been born together, one coming out right after the other and growing up like two trees grown from the same seed. 

Mommy was a seamstress. Worked as an apprentice at the tailor’s in town and made Tina clothes out of whatever spare fabric she could sneak from work. Mommy wasn’t interesting. Not like Momma. Momma was an artist. She painted and sketched, filled the house with mosaics made from broken bottles and vases cooked in the oven. Her art filled the house and overflowed through the town. It was on the outside of shops and photographed in the newspaper. She even had one of her paintings hung in the museum in the city. Momma was famous and she acted like it. 

Her emergence from the house was preceded by the brim of her floppy sun hat and punctuated with the crack of the screen door. She came clopping down the driveway like a horse, all long legs and the slapping of her wedged sandals, a glass of lemonade poised in her fingers as she came up next to Tina in her cutoffs and tied up shirt. Daddy would’ve shouted about the screen door and her shorts if he was home, saying it was loud and she looked like she was running off to work a corner–whatever that meant–but Daddy wasn’t home and that’s why Tina had been in the driveway in the first place. Had Daddy been home so would his ugly green truck and the bed of it took up any play space Tina could’ve had because Momma had made her studio in the garage. 

Tina didn’t mind the truck so much once Momma showed her why Daddy didn’t use the garage. What would a truck do with all that space? Momma made it better with her paints and pastels, shelves of records and her precious record player that Grandma gave her. So Tina never said a word about never being able to use her chalk on the driveway like the other neighborhood kids. The Michelles and Heathers that sat in their driveways all afternoon while all she could do was lay out in the grass and hope she found a ladybug or a worm to entertain her. 

“Hey, baby bop,” Momma said once she had watched Tina color for a while. She put her ankles together and crouched down until her knees were at her chin, set her lemonade on the ground and picked up a piece of chalk. Tina had thought Momma was gonna help her draw some more fish or maybe a crab, but instead she’d brought the stick of chalk to her mouth and took a chunk out of the flat end with a loud crunch. Tina watched her chew, eyes feeling too wide for her tiny face and she must’ve looked funny because Momma had giggled, gap toothed smile smeared with Crayola blue. 

As if she thought Tina had been perturbed by her lack of sharing, Momma offers Tina the chalk. And because she wanted nothing more than to be just like her Momma down to the strangest quirk, Tina’s little teeth found the grooves her Momma’s left in the chalk right along with a smear of her lipstick and she bit it too. It didn’t taste like much in her mouth, mealy and flavorless in a way that reminded her of cornstarch. It made her tongue feel like cotton as she chewed. She couldn’t pretend to enjoy herself and ended up trying to get rid of the taste by licking the back of her hand, leaving behind a smear of blue like a paint stroke. Momma laughed again and offered Tina her lemonade to wash away the taste. 

“Doesn’t taste so good now, huh?” Momma asked, tongue blue through the space in her teeth. Tina scrunched up her little face like the lemonade was too sour, trying to remember when she’d ever eaten a piece of chalk. She’d licked some playdough once and chewed on a piece of bark after seeing those cowboys in Daddy’s westerns working their teeth over some tobacco, but chalk was something new to her tongue and she said as much. Momma poked her cheek, a wine red nail making a dimple in her brown skin. 

“When I was pregnant with you I was eating anything and everything. You had me chewing on tailor’s chalk and sucking on rocks.” She laughed, settling on her butt with her head tilted towards the sky. The sun cut her face in half, golden lips and chin and dark nose and eyes beneath the shadow of her hat. Her red lips were smiling like it was a fond memory, eating those weird things, and it made Tina think pregnancy must be nice. To have a little person stewing inside your stomach and making you eat rocks. She got in closer to Momma, crawling into her crossed legs and tucking her head under her chin like a cat. Momma held her tight, squeezing her close. Tight enough that Tina imagined she was trying to put her back inside her belly. 

“Did you ever get sick?” Tina asked. 

“I got sick all the time,” Momma answered. Her laugh sounded humorless as her fingers gently played with the beads in Tina’s hair. “But I don’t think it was the chalk or whatever else. Sometimes you just get sick when you’re pregnant. They call it morning sickness but hell if it don’t happen all day.” Tina didn’t point out that Momma swore. Daddy didn’t like it when she did that. Said it made her sound dumb and low class and she already sounded funny enough talking how she did. Momma and Mommy were from the south, down where it was almost always warm and cows walked around like stray cats. 

There was a thick twang to her voice when she talked, it sounded warm and smooth like syrup when she sang as she cleaned the house but Daddy still didn’t like her talking too southern. He’d make a fuss about her calling something the wrong thing; for saying “purdy” when she meant “pretty” or “crick” when she meant “creek.” It made Tina not like her Daddy too much and sometimes she wondered if there was even a lick of him inside her. But how could there be when Momma made her and birthed her and raised her?

And Tina was nothing if not a Momma’s girl so she kept on chewing her chalk even after Momma had gone back inside to start dinner. The whole box was gone by the time Daddy pulled around the corner and her teeth were stained pink and green as she ate dinner by Momma’s side. 

It was a year later when she got to see pregnancy up close. Tina had seen pregnant women before. Mrs. Bishop from down the street had been pregnant not long before Momma was. Her stomach bloated like a beach ball was tucked under her dress, knocking into the handle of her shopping cart when they’d passed her in the grocery store. It didn’t look as fun as Momma made it sound when she was talking about chewing on sand and potting soil. And this time all she seemed to eat was sour foods. Lemons and limes, pickled anything and vinegar straight from the bottle. Mommy said it must’ve been a boy inside her wanting all those sour foods. Sour was for boys and spicy was for girls. Grandma said she had eaten hot peppers and shrimp smothered in chili powder everyday when she’d been pregnant with Mommy and Momma. 

Tina tried to imagine it. Grandma young and round, fingertips red and tongue burning from the spice. It made Tina wonder if Momma had been joking about the baking powder and rocks. Mommy and Momma were spicy girls and Malcolm ended up being a sour boy, so why had she been the flavorless chalk and garden store sand? When Tina had finally gotten around to asking about it, Momma was in the kitchen with Malcolm on her hip and a spoon in her hand, stirring a boiling pot of noodles. Her brother didn’t seem all too happy to be so close to all the heat and steam and Momma was quick to hand him off as soon as Tina got close enough. 

“What’s up, baby?” She asked, shaking some salt into the pot. Tina rearranged Malcolm on her hip, wiping away the sweat beading on his forehead while he fussed at her hand. Babies never seemed to know when someone was trying to help them. She briefly considered flicking him between the eyes to give him something to really fuss about, but then she’d get in trouble, so she settled for wiping her hand on her shorts and asking Momma the question that had been bothering her for almost two years. 

“Why was I flavorless?” Tina asked, shifting Malcolm’s weight as he squirmed restlessly in her arms, tiny fingers reaching for one of her braids. Momma hummed like she didn’t hear her, too busy glancing through the window to see if Daddy and his ugly truck were rumbling down the street. 

“Malcolm was sour. You and Mommy were spicy. Why didn’t I get a flavor?” Momma looked back at the pasta then put the spoon down. She stared into the steaming pot for a few moments longer until the hot air brought tears to her eyes and sweat to her brow. Momma dabbed away the moisture before turning to answer. 

“I always thought it was because you were supposed to be twins.” Momma said, voice sounding thin and watery. “Boys are sour and girls are spicy, so I always thought wanting flavorless things meant I was having a boy and a girl and y’all were blocking each other out.” She went back to stirring the pasta once it started hissing as water bubbled over the edge. 

“But I don’t know for sure. The doctors never said nothing about twins but sometimes it felt like there were supposed to be two of you. I even picked out two names. Y’all were gonna be Christina and Nathaniel. Tiana if I had two girls. Malcolm if I had two boys.” Malcolm gurgled at that, making little noises in Tina’s ear like he agreed with Momma. But Tina didn’t like that. She barely liked Malcolm. She didn’t like the thought of having to share Momma. She was her Momma’s first baby and Tina got it in her head that she was the only child Momma needed. 

Sometimes she wished Mommy would move out and take Malcolm with her. But some deeper part of her knew that was a selfish thought. Selfish to think that she was the only one deserving of her Momma’s love when they both came from the same place. How could Malcolm really be less than Tina herself when Momma made them both? But even still, when Momma told her they’d be having another sibling soon Tina immediately wrote them off as irrelevant, too. 

She was the oldest. She was the most important. Tina had something that the others would never have. She’d had time alone with Momma. Five whole years to herself. A small eternity in which the only person that seemed to matter to Momma was her. These new babies would only be important until they could take care of themselves. Once they didn’t need Momma to do everything for them she’d refocus, and Tina waited patiently for that day to come. The new baby was only a minor setback. A few more years added to her wait time, but Tina didn’t complain. 

Momma’s new pregnancy had hit her hard. More vomiting up dinner and breakfast and lunch and anything else she tried to snack on. And she didn’t want chili peppers or vinegar, she wanted sugar by the fistful. Any time Tina had free was spent tending to Malcolm or running to the corner store to buy up their supplies of Skittles and gummy bears. Momma ate so much candy that in her fifth month she started complaining that her teeth felt loose. Every part of her body ached and ailed. Her teeth hurt, her legs hurt, even her eyes were sore. 

Tina began her metamorphosis into her Momma long before she’d expected to. With Mommy and Daddy off at work most of the time it fell to her to take care of Malcolm when she wasn’t in school. He started clinging to her, too afraid to go near the bloated, sweating mess that was his mother. Not when her discomfort started to get the best of her and she was lashing out at anyone that came close to her without a peace offering of cookies or beignets. 

Once Momma had sent Tina running in town with a handful of crumpled bills. She’d been heaving and sweating like an overworked horse by the time she reached the bakery doorstep just as the streetlights were flickering on. Her little hand had left a smear on the glass door when she pushed it open, but the owner had been charitable to her. Sitting through all her panting and wheezing as she tried to explain why she’d come tearing through their door five minutes to close begging for some beignets if they had any, anything soft and sweet would’ve done if they didn’t. The owner, a soft looking French woman with a thick accent, had told her to sit for a moment while she got the beignets and something for Tina to drink. She made her suck down two cups of water before sending her off with instructions to be careful walking back, but their neighborhood wasn’t a place that got scary at night, not like the city did. 

She could hear the news anchors going on about murder and mayhem happening just a short drive away to where the buildings were all at least twenty stories high and you had to take a bus to get anywhere of importance. In comparison, the little suburbia Daddy had moved them into when Tina was still inside her Momma was hardly anywhere dangerous. The orange glow of the streetlights had been enough shelter for her as she walked from Main Street back to their house. But by the time Tina knocked and peeked her head into her parent’s room the pastries were only lukewarm and Momma had thrown a fit. 

She tossed the bag at Tina and it burst against her little chest in a flurry of powdered sugar. It had been the first and only time Momma had ever gotten real mad at her and Tina had stood there sniffling and sweating, spots of white powder on her shirt as Momma yell at her for taking too long, and then louder when she offered to put the ones that had survived being tossed around during her fit in the microwave. She’d raged over those little pastries so hard that she winded herself and waved Tina away with a halfheart wheeze as she began the process of rolling over to get comfortable on her side.

Momma didn’t really leave bed after that night. She just sat propped up on her mountain of pillows eating and crying and fussing over nothing. Mostly her stomach that looked distended to the point of pain the closer she got to the end. Momma’s skin had always been lighter than Tina’s. Light enough to just make out the blue rivers of veins beneath the surface. They stood out like spiderwebs next to the ribbony texture of her stretch marks and the rough line of her scar where Malcolm had come out of. The only reason she left bed was whenever the baby settled up against her bladder and she had to shuffle to the bathroom or risk soiling the sheets. She hardly bathed and Daddy was starting to complain that she wouldn’t be as pretty once the baby was out of her. 

He complained to Mommy in hushed tones while they were watching TV and Tina was supposed to be doing her chores. She’d stare out the dark window from up on her stool, elbow deep in sudsy water, and listen to Daddy talk bad about her Momma until she couldn’t stand it anymore and turned on the radio. He’d sit up on the couch and lament the fact that Momma would probably lose some teeth and her figure after baby number three. He didn’t like looking at Momma anymore, and hardly went into their room. Instead, when Tina would get out of bed to get a drink in the middle of the night she’d shuffle past the living room and find him sprawled across the couch with the TV still droning on. Even Mommy avoided Momma when she could help it, throwing herself into housework and child rearing in Momma’s place. Anything to keep away from the beast in the bedroom at the end of the hall. 

