#Unless someone shit talks him or Squall

[gorematchala]

I guess people were talking about the retirement age in Japan in relation to Nomura and Kingdom Hearts because of some interview where he admitted that he has to watch youtube plot guides to remember what happened in the older games, which I dont even have words for at the moment

I think both outcomes of someone else having to conclude KH are very funny to think about because its either someone (Motomu Toriyama) comes in and writes something so bad even disney adults can't defend it, or they get some sort of modern messiah to turn the whole thing around and it reveals that everything up till now was as dumb as it seems

Re-reading all of the shit about Xehanort's time travel escapades has been very frustrating to me but outside of all that shit which is so clearly like, "oh no how do I make all this make sense" type shit, I've been really annoyed by two things in KH2 that I feel are uncommon complaints

First is why Xemnas just stood there like a neanderthal while Ansem shot a laser at the moon and fucked up everything they had worked on for years, and the other is Riku handing Kairi HER Keyblade. He literally is like here use this and gives her a keyblade that I guess he just had on him which is uniqiely Kairi coded, and then she swings it twice and then never does another action for the rest of the franchise and then gets left behind at the end of Melody of Memories which is Her Game

Giving other characters keyblades was like the biggest fuck up of all time because its like okay whats special about the one Sora has if literally everyone has one, but they probably realized they had to do it because youre not supposed to be able to kill heartless without it, because if you could then Cloud and Squall could solve the whole problem themselves. But I guess theyre also not worthy of being keyblade wielders which wouldnt be weird if only Sora had one

And to touch on the true org 13 shit a little bit I think its funny they never bothered to come up with human names for Demyx and Luxord, but also its a little understated how tonally dissonant the organization is. Theyre portrayed as being kinda loserish in a way that makes them non-threatening, but their ultimate purpose and goal involves like rewriting the code of the universe? Which is like a pretty big deal? Xehanort did time travel shit and had Xemnas hand pick goons for his ultimate evil scheme to usurp heaven and he saw Demyx and was like yeah you'll do. And Demyx is like will I??? And its funny that there's one guy on the team who kinda sucks but the problem is that they dont do anything with that in 2 where he's introduced cuz I assume they didnt have time because they decided to establish and kill 13 antagonists, but then later when you reveal that all these dweebs are in on a plot to, again, usurp the seat of god, its like was there Nobody better suited to this shit? (Hehe) And if youre doing time travel why not just do the real organization from the start, unless youre making this shit up as you go and you didnt think about the long term implications of anything

But anyway yeah someone else is inevitably gonna end up finishing this series because Nomura cant seem to spend less than 15 years working on anything at this point and I'm very interested to see the overall concepts become less interesting but the dialogue become much much much better

[thejackalsden]

@griefandpunishment

     It never failed, between jobs Cloud always ended up in the usual spot. Squall’s home had become just as much his as any other place, and it was easy for Cloud to slip inside. Shorter than the other, those ears finally relaxed from where they had been pinned against his skull. They swiveled forward, straining for any sign of his Knight that he could pick up.

     Even the tail had shifted, no longer jagging back and forth, irritated and snippy. It was content to flick behind him, a lazy drift back and forth as blue eyes lidded and he looked for that reckless Knight of his, “Squall,” a call into the basement, looking for where he was. Normally they weren’t far from each other, but perhaps he had been intent on stopping around town. Who knew, knowing Squall.

     Instead, he decided to stretch out on the couch - armor stripped away and down to just a pair of far thinner pants and that sleeveless compression shirt. He was content to stretch, on his stomach and arms folded under his head as that tail draped over the side of the couch. A hum let him, those ears flicking once before even they settled and Cloud drifted. He was safe here, he knew it.

     The question was just how long before Squall returned, and how long before he’d be able to harass the poor bastard because he was bored.

[themadauthorshatter]

... I think you guys are going to like this.

358/2 Days REWRITE Part 2

Riku is around, but he's all over the place, and he has a mission: Find and capture either Roxas or Xion, unless he CAN manage both, so DiZ can use them to help Sora recover. He's on a time limit, though, because Sora's heart is damaged and the longer Roxas and Xion are around, the less likely Sora is to waking up or even sleeping; I mean, he'll BE sleeping, but it'll be much quieter and it will be absolutely pointless to try waking him up.

For the first few days or months, he keeps his distance, trying to decide who he's picking, sadly.

Pros of bringing Roxas to DiZ: He has the closest connection to Sora, being his nobody, he's got the keyblade, Riku can probably take him one v. one, if there are any problems, he just needs to get a reaction out of 'Sora.'

CONS of bringing to Roxas to DiZ: Have fun trying to run from the remaining Organization members, he'll have to avoid Non-form or he'll get beaten all to Hell, he runs the risk of hurting his friend for reals, Roxas is rarely alone, Roxas is one hell of a runner and fighter, he'll just feel bad.

Pros of bringing Xion to DiZ: She has more 'keyblade' potential, maybe her voice will help wake up Sora(?), she looks and sounds like Kairi, Naminé gets a new friend(as long as DiZ doesn't decide to throw her away).

CONS of bringing Xion to DiZ: She looks and sounds like Kairi, she's crazy skilled, she hits hard, she's laughable when she's mad, but it's gut wrenching to see her cry or be hurt, she looks and sounds like Kairi, Naminé is probably getting Thanosed when DiZ is done with her because he's a dick right now, so giving Xion to her as a friend will mean nothing, the connection to Kairi, he'll feel bad.

As you can tell, Riku is great at making decisions(sarcasm)

While he's too caught up to do anything, let's check on the sea salt trio, who are getting closer as friends, i.e. seeing Hayner, Pence, and Olette do stupid stuff a KH equivalent of TikTok, which the trio repeats on their own without a phone recording them, eating ice cream, talking, and exploring the Disney worlds for fun, both old ones and new ones that will appear in future games.

In this time, Xion becomes a mix of Kairi and Naminé, outspoken, but careful with who she runs her mouth to, smart, but still open to learn, protective and still needs something if a protector, etc. She is also a wickedly fast learner.

We also get organization shenanigans like Demyx being lazy on missions, Roxas getting annoyed at Xigbar for calling him tiger, dealing with  Saïx, trying not to annoy Xaldin, even getting head pats from Xemnas, and, for fluff, Roxas and Xion finding Axel asleep on the floor of the clock tower and the two scaring him away for shits and giggles. 

Yes, a lot of time passes, about 9-11 months, give or take.

Roxas and Xion also become closer as well with Axel being something like their chaperone, only he reports to Xemnas and Saïx.

Speaking of Saïx, he meets up with Axel one day and expresses disdain with the fact Axel would rather be friends with an unstable Roxas and a literal puppet that doesn't even exist.

Axel, on edge already with Xemnas on his back, tells Saïx to put a cork in it. Saïx only pushes back, asking if Roxas even KNOWS what Xion is, even what HE is. To both their credit, the two are wonderful at playing make believe and Axel, being the child he is, is a great at being their playmate.

Axel shoves Saïx back, snapping for him to shut his mouth before he says something he'll regret. Saïx, losing his composure, shoves back, asking if he should because Axel can't handle the truth; he never has been good at it, so it's not surprising.

Ring a bell, someone, please, because Axel throws a punch into Saïx's cheekbone. Saïx returns with a left hook directly to the side of the neck and knees Axel, who grabs his leg under his knee and rolls, making them both fall and throw more punches on the ground, bruising and bloodying each other in full view of the remaining organization members. Maybe we get a gag of Xigbar and Luxord placing bets on who will win, Demyx worrying because they should probably be stopped, Xaldin scoffing at the immature display, and then Roxas and Xion walking in and instantly getting worried because Axel is not winning this fight, as evidenced by Saïx slamming his head into the floor.

When the two stand up to keep fighting, Roxas and Xion race between them, the boy in front of Saïx and a very nervous Xion in front of Axel, who tells her and Roxas to stay out of this or they'll get hurt.

Roxas obviously refuses, but Xion leads Axel away from Saïx, who asks if Axel really needs children to protect him.

No, he needs to protect these two idiots, especially Roxas, who hasn't moved and his eyes have gone Non-form-y, like he's about to transform.

Saïx returns with berserker eyes and smashes Roxas into the wall by his neck, daring him to try it.

It draws a gasp from EVRYONE, even Xaldin, but Saïx scoffs that they shouldn't try pretending to be worried, what with how unstable and how much of a nuisance Roxas is, not too mention weak, which he says while watching Roxas try to break free. He kicks at Saïx, and misses, but Saïx smirks and summons his claymore, wanting to see how tough Roxas really is.

There's a reason Xion pulled Axel away and is so nervous, because said reason puts a hand on Saïx's shoulder and asks him if he enjoys this façade of a life and would rather not disappear.

Yep. Xemnas is here, and everyone backs down, including the the bet making Xigbar and Luxord, who so they can have deniability.

Saïx snaps out of berserk mode in the blink of an eye and begrudgingly lets go of Roxas, i.e. lets him drop down.

Axel and Xion start toward him, but freeze when Xemnas eyes them, like scary eyes.

He has an announcement: There's an imposter and he could be anywhere. He's in a coat just like everyone else's, but his hood's usually up. When he's not wearing it, he's a silver haired teen. Oh, yeah, and his name is Riku.

Axel, Roxas, and Xion all gasp, Axel because Riku was in Castle Oblivion and probably knows where Sora is and Roxas and Xion because it brings back memories from Sora.

Xemnas sees the reaction, but only focuses on Roxas, asking softly if he's okay and if he was hurt.

He's fine and he wasn't and he shakes his head to chase away Non-form.

Xemnas still helps him up and orders everyone to keep their eyes open and report ANYTHING on this imposter because the sooner they catch and... well, just catch him, the better, that part being Xemnas not wanting to upset Roxas, make him go into Non-form, and have everyone need to knock him out to calm him down.

Xemnas takes Roxas away to be checked on, in case he was really hurt and doesn't know it, and Roxas asks what will happen to Saïx and Axel for fighting. He didn't see a lot of it, so he’s not even sure who started it.

They’ll be 'interviewed' and reprimanded accordingly, but they won't die, so relax.

What about the imposter? Who's Riku? And who's Sora??

Xemnas stops checking on Roxas and puts a hand on his head, which he doesn't need to worry about because the organization can deal with it. All he needs to do is keep doing missions and giving his 100%. Roxas sighs that he IS, hell he's giving 150% because Non-form's acting up, but he's kept it calm, even with the hallucinations of Sora, Ven, and now Non-form.

Xemnas finishes checking for any wounds and commends Roxas, saying that is why he chose him. Before Roxas can ask, Xemnas tells him to go in the lobby because he has a mission with Xaldin.

Roxas does so and passes by and reassuring Axel and glaring Saïx, though Roxas glares back.

Xemnas has the two sit down and that warmth he had with Roxas is GONE IN A SECOND, asking both of them what they were thinking, picking a fight in front of everyone and endangering the two most vital components to the plan. Saïx jabs that Axel is letting himself be distracted while Axel states he's doing his job and doesn't want either of them to get upset or angry to the point of dysfunctionality. Besides, He did not start that fight, which he didn't even WANT to partake in.

Does Axel have legs? For now he does, yes. Can he stand? Yes. Can he DEMONSTRATE that he can stand? This is getting tedious, but sure, and Axel stands. Now can he walk from where he is to the far wall? Again, this is tedious, but yes.

If he did ALL OF THAT, why didn't he actually do it?

With no words, Xemnas dismisses Axel, telling him to accompany Xion on their mission.

Axel nods and leaves Saïx to be scolded.

We cut to Riku as he watches Roxas and Xaldin fight of heartless and some knights in Beast's Castle, maybe even go toe to toe with Beast himself, who manages to catch Roxas off guard and momentarily confuses him with Sora.

Xaldin knocks him away and the two leave, Riku coming out and asking if that smaller nobody really was Sora.

Beast admits it was a spur of the moment, but he could have sworn it was Sora.

Meanwhile, Xion and Axel fight hard in Hollow Bastion, squaring off against Squall, Yuffie, Tifa, and Cloud, where we see both more of Axel's gymnastics and Xion's ability with a keyblade.

The fight ends when Xion stops who she believes is Riku the imposter and chases after him, Axel following her in case shit hits the fan.

Xion follows Riku to a cliffside and he gives her an offer and a warning: either give him Roxas or hope that they never meet face to face again. Xion arms herself and demands to know what that means, but Riku also arms himself right as Axel throws a chakram between them and tells Riku to fuck off before he gets hurt.

Riku gives Xion one last glance before falling off the edge and leaving through a dark corridor, making it look like he just disappeared like a badass. They’re both confused, but still call it a day, Xion asking if Axel is okay after that fight with Saïx, because he’s still a little banged up. He expresses he’s fine(he’s a big boy!!) and tells Xion not to worry. 

She’s going to anyway because Riku is after Roxas, and threatened her with a fight if she didn’t bring Roxas to him. Axel, although he’s shook, tells her everything will be fine.

LIES, because Xion is sent on a mission to defeat Riku. All she needs to do is knock him out and they’ll come collect him, no problem.

Xion IS strong, but not strong enough because Riku wipes the floor with her and is about to take her to DiZ when dusks, samurai, and Non-form Roxas, who also gets whooped, but at least fairs a little better. 

The two wear Riku out enough for a lance to graze his arm, an arrow/bullet to hit his leg, and a few cards to distract him. 

The rest of the organization arrive, even Saïx and Xemnas, the latter using thorn/vine things to bind Riku’s hands behind his back. 

He remarks that Riku’s a lot bigger than he thought he would be, stronger too, and we get one of those creepy manga Xemnas moments as he grabs Riku, pulls him close by the jaw, and states he’ll have fun seeing just how strong he is; he knows that Riku is hiding Sora, Kairi, DiZ, and his witch, and will tear him apart with his bare hands to know where they are.

With Riku thoroughly freaked out, Xemnas stands and everyone returns, all tired and ready to find Sora. 

Xion, however, isn’t. Because Riku said some very interesting things to her during their fight. 

She considers telling Roxas, but he’s too worried making sure she’s okay, because Riku was tough. She goes to Axel instead, knowing he has a key to the dungeons, and he’s instantly skeptical; she asked if he could take her to see Riku. Xion lies through her teeth and says she just wants to rub in Riku’s face that they won and he lost.

Axel agrees, but decides he’s going to follow her, just in case.

They arrive as Xigbar leaves, asking if they’re going to welcome the new arrival and need help in doing so.

Xion counters that she’s actually going to return a favor and would like to do it alone. 

Axel’s surprised and Xigbar whistles for her to stand down; he was just asking because she got kicked like a soccer ball, no harm in asking for help.

He leaves and Xion goes toward Riku’s cell, asking Axel to stay by the door until she’s done.

He does so and Xion walks towards Riku’s cell, where she and we the audience see Riku is banged up from being interrogated; looks like Xemnas is taking his time.

Riku asks what she wants and Xion responds with a deal:

Tell her about Sora and she’ll give the organization a good enough lie to let him go so he can help Sora. During their fight, the two had an argument, Xion saying she was going to protect her friend and Riku snapping she had no idea what friends were because she’s a nobody and a replica, and the reason Sora can’t wake up.

 Spark Notes of the deal: If Riku tells Xion about Sora, Xion will give the organization an answer that will buy Riku enough time to get back to Sora.

Fair, but he has one condition: If he tells her, she was to decide what she will do; he’s not refusing because she genuinely wants to know more about Sora.

Xion agrees and Riku tells her to take a seat, because they’re going to be here for a while.

[what-ever-happened-to-chip]

The Adventures of Squall

Squall's observations. Hmm. I don't know what Rinoa wants me to do. I guess I'll ask Eli for his notes and just give them to her. *knock knock* "Cheerio good boy, may  I help you with anything?" "Do you have notes on that thing Christian was talking about?" "Ahh you've came to the right residence, just let me....hold on just a moment..." He began digging through piles of loose paper, flipping through notebooks, all whilst mumbling to himself. "Alas! Here is one of my more rudimentary charts, but it shall accomplish what you're intial questions preface." It was hard to concentrate, he was talking very fast and using a lot of words that I didn't know. Akio says because of my ASD I sometimes get what he calls "verbal dyslexia" and it's hard for me to comprehend what other people are saying, especially if they talk different from me. I'll have to concentrate very hard if I don't want Rinoa mad at me again. "But see this is where it gets confusing, we have many great forces here, coincidence? Doubtfully so, but these overlapping characteristics I believe have come here for a reason. Many of our members, including myself, have had interactions with Christos, Christian you call him, and I can't imagine why he would let so many familar faces corner him in the same scenario, unless of course he had a plan for each individual. See, I believe..." He pulled out a chair for me that I sat in. I took out my notebook so I could remember what to tell Rinoa. "If you look here on this chart.." he pulled out a large beige canvas with several pictures pinned to it, threads of twine connecting different ones. "First you see here that Christos comes to my noble world and plants himself as Cyrus, the destroyer of worlds. He taints Noah and I am his right hand man. He tells me a great many things, we can go into later. Do realize this isn't in chronilogical order, I have no way of telling yet the timeline of all our respective worlds. "Next he plants himself as an alien, "Jenova" he calls it on Gaia and and infects the whole planet. The only one to save it was Aerith who possesses extrodainary spiritual powers. She was the last chance tho and aside from her sacrifice Geostigma went on beyond her time..." "His next target, alas, Thomas. A young, troubled boy whom Christian fictionalized a companion for. An alter ego of sorts and made thomas believe it was himself. I believe he might have been weak and needed a human body to recover on. At some point Christian went to Aiden and found him by the Sanguis River, which is the border between our world and ubi requiescit dolor or "where sorrow rests. I haven't been able to spot where he showed up in Harry's world, but I do know he was there at some point. He likely was only a death eater of no great importance. Same with Roxas, Christian probably took the form of a nobody, which of course begs the question...." It was really hard for me to take notes as fast as he talked. I was really tryign to spell words better to get in the habit of it. Reading was easy for me, but writing made me nervous. I'll just get the names and maybe i'll remember. "can one become a nobody without having a form first? Perhaps that's it. He was a formed human on one planet and when he was almost destroyed at some theroetical part, he latched onto Thomas but only came back as a nobody which of course is an allusion. Details, details, but where were we? Oh yes, next on his infamous walk through time was of course Aangs world where he brought the powers of darkness to a seemingly balanced world, probably dating back to around...." I needed to yawn, but it seemed rude. I wonder how he knew all of this. He seemed confused himself. Maybe I should talk to some other people. Rinoa will be mad if I only talk to him. I should have gotten more information earlier.

“And of course Akio’s unfortunate fate with him, presenting himself as illusions to drive the man mad I’m sure. I do believe he could do that, his evil seems endless.” He paused and looked around at all his charts and papers. this will be a good time to excuse myself. "I have to use the restroom, excuse me" He didn't seem to notice me leave, he kept talking and looking at his papers. While I was walking I saw Harry with a plastic cup pressed up to a door. As I walked closer to him he dropped the cup and ran. I went to the kitchen. "Hey Zack" He was drinking really fast out of a big water bottle. Some of it was spilling on his black shirt. "Heya buddy, I broke 20 in 80, my new personal best. Gotta love the summer time." "What?" "Oh 20 miles in an hour and 20, a 4 minute average." "...." "So do you know anything about why we had to go to Camp A and Camp B?" "Ulquiorra seemed pretty on edge, everyone getting riled up like that. Maybe it's time for the old man to retire!" "What about the dark world place?" "I don't know much about that, but I tell you I sure don't know want to get to know it better if you know what I mean. Anyways bud, lactic acid builds on stiff muscles, gotta do my cool down." He then clapped me a little hard on the back, it was sort of uncomfortable, then left the room. I continued walking around looking for someone else to talk to. Rikku is on the couch watching a cartoon called the Powerpuff Girls. She is flossing on the couch? Why isn't she in the bathroom. I'll wait until she's done. I'll wait around the corner so she doesn't know I saw her doing it. After about 70 second she dropped the floss on the ground. There was a garbage can right on the table, but I guess she didn't see it.

