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lancestrollsgf · 5 months ago

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# THE BETTER NORRIS ! F1 GRID X ADOPTED NORRIS! READER, SMAU

introduction master list request list

part one, part two, part three.

# WARNINGS : cussing, i know nothing about the parents of lando so everything is fictional. lowercase intended, spelling errors (english isn’t my first language). lando's actual siblings are not really mentioned in this since I don't know anything about them. reader hitchhikes. an excessive usage of emojis such as “🙄, 🤫, 😝, 😭,😊,😉”. reader is 17 in the story btw (the age isn’t really mentioned so i guess you can imagine it however you want)

# SUMMARY: the adventures of the formula one driver lando norris adopted sibling, y/n norris.

# AUTHORS NOTE : this is my first smau (that i’m posting). there’s no meaning behind this story i really just wanted to make it for fun. backstory for how reader (you) were adopted is not explained. reader is kinda of portrayed as bisexual, sorry only like three times. pretend lando is a soccer/football fan (and likes messi). some of these scenarios/comments actually happened to face claim.

# FACE CLAIM : marian guevara/theatomicbabe on instagram (i love her so much)

VOTE FOR FUTURE LOVE INTEREST (now closed)

— instagram !

liked by landonorris, charles_leclerc and 529,289 others

thebetternorris visited jamaica once again, spent every moment with the children and made memorial memories that i will remember forever, thank you @junglenonprofit for making this event happen🤍🇯🇲

landonorris: very cool hair style in the last photo is that your new look?

-> thebetternorris: maybe it is. you should also try finding a new look instead of looking like a washed up mop you have on your head that you call curls

-> carlossainz55: ay no, she got you with that one 🤣

-> landonorris: I WAS LITERALLY BEING NICE. WHY DID YOU COME AFTER ME??

landonorris: since when did you go to jamaica???

-> thebetternorris: since two days ago, man keep up with the times 🙄🙄

maxverstappen1: y/n does your mom know you’re in jamaica??

-> thebetternorris: no.. don’t tell her, she doesn’t have instagram 🤫

-> ciscawauman: y/n norris.. you said you were with friends for this week?

-> thebetternorris: hi mama 😊😊 im with bsf/n. but im on my way home! (max emilian verstappen this is all your fault, im coming after you)

-> maxverstappen1: sorry y/n.. hi mrs.wauman!

-> ciscawauman: hello max 👋 y/n please don’t threaten someone through comments

username1: y/n’s interactions with the drivers will never fail to make me laugh

username2: i love you y/n!!!

username3: will forever appreciate how y/n is not pr trained. her posts and comments heal me

-> mclaren: that will change very soon, sadly.

-> thebetternorris: @.mclaren YOU WILL NEVER CATCH ME ALIVE

lewishamilton: good work, little norris, very proud of you, keep doing good in the world 🥰

-> thebetternorris: I LOVE U SIR LEWIS

-> lewishamilton: love you too

-> landonorris: lewis please ignore her

username4: y/n’s reply to lewis’ comment is so real

username5: the third picture is so cute 🥹

view all 5201 comments

april 21, 2024 (dates are for the post above ^^)

liked by landonorris, oscarpiastri, and 661,201 others

thebetternorris 🍸🪩🌃🍾

landonorris: who is that guy in the last photo?

-> thebetternorris: i have no clue, i js chose it because i looked good. i think he was trynna lure me into a cult?

-> landonorris: WHAT?? CALL ME RIGHT NOW

username4: you can always rely on y/n to never disappoints with her outfits 😫😫

oscarpiastri: how come you never invite me to party out with you?

-> thebetternorris: because you steal all the girls and guys too 😕😕 also you’re too old

-> oscarpiastri: i’m barely 23??? and thank you or sorry idk man, you confuse me

username6: y/n’s life is so entertaining

username7: i wanna be like y/n when i grow up

username8: my goal in life is to party like y/n does

view all 6229 comments

april 25, 2024

liked by landonorris, charles_leclerc, girl3, and 786,929 others

thebetternorris no caption 🌞 👤: @.girl1 @.girl2 @.girl3 @.guy1

girl3: i had so much fun y/n see you soonnn

-> thebetternorris: me too! see you soon 😊😊

-> landonorris: y/n what is this???? what do you mean see you soon???? ANSWER MY CALLS Y/N

landonorris: who are those girls and guy on the last two photos???

-> charles_leclerc: leave your sister alone, as if you weren’t doing crazy stuff this week either 🤣

-> thebetternorris: @.landonorris they have names you know, you shouldn’t just call them “those girls”. i thought mama taught you better. 🤨🤨

-> landonorris: @thebetternorris sorry..?? but you didn’t answer the question.. also please @charles_leclerc don’t expose my doings of this week onto the internet

username9: you’re the loml in a another universe 😔

-> thebetternorris: why not this universe 😉

-> danielriccardo: damn little norris has more rizz than her brother 😭 @.landonorris

-> landonorris: why do i keep getting attacked 💔

username10: having the caption as “no caption” is having a caption

-> thebetternorris: 🤓🤓

username11: does y/n like girls cause that third photo is a bit suspicious LMAOO

-> username12: i think so, especially because of her response to oscar's comment on her previous post

view all 3620 comments

april 27, 2024

liked by landonorris, newyorkcityfc, and 887,292 others

thebetternorris thank you @.newyorkcityfc for inviting me to document the New York City fc vs charlotte game. visiting the new york city fc game made me want to try out soccer, turns out it might be time that i change career path 😝

landonorris: you’re in new york??? since when. and @.newyorkcityfc just invited you???

-> thebetternorris: since two days ago and is that an insult?

-> landonorris: who are you staying with?

-> thebetternorris: man stop asking so many questions 😕

charles_leclerc: weren’t you in jamaica like less than a week ago?

-> thebetternorris: weren’t you in china less than a week ago? why you judging where im traveling, i don’t judge you. you literally fly somewhere each week for your go karting 🙄

username13: y/n’s post are so unpredictable each time 😭 she was just helping children in jamaica and is now at a soccer game in nyc

-> thebetternorris: gotta keep y’all on your toes 🤫

-> username13: toes 🤤

-> thebetternorris: NAH GTFO LMAOOO

username14: y/n becoming a soccer player when??

username15: all of the norris siblings are so talented

view all 2928 comments

april 29, 2024

liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1, and 997,929 others

thebetternorris miami grand prix day 2 & day 3 🤙. found out some guy with the same last name as me won? idk but congrats @.landonorris

username16: dang her brother just won his first race and she doesn’t even make a post about him?

-> username17: for real, like everyone congratulated him right after but not even his own sister

-> username18: @.username17 well she is adopted 🤣

username19: it was so fun meeting you y/n!!!

-> thebetternorris: thank you pretty

username20: thank you for the water y/n 😊😊

-> thebetternorris: of courseee, had to give you that rich voss water 😉😉

-> landonorris: you gave a stranger water?? when?? you were with me the whole time???

-> thebetternorris: hey man you gotta start appreciating the people that support you, he was a worker ✊🏼

username21: hey i was the guy you were signing “way 2 sexy” with lolll

-> thebetternorris: AYY MY MANNN, i posted u on tiktok look at it 😉

jamescharles: omg i met you!! you’re gorgeous 🥰

-> thebetternorris: JAMESS HEYYY, i put you in my tiktok 🤙🤙

username22: omg you hugged me, remember i picked you up 😭

-> thebetternorris: I REMEMBER YOUU, that hug was great thanks man i needed that 🫵🏼 posted a full tiktok abt you

username23: your first outfit is so art teacher-coded

-> thebetternorris: is this a compliment or?? thank you though 😭

-> landonorris: @.username23 THATS WHAT I TOLD HER

landonorris: the number of people commenting that they met you is insane. @thebetternorris

-> thebetternorris: what can i say i'm js that guy 😼

view all 6282 comments

may 5, 2024

liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1, and 1,000,010 others

thebetternorris congrats to @.landonorris for winning your first grand prix, in america 🦅🇺🇸, i’m so so proud! turns out having an adopted sister isn't so bad for your racing career after all 😜. btw to everyone in the comments section getting their gears all tangled because I didn't congratulate him sooner, chill out. I was busy practicing my own racing skills. yk, just in case he needs some real competition 😴 sorry @.maxverstappen1. i’m so proud of you, i'm forever grateful that i got picked from the “bin” i was found according to you 18 years ago, and it resulted in me being your sister :) 👤: @.landonorris @.oscarpiastri

landonorris: thank you for the congratulations, but did you really have to use those photos of me?

-> thebetternorris: damn you got your congrats just be grateful man 🙄

oscarpiastri: so this is why lando was crying, btw thank you for using a good photo of me

-> thebetternorris: OSCAR ARE YOU SERIOUS. @.landonorris YOU CRIED?? LMFAOOO

-> landonorris: @.oscarpiastri YOU SNITCH.

maxverstappen1: thank goodness you’re not a f1 driver, you’d be some real competition. we need to try go karting together soon 👍🏼

-> thebetternorris: i know this is a joke but thank u max 😔 we should go karting soon so i can beat you at it 😈

-> username24: i would pay to see y/n kart against max

username25: i don't even know anything about f1 but this made me tear up

username26: y/n getting hate for not congratulating her brother is insane

username27: people getting mad about y/n not congratulating lando as if they know anything about them

username28: y/n was one of the first people to congratulate lando, yall are hating a literal kid for smth so little 💀

view all 4593 comments

may 7, 2024

liked by landonorris, leomessi, 1,102,920 others

thebetternorris pov that one unemployed friend on a tuesday (saturday). thank you @.mles for the invite and for letting me meet the goat @.leomessi 🩷🩷

joyboy: finally found someone that is everywhere like me

-> thebetternorris: paris fashion week next 😉?

-> landonorris: NO???

username29: IS THAT LIONEL MESSI??

-> thebetternorris: that’s literally oomf what are you talking abt 🙄

ueername30: y/n is literally everywhere but home

username31: y/n's smile 🥰🥰

carlossainz55: Real Madrid CF>>>

-> thebetternorris: carlos get outta here 😕😕

username32: te encantaría ser un hombre nunca lo vas a ser y eso es lo que te jode (you’d love to be a man and you’ll never be a man and that fucks with you)

-> thebetternorris: @.username32 me encanta ser mujerrr (i love being a womann)

-> username32: @thebetternorris pues lo disimulas fatal (well you hide it well)

-> thebetternorris: @.username32 que es ser mujer para ti? (what is being a woman to you?)

-> username33: SHE GOT YOU THERE 💀@.username32

landonorris: you meeting messi before me insane 😔

leomessi: gracias por tu apoyo 🩷 que chistoso la caption 🤣 (thank you for your support 🩷 how funny the caption is)

-> landonorris: oh you’re joking.

-> thebetternorris: @.leomessi 🩷🩷 (i’m so normal abt this..)

username33: i wanna be y/n's camera man

username34: who is taking these pictures of y/n

-> thebetternorris: for this game, some guy named jarvis took these photos idk but we're homies now

-> landonorris: WHO IS JARVIS???

view all 12920 comments

june 5, 2024

liked by landonorris, maxverstappen1, and 1,293,021 others

thebetternorris i look sunburnt, swear it's just the lights 👤: bustarhymes

bustarhymes: it was nice meeting you little norris

-> thebetternorris: it was great meeting you man, your music is great

danielriccardo: mate i think you need a new cameraman because most of these are blurry...

-> thebetternorris: my pictures look better than yours, you're letting your jealousy show

landonorris: nah bro how did you meet busta rhymes before me.

-> thebetternorris: because i'm better than you

username35: you dead ass look like han jisung omg

-> thebetternorris: thank you, idk who that is but i get that a lot 😭

username34: y/n looks so much like young miko it’s insane

charles_leclerc: you look scary in the first picture

-> thebetternorris: i saw your paparazzi picture from the beach, your shoulders look scarier, learn how to put on sunscreen 😬

username36: y/n’s style is so 🥰

view all 5934 comments

june 30, 2024

liked by landonorris, charles_leclerc, and 1,304,393 others

thebetternorris back at the big apple 🍎🏙️

itsyoungmiko: hi twinn

-> thebetternorris: hey twin, we should meet up soon

lancestroll: how do you travel everywhere?

-> thebetternorris: walking and hitchhiking

-> lancestroll: hitchhiking? be safe norris

-> thebetternorris: yea hitchhiking. not all of us have private planes that our daddy pays for🙄(just joking, love u @lawerence_stroll pls give me money)

-> lancestroll: your brother literally flies private. please don't ask my dad for money 😭

lawerence_stroll: hello y/n, how much money do you need?

-> thebetternorris: HI MR.STROLL, thank you for the offer I was just joking, you're so nice. see you at the next gp 😊

username37: who is that on the last photo?

-> thebetternorris: THATS ME. LMFAOOO

username38: ain't no way you're in new york city rn, you were in florida a day ago.

-> thebetternorris: that's what hitchhiking is for, duh

-> username38: you dead ass hitchhiked a ride from florida to new york city. that's like 20 hours...

-> thebetternorris: “that’s like 20 hours…” ☝🏼🤓

username39: are you gonna go to the british gp?

-> thebetternorris: yes sadly 💔 lando is forcing me against my will 😕

oscarpiastri: don’t forget my keychain pls

-> thebetternorris: ofc man ill give it to you soon 🤙

zhouguanyu24: very cool pictures y/n and cool outfit

-> thebetternorris: HI ZHOUUU, i got you something for you and sweet corn 🥰 thank u for the compliment 😙

username40: future mom lore is gonna go insane

-> thebetternorris: 😈

landonorris: y/n are you ever not in the US. come back home..