And after everything was said and done, all that pain and suffering hadn’t amounted to anything. There was no catharsis. No great revival to punctuate the end of such a grueling pregnancy. When the time came, Michael ended up taking everything Momma had, like a proper parasite. Sucking her dry and coming out in his own time. He’d wanted out earlier than expected and had come bursting out of Momma, dragging half of her out with him. 

No amount of time could scrub clean the image of her little brother tearing through her Momma as she sagged into the bloodied bedsheets, too tired, too weak to scream as Michael took souvenirs to remember his time spent inside her. Baby number three meant the whole process happened faster and Momma had been used to the phantom contractions. After all, Michael hadn’t been due for another month and all her babies had been born on the dot. But of course the youngest wasn’t about to be upstaged. Momma had spent most of the day rubbing her belly and complaining about those elusive cramps and Michael kicking at her ribs. She’d called Tina over to feel her little brother throwing a fit inside her belly. 

She’d humored Momma, putting her little hand on the stretched skin of her stomach, waiting for that weird fluttering feeling of a hand or foot brushing underneath her palm. It had been a gentle nudge in the afternoon, nothing to raise alarm. But Momma had started shouting in the middle of the night, waking up the whole house. Malcolm was crying and Daddy was phoning the hospital while Mommy tried her best to see what happened. At first, Tina thought Momma had wet the bed again when she saw the damp spot spread out underneath her, but it was quickly followed by a few watery spots of blood. 

Michael came early and with vigor and in the end Momma was dead by the time the red lights came flashing through the windows. Her body cracked open and spilled across the floral printed sheets. The men in the uniforms reminded Tina of her Daddy. Starched and impersonal as they took her Momma away and left the mess for her and Mommy to clean up. Malcolm hadn’t been there to see what happened. Mommy put on a movie and parked him on the couch when Momma’s shouting rattled the house awake and Tina put him back in his room before the paramedics could wheel Momma, zipped up in a body bag, downstairs. He didn’t ask about the blood on her clothes or tears in her eyes. No he was too preoccupied with what bedtime story Tina was going to read him and as she read him Goodnight Moon Tina wondered if the two year old would wake up in the morning and think Dahlia was gone and Momma was still around. 

She mulled over the thought once Malcolm had started snoring, nose stuffed up from his allergies, and still as she washed what was left of her Momma down the drain. Her blood had gone cold and tacky where it smeared across Tina’s fingers. She scrubbed them methodically, like she was in the kitchen washing dishes. The meticulousness kept her mind off the thought that the beast that tore her Momma open. He would never know what Momma looked like in person. Never know the little differences between Dahlia and Delilah. Would never see how Momma’s gapped teeth were straight but Mommy’s were crooked. Never notice the little scar on Momma’s chin from where she’d fallen off her bike as a kid. He’d taken what he needed from her and abandoned the rest to rot. 

His selfishness took everything. Tore the beating heart from the house. Everything had fallen into disarray when Momma had been confined to her bed and now it would never be shifted back to normal. Everyone had to pretend that nothing was wrong. Had to care for him like he wasn’t a little murderer. Tina wanted to leave him out for the wolves like they did in the fantasy books she read in the back of the library. Leave the unwanted baby in the woods to be dealt with by nature. She hadn’t been so vitriolic with Malcolm. At least with him there’d been the promise that Momma would refocus eventually. That the attention would shift back to her once Malcolm could look after himself. But Michael was quick to snatch that rug out from under her. 

Coming out scream and shouting like he was the one bleeding out in his bed. It only took one time for Tina to be left alone with Michael after he got out of the NICU for Mommy to start keeping them away from each other, like Tina was a caged lion and he was an innocent gazelle. It would’ve been better if they were because lions didn’t have to answer for their crimes against weaker animals but Tina had to explain what she’d meant to do with Michael and the full bathtub. She’d said she wasn’t going to do anything when Mommy asked and she’d meant it. She was going to put Michael in the tub and then do nothing. A pseudo baptism that would send him straight to the pearly gates. 

The thought had formed so clearly in her head. The claw foot tub and the squirming body of her infant brother. The way he’d try to wail even with no air to fill his lungs. She’d read somewhere that babies could survive underwater longer than adults and brought a book and her radio to pass the time as she waited for her brother to drown. There’d been no remorse, no doubt, as she’d knelt on the faded bath mat, holding the baby over the lukewarm water. He was lucky Mommy stopped her or she would’ve had her vengeance. But then she thought better of it in the time she was grounded. 

The blood would’ve so plainly been on her hands and she couldn’t guarantee that Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t send her away. And drowning would’ve been so impersonal and come much too soon. She wanted her brother to feel it if she was going to kill him, to be able to know what it meant to be alive to feel the visceral fear that surely comes in the face of death. A baby doesn’t know it’s alive anymore than a tree does. So she waited. The distance Mommy put between the two of them had given her time to plan. Years to formulate how to repay the crimes he committed against her and her Momma. 

Daddy didn’t want any sort of revenge. Truthfully, he didn’t want anything to do with Michael. For as much as he’d bemoaned what had become of his beautiful wife in the throes of pregnancy he still loved her, or so he said. It was hard to tell with men like Daddy. He had a pretty wife and beautiful babies but he never seemed to care for any of them all that much. Work was his true love and he seemed to only come home so he could miss it. The man left sometime early in Tina’s planning. It had come a few years after Momma’s death. 

Tina was twelve and trauma tended to add a few years to your age. She understood what Daddy was saying and why he was saying it when the storm had finally come tearing through the Woods household. Momma was the glue keeping everything together. Mommy–Dahlia–tried but she’d always be a poor substitute. Even when Tina could hear Mommy and Daddy in Mommy’s room across the hall moaning and groaning like they were sobbing and laughing at the same time and that quick smacking like they were hitting each other in between the mourning and celebrating. 

Mommy was spare parts. The second twin that came up beside her sister–behind her–always standing in Momma’s shadow. Because some nameless seamstress couldn’t hold a candle to a woman like Momma, to the gorgeous artist that did that mural in the park or had painted a portrait of the mayor when he came to visit from the city. Plain, unremarkable Dahlia was the one that should’ve died if Daddy had his say. He couldn’t love Mommy because as much as the wrapping paper was the same the present was different. 

Daddy hadn’t chosen Mommy, he’d settled for her when his real prize was sealed into a box and put away in the ground. And his anger over her inferiority festered over the years. Anyone with eyes could see it. The nosy neighbors frowning and lamenting about Mommy’s poor treatment, Tina herself as she watched Momma’s ghost drift through the house trying to fill up her sister’s space, even the man that came to fix the TV that one time seemed to stiffen at the pressure Daddy brought into any room he entered. Those years had been calm before the storm and when it finally hit it was devastating. 

His finger pointed at Tina first. A little over a decade old, just starting middle school and still a weird mishmash of the hands that raised her. There were pieces of Daddy still tucked inside her, his fingerprints stamped into the clay of her skin even as he said she shouldn’t have been born. She was a mistake in her father’s eyes, always had been. An accident that wasn’t dealt with in a discreet doctor’s office and a girl to add salt to the wound. She’d made him a married man, tied him down and straightened his laces. The way Daddy saw it, he wasn’t done living but Tina might as well have come out of her Momma with a gun in her hand to kill him herself. 

When he started all his hollering she let herself get angry, let the flames of unattended anger, a deep loathing honed by years of neglect, well up to burn him. Her father stood there like an angry bull, sweat beaded at his hairline and spit dabbled in his beard as she tried her best to burn him to the ground. 

“I didn’t ask to be born.” He knew that as well as she did. Though Tina would like to imagine her soul in some ethereal, incorporeal form, drifting through her Momma’s dreams and asking to be brought into the world as her child. Chalk and all. It hadn’t been her that killed Momma anyhow. No reason to yell at her when Michael was the one that turned Momma into pulp on his way out. Daddy is a raging storm but she’s an immovable shelter, foundations unshaken by his presence. 

“Momma wanted me,” He needed to be reminded and Tina could almost hear Momma’s voice ringing through her own. I want it, that should be enough, Momma used to say when Daddy questioned her. She wanted it and she didn’t have to explain herself to nobody. Tina watched him catch fire, the anger rushing out of him as she turned the knife of Momma’s death that was still stabbed deep in his chest. They were all hurting. He had no right to make it out like Tina was the one at fault. If she had to suffer his wrath, he could suffer hers. 

“Momma wanted me and she wanted you. Blame me all you want, but you could’ve left.” That was the child in her, still young, unaware of the unseen bonds that tie people together even when they’re far apart. Daddy would’ve never gotten over Momma. He needed her more than she needed him, and as Daddy stared at her from across the living room the look on his face, drawn in and haggard, said that he knew it too. Momma was a storm. A roll of thunder and a flash of lightning, bombastic and untouchable. He caught her and there was nothing in the world that was gonna make him let her go. 

Even after her death he still held on. Held on to the sun-faded magazines that Momma never got to finish, pages missing parts from where she cut them up in preparation for a new collage. They cluttered the coffee table next to the sketch Momma had only half started. She was sewn into every stitch of the house and Daddy must’ve lost his mind seeing evidence of her presence for so many years and yet not being able to find her in anything besides a poor copy. 

That night he emptied the house of any evidence he’d existed, packed his clothes and nicknacks into that ugly green truck, and drove off into the night. Tina had watched from the driveway as the rusted truck disappeared around the corner and when she went back in the house she let the screen door slam behind her. 

He’d chosen to run from his grief, hide from it like it wasn’t something sewn into the very fabric of his soul. But Tina could never run. She couldn’t even leave that house. Not completely, not when, if she sniffed hard enough, she could still smell Momma’s perfume in her bedroom mixed with the salted iron tang of her blood. Dahlia hadn’t thrown out the sheets. Instead she’d dried them on the clothesline after the men in uniforms had cleared away the macabre mess Michael had made of her Momma. The bloodied floral sheets fluttered like a flag of surrender as the sun rose over the backyard. She’d taken them down after breakfast and folded them into an old hat box to be shoved to the back of the closet with the rest of Momma’s clothes and she and Daddy had flipped the mattress to hide the rest of the evidence like murderers cleaning the scene of a crime. Sometimes when the house was empty, Tina would do something forbidden. She’d sneak into her parents’ abandoned bedroom. 

With the house empty and the room deserted there was no one to see her enter. Years ago she would’ve knocked or suffered a tongue lashing but the dead and disappeared don’t require privacy, so Tina simply waltzed in the same way she would her own room. The stale air still carried hints of her mother as she went through her abandoned clothes, tried them on and posed in the mirror like the models Momma sketched. Looking for her mother in her reflection. She was there. In the curl of her hair and length of her lashes, the shape of her nose and the pout of her lips. If Momma and Dahlia were twins, Tina was their triplet. Her body was still soft with youth, Momma’s clothes sagging off her developing body. Tina liked to think of that future when she’d be full and pretty like Momma had been, like Dahlia still was. She’d wear the same cutoff shorts and cropped t-shirts as Momma and the same tight dresses and high heels too. Those clothes weren’t so special but Momma’s oversized clothes that only got used when she was having a baby looked sacred as they hung on hangers and sat in drawers next to the empty space left by Daddy’s abandonment. 

Tina only tried those on when she was feeling particularly far away from her Momma. She’d chew on her chalk and spoonfuls of cornstarch and rub her hand over her flat belly as if she expected something to poke her back like the Virgin Mary. Tina would twist and turn in front of the vanity cluttered with photos Momma took of herself and her two babies and imagine she was having a daughter that would look just like her, just like Momma. She’d repay the labor of Momma carrying her inside her. She’d suffer the morning sickness and bouts of anger and sadness, moan through the aching back and enjoy the strange cravings her little alien brought along. She’d remake her Momma and bring her back into the world as her own daughter. 

Or so she thought until she dug a little too far back and found the forgotten hat box and saw the last of Momma’s life smeared across the blooming roses. She hadn’t forgotten. She’d been there holding Momma’s hand when Michael came bursting out of her. But it was easy to separate him from her and Malcolm. They’d been easy. Safe. Momma had been fine with babies until Michael came along and ruined everything. But that night was easy to repress once Tina stopped thinking about it. It became Momma is dead not this is how Momma died. She cared less about the cause and more the effect that lived in Michael, but seeing those bloody sheets brought it all back like she picked off a scab. That night Tina dreamt of being pregnant as she often did but instead of a baby looking just like the pictures in Grandma’s photo albums, she birthed a disgusting pale monstrosity, head long and eyeless just like an alien. 