"Hey" "Uhhh hey..." Her eyes never left the screen. "Do you know anything about the dark spirit place Christian was talking about?" "Hmmm, there was this one story Buddy used to tell us to scare us, it seems like the same thing and i don't know with all this world collide bs i wouldn't surprised if it's the same. "Do you know the story?" "I don't know ask Buddy, i'm busy." "..." Okay I wonder where Buddy is. I heard a basketball hit the basket outside. Sometimes we play basketball together. "Yo, yo, yo man 3 on 3, pussy slayers vs bitch playas." "AW SHIT" "wooof woof woof" "Which ones which?" asked Aang. "My brutha you knows yous a slaya!" on that they bumped their fists together. "I guess that means i'm with you guys" Tifa said and smiled. That means I'm on Adam's and Riku's team. I played basketball up to 21 points. My team lost. I'm good at making baskets, but not as much at passing and working with my team. "Aight, aight, how bout a smoke break and then maybe we'll give ya'll a rematch." As they all began to disperse, I walked up to Buddy. "Rikku said you could tell me a story about the dark place." "Rikku tol you that?" "Yes. The one you use to tell her." He looked both ways and then straight at me. "I don know nuthin about no story." "Okay, sorry." I guess I better ask someone else. I was getting tired. I should have done this earlier, but I see  Rinoa tomorrow. I think it would be a good idea to ask Thomas. I'll see if he's in his room. *knock knock* He opened the door slow, but wide and stared at me. "Can you tell me anything about the dark place." He looked surprised and happy. Akio tells me sometimes people's facial expressions don't always show what they mean, but it's a good indicator if I'm confused. I think he wants me to come in. He was sitting in his computer chair and he had clothes folded on his bed so I don't want to sit there and get them dirty. "I find it rather odd you're the one asking me this question. Eli wasn't surprising one bit, but it's not like he'd listen if I did tell him anything." "So you don't know anything?" "Don't know anything? Yeah right. I know everything that I need to. And ultimately however this goes, there's nothing left for me to lose." "...." "I must admit it does get rather boring having to hold back such genius in my mind. Feigning ignorance on all matters that go on here just to be able to thrive. This truly is the best case scenario for me and I know i'm not alone." He was frowning now. I didn't say anything so I know he probably isn't mad at me. I've learned that most people just keep talking if you say nothing. It helps a lot because I usually have nothing to say. "Are you looking for the nitty gritty, the gory details, or simple how're you're involved?" "Rinoa wanted to me to ask people about it. She thinks we're being lied to." "HAH. Just now she thinks she's been lied to?? Foolish girl." "Rinoa is smart." "Perhaps she is, all the same it's all clouded by her ego." "....." "So rinoa wants to know about the dark world they've after all this time brought up. You have to know though, Simon wouldn't have brought it up if there wasn't some gain to him, some strategic reason for his timing. He's a puppet master, he probably knew you would be here talking to me. It's all going just to his plan.....or perhaps he thought I would kick you out and that would keep him advantageous. But he knew that i'd knew that he was planning that." I was getting pretty confused. "Who's Simon?"

He frowned at me. "He's Christian." "Okay." "That's right "Christian" has had many names, many forms. He's wormed his way into many of lives and took everything they had with them. A leech. Of course a leech needs to eat too." I had been in his room almost 15 minutes. It was probably time to talk to someone else. "The dark world, purgatory, the eternal space, the fog, every world has a different name for it. Some are ignorant, but most know that not everyone gets the "good death". It's origin is beyond me, but I know what it is now. And I know he wants to go there. He's looking for something. Or maybe he's helping someone else." "I have to go now." "Then go, i'm not keeping you if that's what you thought" Thomas sneered at me. "..." *door shuts* As I left Thomas's room, Zidane came in really quickly from the front door. He looked really skinny these days. He pulled off his knapsack and begin looking for something deep within it. I don't know why he still uses his old knapsack, a good messenger bag would look a lot nicer and be a lot less stressful on his shoulders. "OKAY DADDY'S HOME, who wants to party???" As people began pouring into the dining room, they gathered around as he poured a large bag of cocaine out onto the clean glass table top. I remembered when I went fishing the other day how when I dropped bread crumbs in little fish would swarm to all try and get the food at once. It reminded me of that. I used to do cocaine sometimes with Irvine and his friends, but Akio says that it might make my OCD and ASD worse. I didn't want to mess with it, I had already had a stressful day. That's good enough for now. I'll just go to bed and maybe in the morning someone will talk about it and I won't have to ask. I did my bedtime rituals in the normal order, brush teeth, clean face, comb hair, change out of all clothes into two pairs of fresh underwear, socks, and pajamas. It was nice tonight I could turn off the air conditioner. I rested my head on the pillow. The cocaine was making everyone rowdy and I could hear it. Great I could hear Aiden yelling from his room that was right next to mine, on the side my bed was pushed against. I've asked Garnet multiple times if he could switch rooms, but she says no one wants his room cause it smells like blood and has a bunch of holes in the walls. And I was definitely not going to switch my room, everyone was right in it, it didn't need to change. I don't want to spy on people, but last time I said I wouldn't do what Rinoa wanted she threatened to not talk to me for a month. Instead, she talked, or more so bitched, the entire month at me, never letting me have some peace and quiet. I don't want that again.

I took out my nightly form to see how I’’m doing and filled it out.

Anxiety: 8/10

Mood: 6/10

Insomnia: 2/10

OCD: 7/10

Triggers: Talking to people, missing lunch because no one would leave the kitchen, having to ask questions, shoe lace breaking and not having a replacement.

Medication issues: None

Overall: 6/10

He kept yelling, but I could hear another voice too. He often talked to himself so at least when someone else was there, it was only half yelling. I really didn’t want to do it, but I felt Rinoa demanding me why I didn’t. I didn’t like lying to her.

   I remembered Harry earlier. I poured my water cup out and pressed my ear against the bottom of it. "Denny if that's the case, what do you have to lose?" "EVERYTHING. DON'T YOU GET IT!!! I've been waiting too long for you to FUCK things up." "Well I do admire your dilligence Denny, you truly never give up." "I will never give up, I will never stop until things are right." "Being when you have Jenn back?" "NO SHIT. All you are is a pawn. There is no other reason you're here." "The life of a king or the life of a pawn, really only is affected by perspective. I take my place with pride and am grateful for whatever else life I get to cherish." "I've waited long enough, i'll wait forever, but I sure as fuck don't want to." "Aside from your said goals, I am curious, did J really return from there?" "Fuck if I know. It has nothing to do with me." "There feels as if there is things you aren't telling me Denny." "WELL HOW THE FUCK DID IT GO LAST TIME I DID." "Please.....I want to help." "As long as Christian holds up his end of the deal, I won't need to use you. And he has the same goal." "I get the feeling you two are not alone in your quest. Are there others?" "Yeah but they're not important really. Just gotta an eye on them." "Even more useless than I?" "No one could be more useless than you." "Ahh how appropriate I and Lana are spending our time in this waiting room together, both readily discardable part of the larger schemes of the world. I've never felt quite so zen  before." "haha maybe they should bring Liza around and see how well you two get along." "I believe they would get along splendidly. they like the same music, both androgenous yet stunningly feminine, thrill seeking." "Ur forgetting one thing, cock makes bitches crazy, look at Jenn and Yuna. They'd be the best friends in the world if Yuna hadn't sucked my dick." "And by Jenn, you mean that girl masaqurading as your girlfriend?" "Watch it fucker." "I'm only stating your sentiment seems strangely misplaced seeing Yuna is in real danger whereas "Jenn" is only what you make her to  be" "I don't think anything has to happen to her, but if it does she knew what she was getting into." "Yes, but that was a long time ago. A long time before now I would have sacrificed myself for your well being, do you think things are the same now?" ".......what do you mean..? but you....just said...WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN??????!!!!!!!" "I was only teasing Denny, of course I'm here at your service, seeing of course you are the sole reason I am here. I don't think it's wise to betray our gods." "Heh yeah right, I'm your fucking god." "Indeed I am in religious awe." "heh yeah sure. So fucker whatchu got in the briefcase." "Zidane went and filled my reservoirs, I'm back in business" "Hook it up bitch." "I wouldn't have it any other way." After that they started talking quieter in a way that didn't bother me, Finally I can go to sleep.

[sayj-drabbles]

"Hey. You got a minute? I wanna talk. Outside of here."

Rinoa wondered when Zell would be coming to her door after her outburst on him in the desert, outright defying returning and for more bars to encase around her. She even took the extra step of destroying Odine's equipment that he had brought with him when he continued to try to cource her. It was cathartic, breaking the chains that sealed her in outright rebellion. That rebellion and defense is still felt even with her back in Garden, throwing Zell an accusing stare. She had not forgotten he outted her - to someone she didn't trust to less, and hasn't forgiven.

"Is that an order?"

"It's a request. From one friend to another." His confusion and frustration is written on his face. The same look he had when she refused to move before his ocean eyes looked at where he put blame.

Rinoa sighs, but relents, hating the fact someone at her hip was a requirement but wouldn't say no to getting out of here for a while. She makes no baring to hide she is still furious with him while they leave Garden, leaving the garage to drive to Balamb. Any time he glances over, she's already glaring, scathing. He was going to wait until they were stopped and at his own place but he can read the room.

"Look, Rinoa. We're just tryin' to keep you from gettin' that one way ticket to the moon or worse. I dunno how I'd do with not bein' able to do and go where I wanted, so I've looked the other way trusting you to keep yourself safe. This isn't it. Maybe I'm over-stepping-"

"Maybe? I know it was you, Zell!" His brows curl in confusion. She gladly elaborates. "You and like four other people know what I look like when I leave here on my own. There is no way Heywood would have known and I have never been recognized. It was also the damn desert; there aren't a lot of places to hide, so you're sitting somewhere watching Seifer's place, and you were with him and told Heywood it was me. That's who messaged Squall. And I know it was you because why else would you show up with all that equipment? Am I wrong?" She dares him to challenge her. Zell doesn't, his lips pressed in a tight line. He’ll admit - sometimes he forgets how sharp she is.

"I wasn't there lookin' for you. I keep tabs- on him. It ain't a secret the guy isn't Garden's biggest fan. Just puts my mind at ease, aite? I didn't mean to let it slip. What the hell are you even doing there again?"

"What do you think he's going to do, attack Garden?" She asks in that tone that demands an answer, while also side-stepping his own.

“I don’t know he wouldn’t.”

“You really think he’s going to throw his life away like that - for what? He does that he’s either going to get killed or to back to prison; you’re being ridiculous!”

“Fuck, Rinoa, why are you defendin’ the guy?! Last I checked you couldn’t stand him and ran off in another room on sight - and now you’re sneakin’ around his house and playin’ his advocate and he’s even got you actin’ like him! This is why I was tryin’ to look out for you!”

"Controlling me! You didn’t ask me what I wanted! Maybe I’m actually acting like me.”

“This ain’t you-”

“You don’t KNOW me!” 

She sees the sting her words had on his face. How can he know her when she doesn’t know who that is? Zell parks the car; they’re still out in the field but screaming at each other while he’s driving isn’t doing anyone any favors.  “And he does?” He asks, now facing towards her so they can actually look at each other properly. Rinoa is facing him too, but with her back against his door completely facing him, as though she’s cornered. She doesn’t answer, not verbally, but her expression says enough for him to understand the ‘yes’. He sighs, shaking his head. “I don’t know what’s going on with you. I don’t know why you’re suddenly actin’ out more, breakin’ shit, hanging around that trailer, but you keep on like that, Rinoa, I don’t know if we can protect you and that scares the piss out of me. We got your best interest. We’re tryin’ to help you - and you’re lookin’ at me like I’m the enemy.”

“Protect me? Do you know what Odine does to me for his science? I’m not protected and that’s what none of you understand!”

“It ain’t that easy to just start makin’ demands unless you’re tryin’ to piss someone off! There’s a process to this-”

“They’re never going to let me go, Zell!”

“Not if this is how you’re gonna go about it, no they ain’t! Don’t be stupid about this! Squall’s got connections, he’s got some power.”

“Then why have things only been getting worse?! He hasn’t done anything!” A sore spot was finally hit, years of frustration she tried to keep buried rising to the surface as heat starts rising behind her eyes. The helpless cracks, the isolation cracks, and RInoa retreats into herself by holding into her own legs to her chest with her forehead buried into her knees.

“.... That ain’t true. Hey, hey-” A gloved hand reaches out to touch her shoulder, before thinking better of it before contact is made and pulling it back. “He loves you, of course he’s fightin’ for you.”

“It’s just getting worse and none of you have to live with what it’s doing to me and I’m tired of acting like I’m fine. I’m not fine! And now because of you everyone in Garden could know what I look like. You put me in danger. I had getting in and out under control.”

She refrains adding more, questioning Squall’s love for her and how real it was. Rebellion was not the only seed planted by Seifer, growing rapidly with rotten fruit that silently poisons her but yet she can’t stop eating. His testimony put everything she thought she knew about their relationship into question, going back and fourth with doubting his feelings from the moment she became a sorceresses to denying she had that power over him given how they fight. If she had control, wouldn’t he just give into her? What about the times he has, manipulating him thinking her want was his own?

Zell’s fingers push against his forehead, coming down the bridge of his nose. Her accusation wasn’t wrong, but he has to bite back pointing out she’s been putting herself in danger for years. That wasn’t going to help the conversation, at all, and she’s just going to further think he’s against her. Tip-toing also isn’t Zell’s style, known to be forward and direct with lacking tact of how he goes about things.

“I’m sorry about that - I really am, Rin, but you ain’t in a position to absolve yourself of all responsibly here. Y’shouldn’t have been out there doin’ fuck knows what with him and I’ma be honest - I got my suspicions,” and he hopes he’s wrong, “- and if you keep going like you’re going, you’re gonna end up takin’ yourself down and people you care about with you n’ you won’t be able to take it back. Take it from me - you don’t want that on you.” 

Silence fills the car now, Rinoa now facing away from him and staring out that window, conditioned helplessness stuffing her insubordination down. The carefully crafted personality to suppress and survive was taking over, demanding she quit making waves least Zell is right in his assertion that she will not be the only one she hurts. Maybe he was right - maybe she should stop before it gets too far.

“... Just take me back, Zell.” She finally says after several minutes, all fight absent from her voice now. 

[ ref. @hartofbalamb && @prideanddiscipline 

[taciturnrebel]

drabble  :  1620 word count.   @niflim​   &   @saigeonmain​

I knew from the moment my mother saw the mako-blue in his eyes, she would disapprove, she would hate him regardless of my feelings or his. The shock on her face upon seeing him sat in our kitchen tonight was quick to elevate to anger. And I could see her fingers twitch, wanting to reach for the shotgun hidden in a cupboard nearby to rid herself and us from that which she saw as a living abomination in the world. Fortunately, Cloud picks up on the sudden tenseness in the room and excuses himself to wait outside. He probably saved himself a maiming as well as me having to ask him to leave, something I really did not want to do. I want him here. I want her to want him here, but I know far too well that is not going to happen anytime soon, maybe never.

For a long time, mom stares at our backdoor with the same steely gaze I too had inherited from her. If looks could conjure spears of ice and send them through that door to murder my boyfriend, I don’t think she would hesitate. “Why was that SOLDIER here? Did he hurt you?!” Her attention finally turns to me, and much to my grief, she had not picked up on why he was here, which means I’ll have to tell her myself. Wonderful. She fusses over me as if I were still a child, checking for injuries or any sign of mistreatment, ignoring my protests as I try to avoid those maternal hands.

“Speak to me, Squall. Tell me.” She asks, impatience quick to slip into her voice. This is gonna get rough, she’s already at full anger.

“No, I’m fine. And Cloud isn’t with SOLDIER anymore.” He never really was, but I can’t explain that all right now. Too headachey.

“What? I don’t understand. Why is he here then? Why is my son talking to any product of Shinra?!”

It’s almost like she’s forgotten that I worked for Shinra, even if it was for the benefit of finding her husband. I wish dad were here right now because I know already that he would like Cloud, so would sis, but they’re miles away in Wutai setting up the house while mom closes a deal on our property here. I guess having her husband back hadn’t softened her as much as I would have liked.

“Mom don’t talk about him like that. He’s a person, not a thing.”

“No, Squall. They were human once upon a time ago. But once Shinra puts all that crap in them, they become something else, something inhuman.”

“Oh right, because you know so many former SOLDIER, huh? Cloud is kind…most of the time, he just tends to come off as a bit of an ass sometimes.”

“Wait, so you’ve seen…spent time with him before?” Shit. For a woman so on the ball with everything else, I’m surprised she’s so oblivious to what’s going on here. I’m really just going to have to lay this out for her and hope for a best-case scenario, of which there is none.

“Yeah, I’ve known Cloud for a while now. We’re….uhh, sort of dating, well, not sort of dating, he’s my boyfriend, mom.”  Suddenly, it feels like meteor fall over again. A darkness pierces the place that had been our home for ten years, and I can see the blood drain from my mother’s face in sheer horror, and I can see her reliving the past where we had once been the prey of SOLDIER. I don’t remember that time well, but thinking back on it as I got older and then now, she had been on constant guard, snappy, and she wouldn’t let Elle or me out of her sight for even a minute. SOLDIER frightened her then, they frighten her now too. I can’t blame her either. “Mom, it’s okay. Cloud isn’t like those guys that came after us back then. If you just got to know him, you would see that. May---”

“Why are you doing this, Squall?” She asks, accusation rising in her tone as if I had committed a terrible crime rather than fall in love.

“I’m…I’m not doing anything, it just happened.”

“It doesn’t just happ---there will be plenty of suitable women and men for you in Wutai, son. They will know and understand you better than a lab rat ever could. You get along so well with Yuffie, wouldn’t she make a great girlfriend?”

“Are you kidding me right now?” I’m trying to keep my composure as she picks and chooses partners for me that aren’t the one I want, but it’s hard. I had known for years that she would prefer for me to be with someone of our ethnicity because it’s safer, there won’t be any prejudice in Wutai if I were with someone from Wutai. That doesn’t matter to me though, I know for the first time in my life who I want for me, that’s never happened before. “You can’t just expect me to up and forget about him because that’s what you want! I’m happy, doesn’t that count for anything in your narrow-minded little world?”

Facing down her stare is worse than facing down any kind of blade. Is that how I look to people? I just called her narrow-minded, and I’m getting nothing in return which can only mean she’s beyond the point of any normal anger. I can only imagine what Cloud must be thinking about this right now unless he’s already decided to run away. I would if my boyfriend’s mother referred to me as a thing rather than a person. What if this scares him off for good? One of the few positives in my life and she might be about to ruin it.

“I’m going to keep seeing him whether you like it or not. This is my life, and he’s what makes me happy, isn’t that what you want for me?”

“Are you sleeping with him?” I’m certain my jaws drops open as those words leave my mom’s lips. If she hadn’t already made me uncomfortable before, I definitely was now.

“W—What?”

“I asked if you’re having sex with him, Squall.” I suddenly do not appreciate how blunt I can be at times when I hear it from her.

“That’s none of your business. I’m twenty years old.”

“Are you using protection?”

“It’s none of yo---”

“It is my business, Squall Leonhart! You are my son, and god knows what he might be passing on to you from the tube he crawled out of.” I’m stunned, my horror surely matching her own from earlier. I know she’s not that ignorant, she’s just trying to scare me and make me end this relationship, but that won’t work. If she only knew who had been here before Cloud was in my life, her opinion might swiftly change. He’s not perfect, and I never asked for perfect, he’s flawed like everyone else, like me. Maybe now she will realise I’m not her perfect little baby boy anymore, stars know she needs to.