-> thebetternorris: USA 🇺🇸🦅🦅

-> logansargeant: USA USA 🇺🇸🦅🦅

-> landonorris: @.logansargeant logan please don’t lure my sister into your cult that you americans have

-> logansargeant: @.landonorris we don’t have a cult in america 😭 well… don’t quote me on that 😔

-> username41: “you americans” is crazy 💀

view all 4402 comments

july 1, 2024

comment to be tagged in the next part 🤫🤫

1K notes · View notes

astrotruther · 6 months ago

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Astro Observations

misc. (i)

⛔️ TW: mention of anorexia and drugging❗️

♡ Venus Square Mars may attract obsessive people. In particular, people who obsess over their looks or fetishize them in some way. Brooke Shields had a whole nation obsessed with her at the mere age of 12. Eugenia Cooney has infamously attracted hoards of anorexia fetishists with her content. People with this placement may have a higher risk of drastic weight loss or gain.

♡ Either I meet too many Capricorn Suns by coincidence or it's a rather common placement. One reasoning could be that April is an ideal month for marriage in many places, especially ones where it gets unbearably hot in June. Spring adds to April's allure. Traditional couples often conceive right after tying the knot, making the pregnancy due in Capricorn season.

♡ Lilith is associated with sexuality but people focus too much ONLY on that facet of it. Lilith is associated with many other things like power, revenge and how one becomes a social pariah.

♡ Planets at 0° may symbolize struggle. Lana Del Rey has Sun at 0°. The Sun represents our ego. She had many controversies in 2020 including the mesh mask and her Instagram rant undermining POC artists. Even after criticism, instead of apologizing, she remained defensive. I believe that planets at 0° provide a lot of room for growth if the individual is genuinely interested in self-improvement.

♡ Aries Moon (ruled by Mars) and Scorpio Moon (ruled by Pluto, traditionally by Mars) despite being similar are perceived quite differently by people. The sign of Aries gives child-like quality to the native. They come off as cute and their sarcastic remarks are perceived as good humor. E.g. Rihanna roasting Helena Bonham Carter's sense of fashion. Meanwhile, one eyeroll from a Scorpio Moon, and they may come off as hateful and jealous. My advice to Scorpio Moons who want to be in the public eye, please never put on the mean girl persona. Tap into your kind side, it'll be received in a positive way and you'll attract genuine support.

♡ Venus-Mars aspects symbolize beauty; the difference may lie in how people perceive it. Venus Trine Mars are often called cute. People with this aspect are well-liked and have a good reputation. These are the people who may never be cancelled due to the halo effect they have. No matter how massively popular they are, people won't be digging up dirt on them, which is also why very little is known about these people's personal lives. These people often become a household name due to that one iconic thing they did, even if they decide to adapt a lowkey presence afterwards. Let me emphasize this with an extensive list of examples:

✧ Nina Dobrev (The Vampire Diaries), Zayn, Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl), Adele, Kit Harington (Game of Thrones), Sabrina Carpenter, Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man), Kate Middleton, Mandy Moore (A Walk to Remember), Jackie Chan, Jenna Fischer (The Office), Ana de Armas, Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games), Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians), Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) and Alan Rickman (Harry Potter) have this aspect.

✧ Taeyang being the only member of former K-pop group BIGBANG who's had no controversies (also managed to keep his relationship hidden for a long time before revealing it with a wedding announcement), Khloé Kardashian being the least disliked Kardashian/Jenner sister, Cardi B admitting to drugging and robbing men, starring in Hustlers that glamorized it, hitting her career peak with WAP the very next year really drives the point home.

✧ I've also noticed this aspect in almost all Bollywood IT girls of their time: Priyanka Chopra, Aishwarya Rai, Anushka Sharma, Ayesha Takia, Dia Mirza, Divya Bharti, Parveen Babi - all loved by the general public despite the media scrutiny and misogyny that prevails within the industry.

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#astrology #astro observations #astro notes #astro community #astrology placements #astro posts #astrology notes #astrology observations #astrology community #astrology tumblr #natal astrology #natal placements #natal chart #celebrity astrology #kpop astrology

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southeastasianists · 29 days ago

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It was the mid-1980s when Paul Toh came of age as a gay man, decades before smartphones and dating apps made sex a lot more accessible right at your fingertips. Toh has been diagnosed with HIV since 1989.

Now semi-retired with his own business distributing antiretroviral therapy medication and HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), the 59-year-old said that in those days, cruising in public parks, toilets, and back alleys of dirty shophouses along pre-cleanup Singapore River for sex was par for the course.

Unsurprisingly, cruising in public made gay men easy targets for police officers. “They started going to these cruising grounds undercover, with the explicit intention of entrapping and arresting gay men,” Toh added.

Police raids in nightlife establishments with gay clientele also became common, with prominent gay discotheque Niche having its liquor license withdrawn by the police in 1989 and the Rascals incident of 30 May 1993, in which multiple patrons were arrested for not having their NRICs on them. This came to be remembered by veteran activists as Singapore’s Stonewall.

Fear about the spread of AIDS was part of the reason why police intensified their clamp down on queer spaces. In April 1987, Singapore experienced its first AIDS-related death. And one year later, the Director of Public Affairs of the Singapore Police Department said in a Straits Times article that “homosexual activities have been strongly linked to the dreaded AIDS disease,” making it an “added reason in the public interest for police to disallow homosexuals to convert places licensed for entertainment into places where they can congregate.”

Iris’ Work of Fighting Stigma

76-year-old health advisor Iris Verghese was among the first health workers to rise to the occasion when Singapore reported its first HIV/AIDS cases.

“I knew just as little about HIV/AIDS as everyone else,” said the retired nurse, who first joined Middle Road Hospital, a now-defunct treatment centre for sexually transmitted diseases, in 1974. As part of her job, Verghese was tasked with contact tracing people who had sexually transmitted infections.

The job brought Verghese to brothels and nightclubs in Geylang’s red-light district, which meant she was no stranger to serving society’s Others with kindness.

“A lot of it has to do with my faith.”

“I thought about my role models like Jesus and Mother Teresa—they didn’t care what illness you had. If they could hang out with people with leprosy, then who am I to refuse to care for those with HIV/AIDS?”

Verghese’s work is well-documented, and everyone has given her the accolades she deserves—from President Halimah Yacob to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Singapore to the Straits Times, which named her an everyday hero in 2019.

Plague, a 15-minute short film by Singaporean filmmaker Boo Junfeng, captures the emotional gravity of the care work performed by Verghese and health workers like herself.

The emotionally-stirring film is inspired by Verghese’s work with HIV/AIDS patients in the ’80s and offers a look into the life of Jamie, a patient who stopped coming to the clinic for treatment and counselling.

In the film’s climax, set in the patient’s HDB flat, Verghese tries to dissuade Jamie from inflicting internalised stigma. Jamie insists on using disposable plastic cups and utensils and cleaning every surface he touches for fear of passing the virus to his loved ones.

Wanting to prove that HIV/AIDS is not transmissible through saliva, Verghese takes Jamie’s plastic cup and drinks from it. She then hands him a regular glass, beckoning for him to drink from it, only for him to swipe it away, breaking the glass and cutting himself in the process.

Thus comes the true test of Verghese’s dedication to her profession as she steels herself to the drastically heightened risk. Now that her patient is bleeding, she is dealing no longer just with saliva, but with blood carrying the virus.

In our interview, Verghese recalled many incidents like these. One that stuck with me was her counselling session with Singapore’s first HIV patient, a young gay professional, in 1985. “As I listened to him and gave him a hug, he broke down and cried,” she said. “He said he felt so good afterwards.”

Safe Sex Outreach in the 80s

“Things were very different in the ’80s and ’90s,” said Professor Roy Chan, Founding President of Action for AIDS Singapore (AfA). AfA is a non-government organisation founded in 1988 to fight HIV/AIDS infection in Singapore.

“There was no internet then. When we set up AfA, we had to rely on word of mouth, phone calls, faxes, pagers, and so on. Mobilisation was not as easy then, but we overcame the obstacles we faced. It was very much more hands-on in those days,” Chan recalled.

Chan set up AfA as a non-governmental organisation in 1988 to respond to the needs of people living with HIV/AIDS, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, as well as to advocate for greater action and awareness around HIV/AIDS.

AfA was also one of the first community groups in Singapore that served the needs of LGBTQ+ individuals—namely men who have sex with men—disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS.

“Back then, people didn’t have as much access to the internet as we do today, meaning that accurate information on HIV/AIDS was much harder to come by, making education efforts vital,” Chan recalled. “On the flip side, no internet meant the gay nightlife scene was more vibrant than what it is today.”

Since the gay community in the 1980s and 1990s did not have the internet and mobile phone apps to meet other people online, they had to go to physical spaces to fulfil their need for connection, whether it was nightlife establishments or cruising grounds.

Gay clubs were hence crucial in AfA’s outreach programs on safe sex practices back in the ’80s—even if it meant risking the possibility of police raids.

Back then, there were very few places in Singapore where gay men felt safe enough to gather in abundance, making gay clubs a viable hub for outreach and education.

AfA’s outreach efforts endure today in the form of the Mobile Testing Van initiative on weekends. The van, parked outside popular gay nightlife spots in Singapore, aims to bring HIV testing closer to the public, bridging the fear and stigma of walking into a stand-alone clinic to get tested.

The Consequence of Outreach

The people brave enough to put themselves out there to serve a larger cause were but a small minority, especially given the cultural milieu of the time.

“There was so much that was unknown about HIV/AIDS even among the medical community, much less the general public,” said Verghese.

“Even at Middle Road Hospital, two doctors resigned, and twenty-five nurses asked to be transferred out.”

AfA’s awareness campaigns and fundraiser drives drew a lot of publicity—and no doubt some backlash.

Still, beneath all the headlines and the star power lent by high-profile celebrity allies was the silence surrounding individual HIV/AIDS cases.

“It was all very hush-hush. People didn’t want to talk about it. No one wanted to know who died of AIDS,” Verghese shared when I asked if the atmosphere in the 90s was similar to that depicted in films and drama series such as The Normal Heart and Pose.

The shows portrayed the HIV/AIDS crisis in the disease’s epicentre in New York as being a time of deaths and countless funerals attended by surviving gay men.

One exception to this veil of silence was Paddy Chew, the first Singaporean person to come out publicly as being a person living with HIV/AIDS.

Chew—well-known for his one-man autobiographical play Completely With/Out Character—told Verghese and her husband that he wanted no crying at his funeral.

“He asked me to arrange his funeral such that his ashes will be thrown into the sea from a Singapore Armed Forces boat,” said Verghese. She and Chew’s close friends were instructed to be dressed in their party best, with helium balloons that were to be released out at sea.

“There was one helium balloon that drifted away from the other balloons. To me, that felt like it was Paddy’s soul saying goodbye to us one last time.”

A Tale of Two HIV Diagnoses

Perhaps by coincidence—or not, since Verghese was one of the very few nurses dedicated to caring for HIV/AIDS patients at the time—Toh’s then-partner was also one of Verghese’s patients.

“My then-partner Freddie and I handled our HIV diagnoses very differently, but of course, we also came from very different backgrounds and life experiences,” said Toh.

“I found out about my status because an ex-lover of mine had come down with pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP). I flew to Sydney for a diagnosis so that I wouldn’t be registered in the local system here if I was found to be positive.”

On the other hand, Freddie found out about his HIV-positive status because he was a regular blood donor. Not only was his diagnosis inevitably recorded in the national registry, but Freddie also ran into legal trouble. He was charged in court for false disclosure of his sexual activity.

“Because of how the entire trial turned out, Freddie was sentenced to imprisonment for twice the expected duration. It affected his entire outlook in life, feeling like he was being framed by a bigger power with an agenda, with the whole world against him,” said Toh, who cared for Freddie until he passed in 2008.

Toh, on the other hand, took his diagnosis as an opportunity to re-evaluate his life and make the most of the eight years that the doctor told him back in 1989 he had left to live.

“When I received my diagnosis, the only thing in my mind was this: it is the quality of life that matters, not the quantity.” And so, the two spent the next few years of their lives travelling the world, making their remaining years as meaningful as they could be.

Anything for a Chance at Life

Maximising his remaining years did not stop at travel for Toh. Having managed to get his hands on antiretroviral therapy in Sydney in the form of azidothymidine (AZT), he went on to look for more effective forms of medication while the technology was being developed in real-time. Toh wanted to help other HIV patients like himself.

In 1994, Toh joined the Asia Pacific Network of People with HIV/AIDS (APN+), a regional network advocating for the improvement of the lives of people with HIV/AIDS in the Asia-Pacific region, later becoming a Board member and secretariat.

“North America and Europe were progressing swiftly in their battle against HIV/AIDS thanks to the work of activists there putting pressure on their governments and the medical community to channel funding towards the research and development of suitable treatment for HIV/AIDS,” said Toh.

“In Asia, however, it’s a different story. We had to be street smart in our advocacy while also looking elsewhere for allies.”

This meant looking to donors in the West who could be persuaded to recognise the importance of HIV/AIDS advocacy in Asia.

“I was very lucky to have the opportunity to be one of the first few Asians who had access to HAART, said Toh.

HAART (Highly active antiretroviral therapy) is a triple-combination of antiretroviral drugs discovered in 1996 by Professor David Ho. Toh had been invited to attend the 11th International Conference on AIDS in Vancouver, Canada, where the discovery of this triple cocktail was announced.

Within three months of beginning HAART treatment in 1996, Toh saw his health improving tremendously, with his CD4 count—a measure for the immune system of PLHIV—increasing exponentially and his viral load becoming undetectable within the fourth month.

Although Toh already had a supply of free antiretroviral medication from his healthcare provider in Sydney, he continued to look elsewhere for alternative sources for patients who were unable to afford the patented medication.

“Unlike Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, where medication for HIV/AIDS was provided to patients for free, Singapore was the only Asian Tiger which did not do so,” said Toh.

“Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies in developing countries like Brazil, India, and Thailand were manufacturing their own generic antiretroviral medication in spite of patent laws, making it more affordable.”

While still not free, MOH announced in 2020 that HIV medication would become subsidised.

Singapore’s Very Own ‘Buyers Club’

With patented HIV/AIDS medication in the ’80s continuing to be inaccessible to many who needed it, buyers clubs—similar to the one featured in the 2013 film Dallas Buyers Club—would soon emerge worldwide, including Singapore.