The nightmare had woken her with a start and the wetness between her legs made her pull her sleep shirt up her thighs like there was a monster waiting between her legs. Tina had been hoping that she’d been so scared she wet the bed. At twelve she shouldn’t be peeing herself but she knew how to do laundry and could easily hide the evidence. But instead of pee she found blood, dripping from the place babies come from. She watched the puddle between her legs get bigger, terrified to move and wake the beast that might be coiled inside her, cramping her stomach and tearing up her insides. 

When the gnawing in her stomach finally waned she dared to creep into Dahlia’s room, asking what was happening to her as blood dripped in piddling ribbons down her legs. Dahlia told her how to get stains out of sheets and underwear with peroxide and explained what periods were in the first place. School had neglected to tell her but now she knew. It made children all the more appealing after knowing she’d have to suffer this inconvenience every month that she wasn’t filled with one, a sort of cosmic revenge from all the children she refused to take into her body. Each month gave her a painful reminder of the promise she’d made to her mother’s reincarnation. But Momma would have to wait. There were things Tina needed to do first. 

Namely, deal with her murderer. Michael hadn’t done anything to offend since his violent arrival but Tina was inclined to believe that such first impressions shouldn’t be forgotten and some offenses can’t be forgiven. So she lived with her Momma’s murderer. Changing his diaper and feeding him once Dahlia decided Tina had gotten past that first hiccup with the bath, sitting across from him at dinner and walking him to the bus stop. She acted as any sister would, being nurturing when she felt so inclined and cruel when the sardonic haze of adolescence set in. Malcolm she still tried to treat nicely. He didn’t know it but they were a team. There was a binary divide in the house; the before and after, those who knew Momma and the one that didn’t. 

Michael was ignorant to what he’d lost, unfettered by any feelings of remorse or wonder towards what could’ve been. He didn’t know a world where the Woods children weren’t raised by Dahlia, didn’t remember a world where their Daddy was around either. He was unmoored in the same way Tina couldn’t imagine. Floating out to sea, untethered to the shore. He called Dahlia “Auntie,” and doesn’t remember that Daddy had a beauty mark under his right eye the same as he does. Momma would’ve loved to kiss it, to leave a heart shaped stain of her lipstick high on his cheek the same way she did with Daddy’s. 

Truly, everything about Michael was other and yet he acted as if they were all the same. As if there wasn’t an ocean’s breadth between him and his older siblings. Tina found it mildly amusing that Michael still went through the motions of pantomiming what a younger sibling should be. Tina remembers the time he’d fallen off his bike and skinned his arm. He’d come wailing up the sidewalk, bike abandoned where he’d fallen, crying for Tina to make it better. Strangely, Tina hadn’t taken any pleasure in his suffering. She didn’t feel the same acrid rush of anxiety that prickles like a thousand needles from her scalp to her feet, the constricting of her lungs and jumping of her heart that she did when Malcolm got hurt. In those moments she felt like Momma had possessed her, filling every corner of her body in a panic as she reached from wherever she was–waiting and watching–to take care of her baby. 

With Michael it was the same empty diligence she felt when she did her chores. She wiped away the blood and dirt like scraping scraps into the trash, dabbed the stark pink patches of stripped skin with peroxide like bleach on a stain, and smoothed on the bandaids like making her bed. Michael hadn’t been able to tell the difference, hadn’t been able to see the emptiness behind her brown eyes when he asked her to kiss him better. And when she washed his blood off her hands once he’d gone back to play she’d felt no satisfaction. 

It seemed like the universe was set on torturing her with glimpse of her brother’s suffering. As he grew he became more reckless, having no regard for the body Momma suffered to give him. He scraped up his skin and broke his bones, then went back for more. Dahlia said he was like Daddy but by the time she brought it up the man was only the wisp of a few memories in the back of her mind. She’d wiped clean any trace of him from herself, scrubbed away his influence until she was left nearly blank aside from Momma and Dahlia. She hated that the older she got the farther her Momma seemed. Her face started shifting in her memories, her voice morphing. Tina was slowly losing the only thing she held close to her heart and it made her angry and she liked it. Anger was familiar, she’d been angry for so many years. At Daddy for leaving, at Dahlia for never being enough and betraying Momma’s memory by pretending she was, at Malcolm for tainting the few years she had with her Momma, but especially at Michael. 

Every new scar, every trip to the hospital made Tina bitter in a way that was palatable. But it seemed she was exceedingly good at hiding it by the way Michael seemed to gravitate towards her, always looking for his older sister’s approval. Malcolm wasn’t nearly as desperate for her attention and perhaps it’s because he knew that she held him in higher regard. She never told Malcom but she suspected he might hold a small fraction of the animosity that she did towards Michael. And he didn’t try to hide it. Michael had figured out sometime when he turned ten that Malcolm didn’t particularly like him. Perhaps he felt obligated to love him in that way estranged families tend to, but Tina knew that Michael annoyed Malcolm even back then.  Perhaps it was just a part of being siblings but Tina couldn’t tell. When it came to Malcolm her feelings switched between maternal and tolerant and for Michael it was a dial that ranged from annoyance to blinding rage depending on her mood, but she tried to keep it bottled up. It wasn’t healthy but the alternative of letting go and moving forward in peace was wholly unappealing. Her grief was a bottomless maw, swallowing her whole and she’s fallen through the stages, never passing beyond anger or depression. 

His presence was like a perpetual thorn in her side, a wound that refused to heal. It festered and throbbed and she started finding ways to stay away as long as possible. She loitered at school, milling around the library and circling the back fields until a teacher asked if she’d be interested in swimming. Truthfully she wasn’t. She swam in the creek that ran behind their street until she was too tall. Malcolm used to join her, little fingers bringing her turtles and frogs as she sat with her ankles in the water. Michael never liked the creek. Never liked deep water. She could imagine why. It made her like swimming. Knowing Michael cringed and clung to Dahlia every time they came to watch her compete. But really she liked the feeling of being in the water. In the summer when the water was warm, Tina could imagine this is what it had felt like being inside Momma. The weightlessness, the muted silence. She could hear her own heartbeat as she held her breath and shut her eyes. It soothed her, pouring water over the embers of her anger. But it could only last for as long as she was in the water. It always came back like a pyre lit beneath her feet, rising until she was consumed. 

She couldn’t forgive and the gory scene of her mother broken and bloody in her bed was impossible to forget, so she held tight to her hatred, refusing to let go for even a moment. Tina held onto everything. Even when she left, first for college and then for good, she carried everything with her. 

It somehow trapped and freed her all at once as she lived abiding by her singular desire to give the ghost of her Momma a new body to possess. Tina couldn’t see her clearly in her mind’s eye by then, the years gone by making Momma’s face a faded wash of abstract shapes pinned in place only by the broadest strokes; her gapped teeth, her long lashes. She knew Momma looked like Dahlia but those subtle differences slipped through her fingers. She couldn’t remember the exact shade of Momma’s brown skin or which side of her chin bore the childhood scar. Not without looking at her picture. She’d stolen many of them when she moved out. Most of the photo albums in that house were half full or only showed her and Malcolm as babies, then toddlers. Momma had been the one that liked photography, liked the art of it and the cataloging of her babies getting older. 

Photos of Michael were few and far between. Dahlia wasn’t sentimental that way, especially not after being saddled with motherhood when she herself hadn’t birthed any of them. Tina imagined that being with Daddy, loving him, had made it easier before he left. But once he did, she slowly fell out of love with her niece and nephews, with life itself. Just like everyone else that raised her, Dahlia turned into a wraith haunting Tina’s memories. She forgot that her aunt was still alive, still tangible between the walls of her childhood home. Tina had fled long ago, looking for her Momma everywhere she went. She studied and graduated, did all the things she was meant to do in between, but never forgot her Momma. She was like a dark figure looming in her periphery. Waiting and wanting, scorning Tina for taking so long. So she settled. 

The way Momma talked, Tina knew she adored her boring father and he’d loved her Momma in his own way. But Tina wasn’t about to wait around to fall in love. She didn’t need to be in love to make a baby, and surely didn’t need whoever she chose to stick around. Her Daddy had decided to stay, then, when he grew weary, he decided to leave. Tina didn’t want her baby, her Delilah, going through that. She had long since decided that whoever she chose would either be there until the end or not at all. And in her junior year of college she’d finally decided on a man she figured she could spend the rest of her life with. He wasn’t strikingly handsome or eclectically interesting in the way mousy men are in movies, but he was a person she could talk to for hours without a thread of annoyance lacing through her thoughts.

Tina spent most of her life pretending, playing at being what everyone expected her to be. A caring older sister, a doting mix between a niece and daughter. The teachers expected her to swim, so she swam. Dahlia expected her to use her good grades to make something of herself, so she went to college. A confectious institution that taught her that cooking wasn’t love, it was science. A careful balance of ingredients. Tina didn’t much care for the superficiality of it. In those big chrome and marble kitchens there was no one next to her to peel her oranges and hold the spoon while she tasted. It was a lonely, bitter kind of career despite the cloying veneer of sugar that clung to the roof of her mouth at the end of every day. It wasn’t until she met Nate that she realized life could just exist in its softer, less focused form. 

She wasn’t madly in love but that was for the better. Love was what made Michael and she didn’t want to damn herself to that fate, not when her whole life has been dedicated to righting that wrong. His name helped, too. For the first few months of companionship Tina thought he was a Nathan. She hadn’t met any Nathaniels in her life. He was the first and she supposed that was the sign she’d been waiting her whole life for, the bloody red string of fate she’d been following. It faded to a less vivid shade when it appeared in her hands. One, then two pink stripes declaring her body occupied. The shape of her stomach hadn’t flinched, skin still pulled taut against her muscles, but Tina knew that would change soon as Delilah took shape inside her. The red string was nearing its end, but the line that inevitably led back to Michael. 

He’d gone and hurt himself something fierce this time, got so broke up he needed a wheelchair and the house Daddy left with Dahlia wasn’t equipped to handle any of that. All the bedrooms were on the second floor, as was the full bathroom. The only accommodation Dahlia could offer was a plywood slab over the steep steps and a futon squished underneath the window of the living room. So of course her aunt called Tina to cajole her into taking Michael off her hands. 

“You’ve got your big house now, and he needs the space. Let him stay with you, Tee, please. There ain’t nothing for him here no more.” Her aunt had said. As if there’d ever been something for him. She’d sounded drained and distraught, each word steeped in exhaustion. Tina said she’d think about it and asked Nate what she should do. 

“You want him here?” He knew very little about her family and what small knowledge he had was given with an air of loveless detachment. 

“No.” Tina had decided since the moment Michael was born that she didn’t want him here. Not in her house, not on this earth, nowhere in existence, heaven or hell. But the more she thought about it, letting the thought of passing him in the hall and eating dinner at the same table again festered in her head, the more she decided she did want him here. 

The coals of her rage had begun to simmer down in the years separated from him. She truly hadn’t been home since graduating high school. Even for holidays and summer breaks there was nothing for her to go back to. A husk of a house standing like a tomb in the middle of the street. All that was left in that house were ghosts and the reaper that killed them. Malcolm had escaped that purgatory a few years after her and it left Dahlia trapped with her sister’s murderer and now, Tina was sure, her aunt wanted him gone. And the fruits of her labors were ripening just in time, Momma quickening inside her as she mulled over the thought of taking in the stray. Because Michael was never truly part of the family, more like a back alley mutt that followed someone home. Tina wondered if he’d bite because Tina sure did. His death was a mercy. Like taking him out back with the shotgun. It wouldn’t be in cold blood, either. No, Tina’s blood was so hot it was nearly evaporating from her veins with how livid his mere existence made her. This was just, this was righteous. 

When Michael arrived at her doorstep, ferried from the airport by Nate, Tina was struck with how absolutely foreign her little brother looked. She hadn’t seen him in the flesh since she was on the cusp of her twenties and desperate to flee the crypt her childhood home had become. He’d still been a child, eleven or maybe twelve and only coming up to her ribs, but he was grown now and Tina was struck by all the years she’d wasted letting him get so big. She couldn’t gauge his exact height with him in his wheelchair but Tina imagined he stood a full head above her. 

