#The responsibility. The guilt. Her book 4 nightmare she has work through.

[hulloitsdani]

I am serving my headcannons on a silver platter. Here’s your meal my good sir. Tonight we are serving the emotional repercussions of neglectful parenting and child soldiers with a side of sleep deprived college grad.

Nah but seriously thank you!! I’m glad you enjoyed!!!

Now I wonder what Kiran’s degree is for 🤔

LMFAOOOO

It's very unclear! But Alfonse's "It's been at least 10 years since Sharena was a child" line is a rough estimate itself. I feel like it could place Sharena anywhere to 18 to 20 when she joined the Order of Heroes (this is just my headcanon though, based on what's typical irl -- there's also a possibility that in Askr, the age you're considered "an adult" is different, but that's also speculation)

But if Sharena was anywhere from 18 to 20 when she joined the Heroes, and granting that a few years have passed to get to Book 4. Maybe 22? 24? At oldest? If every book is a year. Which in that case!

Yeah she could be at this point actually 🤔 Or maybe 26.

And really you can throw any random number at Alfonse like. I kinda hc he's 3 years older than her, if not 4. They do seem close in age, but far enough that Alfonse has always felt more "grown up" to her (possibly by the way he was treated/raised, many possibilities). But going off those numbers, he could be 29 or 30ish current Book, if we're going w Sharena being 26 (makes me wonder if his Brave alt is gonna make him look "more mature"... like his portrait always read as young adult to me, but I wonder if he'll be a little less baby faced.)

[amor-immortalem]

Everything Undesired chapter 5

A/N: this went in a completely different direction than the original comic did but I think its better this way. More angstier.

Chapter 4

The glow of blue fire emanates from the Witches’ house. As the three brothers watched, the child tucked safely into Lucifer’s arm, the mood was solemn.

“So, it’s over? What happens now?” Beel asked.

“We go home,” The Avatar of Pride replies, “And we help Mammon do his best to move past this...” He turns to look at his brothers, the glow from the fire casting a dark shadow over his face. “We’re finished here. Let’s go.”

A portal was opened as the eldest walked through followed by the others. On the other side, he found Levi and Belphegor trying to move Satan’s old crib from the attic down to Arella’s old room.

“Come on, Levi, put your back into it!” Belphie said as they moved down the stairs carefully. “I’m practically carrying this thing on my own here.”

“I'm trying! A shut in like me isn’t meant to be moving something so heavy.” Levi groaned as he hefted the crib up further.

Lucifer only cleared his throat as the seventh and third-born brothers looked his way. “Where’s Mammon?”

“I used my powers to put him back to sleep so he could rest up before the kid got here.” The Avatar of Sloth replied. “He doesn’t need to be over-tired and dealing with an infant at the same time. It’s a recipe for disaster, if you ask me. ”

At the commotion, Arella came out of the kitchen where she was washing out all of the old baby bottles they would need. “Oh, you’re back. I can take him now. Beel, would you help them with the crib please? It’ll be going in my old room for the time being, and Satan, would you finish drying the bottles for me, please?”

Both brothers nodded with Beel stepping forth to take the crib from his brothers and Satan headed to the kitchen. Levi and Belphie let out exhausted sighs as they headed off to their rooms and the only two left now in the entrance hall were Lucifer and Arella. She held her arms out for the little one and Lucifer was all too happy to oblige her.

With a small cry of discontentment, the baby settled into her arms quickly as she shushed him. She rocked him gently until he was back to sleep. Seeing her step so readily into the role of motherhood left the demon impressed.

“He’s already had a diaper change around two hours ago and he ate around an hour ago so he should be fine for a little bit.”

”Alright, he is frightfully thin though which worries me, but he’s in good hands now.”

“Why are you doing this, Arella? You know you don’t have to and yet here you are, embracing a child that’s not even yours.”

“Do I need a reason?” She smiles as she looked up at him. “I don’t think I do. I suppose if I have to have a reason it would be that I just want to help Mammon. He can’t do this alone. Don’t you think that’s enough?”

The Avatar of Pride only nodded. “You humans never cease to amaze me with your generosity. Has he thought of a name yet?”

“He threw a couple names out there but ultimately he couldn’t decide so he asked me to choose the name from the ones he suggested.”

“And?”

“I chose the name Cyrus, from the Latin meaning sun. Right now, it’s a very dark time in our lives, but I hope one day he’ll be bright like a little ray of sunshine.”

“Very thoughtful of you,” The demon hums. “But are you sure you’ll be alright tonight? You’ve been up nearly all night. You have to be exhausted by now.”

“I’ll be alright. This isn’t the first time I’ve pulled an all-nighter. When I graduated from Cambridge a couple years back, I earned myself a degree in biochemical engineering. I can’t tell you the number of sleepless nights I had cramming in last minute reviews. This won’t be anything compared to those. I’m obviously not planning to go to RAD tomorrow, so I can just sleep when Cyrus sleeps.”

“You can take online courses then. We’re going to try to pass him off as your child for that to work you’ll need to be absent from RAD for an extended period of time. If word gets out that my brother was assaulted, the mockery he’ll face will be absolutely ridiculous. It’ll be easy since demons don’t know much about human anatomy. We can always say it was a surprise pregnancy and you never showed.”

Arella only nodded at that. “Thank you,” she turned and headed to her old room for the night to settle the baby.

----------------------------------------------

Mammon slept for a full eight hours before waking up with a start. While he felt rested, there was also an odd sense of worry flowing through him. He looked around frantically and then realized what was missing. Arella wasn’t with him. He got out of bed and made his way around the house looking for his mate. She would be in the last place he looked- in her room. He shrunk back at the sight of his child resting against her chest, as a soft purring noise filled the room. The sight reminded him just how much he wanted them to have a child of their own together.

The demon stood there, mesmerized by the sight in front of him until his human noticed him. She motioned for him to join her on the bed, a bright smile enveloped her features as he did just that.

“He’s beautiful, love.” She said as she leaned her head against his shoulder. “Do you want to try to hold him?”

He shook his head as he rested his cheek against her. “I don’t know if I can right now...” The Avatar of Greed only frowned. He wanted to hold Cyrus but he still felt like none of this was real. “It feels like a bad dream... Like I’ll wake up any second now.”

“That’s alright. If it helps, you could pretend that he was always our son to begin with. It might help you in the long run.”

“Do ya think... maybe I can trick myself like that?” He reached out and stroked the child’s cheek. “’Rella, I don’t get it... How can somethin’ so beautiful be born from somethin’ so horrible?”

“Sometimes the best things come from tragedy, Love. I’m so proud of you for being strong enough to take him in, do you know that?”

Mammon would only nod in response as a tiny hand came to wrap around his finger. For a moment all the air was stolen out of his chest as he recoiled from the contact slightly. The feeling of a crushing weight on his chest that he had only felt in his worst nightmares had returned. Suddenly, he wondered if he made the right decision as the realization set in that he was a father now. What if he was never able to love his son? What kind of damage would that do to his child? Could he do this?

“Mammon?”

“I-I’m fine. Don’t worry,” he takes a few deep breaths and he’s able to calm himself. “I'll take him now. Hafta get past this at some point. I hafta be the parent he needs.”

“You will be. I have faith in you.” Arella kissed his cheek before carefully transferring Cyrus to his father. “I know you’ll be a fantastic father once you’re able to see him separately from what his mother and aunts did to you.”

He only nodded as Arella cards her fingers through his hair. He thought this would be a monumental challenge at first, and it still was but as long as she was here, he thought maybe things would go smoother.

—————————————————————

The crying was the worst part for Mammon and Cyrus was unfortunately a fussy baby. Over the past few weeks since he’d been brought home, there were multiple times where the white-haired demon had to leave the room whenever his child cried or pass him off to his adoptive mother, feeling too physically sick to listen to or even look at the child.

The end of the spring term was nearly upon them and since exams would be coming up. Mammon took every chance he could to stay late at RAD for some extra studying with Satan and Asmodeus, knowing he had to get his grades back up. But the guilt was eating away at him. Arella was at home all day, typically alone, with his child. Any good father- any good mate- would be rushing home to give his partner a break to take time for herself and Mammon knows this but even when he doesn’t stay late at school he finds himself dragging his feet to get home.

He stared and stared at the work book in front of him. It was curses and hexes, one of his most hated subjects and arguably his worst grade. Eventually, he just shut the work book, taking of his glasses and just rubbing his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. This caught the attention of his younger brothers.

”You alright, Mams?” Asmo asked as he set his pen down.

”Am I a bad father?” The white-haired demon countered with his own question.

”No, of course not.” Satan frowned. “Given everything that happened, I’d say you’re doing great.”

”It doesn’t feel like it,” he frowned. “This is my kid and yet it feels like Arella’s doin’ all the work. Takin’ care of him all the time, stayin’ home with him all the time… It should be me doin’ all the work not her! I’m the one who said I’d keep him and yet I can’t bring myself to do anything for him. A-And its not like I don’t know how to take care of a baby. I’ve done it before.”

The Avatar of Greed ran a hand through his hair in frustration before packing up his things.

”Where are you going?” Satan yelled after his brother before being shushed by the librarian.

”Home! To apologize to my mate and force myself to take care of my child.”

If you want to be tagged for updates, let me know

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Masterlist 2

[sirenprincess15]

Please Don't Leave Me Chapter 15

Title: Please Don’t Leave Me

Author: SirenPrincess

Description: What if Aleksander hadn’t answered the door when Ivan interrupted the war room kissing? What if Aleksander and Alina had a bit more time to get to know each other before Baghra told her his true identity? Alina is the only one who can comfort Aleksander through his nightmares. Will she leave once she knows who he is?

This story is based on the show version and features a soft on the inside, hard on the outside Aleksander with an emphasis on emotional hurt/comfort and angst. If you are looking for lots of hurt!Aleksander thoughts, then this story is for you. Mal exists but pretty much solely to cause Aleksander some angst. Don’t worry. It will be a Darklina ending.

Chapter 1 is a missing scene at the end of Ep 4, and Chapter 2 takes place alongside Ep 5 and then diverges from canon there.

Pairings: Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov, bits of Ivan/Fedyor

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: Grisha are oppressed in this universe, and I don’t shy away from showing the horrors of that. There may eventually be mentions of canon-typical torture (Fjerdan pyres), death of family members, and cruelty to Grisha children. It’s not the focus, but that backdrop is definitely there and comes up as characters discuss their past.

In this chapter: Aleksander struggles to share his secrets with Alina until he finds her upset and needing him.

Recommended listening: Lady A "Need You Now"

Chapter 15

They went on that way for a couple of days. Alina spent most of her time with the tracker. It tore Aleksander up but he permitted it for her. Most of Aleksander’s time was spent handling details of the war, receiving intelligence reports, and managing Ravka. Keeping everyone alive kept him focused.

It was the evenings he spent alone that were driving him mad. He kept thinking of Alina’s desire to be fully honest with each other and Fedyor’s words of the importance of knowing and accepting a partner wholly, even with flaws. He had always been a strategist, always played through all scenarios in his head a thousand times until he arrived at one he liked. No matter what scenario he envisioned with Alina, none of them ever turned out as he desired. He desperately longed for the kind of love and acceptance that Alina called for. There had been so many years alone where he had yearned for someone to share things with. However, every time he tried to plan the discussion of one of his secrets, it all went to hell quickly. He had even spent one evening writing it all out for her in the hopes that would help him solidify his thoughts. It hadn’t, and he’d burned it all as he realized how beyond stupid it would be to give her such information in writing.

The problem, he realized, was that he could eloquently justify every decision he had made, but no matter how he poured his heart out into explaining it all, none of that would make the truth any less horrible. Marie was dead--that knowledge would hurt Alina, and he just couldn’t stand the idea of her experiencing all that pain. Genya was his spy--without the centuries of seeing Grisha persecuted to understand what it meant if they lost this war, without seeing the king’s ineptness firsthand, seeing the battalions they had lost because of inadequate supplies and wasted funds, she would never be able to understand this decision. It was unforgivable to leave Genya in that situation. He knew it was, even if Genya had agreed to stay in it herself. That didn’t mean it wasn’t the necessary decision, too. They weren’t mutually exclusive, but Alina would never be able to grasp that. He had a way to potentially take control of her power and use it against her will--would she ever believe he didn’t intend to use it? Was that even really true? He had always hated the idea and told everyone they would not be using it, but deep down he had always known it was the back-up plan. Could he even say he didn’t intend to use it if he knew there were circumstances where he would? All the thoughts swirled in his head and threatened to take him past his breaking point. And then she would be there to help him sleep and somehow it was enough to get him through the next day.

He was stuck, and he didn’t see a way out of this pattern. He couldn’t stop thinking of ways to try to explain things to her. He needed her. His desire for her to actually accept him was overwhelming. But how could she? As he imagined trying to explain things to her, he saw things through her eyes. It was a fresh perspective, and what he saw was horrifying. It all caused him horrible guilt, and, yet, he knew he would make the same decisions again. Over the centuries, he had become numb to accepting the small pains to prevent the true horrors. Alina had reignited emotion inside him, and suddenly everything was raw again.

Aleksander looked at the clock and groaned. It would still be several hours before Alina would visit his chambers to help him sleep. He could not take another night of tearing himself apart while trying to come up with words to help Alina understand how the murder and torture of Grisha over the centuries had forced him to make harder and harder choices. He should get up and do something productive, something, anything to keep his mind active. The library might be a good idea. He thought he had most of the good sources on the Stag in his chambers, but there could still be some good books with more information on relics in general that he and David had not yet read that could at least keep his mind engaged. There was the added bonus that the library reminded him of happier times with Alina. He had never seen someone smile so broadly at books. The memory of stolen kisses between the shelves brought a smile to his face.

Decision made, Aleksander strode to the library. He froze when he saw Ivan hovering near an alcove. Ivan was supposed to be guarding Alina. Aleksander raised an eyebrow, and Ivan gestured with his chin toward the alcove. Years of working together made a silent exchange possible. Alina was in the alcove, and Ivan thought Aleksander should go in there.

“Alina,” Aleksander gasped as he took in her appearance. In her nightgown and robe, she was disheveled, hair a mess, with tears in her eyes.

She desperately tried to wipe the tears away when she saw him. “Aleksander.”

“You’re crying,” he whispered as he closed the distance between them.

“It’s nothing. I’m just tired.”

He reached out and tilted her chin until she met his eyes. “You never let me get away with that line.”

The tears started to fall again. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. To his surprise, she started sobbing. He tentatively sent his power through to her. It caressed against hers and begged for a response. This time, she let the connection flow between them. Emotions echoed back and forth with the familiar comfort of each other. She was sad, confused, scared. He was concerned. He made sure to let her feel his love for her, whether she wanted it or not.

“I missed this,” she whispered after a long while.

He blinked. Didn’t she know she was in control of that? He constantly longed for the connection with her. She was the one who decided when they were allowed to have this. “I missed you.”

She sighed and finally let go of the stress in her. In their bond, she pulled for his comfort.

“Did he hurt you?” It was a quiet question, but there was a clear threat in his tone. If the tracker had harmed her, there was nothing that would stop him from enjoying that man’s death.

“No,” she responded quickly. “It’s nothing like that.”

“Are things not going the way you want with the tracker?” He tried not to enjoy that idea. Alina was hurting. That was bad even if it would result in the tracker being out of the picture.

“You’ll be relieved to know that we’ve realized what we are to each other and it’s family. I tried to kiss him. It was awful. So awful, Aleksander.” She made a face and then gave a soft little laugh. “I do love him, but that felt so wrong, and I realized it’s because he’s like my brother.”

“That is not why you are crying, though.” He could tell. He couldn’t let himself become distracted by the jealousy he felt at the idea of the tracker’s lips on hers, even if it was awful as she said. She was comfortable with the decision that the relationship with the tracker was not romantic. He might take more joy in that, but he could not because something else was devastating her. “Whatever it is, you know you can tell me.”

“I’m afraid it will upset you.”

Because the tracker had actually hurt her? Because she was going to say something against Aleksander? Something to break his heart? “I can take it.” He kissed the top of her forehead. “If I somehow found a way to talk to you about the Fold, you can share this with me.”

She looked up at him with uncertainty in her eyes. “I can’t. You’ll hurt him or ... lock him in the dungeons.”

So this was about the tracker. He might very much like to kill, mame, or at least imprison the tracker for whatever she was about to say next, but he knew she wouldn’t tell him unless he agreed not to hurt that idiot and she could feel that he meant it. He took her hand in his so she could get a strong read of his emotions. “I promise I won’t hurt him without your permission.” That, at least, he could agree to. He’d just convince her to let him kill the tracker if that was called for.

Unable to look him in the eye as she spoke, she focused her gaze on the floor and whispered. “He wants us to run away and hide. He has a whole plan. I tried to explain how I can’t do that. I can’t hide my power. I told him how sick it used to make me. I didn’t understand what was causing it at the time, but now I do and I can’t go back to not being able to eat or sleep, to feeling so exhausted constantly. Nadia told me some stories of Grisha who tried to suppress their powers and got seriously ill. But he just keeps saying it will be fine just for a little while.”

Aleksander tried not to react to the news that the tracker was trying to escape with her, but Alina could probably feel his response. Anger was there, of course, but more than anything it triggered his protective instincts. He swallowed as he tried to push away any concerns of the tracker stealing her out of his safe space in the Little Palace. That wasn’t why Alina had told him or what she was asking for his help with. “He doesn’t accept you as you are, but it’s only because he doesn’t understand you. What we are is impossible for him to comprehend.”

She leaned against his chest so he could wrap his arms back around her. “He keeps saying things against Grisha. Not against me, he says not me, but … I don’t even think he realizes he’s doing it half the time. ‘We can’t trust her, she’s Grisha.’ ‘Those people always have tricks up their sleeves.’ Please don’t be mad at him. He isn’t trying to hurt me, but it does.”

“Prejudice against our kind is something learned at an early age. It’s so ingrained in Ravkan society, worse so in other countries, he probably does not realize that it is hate he is speaking.” He took a deep breath. “I’m not trying to defend or slander him. It’s the truth you need to hear, Alina. He is otkazat’sya. You are Grisha. They have always hated our kind. Fight as we may to be accepted, we never are.”

“I’m tired of feeling so … foreign … other.” She sighed.

“Do you feel like that here at the Little Palace? When you are with me?”

“No, and when he says things like that … I … It’s stupid. I’m so stupid.”

She knew he couldn’t stand for her to put herself down, but he was trying to get her to open up and let all her feelings out, so he didn’t correct her. “Tell me. All of it.”

“I’m a mess, Aleksander. I’m such a mess.”

“You hold me together when I am a mess. I can do the same for you.”

“When he says things that hurt me, all I want is you. I miss you. I miss our connection. I find I can’t breathe when I’m not with you. There’s just this tightness in my chest that won’t go away. I long to reach out to our bond.”

“And that’s a bad thing? Maybe when he puts you down, you subconsciously reach for the only person who has ever made you feel like you are enough and worthy of being loved. I wanted to give that to you, Alina.”

“I’m so scared, Aleksander. I’m in here crying because I need you and I’m so scared to need you!”

“You have taught me it’s okay to need you. It’s okay to need acceptance and love, Alina. I offer those.”

“How can I need you if I don’t even know if I trust you?” Her voice cracked.

Aleksander sucked in a breath at the pain those words caused. “Because of what Baghra said?”

She nodded into his chest. “And the manipulation. If I didn’t know about the letters, what else don’t I know? What else are you doing to manipulate me? At times I think I am strong enough and I can tell when you are lying to me, so that will be enough for me to be able to stay in control of things with you. Other times I’m terrified that I’m still falling for you and I will end up your slave. I realize I’m not in control of anything. I don’t feel whole unless I’m with you! When I’m with Mal, I am constantly thinking of you. I thought that if I gave myself some space, I could separate from that and sort things out, but it’s only worse. It takes all my strength not to run to your rooms because I need you.”

He wanted to reassure her that he was worthy of her trust, but he wasn’t sure that was even true. Wasn’t he just a bit earlier going through the list of all the secrets he had kept from her? He hadn’t managed to confide any of them to her or even come up with a plan of how he could. “There’s so much you don’t know,” he admitted. “It terrifies me, too. Trying to find a way to share it all with you is destroying me.” It was the full truth for once. There were horrible secrets there. He did not want to be manipulating her. He truly did want her to know all of it now, but he wanted her to understand it all too. Figuring out how to make that happen was eating him alive. He focused on those feelings and opened their bond fully so she can know the truth of that. “I need you. I fear if I use the wrong words, you will leave me, and I will not survive.”

“So … we both are driving ourselves mad with self doubt and worry and the pain of being apart. What do we even do with that?”

“If I had come up with a solution, I would not still be tearing myself apart trying to figure it out.” He sighed at the familiar ache in his chest. “Do you … Do you want to just take a break from … trying to figure everything out? My only solace in life is you. If I am your only respite, can we not just give ourselves a night to have that?” He needed a break, and she needed his comfort. They both were in so much pain from trying to survive alone.