“You need to stop seeing that man now before things end badly. Those SOLDIER people aren’t capable of love.” How little she knows, but I will not divulge the details of Aerith to her. That wound still hasn’t healed on either of us.

“No, I won’t.” I reply the iron will in my tone unshakeable this time. I’m not going to let anyone’s fear take this away from me, not even hers, and I need her to see that. “I love him.”

The mask cracks, her steel tears like a piece of paper, now she knows this is serious. Hands press to her face in despair for this is something that can’t be controlled, she can’t stop my heart from wanting what it wants, neither can I. “I can’t approve of this, Squall. There is a monster in his heart, a darkness in his soul from what Shinra has done to him. And I truly believe he will hurt you at the end of it all.” The mother I know is back who speaks only with loving concern, not from malice. But she still fails to realise that Cloud isn’t the only person capable of causing pain. Maybe I’ll break his heart one day.

“There’s no monster or darkness in him…he’s just, he’s Cloud, a little lost, sad, and he pretends to be a lot cooler than he really is. Maybe we have those things in common.” I can tell she still doesn’t want to hear the opposite of what she believes to be true, her lips purse into a tight line, but at least she isn’t trying to fight me on it anymore, not today anyway. “I’m gonna go stay with Cloud tonight, let you cool off. I’ll even give you the house address if it really worries you so much. But I promise mom, I’m not making a mistake with him.” I stand to leave, the old wooden chair scraping across floor tiles. Hopefully, he’s still outside waiting for me, Cloud isn’t the type to abandon someone he cares about.

As I shrug on my jacket, mom appears silently at my side. I’ve never understood how she managed to do that, but I cease contemplating it when she pulls me into a hug, I hug her back tighter than I usually might to show what can’t be said right now. Even if two hearts eventually end up broken at the end of the day, if myself and Cloud hurt one another, there will always be her love for me to fall back on even if she sometimes shows it in brutal ways.

[lovemesomerafael]

It’s Complicated                        Chapter 8:  Reorientation

Source:  @yunafire

Chapters 1-5  Chapter 6  Chapter 7   Read on AO3

It was late when Mike Dodds showed up at Forlini’s.  By then, Fin and Carisi had already left and Amanda was getting ready to head home herself, but she stayed to have a last drink, not wanting to leave just as Dodds arrived.  He worked too hard, and he had a thing about not getting too social with the detectives, trying to maintain an appropriate distance since he was their Sergeant.  Amanda thought that was crap; Olivia socialized with them, after all, so she bought him a shot of tequila to go with his beer.

The conversation was typical Friday night, several-drinks-in fare, and it was exactly what Dodds needed to clear work from his head. Especially with these women, who flirted tipsily with him and were primed to laugh at his jokes.  Amanda did excuse herself after she finished her last drink, though, leaving Frankie and Mike at the table.

“You want another one?”

“I don’t know, Mike, I’m kinda lit already.”  Frankie made a face.  

“C’mon.  I just got here.”

“Oh, what the hell.  I’ll just switch to beer.  I’m buying.”

When she returned with their drinks, she looked just a bit too long out the window.  Dodds was not only a trained detective, he was also naturally intuitive.  The look on her face didn’t escape him.

“What was that?”  He asked, clinking his beer glass with hers.

“What was what?”

“That look.  You see someone out on the street?”

“Mike.  Clock out already.  You are done Sergeant-ing for the day.”

Dodds laughed.  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrogate you. But I actually have been meaning to check in with you.  About Canady, and everything that happened.  How you doin’ with all that?”

Frankie’s eyes took on a speculative look.  “I think I’m OK.  My life is back to normal, and I haven’t had a prison dream in a while. And I didn’t realize until he was dead how often I was worrying about Alan finding me.  So, you know… I think I’m good.”

“Glad to hear it.  Sorry I had to be the one to arrest you.”

“Stop apologizing for that.  It was your job, and you couldn’t have been nicer about it.  Anyway, I’m pretty sure there are women who dream about you handcuffing them, Sergeant.”  

Dodds’ face twisted into a wry grin of sorts.  “Well, I’m afraid they’re gonna have to go on dreaming.”

Frankie tried to keep her face impassive.  “Oh?  Rather handcuff men, would you?”

“Not into handcuffing at all, to tell you the truth, but yeah. If there’s handcuffing to be done, I’d prefer it be male.”

Frankie smiled and clinked her glass with his.  “Gotcha.”

“You surprised?”

She shrugged.  “I hadn’t thought about it.  OK, that’s a lie, I noticed you’re pretty, um…”  she waved her hand up and down to indicate him.  “What’s the professional way to say ‘sexy’?  So I might be just a little disappointed.  But I can’t say I blame you.  I like dick, too.”

Dodds almost spit out his beer at that.

“Oh, shit.  I must be drunker than I thought.  Sorry about that, Mike.  Sometimes my mouth tries to kill me.”

He swallowed and laughed.  “No, don’t be sorry, that may be the best response I’ve ever gotten after coming out to a woman.”  

“So, obvious next question.  Are you dating anyone?”

“Not currently, no.  Which explains why I’m sitting here with you at ten O’clock on a Friday night.”

“Wow.  That hurt.”

“No – that came out wrong.  I just meant-“

Frankie laughed and put a hand on Mike’s arm.  “I’m just giving you shit.  I’m the wrong flavor.  I get it.”

“But you are Barba’s flavor, and I gotta ask about that.  I thought the two of you had a thing going.”

“For a grand total of one minute.”

“Bullshit.  I see the way you look at eachother.  And don’t even try to tell me all that yelling isn’t foreplay.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Sergeant.  I mean, yeah, he’s attractive enough, but we have a fundamental… difference of… opinion…”

Frankie’s voice trailed off and she gazed, eyes unfocused, at the tablecloth.  

“About?”

Her mind had suddenly been pulled back to Rafe’s hand injury.  She wasn’t going to share her suspicion with Dodds, but she was just drunk enough to take the opportunity to unburden herself a bit.  “Well, it’s…” She looked up at him and leaned in. “Can I talk to you about something sort of personal?  Confidentially?”

“The doctor is in.  Did you want to lie down on the couch, or…?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…  Everybody’s a comedian.  So the thing is, Barba thinks I did something to get Juwon Jefferson – you remember, the tweaker kid?  Barba thinks I got him to say Alan was the Pattern 20 rapist and that he killed himself.”

“What, Barba thinks you killed Canady?”

“No, he says he believes me about that, but he thinks it’s awfully convenient that Jefferson suddenly started cooperating.”

“And?”

“What do you mean, ‘And”?  Barba thinks I tampered with a witness.”

“He thinks Jefferson lied?”

“I don’t know, exactly.  But he thinks whatever he said, I put him up to it.”

“Did you?”

“No!”

“Then who gives a fuck what Barba thinks?”

“I do.  That’s the problem.  I… Mike, I could really care for him. In fact, in vino veritas, I do really care for him.   But I can’t have him thinking I did something like that.”

“Something like what?  Frankie, seriously, let’s say you did – I don’t know – bribe Jefferson, or threaten him with something if he didn’t come clean.  Hell, let’s even say you got him to lie.  As long as you didn’t kill Canady – and you didn’t - so what?”

“Are you fucking serious right now?”  

“Dead serious.”

“It would be OK with you if I bribed a witness to lie for me.”

“In this case?  Yes.”

Frankie gaped at him, incredulous.

“Oh, grow the hell up, Doc.  I might not even be all that upset if you were the one who offed the guy. You’re from Texas, right?  What is it they say, ‘He needed killin’?”  

“You are honestly telling me…”

“Look, I don’t know, all right?  I’m feeling that tequila, maybe in the cold light of day I would have a problem with you actually killing the guy.  It would depend on the circumstances.  But as it stands, he did himself to frame you, and if Jefferson hadn’t backed you, it would’ve worked.  That, I definitely would have a problem with.”

“Shit, Dodds.  That’s basically what Barba said.”

“Then Barba’s right.”

“Listen, you gotta keep this between us, OK?  Don’t say anything about… how I feel about Barba.”

“I won’t.”

“In fact, you gotta give me some collateral.  Tell me something you don’t want anyone in the squad to know so I can blackmail you.”

“What was that phrase from the Cold War?  ‘Mutually assured destruction?’”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t think I’ve had that much to drink.”

“Then let me tell you something about you that you don’t want anyone in the squad to know.  I’ve been sitting here multitasking, assimilating the idea of you being gay.  Suddenly your reluctance to socialize with us makes a little more sense.”

“Oh, shit.”

“It’s Carisi, isn’t it?”

“Fuck, Frankie, you could destroy me with that.”

“Of course I couldn’t.  Number one, I’m assuming you’ve never said or done anything about it.”

“Of course not!  He’s my subordinate and he’s straight as an arrow.”

“And number two, I’d never say a word.  Unless…”  She gave him a wildly overdone evil leer with a mustache twirl.

“You’re diabolical.”

“I’m not, actually, but please don’t say anything to Barba.”

“I won’t, but you should.  He’s into you.”

“A lot you know.  Right this minute, he’s ‘into’ the Chinese restaurant across the street with a blonde.”

“I knew you were looking at something out there!”

“Yeah, bully for me.  Next, I’ll be driving by his house at night, just hoping to get a glimpse of him, like a bad country song.”

“You could do that.  Or just fucking talk to the man.  I’m telling you, Frankie, you are the one making problems for the two of you.   You need to lighten up and see the world for what it is.”

“Shit, you’re practically quoting him.”

“Then maybe you should listen.  Because I know he’s waiting for you to make a move.”

“He’s waiting with a blonde, Mike.”

“So?  You’re here with me.”

“I think the blonde shares our preferences.”

“Again, so?”

“So I’m assuming he will be sharing leftovers with her in the morning.”

“Jeez, Frankie, how old are you?  So he fucks her.  So what?”  

“So I’m the jealous type.  That would be a problem for me.”

“Oh, come on.  Say I take you back to my place and fuck you stupid.  All weekend, even.  Is that going to change the way you feel about Barba?”

“Depends.  Are there handcuffs?”

Mike laughed loudly.  “I think in your profession, they call that ‘deflecting.’  Which means I win.  It’s the twenty-first century and we’re grown-ass adults, Frankie.  Let the blonde handcuff Barba all she wants. That isn’t gonna change the way he feels about you, and you shouldn’t let it change the way you feel about him.”

Frankie leaned back and shook her head.  “I’ll think about it,” she said, frowning.

“Do that.”

She brought her eyes back to Dodds and leaned in again.  “And you think about Carisi being straight. You may find he’s straight as a rainbow.”

“Shut up.”

“Yep.  I’ve seen some things.  And I can even find out for you, if you want.”

“He’d still be my subordinate.”

“I don’t want to know the details, Dodds,” Frankie winked.

“I meant that I’m his Sergeant.”

“I know what you meant,” she laughed.  “And I’m going to find out how he rolls.  Carefully, discreetly, and without even a hint of your name.  I’ll let you know.”

 *******************

“Hey, Snot-rocket!”

“You’re the snot-rocket, Snot-rocket.  How’s it going?”

“It’s good.  Got a bit of a squall comin’ through right now, which is messin’ with my plans for today, but life on a ranch, right?”

“Right.  So… how’s the hand?”  Frankie waited to see what Rafe would do with that question.  

As expected, his response was, “What hand?”

“I heard you had a couple of broken fingers, or sprained, or something.  Twisted them working on a fence?”  

“Oh, that.  That was a while ago, and it was nothin’.  They’re fine.”

“What happened, exactly?”

“Like you said, I twisted ‘em.  Workin’ on a fence.”  

“We have different definitions of the word, ‘exactly,’ Rafe.”

“What are you, interrogatin’ me?  Am I under arrest?”

“Hmmmm.  Defensive reaction.”

“Frankie, what are you gettin’ at?  I hurt my fingers.  BFD.”

“Well, it is a big fucking deal if you’re lying to me because you hurt them beating up Juwon Jefferson to get him to talk to the cops.”

There was a silence on the other end of the line.  

“Amanda tell you that?”

“No, you just did.  What the fuck, Rafe?  That’s witness tampering.  It’s illegal.  Stone could use it to re-file the charges!”

“He ain’t gonna do nothin’ if you don’t tell him.  Drop it, Frankie.  I mean it.  It’s over. You coulda been convicted of murder, and I wasn’t gonna let that sumbitch do you like that.  That’s all I got to say about that.”

“Rafe…”

“That’s all I got to say.  How’s Amanda doin’?”  

Nothing Frankie could say would get any more information out of her stubborn brother.

 ****************

Olivia was very surprised to see Frankie at her apartment door on a Saturday afternoon, but Porter wasn’t.  They’d been texting, and he hadn’t been able to put Frankie off. The most she would agree to was to wait until Noah’s naptime before coming over.  She was clearly upset.

“Do you want some coffee?”

“Thanks, Liv, I’d love some.”

Porter sat down on a chair across from the couch where Frankie sat. “All right, so what’s the emergency?”

“You avoided me after I got out of Riker’s.  I thought it was weird that I couldn’t get you to agree to a time to get together and talk about what happened with Alan, after all we’d been through.”

“And the fact that I was busy means I was avoiding you?”

“You were waiting for the bruises to heal.”  

Olivia handed Frankie a mug of coffee and sat next to her, an expectant look on her face as she looked at Porter.  

“You knew.”  

Olivia sighed.  “I knew Dean was in a fight the night Jefferson was brought in, and that he asked me not to mention it to anyone at NYPD.  But that’s all I knew.”

“Because you purposely didn’t ask any questions.”

“Best I could do.  And, if you want my advice, I’d recommend you don’t ask any questions, either.”

“So it’s true.  You-“

“Don’t say anything else, Frankie.”  Porter advised, leaning forward toward her.  “Just drop it, have some coffee.   We can talk all you want about Canady.  Let’s just not worry about Jefferson.”

Frankie drank deeply and thoughtfully.  Barba’s coffee was infinitely better than Liv’s.

“Am I that much of a child?”  She asked.

Liv took that one.  “Frankie, you know me.  You know how I do things.  Would you call me a child?”

“Of course not.”

“Then neither are you.  Now.  Would you call me… oh, I don’t know.  Crooked? A rogue cop?”

“Of course not.  You’re one of the most righteous cops I know.”

“Then listen to me.  I was one of the arresting officers in your case.  It was bad.  It was very bad.  Based on everything I’ve seen, I was scared for you.  So when I got the call about Jefferson, and he started to talk, I was relieved as hell.  And when Dean showed up with bruises that night, I didn’t ask any questions.  He’s an FBI agent.  He gets beat up.  I have no idea what happened to him, and neither do you.”

“What if Stone finds out?”

“Finds out what?  Finds out Dean’s an FBI agent who sometimes gets in fights on the job?  He already knows.”

“You know what I mean, Liv.”

“I know you’re drawing conclusions.  I know you have no idea what did or didn’t happen while you were in Riker’s.  And I know you should be grateful as all hell you’re not there now, and you should never think about it again.  That’s what I know.”

Frankie sighed and took another long drink of dreadful coffee.

“You want to talk about something else?”  Porter asked.  “Because we have some news.”

Benson and Porter’s engagement was the only topic of conversation for the rest of Frankie’s visit.  

 *********************

“Hey, Sonny, I need to ask your opinion on something.”

“Shoot, Doc.”

Sonny was sitting at his desk, searching online for a site on the dark web that had just turned up in a case.  Frankie sat on the edge of the desk nearby.  No one else happened to be in the squad room at the moment.  

“I have this cop friend.  He’s gay and he’s thinking about coming out to his team.  He wants to know what I think, and I haven’t been part of the NYPD for long enough to have a good sense of how that would go.  You’ve been around NYPD for a while, worked in some different houses, what would you tell him?”

“Depends on his unit.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.  Like, if he works Gangs, he should move to the back of the closet and hide behind the winter coats.  But some units are friendlier than that.  Where’s he work?”

“Until he comes out, I’d prefer not to say.  I trust you, I just don’t have his permission, you know?”

“Got it.  Well, since you’re that discreet, let me tell you somethin’.”  Sonny looked around to ensure their privacy.  “SVU’s about the most LGBTQ-friendly unit there is in the NYPD, right?  And even here, I publicly only date girls.”

“So you’re saying you’re bi, but you wouldn’t come out, even here.”

“That’s what I’m sayin’.”

“Well, thanks for the insight.  And the confidence.  It’s not misplaced.”

“I know.  And I’m out to Amanda, too, just so you know.”

“OK.”  Frankie said, then pretended to be struck by a thought.  “So listen, that being the case…  I heard something.  I need to thread the needle a little bit here, but…  Someone, a guy, told me that they’re interested in you, and he wanted to know if you were straight.  But he’s not out here, either.”

“Someone in SVU?  A guy? Is interested in me?”  

“I didn’t say he was in SVU,” Frankie said, noticing that Carisi’s eyes instantly went to Dodds’ desk.  “But he’s… around, and you know him.  I told him I didn’t know where you stood, but I’d find out.  I don’t know how to do this…  I wouldn’t out you to him, even with your permission.  It’s a rule I have.  But could I tell him he could trust you not to shoot him if he made his interest known?  Would that be OK?”

Sonny’s brow furrowed. “Can I think about it?”

“Of course.  And if you never mention it again, neither will I.”

“Cool.  Thanks.”

“Sure.”

Sonny worked for a while longer.  “Hey, this guy…  What’s he like?”

“Tens across the board.”

“Really?”

“Definitely.”

“OK.  You can tell him I won’t shoot him.  The rest is up to him.”

“Consider it done.”

 *********************

Frankie needed advice.  Well, that wasn’t exactly accurate.  She’d received quite a bit of advice on how to view what Porter and Rafe had done, all of it decidedly uniform.  But she was having a tough time accepting it.  She needed to talk to someone about it, and she didn’t know who to turn to. She respected and trusted the opinions she’d heard; it wasn’t that.  The problem was, she needed to talk to someone whom she knew had unimpeachable principles of right and wrong.  Actually, she would have loved to hear Peter Stone’s thoughts, but she would always be scared shitless of him.  Also, she preferred to stay out of prison.  Nikki?  No, she knew Nikki would say what everyone else said.  

And then she thought of George Huang.  

“Frankie!  What a nice surprise!  Or is it? You’re not calling to curse me for letting you get involved with SVU, are you?”

Frankie laughed.  She loved George.  Even the relaxing sound of his voice made her feel better.  “I’m not, but you could’ve warned me about Barba.”

“Ooh.  Sorry about that.  I guess I should’ve seen a little potential conflict there.  You remind me of each other.  Then again, maybe he’s good for you.  He’s the only person I can think of who could say ‘no’ to you and make it stick. I’m guessing you find that as attractive as you do annoying.”

“Get out of my head, Professor.  I’m not your student anymore.”  

“Listen, I was very sorry to hear about what you went through. With Canady.”

”Thanks, George.  And thanks for your emails.  I appreciate it.”

“How are you doing now?”

“Surprisingly well, actually.  It will probably turn out to be good for me, professionally, to have had that experience.  You know, maybe in ten, twenty years.”

Huang laughed softly.  “I’m glad to hear you’re OK.  I was worried.”

“Well, when I say I’m OK, that’s a bit relative.  There is something I need to work through.”

“That’s what you said in your text.  Your fifty minutes starts now.  I’m expensive, make them count.”

 *************

Carmen had been here before.  Janice Edwards was not the first woman who “just happened to stop by hoping to catch Mr. Barba” when he was in court, and ended up pumping Carmen for information about him.  She was, however, the first one who came bearing expensive coffee not for Mr. Barba, but for Carmen.  Carmen hoped Ms. Edwards was a bit less obvious with judges.  Ms. Edwards was perfectly aware that Mr. Barba had a hearing this afternoon; Carmen had heard him tell her about it not two hours before. Consummate professional that she was, Carmen sipped her coffee and smiled, despite the fact that she really wished Ms. Edwards was sitting in the chair next to her desk, rather than on her desk, leaning in as though they were the closest of friends.  

