#a compassion and an odd sort of nostalgia
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Heartbreak Feels So Good is THE SM(F)S song ngl. They’re all bangers but this one feels real it feels aching it fucking pulsates. This one courses through the weaving forks of my veins like old blood
#i can't explain how but Heartbreak Feels So Good plays like growing up and#slowly understanding what it meant to be a reckless and immature teen#and holding space for a patience for that stage of your life#a compassion and an odd sort of nostalgia#rather than being resentful#and finally feeling that real genuine awareness of being alive and being grown#and being an older version of your young reckless foolish heartaching self#personal#FOB#so much (for) stardust
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Day 2 of the interviews! The lovely Yulisa, everyone :chinhands:!!
Yulisa, author of The Nexus Trials: Trial One
Religious Diversity Month Featured Author
It’s been years since you last stepped foot inside the Silver Nexus, a large kingdom with mile high walls surrounding the bustling cities inside; each metropolis filled with magic and intrigue hidden around every corner.
Once a place you called home, you’ve long since given up that security to travel the world as a wandering mercenary alongside your two companions– though soon an opportunity too good to refuse arises in the form of a mysterious though promising summons from the Silver Queen herself. Having asked for your company’s assistance specifically, you begin the long trek from the Bronze District, ignoring the vague details in favour of anticipating your big break.
Returning to your old homeland fills you with an almost heavy sense of nostalgia as you walk the brick road leading to the capital, hopes high knowing this job could change the lives of both you and your companions for the better. However, unease quickly sets in as you come to realise nothing could have ever prepared you for the trials that await…
The Nexus Trials Demo TBA | Read more [here]
Tags: sci-fi, fantasy, horror
(INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT!)
Q1: Tell us a little bit about your project(s)!
The Nexus Trials is an entirely text based interactive story with two parts currently planned. For Trial One, the player takes on the role of a mercenary down on their luck. Having spent years wandering the expansive lands of the Outside, taking on whatever odd jobs you could find, you tossed your moral compass aside long ago for any potential of extra coin; having debated more than once resorting to selling the clothes on your back to avoid total bankruptcy.
Things begin to look up, however, when you receive a summons requesting the aid of you and your companions from the illustrious Silver Queen herself. The promise of prestige and security is one too good to resist; the offer a gateway to turning over a new leaf and starting fresh. Escaping the lingering shadow of your past never comes so easy though.
Q2: Why did you settle for interactive fiction? What drew you to this format?
I think, more than anything, what drew me to create interactive fiction was the freedom it allowed. The ability to go down these different paths and witness how the world around you changes depending on the choices you’ve made, whether it be for better or worse. Not having to worry about being bound to any specific, hardset canon is nothing short of exciting to experiment with, especially because even with my other non-IF stories I’m constantly entertaining the possibilities of the what ifs? even if they aren’t always plausible. I remember reading a lot of R.L. Stine growing up.
For the most part, I actually wasn’t the biggest fan of the regular Goosebumps, but the spin off series Give Yourself Goosebumps had always intrigued me. Being as young as I was at the time when I first discovered them, the concept of CYOA books was foreign to me and opened my eyes to a new way of storytelling. I loved getting to dictate the course that the story would take, even if the consequences of my actions didn’t always lead to the greatest outcome. In a lot of ways, the little catchphrase has stuck with me throughout writing TNT, even if it’s been years now since I last read any of the books. Reader beware… you choose the scare!
Q3: How have your identity and beliefs influenced your work?
Everything about who I am has left traces in my work, though truthfully it’s often unintentional. With TNT taking place in a fantasy setting, I’ve done my best to instead let the world take on an identity of its own; though I do admit to projecting onto a few characters in particular. Really, just about the only time I ever go out of my way to bring my own bias into what I write is for really petty things, like my hate for all and anything mint. I don’t understand how people are so obsessed with that burning sensation… but then again, I’m allergic, so I’m probably not the greatest person to trust on that front.
Q4: What aspects would you like to be more explored or represented in media regarding your religion?
The norm these days in more mainstream media is for characters apart of minority religions to mention what they follow in passing, never to be brought up again, in some sort of half-hearted attempt at religious diversity. If nothing else, I want there to be a sense of pride from those token Jewish characters, unashamed in their identity, without the typical pressuring to partake in religious practises not their own from other characters. It’s as good a starting point as any.
Q5: What are you most excited about sharing related to your project?
Would it be cliche to say I’m excited just to be able to share my project in general? I’ve never had the confidence to release any of my other works before, and truthfully me putting TNT out there publicly was poorly controlled impulse on my part; then suddenly, next thing I know, it basically blows up overnight and I’ve got hundreds of people excited for it despite a demo not even being out yet. It’s a level of confidence I never thought I could achieve. If I had to choose, I can’t wait for everyone to meet the characters. Will you find a family in them, or make lifelong enemies?
Q6: A tiny bit unrelated, but what’s your favourite religious holiday?
A bit predictable, maybe, but I love Hanukkah. I have a rather large family, to put it mildly, so our schedules rarely line up which means most holidays tend to pass us by without much thought; Hanukkah, though, is something we’ve always managed to make time for, even if it’s not a consistent celebration. I value the time we all get to spend together more than anything.
Q7: Any other thoughts or advice you’d like to give to fellow authors or readers?
To my fellow authors or aspiring authors, go your own pace. You’ll find what works best for you even if it might seem hopeless at times. Remember that you’re building up these worlds brick by brick with your own two hands, breathing life into these characters you’ve birthed from ink. That in itself is something to be proud of.
To the readers, your support means more than you could ever know. I can never thank you all enough for the encouragement you’ve given me in the times I’ve wanted to give up.
#if: events#religious diversity month#religiously diverse authors#religious diversity#interactive fiction#cyoa#choose your own adventure#choose your story
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The Goddess and the Grocer
(Steve Rogers x Fem!Reader)
Summary: Sappy and hopelessly romantic, the part time art student, part time grocery bagger, and full time fantasy creator Steve Rogers lives in his head, with you as his muse. Making puzzles out of your groceries, and portraits of your every curve and edge, he fears and craves every interaction, while living with you as a lover in his mind.
A/N: Well. I have struggled with motivation for the longest. Something hit me though, and by something I mean other supportive writers and great friends. Hugest shoutout to @threeminutesoflife for being a darling and @imanuglywombat for making TWO beautiful mood boards I stare at more than Steve stares at the Peggy compass.
Warnings: creepy, obsessive Steve. ideation of creepy thoughts. food focused talk. mention of overeating. dub-con concepts. two mentions of alcohol consumption.
New blog, new me! I’ll take this moment to say I’m taking requests, and I love feedback even more than Steve loves you! hope you enjoy
Word Count: about 3k
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Now rain slicked, the sheen of oil and water twists the reflections of the tonights red, red, green—-“can I make the turn, no too late” on yellow—now red traffic lights into a twisted rainbow on the city streets.
Down those streets, and across a barren parking lot, parents, lovers, businesspeople and more squeak and clack and slap their rainy shoes on the old speckled tile at the entrance (that Steve had just mopped) as they do every week.
At the Potts Grocery Store, nothing ever changes. And never in the night.
It isn’t just night though, it’s dead night. The odd time after things have slowed for sleep, after the rush in between when people bumble in (promising themselves promises they won’t keep about doing the shopping sooner next month), after the ten minute period within which Dr. Banner wordlessly picks up the same array of bland teas.
The night has crawled beyond all the events that happen as they do, and entered the dead night.
Maybe Steve is too poetic—like his dad says he is—too tied up in fate, and hope in life’s mystique, but he holds hope for what happens where the night is dead.
When the night dies, and most are asleep, with it, facades die too. The only people to come in the dead of night, are drunks, doctors, various night shifters, and… you.
He hasn’t yet questioned your reason for showing up so late. Hasn’t really, technically, spoken to you at all, really.
Some part of Steve thinks, maybe if he startles you, says something that clangs too loud or awkward, all your pieces will blow away, like some agitated dandelion, and he will never know you again, if he ever even knew you at all.
No, Steve’s job isn’t to startle you, or to take up your space. It’s to try and meet your eyes as you hand him the reusable bags. It’s to try and figure out what meal you’re planning from what he’s bagging, and what he already knows lies unused in your kitchen. It’s to put the bags in your cart if you’ll let him.
He hasn’t seen you yet. It’s getting late, where are you?
Somewhere between cold fluorescent and neutral warm desk lamps, the lights of the grocery store seem to exist both to chase shadows on tired shoppers' faces, and to mock him, like a candle finally blown out by a stood up date.
Had he done something wrong the last time? If he had, that couldn’t be helped. You were wearing those shorts and looked like you had just gotten ready for bed and you had your hair pulled back, but just a little fell into your face anyway.
And your scent. It always wraps around him like the saccharine spice of pastries when he swings open the bakery door for his morning shift.
The moment you breezed by him after checkout was almost too much to bear. He caught the fresh damp scent of your tied up and deep conditioned hair. You smelled like fresh linens and a life he can only imagine having when he’s chasing orgasms alone and twisting up his sheets.
He could have devoured you.
But he didn’t.
Not even when your shoulder accidentally grazed him while you were rushing out in a frenzy.
“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry,” came your frantic whisper.
He dreams of making you that delicate again. He thinks he could shape your unsure apologies in his hands like clay, or spread you thin on a canvas when you whisper so soft. But he didn’t do those things at all.
Steve being Steve, he tried to make his large frame slouch, your aura wrapping him up into a double life Clark Kent shyness, despite your gentleness.
He didn’t say a word.
A wordless, mirthless stretch of his lips. An “It’s okay, walk all over me” grin. You regarded him with a flicker of an odd glance, and then you were out the door.
As he finishes up with the last shopper in his lane, his worn Converse squeak as he leans his frame against the bagging station at checkout.
-
Last class, last week, his art teacher dropped a big assignment. Stuffy and sadistic, the man seemed to only eat the pain of lovers kept from expression, so of course, he relished in the moment he told the class to try a new medium, with a subject they hadn’t previously captured.
He seemed to look directly at Steve as he delivered the blow.
Steve's problem certainly isn’t creativity. It isn’t talent or lack of effort. He surely is adaptable, he rarely tells on his love!
For the still life project, he captured the tree that blocks your kitchen window. Heavy strokes in his sketchbook.
He even painted the park in blooms on a paper towel—yes a paper towel—when you justified to a cashier one day that all the crackers and deli meats were for a picnic.
So he has a muse. But he’s not a fool. Sometimes he spends so much time trying not to look like a fool, and paints so much around you instead of you, that it’s a self portrait of his own obsession.
Your face. Your curves. The many separated sections where he tried to master the texture of your hair. All those traces of you live in his sketchbook. Only twice has he turned in a portrait of you.
Being told he can’t have you makes Steve feel like he’s been too obvious. You’re his little secret. And he is no fool. He’ll have to be more careful. So here he is.
The canvas is as bare as the walls of his studio apartment.
Three jobs and a potted plant from his mom just aren’t enough to decorate life. He wishes he could capture sleep in a picture frame and hang it on the wall. When he got too tired and caffeine stopped working, he thinks he’d pick up those frames and absorb the sleep in the way he can absorb nostalgia when looking at a real picture.
Then, he thinks, that’s the sort of thing art majors say when they haven’t slept in three weeks.
The canvas is still bare. It isn’t like Steve. He always knows where to go, what he feels, what he wants.
His teacher told him to try something different. Had the nerve to clap Steve on the back after class and say something about stretching creative wings and finding a new muse.
He thinks the guy should have punched him in the face instead.
There’s nothing stuck about Steve. He knows what he wants and how to get there.
He also knows that schooling ruins the intent of art, he knows how to put love into colors, that art teachers know the least about expression out of everyone on earth, and that he works two night jobs a week to barely afford to be taught by that man anyway.
Life is full of oddities.
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Some of life’s oddities are right there in your cart as you approach. Steve notices the rain has frizzed your hair, the lovely heart shaped curve of your lips as they stretch into a smile, and the way you yawn before you say hello to the cashier.
He makes a mental note that your hair might have a warmer tinge when illuminated by the sun. You’re already his sun. His stars too. Maybe even his whole universe.
You’re always warm in his paintings. Anything to separate you from the dreadful scheme of this commercial death trap.
What’s for dinner this week?
Your groceries thump onto the counter in practiced succession. Perishables together at the front, and non perishables as neatly as possible following behind.
So thoughtful, my sweet darling.
Your produce today mostly consists of fruit. It reminds Steve of how practiced he is with a knife. How he’d slice up your apples just right for you. He has the practiced skills of an artist. He’d take care of you.
Bucky likes to tell him that cooking is the art and baking is the science. That’s meant to mean that it’s no surprise that Buckys got a perfect little life with a perfect little baker who smiles like the sun and only trusts Bucky in her kitchen.
...And it’s no surprise that Steve’s artsy streak has led him here. Thinking about folding mandarin slices between your perfect lips and letting the flavor explode across your tongue.
He thinks about kissing you. How you would taste tangy and sweet as you try not so hard to push him off so he gets back to cooking and doesn’t burn the house down.
The house. A house with you. A home.
He sees you’re wearing a sundress, and tries not to pity you for the irony. In the closet of some cookie cutter three bedroom, you might ask him how you look in it. He would beg you to wear it just for him a little longer, but ultimately, he would have been able to warn you about the rain.
You wouldn’t have listened though, my stubborn angel.
He thinks about your thighs beneath your dress, and the heat between them.
Sometimes, his dreams betray him, and he steps through the threshold to your shared home, not an artist, but a “Honey, I'm home” suit wearing prisoner.
He fears the simple life, but with you, he believes simplicity could be enough. Maybe he would be rich enough to buy you a million sundresses.
But without his art, he’d be powerless to show you how rich you look, bathed in color, divine from his perspective.
Without his art, he has no outlet for imagination. The only thing that gets him off these days is imagining what you look like under your clothes, and how it might sound if you spoke his name.
When you buy lotion, or a candle, he makes a mental note of the scent, and uses it to color his experience later. You like warm sugary scents, or natural outdoorsy ones, with no in between.
As you small talk with the cashier, your card slips from between your fingers and clatters onto the unswept floor. Finishing a thought, you delay in retrieving it, but by the time you’re leaning down, Steve’s already handing it back.
Eyes flitting up to meet the baggage boy standing up at full height, you melt into an easier smile.
You notice first that his eyes are incredibly blue behind the dark window frames, and second that his hands are incredibly warm as he hands your card back.
Frazzled, and just a bit smitten, you smile kindly.
“Thank you,” you say sweetly, regarding him fully, perhaps for the first time, and pausing only to let your eyes drift to the knitted cotton polo stretched across his broad chest—no, to the name tag resting on it…
“Steve,” you finish with a smile that makes it ring like an exclamation point. To hear you finally pronounce his name… it’s like church bells. But they’re muted because now he can only consider your eyes locked on his.
He’s never wanted to escape somewhere and go home with someone so badly. And would it be so wrong?
He could slice up fruit for you. He could bring sausages and deli meats and blocks of cheeses whole from the market where they slipped him things free. He’d slice them up nice and wrap them in cloth and surprise you with an old fashioned wicker basket picnic in the mountains.
He’d let you eat yourself round. And after you were full, he’d still offer to feed you grapes, to pour you more wine.
Steve never understood why the rich ate bread with olive oil, but God he wanted to be rich enough to give you that. All the things that sound ridiculous to people who work to live. He wanted to work so hard you’d never work again.
He wanted to kiss you dizzy, bunch up the fabric of your dress on your hip and tell you he loves you while you’re wine drunk. He’d carry you back to the car and surprise you with wildflowers in a bunch.
Later, he’d paint you nude with them in your hair, and he’d feed you more grapes.
He would tuck you in and wrap you up for later when you woke up missing him. Maybe he wouldn’t leave at all. Maybe you would want to spend the whole day with him too.
He’s got a twinkle of charm in his eye and just a bit of sadness that looks every bit like the starving artist people believe him to be. Bucky hasn’t stopped bringing him the leftover rolls at closing since he found out Steve spends more money on paint than meals.
And is it so wrong? As Steve looks into your eyes, he musters all that charm his mom said he was born with. He blinks brighter the twinkle in his eye.
“You’re welcome,” comes Steve’s gentle, but sure reply.
You pause at that, because really it’s nothing... But people always seem to say “Don’t worry about it!”, “It’s nothing”, or maybe nothing at all.
You pause at how the reaction seemed genuine, in a world of practiced replies, and on a day that you’re feeling shitty because the rain ruined your hair and happiness.
You smile at him again, grateful for a pocket of truthful kindness, and turn back to the cashier, effectively ending the interaction.
Steve’s mind is spinning in ways he just can’t bring himself to understand. So he bags your groceries. You forgot the reusable bags, he doesn’t pause to wonder why.
Click. Click. Click. Beep!
Tomatoes. He bags them with the apples. Double bags for good measure.
Beep.
Spaghetti. The good kind that most people overlook in favor of a more common brand. New bag.
Beep.
Frozen garlic bread. He adores you. You’ve got garlic and basil and more herbs than you’ll ever need at home. You’d probably make the spaghetti noodles and parmesan yourself if you could. But you love five minutes at 400 garlic bread.
He imagines your pretty little kitchen, with all its various knick knacks, smelling like garlic and tomato sauce. He can’t help thinking you’d be impressed with his chopping skills too. Just how his mom taught him.
He imagines cooking with you in the dead of night, instead of being here. He imagines you bending over with your legs straight and your back curved and the oven mitts on to get garlic bread out of the oven. You put the tray on the cold burners Steve’s not using.
Maybe he would ask you to try the sauce, he’d hold the spoon to your lips after blowing off for you. Your eyes always flutter closed to process the taste of things, and sometimes he swears he could read your mind.
Then they would open. Wide. The same way they did when you tasted the new product double chocolate brownie sample last Tuesday. You would tell him how perfect it is and praise how he finally isn’t shy about using garlic anymore. Turning off the burners, he’d pull you into his arms, he’d kiss you til you saw stars…
-
Walking you backwards, still entangled in the breathless kiss, he wouldn’t stop until you bumped the padded kitchen bench. Then he’d fall to his knees.
“Steve, honey”—
You’d cut yourself off with a breathy moan because he’d already be under your skirt.
Kissing up your thighs, flattening his tongue against you, kissing you gently, before sucking your clit, while working it with the tip of his tongue, he’d show you again, like always, how passionate of a lover he is.
You’d moan like heaven, because you are.
You’d lean back, propping yourself up on an arm and pushing the other hand through his golden hair. You just can’t stop your hips from rolling against his tongue that’s still worshipping you.
He won’t use his fingers. It wouldn’t be proper, he’s just been cooking. So instead, he uses those hands to pull your thighs up onto his shoulders.
Still swirling his tongue around your clit, Steve is drawing you closer, your body seeming to know it’s own ways to pull him to you too.
It’s electric. You can’t stop and you’d never want to. He’d make love to you every single—
-
That’s not where he is though. He grabs the paper bags he’s bagged up with your ingredients and some other oddities, and he places them in the cart you’ve pushed forward.
He tries not to think about the fact that you’re going home alone. He tries not to think about how he’ll be sleeping alone, and in cold colors. Tries to skip forward to later when he has all the time in the world to imagine the way things should be.
A quiet goodnight and you’re on your way. You’re careful not to graze him as you walk away, and he’s careful not to be obvious watching.
The cashier leaves the station, and Steve puts his head down as he passes, before looking up in your direction as he always does.
Except… when he looks up to see your sundress swishing, it isn’t. And you’re turned back looking at him with this funny little look.
You smile. A twinkle of embarrassment, nervous to have been caught looking. He tries not to chuckle for all the irony.
He watches you as you watch him just a bit longer, before your sundress swishes out the door, and the light of your halo fades into the distance, consumed by the rain.
-
By the time his shift is up, the rain has stopped and the sky is colored like a bruise. The sun knocks at a threshold unseen, just slightly feathering light through the sky.
Steve is dead tired, but he won’t sleep a wink. Once he arrives at his apartment, he begins the project.
A mixed medium piece. Acrylic paint, charcoal shadowed details. It’s a wicker basket, full of apples, grapes, and wildflowers.
-
Later, as the sun rises, and the painting is half done, he flops into bed, finishing up a stale roll from the bakery, and dreams about waking up to you.
He pretends there’s no job to be at in three and a half hours, but instead, that it’s a quiet Sunday, and he’s waking up to you in his arms...
Soft and ethereal.
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Thank you for reading!