“I’d like that,” she admitted, finally looking up into his eyes.

Aleksander reached out his hand and cupped her cheek. She leaned into his touch, and the clenching in his chest finally relaxed. She wanted his comfort. He wasn’t quite sure what a break would look like to her. Would she just want to sit and read in the library? Hold each other perhaps?

Tentatively, he leaned forward to kiss her. Her lips parted, and her body arched into him as if she could not get enough of his touch. He was shocked at the flood of desire that she released through their bond. There was no doubt that she wanted more.

As much as he longed to make mad love to her right there in the bookshelves even with Ivan only an aisle away, it didn’t feel quite right to dive straight into ripping off her clothes. Their relationship was awkward and uncertain at the moment. They needed cuddles and contact and warmth before he reminded her what it felt like to have her body worshipped. An idea occurred to him. “Do you want to take a bath together?”

She smiled. “Yes, please.”

=========

Author Notes: I wrote this chapter a dozen times and deleted them all. Every attempt at writing Aleksander come clean was ridiculously bad. So I started writing about him feeling that way, and Lady A's "Need You Now" came on my station and inspired me. Aleksander was a mess of guilt, self-doubt, and fear until Alina needed him, and then the story just clicked and was so easy to write. All of the emotions felt right once he realized she needed him. He doesn't need to be perfect for her. He needs to be what she needs, and he can be that, even with the dark past. This version felt genuine to the characters, including Alina and Mal. Alina's future with Mal was miserable. I wanted to let her realize 'hey, I don't like this' and choose something else for herself.

[chickenmcfly1]

Marty with superpowers headcannons?

(Again, I have no idea how the science behind any of this would work so just bear with me)

So the exposure to plutonium without cell rejuvenation gives him superpowers. Marty can briefly manipulate time by freezing and speeding up time around him, and he can manipulate space by phasing in and out through solid material

basically since his powers came from the DeLorean and interaction between radiation and the flux capacitor, Marty basically becomes a weak human flux capacitor and can manipulate space and time(sketchy science is sketchy)

He discovers them about a week after part three ends because his body finally transitions out of survival mode.

Through the trilogy, Marty is running on like 12 total hours of sleep, 1 meal, no water, 4 head injuries, 3 of which are traumatic brain injuries he doesn’t really accidentally draw on said powers. He’s weak, pretty injured, and exhausted, and his body’s probably focused on healing and staying upright, not manipulating space and time (also I always forget that by definition and time spend unconscious, Marty sustained three traumatic brain injuries in the span of 18 days? That’s gonna be fun for his family doctor to deal with at his next wellness checkup)

After he returns to lone pine 1885, Marty hasn’t really been sleeping bc he’s plagued by near constant nightmares and he’s been super on edge and anxious so he hasn’t really been eating and he’s overwhelmed and exhausted and just crashes in bed one day. And his body is like “oh we’re finally resting! we feel better! Let’s check out these new body functions!” (Again, This is not how bodies work but just humor me)

Then, the next morning, Marty wakes up under the bed? And Marty knows he’s a weird sleeper and he kinda just assumes he thrashed and moved around in his sleep and fell off of the bed, but that’s not possible bc he’s in the exact position he was on top of the bed. There’s also this heavy plastic keyboard case next to him, blocking the only side of the bed he could’ve rolled under from. Otherwise he would’ve had to roll over his guitar, fallen off of the bed, and rolled back under?

But Marty is 100% not in the mood to deal with any more strangeness and weird situations. He’s already overwhelmed and confused, he misses Doc so much it physically hurts, and he’s got real gigs lined up through the holidays and he really doesn’t have the mental energy for this so he just kinda ignores it and goes to school

But strange things keep happening? In math, when he knocks his calculator off of his desk during a test, panicking about how embarrassing it’s going to be when it hits the ground and makes and noise, making everyone turn around and look at him, the calculator just slows down, almost ceasing it’s free fall until Marty grabs it? And the few people who were turning around to look at Marty also have stopped, heads turned halfway to Marty before jerking back to their tests?

The worst one is when he’s on his way home, about to get on his skateboard. Instead for getting on, though, his foot goes through his skateboard. And just when Marty thinks that ordeal is over, his hand goes through the bumper of a car he tries to grab, sending Marty spiraling into the street. As cars zip past him and Marty’s in the middle of an intersection, thinking about how Doc was right and this little car surfing habit of his is gonna end him up in the hospital, the cars around him suddenly stop and seem to freeze then move in slow motion, just long enough for Marty to get to safety before continuing to speed down the streets as if nothing ever happened

Marty continues his commute home, feeling absolutely sick to his stomach, because there’s really one reason he could be passing through solid objects. He’s fading from existence. And that doesn’t explain the other weird stuff, but Marty’s way too worked up to consider the little details. The only thought running through is head is that there’s absolutely no way this can be happening again because this was supposed to be done it was all supposed to be better now

He goes home to get his truck, barely concealing his near-hyperventilating from Biff who always seems to be waxing one of their cars, and his dad who’s sitting on the porch, and drives to Doc’s. The lab is obviously empty, but being here makes him feel a little safer, and a little more clear headed.

He doesn’t eat or sleep that night and that puts his body back into survival mode, so his powers calm down again and Marty is beyond confused but just chalks all that up to exhaustion induced hallucinations? Which is a little scary because Marty is absolutely sure that all of that happen, and he’s really hoping he’s not going insane, but he’d rather be insane than fading from existence because option b means he messed up the time stream and that means that a bunch of other people potentially in danger and Marty’s already bucking under the guilt of 1985 A, he doesn’t need this too.

Obviously Marty has not been the same since time travel, but Jennifer notices he seems extra off as of late, so after school that day, she drags him to her house and asks her to tell her everything. And he knows he shouldn’t, but Doc’s not here and desperately needs to talk to someone and Jennifer is always so grounded and level headed and he needs that right now.

After 18 days of trauma chaos and Marty’s new affliction is described, Jennifer, who is a huge comic book and science fiction nerd, tells him in the most cheerful but matter of fact voice that he obviously has superpowers!

Marty just gives her his signature look of wide eyed, panicked confusion

Jennifer reassures him and tells him to leave a note for Doc where Doc left the DeLorean for him and ‘55 Doc. Marty likes that idea, but he’s still not entirely sure about the whole superpowers thing. So Jennifer tells him to attempt doing those things on purpose, and sure enough, all the things Jennifer makes fall off of her desk chair, including herself (which is the scariest trust fall of Marty’s life) slow just long enough for Marty to right them. Similarly his hands and legs pass through objects. Jennifer suggests he try to phase through the wall to see how strong his powers are, but Marty has a horrifying image of him stuck between Jennifer’s bedroom and closet wall forever, and he decides he’s not trying that own without Doc.

After a few trial runs, a very excited Jennifer’s going on about all the good things he could do the community with these powers and all the cool things he could do, but Marty’s anxious and overwhelmed and just wants to lay low. So he has powers, doesn’t mean he has to use them. Besides, Marty doesn’t know how to explain to Jennifer that after all the ‘good’ he did in 1985A and other timelines, the best way for Marty to serve the community is to probably stay far far far away from where he can mess anything up. Jennifer is, of course very understanding and she accompanies him to leave a letter for Doc

That night, Marty’s scared awake by a sudden rap on his window and wakes up to see Doc? And after Marty’s fight of flight response calms and his heartbeats slows enough for him to function, he just kind of sits there, convinced this is a dream and any second now, Doc will open up his lab coat, revealing bullet wounds and collapse and Marty will have to watch again. But then Doc calls his name and tells him he got his letter. And Marty is overwhelmed with joy and after flinging open the window and tackling Doc with a hug and then giving Clara and the boys another one, they go to the lab and figure everything out

Marty does, indeed, have superpowers. He’s basically a mini flux capacitor and Doc is over the moon thrilled, then panics and checks Marty over to make sure he’s still fine and healthy and that there are no negative side effects, then goes back to being thrilled

Idk what direction I wanna take this in? Whether Marty is just a normal person doing normal person things who just happens to have superpowers or if he and Doc get another crazy adventure, this time, involving superpowers, but yeah. If anyone wants to add on and take this in a direction, pls do bc I have no idea what comes next, lol.

[the-maidofmischief]

both zukos and catras characters arcs are great and amazingly written, so i always feel uncomfortable when ppl compare them, because not every redemption arc has to be the same in order to be good.

THANK YOU. This is gonna be long lmao, please bare with me.

Zuko and Catra share some similarities, but at the end of the day they are very different characters, with different backgrounds, story and psychology.

And that’s AMAZING.

It’s amazing because we were shown two different but effective ways to tell a story about how childhood’s abuse can affect a person’s mental health, and how they can get better and grow up, showing that there is hope for everyone, as long as you do the best you can to change.

Want to know why their redemption arcs worked, where others like Kylo Ren’s or Snape’s failed?

I could start by saying that Kylo and Snape where two grown ass men, only written as negative characters with literally no background on why they acted the way they did. Kylo has a change of heart at the last minute (which is okay, because I believe that anyone can change at any point), but its not enough to be redeemed, because he should have also actually took responsability for his past actions. But he didn’t, he simply died for the good side and...that’s it. That’s why it doesn’t work. And also, because, let’s be real, it wasn’t planned for him to get a redemption arc in the first place. He was supposed to be de main villain, Rey and Finn were supposed to be the main characters of the sequels trilogy, but the fans decided that it was all about the white sad man uwu instead, and that, plus the lack of story planning, is what ruined the movies. What about Snape? he was an abusive teacher and a negative character for seven books straight. Then, in one of the final chapter we get his whole backstory and we are supposed to feel sorry for him. And we are, at least I sure was, and I won’t deny that he is actually a complex character, and that not everything is black and white. But it’s still not enough for him to be forgiven of all the bs he put the other characters too, even when he was supposed to be a good guy. So, at the end of the story, when Harry named one of his children after him, it just feels wrong, especially when Harry actually had a lot of positive people in his life that helped him way more than Snape - or Dumbledore - ever did. (I also have the feeling that jkr totally improvised snaped backstory at the last minute, but maybe that’s just me lol)

Both Catra ans Zuko were literally children/teens, and the reasons why they acted the way they did were shown by the very beginning. It is something that makes you emphatize with them, but that at the same time it makes you realize that their past sufference can’t be use as an excuse to hurt others. They both had many wake up calls/chances during the shows to simply join the good guys, but they both do that in the final season because they needed to take a look at themself first, and realized why they fucked up so many times. Because guess what? abuse victims fuck things up. You guys support abuse victims only when they fit your ideals of hurt and sweet damsel in distress, but when they actually have personality/anger disorders they’re monsters. The shows NEVER justified or romanticized the bad things that they did. And if you want a well-written redemption arc, you HAVE TO let the characters do bad guys stuff. What makes them different is that even when they were on the villain’s side, they both showed moments of kindness that enstablished potential for a future change. What makes them different, is that we actually follow their story arcs too, and we see them growing up and changing.

And, most importantly, they actually face the consequences of their own actions. Before joining the gaang, Zuko is already starting to have doubts. During season 4 Catra has constant nightmares of the portal, and she tries to repress the guilt that she is feeling, because she is slowing realizing that this time she hurted a lot of people, and that there’s no one else to blame but herself. And she doesn’t fully accept it until DT slaps the truth to her face. And at this point of their story, what Zuko and Catra need is NOT more punishment, but forgiveness. IF they actually try to be better people. And they do. In different ways, but they do.

Zuko joins the gaang that accepts him and he constantly tries to be good. The only person that is giving him an hard time is Katara (rightfully), but eventually she forgives him too, because she is realizing that he is making an effort.

Catra sacrifice herself saving Glimmer, goes through more physical and psychological trauma and abuse by Horde Prime, and literally almost dies. Then Adora saves her, and Catra joins the squad, but it’s not easy. It’s not easy because she knows that she hurted them in the past, and doesn’t think that she deserves their forgiveness. But she decides to try. She shows genuine remorse of her past behaviour, and makes sincere apologies to the people that she hurted, without expectation of forgiveness. It is easier for Adora to forgive her, because she grow up with her, and knows her better than anyone else. It’s easier for Glimmer to forgive her because they started to bond on Prime’s ship, and the princess realized that they are more similiar that she thought. But they all know that the road to redemption is hard and long, and that Catra need to work on herself. And guess what? she does.

After they join the good guys Zuko and Catra show constant effort to improve throught both big and small actions of true selflessness. And that’s why they works as characters. We can’t really compare them because they have different stories. But that doesn’t mean that one arc is better than the other.

[ms-rampage]

Eden’s Gate: Kidnapped Chapter 17 - The Last of Us Part 1

In the series finale of Eden’s Gate: Kidnapped, our heros the Winchester family face the Seed family. But who will come out alive? Who will live? What’s the fate of Hope County? Who betrayed who? Find out next week on Dragon Ball Z!!!.

Word count: 3k+

Warnings: Swearing, drug usage (bliss), ANGST. 

Okay to be honest, I literally start to cry while I writing one of the scenes in this. Might be 1 or 2 Supernatural moments between the sisters.

******************************************

“No, no, no this can’t be happening!!” Paige exclaims in panic, pulling on her hair. 

Joseph continues to look down at Cristina, cradling her in his arms.

Paige pacing in the cage, rage fuming off of her. 

Jacob approaches the cage where the two sisters are in.

“You!!” Paige points at him, “You motherfucker!!” she spits.

John approaches the cage from behind Jacob.

“You fucking asshole John!!” Kate snaps at him, standing up grabbing the bars aggressively, and shaking them.

He is taken aback by her sudden outburst as well as Paige.

The look of surprise on his face as the girl he once loved is raging, angry, and yelling at him.

John should be lucky the cage has extra bars going across it horizontally because Kate looks like she wants to strangle the life out of him.

“Where’s my husband?? Where are my friends??. Where’s my mom??” Paige yells at them, looking aggravated.

Joseph steps forward towards the cage, still looking down at Cristina.

“Why are you holding her?!?” Paige snaps at Joseph, he looks up at her.

She just wants to slap those stupid Aviators off his face.

He looks back down at her daughter. “She’s beautiful, she looks like you. She reminds me of my daughter” he says in a soft voice.

Both sisters look at each other in confusion, and look back at Joseph. 

He hands her to one of Jacob’s soldiers, and puts her in a milk crate nearby. 

“I know you’re in pain. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh. But you’re not the only one to be tested” Joseph says to them, but mainly to Paige. 

“Did you know I had a wife?” he tells them, showing the tattoo of his wife.

They look at his arm. “So beautiful, isn’t she?. We were pregnant with our first child, and we were just babies ourselves, and I was terrified. Becoming a father, mostly about money”. 

Paige and Kate look at each other in confusion, and back at Joseph.

“She wasn’t worried, she had faith that things were going to work out. She always had faith, and then one day. She was going to visit a friend. There was an accident, and”

Paige and Kate look on with mixed emotions at him. 

“The Lord taketh”, he continues.

“They rushed me to the hospital and put me in a room with this little pink bundle stuffed with tubes, and they said I had to be strong because my little girl was going to live. God was looking out for our daughter”

Paige looks at him in disbelief. She looks over at Kate who looks unsettled, and unnerved.

“And they left me alone in a room with her. I just stared at my daughter. So helpless. So innocent, and all she had in the world was me. A nobody from nowhere-” 

Paige cuts him off, softly saying “A nobody? You’re her father!”.

Joseph continues “With nothing, and in that moment I knew that God was testing me”

Kate rolls her eyes in annoyance, looking down “God doesn’t care!” she thinks to herself.

“He was laying out a path before me and all I had to do was choose. So I put my hand on my little girl's head, and I leaned in and I could smell. And we prayed together, prayed for wisdom. Prayed for strength then I knew. I heard God’s plan for me, and I took my fingers and I put them on that little plastic tube that was taped to her angelic face, and”

Paige already knew where he was going with this, and she's feels a tightness in her gut. 

“I pinched it shut” he says.

“You did what?!?” Paige whispers loudly, her eyes widened. 

Kate looks at him in shock, her jaw dropped open. 

Joseph looks down at the ground for a moment before continuing.

“And after a little while her legs began to kick and kick, and then nothing. Stillness. Release”

Paige looks over at her daughter who is still in the milk crate, and cuts Joseph off yet again.

“You killed you daughter!!” 

“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh. Pain. Sacrifice”

He leans in closer to their cage. 

“These are all part of his test. Only have to prove that we can serve God, no matter what he asks”. 

They turn to each other in disbelief, shock and anger.

“Can you believe that?!?” Paige whispers very softly to her sister.

Kate gives her a wide eyed look, and shakes her head. Looks around the cage, and she whispers to her “Now, I know how Lucifer felt, when we shoved his ass back in the cage”

Paige gives her a stern "seriously" look, then an idea comes to mind. She looks over at the other 3 Seed siblings.

John looks unbothered, typical of him, Jacob has some sadness in his eyes, maybe it's hard to tell, but Faith on the other hand, she looks completely horrified.

She looks like she has never heard that story come from Joseph before.

Kate even sees the expression on her face, the fear in her eyes.

He goes over to the carriage, and takes Cristina out, holding her again.

“You better not hurt her, you will fucking pay for it if you do. I will hunt you down and God won’t be able to save your ass” Paige threatens him. 

Joseph looks down at the infant in his arms, as if he didn’t hear her threaten him.

He turns around, and approaches Faith, he says something to her but they couldn’t hear what. 

She has the look of guilt written all over her face, looking like she doesn’t want to do what Joseph just told her to do. 

She approaches the cage, Paige looks at her, and back at Joseph.

“Wait!” she yells out. They all look at her. 

“You said, God wanted you to kill your daughter as a test?. To choose a path?”

Joseph approaches the cage again, as well as Jacob and John. 

All 4 siblings standing in front of her and Kate, on the opposite side of the cage.

“Yes” Joseph says softly.

She sighs, “Well I hate to break it to you, but God doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about you, me, her *points to Kate* and he certainly doesn’t care about your Project”.

All 8 eyes staring right through her, piercing into her. 

She looks at all 4 of them, “Yeah that’s right, God, Chuck he doesn’t give a fuck about any of us. You see we’re all just a part of his story. We’re just a book, and he ends it the way he chooses. We're all just hamsters in a wheel."

John and Joseph look at her with pity, Jacob has a “huh that makes sense” look on his face, and Faith looks like she is starting to have a change of heart, like she believes her. 

“And since we’re confessing, and being honest, I would like to say this”.

Paige takes a few steps closer to the cage bars, and says. 

“Lucifer is a lot nicer than God. Yeah that’s right the Devil, the Fallen Angel, is a lot nicer than him, and yes because unlike you Joseph, we’ve actually MET God, Lucifer, Gabriel, and Raphael”

Kate jumps in, and says “Castiel, Michael, 70% of the angels in Heaven, a fair share of demons, vampires and God's oldest creations the Leviathan"

They turn to Kate as she says this, and back to Paige.

“So believe us or not, we don’t care. We know more about this God crap than you and pretty much anyone who believes it in” Paige says, giving them all a wake up call.

“Don’t forget, he’s still holding your daughter” John whispers to her. She gives him a death stare, she gives all of them a death stare. 

“Faith, do it” Joseph whispers to her, and he walks away along with John and Jacob, still holding Cristina. 

Faith still has an unsure look on her face.

“You don’t have to do this Rachel” Paige tells her, “You’re better than this, I know Joseph drugged and manipulated you. You don’t have to do this. We can help you” she pleads, her voice going hoarse. 

She looks down at the ground, then up at her before muttering “I’m sorry” with tears streaming down her cheeks. 

She then blows bliss into both Paige and Kate’s faces. Sending both sisters into separate hallucinates.

Paige wakes up in hallucination outside of her childhood home in Phoenix, Arizona.

She turns around, and sees her childhood home. 

“What the fuck!?!” she says to herself, looking around.

She walks up the driveway, and goes inside. 

The house is different on the inside than it is on the outside.

It's nice and sunny outside, but dark and gloomy on the inside. She hears footsteps coming from upstairs, and goes up to the next floor.

She recognizes this scenery, it's just like the one from her nightmares, this is from the night her dad was killed. When she gets to the top step, she gets startled by her dad walking by, but he doesn’t see her.

“Dad!?” she calls out, no response. 

She follows him down the hallway, towards a room, standing next to him, just to make sure if he can see her or not. He was checking on her the night he died, she hears footsteps coming from the next room.

She walks towards it, and pushes the door slightly open. 

She looks back at her dad who is walking towards her, and has a clear view of her but he still doesn’t see her. 

She goes into the room and sees the demon that killed her dad on the ceiling looking down at Kate, but it doesn’t see Paige either.

Joel, her dad walks into the room, and she tries to warn him.

“Dad!! Dad!! Grab Kate and get the fuck out!!!. Dad!!!” her voice echoes throughout the house. He still doesn’t see, or hear her. She’s a ghost to him.

She watches her dad’s final moments before he is taken away from her, Kate and their mom.