“Thanks for letting me stay with y’all. I think Auntie’s had enough of me.” He smiled and it made his face look more alien. If Tina looked like Momma and Malcolm looked a bit like Daddy, Michael looked like neither. His face was unknown to her, genes from some ancestors she didn’t know cropping up in his face in ways they hadn’t when he was younger. Aside from Daddy’s beauty mark there was nothing familiar. After they exchanged an awkward, stooped over hug, she’d taken several steps away and motioned towards the guest room down the hall from the living room. Tina felt Momma stir in the pit of her stomach as she watched him wheel towards the room, that burning sensation curling in her gut as if to disown this man that clearly wasn’t her son. 

How could he be? Tina thought to herself. How could anyone like him belong to her Momma? It’s why Tina loathed him so much. There wasn’t a single drop of her Momma in him. There was more Dahlia than anyone else and even that was wrong. It was the warped, imperfect version of Momma as best as Dahlia could mimic and Tina figured her aunt had simply gotten tired of pretending. She’d grown up pretending, acting and following after Momma, and Tina couldn’t blame her for finally tiring of it. She deserved a rest and Michael deserved his reckoning after the charade everyone had been living through since he’d come screaming into the world. She’d be done with it soon. 

It had taken her all of six minutes to decide that she couldn’t go on with him living. Everything was slipping into place. She had Nathaniel and her baby–her Delilah–and Michael was just there dirtying the water with the blood on his hands. He ate Nate’s handmade pasta and asked what made pink sauce pink. To his credit, Nate had the patience to deal with Michael. He hadn’t been worn down by years steeped in resentment. But it had come back to her. One of the dining room chairs was pushed against the wall to make space for Michael’s wheelchair. He took up the space next to Tina like he always had, elbow knocking against hers as the left-handed boy ate his pasta and pink sauce. 

She listened with feigned interest as he recounted the years she’d missed, oohing and ahhing like she cared about his first girlfriend or his SAT scores, about the scholarship that had to get postponed on account of his back injury. He’d just graduated and Dahlia was likely looking forward to sending him off to whatever university he’d gotten accepted to only for those plans to spoil because Michael couldn’t be careful to save his life. When he’d finally started yawning over the cheesecake Tina made and went trailing off to his room, she had let her mask slip away. Nate, knowing her better than anyone else, was smart enough to keep quiet until Tina had been ready to talk and he kept his questions blunt. He was curious and Tina couldn’t begrudge him that. 

“Why is he here?” He’d finally asked into the stillness of their bedroom. She’d shifted onto her side to face him and found him already looking at her in the darkness. His dark brown eyes looked like endless voids in the absence of light. He looked vacant and empty, a shell next to the vessel of her own body, and looking back that’s probably why she’d told him the truth. In that moment he hadn’t looked like he could get angry at her or be shocked and appalled by what she wanted to do. He looked ready to receive whatever she gave, to be filled with her same anger until he was so full of it that it seeped out of the dark pools of his eyes. 

“He killed my Momma,” she whispered, as if speaking the truth of her death too loud would upset the spirit still lingering inside her. “I can’t ever forgive him for that.” 

Nate had blinked a few times, taking his time to mull over what she said. For a moment she considered the terrible place she’d put him in. Here she was sunk deep in this dark pit that had consumed her life since the day Momma died, and she was holding her hand out, begging him to join her. She tried to control her face as he watched her watching him. A twitch of her brow or twinge of her lip and he’d have known that in that moment she’d been terrified. Here was the only person she dared let close and she was given him the choice to push her away. After a few paralyzing moments of silence he finally spoke.  

“You want to kill him?” He didn’t yell. It wasn’t an accusation. Just a simple question as if she’d told him something mundane. 

“Just him.” She said it like it was something reassuring. Tina wasn’t a violent woman, didn’t want the world to burn and people to hurt. But Michael had hurt people. Momma, Daddy, her, Malcolm, Dahlia. He’d done more hurting than Tina planned to do to him and in the cocoon of their duvet Tina had silently begged Nate to understand. He’d found her hand under the covers and brought it up to his lips, pressing a soft kiss to the ring he’d put on her finger. It was the only answer he’d offered her but it had been enough. The kiss told her he understood and he wouldn’t abandon her no matter what she planned to do. In that brief instant they were Christina and Nathaniel just like Momma said. His hands trailed across her body like he was mapping out her skin for the first time having finally stripped away the facade she shrouded herself in. She let him. All at once overwhelmed and comforted by his acceptance, his love. When they’d finished, skin sticky with sweat and room feeling too stuffy, Tina dared to think she could love him someday. 

In the weeks after that first night, as the end of spring turned to a sweltering summer, Tina did her best to look unassuming in the eyes of her brother. Not scared or demure–she wasn’t some trembling waif sent skittering at the sight of a tightening jaw or flexing hand–but innocent in a way that wouldn’t give Michael any misgivings. She was his sister, his oldest sibling. The faint discoloration of the childhood scar on his arm was a testament to that. She’d been the one to patch him up when he was hurt. Why would she have gone through the trouble of mending something she wanted to be broken beyond repair? And to her credit, Michael acclimated quickly. It should’ve comforted her to see him so at ease as he went through the slow stages of healing. To know that she was the spider and he the hapless fly tangled in her perfect web.

And when her time came, she struck. 

“I thought you would’ve been gone by now.” She said when she found Michael in the living room. It was his birthday, the anniversary of Momma’s death, and he was up and moving around on his own again. “I figured you’d be out celebrating.” 

“Not much to do.” He shrugged like today wasn’t important. Another year living in the body he tore out of Momma’s and he couldn’t find it in himself to look the least bit grateful. He looked at ease bathed in the bluish light of the TV, sunlight softened to a faint glow behind the drawn curtains. It was dark and they were both wearing black. Tina tilted her head, tasting hot iron in her mouth as she bit her tongue against saying anything she shouldn’t. She swallowed down the words and asked why he hadn’t found something to do on his special day. 

“I still don’t know anyone out here.” Still, like he was planning on staying for a while. “I wouldn’t have anyone to go out with. I’ll just hang out with you instead.” He smiled like he couldn’t think of anything he’d rather be doing. 

Tina shifted on her feet, pretending to think about it. In truth, she’d hoped he’d be here. Nate had purposefully been giving him things to do around the house. Dusting away spiderwebs that were too high for them to reach, building that new bookshelf for Tina’s office, and pulling weeds in the garden. Menial tasks that would take up the day and keep him from leaving even if he wanted to. Michael hadn’t seemed to notice. He’d smiled and sipped the lemonade Tina brought him between odd jobs, saying he was glad to help. And she’d smiled back and told him she was glad to have him.

“Wanna make a cake?” She asked like the thought had just occurred to her. Michael was on his feet so quick that she almost forgot he’d been in a wheelchair some odd months ago. There was something frustratingly resilient about Michael. He’d get hurt and go back for more. It was almost unsettling how easily he bounced back up after an injury, like a perennial shaking off the frost of winter every spring. 

“Sure, but you’re gonna have to show me how.” His excitement reminded her of how close they’d been as children. By proximity rather than emotion. Her a star and him a planet, perpetually caught in her gravity. Tina remembered how he’d run to her from the bus stop, tearing down the street like someone was after him. He’d crash into her and she always hated that. His gangly body would hit her like a sack of potatoes, knocking the wind out of her. He’d rest his chin on her stomach and smile up at her like she hung each star in the sky and she hated it. It was how she imagined she’d looked at Momma and he’d taken that light out of her eyes. But he’d just grin and ask if Tina could help him make a paper airplane like he’d seen at school. And she would. 

Michael got to the kitchen before her, taking up space with his wide shoulders and big smile. Tina could tell it would be a pain cooking with him in her way, just the same as it was when they were younger. Michael was always underfoot, whining and straining to see the counter so he could catch a glimpse at what Tina was doing. Like a dog whining for boiling water just because there was a pot on the stove. He was still just as overzealous, crowding Tina against the counters and in the fridge like a shadow trying to smother her as she gathered the eggs and vanilla. She hadn’t been sure of what type of cake to make until Michael proved to be too much of a nuisance breathing down her neck. 

She was used to working alone and he didn’t make for the best assistant. Though he seemed happy enough to get sent out back to pick some berries from the garden. He came back in with a bucketful of strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and yew berries. Tina had nearly forgotten them among the edible things she grew. Red berries that looked frosted like sea glass. They’re ornamental, grown because she has memories of visiting her grandma and seeing thick bushes of them growing in her front yard. A commemorative sort of ornamental plant seeing as they’re too toxic for consumption. But Michael didn’t seem to know that, and why would he? It wasn’t his garden. 

Tina kept on with her baking. Sifting and measuring, whipping the cream and piping out dollops of meringue. She sends Michael to wash the berries in water and white vinegar, busying herself with a phone call to a vendor to feign preoccupation as she lays down the layers of cake, mixing berries into the whipped cream. The sun had set by the time she let Michael dust on some powdered sugar, hiding the berries beneath a downy layer of white. He was eager to taste but Tina made him wait, smiling wide enough to hurt her cheeks as she rustled up a candle and lighter. Eighteen years had culminated in this moment and she made her own wish as he blew out the candle. She caught sight of herself in the reflection of the knife and she sees Momma staring back at her as she cuts Michael a slice of cake. When he asked if she wanted a piece Tina gave him a plausible excuse. 

“It’s too sweet,” she said, jutting out her bottom lip like she was upset she couldn’t have any, running a hand over her pronounced baby bump. Michael had heard her say that enough since he moved in. Her Delilah was true to form; a spicy girl. Ironic considering Tina’s profession, but she was glad for it. Michael had been sweet and isn’t that what started this whole disaster that they were still healing from so many years later? She was happy to numb her tongue on the spiciest fried chicken and too much chili powder, food so spicy the taste of it devolved to something undefined, just hot. It settled her cravings in a way no piece of cake could. Even if she’d been the one to make it. Michael didn’t seem offended, if anything he looked happier to know he’d have the cake to himself. Chewing through one slice and then another before he declared he’d save the rest for later. Tina put it in a glass dish as if it were a display. And here is the weapon with which I killed my brother. The spongy confection that avenged my mother. 

Tina wasn’t so sure about what happened once you ate yew berries but she knew death was soon to follow. Big and gluttonous as he was, Michael had eaten more than she expected. Tina had it in her mind that she might have to coerce him into eating a bit more, just to be sure his fate was sealed, but he’d gone and done it all on his own. The method of his death wasn’t something Tina had given any deep thought to. In her dreams it was horrid and bloody, like what he’d done to Momma. All viscera and inneards. But instead it was something soft and sweet, working through his body gentle as snowfall. Tina almost wished she hadn’t waited. An accident would’ve been easier to frame when he wasn’t up and able bodied, but the opportunity presenting itself on his birthday was almost like an ordained miracle. 

“I’m going out on the lake.” Tina said once she finished straightening up the kitchen. Their little neighborhood had a lake sitting in the basin sloping down from their backyard and it was still hot enough that the breeze off the water wouldn’t give her too much of a chill. Still she grabbed a faded afghan off the back of the couch as she slipped towards the back porch. Michael looked a bit hazy, eyes glassy and rimmed red like he was about to start crying. Tina wrapped herself in the crochet blanket, dipping her nose into the yarn to hide a budding smile. He looked sick, chest heaving a bit too heavy for the few steps he’d staggered towards her. 

“Can I come too?” She recognized that thin, watery tone. It was the same way he used to come stumbling into her room, muted light of the hall tracing out the shape of his little silhouette as he trembled in his nightshirt and asked to sleep in Tina’s bed. He wanted comfort and while Tina had meant to leave him to wallow in his death alone, she decided she’d like to watch him break down and dissipate, watch the light bleed out of his eyes. 

“Come on,” she said, trying to sound annoyed to hide her excitement. Everything had fallen so easily into place today. As if this was what was always meant to happen. Fate was a thread and they were all just tangled in it. Tina went slow down the grassy incline, hand on the small of her back as she listened to Michael lumbering close behind. He was sniffling by then, almost keeled over and Tina asked if he was alright. He nodded, offered an uncertain smile, and said he might take one of his pills when they got back to the house. 