“I happened to see he had lunch with Bess Quinn yesterday.  Do they have a case together?”

“Not currently, no.”

“Oh?  What was the lunch about, then?”

This was not Carmen’s debut performance on this particular stage. “I’m not sure.  This suit is just beautiful.”

“Really?  When did she call to schedule it?”

“I’m not sure who scheduled it.  He just asked me to put it on his calendar.  Is this Alexander McQueen?”

Carmen thought she’d successfully answered all Ms. Edwards questions without actually saying anything when she started to talk about her suit.  Five minutes later, however, she found herself fielding more questions, this time about what Mr. Barba had done this past weekend. That was interesting, given that Carmen had made reservations for him and Ms. Edwards at Xiāngliào on Friday night.  But since Carmen knew nothing about what Mr. Barba had done over the weekend, she simply said so.  

“You know, between us girls, I think he’s seeing someone.  Is he seeing someone?”

“Not that I’m aware, Ms. Edwards.”

“Oh, you know you can call me Janice.  And you can tell me.  He’s not back with Bess Quinn, is he?”

“I couldn’t say.”  She also wouldn’t say that Mr. Barba – well, Carmen on Mr. Barba’s behalf - had sent Ms. Quinn flowers after their lunch, or that he had tickets to see an opera in French with Adrien St. George the next night. Carmen could understand Ms. Edwards’ curiosity.  Even for Mr. Barba, that was a lot of… socializing.

Carmen had to keep doing her job, even with Joyce Edwards in residence on her desk.  Excusing herself, she answered Mr. Barba’s private line and was annoyed – but undetectably so – to see Ms. Edwards leaning in to try to hear.

“I’ll give him the message,” Carmen said, purposely not using the caller’s name or writing anything down for Ms. Edwards to read. She wouldn’t forget to tell Mr. Barba that Dr. Rojas wanted to speak to him.  In fact, she’d been watching the two of them, and Carmen had some theories of her own about Mr. Barba’s social schedule.

 ***************

Frankie and Mike Dodds found themselves on the courthouse elevator together the following day.  

“Hey, Mike, that thing we talked about last Friday?”

“What thing?”

“I said I was going to get some information for you about that detective we talked about.”

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah.  I made a discreet inquiry.”

“And?”

“I am authorized to tell you that they will not shoot you if you make yourself known to them.”

“I have no idea what the hell that means.”

“It means you should pursue that line of investigation.”

“No shit.”

[cavitymagazine]

𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔧𝔞 𝔴𝔞𝔯𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔤

There’s a painting of it that you’ve probably seen somewhere. Pointillist. A dirt road and a cornfield. A parked green tractor. And, the imagery discordant, a dejected ninja slouching beside the tractor, staring down at his limply held blade as though it’s the ultimate substantiation of meaninglessness. This painting’s been reproduced, parodied, enshrined, and displayed all over the globe. It’s at the Detroit Institute of Art, presently, in fact.

Equation from a crypto-meteorological textbook:

91-101 kph [wind speed] + oblique, angular shadow systems [precise configuration/density: UNKNOWN] + misty [optional?] rain/overcast sky + uprooted bamboo trees and/or bamboo chips/strips/material [exact amount UNKNOWN] = ninjitstorm [perhaps]

Crypto-Beaufort Scale entry for ninjitstorm:

Beaufort Number: 10

Name: Chimerical Gale or Conjuror Storm

Wind Speed: 58-62 mph [91-101 kph]

Description: Considerable structural damage occurs; ninja assassins manifest

The homely Nebraska town of Sumner has a general store called General Store – it’s that kind of agrestic. People and corn. And more corn. Grain sacks. A poky video store. Grousing tractors.

Of course this uneventfulness is a late and lamented portraiture of Sumner: it is the way it was before the squall of gleaming katana.

One advanced afternoon in the mid 1990s it rains ninja on Sumner. Like homicidal hailstones, they somersault and roll and flying-kick out of tornadic funnels. Like armed sleet.

It marks the first and only occurrence of this phenomenon in the U.S. It’s a huge moment in Weather History.

Day 1: Chaos and horror. Eleven townsfolk are struck down; some livestock are poisoned by blow darts tipped with something more lethal than cyanide, others are gorily ornamented with shuriken. Green tractor paint obscured by arterial spray. Sumner’s roads go redly moist.

Law enforcement refuses to step in. Here’s an excerpt from the press release the Batch County Sheriff’s Department issued the day of the killer atmospheric conditions:

“While this department mourns the lives lost in Sumner this afternoon, the deaths, according to FEMA meteorologists, are no more ‘criminal’ than, for example, hurricane or mudslide casualties. We don’t arrest natural disasters; we don’t prosecute tsunamis. Sorry.

FEMA experts advise residents to stay indoors until a solution is reached. Crisis managers are in talks with Tokyo climatologists…”

Day 2: Terrorized townies hole up inside their houses and barns. Doors are needlessly barricaded and boarded over. (The aerial ninja confine their sneaky, homicidal industry to the outside world, in compliance with some meteorological principle only the atmosphere kens.) Sumner fathers cradle shotguns, uselessly. (Bullets have no effect on thunderstorms, squalls, or pneumatic assassins.) The town on Day 2 is ghostly and coiled, tense. Black-masked ninja zip in and across Sumner’s roads like darts: horizontal black blurs… a deadly twinkle of metal… then: gone. Hidden again.

Ain’t seen one all afternoon.

That don’t mean they ain’t out there.

My nephew googled it.

What’d it say?

Not much. Lingo for ‘em’s some Japanese word. In America they call ‘em Dudikoffs. Sounds Russian.

That don’t help, Carl.

Carl’s dumber ‘an shit on a post.

Eat me, Baker.

Ain’t never happened here in the U.S. Not ever. Last one happened in the Ukraine in ’94. Bunch in Japan in the ‘80s.

On Day 2 the only deaths are an ambling wiener dog cleanly sectioned by a sword and a few chickens, their clucking heads crunched via nunchaku, the weapon’s rawhide link sticky with fowl blood.

Day 3-5: A predawn charge overtures a full day of mass assassination almost as frenetic and ravaging as the first. This spasm of killing, however, slows over days 4 and five. The manifestation still beheads anyone or anything not under a roof, human or stock, but a certain berserk spirit seems to dissipate noticeably. The slaying isn’t as enthusiastic.

Theories abound, most of them infused with a hope contoured by acute desperation; they’re near-mythic, these theories.

Research into feline predatory patterns/Marquette University/1996:

“Our team stuck cats – housecats and ferals, both – into cages: one cat per cage. Then we simply dumped mice into these cages with the cats. Dozens of mice. The mice, of course, had nowhere to hide.

“The pattern was conspicuous right away: the cat frenzies, eyes big as dinner plates, followed by a maelstrom of claw action.

“Every cat, though, without variance, did this:

“They massacred the mice frantically, as though the mice could escape or we might take them away any second.

“Then, somewhere around Mouse Victim #14 (it’s a 12-14 range, this phenomenon, though we’ve seen it go as high as 16; never lower than 12), the cat just mellows, stops killing. Every time.

“Does the cat get bored around kill #14? Is its bloodlust sated at or around that magic number? Or does it merely realize the mice are trapped and it need not rush its rampage?

“Or… or, more interestingly, does kitty experience some kind of lynxian existential crisis? Does Garfield gaze dejectedly at his bloody, dripping claws as though they’re the substantiation of meaninglessness and say to itself, figuratively, ‘What’s the use?’

“Does Toonces pause and ask itself, ‘What the fuck is the point of me, anyway?’ Unless someone speaks cat, we’ll probably never know.”

Day 6-21: Days 6-21 play out as a more salient, more fizzly copy of days 4 and five.

The murders diminish in both number and frequency.

The mute ninjaforms meet an apparent corrosion of their eager bloodthirstiness. Their hearts are no longer in it, it seems.

The ninja seem bored. Or disillusioned. Sometimes a ripe townie will stroll right past a ninja, practically daring it to cut him down, practically volunteering, and the airborne assassin will merely look down at the dirt road, as though ashamed.

Some pundits attribute the change to Sumner’s population’s obstinacy, its grim insistence on resuming business-as-usual on Day Five. On 5, farmers rouse their slumbering tractors, church service is held, and a semi-normalcy pre-ninjastorm is willed into being. Granted, ninja bashed and hacked a not-insignificant number of townies during this time of unsheltering, sure, but the folks of Sumner were through hiding, come hell or ninja.

Day 22: A milestone in the Sumner ninjitstorm: 22 marks the day of the final killing of a town resident by a manifestation. It’s an awkward kill, like the last twitch of some fading convulsion: a meaningless reflex. Miss Maple, 83 years old. She was exiting the post office. Three ninjaforms were milling around out front, by the office’s decorative trough and hitching posts. None of the ninja had attacked in days. As Miss Maple passes the trio, nodding a “How do you do?”, one ninja flinches, and the flinch clumsily morphs into an instinctive strike. A jerky nunchaku stick cracks Miss Maple’s brittle skull. Red spurts out through gray scalp. Blood spatters her lavender shawl. She dies in the dirt road, her seizurely throes the only movement. It’s pathetic, that last killing. Dishonorable. Ninja wear masks, but still it’s as though the humiliation can be read on the assassin’s face: a child caught in the act of doing something stupidly cruel for no good reason.

Day 23-Day 60:

Crazy to say it.

Well, shit. You want it to go back to the way it was last month?

‘Course not. Hell.

I know what Carl’s gettin’ at though. Yessir. It’s glum. They’re like reminders of somethin’ sad.

Somethin’ bygone.

Yeah, “gone” is right. Gone are a bunch of decent folk gettin’ stabbed and decapitated for no goddamn reason. Are y’all forgettin’ that?

They are weather, Dan. We gonna hate somethin’ natural forever? It’s like stayin’ mad at the tornado that took your pickup.

Like stayin’ sore at the scorpion for stingin’.

That weather took my wife’s eye out with a dag-gum throwin’ star, Baker.

Settle down y’all.

How much’s a bag of them Corn Nuts?

The picante ones? Them’re good.

Well, listen. Them ninja, they’re here. And, ill or good, they’re ours. That’s how this town is. They’re part of us now.

Harmless, the ninja of Sumner slouch, their all-black suits vivid in the dayglare. They mill a lot, doing nothing – mopey shadows.

A gradual homogeny blooms: the town, its placidness, its standardized, cyclic normalcy, first tames and then assimilates the disorder of ninja, like a gobbling Norman Rockwell that quickly swallows up and absorbs any rogue or transgressive brushstrokes.

No one likes a sad ninja. Sad ninja are worse than your ordinary sad person. They’re oppressive.

The ninjaforms go from skulking assassins to lethargic killers; then to dejected, bland objects of pity – voiceless panhandlers, like stray cats or confused urchins.

Lost in despair, pouting between the town’s squat buildings or brooding in silent circles behind the video store, the ninja, finally, become the sullen pillars of the Sumner community.

Day 61-Present:

The ninja are as much a part of Sumner now as the cattle. As fixed and integral as the cornstalks. More so, maybe.

Sumner’s a tourist destination now; a very disappointing one. Morose ninja contemplating the dirt get boring fast. Tourists snap a few photos of the incongruous weather-forms, grab a slab of Marge’s Diner’s “famous” banana cream pie, and drive back to Florida or California or wherever tourists come from.

There is talk of penning up the ninja and making them a petting zoo. They’re docile as sleepy goats now, after all. Sometimes tourists’ kids will run over and pet one of them or tug at one’s pant leg. It gave people ideas.

Sometimes sympathetic Sumner grandmothers, overcome by pity, will do something like pet one of the glum ninja, stroking its hooded, hung head, extending a solace that isn’t receivable.

Story and artwork by Will Bernardara Jr.

[Author Bio]

Will Bernardara Jr. is the author of the novella America from voidfront. 

[ahomeganeyatsu]

Ran Off in the Night (Part 8)

The shop was a quaint little place a few blocks from their building. It was located in a busy street but it’s nestled within a corner and blended too well with the other shops. You would hardly even notice it was there. It was the kind of shop you would miss entirely unless you weren’t actively searching for it. The type that only shows up when you’re in need of it.

Lucas remembered coming upon it accidentally. How he stood in the middle of the street, wishing he could find a place he could hide in a bit to calm his nerves. And suddenly he saw it, right there across him. This hole-in-the-wall shop with its obscured glass display, with tiny knick-knacks and hanging plants. The stylistic script advertising it as QS and nothing more.

He felt compelled to approach it. He hadn’t even noticed he was pushing through the door until he was facing a dimly lit interior. The bell was still tinkling behind him, alerting the owner of a potential customer. He didn’t know whether it was an apothecary, a bookstore, an antique shop or all of it at once. There were shelves upon shelves of varying things, all mixed it one place and it should have clashed but it didn’t. The chaos exhibited a certain harmony Lucas wouldn’t have believed possible if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.

It has been months from what had been his first and only visit. (Until now, that is.) He thought that the owner would have redecorated by now, or resorted the shelves. But things look to be the same as the last time he had been here—save for the new additions or lack of some.

“That better not be you Dorian! I don’t care what you say, I’m keeping the grimoire!” a voice boomed from the back of the shop, echoing loudly in the whole room. He noticed how some items quivered in their spots, shifting to tuck themselves further, as if fearing for their lives. Lucas was used to strange things but he will never get used to that.

Claws clicked against the wooden floors and the teen twisted in his spot to find a tiny animal with large ears and a small slightly pointed snout walking towards him. The top of its coat was a soft orange and the rest of it was a cream-colored white. Its red-ruby eyes stared at him intently and like the first time, it unnerved him.

“Hey, Fynn,” he greeted the fennec fox. Fynn gave no response and continued advancing on him. Lucas kept himself still. He let the fox circle him, sniffing around his shoes and pants. He waited patiently until Fynn was satisfied in his scenting. Once he was, the little fox pounced on him without any warning. It didn’t surprise the teen as much. Lucas had been quite ready to catch him. He gave the little fella a scratch behind one of his large ears. For such a tiny thing, Fynn’s purr rivaled that of a car engine.

“Someone definitely missed you.” Lucas looked up from his petting and saw a woman standing at the entrance to the backroom, watching them with a smirk. There was a certain agelessness to her. And no matter what, Lucas would always feel like a child in front of her.

The first time he met Quellen Squall, Lucas had wanted to ask if she was real. At first glance, she looked human. With short ebony hair, sharp cheekbones, straight thin nose, plump lips and the shape of her dark eyes spoke of East Asian descent. She was wearing a bright red coat and pants and a silver mesh shirt, and combat boots. The only make-up she wore was the black eye-liner that curled into a winged-tip. She possessed one of those androgynous faces. She was beautiful and handsome, and Lucas felt himself flush when he realized he was staring.

But then he blinked. And he saw the way some parts of her skin shimmered, like dappled sunlight, and what he thought had been fin-like accessories on her ears were actually part of them. Lucas would have been scared. He would have run out of there. But Quell looked at him with such kind eyes and a soft smile. Lucas had decided to stay.

“So, what brings you to my humble shop? You weren’t pretty forthcoming in your messages.” Quellen’s words nudged him out of his trip down memory lane. Lucas blinked as she took her spot behind the counter. “Also, I can’t believe it took you months to actually come back! Was the tea that bad?”

“No, no, it was alright. Just… stuff happened. And it wasn’t like I was in need of anything.” Lucas shrugged as he walked up to Quell and deposited little Fynn on the counter. The fox was satisfied with the petting and decided he wanted off.

“Not even for the pleasure of our company? You wound us, mon loulou.” She swooned dramatically and Lucas could only watch, expression torn between amusement and confusion.

“Why would you want a mundane hanging out at your shop?” There must have been something in his voice. A catch. An inflection. An emphasis. He didn’t know. But it was there. Q’s whole face had just shifted along with the atmosphere in the shop. She straightened and looked at him. It made Lucas fidget with the hems of his sleeves. He felt like a specimen pinned on a slide, scrutinized under the lens of the microscope.

“I don’t tolerate that kind of talk in my shop, little one. And you’re not exactly one to talk, considering.” She left the statement hanging in the air.

“What does that even mean?” he asked flummoxed. Quell just gave him a look. One that told him he was on his own there, that he should know what Quell was talking about, that he couldn’t be that stupid not to have known. But Lucas really didn’t.

“Your shop isn’t easy to find when I’m actually, you know, looking for it,” he said instead. If Quell wasn’t going to speak more on the matter, he’ll leave it at that.

“Maybe I should reconsider that layer of the wards,” Quell muttered to herself, frowning at something in the air. She waved her hand and a wisp of magenta trailed after it. She nodded, pleased with whatever she had just done and turned to Lucas. “Great, now you can visit anytime. Fynn’s grown rather attached to you. You have no idea how unbearable he was the past month.”

“Uh…what exactly happened?” he titled his head to the side in query.

“I adjusted the wards so you can come and visit whenever. Play with this little monster,” she patted Fynn’s head, whose ears flicked irritably. Lucas wondered if he should warn Quell to be extra careful that night seeing as Fynn positively vibrated with the intent to murder. “Just you though,” Quell continued oblivious to the furry quadruped plotting against her, “so if you have friends you want to tag along, better tell me first. Also, this way it’ll be easier for you to perform your end of the bargain.”

Remembering what he had come here for, Lucas shoved thoughts of Fynn and his revenge aside. He leaned against the counter, ready to transact with the woman. “Okay, I need information.”

Quell looked impressed that he had gone straight to the point. “Information.” She hummed, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. Her dark eyes regarded Lucas with curiosity, “What information are we talking about?” The woman snapped her fingers and a tray laden with a teapot, two cups and a plate of biscuits appeared between them.

“A name, if you could. Or possibly places I could find him.” A stool had materialized behind him and prodded him to take a seat. He almost swatted it away. Hackles rising from being harassed by furniture. It was persistent and Lucas had no choice but to concede.

Quell smiled over the lip of her cup, breathing in Jasmine. “Well, who are you looking for mon loulou? Any particular specie? Is it a child of the Night? The Moon? Of Lilith? A Fey even?”

Lucas rolled his eyes. The terms Quell had thrown at him rang vaguely familiar. You’re certainly pretty enough to be one of the fey. He willed the blush not to show on his face. He gulped and forced himself back into the present.

“You know half of what you said doesn’t make sense to me, right? Like at all,” he raised his brow and his hand began to gesticulate wildly. “I barely understand what this other world is.”

“And whose fault do you think that is?”

“It’s not like I want to learn more about your world,” Lucas groused, crossing his arms over his chest. He knew he was acting like a petulant child. But Quell was telling him in not so many ways that not knowing how things work in her world was Lucas’ fault. Which, okay, was true but he was putting in efforts not to become a part of it. “I’d rather be as clueless as possible to avoid trouble and you’re not all the sharing-information-for-free type.”

“Point taken. Alright, well, give me a description of this person then.” She motioned for Lucas to go on.

He almost blurted out the stupidest thing but managed to stop himself. The descriptors drop dead gorgeous with the prettiest eyes and infuriating smirk weren’t going to help him. Quell needed identifying marks, things that made whoever Lucas was searching for distinct. He reached for the cup of tea Fynn was nosing towards him as he thought of where to begin. One that wouldn’t make him sound like he was interested in the guy in that way. (He was though. Like a teeny-tiny bit.)

He took a sip of his tea, mulling over his words. It was best to go with the easiest then. He lifted his eyes to meet Quell’s, “He wears a lot of black,” he started off.  “I thought it was a fashion statement at first, but it seemed like it’s because it blended with the shadows. He carries this weird, glowy blade and his skin has these strange tattoo-like marks.”

He also kind of flirted with me, and gave me my favorite snack before disappearing on me, but this is after he stalked me for the whole week.

I also have his hoodie.

Quell choked on her tea.