Trying to hold back her tears, she says to him. "Mom was never the same after this” she takes a few steps closer to him. “She was completely broken, she lost custody of us. We lived with your brother, she took off, and hunted down the demon that killed you, and I did the same once I turned 18. I left Kate behind, and I went looking for mom, and for that demon” 

Paige starts to break down, tears streaming down her face, her voice starts to break and weaken. She looks down at her infant sister, and looks back at her dad. 

“The man she loved was taken from her, the father to her daughters was taken from her. Whenever mom wasn’t around I had to be not just a sister to Kate. But I had to be a mother. I had to be a father. I was just a kid, and that wasn’t fair”. She gets choked up, and tries to force her words out, no matter how much they hurt her, whether or not he can hear, or see her.

“The man you worked with in the Army, the man who you called your best friend, the man who served by your side in the Gulf War. My supposed Godfather Jacob Seed, he tortured me. His brother John manipulated Kate and he tortured me. He got possessed by a demon and he tortured her. His brother Joseph tried to have mom killed. I don’t know what you did that caused all of this to happen but, I forgive you, I forgive you. I know, I’m probably supposed to hate you but, this is the closest I’ll ever get to seeing you again. I just want you to see me, to hear me. To understand what we went through without you. The man who tried to have mom killed, he has your granddaughter. My daughter”. Joel is still looking down at Kate, she moves to stand on the opposite side of the crib, facing her dad. 

“If it weren’t for pictures, Kate wouldn’t know what you looked like. She didn’t get the chance to get to know you. I know how broken she is because she never got to know her own father. She’ll never get that. I know it kills her everyday”

Paige notices he’s not moving, she looks down at infant Kate, and she’s not moving either, she looks up, and the demon isn’t moving either. Time freezes, stands still.

A faint humming coming from behind her dad, and she sees Jacob. “Only you can make this world seem right. Only you can make the darkness right” he sings as he circles her, the crib and her dad. “Only you, and you alone” he continued. He chuckles, standing next to her, looking at her dad for a brief moment, and says “See, I told you he was weak. He couldn’t protect his family. He couldn’t protect his kids. Not only did he fail as a man but he failed as a father”.

She gives him a death glare “Really? Is this coming from his so-called best friend?” she says to him, with raised eyebrows. He smirks at her, with his head tilted to the right.

“And did you know you were supposed to be my Godfather?!?”.

He lets out an annoyed huff, and says “I’ll be outside waiting for you” with that being said he leaves the room. Leaving Paige with her hallucinogenic version of her father, and infant sister. 

The whole bliss trip continues, she witnesses what happened that night between her dad and the demon, before the house went up in flames, and her childhood was ruined. Everything goes by fast, she turns away when her dad gets killed. She couldn’t save him from the demon, she would go right through them.

The whole house goes up in flames, with her still inside. The flames lit at her feet, and she gets eaten up by the flames, making her scream in pain.

Paige wakes up in a cage, screaming her lungs out. 

Kate, and Mandy wake up as she screams her lungs out.

All three of them in the same cage. They look at each other. She looks down at her feet and arms.

“You okay?!?” Kate asks Paige.

She looks at her in confusion, “Yeah, I’m fine” she answers panting.

They looked around, and there were no peggies around the Centre, it was completely empty. Except for the cages with the Judges. 

In the next cage over to their left Kenny, Mark and Nate up from their bliss hallucination.

“Kenny!! Nate, Mark!!” Paige says, relieved to see them.

“Paige?! Oh god I’m glad to see you” Kenny says, reaching for her through the cage bars.

“Guys!?” Adrian says from the cage to their right.

“Adrian, Marty, Cody holy shit” Kate sighs, out of relief.

They all have a moment, and are reunited with each other.

Paige turns to Cody, and asks “What happened when I was gone?”.

“John, he somehow got a hold of a phone, and he called his men. The next thing we knew fucking Cultist trucks were pulling up to the house. They got Adrian, Marty and I”.

“And we locked ourselves in your bedroom” Nate says. 

They all look forward, and they see Faith approaching the cages.

She unlocks Paige’s cage first, “What are you doing?” Kate asks.

“I-I finally came to my senses. I want to help you” she says, unlocking the guy's cage next.

They all leave their cages. “I believe you” she says to Paige.

“After hearing what Joseph said, I finally realized what I got myself into. I don’t want to do this anymore” she says, her voice cracking.

“Where’s my daughter?” Paige asks.

“She’s inside” she says, “Joseph left to his compound” she adds.

“How can we trust you?” Mandy asks. 

“Joseph fears that he’s wrong about God’s plan with him. After what you said he started to doubt himself” Faith says, “Even John started to have doubt, and for Jacob he’s not really religious but he does feel that you’re right”.

Paige nods her head, “Okay, so now what?”.

“John went back to his ranch, and Jacob is inside the Centre” she says. 

“So what, you're like a traitor to the Project?” Kenny asks.

She nods her head “Yes, after what she said about God and being a part of his story, and that he doesn’t care about any of us. It made me question my beliefs and my purpose in the Project”.

There was a few seconds of silence between all 10 of them.

“Okay, so what do we do?” Kate asks. 

Paige says while looking at the ground with her hands on her hips “You go take care of John, kill him if you must. Mom. You, Faith, and others go to the house, and I’ll take care of Jacob”

Kenny interjects, saying to her “I’m going with you”.

She looks at him, her eyebrows cocked. “I can go by myself” she says.

“Yeah I know, but I won’t let you. I lost you before I ain’t losing you again. She’s my daughter too” he tells her. 

She lets out a huffed breath and says “Okay fine. But we’re doing it my way”.

He nods his head, and they go their separate ways. 

“Mom, be careful, and let me know when you get home!” Paige calls out.

She looks back, and nods her head, walking towards one of the Cults trucks.

Kenny and Paige steal some guns from one of the bins on the property, and some ammo.

They go inside the building, and it's dark, the lighting is very dim, kinda like being in a horror movie. “Stay close” she whispers to Kenny. They walk towards the stairs going up, and a red light goes off. “Keep going” Kenny says to her. They continue up the stairs, walking into the hallway, it's also lit with a dimmed red light.

*********************************************************

Kate steals a truck, and tries to radio the Whitetails

“Eli, Tammy, Wheaty are you there??” she asks into the radio.

She waits for a few moments before radioing them again. 

“Whitetails are you there??” she asks again.

The other end of the radio cracks, and there’s a muffled staticy voice.

“Eli you there??” she asks again.

“Kate?? Is that you?” the sound of Wheaty’s voice asks.

“Wheaty?!? Yeah it's me” she replies. 

“Are you okay?!?, how did everything go?!?” he asks.

“Not good, Paige and I got into a car wreck caused by the Cult, we were locked in cages by Jacob, and we put on a bliss trip. I have no idea how long we were in there for”

“You got out??” he asks.

“Yeah, and believe or not but Faith, she has a change of heart, but I don’t buy it and neither does Paige” she tells him.

“Where are you now?” Eli’s voice comes through the radio.

“I’m on my way to you guys, and then I’m gonna go kill John. I’ll tell you guys more when I get there” she says. 

She starts the truck, and drives 15 minutes to the Wolf’s Den, she goes up the mountain, and runs to the open bunker door.

They hear her footsteps coming down, and look towards the doorway.

“Kate!!” a relieved Wheaty says, he hugs her the second he sees her. She hugs him back, and releases him.

“What happened?!?!” Tammy asks, with worry in her voice. 

“After Paige and I left, we were driving through an intersection, and next. Boom!. We get hit by a Cult truck, and we go tumbling through a field. That was the last thing I remember from that, and then I woke up in a cage at St. Francis with Paige next to me. Joseph was there and so were the other 3. Joseph was telling Paige and I, mainly Paige he didn't really look at me. That he was married, and how God told him to kill his infant daughter”. 

She stammers over her words, “It was a complete mind fuck, and we went on a bliss trip. I don’t know what was Paige's, but mine was John forcing me to atone, and confess my sins”.

Eli stands next to her, and asks “So where's Paige, and the others?!"

“My mom took the others and Faith--” she gets cut off by Tammy. “Faith!?!?”. 

“She apparently had a change of heart, after my sister lectured all 4 of them about God, and shit. I don’t remember much from that but Faith looked like she didn’t want anything to do with the Cult. I want to believe her, but I don’t believe her. I just don’t want my mom, or the others to let their guard down with her there.” she explains.

“So what about Paige? Is she there too?” Eli asks.

“Her and Kenny went to get Cristina. Joseph let Jacob take her for whatever reason. So they went to go kill him” she says.

“And you’re gonna go kill John?” Wheaty asks.

She nods, and says anger building up “Yeah, I…want to rip…his fucking..head..off”

“Need any weapons?” Tammy asks.

She nods her head, “Yeah”.

[aithuzah]

The Right Thing

[ AO3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ? ]

“Is this some kind of joke?” Morgana asked, looking from Arthur, to Merlin, to the locked door as ice poured down Merlin’s spine.

Of course Arthur would go to Morgana. Her name topped the list of potential allies he had written out that morning. But Merlin hadn’t thought he’d speak to her so soon. He wasn’t ready. What would he tell her? What could he say to justify lying to her, abandoning her when she’d come to him desperate and afraid, trusting him with a secret he refused to share in return? If he tried to hide his magic from her, how could he explain his reluctance to Arthur?

And the dragon—he hadn’t even told the dragon about Arthur yet! What would he say if “the witch” knew? If they could all work together, would she still become a threat to Camelot?

“Not in the slightest,” Arthur said, oblivious to Merlin’s silent turmoil. He gestured for Morgana to follow him to the desk where Merlin hovered awkwardly off to the side. “Morgana, you have always spoken out against injustice wherever and whenever you see it, even when you see it in the king. It’s something I admire, and, at times, envied.”

At this, Morgana’s eyebrows arched high, and she looked at Merlin as though to ask, Are you hearing this, too? Merlin could only shrug helplessly.

Arthur continued, disregarding their exchange. “I’ve tried to justify his decisions, or bite my tongue while promising myself that I would be a different kind of ruler when my time came.” He opened the drawer where Merlin had stashed their planning notes and spread them again on the desk. “But recently, I learned that my father has committed—and continues to commit—injustices that I cannot afford to ignore. This kingdom cannot afford my ignorance, nor can it afford to keep Uther as its king.”

Morgana lifted her hands, silently begging him to slow down. “Not that I disagree, but—for gods’ sake, Arthur, what happened?”

Arthur’s chest heaved with a slow breath before he spoke again. “Two days ago, when Merlin and I met her outside of Camelot to accept my challenge, Morgause summoned my mother’s spirit.”

“Oh, Arthur…” She reached for his arm, a gesture of comfort, but he turned away.

“She told me…she said that when she could not conceive an heir for him, Uther asked the sorceress Nimueh to cast a spell to create life. I was born of magic. He sacrificed her life for mine.”

“That hypocrite,” Morgana hissed. Merlin saw, for a moment, the same righteous fury that had nearly driven her to take Uther’s life herself after he executed Gwen’s father. The same fury he’d seen in Arthur’s eyes two days ago. Then it receded, replaced by warmth and sorrow as she murmured, “I’m so sorry. To learn such a thing must be painful.”

“If everything I suspect is true, my pain is nothing next to the suffering Uther caused. He must be brought to justice.”

“And you want my help.” Her eyes flickered over to Merlin, who stood silent and jittery with nerves, trying not to be noticed or addressed. An effort that was, of course, doomed to failure from the start. “...And Merlin’s.”

“Ah! Yes.” Arthur clapped his hands as a bright grin replaced his grim expression. He moved around Morgana to sling an arm over Merlin’s shoulders. Merlin attempted to shrink out of existence, mentally pleading with any available gods to have mercy on him and for Arthur to keep his big damn mouth shut.

He did not.

“As it turns out, Camelot isn’t very good at sniffing out sorcerers after all,” Arthur said, cheerfully trampling Merlin’s hopes of coming out of this little meeting unscathed. “Seeing as the crown prince’s personal servant happens to be one.”

Morgana’s pale eyes widened—oh, yes, there’s all the hurt and betrayal Merlin had been dreading—before turning sharp and icy. “Is he, now.”

True to form, Arthur did not notice the sudden change in atmosphere. Merlin wasn’t sure whether he should be relieved or not. “He’s got his own big old book of magic spells and everything. He’s the one who translated Morgause’s spell, so we know that the spirit I met wasn’t some kind of trick or illusion.”

Was...was Arthur bragging to Morgana about Merlin’s magical know-how? That’s what it sounded like, right? If Merlin wasn’t pinned in place by the rapidly growing fury in Morgana’s glare, he’d maybe be a little bit more pleased than he currently had the capacity to feel. And baffled. Who knew he’d have to reveal himself as a sorcerer to earn Arthur’s respect?

“Did he, now.”

Oh, right. Morgana.

Arthur would have to be deaf and probably blind to miss the animosity now radiating from both Morgana’s tone and expression. Probably. Even with full faculties, he seemed to just barely pick up on it. Sometimes, Merlin was downright impressed by just how oblivious Arthur could be when he wasn’t consciously monitoring other people’s emotional responses.

“...Am I missing something?” he asked, like an idiot.

Morgana’s voice and smile were sweet venom. “Why don’t you ask Merlin, since he’s so keen to share secrets with you?”

Arthur lifted his arm from Merlin’s shoulders and backed away from the staredown between them, hands raised in mock surrender.

“So, I am missing something,” he said slowly.

Morgana raised an eyebrow at Merlin, arms crossed. Patient. Waiting for him to speak, as he had failed to do weeks ago when she most needed to hear it.

He let out a long breath. “The Druids didn’t kidnap Morgana. I led her to them.”

Arthur’s hands dropped to his sides in surprise. “You what? Why?”

“To help me understand my magic, because no one in Camelot could help me,” Morgana said. Her tone hardened as she continued. “Or so I thought. Evidently, I was...misled.”

“Your—now, hang on just a moment—”

“Morgana, I’m sorry.” Dimly, Merlin registered Arthur flailing in his periphery as he tried to keep up with the conversation, but he couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “I know how lonely and confusing it must have been for you, but it would have been even more dangerous for—”

“I was lighting my bedroom on fire in my sleep,” she snapped. “That wasn’t dangerous enough to justify your help? I was having nightmares every night and visions of Arthur dying in a new way every other week, and you would barely even admit that it might have been magic. And then—what, it was too dangerous to tell me, one other person who would have every reason to keep your secret in return, but it seemed perfectly fine to sneak me out of the castle, let Uther think I’d been kidnapped, and bring his wrath down on the Druids who helped me and the rest of the kingdom, only to drag me back to this prison? Was that less of a risk for either of us?”

Merlin felt every word like a blow, reliving the guilt and frustration and regret anew in each syllable. But Morgana wasn’t quite finished, even as the anger drained away, leaving only a raw ache and brimming tears.

“I thought we were friends,” she said, a breath above a whisper. “Do you really trust me so little?”

Merlin’s heart broke for her all over again, and he felt his own eyes stinging. Nothing he could say could fix this, really. What could he tell her? The truth? Sorry, but a dragon told me that you’re going to be Camelot’s downfall one day, so I should probably kill you instead of giving you magic lessons? But what lie could justify what he’d put her through, now that she knew the lengths he’d gone to keep his own secret?

Desperately, he tried again. “It’s not like that. I swear, I wanted to help you, I wanted to tell you so badly, but every time I tried to convince Gaius, he said it would be—”

He realized his mistake a beat too late, as Morgana’s breath hitched.

“Gaius knew?” she breathed. Gaius, who had fed her potion after potion, lie after lie, to keep her docile and ignorant.

Merlin had hated it then, and he hated it even more now as he saw the consequences of those lies written in her expression. She sank into the desk chair, a hand covering her mouth as this new revelation worked its way through her mind.

“He thought it would be safer for you if you didn’t know it was magic. You wouldn’t have to lie, that way. And my secret would have been its own burden. But I knew the confusion and loneliness were worse, so even if I couldn’t tell you myself, I thought I could bring you peace in some other way. I just...didn’t understand what the consequences would be.”

Both Merlin and Morgana started when Arthur spoke up from his new position: lying face-down on his bed. He lifted his head to speak unmuffled. “You really thought my father wouldn’t notice if his ward just disappeared from the castle when he believed someone had attacked her in her room just a couple days before?”

Merlin threw up his hands. “I didn’t think he would start rounding up and executing dozens of citizens! And Morgana didn’t exactly object to the plan at the time!”

“I was desperate!”

“So was I!”

The two of them breathed hard, worked-up and watery-eyed, staring at each other through the guilt and anger and hurt as Arthur groaned and dropped his head back into his mattress in the background.

“Mwaeh.” Arthur popped back up and tried again. “Wait. You said Merlin found the Druids? How? Could you do it again?”

Merlin glanced at Morgana, who also seemed to be suddenly remembering the reason Arthur had called them here and started this whole mess in the first place. “I don’t know where they are now, but I know someone who might be able to help me find them.”

“Another magic user?”

“...You could say that.” He wasn’t sure a dragon would count as a sorcerer, but he was definitely magical.

Arthur rolled to his feet and started pacing, more comfortable with a problem to solve than an argument flying over his head. “If we could find any Druids who were alive before the Purge, we could ask them what Camelot was like back then, without the anti-magic bias. The side of history that Uther tried to erase. It might help us understand what to look for in the sealed records, if nothing else. Inconsistencies, contradictions. Maybe records from other kingdoms would have more information—but that could be even more difficult to access.” He sent a flat look at the two of them. “Harder than finding magic users in the heart of the anti-magic capital of Albion, apparently.”

Merlin shrugged. Morgana rolled her eyes.

“If Merlin and I reach out to the Druids, perhaps Morgana could take up a sudden interest in obscure tomes in the library…?”

Morgana shook her head. “I want to come with you to see the Druids.”

“An extended outing like that with you may be harder to explain.”

“I can’t request a pleasant picnic and leisurely horseback ride escorted by my favorite prince?” Morgana suggested with an innocent tilt of her head. Arthur sighed, and she dropped the act. “Even though things ended badly, the Druids still helped me, and they suffered for it. If those who took me in are still alive, I want to thank them,” she explained. Then, quieter. “And apologize for my part in what happened.”

Arthur bowed his head. “You’re not the one who needs to apologize,” he murmured, so soft it may not have been meant for the others in the room. He visibly collected himself, straightening and meeting Merlin’s eyes with renewed determination. “So. When can we meet this mysterious magic user of yours?”

Merlin blinked. “What do you mean we?”

“I’m trying to get to know as many sorcerers as possible to understand the true history of my kingdom and its impact on their lives. Keep up, Merlin. And you’ve still only told me about the spell translation. You said you had more to tell me than that, and Morgana is hardly up to speed yet. Your little spat has taken up quite enough of our time tonight—”

“Little spat?” Morgana fumed.

“—so if you’re still willing to work together, we’d better make the most of what’s left.”

[paellaplease]

Firebird | Chap.4

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7

Chapter 4: Seeker 

Look for the truth where the past has buried it.

*

  After exchanging a few more words with Kamori about her extended stay, the meeting concluded. Maiya bowed politely, bidding the two Ritos goodbye. Before she left, Kamori stopped her at the door, pressing an envelope to her hand. “Follow the address in this letter, my dear. The innkeeper there will take care of the rest. Winds be fair to you, hoo.” 

Maiya returned his smile, touched at his grandfatherly kindness. Her eyes briefly lingered on Revali's burnt feather before she turned away, the guilt she felt at indirectly hurting him still caught in her throat. 

She avoided Talako’s wary gaze as she stepped out of the hut, not wasting any time in making a hasty exit. One foot after another, careful not to trip, she descended the many village stairs. 

The young Enchanter released the breath she was holding as she cleared two levels. “So that happened,” She said aloud. The anxiety was creeping back in. Her heart felt like a butcher’s mallet. Thump! Thump! Thump! If her chest was a piece of meat, it would be well tenderised by now.

First order of business. She needed paper and a messenger pigeon-person-thing...Whatever they used in this village. Chief Kamori already assured her that a missive would be sent to her mentor’s private letter box first thing tomorrow morning explaining the whole situation. However, she knew that she needed to write to her mentor separately. Relaying whatever she can in great detail was of utmost importance if she wanted even a smidgen of a chance of surviving the Sheikah’s ire.  

Calm...calm. I am calm. 

Teacher was going to kill her!

Round and down she went, lost in her thoughts but aware enough to dodge around a yellow Rito child that was playing tag along the railing. Opening the note, she followed the address written at the top in Kamori’s cursive. That’s a lot of levels down . Nodding to herself, she increased her walking speed, making her way towards her accomodations for the next few weeks. 

The inn was located only a floor above the village’s main entrance, making it one of the first things travellers would see when they arrived. Like most structures situated around Valoo’s Spire, a flat platform jutted out from its doors, connecting the main arterial staircase to the wooden, circular, double-story building that was Rito Village’s one and only inn.

The building exterior was painted a deep red, with white curtains billowing from its many open windows. Planter boxes were hung up along the railings of the second floor, pink daphnes and other winter blooms peeking from their containers. 