Whether or not this is your type of writing, or you liked it at all, I just want to tag some authors who generally inspire me and helped in some way to motivate me posting my first piece: @threeminutesoflife @imanuglywombat @sherrybaby14 @jtargaryen18 @heavenbarnes @tropicalcap @allaboardthereadingrailroad @thotty-tatertot @sapphirescrolls
#dark!steve#steve#steve rogers fanfic#steve rogers#steve x reader#dark!steve x reader#dark!steve rogers#steve au#steve rogers au#civillian!steve#artist!steve
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Ok, so. This is just an example on how to use the Inn's Hosts, dear Wanderers. Let's try and ask something to Caratra, shall we? Like, for example, how would the original Avengers team react when meeting a new person that they, somehow, find themselves fancying straight away?
And if that is your request, then I, Caratra, shall answer in the best of my knowledge. You see, I have noticed, throughout the years, that by sitting aside and let life unravel before your own eyes, you begin to see people for who they really are. So let’s throw away all the masks and the prejudices, and see to the matter at hand.
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PART I
The relationship that Tony had with conferences was, to be honest, mixed. Especially when they were masked as a cocktail party. A part of him did enjoy the mingling, the chatting, the chance to talk to that particular big shot long enough to get on his nerves... The other, however, could definitely do without it all, as he found very difficult for the people in those big rooms to fully understand him and his work. Nothing was different in this particular occasion and, at the mercy of the rising boredom and impatience, he was sure about to find a way to sneak out of the place, when something caught his attention. A voice, strong and confident, the kind that does not accept “no” as an answer. Your voice. That was the first time he ever laid eye on you and, for Tony Stark, seeing someone barking orders right left and centre was positively a valid reason to get more interested. And so his eyes never really stopped following you around the room, watching with honest interest as he absent-mindedly carried on the conversation with one journalist or the next. He had plenty of time to notice how strict you were – clearly, you were a part of the team that organized this event – but, at the same time, how you were also trying to help your subordinates, always saving an encouraging smile for each one of them. Strength, compassion, kindness … definitely a kind of mix he was not used to find in these places. «In case you are wondering,» Happy chimed in, suddenly appearing at his side «that person you’ve been staring at, is today’s event coordinator. This is her first big soiree, but I’d dare say she’s doing a brilliant job». «And, tell me, Happy…» Tony replied not missing a beat, «…do you also happen to know her name?». «I’m afraid not, sir» the bodyguard noted apologetically. However, Tony’s spirit was everything but damped, as a grin slowly stretched on his face. «Then, my friend, I suggest I go and find out immediately» he said confidently, not even waiting for Happy to reply as he started making his way towards you.
Steve was worried. It didn't really matter how many times he tried to repeat to himself that it was probably nothing serious, or that he did everything he could. There was something wrong, and the doubt of what it could actually be was slowly gnawing away his confidence. Swallowing hard, he mustered up all of his courage and looked down at the little ball curled up on his lap. Roscoe was only a couple of months old and in Steve’s care since Bucky and Sam decided to surprise him with a German Shepherd’s puppy for his birthday. And despite his initial complaints – where could he find the time to take care of a dog? – he soon fell in love with the little fluffy critter. Hence his extreme worries when Roscoe started to lack his usual energy and enthusiasm, all of a sudden. «Mister Rogers?» a voice shook him from his thoughts. A young woman was standing in front of him, wearing a white coat and a radiant smile. That is, at least, the first two details he noticed and that, somehow, made him feel slightly less anxious. Was it the fact that the vet was finally going to take a look at Roscoe, or that warm smile would have worked even without her professional attire? «Yes» he muttered shoving those thoughts aside and scooping up the puppy in his arms as he got on his feet. «This way, please» you invited, showing him to the nearest available examination room. Reluctantly, Steve laid down Roscoe on the metal table. «So, mister Rogers,» you started, visually assessing the dog as you were putting on a pair of gloves, «I see you are pretty worried. What does it seem to be the problem with the little one here?». Did he look indeed that worried? «Well, this is Roscoe. I got him about a week ago and everything was fine, until one day he started to act… strange. Sadder, less energetic» he explained, scratching the back of his head. You simply nodded, answering with a quick hu-uh as you started to examine the puppy. «I don’t know what happened» Steve continued, «I honestly don’t think he ate anything odd, I was with him at all times. And it’s not like he stopped eating, or drinking, or sleeping». He noticed the careful and gentle way you were passing your hands on Roscoe’s body, the extreme care you took when testing his legs, tummy and back. Something about it put him at ease, and helped stopping the flow of words that threatened to flood out of his mouth. But he still found himself holding his breath as you finally straightened up and looked at him. «Mister Rogers…» you said, contemplating your next words, «…there is no external sign that would suggest Roscoe is not well. Apart from one». Steve’s heart sank at those words, but before he could utter anything at all, a swift movement of your hand unbuckled the collar on the dog’s neck. And, as if by magic, the puppy perked up with a joyful bark and started to jump on the examination table. Saying that Steve was gobsmacked would be an understatement. «But… How…» he barely managed to whisper. «He is still not used to the collar» you laughed, playfully stroking the now very active Roscoe on the head, «And he’s probably been a bit overdramatic about it. It happens more often than you would think, don’t worry». Only then, Steve finally lifted his gaze and, with all of his fears gone, he finally noticed your glittering eyes and your cheerful expression… and that warm, reassuring smile. It did take him a while. A lot of overthinking to do, doubts to dispel and courage to muster. And a couple of nervous walks in and out the clinic. But he finally did asked you out, on that same day, as a way too happy puppy barked his consent and jumped all around the two of you.
The Warbling Bard could be considered somewhat of a rarity here on Midgard, especially for the God of Thunder. The medieval-inspired furniture, the authentic two meters long fireplace, the catchy tavern-like music... He would never admit it out loud, but Thor did miss Asgard when forced to remain on Earth to help the Avengers, and this this cozy pub in the suburbs was the only place where he could try and breathe an atmosphere similar to home. The beer, also, was pretty fantastic. «Are you actually looking for an opponent, or that cue in your hands serves more like a cane?» a voice suddenly brought him back from his nostalgia-filled thoughts. But he did not act as if he was caught unaware: he simply took another gulp from his beer, put down the tankard on the green felt table and turned... only to find a woman, with a knowing grin painted on her face and another cue gripped in her hand. Thor raised his eyebrows, surprised by how the stranger approached him, but he would have lied if he said that the first impression she made was a bad one. Quite on the contrary, to be honest. «Oh, if you're too drunk, forget playing» you continued, sarcastically hinting at his lack of verbal response, «I do not pick on people that cannot defend themselves». The Asgardian erupted in a booming laugh. «Drunk? My lady, it will take way more than a couple of beers to render me useless» he replied confidently, «And even then, I could easily crush my adversary». You smirked. «Is that a challenge?». Thor mimicked your expression, the spark of competition glittering in his eyes. He was certainly not expecting to meet someone like you that evening, but there was something... fresh about you, and fiery, like a spring gale swinging the windows open and flooding the room. An invigorating and well-welcomed change of pace, compared to what the God of Thunder had been used to in the past few days. He quickly turned around, slid two fingers in his mouth and whistled to the barman. «Jeffrey, I need two tankards here!» he called out to the friend, «Large ones, please». By the end of the evening - and after countless drinks - Thor was very much surprised to see that you had managed to keep up with both his playful banter and the game. You might have also won, if a gentleman that had one too many did not trip and spill half of his beer on you, forcing you to take your leave a bit too early - for Thor's taste, at least. But even if he thought that that had been the best evening he had had in a long while, none of his cheerful expressions could have matched his smile when, repositioning the balls in the centre of the table, he found a quickly scribbled note... with your name and the date and time for a rematch.
The gym was quiet that day. Most of the agents were probably out anyway, trying to sort the mess that was New York City after the Chitauri's attack. Natasha had already done her part, when it came to that particular problem. Teaming up with a group of incredibly gifted people – and super humans. And gods – was not exactly part of her initial plan. She always preferred to work alone after all. But she did find something in that group of people, something she had missed for so long that she was not even certain she was still capable of experiencing. Opening up to others, trusting others was always something that exposed her to risks, and that was definitely not part of her job. That feeling, however… Natasha sprang forward, twirling on herself to deliver a powerful kick to the sand bag. She didn’t want to think about it now. Not when she basically had this S.H.I.E.L.D. facility’s gym all to herself. Or at least, so she thought. The agent felt you entering the room even without turning around. And either you failed to recognize her or you were keeping to yourself, avoiding congratulating her or expressing your admiration for her – like at least ten other operatives did on her way to the gym. That, in Natasha’s eyes, was definitely worth points. She returned to her training, but instinctively kept an eye on your movements - after all, the two of you were the only people in the room. And it was exactly by monitoring you that, ten minutes after, Natasha noticed that you were watching her. She shrugged, returning to hit the bag in front of her. But even after another few moments, she still couldn’t help but feel your eyes on her. You were not even trying to hide it: you were staring at her, plain and simple. The agent finally stopped her array of kicks, sighed loudly and turned towards you. «May I help you?» she asked, letting a tinge of irritation color her question. «Uh, sorry» you quickly apologized, realizing your gaze might actually have been slightly intrusive, «It’s just… your form. It’s very peculiar». «Peculiar? It’s simple combat training. Like the one you probably went through yourself» she merely commented, stretching one leg. You shook your head. «Not really. The way you fight is definitely more accurate and lethal than what I normally see around here. It’s also more… angry». Natasha quirked an eyebrow. «Angry, as if there is something troubling you, deep down» you clarified. The red-haired spy was confused, but she recovered quickly enough to object. «This pretty psychological analysis is interesting, but I can assure you are only seeing what you want to see». With a confidence that surprised both Natasha and yourself, you stood up from the bench you had been sitting on and approached the other woman. «I can prove it to you». And just like that, without any sort of warning, you lunged at her, throwing a turning kick that she readily parried with a gesture of her arm. Natasha would have probably complained, but you did not give her the time to voice her thoughts, so she simply focused her frustration and retaliated. But time after time, kick after kick, her disciplined form started to change and, despite being precise and deadly, the spy began to resembled more of a storm than the precise, lethal weapon she had been trained to be. A tempestuous sea of wild waves, that seemed to have little to no effect against the calm and precise technique her opponent was using. Until the spy had enough, and managed to catch you by surprise with a low kick that made you fall flat on the floor. She was Natasha Romanoff, after all. The two of you looked at each other for a couple of moment, panting from the intense sparring. And before you could say anything, Natasha extended a hand towards you, helping you back on your feet. «That was fun» you smiled, combing a loose strand of hair behind your ear. «Yeah» the other woman simply replied, her shoulders not so tense as before. Satisfied, you went back to collect the gym bag you left by the bench and made your way towards the door. «Hey» you called out, turning towards her one last
time. «It's ok to be angry. Or confused. But we don't always have to deal with it on our own». And just like that, you flipped the bag back on your shoulder and flashed Natasha a kind smile before leaving the room. The spy stood there for a few more minutes, unmoving, still focused on that spot in front of the door where you had been just a moment before. Somehow, she felt lighter, as if the weight of those storming doubts was lifted, giving her the space to breathe more freely. And, somehow, a smile began to stretch on her face. Maybe, after all, she could be ready to start letting some people in.
#storyteller inn#hosts#caratra#avengers#marvel#scenarios#preferences#headcanons#iron man#tony stark#thor#steve rogers#captain america#black widow#natasha romanoff
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"greek-Bros: The Return of an Old Enemy"
Chapter 7: Under Watchful Eyes
Zeus had been flying around in eagle form for several days, watching over all of Greece and it's inhabitants. He had seen there had been indeed strange occurrences throughout the land. To his unfortunate luck, he could see it was indeed the return of Lycaon. His only mission now was to find where Lycaon was, it did not matter to Zeus why or how he was doing this, all what mattered to him was to end Lycaon before he succeed.
From Athens to Sparta and everywhere in between, there was always some persistent problems revolved around wolves. Yet deep down everything knew these weren't wolves...or at least not entirely. The local gods and demi-gods had become aware of these attacks but as all powerful as they were, it always seemed they couldn't catch a glimpse of the creatures.
Flying through Athens on this fine morning, he planned on meeting with Athena to see if she had any issues with the beasts. Athens being a more metropolitan city, it would be impossible for such attacks to occur. He glided through the city to the Acropolis where he would have a little privacy with Athena. She always busy, even when she would be at home in Olypmus. Zeus flew to the main hall of the temple, and landed in front of the Statue of Athens. He looked around, hoping no one would see an extra large, white talking eagle. "Athena my child, this is your father. I need to talk to you." He spoke in a low whispered voice.
The statue eminated a light blue aura, as the stone around the statue's face began to soften into flawless skin, the blank marble irises shift into a dark deep brown eyes brimming with knowledge, and the statue's stoic expression came to life. "Greetings, father." Athena spoke. The statue looked down at the eagle, from Zeus's point of view even as an eagle, she dwarfed even any of his current temple representions.
"My child, are you aware of what has been going on in the countryside? I visit you in hopes.....that these events have not encroached into your lovely city...has it?" he asked. A deep sigh of concern escaped from her lips, she knew what Zeus was inquiring.
"I'm afraid so, although not in the same frequency as the occurrences in the country side. It is not of my concern on the matters of borders of the land. If what is happening is part of nature, I can not change it.", she proclaimed, the matters of the metropolitan area of Athens were Athena's jurisdiction. " What ever may be happening in the countryside, I assure you father, these are merely just criminals who have decided to be bold enough to desecrate my city. Justice will prevail, even if it mean I shall have to strengthen law and order." She sternly declared, although she was not as empathetic in an emotional sense, she was determined to make Athens a city of order, culture and a safe haven for its citizens.
Zeus, ruffling his feathers a little, felt it odd that she would be dismissive of Athens's rural lands. "But surely my dear, are you not concerned about the common farmer? After all, they do contribute to the Athens.", he argued. "....do you remember that fairytale I once told you when you were younger, the one about Lycaon?", he affectionately asked.
Athena stared at Zeus unamused, "You mean when I freshly arrived into existence? If your memory failed you father....I was no child when you told me that story.....why are you wasting my time with nostalgia?" she harshly replyed, she felt that every second Zeus was talking to her was a second wasted of her time. Time that she could be vigilantly be helping her city.
Zeus lowered his head a little, his fatherly affections weren't always well received by Athena. Unlike the majority of his offspring, Athena was born from his head fully grown, so she never really learned how to be empathetic to anyone, even her father. She was born with ambition, wisdom and a head for progress, why would she ever need to have such silly emotions as empathy and compassion? Zeus felt as if he may have irritated her, he had the most patience with Athena inspite of her cold responses. "I ask, because I wasn't being fully honest with you...it was not merely a story I told to you.....it is entirely true... everything....the only part of the story I left out....was my inaction to kill him...I'm afraid he could be still alive. These animal attacks have something to do with him....I can feel it my gizzard.", he warned.
Athena was visible unamused at his pun, but she was more offended at the thought her own father thought she would be as naive is the rest of his offspring would be to assume every grand tale of his past was just "merely stories". "Hmf, you honestly believe that I did not know? Do you forget where I came from?", she scowled. "If what you ask of me originates from the countryside, go and inquire Hermes of such things.....I have no time for such matters.", feeling undignified at her father's questions.
Zeus again felt the vinegar in her words, using his wing he rubbed the top of his head, remembering the terrible pain he had felt birthing Athena that very faithful day. "No....I assure my dear...I have not forgotten.", he spoke in the traumatic tone. One would too speak of such a memory with contempt and fear if one had to experience having the top of their head split in two. "Well, I see that I have....taken more than enough of your precious time. I shall take my leave..... goodbye child. I hope things go back in order to your standards." he turned around, trotted to the top of the Acropolis's stairs, took a leap into the air and sored to find Hermes.
Athena without any further interruptions, loosened her powers over the statue, and it had returned to it's normal state. Unbeknownst to both of the gods, a spy was amongst the temple walls. She looked very much human, but her glare was wild and her grin was sinister. Armed with the knowledge that Athena, Athens great and wise patron goddess, had no intentions of even looking into the countryside, she ran down the Acropolis's stairs, down to the quite streets and down towards the shadowy alleyways where a black market of sorts was underway. The spy looked for a marker of her master, she looked until she stumbled on a craving she made several days prior of claw marks. She pushed the carvings like a button, opening a small passage way, into the underground catacombs of Athens. She crawled in and closed the opening. She escaped the city limits, to the open trail back to Delphi. She walked none stop and didn't break a sweat. After almost a full day of walking, she had found a gate, gaurded by two unidentifiable gaurds whom wore no emblems of any Greek army. She walks to the opening to speak with them to let her in. At the first the gaurds were reluctant, thinking she was an intruder, until she growled at the two foolish gaurds for thinking otherwise. The gaurds sheepishly move aside, letting her in, obviously she did not need a password. Entering into the void of the gate entrance, she turned around, "and if I catch you two QUESTIONING me ever again, I'll have BOTH your hearts served to your highness on a gold platter!" she shrilled at them, from that point on, she walked down the path.
The spy continued the long, dank passage, the walls slowly transitioned from cobblestone, to excavated bedrock and finally to a natural stoney cavern. She was almost home to New Lycadia, where she and several other converted citizens, gathered information from the surface.
As she walked, she felt her skin crawl and itch, her joints hurting, and her teeth feeling as if they were being pulled out by the roots. "Hehehe, the sun must be going down" she growled gleefully. Her face burned as she felt everything stretch and pull, her nails grew into strong claws and her posture huntched over. Fur grew throughout her body, she shook and readjusted much of her own clothes so that the fur didn't grow through the textile making an already uncomfortable transformation worse. The change ended with a surge of dopamine and adrenaline, she let out a howl and started to run faster down the cavern with her regained agility.
In the King's Throne room, King Lycaon was inspecting some intruders that had somehow found their way through the cave entrence near Delphi. He glared down at the three Roman soldiers whom apparently had stumbled upon A DIFFERENT cave entrence farther from Delphi. "Hhhhmhmmhmmm.....far frrrrrom home.... aren't we?" He snarled. The Roman soldiers were shaking, chattering their teeth and regretting the very thought that tempted them into the cave. ".....you two" pointing at a taller soldier and the one next to him, "will make wonderful additions to my army....as for you." he points to a more portly soldier, "will make a fine meal for my court..... slaughter this one for the kitchen....as for those two, convert them...and....give them a taste of what's to come from their new lives down here." he ordered. The two soldiers screamed for their lives while their comrade was taken to another room....never to be seen again. Lycaon sat back down, "play something sweet...for tonight I shall have Italian for dinner." he chuckled, a small group of converted bards began to crudely play on flutes and lyres, unfortunately for Lycaon, these bards were having a difficult time adapting to their claws and lack of dextrous lips to play. He groaned after a few seconds, "Never mind!.....send those amateurs to practice....it would be a terrible shame to waste their potential as musicians." he gorwled, he was correct in his statement though, it would have been a waste of wolf venom of he converted a Delphian band of bards for nothing.
He sat on his throne, frustrated at some lack of surface world necessities, he couldn't wait for some good news.
A scout scampered towards him, "Your majestic one! Amara is back from Athens with good news my lord!" the scout announced.
King Lycaon gave a side glare mostly for the brazen audacity of this petulant scout to just SIMPLY come in unannounced himself, but even the King couldn't resist giving a toothy sinister grin. "Well well well, better brrring her in." he sneared. Amara was a mystery woman, she wasn't from Greece but neither was she from the Mediterranean inspite her name. Rumor has it she was from far up north, where the infamous "Norse men" were raiding and pillaging villages. Her platinum blonde hair had turned into a dark brown when she changed. Due to such a drastic side-effect, she's used it to her advantage, during the day she looks like a regular Greek woman, by night she was a wolf. At the moment, she was King Lycaon's best spy.
"Your highness! I have news from those pompous Athenians! Hehehe, it seems their glorious patron.... doesn't care for the little people of the countryside." She relayed. She was rubbing her claws together in anticipation to Lycaon's reaction.
The king's smile slowly grew from ear to ear. "Wonderful news.......so...the countryside is open for attack?" he questioned.
"Oh yes yes my Lord! Even the great Zeus couldn't convince Athena to even glance to the countryside! Foolish greek gods!" she chattered away.
Suddenly the tooth smile Lycaon was sporting, melted into a snarling growl. "ZEUS??! HE KNOWS OF MY PLANS?!?" he crawled towards, looking at if he was going to lunge at her throat, he grabbed her by the neck. "WHAT DOES ZEUS KNOW OF MY PLANS?!? SPEAK YOU WRETCHED EX-WHORE!" he roared.