If it had been someone else, Lucas would be laughing in stitches right now. But this was Quell. He’d rather not piss her off. So, the teen said, “Shit, Quellen, what the hell. Are you alright?” He coughed to dislodge the mirth trapped in his throat. The brunette scrambled from his seat to help her, but she waved him off.

Lucas wondered if she happened to catch his thoughts. He hoped to whoever she hadn’t.

Fynn was unbothered by all of this. He just sat on the counter top, chewing on a biscuit, minding his own business, and just soaking it in. Quell snapped her fingers and a box of Kleenex appeared. Lucas grabbed several sheets and handed them to her. She accepted them generously. She was still coughing as she wiped the dribble of tea on her chin and the corner of her lips. Then dabbed at the tears on her eyes.

Recovered from her ordeal, she turned to Lucas with wide eyes. Or as wide as they could go anyway. Her face spoke volumes of incredulity. Wrestling with the knowledge of what Lucas was asking of her. Trying to come to terms that the boy was looking for this particular person. “Lucas,” and hearing his name out of Quell for the first time that day, it clued in the teen that this had just gotten serious. “Lucas, why are you looking for a Shadowhunter?”

A shadow-what now?

 Lucas stared at Quell, waiting for her to say something more. When she didn’t and only continued to look back at him, the teen tugged at the collar of his shirt awkwardly. He cleared his throat and scratched his cheek. “I don’t want to sound stupid,” too late, he already did. “But what the fuck is a Shadowhunter? Do they like, literally hunt shadows?”

Let it be said that some days he, Lucas Lallemant, may not be the brightest crayon in the box.

The way Quell’s brows slowly rose had the boy immediately protesting, “It’s a legitimate question! Don’t look at me like that!”

But the words have passed his mouth and his image was forever tarnished in the eyes of Quellen Squall. The prospect of smacking him right upside the head was looking quite tempting to her. “No,” she finally answered. “The job description doesn’t quite live up to the job title.” The blush he had been willing away earlier was winning the battle. He was glad that Quell wasn’t mentioning his ill-timed impersonation of a lobster.

“Shadowhunters. In simpler terms, they’re like the police of the Downworld. They keep things in order, as much as they can anyway. Usually they step in when mundanes get involved, when they get hurt. They used to stay out of other Downworlders’ business, but with the new Accords, a council’s been set up to hear cases when factions are disputing. It’s messy and you don’t need to know this.” She had probably seen the lost look overtaking Lucas’ face and took pity on him. “The point is,” she sighed, rubbing her temple gently, “Shadowhunters hunt demons. They protect mundanes and the Downworld in general. Keep the mundanes as oblivious about the existence of the Downworld.” Her eyes met his once again. “So, why are you looking for one?”

Lucas knew there was no point in lying to her. He may have been well-versed in the art of subterfuge, but Quell could probably whiff out any lie he would give. She won’t push him when he omits any information. She was simply like that. But it didn’t mean she would simply drop it. In the short time he had known her, that much had been certain to Lucas.

He drummed his fingers on the counter top. A 1-4-2-3 pattern he did as a child when he started playing the piano. He glanced at Quell. She was waiting for his answer. He wasn’t sure how much he could tell her. Quell knew something about him that he didn’t. Her earlier statement about him made that abundantly clear. He didn’t know why she couldn’t just tell him. But he guessed the universe didn’t function like that. It didn’t just provide answers that easily. If that had been the case, there would be less trouble in the world. Lucas also understood that in this world—this Downworld that Quell spoke of—you couldn’t trust people fully. Quell made no indication that Lucas could trust her wholly but she didn’t give him any reasons to distrust her either. He still has no idea why Quell was helping him in the first place. The woman did things for a price. And getting off with simple manual labor like last time, it sounded too good to be true.

She simply can’t be fond of him to be granting him these favors. Still, Lucas would take what he could get. She may be hiding something, but the day he met her she had been nothing but helpful to him.

“The guy’s been following me the past week,” he told her at last. “He said not to find him since he’ll come find me. Except he hasn’t exactly shown up again? He just—” he made a poof sound as his hand demonstrated the action, “—so I figured fuck it. I’m gonna go look for him.”

Quell gave him a look that said she was impressed of his initiative, but also spoke of how stupid she found that decision had been. She didn’t remark about it though. Instead, she frowned and asked, “Why was he following you?”

“That’s the thing I wanted to know too.” He scowled as he grabbed a cookie from the plate. He bit into it with ferocity, raining crumbs on the surface of the counter and on himself. “He wasn’t the most talkative about that.”

“Don’t take it out on the cookie, kid,” Quell chided him. With a wave of a hand, the crumbs that littered the counter vanished. “I can’t tell you where the Institute is. It’s like their base of operations,” she explained before Lucas could voice his question. “I’ll get in trouble for divulging that information, even if you do have the Sight. Shadowhunters aren’t quite fond of mundanes and us downworlders.” A rueful smile made its way on her face before she shook her head. She flicked her wrist and between her fingers, a card was pinned.

Quell offered it to him and Lucas took it carefully. It was a nondescript black card. On one surface it was blank, but when he flipped it over, there he found an elegant script written in silver ink. It was Quell’s full name.

“There’s a club called the Sans Jour, show them this and they’ll let you in. It’s a crowd favorite—mundanes, downworlders, even Shadowhunters come there.” She took a cookie for herself and bit into it more sedately than Lucas had. “I can’t be certain if you’ll find him there, but it’s worth a try.” She looked directly into his eyes. There was a fire there and Lucas found himself straightening in response. “I want you to be careful. Most downworlders leave mundanes well enough alone but there are still some who want to play. I would rather you go with someone than do this on your own, except I know you won’t endanger any of your friends. If something happens, burn the card. I’ll come get you.”

“Why not just come with me?” He asked as he studied the card before pocketing it.

“Mon petit chou,” Quell said with exasperated fondness. “I may not be the High Warlock of Paris, but I have other obligations. Even if I wanted to, I simply couldn’t.”

He wasn’t sure what that title meant. It sounded important and Quell really did look like an important person. She held herself with confidence and an air of authority. Even if the title didn’t belong to her, Lucas could imagine her owning it. But he did understand what Quell was saying: She was a busy person. He had already taken enough of her time. He also realized that she would charge him extra if she came with him to that club. He can’t afford racking up more favors from her.

“You never did describe what this shadowhunter looked like,” she sipped her tea. This time it smelled like strawberries. When she changed it, Lucas would forever wonder.

“He’s—” he coughed, taking a delicate sip from his own cup. It was still warm. It was also the right temperature that Lucas liked. Magic, his mind whispered. “—tall. Messy hair. Has these really pretty unique eyes.” Nice save Lallemant, smooth, real smooth.

Quell was leveling him with this curious stare. Like she was trying to pick him apart. She might as well have been.

Lucas tried to ignore it. He chose to finish his tea and another cookie. His hand itched to pet something to calm himself. Fynn had taken to napping near the register and Lucas didn’t want to disturb him.

All of a sudden, Quell made a surprised sound and the next thing Lucas knew, she had put down her cup of tea, and was bent over the counter, clutching her stomach as she shook from the force of her own laughter. Lucas just watched her. Worried and a little annoyed because it felt like whatever had her losing it, must have something to do with him. She finally lifted her head and looked at him again. She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, laughs tapering off into quiet huffs of amusement.

“You actually have a crush on this guy, huh?”

The heat that climbed up Lucas neck and stole through his cheeks was so severe he worried he might actually be running a fever. “I— I do not!” he denied. It made him sound guiltier and Quell was definitely of the same opinion. The way her eyes were sparkling, she didn’t believe him at all.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, mon loulou,” she sing-songed.

“I really don’t!” His words fell on deaf ears. Quell still chuckled and the blush wasn’t going away either.

Fucking idiot shadowhunter.

[dawnblxde]

A very important PSA!

Under the cut! For new and old followers! For those who know of my muse and for those who do not! :) WARNING. I AM IN DEPTH WITH EVERYTHING. 

I didn’t think that I would have to make this post, but it seems I do. To try and prevent a very recent situation that was throwing me off writing. I recently had to part with a mutual for breaking my rules repeatedly, trying to force me to write something I don’t want to write, claiming they needed to play XV to understand my muse and seemingly failed to grasp the simple version of this explanation. You’ll notice that the main description of my blog says Noctis from Versus XV. That’s because Versus was Nomura’s hard work. Who created Noctis. The XV is left there to leave it as it’s own thing. But I’m going to explain what it means when both my about page and rules page say I do not write XV. Usually this is grasped simply, but after a few times it wasn’t. This is just in case. This Noctis does not exist in the world, lore or story of XV. He exists in a completely different universe. The original prime universe planned for a remake. Nomura’s work. This is because Noctis is Nomura’s creator. Nomura created and put more work into him out of everyone. So I find the most respectful thing to do is follow his vision. I do the same with my Spider-Man muse. I write him how Steve Dikito wanted him to be. His creator, not bad comic writers. Not the terrible Disney way. What wasn’t understood was the fact that Nomura!Noctis is not Tabata!Noctis! They are two completely different version’s of one character. One is complete while the other has a personality shit and a lot of stuff from the other Noctis taken away from him! This is like Spider-Verse. A crossover comic with multiple version’s of Spider-Man, all from their own worlds and didn’t know each other’s history. It’s like how 616 Spider-Man that I write, the one from the comics. Is not the same one as the unfaithful one MCU movies currently uses. 616!Spider-Man doesn’t like Tony Stark. MCU!Spider-Man is his number one fan boy. Two different people! Comics!Batman is different from the DCEU (DC EXTENDED UNIVERSE) Batman. The main comic Batman doesn’t kill people, but DCEU Batman does. Two different people. Finally, there’s Archie!Sonic (his original comic book self) and Game!Sonic. Sally Acorn only exists in the Sonic comics, what does this mean? Game Sonic doesn’t know her! Two different people! These examples were given to make it clear. Nomura’s Noctis, which I write. Has nothing to do with the story of the incomplete XV video game, it’s lore or it’s world. He won’t get any references and will have no idea what you’re talking about if you make a reference from it. He is only aware of my about page and anything his creator wanted for him! What does this mean? (This is where from my simple explaining, someone got confused.) If you have played XV, you gotta not think about it or it’s Noctis, when writing with mine. It’s not going to help you or be relevant. If you haven’t played XV/don’t want to/intend to/can’t for some reason - this is important to remember - you do not need XV to understand or grasp the Noctis I’m writing. Why would you? When he’s the original prime version of the character and an entirely different version in general? To some of you this may seem a pointless PSA. I didn’t think I’d have to make this in depth. But I do. But yes, you don’t need XV in order to interact/write with my Noctis and PLEASE do not think about anything XV or that Noctis when writing with me if you have played it, or you do end up doing so. If it feels like you’re trying to switch me from Nomura’s hard work, over to the unfinished thing - it’s going to upset me. Same if it feels like you’re thinking/visualising anything that’s XV relevant - but not relevant to a Nomura interaction. Unless your muse is from XV and we’re working them into the better lore of the creator. I’m sorry for the load! I hope things are clearer for you all now. One more reminder coming up! For now like other things, this will remain a PSA for now! If this becomes more of an issue like some things have. It will get added into my rules! Same if things not worthy of PSA’s right now, will become PSA’s if need be. I’m sorry to the mass that probably didn’t need this, but this felt like a massive need be for those who do need it! Due to recent events!

You do not need to play XV in order to understand this Noctis as this is Nomura’s Noctis! A helpful end to this PSA, below other then my about page on Noctis itself for 70% Nomura’s ideal story and 30% inspired by me, here is what will help you know my Noctis 100%! Much quicker then playing something incomplete! 

http://dawnblxde.tumblr.com/post/183461820557/moonakarii-nomura-tetsuya-creator-father  [ Gif quotations! ]

‘Nomura did not want Noctis to have a personality like Squall Leonhart or Cloud Strife, the respective protagonists of Final Fantasy VIII and VII, defining their personality type as that of “a silent, gloomy little boy”. Instead, Nomura wanted to create a realistic character type not seen in the Final Fantasy series before. Because of this, he was wary about him as he was so new to the series that he might fall “out of bounds”. Whereas previous protagonists did not have strong personalities to avoid interfering with player empathy, Nomura wanted Noctis to have “an overabundance of idiosyncrasy”, which was one of the ways he would leave an impression on the player. Nomura also wanted the character to have traits and perform actions that bore both heroic and villainous traits, creating someone akin to an anti-hero. He thought that these qualities would match the game’s themes very well. While naturally shy, Noctis hides this under a cold exterior, though his close friends can see through this.’ [ Quote from Nomura’s representives, from his mind and words! ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6At_bb1PNU 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiIx9VJWSl8 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcUSXub_ypU  [ Clips and trailers! ]

[reddie-to-write]

Of Worries And Windows

“Cut the crap, Richie,” Eddie whispers curtly, and Richie shuts up, his eyes widening behind the thick lenses of his glasses. "Why are you climbing through my window?"

Richie is silent for a second. He looks down at the floor, using his finger to jam his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and Eddie can’t really tell but thinks his cheeks might be a little bit red. “I, uh…” He starts, and Eddie leans forward in spite of himself. The room is dark and feels full, somehow, the air Richie exhales thick with tension or a secret.

Or: Richie keeps climbing through Eddie's window at night, and Eddie can't stop himself from asking why.

Words: 4,302

Tags: Fluff, Cuddling, Unintentional Bed-Sharing, First Kiss

Eddie’s window is open this particular night.

He can smell the fresh air, puffing in little breezes as rhythmic as the breaths of a sleeping animal, and it’s fitting because the night is dozy – warm, even for the tail end of summer, and calm with the orchestral cheeping of crickets and the smell of wet grass. He sighs, the sheets cool and comforting against his skin. The familiar dread rises in the back of his throat.

           It’s late, he knows, the clock on his bedside table glowing like a pair of eyes in the dark, but he doesn’t look at the time – he squeezes his own eyes shut and tries to ignore the flutter in his stomach, the fear pressing against the roof of his mouth.

           Plink.

He stiffens, feeling something like an icy finger trail up his spine. He knows he’s been jumpy lately, startling at small noises and flinching away from sudden contact, and that far less observant people than his mother have noticed the dark bags under his eyes. There’s something in his chest that rises up at night to strangle him, the old asthmatic wheeze coming back to play but worse, oh god so much worse when he remembers the dank drip of the sewers in the dark –

           It’s dead you killed It for fuck’s sake there’s nothing there it’s probably a mouse –

The sound comes again: a light, sharp clack, like something hitting glass, and then the clatter on the drainpipe, the thin roll down the sloped roof.

           Eddie lies rigid as a poker in his bed – he squeezes his eyes shut tighter, but still sees a rotting, noseless face, yellow eyes blazing with the fire of the dead.

           Close the window, just get up and close it, don’t be a fucking pussy if you can just get the window closed you’ll be safe –

           Plink.

Eddie lurches up out of bed and is across the room before he can talk himself out of it, barging through the black shadows that leer up at him from the floor, and as he grabs the wooden window frame, feeling sweat slide greasily down the small of his back, he sees a shadow detach and move below him in the grass –

           “Eds?”

His mouth drops open, and he feels his knees go soggy with relief that quickly turns to a slap of annoyance.

           “Richie?” He hisses as a grin flashes up at him from the dark, “What the fuck? It’s, like, one in the morning –“

           “I had to come and see you, Eds,” Richie tries to whisper, and Eddie winces – Richie Tozier’s definition of ‘whisper’ is close to a normal person’s speaking volume. Eddie shushes him frantically as he drops his handful of pebbles and begins to shimmy up the drainpipe, nearly putting his foot through the living room window.

           “What? Wh – what planet are you living on where people just say, ‘oh, you know, everyone’s asleep, what a great idea it would be to visit my friend! Let’s throw enough shit at his window to give him a fucking heart attack’ –“

           “You left your comic book at my house,” Richie says, crouching right outside the open window so his big brown eyes are level with Eddie’s, his expression soft as melted chocolate and twice as sticky. Eddie, unimpressed, wrenches the window open further, leaning both his elbows on the sill. Richie brandishes the comic book, Wonder Woman fluttering up at them from between newly dog-eared pages, and Eddie takes it.

           “So, what? I’m just supposed to let you in now?” He whispers fiercely, trying to ignore the puppy eyes Richie is vomiting up at him in the dark.

           “Unless you want me to be downtown at one in the AM, when any psycho could grab me, murder me, and chop me up into little pieces,” Richie says cheerfully, and without an answer begins to shove his head and shoulders through, pushing Eddie out of the way.

           Eddie feels laughter rise against his will as Richie bends himself into a boy-pretzel, trying to maneuver through the window with his leg under his left shoulder.

           “This is the shittiest break-in I’ve ever seen,” He whispers as Richie gets stuck, winces, squirms through, trips, and curses in quick succession, flailing his ridiculous lanky arms on his way down and ending in a pile on the floor.

           “Only the shittiest for you, Eddie-my-love,” Richie says, flopping into a short bow, and Eddie crosses his arms, tossing the comic book onto his desk. Richie notices, and places a hand over his heart in mock horror. “Such little care taken when I risked my life for you! Such –“

           “Cut the crap, Richie,” Eddie whispers curtly, and Richie shuts up, his eyes widening behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “Wonder Woman really couldn’t wait until tomorrow? Why the fuck are you climbing through my window?”

           Richie is silent for a second. He looks down at the floor, using his finger to jam his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and Eddie can’t really tell but thinks his cheeks might be a little bit red.

           “I, uh…” He starts, and Eddie leans forward in spite of himself. The room is dark and feels full, somehow, the air Richie exhales thick with tension or a secret. Then he blurts, “I just really needed a little midnight coitus with your mom,” and the moment breaks like some rare and precious glass drop-kicked off a cliff.

           “That’s it, you’ve hit the limit, get the fuck out,” Eddie tries to whisper, he really does, but his voice has risen, though in anger or reluctant laughter he can’t tell. Richie dodges his shove, then rolls backwards over one shoulder and flops his full length on the floor. His heels thunk when he throws them down. Eddie grabs him by the ankle and starts trying to pull him towards the window.

           “Pip-pip, cheerio, please, gov, not the window!” Richie is saying in one of his terrible British voices, and Eddie can feel himself smiling, damn it, a little laughter leaking out the corner of his mouth.

And then there’s a voice from downstairs.

“Eddie-bear?”

They both freeze like frightened animals. Eddie meets Richie’s eyes for a split second, sees malevolent, unbridled delight and knows he’s logging away this new nickname for future torture. He takes a moment to curse Richie Tozier even as he hears the telltale squall of his mother mounting the sagging staircase.

           “Eddie, are you awake?”

Richie gestures at the window, and Eddie shakes his head, frantic. Hide, he mouths, and Richie mouths back where as he looks helplessly around the spotless room. Eddie hears the slow advancing creaks, his mother’s labored breathing as she comes up the twelve stairs, and with his heart in his throat he shoves Richie backwards onto his bed.

           “Stay still,” Eddie hisses, and Richie nods, swallowing hard at the sound of Sonia Kaspbrak’s heavy step immediately down the hall.

           He pushes Richie in towards the wall, whipping the covers over him and trying to make it look believably messy, and the blankets have barely settled over them both before the door opens.

           “Eddie, are you having nightmares?” She whispers, and in the very pregnant silence that follows Eddie feels Richie wriggle slightly, a bony knee knocking the back of his thigh. He grits his teeth, trying to remind himself that strangling Richie would probably give him away, and then he feels the blood drain out of his face as Sonia steps into his room.

           Oh fuck, oh please god no, he thinks incoherently, because not only is she going to murder him in about three seconds when she finds out her son has been sneaking boys into his bed – but she is going to kiss him in front of Richie.

           Richie has grown very still, and Eddie tries desperately not to squeeze his eyes shut, to make his breathing slow and smooth as Sonia leans over and pecks his cheek, her lips smacking wetly on his face.

           She stands there for a few torturous eons, eyes on the bed, and Eddie is stock-still, brittle as an icicle, nails digging into the sweat-slicked palm of his hand and Richie a warm, miraculously quiet lump behind him.