Another staircase, though this time shorter and much more narrow with steps worn from years of use, ran flush along the inn’s side. Maiya theorised that it supposedly gave customers a means of accessing their rooms without having to pass through the reception area. That said, she was unpleasantly surprised to find that whilst most rooms were situated at the building’s second floor, the inn still offered beds on the first. In its lobby. 

...

What?

Eyebrow raised at the arrangement, Maiya tiptoed past sleeping travellers and made her way to the front desk. Tourist season must be in full swing, with most of the beds filled and a small sign above the front desk announcing a limited vacancy. A customer’s snores echoed from the corner. 

This is, um, unpleasant. She thought. But arguably not as bad as when Uncle Rohan had to crash at the forge after he and Teacher had too much to drink. Maiya grimaced at the memory. That Goron blacksmith’s snores were loud enough to wake Death Mountain...but I still wouldn’t complain if this place offers earbuds.

A burgundy Rito with a short side braid and golden hooped earrings smiled sunnily as she approached. “Welcome to Swallow’s Roost,” she whispered. 

Maiya mumbled a shy ‘hello’ back. She set her pack down and fished out her identification papers and coin purse. A leaf flew out of her open wallet. Oh damn. It was then that the Hylian realised, with much embarrassment, just how filthy she was from weeks of travel. The quick wash at the stables that morning took care of most of the grime, but her travel pack was still covered in mud and leaves. From the moment she entered the inn, she was already tracking dirt on the massive blue circular rug that covered most of the wooden flooring. 

I am the queen of good first impressions. 

“I would like to book one of your beds until the Winter Solstice, please.” Maiya said, glancing at an open bed warily, noting the thin divider between it and the traveller sleeping a few steps away. 

“Not a problem, but you won’t be placed in any of the ones down here, that is, unless you really want to,” The innkeeper said. She giggled at Maiya’s confused expression. “My apologies, let me clarify. These beds are reserved for single day travellers.”

From out of nowhere, the innkeeper pulled out a graph. It was framed, hitting the table with a dull thud . She grabbed a piece of charcoal to the side and pointed to a random line. “See here?” Maiya nodded, not sure what she was seeing. “We noticed that many visitors of our village have been on the road for quite a while and simply needed a place to rest for a few hours. By implementing this we’ve Roost Boosted our business by 15%!” The Rito grinned proudly. “It’s our solution for the short-stay traveller without breaking the bank!”

Not one to be rude, Maiya replied. “That makes sense.” So I’m not sleeping in the lobby? Nice.

The innkeeper didn’t even try to hold back an amused laugh at Maiya’s expression. “Ha! Relieved now, aren’t you? You’re adorable. My name is Cheska by the way, owner of this lovely establishment. I’m guessing you’re also on the search for a warm bath and a good meal?”

“And the softest bed you got,” Maiya said, recalling the difficult evening she had the night before.

“You’re at the right place, have you heard of our world famous Rito down-beds? Of course you have. Let’s sort you out!”

 The room was sparsely decorated in a cosy sort of way. The place was free of knick-knacks or paintings, and it soon became obvious that everything there was there for a purpose. 

On the right was a double bed and a wooden chest sitting at its foot- open, unlocked and empty. Opposite this, to the far left of the room, was a small fireplace. Stocked with logs, it was ready to be lit to ward against the later evening chill. 

Maiya pulled the cloth door further, stepping over the threshold. On the wall directly across from her was a window. The surrounding waters of Lake Totori and the leafy green Tabantha forests were visible from within its four corners. To Maiya's relief a writing desk was positioned beneath it, paper, inkwell and quill already supplied. Her mentor wouldn't have to wait too long for a response. 

The place felt untouched, as if frozen in time since the last tenant vacated. She liked it. It smelt like honey and sage. 

“Forgive us for the dust,” she heard Cheska say. The Rito swiped a few feathers on the top of the window sill, frowning at the dirt that came off it. “It has been a while since anyone’s set foot into this room. Would have offered one of our vacant newer ones too, but Chief Kamori suggested in the note that you could stay here.” 

“Where’s the original owner?” Maiya asked. 

“They left many years ago, when I was just a chick. Mama was the innkeeper at that time as I was still too young to learn the ropes.” Cheska tilted her head, earrings glinting. “I can’t really remember their face, but my ma described them as always a bit intense. 'Too many eggs in one basket makes a person go crazy, Ches!’ She would say. Whatever that means.” The Rito wiped her wing on her apron. “Wonder if that’s why they left, huh?” 

Maiya racked her brain for something to say, “Uh…”

“Anywho! Communal baths are a Spire floor up. Complimentary soap from the front desk will be handed out if you remember to cheer 'Swallows Roost Boost!' Oh! And clap twice. Don't forget that. That's very important."

She felt a headache creeping up. "Is it really?"

"Nope." Cheska grinned. "But it’d still be a good idea to have a wash before you knock-out for the day. Sorry to say it, hylianlla , but you stink!"

 The young Enchanter worked quickly to acclimate herself to her new surroundings. Whilst this was the first time she’d travelled so far outside Akkala, she knew it would be smart to be curious and observant. Everyone had their patterns, and the Ritos were no exception to this. Much like it did with enchanting, figuring out how things worked early around these parts was going to do her a lot of good in the long run. And not making a fool of herself by missing simple social cues was always a plus. 

Day one was when Maiya realised that Rito Village rose before the sun. The smell of freshly baked bread and the sounds of haggling at the markets began as early as the crack of dawn. Sitting on the railing just outside her room and picking apart her mandarin, she also found that some fruits tasted better here. 

She swung her feet. The cool mountain breeze and view were enough to brave the drop, and she surprisingly found herself at relative peace as she finished her meagre breakfast. It was a big change from earlier that morning. 

Maiya had awoken before first light, bleary eyed from another nightmare she couldn’t quite remember. Walking outside to catch her breath, she spotted a squadron of warrior Ritos flying overhead in the early twilight. She’d nearly called out and waved to them, doubtful that they would hear her anyway, but thought better of it when she caught the familiar sight of blue amongst their ranks.

The Hylian exhaled, tilting her face to the warming sunlight. Watching the sky now, about three hours afterwards, she saw a dull orange Rito depart from one of the upper floors, flying in the same direction towards the mountains. She wondered if they were a warrior too.

She bit into her fruit, chewing somberly. A warrior. She was supposed to find a worthy warrior. But how could she now when the dagger rejects one of the best fighters this village could offer? 

Perhaps I have to look harder. 

Maiya closed her eyes, the rune on her hand aching. "Where do I even start?"

On the list of tasks to complete whilst she was here, another began to weigh heavily on her mind. She remembered that Teacher said this was her opportunity to gather more information for her studies. Where books on Ancient Weaponry were limited, tomes on Enchanting were extremely rare. Most were burned, buried or lost to time when the Sheikah were subdued 10,000 years ago. 

Enduring information survived in bits and pieces, some being handed down by word-of-mouth through stories and secrets. Whilst this worked to protect knowledge, it made finding consistent techniques difficult. And with all known Enchanters aside from her and Teacher either lost, dead, or in hiding, finding instruction beyond her mentor’s library and her mentor herself felt almost impossible.

Feeling hopeless, Maiya stared at the new glove which covered her left hand, lifting it so that the eye-shaped scar underneath would be at level with her own. The rune was quieter today. She turned her hand, examining the neat seams at its sides and the small tufts of feathers which cushioned her palm. The fit was perfect. She wondered how much study and practice it would take to make something this good. 

A memory of one of her Teacher’s lectures came to mind. 

“Most Enchanters encountered in legend are Sheikah, however this does not mean that they are the only beings with an aptitude to enchant. ” Her mentor’s voice echoed in her head. She could visualise the moment easily, see the tall woman in a dark hood pace the room, her long pendant of a weeping eye lightly swinging.

“In fact, were it not for the Goron People in Eldin and the teachings they kept of their late-Enchanters, I would have never fully mastered the flame for my first weapon. Hence, I would have never become Enchanter were it not for me seeking their guidance. We are nothing without the teachings of others.”

“I am nothing without the teachings of others.” Maiya repeated, words eaten up by the cloudless sky. 

All of Teacher’s old books said that the Hebra Highlands were the original birthplace of ice enchantments. Rito Village, with its close proximity and history of keeping physical records, was her best bet in finding actual information regarding Ice Enchanting or even runes if she were lucky. She needed something , whether it be a book or an old myth. Anything to lead her in the right direction for her research. And she had no idea where to start.

Questions, questions…

“Why so glum, hylianlla? ” 

“Shit!” Maiya jumped, dropping her fruit, she tipped forward, body seconds from falling into the waters below.

“Woops! Hold on there.” A wing reached to grab the collar of her jacket, pulling her backwards.

The young woman fell onto the wooden decking behind her. She groaned, rubbing her back as she rolled and stood up gingerly. Familiar burgundy feathers, braids, and now silver triangular earrings met her gaze. “Good morning Cheska, nice earrings. Please don’t do that again.”

The Rito looked slightly apologetic, tossing her mop’s handle from one wing to another. “I’m sorry for that, you see I was just cleaning out the room next door- terrible stuff really, the man left a smell that you can’t just scrub out- when I saw you sitting here all sad looking and lonesome.” She looked a bit bashful. “I was going to leave you to your thoughts, but then you said something ominous out loud and my curiosity got the best of me.”

Note to self, don’t repeat Teacher’s top ten quotes in public. 

Cheska continued, “Were you thinking hard? I don’t think you blinked once. You looked like you were trying to set something on fire with your eyes.”

Maiya laughed dryly. “Would you believe me if I said you were not the first one to tell me this?” 

The Rito’s curious teal eyes seemed to gleam even brighter. Those apparently were the wrong words to say if she wanted the feathered woman to leave. If she didn’t before, Maiya well and truly had Cheska’s attention now. 

The innkeeper placed the mop she was holding to the side, and with a flap of her wings was over the railing and seated next to Maiya as if she’d been there the whole time. “Alright! What ails you on this fine morning, little traveller?”

Maiya sighed. Might as well . “Is there a place here that stores information?” 

“Depends,” Cheska said, holding up three feathers, lowering them with each suggestion as she ticked off a mental checklist. “Fifth floor we have a library for general stuff. Cookbooks, numeracy and literacy texts, some basic readings on science. The elders use it as a resource in the syllabus for the young’uns.” 

“If you want some political and business advice, or a long winded talk on our current economics, then ask Chief Kamori how his day is going. Don’t get me wrong, I love our fearless leader, but he needs to get out more.” 

“How about old information? Like old history?” Maiya tried. 

“Old history, huh?” Cheska went quiet for a moment, looking at the final feather she held up. “Then you should definitely see Honoka in the Archives. She knows heaps about old teachings. More than anyone else in our little llaqta. Got a whole collection on dead languages and legends not even Old Man Yieni would tell- not that he does much storytelling anymore but I digress!” 

Sounds promising . Maiya smiled. “I think that’s it, Cheska.” 

“Is it really? Oh, I’m happy to have helped. It’s the fourth level from the top by the way! Might be a difficult climb, for a Hylian I mean. A lot of stairs. Don’t get too winded on your way up. Take your time.” She pushed off the railing, flapping her wings and hovering in the air. “You don’t owe me anything by the way. Just maybe let me know if you find something interesting. Actually, definitely let me know if you find something interesting.” 

“You’ll be one of the first,” Maiya said, pushing off from the railing she was leaning on. “Thank you, Cheska. For the help and the directions.” 

“Not to worry, Miss Maiya!” She did a somersault in the air, and dipped down past her sight. A few seconds later she resurfaced, picking up her mop and buckets with her talons. “Oops forgot these! The things a girl would do to get some good gossip around here. Good luck, hylianlla! You’ll need it! ”

Maiya took Cheska’s advice, ascending the spire whilst taking time to enjoy the village with a more wakeful and less anxious mind than the one she had yesterday. A range of colourful shops and little wooden houses were found on every level. It was refreshing to see how open everything was. Doors were mostly long pieces of cloth, rolled up to air out the home and let the wind in. Children ran to and fro, some who were old enough to fly zipping around the clotheslines. There was so much laughter in the air. Their elders sat and gossiped on the front porch, a few leaning out their windows or resting in their rocking chairs. 

It was loud, full of energy, and Maiya loved it. 

There’s an antique store on this level. The pottery is so beautifully shaped! Are those little clay wings?

A jewellry shop. The fine details are so exquisite! I wonder how they got the metal to bend like that without snapping?

A tavern! I’ve never been to a tavern before! 

Distracted by the sights, it took her an extra few minutes to reach her destination.

Meeting the Head-- and only-- Archivist of Rito Village, Master Honoka, was, well for lack of a better word, interesting. A security gate behind the main cloth door rattled and shook as the Rito Elder unlocked it, pulling it back in a single motion. She peered at Maiya through the thick glasses which rested at the top of her beak, cautiously taking in the appearance of the small human woman who awkwardly stood at her doorway. Even whilst leaning on an ornate silver cane, the Rito stood three heads taller, practically towering over her. “Unfortunately, we don’t take walk-ins,” the old woman said. Her voice was intelligent, educated, and extremely tired. 

“I’m not here to sight-see,” Maiya said. “Are you...are you the Archivist?” She shuffled in place, willing herself not to stare at her shoes. “If so, nice to meet you. Do you have any texts on arcane weaponry? Something that mentions blue-energy, or ice magic?” 

Master Honoka expression softened, but her grip on the gate did not waver. “I’m sorry, hylianlla , but the Archives do not welcome tourists anymore. If you wanted to know how to make ice arrows however, I suggest you see the bowyer a level down. Though don’t get his shop mixed up with the blacksmith’s, that bird is a gruff one. Now have a good day.” She shuffled back, pulling the gate to shut her out.

Her rune flashed. “Wait!” Maiya said, unsheathing the flame dagger. Its orange gleam was as bright as ever, catching the morning light. Her hands shook minutely as she presented it in front of her in a nervous hurry. 

Perhaps shoving a knife with little explanation in front of an elderly lady was a bad idea, she thought. Honoka’s eyes widened, a small gasp escaping her beak. She gripped her cane tightly. Maiya’s gloved hand warmed. She panicked, wondering if it was going to hit her. However, as the Elder advanced, her eyes caught the light of the red flame, feeling the radiant heat which ran under the metal of the dagger. The rito stopped, eyes widening in recognition. “Enkantada,” Honoka whispered. 

In an instant, the door was pushed back. Maiya jumped as a wing wrapped around her wrist, quickly pulling her into the hut. 

Immediately, the familiar smell of dust and books filled her senses. Maiya blinked, looking up. All around her, covering the walls and reaching the ceiling, were shelves upon shelves of precious books. 

The collection was massive . 

Maiya gasped. A part of her, the giddy childlike excitement at discovering something new, jumped for joy. It’s like she was standing in the middle of a perfect storm. Some books were hardbound, the titles on many of their spines in languages she’d never heard of before. Others were nothing but just paper and twine, on the verge of falling apart and standing on their last legs. She saw books with paper backs, and books wrapped in animal skins. The top of her banada felt warm, with beams of white, dusty daylight shining from the oculus above her. 

Someone cleared their throat. Maiya whirled around. The elderly rito stood only a few steps away, cane outstretched. The metal stick nudged at the arm which held the dagger, lifting it up higher to the dusty light that filtered in from the glass ceiling. 

“Who are you?” Honoka said, cautious yet not unkind. She reached for a dial at the side of her glasses, turning it. The lenses on her spectacles moved and folded into a focal point, magnifying her vision. She leaned forward, examining the dagger with a critical eye. “An Enchanter? I can’t believe it. I thought there was only one of you left.”

Maiya’s shoulders sank, sinking the dagger back into its sheath. “Two now, actually. I was only given the title a few weeks ago. I’m sorry for the confusion.” 

“It’s no trouble, dear,” Honoka said. “I apologise as well, we’ve had an issue the past few months with thieves. The Yiga Clan have been pretending to be travelling scholars looking for precious, old books in our collection. We’ve lost many in the past month and I didn’t want to take the risk.”

“That sounds terrible.” 

“It is,” Honoka said, looking close to tears. She sniffed, squaring her shoulders. “Nevermind that. What brings you here, Young Enchanter? 

“I’m learning how to enchant Ice Weapons. Someone told me that you’re a collector of old knowledge.”

“I’m a historian and archivist, enkantada. Not an antiquarian. However, yes, I believe I might have something along those lines.  And who was this Rito that directed you here?”

“The innkeeper.”

Master Honoka sighed, taking her glasses off and rubbing her head. “Of course it was Cheska. That girl never has the sense to not stick her beak where it doesn’t belong, especially if she can get a story out of it.”

“Do you know her?”

The old rito hobbled to the middle of the room, cane glinting in the early afternoon light. “She’s my niece.” She tapped her cane to the ground, giving the floor two experimental wacks.

Maiya stood to the side, not quite sure what was going on anymore. “Uh...what are you doing?”

The Archivist raised her cane over the floor once again, stabbing its end into a barely noticeable hole in the planks. She twisted the cane and stepped back, lifting up a long piece of floorboard. It came away easily, nailed-in less tight in comparison to the others. 

Underneath there seemed to be a deep gap in the floor, holding what looked like four mysterious rectangular stacks. 

Maiya bent down to get a better look. The inside was dusty, probably from having not seen the light of day in several years. As she moved closer, she realised that the stacks she saw were actually books, all faded and leather bound. 

“Many years ago,” Honoka said, looking down at the cobweb covered tomes. “I was asked to burn these. Me, being the stubborn woman I was back then, followed my heart and decided to hide them instead.” 

“Why?” 

“Knowledge is never supposed to be destroyed,” she said, looking at Maiya seriously. “We should not fear mistakes nor the things we don’t fully understand. If we did, then we would never learn from our shortcomings and continue making regretful decisions.” She turned away, walking towards a back room. “I will be in my study, the tomes are free for you to peruse. Let me know if you don’t understand anything, I have a few cipher guides you might find useful.”

“Thank you, oh wait!” Maiya couldn't help her curiosity. “Who asked you to burn them all those years ago?” 

Honoka paused before she closed the door. Her back was turned, the intricate weaving and patterns of her multicoloured shawl contrasting with the pale peach-almost white of her feathers. 

“It was the King of Hyrule, young Enchanter.”

[justimajin]

His First Love ⟨Epilogue⟩

➸ Pairing: Yoongi x Reader

➸ Genre: Fluff, Angst 

↳ Vampire AU, Reincarnation AU

➸ Words: 2k

➸ Warnings: none

➸ Summary: Everything reminds you of him - the snow that dances outside, the faint tunes that you compose, the gliding of the white tiles beneath your fingers. But as the years have passed by, what does become of your story? 

➸ Moodboard Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8(M) Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Epilogue - series inspo post

➸ A/N: Thank you so much for taking the time to read this series, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did and I truly appreciate the amount of love that it recieved ^.^

It’s freezing cold.

The cool breeze of the wind brings shuddering chills down your spine, the tips of your fingers already lingering with the delicate frost. Fog disperses into the atmosphere when you exhale, the slight sharp edges of your teeth peeking through the subtle space between your lips.

Your boots heavily stomp against the slippery ground, trudging forward to make it all the way to your office. Burying your face into your red scarf again, you find yourself stopping when you watch two kids playing with the fluttering snow. Their innocent laughter rings through the air, the pure joy of witnessing winter in all its glory and being able to rejoice in their time together has a faint smile tugging at your lips. One of them, the young girl, perks her head up when she notices you watching and a wide smile is painted on her lips.

“Do you want to join us?” She asks, her eyes glimmering with the hope and the everlasting excitement radiating out from her.

You smile, but shake your head, “Maybe next time. Have fun you two.” You say and she nods, before racing back to her friend.

“Have fun,” you slowly whisper, walking away, “With all the time you can still spend together…”

You finally arrive at your office, wondering how it would have been remotely possibly for you to go up so many flights of stairs every single day when you were still human. Shaking your head at the thoughts, you walk inside the room and Sun’s expectant eyes land on you as you shrug off your coat.

“You’re back!” She exclaims, making her way over to you and engulfing you into a hug. Her appearance has since changed, opting to cut her long hair into a shorter style and wearing clothes that were loosely fitted on her frame as the years had passed by.

“I was going to come back sooner or later.” You simply state, setting up your materials down. On the other hand, you were slowly looking more and more like your own past-life, the years taking a wonderful toll on you for your appearance.

However, that was the one bright piece that the future had given you.

Each day continues to be a blur, climbing up the copious amount of stairs and arriving up at the office you shared with Sun to assist her with work. You had continued to study history, but as time went by your interest for it only seemed to decline, pending memories that you had kept locked away attempting to unconsciously resurface.

Because it seems like a part of you never did let go.

You turn your eyes to the side, faintly smiling when you see the brown piano sitting in the corner, pages and pages of new pieces composed in a safely kept leather-bound book for the time you had to spare.

“Y/N?” Sun questions, inwardly sighing when she catches you in a daze once again – your eyes suddenly flickering back at the sound of her voice.

She quietly walks over and sits in front of your desk when she knows all too well why you were eyeing the precious piano in the corner.

“Are you thinking about…” She trails off, not wanting to finish her sentence but you simply nod in response.