The little rowboat was waiting for them on the gravely shore, tied up to a rusted hook so it wouldn’t drift off come high tide. Filled with random bits and bobs. A box of sparklers, a rust speckled bucket, a tool box filled with Nate’s lures and tackle. They dragged it out until they were knee deep in the warm water. One hand on Tina’s back, one hand on Michael’s stomach as they pulled. He climbed in the boat first, arms stiff and face pinched as he rowed them out to the middle of the lake. This far from the heart of the city, the sky was a deep shade of blue and dotted with pearlescent stars. It went dark for a moment as they passed beneath the bridge merging the two shores, the old wood creaking overhead. It made Michael shiver and Tina tried to contain her delight as he squirmed in his seat, rocking the boat in the otherwise still water. Even after so long he was still afraid of the water. How scared he must’ve been to be left alone that he braved the water to stay close to her. 

She fished in her pocket for the lighter she’d used on for the birthday candle, scooping up the damp box of sparklers to see if any would light. Two went to waste before she got one to burst to life and she handed it to Michael and said, “Birthday boy first.” His hand was fisted in his shirt as he curled in on himself, hunched around the crackling light like it was his only tether to the world. 

“I don’t feel good,” he sputtered between gasping breaths before lurching to the edge of the boat. The sparkler leapt from his hand, flame hissing and dying as it met the water. Michael was so far over the edge that he nearly kissed the water as he lost his stomach in the water. A motley spew of berries and cream settled in a film over the rippling water, smelling like briny sugar and tart as he shakily sat up, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand like a child. 

“You ate too much,” Tina cooed, patting his shoulder and letting her fingers stray towards his throat, feeling the erratic beat of his heart. It’s been almost an hour since he ate the berries and Tina decides he’ll probably only need an hour more to expire. She let her own sparkler burn down to her fingers, sparks glancing off her skin before she dipped it in the brackish water and tossed it to the floor of the little boat. Tina briefly considered giving Michael a nudge as he hung his head low over the edge of the boat, knocking him into the water to flail and flounder until he sank but thought better of it. How curious to find him poisoned and drowned, as if she were trying to hide the evidence. Instead she took up the oars and rowed them back to the pebbled shore, wrapping her blanket over his trembling shoulders as she led him back up to the house. It’s another small miracle that he’d taken up residence on the ground floor so there’s no need to lug him up the stairs. 

Instead Tina deposited him on his bed with instructions to take a bath to help with his fever. She texted Nate that Michael was sick and she was worried and her husband answered with just as much concern despite them both knowing Tina didn’t care if Michael lived or died. Soon she’d call an ambulance and hope it took them just long enough that there wouldn’t be anything they could do. She remembers the red lights, the sirens screaming after the deed was already done. A banshee that came too late to the tragedy. They were late for Momma and Tina hoped they’d be too late for Michael. She went to check on him balancing trays of ice and medicine in her arms. Tina messaged Nate that she gave Michael medicine and waited eagerly for him to spit it up, water staining pink minutes later as Michael wretched up her offering of assistance. She gave him some water and took her time hovering over the green button before calling the ambulance. 

“Michael, you have to calm down.” She said it knowing he wasn’t listening. His panic was making her sick in a way that was usually reserved for when Malcolm caught a stomach bug. She was diligent about caring for him, could feel Momma guiding her hand as she dabbed away his sweat and spoon fed him medicine. Watching Michael cough more than he spoke, dry heaving into the bath water, pooled like acid in her stomach. Made her mouth taste sour and her hands go clammy. Her stomach twisted painfully, like she might be sick herself as she wiped his face. Tina couldn’t tell if his eyes were wet from water, sweat, or tears, but there was fear in them. Suddenly he wasn’t built to break. Michael’s body was betraying him by refusing to mend just this once and Tina couldn’t do anything to stop it. She’d had her chance and this is what she chose. Too late to fix it now. Michael looked more like a child than he had in years. That same baby she held squirming and screaming over the bathtub full of water. 

“It hurts.” He whimpered, lip trembling and nose snotting. It was more than Momma had gotten to say and she held onto that scrap of anger. She remembered the silence. That first shattering scream followed by piddling whimpers until Momma went quiet. She comforted him the same as she’d done for Momma, in a haze of confusion. Held his hand as they waited for help to come. It did, eventually, but not in enough time. By the time Tina heard the sirens shrieking through the quiet night, Michael was gone. His last moments were spent trying to force the air to stay in his lungs, coughing and clawing as the breath seeped from his chest. In the end, he hadn’t even had the time to close his eyes. They stared up at the fluorescence overhead, pupils wide and unfocused as his tears began to dry. 

Tina kissed his cheek when the people in uniforms came to take him, right on Daddy’s beauty mark. They tried to comfort her, asking questions about what had happened as his sodden body was zipped into a bag. She’d been here before. Even as something strange stabbed in her stomach, she dealt with them. Tina answered all their questions, told them the last thing he ate so the nice paramedic lady could take a slice of her cake for the lab. They poured out of the house as quickly as they came, leaving Tina alone in her victory. 

She expected to feel some great triumph at this great weight being lifted but, truly, she felt like an empty vase. Like something was meant to be inside, but it wasn’t anymore. Nate found her standing in the living room where the paramedics left her, blindly staring at whatever Michael had been watching. She wasn’t crying but she wasn’t smiling either. It was like she’d dried up, leaving a hollow husk behind. When Nate asked if she was okay she meant to say yes, but instead all that welled up in her throat was a sob. Loud and wailing, so strong it knocked her to her knees. 

The pain in her stomach got worse. Like something moved, pulling and tearing until she fell to her elbows and screamed. It felt like some gnawing beast was trying to break free of her. A cramping pain seized her and she clamped her hands over her mouth to silence her wailing. Nate startled to her side and laid her flat on her back. 

Tina felt strange and untethered like every strand of her soul had been snipped and she was floating in some place of emptiness. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. She’d expected some sort of bodily elation at Michael’s death. She’d righted the wrong, exchanged his soul for Momma’s and yet the air had gone silent. She couldn’t hear Momma’s voice around her anymore, couldn’t feel her stirring inside her belly. The only thing she felt was a deep, clawing pain and she wondered if somehow she’d done wrong. In killing Michael had Tina smothered the last piece of her Momma with her own hands? 

Pinpricks of heat tore through the chill of the air conditioning as she clawed at her stomach, trying to pull out whatever was biting at her from the inside. It felt feral and angry. A monster was trying to chew its way out of the prison of her body, and suddenly she didn’t want the feeling to leave. Hadn’t this been the same pain that brought Michael into the world? Tina curled around herself, pulling her knees to her chest to keep the feeling from escaping. Bile rose in her throat, burning behind her nose as she tried to cling to the shreds of her Momma leaking out of her body. She wasn’t supposed to go. Momma wasn’t supposed to leave. She wasn’t ever supposed to leave. 

The silence got louder. Momma was missing and Tina wondered if she’d ever find her again. 

Tina had begun to flail the same as Michael had in those last moments, clawing ribbons of skin from his throat as he tried to breathe. Her heels dug into the floor as her legs kicked against the couch, bruising herself as she waited for the deep pain to pass. Nate sat with her, holding her hand as she struggled through the feeling of being torn open and emptied. Tina tried to hear Momma’s voice but the only sounds were her own. The raw, stricken wails for her Momma to come back. Tina had done what she promised she would. She’d killed Michael. Killed the killer. But snuffing a fire doesn’t bring back what was burned. Momma was gone. Even if she’d been lingering before, she was gone now. Completely and utterly. 

Tina warred through the night, fighting against the inevitable stillness. Soon the sun blushed through the curtains, birds chirping to greet it, and Tina felt something leave her as she laid there in the pink light. It felt wrong, small and undefined in a way her Momma hadn’t ever been. But maybe that was all that was left of her now. So many memories were warped and lost through the years and all Tina had left was this unknowable nothingness in the shape of her Momma. Tina had carried her Momma with her for so long that she started to chip and fade, leaving only a small fragment behind. And whatever had left would never come back. Momma was gone. Michael was gone. 

When she finally sat up, Tina felt weak as a sapling tree, like the slightest breeze could bend her. The doubt was an acidic coil in her chest, weaving tight around her until she couldn’t bear to stand on her shaking legs. She breathed hard as tears clouded her vision. It was grief, she recognized. The same horrible feeling she’d felt when Momma died. That night had filled her with a burning rage that refused to leave. Now it leaked from her in a tepid flow. There’d be no rebirth, no reunion. Her and Momma had been like two ships passing in the night. Elusive and distanced, a memory more than anything. The string between their hearts, the threads twining their souls, snapped at last. And it felt like breaking. Splintering then shattering like the empty vase she was. 

Tina felt untethered, less whole, without her anger to guide her. Everything was too quiet without Momma. She’d grown so used to those phantom stirrings and gentle whispers inside her that she knew it must’ve been her Momma’s voice. It was gone now and being without it made her feel weightless. Like she was in that warm water again, floating weightlessly on warm waves. It hardly felt soothing. If anything, letting go felt strange. 

She hadn’t been ready to let go but she could feel it all slipping between her fingers the harder she tried to grasp at the last shreds of what could’ve been. Perhaps she would’ve never been ready to let go. Michael could’ve lived his whole life keeping the flame lit inside her. But she’d snuffed him out and spurned herself in turn. 

Tina didn’t feel the peace she’d expected. She felt frantic, like something was missing and she’d never find it again. She’d have to find something to fill the space or live around the emptiness. She had to let go. There was nothing left to hold on to. She’d dig her nails into her palms trying to hold on to the nothingness. Slowly, she forced the shriveled remains of herself to unfold, releasing the grasping tension. It felt like unwinding a knot wrought in iron, but slowly she unraveled. It took days, weeks, it might take the rest of her life. But by the time the taste of metallic wrath and acidic grief was more subdued on her tongue, she started having peculiar cravings for something sour. Of lemon meringue pie drizzled with vinegar, and pickles dipped in dark chocolate. And when Tina touched her belly, heavy with child and rumbling with cravings, she imagined a baby boy inside her. An abstract face that shifted between recognizable and unknowable, with a little mole under his right eye.  

[simplegenius042]

Betrayal, Mistake and Monster for Silva 😊 Please !

Jumping straight to the angstiest of angsts I see. Into the devastating life of Silva we go!

Also this kind of becomes like rambling because I'm very invested in my stuff. Also it's long... so read if you want, take breaks if you must.

TW: Mentions of child abuse (in all forms), a really fascist and shitty society, massacre, death, grooming (in all forms) and cult stuff. Father Adam Omar is officially his own warning. It gets kind of dark sometimes but thankfully not in the FULLEST of details. Continue below:

betrayal: Has your OC ever been betrayed by someone they thought they could trust? Has your OC ever betrayed someone who trusted them?

On the receiving end of betrayal there's only been two major ones and two minor ones. It's not in entirely detail and is slightly a summary since there's a lot more to this.

I make no subtlety in the fact that Silva and Elsa's father, Adam Omar, is an abhorrent individual who deserves to die. He is a danger to his current children, the predecessors he sired before them, and literally everyone else. Anyone who was not under his cult and dictatorship could have looked at Adam and the society he lead and immediately notice the red flags surrounding him. With that said, Silva had been born in the Congregation of Adam's Guard, so what would be deplorable and unacceptable to us was the norm to Silva and Elsa growing up. Adam was Silva's primary caretaker and the one person (barely) keeping her alive and healthy, even if it was clear that he despised her and favored Elsa. The problem was, Adam's delusions and extreme control freak nature often lead him away from his intended purpose for Silva (his plan to groom her into the "Judas" who would be the embodiment of sin and activate the Collapse vs his sick desire to groom her into the role to be his "Eve" and/or kill her for existing... neither great options), so he gave very mixed signals on how much he "cared" for Silva. His constant swings from disdainful neglect and abuse to pride, compliments and reward caused Silva to both crave for his touch and love but also to fear it. But despite his malicious intentions, Silva was caught in his narrative that he did care for her but her "sins" made it difficult, and only he could "fix" her. Silva trusted her father... what child wouldn't? Even though Adam's betrayal had come years before (nearly killing her as an infant, nearly drowning her during her first (of many) baptisms, his neglect and abuse, his grooming, forcing her to witness graphic violence, etc), the most significant events that made Silva realise she had been betrayed by Adam came in three parts; first, at the age of ten, she noticing Adam's (age 52) attention shift from her to Elsa (age 9) and overhearing his plan to get rid of her, second discovering the pile of bodies of her half-siblings (or as he called them, Silva and Elsa's failed predecessors) upon been thrown down into the cellar to be killed later, and lastly, at the age of 18 during the Tumultite Massacre, confronting Adam (age 60) in his palace seeking answers for why she didn't love her as a parent should (as Paul had shown her a parent should), he made it clear that, in the grand scheme of the Lord's plan, while Elsa and her predecessors were merely a means to an end that he could tolerate, Silva herself meant absolutely nothing to him but a constant reminder of failure that fueled his justification to be a raging, bigoted and hate-filled asshole towards her all the while blaming her for not being what he wanted (both as his "Judas" and his "Eve")[<- NOTE: This entire sentence is merely an abridged summary of what he meant and had said to Silva, Adam himself would never admit any wrongdoing nor call himself anything insulting to his self-perceived character]. Then he proceeded to chase her down in an attempt to kill her once again. Thankfully Silva, Elsa (age 17) and Persephone (a week or two old) managed to get to a boat and got away from the Archipelagos and the Congregation.