Having a tough time even breathing, she struggled to speak. "He only asked to w-watch out for you mm-my lord. He doesn't seem to ~~mn* she was about to pass out as Lycaon was actually squeezing her throat with every word she spoke. Let her go, coughing for air on the floor. He had enough of this, what was supposed to be good news really turned out to be a sign that he was slipping into complacency. He was too soft, he wasn't being serious enough, first the intruders now Zeus of all gods was on his trail.
"GgggrrrrRRROOOOAAAARRRRR! GATHER THE WARRIORS! STRENGTH THE BARRACKS! Make sure there are no mistakes! Tonight, we strike Athens.......Once Athens falls, it shall be the surface entrence of New Lycadia....with Athens out of the way....I shall have one of the strongest armies in all of the world....such a shame the great goddess herself would turn a blind eye on such a blatant weak point.", he declared. He was again inturped by the same scout again, this time he was tugging on Lycaon's robes. King Lycaon slowly turned around, this time astounded at the scout's legendary disrespect. "....what....do you want?" He growled.
"sir, I'm not sure of you'd like to know, but something is happening with the Delphians. They're active again.", he cheerfully told. He had this vapid smile on his face, completely not reading the situation correctly.
King Lycaon turned around to glare even more deeply into the scout's eyes, in attempts to show him why no one embarrasses the king as he did. "....and....why is THAT important?" he asked with teeth fully bared.
The scout's ear shaked with something irritating it and scratched the itch. "Because word on the street is that the god of wine and the god of war is going to fight!" he literally had no idea that this wasn't truly important, but he just wanted to share.
Lycaon raised his claw at the scout, unblinkingly staring at him, he was about to land a killing blow to his face when the cogs in his head started turning. He realized that if in some way, he could use this spectacle to his advantage. He started to laugh, triggering the scout to laugh with him, Lycaon then put his claw on the scout's shoulder and stopped laughing. "Next time.....please do announce yourself. If you disrespect my authority again." He paused, "I'm going to cut you open." He finished with a grin, and patted the scout on the head, turned him around and kicked him. The scout yelped and scampered away back to his post.
End of chapter 7
[Author's notes: It has come to my attention that Delphi is located on mainland Greece and is not an island as I have been referring to it throughout the "greek-Bros" series. I heavily apologize for this error and will make no further reference of "Island of Delphi" after this chapter.]
#this just in#im a FuCkInG moron and i didn't know Delphi was part of mainland Greece and NOT AN ISLAND.#please ignore my mistake and no further references to Delphi as an island will continue past this chapter#greek bros#greek-Bros#greek bros: the return of an old enemy#chp7#zeus#athena#Lycaon#dionysus#ares#greek gods#greek mythology#fanfiction#short story
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True Love & Nostalgia, & Deepest Beliefs
Love & seduction are an interwoven pair. Beautiful, but edged with potential tragedy.
Much of that tragedy comes from the modern world being designed to be incredibly seductive. I blush to say it, but my frist & deepest love was reading. I blush, because it's a little odd to take this idea as deep as it goes. I loved to read stories, I would curl up & fantasize worlds as I read them for days on end. I think I loved reading deeper than I've loved any other thing or person in my life. Therefore, a tickle of awkwardness talking about this.
I would say I loved reading deeper than I've loved any woman. That's hard to say as a very adult man. But upon reflection I do consider it true. True Love is a reserved term, & of too great an import to waste, but if it is possible to say this straight faced, I had a true love for reading as a child. But that love died, & my heart is scarred, covered in the scars of nostalgia.
I think this is a more common feeling than we admit, as adults, just how deep our love grows for that which forms us as children. In particular I remember this one series of books, which I gaze upon up on my shelf as I write this. Arthur Randsome's Swallows & Amazons classics from the 1930s.
I remember curling up on the couch wrapped in blankets with my mother & sister, as she read it to us, so young I remember her explaining words we'd never heard nearly every page. Crackling fire, howling wind & the darkness of a winter evening outside the 4 walls surrounding us. As romantic a memory as you wish to ever imagine. This was my formative experience with reading.
I went from learning reader books directly into the Hobbit by Tolkien. My father was reading it too us, but going far too slow for me, I took matters into my own hands. I had to guess the meaning of a lot of words, but by the end I was reading silently. Hopefully this sets the stage, unveiling what sort of child I was & what relationship I had to reading. I was deeply immursed from the beginning.
I remember vividly the day my love of reading died. I believe I was reading the last chapters of The Last Battle, by C. S. Lewis. I sensed a battle within myself & so perhaps within the author, but I was not quite cued into the idea of considering the author a separate mind to his work at the time. That battle was of how to bring the deeply wrot threads of emotional connection into completion within the story. If you know the story, know this, I found myself broken over the idea of destruction of all that I'd known being the gate to an eternity of happily ever after. I wanted more stories, dammit!
In the following days the realization that formed, grew & burst upon my mind to fill me with murky darkness was this; all stories must end. I felt true & utter heart break. I have never grieved anything with more furvor than I grieved that day. Not my own tragedies, or human life or the horrors of the world. I faced perhaps the most profound truth in this world head on, & it broke me asunder.
One beautiful thing with books is that you can reread them, the magic doesn't fade from the pages completely, perhaps no matter how many times you turn them. But this truth is little solice to me personally, as I am one who is ever exploring & so very curious what what is new. Knowing that new thing too is also fated to death, this is the greatest realized terror of my life & the mere consideration of its utter inevitable is truth is the catastrophe central to all my conception & action in the world.
Sustainability as a conceptual alternative, an different mode for reality, is the most beautiful belief I can conceive of. That we can tell stories that tell new stories, or reread our living stories over & over again each time with completely fresh eyes. This heals my soul & restores my faith in existence.
Heaven might be a beautiful concept, but it may also be a phantom. It is I think something we should not wish for in absolute or need, as the nature of our current world is such that if we form it properly, it is ever telling a new story unfolding before us, one of us, that is potentially evergoing.
There is a concept in eastern philosophy, especially the Yogic tradition & Hindu belief. Atman is Brahman.
"Yourself, is the Divine Self."
We are the eyes of God living breath wondering upon the world immursed in the stories of ourselves. Heaven on Earth is on us, it's not a perfected crystal palace, but the world in which we can live sustainably & tell each other & also live, the best & most beautiful stories of ourselves.
Walk into a recent renovated & cleaned stain glass cathedral. It's not a foreboding Gothic place of oppressive reverence, but rather a bright, airy & joyous place. The man made cathedral mimics the nature of the true inner sanctuary. An old growth forest. Stained glass filters light much as leaves in the breeze do. Arches & columns mimic the towering trunks & arching branches of formidably ancient forest giants. Incense even mimics the musky & heavy scent of life roiling in vibrant decay upon the dampen earth. The alter a hilltop, blessings & purification rain. All that is symbolically important has its origins deep in the evolved world around us, life itself, all that has been upon the earth thus far, gives us this depth of experience & wonder.
I say this, because I do not despise the world. I see some in my feeds who do, with furvent religious zeal, & it saddens me. Suffering in this world doesn't bring heaven closer to us, only deepens the grip of hell upon the threads of our souls. Wishing it upon others, as if to purify them in some grand cosmic sense is a pitifully shallow black mark upon your own, & does nothing for the merit of what words & ideals are wrot upon your inner, deepest self.
"The greatest of these is love."
Discard faith if it challenges love, discard hope even. Cling to love more dearly than life itself. That was the lesson. The correct lesson in its own terms, but also the lesson I in myself learned across time. Some might say it leads astray, but I feel more found than anyone else I know. What is faith bonded in hate? Hope in the absence of compassion?
I grew up deep in the Christian tradition, & so have always felt a strongly engrained cultural connection to what considers itself the trad community on this site. But I'm not exactly of it. I care deeply about traditions as a living thing, not 'the tradition' as set in stone.
To truly save the world we need to question everything we consider unquestionable, but without losing ourselves along the way, & end prematurely in the journey. My sense is I want to engage more directly in consideration of belief, deep truths & the true nature of things in this world.
This was wonderful to write, as a personal essay & contemplation of self. I want to use lovely in regards to this as something of a philosophical manifesto, as to me it's a lovely summation of the root & ground of my own emotive journey in regards to fundamental philosophical & metaphysical truths. This blog is my own self & sanctuary where I speak from my inner being with gravitas & melodramatic intregue, but little sense of appealing to expectation or norms as set by culture or other people around me.
I wish there were more places in the world curated to be that for people, a grand & potent opening of the mind, not a wallowing in the dark recesses or a pretense of socially satisfactory & curated intellectualisms, but a careful, yet open unfolding of one's own truth. I hope that you, dear reader, value that in the nature of this blog as much as I do, & so enjoy the journey as much as I have so far, & will continue to, as I go forward.
🌳♂️ Masculine Way of Life!🧔🥊
#alternative masculinity#masculine#masculinity#male#Books#dark academia#academia aesthetic#Reading#Christianity#Christian#Childhood#Nostalgia#Belief#C S Lewis#Love#Romantic#Mine#Dark academia
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@madamdirectcr whispered: It's late, while on their 'adventure', when the blonde woman's fingers come to Aerith's hair, playing at a braid once they're parked up for the night. She's turned some of the wayside late-summer flowers and red autumn leaves into a crown for herself. "Tomorrow we'll be at Junon. We can try to see my family." Despite the calmness of the action, she seems anything but calm, her expression worried, a weight bore uneasily upon those shoulders. Going home... would not be easy.
It’s an odd kind of calm that sits between them; an eerie sort of trust forged on the ruins of a life so often tainted by corporate malevolence. These past few weeks with Scarlet had been like an entirely new world; a respected understanding and kinship having been wrought from the ashes of everything they’d been forced to sacrifice in pursuit of freedom. It’s a life of running, a constant unyielding thing tangled in desperation as much as determination - and as such Aerith cherished these moments of normality. It felt far less radical this way, familiar and soothing even if it was a wholly unpredictable endeavour.
Scarlet’s hands upon her hair had conjured a sense of nostalgia she’d almost forgotten existed, the silent ache for her home and her mother now muted down into a melancholic ache, deep within her bones. The blonde was certainly no Elmyra, but this was the closest to normality she’d felt in weeks. It was bordering on maternal, a strange kind of comfort really - although for which of them, Aerith wasn’t entirely sure. There was tranquility in the repetitive motion of digits, the hypnotic criss cross of one strand over the other a welcome distraction, until the point where it wasn’t.
It’s the words that have her turning, her head shifting as far as she can without tugging at her hair in the process, to meet her unlikely companion with a look that conveyed all the compassion for which she was famed. “How long has it been?” It’s barely above a whisper, but there’s no probing motivation behind it. Aerith simply wanted to help. Wanted to ease that tension lingering in overwrought shoulders and still whatever conflict was threatening to consume her. If talking about it would help, then she wouldn’t hesitate to listen, but conversely, if words were impossible, then she would simply sit here instead, a calming presence to ground and soothe in whatever capacity she was indeed capable of.
“It’ll be okay, you know.” Optimism dripped from well-meaning words, fingertips raising to brush across flaxen strands as she offered a smile seeped in so much conviction. “And if it’s not, well, I’m afraid you’re just stuck with me and my infectious sunshine regardless.”
#madamdirectcr#Have I mentioned lately that Scarlet is an actual queen and I absolutely idolise her?#This was so soft and she's so vulnerable.#;_;#Let's get this woman some hugs stat.
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Stages of Grief
A bit different than my usual writing style i think, just a quick(ish) thing. Do the stages of grief apply to a life? When you lose your way, that is also a sort of grief, is it not ?
Vetrius and, in a way, resolutions. Initially inspired by @tyrias-library ‘s resolutions prompt but idk if it follows that theme enough to still count
warning for themes of depression and talk of suicide
Shock and Denial
Childhood is innocent, yes, but at what point does that naivete start to change into a painful awareness of those around you? Vetrius could pinpoint the exact moment.
She’d never given much thought to her own image until here. She was happy, and sociable. She enjoyed chatting with the others in her Fahrar and never thought twice about offering a hand to another.
It seemed this very thing was what would bring her new revelation around. Practicing in the yard (swords today) after a heavy rain. When her sparring partner slipped backwards, falling heavily to the ground as their sword thudded away, there was no hesitation on her end. She dropped her sword, stepped forward to offer her hand to her friend, and froze at the look on their face.
They sneered up at her angrily, eyes glittering. Vet felt numb as they slapped her paw from them and scrambled to their paws themself. She didn’t react even as the smaller cub shoved at her shoulders, making her take a step back as she blinked at them, still processing.
“Burn it! You’re so...so..SOFT! Can’t you just be normal?” The other cub hissed at her before stalking away. Vet felt her ears burning under the weight of the stares of the others. Her stomach churned. How had she missed this? Now that she looked, she noticed the pattern of slit gazes and twitching tails. How bodies angled from her and the line of the shoulders grew tense and flat.
Vet clenched her fangs. No, no, this was fine. This was normal. Nothing had happened.
Pain and Guilt
In the wake of her newfound hyper vigilance of others, Vetrius seemed to see evidence of her wrongness everywhere. Always too ready to offer a smile, to compromise, to lend a hand. These came naturally to her, but now it was soured by the jarring realization that these weren’t strengths, but weaknesses. It sat heavy within her, writhing and occasionally growing overwhelming and clawing up her throat.
At night she curled up on her bunk in a tight ball hugging her knees to her chest, tail wrapped around her. She clenched her teeth against the cresting waves of despair within her, clawed at the sheets in the breathless pain of emotion. What had she done to be so alone?
Anger
Slowly, so slowly, Vet’s pain and despair started to boil into anger. Why was it so hard for others to just accept each other, to be kind? Why was SHE the odd one out, for having fucking compassion? How dare she give a shit, how dare they treat her like this!
She withdrew ever further within herself. No longer attempting to bridge the gap between her and others, what was the point, she didn’t matter to them and she didn’t want to. No longer was she content either, to ignore snide remarks made against her, and her claws and fangs became ready to bear as she growled back.
She thought it was ironic, in a blood boiling way, how before she was too soft, but now she seemed too harsh, too prickly. The others avoided her now, not out of second hand embarrassment but out of a sort of discomfiting fear that the dog they’d beat might bite back now. She felt too big in her fur these days, felt as if she was always clenching her fangs against something- she didn't know what, just that it would be horrible to unleash.
Wasn’t she perfect now though? She thought with a snarl. Big and angry and ready to fight.
(and Bargaining)
She didn’t need them to accept her though. She could just- run away. Start a new life.
This thought manifested in different ways, but quickly took a turn for unhealthy. To fantasize of a new life is okay, but not when you stray into the territory of ‘can i just die now so i can have a new life’. The thought turned into claws over skin, an increasing recklessness with herself, an always prickling sense of being prepared for a fight against her peers.
And then it happened. A heavy storm that her band was caught in, trekking back home after some field practice. Heavier than normal. Vet foolishly remarked this out loud, and instantly remembered herself as another scoffed. “Scared of a little water?” was the sneered reply.
Vet felt her fur grow hot, start to bristle at the shoulders. Felt that ugly something rear up in her, ready to bite. And just as she opened her mouth, a flash of lightning blinded her. In the receding bright and boom of thunder, they all stared in shocked awe as a large portal opened in front of them.
Instantly her band began to bicker about what to do. Vet felt her anger fade as she considered. “We should go back and tell the others, see what they want to do about this.” It seemed sensible to her, what were they gonna do, step through it? Nothing else to do but find someone who could at least take a proper look.
Except- to her band- it translated into cowardice, a want to leave the situation and have someone else handle it. “You would say that! Hah! Why dont you just run along for us, we’ll stay here and do the hard work.” And suddenly the anger was back and boiling up and finally, Vetrius could no longer bared it.
It radiated off her, heavy and palpable, and even the storm seemed to quiet as everyone hushed and stared at her, waiting for the wave to crest. Her clenched fists trembled, blood mixing with the rain where her claws dug into her own skin.
She thought about turning around. Though about ripping into every single one, fighting until they had no choice but to admit that she was Strong, Stronger than them even. Distantly, breathlessly, and almost furiously disappointed in herself for it, she knew that she wasn’t going to do that.
Instead, she took a deep breath, and stepped through the portal. She would have a new life, one way or another.
Depression
The mists were unlike anything Vetrius had ever thought to expect. They were...ineffable, indescribable, in a way that sometimes struck an odd chord of nostalgia within her.
They were dangerous too, she quickly learned. When she first stepped into the mists from the portal, still dripping with rain water as it snapped shut behind her, she’d felt only a numb angry sort of joy. She’d stuck it to them! Except...what now?
Time passed, or at least Vetrius thought it did. It was hard to tell, some areas seemed to lack any sort of sun or moon even. She could measure it only by her hunger, which stopped being effective as she slowly began to starve, the small meals she was able to catch not quite enough.
Often she could feel the weight of a gaze on her, or would snap her head around looking for the source of an imagine whisper. She must be going crazy. She must be dying. The thought came almost as a relief to her. Or...she wanted it to be a relief, so she refused to admit that it wasn’t.
She struggled on and on and on. The worse her shape became, the more she struggled, the more the panic within her started to rise. Her admittance was just on the tip of her tongue but still she couldn’t let it out.
It was in the dead of night. She’d come across some berries and, starving, had eaten them. It was the wrong choice, she could feel her stomach rolling. By the time the cold sweat of fear had reached her, she knew it was too late, whatever she had eaten was undeniably poison and finally she was faced with the reality that she was going to die, possibly any moment.
Her limbs began to tingle, her vision growing hazy. She shook her head dizzily, trying to stay in focus. Her breaths came in harsh pants. And finally, FINALLY, her realization hit her in a bright burst of light.
(the upward turn)
She...she didn’t want to die! She could feel the thought fill her, breaking through the walls she’d built against her own self. She didn’t want to die, she wanted to live! She WANTED to live.
Her teeth creaked as she clenched them, heaving breaths through her nose desperately as she crumbled but suddenly unwilling to give up.
But it was too late, wasn’t it? Her arms shook, her mouth watered sickeningly. And- and-
Her vision was growing bright, so bright! She could barely see through the blinding light now. She was supposed to stay AWAY from the light, right? She stumbled back, not realizing that her vision had suddenly cleared, her limbs quickly regaining control.
“Be not afraid.” The voice sounded amused, and comforting. Vet could taste a spring breeze, despite the dusty crumbling walls of some mist castle around her. The light started to recede, and finally Vet realized that she wasn’t going to die, actually.
She looked up at the being of light, and it caused a weird feeling to squirm through her. Vet was kneeling, she realized, looking up at this angel (what else could it be?) with teary eyes. The Angel extended a hand down to her, the limb solidifying within the fluctuating light.
Unthinking, Vet blinked away her tears as she reached up, took the hand, and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.
Reconstruction
“You want to leave this place.” Hearing Angel’s voice wasn’t always a common thing. Even now that they had learned some of their bond, Angel usually spoke through impressions of emotions or flashes of images in Vet’s mind.
Vet faltered. Much time had passed now, Vet was positive. She wasn’t a cub anymore. After Angel saved her, the two had just seemed to be entwined. Their bond wasn’t an instant thing after that, but it grew quickly as Angel followed and watched over Vet. The two grew together, and it was...nice, despite it all, Vet thought at least. She’d had a lot of growing to do, she’d realized.
Vet hadn’t had a home in a long time, but this place still wasn’t it. If Angel had asked before now, the fear of facing reality might have driven Vet to deny the statement, but intuitive as their connection was now she must have sensed that Vet was ready to face these issues.
Acceptance and Hope
Vet didn’t vocally accept, but Angel’s presence brightened at the responding emotion of agreement and acceptance reflected from Vetrius. And excitement, even.
A part of Vetrius felt terrified, as Angel steered her towards a portal that would spit her back out into Tyria after so long. But it was overpowered by the thrill of hope running through her.
She’d gone through so much, but she’d also learned so much. She was ready to accept the pain she’d been through: in her childhood, in the mists, the pain she may yet be to face. As long as she keeps growing, she’ll be okay.
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55 Albums Released in 2019 That Splash Oat Milk In My Earl Grey
This year felt like slo-mo, a holding pattern and a fast-forward button stumbling towards unknown ends. I spent the early months in paternal bliss and sleep deprivation, caring for my newborn daughter, then spent the rest of the year running to slow down… to make the most of small moments with my family, to juggle that thing every lifestyle magazine calls the work-life balance, to know when I need help and being willing to ask for it, to making priorities with loved ones.