You let out a deep sigh, “You know it’s hard not to.” A chuckle escapes from you, “I just think he was better at dealing with this than I ever was.”

It was bitter to think about, the amount of times you wanted to lock yourself up inside your room and never come out for a single drop of sunlight were thoughts that never left your mind. The constant drifting of your mind never failed to stop either, always swaying to memories of him when you would catch yourself eyeing the wonderful brim of winter.

But he wasn’t there to share it with you.

“Y/N…” Sun says, “I-I’m sorry.”

You’ve lost track of how many times Sun had apologized to you, long having forgiven her when she told you how Taehyung had exactly found out about Yoongi in the first place.

“What?” You whisper, eyes abruptly enlarging when Sun musters up the courage to tell you.

“I was sent by Taehyung to find out more about Yoongi. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I realized that it was because Taehyung wanted to get rid of him….”

It catches you off guard that Suran’s reason for even going into Yoongi’s forest was because of the Prince. You take a deep inhale, no sense of hatred pouring out from you.

“It’s okay, you were in love, it’s not your fault Sun.”

She bursts into tears at hearing your response, not realizing how much she needed the forgiveness when the guilt continued to plague her.

“Sun. You know what I’m going to say.” You look at her with a soft smile and she holds your hand in hers.

“I know, I just wish you would smile more often like this.” Desperation laces into her voice and you know she’s been trying to uplift your spirits more, but you know they’ve faded, alongside with him.

After Yoongi was gone, Taehyung had vanished as well. The years had passed by at a steady state, no indication of his return throughout them. A part of you continuously prays that he doesn’t return, having fulfilled the Prince’s cruel wishes before departing and leaving you with no ounce of forgiveness to be given.

A knock sounds on the door and Sun straightens up, wondering if a client were possibly at the door.

Instead your met with the familiar shades of black and blonde entering the room.

You softly smile when Jungkook sits down next to you, boxes of food in his hand as Jimin talks to Sun, becoming surprisingly close to her as the years had passed by. The atmosphere changes into a joyful one, and Jungkook asks you about your day.

“Its been going well, you?”

Jungkook shrugs, “Attempting to find a decent job has been hard, but I’m bound to find something soon enough. Maybe I’ll just work in a crafting store or something.” He flops open a container and begins to indulge into the food, offering you some with completely stuffed cheeks. You let out a chuckle, shaking your head at your own empty appetite.

“Woah Y/N, you compose?” You turn your attention to Jimin, who had been previously eyeing the piano resting in the corner and was looking at the old book delicately placed on top of it.

“Uh yeah, those notes are from really long ago.” You explain, carefully getting up and watching Jimin flips through the crippling pages.

“First Love?” Jimin questions and your eyes flash when he’s discovered the particular section you had been hoping he wouldn’t stumble upon. “Can you play it?”

“Yeah, but not right now.“ Jimin continues to persist despite your wishes.

“Aw come on, please, it’ll probably sound really ni-“

“NO.” You snatch the book back into the protection of your arms and you suddenly notice everyone has their eyes planted on you.

You hastily give Sun a stiffened smile, the atmosphere becoming suffocating for you as you grab your thick coat and turn to exit. Walking down the stairs, you enter the snowy weather once again, letting it consume you completely after you disappear into the white chaos.

Sun sighs at your departure, but she decides it was best for you to take some time to yourself first before you returned. She returns to shuffling around her papers, observing the next couple of clients she had been assigned. The names and reasons for appointments are understandable to her, however, one certain file intrigues her interest, the description of having vague nightmares every single night with the inability to decipher them accordingly.

Unknowingly, a small smile tugs at her lips.

You walk back the same route you had taken previously, deciding to quickly take a shortcut through an alleyway when it continues to snow heavily. Narrowing your eyes, you start to have the inkling that it was possibly not the right choice to do so from the already daunting and dark appearance, but you simply just shrug it off.

You couldn’t exactly be classified as being weak anymore.

However, your ears immediately pick up on something from behind you, the slight crunch against the snow being emitted to your sensitive hearing. Raising a brow at the particular intrusion, you abruptly decline your rapid pace and simply wait, wait for the sound to arrive again.

The faint movement behind you is instantly detected.

There.

You turn around, reaching out for the person following you and pushing them against the brick wall, prepared to face anything that came into your sight.

But this, this was something you were not expecting in the least.

Your hand falters.

You immediately take in his features – the same eyes boring into your own except they had no red hues swirling within them. The strands of his hair swiftly brush against his forehead, the newly dyed dark red strands greeting you instead of the familiar midnight black shade. His teeth remain clenched, no signs of protruding teeth but regular white pearls being present.

He looks….completely normal.

“Argh, I wasn’t trying to do anything, can you let me go?!” You move away from him once you sense the irritation laced in his voice, but your eyes remain attached onto his form. You keep wondering if your hallucinating, or worse, if the past was possibly coming around to haunt you with nightmares once again.

“S-sorry…” You quietly whisper, and he walks away after scoffing and fixing his crumpled shirt.  

He keeps walking.

Further and further from you.

“Hey.” You say, barely audible through the small delicate, flakes fluttering down upon you, but he turns away, raising a disinterested eyebrow.

“Y-yoongi?” You question as your eyes begin to slowly gloss over, tears threatening to fall.

You don’t know if your hallucinating or dreaming, but he’s right in front of you and you don’t want to let him go.

“How do you know my name?” He wonders, taking a step towards you and your eyes widen with the confirmation.

You now understand how painful it is for him to continue staring at you, void of any emotion arising in his eyes when a thousand are emerging from your own. You force yourself to continue on, “D-do you ever have dreams…w-where you’re dying?” You abruptly say.

His eyes tense in surprise, walking over to you slowly. When he gets closer, his voice drops down and he asks in a hushed whisper, eyes darting back and forth, “How do you know about that?”

A loose smile adorns your lips, reaching out your hand to encase with your own. A part of you laughs when you see his delicate hand be placed within your own hand, which were now paired with angry black veins and elongated nails.

“Do you want to hear a story?” You suggest and you can already recognize the look of contemplation running through his mind, wondering if he should trust you or not.

The firm line his lips were drawn in finally drops down, before he nods and you tug him alongside you to walk in the snow.

“What kind of story is this?” Yoongi questions, a blooming smile arising on your lips when you turn to face him and gaze into his eyes.

“It’s a story…” More snow begins to flutter down, encasing around only the two of you.

“About his first love.”

[butterflydm]

The Magicians Revisited: 1x04 The World in the Walls

Significant moments: As part of Marina’s plan to steal from Brakebills, she’s done a cooperative spell with Julia to mess with Quentin’s mind in order to trick Dean Fogg into lowering the protective wards around the school. I’m assuming she picked Quentin because it’s a powerful cooperative spell so she needs a strong witch like Julia, and Julia’s mad enough at Quentin to be able to use him as a target. Julia might not be willing to trap just any random student into a hell-dream, but she’s pissed enough at Quentin to do it to him. The dream itself is a mishmash of the hospitals he’s spent time in with elements of Brakebills, and it preys on his own thoughts and twists them.

So, potentially, twisted reflections of what’s in Q’s mind — Dean Fogg becomes another authority figure, a doctor. Both Eliot and Alice are very sexually aggressive towards Quentin, and Q turns Penny into a janitor with a heavy accent (which real!Penny calls out as racist of Q’s subconscious).

Julia, otoh, is the actual Julia. Which… man, oh there is so much ugliness to unpack there. Actual, real Julia takes malicious joy at Quentin’s pain in her first scene, and only starts to be worried/concerned in her second, when Q has gone past being freaked out and is so mentally burnt out that he’s non-responsive.

As Julia is leaving from her second visit with Quentin, real!Penny walks into the dream/spell. He sees fake!Penny and is instantly offended which, you know, fair. Anyway, Q asks Penny to find him in the real world and wake him up, and that, at 23-24 minutes into the episode, is the first time we leave Quentin’s head.

On a more acting-based level, I feel like this kind of episode only works when the actor has a rock-solid understanding of who their character is and how their character sees themselves and isn’t afraid to embrace the uglier sides of their character, and I’m pretty impressed at how strong a grip Jason Ralph has on Quentin only four episodes into the show.

In the scene with Julia and Marina, Julia expresses concern over what the spell is doing to Q, and we see that Kady has been watching, too, and Marina is definitely aware of Kady’s relationship with Penny at this time. Kady is also concerned at the idea that the spell could potentially trap Q in his own mind forever. When the later attempt by the Dean and Penny to break Q out of the spell fails, Kady goes to Julia to tell her to reverse the spell because Q might never wake up otherwise. Julia goes to the Dean & Co. and confesses that she cast the spell.

One big thing that this episode does is soften the antagonism between Q and Penny — ironically, being a little inside Q’s head pissed Penny off, but when he was more deeply inside and exposed to more of the trauma Q was going through, he became angry at Julia on Q’s behalf for putting him through that. It did this to a certain extent with Kady and Q, too.

With Jane’s help, Quentin is able to pull himself out of the Web even when the Dean seems pretty certain he’s fucked. Jane looks damn proud of him for it, too. Eliot, the Dean, and Penny are all visibly relieved that he’s awake again. Julia is guilt-stricken as, you know, she should be. Looking forward, I’m relatively sure this is the ugliest thing that actual, shade-having Julia ever does to anyone. Anyway, not only has she set fire (for now) to her relationship with Quentin, she also gets kicked out of Marina’s hedge witch group for betraying Marina.

In Q’s last scene in his head, we get him quoting from the books, “Jane saw only one way out for him: stop playing, start living”, which ties into the “live your life here” throughline that’s been thrown at Q a few times over the course of the series. That’s also tied into the ‘stop overthinking’ theme that Q gets a lot, too. Q runs into issues when he lives inside his head instead of living his actual life in the real world, and this nightmare that Julia and Marina trapped him in is just an extreme manifestation of that tendency of his.

That’s actually also related to that flaw of his that I mentioned in the 1x03 post — where he holds other people accountable for his emotions. That’s him living like he’s in a Scarlatti Web all the time, where other people are just projections of his fears and desires rather than being, well, other people. And that’s the epiphany that he has during the endgame of the Beast arc when he gives the… god’s come… to Alice instead of drinking it himself (what is this show that I had to write out that sentence). That he is not the sole protagonist, that he is not the only person who has emotional importance. And that life is actually better when he embraces that truth, because it means that he can actually see other people for who they are and not as echoes of his own thoughts. It was really great character growth, until- well.

Magic: 1. Quentin "wakes up" trapped in a mental world created by a cooperative spell cast by Julia and Marina called a Scarlatti Web. 2. Quentin is able to cast a fireworks spell while in the Web. 3. Jane is able to penetrate the spell enough to send a vision of her younger self to Q to try to get him to work on breaking the spell by giving him hints about where to look. 4. There was a magician in Fillory named Ellesworth Downs, who was cursed by a witch to only be able to cast game magic. 5. Kady tries to cast healing magic on Q; it fails. 6. Marina uses a spell to light her cigarette. 7. The wards are lowered to allow the bug-spirit in to save Quentin. 8. Marina uses magic to get into the room where the stolen memories are kept. 9. Jane is able to get to Q again after the first part of the spell is broken, and she tries to let him know how to get out of the spell. 10. Marina pulls Julia to her side. 11. Marina crosses out Julia’s hedge witch stars and kicks her out of the bodega.

Relationships: Quentin & Julia: estranged friends Quentin & Eliot: friends, confidantes, romantic undertones Quentin & Penny: frenemies? I think they qualify as frenemies now Quentin & Alice: estranged friendship?, crush Penny & Kady: romantic & sexual relationship Kady->Penny: manipulative relationship Marina & Julia: burned bridges Marina -> Kady: blackmail/extortion Quentin->Kady: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Kady->Quentin: friendly enough to be concerned about him & pissed at Julia for being willing to turn on him Jane&Fogg->Quentin&co: manipulative mentorship Eliot->Julia: contempt Kady->Julia: contempt/anger

Physical contact: Fake!Eliot searches through Q’s pockets for pills, grabs Q’s hand and presses it against his chest and pushes it down his body. He puts a finger on Q’s mouth and smacks him on the ass as he leaves. Fake!Alice grabs Q’s face and kisses him. Julia reaches out to touch Q’s hand during her visit to him. She brushes his hair out of his face. Fake!Penny grabs Q’s hand to show that Q was palming pills instead of swallowing them. Q grabs pages out of his fake roommate’s hands to keep him from destroying the books. Q touches several of the residents of his mind during his musical number. Q shares a hug with his fake father. Fake!Eliot and Fake!Alice do some very close sitting with Quentin during the montage after he’s been told that he tried to kill his father. Julia touches Q’s knee in her second visit with him. Penny shoves Quentin against the wall. Q shoves him back, Penny shoves him back harder (as requested). Marina smacks Kady’s ass. Q pickpockets one of the fake nurses for a key into the office to finally get some tape to fix the pages of the book. Penny shoulder-checks Eliot a bit (not too hard) as they’re looking for Q’s body. Penny slaps Q’s face to try to wake him up. Fake!Penny and another fake employee of the hospital haul Quentin off to get the lobotomy. Dean Fogg touches Q’s forehead after the attempt at breaking Q out of the spell. Eliot pets Q on the head after he’s woken up from the spell.

Character Notes: Quentin: he last saw his dad (Ted) a few months ago; they had dinner. Actual Alice, in real life, does not appear in this episode. Only the fake Alice in Q’s head. Margo does not appear in this episode.

Students: Marina used to attend Brakebills; she was kicked out three months before graduation.

Timeline Notes: Quentin fell asleep at a party on Tuesday and then went under the spell. Penny arrives in the dream on a Wednesday.

[nehawriter16]

2018, THE YEAR THAT BROKE ME

I’m currently sitting on the floor of my bedroom. It’s been a day of avoiding real work and responsibilities, but then again, escapism is kind of the theme of this year, so it’s only accurate that I’m here writing this.

Everybody is asleep, except me. And the men I like who live overseas, but they’ve been ignoring me, so I have no desire to ring them up despite the general despair and loneliness I feel. But let’s not begin our round up with boys, because although they rank high on my list of important life lessons/disappointments this year, I don’t want also want to give them the satisfaction of first place.

In the last 365 days, a lot about my life changed. I’m going to try to sum it up as best as I can.

1) In the beginning of December, I quit an internship that anybody else would have killed for. The work and constant travelling and being yelled at by crude seniors broke the delicate petal that I am. I’d landed that job at 19, and I loved that I was thrown into the adult world so early because it taught me a lot, but two years of showing up every day to do something I don’t love killed something inside of my brain. And so, I decided to take a month off and then move to a smaller firm, not realising that my job at EY would help to keep my sanity by keeping me occupied.

The first few weeks were bliss. After twelve hour work days, I suddenly had a lot of free time and I indulged in attending fun trainings and catching up with old friends. For a short second, life was filled with hope, up until my birthday in mid Jan.

2) Since I now had the luxury of lesser work hours, I decided to pursue one of my biggest dreams – writing a book. I already had the story in mind, and I thought that despite the emotional turmoil that revisiting some of the memories would bring, the bigger picture would be worth it. It’s almost the end of December now, and I’m still sure it is.

But the truth is – my relationship with A blossomed in 2016, and died a premature death in mid 2017. And I’ve been dragging it through the ground for longer than I should be. Sometimes I wonder if I’m solely responsible for squeezing it for the story. Or maybe it was the kind of love you can’t forget. Well, I can’t. I’m sure he has.

But one of the hardest things about writing this has been taking myself back to when we were falling for each other. I’ve been reading emails about hopes and dreams and forever after it has already ended. And how do you write about happiness when you know there isn’t going to be any? All this is important for the narrative, yes, but it fucks with my mental health so badly. 2016 me was naive and trusting. 2018 me is bitter, and not too thrilled about revisiting those moments mostly because of how much they hurt just to think about, forget turning them into an interesting cliff hanger filled story.    

I have almost finished writing it though, and that’s what’s the more important thing. I don’t know what kind of nightmares publishing and finding an agent and royalties is going to bring, but at least I will have created something tangible and coherent instead of this faraway thing that I’ve dreamt of since I was 13.

3) I tanked my CA Final – and this was the biggest disappointment, no surprises there. More than the gallons of self loathing it brought on me, it was about the burden I created for my parents. Yesterday my mother, in a burst of anger, said, “If you don’t pass in May, you can’t live under our roof anymore.” She doesn’t know this, and she probably never will, but I cried myself to sleep because that thought terrifies me.

I feel like I am already just swimming through a rubble of guilt. Most people my age have already gotten well paying jobs and have been living out of home for years now. They are financing themselves and starting businesses and I don’t even read the newspaper on a daily basis. I lack the self control I used to have in school, or maybe my mother’s constant nagging and being up my ass was the only way I stayed successful when I was younger.

Of course, this career choice was a MASSIVE bad decision, and I’ve always felt out of place in it. I will never be the best, but I really do need to pass and finish. If I can’t pass it again, I will literally sink into unconquerable depression that no amount of therapy and medicines will be able to pull me out of.

I’m supposed to start studying from the 1st, and I hope that it doesn’t drive me FUCKING INSANE like the last time it did, because this time, the pressure is higher and time, lesser.

I still have some grit left in me though. The last two months of this year have been difficult, but creatively fulfilling, and I am okay with having to go back to analytical subjects again. I feel sane enough to drop into the mental battlefield that is the CA Final syllabus.  

 4) I’m 23 in a fortnight, and at least 5 of my friends got engaged this year. I was the oldest in school in my batch so they’re all younger than me. This whole finding a boy thing is stressing me the fuck out, because as per my calculations, it would take a year of courting for me to so much as like somebody seriously. After that, it would take two years for me to try every possible method to drive him away, and torture him with all my hamartias, and THEN if he doesn’t leave, and when he proposes, I’ll be like, “Okay fine. Maybe we can be engaged.” This whole process takes 3 years. I want to be married at 26, so I only have those many. The problem is that in this time period, it will not only be difficult to find an emotionally available boy with a pretty face – WAIT, for him to find me, because women don’t do the chasing – who is also sexy and charming and reads poetry and has a sensible head on his shoulders. No, in this time period I will also be taking solely career-oriented decisions as one must, and love will always take the backseat. I want to move abroad in 2020 and he may live somewhere else, and it’s clear from my several failed attempts that I can’t do long distance. Also to be noted that you cannot try this experiment with different men simultaneously. It’s sort of a one lab rat at a time type of test.

So what, then? Fuck feelings, and only be serious with hook ups? I think I’ve filled my 2018 with at least a two dozen of those hot but dumb types (tall, abs, rolling in money, half a brain, bonus if they’re good kissers, but you can never date them seriously) and to be honest I’m getting tired of them. First of all, they’re all pussies about the poetry, it literally frightens them which I find kind of hilarious, but it’s also annoying. Sure, we can roll a joint and make out on my terrace, and they’ll just pull up when I find myself getting even the least bit lonely, but the ones I really like – the fuckboys who I see have real turning into boyfriend potential – they live abroad. It’s so cliché, I might vomit, but they literally live in London and New York. London Boy is only here for a month and then he’s gone. New York one may stay back, but he always wants to meet after midnight and there’s no fucking way my parents are allowing that.

And let’s face it, I’m a relationship girl. Sure, I’ve picked up some skills with hooking up and if we’re being honest I don’t really have to make an effort, just pick a half-interesting loser from the hundred DM’s sitting in my Instagram, and it’s done. He does the work and buys the drinks. I put out. I ghost. It’s practically a system.

But I’m bored now. I need somebody entertaining. But no matter what, one of the most important lessons I’ve learnt this year is to never settle for less than what I deserve. (At least for my heart. My body gets it when she likes it, and thats enough.) So I say no to…well, everybody. True love has literally been evading me, and may for a while, I think until this CA shit is done, because it’s more important anyway.

Until then, I literally have a broadcast list called, “FWB.”

4) Do I even need to write about fake friends? Girls are so fucking FAKE NICE, it irritates me. And I have a great group of these girls in my life, who want nothing more than to use you as a stool to get to where they want. I have very few real friends and I’m so grateful for them (okay, her) because everybody else is just about the temporary bullshit. I am always afraid of judgement with them, and everything I say comes with a “what will they think of me?” filter. I don’t think real friendships should be like that at all. No, in a true friendship, you should be able to take both – your make up and fake bitch mask off and sit around in sweats, drinking and complaining about everything that’s wrong with your life.

Is this really how adults act? Will I always have to worry about the ulterior motives of everybody new I meet? And even scarier, if I spend enough time around them, will I also turn into a self centered asshole with no backbone? Will I forget who I am and start adapting to the social settings into which I’ve been thrust?

Because I hope not. Despite everything that’s happened this year, and despite almost losing my mind to mental health (yes! A thing I am still not ready to talk about! But someday will be!) I actually like my brain and what its capable of, once it starts trying. I like the stuff I come up with, the way my thoughts come out as sentences. I am actually a fan of the voice in my head, who – let’s face it – has been a real ass friend to me also. Even though she kind of went crazy with the depression, but I think the recovery has begun.