           Finally, she turns and goes, leaving his door open a generous crack, and Eddie has to stop Richie from springing up as she descends down the stairs. The garage light flicks on, flooding the driveway with brightness, and Eddie groans in consternation when he doesn’t hear her bedroom door close –

           “Well, Eds, as much as I’d love to sneak down and join your mom, I guess I’ll be on my way,” Richie whisper-shouts, and Eddie is shaking his head, grabbing him by the arm as he tries to sneak out from under the covers.

           “You can’t. She has the light on, she’ll be watching for burglars for at least another hour – she does this whenever she hears noise upstairs, so good fucking going –“

           Richie just smiles lazily, not protesting in the slightest, and Eddie trails off, blinking with the realization that maybe this was what he wanted all along.

           “Sure,” He yawns, stretching out his obnoxiously long self, “any excuse to keep me in your bed, Eddie Spaghetti. Now if you’ll pardon me, I need my beauty sleep.”

           “Here,” Eddie mutters, shoving a pillow between them, “take your fucking shoes off in my bed, and don’t you dare touch me with your feet.”

           “Bossy in the bedroom,” Richie says, grinning, “that’s kinda sexy.” He kicks his sneakers off the foot of the bed and away, twisting up the blankets and probably grinding a fuck-ton of dirt into the clean sheets.

           Eddie bites his tongue, turns his back, and does his best to fall asleep with someone literally breathing down his neck.

“Hey Eds?” He hears a few minutes later, a sigh, low and gentle with almost-sleep, and he drowsily resents the fact that he can’t ever ignore Richie Tozier.

           “What, Richie?”

The air has regained its soft quality – the charcoal darkness is anonymous and safe, and there’s something hesitant in Richie’s voice. His heart speeds up in anticipation. He holds his breath as he waits for Richie to respond, feeling that they are trembling on the verge of something new.

           “How many live lizards d’you think I could eat before I threw up?” Richie asks, and Eddie closes his eyes, warring between the fresh impulse to choke him and a strange disappointment deflating in his chest.

“Go the fuck to sleep,” He grumbles, and Richie laughs quietly to himself for a second before lapsing back into merciful silence.

A few hours later, Eddie wakes up to find the pillow gone and a whole bunch of extremities wrapped around him – it feels like he’s been engulfed by a particularly bony octopus.

He lies very still, his sleep-muddled brain trying to figure out where all the limbs came from – why there’s a long leg thrown over his hip, and why there are two more arms, one curled under his neck and one flopped loosely around his waist – and then it hits him and he throws his elbow backwards into Richie’s stomach and Richie snorts violently, his knife-sharp ankle kicking into Eddie’s leg. Eddie bites his lip hard to keep from shrieking and does his best to roll over. Richie mumbles muzzily, his arms tightening.

“Whazzit?” He slurs, “Eds?” and Eddie swallows because Richie’s voice is never this quiet, the room is chilly because the fucking window is still open and Richie is warm, damn it – even though he’s breathing damply on the back of Eddie’s head, even though his stupid bones are poking everywhere, even though he’s been snoring in choked little sputters – Eddie doesn’t really want him to back off.

“Nothing,” Eddie whispers, “Go back to sleep.”

Richie hums, just a contented little wordless sound from the back of his throat, and Eddie takes a shaky breath. Richie readjusts so that Eddie’s head rests more comfortably on his arm, and then tugs him closer, so that his entire back is pressed against Richie’s front. Eddie thinks about protesting, but it’s actually nice – like cuddling up to a five-foot-seven-inch hot water bottle.

           Eddie is asleep before he realizes his eyes are closed.

He wakes up to the open window streaming early-morning sun, one side of the bed cold and rumpled, and the realization that, for the first time in five weeks, he has slept through the night.

           The next night: he’s sitting up in bed, his gooseneck lamp casting a small circle of light on Wonder Woman punching out of dog-eared pages, when Richie pokes his head up past the sill.

           “Hey, Eds,” Richie says, like it’s normal to be crouching on your friend’s roof at midnight waiting to crawl through their window, and as Eddie crosses the room to wrench the frame up further he thinks that maybe, in this case, it is.

           The next night: he’s at his desk, trying to get at least a little progress in on their summer homework, but for some reason he can’t focus until he hears the scuffle of dirty sneakers on the drainpipe, the grit of an eager footstep on the roof.

           The next night: Eddie comes from brushing his teeth and Richie is in his bed already. He stands quietly in the doorway for a second because Richie’s mouth is shut for once, his hair curling like a big un-brushed dishmop all over the pillow, and he has a look Eddie had forgotten because he hasn’t seen it since they were six or seven – soft, smiling without hiding behind a joke.

           Then he notices Eddie back. He raises his arms, wiggles his eyebrows in what he probably thinks is a seductive way, and his big fucking mouth opens again to decimate the moment.

           “Come to beddie, Eddie Spaghetti,” He croons, and Eddie is done staring – he just glares and remembers why letting Richie in was a bad idea in the first place.

           The next night: Eddie leaves the window as far open as it can go, then gets in bed and turns out the lights because, for the first time in six weeks, he feels drowsy instead of afraid. And when he hears scuffles and footsteps, a soft curse from someone making their way with questionable stealth to the bed, Eddie doesn’t feel suffocated by his own lungs – he just lifts the edge of the blankets and lets Richie slip in beside him.

           It becomes their routine, and eventually Eddie stops being bothered by the fact that they don’t talk about it. It’s just them, EddieandRichie, and if their normal daytime friendship of jostling and playing now includes sleeping in the same place, warm and pliant and entangled – well, Eddie’s just fine with that, as long as he constantly reminds himself not to think about it too hard.

           It’s only after three weeks of this that everything comes rushing back, all of Eddie’s misgivings and half-acknowledged doubts and the familiar, scorching-cold panic, because Richie isn’t normal when he comes through the window.

           “Hi!” Eddie whispers when he hears Richie tumble through, “Y’know, I was downtown today – close the window, dipshit, it’s freezing – and I saw Bill getting candy at the pharmacy and he said we should have a sleepover this weekend – Richie?”

           Eddie looks around because Richie hasn’t interrupted him with a single word. He is standing in the middle of the room in his flannel pajama pants and a holey old T-shirt that looks like it hasn’t been washed all month, and he is staring with unfocused eyes, his gaze on a spot slightly above Eddie’s right shoulder. There’s a leaf stuck in his hair.

           Eddie feels his eyebrows wrinkle.

“Hey, Richie? Earth to Trashmouth?” He tries, and Richie blinks and twitches his way back into focus, a brittle and completely unconvincing smile on his face. He speaks a bit too loudly.

           “Sorry, Eds what was th –“

Eddie shushes him harshly, eyes wide, and instead of continuing at greater volume he falls silent, the false smile dropping from his face like melty snow sliding off the hood of a car.

           “Are you okay?” Eddie asks, and Richie nods, slowly. His half-closed eyes look thick as syrup.

“Fine, Eds,” He mumbles, again too loud, “Ready for a long night’s sleep is all.”

Eddie considers pressing the issue, asking what’s wrong, but his brain automatically snarks that Richie will just make some joke about his dick or his mom. Then he looks more closely at Richie, whose shoulders are slumping so vacantly, and he suddenly thinks but what if he doesn’t?

           He is more scared by the second option, so he just propels Richie to the edge of the bed.

           They lie down together, and Richie is like a breathing corpse – he flops on his side, boneless but scarily stiff, his arms straight down past his ribs. Eddie waits for him to scoot closer, to curl around his back like a limpet like he usually does the second he thinks Eddie is sleeping, but after two uncomfortable minutes he hasn’t moved an inch. Eddie opens his mouth, then snaps it shut when his brain thankfully catches up – what in the fuck was he about to ask? Hey, Richie, what’s wrong – get sick of being the big spoon?

Slowly, his cheeks burning with what feels like a fever, Eddie turns to face him. He puts one arm carefully over Richie’s waist, the other crunched awkwardly between their chests. Richie is cold to the touch. He relaxes slightly at last, letting out an exhale that sounds painful – a drowning boy finally giving up his air.

           Eddie ignores the voices in his head that are shrilling justfriends don’t do this and what’s wrong with him and why do you think you can fix it, and they fall asleep without saying anything, uneasy in the dark.

           Eddie wakes up to a bright crack of pain across his cheek, and it takes him a disoriented second to recognize Richie’s gross shirt in front of his eyes, and the stab of the bony arm that just elbowed him in the face. He scowls, hissing out a rebuke, but then his fury evaporates when he hears a muffled intake of breath – it’s wet, and sounds remarkably like a sob.

           “Richie?” Eddie whispers, and feels him stiffen up, trying to flinch away but only succeeding in whacking his elbow against the wall. There’s a quiet swear, a sniff, and he reaches out as best he can, pulling one of Richie’s hands away from his face.

           “What is it?” Eddie breathes, and in the few seconds it takes Richie to gather a reply Eddie again expects an automatic quip – he’s gonna spit up some joke because that’s what he does, ha-ha, yuck it up, c’mon don’t be a pussybabybitch, we’re boys eddie and boys don’t cry, eddieandrichie don’t do this, justfriends don’t do feelings –

           “It’s the fuckin’ clown, Eds,” Richie chokes out, and a whole colony of shivering gooseflesh rashes out on Eddie’s arms and neck and back. For a second he stutters with his own fear, stutters like Bill, red-faced and trying so hard to get the comfort out.

           “W-w-we killed It, Richie, It’s fucking – It’s dead, dead gone, we - we –“

“I know,” Richie interrupts, and he sounds furious, now, hissing out in a real whisper at last, “I know we fucking killed It, and I know I shouldn’t be afraid – there’s no reason to be such a goddamn pussy now that it’s gone – but I keep having these, these fucking dreams, and –“

           His voice breaks and peters out, and Eddie can sort-of see him in the dark, his eyes without his glasses still huge, shiny with tears.

           “Me too,” Eddie whispers, and Richie’s head shoots up, “I – I didn’t sleep until you started sleeping with m – until we started sleeping toge – fuck, you know what I mean, Richie. I – “ He pauses, a thought striking him like a battering ram. “Wait – is that why you started coming? To the window, I mean?”

           Richie drops his eyes, then nods twice. His voice is steadier, now, but still so weirdly quiet that it makes Eddie apprehensive.

           “I – yeah. I guess I – it’s weird, Eds, I kept having these dreams and I would wake up in the middle of the night, and it was – it was like I was back there, even when I woke up. In the Neibolt house, or the sewers. And even when the dream was done, it felt like I was still in the dream – like, I wouldn’t be able to feel my hands attached to me, or it felt like my fucking head was floating away – or - or –“ He breaks off, and Eddie can tell he’s edging back to tears. “Then I had another one tonight before I came here, and I – I just – needed some way to – to feel real again after.” There is a self-conscious pause.

           Eddie swallows the relief, the gratitude welling up in his throat. He knows what Richie is trying to tell him about, even though he knows he could never find the right words either – the way his room looked skewed and flimsy after every nightmare, all his belongings cheap props in some fucked-up parody play, the shadows threatening to cut the fragile string that tethered his drifting mind to his body.

           His brain is going a million miles an hour, but Eddie stays very still. He can feel Richie quaking against him, and he takes a deep, shaky breath, admonishing himself for being such a fucking coward.

           Richie needs you – don’t be a pussy, just do it, you already want to –

He reaches out, slowly, and touches Richie’s side, trailing up his ribs. Don’t think about it too much. Richie looks up so fast his neck cricks, but when Eddie moves his fingers away he shakes his head silently, gently, and catches them in his own.

           “Does this feel real?” Eddie whispers, his heart thundering under his ribs, and he hears Richie’s breath hitch as he nods – for once, he seems to be at a loss for words.

           Eddie detangles their fingers and touches Richie’s shoulder, brushing up his neck. His skin is soft, surprisingly, and Eddie realizes he’s enjoying it – his mind is shrieking justfriends justfriends justfriends and he shoves it away – and Richie swallows hard.

           “Does this feel real?” Eddie repeats, and his hand is moving up to Richie’s face, the freckles smooth and perfect on his cheek.

           “Y’know what would feel realer, Eds?” Richie breathes, and his eyes flicker down to Eddie’s mouth. He licks his lips and Eddie is on the throes of an asthma attack right then and there. They are almost nose to nose. Eddie doesn’t move his hand away because his brain has gone from justfriends to richierichierichie to a roaring blank silence, and to his own surprise, Eddie is the one who leans in.

           It is short and soft in the dark, melting with the same brevity and sweetness as a chocolate bar. Eddie had thought about kissing girls before, had vaguely wondered when that particular rite-of-passage would come, but he had never felt anything attached to these faceless, imaginary girls, and so he didn’t expect his first kiss to feel like much at all.

But Richie kisses like he talks: too fast, too random, a little too much spit, and Eddie knows why people say fireworks now, because he has a whole box of cherry bombs rocketing around in his stomach. He thinks he might be dying, because he’s never felt this much in this many parts of him at once.

They break apart, and almost immediately Richie goes in again, but he misses by a long shot and ends up slobbering overenthusiastically on the corner of Eddie’s nose. Eddie recoils, pretending to gag, and Richie shrinks away with unusual seriousness – his face that Eddie can half-see in the dark looks crestfallen, even as he tries pathetically hard to keep his voice light.

“Sorry, Eds,” He says, “Thought you were, you know, into it, but if not –“

“No – no, Richie, I, uh –“ Eddie stumbles over his words, embarrassed, “Just, um, don’t put your – your tongue up my fucking nose. The – the rest was – well. Good,” He chokes out, and he knows he’s tomato-red because of how volcanically hot his face is. He can practically see Richie light up like a Christmas tree; his face is silly with happiness.

           “Good,” Richie echoes, then says it again, stronger, “Good. So we can, uh…do it again sometime?” And this time Eddie’s absolutely dying, imploding in on himself, because jesus fucking christ.

           “Yeah,” He chokes, and thankfully Richie doesn’t say anything else – he just wiggles a little and grabs Eddie in a hug, drawing him close, his smiling face tucked against the top of Eddie’s head.

“So, um, what if I told you I didn’t sleep well without you anymore?” Richie whispers, and Eddie thought his heart had recovered, but it quivers and bursts in his chest because Richie’s voice is hesitant, a little quiet, and that. Well. That was unexpectedly sweet.

“Well,” Eddie whispers back against Richie’s collarbone, curling his fingers into the front of his shirt, “I’d call you out on your bullshit, since I haven’t had a night away from you in three weeks.”

Richie laughs a little, and Eddie can almost feel the joy radiating off him like sunbeams.

“Should we test it? Go a night without me serenading my beautiful Eds from beneath his window?” He asks, and Eddie shakes his head. He stops smiling for a second to press a tiny kiss to the base of Richie’s throat.

“Fuck no,” He replies, and Richie laughs again, hugging him tight, tight, tight.

Eddie’s window stays open following that night.

[rkxsungwoon-blog]

a bitter pill

✦ — an rkmga4 backstage solo ; set on tuesday ( 07/08/18 )

if you lie down on your back in the practice room, you can count eleven hairline cracks in the ceiling. maybe more, if your eyesight is good. sungwoon’s is not. 

he can’t remember how long he’s been in this position. doesn’t think it matters, to be honest. this is a rare reprieve from practice, from his teammates’ well meaning helpfulness. he can tell they feel bad for him—the lone singer amongst a group of talented dancers—and while he appreciates the fact that they’re all good people, he wishes they would stop. good intentions or not, he doesn’t want pity from others; he’s wallowing in enough of it on his own. 

truth is, he’s tired. he’s had enough. his fault—his team’s ranking last week was his fucking fault. he was the weakest dancer among them and he stupidly thought he could make up for it, but instead he ended up dragging everyone else down. the weight of that responsibility is crushing and sobering. he can’t do this anymore. he can’t keep being told he’s lacking, lacking, lacking in something he never wanted to do in the first place. it all comes down to fucking dancing once again and he can’t do this so why is he here? 

sungwoon never wanted to be an idol. it wasn’t something even remotely on his radar after his disastrous first few weeks in seoul. this is not his dream. for a scant few minutes he felt like it could be, but he’s been told again and again that he’s just not good enough. honestly, he only joined the show because daniel said he deserved to and because sungwoon craved the validation, the acknowledgement that music could be his life, not just an aside. it was never about getting signed, though sometimes he wondered. 

because empty enigma, as safe and comfortable as it is, can’t last forever, nor does sungwoon want it to. he can’t sing like that for the rest of his life: as a metalcore vocalist not respected by his musical peers, unable to show what he can really do, trapped in a genre of music that doesn’t allow him to explore his tastes. and he can’t hide behind squall forever, never getting anywhere under the merit of his own name. but as this competition has proved, he can’t do anything without them either. he needs empty enigma more than they’ve ever needed him. 

the proof is there: the one thing he tried to do on his own—a failure, because he can’t dance. no matter how how hard he tries or how much he believes in himself, he’s not good and will never be good enough for this industry. sungwoon takes it as a sign that he’ll never get beyond being the lead singer of a small time band, and maybe this is far as life can take him. it definitely feels that way. maybe he should just accept it. 

he laughs dryly, unhappily. his throat hurts along with the rest of his body and he’s not sure why. he’s barely used it aside from the pre-recording of their song, the only time he felt like himself since the song selections. but the euphoria faded far too quickly, leaving him stuck in pit he can’t climb out of. sungwoon doesn’t know what he’s doing here still. he’s not sure what he’s fighting for anymore. and he’s tired—so fucking tired—of killing himself over this every week.

he wishes, not for the first time, that he could talk to someone. seek reassurance. just have someone there to fucking pat him on the back and tell him that things will be okay, even if they won’t. but there’s no one for him to lean on, really. sungwoon did this to himself, eternally obsessed with taking care of other people, with fixing them to the point where he forced himself to become invincible in their eyes. you can’t show weakness in front of people who believe in you because then you won’t be someone to believe in. 

and so many of his friends—they need that from him. sungwoon the level-headed, sungwoon the caretaker, sungwoon the person who has his shit together and never seems fazed. sungwoon the comic, sungwoon the mediator, sungwoon the leader.

there’s no room for sungwoon the mess. 

his eyes feel wet. fuck. he’s not going to do this. he is not going to do this in this stupid fucking smelly practice room in front of cameras or god knows what else. this is not his sanctuary and he will not break down here. forcing himself onto his feet, he presses his lips together and slips out of the practice room. his feet carry him through the hallways, past the other rooms, past the few people milling around, and out of the building. it’s only when he’s outside that he drops into a crouch and allows himself to cry. 

sungwoon hates feeling this way, like he’s lost control of himself and his life. he hates—he hates feeling hopeless, he hates feeling so stressed he can’t even sleep, he hates trying and trying and trying only to fall. maybe if he’d just been eliminated already—fuck, he wants his freedom. he wants to feel, once again, like he’s good at something and not just a gigantic failure. 

he wants a fucking hug. 

taking a deep breath, he stands up and wipes his face with his sleeve. this isn’t him. he isn’t allowed to act like this. never did, even as a kid, unless his grandmother was there to comfort him. but she’s… long gone now, and his grandfather isn’t nearly the support system she was. still, he feels small and tired and suddenly homesick for a time when things weren’t so complicated. fishing his phone out of his pocket, he calls his grandfather and hopes the elderly man will pick up. sungwoon just wants to hear his voice. 

it takes eight rings, but his grandfather does eventually answer the phone with a brusque, “who is it?” 

“grandpa, it’s your only grandchild.” even feeling as shitty as he is, he wants to laugh at his grandfather’s no-nonsense tone. “i made sure you had caller id last summer.” 

“oh.” he still doesn’t sound impressed. “what do you want?” 