That was one major betrayal Silva had to deal with and one that still haunts her. The second major betrayal was with her adoptive father, Paul Yellowjack. Five years after escaping the Tumultite Massacre and making residence in Hope County with her sister and daughter (though the former only gets to spend the first two years with them before dying in an accident at age 19 or 20 haven't decided), Paul (age 51) visits Silva (age 23) at her residence, five years after she thought he died during the massacre that pretty much wiped out their entire community (with the exception of Kamski and Ezekiel, who survived but Silva wouldn't know that until she encounters Kamski later that year and Ezekiel during the New Dawn Arc). Despite the warm reunion, he insists for her and Persephone (age 5) to join his cult (the Apostles of Zachariah) which she refutes, because the Congregation was traumatizing and Eden's Gate has been harassing her over her late-sister's floristry. Paul initially accepted this and swiftly left... then later the next day ambushed her with the rest of the Heralds of the Orchestrator, kidnapping Persephone, and forcing Silva to go on a six-month travel across the globe hunting down these heralds looking for her daughter. So for context... Paul went a little mad after the massacre and joined a cult whose whole premise was "the individual cannot grow nor live without suffering and must be traumatised to better adapt" (plus a whole bunch of other ideals). The ultimate betrayal comes when (eventually) Silva corners Paul with Kamski's (age 55) help, though Paul (out of a combination of feeling betrayed himself, a punishing retribution to avenge his fallen adopted children, pure spite for ruining his operations and slight envy towards his granddaughter) had murdered Persephone right in front of Silva (something that would shake and reshape Silva's character drastically and lead to Paul's own life-long self-loathing and regret for his selfish actions). Paul pays this betrayal with his life upon the final month (though as you will learn in the New Dawn arc, this only ends Paul on the material plane, and grants him a doorway to a supernatural state...)

The minor betrayals Silva experiences come from Eden's Gate (a hostile takeover is not taken well by Silva, especially if the one/s committing it are pretending they aren't in any wrong) and Denise Lapis (unfortunate forced wife to Captain of the Enforcers, Oscar Lapis, who had been taken in by the Tumultites after finding her near death, though she betrays them by tipping off the Enforcers to the planned rescue mission for Elsa. Though Silva was (justifiably) mad about this at the time, especially when it gave the Enforcers an opportunity to surprise her community with a massacre that killed her lover, Persephone's mother and Kamski's daughter, Irene Neon, five to eight years later after having to reflect upon her life, Silva understood Denise was as much as a victim as she was and only did what she did out of fear, rationalizing that, had she still been under Adam's thumb and in Denise's position, she would have probably done the same thing).

Now, Silva herself betraying is only very minor, and from the (questionable) perspective of others and herself. Adam would obviously think Silva to have done this to him, even when he tried to set her up as this to the Tumultites (which failed), but from Paul's perspective, this may be the case, especially during the six-months she hunted down Paul and the Apostles, but eventually years later he realises this to be false and that he was definitely at fault for his own actions. But for Silva herself, thanks to her survivor's guilt and self-blame, she believes that if she is unable to help another community overcome an oppressive force who is way too similar to the Congregation for her to even be able to disassociate the two, if she fails in saving more lives than she could in the massacre, or worse, gives in and joins Eden's Gate (which to her, regardless if they're morally better than Adam's Guard will ever be, will never provide a safety and belonging that she wants to have with the residents of Hope County), she feels then that she would be betraying the values of Jannah's Principles, tarnished the memory of the community who gave her freedom and an opportunity to live a normal life (at the cost of their own) and breaking another promise to her loved ones, leaving their sacrifices in vain. There's also the part in which in Silva's Hope, she has a moral crisis over whether or not to keep John, who she had spared and kept as a prisoner in her bunker, alive as an opportunity to end the Reaping at the potential cost of her friends and new community's trust in her for withholding the fact she didn't kill John despite all he had done, or to kill him to legitimize the lie as truthful and keep her friends at the cost of her own morals of killing a defenseless and imprisoned enemy who she actually started to view more positively and with more sympathy and friendliness (especially after Joseph's broadcasted eulogy, something that both reaffirms her belief that Joseph is a fraudulent prophet and the Collapse truly did happen in the Archipelagos in the form of the Tumultite Massacre, and also something that sours her view on Joseph even more and actually allows her to humanize John by recognizing herself in him). There's her eventual reoccurring meetings with Faith, which is a whole other can of worms that has some people (like Tracey, Jess and Virgil) pissed at her (in Silva's defense... she tried to be manipulative to give the Resistance an advantage... but it somehow turned from vibing-tolerance trying to get the other to crack a mask and gain any information that contributes to their respective factions into bickering enemy-friends who might sabotage their factions behind their leaders back just to help the other out once or twice into some kind of amalgamation of a messy friendship that leans on borderline romantic situationship but both parties don't know how to admit they like each other nor do they think they can so they just suffer in yearning thinking if they make the first move they'll ruin whatever comfortable relationship this is... among other things).

...Moving on.

mistake: What's the worst mistake your OC ever made? What led to them making it? Have they been able to fix it? How have they moved on?

I'd say there is two major mistakes Silva makes in her life.

First and foremost is not killing Adam Omar when she had the chance. She had him at gunpoint and he may be a 7'1 sixty-year-old giant built like brick empire states building, but he was still a man who could die from a gunshot (when the Voice's charm wasn't protecting him that is). It's the facts that Silva was a) hesitant to kill her father, even when he should be on an offender watchlist (preferably past tense) and b) she's eighteen and wanted answers to just why he is the way he is/did what he did/hated her from the very beginning despite being faithful and subservient (not a good thing). Unfortunately Adam is a self-righteous and victim-blaming dick so he said a breaking speech (that I will not post here) which was complete BS and gaslighted Silva into losing confidence enough to give him an opening but with still enough determined will to have the rationality to get away from him. She managed to fix that mistake with the Apostles and Paul (but is unsuccessful due to unforeseen events out of her control) and is trying to do the same with Joseph and Eden's Gate. Though, spoilers, she might be able to confront Adam once more in the main story... a day Adam will be determined to ruin. Her entire story is trying to move on but being unable to.

Second major mistake, in her POV, was not joining Paul and the Apostles, especially if it meant Persephone got to live. She knew the cult was wrong (slavery, torture, organized crime, chemical warfare, not really good things) but they managed to ingrain rules to follow in the Apostles that Adam's Guard just didn't care about. Like no sexual violation to the body or mind, everyone is equal and valuable, and kids are off limits (the last one Silva finds is being bent by the heralds Gaius and Zhan Tiri, the former finding a loophole of what ages define a child and adult in certain countries to put them through death playgrounds that end with a sacrifice and the latter isn't discriminate on who ends up on the receiving end of her poisons) [NOTE: While Paul does kill Persephone, unlike Adam, he feels immense guilt about it and doubles-down on the rule later]. They're evil, but there is standards and a certain nobleness to them (for lack of a better phrase). The only reason she didn't was because it went against her morals to let innocent people be taken from their lives to live one that was miserable and just plain suffering (is it likely Paul would have changed the cult up a bit if it made Silva more open to joining? Zachariah be damned? Perhaps. Though whether or not Silva would have still joined him then is another question with an unknown answer).

monster: Is your OC monstrous in any way? Is there something that makes them monstrous? Are they aware of their own monstrosity? Do they accept it or reject it?

I suppose desensitization to violence and death and the lack of empathy towards her enemies may count, considering she has a very high kill count and over the course of the stories she feels very justified in those deaths. She doesn't actually like it but no one has ever told her (in her very black and white view of the world) that its wrong so she's very aware its apart of her in some way, shape or form. Though this line of thought is muddied by her fight against the Seeds and Eden's Gate (including Nadi and Alexander) which introduces her to the gray in morality, something I'll explain another time. She accepts it at first but ultimately decides to reject it to not be like Paul and the Apostles or her father's Enforcers in the end.

Sorry this was long and not as refined as I would have wanted it to be, but I hope it gave enough insight. I do hope it is as understandable as I could make my ramblings be. Chow!

[llycaons]

I liked immortal days a lot and you can read it for free here as long as you make an account! the chapters are fairly short, and about 250 of them have been released to the general public (you have to pay to unlock the newest ones early). I'd recommend it to anyone who likes action, scifi, comedy, crime/violence, interesting characters and relationships, children who get to be people, and well-written women. lesbians also

for TWs off the top of my head

I'd warn that one of the main plot points revolves around essentially a death cult that encourages suicide, and later abuses and cannibalizes the organs of children (it's attempted suicide since people can't die)

since people can't die - methods of disposal include burying, leaving people to drown endlessly in oceans, and constant incineration

child abuse is a plot point for several of the mini arcs and features in several characters' backstories

human trafficking, child abduction. itgan trafficking

sexual assault and hate crimes (racist and homophobic) are mentioned frequently in one of the arcs, and a character remembers onscreen being molested as a child, though not graphically.

discussions of ptsd, including from ex-military

domestic violence, abusive husbands and mothers

torture, including sexual torture, is referenced as punishment for crimes and the aftermath is seen. this and prev point are mostly in the arc "The Khan"

frequent domestic terrorism via bombing, including attempted bombing of a hospital

another major plot point revolves around drugs that send users into a frenzied cannibalistic state, or make them into something like zombies.

honestly the series is not as gory as it sounds, but it's definitely violent

mass imprisonment of children and unethical medical experimentation is a plot point later in the series

one of the characters is a closeted trans woman and we see her abusive mother deny her identity in a flashback

ummm one of the characters in the main relationship is an extremely manipulative stalker early on and continues to be a huge liar obsessed with the other guy but everyone ends up knowing about it and he faces consequences etc. and I find their dynamic super interesting and well-done. he tortures people also. but basically dw about it portraying toxic behavior as romantic. the author and everyone else knows he's fucked up and it's not a romantic relationship anyway. and I love him I think he's a fabulous character. he is. unhinged as they say

[bellafragolina]

TWs for suicidal behavior, suicide jokes, character death, war, child abuse and a pedophile.

Nope! Bungou Stray Dogs is not a movie about actual dogs... but now I'm curious about the movie you're thinking of.

I will mention that BSD is a seinen, not a shounen - so there is darker subject matter (all listed above) and more graphic violence. There is a pedophillic reoccurring character and while the manga doesn't show how far he goes, he still creepy when he's on screen and he openly admits to what he is.

To explain the name of the series, bungou means "literary" or "of literature". Most of the cast is named after real-world authors and have a power based on one of their counterpart's publications. The "stray dog" part is because... most of the cast is orphaned as the story takes place just 14 years after the end of a fictional war (most of the characters are 18-22). It's very much meant to invoke a sense of lonlieness, a desperation for love, meaning, purpose and both ugly and raw survival.

The story follows 18 year old Atsushi Nakajima, somewhat recently evicted from the orphange he grew up in, alone and starving on the streets of Yokohama, Japan. After saving a man from drowning in the river (revealed to be a suicide attempt but it's played for laughs), Atsushi is offered to interview for a position within the Armed Detective Agency, or ADA for short.

There's the ongoing manga, several accompanying light novels and a spin-off manga where Atsushi and Akutagawa (villian turned rival) have reversed roles. The 5th season of the anime aired last year and there's a movie, too.