2018 was a fucking shithole, and god, I fell deep. I know 2019 is going to be even harder but I hope it is filled with more genuine happiness because it’s been a long time since I felt “happiness” as a permanent, internal feeling. It’s just been more of a fleeting and momentary thing for a few hours before the sadness envelopes me and takes lead.

So I hope that when I speak to you in – and over – the next 365 day period that’s about to begin, I am able to share some more hope and joy with you. I hope the motherfucker I’m going to marry stops sitting around on his ass and finds me, because I’m ready for my heart to be won over again. I have mourned enough, and fucked half the high spirits crowd. But most of all… I hope this book I’ve written does well. Not just because it’s a brilliant piece of shit, and a beautiful fucking story (if I may say so myself) but mostly because I really like clothes and I could use the money.

Also it would be great to stop feeling so mediocre all the time, so yeah. That would be nice. Will keep you updated Tumblr!

Love,

NC

[klein-archive]

‘What does death represent to the individual?’ – Melanie Klein’s response to a letter from Joan Riviere, 3rd June 1940

8th November 2018

This month I am posting a couple of wartime letters, which I thought appropriate on the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, 11th November 1918.

Folder C.96 in Melanie Klein’s archive consists of ten pages, including a two-page letter written by Joan Riviere to Klein on 3rd June 1940. In this letter Riviere asks Klein to lay out some of her thoughts on the ongoing war, and the psychological ‘causes’ behind such destructive conflict. This exchange – saturated with anxiety about the worsening situation – took place at a moment when the UK was under real threat of Nazi invasion and when, as Riviere says, ‘the possibility of our work all coming to an end seems so near’.

Riviere‘s letter is handwritten, while Klein’s response (undated, presumably written not long after Riviere‘s) is typed. No record remains of the list of questions suggested by Riviere to Klein. I have given Riviere‘s letter in full, but in the case of Klein’s notes I have done some minor editing for clarity’s sake. Her text was clearly not meant to be read out exactly as it was written down. Rather, it resembles a series of notes, a kind of aide-memoire for her talk, to which Riviere refers in her letter. It is unclear as to whether this talk was ever given, as Klein left London for Pitlochry at the end of June 1940; like many of her colleagues, she temporarily relocated to avoid the heavy bombing of London.

The majority of this fragment from the Klein archive has, in fact, previously been published by Claudia Frank (2003), but only in German. An English translation of Frank’s paper will appear as part of a collection of materials from the Klein archive, to be published by Routledge in 2019 (Jane Milton, in preparation). Meanwhile, Michal Shapira (2013) has written about Klein’s concept of ‘the Hitler inside us’ during the Second World War, and is currently preparing another book about Klein, based on archival material from this period (to be published by Cambridge University Press). The letter from Joan Riviere appears in a new biography by Marion Bower (2018).

Below is the letter from Joan Riviere:

Harefield                                                                 (4 Stanhope Terrace, W.2)                                                                                            June 3. 1940

My dear Melanie

When the first official mention of invasion began, the possibility of our work all coming to an end seemed so near. I felt we should all have to keep it in our hearts, perhaps, as the only way to save it for the future. Also of course I was constantly thinking of the psychological causes of such terrible loss and destruction as may happen to mankind. So I had the idea of your telling me (and then a group of us) everything you think about these causes, so that all of us who can understand these things at all should share and know as much as possible, to help to preserve it.

My idea is that you should tell us first what you believe to be the causes 1) of the German psychological situation, and  2) Secondly of that of the rest of Europe and mainly the Allies, since the last war. To me the apathy and denial of danger in the Allies especially England is not clear (I never shared it). 3) How is it connected with what I call the ‘Munich’ complex – the son’s incapacity to fight for mother and country, and his homosexual leanings.

These are the sort of questions I wanted you to speak of. I thought we would have no discussion – the only questions should be to get your meaning clear. I asked people to send in questions beforehand, which I can probably arrange in some order and bring up at a moment when you are dealing with that kind of point. If there is time I would send you the points before. Do you go to 9 Manchester Square on Saturday before the meeting? Or where will you be?

I shall be in the country till some time in the afternoon, then at home until about 6.45.

Thank you very much for your letter of 24th May. It is a good thing you have sent your papers abroad. But I believe we shall pull through, all of us, including you!

I am so looking forward to Saturday – psa [psychoanalysis] is a great anodyne in all this anxiety!

With much love

Yours ever

Joan.

In the margin is written an additional question:

4) One great question is why is it so important to be able to be brave and to be able to bear whatever happens? Everything in reality depends on this. I see a lot of answers but I don’t feel I see all it implies.

The reply from Klein:

What does death represent to the individual?

The increasing danger of a terrifying death brings out in individuals both the deeper reasons of their fear of death as well as their methods of combating this fear. Instances A. patient of very religious upbringing in whom the fear of Hell had played a great part in childhood, a fear which had intellectually been entirely overcome is revived in the present situation. The internal hell which could not be overcome by love as demanded by religion because devil and helpful God were so very much the same in his unconscious mind. In this case and others it became clear that terror of own destructiveness and murderousness, fear of having arranged for Hitler to destroy the world, and especially the incapacity to dissociate the evil father and parents from the good ones, to dissociate love from hate, and therefore to turn hatred against the evil thing – love and protection towards the loved and good people – that all this has a paralysing effect in the relation to external dangers.

One conclusion a) An important step in development is the capacity to allow oneself to split the imagos into good and bad ones which goes with the capacity to trust one’s constructive tendencies and love feelings. Only thus is it possible to hate with full strength what is felt to be evil in the external world – to attack and destroy at the same time protecting oneself with one’s good internal objects as well as external loved objects, country etc, against the bad things. To be able to achieve this is also dependent on b) The relative strength of internalized relations versus external ones – or rather the balance between internal situations and relations on the one hand and externals on the other.

If the feeling that external war is really going on inside – if the feeling that an internal Hitler is fought inside by a Hitler-like subject – predominates, then despair results. It is impossible to fight this war, because in the internal situation catastrophe is bound to be the end of it. This depends also on the ways and means in which the subject is carrying out the internal war. If he feels to out-Hitler Hitler, then it will all end in complete destruction inside. If there is a better balance between internal happenings and external happenings and the war inside is not predominating, then one can turn with strength and determination against the external enemy. There are many other factors at work which all work towards greater trust in one’s own capacity to love and construct as well in the good object and determining the balance between internal and external.

I see fully confirmed former experiences that death is terrifying to the utmost, if trust in internal relationships is weak. The danger may then be denied (very important in the general attitude towards the Hitler danger – Chamberlain’s remark of war as a nightmare) or the individual becomes paralysed – which may amount to suicidal incapacity to deal with external dangers, and ultimately (paralysis of) the means of destroying the dangerous Hitler inside. I have seen in this present situation patients’ courage grow, depression diminish, and their capacity to make decisions etc increase when hatred and guilt connected with early phantasies had been further analysed. Present situation provides a very strong stimulus to revive the guilt and fears connected with these phantasies, and I have been struck with the effect analysis can have in such conditions. Pressure of anxiety helped to throw light on former material and was able to remove much anxiety and despair.

One very typical thing was the guilt about the attraction towards this, to the destructive and dangerous penis which Hitler’s murderous weapons represent. In men it appeared that quite hidden passive homosexual phantasies, plotting and scheming with the destructive father, came to the fore. a) They had instigated Hitler to this destructive intercourse and enjoyed it sadistically. b) Terror of being destroyed and identification with the threatened mother reinforced the tendencies to scheme and plot with the dangerous father. To this is added the anxiety of the internal destruction by this dangerous father who becomes more and more internal the more external reality proves his dangerousness. The guilt about the sadistic alliance with the dangerous father is one important reason for denial: but I see the most various methods used against it; for instance, very rational sounding views that we should continuously concentrate on the offensive expressed the drive towards active and dangerous homosexuality as a reaction against the desire and fear of being anally penetrated.

This feeling of a continuous thrust on the enemy to prevent him from invasion, in contradiction to that, that we should preserve through our thrust France’s destruction and rather allow him the invasion of England. (The mother was to be saved, England, representing more the patient himself, should be more allowed to be invaded). But here the jealous attitude of mother also found expression. There was also the wish to be anally penetrated by this impressive father as well as the desire to test in reality the dangerous threatening experience. With women too, the attraction towards the dangerous father, conspiracy against mother, guilt and punishment, were very much revived. Fifth column tendencies/phantasies and guilt. But it is interesting to find the connection between these sexual phantasies, the sadistic pleasure as experience in masturbation, and inner relations. Interaction between distrust and guilt relating to brothers, sisters and parents because of these sadistic conspiracies and relations to internal objects. In the (reduced) capacity to trust in the preservation of internal loved objects because of these sadistic phantasies in relation to external ones.

Striking how the analysis of these secret plotting sadistic phantasies improved internal relationships and relieved anxiety of danger of present situation. In one instance, much former material became so much clearer and illuminating that peace of mind steadily increased, in spite of the worsening of the external situation. Balance between love and hatred increased, parents become in retrospect much more trustworthy, worthwhile preserving, and accordingly also present relatives. Fear of death decreased when trust in me, in analysis, and more generally in the survival of goodness in spite of all dangers to values, increased. The feeling that goodness cannot ultimately be exterminated, which may be a denial of danger in external relations, was based on a better balance between facing danger and yet relying more on internal goodness and trust in some good object.

The question of balance so often stressed appears as the ultimate decisive factor. Optimum between external and internal, love and hate, and the methods used against anxiety. Certain amount of temporary denial obviously unavoidable and necessary. We look at nature, we read a book, we play with a child, we enjoy food, etc, and we have to remind ourselves that our life and country is at stake. In between the good experience has helped us to deny the danger. If the denial predominates in the attitude it may lead to complacency, flight to the good inner objects, etc. If the help provided by the fact that such good things we just enjoy exist, the belief in the good object and in goodness ultimately, is not too much denial of the bad things, it may help us to take steps to preserve goodness externally, and may internally help us to remain calm in the face of danger.

After giving some fragmentary examples, which are in note form and not fully coherent, Klein turns to ‘technique’:

TECHNIQUE

The satisfaction we must all derive from the fact that analysis can be so helpful in these circumstances. There is confirmation about the main principles of our work; even now reassurance does not seem to be of great value (certain exceptions and rather limited). But an undisturbed keeping or holding fast to analyse aggression, guilt, which disturbs the belief in constructive and reparative tendencies, seems most helpful. We must however remain aware of the interplay, present and external situations, with internal and with the past, as well as past experiences. The strength with which certain experiences are re experienced, the details of phantasies coming up under this pressure, indicates also the great wish of the patient to cooperate with the analyst, and thus also to help the parent to improve the relationship with him, and to establish internally and externally, harmony. This strength of experiencing and bringing forward material has also to do with the stimulus which the nearness of death provides in experiencing life. Instances for taking in much more strongly beauty of nature, love in relations, etc, even lessening of certain inhibitions as seen in several cases. It is filling oneself with life, as well as sharing love with external people, and thus reviving, restoring internal situations. Also proof for goodness remaining; because ultimately in the future there will be objects to experience this and thus death as utter destruction cannot be true.

References

Bower, Marion (2018). The Life and Work of Joan Riviere: Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality. London: Routledge.

Frank, Claudia (2003) Zu Melanie Kleins zeitgenössischer Bezugnahme auf Hitler und den Zweiten Weltkrieg in ihren Behandlungen. [On Melanie Klein’s contemporary references to Hitler and the second world war in her treatment] Psyche – Z Psychoanal., 57:708-728.  

Milton, Jane (in preparation) working title: From the Klein Archive; Essential Readings. London: Routledge. To be published in 2019/20.

Shapira, Michal (2013) The War Inside: Psychoanalysis, Total War, and the Making of the Democratic Self in Postwar Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[lokisgame]

The Heavens Come Down To You

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4]

The phone rang when he came to the office. Skinner's secretary calling him upstairs. His uncooperative boss was the last person he wanted to talk to. Coming to work felt like a chore for weeks now. The cases didn't hold the same interest, the office felt dark and empty despite the golden autumn outside. Everything in there reminded him of her, a mug, navy blue sweater kept for days the basement got cold and damp, glasses in the drawer. Gold cross hidden under his shirt, a talisman he kept against darkness, failed him miserably.   Mulder plays dumb when Skinner asks about the incident in the hospital parking garage, and that is just too much for his boss. "What happened to you Mulder" he asked, disappointment that shouldn't be there slipped through the cracks. "You wanna know what?" he got up and banged the ashtray on his boss's desk, crushed cigarette bud still smoking "him, Cancer man, he's responsible what happened to Scully, tell me how to find him" Dark thoughts flooded Mulder's mind since he woke up. She's gone for good, she didn't come, bright light took her and he blew it again, he'll never be able to bring her back, he never even stood a chance, and that last realization angered him most "I don't care, you can have it all, the X-files, my badge, just tell me" "And then what?" Skinner sat down, resigned, glasses sliding over the blotter "he sleeps with the fishes? We're not the mafia Agent Mulder, we work for the Department Of Justice" "That's what I want" his cold resolve sounded more dangerous than any threat. Mulder was a great threat, mostly to himself, especially in this frame of mind and without Scully to watch his back.   "Sit down" he ordered, not unkindly and Mulder followed, vengeance tasted best served cold anyway, he thought. The older man looked tired, although it was not even 10am. The buzzing phone was left ignored. "Scully was a fine officer" Skinner said quietly "more than that, I liked her. But she knew the rules of the game and accepted them, if you weren't ready for what might happen, maybe you shouldn't have stepped up on the field" Skinner was right, he should have stayed away when they split them up. He should have never let her draw him back into her life. There was no way to make it right or bring back what was lost. Everything he ever touched, died. "What if I knew the risk, but never told her" "Then you're as responsible for what happened to her as the Cancer man" Skinner replied and the words crushed the last ounce of hope Mulder had. He went back to the office and typed in his letter of resignation, leaving it printed out on the desk, all it needed was his signature.

Lunch hour found him at the hospital, looking into Scully's room through the glass. Melissa by her side, book in hand, reading out loud. The monitors never changed, but something made her turn around. Mulder nodded a greeting but stayed outside, no longer sure where his place was anymore. She closed the book and came out to meet him. "Why aren't you coming in?" "I wanted to give you a minute" he leaned against the doorframe, not looking at the figure on the bed, calm, frozen and beautiful, like a fairy tale princess. He couldn't bare to see her, the guilt dragging him under. Melissa watched him and felt the change, his aura darkened. He cared for Dana, deeply, and she knew her sister enough to know, she wouldn't let her friend hang himself with guilt, real or imagined. "Have lunch with me" she suggested, hand under his elbow, steering him gently to follow "I'm famished"

She bought a sandwich in the hospital cafeteria, he ordered coffee but didn't touch it, only kept playing with a packet of sugar that came with it. Turning it between his fingers, letting the contents trickle from one side to the other, like sand through a hourglass. He wasn't the same man she saw just a day earlier. His determination was gone, but it wasn't acceptance that replaced it, and it worried her more than she'd ever admit, given they were practically strangers. The light of hope was fading in him. He turned the packet upside down, again.   "You know, Fox" she faked the slip and it made him look up "sorry, Mulder" The smile she hoped for, didn't come, he was miles away, hiding behind a brick wall. "You know, you can look for whoever did this to her for years, and still be as far from the truth as the rest of us" the sugar hourglass turned, his eyes stayed down "whoever did this to her, has an equal horror coming to them" She tried to bring him some solace, but his face fell even farther. "Including myself?" he asked, but before she could understand some woman was asking for change for the vending machine. He got up, found a pack of Morley's the woman didn't want and rushed away, as if spooked by something.

"What is it?" Mulder asked, suspicious of the envelope he just got handed. "Your plane ticket" Mr. X stood in the shadow of the column, a different blind spot in the hospital parking garage. "But we barely know each other" there was no humor in the words, how could he trust a man who just admitted to be using him for months. "Tonight, around 8:17pm, two men will come to your apartment, searching for some files, convinced the place to be vacant" "And?" "I'm offering you something I never had" "Meaning" "A chance for revenge" the man took a step back, deeper into the shadows "after tonight I won't be able to contact you for some time" "Why are you helping me?" Mulder asked, but he was gone. Just another answer, he never got.

It was a dangerous gift. Mulder received such gifts before. Usually they turned out to be nice things, mostly to hang himself with. Fake intel, false leads, bogus cases designed to keep him away from the real deal. He sat on the couch, doors locked, lights turned off, gun in hand. There was a good chance the men who were supposed to come, knew he'd be waiting. It was possible that the outcome would be decided by the one who was quicker to draw, point and shoot, and whatever happened he was going to take that shot. For Scully, for Samantha, for all the people he lost. Lights from passing cars traveled the ceiling from time to time. Clock on the wall seemed to be frozen in time, it's arms glued in place. The tank glowed, bubbles breaking on the surface hummed like...

Rain kept thrumming against the roof of his motel room. These places were always drafty, making the flame flicker, casting strange shadows between flashes of lightning. A generator must have died somewhere in the area. He heard a knock and went to the door, realizing when and where he was. "Hi" he said, feeling the relief wash over him. She was shaking, the purple bathrobe did nothing to protect her from the cold. "I want you to look at something" she declared, fear overpowering any shame she might feel. He let her in and closed the door, candle in his hand making her shadow dance over the walls. She was untying the robe and his heart started pounding, the image burned in his memory so deep that it was embarrassing, eidetic memory or not. Slender shoulders, small waist, white sensible underwear. The first time he saw her, confused as he was, he saw a woman, skin and curves, still his partner, but forever a beautiful woman. This time, he saw her, nothing more, the one person he trusted with his life, the one person he had to bring back. She glanced over her shoulder, weight shifted, and he remembered his part. Taking a deep breath, he knelt down to examine the marks on her lower back and noticed his own shaking hands, the flickering light. He didn't dare to touch her this time, if he did, he wouldn't be able to stop. "What are they?" she was starting to panic, reliving every second of the memory as it was happening. To her time was still a universal invariant, she'd never believe him, if he told her that this moment was already their past "Mulder?" "Moquito bites" hearing his own name on her lips again made him smile. "Are you sure?" he got up, before he did something rash. "Yeah, I've got eaten up a lot myself out there" and there she was, soft weight rocking him back so that he had to brace himself, inside and out. Her arms around him holding tight, shuffled all his pieces back into place like a deck of cards. He held on, squeezing his eyes shut, she was warm, strong and alive, she smelled like Scully, and she felt like Scully, and he never wanted to let go or wake up. A lightning flashed, her face stayed buried in his t-shirt, him gently rubbing her back. Seconds ticked by, dream time making them stretch, was it him or her this time, tampering with their universe. "You okay?" he said softly, feeling her shift, relax into his embrace instead of pulling back. She pressed her cheek to his chest, exhaled, and he drew her a bit closer, a bit more like a long lost friend. "I..." she hesitated, voice sounding distant made his breath catch. It was her, she was here, listening. He leaned down to whisper in her ear when a thunder crashed closer than ever...

Someone was pounding at the door, yanking him from the dream, the feeling of Scully's arms fading rapidly. The gun in his hand suddenly felt very appropriate. "Mulder?" a woman's voice called, and somehow he doubted, that Melissa was here to search his apartment. It was tempting to ignore her and protect his cover, but the longer she stood there, the more she put herself in danger. A cold thought shot a shiver down his spine, that something might have happened. He opened the door and looked past her down the hall, empty for now. "Sorry I came by, but you weren't answering your phone" she started to apologize but he quickly dragged her inside closing the door behind them "Why is it so dark in here" "Because the lights aren't on" he deadpanned, holding back anger, she was reckless to come here, and he couldn't bare having any more blood on his hands. "Okay" she looked at him as if she saw an exceptionally annoying teenager "I just came from the hospital, dr. Daly says she's weakening" the weight of her words sinking in as she relayed them, still the truth couldn't make it past her throat "it could be anytime, so I figured you'd want to come and see her" To say goodbye, he wanted to finish for her. "I can't" I'm not saying goodbye, she's not going anywhere. "Well I think that you would" she insisted and Mulder screwed his eyes shut, blocking out her and her new-age make peace with death crap. "I can't, not right now" she was just here, he felt her, he could still bring her back. But Melissa was angry with him now, unaware that Scully was reaching out. "Listen. I don’t have to be psychic to see that you’re in a very dark place... much darker than where my sister is" the calm facade dropped, she was going full throttle "Why don’t you just drop your cynicism and your paranoia and your defeat. Why is it so much easier for you to run away than just expressing to her how you feel? I expect more from you. Dana expects more" She unlatched the door and pushed past him, anger rolling of her in waves he could almost feel  crashing against him "Even if it doesn’t bring her back, at least she’ll know. And so will you" She slammed the door and he leaned against it, hiding his face in cold and shaking hands. He came home determined to get even, ready to bring down the men who hurt her. But he knew it would never even the scales, no life taken would make her come back or take the pain away. The watch on his wrist ticking loudly in the silence that fell over him. The silence that would reign forever, if he did nothing. Seconds shoveled from someday through now to way back when. All the things lost, questions never asked. The greatest mystery was life itself.