“The funny thing was that Australia had easy access to HIV/AIDS medication, so there was a lot of stock available in Sydney,” said Verghese. A family vacation down under in 1987 turned into an informal research trip for her to network and gather the information that she needed to perform her job optimally.

During her trip, she met HIV researcher Dr David Cooper, who brought her to Albion Street Centre (now known as The Albion Centre), which specialises in HIV/AIDS management.

Through her newfound contacts, Verghese managed to get her hands on some of the unused stocks of medication in Sydney back to Singapore for her support group.

“We even got the help of the Singapore Airlines flight attendants to pool together their unused baggage allowance to bring this medication back,” she recounted with a laugh.

Antiretroviral medication was not the only asset that Verghese brought back. She learned a lot about the virus from the professionals she met in Sydney, allowing her to move faster than the national response and gather the information needed to tend to her patients.

A Ground Up Initiative

“George Yeo was actually very impressed with what we were doing,” recounted Verghese. “He wanted to meet with the community to learn more about our efforts and arranged a closed-door meeting with us.”

The meeting was the culmination of months of sending letters to Yeo, the Minister of Health at the time. The dialogue session was held to discuss the government’s rule that mandated the bodies of AIDS sufferers to be buried or cremated within twenty-four hours of dying.

This rule was finally lifted in December 2000, after four years of advocacy by AfA.

They argued that the policy was outdated, having been implemented in the mid-1980s when hardly anything was known about HIV/AIDS.

“I think we’ve certainly had to prove ourselves as an organisation over the years,” Chan said. “There might have been concerns among some who thought of us as a gay rights organisation, or misconceptions that AfA worked solely on issues that concern gay people.”

“But we’ve proven ourselves over the years to be a serious and effective organisation tackling HIV/AIDS and sexual health with clear metrics of success, and the results and continued support from the government speak for themselves,” added Prof Chan.

Toh, who served as AfA’s Executive Director from 2007-2009, concurs.

“Actually, not many people know this, but MOH has been quite supportive of AfA over the years. Even during my term, they would hold closed-door discussions with us, intently wanting to work with us on eliminating HIV/AIDS,” said Toh. He reckoned that MOH did not want to be publicly seen as supporting something considered by society as ‘morally corrupt’ no matter how beneficial it is to wider society.

The Fruits of Our Predecessors’ Labour Are Not Handed on a Silver Plate

The history of HIV/AIDS and its role in fomenting community-building among the LGBTQ+ community has always been a topic of fascination for me.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to see everyone in your social circles and communities succumbing, one by one, to an unknown disease.

Covid-19 provided the closest representation of the tumultuous and uncertain time in the ’80s.

In the midst of writing this, however, the comparison became a much closer one. Monkeypox is now affecting men who have sex with men more than the rest of the general population.

“It’s not the same thing,” Chan said, cautioning against making blanket comparisons between monkeypox and HIV/AIDS.

“For starters,” he intoned, “monkeypox is not an unknown disease. We’ve known about monkeypox for decades, so it is nothing close to HIV back in the ’80s.”

Admittedly, life is easier for a gay man like me, who came of age at a time when HIV/AIDS is no longer considered a significant threat.

With common knowledge of medication as well as preventative measures like safer sex and pre and post-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP and PEP), it is easy for me and my peers to take for granted the freedoms that we now enjoy, thanks to decades of advocacy and destigmatisation.

But as Prof Chan said, “It is important not to be complacent. The freedoms and advancements we have today were not handed on a silver platter. Earlier generations had to fight very hard for all of these things.”

#Southeast Asia #Singapore #History #LGBTQIA Issues #Health #HIV/AIDS

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goliath-de-senfina-sango · 6 months ago

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Danny Phantom and the Riordanverse

I have some thoughts about a Shared World kind of crossover between Danny Phantom and Percy Jackson & the Olympians. I haven’t done a full rewatch of DP in ages, nor have a read outside the core 5 PJO books, the HOO books, the Kane Chronicles, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, and about 2 and a half of the Trials of Apollo books, also been a while. Apologies for any inaccuracies but hey, fanon.

A Glitch In Time canonizes that the Infinite Realms and Material World were once one and the same, but a global war - waged by people who were naturally half ghost the way Danny and Vlad are - split the world in 2. All things regarding Pariah Dark, I’d say he was one of the major powers in this war.

Realms can range from a 10x10x10 room to entire islands with their own celestial bodies like Dora’s kingdom and its sun. Technically we don’t know if the Far Frozen even has an End Point. Doors can lead to alternate timelines; Desiree, Ghost Writer and Clockwork are all able to warp reality, time included, and the Observant Council perceive time in at least 2 dimensions.

In the Riordanverse it is revealed in the few books of the Trials of Apollo that I read and remember that mortal belief from even a relatively small cult can elevate a mortal man to immortal status a la monsters and Gods. Apollo even muses about the way the Gods don’t want to acknowledge how dependent on mortals remembering them they are.

All of this considered, if you want DP to exist in the Riodanverse and even keep the lore of both, then the Realms/Planes/Worlds of the Gods - of Hellas, Kemet, the Æsir and Vanir, the Heavenly Beauracracy, etcetera - are Realms connected to the Spirit World but managed to remain intersected with the Material World through the efforts of the Gods and the memories of Mortals.

The Duat could even be a layer of the Infinite Realms, frankly.

Danny states that his accident was a month ago as of Episode 1, Mystery Meat, which is set April 3rd, 2004. Based on the few concrete date indicators we get in Danny Phantom, the series takes place over 3 years. 4 if you count Claw of the Wild, but that means the trio stays Tiny all the way into Senior Year lol.

Prisoners of Love begins on May 18th, Fright Knight is a Halloween episode, and in Lucky in Love, they’re at a waterpark, which only open in May at the earliest. The Fright Before Christmas is obviously set before and during Christmas and then Reality Trip is set at the beginning of Summer 2006.

In Urban Jungle, Tucker remarks that it’s 90 degrees outside, which means it’s either late May or early June since I do believe they Are in school at that point and iirc global warming hadn’t made it 90 in the midwest early in 2006. Claw of the Wild is an odd camping episode featuring Danny’s class, and I forget in episode details so if this was during school time it had to be during the spring since, again, they live relatively close to the Great Lakes, so it’s gotta be during a naturally warm time. A Glitch In Time, therefore, is set in late spring or early summer of 2008.

Percy Jackson is 12 at the beginning of The Lightning Thief & 13 at the end Iirc since his birthday is August 12th. Either way, this is in 2005. Sea of Monsters and Titan’s Curse are both set during 2006; Battle of the Labyrinth is in 2007, and iirc The Last Olympian is set next year during 2008 and Percy is 16.

Thereby when the Heroes of Olympus books begin in 2008-2009, Danny is 18 and either a senior or highschool graduate. This is a hilarious point in time for Percy to meet Danny, actually, or any of our protagonist crew, if you want to maintain canon for both.

I know most people don’t, in fact, care to keep up DP canon nearly this rigidly, so some other fun thoughts.

In Reality Trip, Freakshow acquires the Reality Gauntlet, and begins the summer (as this begins on a last day of school event I’d say probably even on the Solstice) of 2006 with a reality warping bang. Once he gets the gems, Freakshow transforms the whole world into his circus, until Danny tricks him and gets the glove back, fixing reality to exactly how it was before the change, wiping his identity from the memories of everyone save Tuck, Sam, & Jazz, and then destroyed the Reality Gauntlet in a single shot.

This, I imagine, would grab the attention of The Gods. That’s if the Pariah Dark situation didn’t register to them, even. Considering Percy is 13 at the time and due to deal with the Sea of Monsters situation, the Kane siblings haven’t been recruited yet (I think) and Magnus is still just a homeless kid in Boston, I dunno if anyone from New Rome would be sent but the Gods of various pantheons may investigate directly or through minor gods/spirits.

The House of Life certainly wouldn’t approve of the Ghost Portals, Vlad, or possibly even Danny. Hell, Luke might actually be sent to recruit Danny or Vlad to the Titan’s cause now that I think about it.

With the fact that Danny, Vlad, and Dan were destroying other timelines while smashing into them from sheer speed through the Spirit World during A Glitch In Time, I’d say Danny is at least a 6D being (existing in at least 4 dimensions of space and 2 of time.) If that doesn’t count him as a God, idk what would. Also during Infinite Realms, Vlad and Danny time travel to both ancient Rome during an event in the colosseum and ancient China at a monetary. If these are the same universe as Danny’s, then he and Vlad should have a myth or two regarding one another, which would also put them on the watch list for Olympus and the Bureaucracy of Heaven.

But hey, what do you think? I’m open to talk about this and wanna hear other people’s thoughts and opinions.

#Goli Gabs #Danny Phantom #Percy Jackson #Riordanverse #Crossover #DP/PJO #Mythic Phantom #shared verse crossover #discussion #DP x PJO

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girlactionfigure · 2 months ago

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It was a "small" act.

But, at the time, she didn’t realize she was making a life-changing, and life-saving decision, not only for her but for hundreds of Polish Jews during the Second World War, helping save them from Nazi execution.

Only when she died, on April 8, 2022, at the age of 107 did the rest of the world learn of her courage.

She was born Carmen Koppel in Vienna, daughter of Frieda and Emil Koppel. Her father, an opera-loving grain merchant, chose her name after Bizet’s Carmen,” according to The Guardian, “She studied languages at the University of Vienna, taking shorthand to help with her note-taking.”

She said “My mother had insisted that I learn something useful, so I learnt to type.”

“In 1936 she married Josef Weitmann, who owned a curtain-making business in Kraków, and the couple settled there and had a son, Sascha.

“After the German occupation of Poland in 1939, the administration wanted to re-establish Kraków as Krakau, a German city. As Jews, [she] and her husband were forced to live in the Kraków ghetto, established by the Nazis in 1940. Its inhabitants were allowed to leave and return only with special permits. Josef was killed while trying to escape; Sascha was smuggled to relatives in Hungary.”

According to the New York Times, “in late 1944, as a slave laborer in the administrative offices of the Plaszow concentration camp in Poland, [she] typed an important version of the manifest of prisoners bound for [a] munitions factory in the area of the Czech Republic then known as the Sudetenland.”

“It was in those offices” that she also added her name and the names of two friends to the list, indicating her profession as “schreibkraft,” according to writer Alex Mindlin.

By typing that list, she almost certainly saved her own life, the lives of her friends, and many others, according to Mindlin.

That “list” “saved them from the gas chambers of Auschwitz, where most of the other Jews from Plaszow were deported,” according to The Teller Report.

Years later after the war, she would meet again the man who had made that list possible, the man who employed her.

She had a different last name by this time, but he still remembered her by her nickname. [She never liked the name “Carmen”, so close friends referred to her after a character in “La Bohème”.]

'It must have been around 1953,” she said. “I had gone to Vienna and I was walking along a street with an uncle. We were passing a coffee house where there was a group of people sitting. This large man ran across and hugged and started kissing me, saying: ‘Mimi, Mimi…’

“It was then that I realised that it was Schindler sitting with some of the Jews he had rescued.”

“The documents that [Mimi Reinhardt] worked on were made famous by Thomas Keneally’s 1982 novel . . . and by the 1993 Steven Spielberg movie ["Schindler's List"], both of which detailed the extraordinary lengths to which [Oskar] Schindler went to save the lives of some 1,200 of his Jewish workers,” according to the Times.

Other sources cite the number of lives saved even higher. According to AFP (Agence France-Presse) and The Times of Israel, “The lists which Reinhardt compiled for [Schindler] helped save the lives of some 1,300 Jews at considerable risk to his own life.”

“Austrian-born Reinhardt (sometimes spelled “Reinhard), herself a Jew, was recruited by Schindler himself and worked for him until 1945.”