Giraffe off anon

oooooh

i've been told i was thinking of the Isle of Dogs, or some similar title

but that sounds super interesting! i might give it a watch when i have the time. i've got lots of new media to look into now, and i'm excited! once school lets out for break, i'll be really able to watch some stuff, but until then, i'm keeping a list!

thank you for the explanation! it sounds super cool and i'm looking forward to watching it!!

[meltotheany]

hi friends! how are you doing? i hope well! april was a really good reading month for me in terms of quantity! but quality? oh friends, we were in the trenches a little bit at the start of the month, i wont lie lol! i gave my first one star rating in years (truly years) and i still can’t believe! but we also ended the month with one of the best books i’ve read in years, so maybe we did have some balance. or maybe the book gods felt bad for me, so they gave me a boon before may reading began! but okay, let’s get into the range of the ten books that i was able to read this month! ✨ ✨ Slaying the Vampire Conqueror by Carissa Broadbent ⭐⭐ 1.0) The Serpent and the Wings of Night ★★★★ 1.5) Six Scorched Roses ★★★★ 2) The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King ★★★★ i have been loving this series so very much, and after finishing the ashes & the star-cursed king i immediately wanted more, therefore i picked this up also assuming it would be a banger like the rest of this series. oh friends, i am experiencing heartbreak as i type this mini review. i believe that this in-between story, set in this world at a different time period, was to help us learn more about the goddesses, in particular nyaxia and (view spoiler) arachessen. yet, that’s all it really did for me because i just could not get into this story, these characters, their romance, their dynamics with other characters, or anything really. this was ultimately just such a let down for me, but i will still be picking up the songbird & the heart of stone come fall! content warnings mentioned in author’s note at beginning of this book: violence, war, drug addiction. violence against children, explicit sexual situations additional trigger + content warnings i wrote down while reading: loss of a loved one, loss of a friend, cult depiction, colonization, drowning, grief, murder, death, a lot of blood depictions, captivity, body control powers, drugging, talk of the subject of rape, power imbalance dynamics / child abuse, slavery mention, extreme drug withdrawal, talk of animal death, graphic detailed mentions of eating animals ✨ Funny Story by Emily Henry ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley “To me, libraries have always represented the best of humanity. The way we all share knowledge and space, and… and how we find ways to look after each other. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s powerful.” this book is, ironically enough, a story about one person trying to convince another person to build a home and life in a sleepy little michigan city. but let me not forget to type that these two people’s lives have crossed because both of their significant others have decided to leave them for each other! and our main character, after being dumped the morning after her fiance’s bachelor party, has nowhere to go because she picked up her life and moved it to where she thought she would finally set up roots. so she moves in with her ex’s new girlfriend’s ex (this feels so hard to type out lol), and each chapter starts with a countdown of how many days until a fundraiser at her work, at a local library, happens and then she will be able to leave. but maybe she can actually still set up those roots after the fundraiser, but in an even healthy and happier way (filled with some good healing along the way). ❤️ full breakdown review with tw/cws HERE ✨ Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson ⭐⭐ even though i did not love this, i think i have finally recognized that i’m just not this type of horror reader. i love anything speculative, anything paranormal, but actual murders/slasher-like stories? they just don’t work for me, they have never worked for me, and this one also did not work for me. and if a sapphic cottagecore one didn’t work for me, i fear just none ever will. so i really implore you to look at other reviews if this book sounds good to you – here are some of my faves: gabby, genesee, cassidy but yeah! sapphic, cottagecore, two girls meeting at a farmers market, but somethin...

[ink-beneath-her-fingernails]

reach your hand through the everglass (the boat to nowhere gets there fast)

read it on ao3   |   masterlist

Fandom: Hades (video game)

TWs: major character death (canon-typical), graphic depictions of violence, mentions of unhealthy parent-child relationships. please let me know if there are any other warnings that should be added.

Wordcount: 1,748

Originally Published: January 27, 2023

Summary: here is what they do not tell you: running through every level of hell, being reborn in a river of your own blood, experiencing every thousands of ways to die, failing and failing and failing and yet persisting—you will change.

here is what you are scared to ask yourself: how much?

Notes: whoops i thought too much about this game!! idek what the title on this one is. originally it was "persist in the fathomless depths" bc i couldn't find any of the dialogue that inspired this story in the first place, and none of the other stuff was jumping out, but then this just. kinda happened. and now i'm attached to it so.

Transfer Notes: n/a

here is what they do not tell you: running through every level of hell, being reborn in a river of your own blood, experiencing every thousands of ways to die, failing and failing and failing and yet persisting—you will change.

here is what you are scared to ask yourself: how much?

*

here is what you learn:

how to die (stabbed through the heart, body seizing, skin frizzing with magical energy, choking on blood and bile and poison, bleeding out in a quiet corner, crushed by falling debris, at the hands of one of your oldest friends),

never to meet your heroes (of any sort; every olympian you've ever talked to is fickle and proud and angry beyond measure; it takes you three meetings to even realize who patroclus is and he is nothing like any story, tired and drowning in sorrow and apathy and having given up in every way; you tell theseus that fighting him would be an honor and he calls you a fiend, a blackguard, and a coward, tells you he will show you no mercy, relishes more in the crowd and glory than anything else above or below the earth),

how to talk to people (you've always been alright at it but you need it now more than ever before—new people, not the ones you've grown up knowing, ones who will talk back and stick around for longer than their sentencing; you talk and you talk and you give and you give and sometimes you take and this you are forced to realize before anything else: everyone here is your ally, and everyone here is your enemy. they are bound to this house just like you are, want you to escape because they never could, want you to fail because it's their job, want you to die because they'd rather swallow you whole and let your ever-lit feet scorch their insides until they learn not to burn than let you leave them.

you learn to toe a fine line, never show too much of your hand at once, look for double meanings, take nothing at face value; line thin smiles with sharp teeth and honeyed words, and you hate it and you hate it and you hate it and—),

people change (sisyphus tends your wounds, gives you spare obols he's picked up on his perpetual path, slips you gemstones of darkness incarnate that make your blood sing, always offers you an ear to listen and a kind set of words. you ask nyx where his pact might be so you can void it, and she asks if you think that is a wise decision. you tell her you don't know, so she sends you to her son. you cannot look sisyphus in the eye when next you meet, taking his gifts sets something roiling in your gut. he has been here for so very long. you cannot even imagine what he was like living, cannot possibly reconcile the crafty king you've been told of with the bashful, friendly man who offers you encouragement on your runs. you still do not know if you should free him. you wish you'd never thought of it.

your father is a shadow over your entire life, you have learned nothing from him except every painful part of the words blood and darkness. he has tried to teach you how to hate and despite all his wishes, you have not let him. (you still love him, you still love him, why do you still love him, how can you still love him?) you have given him the benefit of the doubt at every turn and still he surprises you, still it shocks you to the core of something you didn't know you had to hear him uncertain, to hear him loving, or trying, to hear him attempting to make the right choice in a way that matters differently from the rulings of the universe and politics and mortality.

achilles tells you he tore the world asunder once but will not say how. try as you might, you cannot picture it.

the shades milling outside the stadium in elysium murmur about how, in life, theseus killed the minotaur with his bare hands, and you spend long minutes wondering if you'd misheard, trying to understand when presented with the information for the first time since you'd actually met the pair how that makes any sense, when they're a team, when theseus bargained asterius out of erebus just to fight by his side. they tell you, again and again, that you could never understand the bond they have, and you believe it every time),

how to use each of the infernal arms (that have found their way crawling from the darkness where they were always meant to be forgotten, that fit your palms like they were always meant for you to wield them, that make your hair stand on end and your blood pump and your muscles pulse and the need for something great and terrible and violent to spring forth from you frying the very air you breathe.

you collect bounties, and they're something awful, something old, something you shouldn't be seeing, holding, using—titan blood. each weapon, without fail, reacts when you do. they shiver, and quake, and whisper, and you think you finally know what achilles must've meant when he told you that they'd hunger for it before long.

you carefully pocket a vial of the ancient ichor, and the trembling of aegis brings you pause. its open mouth is gaping, and you wonder, if it had a tongue, would it be licking its chops, and is it just you, or are its fangs longer now than they were before? you feed them eventually, because of course you do, you're running out of options, and you wonder if, in several hundred slices of agony throughout the depths, your forefathers' forefathers can feel it).

here is what you don't: who actually hired skelly? who was he before?

why do the gods of olympus, who all quietly hate each other so, bother to put up with one another for all this time? (is there perhaps more than one reason lord ares has been kept so very busy on earth recently? is it nothing but a desperate hope that he will not have time to turn eyes to their mountaintop, considering?)

why did your mother come here, and why did she leave?

why does the river phlegethon keep flooding?

why, when you are so very frustrated after a ruined escape attempt that ended slowly and painfully, when meg refuses to even talk to you, when everyone at the house has stonewalled every question you've asked in the hours since, and you throw something—was it a pot? a book? a statuette?—across your room in a fit of rage, does the mirror nyx once gifted you shatter like it never, never should? why does nyx not instantly storm in, having felt it?

why don't you feel any different when it does?

(nyx tells you the mirror will make you stronger, and by her grace, it does.)

(so why is it, when you kneel amongst the shards, trying to figure out how you're going to fix your own impulsive stupidity, that it doesn't feel dangerous? it did, before, even when it was whole, when you first used it. now, you handle the pieces, and don't even make an effort to handle them carefully because some part of you knows they would never dream of cutting you open.

when you press them together, the darkness sings, and where it once made you feel small, like prey, maybe, now it is a comfortable hum in your chest, in your heart, in your soul if you were to have one, and you act without thinking, letting the music of the cosmos you should not hear or feel or taste guide your hands without thought, and suddenly you have one larger piece instead of two smaller ones, and one pair less of jagged edges. you keep on, like it's your purpose, because maybe now it is, and shard by shard, edge by edge, you build something, and the darkness sings ever louder with each joining, until you could swear the whole house is shaking in its foundations. eventually, you press an entire, jagged panel into the frame and what's stayed there, and it's like nothing ever happened. slowly, the music fades.

when you ask nyx if she heard the singing later, she just blinks at you, says she's not sure what you mean, and orpheus still hasn't been much for playing lately.

you don't bring it up again.)

*

this is what it seems everyone has forgotten except you: how gods become.

young gods are a rare commodity these days. they always have been.

more often than not, gods come into existence fully formed for their purpose, or nearly there. gods that are created more than born often have it given to them, even.

their powers are not uncovered through a slow process of trial and error, or by accident. rarely are they a surprise.

people tend to forget that it wasn't always this way. people forget that once, the world wasn't split in three, that the infernal arms exist for a reason, that gods can be made as much as they can be born, and sometimes, they can be both. they forget that gods can die, just not forever; forget that there are things older than them that still watch.

but you don't. you can't. you're living in it.

we're gods, boy. killing one another is our lot.

you wonder, then.

you think that maybe that is how divinity is forged—if it is through resentment, and spite, and battles to the death again and again, and running and fighting and learning and falling into places you aren't supposed to and seeing things from beyond your realm.

the darkness sings, and your blood roars in time with it, and you let it, feeling a sort of whole you didn't know was possible.

make things more interesting, indeed, the being that is beyond time and world and reason murmurs when next you meet. a smile curls upon your face, and you wonder when you stopped finding things like that ominous and threatening.

well.

perhaps it was when you started making your life a little more interesting, after all. or, perhaps, it was when life started making you a little more interesting.

it's hard to say, really.

[chillychive]

TW: space death, stranded, mentions of drowning, suffocation, description of suffocation (a little graphic), inconsistent style, hopelessness, not understanding death, playing with bodies.

It had been over a week since fuel ran out. Not that it mattered anyway, the ship wasn’t going anywhere, fuel or no fuel. 

Gem missed the trees. She missed the wild outdoors and the buzzing bees and roaring rivers. It was quiet up here, in the stars. Quiet and cold. 

She tried not to move too much, not to breathe too much. The air processor was running off of hopes and prayers- best not strain it any more than she had to. 

She’d been sitting on the floor for void knows how long. Back to the console, one knee curled to her chest, head tipped back. Every breath frosted the low glass above her. She couldn’t call for help. No one would hear, out this far. 

She was light weeks away from the nearest planet. Her destination was still so much further to go. 