She was still asleep, alone in her room, the slowly beeping monitor watching over her, chanting still, here, still, here... He took the chair by her side, slipped his fingers into her palm and held on for both of them. Could he do it like this? Would she come if he'd go looking for her? Was there really no more time? The beeping monitor had no answers, just went on with his mantra, still, here, still, here... "I feel, Scully that you believe..." he spoke softly, feeling each word, willing them through from the bottom of his heart, voice catching as he fought the fear in their path "you’re not ready to go. And you’ve always had the strength of your beliefs." The cross around his neck was her strength, and he willed that strength into her as well, blindly making up spells as he went along "I don’t know if my being here... will help bring you back. But I’m here" The monitor kept its' hypnotizing rhythm, still, here, still, here...

The rain soaked through his jeans and jacket, graveyard scent giving the dream a morbid twist. "What is going on here?" she protested, two open graves yawning in the distance. "I think I know who did it" he felt the cold but also the feeling of the two of them, finally on the same page, the night they connected "I think I know who killed Karen Swenson"   "Who? The detective?" he remembered the look on her face, when she filled in the gaps in his theory with science, the night she saved him from his own madness. "The detective's son" he risked, waiting for her to call him crazy, to do that crazy thing she does. She never gave up without a fight, not on that first case, never in her life. "The boy in the hospital, the vegetable?!" "Peggy O'Dell was bound to a wheelchair but she ran in front of that truck" maybe she woke up in a strange place, alone in the dark "Look, I'm not making this up, it all fits the profile of alien abduction" "This fits a profile?" The rational mind was her wall, lifting her up and giving her clear view of the world, as much as giving her someplace to hide. He climbed that wall to bring her back. "Yes. Peggy O'Dell was killed at around nine-o-clock, that's right around the time we lost nine minutes on the highway" when I thought I lost you "I think that something happened in that nine minutes, I think that time, as we know it, stopped. And something took control over it." She did that, she called him here, to a place where everything started. He saw her smile and believed, believed with all his heart, that it wasn't to tell him goodbye. "You think I'm crazy" she ducked her head, hiding her smile, but he could feel her thinking. The cold turned their breaths into puffs of mist in the moonlight. "Peggy O'Dell's watch stopped a couple of minutes after nine" her voice became distant, thoughtful, reciting his old words back to him "kids come to the forest, because the forest summons them, and the marks are from some kind of test that's being done on them" Gaze fixed on the grass beneath their feet, she began to shiver and Mulder took the three steps that separated them. Shrugging out of his jacket, draped it over her head. "I'm sorry" he said, willing the dream cold away "I left my umbrella at the office" Puff of air marked her laughter as she closed the gap and although he could barely hear her over the rain, he was sure this wasn't the young girl he just met, not anymore. She looked up and the months they shared were written in her eyes. "We'll make it work somehow" she replied and threw her arms around his neck, pulling him down. Mulder freed one arm, crushing her to his chest, laughing and whispering time and time again. "Scully"

Something plopped on his head, making him wake with a start, gentle wight slipping down his neck when he looked up. She was looking straight at him, eyes slowly blinking away sleep, fingers searching. He took her hand and brought it to his lips, pressing them against warm, dry skin, making her smile, a bit with her lips, but mostly with eyes. "Hi" she breathed, and he knew, even though no sound came out. "Welcome back" he whispered and she brushed away the tears that rolled from his eyes.

A lifetime later they sat on opposite sides of a hospital bed, listening to the steady rhythm of yet another heart rate monitor. The mother they shared, still, here, still, here... "Back in the day..." Scully hesitated, still not entirely comfortable with embracing the fantastic as a possibility "did we ever come across the ability to just... wish someone back to life?" "I invented it.” Mulder replied “When you were in the hospital, like this." He no longer feared being called crazy, he loved her skepticism as much as she loved his crazy. "You're a dark wizard, Mulder." She smiled, the love they shared pulling them through dark times. Together, as always.

[melindacoulson4]

The missing piece

The future is bleak. The team scattered. Melinda May spends her time taking care of a daughter she never knew she wanted. But she doesn't do it by herself.  Expansion on scenes from 5x08. Phil’s pov

He shuts the door quietly behind him knowing that it's late. In fact, it's much later than it usually is when he gets back. It couldn't be helped. Their commander had forced them to stay over two extra hours for clean-up. His squad had spent the day taking out as many roaches as they could. But apparently, it was completely unacceptable to leave the roaches scattered about on Level 4. “Not so close to Kasius,” the commander had said. So they'd had to drag the dead carcasses to the elevator and down to Level 0 for incineration.  Population control: that was his job now. When the time came for job assignments here on the lighthouse they had to blend in. It was a more life-threatening position, but it brought home more credits. He'd joined the squad of twenty other men who'd been picked to eliminate the roaches each day. It seemed like no matter how many they took out the numbers always replenished itself tenfold. They could never make a significant chunk. 

Either way he'd come home each day mostly exhausted, limbs aching, body bruised. But he'd be rewarded immediately by the sight of Robin and Melinda together. The three of them would share dinner together and talk. Those moments made it all worth it. The peace of being together gave him the strength to get through the days.  The dim light of the bedside lamp in Robin's room illuminates the hall. That either meant that she was awake, plagued by her visions which drove her to sketch the scenes out or she'd turned the light on to keep the monsters away. The roaches were the monsters here. A few times a month she'd have nightmares about the roaches invading their level. When the nightmare got to be too much she would crawl into bed and sandwich herself between he and Melinda. When the nightmare was bearable she would turn on the bedside light. He'd told her that the roaches were afraid of light so there's no way they'd come into her room. It was enough to placate her. After all he'd know- he dealt with the roaches every day.  Other times, the visions would be responsible for her insomnia. Those were the rough nights. Sometimes he'd walk into Robin's room and pictures upon pictures would be scattered around the floor and piling up on the bed. All meaningless scribbles unless she could remember the fine details, but usually she couldn't.  But he and Melinda weren't one's to push her. So they'd all pick up the piles of drawings and shove them into the box in the corner of her room. A tiny part of him couldn't throw the creations away for fear that one day they'd need to refer back to them. In case they'd be significant in some way in the future. There was always that chance.   Melinda was especially against feeding into the visions unless they were sure that the visions directly impacted their future. It took a toll on Melinda when Robin was having a bad day. She tried so hard to provide a normal upbringing for Robin, but some days it was too difficult. He always knew when it had been a tough day for both of them by the strained glaze of Melinda's eyes and the rigidity of her movements.  He enters Robin's room, fully expecting to see her scribbling away as if the weight of the world rested on her shoulders. The scene before him catches him off-guard and completely melts his heart. Melinda is there with Robin connected to her side each fast asleep and breathing deeply. Robin's head rests on Melinda's shoulder. Melinda has both arms wound around Robin protectively. They're completely wrapped up in each other. The white knit blanket that he'd traded an old book for cocoons Robin's small form. It barely covers Melinda, which tells him that she hadn't meant to fall asleep here.  He smiles, genuinely awed that this is his family: two beautiful people that he loves furiously. He moves towards them, taking gentle steps across the floor, overwhelmed by the need to just look at them like this. It's not often they seem so unburdened. But both of their faces now are relaxed, all of life's worries have melted away in this moment. He wants to memorize their expressions. It's moments like these that cause him to wonder what he's done to deserve them. He's still getting used to seeing Melinda this way even though it's been close to two years since they've been in space. This Melinda, that isn't covered in bruises, blood, or dirt. Where she isn't being taken and replaced by an LMD. Where she isn't engaging in hand-to-hand combat everyday of her life. Where she is allowed to be just Melinda and that is enough. This softer woman who still exhibits an innumerable amount of strength each day.  Raising Robin, loving her, has given Melinda a glow. She's lighter somehow- finally able to show off her natural kindness and warmth. It was no secret between them that she always desired to be a mother. After the events in Bahrain, she'd given up that dream, but he knew she always had it in her. It was obvious, the way she dealt with Daisy. He's lucky to witness it now. It highlights how beautiful she is in every way. It's all he could ever ask for.  "Hi," she whispers, voice layered thick with sleep.  Her voice catches him off-guard. Momentary panic courses through his veins, remembering all of the years where he didn't allow himself to be seen admiring her. His mind had become conditioned to it; it was one of the harder habits regarding their relationship to break.  But now he could just look at her whenever he chose, appreciating her for who she is. "Hey," he responds, keeping his voice low. He should've expected her to wake up; she'd always been able to wake at the sound of a pin dropping. Thanks to the instincts of being a highly skilled shield agent that she would never lose.  "Anything?" She questions, hopeful.  They did this question and answer dance every day. Any significant movements today? Had he heard anything? Any news from the surface? From their missing people? Both had been unable to give up hope that maybe somehow they’d survived.  "No," he says, regretfully. Their need for information was strong but they never had much luck in that department since being forced to inhabit this space station. They were both used to being on top, in control. Formerly the director and his right hand. To not be in the loop, questioning everything, to be blindsided and shut out was not something they were accustomed to. It was one of the harder aspects of life here. They were still getting used to it after all this time.  The familiar flash of hurt clouds her eyes. His calloused hand reaches out to cover her own, silently comforting her.  Each time he reports no news, he knows that the hope dies a little bit more inside of her. There would always be the open wound: what happened to their people. Their imaginations were probably worse than the reality. That didn't stop the nightmares and the constant intrusive thoughts. The guilt weighed heavily upon them.  The loss that they had suffered was irreparable. After working with the team all of those years, they'd grown to care about each other like family. Then it was split apart. They'd lost Daisy and Mack somewhere on the surface that day the Earth cracked apart. Nothing was the same after that. Even though Fitz, Simmons, and Yo-Yo had made the journey with them everything had changed. Yo-Yo silently envied that everyone had their partner to turn to yet she lost hers. Fitz and Simmons felt the pressure of building the time machine. They all disagreed about how to move forward. Yo-Yo wanted to attack the Kree. Fitz and Simmons argued that the time machine wouldn't work. They couldn't go back to change what had happened. It was already done, so there was no point. He and Melinda wanted to play the long game. Keep living under Kree rule until Robin gave them something significant.  They'd all become a pitiful shadow of the team that they'd used to be.  Melinda and Robin were the only things that he had left in this world.  "Dad?" He turns his attention down to the small figure wrapped in blankets, blinking up at him.  "Hi honey," he replies. He can't help but smile while looking at her. Her sweet innocence helped him forget for just a little while. She gave him another reason to go on. When he was doubting it all he thought of her. Her future. And he remembered why it was so important to keep moving forward every day.  "I missed you," she says, wide brown eyes staring up at him. "I missed you too. I thought about snuggling here with you two all day." Truly he did. Always favoring the quiet with them rather than killing overgrown mutant bugs. But, he had a job to do. Even if he wasn't an agent officially, he had still sworn to serve and protect all people. The innocent. He'd never give up that duty. That fight. Now it was a fight for the survival and freedom of the human race. "Did you get all of the monsters out?" She questions, suddenly very serious. Unfortunately her fear is not a case of childhood imagination gone awry. The roaches are real and the base is crawling with them. The lie forms quickly in his mind. It's the type of lie all parents tell their kids. That the monster has been vanquished in order to protect them. All to keep the burdens of adulthood from the kids. "Of course I did. I wouldn't be able to sleep if I didn't. You know how scared I get," he gulps comically. "Yea. It's okay....mom will protect you," Robin says, completely genuinely.  "Oh she wounds me." He grabs his heart over his jacket dramatically. He can't hide the smirk from his face. It's true. Melinda would protect him if the roaches or anything else got in here. She was still much more capable in combat than him. Even though she's repeatedly assured him that he's actually improved with their weekly practices.  Robin's pure childish giggles fill the room. She's laughing so hard that her head is thrown back into Melinda's shoulder.  He peaks at Melinda and catches as she rolls her eyes at his antics, lips curving into a smile.  The laughter quiets down as he catches Robin's eyes grow heavy once again. He reminds himself that she needs to sleep no matter how much he wants to stay here talking to her all night.  "Go back to sleep. Maybe in the morning we can go gazing before I go to work. Sound good?" "Yea!" she nods excitedly.  His heart still warms at the idea that she wants to spend time with him. Going gazing was their thing. They looked at the stars together. Their spot was on Level 2, the room where Fitz and Simmons worked on their plans for the time machine up until a year ago. Now the schematics and extensive notes that they'd taken lay strewn about the room haphazardly. No more than abandoned plans.  The Kree paid the room no mind, believing it was just another storage area destroyed by the roaches. The far wall of the room had a retractable metal flap that would slowly slide open revealing a window that allowed them a glimpse of the stars- the deep blackness that seemed to go on forever. Somehow, it also held the promise of something greater. Of distant galaxies and the heroes that traveled around. Of course they'd learned that it was filled with assassins and marauders, but he still latched onto the hope that good could come from it too. He thought of it as a reflection of earth. Sure there were bad people but there were also a lot of good too. He just hoped that they could hold out long enough for that good to appear.

When Robin sat beside him at the window, he told her elaborate stories about mighty galaxy heroes that traveled through spaces fighting off evil. She probably didn't believe him, but she listened intently anyway with eyes wide while asking questions. He would always marvel at how wise beyond her years she was. But who wouldn't be with the things she's seen and lived through. He and Melinda have done everything in their power to preserve her childhood. To ease her worries and let her have fun. It was a difficult task. This was no place for a child to roam free or to play with others. The Kree did not see the value in allowing free time. They were fierce and strict even with the children. That's why Melinda mostly stayed in their quarters to keep Robin safe and entertained.  "Alright. Mom and I are going to sleep too. Come get us if you need anything," he reminds her.  "Okay. I love you," she murmurs, eyes already flittering closed. Melinda tilts her head down and drops a kiss on the top of Robin's head. She slides herself out of the bed and stands next to him. "I love you too," he says, heart full of warmth. He lifts the white blanket up to Robin's shoulders, making sure she's fully covered. Then, he tucks each side of the blanket under her body so she stays completely wrapped up. The last thing he does is bend over and kiss her cheek just like every night.  He starts walking out of the room, then turns back for one more peak at her. Her chest moves slowly up and down as she rests. She's peaceful like this, unburdened by anything. He commits the image to memory, telling himself that she's okay and if she needs them she'll come into their room tonight.  He follows Melinda into the hallway. She slips into concerned parent mode once they're out of Robin's earshot, spinning around to face him before getting to their room. Her suit of armor fades away as the seconds tick by. "She couldn't fall asleep without me there. It's getting worse. She's having the nightmares at least four times a week now," she reports, the worry unmistakable in her tone. "Did she learn anything?" If she was having nightmares maybe she'd learned more about their situation. Something about their impending doom. Any piece of information that would help them.  "No....it wasn't anything relevant. She was seeing.....death. Mine this time," she tells him arms folding in front of her stomach protectively. They didn't like dwelling on their deaths. They'd made the shared decision quickly that they wouldn't want to know about either of their deaths if Robin saw them. It was too much. Just last month he'd come home to Robin crying in her room after seeing his death. He sat with her for a while, holding her close to his chest reassuring her that he was okay. Melinda had dried tear tacks on her cheeks when he crawled into bed that night.  "Anything significant on your end?" She asks changing the subject, back to agent mode. "It's bad out there. Kasius....he's taking more people," he reports. Anyone who Kasius deemed as a threat would be sent to the surface, which was guaranteed imminent death. Earth had become uninhabitable after breaking apart. Rumors had floated around about what it was like. Zero oxygen. Your lungs would instantly burst. The land infested with roaches. Deadly storms raged on. Anyone who gave the Kree a misguided look or said something that they deemed suspicious was doomed. That's why he stuck with keeping his head down, making miniscule moves only when he was sure it was completely safe. Which meant information came slow and progress was barely more than standstill. "I got a couple more snippets today," he tells her, pulling the proof out of his back pocket. Someone had slipped him a two page document detailing where the Kree received supplies from. The aim was to know ahead of time what the Kree were planning on doing by getting their hands on shipment manifestos. There were only a few people that he could trust out there. People would turn on one another for an extra meal or a couple of extra tokens. It was every man for himself. The hope that people held out for had died out after the first year passed.  The lack of progress left them both feeling frustrated and useless. Shield had ingrained in them that missions were to be completed swiftly. The bad guys were to be arrested or taken down permanently. Hand-to-hand combat was a must. All of these things were completely impractical to them now. They were in the long fight this time. Recon was key. Forming relationships with other people who were strangers but they had no choice but to rely on. The Kree had them outnumbered, outgunned. Resources were at the bare minimum. It had already been two years and they had little to show for it. The continuation of the human race was at stake and the pressure weighed heavily upon their shoulders.  "You're bleeding," Melinda suddenly says. She reaches up, fingertips lightly touching the side of his neck right under his left ear. He sees her squinting against the dim light out of the corner of his eye.  Her fingers fall away from his neck as she grabs his hand without another word and leads him down the hall to their bathroom. She sits him on the metal toilet seat, her knees brushing his own as she moves. It's cramped with two people in here, but it brings them closer together so he doesn't mind.  He watches her as she gathers supplies from the medicine cabinet hidden behind the mirror that hangs over the sink. They didn't have much stored up. They'd conserved and traded various items to get the collection that they have now. It's more than most people have.  She picks up a piece of gauze and places a couple of drops of the liquid antiseptic onto it. It would be enough to clean the cut. It was so small that he hadn't even realized it was there until she pointed it out. Still, they could never be too careful. Her fingers lightly grasp his jaw and move his face to the side so she can get a clear view of the cut. The antiseptic stings as the gauze makes contact with his broken skin. He can't help the hiss that escapes his lips in response.  She tapes the gauze to his skin to eliminate the chance of infection. He feels the warmth from her fingertips as she presses the sticky material against his neck. Her touch lingers over the patch and he senses her words before they even leave her mouth.  "You have to be more careful," she sighs. It's meant as a warning but he detects the fear behind her words.  "I'm trying," he tells her honestly. He knew the consequences of getting sick or hurt up here with supplies severely limited. They'd seen it first-hand. It happened to a married couple who they'd met and considered friends. Both were former police officers, so they'd all bonded over the idea of a quiet rebellion. It was a case of wrong place, wrong time. Donna had been assigned garbage duty. Tom had joined him on the roach cleanup crew. One day, Donna and a group of her co-workers had gotten into the elevators and went down to Level 2. A roach had greeted the group of them once the doors opened. She'd been slashed across the chest, but lucky to escape. A week later, she was dead. They hadn't had the proper supplies to heal her. After that, Tom had never been the same. A haunted look had permanently clouded his eyes. Phil saw himself in that man if anything ever happened to Melinda or Robin. Someone with nothing left to lose. A couple days after Donna's death Tom had gone up to the Kree level with a baseball bat- the level that was inhabited by the rulers. They never heard from him again.  "Try harder, Phil. Please...I.....can't. I can't do this without you," she says, voice breaking with raw honesty. They'd stopped pretending and putting on brave faces for each other long ago. Their life together had gotten much easier from then on. Once they both accepted this new flow of their relationship. He knows that she'd be able to keep on going if something would happen to him. He knows her strength. The fight that burns inside of her. But he doesn't dare say it aloud. He swallows the words before they can leave his mouth, not wanting to get into that fight again. The one that they always had about recklessness and unnecessary risks on both of their parts. The one that stemmed from not wanting to lose each other over careless mistakes. He stands and cups her cheek, wanting her to know that he understands her worries. He waits for her dark eyes to meet his before speaking. He could always learn everything he needed to know by looking into those eyes.  "I'll be more careful," he says seriously. It's a promise that he has every intention of keeping. To see Melinda and Robin through this mess. He can see that she needs the reassurance. He knows when to push her and today is not one of those days.  The hand on her cheek travels through her dark strands and moves to holds the back of her head. He pulls her against his body with the other hand, needing to feel her warmth. Instant relief floods his senses as he's finally able to hold her after such a long day apart.  Her arms wrap around his middle, holding him equally as close.   His palm runs over the knots on her back, applying a light pressure, aiming to relieve the built up tension in her shoulder muscles. He clutches her a little bit tighter tonight feeling the honesty, love, protection, and acceptance in radiating from her arms.  They'd become so intertwined he didn't know where he ended and she began. They were two drained people, desperate for the fight for survival to be over, but never granted the luxury. So he held her just much longer tonight, knowing that their daily challenges were far from over.  He'd fight until the bitter end, humanity's last breath if it meant she'd live. 

//end//

[rauliskafan]

A Little Lesson in Healing: Chapter 4

Authors’ Note: Happy Thursday, terrific readers!!! Thank you for last night’s amazing comments!!! Rafael is about to have a day in court like he has never known. Read on for more!!! @vintagemichelle91 and I hope that you enjoy, and we always look forward to your feedback!!!

NOTE: Italicized passages are set earlier in the series.

           “We’ll have to come up with two names this time around.”

           Lying in bed, Natalia tilted her head to glance at him. Maybe his smile was for her eyes, but his hand kept caressing her tummy. She laced her fingers with his, stunned at the second, and the third miracle, growing inside her.