Also, after years of oolongs and a staunch no-milk-in-tea-except-milk-teas policy, I started putting honey and oat milk in my Earl Grey, an old tea standby that's felt warmly familiar in colder months. Similarly, I dug my heels into familiar-to-me gnarly metal, deep drone and abrasive punk this year, uninterested in poptimist takes on indie-rock. In an effort to maximize more time with new family and less with bulls***, I leaned hard into my Viking's Choice column at NPR Music (which went weekly!) to shout out underground debauchery and beauty to anyone who would listen.
Below are 55 albums (and a few reissues and archival releases) that hit me in different ways over 2019. No ranking, just links out to Bandcamp where available. They come paired with emoji because that's a thing I do on Twitter.
See also:
Viking's Choice: The Year In The Loud And The Weird (my annual year-end episode of All Songs Considered)
20 Punk Albums Released In 2019 That Flip Eggs, Pick Up Chains
20 Metal Albums Released In 2019 That Bluurgh Over Sick Riffs
A nine-hour playlist of 2019 jamz
But first, some stray thoughts:
Ta-Nehisi Coates' still-ongoing Captain America run has been extremely rewarding. A beloved superhero comes to terms with the line between patriotism and nationalism as Coates underlines that American progress often comes from reluctance.
Daniel Warren Johnson's Murder Falcon spoke to me not only as a metalhead who loves cartoonishly kick-ass violence, but also as a dude with a tender heart… that final issue still gets me in the feels.
Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours is secretly a trilogy of movies about the loving, painstaking process of creation, specifically music. I'd never seen any of them until paternity leave (and a sleeping baby) gave me hours to binge long-neglected to-watch lists. In 1993's Blue, in particular, a composition mirrors the grief of Juliette Binoche in an exquisite performance.
Tiny Desk concerts I produced for NPR Music in 2019: American Football (with a children’s choir!), Thou, Erin Rae, Carly Rae Jepsen (sort of), Jimmy Eat World and Mount Eerie (videos coming in 2020).
There’s a gallery at Glenstone, a truly stunning museum experience, that’s literally just a room full of books, a sculpted wooden bench and a large window that looks out on the rolling hills of Maryland. I could spend hours there.
The second season of KCRW's Lost Notes, hosted by Jessica Hopper, built episodes like albums, sequenced with eureka moments throughout. See: the story of a teenage Farsi New Wave sibling duo and a difficult and necessary reassessment of John Fahey through the women in his life.
High Spirits (May 7, Atlas Brew Works) is such a force for good. Heavy metal singalongs about love, friendship and positivity. I feel like this band needs to tour with Sheer Mag to be fully appreciated by an unknowing audience.
Has your baseball team ever won the pennant with the sleeping baby on your chest? So many silent screams of joy in our household as the Nats not only won the National League, but the whole dang World Series. I haven't lived in a city/state with a baseball team that's gone to the World Series since 1995.
Circuit Des Yeux's Haley Fohr (Dec. 5, Hirshhorn) tuned her voice to feedback hum and the rest that followed felt like a wordless eulogy for 2019. I felt renewed by it.
I can't think of a prettier song released in 2019 than "This Time Around" by Jessica Pratt. It is saudade whispered into the wind.
This was my Linda Ronstadt year. Heart Like a Wheel, Canciones de mi Padre, her records with the Stone Poneys — the Queen of LA, with a voice that both bursts out of and melts into dusk, softened the edges of long days with an equally adventurous and easygoing spirit.
🚙 Petrol Girls, Cut & Stitch: In 2019, it was crucial — life-affirming and -saving, even — to make your own noise. "This is the sound / It moves in our bodies / It passes through time / Brings what came before us," Petrol Girls' Ren Aldridge screamed at the top of a turbulent punk record filled with compassion. That boundless philosophy resonated with me this year — to listen and absorb more deeply, to excavate the traces of memory in music.
👽 Blood Incantation, Hidden History of the Human Race: Simultaneously exists in the gaping maw of death-metal tradition and the galaxy brain of its future.
💾 Kali Malone, The Sacrificial Code: Seeks the solemnity of the drone in the pipe organ, but leans into the vulnerability pushed through the air.
🕹️ billy woods & Kenny Segal, Hiding Places: An album-length self-excavation that crawls through moldy memories in a brutal poetry that is at times darkly funny but mostly wrestles with personal and societal truths that'll leave you touched, shook.
📟 Holly Herndon, PROTO: One of our deepest thinkers went to the past to make music from the future.
🚨 Rakta, Falha Comum: Creepazoid emanations from a subterranean plane.
🐣 Sunwatchers, Illegal Moves: Ecstatic protest music summoning the beauty and rage of Alice Coltrane, Sonny Sharrock, Rhys Chatham and Hawkwind.
🏞 Bill Orcutt, Odds Against Tomorrow: The most engaging, radical, but surprisingly accessible solo guitar album of the year. Bill Orcutt's ragged-yet-tender guitar skronk gives shaggy texture to rapturous melodies.
🍕 Control Top, Covert Contracts: This hits some dance-punky Erase Errata sweet spots for me, but with the technical finesse of a power trio.
🚟 Real Life Rock & Roll Band, Hollerin' the Spirit: Applies minimalist techniques to rumbling, dueling guitar histrionics with a reckless, but locked-in energy. Never woulda thunk American Football and Henry Flynt could hoedown together.
🐠 Caroline Shaw & Attacca Quartet, Orange: Balances austere beauty with rumbling earth. Riveting music for string quartet.
💥 Mdou Moctor, Ilana (The Creator): Where ZZ Top bombast, Black Sabbath riffs and Tuareg trance rhythms swirl into an acid-rock stomp.
👑 Vagabon, Vagabon: Goes so many places, yet always returns home.
🎭 JPEGMAFIA, All My Heroes Are Cornballs: A neon-freaked feast blasted in slow mo and fast forward all at once.
🌆 Denzel Curry, ZUU: Dude's a metal rapper without a metal band, but if he ever started one, I'm down 100 percent.
💨 Whistling Arrow, Whistling Arrow: An avant UK supergroup of prepared guitar, violin, electronics and hypnotic percussion drinks deep of dark lagers and mossy earth.
🐸 101 Notes on Jazz: Things are getting hard around the boloney hole...
🐳 M. Sage, Catch a Blessing: Warm, fuzzy world-building from blocks of sound stretched and warped into a new nostalgia.
🚇 Mizmor, Cairn: Deliberate and patient in its annihilating pace; lumbering, yet regally melodic riffs echo into a chasm of feedback.
🌅 Takafumi Matsubara, Strange, Beautiful And Fast: Next-level grind from the Gridlink mastermind and friends. While No One Knows What the Dead Think picked up where Discordance Axis left off, Takafumi Matsubara shreds into the future.
🐎 American Football, LP3: A reunion that keeps on giving and growing. Impressionistic in its quietly bursting arrangements and attuned to the individual talents of its vocal guests, especially that stunning duet with Hayley Williams.
🔋 v/a, Seitō: In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun: This compilation does for modern Japanese women in experimental music what P.S.F.’s Tokyo Flashback comps did for the Japanese psychedelic scenes of yore.
👗 Carly Rae Jepsen, Dedicated: Didn't hold together as much as I wanted, or play like E•MO•TION's late-night mixtape, but every time one of its singles popped up on a friend's playlist -- "Julien," "Want You in My Room," "The Sound" and especially the slow-burn synth-pop exhaustion of "Too Much" -- I'd think, "Carly Rae Jepsen is the Queen of the Song I Needed Right Now."
🌕 Rong, wormhat: Just bonkers. Boston's Rong channels the joyous chaos of Japanese punks Melt-Banana and the aggro skronk of Brainiac with a tad of Deerhoof's weirdo-pop hooks.
✊🏿 Sounds of Liberation, Sounds of Liberation / Unreleased Columbia University 1973: Free jazz and funk band deep in spiritual grooves. Killer performances all around, but such a trip to hear more from young vibraphonist Khan Jamal during his Drum Dance to the Motherland era.
🐬 Great Grandpa, Four of Arrows: If Sixpence None the Richer made an emo record, but only had Return of the Frog Queen on the mood board.
📳 Sarah Louise, Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars: One of my favorite guitarists right now. Digitally processes melodies and single notes in an electronic elation landing somewhere between Robert Fripp, Alice Coltrane and Terry Riley.
📮 Sarah Hennies, Reservoir 1: An immersive sound cycle in constant motion, a quiet rumble that slowly transforms in and out of a glorious clatter.
👣 Psychedelic Speed Freaks, Psychedelic Speed Freaks: Munehiro Narita essentially picks up where High Rise left off, still plays the guitar like it's about to blow up.
🍩 Town Portal, Of Violence: Most instrumental post/prog-rock puts me to sleep, but this Danish trio illustrates just how dynamic and sound-rich this music can be.
🛀 Jim O'Rourke, steamroom 45: An electronic excavation from the deep abyss. The 37-minute "Sigaretstraat" is a master class in patience, dynamics and sublime dissonance.
🎀 Cristina Quesada, I Think I Heard a Rumor: Multi-lingual, ultra-chic dance-pop with super-smart synth arrangements. Think: Tiki drinks and mod dresses.
⏹ John Luther Adams, Become Desert: Truly time-less music; as in, music without time.
⏏ Julia Reidy, brace, brace: Late night, longform excursions that offer an alternate Blade Runner soundtrack with frenzied 12-string, fuzzy synth glossolalia and an Auto-Tuned bummer haze.
🚞 A Million Dollars, I Love Your Voice and I Love You: Weird and warped twee-pop that woulda headlined Silent Barn.
📠 Priests, The Seduction of Kansas: Truth-telling and truth-seeking through a mangled disco haze and bleak New Wave romanticism.
🏭 Werner Durand with Amelia Cuni and Victor Meertens, processions: Majestic drones capture an undulating wonder with enveloping somnolence.
🎳 Sheer Mag, A Distant Call: The denim-and-leather-jacket-wearing standard bearers of truly independent rock and roll double-downed on their sound, but opened their hearts a bit more.
📒 Susan Alcorn / Joe McPhee / Ken Vandermark, Invitation to a Dream: Illuminates the flickering motions of exploration.
😱 Serpent Column, Mirror in Darkness: Pitch-black metal chaos with forceful melodies twisted into the tableau. Honestly? Deathspell Omega but skramz.
🏅 Pernice Brothers, Spread the Feeling: Joe Pernice digs into his '80s record collection to return with some of his most delicately written, winsome guitar-pop in years and tons of one-liners: "Love is a shoeless charlatan, a silver-tongued huckster with a sadist’s lipless grin."
🍓 Kalie Schorr, Open Book: Whip-smart, hook-twanged country-pop raised on MTV2 pop-punk and Sheryl Crow.
📀 Angel Olsen, All Mirrors: In a year where we lost Scott Walker, this felt like a torch passed from 1969.
😪 Mount Eerie, Lost Wisdom pt. 2: Phil Elverum draws us in evermore, revisiting a beloved album, mode and collaborator (the remarkable Julie Doiron), and molding them into his ever-changing songwriting and circumstance. Contains the most tender couplet of the year, which I'll carry with me always: "If ever the bonfire that I carry around could warm you again / I will be out here in the weather for you glowing."
🙉 75 Dollar Bill, I Was Real: Serious hypno-grooves from these drone excavators.
👢 Karen Marks, Cold Cafe: The early '80s artist behind the Sky Girl comp's broodiest track gets a few more songs of existential synth-pop and jangly post-punk. Just wanna put them on mixtapes for friends.
🍻 Haunt, If Icarus Could Fly: Synthesizes an earnest, studied love for '80s heavy metal with tons of guitar harmonies and can-crushing anthems, yes, but also a ton of heart.
🍖 Bob Dylan, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The strangest, most mystical and wild Dylan persona in all of its face-painted glory.
🌹 A Pregnant Light, Broken Play: Damian Master's endless creativity and shameless bravado coalesce into a rugged beauty. As always, riffs for days.
🦄 Fire-Toolz, Field Whispers (Into the Crystal Palace): Clashes New Age synthscapes, clubby raves, jazz fusion and metal shrieks into an idiosyncratic master's pure creation.
🌇 Maria W Horn, Epistasis: Quiet, yet forceful acoustic elements are wrapped in the sinews of technology to blur composition. A stirring mix of icy string drones and minimalist piano.
🐲 Soul Glo, The N**** in Me Is Me: Distills the rage and terror of living in America while being black with blunt force.
🍢 Mára, Here Behold Your Own: Snapshots of a time before parenthood rendered in garbled organ, ambient guitar loops and echoing lullabies. Felt this one deeply.
🚙 The Go-Betweens, G Stands for Go-Betweens: The Go-Betweens Anthology - Volume 2: There's a live KCRW version of "Quiet Heart" that just absolutely destroys me. Deeply thankful for the presentation and preservation that's gone into these box sets.
😈 Bat for Lashes, Lost Girls: A coming-of-age concept album about a teenage vampire gang that was somehow severely overlooked. Some of Natasha's most tender songwriting and a rich synth-pop world that'd make M83 jealous.
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balkantalia mbti (pt. 1)
big sorry to everyone for this very niche post. i’m new to typing so if you have any thoughts please share!
Bosnia: INFP (FiNeSiTe)
I honestly considered Thinking for Bosnia, but I feel like INFP fits best. He has dominant Fe, which gives him a strict moral code to follow when making decisions. His low Te makes it difficult for him to follow through with plans. This, coupled with his Ne meant that when he was younger he had a lot of big plans that never came to fruition. His tertiary Si means that he’s prone to nostalgia and longing for the past. He strikes me as a typical moderately-developed INFP - empathetic, warm-hearted, and principled, even if he’s a little resentful due to people taking advantage of him in the past.
Bulgaria: ISTJ (SiTeFiNe)
One of the names for ISTJ is The Traditionalist, which is fitting for Bulgaria. His high Si makes him reliant on tradition and solutions that have worked in the past. This puts him at odds with ENFPs like Serbia and Macedonia, who are very much fight the system! destroy all traditions! sort of people. His low Ne makes him reluctant to try new things. His ambition (and success) in youth came from his Te, which, coupled with his then-underdeveloped Fi, meant that he had the ability to accomplish goals and set plans in motion without an established more compass to reign him in.
Croatia: ENTJ (TeNiSeFi)
Croatia is a very typical ENTJ - charming, ambitious, and resourceful. His dominant Ti gives him a clear sense of his goals and the ability to set them in motion well, while his Ni allows him to visualize how different courses of action will play out. His Se means that while it’s not his preferred method, he can think on his feet. I think that his Fi has only just recently started maturing - it’s where a lot of his pride comes from. It also makes him reluctant to show feeling and even disdainful of those who do, because he considers it weakness.
Greece: INTP (TiNeSiFe)
Finally, some characters with canon examples! Greece is such a typical INTP. High Ti users are natural philosophers, since Ti is all about objective, universal truths. You know how he’s always portrayed as weird? That’s Ne. His tertiary Si means that he can often be nostalgic for the past, and his inferior Fe makes him reluctant to form relationships with people. It also makes social cues a little difficult for him to understand (seen in that episode where he talks at Turkey about philosophy, rather than with him.) He meshes well with other high Ne users, such as Serbia (ENFP).
Part 2: https://staerkmaelk.tumblr.com/post/186993357988/balkantalia-mbti-pt-2
#balkantalia#hetalia#hetalia headcanons#aph bosnia#aph bulgaria#aph croatia#aph greece#aph serbia#aph macedonia#mbti#infp#istj#entj#intp#typology#yugotalia
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Lord of Misrule (Sequel to Peoples Poet)
I hear your voice waves echo through my music station Hi~ This is the new generation I'm Kelsey from the 21st century I vividly see you If you're not on a screen you're in my mind, Or in the astral galaxies inbetween Who is that?, is that yourself, you in your younger days or one of the characters you portrayed an androgynous man, wearing a badged jacket and pigtails under his fringe Making political satire that would make viewers laugh and cringe When your not fighting a roommate, your conveying your rambles through Anarchic poetry No wonder I feel this connection between you and me Your referencing Marx, playing Guitar Hero I sometimes see on a mirror your signature smudged in biro A dance, a playfight the odd tickle while I heard your snorting giggle Usually with fictional characters I only felt like I partly related to the characters and if I did get connected to some they would be animated soon I’d get slightly more invested when I learnt of a certain show you co-created which changed my life Someone left open a dressing room door, maybe it’s a portal to find out more On a runway, a show full of variety, yes he was originally a jab at light entertainment game show hosts But today considering his flamboyant aesthetic and attire, Guest Judge gigs for RuPaul is what Richie Rich would be after. I hear big ben chime, can you think any fictional tories that would’ve lived near number 10, his reputation for shows that had political satire would be intertwined see the subtext look at the state, Oh what was that again I was too busy gazing at Mr. B'stards gorgeous face Then again compared to trump and teresa Alan would be more suitable for running the country at this rate, yes some mean spirited episodes made him sound criminal but he had something in common with us, the public in general, aren’t we all at times quite cynical? There was this film I vaguely remember of this peter pan esque chap, dressed like a leprechaun, using gross out to get a cheap laugh, what was his name I forgot I recall a lot of references to snot When I was first learning of critiquing films, on the internet I saw a certain nostalgia critic, I stopped supporting him, if you can learn what his team went through however some details might make you sick I did warn you One of his reviews was of the flick involving that imaginary friend twit, after hearing a clip I couldn’t watch another bit, until recently last year a moment of realisation had hit, the same person playing that poet rick played Drop Dead Fred so I then finally finished it, it’s now one of my favourite films but for others it’s still trash or in their guilty pleasure pit Argh!, Planes attack, Oh no! We’ll all fall apart, Hurray it’s Lord Flashheart, a air pilot hunk still with the attitude of punk, smirking and flirting but he’ll make anyone consentually relax taking them on a flight through heaven and back, Woof! wearing uniforms at all times is a bit old when projecting the sucess, I know I’ll wear a dress. Slam, Bash, Pop and Snatch, the gas man is here Eddie!, open that door latch, their luck with love could use more uplift, but they’re alone, together in hammersmith, preparing christmas sprouts hiding self doubt, claiming to be a hard duo of louts but they’re always together, platonically and romantically out and about News and media is always complicated and messy, what about the days of a cheerful brummie named Kevin Turvey, reading his anecdotes, always with new hyperbole to quote One off, having to write him last minute must’ve been hard, I know he didn’t work long but doesn’t his conversational style sound like a certain Vicky Pollard. That other one off project some metalheads said was bland, the satirical band, new viewers wouldn’t know what to say they only know the name because it’s associated with bassist, astrophysicist icon Brian May, before so called spinal tap, playing at castle donnington just for a sarcastic laugh, if people didn’t know they weren’t musicians at gigs they would’ve been torn in half, not intending to win, Spider, Den, Vim and that banker Colin. I see a rift in my imagination shift With innovating Theatre, TV, Film and Comedy You’ve certainly done your bit sometimes i like to think what it would be like to have collaborated with you and your pals from the comic strip being apart of it,Operating a camera, managing the script of your guest appearance in a drama Even our celtic sounding names have some of the same letters You’ve made my life so much better From meeting new people, learning from your wise words and being my acting inspiration I feel like your a grandpa mentor of sorts you see, even if your not related to me I didn’t know I’d have so much in common with such a pan global phenomenon I’ve seen you since childhood, I didn’t know your bloody name until years after your lack of breath ended your flame, hearing that news what a shame, Life continues on, even if it’s often less fun, boring gimmicks and Anyone hates Everyone I guess now with society it’s out of fashion to regularly show compassion I wish if I was around in the 20th century watching one of your stage performances would’ve been nice to see, I wish we had met, in those other dimensions I enjoy the interactions but there’s limits to how vivid my dreams can get We had the same classic comic inspirations from Python to Porridge Because of that I’ve expanded my comedy knowledge I’m me and while I’ve been through trauma, regrets and drama You and other anarchist icons have helped teach me to be free Love will always be the answer as you will always be with your Barbara Sid, Bonnie and Rosie too, wow! they’ve grown who knows what the future will show? Thus concludes our subtext tale, we know your up there, waving at us Our lovable, 60 and counting The philosophically Anarchic Lord of misrule, Rik Mayall
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Nostalgia
Ship: Tomarry.
Rating: T
Warnings: Depression, Minor character death. Post-Epilogue AU.
It’s on AO3.
Harry didn’t know how long he watched him.
It could have been minutes, could have been days, since he’d sat down on the hospital chair to watch Tom sleep, unable to do much else than sit as the shadow chased after fading sunlight.
Harry didn’t feel time pass, never when he watched Tom’s chest rise and fall steadily; the man’s body drowned in the endless white sheets billowing around him. They swallowed him, consumed him. They almost resembled angel wings with the way the sheets fanned around him, as odd as it was.