This is a new story for the Jon S. Randal Peace Page. The Peace Page focuses on past and present stories seldom told of lives forgotten, ignored, or dismissed. The stories are gathered from writers, journalists, and historians to share awareness and foster understanding, to bring people together. And, as such, the stories are never relegated to one single month - they are available all year in the Peace Page archives and on this page each week throughout the year. We encourage you to learn more about the individuals and events mentioned here and to support the writers, educators, and historians whose words we present. Thank you for being here and helping us share awareness.

~~~~~

Reinhardt, then known as Carmen Koppel, “survived the final liquidation of the Kraków ghetto in March 1943, when 2,000 Jews were slaughtered, because the Nazis deemed her language and secretarial skills useful,” according to The Guardian.

At the time, the Red Army was approaching Poland and workers in Plaszow were being sent west to death camps,” according to The New York Times.

Reinhardt was a “prisoner at a concentration camp near Krakow, Poland during WWII in 1944,” according to the World Jewish Congress, when Schindler recruited her for a job in the camp's administrative office.

“Schindler and his Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern, who had helped to motivate Schindler, prepared the 'list' of essential workers - all of them Jews - for relocation to his new factory,' according to writer Peter Beaumont.

As Schindler’s secretary, Reinhardt “drew up the lists of Jewish workers in the Polish city of Krakow to work in the factory of her German industrialist boss”, according to writer Caroline Frost.

“This was a highly risky enterprise but is estimated to have saved . . . [the] workers from deportation and almost certain death in Nazi concentration camps.”

Reinhardt also “added the names of friends and her own married names until Schindler's quota negotiated with the SS was fulfilled: "Weitmann, Carmen, January 15, 1915, typist" is number 279 on the list.

“The rescue almost went awry” according to The Teller Report.

“On the way to Brünnlitz in 1944, the train carrying Schindler’s workers was diverted to Auschwitz,” according to The Guardian. “Death seemed inevitable. But Schindler used his military intelligence contacts to stop the diversion, claiming that these workers were vital for his armaments factory.”

“They had to stay in Auschwitz for two weeks,” according to The Teller Report.

“Mimi Reinhardt later compared the time to Dante's ‘Inferno’.”

“At the war’s end, [Schindler’s] workers were liberated, and Mimi was reunited with Sascha.”

Reinhardt “settled for a time in Morocco and then New York, where she lived for 50 years,” according to The Guardian. “She kept in touch with other ‘Schindler Jews’ whose lives had been saved by escaping the Plaszów camp under Schindler’s protection, but did not speak publicly about her earlier life until she moved to Israel in 2007.”

In Israel, she joined “her only son, Sacha Weitman, who was then a professor of sociology at Tel Aviv University,” according to The Times of Israel.

Schindler died in 1974, when he “was named by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum as a member of the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’, an honour for non-Jews who tried to save Jews from Nazi extermination,’ according to Frost. “He is buried on the Mount of Olives just outside Jerusalem.”

The story of Reinhardt’s “small act” came to light when she was being interviewed by the Jewish Agency for Israel. (Note, “Reinhardt wasn’t directly portrayed in the Schindler’s List film,” according to News18.)

Reinhardt “expressed regret that Mr. Schindler, whom she adored, did not become a household name until after his death in 1974,” wrote Mindlin.

“He would have loved it, the attention,” she said.

She added in another interview, "I saw a man who was constantly risking his life for what he was doing. He was human. He must have had a heart of gold."

Reinhardt spent her last years at a nursing home north of Tel Aviv.

She is “mourned by her son and his family, as well as the thousands of people whose parents and grandparents she helped escape certain death,” according to the Jerusalem Post.

She has three granddaughters, nine great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

In the image attached, Sasha Weitman, son of Mimi Reinhardt, holds an old photograph of his mother in Herzliya, Israel, (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit).

Of her contribution to history and assisting Schindler in saving hundreds of her fellow Jews, Reinhardt said, “I was just typing the list.”

~ jsr

The Jon S. Randal Peace Page

#WW2 #Shoah #Carmen Koppel #Schindler's List

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sallowtheories · 3 months ago

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What would happen if Sebastian became a professor?

This is a long one, but I just realized that if Sebastian somehow manages to follow in the footsteps of his parents and become a professor at Hogwarts, he could have taught Albus Dumbledore, Aberforth Dumbledore, Newt Scamander, Tom Riddle Jr, among many others.

Imagine it - the year is 1895, and a 20 year old Sebastian Sallow has just accepted the job as the professor of Magical Theory - a job one of his parents (I theorize), used to have before professor Fig. A position that would fit Sebastian, given the goals and values of knowledge his parents has passed on to him.

Sebastian would have been present in the Great Hall the evening Aberfoth Dumbledore would be sorted into Gryffindor, and would have taught him in his first year classes on the subject.

Some time before 1908, Sebastian would be teaching when Albus Dumbledore became a professor at Hogwarts. The same Albus Dumbledore that Sebastian watched getting sorted back in 1892, during Sebastian’s last year at Hogwarts. The same Albus Dumbledore, who his fellow classmates whispered about, wondering if he was any like his father. But now, at the age of 33, Sebastian would find himself in the Faculty Tower, having deep and interesting conversations with Albus about Magical Theory.

At times they would talk about their pasts. Sebastian would let a little slip about his family, and so would Albus, but they would never confide in each other more than that. They just knew about the other’s struggle, nothing more. Maybe there would be a friendship. A professional friendship, yet they would somehow always know a little more than they would like to say.

In 1908 Sebastian Sallow would be sitting at the teachers table, watching as Newt Scamander would get sorted into Hufflepuff, and Leta Lestrange into Slytherin.

In 1926, at the age of 51, Sebastian would have a knowing feeling that Albus had something to do with Newt going to America, and in 1927 his suspicions would be confirmed when members if the aura office showed up at Hogwarts, heading straight for Albus in his classroom.

In 1938, at the age of 63, Sebastian would watch with uneasiness as a certain Tom Riddle Jr gets sorted into Slytherin. He senses something familiar about the boy, but can’t quite place it. However, during their classes together, Sebastian would find himself impressed with the boy’s abilities, wondering if maybe he possessed the same abilities as a certain someone he knows… but soon Sebastian would learn that it wasn’t the case, but that the boy possessed a different ancient ability…

Many professors liked the young Riddle boy, and Sebastian too would find that the young boys charm had won him over. In some ways it was like look at himself at that age. Young, handsome, charming, with a way to bend the rules. Especially after both Sebastian and several other teachers had caught Mr. Riddle sneak around in the restricted section, and each time they would let him go with yet another warning. But that would change on day in 1942, not long before the summer that year.

During a day in April 1942, Tom Riddle would come to Sebastian in his office, asking kindly if he could have a word with him. It wasn’t uncommon for Tom to do so. He often enjoyed taking with his professors, and especially about quite advanced magic. Tom often found and interest in Sebastian’s research, so of course he allowed Tom into his office.

Tom proceeded to ask Sebastian if he knew anything about the name Marvolo. Sebastian asks him what it’s about, thinking of his best friend’s brother, remembering all the things Ominis had told him about the man. Some what mad, having two children of his own, and gambled and whored away all the money he had gotten after their parents death.

67 year old Sebastian asks the 16 year old Tom what it is about. Tom asks Sebastian if he knows about his… home. The orphanage. And to Sebastian he sounds sad, and for a moment Sebastian’s heart breaks for the poor boy. He almost doesn’t catch the look in Tom’s eyes, when he checks for Sebastian’s reaction.

“You see, professor, I just so badly want to know about my family, and it is the only name I can go off of. No year book says anythings about Riddles”.

“I understand, Mr. Riddle, I absolutely do. But I will have to ask you again. Where did you get the name Marvolo from?”

Something flashes in Tom’s eyes. Something dark, for just a small moment. Something Sebastian has seen before. Something he saw in his own eyes as a 15 year old, trying to figure out how that relic worked… But then Tom smiles, the flash in his eyes gone, as if it was never there.

“I’m sorry, sir. I should have told you, sir. It’s my middle name. As I told you, I am researching my family, trying to find some… answers. And there’s nothing about Riddles at Hogwarts, so the only other thing I have to go off of, is Marvolo. I suspect… I suspect it’s from my mother’s side”.

“Tom”, Sebastian started, not seeing the way the boy almost flinched at his name. “I don’t have much to tell you about Marvolo. I never really spoke to him, and he finished during my second year-“.

“But his sister graduated while you were in your third year”, Tom said, almost startling his professor, an intensity in his eyes. “And his brother was in the same year as you”.

“So you have already found what you’re looking for?”

“Sorry sir, that was inappropriate of me. I didn’t mean to pry, but I’m growing desperate in my search. What do you know about the Gaunts?”

And so Sebastian told young Tom about the Gaunts. Their history, their legend and their ancestry. However he know nothing about Marvolo’s whereabouts, and decided lying about Ominis would before the best, having a feeling it would be best to leave him out of the conversation. And then, moments later when young Tom left his office, Sebastian regretted immediately, writing to Ominis at the first moment he got.

Months later, Sebastian and Ominis would find themselves in Feldcroft, when an owl came with the Daily Prophet. Muggle murder - Morfin Gaunt had killed the Riddle family.

Ominis knew straight away. It wasn’t Morfin. His nephew may have been an overly inbred idiot, but it wasn’t him. But how would Ominis know anything about his nephew? He hadn’t even spoken to Marvolo in years. It wasn’t until that day he learned that his brother in fact was dead, and has been so for several years. But Ominis just knew. Tom Riddle was danger.

Upon Sebastian’s return to Hogwarts that September, he was surprised to find that Tom still had many questions about Magical Theory. More than ever before. More… specific. More… dark… than before. Subjects that Sebastian remembered he himself had read about in the restricted section. But the day Tom took it a step too far, and asked about inferi, Sebastian cut the conversation shot, obviously uncomfortable. Especially more uncomfortable when he saw the look in Tom’s eyes, reading him like a book. After that Sebastian avoided Tom like the plague, not caring if it was ethical or not. Talented or not, Sebastian could not handle such a questioning again, especially not about… those. Sebastian did not wish to remember those…

Tom may have asked Sebastian many questions about Magical Theory, bur there had always been specific professor that Tom had taken a strong liking to - professor Slughorn - head of Slytherin house. Strange man in Sebastian’s opinion. If he and the certain person in his life had been Slughorn’s students, they wouls have found themselves collected in these then a day. And of course, Tom Riddle had been collected by Slughorn, invited to his many parties. But never had Sebastian expected the day Slughorn would come to the Faculty Tower, an expression of distress on his face, along with a flinch whenever Riddles name was mentioned. At that point Sebastian was able to put two and two together. Riddle had asked Slughorn something worse. Much worse.

That June, a Ravenclaw student was found dead in one of the girls bathrooms, and Sebastian was not the least bit surprised that Albus already had his theories about who could have done it. Sebastian had one as well, but for the moment he didn’t say a word, not even to Dumbledore. Instead he wrote to Ominis, and Ominis agreed, writing personally to Amando Dippet, calling for him to close the school. And with the rumors of the school closing, whatever had attacked the Ravenclaw girl stayed abay. But Sebastian did not expect, was for Tom to suddenly march the half giant Rubeus Hagrid in front of the staff, telling them about the giant spider the student kept hidden, or as Tom put it - the monster that killed that Ravenclaw girl.

Given wizards and witches ability to age greater than muggles, a few things could happen. Sebastian could decide to retire before the age of 70, spending the rest of his life with whatever family and friends he still had left, or he could continue teaching, doing his research on the side, just like he had always done it. Just like professor Fig had done it. Just like his parents had done it.

In 1945 at the age of 70, Sebastian would have been at the school, when Tom Riddle asked Amando Dippet for a position at Hogwarts the moment he graduated, before he even ventured a foot outside the school. He would have noted the shaken look on Slughorn when he received that Tom was looking for a position at Hogwarts. But Dippet had declined Tom's offer, believing he was too young, telling him to come back in a few years if he still wanted a position.

In 1947, Sebastian and many others would have been watching with great intent, as the Sorting Hat took it's time with Minerva McGonagall, before finally sorting her into Gryffindor.

If Sebastian still found his age to be no trouble, and his job worth the time and energy, he would have been 81 in 1956 when his colleague, and now friend, Albus Dumbledore would take over the position of headmaster at Hogwarts.

In 1961, at the age of 86, Sebastian would not have been the least bit surprised to see the red heads of Arthur Weasley and Molly Prewett getting sorted into Gryffindor.

Should age still not be of matter, Sebastian would have been 90 when a Lucius Malfoy got sorted into Slytherin, just five years before the first wizarding war would break out.

But would Sebastian still be alive when Harry's parents would start at Hogwarts? We know that in the mid 1990's, the life average expectancy of a witch or wizard was 137 years and three months, so therefore it wouldn't be strange to believe that he would live so long, even if he was from around 1875. Amando Dippet was around 200 years old, when he took up the position of headmaster, and I still wonder how old Bathilda Bagshot was when she died.

So if we continue under the presumption that Sebastian would live to at least 137 and three months, then he would have been 96 in 1971 when Lily Evans, James Potter, Severus Snape, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew sat their feet in the Great Hall for the first time.

Sebastian would have been there, as the Whomping Willow got planted, and maybe, at least once, he would have been one of the teachers escorting a young Remus Lupin to the hidden passage.

Around the year 1975, around the age of 100, Sebastian would find Mr. Potter, Mr. Lupin, Mr. Black and Mr. Pettigrew standing outside of his office, whispering among each other, figuring out who should ask him.

"Ask professor Sallow about what?"

Watching the four Gryffindor boys scrumbling among themselves, their faces draining of color. Sebastian knew that look. He had seen it on his friends, and he was sure he had been wearing it several times throughout his life. It was the look of getting caught.

"We're sorry if we disturbed you, professor Sallow, but we have some questions about... well you see...", James Potter said, desperately searching for the words, that would make their professor less suspicious of them. "Sirius here really wants to be a map maker for the ministry, but he just have no idea how to do it, and he’s a little bit embarrassed about it. You know… not being able to make a magical map…", James said, ignoring the dead pan look Sirius was giving him, Remus and Peter holding back their chuckles.