           “Do you remember when we settled on Violetta?” she hummed. “My books, your phone…”           

            “Lots of pizza and ice cream,” he teased. “We’ll have to make a party of it again.”

           “That would be nice,” Natalia replied, and she saw Rafael’s eyes narrow at the sound of her voice growing hoarse.

           “What’s wrong?” he gently asked. “It’s good news. And he can’t---”

           “I know,” she quickly cut in. “He… he’s not the father. He’s far away…”

           She couldn’t complete the thought, still cringing at the memory of the moment when he touched her, the seconds after when he sneered and threatened, wearing a fun house version of her husband’s face. Shuddering under the sheets, Natalia felt herself on the verge of tears when Rafael tightened his hold.

           “He can’t touch you,” Rafael promised. “Or us.”

           “I know,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “I just…”

           “You faced him down when he tried to barrel his way back into our life,” Rafael insisted. “Do you have any idea how brave you are?”

           “And maybe a little foolish?” she asked, her chuckle light as he twirled a lock of her hair between his fingers.

           “I didn’t say that,” Rafael continued. “I would have preferred that you called for backup. But…”

           “Yes?” Natalia asked. He said nothing else, simply smiled and brought his lips to hers…

           “How are you holding up?”

           Sitting in the back seat of the taxi cab, Rafael said little. His eyes stayed fixed on the window, seeing nothing despite the busy city streets sliding by.

           “Atticus?”

           He felt Natalia’s hand on his arm and struggled to shake off the dark images upon facing her.

           “I’m sorry,” he said. “Guess I was lost in thought or something.”

           “I know,” she whispered, placing a swift, sweet kiss on his cheek. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

           “No, it’s not,” Rafael agreed, his voice suddenly hoarse, his eyes glazing over for an instant before he sat up straighter and clasped Natalia’s hand.

           “Kind of ridiculous,” he continued. “Not like it’s the first time I’ve been in a courtroom.”

           “But not like this,” Natalia gently reminded him, reaching her free hand over her chest to stroke his chin.

           “No,” he said, taking some comfort in her touch. “Definitely not like this. I… for the first time in my life I wish I could just sit in the gallery. Be a spectator.”

           “Atticus? Are you---?”

            Rafael pulled her close, his lips on hers. Natalia returned the kiss and draped her arms around his neck. The chill of the breeze wafting through the cracked window seemed to suggest snow at any second, but he felt warm, contented… safe as his wife held him.

           “Am I alright?” he guessed. “That’s what were you were going to ask me, right?”

           “Reading my mind,” Natalia whispered. “If I were a betting woman…”

           Her voice trailed off as she played with his tie. Rafael captured her small hand in his around the paisley, bowing his head to kiss her wrist before meeting her eyes once more.

           “Finish the thought,” he pressed.

           “If I were a betting woman,” she repeated. “I’d put the house on you. To get this done. To come out the other side a winner.”

           “Save your pennies, hermosa,” he said. “Today I’m far from a sure thing.”

           The cab came to a stop before the courthouse. His chest felt tight, his hands clammy. He was on the verge of asking the driver to keep going, to take them far away from the place, from the moment when he’d have to see the man who had shattered two families, scores of special victims… who would have ever thought that he would number in their ranks?

           “Atticus?”

           At the feel of Natalia’s hand on his back, Rafael found her eyes. They were bright, her smile seemingly stretching into infinity, and she touched his flushed cheek.

           “You are a sure thing,” she said. “Just focus on O’Dwyer.”

           “Haven’t we had this conversation before?” he whispered, his mind flashing back to Robert Emerson’s trial and Natalia’s fears before she took the stand.

           “I think so,” Natalia murmured. “And I’ll tell you now what you told me then. If that doesn’t work, then you look at me.”

           She had never looked lovelier than in that moment, sweet yet strong, seeming as if she could take on any monster that might cross their shared path with one hand tied behind her back.

           “With pleasure,” Rafael said, pressing his nose to hers before taking a deep breath.

           “Okay then. Let’s head inside.”

           “Of course Cutter’s down for the count,” Fin said after Rafael and his wife exchanged a few pleasantries with the sergeant and the lieutenant. Liv’s hand was light on his forearm, her face fixed in determination.

           “One down, one to go,” she said, and Rafael nodded as he heard Natalia whisper to Fin.

           “Powers that be’ll probably unchain Amanda from her desk within the week,” Fin replied in response to his wife’s quiet question.

           “What about Mike?” Rafael asked, knowing that the other sergeant had sacrificed so much for his family, knowing that Natalia missed her sister because Maggie rarely came around and preferred to see the little ones at Trevor and Alessia’s. How to fix that?

           “I’m not sure if I’m getting him back,” Liv admitted.

           “Really, Liv?” Rafael asked. She shrugged her shoulders, shaking her head sadly, and she patted his shoulder.

           “Bill won’t let him lose his shield,” she continued. “But back at SVU?

           “No matter what he stays in the family,” Fin swore. At that, Rafael felt a fresh wave of guilt and hated himself for being the cause of so much chaos. He said nothing else as they sat in the gallery, his eyes fixed on the defendant’s table.

           Natalia reached for his hand.

           “Okay?” she whispered.

           “So far from it,” Rafael said. “I should have been smarter. About all of this. I’ve ruined so---”

           “Stop that, Atticus.”

           Her tone was gentle yet firm, her fingers clutching his tighter, and his soul lightened at the feel of her head falling to his shoulder.

           “It wasn’t your fault,” she started. “None of it. Other people hurt you.”

           “But, hermosa, I---”

           “We will figure out what comes next,” she promised, her lips drifting towards his cheek. He savored her kiss and met her brown eyes.

           “As hard as it was, I felt better when I stared Melanie’s father down. When I escaped from Francis Devenue. When…”

           He watched her carefully, knowing that the wreckage wrought by Nevada Ramirez was not as easy to compartmentalize. Maybe if the man didn’t have his face. Natalia shuddered for a second before lifting her head and smoothing one stray hair that had fallen to his forehead.

           “Feel better today,” she said. “Right now that’s all that matters. We’ll work the rest out.”

           Her stare sparkled, and he inched closer in search of her lips when a door creaked open. Spying the shackled dentist shuffling into the courtroom, Rafael’s mind raced back to the darkened room, the hands balled into fists… the bottle…

           “Neil Alexander, please rise.”

           Clad in orange, the dentist stood slowly, listening to the judge tack on ten years to his already lengthy sentence for the assault. Never before had he understood what those words meant to a victim, the idea that the monster could stay hidden under the bed. Maybe it would always reappear in the realm of the nightmare. But one day in the light after another seemed a sure thing. His heart beat slowed; Natalia was so close that her breath caressed his cheek, and he wanted that to be enough.

           But one look at Liv confirmed that there was still another step, a speech unrehearsed except for in the depths of his soul…

           Could he be as brave as his wife?

           Upon hearing the judge pose a similar question in a far more formal fashion, Rafael sucked in a deep breath. His legs wobbled, but somehow he approached the podium. His lips drew close to the microphone. Were this another world he would have struck a pose, raised an eyebrow, curled his lips into a smirk. No time for theatrics now. He simply turned his head and peered at his attacker.

           “I…”

           For a few long, painful seconds, he could say nothing else. Alexander looked like he would tear into him again given the chance.

          But this wasn’t a world behind bars.

         “I think of your niece,” Rafael continued. “All the patients that you… plied your trade with.”

        Alexander narrowed his eyes, obviously trying to rattle him. But Rafael stood strong, gripping the edges of the tall, narrow table and tightening his own stare.

      “They were far more courageous than I,” he said. “Having to live with… with the shadows…”

       Starting to stumble over his words, he saw the dentist’s smirk. He nearly threw in the towel when he spied Natalia shifting forward in her seat, her eyes wide and believing. Regaining his footing, Rafael looked back to the dentist.

      “Having to live with what you did for so long,” Rafael said. “And carry on. I’ve lived with this for only a few months. I can say right here and now that you leave a stain behind.”

       Judging the next moment carefully, he watched Alexander ready to bask in a perverse kind of triumph as the next set of words trickled off his tongue.

      “But they washed you away,” Rafael spat. “Because they sent you to a place where you can never hurt them again.”

      Now he stepped from behind the podium, just looking at Liv as he held one hand in the air.

      “I had the misfortune to find you in that place,” Rafael said. “You thought you could drag me down with you? Make me think that I belonged in that dirt?”

       He had thought as much so many times, too many times to count.

      “No.”

      Looking away from Alexander, liking the idea that he left the monster confused at to how he might even work his way back under the bed, the shadows providing no sense of cover, Rafael focused on his wife.

     And he managed a smile.

     “What happened… it wasn’t my fault,” he started, and Natalia nodded her head. “Not to say I couldn’t have stayed in that filth. But I have someone who pulls me back into the light. Every day.”

     He saw his wife’s eyes brim with tears. Blinking back his own, he turned to Alexander.

     “That’s a place you can’t understand. Where you don’t get to live. The day will come when I won’t think of you at all. But you think on this��� you didn’t break me. Because I was never alone. Not when we were in that room… and definitely not now.”

     Feeling, knowing that he did not need to utter another word, Rafael returned to his wife’s side. Natalia moved fast to wind her arms around his neck, her kisses coating his cheeks. He held her waist, listened to Alexander’s new sentence made official…

     “Atticus?”

     “It’s over,” he muttered. “Let’s get out of here.”

      “But you didn’t need it.”

      “What?” Natalia asked, her voice slightly muffled as she cuddled into his chest.

       “You didn’t need any help to get the job done. You’re the strongest person I know. I am indescribably lucky that I get to have you this close every night. And forever.”

       Smiling, Natalia stroked his cheek, her heart mending because it was so full. Tomorrow would bring twins. An even brighter world. Nothing could not be alright, and she settled in for sleep in his sweet embrace.

           “Are you good?”

           After Liv and Fin departed, Rafael looked to his wife, saw the sunlight cascading through her hair, and took her hands in his.

          “At this second, yes,” he answered.

          “You were so brave in there,” she said. “You are the strongest person I know.”

           “A mirror would disagree with you, hermosa,” Rafael said.  “It felt good to confront him. But… I mean maybe tomorrow---”

           “Today you took on the world and won,” Natalia said. She hugged him tightly, and he felt the weight of so many worlds leaving his shoulders.

           “Let’s say we head home to our girls,” she said. “That might feel good, too.”

           “The best mi hermosa flor,” he agreed.

           Rafael Barba, the unexpected special victim, the onetime ADA who hoped he would get a chance to try another case descended the courthouse steps. The terrain was unknown, but his wife was at his side, in a world where he wanted to dwell for the rest of his days…

          …and forever.

[together-forevermore-blog]

Re-watch Wednesday: My Favorite “The 100″ Episodes – “Murphy’s Law”

Disclaimer: Since this is part of a re-watch that I’m doing between Season 4 and Season 5 of “The 100,” my comments will reflect that and range from reprimanding, praising, and laughing with/at characters to picking apart a line/scene. References will be made to later episodes so SPOILERS are plentiful. (Unless life gets too crazy, there will be 2 re-watches a week until the Season 5 premiere)

The 100: 1x04 – Murphy’s Law (aka the “Whatever the hell we want doesn’t work” episode)

Why it’s a favorite: It’s the beginning of Clarke and Bellamy working as a team, sets the foundation for Bellamy and Murphy’s relationship, and the repercussions from events and decisions made are still seen and felt in Season 4.

We start the episode to a pan of the blockade wall surrounding the dropship camp. Various pieces of metal – scraps and ladder, fabric and wood have been placed wherever they work or fit. It’s glaringly obvious that it was constructed by those who weren’t knowledgeable about construction. And while it’s astounding that they built anything of its scale, I can’t help but wonder: were they really naïve enough to think it would protect them? Or were they hoping it would give them a delay? Traps would’ve been a good idea. But did they know how to build any? It’s a sharp reminder of how ill-prepared they were. Only later do we learn about their Earth Skills training but I’m guessing they wished they’d paid closer attention now that they’ve landed, learned they aren’t alone on Earth and that they’re not welcome additions to the planet.

Clarke kneeling at Wells’ grave – It serves as a reminder of what happened in the previous episode. Not just Charlotte killing Wells, but also Clarke finally figuring out that Wells lied about who turned her father in to protect her from knowing the truth. Sacrificing their friendship and letting her hate him. And as the camera pans over to Clarke kneeling at the foot of his grave, we see her lost in her thoughts about Wells and more than likely, her regrets about how she treated him and the time they lost as friends because of her assumptions of his guilt.

Damn, Finn! You’d think by now that you would know not to sneak up behind people. Especially when the one you pine over is kneeling by the grave of her friend who was supposedly killed by Grounders!

The Art Supply Store – OMG! I’d completely forgotten that we learn about the Art Supply Store in this episode! And just like that, my excitement over remembering the significance of the place is smacked away with Clarke’s reminiscing about Wells giving her art supplies on the Ark. How he traded his own stuff to get her those supplies. . .And again, I have to remind myself that the book and the series are each there own entities and that at least I have the option of opening a book if I want to get a Wells fix. I digress.

“My mother killed my father.” – I’m going to get technical here. She turned him in which lead to him getting killed, but she knew that by turning him in that he would be floated. But she didn’t actually pull the trigger, stick him with a knife, or in this case – push the button that floated him. And I think that’s what eventually gets Clarke to move past this realization that her mom killed her father. And also the fact that as Clarke becomes more of a leader she faces decisions that make her realize that doing what is needed to survive sometimes makes you do things that you could never imagine, goes against your beliefs and sometimes your better judgement. But at this moment she’s hurt and angry and she finds the most effective way that she can make her mom feel her pain.

Ah, Murphy! You never fail to disappoint. Pissing on a guy who needed a water break, just because you can. All right in front of Charlotte. And they make it a point to show her expression as Murphy tells the guy to get over it and yells at everyone to get back to work. The look of someone disgusted and not happy about the fact that they can’t do anything to stop it.

My poor adorkable Jaspy! Octavia helps you to venture outside the protective walls of the camp, only to be confronted by a prank and then a couple of cut off fingers on the ground.

Kane: the busybody, the “I’m tracking everyone,” ready to stick it to everyone guy that everybody loves. . .well, maybe not. But at least he has the bad guard. What’s his name again? Oh that’s right. Commander Shumway. I bet they’re both a hoot at parties.

“The less you know, the better.” – The 100 equivalent to saying “This is going to blow up in our faces.”

“Like it or not thinking the Grounders killed Wells is good for us.” – I could go on and on about the comparison to this argument and the one Bellamy makes to her in 4x01, but I’ll save that for a later time. I do wonder though that if he’d gone about it differently; tried to reason with her about people forming a lynch mob instead of making it about needing people to stay focused on building the wall, he might have convinced her to heed his warning. Or at least make her pause before she goes out and confronts Murphy in front of everyone.

Yeah, this is where that “First son. First to dye.” declaration from 1x01 comes back to bite Murphy in his ass. And I think this is par for him. He constantly does stuff in the moment that makes him feel good and better about himself. Things that hide his insecurities, usually by trying to make others feel lesser about themselves. The “I’m in charge, can do anything I want and you can’t stop it.” mentality. Because he’s scared of losing it (power) and without it he won’t “belong.” And how quickly people remember all the things he’s done that point to his guilt. Trying to kill Jasper, bullying people into working, peeing on a guy that needs a drink of water. . .So when he tries to convince Bellamy that he didn’t do it, nobody believes him (or wants to).

From the look on her face before, you’d think Charlotte would be with the crowd in wanting to see Murphy get some kind of payback. But there’s only signs of worry and distress on her face as they carry and roll Murphy away. Her worry turns to disbelief as the crowd chants for Bellamy to kick the box out from under Murphy and Clarke pleads with him to stop it. It’s the disbelief that surprises me. It points to her moving past her acting selfishly and that’s surprising when you think about the fact that she killed a guy because his dad’s actions caused her nightmares. Only in the horror of this moment, of seeing the crowd turn on Murphy and him swinging from a rope is she able to think of someone else.

And then the look of realization that she’s probably next to hang after she admits that she killed Wells. . .The mommy in me comes out when I watch this happen.

“I need a pressure regulator.” “What for?” “Regulating Pressure.” – Lol! It cracks me up every time!

“I was just trying to slay my demons” – Charlotte “I was just giving the people what they wanted.” – Bellamy: Justifications for killing and trying to kill someone. I’ve got to admit, I’m conflicted a little with Charlotte because she’s arguably young enough to not fully grasp the consequences of her actions. And I wonder if that’s part of the uneasiness and reluctance from the crowd when Murphy suggests that they “see the real murderer hung up.” But Bellamy? He waylays into Clarke about how she confronted Murphy when he’s just as guilty of not thinking through his decisions. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a Bellamy fan. He’s my favorite character. But at this point I have a hard time liking him. Good thing for him that The 100 is big on character transformations.

OMG! I just realized that Murphy punches Jasper after hitting Bellamy over the head with a piece of wood. Not cool, Murphy! Someone please wrap Jasper in some bubble wrap.

Dun. Dun. Dun. – Charlotte’s escaped with Clarke and Finn. The old escape through the back flap in the tent trick.

Again with the “The less you know, the better.” declaration. This time from Abby. Y’all are tempting fate, you know that right? Or at least maybe The 100 writers.

Clarke refusing to hold Charlotte’s hand and then her reprimand: “You killed someone, Charlotte! Ended his life! Did you stop to think about that for even one second?! Look at me! You can’t just kill someone to make yourself feel better!” – The look on Charlotte’s face. It’s heartbreaking. I think this is when the consequences of her actions really hit her. Up until now, she could convince herself that everything would be okay even though there’s someone chasing them that wants to hang her. Clarke, Bellamy, and Finn will still accept her. After all, they’re trying to hide her from Murphy and keeping her safe. But that illusion evaporates when Clarke refuses to comfort her by returning her hand hold and then scolds her for her actions.

Hiding out in the Art Supply Store – I like how it allows for the opportunity for the characters to have a moment to slow down and reflect. Clarke admitting that Bellamy knew better than her and that there needs to be consequences for actions or this is just going to keep on happening. And then there’s Finn’s hope that they figure out how to resolve all of this “before Murphy kills us for helping her.” which Charlotte very much hears. Further pounding it in to her that there’s no escaping what she did and that she needs to take responsibility for her actions. Because if she doesn’t, people she cares about will get hurt, or worse, killed. It distressed her to witness the hanging of a guy who she didn’t care for and she feels guilty for it. How much more so would she feel if that happened to Clarke or Finn? People she actually cares about.

Kane has a mother? And she seems like a nice lady? Dude! What happened? Maybe he’s more like his dad?

“He’s here to see me, Vera. Go on with your mumbo-jumbo.” – I wish we’d gotten to see more of Nygel.

I also wish we’d gotten another beat before Clarke’s happiness of waking up with her head on Finn’s shoulder was stolen away. But at least there was a smile.

 Abby: always willing to do whatever’s necessary to make sure that they make it to Earth and survive. Including sacrificing her life so Raven can make it down to Earth and prove that living there is possible.

Charlotte’s fears come true – Murphy holds a knife to Clarke’s throat and threatens to slit it. I’ll admit that I held my breath when I first watched this scene. I didn’t know if Finn or Bellamy would miraculously somehow get Clarke away from Murphy or if Charlotte would give herself up to him. If Bellamy hadn’t have stopped her, I think she would’ve given herself up to Murphy. It was a standoff. Murphy wouldn’t let Clarke go, Bellamy wouldn’t let Charlotte give herself up. So she did what I never saw coming.

“I can’t let any of you get hurt anymore. Not because of me. Not after what I did.” – I’m not kidding, I think I sat with my mouth hanging open the rest of the episode when I first watched Charlotte jump off the cliff. The kid that killed a person to stop her nightmares sacrifices herself to save others. . .It was just so shocking to me. And I missed several things that happened after that because I was too shocked to notice them. Finn’s “Damnit!” expression. Murphy’s look of “I can’t believe it” mixed with “Holy shit!” as Clarke and Bellamy grieve over what just happened.

Bellamy’s grief turns to rage and Murphy’s face becomes the target and method of release from everything that’s been building up until that moment. He’s angry at what’s happened, blames Murphy for forcing what happened, Clarke for not listening to him, and, knowing Bellamy, he must blame himself too. I honestly thought he would kill Murphy as angry as he was. Thank god for Finn pulling him away.

And then we get to what Charlotte’s sacrifice leads to: they reject the way things are done on the Ark and decide to lead together. Not really having any idea what that decision will eventually lead them to.

I always forget until the end of this episode that it’s the one where Finn gets upset about the wristbands frying and has a meltdown that ends up with him and Clarke sleeping together. I think it’s a natural reaction for them. They’ve obviously had an attraction to each other and are scared that there’s no possibility of their loved ones joining them. Sadly, with all that happens with him, Raven and Clarke after this episode, this ends up being one of the last times that I look at Finn as the “Cool Finn” that we’re introduced to in the first couple of episodes. It’s not until we get to Spacewalker that his character makes it full circle (just my personal feelings about him though).