It was oddly peaceful. Drowning would be like this, she thought. For the first few hours, she scrambled, checking food and supplies, trying to stop the fuel leak (it was useless, she couldn’t get outside the ship to patch the hole without a spacesuit, and that was broken too.), desperately calling for help knowing no crafts ever came this way. 

Now Gem was still. She was going to die out here. She knew it. She was so far off any major shipping lanes, any spaceways… her chances of running into another ship where slim to none, now that she’d drifted as far as she had. 

She should have asked Tango to take one last look at the ship before she left spacedock. Maybe then he would have found the crack before it was too late. Maybe then the suit wouldn't have broken. 

She didn’t hope for rescue. She didn’t dwell on the desperation. She just sat there and stared up at the stars and slowed her breath. 

The nebula was thick. Deep swirling purples and shimmers of gold everywhere she looked, like the inside of the kaleidoscope she had as a child. Every so often, a streak of red would whoosh by overhead. 

There were legends of creatures in these nebulas. Mischievous and powerful. Guiding lost travelers home. 

Gem wasn’t sure she believed in those myths. Most space legends were just tales written by bored travelers with too much time on their hands. Space travel could take decades, after all. Right now though… she wanted to believe. If only to keep her restless hands still for another moment. 

Another streak of red rocked the ship. This one was larger than the last, disrupting the calming waves of purple and showers of gold. 

It flickered out of view for a moment, beyond the frame of the cameras, but returned a moment later. It was easy to forget that the panels above her were screens, not windows. Easy, when they were so fast and so detailed. Easy, when the footage was so smooth. 

But after this… she didn’t think she’d forget again. Not as the ship shook again and a crack splintered the screen above her head. For a moment, Gem didn’t move. She was so calm… so still… so peaceful. 

And then the glass started to rain. Gem screamed. 

—

Pearl was so bored. The nebula had been empty for so long. Her brothers were not yet grown, not yet old enough to keep her company. She missed them. 

It had been a while since they died. Grian was always so curious to explore. Jimmy always lacking in self preservation. Martyn, just a little too hungry to create for his own good. She missed those days. The four of them exploring and expanding their nebulous home together, playing between the stars. 

Now they just floated around her, little wisps not yet regrown. It was so boring here in this nebula, all alone. 

That was until the ship arrived. Just a floating hunk of metal. Her brothers were curious, darting around it, exploring every facet. Pearl stayed back at first. She knew of ships. There were whispers of them in the nebula, the dust that radiated out far beyond the dense clouds carrying echoes of ships back with them. 

Massive, violent things, tearing through space, leaving trails in their wake. This one didn’t look all that scary. Martyn seemed to agree, going to investigate before coming back to her. He bumped into her, and though he couldn’t speak yet, she knew he was trying to tell her to come look. 

Grian and Jimmy had gone around to the other side of the ship as she and Martyn approached. She pushed the ship lightly, surprised when it shook under her influence. 

Martyn nudged her again, and she followed him back to where Grian and Jimmy were investigating a hole in the ship. It was spewing particles into their nebula. What was inside? Pouring all those particles? 

The dust said ships sometimes went to planets. The dust said ships sometimes had creatures inside them. Pearl very much wanted to know what was inside this ship. 

She went back to the front again, and the ship started to shake. Was the thing inside afraid of her? 

Pearl remembered a time before the nebula. A time in ships. The memories were fading now, she’d lived in the nebula for so long. But she remembered being afraid, afraid in ships. Afraid of the void, afraid of the vacuum, afraid of the stars and the dust and everything she now loved. 

Pearl pushed on the ship once more, and it started to break apart. She could see the thing inside from here- it looked terrified. 

People- that’s what they were called! The things in ships. 

This people was afraid, curling in on itself. Pearl worked her way through the gap. The people didn’t need to be afraid, the stars were beautiful, it just needed to come outside into the nebula. Then it would see, the void wasn’t so terrifying after all. 

The people moved away quickly, all long and smooth limbs, and turned itself into a ball again. It trembled as Pearl moved closer. Jimmy had followed her in and he went to bump the people. It shrunk away from him. 

The people had fire colored strands on it’s head that billowed in every direction. It started to make strange sounds- gasping. Pearl wrapped it up and began to pull it outside. All it needed was to get into the nebula, then it’d be fine. 

The people tried to fight her, but it was losing strength. And as Pearl held it, she began to learn some things from it, like she learned things from the dust or learned things from her brothers, even though they couldn't talk. 

It’s name was Gem. It was a people, but a human people. There were other kinds of people, but she was a human people. She was also a she, not an it. She didn’t like being an it very much. Pearl would try to stop that. Gem was also very, very afraid. 

Pearl tried to soothe her, like she would her brothers when they ventured too far out and got spooked by the emptiness. Gem didn’t want to go outside, not into the nebula. She wanted to go back to her ship. Pearl didn’t know how to make her understand. The ship wasn’t safe. The nebula would protect her. 

Gem didn’t like that. She was relaxing though, she stopped fighting against Pearl. She was tired. She still trembled, she was still afraid. Human people were so complicated. 

As Gem’s head reached open nebula, she stopped shaking. 

See? Pearl wanted to say. The nebula is good. 

Gem slowly started to change in her hold. The human people Gem was disappearing. Gem was changing into a being she'd never seen before, covered in sharp cold shapes-ice. Changing colors, turning blue.

Pearl'd never seen a blue human people before. To be honest, she hadn't seen that many people before... so this was good! Before Gem, she didn't remember any people. Now, she'd met a human people, and this new blue people!

She hugged the new blue Gem to herself, and now, she could feel- Gem wasn't afraid anymore.

ooo maybe gempearl content perhaps? (both recently updated their boundaries and wlw for the win)

ooh im a sucker for gempearl- dya have a link to the updated boundaries? I didnt see that!

[bambazzle]

LGBT+ Fantasy/Fiction Books and TWs

-In the case that a book on the list is the first of a series, TWs will include warnings for the entire series-

IDNS means “I Do Not Support the Author”- reasons will be listed and linked! if you are interested in this author’s book, try to buy second hand!

I have removed some books that were on here, I know! I removed them specifically for problematic content- this book list was not just books I loved, but books I had yet to read and hoped to love. Books that misrepresent or fetishize our community don’t deserve to be supported and spread even more. I have replaced these books with ones that don’t perpetuate harmful stereotypes, so we can all enjoy our escapes! 

1. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (Trilogy)-

(Fantasy, Witches, Vampires, kind of Harry Potter-y, MLM Romance, TW for suicidal ideation, self-destructiveness, abandonment, foster care, neglect, bullying, major character death, racism, murder and attempted murder, violence, gun violence and relationship issues. It has some heavy topics but is written in a pretty light tone.)

(DNS author: Racism/stereotyping/fetishization of Asian community)

2. Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston-

(MLM “Enemies” to lovers, about the son of the President and the Prince of England getting into a fight, they have to fake a friendship to fix their PR situation, TW for being publicly outed, semi-graphic sex scenes, politically charged discussions, addiction, underage alcohol use, blackmail, parental death (mentioned), homophobia, panic attacks, sexual abuse/harrassment (mentioned), racism, parental neglect )

3. Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller-

(MLM but not explicitly romance, Ancient Greece, demigods, exile, TW for abduction, abandonment, war, violence, ableism, child abuse, death, human sacrifice, human trafficking, murder, plague (mentioned), sexual assault (mentioned), self-harm, slavery, torture)

4. The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic (Trilogy)-

(MLM, very slow burn. Demisexual MC. Mafia mixed with kids with broken homes mixed with a kid who has a dream of being a pro at a fictional sport. The focus is NOT on the relationship, it is the subplot. TW for ableism, verbal and physical abuse, abuse within a psychiatric facility, alcoholism, underage alcohol use, physical assault, sexual assault, conversion therapy (mention), death of an animal, parental death, drug abuse, drug use, drug overdose, drug misrepresentation, violence, gun violence, knife violence, homophobia, hate crime, murder, panic attacks, rehab, self harm, suicide (mentioned), graphic torture, manipulation, police intervention, organized crime/mafia, graphic description of burns. It is a great series but it has heavy content and is not light reading if you go in unprepared.)

5. The House on the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune -

(MLM (WLW side characters), fantasy, found family, heartwarming romance, magical creatures, TW for abuse(mentioned), trauma-related anxiety, bigotry, body shaming, bullying, child abuse (backstory), internalized fatphobia, homophobia, microaggresions, violence, violence against children)

6. Heartstopper by Alice Oseman (Series)-

(MLM, graphic novel, slow burn, coming out, TW for emotionally abusive relationship, anorexia, self harm, suicidal ideation, bullying(mentioned), psychiatric facility, trauma discussion, homophobia)

7. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (Series)-

(MLM, Fantasy, about a secret private school, slow burn, found family, TW for underage alcohol use, drug use, suicide(mentioned), homophobia, domestic abuse, child abuse(mentioned), murder and attempted murder, burglary, car crash, fire related death(non-graphic), kidnapping, terminal illness, sick parent, ritual sacrifice, suicide, violence, gore, gun violence, knife violence, panic attack, PTSD, workplace harrassment)

8. They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera-

(MLM, Bisexual Latino characters, whole story takes place in 24 hours because at about midnight- aka the start of the book- they get a phone call saying they’re going to die, TW for death, animal death, child death, drowning, violence, gang violence, gun violence, homophobia, panic attack, parental suicide, suicidal ideation, sick parent, police intervention, and foster care)

9. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (Series)-

(Queer characters, but no romance in the first book, fantasy, found family, slow burn, TW for graphic depictions of violence, addiction, genocide/fantasy racism, gambling, drug use, withdrawal, ableism, abuse(mentioned), sexual slavery(mentioned/backstory), sexual assault(mentioned/backstory), imprisonment, murder and attempted murder, death, death threats, loss of loved one, prosecution, torture, violence, gore)

10. The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee- 

(MLM Historical Fiction Romance, Travel/Journey, Best Friends to lovers, TW for abuse, homophobia, adoption, alcoholism, breakups, death(mentioned), epilepsy/seizures, prison, robbery)

(DNS author: transphobia/biphobia)

11. In Deeper Waters by FT Lukens-

(MLM, High fantasy, “A young prince must rely on a mysterious stranger to save him when he is kidnapped during his coming of age tour”, TW for kidnapping, violence, abuse, war(mentioned))

12. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (Duology)-

(MLM Latino coming of age story, TW for violence, surgery, transmisogyny, sexism, homophobia, hate crime, PTSD, hospitalization, alcohol use, drug use, animal death, car crash, death(non-graphic))

14. We Contain Multitudes by Sarah Henstra-

(MLM, coming of age, friendship and romance, TW for bullying, homophobia, abuse, underage alcohol use, drug use)

15. Beneath the Citadel by Destiny Soria-

(Asexual/Bisexual representation, fantasy, ragtag team goes on a quest, TW for death, abduction/kidnapping, blackmail, branding, child abuse(mentioned), coma, amnesia, execution, murder, addiction, violence)

16. More Happy than Not by Adam Silvera-

(MLM main character, YA, “it's about a boy who is considering a memory-alteration procedure to forget he's gay because leading a life as a straight teen would probably be way easier for him. It's about science versus nature, friendship, sexuality, and a quest for happiness.” About the happy ending and how even bad moments lead to good. Hopeful but despairing. TW for attempted suicide, suicide, domestic abuse, medical procedure to erase sexuality, internalized homophobia, homophobia, depression)

17. I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver-

(Nonbinary main character, nonbinary muslim side character, romance/love and building a family out of people you care about. About finding your voice. TW for bad coming out, misgendering, transphobia, family rejection/struggle, anxiety(detailed), child abuse, gender dysphoria, homophobia, disownment, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts, suicidal ideation, underage alcohol use)

18. We Are Okay by Nina LaCour-

(WLW, moving out and coming of age, self-discovery and childhood romance, TW for loss of a loved one, depression, loneliness(detailed), chronic illness, death, drowning(mentioned), suicide)

19. The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness-

(Contemporary, about the normal people’s lives while living among Chosen Ones. Family/coming of age/acceptance story. TW for monsters, apocalypse, violence/explosions, death, anorexia, relapse, panic attacks, anxiety attacks, unrequited romance)

20. Lizard Radio by Pat Schmatz-

(Dystopian story about a teenager struggling with their gender identity, TW for abandonment, oppressive government, outlawed homosexuality, hate crime, homophobia, transphobia, violence)