Sebastian studied the boys in front of him, knowing fully well their tendency to sneak around Hogwarts. Four troublemakers they were, and Sebastian had had them at detention in his classroom several times. But there was no denying that he had once found himself in the same position as them, running around the school at night, getting up to no good with his friends. So of course the four trouble making Gryffindors wouldn't fool Sebastian. But what was the harm in letting them know the theory behind magical maps. What could go wrong?

Then, in the year 1981, when Sebastian found himself at the age of 106, news broke of the death of the Dark Lord, after he had hunted down the Potters in their house, and killed Lily and James Potter, leaving a one year old Harry Potter as the soul surviver. Both Sebastian and Albus (I have a theory about how and why Sebastian would know about it, other than being the professor of Magical Theory) would know the truth of Harry's survival - Lily. Lily's love saved Harry and got rid of the Dark Lord.

In 1982 Bill Weasley would start at Hogwarts, and Sebastian once again found himself smiling when he saw Leander and Garreth's red gens still running strong.

In 1984, Charlie Weasley would start at Hogwarts, along side who might be Sebastian's own great grandchild (I have theories/headcannons about how the MC from Hogwarts Legacy might be connected to the MC from Hogwarts Mystery, but that is for another day).

In 1987, Percy Weasley would start at Hogwarts, followed by the twins Fred and George in 1989, making Sebastian wonder where on earth Molly and Arthur found the energy. Although, he thought that they deserved a medal for trying to repopulate the wizarding world after the first wizarding war.

Sebastian would be 116 in 1991, when Harry Potter finally came to Hogwarts, along side yet another Weasley. This would have to be the last Weasley, right?

In 1992 Sebastian would have been proven wrong when yet another Weasley came to the school. However this year, Sebastian would once again find himself writing to Ominis in horror, at the rumors of the Chamber of Secrets having been opened once again. But Ominis was at a loss for words. He had no ideas, and he was worried. Very worried. And he was just as worried when he and Sebastian learned that it was the diary of Marvolo's grandchild that had opened the chamber.

In 1993, Sebastian would finally learn of the reason James and his friends came and asked him about maps, finding his newest colleague Remus Lupin once again asking him about maps. Could these kind of maps show people who were dead? And with that confusing question, Remus would finally show Sebastian the Marauders Map. For a moment fear would rush over his face. What rooms did this map show? But to his luck, neither the Undercroft, the Room of Requirement, nor the entrance into the Map Chamber - none of it. Relief fell over Sebastian, before he answered the question Remus had been asking - no, such a map would not show dead people.

In 1995, a 119 year old Sebastian would feel the first signs of age, as he and all the others awaited the champions’ return from the maze. But to alls horror, Harry Potter would return with the body of Cedric Diggory. And when Harry cried that the Dark Lord was back, Sebastian believed him, contacting Ominis as fast as possible.

When a new school year started in 1995, 120 year old Sebastian found himself seated at the same table as a toad stuffed into a pink dress. Horrible woman, who Sebastian time and time again would find in his classroom, keeping an eye on how he taught the first years in the basics of Magical Theory, taking plenty of notes when he taught the older students who had taken the more advanced class.

In the end of June 1996, Sebastian found himself at the receiving end of strange questions from Albus. One asking about Ominis' whereabouts, and another asking if the could join him for tea. Here Albus asked Ominis for permission to destroy some family heirlooms of his. Not any that he himself had gotten, but his brother. Ominis, having an idea of what it could be about, gave Dumbledore permission. Dumbledore then turned his attention to Sebastian, asking him a question he never thought imaginable - "how does one destroy a horcrux?"

"That", Sebastian answered, pointing towards the sword of Godric Gryffindor. "It is goblin metal, is it not? Taking on the powers of what makes it stronger. Mr. Potter used it to kill the basilisk".

"Remind me to thank the boy one day", Ominis muttered.

The September, Sebastian would return to Hogwarts, finding himself surprised at the return of Slughorn as potions master. Upon asking Albus about it, however, he got told a totally different thing. Different, but probably more important.

"Do not attempt to interfere. Neither you, Ominis or the one that hold ancient power. This is not your fight, and if it is to work, you will have to stay out of it. I thank you Sebastian, for all that you have done, both as a fellow student, a teacher and a friend. But I fear that soon, Hogwarts will not be safe place much longer".

"What would you want me to do, Albus?"

"I want you all to flee the country as soon as possible. Take Ominis and your friend and hide them. If Voldemort were to ever realize that he is not the last of his Salazar Slytherin's descendants, he will try to find them. And should he learn of the power of ancient magic, he will try to use it. He will look for it. And I fear he will be more successful than Ranrok".

At the end of the school year in 1997, Sebastian still found himself at Hogwarts. Though Sebastian may be 122 at this point, he would not be any less stubborn, or convinced that he knew of what to do. But that one evening when Dumbledore was seen, falling from the Astronomy Tower, that had just been illuminated by the familiar green glow of the killing curse, Sebastian understood. As the dark mark hung above the school, Sebastian understood. Once again, those dearest to him was in danger.

And so, like so many others that year, Sebastian packed this things. This would be the last year he taught at Hogwarts. But neither he or those nearest him wished to flee. Instead he stayed at his uncle's old home in Feldcroft, listening in, during what they could in an attempt to help the order.

When Death Eaters took over Hogwarts Valley, they gave the order all the information they could.

Maybe in the year 1998, after Harry Potter had done what needed to be done, you could find an elderly Sebastian Sallow and an elderly Ominis Gaunt, together with an elderly friend of ancient magic, among the many students, teachers, aurors and those who wished for a free world, fighting against the Death Eaters. Maybe they survived it, or maybe this was the battle that killed them.

If they did survive the Battle of Hogwarts, I highly doubt that Sebastian would go back to teaching. Not because he didn't want to, but his age. With the time he and his loved ones would have left in this world, than maybe it would be nice for his to take it slow for once, knowing that he and those closest to him had done their part in history, and now it was time for a well deserved break, hopefully with some good books, a butterbeer in hand, and the smell of the ocean.

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

I might make a fan fiction out of this.

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batmansymbol · 2 months ago

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can't remember the last time i made a blog post on this blog. i really am becoming the hermit i always aspired to be.

looking for somewhere to put this particular exhaustion though and journaling makes me feel lonely and lately all interpersonal interactions leave me with the feeling of having transgressed in many secret ways unknown to me. so vent follows. although for the record someday when i am a true hermit i will have found inner peace, and i will no longer make posts like this, and i instead will be able to identify a cypress tree on sight.

for now, i've been having this feeling of kneeling in the surf with my mouth open and the ocean trying to force itself down my throat. i'm working four jobs to make ends meet. they are meeting, barely. my 16-year-old car broke down for the last time, and this week i bought a new one from a man at a dealership who lied to me over the phone about hidden fees as though $900 meant nothing. now i have new car payments every month but i no longer hear a steady drip behind me in the car when it rains, can't decide which of the two feelings of dread is more potent. i loved that leaking car into its grave. i often wish i had a soul-crushing 9-to-5 that paid me $75,000 every year like clockwork. i am spreading myself too thin socially. i love everybody in my life. sometimes i receive profound and beautiful reactions to my writing, and also with four clicks i can see criticism of my work online that makes me feel like i should never have been born. i struggle to weight these experiences in a reasonable way in my mind. i have not read a new book since sally rooney's intermezzo. i hate everything i write but luckily the hatred comes in cycles, counterbalanced by defiant love, like my relationship with my forehead. i have to believe everything i write is the one (the one that will financially or artistically save me). i have to tell myself the one doesn't exist so as not to get my hopes up. i have to remind myself my problems are atomically small compared to nearly everything. i have to remind myself of this because sometimes it's the only thing that makes me feel human again. i have dreams about friends i had in high school and the shitty jokes i made to them, how much more sensitive i could have been. in the dreams they hate me, or forgive me, or hit me. last april at age 28 i began to have back pain every single night from a degenerated spinal disc and now at age 30 i have anti-arthritis pills in my toiletries bag. it hurts to lean back in a chair, but i have all my limbs and my mind. i wonder every day why i'm not doing something differently. my inability to do anything meaningful disgusts me. i find meaning whenever i open the blinds. i have forgotten to switch my car insurance to my new vehicle, so after i press Post Now i will go to the website that will ask me for my password and to confirm i am myself.

#personal #they say nothing good comes of being online after 1 a.m. but you know what?#i feel better letting this out #it never fucking stops #every day is an unending howl of information

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simvanie · 7 days ago

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My 𝐓𝐨𝐩 24 𝐒𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐬 from 2024🎉

Thank you @theplottdump and @duusheen for the tag!! 💗🥰

Tagging: @someone-elsa, @aurorangen, @thebramblewood, @tulipsimss, @cowplant-snacks, @rebouks, @bakersimmer, @flocy-sims, @cowplant-pizza, and of course whoever else would like to do this! (I've lost track of who has and hasn't already done this, so feel free to ignore if you have! <3)

Januari

I remember one of the first things I did when Supriya aged up into a teen was to have her take selfies. Because not only is that someting a pride generation heir would do, but at the time I also thought she was one of the prettiest teens in my game ever.

Februari

I decided to fully furnish and decorate an apartment for Supriya to live in and I think this is when I realized that I'm 100% a maximalist when it comes to interior design.

March

Ah, the night of the gala where Supriya and Rohan finally let their walls down 😊. I based the the outfits and the location of the gala (before they got back to Supriya's apartment) on the gala scene from the movie Maid in Manhattan which was a movie I really liked as a kid and for some reason that gala scene imprinted itself in my brain.

April

I love a good sunset. But what I love more is Rohan and Supriya getting engaged in front of a good sunset. The couple moved to Brindleton Bay where they fell even more in love with each other, and I fell in love with the Brindleton Bay heatwaves (when it doesn't rain that is). Rohan and Supriya eventually got married and it was my first cultural in-game wedding and, you guessed it, I loved it.

May

A pregnancy photoshoot with Supriya and Rohan in that little park with the blossom trees in Lykke Centre, Windenburg. The other screenshot is a screenshot with Cedia as a siren that I never posted in the Halloween post of last year, so I decided to make another post this year with the screenshots I also loved and that didn't make the cut back then.

June

I was still experimenting with my decorating skills and I had a lot of fun decorating the kids' playroom and Gulshan's bedroom when they were little.

July

I did an "end-of-generation" photoshoot with Supriya and also made one of my oc's, Fawzia, for Thebramblewood's vampire casting call who until then had only existed in my head. And for my legacy I wanted to try something different with the lighting in the screenshots where Gulshan and his friends are partying and I really liked how it turned out.

August

Sad boi.

September

Gulshan got his restaurant and I love everything about it. I started building this restaurant when I started the 7 sins legacy and I was so excited when I could finally play in it.

October

I took this screenshot after Gulshan earned 4 stars for his restaurant. I posed everyone except for Lord Hamlet. He just walked past and it turned out perfect for this screenshot. Did I mention Lord Hamlet already? BECAUSE LOOK AT HIM! At first I wasn't sure how a pig who is actually a dog would work out in game, but he is my favorite in-game pet ever and I love him so much. The last screenshot I made to showcase the Poppy cas set by Surely-sims and Ice-creamforbreakfast and all the screenshots for this are some of my favorite lookbook screenshots ever.

November

Sad man.

December

Nothing beats baking cookies with the love of your life on a snowy winter morning.

#ask game #7sl extras

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afreakingdork · 4 months ago

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You Are My Sunshine, My Only Moonshine - Chapter 9

RotTMNT x Reader

I am constantly blown away by this chapter art by @yamin-yups

Rated: Teen and Up Audiences

Relationships: Michelangelo (TMNT)/Reader, Michelangelo (TMNT)/You, Donatello (TMNT)/Reader, Donatello (TMNT)/You

Warnings: POV Second Person, Gender Neutral Reader, Anxious Reader, Introverted Reader, Stuttering, Aged-Up Mutant Ninja Turtles, Romance, Love, Love Confessions, Falling In Love, Unrequited Love, Rejection, Aromantic Asexual Michelangelo (TMNT), Bisexual Donatello (TMNT), Pansexual Leonardo (TMNT), Lesbian Cassandra Jones | Foot Recruit, Demisexual April O'Neil (TMNT), Implied Cassandra Jones | Foot Recruit/April O'Neil/Sunita, Endgame Donatello (TMNT)/Reader, Romantic Love, Platonic Love, Panic Attacks, Sexuality Crisis, Agoraphobia, Social Anxiety, Happy Ending, Fluff

Synopsis: You’ve lost most of your life to anxiety and fear. Now, in your late 20s, you are desperate to reclaim it and during one such outing you encounter the sun personified. With his and his similarly celestially inspired family, will you finally reach your goal or will you lose yourself along the way?

This chapter contains reference to body dysmorphia. Remember that what you feel is completely valid, but we can sometimes see ourselves differently than we really are. Please keep yourselves safe.

Also available on Ao3

First 💛 Previous

“Maybe we take a break from going out into the packed public for once?” Mikey was upside-down, but compensated by holding his phone the opposite way.

It put him right side up in the video chat, but the view was extra blurry. “Is that… okay?”

“I’m the one suggesting it!” Mikey stuck out his tongue, but his reflection seemed to confuse him on which way the appendage should go. “It’s been awhile. I haven’t been able to see you.”

“Yeah… well…” Though for you it would have been predictable, Mikey hadn’t felt the firsthand effects of your setbacks yet.

Panic attacks always caused you to withdraw into yourself.

You weren’t supposed to.

There were times when it was easy to keep going.

Others, such as now, left you homebound for as long as society allowed.

The push to normalcy now included your thoughtful friend.

“Do you know after my tremors went away, I spent months avoiding art because I was afraid of how it would look?” Mikey told you casually.

You weren’t sure what he was talking about.

You tried to recall something about tremors, but came up short.