It was...beautiful.
Tom looked peaceful like this. And Harry couldn’t help but feel that way too, lulled by the calm aura radiating from Tom’s slumbering form. Observing, as he often did, how Tom slept his immortality away.
It gave Harry a glimpse of the man he had never seen before. A fragility, a weakness, that Harry never thought Tom was capable of expressing. Convinced, after watching memory after memory of the boy’s unruffled smile, that Tom had been incapable of softness.
Tom had always been strong. Never a wrinkle on his mask, never a showing of weakness, even as an eleven-year old boy. He had been cold, curious and cherubic in the ways children often were, but he was never soft. That had been lost to him long before Dumbledore had met him.
So it was strange to see him this way because how did someone so strong, a man that spat at the mere showing of weakness, look so relaxed in slumber? There was no explanation for it. There were no “whys” and “hows”. It simply was.
Harry didn’t question it. He’d long since accepted these rare moments for what they were. It was an enigma, a mystery, with no discernible answer, and he had long since given up trying to decipher it.
Even monsters could sleep. Even monsters were capable of humanity. If this wasn’t a clear indication of this fact, Harry didn’t know what was.
He knew this now. Understood that Tom Riddle too could show a hint of humanity, even if only in sleep. Caught between life and death, unable to escape the artificial realm of dreams his wardens had forced him into.
It was inhumane that this was how they dealt with this fragment of the Dark Lord. That, rather than give this man a sense of individuality, even if he was the last living piece of a monster; a boogeyman that refused to die; they silenced his mind. Losing one’s sense of self was horrid, and Harry wasn’t sure even Voldemort deserved this.
This was Tom’s awareness. This was Tom’s mind. Nothing was more precious than that. How were they to make him feel remorse, teach him that what he’d done was wrong if he wasn’t even awake to experience it?
Harry had nearly lost himself once before, the strength of Voldemort’s will overwhelming his own back in the Ministry. It was decades ago, but still, he remembered his fear. The weight of Voldemort’s mind crushing his would never be forgotten, even after years after the fact. There was nothing more frightening than losing one’s sense of self, and Tom had lost his.
At least, with Tom awake and aware, they could teach him something. They could show him how he’d been wrong. There was no teaching an empty man remorse.
But then again...Harry thought, lips pursed into a stubborn line. The original healers never cared to show him remorse in the first place.
They’d decided almost immediately that there was no other option but this. That in order to contain this threat, this was necessary. A means of protecting themselves from a danger they saw no reason to unleash upon the world.
Or so they said, but Harry knew the true reason. Even if he hadn’t wanted to know, to feel even a smidge of compassion for a piece of the Dark Lord.
The Ministry didn’t want to retribution for the lives lost in the war. No, they wanted to know how Riddle was alive. They wanted to study him, to pick apart his secrets without risking their lives, without awakening a monster they could not contain. No one was foolish enough to consider waking him nor willing to sacrifice this opportunity for research either.
It was opportunistic. It was barbaric. It went contrary to everything Harry believed in, but he had been complicit in all this. Even if he hadn’t known, at first. Even if he’d believed Voldemort had deserved all of it when he’d been drowning in his own grief years after learning of this.
And then, he found out about the experiments. If he had been hesitant before, then now he was outright revolted. This went beyond even his own vindictive feelings, surpassed any sort of animosity he felt for Tom. It was appalling what they did, what the healers were permitted to do in the name of immortality. They were no better than Tom.
Yet, Harry did nothing to change this fact despite all of his reservations, his misgivings of how Tom was treated. Eternal sleep, he'd justified to himself to an extent, but the experiments? The fact that the healers were poking into Tom’s mind without the man being aware? Harry could not stomach it.
Harry knew that Voldemort, should he have been presented with a similar situation, would have done the same. This fact didn’t stop him from feeling sick to his stomach, however.
The healers wanted to understand the lengths Voldemort had gone to ensure his survival, and so, Tom Riddle would asleep, dream and flit about his imagination until they, one day, cracked the code.
All with Harry sitting idly by. Allowing it to go on, permitting this unethical behavior; if only to uncover, along with the secret to immortality, a way to undo it as well.
All they had was time. An untenable thing that felt more and more ominous with each passing day.
Because Tom was not aging, and neither was Harry.
Harry would live so long as Tom lived—or was it the other way around? Harry had long since given up explaining this to himself. All he knew was that he was bound, even now, to the monster. It didn’t matter that he’d torn what little remained of Voldemort’s tattered soul from his chest at the clearing.
No, none of that mattered.
They were still intertwined. By prophecy or by blood, Harry did not know. Connected in ways that no healer could explain.
Nothing could erase this fact. Not the efforts he’d made to exorcise Voldemort’s soul from his body nor the lengths he’d taken to prove to the world that he was nothing like Voldemort.
Harry could not die, he could not age; just as Tom Riddle could not.
When he'd discovered this fact, the knowledge had driven him mad with fury. It’d twisted his insides, made fear like he’d never experienced before consume him. He'd believed it was over, thought himself free of Voldemort’s control, of his putrid soul.
Sure, one of his horcruxes had remained alive, asleep in St. Mungo’s for the unforeseeable future, but to learn that they were still tied by something no one had the means of explaining? Harry had gone ballistic. He’d shouted his lungs out, demanded that the healers, that someone, undid this magic that refused to let him die.
And for a time, Harry had hoped that one day they would succeed. Their assurances had seemed earnest enough.
But now, Harry knew just how stupid a hope it was. The days had turned to years, and the years had turned to decades, and still, there was no solution to this bizarre problem.
His friends had faded into dust. His wife and children had all passed on. All of them had gone without him. He still had his great grandchildren, which he had visited for a time when he’d been crippled with loneliness. But those visits had grown more sparse as the days continued to trickled by. He was unable to stomach features that looked both too much and too little like Ginny’s.
Like small hands that reached for a fluttering bird, but only ever brushed against its feathered tail.
It was in that state of grief that Harry had decided to visit Tom Riddle for the first time. Stricken with a sudden desire to see the monster that had damned him to this fate.
It’d been two decades since he’d seen the man, and surely enough, when he went, Harry realized just how much things had changed. Voldemort’s name had become a mere whisper of a memory in the minds of the new healers milling about the hospital. After all, the person laying on that bed was not the Dark Lord. It was only a slumbering man. A person that would never wake. Not in their lifetime, at least.
Harry hadn’t known why he'd come then. He still couldn’t precisely explain the reason, even now. If someone asked him, he wouldn’t be able to give them a decent enough answer. Something had drawn him to the hospital, had drawn him back to the man, and now he spent most days seeing him.
Though, that hadn’t stopped him from coming up with reasons.
In the beginning, he’d thought it was to see for himself what avarice could turn a person into. To derive some sort of amusement at Voldemort’s expense, to witness for himself just how far the name of “Lord Voldemort” could go. It was a selfish thought. Enough to elicit a feeling of guilt now, but at that time, he’d believed that to be his reason. He’d been driven so mad by his anger and sorrow that it only made sense that he’d latch onto this explanation.
Because why shouldn’t he have? Why shouldn’t he see for himself what had become of Voldemort, despite his reservations with the man’s imprisonment in that hospital? He had all the reason to go, to rub it in the man’s face that even his name was lost to time.
After all, no one knew who this man was. The name Voldemort was overshadowed by the peaceful age that followed his fall. All that they knew, that everyone understood, was that there was a dangerous man imprisoned in St. Mungos. They only knew him as immortal; as a creature with beautiful features that slept his days away in a room bathed in white.
The name “Voldemort” had melted into the sands of time, forgotten. As most things often did when life continued on.
Time waited for no one and nothing. No one could go against it, could leave permanent lines across the sand. Not even Voldemort, who worked endlessly to leave his mark.
But then the first visit became a second, and that second visit became a third, until Harry eventually lost count of how many visits he’d paid Tom. The anger and sorrow dissipated with each trip; with each time he sat beside the man’s side, waiting for something he could not explain.
Harry didn’t know how many visits it took before all he felt was bitter emptiness. Was it the tenth or the thirtieth visit? Harry didn’t know for certain.
That hardly mattered now, however.
Harry couldn’t stop seeing him even if he’d wanted to. The emptiness was a living, breathing thing. It was a cloud that seeped into his bones, that wedged itself between the gaps between skin and muscle. It was a noxious feeling in the pit of his stomach that refused to go away—a writhing mass that danced along the back of his thoughts with Tom Riddle’s face reflected in that abyss.
You’re alone...The man would say behind Harry’s eyelids, would echo into his eardrums endlessly.
The name Voldemort was dead, but Tom Riddle still remained, sleeping peacefully on that bed. The shadow of the monster, the angel before the demon had erased milky skin and handsome features.
It was as if time had not passed at all for him. As if the man had not murdered Harry’s parents all those years ago, as if he hadn’t performed the darkest of rituals and crawled out of that cauldron. He was the only thing that remained unchanged, the only constant in Harry’s life.
Everyone Harry knew, everyone he loved, had died of old age. But Tom Riddle was there. As he always was. In his head, in his dreams, and sleeping on that bed until the day the healers found a way to reverse whatever it was he’d done.
It should have disturbed him how often he found his thoughts traveling back to this man, how often he saw him—heard him—whispering into his mind. He was asleep, but he had never seemed more alive. This should have been cause for concern, but Harry only felt resigned to it. Only felt peace as wrong as that was.
Because what else was there for him to feel? What else was there for him now? He couldn’t die, and to live was to watch every new acquaintance he made pass away. They would all eventually leave him, just as his friends had. He couldn’t follow, couldn’t claim the death he’d desired since Ginny exhaled her last breath, grey hair and pale, wrinkly skin slackening in death.
Tom Riddle was the only one that stayed, and although it was wrong to feel relieved by this fact, to feel even an iota of peace sitting beside a mass murderer, it was better than being on his own.
The irony of it, the hilarity of this fact, had nearly driven him to tears one too many times in the past, but now, he barely registered the twinge of guilt each time he greeted the receptionist. This was his life now, this was the price he paid for housing Tom Riddle’s soul for as long as he had. It was his burden to bear, his sin to carry on his shoulders.
Voldemort is your past, present, and future.
It was absurd that this was what it’d come to. That this was his fate, after all he had sacrificed, after all that he had done for everyone. Everything had amounted to nothing, and he only had himself to blame.
Voldemort was still alive, even if a mere shadow of himself. Even if no one knew that this man, this Lucifer, was not in the shape of Satan. He was there, sleeping his days away, unaware of what he had done to both of them.
It was in these visits, in his grief and loneliness, that Harry wished Voldemort would one day wake, as stupid as that was. He wished that Voldemort, somehow, could speak to him from outside of the false memories in his head, that Voldemort too would carry this burden; the weight of immortality that Harry had had to live through for almost 150 years. Immortality was what Voldemort had wanted, and it was unfair for Harry to have that stupid dream forced onto him.
Immortality was nothing when everyone that you loved and all of your dreams crumbled before your very eyes. What did it matter when you could never rest, when you had to constantly live through acquaintances fading into the night in what seemed like a blink of an eye? He was alone. Always alone. The least Voldemort could do was be awake to fill the emptiness wrapped around his soul, to undo whatever it was that he’d done so that Harry could finally die in peace.
It had taken him a long time to understand why he had gone to see him on that first day, but now Harry knew why. It wasn’t in some misguided need to gloat. It wasn’t to see Voldemort at his lowest, to see him blessed with his immortality and cursed with slumber. It wasn’t to keep an eye on the experiments conducted and to ensure that Voldemort was treated humanely.
No. It was for none of these reasons.
Harry was alone, and it was that loneliness that forced him to go. Waiting for the day that maybe Voldemort would finally wake and strike him down. Whenever that was, if that day would ever come at all.
"Harry?”
A surprised jolt curled up his spine at the sound of his name. It was whispered lowly, a soothing tenor. Harry hadn’t expected it. He was often left alone with Tom. The healers only ever addressed him if the hospital was closing or they needed to take Tom down to the Unspeakables—
Clearing his throat, Harry ripped his attention away from the slumbering Dark Lord to address the witch. His cheeks felt warmer than usual, embarrassed that he’d once again lost track of time and caught by surprise while boring a hole into Tom’s face.
How long have I been here?
“Is it time for me to leave?” He asked, needing confirmation that yes, he killed more time than permitted at Tom’s side.
The witch looked apologetic, her lips turning into a soft, understanding smile that told him that that was exactly the case. Harry had come in early that morning, minutes after the doors opened to the public. He hadn’t planned to sit beside Tom for more than an hour, that was the goal he had set for himself at the time, but it seemed that a whole day had passed without his awareness.
A flush spread along his cheeks, ashamed. He’d done it again. It’d been happening too much lately.
“Yes, dear. But you know, if you want to stay a little longer, it isn’t trouble at all. You’ve been visiting this young man for years now, just watching. I don’t think anyone would really mind if you stay overnight just this once.”
Harry wanted to protest, wanted to say that he didn’t want to stay overnight, but before he could say just that, the healer had turned away and left down the way she’d come. The door closed with a click behind her, and Harry found himself at a loss of what to do then, mouth hanging open with words he didn’t have the chance to speak.
He should leave, he knew. Tom would remain where he was. He’d been sleeping for so long; it wouldn’t make a difference whether Harry stayed there overnight or not.
Still, he found himself tempted by the idea. The witches had never allowed him to stay overnight before. They always kicked him out promptly at 8 o’clock sharp. It was the routine. It was policy.
Why the mediwitch—Delphini, she said her name was—allowed him today of all days to do so was a mystery.
Though it didn’t stop him from dragging his seat closer to where the man slept. He didn’t know why he did it, but something inside him urged him to. It whispered into his head, murmured into his brain that he needed to get closer. It was a susurration, like the flash of a memory long forgotten coaxing him to bridge the space between them.
So he did, all without tearing his eyes away from Tom’s serene face. Watching, always watching, how Tom’s eyelids fluttered as if seeing something unfold behind them—a vivid dream, perhaps, that Harry could not witness for himself.
It made Tom look vulnerable, almost human in a way, to see him like this. To see that, even Tom, despite the poison that swirled in his heart, was capable of dreaming things too.
I wonder what he dreams about...Harry wondered, unconsciously leaning closer to take in more of Tom’s face, as if doing so would yield him an answer to his silent question. He could see each individual eyelash, the way they curled beneath his eyes, adding a touch of femininity that Harry hadn’t noticed before when he’d seen memories of Tom Riddle in the Pensieve, when he’d met him for the first time in the Chamber of Secrets, nor the previous times he’d visited.
His eyes followed the curve of Tom’s eyes, the way they slanted just slightly at the ends and how they fit proportionally to the rest of his face. His jaw was sharp and angular, neither too strong nor square, a perfect balance that Harry couldn’t help but stare at.
A fallen angel before sin had robbed him of his beauty.
Was this how he tricked his victims? Did he seduce them with carefully whispered words, did he flutter his lashes at them before twisting his lips into a charming smile? Did he ever show the world this face, dreaming and chasing after realities that would never exist in the world Harry lived?
These thoughts came without sign of it stopping. They blossomed behind Harry’s head, just as intrusive as he felt while lingering in the silent hospital.
Still, none of that registered.
Harry stared at the curve of Tom’s nose, followed the shape of his brow bones, traced the swell of his lips and how red they looked on his pale skin. Harry took it all in as if he could divine these secrets from sight alone.
There was no way to tell how long he remained that way, drinking his fill, but it had to be longer than ever before. When he blinked, the light from the hallway was off—the room bathed in shadows that hadn’t been there before. An absolute silence bled from the walls. No sound save for his and Tom’s breaths could be heard—the isolation almost unsettling.
You shouldn’t be here...A voice said in his head, but Harry did not move. He couldn’t. Somehow, in the middle of his staring, he’d leaned in so far that he was centimeters from Tom’s face, practically breathing the same air.
No alarm came with that realization. Harry was only strangely fascinated with the quivering of the man’s lips, and how, in his sleep, a tongue poked from his mouth as if chasing after a drop of moisture that trickled down from the seam of his mouth.
I wonder how they would—
Harry reared back as if burned, a warm flush creeping up his face. He didn’t know where that thought had come from. It was unacceptable, it was strange that he could have such thoughts about a person that he had hated and envied for so long.
Hated because Tom had forced him to live beyond what a wizard was permitted to live, without aging at all; envied because he was sleeping eternity away, completely free of the nightmares that ruined all thought of rest for Harry.
Harry decided right then that he needed to leave. He’d overstayed his welcome.
And then, just as he was about to take a step back, to leave and forget just what he’d considered doing to his enemy, something latched onto his wrist to stop him in his tracks. It was hot. The sensation burned him him from the inside out, the heat spreading from that single point outward. It suddenly felt difficult to breathe.
Sshhhh.
It took him seconds to realize that it was Tom’s hand, that the warmth and the grip on his left wrist were five fingers and a palm digging into his wrist.
“W-what?”
A powerful wave of shock overtook him, and Harry yanked his arm back as if he’d been bitten, but the hand refused to let him go, surprisingly strong despite the man remaining inanimate for so many years.
“Harry...” A baritone voice murmured, still heavy with sleep.
Everything around him stilled. His heart and his breathing all came to a stop, his eyes snapping away from where Tom’s hand had caught his wrist to the face Harry had been gazing into almost all evening. A face he’d seen too often in his dreams, that he looked upon with growing fascination each time he paid Tom a visit.
Red stared back at him. The brilliant crimson equal parts bleary and confused.
Harry was speechless.
“Potter...” Tom said, as if weighing each syllable on his tongue.
Harry did not speak nor move. He couldn’t, even if he’d wanted to. His shock kept him rooted in place, the grip on his wrist forgotten by the sudden realization that Tom was awake.
“Harry...Potter...”
The man breathed, practically crooning his name out before tugging Harry closer than before, until Harry’s chest was flush against Tom’s, their lips only a centimeter from touching. Nothing registered except the gleam of crimson in those eyes, than the life that suddenly rippled across that face.
His chest constricted with fear.
This isn’t supposed to happen...A thought whispered into his head, the voice alarmed even if the rest of him wasn’t. His emotions were oddly disconnected from reality, as if there were some of lag between the real world and how he perceived it. His body was relaxed, but his mind--
It screamed for him to move.
“Finally...I can touch you…”
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“Oh, Joy” || Jily.
My God I haven’t written Jily in so long… this is a combination of pointless plot and me avoiding studying at any and all costs, but I hope you enjoy!
Word Count: 6,473 || archiveofourown
It was just more wholly unnecessary, but utterly definite proof that French really, truly was the Satan of all subjects. Of course, the events of that atomic disaster of a night could also have been blamed upon her liberal alcohol consumption, or even indeed on the disloyalty of her so-called friends - but their final term together ended in less than two months, and Lily was rendered too emotionally fragile at the thought of having to leave them to truly be angry with any of them.
That and the fact that blaming them for what transpired that night was probably entirely irrational, given that her actions just so happened to be of her own doing – alcohol or no alcohol.
Whoever or whatever was to blame, the fact remained that Lily effectively set her entire life alight on that fateful night, deep in the depths of what was quite possibly the grottiest pub on their side of the river.
And the most startling thing of all was that she didn’t really mind all that much.
~
Tally: Lily – 05 || James – 03
“Oi – prick-face,” she all but shouted, moving through the crowd with the grace of a mobile armoire. The prick-in-question’s eyebrows raised inquisitively at her greeting.
“Have pigs started flying, Evans? Or did you just voluntarily acknowledge my presence?”
Lily’s scowl deepened at the slow smirk which unfurled across his face.
It was more out of a stubborn resilience that she didn’t allow herself to fall at the feet of James Potter. She wasn’t blind - contrary to the popular public opinion - she just wasn’t bloody interested. She recognised a good-looking bloke when she saw one, and she could appreciate what Mother Nature had done for him over the course of puberty, but she was strictly monogamous, and entering a relationship with both James and his over-inflated ego was not something she would ever willingly inflict upon herself.
Of course, this resilience didn’t factor in the five-or-so shots she had taken in the interim between arriving at the pub and encountering her current sparring partner, and James’ smirk only increased in size and in smugness as her hand shot out to grab his shoulder as a means of stabilising herself.
“It seems not only pigs. Acknowledgement and touching? My, my Evans. Forward little minx, aren’t you?”
“Shut your mouth before you find my fist in it,” she grumbled, removing her hand from his shirt as if burned.
“You’ll need to take me on a date first.” He winked, causing her to roll her eyes.
“It this the famous Potter charm I’ve heard so much about?” she scoffed “Because I’ve got to admit, I’m underwhelmed.”