“nothing, i just…” want you tell me i matter. tell me i’m good. tell me i’ll be okay and that the hard times will pass. tell me it’s okay to be bad. tell me— ”i’m having a hard time right now. i miss home.” 

his grandfather is quiet for a while. “hard time?” he repeats, finally. “did you go into the military?”

oh fuck. “no.” he’s half crying, half laughing. “i—” his grandfather doesn’t know about the mgas. he doesn’t watch television, and when he does, it’s certainly not music shows. and sungwoon’s never been able to tell him that he likes music or that he likes being on stage because he doesn’t want to disappoint him. his grandfather wants simple things for his grandson: a good career, a pretty wife, a nice house, and a few children. music doesn’t factor in. “i took a second job.” it’s the only thing he can think of to say. 

“oh. call me when you enlist.” 

“grandpa—” 

his grandfather snorts. “jobs are supposed to be hard,” he says. “you’re not doing it right if it is not hard.” 

“this is a different kind of hard.” and here’s the most bitter pill to swallow: “i’m bad at it. i didn’t think i would be, but i’m so bad i’m going to get fired and i don’t know what i’ll do if that happens.” empty enigma won’t be waiting for him like a security blanket either. sungwoon doubts daniel will be eliminated anytime soon. he genuinely thinks his friend can win this, and he wants that for daniel, but it would leave empty enigma... empty. sungwoon can see it falling apart in front of his eyes. he’ll have nothing there to welcome him back. “i don’t—i don’t have any confidence in myself anymore.” if he fails as sungwoon, does he even deserve to take a different stage as squall as if nothing happened? 

“then quit.”

“i can’t.” god, if only… but his pride won’t allow him to, and even though this is an individually ranked performance, he can’t let his team down like that. he doesn’t half-ass things under any circumstances and he doesn’t just want to bow out of the competition like a coward. “i’m not a quitter.” 

“good.” for the first time, his grandfather doesn’t sound annoyed or stern. “then see it through, and when it’s over, come home.” 

home. he swirls the word around in his mouth. sungwoon always goes home for the summer for a week or two, but he hasn’t gotten the chance to this year with the show and everything else. he didn’t realize how much of his time and his life it ate up. god, he really does want to go home and get away from all this. see this commitment through and go home for a while—back to his grandfather, to the house he grew up in, to the people who know and love him. it’d give him time to think and recover and maybe stop feeling so fucking panicked. 

home calls to him now, and deep down, he knows he’s just looking for an escape, an excuse to run away, but sungwoon also needs this for himself. he just wants to feel—at home. 

“yeah,” he swallows and looks up at the cloudy sky. “i think i will.” 

[legendary-bard]

Beta Content For Chapter 42

this chapter underwent EXTENSIVE rewrites. originally it had far more angsty content.

Zarya was originally more discriminatory towards Gabriel and Jack’s relationship:

“Jack, let’s go.” Gabriel didn’t hold out his hand this time- he slithered a tendril of shadow around Jack’s ankle, and the two of them were off. They ended up on the lawn of the mansion, halfway between the big old house and Amelie’s flat training ground. Gabriel dusted himself off even though he hadn’t gotten dirty, feeling obligated to remain in motion.

“Wait, we didn’t need to hold hands for you to teleport us?” Was the first thing out of Jack’s mouth.

“No.” Gabriel admitted begrudgingly.

“Gabriel, that’s precious.” Jack hid a smile with his hand.

“What’s precious, you bird-assed motherf-”

“You just wanted to hold my hand, didn’t you?”

“Shut up, Jack.”

“You know you can just ask-”

“Shut up, Jack.”

“Gabriel, you know it’s okay to ask-”

“Can we not have this conversation now?” Gabriel complained.

“Getting you to admit that sometimes you want to be the little spoon was like pulling teeth, you know you’re allowed to-”

“Jack, please, not now.”

There was a moment of silence. “If you’re holding on to something you want, just say so.”

Gabriel’s stomach felt light and fluttery, like someone had filled it with helium and it was ballooning up in his chest. “What are you asking?”

There was a distinct tonal shift- Jack was looking at him as if examining a bug under a microscope, his lips slightly pursed. “Are you scared of something?”

“This case?” Gabriel prompted weakly.

That didn’t seem to satisfy Jack- playing stupid was not going to get Gabriel out of this.

“I don’t want to, Jack. It’s simple as that.”

“I’m just wondering if you don’t want to, or you’re too scared of asking. I don’t understand why you’re so stubborn about letting go of being an alpha male for half a second-”

“I’m not! And I’m not scared, either.”

“Too scared to ask to hold my hand…”

“This is different.”

“Is it?”

“Jack, I just- I was never like that. I don’t feel things like that, and I’m sorry if that’s what you want, but I just- can’t.”

Comprehension dawned in Jack’s eyes. “Gabriel-”

“I’m not broken.” Gabriel’s hands were shaking along with his voice. This conversation had been a long time coming, he thought. Months of buildup- he had dreaded the day Jack would ask about this the same way a prisoner regarded their execution date. Had feared Jack would see that he was- fucked up and just- leave, because he wanted something that Gabriel couldn’t give him. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“I didn’t say you were.” Jack brought him down gently.

Gabriel shook his head slightly, uncomfortably. “Let’s not talk about this anymore.”

Gabriel knew what Jack was thinking. Gabriel was thinking it, as if it were something deplorable or shameful.

Asexual.

After Mei’s Arrival back home:

Mei arrived home long before Jack did, but still about thirty minutes later than expected. She claimed she’d gotten caught up in a terrible traffic jam due to ( and Gabriel hardly fucking believed it until she turned on the news ) an enraged gorilla jumping around and clutching a massive bug zapper. Evidently it’d escaped from the Santa Barbara Zoo’s gorilla exhibit.

Zarya made no mention of their talk to Mei, though her gaze did slide to Gabriel when Mei slipped her hand into Zarya’s. It was a questioning and sympathetic stare.

Gabriel was awkward with relationships. He had been in a handful when he was younger, and his parents…

He would rather not dredge up his parents. They brought to mind visages of shattered glass- sharp, dangerous shards.

Broken.

Gabriel did not like that word.

He also did not like thinking about his parents, which is what made his inability to stop thinking about his parents so hellish. Their relationship with one another, their relationship with Gabriel- His head was spinning in circles all while he numbly joined Zarya and Mei on the couch to watch TV.

You’ll find the right girl some day, Gabriel.

He and Jack had a conversation coming that should’ve happened the first couple weeks into their relationship, and the longer it went on the more it felt like he was stalling. The noose was tightening around his neck and it was starting to choke him- it never should’ve gotten this far without discussion.

Why had Jack never brought it up? That’s what he wanted to know. Was it pity? Was he waiting for Gabriel? Was he also…?

God. Somehow it would be even worse if Jack was also like this.

Focus, dickhead. He shook his head ever so slightly, not hard enough to disturb the two women near him. You have a lot of shit to deal with. You’re probably going to die in the next two weeks unless Angela comes through for you. This won’t come up if you’re dead.

But if I’m going to die soon, don’t I owe Jack-?

“I’m going for a walk,” He announced suddenly.

Zarya’s green eyes were as sharp as a blade. “Would you like someone to go with you?”

“No, keep watching the show. I’ll be right back. Gotta clear my head.”

Gabriel put on his shirt and boots. Thought about bringing his Reaper coat. The weather was too warm for a coat, though… And no offense to the Reaper that’d owned it prior, but the coat wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.

He shut the door gently behind him. No key, so it was unlocked. Any robber tried to get in, though, they’d probably get a faceful of bear or yeti.

It was a little past afternoon. One or two, maybe.

Cars honked in the distance. Two birds twittered, nipping at one another. Mates, maybe.

Gabriel moved quickly down the sidewalk. He passed faceless, blurred men and women. In the wake of this agitation, a small feeling burgeoned, blossomed in his chest.

Hunger.

Not the type of hunger that drives you to eat. A kind of numb, soul-consuming hunger that made his entire being drool and shake from need.

It was the Reaper. Of course it was the Reaper. The smoky asshole hadn’t made an appearance for a long, long time, and Gabriel had been exercising his powers independent of the thing’s help for the past couple of months. He didn’t get any of that liquid grace or heightened reflexes shit this time, though- It was a hunger that gnawed at every scrap of his body. He had to swallow in order to keep from drooling.

So many walking, talking meals. The stray mutt plodding along beside a rundown Dollar Tree. The pigeons that fluttered away in big flocks. The old man hobbling along with his wife, reliant on a cane. The family of six- A woman and her five squalling children. A flock of teenagers, talking amongst themselves about a movie they’d seen while chewing on leftover Cinemark popcorn. The determined female jogger with a pink shirt, cap, and brilliantly white new Nikes, earbuds in her ears and sunglasses on her face. The businesswoman on her phone, talking about stocks and how much money she’s made investing. The homeless man holding a sign begging for money, grubby tattered gloves and beanie, face caked with dirt so thick it seemed permanently ground into his beard. The meter maid merrily ticketing cars that’d parked too long. An Asian woman and Asian man, the woman holding their son’s hand as he held his melting ice cream in the other. An older Indian gentleman in a turban, shuffling along on a midafternoon walk. A clique of college-age boys wearing varsity jackets, one of them passing around a cigarette. Two young black men, animatedly debating some TV show while carrying groceries. Two women, one of them with a floofy poodle, laughing at a joke the other had made.

A buffet just waiting to be devoured. Gabriel breathed in deep and breathed out hard.

It’s only like this because you’re upset. Gabriel schooled himself. The only reason the Reaper is here is because you couldn’t get your shit together. So get it together.

He roved around in the sunshine until he felt better.

After a while, the hungry gnawing at his guts rescinded and he was left with a strange, horrible mixture of guilt and unhappiness that the sunny day could only do so much to remedy.

He thought about teleporting back to the mansion, or to the Shambali, to talk to Ana or Reinhardt or Hanzo.

Instead, he went back to Mei’s house.

He closed the door behind him and was met with Zarya’s stare from the couch. Her arm was wrapped around Mei, and the police officer snuggled into her shoulder.

“Is it a weekend?” Gabriel asked, pausing a step away from the threshold. It had just occurred to him that Mei wasn’t doing her job.

“It’s Monday.” Mei yawned. “The chief is giving me time off because he knows I’m part of Overwatch!”

“He’s a non-human?”

“Vampire.”

Gabriel made a small grunt of assent.

“You are cute when you yawn.” Zarya told Mei in a warm rumble. The officer attempted to hide her giggle by stifling it with her hand. Zarya glanced back at Gabriel. “Jack is back. He’s in the guest room.”

His heart fluttered and he stomped down his feelings viciously. “Thanks.”

He headed to the guest room, knocking on the door.

“It’s open,” Jack called from inside.

Gabriel opened the door- Jack was sitting on the bed, a pistol in his lap.

“What’s that for?” Gabriel asked.

“It’s for you.” Jack told him simply, picking it up and offering it out.

Simple little number. Police-issue. Serial number scratched off and painted, amateurish. A few scratches and dings that suggested the gun had seen some combat.

“Makes me wish I had my holster.” Gabriel sighed wistfully. “Not sure what good it’ll do against supernatural creatures…”

“Bullets are bullets.” Jack gave the barest hint of a shrug. “A lot of people feel safer with guns. Figured, being an officer, you’d probably be one of them.”

“Thank you.” Would need to ask Angela or Amelie or Torbjorn or Sombra or somebody to get him a holster for the damn thing.

[walkinginsolitude]

Abby

It's some day of the week that’s wedged too far between days off to matter much.

I’m on auto-pilot.

Delivering packages via bicicleta in the cold winter air of downtown Manhattan.

My phone startles me with a noise that only exists in this world because a bunch of assholes sat in a room somewhere dragging nails across chalkboards and throwing kittens at drumsets and listening to brunch conversations about intermittent fasting until they engineered the single most obnoxious sound ever heard.

It's an alert that I thought we had all agreed was only to be used when someone stole a kid.

But no, instead this sound scares the absolute shit out of me in order to let me know that “a winter squall is approaching”. It might as well say a “scoopty poop is coming” because I have no idea what the shit that means.

Either way the sky almost immediately falls dark. The temperature drops. Winds pick up. Snow begins blanketing down, which is just the cutest of all severe weather unless of course you’re the idiot in your family who didn’t go to law school and so is currently riding his bike around New York delivering packages.

Okay. Fine.

An hour or two pass.

I’m cold annoyed and considering applying to law school.

But I'm alright. It’s what I signed up for.

Until some young meat popsicle who clearly attended business school walks directly into the bike path without looking which just has a terrible ROI as I'm forced to swerve brake slip and tumble across the pavement and into a gaggle of other business humans.

Okay. Fine.

I lay there for a minute more due to the cumulative shittiness of the day than the bumps and bruises of the fall.

I am a bit shaken up though.

Never fun to fall off your bike in the streets of NYC. It's sort of like the world’s longest, stupidest game of russian roulette.

Fine. The only way through the day is through the day. Back on the bike. Back to work. I can be resilient. Take it in stride.

I’m riding slower now. But not too slow because it’s absolutely freezing. The snow is still piling up with no signs of stopping. Thank God no children were actually taken, because you're not finding no kids in this squall.

So I’m working. Shaking off the gitters of the fall. Finding shelter where I can.

My phone goes off again. This time far too softly for the message it's delivering.

It’s a text that reads: “Abby is stopping chemo. She’s going into hospice. She’s not going to make it.”

………………. Shit. …….

…. Bu……

…………….

Fuck.

I get back on my bike again trying as best I can to compartmentalize my feelings. Not be overwhelmed. Don’t be overwhelmed, Don’t be overwhelmed. Focus up.

The snow doesn't matter. The physical pain doesn’t matter. You'll have to think about Abby later.

I can't.

I can't.

The harder I try not to think about her the more overwhelmed I become. Until she is ALL I'm thinking of.

I’m not even looking at the street anymore.

I fall from my bike again.

I’m crying.

Keeping my head down while delivering packages so the recipients won't see my eyes.

I can’t control my feelings. I'm drowning.

Thinking of Abby.

She's been battling ovarian cancer for some time and is now apparently preparing for the end.

To be fair her and I were never all that close.

We went to a small boarding school together had some close mutual friends kept in sparse contact throughout the years.

And in typical Abby fashion she never cried for help or asked for attention.

It was only when things got too bad to ignore that her friends betrayed her orders of privacy and let those who love her know her situation.

I’m thinking of this Woman. This Beautiful Vivacious Kind 33 yrs old Woman, who in every cliche way that people talk about the dying IS TRULY, HUMBLY, WONDERFUL.

In high school everyone seemed trapped in their egos. Consumed by insecurity.

Abby didn't.

She wasn't too cool or more mature, just refreshingly devoid of teenage self-centeredness.

She was always genuine. Inquisitive. Joyful. Real.

She has the type of smile that only free people have.

And she is.

A free soul.

Every step along the way that I've been fortunate enough to share with Abby she always seemed free. She always seemed connected.

And so I think of Abby with her whole life ahead of her. That bright, infectious smile. That spirit to really live. Going through this.

Falling ill. Getting the horrible news: You might die. Putting on a brave face.

But life looks different now.

All your friends are traveling getting married having kids going to the beach talking politics.

And you’re just surviving.

In and out of chemo. All the medication. The fear. The loneliness.

And I wonder, beyond all of this unimaginable physical pain and suffering she endured, when it was that she first truly allowed the possibility of dying to enter her mind. A young, vibrant, talented, joyous woman in her early 30s now coming to terms with the realities of her illness.

Think about that. It’s worth your real consideration. What it must be like to face that.

For no good reason your life might be Ending.

How does that feel? What do you do? How could she find the strength to fight with that looming over her? What did she think about every day? How insanely scared are you? It’s unimaginable. It’s not fair.

And now to know for certain that this Is the End.

At 33.

To go into hospice and literally prepare for death. It’s FUCKED.

It’s a concept that fills ME with so much anger and frustration and sorrow that I can barely breathe when I think about it and I’m just some asshole who knew her 15 years ago. This poor, amazing woman who I sincerely believe deserves to be alive more than I do if life was fair, has to actually go through it. It’s FUCKED.

And so I’m biking in the squall in the cold scraped and bruised crying thinking of Abby absorbing the news. I am miserable in a way that I haven’t known in a very long time.

But then I think about just what Abby would give to trade places with me in that exact moment.

To be riding a bike out in the world in the beautiful snow in a beautiful city with her health and her life ahead of her.

She would be smiling that bright beautiful effortless smile. She might be singing. She might stop to take a photo of the large white snowflakes falling in the light of dusk on the east river before getting back on the bike and navigating the world. Her beautiful blonde curls floating in the air behind her.

She would be living.

That realization helped me a bit.

There is a thing that happens any time we hear about tragedy. About death. When we are forced to acknowledge through other’s pain and suffering our own mortality.

To recognize that we are just a bunch of sentient organisms on a spinning rock with no fucking clue why we are here or where we go when we die.

Some time after I first learned about Abby having cancer I was thinking about her and I saw a beautiful flock of birds flying through the air doing that weird thing birds do where they all move as one through the sky in those quick erratic motions. It seemed unfathomable to understand how they could all know which way to go and when exactly to turn. How do they do it? Who's steering?

I watched them and thought about wedding rings.

This million or billion dollar industry that seemingly everyone has accepted is just the way we do things. So much so that a bunch of children in Africa are literally physically abused into finding shiny rocks in the ground that are then sent to these other parts of the world where people have running water and 3D printers. And they take these rocks and put them on top of this very shiny metal which, I’m sure, also has some fucked up back story as to how it got to be sitting in this display case at Zales somewhere in Rhode Island. And then this man (it’s a man because the bird flock decided this was the man’s job and so all the birds just instinctively turned left) goes into the store and buys this metal/rock thingamabob that costs something like 120 days of his life, which, again, like, who the fuck is steering? And he takes this shiny metal rock thing and brings it to a woman he’s known for two and a half years who likes the same netflix shows as him but doesn’t know that he occasionally does cocaine and he gets down on one knee at the fanciest restaurant in Providence and puts the shiny thing on this lady he kind of knows finger and they begin a promise to be with one another forever even though there are something like 2020 years of glaring statistics that the likelihood of all this working out or keeping them happy is like 1 in 40. All the other bird humans in the fancy restaurant get up and applaud. They kiss and smile at each other take in the moment and at the very-first-socially-acceptable-moment they announce their engagement online with a photo that is cute, subtle and funny, catches them both at their most symmetrical, supports the troops and only takes a full hour of attempts to finally get the shot where they don't look like they are trying. Then they reminisce about their relationship call their loved ones, buy a round for the birds sitting next to them, she cringes, thinking of how upset her older, unmarried sister will by by the news, he smiles thinks about all that blow they are going to do at his bachelor party, but more than anything they just keep looking down at their phones to see how many likes that engagement announcement got. It ends up being 324, and that feels pretty good.

And I just hope that something, somewhere is watching all of us do all of this saying “what the fuck? Why are they all doing that? How is it possible that none of them just stray off and do their own thing?” Which is exactly what I was thinking about watching the birds.

And then thinking of Abby. And Life. And Death.

What I took from it is that nobody knows what's going on. None of these systems or paths make any sense. Forget about a career. Or money. Or beauty. Or soul mates. Forget all of it. What do you want? For you? Not the flock. Because one day, sooner or later, you’re going to die.

So live you’re fucking life while you can.

I like to believe that Abby did that well. Maybe I only feel that way because she has passed now, but I don’t think so. I really believe that woman knew how to live and who she was. And if you don’t know her it would only take seeing a photo of her or by her to feel the same.

And so I’m left with a painful reminder of our mortality. Just how important and beautiful and fleeting life is. That even on your worst most mundane day in the middle of the winter in the middle of a squall with truly terrible news in your mind there is still beauty to be found lessons to be learned reasons to be present because your friend who is dying or that kid in a ditch in Africa mining shiny rocks would love to have that moment. Every day above ground is an insane gift. And that is an important lesson to continue to learn.

But it does absolutely nothing to change the fact that an exceptional young woman went through hell on Earth and is now gone.