You wanted to ask more, but there was a more startling aspect than the content itself.

You couldn’t believe there was ever a period where Mikey avoided art as he had been nothing, but a loud proponent of all its merit.

“Why?”

“Because I knew my level and then… I didn’t. I knew I’d have to get back there. It was like riding a skateboard, but needing to take that time? For a second time. Chancing the bad result? It was like my healing was one thing and then by doing that it would show me just how much further I still needed to go. Like that dude with the cat and the box. I didn’t want to open it and find out. I couldn’t do it.”

“Isn’t the saying… something… about riding a bike?”

“We were skateboard tots!” Mikey rolled over and with it so did his camera, inverting the image.

You nodded lightly.

“I switched up crafts. Started new ones that weren’t so finger focused. Pour paints and candle work!” He made grabby hands at the lens as he fixed his phone angle.

“Something low key…” You hummed where you were sitting at the foot of your bed.

“Yeah, something quiet, calm, and… oh! Oh yeah!” There was another flip, but this one was out of excitement.

“D-don’t… bust through a wall…!”

Mikey appeared within a flurry of static. “Did you just make a Kool-Aid Man joke?”

“I make jokes!”

The wattage of his smile turned up to a blinding degree. “Well then I’ve got just the wall to bust through!”

“No.” Donnie glowered over his shoulder.

“Please!” Mikey bounced his plea with his head straight up to the ceiling of the garage you were currently in.

An oddity in the subway, but something you imagined had to exist based on logic, your eyes were openly roving around the tidy depot.

“Absolutely not.” Lifting out from under a hood and minding his head, Donnie craned an elbow to the engine block he was working on. “You know you’ve been banned.”

“One time!” Mikey groaned.

“No!” Donnie felt the need to rip off his leather work gloves to throw an unencumbered finger in Mikey’s face. “You were banned once after crashing eleven separate times!!”

“Eleven?!” You squeaked.

Mikey flipped back and forth between the two of you, obviously caught in who to address first. “My driving is fine!” He chose you and then flipped to Donnie. “I’ve changed!”

From the duffel that was slung around your body, you had already been clinging to the strap as it gave you something comforting to hold on to. With the new knowledge that you had almost been driven somewhere rural by someone with that kind of driving record, you now scooped up the entire sack to soothe yourself.

“Forget that.” Donnie flicked his gaze to you. “You’d need a full crash suit to survive him.” He then folded his gloves into a pair and went to check his tool box.

You wilted further.

“We’re already packed!” Mikey rounded a new argument. “This is going to be our big, no-stress, relaxing getaway and you’re making it exactly not that!”

“That’s unfortunate. The bus station isn’t far.” Donnie knelt down to get a wrench.

“And how’s that going to work!? We get dropped at some station and walk to the cabin!? You know it’s in the middle of nowhere!” Mikey stepped up to throw menace over his brother.

Donnie smelled it a mile away and lifted his head, pouring twice the malice. “Oh, you want to play?”

Mikey gulped and nodded his head once. “Let us borrow a car, the tank, a shell cycle, whatever! You’re being unfair!”

“Your planning is poor.” Donnie was slow to get on one knee. “You’re ill equipped.” To the other, he got a foot under him. “You’ve informed no one.” Rising to his towering height above his brother, he loomed. “You walk into my garage, where I am in the midst of my own personal and much needed zen in the form of refurbishing my newest baby and expect me to drop the keys of another into your hands knowing full well that you have destroyed more vehicles on more occasions than I can count on our joined mutant fingers and toes because you just so happened to suddenly decided that you needed to take a weekend trip with your friend of which whom you have a similar slapdash scheme going on with to go to our family’s cabin up north on a whim!?!”

Having watched Donnie not take a single breath, you backed up nearly the same distance that Mikey’s head had shrunk down into his shell.

“Y-yes?” Mikey peeped.

“No.” Donnie said the word firm and quiet, but punctuated it with a tap to Mikey’s plastron which caused the stiff turtle to fall over. “Now leave me to my work.”

Only a shell laying there, you leaned forward to look over Mikey without compromising your spot.

Donnie swung his wrench and moved over to a creeper with the intention to disappear under what looked like a turtle-themed moon buggy.

“You-” Your voice echoed in the garage and you tensed up.

Mikey’s head emerged from his shell to peek at you.

Donnie halted his motion, but didn’t turn.

“You… um… could… come with us?”

You watched Donnie’s lips wobble with disdain.

“N-Not a-as a d-driver! Y-you said…”

In a loud pop, all of Mikey’s limbs emerged. “That’s a great idea!!!”

In a smooth rotation, Donnie both turned and lifted his wrench with a threat.

Mikey crab walked several paces away.

“I’m disappointed.” Donnie sent a glare in your direction. “If your thought is even-” He caught a glimpse of his wrench. “-5/16ths as moronic as his then you are banned from the garage itself. Know that, would you still like to continue speaking?”

Gaze plummeting, your heart tried to escape and you screwed the whole of you shut to keep it inside.

Your entire body shook with the force of your nerves and you had to wait until your BPMs dropped to a manageable limit before you could manage speech. “You… said… m-much needed… so maybe… the trip would… well… be calming… for you too?”

There was a clink of metal hitting the ground.

Banned.

You were banned from the garage.

That was fine.

In theory, it wasn’t.

In theory, you were mortified.

Despite your best efforts, you had never been banned from anything.

Now you were.

A glaring dark spot on your permanent record.

Was Mikey a bad influence?

“You do say driving gets your mind off things…” Mikey said with a sudden supportive starkness.

You kept your gaze firmly rooted to the floor in shame.

“Also hold up!” In a slap of feet against concrete, Mikey righted himself. “You take a few of those things back, Don! I may have pushed the idea through, but it was not poorly planned or ill equipment or whatever you said! Y/N worked crazy hard on putting together everything in the short time frame I laid out!!”

You twitched.

“There’s maps, multiple trails marked, a calculated amount of water, with extra rations, flares… Like do you think this other bag is mine? Heck no! I’m not bringing anything! Both these bags are Y/N’s! They’re both stuffed with… stuff! Like-like!” You felt Mikey come over to you. “How you contacted the ranger’s station to tell them we’d be in the area? I’ve never even thought of that! We’ve never done that have we, Dee?”

Donnie continued his bout of silence that you didn’t dare look upon.

“What else…?” Mikey slapped his forehead. “I mean, come on! I can’t even remember it all!”

“I… got that satellite phone… you were pretty excited… about it.” You mumbled to the ground.

“With the backup batteries, Donald!” Mikey hummed a self-important sound. “The backup batteries!!”

The garage made it very clear that Donnie was walking over to you.

You bounced ever so slightly to garner the courage to meet his eye.

“Who did itinerary?” Donnie asked.

“Me.” Mikey remarked casually.

“I assume food too?” Donnie’s voice was heavy with judgment.

“Nope.” You could see a swoop as Mikey folded smug arms.

“That’s not quite…” You cleared your throat. “Mikey… shared his… favorite dishes that you… all make…when you… go.”

Donnie dipped into your eye line and you startled.

He’d bent at his waist and come down at a perfect angle.

You stared with warped lips.

“How long?” He narrowed his gaze.

“T-the trip?” Your gaze wobbled.

Mikey opened his mouth and Donnie threw out an arm that, by the sound, must have slapped the younger in the face.

“Yes.” Donnie kept his hand in place.

“Tonight… tomorrow… back Sunday?”

“Is that a question?” Donnie’s head tilted.

Mikey grunted, annoyed.

“No…” You got out, quiet.

“You agreed knowing full well you’d be alone with him?”

Slapped with a similar heat from the first time you’d realized that fact, you gave a tight nod.

‘We have separate rooms!’ Mikey mumbled through closed lips with surprising clarity.

“And that’s okay?” Donnie disappeared.

You chased him up to find he’d released Mikey and was waiting on him for an answer.

“It’s a no brainer.” Mikey nearly rolled his eyes.

Donnie’s brow lowered, unsatisfied.

“Yes, it’s okay because it isn’t a thing.” Mikey huffed around his clarification.

“I suppose… I’ve been persuaded.” Donnie looked down thoughtfully and you watched him trace back to where he’d dropped his wrench.

Mikey jumped into the air with a sudden bout of energy and caught your hands to spin you.

“Y-y-yay!” You stutter, stalling on the rotation.

“Cabin, here we come, baby!” Mikey cheered.

“I need my things!” Donnie barked. “And you.”

You jolted. “Y-yes?”

“You will send me triplicate copies of your plans.”

“S-sure…” You spastically patted yourself down for your phone.

“I refuse to engage with either of your antics.” Donnie’s own appeared in his hand. “I am no third wheel. I am coming because I will apparently have to deal with your whining otherwise and because I am not in the mood for the lecture from Nardo and Raphael when they return.”

“Have they texted yet?” Mikey peered over Donnie’s shoulder.

“No. Security detail means one must pay-” Donnie suddenly dropped and ducked through Mikey’s legs in one fluid movement. “-attention. This is why you weren’t requested.”

“And why didn’t they request you, hm?” Mikey pushed his lips into one corner of his mouth.

“Because…!” Donnie trailed off with widened eyes. “My talents lie elsewhere! Enough interruptions. I will drive and then you will leave me be! I am to have my zen! Is that understood?”

“Yeah, yeah, crystal.” Mikey finally did roll his eyes.

Donnie took a few steps away as you found your phone and held it unsure of how to send him the details.

“He’s totally going because he heard ‘yakiniku’ when you mentioned we were making my favorite foods.” Mikey walked over to you with a smirk.

You watched Donnie take an irritated pause before continuing on to get his things.

The ride in the tank had passed with booming music and a tour from Mikey that you only visually participated in because you were terrified to move about the cabin. The younger seemed not to notice as he explained parts with stories more than function. Donnie alternatively, had shades on that further marred his calculated expression and he said nothing as the studious driver.

Leaving the city and entering scenic woodlands, you were soon left to admire the views until you eventually deviated off the road toward the cabin. Tracking it with the little local map you had found, you busied yourself in the comfortable way that most people disliked on road trips: silence in a cozy bubble all your making.

There didn’t have to be talk, that’s what road trip mixes were for.

You only made exceptions for car games.

You liked that they had simple rules and there were little stakes to be had.

You only wished cars were safer modes of transport.

There was also something to be said about environmental impact and the culture of automobiles in America, but other than that, you found them nice.

Pulling up to what you imagined was a quiescent place, Mikey could not be restrained a second longer.

Out of the tank in a flurry, you watched through the windshield as his form screamed straight up the cabin’s steps. “He doesn’t do great on car rides, huh?”

“Sitting still for too long? Michael?” Donnie rose from the captain’s chair.

You gave a small smile and gathered up the few things you’d taken inside with you. Your actual bags were stored in an outer compartment and Donnie waited for you as a safety net as you made the harrowing steps down the tank ladder and to the ground. Landing with little fault, you joined him in getting the luggage until Mikey tore back over to grab some of the load. He talked loudly of dust that had accumulated and Donnie griped at him that it was obvious they’d need to clean.

You fondly watched the two bicker and set-up became the next directive. Throwing back plastic sheets that coated furniture, Donnie had a multitude of inventions to clear the space quickly. You had to run to the windows to release the dust tornadoes formed. Making it out mostly unscathed, you then helped Mikey hang bug nets. With the late Spring weather warming the air, soon everything was prepped and Mikey did a little closing dance number, capping off the preparatory part of the trip.

“Swimming hole time!” Mikey cheered and then turned knowingly on Donnie. “Then BBQ and prompt lights out so I can make a lumberjack breakfast first thing!”

“We’re grinding beans… we roasted…” You offered softly. “Uh… Coffee… beans… that is…”

“Oh yeah, I forgot we took that class.” Mikey chuckled. “You almost fell into that sack!”

You squashed a noise of distress at the memory.

Understanding the schedule, Donnie dismissed himself with a turned foot and headed to one of the cabin’s many rooms. You were left to look about the quintessential log cabin where the huge living space and connected kitchen then butted up against a row of doors. They spoke of many rooms that traced the back of the cabin and then up a staircase to a second floor. From what you could see, there were about eight rooms in all. The entire cabin then had a wraparound porch that extended into the wilderness. It was land that both belonged to nature and not, but Mikey had been cagey about revealing property lines.

“Welp!” Mikey folded his hands on his hips. “Your boy needs to get wet before he explodes.”

You gawked at him.

“Seriously!” He was looking out over the cabin with a vacant stare that held a sort of unhinged quality. “First the car, then stuck inside? This is not an inside trip. if I am not unleashed in the next, oh I don’t know… 2 minutes, I’m going to lose it!”

“Uh…!”

“You got those trail maps?” He turned, both looking through you and not at.

“Y-yes!”

“I color coded the one to the watering hole. Orange, obviously.” Mikey approached with a waggling brow ridge. “I saw you in the car, keeping perfect pace. It was awesome.”

“Just to s-stay b-busy!”

“Uh huh! Your smile said otherwise! You’ll meet me there then! Same way!” He patted your shoulder once with a whack before bolting out the door.

You stared after him now knowing why he’d chosen to travel in his swimsuit.

Looking down at your road trip ensemble, you still felt sure of your decision to take the few hour drive comfortably.

There was a noise of a door opening and Donatello emerged, changed into a casual outfit punctuated by purple swim trunks.

You stared at him and felt a little like a caught fawn.

Donnie took you in before his gaze dulled with understanding. “He ditched you.”

“I’m… going to meet him.”

“He always does this.” Donnie responded dismissively. “You should have seen him in time out as a tot.”

“Oh?”

“One minute in time out for him was comparative to thirty for the rest of us.” Walking around a large kitchen bar, Donnie studied the rations.

You took a few steps toward him for the sake of it.

“He’s so impatient.” Donnie murmured, poking several waters aside to find a carton of juice boxes that Mikey had insisted on. He quickly tossed the set into the fridge. “He’s not even an aquatic turtle.”

You sort of wished you had done more research past looking up pictures of their species.

“You’re losing daylight.” He emerged from the fridge. “Or are you not swimming?”

“I-I am…!” You squeezed a fist to your chest. “Are… you coming too?”

Donnie blinked slowly at you. “No, why?”

“Oh…” You shouldn’t have assumed. He’d already told you otherwise. “Sorry… your bottoms… I thought…”

“Board shorts.” He punctuated the words with an odd accent.

You gave an unsure nod.

“I’m glad their sign was translated.” He glanced down at himself.

“Sorry…” You murmured when he made no further movement and quickly left to avoid any awkwardness.

You weren’t sure what you expected.

It’s not like you wanted to exclude Donnie.

You knew that pain too well.

You also didn’t want to make him feel unwelcomed.

You were painfully aware of that too.

He hadn’t wanted to be a third wheel and you had made it a silent mission to keep that from happening.

Something else you’d experienced in the past, you’d been the unwilling chaperone on more than one occasion just to satisfy parent’s minds. The good one, in their minds, you had always been ditched and the feeling wasn’t one you cared for. Shoving past the bygone era, you were seen now and you tried to relish that.