“Oh trust me, Ginge. I haven’t even started trying to charm you.”
A very unladylike grunt emitted from somewhere at the back of her throat “Ginge? That’s the best you can come up with?”
“You used to threaten to dismember my bodily appendages every time I called you Ginge, remember?” he reminded her almost fondly, a wistful nostalgia in his voice that made her roll her eyes.
“I most certainly didn’t say dismember bodily appen-whatevers. I told you I’d tear you limb from limb, you ponce. Don’t misquote me or I’ll sue-”
“God Evans, you’re really not holding back, are you?” he laughed “Usually you at least try and make an effort to begin pleasantly before breaking out the violent threats. You’re hurting my fweelings,” he sniffed, the ever-present smile detracting completely from what was otherwise a stellar performance.
“You’re infuriating.” She scowled.
“You chose to come talk to me,” he reminded her “Why was that, exactly?”
His eyes seemed to spark with mischief, mouth curling almost impossibly as he watched the slow, embarrassed flush spread across Lily’s cheeks. She could practically see I’ve got you there flashing across his pupils as he regarded her with something in between indulgence and amusement.
Fucking prick. Stupid bloody asshole with his stupid smile, and stupid twinkly-flash eyes. Why did people every describe eyes as flashing anyway? They weren’t bloody traffic lights.
“You’re a very philosophical drunk Evans, quite the little Aristotle,” he mused, tilting his head slightly as he looked down at her “I’ve got to admit, it’s kind of a turn-on.”
“I’m told I’m a truthful one.” She sniffed, trying to suppress the blush threatening to spread across her skin at his… sexual references. She wasn’t a prude, but she also didn’t like discussing topics beyond how much of a prat he was when conversing with Potter. It was unnerving to think of him as anything beyond an annoying eleven year old boy.
“As opposed to being a solely violent one? Package-deal you’ve got going on, I see,” he teased, arm reaching out to steady Lily once more as she swayed back and forth on her feet. She batted him away sharply, ignoring the jolt that seemed to course through her body.
“Where’s your harem?” she asked abruptly, diffusing the odd atmosphere which seemed to be descending on them both “I thought you were incapable of functioning without someone hanging off your arm to remind you oh what big biceps you have, Jamie,” she mocked, scoffing slightly at her own joke.
“My harem?” he snorted.
“Yes, your harem of women – well, girls.” She self-corrected. She hated the word woman – it was a constant reminder of the impending adulthood freight train that was about to obliterate them all.
That and referring to the gaggle of giggling nitwits that clung to Potter like the sickly perfume they all wore as women made her head hurt.
“I wasn’t aware I had a harem at my disposal,” he laughed, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Oh sure.” She rolled her eyes “I’m sure you didn’t.”
“Are you sure I’m sure I didn’t?”
“Tease me one more time, Potter, and I’ll-”
“You’ll what, Evans? Stab me with a compass again?” he teased, raising an eyebrow at her.
“Oh would you let it go. We were twelve, and you wholly deserved it-”
“Wholly deserved or not, you certainly left me holey.”
She stared incredulously at him for a minute, as he shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, a satisfied smirk on his face.
“That was single-handedly the worst pun I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“Then you obviously haven’t spent that much time with Remus.” He grinned.
“No, I can’t say I have. Because spending time with Remus would mean spending time with you,” she spat, more so out of habit than actual venom. It was a reflex action to go in for the kill whenever Potter provided her with a suitable opening.
“You’ve spent quite a bit of time on me already,” he reminded her once again.
“Only because I saw you and got mad.”
“Really? The mere sight of my face riled you up enough that you felt the need to come over here? Lord, I think I’ve hit a new low.”
“Yes, how does the world look from the metaphorical shit pit?”
“About as good as it must look from your throne of self-righteousness, my dear Evans.”
“Call me my dear one more time and I’ll-”
“Lose your composure? Let’s be honest here, you haven’t had that for quite a while.”
“Maybe you’ll find it shoved up your arse – although I highly doubt there’s room, considering you already have your head wedged up there.”
“Good grief Evans, you’re really not holding back, are you?” he laughed, giving Lily the hazy impression that he probably wasn’t on the same level of intoxication she was.
And everyone knows that sort of an imbalance in social awareness during a conversation is a recipe for utter disaster.
“I’m leaving,” she announced.
“Are you sure you can?” he chuckled, looking dubiously at her heels which were still causing her to pitch at odd angles.
“You just bloody watch me, Potter-” she snarled, stomping away from him purposely on a one-way track back towards the bar. Her exit probably would have held more drama had she not stumbling not two feet away from him.
But she would ignore his laughter in lieu of another alcoholic beverage.
-
Tally: Lily – 07 || James – 09
Two tequila shots and one episode of convincing Marlene that climbing up on the bar was definitely a sure-fire way to get them thrown out, Lily found herself wandering the dance floor, looking for her friends. Often there was a misconception that girls travelled in packs on nights out – and while ultimately that was the goal, it was inevitable that, just as in the wild, every so often the pack would lose a member or four.
And considering the fact she had just seen someone throw up in a bag that definitely wasn’t theirs, they had most certainly entered the wild. And her shoes were bloody killing her.
Eyeing the outskirts of the packed dance floor once more, she gave up on her search with a resigned sigh, choosing instead to make a beeline for the row of benches along the western wall so that she could ensure all her toes were indeed still attached to her body. Stumbling up the lone step differentiating the seated area from the manic revelry of the dance floor, she swerved around the enthusiastic couple sucking face and instead plonked down heavily on one of the plush benches that was worryingly sticky against the bare skin of her thigh.
“Wouldn’t sit there if I were you, Peter just spilt his pint all over the place. Other two took him to the bathroom, absolutely puking up his guts.”
Her neck snapped to her right upon hearing the voice, her eyes instantly narrowing when she took in the faintly-glowing white shirt, and birds-nest hair.
“Christ alive, what’re you doing, following me?” she groaned, shooting Potter a dirty look before leaning down to fiddle with the straps of her shoes – which were now positively murdering her poor, innocent toes.
“And you call me conceited – I’m just sitting,” he replied jovially, his shoulders moving in synchronisation with his voice.
“Well how about you bugger off and just sit somewhere else-”
“Well you see, there’s the little fact of I was here first, Evans.”
“I almost fell on my arse three times making my way from the bar to here,” she said, pointing towards the heaving crowd as if to add further emphasis “You can get fucked if you think I’m the one that’s going to be moving.”
They were locked in a heated staring contest for a few moments, before Potter eventually conceded and shook his head with a chuckle.
“Christ, you’re beautiful when you’re angry-”
“What sort of misogynistic drivel is that, Potter? Am I supposed to flush and quit being angry with you because you’ve complimented me?”
“On the contrary, I often find myself complimenting you as a way to enrage you further,” he said airily “Well that and the fact it’s startlingly easy to do.”
“Who says enrage in regular conversation?” she asked, her nose crinkling in disgust.
“You said drivel.” He shrugged “And I think that’d earn you more points in Scrabble.”
“Never played Scrabble,” she grumbled.
“You’d love it, truly. And there’s nothing sexier than spelling.”
“I’m sorry, did you just say the words sexy and spelling in the same sentence?”
“Nothing sexier than a bit of spelling. ‘Specially when there’s hidden letters. Like an unexpected striptease.” He wriggled his eyebrows suggestively, laughing rumbling deep in his chest at the sight of her displeased scowl.
“I’m beginning to see why you’re McGonagall’s pet now,” she said, her nose scrunching further.
“I absolutely am not.”
“You absolutely are too.”
He pouted almost petulantly, reaching to spin a bottle in a slow circle on the table in front of them, pointedly avoiding Lily’s smug smirk.
“Just jealous ‘cause there’s one teacher that likes me more than they like you.”
“Maybe I am.”
“I don’t believe there’s any maybe in that sentence, Evans.” He grinned, reaching to tug gently on a lock of her hair
“Only because there’s no reason for it!” she exclaimed hotly, slapping away his hands indignantly “You always hand up your essays late, you’re constantly skiving off with Sirius in the back of the class-”
“How do you know I hand up my essays late?”
“Because it’s you-”
“Careful there, that sounds awfully like a sweeping generalisation.”
“Well you never have your shit together for Slughorn.”
“Well there’s one glaring difference there – I like English. I’m planning on buying my biology book off the school so I can ceremoniously burn it after graduation,” he explained, his nose crinkling slightly upon the mere mention of his least-favourite subject.
“Biology’s easy,” she sniffed, flipping her hair over her shoulder.
“Not all of us are medical prodigies.”
“I’m not a prodigy, I work hard,” she emphasised, her lip curling slightly at the insinuation “Everyone who says I do well just because genetics or some shit like that needs to fuck the fuck off-”
“Alright, alright. Keep your wig on, I’m just saying that I could beat myself around the head with the bio coursework and I still wouldn’t be able to remember what in God’s name half of it means.”
“Then you aren’t trying hard enough,” she said sharply. “That or you’re just inept.”
He coughed slightly, raising an eyebrow over the brim of his beer bottle before taking another swig “And there we have it, trademark Evans put down. Tell me, what happens if you don’t insult me every five minutes? Do you internally combust?” he asked cooly, causing her to look away in what felt closely linked to shame.
“Look - I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Well, you were,” he replied shortly.
This was new. Lily wasn’t accustomed to insulted James,- her familiarity lay with insulting him – meaning the now unsmirking, unannoyinng-her being that occupied the seat next to her unnerved her. The silence which descended over them seemed deafening, even though the floor still vibrated underfoot from the jarring techno-bass mash-up disaster the DJ was blaring.
She huffed slightly, before leaning over to poke his cheek “C’mon Potter, I thought it was physically impossible for me to get you to shut up, don’t break the six-year trend now.”
“Maybe I’m sick of putting up with your snide comments.”
“Well – you and I both know that that’s a horrific lie, Potter. And horrific liars go to hell.”
“Don’t you implore me to take a quick trip to hell on the daily?”
“I may have occasionally told you to do that, yes,” she conceded rather sheepishly “But that doesn’t change the fact that you shouldn’t lie.”
“Hang on - I just used implore, and you’re not going to threaten grievous bodily harm? You must be sorry.”
“Did I say I was sorry?”
“You mean you’re not?”
“Well I – possibly could have been a bit harsh but-” she started difficulty.
“You’re terrible with apologies, Evans,” he chuckled, but the way his shoulder bumped hers told her she had in fact been forgiven.
Maybe it was the alcohol, but the contact made her stomach jolt slightly. No – not jolt. Lurch. Lurch was a verb with much more negative connotations, she couldn’t allow herself to think in the positive.
Lord knows what would happen then.
She settled for a short “like you’re any better” as a reply.
“Ah – but you see, very rarely do I ever do anything that I will later feel the need to apologise for.” He held up his finger to silence her before she could interject “And before you jump down my throat about my actions affecting others, doesn’t mean I’m a complete dickhead. Just means usually I try to do things I won’t regret.”
“Life’s full of regrets.”
“Not for me, Aristotle.”
“So there’s not one thing you regret?”
“Very few things,” he corrected her “I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t regret anything.”
“Well this is rather intriguing – the supreme James Potter admitting to making some mistakes?” she said, her lips curling up into a smile as she fully turned her body to face him “Well – come on. Don’t leave me in suspense, you’ve got to tell me at least one.”
“I most certainly do not,” he chuckled, leaning his head back so it rested against the wall.
“C’mon, Potter. Don’t be a wimp.” She reached forwards to prod his chest, tilting her head to match the angle of his.
“Absolutely not – you’ll laugh.”
“I’ll laugh anyway, laughing at you is my favourite hobby.” Something horrifically like a giggle bubbled from her lips as she reached to poke him once again.
“Are you going to keep poking me until you get your way?”
“Oh you can bet on it-” she promised, her finger tapping out a staccato rhythm on his rib cage.
“Alright – alright, enough woman!” He laughed, swatting her away “I regret pulling your pigtail on the first day of first year.”
“Really?” she snorted “Out of everything you’ve ever done in your life? That’s what you pick?”
“It’s not the only thing, mind you. But - yeah.” He shrugged “You’ve had a set on me ever since then. Probably would have saved a lot of shouting and arguing if I hadn’t.”
She considered his words for a few seconds, before nodding “Well yeah, probably would’ve. Why did you?”
“Why did I what?”
“Pull my hair, dunce.”
“Because I liked the colour.”
“Of my hair?” she snorted again.
“Of your eyes.”
Lily blinked for a moment, her eyes narrowing dangerously as she waited for any signs of a smirk, or a chuckle to emit from James, but he simply reached forward to pick up his beer bottle once more and take a swig.
“I don’t find that cute, you know. Lying to try get in a girl’s pants is just pathetic, Potter.”
“Ah, but liars go to hell, Evans. A wise philosopher once told me so. And I don’t really fancy a trip down below. So that – that was the truth,” he said, the beginnings of what almost looked like a sincere smile unfurling across his lips that seemed to be having an adverse effect on her knees, even though she was sitting down.
Of course, he had to go and ruin it all by winking. She left promptly after that.
~
Tally: Lily – 08 || James 09.5
Storming away from James for the second time that night led her on a very similar pathway to the bar, where she stopped just long enough to neck back another much-needed drink before continuing on her not-so merry way to start up the manhunt for her friends once more.
She eventually located them in the girl’s toilets, resulting either from a tactical ploy on Marlene’s part to scope out the talent remaining in the pub, or Mary’s pea-sized bladder.
“He’s such a childish, arrogant, fucking-” she forced through her clenched teeth, tearing a piece from the paper towel in her hands aggressively with each word. She was perched on the corner of one of the many sinks which lined the damp walls of the pub’s bathroom, pouting petulantly as she watched Marlene shakily reapply another coat of mascara.
“I’m sorry – who’re we talking about?” Mary shouted from inside the bathroom stall “What’s happened? Do you need me to fight someone? I’ll need help taking out m’earrings but otherwise I’m ready Lil-”
“Keep your arse on the toilet, Mary.” Marlene slapped the stall door, causing Mary to shriek “She’s just griping about James again.”
“Oh – well if that’s all.”
“No – that is not all, thanks very much,” Lily said hotly, looking up from her shredded piece of tissue to glare at Marlene.
“But it really is, Lil – you vehemently refuse to snog the boy’s face off, so there’s not very much we can do for you.” Marlene shrugged “Tough tits.”
“How in God’s name would snogging anyone’s face off solve any problem? Much less this one?”
“You know, for a smart girl you’re annoyingly stupid,” Marlene sighed, throwing her mascara tube back into her clutch before reaching to grab Lily’s hands “It’s this horrible little thing called sexual tension.”
“Please remove your hands from my body and stop chatting shit, Marl.”
“You can deny it all you want, Lil. But the truth of the matter is that you want to play tonsil hockey with James.”
“No, I sodding well don’t! A girl can hate a boy, you know. It’s not always just hidden feelings – this isn’t some crappy youth novel, this is my life!”
“Yes, that you seem insistent to live in denial. Look – it doesn’t give me any pleasure to throw you into the deep end like this. But we’re all just sick of hearing about him, okay?”
“Mary, what the hell has Marlene been drinking, straight bleach?” Lily demanded as soon as the bathroom door unlatched, and Mary emerged.
“Been very responsible tonight, actually,” Marlene sniffed.
“Then would you care to explain the origins for this insane theory of yours?”
“It’s not insane, Lily. You’ve not been exactly subtle about it-”
“Look – what Marlene’s trying to say is that, well there has been signs, Lil,” Mary admitted awkwardly, reaching around Lily’s head to grab a handful of paper towels “No one’s trying to say you’ve been doodling his name everywhere or anything – but, there’s clearly something. And the longer you make yourself wait, the worse it’s going to get.”
“Long story short, the tension’s going to make one of you explode,” Marlene supplemented “So get on it, yeah?”
“Neither of you seem to be understanding that I hate him-”
“You’re walking a fine line between love and hate on this one, Lil. So will you just do us all a favour and pick a side, yeah?”
“And meet us on the dance floor if Ed comes on.” Mary grinned, before they linked arms and vacated the bathroom, leaving Lily to brood.
~
Tally: Lily – 09 || James – 11
Lily stumbled out of the bathroom in what felt like a daze, one which was only partly induced by the alcohol units she had consumed. She pushed her way slowly through the throng that still occupied the bar, her mind whirring at the concept that is wasn’t pure hatred she felt towards James.
Facultative hatred, certainly. But even the fact that there might be some hint of fondness present had her world spinning completely off-kilter.
It was nothing more than fate laughing directly in her face that she should then stumble into James.
“Not you again-”
“Really, Lily. I don’t think I can deal with any more fighting tonight. M’brains all fuzzy, won’t be able to think of witty things to say to -”
“Why do you think I hate you?” she asked, cutting over him.
“Oh, all the regular reasons – you know yourself.” He grinned.
“But why do you think I hate you?”
“Will I let you in on a little secret, Lily?” he asked, dipping his head so his lips seemed to hover uncomfortably close to her ear “I have this valiant hope – cursed optimistic nature – that really, deep down, you don’t.”
And she hated herself for it, but her breath hitched – fucking hitched - getting caught somewhere in her throat before it could exit her body.
Carbon dioxide poisoning caused people to behave madly, didn’t it? Would certainly explain as to why the hell her eyes seemed fixated on his eyelashes, which she was nearly certain were longer than hers. And usually that would have caused an irrational pit of hatred to bubble, because stupid Potter and his stupid perfect eyelashes.
But this time it just made her want to know how they’d feel brushing against her cheek.
“I think my epiglottis is malfunctioning-”
“How on earth do I find you attractive?”
“You like my eyes,” she reminded him.
“God, I do. I really do,” he replied, his mouth curling into a grin, causing Lily’s chin to tilt upwards in response. Her heels were putting out a valiant effort of bridging the rather substantial height difference which usually kept her on par with his shoulder. Potter’s head seemed to duck in response, the space between them rapidly decreasing until –
A hand suddenly clamped around the back of her neck, and she found herself being shoved towards James, their heads colliding painfully with what most definitely would have been a resounding thump had it not been cancelled out by whatever God-awful house mix the DJ was blasting out.
Her hands instinctively shot up to cradle her forehead, a groan lost under Potter’s shout of “For fuck sake, Sirius!”
“Just kiss each other already-” Sirius shouted, his hands making a crude hand gesture towards Lily with a grin that made her want to hit him.
Having Potter shove him would suffice nicely, however.
She watched as his mouth moved furiously, his index finger jabbing Sirius’ chest as she watched rather than heard him say “She doesn’t bloody want to.”
If it hadn’t felt like she had just entered the twilight zone, she probably would have found it funny. The anger evident in the way a red flush was forming on Potter’s neck told her his anger was real, and that he was directing it at Sirius of all people was entirely bizarre.
That he was getting so het up about Sirius’ interference lay somewhere in between the realm of ridiculous, but also oddly sweet. Potter’s half-arsed efforts at chivalry usually annoyed her beyond all comprehension, but even she could see that he was simply trying to do the right thing.
Even if what he thought was the right thing was completely and utterly wrong.
Lily’s eyes continued to dart from the now completely beetroot Potter, to the seemingly mollified Sirius, who had his hands raised in defence. Potter gave his friend one last poke, and a concluding glare before turning back to Lily, an apology written all over his features.
“Look, Evans – I’m really sorry, Sirius is just a prick and-”
“Do you make it a habit to make other people’s decisions for them, Potter?” she cut in, archly raising an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry, what?” His entire expression betrayed complete bewilderment.
“You just assumed what I wanted to do.”
“I didn’t – what?”
“Don’t assume what I want and don’t want to do.”
“But-”
She silenced the rest of whatever he wanted to prattle on about by grabbing the front of his shirt and slamming her lips to his.
Their noses seemed to collide awkwardly as they both turned in different directions, a startled ‘oof’ emitting from Potter which really wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear upon kissing anyone. And in a brief moment of clarity, and perhaps even sobriety, she realised she was standing in the middle of a dance floor which was coated in a black scum, her hands awkwardly knotted in Potter’s slightly-damp t-shirt, his lips seemingly frozen against hers while the bridge of his glasses cut uncomfortably into her cheek.
A horrible feeling of regret began clawing its way from her stomach to her mouth – Oh God, oh God, oh fucking God, she had read all the signs wrong. This was awful – he’d never let her live it down. Forever, she would be known as the girl who virtually assaulted Potter while he stood there and did nothing.
Pulling back, she took in the bug-eyed expression of shock on his face, her own cheeks burning bright with embarrassment. Cold reality seemed to rain down upon her with the realisation that he had probably never contemplated, or indeed ever wanted to swap spit with her, and considering their explosive history, had presumed that Lily was on the same wavelength.