Nothing will change that. And I certainly won’t do any justice in articulating just how tragic that truly is. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. It’s just unfair.

And so I’ll end by saying that I genuinely feel very fortunate to have had the pleasure of knowing Abby the little that I did. You were an amazing person and I am so incredibly sorry that you had to go through all of this. You deserved better. I wish I could have told you this in person.

Goodbye Abby Kraftowitz. And thank you.

[akiratachimori]

FF8 - A weird romance story, poor character development and hero is dead/dream theories

I am officially done with FF8...after 93 hours of gameplay.  Seriously. This game is not long by any means but getting everything done in the game is so goddamn tedious. And I won’t even mention the 10k enemies killed achievement. Considering you don’t meet big groups of enemies and the fact you usually meet 3 enemies and let’s say one battle takes 30 seconds:

10k / 3 * 30 / 60 / 60 = 27 HOURS

Achievements shouldn’t be about super tedious actions like that. I can get collecting all the cards, especially since as long you get rid of the random rule in all regions, winning the matches is quite easy. And I got my 100 win about the time I was doing the Queen of Card side quests so clearly you don’t need to spend so much time doing it and the matches are vastly more entertaining since you have to think at least a little bit. I have all stats junctions, auto-haste, and Mad Rush so that I don’t have to mash the V button. It was still a very boring process. The only challenge was Omega Weapon given the damage amount and frequency but after spending 3 fucking hours in the final dungeon I was so done I just used Hero (which makes characters invincible) and laughed my ass off maniacally seeing 0 damage popping above my squadmates’ heads. I kinda wish I cast Aura on Selphie and used The End just to troll it even more, lololol. The same problem goes with 100 lvl Chocobo achievement. Walking Boko not that bad since you can automatize it a bit and Chocobo World’s window is tiny so you can easily make some other stuff in the background. ...That being said, considering that if you are really unlucky (like me) and you get the worst possible Chocobo ID, you CANNOT beat the Evil King. Like wtf. I tried it 20 times until I read that there is no way in hell I can win. Still, going all the way to level 100 is really tedious even once you encounter Moogle.

Okay, now that I vented my frustration out, let’s discuss the bits I have mentioned in the title.

The romance

It’s impossible not to speak about the romance in FF8, given how it’s given the spotlight in the last disc and a half. It would be all good and dandy if the romance was well executed.

But it isn’t the case.

Don’t get me wrong, I can enjoy me some romance. Even if I some pairs are NOPT for me, I can still acknowledge that the progression of the mutual attraction made sense. For example, Aerith was clearly made the main romance partner for Cloud in FF7 (although there is a lot of complication with how he processes the world, the fact her bf Zacks died and she can tell it right away thanks to her abilities, or that Cloud adopting Zack’s personality traits and achievements because he is too ashamed of his own, he got serious case of Mako poisoning and so on, and so on), or Locke’s affection towards Celeste was made very clear in FF6.

The main problem with FF8 romance is just the sudden shift in Squall’s attitude towards Rinoa. I wasn’t much of a fan of her or her pushy behaviorism so I picked pretty much all cold options towards her I could. But then she falls into coma and Squall pretty much loses his shit and obsesses over her. It would be fine in case of a normal romance escalation but it looked ridiculous since merely two scenes before Rinoa was literally hanging on the edge on a cliff and Squall just tells Zell to take care of it and had to be told by Qustis to go save her to actually do something.

During the battle of the Gardens Squall had so much responsibility pushed on him by Cid (yeah, let’s make him the head of the whole organization. Oh? He qualified into being a SeeD member only two weeks ago? Even better! Because fuck being a responsible adult and taking care of your students) that he was more worried about the well-being of other students (who had no battle experience of any sorts) and possible destruction of a place he considered home than saving his “beloved” from falling down an being violently blended into tiny pieces.

I am surprised that Rinoa was able to hold up for so long tbh.

At any rate, this “go and help her, I have to take care of all other responsibilities” and “I want to hear her voice again. I want her to call my name again.” is pretty much a 180-degree turn and since the game does not present you with any choices in this situation, those two attitudes towards Rinoa are canon.

But I said that it was two scenes before, so what happened to Rinoa and Squall between those events?

Well, not much. But it’s important to note how out of place the scene I will describe now was.

Imagine you have saved the girl from your squad but you are not done yet. There are still screams and explosions happening in your close proximity and you know that you have to defeat the opposing army to save people who are part of your “home”. You run through the battlefield with your squadmate at your side as you see your other members of your “home” fight off the soldiers to the best of their abilities.

And then you move to another screen where your squadmate stops you to talk about your ring. Your favorite ring you gave to another of your squadmate (Zell), since he asked you and you agreed under the condition that he will fucking return it later. And then Rinoa is all bubbly, merely seconds after she was hanging from a fucking cliff, people are getting injured and are risking death just one screen away, and says that she wanted to ring since she would like to have the same one. And then says “but then people would get a wrong idea.” while she is clearly saying it flirtatiously.

Of course, by this point Squall even muses that his whole squad is obviously trying to get them together. He doesn’t say how he exactly feels about it but it comes across with his usual annoyance when someone is bothering him.

He is still lukewarm towards her at best and after some battles, she falls into a coma for plot reason and Squall goes bonkers. He goes even more insane later considering that allowing Rinoa to be sealed until they deal with Ultimecia would be a safer (and more comfortable for him) choice which is why he initially agrees to it until Quisits scolds him and tells him to help her.

Given Squall’s dismissal of Rinoa’s affection, it seems more that he gave into peer pressure more than anything and partially into his fear of being left alone. The reason why Squall joined SeeD was in order to find his missing sis and this desire was strong enough to remember it, even with the excessive usage of GFs; he had forgotten that he was in the orphanage with his other companions (all, except for Rinoa), that Edea was their matron and his sis’s name but this desire to find the one person he loved the most in the world has stayed with him. It also caused him to have some serious issues with keeping people close in fear of losing them and desire to stand on his own since he was terrified that he will be abandoned and left to his own devices.

Squall does go through some interesting character development, don’t get me wrong. I did enjoy seeing him come to care for his companions and his awkward attempt to be verbally supporting which is clearly not his forte. This awkwardness was actually quite fitting since you cannot change overnight and it felt that it was happening naturally, meaning that the desire to open up and care for other people came straight for Squall rather than from the outside. I enjoyed the worry and care Squall shows towards his squad throughout disc 2 and during the visit to the Trabia’s Garden thoroughly and this could have easily been the complete focus on Squall’s character development since none of it seemed out of character at all.

Of course, things aren’t “bad” just on Squall’s end. Squall’s live long rival called Seifer was Rinoa’s romantic interest. Or at least he seemed to be, it wasn’t explicitly stated, but since they didn’t spend much time together, her way of speaking indicates that he was her crush. So she had to deal with fighting against her possible crush while she was looking for certain character trait in Squall to fit how she viewed Seifer; similarly how Aerith wanted to see Zacks in Cloud (unaware that her secret desire is actually what is going on in the story, lol).

Seifer did have some similarities with Squall but the game made the point of making them clear opposites. Both use the same weapon but have different fighting styles, both have scars on their faces (they gave the scars to each other at the beginning of the story) but their angle is flipped, both become the sorceress’ knights at some point in the story, both have charisma and leadership capabilities (although Squall feels uncomfortable being a leader with his limited experience). At the same time: a. Seifer wears all white while Squall wears all black, b. Seifer has blonde hair and Squall has brown hair, c. Seifer defies authority, Squall follows it, d. Seifer is open with his emotions and has no problem expressing it, Squall keeps to himself and has a hard time showing care or affection, e. their character card values are flipped, f. Seifer is aggressive, Squall is passive unless provoked.

The specific trait that I saw Rinoa trying to influence throughout the game is Squall’s problem with expressing emotions and keeping to himself. The thing is that, in the story, it didn’t seem like her pushiness was really doing anything else that makes Squall close even more while his companions like Zell or Selphie gave him space which made him feel comfortable and slowly change without realizing it. This is why the dynamics between Squall and his squadmates from Edea’s orphanage was really interesting, even if they weren’t interesting characters themselves except for Selphie. Speaking of which...

Character Development

Many characters came across as either very hollow or unpolished for some reason.

I still don’t get why exactly did Seifer help Ultimecia. At first, it seemed to be some kind of mind control but by the time disc 3 rolls in, it’s clear that he is serving her out of his own volition. Why did he side with her? Why was he willing to hurt Rinoa in order to do so? Why was he okay with butchering the Garden he grown up in? Was he aware that if Ultimecia’s plan succeeds, only she would be able to live in the time compressed world? Did he want to break the world?

Ultimecia isn’t a very complicated villain either even with the limited information the game provides. The most we can get about her motives are from the speech she gives in Deling City. She mentions that she is now hailed by the lowlifes that condemned her for generations. It would be interesting to see just what she went through and what made her hate other people so much (like of Sephiroth looking down on people and burning Kalm without more information would make him feel very shallow, but because you learn that he despised Hojo and he pretty much went insane after he realized that he was a product of an experiment, he went through losing two of his close friends, etc.).

Zell is Zell, lol. Hot-dogs, fighting and (a mutual!) crush on the girl from the library. It was cool that he offers to protect Edea while Squall is away so there was that. It’s disappointing that he didn’t talk to his parent about being adopted which I think would be an interesting addition to his character since he joined SeeD because of his grandfather. His accessory making came out of nowhere just to serve as part of the whole “Rinoa: I want to have a ring just like Squall, *heart*.” so let’s not talk about that. It would also be interesting to see him confront Seifer on equal terms given how it turned out he was his lifelong bully.

Irvine is a bit forgettable but he played a vital role in revealing that everyone in their groups is connected (except for Rinoa) and this actually explained well why he wasn’t able to assassinate the sorceress. He was probably made a bit vague on purpose too since when Squall is thinking about his companions when they were younger he muses: “Sorry Irvine, you are just too forgettable.” lol

Quistis is defined the most by being a serious character but it was disappointing that she step aside as soon as Rinoa get into the picture. She was also the one who pushed Squall to be closer with Rinoa the most from the bunch. Not that I ship Quisits x Squall, but she says that her affection was most likely an unaware attempt to fill in a role of Squall's sister but given how obviously she wanted his D and was open about it, I think that it was just a statement to distance herself. She also is good at card. Not better than me tho.

I actually liked Selphie’s character, even though she was a bit too hyper for my taste in many moments but seeing her reaction when the Gardens were threatened by Galbadia’s missiles and interactions with the members of her Garden really added up to her character. She might be an idiot. But she is mine idiot. Lol. Same goes for Laguna. It’s sinful to be so lucky and so stupid and the same time. She also comments close to the end of the game that she is surprised that Squall and Rinoa got together since they are complete opposites and she didn’t believe that her pushy approach would work on Squall but ultimately she is happy for him. I wonder what her personal info says, the computer never got fixed. And I wish I knew what GF she has junctioned when she was younger.

Squall was clearly the most covered character and so long I ignore that horrible romance, I have no complaints. I didn’t expect to like another moody and broody Square Enix protagonist but he touched upon many interesting things in his inner dialogue and I can’t help but sympathize. I also had a wild guess that Squall is Laguna’s son (I had others like when I found Timber Maniacs issue about Laguna’s visit to Esthar, I joked to myself he probably became their king. How right I was. Lol. Also, Esthar was hands down the most interesting city.) so it would be funny to see some interactions between them and Ellone but because the game focused on the romance it was mostly swept under the rug. It’s disappointing that despite Krios’ saying that they should sit down and talk about it once Ultimecia is defeated, the game does not give you an option to do that. T~T

Rinoa. Ughhhh. Her character had potential but because SE decided to focus on romance, so her character was just not well rounded. The most interesting thing about her is that her mother was Squall’s father crush for a long time and since I am a fan of two people not ending up together but their children do, it was a cool concept but it’s left as a very obscure thing since only one NPC’s dialogue mentions her. Thinks that could have been talked about instead of focusing on romance: What exactly caused a rupture between her and her Father? Can their relationship be mended? How does she actually feels about being a revolutionist? How much it’s about genuinely wanting Timber’s independence and not acting to oppose her father? Another thing about her character is that she has a dog named Angelo but they have little to no interaction. Angelo seemed more like a GF than a part of the squad, especially since you have little control over summoning so I saw him fewer times than I have seen Odin. Which is sad. And there is Watts and Zone who are helping her but after they end up on the White Seed Ship you don’t really hear about interactions between the three of them so it makes all of them even less dimensional than they already are.

Squall is Dead theory

My first attempt that finishing the FF8 ended with disc 1 since I couldn’t find the rest in my brother’s big CD collection so when I stumbled on the theory recently, I thought: “well, it was shocking to see him die for me back then. I expected he died to be honest which is why I wanted to play the next disc as soon as possible, lol. I would be interesting to see if it’s true.”

But the theory does not appear plausible to me. The cool thing about the hero is dead theories is that they are some elements introduced that you are familiar with or they make enough sense for you to go with what is happening but at the same time there is this sense that something is wrong. Those might be just short hunches. I didn’t find THAT much weird as long as I ignore Squall’s failed attempt to get back to Edea’s Orphanage during the time compression.

But let’s examine some clues people put together to support this theory.

1. Why Ultimecia wouldn’t kill Squall? And why would she have a newbie interrogated instead of Quistis?

I think that it might be just pure luck + possible Seifer’s intervention. The icicle pierced Squall’s left side of rib cage so he avoided pretty much instant death via heart piercing and given the rivalry with Seifer, he could have asked Ultimecia to keep him since he can torture him later (which he does with obvious eagerness and pleasure). It’s also possible that Ultimecia didn’t find him to be a huge treat and even didn’t know or care how long Squall was a SeeD/didn’t bother with that. It was only important that he was one and that she needed to know what SeeD is in order to protect herself. Killing him would be risking losing additional information, besides even if he had no information, he could always be tortured to make others wag their tongues. We do not know how resourceful Ultimecia is but she took Seifer as her knight soon she laid her eyes on him so it doesn’t seem to be too farfetched. Still, Seifer was running the show in the prison so he picked to torture Squall first to stroke his ego and fulfill his sadistic desires.

2. Why there is no wound after Squall wakes up, why would Ultimecia heal Squall to full health just to interrogate him?

It’s difficult to interrogate someone if they are bleeding to death. She also didn’t have to heal him to full health, just enough to make sure he doesn’t die while he is knocked out for however long he was.

3. Why are Moombas talking? It’s a really strange element to be added, especially how lions are important symbolically to Squall.

It’s probably to give a clue that Squall is Laguna’s son early on in the game. We learn later that Moombas can recognize people by the taste or smell of the blood so since Squall is Laguna’s son, it’s probable that he smells at least a bit like Laguna. As far as symbolism goes, I think that the point is symbolism but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a projection of Squall’s admiration of Griever. It seems to be, again, a clue that Laguna’s little boy is like a lion ;)

4. NORG the master of the Garden. Why he is never talked about again after he is defeated? Also how weird is having a yellow, slimy thing fund SeeD? Edea and Cid’s marriage comes out of nowhere.

I do not understand why this question was brought up. Cid does comment that he approached/was approached by NORG to gather funding to fund SEED and sometime after the battle you met some other Shumi tribe member and tells briefly that NORG was consumed with greed which made him the black sheep of their tribe. It’s pretty much the same thing that Cid says.

As far as the second question goes, not that weird. It’s a FF game after all. It has fat chocobos, tiny minotaur throwing a bigger one, synchronized chocobo dancing, dodgy sex hotels and so on.

5. Too much, “perhaps it’s fate”.

I don’t think it’s too much. After we learn that everyone (except for Rinoa) was in the orphanage their fate as SeeD is to kill sorceress is clear (which has been founded by Edea, another sorceress), Seifer and Squall are fated to fight (they were rivals since childhood with Seifer taunting Squall and him falling for it because he wanted to stand up on his own) and Squall leading the Garden doesn’t make much sense to me since even when Squall meets Edea in the past he doesn’t introduce himself as the head of the Seed but just as a member. And I still think that Cid shouldn’t have thrown everything in his lap just because, but I think that he is just irresponsible which is why he sent out Squall and his squad to deal with Edea.

6. “Just stay close to me.”

“Speaking of a perfect fantasy, the romantic storyline of Final Fantasy VIII is just that. The romantic plotline, which many fans consider to be the most successful element of the game, is completely fabricated for Squall’s personal satisfaction.“

Stop, the romantic plot is a horrendous atrocity and I question the sanity of anyone who says that it was a successful element of the game, let alone a most successful XD It’s as much of a crutch as it was for SAO. Well, maybe a bit less. Hard to tell, I have been avoiding SAO on purpose and I don’t want to hear about it again just to compare the two.

I don’t think that Rinoa’s affection is weird in the dream-like-way. She is overzealous in my opinion but Squall has some similarities to Seifer that could have drawn her to him (I only question why he responds to it the way he does after coma happens). Rinoa does dislike Squall’s cold and introverted personality initially and later on you can see that she is trying to mold him to suit her liking. If it has been all a dream, Squall’s dream no less, why not make her like him the way he is? Why have the dream version of Rinoa try to change him?

“The relationship Rinoa and Seifer had is never again mentioned, except by Seifer in the form of taunts during battle.”

Actually, it is mentioned even if dismissively when Rinoa and Squall are returning to Earth. I DO think that jumping from Seifer to Squall is a stupid, immature decision but I don’t think it’s that far-fetched. As far as Seifer being an alright guy to complete villain post Squall’s possible death, I think that it’s just really bad writing. You can see it with the majority of the characters in this game.

7. The end.

I do admit that the final cinematic was some weird shit. I mean...

Sweet dreams everyone.

Okay, but as far as why only specific scenes are replayed over and over again, I think that those the scenes of most significance to Squall. He fought with Rinoa and there was this weird flirting on her part throughout the game but definitely the very first time he met her, he was thrown out of his element which is why the ballroom was of such significance. Squall doesn’t feel comfortable with dancing so being pushed into it out of nowhere definitely caused him a lot of personal distress, something that it’s easy to recall. Same goes for Rinoa in space, by this point he developed an obsession with her and was terrified she was going to die, had there been a cutscene with here laying in the hospital bed, we would most likely get it as well.

“If this was really how the game was meant to be interpreted, why did they make the “dream” so subtle?“

I think people are just giving to much credit to this game ^^; Some things are way too elaborate for it to be a dream and others can be explained logically even if you play by the “dream’s” rules. The weirdest thing that did happen in the game was Laguna “dreams” but those were happening before Squall “died” and Ellone is the very first person you meet in the game. I also find it funny that Squall would dream about having Laguna as his father, he just didn’t seem like a good material for one until you get the “dream” from his stay in Winhill and Squall didn’t like him at all and think she is a moron. And by FF standard, the rest doesn’t seem that crazy tbh.

“The ending is like recapping the game on acid.“

Oh, that’s for sure. (*look at the picture above* *shudder*)

I guess I will type what I liked/didn’t liked.

+ Laguna, Selphie, Squall

- Romance

+ GFs

+ draw system (tedious but it was cool to have no mana to worry about)

+/- GF system (there should be more slots for abilities)

-/+ Music (not memorable but okay, one song during the final battle was cool)

+ Triple Triad

+ PuPu Quest

- the lake quest (way too vague)

- confusing graphic (no option to mark passages or ladders like in FF7 led me to a lot of confusion since I either didn’t realize that you can go to x room or that there is a lever/rope I can pull. It is caused by rending interactive elements with the background which makes them difficult to distinguish. Chrono Cross handled it well since the interactive objects were rendered similarly to the character models).

- fuck 10k kills achievement

-/+ if you miss Occult Fan III you cannot ever get it (luckily you don’t need it for achievement or to summon Doomtrain)

+ Selphie’s limit break, lol

+ Gilgamesh getting payback for Odin, lol

- too easy (fight against the final boss was laughable and I was only using attack command).