The sun’s attention was a fickle thing, but you were getting more use to losing Mikey’s. Something you thought should scare you, instead you felt your friendship with Mikey was stronger than ever. You no longer feared losing him in the same intangible way and you weren’t sure if you should crop that up to Mikey’s feelings about you. Instead it felt as though you’d reached a better status quo where Mikey’s running off felt more like the sun moving on its predetermined rotation. It would eventually round back to you and in that way you expected Mikey’s claustrophobia even if you hadn’t known about it.

You picked a room at random and rummaged through the duffel that you placed on your bed. There was a woodsy smell that teetered on musty in a way that spoke of it being well lived in even if its occupants only came every so often. You had your own little stand up mirror, nightstand, dresser, and a closet though you doubted you’d use anything past the first. Pulling out a single slick piece of black fabric, you double checked the door was closed before changing.

The perfect swimsuit was one you hadn’t imagined you’d find. Not one for flashy things, you only wanted a muted cover that also happened to cover you. Water did unimaginable things to fabrics and you hated the way it clinged. You wanted something you could disappear in, that brought no unnecessary attention, and could be forgotten on your end. Finding it in a matter of minutes into shopping as opposed to the years it took when you were younger, the item had even been on sale.

Stepping into it and pulling it up, you shimmied into the fabric and turned for that same show stopping image you’d seen in the changing room.

What stared back was an image of allure.

No.

That was wrong.

That’s not what it had looked like.

It had covered you.

It hadn’t accentuated anything.

It was simple.

You squirmed, changing angles in hopes that it would get better, but each only revealed more.

What had changed?

You’d purchased it this week.

Were you hallucinating?

Was there something in the wooden walls?

Had the tank crashed and this was you playing out some morbid purgatory?

You pinched yourself.

A sting bit your forearm and you threw your gaze back at the mirror for the unwilling shapes it concocted.

This wasn’t right.

You wanted to swim.

There was no way you could.

Miserably turning away from your image, you rooted through your bag for a cover up. Finding one in some oversized t-shirt you’d brought for comfort, you held it and hated that this wasn’t the way you imagined it would be employed. You figured it’d be a back-up pajama top and not something to hide your shame away in. Clinging to the fabric, you hastily pulled it over your head with an imaginary clock ticking away because Mikey was waiting.

You were ruining everything.

Stumbling out into the living room, you found yourself alone.

Momentarily thrown, but shaking off how Donnie wasn’t a priority right now and the guilt that came with that, you went for your pile of maps. Finding the trail one with the orange lines, you gathered some shoes and careened down the porch.

Buzzing insects mocked your sloppy descent as you rotated the map to be on your course. Following it more than your way, you took the necessary inlet and folded its winds to a drawn T. Bushes and trees concealed you, but the splashing of what was beyond reached your ears faster than you’d hoped. A journey not long to its destination, you slowed as you came to the final bend. You could hear Mikey blabbing presumably to himself as he hooted before resounding sloushes followed. In your mind he jumped off some kind of ledge, you took a deep breath before making the final steps leading to the watering hole.

Somewhere quaint if you had the perspective for such a thing, a tree towered comfortably overtop a sizable pool. One mucked up from algae as the little stream feeding into it didn’t stir the water near enough, you watched roiling green as Mikey emerged with a flip of his wet hair.

“Y/N!” Mikey shouted happiness. “You made it! Come on in! The water’s fine!!” He swam backwards as if giving you room.

The guilt was staggering.

No, Mikey.

I won’t be swimming today.

My body looks like shit and I can’t stand it.

I’ll watch you though.

Have all the fun.

You deserve it.

Signing off your name, you slunk forward only to clip a sight of mixed purples.

Donnie craned his neck back to view you from beneath a large sun hat he’d put on. Sitting on a few rocks that made up the closest edge to you, his lids lowered in a way that said he was reading you like a book.

Hating how he did that, you squeezed the bulky hem of your shirt and walked up. “Uh… M-Mikey…?”

“A-yup!” He stopped splashing to hear you better.

“The… um… car ride… sort of took… more out of me than… I thought? Would it be alright if-!”

“You don’t have to swim.”

You blinked wide and over to him.

“If you don’t want to, don’t!” Mikey continued on. “Let’s compare: are you upset I’m swimming when you don’t want to?”

“O-of c-course not!”

“Then why should I care in the reverse?” He fell back and floated, eyes closed, on his shell.

That was right in a way.

Sweet in another.

You wished you’d put together the same reaction.

Inching closer, it felt like pouring water into an overtaxed bucket.

Another guilty drop in your damnation.

You’d seen your friend in a bad light.

Shirking all the more, you toed off your shoes and let your feet lay flat on one of the worn rocks. It put you near Donnie who’d become the moon on a sunny day’s backdrop. He shined upon the same stone and illuminated its age. The rocks were older and wiser than you’d ever be. They never worried about getting wet. They only knew how to exist, something you wished came as easily to you. Sitting down because you needed more of you to drink from the stone’s wisdom, you kept a lowered head to the water’s edge. It sloshed in a beckoning way and you imagined it too would feel good in a different way.

You really had wanted to swim.

Imaging your tears would do little to fill up the pool while also overflowing it, you heard a tepid sigh beside you.

Eyes wide and shooting up across the pond, you then turned to where you’d sat down next to Donnie.

Someone who you mistakenly forgot about during your pity party.

How was that for a third wheel?

“It’s always something with you.” He spoke softly.

“Sure is.” You gave an awkward laugh.

“That’s…” He made a little concerned noise. “… I didn’t mean it in a cruel way.”

“You didn’t have to. It is.” You threw your legs off the rock and threatened to drown your toes in the water. “It’s a cruel fate. I’m…” You remembered yourself. “Sorry. Nothing. What are you doing here?”

“My species is aquatic.”

You snuck a glance. “You’re pretty dry then.”

“You are too.”

You frowned deeply and watched Mikey pick up a sun drunk grin as he spread his limbs out to float on. “I don’t know why I feel like this. Everything was fine before…”

“With what?”

“This…” You threw a hand over yourself. “Stupid ugly swimsuit.”

You could feel Donnie’s gaze linger.

“Just trust me.” You folded your legs against yourself.

“I’m not sure I do.”

You squinted at the glistening water before looking at him.

“I barely know you.” He responded simply, waiting there.

“Oh.”

“Disappointed?”

“In what?” Your ugly side was leaking far beyond the reach of what your shirt could cover. “I didn’t think you trusted me. You may have been wrong about me being bad, but that wouldn’t make you less suspicious. So it’s not that. What’s left? The swimsuit sucks. It’s not like you wanna drool over it. I don’t want anyone too. I wanted to swim.”

Hearing your wish aloud, you pressed hard on your chest with your legs.

You could flatten out your entire form if only you were malleable.

“The water is opaque. I can alert Mikey and we’ll turn away so you can get in.”

You felt too far gone for solutions.

You weren’t worth the trouble.

Burying your chin into your knees, you stewed.

“You know how many times the others have made fun of my board shorts?”

You told yourself you didn’t care.

If that was the case then Donnie didn’t either. “Hundreds, though it might be my attitude when wearing them. I like the excuse. To have my day off and not worry about pleasantries. To not have to tailor myself to others. I can tell them to shove it. It’s my day off and how I look isn’t anyone’s damn business.”

Sounded like an odd hill to die on.

“Everyone should have those days.” Donnie craned his arms behind him and leaned back to soak up the rays he was in.

The tree overhead was clipping your light.

Donnie was free.

Mikey was free.

Head lifting a little, you pondered your friend.

He’d needed to get out and he did.

Now he was a vision, glowing amongst the pool.

In contrast there was you, wadded up and tossed away without even giving yourself the chance.

Another terrible reminder that this was the point.

This was what you were trying to avoid.

This was what you were trying to learn from.

Mikey didn’t even have to do anything to be himself.

He just was.

Instead of his usual bustle of light, he shined by matter of existence.

That was why you chased him.

You wanted that.

Staring at him until sun spots mucked up your vision, you turned the mass to Donnie.

Beside you in the same pose, he was more calculated.

He had to put on his wares.

His was an unseen struggle you hadn’t considered.

No one gleamed quite like Mikey.

That didn’t mean they didn’t shine in their own right.

Donnie’s darkened scales only threw prisms in a different way.

The cool moon’s glow.

Letting your legs fall, this time your feet drew to the allure of the water.

Just out of reach, you stared hard, making sure the pair would keep their eyes closed.

The both of them were still as if asleep, but you waited past whatever insect was chirping before you slowly tugged your hem out from under you. Emerging without more than the sound of rustling fabric, you rolled your shirt up around your waist. The next move was one harder to conceal, you threw a desperate glance at your friend.

Water rocked the resting Mikey like a babe and you wanted to feel that too.

You wanted to be nestled by the sun’s glow.

You wanted to feel weightless and have those burdens removed.

You yanked the shirt over your head and dropped it to your side.

Donnie stirred at the sound, but didn’t open his eyes.

“It’s… It’s okay… I’m not… okay… but I think I… I don’t want to care…”

He cracked a lid and stared skyward.

“It looked so different in the store.”

“How so?” He asked a whispy cloud.

“It looked… I don’t know… covering? Like it didn’t… show any bits. Like it… hid them away.”

He blinked slow and comfortable. “I’m a designer, you know.”

“What?”

“Genius Built Apparel. Where fashion meets function.”

You stared on.

Of course he was.

He also built a tank and a legion of dusting robots.

If this were any other family you’d think he was pulling your leg.

You’d seen more than enough to believe.

Most of your stare came from the cocky name.

Though even that made sense.

Donnie was a carefully constructed sphere.

Who were you to take away his gloating?

He tilted his head just enough to glimpse your face. “I’m serious. I’ve dissuaded Mikey from many a faux pas.”

You shook your head.

“May I?”

“What?” You switched to eyeing him.

“I can take a clinical eye. Examine stitching. Find your err.”

You bounced one of your legs.

You did want to know where it had all gone wrong.

You could theoretically fix it then.

Wash this all away in the water you so desperately wanted to get in.

“You won’t make it weird?”

“I don’t drool on the metaphorical clock; you were right about that, but I understand your concern. I have accosted you before.”

“Different kind of weird. That was mean weird. You were a jerk weird.”

Donnie chuffed and it rolled down his plastron.

You watched it fall into his lap before forcing your gaze back to his face in a rush. “Promise… Promise I can pull your hat down if you… do anything.”

“I won’t so a simple enough agreement. Sure.”

“Go… ahead…” You folded your arms to your sides, obviously nervous as you listened to his clothes move.

In a twist, he was examining you and he gave a faint hum.

Not wanting to see exactly how he saw you and growing miserable, you stared into the water.

You could throw yourself in and be done with it.

“Here.” He spoke.

You moved to the sound on instinct and found him pointing to your hip.

His eye was indeed one you imagined a tired scientist gave the samples he was cursed to study.

You immediately relaxed. “What?”

“This ruching here is meant to cover cellulite when the fabric gets wet. When dry it acts a similar concealment, but the way the strips are sewn are for the first purpose.”

“Oh…” You tilted your head to look.

“Thing is, it’s also leading lines.” He didn’t get any closer, but he mimed tracing the seams of the fabric that curled around your hip and beneath where you were sitting. “It’s meant to direct the gaze to certain assets.”

You blew out an annoyed breath.

“Dressing room mirrors, where I imagine you first saw this, aren’t slapped on walls without thought. They're engineered with angles and lightning to make clothes look as flattering as possible.” He brought his eye to yours. “Where did you see yourself today?”

“There’s a… mirror in my room.”

Donnie’s lip twitched with distaste. “That floor length one?”

You nodded.

“Dad uses that one to feel tall.” He sneered openly. “It tilts up from below, the worst possible perspective.”

You blinked a few rapid times.

“It took the ruching and blew it up.”

“So it’s not… that bad?”

“It’s anything, it's tasteful!” He spoke with an irritation that said that should have been obvious. “It fits your body well. Does it have a certain allure? Yes, I’ve already spoken of assets, but it is not a piece that invites unnecessary solicitation.”

“Assets, assets. What are you, an ass man?” You retorted automatically.

“There is nothing quite like sinking your teeth into that soft, inviting flesh.” He took your response and held it between his teeth.

In a blink, you saw an imaginary Donatello around your hips pointing to the fabric and on contact with the thought your face exploded.

“I say generally speaking, of course.” He clicked his tongue as if scolding you and turned away toward the water.

Hot.

You were too hot.

Run.

Throwing yourself forward, you submerged as indelicately as possible into the water.

Sinking like a stone into the silence, your burning flesh was quickly soothed by a cold lap.

A sweet embrace, you kicked to the surface and emerged with a pathetic gasp.

Never graceful, you shook yourself free of clingy drops and spun back around to view the rocks.

Donnie was staring up at the sky again and you sort of hated him for it.

Swim.

You’d swim with Mikey.

Spinning around, the other turtle was not only longer floating, but you couldn’t locate him at all. Quickly worrying that you had toppled him in your dive, you swam forward. “Mikey?”

Quieting to listen, you didn’t hear anything past the faint roiling of the water against its container.

Thinking he must have dove, you looked down to find Donnie’s earlier comment to be a correct one. With the water murky to a fault and a new fear cropped up. You had no idea what was in the water and you immediately darted for the closest shore. Something several long feet from Donnie, it was a sort of marshy landing that rocks from below steeping up to meet. They were covered in a slime that clung to your feet and had you pausing until you heard an off-toned lap behind you.

You whirled around with wide eyes and found a sea monster waiting for you.

Something matted with algae, it groaned pathetically and you sucked in enough air until the balloon was full enough to scream.

“What!? Who?! Where?!” The creature splashed with Mikey’s voice.

He’d been captured by another mutant.

You turned to get out of the water with some intention of getting to the tank.

It had to have missiles or something.

Anything to help.

You’d take a bowling ball launcher at this point.

Catching grip with one foot, you hoisted up the other. The many rocks acted like a disjointed ladder and your entire torso emerged from the water before one of your feet slid. The moment it happened felt like you were falling out of time. In slow motion, you knew your face was one of surprise. You painted an open expression where the imminent terror that you were falling couldn’t catch up as neurons to save yourself from the action.

Your mind knew, but your face didn’t know that you were going to crack your head open on the rocks you just slipped on.

“Y/N!”

Two voices.

Too far.

Something skewered your side as the first injury of many.

Hoping only to black out on that first step, you willed your possessions to your friends.

You didn’t bother hoping they would remember you.

You only hoped that they could make some use out of your worldly imprint.

No matter how small it was.