“I’m – I’ve – got to go,” she stuttered, waving vaguely in the direction of the exit door before taking off through the crowd, ignoring his calls for her to wait until she could no longer hear them over the music.
She weaved her way through the still-writhing masses, pressing the backs of her hands against her cheeks in a vain attempt to cool the fire-pits that had seemingly replaced half of her face.
She probably could have gotten over the embarrassment of crashing and burning with Potter – after an appropriate amount of dodging him in the remaining weeks of school, and proposing a binding contract to never mention his name again – however it was the fact that she had crashed and burned with Potter with the majority of her class as an audience which was the true problem. There was still six weeks left in school, so really, abandoning her education to move to Ecuador would just be a waste of the last fourteen years of education.
Plus, she had taken French instead of Spanish.
A tinny ringing in her ears erupted as soon as she stepped out of the pub, her heels scraping against the cobblestones of the footpath. Bobbing her head to the bouncer, she wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to fend off the April chill as she began her slow hobble to the chipper – conveniently located next door.
“Lily – Christ alive Evans, can you just wait-”
She made no attempt to stifle the groan that seemed almost a reflex action in response to his voice “Potter – go away, please. I’m begging.”
“No, I want to talk about whatever what just happened was,” he said determinedly, reaching out as if to grab Lily’s arm, before thinking better of it.
“Can we just – forget that happened? Please?”
“No – no, well – I mean, yeah because that was terrible-”
“Well thanks,” she gritted out, embarrassment still colouring her cheeks as she narrowed her eyes to glare at him.
He started, horror dawning on his face as he processed what he had said “Not – no, you weren’t terrible, I was terrible-“
“Yeah – you sodding well were! Why didn’t you kiss me back?” she demanded.
“I wasn’t expecting you to do that!”
“Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you needed a formal letter of notice before someone kissed you, my bloody mistake,” she said, sarcasm dripping from every word.
“Well sod it, if it’s you kissing me maybe I do!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means – it means I would’ve been less surprised if you ran me over with a car, Evans,” he sighed.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, growing more and more affronted.
“It means you – earlier this evening you were threatening to sue me, and then suddenly you’re flirting with me and I got confused!”
“I never flirted with you-”
“This is what I’m talking about, Lily! This – the hot and cold thing, I can’t keep up with you. And believe me, I love the fact you’re absolutely mental, I fucking love it because it’s you. But - can you at least give me some help in figuring out where I stand with you? Please?”
Her anger faltered slightly at the desperate plea that seemed to emit from his eyes, his words hanging in the air between them. His eyes seemed to search hers for something, desperation leaving the hazel irises to be replaced by what she remarked looked horribly close to resignation. She stepped towards him, a line appearing between her eyebrows as she scrutinized his eyes – hazel in colour, and slightly too small for his face behind the frames of his glasses.
“Your eyes aren’t brown,” she said almost stupidly, blinking up at him. “I’d always thought they were brown.”
His heavy sigh sent hot air rushing across her cheeks, the scent of beer and stale chewing gum enveloping her.
“I think you need to go home, Evans,” he said, running a hand through his hair slowly.
“Potter-” she began, before he cut her off
“Can you just – call me James? Like a normal person? So maybe I could call you Lily without feeling like I’ve just called my grandmother Dorea?”
“Why are you talking about your grandmother?” she asked, her forehead wrinkling in confusion.
“Because that’s what I do when I’m nervous! I projectile vomit stupid stuff I probably shouldn’t say-” he said hurriedly, his hand reaching up to ruffle the hair at the nape of his neck.
Usually, this particular quirk of his irked her beyond all comprehension, yet for some ungodly reason, cast in the semi-light emitting from the chipper’s condensation-covered window, the action looked almost endearing.
“I was talking about my epiglottis earlier, I think I can relate,” she interjected, raising her eyebrow.
The corners of his mouth tilted up into a half smile, and she felt her own copy the movement. The front of his shirt was wrinkled slightly where her hands had twisted the fabric, beads of sweat on his forehead still not evaporated even in the frigid cold night air.
“I like it when you call me Evans. Makes me want to smile, and hit you all at the one time,” she blurted out.
“Alright, admittedly not exactly what I was going for-”
“Everyone calls me Lily, or Lil. You’re the only one that calls me Evans. And I like it, because it’s different. Because you’re different. And whether you’re different because you’re destined to annoy me to death, or because of something else – I don’t really know. But I like when you call me it,” she said quickly, her breath releasing in a quick huff.
“…you do?” He blinked at her.
“I do.”
Silence descended on them, James rocking back onto his heels before shoving his hands into his pockets.
“And…that’s all you’re going to say?”
“Would you like me to say anything else?” she countered.
“Well – Christ, I dunno really.”
“I’m not going to start spouting poetry at any point, so if that’s what you’re looking for-”
“No, that’s definitely not what I’m looking for,” he chuckled tiredly “I just – want to know, really.
“You want to know what?”
“See – that I don’t even know. Do you – like me? Hate me? Mildly tolerate me? Why’d you kiss me? Things like that.”
“I-” she began, before biting her lip “Can’t really answer any of those.”
“Not even why you kissed me?”
“…possessed by a demon?”
His chuckle caused a smile to inch its way across her face.
“You’re something else, Evans.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Any chance you might take pity and be a bit nicer to me now though? Considering you nearly headbutted me.”
“I most certainly did not you shit-”
“I know, I know. Keep your knickers on. You’re going to have to learn when I’m teasing you, you know.”
“Believe me, I usually know. I just don’t find your jokes all that funny.
“And there you have it, spear right through the heart. Have mercy, my sense of humour is more precious to me than my pride,” he said dramatically, clutching his heart.
“You’re such a dork, Potter.”
“So you love to tell me.” He grinned.
“Am I still hurting your fweelings?” she teased, raising an eyebrow jestingly.
“Oh, I’m almost used to it by now.”
“It seems I may end up needing to make it up to you, Potter.”
“Well if it’s anything like your apologies, I don’t think I want to know,” he laughed, causing Lily to scowl.
“It was a perfectly sufficient apol-”
The latter half of her sentence was cut off rather suddenly, Potter swooping down to press his lips against hers gently. His hand found its way to her waist, almost anchoring her to him, the heat from his hand radiating through the thin material of her top. If their first kiss had been rushed and jerky, this one was slow and cautionary, their noses brushing slightly as their heads tilted to accommodate the other – James nudging the frame of his glasses slightly so that they didn’t interfere as they had before. Her hands snaked their way around his neck, fingers gently brushing the closely cropped hair at the nape.
It wasn’t a kiss that stopped time, or made her weak at the knees. The wafting scent of chips, cheese and curry meant that she was more than aware that they stood in front of a greasy chipper, next door to a grotty pub. His shirt was still damp, and her shoes had begun to pinch, but the sheer warmth that enveloped her as he pulled his arms tighter around her, the little spark in her chest as their mouths moved in almost perfect synchronisation made it feel like an invitation, a tantalisation. A promise of what could be, rather than what was right there and then.
They broke apart slowly, their faces still almost impossibly close together. James chuckled a little, leaning towards her so their foreheads pressed together.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, her arms still wrapped loosely around his neck.
“Well – one, I sort of had to make up for earlier. And two, I could feel you working yourself up into a tizzy. And I think we’ve met our arguments quota for tonight.” He grinned.
“If you didn’t aggravate me, we wouldn’t argue.”
“Ah – but if we hadn’t argued, I wouldn’t have gotten to kiss you.”
“You know – this isn’t going to become a thing,” she said sharply “You’re not allowed to just start kissing me whenever you don’t like what I’m saying.”
“Oh, never dear Evans. Don’t worry – I enjoy your sparkling wit entirely too much,” he said, the reassuring tone he adopted completely cancelled out by the crinkles around his eyes which told her he was trying very hard not to smile.
“And here we have a classic example of where I don’t know whether I want to smile, or punch you.”
“How about we add a third option – you could always kiss me.”
“I wouldn’t bank on that, if I were you. I’m fully expecting to wake up tomorrow in a cold sweat of fear.”
“Well – let’s not worry ourselves with bruising my ego right now. How about you and I buy a bag of food poisoning each from this here lovely establishment, and see how long we can sit in each other’s company without arguing, hmm?” He grinned, raising an eyebrow.
“We won’t make it five minutes without killing each other,” she said, however her hand reached for his, their fingers intertwining as she began to tow him in the direction of the door.
“A little bit of optimism, yeah Evans? I think we could be on to something good here,” he countered, ducking to kiss Lily’s cheek.
“Stop that you-” She swatted him away, though her smile was completely destroying any illusion of annoyance.
“It seems I’ve found my new preferred method of annoying you, Evans.”
”Oh joy.”
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Stars Unearth Your Fires (ch4/?)
Title: Stars Unearth Your Fires (Ch 4/?)
Fandom: DCU, Teen Titans, Red Robin (preboot)
Rating: PG | Words: 2800 | a03 link
Summary: Tim Drake never thought of himself as a troublemaker as far as Robins go. But a passing accusation quickly escalates into a case of stolen memories, technologically backwards clues from his past self, interdimensional hijinks, reflections on the good old days, and possibly the rekindling of a foregone romance. Eventually Tim/??? Mystery ship!
Ch 4: Tim has to look up an old friend or two before he can dig up his (hopefully existent) clue.
A/N: Hey guys! Sorry for the lateness of this chapter. It’s ended up becoming my longest one yet. Thank you so much for the amazing reviews! While there is sadly no Core Four in this chapter (Bart tried to elbow his way in, he really did), they will make more appearances soon. It’s time for Tim to reconnect with a few non-caped companions. My lovely beta Kiragecko took a much-deserved break this week, so all mistakes are 100% me. Sorry if I missed anything!
He and Ives were still friends. He was pretty sure. Mostly. At least, the guy hadn’t taken it too personally the last time Tim had visited out of the blue without speaking to him for over a year.
If anything, Ives had been shocked that Tim wanted to hang with him when he was in the middle of cancer treatment, as so many other friends had flaked out when things got too intense. Tim had just been grateful to have warning, for once, that one of his friends might die. He wasn’t usually so lucky, though he didn’t know how to tell Ives that without telling him way too much.
Two rings. Three. And then—
“Does my caller ID deceive me, or is this richest and dorkiest of my foul weather friends?”
“Don’t you mean fair-weather friends, Ives?”
“No, no, I don’t. You should brush up on your Shakespeare. And cheap surfer-stoner productions in the park don’t count, by the way,”
There were voices in the background, and music too. If anything, Tim would have sworn Ives was in the middle of a… club?
Ives continued, “I do mean foul-weather. That’s what you call people who stick with you when life is sucking but unexpectedly ditch you when it’s time to party. Case in point: I’m throwing a party and you’re not here. Because you never pick up your damn phone, you ass.”
Oh. OH! “Congratulations on your remission, man.”
He could hear the smile through the phone. It wasn’t the same as being totally forgiven, but Ives wasn’t the sort of person who could be happy and hold a grudge at the same time.
“Thanks. It’s my one-month anniversary of the big NED. Looks like for the time being, I’ve rolled a twenty on breathing. It’s worth celebrating.”
Smooth opening. Here we go.
“Feel like doing a more personal celebration too? Maybe something nostalgic? Like digging up our time capsule from the 8th grade? I’ll buy the pizza.”
“Oh, man. Yes. You better, Prince Midas. Hold up.”
He was distracted, clearly talking to somebody else at the party. Tim took a moment. It was just as well that he’d caught Ives when he was distracted. The guy didn’t do parties much. Introvert that he was, they took a lot out of him, including his tendency to say no to things. Even before he’d been sick. Tim didn’t have many childhood friends, but they were bookish gamer geeks, the lot of them.
Ives voice came back on the line.
“I got a friend who wants to come with. The dude’s curious about everything, a real Nancy Drew. Wants to know about my nerdy little 8th grade self. I told him the biggest difference was that I was little and in the 8th grade, but he’s bored and I promised to include him in more stuff.”
“That’s cool. Saturday, noon?”
“That’s high noon to you, buckaroo. And yes.”
——-
He’d outgrown his best nerd shirts.
Tim didn’t even know when it had happened. It wasn’t that they didn’t fit him through the arms and chest—he was wiry enough that they did—but he’d gotten so long in the torso, that the edges of his shirts rose up obnoxiously from the waist of his jeans, constantly baring strips of skin.
When this had happened to Cassie, she’d embraced it and pulled off the sexy belly-shirt like a pro. Tim… couldn’t do that. Or rather, he couldn’t do that without pulling out a persona.
Ives had an meet-up with Tim Drake, not Mr. Sarcastic. So belly nerd shirts were a no-go.
He’d yanked out what appeared to be his least-expensive hoodie and Alfred-purchased designer jeans, and hoped for the best. This was supposed to be about nostalgia for Ives, though Tim had mixed hopes.
What would be worse? Finding nothing but exactly what they had buried years ago, and pretending to laugh with his friend while secretly pulling out his hair over a dead end of evidence? Or finding the evidence he needed in its place, but then having to somehow cover for the oddness of whatever they found by lying to Ives again?
It had been a while since he’d had to lie to someone he loved, and Tim wanted to keep it that way. (And lies of omission didn’t count. Especially to Bruce. And to Dick. And to whomever else he’d been lying to by means of omission lately.)
“Best not to overthink it,” Tim muttered to himself. He had been ten minutes early to the discolored tree that had been the site of his and Ives’ 8th grade paint-ball fight. Also, the site of their only paintball fight, because apparently nobody had told Ives that there tended to be bruises from such a thing.
If Ives was anything like his old self, he’d be five minutes early, and… yup.
Tim smiled and waved as Ives’ old Chevy pulled into the park’s lot. He was about to say hello, when a second person slid out from the car, following after Ives with a growing Cheshire grin on his face.
Tim gasped, “F@*#$ing hell.”
Bernard Dowd.
Ives new Nancy Drew pal was Bernard. Fragging. Dowd. The nosey-est (and therefore worst possible) person to have on a dig that might or might not yield incriminating signs of inter-dimensional antics.
“Why Timbo! With a greeting like that, one would almost think you weren’t pleased to see me.” Bernard bumped the car door closed with his hip as he balanced a brand new shovel on one shoulder.
Ives blinked, “You two know each other?”
Tim scratched his head, “You two know each other?”
“As I’ve told you both,” Bernard set the shovel down by the largest tree root, “I know everyone who’s anyone.”
As if to prove the solidity of his nonchalance, Bernard took his best guess as to which patch of dirt housed the capsule, and made a sweeping ‘you first’ motion with his arm at Tim and Ives.
Tim pulled out Alfred’s trusty gardening hoe, and braced himself as Bernard began to snicker. Because he’d brought a hoe. Because, for all his eloquence, Bernard was emotionally twelve. Ives stared at them both like they had doubled their number of arms and limbs and turned green.
Tim felt his eyes narrow in suspicion in Bernard’s direction, “You knew I’d be here.”
Bernard pulled back his laughter into a finely-controlled smirk, “When dear ol’ Sebastian told me he had an eccentrically neglectful, ridiculously rich childhood compadre named Tim… well, I did the math. But I waited for a face-to-face to be sure,” He winked, “It’s more fun that way.”
Tim purposefully and carefully ignored that entire description of himself as he stared incredulously at Ives.
“You actually let him call you Sebastian? Him?”
“It was the only way to get him to stop calling me ‘St. Ives’ along with several other unholy variations of my surname,” Ives took a deep breath and pitched his own shovel into the dirt, “Now lets get this show on the road.”
Once the digging began, it was a simple matter to let Bernard dominate the conversation, explaining to Ives that he and Tim had gone to the aptly-named Grieve High for a semester together. Until the Aquista gang war had come to their front door step.
Tim’s mind remained vaguely on Bernard’s story, but mostly on the ground they were unearthing. There was a reason Bernard had been able to see the digging spot. It was especially uneven compared to its surroundings, overgrown with grass that was clearly seeded, a slightly different color than what was surrounding it.
Which was suspicious, considering Tim and Ives hadn’t laid down any grass seed when they were kids. Not that someone responsible for the park couldn’t have laid something down, but it didn’t look quite right. It had been what? Six? Seven years since he and Ives had buried the thing? It should have blended with the rest of the milieu perfectly. But it didn’t. Not quite. As though it had been dug up again at least once in the interim.
“Earth to Timinator,” Ives poked him in the forehead, “Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
Ives looked like he wanted to smack Tim with his shovel and Bernard looked… oddly serious.
“Did Bernard’s dream girl turn into a super villain and try to kidnap you?”
And this was why he didn’t want Bernard here. There was the guy’s ongoing conspiracy theory habit, and then there was the fact that he had actually seen way too much.
“No,” Tim heard Bernard begin to protest, but he continued, “Darla didn’t try to kidnap me. She tried to make me into her personal moral compass and I told her where to get off.”
Bernard stared, “You what??? But she—you—she dismantled my car! She had these… these…”
Ives jumped in, “Phenomenal cosmic powers?”
“Yes,” Bernard continued, “And you just told her to go jump off a cliff? And got away with it? What the hell, Timothy!”
Tim blinked. He had forgotten about that. When Darla Aquista had died and returned from the dead with dark magic powers via one of Robin’s enemies, she had sought out her friend Tim Drake out for “advice.” Tim had forgotten that she had gone to Bernard first. He had never bothered to call Bernard and let the guy know he was okay. For all Bernard had known, he’d sent Tim’s untimely demise to his door when he told Darla where to find their former classmate.
Tim put the shovel down for a moment.
“I’m sorry I scared you, Bernard. I meant—I meant that if Darla wanted to be a hero, and she did, she couldn’t rely on me to tell her right from wrong and hold her to it. Heroes take responsibility for their actions. She gets that now. She went off with a superhero team called Shadowpact. She was okay.”
“And you?” Bernard exhaled.
Tim grinned.
“I’m always okay.”
Neither of his friends looked like they believed him.
Ives returned to digging, “See this is why you should call me more often,” He grunted as his shovel finally struck metal, “Your life gets really, really weird without me. Dating undead superheroes, Tim? Really? Oy vey.”
“We didn’t… never mind.”
He could have pulled the chest from the remainder of the hole without grunting, but watching Ives and Bernard wheeze and strain from the physical activity set a good bar for Timothy Drake Wayne’s level of sluggishness. So he panted along with them.
“Makes..nnghhh… a lot of sense in hind sight, though.” Ives breathed.
“What does?”
“Cancer probably doesn’t look like so bad of a boss battle after you’ve seen the fire and brimstone.”
“I…” He could be honest about this much. He could. “It made me glad for the people who are alive. However long they’re alive. Y’know?”
Ives gave him the most earnest smile Tim had seen all day.
“Okay, geeks! And Tim, for all your previous disguise, I see now that you are—in fact—a geek. It’s time to unbox this baby.” Bernard crowed.
Their “time capsule” was less a futuristic tube and more pirate-chest themed lockable luggage from the nearest department store. It had space for stuff, and it looked cool. Even as an adult, Tim felt he could stand by that choice.
Three seconds to blow off the dust. Forty-two to smash the lock. (He and Ives could both remember Tim swearing when they were kids that he would remember the combination, but well, he hadn’t.)
“A moment of silence for the defunct game boy who’s grave we have disturbed.” Ives mock-solemnly intoned, as he pulled out the old system preserved in plastic.
Tim blinked, “You buried your game boy? You loved that thing.”
“Exactly,” Ives poked him in the chest, “I was committed to this project. Unlike you.”
Tim frowned.
“I was too committed. Behold,” he lifted a green mud-crusted travesty that had not aged well, “Rusty the water pistol. Never got in a water gun fight without him. And look! My pog collection.”
“You mean my pog collection.”
Tim shrugged, “Our pog collection.”
“You are both the nerdiest nerds who ever nerded in the eighth grade. I don’t know why I expected differently.” Bernard sighed.
“I did warn you, buddy.” Ives laughed.
Bernard muttered something unintelligible, but it set Ives off on a lecture about the impact of popular culture. Tim took it as a much-needed distraction.
It wouldn’t have done Tim any good to have remembered the lock combination anyway. The lock wasn’t as old as it should have been. And while the capsule was filled with mementos from younger years, there were two small evidence bags at the bottom that were Batman standard issue.
They were hair samples.
Easily researched. Easily pocketed.
Tim breathed a sigh of relief as he quietly slipped them into the back of his jeans.
That had… not gone nearly as badly as he anticipated. He reminded himself that it wasn’t quite over yet. After all, he owed Ives pizza.
Ives and Bernard were still arguing amicably.