Water rushed to greet you and shoved you away.

That wasn’t right.

That was the wrong direction.

Water swayed like waves.

The equal and opposite reaction wouldn’t come until you fell in.

Why had it preemptively come for you?

Your arms dangled heavily from gravity and you forced your eyes from wherever they had gone.

The monster was right in front of you.

Its face was one of Michelangelo.

Green sludge caught in his blackened locks and his worried expression peered out from between a small part.

He had you by the waist and was holding you up in the air. “Are you okay!?”

You were a loose toy strung up.

Flopping down, lifeless, you were a doll that couldn’t close its eyes until it was laid down.

A second deafening splash came as you hung there.

Mikey’s lips were moving awfully fast.

“Did they hit their head?!” Donnie’s voice broke through.

“No! Above water the whole time! Donnie! They aren’t saying anything, I don’t-”

“Shock?” Donnie wondered, but he never came into frame.

Where was he?

Mikey jostled you as one might bounce a colicky baby.

It was pulling a string on your back and you hacked on contact.

You wheezed, forcing air in where terror had torn it from you.

You fought.

Not Mikey exactly, but the situation.

It strung your arms back.

It shoved your torso forward.

It threw your head skyward.

You gasped, alive.

You saw blue.

It was the sky.

You hadn’t died.

Mikey had saved you.

Finally.

You came down from your arching to translate your joy.

Mikey’s face slid into your vision and he was the picture of a boiled red tomato dotted with summertime spots.

He was looking at you.

He had ogled you.

He was embarrassed.

Your blood pressure plummeted twice as fast as it had when you thought you were about to die.

This was worse.

This time you heard yourself scream as you lashed out.

Water flew up as if to welcome you, to bring you where you were meant to be.

Drowned.

Returned you to that place where you weren’t an object to be viewed.

You were a person floating free.

Liquid carried life.

It supported it.

It didn’t have it.

Vertigo struck you as you moved within a blink.

In a disorientated spiral, your lids fell heavy as your inner ear tried to correct the imbalance.

There were no longer hands around your waist.

Something clicked like an engine uselessly turning over.

Weary, you realized you were standing in a safe spot in the water.

You drew up the dreary blinds of your curtain and found a muscled arm thrown out protectively in front of you.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!!!” Mikey cried, loud and desperate.

“What the hell was that then!?” Donnie’s voice rang close.

That firm limb tucked you further behind someone.

You were being shielded.

A squabble happened in front of you, but you only looked down at the jade appendage acting as your guard rail.

You touched the arm and it felt familiar.

“Don-nie?” Your voice came out synthetic.

His was the body you were behind and his face appeared in a whip of his head. “Are you alright? Can you swim? I’ll move.”

“I’m not…?” You weren’t swimming.

You weren’t doing anything.

You were standing in the water.

“What…?”

You looked past Donnie and glimpsed Mikey with a faint blush still stuck to his cheeks.

“Y-you…!” It felt accusatory on your lips.

“I’m sorry!!!” Mikey screeched.

“Turn around, dummy!” Donnie growled hot and was in motion.

You were soon ushered into a spin with an indelicate hand to your back and all but rushed over to the rock you had jumped off of.

You heard a splash of what you assumed was Mikey growing distant behind you.

You hoped that would cool him off.

“You ready?” Donnie’s voice appeared like it was newly there.

“For what?” You were already used.

What was left?

Was it time to take out the recycling?

“I’m going to lift you up. Your shirt is right there.” Donnie instructed.

“My shirt…” You were forlorn.

It was your back-up comfort item.

“Ready?” Donnie asked again.

The water rocked you and you barely bumped his firm plastron.

You nodded dumbly.

Your hips were taken in what you read as a clinical way.

You were barely bounced once, then twice, in a way that ballet dancers got momentum to lift their partners.

Sure enough, you were lifted cleanly out of the water.

Only this time you felt well handled.

You weren’t swung around like a toddler holding up their favorite doll.

A child who cared for his toys put you on a shelf.

When your knees touched down, you drank in the life of the rock and scrambled for your shirt.

All the things that had just occurred crashed into you.

Shoving your head through the hole, you yanked the shirt down your body as you were already in motion. Forest floor digging into your bare feet, you didn’t need the map to retrace your steps. You followed the single, winding, prickly path and emerged out by the cabin only to fly inside it. A sanctuary amongst the unrelenting woods, you left a rotting drip trail as you entered your room. Your door clattered from where you had thrown it open and you ripped your duffel bag to shreds to get to its confines.

Pulling on layer after layer, you could see Mikey’s blush with each piece of clothing.

He’d looked at you.

You shoved your feet into a third pair of socks.

His gaze was amorous.

Into a thermal that was very much against the season, you ran out of clothes and stormed the dresser.

Sexual.

There were oversized men’s clothes that struck you as maybe being Raph’s and you thanked their huge size.

You put shirt after shirt on.

Mikey had said, point blank, that he wanted to see how far his feelings went.

Why were you so stupid?

You screamed.

Raw and uncut.

Tearing at your larynx, you ripped a few too many layers off as they impeded your melt down.

You needed space to breathe.

You needed to be swallowed whole.

Stumbling out to that accursed mirror, the shape you found there was a frumpy one.

Smiling a teary look at it, you watched it warp your face into one of dismay and you cried.

Where had you last felt okay?

It wasn’t here.

Moving around the room you searched for it.

That intangible something that would help.

Knocking everything over, you finally got a hold of a much too large pillow and hugged it to your body.

It was large and not at all as firm as you wanted.

You needed a hard wall.

You needed that unrelenting nature.

You weren’t something to be judged with heat.

You needed a cold light the sun couldn’t supply.

The wall knocked.

You spun around with your pillow defense to find the back of a head waiting there.

“I come as an emissary.” Donnie spoke slow and methodical.

“You can-!” It wasn’t Mikey.

Your pillow fell slack into one hand.

It wasn’t Mikey.

You let it drop with a thump to the floor.

It wasn’t Mikey.

“…come in.”

You took a wobbly step to spread out your clothed legs in hopes of keeping yourself upright.

Donnie didn’t move.

“You can… come in…” You repeated, not sure if you had gotten the first phrase out.

“No.”

“No…?” You took another step and saw how Donnie was clearly beyond the boundary of your open door.

With his back to you.

Not impeding on you in any way.

“This is your space.” He spoke it like a finality.

You stared at the knot of his mask tails and tried to place what you felt.

“Being out here with us…” Donnie let the sentence hang before he lowered his gaze to the floor. “I want to… respect that much.”

“Why’d you say it like that?”

“I prefer the term ‘sanctum,’ but I couldn’t fit it in.”

“A sacred place…?”

The back of his head nodded. “My lab is supposed to be one.”

Sanctums weren’t places to be invaded.

If they were then they were violated.

He understood.

Is that what you felt?

Camaraderie?

Even his mania in the beginning had been one you made sense of.

Was that why you hadn’t complained?

No, you were rewriting history from your current perspective.

It was also the only one you knew.

It was one where you envied one man.

It was where you once feared another.

Now their roles were reversed.

You never had to explain your misery to Donnie.

You didn’t have to make him understand.

He was the moon.

You rushed towards him.

Donnie heard the footsteps and made it about half a turn before you reached him. “As… I was saying, I talked to Michael and come in his stead to-”

You collided with that unrelenting wall of plastron. Finding an odd hinge between the front of his shell and the back, you did your best to tuck into that space and weaseled under his arm. You felt it rise above you, out of your way and a rotation brought you more towards his front. There you felt him stop to take your over-clothed form in.

“I’m sorry!” You choked on tears, rooting the sound as deep against Donnie’s wet clothes as possible.

He let your misery hang for exactly one second.

Then he surrounded you in a soft moon glow.

He pulled you toward his chest and you burrowed closer to him.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I completely overreacted. It was just too much… Too much attention… the way he looked. He said… I thought he wouldn’t… I didn’t want…!”

A hand pet through the layers of your back.

Even and careful.

No further connotation other than to soothe.

Squirming to get your arms out from where you were crushing them, you wiggled them free to embrace him.

You squeezed a sigh right out of him.

“I know.” He spoke into your damp head. “I know…”

You nodded and basked in the tide. Pulled by the moon’s orbit, the waves rolled in and out with a sway. A gentle rocking, you were cast a comfortable drift by it. This was the one you had longed for from the swimming hole. Here, you floated amongst sturdy shores. Held safe, the guiding white light poured around you. One that pushed back against the darkness, it shone on you. Lucky to be in its reach, it wasn’t the type you soaked up. It instead washed over you in a cleanse. Feeling lighter and a little stifled, you extracted yourself from moisture to moisture.

Everything around you from your leaking face to the clingy pond water was soaked and you frowned down Donnie’s body. Standing in a little pool mostly created by him, you wanted to stick your tongue out at it, but you feared the bacteria clearly clinging to your skin.

“The cabin is yours tonight.”

Before you could register the words, you felt him strengthen his resolve with a puff of his chest.

“I don’t want to hear complaints otherwise.”

You wanted to pout.

“I checked the systems when we were doing our preliminary cleaning. The water will be hot. Shower, bathe, do whatever you’d like. We’ll be staying outside.”

You gave a faint nod to the wet floor.

“We’ll grill and I’ll make you a plate. Preference?”

You shook your head. “I don’t… feel like eating…”

“Bland it is.”

Now you were pouting.

“Y/N.”

“Yeah?” Your head felt heavy.

“I still have a message from Mikey to deliver.”

“I really don’t want to hear it.” Irritation brought you to look at him.

Donnie took you in with a sort of smile. “You’ll want to.”

You dropped your features in a way that said you didn’t believe him.

“He said he’s not ready to talk as he’s having his own crisis, but he’ll let you know when he’s ready to apologize.” Donnie tilted his head, almost amused.

You blinked straight out of your bitterness to stare openly.

Donnie gave a single knowing nod.

“Enjoy your shower.” With one last sweep over you as if to check you were all still there, Donnie turned and headed for the door.

Watching him go, you saw the faint amber hue of sunset.

“It’ll all work out.” Donnie tossed just as he grabbed the knob to exit.

You turned and stormed straight to the bathroom. Drowning in clothes and scum, you locked the door tight and turned the shower knobs to their highest setting. Leaving the water to warm, you started removing your outermost shirt. As soon as it hit the ground you felt possessed. You tore off your clothes with each subsequent layer removed at a faster and faster pace. You needed to be freed. You needed that ridiculous protection off of you as soon as possible. All of it soiled, you stripped down bare and left your feet for last.

The moment they were naked and pressed to tile, you leapt into the old style tub. Instantly boiled by the too hot water, you let it scorch you with clenched teeth at first until the burn seared and you adjusted the dial for something reasonable. Still a lobster in a pot, you scrubbed your skin until you thought it might flake and then doused it in suds until you couldn’t see its color. A sea of white foam, the second scrounge came through, washing the detritus away.

Pickled in the process, you emerged and greedily took up every towel in the room. It meant toeing around the disgusting mound of clothes you’d left, but Donnie had said the cabin was yours. Until tomorrow when you’d clean the place up, you instead mourned how you hadn’t even brought your toothbrush in with you. Scowling at a fog coated mirror, you cracked the door and watched the steam leak out.

Chasing it with your ear, you didn’t hear anything, but there was a distinct lemon scent.

You followed the smell into the hall where you quickly placed it was cleaner. The floor had a sheen to it that spoke of a recent mopping. The clean line ending abruptly at your door said exactly who the culprit was. Donatello had snuck back in to clean and you were thankful for it. He’d left your sanctuary untouched and instead set a stool just outside the door.

On it was a stack of comfortable looking clothes and a note.

‘Keep your room or upgrade. I recommend the one upstairs, second bedroom on the right.’

You folded the note along its lines and placed it back on the offered clothes. You then gathered the lot and took it with you along with a brave face as you entered your room. You barely looked up as you salvaged what you could from your duffel. Carrying the mostly limp sack, you then moved to follow your recommendation. It led you through the darkened cabin and up the winding wooden stairs where the door in question was closed. Knocking on it out of politeness, you found it empty and slipped inside. It was decorated similarly, but clearly different. Comfortable in its own sense, you went about your nightly routine as best you could and thanked the space for not having a mirror. Growing more weary by the second, you thought vaguely of meat as you instead pulled back the covers.

Sinking in and imagining charcoal lighting the men’s faces, you settled down into the welcoming embrace of bed.

You eventually got up and padded across a tiled floor.

Pulling out a single slick piece of black fabric, you double checked the door was closed before changing.

The perfect swimsuit was one you hadn’t imagined you’d find.

What luck, you thought, as you slipped it on.

Stepping into it, you shimmied into the fabric and turned for that show stopping image in the changing room.

It was perfect.

It covered you in all the right ways.

Finally, the piece you’d been looking for.

Smiling and striking pose after pose, you saw a hand wave above the curtain.

“Come in!” You called to it.

Sanctum’s were only to be entered with permission.

“Silly.” You looked over your pleasing image once more. “Is it still a violation if I request it?”

“I guess not.” Instead of drawing the curtain back, Donnie slipped through it.

Tucking himself a strong wall behind you, he looked into the mirror at you.

What looked back held no heat, only appreciation.

“Do you like it?” He checked with you without passing judgment himself.

“I do…” You smiled.

He gave one of his own, though subdued, and flicked his gaze down. “Look here.”

You lowered your gaze to find him kneeling behind you. With his head popped out around your hips, he was looking up at you in a way you liked quite a bit.

You felt powerful.

You were a light bright enough for him to want to project.

“This ruching here has leading lines.” He didn’t touch you, but his hands ghosted over you along the fabric’s pattern.

Your lips parted and your chest filled with heat.

A celestial body was meant to look on.

You were safe.

“May I?” He asked you once again.

You were glad and responded with a breathless, “Please.”

His mouth opened a dark orbital maw, a new moon, which then glinted into a teeth-filled waxing crescent headed in its trek to sink into your soft flesh.

You jolted the moment the teeth supposedly hit their mark.

You stared into the dark abyss and saw drifting images of sharpened grins.

You were dizzy.

A sheen of sweat to you, you tossed back a cover.

The black hovel above you took shape as logs in the cabin ceiling.

They lined up like thick thighs appearing from where board shorts had hiked up.

Begging for a taste.

Awareness struck with a sharp inhale.

Fully awake and doused with dread from your dream, you voiced your despair with a whisper.

“Oh no…”

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I swear I handed this to my betas over a year ago... @tmntxthings and @thepinkpanther83