One of the reasons Ives never had too many friends as a kid was because most people couldn’t understand that the guy’s favorite form of conversation was a heated debate. When he felt like conversing at all outside of Wizards and Warlocks.
Bernard… well, Bernard just decided when someone was his friend and treated any attempts to escape his friendship as an amusing joke. It worked for him. But he also had a tendency to look down his nose at people who fit too neatly into a category, and Ives tended to wear his categories loud and proud. So it was… curious.
“So, how did you guys meet?”
Ives and Bernard paused and then grinned in unison.
“Elizabeth Spillgrave.”
Who? It took Tim a moment. Right.
Elizabeth Spillgrave. Real name: Jodie Weise. Internationally recognized alien conspiracy theorist, and one of Ives favorite authors. Or least favorite, depending how one looked at it. He always holed up in his room on the day one of her books released, reading voraciously. He would spend the next two weeks debunking her entire book paragraph by paragraph. Sometimes with charts if he was feeling particularly zealous and homework wasn’t challenging him enough.
Tim blinked, “And you became friends over this?”
It didn’t seem possible. Because while Ives was the sort to spend two weeks disproving the sort of theories that were the woman’s bread and butter, Bernard was just the sort to spend the same amount of time proving it. Or perhaps editing how such events would be possible, turning each paragraph into a spring board for his own theories. He would stop short of making charts, though. Bernard thought excessive chart-making was for nerds.
Ives shrugged, “We were both late to her book signing last year, and had to team up on scalping tickets to get into the VIP meet and greet.”
“We shared mutual disappointment that she could but spare us two minutes each, even after all that hassle.” Bernard sighed.
Ives rolled his eyes, “And then he started going on about his idea that the UFO’s mentioned in her last book might be Kryptonian. From a hundred years ago.”
“Magic is a thing, Sebastian.”
“They’re aliens, Bernard. Superman is vulnerable to magic. He’s not going to carry around something that could kill him.”
“Humans do it all the time.”
They continued on as they packed up their tools and piled into Ives’ car. Tim didn’t get a word in edge-wise to ask where they were going, but he quickly recognized the route Ives was taking. Pizza Planet, appropriately enough.
He pulled the clear evidence bags from his pocket to glance at them once more.
One contained extremely short snips of dirty blond hair. The other contained a single jet-black lock that looked like it had been curled around someone’s finger before getting cut.
Both sets were sufficient for a DNA database search.
Tim sat back in his seat.
First pizza, then catching up with the two civilian friends who were still speaking to him, maybe some nostalgic passing around of ye olde Game Boy, and then…
Answers.
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Three Hearts to Own
Fandom: Doctor Who Rating: G Pairing: The Doctor/Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler Chapters: 5/10 Read on AO3 here.
A (sort of) season re-write centering around the Doctor’s touch telepathy and the many ways that it makes his life difficult while he attempts to move on from the loss of Rose Tyler. This work is based around Seasons 3 & 4 and the Tenth Doctor. It’s the final entry in the “A Hand to Hold” series, but it can also be read as a stand-alone. The first four or five chapters will just be short excerpts from the Doctor’s time away from Rose, but there will be a Journey’s End fix-it and a happily ever after at the end. Tags will be updated as I go. Chapters will vary in length.
Chapter Five: Donna (Part One)
---------- Partners in Crime ----------
When he began to investigate the frankly too-good-to-be-true Adipose Industries, the Doctor had expected to find some sort of alien involvement lurking at the root of the operation, but the
last
thing that he had expected to find was
Donna Noble
- dressed in a business suit and gaping at him in pleased surprise as the two of them listened in on the company's nefarious plots to take over the world.
When they finally ran into each other again in the literal sense, the Doctor wasn't entirely sure who initiated their reunion hug first - all he knew was that he was surprised at how happy he was to see her again, and the firm embrace felt nicer than he had expected. Maybe he had just been traveling on his own for a bit too long, but it was nice to think that there was someone out there in the universe who had apparently missed him enough to attempt to hunt him down.
"Don't you ever change?" Donna demanded as he grabbed her hand and they returned to their mad dash to escape Ms. Foster and her lackeys. The Doctor might have laughed if they weren't currently running for their lives - despite their adventures together last Christmas, poor Donna didn't even know the half of it. Maybe that was why she happened to be the only woman on planet earth who he had managed to run into twice, now. Maybe if she really knew the truth of who (and what) he was, then she wouldn't have made it her sole business to track him down again.
However, it seemed that Donna had changed her mind quite a bit about running off to the stars with him, and the Doctor found that he barely had the chance to get a word in edgewise as she practically forced her way back onto the TARDIS.
"Would you rather be on your own?" she asked hesitantly when he didn't immediately help her in packing up her things and rather settled for watching her with a wary, uncomfortable expression.
"No," he replied, the honest answer coming easily as he met her gaze. "Actually, no. But ... the last time ... with Martha, like I said ... it got complicated. And it was all my fault."
However, Donna's brash, stubborn attitude quickly assured him that she would not, in fact, be falling into the same pitfalls that Martha had fallen into. In fact, her reassurances that she was not even the least bit interested were so adamant that the Doctor wasn't quite sure whether to be relieved or offended.
Considering the fact that she had already rejected him once before, Donna settled into life on the TARDIS far quicker than he had expected her to (and also with much more luggage than he had been prepared for). The Doctor wasn't sure if it was simply the fact that they had been reunited against the many odds stacked between them, or if he was simply growing sentimental in his old age, but he thought that he felt a certain tugging in the back of his mind as Donna left behind her life on Earth and stepped back into his time ship - as though fate herself was putting her own spin on their timelines and rewriting the paths that lay ahead of them.
He silently determined to keep an eye on the strange sense of foreboding that he could feel welling up within him and hoped that it wouldn't prove to be a warning of impending heartbreak for the fiery, indomitable Donna Noble.
---------- The Fires of Pompeii ----------
The Doctor fell into a rhythm with Donna almost as easily as he had with Martha, though there were, of course, remarkable, significant differences between the two. Where Martha was friendly and easy-going, Donna was no-nonsense and kept a notable distance between herself and the rest of the world. Besides the casual hand-grabbing that was necessary when two people were facing life-or-death circumstances, the Doctor and Donna largely kept an easy, companionable distance between themselves, which took a weight off of the Doctor's shoulders that he hadn't even realized he'd been carrying until it was suddenly gone.
However, the separation that Donna purposefully put between herself and others didn't exempt her from a sense of sympathy for the plight of the innocent - and the Doctor had to fight hard to ignore her pleas for mercy and stay true to the timelines that he knew were right.
Pompeii had to burn - it was one city, or the entire world. The Doctor had been making these types of decisions his entire life - he knew what had to be done, even if he didn't like it - but that didn't meant that carrying out the actions came any easier with time and practice. In the end, he was glad for Donna's hands on his as they prepared to blow the trigger on Vesuvius together. He could feel her heartbreak as his own as the terrible weight of their actions came down upon their shoulders, and it was nice to know that, for once, he didn't have to make the decision on his own.
The Doctor did eventually go back to save Caecilius and his family in a way that he had never been able to save his own, and though the unnatural twist in the timelines made him sick, he was glad that Donna had been there to convince him to return to the city of Pompeii. He knew deep down that it was the right thing to do, whether the timelines agreed or not, and it wasn't as if it were the first time that he had broken the rules because of his own, foolish compassion.
When he set the small family of four down on the outskirts of the city and watched them prepare to make a brand new start in honor of their fallen friends and neighbors, the Doctor felt a sense of hope springing up in him that he hadn't felt in a very long time. Maybe if Caecilius and his family could start over and keep going, then he could manage it, too.
---------- Planet of the Ood ----------
Donna quickly proved that her compassion for others in need extended beyond the human race as the two of them stumbled upon an ood factory in the forty-second century and instantly uncovered the malpractice taking place within its grounds. The Doctor couldn't help but think of Rose on that snowy, desolate planet - she had had sympathy for the slave race when they had run into them on Krop Tor as well. He knew that her reaction would mirror Donna's righteous indignation if she could be here now, and the haunting nostalgia of her memory seemed to push the Doctor forward as he fought to save the ood in a way that he hadn't been able to back when they had been trapped in that sanctuary base over the black hole.
The Doctor was both surprised and unsettled as he uncovered the ood race's propensity for telepathic communication, and he found himself having to lift the mental shields around his mind once more in an attempt to connect with them. Their song of fear and captivity was enough to break both of his hearts and make him long for the freedom of the open skies once more as they collectively called out for release and justice. He opened Donna's mind to it partly because he knew that she wouldn't have stopped asking if he had said "no", and partly because he was simply tired of having to suffer through it alone. She could only stand twenty-seven seconds of it, but it was enough to know that she understood the great pain that the Doctor was having to work through as he continued to fight to free the ood.
"I spent all that time looking for you, Doctor, because I thought it was so wonderful out here," Donna mused darkly as she gazed in horror at the ood currently holding its brain out to them in its gently-cupped hands. "I want to go home ..." she breathed in desperation.
The Doctor couldn't really blame her - if he had any sort of home or normal life to return to, he supposed that he would be longing for it right now, too - but before they could discuss the issue of Donna leaving him all on his own again, they had a mission to complete, and the people working for Ood Operations certainly didn't make it easy for them.
Still, they managed to put an end to Mr. Halpen and his backwards company (with a little help from the very patient Ood Sigma), and the Ood Brain was free to sing openly once more, the song of life and hope for the future spurring the Doctor forward and making him eager to continue on in his adventures. However, Ood Sigma's parting words left him feeling that odd sense of foreboding again - the sensation that something was twisting the timelines around Donna and the Doctor and forcing them into some sort of unknowable situation that made him uneasy.
"Every song must end," Ood Sigma assured him ominously. But the Doctor was determined not to hear the end of that song of hope and life - not today, when it was so fresh and new and thrumming through his veins like adrenaline. With Donna's assurance that she had changed her mind and would continue to travel with him after all (for the time being, at least), he shuffled them both back into the TARDIS and pointedly ignored the rest of his growing concerns in favor of focusing on their next adventure instead.
---------- The Sontaran Stratagem & The Poison Sky ----------
The Doctor was apprehensive about returning to Earth at Martha's urging, but he had promised her that he would respond when she called, and really, he supposed, it was the least that he could do.
"You haven't changed a bit!" he told her as he instantly swept her up into his arms and gave her a welcoming hug. However, he quickly discovered that that wasn't entirely true. The stinging hum of desire that seemed to have become second nature to their strained relationship was no longer prickling against his skin, and it didn't take long for Donna to deftly point out the fact that Martha was now wearing an engagement ring. This new information had the Doctor breathing a small sigh of relief that was quickly cut off when Martha took out a walkie-talkie and immediately began barking orders.
"Is that what you did to her - turned her into a soldier?" Donna asked curiously as the three of them eyed the red berets and guns that suddenly surrounded them.
The Doctor gritted his teeth in silent consternation as he watched Martha slip through the UNIT soldiers as easily as though she had been doing it all her life. It felt wrong to see her like this, but what right did he have to tell her otherwise? He couldn't exactly deny the accusation in Donna's words, and it wasn't as though what Martha got up to on her own time was any of his business, anyway.
The day just got stranger, however, as the Doctor was introduced to Luke Rattigan, and then Staal the Undefeated himself. And if a sontaran invasion wasn't enough, he was finally introduced to Donna's family and realized that Donna wasn't the only human that the Doctor seemed to be continually running into lately, as he instantly recognized the face of her grandfather as the man who he had met this past Christmas during his Earth tour with Astrid. The old man introduced himself as Wilfred Mott, and the Doctor silently mused over the fact that he seemed to get along much better with his companions' grandfathers than he did with their mothers - he would certainly have to make a note of that for the future.
He gave Donna a TARDIS key not long after that, just to ensure that she wouldn't get any further ideas of leaving him as he dashed into the poisonous smoke that was currently threatening to choke the life out of every living thing on Earth. Of course, the Doctor had no way of knowing that the sontarans would teleport the TARDIS directly onto their ship, leaving him on his own to stop nuclear destruction, find the real Martha, and save Donna's life all at the same time (and, as it happened, in that order, exactly).
Burning the gas out of the earth's atmosphere was a simple enough operation, but it wasn't enough to defeat the determined sontarans. The Doctor knew that they would be regrouping in preparation to destroy the planet that had managed to resist their invasion, but still, he had to give them a choice - he had to offer them the chance to leave and survive before he ripped apart their entire fleet and himself along with it.
Because, if there was one thing that the Doctor had learned from Donna during their travels together, it was that he should always be willing to give second chances. However, Luke Rattigan was more clever than the Doctor gave him credit for, and had a righteous fury that outweighed even his own, and the young human boy ended up placing his own life on the line of battle so that the Doctor could live another day and go on to fight off another alien invasion.
After everything was said and done, the Doctor was pleased that Donna still seemed determined to leave her family behind in favor of the TARDIS, but before they got the chance to say goodbye to Martha and allow her to return to the life that she had created for herself, his old time ship seemed to get ideas of her own as she suddenly took timelines into her own hands and hurtled the three of them forward into the unknown quite against their collective will. It seemed that she had something that she was very keen that they all experience together, and she wasn't about to sit around and wait for them to get there on their own time. The Doctor appreciated the fact that, even now, his brilliant ship was looking out for him and his companions, he just wished that the TARDIS would deign to clue him in on the details of her little plots every once in a while.
#doctor who#dw#fanfiction#fanfic#dw fanfic#dw fanfiction#doctor who fanfic#doctor who fanfiction#the doctor#tenth doctor#rose tyler#ten/rose#tenxrose#the doctor/rose#the doctorxrose
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Gender
It occurred to me while I was exploring the nature of this sense of yearning for a sort of “coming of age” story that I haven’t written anything about my sense of gender on this blog, something which seems to always be bubbling in the background even when I’m unaware of it. The last time I made serious notes about gender was at Sierra Tucson and soon after moving to Crownview, and was likely postponed due to needing to adjust too quickly and return to old coping mechanisms. I have an excerpt here I’ll copy from Sierra Tucson:
I’ve been thinking about gender identity as it relates to physicality and societal expectations. If I am male, I feel like that identity shouldn’t come exclusively from biology, especially concerning outliers. Thus it seems that gender as we truly define it is something more abstract; belonging to a group. But then, how is such a group defined if not ad-hoc, biologically inspired judgement? Perhaps it’s more useful to recontextualize gender as the identification with certain values. We might imagine a distant future where biological gender has been genomically removed, but people still fall into gendered categories (even a literal “man” or “woman” card, like a club membership) by taking a personality and values assessment test. But then, what are these values? What follows is a first draft from perceived societal norms and expectations:
Male:
Strength
Stoicism
Self-sacrifice?
Self-sufficiency/solidarity
Engineer
Protection
Confrontation
Direct
Outward
Honor
Female:
Elegance
Compassion
Flexibility
Cooperation
Designer
Growth/nurturing -> support
Indirect
Inward
Fairness
Notice that none of these are diametrically opposed; one person could have all these qualities, although such a person would be just short of perfect. These represent the values of a gender identity as well as the attitude/mindset. They are designed to fit with antiquated gender norms and are all positive qualities meant to empower any who embody them. This is not prescriptive, but descriptive, and no effort is made to make an explicit tie to biological sex. Additionally, qualities are made to be abstract. Qualities like “physical” v “emotional” implicitly dehumanize and are too close to reality to be appropriate values.
After a page of doodling I came to these values:
Strength | Elegance
Stoicism | Compassion
Structure | Flexibility
Independence | Cooperation
Protection | Support
Honor | Equality
I’m sure if I rooted through Journal 0 I’d find notes expanding this model, but I’m lazy.
Now then, I suppose I should explore my relationship to gender here, something I’m finding particularly hard to keep a train of thought about.
I can’t say gender has always been a complicated subject for me. I don’t recall having any particular interaction with it as a kid up to... we’ll say middle school. I think it really only became complicated when my asexual fetish branched out into transgenderism and the homosexual side of my bisexuality came out. I would often imagine myself as female with a male in fantasies - this didn’t so much cause me to question my masculinity as wonder what “masculinity” and “femininity” really were. In my head, the difference seemed superficially anatomical, but I got a distinct feeling there was something deeper to it.
I also questioned my gender identity as far as being trans goes, but at the end came to conclude that, for one, anatomical gender was irrelevant other than how it affects the perceptions of others and post-op transsexuals were deluding themselves into thinking physicalizing a fundamentally abstract part of their personality would somehow lead them to self-actualization. On the other hand, an easy counter-point was putting myself in the shoes of a female social scenario and recognizing that any such exchange made me uncomfortable; I didn’t like being treated “like a girl”. But then, so too did male social scenarios.
I became more and more aware of a deep discomfort when stereotypes were applied to me, such as remarking that my eating habits are “because I’m a boy”, or that I’m acting “just like a boy”. It felt wrong, alienating, dehumanizing even, not because they were technically inaccurate, but rather because they robbed aspects of my personality and placed them in a categorical identity I had no control over. For a while I felt some sense of pride when I saw how unlike the stereotypes I was, caring nothing for “football” or “cars”, but such an attitude has likely led me to my current situation; a lack of socialization with “male culture” and thus a stunted ability to make friends.
If I might go off on a tangent for a bit, I have this particular image in my head. When I lived with a friend, there was a grey cat named Sophie there. She was very odd to deal with, because it almost seemed like she didn’t know how to act like a cat. She was stiff, easily spooked, would stare blankly at toys or playful advances from the other cat, and loved nothing more than to lie down on someone’s lap where she didn’t have to move around. I’ve been told she was removed from her litter too early; essentially, she never had the opportunity to learn how to be a cat, and what resulted was this uncomfortable mess. I am that cat, “catness” being “manhood”.
Speaking of, I do remember always being incredibly uncomfortable with the word “man”, less so with “boy”, and that still seems to apply. I cringe every time I remember that I’m supposed to be a “man”. Is it fear of the expectations therein? A residual reaction to the inherent dehumanization of labeling?
I don’t think all of this is solely related to gender though; I get similar (though less pronounced) feelings when people comment on my race being causal to my personality. There’s just something deeply unsettling about people having these easy visual markers to tear off large chunks of your humanity before you can even speak.
As for my perception of the stereotypes associated with men, I suppose I should list those:
Strong, aggressive, teasing borders bullying
Smart or stupid, serious or clowns, usually overconfident
Ravenous appetite, a proclivity toward activity
Sports, cars, sex, money, fame, success
Competition, independence, invulnerable
Expected to self-sacrifice (stoicism, women and children first)
Heavy lifters, pull the weight, breadwinner, work yourself to death
Soldier, worker, grunt, slabs of meat
Big and bulky, powerful, threatening, hairy, smelly
Unrespectful of politeness (body humor, farts, burps are “funny”)
Dirty slobs, pigs or bulls, wrecking everything they pass
There’s a few societal roles tangled up in there (child, adolescent, adult, family-man) but you can get the general picture. As I write these I interpret only negatives, but it occurs to me that there’s nothing inherently negative about any of them (with some exceptions). Someone matching these stereotypes would think them either natural or even virtuous.
Uh... Back to my original motivation, exploring this sense of... disconnection or lack of finality with my gender. This feeling I can’t quite place. One that’s most strongly responded to this image:
... and others like it...
From what I can tell, the two main commonalities are “serious face” and “contrast” (young and old). The second image especially fascinates me because I can see the adult’s eyes shining through his child body. Something about that, unattainable levels of wisdom well beyond their years... I’d compare it to nostalgia, or even a longing for something to be nostalgic about.
I want a coming of age story set in elementary school featuring a main character who’s older than they appear. Am I looking for a role model? A transitional period between being taken care of and taking care of others? I want to feel small for some reason. Do I want to be masculine in the strong protector sense? I lack it as-is. Many of the things Satoru does are unthinkable for me simply because of my personality, things I wouldn’t mind doing but can’t because that’s not the imaginary self I’m roleplaying... Personality? Something to tinge what to me is a dull grey mush of a personality? Or happiness, belonging, connection, friends.
And then in anime, when I see boys shirtless
It’s not jealousy, or lust. I wish for a toned physique, and enjoy looking at theirs. But at the same time, I feel a counter-feeling of shame from wanting anything “manly” like well-defined muscles. I don’t want to be a “man”, yet I find myself wishing for just that.
I just want to be “me” without that being labeled.. Just “human” suffices, I think. (though I’ve had issues with even that...)
I keep thinking about writing some kind of story in which a girl wakes up as a boy and has to deal with everything that comes with. She’d be a kind of self-insert for me, in that neither of us knows what being a boy is like.
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